https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24248391/youtube-pause-ads-widely-rolling-out
“We’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers.”
It's excellent that alternatives and ad blockers do exist but we need regulatory action to hold companies accountable for things that are designed to worsen user experience to pressure people into paying. It's also a serious accessibility issue, to increasingly have everything be bright and loud and motion filled and unpausable all the time. This trend goes beyond YouTube and it sucks, we need to regulate this nonsense.
What a weird downslope of a take that will obviously result in authoritarian government power expansion and futher censorship.
Just stop using it and support alternatives that dont do it. Have some self control.
Do you think regulations are just blanket authoritarian actions. Sometimes we need government intervention to ensure and protect people's rights.
Name a single viable alternative to YouTube at this point in time. Alternative frontends don't count, since they still rely on YouTube to work. None of the creators I watch upload anywhere else.
People always say shit like this as if people don't have a multitude of different life circumstances that affect and coerce how they interact with technology. That's just how capitalism works. It's not a matter of willpower. Privacy Bootstraps Theory is unhelpful. Being able to completely opt out of entrenched tech monopolies is a privilege. It's great that you can do that, not everybody can.
I agree, but most Invidious instances are currently broken, Grayjay isn't really FOSS and youtube-dl/yt-dlp aren't really great for watching videos, they're better for archiving them.
Invidious: News to me. My instance has never been down.
GrayJay: News to me... https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android I can see the full source... and the license seems pretty "free" to me... https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/blob/master/LICENSE.md with only caveat being that you can't distribute it for payment. I'm fine with that... and most others should be fine with that too.
ytdl: depends on the service using it. https://www.tubearchivist.com/ uses ytdl and gives you a little frontend for it. Works fine for watching and you can set it to watch for uploads from channels.
If you host your own private instance, it's less likely to get blocked. But quite a few public instance are having trouble right now.
Grayjay is source-available, but not free & open-source software.
Downloading YouTube videos works, but it's probably not the desired workflow for most people. It takes up storage space on your disk, and you have to wait for the video to download, before you can watch it. I like Tube Archivist, and use it myself for archiving videos, but I wouldn't consider it a great solution for just watching videos. I think LibreTube, FreeTube or a self-hosted Invidious instance are better solutions here.
I’m betting these wont work on a Roku Tv huh? Kiddo likes putting music videos for shapes and beats but the constant POLITICAL ads are driving me nuts.
Thats awesome! Looks like it runs off of Invidious and they're having issues right now. I’ll check back in on it and hopefully they can get back up and running again!
Some instances like inv.nadeko.net still work pretty well
You can also host your own instance at home on a small server or a VPS. You can optionally put it behind a VPN using Gluetun.
Oh nice, thanks again! I started testing the instances in the app but they were failing at pulling the videos during the tests. The instance you mentioned looks to be working!
I’m not familiar with using a VPS, I’ll have to look into that. i have pihole running on a mac mini with my router using that for dns and I’m an avid user of ProtonVPN.
You can easily deploy Invidious on that Mac as well. Just use Docker, Invidious has pretty good documentation for that: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/#docker-compose-method-production
I used to host Invidious like that on a Mac for almost a year, it worked flawlessly
Apparently a hot take, but I don't have an issue with this, as long as they're picture ads, not videos. An option to hide them temporarily would be good if you're trying to read something. Maybe you'd need to hold a key or something. To me this is much less intrusive than 3 videos ads at the beginning of a video.
All of that said, I pay for premium, as I watch enough YouTube for it to be very very justified. I've probably saved weeks of my time not watching ads, plus it supports creators more than the ads ever do.
You must be young (or without memory). YouTube ads started exactly with picture ads (horizontal banners), but that was not sufficient, and ~12 years later there already are 2 unskipable videos at start, middle and finish (and several at the middle if in a long video). Your ad at the pause may start with pictures even, but videos and later longer videos will follow.
My noodle 🍜 has little ads built into the noodle blades. I have to eat in my room. I've been watching porn so most of my noodles are pornographic. Anyway, don't look at my noodles! I get them for free with the ads.
You know, if I have no issues with this or that ad campaign, why would I have an issue with ads on noodles? Why stop there?
Ads on chips! ...new Doritos with e-paper ads on every chip!
Pornflakes! Every pornflakes comes with you!
Beans and rice? Yes and corn! All products can be stamped with ads! Imagine how many Viagra ads you can stick to a bowl of rice 🍚!
I could even rent my dick head to pornhub for relevant ads for my wife!....the new IKEA dinner set! Wait hold on!, how many spoons? Gr gl grgrgrgr....hold on wait I think comes with a gr gl grgrgrgr... Ok I don't like this channel! Sorry, the Internet, it is for porn.
You're joking but infinite growth is the broken basis of our financial system. Shareholder are legally entitled to request growth.
YouTube has cornered the earth market, they have practically no room to grow, the only thing they have left is to increase the revenue per view, so add stuffing will get worse quarter after quarter. Eventually they'll have to put ads in the ads and play them 5 at a time.
And yet people still say "if you don't like ads, pay up" as if getting ads in a subscription is not a matter of time, like it's happening to streaming.
I'd rather see them on pause screen than interrupting the playback but because we can't have any nice things, interruptions will also only get worse.
And good people argue how adblock and sponssrblock are fair game for your shitty company practices
If only YouTube ads were as unobtrusive as PornHub's.. one five-second-skippable ad before each video is all I've ever seen
Except the ads on porn sites are easier to block than YouTube's intrusive garbage. A simple DNS filter should be enough for most porn ads, whereas YouTube requires more complex blocking techniques.
Just gonna say I hate this when other apps do this. I pause cause I need to concentrate on something else. Showing an ad just makes that even harder. Now I have to pause AND close the app.
This already happened. People looking up CPR instructions because a loved one is dying, only to be met with three unskippable ads.
Goodbye Meemaw.
Yeah, that may be so, but priorities man. Priorities! Think of our profits man! In this harsh economy, ever ad counts! We're only controlling 90% of the internet while we strive for 100%. That's 10% short. 10%! We only had a revenue of 305 billion in 2023 which is not nearly enough to cut down on ads. Billionaire lives matter man! Come on, everybody, say it all together: Make millionaires billionaires again! Billionaires first! Meemaws don't consume enough anyway. Screw her. By the way, want some penis enlargement pills?
Proof? Aren't there classes of videos non monetized on youtube? When I just google search for cpr and find the american red cross I quickly found written instructions as well as a youtube video that doesn't appear to have any ads. Isn't the problem that some video creators intentionally create videos for CPR in hopes of monetizing?
https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/83733719?hl=en
This means as a creator that’s not in YPP [Youtube Partner Program], you may see ads on some of your videos. Since you’re not currently in YPP, you won’t receive a share of the revenue from these ads, though you’ll still have the opportunity to apply for YPP as you normally would once you meet the eligibility requirements.
Thanks for the checking. I think the whole argument is pretty wild and specious, and factually suspect, that someone died because a person couldn't look up the cpr video on time. YouTube is not a platform that is meant to deliver on demand life saving training. In NYC all the restaurants and workplaces have signs up in designated areas with instructions on how to do cpr. I suspect someone is going to more quickly look up written instructions or infographics if they need to Google. But really, this just speaks to the importance in staying up to date on CPR practices and having school and HR classes that teach this on a recurring basis. Using this as an argument against all ads is kind of nuts.
Also, the first step of most CPR instructions is call 911. So if you follow instructions, how are you watching a video on the phone? And can't the operator coach you through the steps?
Not defending YouTube here, but CPR is so time sensitive that if they were looking up instructions, she was a goner anyway.
Have you had CPR training? What you stated isn't true. Every second counts. But looking up instructions and seeing a easy video will still help massively.
Exactly. It takes over a minute for permanent brain damage from a lack of oxygen, and it can take several, several minutes before actual death.
CPR started anytime within that range will help keep the person alive, as you are literally forcing their body to intake oxygen and pump the blood.
If you find someone without a heart beat and they aren't already cold then call 911 and start cpr
Don't most YouTubers make more money with their own sponsorships than from YT ads? Can we start the mass migration to PeerTube already?
I don't think Peertube would handle mass migration of Youtube creators, unless each and every one of them set up their own instance.
I'd honestly be curious to see how that plays out. Every creator hosts their own content while strengthening and spreading the Peertube network.
I feel like that would quickly solidify it as a viable alternative.
This, my friends, is a classic lemmy argument: "how about someone whom I already don't pay anything go and do more work for less pay, so I can enjoy my content free, without ads, and don't need to bother with an AdBlock".
How about, you, anon, set up a server, provide a simple upload API, and convince your favorite content creator to upload there? Since it's no costs for them and very little work, they might. Maintain that for a year, then we'll talk.
Then realize that YouTube was losing billions every year for over a decade, and that their current model is the only way it can be profitable for them 😅
In time the technical knowledge requirements may be reduced. I could see a small company selling pre-setup media servers with a couple TB of storage. Just plug it in, load up your videos and your basically done.
And if you don't have comments/users, there is little that needs to be maintained.
It's not perfect, but there will eventually be a point where YouTube becomes so enshitified that people begin to switch to alternatives.
Nah, your ISP doesn't give you enough bandwidth to host your own mini YouTube. You vastly underestimate the bandwidth required to run the service. It's massive, which is why PeerTube is having a hard time gaining traction.
If I had a million dollars I'd start a company that sets up and manages federated software like Mastodon and Peertube.
YT will likely attempt to play creators and viewers off one another. Similar to how hospitality does so with patrons and staff re: tips. You could see a FUD campaign aimed at anyone republishing their work on competitor sites.
odysee can also be a option from peertube as well but odysees privacy policy they sell non pii data according to them if they dont sell user data we will be good
I wonder what made their leadership continue to escalate into increasingly bullshit decisions. What happens if I need to pause because I need my PC to be quiet so I can address something and still an ad suddenly starts playing, completely interrupting what I wanted to address in a completely intrusive way? I'll tell you what happens, I'll either find some way to disable that from happening, switch to a service that doesn't do it if I can, or just begin avoiding it all together.
Brilliant planing, YouTube. Whoever has been left as its leadership is a dumbass.
Not to mention it'll push more people towards using Adblockers. And since chrome is cracking down on Adblockers as well, people start using another browser altogether. It seems like Google is self-sabotaging with these kind of decisions.
Hilarious isn’t it? I stopped using Google search because they fucked it up too bad. I stopped watching YouTube years ago too because they already fucked it up.
I guess they just don’t want users anymore.
I guess they just don’t want users anymore.
Actually, they do; it's just that Google has become a bit short-sighted. They've started prioritizing short-term revenue over long-term growth and user experience.
They seem to have forgotten that focusing on the long term and prioritizing user experience were the key factors that made them an internet giant in the first place.
In any case, Google is a sinking ship. I'll give them a max of seven years before they become the next Yahoo if they keep making incompetent decisions like this.
Whoever has been left as its leadership is a dumbass.
Not in the slightest. More likely their annual bonus depends on boosting revenue right now. So they're incentivised to generate short term increases in revenue but not for longer term. Plus, also, if/when Youtube goes tits up they'll just get a different CEOing job (with "increased revenue by 25% in 2024 on their resume") rinse and repeat.
Money.
Also I imagine the ads will be silent but animated, like a regular website ad but full screen, essentially turning whatever you're watching it on into a giant billboard.
It's just another thing to block I guess.
I should have opened the article, that's a lot less intrusive than what I thought. If this is the extent of it, and frankly considering that Google let's you opt out of personalized tracking when many sites have begun forcing them onto users and forcing me to constantly clear their cookies, that makes me a lot less mad with them.
What if you paused so you could see something? You're not allowed to read that text in the background because ads
Great point. I already find this to be a problem with the recommendations that pop up when paused, and the end-video elements they throw over everything despite having that turned off everywhere I can find it. It's all so dumb. Just so damn dumb.
They’ll likely do what other platforms have done and let you X out the ad til you unpause
when he said that software should be free as in freedom, because that would solve this problem
While I don't disagree with Stallman, how would that solve this problem? This is about a major video hosting platform having market shares and injecting ads into their streams / UI. I do not see - even if every line of youtube's software sources were public - how that would solve the issue that the hosting platform can insert ads anywhere - honestly, as much as I hate ads, I can't even blame youtube for doing something morally questionable - they are providing a service, they are not a public institution obligated to making information accessible.
that's right: into their UI; with free software, you could use a different UI with no ads
Serious question: how can YouTube pay the bills with zero ads? I'm not talking about making a profit, just breaking even.
which is basically what we do using ublock origin - and then they inject ads directly into the video stream, and a custom UI wouldn't help.
Somewhere along the line, maybe the early to mid 2000's they stopped making products "for" the end-user and flipped it around so the end-user (their data) is now the product, and the customers are governments, corporations, and share holders.
shareholders
If 0.000…01% shareholders count:
Guessing a lotta us have a few bucks in index funds… suppose that ain’t cool, gotta find a principled fund.
The most principled funds must only invest in like three companies cuz every corp has some problem.
Because those shareholders (billionaires) and corporations drained the consumers of all of their money and now they're the most profitable demographic to market to.
Long gone are the days when I used be excited to read update notes for new features... Now I just hope they don't god damn force an update on me.
Just use Free and Open Source Software!
It can always fuck up with updates, but usually you just get more free stuff and it's awesome.
I went back to an old APK of Twitch and refuse to update to the current dumpster fire.
I use PurpleTV and it's been great. It's a Twitch fork modified to block ads, reduce bloat, and include customisation for chat, player and other components.
Don't know if we can share links here but the APK can be easily found online, still being updated semi-regularly. I won't come back to the official app as long as I'm able. :)
Cheers for that. I had other third party apps way back in the day but they lacked some features. Will check it out.
Twire is a great alternative though.
https://github.com/twireapp/Twire
And it only connects to Twitch! :) (Plus betterttv or alternatives in case support for them are activated iirc)
is there way to watch stuff without using a Twitch account with it? I've tried just skipping the login process, but search returns no results when I search for streamers or games.
That's part of the reason why new community oriented projects are way more interesting to me now than most software. There are some outliers in the space who still have dedicated people in their craft rather than for money but it is fewer and farther between.
Absolutely. Although, this is just making old technology worse because web 3.0 and AI aren't performing to corpo expectations.
Soon: when you pause a video, it starts playing a video ad with audio, to make sure no silence time gets wasted from your speakers.
And your speakers are on subscription plans that charge you for every second that they play noise. Better upgrade to the next tier if you want to listen to anything else!
But now you have to watch and listen to the whole thing before you can resume the original video which was an ad to begin with.
