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Comment by JofArnold | Hacker News Reader

Some really weird product decisions this year. E.g. they are also hellbent on showing me "shorts" in my search results. I can't think of a single occasion lately when I didn't want to see the full description and comments and they make it hard to get directly to the video. Worse still they are applying this "shorts" concept retrospectively to any video that happens to be short in length, meaning I get videos that were never intended for that format by the creator.

Fortunately this bookmarklet (which i've named "eat my shorts" in my bookmarks) does the job:

  javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href %3D window.location.href.replace(%2Fshorts%5C%2F(.*)%2F%2C "watch%3Fv%3D%241")%7D)()

raw:

  window.location.href = window.location.href.replace(/shorts\/(.*)/, "watch?v=$1")

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> eat my shorts

While I opened this thread I felt an restless rage rising at yet another fuck the user decision from Google, but this joke made me laugh and defused the situation. Thanks. The Macbook won't be thrown across the room in a fit of nerdrage today.

Recently they have iOS YouTube (or some A/B test of it) automatically opening shorts on full screen when you launch the app. Totally obnoxious.

That tells me they’re absolutely freaked out over TikTok. Ridiculous. Like an F150 trying to masquerade as a Miata.

If I use YouTube on mobile, I access by opening a new tab in Brave.

I deleted the app well over a year ago.

I am never force fed anything by Shorts.

I'll load the URL directly either in mpv (desktop or Mobile via Termux), or VLC.

Fuck YouTube entirely.

The pain of using the Web interface is precisely the point, as someone's KPIs are steering users to apps. That's succeeding, though it's not YT's apps which are substituting....

I still miss the mps-yt app, though I'd found an alternative recently, yewtube (still need to try it out).

<https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube/issues/1191>

<https://iamtalhaasghar.github.io/yewtube/#installation>

NewPipe is a godsend on Android.

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.

Given that I'm generally driving an e-ink device, mpv/Termux is actually preferable for playing audio-only.

Actually, that's my preference in most cases for "video", especially anything that's talking heads / expository.

There's also effectively no data surveillance capture possible, other than IP.

And NewPipe + Sponsorblock does wonders at getting rid of unwanted in-video segments (intro, sponsors, etc, outro).

I've had this happen to me in the Android version, but I judged it to be a bug due to its inconsistent behavior.

I strongly recommend using iOS Safari, 1Blocker and Vinegar. Between them you get pure HTML video with picture-within-picture support etc and no ads. Feels like you YouTube used to be.

This is what I do, I just wish that YouTube didn't only support 720P as maximum resolution on iOS safari; happens on everything from an iPod touch & iPad Pro to iPhone pro max, at least for me.

Vinegar has the option to force 1080p, via adaptive bitrate streaming, with the possible downside that the stream may start at lower quality, although I haven’t experienced that downside for some reason. Although perhaps that caveat only applies when using airplay. Either way, check the Vinegar settings from within Safari to find/set 1080p.

Or you can sideload uYou+[1] using Sideloadly[2] or AltStore[3]. It has built-in adblocker, UI unclutter options and Sponsorblock[4].

[1]: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus

[2]: https://sideloadly.io/

[3]: https://altstore.io/

[4]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

What is Vinegar?

Does it still do that silly thing where it opens fullscreen videos in portrait? That along with the lack of swipe up/down to toggle fullscren made Safari YouTube a no-go for me.

Could be worse - recently Android YouTube (or some A/B test of it) opens links with the tiny thumbnail at the bottom - like it reduces to when you go back to search results or something usually, but it's not maximisable, not dismissible, it just sits there tinily playing its ad.

I have to back out of the app and open link in new tab (so it plays in the browser instead) if I want to see it, but usually I just bounce, and am slowly learning not to bother clicking in the first place.

ReVanced has an option to turn this off on Android. As well as a lot of other annoyances

https://github.com/revanced

That page tells me nothing about what ReVanced does, except that it's a continuation of Vanced (and has a lot of icons for various services). I'm guessing it's a kind of meta-social thing that gloms each of those services? And from your comment, I guess is provides more settings?

These AB tests where they force you to engage in some new medium of content that they want you to become accustomed to is reminiscent of that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they force Alex to watch film of violent images.

https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/treatme...

Although this was actually intended to be a punishment.

>> Although this was actually intended to be a punishment.

Involuntary YouTube shorts seems like authentic punishment to me.

cruel and unusual if you ask me. we have rights damn it!!!!!

The worst thing about Shorts is they’re all in the wrong orientation.

Second worst thing. Worst thing was that up until very recently a portrait 1080p monitor did not render Shorts correctly and cut off the like/dislike/comment buttons. I literally had the correct hardware to watch Shorts on a desktop but nobody bothered to test for it!

Yeah, they are cropping landscape videos 90% of the time. Maddening.

This maddens me too. Or anytime someone has messed with the aspect ratio in general.

Mostly because these are people who willfully wanted to create On Youtube, not tiktok. They probably don't want to make portrait content at all. But if they ignore this new feature google is desperate to make happen, they'll be punished.

I hate that I can't scrub the video.

That orientation is a big reason why they are great... they are meant to be consumed on a phone.

The only problem is you cant rewind them with the default interface and have to loop it if you missed something.

> The only problem is you cant rewind them with the default interface and have to loop it if you missed something.

As a user every time I encounter that it feels like YouTube is giving me the finger.

They copied this from Other platforms like Instagram :/

Holding you at gun point to finish the video. At least let us rewind if they don’t want you to skip forward.

Just like a monopoly, they long ago stopped tweaking the product to improve your experience, and instead for years now all the product changes have been to improve theirs. As another example, I’ve noticed they’ve started hiding when videos were published too

This is the key point and should be comment #1.

When a company has “won”, it no longer makes product decisions to please users, it makes product decisions to suit itself.

Even on my phone I prefer landscape. The few shorts I’ve seen would have been better if they were landscape. The ones I saw could have been trimmed down to 1:1 or 4:3 and would have been essentially the same.

I’m the opposite, reading is easier in non-landscape and when watching videos on YouTube or Reddit it’s annoying to have to turn your phone sideways and hope you don’t have ‘lock’ on… then if you do you hope it works properly and doesn’t take forever.

Mostly a pain but obviously some video content doesn’t make sense without landscape mode.

I find the content in shorts is also usually really annoying.

And only people on HN know this. Millions and millions of other people don't care. They enjoy shorts and spent quite some time on it.

Shorts is extremely frustrating and has nothing I would have ever asked for or desired.

Further it decreases the likelihood that I would consider paying for YouTube services.

I was almost ready to try a paid version when Shorts starting showing up with a totally unfamiliar and unwelcome UX. Completely unattractive and therefore NOISE.

They also have the stupid "Posts" section where content creators are supposed to post little blurbs and tweet like things. Totally superfluous but right there on your home page. Oh that's okay, there's an X to get rid of it.

"Hid for 30 days" Fucking excuse me? No, I told you I don't want this and you IGNORE ME? The insane level of arrogance and hubris to just IGNORE a direct user action like that....

I use this userscript to auto-redirect: https://openuserjs.org/scripts/cliff_barr/Redirect_YouTube_S...

Thank you very much for this, I too despise the shorts interface with a passion, I have been manually frobanzing the url back to the desktop page for a while now, while i have been meaning to investigate what it would take to do a bookmark or user script(easier than I thought) I never got around to it.

salutes

> they are also hellbent on showing me "shorts" in my search results.

Every content site is hoping the US bans tiktok and they can be positioned to pick up all the traffic

I use this to remove shorts from my subscriptions view. You have to click it every time it loads more, but it clears up the clutter. I call it "no shorts"

  javascript:(function(){ var els = document.querySelectorAll('[href^="/shorts/"]');  for (var i = 0; i < els.length; i++) { if (els[i]) els[i].closest('ytd-grid-video-renderer').remove(); }  })();

> Some really weird product decisions this year. E.g. they are also hellbent on showing me "shorts" in my search results.

The fastest growing social network on the planet is based on video shorts and they're trying to get those eyes.

I hate what the web has become.

They don’t even need this. If they brought back whatever algorithm magic they were doing in 2015 they’d pick up a massive boost in engagement. They won’t though since they’re too busy making the world safe for democracy.

On my work computer, I am not signed into a Google account in the profile I use Youbtube in. Youtube has apparently decided that I would be most likely to engage with Shorts that feature scantily clad women and clear sexual innuendos.

My only guess is it has grouped me in with the crowd that watches metal machining videos.

I use Firefox Focus, which clears all state frequently. I use DDG to search YouTube, so I had never even heard of shorts.

Went to YouTube.com after reading your comment, and it was similar (though they're all clad in indoor winter season clothes).

Can you clarify what metalworking has to do with your point?

The machining industry is largely/almost exclusively male. Several of the large social media influencers in the industry still have pinups in their shops.

> they are also hellbent on showing me "shorts" in my search results.

Out of curiousity... Do you also get shorts when you open the app (new session)?

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