this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024

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Privacy

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Youtube is now unusable without a frontend (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:

hide Shorts

hide For You

hide Trending

hide 'People Also Searched For'

hide Search Categories

hide Promoted Videos

hide Promoted Websites

hide Suggested Products

Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It's literally a short, yet it's inserted like a video so you're forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you've watched and start inserting shit based off that.

Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities... "just let me stick it in"

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Pretty sure my Adblocker already does all of this I still use Youtube about 10% of the time to find new channels Piped provides some suggestions while you watch some Video but it can't replaces YT's homefeed

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I use YouTube with https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/search-fixer-for-youtube/bojdknokkpgboeonegndfcgkaommhleo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

You're using Chrome in 2024 while also browsing Lemmy? Dear God, man. I wish I had your determination and\or powers of ignorance.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

My three biggest problems with YouTube are:

It sucks on desktops/laptops with bigger UI scaling enabled, some stuff just doesn't fit.
The search function on YouTube is useless and completely broken. Instead of searching normally it:
1. Repeats same results multiple times;
2. Display unrelated Shorts nobody asked for;
3. Instead of displaying relevant results it shows stuff you have already watched or picked by YouTube algorithm.
You can't skip sponsored segments with YouTube Premium. You need SponsorBlock browser extension for that.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago

1 minute videos aren't put into the shorts interface, so it's not YouTube noticing that you disabled shorts but rather some YouTuber trying to follow the algorithm using a channel they made for shorts and mistakenly (I assume) uploading a video longer than minute on it. All such videos appear as normal videos instead of as shorts.

Google is terrible though, so I understand why you would think that.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Firefox, uBlock Origin, on a Linux Desktop. I have none of these problems and have filters to hide shorts, endcards, autoplay, ambient mode. And I block all cookies from Youtube/Google. Works perfectly.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

The damn site tries to crash my browser before showing me what I want

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Cool music taste.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Ya'll need FreeTube.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Yal'l n'eed t'o lear'n a'bou't apo'str'phe pl'ac'em'en't'.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

May I ask the name(s) of these extension(s)? Currently having this issue and that’s why I mainly use MPV to load my music playlist on.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Untrap for Youtube

The same dev also makes an extension that lets you block individual elements for facebook, instagram, leddit, etc. Useful to break a habit

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’m really surprised at how bad of an experience people are having! I have a bunch of channels I follow and people I interact with. Some big channels but most small. I love channels with only a few hundred to a few thousand viewers. The creators post their videos and then I talk to them through the comments. We have some really interesting conversations.

Lots of other channels I follow I don’t interact with but still really enjoy. A lot of hobby channels are amazing! I generally avoid the news and politics stuff, though I still occasionally watch Ukraine videos or Trump trial stuff. I get sick of those after one video though!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, tbh, the insane focus on privacy makes YouTube a lot worse, no shit. The algorithm just throws shit at the wall hoping it sticks, what do you expect?

Make a burner account only for YouTube. See how the quality goes up because you can follow people you are actually interested in.

I personally really don't see the privacy risk with that? (then again, I gave up on the idea of true privacy online years ago. Privacy through obscurity is enough. I don't care big companies recognize my habits, as long as they don't know 100% exactly who I am.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

You can subscribe without an account using third party clients like NewPipe or FreeTube

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I disabled History and only see my channel subscriptions. None of the options above appear in my Youtube feed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah i did this until they make the entire homepage blank if you keep history off. Very annoying.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

but why would your homepage not be your sub box

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they don't subscribe

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Their incompetence opens room for other platforms

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

PeerTube isn't too bad if you're willing to host your own videos as a big creator, and smaller creators can pool resources for smaller instances.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Video hosting is a money sink, I wouldn't hold my breath that somebody else comes along.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Oh, we've been through this though. Which other platform will ever have the cash to be a real contender here?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

DouYin, you know, the Chinese YouTube

That's sarcasm though, as I expect them to be as malicious as YouTube

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Things like freetube seems to be basically a simple yt front-end.

I don't know what happens if a significant amount of yt users used freetube. but that probably won't happen.

I find it a lot more pleasant to use than yt.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I don’t know what happens if a significant amount of yt users used freetube. but that probably won’t happen.

Look at what happened with Nitter (alternative Twitter frontend). They'll start changing around things so often that alternative frontends break every few days.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Well FreeTube never claimed to be a platform, it's a fantastic front-end for browsing YouTube videos without having to deal with Google's crap, but you're still using YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

I use freetube as well, but I have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before google brings the axe down on it too, especially if it increases in popularity.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Twitch could. Still wild they don’t allow editing vods or uploading videos.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Dan Clancy has already said that Twitch isn't profitable as it is. Right now, they basically only still exist because of existing contracts, otherwise Amazon would've likely pulled the plug a while ago. They can't handle their current user base; they wouldn't be able to handle YouTube refugees en masse.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They currently allow unlimited vods that are hours long that provides zero revenue. They could disable that and instead allow 30 minutes of edited vods or video uploads and have ads on them to make money

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah that's true, and I'm honestly surprised that they've had features like that available for free for as long as they have.

I kind of wonder why they haven't attempted such a pivot already, though, as it seems like they could easily take over the gaming video space that YouTube currently dominates. Much of that audience uses Twitch already and would easily transition over to a more curated platform, so it feels like it should've been a pretty obvious move by now.

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[–] [email protected] 254 points 8 months ago (10 children)

I’ve noticed that the search results are getting less and less relevant to what I’m actually looking for. I guess one day the search bar will disappear like the headphone jack of the iPhone.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago

They're so brave.

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Youtube search results have been garbage for a while now :(

[–] [email protected] 73 points 8 months ago (1 children)

~~Youtube~~ Google search results have been garbage for a while now :(

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Try piped. Your feed is only what you subscribe to and theres a toggle to hide shorts

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Or NewPipe

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

Or Tubular

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I've tried looking into that but I couldn't get it working. It didn't add any subscriptions to my feed. Going to the site now I don't even seem to be able to click on anything. I just tried disabling my ad blocker and now I can click on stuff, but none of it won't load any videos. Any idea what's up with it? I'd love to be able to switch off YT if I can.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Which instance are you on. I use piped.adminforge.de with uBlock and it works fine. Also the feed shows stuff from my subscriptions (I think I adjusted something in the settings for that).

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