Did ad blockers survive YouTube's offensive? Letting numbers talk
TL;DR version:
From June to August, the number of active users of the AdGuard Ad Blocker extension for Chrome dropped by about 8%. But in late August, the trend reversed. The temporary slump in user growth was offset by the increased demand in the second half of the year.
After a brief period of turbulence that lasted about a month, we saw the trend stabilize. And while the daily number of uninstalls was still higher than before YouTube's crackdown, it remained consistently lower than the number of daily installs.
After media reports and YouTube’s own statements implied that ad blockers were doomed, and especially after more and more users started noticing that their ad blocking extensions were not working properly on YouTube, we did indeed see a spike in uninstalls. However, at the same time, the number of installs also increased significantly! It may well be that the way ad blockers’ woes were amplified in the media inadvertently boosted their popularity and helped them woo new users.
The takeaway from all of this is that ad blockers — first and foremost, ad-blocking extensions — were rocked by YouTube’s onslaught, but survived. And, moreover, the interest has rebounded, as is evidenced by the growth in the number of active users.
Why should I use an Android emulator to run an app on PC instead of the many browser front ends for YouTube?
or an adblocker and tampermonkey for that matter
People keep complaining about frontends and plugins failing and having to switch strategies, but newpipe works flawlessly.
It's less work.
I've never had that issue with Piped or Invidious, though sometimes I've had a specific instance not load. There are literal dozens of instances though.
However, I've had numerous issues with Bluestacks and it's a huge memory hog, not to mention it's overkill to install an entire OS just for 1 singular purpose that can be done just fine on your native OS.
It's a layer of abstraction that's almost entirely unnecessary except for 1 use case: watching YouTube without ads.
It's five clicks. That's not a big issue for most people.
Calling it an entire os or a layer of abstraction doesn't negate the simplicity of 5 minutes of set up and five clicks, and then it works perpetually.
It's probably more trouble to set up some of these plugins and frontends.
Also once you have any emulator installed, you can use all of your favorite apps straight on your desktop.
It's extremely convenient.
You know what's more convenient?
https://piped.kavin.rocks/
Lol. You are ridiculous.
It's more ridiculous that you find a single 5-minute period to access years of content ridiculous.
No, I find it ridiculous that you are recommending that others use such a woefully bloated method simply because you remember it taking 5 minutes and have used it for years.
I don't intend to change your mind, I intend to imply to others reading that this is a silly and bloated way to do it that most people shouldn't follow unless they actually require Bluestacks for something, such as app testing or to use an Android app that contains specific functionality not available on PC.
Also, I remember when NewPipe was ass, so it also took that dev a "really long time" to come up with a functional app. Not really sure what your point is other than to attempt to delegitimize a solution that is better than yours. :b
Simply to point out your continued inaccuracies.
Someone else working out a solution that works better than your myriad of suggestions really seems to bother you.
You keep pretending that a couple of minutes is some laborious chore that no one would ever be able to work through.
You can keep pretending that installing two programs is difficult, but it isn't, and nobody following your inaccurate and easily disproved claims one after the other is going to take you seriously.
No one is saying that setting up NewPipe on Bluestacks is particularly difficult.
Everyone is just trying to tell you that it's a needlessly convoluted way of watching YouTube videos on desktop, and that there exists many better options to achieve the same end result. Do what works for you, I definitely have some weird workflows and hacky work-arounds too, but expect people to push back if you try to recommend it to others because it's a pretty bad recommendation.
I don't find one-click computer programs convoluted, and by installing an Android environment you have instant single-click access to apps you wouldn't otherwise be able to use on a computer.
I do appreciate you admitting that bluestacks is not as difficult as you are pretending it is, but pretending that single click access and operation is convoluted is not much better.
Installing an emulator (and an app on that emulator) for something you can achieve more easily either with a native app or a website is already convoluted.
Doing so on a PC when the UI of the emulated app is meant for a mobile phone with touch controls and a fraction of the screen size of a desktop computer? Very convoluted.
You might want to make that statement personal, I don't know many people who find install wizards or using a mouse as "convoluted" as you do.
Not if you have to run an entire android emulator to access it.
Haha, an "an entire Android emulator"?
You click twice to install it.
Click twice to install any app.
Click once to use the app perpetually.
That's not as much work as you're pretending it is.
It's more work than using an alternate front end in the browser... of which there are plenty of excellent options... all which are optimized for use on desktop. But you do you I guess.
Can you give me an example?
It took me 5 minutes and five clicks and I've been using it for a year on my phone and desktop.
I don't consider something that simple and convenient work, so I'm curious what you mean by "less work". Do you mean the front ends take 3 minutes to install instead of 5 minutes?
Obviously can't be down time since you can't have a less than zero downtime, but what do you mean by "less work"?
You don't have to install anything, just go to https://yewtu.be/
Oh cool. Thanks.
Piped.video and Yewtu.be are both web frontends that work in the browser and require no installation.
Freetube has installers for windows/mac/linux with no need for the overhead of android emulation.
I haven't tried this out but I wonder if any of the popular Android youtube clients would work with Windows Subsystems for Android on Win11. It'd be way harder to setup than Bluestacks but would require less overhead.