[pests]

I agree with you almost completely. I never used YT as a content source until a few years ago - I’d never open the app and only watch videos linked or embedded / looking up a specific how to video. Now it’s different though.

I never go to my subscription feed - the front page algo keeps me up to date on any new content from people I want to see updates on. I’ve noticed too it almost has a “shadow subscription” where even though I am not subscribed to certain channels, it knows I watch every video by them so it gets on my front page too.

The front page really has a “vibe” that follows my interests around. Watch a few too many Minecraft videos or car repair and soon you start seeing more and more of the front page being those topics. Get a new interest in pyramids? Devlogs? Nature? The front page slowly decays old interests and promotes new ones.

Which is again why I don’t check my sub feed - it’s a graveyard of interests, many of which I don’t care about right now. The algo surfaces the ones I do.

[zimpenfish]

> Watch a few too many Minecraft videos or car repair and soon you start seeing more and more

In my experience it's "watch one video outside of your recommendations and then half your next set of recommendations will be related to that". I'm scared to click on anything I'm not already subscribed to for fear of trashing the home page.

[gtirloni]

You can (almost) always tell you're not interested in those videos and it slowly stops suggesting them. You can also ask it to never recommend a certain channel.

[TylerE]

You can’t, however stop it from suggestion huge blocks of shorts or crappy free to play games.

[dmd]

You somehow must be able to, as everyone I know has feeds full of that sort of thing, and I've never seen even one short or game on my youtube home page.

[immibis]

Nope. You specifically can't disable shorts, no matter how much you want to - so much that YouTube Revanced has this feature.

[zimpenfish]

> You specifically can't disable shorts

You can use the three dots to say "Not Interested" on the Shorts shelf but it only hides it for 30 days and then the insidious little worm comes right back.

[squigz]

Yes you can, with something like uBlock Origin, or even a simple stylesheet override.

[bigstrat2003]

If you have to go outside of youtube you modify its behavior, that doesn't really qualify as "you can make it stop". That's like saying you can make someone stop shooting you by wearing a Kevlar vest.

[squigz]

What a silly comparison.

[zimpenfish]

Sadly not available when using the Apple TV to watch YouTube. If there's a NextDNS / PiHole method that stops YouTube ads, I could probably implement that...

[treve]

I tried this for games and shorts, but something about their HTML changes enough that they keep reappearing. I absolutely despise shorts

[squigz]

Yeah they tweak the HTML enough that static stylesheet overrides can become outdated real quick. Very annoying. It's been a while since I looked, but there probably is some uBlock Origin filter list that'll handle this and will stay fairly up-to-date.

[pests]

You can delete things from your watch history to clean up the algo. If I ever let a TV auto play for too long or have kids over watching things I go though and delete things I think will negatively affect the algo.

I feel like clicking a video and immediately clicking off is also a negative signal they use but YMMV.

[trw55]

My interests vary so widely that my home feed is awful. I like watching videos on power tools, software development, video games, sports highlights, math, and other, less focused things like the hoard of cat video channels I sub to to keep existential dread at bay.

I get recommended right leaning videos and videos with ads for manscaped and I'm neither a conservative or a man. It's super weird so I tend to separate my interests into two apps: the YouTube web app for "junk food content" and FreeTube when I want to learn and focus. It's the only way I've found to not be fed the random content carrots while falling down the rabbit hole.

[pests]

I manage to keep a pretty diverse set of topics.

Right now my homepage seems to be

- construction/DIY videos (Perkins, B1M, Megaprojects, Matt Risinger, NS Builders)

- video game dev (blackthornprod)

- "indie game of the day" channels (Aliensrock, Nialus)

- military videos (Battleship New Jersey, Ryan McBeth)

- freerunning / urban exploration (STORRER)

- movie & tv analysis / commentary (Frame Voyager, Corridor Crew, New Rockstars)

- chess (agagmotor, Magnus)

- Minecraft (Mumbo Jumbo)

- random documentaries (fern, Stewert Hicks, Half as Interesting)

- egypt / pyramids (History for GRANITE)

- science / engineering (Adam Savage, Colin Fruze, Applied Engineering)

- coding (Tsoding)

From just a quick scan of the topics / channels.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

Youtube disrespects any person that is multilingual. They shove AI translations into our faces because the content creator is responsible for disabling it not the user. Instead of German videos I get German videos with English AI audio. I keep getting videos from the same game I always ignore or say not interested on my front page.

Youtube wants my money. They will never get my money when they come up with things like that. I will give them my money once they start cracking down on ads. And by that I mean actual moderated ads - not random ads with porn. As long as they serve scam ads I will never give them money - and it does not look like I will in my lifetime.

[pests]

Paying them money removes all ads though, scammy or not. And they just announced their lower priced tier, although I think not all genres are ad-free.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

Ad blockers do the same and will be my choice. It is their choice to not moderate their main business. It is their choice to disable monetization on history, ..., people who say fuck in the first minute.

Is it that hard to look at all the BS and say - no not my money?

[hollerith]

But most of the channels I'm interested in have "in video" ads (ads put there by the creator rather than Youtube, I don't know the industry terminology) that remain even if you pay for Youtube Premium.

I wish Premium provided some way for me to predict how many of these kinds of ads are in a video I am considering watching (e.g., by requiring the creator to tell YT how many there are and imposing consequences on creators that lie) but YT does not.

[pests]

Those are sponser segments and I have no problem with them. These videos can be expensive to produce and these people need to support themselves still. If you take away or reduce their ad revenue, how do we expect them to survive?

There is an extension called SponserBlock that will automatically skip them and other marketing / time wastes. Otherwise I just skip ahead (the highest peak in the watch graph playbar at will usually be the end of the segment)

[hollerith]

>If you take away or reduce their ad revenue, how do we expect them to survive?

I want YT to pay them out of what I pay for YT Premium.

[pests]

They do, and its a pittance.

[abustamam]

In all honesty I had no idea YouTube had a sub feed until you mentioned it. I still don't know how to access it, but the home page more than suffices for me.