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Someone at YouTube needs glasses

jayd.ml

131–140 of 720 posts

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#131

I am BEGGING someone, anyone at Google/YouTube to let me permanently disable YouTube Shorts. I HATE Short form video content and no matter how many times I select "show me less of this" I still get them front and center when I open the app or website.

You can disable watch history on your account, which completely disables it. No need to install any extension (which may not work on all your devices)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42795204

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#132

So who is building their competitor? Any shot in hell at this because of their huge library?

Peertube is trying. There are a bunch of different servers with some interesting content.

Some is the keyword here. As you say youtube's huge library is a hard thing to compete with. Still I've found some good content there and I make it a point to look at peertube first to reward those who are there with my eyes.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#133

I am BEGGING someone, anyone at Google/YouTube to let me permanently disable YouTube Shorts. I HATE Short form video content and no matter how many times I select "show me less of this" I still get them front and center when I open the app or website.

Just block the html elements which show YouTube shorts? Use ublock, select, and block.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#135

I always laugh at these shots from the hip criticizing YouTube and Google. As though Google doesn't have a entire team of data scientists and top tier engineers managing this experiment and driving it to optimal results. (Spoiler: they do) If you don't like the service, you can stop using it. And if you do, they have already factored that into their metrics guardrail, and it was the right decision.

Yup! That's the point, I'm mourning what was and shaking my fist at a cloud.

They're probably right by their metrics, they can probably rigorously prove this makes them more money. But I think its subjectively worse, it feels claustrophobic and prescriptive to me.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#136
post #52
post #46

For a long time the grid of videos on the homepage has been slightly misaligned. I imagine the different rows belong to different teams. This means you can't hover your mouse in the gaps between columns while you scroll to prevent videos autoplaying when moused over. I find the autoplay so annoying because it hides the thumbnail which was carefully designed to communicate why I should click on the video and replaces…

THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. This has been one of the most frustrating things I run into with Youtube scrolling the page. Can’t leave your cursor on the page while scrolling without managing to have the spacing shift the thumbnails just so slightly so that your cursor lands back into a thumbnail for an autoplay to start and add to the metrics.

I can’t think of other examples, but this exact problem is a constant frustration for me on multiple sites. I can’t scroll with my cursor on the page without crap happening that I don’t want to happen.

As to the reason, at least with Youtube and Facebook, the answer is obvious: they want to increase their ad revenue by claiming additional “plays” or “interactions” or whatever they want to call it today. I remember realizing several times over the years that I had been conned when I paid for ads. The top-level numbers looked good, but when I dug in, I realized they were all faked.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#137
My homepage on 14" laptop has degraded from 12-16 previews (4 in row) to 9 (3 in row), lately since around late 2024 has a whopping 4 (four) previews. Amazing evolution. Such courage.

Also there are bugs there, and after some magic combinations of clicks I sometimes see 9 grid, or even rarely a 16 grid. Though it lasts only for one session and I can't ever reproduce the bug. So the support is there, they made it shitty on purpose. And I even pay for that crap :(

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#139

I am BEGGING someone, anyone at Google/YouTube to let me permanently disable YouTube Shorts. I HATE Short form video content and no matter how many times I select "show me less of this" I still get them front and center when I open the app or website.

Ublock origin allows you to block any part of a page. Solved!

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This means you can't hover your mouse in the gaps between columns while you scroll to prevent videos autoplaying when moused over You can disable autoplay at https://www.youtube.com/account_playback , then uncheck "Video previews". It resets itself every 15 days or so, but at least one can have some peace in the meantime.

> It resets itself every 15 days or so Are you saying that YouTube just alters your preferences?

Many websites do this. Facebook resets your feed sorting preferences, as does LinkedIn (sort by Recent, then refresh the page, it will be Top again).
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