I’ve noticed YouTube specifically has become more addictive, I never used to be one to sit and scroll for long durations before but I often catch myself spending way too long on shorts now
Even people or older generations seem to be getting sucked in nowadays
I block shorts on youtube, I don’t care for short form content. Give me those hour long analysis type videos. Without shorts youtube still does a rather poor job at recommending new stuff.
That being said, shorts are being more addictive by nature since the barrier of entry to watch ‘one more’ is so low. If you engage with them on any app, you will waste more time on your phone.
Yes TikTok is a disease and I have it.
Your phone does too with all of their custom spyware…
The tiktok videos I get recommended are way too long and dense/informative for me to be able to watch too many at one time.
When I first started using it I made a point of skipping anything I considered dumb or any videos I couldn’t fast forward through. Now, it’s mostly all stuff about history and philosophy and I have to purposely search for new things. Still works way better than YouTube at recommending actually interesting content.
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How do you disable shorts?
Firefox has an addon called “Hide shorts for youtube”. I don’t use any other browser on any device.
Youtube reVanced has that option.
Not on iOS I guess
Well, there’s your first problem
I can’t be arsed with wasting time to try to degoogle an android phone and keep my banking applications working.
Apple is good enough for me :)
I don’t touch google products or services, and fully agree.
Plus, iOS is fucking stellar. Every phone I’ve had from them is blazing fast after YEARS of NEVER REFORMATTING
(Posting from my XS Max that I’ve never reformatted lawl)
Yeah, I too noticed android phones usually go to shit after a few years. Even formatting doesn’t fix them entirely, and I never play games on mobile
I too ignore shorts but I disagree with YouTube’s recommendations. It has gotten significantly better from even 2 years ago. I used to only watch my subscriptions, what I specifically sought out, or links from others. What YouTube recommended me was honestly confusing considering the amount of data they have on me and my interests. Now it’ll actually recommend general content I would watch. But also small YouTubers from the types of content I consistently watch. It’s pretty great.
That’s still pretty hit or miss for me. I’ve watched a video about cats exactly once a few weeks ago when my cat did something strange, and my recommendations are still littered with click-bait videos about certain cat behaviors. I watch tons of the aforementioned hour long analysis videos and I still need to resort to playlists compiling them instead of getting recommendations. To me, it seems the algorithm really wants to push certain types of content and will flood me with them if I so much as hover a video too long. But it really dislikes other types of content and almost hides them on purpose, despite me liking them. My best guess would be that longer videos have less ads per minute of content and are therefore not recommended as much, but I couldn’t tell, I started blocking ads on Youtube when they added a second ad banner back in the day - long before video ads were a thing.
I have premium so maybe that’s a reason. Also, if I watch a video I know YouTube will latch unto them I remove it from my watch history and heavily use not interested option.
Is it just me or did the recommendation algorithm become much worse a few years ago? I think there was a big update at some point and it’s sucked ever since. If feels like it remembers about the last 10 videos I watched. You were interested in topic XYZ a few months ago and there is lots of new content about it? Sure you don’t want to know anything about it!
Say no to shorts on every platform.
Even porn is getting shorts. What the hell is going on Internet?!
That might be the one genre where I wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Do you mean to tell me that you don’t watch long-form porn, spending 6 hours in a row on one video?
Really? Where?
Tumblr, a decade ago lawl
Is getting? Tumblr was waaaaaay ahead of the curve then, a million years ago
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As someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s I disagree.
They remind me of the d nickelodeon pictures that actually cost a nickel. I think you youngins should salute your shorts. It’s fun to watch wild and crazy kids doing stupid bottle tricks. Legends of the hidden temple in some state park nearby. It’s just cool stuff and you can’t do that on television.
I might agree with you if the shorts player wasn’t ass. Everything about it works differently to the video player, and everything about it pushes you to more shorts. Even on the video player I disable autoplay and the prev/next buttons, having a player built around those was DOA for me.
I find YouTube is less attractive than a year ago. Ads are more invasive and more difficult to remove. Recommendations skew heavily to the rage-inducing, e.g., I watched one late night comedy sketch making fun of Jordan Peterson and then my feed was full of clips of him spewing his hot trash for weeks.
I gave up on reddit earlier in the year when all the API / sub blackout / forced mod removal stuff was going on.
Freemium apps seem to be pushing ads more and more, which makes me more resistant to using them.
If what I read online is true, the days of investors throwing money at anything tech related are slowing down. Which means some companies that have never had to be profitable before now must find a way to do so. Which means tightening up subscriptions and/or more ads.
I try to spread this tip everywhere i can: If you ever find that you’ve watched one of those videos that fucks up the recommendations, go to your watch history and delete the video. It really works.
I disabled and cleared my history, now I don’t get any recommendations except the ones related to the video I’m currently watching 👍
I’m feeling the opposite lately. YouTube recommendations suck. I often open the app/page for the quick dopamine rush, but few of the recommendations interests me, so I just bounce off. For me, YouTube is mostly for long form content nowadays. Something I can put in the background while cooking/doing dishes.
Instagram is turning more and more like TikTok. Sometimes it recommends me something fun (like cat videos), but often it’s just nonsense. So I bounce off quite quickly there as well.
I feel happy about it.
No, shorts are shit and I’m absolutely not sucked in. They try to emulate tik tok so I would say this format simply works for you.
I have a seething hatred for shorts. I refuse to watch anything designed like them on any platform.
That’s part of the idea, isn’t it? They mix normal content with max cringe content because that’s what keeps people watching.
Absolutely. That’s completely not for me, no way, no how.
Ah, you already said it. Exactly how I feel.
It does unfortunately. I don’t like it but it absolutely hacks my brain
Would love if there was just an option to disable shorts in the app because I still want to use original youtube
If you keep hitting not interested on the shorts, they get temporarily disabled for a while.
Temporarily being the problem there unfortunately
I’m not the kind of person to put up with doing stuff like that repeatedly
You either have to accept that you like watching shorts more than doing other things and watch them without worrying or change your habits. There’s no magical way where you just stop doing it. I will take some effort.
The change in habit unfortunately is just not opening YouTube on my phone, which is a shame because there are good videos that I feel good after watching but I can’t resist getting drawn in by shorts.
Typically I don’t get that problem on PC or on a smart TV because they push long form content more there
shorts are designed to be addictive. just don’t use them. otherwise, the platform hasn’t changed, you have
Shorts are new-ish to the platform. Like others that saw the success of TikTok (e.g., facebook with their reels, presumably instagram has something similar) they pumped out their own version to better trap people on the platform.
Same idea as ever but more addictive than before.
Recently? No, but maybe I’m in my own bubble. I’ve made my phone more boring intentionally. Getting rid of Reddit made me get off my phone a lot more. I really just mindlessly browse Lemmy and Mastodon now, and I run out of content on those.
Shorts made it less addictive, they’re awful to watch and I invariably stop at one.
Perhaps you are experiencing a spike in your own addictive behaviour?
same with me. they’re awful and the content quality is depressing. but i think for many people shorts are the addiction
Oddly enough, there’s specific content only available through shorts that I would love to see (Scott Manley in particular does fantastic shorts), however I never see them because the shorts player invariably kills any enjoyment I may have be having at the time.
No matter what content exists on shorts, I will go out of my way to disable shorts altogether. If I could block the URL I would.
I’m getting bored with my smartphone. Stuff like YouTube I never watch on my phone anyway, but imo YouTube has gotten much worse over time and I barely watch it at all now.
I honestly think that content on YouTube has gotten better and better. Not the systems of YouTube, mind you, just the stuff that people create. But maybe that’s because in the last year or so I’ve been watching and discovering a lot more educational YouTubers (think Tom Scott, Münecat, Real Engineering, etc). among the exclusively funny stuff.
I feel the exact opposite about you tube. I feel like there is nothing interesting to watch any more unless one of my follows post a new video
I feel the same way. New show on Netulumaxplus? Add it to the list, never watch it. New post from a followed YT channel? Instant watch then down the rabbit hole of related stuff. I get more out my ~$50 in Patreon subscriptions in a single month than I ever will out of the $100/month I spend on streaming services.
If anything I’m less addicted to my smartphone now that Reddit got rid of the 3rd party apps.
I don’t think it’s really changed, maybe it’s just your perception of it. It’s just as addictiv today as it was last year as I see it.
Their algorithm is specifically designed to keep you entertained. Kind of a curse or a gift depending on who you ask. Think the worst cases are children tbh it was insane my first time seeing a tablet kid out in the wild. Faced glued to the screen being walked by their mom
Almost correct.
The algorithm doesn’t give two shits if you are entertained. It only drives engagement. You don’t need to be entertained to be engaged. In fact, most engagement comes from outrage.
THIS is what’s killing the modern internet.
Smartphones are too stimulating for young children. Their brains are wired to really take in the lights, sounds and interactiveness of it all. This is kinda dangerous because this is also when a lot of learning is going on, they will develop socially based on the content they consume.
I’ve heard that some toddlers/babies recently began mimicing the action of pulling a mobile device from a pocket and looking down at the screen. They’ve seen others do it so often that they are learning it as a nearly instinctual action.
Saw a toddler with a phone in hand today, maybe a year. Couldn’t walk yet, but had no trouble scrolling.
No? The opposite of anything, I consume media much more on my TV, PC and via my ereader recently.
My smartphone has mostly been relegated to a communications device the recent 3-6 months as I’ve lost the will to try to go through media on a needlessly tiny screen. Luckily though, I don’t have a commute any more. But when I did, I read books on the ereader during the train travel instead of being on the phone.
Same here, I really also switched media consumption to the TV with a nice sound system and only use the phone for communications and podcasts, oh and navigation and music in the car.
I’ve been considering just getting a dumb phone and maybe a kindle for entertainment
Problem is I want to be able to run apps like signal, WhatsApp, discord etc
The problem is that most people aren’t aware that shorts / stories are made to be addictive.
If you keep pointing out to your friends and family how much time / battery they waste watching them they may start to take action though.
I’m well aware how much time I’m wasting, I’ve got a screen time monitor setup and have even gone so far as writing my own script that takes me to youareanidiot.org if I try to open YouTube before 10am but it still didn’t stop me for a good amount of time
I think I might’ve just about kicked it at this point but now I’m spending loads of time scrolling Lemmy and talking to strangers instead which I suppose is marginally better
I have the same problem with YouTube! Between work + school I don’t have free time until 930/10, so I unwind watching documentaries on YouTube and it’s 2-3am before I know it :(
I recently ordered an EReader and if books can’t replace that YouTube urge I might have to go the same route as you and redirect myself after midnight.
I give myself a pass for Lemmy though. It’s not sucking me in, rather I open the site specifically for news for sites that don’t offer RSS feeds. (RSS helps a lot with eliminating the news -> distraction scenario)
