YouTube viewers will soon have to sit through even longer ads, with Google rolling out new 30-second unskippable spots on a popular app.
Oh no, the ads I block are getting even longer!?
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.
Those will not block YT ads.
This is correct
but YouTube ads are delivered directly into the video stream.
This is false
this is false
So far
Sure, but that can be said about almost anything.
Still, I’d be surprised if they went the route of embedding ads into the stream, in part because of measurability/skipability/etc. It’s definitely not out of the question, but I think we’re still ways to go before we get there.
And even then, tools like yt-dlp would probably be able to apply some heuristics to figure out which segments are foreign to the stream and slice them out that way. Blocking yt-dlp would require DRM, which in turn requires changing the transcoding pipeline in a pretty non-trivial way. I also doubt they would willingly go this route.
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.
That would mean reencodingevery video for every user and would need an insane amount of computing power.
You actually don’t have to, on account of how adaptive video streaming works. It’s fully possible to serve a few segments of ad content mid-stream.
Depends on how they’re served but mostly, yes
But, topically, will not block YouTube ads
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.
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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.
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and only a minor inconvience as youtube delays the video for adblockers, of course they will try to make that permanent somehow.
not unless you figured out how to adblock on youtube tv. this isn’t for desktop clients.
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.
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.
The one thing I like them for is nostalgic songs. Almost always a great vibe in the comments
Oh, no! Not the comments, those are always so smart and insightful.
Are they really threatening us with a good time? No YouTube comments is a benefit, not a punishment
by hiding comments
So using adblockers is even better than I realized?
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,
I know they are trying but so far it seems the ad-blockers are winning because I’ve not noticed any interruptions or problems with comments so far.
My friend told me recently about TizenTube which is a youtube app with adblock/sponsorblock for Samsung TVs
Anyone know if theres such an app for LG tv’s?
Grayjay only supports Android, so let me mention Tube PiP for iOS
Oh, excellent, I’ll be checking that out right away. I have an iPad that I’m stuck with from work and it’d be great to get ad free YouTube there.
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.
or more accurately: google has made it impossible to make a useful tracker and ad blocker for chrome
Firefox. Google does AB testing so they roll out the anti adblocking changes ot some users. Its usually effective at blocking adblocker for a day or two. Sometimes i have to watch the Ad sometimes i have to sit and stare at a black screen for 15seconds.
Also Brave just straight up blocks ads by default across the browser. And it’s a damn good one too
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.
I tried it on my Sony TV, which runs Google TV.
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Yes, just connect a small computer and then install Firefox with unlock origin on there.
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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.
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YouTube has ads?
I demonetized YouTube on my android platform long time ago
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
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
My computer is covered, but which app is safe to block ads on my phone?
On my phone it’s not just the ads that aggravate but also the autoplay videos–the ones that follow you as you scroll down. I can’t prevent them from autoplaying.
Mobile firefox is compatible with desktop addons, so you can still use ublock origin on your phone. I also use pihole to cover my whole local network and wireshark to VPN my phone to my local network when out of the house. If you’re on iPhone you’re probably just out of luck.
I generally do everything in-browser and do not use any other mobile apps, so no youtube app, etc.
This is the first I’ve ever heard of following autoplay videos lol
What’s your opinion on duckduckgo on a phone?
I used to use https://html.duckduckgo.com/ as my search engine before I started self-hosting SearXNG. The duckduckgo website works fine on a phone, the same as desktop
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.
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.
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.
The “shorts” platform is pure garbage. Can I turn shorts off? No I can “show fewer shorts”.
Once again the pirate version (revanced) of youtube is better than the actual paid version. Revanced and ublock filter take care of shorts for me. Haven’t seen them in months
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…
You can also just use a ublock filter to block shorts
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.”
i heard they even planning ads on “paid” version eventually.
you gladly feed them your viewing habits to increase their value to their shareholders though 🤷
you aren’t hurting their bottom line by not watching ads. You’re just making a tiny dent into a single line of thousands on some slides on the evp of youtube’s quarterly presentation. No one else notices.
Your data and viewing habits and patterns and all of the device info you leak and broadcast? The wifi signals your phone is always seeing? Oh that bluetooth device that just rode past your apartment while your blocking ads on youtube? Definitely not being seen by them. Apps are spyware these days, and they are spying on everything
My main point is that if it wasn’t a privacy destroying capitalist evil company and website, that it would provide enough possible value for me to want to pay. My data is one of the reasons it isn’t, I was merely answering to the article and context here.
Who still watches YT without adblocker? It must be horrible.
Someone who don’t want to lose their emails… In https://lemmy.cafe/comment/15974964 it was mentioned that their entire google account got banned for 10 years over adblocking youtube. I stopped watching youtube immediately… I’m not about to watch ads, but I don’t want to lose access to my 22 year old personal account… So many accounts are tied to that address, that I can’t manage to move to a different service.
FML what happened to “do no evil”? Now it’s “make money with the baby grinding machine for all costs”
I would be scared as hell to rely on Google like that. You are one automated Ai decision away from losing access.
At least move your mail to a proper company. Jesus.
Don’t log in on YouTube. Unless you’re uploading, there’s no point.
People with android phones who use YouTube app.
reVanced is alive, well, good, and at this point necessary
No, Firefox with uBlock works fine!
Watching youtube in a mobile browser works, but is a completely separate form of torture
It’s not that bad if you add uBlock, Sponsorblock, DeArrow and NoYoutubeShorts.
:sweat:
Do Vanced et al even have Sponsorblock functionality?
Revanced does, that’s how I was introduced to it. And the UI is more polished than the Sponsorblock browser extension.
When I see a link to a potentially interesting YT video, I just send the link to my PC.
Ublock works on Firefox on phone. Can skip the PC step if ya want
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.
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No one will create content without ad revenue. Peertube is doomed to fail.
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 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.
I don’t think people were doing it professionally as much back then.
People started doing it professionally when the ad money came in. Before that people did it for the love of the content, and it was lower production quality, but better content.
Lots of people did it on YouTube for years. Even more on other platforms.
NoBOdY wIlL dO AnYThiNg wItHOuT PrOfiT mOtIvE
This book, YouTube’s history, and the span of human history say otherwise. You’re spouting capitalist rhetoric which is ultimately a lie told to us on repeat to encourage greed, selfishness, and individualism.
The platform you’re using right now was built without profit motive, there’s plenty of content. PeerTube can achieve the same.
Except for all the people already making unpaid content. I guess if you ignore them then yeah, you’re right. Great job advancing the conversation in a meaningful way.
You obviously didn’t experience the early internet
People will create plenty of content for free. Basically every blog, early YT video and all of Wikipedia was made by people who just like creating stuff for free
There are already some youtubers linking to their patreon because their content gets demonetized frequently (shiey, gifgas).
I think this could be the way to go. Instead of patreon, liberapay could also be used.
I’m creating content and YouTube pulls from my Peertube. So I’ll never lose it. All of these content creators are leaning on Patreon as none of them can count on ad revenue anymore. So people are already doing it.
And Peer tube will never fully replace YouTube, but also, it doesn’t have to. Your local library, school, church, community space, doesn’t need ad revenue.
The article about crappy ads wants me to turn off my ad blocker, lol
It’s the year 2026. Irony is dead.
what YouTube ads
I think it might be something that happens during that short pause before a video starts?
I wonder what the breaking point is for those who don’t use adblockers.
Remember that some people voluntarily pay for TV and streaming with ads.
Yeah, funny people. I personally prefer my ads to be free on free streaming services. Even if it means to wait a few weeks or so before desired content will be available on these services.
I had been paying for it a while ago since, to be fair, the service is free otherwise and often times it pays the creator more. Then Youtube decided to give about $45mil or so worth of energy toward making pro-Israel content and suddenly I didn’t mind the ads so much anymore. Now they’re making it a lot worse and my solution is going to need to be an adblocker.
Youtube: “People are blocking are ads and costing us money, what should we do?!”
The People: “Police your platform and stop advertising scams, hate speech, pornography, and all the other shit.”
Youtube: “I just have no idea what to do, so I guess I’ll just invest millions/billions into making ads harder to block, and make the ads longer and unskippable. You know, Just make the platform almost completely unusable without adblocking”
The People: “YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, JUST POLICE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM ALREADY. IF YOU DID YOU WOULDNT NEED TO DO ALL THIS SHIT”
Youtube: “Oh, btw, heres another PragerU video thats 3 hours long and talks about how the black man should be grateful for the white man uplifting them via slavery, followed by a ad thats basically a woman fingering herself to advertise chinese AI girlfriends”
The People: adblocking intensifies
That’s the craziest part isn’t it? All of this data collection so they can build profiles of us, and then they just don’t apply any of it to ads.
I don’t like watching ads, but it would at least be slightly more tolerable if I got ads for things I actually wanted. On my TV I watch YT unfortunately not adblocked, and never once have I seen an ad for anything that appeal to me.
This is tinfoil hat stuff, but based on the ads I’m shown, it’s almost like they pick ones they know won’t appeal to you since they know anger drives up engagement. Google can probably guess from my search history that I’m trans and asexual, since I’ve asked questions online relating to that. And then the majority of the ads I get on YouTube are porn and anti trans things.
Anger does drive up engagement, but the point of engagement farming is supposed to be so that you keep coming back to the content (YT videos, articles, whatever) and therefore it gets more exposure so that the attached ads get more exposure.
The ads themselves designed to make you angry at them doesn’t seem to make sense, at least as a default practice. There’s really only hyperspecific niche scenarios where the ad itself making you angry at the ad is beneficial to the people paying for it.
If they actually wanted to show ads targeted to me, first thing they would figure out is if I’m capable of buying their stupid bullshit product. I’m poor as the rat in the church, my monthly budget is literally -50€. I can’t afford to buy anything, what good does it do for advertisers to let me know that they have a new phone that costs 1500€ and is 0,05mm thinner than the previous one?
No matter how rich you are, if you have seen the ad, then their job is done. They pay YouTube to show ads to as much people as possible, not to just ones who can afford buying their products.
Yeah I was specifically talking about how google etc tell me that they are offering me “targeted” ads. Point was, if they knew anything about me, they’d know I’ve been poor as fuck for the last 20 years and should advertise food banks etc to me, instead of the latest Macbook Pro AI Super 2000.
YouTube does police their platform, they curate it for babies and remove anything critical of the government
I love when two conflicting conspiracy theories meet online.
Fuck, I was with them when it was 1x60s ad or 2x30s ads only in the middle of the video. I would grumble at 30s/15m.
I turned off the adblock the other day to pay physics girl some ad-rev, it was fucking unreal. I was trying not to skip, her 8m video tried to give me a 30 second ad, a 5 minute ad, and a mutli-hour ad. Who the fuck would watch that, who the fuck would pay to put a multi-hour ad on an 8m video that nobody is going to watch?
One day the ads will catch up to us, they’ll just embed them in stream and refuse to let you ff/rewind. and at that point, i’ll just go back to record->comskip and store what I want to see on my nas.
and a mutli-hour ad. Who the fuck would watch that, who the fuck would pay to put a multi-hour ad on an 8m video that nobody is going to watch?
People who are hoping to get a captured audience that cant get up and click the skip button for whatever reason.
They least they could do is target it a little. It’s always about some shit that YT already knows i DGAF about
never know, you’d be surprised the assumptions youtube makes about you based on what you watch.
I watch a couple fishing channels, and it seems that anything outdoorsy youtube automatically registers as conservative republican, and increases the right wing/prageru propaganda significantly during the times I dont have adblock (When I used to use xbox to watch youtube on the big TV, I replaced it with an old laptop entirely to get adblocking running)
Nah it doesn’t matter what ads they’d have or how well they police their site. I’d block them regardless.
I set my VPN to Albania. Ads on YouTube are banned in Albania.
On the web, I be Albanian.
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.
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 !
lol I have no idea if it works, but if I watch a random video, I delete it from the watch history because I fear that if I don’t, the algo will go bonkers. So far it seems to work though lol
This is what I found.
With Nebula and CuriosityStream, most of the things I follow are still on YouTube.
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.
We need an alternative with people on it.
Gotta start somewhere. Get on peertube.
Hell that’s the reason I’m here and not on Reddit.
The ability to host that level of video and audio data, streaming, though.
Purge old stuff. Keep only what you really enjoy. It’s not too bad.
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
Nebula doesn’t have hobby vids. Good in some respects, terrible in others.
In addition, it’s locked down to posting, with only a nebulous indicator as to how to get invited to post creator content.
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 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.
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.
The problem is they’re already making bank on ads and data. They don’t need our money.
Hey, if you can find reliable vids on fixing just about anything, it’s in. Bonus if there’s solid journalism and documentaries.
That’s unfortunate for the content creators. I realize that majority of their revenue comes from ads, but this is probably going to drive viewership down. The average person doesn’t have that kind of attention span anymore.
Ads are already a nuisance, making them unskippable will turn people away from the video especially if they also decide to go down the route twitch went of you having to physically be present and not minimize the ad. Creators already resort to their own product placement in their videos, which fortunately can be skimmed through. I just try to buy THEIR products to show support, if they offer.
Also, nothing makes me want a product less than intrusive annoying ads. That’s a product I would steer clear of.
SponsorBlock let’s you skip a lot of product placement. Without uBlock Origin on desktop, Revanced on Android, and SmartTube on TV: I wouldn’t be watching YouTube.
And Unwatched for iOS.
I get what you’re saying, and these programs are great and all, but the average viewer knows fuck all about these apps or probably how to use them. Most people are turnkey users and basically vanilla. Then there are viewers that are morally conscience who think adblock might be wrong. I’m just saying overall this could knock viewership down a few pegs.
Absolutely. I truly feel bad for those who waste their finite lives being inundated by marketing and psychology professionals, whose only goal is hijacking the human conscience: instilling a boundless urge to consume. I do what I can to spread the information and tools necessary for others to escape indoctrination and never weep for the lost revenue of vampires. I also have faith that the learned compliance to “drink a verification can” can be deprogrammed from my fellow man.
This plus Enhancer for YT are a must have for me. Can’t stand the new UI and all the bs they lock down
physically be present and not minimize the ad
That’s only a problem on mobile. Desktop browsers don’t disclose the state of the window to the JavaScript API. What this means is: YouTube can tell if you switch tabs, but it can’t detect if you open another browser window in the meantime and let the ad run in the background.
