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- cross-posted to:
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Ad blocker still works. They really want people to stop using YouTube though, don’t they.
The real problem is that barriers to entry for competition are insurmountable.
If I wanna compete, I gotta host those files somewhere. With Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. That’s basically my whole list of options.
I mean, I can opt to do it myself, but… That’s beyond David v Goliath. No way I could manage the amount of spam, CSA, DMCA, terrorism/misinformation and other shit that would seek to take the competition out.
IMO a lot of the attacks on independent and federated social media probably come from their corporate competitors. Who has the most to gain from flooding Lemmy with CSAM? Reddit, obviously.
The other reason why it’s impossible is simply that nobody would upload their genuine content to your site because it doesn’t get as much “engagement” as on YouTube. Social inertia is why YouTube can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want and people will stay.
Twitch is the same thing for livestreams. Not even Facebook using fuck-you money to literally buy exclusivity contracts with streamers could change that. People just didn’t want to watch there (although I can understand their reluctance).
If you’re using an ad-blocker or skipping ads, yes, they absolutely don’t give a shit if you stop using it, because you provide zero value to them and are only consuming their resources.
Your metadata is still extremely valuable to them, and it’s not limited to just watch history and likes, but rather everything on how you engage in their services, including where your mouse cursor sits.
Parroting the angry me Yorker whose name I forgot. If you use an ad blocker your likely privacy aware and they don’t get much/any meta data from you.
Also YouTube is extremely costly to run. They are making it abundantly clear you are not valuable to them if you aren’t watching ads. You aren’t that important.
Yes and no. Metadata is more than just tracking info. I did mention watch history, likes, and mouse position, which are not things that can really be blocked. This also includes things such as how likely you are to click on a video based on thumbnail and screen position, how long you watch specific videos as well as how long your overall watch train is. They know what they’re showing you, where it is, and what you click and when; that’s enough to provide a hell of a lot if data. All in all, how you actually use the service is something that they pay very close attention to, and is still very valuable.
Is it as valuable as tracking info and advertising, definitely not. But it’s far from worthless.
How is any of this information valuable to them if I block all ads?
Because you aren’t an individual to them, you’re a statistic providing them with valuable market research on how their service is used.
“People that watch this collection of video classifications are more likely to watch videos who’s thumbnails have these characteristics. Only 1% of them use ad blocking so we can improve our ad presentation rate if we present more videos with these thumbnails to this group.”
^ mostly this. Ad revenue from watched ads isnt all of their income, not even close
If you block browser ads, they still make money off of you from mobile apps showing ads. If you use DNS-level blocking, they can still use your data to tailor ads for those around you.
But the value per person they get from " use your data to tailor ads for those around you" a tiny amount and the amount they get from selling your eyeball space directly to paying customers is (comparatively) vast, I could easily see it being 1000x greater or even more. Youtube is going to war on adblockers for a reason.
Exactly
It doesn’t work for me, on my PC I can only use freetube. YouTube doesn’t work with ublock origin.
Queue all the people in the comments talking about ad blockers or alternative apps.
Those might be great (and ad blocking is important in general), but I’ve found I ultimately just watch YouTube less.
A good chunk of my favorite creators had been pushing Nebula for the past couple years, so I finally tried it out and it’s pretty decent. I’ve even found new channels there that would have been buried on YouTube. Still tons of room for improvement for the platform, but it’s functional now.
Other creators have their own websites with text content, or podcasts hosted elsewhere.
It’s only a small handful of channels I check for on YouTube anymore. It kind of sucks that it’s mostly small channels where video is a key component and they don’t fit with the edu-tainment vibe of Nebula, and I don’t know of another platform for them. Lots of DIY home improvement, self-sufficiency (not religious or conspiratorial lol), music videos, and channels dedicated to specific videogame franchises.
I know LTT has Floatplane too. I wonder if all of these other videos streaming options getting worse will start driving more people to smaller platforms.
You might want to give Grayjay a try. It’s a cross platform video app that lets you connect to people’s YouTube accounts but also Nebula and other video platforms. Don’t download it from the Play Store though, sideload the apk file directly from the website. I’ve only used it for YouTube so far but it lets you do the things you would have needed Vanced for before and I love it
Cue*
Maybe they really just want to line them up in a large queue 🤷♂️
I was kinda worried with the LTT drama unfolding since DankPods does use Floatplane as a source of income. While Floatplane and LMG are technically separate, because it spun off of LTT people might not see it as such.
And yeah, I notice I watch YouTube a lot less now, ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page. Maybe that’s for the better. I still have a watch later backlog I should export to a text file or something.
ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page.
How do you expect to get recommendations with no watch history?
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They still build recommendations even if you’re not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it’s all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.
They can base the recommendations on your subscriptions.
By that same logic, you should worry about the creators on YT when advocating actions harmful to YT.
Speaking for myself, I disagree.
YT is bad, and so is LTT, and by extension, Floatplane.
After LTT unambiguously showed their true colors, and doubled down, I unsubscribed and removed all of trace of their ecosystem from my digital habits.
YT is a bit harder to do that with, so I use alternative methods to extract the value/uses from their service. It works for me.
Nebula is fantastic but I’m not sure their current price is sustainable. Although I’d easily pay 3-4x as much for the quality content there.
My only hangup is that their privacy policy is your typical “we exploit your data for profit” type thing every other modern company has that I’m not contributing to.
Yeah we’ve just cut back our consumption a lot and what we do watch is a lot more intentional and not just riding the algo for hours. And what we do watch now is done via JDownoader > Plex for the most part.
Ironically the linked site doesn’t show content if you’re using an ad blocker.
Recently I’ve had sites block content just for rejecting cookies.
Very rarely do I ever see a site that allows you to “reject all” cookies. Almost always they require you to consent to “strictly necessary” (but also completely unnecessary) cookies. It’s so fucked up.
Quite the norm in Italy, even tho I think it’s illegal
What adblocker are you using? ublock on Firefox does fine
Edit: I’m not using ublock origin. I forgot I was using my iPhone with AdGuard.
Allowing all scripts it works for me, blocking only third-party scripts it shows a popup ad, blocking scripts of the domain too and inline scripts it works and uses less cpu.
They’re completely lost at this point I think. The ‘skip ad’ button is brilliant from a marketing perspective, if you ask me. One can get pretty used to tuning out ads but having that skip button keeps you actively interacting. So even if you didn’t see the whole ad, if the advertiser is smart you heard their name before you skipped. Plus the user gets to feel like the ad isn’t shoved down their throat, they have control.
If I were running things I’d quit this dumb battle with the users they’ve declared and make ads extremely easy to skip - I feel like you’d have a lot fewer refugess from the site and a lot more people less motivated to install an ad blocker in the first place.
I have the god damn chromecast with the remote thing and it’s totally bullshit, and handy! But mostly bullshit. I’m a mute nazi and mute every ad immediately to the point my wife makes fun of me. Although she does admit that it makes it more peaceful to watch. I’m wait to see how they enshittify it. I give it 3 months and then they pause ads if it’s muted.
Get tourself smart tube. It’s a million times better than the youtube tv app. I got a chromecast tv specifically so I could side load smart tube cause i was sick of the youtube app on my tv
That’s seems more complex than I’m willing to attempt. I’ll keep it in mind, thanks for the suggestion!
I don’t remember it being that tricky, you just download the release from github and either put it on a usb to put into your Chromecast or send it from your phone via a myriad of apps and you just install it on your Chromecast like you would with your phone. You might have to enable developer mode but that’s just as easy on a phone to by just pressing ok on the version number in the settings a few times
I just went through the steps and it seems like the menu no longer jives with the instructions. I’ll keep poking away at it. I did unlock developer mode so, progress.
If you get it to work, I’d also look into getting the button remapper app so you can make the YouTube button on your remote open up smart tube instead.
I also use it to map the double tap of Netflix to Disney+ and a hold to go to Amazon. It’s pretty handy.
I didn’t know that was a thing! Sounds like a worthwhile endeavor!
It’s worth it. You only have to.install it once and then you can update it from inside itself. I have YouTube premium so ads don’t pop anyway but sponsorblock awesome and the actual interface is better and doesn’t completely change randomly for the worse like YouTube app does Everytime they get an amazing idea for how to make the UX worse.
Excellent. Good to hear. I’ll keep trying!
RESUME VIEWING. RESUME VIEWING.
Skip for: 700 merits
WRAITH BABES
Do yourself a favour and sideload Smarttubenext onto the chromecast. No more YouTube ads.
I’m sticking with the Chromecast 2. No remote, but also no bullshit. Just cast from your phone or computer and send whatever you want from there to your TV.
I kept mine and may go back to it. The remote one is only good because it let’s my family watch from my account without buying the family plan. We also have it linked to a couple leach accounts.
No one is leaving YouTube because there is no alternative. You can go to a site like Vimeo, but no one uploads there. You can go to Nebula, but very few people want to pay for yet another subscription.
peertube
Unfortunately there is an alternative, pay them. But fuck that.
You could also pay the content creators that you enjoy watching directly. That way you can still have an ad free experience, mostly, while also supporting people making the things you like.
I do support a couple. Patreon doesn’t let me cast, I have to click through to YT. Maybe if I got the patreon app? But fuck that too.
good thing i use revanced 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍📌
edit: not the pin
My revanced has been out of date and non functional for a while, do you happen to recall how to update it? For some reason I’m struggling to remember the install process.
Huh. My solution (for years now) has been to kill the YouTube ap entirely and watch videos on Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I may have to see if Revanced is a better experience.
Used to do that but recently switched over to ReVanced because Firefox pip would just show the corner of the webpage sometimes, or when I go to fullscreen the app would close, so I’d have to go back on Firefox again and fullscreen twice because the first time I fullscreen it doesn’t auto-rotate
get a newer YouTube apk, install and then patch. the same way you install it in the first place. you reminded me that I need to do the same
Personally I use revanced extended from GitHub. It’s got additional options and they release an APK, so I just download and install
If you don’t want to deal with that, NewPipe is pretty good. I’ve been using it for a bit and love it.
Can be found on f-droid or from their website
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apks are not the best idea even from trusted sites. There’s probably a telegram link for it. I use the extended version which has some extra goodies: https://t.me/s/revanced_extended
Don’t trust some random site to download apks from, anyway, here’s my random telegram channel, use that…
That has to be trolling
Revanced APKs - Automated builds and distribution of ReVanced apps (unofficial):
If your rooted you can use magisk and just hunt down the revanced magisk zip.
Alternatively I use Newpipe and testing Grayjay.
grayjay.app
If your rooted you can use magisk and just hunt down the revanced magisk zip.
BTW if you can only find the magisk apk rename the apk to .zip and you can fastboot flash to boot.
i thought the pin indicated a blood offering for a second
XD
easy fix: don’t use the app on your phone.
instead use youtube via your browser with adblock (for instance safari + adblock pro) and create a shortcut on your homescreen. you can use youtube just like in the app, you won’t have any ads and you also can play videos with your screen turned off
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future they make it so the only way to watch Youtube on mobile is through their app. It seems like they’re getting desperate, and that seems like the logical conclusion.
I really hope not. Otherwise that would be the end for me. Same as reddit I simply would delete my account and uninstall everything related to it :)
Or just use patches or alternative YouTube clients
why installing something when you just can use your browser and get basically the same experience?
Also those apps will be useless when they mess around with the api just like reddit did.
these apps do not use any official API. if they used it, they would be obliged to comply with the terms of services that most likely force them to show ads or track the users or some other bullshit.
of course these unofficial viewers break from time to time, but in my experience they have been super quick releasing patches fixing it and the user experience is way way better than the official web or app. Fast UI without bloat, no ads, no algorithms, etc.
ok. im gonna stick with my browser solution, don’t need anything else and it works great.
i’m getting downvoted for this, lol 🤣
They don’t realise that it just looks like the app and behaves like YouTube premium with background play if you use Firefox or similar on your phone.
They probably imagine some clunky browsing experience in desktop mode.
Or they’re personally invested in all those apps that I wouldn’t trust my password to.
same for me. I wouldn’t trust my password to another unofficial app if I could use just my browser for the same experience.
It’s basically only for YouTube these days, since I got my official mailing away from Google, but still.
You can’t cast to Chromecast (non-googleTV if that matters) from Firefox mobile, also pull to refresh doesn’t work in browser, and they dont support push notifications for uploads. Revanced works great so I see no reason to switch, and it’s based off of the official YouTube APK so you’re only logging into Google play services, and you get the same native app experience you’re used to with all the addons you’d get from browser extensions built in (adblock, shorts block, sponsorblock, return dislike, background play, etc.)
I don’t think there’s anything that YT in Firefox mobile can do that revanced can’t, but revanced gives you cast support (through the official cast shim that supports CEC for pause, play, stop using the TV remote unlike doing screen mirroring of your phone where you can’t use your phone for anything else while mirroring) and other niceties like notifications and one tap to newpipe player / download video file through newpipe. It’s only a benefit to use revanced over the mobile web.
With Firefox on mobile I can use my personal uBlock filter list to deshitify the search results. That alone makes it superior to Revanced for me (still use it from time to time, but every time I search for something I feel the urge to puke).
I recently migrated to NewPipe/SponsorBlock from Libretube and can concur that once you migrate your old subs from the csv google is required to send you, the experience is incredible on either platform.
This plus using invidious with rss feeds and yt-dlp/sponsorblock on desktop, and I’ve kept up with all my favorite creators without having visited the Youtube site, seen an ad, or heard a sponsor or a call to action in years.
Oh, and on Android, iif you view this article using Mull with NoScript and Ublock on, content is visible wuth no ads.
Add in a bypass paywalls filter list to ublock and yeah…internet is usable again, lol.
Because the browser sucks more
A dedicated app is prettier, more functional, and (feels) faster than Firefox + Ublock or Newpipe, actually plays in the background (seamlessly, I might add… looking at you, Newpipe), and allows for more player options.
that’s maybe your opinion. I have absolute no problems with the look and feel of youtube in safari and I have all the functionality I need (play videos with screen off and on).
It is nearly identical to the app.
why installing something when you just can use your browser and get basically the same experience?
Because it’s absolutely not the same experience?
Also those apps will be useless when they mess around with the api just like reddit did.
They break all the time but they always fix them. LibreTube has been broken for the past few days but they’ll fix it soon enough.
E: LibreTube is fixed temporarily by switching to HLS.
Because it’s absolutely not the same experience?
It looks pretty much like the app, I get recommendations like in the app, can watch my subscriptions like in the app, can see comments, video or fullscreen mode. Don’t know about you but for me this just feels like the app.
They break all the time but they always fix them. LibreTube has been broken for the past few days but they’ll fix it soon enough
That just sounds awful and would be a reason for me to stay far away from these apps
why installing something
I don’t watch YT a lot on my phone, but Freetube for desktop and Newpipe for android (F-Droid) support offline subscriptions, playlists, history and downloads of video or audio, background playback and you can sync both apps.
How’s sponsor block?
Seems to be doing fine, I’m having no problems with it.
I hate web apps and electron for performance (incl. memory) reasons and the gestures are simply better in the app, not to mention Haptic Touch and crashing due to out of memory on iOS
On the API, that’s why I use a patched client. YouTube isn’t that aggressive with pushing new versions so you install a patched version of the old version like uYouPlusExtra
Also, even when the address bar is hidden in Safari, there’s a much smaller but still existent bar
It’s okay to have alternatives. I use NewPipe, Firefox+uBlock and sometimes a YouTube ReVanced app.
Does that have the address bar taking up space on the top of the screen? That seems like the downside. I prefer revanced, but I can understand that some people don’t want to install anything.
safaris address bar is at the bottom and also hides automatically…so no.
And on firefox you get to choose whether you want it up top or down below.
If that’s annoying have the people writing this article looked at their own website, ads on ads (and ads placeholders with adblock) with cookie and email subscription popups and SEO bullshit.
They’ve also gone hard on those 10 minute ads that go on and on unless you press skip, which I often can’t cause I’m doing dishes or have my hands busy while watching videos.
Also recently I’ve been getting the prompt to skip an ad, and when I press the skip button, it gives me two more unskipable ads
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Jsyk smart tube is incredibly easy to hook up on an android or firetv and provides adfree viewing and sponsor-block
At some point this has to be counterproductive to their profits. When YouTube had way fewer and shorter ads than now, I spent a lot more of my time there than I do now. They literally drove my eyeballs away by showing too many ads.
I wonder if they know the dollar figure in sales that ads, for all their expense, have gained out of me. I’d say it’s near zero. You may say I am subconsciously influenced and even if I don’t click the ad, I may buy the product at some other date due to recognition. Maybe. But that individual ad impression that someone paid for that I did not click (or blocked) does not know that. And it’s quite likely they don’t care, because ever missed click is still getting the word out so to speak.
But what they should care about is the absolute dislike I have towards aggressive advertising. And I am not alone. When I face an unskippable or full page or pop up ad, I don’t subconsciously want that product then or later. I consciously hate the product just a little more and more with each impression.
And now that it’s an arms race, the lines are being drawn, the hatred being cultivated, and the whole effort has lost its entire point: To make me friendly toward the product and to buy it. And I feel like sites like YouTube essentially don’t give a shit. They have the advertisers convinced through some great effort that ads are effective and worth it. All while doing everything that they can to keep us corralled and our eyes pried open to view them.
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If you want people to disable content blockers on your website, it’s best not to treat the people who don’t have one on like shit YouTube.
knocking on wood so far with firefox and ublock/noscript and disabled hardware acceleration, i will get audio but no video when these ads autoplay-- instead of pressing the skip button, i just hit f5 and poof, gone. still more work than i prefer but i hate advertising as much as anything
I tried using sunshine/moonlight to stream hockey from my PC to my tv and the stream was black (until I disabled hardware acceleration). Legit blew my fucking mind. I was 30% impressed and 70% angry. Once again paying customers are the ones with the shitty UX.
I’m sure the average person doesn’t give a fuck but I am slowly but surely being driven away from any and all paid content. I can’t watch 40 dudes skate around in circles without being fucking bombarded with gambling ads from every fucking possible avenue. Because millions isn’t enough they need more millions.
I’m getting so fucking jaded.
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In Europe we can use ublock and it works just fine. No ads
Google is afraid to overstep in Europe and piss off the EU? Nice.
Google is respecting already existing laws in the EU that prevent them from collecting information about your browser without your consent
Oh yeah, the EU has shown it actually has teeth hitting even the bigger companies where it hurts: fines that aren’t just “cost of business” but actually impact their revenue.
I would pay for YouTube Premium, like I had been when I was a student ($7.99/month), but I’m not a student anymore and they want $19 a month. Fuck no.
$19? I don’t see that option
Subscribing through the iOS YouTube app is $19 because of Apple’s cut. He might mean that?
Apple tacks on another 50%? That seems high.
SponsorBlock still works via Firefox.
Using ublock on Firefox, still working
That one was never blocked, youtube doesn’t gain money when surfshark pays a youtuber to tell you it’s a good vpn.
It also blocks normal answers well though
ADs? What ADs?
Oh, the irony.
ublock works perfectly, anything else shouldnt be used
The screenshot is from an iPhone, on which uBlock isn’t an available option.
Choose the walled garden, live in the walled garden.
delete the stupid app and use youtube on safari with adblock. works like a charm.
They’re talking about the Android authority website
are they? I think they talk about the screenshots on that page showing the youtube app on iphone.
It’s a screenshot of the Android authority website. It was what popped up immediately when I clicked on the link.
useless Google, we said iOS smh
