YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 673 points – YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it
mashable.com

YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it::undefined

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I'd give up YouTube before ad blockers.

True, holy shit if they wouldn't completely bomb you with ads everywhere it might change something, but I accidentally used the official app on my smartphone and I can't even make out content between the ads in the UI.

Not to speak of the 50s ads for a 20s video, nah won't ever go back to the official experience.

It reminds me back when ad blockers came around, nobody cared for the one banner or some pictures on the site, but they ripped your arm out and cried when there were finally solutions for solving that harassment.

I used the official app up until we got two ads before every video and the first one is always unstoppable. Now it's unbearable to use so I use an adblock.

I'm considering giving up Youtube right now with how many times it tries to fuck up my recommendations by sneaking far right BS into my watch history. Especially you, shorts.

Try using third party clients like newpipe or piped

YouTube is WHY I have adblockers to this day. I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.

Their greed is why they make $0 from me many years later.

I think it’s rich they aren’t happy with people using them when they’re the ones that made the standard viewing experience awful in the first place.

i remember when ads started rolling out when I was much younger and i was like this is odd but ok then they became longer than skippable then an ad played in the middle of my video and i was like must be a glitch haha.

i cannot even look at youtube without an ad blocker i feel like 13 viruses would be downloaded at a glance

The only device I use for YouTube is my android phone, because it runs Firefox and ublock origin. For this exact reason.

Google's clever though, they broke full screen video in Firefox in Android 13. Now I have to restart Firefox after putting the first video in full screen, after that the videos still play.

Revanced works flawlessly on android and gives you the native app feeling

I got this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bimilyoncu.sscoderr. * * vanced is that the one?

Edit: vandalized the URL so search engines don't pick it up

No, that's a scam. ReVanced will never be in the Play Store, you have to patch it yourself. There's instructions on the ReVanced subreddit and it's easy. And don't download premade versions either

You can use:

Revanced

This patches the official YouTube app with a lot of different options including removing those ads.

NewPipe

This scrapes the website, and is my preferred YouTube app. You cannot log into an account though, which isn't an issue for me. You can also import/export your subscriptions. They are still working on getting comment replies into the app though.

LibreTube

This uses Piped API, and you can choose with instances you want to use. This has comment replies in the app.

Do you use an iOS device? I have an app that works very well and is on the app store, no side loading

What's stopping you from posting the name? I have an iPad that I used to use for YouTube in the kitchen but now it's only Netflix and nebula.

In general, posting publicly about these kinds of workarounds is a bad idea. It'd be great to share them with the world, but the sooner Youtube finds out about them, the sooner they break. Keeping the recommendations to in-person or at least in private channels helps to maintain the obscurity that allows them to exist.

There's zero chance that Google / YouTube don't already know about the Vinegar Safari extension for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

What sucks is that my kitten sleeps on my desk and every single time one of their ear-blasting ads comes on he flicks his ears in discomfort. It's not even that the ads themselves are loud (they are, very very loud) it's that every syllable and sound effect has the Attack turned up to 11. Sometimes i'll be in the other room it will sneak an ad on me and all i'll hear is TKnn TKmm TKTKmm TKTKTKmm mm TKTK mm mm

I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPbpYR_RKY

I really don’t give a fuck what Youtube is happy about

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE TRILLION DOLLAR SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM APPARATUS !?!

THE DYSTOPIAN 1984 OCEANIA SUPPRESSION SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS THE TRUTH ALONGSIDE THE BIG BROTHER HAS FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW ?!?!?

! 2023-10-06 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##tp-yt-paper-dialog.ytd-popup-container.style-scope

Oh no, anyway.

Is this a rule for an adblock extension? What does it pick out?

It gets rid of the nag screen so you can just watch the video. For uBlock Origin, it's a bit crude, may affect other bits of interface, I also use the Enhancer for YouTube plug-in for Firefox which is really useful.

Cool, thanks for the explanation!

I quite easily removed it with uBlock using block element, but the video is still paused.

I guess this is a similar solution?

It'll work until they get annoyed and do what Hulu and Twitch does and bake it into the player. Then we're kinda fucked.

The day I can't get around youtube ads is the day I stop using youtube. I already refuse to use it on my mobile device or my TV, due to the ads.

NewPipe is a YouTube app alternative that blocks ads

It doesn't block it, it doesn't even download them or even request them. There is no concept of ad in NewPipe.

Which one? There are 3 newpipe apps in the app store all by different developers, and all "contain ads"

The official newpipe isn't on the play store because it breaks their terms of service, which makes sense considering 2 of the 3 "newpipes" on there are just completely different apps using the name and logo of newpipe. The third is actually newpipe but with loads of ads added, not sure how long it'll last before Google nukes it.

But yeah for newpipe just get the offical ad free and open source version from TeamNewPipe on GitHub or on F-Droid in the main repo. Or if you want newpipe with no ads and also with sponsorblock, you want to get it from polymorphicshade on GitHub or through F-Droid with the Izzyondroid repo.

On the subject of newpipe, if you also view a lot of videos on NicoNico, Japanese yt, I recommend the pipepipe fork since it allows you to play both yt videos along with videos from NicoNico without ads. Also works with BiliBili in case you like listening to Chinese vocaloid songs or other Chinese content without ads.

YouTube ReVanced gets you completely adfree, configurably de-shittified Youtube with sponsorblock on your phone. (And Youtube Music ReVanced is premium YT music, for free, of course also without ads.)

And Smarttube Next does the same thing on Android TVs, FireTV, and probably some others I haven't used.

On Android the Firefox app allows the use of extensions including all the adblock options you would find on PC. Works great and for YouTube as well.

My guy there are like 34 different ways to get around YT ads on mobile and TV.

Considering how prevalent scams and actively malicious content posing as ads are across ad services in general, having an ad blocker is just basic online safety at this point.

I still see fake download button ads distributed via Google's own ad infrastructure to this day. I even reported a few that were taken down.

For all the AI prowess Google likes to brag about, why can't they make a simple "does this look like a download button?" detector? The scams are not that clever, most of them follow one of a small number of specific patterns.

Why would they? They would lose money if they did that

What's worse is when corporations try to be funny put a fake download button and the entire ad is like "Wow can't wait to click this skip button" and they don't realize that sometimes youtube randomly makes those unskippable so it's just awkward dead air for 30 seconds.

The thing is YouTube just can't be nice about it. It just cannot. In times that it was adblocker resistant, they'd add more and longer and worse ads until they pissed off enough engineers who collectively declared it a crisis and built the many anti-YouTube-ad solutions we have, from alternative YouTube mirrors to the Firefox packages.

We've seen this play out in the tech industry multiple times, and always the public wins thanks, largely to programmers who just get ticked off and spend a weekend on pizza to create a bypass.

The executives at Alphabet know all they have to do is allow concessions to be only mildly annoying and leave them. Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content? That might be fair so long as it's pizza ads and not Jesus ministries telling us how sinful the LGBT+ are or Matt Walsh suggesting we make it illegal for some folk to vote.

But they can't do that. Shareholder Primacy means Alphabet must push for record profits, even if it means enshittifying all their services, including YouTube, and that means a 1/4 ad to content ratio and increasing that until it's intolerable and ad-based profit numbers go down due to failing viewership.

Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content?

Yeah, and besides, that shit barely functions on TV/streaming because someone paid to have quality content created. When you're clicking around yt and you don't know if a video is decent or dogshit, why should you have to sit through long ads just so you can watch a minute before you decide the content sucks?

This is frequently brought up as a problem for twitch as well. On the rare times someone decides to check out a new streamer without many viewers they get ads before the stream and most people aren't going to sit through that for a streamer of unknown quality so it makes it even harder for new streamers to get discovered.

What is even more infuriating, I'm from one of the countries that had YouTube Premium Lite available. €6,99 for adfree YouTube with none of the 'offline' or YouTube Music nonsense that I wouldn't be using anyway.

My wife and myself have been subscribed for about 6 months now, totally seeing the value of it. Literally one month after signing my mum also onto it, she gets an email telling her that her subscription will end in a month from now.

Fuck that shit.

YouTube Premium Lite was perfect, affordable and removed exactly the main issue with YouTube: ads. Endless stupid amounts of ads.

I'll go back to Firefox with any amount of extensions that block ads and block the ad-block blockers. Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.

Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.

They're sure as fuck trying.

The irony in this? They have just announced this very subscription plan in Germany. Not even a week after axing the plan in some neighbouring countries.

To be fair, this is the most sane take I've seen about this from the pro adblock side. That's actually fucked up if they killed it out of nowhere but also sounds like Google.

I won't ever sub. I'll find a different hobby/time sink. I won't ever have to worry about it though, the high seas are always more inventive so there will always be content to watch.

I recommend going to India (VPN) in order to buy premium Together with the family option, you can get to about 1$ a month

I'm torn because fuck ads, but also YouTube is probably the most expensive website on earth to run (just the website itself, obviously a shipping company with a website will cost more.) Video is just obscenely expensive to store and they let free accounts upload 4k and keep it private.

I honestly don't know the solution here because YouTube being free is amazing, but they've literally never made money. I think a business model like nebula is more sustainable, but it sucks for those that can't afford it.

(To head off any arguments, I'm pro piracy, I just can't blame YouTube to trying to stop people)

If the ads weren't so intrusive I wouldn't mind nearly as much. As it is, if you don't block them, you're watching ads as much as you're watching content. In-line ads would be better I think, but forcing an ad before the video is annoying as hell.

True. Back in 2011 they didn't bother me at all. I think the issue is once everyone started using ad blockers they had to start squeezing the schmucks that weren't.

That and they started allowing unrestricted 4k uploads. That imo is their main issue with money.

I understand where the "everyone using adblockers, makes it worse for those who don't" argument comes from, and it generally makes sense. But I also have my suspicions that the expectations of infinite growth in publicly traded companies would probably have made it happen, even if nobody used adblockers. That being said, as someone who is giving YouTube money every month to not have ads, there's a reasonable argument that I'm enabling their bad behavior.

Fully agree on the 4k uploads thing though, and it also seems to be hurting the bitrate of lower resolutions. Up until around 2021 I primarily watched and preferred 480p when watching on tablets and sometimes even lower on my phone, for me it was a good balance of lower data usage and acceptable image quality. They've cut the bitrate so much at the low end though now, that sometimes even on a small phone screen I have to watch at 720p just to keep things from looking like they were recorded off a video conference from the early 2010s. Maybe 720p just is the new 480p and it's using a similar amount of bandwidth, but it feels like they're chasing the "bigger number better" crowd, rather than just defaulting to a reasonable resolution, with a high enough bitrate that most people won't feel the need to adjust it.

It feels like we should have solved this issue a decade ago with bittorrent.

A website is just a frontend for a fileserver, so why are we not distributing these files across the globe, where we all volunteer a bit of storage and bandwidth to services we want to use.

Websites really need be nothing more than indexes and trackers which serve up a list of peers who are hosting the files we want.

I doubt a p2p network would be able to match YouTube:s current performance.

How would the content creators get rewarded in that system? Some of the YouTube ad money goes to the channel the ad is shown on.

It's harder to profit from that, so obviously that's not the direction things went.

To be fair, they aren't exactly profiting from the current strategy.

Youtube itself might not be making a profit, but I double Google as a whole isn't by having YouTube. They keep you in their ecosystem longer, and that's good for them regardless of if you're watching ads.

Because have you ever stumbled upon dead torrents? I see this more as a backup method to relieve the load rather than the only one.

(Wish I had a perma-online SBC to seed my torrents btw)

Another sane take. Seriously, a breath of fresh air after seeing people on both Reddit and Lemmy talking about this with the entitlement of the average r/ChoosingBeggars post

Meh, YouTube has been profitable for years now despite all the people using adblockers. They aren't hurting for money anymore. I pay for it but I wish they'd separate out YouTube music from the sub because YTM sucks ass.

So if they stop people from skipping ads and the people then stop watching altogether, what's the difference? They'd save on some bandwidth but look less inviting to advertisers since they have less viewers.

We need a new internet, one free from corporations.

Too fuckin bad for YouTube. I won’t change my behavior, I’ll just not use YouTube.

Fuck em

Many literally fucked them. This hack was working for a day

https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/802407

That's amazing but I wouldn't be at all surprised to here that anyone who did got it reversed if not just outright banned from Google. I certainly wouldn't have tried in on my main Google account.

Its still working but who knows for how long. I doubt if google will ban it.

What happens when google decides to fix this? What happens to the data beyond the free tier? My guess is that it'll be deleted, and you'd be screwed if you used this as your backup solution.

E: still a really cool hack!

Bruh anyone with half a brain cell won't use google account to store personal data. All that 30tb goes to storing 4k movies and porn lol.

Me, using Piped: what?

Or Revanced, or SmartTube or NewPipe etc etc. Fortunately and thanks to some great devs out there, we're still able to give Google the big middle finger.

I don't mind tasteful, well paced ads. That said, I use New pipe and Firefox with Ublock Origin because no one seems to remember what those are.

uBlock won't block the new popups. You can remove them, but it will still pause the video at the moment.

I've found revanced to stop playing the video after a minute or two unless you frequently update it (which is a manual process)... I no longer listen to lectures while I run errands, because there's now no convenient way to do it. Ads are out of the question, and finding a video I want to watch only to have it cut out as I get on the road has killed the experience for me

I'm on Android, and open to suggestions

Okay. Explain something to me. I’ve tried to use piped, but it’s just so dogshit slow. Unusably so.

What am I doing wrong?

I am not sure… are you using a shared instance or self-hosting? I self-host my own instance and have no issue since my deployment

uBlock Origin for the win.

Yeah I blocked the little message with the dropper tool and the stupid clear background thing it makes too.

Make sure you clear all caches and update the filters in uBO, that's the recommended way to prevent the message from popping up

stupid clear background thing

In web design that's called a modal.

I've been paying the €5 ad free subscription without other premium features for years until they announced that it will be discontinued from next month.

So then I am going to take a new look into ad blockers.

Good job, YouTube.

COUGH vanced COUGH

Re*

Yes, correct! I have to keep bouncing between the two. This time its indeed revanced because the last working version of vanced went down again a couple months ago. And I'm sure in 6 months or so, they'll start blocking revanced again and by that time github should have a working version of vanced again. I kinda lose track now.

1 more...

If people don't want to engage with your business, maybe you need a better business

I keep seeing these headlines, but my ad blockers all still work just fine. So, good job Google and YouTube lol

This is a naive take TMHO.

Youtube has been rolling this out, phased, slowly, for the last few months. Judging peoples reactions and engagement levels.

They are only mildly foolish and know that ad block users are some of their most engaged and tech savvy. Just like ad block users generally know that youtube can't exist without ad, and if everyone used them, we might all be worse off.

Roll it out quickly, and you create awareness and ignite the fuckery out of the arms race, do it slowly, watch the engagement, and try to find the best messaging to bring "us" "back on side", and maybe they stand a chance to shift the needle.

(Firefox nightly + ublock origin for the record, had ad block messages on/off from Youtube for about a week)

Add SponsorBlock and some extension that allows you to download videos and your gtg.

Again, im not naive enough to think that everyone can block all ads without consequence.

So I don't use sponsorblock.

If I'm that offended by a sponsor spot, I can always skip it (an option usually unavailable with typical ads) or just close the video. If you're pushing crytoscams, I'm pushing close.

Then you should support an opt in system for ads I assume. Opt in. Heart's content. Bob's your Uncle.

No.

I acknowledge I'm a selfish asshole with ads, but also that some ads and ad platforms are abusive and virus ridden.

I know that platforms like Facebook and YouTube couldn't exist without Ads, but I choose to block them anyway.

I feel like their A/B testing also takes into account an individual user's propensity to leave their service permanently.

Roll it out quickly, and you create awareness and ignite the fuckery out of the arms race, do it slowly, watch the engagement, and try to find the best messaging to bring “us” “back on side”, and maybe they stand a chance to shift the needle.

I think they are too naive then... I mean, how do they plan to win back people that use adblocker blocking the adblocker ? Forcing them to disable the adblockers ? It is clear that this action will start an armed race (not that it was never an armed race in this situation).

It's an arms race. They block adblockers, adblockers block the anti-adblocks. It breaks for maybe like a few hours before it's circumvented.

I think that just means you weren't part of the test group.

I was part of it. It's not that ad blockers don't work - they still work fine. YouTube just doesn't load the content; it's a full screen modal telling you to disable it.

When it happened to me, I was able to just open the link in a private window and it loaded fine - ive_never_seen_this_man_before_in_my_life.jpg - but that may have just been because it was a test; if they roll this out to everyone everywhere I'm guessing that wouldn't work.

The other thing that worked was yt-dlp ... Hopefully that won't be impacted by the adblock prohibition... That also gets around workplace filters (at my work anyway).

YouTube, I've been using ad-blockers since the advent of pop-up ads in the late 90s. You've never been able to stop this, and you aren't going to now.

I don't use the YouTube app or watch your videos on my browser. I use FreeTube on desktop, LibreTube and GrayJay on mobile and FCast on TV so 🖕

Thanks for mentioning LibreTube! I've installed it.

You're welcome. I recommend disabling the Piped API as it will cause constant connectivity issues, and you don't need it if you have a VPN.

What is it with the number of people "happy" to pay for Youtube Premium? Like "why yes, I'm glad I can give a company that spies on me day and night for the privilege!"

What kinda bothers me is that I recognize that something like YouTube is expensive to run and just switching to an alternative isn't super feasible. I would be more than happy to pay for a service like YouTube that I use everyday. HOWEVER, not with their bullshit double dipping. If I am paying a company like Google to use their services, I don't think it's unreasonable that their should be an expectation or mechanism where that means I am not just no longer served ads, but that all tracking and data collection about my account(s) are stopped.

That's never going to happen though :/

You mean like cable that we paid for and got ads or like your cell phone/ISP provider charging you while selling your data simultaneously?

Yeah, I never said I thought it was tennable or that any system like I described has ever actually existed. Wishes and dreams, ya know?

That's a fair criticism. I personally don't care about it because I gave up on the idea of having any privacy ages ago but I get that people may not be happy with that.

If I were to play devil's advocate, I can say that the data they collect is important for serving you the right videos but let's be real here, Google definitely uses it to serve you ads everywhere else

Because their "spying" doesn't really seem to have any down sides for me, and I get better, more useful, products from it. I don't really care if they know what woodworking videos my boring ass watches.

They don't just keep track of what videos you watch, they also keep track of what parts of those videos, as well as everything you search for and everything you begin to search for but never actually do. They also keep track of where you are when you watch the video and what device you are watching it on.

And?

Its weird that you are okay with some company doing this.

When if it was some stalker you'd be freeking out and going to the police and begging for help.

Because a stalker might actually cause you physical harm, while Google/YouTube just wants money, and not necessarily your money. I have no love for the ad supported business model, I'm definitely not defending it, but you're not going to convince someone who doesn't value privacy to care about it.

People who don't value privacy, are always the ones that cry the loudest and say such iconic phrases like "WHO LET THIS HAPPEN" when their privacy inevitably gets violated.

Its weird that you are okay with some company doing this. When if it was some stalker you’d be freeking out and going to the police and begging for help.

ATTENTION STALKERS!!!!
This morning I watched a video of a guy making a 5 drawer cabinet out of plywood on my Pixel 6 XL from my home. I skipped the last 30 seconds of the video because I got bored.

I get it that marketing doesn't bother you, but several tech companies have been found to give direct access to users' data to their employees, who used it in all sorts of creepy ways.

GPS location please.

Obviously I don't want to know it but be sure there's hundreds of Google employees that can freely access it.

on my Pixel 6 XL

Congrats, you've already made hacking your phone 10x easier by telling a potential attacker what model you use.

And if you are ever in a spot of trouble, they can and will hand that over to the cops to burn you with. Trouble you dont even need to be guilty of, mind you, so long as the data implies you could be.

Like how facebook had records of a girl searching for abortion treatments, and slipped those into uncle sams pockets to put her in jail for daring to want the right of bodily autonomy.

What thing do you do today that will incriminate you tomorrow?

They don't just keep track of what videos you watch, they also keep track of what parts of those videos, as well as everything you search for and everything you begin to search for but never actually do. They also keep track of where you are when you watch the video and what device you are watching it on.

OMG, the horror...

It is for those of us who care about our privacy. I for one don't want nebulous corporations with questionable ethics and data security policies knowing and tracking my every movement. And while yes, I recognize that to a certain extent that is unavoidable in this day and age, I don't condone it nor do I want it to be easy for them.

People today are just too comfortable with the death of privacy and corporations spying what you do day in and day out.

Everything about us is up for grabs but god forbid anyone watches a meme without monetization.

Give me your current location, list of immediate interests and last 100 searched queries, if you're so okay with that.

Of course, I don't expect an obvious corporate shill to have any intellectual honesty.

What are you offering in return? Google gives me what I consider to be valuable services in exchange for that information.

I.e. you do care, so your position is bullshit.

My reply is consistent with every other comment I've made in this thread. Google offers me useful services in exchange for my information. You offer nothing.

Fuck you YouTube/Google I'm gonna use an Firefox + ublock origin till death do us apart. If there's no adblocker I'll just quit the internet.

we are not happy to endure 4minutes of ads for product we don't care about, each time we play a video.

YouTube can get bent with its biased algorithm pushing alt-right conservative crap to the masses.

Maybe I'll disable AdBlock if you get rid of unskippable ads. What's that, you're not gonna? Then I'm not gonna.

The worst thing is ads every two or three minutes in some videos. Not even TV is like this. No thanks.

Skippable ads don’t bring in enough revenue to cover infrastructure costs

Then they should have less ads and charge more for them.

I assume neither of us are in the ad business so we can't say for sure but, if they could charge more for skippable ads, I'd bet they would have already

I was in the ad business for a about 5 years. They'll pay more. The better the data, the more the pay. If you're offering exclusive ads that your demographic will see, you'll pay.

Okay but would that not require more user and data tracking that Google is already being criticized for?

Users are not happy with the amount of ads on YouTube and are doing something about it. What YouTube does not seem to recognize is that if you take their ads, plus the sponsored videos on the platform, it is all WAY too much. Like way way way too much and thus they are fighting a loosing battle here.

The core issue here is that there are many players involved in a video that all need to get paid. You have the YouTuber, YouTube, and most of all, shareholders who legally demand a return on their investment and will squeeze every last cent they can, even if it kills the company which seems to be the path we are on.

There are decentralized alternatives for video like Lemmy is for discourse, but like Lemmy, most rather use a big, “safe”, corporate service so here we are. How far will we have by to fall before we recognize that centralized services with shareholders are a dead end? Based on the stagnant price of Bitcoin for the past year or so, it seems we prefer falling and being exploited. Not the smart people here though as we are not seeing any ads on Lemmy. Decentralization is the solution, but far too many are spending time installing and maintaining ad blockers versus just leaving for less exploitative decentralized alternatives.

Oh well. Human gonna human and YouTube is gonna be a corporation to ensure shareholders get their return as they have no choice. Like literally they have no choice as directors legally need to do everything they can to drive shareholder value, not customer value.

That felt good to write. Rant complete I guess.

Yeah I agree. Although decentralized servers also cost money so I make sure to pay the admins. I don't mind paying for things that I use, but I just don't think Youtube premium is a good deal :(

YouTube premium is the worst streaming deal I've found. Yesterday I cleaned up all my streaming services and my wife was interested in adding YouTube premium. It's $23/mth for absolutely no features that are worth it. I pay less for the D+/hulu bundle. I have no idea why anyone pays for it. It's cheaper to buy a media PC every year to use ublock in a browser than pay for YouTube premium.

YouTube Premium should be tiered. First tier as it is now, but cheaper because it's not good enough (I would pay maybe $8). And a higher tier with the current price that has actual offline capability, etc.

I'm not happy about YouTube and I'm doing something about it too.

What about android apps like "revanced" which allow you to have all the premium features and ad blocking without having to pay premium. It is legal as well.

All a person has to do is google search for it and download a proper version YouTube apk and then patch it and they are off to the races!

I used to pay for YouTube family for years, but they got greedy and raised prices. Now after about 30 mins of getting it set up once I never have to pay again.

i run the mobile firefox app with virtually the same add-ons as i do on pc. it's not quite as snappy as a native app on a mobile device, but it works well. you can even turn the screen off and the videos continue to play (music/podcasts/etc) as they did in the vanced app.

I could never figure it out. I did it once with vanced then could never figure out revanved.

Download the Revanced Manager. Tap on the 'Patcher' tab at the bottom. Tap on 'Select an Application'. Look for YouTube. If it's not there at the top then search for it. That box that showed YouTube will also show what version of the YouTube app you have installed and what version they recommend you install so you can patch it. This is where it gets complicated.

Go to your web browser and search for 'YouTube apk'. I usually use apkmirror for my downloads but if anyone has another suggestion that's better, go for it. Tap on the link to go to the YouTube apk page on apkmirror and scroll down the page until you find the version number that matches the one listed in Revanced Manager. Tap on the downward-facing arrow icon and it will take you to the page for that version of YouTube. Scroll down and it will show you the different variants available for that version. Tap the download icon next to the variant that says 'no-dpi' and it will take you to that variant's download page. Scroll down and tap on the download button; this button will also display the size of the apk which should be around the 120-ish MB range. When the download is finished a little window should popup asking if you would like to open the file. DO NOT open the app yet. At this point you are going to switch back to Revanced Manager.

Hopefully you're still on the Select an application screen. If not then follow the instructions in the first paragraph until you are. At this point the installed and recommended version of YouTube should match. If it doesn't, that's okay. Tap on YouTube and a window might pop up asking to select the apk file. Find the file you downloaded if you need to. Then tap the 'Patch' button and let it run. It will take a few minutes and it will look like it's stalled out at times but it's not. Just let it go until it's done. Tap 'Install'. If it asks if you want to upgrade YouTube then tap 'Upgrade'.

Once that's done you're good to go.

Make sure you're patching the correct version of the YouTube app, revanced manager will tell you what the current best one is.

TL,DR:

YouTube is going to kill your grandma on Christmas Eve unless you disable as blockers AND send all the money you have to them in an unmarked envelope. No cops...

I heard about their plans maybe a month ago and i deleted all my stuff there and left youtube forever. I also already had deleted my gmail before that. I now use freetube on my pc and libretube on my phone.

It's tiring to have to take measures to make sure you can use the internet as it used to be, though. I feel like i have a digital armor with ghostery, encrypted email, foss software, etc, etc...

Youtube can go fuck itself. I was one of the few people who was committed to not using an adblocker - corporate assholes or not, I recognized that advertising was why Youtube exists for free.

3 unskippable ads on every fucking video broke me. Youtube can burn, I'm just burning bandwidth until it does.

Greedy companies like youtube thinking tracking people is fine don't need my money. I won't end using adblockers.

*Laughs in nebula

You're paying for Nebula. If you don't want ads in YouTube, you can pay for Premium.

I prefer to pay to the creators more than I want to fund a corporation

I agree. My point is that paying for Nebula will not enable ad-free content on YouTube beyond the handful of creators that have content in some form on that platform.

Who said anything about using nebula for any benefit on youtube?

The article you commented on is about ads in YouTube. Without any context, "laughs in nebula" suggests that somehow this is a solution to that problem, so I'm providing some context into this thread.

I'm pretty sure nebula is a creator co-op, but I might be getting it mixed up with something else.

Nebula has much cheaper pricing than YouTube, and gives creators much more control over their content. I'd rather give my money to them than a company that spends every waking moment thinking about how to screw me and its creators over.

YouTube Premium includes YouTube Music, so the price comparison isn't on equal footing. My only point is that if you don't want the ads, you can remove them without an ad blocker.

But I don't want YouTube Music. I want to watch quality videos without ads where my money benefits creators first, not a corporation first.

So by those metrics, Nebula is still a better bargain for me and a better place to spend my money.

Only one of my YouTube channel subscriptions is on Nebula, so it would be a bad deal for me. It's almost like this analogy doesn't hold water and we're comparing apples and oranges.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that there's a platform that currently puts creators first. Don't forget that YouTube was that platform once, too, until enshittification brought it to where it is today. I'm hesitant to leap on to a new platform with an extremely limited content offering as I don't anticipate it will be financially viable in its current form.

Between uYouPlus on my Apple devices and SmartTubeNext on my Android devices, I’ve almost never seen an ad on YouTube. I’d just stop using the service if I started to see them in any real number.

Speaking in general, and not about you specifically..

but I've seen so many people scream "if company does X, I'm not buying/using their product anymore!"

And company does X

And they scream about it for.. a week, then go back to using it, and buying the next version, and singing its praises after the controversy passes.

So I have no faith that the general consumer has the willpower or the give a fuck to stop using these things.

and individuals like you and me, who do actually stop using them, are so rare as to not actually matter.

You're absolutely not wrong. I have the luxury of just using YouTube to watch golf videos and some niche hobby stuff; I clock in at less than a few hours a week. So, I could easily use that time on the treadmill or riding in a car to read, watch scripted media, or write my DND modules. My consumption of YT is far below most, so I'm certainly an outlier.

My YT consumption has declined drastically.

but in honestly, thats mostly because of covid, and a lot of the intelligent, reasonable people I used to watch falling face first into the conspiracy pit and going absolutely fucking braindead.

I already only use FOSS front ends to access YouTube. If content existed elsewhere like Peertube or Odysee I wouldn't be using YouTube at all.

Revanced also appears to be awesome, I've just started using it.

Better than piped.video from what I can tell.

Ok. So why aren't we all using peertube?

If more content creators moved to it, more viewers would switch to it to follow the content. The fact it's barely got anything on it is why most people, who only view the videos and not make them or post them, do not use it. Which the creators will turn around and say is the reason they don't use it as well; the viewers aren't there. Stupid perpetuating cycles of fuckery. 😩

In highschool, my friend group of maybe a dozen had an sms group chat. I spent months suggesting that we switch to signal, but to no avail. Eventually, I convinced one person to join, which made it a bit more convincing for another, and then a few more, and so on. Signal is now the primary means of communication for this friend group, showing that change is indeed possible. Keep fighting the good fight until the rise of these alternative platforms becomes inevitable.

Because it currently sucks?

What sucks about it for you?

It's a little confusing for the average user, just like other fedi sites like lemmy and mastodon. First search result on google doesn't even link to a peertube site where you can actually watch videos. DDG does show peertube.tv as the first result, so thats good.

I like the idea, but for some reason on both my laptops its usage can shut down the internet connection until I reboot. It happens sometimes with regular torrents, but with Peertube it is a consistent issue.

I'd be down to pay YouTube to watch 2k - 4k videos, I'm shocked they allow people to upload videos on that resolution to begin with.

Now, if they start intentionally blocking adblockers, or have a way to force around them (like Twitch) I'd immediately stop using it (like Twitch)

Too bad. If we can't block these ads, everyone will go elsewhere

Oh? Totally explains why Vimeo is on track to control the space. Wait..........

I read that as "Venmo" the first time and was so confused.

I do find it a bit funny that their adblock-block is to my knowledge just client side JavaScript. Ya' know, the kinda stuff adblock is built to cutout.

Unless they're going to be splicing up videos to put the ads into the same file (which would be astronomically resource intensive) or only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers it'll be impossible prevent a device from running or not running code as the user see's fit.

only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers

This is exactly what they want. Remember their github with the OS integrity authentication service? They're already there with phones and Chromebooks,, now they have to control PCs.

This is correct, and uBlock Origin has already received an update that works around the popup.

This is a game of cat and mouse that Google simply can't win. I'm fairly certain they'll add native code in Chrome for detecting ad blockers within the next 12 months.

I can also see a world in which they eventually block third party browsers from accessing it too. Even then there will still always be ways of working around it like revanced, custom chromium builds and so on.

native code in Chrome for detecting ad blockers within the next 12 months.

Just a new header for whether the site allows extensions that are not Google Web Protect certified.

I had a good YouTube binge last night, and my ublocker worked fine. Google didn't do anything

They are only rolling this out to a subset of people.

anyone have a good chrome extension that blocks youtube ads? The one I was using was just flagged for malware

why even use chrome? firefox with add-ons is the way to go. eventually google will break any plugin preventing ads and privacy

Yeah. Don’t use chrome and use Firefox. Then install the Adblock extension on Firefox.

Stop supporting google by using their browser.

The problem here is Chrome - guess what, the company that brought you YT also makes the Browser that prevents ad blocking by simply calling ad blocking software "rogue".

I've been using this one and its been working well so far

Somewhat related, how has people's experience been with Viewtube?

I'm pretty happy paying for YouTube Premium; it seems like a fair deal given how much my family uses YouTube. But I'm worried that sooner or later YouTube Premium is gonna get Google Graveyarded, or they're going to insert ads anyway.

Youtube premium is a very short sighted band-aid solution. Because the more people sign up for it early, the more expensive and/or less convenient it will become later when the 'market is saturated' (meaning there's no one left who wants to sign up for it). When they can't grow their income through more users, they'll ramp up prices and shave off services. It's happening everywhere already and in the end you'll wish everyone advocated for adblockers a little more because by the time you're fed up with their pricing, it might already be too late to go back.

This is the real insidious thing about internet enshittification. It's run by publicly traded corporations so it's not enough just to squeeze every possible dollar out of your customers, you have to keep ramping up the squeeze. Even once you're bringing in billions and billions of pure profit with a product that everyone loves, you have an actual legal duty to your shareholders to make it worse in an effort to try to grow the profit even more

Premium has already been enshittified. You used to get Youtube Music alongside it, now you have to buy it separate. The worst part is that a lot of people only bought premium for one or the other, so even among those who bothered to switch over, they cut their userbase in half.

Guaranteed they’d find a way to double dip. Price gouging, restricting content behind further paywalls, adding ads anyway… absolutely they’ve investigated all those and undoubtedly more.

Switch to Firefox, Chrome is their biggest lever to force this kind of stuff onto people. While Firefox exists and it remains uncool for them to block it they’ll have to compete against piracy and adblockers which will limit their ability to aggressively monetise.

Switch to firefox!

Just look at where Netflix and Amazon Prime are going.

The days of YouTube premium being ad free are numbered. I suspect 2-3 years before it's announced, rolled back, and then a stealth rollout is done.

I consider it already not ad free considering how many video creators shove sponsored segments in all their videos.

That's largely because youtube native ads aren't a reliable, predictable or consistant source of income. Plus youtube takes the largest cut of the money from those ads.

I mean I get it and i don’t blame them for doing it, but it just makes googles claim of youtube premium being “ad free” insulting. Why would I give them money when they can’t even pay their content creators consistently enough, forcing them into alternative revenue systems? I’d rather just block ads on youtube and pay my favorite creators directly.

There are plugins to automatically skip those segments too. They crowd source the begin and end times of the ads and automatically skip ahead.

YT isn't going to drop premium any time soon. Subscriptions are astronomically more revenue generating then ads, and given YT was always operating at a loss until they stopped reporting revenue altogether premium will probably be the only route to scrape by.

Not to say they can't enshittify it by raising prices and adding restrictions, but I can't see them doing anything but trying to force more people to it.

I paid for it for a bit a while back, and it was decent. Of course free tools give considerably better features (adblock, sponsor block, DRM free downloads, better privacy). That and personally not wanting to financially support YT for a variety of reasons has kept me away from it for a long time.

The main reason I never went for premium is that they basically do what the writers strike in Hollywood recently had to deal with: YT keeps pretty much all of the money from subscriptions and creators get almost nothing. Many saw huge drops in revenue after the program went live.

To show just how exploitative their system is: subscribing to a channel (supporting them directly) still has you seeing ads. Even white supremacist "cracker is a slur" Twitch realized the importance of not playing advertisements on the channels you sub to.

FYI, subscribing on YT is equivalent to following on Twitch, free and just for notifications. Twitch subscriptions are more like YT channel members, emotes and all.

I used subscribing as shorthand for channel membership because that shit's hard to work into a sentence.

Fair enough, but subscribing is used two ways here, so it could be confusing to someone who doesn't know both.

Twitch ads are worse

Twitch is worse, in general.

At least youtube tends to crack down on the pornography on their site, while twitch features it on the front page and actively advertises it

Literally some almost completely naked OnlyFans reject on the front page, right now, doing jumping jacks to make her tits flop about.

True that but I was talking about how youtube allows you to skip ad after 10-20 seconds while twitch has 5 mins unskipable ads. Youtube streaming is better (you can skip and rewind any time) and pays streamers more too. Their ads are both repeatitive cancer though

I don't think third party apps and services are effected as if now.

We need an alternative

Nerevar, dont scare me like that. What is it Nerevar? it's 4 am! i am not due for my daily skibidi toilet until 10 am.
Nerevar, you fool. What an intoxicating and grand irrelevancy. I pay the guild of google 12 bucks a month so they leave me alone with ads. Why would I Dagoth Ur(the god), care for such an issue. I am a god, Nerevar. I can pay whatever i want. No i will not buy girlscout cookies for you. Go back to bed. You're waking up the gnomes. I do not care for their nuisance.

This may be a hot take but I think it's quite important for YouTube to be profitable because of how difficult running a video platform is already causing there to be no competition. Yeah, I would 100% prefer YouTube without ads (I pay for Premium) and I would love for there to be competition but considering the state of video streaming and how expensive it gets, I'm all for YouTube getting money.

I think if it's not possible to run anymore without ads, then it's time to shutter YT and let the competition fill in the gaps.

The problem is that running a video streaming platform is too expensive for there to be competition and YouTube is the only platform with the user base to be able to do it while being profitable. If you want no ads because ads are annoying but you also don't want to pay for premium, you're advocating for piracy (which I'm not against either), but if you expect them to keep the servers running even after that, you're not living in reality

Just to add one more thing, if your criticism of premium is that they still collect your data after that, fair enough (get newpipe), but if you simply want to use YouTube for free and aren't that bothered about your privacy (like when you use adblock on a browser) then that's not consistent with that argument either.

Which is why peertube exists. Dont run a video streaming platform. Run 10 million streaming platforms all tied together.

Yeah, but where's the user base and content? That's why YouTube is successful.

As much as I love to shit on Elon Musk and twitter X, the fact that he's paying users that generate traffic to his website means that he realizes the importance of user generated content. That's one good thing I commend him for.

too expensive for there to be competition

How does that work, exactly? For something like a railroad or a power grid, you get a natural monopoly because you need a system to connect everyone to everyone else for it to really work, and you need to pay to build out the connection to each person.

For video streaming, you need to pay for servers to transcode, store, and serve the video. Which is expensive, sure. But then each user comes in over the Internet; you aren't paying to connect directly to their house, and you aren't putting a CDN node in every town when the town has 5 users who can just talk to the central deployment.

If you want to run ads, you find some network that places video ads, and you get the ads from them and you run them. Maybe they don't pay enough and the service is not profitable, but what would make that change if the service were bigger?

Where are the huge, unassailable costs? Where is the revenue you can't get unless you are the absolute biggest?

The issue is content. Sites like daily motion didn't have the content to bring in the user base. No users means less incentive to make content means less incentive to make content for it, means less users and so on... that's the real reason no one's got competition

Can't remember the last time I visited youtube.

I watch YouTube from my TV, and my Pihole can't block the ads. So I splurged for premium (which costs about $5/month where I'm at) and would do it again in a heartbeat. Way better experience.

Is this account run by Google intern? Look at how it's written.

"Also, I love listening to the newest tunes. And with YouTube music, I can get songs, subscribe to podcasts, and more!"

Do you really think a google intern is going to bring up Pihole? Not everything is a conspiracy.

That's crazy, it's like 16 euro a month where I am.

Oh man. I would think twice if my cost was that high.

I do believe good creators should be compensated so I think of this subscription as the alternative to letting the advertisers pay them to get in front of me. I think ad blockers result in the creator not getting the ad revenue, right?