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.
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.
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. :)
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.
Yeah YouTube overall does quite a good job recommending me videos I’m actually interested in.
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
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.
Pro-tip: use NewPipe and you’ll never want to go back. You can install it from F-Droid.
Revanced is not from the play store you buffoon omfg. It’s one thing to want to denigrate another (better) app, for whatever reason. But at least don’t be an idiot about it.
Yah, I use Piped and https://yewtu.be/ now too.
But the last time I tried to use NewPipe, it was slowwww and would frequently be broken by changes made by YT. I’ll have to check it out again.
The only problem with newpipe is you can’t log in and manage your own stuff.
On the other I love that you don’t need an account to be able to “subscribe” for a custom feed, group channels into custom categories, or make playlists. And all being able to get backed up locally.
I use bubble upnp. If you share the yt link to it, you can cast the video to your Chromecast devices https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp
Base YouTube is a cancer experience. I used vanced back when it existed. The second they shut down, I stopped using mobile YouTube and just used it on Firefox PC with ad block. When I heard reVanced was a thing, I downloaded it and it’s essentially just like vanced.
I will never use YouTube without adblock unless they either change their monetization system, or ad system.
For anyone else not aware of this.
You can use Yattee. There’s a guide on how to set it up correctly. You can also just add the Piped website to your homescreen. That’s what I’ve been doing for over a year, before I switched to GrapheneOS. Now I can enjoy LibreTube.
As a Pixel user, I don’t appear to have the option of uninstalling YouTube. Imagine that.
Try the Universal Android Debloater. Or switch to GrapheneOS.
@Drusas @perishthethought
True, as a Picel user you have no possibility to uninstall Youtube and other apps, because they are system apps. However, you do not have so-called bloatware. With Samsung, Oppo, etc. you can not uninstall the Google apps, and also have a lot of bloatware apps (20 GB) such as Facebook, Netflix, etc. that can not be removed!
Just know, I can’t uninstall it either. Instead I went into the Android settings, did Force Stop on the YT app, and then I was able to Disable it.
@Drusas @perishthethought
Pixels have no bloatware, only the Google system apps!
Our TV has a YT app on it and I never sign in. I have way better experience with it because it randomly suggests stuff that the algorithm would probably think isn’t something I like and yet it TOTALLY is something I like.
This is the problem with all these attempts at AI. They don’t have the capacity to be actually random when they’re using large databases of accumulated input from us.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the non logged in version I’m experiencing is also constrained by my prior choices, but it seems like the data they’re holding is much smaller which allows for better chances at a random find.
Plus my kids get on there and search for their weird gamer streamer blah blah BS too which I’m sure really throws a curve ball.
