[Bumblonono]

My only problem with this is the good content on the internet like good YouTube videos explaining to you how the world and things work.

If i could have a good filter which really can control my internet usage without giving away my privacy that would be awesome.

But no first of, everything goes through chrome and i do not trust random addons, i can also circumvent it too easily. Then even services like YouTube introduced there shorts. Do i watch them? Sometimes. Do i want to watch them? no

Can i deactivate them? no..

I will continue paying for YouTube premium! But pls give me a personal pseudo budget and not some ass weak timer i can just click away...

[j1elo]

The platform itself wants to shove Shorts and other mindless consumption content down your throat, because their interests are different than yours, even opposite one could say. So your only options are to find tools that allow pushing back (or just abandon the platform, but that's very difficult precisely because they have taken care to extinguish any practical chance of alternatives to sprout over the years).

On a desktop with a decent browser you should be able to use uBlock Origin (not a random addon by any reasonable measure) and the user-contributed rules from here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube...

(remember this is a fight against interests of the provider vs those of their users, so expect it being a cat-and-mouse game of rules that stop working).

On handheld devices, any system that respects user authority to do as they please (i.e. not an iPhone) can install a patched version of the YouTube {revanced.}app, which ironically attends better to its users' needs, and allows disabling Shorts altogether. Again, it's a bit of an antagonist position, so breakages can happen (VERY rarely, though).

[nxpnsv]

Shorts are terrible, they suck you in and 15 mindless videos later you can't even remember what you've seen. I almost only want to search for videos or check subscriptions, the main page with recommendations is full of traps...

[Workaccount2]

I was talking to my friend about this the other day. How you can watch video shorts for an hour and come away with no new knowledge at all. Nothing sticks.

It's like shorts are a brain glitch where you can artificially quench your desire to do stuff with empty filler.

[s1artibartfast]

This is often my experience reading the comment section on Reddit or HN.

a lot of hot takes, stimulating social disputes, interesting logical constructions, but it is all gone within 5 minutes of getting up.

[roland35]

They're like pop tarts! I can eat those all day and still be hungry

[JohnFen]

I agree. I never want to watch shorts (and now they've added games I never want to play). I wish there was a way to exclude both of those.

[tacocataco]

https://unhook.app/

I know it's an addon. I can't think of anything else other then using a different service.

[Asooka]

As someone else said - your best bet is to just download videos you deem to be good and put them on a plex server for your children. You can even automate it to automatically download from a given channel when new videos are posted to it. Of course at some point you will have to let them browse the wide internet on their own, just make sure they know the importance of opsec and never ever writing their real info online.

[financetechbro]

I have YT premium and was so fed up with shorts on my home feed. If you click on the three stacked dots next to the shorts section on the home tab, you can select “don’t shot this” or “not interested”; can’t remember what the option was. But I haven’t had to deal with shorts since :)

[Pepe1vo]

> Can i deactivate them? no..

Sure you can, just click the "x" on the top right of the shorts row and they will be gone. Though, you might have to re-hide them every x days, but still if you don't want to watch them you really don't have to.

[Bumblonono]

This is exactly not what i want. I do not want to 'x' it constantly and no just because i x it doesn't mean that the Tab in the YouTube App disappears

[DiggyJohnson]

I lost the 'x' a month or so ago. Especially for the Shorts banner at the top of my recommended feed.

[two_handfuls]

There is no “x” atop the Shorts row for me.

[skeeter2020]

the best I could do was a ublock filter to hide them.

[onemoresoop]

I spend more time offline. I started downloading lists of videos I find interesting and consume those offline. Not being recommended videos when I'm not looking for recommendations feels like it I have a lot more control.

[snikeris]

> If i could have a good filter which really can control my internet usage without giving away my privacy that would be awesome.

This is the domain of your conscience. It notifies you when your actions and values lack alignment.

[ycombinete]

> Can i deactivate them? no..

Yes you can. When I turned off search and watch history the shorts interface was deactivated. It just had a notice saying that I need to enable the haptics to use the feature.

[015a]

You're never going to find an automated filter which can perfectly strip the bad away from the good and present an even remotely "better" internet than the one we have today. Time-based filters do not work, because the user's ability to override them will always outweigh any enforcement power the system might have, and a "nudge" isn't enough for most people. Even devices like the Litephone, or setting your phone's display to black & white, doesn't work in the long run; its more performative than minimalist, color is kinda important, the problem really isn't the phone, or the tools, or the filters, or the services; its you.

Saying "I just need a good piece of software to control my addiction to software" sounds insane when phrased like that; "I just need another cig to control my addiction to nicotine".

Devices like the litephone, or the recent frontpage post about the Apple Watch iPod case, are kind of missing the point; if you're going out to buy another device to address your problem with using devices, what you're participating in is performance art, not self-improvement. Did you see that the litephone 3 costs $800?! The most digitally minimalist people I know use full-featured smartphones; sometimes rather old, but still fully capable. They just use them far, far less. No one is telling you to get rid of Youtube, but maybe a homepage smattered with ludwig and asmongold videos indicates you have a problem.

[techjamie]

I formerly had a problem about 2 years ago where I spent entire days flipping between Youtube and Reddit outside of work, and not really accomplishing anything productive or bettering myself in any way. I started cutting back and filling that time with other things, programming, language learning, or hanging out with my friends.

I deleted Reddit entirely during the API fiasco, but I still watch YouTube since it's basically what I treat as my TV. However, I have a caveat that I keep myself productive until it's dark outside aside from the occasional 10 minute mental break, and during meals. Once it's about 10pm, then I'll relax.

I don't let any kind of entertainment or news app send my phone notifications. I interact with them exclusively on my own terms.

With how algorthmic content feed is, you've got to be willing to set boundaries for your tech and yourself. Find things you like to do, and replace social media time with that. There's an entire world of information at your fingertips to learn absolutely anything you could ever want to, take advantage of it.

[Bumblonono]

My problem are youtube videos which talk about science, diy, woodworking, metal working, history, math etc.

I'm not addicted to software, i'm addicted to entertainmened optimized for grabbing my attention.

And the comparision to cigs is not far away. They have also been designed to be addictive, a lot of people struggle for their whole live to get away from them.

My planning brain can easily see what i don't want to do or have, my doing brain is not strong enough to then just execute on this. Otherwise i would be a rich, supersporty, multilingual expert in multiply fields.

[ndriscoll]

Make a shell script that runs yt-dlp for the channels that have worthwhile information. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that videos which "talk about" math and science are educational, when they are in fact entertainment. e.g. [0] is education. [1] is education. [2] is entertainment.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@FredericSchuller

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@khanacademy

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@kurzgesagt

[patchorang]

There are many chrome extensions that remove shorts.