Yesterday, I ranted about how Youtube is aggressively pushing Shorts in their feeds and recommendations. Of course, the quality had taken a huge nosedive. Well, just look at the explore tab of YouTube. I very rarely do, that section always had poor-quality videos. But at least they were... www.amitgawande.com

@amit I've never browsed YouTube like most do so I checked out the Explore tab. I see what you mean although it was a mix of shorts and long-form videos for me. Perhaps because I haven't engaged much with this tab yet. Also, I don't understand what's the point of showing how many other people have seen the video. It's hardly a measure of its interestingness especialy if they are being pushed via the Explore tab on people.

@pratik Oh, even I don't. It's a terrible place to find some videos or channels to watch. It's equally toxic as a twitter trending list. Just in a different way. Plus am sure each person might see a different view of this tab. After all, this too is "personalized", stiched by some algorithm.

And I agree, the numbers in there are absolutely meaningless. I don't anyone decides what to watch based on these numbers. It's a metric for their algorithms and not for us. Or at least that is what I likes to believe.

@amit I keep looking in the YouTube settings every few weeks hoping they add a way to hide Shorts and Stories. I only want to see "real" YouTube videos from people I subscribe to. Wish I could hide all the clutter.

@manton Oh, that reminded me; is there any way to change the saved drafts video back to the traditional format?

@amit I think YouTube wants you to be inundated with notifications for content you sub. They want to train you to go directly from notifications to your subscribed content, never seeing the Shorts. My 14yo does that but she gets 10-12 notifications daily and her subs are her rabbit hole. Her YouTube habits have calcified a K-pop filter bubble and kayaking playlist.

@SimonWoods I’ll check. YouTube did that automatically because of the size.

@manton Yeah, same here. I don't think YouTube wants to allow users to hide shorts/stories. I'd tried a few tricks - switching off the watch history and accessing subscriptions only as feeds helped momentarily. But I was back to browsing homepage eventually.

@Clonmeldigital Yeah, possibly. As much as notifications are reminded about by the channels, I doubt how many people really notice them. They might help though, no idea. I think you might get notifications for shorts too, right?

@amit Shorts offer notifications but I won't toggle them on.

@amit @manton Terrible and predictable. Classic YouTube.

@SimonWoods If you mean to watch that video in conventional YT page, replace shorts/ in URL with watch?v= as here