Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
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Lol it was some Google employee’s job for months to work on this anti AdBlock method and uBlock Origin bypasses it like same day
Don’t assume ineptitude.
I’ve been in the position of being asked to implement an anti-feature. I made it take as long as possible to drive up the cost and designed it to be trivially bypassable because I’m not motivated to intentionally trash my own project.
I don’t know who you are, or what you write, but thank you.
Subterfuge at work, a fun subject to study.
Some of my favorites from a declassified WWII “simple productivity sabotage” manual:
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Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
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Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
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When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
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Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
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Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
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Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
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Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable"and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
When I first saw these I was like goddamn, psyops got to my executive director!
Sounds like how work is done in large corps
“Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.”
See also: lean manufacturing
Sounds like how I buy shoes and jackets.
It’s I think the CIA sabotage handbook
OSS’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944 (declassified)
Good memory, it was the precursor to the CIA.
Do you know if there is a book (extensive article) which covers that in detail?
CIA sabotage handbook, if I remember correctly
Thanks, I’ll take a look at.
OSS’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944
There’s a link at the top for the full pdf. And do note, OSS is Office of Special Services, the WWII precursor to the CIA - not Open Source Software lol.
Thanks (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
What’s funny about this is all of this pretty much comes naturally when you’re doing something you don’t want to do without a reason to do it.
WWII changed their name to BMV I think.
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Destroying them from the inside I see
Not all heroes wear capes, but you are a godsend!
the prejudice, assuming they don’t wear a cape.
I always thought if youtube pushes the anti ad policy too hard they risk alienating the tech people who will end up on another platform which will start growing much faster. What they do is come up with half assed ad blocking. So casual people and people on locked systems like iPhone YouTube app are forced to watch ads.
Anyone not bothered by ads or Lacy enough will make Google money by watching ads. So they’re squeezing as much money without going too far. If they wanted to, they could have ads which would be unblock-able.
Based
Good guy.
90% chance the dev knew and didn’t care
If only they could do the same for Twitch
Adblock solutions still exist for twitch. I’m using one right now. Never seen a single ultra intrusive pre-roll or full screen ad in months. Banner ads occasionally sneak through.
It does break every now and then for a week or so when twitch updates things, but still infinitely better than sitting through ads.
Which addon do you use because I’ve tried like all of them. They still manage to get thru
And don’t forget to show your appreciation to the people who maintain that whole shebang - of course, only if you’re able to. Sending here and there 10 bucks, for example to the Newpipe or libretube team - or to your resident open source adblocker - doesn’t hurt, it’s only a few clicks and it really makes a difference.
ublock origin doesn’t accept donations, donate to filter list maintainers instead
Ive had to dick around with my adblock settings once every few days lately.
Firefox + ublock origin = I haven’t had to do anything for the last year and stuff just gets blocked with no downsides.
Yeah this is the way. I honestly forgot they had ads until I pulled a video up on my phone to show a friend the other day.
You need a clean condom every once in a while.
to clean a condom*
How would one do this? I use ublock origin on Firefox, but I’ve started seeing the same pop-ups on YouTube the last few days and would love to get rid of them.
On PC: Click on the little uBlock Origin symbol on the url bar, then click on the little gears in the middle right to go to the dashboard, and then select the Filter Lists tab.
To begin, ensure that the first option, auto-updating filter lists, is turned on unless you have a reason for it to be off.
Then, make sure that you have ALL the ad-related filters turned on, and all the annoyances filters selected as well. Only some are selected by default so you need to look them over carefully. Look over the other filters while you’re at it and turn on any others you’ve missed that you think you might want.
Then, once you have enabled all your desired filters, select “Apply changes” and then “Update Now” via the two large buttons at the top left of the page. You should see all the filters go from an orange triangle to something else. Export your new settings if you want a backup of what you just did, and close.
If a filter list you turned on breaks something, just turn the newly enabled ones off again OR whitelist the broken site. But honestly you shouldn’t have any problems, the uBlock Origin filter lists are pretty fine-tuned these days. I have them ALL turned on, lol.
I’ve done this several times over the last few weeks as I’ve been trying out Linux distros and refuse to use Firefox without ad-blocking. Let me know if you have any problems.
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Great call, thanks for adding that.
We need more people like you in the world.
Sadly it looks like Google/Youtube have now circumvented Ublock again. After implementing the changes you suggested above, it got rid of the pop-ups on Youtube for me for a week, and now they’re back and I can’t get around them even after updating Ublock. Hopefully Ublock gets around these quickly.
uBO! ublock is unrelated.
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I’m sure that it’ll just be an ongoing battle between Ublock & Youtube both updating themselves to get around the other. I’ve transferred over to watching more & more on Nebula as it’s better for the creators, ad free, and way cheaper than Youtube Premium.
I had that problem as well, I had to make sure I didn’t have any other blockers/privacy/enhancer addons that changed YouTube in some way, after that, ublock worked properly again.
Ah, I am also using Sponsorblock. That may be doing it.
That still works for me. I had to disable “Enhancer for Youtube” and the Firefox-internal “Enhanced tracking protection”
You’re right. Sponsorblock still works, but I needed to disable my “Return Youtube Dislikes” extension. After that was turned off, all good!
wait, you can’t use them together? I’ve been using them using them since last year and they still work fine together
Just with these latest new pop-ups that YouTube has implemented within the last couple weeks.
They worked fine in combination with one another until that.
But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices.
Implying that deleting them from your view actually deleted them.
My man thought he was permanently erasing it from history.
Next you’ll tell me cognito mode isn’t keeping my browsing completely private! /s
How can my workplace admin block Pornhub even when I’m using private mode? He shouldn’t even be allowed to see what I do privately!
I mean, this is mostly borne from a fundamental misunderstanding of what “Private Browsing” mode is and was meant to be.
When you open an incognito tab on Chrome, it literally says “Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.”
It also says
Your activity might still be visible to:
- Websites that you visit
- Your employer or school
- Your Internet service provider
Fuck using Chrome and I’m not defending Google at all here, but they never once claimed Incognito was anything more than it was.
Pretty sure Firefox says that too. Users just don’t read. Like, ever. They’ll get an error message saying “Important!” and click whatever button seems most likely to make it go away before calling support and demanding they “fix the computer”.
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Surely they’ll actually comply, not be caught in an audit years down the line and given a friendly “Now now, we talked about this: don’t get caught breaking the law again!” slap on the wrist for failing to delete and instead further monetising that data?
Under GDPR and DMA, there would be real consequences. Like “being broken up or cease to exist” magnitude of consequences. Why would they risk it for the 1% of users who actually care and set their privacy settings accordingly?
Google doesnt care about you or anyones personal data. They care about the amount they collect. If the most privacy-aware users wrestle back some data and have it deleted, so be it. Google couldnt care less. Users are like cattle to them, as long as the general “data harvest rate” looks okay they wont investigate the odd one out.
Forgive me for being cynical about the odds of those consequences actually being enacted. Giving the courts a weapon for getting such companies in line is one thing, getting the judges to actually fire it another.
A law is only ever as good as its enforcement.
If I’m wrong, of course, I’ll be glad to learn that. I’ve just run out of optimism halfway through adolescence.
Check this out:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems
Facebook (and the complicit Irish Data Protection Comission) thought so too, an were rekt.
The case invalidated 2 seperate “safe harbor” agreements between the EU and the USA, making ANY data transfer of EU customers private data to the USA illegal without explicit consent. It was literally pandemonium in the IT sector for a few months, everyone was running stuff in US clouds and panicking.
This is what makes the EU high court (ECJ/EuGh) special: noone can pressure them politically. They couldn’t care less what anyone but EU law says.
And that was “just” GDPR, now they have way more EU laws (DMA, DSA) they can throw at FAANG.
Huh. Neat. Thanks for that!
This isn’t some trivial information like your precise location history, this is serious.
doesn’t even matter. what matters is the meta data. if the data from the list say you like science videos with emphasis on electrical engineering, star wars podcasts and mmorpg let’s plays - does that data go away apon history deletion. what about meta-meta data. if the meta data puts you on group X that receive content Y, does that go away apon history deletion. and what kind of integration does that get with the rest of the google knowledge about you…
I doubt turning off history truly does what it says either though. I think it was more about avoiding the shitty algo recc’s that try to turn everyone’s dad and uncle into a far right extremist.
All the morons defending a mindless corporation in this thread forgot that Google has far overstepped it’s boundaries in general. It got to where it is from harvesting free data from users. And now is initiating a web DRM that will far overstep any boundary seen. If a website decides to adopt it, everyone is screwed.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
“You can go ad free with YouTube premium!”
Buys premium
youtube shows ad for paramount plus under my video
Cancels YouTube premium.
So anywho there’s a thing called freetube. Just saying. Idk that it’s a perfect alternative, but it’s at least one step further from googles prying eyes and grubby hands.
Tbh, I block ads when I can but have a hard time getting angry about this. YouTube is both incredibly useful and incredibly expensive to operate – seriously, what other service lets you upload hours of HD video which anyone in the world can access instantly, indefinitely, for free, and at the same scale YT does? It’s a peerless engineering marvel and it would be a tragedy if it were to shut down. If seeing some short skippable ads is what it takes to keep that resource viable, that’s honestly pretty fair.
I just pay for YouTube Premium. It gets me YouTube Music, so for slightly more than the cost of Spotify I get music streaming and ad-free YouTube, and the channels I watch on YouTube get more value out of my streaming than if I watched with ads. And far more than if I watched with an adblocker.
Google Play Music was so much better than YouTube Music, unfortunately, but YouTube Music is still usable.
I understand that everyone hates ads. I hate ads, too. But video streaming and content creation aren’t free. I want to support the platform and support the creators whose content I enjoy, and I don’t want ads. So YouTube Premium seems like the easy option.
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I’ll admit I make good money. I work in software.
But I’ve been paying that since before I was making good money. Again, this is my music streaming platform. I would be paying $10/month to Spotify if I weren’t paying $14/month to YouTube.
(Actually I looked into my subscription while typing this, and I’m still paying the grandfathered price of $9.99/month for YouTube Premium. Pretty sweet, that.)
FYI, that grandfathered price goes away after December
That’s a shame, but the benefits still outweigh the cost in my mind. I hate ads, so what I get out of a YouTube Premium subscription is far more than what I get from Netflix or Max.
(And I realize I can get all of this for free by going around the TOS, but if I have the money I might as well support the service.)
Not really being reasonable. I don’t make much above min wage but buy YT Premium
Its reasonable for a lot of us
AdGuard and Vinegar on safari, uYouPlus from Altstore
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Using AdGuard and Vinegar to use YouTube in Safari, I can’t remember when I last saw an ad. It’s not ideal, but it works well enough.
If you are broke you are better off using your time outside fediverse or social media to make extra money.
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I mind my own business earning money.
Unlike you.
Be more keyboard warrior please.
Ads should be separate from content and not interfere with it. Ad blockers likely wouldn’t be a thing if this were followed. Also, ad networks are a security issue. Host them on your own servers with relationships with advertisers if you must have them.
I would have more sympathy for Youtube if 1. it wasn’t the de-facto standard where essentially all video media gets uploaded to (which Youtube itself has done everything in its power to make happen) and 2. the company that owned it didn’t also own the most popular phone OS, most popular search engine, most popular email provider, most popular ad network, most popular maps, most popular online office suite, most popular airline booking, 2nd most popular cloud hosting… The list goes on
Until a federated solution like peertube gains more traction I have no problem paying content creators directly via patreon, and do everything in my power to not pay Google a dime. Trust me, they can afford it just fine.
The tragedy is that the centralized, profit-driven, socially-damaging platform keeps so much value under ransom because the parent company can operate it for so long at a loss.
I get that the platform is a marvel, it’s just disappointing that its purpose is tailored to keep eyes watching more ads rather than contribute to society as a whole.
The issue is that ads on YouTube used to be fairly innocuous. Now I get batshit conspiracies pushed, non-stop Aussie gambling ads and so on.
Where I was once happy to sit through some food ads, or some tourism ads to support the platform. I’m not happy being blasted with non-stop, low-quality propoganda.
Granted the $22 family plan for me and my wife has worked well. We both use youtube music extensively as well. It’s the only streaming service I pay for, the only other subscription I have is for a VPN.
YouTube is greedy. They make plenty of money without stuffing in more ads and pulling crap like this. I don’t use an ad blocker, but I’ve considered it (or just dumping YouTube completely) because they have really ramped up the ad interruptions. I’d subscribe if they had a cheap YouTube-only plan. But they don’t. You either have to pay for bundled music or TV and I don’t want or need either.
Yes, there are business costs, but they don’t produce the content they air, and their payout to those who do produce the content is a relative pittance. Their infrastructure is shared among other Google products, so it’s not like they’re having to pay for all their server racks out of a single budget. And I’m sure Google is trying to figure out how to train AI on all the content that’s posted there. Not to mention all the pirated content posted to YouTube that Google is making money from, without compensating the creators or copyright holders.
If was running a competing business like Facebook, or Amazon, I would seriously consider ramping up a competing product.
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I share the same sentiment but I can see why someone might want to not support Youtube in any way because they don’t want to support Google’s stranglehold on the internet. Unfortunately the correct way to address that problem is sensible regulation. Call me skeptical, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.
Just like a few of the other posts, I honestly don’t get it. If they can’t sell your data and can’t serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free? There’s so many people complaining how YouTube has a monopoly and how it’s not even that hard to run, but I seriously doubt these people. Transcoding video and distributing it worldwide while having automated moderation is not easy or cheap. If there were serious contenders in the space people would have moved on, and I don’t think it’s just the network effect that keeps YouTube as a dominant player here.
People despise ads, but then they want content for free. They use adblockers to bypass a primary revenue source for a website, then go all surprised Pikachu face when that website doesn’t welcome them. And then they get upset that they don’t want to be the product despite not willing to be a source of ad revenue. I’m willing to pay for YouTube premium (and other subscription models to get rid of ads), but a lot of people aren’t. And honestly, I really would rather those people simply leave the site. It would lower operating costs for YouTube (I don’t expect my subscription fees to go down but maybe their engineers will have more free time to work on features besides adblocker-blocking), and more people on different sites would lead to more competition.
If you aren’t willing to eat ads, and you aren’t willing to be the product, and you aren’t willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you’re entitled to content?
People despise ads, but then they want content for free.
You have it perfectly backwards: YouTube wants content for free, and to not have to share any but the most pitiful fractions of ad income with the ACTUAL content creators.
YouTube does not produce content, others do. YouTube has gone out of its way to dick the vast majority of them, especially the smaller ones, to the point that as such, unless you have a Patreon, a website or store of your own, corporate sponsors, merch, or some other side hustle in addition to making YouTube content, you’re literally making content for a fraction of a penny per view, and entirely at your own cost.
And even then, you’re subject to an algorithm over which you have no control and which can just as fickly ban your content to oblivion as it can raise your content to the multi-million views club. By skipping YouTube ads and finding other ways to support the content creators I enjoy, I help give my creators a financial buffer from the unpredictable vagaries of the algorithm and also withhold reward from YouTube as well.
When YouTube shared ad revenue with content creators in a much more equal fashion, I did not have a problem with their ads. But several years ago – I want to say six or seven, but it’s been going on for at least ten – YouTube got greedy with the ads AND with becoming incredibly unstable and unreliable for creators in all manner of ways AND decreasing payouts to creators all along the way, at which point it became clear that me watching an ad or not no longer affects the content creators I enjoy at all. And they are the only reason I am on YouTube to begin with.
(And don’t get me started on all the copyright/demonetization scams there are on YouTube now: I have a friend who got a copyright strike for playing a C scale on a piano because some asshole claimed it and YouTube lets them do it: even when a creator gets views, they can get demonetized at a drop of a hat even for obviously ridiculous claims, and then that revenue goes to the person making the copyright claim. Win/win for everyone except the person who actually made the content.)
Over the years, YouTube has never failed to excel at two things: server space, and fucking its golden geese, the creators of the actual content, without which no one would be making any money there at all. So get back to us when YouTube recognizes the creators of the gold mine they have in the content hosted there, and once again finds a way to respect for the amount of time and effort and cost that goes into creating that content by sharing revenue with content creators in a more equitable manner.
TL;DR: Why should I watch ANY YouTube ads at all when I can support content creators via Patreon or a creator’s website and know that a much more equitable amount of that revenue will go straight to the creator of that content, where it belongs?
YouTube still pays creators pretty high comparatively (55% of ad revenue according to https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-influencers-get-paid-on-instagram-tiktok-youtube). You are simply getting a service (hosted, searchable, collection of the largest collection of web videos in an extremely nice interface) that costs money even outside of the creator’s cost. For creators they are allowing that 45% cut of ad revenue to get access to the YouTube audience, paid hosting that simply works, nice creator tools, etc.
You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate, but the evidence is that there aren’t many alternatives that do better. Today we do have things like PeerTube (which I think all creators should consider selfhosting with ads/subscriptions and federating the free stuff after a delay) and joining creator owned video services like Nebula (which could be made even better with federation). Unfortunately, with both you run into the discoverability problem, something creators and their audiences are paying to solve when you are hosting on YouTube.
I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you - why should you pay for internet service when it’s the content of the videos you watch not the wires that deliver it that have value? If you hacked around your neighbors WIFI to get some free network access, you could zero-cost get something you might not necessarily want to budget for, and you get quite a nice service out of it. Why shouldn’t that be okay when you still Patreon the creators of your videos given your reasoning about YouTube providing no value?
You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate . . .
I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you . . .
why should you pay for internet service . . .Yeah, except I didn’t say that, nor any of the other strawmen you erected to slam down.
What asinine aggrandizements and distortions. “Why should you pay for internet service” lol. (Reading your response I am momentarily rethinking it, certainly.)
Get back to me when you can address what I actually wrote, and not what you need me to have written. Thanks.
I honestly don’t get it. If they can’t sell your data and can’t serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?
They shouldn’t. If they can’t figure out how to make money with it they should close it down. If they insist on thinking about it as a product and it doesn’t make money, it’s a product that doesn’t make sense and should not exist. If the only way you can make people use your product is by giving it away, what does that tell you about it?
They could lock down the platform behind paywall but they don’t want to do that. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all the free videos being uploaded but they don’t like all the free viewers. Unfortunately they go hand in hand.
[…] you aren’t willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you’re entitled to content?
You CANNOT pay for your content there, even if you want to.
Has it never occurred to you that YouTube gets all their content FOR FREE?
You can only pay to make Google even richer. That’s all your money can do there. Nothing else.
Perhaps YouTube gets all their content for free, but it certainly isn’t free to transcode video, host it reliably, and distribute it while moderating it (given how bad Twitter is right now I’m sure they have a decent number of measures in place, even if they aren’t even “good” at it). And if it was remotely easy, believe me, there would be a lot of competition in this space.
Yes, I make Alphabet x dollars richer (or really, I make YouTube operate at a slightly lesser cost) every month by paying a subscription. And actually, I’m okay with it. A tiny cut of it goes to content creators and I get a nice piece of tech. And I support the branch of Alphabet that has technology that I think is incredibly useful and beneficial. If there’s a content creator that I like especially then I’ll support them directly.
The reality of it is that things cannot be free. Or at least it seems that way, because we have not been able to provide a free video hosting service that doesn’t take advantage of its content creators or consumers.
Yes, I make Alphabet x dollars richer
A tiny cut of it goes to content creators
No. That was my point. Don’t you know their business model? The creators get a tiny share of the paid ads on their video, and they get nothing at all if there are no ads playing on their video. They can never get a share from your payment.
Where are you getting the information that YT doesn’t pay out creators for Premium views?
Google claims they do. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7060016?hl=en#:~:text=How YouTube Premium supports creators,monthly membership fee with creators.
A search over Reddit would indicate creators actually make more money from premium views than regular ones, but that’s hearsay.
If you aren’t willing to eat ads, and you aren’t willing to be the product, and you aren’t willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you’re entitled to content?
You’re overthinking things. I click one button once and I never see ads, for years at a time without needing to tweak it at all. This is also completely free to set up and completely legal.
The fact of the matter is that this technology exists, and they can do nothing to stop it. Despite this, they continue to rely on the ad supported model. Curious, no?
then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?
Because if I post a link to a video and as a result someone sees an ad —or better, signs up for premium—then boom, they just made a profit. There is of course a critical threshold of adblockers where this no longer works but we’re not near it yet so they won’t change their revenue model.
Note: I am not taking a moral high ground here, just pointing out how it works. Yes, you are subsidizing me, thanks for that.
Well, the devil is in the details. People like you, who has actually figured out how to use an adblocker properly for YouTube, and me, who is willing to actually pay for YouTube premium (you’re welcome for the subsidy), surely form a small proportion of the actual number of YouTube content consumers.
Maybe I’m wrong, but my view is that the majority of users just want to watch videos without having ads and they aren’t willing to devote time (for adblockers) or money (for subscription services) and are completely ignorant that they are the product regardless. And those users act like they are entitled to content and that leaving YouTube is somehow significant to the big picture.
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The amount of ads on YouTube only seems to get more and more invasive over time. And I’d have less of a problem with them if they didn’t keep showing me the same ads over and over and over again.
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Even with all that, I would pay (subscription wise, not like I haven’t rented/bought movies from them) if I actually knew where the money was going. YouTube is surely expensive to operate, but we don’t know how much money it costs to actually run it vs how much money is extracted via executives and shareholders.
If you read around you’ll find (perhaps surprisingly to you) that YouTube operates at a loss. So in response to your points:
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You can pay to get the ads removed. They make less money off of you when they can’t serve you ads, and I’m sure they’re trying to operate at less of a loss.
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Alphabet is a public company, and it must release certain information about YouTube. Anyways, I’m pretty sure they aren’t using the money to directly line the shareholder profits. The reality of it is that it’s probably just another arm that Alphabet uses as part of its monopolistic tech deathgrip, so it’s not gonna be a straightforward computation. Maybe Disney could be used as a metaphor here?
If you don’t wanna pay to support that, I don’t exactly blame you. But practically, I don’t really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return. Either you eat ads, you pay for a subscription, or you become the product (unfortunately this last point might be true irregardless).
Where do you read that Youtube is operating at a loss? The last article I can find mentioning that is from something like 10 years ago.
In the last few years they have split Youtube income out of the overall income and it’s not like they aren’t making money with it - roughly $7B in the last report I can find.
Let’s not forget that the strategy of operating at a loss is arguably anticompetitive and monopolistic - not every company has the luxury of doing that, making it extremely difficult to compete against them. Seems pretty clear, with the incessant ads, that they’ve accomplished the first step in that and are rounding the corner to extracting capital from their users now. So they’re not exactly a benevolent actor in this either.
Basically every tech company “operates at a loss” because of overzealous growth and money going to their investors/parent company/shareholders. I’ve never seen a detailed breakdown of any tech company’s financials released publicly, so I doubt there’s any way to prove this one way or another.
They make less money off of you when they can’t serve you ads
Genuinely I’d be interested in seeing a source for this since every metric I’ve seen from third parties is that ad free purchases gives them waaaaaay more money per user compared to the tiny RPU from ads. But maybe Google being its own ad provider changes that
But practically, I don’t really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return.
Never said I was owed anything by them, just that I have no moral or ethical qualms continuing to use adblock on a giant corporation
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The problem is that YouTube went from “short skippable ads” to almost all ads. It also is a major invader of privacy.
No ofence but if thats your pov on the situation (a very valid one btw) you would be better of subscribing to youtube premium. You suport them directly, and dont really get the short end of the stick on mobile like evryone else that isnt paying or isnt a power user. They still colect your data incluiding browsing and watching habits, but you wont get bombarded with terrible ads and get some nice perks as a plus.
Agreed. I’ll fuck around with the workarounds for as long as they work but once YouTube truly manages to make adblocking a complete headache I’ll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium. I’ve been watching tens of thousands of hours of ad-free content on that site for as long as it has existed. I can’t, with a straight face, complain about the fact that they would like to make some money from it too.
I’ll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium
I’ve thought about doing this, but worry about it fucking up my recommendations, which I’m actually pretty happy with. Do you know if that’s an issue?
I don’t know, but I doubt it’s an issue. Your recommendations are probably mostly based on your watch history and not location.
I think we attribute different meanings to the word “tragedy”. Stuff such as tutorials and documentaries (and, you know, books…) have existed well before YouTube was even conceived and will exist after it disappears, not taking into account that 90% of YouTube is just clickbaity videos with the stupid “surprised face” thumbnail anyway. YouTube is given too much credit for what it is and it is frankly overrated as a source of reliable information.
The real tragedy is the unhealthy addiction to YouTube of such a huge amount of people seem to have developed.
My problem is that I paid for YouTube premium, for “an ad free experience” in their words. Then I immediately had an ad for paramount plus embedded under my video.
So I canceled and they can go fk themselves. I was willing to support them directly, but they straight up lied about what I was buying from them.
YouTube: starts putting 2, sometimes even 3 ads that are often unskippable before and in the middle of 10 minute videos
Also YouTube: Why are people using adblockers?
Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.
If you’re on PC use Firefox with uBlock Origin.
For Android, Im personally using Libretube but using mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin also works.
On android you should try to go with youtube revanced, its a little tedious and time consuming to install but it is worth every single second.
Nah I prefer Libretube.
PSA:Firefox + ublock origin combo works on android as well. If you don’t want to install revanced.
Kiwi + ublock 👍
Another option on Android is NewPipe. Doesn’t look as nice as Libretube imo, but it goes to Youtube directly for content which is useful since public piped instances can be a bit unreliable or slow from time to time. (Also on Libretube you have to sign up and re-import your subscriptions whenever you switch instances which can be tedious)
NewPipe is really good once you get the hang of it.
You have to keep in mind that its development has temporarily slowed down a bit, so you won’t have many new features, such as being able to view Shorts and Livestreams tabs in a profile (can be overcome by browsing the profile via Invidious and sharing the page to NewPipe) but bugfixes are usually quick. AFAIK the slowdown is due to a rewrite/refactoring which will make NewPipe easier to develop and maintain and improve its UI.
NewPipe is another good option for android
Revanced still pretty much works for me
I just tried libretube but it crashes every time I click on a video :(
It’s such a shame because I used to use newpipe all the time and I absolutely loved that, until it also stopped working
Revanced not an option?
I think you need to update NewPipe.
If you just installed the app from an apk file, try installing it from the F-Droid app instead, to keep on receiving new updates.
Alternatively, you could add it to the Obtainium app (use the search bar when adding), since it supports GitHub, F-Droid and many more repositories.
That’ll keep you updated!
For iOS users, I highly recommend using Vinegar. 👌
I use Firefox with uBO on Windows and it doesn’t help. I tried installing filters I found online but they don’t do shit.
I’ll just install FreeTube.
It’s likely because you have some other addons/tracking protection/etc that blocks stuff or otherwise modifies how YouTube behaves. I had a YouTube enhancement addon installed, once I uninstalled that, everything got blocked properly again.
That’s odd. Were you using other YouTube add-ons?
Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.
Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Give me “pretty much everything” for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.
PC: Install Firefox. Then install these extensions: Sponsorblock for YouTube, Enhancer for YouTube, uBlock Origins with all the filters turned on except the language filters (you can use them if you wish) and Return YouTube Dislike. Keep uBlock Filters updated by checking for filter updates once a day.
Android: There’s Revanced. I use pre-built apks along with Vanced MicroG from RVX Lite in Telegram.
Android TV: Install SmartTubeNext.
Enjoy.
Another tip: For security reasons, always install the absolute minimum number of browser extensions you can get by with. And only from devs you trust.
Invidious has still been working for me too, though I’ll be clear I’m also using firefox
Hey I had a lot of problem with invidious how can u mitigate the long loading times and what about the front page … it changes content maybe once a day yeah I know I probably consume too much yt but it’s pretty annoying to search for content manually…
Sorry for the delayed responce, but yeah I understand if it’s not working for you it might not be a great option sadly.
If that’s happening, I’d try a few different instances. Try inv.tux.pizza which works well for me. I do sometimes have to click the address bar and then enter though instead of just reloading, which is also strange
Thanks I will definitely give it a shot I’m tired of yt policies (eventhow thanks to various addblock its normal for now … )
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That works as well.
any iOS suggestions?
Use Altstore and sideload uYouPlus
This is the best an iOS user can do I think. Does Firefox exist in App Store? If yes, if it doesn’t use Safari as base, it might be supporting extensions. Never had an iPhone so don’t know much about it.
Slightly better, instead of Altstore get your device registered on the apple developer program (there are cheap ways of doing this) then you can sign as many sideloaded apps as you want and they stay working without having to constantly connect altserver.
It uses Safari as a base, for now. Hoping that with the EU forcing other app stores or sideloading we get full Firefox on iOS. Would be amazing.
I remember seeing something saying they were testing a full build for iOS a while back. They essentially have one feature complete with the macOS Apple Silicon version as well.
I use safari with an adblocker extension (AdGuard) on ios
youtube works just fine in a browser, the youtube app sucks anyway
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When they take out uBlock Origin, they take me out as well.
Newpipe is still working great, I haven’t used an official interface in like 3 years.
They’re begging for a direct competitor.
Lmfao, no one is dropping YouTube. You’ll be back one way or another.
I hate ads as much as anyone and have been blocking them for almost as long as ad blockers have existed. I still acknowledge the fact that ads are the primary revenue source for a lot of things on the Internet, and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.
How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions? When they puts ads on their site, the unsaid agreement is that you exchange your ad views for their service.
