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uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

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Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#161

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

dietr1ch wrote: post #149
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil” Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”

And how do I pay for a YouTube competitor that's libre or at least won't spy back without losing access to its monopolisticly large catalog?

Yes I know that Google just reported YouTube’s revenue is larger than Netflix’s. But I really don’t find anything interesting on YouTube. Every time I try to find an interesting tutorial on for me AWS, if it isn’t produced by AWS itself, it’s usually subpar and I end up just paying for it on Udemy or using my company paid Pluralsight.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#162

Post by HWR_14 »

derektank wrote: post #95
api wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short form video is addictive, so they want to push it. It maximizes time on site.

As someone that pays for YouTube premium (and isn’t served ads), I don’t understand why they push Shorts to me too. Presumably they should want me to spend the bare minimum amount of time on YouTube necessary to keep me subscribed, as any further use just contributes to higher infrastructure and bandwidth costs.

Infrastructure and bandwidth cost savings aren't worth the risk that you start spending time on Netflix and cancel your subscription.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#164

Post by sam_bristow »

AlexandrB wrote: post #126
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil” Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”

I pay for plenty of goods and services. Just not YouTube. As others have noted, YouTube premium makes ads go away, but none of the other engagement baiting and user disrespecting anti-patterns. As far as I'm concerned, Google is in adversarial relationship with its users, whether your paying or not.

I currently pay for YouTube premium but I'm strongly considering stopping again. For me it's a combination of prices creeping up (small part) and the worsening UX and engagement-bait (big part). It's the same reason I dropped Spotify a few years ago.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#165

Post by doctor_blood »

I can't even stand to visit YT without the combo of Blocktube/Unhook/uBlock Origin/SponsorBlock/Return YouTube Dislike. (Some people may also find Clickbait Remover useful.)

Blocktube is a godsend; it adds a context menu for blocking videos/channels, and you can block vids/channels/comments based on a regex or keywords (e.g. transparently remove every 'minecraft' or 'roblox' vid, or remove every comment with 'Telegram' in it). It even removes vids before the DOM rendering, so blocked vids don't show up as empty title cards or blank spaces.

Unhook lets you independently toggle visibility of the home feed, the rec sidebar, endscreen recs, comments, shorts, and the unrelated BS they ad to search results. (The latest YT update lets endscreen recs slip through again; be sure to add youtube.com##.html5-video-player.ended-mode .ytp-fullscreen-grid to your ublock filter to get rid of them again.)

Surprisingly YouTube still generates a feed for every channel's video page, so I just add channels to my RSS reader for updates instead of bothering with the increasingly flaky subscriptions page. (If they ever break this or yt-dlp I'm not even going to bother with YT in the future.)

Remember when Google exec Prabhakar Raghavan (the man who previously ran Yahoo search into the ground) made Google Search worse so they could serve more ads?

This is the YouTube philosophy; make the platform worse to drive 'engagement', completely ignoring the second and third order effects of their 'optimizations'. Want to search by upload date? Sorry, we removed that! Have some slop! Want to look for a video? Here's a bunch of unrelated bullshit instead - have you tried some slop? Also, have some ads.

The experience for creators is even worse. The recommendation algorithm and monetization policies change every month and YT conveniently gets to collect all the ad money if you've been demonitized. They're shoving a bajillion AI tools down creator's throats and even editing videos after they've been uploaded.

In the end, YouTube caters to advertisers. You're just the product.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a bot shoving slop in a human's face -- forever.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#166

Post by susam »

susam wrote: post #73

I wrote this little quick and dirty userscript for myself sometime back: // ==UserScript== // @name No Shorts // @match https://www.youtube.com/shorts/* // @match https://www.facebook.com/reel/* // ==/UserScript== window.document.body.innerHTML = '' This isn't as comprehensive as the uBlock filter but it has worked pretty well for me so far.

Here is another one I found in my personal userscripts. I believe this script is more effective than my previous one because it prevents recommendations for Shorts or other videos from being shown.

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name  No YT Sidebar and Shorts
  // @match https://www.youtube.com/*
  // ==/UserScript==
  function noYTSidebar () {
    const element = document.getElementById('secondary')
    if (element === null) {
      window.setTimeout(noYTSidebar, 1000)
      return
    }
    element.getElementById('secondary').style.display = 'none'
  }
  function noYTShorts () {
    const elements = document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer')
    if (elements.length === 0) {
      window.setTimeout(noYTShorts, 1000)
      return
    }
    for (e of document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer')) {
      e.style.display = 'none'
    }
  }
  noYTSidebar()
  noYTShorts()

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#167

Post by sandworm101 »

testfrequency wrote: post #113
phony-account wrote: post #106

I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations. I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. But apart from ignoring me wh…

YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting. It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback. All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view! Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT i…

Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#169

Post by aucisson_masque »

venusenvy47 wrote: post #163

I'm curious if anyone knows of something like SponsorBlock or a UBlock list, that can flag tje onslaught of AI videos that are appearing. I find those crappy videos worse than the ads and the shorts.

I got an idea. We could use some kind of voting system where user can upvote or downvote YouTube videos, and it shows the rating when someone click on it.

It could be as simple as 2 buttons and a percentage bar right under the video, on the right, close to the dislike button that does nothing lol.

Re: uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

#170

Post by tecoholic »

etothepii wrote: post #168

I would pay for YouTube premium again if I could switch off shorts. I actually stopped paying for premium to make YouTube less appealing.

Another technique is to turn off watch history. As soon as you do that, you get a blank page on YouTube. It puts the decision making on the user to choose what to watch. I rarely get into the rage bait or shorts. It’s shown in search results and the sidebar. But at least, it’s not in the face when you open the website.
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