So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.
And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I’ve been on Firefox for over a year.
I would actually pay for Youtube Premium Family, where it not for the fact that it does not work with gsuite accounts (which I have for my family).
We have spotify for the family, and I would cancel that and switch to youtube and music premium of google. For three dollars more we get ad-less youtube as well as music.
Sorry google, gotta pay attention to these things.
$ yt-dlp [URL]
correct
Ok so I’m not saying the correct solution to this is to just give Google the money they want, but for me YouTube premium is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to. (Unless you count the lifetime Plex pass I got on sale years ago, lol)
Things like our smart TV or the kid’s iPad work flawlessly, including convenient downloads for trips. And since I watch a lot on my TV, it’s nice having higher bitrate available.
YouTube music is a nice addon for music in the car, even though it doesn’t make or break the deal.
And as I understand it, creators make significantly more money from premium views than ad-supported views. I like watching all kinds of niche scientific/tech/educational creators so I like to know they’re getting a bit more from me
is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to.
i mean that bar is pretty low
This is my sentiment too.
You know what, I complete agree!! I realised I spend 10x the time on YouTube compared to Netflix.
And then, at least in the U.K., there’s a mobile phone plan that includes a YouTube premium membership, so it works out at 2/5ths the price.
x
Fuck the advertisers. I care way more about them turning screws on the creators.
Serious question. Can a pihole stop this? I’ve been thinking about building one for my house.
It won’t stop ads delivered by the same servers as the content.
Diversion, the ad blocker built into the Merlin fork of the Asus router firmware, is able to do this. It functions in the same way as a pihole. It’s not always perfect, but serviceable on devices that can’t use an adblocker like chromecasts.
Pinhole works at the network level. You need browser extensions like ublock-origin to filter this on the client side.
Edit: You also have apps like adguard, which work like Pihole, and do cosmetic filtering like ublock-origin.
The best part is that it gets worse
Show me something that gets better.
Brave Browser gets around YT’s ads.
False. The screen doesn’t have 99% ad to 1% actual content. Not an accurate representation of the future.
That is actually how the Xbox user interface started to look like after a while. It went from “what you probably want functions” to 80% ad, whitespace and “suggestions” with a Play the game somewhere in there.
For those with iOS, please watch through Firefox Focus. It blocks YT ads!
Or sideload uYou/uYou+, works really well!
Or use Yattee and Piped (no need jailbreak)
I prefer using yattee, but lately most instances throw an error and has been unusable for me, hopefully it can work more consistently over time
Find a peertube instance you like and start uploading content on there! I’ll come watch your videos 😊
It sucks. What sucks even more for me is that, I understood the fact that a platform like YouTube costs an unimaginable amount. I get that. And I wanted to pay. As a matter of fact, I did pay, happily so, for quite while. For YouTube Prenium Lite. Until a week ago I think, where I got this wonderful email from Google titled: Kindly go fuck yourself… or at least that’s how I read it… telling me that YouTube Prenium Lite was going the way of the Google graveyard. Because of course it did. And now, it was paying for full Prenium or nothing.
So I stopped paying. I’m not paying 13 bucks a month for no ads. Especially if you’re basically strong arming me in doing so, I’ll do without YouTube.
Because hey, I tried YouTube Music. It’s actually quite good in many aspects (horrendously flawed in many others too, of course, but that’s most Music Streaming services) but you know what? I know it’s been years, but I’m still not over Google Play Music and how they killed that off for what was an inferior product back then. Why the fuck would I invest my time and money in a Google product, nowadays? I’m sorry if you reading this were one of these people, but it’s like… to the people who were paying for Stadia and were shocked to learn that the service was shutting down… I’m sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you? It was bound to happen, from the moment it was announced, the entire internet started joking about the fact that this thing will be dead in two years!
I refuse to pay for a Google product nowadays. It’s like paying for a live service game at release, it’s rolling the dice and betting against the colossal odds that this thing will be dead in two years. So, unless it’s a Pixel, so I can slap something else than stock Android on it and that’s basically it. Google can suck it, they won’t get a cent from me.
It’s like I paid for Prenium Lite because I loved YouTube. Hell, YouTube stopped being a good product a long time ago, I was paying for the content I was watching. Gotta support creators, you know? And also, because I watched a lot of YouTube on my TV, and you can’t slap Ublock on that. It was a reasonable enough price. But now? Fuck YouTube, I’m done with this. I’ve been hating this platform more and more for a while now, the algorithm is awful, it keeps recommanding me stuff I don’t want (why the hell does YouTube insist and recommanding me far right content, jesus christ, stop!). And even without ads, you still get them because monetization is so damn inconsistent creators can only depend on sponsors, I could go on and on.
So now, it’s NewPipe on mobile, Piped on desktop and I guess I’ll just find something better to watch on TV. I’m paying for Nebula, it’s cheap, doesn’t have even a third of the people who I watched on YouTube, but at least it’s creator centric and it’s got a lot of good, interesting stuff on it. I’ve been watching lots of Twitch lately, and while yes, I agree, fuck Amazon, at least I can just pay for the people who I watch most to get no ads, it’s a reasonable price, support them and Twitch ads are not nerely as horrendous YouTube’s are in terms of frequency. So, yeah. I don’t miss it.
I use FreeTube on desktop and NewPipe on mobile. I’m still searching for a solution to the AppleTV.
guess I’ll just find something better to watch on TV
smarttube, you can even login
Sadly, I use an Apple TV.
chuck it in the bin and get a 29 bucks android tv device
YouTube- is a terrible experience.
For me, what works perfectly is this setup:
Desktop – Adguard
Android – YouTube ReVanced
Never get adverts ever. The day I’m forced is the day I stop using it altogether.
Have you tried Freetube (desktop) or Newpipe / Libretube (Android)? Working fine for me.
of course those work its just annoying seeing the main site crumble this way. I shouldn’t have to use third party workarounds when the first party site can be making improvements easily
Patch it with Revanced.
Add in sponsors that some ass holes throw 2-3 in a video (FU LTT) and I don’t know how people watch YouTube with ads. It sucks so bad.
I do pay for premium, but use smart tube on my android tv box and it feels so good when it rolls right past them.
At least you can skip LTT ads.Try that with YT ads.
SmartTube is some of the greatest software ever made
sponsorblock is a godsend for that type of stuff
Sponsors are the biggest argument for not getting YouTube Premium, in my opinion.
You spend money on YouTube Premium and still have a bunch of ads, so you need to use sponsorblock, and if you’re using that just use an ad blocker too.
