So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.

So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.

And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.

E: I’ve been on Firefox for over a year.

  • @Sendbeer@lemm.ee
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    202 years ago

    Add in sponsors that some ass holes throw 2-3 in a video (FU LTT) and I don’t know how people watch YouTube with ads. It sucks so bad.

    I do pay for premium, but use smart tube on my android tv box and it feels so good when it rolls right past them.

  • ᦓρɾιƚҽ
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    82 years ago

    I had 4 ads stop me 4 times in 5 minutes from starting to watch my first video. And they were the long ads you can skip, but if not, they will last. I miss back when a banner at the bottom of the video was an annoyance.

  • Keith
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    162 years ago

    Consider Piped, Invidious, etc. Yes you can’t log in, but on Piped you can create a Piped account and on mobile use Yattee (iOS) or Libretube (Android). No recommendations on home screen, but subscriptions feed and recommendations per video.

    • JokeDeity
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      22 years ago

      Meh. Revanced still working great for me and I have all my subscriptions, no ads, all the features.

  • @Zink@programming.dev
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    122 years ago

    Ok so I’m not saying the correct solution to this is to just give Google the money they want, but for me YouTube premium is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to. (Unless you count the lifetime Plex pass I got on sale years ago, lol)

    Things like our smart TV or the kid’s iPad work flawlessly, including convenient downloads for trips. And since I watch a lot on my TV, it’s nice having higher bitrate available.

    YouTube music is a nice addon for music in the car, even though it doesn’t make or break the deal.

    And as I understand it, creators make significantly more money from premium views than ad-supported views. I like watching all kinds of niche scientific/tech/educational creators so I like to know they’re getting a bit more from me

  • @Teknikal@lemm.ee
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    82 years ago

    I tried to give YouTube ads a chance at one point but they got ridiculous to the point I just can’t.

  • @abhibeckert@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    I could live with an ad before every video

    I can’t live with that. Often I don’t even know if I actually want to watch the video or not, and if I have to sit through three minutes of ads, only to close the video five seconds after the ad because it’s not what I expected… yuck. Preroll ads are often a deal breaker for me unless it’s content that I’m very familiar with.

    Mid-roll ads I’m OK with - by then I’ve already decided the content is worth watching.

    I don’t think I’m alone and YouTube seems to be very aware of this issue. They are selective about which videos have a pre-roll ad.

    • bermudaOP
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      22 years ago

      I mean idk I never really bothered with an ad blocker pre 2013 or so, back when you’d get an ad before the vid and the longer ones had mid rolls.

  • @loops@beehaw.org
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    92 years ago

    I use NoScript to block every script from google except for ytimg and youtube and I haven’t seen anything like that; though, I do only watch 1-2 videos at a time, maybe I haven’t ‘triggered’ it.

    I can even disable origin and still not see any ads because NoScript blocks them from loading in the first place.

  • Plume (she/her)
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    2 years ago

    It sucks. What sucks even more for me is that, I understood the fact that a platform like YouTube costs an unimaginable amount. I get that. And I wanted to pay. As a matter of fact, I did pay, happily so, for quite while. For YouTube Prenium Lite. Until a week ago I think, where I got this wonderful email from Google titled: Kindly go fuck yourselfor at least that’s how I read it… telling me that YouTube Prenium Lite was going the way of the Google graveyard. Because of course it did. And now, it was paying for full Prenium or nothing.

    So I stopped paying. I’m not paying 13 bucks a month for no ads. Especially if you’re basically strong arming me in doing so, I’ll do without YouTube.

    Because hey, I tried YouTube Music. It’s actually quite good in many aspects (horrendously flawed in many others too, of course, but that’s most Music Streaming services) but you know what? I know it’s been years, but I’m still not over Google Play Music and how they killed that off for what was an inferior product back then. Why the fuck would I invest my time and money in a Google product, nowadays? I’m sorry if you reading this were one of these people, but it’s like… to the people who were paying for Stadia and were shocked to learn that the service was shutting down… I’m sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you? It was bound to happen, from the moment it was announced, the entire internet started joking about the fact that this thing will be dead in two years!

    I refuse to pay for a Google product nowadays. It’s like paying for a live service game at release, it’s rolling the dice and betting against the colossal odds that this thing will be dead in two years. So, unless it’s a Pixel, so I can slap something else than stock Android, Google can suck it. They won’t get a cent from me.

    It’s not like I paid for Prenium Lite because I loved YouTube. Hell, YouTube stopped being a good product a long time ago, I was paying for the content I was watching. Gotta support creators, you know? And also, because I watched a lot of YouTube on my TV, and you can’t slap Ublock on that. It was a reasonable enough price. But now? Fuck YouTube, I’m done with this. I’ve been hating this platform more and more for a while now, the algorithm is awful, it keeps recommanding me stuff I don’t want (why the hell does YouTube insist and recommanding me far right content, jesus christ, stop!). And even without ads, you still get them because monetization is so damn inconsistent creators can only depend on sponsors, I could go on and on.

    So now, it’s NewPipe on mobile, Piped on desktop and I guess I’ll just find something better to watch on TV. I’m paying for Nebula, it’s cheap, doesn’t have even a third of the people who I watched on YouTube, but at least it’s creator centric and it’s got a lot of good, interesting stuff on it. I’ve been watching lots of Twitch lately, and while yes, I agree, fuck Amazon, at least I can just pay for the people who I watch most to get no ads, it’s a reasonable price, support them and Twitch ads are not nerely as horrendous YouTube’s are in terms of frequency. So, yeah. I don’t miss it.

  • JokeDeity
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    2 years ago

    This thread is in c/technology, but I swear these are some of the least tech literate comments I’ve seen. Stop using Chrome, yesterday. Use Firefox, use ublock origin. On Android use Revanced. I never see an ad on my PC or phone using YouTube, including ads in the video by the content creators (sponsorblock is built into Revanced and can by toggled).

    • phillaholic
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      42 years ago

      there have been many posts about YouTube detecting blockers recently and warning users it’s against the ToS. Not sure if they are widespread or not.

    • bermudaOP
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      62 years ago

      I was already on Firefox.

      I switched to ublock origin yesterday and it worked for about 2 hours before YT somehow detected it and shut down every video. My fix for that was to disable ublock, refresh, enable ublock, refresh again

      • @Amends1782@lemmy.ca
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        32 years ago

        Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I’m a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don’t even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads

      • JokeDeity
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        32 years ago

        Something is wrong, this has not happened to me ever. Is ublock set up to automatically update itself and it’s lists?

    • @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 years ago

      The ads are just extremely bad in general. Betting ads for a legitimate casino would already be a huge step up form the shit I get…

  • @megopie@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    I used to pay for premium just because it was the simplest way to watch ad free on my phone (IOS so Vanced was not an option), and being able to download videos to watch later on a flight was nice.

    But then they wouldn’t let you do Picture in Picture from the app, which, like, fine. Annoying but I’ll just play it in the background and just listen to the audio.

    But then they started forcing the tiktok clone onto the home page and subscriptions page. I really do not like the dopamine disinformation vortex. So I deleted the app and just started watching them through the website, which actually enabled Picture in Picture and let me hide the shorts shelf (for 30 days before I have to click the X again.)

    Now I’ve just stopped paying for it and just watch YouTube in the Firefox Focus IOS browser which completely blocks YouTube ads in my experience. It won’t let me do Picture in Picture or play audio in the background on their website, but I’ve noticed embedded YouTube videos on other websites will.

    So now I’m looking in to using other front ends so I can have complete normal functionality without having to watch adds or pay them money and have their stupid tik tok clone shoved down my throat.

    Good job Google, you managed to completely alienate someone who was paying you cash. Now I’m the definition of a free rider on your service.

  • dalë
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    112 years ago

    This is why I use Smartube on my android TV and revanced/NewPipe on my phone.

    The few times I’ve witnessed naked YouTube it’s made be realise that if any of the sources mentioned stop working then I’m simply not going to use YouTube.

    • @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 years ago

      Yeah it’s horrible. For it to somehow be worth watching with ads, the ads had to be for a legitimate and relevant product, and the algorithm / video quality had to be much better.

  • @Amends1782@lemmy.ca
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    62 years ago

    Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I’m a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don’t even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads

  • JokeDeity
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    42 years ago

    Quit using shitty browsers? I see zero ads on YouTube in Firefox with ad blockers. I mean there’s about a million other reasons to not use Chrome as well, but use this anger as your catalyst.

    • bermudaOP
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      72 years ago

      I’ve been using Firefox for over a year, so thanks for the assumption boss.

      • JokeDeity
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        12 years ago

        Just wanted to come back to this and say while I checked and didn’t have any addons besides ublock that should be helping (with many of the extra lists checked/enabled in settings), I do have tampermonkey with these scripts and maybe they’re helping:

        Simple Sponsor Skiper YouTube CPU Tamer by AnimationFrame YouTube HD YouTube polymer engine fixes YouTube Web Tweaks YouTube(Chinese characters) YouTube AD Blocker

        Along with some others that I don’t think would apply.

      • JokeDeity
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        22 years ago

        Sorry about that, this is just the usual case when I see this complaint. Let’s figure out why you’re experiencing this because I’m a HEAVY YouTube user and I want everyone to have as good of an experience as I do.