I like YouTube. In fact, I like it a little too much. I’ve found myself spending much to much time just bouncing around watching the “recommended videos” they serve up.
Because I wanted to get distracted less, I installed a really nice FireFox plugin – one that hides all YouTube recommended videos.
This only has affected the YouTube experience on my desktop and laptop machines, but something interesting has happened.
My addiction was junk-video addiction has been completely broken.
Junk-Video Addiction No More
After hiding the recommended videos on my computers, I started becoming disinterested in the YouTube recommended videos even on my TV where the recommendations weren’t hidden.
It seems that I had been caught in an addiction loop, with YouTube conveniently serving up a steady diet of addictive time-wasters catered just to me.
Once I broke that loop, the recommended videos no longer interested me even when exposed to the videos on another device.
Now, I’m really noticing that the recommended videos are almost all quick-hit junk. Stuff that seemed interesting when I was in addict-mode, barely moves the needle for me now.
Filling the “Watch Later” List with High-Quality Videos
Instead of using the recommended videos, I’m now searching for specific, more quality/in-depth videos and adding them to my “Watch Later” list.
When I want to watch something, I just jump over to that list – I ignore or don’t even see the junk food aisle of YouTube recommended videos all-together.
My YouTube experience has improved exponentially because of this. Now instead of the mindless brain-candy, I just watch stuff that expands my mind in positive ways.
How You Can Block
For those of you interested in blocking the YouTube recommended videos, use:
Desktop Firefox: The Remove YouTube’s Suggestions extension for Firefox.
Desktop Chrome: I found this recommended video blocker for Chrome. I only played with this one for a minute but it appears to work well and gets high ratings.
Mobile YouTube: Unfortunately I have not found a good way (or any way) to block the recommended videos. If you know of a way please contact me and I’ll update this article.
