# YouTube Shorts 21 Hacker News commenters recommended YouTube Shorts and 130 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend Shorts for quick explainers and short breaks, especially with recommendations off. Critics say it is addictive and cannot be fully turned off. ## Why people recommend it - Quick, bite-sized explainers and breaks (2 comments): "I don’t mind shorts. Especially when I have a few minutes to kill" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787605)) "Her youtube shorts are also good bite-sized explainers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068679)) - Only shorts from followed creators (2 comments): "with recommendations disabled it is tolerable, because only shorts from people I subscribe to are in there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47612929)) "My shorts are mostly of the creators I follow or adjecent creators." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409385)) - Quality comparable to long videos (2 comments): "They're not lower quality, and while you could call a lot of them "impulsive", a lot of longer videos are also impulsive!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034098)) "the shorts are at least as useful as long form videos to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409407)) ## What people warn about - Addictive endless-loop design (3 comments): "corrosive to a developing mind...the mindless content, automatic looping, serving up one shallow video after another" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449884)) "continuing with all of the hooks and barbs, design and advertising built to addict as many people as possible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787163)) "using TikTok/Reels/Shorts in the typical way, skipping videos any time the user wants has a short-term impact on prospective memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625441)) - Cannot reliably disable Shorts (4 comments): "All vertical videos I've uploaded have automatically turned into shorts and there doesn't seem to be a way to toggle this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46055265)) "It's IMPOSSIBLE to disable it with parental controls and it has the exact same slop as the other vertical video services." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067101)) "If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not what this is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787294)) - Slop and low-value content (3 comments): "After, it's mostly AI voiceovers reading out Reddit or Twitter comments about life situations, placed over Minecraft gameplay." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50211230)) "Google treats the worst ones as a watched video. I'll spend less than a second as my brain processes the slop and then skip." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47172220)) "Approximately one in every hundred shorts consist of something good that isn't also in a video somewhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787333)) - Recommends unwanted disturbing content (2 comments): "Youtube Shorts decided for a while that I really want to watch videos of semi-automatic pipe welding tools being used by Asian women." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330825)) "platforms like YouTube will start flinging misogynistic content at you and it's incredibly hard to remove" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47099643)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [YouTube](https://hackerapproved.com/p/youtube.md): 653 recommend - [PeerTube](https://hackerapproved.com/p/peertube.md): 66 recommend - [Loops app](https://hackerapproved.com/p/loops.md): 21 recommend - [Twitch](https://hackerapproved.com/p/twitch.md): 12 recommend - [Rumble](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rumble.md): 8 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "YouTube Shorts", https://hackerapproved.com/p/youtube-shorts/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).