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I was curious why NewPipe didn't implement SponsorBlock. Is there a story behind why it doesn't? The repo hints at "differences" but isn't specific.
They wrote about it here: https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/newpipe-and-online-advertisi...
From https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/newpipe-and-online-advertisi...:
Fair opinion. Also fair to fork when one does not agree. This is how the system is supposed to work.
There's an obvious catch-22 here: either you are maintaining privacy, and the sponsor has no way to know whether their segment was viewed, so you are wasting your life watching an ad to make an inanimate object happy, or they are spying on you to learn whether you watch it.
Either way I fundamentally disagree with them on the idea that push advertising is ethical in the first place, but it's kind of absurd thinking about people feeling good about themselves for watching a recording. Like did you also not fast-forward your VCR through ads in those days and instead dutifully watch attentively lest God know you were naughty? You make sure to read all of the spam in your mail, or inserts in newspapers rather than chucking them in the bin?
I actually think this is 100% the correct move practically, as someone who thinks advertising is unethical. Keeping it out of this popular option while remaining open source allows the original to be clear from "wrongdoing" here and does not put so much pressure on creating an arms race. Then, the fork just adds sponsorblock, and things are ok.
As I see it, it's similar to the situation with FOSS passkey options. Currently the big projects are complying with all of the (increasingly silly, imo) demands of the standards org. If they did not, there would be significantly more pressure for attestation, in which ultimately only Google/Apple/Microsoft-controlled options would be permitted. Complying allows a fork to patch out the user-hostile behavior.
There is no wrongdoing though, except for the people that decide to build machines to waste other's time. Imagine spending your life on that. There's no need to carry water for the people who dedicate their lives to making everyone else's lives a little worse. Like if the wealthy paid people to go around littering (which, in a sense, is basically what mailers/inserts are).
Passkey likewise is a retarded idea with no user empathy, and by going along with their demands, you still push people into monopolistic ecosystems because the only way to use it in practice is with a cloud sync service. There's likewise no need to carry water for it. Anyone advocating for it outside of scenarios where you have an IT department to maintain it is either a fool or a shill.
Also NewPipe is still niche and appeasement isn't going to do anything. They'll end you when they feel like it. c.f. the tightening of the Android software monopoly in general. At some point they're just going to block NewPipe entirely. It's not like Google is thinking "well it's okay if they block our ads as long as they allow in-video sponsors." Nor are they ever going to think "wow maybe we should have some morals; maybe our global surveillance system we've built was a bad idea. I can't believe we didn't realize that!"
Well, that's why I scarequoted it. Morally I agree with you, and for the same reason I will not support LLMs and the companies pushing them. But as it is, the techbros and the adbros will continue to move fast and break things, and nobody will check them, so if some people can divert them into breaking slightly less, it is a small consolation.
Well, there are people that actually like work in the marketing space. As scary as it sounds.
But NewPipe clearly circumvents YouTube ads so not sure how they wouldn't have faced pressure otherwise, and it's actually more so that YouTube doesn't care about sponsorship segments as they make no money from it so NewPipe would be even more in the clear if they didn't block YouTube ads but blocked sponsorship segments.
The same way they did in the past, with broadcast radio and television: they base it on audience numbers rather than tracking whether people actually listened or viewed the ad. Besides, isn't one of the major motivators of tracking to avoid fraud? (Which I find ironic, given I don't view advertisers as very ethical in the first place.)
The way I think of it: advertising doesn't have to be unethical, but it incentivizes unethical behaviour.
I would typically walk away to do something else. Same outcome though. That said, I started to turn away from broadcast media in the early to mid-1990's. I forget whether it was due to advertising, but the end result was a lot less exposure to advertising. Which is a good thing IMHO.
Considering the fact that the vast majority of YouTube sponsors seem to be some kind of scam or are privacy-invasive themselves, the word “mostly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
They circumvent YouTube ads but draw a line at in video ads? Their stance is inconsistent, not to also mention that lots of sponsorship ads can be unethical (see the outrage over BetterHelp) while normal YouTube ads don't have to be unethical.
Issue further is that sponsorship ads put the onus on the video authors themselves to make a judgement call and put their own reputation somewhat on the line. Rather it lets them creator-wash half truths and potentially misleading information.
Not that I think youtube or other ad platforms make great decisions on ads one bit either, its all just a very abusable medium.
is there an equivalent experience for desktop pcs?
Firefox with sponsorblock installed and ublock origin?
I haven't been able to watch youtube in the browser for ages. I get like one 10-20s chunk then nothing further. Do you use just the standard block lists?
Works well for me on Firefox with uBlock origin without any special lists.
Personally I use my own fork of FreeTube on desktops, though, falling back to Firefox with uBlock when there are outages.
Are you using a VPN? Youtube will be a jerk to those IPs. I need to set my exit node to either Poland or Albania to watch YT. (The latter incidentally is supposed to act as an ad-blocker due to local legislation banning some types of ads, but I have my own ad-blockers so I cannot confirm.)
Even on the fastest computer I got, I have to wait 2 whole minutes for the website to finish loading. I think they really hate Firefox.
I use Firefox (and Librewolf), and have no issues.
So, it must be some extension or content blocker list causing that issue?
Your experience is strange, I use the official Chrome (not Chromium) with uBlock Lite and everything works perfectly (except the 5s delay at the start).
Freetube if it's still working? I haven't tried it in a while.
It's working again.
Chrome with sponsorblock and ublock origin lite
Reject Chromium, accept Firefox
Why settle for lite?
It's not that well known, but mpv supports playing youtube videos. I think you need yt-dlp installed.
Freetube is pretty great, also you can import your newpipe subs. Http://Freetubeapp.io
Shameless promotion here but I think https://channelsurfer.tv is a good experience.
Brave browser.
I'm not sure about transferring subscriptions between Pipe and Brave...?
Grayjay I'd say. Also works great on Android.
I have been happily using PipePipe for the past few months and have been very satisfied with it. The developer seems to spend the time and attention needed to make it work again whenever youtube likes to change things and I really appreciate that.
I think it's been about 6 months or more for me and I am also very satisfied with it. I left NewPipe because I'd often have to wait days to weeks for simple fixes to get implemented. PipePipe is patched very often.
I think part of the reason why NewPipe is so slow is that they are in the middle of a rewrite/redesign. All the focus is there and the current app is in the maintainance mode.
This is the reason I switched probably mor than a year or two ago. YouTube remains a cat and mouse game. Strange things with those forks is that they always add some more streaming sources Mike BkliBili but keep the old stuft. Actually soundcloud only works very limited lately.
Same. It's also less buggy, and they've fixed long-standing navigation gripes I had with NewPipe. I did disable the SponsorBlock integration because I find it quite annoying to go back on a skipped sequence.
Same. My only issue (with NewPipe also) is that at ~50 subscribed channels, Google rate limits me when I refresh. I wish there was better logic to get new content or a way to space it out over an amount of time.
I am at 340+ subs and rate limits happen very rarely.
I have had this issue few times on a specific wifi router (different router on same line doesn't) so don't know exactly.
Crazy name
Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec. The only issue is that background playing is flaky, not sure it only works on my Poco F7 and not my S23, or if it randomly starts pausing the video when leaving de browser or even if it's a browser or OS power saving settings. But when it works it works flawlessly.
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
One of the reasons why I use an app to view YouTube is to disable suggested videos and comments. Basically, I want to have a personalized list of the channels I view as worth watching and I want to discourage continued watching outside of those boundaries.
I don't have a problem with compulsive watching, so for me the subscriptions view is good enough. I think there are be extensions for Firefox to customize the layout the way need, but it falls in the pitfall of relying on YouTube code for it to work, so it's bound to be flaky or have a short lifespan.
For the most part, I've been using the apps for so long that compulsive viewing is not an issue on my end either. That said, I do have my days and I don't want to slide into that habit. By sticking to my curated list, I am limited to a couple of hours of videos a week. Quite often it turns out to be less since I've grown much more selective about what I will watch from that list.
In a non-curated list, or one curated by the algorithm, what types of videos do you think has this potential to suck you back into this habit?
By far the easiest ones that would cause me to slide back into this habit come from channels I used to watch, then decided to stop watching. In a lot of cases, those channels produced videos I enjoyed. Yet I also found them hit-and-miss in terms of quality or the channel focussed upon long-form videos with too little content to justify the time watching them.
When I switched over to using an app, there was also a good chance that an algorithmically suggested video from an unfamiliar creator would capture my imagination. When I have looked at recommendations recently, I doubt that would be a problem today. Too much AI and human generated slop. Too many click-bait titles that barely give a hint on what the video is about, never mind why I should care about their take on it.
Then there are the days when I am both bored and exhausted. While I don't tend to watch much on those days, I have known myself to scroll through the recommendations to see if there is anything to occupy the time.
There are adblock filters and extensions for that fwiw.
YouTube does make some kind of changes significantly harder to build than simple scripting will handle though. I do definitely see some reasons for specialized apps, and video is a fairly prime example of where they're often more capable or more (power/time/whatever) efficient.
I use NewPipe so I can subscribe to channels and put channels/videos into playlists, without needing to make a youtube account.
I use android so I'm already past that point sadly, but I'd be the first to dump my Google credentials as soon as that monopoly that's got a stranglehold on Android cracks
I'm also on Android, running LineageOS without adding google services
Indeed, but then I'd have to say goodbye to banking and thus NFC paying, which needs the banking app installed locally AFAIK to authorize the link. So yeah, it's doable but cripples the device to such a point that I'd only be able to use it at home. On the go access to banking is a must.
The block in degooglifying is usually region not lack of willingness. Some places are locked to Google by no fault of the consumer.
NewPipe has a one-click download button. If one follows channels with mainly-audio content that one may want to listen to later, possibly away from an internet connection, that is super-handy.
NewPipe also lets you export your subscriptions (which is just a bunch of links to RSS feeds), so you aren't shackled to Android/RSS.
Can I somehow import my current subscriptions from Google into newpipe? When I tried newpipe what put me off was that I already had a list on the browser. I also couldn't sync the list between multiple devices. Also is there anything on Linux I can use to sync to newpipe and resume videos on my laptop if I'm tired of watching on my phone? Of if I saw something interest and I wanted to continue on Linux in order to take notes and make proofs of concept.
NewPipe does have a Share function for any video and there is probably some way to customize it to get the integration with your Linux laptop that you want. I believe (though I haven't tried in a while) that if one is watching a video on NewPipe and then clicks Share and passes the video to a media-center device running Kodi, Kodi will even start playing the video from that same timestamp, so Share is pretty powerful. Not sure what is available for passing vids from a Linux computer to NewPipe on the phone, though.
To add to the list, if you share the link over kdeconnect and select a linux device (mine is hyprland on archlinux) it'll open the link using the default $BROWSER. If there's a simple integration to sync subscriptions I think I'd give it another go. Fennec is good but as mentioned background playback stability would be really nice to have.
Yes https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/import-export-data/#import...
Also newpipe let you create a playlist of videos and only play the audio track in the background or play a given video in the background
It's even better with a podcast app that can have a directory read as a podcast. Have to click once more though to have the"podcasts"refreshed to get it in my playlist. Still cool for podcasts that are only on YouTube and Spotify.
Solid take, these days most apps are just glorified browser wrappers and you don't miss out on anything. In fact, you could have a separate browser with all these saving modes disabled just for the youtube use case.
Have you tried disabling the Page Visibility API? Web apps will sometimes use that to try and mess with background playing, IIRC.
Wasn't aware of this API tbh, will take a look thanks!
Your comment made me try Firefox for the Nth time right now.
And the rendering is still bad like I remembered it. Download the image locally and open it in an image viewer so you actually view the pixels 1:1, then see if you can tell which one is Firefox (I can): https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3
I'm staying with Chrome.
Related tangent: Brave is pretty close to Chrome, sans Google.
I mean, so is Edge. I can't say I feel more comfortable with them. Probably the most direct thing I can point to for Brave is that having cryptocurrency features in a browser doesn't give trustworthy vibes. And yes I realize there's a reason for it and there's a fairly high chance the vibes could be giving the wrong impression here, but when your entire digital life is at stake, that raises the bar for the risks you want to take. Whatever you think of Chrome or Google, the reality is that they're known quantities and I'm already using them, like most other people.
It always hurts me, when people basically say "I'm not giving up [something that has cornered the market] for the alternative, because [minor-grievance]", even though it is already clear that the monopoly is being exploited to make things worse for all customers.
I want to use Firefox, this was my Nth failed attempt at doing so. I just cited the first problem I saw again, not the only one as you're assuming. Mozilla has had years - literally over a decade - to fix such issues.
But hey, if there's one thing that's definitely going to convince people to do things they don't like, it's to diminish their grievances and guilt-trip them.
This whole debate is such a chestnut. Of course, you will do as you please, it's your right. But these choices do reveal values and priorities. Speaking personally (and, I suppose you will say, sanctimoniously), I choose to use Firefox despite its flaws because I don't want the internet to be privatized. I know what I'm missing out on. It's less important.
agreeable argument. I am also running towards firefox, but keeping the firefox open, juggling between the tabs, especially the quirks YT poses on Firefox, these apps poses a usecase. Yes, download/subscribe/SB support etc. Currently using libretube mostly.
I'm with you here, it's a degraded user experience running stuff on mobile browser, intentionally so I'd risk saying. Best of both worlds would be to have an android app but it's just a webserver I connect using the browser, you know, like we've always done in linux haha, this way we could have newpipe-like apps targeting the browser running locally.
but for some reason google knows better and there is no efficient way to run local containerized web services.
Have you tried the Firefox extension "Video Background Play Fix"?
This has worked flawlessly for me on every phone I've used.
From time to time I get blocked by YouTube and both NewPipe and PipePipe become unusable. I wonder if it has something to do with my internet provider putting me behind a CGNAT proxy
totally...
Funnily what I found was to install 1.1.1.1 from cloudflare. Enable that. PipePipe works perfectly.
Yes, it happens quite often recently. I think, their approach is "dominate and tolerate" in a controllable way, so they know quite a bit about who is actually using NewPipe, yt-dlp, etc. and they tolerate it in order to have a kind of leverage to preserve their monopoly. Then if number of out-of-official-app views becomes like above certain point, they aggressively block with "bot detected" message.
Anyone know how PipePipe compares to SmartTube? I recently got a Google TV, and I’m looking for the best alternative YouTube viewer.
Been using pipepiple since December of last year, very happy about the app. The developer seems to care about the project and introduces a lot of quality of life improvments.
Why use this over Morphe? You can download from Morphe and it'll skip sponsorship segments too as they all use yt-dlp underneath.
Morphe just patches the YouTube app no? Then you need to still use that abomination. NewPipe/PipePipe is fast, lightweight and I couldn't care less about any "features" other than watching a video.
Morphe/revanced with good configuration makes the official app super nice. Swipe controls, full OLED, no shorts, Sponsorblock.
Default app for sure is an abomination and so are most Androids straight out of the box before debloat + clean rom + root.
What's the benefit of Morphe over Revanced? I've been using Vanced or Revanced for years, but I'm willing to change.
Bad name though, first few results for "Morphe" is a well-known make-up brand.
I just use ReVanced. I like shorts and recommendations and don't really care about privacy when most of my feed is football highlights, K&P sketches, gaming channels and random bullshit comedy videos. But having a full open source alternative is still important.
Why don’t you care about privacy specifically in this context?
He thinks privacy is for dodgy things.
Because the algo, despite everyone's objections, is pretty good at recommending videos.
Yes , with the caveat that you need to be aware of it, guide it, and watch out for its tendency to recommend weird propaganda if you touch certain non political subjects.
Personally, I struggle to find an upside in the galaxy of downsides. I don’t want to trade my agency for convenience, regardless of the topic or venue.
What exactly are the downsides?
I would like to define my own thresholds for exploration/exploitation so that I can shape the person I want to be, thanks.
Then dont use Vanced
Oh? I recently stopped using revanced when updates stopped and my older revanced stopped working correctly. Is it back?
Morphe [1] seems to be the one carrying the torch.
[1] https://github.com/MorpheApp/
https://github.com/revanced Download the latest revanced manager and it works fine. I've had no issues but the account I use is on a friend's family YouTube Premium plan so I don't need to rely on the ad blocker.
you gotta repatch every 4~6 months, its always breaking due to yt changes
Morphe is the new app made by the old Revanced developers
Does it auto-update now? I like its UI better than PipePipe, but I got so sick of hand-updating Vanced (including hand-downloading the correct apk and waiting several minutes for the patches to run against it) every time Google breaks Youtube again. There was a period of Warfare last year where Google would make breaking changes more than once a week...
PipePipe is so nice with the fast auto-updates. If I ever even catch it breaking, I just have to use Firefox for a few hours and then F-Droid ships the fix and PipePipe works again.
It doesn't, sadly. The new kid on the block, Morphe (there was some classic open source drama) directly gives you the link to the correct apkmirror page, don't know if revanced also did this. But it makes things easier. Tbh, I only update every few months, it's bearable
This app and previously NewPipe is the main thing I miss after moving to iOS. I really can't stand ads (including organic ads that SponsorBlock deal with).
Yep, it’s pretty much the reason I don’t use Youtube on my iPhone almost at all.
It’s probably a good thing, actually.
Although not a direct equivalent, but check out Unwatched [1].
[1]: https://github.com/fer0n/Unwatched
Get https://github.com/yattee/yattee
I've been watching youtube without ads on all Apple hardware for years.
I use invidious as backend.
https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Absolutely fabulous.
i had a look at yattee, but it looks like there is only the possibility to sideload it to ios devices, which you would have to do every 7 days, or am I missing something? The repos is unfortunately very sparse with installation instructions
Sign up to the TestFlight.
https://yattee.stream/beta2
Super easy.
The installation instructions are here
https://docs.yattee.stream/docs/app/getting-started
I’m using https://github.com/Tonwalter888/YouMod on my iPhone and I’m very satisfied. It has integrated adblock, sponsorblock, and despite being modded stock YouTube app it has tons of features, like completely removing shorts from the app, customizing the UI, and more.
Connect to VPN in Albania and you will get ad free YouTube experience. You are welcome.
Why?
Killer feature!
If you want music I've found Metrolist to be the nicest frontend.
https://github.com/MetrolistGroup/Metrolist/releases
Limusic on desktop has been good for me too
After trying all the alternatives in the end I settled on self hosting https://github.com/Materialious/Materialious
All the YouTube alternative frontends are so privacy focused that they do not even offer video history in your account.
Having video history is a must for me as I might start watching a video in my computer and then continue on my phone.
Also as it is just a web (and includes support for SponsorBlock) it works everywhere, no need to patch apps or install extensions.
I have watch history in NewPipe just fine? And I find it very convenient to know what I've already watched. All local, Google doesn't need to store it for you / you can't lose access to it
I think OP meant cross-device.
Is it a problem for you that YouTube's watch history is littered with videos you didn't watch, but got recorded as being watched because the mouse pointer moved over one of their suggestions for a moment.
I want these things to implement peer to peer caching, so that when 10 people are watching the same video, only one downloads from youtubes own servers.
Then it's just a matter of letting people add their own videos directly to the service and it can become fully independent of YouTube.
The problem with P2P video is that it's expensive to host and most of the people using it are going to use it for child abuse. It makes it not realistic.
This is deeply unsubstantiated and does not help contribute to a constructive debate. Please consider thinking more carefully.
“Most” is hyperbolic but it’s a real problem in any system designed for peer to peer hosting or sharing.
If the system is truly distributed it means you might not be able to participate without hosting or transmitting CSAM.
It’s also been used as a deliberate attack, which is known as “pissing in the pool.” Flood the system with CSAM and copyright infringement.
Most P2P video system make you seed only the video you started watching, thus making the point about transmitting csam moot.
yes, will you also be providing the caching server? Because that's the main blocker I think, nobody has the resources to cache them.
there exist distributed alternatives like joinpeertube.org but they never really take off. Consumers like centralization, look at twitter.
I tried using Peertube but finding an instance whose content policy fits what you're meaning to upload and responds to sign-up requests isn't trivial. It's basically perpetual storage they're offering for free so I get it, maybe the real surprise is that youtube makes so much money off of us that they can afford this
Found one in the end when I didn't have a choice anymore and put renewed effort into it (Google's algorithm won't let me into my account anymore, saying they don't have enough information to verify it's me (username, password, recovery email.. not enough apparently, but there is nothing else), so I'm a Peertube exclusive now) but iirc I can't use it for everything, like if I wanted to upload something in Dutch I'd have to find a new server that allows my language
That would put users at risk of being sued/punished for copyright infrigement.
Delivering the bits is not the hard part of making a successful video platform. It's other stuff like recommendations and content discovery that is actually useful, allowing creators to monetize enough that they want to be on your platform, navigating legal issues, fighting spam and abuse, and getting enough users to sign up and start using your service.
Delivering the bits is a part of it though. When youtube changes its api in a way that forces NewPipe to change its algorithm, they have to push out a change that forces users to update the app. This is annoying because naturally you won't find NewPipe on the app store so updating the app is tedious for users who use it. The parent's workaround fixes some or all of this nuisance, depending on how implemented
Delivering the bits might not be hard. Storing the bits is hard. Or at least expensive.
this is exactly why i worked on webtorrent ~13 years ago https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent
Peer to peer died because (1) a lot of the world, especially outside the US, has terrible upload/bandwidth, (2) HTTPS CDNs got _really_ cheap, far cheaper that p2p technologies like BitTorrent+WebSeed.
There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.
I honestly don't see how those two things are related.
Pretty much worse user experience guaranteed, plz no.
How do you verify you get the right data from your peers? With torrents we know the correct hashes for each block. YouTube probably doesn't do this.
I've been using Tubular which was a NewPipe fork that implemented SponsorBlock. Works really well, and I was going to see what the differences are. Just noticed, now that Tubular is no longer maintained.
I'll move over to PipePipe now.
How have you just noticed that when Tubular reliably broke every single month when YouTube changes something and you had to wait for weeks for it to be fixed? It was barely maintained for a long time now
Still no good solution for Apple TV? Running SponsorBlock container, on the same network appears to be the best solution but that only mutes ads and skips them when permitted.
Fundamentally against stealing from creators.
I respect your stance. A couple counter points from personal experience: even if I can't skip the ads, I'm not paying attention - I immediately mute/tune out. And the ads are typically so obnoxious that the reflex to ignore/avoid is only magnified. Is that so different from having a mechanism to auto skip/mute?
Posting YouTube videos can just be a hobby - it was in the beginning, and that was fine. It's OK if posting a video isn't a profitable career path. Enthusiasts > "creators".
And in-video ads like these are even less defensible given that they still show up when people are paying YouTube (and creators by extension) to not display ads.
You’re free to put ads and I’m free to not watch them. What the issue ?
Out of the options "creators released content only behind paywalls", "users steal from creators", and "creators incentivised platforms to lobby to remove user freedom so users can't steal from creators", what actually happened was, by far, my least preferable option.
How is blocking in-video apps stealing from creators? If the advertiser pays them per view, your view still counts. If they pay a commission per purchase, it doesn't matter if you skipped the ad if you wouldn't have bought the product anyway, and I doubt you buy every single advertised products to support creators.
Nowadays I use Morphe for Youtube and Reddit. Seal Plus for downloading and VLC to play downloaded videos.
NewPipe was so buggy for me in the past, I've avoided it. Did it get better? Any reason to use it over Morphe?
Just a heads up, this includes support for Return YouTube Dislike, which tells a third party service what videos you click on and has no measures to ensure anonymity like SponsorBlock does. The option for disabling it doesn't seem to do anything.
token controverial comment that all good stuff needs to be sustained with money somehow. always good to find alternatives if/when/for can't afford/appreciate. but there has to be sustenance. nothing against a cheeky freeride, of course. but when it becomes the main source something has to give.
No (realistic) amount of money can protect an app like this from Alphabet. It's their service, and clients like NewPipe are always at risk of being depreciated forever.
Chinese developer. I'd love to see Tubular be revived
Looking at YouTube shorts on my cellphone (iPhone with hacked https://github.com/NeonKokoro/KiraTuno hacked yt client) was becoming a problem. So I got rid of the app. Too many shorts too much brain rot.