These are all products that I legitimately like and want to engage with, but linking them all to a single account and more importantly a shared recommendation engine feels very flawed.

My music playlists from Youtube Music keep showing up on my Youtube homepage. Likewise, engaging with Youtube Shorts (especially subscribing) also subscribes to their youtube channel. I don’t know about anyone else, but what I find interesting in a 30 second video is not what I find interesting in a 10-30 minute video.

I feel like Google would be better served separating these recommendation engines. Even looking at this from a monetization lens, it feels inefficient. How do you guys feel? If you have any hacks or recommendations I’d love to hear them. I’m personally ready to create a TikTok account just to avoid contaminating my youtube feed.

  • crowsby@kbin.social
    8·
    2 years ago

    I dislike the general trend towards platforms feeling compelled to blindly imitate the various interaction mechanisms from platforms. Sometimes I just want to Instagram on Instagram. But then they had to follow-the-leader, so now you can Snapchat on Tiktok, or TikTok on Instagram. Companies are compelled to do many things haphazardly instead of one (or a few) things well.

    This is simultaneously coupled with a growing trend towards disallowing any type of UI customization. You will take our experience and you will like it. How dare you want to turn off our faux Tiktok bullshit that our developers spent so many months plagiarizing.

    • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve had to add something like #infinite_scroll_content > div:nth-of-type(1):others() for a few sites in uBlock Origin because every site wants you to just scroll the site forever now and attaches a bunch of other random articles to the bottom of any page you open.

      I also block a lot of sidebars, sticky title bars that follow you as you scroll, widgets prompting me to chat with a salesweasel and so, so many cookie notice bars because sites still think they’re a get out of jail free card by EU law.

      I’ve actually got quite a few Youtube lines in my filters file, because it’s my computer and it still does what I want despite the best efforts of big tech companies:

      www.youtube.com##.yt-formatted-string.style-scope.yt-simple-endpoint:has-text(YouTube Music):nth-ancestor(13)
www.youtube.com###video-title-link:has-text(Mix – ):nth-ancestor(7)
www.youtube.com###title-text:has-text(Shorts):nth-ancestor(7)
      • MrWiggles@prime8s.xyz
        0·
        2 years ago

        As a note, the cookie notices are required by EU law for any tracking of the user via cookies. I just went into this with my lemmy instance. Lemmy isn’t required to have a cookie notice because it doesn’t track you with cookies.

        • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          0·
          2 years ago

          According to gdpr.eu:

          To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must:

          • Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.
          • Provide accurate and specific information about the data each cookie tracks and its purpose in plain language before consent is received.
          • Document and store consent received from users.
          • Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
          • Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.

          I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site with a revoke consent button.

          Many of them start dropping cookies as soon as you load the page and mostly you get a link to their privacy policy rather than cookie explanations. So they aren’t even meeting GDPR requirements anyway. Sites just treat the cookie notice popup as a complete GDPR solution.

          It looks like Lemmy sets a cookie when you log in to an account, so it might actually need a paragraph explaining the login cookie. Or maybe it has one and I’ve forgotten.

          • MrWiggles@prime8s.xyz
            1·
            2 years ago

            So, from what I understand, the login cookie is considered “Strictly necessary” as it is involved with the necessary functions of the site. As far as privacy policy and cookie explanations, lemmy has none, and I’ve been campaigning in Github to get the necessary changes made to make the Lemmy UI compliant, which to my understanding it is not currently. This has nothing to do with cookie banners and everything to do with privacy policy.

  • tyo_ukko@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Sorry I can’t really contribute to your question, but would anyway like to take the opportunity to air my grievances: I hate Youtube shorts and TikToks with fierce passion. The format of short videos makes sense and is a good idea to some extent, but who the hell decided we’re not allowed to rewind our videos anymore? I want to hunt down that person, go to their house at night and tell them that they are not very good at their job so loud that their whole family can hear it.

  • Azure@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    Youtube shorts being visually hard to tell the difference but being in my sub lists AND breaking the queuing is obnoxious. I have been cutting myself off from google products as much as I can, they are just so shitty now.

  • Matt@lemmy.oneEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    That’s one of the most significant reasons I stopped using YouTube Music.

    • SPOOSER@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I switched from Spotify to YouTube Music because I was under the impression I could use YouTube Music to play any song that is currently on YouTube. Apparently, that’s not how it works and it was actually much harder to find not only music I had on Spotify, but there are many songs from YouTube that you couldn’t even get on YouTube music, making it a shittier version of listening to songs from YouTube. The service is pretty pathetic.

  • Dusty@l.dustybeer.comEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I personally despise yotuube shorts. I use rules in my ublock origin to block them so I don’t see them on my youtube page.

  • Snapz@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Glad you called it out. Hate this forced crossed contamination.

    I make it a point to not engage with any of the shorts content - especially since they deliberately made it difficult to add to watch later list. My time is held hostage in that moment and FUCK if that isn’t a great way to get me to not engage with that bullshit, even if I was interested in the content.

  • x2XS2L0U@feddit.deEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I don’t have a google account. You can find the RSS feed of channels you like in their accounts sites source code and just use a feedreader (I can recommend feedbro) to follow them. Also: Use sponsorblock in addition to your normal adblocker. Shorts I skip, music I listen to from other sources.

    The enshittyfication is getting strong over at yt

  • brie@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I think I used to use a brand account just to separate my music subscriptions and regular subscriptions. I’m not sure if it affected suggestions though.

  • lemillionsocks@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I just browse music with a different account than I do regular youtube. The shorts dont bother me too much conceptually but I absolutely hate the player with how it doesnt have media controls and forces a portrait mode(especially when im watching youtube on my tv and laptop)

  • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    Personally I like the YT/YTMusic cross. I listen to the same music in the car or at work that I do at home in YT fairly often. I just hate shorts and wish they’d get the fuck off my homepage. That “hide for 30 days” button is so aggravating.

    • deadcream@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’m fine with music content in Youtube recommendations, but videos in Music recommendations is absolute cancer.

      • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        Honestly I’ve used both every day since Google Play Music shut down and I can’t say I’ve ever had video stuff come up on YT Music.

        • swope@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          My kids get annoyed when YTmusic plays the video version of a song. I get annoyed that my kids choices influence what the algorithm recommends to me. (Play Music let kids under 13 have their own profile, but not YTmusic.)

          Shorts are quite annoying and I want to disable them permanently.

    • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      uBlock Origin doesn’t have a 30 day limit:

      www.youtube.com###title-text:has-text(Shorts):nth-ancestor(7)
        • zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          The feeling of “You’ve clearly indicated you don’t want this, but this is how long we’re willing to wait before we try to force it on you again” of the 30 days is annoying, yes.

  • Risky@lemmy.kiberness.xyzEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    My main gripe is with movies. After a while, the simlar video recomentaions are filled with “Free with Ads” movies. I don’t even watch movies on Youtube. Its annoying.

    I usually have to clear cookies to get rid of them.

  • plantstho@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I can’t stand Shorts. I don’t even mind the aspect ratio so much, but the lack of a scrubber or even time information is a dealbreaker for me. I wrote an adblock rule to remove them from the website UI, but it is a bit of a bummer how much content is only in Shorts.

    Edit: And the looping!!! Ugh

  • distractedcactus@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    What I find irritating is seeing the long-form video channels that I watch repeatedly pushing new shorts videos to keep up with the algorithm and draw traffic, but because they don’t do a lot of quick daily vids they break up old videos into multiple shorts. So now my feed is full of snippets of videos from months ago, and it makes it harder to know when there’s actual new content to see.