1y ago

We're going in the wrong direction

200 comments

Leave it to big tech to introduce the same exact product with less features while they gaslight you into believing it's a shiny new product that you should be excited about.
- Give it a year after people has gotten used to it and forgot how it was. They'll sell it back to you as a premium feature.
  
  deleted
- Big tech is about big money, it has less and less to do with tech
- The new feature is how much they shove them down your throat.
  
  When I see "New and improved!!" all I get is "We have found a way to make more money, and we sure as fuck ain't passing the earnings to you", or potentially "We faced a lawsuit so have since begun to follow the smallest possible set of FDA guidelines the law allows for, making OUR product safer for YOU!"
- You described Apple perfectly
- Sure our product is made by Filipino children, and sure it pollutes pristine wetlands, and yes, it does unfairly contribute to an insanely skewed distribution of wealth, but think of the INNOVATION!

Pro tip: if you replace "shorts/" with a "watch?v=" in the URL of a YouTube shorts video, you can watch it like a normal video.
Another pro tip: if you replace the entire URL to "https://www.who.int/health-topics/mental-health", you can learn about mental health, which is an essential piece of knowledge in the case you watch YouTube shorts.
- And if you've accepted the decline, I believe replacing "shorts" with "v" is enough.
- I use an extension that auto opens any stupid short in full video version.
  
  Would you kindly link this extension?
- Lmao
- You can also just replace "shorts" with "watch".
- Install “enhancer for youtube” (chrome web store) and in the settings for it check “convert shorts”
  You’re welcome

YouTube is the worst with this, because they've even gone so far as to convert older videos under 1 minute to shorts. They weren't uploaded as shorts, but now congratulations you can't scrub through the video or share a timestamped link anymore.
- I think there's client sided stuff to do to solve that still, I'm 90% sure on my pc shorts open as normal videos due to an add-on I added a long time ago (the most popular for modding the look and feel of it, someone definitely can add it because I'm out of the house)
  EDIT: Someone who deleted their comment (saw the notification that stayed) got it right, it was Enhancer for YouTube. It's the bees' knees, very recommended for everything (except adblock, for that get uBlock origin)
  
  I think it's called YouTube shorts block
  
  Yeah don't have the name now but at least for Firefox there is an addon that just plays them as normal videos.
  
  Hello, it's me, the one deleting their comment :))
  I thought I'd be able to reply to that other comment of yours but it didn't seem to work so I'll just paste it here:
  Oh interesting, I pretty much instantly deleted my comment again because I remembered seeing that the shorts thing in the enhancer was only experimental and assumed it didn't work well yet.
  Can't find this comment of yours in the thread now ~~but I can reply from the inbox :))~~
  
  Youtube Enhancer is my bet. There are others but that's the most popular. Also removes ads but I'm not sure that works anymore. uBlock and GreaseMonkey with the git script is the way to go for ads, just as a public service announcement.
- Has anyone noticed YouTube’s video compression has become much worse lately?
  I tried watching a video I’ve seen before and I felt like I stepped back into 2007 again. That same video wasn’t like that last year.
  
  Sometimes YouTube will bump you down to like 720p while still showing the quality as 1080p
  
  Yes. Auto is essentially the "720p or less but we're gonna lie and say it's 1080p still" option now. I'm constantly having to manually choose my resolution to get the full bitrate.
  
  It really makes their tests for the higher bit rate "1080p Premium" quality just seem like reducing the current 1080p and locking out the one we already had.
  
  There was that whole controversy about the Wish trailers because of Youtube compression...
- If you pause the video you can scrub by dragging the end of the bar. It's terrible UX but it's technically possible
  
  OMG! I didn't know that! Thank you! I've been having to watch videos again from the start when I accidentally navigate away.
  Granted it's a short time frame but still.
  
  You don't have to pause for this. I can just scroll from the thin red bottom bar
- You can scrub shorts on mobile (might have to pause it first), but not desktop for some reason...
- It's annoying, but you can covert the garbage at the end of like the youtube.com/shorts/afaftxsdds to youtube.com/watch?v=afaftxsdds and it'll behave and be able to be interacted with like a normal video.
  
  Anyone wanna make a firefox plugin or something for this?
  
  Just /v/ in place of /shorts/ works
  
  Considering you just have to change a word I wonder why did they implement the features that people want and lock it behind a word change. What am I saying thinking more about this is just making the mistake of assuming morons don't exist.
- Firefox, right click, show video controls
- They fucking what!?
  Anyway, the "Enhancer for YouTube" addon has an option to force a normal player for the shorts.
  
  Now that you mention it I sometimes forget I have YouTube enhancer until I stop and remember oh wait YouTube isn't normally monochromatic blue. Man I had too much fun redesigning my YouTube css.
- Wait, even videos that aren't in the vertical aspect ratio? I've got an 18 second video posted to Youtube and I'm going to be quite put out if they crop it and shart it out as a "short."
- Revanced + disable shorts components
- The timestamp no, but the scrub works. I think on TikTok creators could disable that, not sure if YouTube offer that.
  And the timestamp thing yeah... Although for so short videos to me is not that annoying. But yeah sucks.
  In any case can you share an example of this converted videos? I have never seen it.

Perfect example of continual enshitification, there's no reason even a 15s "short" or other quick media couldn't have video controls, it's just intentional because some dogshit behavioural phycologist they've paid said that's the best way to coerce more engagement.
- Behaviour psychologists should have a morality clause in their oath.
  
  Behavioral psychologists working for TikTok, Instagram and the likes are like physical doctors working for McDonald's to make their junk food more addictive while blindly accepting that it will become even more unhealthy.
  What a miserable waste of workforce.
  
  Lol oath they are mostly just glorified teachers. Although maybe teachers should have oaths come to think of it.
  
  That is incompatible with a capitalist business model. Morality is nice and all, but please do that on your own time, during company hours we literally own your life.
- Or when it looks like it's going to be a 15 second video, but actually it's been going 2 minutes and still hasn't got to the bit you'd have skipped to had it had controls, so you just close it in disgust.
- It's removing affordances to limit your possible interactions to the ones which benefit advertisers. They'd get rid of the back button if they could.
  
  Facebook is experimenting with back button removal right now, test group rollout.

The best days of the internet are behind us.
- Yep when everybody got smartphones it let all the dumb people on the internet who couldn't use computers.
  Then the portrait video orientation became the dumbass default video mode, even when the majority of videos would look 9000% better in proper landscape orientation. It all comes back to narcissism - people filming their own face and body in portrait mode because they think people need to see their face talking about every asinine opinion they think needs to be shared for attention-getting purposes.
  Tiktok is the perfect example of everything wrong with it all now.
  
  Old person yelling at clouds
- Early ebaumsworld was peak
  
  Somethingawful forums!
  
  As a big contributor to YTMND back in the day, I'm honor-bound to hate you just a little bit for that.
- Seriously, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Facebook stories can go to hell.
  Let's build the Internet again, starting from Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. One step at a time.
  
  That's why we all are here, aren't we

I also hate players where the overlay doesn't go away. My girlfriend still watches videos on Facebook sometimes, and when she sends them to me, it always drives me crazy. You can't see like 30% of the video, often the part of the screen where the captions are
- Instagram reels and TikTok are the worst for this. Half the screen is useless shit.
  
  Tbf a lot of the actual content is useless shit too
  
  You can hide it all on tik tok iirc

Especially with no volume knob on desktop. What in the actual fuck?
- If you have access to a Desktop. Why would you ever be on TikTok?
- As someone with a physical volume nob on all my speakers … what

It's designed to keep you rewatching until you get the info you want or give up and keep scrolling. Eroding your attention span in the process.
TikTok is an evil platform that I will never use till the day I die. Don't @ me
- @TheBlue22
- @ me
- TikTok has video controls you can move to any part of the video. It also has 2x play speed.
  
  The meme lied?!?!
  How can someone do this? Lie on the Internet!!!
  All jokes aside, I am wrong in this specific regard then, but in my opinion the way the tiktok is designed as a whole is extremely harmful.
  
  And you can hold down on the left-hand side of the screen to go to 2x temporarily, like YouTube does (but doesn't do for shorts). I find that very convenient.
- I always wondered why people say "Don't at me". Finally figured out its because it meant to be "@" as in a ping.

VLC Media player is still the best way to watch a video.
- Is there a way to make it pause/run by clicking on the video instead of having to mouseover the play icon? It is annoying to have to click on the little play icon every time.
  
  Space bar?
  
  space bar or right click and select play
  
  I think that might be a browser issue I use Firefox and I can click anywhere to pause/play by default
  
  Pretty sure there is a setting for it.
  
  learn the keyboard commands
- mpv for me
- MPC-BE gang 💪
- VLC does it all. You can even use it to save streaming videos from the web to a file for storage or use on your personal media server. I also use it to view my security camera feeds sometimes.

If the site that hosts the video you want me to watch doesn't have an audio slider, I won't fucking watch it.

I firmly believe videos without controls are just gifs with sound.

TikTok has controls now actually.
There's a scrollbar, playback speed, PIP mode, zoom, captions, and you can remove the Like, Comment, Share buttons as well (they call it Clear Display mode). Videos with different aspect ratios can also be put in landscape mode for better viewing.
- Hopefully that means all the trend chasers trying to copy tiktok will copy that too.
- Now? They've had controls for nearly 2 years at least.

if they had their way they'd glue you to your seat, staple your eyes open, pin your arms down and play endless ads at you, purchasing on your behalf (with your credit card, of course) every time you watched one. Your ability to choose interferes with their business, which is sodomizing you and your family's wallets.

Can we standardized the PornHub video player already?
- PornHub is going to rebrand and take over the video streaming market, watch.
  
  If I recall correctly there are already people uploading tutorials on porn hub. Granted there tutorials like how to sterilize a flesh light or how to draw a wolf dick. Stuff like that.
- It's designed to be controlled with only one hand.
- Really, people are most familiar with this rhan any other.

GET OUT HERE AND WATCH YOUR FAKE PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS

This, and autoplay muted videos in a feed like Twitter or Facebook drive me crazy.
You click unmute but you’ve missed 15-30 seconds of audio, so then you have to restart the video and click again.
Just add a “unmute and restart” button!
- better yet, just don't autoplay fucking videos! if I want to watch it, I'll click on it!
  
  People that I know irl don't understand why I don't want to use TikTok. It doesn't bother me that it's "rotting people's brains" or that China is spying on us or whatever.
  It's autoplay.
  I can't fucking stand autoplay. The first thing I do when I log into YouTube on a new device is disable autoplay. It legitimately infuriates me and I'm not entirely sure why. All I hear when someone is watching TikTok is nonstop incessant sound and videos autoplaying one after another. The sound often isn't even relevant to the video and is just there to make annoying loud noise. The looping is also enraging. It's like sensory overload (no, I don't have autism).
  If TikTok were more like YouTube in that I could click on the next video whenever I was ready, I might be into it and actually enjoy it. But it's like someone made a platform dedicated to one of my biggest pet peeves and dialed it up to 11. I don't understand how people find that enjoyable.
  
  I have a feeling that might be a sort of add scam. Like oh look at how much watch time all the videos on this site gets. Imagine the interactions that your ad will get if you pay me to roll your ad on my platform.
- Or add another attribute explictly muting the video by default, and disallow autoplay without it.

You get to an age where new shit doesn't seem like a good way to spend time. TF anyone wants to watch a stupid tiktok hand dance video for is beyond me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some DVDs to alphabetize. I'm going to be watching some sick special features for Blade Runner while idiots wave their hands around to chipmunkified "oh no" song for internet points. I don't know who's winning.

YT Shorts, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Reels... These are things I just don't bother watching.
The only reason social media companies took the controls away is because they know the videos being uploaded are shit but they want you to watch the whole thing for engagement. So they take away the controls to force that engagement. Go fuck yourself.
Also people who upload using these services - especially Shorts and Reels when other options exist on the same damn platform - are literally worse than Hitler.
- Comparing video uploaders to genocidal dictators is a bit much. Especially when you can just use yt-dlp and watch the video in a media player instead
- literally worse than Hitler.
  Any minute now, somebody's gonna argue that it's incorrect to use literally this way. Happens every time I see the word used here on Lemmy lol
  
  There's a name for that - it's called Cunningham's Law.
  
  Well. You kind of did. Are you like Switzerland here?
  
  And they're wrong every time. You can use "literally" as a rhetorical exaggeration, bam, debate over. They're the same as the "could care less" crowd. "I already care very little, but I could care even less", solves it.
- Shorts You can replace 'short' in the link to 'v' and its a regular video page and doesnt repeat and plays in the normal player
  There's also the Firefox browser pluggin shorts blocker
- Idk about shorts but for TikTok, creators have the ability to turn this feature on or off, this isn’t the norm.

Why are there so many people in the comments staning YouTube?
- I, for once, defend Youtube because at least it allows me to change the volume via an extension (YT Magic or whatever the name is).
  On the other end, all of the Vine (yes, I am that old) style videos don't have native volume control, which drives me insane. Talking about PC, phone has it's own built in VC. Kinda explains where the market is going, eh?
  
  Wait I'm sorry, you're defending Youtube... because a third-party extension re-adds the controls they don't provide?
- Do you think YouTube's UI is bad?
  
  For these stupid fucking shorts, definitely. Yes.

Installed an extension to be able to see forward and back and change the volume. Volume is another one in a bad direction
- Or the fact that I can't change video quality. Esp bad when previously I watched on minimum video quality because it was a music video. Then when I click on a short I suddenly can't up the god damn quality

YouTube shorts do have controls, you can scrub through the video with the progress bar along the bottom edge of the screen? Unless they're getting rid of it.
It doesn't super matter to me, I try really hard to avoid short form content. My attention span is bad enough as-is
- It used to not work like that when shorts first came out, there wasn't even a bottom bar iirc this must be an old meme
  
  Gotcha, that makes sense
- you can scrub through the video with the progress bar along the bottom edge of the screen?
  Stop leaving question marks at the end of statements.
  
  I will do what I please, thank you very much.
  The point of language is to convey ideas, and sometimes the most succinct way to communicate what you think and that you're open to people disagreeing or alternative perspectives is to end a statement with a question mark.
  Telling other people how to communicate because what they said disagrees with rules you arbitrarily made up is dumb. The text you quoted conveyed exactly what I meant.
  
  I would never do that?
- The bar is there, but I've never actually gotten it to work, it ignores any presses/clicks that I make

This is what I hate about shorts... I can't skip to the relevant part if I kiss something before it loops
- you made a typo mate, i think you meant to write "poops" not "loops"
  
  Where there's smoke they pinch back.
- 😘

Can’t speak for TikTok as i’ve never really used it, but Shorts and Reels do have a seek bar at the bottom of the screen. It’s barely noticeable at first but it’s there. And on Shorts you can tap once on the screen to pause the video if you’re on mobile.
Now, I love to hate on the smartphone-ification of web video as much as the next person, but this meme just feels like bait.
- Doesn't work on desktop
- It's not every YouTube short
- There's no need to skip forward with Facebook's shorts, because the answer is no, there will be no pay off.
- Some TikToks have seek bars but it seems only longer ones do. Short ones don't.
- tiktok you can 2x long pressing on one of the icons right bottom can't remember which
- To be fair for Tiktok it doesn't matter much since it's selling point is shorts anyway. It's basically Snapchat but less personal but with extra memes
- Not on every reels
- you feel like bait

At least YouTube shorts has controls now. But videos more than a minute long are nice too.
- Instagram does have time seeker, it is just like 0.01mm thick at the bottom and if you have fat fingers, good luck
  
  also it has no proper pause button, if you want to pause, you must hold your finger (like a dead man's switch lol)

i swear shorts have always had video controls, at least for picking a spot to skip to like regular videos

longpress the bottom of the screen, it brings up the seekbar.
Also ... there's a moded APK out there that removes ads, blocks some metadata capture and enables the seek bar on every video (and allows downloads)

ok but who's that girl?
- It's Jess!
- Sorry, I tried
  
  i appreciate the effort

Revanced for YouTube fixes that on android and there's a couple of Firefox extensions that add controls and autoplay to shorts.
- And Instander, an Instagram clone, gives you video controls for Instagram

100% agreed most videos are enjoyed best played in reverse! 👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️
- I've never tried it so I won't argue against it.

I thought for shorts they added a controller. I use it.
Now can you get rid of all that text and buttons all over the place? It takes up half the screen and I can't see the subs.

TikTok has video controls. Tap to pause/play. And there's a progress bar you can drag to seek. Instagram and YouTube shorts are much more difficult to control
Edit: you can even hold either edge of the screen to speed up the video in TikTok. And a 2 finger hold hides the caption and interface
- why is tiktok the only good short video platform
  I can't be the only one feeling FOMO because I don't use it? YouTube has no content so they just cycle through old shit, old jokes Spotlight is better but doesn't have a good algorithm, And I don't use anything else because of fear of privacy.
  It feels like I'm missing out on such a huge part of culture where I live today, my jokes are outdated and I feel unfunny because of it, while at the same time the other side of me is telling me that what I'm doing is good right now!
  
  Some stuff I can do without and are better off dead. But yeah, part of culture is now locked away inside some of these platforms now.
  The main reason I'm keeping away from Tiktok is addiction. I want to cling to the rest of sanity I have, and becoming a phone crackhead might not help. Tiktok can be used more privately if you sacrifice a bit of conveniency.

Well, I got annoyed about that, and found a browser addon that changes the url from shorts to videos.
- Name of the add-on please 🙏
  
  "Shorts to normal player" is the one on chromium (I used to use it in sandbox exclusively for YouTube). On Mozilla, the "YouTube Shorts Normal Player" seems to do the same trick it seems.

You can guess why I don't use Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube shorts and even that Reddit video player thingy.
For Youtube you can "get back the controls" by replacing youtube.com/shorts with youtu.be (at least for nooooooow).

do arrow keys work? :o

They have controls both YouTube and TikTok. The creators might be able to disable them on TikTok I think.

200 comments