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Show HN: YouTube Search Fixer – Firefox addon that removes unrelated suggestions

134 points by phoennix 6y ago

fimdomeio 6y ago
I just notice how messed up the search is very recently. One of the things that it does is that it uses search terms from previous searches in the results for a specific search, it's awful for people with diverse weird interests. My example I was searching for "primitive garden irrigation systems" after searching for some "city building games". Half of my results were "water canals in city skylines". It's both useless for what I was searching before and what I'm searching now.
- dmos62 6y ago
  But that's probably also how you get really interesting, yet somewhat-random-somewhat-related suggestions.
  - Fiveplus 6y ago
    Agreed, I've discovered some really nice tangentially related videos/channels that way. That said, it should be a strict opt-in model presented on the settings dropdown not a Here-is-a-feature-we-think-you-will-like-so-you-have-to-use-it.
  - doliveira 6y ago
    YouTube recommendations have gone to shit lately. I can't even find anything new, they always recommend me the same old channels over and over
    - throwaway2048 6y ago
      Its even worse for me, they recommend me the same videos over and over again, even ones I've watched that very same day.
    - retox 6y ago
      I don't have any proof but I believe it's because of all the stories in the press about scary "alt-right/conspiracy rabbit-holes" and how something _must_ be done. A YT rabbit-hole is exactly how the product should work; you watched these videos so I'll show you closely related videos because you're more likely to stay on the site and generate ad revenue.
- grawprog 6y ago
  This comment prompted me to actually look because i've noticed the same kind of thing and it's frustrating as hell. It seems like a hassle, but I did manage to find the youtube watch and search history where you can remove individual videos and searches from their algorithms. It's not very user friendly and doesn't give a ton of control, but it looks like it could help at least keep those weird one time searches from cluttering things up.
- sshagent 6y ago
  There does seem a lot of that kinda shit nowadays. Websites thinking they know what you mean. Just search what i typed pleased, maybe if its got zero results then sure...have a guess what you think i intended. So often you can't search entire phrases of things, it'll arbitarily pick one word from your search and show you results on that. So annoying
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >There does seem a lot of that kinda shit nowadays. Websites thinking they know what you mean. And we pretend it's "AI". It's horrible.
    - Jommi 6y ago
      Well I think you both need to take a step back and be more objective. How would treat such an occurrence of it was your product? Surely they would look at the data and supposedly, it could be that 90% times it actually is a great predictor of intentions, and these are just edge cases. Edge cases will always happen. ALWAYS.
      - kohtatsu 6y ago
        Yes, I imagine most people will become engaged in a lot of videos that are offered, even if those videos aren't what they intended to watch. The edge case is not being directed and consumed by an algorithm for profit.
- ornornor 6y ago
  I rarely search YouTube directly so I haven’t noticed that. Instead I search for « whatever I’m looking for YouTube » on ddg and I don’t get these irrelevant results because YT doesn’t have my search history to mess with.
- robotnikman 6y ago
  I usually always open youtube in a private window or container tab when I need to search for something specific because of this.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  It's likely a success if you only measure click though rate, i.e. someone loses focus of what they were trying to do because they are presented something similar that is very salient and switches to that context. I've certainly noticed that more and more with features like "frequently opened sites" YouTube's recommendations, a highly targeted ad etc
  - jeppesen-io 6y ago
    YouTube is the least likely to look at just click rates How long someone watches a video is deeply tracked and even impacts creators revenue
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
      That's fair, I think the scenario I'm laying out still holds though, i.e. that it's a win in E(sum(watch_time)|impression)
phoennix 6y ago
Hey all, it's very basic problem that I aimed to fix with my first ever extension. I designed it to fix YouTube search. It removes "For you", "Related to your search" and other distractions from your results. It also fine tunes some visual interface elements and aims to synchronize the design language. I realize there will always be bugs despite my best attempt so I would be greatly appreciative of your suggestions and critiques. Both are equally welcome.
- rapnie 6y ago
  As other commenter mentioned there's no source, though under Versions it states "Source code released under MIT/X11 License". Do you have a link?
  - Fiveplus 6y ago
    I think he forgot to answer you but OP mentioned it elsewhere on the thread[1]. [1]https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
kkaranth 6y ago
EDIT: @OP I do not see a link to the source for the addon. I think a lot of users would be vary of installing closed-source addons. This is great, some YouTube features are just so annoying. And I cannot disable them even though I pay for YouTube premium. An alternative to this is to add this to your ublock origin list: www.youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer it seems to be working, but I do not know if there are any other ramifications. (for instance, I use the rule https://www.google.*/xjs/* https://www.google.*/xjs/* to block the "people also search for..." on google.com and I recently realized that that breaks google maps-based search results)
- oefrha 6y ago
  > closed-source addons wget https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/3611176/youtube_distractfree-0.1-an+fx.xpi unzip youtube_distractfree-0.1-an+fx.xpi You'll find yt.css and ytt.js which aren't minimized/obfuscated. Browser extensions/addons are about as "closed source" as websites, or even less so in most cases (let's ignore wasm-powered websites or extensions for a second). Not linking to a GitHub repository doesn't mean it's "closed source"; conversely, linking to a GitHub repository is no guarantee that what you're getting is what's being linked to, or the extension won't be compromised in a future update.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    It's nice that one can do this, but I wish I didn't need to. Mozilla could easily add a way to view the source online. This would be much more convenient and obvious that it's possible.
    - lights0123 6y ago
      I wish there was the same for Linux packages, there's been many times where I needed to reference a file that a package installed on another distro, but don't want to go through unzipping it and reading it, especially on mobile.
- junkblocker 6y ago
BitwiseFool 6y ago
The problem with YouTube nowadays is that it's mission isn't to get you to watch something, it's to get you to watch something else. Pause the video? See suggestions. Start watching video? See suggestions. So I appreciate anything that reduces the amount of suggestions that appear to me.
- kace91 6y ago
  I've also noticed that. It's very annoying to press space to pause the video, have a giant pop up cover the whole thing, and then having focus switched so that now space deals with the suggestion instead of resuming the video.
phoennix 6y ago
Hey all, apologies my internet was in error I just check the comment section. Also sorry, I did not link the repository earlier I missed it but no worries, I have provided all files of addon here for you now: https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix Thanks for all the kind words.
gruez 6y ago
I also find it helpful to adblock the home page and "related videos" suggestions (both sidebar and after the video finishes). It really helps you from getting tempted/distracted by clickbait videos or getting stuck in a rabbit hole.
- aorth 6y ago
  Exactly! I came here to suggest the Clickbait Remover for Youtube plugin for Firefox. Sometimes I forget it's installed and I'm surprised when I use YouTube on the phone or TV and see tantalizing thumbnails. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
  - gruez 6y ago
    I find it funny how even though it removes the clickbait thumbnails, the "youtube face" is still inexplicably there there. https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/223/223240.png?modified=1565030067 https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/223/...
gxx 6y ago
I usually search videos with Bing using the !bv redirect from DuckDuckGo. Google's video search is shockingly bad, considering they own YouTube. Not only are Bing's results more on target, it also displays search results much more conveniently. Also Bing supports the "+" operator that Google does not. (Also the "-" operator.) These allow accurate targeting of what you are looking for. I also usually redirect to Bing image search (!bi in DDG) because their support of the "+" operator allows more accurate search targeting.
sub7 6y ago
There's also this, which forced verbatim search on google. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unfuck-google/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unfuck-google... Warning: bug with clicking image results on the main search results page.
TobTobXX 6y ago
I think this might be intentional functionality to reduce expensive search operations. Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but search engine caches aren't useful if they can't be reused, thus they also serve results of previous queries that might match with the current one.
hitech_dude 6y ago
What is the legal landscape? We know adblockers are legal We know "auto clicker" sites which skip some content can be sued for TOS violations We even saw aggregation/search sites being sued Good luck to the OP and I hope u grow and thrive
progman32 6y ago
YouTube is just so noisy. Inspired by this post, I threw a user style together: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/407461-plain-text-youtube-subscription-list https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/407461-plain-text-youtube-... This works specifically for the subscription video list at https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=2 https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=2 * Greatly compacts list layout - ~17 videos now fit on a 1080p screen vs four. Four! * Hides video thumbnail - they're mostly noise. * Hides uploader picture (text only name). * Hides description - it's also usually noise. * Hides view count - you're subscribed to the channel, is this really useful? * Hides user verification checkmark - you're already subscribed; you know who this user is. * All video titles made into lowercase - anti clickbait! Idea from this Show HN. edit: formatting
- qzx_pierri 6y ago
  This is pretty cool! If you implement mini thumbnails somehow, that would seal the deal for me.
fareesh 6y ago
Similar to Twitter without blue checks I think YouTube without large corporations would be quite nice. Can't think of a good way to filter those though, other than a giant blocklist.
Avery3R 6y ago
This is unusable unless you're also using dark mode
- phoennix 6y ago
  Hello Avery3R, I release update that fixes this problem today morning. Many people reached out that they use light mode, now it's there. Feel free to check out latest version from addon store
dependenttypes 6y ago
A bit unrelated but I have a complaint regarding firefox and addons.mozilla.org. In the past that site would let you browse through the code of the addon so that you could make sure that it did not contain anything malicious but now it lacks that option. In addition firefox does not give me the option to check the source of the plugin on updates so even if I manually download the plugin and review it the addon author can at any time introduce backdoors and firefox will automatically fetch the updated version. In addition as far as I am aware firefox only check for signatures from mozilla, not from the addon author, so mozilla can push malicious updates for addons if they wish without the addon creator knowing about it.

134 points by phoennix 6y ago

I just notice how messed up the search is very recently. One of the things that it does is that it uses search terms from previous searches in the results for a specific search, it's awful for people with diverse weird interests. My example I was searching for "primitive garden irrigation systems" after searching for some "city building games". Half of my results were "water canals in city skylines". It's both useless for what I was searching before and what I'm searching now.

dmos62 6y ago
But that's probably also how you get really interesting, yet somewhat-random-somewhat-related suggestions.
- Fiveplus 6y ago
  Agreed, I've discovered some really nice tangentially related videos/channels that way. That said, it should be a strict opt-in model presented on the settings dropdown not a Here-is-a-feature-we-think-you-will-like-so-you-have-to-use-it.
- doliveira 6y ago
  YouTube recommendations have gone to shit lately. I can't even find anything new, they always recommend me the same old channels over and over
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Its even worse for me, they recommend me the same videos over and over again, even ones I've watched that very same day.
  - retox 6y ago
    I don't have any proof but I believe it's because of all the stories in the press about scary "alt-right/conspiracy rabbit-holes" and how something _must_ be done. A YT rabbit-hole is exactly how the product should work; you watched these videos so I'll show you closely related videos because you're more likely to stay on the site and generate ad revenue.
grawprog 6y ago
This comment prompted me to actually look because i've noticed the same kind of thing and it's frustrating as hell. It seems like a hassle, but I did manage to find the youtube watch and search history where you can remove individual videos and searches from their algorithms. It's not very user friendly and doesn't give a ton of control, but it looks like it could help at least keep those weird one time searches from cluttering things up.
sshagent 6y ago
There does seem a lot of that kinda shit nowadays. Websites thinking they know what you mean. Just search what i typed pleased, maybe if its got zero results then sure...have a guess what you think i intended. So often you can't search entire phrases of things, it'll arbitarily pick one word from your search and show you results on that. So annoying
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >There does seem a lot of that kinda shit nowadays. Websites thinking they know what you mean. And we pretend it's "AI". It's horrible.
  - Jommi 6y ago
    Well I think you both need to take a step back and be more objective. How would treat such an occurrence of it was your product? Surely they would look at the data and supposedly, it could be that 90% times it actually is a great predictor of intentions, and these are just edge cases. Edge cases will always happen. ALWAYS.
    - kohtatsu 6y ago
      Yes, I imagine most people will become engaged in a lot of videos that are offered, even if those videos aren't what they intended to watch. The edge case is not being directed and consumed by an algorithm for profit.
ornornor 6y ago
I rarely search YouTube directly so I haven’t noticed that. Instead I search for « whatever I’m looking for YouTube » on ddg and I don’t get these irrelevant results because YT doesn’t have my search history to mess with.
robotnikman 6y ago
I usually always open youtube in a private window or container tab when I need to search for something specific because of this.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
It's likely a success if you only measure click though rate, i.e. someone loses focus of what they were trying to do because they are presented something similar that is very salient and switches to that context. I've certainly noticed that more and more with features like "frequently opened sites" YouTube's recommendations, a highly targeted ad etc
- jeppesen-io 6y ago
  YouTube is the least likely to look at just click rates How long someone watches a video is deeply tracked and even impacts creators revenue
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
    That's fair, I think the scenario I'm laying out still holds though, i.e. that it's a win in E(sum(watch_time)|impression)

phoennix 6y ago

Hey all, it's very basic problem that I aimed to fix with my first ever extension. I designed it to fix YouTube search. It removes "For you", "Related to your search" and other distractions from your results. It also fine tunes some visual interface elements and aims to synchronize the design language. I realize there will always be bugs despite my best attempt so I would be greatly appreciative of your suggestions and critiques. Both are equally welcome.

rapnie 6y ago
As other commenter mentioned there's no source, though under Versions it states "Source code released under MIT/X11 License". Do you have a link?
- Fiveplus 6y ago
  I think he forgot to answer you but OP mentioned it elsewhere on the thread[1]. [1]https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

kkaranth 6y ago

EDIT: @OP I do not see a link to the source for the addon. I think a lot of users would be vary of installing closed-source addons. This is great, some YouTube features are just so annoying. And I cannot disable them even though I pay for YouTube premium. An alternative to this is to add this to your ublock origin list: www.youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer it seems to be working, but I do not know if there are any other ramifications. (for instance, I use the rule https://www.google.*/xjs/* https://www.google.*/xjs/* to block the "people also search for..." on google.com and I recently realized that that breaks google maps-based search results)

oefrha 6y ago
> closed-source addons wget https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/3611176/youtube_distractfree-0.1-an+fx.xpi unzip youtube_distractfree-0.1-an+fx.xpi You'll find yt.css and ytt.js which aren't minimized/obfuscated. Browser extensions/addons are about as "closed source" as websites, or even less so in most cases (let's ignore wasm-powered websites or extensions for a second). Not linking to a GitHub repository doesn't mean it's "closed source"; conversely, linking to a GitHub repository is no guarantee that what you're getting is what's being linked to, or the extension won't be compromised in a future update.
- smichel17 6y ago
  It's nice that one can do this, but I wish I didn't need to. Mozilla could easily add a way to view the source online. This would be much more convenient and obvious that it's possible.
  - lights0123 6y ago
    I wish there was the same for Linux packages, there's been many times where I needed to reference a file that a package installed on another distro, but don't want to go through unzipping it and reading it, especially on mobile.
junkblocker 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago

The problem with YouTube nowadays is that it's mission isn't to get you to watch something, it's to get you to watch something else. Pause the video? See suggestions. Start watching video? See suggestions. So I appreciate anything that reduces the amount of suggestions that appear to me.

kace91 6y ago
I've also noticed that. It's very annoying to press space to pause the video, have a giant pop up cover the whole thing, and then having focus switched so that now space deals with the suggestion instead of resuming the video.

phoennix 6y ago

Hey all, apologies my internet was in error I just check the comment section. Also sorry, I did not link the repository earlier I missed it but no worries, I have provided all files of addon here for you now: https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix https://gitlab.com/phoennix/youtubesearchfix Thanks for all the kind words.

gruez 6y ago

I also find it helpful to adblock the home page and "related videos" suggestions (both sidebar and after the video finishes). It really helps you from getting tempted/distracted by clickbait videos or getting stuck in a rabbit hole.

aorth 6y ago
Exactly! I came here to suggest the Clickbait Remover for Youtube plugin for Firefox. Sometimes I forget it's installed and I'm surprised when I use YouTube on the phone or TV and see tantalizing thumbnails. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
- gruez 6y ago
  I find it funny how even though it removes the clickbait thumbnails, the "youtube face" is still inexplicably there there. https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/223/223240.png?modified=1565030067 https://addons.cdn.mozilla.net/user-media/previews/full/223/...

gxx 6y ago

I usually search videos with Bing using the !bv redirect from DuckDuckGo. Google's video search is shockingly bad, considering they own YouTube. Not only are Bing's results more on target, it also displays search results much more conveniently. Also Bing supports the "+" operator that Google does not. (Also the "-" operator.) These allow accurate targeting of what you are looking for. I also usually redirect to Bing image search (!bi in DDG) because their support of the "+" operator allows more accurate search targeting.

sub7 6y ago

There's also this, which forced verbatim search on google. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unfuck-google/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unfuck-google... Warning: bug with clicking image results on the main search results page.

TobTobXX 6y ago

I think this might be intentional functionality to reduce expensive search operations. Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but search engine caches aren't useful if they can't be reused, thus they also serve results of previous queries that might match with the current one.

hitech_dude 6y ago

What is the legal landscape? We know adblockers are legal We know "auto clicker" sites which skip some content can be sued for TOS violations We even saw aggregation/search sites being sued Good luck to the OP and I hope u grow and thrive

progman32 6y ago

YouTube is just so noisy. Inspired by this post, I threw a user style together: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/407461-plain-text-youtube-subscription-list https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/407461-plain-text-youtube-... This works specifically for the subscription video list at https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=2 https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=2 * Greatly compacts list layout - ~17 videos now fit on a 1080p screen vs four. Four! * Hides video thumbnail - they're mostly noise. * Hides uploader picture (text only name). * Hides description - it's also usually noise. * Hides view count - you're subscribed to the channel, is this really useful? * Hides user verification checkmark - you're already subscribed; you know who this user is. * All video titles made into lowercase - anti clickbait! Idea from this Show HN. edit: formatting

qzx_pierri 6y ago
This is pretty cool! If you implement mini thumbnails somehow, that would seal the deal for me.

fareesh 6y ago

Similar to Twitter without blue checks I think YouTube without large corporations would be quite nice. Can't think of a good way to filter those though, other than a giant blocklist.

Avery3R 6y ago

This is unusable unless you're also using dark mode

phoennix 6y ago
Hello Avery3R, I release update that fixes this problem today morning. Many people reached out that they use light mode, now it's there. Feel free to check out latest version from addon store

dependenttypes 6y ago

A bit unrelated but I have a complaint regarding firefox and addons.mozilla.org. In the past that site would let you browse through the code of the addon so that you could make sure that it did not contain anything malicious but now it lacks that option. In addition firefox does not give me the option to check the source of the plugin on updates so even if I manually download the plugin and review it the addon author can at any time introduce backdoors and firefox will automatically fetch the updated version. In addition as far as I am aware firefox only check for signatures from mozilla, not from the addon author, so mozilla can push malicious updates for addons if they wish without the addon creator knowing about it.