Dear YouTube, if anyone there ever reads this.
I tried not to block ads, I would let the preroll go and usually not skip it.
I started skipping ads when they started getting long. I recall some were several minutes long at times.
I started leaving videos part way through when there were mid-roll ads, and those got long enough that I’d often forget what I was even watching.
I started blocking the ads outright when I would be watching a relaxing video, and a very loud mid-roll ad would blow out my goddamn eardrums.
Fuck you YouTube. You abused your users, you chased off good content creators, and now you’re offering people no carrot and all stick. How about you offer to match the volume of the ads to the videos, limit the length of ads to something reasonable, and nicely tell viewers that you are making ads less annoying and that unblocking the ads helps pay the content creators.
I used to make animations for YouTube, which weren’t monetized because I hate ads, and one day they copyright struck me for some very provably public domain music, but the way they did it was to insert ads into my video without my consent so they could monetize them to send the money to the scammer who flagged me. So I just deleted my entire account, fuck them.
x2
NewPipr
I am much, much more likely to be willing to pay for Ublock than I am YouTube.
That’s interesting to me as someone who has paid for both lol.
Just curious, why would you not want to pay for YouTube knowing that some of that money makes it to the creators at least? Is that not enough? Is it a principal thing because they try to block the ad blockers now? Or do you think all video content should be free somehow with the creators making a living some other way?
I have been going through things I subscribe to lately and realized that the content on YouTube is probably the thing I watch the most. I genuinely like some of the people I watch videos of there and want them to do well. I like that some of them started their own streaming sites now so that’s nice but I also don’t want more streaming sites.
Well there are a few things to say about your comment. First, YouTube DOES pay content providers. However, most earn money from multiple sources like YouTube, Patreon, sponsors and merchandise sales. Out of those sources youtube is probably the most fickle. Their rules about canceling a channel or removing monetization are arbitrarily enforced and difficult or impossible to appeal.
The same can be said for the way viewers are treated. YouTube is a “free” service. They decided to operate this way, not us. Instead of, for instance, offering the streaming service as a paid subscription, they chose to essentially destroy the product and then ask for payment to fix it ( the so called poison pill). And don’t forget the notion that if you are not paying for the product, you ARE the product. I’m pretty sure that YouTube is collecting our information and profiting from it. And if they aren’t the parent company absolutely is. When you couple this with the thought that “suggested” content is designed to profit youtube, its easy to make the argument that it wasn’t actually free to begin with.
So bottom line is, I think people are fed up with relentless marketing and the form of marketing YouTube has chosen is the worst possible kind of marketing. This leaves those who have been users for a while and want to continue, with the choice of fighting this invasive advertising with ad blockers or paying for the service. The latter of which feels a lot like a reward for reprehensible behavior on the part of youtube.
In short, I think the chief complaint here is HOW youtube has gone about this. Anyway, that’s the way I see it. I use a lot of “free” services and youtube is by far the worst type of cost. Pandora, plays ads I have to listen to as the cost for that service but they aren’t nearly as bad about it and they never do it in the middle of a song, for instance. I use Wikipedia and they don’t market at all, just ask for a donation every now and then. I gave up and just paid for youtube premium. But I have to say it feels a bit like I was extorted, because I feel like I have seen enough ads for one lifetime. If at any point youtube starts showing ads with their paid service I will absolutely drop them like a hot potato, which would be a shame since, like you, I enjoy a lot of the content.
If you’re using uBlock Origin. Go to “Filter Lists” and Purge All Caches. That may help.
I just did the zap element thing on that warning. So far so good, except you can’t scroll down.
I see this as an absolute win, since that means you don’t have to read YouTube comments.
deleted by creator
Can we pin this?
…temporarily it might help
I haven’t watched live tv in almost 20 years because I refuse to sit through ads, and I definitely won’t sit through them on YouTube. If it was a banner or some thing on the page or the side of video that would be more acceptable, but sitting through ads to watch a YouTube video….there’s just no way.
You could subscribe
It’s an end of an era. I’ve been on reddit for over a decade, and on youtube for even longer. Crazy to think I might be giving up both of those services within a few months of each other. Feels like the internet is dying. Oh well. Maybe I’ll go back to reading a shitload.
The worst part about reddit was they made ads and legit posts look as similar as possible
Maybe I’ll go back to reading a shitload.
I’ve been reading a lot more lately, and dear god, for your own sake, please do. I’ve been so much happier and less anxious reading books vs random internet garbage. Highly recommend.
That’s good to hear. I’ve started reading Leonard and Hungry Paul and I like it so far. I’ve also started reading China Mieville’s The City and the City, which is also good, but Mieville has this weird thing where the more plot his novels have the worse they are. He’s great at describing a city as a living, breathing thing, though. That’s why the best parts of Perdido Street Station were the first 100 pages or so before the actual story really got started. Hopefully this novel doesn’t suffer from the same problems.
What about you, what have you been reading?
Same I’ve been on YouTube since at least 2006 so almost 18 years 😭 (I’m turning 30 soon for reference) That’s a long ass time to be using any service. Times have changed
not dying, evolving
Evolution implies that old things die and new things take their place, so those are not mutually exclusive concepts. The thing taking its place is comparatively worse than the thing that came before it, though. Which is fucking annoying, but oh well.
deleted by creator
I haven’t turned off ad-blocking in 20 years. That’s because I “don’t allow” companies to use my home and my computer as their place of business.
i actually blindly accepted Google ads in early 2k because they were text only and an imitation of ads in newspapers. whenever they made animated banners i lost my shit and never allowed it again
How did manipulation to make you buy specific shit become so accepted?
Because that’s the goal of capitalism
That’s deep.
ublock origin still blocking everything.
not the current version. YT just updated their id.
YouTube ReVanced is still around?
Yup. I last updated a month or 2 ago and it works perfectly fine still.
I wish I could say the same been getting these annoying youtube things with firefox/ublock on both linux and windows
Adblockers are eventually just going to become undetectable because of this. Adblockers are about to get so much better!
deleted by creator
They could use inline commercials.
They could also disable viewing while not logged in, they count the minutes you’ve watched content vs the minutes of commercials that content was supposed to have and block your account.
Addblocker that runs a second instance in the background that watches the add for each video to make up the time.
We already have sponsorblock for that.
Advertisement is brainwashing and should be against human rights.
if only ads arent annoying and loud, i have no problems unblocking them. but damn, they’re unbearable atleast in my region.
Getting so many NSFW dating/straight up p##n ads. I shit you not they have even had CP ads I have seen. Disgusting and completely illegal.
Do you have briefing history turned on? If so, hmmmm…
deleted by creator
Ads are served based on your browsing history. If you have never watched those, then you probably should check on you 8yo child or wife’s who’s using the same acc
Ads are served based on your browsing history.
Not really. Ads served on Google ecosystem is geo-based, if you don’t logged in your Google account or where your YouTube connected. You cannot get rid of it, unless you wipe all Chrome and Android users.
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in my browsing history that would suggest I’m looking for a boyfriend 🤮
Nobody else used my google acc at the time i still had it. I use FF now anyway.
Simply not having them repeat so often would already go a long long way. I always end up with the same ad 20 times in a row and it’s not even relevant to me. I don’t get how the ad industry can be worth billions of dollars and be so complete crap at what they do. Most of the stuff I watch on Youtube is essentially already an ad to begin with, all the unboxing, reviews, sponsored content, etc. is just showing me what new products are out there, and they do it in an entertaining fashion. Why are the actual ads so much worse?
Unpopular Opinion: I don’t like ads as much as anyone, I’d rather YouTube monetises 1440p and 4k content instead of forcing people to watch ads. YouTube is an extremely expensive business to run, so it being free forever is completely unsustainable.
Google doesn’t pay taxes. They save something like 3-4 billion a year not paying taxes.
It’s entirely sustainable.
What did they charge the government for selling out to the surveilance agencies?
so it being free forever is completely unsustainable.
Well they own a lot of the infrastructure that makes youtube possible, which means they are keeping their own costs a lot lower than people think. I believe a lot of the ‘its unsustainable!!’, or ‘it makes no money!!’ rhetoric we are hearing is come straight from the google PR dept.
deleted by creator
I doubt that is remotely enough to keep YouTube from being a moneysink for google
It’s not a money sink. They are using the data they collect to rake in cash. Don’t let the fact the money is made by a different business unit fool you into thinking Google is struggling.
It doubt its as big of a money sink as we are being told… sounds like google PR working overtime there to me
https://github.com/gilbsgilbs/NewPipeSponsorBlock
Spread the word for non IT folks too! Fck up google! Google is evil!
See also, another attack from google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Removed by mod
! Fck up google! Google is evil!
but… they specifically told me they were not evil
Hold the line uBlock Origin. If YT becomes unusable, I’ll find somewhere to binge-watch true crime videos at 3am.
just get freetube, it’s FOSSome, you don’t even need a Google account to subscribe to videos.
Google recently announced that it’s podcast service is shutting down and moving to YouTube music, I don’t want or need YouTube music so I’ve already moved to Podcast Republic, it has a few ads but they can be removed with a small one off payment. Google just wants to shove all it’s users into YouTube and YouTube music for maximum ads and data harvesting.
Pocketcasts. You’re welcome.
I’m another satisfied pocketcast user.
