Youtube added shorts to the subscriptions page, pushing the subscriptions almost entirely off the page...
I prefer "list" view over grid view. Switching to grid view shows six videos before the break, but significantly less information about the video.
God, Youtube has gone to shit lately.
Lately in this context, meaning about the last 15 or so years.
They added sort from oldest back! wooooooo. One step forward after being launched backwards into a pile of shit.
They only removed it because it interfered with a new feature they added to the mobile app. If they removed it for monetary reasons (like what they did with dislikes), they wouldn't have brought it back
I don’t give a cunt’s dick why they removed it in the first place, why are you defending anything about it
I'm not defending anything. I think you misunderstood my comment
uBlock Origin makes this easy:
You can also use the "zap" feature. Just use the lightning bolt icon to the left of the eyedropper and it'll skip step 4. I also found this to work better because selecting shorts ended up always selecting the entire videos section as well.
This is just temporary, if you refresh the page it will show section again.
It was not temporary for me. I had to go into my settings and delete my changes to get it working again.
This is defined as temporary in uBlock documentation.
Your link talks about the element zapper, the icon that looks like a lightning. The instructions above talk about the element picker, the icon that looks like an eye dropper.
Unfortunately zapping doesn't work after refreshing
I would recommend clicking Preview before Create. You know what will be removed before creating a rule is better.
There are pre-made filterlists that deal with annoyances like this (which tend to end up more reliable as tools that randomize/minify CSS classes get widely adopted), not just on YT but the wider web as a whole. I've written about how to set them up here: https://blahaj.zone/@ShittyKopper/pages/usable-web if you want to take a look at it
This is a great resource, thank you very much!
OMG thank you ☺️
Some more filters for blocking Shorts from YT can be found here.
I did this years ago when it was added to home, not seen shorts since. Good guide.
Wow cool feature!
I can't thank you enough.
Does this work consistenyl? I tried that with Pinterest's login popup and it doen't work (the element changes every time you enter the site). I ended up adding a filter to remove all Pinterest results from all my searches.
You can hide segments like that with ublock, fwiw. It's been really useful to me for these kinds of changes every single website seems to be pushing these days.
I dont know where I have it from (I think somone on reddit posted it), but I use this in the uBlock Origin Filter since 8 month and it removes all my shorts from the subscription:
It will sure break in a couple of month again. It did 8 Month ago and I am sure YT will change the code again at some point.
I do not trust having to many FF Extensions installed from some rando from the Internet, so I like this solution better.
I don't mind shorts so much but Enhancer for Youtube has the ability to convert shorts to regular videos or hide them.
But the Videos are still only 1 Minute long. I find them a disgrace for my attention span. Before shorts/tiktok people were already arguing how deep a video of 10 Minute really can be and might be giving only a shallow idea of a topic. Going even further down to 1 Minute per topic is too much (less) for me. I prefer videos 20 Minutes+. Mostly 45-60 Minutes hit a decent spot for me to feel like I learned something about a topic. A couple of days ago I watched a 2-parts video of 6h and 5h (over several days) about the Russo-Japanese war. And even that was skimming over a lot of topics (obviously) but afterwards I felt like I understood something. I dont know how a 1 Minute short can transport anything other than just "a feeling of knowledge" - at this point it is basically just entertainment. I already felt 10 Minutes was snack-infotainment short. 1 Minute clips leave me behind like eating candy for dinner: Very unsatisfied. And maybe that is the reason people then click the next tiktok/short, because they actually do not feel satisfied by such a short clip and have the feeling for wanting more. And they satisfy this "more" by switching to another 1-Minute video. Again getting the feeling of more, yet getting less in the end of the day.
Any chance you can drop a link to 11 hours on the Russo-Japanese war? Didn't even know that was a thing
Sure. Here you go: Part 1, Part2, (there even is a third part) - I strongly advice to watch it on 1.5x, as the speaker is very slow
I liked the very detailed day-by-day turns in the first part as well as the epic sea-fights in the second part. Also the small biography-slides with detailed vitaes of military personal gave a good idea in what time people lived and where they were going. Combined with an endless stream of original photos and drawings of the fights, it was a very dense documentation and gave a good image about war, russia, japan and the though-process of early 20th century military tactics.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=vqdBOxKq-L4
https://piped.video/watch?v=8StilK0RWW0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Not even that comical story about the misadventures of the Russian Navy? Oh man, you're really missing out!
Here are a couple of videos about it:
<10-minute video by BlueJay (presented in a casual/funny/meme-y way)
>40-minute video by Drachinifel (presented in a serious documentary kind of way)
If you've got 50 minutes to spare, it's worth watching both.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=yzGqp3R4Mx4
https://piped.video/watch?v=9Mdi_Fh9_Ag
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Hey bot, you missed the fact that there were two videos linked in that comment.
Open an issue on GitHub.
Ideally, the bot author would create a hook to turn bot feedback given as replies into Github issues semi-automatically.
Can you share the videos about the war? They sound interesting.
True but also to be fair I have attention issues and can't really sit too long for a whole video but they're good for a lot of little critical role clips!
Then again I'm on like Tiktok all the time so I'm used to it :3
I think (if it is not a disorder) attention span can be trained. It takes discipline and a true interest into a topic other than just a vague excitement. If you are able to state what topics you are interested in for yourself, you might be able to concentrate on 10-30 Minutes of the same topic. People who are really into The Kardashians are able to watch a whole 50 Minute episode of them. So it is not the problem of concentration for them, it is more that they need something put in front of them for that they can feel a passion or enthusiasm they deeply care about - even it is just The Kardashians. Here is the thing: People have no problem browsing 2h+ of tiktok, but can not concentrate on 10x 20min video? I think if you have a real interest in something you can get through longer videos. Do you look for thing you really care about or do you actively looking for a distraction when you browse tiktok? It is not a bad thing to use it that way. After a long day of work, it can relax your brain browsing real shallow, short clips. But daily, in high doses... then I think it is maybe another reason people do it (escapism, etc.)
Maybe from here: https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts
I really think i got it from a Reddit comment, but it is good to know the source of it. Thank you.
Some of those rules are OK, but the
pathrules will be pretty flaky since they're relying on a particular shape (like an icon or something) being present on the page.Also with a browser extension. Wikihow has a page on how to do it 5 different ways.
yep, I use this on Firefox currently
Added and thank you!
I found youtube in particular to use very generic functionq that are used in other places so blocking something small ends up blocking other things, iirc from the long time ago that I wasn't using piped, blocking youtube premium prompt broke comments or something along those lines
Sure, it depends on the coding of the site. Personally, I make sure to block the entire container where possible, and I haven't run into too many issues like that.
only had the problem on youtube, I remember trying a lot of different elements to see how I could get around it
Also DeArrow extension is really good for removing the clickbait thumbnails and replaces them with a simple still from the video itself. It also removes Emojis and special characters from the titles.
Other essential extensions for YouTube for me are (1) sponsorblock and (2) enhancer for YouTube.
DeArrowing is the thing I didn't know I needed. Thanks!
I will also recommend blocktube extension.
Anyone using Arc who needs a boost to block all YouTube bloat, let me know. I created one for myself but haven’t submitted it to the gallery. It hides shorts, suggested search results and some other crap.
The new slider replacement.
I use rehike personally, it has the old layout so shorts are barely shown
You can also hide these segments by just clicking the X in the top right corner. It'll hide the shelf (I think that's how YouTube calls them) for 30 days.
I dunno when it happened but there was a time before clickbait and in-video ads. That was the good time.
Youtube added shorts to subscription, and i added Youtube-shorts block to firefox.
Nice one
Same. They can try as much as they want to make it happen, but if people don't want it, people don't want it no matter how much they force them.
I hate this format of content so much. An automatically reloading, never ending stream of snippets that are hardly informative even if they try. Fucking looks like they are trying to hypnotize us.
Oh wait, they absolutely are. Stop thinking about not being able to afford a living even though you bust your ass of everyday. Stop worrying about the climate. Get a new iphone and obediently watch citizen.
Trying to hop on that ADHD train.
This is not a defense of TikTok style short form content. It's just that from time to time, I do enjoy the shorter style videos. Like when I have 5 minutes to kill, watch a few short videos and be on my way.
What I really don't like is that if you choose the app and the last thing you watched was a short, it opens right back up to to Shorts. Very annoying.
When I have 5 minutes to kill I open Wikipedia and read the article of the day.
Reading is better for your brain and attention span, and on top of that you learn something new.
I should do this more often. Thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah I occasionally use Instagram and look at reels. Sometimes it's fun to catch the one snippet from a comedy sketch instead of watching the whole thing.
That said, I wouldn't miss anything if I deleted it tomorrow.
Plus they commit the biggest sin possible in video...VERTICAL VIDEO. I hate this garbage trend of everything being designed for phones. Vertical videos suck. They are terrible to watch on desktop. You can rotate your phone sideways, you can't rotate your TV, laptop, monitor, projector, etc. vertical (at least not most of the time).
I just hate how much functionality the Shorts player loses compared to the regular Youtube player. They seriously made their product worse to imitate a competitor? Who asked for this?
The shareholders.
I swear that these board of director types are some of the most dense and out of touch people on the planet. It's crazy how we reward them for their stupidity in exchange for their unbridled greed.
I think the UX team is banking on user psychology. Majority of users don't want functionality, they want familiarity. They should feel like they are watching Tiktok.
We should remember that we power users are a minority in social media.
Checkout the Youtube-shorts-block extension which gives shorts the same UI as normal youtube videos.
Basically what the extension does is replace the parts in the URL youtube.com/shorts/"video-id" to youtube.com/watch?v="video-id"
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/shorts/
https://piped.video/watch?v=
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
And funnily, the shorts player on mobile has some of those features.
Either Susan Wojcicki (ex-YT CEO), Neal Mohan (current YT-CEO) or Sundar Pichai (Google CEO)
I'm afraid it boils down to the significant amount of users, who asked or "asked" for this. Shorts is crazy popular.
Fuck YouTube shorts. It's infuriating that YouTube doesn't provide us an option to remove all traces of that fuckin cancer from the platform.
My biggest issue is so many of the people I sub that have shorts, the shorts are their normal videos but only a small clip of it. I dont want that, Im already watching the videos!
Agreed. Some of the YouTubers I watch have said that YouTube is forcing them to make shorts because their videos won't be shown to people if they don't. A couple are even doing a bit of malicious compliance and taking the piss out of YouTube Shorts because they hate it as much as we do.
If we wanted short clips, we'd be on TikTok damnit!
Exactly. YouTube doesn’t want to lose out on that revenue/time spent on other platforms…
Press the X? Gotcha! I'll remove shorts for 30 days or until you come back without cookies in 10 minutes.
I don't mind YouTube shorts usually, although my TikTok feed is far better. But last week, my YouTube app started opening to the shorts tab. Infuriating. I'll watch a short if it piques my interest, but that's not what I'm going to YouTube for.
Just add this line to the "My Filters" section for the uBlock Origin extension.
www.youtube.com###content > .ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope
My original mastadon post has screenshots with red guide marks in case this is confusing:
https://mas.to/@JDPoZ/110736154436202944
There's an even more extensive filter list for hiding shorts here: https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts
This is like going to the drug store to an inhaler but their entrance takes you through the perfume section to get to the pharmacy.
My local shoppers drug mart does this…
Ah, you've been to shoppers drug mart in Canada I see
I don't get why everyone is so mad about this. When I saw it yesterday, I was glad they finally put them into a separate box I can just scroll past. Before, Shorts were just mixed in between the normal videos in the subscription feed and that was fucking awful.
And before that, they were in a separate section like they are now, but it had a thing you could click to hide that section entirely for 30 days.
Just because it's less bad than the previous thing doesn't mean it's good.
YouTube shorts are awful. Most of them are just incomplete YouTube videos.
I don't remember them ever in a separate section on the subscription page. Maybe it was just one of google's A/B testing for some people or I just hid them immediately and forgot. :-)
Would be better if it was possible to hide it, like in home feed. I don't want to see shorts in my subscription feed. It takes so much space.
I tested with ublock origin (firefox), removing the shorts section via adblock works.
I actually liked when they were together in single box, everything was ordered from newest to oldest and I had extension that redirected shorts to normal player. With separated boxes I feel like there isn't enough space and now the shorts don't get the 'watched red bar' so I don't know right away which shorts I've already seen, I'm forced to remember the thumbnails now which is annoying.
I do wish they give customization options, so users can decide how to actually use youtube.
oh they moved it finally? i couldnt stand a feed full of annoying shorts making it harder to find actual videos i wanted to watch. i been using an extension for a while and cant go back to what it was then. if at least they are confined to a seperate list its not so bad
I guess your screen isn't 1366x768
This 100%
Welcome to the worlds best anti-monopoly education. See just why monopolies suck in real time!
Monopolies are problematic, of course, but it's more than that. Monopolies, especially in the luxury space, still have to compete with consumers making the choice to not consume at all.
It's more nefarious than that. This is a symptom of "you are the product, not the paying customer". You get absolutely no say in how to product is used, and worse, your experience will actively be harmed if it means the real client, advertisers, get more value extracted out of you.
Y'all just sheep walking happily into the slaughterhouse, thinking the farmer is here to feed and shelter you, and it's just missfortune that the farmer has to put you in some dirty cages, when in fact, the farmer does this intentionally because it's more profitable that way.
Having two factory farms (TikTok) doesn't make the conditions for the animals better. In fact maybe it even makes it worse, as the farms compete to cut costs.
The real solution is a new buisness model. Organic farms... Or payed video platforms, where the solution provider builds the software for the user, not advertisers.
I think we've passed the point where any non-free service could compete with a free one. The short term gains of shoving ads in everyone's face is in full force.
I do think in the future when these companies have burned through every ounce of investor money we'll go back to paid services, but I think that's a decade out or more. There already exists a few paid services similar to YouTube such as
diet quibiDropout, Nebula, and Floatplane (I think it's premium), and I think those will serve as the models for future services.They're all rather affordable and their models are setup for people that want to follow creators (nebula and Floatplane) or for people that want to follow specific shows (dropout). They don't advertise to you, there are no sponsor spots, and they're always working to improve their platforms for the user. Hell, in a recent episode on dropout, the CEO admitted that their player had issues that they wanted to fix completely unprompted.
Hopefully future services will model themselves in a similar way, of not an improved formula, but again I think it's a long way out
Well then stop using the platform if you arent happy with it. Everyone else doesnt care
Anyone get an update on for their TV app this week?
Went from having reasonably-sized thumbnails, to these over-sized ones where only like 2.5 of them fit horizontally and less than 1.5 of them fit vertically. They are obnoxiously huge which means to see what videos are in your feed you have to do a ton of needless scrolling.
Just a week ago, it wasn't like this - I think you could see 4 horizontally and 3 vertically before which is perfect for a living room experience.
My favorite part is that there is no way to make any adjustments. If you are going to change something like this, at least let me change it back. WTF?
You should use SmartTube Next. It's like ReVanced but for TV.
We alkready pay for Premium, so what would be the benefit for us? And while we use YT on all our devices, obviously, we use YT a whole hell of a lot in the livingroom TV on my Shield TV.
Can't do that for Samsung and LG TVs.
My worst tech mistake was buying a Samsung TV.
It's great TV tech, I'm just underwhelmed by Tizen and its app ecosystem - doesn't have nearly enough options, some non-major apps are barebones compared to their Android counterparts, sees less support.
My only real alternative for good quality TV with Android was Sony, but they had dropped the ball at the time concerning Variable Refresh Rate support, and prices weren't great either, so I decided against.
I can still use Android apps through a cable tv box that has them, but most of the time it isn't worth the bother for me - easier to just switch on the TV and use its native system.
It is ridiculous! I'm sure it'll do little good but I sent some feedback at https://www.youtube.com/tv/feedback
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/tv/feedback
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
fail
Yes and that is so fucking annoying. Whag a degen ui designers on yt
I fucking hate shorts so much. I completely blocked them:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-block/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-shorts-block/jiaopdjbehhjgokpphdfgmapkobbnmjp
It's amazing how much YouTube doesn't understand what people do and don't like about TikTok
Watching every platform ruin itself to become a facsimile of every other platform is deeply infuriating and exhausting
I honestly can't figure out what anyone actually likes about tiktok. I installed it and after 30 minutes was annoyed with the autoplaying and having things just forced on me. I want to choose what to play. All the time, I hate anything anywhere that autoplays, and I don't understand how anyone actually enjoys that. Its like being told that being poked in the eye with a needle was really popular.
It feeds an anxious brain's desire for dopamine. Just "here's a nonstop feed of easy to digest content." I think it's kinda predatory, tbh, and that's not to get into anything else about the company
Reduced the amount of videos per row too, had to find a ublock filter for that one.
If anyone is interested: https://pastebin.com/raw/SMVYXFHe
It’s sad having a front row seat to The Internet slowly killing itself.
the ad based internet, as it is today was never supposed to work as some people will always block ads meaning more ads pushed to regular users and thus more people using adblock until we hit the break-even point and the site is forced to shut down or do the enshitification thing
The thing is that video hosting is very expensive and only large companies like Google/YouTube can afford to do it at anywhere near their scale. You need multiple copies of every video all around the world to ensure they play well for users, with no buffering, and that much infra (servers, storage, high-quality bandwidth rather than just using Cogent everywhere, etc) costs a lot.
PeerTube exists (and has for a while). It's a federated alternative to YouTube that uses torrents to share video, rather than centralizing it in one server.
The problem for creators is that they can't make money off of PeerTube - thus there's no incentive outside of making a Patreon.
Isn't Youtube itself getting to that point too? The way lots of Youtubers complain about it and push their Patreons and alternative subscription streaming services (Curiosity Stream/Nebula/Floatplane/etc.), it sure seems that way.
You're mostly right, expect video playback doesn't need high quality bandwidth.
Video players usually keep a forward buffer of a few minutes of video, which means your connection can be extremely unstable and still provide smooth playback as long as your average bandwidth is sufficient.
You still need good bandwidth to ensure the video starts playing right away, plus enough bandwidth to be able to buffer ahead while lots of people are using the service at the same time. I've seen some video sites that need to buffer for a looooong time before the video starts playing.
A few minutes of video at 4K takes a noticeable amount of space, so I don't think video sites would buffer that far ahead for 4K.
Honestly this is better than it was - prior to this change the shorts were just mixed in with the regular videos ... now at least you can scroll past them and see only videos.
Shorts are cancer yes?
How is it that such a shitty site/corporation has continued to maintain a grip on this market? Why aren't we inundated with viable alternatives?
Hosting video is expensive?
That's basically it. The only potential competitor is Twitch, but even then Amazon only really gets into free streaming content.
Google has cheap hosting costs and the best ad market in the industry. The only non-porn competitors either charge the uploader to host or charge the user to watch.
Yeah. Everyone thinks it's easy to just "setup a YouTube".
I support nebula which is a subscription service with some good creators. And because "fuck shorts and clickbait titles/thumbnails".
Being free is a huge part of it too. For better and worse.
Nebula is making good inroads. It’s well positioned to (eventually) make a shift from “YouTube parasite” to “YouTube alternative”.
I don't see it as YouTube parasite so much as the next step up for creators on the monetization chain.
I’m not saying it being a YouTube parasite is a BAD thing. But as long as it’s primarily getting it’s views from people who started watching on YouTube first, “parasite” is an apt description.
Week by week it becomes more and more enticing. Most creators I watch are on it as well so I wouldn't really lose much.
Also fighting copyright claims from the music and movie industry is even more expensive and difficult.
Microsoft (with their Azure) has more than enough storage space. They got CDNs and video streaming technologies (that anyone can use in their own products). But they've still given up their own music streaming service and public video upload service.
Because it has all the good content. The creators are what makes watching YouTube so fun, not the site itself.
there's peertube and odyssey but idk how viable either of them are long term. peertube at least is decentralized, not sure if odyssey is too or not
i know Louis Rossmann also posts on Odyssey
You mean "Odysee," I guess?
...Hey, browsing the "Home" and "Featured" categories, there are a couple of other Youtubers I recognize! Not many, but a few:
Peertube works.
Check out Piped, Invidious, Newpipe and Libretube! ;)
I'm gonna look into getting some PC client. I already have Revanced, Libretube and Newpipe on my phone.
If you are okay with a website Piped or Invidious could do the trick
Boy am I glad I have the extension that makes shorts invisble
May I ask which extension you are running?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-shorts-block/jiaopdjbehhjgokpphdfgmapkobbnmjp
Thanks. I find the Enhancer for YT a bit over kill.
Have you tried pockettube? it allows yyou to create categories so you can bunch your channels together. It's pretty cool.
They also still seem to run user-testing on hiding these sections for 30 days. I had this option a few months ago, then it vanished and today it was back again. Maybe enough people are still actively hiding it so that YouTube still doesn't fully commit to shorts. Let's hope it stays that way, they are annoying and I couldn't care less about another Instagram cat video algorithm.
I'd be open to trying shorts but the video player is intentionally awful. No volume control nor the ability to rewind. Why!?
One of the hundreds of tiktok clones, which i dont think has a seek bar. It didn't last time I used it anyway
TikTok seems to arbitrarily decide if a video has a seek bar or not.
I'm really not sure why they do that. Revanced has a patch for TikTok that puts the seek bar on every video.
Yeah, I don't like shorts but it would at least have been tolerable with a seek bar.
For me the hide option only appears on the home page version of shorts. I'm stuck with this shit in my subscription feed
I wish they would give us a user setting to completely hide shorts from ever showing. I have never watched a short and I will never watch a short. It’s just not the type of content for me. If I wanted TikTok style videos, I would download TikTok. It’s crazy how much stuff YouTube tries to cram down your throat even as a premium subscriber.
Edit: also just a great example of companies jumping on a bandwagon to make a quick buck. YouTube is a well established video hosting and streaming service, they didn’t need to spend how every many millions of dollars adding shorts (not that they would have bothered spending that money on the user/creator experiences anyways)
You can yeet with plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-block/
Ooh this will be a nice add on for desktop, Ty Ty
I agree with you so much. The only time I ever click on shorts are accidents. I hate them. I don't use instagram, tiktok, anything like that. I don't want to see shorts. They are horribly crammed and well, way too short. Leave me alone and stop autoplaying on my tv.
I highly suggest using Enhancer for YouTube, it allows you to hide shorts and also convert them to normal video player so you can seek them like any other YouTube video.
There's also multitude of different customisation options, you can hide related videos, change default comment order, disable comments altogether, expand the description ;)
https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/enhancer-for-youtube/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enhancer-for-youtube/ponfpcnoihfmfllpaingbgckeeldkhle https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/enhancer-for-youtube%E2%84%A2/dlgfaleeejmphhnemjgiaekdbonkagkd
You just put me on sir. I have been using piped instead because of all the clutter yt was putting in.
I wish this worked on the mobile browser
There's always ReVanced, at least on Android ;)
https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager/releases/latest
Worse, they have started playing Shorts without my consent as soon as I open the app.
I don't feel fond of participating in mindnumbing TikTok worship.
I prefer my own, different mindnumbing activities thank you very much.
That only happens if you close the app while watching a short.
No, it happens like a cold call when I haven't opened the app all day.
I don't experience this and I've never heard anyone else claim to experience it you positive that you're forced quitting the app?
Revanced-extended has a patch for this (see
disable-shorts-on-startuphere)How do I do that?
If you're on Android, I recommend NewPipe to watch YT. Otherwise, stick to invidious instances, like https://inv.tux.pizza
But I don't want all gaming and programming content.
Invidious instances recommend stuff based on what you're currently watching. Just start with one video and go from there. The Featured page is probably based on what most people using said instance watch most.
Some instances don't even have a Featured page, just a "blank" search.
What instances are there? How similar is this to PeerTube?
Invidious lets you watch youtube outside youtube. No ads, no tracking and some instances let you download the videos. You can use any
watch?v=993939link with any of the instances and it'll work. Example:Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: FYC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18PL6enCwh8 - original YT link
https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=18PL6enCwh8 same video
https://onion.tube/watch?v=18PL6enCwh8 same video, different instance
https://inv.zzls.xyz/watch?v=18PL6enCwh8 same video, this instance allows downloads
You can see a list of instances here https://api.invidious.io/
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=18PL6enCwh8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Interesting.
If you're on Android check out ReVanced. It lets you patch YouTube to disable shorts and even get rid of all ads, bring back dislikes, and sponsorblock. Just have to get an apk since it can't handle stock installs, and also microg_vanced for login. No root required.
What does any of that jargon mean?
ReVanced (manager) is the program name that creates changes in the YouTube program. apk is the android package format. Like an exe or msi file on windows it installs the program. Sponsorblock is an addon that uses community submitted timestamps for videos that tells it where sponsorships, music, intros, outros, subscribe reminders, etc are in the videos and can be set up to automatically skip them.
How do I set up the first one? I don't want the second one.
It's just an option given during the patching process. I'll send you a link to my private server so it's not hammered. It'll have all the files needed to get going. Let me just make sure to update it to the current versions.
All I want to do is stop shorts from playing when I open the app.
That was included in the patches. Disable shorts on startup.
I'm not a programmer if I haven't made that clear. I'd rather deal with the ads and sponsors and invasive shorts than risk exploding my phone by miscoding something.
Worse: When you watch a short that appeared in your search results, all related videos are general shorts and NOT more search results. It's too distracting, and for a person with ADHD such as myself, it kills my productivity. 🤬
Well anyway yt search result shows 3-5 relevant results then some shitty sexually suggestive videos with "People also watch this" whuch have zero relation with what I search and further scrolling shows the first 3-5 results again then loop forever
This is the experience on mobile idk web tho
I would say *it's time to federate", but the path to monetization is nonexistent. Production value costs money and there should at least be a way to make that back. But as with open source software regarding monetization, federated platforms are overtly anti-monetization, demanding there be no ads, paid subscription or any integrated payment that is linked to the actual content (for analytics and tax purposes, which is key if you want to run it as a business).
The general consensus I seem to get from tankies and anarchists on Matrix and here on the fediverse is that they don't want anyone who makes any money to take part, thereby creating a "boys club" specifically catering to their whims.
A bit of an aside, I know, but I thought it should be said.
Framing anti-monetization as a "tankie and anarchist" stanice is a bit disengenuos. I know that hosting costs money, but this can be handled through donations.
Not everything on the internet needs to be a for-profit venture, archive.org and Wikimedia work just fine as donations supported NGOs.
No, not everything. Just the things people want to sell and hopefully through smaller platforms in a decentralised manner rather than being corralled into a massive, centralised platform. You know, people who do it for a living, who'd like to eat food and be independent rather than being stuck in some dreary ass company or under the thumb of Google. Ever consider that?
Like if I put $200,000 into a piece of work I need to have some guarantees. I can't put years of my life into a project that I need to make money off of, give it out for free and hope for donations. That's insane.
That's called investing, and guess what, sometimes you lose on investments. If you want guaranteed income, you can be a salaried employee.
If the end goal is monetization, then say so upfront, don't worm your way into communities and start hawking your wares. Again, not everything needs to be a profit making machine, volunteering, donations and non-profits exist.
Your personal ambitions are not a concern of me, or anyone else. You sound like the Lemmy community is putting a damper on your dreams of making it big (it's never just about putting food on the table,right?). Maybe we want a place where we can talk to each other and not have ads shoved into our faces, like on every other platform?
If you want to set up a commercial based instance, go ahead, just don't be surprised if you don't recieve a warm welcome.
Yeah pretty much, quality of community spirals downwards very fast as money becomes a bigger factor. I'm one of the anarchists you mentioned though. I have no interest in monetization of the fediverse and would be willing to change instances or platforms if they allowed that.
Its also funny that you mention it as a "boys club", because in this situation the only people we're explicitly excluding is capitalists. So like, a "workers club" which yeah I dont want to be part of communities that cater to capitalists and capitalism. Content creators can use patron or other more direct methods of earning from content they post here. Capitalist middlemen profiting off of ad placement be damned.
I follow a few YouTubers that took off ads once they had a Patreon up, and that has to be my favorite way to do it.
I was referring to tankies and anarchists on Matrix - not as a major qualifier. Libre is important, but saying that integrating payment systems and such into software or services as either immoral, unethical or predatory is disingenuous at best.
But you've proven one thing: you are definitely apart of that boys club, no matter your political leanings.
Btw, I'm a social democrat and I'm very pro-integrity and anti-predatory. But we're cutting off our left hand to spite out right, meaning we've created a sterile environment where there is no possibility for content creators or commercial developers to monetize without jumping through hoops.
There is something to be said about dark design patterns within UX, but the belligerent and stubborn disposition that all monetization is bad monetization is the folly of a one-track mind.
The "boys club" that excluded capitalists, yeah. Youre acting like I should be sympathetic to capitalists who are missing out on business ventures.
You're certainly not showing any socialist leanings if you're literally calling on me to "think of the commercial developers". Capitalists are class enemies. Excluding them makes this a space for the working class. Thats a great thing, there is no other major social media free from capitalist profiteering.
Youre never going to convince a leftist to start feeling sorry for capitalists who aren't able to come in here and set up shop. So that this space continues to be worker oriented and free from corporatism we absolutely should continue to actively prevent commercialization of this community.
One simple difference between a federated "video service" and stuff like mastodon/lemmy/etc. would be the vast quantity of bandwidth and storage required if the service got successful could push this well beyond goodwill and crowdfunding efforts. The amount of active user a single dollar (or whatever currency really) can support for a text based service, even with image hosting, is way higher than a video streaming service like youtube.
PeerTube is a federated video service, and one that's been around longer than Lemmy.
It gets around this problem by using Peer-to-Peer tech. Essentially, when you go on the site it uses your machine to send data to multiple other users, like how torrents work. The server still needs to exist, but load is lessened by offloading it to clients who seed data to others.
Not necessarily. Consider Freenet:
Linux Experiment has been doing a mixed model for a while, and asks reasonably well for Patreon patrons to front the majority of the bill. And frankly, that might be the way forward. Creators putting their introductory content on Peertube and then their best content on curiosity streams. Introduce themselves on the free platform, get the money on the paid platform. But they're always going to at least want to put some content on the easily monetizable platform that's ad funded, and I think that's fine, to be honest. Maybe they even want a three tier model. Intro stuff on Peertube, some of their premium content on YouTube as a preview for what you get if you pay extra, and then the best stuff on the paid platform. You'll see some people who jump from Peertube straight to paying the creator directly, but people always have varying degrees of caring about this stuff and different motivations, and for content creators who really have to put a lot into videos to stand out even just a little, they need to find the model that makes them the most money
What if we host the videos at 144p then have the client use ai upscaling to 4k?
I feel like upscaling from 144p would be terrible. 360p might be more doable i think
hmm you're right. What if we ditch the video entirely and they just enter a prompt of what the video should be and we generate it. With AI?
No matter how good an AI is, it cannot restore details that were lost. It can approximate them, but if you have a 4k photo of a piece of paper with a small stick figure drawn on it and compress it to 144p, you will have a gray blob in its place at best or just nothing.
The most advanced AI from 50 years into the future would still not be able to restore the original stick figure.
I think you could do this if the compression algo is made with ai upscaling in mind. You'd just neet to store the word "stick figure" and its position, and bam your ai can draw a stick figure on the sheet.
You store what objects are seen in text or tokens and the pixels serve as more of a coordinate system to mark size/shape etc
Ads are horrible and always ruins the experience severely, since there are never enough ads on a page for the producer to be happy.
I'm not against being a subscriber but I only do that for services that are extreamly useful, like search and email.
The point of Lemmy as a federated platform is that the cost is shared between many people. If hundreds of instance admins pay 10 dollars per month, it's easily manageable. But if one instance becomes huge and needs to pay 10000 dollars per month, there is an issue for that instance, not the Lemmy network.
Uhm... software and content creation? Exclude ads, fine. But I'd like to get paid for my work and that you won't get your hands on my work until you pay me. If read the words "donate" or "honour system" in your reply I'm going to lose my shit.
And again, I'm not talking about paying for the platform, but for some content. Some content costs money to make, and people work for the money they put in and may naturally want returns. Why is that a bad thing? Why is people getting paid for their work a bad thing?
I'll tell you what's bad: people being dependant upon major platforms because it's the only place to make money. It's a self fulfilling prophecy giving way to much power and influence to the big corporations. Why wouldn't you want to decentralise that?0
You will get paid for your work on windows or mac if you make good software. Go ahead and create.
Content doesn't cost to create. Users are doing to for free as you can see. People have other reasons to contribute to a platform than making money. It's not the meaning of life you know.
This is what you don't understand I think... That a technical platform can have other goals than how to produce profit for it's owners.
I need you to understand that markets and selling products or services is not what defines capitalism. Capitalism is modern usury, i.e virtual liquidity, like central banks printing money they don't have, loans upon loans on the glimmer in the milkman's eye.
Do not let capitalists co-opt the concept of markets and money. Okay?
Additionally, we will never see adoption in the fediverse or in open source without monetization. People want commercial products and media. By preventing any access of it on a purely ideological and zealous level because you don't like it screws all of us.
Do I want a libre system? Yes! Do I mind a UUID for my hardware provided by the kernel? No! Do I want Ableton Live on Linux? Fríggin' yes! Do people who develop software and media need to pay rent, buy food, pay employees? Heck yes! Will most users gravitate towards platforms that provide all this? You bet your sweet bippy!
Again, I feel zealous demagogues so lost in mainstream disinformation and yankie psy-ops have really become a wet blanket over all liberating technologies.
Some guy on Matrix said that "letting people pay for exclusive content on a platform is akin to DRM"... like removed, you mean paying for someone's work? "Oh, you can just donate and then give the content out for free"... like how is a content creator supposed to operate on that? Even Patreon is it self a video platform with exclusive videos and people make a living off that!
But NOOOOOO! We gotta let the fríggin' liberals (right-wing) and capitalist screw us in one ear so our brain falls out the other, to completely dominate these markets ON THEIR FUCKING TERMS just because a mind bogglingly childish disposition like "money bad" makes regular people disinterested and even concerned upon the point of cringe.
What do you expect? We start trading goats for wicker baskets again, or is that also "capitalism"? Or do you hope that society will automatically jump to a Trekkien utopia over the weekend if we just hope hard enough? Goddamn it pisses me off that people are this uneducated.
Thank the heavens that Flatpak will support payment systems in the future. Maybe then we can FINALLY get some commercial software that cost a lot of money to develop in the first place on to libre platforms so anyone, literally anyone other than the closed minded demagogues and zealots might be interested in making the switch from PREDATORY CAPITALIST BASED SYSTEMS LIKE WINDOWS AND MACOS over to libre ones.
Maybe then this fucking boys club will reseed into the egocentric, chest thumping, brain rotting, narcecistic matrix chats, where the circle jerk can continue in a zoo like controlled environment.
God, I'm getting an anurism over here. So many have fallen for the Okey doke, and I gotta sit and explain why paying for a product is okay and not what capitalism is about. Shoot me.
I don't get this argument. You already have windows and Mac ecosystems where people pay for everything and you have the professional sales guys and big tech being fully invested in sucking all value they can from it all.
Ads in operating systems, spying on users, ads in search engines, telemetry in products, everything you want yourself because you want companies to make money from users.
You have Facebook, Instagram, Google, Microsoft, Meta etc etc. They are all there for you.
So maybe use one of the existing platforms which is fully monetized? Use programs developed for those platforms? Don't bring that shit into the Linux world.
You mean those tracking platforms and walled gardens? Is that what you have to do, opt into predatory platforms in order tobuy some software? How does that make sense? "Oh well, you just need to sacrifice your privacy and autonomy to buy a product"... seems like you want people to be manipulated and subverted so you can sit on the other end and be a smug git.
Mass tracking is a danger to democracy and liberty. Look at China. Stop enabling the status quo. Stop being a selfish zealot.
That tracking and those walled gardens will come to Linux if you make it a highly profitable platform to develop apps for, or allow ads into our software.
I don't know why that's so hard to understand when you have examples right in front of your eyes.
If you use Ublock you can use this filter to clean Shorts from Youtube (FTR you only need 2 lines near the bottom that have the word 'short' in them, but Lemmy formatting is balls so it's all or nothing):
Good thing ublock origin exists, shorts are awful
Depends. It's a good alternative when you don't want to follow people on TikTok. Hank and John Green do shorts, there's a Maine lobsterman who does great shorts, there's a couple of people who do very funny Heaven/Hell skits...
Nah, they're awful. Your explanation is like someone saying, "Nazis are awful," and you saying "Depends. Fritz had me over for dinner and him and his wife are pretty nice, and Hanz is good defense for a game of footie."
Just because there are exceptions to the rule, doesn't make the entire format, as a whole, not awful. The idea, right down to its core of being 1) easily accessible 2) quickly digestible and 3) easy to market with turns it into a party where everyone is jumping around saying "Hey, hey! Look at me! Looook at meeeeeee! Please give me your attention!"
This is why 50% of TikTok users surveyed said that videos over one minute long are stressful for them, it's completely devastated people's attention spans.
But this still ignores the ultimate cardinal sin of video content: forcing the vertical aspect ratio in order to facilitate easier scrolling, even though OUR BINOCULAR VISION IS OPTIMIZED FOR WIDESCREEN VIEWING.
Are we really comparing YouTube Shorts to Nazis?
I'm comparing two shitty things using hyperbole
Easy on the Godwin there, pal.
Fastest and easiest way to get my point across
This is all 100% accurate forever and people that don't like it are wrong.
Ok don't get me wrong (fuck shorts, they're a terrible follow of a trend across so many platforms), but at least on mobile it seems like they're shorts from people I subscribe to 🤷♂️ so I'm cool with supporting the folks I subscribe to, I guess
YouTube Shorts is a blight on humanity. It is even more sinister than TikTok. No joke. Glad that you can add an extension to block the YouTube "shorts".
This feels like an ad, I use premium and they should give us the option to hide it
I also have premium. I really like it. But this is just shoveling shit in my face.
There really is no avoiding tic tok is there?
Even creators I used to respect started creating this adhd-friendly nonsense with 0 educational value.
I can’t imagine how someone born today is going to grow up to be a functional human being. All the big corporations are controlling every single little thing they see.
It's not ADHD friendly at all...
This is kind of the point. The less people think, the less they will question corporations.
If you happen to use any user script extension already (like Violentmonkey) or don't want to use a dedicated extension to fix stupid design decisions, I can recommend https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/405614-youtube-polymer-engine-fixes.
At first shorts were pretty neat, now they're the same shovel-ware from TikTok. I literally see copy/paste TikToks with the stupid follow animation every few videos, or subway surfer videos that progressively takeover the bottom of the screen with every short. Actual cancer now.
Youtube is so aesthetically and functionally unappealing nowadays, I lose interest in browsing even my own subs. I don't care what users "like me" are watching nor what I "might like". The only way to see my subs vids is with Piped.
YouTube shorts feel like a weird attempt to enter a market that YouTube doesn't really fit. I understand the business philosophy behind it, but I wish they would prioritize improvements to their main services over their side projects.
The original idea for Youtube was "make your own tv shows" so it wasn't really intended for highbrow entertainment, infotainment, etc. Then they started promoting videos that were longer format, so the "watch my sister go splat trying to jump in the pool" videos got replaced by how-tos, unboxing, and explainers. Then tiktok came along and Youtube is trying to turn itself into "watch my sister go splat in 60 seconds or less."
It's sad that with the concentration of developers and creatives at their disposal -- not to mention the financial resources -- they can't innovate something beyond tiktok. Instead of tagging along after a trend and wind up looking like an old geezer dressing up like a 16 year old.
That format was fine, actually, since it chucked all the shorts into a single row, then you can scroll by them easily. My sub page has gone back to interspersing them in-line with normal videos and it’s massively infuriating.
Shorts are nothing but thirst traps for me. Damn it's hard not to click, but I regret it every time I do. There's never actually good content in them.
Unhook is a good Firefox extension to control Youtube's bs
Fix: use newpipe on mobile and invidious on PC
No algorithms, chronological order from subscriptions , no shorts
There is also FreeTube as a standalone program for linux/win/mac too, I really enjoy it.
To get rid of Shorts without any extensions, this tip works for the mobile app, I presume it works for Web too.
Click on the 3 dots by a Short and select "Not interested" or similar. Repeat this until every Short in the section is gone. Now the whole section disappears and stays this way. It hasn't come back yet for me since I did this a few weeks ago.
This used to work. The latest block of shorts that they added in the subscriptions page that is not removable.
I use Youtube via the channels RSS feeds. If there is a short I mark it as read and read on.
Laughs in revanced
Laughs in NewPipe
I am just blocking that tiktok shit with browser extension.
I'm gonna have to set something up to hide the thirst trap shorts of the girl who plays guitar poolside in either just a bra or braless in a thin light colored shirt. I just want videos from old dudes who teach me how to make pedal circuits.
I'm sure she's good, but god, sometimes I wonder about her mental health. I know she actively uploads those videos, but what does it feel like needing to objectify yourself to try to get people to notice your talent? And also if I wanted a thirst trap video of someone playing guitar, goddammit, I want 3 minutes to rock out to
I don't mind people being in the business of being sexy. I just don't go to YouTube for that. I mainly use my YouTube on a living room HTPC. I go out of my way to keep a clean recommendation profile so I don't have to explain embarrassing videos that pop up when I have people over. YouTube just really wants me to see her.
Oh dear. I still see a screenful of normal videos before that batch. Hopefully it remains like so for me. I wonder if free users see ads on that page as well.
I haven't used that page even once after started using pocket tube extension.
Newpipe. Libretube Free tube
https://github.com/Vulpelo/hide-youtube-shorts
this works for me
damn you cant even hide them like you can on mobile that sucks.
I do not see a way to hide them on mobile.
There was one of the buttons up in the corner like there is for videos where you can tell it not interested. Like 3 days ago I was very annoyed because they threw them up at the very top of my YouTube apps home page and idk how it is on a regular phone, but on the fold 3 the shorts section takes up like 3/4 of the screen. If you're looking for one in the subscription page, I don't actually use that page tbh but I just checked and yeah there's not one there.
I just installed the Youtube-shorts block extension which is available for both chrome & firefox. Between that and still using a revanced patched youtube apk hopefully I never have to see shorts again.
The real issue is your YouTube algorithm bro. What in the trash tube are you watching?
Real trash tube is loading the YouTube homepage in a private browser and scrolling without signing in. Most of the stuff on it I wouldn't watch while piss drunk.
I generally only use the Android client. But if there's any similarity, there's no way to stop them spamming you with their shorts.
YouTube be like
I feel like all the people talking about how to block Shorts are missing the point.
I tried a few 'shorts' blocking extensions on Firefox with weird and inconsistent results. I started hiding every 'short' on my subs page before picking anything to watch. They've magically disappeared as of a couple days ago.
But now they separate your subscribed channel's shorts for their regular videos. Since most channels put out 3-6 shorts a day, all they did was clog my feed. Now I can at least ignore the shorts section to see the long form videos I care about.
That's why I've stopped looking in my subscriptions, too much clutter..
That's YouTube's goal: to completely funnel you into their algorithm instead of you being able to choose the content you want to watch.
I may be weird, but I don't mind the YouTube shorts too much.
It's like a little taste of the people I subscribe to.
It's YouTube. I don't need a little taste. I can just start playing a video and skip around.
I'd be less annoyed at them if I could turn them off.
Since Google keeps trying to shove them down my throat it's safe to say they exist for Google's benefit, not mine.
If only we had invented a device that could scroll the web page... Some kind of wheel maybe? It could even go directly on the mouse.
Guess we'll just have to suffer until then.