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Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

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Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#41

Post by BrandoElFollito »

luffapi wrote: post #36

I have the opposite problem with YT, I’d really like for it to offer me great suggestions so I could sit back for hours and watch, instead of having to actively search for new content. The problem is the recommendations are really narrow. Want to watch a video on how to make cheese? I hope you like being recommended every video from that channel and every other cheese making video for the next 30 days. I feel like it…

I noticed that the suggestions for novelties improve once I scroll very far in the suggestions, and then watch one or two videos of what I would like to have as a suggestion.

This is purely empirical but seems to work more or less in my case.

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#42

Post by isoskeles »

lucideer wrote: post #35
hawski wrote: post #18

A less drastic extension is Clickbait Remover. It replaces thumbnails to an actual frame from the video and de-capitalizes titles: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

Haven't used it, but how representative/helpful are the replaced frames? I can imagine that would be something that would be very difficult to get right (even with the help of AI). My thinking is that with curated thumbs I can at least get a good idea of the author's intent (particularly when one's a relatively experienced regular YT user). I kinda thing targeting curated thumbnail selection is looking at the wrong c…

A browser plug-in can only do so much. It can attempt to fix the symptoms of perverse commercial incentives. But I t cannot fix those underlying incentives.

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#43

Post by jperry »

csunbird wrote: post #32
FridayoLeary wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which should be done anyway. YouTube dropped the ball on that one.

I am also not sure why they allow thumbnails outside of the video content anyways.

Because it's great for analytics. The formula of "face in thumbnail, big text, bold colours" works and YouTube WANT you to be clickbaited so that you watch the ads.

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#44

Post by tut-urut-utut »

luffapi wrote: post #36

I have the opposite problem with YT, I’d really like for it to offer me great suggestions so I could sit back for hours and watch, instead of having to actively search for new content. The problem is the recommendations are really narrow. Want to watch a video on how to make cheese? I hope you like being recommended every video from that channel and every other cheese making video for the next 30 days. I feel like it…

Google YouTube recommendations are simplistic, to the point of being unusable.

What I would really like to see is a YouTube video collection powered by the TikTok recommendation algorithm.

TikTok video proposals are much more adaptive and much more nuanced. There I found out some content through recommendations that I would never search for, but truly liked it.

Of course, not sure how that would work with longer videos, but I can suppose at least for music length it would be good enough, and for longer videos it may need more time to train the engine before starting to recommend.

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#46

Post by robotnikman »

46756e wrote: post #38
luffapi wrote: post #36

I have the opposite problem with YT, I’d really like for it to offer me great suggestions so I could sit back for hours and watch, instead of having to actively search for new content. The problem is the recommendations are really narrow. Want to watch a video on how to make cheese? I hope you like being recommended every video from that channel and every other cheese making video for the next 30 days. I feel like it…

I feel this. I feel like a decade ago, video suggestions where based on what you were currently watching and you could find tiny channels and new content easily. Nowadays the suggestions are basically 1/2 videos I have seen and 1/2 videos that are either big youtubers or I have subscribed to. No going down the rabbit hole to find new stuff unless you search yourself.

Yep, I miss the days when it would just recommend similar videos. Was so much easier to find new stuff and hidden gems

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#47

Post by willmadden »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #44
luffapi wrote: post #36

I have the opposite problem with YT, I’d really like for it to offer me great suggestions so I could sit back for hours and watch, instead of having to actively search for new content. The problem is the recommendations are really narrow. Want to watch a video on how to make cheese? I hope you like being recommended every video from that channel and every other cheese making video for the next 30 days. I feel like it…

Google YouTube recommendations are simplistic, to the point of being unusable. What I would really like to see is a YouTube video collection powered by the TikTok recommendation algorithm. TikTok video proposals are much more adaptive and much more nuanced. There I found out some content through recommendations that I would never search for, but truly liked it. Of course, not sure how that would work with longer vide…

My problem with youtube isn't their recommendation algorithm, it's that they ban and censor so much of the content I want to watch. Youtube and the major social media outlets have turned into broadcast TV over the last five years. I use it for "how to" videos, and that's about it. I find a higher concentration of interesting/intellectual content on other platforms.

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#48

Post by mdaniel »

emehrkay wrote: post #33

I love this and will use it. I watch video at 2x and made a simple bookmarklet to control speed for video/audio https://github.com/emehrkay/media_speed

If you haven't seen it yet, the gear on their player offers a number of playback speeds (including 2x) and seems to remember the setting across videos. I suspect it does that because they're reusing the element for playback until a fresh page load, because it's not persisted as much as just not reset between videos

Re: Show HN: Less Addictive YouTube – a cross-browser plugin

#50

Post by kissgyorgy »

I have this idea for a long time: a separate page with predefined "algorithms" which you use the Youtube API to query video selection. You can change the algorithm any time, and it shows videos similar to the YouTube home page, but the search results are based only on the selected algorithm.
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