YouTube viewers will soon have to sit through even longer ads, with Google rolling out new 30-second unskippable spots on a popular app.
YouTube has ads?
Why still watching youtube?
Download your videos
Firefox and u lock origin.
Smarttube on android tvs/media devices.
A dozen ways to avoid YouTube ads.
Fuck YouTube.
Grayjay.app
Nahh, just use
mpv
why not have UBLOCK origin.
I have recently had a funny discussion with a husband of my wife’s friend. In short, he’s not an IT guy but does run ad blockers on each browser and device as he can. He was wondering why people wont use ad blockers since it is trivial to install and even chrome uBO lite works well on youtube (dunno about that fact, I have migrated to FF as soon as they announced Manifest V3)
Normies just wont. It is just not what they do. And they are the majority.
I’m kinda glad they won’t. If I tell you how easy it is to install an ad blocker and you don’t, you’re just funding my leeching through your data and time that you claim has no value.
Normies just wont. It is just not what they do. And they are the majority.
And that’s actually a good thing. If 90% of users used ad blockers on youtube, their profit model wouldn’t work and they’d stat locking more behind a subscription or they’d double down on cracking adblockers. We can enjoy an ad blocked youtube experience because the majority of users don’t.
On the other hand, If everyone would use adblockers, maybe content creator market would evolve into viewers supporting their favorite creators directly, or youtube having a subscription model that is much better than a current one in a way of user experience and creator support.
This applies to everything 😄😄😄
The article about crappy ads wants me to turn off my ad blocker, lol
YouTube has ads?
I demonetized YouTube on my android platform long time ago
I recommend Peertube. There’s not much there yet, but myself and others are trying.
Also, did you know you can upload your video to Peertube and have YouTube pull it via RSS? That’s what I’m doing!
All of my stuff you’ll find on Peertube and I don’t have to do anything else to get it up on YouTube.
No one will create content without ad revenue. Peertube is doomed to fail.
Lots of people did it on YouTube for years. Even more on other platforms.
This is a terrible take, as most content creators I watch already cannot survive off of Youtube ad revenue and rely on third-party monetization, like Patreon subscriptions.
Besides the fact that plenty of people make content for free, from the simple love of creating something.
Didn’t YouTube start without ads? Was doing fine back then, right?
I don’t think people were doing it professionally as much back then.
I don’t think it had prerolls during the flash days but it had banner ads as far back as I can remember
Flash… flash macromedia… the golden age.
Well, no. It’s been losing money for years. But I doubt this will make it profitable.
It’s so fucking funny though. I would love to pay YouTube. But I will never pay a company that abuses my data the way they do.
i heard they even planning ads on “paid” version eventually.
There’s that, but I’d also like to point out, that as a paying customer, you’re still force fed that bottom tier slop with no way to filter it other than hoping some combination of reporting/not interested/don’t show me this channel again works.
But even if you say, not to recommend a channel, it can still show up. So you get to pay for low grade AI slop videos. Or “content farms” that take 2 videos and just splice them together for some reason (both horizontal and vertical). Or the “I’m just going to stare at the camera and do nothing while I play a video that’s from another platform”. Like it’s endless.
The “shorts” platform is pure garbage. Can I turn shorts off? No I can “show fewer shorts”.
So you pay, to not get ads. They sell ALL your data to double dip (since they selling your data anywho) and there’s no benefit for the content. They have all this data, all this tech, and the platform is rot with shit.
That’s true. I guess I would only pay for a YouTube that is actually useful. “People want to block channels. Best we can do is ‘I am not interested’ and still show them.”
On my desktop I use YouTube Enhancer on Firefox and you can make it to where shorts literally never show up.
Now, if only it could filter out the “Buy Premium Now” and “Try Out Our AI Bullshit” boxes that appear…
Oh no, the ads I block are getting even longer!?
and only a minor inconvience as youtube delays the video for adblockers, of course they will try to make that permanent somehow.
I just purchased a new travel router that will have options for ad blocking built in. Would that block ads on any device sharing that connexion? TV, phone, PC, smart fridge,…?
Those will not block YT ads.
They’ll block ads at a DNS level, but YouTube ads are delivered directly into the video stream.
Youtubes ads are not delivered into the videostream. That would mean reencodingevery video for every user and would need an insane amount of computing power.
Why would you need to re encode when you can literally pause one stream swap in the ad and then swap back in the paused one in the same response
Exactly. Instead of editing within the video stream you just switch to a second stream.
However from youtubes perspective that has the downside that the switching logic is where adblockers can hook in to block the ads.
Those will not block YT ads.
This is correct
but YouTube ads are delivered directly into the video stream.
This is false
Honestly, it varies. Businesses are starting to get wise to DNS adblockers, and are serving more ads from their primary domain (this is part of why you can’t block YouTube ads with a DNS blocker anymore - you can’t block them at the DNS level without blocking all of YouTube).
You’ll see a noticeable downtick in phone ads from web browsing and ad-sponsored games, but something like a TV or fridge will probably be unaffected because the ads will be served directly from the same host as the content. You’ll see fewer ads but far from zero.
Also why are you connecting your smart fridge to a travel router? Do you travel with a smart fridge?
No XD i was just wondering what kind of ads it could block. It will be my dedicated VR router when not in my main setup and i’m wonder what else i could do with it.
Not youtube ads, sadly, if they are blocking based on domain names. For YouTube, you can use pipepipe, which do block ads as far as I have seen.
Depends on how they’re served but mostly, yes
But, topically, will not block YouTube ads
deleted by creator
I’m just imagining how spammy it would be to see this reply on every comment that has more than 69 upvotes.
Yup. At one point that number was 69 in order to get to where it is now. Good job.
Thanks.
We need an alternative with people on it.
You’re people. What alternative are you using?
Nebula, means tv, and dropout =/ none will be the next YouTube but it’s nice to have options I guess
Gotta start somewhere. Get on peertube.
Hell that’s the reason I’m here and not on Reddit.
Or to come to terms with needing to pay for the services you use. YouTube has a paid option that supports the platform and creators much more that watching ads.
Of course, I also upload my videos to PeerTube. Seems like the best alternative I’ve seen thus far.
I’d consider paying if Google wasn’t just an evil company and if paid vanilla YouTube was better than the third party frontends and apps. As it stands, you can get more/better features for free.
I want value for money if I’m going to pay, and right now paying for YouTube would not improve my experience with it in any way. I’d be paying ~£156 per year for nothing to change.
I get a lot of value from YouTube that I would happily pay for, and I already pay for online services that respect me but I wouldn’t pay a company that treats users like they do. It’s not the ads I have a problem with, it’s the tracking of users. They could have ads on their website that don’t track users. You can subscribe to premium and presumably they don’t show you ads, but they still track you. If they didn’t do that I would happily pay them.
That’s incredibly fair
That used to be a fair deal. We know better now and even have a word for what will happen to us once we’re locked into the system, enshittification. Just about every subscription model eventually leads to squeezing as much as they can out of us without a corresponding increase in value.
I agree in general, but when it comes to YouTube and the creator economy I do partially disagree.
You aren’t locked into anything, you can just go somewhere else. It isn’t like Netflix and the other million subscription services where they hold all of the power, that’s the beauty of independant online video creation; the creators have the power. If YT becomes enshittified enough, creators will leave to somewhere else. As it is, I currently watch some videos on PeerTube, some on YouTube, some on Nebula, and some on other platforms. People do struggle with using multiple websites across the internet, preferring to stick to a core few websites, but for their favorite creators I believe they’d branch out.
I guess there are some examples of that happening with places like patreon, floatplane, twitch, kick, etc. It’s hard to fathom anything coming along that can even approach the reach of youtube without backing from another big tech company and eventually following the same enshittification pattern.
It really is hard to fathom, but I think it has a high likely hood of happening some day. I also think it’s why YouTube hasn’t been enshittified more than it has been, they know that it’s a possibility.
Firefox with ublock origin for desktop and mobile. Grayjay for mobile (integrates Nebula too so you can get both your feeds at once). Android TV with FCast and Smart Tube Next for your TV. Never see ads again.
A/B testing is showing they are going after people with ad blockers: https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-apparently-punishing-ad-blockers-by-hiding-comment-section-3320581/ But your specific combo seems good.
Oh, no! Not the comments, those are always so smart and insightful.
They keep trying. The adblockers keep winning. I’ve had my fair share of videos sometimes not loading, or regularly needing to update apps to keep up with Google’s latest bullshit, but the minor glitches and headaches are worth it for all the time I don’t spend staring at a greyed out skip button.
Pretty sure several engineers from google itself might be contributors to some of them, fortunately.
That genuinely would not surprise me in the slightest.
All you have to do is close the window every time they try that bullshit and that shows up in stats. Get enough people doing it and they’ll back off
Wait, YouTube’s idea of punishing ad-block is removing the most toxic, worthless part of the site?
Nobody tell them. Not one fucking word. We might even get them to remove Shorts, too, if we pretend this is a bad thing.
Please Google don’t get rid of shorts! Especially the ones with the wonderful AI voice over and karaoke style closed captioning! Please don’t do that! Or else I’ll keep using adblockers.
I’m so happy they got rid of dismissing shorts and throw them in a feed more! Please don’t get rid of them!
Why would I ever want to see youtube comments? Literally zero impact for me.
was going to say, shoot I’m gonna install an adblocker just for that feature!
Are they really threatening us with a good time? No YouTube comments is a benefit, not a punishment
Hiding comment section? Oh no! What will I do?
Unless I’m missing a “freeze pane” option somewhere, scrolling down to read comments prevents me from actually watching the video.
I mean, I intentionally block the comment section, but sure,
If I want to see the comment section I use official app, and just pause the ad.
If I want to go blind I splash acid in my eyes
I’d recommend using lasers for that 🤣
Good call, a more targeted approach.
I run both those and I see ads every time google breaks ublock which is monthly now. Grayjay is broken more than its not at this point and requires like 10+ tries with various ciphers.
I think the day of these ads becoming unblockable is coming soon.
Are you running Ublock on Chrome or Firefox? It works significantly better on Firefox. I’ve never seen an ad get through it.
Also Brave just straight up blocks ads by default across the browser. And it’s a damn good one too
My friend told me recently about TizenTube which is a youtube app with adblock/sponsorblock for Samsung TVs
Smart Tube is useless for me. Takes forever to load the video and usually craps in the process. Pass.
Do you have a weird network/Google TV setup? I run it on a stock nvidia shield with no pihole or anything and I’ve never had any issues with smart tube, it’s great.
got anything for samsung tvs?
Yes, just connect a small computer and then install Firefox with unlock origin on there.
ideally something that could be used with a remote control or easily through the phone instead of plain firefox.
Someone else in this thread mentioned TizenTube, that sounds like what you’re looking for.
But personally I just grabbed an Nvidia Shield. It works great and if you swap out the default launcher you’ll never see a single ad on it (with the right apps). Plus the pro is beefy enough to run some decent emulators too.
i have a couple of options i want to experiment with, but this tizentube thing sounds like a nice to have.
I recommend turning off the device completely when an ad starts. This not only works, but has improved my entire life.
Or use a different front end on mobile or unlock on Firefox. I haven’t seen a YouTube as in years. Also smarttube for Android tv.
I set my VPN to Albania. Ads on YouTube are banned in Albania.
On the web, I be Albanian.
I often entirely forget that youtube and most of the internet is plagued with ads. It’s a shock to use a family member’s phone or laptop that does not have adblock
As a good friend and son, I of course installed unlock origin for them. Even the light version in Chrome if I have to. Their phones I did not touch though.
The Internet is practically unusable without adblock. Rawdogging the web you get a postage stamp sized amount of content bordered by flashing ads and video ads. No fuckin thanks homie
“unskippable” laughs in ublock/revanced
Nebula is pretty good these days, I can’t remember the last time I deliberately watched something on YouTube.
Yeah, Nebula is awesome.
Nebula doesn’t have the random crap I watch.
This is what I found.
With Nebula and CuriosityStream, most of the things I follow are still on YouTube.
Might just be my account but YouTube algorithms got so sensitive I’m afraid to watch random crap, I watch like 1 video about a topic then for a week that’s all I get.
But yeah it’s more for intentional viewing than watching random crap, but I saw that as a bonus feature as it led to me procrastinating less.
This is a real problem… Like I’m afraid to watch certain things knowing full well I want it to be a one and done, but if I click on it LITERALLY EVERY OTHER RECOMMENDATION IS A DUPLICATE OF THE RANDOM VIDEO for days or until I start interacting with it to stop seeing them.
Like WTAF, I shouldn’t have to manage my feed that hard. Maybe if I watch 3 or 5 videos of the same topic or from the same creator you can start recommending them.
But even then, 3-5 watches of a rabbit hole one random Tuesday does not mean I’m suddenly interested in fishing for the rest of my life !
What’s nebula? Where can I find it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_(streaming_service)
It has a bunch of popular YouTube channels.
It doesn’t really have a recommendation engine but if you already have a bunch of creators on there it’s a cheap way to go as free.
They also have a bunch of Nebula exclusive series, like the guy who makes Not Just Bikes going to cities and trying all their transit in one day.
Alright thanks, will check it out
Make sure to sign up via a creator’s link! (the ones they’ll put in the sponsored section of a video where they are “sponsored” by Nebula as one of Nebula’s creators)
Gets you a pretty good discount and drops it to about 30 bucks a year.
Speedrunners unfortunately use YouTube and twitch only. So it’s pick your cancer on that front.
At least twitch is a bit different than YouTube in that the culture there it’s normal for people to pay and donate to streamers. Even though the owners still suck massively, of course
