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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.

Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.

Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.

And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.

For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.

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Of all of the various online services, YouTube is the one where I feel I get the most value in return for paying for premium. 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free. (Well, except that so much of hobby YouTube is implicitly all ad because the video is about some piece of hobby gear, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.)

I've never watched a YouTube short.

My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.

> 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free.

If it works for you, great! Most video I watch is in the form of TV shows and movies. And Youtube sucks for that. Youtube is great for some hobby stuff. I used to like it for reviews, but even that sucks now - when I do a search I'm inundated with low effort reviews (i.e. by people who haven't used the product they're reviewing).

But if there's a creator you really like and follow, I can understand that.

> I've never watched a YouTube short.

Don't you think they should give you an option not to present them to you, given that you don't watch them?

> My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.

I don't want to pay money and then have to do this. This is a pain I don't have to deal with in any other service.

> Don't you think they should give you an option not to present them to you, given that you don't watch them?

Yes, I certainly do! The fact that YouTube still tries to get me to watch Shorts every few weeks is 100% a user-hostile choice. Seems like basically every app these days does that kind of shit. It makes me sad, but it's pretty clearly in the set of things I can't change, so I try to just be mindful of the serenity prayer and accept it.

I watch Youtube on a Chromecast using the SmartTube app, which is a 3rd party front-end (side-loaded APK) for Youtube that eliminates all the ads, and lets you configure practically everything. Don't like "shorts", just disable them and they are gone. That's the main reason I sought out an alternative to the Youtube app, I hated the shorts and there was no way to get rid of them in the Youtube app.

I used to pay for a Youtube subscription to get rid of the ads, but that doesn't include the in-video ads that content creators put in there - but SmartTube has that covered too, in most videos I watch the in-video ads are skipped too. I have 5 chromecasts on the 5 TVs around my house, and every one of them has SmartTube installed. I wouldn't want to watch Youtube without it.

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube/releases

There are a few ways to disable/hide shorts. One day I said to a friend, “man I wish I could block these things, they’re insulting to my intelligence and just encourage clicking around” and my friend said “I’ve been blocking them for a while, just do this.” And while I can’t remember what “this” was, it’s worth a quick google.

Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.

I know how to disable them on my PC. How do I disable them on Roku?

If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.

Let me put it this way.

Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.

I don't want to pay for that.

>Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.

Depends on what you watch, as always. my YT feed is a mix of news, random gaming content, documentaries on a variety of topics, and odd little tech trivia. It covers all the bases at once.

Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". Then I just pluck it onto my NAS and move about on my day. Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?

Nebula is the only other service I ever considered paying for. It's not a "Youtube killer" and misses out on a lot of the odd trivia sides of YT, but it overally feels more fleshed out on content than Netflix".

> Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch".

If there's even 1 show I want to watch, it's great to watch it. The problem with Youtube is even when they have stuff I want to watch, it's a pain to watch it. Their UI is atrocious!

> Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?

You just unsubscribe at that point.

Know how much stuff I had bookmarked on Youtube that is no longer available? A whole damn lot.

Maybe I'm missing something, but every video service Ui feels the same these days. Grid of videos with some loose sorting, click to play/pause, seek controls. I wouldn't call any of them good/bad on UI alone.

Or just watch Youtube on a laptop, and install an ad blocker.

Depends on the personality. Do you watch movies on a laptop?

For me, the big screen and ambience play a big role.

For the big screen, I have another tiny PC and a wireless keyboard.

HDMI cables are cheap. The best roku is a 30ft HDMI cable.

Actually I've used the steam deck in this role a bunch, works great.

> Their ads are terrible.

I imagine they are that's why I pay for YT Premium, which I think is my most bang for buck subscription based on the amount of time I spend watching it

> Curation doesn't exist.

I don't find this a problem personally because 95% of my feed is just channels I'm subscribed to but YMMV depends on what you expect out of it

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