Using Youtube without Revanced or uBlock is like using a phone without a case.
Eh, using a phone w/o a case is reasonable. I’d liken it more to watching live TV. Why do that in the era of streaming services when you can (well, could) avoid ads and watch exactly what you want instead of whatever slop the network decides you should watch?
Sharing another app suggestion(s) for Android: Tubular [0] or the more up-to-date LastPipeBender [1].
Both apps differ from NewPipe and its variants by integrating with PeerTube along with YouTube, apart from providing features like SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike.
I have started using PeerTube much more often as my subscriptions from YouTube and PeerTube are now shown together, which makes for a seamless and superior experience altogether.
[0] https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular [1] https://github.com/MaintainTeam/LastPipeBender
Youtube when I use Ublock Origin on my Thinkpad and ReVanced on my Pixel:
Any reason for thinkpad and pixel?
Probably to let us know mobile and PC variants.
He’s rightfully displaying his dominance
I am wondering the same, mentioning the specific hardware makes very little sense, when it could just be mentioned as Linux/Windows/PC and Android/GrapheneOS/etc.
It would arguably be more informative too for people looking for alternatives for their device platforms.
Grayjay is my new hotness
uBlock Origin works wonders. I haven’t seen a YouTube ad since I installed it.
There’s a chance ad blockers are eating up the ‘Skip’ button while also failing to block the ad.
A CHANCE?
Only trash adblockers like Adblock Plus and Adguard have that “chance”. uBlock Origin the goat fr frf
I don’t think Adguard is trash. It’s just not as good as UBO.
Youtube is like that bully that asks for your lunch money and when you say no, they slam you into a locker.
When you say no again, they start hitting you until you finally give that lunch money.
Once you do, they will show you the others are being abused harder when they demand more money from you.
I would love to contribute to the end of youtube.
To me, the value of youtube and it’s music is far below the €18 it costs to get me and my wife ad free. My internet costs roughly that and offers a lot of possibilites, so why should i pay double for a service that supplies about 1 millionth of what the internet itself has to offer, especially considering my wage has barely changed while i watch my rent and groceries triple in cost.
Y’all need to realize there is an end to my money, you can’t keep taking.
Look, I don’t disagree with you. YouTube has many flaws and they’ve rapidly enshittified to increase monetization. But YouTube is a far more complex* operation than your ISP. It took a decade to start making a profit on YouTube.
The amount of hardware behind it is insane. The amount of work behind it is insane. A lot of that work is performed by really expensive software engineers in the US and Europe.
It was never sustainable from the get-go. Not with a single pre-watch ad and no premium tier, anyway. They HAD to add more ads and a premium ad-free tier. Where I disagree with them is the amount of ads and the cost of the premium tier.
*The big cloud providers (including Google) have grown so big, they don’t use ISPs in the traditional sense to connect their data centers. They run their own subsea cables between continents to improve connectivity. Whether or not you like the companies, they put a LOT of work into keeping you on their platforms. Of course this is for Google Cloud customers, but YouTube basically IS a Google Cloud customer. Just an in-house one.
Youtube is like that bully
Except no one is forcing you to face that bully.
You can simply stay away.Yeah, I don’t have much sympathy for this dork. You don’t need to watch YouTube.
Most people are lazy and not willing to make their life less comfortable. If they were, a lot of problems in big tech would not even exist. That’s why people still buy apple, use WhatsApp and microsoft instead of the free alternatives - because its less comfortable.
They want change, but are unwilling to be a factor in causing that change.
It’s either this or cable, cable sucks.
So i’d rather adblock the hell out of them.
I’m laughing at
theirYouTube’s response. Obviously someone used a thesaurus to write it and didn’t know that “incalcitrant” is not even the word, no major dictionaries list it. It’s like using irregardless instead of regardless The wordtheyYouTube wanted is recalcitrant.And it’s very telling that
theyYouTube used that word because it shows they think they are King.Recalicitrant:
Stubbornly resistant to authority or control.
Unwilling to obey orders or to do what should be done.
Resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant.
Edit: I’m laughing at YouTube’s response. I thought that was clear by context… I guess people who didn’t read the article didn’t get that? Maybe it was paywalled to them?
Words matter, and by using the one they did, YouTube is basically saying that they demand people obey them.
STFU
I’m laughing at YouTube’s response. I thought that was clear by context… I guess people who didn’t read the article didn’t get that? Maybe it was paywalled to them?
Or why are you telling me to STFU?
They’re an idiot. You taught me a new word! Keep it up.
Thanks :)
Is Elongpork on the board of directors or something?
Length of post + laughing at vocabulary =/= laughing at article
Plus incalcitrant has plenty of current usage.
We’ve launched a global effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience.
By drastically increasing the rates every 6 months. Raising it past the prices of actual production streaming services. And paying the people making the content less and less money, until they have to put their own ads and their own content.
I either watch YouTube without ads or don’t watch at all. We need a new platform for videos.
Tell you the truth, once upon a time I really didn’t mind the ads. In fact I was quite happy to support the creators that I like with watching the ads that appeared on their videos. But then YouTube started getting smarmy by blocking my suggestions because I didn’t use history on my account. And then there’s the problem of the ads getting longer. At which point I got fed up and downloaded the adblock software to stop seeing this garbage. And then this little war broke out over ads on the platform.
Quite frankly, so long as the people who make the software to block ads continue to do that kind of work I will continue to download their software and make Google spend boatloads of their own money to try to block the blockers. Because the blockers aren’t going anywhere. Not to mention that the blockers were not quite as popular before Google started this little campaign. And now they have made people so hyper aware of the fact that they can actually go out and find some way to skip these stupid ads that they’ve basically dug their own grave. Broadcast TV spent decades on this failed quest.
Yeah, me too.
I liked watching ads 12 years ago, they were a funny interjection/change.
Nowadays the ads are so extremely obnoxious, it feels as if they’re poisoning my mind. No way i’m even gonna watch them for a second.
I was the exact same way. I could justify watching ads to support the people I watched, but then I learned how little compensation a creator actually gets from one view and decided my time was more valuable. Plus I just got too used to never seeing ads and could never go back.
This video sums up the sentiment you’re describing nicely.
Exactly right. Two 15 second ads in between shows two midstream 15 to 30 second ads, I was perfectly fine with watching those ads.
When they started letting content creators pick the number of ads, and they started letting more than 30 seconds of ads per break, now I have incentive to block them.
Capitalism dictates that they need to make 20% more every year. They cannot continue to get 20% more ad revenue every year without increasing ads substantially.
When a handful of companies owns everything and they can no longer buy new companies up to make more money, They can’t make their numbers. All they can do is gut us for the last 20% and then go out of business.
The problem is hosting (storage, network) is expensive.
IIRC some platforms (feddit.org, catbox.moe) pays $1000 per month, and that’s mostly just static images.
Videos is much more than that. Who pays for that?
I have a hunch Linus at LTT could float his own storage for whatever stuff he wants to host. The same way you and me have to pay for our own online storage.
Hosting is only half the equation you have to be able to serve it people all around the world at once with no buffering. People have no clue how amazing YouTube is for a free service. Bandwidth costs a fuckload of money too to add to the hosting cost.
PopcornTime might be a good model for a decentralized YouTube system. You could pick a movie and then it would find a torrent and start downloading it.
Yeah, that would mean everybody pays for hosting videos themselves. The question is: is that a viable strategy / are users willing to put up with that.
are users willing to put up with that.
No. People are used to stuff being free.
Peertube looks good… but has nearly no content or content creators, which is the reason Google nearly has monopoly with Youtube
Not a fediverse thing, but I pay $5 a month for nebula. I think it’s worth it to support creators. And I believe the whole “if you’re not paying for something you’re the product”. Though you can still be the product even if you do pay.
Is there any competitor like Nebula that’s not solely focused on informational/longform videos? I come from the age when hobbyists made silly memetic animations and shared them around, not even necessarily for profit. I’m sure many of those people consider YouTube to be some level of evil and would enjoy an alternative that’s actually organic.
Is nebula good?
There’s definitely good material on it. Was a big fan of “Dracula’s Ex-Girlfriend” short film, for instance.
But its also got your garden variety YouTube crap.
I’m also a Nebula subscriber for the same reason stated above. A lot of my favorite creators are on Nebula and either post their videos a week or two early on Nebula, or post extended versions of their videos on Nebula.
There’s no ads or sponsorship segments, so it makes for a pleasant experience. Admittedly, the Nebula “originals” which are exclusive to Nebula, is a fairly small catalogue. But what is there is high quality.
The Nebula subscription is worth it for me to support creators and have a better viewing experience… And to see each Jetlag episode a week early.
Tbh I dont use it enough, but I love that’s it no ads like you said. Also feels good to support creators instead of Google. I’ll check out the originals!
They have a $30/ year annual subscription (I’m not certain if that’s a purely introductory rate or not). Most of the content is non-exclusive but it’s ad-free and many creators remove the sponsor segments or even include exclusive content on their Nebula version. It seems pretty worthwhile to me
I might try it for a month, thanks for the info _
It’s alright. Most of my favorites aren’t on there, but there’s some decent content there.
I ended up getting a lifetime subscription, and it’s definitely worth it, but it’s not a replacement for YT entirely.
Dropout.tv has good comedy videos which is largely lacking from Nebula, but I find it buffers more often for me, which makes it uniquely bad among all the streaming services I’ve used.
But, I watch plenty of fan compilations / animatics for stuff on YT from my recommendations, and I haven’t found them anywhere else either because they don’t exist or because they don’t get recommended to me. It seems difficult for that kind of stuff to exist without free, easy uploads AND free, easy viewing.
Finally there are some people that primarily do Twitch that I subscribe to on YT. I’ve tried watching them on Twitch, and I prefer the content after their YT editor has worked their magic.
Dropout.tv was created by college human right? Idk if their old videos would hold up today, but I remember liking their content. Nice to know they’re still around.
Yeah, they even finally rebranded the YT channel last year so it is now Dropout instead of CollegeHumor. They are doing some interesting stuff currently (Gamechanger is almost always good), and all their old sketches and programs are there too.
I’m sold! I’m going to subscribe for a month and try it out.
I came across a few days ago with Pipepipe, which is a Newpipe Hard fork with sponsorblock. It seems that it is better maintained than Newpipe ( Newpipe stops working sometimes ), and has more features. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/InfinityLoop1309.NewPipeEnhanced/
just make it a subscription service already and see how many people remain…
They have and most users are still around because the alternatives are far too light on content. The creators drive the show, not the users.
They did. The subscription service still shows ads.
This is not true.
Do you mean the promoted content done by the youtubers themselves? Because there are no YouTube ads when you use Premum.
And Premium recently came out with a feature that makes it really easy to skip the promotional content.
no, subscription only as in you can only watch if subscribed
Subscribed what 🤔
You do know you can subscribe already, right?
what I mean is a model where a subscription is required to watch anything. Even that is more graceful than the hacky 1 hour long youtube video solution to their problems.
No problem with ads with https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ Or youtube revanced :)
Some Alternatives:
- Firefox + Ublock Origin
- Grayjay App
- Grayjay Desktop
- FreeTube
- NewPipe
Firefox + Ublock Origin
This right here. No longer using chromium-based browsers is a really good start.
Works on Android as well.
Youtube ReVanced is flawless. It’s easy to patch
I have tried using ReVanced a few times when NewPipe was down, but it never worked for me. Maybe I’ll try it again.
- LibreTube on Android
NewPipe stopped working for me two weeks ago, and it seems like Google won’t allow NewPipe to download Youtube’s content for free anymore. I don’t think Youtube/NewPipe will ever be usable again. I think we have to say goodbye to Youtube.
Did you update to 0.27.5?
Good suggestions but most of the time I can’t get any of these apps to work, some commenters here say differently but for me, due to YouTube’s policy of “sign in to prove you’re not a bot”, I end up using a tor browser with cookies denied and sadly all the bullshit yt advertising of course.
While the company stops short of directly saying as much, it sure feels like the preposterously long ads we’re seeing here are an example of one tool in Google’s arsenal for effectively disabling YouTube playback for violators of the site’s ToS.
I don’t get it. When my adblocker works, I don’t get to see this shit. Only if it fails I’llbe confronted with hour-long ads, so the incentive to find a better blocker is even higher?
They are trying hard to block all known adblockers. And if they ever do, this will become a serious problem.
Arms races are rarely won by anyone.
They are won by arms dealers.
In this case though the arms dealers make the arms for free so I’m kind of okay with it
And all of it could have been avoided if google just audited/policed the ads it served. No sane person minds watching a 5-10 second add every 10-20 minutes to support the platform.
But rather than spend money expanding their ad department to audit and police the adds, they are spending gobs and gobs of money trying to force people to see view virus-delivering ads, racist ads, blatant misinformation, etc.
No one wants to be forced to spend 30 minutes watching a pragerU video on how the black man should be grateful for slavery and all the “good” its brought him
But that seems to be the world that google wants.
If they limited the ad time in videos, ad time would be worth more.
Remember when Google aquired YouTube and stated they didn’t intend to change anything? Remember when the only ads were those little banners you had to close? We’ve come such a long ways from where we started and what is considered “sane” these days would have been an affront back then. Google truly did slow boil the frog.
No sane person minds watching a 5-10 second add every 10-20 minutes to support the platform.
Fuck that. Ads are cancer. Willing consuming cancer is insanity.
There are arms dealers on both sides. Anti-adblockers also require development, and I doubt anyone does that for free.
That’s an excellent Maxim.
True.
This is a war that was fought by broadcast TV and the makers of videotapes, DVDs, and blu-rays. In every case the Corpos failed. So no, this arms race is and will be won by the ad blockers.
Except all of those formats are now obsolete, no major company is even making Blu-Ray players anymore, and people have moved on to others. So did they fail or did they just find a different method? I’d say the latter. How many people do you know with a working VCR at this point?
no major company is even making Blu-Ray players anymore
Uh, yes they are. What are you smoking? They even still make DVD’s and straight DVD players. They even still make VCR’s.
Pardon me, you’re correct. Sony and Panasonic are the last two holdouts.
Also, those are not VCRs still being manufactured, that’s selling off stock.
It won’t, I’ll just go do something else with my free time…
So they effectively blocked the video then?
No, they just set the bar for watching it too high for my liking.
While their statement is entirely correct, they’re still wrong. YouTube is basically unusable without an ad blocker. Multiple 10 to 15 second long unskippable ads before the video even starts, and unless you watch videos all the way through you end up watching as much ad as you do content. It is damn near impossible to hop around between videos trying to find the one you want because of the pre-roll ads on every vid. On the other hand, with an ad block enabled YouTube is actually quite nice. The engagement algorithm is fucking trash of course but if you know what you’re looking for and you go directly to it it’s pretty good.
Do you habitually not watch videos all the way through, or am I misunderstanding your comment?
No judgement, you obviously should consume media in the manner you find most enjoyable, but once I start and enjoy a video - YouTube or otherwise - I tend to get invested and want to watch as much as is available.
If you’re looking for tutorials or other immediately applicable information, you’ve often got to skip a LOT of bullshit before even determining if this video is relevant to you.
"Hey everybody it’s Mike from Mike’s the guy named Mike, it’s a snowy day out there, I got my coffee, took my dog for a walk, it’s been the morning of a day, and now I’m out here in the garage and I figured I’d make a video about a topic a bunch of you have been asking me about. You guys have been asking me a lot lately “Hey, Mike’s the guy named Mike, could you show us how to properly lick a drill press?” Well let’s find out.
10 second title screen because Mike thinks he’s making TV
“So a lot of you guys have been asking me “Hey, Mike’s the guy named Mike, could you show us the right way to lick a drill press?” Before we get into that, be sure to leave a like, drop a comment below and be sure to subscribe. It’ll really help me out more than you can think…”
19 minutes into a 21 minute video and there hasn’t been a drill press on screen yet.
Three weeks later Mike’s the guy named Mike along with his entire family is killed in a rock slide. The UN declares it an international day of celebration.
What was I talking about?
19 minutes into a 21 minute video and there hasn’t been a drill press on screen yet
And that’s intentional. The algorithm rewards them for having people watch more / watch longer, and a 21 min video might have 2 or 3 ad rolls. If someone watches all the way thru, creator gets more money and higher placement in search results.
I like YouTube as a concept but the algorithms are totally enshittifying it.
I remember the early, pre-Google days of Youtube, when it was fail videos, that one particular kind of lyric video, lonelygirl15 and mememolly. It was about the time South park had run that episode where they had all the people who had become internet famous like Tay Zonday and the Star Wars Kid who were sitting around in a waiting room waiting for their “internet money” to make the point that there was no method in place for them to monetize their fame…
If you had asked me then what Youtube would look like in the year 2025 I don’t know what I would have said but I wouldn’t have guessed correctly. I probably would have said it’s not going to last that long. I would not have guessed that fifteen years of Google changing the algorithm, but not letting anyone know what they did or why, so there’s this constant game of trying to design video formats around what the software would promote would twist it into what it is…
Holy moly this is spot on 🤣🤣
You need to get sponsor block. Not only does it block all the sponsor segments because they are also ads, that the ad blockers don’t otherwise block, but they also block all of the other annoyances, like instructions to subscribe and intro animations.
yeah that’s really the key to an acceptable youtube experience. after google nuked UBO on chromeOS, sponsorblock is still there to do the heavy lifting. I’ll be switching to a windows machine soon, but for now all I have is my chromebook, which is still functional even without the real UBO-- but I’m sure they’re working on a way to fuck us out of the “lite” version of it and take away extensions like sponsorblock
Can you run Firefox on a Chromebook?
*Either you go with the Android build or you take one more step towards joining the cult of Linux.
technically chrome is is built on Gentoo.
I tried to watch one video from a guy on a specific topic and he opened with an update on his divorce. Coooool.
Brilliant 😄
The way I see it these folks don’t respect my time when pulling off shit like this.
Emotional rollercoaster.
When I’m ‘watching a video’ I watch it all the way thru. However often I’m looking for something specific, like how to do something, and a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever). In that situation I’m usually looking for a specific piece of information which often requires scrubbing around in multiple videos. Same thing if I’m doing research on a product, while I might watch a review will the way through I’m more often looking for some specific things like video of the interface or does it have some specific setting or can I set it up without needing a phone app or cloud account. That requires scrubbing around in multiple videos to see bits of the setup UI. Unusable if each video has an ad
a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever)
You’re not alone in that, and it seems neither am I
There are at least three of us!
And my axe!
a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever)
One of my favorite Youtubers (Greg’s Airplanes and Automobiles) has excellent in-depth content mostly about WWII piston-engined aircraft with lots of detailed discussion and reference to original source materials. But it’s just him reading a written script while presenting still photos and excerpts from flight manuals and the like. It really would be perfect as a blog or in book form, but he has to turn it into videos in order to have any chance at making decent money from it. It’s just such a shame that this is how things are going now.
If you like that sort of thing you’ll like IHYLS
The Drachinifel of the air!
This makes no sense to me. It’s significantly more expensive to create and host video content, yet somehow we’ve gotten to the point where that’s the most profitable? It makes no sense.
It has nothing to do with the expense and everything to do with the fact that most people do not enjoy reading (any more, at least).
I guess I’ll just appreciate the fact that my books don’t have ads.
I read a lot of books on Kindle. It’s just a matter of time …
It’s all about advertising. On a web page, which is cheap to create and cheap to host, the only ad you can really get is a pop-up or similar, and those don’t pay very much. On the video, which is expensive to create and expensive to host, you can have 30 or 45 seconds of video ads, which pay a lot more.
Fair enough. Thanks for the answer!
How about this, do a profit sharing agreement with channels. If a channel makes money from YouTube, YouTube gets a cut, and let the channel decide whether to run ads, use sponsor segments, post affiliate links, etc. If they choose to not monetize at all, they pay a monthly fee for hosting.
