Comment by andy99

Comment by andy99 9 hours ago

66 replies

The article probably could just have been that statement, but I agree.

Every experience now just seems like people (companies) fighting over who can most obnoxiously distract you.

I bought a new phone recently for the first time in 8 years, and (a) had to set everything up all at once (ad blocking, no notifications, etc) which left me briefly exposed to how bad things are but (b) had to experience all the annoyingness of a modern phone trying to suggest things and sync things and bother me with stuff I don’t want.

No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.

So yeah, outside some sheltered life of luxury, it’s a constant fight to preserve focus against people wanting to steal it.

BuyMyBitcoins 9 hours ago

I can’t watch YouTube without an adblocker. On a surface level, I hate the ads. But, the main reason is the fact that I can’t stand how YouTube is fixated on trying to make you watch something else at all times. I need something to hide all the little cards and interstitials that pop up when pausing the video, the badges, all the obnoxious thumbnails, etc..

I also hide all of the videos on the sidebar except for the one that would be recommended next, just so I can know what might play if I leave autoplay on.

It is insane to me that the product got to this place. I get Google is all about advertising, but my goodness, YouTube is just designed to make you not pay attention for more than a few seconds.

  • noir_lord 8 hours ago

    Ublock Origin and Unhook[1]

    Lets you remove as much or as little of the "UI/UX" as you want - don't want to see shorts, recommended vids, end cards etc - live comments (who even asked for that) you don't have to.

    It collapses YT back to been an intentional thing - I'm looking for a video to watch, I watch it, it suggests nothing and I go on with my day instead of getting distracted by the skinner box.

    [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

    • ryandrake 6 hours ago

      At this point this functionality should just be built into browsers. It's 2025. We shouldn't still need extensions to provide table stakes functionality like content blocking.

      • pjc50 6 hours ago

        You mean the browser with 90% share owned by the same company responsible for the advertising?

        • noir_lord 4 hours ago

          and removed functionality that made it more difficult for the best adblocker as an extension to function.

          I know - it's weird right.

      • do_not_redeem 6 hours ago

        I disagree. All the major browser vendors have invested into the ads space to some degree. I'd rather have my content blocker built by someone without a conflict of interest.

    • [removed] 3 hours ago
      [deleted]
    • BolexNOLA 7 hours ago

      This is also why I love Freetube. No nonsense, just what I want in front of me the rare instances I’m on YT these days. Only annoying thing is having to update it every few weeks

  • fainpul 7 hours ago

    As somebody already mentioned, uBlock Origin helps.

    I have these in my filters to make YouTube bearable:

      www.youtube.com###comments
      www.youtube.com###related
      www.youtube.com###sponsor-button
      www.youtube.com###donation-shelf
      www.youtube.com##.ytp-endscreen-content
      www.youtube.com###chat:remove()
      www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope
      www.youtube.com###chat-container
    
    On top of that you probably want SponsorBlock, because sponsor segments are also ads.

    https://sponsor.ajay.app/

    • echelon 7 hours ago

      I hate ads and use adblock on websites too, but I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for. We're counting on "normies" footing the bill for our technical sophistication.

      I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.

      • WarOnPrivacy 6 hours ago

        > I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for.

        For folks in the ad-enabling chain: Caring about their well-being isn't really reciprocated. Not in a tangible way.

        If that ever changes, my psychological hygiene can be up for discussion.

      • anukin 7 hours ago

        A lot of YouTubers and streamers makes a lot of money as well. The sponsorship alone is worth a lot. There was a recent video by an influenza where they made close to 45000 dollars a day.

      • [removed] 6 hours ago
        [deleted]
      • andy99 7 hours ago

        YMMV, to me there’s nothing I would watch an ad in order to use, given the choice. As in there are things I value enough to pay for, and things I don’t care if they go away. No ad-supported middle ground.

        Unfortunately “normies footing the bill” means in many cases we’re stuck with engagement optimized drivel instead of actual thoughtful content, which is largely the point of the original post. I’d love a world where this was driven out of existence because people stopped watching ads.

      • righthand 3 hours ago

        > I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.

        By the time the video is uploaded to Youtube, for the creator is a sunk cost. What most of your Youtube ad view generated money goes to is the hosting on Google’s end, not the creator. It’s a false belief that 99% of Youtube creators will go extinct if you use an ad blocker, because it’s a post pay system.

        This is only really true for successful channels not most Youtube content. The ad blocker hurts Google more than YT creators.

  • qntmfred 8 hours ago

    Ad-free YouTube Premium is a Luxury Good

    • nemomarx 8 hours ago

      Even with premium you still can't hide suggested videos, shorts, the front page is still messy...

      • Elidrake24 7 hours ago

        Have people forgotten what a bookmark is? https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

        And once on a video, suggestions cannot be seen in Cinema Mode, which can be made the default. Still have the ones at the end of the video I suppose, though they show up inconsistently for me, so might be a channel creator setting.

      • SilverElfin 7 hours ago

        I wish there was a way to block those floating boxes recommending additional videos, that always cover up the end of a video

    • bigyabai 7 hours ago

      Which is why I pray everyday at the shrine of my 10tb 5200rpm spinning rust and yt-dlp client.

      • [removed] 7 hours ago
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    • carlosjobim 8 hours ago

      Aren't luxuries supposed to be expensive?

      • brookst 7 hours ago

        No, or at least not in money. An afternoon on the couch reading a good book is a luxury.

  • jimmydddd 5 hours ago

    Youtube as we know it will probably be dead in a few years anyway. Tiktok has shortened everyone's attention span. I shockingly found myself clicking away from one of my favorite classic rock songs from my youth because I didn't want to stay the entire 3 minutes.

    • righthand 3 hours ago

      No, just a portion of the population that’s into having no focus will continue to do so. You can change your habits and not be cattle without agency.

  • pipes 4 hours ago

    Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

    There is a lot of complaining on hacker news about adverts, yet when Google offer the only other viable solution (subscription fees) everyone still complains.

    • j1elo 4 hours ago

      Problem with that solution is that Youtube is not an independent company that one could be happy to pay for their services. You're paying Google, and there are more than enough reasons to not wanting to give Google any money at all.

      That's the problem with corporations: they cover too much. I cannot pay Youtube while at the same time not giving an ounce of support to the company that wants to remove all remaining freedoms of the Android ecosystem.

    • namibj 4 hours ago

      Doesn't fix the app from booting into a short that thus defaults to playing with sound.

    • Krasnol 4 hours ago

      > Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

      At this point, if I had no choice like ublock: I'd still not pay them. Why should I? To enforce this behaviour so everybody suffers more? What about those people who can't afford a subscription? Why is their mind and attention free to be abused?

      The advertisement industry has became disgustingly evil. I hate everything about it.

  • nxor 9 hours ago

    For meaningful focus our brains need uninterrupted periods.

    I use Brave, though I know its reputation could be better.

  • BoredPositron 7 hours ago

    The only way to get a sane YouTube experience is to deactivate the history and only use the subscription page but that has other downsides.

UncleOxidant 7 hours ago

My wife got a new android phone recently and she was showing me that her picture gallery now has ads. My Android phone from 5 years ago lets you look at the pictures in the camera app, but hers does not and makes you see ads to look at the pictures you've taken. This is evil.

seba_dos1 7 hours ago

Having used GNU/Linux on all my PCs and smartphones for nearly two decades now, I feel the joy of missing out on this. It's bad enough on the Web already, I can't imagine my own devices adding their own layers on top.

LaFolle 6 hours ago

I think that is where the power of current AI chat interfaces like chatgpt beats other digital interfaces. You ask a question. Get just an answer back in more or less same format or grammer. And no ads. No distractions. Clean.

Though it is tough for ai chat providers to keep it that way for long if revenue from subscriptions / apis does not offset the exorbitant compute costs.

  • sothatsit 4 hours ago

    Yeah, I don't expect this to last too much longer, unfortunately...

rubyfan 6 hours ago

I bought a new treadmill with a 24” screen on it. The screen should have been the red flag I guess. They want $40 a month to use the screen if I want to watch Netflix while I run, or sync my running data to Apple Health. There is no way to change this as far as I can tell and if they went out of business I’m sure my equipment would become a brick.

  • apparent 3 hours ago

    Was the subscription pricing mentioned during the purchase flow, even if you didn't happen to see it at the time?

    At $500/yr, seems like it'd be cheaper to just buy a tablet and use that instead of the built-in screen.

  • ileonichwiesz 6 hours ago

    I guess it’s time to pop it open and do one of those classic “how I rewired this thing to work how I want” HN posts.

    • rubyfan 4 hours ago

      I was thinking about that, and then figured just paying the $40 for the next 5 years is probably cheaper.

  • footy 2 hours ago

    That's more than I pay to use the gym.

  • cpursley 3 hours ago

    Perhaps I’m reaching, but why not just run outside? Cold? What’s a gym cost where you are? $40 just seems like a lot in addition to the amortized cost of the basement clothes rack, I meant exercise machine.

nxor 9 hours ago

Completely agree, and it's sad that people put their machines over relationships with other people / coworkers / focusing on those relationships.

  • MichaelZuo 8 hours ago

    It’s always been like that, misanthropes, psychos, regular scoundrels, etc. have always existed.

    Of course in the past there were less opportunities to hide or excuse that kind of behavior.

    • fn-mote 8 hours ago

      > misanthropes

      You're underestimating the impact, in my opinion.

      Almost EVERYONE puts their devices over relationships.

      Not as bad, but even when the relationship gets priority, it can be mediated by the device. E.g., texting close family members. It's another chance to be a victim of attention-stealing because you start the device session for a good reason.

      • MichaelZuo 7 hours ago

        It seems clearly possible nearly everyone you know could be a closet misanthrope/psycho/scoundrel/etc. ?

        And all they needed were convenient excuses and opportunities to indulge in that behavior.

        i.e. it could genuinely be their true self, unattractive as it may be.

great_wubwub 5 hours ago

> No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.

This is a beautiful sentence.

I would add that under modern-day aggressive hyper-capitalism all attention can be translated to money, so it's all just products whose job is to get you to buy more products.