1y ago

YouTube Shorts - for those of us who don't want TikTok

YouTube Shorts - You're mildly infuriating!

Ever since I was forced to update YouTube on my devices, I got really annoyed with YouTube Shorts. At first, they were easily turned off. Then the option to turn them off disappeared from Settings - General. So I installed apps that allowed to skip out on Shorts. Then just a few days ago I could no longer have Youtube Vanced installed.

I've since learned do deal with this annoyance, but do I really have to mark "Not Interested" from channels I don't subscribe to or "Hide" from my subscribed channels? On my Linux- and Windows PC's I have regular blockers. But I mainly watch content on devices hooked up as small entertainment screens in the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. And those are iOS or Android.

All I want are steady streams of content from my favourite relaxing subjects and channels. Without shorts or AI-derived "Hey, this video from a channel featuring a redneck with 15 AR-15's shooting coyotes in the desert might be your thing!" inserted into my playlists or streams. But the AI-derived autoplay content is beside the point.

YouTube Shorts - You're mildly infuriating!

57 comments

Ya agreed, I wish YouTube would've just pushed it as another app instead of forcing it down the main YouTube users throats.
Like, I don't even mind short tiktok like videos, but yeah I don't go on youtube for that
- There's a firefox addon called ' Hide Youtube-Shorts' and now I just never see them.
  
  Hide Youtube-Shorts
  Thank you for this! I can't stand the shorts in my subscription feed.
- I go to YouTube to watch 2 hour long documentaries on subjects I don't even care about, twitch steam uploads or 30 minute videos from my dubbed channels.
  
  I just watched a one hour video about a fridge, so I know what you mean lol
- This. I'm happy with these content offerings, but it's weird to have them all mashed together. It'd be like if Lemmy randomly inserted book chapters in between other posts. It just doesn't fit with the platform and the use cases are wildly different.

youtube revanced allows you to disable it, i strongly recommend patching the app yourself
if you are interested here is the github link
- I can second this enthusiastically, especially since it also blocks ads and sponsored segments, customizes the UI, allows background playback, allows downloads, and more stuff too.
  
  yup it blows my mind that this is a much better experience than youtube premium not to mention you get it for free
- If you are rooted the magisk module is even easier to use. When I tried compiling myself it would always crash but the module works perfectly and super easy to update.

Also infuriating: With how much YT is incentivizing creators to create shorts, a bunch of channels I follow no longer even make regular 10-15 minute content regularly.
- And I no longer follow them.
- Yeah, this is the worst. The whole reason I use YouTube is for long-form content.

The more they shove these down my throat the less I want to watch them

Be reasonable. All sites must have Stories, and they must have Short Vertical Videos. They must. Surely you can see the necessity of that.

I don't watch tiktok and I don't want youtube shorts either, they are all equally stupid.
I watch youtube on android phone with NewPipe. On desktop I use Firefox+uBlock Origin with this filter sets
https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts

creators cutting 16:9 videos to the worst possible format (phone vertical) ugh

I don't mind shorts but their recommendations are somehow even worse that regular yt recommendations. And those are already dogshit...

Try ReVanced it doesn't have the shorts button, and you can remove shorts from your home feed.

On mobile, I use NewPipe X SponsorBlock which is a fork of NewPipe. Amongst other things, it lets you completely hide shorts. :)

I was thinking of making some Shorts for students, especially since attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter. This article was inspirational. https://www.chemedx.org/blog/how-use-tiktok-and-youtube-shorts-your-chemistry-class
- There is one thing about it being voluntary to create. But they’re pushing YT Shorts down both content creators and viewers throats.
  As a former teacher and mentor, I agree with the thought to make content more interesting and digestible for the younger generation. What I don’t agree with is packaging everything into mindless kick-rewarding (dopamine hitting) bits, like Candy Crush, One armed bandits or Tik Tok videos.
  If you package too much study content into this kind of easily digestible and forgettable bits, you have to remember: it flows out from their minds almost as fast as they spent the effort to see it… maybe it lasted longer if they shared it with their friends/network, but the lesson you wanted them to absorb will mostly disappear faster than the time it took you to create it.
  We work (and should work) to create (at least some) lasting impressions that educate. The most memorable moment that one of my study groups had with one of their “cool TikTok and Fortnite savvy” teachers was when they did candy flossing after it stopped being cool. What lessons he taught? They couldn’t remember if it was English or Math.
  Sorry for my rant. I digressed.
  
  I love the rant. Titrating (pardon the pun) content to kids and having them engage properly is such a big battle.

I hate shorts and I’ve unsubscribed from any channels that make shorts.
I don’t subscribe to you for a 30 second adhd friendly clickbait video. Major respect lost for some channels.

Ya, let's keep shortening everyone's attention span... Hate all short form videos!

In case someone likes the content of YT shorts but can't stand the web player: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/439993-youtube-shorts-redirect
Turns shorts into "normal" videos. Still the same orientation but at least a player that doesn't loop and even applies SponsorBlock rules if there are any.

The most annoying thing about Shorts is that they appear right along the regular videos in /subscriptions

YouTube Revanced is a replacement for the Vanced app that is less likely to get taken down since it doesn't distribute YouTube assets
https://web.archive.org/web/20230616120327/https://old.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revancedmanagerguidefordummies/

On mobile you can use extensions like uBlock Origin (content blocker) or Stylus (CSS injector) if you use some specific browsers, and use youtube.com in those: Firefox, Yandex Browser (ugh I know), or Kiwi Browser (Android-only). It's a mess, I know, but it's a solution.
- Thanks. It’s helpful, uBlock Origin etc didn’t do much on my mobile devices, but I haven’t looked into Firefox or the other ones for the mobile devices.

I'm fine with short videos, but why do they all need that terrible ui with no seek bar and fewer features than proper videos? I really hate how they don't have the previously watched ui on them. It makes keeping up with a creator impossible.

I hate shorts so much that I don't even have YouTube installed on my phone. I use libretube and newpipe on my phone. The crazy thing is YouTube of pushing shorts on desktop as well.

What about revanced ?
- Revanced is the shit. Everyone should use Revanced.

I like some YT shorts once in a while to mix it up

Shorts are mostly just disappointing. Sometimes I don’t notice that I’m clicking a short because the title seemed interesting. Then after 30 seconds it’s already done, and all those times the content wasn’t even that good! You would think that maybe they could condense the best parts of a long video into a shorter one, but instead they just lack any depth and information.
In the same vein, the way Instagram is pushing their (autoplaying) Reels is even worse.
- You would think that maybe they could condense the best parts of a long video into a shorter one
  Some channels do this, and I think it's a really good use for the platform. Nerdforge is one channel that comes to mind - she has a few videos that are a 1 minute short (e.g. https://youtu.be/5QNIgDFq-vw) summarizing a 20 minute video (https://youtu.be/ZVqa7j6jG0Q)

@Regna I ended up running Youtube in Firefox on my mobile device. That way I get to keep all the adblocking abilities as well.

Just use new pipe, The home page is just videos from your subscribed channels and there is no one click way to see an endless stream of shorts. You can still see them if you search them. Bonus: no ads.
- Also, there is no algorithm-curated home feed on NewPipe. You'll just get a simple feed with the latest videos from the channels you are subscribed to, which is a big plus in my book.

This thread made me look up Google Chrome Youtube Short Block Extension, installed, working, easy peasy lemon squeezy
- Yeah, on my Linux and PC units I have good Chrome extensions. Still helpful, thanks!

What pisses me off the most is channels I used to like, stuff like Scam Nation who now repackages all their old content as shorts. And so I unsubscribe because I don't want that level of spam.
Youtube Shorts sounds like an interesting idea, that has all the problems of Tiktok, and then clutters up Youtube. It would be SO easy for people to be able to opt out of Shorts, but that's not how it works, and Youtube's UI keeps pushing them to the point where I stop looking at my notifications.
Great work Google.
- Yeah, the easiest option for Google/YT would be to keep Shorts to the Shorts category only/mainly, and keep the ability for users to opt out of Shorts in the platform’s players. That way, creators who want to push 5 to 30 second videos instead of 10 - 200 minutes would still get their 15 ~~minutes~~ seconds of fame.
  But now, they aren’t just pushing Shorts on us viewers, they are forcing channels to do Shorts to get better visibility.

I do actually find some interesting shorts every now and then after avoiding them for years. However it completely fucks up my recommendations and you can't remove them from the watch list as easily...
So if I watch a couple I'll be suggested shorts for a week or so...

Revanced Manager has a patch option to hide shorts from the feed, it's not much but it is something!

57 comments