> YouTube is eating itself from the inside out too

One thing that I really really hate Youtube for is that they don't allow users to turn off their shorts. You can choose to "reduce" Shorts for a given session, but they come back right next time.

That said, Youtube is tremendously valuable for its high-quality content. It's kinda like a restaurant. The service can be horrible. They decor can be hideous. But! I'm come back and pay as long as the food is delicious.

You can go to Google Account > Data & Privacy. Then pause Youtube History. There will be no more feed on Youtube home screen. You will only see your /subscriptions feed. Little trick for a more peaceful life.

There's a new setting rolling out in the YouTube app.

Go to settings > time management > shorts feed limit. Turn that setting on, and you can select how many minutes you limit to. There's now an option for "0 minutes".

Yeah the 'not being able to turn off shorts' is such a brazen, anti-user form of enshitification. Alongside not being able to hide threads in Instragram (can only hide for 30 days), and so many other examples. Like there is enough demand for this that there are literally browser extensions to block shorts.

I can see why youtube don't want you to disable; because shorts are "addictive" in a certain moorish way and letting you disable would lesson your expected youtube use time.

But it's such a wierd choice on a certain level right. Like "lets make our product objectively worse for users because (in the short term?) we'll make more money". It's the sort of choice that does't really exist in the "real" "normal" economy. Like you bake some bread, you wanna make it as good as possible, I buy it from you because you make good bread.

So anyway I get why they do it. I'm just a little surprised that in their calculations the gains to engagement from forcing shorts are worth the loss of user goodwill. And even like employee morale right. Like how would you feel about your job if you're having to do this stuff, deliberately and explicitly curtailing the choices of your users.

But yes I agree the content is great.

> but they come back right next time.

I never once did playables and each time asking them to dismiss them. I wrote down every time I was re-prompted for over a year:

March 19, 2025 - 8:31 PM

April 9 - 4:09 PM

April 24 - 8 AM

May 9 - 5:33 PM

May 20 - 2:07 PM

June 8 - 5:10 PM

July 9 - 6:59 PM

August 9 - 5:14 PM

September 8 - 8:45 PM

November 9 - 8:47 PM

December 9 - 8:48 PM

Jan 8, 2026 - 9:28 PM

Feb 7 — 11:11 PM

March 10 - 9:18 PM

April 10 - 1:10 AM

May 10 - 7:53 AM

On IOS/macos there's an app called "Unwatched for YouTube" which allows you to subscribe to channels via RSS (no need to login) and then you can turn shorts on/off per channel.

It's free for now but the developer has plans for some kind of subscription for premium features.

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/unwatched-for-youtube/id647728...