YouTube cracking on ad blockers.

Dear YouTube, if anyone there ever reads this.

I tried not to block ads, I would let the preroll go and usually not skip it.

I started skipping ads when they started getting long. I recall some were several minutes long at times.

I started leaving videos part way through when there were mid-roll ads, and those got long enough that I'd often forget what I was even watching.

I started blocking the ads outright when I would be watching a relaxing video, and a very loud mid-roll ad would blow out my goddamn eardrums.

Fuck you YouTube. You abused your users, you chased off good content creators, and now you're offering people no carrot and all stick. How about you offer to match the volume of the ads to the videos, limit the length of ads to something reasonable, and nicely tell viewers that you are making ads less annoying and that unblocking the ads helps pay the content creators.

I used to make animations for YouTube, which weren't monetized because I hate ads, and one day they copyright struck me for some very provably public domain music, but the way they did it was to insert ads into my video without my consent so they could monetize them to send the money to the scammer who flagged me. So I just deleted my entire account, fuck them.
- That didn't stop you from making cartoons, did it?
if they're anything like cable ads, they actually make the ads louder than the regular programming on purpose to try to make sure you hear it if you tune out or just walk away. no relaxed, unfocused watching for you!
x2
Lmao "you purposely made your stuff shit. Now, if you offered a basic service without all the shit, I might pay for that."
Bruh, you don't pay for something because it's not shit, you pay for something because it's good. By paying for a basic service simply because it's not shit, you are incentivising them to enshittify their service and offer a premium "not shit" version, instead of actually improving their service.
It's just like the people who buy the new iPhone because it actually has a headphone jack this time.
NewPipr
They get away with this because people don’t use the alternatives. Odysee and Rumble are actually good alternatives. No, they’re not as good as YouTube, but they’re good enough. We just need creators to also upload to those platforms. Since YouTube keeps banning and demobilising them, this problem might solve itself.
- Rumble is 100% fascist Nazi bullshit, not an alternative
- Curious, how does monetization work on those platforms? The bigger "Content creators" typically will be making videos as a job, so to draw them you'd need a halfway decent way to monetize.

to people saying YouTube is a moneysink for google:

yes it is, if you just look at direct expenses of running it. but you're overlooking the fact that it has enabled google to amass so much data(we're taking about 500 hours worth of videos being uploaded per minute) that they can train anything with it.

it's a service that's too big to fail. even whole governments, courts, and other institutions depend on it. so, I refuse to believe that YouTube will be non-existant because a sliver of users refuse to be profiled by invasive advertisements.

it's a service that's too big to fail.
I used to believe that.
Then Elon Musk showed us that nothing is too big to fail.
- Too big to fail is a lie told by bankers who don't want to pay their losses.
- fair point. but twitter isn't as big as YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine.
  So, YouTube going down would be a much bigger deal than twitter. I suppose governments won't even allow YouTube to get acquired by some musk.
- Twitter / X are far from failing simply because your bias is peeking through and "Musk bad"
If youtube is such a burden, donate it to
Cash-4-Clunker_Companies.com
A new charity that takes your failing social media company off your hands (and your ledger!) and donates it to the United States Postal Service to administer and, after government streamlining, channel all profits into funding summer camp and spring break for our underprivilaged senators, congresspeople, and justices of federal rank or higher.
This is where I am a bit curious. In a world where we didn't have user tracking and just did ads the old fashioned way like television via over the air signals and used content as proxy for viewer interest, would folks still use ad blockers or accept having ads as part of the viewing experience? Is there a happy medium where users are willing to watch some ads, and advertisers don't track everything but still get some measurement that there shit is being viewed by real people and not bots. IDK. Is there a minutes per hour of ads per content that makes sense for video?
- We just muted the TV during the ads and did something else until the show came back on. Ad breaks for regular shows like dramas were a predictable length of time, so you could time your bathroom or fridge run pretty well.
- I don't mind ads if they're solely keyword-based, and one per 30 mins or so. but I do mind the tracking by ad companies(most notably google and meta).
  but nowadays I'm so deep into privacy hole that I steer clear of anything that's not FOSS, unless it's absolutely necessary(e.g.: degoogled android). So naturally, ublock origin stays on all the time.
- for sure. I listen to a number of podcasts that instead of having dynamically inserted ads, still have the hosts do an ad read. I don't mind that at all
to people saying YouTube is a moneysink for google:
Who says that today? This was true about YouTube many years ago, before Google took it over, I doubt that's still true.
it’s a service that’s too big to fail.
No it's not, most content of value will have back ups and can be uploaded to other services.
- Google have been saying that for ages, that their YouTube advertising revenue does not cover YouTube's running costs.
their data is worthless if they can't serve ads
- They're serving ads just fine. They're now targeting those that don't want the ads and actively try to avoid them. That's the main difference.
- The data has so many more uses than just ads. They sell the data, use it to train AI, etc. The data itself is more valuable than their entire ad network.

If you’re using uBlock Origin. Go to “Filter Lists” and Purge All Caches. That may help.

I just did the zap element thing on that warning. So far so good, except you can't scroll down.
- I see this as an absolute win, since that means you don't have to read YouTube comments.
- Lmao
Can we pin this?
I occasionally see ads on Youtube. I'm not sure if this is related.
...temporarily it might help
I imagine they'll eventually find a way to prevent us from blocking ads. Twitch TV for example has found some ways to make adblock useless.
It's a shame, and it's really just a side effect of google racing to the bottom of the adspace game. If ads weren't as cheap as they are today, they wouldn't be trying to maximize the amount of users who are forced to see advertisements.
- Someone will create an extension to mute the ad and overlay it with suitably timed bite sized cat videos.

I am much, much more likely to be willing to pay for Ublock than I am YouTube.

That's interesting to me as someone who has paid for both lol.
Just curious, why would you not want to pay for YouTube knowing that some of that money makes it to the creators at least? Is that not enough? Is it a principal thing because they try to block the ad blockers now? Or do you think all video content should be free somehow with the creators making a living some other way?
I have been going through things I subscribe to lately and realized that the content on YouTube is probably the thing I watch the most. I genuinely like some of the people I watch videos of there and want them to do well. I like that some of them started their own streaming sites now so that's nice but I also don't want more streaming sites.
- Well there are a few things to say about your comment. First, YouTube DOES pay content providers. However, most earn money from multiple sources like YouTube, Patreon, sponsors and merchandise sales. Out of those sources youtube is probably the most fickle. Their rules about canceling a channel or removing monetization are arbitrarily enforced and difficult or impossible to appeal.
  The same can be said for the way viewers are treated. YouTube is a "free" service. They decided to operate this way, not us. Instead of, for instance, offering the streaming service as a paid subscription, they chose to essentially destroy the product and then ask for payment to fix it ( the so called poison pill). And don't forget the notion that if you are not paying for the product, you ARE the product. I'm pretty sure that YouTube is collecting our information and profiting from it. And if they aren't the parent company absolutely is. When you couple this with the thought that "suggested" content is designed to profit youtube, its easy to make the argument that it wasn't actually free to begin with.
  So bottom line is, I think people are fed up with relentless marketing and the form of marketing YouTube has chosen is the worst possible kind of marketing. This leaves those who have been users for a while and want to continue, with the choice of fighting this invasive advertising with ad blockers or paying for the service. The latter of which feels a lot like a reward for reprehensible behavior on the part of youtube.
  In short, I think the chief complaint here is HOW youtube has gone about this. Anyway, that's the way I see it. I use a lot of "free" services and youtube is by far the worst type of cost. Pandora, plays ads I have to listen to as the cost for that service but they aren't nearly as bad about it and they never do it in the middle of a song, for instance. I use Wikipedia and they don't market at all, just ask for a donation every now and then. I gave up and just paid for youtube premium. But I have to say it feels a bit like I was extorted, because I feel like I have seen enough ads for one lifetime. If at any point youtube starts showing ads with their paid service I will absolutely drop them like a hot potato, which would be a shame since, like you, I enjoy a lot of the content.
- If youtube didnt consistently fuck over creators, and didnt have draconian and immutable copyright takedown and ad stealing policies, maybe Id consider it
  But theyre too hostile to feel good giving money to. They dont work with creators or viewers, they try and undermine them. So Im not interested in doing as they ask.
- why would you not want to pay for YouTube knowing that some of that money makes it to the creators at least?
  do the math to find out what percentage of user subscription ends up in a creator they watch. Also do the math to find out how much is earning google vs how much money goes to the creator. Creators end up getting pennies. If you want to support your favourite creators do it differently. By believing that "least some money makes it to the creators" is what youtube has managed to make people believe so that they rationalize paying for a subscription.

If YouTube premium was $4.99 a month it'd be worth a consideration. But then again adblocking is free and privacy respecting

I'm not gonna pay for a service that harvest and sell my data
- So you pay for 0 services then?
- Well, we all know it's the free services that don't harvest data.
- I agree
If you really want to support the creators without getting your data exploited, this ist the place to go: https://nebula.tv/
- Yep. Nebula rules, I wish more creators were in there.
Exactly. Premium is basically twice what I'm willing to pay. I've considered going premium multiple times, and have multiple times suffered sticker shock and backed away.
Family plan split 6 ways among friends and family roughly comes out to $5/month
- Pfft you think JCDenton has 6 friends and family to split the cost with?
I actually think YouTube premium is worth its price. Spotify is the same price, but you get less.
- I want ad free YouTube but don't want YouTube music. I don't want to pay for extra shit that I won't be using.
  I use Spotify way more than I use YouTube. Spotify does one thing and it does it extremely well.
  If Spotify added unlimited free Uber eats delivery tomorrow and bumped up the price to $20 a month, then sure, it'd be a good deal but I wouldn't want any of that.
- I'm not sure about individual plans, but YouTube Premium Family went up to $23 per month. I've been a member since day 1 and they eliminated all grandfathering for me. Spotify is $15 for Duo or $17 for family.

It's an end of an era. I've been on reddit for over a decade, and on youtube for even longer. Crazy to think I might be giving up both of those services within a few months of each other. Feels like the internet is dying. Oh well. Maybe I'll go back to reading a shitload.

I haven’t watched live tv in almost 20 years because I refuse to sit through ads, and I definitely won’t sit through them on YouTube. If it was a banner or some thing on the page or the side of video that would be more acceptable, but sitting through ads to watch a YouTube video….there’s just no way.

You could subscribe
- I basically don't subscribe to any streaming services, but we got the family plan years ago and share it with a few friends and family that chip in a couple bucks each.
  It's so affordable and the content on YouTube is second to none.
  I'm so happy to help content creators earn a living content I genuinely care about rather than studios led by c-suite committees.
- Lemmy users only want to use foss and not pay a single penny. How dare you suggest they pay a tiny amount to help pay for servers and the creators they're watching!

Yeah I could care less about people saying they'd watch ads of they were less intrusive. I'm not, I don't give a fuck about YouTube's sustainability who happened to still have major growth while I ran an AdBlock this entire time.

Maybe I'd consider paying if YouTube was the actual product I was paying for. Instead I get privacy invasive spying and my data being harvested, while am paying to do so. The product I'd want to pay for would have zero privacy invasive stuff involved. Which that isn't going to exist, so I'm never going to pay.

I couldn't* care less.
If you say "I could care less," then it means you're still caring.
- In my opinion its impossible to be unable to care less if you are aware of something there is always a tiny bit of care wether its negative or not is irrelevant.
Premium is priced so uncompetitively my family can subscribe to all of Netflix, AppleTV+ and Amazon Prime Video for less than a YouTube subscription.
- I have YouTube premium family and it costs about $20/month for 5 family members. Are you sure those streaming services cost less than that?
- Maybe youtubeTV

I don't really know how people can even use YouTube without ad blockers. Sitting through minutes of advertisement is not going to make me want to buy your product if I start mentally associating your product with frustration and annoyance. If these video ads are going to be repetitive and annoying, at least make them funny.

It seems like there is nowhere on the Internet to get away from ads currently, even here, where you thought you are safe, you are now reading an ad for my newest movie (you know the one), now also available on streaming!

It seems like there is nowhere on the Internet to get away from ads currently
Enshittification is spreading like a virus.
I would like to imagine a world where site advertising was reasonable. Ad blockers don’t exist, sites advertise 1 or 2 banners at $3-5 CPM and everyone gets paid and consumes content in synchrony. It won’t happen. Advertising is setup for ad blocking audiences and iOS cookieless environments. Everyone else subsidizes by viewing the myriad of placements splattered all over the page.

Youtube is getting on cable tv levels of bad. On a regular ~10min video you will first deal with a few preroll ads and at least one is unskippable, then the creator will have a 2+ minute sponsor segment (I don’t mind those since they are usually well presented). There will also be multiple midroll ad spots.
That would only be accurate if Google quintupled the price of YouTube Premium and forced these ads upon actual paying customers.
I really don't like it when pro-piracy advocates whine about being served ads or not having everything on a single unified service costing just $9.99 a month, or a fraction of how much Cable used to cost.
Now this may be a bitter pill for the Lemmy World community to swallow, but ads being annoying doesn't grant you a God given right to freeload off of other people's products and services, and this rings especially true for YouTube. The only reason I don't compare ad-blockers to piracy is due to their downright necessity in tackling malvertising, which is unfortunately all-too-common.
YouTube is the only big player in the video sharing market for a reason, and that's because hosting videos is prohibitively expensive unless you have the resources of Alphabet Inc and the existing following that YouTube already has. Many competitors have come and gone. Heck, the only competitors in this space are Dailymotion (a French platform that has been enshittified Digg v4 style) and Rumble (an extreme pro-free speech platform that's being bankrolled by alt-righters.)
- And forget about the absolute goldmine YouTube is for Google. It's is among the most important information repositories in history and profits massively from it. There is a reason they run it at a loss. Google uses that data to categorize everything thing about you and uses it to exploit your psychology to sell whatever bullshit their advertisers are peddling this week. It then double dips by selling off that data. And I'm supposed to pay for this? Nah. Fuck Google. I'd rather see YouTube get shit canned than pay a single dime to Google.
- I almost got it until I saw it cost 15 a month and they need to fix their copyright troll problem.
- Heck, the only competitors in this space are Dailymotion (a French platform that has been enshittified Digg v4 style) and Rumble (an extreme pro-free speech platform that’s being bankrolled by alt-righters.)
  Nebula and Floatplane?
- We need to block ads so that ads die. Anti-angiogenesis for advertising. Get a less annoying business model.
  That said, I have YouTube premium at that I don't see ads.
Invidious is having trouble to work these days. I fear google will also pull the plug on third party front ends once they get popular enough.

Does anyone else remember back in the days of VCR, the networks wanted to push a technology that disallows you from fast-forwarding through ad breaks on the stuff you recorded?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Does that last sentence make this comment an advertisement?
- I guess, technically yes. Does that mean I have to specify that I am in no way endorsed by or representing Pepperidge Farms and that I cannot attest the quality of their products because they are not offered in my country (or at least I haven't seen them)? Is that The Way It's Meant To Be Played?
- I didn't read it.

Holy crap

Piped is about to get another user

Why wouldn't they block Piped?
- For the past few months, they have been rather aggressive with IP bans for Piped instances, yeah.
Bruh, your not gonna believe this, but the ducks at the park are free. if you use one of these, you can download all the ducks you want. I downloaded 9000 ducks so far.

If you're using UBlock Origin do the following:

Go to settings. Go to Filter Lists. Click purge all caches. Click update now.

That's it, this message should disappear entirely.

What youtube is trying to achieve is technically impossible, unless they merge the advertisements into the videos.
- don't give them ideas
- What you're saying is already very possible. Twitch is at the forefront of fighting adblockers and they're constantly adding new ways to serve ads.
  Realistically speaking I think YouTube has been only tolerating ad blockers and will start rolling out new methods next year.
It worked for me but minutes later it started appearing again
- The UBO guys have recommended turning off other plugins (obviously, start by turning off everything, then turn stuff on slowly until you find what is conflicting).
  Oh, and make sure you're on Firefox, not any chromium based browser (Edge, Chrome, Opera, Brave etc).
  I've also seen suggestions that you should try removing any custom filters (can't remember if that's direct from the UBO guys or not)
- try this https://openuserjs.org/scripts/reek/Anti-Adblock_Killer_Reek
If you’re using UBlock Origin do the following:
UBlock should just add code that automatically does that every time you start the browser, or daily.
- That would just put an undue burden on the places that host the blocklists, for no good reason. Purge is something that only needs to be done manually in particular cases like this one.
- Not everyone would want the cache cleared all the time. Cache is useful, it prevents you from reloading everything every time. If he was to add the functionality it would probably need to be an adjustable setting.
If you’re using UBlock Origin do the following:
Go to settings. Go to Filter Lists. Click purge all caches. Click update now.
That’s it, this message should disappear entirely.
I think there is going to be a time when ublock alone cannot simply program their way out of this, they will need help eventually from a completely different approach like anti ablock killers or some other app that hide the blocker itself from detection
https://openuserjs.org/scripts/reek/Anti-Adblock_Killer_Reek

I haven't turned off ad-blocking in 20 years. That's because I "don't allow" companies to use my home and my computer as their place of business.

i actually blindly accepted Google ads in early 2k because they were text only and an imitation of ads in newspapers. whenever they made animated banners i lost my shit and never allowed it again

How did manipulation to make you buy specific shit become so accepted?

Because that's the goal of capitalism
- That's deep.
- Capitalism is driven by the idea of a free market, where competition and the law of supply and demand determine prices, production, and distribution. Manipulating you to buy stuff you don't need is the result of human greed, not capitalism. That's such a monothink way of seeing the world.
  Imagine living in a small town in the middle ages. You're growing corn, your neighbour has a chicken farm, then there's also a bakery, blacksmith etc. Say you now need nails. Where do you go? To the blacksmith obviously. Does he just give them to you? No, he wants something in return. Well you offer corn because that's what you have plenty of but what if he doesn't want corn but wants eggs instead? Well you can go to your neighbour and ask if he would like to trade some eggs for corn which you could then further trade for nails. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't, but that's still a bit of an hassle. That's why people came up with money. You can just sell your corn, get cash, buy those nails with said cash and the blacksmith can then go buy eggs with that. That's capitalism.
This is not what is happening. Google offers you a tier with advertising for free. If you'd prefer to not have the ads, you can pay a small fee, get no ads and also steam every song ever. I truly don't see the controversy.
It's literally cheaper than a beer for a full month of this service, but people would rather spend hours of their time tinkering with settings instead. Personally, I don't have that kind of time.
- You are missing my point. Advertisment became an elaborate manipulation, targeted with questionably obtained personal information.
  And for me personally the content YouTube is selling is not worth the money they are asking. I just do something else.
- If I'm not mistaken, the "tinkering" necessary in uBlock Origin would take much less than the time you took to type out your comment. And no, it doesn't cost less than a beer.
  You have a point, but the problem goes far beyond ads vs. no ads. There is definitely a lot of controversy, and you simplify choose not to see it, but don't try to act like everyone else is just too dumb or too poor to see things your way when neither of those are true.
- Where do you live that a beer is $15?

Unpopular opinion: They should've just started charging big creators, kind of like Vimeo. Mofos be having youtube ads, sponsorships, built-in ads, courses, merch stores and patreon, and then they whine when youtube wants them to comply with advertiser's demands.

YT Creators get paid a share of ad revenue and that is what funds their channel. Charging them would just kill a lot of channels.
- That's ignoring the first part of his comment though. He said the ones that have merch stores and patreon pages. Not just getting YT money.
- That's completely true for smaller creators, but YouTube is more than just people who rely on adsense for the livelihood. I don't think Jimmy Kimmel or Taylor Swift would miss a few dollars, even a few hundred, a month to be on the platform.
- Good. It's the same for me as regular businessee: if you can't make a profit while don't breaking the law, you shouldn't make business.
How well did that work out for Vimeo?
Charging the people to create the content you sell is downright dumb.
- Works well enough that it's still one of the major video hosting platforms.
  The part you miss is "you sell" part. Unlike youtube, where it solves both monetization and content delivery for you, Vimeo, AFAIK, doesn't do any monetization and focuses enterely on content delivery. You pay for the service, and how you monetize the content is entirely up to you. May be the ad deal with NORD SHADOW MANSCAPED, may be donations. Or, the video may be promoting your own business, which seems to be the most common use case - as a business you don't want a competitor's ad on a video which purpose is to promote your own.
- Only fans really doing terrible rn you're right
Idk if that would be a good business decision. They would want it to be free and easy to start a channel still, so it would mean once your channel gets to a certain popularity google makes the deal progressively worse. This would create a big incentive for competition if all your biggest content creators are suddenly paying over cost to subsidize smaller channels.
Not that this would be a bad thing, but I don’t see why google would ever want to risk it.
Is this really an unpopular opinion?

ublock origin still blocking everything.

ublock origin is so good at blocking YouTube it almost makes me think the developer is affiliated somehow. Their other extension, umatrix (which has more or less the same functionality just laid out differently), never really worked for me, but as soon as I add ublock origin it works perfectly.
- Are any of the blocklists actually made by gorhill?
not the current version. YT just updated their id.
YouTube ReVanced is still around?
- Yup. I last updated a month or 2 ago and it works perfectly fine still.
I wish I could say the same been getting these annoying youtube things with firefox/ublock on both linux and windows
Not for me anymore.

Adblockers are eventually just going to become undetectable because of this. Adblockers are about to get so much better!

Google kind of sucks.

What was their last big success? Google maps? Pretty much everything they do lately is some combination of shitty or prematurely killed.

Google more than just kind of sucks. Like you said they haven’t done shit in a long time outside of making the internet more hostile with shit like this and their planned chrome-based anti adblock (a LOT of browsers run on chromium which would bring the same shit, Mozilla4lyfe)
Also, the google graveyard is just pathetic at this point. They truly can’t do shit outside of anti-user bullshit
- UP FIREYFOX!
Android? Google Photo? Google Pixel? Google Pay? Google Apps? Chrome? Chromebook? Google Drive? Chromecast? Android Auto?
They launched a ton of successful stuff since Maps came out in 2005
- You got me! Android came after maps in 2008. So that's not a great argument for recent development. Is pixel meaningfully different than Nexus? That would put it in 2010, or 2016 if you insist pixel is a big innovation.
  Chromebooks are also a 2010 project.
  Google pay I don't think is a success? Didn't they like relaunch it recently and shit it up by tying it to phone numbers instead of your Google account? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/google-pays-disastrous-year-continues-promised-bank-account-feature-is-dead/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-pay-hopes-to-recover-from-brutal-2021-with-new-leadership/ . Also the original release is 2011. Quite some time ago. But technically newer than maps!
  Drive is 2012. Dang, got me. But that's still more than 10 years old, so my actual point seems to stand.
  Chromecast is 2013, so maybe within this decade.
  Auto is 2015 but I know nothing about it.
  I guess I should've said "in the past 7 years" instead of exaggerating and saying since maps!
- Android is developed by a consortium of developers called The Open Handset Alliance under an open source license. It is most certainly not a Google product, any more than Linux is a Canonical product. As in, they help develop it but it's not their product.
Most of their innovation has been for developers it seems.
Edit for clarification: since Google maps
Ignoring everything after Google maps is ignorant as hell. I mean Google Photos is literally used by a massive percentage of iPhone users as well, because it's so good.
- You seem to be unfamiliar with hyperbole, or maybe just didn't recognize it here.
  Also they kind of enshittified Google photos by walking back the unlimited storage promise. Probably not the best project to point to for "Google doesn't suck" arguments.

YouTube is the cable tv of 2023

Advertisement is brainwashing and should be against human rights.

not totally true, targeted spammed ads are brainwashing, suggesting a thing isn't. it's always the dose
- People choose products that seem or sound familiar. It is a psychological effect that advertisers abuse. Often times you see the same ad multiple times and this establishes that familiarity.
- People should be able to choose if they want to see ads or not. When I need a product and start product hunting than that's the perfect time to open yourself for "suggesting a thing" as you call it. Now if I am just browsing a page like reddit or whatever and see an ad that I really don't want to see, don't need etc etc. THAT is brainwashing because it stays unconsciouslly on your mind if you see it enough times which increases the chances that you'll act on it, buy, think about it. This is basic stuff.
  Many many years from now IF humanity has not wiped out itself and actually evoved, this statement:
  "Advertisement is brainwashing and should be against human rights."
  Will be 100% absolutely true.

Unpopular Opinion: I don’t like ads as much as anyone, I’d rather YouTube monetises 1440p and 4k content instead of forcing people to watch ads. YouTube is an extremely expensive business to run, so it being free forever is completely unsustainable.

Google doesn't pay taxes. They save something like 3-4 billion a year not paying taxes.
It's entirely sustainable.
- What did they charge the government for selling out to the surveilance agencies?
A lot of devices still don't run much more than 1080p so theres not a big audience for what you suggested.
- Cant be that different a number of devices who are running ad block
- Yeah but still with ads for free users.
so it being free forever is completely unsustainable.
Well they own a lot of the infrastructure that makes youtube possible, which means they are keeping their own costs a lot lower than people think. I believe a lot of the 'its unsustainable!!', or 'it makes no money!!' rhetoric we are hearing is come straight from the google PR dept.
I doubt that is remotely enough to keep YouTube from being a moneysink for google
- It's not a money sink. They are using the data they collect to rake in cash. Don't let the fact the money is made by a different business unit fool you into thinking Google is struggling.
- It doubt its as big of a money sink as we are being told.. sounds like google PR working overtime there to me

Suck my balls Google

Next tactic to stop adblocking: we will come to your house and break your fucking legs if you even THINK about installing ublock

Then a few days later ublock removes it

https://github.com/gilbsgilbs/NewPipeSponsorBlock

https://invidious.io/

Spread the word for non IT folks too! Fck up google! Google is evil!

See also, another attack from google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Thank you!
! Fck up google! Google is evil!
but... they specifically told me they were not evil

Google recently announced that it's podcast service is shutting down and moving to YouTube music, I don't want or need YouTube music so I've already moved to Podcast Republic, it has a few ads but they can be removed with a small one off payment. Google just wants to shove all it's users into YouTube and YouTube music for maximum ads and data harvesting.

Heads up as more and more people seem to not know this lately: the overwhelming majority of podcasts are officially and legally available without having to pay for them. Traditionally a podcast was just an mp3 or video file someone posted up on their blog that could be subscribed to via a basic RSS feed.
Anyway, on Android Antenna Pod is a great free and open source app for managong podcasts and youe subscriptions to them. Can get it off F-Droid.
- The way I see it, if a podcast isn't available through RSS it ain't a podcast.
  Spotify exclusives: Not podcasts. Audible exclusives: Not podcasts.
  If I can't listen to it on my phone with Overcast, then I won't listen to it. The only exception for me is stuff on BBC Sounds, but much of that isn't offered as podcast anyway.
- AntennaPod user for years and years here too. I've tried other ones but always come back. It's in the regular play store as well if that's easier for folks.
Pocketcasts. You’re welcome.
- I'm another satisfied pocketcast user.
AntennaPod is available on F-Droid.
Podcast Republic is great, one of the few apps I've kept for years on my phone. I removed the ads ages ago, and I've even sent them an extra tip once in a while.

2025: Search removed. Spend a decade crippling the function, then claim the usage data support getting rid of it!
2027: Expiring updates. Juice those watch numbers with a new artificial scarcity measure. Marvel Bullshit 49 Theatrical Trailer, available for seven days only! Featuring AI Robin Williams and a Mr B_ast guest ad!
2028: Web Environment Integrity inserted. Hand warmer sales crater as mobile viewers relish their new handset functionality.

Reset Ublock orgin and update the filter and Ublock extension. Disable other adblock extension if you have one. Still you would be getting the popup once a while.

Eh, don't need YouTube that badly. I think we'll collectively figure out video distribution without em just fine.

And we can call it something like... I don't know... PeerTube?
- Hell yeah, brother 😎
I haven't seen anything come close to competing with youtube as a centralized video source, everything from documentaries to DIY instructional videos. Sure the idea seems simple but the problem is their success and vast repository keeps us locked in.
- It is more that we, as users, have become a lot more lazy.
  It was rare for one company to host most of the content. Instead, content would be distributed across different websites.
- Not sure your age and I sincerely do not want to critique it either or come across as ageist, but I remember a world without YouTube and all this crap. We're going to be ok if we don't go to YouTube. Not trying to be flippant - really. I understand the monopolistic conundrum we find ourselves in.
  This is where voting and advocating for real legal solutions comes in. Is that easy - no. However there has been progress in the EU and Warren/Cruz are sponsoring a digital rights bill too. If that fails, we keep pushing. It is possible and the encouraging part is that the more they (Google, fb, Amazon, etc.) reveal of their trap the easier it will be for us to pressure politicians.
  Younger folks have allies in older non techy people too. Those folks feel bewildered by their phones, computers, etc. Politicians certainly listen to them and if they have their grandchildren agreeing with them that tech companies are crazy. I almost guarantee they'd agree. See Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz co-sponsorship as some evidence. Talk to folks y'all!
  Also, your library has a lot of content if you are looking for documentaries.
  Kind of sounds like you have tried nothing and you're all out of ideas. Can't say I blame you. Complacency and feelings of no way out is where they want you.
  Spolier monopolies! No one changes until they are under pressure and feel trapped. They're feeding the fire of their own undoing.

Hold the line uBlock Origin. If YT becomes unusable, I'll find somewhere to binge-watch true crime videos at 3am.

just get freetube, it's FOSSome, you don't even need a Google account to subscribe to videos.

Even if I have to sit through 30 seconds of silence, is there a way to redirect the ad to a ghost browser so I don't have to listen to something like grubhubs stupid video?

Not exactly what you have described but better https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/
- I hear the ungoogled chromium is immune to the youtube antiadblock bs while getting rid of google's influence, leaving you to be able to keep your Firefox identity safe without compromising your privacy by going to a browser you know is maintained by a community instead of another corporation
Stop using YouTube, go for new pipe/piped/invidious instead. Same content without the fucking bullshit.
Example: http://yt.whateveritworks.org
- Or ReVanced
- Definitely agree, but your link is protected by cloudflare (yet another centralized service destroying the internet) and therefore I'm unable to get through because I have privacy.resistFingerprinting enabled on my browser so cloudflare is unable to determine I'm human I suppose.
  I despire youtube and it's monopoly, and I think it get's an appropriate amount of hate on here and HN, but what confuses me to no end are the people who complain about youtube turn right around and constantly recommend cloudflare. Can someone explain what I am missing?

Fuck youtube

Yeah. This is becoming a problem with Google. Whatever they have created they just want to make it shit. Like everybody can't just pay and the amount of ads just makes it unwatchable.

On my firefox this rarely shows up though. I use the privacy extensions uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes.

one way to look at it is a blessing in disguise. instead of dissociating with YT, now you have all this time to figure out who you actually are and then become that thing. i imagine it's more rewarding than passively watching YT.
- Because hobbies don't exist? Only jobs?
It sounds like you algorithmically encourage this content too

"allowlisted" topkek

A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended but not display the ads. There would be no way for the site to know you can't see them. Blocking their activation just signals the site that you are using an adblocker.

Edit: I was thinking more of a VM sandbox like another comment said

Lmao, time for anti anti-adblock! 🤣 https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/

holy crap that one works great!
(youtube has come to your house and taped your mouth shut)

#BoycottGoogle

More PeerTube please!

Do we really need a new post about this, with the same screenshot, every time it happens to someone for the first time?

Someone please make an extension so it automatically redirects to piped.video or something else.

Been getting that lately after successfully avoiding it for a bit. Just not gonna use it directly anymore.

For me the solution is to just log out and only login to comment or watch shorts.

If you log out, they still harvest your data from your IP address. tbh I don't what you're trying to accomplish with this.
- The system is automated to disable video player for accounts, not for IP Addresses. It doesn't disable video player no matter how many times you see the popup if you're not logged in.

I will happily either find an alternative frontend, or just stop watching youtube all together. It's done nothing good to my life either way

For a while, I've been quietly preparing for the day when YT becomes unusable. I've been using Odysee and Peertube to see if they are viable options. To some limited extent they already are, but there are still lots of room for improvement. Just like Mastodon feels like the early days of Twitter, Lemmy feels like the early days of Reddit, Odysee is a bit like YT once was a very long time ago.
in recent years, YT has been working hard to kick out certain types of channels, so nowadays you can find that sort of content in some of the other platforms. It depends on what you're looking for, so the experience can be anything between awful and great.
invidio.us

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/

I LOVE SUBSCRIPTION BASED SERVICES

Drink verification can.

I have yet to see anything like this with my adblocker.

Is this fake? I thought the term is whitelisted not allowlisted

In recent years there's been a shift from "white/black list" to "allow/block list" in an effort to avoid the stereotypes associated with those terms. I wouldn't say it's the new norm yet, but it's slowly becoming more popular.
- Ah like the master/slave becoming server/client?
  I still don’t like allow list though. Block list seems fine. Maybe access list?
- I hate that.
  With flying they changed NOTAM from notices to airmen to notices to air missions or something.
  Calm tf down. Will they change Human to hupersons next? Man-made to huperson-made? GTFO here.
- Yeah, basically the demand for hate outstrips the supply, so they decided that whitelist/blacklist is racist. Its just a power trip, being able to change peoples vocab with nonsense.

Originally there was an X. Now I have to wait a few seconds before I can click the X. This pause gives me time to think if I really need to watch this video, which more and more often is turning into a "not really".

This is why we use Frontends... NewPipe, FreeTube, Invidious, Piped, etc c: Otherwise the nuclear option; "mpv https://youtu.be/url"

Okay, I don't ever see this problem. Using Brave and uBlock origin in Firefox. Maybe just update your filters once in a while?

Fortunately I haven't gotten any warnings but my dad did last night. I cleared ublock's cache and updated the lists. Hopefully it works.

[Edit] Nope my dad is still getting warnings about ublock origin.

Google is updating their code every few hours to adjust to ublock code. Just keep updating it daily.
I did this because a version of this pop-up started showing up in every video for me this week. Didn't help. I'm thinking about using piped, though I really don't like the UI, it's not polished enough.
- My dad is still getting the ad blocker warning. :-/

Yeah. This is becoming a problem with Google. Whatever they have created they just want to make it shit. Like everybody can't just pay and the amount of ads just makes it unwatchable.

On my firefox this rarely shows up though. I use the privacy extensions uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes.

This is only the 3764th post this week..

And I will gladly read 3,764 posts more.
- To be the man who read 7,528 posts to fall down at your door
- To be a man whode read 3765 posts is more than I asked for.

Remember when the hopper was going to be the end of free TV?

Streisand effect

I love how a massive Internet company is trying to act like their service isnt on the internet and like they don't know what that means
🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️
Currently downloading all of my favorite YouTubers content ad free 🖕

Which browser is this?

"Used by billions woldwide"?

Yeah, literally?
2.7 billion active users.
- Oh fuck, I don't know where my mind had gone when I wrote that. I think I briefly forgot how many people there are.

Do Pi-Holes work for this?

I've been using Brave browser with no issues

It's rolling put regionally

Look this is different than pirating a game or bypassing a newspaper paywall. Watching content on YouTube simply costs money to YouTube. It's not like torrenting a game or movie, where while you haven't paid for the content, it didn't cost anything to the owner other than theoretical revenue. And it's not like bypassing a newspaper paywall, either, where the cost to the newspaper to serve you the story is practically negligible and the real costs are fixed and not related to how many people actually read the story.

Hosting video costs money and nobody can replace YouTube's massive library or realistically replicate their business model. I mean just look at image/gif hosting sites, they constantly go bust like Photobucket because storing everyone's pictures forever and for free isn't not a real business model.

YouTube needs to be paid for its gonna go the way of Photobucket.

Google has billions. YouTube pirates (can we call ourselves that yet?) are not going to bankrupt Google. In fact, Alphabet is spending more on their crackdown for sake of principle.
But Google is beholden to its shareholders, whose interests are diametrically opposed to that of the general public, so any gain by Google is a loss to the rest of us.
So any profit we can deny the Google machine remains instead in the economy, rather than vaulted in offshore accounts or used to further lock down the empires of the shareholders.
The day I can't watch YouTube sans commercials is the day I quit watching YouTube. And then it will get absolute-zero engagement from me.
So bring it. I do not need YouTube, and it needs viewers like me.
Corpo shill alert
YouTube doesn’t need to get paid (by the users watching their ads) they get paid through you, the actual product. What you watch what you click on what you search for, these are ALL monitizable. You think Google is protecting your data instead of selling it lmao
Furthermore how much is enough? They gonna keep adding more and more unskipable ads more pre/mid/post rolls, b-b-but the multi fucking billion dollar corpo needs to get pAiD!!!!
Grow up
- Só your solution is instead of charging the viewer charge who? The person that puts videos up?
  Do you really think your anonymized user data is worth the 20 bucks/user the YouTube premium costs?
  In your mind YouTube can just sell the data for the 2 billion users they have and instantly make 40 billion dollars a month from that?
Does that boot taste good or something?
Everything has to be free; I won't pay a dime. If anyone tries to make money (aka any business), they are evil.
Lemmy
Let it die. Creators will go elsewhere. We need to shake up the ancien regime a bit
- Go where? The only companies that can afford to do unlimited video forever for everyone are the likes of Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Meta tried to steal VOD watchers from YouTube years ago, they failed. Amazon tried to get into VOD via Twitch, they gave up. Microsoft tried to come after Twitch with Mixer, they failed. Moreover, a lot of the things we hate about youtube like poor content moderation, the copyright system, demonetization, etc arent youtubes fault. The broken copyright system is just a result of what copyright law is, it'd probably be worse on a different site since they wouldn't have the special agreement YouTube has with major copyright holders to serve as an intermediary. Instead of content strikes, or an ad revenue claim, that youtube has the special power to do, you'd just default to DMCA takedowns for everything immediately. And yeah content moderation and demonetization is bad but Youtube never wanted to do this right? They were happily showing ads on ISIS videos, its advertisers that forced them, which is how we ended up with a system that randomly pulls ads from videos if there is a hint of something an ad agency would object too. I mean it's either this or advertisers don't advertise at all, which fucks everyone, instead of a few people.
- And are you going to pay to host the petabytes of 4K content? Or are you going to expect other people to pay that when these creators jump ship?
Google would never give up on a project!

I'll look forward to reading this yet again next week, alongside all the entitlement in the comments section that seem to think running YouTube is free and recommending trash alternatives which have less than 1% of YouTube's content and don't even work.

See you next week!

The childish, whiny entitlement around here is stunning. Don't like it? OK. Don't fucking use it.
- I believe I know where the entitlement is coming from: Most people here are literal children who never worked or paid for anything in their life. The mental gymnastics going in here to justify consuming a commercial service for free is staggering.
  I switched from reddit to lemmy to avoid the tiktok crowd that invaded reddit over the last few years, but it looks like this place has already gone to shit, too.

Every day same post complaining about this..

I normally complain about the same thing being reported over and over. But this one event is actually affecting a lot of people who use the fediverse.
- It’s not really a problem though, least not one worth being constantly all over my feed. the solution is in the picture. Allow YT ads or pay , it’s really not the hard.
You don't have to read them or comment on them

Youtube is squeezing one party really hard while pretending the other party doesn't owe shit to keep their monopoly. Start charging uploaders. If YouTube needs to up what they're earning because of things like bandwidth cost and what not make uploaders cover some of that cost. They're a business making money off of the platform so charge them.

This is the worst possible take I've heard this week, probably this year.
You would fuck over thousands of people, in addition to creating a bar of entry for anyone wanting to post a video or start a channel. Like I genuinely don't even know where to begin explaining how bad this take is.
- But I don't want to pay and I want everything for free! Make somebody else pay for my enjoyment!
- My statement was far too broad for it to be "setting a bar of entry". YouTube is trying to squeeze its viewers for every drop they can without having uploaders and im obviously not talking about the little guy here shoulder any of that cost. Who in your mind is responsible for the cost associated with lets say a Mr Beast video? Is it Mr Beast or is it the viewer? I think it's both.
They already are, by monetizing the content they didn’t create, and paying creators just a fraction of the revenue generated.

Pay?

I am winning to pay for content I like. But using their propietary app? No thanks.
- Then don't use it 🤷‍♂️
Hello, you must be new here. We don't like to be held accountable for anything and simply vocalize all our problems in an echo chamber where we collectively agree that other people should be held accountable instead. I hope this offers some context for the downvotes.
- Meanwhile, at expensive private schools across the world, budding young neoliberals are being taught there is nothing more reprehensible than not milking every possible person of every possible penny.
  Not even child slavery.

Man y'all really expect high quality, extremely diverse, and robust video streaming platform for free?!

YouTube gotta pay it's bills somehow. Why y'all ok with paying Netflix/prime/hulu or whatever but not YouTube?!

YouTube don't owe nobody free services. Get over it.

It’s google. They’re paying their bills just fine
Awww, poor little YouTube/Google/Alphabet, helpless and basically living on the streets, barely able to make ends meet.
literally laughs my fucking ass off
If it is so dire for the poor conglomerate, it could shutdown YouTube to cut costs.
crickets
That's what I thought.
- So they should just provide you a totally free service the costs them money because...? Are they still going to pay creators or do you want everyone to work for free to entertain you?
  Petition the government to make a nationally owned and run video sharing site if that's what you want, don't be surprised when a capitalist company doesn't give you everything you want for free
Corporate apologia 🙄
- Do you work for free yourself? Is it completely unreasonable to expect money in return for your services?
I have YouTube Premium because I also use YouTube Music, so the subscription fee is worth it for me.
But if you don't use YouTube Music, it's far too expensive and tough to justify the cost for YouTube alone.
- It's $25 CAD. You can add 5 family members. It's literally $5 per month.
- Yep. That's why I also pay for it. It's a reasonable price for a valued service. Moaners gotta moan.
The ads are just out of control. Back when it was one, maybe two, ads that were 10-20s long combined, I was willing to sit through it. Now there are almost always multiple ads concurrent, ads in the middle of the video, ads at the end of the video if it plays all thr way through, then ads again before the next video plays.
Bring it back to a single ad at the beginning of the video and give me a variety of ads so it isn't the same 3 over and over, and I'll sit and watch it.
- That's the way greed creeps.
  You could build a successful service that brought in $1 million a month from happy users treated ethically, but there will always be an insatiable psycopath whispering "if we sold our user data, we could make a extra $100k each month".
  So one ad becomes two. Users are tracked and the information sold. Algorithms are created to make services as addictive as possible, because "one more video" turns into "4 more ads".
  However many apologists may post about poor, destitute Google being unable to feed their children because people aren't watching enough ads, we're absolutely correct to oppose that endless creeping.
  There is always another sleazy way to manipulate people out of money. Companies need to learn to accept that their tens of millions of dollars profit are enough.
Cry us a river. I will find ways to block ads and tell people how to do it
Difference is those other networks actually make content thats arguably seen as worth paying for. YouTube recycles user content and barely pays those users for it. Yes you can say that they deserve your money for servers and whatnot, but you can’t compare YouTube with those other services you mentioned and expect people to cry big crocodile tears…
I wouldn't object to paying if:
Their pricing was more reasonable
A fairer cut went to content creators
They had something that actually qualified as a search function on their site
They weren't trying to bully everyone into paying
- This. I used to pay for ytp family plan, way back when now. I had to skip a month as money was that tight. When I went to resub, they wanted an extra ~$5 a month, or like 25%, for the same content and features. No advertised changes in revenue sharing amounts.
  I just pay creators directly now, via patreon and ko-fi. I don't care about yt, I care about a few creators. A few have stated that $1 is more than they make from yt per user per month. The revenue split is wild.
  I don't care about ytm. Cut the cost in half and give more to the people that are actually providing content. Right now yt in my eyes is greedy and their additional price hikes solidify that.
- I think the price is very fair if you split the family plan with others
  Also I think creators get a 55% cut for ad revenue which seems reasonable to me
I dont use those particular other services to be fair. I do admittedly pay for Nebula, but to my understanding that is supposed to be more creator driven and is quite cheap anyway.
The thing about YouTube adblocking, at least for me, is that I dont think they owe me free and ad free content, or that they should be obligated to offer that for some reason. I fully understand that delivering video the way they do costs some amount of money even if not very much for an individual user, so blocking their monetization scheme means that using their website costs them money. However, I do not like or respect that company, I feel that their engagement algorithms have proven generally harmful to society as a whole by pushing people to more extreme content to improve retention, and I feel that their position as the primary place anyone thinks of to upload or view video not created by large scale studios is non-ideal. As such, when I do end up watching something there (content which, I might add, isnt even something that they create, just stuff independent creators are pretty much forced to upload there to be relevant as they are by far the largest game in town for their niche), I'm not bothered by blocking their ads, because I dont really care about Youtube's profit margin. If anything, if doing so actually harms them, in some tiny way, that is a bonus in my book.
They’re one of the largest companies in world: they are the bills
People out here are really dick riding YouTube lmao.
- Most importantly they are simping for Google and acting as though YouTube is an independent company with its own separate stocks and unaffiliated under the Google monolith.
If Google wasn’t so blatantly malicious in their advertising practices then I would gladly pay for YouTube premium. However, their current business model of “take any and every bit of data on them to sell more product” is morally repugnant. Subsequently, I feel no shame in blocking ads and using invidious to avoid giving them even a cent of revenue.
Poor Google. Such a small company struggling to get by.
YouTube is highly profitable already.
How much of their revenue is spent toward content generation?
I know but ... YouTube belongs to YouTube, and I'm sure google is already making tons of money selling/using the data of all their users so... I would not have a problem with one or two ads, but they often put three or more annoying ads per video.
Meh if YouTube died tomorrow there would be a competitor the next day. Google bought YouTube back in the day and there are already like platforms.
Yes
😂 reading the replies to your comment is the fun part. Watching people lose their minds over a comment.
Yeah, you can tell by the replies how much this forum is filled with entitled children and hipster anarchists.
That and by how anytime Google is mentioned here in literally any context, the top comments are all about how much people hate Google. Could be an article about Google rescuing lost kittens, and people here will make up stories about how Google is doing it for some evil reason and it's a threat to the internet as we know it.
Anyone who tries to argue with me will be summarily blocked because I don't have the patience today. Thanks in advance for helping me populate my block list.
- You and the other person's misrepresentation of the reason others are complaining about this are little more than complaining about other people complaining.