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Grayjay Desktop App

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512 points pierrelf | 3 comments | 20 Dec 24 17:33 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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NotPractical ◴[20 Dec 24 19:45 UTC] No.42474280[source]▶
The best feature of alternative YT clients IMO is "multiple subscription lists". I have so many subscriptions, when using the official YouTube app or site the "subscriptions" feed is overwhelming, and I prefer not to use the algorithmically-generated "home" feed. Since YT has kind of become the de facto "place to upload videos on the Internet", video topics are broad enough to constitute multiple web sites, and I like to be able to filter channels by topic rather than having them all grouped together.

If you're opposed to using a separate app just for this, you can achieve something similar using an RSS reader and YT's official RSS feeds (which I'm surprised they still publish tbh).

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1. hysan ◴[20 Dec 24 20:28 UTC] No.42474708[source]▶
Did you know that YouTube used to have this exact feature? It was called subscription collections and they publicly promised that they would replace that feature with something better when they removed it. That never happened. It's been 9 maybe 10 years since they said that. [1]

The removal of that feature was an intentional push to take away user agency and push them into using YouTube's recommendation algorithm. The lying was a way to misdirect user complaints until it was too late.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38101629#38104494

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2. toomuchtodo ◴[20 Dec 24 20:30 UTC] No.42474735[source]▶
Never trust the platform. User sovereignty or bust.
3. gryn ◴[20 Dec 24 20:50 UTC] No.42474885[source]▶
Yup. I really liked that feature, but hey who cares about user preferences. the only thing that matter is engagement metrics. it's not like there's any real competition to YouTube you can run to. and the hunt for ad-blockers is getting fiercer.

my workaround to getting different topics separated have been to have multiple YouTube channels inside a single account, each with separate likes/sub channels/recommendations etc. one per Firefox container.