[HN Gopher] We only have one life. Let's stop wasting it on YouT...
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We only have one life. Let's stop wasting it on YouTube shorts
Author : youz
Score : 124 points
Date : 2025-10-23 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| DoktorDelta wrote:
| You can also hide Shorts from the entire UI with this uBlock
| script: https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
| skaul wrote:
| This is easy in Brave, just go to
| brave://settings/shields/filters and enable the "YouTube Anti-
| Shorts" filter list.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| I simply add "0.0.0.0 youtube.com" to the (network wide) hosts
| file on my router. Problem solved. I'm simply do understand why
| the problem is just with "shorts", most of the "longs" are not
| worth wasting time with either. :-)
| wvenable wrote:
| YouTube has a massive amount of edutainment content that is
| absolutely fantastic. Content that could never make it onto
| mainstream television.
|
| At this point I think I owe all my hobbies to YouTube.
| siavosh wrote:
| I wish there was something for the app. I haven't tried it
| recently but you could kind of stop the shorts being displayed
| for a brief period of time before it re-asserted itself. And I
| already pay for ad-free youtube wish it was at least a premium
| feature but obviously makes no sense from corporate point of
| view.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| If you turn off history and disable the few toggles under
| privacy related to your usage, it disables recommendations
| (including shorts)
| jonplackett wrote:
| I've had to do this but miss recommendations now.
|
| I don't get shorts at all. They're just such a bag of shite.
| Like at least reels and TikTok have decent content sometimes.
| YT shorts are always so crappy.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Yeah Shorts seems to be the most filled with AI slop, its
| not even the funny/edgy AI slop. But mundane fake stories.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| For Android, you can hide all shorts stuff by patching the apk
| via ReVanced Manager.
| 360MustangScope wrote:
| Not to worry, you soon won't be able to do that in the next
| version
| thousand_nights wrote:
| seriously. there is nothing more infuriating then an app (which
| you pay a subscription for) gaslighting you into feeding you
| more slop even if you click "i dont want to see this" a
| thousand times. nice placebo button.
|
| i can imagine the smug face on some manager at google that gets
| himself off to engagement metrics at night because his life is
| so miserable. i wish these people could be named and shamed,
| but they hide behind a faceless corporation
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Begs the question - why don't you stop paying for it?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Right, at some point shouldn't we shame the people giving
| money to these companies, enabling them?
| thousand_nights wrote:
| i think my situation is quite niche - i host a lot of
| social gatherings for friends at my place and most of the
| time we like to play music videos on the TV either in the
| background or actively sharing our music tastes with each
| other
|
| adblocking YT on a TV is a PITA. i'd rather have it just
| work, to not interrupt the vibes
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Pretty easy if you just hook a laptop to the TV. Honestly
| way nicer ux queueing up videos with an actual keyboard
| vs tapping out single characters at a time with a remote.
| asterix99 wrote:
| If you have a samsung smart tv, you can install
| TizenTube. Takes a couple of hours to figure out the
| installation (poorly documented), but works flawlessly
| after that. https://github.com/reisxd/TizenTube
| zip8370 wrote:
| I've installed ScrollGuard a month ago. Great success in
| preventing doomscrolling.
|
| https://scrollguard.app/
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Last I checked, shorts are disabled if you disable
| recommendations.
| jfengel wrote:
| So instead of wasting your life 30 seconds at a time, you can
| skip straight to wasting your life by minutes and hours?
| zamadatix wrote:
| There seems to be something about the "short" approach that
| makes it easier to actually spend more time than you would with
| "longer" videos. Too much of anything is bad though, one should
| try to avoid large amounts of passive entertainment (my
| reminder to get off HN for today).
|
| I also don't think I could ever spend 2 hours watching shorts
| and feel like I left with something worth having spent the time
| on, but I can tell you some movies or long form videos which
| had enough impact to carry in my memory through today.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Depends how you define waste I guess, I loathe shorts, I enjoy
| hour long deep dives into naval armour.
|
| It's all perspective.
| paulnpace wrote:
| The only shorts I've clicked were an accident.
| seany wrote:
| The most annoying thing about shorts is that they seem to have
| more of the "old" YouTube algorithm back. The one that actually
| clustered around what you had watched. I often see a thumbnail,
| realize it's a short, then go and find the long version (often
| off YouTube)
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Also can use FreeTube, which lets you hide most distractions on
| YouTube.
| freehorse wrote:
| One can also use an extension etc to redirect the shorts url
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xyz to
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz which displays it as normal
| video, thus no endless scrolling etc. I have found no issue with
| this, but only with the shorts scrolling feature.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| YouTube shorts baffle me, in a way. "We've spent 20 years
| developing the perfect user interface for watching videos...now
| let's throw it all away and remove almost every feature so that
| it's more like TikTok."
| wvenable wrote:
| Youtube Shorts are apparently very popular; so even if they
| aren't our cup of tea, you can't argue with success.
| gtowey wrote:
| Gambling is also extremely successful but you could argue
| it's a net loss for society to have it.
|
| The argument that money == correctness is basically what
| we've been trained to believe by armies of MBAs, but it's not
| right. It's sad that the state of philosophical and moral
| discussions in our society has basically been usurped by a
| kind of thoughtless reductionism.
| moritonal wrote:
| They're addictive, they're "popular" in the way slot machines
| are popular and require controls around. It's just so easy to
| watch another, which miiiight be amazing!
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| It's successful in a really unhealthy kind of way though. I'm
| in my late 20s and in at least one group chat I'm in I've got
| 4+ friends who together we try to avoid shorts because they
| are such a time sink.
|
| You don't enjoy your time on it but it's engaging and it's
| hard to get out of once you get sucked in. My friends
| literally keep track of how long they've been away from
| shorts and regularly "relapse" into sinking hours into shorts
| "against their wills" even when they uninstall the app but
| eventually end up on the mobile website stuck in shorts.
|
| It's very much intentionally addicting and takes advantage of
| basically every dark pattern they can to maximize your time
| spent in the app.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you just described almost ever product ever :) I used Jira when
| it was first released and it was ridiculously amazing. facebook
| was fire too... but quarterly earnings are you know, once per
| quarter... :)
| raincole wrote:
| Try this: "we've spent 20 years developing the perfect user
| interface for watching videos, and our users are abandoning it
| for TikTok. What to do, Product Manager?"
| AuthAuth wrote:
| I dont think Youtube is losing users to Tiktok. I thnk Tiktok
| is growing with new potential youtuber users and youtube cant
| accept that and must throw everything away to capture them.
| arkensaw wrote:
| Are they really that bad? I've seen some great sketches through
| Youtube shorts. Case in point:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2zb7S2beKOE
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Are they really that bad?
|
| No, they're worse. Nothing like doing a search for a serious
| topic related to a class I'm teaching and having unrelated
| garbage shorts come up over and over, each taking up six times
| the space of a real video. I'm sure YT has someone analyzing
| data saying this is better. That person should be fired because
| they have no idea how to analyze data.
| api wrote:
| TikTok is worse. It's pretty shocking how addictive these rapid
| fire algorithmically driven video feeds are.
|
| I got into scrolling shorts once. Once. An hour and a half later
| I felt fried. It was literally an icky brain dead feeling like a
| hangover. Couldn't focus for another hour. It's like a drug, a
| bad one.
|
| Never again. I banned TikTok at the pi.hole level but
| unfortunately YouTube is sometimes useful. I just refuse to click
| on shorts.
|
| This stuff is really gross. Congratulations people. We found a
| way to deliver opioids by computer screen.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I have my browser set to clear cookies and site data
| automatically, so I'm not sure if my experience of YouTube
| shorts is typical, but I have a pet theory about why the
| feelings you describe are so common. It seems like a big part
| of the addictiveness is _not_ that the content is eye-catching,
| although this clearly has an effect. The platform gives you a
| quick way to move onto something else by scrolling /swiping,
| which means I find myself caught in a cycle of:
|
| 1. seeing AI slop or a unoriginal 'comedy' sketch,
|
| 2. thinking "eww get this off my screen",
|
| 3. scrolling down to the next video; jump to step 1
|
| On the rare occasions that the algorithm does show something
| genuinely interesting or creative, I watch to the end of the
| video and feel a lot more satisfied about spending time on it.
| That's not to say that long-form videos can't be distracting
| and addictive, but I would posit that 'shorts' engagement is
| actually driven by disgust rather than curiosity. I now avoid
| YouTube shorts like the plague, because life is too short to
| experience that volume of disgust in it.
| journal wrote:
| this post will probably have the opposite effect on people
| watching more shorts to understand why they suck.
| Animats wrote:
| Shorts are better than many long-form videos. The ones that start
| with some neckbeard with a big microphone blithering about
| something. Then there's a demand to "like my channel". Then
| filler historical material on the subject, probably involving
| zooming and panning over old public domain stills. Then an ad for
| NordVPN. Then a bit more historical material. Then, finally,
| about three minutes of new information. Then a recap of the
| history. Another "like my channel and ring my bell" demand. Then
| neckbeard fades out.
|
| Interspersed with this are Google ads. The padded length allows
| for more ad time and increases revenue.
|
| I can live with the shorts. They just show as stills for me
| unless I click them.
| p1necone wrote:
| Oh great another HN thread where everyone breathlessly moralizes
| meaningless bullshit. I watch them sometimes, they're fun. Often
| I learn new things about cooking or woodworking or brewing or
| whatever random hobby I'm interested in (or I laugh at comedy
| skits - not everything has to be productive). I get bored and go
| do something else after scrolling for a while. It's not that
| deep.
|
| And before you start writing the reply about dark patterns and
| hijacking my attention and so on. THAT'S ALL ENTERTAINMENT.
| FOREVER. Arthur Conan Doyle was writing short stories that
| "exploited your attention mechanisms" in the fucking 1900s.
|
| If you're going to complain about YouTube, complain about their
| opaque business practices when it comes to paying creators, not
| the medium.
| jahsome wrote:
| Denigrating "breathless moralization" and promply using ALL.
| CAPS. AND. EXCESSIVE. PUNCTUATION. topped off with gratuitous
| profanity was a masterstroke.
| lukebechtel wrote:
| AppBlock for Android has a feature where you can specifically
| block YouTube shorts, but still watch regular YouTube videos.
| herval wrote:
| 12+ years ago, I wrote a Chrome extension that blocked comment
| sections on youtube and blogs. It was time well invested.
| Eventually everything became social apps, so my little extension
| got less and less effective.
|
| I'm not looking forward to the near future where Youtube will
| pretty much be entirely shorts
| nomilk wrote:
| Add this to your uBlock Origin Lite filter list.
|
| I haven't seen a short since :)
|
| https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts/blob/master...
|
| How to do it: Click on uBlock Origin Lite extension -> Settings
| (cog icon) -> Filter lists -> Custom filters -> Import / Export
| (bottom of page) -> Paste in the list
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Speaking of which, what the fuck is wrong with product managers
| at big tech these days?
|
| When I try to express:
|
| > I don't want to see ANY shorts
|
| instead, I get:
|
| > show me _fewer_ youtube shorts
|
| when I want to say:
|
| > NO
|
| I'm only allowed to say:
|
| > mAyBe LaTeR
|
| Do the people behind these design decisions not realise they're
| monsters by gagging their users into only being able to express
| notions that appease them?
| raincole wrote:
| And YouTube doesn't really provide the option of showing less
| shorts. Try it. See if it really shows you less shorts there
| months later. Spoiler: it won't.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| itS Our PlatfORM, wE do wHAT We waNt
| Timwi wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether they realize it. Even if they do,
| they just don't care. Most corporate leaders have high
| degrees of psychopathy. They are exclusively focused on their
| profits and nothing else. If gagging their users makes them
| more money than not gagging their users, they will gag their
| users and they will spare zero thought on how the users might
| feel about being gagged.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| This is the point. Youtube mobile has even started opening
| straight into shorts on occassion rather than opening to the
| home screen. Intentionally dragging users into shorts ups
| engagement and watch time. Letting users opt out or avoid
| shorts is exactly counter to their goals and metrics.
| verdverm wrote:
| Same with AI at the top of search, I just want to to go away
| permanently. I will go to an AI app when I want to use AI
| stormbeard wrote:
| This didn't work for me after importing.
| roflchoppa wrote:
| ublock origin filter that worked for me:
|
| ``` youtube.com###items > ytd-item-section-renderer.style-
| scope.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer:last-child
| youtube.com##[is-shorts] youtube.com###secondary ```
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I find it slightly ironic that that statements ends with "YouTube
| Shorts" and not just "YouTube". What in particular makes the
| shorts so much worse compared to regular videos? If life is
| short, shouldn't one try to avoid spending too much time on
| YouTube overall?
| GodelNumbering wrote:
| I watch tons of long form educational content on youtube and
| entirely ignore shorts
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Shorts and full length videos have similar attributes. Both
| have good, life enriching stuff (tutorials, performances) and
| both have the downside of being addictive and often hollow (or
| downright empty).
|
| The difference is the Shorts format tips the scales. Somebody
| might want one and not the other.
| alecsm wrote:
| Many shorts are just AI cuts from bigger videos made to draw
| attention.
|
| And what's worse is the infinite scroll.
| johnisgood wrote:
| [delayed]
| raincole wrote:
| It's a pat on one's own back. "I might be hooked to whatever
| YouTube algorithm recommends me, but at least I don't watch
| shorts like teenagers today!"
| FuckButtons wrote:
| Well, you've more or less described the issue yourself. I don't
| need YouTube shorts to exist, at all. Youtube itself, is
| actually helpful for certain things, so I'm happy it exists.
| Even if it's incentives don't really align with my use of it as
| a sleep aid / radio station / university lectures and
| conference talk video portal.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| Short form algorithmically curated content is an order
| magnitude more addictive than long form videos from creators
| you intentionally click subscribe to
| osn9363739 wrote:
| I don't disagree, but they really are a different beast. Have
| you used the shorts feature? It's 95% brainrot. Where as you
| can use youtube intelligently to watch interesting things if
| you choose to. Obviously you could use regular youtube and
| watch brainrot/slop too, but there is no way to use shorts to
| watch good content.
| codemac wrote:
| attention required: 10 minute video > 10 second short
|
| When the written word took over with the printing press, the
| same concern was levied. The amount of attention required to
| listen and memorize a story/poem is a lot more than just
| reading it.
|
| The change with smart phones is just one of access/time spent
| on these things. There are people who are spending ~5 hours/day
| watching this content. There is a big difference between
| someone listening to 5 hours of a single poem, to reading 5
| hours of a single book, to reading 5 hours of blog posts, to
| watching 5 hours of a youtube video, to watching 5 hours of
| random videos, to 5 hours of <10s videos.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Short form content always leaves me wondering whether what I
| just watched is true or factual, I can't bring myself to not be
| skeptical of every short form video I watch because there is
| never enough context to tell otherwise.
|
| I only get what the creator wants to communicate, which is
| almost always misleading or missing details.
|
| It's an awful medium for communicating and I feel like I'm
| being misled every time I see short form content, which is
| rarely since I avoid it at all costs. At least with a longer
| video there is more substance to evaluate to tell whether the
| creator is worth trusting.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They are infuriating. They hide the scrubbing controls for
| whatever reason, I'm not sure. I guess to make it look like
| instagram. Usually the shorts I am served are straight up
| widescreen videos cut to smartphone narrow width which is
| disgusting when all my youtube consumption happens on an actual
| computer.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Ban TikTok which is the bigger problem
| bdangubic wrote:
| TikTok will soon be mandatory to be installed on every device.
| IRS will police it, you'll have to add TT handle to 1040 and
| show a proof of minimum daily activity ;)
| nextworddev wrote:
| lol, you must be reading some next level conspiracy theories
| LFjarramuk1 wrote:
| i dont know how to block this on my kids tablet this is so
| frustrating and bad by google.
| kendallpark wrote:
| Would really like some kind of legal policy that requires
| developers to allow users to opt out of algorithm generated
| feeds.
| peacebeard wrote:
| "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a
| lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous
| amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it
| were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury
| and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's
| final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we
| knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but
| we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of
| it... Life is long if you know how to use it."
|
| -- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How
| to Use It
| paulcole wrote:
| Bro never spent 2 hours watching Margin Call in 35 second
| chunks with a weird filter on top.
| _dain_ wrote:
| We are streaming to willing viewers at the current fair
| market price
| kadoban wrote:
| The heedless luxury and "no good activity" are some of the
| better parts of life.
|
| Personally I live for the every day, I'm not worrying too much
| about what I will regret for a few hours on my last day(s) if I
| even make it there.
| jackdoe wrote:
| i started using https://unhook.app/ recently, it changed my
| youtube habits in just a day
|
| home redirecting to /subscriptions, removing shorts, removing
| comments, removing autoplay suggestions
|
| its super nice now
| kendallpark wrote:
| I would love a legal policy that requires developers to allow
| users to opt out of algorithm-generated feeds. A "right to
| control consumption" or something that like.
| Insanity wrote:
| I started watching short like a year ago. Three months later I
| decided it was a net negative on my life and I stopped.
|
| Never looked back, it's such a waste of time
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Maybe I have my feed tuned really well or I subconsciously just
| ignore the slop, but these days I find that a lot of the time
| Shorts are more helpful than full length videos which, I guess
| for ad reasons, are so heavily padded out that it can be a chore
| to get to the meat of it. Also the little short "previews" of
| full length videos let me know if I should bother with the full
| length one or not.
|
| There is definitely some slop there, but I've overall found it
| more useful than not.
| redbell wrote:
| The other day, I was home with my kids, who then asked me to show
| them how Japanese schools look like, I fired up my YT app on my
| Android phone, turned incognito mode and searched "Japanese
| schools", and the results were beyond imagination: the first
| result was an _ad_ , the following results were ten successive
| _shorts_ , two per row for five columns!!
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(page generated 2025-10-23 23:00 UTC)