Comment by n4bz0r | Hacker News Reader

Comment by n4bz0r | Hacker News Reader

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On the main page, shorts, as all the other videos, are served by the recommendation algorithm which should filter out general audience crap you'd see if you're not logged in or have view history disabled. You'd normally see the same stuff you're subscribed to there, plus a few random videos of cats. Maybe a wamen butt occasionally. Might as well hide the main page entirely if you're not that easily entertained. To be quite frank, the main page is such an echo chamber lately that I almost got myself unhooked from procrastinating on YouTube.

On the search page, shorts are mostly a mixed bag, but you do occasionally get useful results.

So what does this solve? Seems like a form of protest nobody important (those in power) cares about.

Another thing is, I have, to my own surprise, discovered a few decent channels that I like, that post their videos in form of shorts exclusively. That's a somewhat new trend and mostly relevant to humor-related or music channels, though.

Almost forgot to mention. YouTube recently added the scroll bar to the shorts so they aren't all that different from the other videos now.

> Seems like a form of protest

Filtering content is not "a form of protest", it is about deciding what content you want to see in your browser and what not. Youtube, even the paid version, does not offer much in terms of customising one's experience (imo the "algorithm" deciding what you should watch based on your history does not count as one) and shorts is a proven addictive pattern that one may not want to encounter online.

It is fine if you like watching shorts, such filter lists are for those who do not want to watch shorts.

I might be wrong, but I don't think people really care about the addictiveness in the first place. As I see it, the shorts were irritating to see, mainly because they were heavily out of tune with the rest of recommendations. But they seem to have tuned them to be more in line with the rest of the videos. Being not that different from the rest of the videos one gets recommended, there is not much point in hiding them? I'm not exactly protecting shorts here. My point is, you can, of course, cut some of the videos from the feed, but the rest would still be affected by the same algorithm. You still don't get to filter anything, really. So what's the point?

If addictiveness really is that much of a factor, I rest my case.

No, because it’s that much easier to justify watching “just one more” and totally lose the desire to go to sleep or do some other healthy behavior.

If you’re only “irritated” by them for now, that’s just because the algorithm hasn’t gotten you yet. One day, you will be weak and fall prey.

> One day, you will be weak and fall prey.

I really dislike statements like this. It's not cocaine.

For me, it is about addictiveness. Otherwise, if they were just "bad recommendations", I would probably just ignore them.

The main benefit for me is hiding content I'm actively uninterested in seeing. Shorts are portrait mode content that pretty much never seem to be long enough to discuss anything interesting. I watch on widescreen monitors, so I just don't care for them. There's nothing else to it really.

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