- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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Ad blocker still works. They really want people to stop using YouTube though, don’t they.
The real problem is that barriers to entry for competition are insurmountable.
If I wanna compete, I gotta host those files somewhere. With Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. That’s basically my whole list of options.
I mean, I can opt to do it myself, but… That’s beyond David v Goliath. No way I could manage the amount of spam, CSA, DMCA, terrorism/misinformation and other shit that would seek to take the competition out.
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The other reason why it’s impossible is simply that nobody would upload their genuine content to your site because it doesn’t get as much “engagement” as on YouTube. Social inertia is why YouTube can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want and people will stay.
Twitch is the same thing for livestreams. Not even Facebook using fuck-you money to literally buy exclusivity contracts with streamers could change that. People just didn’t want to watch there (although I can understand their reluctance).
If you’re using an ad-blocker or skipping ads, yes, they absolutely don’t give a shit if you stop using it, because you provide zero value to them and are only consuming their resources.
Your metadata is still extremely valuable to them, and it’s not limited to just watch history and likes, but rather everything on how you engage in their services, including where your mouse cursor sits.
Parroting the angry me Yorker whose name I forgot. If you use an ad blocker your likely privacy aware and they don’t get much/any meta data from you.
Also YouTube is extremely costly to run. They are making it abundantly clear you are not valuable to them if you aren’t watching ads. You aren’t that important.
Yes and no. Metadata is more than just tracking info. I did mention watch history, likes, and mouse position, which are not things that can really be blocked. This also includes things such as how likely you are to click on a video based on thumbnail and screen position, how long you watch specific videos as well as how long your overall watch train is. They know what they’re showing you, where it is, and what you click and when; that’s enough to provide a hell of a lot if data. All in all, how you actually use the service is something that they pay very close attention to, and is still very valuable.
Is it as valuable as tracking info and advertising, definitely not. But it’s far from worthless.
How is any of this information valuable to them if I block all ads?
Because you aren’t an individual to them, you’re a statistic providing them with valuable market research on how their service is used.
“People that watch this collection of video classifications are more likely to watch videos who’s thumbnails have these characteristics. Only 1% of them use ad blocking so we can improve our ad presentation rate if we present more videos with these thumbnails to this group.”
It doesn’t work for me, on my PC I can only use freetube. YouTube doesn’t work with ublock origin.
Queue all the people in the comments talking about ad blockers or alternative apps.
Those might be great (and ad blocking is important in general), but I’ve found I ultimately just watch YouTube less.
A good chunk of my favorite creators had been pushing Nebula for the past couple years, so I finally tried it out and it’s pretty decent. I’ve even found new channels there that would have been buried on YouTube. Still tons of room for improvement for the platform, but it’s functional now.
Other creators have their own websites with text content, or podcasts hosted elsewhere.
It’s only a small handful of channels I check for on YouTube anymore. It kind of sucks that it’s mostly small channels where video is a key component and they don’t fit with the edu-tainment vibe of Nebula, and I don’t know of another platform for them. Lots of DIY home improvement, self-sufficiency (not religious or conspiratorial lol), music videos, and channels dedicated to specific videogame franchises.
I know LTT has Floatplane too. I wonder if all of these other videos streaming options getting worse will start driving more people to smaller platforms.
You might want to give Grayjay a try. It’s a cross platform video app that lets you connect to people’s YouTube accounts but also Nebula and other video platforms. Don’t download it from the Play Store though, sideload the apk file directly from the website. I’ve only used it for YouTube so far but it lets you do the things you would have needed Vanced for before and I love it
Cue*
Maybe they really just want to line them up in a large queue 🤷♂️
I was kinda worried with the LTT drama unfolding since DankPods does use Floatplane as a source of income. While Floatplane and LMG are technically separate, because it spun off of LTT people might not see it as such.
And yeah, I notice I watch YouTube a lot less now, ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page. Maybe that’s for the better. I still have a watch later backlog I should export to a text file or something.
ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page.
How do you expect to get recommendations with no watch history?
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They still build recommendations even if you’re not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it’s all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.
They can base the recommendations on your subscriptions.
By that same logic, you should worry about the creators on YT when advocating actions harmful to YT.
Speaking for myself, I disagree.
YT is bad, and so is LTT, and by extension, Floatplane.
After LTT unambiguously showed their true colors, and doubled down, I unsubscribed and removed all of trace of their ecosystem from my digital habits.
YT is a bit harder to do that with, so I use alternative methods to extract the value/uses from their service. It works for me.
Nebula is fantastic but I’m not sure their current price is sustainable. Although I’d easily pay 3-4x as much for the quality content there.
My only hangup is that their privacy policy is your typical “we exploit your data for profit” type thing every other modern company has that I’m not contributing to.
Yeah we’ve just cut back our consumption a lot and what we do watch is a lot more intentional and not just riding the algo for hours. And what we do watch now is done via JDownoader > Plex for the most part.
Ironically the linked site doesn’t show content if you’re using an ad blocker.
Recently I’ve had sites block content just for rejecting cookies.
Very rarely do I ever see a site that allows you to “reject all” cookies. Almost always they require you to consent to “strictly necessary” (but also completely unnecessary) cookies. It’s so fucked up.
Quite the norm in Italy, even tho I think it’s illegal
What adblocker are you using? ublock on Firefox does fine
Edit: I’m not using ublock origin. I forgot I was using my iPhone with AdGuard.
Allowing all scripts it works for me, blocking only third-party scripts it shows a popup ad, blocking scripts of the domain too and inline scripts it works and uses less cpu.
They’re completely lost at this point I think. The ‘skip ad’ button is brilliant from a marketing perspective, if you ask me. One can get pretty used to tuning out ads but having that skip button keeps you actively interacting. So even if you didn’t see the whole ad, if the advertiser is smart you heard their name before you skipped. Plus the user gets to feel like the ad isn’t shoved down their throat, they have control.
If I were running things I’d quit this dumb battle with the users they’ve declared and make ads extremely easy to skip - I feel like you’d have a lot fewer refugess from the site and a lot more people less motivated to install an ad blocker in the first place.
No one is leaving YouTube because there is no alternative. You can go to a site like Vimeo, but no one uploads there. You can go to Nebula, but very few people want to pay for yet another subscription.
peertube
easy fix: don’t use the app on your phone.
instead use youtube via your browser with adblock (for instance safari + adblock pro) and create a shortcut on your homescreen. you can use youtube just like in the app, you won’t have any ads and you also can play videos with your screen turned off
Or just use patches or alternative YouTube clients
why installing something when you just can use your browser and get basically the same experience?
Also those apps will be useless when they mess around with the api just like reddit did.
why installing something when you just can use your browser and get basically the same experience?
Because it’s absolutely not the same experience?
Also those apps will be useless when they mess around with the api just like reddit did.
They break all the time but they always fix them. LibreTube has been broken for the past few days but they’ll fix it soon enough.
E: LibreTube is fixed temporarily by switching to HLS.
Because it’s absolutely not the same experience?
It looks pretty much like the app, I get recommendations like in the app, can watch my subscriptions like in the app, can see comments, video or fullscreen mode. Don’t know about you but for me this just feels like the app.
They break all the time but they always fix them. LibreTube has been broken for the past few days but they’ll fix it soon enough
That just sounds awful and would be a reason for me to stay far away from these apps
Because the browser sucks more
A dedicated app is prettier, more functional, and (feels) faster than Firefox + Ublock or Newpipe, actually plays in the background (seamlessly, I might add… looking at you, Newpipe), and allows for more player options.
that’s maybe your opinion. I have absolute no problems with the look and feel of youtube in safari and I have all the functionality I need (play videos with screen off and on).
It is nearly identical to the app.
why installing something
I don’t watch YT a lot on my phone, but Freetube for desktop and Newpipe for android (F-Droid) support offline subscriptions, playlists, history and downloads of video or audio, background playback and you can sync both apps.
It’s okay to have alternatives. I use NewPipe, Firefox+uBlock and sometimes a YouTube ReVanced app.
I hate web apps and electron for performance (incl. memory) reasons and the gestures are simply better in the app, not to mention Haptic Touch and crashing due to out of memory on iOS
On the API, that’s why I use a patched client. YouTube isn’t that aggressive with pushing new versions so you install a patched version of the old version like uYouPlusExtra
Also, even when the address bar is hidden in Safari, there’s a much smaller but still existent bar
How’s sponsor block?
Seems to be doing fine, I’m having no problems with it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future they make it so the only way to watch Youtube on mobile is through their app. It seems like they’re getting desperate, and that seems like the logical conclusion.
I really hope not. Otherwise that would be the end for me. Same as reddit I simply would delete my account and uninstall everything related to it :)
If that’s annoying have the people writing this article looked at their own website, ads on ads (and ads placeholders with adblock) with cookie and email subscription popups and SEO bullshit.
They’ve also gone hard on those 10 minute ads that go on and on unless you press skip, which I often can’t cause I’m doing dishes or have my hands busy while watching videos.
Also recently I’ve been getting the prompt to skip an ad, and when I press the skip button, it gives me two more unskipable ads
That’s the most frustrating part. I don’t mind watching limited ads. I get you gotta pay for your shit somehow. But don’t give me 30 minute ads, and don’t haphazardly place the ads in the video so there’s no transition from an important part of the video to your ad.
I typically use an adblocker but for some uses (smart TV) I’m too lazy to set up a workaround. It doesn’t bother me that much.
Jsyk smart tube is incredibly easy to hook up on an android or firetv and provides adfree viewing and sponsor-block
At some point this has to be counterproductive to their profits. When YouTube had way fewer and shorter ads than now, I spent a lot more of my time there than I do now. They literally drove my eyeballs away by showing too many ads.
I wonder if they know the dollar figure in sales that ads, for all their expense, have gained out of me. I’d say it’s near zero. You may say I am subconsciously influenced and even if I don’t click the ad, I may buy the product at some other date due to recognition. Maybe. But that individual ad impression that someone paid for that I did not click (or blocked) does not know that. And it’s quite likely they don’t care, because ever missed click is still getting the word out so to speak.
But what they should care about is the absolute dislike I have towards aggressive advertising. And I am not alone. When I face an unskippable or full page or pop up ad, I don’t subconsciously want that product then or later. I consciously hate the product just a little more and more with each impression.
And now that it’s an arms race, the lines are being drawn, the hatred being cultivated, and the whole effort has lost its entire point: To make me friendly toward the product and to buy it. And I feel like sites like YouTube essentially don’t give a shit. They have the advertisers convinced through some great effort that ads are effective and worth it. All while doing everything that they can to keep us corralled and our eyes pried open to view them.
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If you want people to disable content blockers on your website, it’s best not to treat the people who don’t have one on like shit YouTube.
SponsorBlock still works via Firefox.
Using ublock on Firefox, still working
That one was never blocked, youtube doesn’t gain money when surfshark pays a youtuber to tell you it’s a good vpn.
It also blocks normal answers well though
knocking on wood so far with firefox and ublock/noscript and disabled hardware acceleration, i will get audio but no video when these ads autoplay-- instead of pressing the skip button, i just hit f5 and poof, gone. still more work than i prefer but i hate advertising as much as anything
I tried using sunshine/moonlight to stream hockey from my PC to my tv and the stream was black (until I disabled hardware acceleration). Legit blew my fucking mind. I was 30% impressed and 70% angry. Once again paying customers are the ones with the shitty UX.
I’m sure the average person doesn’t give a fuck but I am slowly but surely being driven away from any and all paid content. I can’t watch 40 dudes skate around in circles without being fucking bombarded with gambling ads from every fucking possible avenue. Because millions isn’t enough they need more millions.
I’m getting so fucking jaded.
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In Europe we can use ublock and it works just fine. No ads
Google is afraid to overstep in Europe and piss off the EU? Nice.
Google is respecting already existing laws in the EU that prevent them from collecting information about your browser without your consent
Oh yeah, the EU has shown it actually has teeth hitting even the bigger companies where it hurts: fines that aren’t just “cost of business” but actually impact their revenue.
I would pay for YouTube Premium, like I had been when I was a student ($7.99/month), but I’m not a student anymore and they want $19 a month. Fuck no.
$19? I don’t see that option
Subscribing through the iOS YouTube app is $19 because of Apple’s cut. He might mean that?
Apple tacks on another 50%? That seems high.
On mobile? Use Firefox.
On pc? Free tube.
more like
On mobile? Use Firefox.
On pc? Use Firefox.
On mobile? Use newpipe/libretube/Revanced
youtube ui itself sucks.
What’s freetube? Ik I can search but so many recommendations
Oh, the irony.
ublock works perfectly, anything else shouldnt be used
The screenshot is from an iPhone, on which uBlock isn’t an available option.
Choose the walled garden, live in the walled garden.
delete the stupid app and use youtube on safari with adblock. works like a charm.
They’re talking about the Android authority website
are they? I think they talk about the screenshots on that page showing the youtube app on iphone.
It’s a screenshot of the Android authority website. It was what popped up immediately when I clicked on the link.
useless Google, we said iOS smh
more like fuckyoutube amirite yes i am
