8 ms·

I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendati

I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations. I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. But apart from ignoring me when I say I’m not interested in whole genres of ‘fun’ videos, it also resets the streaming quality to the lowest setting every single day and then hides the quality setting deep inside a menu with several fiddly clicks. And this isn’t for my benefit of course: I can easily stream 4K video to my screens. It’s to shave a few cents off each stream and max the gouging.

month13 7mo ago
YouTube's hostility is truly remarkable, by far the most egregious that the Subscriptions page in the TV app having a dedicated row for "recommendations" and "shorts" before you can proceed.
testfrequency 7mo ago
YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting. It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback. All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view! Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT is doing this to try and bait me into watching these deeply emotional and personal content, and again, ignoring it and providing feedback seems to do nothing to my feed. I hate it.
- sandworm101 7mo ago
  Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.
  - throwawayqqq11 7mo ago
    I am waiting for the day when they permanently turn off the channels rss feeds. Recently, after years of smooth sailing, they had a couple of outages, first selective, with only about 50% of my feeds effected and yesterday again with 100%, returning 404s. I am concerned given this development and alphabets apparent plan to kill as much interop as possible. For the uninitiated, afaik, some feedreaders can auto discover the rss url when you add the channels url. Otherwise you have to manually search the channel page source for 'RSS' or 'channel_id='.
    - banana_giraffe 7mo ago
      And for those that want to get the feed URL, this little Python snippet can get the feed URL from a channel's page, either from the channel's URL itself or a video or playlist page: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/834882f59bc921a3865272a66d9ac3b7 https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/834882f59bc921a3865272a66d...
- jmathai 7mo ago
  Turn off history. Completely disables the food. The only content you see is what you search for.
  - bromuro 7mo ago
    To me history is useful to continue watching or find videos I’ve already seen. Turning it off will remove a feature I actually need. They force us to see their horrible “for you” content in exchange - so shameful.
- plasma_beam 7mo ago
  I only use YouTube with my watch history set to off. So there is no feed, and I only see updates from channels I actually subscribed to. If I want to see some random crap I go search for it but it’s a clean slate next time I open the app. I have found this method of using YouTube to be extremely useful.
  - xipho 7mo ago
    This is the way. I get plenty of feeds, recommendations etc. from others, enough to keep me busy. Follow who I want, and drop in when I see they have something new.
  - sidrag22 7mo ago
    I transitioned to using youtube with just that left sidebar for updates from channels i subscribed to, id watch the 2-3 creators videos maybe, slowly that became 1, now its 0. I still consider watching that final creator, but if i do its gonna be because i went to youtube and wanted to type that channel into the search bar, not because of a notification. Everyone seems to act like youtube is something we need, I just don't really agree. If i want to watch something for entertainment, there are so many amazing shows with deep stories to choose from. If i want to learn, the video medium to me is just straight up garbage. I prefer to read to learn. Of course there are topics this doesnt totally apply to, but for my purposes, videos are almost always just a way to not only likely repeat the same things you already know for a good chunk of the video, but when you finally find the meat, its still being delivered in a slower way than it could be ingested by reading.
- davorak 7mo ago
  I kept having issues like this, with a different kinds of videos, until I scrubbed my history of any of the kinds of videos I did not want. If I click on something I thought I would want to watch and it is the kind of video I do not want recommended to me I immediately delete it from my watch history, block the channel, and some times block that profile from viewing my youtube channel. ~2 years ago I never had to delete anything from my watch history and my feed/recommendations were ok, now I have to if I do not want my feed/recommendations to occasionally be flooded with something I do not want.
  - jtolmar 7mo ago
    I watch things from unknown-to-me creators in a private window, then copy the URL over to logged in window if it's any good. Same idea, might be an easier workflow. Absurd that we have these sorts of workarounds, but of course the view numbers are better if it keeps fishing for just the right kind of clickbait trash that you'll wolf it down endlessly.
- meroes 7mo ago
  I just use two browsers. On one my recommendations are truly well curated but I can’t watch a single out of place video or my feed is corrupted. The other browser is for brain rot time and it’s the Wild West.
- fma 7mo ago
  I used to have an account for my kids. I thought I would be smart by seeding the history with educational content. I clicked on a lot of videos, let them play etc. I was there when my kids would watch videos - and slowly but surely YouTube started recommending junk AI generated videos. It is my opinion their algorithms are tuned to push this kind of engagement no matter what.
mog_dev 7mo ago
If you pay for youtube, you are part of the problem
- RGamma 7mo ago
  Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it. Yes there is insane anounts of garbage and yes their history is getting spottier by the day, but nothing else comes close to all of the good stuff that is still on it. Google needs to get its shit together and give users power tools. YT hasn't improved materially for many years now. I hope they can snap out of whatever governance dysfunction they're in. Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here. It will probably only lead to more enshittification, and a long, slow death and I'm pretty saddened by that thought.
  - serf 7mo ago
    >Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it. > Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here. fantastic, an appeal to personal guilt to fund large corporate money making and national/corporate-soft-power efforts. an acquired predatory advertiser, the worlds #1 inadequate and neglectful child nanny, and world wide cultural trend-setter is also bad at making money? and they need more? and you say they won't squander it? I think i'll donate to PBS while aiding YT archival efforts.
  - sidrag22 7mo ago
    Youtube could vanish from existence tomorrow and I'd probably just be upset that there isn't a place that might show me a 180p 20 year old video of how to properly clean my old dishwasher. I don't really know what these super high value videos are other than those. I really don't know why they must all exist on this one platform either.
drnick1 7mo ago
Why are you still paying for Youtube? I run uBlock and haven't seen ads in years, don't see any cellphone format crap now thanks to this list, and VacuumTube on my TV defaults to 4K.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Hacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil” Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”
  - AlexandrB 7mo ago
    I pay for plenty of goods and services. Just not YouTube. As others have noted, YouTube premium makes ads go away, but none of the other engagement baiting and user disrespecting anti-patterns. As far as I'm concerned, Google is in adversarial relationship with its users, whether your paying or not.
    - phero_cnstrcts 7mo ago
      Does it make the sponsor sections of the videos go away too?
      - Nannooskeeska 7mo ago
        No, but SponsorBlock[0] is fantastic for that. I even have it setup on my home server[1] so it skips sponsor segments on my Apple TV, which is where we watch most of our YouTube. [0] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
      - Gigachad 7mo ago
        It makes them less annoying. With premium if you hit the scrub forward button once it jumps directly to the end of the sponsor section
    - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
Larrikin 7mo ago
Don't pay for YouTube
easwee 7mo ago
[flagged]
bluescrn 7mo ago
I'm amazed that they still haven't added any way to organise/categorise your subscribed channels, it's just a big flat list.
- mostlysimilar 7mo ago
  YouTube is social media first, even if it also happens to be a repository of useful content. Social media does not want you to navigate with agency. They want to choose what you see because it lets them keep you on the platform longer, which is the entire goal.
  - da_chicken 7mo ago
    No, that's like calling Amazon a social media platform. YouTube is a content delivery platform that has social media features. You can tell because if you shut off all the comments, people still visit the site in droves. But if you shut off the videos and left the comments then nobody would visit the site at all. Now, it's possible that YouTube doesn't realize that, but I think they're just unwilling to make any changes at all if it doesn't give them any competitive advantages.
    - RsAaNtDoYsIhSi 7mo ago
      YouTube used to have direct messages until 2019. Reimplemented in Nov 2025 for Ireland and Poland.
- dietr1ch 7mo ago
  What's crazy is that their adtech definitely knows how to categorise stuff down to super specific topics, yet they only use that internally.
- lavela 7mo ago
  You can do it by using a feed reader and subscribing to the channels rss feeds. Keeps you better isolated from dark patterns as well. edit: has the added benefit that there are different feeds for All/Videos/Shorts/Live/Specific Playlists, so this is another way to avoid shorts
phero_cnstrcts 7mo ago
I hate that you can’t block specific channels from showing up in your feed. So much ai slop.
- NoahZuniga 7mo ago
  This is not true. You can in fact block specific channels. From YouTube support[1]: > On certain pages, such as your Home and Watch Next pages, find a video from a channel that you don’t want recommended to you. > Click More next to the video title. > Select Don't recommend channel . [1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en
  - calmbonsai 7mo ago
    This is also not true and hasn't been so for years. One can set a preference to "not recommend", but one can not explicitly block any channel. Depending on your particular "preference constellation's weights" (over which you have no direct control), you can, in fact, be shown videos from that channel again.
    - SoftTalker 7mo ago
      Or they just launch another channel. I've had to block about a dozen channels by that bald bearded guy with the glasses.
      - RsAaNtDoYsIhSi 7mo ago
        The one with the really high quality crystal methamphetamine? I actually liked him before he got gakked on the sauce.
      - slater 7mo ago
        VS__ce?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
nathancspencer 7mo ago
Pretty sure shorts disables if you turn off watch history: (https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-watch-history/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-wa...)
- goalieca 7mo ago
  I’ve had watch history off for years and it shows me shorts above my actual subscriptions.
486sx33 7mo ago
[dead]
nextaccountic 7mo ago
> I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. This should be illegal..
sva_ 7mo ago
I use ReVanced on Android and it allows me to hide shorts. A 'pirated' version of the app offers a much better experience than even the paid option of it.
- jbaiter 7mo ago
  Yup. I pay for YouTube, but not being able to disable shorts made me use ReVanced.
- satvikpendem 7mo ago
  > We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. - Gabe Newell
  - da_chicken 7mo ago
    Yep. Gabe was right when he said it and he's still right now. Valve knows the product is service. This is why Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store have such a hard time. Good games come and go, but good service is good service. And now, Valve is pushing to leave Windows, because they see which way the wind blows in Redmond. They don't want to be leashed to Microsoft in 2026 anymore than Microsoft wanted to be leashed to IBM in 1986.
simondotau 7mo ago
This is exactly the only reason why I don’t pay for YouTube. Why would I pay money to make it even more addictive, when what I want is to make it less addictive.
asdfman123 7mo ago
We have such powerful AI tools these days. Every media recommendation service should have a slider you can set to indicate how much you want to be "challenged." High challenge = CS papers explained Medium challenge = bridge engineering videos Low challenge = some guy playing video games for you on YouTube
micromacrofoot 7mo ago
but you're still paying
NikolaNovak 7mo ago
Not only I cannot turn off shorts, recently the iOS YouTube app auto plays random short the millisecond I start the app. That is against my user desires in three different ways - and there's no way I can find to stop it. Grrr.
efilife 7mo ago
Then stop paying if you are unsatisfied
ckosidows 7mo ago
Turn off your watch history. It stops all shorts except from your subscriptions. If they remove this, I will surely be done with YouTube. I was so desperate to disable shorts and ready to be done with the app, but then I learned that disabling watch history pretty much perfectly allows me to use the app how I want to.
matt-attack 7mo ago
Since the beginning of Youtube, it has always struck my as reeking of such desperation to keep you hooked. Just the idea that you're watching a video, and there is simultaneously a list of 10 OTHER videos right next to the view. Most have become so numbed to that, but if you step back you should find it just such a sign of desperation to hook you (is the best way I can put it). Before a video is even over, they have to plaster the video window with MORE VIDEOS. "Here try this, what about this other thing, here have you considered this?" My mind is always "I haven't even digested this one video and you're already PUSHING MORE!" When my kids are over my shoulder on YouTube I'm constantly zooming in w/ Mac zoom to obscure the other videos, the other spam, etc. Just learn to absorb and soak in one thing. And digest it for a moment. It's all so obnoxious and it's now the norm. FWIW, I only ever login in a fresh private window.
- jmyeet 7mo ago
  First I will say that clearly all these attention hooks must work or they wouldn't keep doing them but, for me, it just doesn't match how I use YT. Specifically, I am almost always going to YT with the intention of watching something specific. It could be because I need to solve a problem (eg installing a smoke detector). I also for some reason use it to play music despite having Spotify. I honestly don't know why. But I almost never go to YT to look for something to watch. I do sometimes watch a related video after I'm done but this wouldn't happen more than 10-15% of the time. I think I'm in the minority here as people seem to go on YT and just keep chaining videos. But I find YT's interface to be a confusing mess of "me too" products that are half-assed and various likely fiefdoms that force UX onto things that don't make sense. For example, YT's Live streams are, well, ass. The player is terrible. The UX is terrible. And you still have that right panel showing related videos. But watching Live videos is a vastly different UX than watching VODs. So why is it there? I suspect because whatever team owns that recommendation panel has a lot of power. And it probably drives metrics still so it's still there. And bringing this back to YT Shorts. Ugh, I too would like to never see them. It's a "me too" Tiktok. And it's worse. Tiktok's UI/UX is just a step above Shorts (and Reels). And I spend 98% of my Tiktok time on my fyp. But yes the "please watch another video" UI is everywhere. The end of a video, your home page, the right panel and in-video prompts/
- 7mo ago
alex1138 7mo ago
And yet if Youtube didn't have a paid option (and still now, even while it does) people would be saying If you're not paying, You're the product Sorry - these companies have proven they're malicious even while you're paying them (Except possibly Gmail. Facebook Verified is apparently a crock of shit, but Gmail MIGHT give you some account support more than people who don't pay)
shadkhan 7mo ago
[dead]
VerifiedReports 7mo ago
And Google whines when people install ad-blockers. It's pathetic. I was willing to watch ads. But then Google introduced NEVER-ENDING ads, when the program is interrupted frequently and will never return unless you herd it along periodically by clicking Skip. Screw you, Google. I'm cooking, with my hands covered with who knows what, and now I can't watch the program.
amelius 7mo ago
Yes, enshittification.
FranklinJabar 7mo ago
Why are you still watching youtube, then? What's drawing you in?

month13 7mo ago

YouTube's hostility is truly remarkable, by far the most egregious that the Subscriptions page in the TV app having a dedicated row for "recommendations" and "shorts" before you can proceed.

testfrequency 7mo ago

YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting. It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback. All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view! Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT is doing this to try and bait me into watching these deeply emotional and personal content, and again, ignoring it and providing feedback seems to do nothing to my feed. I hate it.

sandworm101 7mo ago
Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.
- throwawayqqq11 7mo ago
  I am waiting for the day when they permanently turn off the channels rss feeds. Recently, after years of smooth sailing, they had a couple of outages, first selective, with only about 50% of my feeds effected and yesterday again with 100%, returning 404s. I am concerned given this development and alphabets apparent plan to kill as much interop as possible. For the uninitiated, afaik, some feedreaders can auto discover the rss url when you add the channels url. Otherwise you have to manually search the channel page source for 'RSS' or 'channel_id='.
  - banana_giraffe 7mo ago
    And for those that want to get the feed URL, this little Python snippet can get the feed URL from a channel's page, either from the channel's URL itself or a video or playlist page: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/834882f59bc921a3865272a66d9ac3b7 https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/834882f59bc921a3865272a66d...
jmathai 7mo ago
Turn off history. Completely disables the food. The only content you see is what you search for.
- bromuro 7mo ago
  To me history is useful to continue watching or find videos I’ve already seen. Turning it off will remove a feature I actually need. They force us to see their horrible “for you” content in exchange - so shameful.
plasma_beam 7mo ago
I only use YouTube with my watch history set to off. So there is no feed, and I only see updates from channels I actually subscribed to. If I want to see some random crap I go search for it but it’s a clean slate next time I open the app. I have found this method of using YouTube to be extremely useful.
- xipho 7mo ago
  This is the way. I get plenty of feeds, recommendations etc. from others, enough to keep me busy. Follow who I want, and drop in when I see they have something new.
- sidrag22 7mo ago
  I transitioned to using youtube with just that left sidebar for updates from channels i subscribed to, id watch the 2-3 creators videos maybe, slowly that became 1, now its 0. I still consider watching that final creator, but if i do its gonna be because i went to youtube and wanted to type that channel into the search bar, not because of a notification. Everyone seems to act like youtube is something we need, I just don't really agree. If i want to watch something for entertainment, there are so many amazing shows with deep stories to choose from. If i want to learn, the video medium to me is just straight up garbage. I prefer to read to learn. Of course there are topics this doesnt totally apply to, but for my purposes, videos are almost always just a way to not only likely repeat the same things you already know for a good chunk of the video, but when you finally find the meat, its still being delivered in a slower way than it could be ingested by reading.
davorak 7mo ago
I kept having issues like this, with a different kinds of videos, until I scrubbed my history of any of the kinds of videos I did not want. If I click on something I thought I would want to watch and it is the kind of video I do not want recommended to me I immediately delete it from my watch history, block the channel, and some times block that profile from viewing my youtube channel. ~2 years ago I never had to delete anything from my watch history and my feed/recommendations were ok, now I have to if I do not want my feed/recommendations to occasionally be flooded with something I do not want.
- jtolmar 7mo ago
  I watch things from unknown-to-me creators in a private window, then copy the URL over to logged in window if it's any good. Same idea, might be an easier workflow. Absurd that we have these sorts of workarounds, but of course the view numbers are better if it keeps fishing for just the right kind of clickbait trash that you'll wolf it down endlessly.
meroes 7mo ago
I just use two browsers. On one my recommendations are truly well curated but I can’t watch a single out of place video or my feed is corrupted. The other browser is for brain rot time and it’s the Wild West.
fma 7mo ago
I used to have an account for my kids. I thought I would be smart by seeding the history with educational content. I clicked on a lot of videos, let them play etc. I was there when my kids would watch videos - and slowly but surely YouTube started recommending junk AI generated videos. It is my opinion their algorithms are tuned to push this kind of engagement no matter what.

mog_dev 7mo ago

If you pay for youtube, you are part of the problem

RGamma 7mo ago
Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it. Yes there is insane anounts of garbage and yes their history is getting spottier by the day, but nothing else comes close to all of the good stuff that is still on it. Google needs to get its shit together and give users power tools. YT hasn't improved materially for many years now. I hope they can snap out of whatever governance dysfunction they're in. Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here. It will probably only lead to more enshittification, and a long, slow death and I'm pretty saddened by that thought.
- serf 7mo ago
  >Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it. > Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here. fantastic, an appeal to personal guilt to fund large corporate money making and national/corporate-soft-power efforts. an acquired predatory advertiser, the worlds #1 inadequate and neglectful child nanny, and world wide cultural trend-setter is also bad at making money? and they need more? and you say they won't squander it? I think i'll donate to PBS while aiding YT archival efforts.
- sidrag22 7mo ago
  Youtube could vanish from existence tomorrow and I'd probably just be upset that there isn't a place that might show me a 180p 20 year old video of how to properly clean my old dishwasher. I don't really know what these super high value videos are other than those. I really don't know why they must all exist on this one platform either.

drnick1 7mo ago

Why are you still paying for Youtube? I run uBlock and haven't seen ads in years, don't see any cellphone format crap now thanks to this list, and VacuumTube on my TV defaults to 4K.

raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
Hacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil” Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”
- AlexandrB 7mo ago
  I pay for plenty of goods and services. Just not YouTube. As others have noted, YouTube premium makes ads go away, but none of the other engagement baiting and user disrespecting anti-patterns. As far as I'm concerned, Google is in adversarial relationship with its users, whether your paying or not.
  - phero_cnstrcts 7mo ago
    Does it make the sponsor sections of the videos go away too?
    - Nannooskeeska 7mo ago
      No, but SponsorBlock[0] is fantastic for that. I even have it setup on my home server[1] so it skips sponsor segments on my Apple TV, which is where we watch most of our YouTube. [0] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
    - Gigachad 7mo ago
      It makes them less annoying. With premium if you hit the scrub forward button once it jumps directly to the end of the sponsor section
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago

Larrikin 7mo ago

Don't pay for YouTube

easwee 7mo ago

[flagged]

bluescrn 7mo ago

I'm amazed that they still haven't added any way to organise/categorise your subscribed channels, it's just a big flat list.

mostlysimilar 7mo ago
YouTube is social media first, even if it also happens to be a repository of useful content. Social media does not want you to navigate with agency. They want to choose what you see because it lets them keep you on the platform longer, which is the entire goal.
- da_chicken 7mo ago
  No, that's like calling Amazon a social media platform. YouTube is a content delivery platform that has social media features. You can tell because if you shut off all the comments, people still visit the site in droves. But if you shut off the videos and left the comments then nobody would visit the site at all. Now, it's possible that YouTube doesn't realize that, but I think they're just unwilling to make any changes at all if it doesn't give them any competitive advantages.
  - RsAaNtDoYsIhSi 7mo ago
    YouTube used to have direct messages until 2019. Reimplemented in Nov 2025 for Ireland and Poland.
dietr1ch 7mo ago
What's crazy is that their adtech definitely knows how to categorise stuff down to super specific topics, yet they only use that internally.
lavela 7mo ago
You can do it by using a feed reader and subscribing to the channels rss feeds. Keeps you better isolated from dark patterns as well. edit: has the added benefit that there are different feeds for All/Videos/Shorts/Live/Specific Playlists, so this is another way to avoid shorts

phero_cnstrcts 7mo ago

I hate that you can’t block specific channels from showing up in your feed. So much ai slop.

NoahZuniga 7mo ago
This is not true. You can in fact block specific channels. From YouTube support[1]: > On certain pages, such as your Home and Watch Next pages, find a video from a channel that you don’t want recommended to you. > Click More next to the video title. > Select Don't recommend channel . [1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en
- calmbonsai 7mo ago
  This is also not true and hasn't been so for years. One can set a preference to "not recommend", but one can not explicitly block any channel. Depending on your particular "preference constellation's weights" (over which you have no direct control), you can, in fact, be shown videos from that channel again.
  - SoftTalker 7mo ago
    Or they just launch another channel. I've had to block about a dozen channels by that bald bearded guy with the glasses.
    - RsAaNtDoYsIhSi 7mo ago
      The one with the really high quality crystal methamphetamine? I actually liked him before he got gakked on the sauce.
    - slater 7mo ago
      VS__ce?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]

nathancspencer 7mo ago

Pretty sure shorts disables if you turn off watch history: (https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-watch-history/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-wa...)

goalieca 7mo ago
I’ve had watch history off for years and it shows me shorts above my actual subscriptions.

486sx33 7mo ago

[dead]

nextaccountic 7mo ago

> I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. This should be illegal..

sva_ 7mo ago

I use ReVanced on Android and it allows me to hide shorts. A 'pirated' version of the app offers a much better experience than even the paid option of it.

jbaiter 7mo ago
Yup. I pay for YouTube, but not being able to disable shorts made me use ReVanced.
satvikpendem 7mo ago
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. - Gabe Newell
- da_chicken 7mo ago
  Yep. Gabe was right when he said it and he's still right now. Valve knows the product is service. This is why Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store have such a hard time. Good games come and go, but good service is good service. And now, Valve is pushing to leave Windows, because they see which way the wind blows in Redmond. They don't want to be leashed to Microsoft in 2026 anymore than Microsoft wanted to be leashed to IBM in 1986.

simondotau 7mo ago

This is exactly the only reason why I don’t pay for YouTube. Why would I pay money to make it even more addictive, when what I want is to make it less addictive.

asdfman123 7mo ago

We have such powerful AI tools these days. Every media recommendation service should have a slider you can set to indicate how much you want to be "challenged." High challenge = CS papers explained Medium challenge = bridge engineering videos Low challenge = some guy playing video games for you on YouTube

micromacrofoot 7mo ago

but you're still paying

NikolaNovak 7mo ago

Not only I cannot turn off shorts, recently the iOS YouTube app auto plays random short the millisecond I start the app. That is against my user desires in three different ways - and there's no way I can find to stop it. Grrr.

efilife 7mo ago

Then stop paying if you are unsatisfied

ckosidows 7mo ago

Turn off your watch history. It stops all shorts except from your subscriptions. If they remove this, I will surely be done with YouTube. I was so desperate to disable shorts and ready to be done with the app, but then I learned that disabling watch history pretty much perfectly allows me to use the app how I want to.

matt-attack 7mo ago

Since the beginning of Youtube, it has always struck my as reeking of such desperation to keep you hooked. Just the idea that you're watching a video, and there is simultaneously a list of 10 OTHER videos right next to the view. Most have become so numbed to that, but if you step back you should find it just such a sign of desperation to hook you (is the best way I can put it). Before a video is even over, they have to plaster the video window with MORE VIDEOS. "Here try this, what about this other thing, here have you considered this?" My mind is always "I haven't even digested this one video and you're already PUSHING MORE!" When my kids are over my shoulder on YouTube I'm constantly zooming in w/ Mac zoom to obscure the other videos, the other spam, etc. Just learn to absorb and soak in one thing. And digest it for a moment. It's all so obnoxious and it's now the norm. FWIW, I only ever login in a fresh private window.

jmyeet 7mo ago
First I will say that clearly all these attention hooks must work or they wouldn't keep doing them but, for me, it just doesn't match how I use YT. Specifically, I am almost always going to YT with the intention of watching something specific. It could be because I need to solve a problem (eg installing a smoke detector). I also for some reason use it to play music despite having Spotify. I honestly don't know why. But I almost never go to YT to look for something to watch. I do sometimes watch a related video after I'm done but this wouldn't happen more than 10-15% of the time. I think I'm in the minority here as people seem to go on YT and just keep chaining videos. But I find YT's interface to be a confusing mess of "me too" products that are half-assed and various likely fiefdoms that force UX onto things that don't make sense. For example, YT's Live streams are, well, ass. The player is terrible. The UX is terrible. And you still have that right panel showing related videos. But watching Live videos is a vastly different UX than watching VODs. So why is it there? I suspect because whatever team owns that recommendation panel has a lot of power. And it probably drives metrics still so it's still there. And bringing this back to YT Shorts. Ugh, I too would like to never see them. It's a "me too" Tiktok. And it's worse. Tiktok's UI/UX is just a step above Shorts (and Reels). And I spend 98% of my Tiktok time on my fyp. But yes the "please watch another video" UI is everywhere. The end of a video, your home page, the right panel and in-video prompts/
7mo ago

alex1138 7mo ago

And yet if Youtube didn't have a paid option (and still now, even while it does) people would be saying If you're not paying, You're the product Sorry - these companies have proven they're malicious even while you're paying them (Except possibly Gmail. Facebook Verified is apparently a crock of shit, but Gmail MIGHT give you some account support more than people who don't pay)

shadkhan 7mo ago

[dead]

VerifiedReports 7mo ago

And Google whines when people install ad-blockers. It's pathetic. I was willing to watch ads. But then Google introduced NEVER-ENDING ads, when the program is interrupted frequently and will never return unless you herd it along periodically by clicking Skip. Screw you, Google. I'm cooking, with my hands covered with who knows what, and now I can't watch the program.

amelius 7mo ago

Yes, enshittification.

FranklinJabar 7mo ago

Why are you still watching youtube, then? What's drawing you in?