I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:
hide Shorts
hide For You
hide Trending
hide ‘People Also Searched For’
hide Search Categories
hide Promoted Videos
hide Promoted Websites
hide Suggested Products
Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It’s literally a short, yet it’s inserted like a video so you’re forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you’ve watched and start inserting shit based off that.
Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities… “just let me stick it in”
It’s amazing how hard some of you work to make YouTube enjoyable. Here’s a tip: stop watching YouTube.
The problem is no other platform has that much content. Looking for an obscure scene from an old tv show? It’s probably on YouTube. Wanna know more about Brigitte Bardot’s career? Someone has a nice channel about her. The fact that the platform sucks amd his own by effing google doesn’t change that there is just so much great niche content to be discovered. Hopefully we’ll have a fully working foss alternative soon enough. I’ll gladly pay for that if the money goes back to creators.
Pretty sure my Adblocker already does all of this I still use Youtube about 10% of the time to find new channels Piped provides some suggestions while you watch some Video but it can’t replaces YT’s homefeed
Great band though, you’ve got good taste
Agree
Unusable for me with ads as well. Grey loading screen and choppy audio instead of actually loading ads, never gets to the video. If I reopen the video a few times to skip the ad the video loads fine. No problems with online gaming, streaming services, etc so I know it’s their shit Roku app and ad network and not me. Ad blockers make it actually usable.
Uh, yeah. Use <search engine of choice>, give search term, go to <video> tab or corresponding functionality.
Why would you use youtube’s internal search anyway? It’s age-old knowledge that such platforms use algorithms to “engage” (manipulate) you.
- Here’s an extension which turns YouTube into an Invidious-like site, removing all addicting elements.
- If you’re using Linux, I wrote the youtube-tui a few years back, very similar to the extension where you get nothing but the search bar and subscriptions.
Dude your tool is gonna make my life better, thanks. I’m currently using yt-dlp and mpv to launch videos and was wishing I could get some features like video description while doing it.
Holy shit this is incredible. I have wanted a way to permanently hide shorts forever, thanks for sharing. Also it’s actually recommended by Mozilla which means it has active security audits on it, impressive.
🦀
In fairness, I have no idea what I would want from that search query.
Hot and sexy nude planks of Canadian Maple plywood.
Boards of Canada is a very popular IDM artist, and they’re the third result down from the top.
It’s indeed the name of a band
It looks like it’s a band name, as the third result is from a channel with that exact name. Idk what the first search result is, but that second one seems vaguely related probably because the guy mentioned it in his silly short
Firefox, uBlock Origin, on a Linux Desktop. I have none of these problems and have filters to hide shorts, endcards, autoplay, ambient mode. And I block all cookies from Youtube/Google. Works perfectly.
I’m working towards a Linux distro instead of windows. Until I get there it’s Firefox, unblock on a desktop with mullvad VPN. Set the vpn location to Albania for no ads.
Kubuntu is very friendly, it’s my daily. Try Mint if you want easier.
This is the way. And I might add, Unix desktop. Let’s not start bikeshedding between FOSS Unix distributions out of dogmatic reasons (I’m sure you didn’t mean to specifically single out “Linux” here, but I wish we would stop opposing “Linux” and other Unixes like BSD, Illumos, etc).
The point is, voting with your data for software that is defending your interests, and respecting your rights.
It’s not so much opposition rather than other BSDs having almost negligible desktop presence… If we really want to get into semantics, too, Linux is technically not UNIX.
This is a weird response to me.
This is the way. And I might add, Unix desktop.
Sure man, rock on. ✊
Let’s not start bikeshedding between FOSS Unix distributions out of dogmatic reasons (I’m sure you didn’t mean to specifically single out “Linux” here
Eh… OP seems to be talking about their own setup. They probably “singled out” Linux because it’s what they use.
I wish we would stop opposing “Linux” and other Unixes like BSD, Illumos, etc).
I oppose none of those things, but Linux isn’t Unix.
(Usually the Unix folks are the ones at pains to point that out.)
Add on the PokeTube skin from userstyles.org and you can pretend you live in a world that’s free and balanced where children can kick the asses of wannabe capitalistic overlords instead of the corporate hellscape we currently find ourselves in.
just an fyi it’s userstyles.world now. The .org is dead.
OK but what does that have to do with privacy?
They can’t do what they are doing here without an intent to violate privacy.
How so
Has been for years already sadly. I recommend https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local to watch directly and https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl to download. They both remove the dark patterns trying to abuse the attention of viewers.
What I have noticed is that if you add “before:2025” (or any other future date) it doesn’t show the unrelated stuff.
Ya’ll need FreeTube.
It’s “y’all” - as in a contraction of “you all.”
“Ya’ll” is the contraction for “yes, llama”
Yal’l n’eed t’o lear’n a’bou’t apo’str’phe pl’ac’em’en’t’.
This boy ain’t right
Ya will need freetube
Damn… That’s a good username. Wish I had thought of it
you can have it too, considering you’re on separate instances :P
Nah, I don’t feel like starting a new account, nor adding to the unnecessary confusion of multiple users with the same name. I’m kinda happy I’m the only one of me rn
I’ve used Vanced, ReVanced, Newpipe, LibreTube etc. for years and finally just gave up with the neverending third part app hassle, got YouTube Premium and disabled watch history. Sure it’s costly, but at least everything works, there are no ads and shorts don’t work without watch history. Win some, lose some ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good for you, but this is the wrong sub for you then.
You’re totally right, I wasn’t paying attention to the sub, my bad.
Same here. I know we’re pariahs for admitting something so obvious, but sometimes the easiest way to get good service is to actually pay for it. Youtube Music alone is worth the monthly sub, since it is VASTLY superior to Spotify.
Aren’t playlists still broken? I remember shuffle not working, repeating some songs and then going off with unrelated videos before the playlist was even over.
The problem is that YouTube music is vastly inferior to google play music.
I’m not a fan of services that make themselves worse and then charge you for it.
The paid experience is a decent one, but it isn’t the same as service that I want. I want to control what I watch and not be fed what they think I want to watch.
But I don’t disagree that paying for a good service is worth it.
You sparked my interest, in which way YouTube premium is better than newpipe ?( I’m using the sponsor block version) I mean you won’t convince me to give my money to such evil company but I’m curious about what convinced you …
I was a YouTube premium family account owner. Paid for myself, my partner and three friends accounts (think it was five slots?)
The recent price hike was too much, so I’ve been using frontends as of late.
The YouTube premium experience is seamless, much faster than the frontends but at the same time your getting shit shoveled down your throat at every chance.
I’ve had lots of issues with libretube servers as of late. Pipe pipe is better but overall since I dropped my sub I’ve been watching far less on YouTube as a whole.
Out of those I mentioned, Newpipe was actually my favourite (LibreTube felt too beta, only used it for a week at most) and I’ve used it for years. Vanced was great too. But there’s always something, like what happened to Vanced for example. I don’t know, I felt like I was spending way too much time installing third party apps, trying to get them to work properly after Google’s endless shenanigans. Paying them is more convenient / less time consuming.
Some people just don’t like the hassle. In my opinion, having had premium and used revanced with sponsorblock, revanced is better.
Yeah I understand it’s a personal point of view for me setting up my card and remember to pay is way worse hassle, on the other hand also installing newpipe and learning a new interface it’s not that easy …
Not good for privacy
Cool music taste.
You guys still using youtube?
Id rather not. Care to share some alternatives?
* 20 ALTERNATIVES TO YOUTUBE *
The Internet Archive https://archive.org offers over 1.8 million free movies and over 12 million free videos.
Here are more options. Most are browser-based. A couple require an app.
ODYSEE
https://odysee.com
VIDLII
https://www.vidlii.com/
INVIDIOUS
https://invidio.us
TIKTOK
https://tiktok.com
9GAG
https://9gag.com
BITCHUTE
https://www.bitchute.com
BILIBILI
https://www.bilibili.tv/en
RUMBLE
https://rumble.com
PEERTUBE
https://peertube.tv/videos/overview
NEWPIPE
https://newpipe.net
TWITCH
https://www.twitch.tv
TED TALKS
https://www.ted.com/talks
VIMEO
https://vimeo.com/
VEOH
https://veoh.com/
LBRY
https://lbry.com/
DAILYMOTION
https://www.dailymotion.com/us
UTREON / PLAYEUR
https://playeur.com/
THE OPEN VIDEO PROJECT
https://open-video.org/
STORYFIRE
https://storyfire.com/Lol TikTok
removedute
TikTok as an alternative to YouTube because of ads and intrusive videos? That’s just replacing one poison with a stronger poison.
also, i don’t really consider tiktok an alternative
Alternative to using youtube? I bought a bike recently. Maybe try that.
I own 4 bikes. Bike commute to work, mountain bike weekends, and hundreds of miles of bike touring in the summer. So any alternatives to youtube?
How about autofellatio or no you’re already an expert at that too.