Android @lemmy.world perishthethought @lemm.ee 1 yr. ago

Smartest thing I've done this month: Disable the YouTube app

I'm using a stock Samsung Galaxy 8 phone right now (with Android 10) and I disabled the YouTube app. I was basically sick of its s***. Since then, I never sign in to the app/site, and so may aspects of using the site are much better now.

Everything is faster, since they don't know me / aren't tracking as much.
I always open YT in Firefox Focus, which doesn't ever keep cookies or history each time I close it, so there's no history for YT to mine each time I visit again.
I'm pretty sure I see fewer ads since I don't have a deep history for YT to mine / target.
More random suggestions from YT means I am mostly broken out of the bubble caused by their tracking. I find new, interesting music, for instance, now, from the suggestions.
Hitting "back" in the browser means I go back wherever I was before, not to the YT home page (like the app used to do to me)

I still visit the site often, and appreciate all the good music and channels I watch, but now it's overall a much more positive experience, more like YT was a few years ago versus the horrible mess it's become recently.

I'd still appreciate any other tips anyone has for making YT visits even more enjoyable.

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I don't understand people not wanting recommandations based on ehat they watch... I discovered so much great channel because of it
- My issue was just that YT puts me in a bubble where it thinks I want to be. But then you only see videos like the ones you've been watching - a bubble. Imo, it's better to see lots of different videos.
  
  YT knows I have ADHD so it cycles through a few trying to guess my mood. It's kind of frightening how satisfied I am with it tbh
  
  That's true. But personally, if I want something different, I will simply search on DuckDuck "Reddit good "something" Youtube channels" and I will find a lot of things. I did it for horror channels, I start watching a lot of them and Youtube then show me other horror channels that I didn't see before. And when i'm bored of the same subject, I rinse and repeaf
  
  Yes I do t like that either and sort of want it too for some channels so what I do is use YouTube revanced with login , I purge my history once three months , and start a random video for first time like may be a documentary or a really.old/new song and then it germinates very different things for me from there on. And I got no ads at all. :)
- It's too repetitive. I want to see videos other than 5 hours elden ring speedrun/challenges sometimes too, thanks.
- I have accidentally stumbled on "default" YouTube and it's horrible af. Clickbait and fake news all over. It could be better, but I'm very grateful for my current feed.
- For me it's because I don't use YouTube for that. I don't watch channels or personalities. If I go to YouTube, I'm there searching for something specific.
  
  And when I find the video that shows me how to open my key fob to replace the battery, I'm not interested in a series of key fob videos. If I watch a video related to a news story, I'm not interested in all the reaction videos or analyses by people who don't know what they're talking about. I'm most certainly not interested in any other video with a thumbnail of someone with their mouth agape at something
  
  I don't want it suggesting more of them, and I certainly don't want it automatically advancing to some other video after it's done. All I want is a video host that plays the videos I asked to watch. Everything else is just a reminder that the kind of videos they push are the exact kinds of videos I don't want to watch.
  
  They get in the way, they draw attention to the wrong things, and they encourage people to make more of the kinds of videos that get in the way of finding the actual useful information
  
  Me I use it while i'm working. One plug in my ear, and I listen to videos or podcasts like that. In that case, I need a lot of videos to watch/listen
- I can understand both, sometimes YouTube just force me in a loophole of shit
- Its about being surveillled, privacy respecting people arent into that. Google is a dataminer.
- Yeah YouTube overall does quite a good job recommending me videos I'm actually interested in.
  
  YouTube Music's new music suggestions algorithm is fantastic, vastly superior to Spotify
  
  I'd almost pay for it, if it wasn't for Vanced lol
- Because it leads to echo chambers. It's working for you now. Great. Then a few months later you get a totally different kind of content and you didn't realize of that transition. Amd that's not a good thing.
  
  I'm not saying that will happen to you, specifically. But it has happened to a ton of people.
- My main way to consume YT is with the recommended row of Smart Tube recommended feed in my Nvidia Shield TV, so I agree with you.
- The recommendations on Piped (privacy-focused YouTube front-end) are fine for me. I actually prefer it when the suggestions are related to the video I am watching right now, than when they are related to some random video I watched 2 weeks ago and I have no interest in.
- YouTube recommendations shows me spoilers if I rely on it, since I don't get around to games right away. I also hate most YouTube channel personalities. Me and YouTube channels don't get along. It gets the topic right but I'm too picky over channels I want to even watch, and back out of so many videos I check out. I'm fine with my current list of streamlined subs, and periodically unsub from a bunch due to ending up not watching most of the content anyways and it just cluttering my feed.
- YT recomened keeps trying to feed me fascist propaganda.

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