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Comment by yoavm | Hacker News Reader

I just tried this last week and wrote this tiny Userscript that redirect Youtube videos to their .mp4 source file, so nothing is actually loaded except the video itself. No ads, no "watch next!", no related movies, no comments.

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name youtube-redirect
  // @match         https://www.youtube.com/watch*
  // @run-at document-start
  // @version          1.0
  // ==/UserScript==
  window.stop();
  GM.fetch("https://alltubedownload.net/json?url="+document.location).then(x=> window.location=JSON.parse(x).url);

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This has the disadvantage that you're stuck on 720p, not to mention a bunch of functionality missing (eg. subtitles, being able to use the "copy video url at current time" functionality). A better solution would be simply to adblock the elements you don't like.

To clarify this: I ran

    youtube-dl -F apeZO6C0ZeA

and if you ignore the entries that are video or audio only, there's only a 640x360 stream and a 1280x720 stream. This video is actually available in 2160p, so you definitely are getting a lesser quality experience if you just redirect to the MP4.

The reason for this is that Youtube uses DASH[1] to switch to the best usable audio and video automatically. In this case the top video bitrate is about 18 Mbps!

Incidentally, Youtube has really gone into the sewer. I spent about 5 minutes scrolling down the page to find a video I wasn't too embarrassed to use as an example for this comment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...

There's still plenty of good content on Youtube. It's just that, like most other social networks, the content enjoyed by the majority of people is pretty much garbage.

To get good content, rather than popular, you have to search for it. Or have a history of watching good content, so the system can recommend more.

Even so, I still ignore the vast majority of Youtube's suggestions.

But again, there's also plenty of good content.

To be fair, I wasn't logged in. But it's pretty soul destroying whenever I see the home page. It's a bunch of people "reacting" to things (meaning that they have their mouths wide open in the thumbnail), or worse ("I bought everything at X store"). Just excruciating. That's before you get to the fact that like 80% of front page stuff is compilation videos (i.e. content stolen from users on other sites).

In my country, prank videos are dominating

Being logged out isn't enough. You have to eliminate all of Google's tracking cookies to avoid the profile bubble they've created for you.

This is fairly easy to do on firefox if you use the "temporary containers" extension.

Letting people choose their own video sample picture definitely has lead to a huge increase in videos with highly sexualized cover photos. Some topics are more prone to it than others. I've definitely noticed a huge increase in the number of videos with scantily clad women as the cover photo. Sometimes even on videos that have much tamer actual content.

I do agree that there's good content on YouTube, but if I watch any garbage at all, the recommendation engine will only recommend that. I wonder if someone has a script that will reset my YouTube history every day. Might be interesting for the algorithm to have a fresh take on me every day to show me what I'm into that day.

I noticed that I started getting woodworking videos featuring hot women that clearly didn't actually know what they were doing. They were just following someone else's instructions.

Some of the followed those instructions fairly convincingly, but at least 1 was so bad and I instantly saw through the ruse.

To be fair, I've also seen some with pretty women that did know what they were doing.

Then, those videos stopped appearing in my feed. I doubt they aren't being made, but I was surprised the algorithm stopped offering them.

Click the three dots on the thumbnail and select “not interested”. The algorithm will stop showing similar stuff.

If you are going to reset it each day why not just disable Youtube history?

I recently looked for content like "how to run an ethernet cable in the garden" and everything was what I was expecting to see. Real instructions, no clickbait garbage.

I have a script that can fetch YouTube videos links and download them easily, and it doesn't need external service to work, only YouTube are needed: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/369400-local-youtube-downl...

Disclaimer: I am the author of the script

ViewTube is also a userscript that offers the same functionality and more.

http://sebaro.pro/viewtube/

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