I’ve noticed YouTube specifically has become more addictive, I never used to be one to sit and scroll for long durations before but I often catch myself spending way too long on shorts now
Even people or older generations seem to be getting sucked in nowadays
I am using
- Mull + adblock
- greyjay
- jerboah
- several Discuss webapps
- internet searching
- antennapod for podcasts
This is already enough to get me addicted and its not even typical social media
This reminds me of “Gum’s Gotten Mintier Lately. Have You Noticed?”
This just put me off YouTube, I get that they are trying to copy Tiktok’s addictiveness but I just don’t get anything out of short-form video content.
I don’t watch shorts, but the algorithm became absolute trash for me recently.
Install Youtube ReVanced and disable shorts altogether! Doing that saved me years of lifetime haha
I’m constantly having to recheck for updates on revanced because they are constantly changing YouTube and shorts keep reappearing.
Nonroot device so I can’t do it automatically, unless I’ve missed something.
That’s weird! My phone isn’t rooted either (Moto G100) and I’ve only manually updated Revanced once since it was released. I don’t think it has ever lost my settings either. Is the option “Auto Update Patches” checked in your Revanced Manager?
The patches keep themselves up to date, and I have to hit the update buttons manually for the revanced manager itself, but the YouTube app I get told “this is a split apk” and apparently you can only mess with those on RvM if your device is rooted, according to the popup.
I just have to find the recommended app version on apkmirror and choose my patches if they haven’t saved from the previous time.
It’s just a little annoying to have to find the apk and do all the extra steps, but that’s what I get for not rooting. Partly because the phone is still under warranty and partly because I don’t trust myself to not brick it.
Even with every negative piling on at once, it’s still lightyears ahead of youtube base. And it’s not bad by any stretch. All the negatives I’ve experienced are partly my own doing.
Hmm, maybe ReVancedExtended would solve your problems? I know my RvM has no issues with custom patches even without root, but it might just be a device/os version weirdness. I’ve heard RvX is overall better with the non-root support, but I’ve never used it personally
I had no idea there was a vanced replacement!!!
No, shorts are shit and I’m absolutely not sucked in. They try to emulate tik tok so I would say this format simply works for you.
Ah, you already said it. Exactly how I feel.
I have a seething hatred for shorts. I refuse to watch anything designed like them on any platform.
That’s part of the idea, isn’t it? They mix normal content with max cringe content because that’s what keeps people watching.
Absolutely. That’s completely not for me, no way, no how.
It does unfortunately. I don’t like it but it absolutely hacks my brain
Would love if there was just an option to disable shorts in the app because I still want to use original youtube
If you keep hitting not interested on the shorts, they get temporarily disabled for a while.
Temporarily being the problem there unfortunately
I’m not the kind of person to put up with doing stuff like that repeatedly
You either have to accept that you like watching shorts more than doing other things and watch them without worrying or change your habits. There’s no magical way where you just stop doing it. I will take some effort.
The change in habit unfortunately is just not opening YouTube on my phone, which is a shame because there are good videos that I feel good after watching but I can’t resist getting drawn in by shorts.
Typically I don’t get that problem on PC or on a smart TV because they push long form content more there
Big tech writes the equivalent of digital heroin.
The longer they can keep you on their platforms,
the more they can data-farm you,
the more data they have on you,
the more they can sell about you / earn on you.Detox yourself from your bad heroin addiction,
by switching to fair FOSS (Free Open Source Software) alternatives.E.g. Use Invidious, Grayjay or NewPipe instead of YouTube.
I downloaded freetube, is that one ok?
Have not used FreeTube myself.
However it appears to be reputable / decent.- It’s source is open: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
- It’s mentioned in the Invidious repo: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious#projects-using-invidious
Rule of thumb:
- Steer clear of proprietary / closed source software
- Always aim to use open source software if possible
thanks bb
I’m getting bored with my smartphone. Stuff like YouTube I never watch on my phone anyway, but imo YouTube has gotten much worse over time and I barely watch it at all now.
I honestly think that content on YouTube has gotten better and better. Not the systems of YouTube, mind you, just the stuff that people create. But maybe that’s because in the last year or so I’ve been watching and discovering a lot more educational YouTubers (think Tom Scott, Münecat, Real Engineering, etc). among the exclusively funny stuff.
Say no to shorts on every platform.
As someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s I disagree.
They remind me of the d nickelodeon pictures that actually cost a nickel. I think you youngins should salute your shorts. It’s fun to watch wild and crazy kids doing stupid bottle tricks. Legends of the hidden temple in some state park nearby. It’s just cool stuff and you can’t do that on television.
I might agree with you if the shorts player wasn’t ass. Everything about it works differently to the video player, and everything about it pushes you to more shorts. Even on the video player I disable autoplay and the prev/next buttons, having a player built around those was DOA for me.
Even porn is getting shorts. What the hell is going on Internet?!
Really? Where?
Tumblr, a decade ago lawl
That might be the one genre where I wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Do you mean to tell me that you don’t watch long-form porn, spending 6 hours in a row on one video?
Is getting? Tumblr was waaaaaay ahead of the curve then, a million years ago
deleted by creator
Its the oversaturated colours, not the short form content. The latter has no alternative, and short form content is sometimes much better than 10 minute filler and sponsorship ridden videos.
Put your phone on grayscale, doable on both Android and iOS from settings or some system toggle. Short form content is not the convincing answer everyone thinks it is. It has existed since 2000s with US-based Vine (Tiktok is a Vine clone), then Snapchat Shorts, then Instagram Reels, then Tiktok, and now YouTube Shorts.
Another protip is to find some kind of app or filter to desaturate your screen, if you cannot do grayscale in long term. Desaturate by 50% and see the magic for yourself.
AMOLED transition on phones did not happen for the dark (crushed) blacks and power saving, that is pure marketing drivel practically.
Giving the gray-scale thing a try, I think the thing that sets modern short form content apart is how fast, snappy and easy to scroll it is though
Rarely have more than half a second of downtime between shorts, I think that is the issue recently
The short form content is doing something else, it is not directly the short length that is to blame. It is the information overload and the methods and information used to incite some form of emotion from you, and to solicit engagement. That is the endgame you have to win against.
Information overload can also happen with 10 minute videos. You have to stay away from overloading the brain constantly, and give it proper breaks, and even disengage from visually stimulating content to keep a stable, spike-less dopamine feed to your brain.
For me it’s certainly the short form content, as I’ve found myself getting hooked on it on PC to the point I have to snap out of it and instantly close the tab once I realise what’s happening. This isn’t happening with my normal subscription feed, because it’s not a never ending stream of content.
I need you to try desaturation trick once, and for atleast a couple days or week. You will notice the difference instantly.
Okay, I’ve turned it on and this was the first short to appear.
I’m gonna be honest, it’s not making a difference for me personally. If anything I think I’m staring at it more now because I feel like I can see more details in the videos.
Its more about not the immediate effect, but you will develop an observation within a couple days or a week atmost, if the effects are not immediately observable to you. Just turn it off while using camera (obvious reasons), and try at your own liberty.
I just avoid shorts or reels or whatever personally. They’re short and engaging making it easy to lose track of time.
But yeah you’re 100% right my parents (late 50s) have started doing it a lot. I’ve noticed a lot of teenagers do as well.
Me too. I’ve seen my partner on them and it’s like a really bad version of tiktok only you don’t get to train the algorithm properly. No thanks.
My wife’s attention span has gone to shit thanks to short form videos like that. From vine to ticktock to whatever Facebook version she uses now, I’ve gotten to the point where if she picks up her phone while we’re talking, I’ll just stop talking until she looks up. If we’re whatching a new movie or show, I’ll pause it until she puts the phone down.
Sometimes it takes her several minutes to realize what she’s doing.
I’m so fucking tired of having to pause things to explain what we just watched because she was too busy watching some asshole drop a glass of milk onto the floor for a joke. I’m tired of having to repeat myself because she “needed stimulation” and decided the conversation we
arewere actively having isn’t good enough.So now I just don’t bother. If she’s interested, she’ll ask. If it’s important, I’ll tell her to put the phone down because it’s important.
I block shorts on youtube, I don’t care for short form content. Give me those hour long analysis type videos. Without shorts youtube still does a rather poor job at recommending new stuff.
That being said, shorts are being more addictive by nature since the barrier of entry to watch ‘one more’ is so low. If you engage with them on any app, you will waste more time on your phone.
Yes TikTok is a disease and I have it.
You have other diseases like Youtube and Instagram too, way worse than Tiktok.
Your phone does too with all of their custom spyware…
🙄 I’ll bite. What custom spyware?
Lemmy is exclusively conspiracy nuts I think, that’s the impression I’m starting to get
Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Common. Steam does this. It’s behind a permission these days and nothing is custom or special about this in any way.
Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)
Patched out and was common at the time via Androids API. Again zero secret sauce, most apps pulled this.
Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
Bullshit provide some verification in the least bit. It’s a random anonymous redditor mouthing off.
Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken
Again in the API patched out several years ago
Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
More unverified bullshit.
Pro tip: when your source is a random redditor who definitely worked for tiktok maybe consider for a second that someone is just making up bullshit and reaching to push their objective.
You’d think for being the most spyware app on the planet you could provide a source from a professional and not a redditor.
They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
Lemmy is not fantastic with condescending pricks like you posting comments.
You could have delivered your point without being an asshole about it.
👌
The tiktok videos I get recommended are way too long and dense/informative for me to be able to watch too many at one time.
When I first started using it I made a point of skipping anything I considered dumb or any videos I couldn’t fast forward through. Now, it’s mostly all stuff about history and philosophy and I have to purposely search for new things. Still works way better than YouTube at recommending actually interesting content.
I too ignore shorts but I disagree with YouTube’s recommendations. It has gotten significantly better from even 2 years ago. I used to only watch my subscriptions, what I specifically sought out, or links from others. What YouTube recommended me was honestly confusing considering the amount of data they have on me and my interests. Now it’ll actually recommend general content I would watch. But also small YouTubers from the types of content I consistently watch. It’s pretty great.
That’s still pretty hit or miss for me. I’ve watched a video about cats exactly once a few weeks ago when my cat did something strange, and my recommendations are still littered with click-bait videos about certain cat behaviors. I watch tons of the aforementioned hour long analysis videos and I still need to resort to playlists compiling them instead of getting recommendations. To me, it seems the algorithm really wants to push certain types of content and will flood me with them if I so much as hover a video too long. But it really dislikes other types of content and almost hides them on purpose, despite me liking them. My best guess would be that longer videos have less ads per minute of content and are therefore not recommended as much, but I couldn’t tell, I started blocking ads on Youtube when they added a second ad banner back in the day - long before video ads were a thing.
I have premium so maybe that’s a reason. Also, if I watch a video I know YouTube will latch unto them I remove it from my watch history and heavily use not interested option.
How do you disable shorts?
Firefox has an addon called “Hide shorts for youtube”. I don’t use any other browser on any device.
Youtube reVanced has that option.
Not on iOS I guess
Well, there’s your first problem
I can’t be arsed with wasting time to try to degoogle an android phone and keep my banking applications working.
Apple is good enough for me :)
I don’t touch google products or services, and fully agree.
Plus, iOS is fucking stellar. Every phone I’ve had from them is blazing fast after YEARS of NEVER REFORMATTING
(Posting from my XS Max that I’ve never reformatted lawl)
Yeah, I too noticed android phones usually go to shit after a few years. Even formatting doesn’t fix them entirely, and I never play games on mobile
Is it just me or did the recommendation algorithm become much worse a few years ago? I think there was a big update at some point and it’s sucked ever since. If feels like it remembers about the last 10 videos I watched. You were interested in topic XYZ a few months ago and there is lots of new content about it? Sure you don’t want to know anything about it!
I’ve found I’ve used my phone a lot less, but it might be because I prefer either longer, more essay structured videos, or a good half hour unscripted comedy bit (podcast, video game, whatever). I don’t even bother with a lot of stuff under 10 minutes unless it’s something like an animation or a skit where that time would be unreasonable. Still though, they’re from channels I know, and aren’t ones I’m randomly being served. I’ve gotten more into TV recently because if it, and I read manga when I have a little bit of downtime.
Still though, the way popular web video has gone, it’s funny remembering YouTube nuking short videos a decade back when they changed the revenue structure. They already had the videos being made on their platform and actively discouraged them.
No? The opposite of anything, I consume media much more on my TV, PC and via my ereader recently.
My smartphone has mostly been relegated to a communications device the recent 3-6 months as I’ve lost the will to try to go through media on a needlessly tiny screen. Luckily though, I don’t have a commute any more. But when I did, I read books on the ereader during the train travel instead of being on the phone.
I’ve been considering just getting a dumb phone and maybe a kindle for entertainment
Problem is I want to be able to run apps like signal, WhatsApp, discord etc
Same here, I really also switched media consumption to the TV with a nice sound system and only use the phone for communications and podcasts, oh and navigation and music in the car.
Lately I’ve been more conscious of my decisions to watch trash on you tube. You watch a few traffic cam videos and pretty soon that’s half your feed. So I’m finding myself thinking twice before clicking.
Shorts I mostly avoid because I feel that feature is toxic clickbait.
I had to get YouTube revanced to disable the shorts player for me, and then had to disable notifications. It’s a place of no return.
