Youtube is the final boss of internet enshittification

...Because there's just kind of nowhere else to go at the moment. Most platforms that have addicting content structures and algorithms, or that put their money in awful places, are easily avoided and replaced with less awful alternatives (A PSA for anyone still somehow using Twitter to please for the sake of yourself and your mental health move to Bluesky or drop it altogether. Same for any Spotify users in the crowd, migrating to Tidal isn't that hard, you can do it).

I know there are alternatives in theory, but in practice the stranglehold youtube has on the notion of Hosting Videos Online is just too powerful to break, and disrupting the platform at scale and potentially killing it off would be undesirable anyway given how the website is an unparalleled historical archive of digital ephemera (shoutout to those at the Internet Archive working to preserve a lot of those videos elsewhere though, genuinely hugely important work).

Being stuck with youtube is a difficult situation to be in. I don't find myself scrolling bsky for hours at a time like I used to with twitter, but I still catch myself falling through the youtube shorts tab for entirely too much time (which is to say, any time at all), getting served garbage. I even find myself watching recommended longform videos I would never willingly seek out. It really does bring out all the worst possible traits in me, and I feel like it's very easy to see how someone who isn't as vigilant about their internet use and their relationship to platforms can turn out bitter and hateful when this kind of negativity-laced dopamine spiral is the default mode of online experience nowadays.

I don't really have a solution here, I just wanted to muse about this in the open because it's a very vexing problem. I wonder if there are any mods or skins for youtube that remove shorts, or potentially algorithmic features altogether. 

But, I can offer a small tip if you're like me and use shortcuts to access your most commonly used websites: change your Youtube shortcut url from the home page to the subscriptions tab, so you aren't immediately tempted by stupid unrelated shit the moment you open the page. It's not perfect, but it's something.