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YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

openrss.org

11–20 of 124 posts

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#12
Apparently, this guy doesn't get that RSS is a problem to Google, that they already tried to kill. Of course the neglect is by design. The only reason they keep RSS going is that there is a return on it and it does bring in users - such as me.

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#13

I use a script to read the feed which then checks every video against https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID . If it loads (200), it's a Short. Stupid, but it works.

FYI you can just write a quick script to replace that with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID and it works, at least on a desktop firefox browser with an adblocker on it. Weirdly, it seems to explicitly not work in Discord?

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#14
I see people are doing scripts or other things to remove shorts from their feeds, but there is a simpler solution.

Take your RSS URL of a channel, e.g.:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCxSGC9B...

Replace the `channel_id` with `playlist_id` and replace `UC` with `UULF`. This prefix will only list normal videos:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=UULFxSG...

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#16
post #13

I use a script to read the feed which then checks every video against https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID . If it loads (200), it's a Short. Stupid, but it works.

FYI you can just write a quick script to replace that with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID and it works, at least on a desktop firefox browser with an adblocker on it. Weirdly, it seems to explicitly not work in Discord?

Discord has special handling for certain websites' embeds, including YouTube. Maybe because they already have to pull other video information by ID, they determine whether to use the shorts player based on YouTube's API rather than the URL used.

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#17
post #4

> Nobody asked for shorts in their feed This has been a big issue for me. I currently use RSS exclusively to view the YouTube channels that I'm subscribed to -- currently about 75 channels (and 27 nebula channels) -- and over half of my YouTube feeds are filled with several shorts (sometimes multiple ones by the same creator per day). Looking for hashtags in the title and marking those videos as read is essentially m…

Out of curiosity, are you filtering out shorts because of YouTube's terrible Shorts UI, or solely because of shorts' content quality?

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#18
>When visiting a YouTube channel, there's no link to follow it in a feed reader, no "add feed" button, nothing.

There is literally a bell which you can set it so all videos get sent to your notification feed.

>But when that mission starts bleeding into the feeds of users who don't want it, it becomes a big problem.

Most people love shorts. It had extremely fast growth and continues to get a ton of engagement. Not wanting to see shorts is a small minority. It is disingenuous to pretend that no one wanted shorts when engagement is though the roof with the product.

Re: YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken

#20
post #17
post #4

> Nobody asked for shorts in their feed This has been a big issue for me. I currently use RSS exclusively to view the YouTube channels that I'm subscribed to -- currently about 75 channels (and 27 nebula channels) -- and over half of my YouTube feeds are filled with several shorts (sometimes multiple ones by the same creator per day). Looking for hashtags in the title and marking those videos as read is essentially m…

Out of curiosity, are you filtering out shorts because of YouTube's terrible Shorts UI, or solely because of shorts' content quality?

Not OP, but because IMO shorts are mentally harmful. They're the mental equivalent of transfats-heavy foods.
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