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.
x2
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.
NewPipr
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.
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
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in my browsing history that would suggest I’m looking for a boyfriend 🤮
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.
Nobody else used my google acc at the time i still had it. I use FF now anyway.
Do you have briefing history turned on? If so, hmmmm…
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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?
A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended but not display the ads. There would be no way for the site to know you can’t see them. Blocking their activation just signals the site that you are using an adblocker.
Edit: I was thinking more of a VM sandbox like another comment said
A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended
One could make a strong argument that the creators of the page intended the page to show ads.
If you want to block them, that’s fine with me, but arguing that not displaying ads is the intended experience of the page is just incorrect.
I think he means that a good adblocker should load the page as intended with the ads and then simply discard them before rendering the page.
Sandbox the ads. Trick them into thinking the playback is finished. If there is a timer that prevents skipping, modify timing calls to shorten the duration. Or execute faster than real-time.
If there is some kind of timer callback to server, it would even be preferable to have ad “running” invisibly with a progress bar and no ad.
That is really what I was thinking of
That would be rendering potentially malicious code in the ad.
Sandbox them
Even if I have to sit through 30 seconds of silence, is there a way to redirect the ad to a ghost browser so I don’t have to listen to something like grubhubs stupid video?
Not exactly what you have described but better https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/
I hear the ungoogled chromium is immune to the youtube antiadblock bs while getting rid of google’s influence, leaving you to be able to keep your Firefox identity safe without compromising your privacy by going to a browser you know is maintained by a community instead of another corporation
Stop using YouTube, go for new pipe/piped/invidious instead. Same content without the fucking bullshit.
Example: http://yt.whateveritworks.org
Definitely agree, but your link is protected by cloudflare (yet another centralized service destroying the internet) and therefore I’m unable to get through because I have
privacy.resistFingerprintingenabled on my browser so cloudflare is unable to determine I’m human I suppose.I despire youtube and it’s monopoly, and I think it get’s an appropriate amount of hate on here and HN, but what confuses me to no end are the people who complain about youtube turn right around and constantly recommend cloudflare. Can someone explain what I am missing?
Freetube is another valid option
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
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.
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Can we pin this?
…temporarily it might help
How did manipulation to make you buy specific shit become so accepted?
Because that’s the goal of capitalism
That’s deep.
Advertisement is brainwashing and should be against human rights.
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.
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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.
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
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?
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.
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
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
Eh, don’t need YouTube that badly. I think we’ll collectively figure out video distribution without em just fine.
And we can call it something like… I don’t know… PeerTube?
Hell yeah, brother 😎
I haven’t seen anything come close to competing with youtube as a centralized video source, everything from documentaries to DIY instructional videos. Sure the idea seems simple but the problem is their success and vast repository keeps us locked in.
Not sure your age and I sincerely do not want to critique it either or come across as ageist, but I remember a world without YouTube and all this crap. We’re going to be ok if we don’t go to YouTube. Not trying to be flippant - really. I understand the monopolistic conundrum we find ourselves in.
This is where voting and advocating for real legal solutions comes in. Is that easy - no. However there has been progress in the EU and Warren/Cruz are sponsoring a digital rights bill too. If that fails, we keep pushing. It is possible and the encouraging part is that the more they (Google, fb, Amazon, etc.) reveal of their trap the easier it will be for us to pressure politicians.
Younger folks have allies in older non techy people too. Those folks feel bewildered by their phones, computers, etc. Politicians certainly listen to them and if they have their grandchildren agreeing with them that tech companies are crazy. I almost guarantee they’d agree. See Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz co-sponsorship as some evidence. Talk to folks y’all!
Also, your library has a lot of content if you are looking for documentaries.
Kind of sounds like you have tried nothing and you’re all out of ideas. Can’t say I blame you. Complacency and feelings of no way out is where they want you.
Spolier monopolies! No one changes until they are under pressure and feel trapped. They’re feeding the fire of their own undoing.
I remember life before deregulation of media :(
Kind of sounds like you have tried nothing and you’re all out of ideas. Can’t say I blame you. Complacency and feelings of no way out is where they want you.
Absolutely not, I look around, but the vast majority of amateur videos are only on youtube. You won’t find them at the library.
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.
