Reminder that this is a thing that could happen.

Striker@lemmy.worldmod to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 559 points –
169

Oh no! Anyway....

continues using an AdBlocker

Not when they disable ad blockers like twitch

My AdBlocker still works on twitch, you just have to do some fanaegling with user scripts.

Really? How do you do it? I'm assuming you use ublock origin

Yes. You can block ads by creating a special script, you can find the info on how to do that at the end of this GitHub ticket but I'll paste it here too.

  1. Navigate to the uBlock Origin Dashboard (the extension options)

  2. Under the My filters tab add twitch.tv##+js(twitch-videoad).

  3. Under the Settings tab, enable I am an advanced user, then click the cog that appears.

  4. Modify the value of userResourcesLocation from unset to the URL https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions/raw/master/vaft/vaft-ublock-origin.js

Then just disable and reenable uBlock to refresh it and you should be good to go.

Wow, this is awesome. Thank you for sharing this, will add this to my ublock :)

In that moment, I will use piped. If piped goes down, I will use nebula. Anything over paying youtube.

Then I won't use youtube since the content is not really worth watching ads or paying for.

There are still alternative frontends like piped.video that don't show ads

I think website developers and ad block developers will be in a continual back and forth. Websites trying to find ways to disable ad blockers and ad blockers trying to find ways around them so they could continue blocking ads.

I use adblocker in Firefox mobile. Noticed YouTube keeps downgrading the quality on every video load even tho higher quality is set to auto

NewPipe from Android saves me from this

Ublock Origins on desktop browsers. Or Freetube.

Soon it might be Firefox exclusive though

Good thing I switched to Firefox, then!

I fully abandoned Chromium in favor of Firefox ever since they made extensions like Ghostery work worse (on Chromium, you can only prevent a tracker from running, but it will still get (down)loaded; on Firefox, extensions like Ghostery can prevent a tracker from being loaded at all). It's been like that for years.

I get a lot of videos with a Spanish audio track and no way to change it to default.

I use uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock for YouTube and I haven't seen an ad in ages. When I do see an ad, it's because I'm trying to browse on somebody else's computer.

SponsorBlock in particular is life changing. You don't realize how much nonsense filler is in these videos. You can easily cut a 10 minute video from a mainstream YouTuber down to like 6 or 7 minutes worth of content if you skip intros, skip recaps, skip sponsorships and product plugs, and skip interaction reminders.

Sponsorblock is so good, it's amazing. Even use it on Smarttube (firetv).

Alright I'm convinced. I've been using just uBlock but I'll give sponsorblock a try.

reddit and youtube really shouting out how much companies don't give two farts about its users. there's so much wholesome and educational content on youtube but, dogs forbid, youtube make $5 fewer in revenue than yesterday 🙄 i can't wait for grassroots decentralization of the internet, including video

Youtube has been consistently getting worse for the past 10 years now. I keep going back because that's where all the good content is and I don't think anyone could possibly create an alternative. It would just cost too much money.

idk, some of my fellow tech furries have ridiculously large homelabs and servers that have massive amounts of storage. i don't think it's impossible, but may require someone to come up with a way for us to decentralize video which, ofc, is humungo-bonzonga-jumbo

What’s missing is a monetization strategy. Any social media platform at a scale larger than a small community is going to require some kind of revenue because servers in the basement just aren’t going to cut it for long.

Users might not like ads, but until they are willing to pay for subscriptions, that’s what they’re stuck with.

I wonder what percentage of Lemmy. World users have actually donated. Hopefully it’s sustainable enough that they can do more than pay for servers, but also hire some admins.

true, true, and true. i didn't even think about admins. just as important D:

The technical aspects, like storage and bandwidth aren't the only issues (though they are pretty major hurdles). The, arguably, bigger problem is the network effect. If you have the best UX possible and no content creators (that people care about), you won't get users and without users you won't get content creators that people care about.

oh, of course, you're absolutely right. it may take another rancid campaign from youtube parallel to reddit's shenanigans that fill in the ux piece of it. or, who knows, maybe it would grow organically as people start to see their favorite sites and resources always come with a peephole and a coin slot 🙃

If you have the best UX possible and no content creators (that people care about), you won't get users and without users you won't get content creators that people care about.

This. I have a small yt channel, my videos regularly get 10k+ views there. In the early days, I also uploaded to a couple of other sites (dailymotion was one, can't remember the other). Where I was getting hundreds if not thousands of views on yt, I was getting maybe half a dozen on the other sites. My most popular video got nearly 100k views on yt, and last I looked on dailymotion it had something like 8 views. Needless to say, I didn't bother uploading to other sites after that and just stayed on yt.

That said, I'm willing to start uploading to peertube once I've had a chance to look into it.

That’s already a thing: peertube exists and does a pretty decent job, if being expensive to host and limited in content right now.

One thing I'm curious about... Are you aware of a way to grab an entire channel worth of videos at once? I have a few educational channels I'd like to have mirrored locally just for my own consumption.

youtube-dl is up again since it was taken down last year(i think)

It is! I got it going and was able to download some of what I wanted, thank you for the recommendation!

No worries, just wanted to spread the word of it being back. Only realized it myself recently

i think kresten has the right idea, i've heard good things about youtube-dl

We are the commodity for sale to advertisers. We make the content we consume, YouTube makes sure it keeps going, but for the most part they are just perpetuating viewing space for ads.

this, of course, is not inherently bad. but when does it end? when you literally strip away all but 1 cubic centimeter of joy and ease of use of your product just to squeeze out two monies?

Christ I love the Revanced project

There's a Revanced? I've been clinging on to Vanced hoping YouTube API will not change anytime soon

Yes, instead of an app you install, you patch the app yourself using a separate app. Kinda like xmanager if you've used that before. I'd point you to their official reddit, but... yknow... Here's their official Discord https://discord.gg/revanced

Dude I had vanced and it died after YouTube got them to stop updating. You're saying it's still going!?

As far as I know, not the same team, at least officially. Unlike vanced, they don't provide the app themselves, you have to build it yourself, but that isn't too hard. Your given the patches and the app that writes them patches to a stock version of YouTube downloaded on APKMirror, all that plus vanced MicroG and you got Revanced

That's awesome, I'll definitely check it out! I'm not the most tech savvy but am up for learning:) thanks!

2 more...

They really want to tv-ify web content huh? People left TV because they were sick of ads.

I only have YouTube premium because I do not want a TV license and one is definitely cheaper than the other but the fuck man.

Cable TV did not originally have ads. That was part of the reason that people started paying for it.

What you are seeing is the natural cycle of content and greed.

Not just them either. Netflix has an ad based tier now and I wouldn't be surprised if other platforms have them too as they realise there's a limit to how much they can realistically charge people. It seems like we've circled back to the start of cable

Yeah, i use youtube and youtube music like daily, to me it worth the money than any other tv service

Yeah i am totally fine with being showed ads or paying for an ad free option. I got YouTube red when it came out and never looked back. Plus they gave us Cobra Kai, which was amazing. I do wish they also included a "we won't sell your data" option in that premium though

Must be the season of boycott, youtube about to do a reddit moment.

It's like everyone's speedrunning it's downfall 😂

Peertube? I guess? Whats the alternative then?

Aside from Peertube one I could think of is vimeo, dailymotion, dtube and twitch, then again in terms of content and servers available around the world nothing matching youtube, except maybe tiktok and twitch. There is pornhub which I think could be the best competitor for youtube barely any restrictions you can talk shit in fact some actually upload gaming videos and some random stuff aside from porn ofcourse they have a lot of servers around the world. The videos dont buffer that much. Who ever owns pornhub if they decide to have sfw alternative to it they could be best alternative to youtube.

Edit: I think they dont have sfw because its hard to make money out of it similar to youtube which is operating at a loss. The only reason google still keeps youtube running is because its a white elephant.

Right now, there's no viable alternative anywhere near YouTube's size. Hosting that much video content is expensive and very few companies have sufficient money and servers to support it.

@STRIKINGdebate2 Firefox + uBlock Origin is love!!!
Firefox + uBlock Origin is life!!!

Also on Android. It allows me to have extensions.
I don't need any other app besides Firefox, Revanced, and my bank's app on my phone.

I finally got a Nebula subscription. A lot of my YouTube favorites are on there, and I've found a couple new ones to follow. I still wind up on YT for a few folks, but that number is dropping.

NewPipe x Sponsorblock on Android, Invidious on iOS, Adblock + Sponsorblock in Firefox, SmartTubeNext on Android TV box.

reminder that Invidious and Piped (and LibreTube on Android and Yattee on iOS) are a thing.

Don't forget ReVanced!

That's wild. I would never sit through that. I've been a YouTube premium sub for years because it's bundled with music. Never knew it was this bad

Careful, lots of people take issue with paying for a service these days. /s but only kinda

YT premium has been by far the most worth it subscription for me. I spend a frankly unhealthy amount of YT, even have it running in the background while not watching actively, and I listen to YT music for hours every day. Really easy value sell for me.

But somehow people expect YT to host and deliver literal exabytes of data for free.

These kind of unsolicited reports from users prove a really important point, and one that Spez and company would prefer to ignore. If you have good enough content people will pay for an ad-free experience.

When I canceled my Spotify subscription, I did the same. I get music and video w/o ads

PeerTube needs more traction.

PLEASE - Just do anything to give Youtube a run for its money. They're steamrolling right now due to the promise of ad-revenue to streamers though. Idk how to fight that

How does PeerTube handle storage? I'm trying to imagine trying to create a federated system version of Youtube and it seems very problematic. Storage and bandwidth.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Each PeerTube instance provides a website to browse and watch videos, and is by default independent from others in terms of appearance, features and rules.

Several instances, with common rules (e.g. allowing for similar content, requiring registration) can form federations, where they follow one's videos, even though each video is stored only by the instance that published it. Federations are independent from each other and asymmetrical: one instance can follow another to display their videos without them having to do the same. Instances' administrators can each choose to mirror individual videos or whole friend instances, creating an incentive to build communities of shared bandwidth.

Videos are made available via HTTP to download, but playback favors a peer-to-peer playback using HLS and WebTorrent. Users connected to the platform act as relay points that send pieces of video to other users, lessening the bandwidth of each to the server and thus allowing smaller hardware to operate at a lower cost.

Wikipedia Source

Ah so the P2P works via instances, not users. Interesting idea.

sounds like Lemmy.

Yeah, but Lemmy instances don't split bandwidth P2P. Imagine hosting a video on some cheap cloud instance that doesn't have any kind of traffic sharing and putting some brand new game trailer up like Diablo 4, then someone links your video copy on something like Reddit. You'd get obliterated if all the video traffic was just coming from your server.

Peertube also uses ActivityPub, so theoretically, you can follow channels in Lemmy or Lemmy posts in PeerTube. Same with Mastodon. Not sure exactly how that works, though.

Kind of like how KBin also uses ActivityPub, so Lemmy users can use KBin magazines as if they were Lemmy communities.

Thanks! Peertube looks like the perfect foundation, at least for the current scale. You can post peertube urls in Mastodon or Lemmy and share the comment stream over the fediverse. We are in the earliest days right now, but it is on!

I think 2023-2024 is going to be the years of decentralization.

R.I.P Invidious. Good ol’ enshittification.

What happened to Invidious?

YouTube sent a cease and desist to TheFrenchGhosty, the project manager of Invidious.

However, he doesn't seem to care, because he doesn't see any legal merit in the letter.

Blog post
GitHub issue post

Damn, that's sad news. Thanks for the answer.
Edit : and for the links. His blog post was such a pleasure to read.

How does it monetize? What makes it attractive to creators?

I had the same questions. The first one is answered here better than I could.

As to monetization, I would think that that's up to the creator. The Patreon model, sponsors. Like that.

And that's why I have AdBlock

Youtube revanced on android. It also supports sponsorblock.

Sponsorblock allows you to skip sponsors recorded in the video (raid shadow legends and stuff like that), interaction reminders (like comment and subscribe), self promotion (buy my merch). There is also extension for Firefox/Chrome

just got revanced. life changing

This is why we use Piped and Newpipe/Libretube.

They’re trying everything to get us to buy YT premium. At what point do they start becoming full-on commercials? Lol

amazon music too. exceeded skip count ->buy premium skip

Don't forget, on a "free" platform, you are the product.

I was thinking what if we switched to a fediverse Youtube replacement, such as PeerTube. However, I don't think this would work. For one, because there are no ads, there's no money being made, and creators would have to be backed by donations. Not sure how much money that would bring in.

Additionally, the difference between a "creator" on lemmy/subreddit (creating a community) vs a "creator" on youtube (uploads videos) is that I can be a creator without hosting an instance here. Looks like if I wanted to upload videos to PeerTube, I'd need to make my own instance or pay for one. Maybe if there was an option to select an instance just like here on lemmy, but videos take waaayy more disk space and processing to stream than text and a few images. Could be cool to host yourself though.

I obviously don't have a lot of data but I've checked the financial for the YouTuber StupidEconomics. I've checked him because he is the one I know that publish a detailed financial report. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1uEk4Td0fyFSGTBUhG_n6oxOanmknXi21p3VmFszCCYU/htmlview#

It looks like YouTube ads revenus are only 5-10% of his revenus. Most of his revenus are donations and public subventions.

Not only that but Youtube often demonetizes videos while also cutting ad-payments. Payments per-view today are much lower than they were 5 years ago.

It's even worse that they're apparently going to crack down on adblockers too. Ik people will just make anti-adblock blockers but it's still fuckin dumb. I swear yt wants to make itself worse than cable tv in terms of ads.

And then big companies wonder why we use ad blockers.

Newpipe on fdroid.org

YT can still track and profile you using Newpipe. I installed Libretube but not before reading about how it's better for your privacy .

I prefer Newpipe's UI but not enough to feed google more data.

This is kinda misleading, the only thing they can "track" about you using Newpipe is your IP address, which doesn't reveal as much info as metadata/tracking scripts in the official app do. Use a VPN and you're good

"Oh boy, done with my shift. Time to sit down and watch some entertaining videos ads!"

I wish there would be an iOS app for Peertube. Then I could start to migrate. But without a mobile app, this is not really useful.

(Yes, I know some people love to use a webpage on their phones. I don't.)

Oh well, I have already left Twitter and Reddit this year, I'm down for one more.

And as a PSA: YouTube might or might not be secretly cracking down on 3rd party clients. There have been issues with Invidious & yt-dlp and I have had a few instances where NewPipe on Android bugged out. Let's see where this leads to

"Five to ten second ads are already normal what is thi- ... oh. Yeah I see what they're upset about."

Haven’t seen it mentioned but the vinegar safari extension for iOS removes ads, allows PiP, and playing in the background.

First, I just got an ad for Reddit on this post. Don’t know how kbin handle their ads but found that ironically amusing.

Second, I have essentially stopped using YouTube at this point due to the ads, and the first time I get 5 unskippable ads will be the last time I use YouTube. I already essentially quit after it stopped being 1-2 20s skippable ads or 1-2 5s unskippable ads, which I thought was fair as long as it was no more than twice in 20-30 minutes. Now I get 2 unskippable 20s ads every time and there really isn’t anything on YouTube I want to watch that much.

I'm already not using Twitch much at all because of that. Even with an ad-blocking extension on the browser, it's an awful and infuriating experience. You can see how frequent and how long the ad breaks are even through the adblocking. When I use it on my phone that has no blocking, it's just... I click a random stream to see what the streamer is doing and I get locked into 3 minutes of ads before I can even see that. I usually just back out and close the app when that happens.

If you have a VPN, set your location to Poland and you will not have any ads on twitch. I guess they have some law against it or something.

Revanced all the way

I wish you didn't have to be rooted for revanced to edit the official reddit app. If any of you are rooted and want to patch a Reddit APK for me with all patches I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'm rooted, give me a bit and I'll try to patch it for you

Just another to confirm, I'm very much not rooted, and very much using Revanced every day

You don't need to be rooted. You just need the .apk from APK Mirror, then open Revanced Manager, go to Patches -> Select an application, chose the "storage" option in the bottom left, select your downloaded .apk and patch it.

Content industry trying increase the greed game now just like brick and mortar has been doing to us since Covid. Fantastic.

Can someone create frontend app for TizenTv? I feel like it will be annoying as fck or i'll just stop using yt on tv for good.

I have YouTube ad free for a while now. Quite expensive, but I also watch it a lot, so it makes sense.

I bit on the 3 free months offer awhile back, and they got me. I just couldn't go back to the ads. $11.99/mo feels expensive, but like you I watch it all the time.

Do you guys not use AdBlock and revanced?

Sure. On my phone. But on devices like a Roku, those aren't available.

I had it when it was $8.99 and included Google Play Music... I unsubscribed once they discontinued Google Play Music and replaced it with the (far inferior) YouTube Music. Even now, YouTube Music is still missing some features and songs from Google Play Music.

That plus music disappearing from both services due to licensing issues is why I canceled my account. It convinced me to set up my own Plex server, rip some CDs, and use Plexamp instead.

Are there any methods for blocking adverts when using the Youtube app on the Xbox? Already feel like they show a ridiculous amount.

PiHole maybe? I have no experience with one but I believe it blocks ads on all devices on your LAN.

I started using Piped.video a year ago on my computer, which could also skip sponsored segments. Couldn't be more happier.

Between the GCN app and Nebula I've spent less and less time on YouTube recently. Happy to pay Nebula for the privilege as well, they do such a good job and support creators far better than YouTube do.

No surprise. Scumbag owner does scumbag things.

Bloomberg reported this month that “Twitter is late on more than $10 million of payments to an array of companies that provide services from public relations advice to branded merchandise, according to claims in court filings.”

Many of those vendors, like Avalanche, are small, local businesses.

dude, just spam close and open the video skipping all the ads and then you're good