Shorts is the most braindead form of content. No important and worthwhile information is going to be explained in less than 30 seconds. Block that shit.
I create content but not for any form of monetization or trying to be popular, I just like to make things that are useful. I'm not happy about it, but my most successful video ever, 40,000 plus views was how to fix a lighter. YouTube automatically made it a short because it was under a minute.
I crapped that video out in about 20 minutes... Meanwhile the videos I put dozens of hours into get maybe 3, 4, 5, 600 views
It's also funny looking at it from the other side, from youtube creators saying they feel pressured to make shorts because shorts are so popular right now.
They're only 'popular' because youtube is pushing them like crazy on everyone they can. Youtube is manufacturing the demand, and creators feel the need to cater to that demand.
Yep. I occasionally need to search for a shorts video, but unless I do you can just select to not see the shorts in search, which is surprisingly nice, and should be included on the web UI.
The search is terrible even without shorts. The first 3 or for search results are related to your query, most everything after that is just unrelated stuff that YouTube thinks you'll like.
Pssst - put "before:2027" as it is, without spaces after the search query to change that. I'm guessing this won't be working for too painfully long now with the ai search thing, but grab it while it's hot I guess
Most devs have abandoned Revanced because the owner is an asshole. They've started a fork called 'Morphe'. Revanced is allegedly carelessly stealing code from Morphe, including using AI to "copy" patches from Morphe to Revanced, but the Revanced subreddit and discord mods are suppressing all mention of Morphe.
That's because the movie streams are encrypted and cannot be watched on third party apps. And even worse, YT is now experimenting with encrypting all the videos... Only reason I know this is because my account was unluckily chosen in an A/B test and I couldn't watch anything on VacuumTube or SmartTube...
Oh no that works fine for me too, but it only works because it's technically the "official" app except it's just patched. Everything else like the apps made for TVs and such will not work with encrypted streams. I really hope they don't go through with it. I quite enjoy casting stuff to my steamdeck and second monitors.
I blocked them with an extension in Firefox and it has improved my YouTube viewing experience, well, back to how it was before shorts, but still not quite as good as it was when we could still see downvotes.
I use the Youtube app on my old smart TV. One of the things that bothers me the most is navigation. Navigating the side bar makes every option load in its entirety as you scroll down it. Want to resume a video you already partially watched? You have to scroll to “Library” to get to your history. But you can’t just scroll there and get it over with, because just going down the menu means having to wait for every single page between “Home” and “Library” to load. What should be a quick, “click down four times, click right once, start video” becomes, “click down once, wait. Click again, wait. Click again, wait. Click again, wait…”
I see no reason why we can’t navigate the side menu without having shit load every time we click. If I wanted a preview of what’s available, I’d just choose that tab and go from there. If I’m trying to navigate to something specific I want to watch, it’s like YouTube goes out of their way to make it a pain in the ass.
See if you can install the smarttube APK. Worlds different, can block shorts, auto blocks ads, built in auto update. I won't watch YouTube without some sort of a blocker, I used reavanced on my phone and tablets.
After decades of stripping away info from videos? Tell me ain't so!
Yeah, I still have artists I like on the channel (social network effect, ugh), but I watch as the algorithm is trying to steer me away from them. It's frankly disgraceful.
I just ignore them, even though they are in my face. I've watched enough shorts to learn most are incomplete, most titles are deceiving, and no dates means I might be clicking on a news related item that is old hat. I can only find out the approximate date from the comments. I still love youtube for a lot of their other stuff though.
I don't mind them too much. I also don't watch a lot of them and I especially don't scroll through them. But I like that they (usually) get right to the point instead of waffling about and I don't have to block any ads.
And contrary to sentiment elsewhere in this thread, some are really informative. If someone’s feed is filled with brainrot I feel bad for ya son, I got 99 video suggestions and brainrot’s getting blocked (I know it doesn’t rhyme, we can workshop it.)
The one that would most fit the bill for Lemmings is Chris Boden aka Physicsduck but there are heaps of informative creators making short content that doesn’t waffle on just to pad the runtime.
That being said; obviously if the goal is to watch a 1 hour deep dive into a subject and the reaction is “shorts can’t do that”…. Well, yeah, they’re like the fun facts you could get on Minty’s wrappers not documentaries.
But it offers "skip to highlight" now, so you're not limited to only 30 seconds. If you're trying to fix something, sometimes you need more context rather than just a screwdriver unscrewing something and not explaining shit.
Most of the content providers are just re-cutting their existing stuff into shorts. They're low quality. Only the strongest creators can even manage to make one interesting enough to get someone to watch their channel
YouTube Shorts make zero difference if one's pattern of usage of YouTube is to only watch YouTube videos linked from other sources rather than actually staying within YouTube and consuming one after the other the videos their algorithm puts in front of you.
Personally I've never really got into the whole thing of just staying in YouTube and watching those videos that YouTube suggests, maybe because YouTube tends to suggest stuff with alarmist titles ("You won't believe what we've just found out") and other such loudmouth bullshitter crap, and for me that stuff just screams "untrustworthy and superficial bullshit which won't teach me anything new with any depth" so for years it's been the case that when I end up in YouTube their algorithm quickly put me off from consuming what it suggests. At most when I do stay within the YouTube environment to watch multiple videos, I'm explicitly searching for specific stuff, generally more stuff from the same person of the last good video I watched.
Usually I get a lot better YouTube video "suggestions" from links in posts and comments here or even in Reddit (back when I frequented it) than from the YouTube algorithm.
I consume content at my speed and dislike any sort of push solutions because at least for me content pushed towards me makes me feel pressured to watch (because the pile of unwatched stuff grows if I don't keep up with it).
I'm a lot more comfortable to do what I can when I can than having an external something set the pace.
I suspect getting "stressed" by a growing pile of unwatched stuff is a personality quirk.
Same, I have a couple of extensions to fix youtube. No ads, no shorts, no recommendations, no autoplay, no "most relevant" whatever the fuck yt thinks that means, then keyword filters and auto-hide played videos. The subs tab is just unwatched stuff from the people that interest me.
When it becomes too hard to keep up with fixing all of the shit they break each update to try to make free users' experiences worse, I'll leave before letting them push anything on me I don't ask for.
Looks like more people actively consume Youtube than i thought. And then even on their slow vibe page, probably logged in. Most here are rather tech-literate, no? Why not take a minute, to look up a native privacy-conscious client?
Shorts dont have the inserted scripted ads peppered through the video. Perfect for when I just want a short concise explanation for how to do some task, like change a faucet aerator or swap the air filter in my car. So I disagree, shorts have a place in search results at the moment.
Once those get ads, yeah, they should be separate.
Google didn't add shorts to cater to them, they did it because they saw Tiktok's success and wanted some of that. It's the same reason Instagram effectively became a Tiktok clone
Nobody would use shorts if it was a separate app, so it's understandable why they used YT to boost shorts. As a regular user I don't know what problems people have with shorts. This feature causes zero problems for me. I still get quality content via subscriptions and recommendations.
I disagree, there is a lot of quality content in Shorts format. I stumbled on multiple creators via Shorts, such as GenericArtDad. I have basically no slop in my Shorts anymore, if I ever had.
I also don't find them to be such an annoyance when navigating, they are very fast to skip.
What's annoying is when YouTube starts one when you launch the app, that's really bothering and uncalled for.
Just want a browser add-on to automatically hide shorts, switch my searches to videos, and autohit "don't recommend channel" if it finds a video with over 100k views.
I don't use the YouTube app unless I want to Cast a video to my TV (rare). Otherwise I just use my Firefox browser to watch YouTube videos. Shorts are a non-issue. Especially since I've disabled history.
The search is generally complete trash. Not only because of the shorts. It is also filled with unrelated bullshit. Often times videos i watched before, that have absolutely nothing to do with the thing i'm searching right now.
How is everyone in here suddenly a YouTube connoisseur? "I only watch super important videos, shorts are not information". Fuck off. YouTube has always been a website to waste time on with stupid memes. I've seen lots of entertaining, funny, interesting shorts. I'm over 40, so not a zoomer.
But yeah you go ahead and watch a cartoon and pretend it's high art just so you can do some generational culture war "these kids today with their short shorts"
Shorts is the most braindead form of content. No important and worthwhile information is going to be explained in less than 30 seconds. Block that shit.
There are some that are a couple minutes long, but those are mainly cropped sections of longer videos
I create content but not for any form of monetization or trying to be popular, I just like to make things that are useful. I'm not happy about it, but my most successful video ever, 40,000 plus views was how to fix a lighter. YouTube automatically made it a short because it was under a minute.
I crapped that video out in about 20 minutes... Meanwhile the videos I put dozens of hours into get maybe 3, 4, 5, 600 views
No Shorts for me, thanks. ReVanced.
FYI Morphe is the new ReVanced
PipePipe is also great at filtering shorts.
Getting Revanced to remove shorts and ads is a must.
Even if you were to pay YouTube, you can't remove the shorts.
Ha ha, look at that guy who thinks that the users ' interests are of any concern to social media companies.
It's also funny looking at it from the other side, from youtube creators saying they feel pressured to make shorts because shorts are so popular right now.
They're only 'popular' because youtube is pushing them like crazy on everyone they can. Youtube is manufacturing the demand, and creators feel the need to cater to that demand.
The video recommendations are based entirely on what you've chosen to watch, so it's pretty clear they do.
If your computer is doing something you don't like, change it so that it doesn't do that. It's YOUR computer.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-youtube-shorts/
I have strong ADHD and no self control. will spend all day on short form content if I can. and I hate it.
Revanced saved me. thank Revanced
Yep. I occasionally need to search for a shorts video, but unless I do you can just select to not see the shorts in search, which is surprisingly nice, and should be included on the web UI.
The search is terrible even without shorts. The first 3 or for search results are related to your query, most everything after that is just unrelated stuff that YouTube thinks you'll like.
True
Pssst - put "before:2027" as it is, without spaces after the search query to change that. I'm guessing this won't be working for too painfully long now with the ai search thing, but grab it while it's hot I guess
I use revanced so I can block them entirely.
Most devs have abandoned Revanced because the owner is an asshole. They've started a fork called 'Morphe'. Revanced is allegedly carelessly stealing code from Morphe, including using AI to "copy" patches from Morphe to Revanced, but the Revanced subreddit and discord mods are suppressing all mention of Morphe.
The only way to use youtube anymore
Also smart tube on the tv, my one complaint is that movies don't work on that one.
That's because the movie streams are encrypted and cannot be watched on third party apps. And even worse, YT is now experimenting with encrypting all the videos... Only reason I know this is because my account was unluckily chosen in an A/B test and I couldn't watch anything on VacuumTube or SmartTube...
That's very annoying. It's only a matter of time until all workarounds stop working and youtube becomes completely unusable
You know, piracy sites don't have that problem
I'm able to watch the movies on revanced without ads
Oh no that works fine for me too, but it only works because it's technically the "official" app except it's just patched. Everything else like the apps made for TVs and such will not work with encrypted streams. I really hope they don't go through with it. I quite enjoy casting stuff to my steamdeck and second monitors.
I used Pipepipe as well!
I blocked them with an extension in Firefox and it has improved my YouTube viewing experience, well, back to how it was before shorts, but still not quite as good as it was when we could still see downvotes.
You can block them on Android in YouTube morphe too (the successor to revanced which is on its way to being abandonware atp)
YouTube is so ass these days. It's the UI for me that turns me off. It's simplified yet it somehow also fails to communicate essential information.
I use the Youtube app on my old smart TV. One of the things that bothers me the most is navigation. Navigating the side bar makes every option load in its entirety as you scroll down it. Want to resume a video you already partially watched? You have to scroll to “Library” to get to your history. But you can’t just scroll there and get it over with, because just going down the menu means having to wait for every single page between “Home” and “Library” to load. What should be a quick, “click down four times, click right once, start video” becomes, “click down once, wait. Click again, wait. Click again, wait. Click again, wait…”
I see no reason why we can’t navigate the side menu without having shit load every time we click. If I wanted a preview of what’s available, I’d just choose that tab and go from there. If I’m trying to navigate to something specific I want to watch, it’s like YouTube goes out of their way to make it a pain in the ass.
See if you can install the smarttube APK. Worlds different, can block shorts, auto blocks ads, built in auto update. I won't watch YouTube without some sort of a blocker, I used reavanced on my phone and tablets.
Unfortunately, the TV’s a Roku. I haven’t got the money to get a different one. Are there any ad-block options that would work for that?
If you can install apps via USB, smarttube should work. Will need to research your model
Don't need a new TV either, get a device like a Chromecast or Nvidia shield, they allow apk installation.
After decades of stripping away info from videos? Tell me ain't so!
Yeah, I still have artists I like on the channel (social network effect, ugh), but I watch as the algorithm is trying to steer me away from them. It's frankly disgraceful.
I hate there that it's shoulder-to-shoulder with the videos so unless you use the scroll bar you get so much auto play
I just ignore them, even though they are in my face. I've watched enough shorts to learn most are incomplete, most titles are deceiving, and no dates means I might be clicking on a news related item that is old hat. I can only find out the approximate date from the comments. I still love youtube for a lot of their other stuff though.
what would you choose as a big ass copoeate multi-billion conglomerate
Customer satisfaction is usually what makes them money. Youtube is a bit different since you don't pay for anything.
Seriously? Spotify, any streamkng services, even youtube? Adobe products? Anything that requires a subscription nowadays is so so much enshittified..
You do pay for Youtube, either with your money or your attention.
I don't mind them too much. I also don't watch a lot of them and I especially don't scroll through them. But I like that they (usually) get right to the point instead of waffling about and I don't have to block any ads.
And contrary to sentiment elsewhere in this thread, some are really informative. If someone’s feed is filled with brainrot I feel bad for ya son, I got 99 video suggestions and brainrot’s getting blocked (I know it doesn’t rhyme, we can workshop it.)
The one that would most fit the bill for Lemmings is Chris Boden aka Physicsduck but there are heaps of informative creators making short content that doesn’t waffle on just to pad the runtime.
That being said; obviously if the goal is to watch a 1 hour deep dive into a subject and the reaction is “shorts can’t do that”…. Well, yeah, they’re like the fun facts you could get on Minty’s wrappers not documentaries.
Wouldn't know. I use YouTube in firefox and block ads and shorts with extensions.
Shorts do serve a semi-decent purpose of watching a clip instead of the 10:03 length version so they hit the monitization minimum.
Where it doesn't work...is when the clip has so many cuts in it it kisses the point.
But it offers "skip to highlight" now, so you're not limited to only 30 seconds. If you're trying to fix something, sometimes you need more context rather than just a screwdriver unscrewing something and not explaining shit.
In 15 years YouTube will have a whole new set of policies to make portrait videos suck, and everyone will start using diagonal videos.
Most of the content providers are just re-cutting their existing stuff into shorts. They're low quality. Only the strongest creators can even manage to make one interesting enough to get someone to watch their channel
I've experienced this too.
Install Revanced or Morphe. Delete ahorts from app. Profit
I hate shorts!
How dare you besmirch the traditional clothing of my people! (Australian adult males)
There are ways to block shorts.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/05/18/how-to-hide-the-shorts-section-on-youtube/
Yeah this was written a few years back but it was last updated in Feb of this year.
I just "picked" the shorts section with uBlock
I don't know what you are talking about because I've had an addon that removes shorts for years now.
i have about 80 lines of filters devoted to hiding them in ublock origin. Works like a charm
Extensions -> hide shorts
Or use revanced/morphe and hide shorts patch
There's still some good content in shorts (namely original skits) but most of it is low tier content
Shorts was a large reason why i stopped watching YouTube, not the only one, but a big part.
Unhook is a good extension for YouTube. It can hide various distractions, such as shorts, and it's also configurable.
https://unhook.app/
This is the way. (This or FreeTube.)
Note that the Firefox Add-On store features it as "Recommended", i.e. the extension is monitored for safety.
I use untrap
YouTube Shorts make zero difference if one's pattern of usage of YouTube is to only watch YouTube videos linked from other sources rather than actually staying within YouTube and consuming one after the other the videos their algorithm puts in front of you.
Personally I've never really got into the whole thing of just staying in YouTube and watching those videos that YouTube suggests, maybe because YouTube tends to suggest stuff with alarmist titles ("You won't believe what we've just found out") and other such loudmouth bullshitter crap, and for me that stuff just screams "untrustworthy and superficial bullshit which won't teach me anything new with any depth" so for years it's been the case that when I end up in YouTube their algorithm quickly put me off from consuming what it suggests. At most when I do stay within the YouTube environment to watch multiple videos, I'm explicitly searching for specific stuff, generally more stuff from the same person of the last good video I watched.
Usually I get a lot better YouTube video "suggestions" from links in posts and comments here or even in Reddit (back when I frequented it) than from the YouTube algorithm.
You're aware you can build a list of subscriptions that you can use instead of relying on the algorithm?
I consume content at my speed and dislike any sort of push solutions because at least for me content pushed towards me makes me feel pressured to watch (because the pile of unwatched stuff grows if I don't keep up with it).
I'm a lot more comfortable to do what I can when I can than having an external something set the pace.
I suspect getting "stressed" by a growing pile of unwatched stuff is a personality quirk.
Yes, they are annoying.
I've taken various steps to ensure shorts don't show up in my Youtube web experience.
YouTube should never have been an app in the first place.
Wasn't it literally the first app available for the iPhone, aside from apples stuff?
And?
Is notube currently working fine? The past week all the newpipe forks have been borked :(
Yes
Many things have ruined it, but shorts is absolutely a huge part of that
I wouldn't know, I haven't used the official youtube app in a while
The only shorts I like are the ones I'm wearing.
I use a grease monkey script to redirect shorts links to regular videos.
But I also only watch videos from preexisting subs and never leave the subscription tab now
Same, I have a couple of extensions to fix youtube. No ads, no shorts, no recommendations, no autoplay, no "most relevant" whatever the fuck yt thinks that means, then keyword filters and auto-hide played videos. The subs tab is just unwatched stuff from the people that interest me.
When it becomes too hard to keep up with fixing all of the shit they break each update to try to make free users' experiences worse, I'll leave before letting them push anything on me I don't ask for.
There should be at least a dropdown box to let you choose what types of content you want to find. Videos, shorts, posts, surveys, etc.
Looks like more people actively consume Youtube than i thought. And then even on their slow vibe page, probably logged in. Most here are rather tech-literate, no? Why not take a minute, to look up a native privacy-conscious client?
Shorts dont have the inserted scripted ads peppered through the video. Perfect for when I just want a short concise explanation for how to do some task, like change a faucet aerator or swap the air filter in my car. So I disagree, shorts have a place in search results at the moment.
Once those get ads, yeah, they should be separate.
There are some that i really like, e.g voice-acting out tumblr posts, but i hate that it sends you to the shorts dimension every time you open it
youtube has to cater to the new gen of brainrotted kids with the attention span of a goldfish with adhd
Google didn't add shorts to cater to them, they did it because they saw Tiktok's success and wanted some of that. It's the same reason Instagram effectively became a Tiktok clone
A game I like to dip my toes in has a game mode called 'shorts'.
So searching for 'Trackmania Shorts' is a Wilde card if you get relavsnt info, or 5 year old videos rimmed into shorts.
Nobody would use shorts if it was a separate app, so it's understandable why they used YT to boost shorts. As a regular user I don't know what problems people have with shorts. This feature causes zero problems for me. I still get quality content via subscriptions and recommendations.
Yes. 100%
Thankfully I use Grayjay on mobile so this shit is gutted out there
I disagree, there is a lot of quality content in Shorts format. I stumbled on multiple creators via Shorts, such as GenericArtDad. I have basically no slop in my Shorts anymore, if I ever had.
I also don't find them to be such an annoyance when navigating, they are very fast to skip.
What's annoying is when YouTube starts one when you launch the app, that's really bothering and uncalled for.
Not necessarily a different app, but it should definitely be a separate section.
Just want a browser add-on to automatically hide shorts, switch my searches to videos, and autohit "don't recommend channel" if it finds a video with over 100k views.
I don't use the YouTube app unless I want to Cast a video to my TV (rare). Otherwise I just use my Firefox browser to watch YouTube videos. Shorts are a non-issue. Especially since I've disabled history.
The search is generally complete trash. Not only because of the shorts. It is also filled with unrelated bullshit. Often times videos i watched before, that have absolutely nothing to do with the thing i'm searching right now.
tictoc brain infection
I use brave browser on my phone and the brave app has a setting that disables shorts. I like it because I don't get sucked into shorts
How is everyone in here suddenly a YouTube connoisseur? "I only watch super important videos, shorts are not information". Fuck off. YouTube has always been a website to waste time on with stupid memes. I've seen lots of entertaining, funny, interesting shorts. I'm over 40, so not a zoomer. But yeah you go ahead and watch a cartoon and pretend it's high art just so you can do some generational culture war "these kids today with their short shorts"
You can just say you enjoy short form content.
Careful though, shit's addictive.
Whole lot of dumbass assumptions in here.
This always makes me feel like an alien. Just don't use YouTube. Go get a book from the library. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go yell at clouds.