I'm my opinion the best days of YouTube were before monetization was a thing. There were plenty of creators back then, and it was a lot less corporate than it is now.
People think TikTok took off because the algorithm has some magic sauce the other platforms don't. Nope. It's because the content was more authentic because creators couldn't monetize. It was like YouTube in the early days.
Unfortunately, you need monetization to keep going. If creators didn't, they wouldn't have folded to YouTube monetization rules and just kept posting whatever they wanted. Basically, YouTube demonitezes then crrators have folded to just censoring their videos instead of pushing back because of money.
What they are saying tho is that people who want to make actual content don't care about monetization. They do it for the love of the game. Sure you can get a few to censor swear words and suicide, but the thing that built it was freedom. If you take away freedom then you've got nothing. Half the equation is people who watch the content. If people don't want to watch your shitty watered down bullshit, and other people don't want to be gagged by censorship, you're going to alienate the base; that is, actually red blooded humanity. Oh, let's say between the creators and the viewers its about 60% of your base. It won't be over night but it will be enough that ther3 will be alternatives to the bullshit. I say bull shit because that's what it is. Fucking goddamn horseshit. Thank you for glistening.
AFAIK, it's still possible to upload content that can be demonitized if you really don't care about monetization. The video will not be deleted, it will just be demonitized. However, creators don't want to get demonitized so they bow down. There is still freedom just as long it's not some extreme stuff.
That's true. We'll need third party agregators of YouTube then yp see what pertains to our worldview. Whether or not this fractionalizes further the community is probably well documented.
Your first phrase explains the problem perfectly IMO.
Maybe everyone mustn't make a youtube every other day. Sometimes I stumble onto an old youtube with all the information I need, but it's getting rarer and rarer because people who "need" monetization push them out it seems.
Exactly. In some way this would even be appreciated since I would probably do way more useful and healthy things with the time that I currently spend on YT.
Frankly, I find most YouTube content to be super obnoxious, so I would not pay for it anyway. I already barely ever use YouTube outside of trailers and music videos.
The link is broken.
After some searching, found it here.
So no one else has to do that annoying seach, here is the article text.
I'm sure formatting will be shite. Sorry about that.
YouTube is becoming unwatchable for ad block users – thanks to this powerful new crackdown tactic
News
By Mark Wilson
Published May 28, 2024
Videos now auto-skip to the end, ad block users report
A laptop showing YouTube's ad blockers message next to a laptop showing UBlock Origin
(Image credit: YouTube / Shutterstock / monticello)
Share
The battle between YouTube and ad blockers is heating up again, with some YouTube users reporting that videos are now auto-skipping to the end if they're using extensions to block advertisements.
The new YouTube tactic has been widely reported on Reddit (via 9to5Google), with ad blocker users revealing that video playback immediately skips to the end of their video. This apparently continues to happen even if the video is immediately replayed.
While Google hasn't officially stated that this is a new tactic for dealing with ad blockers, it has escalated its crackdown on apps and extensions that remove advertisements in its videos over the past few months.
For example, in April a Google post in a YouTube Community forum stated that viewers who use third-party apps like NewPipe "may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video".
This new auto-skipping behavior appears to affect multiple ad-blocking extensions including AdBlock, although there's some evidence that uBlock Origin has already found a workaround for the issue.
The other solution, of course, is to subscribe to YouTube Premium ($13.99 / £12.99 / AU$32.99 a month), which is undoubtedly what YouTube is pushing users towards with its ad block crackdown. But its tactics are seemingly nudging many towards doubling down on ad blockers, resulting in a game of whack-a-mole that's likely to run for a long time.
Is Premium worth it?
A YouTube Premium menu on a tablet
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
YouTube argues that using ad blockers "prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership" and that the site's increasingly long advertisements "help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service".
The problem is that, with those advertisements becoming increasingly lengthy and unskippable, many users feel that YouTube is increasingly looking to boost its own bottom line as much as its creators' income.
In a parallel to Netflix's password-sharing crackdown, there is evidence that YouTube's ad blocker is working – back in November, ZDNet reported that Google's tactics had led to a record number of users uninstalling their ad blockers. And in February, YouTube reported that it had hit a new milestone of 100 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.
But with YouTube Premium also recently getting its biggest price hike in years, many are still holding out and using ad blockers and extensions like YouTube Enhancer to preserve an ad-free experience. With YouTube ramping up its battle with ad blockers, though, the game of cat-and-mouse will likely become increasingly hard-fought.
ngl, revanced doesn't work for me anymore as of yesterday - most videos either drop to 144p after a few seconds and can't be changed, or simply won't load past the 1 minute mark. in the past i've been able to fix this by updating to a more recent revanced version, but i'm still having this on the latest youtube apk and revanced patches. will give it a few days and see if we get any new updates...
It's an Apple app so be thankful it's not $29.99. I'm not endorsing the price and haven't even had an iPhone in years but it did work well, even on such a locked down platform
What Youtube seems not to understand is...they serve at the people's pleasure. And even more so...they exist BECAUSE people create their product (content).
They're not too big to fail; they're just not annoying enough for mass exodus, yet. Classic frog in boiling pot.
Let's all remember - Youtube is a replaceable commodity. I would make efforts to download / store what videos you find irreplaceable from there (0.5-1T of hard-drive should store roughly 1500-2000, 20-30 minute youtube vids, at 720p@60), streaming them locally and intermingling with other sources.
In fact, I am working on an effort to do just that, by creating a local, SMB backed "channel" in my forked version of SmartTube
You make a good point about downloading... I rarely venture past my subscriptions list, I could just download their videos automatically and watch through Kodi or something
I've actual stopped sobbing to channels I want to follow, because I've noticed my feed doesn't really show many of my my subscriptions, but the channels I watch regularly without subbing always have 100% of their new videos at the to0 of my feed.
I find that feed thing unusable, I had to make significant efforts for it to stop showing shorts, premium ads, channels I'm not interested in, AI generated stuff, games (there are games now on youtube...), and it still doesn't show me anything worth watching. If only they took a page out of tiktoks book - not the shorts page pls
youtube/google is spending more time, money and reputation (not that it cares about reputation since its the only player in the game) trying to defeat adblockers, than it would have ever spent on just moderating its platform to make sure its not airing scams, malicious misinformation, frauds, hoaxes, outright porn, and all the other nasty shit that piss people off about the advertising.
cause thats really all this comes down to. no one likes ads, but they'd be a lot more tolerable if google fucking policed what they showed so people didnt get fucking AI nudifying ads on kids videos, or if they just didnt air 2 hour long prageru videos about why the white race is superior and why blacks should be happy whites "elevated" them with slavery.
but they'd rather force us to see that shit, than put in the slightest effort of moderating themselves
Some of us don't base their buying off of stupid ads. Why can't we just be left alone. At this point I'm just basing on if I have any money left after going to the gas pump.
That's not the point. Youtube doesn't want to sell you anything. They want to sell you to the companies that want to sell you something. Doesn't matter if you buy anything, as long as you give them some attention.
Yeah, it’s really annoying how ads have become “Mr. Beastified” too. I can’t even turn a TV on without some attention sucking advert coming on that demands your full and centered attention. What was a chill afternoon feels more like a tax.
I tried curiosity stream but ended up not liking it. Since 90% of what I watch is educational or infotainment I've gone with a sub to nebula, as most creators I was following on YT are there. Note there is no upvoter/down vote or commenting of any kind there.
Yeah , I love a good ad blocker / sponsor block / privacy frontend but they all feel like duck tape on a sinking boat. At some point we have to move away from these centralized platforms but the enshitification hasn't outweighed the lion's share of content / creators on these platforms to a tipping point for the majority. Ad blocks let you mitigate the enshitification so you can stay on these platforms longer - in many cases this is required so not knocking it, I do it as well. My hope is that as these companies continue to go after ad blocks users will finally jump ship in mass as they are forced to confront the lovecraftian nightmare that is any of these platforms without an ad block.
I certainly agree that more options will help - but, I would love to see a more federate / user powered, owned option take YouTube's place not just Youtube #2. it feels like a centralized option will just corrupt over time no matter the intentions and we will just be repeating the same mistakes but perhaps the economics of Video hosting / streaming at scale require something like this .. I am not sure how the economics of something like peer tube scale but I would love to see us all learn from our mistake and not just make it again. But ... maybe I am just idealistic and not grounded in reality.
I started routing all of my system traffic through Tor recently, which made YouTube nearly impossible to watch. So, my watching time on YouTube has dropped, and I have started watching more Rumble, Odysee, and PeerTube.
Harder to find content, but otherwise alright. I was honestly a little bit surprised at how many channels I did find that I follow on YouTube were already on Odysee or Rumble. Though I used to watch two channels about the US cellular networks such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon that are not on any of the other platforms. So I just lost that content.
pipepipe is working just fine for me. youtube will never win this war. the best they can do is force people to work around their temporary tricks, people who will always be more motivated than youtube engineers.
I use premium and even then it’s getting shitty. The UI sucks now and I get so many crap gen AI videos that aren’t my subscriptions. I keep intending to run invidious, I should do that today
I scrolled down the comments curious about what other third party apps there were and I was really surprised.
The only app I was aware of was Revanced, and I'm not sure if the other apps are new and popping up because YouTube keeps giving more attention to them or if I was just unaware.
Hasnt been very successful as i can see, mine goes well and i even vibe coded some slop IPA for my iphone to sideload a custom ad free client that works flawlessly. Idgaf their greedy ass, ima watch my shit adfree until i tapout
I've probably watched thousands of hours of YouTube over many years.
I honestly don't see what people have against paying for the service in stead of watching ads.
It's not like you never heard of YouTube premium, you know it exists.
Paying them not to stuff annoying bullshit into your content still doesn't stop them from slorping up every possible facet of your personal data. So long as they're double dipping, I'm not giving them a dime.
15 years ago I would have agreed with you, but it’s not just ads any more.
These companies track everything you do, share data with eachother, and create profiles on everybody.
If I were to follow you around keeping track of everything you do and share that info with my buddy who does the same thing, you would probably feel unsafe, and it’s illegal. It’s called stalking.
So why is ok for a corporation to do these things?
I paid for it for a while, but the price kept going up way faster than inflation (and even faster than my salary). I just pay for Nebula and Dropout instead.
Some people don't really watch it as much to justify a subscription. I watch it everyday and listen to yt music daily as well, so my sub is pretty worth it. Otherwise i'd just get Nebula
You already pay for it in more ways than one. Who pays for the data centers? You do, the increased water and electrical bills. The increased property taxes.
Those mutually shared power pylons didn't get built for free, you paid for them. You pay for the internet service. What else do you want to pay for? Just line right up. These companies aren't paying you for the fuel to deliver their vomit yet you line right up and eat it all and say it's not that bad. Get bent. oh wait spit roasted? sorry don't mean to kink shame.
I paid for a while but got sick of getting shorts and playable pushed into my feed every other day. I’m using Viddle now which is great, I might go back to paying if that stops working as I don’t mind supporting creators, just don’t like the stuff YouTube is pushing.
132 replies
PeerTube
Odysee
Internet Archive, to an extent
Nebula
Floatplane
Vimeo
Patreon video
Bitch your content creators to also provide content on other platforms.
The content creators won't make the effort unless they have some way to monetize their views though.
I'm my opinion the best days of YouTube were before monetization was a thing. There were plenty of creators back then, and it was a lot less corporate than it is now.
People think TikTok took off because the algorithm has some magic sauce the other platforms don't. Nope. It's because the content was more authentic because creators couldn't monetize. It was like YouTube in the early days.
Unfortunately, you need monetization to keep going. If creators didn't, they wouldn't have folded to YouTube monetization rules and just kept posting whatever they wanted. Basically, YouTube demonitezes then crrators have folded to just censoring their videos instead of pushing back because of money.
What they are saying tho is that people who want to make actual content don't care about monetization. They do it for the love of the game. Sure you can get a few to censor swear words and suicide, but the thing that built it was freedom. If you take away freedom then you've got nothing. Half the equation is people who watch the content. If people don't want to watch your shitty watered down bullshit, and other people don't want to be gagged by censorship, you're going to alienate the base; that is, actually red blooded humanity. Oh, let's say between the creators and the viewers its about 60% of your base. It won't be over night but it will be enough that ther3 will be alternatives to the bullshit. I say bull shit because that's what it is. Fucking goddamn horseshit. Thank you for glistening.
AFAIK, it's still possible to upload content that can be demonitized if you really don't care about monetization. The video will not be deleted, it will just be demonitized. However, creators don't want to get demonitized so they bow down. There is still freedom just as long it's not some extreme stuff.
That's true. We'll need third party agregators of YouTube then yp see what pertains to our worldview. Whether or not this fractionalizes further the community is probably well documented.
Your first phrase explains the problem perfectly IMO.
Maybe everyone mustn't make a youtube every other day. Sometimes I stumble onto an old youtube with all the information I need, but it's getting rarer and rarer because people who "need" monetization push them out it seems.
From what I understand (very limited knowledge here, might be BS) YouTube actually pays creators more than pretty much any other platform.
NewPipe
That's a privacy overlay like nitter for twitter, not a hosting platform.
Works better than invideous though.
invidious https://inv.nadeko.net/feed/popular
That's a privacy overlay like nitter for twitter, not a hosting platform.
I haven't been able to get invidious to work reliably for a year or more.
I'm not asking for a how-to. I'm happy enough with freetube on the desktop.
man I love your profile pic! made my day :D
I do but they usually bitch right back
Also remind them that html has a <video> tag that is very easy to use
I bought a lifetime to Nebula for $300. Enjoying zero commercials on the content
Also not sustainable.
Maybe add Bilibili, TikTok, Facebook, and Dailymotion to the list. Yes, they also have ads but they are not that strict about ad blockers.
Fuck tiktok, Fuck facebook.
Once thousand percent 💯
But they are the only plausible alternatives with enough funding to operate
They should both be dismantled permanently and their scumbag owners/CEOs dealt with in an appropriate fashion
The day they "win" is the day YouTube is dead to me
Same, will just read books instead (if nothing on alternative platforms)
Exactly. In some way this would even be appreciated since I would probably do way more useful and healthy things with the time that I currently spend on YT.
God I wouldn't mind if the ads weren't so fucking cancer. Like I have streaming with ads and dumb Liberty Bibberty or whatever is fine.
But YouTube, it constantly runs gambling scams and then rolls into a 90 minute "ad" podcast about some bull shit
I just noticed they removed the button to report ads as inappropriate.
because ads are never inappropriate!
source: Google
I would mind. I will never not mind. No ads, all or nothing.
I get SO MANY ads for dick pills. So many. How do they even get away with that?!
I will never pay for youtube while sponsor block is not part of the default app and downvoted are visible.
YouTube can't have sponser block as that is not part of YouTube.
Frankly, I find most YouTube content to be super obnoxious, so I would not pay for it anyway. I already barely ever use YouTube outside of trailers and music videos.
Even with the consequences of popularized tracking?
You guys, Mr YouTube worked really hard to make and produce all those videos quit stealing them!!
dont reupload them to new chinese global platform called bilibili. use their new mobile apps if you do
The link is broken.
After some searching, found it here.
So no one else has to do that annoying seach, here is the article text.
I'm sure formatting will be shite. Sorry about that.
YouTube is becoming unwatchable for ad block users – thanks to this powerful new crackdown tactic News By Mark Wilson Published May 28, 2024 Videos now auto-skip to the end, ad block users report
A laptop showing YouTube's ad blockers message next to a laptop showing UBlock Origin (Image credit: YouTube / Shutterstock / monticello) Share
The battle between YouTube and ad blockers is heating up again, with some YouTube users reporting that videos are now auto-skipping to the end if they're using extensions to block advertisements.
The new YouTube tactic has been widely reported on Reddit (via 9to5Google), with ad blocker users revealing that video playback immediately skips to the end of their video. This apparently continues to happen even if the video is immediately replayed.
While Google hasn't officially stated that this is a new tactic for dealing with ad blockers, it has escalated its crackdown on apps and extensions that remove advertisements in its videos over the past few months.
For example, in April a Google post in a YouTube Community forum stated that viewers who use third-party apps like NewPipe "may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video".
This new auto-skipping behavior appears to affect multiple ad-blocking extensions including AdBlock, although there's some evidence that uBlock Origin has already found a workaround for the issue.
The other solution, of course, is to subscribe to YouTube Premium ($13.99 / £12.99 / AU$32.99 a month), which is undoubtedly what YouTube is pushing users towards with its ad block crackdown. But its tactics are seemingly nudging many towards doubling down on ad blockers, resulting in a game of whack-a-mole that's likely to run for a long time.
Is Premium worth it? A YouTube Premium menu on a tablet
(Image credit: Shutterstock) YouTube argues that using ad blockers "prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership" and that the site's increasingly long advertisements "help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service".
The problem is that, with those advertisements becoming increasingly lengthy and unskippable, many users feel that YouTube is increasingly looking to boost its own bottom line as much as its creators' income.
In a parallel to Netflix's password-sharing crackdown, there is evidence that YouTube's ad blocker is working – back in November, ZDNet reported that Google's tactics had led to a record number of users uninstalling their ad blockers. And in February, YouTube reported that it had hit a new milestone of 100 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.
But with YouTube Premium also recently getting its biggest price hike in years, many are still holding out and using ad blockers and extensions like YouTube Enhancer to preserve an ad-free experience. With YouTube ramping up its battle with ad blockers, though, the game of cat-and-mouse will likely become increasingly hard-fought.
yt hasn't defeated uBo or revanced/morphe in the 2 years since this article came out.
ngl, revanced doesn't work for me anymore as of yesterday - most videos either drop to 144p after a few seconds and can't be changed, or simply won't load past the 1 minute mark. in the past i've been able to fix this by updating to a more recent revanced version, but i'm still having this on the latest youtube apk and revanced patches. will give it a few days and see if we get any new updates...
Most of the revanced devs left the project (due to some issues with another dev) to found morphe, I suggest switching over to that
There's a list of extra patches you can add to morphe here: https://reddit.com/r/MorpheApp/comments/1ta0bek/how_to_patch_more_apps_with_morphe/
thank you for this, i hadn't heard of morphe before and it works great as a drop-in revanced replacement :)
On android use a firefox fork with ublock I'm sure there is an equvalent on ios as well. It's much easier than playing whack-a-mole with an app.
Try Unwatched
It even have sponsorblock built in.
Thank you so much I have looking fr something like this for nearly a year now.
My pleasure.
It can be finicky sometimes playing videos but a long press of the play button would give you the option to reload the player.
Bonus
Ublock works in normal mobile Firefox on android
Firefox integrates AI bullshit these days therefore I would never recommend it.
While I share the sentiment, they do have a master toggle to turn all of it off.
pipepipe is fine. Install direct from github. It alerts you when theres an update.
100%, there's plenty of alternatives. Nobody should be paying for this garbage.
Does the ublock addon also do the cat and mouse game with Google when google patches ad blocking with ublock?
I have yet to have an issue like that. I've been watching YouTube through ironFox with ubo for over a year with no issue I disabled the mobile yt app
I haven't tried yet so i am asking. I currently only use brave because I know they patch whatever google does to evade adblock
Brave shields are a fork of ubo... Ubo in my experience has stayed consistently on top of it. Never gotten an ad blocker notice
As of recently the offical block list doesn't because they gave up but there are many others maintained by folks that still do.
Vinegar works really well on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303229
$1.99?
No thanks. But thanks though.
It's an Apple app so be thankful it's not $29.99. I'm not endorsing the price and haven't even had an iPhone in years but it did work well, even on such a locked down platform
Ok bud
On Android, the DuckDuckGo browser and AdGuard both have ad-blocking video players.
What Youtube seems not to understand is...they serve at the people's pleasure. And even more so...they exist BECAUSE people create their product (content).
They're not too big to fail; they're just not annoying enough for mass exodus, yet. Classic frog in boiling pot.
Let's all remember - Youtube is a replaceable commodity. I would make efforts to download / store what videos you find irreplaceable from there (0.5-1T of hard-drive should store roughly 1500-2000, 20-30 minute youtube vids, at 720p@60), streaming them locally and intermingling with other sources.
In fact, I am working on an effort to do just that, by creating a local, SMB backed "channel" in my forked version of SmartTube
This reminds me of the guy who uploaded his entire collection of DBZ to PornHub because they could give a rats ass about copyright infringment.
taps temple
BTW, Pornhub requires photoID to access it here now. I checked for uh... science.
I'm sure there's an equivalent to yt-dlp for it. In fact, I'm sure yt-dlp can do it.
I always check pornhub "for science" ;)
I check it for research articles, myself. While masturbating, obviously.
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/phd-aspirant-to-onlyfans-model-who-is-zara-dar-influencer-whose-career-choice-sparked-a-debate-3330559
https://www.ladn.eu/nouveaux-usages/qui-est-zara-dar-la-prof-qui-fait-reviser-les-mathematiques-sur-pornhub/
Gives a whole new meaning to Myth Busters
You make a good point about downloading... I rarely venture past my subscriptions list, I could just download their videos automatically and watch through Kodi or something
I've actual stopped sobbing to channels I want to follow, because I've noticed my feed doesn't really show many of my my subscriptions, but the channels I watch regularly without subbing always have 100% of their new videos at the to0 of my feed.
I find that feed thing unusable, I had to make significant efforts for it to stop showing shorts, premium ads, channels I'm not interested in, AI generated stuff, games (there are games now on youtube...), and it still doesn't show me anything worth watching. If only they took a page out of tiktoks book - not the shorts page pls
I never see shorts or AI videos, but I get that others aren't so lucky.
My Dad's is all AI slop, shorts, and right-wing talking heads.
Exactly. If you don't go HAM, you can curate a substantial offline YT library in about a month. Use TubeArchivist, yt-dlp or meTube
For those not in the know
https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
https://github.com/alexta69/metube
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
I knew about yt-dlp, was looking at ways to automate that, but apparently that's done too with the other ones, thanks
youtube/google is spending more time, money and reputation (not that it cares about reputation since its the only player in the game) trying to defeat adblockers, than it would have ever spent on just moderating its platform to make sure its not airing scams, malicious misinformation, frauds, hoaxes, outright porn, and all the other nasty shit that piss people off about the advertising.
cause thats really all this comes down to. no one likes ads, but they'd be a lot more tolerable if google fucking policed what they showed so people didnt get fucking AI nudifying ads on kids videos, or if they just didnt air 2 hour long prageru videos about why the white race is superior and why blacks should be happy whites "elevated" them with slavery.
but they'd rather force us to see that shit, than put in the slightest effort of moderating themselves
Is the article 404ing for anyone else?
Yep
For me as well (in germany)
Some of us don't base their buying off of stupid ads. Why can't we just be left alone. At this point I'm just basing on if I have any money left after going to the gas pump.
That's not the point. Youtube doesn't want to sell you anything. They want to sell you to the companies that want to sell you something. Doesn't matter if you buy anything, as long as you give them some attention.
Yeah, it’s really annoying how ads have become “Mr. Beastified” too. I can’t even turn a TV on without some attention sucking advert coming on that demands your full and centered attention. What was a chill afternoon feels more like a tax.
Newpipe's been relatively solid for me on Android. I think I have more subscriptions there than on Youtube at this point.
Yep, Newpipe and PipePipe which is a fork of Newpipe are both working just fine for me.
What differentiates PipePipe? I really liked Tubular, which was NewPipe+SponsorBlock, but it quit getting updates
https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
Just quit YouTube. Just part of degoogling. When I finally get all my auth off of Google I'll finish it and go to graphene.
any good alternatives? I know of curiosity stream etc but not another site where anyone can upload.
Peertube is the fediverse alternative. It's cool but not a ton of traction right now
this is cool, thanks! I'll upload my own youtube videos to it. :D
I tried curiosity stream but ended up not liking it. Since 90% of what I watch is educational or infotainment I've gone with a sub to nebula, as most creators I was following on YT are there. Note there is no upvoter/down vote or commenting of any kind there.
Not the alternative one would be usually looking for, but Glomble is a neat place to share videos
You'll come crawling back
Lol whatever.
Yeah , I love a good ad blocker / sponsor block / privacy frontend but they all feel like duck tape on a sinking boat. At some point we have to move away from these centralized platforms but the enshitification hasn't outweighed the lion's share of content / creators on these platforms to a tipping point for the majority. Ad blocks let you mitigate the enshitification so you can stay on these platforms longer - in many cases this is required so not knocking it, I do it as well. My hope is that as these companies continue to go after ad blocks users will finally jump ship in mass as they are forced to confront the lovecraftian nightmare that is any of these platforms without an ad block.
so thats I why I welcome that new chinese entry - bilibili. I think it will give yoube good competition.
I would just repost shit there from youtube
I certainly agree that more options will help - but, I would love to see a more federate / user powered, owned option take YouTube's place not just Youtube #2. it feels like a centralized option will just corrupt over time no matter the intentions and we will just be repeating the same mistakes but perhaps the economics of Video hosting / streaming at scale require something like this .. I am not sure how the economics of something like peer tube scale but I would love to see us all learn from our mistake and not just make it again. But ... maybe I am just idealistic and not grounded in reality.
I use two separate third party apps, and YouTube is very diligent with screwing with my favorite of the two.
Which forces me to use the other, which is very diligent at clipping out the sponsor ad.
Come on, you can't just say this and leave without naming the app lol.
Nou, that wouldn't be nice, Nou would it?
I use an app called freetube
https://freetubeapp.io/
If your having issues with ad blockers then this might be worth a try
I started routing all of my system traffic through Tor recently, which made YouTube nearly impossible to watch. So, my watching time on YouTube has dropped, and I have started watching more Rumble, Odysee, and PeerTube.
How do you find them as replacements?
Harder to find content, but otherwise alright. I was honestly a little bit surprised at how many channels I did find that I follow on YouTube were already on Odysee or Rumble. Though I used to watch two channels about the US cellular networks such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon that are not on any of the other platforms. So I just lost that content.
Good to know that Odysee is a legitimate alternative.
I already left youtube. Do I miss it? Not really.
Good to see they are actively making it worse.
pipepipe is working just fine for me. youtube will never win this war. the best they can do is force people to work around their temporary tricks, people who will always be more motivated than youtube engineers.
Any selfhosted, web based, alternative YT client? I've tried some quickly but nothing worked out of the box. Any recommendations?
Been using Morphe for over a year now with no issues. Smarttube also still works fine on my tv.
Pichai, you fucking banchode.
Oh, yes, uBlock Lite and a bunch of other plugins killing off intrusive ads can't still be beat.
Freetube is a third party youtube client that usually works, but they are also in a cat and mouse game with youtube blocking.
https://freetubeapp.io/
I use premium and even then it’s getting shitty. The UI sucks now and I get so many crap gen AI videos that aren’t my subscriptions. I keep intending to run invidious, I should do that today
Guess that explains why GrayJay stopped working.
Logging out and in fixed this for me
I was never logged in. But it did start working again for some reason.
"Page not found" but the post is upvoted this much? Is the article taken down perhaps?
It's probably upvoted because fuck Google.
I scrolled down the comments curious about what other third party apps there were and I was really surprised.
The only app I was aware of was Revanced, and I'm not sure if the other apps are new and popping up because YouTube keeps giving more attention to them or if I was just unaware.
That's why I'm using the nouTube app, I can watch my videos peacefully and it doesn't have those annoying shortsyoutube :P
When Gemini recommended SmartTube I made the switch.
Hasnt been very successful as i can see, mine goes well and i even vibe coded some slop IPA for my iphone to sideload a custom ad free client that works flawlessly. Idgaf their greedy ass, ima watch my shit adfree until i tapout
Try Unwatched
I've probably watched thousands of hours of YouTube over many years. I honestly don't see what people have against paying for the service in stead of watching ads. It's not like you never heard of YouTube premium, you know it exists.
Paying them not to stuff annoying bullshit into your content still doesn't stop them from slorping up every possible facet of your personal data. So long as they're double dipping, I'm not giving them a dime.
15 years ago I would have agreed with you, but it’s not just ads any more.
These companies track everything you do, share data with eachother, and create profiles on everybody.
If I were to follow you around keeping track of everything you do and share that info with my buddy who does the same thing, you would probably feel unsafe, and it’s illegal. It’s called stalking.
So why is ok for a corporation to do these things?
I paid for it for a while, but the price kept going up way faster than inflation (and even faster than my salary). I just pay for Nebula and Dropout instead.
Some people don't really watch it as much to justify a subscription. I watch it everyday and listen to yt music daily as well, so my sub is pretty worth it. Otherwise i'd just get Nebula
You already pay for it in more ways than one. Who pays for the data centers? You do, the increased water and electrical bills. The increased property taxes.
Those mutually shared power pylons didn't get built for free, you paid for them. You pay for the internet service. What else do you want to pay for? Just line right up. These companies aren't paying you for the fuel to deliver their vomit yet you line right up and eat it all and say it's not that bad. Get bent. oh wait spit roasted? sorry don't mean to kink shame.
I paid for a while but got sick of getting shorts and playable pushed into my feed every other day. I’m using Viddle now which is great, I might go back to paying if that stops working as I don’t mind supporting creators, just don’t like the stuff YouTube is pushing.
Ads require streaming. I prefer watching already downloaded videos so I don't need to worry about having a stable internet connection.
But I'm watching through RSS feeds, yt-dlp + VLC player, so browser adblockers aren't really relevant to my use-case.
And a lot of people already pay for spotify, so they could switch to YouTube premium and have music and ad free videos