Someone at YouTube needs glasses • Hacker News Board

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#231

Post by Arisaka1 » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

jackcooper wrote: post #147

dcchambers wrote: post #58

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.

Summary of the proposed solutions to block YouTube Shorts: -Enhancer for YouTube extension (Firefox) — mopsi -Unhook extension (Chrome/Firefox) — jabroni_salad, kelvinjps10 -YouTube-shorts block add-on — timbit42 -ReVanced for mobile — kelvinjps10 -Shorts filter list in Brave browser (works on mobile) — my personal favorite

Unhook made YouTube actually useful for my friend who has ADHD, since it lets you hide all recommendations in front page + side bar.

Luckily Google hasn't "manifest away" this type of extensions (yet).

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#232

Post by whiplash451 » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #212

dcchambers wrote: post #58

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.

I cancelled YouTube premium and stopped using YouTube entirely because of this

I'm with you, but unfortunately Youtube is trading you(s) for many more zombies in the subway. Stats rule.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#233

Post by rcfox » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

hkchad wrote: post #134

This happened to me last week, used uBlock origin to set it back to 8 video's per row.

Could you share how you did that?

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#234

Post by amluto » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #185

dcchambers wrote: post #58

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.

Not a chance. YouTube needs shorts so that they can compete with TikTok. They HAVE to put it in front of everybody so that they can leverage their existing, vast userbase to quickly bootstrap such a product. It's a fight for market relevance for them. You will most likely not see them let that go.

Someone may believe this, but it’s utter nonsense. The users who don’t want to see shorts aren’t using TikTok.

This would be like Starbucks randomly serving tea to 20% of customers who order coffee because they want to compete more effectively with Lipton. That’s not how competition works.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#235

Post by jonny_eh » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

mmmlinux wrote: post #11

Doesnt doing this make youtube impressions go up, since they are showing you the video with less immediate competition around it.

Fewer thumbnails mean impressions go down

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#236

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

skyyler wrote: post #158

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I have given up on trusting low-audience browser extensions. Too many stories of the author selling out and injecting analytics/malware into the product.

300k users is low-audience to you?

Unless it is a top-10 app, it is a no go. The top applications have millions of users.

A browser is my everything app. It is the most security essential tool I use daily, which requires vigilance in how I extend it. More users is a crappy proxy for how likely a developer can sneak through an insidious change.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#237

Post by grobibi » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

eddyg wrote: post #71

voytec wrote: post #18

FYI: YouTube provides RSS feed for every channel. The URL is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID And without downloading with yt-dlp, videos can be watched from youtube-nocookie.com in full-window mode (no distractions) under: https://cinemaphile.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

The excellent “Play”⁽¹⁾ app (available for iOS, macOS, Apple TV and Vision Pro) can also use these feeds, plus give you the ability to conveniently save other videos to “watch later”. Highly recommended! ⁽¹⁾ https://marcosatanaka.com/

In addition to the main purchase price, this app charges 3.99/month for: -following channels -following playlists -removing shorts and many more features on top of those.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#238

Post by slater » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

sailfast wrote: post #35

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

of course there are competitors, but they're either pay-to-play (Vimeo?), or overrun with fash or fash-adjacent content (Rumble, etc.)

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#239

Post by -__---____-ZXyw » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

dcchambers wrote: post #58

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.

I use invidious, and if I can't because it's down or something, I use a FF extension called "unhook". I hadn't been on to youtube proper in a good few years, but with unhook, I can block everything (suggested videos of all kinds, comments, etc). I can re-enable comments by clicking on the extension in the toolbar and unchecking comments. Easy peasy.

You get almost a complete blank page and a search bar when you go to "youtube.com", and then when you search, you get the results. Just simple, really.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#240

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

This feels symptomatic of Google getting more and more desperate to have Youtube generate net revenue. All of the changes pointed out (and all of the 'shorts' that litter the site) are explained as 'additional monetization.'

If the author scrolls down another 5 videos and an ad will appear, etc. Shorts are designed so that they can feed more ads/hour to viewers. Both are strategies to increase monetization on the site at the cost of customer experience.