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points

by jonplackett11 hours ago |

comments

by ssl-32 hours ago|

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Yeah, they're very pushy with shorts.

But there are ways to never be shown shorts. They just tend to require avoiding the YouTube app.

Remember the World Wide Web? Even here in 2026, YouTube is still just a website -- if you want it to be. Web browsers like Firefox can still be used to block whatever you don't want to see.

So an effective way to deal with this situation is to switch to a browser, block the shorts, and then cancel premium and block ads as well.

In this way: A person can still consume the content that they want, while also protesting with their wallet.

by Groxx6 hours ago|

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Subscriptions and even viewing history(?!) pull shorts out of order and place them at the top.

Hell, many times I launch YouTube and it immediately starts playing a short, no interaction required. And I have "show touches" on, so I know it's not a phantom tap or something, it's doing it all on its own.

YouTube pushes shorts insanely hard.

by zdragnar1 hours ago|

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I wonder if they are doing some A/B testing on this. I see shorts about once a month or so, which is when the "not interested" option runs its course. Other than that, they don't push it to me at all, and the app has certainly never started auto playing a short when I've opened it.

I've also never watched a short, or if I did I immediately removed it from my watch history. I do keep that trimmed with prejudice, because the algorithm is desperate to show me something other than what I normally watch.

by Groxx1 hours ago|

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I somewhat suspect the auto-play is a bug with "accessibility -> remove animations". There are quite a lot of Google-product bugs with it enabled (nearly all other apps I use are 100% fine), though most don't render things unusable (except the recent apps list, WOW wtf). Youtube has also lately been jumping straight to "Shorts [that I have uploaded, which is zero]" when I open the "You" section, despite it being the last in the list and completely empty - this too is very likely an animation-related bug.

Why it happens with remove-animations: well I'm pretty confident they don't test with it. But it's super freakin' weird. I kinda doubt it'll get fixed though, doing so will cause "engagement" to drop, and it has been happening for most of a year now.