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>YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts No it doesn't. If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not wha
by savanaly 6mo ago
>YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts
No it doesn't. If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not what this is. I just tried the thing mentioned in the article-- set my Shorts time limit to 0 minutes. What it does is make it so if you click a short from somewhere the short plays, but then if you try to swipe to the next one it hits you with the "You reached your short limit". If you then return to the home page you still see Shorts.
- idle_zealot 6mo agoClassic "self regulation" of an addictive product. "You look like you might have a problem with self-control, here are tools for managing yourself better" while admitting no fault and continuing with all of the hooks and barbs, design and advertising built to addict as many people as possible.
- alex1138 6mo agoReal name? No? We'll ask again later
- jiveturkey 6mo agoWell played. I don't think many remember this. The product was completely forgettable but the introduction of this user hostile pattern was a turning point.
- natpalmer1776 6mo agoWhat was this referencing?
- berdario 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars
- natpalmer1776 6mo agoThank you!
- trinsic2 6mo agoYou sure you don't want to add your phone number? I makes verification easier next time you want to upload a video.
- alex1138 6mo agoI was referring to Google+. I don't know if you mean something else like Facebook, which is no less abusive than Google+ ever was People seemed to like Google+ but a) nymwars lead to dangerous situations (although no less dangerous than Facebook's graph search) for people that don't want to reveal their real names but also b) the merging of accounts ruined some people's Youtube channels. Zuckerberg is so much of a control freak that I suspect (based on evidence I've vaguely heard, not just my own intuition) links to Google+ used to get deleted. It used to be the case people liked it but they "couldn't get their friends to use it". So yeah - in part, inertia; but also what if you linked it and nobody saw it in the feed?
- jldugger 6mo agoTechnically I think it's for parents to regulate their kids.
- Carrok 6mo agoI'm confused why you're bringing up parents and kids. Are you implying only children might have problems with self-control wrt media consumption?
- idle_zealot 6mo agoYeah, it's pretty broad consensus that the Chinese opium epidemic was really on the parents. 19th century Chinese parents really dropped the ball there, and no further considerations or blame should be placed.
- jval43 6mo agoMy parents are retired. How exactly do they come into play? I'm actively avoiding Shorts, Reels, and whatever else with those mechanics precisely because they pull you in and snap an hour is gone with nothing of value to show for it. It's so totally different from regular long form videos. We regulate addictive substances too, even for adults and without relying on parents. The amount of productivity and quality of life lost to these platforms must be staggering in aggregation.
- losvedir 6mo agoDamn, yeah that's what I was hoping for. Honestly, the only thing really keeping me from watching shorts is the perplexing UX decision to not show the channel name as part of the preview tile. As basic Internet hygiene it just feels real bad to click on a video without the tiniest bit of idea about its provenance. For that reason I never do and have always just wanted to hide Shorts altogether.
- chii 6mo agoI don't watch shorts because of the type of content it encourages - short clickbait content for the attention deficit. I want long form, well researched, well put together content. These types of content takes a long time to produce, unfortunately, and the youtube algorithm doesn't favour it.
- rob74 6mo agoThese types of content takes a long time to produce Unless they're AI slop, of course. Between shorts and AI slop, worthwhile content on YouTube will soon become almost impossible to find...
- chii 6mo agoThat's where off-platform, trust worthy sources are important. Over the years, i've curated a lot of subscriptions on youtube of such long form content (talking about things like Primitive Technology, Smarter Everyday, etc). It simply sucks that youtube has gutted the UI for subscriptions - the layout is horrible, i can't scan it as they removed the list view, etc. And sometimes subscribed channel's videos don't even show up there - you have to visit the channel page directly to see the new videos. it's almost as if they want people to rely only on the home page and the recommended videos from their algo.
- tveita 6mo agoHonestly I'd sometimes like a checkbox to ignore any results uploaded after, say 2023. Or else to only see 'verified non-AI' content. There is nothing I'd ever search Youtube for where an AI generated video would be an acceptable answer.
- darth_avocado 6mo agoCorrect, based on the text when you change the setting mentions that. > scrolling is paused but you may still see individual Shorts It prevents doomscrolling, not what you see in your feed or homepage.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- leptons 6mo ago"Shorts" is the #1 reason I switched to the SmartTube app on my Chromecast. No more Shorts. It also has other great features that are well beyond what the Youtube app lets you do to customize the expernience. And then I realized, it also blocks all the ads. I was a Youtube subscriber, but they alienated me with their "Shorts", so I switched apps, and then I cancelled my subscription. Most of big tech is too big. It's ridiculous how bad these monoliths have gotten.
- senectus1 6mo agodammit. I got so excited about that headline. now I'm just angry again.
- geerlingguy 6mo agoDitto
- PaulHoule 6mo agoROFL because there is no danger that I'm going to spend any time watching shorts. If they put some limit on other videos now that might be relevant... but shorts are just taking up real estate on the screen which could be filled with content I might engagement. I want to say it is like picking their shareholder's pockets except nobody profits from the existence of shorts in any way.
- samxli 6mo agoIt’s still working for me tho. Could it be a different app version?
- rmwaite 6mo agoIn my case, once I set the limit to 0 minutes and refreshed the home tab I don't see Shorts recommendations at all. There is still a Shorts tab at the bottom that tells me I have no remaining time (and allows me to trivially override it, sigh). But otherwise this seems to have cleaned up the "feed" that I see in the app of anything Shorts related (for now, at least).
- philipov 6mo agoAn ad blocker handles this use case just fine, however. It's easy to create a rule to remove the div containing shorts. Also works on many Use AI buttons.
- VerifiedReports 6mo agoWow, WTF. What an inept implementation.
- neop1x 6mo agoSame.They just did the minimum to look like they care about restricting addiction practices but in reality still continuing with business as usual
- nine_k 6mo agoIf you want to completely eschew shorts, consider adding https://www.youtube.com/shorts https://www.youtube.com/shorts to your adblocker blocklist, and maybe use an extension like Stylus to hide the "Shorts" links on YT pages. I would rather keep the ability to see a short if I need it.
- paulnpace 6mo agoMy shorts are on.
- kakacik 6mo agoSwipe. Not a problem with mouse control and generally full computer, seems like even such a dumb move as swiping can become addictive and be done subconsiously. Never understood why people complain here so much about shorts since they never go beyond the one video played that I opened myself I guess that explains it. Tablets/touchscreens/phones are not the best way to experience online stuff, rather the worst. ublock origin in firefox makes internet usable in other dimension for me, since I am allergic to ads but thats another story
- bityard 6mo agoIt turns out, the tiger can't change its shorts
- runevault 6mo agoIt really amazes how how Youtube refuses to let me hide stuff I don't want to see on my homepage. I still long for the ability to tell them to not give me mix playlists, I do not want them, and often they annoy me when the first song is one I'd click on but I don't want to have to pay attention enough to kill it before the next song plays (since you cannot disable play next in playlists...)
- rob74 6mo agoYou see, you think you don't want all those things, but the algorithm knows better. Trust the algorithm!
- ChrisRR 6mo agoSearch youtube for a thing > 5 results for your search > 10 unrelated videos that you've already watched > An endless stream of unrelated videos
- rjbwork 6mo agoIt's not a product where you are the user. Your attention is the product being sold to advertisers and the videos are a harvesting/production mechanism. It is not in the interests of either YT or the advertisers to allow you to opt out of features that are proven to be lucrative for eyeballs.
- charcircuit 6mo agoYouTube has multiple different products. YouTube as a company do not call your attention a product. There isn't a product team that is in charge of people's attention as a product.
- tsimionescu 6mo agoThis line of argument would make sense if they did allow paying customers who don't see ads to disable these anti-features. They don't.
- jore 6mo agoI actually set the time limit to 0 minutes , then I restarted the app in iOS and right now I do not see any shorts. Let’s see how long it would take for them to reappear again
- BingBingBap 6mo agoYoutube would be cooked if there was an alternative that actually eorked (incentives for people uploading, spread well etc).
- superjan 6mo agoThe nuclear option is to disallow it to store your watch history. You get only a search bar and your subscriptions. I switched to this. It is less fun, but also less of a timewaste.
- joelthelion 6mo agoNote that you don't need YouTube's permission to remove shorts from the homepage; there's a Firefox extension for that.
- rkapsoro 6mo agoArgh. I was really excited for this. I'm a YouTube Premium user, and I get a lot of value from YouTube, but I can't get rid of the nicotine-tastic home feed and shorts. I go to YouTube for useful (especially, long-form) stuff, and get sucked into garbage. On desktop you can manage this with extensions. Not so much on mobile. Profound product misalignment.
- dahcryn 6mo agoweird how its 0 to 15, and no in between. I went in hoping to set it to 5 minutes. I don't see that as a problem. However, suddenly losing 15 minutes, yeah that's an issue
- adjejmxbdjdn 6mo agoI think this might be even worse, psychologically. You’ve added a “forbidden fruit” element to the Shorts.