How to avoid YouTube's downward spiral
I watch YouTube content almost every day. I catch up with US shows such as “Late Night with Steven Colbert”, watch daily tech tips series and see what else is suggested. In other words, I’m consciously choosing what to watch. That’s the promise of on-demand streaming; the content you want when you want it.
Mmmh, kinda. The reality is that by default, YouTube is set to autoplay. This means that when the thing you wanted to watch ends, YouTube chooses something else to play. Before you know it, an hour has passed, and you’ve seen a dozen videos and two dozen ads.
It starts with the promise of on-demand choice and ends up as good old-fashioned push media where the broadcaster decides what you watch. All that without the benefit of the shared watercooler moment at work where everyone has seen the same TV show the night before.
What’s wrong with that, you say? Recommendations based on other things you watched. Sounds great, but YouTube quickly turns into a cesspool if you’re not careful. You can quickly go from watching the video you intended to watching to some hate-filled bullshit in about 4-5 videos.
Here are a couple of tricks to help you or your family avoid falling down the rabbit hole.
Switch off autoplay
This means that YouTube won’t play anything after the current video ends unless you select a new video and hit play. You now have more control over what you watch, although that simple step doesn’t change suggestions of what to watch next.
To switch off autoplay, hover over the video and touch the video on mobile. The controls for that video appear at the bottom of the video (see screenshot below). Toggle the button that looks like a pause control, as shown in the first red circle on the screenshot below.
Make playlists
Saving videos to playlists and watching those playlists definitely makes your viewing time more intentional. The “save to playlist” button is often hidden now, but it looks like a bookmark icon. In the screenshot above I had to click on the ellipsis (…) button to reveal the “save to playlist” button.
Playlists can be public or private, and there’s already a “watch later” playlist on every account.
Use a VPN
Switch on your VPN and set it to Iceland (unless you understand Icelandic). Why? It doesn’t solve the problem of ads, but Icelandic ads are extremely ignorable.
First of all, you won’t understand what anyone is saying. Ads fade into the background and become less annoying, unlike so many British ads: especially those done by the founders of the company being advertised. Second of all, ads in Iceland sometimes don’t even have actors or audio. I’ve seen ads that just show you a picture of the product and that’s all. All in all, Icelandic ads are just much less shouty. I don’t have a cultural framework that can pick up cheesiness in Icelandic advertising so none of it is cringy.
When English language ads are played I find my finger hovering over the bottom right of the screen where I know the “Skip Ad” button will appear after 5 seconds. Sometimes you just can’t do that. E.g. while cooking. I’m sure these ads raise my blood pressure. However, switching VPN location to Iceland means you continue cooking, blissfully ignorant of someone walking round a supermarket advertising bob knows what. Some Icelandic ads are silent. I often look up at the screen for those. Maybe that’s a lesson for us all.