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Comment by twicetwice | Hacker News Reader

Yup, for me I cancelled my YouTube Premium subscription—which I had been happy to pay—because of YouTube shorts. They were constantly pushing them in the mobile app, and sometimes I would succumb and click on one, and then often lose several hours to scrolling. Skill issue, I know, but when I went looking for a way to disable them in the UI I found there isn't one. I ended up feeling like it was a adversarial relationship—they're using dark patterns to hijack my attention to increase their engagement metrics, to my loss—so why would I pay them? I installed NewPipe and subscribed to the creators I watch regularly on Patreon and I'm very happy with this setup.

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Couldn't agree more.

I don't use social media because I think it's a net negative in my life. However YouTube I've always justified by following lots of educational content. I've learned a lot of cool things and gained new hobbies just by watching YouTube. One day, leather-working videos popped up on my feed. Soon I was making my own stuff with leather - it was a heap of fun!

I've noticed over the past few years though, that no matter how much I try to tweak the algorithm, I'm just getting mindless junk. And shorts are the worst of it! They're deliberately designed to hook you in, so they're very hard to ignore.

And so YouTube, I have to admit, has become a net negative. Another place for mindless dopamine hits, zombifying us all. I'm so sad about it!

I curate the list of channels that I'm willing to watch. Mostly science, math, engineering, etc. Like that I'm free from the algorithm. YouTube is still the best most educational and interesting media out there.

But yes. YouTube shorts are a massive net negative. I wish I could remove them completely.

As a counterpoint, my YouTube feed is great these days. When I open it up, I get more of what I want to watch. The hardest part is choosing which video to watch in my limited time.

I think the key is that I subscribe to channels I want to watch and I use the like button on videos I want to see more of.

> I've noticed over the past few years though, that no matter how much I try to tweak the algorithm, I'm just getting mindless junk. And shorts are the worst of it! They're deliberately designed to hook you in, so they're very hard to ignore.

If you're actually clicking the shorts ("very hard to ignore") then you're going to get more of them, period. I get an occasional shorts line in my feed but I scroll right past it.

If you use Revanced[1] you can patch Youtube Mobile on Android to completely remove Shorts.

[1] https://github.com/revanced

https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches/

Just the thought of installing an app with permissions to patch other applications on my system makes me twitchy. I'd consider it on a dedicated media consumption device with limited shared account information, but on a daily driver I use for authentication, purchasing, etc? No thanks.

Nothing against the developers of it, but it's a tool available for use by others and I'm not going to jump on it any more than I'll install random unsigned browser extensions.

It patches an apk that you supply it - it has no ability to patch installed applications.

It sounds like you've already been brainwashed by the corporatocracy.

Contrary to what they want you to think, there's an entire world beyond them where trust is not dictated by them.

Sure yep brainwashed. Still not running third party firmwares compiled by pseudonymous folks somewhere in the world, and still not running sideloaded modified APKs or sideloaded much of anything.

Hell, I'm not even running the assorted very functional "photo scan to pdf" apps that I purchased Pro versions of over the years because while there are some very skilled developers in Moscow and St Petersburg I have no way of checking on whose behalf they use those skills.

Revanced is just an app with no special permission. It's not a firmware. It's open source. It can only patch an apk which you provide to it with standard android file-picker APIs.

I understand exactly what it's doing, and while it's better than doing it on an active system in still going to stay away.

From a security standpoint, can you tell me what's different about this vs "I ran this chunk of PowerShell that said it would patch Office to bypass activation"? After all, it's just a patch.

The patch is totally open source, and the project is rather high profile. Where exactly is the additional risk here?

From a security standpoint, What's the difference between using revanced's open source patches and downloading literally any open source software from GitHub?

Does this require root?

I nearly cancelled premium over shorts. They are aweful.

Nope. It can also block sponsors.

It doesn't !

Vanced still works great for me, it can be found on various APK download sites.

I'm sure it has a rapidly approaching expiry date, however.

I love revanced, the main thing I miss though is the ability to cast to chromecast through the patched app. So for now I keep both apps installed and switch if I need to cast.

I've pressed the "X" on those damn things like a dozen times, and even said "yes" to the modal asking me if I was sure I wanted to hide them. Yet they still appear. The default selection also uses the most transparently sexualized thumbnails with BOOBS! just begging me to click. Admittedly, I sometimes do - not for the boobs, but for the comments which inevitably make jokes about the boobs in the thumbnail.

I find that shorts pretty regularly suggest content I would like and it seems to largely depend on what I watch even outside of shorts. Ie when I watch a lot of dancing videos I get a lot of Shorts feed containing that, same with Korean or Japanese content.

That's definitely not the case for me, unfortunately. It seems like the selection of Shorts presented to me on the homepage has never evolved past its default content recommendations. Maybe I opted out of something at some point and they can't use my watch history for Shorts suggestions.

>skill issue

Anyone who says that and actually believes it is fooling themselves if they think they’re immune to strategies developed by an entire industry over the course of decades to the tune of billions of dollars.

> Skill issue, I know,

Not a skill issue. Just the way our brains are biologically wired and people exploiting it for ad money.

I feel the same with Twitter. Recently, no matter how hard I try to train its algorithm, it always finds new crappy short videos or click-bait threads to push on my timeline. Feels like a naive "crank the engagement up" lever has been pushed. It's fine as a business strategy in itself, clearly it's been working fine for many companies, but it just doesn't align with a Premium subscription model.

People don't voluntarily pay to be treated as semi-intelligent scrolling cattle, we fall into endless scrolling unconsciously and pay with our eyeball-time, but we don't go "oh I'm gonna shell out $8 for the privilege of browsing an inferior TikTok". He's got to chose one strategy and commit to it.

It’s because the algorithm is designed to meet the relevant teams PSC metrics not your wants.

I believe the "following" timeline doesn't use a recommendation algorithm.

When you're in the Subscriptions tab of the YouTube app, there is only one horizontal line dedicated to shorts. In the Home tab, only two horizontal lines are dedicated to Shorts. After that, as you continue scrolling, they never come up again.

I think it's a bit dramatic to jump to words like "dark pattern" just because YouTube dared to suggest some content in one place in the interface.

If anything, YouTube's Subscriptions tab is one of the most user-respecting pieces of social media out there. It only shows you your subscriptions, and it is chronological.

And you can't use any fancy extensions to hide shorts on a Roku or other tv yt app.

I'm currently still paying for premium but now it's like my cable bill. I sorta have to, but I don't feel like it's a voluntary transaction where I'm paying to get something I want. Now I'm paying to reduce about 50% of what I don't want and there is no option to get what I want at any price.

> I cancelled my YouTube Premium subscription—which I had been happy to pay—because of YouTube shorts.

Fascinating -- I've been seriously considering cancelling mine as well, for the exact same reason.

Those shorts are a thorn in my side.

They're so desperate to push Shorts they made Vanced stop working for normal videos but shorts still play fine to this day. I'm using Revanced now which saves me from that crap.

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