824
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by DanTDM@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] miss_brainfarts@lemmy.blahaj.zone 44 points 7 months ago

Oh, we've been through this though. Which other platform will ever have the cash to be a real contender here?

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 10 points 7 months ago

DouYin, you know, the Chinese YouTube

That's sarcasm though, as I expect them to be as malicious as YouTube

[-] oo1@kbin.social 7 points 7 months ago

Things like freetube seems to be basically a simple yt front-end.

I don't know what happens if a significant amount of yt users used freetube. but that probably won't happen.

I find it a lot more pleasant to use than yt.

[-] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 17 points 7 months ago

I use freetube as well, but I have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before google brings the axe down on it too, especially if it increases in popularity.

[-] anothermember@lemmy.zip 7 points 7 months ago

Well FreeTube never claimed to be a platform, it's a fantastic front-end for browsing YouTube videos without having to deal with Google's crap, but you're still using YouTube.

[-] Takios@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 7 months ago

I don’t know what happens if a significant amount of yt users used freetube. but that probably won’t happen.

Look at what happened with Nitter (alternative Twitter frontend). They'll start changing around things so often that alternative frontends break every few days.

[-] xnx@slrpnk.net -1 points 7 months ago

Twitch could. Still wild they don’t allow editing vods or uploading videos.

[-] Chozo@fedia.io 17 points 7 months ago

Dan Clancy has already said that Twitch isn't profitable as it is. Right now, they basically only still exist because of existing contracts, otherwise Amazon would've likely pulled the plug a while ago. They can't handle their current user base; they wouldn't be able to handle YouTube refugees en masse.

[-] xnx@slrpnk.net 10 points 7 months ago

They currently allow unlimited vods that are hours long that provides zero revenue. They could disable that and instead allow 30 minutes of edited vods or video uploads and have ads on them to make money

[-] Chozo@fedia.io 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah that's true, and I'm honestly surprised that they've had features like that available for free for as long as they have.

I kind of wonder why they haven't attempted such a pivot already, though, as it seems like they could easily take over the gaming video space that YouTube currently dominates. Much of that audience uses Twitch already and would easily transition over to a more curated platform, so it feels like it should've been a pretty obvious move by now.

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
824 points (94.8% liked)

Privacy

32177 readers
482 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS