For context I’m in the US. The last time I used YouTube without an ad blocker, there were 2 ads back to back, and way too frequently. I tried watching on my PlayStation tonight, and not only are they more frequent, they’ve increased in quantity by 150%. It’s also very common for the last ad to last 2 minutes to over an hour long. What the actual fuck, why would anyone watch YouTube without an ad blocker at this point? It’s literally unwatchable
Edit: the amount of unsolicited advice in the comments is unreal. I don’t get ads on my phone or on desktop, I’m very aware of how to block them. I simply won’t watch YouTube on my PlayStation anymore. I’m not looking for suggestions, please stop with the recommendations.
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I use revanced and ublock origin and I haven’t seen ads in an entire year, I completely forgot how bad it is
I have a theory that they want you to get so annoyed that you suck it up and pay for premium.
Instead, I decreased my YouTube consumption, turned on my adblocker for low-quality content, or content from an unmonetized creator, or content showing something technically illegal (game OSTs or a motorcycle review involving going 2x the speed limit), and donated to some patreons and purchased a year of Nebula.
iOS
Using Altstore + Sideloaded by uYouEnhanced = no ads on Youtube ads.
Safari + AdGuard extension works too
Android
Use Revanced or NewPipe.
Firefox with uBlock Origin should also work on android.
Bruh, Adblock. Vanced.
There are ways.
You lack reading comprehension
I always wondered but, do pi-holes work on consoles/smart TVs?
Pihole works network-wide.
If ads are served on a separate domain, then pihole blockers still work on consoles/smart TVs
But mostly all ad-supported video streaming services realized that if they serve ads from ads.example.com and content from content.example.com, then it’s trivial to have an adfree experience by just blocking ads.example.com.
So, YouTube ads URLs are made to be indistinguishable from YouTube video URLs from just watching network traffic, or in Pluto tv the ads are directly embedded in the stream
too bad
They should for most purposes. YT has started to try and make it much harder to block their ads, which I think has made Pihole ineffective for that.
Connecting the Pi up to the TV and using it as the player should be an option.
Wouldnt buy a pi for that tho, but if it could make all youtube in my house ad free it wouldve been awesome, sad
Local AdBlock (UBlock Origin) should be fine for anything browser based. It’s really only consoles and smart TVs, where you ‘own’ the hardware but have no control over the software.
Bruh. PlayStation.
No AdBlock, no vanced. There are no ways.
My dude are you browsing Lemmy on your PlayStation?
Grab a chromecast HDMI stick and just stream it from your phone. There are ways.
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Pihole. It’s a hardware device that plugs into your router and blocks traffic to known advert domains.
It works network-wide, so this works even on non-standard platforms like Playstation.
Like the above poster said, there are ways. Just not the ones they suggested.
Pihole doesn’t do absolutely anything against YouTube ads as they use the same domains for ads and videos.
If you tell pihole to block the domain from where YouTube ads are served, then you effectively blocked all YouTube videos
Ah it doesn’t work for YouTube? That’s a bum :(
I think it’s even by accident, wasn’t carefully engineered to block the DNS ad blockers, but just that, since the beginning, all YouTube ads are just links to videos on the advertiser account.
It’s also a reason why sometimes you get an irritating 5 minute trap video as an ad: that channel is inflating their view counter on their music video by just paying YouTube for extra views
Doesn’t work when the ads and content are served from the same domain.
PiHole for fucks sake. And stop buying shit from companies that proceed to force shit upon you unlubed and unwarned.
I don’t typically stream videos on my gaming console.
This isn’t helpful if you’re doing something like visiting relatives.
Edit: For those curious, here are my personal ways I AdBlock for myself…
TV - get an android TV device like a Chromecast and install SmartTube Next
Phone - install YouTube Vanced; unfortunately not available on iPhones
Web browser - Use uBlock Origin
When I’m out visiting others and not using my own devices though the ads piss me off still lol
Is Vanced working again? I thought it went under a few years ago.
Revanced, yes.
Given that this post is about YouTube on PlayStation the solution there is … don’t watch YouTube on PlayStation.
PiHole doesn’t block YouTube ads because they’re served from the same server as the content in the video.
uBlock is the real answer.
There’s no uBlock for PlayStation as far as I know. I don’t think there is a solution other than “subscribe to premium” or “don’t watch YouTube on your console”.
Could you try to get Smart Tube on there somehow?
Right, I forgot the conversation is about PlayStation
that would be correct. get a cheap laptop… even a shitty one for $200 (new) will work for yt… hook it up to hdmi, get a wireless kb/trackpad to stream surf from the sofa. i set a laptop (a junky stream14 with emmc) to not shut off when lid is closed. it stays closed. i sleep and wake it from the kb (k400 early model). that is my streaming ‘device’: browser (firefox)+addons>apps any day.
That’s a clunky, ugly and pricey solution that’s not suitable for 99% of all people.
Just get a cheap Google TV or Fire TV stick (starts at $20 not $200), install SmartTube and you not only will get a remote control come with it, you can control it with your TV’s remote via HDMI-CEC. You can also install any other official or personal streaming solution you like with full features like HDR etc.
an x64 laptop that can run anything you want, including browser addons or os ‘apps’ if that’s your jam, is clunky and ‘not suitable’ for “99%”? 99% of tv viewers wouldn’t know how to sideload an alternate ‘app’ or that they even exist. and ‘ugly’? the lid is always closed, it’s tucked away. i can’t even see it. as far as cost… used laptops are often given away. the one i use was someone’s discarded junk and is even new enough to ‘officially’ support 11 (it also does linux quite well).
an x64 laptop that can run anything
That used to be true, but simply is no longer the case. Commercial streaming services are heavily restricting how and what you can output on your x64 PC.
You’re not only getting far better platform and format compatibility on your cheap Google TV or Fire TV stick, you’re also getting the far better apps and overall user experience.That’s also nothing stopping you from installing Firefox on these devices or pairing a mouse with them, if you desperately need “browser plugins” and an less sofa compatible input device for whatever you’re doing in your living room.
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if only revanced could cast
Does PiHole work on YouTube ads? That’s just a DNS based blocker, I thought YouTube ads came from the same domain as the regular videos and they couldn’t be blocked via DNS.
I ask because I watch YouTube a lot on my AppleTV app, which I pipe through NextDNS which supports ad blacklist files. No YouTube ads are blocked there for me
I stream through Roku (great for plex but no way to block ads on YouTube) and the ads got so bad I paid for premium.
I hate it because I’m reinforcing their shitty business choices but it was like being bullied everyday. YouTube is all I really use for entertainment aside from plex so that’s been one silver lining.
Call me insane but I pay for youtube premium. People have NO problem paying for netflix/hulu/amazon/HBO and whatever else but theres a large amount of people who wont even consider paying for Youtube( presumably because the adblocking options are relatively easy to install and use, especially on desktop)
Youtube premium and it is BY FAR the best value in entertainment for me. I watch videos on it multiple hours a day sometimes (in the background while Im doing housework or whatever) No ads for me or my kids, more money to creators, Its like $12/month or something and with that I also get a music service thats - for me - better than spotify/apple/napster or anything else really.
Theres a reason theres no completely free tier on the other services, and its because supporting things with ads alone takes lots and lots of ads. If you arent paying a dime for the service its tough to take your complaints seriously about how many ads there are, becaus you are getting the content FREE, thus you pay with your time and attention
I’ve been paying for premium for a while now as I get a ton of value out of it as well, and want to support creators. I watch youtube pretty much exclusively these days, besides the occasional (heh) piracy.
That being said - I am absolutely at the point where I am considering backing up all my subs and switching fully to newpipe. I already use revanced just to deal with their absolute nightmare of a UI - YT, I don’t EVER want to see your fucking shorts. Having to hear about them continually making it worse for everyone else makes me want to just leave for another platform… but sadly 99% of long form content is exclusively hosted on youtube, so there isn’t much of a choice.
I think one of the moral (?) objections to paying for YouTube versus paying for streaming services is that a streaming service actually creates (some) original content whereas YouTube merely hosts other people’s content. YouTube is only a facilitator and (ironically) not a creator. All of its content (both original and unoriginal) is produced by money that isn’t YouTube’s. They take zero risk and expect maximum returns.
YouTube hosts millions upon millions upon millions of videos for free, and they set up and maintain the ad network that gets creators the money (55% of the ad revenue goes to them, 45% to youtube). That is the value they provide, not the content they create. They dont take a “risk” per se (anymore, that risk was taken in the beginning), but they are 100% outlaying resources to maintain the youtube network/experience at great expense so that people can create, host, and profit on their website with no risk to the creator except wasted time.
Obviously not a simple thing to do otherwise tons of websites would be doing the same thing and YouTube would have lots of competition, but they don’t because its actually a very resource intensive process that literally - and I mean literally as in literally - no other company is willing to take on.
There is no moral objection, unless you find funding Google in any way immoral.
Its a mutually beneficial relationship with YouTube and the Creators. Youtube has reduced the risk of spending money on content creation but takes on all the work of maintaining everything youtube offers, and the creators have reduced the risk of financial/commerical resources needed to make money on their product. Neither could exist withou the other
I mean, yeah that’s mostly all true; but you’re kind of missing the point. Alphabet created the ad-soaked centralised monopoly you describe. They obviously shut down Google Video pretty quickly after buying YouTube. They bought-out or strangled competitors, leveraging their SE dominance, to get to where they are now, which is offering small pockets of content scattered about in an advertising platform. Alphabet knew what kind of monster they wanted to create and set about doing it. More adverts equals more profit. Profit must increase year on year. That’s how it works. I don’t begrudge Alphabet trying to fleece everybody - it’s how capitalism operates. I just don’t buy into the “good old Google letting me watch stuff for (almost) free” mantra.
There is no moral objection, unless you find funding Google in any way immoral.
Yeah just that one little tiny exception that literally no one could agree with /s
Call me insane but people have NO problem paying for netflix/hulu/amazon/HBO and whatever else but theres a large amount of people who wont even consider paying for Youtube
Because Netflix/Hulu/HBO/etc hosts TV shows that are expensive to make. YouTube hosts various types of content that is produced on shoestring budgets compared to TV shows.
Just because someone would pay to watch The Boys or Game of Thrones doesn’t mean they’d pay to watch Let’s Plays.
Thats an interesting point, but I think a very, very small percentage of people are actively thinking about how much the content they are enjoying costs to make when they are factoring in if its worth paying for. Enjoyment is the number 1 metric by a country mile.
If an expensive show is shit to watch or listen to, no one is going to pay for it. You couldnt pay me to watch Battlefield Earth again for example, I dont care how expensive it was to make.
This is wild… seeing someone in earnest putting hollywood on the same level as some dude in their garage. This is zero chance I would ever pay 1 cent for 100 video essays because they don’t entertain me and they don’t feel worth anything. On the other hand yes it makes full sense to me to pay under $10 a month to watch unlimited productions which clearly cost a lot to make. The costumes, writing, research, and everything else that go into an actually immersive experience cannot be compared to some dude reacting to Linus TT being shitty. I will never understand not appreciating the difference here. The shocking part is that your opinion isn’t even that unpopular. Blows my fucking mind… For some of you, the only things in the world required to make video entertainment is an opinion and a cheap cell phone. 🤯
Im not saying there isnt a difference, or that I dont appreciate it personally. Im saying there are plenty of people that DO pay for video essays or LTT and find them even more entertaining than Game of Thrones or whatever show you want to watch on HBO or Netflix, at least at certain times of day and in certain scenarios
there are plenty of people that DO pay for video essays or LTT and find them even more entertaining than Game of Thrones or whatever show you want to watch on HBO or Netflix,
This is exactly what my head is exploding about though.
True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.
There’s also the fact that YouTube is more of a social media outlet than a content creator. Its content comes from people and organisations experimenting and assuming all risks for themselves. YouTube isn’t commissioning works (bar one or two notable exceptions) and the biggest risks they assume is storage space holding dud content.
Streaming services actually create, or at least license, the content they host. That costs significant sums. Therefore it makes sense for them to be paid services. YouTube itself doesn’t create or license shit.
True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.
I don’t think of it as paying for the content, as much as just paying for an ad-free experience that doesn’t require maintenance on my end and still helps pay creators. I watch YouTube a lot, and on several devices that aren’t easy to adblock on, so I just pay for a family plan and none of my family has to see ads on any of their devices, either. I don’t think YouTube is really doing exclusive content anymore, so that’s not really a huge reason to subscribe.
YTP is one of the few “quality of life” subscriptions that I think is genuinely worth it, IMO.
True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.
Lots and lots and lots of people make bank “on youtube” because people sub to their patreons or buy their merch as a way to support the channel. I think you vastly underestimate what people are willing to spend on a creator whose community they feel apart of and whos content they like.
I think you vastly underestimate what people are willing to spend on a creator whose community they feel apart of and whos content they like.
Is that creator YT? No?
Do they share most of premium’s revenue with said creators? I’m guessing the answer is “none”
If you want to support a relevant creator that’s your choice… but it’s highly unlikely that creator benefits from you going premium,
Thats why I added in the bit of patreon and merch. The persons argument was that no one was going to pay for content that was cheap to make, which is patently absurd given the amount of people making a living off of merch/patreon type deals
Youtube ad revenue is split 55% with the creators - presumably its the same for premium - so yes it actually is “most” depending on how you want to define that.
Main issue is logging in with my main Google account. I don’t want my google data to be accessible in the house from the speaker or the tv or the tablet.
I could pay more by buying YouTube family (or whatever they call it today) and share it with a burner account but that would be ridiculous.
Also, I don’t want to even consider supporting them when they’re pushing their TikTok clone down my throat. Until the TikTok clone is baked in their app with their shitty videos mixed with regular content, then I’m forced to use alternative clients that remove all the short videos from my view.
That TikTok shit bothers me more than 1 minute of ads.
If you run a pihole, you can have it block youtube ads network-wide.
No you can’t, unless you block all of YouTube network wide.
Did you try it?
From a technical point of view, YouTube ads are YouTube videos. So from a DNS point of view, you can’t block one but still continue to watch the other
Not on a tv you can’t. They host ads on the same domain the videos are on, so blocking ads blocks the actual content as well.
Worst case scenario you end up with a vacant piece of screen real estate with a failed to load asset.
If you’re very bothered by the ads, instead of an adblocker you can try out an Ad-blocking DNS. Personally, I use noads.libredns.gr
This will allow them to see all your data though, so I recommend using this method with a reputable VPN.
Pihole doesn’t work on YouTube so this won’t either.
YouTube serves ads from their own domain, can’t be blocked this way.
Never heard of LibreOps and checked them out; they seem legit. Thanks for the information, I will try them out!
dns-based blockers do not work on youtube. google delivers ads from the same hostnames as the content.
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Nope. DNS blocking will cover about 90% of ads, not YouTube or IMDb though, probably some others too. They’re served from same domain.
It allows who to see what data?
Presumably they mean it allows the DNS provider to see your internet traffic, but I don’t believe that’s wholly accurate. I believe at most they’d be able to log timestamps of what domains you visited.
I too have moderate believes that what you say is in fact correct. +1
Geez, so many entitled people in this thread. If Google didn’t get their yearly revenue growth, their poor execs wouldn’t be able to afford their 3rd yacht! Stop being selfish and subscribe to premium already! /s
What about the content creators? I don’t care about Google, but I want the people who make the things I enjoy to get paid.
Sure, you can subscribe to patreons, but you can’t subscribe to everyone’s, and frankly, 99% of people don’t subscribe to any.
I guess we can all just say ha doesn’t matter I got mine and try to not think about it. I guess that is the plan.
If you truly care about a creator you can buy their some of their merch. The profit from that will out-value watching every one of their videos with ads for the foreseeable future.
It’s not your responsibility to make up for Google’s shortcomings. They’re a ~5 trillion dollar company now. They could easily change their payment structure if they wanted to, but they don’t because their shareholders are more important. If a company with >10^8 times more net worth than you isn’t going to bother, then don’t make it your responsibility.
It’s sad, but unfortunately, the creators made a deal with the devil, and it’s not regular people’s responsibility to get them out.
And don’t forget, there was a time when nobody made any money for posting things on youtube - it was just a site for sharing things people found novel and interesting, with no expectation of remuneration whatsoever. I would even argue that it was a much better time to be there than it is now - back before they had recommendation algorithms pushing people to all kinds of deplorable content and pushing the biddings of far-right dictators. Rewarding Google for this kind of behavior only makes it worse.
The majority of people that uploaded their video on youtube never see those ads money because they don’t meet the criteria to receive ad revenue, and those that do, get so little and earn most of their income from other sources (endorsements, paid review, etc). Those minority who blocked ads don’t really affect content creator’s bottom line in a meaningful way. Subscription is another matter though because it pays higher rates, though still pretty low compared to other income stream.
Yeah yeah, can’t afford rent and food, whatever. Have you tried not being poor? Give Google their money you selfish pricks
Wasn’t that something Paris Hilton said? 😆 “Have they, like, tried not being poor?” I may have added the “like”. But it’s very plausible it was there!
OP, I know exactly what you’re talking about.
I was visiting relatives this Christmas and wanted to watch some of my YouTube videos on their SmartTV. I have watched YouThe with ads on occasion throughout the years…usually when watching some video on a relative’s device or school or work computer or something. They are annoying, but mostly fairly manageable. So I started up a 20 minute vid from a youtuber I like.
I shit you not…within the first 5 fucking minutes of the video, there were 5 separate ad breaks. And each ad was going to play for minutes on end if I never hit the skip button.
Yep, you read that right. One ad per minute. I am NOT exaggerating. I counted them and watched the video timestamps.
I almost could not believe what I was seeing. My mind was fucking blown. Never have I ever experienced that egregious level of ads. It made the content I was trying to view literally unwatchable and I switched off the video.
To OP, I’d highly recommend getting an Android tv device like a modern Chromecast (not the old models…needs to run android). They are relatively inexpensive and make viewing content on TVs a sane experience. I think I maybe got mine for $40 or something. Install SmartTube Next and you’ll have no ads. Works fantastic. You set it up once and never worry about it again.
I really appreciate your response
I don’t even use my tv for a tv. I just hook up my laptop to play games. If I wanna watch movies, shows, or videos I got my jellyfin client and youtube is ad free with ubo and firefox
yes
5+ ads each being 3-5 min long.
I was in India and the ads were straight up music videos…
iOS: Video Lite Android: Vanced Android TV: Smart Tube
Stop watching YouTube ads. Use a third party player.
And for everything it works on: just use Firefox with ublock origin!
Add SponsorBlock for in-video sponsors while you’re at it!
Oh yeah duh. I just sometimes disable it because it can be wonky and skip important pieces with how tagging works.
That takes actual money away from the actual creators though (instead of just the exec’s fat bank accounts), so use with some consideration. Don’t drain money from youtubers you enjoy.
No it doesn’t; the creators have already been paid for their sponsorship. Sponsorblock just skips it the same as you would.
Actually that’s not quite how it works from my understanding. Youtube is able to provide detailed metrics that can provide information like “how many people actually watched the sponsor segment?” and base the payouts on that. The payout will either be based on estimated views in advance (meaning if it’s lower than expected they’ll pay less next time) or they’ll pay after the video has been live for some period of time.
Where are you getting this insight from exactly?
You…don’t believe it works like that? Ultimately a sponsor isn’t going to pay much if no one watches the spot. Advertising has always involved getting as much data as possible on how your ads are doing.
I don’t have any one definitive link that will tell you “this is how it works”, but I’ve picked up a few things from the various discussions I’ve seen some youtubers have.
Congrats, you didn’t read anything I wrote!!
why would anyone watch YouTube without an ad blocker at this point
You answered your own question in the actual post I think? Or what is your question? Do you have a question? There’s a question mark in your title. Do you want tips or to just rant?
Also, if you watch a video you like, do yourself a favor and download it. Save it. Archive it. It’s only a matter of time before they either take it down or derank it because they want to push you to some other more profitable video stream. Bonus points because it doesn’t give them analytics information on it when you go back to watch it again, or watch a specific part again.
I’ve started doing this for all kinds of content - technical videos, music, funny clips, games, etc.
This should go in “VeryInfuriating”. I agree YouTube has become unwatchable without any kind of ad-block or cheap Premium
It’s become unwatchable with ad-block, too.
For me it still works (Germany, Linux+Firefox+ublock), but page loading takes forever, and knowing that that’s intentional just makes me not want to use it anymore. Feels like there’s a bouncer telling me to wait in line for watching a video.Have you tried this extension? https://add0n.com/useragent-switcher.html
An hour of YouTube ads is simply apocalyptic
I imagine those are just to trick autoplaying kiosks into becoming ad displays. Nobody expects you to watch more than a minute, but Youtube will let you select practically any video as an ad as long as it’s not age restricted. If you wanted to, you could spend money on pushing a “12 hours of white noise” video as an ad.
This can be used to game the algorithm: ads are pushed out, but they’re also video plays. I believe the Spiffing Brit did a video on how he manages to manipulate the Youtube algorithm by promoting a certain uninteresting video of his as an ad, because Youtube suddenly saw a spike in impressions. I think Youtube patched that, but no doubt similar exploits still exist.
Thanks for grounding me. That make sense
‘Sir, would you like some video with your ad?’
IDK why the hell it’s allowed, but a lot of times people will buy adspace and just put an entire video in it, or worse, a company buys the adspace and puts the entire pilot to a TV show in there. I’ve seen both things happen more than once. Who in their right mind clicks on a YouTube video, sees the pilot to a show they’ve never heard of or a random clickbait video and thinks “Oh, I wanna watch this!”
The worst part about those is
When the ad is actually something I want to watch, there is no way to open it as a seperate video. Once I click off it’s fucking gone forever. It’s such backwards design. The few times I have interest in an ad I can’t even properly check watch it!
The ad driven internet needs a severe correction
The net worth of tech giants also needs a severe correction.
Not just tech giants of course, pretty much all large >billion dollar companies need it too. But tech is a great place to start.
the first time i watched the lego movie, it (the full feature) was an ad played during the trailer for the second movie–and it didn’t have any ads in it either.
They didn’t want you to spoil the first movie, so they made sure you had the chance to see it. That’s a hundred percent something LEGO would do.
the first time i watched the lego movie it (the full film) was an ad played during the trailer for the second movie. and it (the movie) didn’t have ads in it.
We watched that ad too. Hilariously enough it was on a video for the trailer for Lego movie two or whatever.
This is wild haha I wonder if it was just someone trying to piss off the studios by popping that in there for free or something? I guess that way it’s guaranteed to never have ads for anyone, ad blocker or not.
