YouTube Shorts - You’re mildly infuriating!

Ever since I was forced to update YouTube on my devices, I got really annoyed with YouTube Shorts. At first, they were easily turned off. Then the option to turn them off disappeared from Settings - General. So I installed apps that allowed to skip out on Shorts. Then just a few days ago I could no longer have Youtube Vanced installed.

I’ve since learned do deal with this annoyance, but do I really have to mark “Not Interested” from channels I don’t subscribe to or “Hide” from my subscribed channels? On my Linux- and Windows PC’s I have regular blockers. But I mainly watch content on devices hooked up as small entertainment screens in the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. And those are iOS or Android.

All I want are steady streams of content from my favourite relaxing subjects and channels. Without shorts or AI-derived “Hey, this video from a channel featuring a redneck with 15 AR-15’s shooting coyotes in the desert might be your thing!” inserted into my playlists or streams. But the AI-derived autoplay content is beside the point.

YouTube Shorts - You’re mildly infuriating!

  • @KinglinkEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    What pisses me off the most is channels I used to like, stuff like Scam Nation who now repackages all their old content as shorts. And so I unsubscribe because I don’t want that level of spam.

    Youtube Shorts sounds like an interesting idea, that has all the problems of Tiktok, and then clutters up Youtube. It would be SO easy for people to be able to opt out of Shorts, but that’s not how it works, and Youtube’s UI keeps pushing them to the point where I stop looking at my notifications.

    Great work Google.

    • RegnaOPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Yeah, the easiest option for Google/YT would be to keep Shorts to the Shorts category only/mainly, and keep the ability for users to opt out of Shorts in the platform’s players. That way, creators who want to push 5 to 30 second videos instead of 10 - 200 minutes would still get their 15 minutes seconds of fame.

      But now, they aren’t just pushing Shorts on us viewers, they are forcing channels to do Shorts to get better visibility.