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The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

evilgeniuslabs.ca

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Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#31

Post by Slow_Hand »

sph wrote: post #20
krapp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube is actually really good for finding new, non-mainstream music in my experience.

No, you soon realize it’s promoting the same ‘niche’ videos to a large cohort. You and half a million people worldwide have that video recommended from the same unknown Russian indie rock band

Consider that your experience isn’t universally applicable to everyone.

As a lifelong musician, I find it to be a great resource for discovery. I really lean into curating what I do and don’t want to see and it delivers amazing results frequently.

It’s also a nice counterpoint to recs I get from other sources: streaming services, friends, strangers, and good ‘ol fashioned digging.

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#32

Post by coffeefirst »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #4

It's a pity YouTube doesn't let people built innovative interfaces to this treasure trove. It's so frustrating that their interface is so very bad for discovery and exploration.

I’ve thought about doing this. I mostly use YouTube for cooking and home maintenance. Give me the pasta making video shot in a commercial Italian kitchen with captions, and a grizzled old handyman demonstrating how to caulk the shower.

These exist. They should be discoverable. They used to be. But in 2026 the search results skew towards dubious influencers and AI schlock.

It misses the point. The video that is most valuable to me isn’t necessarily popular, is not the authors real job, but they actually know what they’re doing and explain it well.

You wouldn’t even need a full UI, just a big curated directory of useful stuff.

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#33

Post by thot_experiment »

danielbln wrote: post #29
thot_experiment wrote: post #26

You can disable your watch history and then you only get related videos to the current video as far as I can tell. It does remove all of the videos from the home page, but I've been using youtube like this for 6 years and I don't mind it one bit. I have an alternate account with watch history enabled and I look at the home page every once in a while (obviously my history is very stale), it doesn't seem like anything…

A highly beneficial side effect is that it disables the main YouTube shorts stream. You still get some shorts for your subs and such, but the bottomless heroin feed if Shorts is gone, and good riddance.

Oh interesting, I just have a userscript that completely excises shorts from youtube, seems like a neat side effect though. Always a jumpscare to use youtube on someone elses computer and see all the shorts, ads, and sponsored segments. We had TiVo like 30 years ago, this is a solved problem.

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#34

Post by gdulli »

Dove wrote: post #28

Every few years, I think Yahoo's old attempt to have real people build a phone directory of the web wasn't such a bad idea. And I occasionally wish Google still worked by seeing what other people thought was a worthy web page on a topic. My algorithm for finding worthwhile content is similar: I try to visit the community of interest and see what they like. There is no substitute for the human element in evaluating qu…

A side effect of Reddit/Twitter/etc having captured most of the population/eternal September might be that a web directory has become feasible again. Ignore social media, ignore AI, ignore paywalled sites. What's left and high enough quality might be manageable to maintain a directory for.

Easier said than done, obviously, but the point is that the worthwhile web isn't so big anymore.

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#35

Post by pvaldes »

danielbln wrote: post #29
thot_experiment wrote: post #26

You can disable your watch history and then you only get related videos to the current video as far as I can tell. It does remove all of the videos from the home page, but I've been using youtube like this for 6 years and I don't mind it one bit. I have an alternate account with watch history enabled and I look at the home page every once in a while (obviously my history is very stale), it doesn't seem like anything…

A highly beneficial side effect is that it disables the main YouTube shorts stream. You still get some shorts for your subs and such, but the bottomless heroin feed if Shorts is gone, and good riddance.

shorts can be removed using the filters icon at the top right

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#36

Post by hedgedoops2 »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #4

It's a pity YouTube doesn't let people built innovative interfaces to this treasure trove. It's so frustrating that their interface is so very bad for discovery and exploration.

Ding ding ding

This is one of the things a comprehensive interoperability mandate could enable.

Require monopolistic companies that have a frontend/backend architecture to publish the interface docs and to not obstruct third party commercial alt backends/frontends.

Its a bit like carving up monopolistic firms along the joints (interfaces) defined by the software architecture, and team structure. Just less extreme; the firm isnt actually split, it's just required to allow "fair competition by third party architecture components"

This would really improve googles software, we might get e2ee google keep or gmail with pgp.

(I have not worked out the details of this, it might not be feasible)

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#37

Post by 01jonny01 »

mnky9800n wrote: post #6

I was really hoping that the article would end with a tool or new interface to explore YouTube. But I guess the author only is building one but didn’t realise anything yet.

I created skipvids.com as a new type of interface check it out

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#38

Post by bl4kers »

casey2 wrote: post #11

This complaint is factually false. Click on the ask button and you get a Gemini chat instance that can recommend qualitatively similar videos with a description. Running with the c compiler example why not go the forge hosting the project, look at the contributors and forks, scrape all their socials and download their profiles/videos.

Is this a serious suggestion? Gave me a chuckle at least

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#39

Post by physicles »

gdulli wrote: post #34
Dove wrote: post #28

Every few years, I think Yahoo's old attempt to have real people build a phone directory of the web wasn't such a bad idea. And I occasionally wish Google still worked by seeing what other people thought was a worthy web page on a topic. My algorithm for finding worthwhile content is similar: I try to visit the community of interest and see what they like. There is no substitute for the human element in evaluating qu…

A side effect of Reddit/Twitter/etc having captured most of the population/eternal September might be that a web directory has become feasible again. Ignore social media, ignore AI, ignore paywalled sites. What's left and high enough quality might be manageable to maintain a directory for. Easier said than done, obviously, but the point is that the worthwhile web isn't so big anymore.

Every now and then someone shares a small web link here (Kagi is one aggregator). It’s like survivors picking up the shards of civilization after the apocalypse. Of course such a project can remain viable and useful as long as it remains niche, which is virtually guaranteed as long as there’s no money in it.

It’s incredible how too much money corrupts everything it touches.

Re: The feed doesn't know you, and YouTube refuses to let you browse

#40

Post by appplication »

danielbln wrote: post #29
thot_experiment wrote: post #26

You can disable your watch history and then you only get related videos to the current video as far as I can tell. It does remove all of the videos from the home page, but I've been using youtube like this for 6 years and I don't mind it one bit. I have an alternate account with watch history enabled and I look at the home page every once in a while (obviously my history is very stale), it doesn't seem like anything…

A highly beneficial side effect is that it disables the main YouTube shorts stream. You still get some shorts for your subs and such, but the bottomless heroin feed if Shorts is gone, and good riddance.

You can remove shorts under YouTube’s time management settings > daily limits > shorts feed limit, you can set the max allowed time to 0 min and the effect is they all disappear.
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