Leave it to big tech to introduce the same exact product with less features while they gaslight you into believing it's a shiny new product that you should be excited about.
When I see "New and improved!!" all I get is "We have found a way to make more money, and we sure as fuck ain't passing the earnings to you", or potentially "We faced a lawsuit so have since begun to follow the smallest possible set of FDA guidelines the law allows for, making OUR product safer for YOU!"
Sure our product is made by Filipino children, and sure it pollutes pristine wetlands, and yes, it does unfairly contribute to an insanely skewed distribution of wealth, but think of the INNOVATION!
Pro tip: if you replace "shorts/" with a "watch?v=" in the URL of a YouTube shorts video, you can watch it like a normal video.
Another pro tip: if you replace the entire URL to "https://www.who.int/health-topics/mental-health", you can learn about mental health, which is an essential piece of knowledge in the case you watch YouTube shorts.
YouTube is the worst with this, because they've even gone so far as to convert older videos under 1 minute to shorts. They weren't uploaded as shorts, but now congratulations you can't scrub through the video or share a timestamped link anymore.
I think there's client sided stuff to do to solve that still, I'm 90% sure on my pc shorts open as normal videos due to an add-on I added a long time ago (the most popular for modding the look and feel of it, someone definitely can add it because I'm out of the house)
EDIT: Someone who deleted their comment (saw the notification that stayed) got it right, it was Enhancer for YouTube. It's the bees' knees, very recommended for everything (except adblock, for that get uBlock origin)
Hello, it's me, the one deleting their comment :))
I thought I'd be able to reply to that other comment of yours but it didn't seem to work so I'll just paste it here:
Oh interesting, I pretty much instantly deleted my comment again because I remembered seeing that the shorts thing in the enhancer was only experimental and assumed it didn't work well yet.
Can't find this comment of yours in the thread now but I can reply from the inbox :))
Youtube Enhancer is my bet. There are others but that's the most popular. Also removes ads but I'm not sure that works anymore. uBlock and GreaseMonkey with the git script is the way to go for ads, just as a public service announcement.
Considering you just have to change a word I wonder why did they implement the features that people want and lock it behind a word change. What am I saying thinking more about this is just making the mistake of assuming morons don't exist.
Now that you mention it I sometimes forget I have YouTube enhancer until I stop and remember oh wait YouTube isn't normally monochromatic blue. Man I had too much fun redesigning my YouTube css.
Wait, even videos that aren't in the vertical aspect ratio? I've got an 18 second video posted to Youtube and I'm going to be quite put out if they crop it and shart it out as a "short."
Perfect example of continual enshitification, there's no reason even a 15s "short" or other quick media couldn't have video controls, it's just intentional because some dogshit behavioural phycologist they've paid said that's the best way to coerce more engagement.
Behavioral psychologists working for TikTok, Instagram and the likes are like physical doctors working for McDonald's to make their junk food more addictive while blindly accepting that it will become even more unhealthy.
That is incompatible with a capitalist business model. Morality is nice and all, but please do that on your own time, during company hours we literally own your life.
Or when it looks like it's going to be a 15 second video, but actually it's been going 2 minutes and still hasn't got to the bit you'd have skipped to had it had controls, so you just close it in disgust.
Yep when everybody got smartphones it let all the dumb people on the internet who couldn't use computers.
Then the portrait video orientation became the dumbass default video mode, even when the majority of videos would look 9000% better in proper landscape orientation. It all comes back to narcissism - people filming their own face and body in portrait mode because they think people need to see their face talking about every asinine opinion they think needs to be shared for attention-getting purposes.
Tiktok is the perfect example of everything wrong with it all now.
I also hate players where the overlay doesn't go away. My girlfriend still watches videos on Facebook sometimes, and when she sends them to me, it always drives me crazy. You can't see like 30% of the video, often the part of the screen where the captions are
And you can hold down on the left-hand side of the screen to go to 2x temporarily, like YouTube does (but doesn't do for shorts). I find that very convenient.
Is there a way to make it pause/run by clicking on the video instead of having to mouseover the play icon? It is annoying to have to click on the little play icon every time.
VLC does it all. You can even use it to save streaming videos from the web to a file for storage or use on your personal media server. I also use it to view my security camera feeds sometimes.
There's a scrollbar, playback speed, PIP mode, zoom, captions, and you can remove the Like, Comment, Share buttons as well (they call it Clear Display mode). Videos with different aspect ratios can also be put in landscape mode for better viewing.
if they had their way they'd glue you to your seat, staple your eyes open, pin your arms down and play endless ads at you, purchasing on your behalf (with your credit card, of course) every time you watched one. Your ability to choose interferes with their business, which is sodomizing you and your family's wallets.
If I recall correctly there are already people uploading tutorials on porn hub. Granted there tutorials like how to sterilize a flesh light or how to draw a wolf dick. Stuff like that.
You get to an age where new shit doesn't seem like a good way to spend time. TF anyone wants to watch a stupid tiktok hand dance video for is beyond me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some DVDs to alphabetize. I'm going to be watching some sick special features for Blade Runner while idiots wave their hands around to chipmunkified "oh no" song for internet points. I don't know who's winning.
YT Shorts, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Reels... These are things I just don't bother watching.
The only reason social media companies took the controls away is because they know the videos being uploaded are shit but they want you to watch the whole thing for engagement. So they take away the controls to force that engagement. Go fuck yourself.
Also people who upload using these services - especially Shorts and Reels when other options exist on the same damn platform - are literally worse than Hitler.
And they're wrong every time. You can use "literally" as a rhetorical exaggeration, bam, debate over. They're the same as the "could care less" crowd. "I already care very little, but I could care even less", solves it.
I, for once, defend Youtube because at least it allows me to change the volume via an extension (YT Magic or whatever the name is).
On the other end, all of the Vine (yes, I am that old) style videos don't have native volume control, which drives me insane. Talking about PC, phone has it's own built in VC. Kinda explains where the market is going, eh?
Or the fact that I can't change video quality. Esp bad when previously I watched on minimum video quality because it was a music video. Then when I click on a short I suddenly can't up the god damn quality
YouTube shorts do have controls, you can scrub through the video with the progress bar along the bottom edge of the screen? Unless they're getting rid of it.
It doesn't super matter to me, I try really hard to avoid short form content. My attention span is bad enough as-is
The point of language is to convey ideas, and sometimes the most succinct way to communicate what you think and that you're open to people disagreeing or alternative perspectives is to end a statement with a question mark.
Telling other people how to communicate because what they said disagrees with rules you arbitrarily made up is dumb. The text you quoted conveyed exactly what I meant.
Can’t speak for TikTok as i’ve never really used it, but Shorts and Reels do have a seek bar at the bottom of the screen. It’s barely noticeable at first but it’s there. And on Shorts you can tap once on the screen to pause the video if you’re on mobile.
Now, I love to hate on the smartphone-ification of web video as much as the next person, but this meme just feels like bait.
TikTok has video controls. Tap to pause/play. And there's a progress bar you can drag to seek. Instagram and YouTube shorts are much more difficult to control
Edit: you can even hold either edge of the screen to speed up the video in TikTok. And a 2 finger hold hides the caption and interface
I can't be the only one feeling FOMO because I don't use it?
YouTube has no content so they just cycle through old shit, old jokes
Spotlight is better but doesn't have a good algorithm,
And I don't use anything else because of fear of privacy.
It feels like I'm missing out on such a huge part of culture where I live today, my jokes are outdated and I feel unfunny because of it, while at the same time the other side of me is telling me that what I'm doing is good right now!
Some stuff I can do without and are better off dead. But yeah, part of culture is now locked away inside some of these platforms now.
The main reason I'm keeping away from Tiktok is addiction. I want to cling to the rest of sanity I have, and becoming a phone crackhead might not help. Tiktok can be used more privately if you sacrifice a bit of conveniency.
"Shorts to normal player" is the one on chromium (I used to use it in sandbox exclusively for YouTube). On Mozilla, the "YouTube Shorts Normal Player" seems to do the same trick it seems.