YouTube Premium is getting a huge price hike in over a dozen countries, sparking user backlash. Some countries are experiencing hikes between 30% and 50%

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 632 points – AlternativeTo (@alternativeto@mas.to)
mas.to

YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.

Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.

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It is morally correct to adblock youtube.

E: I can’t hear any of these counterpoints over the sweet ad-free youtube I’m getting for free.

Or just not watch.

Not watching has a much better moral argument.

Yup. But people would rather just carp on about Revanced and Insidious or whatever, as if everyone has the time to and the inclination to set that up.

Meanwhile, everyone else will piss and moan for a month, then pay up and keep watching.

If you have the time to watch YouTube enough that you're considering premium you have enough time to set up these systems. The time it saves you makes back the setup time very quickly for someone watching even a moderate amount of YouTube.

If you have time to relax and watch your favourite creators, you have time to set up arcane systems to avoid seeing ads!

No. YouTube is relaxing time, not doing work time.

I can concede Insidious especially with the recent news but Revanced is so easy and quick to set up, calling it arcane is laughable. It's done in under 5 minutes.

It takes less than 30 seconds to install uBlock Origin. It's the first thing I do on a new install after replacing Edge with Firefox

What the hell are you talking about? I download an apk, I install it, I'm done. How many ads will you sit through before you've wasted the whole minute it would've taken to do?

You say that as if it's obvious to everyone what an APK is.

It's an installer for an app on android. Android has been around for half of my lifetime at this point. Not know that is like not knowing what an exe is on a PC.

First of all, you said time or inclination, the latter is caused by the ads, the former wasn't really an issue as I've already said. Now you don't know what APKs are? YouTube won't stop with the ads. You either find an alternative, whether it's Newpipe or just abandoning YouTube entirely, or you put up with them and stop bitching.

You can't sit in the middle throwing your own shit at one side because "people will whine and then use it anyway" and then also at the other side because "it's too hard to install a different app and don't know what APKs are!"

Let’s make it even easier then. I downloaded Firefox Focus from the App Store (also available in the play store)

Boom done. Ads blocked on YouTube. Even the most tech illiterate people can install an app from the store.

You can install ad blockers from within the browser, why are people doing it the hard way?

Easier said than done when you talk about the global video sharing platform that is used everywhere by everyone...

It's like telling someone to just ditch their smartphone... not practically doable. Blocking ads is morally correct when you are forced to use it.

I highly doubt anyone is "forced" to use YouTube, unless you work for a YT channel or something. There are plenty of alternatives, and while they don't have the same content, they have other enjoyable content.

I've moved about half of my watching to Nebula, and almost a quarter to Odysee. There are still some channels I really enjoy on YouTube, but I could totally stop watching those.

No one is forced to use youtube in the same sense no one is forced to use a smartphone.

In the real world you'll eventually have to use those things to participate in society, just by the sheer reach those things have in our daily lives.

Just look back into any time a friend or family shared a link, or it was embedded in an article, or a company made an announcement only in youtube, or if you're in school and you were asked to view some lesson, or those college lectures that get uploaded to youtube.

I can get more examples, the thing is you'll need to click a youtube link at some point. Is it ok for us to deal with an enshittified platform? should we act like a luddite because we don't agree with the TOS? is this fair for us?

My current usage of youtube doesn't involve following creators, for that I use odysee/twitch. But the point remains, its morally correct to block ads, the platform is unfairly dominant.

i dont like being addicted to their platforms and limit my time using it.

however, the idea of being a luddite and isolating myself from the useful things in them just because their current owners are greedy capitalists sounds even worse.

Wouldnt that just cause them to increase prices more? Since now someone else has to pay for the bandwith you use?

Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can't adblock.

The morally correct thing to do is to stop watching youtube and/pr go to a paid platform that's an alternative, like floatplane or nebula and support the creators there, isn't it? But let's be honest, we all know you just want adfree youtube videos for free.

You think YouTube is some kind of Mom pop shop down the block? They have more than enough money to burn. Least they can do is to serve adfree videos, better, I might add.

Thus what you are doing is using your technological know how to offload your costs onto less technical users who can't adblock.

Which is the reason why we should help people get adblocks more, which is also recommended by the FBI.

Level set: ads suck

Least they can do is to serve adfree videos

Now, corporations are greedy right?

Genuine question: What does Greedy Google do if we all install adblock on all our neighbors’ computers tonight?

(@kameecoding@lemmy.world)

I’m ok with all of that. It furthers my goal of hitting the platform back in response to their predatory marketing practices and de facto monopoly. Also, I do support creators outside of youtube. In short, I don’t feel bad about any of this.

That might be their response, yes. But they also have some other options:

  • improve the service to be worth the cost
  • reduce the cost to increase Premium subs - I have a price in mind, and they're way above it
  • add an a la carte alternative to Premium (i.e. pay per video or something)
  • cut expenses, such as by reducing the amount of useless videos that are uploaded (i.e. small charge to upload videos, recur every year; allow some amount for free)

But no, raising prices is the easier "solution." I'm willing to pay (I pay for Nebula, after all), I'm just not willing to pay what they're asking for the service as-is.

Okay, so if you are not willing to pay that's entirely reasonable, you can then not use the service or use it with ads.

Dont get me wrong, I do have pirated movies and shows, it has reasons like scrubs they changed the music, community they took down an episode for no reason, but that shit doesn't cost anyone anything I dont use extra bandwith or anything

There's a third option: use the service with an ad blocker. The way I see it, that's not piracy, it's a TOS violation, and they're free to block me from their site. But as long as I'm not bypassing copyright protections or something, it's not piracy. I think using something like Invidious or other FEs could constitute piracy, but just using their website w/ an ad-blocker isn't.

I'm willing to pay (again, I pay for Nebula), but I'm not willing to pay the price they're asking for.

just cancel all subscriptions. None of them are worth it

Bitwarden is worth it. (Yes, I know, I should self host it. I do, but I still see it as a good deal.) Also Hetzner is a good subscription. So yes, some are worth it

Agreed:

-Bitwarden

-Storage Share

-ControlD

-Real debrid

Backblaze as well. Can’t believe they let me store 20TB of backups for $10/mo.

By there site its more like $120 a month?

Just do the cheap unlimited personal plan and hook up a shit load of external HDDs to your PC. I have a system where my NAS syncs to my PC which syncs to Backblaze so I can sorta hack my way into unlimited NAS backup for $10/mo.

3-2-1 backup where the primary source of data is the NAS, on site backup is desktop PC external HDDs, off site backup is Backblaze.

That's an insanely good deal! I should move pict-rs to backblaze on my Lemmy server

So, only cheap services are worth it?

Are there some expensive services that are worth it? not just that they increase their price just because.

Don't get me wrong, I want more examples (and I am a happy subscriber of Real-Debrid for years already).

As I have said previously, Hetzner is most definetly worth it and it can be expensive. I can't think of any more examples tho 😅

Well, I use what I need. I'm not going to pay an expensive service just because. For instance, I wouldn't pay for Proton. It'd be quite useless (and expensive) for my use case. I do have a paid Zoho email account, tho.

Out of curiosity, what do you do with all that storage? Can't imagine I'd ever need that much personally

I like SimpleFIN ($1.50/mo IIRC) + Actual Budget. I can pull in transaction data from multiple sources into my self-hosted Actual Budget service, which is super nice (or I can DIY if I want).

I used to use Tiller ($80/year I think?), which is basically the same, but it pulls transactions into a spreadsheet (Google Docs or Microsoft Office) and they have some budgeting tools around that. I'm trying to move away from Google and Microsoft, so I ended up cancelling, but I really liked their service.

What do you need that isn’t in the free version?

Authenticator. Also, I would like to support the devs. Running a server and developing the software itself is far from free.

Fair enough, but does having your passwords and 2FA on the same service not defeat the purpose of 2FA?

Good point. 2FA is quite useless if you have a randomly-generated 256 characters long password for every service. I guess Bitwarden is worth it for the advanced security reports (it costs them money for this) and supporting the devs?

You don't need to justify a purchase! If you like the product, paying for it is ge best way to ensure it stays around.

I pay for it because it was required to share passwords with my SO. That's now in the free version, so I don't really need it anymore, but it's $10/year, so I keep the sub to support the devs. I'll probably end it once I self-host it.

i meam the payment for a domain name is kinda worth it. as well as a functional vpn

Agreed. Mullvad is absolutely epic. A question: why do we have to pay for domain names? And why do some providers offer a domain at a lower price than others, while offering the same services? it doesn't make sense to me, an explaination is welcome

a couple of reasons, some being that 1, ip addresses are limited on the internet, and making it free would instantly fill it up. another is that there is still some work involved,because once you register for a domain, internet service providers and DNS providers around the world need to also add your newly established domain to ip to their DNS so that people get redirected to your domain correctly. the domain endings also have a cost attached to them due to popularity and who is allowed to hand them out. e.g country related domains (e.g .kr for korea, .fr for france has their reasons to charge or without handing a domain out, but some countries may get lucky and happen to have a domain thats desirable (e.g Anguilla has .ai) and thus will charge more

you also want to prevent domain name ransoming. if domain names were free, there will be people registering for all domain names to use as bargaining chips against a person or company similar to social media handles

And it's really not that much, it's like $10/domain/year, though it varies by TLD (vanity TLDs are more, less desirable ones are less).

I have about 10, and I'll probably free up half of those the next time I need to pay for them (they were for a business idea that I've largely given up on).

Because it's a monopoly created by international agreement. It's like a phone number - it needs to be routable in the system, but if you follow the standards, you can get integrated into the system as a registrar

The top level domains are owned by countries - the UK has .UK, the US has .com and .gov, the UK has .io (because they stole it), but most countries have just one. They charge a fee to register a secondary domain, and the registrar can charge whatever they want to their customers to register on their behalf

This is just the centralized system though - you could build your own, AOL tried to do that through "keywords" back in the 90s

I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).

I'd say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.

Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.

Sorry if you get this a lot, but have you tried Bitwarden? It's been a while since I compared but last I checked I found it miles better than LastPass.

Or Proton Pass, they already use Proton for email

Proton has a password manager and VPN. May be worth bundling over paying for all 3 separately

So, steal everything or something else? Content isn't free. The ad model exists, but only works if people see the ads.

If everyone blocks all ads, and doesn't pay a subscription, how's that work for those providing the service?

I'm not defending YouTube here, just curious what your solution is to have a service and not pay for it.

I do pay for YT family Premium in the US. I watch mostly YT, and it is my music streaming service. I definitely​ liked it more when it was costing me $15/mo for that and was mad when that went to $23. I even tried switching to Spotify and using ad blocking on YT. I didn't jive with Spotify, and while ad blockers work for YT, it's a bit of a pain installing them on TV boxes and managing subscriptions across devices, asking with which videos you've seen etc.

Youtube revenue in 2023 (before these price hikes) was 31.5 billion USD.

The revenue for the entirety of alphabet in 2023 was 307 billion USD.

Youtube alone generated 10% of the entire revenue of alphabet’s portfolio in 2023.

Yes, revenue is not profit, but I could not find profit figures for youtube.

Alphabet’s operating income for 2023 was 84.3 billion USD. Assuming a similar proportion of revenue to operating income (I know, hella extrapolating, but again no direct sources for youtube) that would put youtube’s operating income in the ballpark of 8 billion USD.

It’s not that they aren’t making money because people are “stealing” as you say from poor little indie company youtube. It’s just that they want more more more MORE MORE MONEY.

Because of course they do. It’s never enough.

Edit: because I forgot to link my source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000014/googexhibit991q42023.htm

YouTube is but one, and as I said while the story is about yt I was talking Mir in general. How do you pay for content/services in general?

Right now with via ads or a subscription.

It’s one thing to pay, and another to be squeezed dry.

When ads were mostly static banners on websites almost nobody was blocking them, because they were mostly unobtrusive.

However, they would often link to shady websites that would install random crap, so the usecase for blocking them was already there.

Then they became animated, and they multiplied. It was one at the bottom of content at first. Then a couple. Then two vertical banners on the sides too. Then more rectangular banners here and there for good measure.

Then they became unkillable javascript popups, then proper new browser windows. Then autoplaying videos with audio were added. And this is just the visible stuff. Add tracking pixels, tracking cookies, browser fingerprinting, and tons of other spying technology deployed under the guise of “but the content is free”.

After every step the use of ad and tracking blockers became more legitimate as serving ads moved further and further away from paying for free content and squarely in the space of selling user data collected without consent for huge profit margins.

If ads and subscriptions were enough to just make a normal amount of profit, very few would be blocking ads or pirating content, because the amount of ads or the price of subscriptions would be reasonable and affordable.

But since everyone wants to make a 1000% markup on the content they generate, they will drive their very own paying customers away.

Youtube could have served me a couple ads per video and I would have kept using it forever. Instead they served me a minimum of 20 ads per video, so now they will serve me zero, forever.

Netflix could have gotten 12 euros every month out of me for their dwindling and dwindling content selection. Instead they wanted 14 after a while. And 17 after a while. And 19 after a little while more. All the while refusing to serve me the 4k content I paid for.

So instead they now get zero too.

I am very happy to pay for content, and a lot of people like me. But the comment you originally replied to was in reference to youtube increasing the price of their subscription by ludicrous amounts. You replied there content isn’t free, and I replied that youtube has no problem making money. The increases are not to keep youtube afloat, is to make youtube make 10 billions in profit rather than 8 next year.

It’s not about paying a fair amount of money for content, it’s about making you pay all that you can give and suck you dry.

So to your question “how do you pay for content/services in general?” I answer “with money”, but that is not what is happening here.

Not op, but I think a solution would be having AI watch the videos and tracking what the people are saying, wearing, using etc and posting links to purchase those things in the description. They get a cut of sales and can also sell links for competing products if companies want more exposure. This could be effective and noninvasive. Give a cut to content creators and it may be even more effective.

  • Firefox + uBO
  • NewPipe/LibrePipe/GrayJay
  • FreeTube

They all are free, no subscription required

And sorry Apple users, I don't know what option you have cuz I don't use Apple.

Freetube doesn't seem to work anymore (for me at least) as Google went hard on blocking all invidious instances and proxies...

iOS user here, uYou++ is quite good, but only a mod for the regular YT app, not a complete alternative.

iOS/iPadOS: Safari + AdGuard (+ Vinegar (optional))

macOS: Safari + AdGuard or Firefox + uBO or FreeTube

As an iPhone user I like to use YtLitePlus, it’s pretty much the same user experience as using revanced on android, maybe even a bit better. I’d like to have an alternative client such as NewPipe but hey, we can’t have everything.

I switched from FF to librewolf. Less convenient, more privacy, no pesky G**gle partnerships, afaict.

reminder that firefox + ubo works on android too.

I use to use tubular, but it stopped working and I'm not computer savy enough to fix it. Can anyone offer some assistance please? It gets the infinite loading icon and then gives me an error

Remember: Everything premium offers used to be included for free

Except youtube music, I guess

The whole reason I got on YT Premium was because it was free with Google Play Music. I have real issues watch non-Premiun now, because I've always disliked advertising methods. (Not so much th ads, which can be entertaining, but just being shown content I didn't request instead of the content I did request.)

RIP Google Play Music. The best music service to ever exist.

YouTube Music Revanced or Innertune (on fdroid)

What does YouTube music have that regular YouTube doesn't? I have a ton of playlists on YouTube for music. Everything is on there.

The awesome algorithm for recommendations on YouTube was turned off to prevent fake news bubbles. This means that when you listen to a song and want YouTube to create a Playlist with similar artists for you, this doesn't work anymore. But this function does still work with YouTube music.

Better quality and nicely sorted discographies

lol and they'll raise prices again next year. and people will complain for a minute, then renew their sub

when is this going to stop being news?

This is simply Business 101. Once you have a customer base you want to trade low-payers for high.

Did this with my computer business years ago. Woke up one day and said, "Why am I sweating these cheapskates that constantly bitch?" Fired them and kept the higher-paying, and less bitchy, clients. I was making more money for less effort and less overhead.

I don't know what amazes me more, that people keep paying when they know the price will keep going up, or that people bitch and moan. Last I checked, YouTube access isn't a human right. I'll keep using it until these is no way around their ads, but I'm not paying them a dime.

YouTube has a monopoly and it’s no surprise people are frustrated, especially those who aren’t tech aware enough to continue blocking ads.

Exactly. My brother bought an accounting firm and is planning to do just that. You can probably double-dip as well by selling these customers to a competitor/new startup as referrals.

Business tends to follow exactly that model:

  1. get users at any cost, and lose money if you have to
  2. raise prices to improve profitability
  3. go to 1 if needed (i.e. promotions), otherwise go to 2

Exactly. "Sparking backlash" just means these people whined for 2 minutes like they always do, before reaching into their wallet once again.

I can't wait for google to crash and burn. Bring back GeoCities and Netscape navigator.

Like Reddit dying after the API incident?

Just like Reddit, Google are going nowhere; sadly.

Google is having problems, they can't make profits anymore. Its different because reddit was never profitable, but googles been profitable for years.

Edit: I said they can't make profits, but what I should have said is they can't innovate and produce new value, they can only cut expenses and squeeze consumers with subscriptions and advertisements in order to remain profitable. Eventually there won't be anything left to cut and will then cease to be profitable. Google is on the decline.

My first comment wasn’t rude, but I’ll concede that my second one was because you incorrectly assumed I was calling out something about your psychology.

As for the information you provided, nothing in there hinted at Google failing as a company and more just highlighting some of the failings of recent times.

"You made me be rude after I insulted you and you called me out on it"

Leave me alone. I've wasted enough time on you. You clearly have your mind made up and can't even comprehend why someone would be skeptical of a company that is driving away its users and advertisers, of which I provided many examples. I wrote several paragraphs supporting my argument, and several sources. You responded in seconds with two sentences. Hopefully you wise up before taking a bath on whatever your investments are. I wish you all the best in life, but this is finished.

I never said that and I never insulted you in the first comment. I used the word hopium which is pretty common word to use these days.

For what it’s worth I apologise if you misinterpreted my initial comment and you feel offended as that wasn’t my intention.

Anyway have a great rest of your day and let’s draw a line under this.

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There's a neocities project... As for Netscape... I think SeaMonkey is still active?

Eh, I don't need Netscape, but I need Firefox to not die/turn into AI spamware. I'm also excited about Servo, hopefully that becomes a project in its own right.

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Use NewPipe if you're on Android.

You're welcome.

Firefox + uBlock Origin already does it too. No ads, and I can listen even when my phone is locked.

Just did cause of ur comment actually, thank you so much!

Any alternatives for iOS?

Using youtube with Brave Browser and AdGuard blocks youtube ads on iOS.

Started using YTLitePlus around a month ago, can recommend

I really like Grayjay, also on Android. The nice thing is it also supports other sources, so you can watch Odysee, Rumble, Nebula, Peertube and others on it. If the same video is on multiple platforms, it recognizes that and only shows one.

The nice thing about hiking your prices by 50% is that unless a whole third of your users quit, you haven't lost anything.

you haven't lost anything

Apart from all future customers that will now choose another service

That's the good thing about a monopoly. You don't have to worry about customers choosing another service.

You don't lose anything for the moment, but it might come back to bite you later regardless. Because Youtube needs to grow until the end of times but can't, it will end ugly one way or another. It's more of a symptom of a bigger problem than an isolated, 'smart' business decision.

Unless the backlash is a huge percentage of users immediately stop using the service, they won't care. They already calculated how many users they'd lose and how much more profit they get to bring in off of those who decide to stay.

Been paying for years now, got a 50% price hike. Canceled on the spot. I like the creators I follow, but recommendations have sucked for me for several months now anyway.

Any advice for streaming ad free on Chromecast or Samsung tv?

Revanced

Does that work for YouTube on smart TV?

The person I was replying to was mentioning a Chromecast so just get something to cast your cellphone to your TV and you're all set

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I'm in the same boat as you and never found anything for Samsung tizen os. Smarttube is android based only and anything streamed to a Chromecast still has ads.

Edit: okay I thought let's search one's more. And there is tizentube did not try it yet but seems promising

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Yeah they are continuously slowing down Firefox and I see a future where I will simply stop using YouTube.i thank them in advance for when that day comes

More and more I try to find my entertainment elsewhere. I am slowly, but surely, migrating away from youtube (and google in general).

Do you know of a good free alternative to YouTube? Preferably one with a smarter algorithm that doesn't just feed me the same boring bullshit over and over again?

Yes I like cars, computers, and video game history, YouTube, but I like other things too, you know. I wish there were a way to view other people's YT homepages so that I can find something new to watch.

My usage of Youtube slowed down considerably when the algorithm stopped giving me anything new. I'd end up asking friends and people on social media about their own favorite videos and channels, just to get something interesting.

Whoever is designing these algorithms seems to be forgetting that our brains crave novelty. If we're not getting it, we're going to feel bored and start looking elsewhere.

I've been paying for YouTube premium and have been watching a ton of YouTube for years. But I've been finding myself watching less and less YouTube lately and this might be the push to finally cancel and back away some from the platform.

Youtube doing what I told every Premium adversary they would logically do after dumping more and more ad space onto the site. And to make Premium look worth the price, they'll continue to shove more ads in your face just before, you guessed it, doing another price hike. Rinse and repeat. Premium users are strong drivers of this enshittification so I will continue to call them out on it whenever they tell you to join the scam as well. I'll stick to my ad blockers.

The Peertube protocol developers should develop a central hub webpage space for newcomers, allow accounts there to follow all channels in every instance (and to only follow and block specific instances too), and then develop apps for smart tvs. It's the only realistic FOSS alternative to Youtube i can think of, and i dont know why the first point is still non existent (having already subscribed to several channels in 3 instances using separate accounts).

It's so odd that a platform that relies so much on user content charges as much as or more than network streaming services. The market hold is leaking into it (and out).

I suspect the user content is the root of the problem. 500 hours of video is being uploaded every minute. YouTube has to transcode and store everything, and be ready to stream it at a moment's notice, even though the vast majority of videos probably get only a handful of views (if any). That's a lot of unused resources that have to be paid for by subscribers and advertisers.

If they were to charge just a little for uploads then content creators would be more inclined to consider whether their upload is of interest to anyone else, and that might take away a lot of the waste.

But then you potentially lose fringe interest videos which the creator makes for fun, only expects a thousand views from people with similar fringe interests and isn't interested in being paid

And for that, PeerTube exists. They can also host their own if they want, which works great for things like family videos or instructional videos for niche B2B products.

I'm thinking they would upload occasional videos to YT to advertise the alternative channel.

Even something as small as $1/video/year would be totally reasonable, and that can be waived once you become a partner or whatever. Maybe also make the first 10 videos free or something.

relies so much on user content

Does it? I mean, it hosts user content but it doesn't really monetize that. YouTube relies on creators, and it pays them.

Creators are users. I think the OP is saying they rely more on smaller shops than large media orgs, which is opposite from big streaming services. Then again, some YT creators are pretty large.

You gotta make up for a lack of innovation but just price gouging customers on absolutely everything. I only have Spotify because of the radio function but otherwise all of these services are absolute dog shit. They don’t offer anything new. They’ve just created a new set of moats for features, songs, videos, television and games. Eventually this system has to collapse because treating customers like employees that have no choice but to stay will lead people to innovate on piracy.

And this is what happens cause the vast mayority of people don't give a rats ass as long as they can consume

Welcome to the monopoly

Yup. People will whinge, moan, and pay up. Same with Netflix.

Some of them are even in this thread which is nothing new, but shocking to me every time:

I'm slowly using YouTube less and less. The experience is worse because of the ads and Premium costs.

I've been paying $25 CAD to support five family accounts and prevent my daughter from seeing ads during her monitored viewing. If that price goes up 30-50%, I'm fucking done. This was an expense I was willing to incur, as YouTube is literally the only media platform my family even uses anymore. Better price than cable and multiple streaming platforms, and (again) I'm paying that for five active accounts.

If anyone knows of a way for me to adblock through my Roku TV so that we can continue watching YouTube on it without a Premium account, I'm all ears. The TV is the only reason I'm not just using uBlock to begin with. I'm really not into the idea of hooking a laptop up via HDMI if I can avoid it. Just feels like a sloppy user experience for anyone else in the household wanting to watch YouTube on TV.

Pi-hole, although really you can accomplish network ad blocking with just about any spare computer.

JK refer to the comment below mine

Pihole doesn't block YouTube ads as it's only a dns blocker, Google serves the ads from the same servers as the videos from what I understand. Adguard home works the same.

Correct. I use the AdGuard DNS servers on my router and get less ads on things occasionally but it YouTube. It's been most noticable on Duolingo because now it always plays the Duolingo premium version ad. I'm guessing that it plays that when it fails to fetch a normal ad.

You got a scrap Roku and move into a platform that supports one of the ad-free clients but I wouldn't do that just yet. YouTube's about to shove in-stream ads down which is going to break every bit of that blocking for quite a bit It might turn out something else is the way to go by the time the dust settles.

Invidious used to work, it's a self hosted YouTube instance that blockw out ads and has things like sponsorblock. I have Playlet installed on my roku pointing at my instance but about a week or so ago it's been giving only errors 😔.

People pay YouTube instead of using an adblocker?

Please tell me a simple, idiot-proof way to block YT ads on all devices incl. Mobiles, Shield etc. that doesn't require something complex like piHole, works outside the home (family's phones etc. ), and doesn't risk blocking stuff it shouldn't. That's my trouble. Premium solves all of that, while bringing other small benefits. Maybe there's a better way.

Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy.

Firefox-ublock (even better on Linux but not required)

Revanced for mobile.

Pihole doesn't stop youtube ads anyhow.

OP just needs to switch to Linux and set up a pihole and teach his entire family to do the same.

Easy peasy.

I’m in the same boat, but I think this hike still will make me cancel my family plan. Less time on YouTube is probably good anyway.

Creators get way more money with Premium viewers than ad-based ones, or at least it used to be that way.

Woah. I just cancelled my subscription last week because it's too expensive, and now they raise the prices further. Guess they really don't want me back.

Absurd to pay so much just to remove ads only for smart TVs. There are easy ways to block ads on phones and computers.

You don't need to pay for smart TVs, if you have an Android TV you can just install SmartTube Next. It's even better than the official app!

Honestly, every YouTube app alternative I've tried has been better, and my only issue is occasionally streams break, which is due to changes from YT, not the app. Instead of putting effort into making the experience worse elsewhere, why not make the experience on the official app better? Features I really like on other apps:

  • adjust brightness and volume by sliding finger on half of the screen
  • nice offline downloads manager
  • remove unnecessary crap from the app
  • access other content than just YT videos
  • run in background (audio only or picture-in-picture)

Some of those are premium features (why?), and others just don't exist in the YT app. If the experience was better and the price was reasonable, I'd probably pay. But it's not, so I use alternatives.

I'd love to, but I'm using a Samsung freestyle 2 projector, and from what I've researched, it doesnt let me install random apks 😭

Bad decision on my part, but I thought a projector would be cool haha

This is just the pregame for unblockable ads.

YT ads will never be unblockable. They legally have to be indicated somehow and people will always write software to detect them. Worst case scenario, you have to download videos you want to watch ahead of time.

Use Smarttube instead on android tv and stbs Smarttube

For android phones, tablets: Tubular

In browser ublock blocks youtube ads, also invidious instances.

Thanks for the Info. Tubular APK can be downloaded directly from Git and so far seems legit and performance. Very Nice! :]

If history is any indication, they will complain and no significant number of them will cancel.

Revanced manager for the rescue. Fuck Google.

And that, kids, is why you should pirate. Paying customers are restricted and being ripped off. Piracy gives freedom, it pays off, it makes sure you dont have to agree to stupid user agreements which take away you rights. Make sure to support your favorite creators though, through other platforms like Patreon. Don't take the money away from them. Just take away the power and control away from the evil mega corps like Google and Meta.

You don't even need to pirate, just use an ad blocker and support your creators directly. My perspective is that, unless you agree to their TOS, it's on them to prevent any activity that's unprofitable to them, and so far, uBlock Origin on Firefox works fine on YouTube directly.

Take what you would've spent on YouTube premium at a more reasonable price and send that to the creators you follow.

Just Vivaldi browser works too. On your phone I recommend grayjay.app

Only up to 50%? I would much appreciate 100%. That would make users rethink their subscription.

Prob a reason to leave youtube

maybe its time people redirect their money to supporting peertube

I would love a solution for Samsung TVs, it's the only reason I pay for Premium.

I don't know about samsungs, but Sony and any android or Google TV is a breeze to hack. Vizio and lg are a pain in the ass but they can be done, so I would assume someone smarter than me has figured it out and posted a tutorial

Same, but nvidia shield. I’ve tried pihole and pf-blocker with no success.

You went through the hassle of setting up a pi hole and in the entire process you didn't figure out that doesn't work on YouTube?

Streaming in general is approaching the old cable prices. Once you've subscribed to the fractured marketplace to find the shows you want you are spending far more than you expected.

I've been paying $5pm for family premium for years.

It couldn't last forever, I guess.

Was actually considering buying premium now that I use YouTube for music more than Spotify, but then the ad stuff happened and now this. Going to avoid it out of principle now.

You might want to check out "Spotube"! Awesome combo of Spotify and YouTube.

I'm currently use RiMusic, but I wish something would automatically sort through my ListenBrainz recommendations

Yeah I'm affected but will probably keep my subscription. Spotify has a shitty track record as well and the price difference is still worth it to enjoy ad free YouTube on the TV. I feel like it's still a good value to be honest. But it also does suck to get squeezed.

I sure hope their recent heavy prosecution of the Invidious project isn't related

There's the enshitification we know and love! Freetube for desktop and Tubular for mobile is how I've been watching YT for over a year now, and it's great!

Must be 50-60 people right? Who pays for premium??

YouTube is the only streaming platform I pay for. I don't want to bother with 3rd party apps, and I use it every day. Plus I get YouTube music out of it, so I don't need to pay for Spotify. Overall 7/10 it's fine.

No judgements toward people who don't want to pay though, I get it.

I bailed because the YTM algorithm is terrible compared to when it was Google music. It had got progressively worse and I really realised how bad it was when I subbed to Deezer for a trial. If they hadn't trashed Google music by integrating it into YouTube I'd still be paying for premium if it came with both. Can't imagine I'll ever pay for it again now.

You may be remembering through rose tinted glasses here. YTM has it's issue but so did GPM...neither I would describe as good products.

Pretty much same. I do get a "free" premium account with Google Fi. But since I'm paying for family already, that just sits there. But still, 5 bucks per family member per month for music and YouTube ad free, I can't argue. It works for me.

I would reconsider things if price went up 50% though. Nothing is irreplaceable.

If you have kids that watch on devices that can’t easily block ads like TVs or game consoles, it’s worth every penny.

YouTube ads are full of scams and smut and all sorts of other things I don’t want my kids exposed too

I understand. It's just that even the videos themselves have ads and are loaded with product placement and paid content, not to mention the low quality of most videos. I am just surprised that people actually do pay for it, instead of finding something else to do.

It's unusable without ads, so if you watch a lot of YouTube it's worth to pay.

I know, it is the reason why I don't watch YouTube. I am just surprised that their tactic of gradually increasing the amount and duration of ads, worked!

I use it mostly for YouTube music (which costs almost the same as Spotify), no ads on YouTube is a nice bonus.