And an ad blocker should be part of everyone’s personal and organisational security model regardless, so you’d have to install ublock and specifically turn it off for YouTube.
But of course, the reason people block ads is most of the Google ads were straight malware at one point.
Can’t use uBO from most of the devices I actually watch YouTube on.
For me, it’s much easier to just pay for Premium. No ads on my phone, Playstation, Chromecast, or locked-down work laptop that I can’t install extensions on.
And the creators whose content I consume still get paid for my views. Honestly, it’s worth it for both my use-case and my morals.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, paying for services you use shouldn’t be looked down upon. It’s way easier then trying to always be ahead of the ad block blockers. I do block all ads on websites though
I started Premium as Google Play Music back when. Made sense as an alternative to Spotify. In my book, it still does. Ad-free YouTube is just a bonus for a music streaming service.
I can afford it and use it all the time. It’s completely unreasonable to expect a company to provide a service for you for free without any way for them to monetize you. Hosting videos isn’t free so why should they pay for you to have access to their service
I can afford it and refuse to pay on principle. I actually would be glad if Google went out of business (although extremely unlikely). Monopolistic Companies like them use every opportunity to cheat and modify laws to give them advantage and remove any chance of a new innovative competitor taking over. Then they expect us to act honorable and play by the rules that they set up.
They are the cancer and we need to restore old antitrust laws that supposed to prevent them from ever getting so big.
Because LemmyWorld is full of immature users who think that anybody who pays money for a thing they get extensive use out of is a shill. They think that using adblockers is somehow sticking it to The Man.
I’m starting to understand why LW has the reputation it does now.
How else do you expect a globally-accessible video hosting service that requires no upfront costs for users to upload millions of video files at the cost of several petabytes of data transfers every day to function?
The users generating the content people actually want to watch wouldn’t be able to do so without the monetization that’s in place, though. They can’t make content for free, and shouldn’t be expected to. And not all creators can rely on sponsorships to subsidize themselves, either, so most creators rely pretty heavily on ad revenue in order to stay afloat on the platform and keep the lights on.
If the creators can’t afford to keep creating, then that also degrades YouTube’s service as a whole, as well.
Really? I’m pretty sure people can make youtube content, and maintain a job. If youtube can’t stay afloat without invasive ads happening every 5 minutes then youtube deserves to go the way of MySpace and every other dead platform before them. Simple as that. Youtube isn’t a necessity.
“the price is what the market will bear” or whatever. I used to pay for ytp (red)/gpm. Paused for a month, went to resub, was like +$4 more a month. I don’t value yt at ~$16, not even at ~$12 really but hey, they wouldn’t fuck billions of users over in the pursing of profits, right? If yt/Google was a scrappy little startup, or a creator that I valued, sure, here’s $5 a month through patreon. But they aren’t, they bought a platform with no clear avenue to monetization/breaking even, and sat on it for 10 years, and then they want to be like ‘please we are the victim here, it’s the evil ad blockers that are forcing us into the streets!’.
G has, metrically speaking, fuck-tons of money. And if they so desperately need to clear their books, they can always close yt, anytime they want. Or they could let the customers pay what they think the service is worth. Hell, they could even shift the costs to the creators, which isn’t the worst idea in the world - it’d at least stop kids from uploading their fortnite clips with them screaming into their mics. Not everybody should be allowed in front of a webcam.
But as long as it’s [number higher than I value yt as] or [shitty experience], I will take option 3 and tell g to gag on my balls, and I shall enjoy my $5 and my ad-free experience.
Lots of options, but nah “fuck the users” came out on top. Acting like the users are the reason why they bought and operated a money pit for 15 years is just hilarious.
By being seen as the de facto “hub” for Lemmy, they’ve attracted a large chunk of Redditors who haven’t left their Redditor attitudes behind them. As LW continues to grow, I’ve been noticing a lot more immaturity on the platform as of late. It’s honestly a little disappointing to see.
You could just, you know, send those creators money directly. Nearly all of them have methods set up for that already, and I’m guessing anyone who doesn’t would set something up in a hurry if you asked to donate to them.
It’s a win / win. You get to sit on your moral high ground, the creators get paid, Google can fuck off.
My subscription list is 100+. As much as I would love to support all of those creators directly, it’s not a financially viable option for me. At least with my Premium subscription, they’re getting something from my viewership, which is more than they’d get from me if I was adblocking their videos.
Hold on, Premium subscription where Google gets the cut and doesn’t have to provide you with any report on your money spent is “a financially viable option”?
As opposed to paying even $1/mo per channel I subscribe to, yes. Many creators have come out and said that their earnings reports show that higher-valued views come from Premium users, even though those viewers are not being served ads. It benefits them more than if I were to sit through every ad on their channel.
At the end of the day, Google’s paying them more for my views than if I were an ad-viewing user. So for ~$20/mo (for family plan), that’s much more financially viable for me than if I were to pay $1/mo to all 100+ creators I watch.
At the end of the day, Google’s paying them more for my views than if I were an ad-viewing user. So for ~$20/mo (for family plan), that’s much more financially viable for me than if I were to pay $1/mo to all 100+ creators I watch.
Are you trolling? It feels like you are. At no point in this thread is anyone saying you need to start paying more. If you’re paying $20/mo for premium, and you’re using an arbitrary amount of $1 as the donation minimum per creator, then why not just donate $1 to 20 different creators for each month? Then the next month, donate to the next 20 creators, then the next 20, and so on. Believe it or not, all of those creators still get paid more by your direct donations – even measured over several months – compared to the tiny fraction they’d get from that same money via your premium subscription.
It seems like you’re trying to argue some moral high ground of funding content you enjoy on youtube. That’s fine. But it takes about 10 seconds of critical thinking to find ways to do it where you pay the same, the creators get paid more, and google gets paid nothing.
As much as I would love to support all of those creators directly, it’s not a financially viable option for me.
No one’s suggesting you pay more than what you’re paying now. I simply suggested you pay them directly. Take whatever you’re paying per month/year to google directly, then divide that up and contribute directly to the creators of your choosing.
which is more than they’d get from me if I was adblocking their videos
Now you’re moving the goalposts. No one is arguing against the fact that content creators get some amount of money from ads and subscriptions. The argument was that donating to them directly is better / more revenue for the creators, since google doesn’t get a cut. You spend the same amount, the creators get paid more, google gets paid nothing.
It’s bizarre how you are such an apologist for google.
I’m not moving the goalposts. I’m explaining my opinions on the matter and the choices I made. I’m not sure why you, who are not in any way impacted by my video consumption habits, take issue with any of that.
Once upon a time it was worth it for me too. But since every service is running up the rates, I had to decide which, if any, deserved my money. Google didn’t make the cut. I have a feeling nobody will by the end of year
Paying Google doesn’t feel like the correct thing to do when they keep making Youtube worse while increasing the price. Morally I think it’s wrong to reward their shitty decisions against other users. Personally I’m still mad about they removed the dislike counter.
I’d rather watch non-monetized channels using an adblocker. The entire attraction of YouTube for me was that it was a platform where regular people could share random videos for free. If that’s not what it is, then I’m not interested.
If YouTube had an option to filter all monetized channels from my feed, then that would be the most moral course of action, since I could simply not watch those – quite bluntly, awful – videos.
If you paid the content creators directly they’d receive tens of thousands of times more than any of your views gave them.
I used to work with a partner account, and I can tell you they make NOTHING for views compared to what Google makes.
So hey, you do you, but don’t try to convince us or yourself that this is for the content creators. That’s like saying you order Uber eats to support the drivers, but you never tip them.
This is about the compromises and concessions I’m personally willing and financially able to make. Obviously it’s not the perfect solution, but we don’t live in a perfect world.
uBlock origin works, but you must disable all other blockers or browser plugins doing something with youtube, as they might interfere with the adblocking capability.
For the fire stick, simply install smarttubenext. Adfree and with sponsorblock included.
uBlock should work, if it doesn’t make sure you are using latest version, you have custom filters disabled and disable all extension. If that fixes it then you can start enabling other extension tracking which one caused issue.
With adblock detection filtering too much can cause to trigger the detection.
Also, you might have to go into filter lists in the uBO dashboard and make sure you’ve checkmarked everything.
I’m not sure what can be done about a fire stick. I’m lucky because I have a mini PC connected to my main TV that runs Linux so I can use that to stream whatever I want. It’s one of the best setups I’ve ever had for entertainment. I just got one of those cheap wireless keyboards with a trackpad for $10 from newegg, and Linux Mint has a setting to make the UI more usable from a distance.
I do use a Roku sometimes when I travel for work, and I just deal with the ads, so if there’s a way to make something like a fire stick or roku work with a custom OS, that would be nice, but I’m not aware of anything.
Edit: Just noticed u/viking@infosec.pub has information about smarttubenext. Might look into that.
Edit: are you psychos actually pulling up YouTube on your browser?
Edit edit: Listen, I’m about convenience on this matter. I want to click a link and just have it open up. I’m also not as militant as most of you about making sure YouTube doesn’t make any money off of me because…that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah I’m going to block ads where I can but I’m not going to inconvenience myself in the process. Everyone keeps recommending revanced which admittedly I haven’t tried, but vanced worked like donkey dick. I said it.
Edit edit edit: ok assholes I got revanced set up. I am not an idiot but that was far from “5s of effort”. Thanks for the recommendation.
Yes, on an Android tablet, using the PocketTube app (which manages my YT subscriptions into groups), to forward a group playlist to YT in Firefox with uBo installed, without being logged into YT in FF.
I don’t have to rely on other 3rd party servers and services working properly, I don’t get ads, and YT gets little to nothing on me as an anonymous user beyond PocketTube just pulling the latest videos from my subscriptions.
I’ve been reading all these posts about blocker warnings being displayed and having to update the uBo filters, and I haven’t seen one of those yet, without doing any of that.
Revanced is quite the pain to set up, in my opinion, and the Revanced forums aren’t super helpful. The developer refuses to publish a useable guide.
I switched to NewPipe x Sponsorblock, and that one was maybe 20 seconds of downloading and installing, not counting tweaking the settings to my liking. It’s been much more stable for me. Revanced always crashed for me at exactly 3 hours of continuous use, which was a problem since I use those 8-hour ambient sound videos to help me sleep.
There’s also LibreTube, but that one can be a lot more finicky, and you have to manually switch the instance, which becomes a pain in the ass after a while.
Revanced forums are straight-up toxic. Any setup questions are smugly redirected at the unusable documentation, as you pointed out. For some reason, there’s an elitist attitude in that group.
I’m sure it’s much harder to manage a Premium subscription than it is to simply install uBO
And an ad blocker should be part of everyone’s personal and organisational security model regardless, so you’d have to install ublock and specifically turn it off for YouTube.
But of course, the reason people block ads is most of the Google ads were straight malware at one point.
Can’t use uBO from most of the devices I actually watch YouTube on.
For me, it’s much easier to just pay for Premium. No ads on my phone, Playstation, Chromecast, or locked-down work laptop that I can’t install extensions on.
And the creators whose content I consume still get paid for my views. Honestly, it’s worth it for both my use-case and my morals.
Revanced for android, SmartTube for android TV
Anything for Apple TV?
Yattee
Possibly something like PiHole? Though I’ve not tried that myself.
PiHole doesn’t work on YouTube ads unfortunately. No DNS based blocker does.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, paying for services you use shouldn’t be looked down upon. It’s way easier then trying to always be ahead of the ad block blockers. I do block all ads on websites though
I started Premium as Google Play Music back when. Made sense as an alternative to Spotify. In my book, it still does. Ad-free YouTube is just a bonus for a music streaming service.
Agreed. Family plan is priced similar to Spotify, and ad free YouTube is a nice bonus
Yeah you can have YouTube premium and also use an ad blocker…. Being mad at YouTube is just the hot thing right now
I can afford it and use it all the time. It’s completely unreasonable to expect a company to provide a service for you for free without any way for them to monetize you. Hosting videos isn’t free so why should they pay for you to have access to their service
They’re datamining us to the tune of billions.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
I can afford it and refuse to pay on principle. I actually would be glad if Google went out of business (although extremely unlikely). Monopolistic Companies like them use every opportunity to cheat and modify laws to give them advantage and remove any chance of a new innovative competitor taking over. Then they expect us to act honorable and play by the rules that they set up.
They are the cancer and we need to restore old antitrust laws that supposed to prevent them from ever getting so big.
Because LemmyWorld is full of immature users who think that anybody who pays money for a thing they get extensive use out of is a shill. They think that using adblockers is somehow sticking it to The Man.
I’m starting to understand why LW has the reputation it does now.
I mean, attempting to monetize every single thing in life is juvenile and short sighted as well.
How else do you expect a globally-accessible video hosting service that requires no upfront costs for users to upload millions of video files at the cost of several petabytes of data transfers every day to function?
On donations?
I mean the flip side of that is that youtube would be worthless without the content the users generate.
The users generating the content people actually want to watch wouldn’t be able to do so without the monetization that’s in place, though. They can’t make content for free, and shouldn’t be expected to. And not all creators can rely on sponsorships to subsidize themselves, either, so most creators rely pretty heavily on ad revenue in order to stay afloat on the platform and keep the lights on.
If the creators can’t afford to keep creating, then that also degrades YouTube’s service as a whole, as well.
Really? I’m pretty sure people can make youtube content, and maintain a job. If youtube can’t stay afloat without invasive ads happening every 5 minutes then youtube deserves to go the way of MySpace and every other dead platform before them. Simple as that. Youtube isn’t a necessity.
“the price is what the market will bear” or whatever. I used to pay for ytp (red)/gpm. Paused for a month, went to resub, was like +$4 more a month. I don’t value yt at ~$16, not even at ~$12 really but hey, they wouldn’t fuck billions of users over in the pursing of profits, right? If yt/Google was a scrappy little startup, or a creator that I valued, sure, here’s $5 a month through patreon. But they aren’t, they bought a platform with no clear avenue to monetization/breaking even, and sat on it for 10 years, and then they want to be like ‘please we are the victim here, it’s the evil ad blockers that are forcing us into the streets!’.
G has, metrically speaking, fuck-tons of money. And if they so desperately need to clear their books, they can always close yt, anytime they want. Or they could let the customers pay what they think the service is worth. Hell, they could even shift the costs to the creators, which isn’t the worst idea in the world - it’d at least stop kids from uploading their fortnite clips with them screaming into their mics. Not everybody should be allowed in front of a webcam.
But as long as it’s [number higher than I value yt as] or [shitty experience], I will take option 3 and tell g to gag on my balls, and I shall enjoy my $5 and my ad-free experience.
Lots of options, but nah “fuck the users” came out on top. Acting like the users are the reason why they bought and operated a money pit for 15 years is just hilarious.
You say YouTube’s solution was “fuck the users”, but the solutions you offered are “fuck the creators”. I’m not sure how that’s any better.
I fail to see how asking creators for their cost in storage space is “fucking the creator” but okay
LW has a reputation?
By being seen as the de facto “hub” for Lemmy, they’ve attracted a large chunk of Redditors who haven’t left their Redditor attitudes behind them. As LW continues to grow, I’ve been noticing a lot more immaturity on the platform as of late. It’s honestly a little disappointing to see.
deleted by creator
uBlock works on Firefox on Android.
ReVanced replaces native YouTube app and Smart Tube replaces YouTube on TV.
That does nothing to address my moral concern, which is ensuring that the creators whose content I watch are getting paid.
While I appreciate free things, I know that I can’t keep getting free things if the people making them can’t afford to do so.
You could just, you know, send those creators money directly. Nearly all of them have methods set up for that already, and I’m guessing anyone who doesn’t would set something up in a hurry if you asked to donate to them.
It’s a win / win. You get to sit on your moral high ground, the creators get paid, Google can fuck off.
I don’t think they really care about the creators. This is just virtue signaling.
My subscription list is 100+. As much as I would love to support all of those creators directly, it’s not a financially viable option for me. At least with my Premium subscription, they’re getting something from my viewership, which is more than they’d get from me if I was adblocking their videos.
Hold on, Premium subscription where Google gets the cut and doesn’t have to provide you with any report on your money spent is “a financially viable option”?
As opposed to paying even $1/mo per channel I subscribe to, yes. Many creators have come out and said that their earnings reports show that higher-valued views come from Premium users, even though those viewers are not being served ads. It benefits them more than if I were to sit through every ad on their channel.
At the end of the day, Google’s paying them more for my views than if I were an ad-viewing user. So for ~$20/mo (for family plan), that’s much more financially viable for me than if I were to pay $1/mo to all 100+ creators I watch.
I suggest you do the math. Your views are worth about $.001 each. Google it. The most generous estimate I could find was $.005 a view.
If you donate a quarter a month to your favorite creators, you’ll be doing more for them than giving them 50 views within the same month.
And that’s the highest estimate. The lower end shows you giving them 250 views to break even on that 25¢ monthly donation.
Are you trolling? It feels like you are. At no point in this thread is anyone saying you need to start paying more. If you’re paying $20/mo for premium, and you’re using an arbitrary amount of $1 as the donation minimum per creator, then why not just donate $1 to 20 different creators for each month? Then the next month, donate to the next 20 creators, then the next 20, and so on. Believe it or not, all of those creators still get paid more by your direct donations – even measured over several months – compared to the tiny fraction they’d get from that same money via your premium subscription.
It seems like you’re trying to argue some moral high ground of funding content you enjoy on youtube. That’s fine. But it takes about 10 seconds of critical thinking to find ways to do it where you pay the same, the creators get paid more, and google gets paid nothing.
No one’s suggesting you pay more than what you’re paying now. I simply suggested you pay them directly. Take whatever you’re paying per month/year to google directly, then divide that up and contribute directly to the creators of your choosing.
Now you’re moving the goalposts. No one is arguing against the fact that content creators get some amount of money from ads and subscriptions. The argument was that donating to them directly is better / more revenue for the creators, since google doesn’t get a cut. You spend the same amount, the creators get paid more, google gets paid nothing.
It’s bizarre how you are such an apologist for google.
I’m not moving the goalposts. I’m explaining my opinions on the matter and the choices I made. I’m not sure why you, who are not in any way impacted by my video consumption habits, take issue with any of that.
YouTube ad revenue is a pittance. If you want to actually support creators, send them money directly.
Once upon a time it was worth it for me too. But since every service is running up the rates, I had to decide which, if any, deserved my money. Google didn’t make the cut. I have a feeling nobody will by the end of year
Paying Google doesn’t feel like the correct thing to do when they keep making Youtube worse while increasing the price. Morally I think it’s wrong to reward their shitty decisions against other users. Personally I’m still mad about they removed the dislike counter.
Nobody’s forcing you to use it, then.
I’m not. I’m just commenting on the moral argument you mentioned.
The most moral course of action would be to simply boycott the service altogether.
I’d rather watch non-monetized channels using an adblocker. The entire attraction of YouTube for me was that it was a platform where regular people could share random videos for free. If that’s not what it is, then I’m not interested.
If YouTube had an option to filter all monetized channels from my feed, then that would be the most moral course of action, since I could simply not watch those – quite bluntly, awful – videos.
If you paid the content creators directly they’d receive tens of thousands of times more than any of your views gave them.
I used to work with a partner account, and I can tell you they make NOTHING for views compared to what Google makes.
So hey, you do you, but don’t try to convince us or yourself that this is for the content creators. That’s like saying you order Uber eats to support the drivers, but you never tip them.
This is about the compromises and concessions I’m personally willing and financially able to make. Obviously it’s not the perfect solution, but we don’t live in a perfect world.
It’s crazy how unaware people are of the options out there, and the little effort it takes.
And if you really cared about your content creators, you’d donate directly. You’re giving more money to Google than to them.
Enjoy your subscription price hike
For some reason, those never work for me. I’ve tried at least 3 different YouTube and blockers and they all fail.
Also there’s no blockers for something like a fire stick, which sucks.
uBlock origin works, but you must disable all other blockers or browser plugins doing something with youtube, as they might interfere with the adblocking capability.
For the fire stick, simply install smarttubenext. Adfree and with sponsorblock included.
https://smarttubenext.com/firestick/
Very long hdmi cable.
There is 100% a blocker for the Amazon fire stick. It’s called SmartTube.
uBlock should work, if it doesn’t make sure you are using latest version, you have custom filters disabled and disable all extension. If that fixes it then you can start enabling other extension tracking which one caused issue.
With adblock detection filtering too much can cause to trigger the detection.
Are you using Firefox?
Also, you might have to go into filter lists in the uBO dashboard and make sure you’ve checkmarked everything.
I’m not sure what can be done about a fire stick. I’m lucky because I have a mini PC connected to my main TV that runs Linux so I can use that to stream whatever I want. It’s one of the best setups I’ve ever had for entertainment. I just got one of those cheap wireless keyboards with a trackpad for $10 from newegg, and Linux Mint has a setting to make the UI more usable from a distance.
I do use a Roku sometimes when I travel for work, and I just deal with the ads, so if there’s a way to make something like a fire stick or roku work with a custom OS, that would be nice, but I’m not aware of anything.
Edit: Just noticed u/viking@infosec.pub has information about smarttubenext. Might look into that.
That isn’t really an option for Android.
Edit: are you psychos actually pulling up YouTube on your browser?
Edit edit: Listen, I’m about convenience on this matter. I want to click a link and just have it open up. I’m also not as militant as most of you about making sure YouTube doesn’t make any money off of me because…that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah I’m going to block ads where I can but I’m not going to inconvenience myself in the process. Everyone keeps recommending revanced which admittedly I haven’t tried, but vanced worked like donkey dick. I said it.
Edit edit edit: ok assholes I got revanced set up. I am not an idiot but that was far from “5s of effort”. Thanks for the recommendation.
What about ReVanced, NewPipe, or Grayjay?
Didn’t know about Grayjay until now. Thanks for bringing it up - it looks really promising!
Firefox for Android can.
I have firefox mobile with uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock addons and haven’t seen a fucking ad in two years. No app needed.
Hell yeah I am. Fuck them trackers!
Revanced is an app
Yes, on an Android tablet, using the PocketTube app (which manages my YT subscriptions into groups), to forward a group playlist to YT in Firefox with uBo installed, without being logged into YT in FF.
I don’t have to rely on other 3rd party servers and services working properly, I don’t get ads, and YT gets little to nothing on me as an anonymous user beyond PocketTube just pulling the latest videos from my subscriptions.
I’ve been reading all these posts about blocker warnings being displayed and having to update the uBo filters, and I haven’t seen one of those yet, without doing any of that.
Revanced is quite the pain to set up, in my opinion, and the Revanced forums aren’t super helpful. The developer refuses to publish a useable guide.
I switched to NewPipe x Sponsorblock, and that one was maybe 20 seconds of downloading and installing, not counting tweaking the settings to my liking. It’s been much more stable for me. Revanced always crashed for me at exactly 3 hours of continuous use, which was a problem since I use those 8-hour ambient sound videos to help me sleep.
There’s also LibreTube, but that one can be a lot more finicky, and you have to manually switch the instance, which becomes a pain in the ass after a while.
Revanced forums are straight-up toxic. Any setup questions are smugly redirected at the unusable documentation, as you pointed out. For some reason, there’s an elitist attitude in that group.
My mans really forgot about Revanced and Newpipe huh…
(Somehow Vanced still works on my old S8 and that has now become my dedicated YouTube player until it, or Vanced, dies)