alt Hacker NewsI think worse than social media nowadays is youtube shorts. That thing is so addictive to kids. I wish there was a way to delete shorts from youtube and have only long form videos available in the app.
Replies
I found a good solution. In the YouTube settings you can turn off your watch history. It’ll want you that your recommendations will not be as good. You can watch a YouTube short, but when you try to scroll to the next one, it’ll tell you that there is no next video because watch history is not enabled.
You need 10 million valid Shorts views just to get monetized. That's just shows how little it's worth compared to how addictive it is.
Exactly. And also a way to opt-out of the comment section. It's hard for me to resist looking at the comments, and sometimes commenting.
Absolutely! I had to sign out from YouTube on mobile (I was only using YouTube via browser anyway, not the app) to reduce the time I spent watching them. After signing out the shorts are so random I lost the interest in them.
I use brave browser on iOS which has a feature to block YouTube shorts. It’s clearly a cat and mouse as YouTube keeps changing the selector but works 95% of the time
Oh, for sure. I have to actively prevent myself from opening one cuz once I pop I really just can't stop.
Agreed, YouTube Shorts and similar pap (e.g., Tik Tok) seem corrosive to a developing mind...the mindless content, automatic looping, serving up one shallow video after another. It's no wonder the tech CEOs insulate their own kids from this stuff[1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/technology/silicon-valley...
There is a way. Disable your viewing history and puff, shorts are gone
100%, Shorts are an abomination.
Not just kids. With one of my friends, even when I'm playing a game together with them, I'll sometimes hear some audio over their headset... there was a dull moment for like 10 seconds and they're already on their phone... "Are you watching YouTube Shorts again?" "No, this time it's Reels!" Shorts, reels, clips, doohickey whatever-the-fucks it doesn't matter what they're called, I hate it.
If you're on Android, install F-Droid and get one of the apps there that let you watch Youtube. No ads[1] and you can disable shorts.
[1] I'm not fundamentally against ads, but the Youtube ad situation has gotten ridiculous. They're far worse than cable TV ads.