[savanaly]

>YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts

No it doesn't. If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not what this is. I just tried the thing mentioned in the article-- set my Shorts time limit to 0 minutes. What it does is make it so if you click a short from somewhere the short plays, but then if you try to swipe to the next one it hits you with the "You reached your short limit". If you then return to the home page you still see Shorts.

[runevault]

It really amazes how how Youtube refuses to let me hide stuff I don't want to see on my homepage. I still long for the ability to tell them to not give me mix playlists, I do not want them, and often they annoy me when the first song is one I'd click on but I don't want to have to pay attention enough to kill it before the next song plays (since you cannot disable play next in playlists...)

[rjbwork]

It's not a product where you are the user. Your attention is the product being sold to advertisers and the videos are a harvesting/production mechanism.

It is not in the interests of either YT or the advertisers to allow you to opt out of features that are proven to be lucrative for eyeballs.

[al_borland]

I’m a Premium subscriber. I don’t see ads, and YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections.

It seems like the incentive for Premium subscribers should be to keep them happy, so they keep paying, and minimize how much they watch, as they’ll be a cheaper user using less bandwidth.

Am I missing something?

[runlevel1]

> YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections

That feature benefits YouTube, too. Maybe even more than its value as a Premium feature. It makes it so that viewers can skip the ads the creator was paid to make without YouTube getting a cut of the proceeds, pushing down the value of those ads.

[gloxkiqcza]

It’s crazy to me YouTube is okay with hosting ads they get no cut from in the first place.

[tsimionescu]

Hasn't this always been the case? If a movie or show features product placement, a TV station playing said movie/show doesn't get any of the proceeds from that advertisement, do they?

[tsimionescu]

This line of argument would make sense if they did allow paying customers who don't see ads to disable these anti-features. They don't.

[crustaceansoup]

It's still a fine argument for that case, you've just moved yourself out of it. They still have an incentive to keep you addicted to the service, which is basically the point of Shorts, "so you keep paying us money to satisfy your addiction" instead of the first case's "so you keep watching ads that pay us money to satisfy your addiction"

[runevault]

The thing that is funny about it is at least with the mixes, it does actively make me engage less because there are videos I would click on if they were not being tied into a mix, but because they are I actively choose not to open the video and let the song play.

[ajkjk]

joke's on them, I have not consciously experienced a youtube advertisement in ten years

[charcircuit]

YouTube has multiple different products. YouTube as a company do not call your attention a product. There isn't a product team that is in charge of people's attention as a product.

[pabs3]

If you have uBlock Origin installed, the subreddit wiki for it has lots of options for blocking stuff on YouTube.

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

[benterix]

Believe me, if they tried as hard as FB, an ordinary user wouldn't stand a chance. As it is now, a single uBlock Origin action is enough to make these disappear from my YT page for good, and for all accounts.

[rob74]

You see, you think you don't want all those things, but the algorithm knows better. Trust the algorithm!

[ChrisRR]

Search youtube for a thing

> 5 results for your search

> 10 unrelated videos that you've already watched

> An endless stream of unrelated videos

[ChrisRR]

Youtube has added random people's text posts to my subscription feed, and it's pissing me off. They're never anything interesting or entertaining, it's always just gumpf

[netcoyote]

I so hate the videos YouTube shows me that I wrote a plugin to place a white box over videos called TubeGate [0], which I open-sourced [1]. It does keyword-based filtering so you can tell it to hide "sports", "politics", etc.

[0]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tubegate/aokfpmegea...

[1]: https://github.com/webcoyote/tubegate

[losvedir]

Damn, yeah that's what I was hoping for.

Honestly, the only thing really keeping me from watching shorts is the perplexing UX decision to not show the channel name as part of the preview tile. As basic Internet hygiene it just feels real bad to click on a video without the tiniest bit of idea about its provenance. For that reason I never do and have always just wanted to hide Shorts altogether.

[chii]

I don't watch shorts because of the type of content it encourages - short clickbait content for the attention deficit.

I want long form, well researched, well put together content. These types of content takes a long time to produce, unfortunately, and the youtube algorithm doesn't favour it.

[rob74]

These types of content takes a long time to produce

Unless they're AI slop, of course. Between shorts and AI slop, worthwhile content on YouTube will soon become almost impossible to find...

[chii]

That's where off-platform, trust worthy sources are important.

Over the years, i've curated a lot of subscriptions on youtube of such long form content (talking about things like Primitive Technology, Smarter Everyday, etc).

It simply sucks that youtube has gutted the UI for subscriptions - the layout is horrible, i can't scan it as they removed the list view, etc. And sometimes subscribed channel's videos don't even show up there - you have to visit the channel page directly to see the new videos.

it's almost as if they want people to rely only on the home page and the recommended videos from their algo.

[tveita]

Honestly I'd sometimes like a checkbox to ignore any results uploaded after, say 2023. Or else to only see 'verified non-AI' content. There is nothing I'd ever search Youtube for where an AI generated video would be an acceptable answer.

[InMice]

I use the control panel for youtube plugin - there is an option that any short plays in the traditional player. It also has lets you customize the thumbnail grid sizes. it is a little over aggressive with its defaults but you can turn them off. it has a lot of options

[rob74]

If TikTok does it that way (I have no idea if it does actually), YouTube obviously has to copy that! If a fishy channel name stops you from clicking on a short, that hurts your engagement, and that's the last thing social media companies want.

[idle_zealot]

Classic "self regulation" of an addictive product. "You look like you might have a problem with self-control, here are tools for managing yourself better" while admitting no fault and continuing with all of the hooks and barbs, design and advertising built to addict as many people as possible.

[alex1138]

Real name? No? We'll ask again later

[jiveturkey]

Well played. I don't think many remember this. The product was completely forgettable but the introduction of this user hostile pattern was a turning point.

[natpalmer1776]

What was this referencing?

[berdario]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars

[natpalmer1776]

Thank you!

[trinsic2]

You sure you don't want to add your phone number? I makes verification easier next time you want to upload a video.

[alex1138]

I was referring to Google+. I don't know if you mean something else like Facebook, which is no less abusive than Google+ ever was

People seemed to like Google+ but a) nymwars lead to dangerous situations (although no less dangerous than Facebook's graph search) for people that don't want to reveal their real names but also b) the merging of accounts ruined some people's Youtube channels. Zuckerberg is so much of a control freak that I suspect (based on evidence I've vaguely heard, not just my own intuition) links to Google+ used to get deleted. It used to be the case people liked it but they "couldn't get their friends to use it". So yeah - in part, inertia; but also what if you linked it and nobody saw it in the feed?

[trinsic2]

I know. I was joining in on the joke, I think I just made that one up though. Im pretty sure youtube asks that If you upload a video and don't have a phone number on file

[alex1138]

Sorry!

[jldugger]

Technically I think it's for parents to regulate their kids.

[idle_zealot]

Yeah, it's pretty broad consensus that the Chinese opium epidemic was really on the parents. 19th century Chinese parents really dropped the ball there, and no further considerations or blame should be placed.

[Carrok]

I'm confused why you're bringing up parents and kids. Are you implying only children might have problems with self-control wrt media consumption?

[jldugger]

No, I'm implying Google faces liability after that court case and is using this as a fig leaf to blame parents.

[misnome]

> The feature was expanded in January to give parents some control over how long their kids spend scrolling through Shorts,

[jval43]

My parents are retired. How exactly do they come into play?

I'm actively avoiding Shorts, Reels, and whatever else with those mechanics precisely because they pull you in and snap an hour is gone with nothing of value to show for it. It's so totally different from regular long form videos.

We regulate addictive substances too, even for adults and without relying on parents. The amount of productivity and quality of life lost to these platforms must be staggering in aggregation.

[darth_avocado]

Correct, based on the text when you change the setting mentions that.

> scrolling is paused but you may still see individual Shorts

It prevents doomscrolling, not what you see in your feed or homepage.

[senectus1]

dammit. I got so excited about that headline.

now I'm just angry again.

[geerlingguy]

Ditto

[kakacik]

Swipe. Not a problem with mouse control and generally full computer, seems like even such a dumb move as swiping can become addictive and be done subconsiously. Never understood why people complain here so much about shorts since they never go beyond the one video played that I opened myself I guess that explains it.

Tablets/touchscreens/phones are not the best way to experience online stuff, rather the worst. ublock origin in firefox makes internet usable in other dimension for me, since I am allergic to ads but thats another story

[jore]

I actually set the time limit to 0 minutes , then I restarted the app in iOS and right now I do not see any shorts. Let’s see how long it would take for them to reappear again

[superjan]

The nuclear option is to disallow it to store your watch history. You get only a search bar and your subscriptions.

I switched to this. It is less fun, but also less of a timewaste.

[leptons]

"Shorts" is the #1 reason I switched to the SmartTube app on my Chromecast.

No more Shorts.

It also has other great features that are well beyond what the Youtube app lets you do to customize the expernience.

And then I realized, it also blocks all the ads. I was a Youtube subscriber, but they alienated me with their "Shorts", so I switched apps, and then I cancelled my subscription.

Most of big tech is too big. It's ridiculous how bad these monoliths have gotten.

[01jonny01]

Yep i use skipvids.com to avoid shorts. I found myself endlessly scrolling like a junky

[mrandish]

Yep, SmartTube is great.

[joelthelion]

Note that you don't need YouTube's permission to remove shorts from the homepage; there's a Firefox extension for that.

[rkapsoro]

Argh. I was really excited for this. I'm a YouTube Premium user, and I get a lot of value from YouTube, but I can't get rid of the nicotine-tastic home feed and shorts. I go to YouTube for useful (especially, long-form) stuff, and get sucked into garbage.

On desktop you can manage this with extensions. Not so much on mobile.

Profound product misalignment.

[nine_k]

If you want to completely eschew shorts, consider adding https://www.youtube.com/shorts to your adblocker blocklist, and maybe use an extension like Stylus to hide the "Shorts" links on YT pages.

I would rather keep the ability to see a short if I need it.

[PaulHoule]

ROFL because there is no danger that I'm going to spend any time watching shorts. If they put some limit on other videos now that might be relevant... but shorts are just taking up real estate on the screen which could be filled with content I might engagement. I want to say it is like picking their shareholder's pockets except nobody profits from the existence of shorts in any way.

[philipov]

An ad blocker handles this use case just fine, however. It's easy to create a rule to remove the div containing shorts. Also works on many Use AI buttons.

[bityard]

It turns out, the tiger can't change its shorts

[BingBingBap]

Youtube would be cooked if there was an alternative that actually eorked (incentives for people uploading, spread well etc).

[adjejmxbdjdn]

I think this might be even worse, psychologically.

You’ve added a “forbidden fruit” element to the Shorts.

[samxli]

It’s still working for me tho. Could it be a different app version?

[rmwaite]

In my case, once I set the limit to 0 minutes and refreshed the home tab I don't see Shorts recommendations at all. There is still a Shorts tab at the bottom that tells me I have no remaining time (and allows me to trivially override it, sigh). But otherwise this seems to have cleaned up the "feed" that I see in the app of anything Shorts related (for now, at least).

[dahcryn]

weird how its 0 to 15, and no in between.

I went in hoping to set it to 5 minutes. I don't see that as a problem. However, suddenly losing 15 minutes, yeah that's an issue

[VerifiedReports]

Wow, WTF. What an inept implementation.

[neop1x]

Same.They just did the minimum to look like they care about restricting addiction practices but in reality still continuing with business as usual

[paulnpace]

My shorts are on.