How to get rid of YouTube’s picture in picture

In the desktop web version of YouTube, if you close the browser while you are watching a video, you will then see this the next time you visit YouTube:

Picture in picture player in the lower right corner of your screen.

This is a typical example of “dark pattern” i.e. a feature that is useful to the website maker (YouTube wants you to be hooked on watching videos to maximise their ads revenue) but hostile to the user (you closed the browser tab because you didn’t want to watch the rest of that video, but you get force-fed that same video once again).

Thankfully, the browser plugin uBlock Origin comes to the rescue. Go to uBlock Origin’s Dashboard, click on the tab “My Filters”, and paste the following:

www.youtube.com##.ytd-miniplayer.style-scope.miniplayer

Now, when you visit YouTube, the hostile feature is gone.

Or even better, start using a video service that is not as user-hostile as YouTube, for example PeerTube or Piped.

Edit 8 March 2022: in an older version of this post, I was suggesting Odysee as a possible YouTube alternative. I no longer suggest using Odysee, due to their very invasive notification policy, where you are reminded to “verify” your account (by sharing your credit card data – or other bits of personal info). If you don’t do that – or are unable to, since the verification process is really buggy – you will get notifications every few minutes, and to add insult to injury, you can’t dismiss those.

This is a typical case of “nagware” i.e. a piece of software that is so annoying to use in its current form, that you are pushed to do something – e.g. sharing your credit card data – that you wouldn’t normally do. The best way I know to avoid nagware on Odysee is using this uBlock Origin filter:

odysee.com##.notification__bubble

Every time that you put effort into work

“Every time that you put effort into work, and you’re making a little bit of money, you better have a very good plan of what you’re gonna do with that money, because you’re using up your life.”

(At 18:29 – “Carts of Darkness” by Murray Siple).

Human evolution

From https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world

This suggests that human evolution selected for cooperation, tolerance and gentleness – and not, necessarily, for intelligence.

“We always assume that intelligence is responsible for our success,” says Hare. “That humans became smarter, which… allowed us to invent wheels and agriculture and iPhones. But what if that wasn’t what happened?”

Hare suspects that, “like the foxes, and like dogs, we became friendlier first, and then got smarter by accident. This would mean that our prosocial skills, the skills that allow for cooperation and friendliness, were what made us successful.”