the three most important life improvements i made in the past year:
(1) eat much healthier (2) kill all social media except station (3) disable youtube watch history and the awful shorts “feature”
my focus went into the relationships and projects i deeply care about. best trade ever.
8 months ago · 👍 idx2, supernoctural, technicaltap, schark, bengunn, drh3xx, half_elf_monk, mrrobinhood5, lykso
@schark when i disabled the youtube history not only did the shorts disappear but also the “explore” or “home feed” or whatever the name of the thing is. now the algorithm stops shoving things onto my screen to increase my engagement. i have to explicitly subscribe to a channel to see its stuff in my overview. i do still get suggestions next to videos, and these are full of clickbaity bs. · 8 months ago
@half_elf_monk that is radical. i like that and i deeply respect that. i am not there yet, as i do have a youtube channel of my own that friends and family consume to follow my house build. if it weren’t for that i might have moved away from youtube entirely. otoh, youtube has some great talks and lectures that i watch regularly. tough one! · 8 months ago
@technicaltap i feel ya. shorts and reels and tiktok is just such a time suck. not saying there isn’t great entertainment value in some of these. but when i ask myself if the time was worth it, i have to admit it wasn’t. so i stopped. and it feels great. the fomo faded away and i am
better off for it. maybe that is something that works for others, too, maybe not. worth a try, though. · 8 months ago
Way to go! I found myself losing too much time and 'chill' with yt (shorts or otherwise), so I just blocked the whole domain in /etc/hosts. It's been VERY worth it. · 8 months ago
I cannot stand shorts and reels, yet they’re so addictive to watch even when you’re not enjoying yourself. Knowing there are so many people mentally locked in scrolling and scrolling through those things feels so dystopian. · 8 months ago
I feel you! I similarly closed out all social media and started cooking more with my wife. I can't stand short-form content and have had shorts disabled for awhile, but can you describe what benefit disabling Youtube Watch History has had? · 8 months ago