I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:

hide Shorts

hide For You

hide Trending

hide ‘People Also Searched For’

hide Search Categories

hide Promoted Videos

hide Promoted Websites

hide Suggested Products

Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It’s literally a short, yet it’s inserted like a video so you’re forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you’ve watched and start inserting shit based off that.

Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities… “just let me stick it in”

  • @[email protected]
    36•1 year ago

    1 minute videos aren’t put into the shorts interface, so it’s not YouTube noticing that you disabled shorts but rather some YouTuber trying to follow the algorithm using a channel they made for shorts and mistakenly (I assume) uploading a video longer than minute on it. All such videos appear as normal videos instead of as shorts.

    Google is terrible though, so I understand why you would think that.

    • @[email protected]English
      5•1 year ago

      Is it possible to turn recommendations on? I’m fine with those, but I never want to see shorts again.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      Is there a YouTube client for iOS? I know, iPhone bad etc, but it’s what I’ve got for now. 95% of the time I’m watching YouTube it’s not on my pc. There’s a Vanced in the App Store but I don’t trust it, especially since Vanced was shut down about 2 years ago if I’m not mistaken…

    • @[email protected]
      5•1 year ago

      I’ve tried looking into that but I couldn’t get it working. It didn’t add any subscriptions to my feed. Going to the site now I don’t even seem to be able to click on anything. I just tried disabling my ad blocker and now I can click on stuff, but none of it won’t load any videos. Any idea what’s up with it? I’d love to be able to switch off YT if I can.

      • @[email protected]
        3•1 year ago

        I used Piped for a while, but it’s always broken half the time or incredibly slow, it was giving me an aneurism. Freetube and never looked back

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        Depends on the instance, it might be down or having work done on it, and also I think there might be some ongoing war with youtube api to keep everything working but im not sure. I just signed up on the kavin rocks one, every couple of days it will be down for a bit but it comes back up.

      • BlueKey
        6•1 year ago

        Which instance are you on. I use piped.adminforge.de with uBlock and it works fine. Also the feed shows stuff from my subscriptions (I think I adjusted something in the settings for that).

        • @[email protected]
          4•1 year ago

          Piped isn’t working for me either anymore. I was using piped.adminforge.de before, but I’ve tried other instances too without any luck. It won’t load play any videos at all. I can search and find stuff without issues, but I can’t play anything.

          • BlueKey
            2•1 year ago

            Have you tried to enable only one codec and set the default quality to something like 720p in the preferences?

  • @[email protected]
    44•1 year ago
    • Here’s an extension which turns YouTube into an Invidious-like site, removing all addicting elements.
    • If you’re using Linux, I wrote the youtube-tui a few years back, very similar to the extension where you get nothing but the search bar and subscriptions.
  • @[email protected]English
    5•1 year ago

    My method for android & desktop. I never sign in to YouTube & never use the app. Using Joplin synced through Nextcloud (any syncable note taking app would do the trick) I keep a list of channels (“subscriptions”) & interesting looking videos (“watch later”) which I group by length. Obviously, this way the links can be via Piped, YouTube whatever.

    I only ever interract through browser which is never signed in. Kiwi browser on Android, Firefox or Brave on desktop. All of them run uBlock + SponsorBlock + DeArrow.

    DeArrow is by the same dev/s as SponsorBlock & gives anti clickbait crowd sourced titles & thumbs. Its become an invaluable tool so I’m glad to have paid to offer some support.

    All of the browsers have history/cookies etc cleared once closed.

    • penguin_rocket
      1•1 year ago

      My method for android & desktop. I never sign in to YouTube & never use the app. Using Joplin synced through Nextcloud (any syncable note taking app would do the trick) I keep a list of channels (“subscriptions”) & interesting looking videos (“watch later”) which I group by length. Obviously, this way the links can be via Piped, YouTube whatever.

      As a Joplin user, I find it interesting. So you have a “subscriptions” folder and a “watch later” folder? What is your routine?

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        Nothing sophisticated, I just have a note for videos. The note has headings (use the [toc] trick at the top of the note to jump directly to the headings without having to scroll through everything)

        You could categorise video links by genre or whatever your preference. I chose to categorise by length, say up 10 minutes, 11 to 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes & so on. So i set up appropriate headings.

        Thats it. I also set up a heading for “Audio” as some videos are essentially podcasts, audio based talks etc & Kiwi browser allows background play.

        Its a few extra steps over tapping “save for later” in YouTube app but it takes seconds to copy title, copy url & paste into a note & it caters for videos from any source. To remove myself from the shitty algorithm it works for me

        • penguin_rocket
          1•1 year ago

          Thank you for describing your system. I didn’t even know that table of contents were available in Joplin.

  • @[email protected]
    6•1 year ago

    On a similar note, does anybody know of a frontend or add on for Instagram? I do not want the suggested content and reels they shove down everyone’s throats because it is very easy to waste hours and get distracted easily with it. Also no ads would be nice. I have to use Instagram to keep in touch with certain people who I have no alternative means of keeping in touch with.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      I’ve been using beeper for the last 2 months and it has been working perfectly, I can see as video if someone sends a short, I can listen to an audio recording and see all of my messages without ever seeing the instagram feed.

  • @[email protected]
    11•1 year ago

    also be sure to disable cookies on youtube, it gets rid of weird suggestions and usually only suggests videos related to the current one

  • @[email protected]
    22•1 year ago

    I simply just stopped searching or clicking on anything I’m not subbed to while logged in. It’s like you commit a crime when you click something. Next then thing you know, that same fucking channel is following everywhere you go, in the home page and under every video you watch. Fuck google and fuck all this enshitification campaign the internet is undergoing

  • @[email protected]
    8•1 year ago

    i ran into this kind of garbage the other day looking for a Nicholas Jaar video when i couldn’t recall the name. like BoC, there’s tons and tons of tracks by Jaar, but results gave me one or two of his most popular tracks and a buuuuuunch of other stuff. i couldn’t even just keep scrolling, there were a dozen results and then the “related search” garbage.

    ugh, i’m so fed up with google, and at the same time not motivated enough to figure out workarounds. i have work and shit to do around my house.

    i guess, with me, they won.

    edit typo