[HN Gopher] Tell HN: YouTube's web UI just got even worse
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: YouTube's web UI just got even worse
The only two possible filters on the list of videos of a channel
now are most recent and most popular. I know it's a small thing
but somehow this hits me really hard. Also, there's less videos on
a single row now. Because we can't read more than that without our
attention span going poof.
Author : Pooge
Score : 281 points
Date : 2022-10-28 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
| Sin2x wrote:
| They should rename it to just Tube without You to better reflect
| the reality.
| bionsystem wrote:
| Funny because it's been a few months that the algorithm has
| been getting worse at giving personal suggestions. I used to
| have a lot of videos I enjoyed on my feed (maybe 75% of the
| time I didn't have to scroll to find something I'd be willing
| to watch) and now I often end up scrolling a lot to find a
| suitable suggestion. And when I watch one all I get as a
| suggestion is all of the things I didn't want before + another
| video from the same channel of the video I just watched.
|
| I don't know if people experience the same but I feel like I'm
| just being fed whatever is trending now instead of things I
| actually want to watch.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I've been hearing this criticism of "the suggestions are
| getting worse recently" for so long that, if it was actually
| true, YouTube would be only suggesting videos you actively
| hate by now.
|
| My suggestions are still totally fine, as they have always
| been.
| YourCupOTea wrote:
| My suggestions have become increasingly stale. Before it felt
| like they were trying to work in related videos but now it is
| just the same 30-50 videos on the home page for the last 3
| weeks.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > getting worse at giving personal suggestions
|
| I agree; which is astonishing, given how bad it was before. I
| wish there were some way I could actually tell it what I'm
| interested in watching; but no, I have to let it infer my
| preferences using it's "algorithms".
|
| Even searching fails, even if I type in the full name of the
| documentary I want to watch. You really have to bend over
| backwards to make a literal search for the title of a show
| give you a completely different show, with a completely
| different title.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I recently wrote a browser extension for myself that allows me
| to filter out videos from the YouTube search results that come
| from Verified channels. The reason I did this is that some
| search terms get completely overwhelmed by mainstream media
| channels, and they happen to all have the Verified checkmark.
|
| Turns out there's very little of the "you" in YouTube anymore.
| I remember a day when you could type in any given search term
| and there would be videos from everyday people arguing for one
| thing or another, or showing you how to do a thing without
| totally shilling out for dinner kits or mattresses. I was
| surprised to find that even the least controversial topics
| yield very little. When it comes to YouTube, it seems very few
| everyday people just vlog or express themselves anymore.
| Everything has to be a podcast, everything has to be sponsored,
| everything needs graphics and studio lighting, everything has
| to not piss off the wrong group, everything has to constantly
| retread safe topics, and so on.
|
| What a boring place YouTube became. The only reason I still use
| it is because NewPipe still works and TikTok just seems like a
| den of mental illness.
|
| Also, I do find my extension useful. If I'm searching for
| videos on a topic involving science or technology, I really
| don't need a bunch of mainstream popsci bullshit.
| Unfortunately, it only works for Firefox.
| prox wrote:
| MoreAdsMoneyTube
| kevincox wrote:
| GooTube
| mradek wrote:
| As each of these subscription services have gotten worse, I've
| ended my contracts with each one and I'm probably way happier
| this way. I'm not overloaded by content, and I feel a more
| enjoyable sense of discovery when I go looking on purpose for a
| video. I use brave browser, so gg ads.
| koofdoof wrote:
| I've seen weirdly different sorting options for a while now that
| vary channel by channel. I assumed it was set by the uploader,
| but I would believe that its a global change now.
| rayrag wrote:
| I've noticed few months ago that Metallica channel didn't had
| any sorting options. I could only switch between uploads and
| past live streams.
| andreyk wrote:
| Why even worse? I use youtube a LOT and I don't particularly
| dislike it.
| running101 wrote:
| I hope some from YouTube sees this feedback
| hnburnsy wrote:
| It is even worse for a music artist, on the Videos tab there is
| no sort at all.
| [deleted]
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Freetube - https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| 5 out of 12 recommends are future streams/premiers all from the
| same channel. I like the channel's content but 5/12 suggestions
| for something I can't even watch _right now_ is just a joke.
| weinzierl wrote:
| The biggest offender is Youtube Shorts at the top. With TikTok at
| least you can restrict your daily watch time and it is pure
| entertainment anyway - I don't have to open it when I don't want
| entertainment. Youtube is different because it has lots of useful
| stuff too and this mixture of the helpful and the addictive is
| pure evil. It is almost as if every food item in your life is
| served with a beer, a cigarette, some coke and some crack for
| free.
|
| A bit OT, but I watch a lot of tutorials with many parts. Is
| there a good way to track which part I already watched?
| kevincox wrote:
| I hate shorts with a passion. It's like they just decided to
| remove half of the features and think it is better. Like you
| can't cast a short to your TV via the YouTube app. You can cast
| other portrait videos, but if they have #shorts in the title
| then it gets blocked.
|
| Luckily you can get the regular video UI if you go direct to
| the video link in your browser, but no casting and if you ever
| get to the video another way you need to edit the URL to do
| simple things like seek.
| [deleted]
| soared wrote:
| There is a chrome extension to block shorts fyi
| ryemigie wrote:
| On the TV app it is nuts now. Only 4 rows of recommendations, and
| 5 videos per row. Like a 1000% reduction in possible
| recommendations. No idea why.
| culanuchachamim wrote:
| Interesting story
|
| I used to procastinate a lot in YouTube, so I installed a plug-in
| in the browser that don't let me get into YouTube. At the
| beginning I was worried that it's not going to work for me,
| because if you use te incognito mode the plug-in doesn't work, so
| I thinked that every time I would want to procastinate I just
| open the incognito mode.
|
| But surprise! I'm no longer procastinate in YouTube, because
| every time that I open YouTube in incognito, the recommendations
| are sooo bad, that I just scroll a few seconds and get out, and
| now I'm YouTube free for a long time.
| jrmann100 wrote:
| I shut down YouTube's addictive tendencies through a couple of
| less extreme factors.
|
| DF Tube (Distraction Free) web extensions are available[0] for
| Chrome and Firefox which cut down intrusive UI (comments,
| recommended videos, the home page). It's easy to clone and
| extend the add-on if you want to block more.
|
| When I'm on mobile, I limit the recommendations I can't block
| by disabling/clearing YouTube watch history. The new UI is
| aware of how much worse the suggestions are and hides them
| altogether--which is exactly what I want.
|
| From there, I try only look at my subscriptions feed and
| occasionally the trending videos page. This makes YouTube less
| overwhelming--even if I watch just as much content--because I'm
| in control of what I want to see.
|
| Curious if anyone else uses YouTube like this!
|
| [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-
| distractio...
| [deleted]
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I just tried and changing "dd" to "da" doesn't work, so it looks
| like they ditched it completely:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_jKrZ130j5QcXycYK_HePw/vid...
| woah wrote:
| It's a tale as old as time: Programmer on HN complains about the
| removal of obscure menu items from a popular social media app
| the_jesus_villa wrote:
| I'm also annoyed that I can't sort for oldest videos.
|
| I remember being a 10-year old and reading these kinds of threads
| on the Neopets forums _everytime_ a UI change happened. Back
| then, everyone would promise to switch to a competitor. Then
| everyone would forget, get attached to the new UI, and then if
| they ever changed it again (even changing it back to be more
| similar to the old one!) we 'd hear the say peans about how they
| are ruining it.
|
| See also: livejournal users threatening to go to dreamwidth, and
| /b/day (the 4chan exodus to 7chan).
| carlgreene wrote:
| Ugh. One of my favorite things to do is go to my favorite
| channels and sort by oldest to see how their videos have
| progressed over time.
|
| Such a shame they've made that so difficult for...nothing?
| agentcooper wrote:
| I've created a small macOS app to track YouTube channels without
| being distracted by the web UI:
| https://github.com/agentcooper/telik. Maybe some of you will find
| it useful.
| duxup wrote:
| I use YouTube frequently, but I don't consider myself much of a
| power user.
|
| I have no idea how I'm "supposed to use" YouTube. I assume
| because I'm a fairly light user my confusion must be because it
| has some powerful tools/ interface for power users that confuses
| light users like me.
|
| But then I try to understand how I should find what I'm looking
| for and it seems there's no good / efficient way to use it where
| I don't end up wondering why I can't just click this or that to
| get what I want.
| [deleted]
| matsemann wrote:
| My biggest peeve is how on the app, scrolling past a thumbnail
| removes it and starts playing a preview. So the title or whatever
| disappears, and instead I get to watch some person talk on mute.
| Then when I actually click the video, it starts from where I was
| in the preview, instead from the beginning, so I have to rewind
| since I obviously didn't catch anything from the small muted
| preview.
| gs17 wrote:
| For me it shows captions in the preview, so I actually get what
| they're saying. I don't have captions on for videos, so no idea
| why it's different between us.
| matsemann wrote:
| I do get captions, but they seldom make sense. I guess no one
| at YouTube have tried watching non-English videos when making
| this preview feature..? To be fair, the captions are quite
| bad for the British panel shows I get recommended as well.
| gs17 wrote:
| That's fair, I forgot how awful the captions can be. Still
| not sure how we got to a situation where, when watching a
| video on my Google phone, the phone can make vastly better,
| and near real-time, captions than YouTube can.
| cphoover wrote:
| Youtube has become almost unusable. recommendations are so bad.
| Because I'm politically independent I've been put into some kind
| of right-wing recommendation track... Now I'm getting recommended
| ignorant pwnd the lib shorts. I've pressed not interested and
| don't recommend this channel but it does nothing.
|
| I really hate the endless short videos of youtube, instagram, and
| tiktok. I have no tiktok but they've essentially recreated the
| same crap on youtube.
|
| The experience of YouTube has been pretty much completely ruined
| for me. The content of videos seems to have gone way down too. I
| think this may have coincided with the change in monetization
| strategy. Seems like the quality of recommendations has gone
| WAYYY down since then.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's not just you, I'm left of Democrat and end up getting
| Jordan Peterson recommended to me. Especially on shorts. My
| guess is the algorithm thinks I like "politics" and suggests
| whatever "political" content it can find.
|
| Besides this, I too have found the content quality declining.
| The best content now comes from channels/creators I followed
| years ago, while most new stuff that's being recommended is of
| the reaction to reaction to reaction variety.
| xg15 wrote:
| Conspiracy theory: If the only remaining sorting options all bury
| old videos, is this maybe a preparation to put old videos into
| cold storage?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The only two possible filters on the list of videos of a
| channel now are most recent and most popular._
|
| Isn't that all there's ever been? Just chronological and
| popularity? This post isn't very helpful unless you say what you
| think has been removed. (I, for one, have always wished for most
| popular over the last 30 days, but oh well.)
|
| > _Also, there 's less videos on a single row now._
|
| You're going to have to tell us how many there were before and
| how many there are now. I'm not seeing any difference. It also
| depends -- are you talking about the home page? Channel home
| page? Channel videos tab? Because they all act differently.
|
| Are you sure you just haven't changed your zoom settings or
| something? Or your window width?
| iampuero wrote:
| I appreciated this comment, especially since this article is
| currently near to the top of HN at the same time:
| https://www.karlsutt.com/articles/communicating-effectively-...
| animal_spirits wrote:
| You used to be able to filter by oldest to newest which doesn't
| look possible anymore
| happyopossum wrote:
| Err, that's sorting - not filtering. And I'm staring at a
| YouTube channel right now and the sort options are:
|
| Most Popular Date added (oldest) Date added (newest)
| garblegarble wrote:
| >Most Popular Date added (oldest) Date added (newest)
|
| That's what I see too, but worth remembering that other
| people might see totally different UI options, given the
| number of A/B tests that Google run
| jjice wrote:
| Was it there recently for you? I hadn't seen that option on a
| channel's list of videos for what must be years now.
| dartharva wrote:
| There was an "oldest" filter too. Especially necessary for
| today's YouTube for us to revisit channels that once used to be
| good but then gradually fell into dark patterns like everyone
| else in the industry.
| swyx wrote:
| you can add it back in since it just takes a url param.
| (until they break this too of course)
|
| https://github.com/sw-yx/youtube-browser-extension
| jasode wrote:
| Fyi... the url params in that source code[1] no longer
| work: const urls = { popular:
| `?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid`, oldest:
| `?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid`, newest:
| `?view=0&sort=dd&flow=grid`, }
|
| Which means the following url modification with _"
| &sort=da"_ will _not work_ in an attempt to list the oldest
| videos first: https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasium/videos?v
| iew=0&sort=da&f...
|
| [1] from https://github.com/sw-yx/youtube-browser-
| extension/blob/e76f...
| ffwd wrote:
| I slapped together a really quick script to get oldest
| videos via Youtube API. It goes through all the videos
| from a playlist ID and then writes them to a html file
| with oldest first. Looks like this:
| https://i.imgur.com/ZxCgnBY.png Not perfect but works ok
|
| https://github.com/n0x5/scripts/blob/master/youtube_api_u
| plo...
|
| Need an API key and also the Uploads playlist ID from the
| channel which can use this script to get: https://github.
| com/n0x5/scripts/blob/master/youtube_get_uplo...
|
| It's a little convoluted I might implement get uploads id
| right into the script but the issue is it doesn't always
| return the correct channel when searching by name, in
| which case one has to manually go through the results and
| find the right channel id which would take longer to code
| to actually work all the time.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Good product design is not based on personal preferences,
| it's data/usage-driven. Having an unused feature is bloat
| that takes away important dev/QA resources.
| Tryk wrote:
| I disagree. Good product design is faithful and doesn't
| change every time someone does an A/B test
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "the product". If the product is a
| content platform where the main purpose is serving ads,
| then I agree. If you're trying to build a "bicycle for the
| mind" that actually empowers the user then removing seldom
| used, but useful features will kill the thing. I can
| imagine what A/B tested Vim would look like.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >I can imagine what A/B tested Vim would look like.
|
| Much more intuitive to learn?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| A vim A/B test blindly adhered to would make it so any
| key pressed quit vim.
| a9h74j wrote:
| I want Clippy for Emacs. "It looks like you are trying do
| define a new mode. May I help with that?"
| jasode wrote:
| _> Isn't that all there's ever been? Just chronological and
| popularity? _
|
| Youtube old UI "SORT BY" option had _" Date added (oldest)"_ :
| https://imgur.com/a/9czAAiv
|
| Youtube new UI removed "oldest" option and only has _" Recently
| uploaded"_ : https://imgur.com/a/aSAhxLC
|
| (Apparently, the new javascript for Youtube hasn't propagated
| to all worldwide servers yet which is why I was able to get
| screenshots of both the old & new UI by using different
| computers.)
| jraph wrote:
| Invidious is an acceptable interface to YouTube.
|
| Some things are missing, like searching and queuing videos while
| watching one (I guess adding this feature could be a weekend
| project), but there's no ads, you can listen to video without
| downloading the video part, it does not stop after a while, and
| is quite lightweight. You can subscribe to channels and there's
| no magic happening in the videos you actually see, nor any need
| for a Google account. The information density is correct. You
| don't wait before a skeleton while the interface loads, because
| it's instant. SponsorBlock works with it too.
|
| I can recommend. It might not be very sexy, but its interface
| design is not driven by commercial reasons and does not follow
| the oversimplification trend.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Likewise, I recommend Invidious, it's clean and sane. There are
| a lot of things missing but that's a feature not a bug.
| rexreed wrote:
| I am a big user of Invidious as well. The biggest issue is the
| lack of subtitling, especially foreign language subtitles.
| Also, the lack of playlist support. Those things often force me
| back to YouTube when I need to view a video with english
| language subtitles. Is there any way to get subtitles into the
| Invidious interface?
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| I feel like many Google UI's have been getting progressively
| worse... I used to watch my movies on google play..now i have no
| idea where they have gone... in the web i can still access via
| play, but phone app not there?! no idea what this company is
| doing left and right hand aren't in sync
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| I was just thinking the same thing this morning using the Play
| Store dev console, which reminded me of Cloud console.
| Everything is randomly jumbled into a bunch of menus on the
| left. I can't remember where anything is.
| superkuh wrote:
| Definitely. Were you aware that Google search will never return
| more than 400 results? Most people don't run into this because
| they use the default of 10 results per page and it takes 38
| pages. But I use 100 per page and that's only 3 page of
| results. I can (and do) scan through that in under a minute.
| http://googlesearchonlyreturns400results.lol/
|
| Google search has been severely gimped. And it's not alone.
| Bing too will only ever return under 900 results. The days of
| surfing the web are over. The tools to do so no longer exist.
| Now the searchable web it's just whatever has been posted on a
| corporate walled garden in the last year.
| yupper32 wrote:
| I've literally never in my life needed more than 400 results.
| What could you possibly be doing where you need over 400
| results?
|
| Severely gimped? Are you sure your use case doesn't just
| represent an extremely extremely small percentage of users?
| superkuh wrote:
| I'm absolutely sure that people who actually search the
| internet are so few that google does not think serving them
| is profitable. That's what I'm saying. Most people are like
| you and only click the first couple results.
|
| And this is a terrible situation. There's an entire
| generation of people that can never learn how to search,
| even if they wanted to, since it is no longer available.
| blondin wrote:
| how else did you filter uploaded videos? i don't remember what
| the other options are. also, the new UI is faster on my old 10 yo
| machine.
| baud147258 wrote:
| you could also filter by oldest first.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's so annoying that they keep removing ways to watch a
| channel from it's beginning. This isn't the first time. Do
| you not want me to spend more time watching videos, YouTube?
| replygirl wrote:
| In the dropdown there was oldest, and they had been playing
| with a shorts/videos toggle
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love how everything keeps getting "condensed". Tweets took
| us to 140 characters, but then doubled. Vines took video to
| short short short segments, then everyone else followed.
| Eventually, we're going to have some SV darling of a startup
| release a new app called Frmz that only allows for 1 frame
| video segments. They're going to try to release a photo app
| as a video app and the sheeple will fall over themselves
| trying to become the next big video influencer. Some VC
| trying to challenge SoftBank will go big on Framz and the
| hype will be insane.
| deorder wrote:
| Lately I often have trouble finding the date/time a youtube video
| was posted. Sometimes I find it when I open the description box,
| but not always.
| petargyurov wrote:
| Am I the only one who uses YouTube like this:
|
| * Only go on the Subscriptions page; I've never once visited the
| "Home" page
|
| * Blocked the Recommended Videos sidebar using uBlock
|
| * Use SponsorBlock
|
| * Use uBO filters to remove Shorts from Subscriptions page
|
| I come to watch what I want, not get all the clickbait on the
| side.
| dont__panic wrote:
| You go to the subscriptions page? I've been subscribed to
| channel RSS feeds for a year or so now, never even go to
| YouTube to "browse" because the interface is so awful.
|
| I'd like to figure out how to filter Shorts from my RSS feeds,
| but my preferred channels almost never use them so it hasn't
| been a big deal. The only other annoyance is live streams,
| which seem to debut on my RSS feed several hours before they're
| actually live (with no clear information about the "live-iness"
| of the video).
| [deleted]
| qull wrote:
| tiborsaas wrote:
| With this many extensions you could write your own frontend :)
| timbit42 wrote:
| Like NewPipe?
| andreyk wrote:
| I also usually watch from subscriptions (I am subscribed to
| 100s of channels). But I do like the home page and
| recommendations for discovering new channels! In my experience
| it actually captures what I like to watch a lot (perhaps
| because I subscribe to a lot of stuff and like many videos).
| justnotworthit wrote:
| Set aside the custom uBO filters and add "Remove Youtube
| Suggestions" to your arsenal. You can block a huge array of UI
| elements.
|
| I too only do subscriptions, watch everything my subscribed
| channels put out by placing them in my playlists (custom watch
| later lists for attention spans/activies), and only find other
| channels through my current channels. If you don't watch
| everything from specific channels (some big ones really pump
| them out), I recommend PocketTube's Subscription manger (and
| playlist manager).
|
| Youtube hates us. It takes away tools for us to watch how you
| and I want, and refuses to add basic tools to playlists like
| "removed all watched" and "sort by length". I'm subscribed
| "watch later" still exists. They want you to just watch
| "recommended" videos one after the other like tik-tok-
| television.
| Pmop wrote:
| I do the same thing. I also have search/watch history turned
| off.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I use it like this:
|
| * Never go to https://youtube.com to find anything. Only go to
| YouTube when it's a known link you found on another site. I
| don't need recommendations or ads
|
| * Copy the URL, paste it into yt-dlp
|
| * Wait a few seconds for the video to download and watch it in
| my viewer of choice with no crap attached.
| opan wrote:
| To add to this, you can directly play stuff in mpv if yt-dlp
| is installed and in your PATH.
|
| Combine this with a window manager shortcut to open the
| clipboard contents in mpv and the experience is pretty slick.
|
| You can also dump the URLs in a .m3u file and watch a bunch
| in a row with mpv that way.
| blfr wrote:
| I use SponsorBlock and uBlock quite heavily but you're missing
| out on Home. The recommendations are surprisingly good.
|
| For me, it basically takes a guess what topics and themes I
| find interesting and pulls content around them. Automatic
| notifications are also pretty good.
|
| YouTube figured out that I like interviews on a certain channel
| and nothing else, or Ukraine war updates from another channel
| but not their regular content. Probably through simple similar
| audience trick but solid selection nevertheless.
|
| For whatever reason, it cannot apply this knowledge to shorts
| which are dreadfully bad.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Ukraine war updates from another channel but not their
| regular content
|
| Speaking of search and YouTube UI... are you talking about
| that veteran guy who occasionally does coverage on Ukraine
| but keeps a level head. He will often point out why it is
| important to think about why your enemy is doing what it is
| doing. And he uses some open source map to show what is going
| on?
|
| ...and the rest of his content seems to be reviews of
| military related things, or something else that has nothing
| to do with Ukraine?
|
| Cause yeah I'm subscribed to that guy, I think... but I
| totally forget what his channel is and don't seem to be
| getting any recommendations for his videos anymore.
| blfr wrote:
| It's a Polish travel channel "Podroze bez paszportu" which
| has taken up these updates after the war turned hot again
| so probably not the one you're thinking of.
| loufe wrote:
| Was it something like S2underground? I noticed he dropped
| off the edge of the map in the last 2 months or so, as
| well.
| lovingCranberry wrote:
| I find the recommendations genuinely horrible. I only get
| channels like real life lore, Adam Something etc, with
| sometimes very shallow takes at politics. And after marking
| those channels with "I don't want to see this", I get their
| hundreds of copycats.
|
| I mostly watch channels like Aswath Damodaran, mCoding, etc.,
| which are not related to the contents of the mentioned
| channels at all, yet their recommendation engine still shows
| me all this stuff.
| maphew wrote:
| Talking with friends: some report most recommendations
| align with their interests, even those that are surprising
| because they haven't expressed interest in that category
| (hadn't yet watched or liked a video in the theme). However
| like you other friends report routinely aweful
| recommendations across the board. My experience is in the
| middle somewhere.
|
| I wish there were a way to see how it places you in various
| demographics, with a corresponding 'slider' to move
| yourself in/out of topics.
| sph wrote:
| Most or my recommendation are OK, but after 10 or so,
| Youtube starts recommending MMA videos, football, the
| latest K-Pop song, "I am pregnant!" trending crap. None
| of it is relevant, I keep telling it I am not interested
| yet Youtube keeps recommending trending topics.
|
| It just doesn't bloody care.
|
| I added another reminder on my todo list to get rid of
| Premium and go rogue. My biggest issue is watching it on
| Android TV and the iPad, I will need a good adblocking
| setup, no way in hell I will watch ads.
| jcpst wrote:
| This is interesting to me- I'm curious to hear how people use
| it. I do one of two things:
|
| - search duckduckgo, go to the "videos" tab, then I end up on
| youtube if that's where the video is.
|
| - go to youtube.com, use the search, pick the video.
|
| - I don't ever like/subscribe/comment on anything.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| I have removed all feeds from the homepage, all recommended
| feeds, all comments, all video overlays with uBO. History is
| disabled, watch later hidden. I hardly ever use search
| directly on YT.
|
| The easiest way for me not to get consumed by trash is to
| proactively hide it. I leaned that I have low self control
| when it comes to data consumption, so I block everything I
| identify as dangerous.
| jeanlucdebran wrote:
| for mostly the same reasons, I tend to use `yt-dlp`; I go
| on a quick foray to look for what I _really_ (and
| rationally, not dopamine-driven) want, get them all locally
| (wrote a script to batch them) and then I watch without any
| ads and far away from temptations :)
| marssaxman wrote:
| Same for me. In addition, I exclusively browse YouTube in a
| private window, so they will have a harder time trying to
| compile a profile of my interests.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| do this instead:
|
| site:youtube.com <your_searchterm>
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| or like so: !yt <your_searchterm> !gv <your_searchterm>
| jcpst wrote:
| Thanks! I forget that's a thing, even though I have
| muscle memory to use the bang notation to search !npm
| godshatter wrote:
| I follow a link from a local page of bookmarks I curate
| usually into a creators videos tab using firefox in private
| mode. I don't log in ever. I might click on some recommended
| videos in the sidebar, but a handful of videos later and the
| recommendations have jumped the shark and it's time to open a
| new window. If I happen on a new creator, I add a link to
| their videos tab on their main page to my list of bookmarks.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Enhancer for Youtube lets me setup the UI the way I like it.
| kevincox wrote:
| I'm not as extreme, but >90% of my YouTube watching is via the
| channel RSS feeds (which I get sent to my email and filtered
| into "Videos" and "Videos Background" folders). Then 10% of the
| time if I am out of subscribed videos and want to see something
| new I scroll the homepage. I find that I rarely appreciate the
| recommendations below the videos but sometimes the homepage is
| ok.
| snird wrote:
| Yes, you probably are one of a tiny group.
|
| Youtube power is in its recommendation engine. I discovered
| amazing content through this engine. You say you come to watch
| what you want, but how do you initially fill the "subscription"
| page without exploring first?
|
| There can be various levels of exploring. Maybe visiting the
| home page only once a month. But the distribution capabilities
| are what makes Youtube what it is.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Is the recommendation engine more than just "Currently
| watching X - people who watch X usually watch Y next"?
|
| I say that because, as someone who does not sign into
| YouTube, I have no idea if it gets more complex.
| kevincox wrote:
| The recommendations for me are trash. They are 50% videos
| that I have watched and 40% videos that I have had
| recommended and scrolled past before. Most of the 10% of new
| stuff is just clickbait trash.
|
| Every once in a while after scrolling for a while it gives me
| a "Want something new?" link and then the recommendations are
| fanatic but that feed has no bookmarkable URL or reliable way
| to get to it.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > I discovered amazing content through this engine
|
| Did you actually discover it through youtube's algorithms and
| discovery engine or was it linked to you by friends and you
| simply watched it on Youtube?
|
| These are completely different things in this context.
|
| > But the distribution capabilities are what makes Youtube
| what it is.
|
| Hold on, I thought it was the recommendation engine? Which is
| it? Distribution is about economies of scale and good
| engineering, recommendation is about putting the user first,
| rather than monetization.
| naikrovek wrote:
| agree. a lot of people I've known who say "there is nothing
| good on YouTube" either ignore or outright block recommended
| videos from showing up. there are centuries of videos worth
| watching on YouTube, and the more you tell YouTube what you
| like (by watching) the better it gets at recommending things
| you like.
| bavell wrote:
| My recommendations have become such an echo chamber that it
| actively pushes me away from using YT. It's frustrating
| scrolling through rows and rows of the same rehashed
| content from mostly the same network of creators. I wish I
| could turn the dial down on similar content and ratchet up
| interesting but unrelated content.
| mtone wrote:
| When I check my recommended feed it's all stuff very
| closely related stuff to my subscriptions and recent views,
| and some useless shorts. It's just an echo chamber at this
| point.
|
| If I'm looking for potentially interesting content outside
| my core subscription views, I'm better served by turning on
| FM radio.
| wruza wrote:
| I actually want it to stop "recommending" and be a year
| 200x youtube when you could randomly stumble upon
| something interesting and follow it. Today's youtube
| really feels like a chamber, a very secure one.
| wruza wrote:
| I deleted my youtube account last month and started new one
| because it stuck in a loop of feeding me bs I don't like. I
| don't know where do you find good recommendations there,
| for me it's still the same bs. Maybe I am too picky, maybe
| you just like what it recommends, but I don't. I guess if
| an engine makes enough users happy, it may be called good,
| but not for the other 5%.
|
| For example I watched and subscribed to PBS ST to kick
| start. It instantly flooded my feed with low-quality sci-
| pop with "pro voice actors" voices and stupid sensational
| topics like "shocking alien planet" or "will our sun
| explode tomorrow? Emoji emoji emoji". No astrophysics was
| recommended yet. Yesterday I searched for and binge-watched
| about hyena clan relationships, today it recommended me two
| quran surahs for good sleep, few colorful open-mouth-
| sensation morons (not sure which topic they were trying to
| "wow") and a very badly compiled drama about different snow
| leopards chasing goats. And that's while I'm holding my
| finger on "not interested" trigger for weeks.
|
| What am I doing wrong?
| burkaman wrote:
| I use Youtube as more of a delivery channel than a platform,
| kind of like podcasts. I listen to a fair number of podcasts
| and to be honest I have no idea where I found most of them, I
| guess word of mouth? Or maybe linked from some article I read
| a long time ago? It definitely wasn't from any
| recommendations engine, although my podcast app does have a
| "Browse" section that I've never used.
|
| I don't think it's necessarily bad to use the automated
| recommendations but there are certainly other ways to
| discover new content.
| groovybits wrote:
| Personally, the majority of my Home page are videos from my
| subscribed channels. I get the occasional suggestions for
| related content from other channels, but I'd say 8/10 times the
| suggestions are good ones for me.
|
| My typical usage is:
|
| * Go to Home page * Add highly relevant videos to my Watch
| Later playlist * View the videos from Watch Later, like/dislike
| as appropriate * Rinse and repeat
|
| I'm trying to give Shorts a shot. I particularly like them for
| viewing podcast shorts, but I've noticed the suggestions are
| taking a longer time to give me 'relevant' videos. Some of the
| Shorts are totally random, while others are from my Subscribed
| channels. I make sure to like/dislike as appropriate, and I've
| noticed a slight improvement in a week's time.
| Kubuxu wrote:
| There is one primary reason why I don't watch shorts, you
| cannot adjust speed of them (I watch most YT at 2.5x speed).
| auxermen wrote:
| On desktop you can use a script that redirects you to
| normal video UI instead of the shorts one and you can
| change the speed there:
| https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/439993-youtube-shorts-
| redi...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I blocked the domain which serves thumbnail images.
|
| Pages are amazingly clean now.
|
| When I mouseover a video with an interesting title, the preview
| appears.
| wingerlang wrote:
| Seems excessive IMO. Many videos have good thumbnails, better
| than the titles.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I don't know how to define excessive in this case, but it
| made the website much more tolerable for me, and I'm
| grateful for being able to do it.
|
| The thumbnails are very distracting, and I found it hard to
| pay attention to the video playing on screen.
|
| I don't miss the thumbnails at all, not one bit.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| Interesting idea, I will try that. I have disabled almost
| everything I could on YT (feeds, comments, video
| overlays, recommendations, history), but occasionally
| still encounter the horrible twisted-face-pointing-finger
| thumbnails.
| cortesoft wrote:
| My only interaction with youtube is clicking on a link from
| another site, or searching for something on google and clicking
| on the link from their. I never navigate within youtube, nor
| click on any other videos.
| _jal wrote:
| Don't forget dismissing the ads, and then the login nag, and
| then ad to subscribe, so the video is actually visible.
|
| ...all of which serve to remind me what a pit of suck the
| service is, and ensure I never subscribe.
|
| And the cycle of life is complete.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| I block out all comments. Those are likely all bots or people
| indistinguishable from bots, I use grease monkey and a
| javascript script to block it out, I also use another one to be
| able to increase the playback speed beyond the arbitrary 2x
| limit.
|
| But getting the clean google-videos layout which was just a
| video player and a search bar can be done entirely with ublock
| :D
| naikrovek wrote:
| > I block out all comments. Those are likely all bots or
| people indistinguishable from bots
|
| definitely not. there are very few bots in YouTube comments
| these days, though there certainly are some.
|
| there is a LOT of brown-nosing, though.
|
| I don't watch ultra-popular stuff, so what I see is different
| from what you will see, necessarily.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Depends on the video. In DiabloLOL series there will always
| be someone breaking down all references second by second.
|
| In gameplay and game streaming videos you'll find useful
| tidbits and hints on how to play a game.
|
| etc.
| jeanlucdebran wrote:
| .. and in addition, why not use yt-dlp (or similar) to watch
| without the zillion ads and in full control of when and what
| you consume?
| poetril wrote:
| This is exactly how I browse as well. I have uBlock hiding all
| links that could possibly lead me to the home page, as well the
| sidebar, and post video recommendations. The only content I
| consume is from the 'Subscriptions' page.
| kleer001 wrote:
| I don't. I'm so off the chart in personality trait openness I
| have to see new stuff all the time. And not just any new stuff.
| It's annoying.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| "Try YouTube TV. "
|
| This popup always shows up in my account no matter how many
| times I dismiss it. Very annoying.
|
| Any way to remove this with uBO? I tried a few ways but it
| ended up not working well
| garblegarble wrote:
| Related: what I've been doing with the incessant "we need
| your consent" popups on incognito tabs is to write a
| tampermonkey script that on page load searches and auto-
| clicks the refuse / dismiss button, the same approach might
| work for your issue? Crazy this is the sort of nonsense we
| have to resort to in order to make Google products usable...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Did they ever fix the problem that prevented having both a
| YouTube Premium and YouTube TV subscription on the same
| account?
| aendruk wrote:
| > Only go on the Subscriptions page
|
| For this I just use the web feeds. Creators are free to hop
| platforms and my workflow won't need to change.
| aquir wrote:
| How can you block Shorts using uBO? Tried a few methods but
| none of them worked!
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I do all of the above, except the Shorts filter because I
| didn't know how to do that. Would you be willing to share this?
|
| YouTube is so much better when you remove all the little
| overlays and dark-patterns meant to get you to watch _something
| else_ at all times.
| jrmann100 wrote:
| An extra shoutout to "DF Tube (Distraction Free)" extensions[0]
| which have some of those UI zappers pre-programmed.
|
| I use YouTube like this! Definitely going to implement some of
| your suggestions.
|
| [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-
| distractio...
| dymk wrote:
| It might be because I've got a large and diverse enough set of
| channel subscriptions, but the Home page is surprisingly good
| at recommending good quality new channels and videos.
|
| I don't think I could use YT without SponsorBlock and uBO. The
| SponsorBlock outage of the last few days really made me aware
| how much time is wasted on those sponsored segments, intro
| reels, and interaction reminders.
|
| I _love_ it when videos have a SB "skip to highlight"
| timestamp -that 10 minute video of the creator rambling on and
| on is now a 10 second video of the slow-motion moneyshot.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| You can watch all your youtubes on vlc: just press open network
| stream and copy paste the link. this gives you more features
| through vlc than you can shake a stick at...
| kevinfiol wrote:
| Nope! I did almost exactly what you described before ejecting
| altogether and consuming my subscriptions via RSS + a static
| site I generate hourly (linked in a top-level comment).
|
| I recognize that people value YouTube for it's recommendation
| engine. That was never the draw for me; I just want a place to
| watch videos from creators I like. Overall, I found the
| recommendations to not work for me; they were overall noisy and
| distracting. Someone asked me once "well how do you find new
| content?", which I found hilarious.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm the other way round: I _do_ use the recommendation engine,
| but I click "not interested" on anything that isn't a music
| video and make sure to only have music videos in my likes. Oh
| and of course adblock. Newpipe for mobile.
|
| This works OK, although it tends to promote the same things
| over and over, seemingly at random.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| YouTube is also unbearable without Clickbait Remover For
| Youtube. It changes the thumbnails to a frame from the video.
|
| Linus' channel is particularly horrible without this.
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
| yewenjie wrote:
| Ah! This is very useful. I hate those over-the-top
| expressions in the thumbnails.
| guilamu wrote:
| Imho, Freetube is the best way to use YouTube.
| ilyt wrote:
| I gave up long time ago and just used RSS feeds from channels I
| subscribe.
|
| I am fully convinced the only reason RSS still works is that
| someone at YT forgot the feature exists and so it didn't get
| fucked with from when YT subscription panel was still working.
| delecti wrote:
| The /feed/subscriptions page has also very consistently worked
| as a reverse-chronological feed of your subscriptions the whole
| time.
| comboy wrote:
| Does it matter? It seem to literally throw random videos it
| thinks you may like into the search results.
|
| It is hard to process for me how could they screw simple things
| so bad.
| andybak wrote:
| Why is there such a mania for reducing sort/finest options?
|
| They carry such a small cognitive load and are of immense value
| to many, many use cases.
|
| Who decides these things?
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| People who's search term history looks like this:
|
| <funny videos> <cats> <harry styles new gf> <steroid cycle>
| <apple or pc>
| bakugo wrote:
| Because allowing users to control how they use the platform is
| not viable in today's world.
|
| From an engagement standpoint, the ideal Youtube is one where
| you can't actually view a list of videos from a specific
| channel at all. Or search for videos. Or anything really that
| isn't just watching whatever set of videos the algorithm thinks
| will maximize your engagement at that time.
|
| The web in general is moving in this direction at a fast pace
| and the cause for all of this is one thing: phones. That's it.
| There's an increasingly massive number of people that spend
| hours a day staring at their phones mindlessly scrolling
| through tiktok, twitter, etc. to waste their time away when
| they have nothing better to do, simply consuming whatever
| content is fed to them, giving absolutely no thought to what
| they're seeing beyond how much it entertains them in that
| moment. They don't want to look for specific videos, they don't
| want to watch a specific channel, they just want to be kept
| busy by an algorithm. These people are insanely easy to please
| and will consume for hours at a time, watching plenty of ads.
| The more people start behaving like this, the more money these
| platforms make.
| fsflover wrote:
| > The web in general is moving in this direction at a fast
| pace
|
| True, with an exception of Mastodon, PeerTube, Matrix and
| other distributed networks based on free software.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Sounds like you are describing the typical HN reader
| ssalka wrote:
| To many, a simpler product is more appealing to a greater
| number of users. I feel like the idea of "convention over
| configuration" went to an unnatural extreme in the world of
| product design - every choice you give a user is an admission
| that you as the creator of the app don't know what the user
| wants in this particular case, and you have to let them tell
| you. For this reason, you may want to stick to what you know.
|
| At the same time, there is some pipe dream that the app can
| just give the user a 100% ideal experience with virtually no
| input on the user's part. What this really means is less
| optionality for users who want it.
|
| Lastly, in any company there are going to be people fighting
| against complexity to keep things maintainable, scalable etc.
| The product gets sacrificed for the organization.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I think it in large part comes down to how the performance
| assessment process manages PMs at an org like Google. When
| you're measured at work on your success in 'launching' things,
| and the evaluation metric comes down to your personal idea
| authorship and impact generated, there's a profound need to
| extinguish other paths. An incremental improvement is
| insufficient, you need to have launched / authored / designed,
| and provided personal outsized impact. Or as an engineer,
| played some leading role in making this vision reality. The
| organization as a whole is _constantly_ on the hunt for these
| units of work, because the internal metrics encourages this. X
| launched and replaces Y is a good story to tell the promo
| committee. Iterating on someone else 's design is career
| suicide.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| What do you do if you are in such org and your idea-less
| manager not only steals all your ideas but also sabotages you
| to the point where you never get to implement anything
| yourself?
|
| Are there books on how to play the game?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I dunno, I was there for 10 years and never learned to
| play. So I quit.
|
| But I never had a hostile manager really. Some coworkers
| though. Most people were more than decent.
|
| It's just... a hard environment to get used to if you're
| not inclined to think in a big-organizational way.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| I read here in HN (whatever that means to you) that Product
| Owners in the Youtube team have an incentive to improve certain
| metrics if they ever want to be promoted.
|
| I can imagine a "Watch Later" product owner thinking that if he
| removes a certain control, he can game the stats and say the
| feature is seeing more use - securing his promotion.
|
| We see this in public administration all the time, no reason to
| think private enterprise would be any different.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I wonder how do product owners get assigned to features, in
| this case. Is it 'musical chairs'? Or at random?
| conductr wrote:
| Tend to agree. Given the actor, I'd bet they want you to
| search multiple times instead of search once and play with
| filters. They want you to feel lost so you are forced to
| search.
|
| Having written that, I realize my YT usage is fairly low on
| search and I feel myself being forced towards it more and
| more in recent months/years.
| qull wrote:
| pas wrote:
| okay, but who owns filters and search and whatnot? nobody?
| oh, okay.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| More data = bigger indexes = much much more complexity and cost
| involved in simple filtering.
| qull wrote:
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Usually bottom line efficiency (less surface area to maintain,
| fewer staff needed etc) drives action more than a long tail of
| user value. Don't ask about use case value ask about business
| value. Don't like it, well I agree but don't be surprised that
| companies aren't a project to deliver value to humanity.
| vezycash wrote:
| > why is there such a mania for reducing sort/finest options
|
| Apple started the minimalist, option hiding, functionality
| axing, 1984-ish control freak movement. They even got away with
| selling phones without chargers, making $40 billion on
| lightning cables sales.
|
| Just blame Apple.
| Kye wrote:
| They still come with a Lightning to USB-C cable. I plug it
| into my laptop when I need a quick charge and use my existing
| lower power Lightning charger when I don't.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| Not everything is a conspiracy to make more money.
|
| I don't know a single person in my bubble who needs more
| lightning cables. I have a dozen unused lightning cables
| already laying around.
|
| I threw away every pair of headphones that came with an
| iPhone I have ever bought. Most of mini/micro usb cables that
| come with small electronics go into trash - I do not need
| more cables!
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Was just thinking about how they stopped including
| headphones. Yeah, I already have enough chargers,
| headphones and whatever else...
|
| Cynically it's probably a way to adjust for inflation or
| whatever by keeping the same price but reducing the amount
| of stuff you get.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >Not everything is a conspiracy to make more money.
|
| ???? That's literally exactly what the point of every
| business decision is.
| afavour wrote:
| Well, no, that's why things like government regulations
| exist. Some business decisions are to keep within, say, a
| government target for waste produced.
| Minor49er wrote:
| And government control over these matters is why
| lobbyists exist
| [deleted]
| augustuspolius wrote:
| There are literally people in the world that can be
| motivated by something other than money. Some of those
| people are involved in making business decisions. Imagine
| that!
| duxup wrote:
| I've made business decisions.
|
| It's not always a conspiracy to make more money.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| You are right sometimes it is all out in the open
| duxup wrote:
| Agreed. At this point extra cables and chargers seems
| wasteful.
|
| If you need one there are plenty of options, including
| affordable 3rd party options.
| delecti wrote:
| Agreed. I've never even owned a device that uses Lightning,
| and I still have a small handful of Lightning cables in
| various cable drawers.
| yreg wrote:
| >making $40 billion on lightning cables sales
|
| Someone commented this yesterday but the calculation was
| crap. What source do you have?
| nabakin wrote:
| My best, charitable guess is that their goal is to make YouTube
| as easy to use and low-friction as possible for anyone. For all
| of us here, using technology is second nature, but for a lot of
| people, especially in 3rd world countries where I imagine
| YouTube is expanding, adding another button means adding a
| nontrivial mental overhead for those people
| ravenstine wrote:
| They probably ran an A/B test and whomever is in charge at
| YouTube was thrilled that the B test resulted in people
| clicking around more. _Engagement!_
| truemotive wrote:
| If it's no longer an option, the platform can now control that
| lever with no indication of why. See how Facebook sorts the
| news feed for you? Oh, it doesn't? That used to be a user
| option right up top.
| gsich wrote:
| /?sk=h_chr still works maybe
| gsich wrote:
| Designers gonna design. Even if it's a stupid mess. I wonder
| why nobody from Google ever shows up when there is negative
| feedback.
|
| On that hand: Google never cares about feedback, you can't
| submit it, if you can it gets ignored.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| Not sure if you work with designers. They are not some
| isolated partially insane org in most tech companies.
| Decisions like that likely start with a PM, get reviewed,
| then eng reviewed, then they run an experiment and confirm a
| hypothesis. None of that involves going to HN to seek
| feedback. Should they ignore an engagement increases of 3%
| because someone has stern feedback? That's just not the
| reality of tech.
|
| Personally, I hardly use YouTube unless I follow a direct
| link. I have also disabled all feeds, comments, and
| suggestions using uBlock Origin.
| gsich wrote:
| Not just HN. It's the same with Mozilla. They change stuff
| just because they feel like it. Then their metrics confirm
| that the users like it (because they have no choice, or the
| alternative is cumbersome). Then they pat themselves on the
| back.
|
| If you expect that people are stupid you will get stupid
| interfaces.
| augustuspolius wrote:
| Personally I don't think they consider their users
| stupid. The problem is in the fact that they (teams, PMs,
| designers, engineers) exist. They have to do something.
| And these companies keep hiring more and more, staff more
| and more teams... So you end up with massive orgs that
| own relatively small surfaces. They all have perf reviews
| every few months, all have OKRs, all have the natural
| desire to make changes, build and refactor stuff.
|
| There is just no way to endlessly improve a UI. At some
| point if you have 3K people work on it it will become a
| hot mess.
| fernmyth wrote:
| > Should they ignore engagement increases of 3% because
| someone has stern feedback?
|
| Yes. A sane person or organization must be able to make
| judgements that include values other than narrow metrics.
|
| If your engagement numbers told you to jump off a bridge,
| would you?
| augustuspolius wrote:
| User feedback is very unreliable. At a certain scale we
| tend to trust usage data more. (Eg why should they care
| more about your individual feedback than what seems like
| an increased user satisfaction with the platform?)
|
| So far I have not encountered a single big tech company
| that is able to factor in values into decision making at
| this level. I don't know whether we even have the tools
| for that. The incentives (promos, bonuses), company size
| (internal competition, changing ownership, focus on
| growth), being public (relentless growth), etc, etc - all
| of that contributes to this outcome.
|
| Personally I prefer a more thoughtful and caring approach
| to introducing changes, but knowing how the industry
| works I don't see a lot of space for that.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Waddya mean?
|
| https://postimg.cc/Wq3t4Fxn
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Always found it puzzling that it takes 5 clicks to remove a
| recommendation from the homepage. 1. dots menu 2. "not
| interested" 3. "tell us why" 4. I've already watched this video,
| check. 5. submit.
|
| No doubt there's particular reasons for not doing so, but a
| "don't show me videos I've already seen" would be quite effective
| for my aims.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| There needs to be a "Don't show me this _type_ of video ever
| again. "
|
| I recently watched some of the trial of the mass murderer who
| killed a bunch of people at a parade in Wisconsin.
|
| Now almost my entire youtube feed is things like "Trial lawyer
| REACTS to Darrel Brooks VERDICT!" - just absolute click bait
| garbage. I hate it, and I genuinely don't know how to make it
| go away.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| That would be nice. Or in addition to 'liking', an option to
| 'show me more like this' which can be turned off.
| gs17 wrote:
| It really needs a "topic" based system like Google News.
| Their recommendations have serious flaws as well, but at
| least I can see the topics a story was (potentially)
| recommended based on and flag one as not for me. The YT
| homepage kind of does that now, except you can't tell it
| topics are bad.
| robszumski wrote:
| Am I crazy or did they remove 1.15x playback? That one seemed
| like the right mix of "I don't have 30 minutes" and not skewing
| the voices too much.
| W3cUYxYwmXb5c wrote:
| they keep making minor changes like this that invariably make
| things worse. For me it's the loss of controls for quickly
| removing individual videos from the Watch Later playlist.
| stormdennis wrote:
| On a tangent. I used to be able play youtube videos on firefox on
| my old android phone with the screen turned off. It was some
| setting in firefox that I can't seem to remember or else is no
| longer there. It was great because you could listen to a long
| lecture while walking using up less battery and even more
| importantly, not inadvertently clicking on something on screen.
| Anyone have any ideas if it's still possible?
| onemoresoop wrote:
| It's also possible with invidious[0].
|
| [0]: https://invidio.us/
| Toorkit wrote:
| Last time I tried this (a few weeks ago), the procedure turned
| out to be:
|
| 1. play video
|
| 2. turn off screen
|
| 3. video stops, turn on screen
|
| 4. pull down the menu from the top, showing a firefox
| notification with a play button
|
| 5. click play
|
| 6. turn off screen again
|
| This is on Android 11, YMMV.
| iamsmooney wrote:
| I think in the Android app that's only a feature for some
| videos if you have Premium. Never tried it in the browser.
| clircle wrote:
| This works fine in Brave using a feature called 'brave
| playlist' (or something like that)
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is possible on iOS with the Vinegar extension. In case you
| are considering Apple or have family/friends with this problem
| too.
| Dx5IQ wrote:
| You can use this Android add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...
| blfr wrote:
| It's possible with
|
| 1. Youtube Vanced (deprecated but still works),
|
| 2. ReVanced (in development),
|
| 3. Brave mobile browser,
|
| 4. NewPipe (opensource, doesn't support most account-based
| features),
|
| 5. YouTube Premium and their regular app.
| DaveSchmindel wrote:
| I feel like an old man in my own head, muttering, "I remember the
| Sort feature like it was yesterday!"
| hedora wrote:
| I don't log into google, and I noticed the YouTube search
| suggestions were hot garbage.
|
| Anyway, I was watching a logged in friend using YouTube, and
| realized their suggestions were equally irrelevant.
|
| I wish people would mirror their videos somewhere that's more
| archival focused and less of a spam shovel.
| 0898 wrote:
| I think this is a YouTube Premium feature now.
| godshatter wrote:
| I had naively assumed that "YouTube Premium" would add
| functionality that users would pay for instead of leaving it
| the same and reducing the experience for everyone else. I'm
| apparently a moron.
| dpedu wrote:
| On youtube's desktop site, I've also noticed that sometime within
| the last couple months the home page no longer shows the duration
| of videos when the page loads. After 3-6 seconds, the timestamps
| pop in. I don't know if this is intentionally or a result of
| lazy-loading - but seeing that the video thumb, title, author,
| view count, and age all load instantly with the page, I struggle
| to come up with a reason it could be unintentional.
|
| This bothers me because I like to know how long a video is before
| I commit the time to sitting down and watching it. This feels
| like an attempt at a dark pattern with the intent to improve
| metrics - surely watch time is a metric youtube cares about.
| gs17 wrote:
| My timestamps don't pop in, they're either there immediately or
| never show up. It's very frustrating, since I also decide what
| to watch based on them.
| staindk wrote:
| Could be your adblocker sometimes blocking them, other times
| not?
|
| Though it probably is some bug or... rapid A/B testing thing
| Google has going on.
| gs17 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's just a bug, I don't think adblock
| caused it for me. Wouldn't put it past them to
| intentionally break things for adblock users though.
| spikej wrote:
| Same with the 3 dots that show extra options like saving to
| playlist. They pop in after the rest of the site has loaded.
| bavell wrote:
| They also have a tiny hotbox which encourages misclicks
| (trying to click "Not Interested" but whoopsie, another view
| on that video!). Dark patterns galore.
|
| Edit: looks like the dots are 40x40px on desktop
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| And sometimes the save to playlist is a separate button while
| at other times it's hidden behind the dots. I've had to
| cancel countless clips from misclicking. (Multiple times in a
| row even)
| Octabrain wrote:
| Another thing I've noticed in Youtube on the smart(tm) TV, is
| that the app does not adapt the suggestions based on previous
| searches anymore. Now it's almost entirely generic crap all the
| time (Seriously, I am so sick of those thumbnails with the
| surprise face. I hate them!)
|
| Between the ads and the poor content, I feel like Youtube is
| pushing hard to become the new public TV.
| dom96 wrote:
| yeah, I've noticed that timestamp thing as well. Super
| annoying.
| b34r wrote:
| I use the YouTube app on my Tesla often and honestly this UI
| update has been a welcome improvement so far. The like button is
| now above the fold so I can easily tap it. It's the little things
| lob_it wrote:
| activitypea wrote:
| it only ever gets worse
| petargyurov wrote:
| Has anyone experienced a bug with navigating back from a video?
| It's been happening for months now but it's on and off.
|
| When you're watching a video and you go back, the url updates but
| the page doesn't refresh/redirect, the video just ends up
| restarting. Very annoying.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| This happens to me. I never realized that anything happened and
| that the URL changed, which means I would naturally click the
| back button _again_ , and it takes me to the previous-previous
| page (which is usually a new tab for me). It's very
| frustrating.
|
| Edit: this happens on Firefox on Windows. I haven't tried
| Chrome.
| phs2501 wrote:
| Yep. On Firefox, haven't tried on other browsers. At this point
| I just hit "back, back, forward" without thinking about it when
| I see it happen.
| geo-matik wrote:
| Happened to me as well, now I click the search button to go
| back.
| dilap wrote:
| Yep, it's completely jacked. Very annoying. Of course, back in
| Twitter also randomly loses your place, too. I guess it's one
| of those "we're a big deal site now" checklist items: Fuck up
| the back button.
| dieselgate wrote:
| In regards to what you've mentioned about hitting back on
| Twitter and losing your scroll position - I think this is a
| difficult technical problem so solve in an elegant and
| reproducible way. We've attempted to address this back
| location issue at my work for an "infinite scroll" feature
| and can only get it right about half the time and believe
| that's handled mostly by the browser. We've specifically
| looked at how YouTube handles this - and it's about the same
| success rate for them.
|
| Oh well even HN will always mess up your scroll position when
| hitting back so it goes
| dilap wrote:
| As a non-web dev, it is mystifying to me that this is hard.
|
| But, taking it as true (for some arcane reason), then
| perhaps they should change the design of their site so that
| popping away from the timeline isn't a part of the normal
| usage flow!
|
| Specifically, if you want to expand the conversation under
| a tweet, you tap it, which takes you to a new page; when
| you're done, you want to continue reading your timeline. If
| making the back button can't be made reliable, then it
| seems a design that simply expands the thread off to the
| right or inline below or in a popup, without leaving the
| timeline page, would work much better.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Yes, also there's been a bug in comment textfields for at least
| 3 years: press enter twice in a row and the cursor won't move
| to the next line.
| eastbound wrote:
| Same problems in Jira: Start typing a comment, and it watches
| the issue or change issue, because keyboard navigation isn't
| disabled while in a field.
|
| But press Cmd+K to reach the address bar, or Cmd+W to close
| the tab: Nothing happens because Jira hijacks the keyboard.
|
| It's the big site challenge: Wreck the user experience and
| watch people who keep using it because they have to.
| tiluha wrote:
| Yes, that is very annoying. In general YouTubes UX is getting
| worse constantly. They moved the read more button for video
| descriptions up and to the right directly behind the end of the
| description text, which makes it almost completely invisible.
| Even now that i know where to look, it is still very hard to
| find. The like button is now only an outline, which is filled
| when active. I find this confusing, which lead to me unliking
| and reliking a video because i could not determine the state of
| the button visually. Was never a problem, back when the thimb
| turned blue. The site is quite sluggish in general, at least
| for me.
|
| Overall YouTube makes for a nice example of how modern design
| often makes the experience worse
| phs2501 wrote:
| I've seen the new "read more" button sometimes actually
| completely be invisible... it'll come back if I force a re-
| layout (i.e. resizing the browser).
|
| But yeah the new design is pretty awful. No idea what they
| were thinking.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| We need 'hug a web dev day' a thing. People are so harsh
| over a button or a color these days.
| phs2501 wrote:
| To be fair everything being complained about in this
| thread is pretty clearly broken stuff.
|
| And for design, I'm actually harsh over stuff like the
| new "top comment" box that, when clicked on, /completely
| removes the normal comment interface/, shrinks the video,
| and moves the comments to a new and otherwise-completely-
| unseen comment interface to the right side of the video.
| Which is bizarre, inexplicable user experience and a fair
| amount worse than simply being a weird color.
| [deleted]
| mijamo wrote:
| On a different note I have encountered a bug where I reach a
| page with a video title and description but the video being
| played does not match and is instead from another one. I think
| it has happened especially after going to a full page video
| from the homepage when there is a video in the mini-view being
| played and about to switch.
| johtso wrote:
| This has been driving me mad.. I'm pretty sure I only started
| seeing this problem maybe a month ago? It's the cardinal sin.
| Don't break the back button!
| smrq wrote:
| Yep. Firefox (seems to be a pattern in the replies). Back-back-
| forward every time on YouTube now. It's terrible.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| or back -> ctrl+L -> return
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yes. There's all sorts of bugs. The buggiest thing is the
| queue. Each time they fix a bug it seems other weirdness pops
| up. Having built a similar queue for the web UI of a music
| streaming app, I know it can be complicated, but surely it
| can't be _this_ complicated. For a while it was unusable for me
| because I like building a queue and reordering the items, and
| sorting didn 't work at all. The queue should be one of the
| primary things that automated tests and QA should be able to
| track pretty easily and be treated as first class.
| a9h74j wrote:
| I've harbored a thought which, incidentally, might also be
| more reliably testable for QA. Rather than rely upon drag-
| and-drop for reordering queue entries, provide explicit move-
| up and move-down performing small buttons, one pair per
| visible queue entry. Of course, drag-and-drop might be
| considered visually cleaner (no visual affordances) and allow
| for move-by-several-slots larger motions. Would that the
| current YT UI actually _allow_ drag-and-drop-between to work
| as expected.
| NeveHanter wrote:
| Yeah, same problem on Firefox, I've thought that this may be
| because of one of the extensions I use, but after disabling
| everything it was still happening...
| dymk wrote:
| Yes, I run into this all the time in Firefox
| peppertree wrote:
| Yes happens consistently with Safari. I guess YouTube engineers
| only test on Chrome -\\_(tsu)_/-
| pueblito wrote:
| 'member when YouTube intentionally put a bug in their site to
| mess with MS?
| niuzeta wrote:
| Wait, what?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a literal bug but maybe they were
| talking about this:
|
| https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
| eastbound wrote:
| This is incredible! I didn't know the story! Thank you so
| much for finding the link, it's a great piece of history!
|
| Just a reminder, at that time you couldn't do
| console.log(), because it worked with the devtools open,
| but "console" would be null with the devtools closed,
| which is treacherous because it only bugged for non-dev
| users. As a bonus, IE would ask the user whether they
| wanted to debug.
| kevinfiol wrote:
| I gave up on the YouTube UI a while ago and now rely on a script
| that runs every hour to generate an HTML page of my subscriptions
| (via RSS feeds): https://kevinfiol.com/youtube/
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| Are you open to sharing the code you use to generate this?
| kevinfiol wrote:
| Sure: https://github.com/kevinfiol/youtube
|
| Some things to note if you'd like to use it:
|
| 1. I deploy to Github Pages via Github Actions. See
| .github/workflows/build.yml for details. The only thing you
| might wanna change here is the `schedule` of how often to
| build your page
|
| 2. I define my subscriptions in src/feeds.json. It's just an
| array of tuples [name, rss_url].
|
| 3. I currently redirect to an Invidious instance. You can
| modify the `YOUTUBE_URL` const in scripts/render.js to
| `youtube.com` if you don't care for this
|
| EDIT: By the way, I also wrote this scrappy user script to
| quickly download my youtube subscriptions as JSON: https://gi
| st.github.com/kevinfiol/da63cd137327b8f8d6b7070601...
|
| It'll just create a `get feeds` button at
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels
| pradn wrote:
| This is actually fantastic. I think we need alternatives like
| this for every other "algorithmic feed" website.
|
| Twitter has become unusable and toxic for me in recent years.
| It seems like most of the tweets are recommendations - those
| liked by my follows or their friends. It's maddening to not
| have control. It seems like no matter how much I try I can't
| help but see vitriolic politics tweets, million-like jokes,
| etc.
| ducktective wrote:
| Yes, and the cure for us users is : yt-dlp
|
| I don't even do that. I use mpv + yt-dlp + SponsorBlock plugin:
| `script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp`
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| YouTube is/was a really good YouTube. It should stop trying to be
| a second-rate TikTok.
| red2awn wrote:
| Everything also have a rounded corner now. This is only in my A/B
| test group though, I don't see it when in incognito.
| jgworks wrote:
| I very much dislike the "glow" behind the videos now. Its
| constantly updating and very distracting.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| While everyone is complaining sometimes the bottom of the video
| is cut off on mobile... this is particularly annoying in Chess
| videos if the bottom row of white pieces is cut off.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| The Watch later UX is atrocious too :
|
| - Adding : hover the video 1000ms to reveal the button
|
| - Removing : 2 clicks away under a menu
|
| Why hide the 2 most frequent actions? Do you even do user
| testing?
| regularjack wrote:
| Your most frequent actions aren't necessarily everyone's. I
| very rarely use the watch later feature. Maybe they are doing
| user testing.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I'm referring to the UI when you're specifically in watch
| later mode.
|
| Imagine if opening a Google result took 2 clicks, it'd be
| infuriating.
| seydor wrote:
| This has been going downhill for a while. I don't know if YT
| engineers actually use the website. Below a certain screen width
| the date of the video just disappears from view. The video
| description becomes crammed to the side and is unreadable, with
| the "more" link rendering on top of the text. This seems to be
| (??) intentional behavior, why?
|
| search has also become ... rather stupid? it shows a few results
| and then some irrelevant "recommendations"
|
| Also would be nice if they stopped pushing shorts so hard. Why
| does youtube want to become tiktok, that is offensive to both
| users and creators, becayse YT has a distinct use case
| wongarsu wrote:
| The push for shorts is somewhat ironic, because Youtube used to
| have lots of short videos in the early days. But then Youtube
| pushed everyone to inflate their video lengths, first with a
| recommendation algorithm that rewarded watch time, then with
| monetization that rewarded videos over 10 minutes (now 8
| minutes). It took TikTok's success to show Youtube that users
| might like shorter videos.
|
| But I'm not sure where Youtube is actually going with this.
| There's now "normal Youtube", "Shorts" and "Live" coexisting on
| the same platform, along with Premium exclusives and Youtube
| Music. All of them integrated somewhat awkwardly.
| 3np wrote:
| As usual, Piped is an alternative front-end made with users in
| mind. You can self-host (persistence not necessary) or use public
| instances.
|
| Original author is the same as the equally excellent NewPiped
| mobile app.
|
| https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped
| rexreed wrote:
| How does this differ from Invidious?
| TT-392 wrote:
| Same idea, but it also has sponsorblock and the bring
| dislikes back thing. Also less limited resolution options.
| They are very similar, but I generally prefer piped
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Thanks, i'm going to check this out.
|
| I hate how youtube doesn't just show whats new from my
| subscribed content creators, it's insane to me that instead is
| a bunch of random crap and I miss content from the people I
| have already told the algorithm I want to see.
|
| Hoping this has a way of just showing the content from the
| creators I want to watch, trying to have a more balance digital
| life and remove the crap these companies put on you, while
| keeping up to date with stuff that is interesting to me, it's
| always a difficult battle.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Am I missing something, or is there no sorting option beyond
| channel?
|
| That's what drives me nuts about Youtube, is that I can't put
| "science" youtubers in to a particular, very narrow category
| separated from other elements. This seems like _the_ feature
| that would make Youtube infinitely more useful. I can 't count
| how many times I've had to bounce back and forth through the
| shitty subscription view trying to associate some
| infinitesimally small avatar with a tutorial video I watched
| two months ago. Somehow I inevitably miss it, too.
|
| Of course there's no incentive for Google to do this, but these
| other guys..?
| jstx1 wrote:
| Now there's "pull up for precise seeking" which doesn't do all
| that much but it's a new feature. And of course ambient mode
| which doesn't do much either.
| CyborgCabbage wrote:
| Going to take this opportunity to ask if anyone else hasn't been
| able to find any playlists in YouTube search results? Whenever I
| filter for playlists, there is always nothing.
| maphew wrote:
| Something to keep in mind is that YouTube does A/B testing,
| showing different interface design changes to different people
| and then comparing the stats later.
| [deleted]
| theduder99 wrote:
| Same here. Since YT has been going downhill I've started
| downloading videos and storing them offline (no not on google
| drive for G to scan and remove in the future) in a couple spots
| because I've seen many items in my saved lists get removed or set
| to private over the years.
| lrvick wrote:
| Install LibRedirect and you never need to visit youtube.com
| again.
| D13Fd wrote:
| What were they before? This post assumes a level of YouTube
| knowledge that I lack.
| HurdsTimesNear wrote:
| SOMEBODY pls write a firefox extension that allows you to
| simulate high engagement for any feature you pick. that way we
| could ascertain only the stuff we like about websites get's to
| stay and everything else goes by the wayside...
| c7b wrote:
| I recently got YT premium in response to their push, but it's
| messed with my YT enjoyment in a somewhat unexpected way: I
| hadn't realized to what extent I'd become used to having
| different sets of recommendations and being able to get fresh
| starts on recommendations by deleting cookies...
|
| I've almost started to become strategic about what I click on now
| instead of just going with whatever flow I'm enjoying right now.
| Not sure if I'll continue the subscription after the trial if
| they don't give us more options for managing our preferences. I
| guess I could get a family option for myself just to get more
| accounts, but I'll have to see.
| kortex wrote:
| Can YT premium still have multiple accounts? That's the main
| way I manage my learned feeds.
|
| I do wish there was something like "virtualenv" for youtube,
| where it's trivial to change your preferences without changing
| your account (which is still tied to things like subscribers
| and comments.
| c7b wrote:
| > Can YT premium still have multiple accounts?
|
| Not that I'm aware of, at least not for a single standard
| subscription. There's a family option with up to 5 accounts
| that might work, but it's probably not how that's meant to be
| used, so you might run into some problems. virtualenv is a
| good analogy, that's what I'd want as well, but I doubt that
| we're going to get that.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| You can definitely create a new Brand account, which is
| managed by the same Google Account. The brand account will
| then also have premium benefits, while having its own watch
| history.
|
| This is how I use it.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/4642409?hl=en
| c7b wrote:
| Interesting, thanks!
| ysavir wrote:
| I wonder if they're A/B testing it. Yesterday I wanted to filter
| a channel's videos and didn't see _any_ options to filter or
| sort. Now I'm seeing the option to sort by most popular, newest
| first, and oldest first, which is still different from your
| experience.
|
| Or maybe they just had a bug interfering with it and are still
| getting a solution in place (if they even noticed it)
| input_sh wrote:
| That's not all, there are _some_ channels where you can 't even
| sort by most popular anymore.
|
| From what I gather they're mostly music-related ones (perhaps in
| favour of YouTube's "most popular songs" playlists). Here's a
| random example: https://youtube.com/c/DomDolla/videos
|
| Notice there's no option to even select any type of sort.
|
| It makes a _tiny bit_ of sense to use that YouTube playlist
| instead (for example artists may upload songs to a label 's
| channel or something), but it's still very annoying.
| mrkramer wrote:
| People at Google don't use Google products, YouTube in
| particular. It is quite astonishing that so many features are
| nonsense or not yet implemented. Why I can't search comments in
| comments section of a video; if a video has 100+ or 1 000+
| comments I can't easily find comments that are relevant to me.
| Why I can't search my playlist videos and my liked videos; I have
| 1 000+ liked videos and 1 000+ videos in my Watch Later playlist.
| Maybe I'm disorganized with Watch Later playlist but I'm also a
| power user which is not satisfied with only casual features. Any
| yea you can't sort channel videos like you use to(Newest, Oldest,
| Most Popular). Like you said it's now only Most recent and Most
| popular. And one thing that I almost forgot, in Web version of
| YouTube you can search channel for videos and in native mobile
| app you can't search channel for videos. When I say search
| channel for videos I mean query with keywords(there is no Search
| Bar within Channel page or within Videos tab).
| bavell wrote:
| My pet theory is that they only implement features which are
| lightweight enough to not cause significant load on their
| backend and if it does then the feature dies right there, no
| matter how useful. Extreme cost-focused tunnel vision.
| mrkramer wrote:
| But it doesn't make sense when you know that they have
| billions in cash sitting in bank waiting to be spend. They
| have the money and the knowledge to implement whatever
| feature they need to. Backend load and infrastructure scale
| is not a problem at this point. My somewhat simple
| explanation is; Google wants to cater to the casual crowd so
| hard to the point of sacrificing user experience for advanced
| users or power users who use YouTube every day. They rather
| prefer status quo than try to bother with more advanced
| features. But I have to admit, they already have some pretty
| advanced features but they need to keep pushing.
| numinos1 wrote:
| YouTube is slowly transitioning from a UGC video marketplace
| into a modern version of cable tv. These technical oversights
| aren't bugs. They're a deliberate effort to shape user behavior
| and maximize advertising revenue. Old content is a liability
| and is slowly being deprecated from the system.
| opan wrote:
| They've also hidden away the "save to playlist" button, making it
| extra clicks to do.
| running101 wrote:
| I always feel dumb when using YouTube's apps and website. It is
| probably the most non intuitive site I use
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| I wish people would use Twitch more to make it a more viable
| Youtube alternative. Amazon doesn't have user hostile attitude
| like Google.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Don't mind all those counterfeit goods on Amazon.com.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Amazon doesn't have user hostile attitude like Google.
|
| Yes, not user hostile is exactly NOT how I would describe
| Amazon's trash heap that is Market
| bakugo wrote:
| Do you know what Twitch is? It's not a Youtube alternative in
| the slightest, and it was never meant to be.
| BoppreH wrote:
| Some channels have also opted to remove sorting altogether:
| https://www.youtube.com/user/enyatv/videos
|
| I understand the desire to control how users are exposed to your
| content, but I think these options err too much on the side of
| removing user freedom.
| swyx wrote:
| it annoyed me too so made a chrome extension to add it back:
| https://github.com/sw-yx/youtube-browser-extension
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Music channels are this weird, broken mess; some channels are
| weirdly split into two under the hood and which one you get
| depends on where in the UI you click ( try it!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajhC6GjK30 -- the icon and the
| artist name right next door under the video go to two different
| YouTube channels ). Playlists are sometimes replaced with
| Albums except it doesn't work right, and there's a bug where
| the infinite scroll repeats the first chunk of options forever
| when browsing albums. I assume the lack of sorting is just an
| oversight in the Music Artist template, because it's not like
| they tested anything else about it.
| tech234a wrote:
| That happens a lot with music channels, which tend to aggregate
| videos uploaded across multiple channels but are labeled as
| coming from one channel. I'm not sure they opted to remove the
| option.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Noticed this UI change today as well and it's awful. Makes me
| feel less bad that I canceled premium and won't be using YT
| anymore.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Oh I see what you mean. I'm not sure I ever used those filters so
| I don't know what it was before... but the overall frontpage
| seems to keep getting less enjoyable. Shorts, which I'll never
| watch, taking up tons of room and less videos. I'm not conscious
| of all the differences, but it sure was better before...
| minraws wrote:
| Seconded those pills make me want to commit murder... It's really
| annoying then there is randomly adjusting css on the home page,
| they have over done stuff in the name of mobile first.
| holler wrote:
| the pill/rounded corners make it feel plushy, but are
| discordant with the square edges of the rectangular video,
| overall making the design feel off.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| The funny thing is that Google brags about the science behind
| their UX and then they have complete garbage UX like Youtube and
| libs like material design. I also wonder if the Youtube mobile
| app testers are minors or have transparent fingers.
| notsahil wrote:
| You can try Invidious it's an open source alternative front-end
| to YouTube. https://docs.invidious.io/instances/
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| Eventually, YouTube will degrade to the point where it's not
| worth using. If you know of any truly precious videos up there,
| I'd start downloading them now.
| branon wrote:
| This is really important. I've got 700 GB (and growing) of
| archived YouTube videos. Started downloading them a few months
| ago because I had noticed older stuff disappearing.
|
| Who knows how many videos in my specific sub-interest (ASMR
| videos, for the curious) are already lost forever. I try not to
| think about that. I've got a representative sample archived and
| am working to keep up with the new stuff that gets posted.
| Anything added to the archive is picked up by Jellyfin for
| later perusal. From here I can create playlists, tweak
| metadata, etc...
|
| A video or two being taken down for creative reasons by the
| author is one thing. YouTube making executive decisions to
| delist videos or channels is entirely different.
|
| Google has had it too good for too long with YouTube being the
| de-facto video host of the Internet. Society at large is at
| fault for buying in so completely.
|
| I just want important examples of an interesting art form to
| stand the test of time. And if you want something done right...
| blueflow wrote:
| I'm using https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp to download my
| favorite videos, and after years of using it, its worth the
| effort. Many good memories would have been inaccessible
| otherwise.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I've started just in the last couple weeks. Series with
| entries on thetvdb or imdb go on Jellyfin, mixed in with
| ordinary TV shows. Works great. Others I'm squirreling away
| for now (I don't like how Jellyfin handles web videos that
| don't have a TV metadata entry, even with the 3rd part addon
| for using Youtube's metadata, so I'm waiting for a better
| solution or until I get bored and write my own metadata for
| those others)
| joshstrange wrote:
| To expand on this, setup one of the various yt-dlp "servers"
| (It's just software, often in a docker container. I have an
| old one that uses youtube-dl, I need to update it) where you
| can post over to them and it will download the video and drop
| it in a folder somewhere. Then setup a Shortcut (iOS),
| bookmarklet, etc so that on any platform you are on, you are
| 1 click away from kicking off a download. Then sort/organize
| those videos as you see fit at a later date.
|
| Bonus points for putting your intake folder in a place your
| media server can see.
| ericd wrote:
| Sounds great. Any shortcut/bookmarklet code or pointers to
| servers to share? I'm sure readers could set that up
| themselves, but time/attention are always limited
| resources.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Something like this: https://github.com/frznman/yt-dlp-
| server
|
| In my case I stuck my instance (not that exact software
| but similar) behind Caddy and added basic auth. Then I
| just setup Shortcuts or bookmarklets that just did:
| curl -X POST --data-urlencode "url={{url}}"
| http://{{address}}:8080/yt/q
|
| Where {{url}} was the current page I was on and
| {{address}} was where my instance was available (with
| username:password added to it, example:
| "https://user:pass@ytdlp.mydomain.com/yt/q").
| ericd wrote:
| Thanks very much! Going to add that to our NAS.
| blancNoir wrote:
| What's been driving me nuts is they took away the ability to
| toggle comments to the right of the video, so you could scroll
| them while viewing instead of having comments below the video
| necessitating scrolling the video out of view while reading
| comments. I thought that toggle was relatively new too.
| mrkramer wrote:
| You can still do it in YouTube Android app as far as I know.
| Open video, tap that little empty square in the bottom right
| corner and your video will be rotated to the horizontal
| position(view) and then tap that little comments box[0] in the
| bottom left corner(third icon).
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/vDzDrio.jpg
| clircle wrote:
| What filter/sorter was removed?
| villgax wrote:
| Despite having premium there is just no way to get rid of Shorts
| everywhere. It is the worst form of content which deliberately
| removes the seekbar & is not enough to convey anything
| meaningful. It's basically video reddit but minus the option
| delve further into the content.
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