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.

  • perishthethought@lemm.eeOP
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      YT knows I have ADHD so it cycles through a few trying to guess my mood. It’s kind of frightening how satisfied I am with it tbh

    • VioletteRei@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

    • Alborlin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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. :)