Obvious Tech Tip
You know me. I like to give tips to help you escape the mire of social media and, where possible, get back to to the Old Web.
Today’s tip isn’t about the Old Web exactly but it concerns the quality of everyday online experience. It’s this:
Don’t link to the YouTube homepage and don’t visit YouTube by typing “yout” into your address bar. And obviously don’t Google it like a dumbass. Create a link or a bookmark instead to your YouTube subscriptions page.
I can’t believe it took me so long to think of this. Manage your subscriptions wisely and you’ll never again see any of the 20%+ of YouTube videos that are AI slop.
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About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
Hi!
I’ve been using the Unhook browser extension for some time now. It allows you to hide all kinds of distractions on YouTube. I now only see my subscriptions, which has fundamentally changed how I use YouTube. No Shorts, no homepage, no sidebar, etc.
The extension works with all Chromium-based browsers — I personally use it with Brave and Vivaldi, not Chrome.
Maybe this tip is helpful.
Greetings from Germany
Robby
Totally helpful. Thanks. I’m slowly migrating to Brave myself in the hope of a faster browsing experience (I hear Brave uses less RAM than Chrome) and so that my data will stop feeding Google’s advertising machine. The only problem is logging into everything again: my passwords did not want to migrate. As to Unhook, I personally vouch for Adblock Plus and YouTube-Shorts Block, but Unhook actually sounds neater.
Hi Rob,
Another alternative to this. I use Firefox to have a faster web but with UBlock Origin. The latter blocks ads etc, but it’s coolest feature is that it allows you to click on any element of a web page and block that individual element. So hey presto, I’ve just click and remove all the recommended videos and assorted garbage. Worked wonders with LinkedIn too.
All the best,
Alastair
Yes! I have uBlock installed because AdBlock sometimes fails on YouTube. There seems to be a bit of a cold war between YouTube and AdBlock. Hey, give us another blog post soon Alastair!