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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

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Being logged out and having cookies disabled definitely helps, but in my experience it's almost not enough.

I need to access Youtube from a completely different IP address, with a different user agent and browser window size to get rid of certain themes and suggestions that magically appear on the front page. Browser fingerprinting is responsible for this adversarial dynamic I find myself in.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoy YouTube Premium. It’s nice to have the option to pay for an ad free experience, which is particularly useful on iOS mobile as uBlock origin doesn’t work. Having the ability to easily download videos for offline viewing and turn off auto play (which I think is also available without premium) is nice, too.

I am sure they are still hoovering up all my data but I hope they at least heed the signal that some people will pay for ad-free alternatives!

Lately I have found myself more willing to pay for certain apps and subscriptions in exchange for ad free experiences. I feel like it’s a more honest transaction. That said, I can’t afford to pay for everything I use online in a given day, so it’s not necessarily a macro solution. Also, I’d like to be able to expect that paying for a subscription would also mean a service stops tracking me to oblivion, but like you said that’s still happening.

Your opinion may be unpopular, but I appreciate the perspective you bring to the table.

I do think there is merit to the idea of market segmentation and value offerings in different ways:

1 - Eyeballs : Give us attention in exchange for browsing

2 - Premium : Pay us, and we will omit all ads

3 - VendorCosted: Vendor pays, and we omit all ads from certain content

I had done this in a new browser because my work once used it to stream a meeting, and I was shocked how tabloid-trashy the default front-page suggestions were. I can't believe that's what a plurality of people would want without the algorithms.

I can believe the tabloid trash is what people want: I've seen supermarket checkout aisles and daytime TV, the depths of the lowest common denominator have been plumbed before and it seems reasonable that youtube would arrive at much the same place. I can understand occasionally wanting to check the popular content for neat trends that you missed out on, but the idea of seeking out the pop / tabloid experience as your main interaction mechanism is foreign and slightly revolting to me. It's not an escape from the algorithm, it's just another side of the algorithm, and not the best one.

IMO the curated youtube experience is far better. Yes, it recommends similar content and will push you down a rabbithole if you let it, but that's what recommender systems do. The flipside of discovering good content from good choices is discovering bad content from bad choices, and I don't think those can be automatically separated. On occasion you have to actively and firmly tell the algorithm "no" in the form of "don't recommend this channel," but once you do it respects your decision. A tiny bit of curation goes a long way, and if if I didn't let youtube work with me to figure out what I liked I imagine I would wind up doing the same thing but worse by keeping a list of interesting channels that I periodically checked.

In my experience, Youtube only works as a curated experience, which means being logged into an account, having subscriptions, an active search history, etc.

If you want to see it with this lens, then look at "trending." I don't tend to have an issue with the algorithm - I like that I get amateur science, humor, and puzzles.

I don't use it to watch political content, so I don't get much of it.

I have firefox default to private sessions, use an adblocker, and never log in to YouTube and it's a much better experience. The algorithm has nothing to work with, so you see the stock entries on the first page. Then when you search for something you get only things related to that search as suggestions, which is actually useful. It's bliss for about an hour, then the algorithm knows enough about you to start trying to make your life miserable again and it's time to close the tab and start over. Discovery is more difficult, since you have to come up with what rabbit hole you want to go down, though.

Before youtube you still had video sharing services online. Youtube was one of like a dozen popular video sites before it started consuming the market like a black hole, or Standard Oil.

I just use it to watch my subscriptions and things I specifically search for. With an adblocker so I can tolerate it, and sponsorblock for good measure. On Android I use NewPipe + sponsorblock.

I'm not addicted to YouTube. I don't spend that much time on it. It's not my go-to source when I go online. Maybe I'm in the minority, but when you treat it only as a video hosting service where you can follow specific feeds, I don't think it's really problematic.

>YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend.

What about Hacker News?

one middle ground I have taken for Youtube is to periodically delete my watch history. I am naturally curious so then when I watch a new niche I welcome Youtube's flood of new content.

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