Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users

TangledHyphae@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1268 points –
Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users
theregister.com
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I don't know why they think this change is going to get anyone to switch.

5 seconds of nothing is still way better than a minute-long ad

They want to sell their Premium subscription. They want you to compare 5 seconds of nothing versus "0" seconds of nothing. That being said, I think uBlock Origin with up-to-date filter lists completely eliminated this delay for me.

At work, we can't log into personal accounts. And my job isn't going to buy YouTube premium. So now any video tutorials on YouTube is getting impossible to watch.

This has now triggered a bunch of lazy developers into action in my entire company. Even our internal newsletters are explaining how to use adblock.

I haven't seen any issues or ads on Youtube across all devices, except my LG tv. I don't doubt they're being scummy but the workarounds are working.

I use https://github.com/webosbrew/youtube-webos on my LG TV, to watch without ads. I have to sideload it via the CLI tools, but it works. Sometimes I have to reinstall it (I suppose some TV update screws up), but for my partner watching without ads is worth the random sporadic breakage.

I am so worried about breaking it, how would you rate it in terms of ease?

The procedure to install is very easy, you can also always uninstall it and reinstall the official one, I don't think it's irreversible in any way. Note that I am talking about side loading using developer mode. Rooting the TV via an exploit can brick your TV instead.

Edit: The procedure is basically described in https://webostv.developer.lge.com/develop/getting-started/developer-mode-app.

I realize I said very simple, but I guess it depends on your familiarity with tech and command line tools.

I have no problem trying it, I just didn't want to brick it is all. I am tech literate but it wouldn't be in my hobbies so I don't have much in the way of skillset. Anything I've done has been with step by step and tools 😂

Oh no, I get it, I was quite scared the first time I messed with it, and I cursed LG plenty for not letting me install safely what I want on my own TV. I found this technique to be quite safe though. You basically uninstall the official YouTube app, then do the loading and you can always remove the app and reinstall the official one.

I hope I didn't sound condescending, I just realized that I had been a bit too quick labeling something easy, while I understand that for some other person reading, using a CLI tool is in itself a new thing. Good luck :)

Not at all you've been very helpful, thank you 👍

They can try selling me their Premium subscription again when they start suggesting more than one or two videos (if that) on their homepage that actually interest me.

Not that I'll ever pay for it, anyway. But get me something that I'll actually click on to get served ads before trying to sell me something to get rid of them.

uBlock Origin

I still worry that google is going to declare ad blockers against their TOS and shut down my gdrive and 20 year old gmail. I'm trying to move away from alphabet shit but it's not so easy with such a long history. To that end I haven't even once used yt except not logged in on a FF private window with ublock since they started pulling this shit.

I recently created another google account for youtube just in case. Was a huge pain to transfer over all my subscriptions but worth it for not having to worry.

Changing mail providers isn't easy when you use their domain endings as you'll probably have to update a bunch of accounts to use a new mail address. For the future, use email providers that allow to use your own domain(s), switching providers is a lot easier then. You can export mails from Gmail with ease though, as long as they provide IMAP you can simply sync your complete mailbox and you could even upload all of it to your new email provider.

And Google Drive...simply transfer all your files to somewhere else and done.

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5 seconds of nothing

It's an eternity of nothing for me now so yeah I switched. To invidious.