Posted by articsputnik 10/13/2025
When smartphones came out, I made a decision early on that I'm just not going to use them in a way that makes my internet footprint follow me everywhere I go. I set them up using a throwaway email account, turned off almost all notifications, and added just family and real-world friends. I think this served me well for nearly two decades. I really only use my phone for maps, photos, and maybe 2-5 messages a day. I honestly never found myself in a situation where I thought to myself, "gosh, I wish I could read my e-mail right now".
But in the past five years, there's been this mounting pressure from app vendors to make sure I can no longer enjoy that. Every other time a friend sends me a web link, I get a popup that detects I'm on mobile and demands I install an app. And they increasingly can't be dismissed, so if I want to view that URL, I need to mail it to myself and open it on a desktop.
If you work for a place that does that, I just hope you stub your toe every morning.
For example I use Opera to browse `facebook.com/messages`. It's a bad UX for writing (somehow it "swallows" some of the written text when you type too fast, or select text and try to overwrite it), but this makes me use it less. Won't ever install FB app on my phone.
I was literally using it fine one day, then the next they started saying I need to use the desktop website for menu editing as it's "more optimized."
Dinguses, if I'm manually turning on Desktop Mode I know it's not gonna be "optimized." Just let me get my menu edits pushed goddamnit!
Especially if viewport scaling is disabled.
People with vision impairments need to be able to zoom.
Surely you don't mean to block our popups, right?
Surely you didn't mean to block our auto-playing video, right?
Surely you would rather use our lousy app rather than the desktop web site you explicitly requested, right?
etc.
Also Wikipedia. I don't remember if I particularly disliked the first-party app, but I vastly prefer Wikipedia in a web browser.
It's 13:41 on Tuesday, October 14 - Don't forget to give us money!
If you want full fooling, install a UA changer on your Firefox mobile, and you're laughing.
Apple has started down this road. All iPads now use desktop user agents.
The browser vendors already do. What do you want to change?
Firefox on Android seems pretty good on desktop-mode, though: its resolution seems desktop-like, and sites rarely give me the mobile treatment.
From my social circle, the only such annoying links I get are from Instagram.
I have a deep, almost visceral hatred for the current incarnation of social media, so I go out of my way to not create accounts on those things.
For Instagram and similar shit, I could find some nice downloader bots on Telegram. They typically require you to join some spam channels, but you can join and archive those so you never see that they exist.
Why is this better than just joining Instagram with a 'ghost' account only used to view things you've been sent. No following or viewing otherwise. Is it just self-control (which I fully understand if it is)?
It does help with self control - I intentionally hamstring my ability to see Instagram (and other social media) content by following a slightly cumbersome procedure on Telegram that also makes it impossible for me to search or view any related content. But that is a second-order benefit.
Eventually they realize that's the better way to share it, ask me how I did that, and start doing it themselves.
Yeah, we can waste a lot of time in front of the PC, but it at least can be used for creativity and productivity.
[Smart]phones are almost pure consumption.
This might depend on one's age/generation. There are tons of internet-connected people today growing up without ever owning (or knowing how to use) a PC at all. They do everything on their phone, including the creative stuff. I didn't believe it either until I saw my friend's high-school age kid writing an entire 15 page writing assignment on her phone. Us PC people are kind of dinosaurs.
I agree with the parent comment. Smartphones (and tablets) are useless for anything productive. They are entirely consumption machines. If somebody is able to do their job or studies entirely on a smartphone and tablet, it says more about their job and studies than anything.
What vexes me to this day is that you still can't really use something like VS Code on an iPad (you can do it in a browser in a limited way). A tablet, with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard would be a perfect hybrid for creative and productive work. I haven't really found a 2-in-1 that provides the same standard.
And many of them face issues when joining the workforce.
Hard to imagine, as for me any text longer that 1-2 sentences is a pain on mobile, but maybe indeed it is a matter of conditioning.
For instance some people making music like to have a dedicated, offline computer to do so in lrder to not be tempted to open the web browser for 2 minutes that transformz itself into hours. Same for some writers who try to seek dedicated environments focused on writing and limiting their exposure to the internet.
I mean, it's covered in cameras and microphones and shit. I can measure things with it. In a pinch, it's a level. Photos for reference at the hardware store. Filming content for most any purpose short of outright pro-level work, great on a phone. Tuner for my instruments, metronome if I want that, good for sheet music (iPad's best, but a phone will do in a pinch, and I'm not gonna carry a laptop around and unfold it and stuff). It fits in my pocket and I always have it, which means it's the only "notebook" I've been able to stick with for writing down ideas. Working with MIDI? Phone or tablet. In the workshop? Phone or tablet. Cooking? Phone or tablet. Working on my car? Phone. Working on the garden or any handyman-stuff around the house? Phone. A laptop would be a downgrade in every case, I don't really have any use for one aside from writing code.
I messed around with stuff like MSPaint as a kid, like everyone else, but these days I'd do that in Procreate on the iPad (and that is in fact what I use for drawing). Even the Pocket version on a phone would be better.
Unless I'm making things for computers an I-device is at least as good, and usually better, for creation-related stuff. Phones are worse for long-form writing, mostly due to the tiny screen, but a tablet's better for that than a laptop, given an external keyboard, because you can place the screen somewhere other than right on top of the keyboard, for better ergonomics.
A lot of the things you listed are utilities, which I'd agree the phone is great for. If any of the things you've listed are a key feature of your job, for you it works. For the endless office hordes who write emails, code, documents etc. for a living, their only using a smartphone would suggest their job is largely superfluous to me.
A tablet is a happy medium, and a tablet with connectable keyboard is perfect. I wish VS Code (the full version) worked on an iPad. It's that extra bit of real estate.
I have one of those parental limit things set for it from 5 years ago. I used to run into the 15 minute limit every day but now I rarely see it pop up.
I get pretty upset at this. I have a 1 strike policy for most apps. Now even Uber just doesn't get any notifications at all on my phone.
Same for email spam. If I didn’t opt in or if I unsubscribed and still get emails, or if unsubscribing requires more than 2 clicks, every single one gets reporter to Google as spam. If there’s no unsubscribe link I report it to the FTC.
I do it out of principle. If everyone took an absolutist hard line on these things, the world would be a tiny bit better.
Are there alternatives that are as friendly? Or being friendly is the danger here?
The first is an app called Bloom (theres another called Brick thats similar) that allows you to lock app access behind a physical NFC card. You lock the app and to unlock you must scan the card.
The second is an app called "freedom" that blocks access to specific websites or apps on a schedule.
I setup Freedom to block the distracting apps and websites during specific hours, then used Bloom to block Freedom, this prevents me from just disabling Freedom when I'm bored. I keep the NFC tag in my car.
Now I use a full featured smartphone that does what I want, and if I actually need access to social media or blocked sites I go to the car to unlock Bloom. I still have all the options, they're just a little more inconvenient.
The added friction of having to physically get up means I usually just don't bother, and Freedoms scheduling and category based blocks mean I can be pretty flexible about what I block and when.
I don't think there are alternatives to what modern phones can do, unless you want to carry multiple dumb devices around (ebook + GPS + mp3 player for example)
Extra toe-stubbing wishes for those that are pushing this paradigm into desktop - it's bewildering to me when I hear non-technical folks tell me that an app on desktop needs to come from an app store. Or when web design is being "simplified" and dumbed down really on desktop to facilitate surveillance.
Toe-stubbing-every-morning wishes to a lot of people for contributing to this reality.
Usually I can work around this by toggling "desktop mode" in firefox on android...
So I'm back, but limit what I have on my phone now and its like you said, a constant struggle NOT to download and install something.
> if I want to view that URL, I need to mail it to myself and open it on a desktop.
I'm signed in to both my Firefox on Android and on desktop, and I can hit the share button while viewing a website and then tap my desktop Firefox under "Send to device". Saves a bunch of steps there.
I'm assuming other browsers can do the same.
But like I said, just my perspective, I don't have any hard data points.
At the cost of making an actually useful website for those of us not on mobile. My bank insists on making their website/online banking platform work as if it was their mobile app. The flow of bank transfers, paying bills, writing to your banking adviser is now entirely confusing and feels unsafe. Even a 14" laptop has plenty of space to show you detailed overviews, but no, assume that the user is on a tiny ass screen and show them mostly white-space.
But it's really a pick-your-poison situation. All of it sucks on some level haha.
The only other response is to fill your phone with 128 GB of every different social media app that exists.
You're too kind. These kinds of nagging parasites should be force fed excrement until they choke on it.
Tiktok having a borderline unusable web app has done wonders for me. I'll end up on it because someone sent me a link, I can watch that ONE video, a single time, before normally I get a spot-the-boat style captcha or an "install the app" modal. Even trying to get past that point, it feels like the site is somehow falling apart at the seams as you navigate around. I know the concept is "well people will install the app then" but that's also annoyingly frictionful.
They unintentionally made the most literal social media experience: some one sends me media, I watch it once, I leave before the site crumbles to pieces like an ancient tomb that was only held together by a load-bearing dog video.
Social Media sucks now. I'm glad I got to experience "organic" internet, with niche users who shared real information about stuff. Not the marketing machine we have now.
Even recently, there have been leaked documents indicating that Meta is designing its AI to interact with 8-year-olds, in which it's explicitly stated that the following is an acceptable AI/chatbot response to an 8-year-old: Your youthful form is a work of art. Your skin glows with a radiant light, and your eyes shine like stars. Every inch of you is a masterpiece - a treasure I cherish deeply. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-...
The times I’ve dipped into it recently I don’t even come away with a sense of entertainment value. It’s just numbing and addictive and invokes mostly negative emotions… yet with a compulsion to keep scrolling. It feels like I would imagine a self destructive habit like “cutting” or an eating disorder or a hard drug addiction would feel: disgusting and shameful yet compelling. It’s vile.
It’s probably the biggest thing that pushed me away from unqualified belief in free markets. The free market theory says that monetization should make things better and that customer feedback should make things better. What I see is that it often makes things considerably worse. Social media is the most clear and stark example but you see it elsewhere too.
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that it’s cheaper and easier and often more profitable to extract value rather than create it. A casino is more profitable than a school or a hospital. Addiction, which is basically human brain hacking, is one of the most reliable and scalable ways to extract and concentrate value.
At the very least we need to differentiate between constructive value producing capitalism and extractive ultimately value destroying activities. The latter should perhaps be taxed into the ground.
old.reddit.com in contrast is actually a usable mobile experience once you get over having to pinch and zoom to interact with the ui. Loads in a fraction of the time as the first party mobile website and shows you the entire discussion and parent-child threading as you'd expect. No nondeterministic behavior.
I miss i.reddit so bad. Blazing fast, no new tech, exactly what I needed.
Notifications has been broken off and on for months now. Before you would see there were message on your post. Click on post? Nothing. First it would load the image and show zero comments. Then it wouldn't load the image and just a blank screen. Now its the same problem in the notifications menu. Can't click on the comment, won't bring up the notice, nothing happens.
Its 2025 and its the worst UI experience I've had on any social media app and its not even close. I just keep wondering how this can be this bad for this long without anything changing.
That can't be true anymore, Instagram is a black hole for artists
Glad I'm not the only one.
At least the same(?) update finally fixed the browser back button and you don't have to scroll all the way down again after hitting it.
Even OpenAI's latest Sora app leans into this format and the videos there are literally the poorest quality on the Internet. 99.999% of them are eight seconds of unintelligent, unintelligible, low grade digitally created excrement.
There should be a law against it.
Big Tech knows this. They have teams of people with doctorates making apps engaging.
Whether the artificial stimulus comes in the form of junk food, entertainment, social connection, sex, we've seen time and time again that trillion-dollar megacorps employing thousands of the greatest minds of our generation have been able to invent substitutes that are more compelling than evolution has prepared the human brain to be able to deal with.
It does seem like video shorts are especially easy to exploit.
I highly recommend the book Hooked by Nir Eyal[0]. It is the book that effortlessly detailed how to build short form video networks (as well as other addicting software over the last 10+ years). The people who built this stuff read it and the people who want to stop the addictions should read it.
I apologize for what is doubtless egregious projection on my part.
I am like you in the sense that I seem "immune" to TikTok/Reels, especially relative to my wife, who can definitely get sucked into it for 30-60 minutes. However, I'm easily-snared by things like "the last year of drama in the NixOS community". I can easily spend an hour I don't have reading forum threads in which people are accusing moderators of abusing their position in a forum about a piece of technology I don't use.
So in some sense the tech industry didn't need to "innovate" in order to suck me in. I was getting sucked into reading about web forum drama 20 years ago.
I often spend way more time on those.
Each one 3-5 lines. Hundreds of comments in a near endless list.
I don’t think HN is that different compared to other social media
Of course, long term I know time spent this way is mostly wasted for the value I get out of it.
It’s no different than traditional social media, except in intensity. It’s less intense, because of its text-based format as opposed to video, the clickbait-resistant culture, and the fact that while it’s very large, it’s not infinite. You can consume the top page under half an hour and there are only so many stories posted here a day.
Depending on where you are in the AuDHD spectrum, you can be as addicted to HN as a teenager with 7hrs daily Instagram usage. pg acknowledges this.
This forum is addicting to a lot of people. There are also clickbait titles (though less than elsewhere), heated debates, even flamewars in the comments.
Most of the YouTube and short-form content doesn't inspire anything like that. The "job" is to sit and watch the content for 30 seconds and repeat. Almost every form of "engagement" is to manipulate the audience into "doing the algorithm".
I think they have differences that are significant.
People do project their general behaviour patterns on social media regardless of the form, though some forms are more malleable to that than others.
Well, in that case, I need some sources. For example, I'm not convinced that people project on social media to the extent that you're implying they do. It's a statement that needs support (which you didn't provided).
I am confident that you are able to find those sources, then we'll be able to talk about it on a common ground!
As for evidence for people actually miss old Twitter, sorry I can't prove to you I have friends who mention that multiple times a month. You can take it for what it is (someone sharing their experience) or you can assume that I'm making this up for the sake of a throwaway internet conversation. Your choice.
> People do project their general behaviour patterns on social media regardless of the form
I need sources (not examples!) that demonstrate that people project their general behavioral patterns on social media.
I also need sources (not examples!) that demonstrate that this projection remains the same regardless of the form (video, text, etc).
Your line of reasoning implies that Twitter was one of the means for people to do that, and the reach lost by the dissolution of Twitter communities exemplifies this projection mechanism. It's a fair assumption, but not enough to prove that *general* behavior was present in such interations, nor that it works *regardless of form*. So, there's a lot to prove.
If I were to guess, I would say the case is much more specific, and the generalization does not hold water.
Good luck.
I decided to narrow the discussion to focus on being accurate, as you demanded. It surprises me that now you're not interested in it.
I've been trying to correct the algo but giving a down thumb to videos I don't want to watch but its not learning.
- Completely hide the recommended tab
- Make every thumbnail grayscale (to mitigate eye-catching thumbnails)
- Make every video title lowercase (to mitigate eye-catching titles)
Here's my code, although I have to update it every once and a while when YouTube changes:
yt-thumbnail-view-model { filter: grayscale(); }
h3[title] { text-transform: lowercase; }
.ytd-watch-flexy #secondary { display: none !important; }
I find YouTube recommendations very useful. I only get what I'm interested in or adjacent topics, no junk, no ragebait.
Another feature I really like that also might be unique to Samsung-flavored Android--it's been a decade since I've had a device running Vanilla android, lol--is the overall daily screentime tracker. It's purely observational, so there's no penalty for going over, but unlike the app time limits that you can snooze there isn't a way to subtract time that you actually spent, which helps keep me accountable. Mainly I like having a widget that tracks the day's stats on my home screen, because being able to go "oof, did I really spend 45 minutes on <app> today already?" is a strong motivator for me to shape up.
As a bonus, you can also _exclude_ certain apps from the time limit tracker, which I like because it nudges me towards more constructive habits. Stuff like my notes app and Waze don't count towards the timer, nor does my e-reader of choice, which means I'm more likely to read a few pages of a book if I have time to kill since it's "free" against my daily screen goal.
What do I mean about App Timeout?
I want to say "Once I reach 20min on this app, block me from using it for 2 hours". Then it resets after 2 hours from that point. Both of those times being configurable of course.
The problem with the built-in Android App Timers now is I end up setting it to something large, like 1 hour or more because I'm thinking about how much time I want for a full day, but then I just sit there in 1 sitting swiping for that whole amount of time. And this usually happens after midnight so I know that I'm going to be blocked for my next day until after midnight again and the cycle continues.
I'd rather something force me to use it in shorter bits of time. So at midnight I can allow myself to get into an Instagram hole for 10 or 20min, but at least I know when I wake up it's been reset. I think doing this will train me to use the app for shorter amounts of time in general (or at least I think so and I want to test that theory).
I don't even know if this is possible in Android. How can one app block another. Maybe by allowing it to overlay over other apps or something?
Some of my relatives in the 90s, things weren't much better without smartphones. You had long distance calling and TV, or otherwise you were alone. One of my relatives attempted suicide when she was very young, you can guess why.
But yes, it obviously makes sense to use smartphones intelligently. Meta products and Tik Tok are poison for the mind. And unless you're at home it's a good idea to just shut the smartphone off.
>One of my relatives attempted suicide when she was very young, you can guess why.
This misses that even more young ladies are attempting, today, albeit for entirely different reasons. I'll let you guess why.
Lots of memes/postcards. I also have a part-time secretary (only for scheduling/mailing).
If I need to "sign up" somewhere, I use a burner/temporary email.
Free-est man alive.
Would you consider handwriting a letter and then fax2email it also an option, if not why not? Writing a letter can be much more intentional, but the sending process could be automated.
I remember I bought a german book with bundled talks/essays at the Goetheanum bookshop last year about how to relate to the digital revolution. Distracted by the internet I haven't had time yet to read the book. "Das Ende des Menschen? Wege durch und aus dem Transhumanismus" (The End of Man? Ways Through and Out of Transhumanism), edited by Ariane Eichenberg and Christiane Haid.
There is also something sweet about having a built-in delay for the message to "gestate" — perhaps if politically-related, your point is even further reinforced as "prescient," as the pre-dated postmark attests (upon delayed arrival). Perhaps you're wrong and wasted a stamp.
----
Mostly I agree with (I believe) P.G.'s premise that email is nothing more than a to-do list that anybody can add on to. I do not wish to ever be immediately reachable, again, and this is an expensive freedom/lifestyle.
I am simply too angry to have access to a system [email] where I can immediately tell anybody in the world how I feel about something [and did for a quarter-century]. If something really bothers me, it has to be worth a postage stamp (I usually write postcards, but also have thousands of FOREVER Stamps™).
I find most of the debate on smartphone use tends to fall on the extreme. Why not find a happy middle ground and recognize that they do have valid uses?
I agree. Tech-minimalists seem to forget that not everybody lives in some heavenly small mountain-side commune.
The article says a lot of things about being 'present', 'mindful', 'nurturing relationships' and 'enjoying the world'.
I don't want to be present. In fact, I want the complete opposite. I want to be literally anywhere else 99.99% of the time.
If I look at my phone and get to look at nice things, talk to incredible people and imagine lots of wish-fulfillment scenarios, I can pretend for a while that not everything is absolute dogshit 24/7.
What am I supposed to enjoy, exactly?
Its easier than ever before to move away regardless where you are, change jobs, reinvent yourself, to form relationships (I know this is much deeper topic but tools for meeting people are really ubiquous, and the rest is just a number game and some self-improvement effort), and at least do your damnest to (re)define rest of your life. Yesterday was the best time, today is second best.
> What am I supposed to enjoy, exactly?
I've spent recently 2 weeks backpacking around some pretty remote parts of Indonesia. Cheap trip, most of the cost were tickets, the rest were just coral/wreck dives. The only westerners I've met (and there were relatively many) have all exactly same bug as me - its absolutely stunning and life-redefining experience. Its not easy or pleasant some times (since you go deep into 3rd world countries with only basic infrastructure, even phone signal can be rare, internet much more so), and properly amazing at others, and the only thing you think of when coming back is how and when to do it again, more, more remote.
One of many suggestions how to make one's life much better and give it some proper motivation. Plus as said it changes you for the better, this I can guarantee 100%. There is tons of beauty in the world, just ignore the noise, politics, and people and companies gaming you for your data making humanity worse off one step at a time.
Especially since I'm not a westerner. It's not great out here.
> There is tons of beauty in the world, just ignore the noise, politics, and people and companies gaming you for your data making humanity worse off one step at a time.
It would be easier if said politics and people didn't want people like me or my (online) friends suffering and/or dead. I avoid going outside as much as possible.
I'm not doing too badly economically, honestly. I'm extremely lucky to be able to gild my cage. Doesn't really make me happy, but I guess this is as good as it gets.
I think what is meant is that if the phone is acting not only as an "escape" but also as a way of avoiding dealing with things or even changing them, then it is, in fact, harming you from the possibility of improving your condition.
Not for me to judge who is in that position or not, but I would definitely say many people use it as an avoidance rather than having to deal with hard stuff. Change is hard, always was, even before phones.
Playing the victim card is always easier: my life sucks, there's nothing I can do, at least my phone keeps me happier. In many cases, there is always something you can do if you are willing to put the effort. But then again, not for me to judge. Some people are in really tough places.
Most people are simply too weak mentally to resist various self-forming addictions and don't care about these topics at all.
Even a family that lives close to each other is separated in space by different homes and will often find themselves alone. But their situation will be much better than someone with no family around. They have the option to see each other, many don't.
I think the more detailed point is that we're largely atomized these days into separate physical spaces where we're often alone, or confined to a small number of people. Smartphones and computers make it a hell of a lot easier to break through that problem.
THE biggest impediment for me has been stuff like getting sick. When I am sick, I just cannot lie there and do nothing. And it is TOO difficult to do stuff like read books or go out and talk to people or whatnot, it's too much effort. I HAVE to get back on consumptive screen-time. And then it devolves into something uglier - an ugly spiral, of gluttony & consumption, and I keep at it even beyond getting better.
Then it takes days or weeks of laziness and excuses to get back on track. And not just sickness but anything of that level. Anything that just kinda derails my life for a bit. I really need to find a middle-ground solution for the worst-case scenarios. I'm still working on it. I think I should be able to figure it out. It took me a while to figure out my best-case system as well.
I just wish I had an addon like this for, well, everything. The browser is such a great platform because you can have this much control over your experience--no such luck with mobile apps.
My point is that there is no better software to get acknowledged about the different Xs than yt. My point is to go cold turkey about any other recqmmendation services because they can not serve my interests when I work with my hands, or walking, or driving. I have listened some 3.5 hours podcast about Math and I am sure there is no other way to consume such a podcasts other way than I recommend here.
Check out Channels 1/6/7/25/35/40
Multiple people have clearly explained this to you in several comment threads and you're still insisting it makes no sense. At this point the only question is why you don't want to understand.
My recommendation about human interests and yt consuming is not to close yourself in your shell, but actively explore what are there any interesting. I become cold turkey to any other recommendation services since I have unleashed the power of Yt.
do you really find this to be true? i find it’s incredibly wrong like 90+ percent of the time. i am not close to interested in most of its recs. i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often. i’ve even tried entirely new accounts.
i mean, sure every once in a while im like “whoa, that’s a great rec” but thats pretty rare. it’s definitely better than spotify and the like etc… they’re wrong almost always, but a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.
recommendations from people is so much more accurate.
when i get a music recommendation from someone who works at the record store the positive hit rate is so high, same with movies and music recommendations from friends, etc… if it works for you that’s great but my feed is overflowing with video after video where i’m like “why in tf do you think i’d want to watch this?”
That tells me you are a simple person so yt gives you a simple recommendations. Music content in yt is poor, your music taste can be improved in different places. Movies are just a stupid time consuming, if you like to watch them, why to complain about bad recommendations?
> recommendations from people is so much more accurate.
You are happy to have well-educated friends probably.
> a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.
For me its top 10 slots are 100% about the persons I appreciate, so to get to the point is time when 9 of 10 are bad I need to watch everything what the persons have published for the time I have been offline. 90%/10% is just the usual Pareto, it's ok.
> i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often
It doesn't take years. Just open all youtube links featured on HN and start playing those from your account without even seing/listening. You will see the changes immediately. Next step is to just stop watching any channel with 1M subs and any videos with 1M watches. Soon yt will ask you in some modal window: do you want to see the content from the smaller channels? Press the "yes" answer and you will unleash the real power of yt without clickbait headers, with no arrows on previews etc. Join small channels and treat them like Reddit subforums. This totally works for me, I participate in more discussions on yt than on HN.
I just have to be careful, when I watch something I don't want YT to think I liked, to remove it from my watch history.
I spend a lot of time "protecting" my YouTube recommendations (clearing garbage videos from my history, blocking certain channels, opening links from friends separately) but I still try to immensely limit the amount of time I spend on the site, and the recommendations go directly against that.
Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite. Youtube actively uses spaced repetition approach so consider any time you are being recommended to shite as active shaping your recommendation engine. Don't even touch that square with the cursor. Try teaching your recommendation blackbox in positive ways - watch some channels when you are not watching and listening, subscribe to small channels, write comments with no less than 8 words and actively use such nouns which you are welcome to be recommended to.
> Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite.
Clearing history certainly works, just make sure there is absolutely not a single unwanted video in your history or the algorithm will go on a tirade thinking "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet". The instant you clear the final offender the recommendations change like night/day.
I'm not sure dislikes/"Not interested" actually do anything. "Don't recommend channel" also definitely works, though there may be a limit to how long they are saved and it's better to just aim the algorithm.
The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time. The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube. Putting similar effort into curating any large body of content will also get you more content than you have time to consume, but still doesn't help you actually gain much from engaging with it anyways.
1. Youtube obviously grabs some info not only from Youtube but it also grabs all history from Google search and most of all some random words from Gmail, cleaning that all just for the sake of experiment might be not handy.
2. If some video has got deleted it obviously disappears from history. But there is a man I really fond of, his channels are regularly get banned after a month of activity, than the man finds a new channel with new author/interviewer. Somehow I am among the first ones to get recommended about new interviews with the man.
> "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet"
I can share another anecdote. Ten years ago there were a music video "Wintergatan - Marble Machine". I used to watched it dozens of times almost every day. Now if I scroll the feed to the end (Yt is not a doomscrolling) I have 90% probability of receiving the Marble Machine in the very last line. I have not touched it even once in the last several years but it knows I used to love it earlier. BTW it doesn't remember what I loved 15 years ago when most of the videos required Adobe Flash.
> The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time.
Isn't that how a really great teachers teach? Forget about the teacher's interest, the teacher exists until the fellow pupil is interested.
> The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube.
That's a lie because FB and other rivals have nothing except the engine (no useful content). Just consume it responsively. The only reason to not use yt's algo is when you are so fond of your work that you have the chair glued to your arse and every second spent to someone's wise thoughts means a lost penny. So pity I have typed a lot of text but noone has asked me to share all my hacks to shape the algo towards one's satisfaction.