Hacker News Reader

Comment by srvaroa | Hacker News Reader

I haven't needed to be so drastic, but removed the YT app from my phone. There is a fair amount of good content that I find very worth consuming from YT (mainly educational videos) and would not like to miss. But, the mobile app makes a very strong effort to push you to shorts, which is the real danger. Shorts are proficiently engineered to just suck my brain into a doom scrolling comma. I tried removing shorts from the app, but it keeps pushing them in your face, so I ended up deleting it and watching via browser, logged out. I've heard several acquaintances having the same experience / solution.

It's a pity the YT PMs insist on designing the app like a Vegas casino, I'd really like to use the YT app for healthy usage, but well.

View on HN

I would highly recommend Youtube Revanced, even if you already have Premium or don't care to block ads. The Vanced Manager app can selectively apply patches to the official APK, removing shorts being one of them.

I had a similar experience to yours. It's very hard to not get sucked into them. I would keep scrolling even when I am actively disliking the actual content being shoved into my face.

It was a very sober realization for me that our brains can hijacked like this using the TikTok formula.

On iOS, I've been using Vinegar with Safari.

I find my consumption to be way down because the YouTube site is... good, but not great, on Safari, but I can still readily consume what I like.

It also supports picture-in-picture and I've never seen an ad on YouTube in the past 3 years except when I load them on my TV. I didn't even know there was an adblock competition going on except for in the news because I've just never seen any.

NewPipe lets you watch shorts but completely lacks the shorts-type UI, so it's not addictive. Also has no ads and lets you play things in the background or with the phone screen off.

having recommendations and auto-play disabled is great too. I only see youtube videos that I choose to see and never see anything else unless I'm searching for something

Plus you can still 'subscribe' to channels you like without even logging in!

Turning off thumbnails has also helped me

Here's a UBO filter that hides YT shorts https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts

This is something that I see mentioned by a lot of people but I really cannot relate. If a video is shorter than 10 minutes I usually don't bother clicking. There is something that I find unappealing about short videos. That said I am 100% victim of reddit doom scrolling. But just seeing a short video makes me close the app or scroll faster.

It basically "oh well I'm going to take a 2m break, let's click that short video " and getting sucked into the vortex.

A similar effect happens to me on Twitter. I sometimes click on a video / dumb meme account, etc. just to take a break or whatever (Twitter does a much worse job at creating the attention vortex, so it's easy for me to literally make it a 2m break). BUT, some hours later the algo digests my click and turns my feed into absolute garbage repeating an endless firehose of dumb meme content. (In Twitter's case this is actually helping me: I really avoid clicking on dumb content so the algo doesn't go nuts.)

I used to feel the same way, I got 'hooked' when I finally clicked on a short made by some tremendous nerd demonstrating a sword fighting technique and in some ways it was the perfect video - short, self contained, and interesting. After that I started watching more and my assessment is: probably not worth it. Its a good format for gags or quick demos but I find that too many that get recommended to me are base emotional appeals (pretty lady thumbnail, cute animal, rage bait, context free 'discord memes', etc) compared to the long form stuff.

Just in case it wasn't clear; not trying to change your mind, more a heads up that they might find bait you find to be shiny.

Oh but shoutout to one of the series with short-form content (2-5 minutes typically, not a 'short') that truly respects your time; no intros, no talking, just purely answering the question; 'what happens when I put this red hot nickel ball on this?' [1] red hot nickel ball.

[1] https://youtu.be/wxyKA5dea5U?si=gNOow9LBT1BCcPpX

Android users can use ReVanced to patch out many aspects of the official app, including shorts.

A patchlist is here: https://revanced.app/patches

If you disable watch history YouTube will not let you use Shorts, will disable the algorithmic home page suggestions, and you’re (maybe) robbing Google of another source of ads targeting information.

I never go on Facebook, but I do have an account because my Quest 2 forced me to login with one. Anyway, a coworker sent me one of those short-form Facebook Reel videos about some new tech. I watched it, and then the next video played, and I watched it, and then I swiped, and watched, and swiped, and watched... I started at 11am, and when I next looked at the clock it was almost 3pm. I was like, what the hell?? lmao, I do regularly use Youtube, so I try to consciously avoid YouTube shorts now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com