I have an entirely different problem with youtube, I open all the videos I want to watch from the main page and subscribed page in bew tabs and then sit through them for 3h straight. Shorts are non issue, when I open them the UI and playback pisses me off so quicky that I don't even watch all shorts from my subscribed channels.
Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
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Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#72I love the concept, I went as far as patching the android app for instagram back in the day to stop me from scrolling (crashing was good enough). Haven't kept up to date unfortunately.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#73I just can't authorize an app to have full control on my phone if it's not open-source. What guarantee do I have that you are not selling all my user data?
> full control on my phone if it's not open-source.
bro is using social media that listens and records ton's of data in background.
https://www.hipaajournal.com/jury-trial-meta-flo-health-cons...
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#74I already deleted the apps, and I mostly use Instagram and youtube in the browser. Any support for blocking reels in browser?
Don't know about reels, but there's "Unhook" for Firefox which will hide Shorts and recommendations on YouTube.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#75This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
Why is it more surprising that scrolling is addictive versus, say, putting a stick of combusting plant matter in your mouth and inhaling the smoke?
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
DigiPaws has the headlining feature of the app advertised here, and is open source. https://github.com/nethical6/digipaws
Not that I suspect maliciousness in the case of digipaws or OP, but does the app's code being open-source actually guarantee any security? Is there anything forcing the app I download to be consistent with the repo on Github?
It doesn't guarantee any security, but it is necessary for you to be able to to be able to have confidence in the security in a reasonable time frame. And if you need a guarantee that the source matches the binary, then you can build it yourself.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#77This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
would also be unnecessary if these apps respected the user rather than trying to addict them
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#78As others have said, the permissions required to make this work are scary and require a lot of trust. The fact YouTube and Instagram don't allow you to disable endless algorithmic short form content is straight up evil.
If you turn off YouTube view history, it breaks Shorts. It also breaks a lot of other shit (e.g. back button after you've clicked a video from a search).
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#79As others have said, the permissions required to make this work are scary and require a lot of trust. The fact YouTube and Instagram don't allow you to disable endless algorithmic short form content is straight up evil.
The way that all these tech companies decided that the users couldn't simply turn those features off is maddening. And the "See this Less Often" option doesn't seem to do anything at all on apps like Facebook.
There should be legislation that requires company's allow "opting out" of individualized algorithmic feeds. I'm fine if you want to show me videos similar to channels I've explicitly subscribed to. But tracking my every interaction and using that to serve content I never asked for is everything that's wrong with modern social media.
Maybe we need an initiative like "stop killing games".
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#80This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
Why is it more surprising that scrolling is addictive versus, say, putting a stick of combusting plant matter in your mouth and inhaling the smoke?
Probably because scrolling feels harmless, while smoking never really did. The surprise is in the mismatch.