Dec 10, 2021

How I use Youtube - Blocking Landing Pages and Comments

YouTube is designed to be addictive and create addiction. This happens through the dopamine feedback loop which hardens reward through repeated behaviors.

This is the core idea of the dopamine feedback loop - procrastination, distractiion, reward, repeat.

Social Media / YouTube is no different -

For YouTube, the Action is watch videos, and then waiting for a reaction is completing the video and looking for more videos to get more "rewards" or satiation.

uBlock - Or How to Stop the cycle.

uBlock is a great add-on for Chrome, Firefox, edge, etc. It isn't new, but it's more trusted and reliable. Back in the day, 5-10years ago it was adblock, but adblock has since been purchased by a ad-tech company and will exempt it's own ads. NoScript as an addon also works, but it is a but more technically inclined and will break many sites and more.

Chrome - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm

Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Once installed, you should see the ublock icon in your browser:

Now go to youtube.com and you should see something similar:

Before - landing page, full of noise and low rewarding content - high engagement, high clickbait but low reward.

You'll have to create a manual filter, by using the eyedrop tool - from the ublock menu - or you could also just copy/paste this string in the ublock settings.

Tricy, but the eyedropper tool buy the lightening bolt is for custom blocking, or you can click the three gear cogs and put the code below.

! 2021-12-02 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com###details
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-row.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-rich-grid-row.style-scope
www.youtube.com##ytd-continuation-item-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope

After! It's nothing - it becomes a perfect search engine, only giving what you ask. After some coaxing.

Comments are the same as well - but we can do it a bit easier, another method is using the mouse to highlight exactly what you want to block like so - This will Block ALL Comments.*

Find comments, through any youtube video, right click and click "Block Element"

Then click around and highlight what you want to block - and create the filter. In the lower right menu, click create and done!

You'll have no more comments! To reverse, you'll need to go back to the beginning of this article, go to the settings of ublock and delete the new entry you created for youtube and click save. Then they'll reappear.

Welcome to a nicer, better, cleaner Internet! :)

uBlock - Or How to Stop the cycle.

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