I noticed my consumption has decased quite a bit. I would visit regularly to watch content from few channels. I would probably still visit every so often to watch the new videos. But the experience has become more deliberate and conscious. I go to YouTube because I want to go and watch something specific. Mindlessly browsing and watching additional content is harder.
This is good progress from Google to get off their platform :)
90% of my recommendations are videos I have already watched.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about YouTube.
I have an addon that makes watched videos gray and adds a WATCHED tag to them. Makes it more satisfying to browse, knowing you won’t get tricked into wasting time rewatching something. Now you can waste time watching NEW useless stuff.
Youtube recommendations used to be an amazing way to find new music. Sometimes you even had a little community of people in the comments going from video to video.
Another casualty of enshittification, I guess.
I’ve only been getting that recently.
It’s like I just watched 50 minutes of this hour video, took it out of my Watch Later and enjoyed it enough to actually give it a Like, why the hell would you recommend it to me again.
No. Mine decreased when ad frequency increased.
I have history turned on and it generally recommends stuff I’m interested in. My only complaint is that it doesn’t update often enough and likes to recommend videos I’ve seen already.
Same, I get the feeling very few people actively interact with the “not interested”/“don’t recommend” stuff, so they end up getting all kinds of weird recommendations. Or they also use Youtube Music. For some reason Youtube seriously struggles to understand that most people don’t consume video the same way they consume music, and conflates the two constantly.
Nah recommendations are shit anyway. I just watch my subscriptions
I’m watching less because I’m not getting any new or interesting recommendations. I just keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. I hate algorithms. I hate that something is deciding what I should watch while not showing me 99.999% of the other things on the platform.
Oh, and the ads are absolutely out of control. I have to decide if the content is really worth sitting through all the infuriatingly jarring ad placements. Most times, it’s not.
If you watch on Android get the reVanced app. No ads and skipping features. It’ll skip sponsors, intros, and end credits plus a shit ton more. It’s the stock YouTube UI with really granular control over features
I watch almost exclusively on my AppleTV. I’ve given YT premium a lot of consideration but it’s just a bit too much and I assume the price will continue to increase.
Yes, the ads is a whole another level. Using it without ad-block is not pleasant one bit
As someone who routinely watches YT through Invidious and NewPipe, I haven’t changed my habits.
NewPipe user here, and same thing. It’s amazing.
Yeah, I catch myself sometimes to switch to NewPipe. But sometimes the videos just don’t play. And sometimes it works fine
I’ve been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years. I don’t visit the site if I can help it, I don’t login, I don’t “like & subscribe”, I don’t see any clickbait thumbnails and most important: I don’t see any ads. Just newsboat & mpv.
I’ve been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years.
Same. Don’t really follow any kind of content feed if I can’t combine it in my RSS client. I don’t want to check dozens of web pages individually.
I’ve primarily only watched my subscriptions for a few years now.
Nope, subscriptions give me what I want. And peertube has a lot of cool channels if I want discovery.
I took the steps to pry myself away from google. Turned off all that stuff, nuked my yt channel history, all that. Exporting sub’s into RSS feeds and invidious. Freetube is an awesome desktop app for watching yt. The only thing I miss is interacting in the comment section but also at same time a blessing since I am the kind of person to accidentally write a 5 paragraph essay noons would ever read, no yt comments means less chance if wasting my time.
Also as I got older my taste and willingness to sit in front of YouTube all day has changed When I was a teen I spend hours and hours watching gaming content. As an adult I have better shit to do and would rather actually play games myself. I my sub’s list has whittled down from 200 > 100 > 50 and I only get a few new vids in my feed a day if that.
Honestly, my YouTube consumption went down when Hipyo refused to endorse trans rights and then the Linus stuff came out shortly after. The one two punch kind of made me start seeing nearly all YouTube personalities as unhealthily egotistical and probably kinda scummy. There are some creators I like, but at this point I just really don’t care what most of these people think anymore.
I’ll always tune in for Philosophytube or Contrapoints, though. I’m a sucker for the format when it’s done well. And I do enjoy Matt Colville and that D&D animated guy.
spent a few hours yesterday sorting all of my subscriptions and moving them to newpipe. while having everything auto-backed up by google was convenient, newpipe is much better - i go in, watch some videos i saved into a playlist or that have come out from subscribed channels, then go out. it feels way better then being sucked in by the algorithm. i think i’ll still use youtube’s algorithm on my pc sometimes, as this setup hinders new content discovery. but overall, i’m really pleased so far with the new setup.
What is newpipe?
I’ve always just watched things that I wanted to watch from followed channels for the most part 🤷
I’ve purposefully avoided the recommended videos for a long time now. They only exist to increase the amount of time you spend watching ads.
idk how any of these features work i just watch videos its still working well for me
