Youtube stopped working for me today when using uBlock Origin in Firefox or Vivaldi with anti-ad enabled.

If things keep going like this I guess I'll abandon Youtube completely. How brighter my life will be

128

That's where things are heading. I wonder what video services will replace it.

40
- It wont be, the scale of service and ease of revenue sharing will keep it as the king of video distribution untill Google kills it (like they do to all their products). FOSS projects and self hosting can not accomodate a viral hit (the slashdot effect), and also a self-hosted project like that would have to find a way to make money for the host to keep the lights on, and even Youtube fails at that one.
  
  48
- Twitter and TikTok
  
  -1
Could just make a system to automate the ads like muting(or white noise) them and automatically clicking skip, is not as good but still feels like a small win

6
- Skipping ads violates YouTube’s terms of service!
  
  Video playback will be blocked until you allow us to shove ads down your throat.
  
  You can also opt for YouTube premium, where we’ll allow you to skip the last 5 seconds of any ad! (*)
  
  (*) ads shorter than 5 minutes do not support skipping the final 5 seconds.
  
  6
The funniest part is they want to watch an ad (trailer) but they aren’t allowed to watch that ad without watching other ads first! Xzibit would be so proud.

0

"Violate Terms of Service" 😂 such agressive language for not wanting to watch endless ads for 2 min videos.

Get fucked.

79

YouTube violates MY terms of service when it abuses my network infrastructure and resources to download data I did not request.

11
Violate is standard legal language for breaking a contract or agreement

8

Ad blockers assert your belief in the web browser as user agent, not server agent

We know you're using an ad blocker. How dare you.
Alphabet's cross-subsidy, and the political value of controlling the Overton window, allows Youtube to remain publicly accessible.
You can get double-penetrated with Youtube Premium, first on the subscription fee then on the usage analytics.

79

Triple penetrated, many YouTube Premium features don't even work properly.

25

That sucks. Do you have access to a VPN with servers in Albania or Moldova? They still don't allow ads in youtube videos.

Happened to me last month, I set proton VPN to an Albanian server and everything worked until uBlock got updated to suppress the black screen of death again. Good luck!

41

Black screen of death? I got a black monitor earlier while doing some work and listening to YouTube. I thought maybe my device overheated. Is this a thing YouTube is doing?

1

I can't wait for the plugin that replaces all the ads with black and white mime videos

36

52

I love that their warning is an admission of failure

36

Permanently Deleted

34

Interestingly, I am having this problem on Linux. EndeavourOS. It's a rolling release distro, so probably a new "cutting-edge" browser feature broke the ad blockers.

7
- Permanently Deleted
  
  1

Datura Network's Invidious instance has a rotating IP, so it's considerably harder for Google to block it.

29

Every Invidious or Piped instance could easily implement IPv6 rotation, the smart-ipv6-rotator is fully FOSS and easy to set up. Invidious and Piped both have official documentation on how to set it up:
https://docs.invidious.io/ipv6-rotator/
https://docs.piped.video/docs/self-hosting/#ipv6-rotator-using-docker

24

It's an interesting situation. YouTube needs us more than we need YouTube.

26

Unfortunately, that really doesn't seem to be true. YT is a monopoly, they do what they want. None of my friends use Firefox, despite me telling them that ad blockers still work on it. They could spend 3 minutes switching to Firefox and losing some of the niche features they have on Opera GX or whatever they hell they use, or they could just watch the occasional 5-second ad. They just don't care enough. I imagine most users are more than likely like that.

15

Just go to yewtu.be same thing. No ads, no tracking or analyzing you.

19

Google foiled again by the yews!! 😂

13

I wonder which will happen first: I'll quit watching youtube because the platform becomes too much of a pain in the ass for me to bother with, or I'll quit watching youtube because of how difficult it is to find content I actually want to watch.

18

I've got a few Patreon shows that host video content on YouTube, but because they're directly linked and not monetized through YouTube they're pretty friendly to visit.

I do need a better way to find streamable music. YouTube Music has been a miserable experience, but it has the largest library short of Spotify, which is also miserable.

3
- I found YTM to have more niche music selections vs Spotify.
  
  You could always try plexamp if you want to self-host.
  
  1

I switched over to FreeTube for all my Youtube needs.

Lets see if Google can break that one.

15

Invidious works absolutely great as an alternative way to access all the content uploaded to YouTube. No ads at all and a way better search function.

10

...until they block APIs which is also in progress right?

7
- Of course that's true, but in the medium run the site is destroying itself through enshittification. We don't need to care about that, as long as we can access the videos we want to access for the time being.
  
  In other words, I completely agree with you, and it's not a scary message.
  
  4
They are now blocking content from playing, on one and loading on the other.

1

Unprompted pro tip: I started running ytdl-sub on my server, added the channels I'm interested in, and now I watch youtube on my personal mediaserver and dont even open the youtube page/app anymore. Because I already know this shit is only gonna get more annoying as time moves on, and especially after the silicon valley growth imperative collapses in on itself. Let's hope we'll have ytdl working for long enough.

You can even configure it to download videos a few days later, after sponsorblock info has been submitted, then it also cuts that out. And you can set it to only keep the last {n} videos if you just intend to watch recent stuff and not keep an archive. It even works for non-youtube. I added Neo Magazine Royale from ZDF Mediathek, and it just worked (shout out to the germans who know what that is)

Cons: I don't get yt recommendations Pros: I don't get yt recommendations

But I still find good new stuff via other feeds, so 🤷‍♂️

9

Still works for me with a combination of Firefox, uBlock and a VPN. I assume sharing an IP with thousands of other people screws up their detection algorithm.

8

As soon as YT started blocking blockers, I created a new Firefox profile with only Bitwarden (just need that everywhere) and uBlock Origin ONLY. Using that has never failed me once this whole time.

When I forget to access YT through my special profile (and therefore only utilize those two plugins) I do see errors. I assume this is due to either uMatrix, AdNauseum or some combination of the two.

5

oh no, anyway now you have more time to watch stuff that people put actual talent into like movies and tv shows and documentaries (this is a jab at youtube in general and not this specific video)

-7

Theres plenty of high quality content on youtube though. You gotta wade through wall to wall youtube cringe to find it, but once you got a list of good subs, that problem disappears. The idea that youtube is solely garbage low effort content is so outdated

3

Try Brave browser. It work

-35

Shame about the crypto bs and homophobia though.

24
- Homophobia? I missed that. What happened?
  
  4
- Browsers be homophobic now? Wild times
  
  -7
Yup. Brave works great on iPhone, too. PiP, no ads, even downloads work fine. And thanks to Airdrop I can watch ad free on TV.

Until yesterday I had a cheap Premium subscription going on but YouTube cancelled it because they found out I don’t live in Asia. Like fuck, it’s not about the money. 5? Maybe 6 or 7? That would have been fine by me. But 20 fucking bucks a month for that? Yeah, nah. Either fix your prices or I will continue to look for workarounds.

-11
- Yattee with this guide is another good option for iOS, iPadOS and tvOS (you could also use it on macOS, but I prefer FreeTube or just using Piped or Invidious in the browser). It's also fully open source: https://github.com/yattee/yattee
  
  4

Am I the only one that pays for YouTube Premium? I get not wanting to pay for things. I don't feel bad for Google here, but I also don't understand what people expect. The government happily subsidizes Musk to litter outerspace. Maybe the government should be subsidizing YouTube?

-38

I want to pay for the content on youtube and I believe that the creators deserve it as well as I understand that the platform costs money. But the UX is so bad and youtube very obviously does not care at all about their viewers, that I morally just can't justify giving them money for that level of service.

19
You might want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE

12
- Did you mean this? https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE
  
  3
I’d pay for it if they didn’t overcharge so much. Their content is provided to them for free, but they charge more than Netflix to distribute it. Fuck that.

12
- YouTube ad tier: $0
  Netflix ad tier: $6.99
  YouTube premium: $13.99
  Netflix standard: $15.49
  
  Huge caveats incoming.
  
  They don't charge more than Netflix, but most of their content is definitely provided to them for free. On top of that, most of YouTube's original content is behind their premium subscription paywall. I tried to see how many of their originals shows are actually viewable with their ad tier and it's hard to pin down a number. My speculation is it doesn't matter because either so few people are willing to pay for premium or their originals aren't very marketable. Off the top of my head I'd heard of exactly one YouTube original.
  
  1
- But in theory they're paying for that content out of Premium subscriptions.
  
  Probably not enough, but that's supposed to be part of what it's for.
  
  1
I'd pay for it with money, but I am already paying with my data you see.

10
Use newpipe or freetube and just send the creators you watch most that money. Google can go fuck themselves

9
I'm okay with seeing an acceptable level of advertisement. Content creators have ad reads within their videos which are skippable, and they've resorted to that because YouTube doesn't pay very well. It used to be that you'd get a short ad at the start of every video or two, and maybe another short ad per 7 minutes or so. Now, it's pretty common for every video to have at least 20 seconds of ad before starting and another 10-30 seconds of ad every 3-5 minutes or so. I like watching on my PS5 while doing chores, so I'm subject to all of these ads. I actually have fully abandoned videos halfway in because of ads that were 60 seconds before I would have the option to "skip" the ad.

I pay for enough things in my life that I was okay with the trade-off of the ads on YouTube. Now, it's (no joke) about 5 minutes of ads interrupting a 20 minute video, and there's usually a 2 minute ad read within that 20 minute video, so really 7 minutes of ads per 18 minutes of content. But it's not really 18 minutes of content because there's an intro, an outro, and a "remember to like, comment, subscribe, and smash that bell" bullshit too. It's roughly 2:1 ratio of actual content to ads and fluff. I'm not fucking paying to take it from 2:1 to 3:1 and they can eat my entire asshole for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe instead of trying to hold eyeballs ransom with the choice of either subscription payments or and overabundance of ads, they should charge for uploading videos to their servers. Sound like a terrible idea? Then I'm sure they'll do it within 5 years. Because fuck everybody, that's why.

9
- Yep. Google treats their service like television, but it’s not television. We all watch the videos on computers and computers are owned by users and each user gets to decide what their computer does, full stop.
  
  The ad model for youtube will always be circumvented by the fact that our computers can run whatever code we want it to (despite Microsoft’s and Apple’s efforts). If that means that youtube goes subscription only, so be it. If that means youtube can’t sustain itself as a business with ad revenue, then so be it. It would mean that decentralized alternatives gain popularity and it would most likely be to the benefit of everyone who isn’t a corporation.
  
  Youtube has a stranglehold on creativity, open speech, and fair use. Youtube will demonetize a video for saying too many swear words. They’ll demonetize or restrict a video for talking about non-sexual lgbt content. They’ll take down legal and legitimate videos for copyright infringement even though it’s fair use.
  
  Youtube is bad for creators and it’s bad for users.
  
  6

I can't help but laugh with this post in this sub.

Paying for media content is somehow dystopian 🤣

OHHHH GOD NO! YT WON'T LET ME FREELOAD CONTENT, I'M BEING ACCOSTED!

-41

Google cornered the video market and killed all competition by mining all of our data and selling it for years.

Now that they are too big to fail they want to turn around and extort us all. The price for premium is NOT reasonable.

This isn't some mom and pop company trying to serve videos. They abused their size and are now abusing it again.

And the fact that there's people like you defending them is a problem. We have to fight the mega corp and the bootlickers in our ranks.

18
- Wait, how did they kill all competition by mining our data? Because they could do things cheaper than compwtitors, or...?
  
  -4
I wouldn't mind paying, if they didn't took away my right to privacy and stopped scraping all of my devices like freaking malware. Even if you don't use any of their services.

As long as they do that, I feel no remorse not paying for their content.

9
At the same time they are enforcing the ban on adblocks they are creating solutions for sponsor blocks to skip the ads that actually bring some money to youtube creators.

Funny how the paying for media content works, you can pay youtube but not the creator of that content, the creator himself gets next to nothing if the youtube algorithm doesn't favour the content. Not a boring dystopia at all.

4
You’re minimizing the abuse. Used to be fine with ads when it was 1-2 max but then it got abusive and greedy. Someone who yells at you once or twice may just be angry, upset, or so on. Someone who yells at you constantly is abusive

2
- I can't honestly believe you just equated more ads on TV to abuse.
  
  -2

Switch over to Brave browser. Its native adblock works better than uBlock anyway.

-44

it does not

the crypto bro scam browser I will l would now trust less than Chrome after that whole debacle

Edit: oh and the homophobia too, and I think there's one other thing
8
I was getting a "this video is private, log in to watch it" banner on everything yesterday with Brave. The videos still played but I wonder if it's related to OPs issue.

4

So you neither pay with money nor by watching ads for a very expensive to maintain service, but you won't leave it be either.

I know I'm making myself Unpopular here, but what is it that you're bringing to the table? Currently you cost YouTube money because streaming video is really expensive. You block out all the ads so every creator is cut off monetization too. This is not a publicly funded library (yet).

-47

Streaming data is expensive, but when you’re vertically integrated to the point Google is, it starts to get significantly cheaper. I’ve been paying creators directly through Patreon for literal years now, and I’ve said before I’d be happy to pay for my usage on Google (including a markup), but paying a flat fee and giving a handful of creators a watch a few cents while Google keeps the lion’s share isn’t good enough for me.

27
It's not my job to fit into a mega corporations business model.

14
- as long as it’s not your salary that gets ad-blocked.
  
  -10
Your words are poopoo

2