I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is
So I've been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I've been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren't allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel's back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn't let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and... wow. It's just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn't enjoy anything that wasn't already demonetized.
And you know I'm fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it's just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I've been on Firefox for over a year.
I think ublock origin bypasses youtubes ad detection
Just tried. It does not.
EDIT: Needed to update my browser.
What browser? It works for Firefox on my PC and mobile.
Google has slowly been really pushing their way or no-way. They announced that 3 strike policy against your account for ad-blocking, from my understanding it had only rolled out to chrome but someone within the last couple months posted an image of Firefox showing them the adblock message.
Ublock Origin does still work for some, but I believe it's per account. Honestly, the moment I heard about the policy I immediately switched to Piped. I don't really care about the YouTube algorithm, I hardly use the site outside of information searching (guides mostly) and so the homepage always being YT front page doesn't bother me. I can create an account with piped and have subscriptions, can make playlists and on the LibreTube app I can download videos. That's all I need. Unfortunately there is some downtime sometime but you can host your own instance of it really gets to you - I'm nearly at that point myself just for the peace of mind.
So, fuck YouTube and Google tracking, fuck their forced ad policy, use a wrapper like Piped/Invidious and be done with them.
I might need to update my firefox. Think thats the issue.
Works on my machine
Firefox + uBlock Origin served me about 4 hours of video last night without an ad in sight.
Also NoScript!
I think ublock is working on a fix
It's a cat and mouse game, except the mouse has effectively infinite lives.
Thats basically how rodent ecology works, already, isn't it? Being an r strategy reproducer is pretty much just speccing into unlimited respawns.
That could feed a lot of cats
Any youtube specific extensions? Or maybe you could check out the enabled rules.
I used to pay for premium just because it was the simplest way to watch ad free on my phone (IOS so Vanced was not an option), and being able to download videos to watch later on a flight was nice.
But then they wouldn’t let you do Picture in Picture from the app, which, like, fine. Annoying but I’ll just play it in the background and just listen to the audio.
But then they started forcing the tiktok clone onto the home page and subscriptions page. I really do not like the dopamine disinformation vortex. So I deleted the app and just started watching them through the website, which actually enabled Picture in Picture and let me hide the shorts shelf (for 30 days before I have to click the X again.)
Now I’ve just stopped paying for it and just watch YouTube in the Firefox Focus IOS browser which completely blocks YouTube ads in my experience. It won’t let me do Picture in Picture or play audio in the background on their website, but I’ve noticed embedded YouTube videos on other websites will.
So now I’m looking in to using other front ends so I can have complete normal functionality without having to watch adds or pay them money and have their stupid tik tok clone shoved down my throat.
Good job Google, you managed to completely alienate someone who was paying you cash. Now I’m the definition of a free rider on your service.
If you're open to recommendations, sideloading uYou+ (via altstore or other methods, no jailbreak needed) is sort of like ReVanced but for iOS.
There's also Yattee which is on the App Store or you can sideload it. It can connect to a Piped or Invidious instance to play YouTube vids.
Both of them are open source if that's important for you
uYou+ is no longer maintained. I use uYouPlusExtra: https://github.com/arichorn/uYouPlusExtra
Thanks, I’ll look in to that.
Maybe it's an iOS thing, but I can definitely do PiP with Premium on the official app on Android.
It may be different now, but when IOS first added PiP is was super inconsistent with the YouTube app, it worked one week, then the app updated and it didn’t work, then the next week it worked if you were logged in, then only with premium, then only if you were not logged in, then it would exit out of it it the first time you opened it but not the second time you opened PiP
It was just… a mess and it almost felt like there was some back and fourth going on between Apple and Google over how it was implemented.
PiP works on iOS, even without premium (with some restrictions). At least it did very recently, I have premium now though so I can’t verify as of today
I can do PiP on iOS with my premium subscription.
I can do PiP on Firefox android by playing the video in fullscreen and returning home. There's an add on for FF, Video Background Play Fix, that allows me to play in the background as well.
A bit of an aside, but did you use speech to text to post this?
No, I’m just bad at proof reading and a clumsy typer/ not the best with written grammar
That's cool. Was curious more than anything else.
Impression I got, too.
Try Yattee. Piped client for iOS. You do have to do weird setup because the app needs to pretend to not be a Piped client. Otherwise, Piped or Invidious website.
Check out uYou+ with AltStore. It lets you enable PiP and background play, and I think you can disable shorts and such.
AdGuard for iOS blocks YouTube ads. Adblock Pro has an “open in PiP mode” button that lets you open videos in PiP without YT premium, which is cool.
I don’t use the app
The brave browser allows you to Picture in Picture and blocks ads!
I can't live with that. Often I don't even know if I actually want to watch the video or not, and if I have to sit through three minutes of ads, only to close the video five seconds after the ad because it's not what I expected... yuck. Preroll ads are often a deal breaker for me unless it's content that I'm very familiar with.
Mid-roll ads I'm OK with - by then I've already decided the content is worth watching.
I don't think I'm alone and YouTube seems to be very aware of this issue. They are selective about which videos have a pre-roll ad.
Mid roll ads are fine if the video was made with midrolls in mind that the midrolls actually happened at the times the maker of the video has set them up to happen.
Sure they are selective about which videos have ads, but not when the ads come on.
YouTube, with no adblocker or premium subscription has basically become an interrupting cow, making noise at the most innapropriate time and then you have to wat-MOOOOOOOOOO-ch the ad, then you rewind 10 seconds to get your cont-MOOOOOOOOOO-text back. There needs to be a legal limit to the number of midrolls you can stuff in a short space of time.
I'd rather watch a series of multiple consecutive midroll ads placed at a prespecified time than a random number of ads scattered at completely random intervals, Ruining the flow and mood of the video.
Its frustrating af.
There also needs to be a hard limit to the length of ads. Cannot fucking stand seeing an ad come on and it's an hour and a half long for some get rich quick scheme
Exactly. With youtube's shitty tutorial search functions ever since they removed dislikes, i kinda need to see the start of the video to know if its even relevant. But no. Full on 2-3 pre-video ads.
I mean idk I never really bothered with an ad blocker pre 2013 or so, back when you'd get an ad before the vid and the longer ones had mid rolls.
This thread is in c/technology, but I swear these are some of the least tech literate comments I've seen. Stop using Chrome, yesterday. Use Firefox, use ublock origin. On Android use Revanced. I never see an ad on my PC or phone using YouTube, including ads in the video by the content creators (sponsorblock is built into Revanced and can by toggled).
I was already on Firefox.
I switched to ublock origin yesterday and it worked for about 2 hours before YT somehow detected it and shut down every video. My fix for that was to disable ublock, refresh, enable ublock, refresh again
Something is wrong, this has not happened to me ever. Is ublock set up to automatically update itself and it's lists?
You might be in different countries. YouTube has shut down adblockers at different rates depending on where you are.
Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I'm a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don't even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads
there have been many posts about YouTube detecting blockers recently and warning users it’s against the ToS. Not sure if they are widespread or not.
Because people are on Chrome.
Just got the popup on FF with Unlock Origin
Add in sponsors that some ass holes throw 2-3 in a video (FU LTT) and I don't know how people watch YouTube with ads. It sucks so bad.
I do pay for premium, but use smart tube on my android tv box and it feels so good when it rolls right past them.
sponsorblock is a godsend for that type of stuff
Sponsors are the biggest argument for not getting YouTube Premium, in my opinion.
You spend money on YouTube Premium and still have a bunch of ads, so you need to use sponsorblock, and if you're using that just use an ad blocker too.
SmartTube is some of the greatest software ever made
At least you can skip LTT ads.Try that with YT ads.
I hate how this trend of "I'll make my service shit so you'll pay more for the not as shit version" seems to work out for these companies
"Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
"I'll put in enough ads to actually support your usage habits and you can pay if you want to not deal with them"
I'm not specifically talking about ads. Things like stopping your playlist every 15 minutes and telling you that maybe you should pay for YouTube music or "free" software that is practically impossible to use until you pay for a subscription are examples of what I'm talking about
It sucks. What sucks even more for me is that, I understood the fact that a platform like YouTube costs an unimaginable amount. I get that. And I wanted to pay. As a matter of fact, I did pay, happily so, for quite while. For YouTube Prenium Lite. Until a week ago I think, where I got this wonderful email from Google titled: Kindly go fuck yourself... or at least that's how I read it... telling me that YouTube Prenium Lite was going the way of the Google graveyard. Because of course it did. And now, it was paying for full Prenium or nothing.
So I stopped paying. I'm not paying 13 bucks a month for no ads. Especially if you're basically strong arming me in doing so, I'll do without YouTube.
Because hey, I tried YouTube Music. It's actually quite good in many aspects (horrendously flawed in many others too, of course, but that's most Music Streaming services) but you know what? I know it's been years, but I'm still not over Google Play Music and how they killed that off for what was an inferior product back then. Why the fuck would I invest my time and money in a Google product, nowadays? I'm sorry if you reading this were one of these people, but it's like... to the people who were paying for Stadia and were shocked to learn that the service was shutting down... I'm sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you? It was bound to happen, from the moment it was announced, the entire internet started joking about the fact that this thing will be dead in two years!
I refuse to pay for a Google product nowadays. It's like paying for a live service game at release, it's rolling the dice and betting against the colossal odds that this thing will be dead in two years. So, unless it's a Pixel, so I can slap something else than stock Android, Google can suck it. They won't get a cent from me.
It's not like I paid for Prenium Lite because I loved YouTube. Hell, YouTube stopped being a good product a long time ago, I was paying for the content I was watching. Gotta support creators, you know? And also, because I watched a lot of YouTube on my TV, and you can't slap Ublock on that. It was a reasonable enough price. But now? Fuck YouTube, I'm done with this. I've been hating this platform more and more for a while now, the algorithm is awful, it keeps recommanding me stuff I don't want (why the hell does YouTube insist and recommanding me far right content, jesus christ, stop!). And even without ads, you still get them because monetization is so damn inconsistent creators can only depend on sponsors, I could go on and on.
So now, it's NewPipe on mobile, Piped on desktop and I guess I'll just find something better to watch on TV. I'm paying for Nebula, it's cheap, doesn't have even a third of the people who I watched on YouTube, but at least it's creator centric and it's got a lot of good, interesting stuff on it. I've been watching lots of Twitch lately, and while yes, I agree, fuck Amazon, at least I can just pay for the people who I watch most to get no ads, it's a reasonable price, support them and Twitch ads are not nerely as horrendous YouTube's are in terms of frequency. So, yeah. I don't miss it.
smarttube, you can even login
Sadly, I use an Apple TV.
chuck it in the bin and get a 29 bucks android tv device
I use FreeTube on desktop and NewPipe on mobile. I'm still searching for a solution to the AppleTV.
Same. Yattee has proven too cumbersome for me to setup. :/
Consider Piped, Invidious, etc. Yes you can't log in, but on Piped you can create a Piped account and on mobile use Yattee (iOS) or Libretube (Android). No recommendations on home screen, but subscriptions feed and recommendations per video.
Meh. Revanced still working great for me and I have all my subscriptions, no ads, all the features.
No recommendations sounds better to me to be honest
Ok so I’m not saying the correct solution to this is to just give Google the money they want, but for me YouTube premium is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to. (Unless you count the lifetime Plex pass I got on sale years ago, lol)
Things like our smart TV or the kid’s iPad work flawlessly, including convenient downloads for trips. And since I watch a lot on my TV, it’s nice having higher bitrate available.
YouTube music is a nice addon for music in the car, even though it doesn’t make or break the deal.
And as I understand it, creators make significantly more money from premium views than ad-supported views. I like watching all kinds of niche scientific/tech/educational creators so I like to know they’re getting a bit more from me
You know what, I complete agree!! I realised I spend 10x the time on YouTube compared to Netflix.
And then, at least in the U.K., there’s a mobile phone plan that includes a YouTube premium membership, so it works out at 2/5ths the price.
i mean that bar is pretty low
This is my sentiment too.
Yeah, if not for Ytmusic, I wouldn't have considered youtube premium. Seperate they don't make much sense. Together, they add a lot of value. Plus, the bonus of not being bombarbed by multiple ads on each video is good.
This is why I use Smartube on my android TV and revanced/NewPipe on my phone.
The few times I've witnessed naked YouTube it's made be realise that if any of the sources mentioned stop working then I'm simply not going to use YouTube.
Yeah it's horrible. For it to somehow be worth watching with ads, the ads had to be for a legitimate and relevant product, and the algorithm / video quality had to be much better.
I stayed at a place last year that had a RokuTV, YouTube was practically unusable on it due to the absurd number of ads that would play. Even more infuriating was that they were often the same ad, repeated.
I tried to give YouTube ads a chance at one point but they got ridiculous to the point I just can't.
For those with iOS, please watch through Firefox Focus. It blocks YT ads!
Or sideload uYou/uYou+, works really well!
Or use Yattee and Piped (no need jailbreak)
I prefer using yattee, but lately most instances throw an error and has been unusable for me, hopefully it can work more consistently over time
Why are people not using Ublock Origin ?
Two words: Smart TVs
Need a hardware solution (pi hole/router with custom firmware) for that.
Please use Smartnext tube app for android TV.
Unfortunately I have a stupid Samsung TV and the app offering SUCKS (though I am pretty sure it technically runs on Android). There's also no way to sideload apps afaik.
God! Never buy Samsung products. I learnt my lesson after buying a Samsung phone.
Ah, what was that? I'm currently using one oneui 5. Compared to xioami, the software is more stable and doesn't have stupid restrictions like not allowing access to running services or frequently killing background apps and services.
It used to drain battery like crazy. Then I bought a pixel with stock android and it was same. After that I installed a custom ROM and this is the result- My overnight idlecdrain is around 1% and if I not use my phone too much, it last 4 days on single charge.
It takes a while for adaptive battery to kick (weeks). Especially, when you newly setup an android device. Same with adaptive brightness. Mine drains fast in active heavy use on 5G with motion smoothness set to high. I also have a dual sim model where one can be pulling the lowest signal strength from tower which can also affect battery drain.
Mine started to work within minutes. Custom roms are the best. Never going back to stock.
Samsung TV's run on tizen OS, not android.
Yep. I watch YT primarily on my AppleTV, which is why I'm subbed to YT Premium. Otherwise it's basically unusable because of the ads. But I fucking hate that I'm being extorted like this
PiHole does not work for YouTube sadly. There's no current solution for YouTube ads on (non-android) smart TVs.
Does Ublock Origin successfully circumvents the new system that is being tested in select countries?
Yes. You need to not use any other content blocker (including potentially browser tracking protection) and keep uBo up to date. Occasionally it might not be up to date with latest YT changes but that's pretty rare.
I read that you need to update the filters to make it work however I can't confirm.
I'm using uBlock, so far it works no problem for me :)
EDIT: Ignore the following, the next day the popup message returned unfortunately
I can confirm, I was getting the popup message yesterday with ublock-origin and was able to fix it by not only updating my filters but also subscribing to all the optional filters. It seems the default lists don't have a fix yet but one of the optional ones does.
Can you share the optional filters for others? Probably best to create a new post
The lists are fortunately pre-installed with ublock-origin, just need to enable all lists within options: Built-in, Ads, Privacy, Malware, Multipurpose, and Annoyances
EDIT: I spoke too soon, saw another popup today
OP mentioned already using ublock-origin. Youtube still blocked him for good after multiple warnings to disable
Here in Australia, there are so many F**king Betting ads on it too.
Just wish they'd ban any form of casino/gambling adverts
The ads are just extremely bad in general. Betting ads for a legitimate casino would already be a huge step up form the shit I get...
I highly recommend using either Piped (has an app for android, too) or invidious (several instances to choose from). No need to use adblock or anything while watching from them. Some videos don't play, seems more common with music videos, but for most stuff it'll work fine.
Where is this mythical app 👀
IMO the best Piped app for Android is LibreTube
The two he listed are websites. On Android a really good Piped client is Libretube, and Clipious for Invidious is... eh. On iOS Yattee for Piped.
https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/2172009173627.jpg
That is actually how the Xbox user interface started to look like after a while. It went from "what you probably want functions" to 80% ad, whitespace and "suggestions" with a Play the game somewhere in there.
Go away, I'm baitin'.
False. The screen doesn't have 99% ad to 1% actual content. Not an accurate representation of the future.
Quit using shitty browsers? I see zero ads on YouTube in Firefox with ad blockers. I mean there's about a million other reasons to not use Chrome as well, but use this anger as your catalyst.
I've been using Firefox for over a year, so thanks for the assumption boss.
Sorry about that, this is just the usual case when I see this complaint. Let's figure out why you're experiencing this because I'm a HEAVY YouTube user and I want everyone to have as good of an experience as I do.
Just wanted to come back to this and say while I checked and didn't have any addons besides ublock that should be helping (with many of the extra lists checked/enabled in settings), I do have tampermonkey with these scripts and maybe they're helping:
Simple Sponsor Skiper YouTube CPU Tamer by AnimationFrame YouTube HD YouTube polymer engine fixes YouTube Web Tweaks YouTube(Chinese characters) YouTube AD Blocker
Along with some others that I don't think would apply.
I've never had this happen to me with Firefox + ublock origin.
If you want youtube on mobile, I recommend Libretube. Or just use mobile Firefox with ublock origin.
It's being rolled out on a person by person basis. If you've been targeted like I have you have to keep updating the extension to keep up with their arms race
I use NoScript to block every script from google except for ytimg and youtube and I haven't seen anything like that; though, I do only watch 1-2 videos at a time, maybe I haven't 'triggered' it.
I can even disable origin and still not see any ads because NoScript blocks them from loading in the first place.
The day YouTube successfullly made it so that it won't work without playing ads is the day I delete every google account I have
I'm not putting up with it
I don't think they'll care or miss you, to be honest. It's not like they're making money off you.
You underestimate the amount of data google collects from it's users, and then sells to advertisers, whether or not they view ads
Who would pay for data on a person you can't advertise to?
Do you seriously think advertisers buy each user's data individually, and sometimes Google goes "oh hey guys just a heads up, that individual is using an ad blocker 👍🏼"?
No, but having a handful of people who will never see their ads devalues the whole package.
I could totally see a company doing a market analysis paying for this data. They'd be looking for for counts of people interested in a thing or in a demographic...then they can determine if it'd be worth it to develop a product targeting that group
They’re absolutely making money
How? How do they profit off someone who refuses to view ads?
With their personal data obviously.
their personal data that they use to show them.. ads
Personal data isn’t only used for ads. In this case a users watching history can be sold especially if it’s connected in some way to a demographic profile. There could be many more ways to monetize many other things the user does.
They don't sell data. They sell ads. Selling data would directly erode their ability to sell ads.
This has a lot more info: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
Anyone here subscribed to Nebula or CuriosityStream? On paper it seems like a much better arrangement for creators and viewers but I'm curious as to anyone's personal experience with the quality of the service.
I’m subbed to both and it’s awesome. No ads, no algorithm, longer videos with better production values especially over topics that YouTube couldn’t have.
The modern conflict series is my favorite example
Great, thanks. Pretty much all of the accounts I subscribe to on YouTube advertize one service or the other and it only recently crossed my mind that maybe they're promoting it because they... believe in it?
So there’s actually a pretty good video that one of the founders made, I think it was RealLifeLore, that talks about the making of Nebula. It’s a good watch if you want perspective on the service
It was Wendover. Sam is also now the chief content officer at Nebula.
That’s the one! I always get them confused for some reason
I subscribed to Nebula for a month for Philosophytube, then I promptly unsubscribed because I couldn't find any other content I was interested in watching. It's way too many video essays and not a hell of a lot else. Not worth it, imo.
I caught that deal some time ago where a subscription to CuriosityStream would also grant you a sub to Nebula. I love Nebula, in theory - I spend a lot of time listening to video essays, and I love the quantity and quality of creators there. But the android app has a lot of buffering for me, and up until the last time I'd used it, it wouldn't remember my watch history / where I left off, making it really burdensome to watch long essays there, so I always just opted for YT Revanced. Just now, I went to check, and the app seems to remember my progress in a video so...!! I guess I'll be giving it a second serious chance! :D
I tried watching some stuff on CuriosityStream, but I've gotten so used to YT-style essays and documentaries, that now anything that has costant background music and fast paced montages kinda bugs me out, lol. But if you like classic-style documentaries, there's a big catalogue, I'd recommend it! Overall, I think it depends on how much you pay a year - I think I pay around 15/20$/y and I think it's a steal, even though I enjoy but a fraction of what's being offered to me. If I used it more consistently, I'd be happy to pay double.
I really wanna check out nebula when I have consistent income again lol
Wake me when they support standard payment methods. Seriously how can you even attempt to get European customers without accepting SEPA transfers.
I had a playlist that I was watching when I was working with raw meat (can't touch the phone). Next video comes up and it's a 8 minute ad that I can't skip because I can't touch my phone. Argh.
A rich right wing lunatic (but I repeat myself) in Australia had a 45m ad for his vanity political campaign. A friend of mine sent a screenshot.
That’s ridiculous. How is there not a limit on the length of an ad? Money obviously—but still. I make a point NOT to purchase from a company if an ad is longer than 30 seconds. So annoying!
You get ads for actually real products? Literally the only ad for a real thing that is available to me was about a cleaning company for house fassades.... but I don't have a house. Everything else is stupid games or apps, or porn or straight up scams.
Very fair point!
Yeah that part was especially frustrating. I like playing longform content on my 2nd monitor while gaming on my first monitor so I kept having to tab out to skip the ads.
And YouTube beat expectations on profits the quarter they raised prices again. The worst part of this is knowing YouTube is turning screws on the audience AND on advertisers. We know Google keeps more data on us than any other company, but they're miserable at pairing relevant ads to my interests. So these brands advertising on YT aren't reaching a potential customer, they're only being used as a pain point to make free YT worse, and to neg viewers into buying premium. In a weird way, we might be saving brands from paying for useless ad clicks. Like, even looking at late stage capitalism and enshittification, this is totally bonkers.
Fuck the advertisers. I care way more about them turning screws on the creators.
Find a peertube instance you like and start uploading content on there! I'll come watch your videos 😊
yeah that shit was never sustainable not sure how people deal with it,adblock forever
For me, what works perfectly is this setup:
Desktop – Adguard
Android – YouTube ReVanced
Never get adverts ever. The day I'm forced is the day I stop using it altogether.
Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I'm a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don't even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads
I would actually pay for Youtube Premium Family, where it not for the fact that it does not work with gsuite accounts (which I have for my family).
We have spotify for the family, and I would cancel that and switch to youtube and music premium of google. For three dollars more we get ad-less youtube as well as music.
Sorry google, gotta pay attention to these things.
For people using smart TVs, consider hooking up an old laptop or desktop to your TV. You can use a wireless mouse/keyboard (or other input peripheral) and you've got a living room setup that allows you to use ad-blockers and your own browser and video player (I recommend PotPlayer), among other advantages.
if it runs android they can jus run Smart tube, its basically perfect
The best part is that it gets worse
Show me something that gets better.
YouTube has turned against its users, and user-inertia is the only thing keeping it relevant. Detach yourself from it, read books, go outside, use Firefox (Not chomium or brave), get yourself a nice pirate hat. Maybe consider hosting a peertube or creating content for it. Try to take this negative and make it a positive I'd suggest.
In the 4(?) days since I got my first anti-adblock popover, I've completely stopped watching random videos. My few favorite channels I've watched in incognito without harrassment, and the only thing I've noticed is having more time for other things.
If those content providers were on some other platform, I'd go there, but that's honestly asking a lot of them for a small slice of their subscribers.
Brave Browser gets around YT's ads.
Not long ago, I was watching 5 skipable ads after 10 minutes of video on Viki. It was a time when they were distributing Korean and Chinese Drama at a pace no independent subtitle team would keep up. The shows were culturally interesting, they were a community spirit you could feel even when not participating in subtitling. The video player was good with nice features like learning mode and timestamped comment. It was an acceptable tradeoff. Today's Viki and YouTube quality is barely sufficient for not favoring pirated website which have in the mean time greatly improved their user experience.
Use Piped as a front end for y--t---. It's open source & non-tracking, but views still count. The creator is active on the fedi too.
Individual servers sometimes go off line or lose quality when they're rate limited. Just try a different server when that happens. If the one you're using at the time shows ads and there are too many, check preferences to turn them off.
(My addiction is Thai. Also watch some c- and k- too.)
I haven't find enough asian-drama fans on the fediverse yet. Japan is everywhere but it's like it Asia only country.
i've only found k-drama communities on lemmy and it seems like they're all abandoned. i know several k-fanatics on mastodon, some hardcore c-drama folk and 3 other thai fans. i don't know if lemmy plays well with the more twitter-like parts of the fediverse but i can introduce you there if you have an account. i think we can DM on here?
I haven't had to deal with video ads for years simply because I don't use the website and use patched APKs to block ads. I'm thinking it was/is the right choice due to gøøgl€'s ongoing war against ad blocking in general. Don't know a solution to the browser problem outside of using alternative frontends like libretube or invidious or whatever if you don't mind not logging in.
Another option is paying a couple bucks and not having to worry about it. Might even make you feel good knowing you’re supporting the platform.
I don’t fault you for tinkering and finding ways around it - that’s fun. But in the end, you’re leeching off a service you enjoy.
I don't think that's a fair or true statement.
For one thing, the "service" here has risen to a point of ubiquity that it's a de facto public space. Everything is on YouTube – legacy media channels, individual enthusiasts, alternative media outlets, the worlds of tech, fashion, politics, sports – you name it. If you were deprived of all access to it, you would have a qualitatively poorer access of what is going on in society. So it's not equivalent to a traditional service like a trade.
For another, blocking ads is not merely refusal to pay a fee of some kind. Advertisements are cognitively intrusive, designed to affect your willpower and decision-making, used to track and control your behaviour, compromise your digital safety, and turn you into a product for companies to whom you do not give your consent for the opportunity to be exploited. Blocking that system of "payment" is not simply prudent but right, and the choice between paying a monetary fee or being so exploited is not a fair choice at all.
So mediums with advertising should not be allowed to seek monetary payment? Only mediums without advertising should do so?
I’m not understanding your logic here.
For me it’s pretty simple. There is a product - would you like to pay for it?
I feel that all the scary words you can add to a paragraph about advertising based revenue for digital mediums is just your tool to justify your behavior of sticking it to the man.
Not quite sure how you got to the point you did there. There are different ways to advertise – billboards and TV/radio adverts, e.g., while often odious, are something you can more easily divert your attention from and which are not tracking devices or the product of turning you personally into an item for sale. I dislike them and would prefer a world without them but I don't think their being attached to organisations in and of itself ought to deprive those organisations of income.
That is apparent.
This is called "begging the question" as a response to me – I've called into question exactly both your premise and conclusion, for reasons you've not actually engaged with, and then you've re-asserted them. You have assumed what you've set out to prove.
(1) it is not simply a product (or service – you've changed tune there), for the reasons I've already outlined. Its use and availability is not analogous to something you can pick off the shelf or pay a tradesperson to do for you. (2) therefore, the question of paying for it (and how) demands different kinds of answer. In the country I'm from, e.g., healthcare is a right and not paid for, neither is early-years education up to 18, and so on. Both are "products" or "services" in some sense of the term, but to speak of payment here is complex and the answer doesn't simply carry over from thinking about normal products/services.
This can only be a disingenuous response, surely? Rather than engage with the criticism of the nature of modern internet advertising and how corporations use it to affect people, you'll just summarise it as "scary words".
I’m being completely serious and I’m interested to understand more about what you mean. You are saying that YouTube is not merely a service and then you’re equating it to something like healthcare and education. Now I must ask are you the one that is being serious?
It doesn't strike me that way when you also write things like this:
"equating" sets up a straw man. Such a tactic gives me the impression you think of this as some sort of battle that you want to win rather than a good-faith discussion.
What I had written was not an equating – and I think you should have or indeed did see that – only a comparison to show that something's being describable as a product or service "in some sense" does not mean it is the sort of thing we pay for in a traditional way. This contradicts the central inference of your argument.
The answer to how I would actually characterise the "service" of YouTube is already in the first comment, so I'll just quote it again:
I stand by that; YouTube has a near monopoly over that media form, and if you require access to information and essentially a key plank of the online public square, then you need to go through it. I regard it as a (positive rather than negative) right that we do all have – not to use YouTube specifically but for information, opinion, discourse, politics and more to be available to us all. As it happens, YouTube is a key platform for the arrangement of all these things. Twitter also is/was, which is why Musk's buyout was in principle concerning, and then in practice very shit once he created a two tier system of access to and impact on that public space.
I’m open to having this discussion but every single response from you begins with you telling me that I’m not interested in having this discussion. If you could just leave that part out so we can have the discussion, it would be much easier. I believe that’s referred to as ad hominem. If you don’t think it is - ok, it’s not. But please stop allowing that to distract from a discussion if you could.
These “near monopolistic public spaces” such as Twitter and YouTube have costs associated with them. How do you feel that we as users/consumers/citizens of the public space support it’s existence?
yeah google really needs more money, poor guys
I know this isn’t YouTube’s fault but one thing that bugs me about yet premium is when creators dump baked in ads.
As a user you have 3 options:
Now the one exception to this is nebula where like YouTube you pay an all access fee but no baked in ads (I pay for this currently).
I do wonder if creators had the option to make videos available via YouTube premium only (say early access and no baked in ads). Would more people pay and would creators use this system? (They wouldn’t have to worry about demonetization).
Curious on your thoughts
@Deemo @locuester About the first option, if you're talking about sponsor sections, you can autoskip them using #sponsorblock. It's an addon which does... well... what the name says.
I do use sponsorblock 😅
Only gripe is your stuck to the web version of youtube (especially on ios).
If you want sponsorblock in the native youtube app you have to side load a mod which means either dealing with apple's 7 day limit refresh or paying for a apple dev acount/ signing service subscription.
Android there is revanced (no sideloading subscriptions needed).
On a final note I am considering trying https://grayjay.app/
It bundles odessy, nebula, youtube and a few other platforms in one app (it also includes sponsorblock and return dislikes for youtube).
https://beehaw.org/comment/1359450
Have you tried Freetube (desktop) or Newpipe / Libretube (Android)? Working fine for me.
of course those work its just annoying seeing the main site crumble this way. I shouldn't have to use third party workarounds when the first party site can be making improvements easily
Patch it with Revanced.
YouTube- is a terrible experience.
There's probably a good workaround to program. I noticed that, when in "windowed" mode on a computer, you can just drag the cursor to the end of ads and it skips them.
If it says they aren't allowed should I turn off my ad block or should I just hit okay and leave it enabled?
Don't give up your privacy by disabling adblocker. I enabled AdBlock on anything I own. If YT will be persistent about it, I'll just leave. There are plenty alternatives to YouTube frontend.
Edit: spelling mistakes.
It's only even an issue for people because they're using shitty browsers like Chrome, lol. YouTube doesn't even warn me and I never see ads. Firefox for life.
Because they've been slowly rolling this out. It first happened over summer to a few users and steadily to more and more. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to you before the end of the year.
Fingers crossed it doesn't, but in the meantime, let's figure this out so we all can avoid the BS. I'll check all my addons when I get home to see if there's anything else that would be helping me. On Mobile I do have AdGuard (the one not available on the play store), but I believe I would be ad free without it just from Revanced.