this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Based on what the YouTube frontpage looks like when I'm not logged in I can guarantee that I will have zero interest in anything that gets hyped up on a leaderboard. But YouTube will of course malform its UI so it can constantly shove it into my face like it does with shorts.
If your on desktop, here's some unsolicited advice. If you're on mobile, good luck...I've got nothing.
LPT: use unlock origin's element picker to block any unwanted sections of youtube mixed into your feed.
"Premium" gone, "Shorts" gone, "Trending" gone, "Pay to watch" gone, "News" gone, "Survay" gone
LPT2: set a YouTube bookmark to go straight to your subscription page. This way you see the new videos you are most likely to care about first. No need to "hit the bell" and rely on notifications. When I'm caught up there, I'll head over to home feed to see if there's anything intresting.
LPT3: get the extention "Enhancer for YouTube". There's a ton of settings to basically set your playback defaults the way you like. I change the toolbar setting to " showin video playback bar" and auto expand" to get the various buttons to show up like the default ones. (The names of those setting is by memory).
"Unhook" is also good one for clearing out junk.
Lastly "DeArrow", from the maker of SponsorBlock. This one crowd sources new video titles with the goal of replacing clickbait for an actual description of the video.
On mobile you've got YouTube Revanced
That still works? I'll have to look in it. Thanks.
+1 for enhancer for youtube, great QOL stuff in there
Unsolicited or not, this is good avice. Thank you!
Aside from showing me stuff I've seen (hopefully I just missed a setting for that) I don't really have an issue with the yt algorithm. I watch game stuff, tech and science and it shows me more of that mostly. I am logged in though, so I don't know if that makes any difference given they are able to track your interests regardless.
To be honest with you, the algorithm is pretty good. I'm a pretty active user of "not interested" and "don't recommend this channel" so the algorithm generally shows me stuff I already like or things I may be interested in.
What I find frustrating is that there are so many extra UI blocks shoved in between regular videos. Featured current events, rentable movies, playable games, and the fucking shorts I don't give a shit about. Since I mainly watch on mobile I also can't just remove those sections and even when I dismiss them, YouTube decides to shove them in my face again and again.
I just want to be left alone to watch my nerdy stuff :(
I tried the games once and they fucking suck, and then youtube wouldn't stop trying to get me to play them more for like 4 months. I mostly use PC so shorts existing while being mildly inconvenient, isn't an issue because I can just scroll past them. The movies have tempted me a couple times, but idk if i want to pay money for something i probably wont watch all of, actual youtube content is often more enjoyable.
Yeah but it's so easy to rip on YouTube, don't you see how edgy it is?