I am BEGGING someone, anyone at Google/YouTube to let me permanently disable YouTube Shorts.
I HATE Short form video content and no matter how many times I select "show me less of this" I still get them front and center when I open the app or website.
The annoying bit is similar to reels, shorts are good for engagement.
It’s similar to why I don’t buy Oreos. I like Oreos, everyone likes Oreos - they’re engineered to be liked, but they’re bad for you. The best way to not eat them is to not have them in the house.
Short form videos are the heroin of media consumption - meta having to pivot instagram to it is because they’re facing competitive pressure. Same with YouTube. You can’t only have vegetables when your competitors are dealing heroin and your revenue is engagement based.
It seems the revealed preference of addicting consumption for engagement is tv with with a novelty button. TikTok and short form videos are that distilled to its purest form.
These companies can’t turn them off - they’re trapped by market incentives, it’s moloch. A few years back when Facebook had a more dominant market position Zuck said they were intentionally going to focus on human connections and friends despite the revenue cost that would cause because it was the ideal he wanted. In battle against TikTok you can’t hold those kinds of ideals unfortunately.
So you don't buy Oreos, and think the best way to eat them is not to have them in the house. I agree. That's why I don't have TikTok on my phone. So why can't I keep YouTube Shorts disabled? I'm telling them I don't want it. If I'm the kind of person who doesn't keep Oreos in the house to avoid eating them, why would I go to a grocery store that insists on slipping a pack of Oreos into every third bag of carrots?
It all checks out if you recognize YouTube clearly doesn't consider the app and the website to be your turf. You are in their home, they have oreos all over the place and they will offer it to you over and over again. You'll ask if they have water, they'll bring it with a box of oreos. You'll ask where the bathroom is, and find an Oreo waiting for you by the sink in case you'd like to indulge.
In my analogy, YouTube was the grocery store, not my home. I don't think of it as a place that I own, but a place that I go shopping for vegetables (educational long-form content). I already made the decision not to enter the candy store on the same block (TikTok), and while I accept that the grocery store sells candy too, I would find it intolerable for them to be following me around waving Oreos in my face as I browse the vegetable aisle, when I keep telling them I don't want Oreos because I'm on a diet. In fact they're the ones asking me if I want to see candy in the vegetable aisle and I keep telling them no.
I don't think it makes sense to say that they are forced by the market to do this to compete with the candy store, when they already know I don't want candy in the first place. Instead, this sort of annoying practice pushes me to leave and visit the organic market instead (Nebula).
I don't think "revealed preference" is the right explanation here either, because these kinds of settings preferences are tailored to an individual account, and I never click on Shorts and always select the "hide" dropdown, so the preference that I have revealed is one that is strongly disinterested in Shorts.
I think the correct explanation is that someone's KPI is attached to increasing Shorts viewership, and they're trying to earn their bonus, even if it's at a cost to the success of the organization as a whole.
> why would I go to a grocery store that insists on slipping a pack of Oreos into every third bag of carrots?
You can see how these are not analogous. The store _is_ slipping Oreos in your vegetables. So yeah… don’t install TikTok _or_ YouTube. I get that you’d rather YouTube to be YouTube-without-shorts, but it’s not a thing anymore, vegetables-without-Oreos is not an option at this grocery store
I think the thing they got wrong is it’s not a grocery store. It’s a casino - you can have a good time there, but the house isn’t interested in what’s best for you, but what’s best for them.
Even that’s imperfect because Zuck really was interested in the interactions he thought were best despite them not being highest engagement, but you can’t only do that and stay alive in a competitive market.
The Oreo analogy is perfect. I don't buy Oreos because I can't help myself from eating the whole container in a few sittings.
I don't even touch short form video because I'll get sucked in and suddenly hours go by. Short form video on YouTube makes me want to never open YouTube because I know how easily I can get sucked in.
There's a difference between useful 30 second tutorials/how-tos and 99.99% of short form content which is brain rot designed to hook into you and keep you mindlessly scrolling - whether it's out of rage or joy. All they care about is eyeballs on screen no matter how it happens.
When I say I don't like short-form video content, I typically mean the tiktok-influenced infinite scrolling algorithm-driven video wall of videos. Where you might click on one thing that looks useful or interesting on your home page and without even thinking about it you start swiping through the videos and suddenly you emerge an hour later form a brain rot video fueled fever dream, with no idea how you just lost an hour of your life to useless shit online.
At least losing an hour to video games or reading online might leave you with a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. I have never felt anything positive after binging on social media videos.
I've been running the SmartTube app on my Chromecast (and on a Fire TV) for over a year and it's fantastic. Of course, you'll need to side load it but once installed it'll update itself directly. There are lots of tutorials online covering how to side load it on various Android-based streaming sticks.
I have never seen a better youtube client than SmartTube. I recently switched from a Shield to an AppleTV 4k and the lack of SmartTube is close to a deal breaker. If android had a better jellyfin client, I would be back on the shield.
They are fucking up the product that they are dominating a market with in order to be an also-ran in another market that's hot. It's Windows 8 all over again.
and no wonder they write papers about "negative sampling" because they don't collect clean data. I made the mistake once of clicking on a video where a Chinese lady transforms into a fox on America's Got Talent and oh my god I am suddenly scheduled for thousands of AI slop videos where some Chinese girl transforms into something on that show with the same music and with the same reaction shots.
There is an answer to the coldest cold start problem and that is have a hand curated collection of about 100 or so content pieces that are of broad interest and stupendously high quality. Instagram will show you videos that are amazing (like somebody cooking a fine meal under rustic conditions) if you're cold and Stumbleupon did the same back in the day. Now Instagram 2025 and Stumbleupon 2012 are not "cold" from the viewpoint of content the way YT Shorts is, but Google has the money to pay professionals to make something -- but their ideology is against it.
Possibly. It's NY it's way more expensive than anywhere else.
That's a delta mixer valve which is $100, plus $100 for the trim. A plumber would charge double for that, so $400 for parts. Usually labor is about the same as parts so I would expect that job to cost $800.
Maybe there was a lot of labor involved, or maybe he's embellishing the story a bit (or leaving out some of the work involved).
All the comments in the video have the same question as you.
Here's a more comprehensive BYO Shorts-hiding extension which uses CSS instead of running JavaScript every time an element is added or removed anywhere in the DOM, and also supports the mobile version (CSS selectors are extracted from the https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube Hide Shorts feature)
I go to Pinterest, no shorts because it only plays 1 video per screen, but on mobile the screen is smaller so, shorts.
I go to Reddit, shorts.
I go to Bluesky, shorts.
I don't go to Twitter.
Tumblr is probably the only social media that isn't filled with vertical videos and that has an algorithmic feed. I go to Explore and I get dandelions. A static photo of them, not a video. I'm crossing my fingers it stays that way.
Waiting for the Show HN browser extension that reformats all HN posts to fit into a shorts frame. Then rather than just displaying the text, it puts it in an annoying animated font. Maybe even adds an AI character to read it to you
I guess the likes of Youtube and Facebook are trying unsuccessfully to replicate TikTok. This is effort #2 for Facebook, which is/was also trying unsuccessfully to replicate Youtube with their take on some-attention-span-needed videos.
(Seriously though... Facebook's video playback UI. What the fuck is that? Why is it so bad?)
I guess they don't get that there's going to be only one winner in each niche, unless TikTok goes down for political/national security reasons. Why do I need Youtube shorts if I have TikTok? Why do I need Google+ if I have Facebook? Why do I want Facebook videos if I have Youtube? Unsolved puzzle.
Are you still using YouTube despite this frustration?
If yes, then they don't care. Sorry. If you'll tolerate it and some other cohort of users will engage with the site for 0.1 seconds more than they would otherwise, it stays. YouTube is an optimization machine.
The button to hide shorts now says something like "Show less" instead of the 30 days it had previously, and clicking it does absolutely nothing. It disappears from the current page but comes straight back after a reload.
I use youtube shorts block, it turns shorts videos into normal videos so you can still view them if you like, just using the normal players with comments etc.
Yes, and I also want to permanently disable hover to autoplay on desktop / 'video previews' on mobile browser. It's stored locally in the browser and is forgotten about every four days for me.
No, it's not propagated to other browsers signed into the same account, it explicitly says that in the settings page.
Maybe part of the issue is that I am logged into the same account across three different devices, or that I have other Google accounts too logged in (but I don't use YouTube in them, only the account with Premium).
Anyway, it should be trivial for Google to make it actually permanent (I would love it it was stored in my account, which I pay for Premium on, instead of local or cookie storage), but lots of people have this problem.
> it's not propagated to other browsers signed into the same account, it explicitly says that in the settings page
Yeah, you are absolutely right & I misremembered - forgot I copied over my browser profile.
It is definitely a permanent setting for me though, on both laptop & desktop profiles, haven't had to re-set it since I discovered it. (Firefox/linux).
Maybe the difference is in handling multiple google accounts differently. My approach: I tend to create browser profiles for specifiec tasks; the youtube viewing profile (used daily) is permanently signed in to my (non-Premium) youtube account, but when I check my actual gmail mail (for example) which is a different google account, I do it on a different browser profile.
Apologies for confusion over propagation, anyhow & thanks for the correction!
It's funny/sad how even firefox is making it worse now. I tend to browse youtube in firefox because the youtube app is such a pain, and doesn't have tabs and other niceties. And then only view individual videos in the app because the player works better and it's nicer to interact with comments.
But for a while now firefox has been asking every single goddamn time whether I want to open this page in the app instead. With the only extra option to always in open in app. What about no? What about never?
I use invidious, and if I can't because it's down or something, I use a FF extension called "unhook". I hadn't been on to youtube proper in a good few years, but with unhook, I can block everything (suggested videos of all kinds, comments, etc). I can re-enable comments by clicking on the extension in the toolbar and unchecking comments. Easy peasy.
You get almost a complete blank page and a search bar when you go to "youtube.com", and then when you search, you get the results. Just simple, really.
Yes please!!! I too hate Shorts. I hate that I get sucked into them in a downward doom scroll even more. I'd love nothing more than to completely disable it. But, i think this is also why they will never let me.
I also hate that the first one or two short may be relevant to whatever I'm consuming, researching, then it quickly turns into me watching Kill Tony comedians, girls basically naked in the gym, etc. they know my brain basically just turns off and enters the void
I notice that many short videos seem to be simply cuts from longer videos posted to promote them. So they were not made for short video section and just try to misuse short videos to increase long video visibility.
There is now a _huge_ industry of solo editors who spam YouTubers advertising "increasing revenue by re-using the content you already made!"
And 98% of it is just grabbing popular snippets of long form videos, cropping them slightly, and overlaying some bubbly animated text (or worse, just closed captions but with a bright font).
It's almost as annoying as the deluge of people who email and say "we can auto-translate your content into 20 languages!"
But there's no way to click from the short to the long video. I'd like to do that. It's someone else doing the cuts, presumably for their own benefit, rather than to promote the original.
Shorts creators can link back to the full video, assuming both are posted on the same channel. You can't link to someone else's video though.
Also, a channel that posts shorts exclusively needs like 30 million views to be monetized, you're infinitely more likely to reach that threshold creating compilation of cute cat videos than with your own original content (regardless of the niche). I'd be shocked if even 2% of channels earning money from shorts create any original content what so ever.
Not a chance. YouTube needs shorts so that they can compete with TikTok. They HAVE to put it in front of everybody so that they can leverage their existing, vast userbase to quickly bootstrap such a product. It's a fight for market relevance for them. You will most likely not see them let that go.
and you might think, "I have (say) N=250,000 people playing game A and I can get them playing game B" you are probably going to be disappointed and very lucky if you get somewhere between 250 and 2500 of them playing your new game.
The two-sided market that makes YouTube impossible to dethrone makes it just as hard to change direction. For one thing you have to change the behavior of the viewers, but you also have to change the behavior of the creators, who know how to make videos, who know how to monetize them, all of that.
Myself I find I don't have a big attention span for short videos. I mean, Chinese girls doing the robot turn on my mirror neurons as much as anything. I can watch a 30 second video and get 30 seconds of fun but I don't want to watch another and another and another. However I cannot get enough of Techmoan talking about tape decks and such
I was thinking that Shorts is popular, and it seems like it is. What I estimates I find put it from half as many users as TikTok to on par with TikTok. With regards the flywheel, I think that it works better than your example, and I think that the existence of the myriad product bundles that we see are why. That strategy works so well against competitors that sometimes antitrust comes into the picture, to break something up that's too encompassing.
Someone may believe this, but it’s utter nonsense. The users who don’t want to see shorts aren’t using TikTok.
This would be like Starbucks randomly serving tea to 20% of customers who order coffee because they want to compete more effectively with Lipton. That’s not how competition works.
I don't think so. I think users who don't want to see shorts, and aren't using TikTok are a minority. Short form video is hugely popular. And even if they are not in a minority, it doesn't really matter (to YouTube), because they are not going anywhere - there is nowhere to go.
The analogy fails as well. It would be more like Starbucks asking every customer whether they want tea as well. And I imagine that whichever tea company is partnered with Starbucks at that point is going to be very happy. Product bundling works very well, especially in cases like this, when an established giant decides that they are going now offer the thing as well. YouTube Music worked the same.
What's really funny is that I reckon if Youtube's persistence finally managed to get me to like short content, the first thing I'd probably do is... ditch them for TikTok.
They've increased shorts length to >60s so now it's blending in with 2-3 minute long videos which overlaps with the sweet spot of no nonsense videos. Some shorts are improving, but the shorts UI on desktop is trash.
What I don't understand is why YouTube penalizes creators for creating short "traditional" videos yet also penalizes them if they aren't creating shorts.
I mean, I do know, it's ads and the attention economy, but still. Pick a lane. This is why I pay for Nebula.
Atleast let me disable shorts on the TV app. I can't scroll thru my subscribed channels feed without being spammed with all the shorts, this makes content discovery awful and im just not using the app as much.
I love short form video content, but I don't want it from YouTube. And if YouTube feels they need to have it to be competitive then don't put it on my desktop.
EDIT: I said "do put it on my desktop" -- I meant to write "DON"T put it on my desktop".
Not the OP, but I have given up on trusting low-audience browser extensions. Too many stories of the author selling out and injecting analytics/malware into the product.
What I've been doing is using high audience extensions (like Tampermonkey) and getting ChatGPT to write a script for it which does what I need it to. Much more effective and trustworthy than relying on another extension developer. If Tampermonkey can't do it then I'll just write the entire extension on my own and load it as a developer extension.
The whole point is that I don't want to run other people's code on my machine so I use an LLM to generate code (that I verify) which does the job I need it to. For small, well contained requirements, it works quite well.
Unless it is a top-10 app, it is a no go. The top applications have millions of users.
A browser is my everything app. It is the most security essential tool I use daily, which requires vigilance in how I extend it. More users is a crappy proxy for how likely a developer can sneak through an insidious change.
Not the OP, but I want to turn off Shorts too. I do most of my youtube access via Apple TV -- where Shorts are particularly annoying when scrolling through Subscriptions -- so this wouldn't be an option.
I want Shorts to format properly on my 1440x2560 screen. All the interaction controls on hidden off the side of the screen. Still have black bars on the left and right of the video too.
And also yes, I want long form and short form videos to be separated, when I'm scrolling through results 6 at a time(minus 1-2 ads) to queue the shorts really mess up the flow.
Same. Shorts are actually a great product in terms of capturing attention, but I don't want them on youtube. I hear someone from the back shouting, "you're not the customer, you're the product!" but I pay for youtube premium... that makes me the customer; and I pay for the long-form content without ads! But 50% of Youtube shorts are just ads or product marketing. I never feel good after going on a youtube shorts binge. Please, youtube, let me turn it off.
You're still the product. Paying to remove ads doesn't change this. You're still being tracked. Unless something has changed recently, you're still being recommended videos.
No, I think Youtube really is the product. With Premium, you don't see any ads (at least the ones Youtube makes money from), and there's no way "tracking" makes them anywhere near as much money as a simple premium subscription.
I have seen an article somewhere they are not even good for marketing.
The do grab your attention, but they have no lasting effect, it is so short and there is so much of it that you quickly forget everything you have watched, including the ads.
They are good for the platforms though, because effective or not, they get paid good money for these ads.
Not sure what you mean with "completely disables it". I have watch history disabled and still see shorts in search results or subscriptions results https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
If you click on one though and go to swipe (unless it's in your subscriptions) it doesn't allow you to "scroll". You can watch them when necessary but it's impossible to get sucked into an infinite feed.
I HATE Short form video content and no matter how many times I select "show me less of this" I still get them front and center when I open the app or website.