YouTube's New Programs to Encourage Binge Watching

I was watching a video from Tasting History where Max said:

I wanted to let you know about the second channel I recently started. Its in conjunction with YouTube. Essentially, it's marathons of old Tasting History videos. It's a way to give old dead videos a second life.

If you go to the channel, you will see that the videos are all around 2 hours long. The channel setup and video naming doesn't feel like something Max did himself. Yet I can understand why Max would agree to this. He often makes several videos with a shared theme, so bundling them together makes sense.

The "in conjunction with YouTube" part is what set off the red flag for me. YouTube does this kind of special relationship with big channels all the time, but they are tight lipped about the process. Getting to see behind the curtain is important because it helps us understand how YouTube tries to suck viewers in and how to defend against it.

Linear TV

Outside of that quote from Max there isn't anything else to go on, but we can make some assumptions.

Earlier this year YouTube started rolling out Stations ^[1] which turns a playlist into a continuously running stream. At the last Made on YouTube event they noted how live content is a big focus for them. Stations allow them to create more live content without actually needing a live stream.

Then last month they made it so you can turn playlists into Shows. These are on-demand rather than live and have a season and episode structure. They will appear in the "Continue watching" and "Recommended shows" shelves.

So the play here seems pretty simple. Normally you can't repost old videos, since YouTube will demonitize them. However, YouTube wants content in more formats that keeps people glued to the screen. So they go to big channels and offer to do the work to turn their backlog into long-form bingeable videos. Those videos then can be converted into Stations and Shows. This is working really well for them too. YouTube had the #1 spot on Nielsen's report with 13.4% of TV viewing in April.

This is a conflict of interest problem. The recommendation system makes choices for YouTube's benefit, such as surfacing bingeable compilations, while making it look like it's a favor to you. The economics of YouTube^[2] requires viewers to consume ever more videos. More and more it looks like YouTube designs around power users who watch it as their main form of content. The rest of us all get caught up in those choices.

Defensive YouTube Viewing

So if YouTube is trying their hardest to make us watch more videos, we're going to need some help avoiding all those recommendation shelves. Thankfully the FOSS community has our back.

For the browser, Unhook allows you to turn off various sections. I removed the entire front page except for the search bar. Also all comments and the recommended video sidebar on video pages. There is also DeArrow, which replaces clickbait titles and thumbnails with crowdsourced alternatives.
^[3]

Instead of the browser, you could use apps that give you back the ability to choose how to consume videos.

On desktop, FreeTube integrates both DeArrow and SponsorBlock and has lots of distraction reduction settings:

On Android there are many options. ^[4] I've been using LibreTube most recently: ^[5]

I also have an Android TV device. I used to use SmartTube but their builds were compromised. What I really need to do is finally set up automation like TubeArchivist to download my subscribed channels so I can just watch them in Jellyfin.

Unfortunately, all these tools break constantly because YouTube doesn't want you to be able to consume content this way.

Be Intentional With What You Watch

This situation can only be described as an adversarial relationship with YouTube. I want to limit how much YouTube I watch. My main goal is to avoid the grazing behavior where you would like to watch something, but not something specific. That is when the autoplay and suggestions are primed to get you.

I don't subscribe to any channels through YouTube directly and I make sure not to have any form of automatic notifications. You can actually subscribe to any YouTube channel by RSS! The url is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel_id>. So over the years I've been able to pare down to only handful of channels I actually want to watch.

Then, if I'm looking to watch a video I can open up my RSS reader and see what is new from those specific creators. If there isn't anything to watch then I choose to do something else. I'm never exposed to the automatic recommendations that make you click just one more video.

I could take that as a sign to just stop using YouTube altogether. In fact at some point I will, considering I can no longer view videos with my VPN. For now though, I'm still getting some value from the couple of channels I watch. With all the shelves hidden, I won't see these repackaged marathon channels of content I've already watched from Max.