And PiHole, Sponsorblock, Adguard and ReVanced (depending on the device). This is a strict "no ads" household.
Or ReVanced on android! I've been running ReVanced YT since it launched and I haven't touched the stock YouTube app since
Speaking of android, Blockada has been great on my phone. It's like a PiHole or uBlock Origin for the whole incomming network data, like AB++ used to be nearly a decade ago.
Amazon Prime on my XBox literally doesn't work without my PiHole. I need to block the ads otherwise nothing plays. My PiHole was recently down for a few days and suddenly we couldn't finish any of the shows we were on.
Never trust these companies, they want to destroy their own products in the name of profit. Undermine them everywhere you can.
The vending machine would reject all bills because uBlock developers don't accept donations.
Billy should really not support them, Ad Block Plus let’s advertisers pay for having their ads checked as "acceptable advertisements", i.e. is selling out the core functionality of their product. Billy should use uBlock origin, which afaik does not accept donations, he could however support something like PiHole .
I’m pretty sure those ads also have to meet certain criteria though.
Using ABP, I’ve never had a popup ad, full page ad, auto-playing video, or other intrusive form of advertisement. The “acceptable ads” have been quiet and out of the way in what would otherwise be empty space.
With the understanding that some websites and content creators are entirely reliant on ad revenue, I prefer to have those filtered down to those that don’t provide a burdensome experience.
I will say that having a new tab open with a solicitation for a donation / “premium” every single update (so almost daily) is irritating and they better knock that shit off if they don’t want to alienate users.
The “acceptable ads” have been quiet and out of the way in what would otherwise be empty space.
I don't mind this whatsoever. I can appreciate the concept of free is paid for by ads, but when you force me to sit there and have to watch it, or pop ups take over the page, all that excessive nonsense, that's when I say fuck off and use an ad blocker that will remove everything.
I actually think dating sites could be improved if they had an ad you could swipe away every 10 swipes or something. (I absolutely loath swipe only apps though. I need to know your personality not your duck face pose....) for apps with bios they could have a "banner" type ad that is between segments of the bio. Anything but "pay $50+/month to make this somewhat functional."
I have no problem with the acceptable ads system. ABP doesn't get any money from it, and the ads have to meet the criteria anyways, and it's easy to opt out. I guess it's a bit fishy that the list maintainers charge money to get ads reviewed, but the FAQ ThunderWhiskers posted says that smaller companies get it for free, and they only charge the bigger companies. I'm not gonna get up in arms over someone charging Disney money for a service they give the local deli for free.
I also like the way it gives companies an incentive to produce less intrusive ads. With the system, unintrusive ads reach more people. Otherwise, it's all or nothing, which makes intrusive ads the best option from a greedy perspective; they're far more likely to be clicked, and the only cost is the risk of damaging the ad ecosystem as a whole (and you know how little corporations can care about damaging ecosystems.)
adblock plus is shilled and lets ads through.
ublock origin, folks. and firefox, because adblocking wont work on chromium anymore.
ublock origin is so based, the dev doesn't even accept donations. He wants people to donate to the chads maintaining the lists his add-on uses instead.
I can understand both sides and I've been on both sides. Wanting to donate to show appreciation and help support an awesome project, and not accepting donations due to creating the burden of unfair support/development expectations for a volunteer project.
It really is such a cool extension.
There's a firefox extension that upgrades the twitch player and blocks ads. Can't remember the name but it was easy to find when I searched for it.
I gave Premium a shot. Then the one time I wanted to use the feature Google said I was paying for - being able to download videos - I found out that it was just a glorified pre-buffer.
Enshittification isnt just limited to free users folks. Slammed that cancellation button right then and there. Good luck earning back my trust, I'm happy to pay if you didnt scream so loudly that even if I paid, you were going to treat me like shit anyways.
Make sure that google can't kill you without consequences after you bought one month of their subscription.
I pay for it and I like the perks. You are giving YouTube money, but also the creator of the video. And synchronizes the view with your account. And takes it into account for the dreaded "algorithm" (which I also find useful, plenty of cool channels discovered thanks to it).
What did you expect, exactly?
Ever go to a video website, click a download button under a video, and NOT have that video in your downloads folder? Literally that. That's what i expect from a download button.
On android the download folder is a mess. I honestly prefer to have the videos in the app. I used newpipe before and it was a bit less convenient (although more flexible).
Never used it on a computer, tho, that would make sense there.
I get that. It would be totally fine if it just gave the option. But yes the issue is more egregious on PC.
I only use YouTube on PC. I'm kinda old school now though. My phone is pretty much just a phone now. Only app I use is lemmy other than maps and normal stuff. No social media on my phone.
I like those perks too, but if I pay more to be able to download videos (which again, I could've used a free tool for) I want to be able to do whatever I want with it. Download means getting a file I can watch using my own video player and store for later even if Youtube dies tomorrow, If I go on holiday without internet, or if my internet goes down for a week. Anything.
If Google is going to be "Uhm aksually, you are technically downloading it, thats why we can advertise it like that", then I'm already downloading literally every video I watch. And thats not the kind of bullshit you give to a paying customer. That is spitting in my face for paying you. Why does a non-Premium user get better service with free third party youtube downloaders?
It's a matter of principle.
I see your point. For videos I want to hoard forever I also use yt-dlp, but for watching colbert on a plane, the app does just fine.
Yeah, I thought it was a nice compromise. It seemed sensible that if Premium is the 'compliant' response to not wanting ads, the 'compliant' response to using third party tools to download videos was to just be able to do things more easily and with more options through Premium as well. But apparently they wanted to advertise something anyone who's wanted to download a youtube video would not describe as 'downloading', which is easily out competed by free (but at times shady) tools.
Wow thanks for the heads up on that! I kept getting tempted by that "Download" button thinking "No...it can't be that easy."
It's kinda amazing how much content uses existing content...so they quietly can't ruin downloading without tanking a lot of traffic.
Exactly, thinking that is what I was getting pulled me over the edge, I sometimes remember a music video I want to listen to on my phone during my commute and I don't want to spend 30 minutes either getting on my PC to download it with a tool, or using a third party downloader which can at times be shady. So upgrading that to a single click in the app seemed like a great deal. Crushingly disappointed when I found out how it actually was. Turns out the real answer was NewPipe, which I don't even have to pay for.
I believe gorhill says to support the filter list maintainers
Ah yes: Why don't you accept donations?
[…] Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. I can not emphasize this enough.
This is the way, appeasement of ad producers doesn't work.
At some point number has to get bigger.
Before you know it were paying for cable tv with ads again.
Except this time we won't just be paying for the cable, we'll be paying to get the ads you want, too. You'll be paying for the DVR function or whatever they want.
As with everything else it will continue to degrade and enrage it's customers, and erode the entire country's very will to live. I am truly curious just how detrimental it is for everyone in this country to be exposed to the THOUSANDS of small fully intentional annoyances daily that are built into every product and service. It has to be a leading cause of how angry and divided we are and is absolutely causing many early deaths. Everyone is so stressed out by every single thing they interact with.
Your comment made me think of those sci-fi books where you have to pay or subscribe to use the simplest of everyday services (such as Ubik where the hero has to pay his door if he wants to go outside)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet
The most effective science fiction is that which is only an arm's reach away from current fact.
You should possibly look into some form of therapy if everything annoys you, especially if feels intentional.
A single piece of merch from your favorite creator will cover for any ads you would have seen for the foreseeable future anyway
I run UBO, SponsorBlock on FF. I have many t-shirts and hats from youtoobers. Someone was asking about my hat, I said it's a youtube channel, then they asked about my shirt and I said it's another youtube channel. I then thought of all the t-shirts I have in my drawer at home. I'd say well over half of them are youtube channel shirts. Made me think I am too deep down the youtube hole, but there is a ton of good content and I like supporting the ones I watch and enjoy. So merch is how I do it so I can be their advertisement. I may not even wear it much, but I'll buy to support them and to tell others about their channel.
Me but Vivaldi and Adnauseam.io.
Ads are a dystopian nightmare but for some reason nobody seems to care
Consider switching to something Firefox based cause Adnauseam will break when google kills of manifest v2 in a month or something
Adnauseam will break
when google kills of manifest v2 in a month or something
In June 2025, as of now. (Vivaldi only, other Browsers may differ, change to FireWaterLibreWolfFox regardless.)
Yeah I'm holding out for that dude who built a new browser from the ground up and made it fully open source. It's called Ladybird.
Probably because unlike paying for the service, we don't feel how it takes our money from us.
A psychological trick that works so great that it made a lot of services exist in the first place like the whole of YouTube. And now we're kinda addicted to those too.
Exactly. I hate when things say FREE!* (*With Ads), because you ARE paying for it. With your PRECIOUS TIME
With your PRECIOUS TIME
That's the least of it! What's worse is that you're paying with your MENTAL HEALTH, because by their nature, ads are designed to make you feel like something is wrong with your life (and that buying the product can fix it).
https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
https://www.mqmentalhealth.org/adding-to-the-problem-advertising-and-mental-health/
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/advertisings-toxic-effect-on-eating-and-body-image/
https://adfreecities.org.uk/what-we-do/advertising-mental-health/
Thank you! I was always morally opposed to ads. Glad to have another great reason to shun them
I'm not using ublock origin, Vivaldi has built-in ad blocking. If I were to switch, I'd switch to Ladybird
YouTube: Has ads and sells your data like every other online service
Also YouTube: Doesn't pay creators much to the point where creators often have in-video advertisements but expects audiences on the platform to pay for an adless experience
That's not really correct. While yes, ads don't pay great, this is generally the case, and maintaining servers with these amounts of data is really expensive. And with YouTube premium, actually, YouTubers get paid quite well. You can take a look at the LTT finances video. They make more money from premium than from YouTube ads, even though only a small fraction has it.
Is LTT the rule or exception tho for that premium vs ads metric? LTT viewers are more on the nerdy side so more likely to have adblocking software. Not saying the data is wrong or anything, I just wonder how it fares on more general topics like cooking, fashion, travel etc.
Not to that extent, no. You can argue that not all watchtime is equal and hence the distribution of youtube premium money shouldn't be proportional but otherwise its hard to argue.
Or... do both. Buy premium because you are actually getting something for your money... a platform. And support ad blockers to stop the ads where the product is just a webpage.
Yeah. I'm actually okay with paying for a service I use daily. Google does a bunch of evil shit to drive its advertising business, but the reality is that nothing is free and somebody has to pay somewhere.
We can pay with money or we can pay with ads and personal data.
What I would like to see is a law banning data collection for paid accounts. Because right now Google datarapes you even when you pay.
but the reality is that nothing is free and somebody has to pay somewhere.
Youtube gained its market share and stopped any competitors arising by offering a free video platform. Now that there isn't much hope for competition they have enshitified, plastering ads and demanding money. They endured massive loses for years just to kill competition. So boo fucking hoo when I continue using a monopolists products on the terms they originally offered.
A privacy law that only works for paying customers? I think we can do far better than that.
The economic reality is not everything can be free for everyone. Privacy is the price people pay to have "free" access to services.
But right now, even those who pay to skip ads or have additional features on a service are still being mined for data.
I deny your economic reality. There is no reason social media needs to charge. It can be run purely on volunteers and donations. It may not be able to be as big as FB but that is okay. We don't need giant multimedia companies running social media anyways.
We need strong privacy protections for everyone, not just paying customers. It is time to put an end to targeted advertising.
We're talking about video hosting here. For a hosting site like YouTube that's several petabytes of new storage added every day assuming no duplicates or backups of anything, plus the bandwidth, overhead, staffing, and more.
A project of that scale can't be done by volunteer hobbyists with no money. What you're asking for is for other people to work and spend billions annually without any expectation of compensation for just your entertainment, and you aren't entitled to that.
Your inability to see the Internet as a distributed resource is astounding considering it's purpose. I will repeat what I said before there is no reason social media can't be done without the corporations controlling everything.
You can easily host your own videos, if everyone did and we used advanced sharing protocols the load can be distributed. The more people watching the more bandwidth.
You have become brainwashed into believing only YouTube can exist. You have bought into it so bad you think someone who wants your rights and privacy protected is a free loader.
We can do at all without them. There is something wrong and perverse about a single entity controlling that much of our culture. Too big to fail you say, I say too big to care about what really matters.
Okay, let's go with your idea that everybody has the knowledge and hardware retired to self-host.
What happens when Grandma's cute video she uploaded goes viral and 11 million people try to watch it in a 24hr period? Would we rather it simply didn't work, or does grandma get an unexpected $7,000 bill?
Good loving people pay for it because they want it to be available to everyone in the world and it's running costs are pretty low.
Wikipedia isn't video hosting. The angles of nenual hosting cost for Wikipedia is around 3 million a year. YouTube probably costs nearly as much per hour to keep running.
500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That's gonna be like 60 terrabytes every hour just in storage space increases.
If you were to try and host that on a cloud server like AWS the cost would increase millions of dollars every day. Google self-hosted, but it's still unfathomingly expensive. There's still questions over whether YouTube profitable even with all the ads and the subscriptions.
Selling personal data at all should just be banned. It says personal right in the name... Giving away free services with forced adds is exploitation in my opinion. The first step to solving the issue is to require everything have a paid option that gets rid of adds and doesn't sell personal data for additional profit. The hard part with that is preventing them from just setting the price unreasonably high.
I'd imagine there's a point where the money from subscriptions is greater than the money from advertising and data hoarding.
The "unreasonably high" prices should be self-solving in that context, because the company won't make more money by selling ads for less than the price of a subscription.
In fact, in order to justify raising the prices too much they'd have to change more for the ads, which in turn would hurt the ad industry by reducing the ROI in marketing.
Yeah I never understood why ads make so much money. Seems like some kind of gift is going on.
Exactly this. Funding google is a bad investment. Exactly like the comic says, give it to someone who will improve your life.
I would pay, if they would offer family pack in our country, but they don't. Netflix is cheaper for me, I have Premium plan for 10€, and I am splitting the bill with my sister, so I only pay 5€ per month. I am not paying more than that for a YouTube.
I'm a GenZ-er, and I adblock everywhere I can. What makes the difference with YouTube premium for me is that I fall asleep to YouTube videos on a TV every night, and the advertisements alone can make that experience terrible because you can't adblock YT on a TV as easily as elsewhere. Premium might be one of my best decisions I've made for a platform I spend so much time on. I still donate to Wikipedia and uBlock even if I pay the premium for other services.
I still donate to ... uBlock
From https://ublockorigin.com/:
The uBlock Origin project still specifically refuses donations at this time
Who are you giving money to?
Depents on your tv. There are good ways for some. S-tube next works for android tv for example, there is a way for webos too
Yeah I've tried this but the experience isn't all there for me imo. It's certainly a great project though.
I'm a GenZ-er
I fall asleep
Typical genZ, getting those zzzz's. That's probably how they got the name.
Youtube premium makes sense for me when combined in a family account for 5 with youtube music for 17.5 USD in total.
But besides that, fuck Google. Id pirate music if I wasn't so lazy but Google diminishing anything of what I currently get would probably give me some energy.
I do the same, but it has to be on my phone, and last I checked that wasn't an option with the screen off even with Premium. So I used Vanced (and now Revanced). I have moderate-to-severe tinnitus and this setup might have saved my life once or twice.
Premium has background playback! I use it to listen to video essays with my phone in my pocket when I'm working, screen off. Revanced was my go-to before premium but it has been a pain for me to patch recently (I'm just lazy) so I'm just using stock YT with Premium.
I don't believe for one single second that this will stay ad free. YouTube will eventually do like all the assholes do and have a tiered system where the first tier is simply less ads not none.
Even when you aren't seeing ads their algorithm is still controlling your front page, allowing them to push partner content that isn't directly advertising but still acts like it. The differences between a commercial for Doritos and an episode of Good Mythical Morning titled "Trying Every Doritos Flavor" from the perspective of the PepsiCo marketing department are that people might willingly click on the GMM video and they probably didn't even have to pay anyone for the video to happen.
Sure Rhett & Link may not have a partnership with Pepsi and are just innocently making content to give their audience (I genuinely believe this), so they've got no part in this becoming advertising, but you would have to be incredibly naïve to believe that Google's algorithm isn't smart enough to recognize that video and others like it as marketable content the promotion of which can be sold to PepsiCo.
Premium subscribers may not be seeing ads, but they are absolutely still seeing advertising.
edit: typos
That's a good point, but to be honest even if those thumbnails were just straight up ads I'd be ok with that. I can simply not click on it. Having any kind of actual ad on a premium service is absolute bullshit though, that's straight up greed...
Hell as a free user I wouldn't mind in the slightest having their segments: videos, segment for shorts, more videos, be broken up to have videos, ad banner, shorts, videos, and banner etc... don't lock me into having to watch an ad but I do understand they need ad revenue and I don't mind seeing the still image ads "of the past" (well past for me since I've used an ad blocker for-absolutly-ever now.)
Not gonna lie, I bit the bullet and got YT Premium almost 5 years ago. Honestly, one of the best purchases I've ever made in my adult life, hands down
I had Youtube premium when it included google play music. GPM was so good...
I unsubscribed everything when they changed to youtube music. Terrible music platform
You're going to make me cry remembering my days with gpm. Hands down the best music platform that was.
Agreed. Plus I know my views pay slightly more to creators than ad-supported views (and far more than ad-block views) so I can feel superior to my fellow man.
I think it's worth it too. People are just weird about paying for a product that supports individuals creative ambitions just because a company takes a cut. Admittedly better content than streaming services most the time anyway.
You could use an ad blocker and give even more to the creators you like via Patreon (or ideally better means).
Porque YouTube/Google gana mucho más que el dueño del canal por esa transacción, además de que lo hace explotando a cientos de miles o millones de personas en el mundo que quieren vivir de influencers.
I typically put children's music on YouTube when driving with my kid. Not having to shuffle with the phone to skip ads while in the car is a life saver.
I've had it for AGES. I agree that ads have been a bit much and many websites almost unusable without Origin. YT Premium though has been fairly solid with a couple hiccups.
Admittedly, I use YouTube as my primary source of entertainment. So the price is easily justified vs other services.
I agree with you but it made me physically nauseous to click the button because I remember a time when YouTube was awesome and free from ads.
Free (legal) movies. Most are stuff I don't want to see anyway, but every once in a while a diamond in the rough pops up
Edit: Like someone else mentioned, YT is my primary entertainment source for a few reasons, so I've definitely gotten my money's worth. I wouldn't recommend everyone get it, but I'm happy with my decision
Doesn't seem like you bit any bullet, you just paid for your subscription giving money away. What's the biting the bullet part for you?
Lol giving away money at all, especially to large monopolistic corporations like Google. They don't need my money, they already have plenty
Use Smarttube instead on android tv and stbs Smarttube
For android phones, tablets: Tubular
In browser ublock blocks youtube ads, also invidious instances.
I'm guessing the problem with revanced is the sheer number of projects calling themselves revanced, most of which are probably just malware.
I'm on it daily. A ton of hours between watching videos and enjoying the music catalogue. It's definitely the only reason I don't mind paying premium. No complaints.
My unpopular opinion is that YouTube has every right to enforce ads on their platform if you're not paying for the service.
Absolutely not our problem. They can come up with other business models. Maybe they can resurrect one of the hundreds of projects/business models from them at https://killedbygoogle.com/ and run with that
oh, wait, i forgot about all the sharecare non-pirate bears that just upload good stuff for the careshare... you know, that other 3/12 of the catalogue...
Same here. My weekly usage is about 14h give or take 2h.
At least Youtube doesnt bother me anymore.
Same, but then trying to push shorts is annoying. I'm paying and m always dismissing the feature, take the fucking hint already
The few shorts I do watch are only from my subs. After I watched the short, I exit and don't enter the doom scroll.
But I agree that thwy are trying harder then when tgey were introduced.
I'll get YouTube premium once they fix their damn TV app.
Admittedly, this bug is not applicable to Premium. Being ad-skippy and all. But it's indicative of the overall quality of the app. For example:
A collaboration between Google and Samsung, people! Two giant corps serving millions of users! And they expect us to pay monthly fee for this holy shit
...sorry for the rant.
Tbf the only Android TV app I've used which is actually usable and has not-shit UX is SmartTube. Discovery Plus deserves a special place in hell.
to really support them, buy merch, subscribe to their patreon, make a donation via kofi... there are so many more viable ways to actually support your content creator than YT+.
