maybe adblock is good
I just realised i haven’t watched a single ad in like 2 years
Thanks ublock origin!
When you see the long ad, just close the fuckin’ browser window. Immediately. And then use something else.
They’ll only get the point and change if you stop giving them your eyeballs for shit you don’t wanna see.
Where?
Oh! On the web interface? n_n I don’t use the web interface. It’s video, so I use a video player. I see no ads, ~ if I do [like ads read out by the podcast host], I skip ahead.
on YouTube’s TV app
That’s where you went wrong. Come to the free software community. We can mend bugs (like malicious features (like ads)) with free software, being free to use, study, share & change the software.
Then there’s me using Revanced and Unlock Origin
Also, if you have an Android TV you can use SmartTube there
quality of content that I’ve been seeing on YouTube in my feed has decreased or I have gotten bored. but either way I have made a point to stop visiting that website as much as possible
I need to get back into reading. my ability to maintain focus has deteriorated so severely in recent years that I can’t even play a stupid video game anymore
Ublock Origin, NewPipe, and Grayjay, haven’t seen a YouTube ad in over a decade. 😌
Last time I saw a youtube ad was probably 2009. Or it might have been 2008.
Android: https://newpipe.net/
Smart TV: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
Computer: https://ublockorigin.com/
SmartTube is for Android, as is NewPipe. You need a Smart TV with Android TV. Other TVs do not have a way out.
Their way out is using an external device.
Of course, but it’s a bit misleading. I thought it might be helpful to add that comment.
They did? They can’t? I haven’t noticed. 🤷
“unskippable”
I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube for years, with 2 simple browser plugins. Assuming you’re on a PC:
Ublock Origin Sponsor Block
If you’re using chrome, you already fucked up.
Better specify your browser: Firefox
The same fucking comment every single time.
This platform is so predictable.
The problem stays the same, why should the answer change?
Mostly because the problem is systemic, so the response should be as well. Your answer was individualistic.
Individual change always places the blame on you. The real focus should be on the system that puts you under this pressure.
Its not like those are mutually exclusive. Long term vs short term fix.
It wasn’t my answer, but I’ll play the part.
I agree with you in cases where individual change is hard, costly and has barely any influence on the big picture (like your “individual CO2 footprint”). But in this case the individual solution is to quit using a terrible browser and install a free extension in the new one, and it has all the impact it needs because it makes the problem go away. I can’t take anybody seriously who will willingly put themselves through youtube ads when they are this easily avoided.
In your example you say reducing your individual CO2 print is hard. It’s not. It just has no real effect against the larger problem. The same thing is true here.
And that’s why the ads will always exist and people will always complain about them. It also funds them to eventually find ways around your individual solutions.
I guess answers like these misunderstand that you’re fighting a losing battle.
I dunno, I was just hoping for something more insightful.
Something more insightful than the obvious solution screaming in your face?
I was hoping for some comments that realized not everyone wants to go to such lengths to avoid watching ads.
Or that people use devices such as Chromecasts.
If you use a Google service on a locked down Google device, what magic fix are you hoping for? There are limits. If you’re unwilling to make any meaningful change, then unfortunately you’re out of luck and either need to suck it up and watch the ads, or pay Google for an ad-free experience. Or you can leave their ecosystem and be free.
If there’s no solution to your device, then the only solution is a new device. At some point, it made sense for me to switch out my Chromecast (gen 1? puck) and go with a dedicated media pc. Now the Chromecast lives in the garage to stream music uninterrupted while I can still watch YouTube tutorials
That’s a lot more hassle than most people are willing to go through just to watch YouTube.
Grayjay
Edit: instead of making a snarky comment, I should probably do the right thing for fellow lemmings and explain:
I’m fucking old and I’ve seen this before. It’s the same model as it was with TV and Cable. Air tv becomes so ad ridden than when Cable comes “ad free” we all start paying and switch over. A decade later the “base” cable TV plan is so ad ridden that they come up with “premium channels”, so you sign up for that so you can watch a movie without 10 minute ad break in the middle or 4 minute ad breaks on series. Then channels start splitting into “base” and “premium” versions (e.g. Discovery or History). Base channel is now just RealityTV garbage.
I got fed up and started following creators on Google Video (then YouTube), Vimeo, listening to stuff on ShoutCast (that was winamp’s podcast/radio thing). Then Netflix comes out, decent service. Every other media company wants a piece of the pie. Slowly but surely every decent movie/series on Netflix gets moved to their respective production company’s service: disney, HBO, Paramount+… Netflix starts toying with ads, now disney…
Slowly YT starts adding ads on the sidebar, then in the lower third, then pre-rolls. Now there’s “premium bitrate” behind a paywall. At some point I said “fuck it I’m not playing ball anymore”. Why pay premium? it’ll be the same as it’s always been. Soon enough “premium” yt will be the only way to watch over 360p quality, they’ll lower a bit the cost of YT Premium, ppl will jump in and down the road they’ll add ads back.
I’d rather donate a buck to my favorite creators, it’ll be 100x more income that whatever they’d get off my views.
Ads on YouTube are a solvable problem. Why not spread the knowledge?
It’s a good reply even if it helps but one person
No, I don’t see them and the day I cannot block ads anymore is the day I am going to stop using YouTube. It’s really not that important to life.
why wait? Give invidious a try, or see if any of the creators you follow also uploads their videos in PeerTube or odyssey or something… The creators, I do follow does that - its good.
I know of PeerTube and like the concept. Out of my 57 subscribed channels only 2 are available via PeerTube, 4 more are available on other sites. I hope this will improve. I’m not using the normal YouTube interface. I’ve customised it to my needs with injected scripts plus additional cosmetic blocking, e.g. I filter out unwanted search results and removed all shorts. For now it works well enough. Anyway, I’m already in the process of reducing YouTube consumption.
Invidious is developed really poorly. The documentation even recommends restarting the service hourly for what I assume has to do with memory leakage (they don’t actually mention the reason, but memory leaks are significant either way). I’d stay away from that project.
I use Grayhay since it makes it so all platforms I follow are on there and I can easily download videos if I want, plus follow people like Louis Rossmann on peertube, YouTube, if they have patreon or nebula there too.
I don’t think they’d give a shit if you left, it’s not like they’re making any money off you.
Oh, I don’t care if they care about me. The attention of my comment was to express how unimportant YouTube has become for me.
Are you under the impression that Bad_Ideas_In_Bulk is one person? Physically they might be, but their words represent a massive amount of people. I think millions of people would stop watching if they had to endure youtube without adblock.
And given that YouTube probably loses money money on those people, I don’t think they would miss them.
… Why would I care if they miss me?
Why would I care about their opinions at all? I’m pretty sure we care about each other’s opinions about equally as is.
Use a vpn with exit node in albania. No ada and no forced sign in.
The other day I was doing dishes and couldn’t skip the ad, so I let the whole 90second ad run. Guess what followed? Another 90second ad.
Hey YouTube? The endpoint of enshittification is this: I wipe my ass and flush you.
Keep going, YouTube. You’re not so important that we can’t just leave.
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
So keep at it.
Keep injecting unskippable ads, flooding the feed with AI slop, letting bots post porn, demonetising and hiding quality content, using DMCA like a digital SLAPP against content creators, and using the algorithm to warp reality.
Your value proposition is ubiquity. That’s it. That’s all you have. Without popular buy-in, you’re dead.
We proles? We have something better than loyalty.
We have spite.
So keep pissing people off - because watching you die on a very stupid hill of your own design will be entertaining AF.
For everyone else, see you on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !privacy@lemmy.world. Come and learn how you can replace all of these pieces of shit.
And in the meantime - yt-dlp should still work to download what you actually want to keep, and SmartTube is black magic incarnate.
You forgot https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
A vile den of scum and villainy :)
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
Exactly my thoughts too.
Yes. You will quit YouTube. But 99% of people won’t and they make YouTube more revenue via either watching more ads or giving up and subscribing
All we can do is point the way. There are alternatives - we’re using one right now.
I’m for giving people choices. People should be empowered with knowledge.
Whether they choose the act on that knowledge is up to them.
None of those have all the creators and people don’t want to go between multiple apps.
This fight is lost. The way to win it now is legislation or blowing up data centers.
I disagree. The fight isn’t lost - it hasn’t even started yet.
People are apathetic and/or ignorant to alternatives. Some of those people can be appealed to - or on sufficient enshittification, motivated into action.
Spite is a wonderful reagent.
Additionally, the apathy of the masses has no impact on individual response.
Things already exist that marry disparate platforms (eg: Grayjay, Kodi plug ins etc).
We need not wait. And while I remain sanguine that YT will piss off enough people eventually, I’d sooner code my own app, that joins all my streams - and release it into the wild - than let others dictate what I can and cannot do.
None of those well ever compare to youtube. You think all the videos are going to stay on those platforms forever? You think they well scale to youtube levels of users?
YouTube is too big to fail” is not the flex you think it is.
No, I do not expect any one of those platforms to “become YouTube.” That is not the point. The point is reducing dependence on a platform that has spent years making itself worse because it assumes users have nowhere else to go.
Fuck that and fuck them.
Scale? Things do not need to match YouTube’s total global footprint to be useful.
They need to serve actual human beings well enough that migration becomes viable.
That is how this starts: not with 2 billion people moving at once, but with chunks of users, creators, and communities deciding they’re sick of eating shit.
As for “will the videos stay there forever?”
They are not staying on YouTube forever either. Videos get demonetised, geo-blocked, copyright-nuked, hidden by algorithmic sludge, or deleted all the time.
Centralisation does not guarantee permanence. It guarantees dependence.
I’m not for that.
That is why people mirror, self-host, archive, syndicate, and build bridges between platforms.
People imagine only one possible future: “Everyone stays on YouTube because YouTube is big.”
I am pointing at the much more obvious one:
“YouTube keeps enshittifying itself until more and more people route around it.”
It does not have to die overnight. It just has to become less necessary.
Soon enough, YT will block all the clever back doors we use with uBlock, Smartube, Revanced, Newpipe etc. Then what? Eat shit? Nah.
This thread has inspired me to roll up my sleeves and see what I can think thru. I already have a back of napkin idea for a basic MVP that joins all those services I mentioned into 1 front end. I will make it for myself and when its solid enough, throw it up on Codeberg for others to fork and improve.
You can also contribute to PipeLine, it’s a desktop client that aggregates YouTube and a few others. And it’s written in Rust.
The issue with YouTube is the network effect though. Even if you can get a lot of users to use one of those multi platform clients, it’s still hard to get the creators to leave. And till they stay, the users stay.
it doesn’t matter, when people are fed up with that shit they will just go back to watch any other platform (tv, streaming, tiktok)
scale does not matter, these alternatives are not trying to scale like youtube because youtube is unsustainable in the first place
I finally gave up and subscribed, but only because the people I wanted to watch weren’t all available elsewhere and because I was lazy
but this year I will be canceling YouTube as my last subscription
Yea I put in the effort and set up my pinchflat quadlet again. Fuck this.
