• Lantern@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.

    • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Bingo. I don’t find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can’t cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.

      • fubo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “Demonetization” is just what YouTube’s promises to advertisers look like when they affect video creators.

        Money on YouTube flows from advertisers. The revenue from charging advertisers to show ads is split between YouTube/Google and the video creator. If your video is not shown with ads, then there is no revenue to split.

        YouTube gives advertisers a very small control over what videos their ads are shown on. They have a few different classifications of videos, and advertisers can choose which ones they want to be seen with. Advertisers are paying for the service of YouTube putting their ads on videos — but only the videos that YouTube thinks the advertiser does want to be seen with.

        If your video is fully “demonetized”, that means YouTube has decided that no advertisers want to be seen with it; or that they are not willing to take revenue from showing ads on that video. But they’re still hosting it, making it available to viewers.

        Video creators’ revenue is a share of the ad income from YouTube showing the video (and accompanying ads). A “demonetized” video is one that doesn’t show any ads — so there is no revenue to split. It’s not that YouTube is taking all the revenue and leaving none to the video creator. They’re not making any, because they don’t think the advertisers would be okay with being charged to be seen alongside that video.

        However, the creator of a “demonetized” video is still receiving value from YouTube. It is not free to host that video — especially if it is popular. Network bandwidth, data storage, and transcoding of video for viewers’ browsers are not free; YouTube covers the cost of these. YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense, rather than censoring those videos by taking them down.

        • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense

          That’s just not true…they’re hosting it because they data-farm the living shit out of both the creator and anyone that gets tangentially close to their site. More content = more people visit = more data on these people = more money…They make a lot of money on this data, even if no ads are shown on a video, and are by no means doing it out of the goodness of their heart.

          • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, but they aren’t making nearly the amount of money on the video as they would with the ads, and no where near enough to compensate the creators beyond free hosting.

            You can still publish demonetized content, just don’t expect to make money from it on YouTube.

          • fubo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I didn’t say it’s charity. I said the video creator (who wants people to see their video) is receiving a service from the video host for no charge, which otherwise the creator would have to pay for. Hosting your own video on your own storage and network bill is not free. If you don’t believe me, go try doing it yourself.

            If the creator didn’t think they were receiving any benefit, they would just take that video down. They sometimes do, but usually they don’t.

            Publishing a book costs money. Someone has to buy the paper from the paper makers, and the ink from the ink makers. Someone has to line up the print on the page. Those people have to get paid, so they can go buy a sandwich and pay their rent. So, publishers exercise some judgment in not printing books that they don’t expect to sell, because they’ve gotta pay their bills, including parts and labor.

            Same goes for video. Hosting a video costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Network connectivity costs money. The people who run those services need to get paid so they can buy a sandwich and pay their rent. If YouTube is hosting your video, even if they’re not paying you a share of any ad revenue (because they’re not getting any), they’re paying bills that otherwise you would have to pay.

            I’m not saying you’ve gotta be grateful or something. I’m saying if you want to understand what’s going on in the world, you can’t do that without understanding the actual bills that people are actually paying.

            To put it simply: The hosting costs of demonetized videos are paid for by the hosting of monetized videos.

            Don’t believe me? Take your video and store it on a server that you pay for, with network connectivity you pay for. That’s a thing you can do. You can even do it with Fediverse technology. However, it will in fact cost you some amount of money.

            • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              Hosting your own video on your own storage and network bill is not free. If you don’t believe me, go try doing it yourself.

              I know this is true but why do I see so many people on lemmy pushing for self-hosting and even talking about it like its some low rent hobby?

              • fubo@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It’s not exactly an expensive hobby, but it’s also not free.

                YouTube hosts a lot of videos.

                And — by the fundamental theorem of financial calculus that I just made up — “not free” times “a lot” equals “big bucks”.

                • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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                  1 year ago

                  And — by the fundamental theorem of financial calculus that I just made up — “not free” times “a lot” equals “big bucks”.

                  Finally, someone who gets my idea of math.

      • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        they’re all paying the bills by hawking raid shadow legends anyways, may as well not rely on youtube monetization anyways and host elsewhere

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      1 year ago

      I’m not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don’t have moderators.

      I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.

      So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.

      Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It’s amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.

      But hey, here’s 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.

      • Jumper775@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The algorithm seems like it is optimized for profit, not for actually being a good platform.

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          1 year ago

          That should mean engagement. It serves up such bad videos that I disengage.

          Once in a while I’ll realize I just spent 20, 30 minutes looking at a streak of pretty decent stuff. Rare enough to be remarkable. Usually after just 3 or 4 consecutive crap clips I’ll close it down and get back to work.

          I doubt anything disengages a user faster than low-quality content. I bet it does it even faster than the authoritarian politics and bigotry YouTube seems to inexorable serve you.

          • Zorque@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            If that were true, it wouldn’t be the way it is.

            Just because it causes your disengagement, doesn’t mean it causes disengagement with the vast majority of their userbase.

            They’re also more concerned with ad views and clicks, so if you’re not the kind of person who gives a crap about ads… they don’t really care that much about you.

            • admiralteal@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              This is predicated on the belief that Google/YouTube is run in a 100% hyper-competent way. I don’t buy that.

              Google does things the easiest way possible to make tons of money. They make unforced errors all the damn time.

              • Zorque@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                They don’t have to be 100% competent, but they are very competent at what they want to do… which is monetize the technologies and services they provide. They’re not trying to make something that people can use well and enjoy… they’re making things to make a shit-ton of money. The two goals are not generally mutually inclusive.

                Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever… which is confusing considering they’re a multi-billion dollar company and not just some guy in a shack banging rocks together to see how they sound.

                • admiralteal@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever

                  Nope. It’s only this specific thing that I necessarily think they’re doing a bad job of. And I’m right; they are. Their algorithm is a struggling baby compared to TikTok and YouTube at large is not a major profit center (and indeed may not be profitable at all – but they maintain it because abandoning it would be too costly for them).

                  TikTok is so good at doing this thing that it is a profitable business for them. YouTube is struggling, and we can clearly see why.

    • echo64@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The terrible content moderation policies are what keep it alive. No one subscribes to youtube so it’s primary customers are the ad agencies. And they want content moderation

    • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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      1 year ago

      This Shorts issue seems to have measurable, constant and immediate effect in ad revenue and therefore platform profitability. Bad content moderation may or may not decrease engagement but in the end Google is a commercial enterprise that’s looking at the numbers at hand.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Might? It already has.

    If shorts were simply a separate section of YouTube with all of its functionality, then that’s understandable. But as they stand, shorts are just YouTube with both reduced functionality (forced vertical aspect ratio, no seek bar, time limit) AND all of the existing flaws (bad recommendation algorithm, reposted content, etc. )

    Unless you are some kind of tech contrarian hipster, I don’t think there is one thing that YouTube shorts does better than TikTok, or heck, Instagram Reels.

  • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    I’m mostly fine with shorts, except for two things:

    1. You can’t move around in them, it’s either play or pause and repeat, which sucks (as shorts don’t have to be short…)

    2. On the homepage it doesn’t show who the short is from (which channel) without opening them

          • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            On the contrary, why bother hunting the down the slider for every different player when you could just use the system?

            Just curious, since I use the youtube slider like once a month.

            • JasSmith@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I’m not the guy you asked, but I assume they do as I do. My system volume is calibrated for all the various applications I use day to day, including video conferencing. If I have to adjust that, it means everything else is the wrong volume. I’d rather modify YouTube to be the right volume than everything else.

              • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                This. My system volume is calibrated to be similar across all applications, games, etc. This means all apps are individually adjusted to reach similar volume level. Why should I have to mess with all of my other volumes just random manager at Youtube decided a volume slider on shorts isn’t necessary despite the site still using volume from regular videos where it can be adjusted? This isn’t an issue with any other app or platform. Maybe the last Youtube video I watched had overly quiet or loud audio compared to the norm and I either have insanely loud audio or I can’t hear a damned thing and I can’t fix it quickly like on any other Youtube page.

                Not everyone had a set of dedicated volume buttons, or wheel, etc. on their keyboard, so having to go into Windows settings or reach for a knob or button on the speakers themselves to adjust is a lot more than getting a slider like every other website in the world gives you.

    • visor841@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can’t move around in them, it’s either play or pause and repeat, which sucks (as shorts don’t have to be short…)

      Oddly enough, this seems to be a desktop limitation. I can scrub backwards and forwards just fine on my phone.

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Hopefully desktop PC hardware will become powerful enough to gain the ability to skip around in 30 second videos someday. I think I read that they expect them to be at parity with smartphone hardware in the next decade or two.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s also annoying that you can’t save them without using the hack where you change the URL.

    • ObservantOcelot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can scrub around in them. Look for the red bar on the bottom after the short starts. You can tap and drag on it and a little red circle will appear that will show briefly after you release.

    • whiskers@lemmings.world
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      You can move around in them. Atleast on Android, there is a hidden red bar at the bottom which becomes visible if you pause the video.

    • TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is a problem with all of these Tik Tok clones (and even Tik Tok let’s you do it for some videos). It’d so annoying to be watching a 45 second reel but if I miss something, I have to watch the whole thing again

      • Bjornir@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I have the exact opposite problem? I can skip around just fine in shorts, but can’t in reels… Is this due to A/B testing or am I dumb?

    • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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      1 year ago

      I simply prefer TikTok for short form videos due to unique community and reasonably entertaining algorithm.

      I enjoy YouTube to the point of paying for Premium but I hate that my YouTube subscriptions feed on TV is littered with shorts that I have no way of disabling other than hiding them one by one (which I do to make a point).

      Suits at Google will try to shove it into everyone’s throats until they get bored and someone adds it to killedbygoogle.com so why would anyone even bother with it.

        • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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          1 year ago

          I’m deep in Apple ecosystem and unfortunately this is not an option on Apple TV as far as I know.

            • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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              In case of Apple TV, it’s the smoothest TV software experience, leaps and bounds above any ad-ridden smart TV or aging Nvidia Shield. I used Android TV and it’s just jank. For a time I had HTPC with Kodi too, it’s been relegated to hosting Plex and downloading stuff from Usenet. I enjoyed freedom to install anything but ultimately this didn’t outweight better audio codec support on Apple TV.

                • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Not sure what you’re making a stab at.

                  Apple software is obviously ad free and I have no problem with paying for YouTube Premium due to value it provides. Some good soul on Lemmy also recommended me a way to block sponsored content via isponsorblocktv which is a script that runs on my server and skips sponsored segments by reading YouTube app state and sending fast forward commands like a remote would.

      • asudox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s amazing how much social credit you possibly have. Xi Jinping is proud of you.

  • thann@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What if we fucked over all of the people that like our website to try and cater to people that don’t like it?

  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Mind you those are (at least some of) the guys that killed animation and comedy sketches on youtube because they made it necessary for videos to be 10+ minutes long to be relevant.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      Which I get a laugh out of, because in the early days youtube would not let you post any video longer than 10 minutes, unless you were a “special” approved account. Now, only 10+ minute videos matter. A complete about face.

  • Neptune@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Using revanced. Disabled shorts. Watching these YT shorts & recommendations decays my brain cells

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      YouTube ruined YouTube

      I swear to god these dumb social media sites are going to hell faster every day.

      I used to like YouTube because I could watch all sorts of interesting things … funny things … informative things … things actually liked

      Now my main YouTube recommended feed is filled with clickbait thumbnails of idiots making surprised or shocked faces to try to get your attention to get you to look at their dumb video of nonsense that has zero information and is not entertaining at all.

        • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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          Because if theres money to be made then theres a few million idiots that are happy to exploit the fuck out of the system and do essentially fuck all to earn cash.

          But without money, the platform would have sunk.

          It’s a harsh reality that all brilliant internet things have to face.

          And i hate it.

  • waz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t mind grabbing my pitchfork and joining the “YouTube is already ruined party”, but two thoughts first:

    That headline is so deliberately vague. It could literally be one employee who said “eh, I don’t think YouTube shorts is a good idea”.

    The article itself doesn’t really give you any information that isn’t in the headline. It feels like an attempt to stoke anti-YouTube sentiment without providing any useful information.

    …okay, with that out of the way…

    Yeah, the current YouTube situation is pretty crap.

    • average_internet_enjoyer@lemmy.world
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      Yeah honestly these are some great points, and really it’s one of these reasons as to why I just dislike modern journalism today with the headlines as such.

    • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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      1 year ago

      It does cite internal metrics on ad revenues going down for three consecutive quarters due to lower potential to show ads in short videos compared to longer ones. It’s anonymous and doesn’t give solid figures but that’s what this article is about.

  • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    As a viewer I agree with their assessment.

    Shorts is (for me) a worse viewing experience and it’s just more useless junk tha clutter up my youtube main page.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      That’s why I have a Firefox extension that automatically redirects from shorts. Although, if Google’s new Web Environment Integrity goes through I guess I could kiss stuff like that goodbye.

    • Pantsofmagic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I usually watch YouTube on my shield and it clutters up every channel with junk I have no desire to watch.

  • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You should be able to remove Shorts from your feed. I never watch them and yet they fill my feed up making it jore difficult to find real content. I’m specifically talking about the smart TV app which throws them all in together.

    • TheGreatFox@lemm.ee
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      I’m using some custom ublock origin filters that I found somewhere to block shorts across all of youtube:

      !Youtube Shorts
      www.youtube.com###guide-content #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer)
      www.youtube.com###items #endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer)
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse #dismissible ytd-rich-grid-slim-media[is-short]:upward(ytd-rich-section-renderer)
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)
      m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer
      m.youtube.com##ytm-pivot-bar-renderer div.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer)
      m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-video-with-context-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
      m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
      m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
      

      Also separately, for blocking videos that don’t exist yet, which I also dislike:

      !Youtube upcoming videos
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"])
      www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[overlay-style="UPCOMING"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)
      
      • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        He’s talking about smart tv app. If those “shorts” are being pulled from some other subdomain then perhaps a block rule on that domain set on the router would help. But best just not to use youtube.

        • zurohki@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          I’m pretty sure shorts are just Youtube videos but with a different UI.

          You can take the video ID from the URL of a Shorts clip and put it in a normal Youtube URL and the shorts video plays with the normal Youtube player.

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t know what I would do with this. And I mentioned to someone else that I mostly watch YT on a Shield. Is this even relevant to me?

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I might have to look into that. I do wonder how it could know when a segment is sponsored.

        I don’t care that much about the ads since we already have Premium so we don’t see the ads anyways.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What I want is a YouTube viewer that cuts out ads that I can use on my Mac or my iPhone to use on my TV with a Chromecast.

        Chromecast is how I view all my TV content.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          You’ll have to take that up with Apple. They’re the ones dictating that you can’t use any of the wonderful apps we have on Android.

          As for Chromecast, SmartTube Next is what you want

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s a little hidden button on the Shorts pane that you can see when you hover it. It gives you the ability to hide them for 30 days if you click it.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          They’ve started putting them in the recommended videos pane on the right when playing videos in a browser. Worst of all, they put it near the top and in a much larger cell than the rest of the recommended videos.

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I watch YouTube mostly on my TV (using a Shield) so I don’t think that would work for me.

  • viking
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    1 year ago

    God I hate shorts. Luckily you can disable them. But youtube is so riddled with ads in general, it makes watching without adblock impossible. If they’d go back to one 3 second ad at the very beginning, I might even tolerate it. But the current shitshow? Not on my system.

    Doesn’t help that they have a whooping 113 trackers running simultaneously.

  • Qxzkjp@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    YouTube shorts was the dumbest fucking idea. They have a niche: long-form (as in >1min) video content. They are dominant in that niche. Then they saw TikTok was popular and dominating the short-form video scene, and their response was… “we should switch to making more short form”. WTF?! And on top of that, they’ve diverted resources away from their main product (longer videos) as the article says. It just seems like such a catastrophic unforced error.

    • petenu@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      YouTube have such a stranglehold on the >1m market, that’s why they can afford to stagnate in that area and look into other markets. They don’t have to fear a competitor threatening their core market any time soon.

  • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    not only is the shorts UI shitty but the shorts themselves are often shitty imo, or at least the “scroll through shorts one at a time” linear format means you see a lot more videos you wouldn’t click on intentionally.

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      “No YouTube I do not want to watch Jordon Fucking Peterson. I will NEVER want that. Fuck all the way off.”

      I stopped watching shorts because of the unwanted boosts of fascist content.

      • jrubal1462@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Silver lining: It gave me the opportunity to “dislike” Jordan Peterson, which was not an opportunity I previously had.

        I mean, I guess I always HAD the option, but there’s something to be said about having somebody serve it up on a platter like that.

    • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      I hate that I get such random shit in my feed when I really only look at art videos - like my scrolling should be nothing but people drawing but random shit like slime videos or some ass hat and his kid.

      • chuckd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah YouTube really likes to inject videos you wouldn’t normally watch into your algorithm. It’s pretty annoying. I would never seek out religious videos, and never have on YouTube, yet they keep making their way into my feed. Even voting them down doesn’t seem to change the frequency.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      The interface isn’t consistent between videos and shorts.

      You can rewind and fast forward videos on phones by double tapping the left or right hand side of the video, but doing that on shorts just likes it.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I literally could not understand what half the ones I saw were even supposed to be about last time I went on YouTube. Like they were just random people doing shit with no punchline or point.

  • metaStatic@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    might? Shorts are the main reason I found alternatives like Freetube, Newpipe and Invidious; and continue to look for actual alternative platforms.

    if there was just a checkbox to turn them off forever I’d probably still be on the mainpage.