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bluescrn | 15 days ago

I'm amazed that they still haven't added any way to organise/categorise your subscribed channels, it's just a big flat list.

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mostlysimilar|15 days ago

YouTube is social media first, even if it also happens to be a repository of useful content. Social media does not want you to navigate with agency. They want to choose what you see because it lets them keep you on the platform longer, which is the entire goal.

da_chicken|15 days ago

No, that's like calling Amazon a social media platform.

YouTube is a content delivery platform that has social media features. You can tell because if you shut off all the comments, people still visit the site in droves. But if you shut off the videos and left the comments then nobody would visit the site at all.

Now, it's possible that YouTube doesn't realize that, but I think they're just unwilling to make any changes at all if it doesn't give them any competitive advantages.

dietr1ch|15 days ago

What's crazy is that their adtech definitely knows how to categorise stuff down to super specific topics, yet they only use that internally.

Brian_K_White|15 days ago

And not even alphabetical. It's ridiculous.

You should see me or my wife sometimes scrolling down this nine miles long single column list on the Roku to find a particular channel. It's in there, it just could be anywhere in there...

They didn't happen to post any new videos lately so they aren't on the main subscriptions page of latest videos, you have to go to the menu on the left to the list of all subscribed channels and just arrow down forever, back up, down again... Why in the ever loving world isn't that list at least alphabetical?

Brian_K_White|14 days ago

Oh and why is the list nine miles long anyway? Self-inflicted problem subscribing to so many channels you can't possibly be watching...

Well I've always had history turned off, and a few years ago YT blanked out the home screen if you have history turned off. Ever since then I have a blank home screen with just a message saying to go into settings to correct the error that I have history turned off.

I never used to subscribe to any channels, but then when they blanked out the home screen you have no other way to get any kind of feed. So only after they did that, I subscribed to a bunch of channels so that at least the subscriptions page would have some kind of feed.

This still doesn't give you anything related, just exactly the subscribed channels. If you want any kind of variety and quantity you have to keep subscribing to more and more channels so that the subscriptions page can almost sorta provide something like the old home page before they blanked it.

I complain, but I gotta say one thing, this way I NEVER see Mr.Beast or SsssniperWolf or anything like those any more. So, maybe it's better this way.

lavela|15 days ago

You can do it by using a feed reader and subscribing to the channels rss feeds. Keeps you better isolated from dark patterns as well.

edit: has the added benefit that there are different feeds for All/Videos/Shorts/Live/Specific Playlists, so this is another way to avoid shorts