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.

  • ristoril_zip
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    1 year ago

    Our TV has a YT app on it and I never sign in. I have way better experience with it because it randomly suggests stuff that the algorithm would probably think isn’t something I like and yet it TOTALLY is something I like.

    This is the problem with all these attempts at AI. They don’t have the capacity to be actually random when they’re using large databases of accumulated input from us.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the non logged in version I’m experiencing is also constrained by my prior choices, but it seems like the data they’re holding is much smaller which allows for better chances at a random find.

    Plus my kids get on there and search for their weird gamer streamer blah blah BS too which I’m sure really throws a curve ball.

      • ristoril_zip
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        1 year ago

        Sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic, sufficiently advanced algorithms look like artificial intelligence.

        Oh, algorithms that write algorithms that write algorithms… they’re still algorithms.