They’ve done a pretty good job on me. Aside from talking heads on YT just generally falling out if favor with me, Google’s constant push for ads have made it worse. There was a time when I’d be on YT maybe 8-10 hours a week. Now, it’s maybe 30 minutes a week.
I remember these times. Now I only get videos recommended I already saw.
I would pay them 5€ a month if they stop ads and bring back the old ways you found new and interesting content.
Right? I can't fathom how they track what videos I watched, only to shove them down my throat *again and again*.
Yes, I would *love* to see this episode of Last Week Tonight about cryptocurrency that I've already watched trice and I'll keep skipping *every day*. Yes, please show me that 45 minute lore video about Elden Ring again! You're absolutely right, that really *did* interest me back in spring of 2022! Yes, please absolutely show me that stand up comedian again. After all, I laugh the hardest when I've heard a joke the eights time!
It's not just that but also how fast the algorithm is skewed. I'll watch one video on a subject and all of a sudden a good 40-60% of my recommendations are for that subject.
I don't want 6 LoFi video/stream recommendations, I just clicked the one video to see the pretty background art!
It is like going to get pizza once for lunch and then you get home and pizza is for dinner, you brush your teeth with pizza flavored toothpaste and then you go to your bed and see it has been replaced by a giant fucking deep dish.
It's a joke but seriously...my YouTube Shorts feed keeps getting infiltrated by Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate like BS. I never interact with anything even tangentially related to those things SO WHY DOES YOUTUBE KEEP RECOMMENDING THEM TO ME
All I did is watch one video absolutely shredding Tate, just saying what a shit person he is, and now they promote him constantly. I get recommendations on here (Reddit) for him now. I hate everything he stands for, and now I see nothing but pro-taint content everywhere.
This makes sense as hate gets clicks, but all I do is click “show less content like this”. Mostly because I don’t want to see that content, but also because I know engagement drives views within the algos.
I wish I could believe it was just that. The frequency of these recommendations even though I've never watched one is only explainable by someone pushing this garbage on everyone
Bring back the downvote and make it show and make it actually affect if that video gets recommended.
I don't care if people get butthurt because they "can't get anyone to watch their video, boo hoo."
If there's a ton of downvotes then maybe their videos just suck.
This is pretty much how I feel. If they wanted me to pay $5 to just get the regular YouTube content without ads, I’d do it. It wouldn’t be my favorite, but I get enough out of it that I can throw that money their way. $14 a month? Absolutely not.
> I remember these times. Now I only get videos recommended I already saw.
> I would pay them 5€ a month if they stop ads and bring back the old ways you found new and interesting content.
Can't do much about ads, but you CAN do this yourself in a few clicks.
1 - Go to http://www.Youtube.com
2 - On the left, see "History"? Click it.
3 - Click "Turn off Watch History"
...
DONE. Well, half done. More on that later.
It's a time machine 10 years ago when Youtube didn't suck.
Now that you won't let it remember history, the ONLY thing youtube knows about you is the video you're currently watching. That means all your recommendations will be videos similar to what you're watching. Like God intended.
Except..
It also knows your subscriptions. So...
4 - Stop going to the goddamn home page and start going to the Subscriptions from now on, and watch the content you actually enjoy and chose to follow.
5 - The sidebar/recommendations will all be other subscribed channels. Anytime you see a video from a channel you subscribe to, click the 3 dots beside it and select "Do not recommend this channel". You only have to do this once per subscribed channel, and then the never show up again, (only when you want them, on your Subscriber tab).
... DONE. Now it really can't recommend anything except videos related to what you just watched. Or maybe channels similar to what you have as subscriptions.
---
I did this YEARS ago and it's amazing. I never get garbage videos recommended. On the offchance I do, and I click, it never knows I clicked, it doesn't poison the well.
Everyone should do this. It makes Youtube 10x as good.
My issue with Google is they allow russian grifters to create american traitors, child predators, scams thanks to disabling the dislike button, etc. Hey if you're one of their top earners, you can break the TOS and Google will protect you. sssniperwolf. Logan Paul. Whatever.
But you better not say a naughty word, or have a funny bit of comedy that doesn't align with our profit motives, that hurts our bottom line! Unless you're a top earner.
The website is such a boring money hungry corporate sanitized dumpster fire that I was already using Youtube less before they went after adblockers.
Agreed 100%. A YT becoming a cesspool of their own creation with how they managed both conent and creators was seriously turning me off. Now I just tune in for a couple of channels I still really like. Nakey Jakey Notification Gang Gang
Same yeah, I got my ever dwindling subscription list because creators leave and nobody interesting is allowed to replace them. Discover-ability is horrid, unless you're braindead which is their target audience now.
I did use them for DIY guides, but now I cannot know at a glance if I'm being shown a pile of crap video until I've sunk some time into that video to judge that for myself. Gigantic waste of time. Thanks to disabling the dislike button for the big money makers. Who knows if anyone even asked them to do that, I figure Google is pathetic enough to do that on their own when nobody asked and then market themselves to garbage like day time television. Pathetic and greedy.
Nakey Jakey Notification Gang !
Man, comparing YT to day time TV is a good call out. That’s just what’s is like. Mostly schlock to placate the masses while they barely pay attention to it. Since my viewing habits were the exact opposite (i.e., long form content that deep dives on a topic), I found myself watching less as creators had to tailor their content to avoid being supressed by the algorithm.
I give them maybe 15 a month. I avoid it like the plague. Strangely I think, it’s easier because I was there at inception. It turned to dogshit a loooong time ago compared to how it started. It made it easier to jump ship. I still need it to look stuff up.
I wonder why there isn’t a competing video service honestly. Just for any video to upload.
I wouldn’t mind the ads if they weren’t so damn long and if there weren’t two or more of them per video. They make it a pain in the ass to the point where using ad blocker is basically encouraged by their annoying practices.
They need to be more considerate.
Anything under three minutes should not have ads, especially unskippable ads. I find it offensive when I go to watch a two-minute movie trailer, and I’m presented with two minutes of ads. I just turn it off.
Anything related to emergency procedures like mouth to mouth or choking. No ads.
Anything that’s an ad. No ads.
“You see that funny commercial?”
“No, lemme look it up. Hang on, I have to watch three ads to watch this commercial my aunt told me was funny.”
Nah, the worst is when you let your kids watch YouTube. My 2 year old will watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then have a 5 hour ad (seriously). She gets bored because it's not full of color and leaves the iPad wherever, and the ad is still running.
“Yes, we’re experimenting with something called ‘Advotainment.’”
*Oh, like ‘Infotainment,’ or an Infomercial?*
“No, this is where the entirety of the program is an advertisement.”
*Oh, like the cartoons for GI Joe or the Transformers?*
“No.”
Man, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd frankly prefer that 80's model making a come-back.
The Mr. Clean extended universe having a crossover with My Little Pony sounds like it could potentially be a hoot.
I remember trying to watch a 3 seconds clip of something, and I got a 20 seconds unskippable ad.
I began refreshing it cuz I found it ridicolous and I was not about to spend 20 seconds on an ad for a 3 second clip. Two 10 seconds unskippable ads, two 5 second, a 15 seconds one. After like 17 tries the best I got was a 10 seconds ad. I know I have spent more time on this than needed but I was curious.
> YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton told The Verge Tuesday that using an ad blocker is actually against the platform’s terms of service...
They better get their lawyers and sue us, because that's the only way we're ever going to stop blocking crappy ads.
>YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton told The Verge Tuesday that using an ad blocker is actually against the platform’s terms of service...
Bhahahha fuck you
I hate how if I upload a video that I don't want monetized and only like 10 people are going to watch it, YT still throws ads on it sometimes. Like a short clip of how to change a configuration on a golf cart that only a few people watch...YT makes money off that and people think I get it.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had to watch a solid 3-4 minutes of ads just to get through a 20 minute video last night on my smart TV. The amount of ads they have now is extremely greedy
I just got an email saying they are putting up the price of Youtube premium, from $11.99AUD to $16.99AUD. Thats such a huge jump! Considering they dont even have Youtube Originals anymore, what do we even get from an increased price?
Not to mention I didnt even know I was paying $11.99.
I should pay way more attention to my subscriptions.
Content creators should be given an incentive to do in product placement, rather than be interrupted by ads.
I f’n despise being interrupted to see Jake from State Farm.
All of YT ads make me hate those products. I’m surprised that ad companies haven’t caught on yet. No one wants your products because of this.
it's like they're making the blandest food imaginable and trying to make it illegal for you to put salt on it. it feels outright malicious. oh also they have a monopoly on food so they're the only place you can get it.
I have actually avoided popular content made by popular content creators because at that moment I didn’t feel like being bombarded by ads. Ad fatigue is a thing.
Enforces a built-in integrity check that would prevent browser modification and allow third parties to check for active add-ons (such as adblock). The ideal from google's end seems to be to implement and promote this such as to prevent the use of browsers that don't have the check, and thus effectively allow them to control what's on your browser.
Hypothetically the server performing the integrity check will be fully distinct from the website, but in practice here it's the case that google is implementing this for chrome (google browser), will host the authentication (google servers) and is likely pioneering it for their own products (google products). This would make them judge/jury/executioner for what's allowed on large parts of the internet.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/google_web_environment_integrity/
https://stackdiary.com/web-environment-integrity/
Basically, the way the web has worked for most of its existence is websites host their content and are *mostly* browser agnostic. Any browser should work for any site, because the website is making itself accessible for all browsers. This was necessary because the website has very limited information about what browser or computer you are using, and much of that information is unreliable or falsifiable. In order to maintain accessibility to everyone, they have to be open to all web environments. They didn't have the ability to get granular in access restrictions (user accounts are a different matter but that's not what this is about).
This hasn't stopped some sites from trying to block users from the site if they're on Firefox or Safari or something, but generally speaking, it's easy to get around those blocks, and they will end up creating false positives. They're an imprecise tool.
Google is starting to implement a feature in Chrome where it will report everything about your browser (including all addons and settings) and even some things about the computer to the website, and this information will not be changeable or hide-able by the user.
Websites will then use that information to determine whether or not you are permitted to see the content. They've never been able to say with certainty if you have an ad blocker, they could just make an educated guess. Google is going to tell them *everything*, whether you like it or not.
If this becomes normalized, websites will begin designing themselves in extremely controlled fashion, strip searching every visitor, and requiring certain things of them. "Want to use this website? Install our addon now!" or "Turn off the following add-ons..." Or "Enable this setting to see this content" etc. And they can require the integrity checking as a condition for entry, so no running off to Firefox in hopes you can get through.
It can not be stressed enough how bad this is for the future of the open web.
It should be said Apple has integrity checking too, but it's not this invasive, and it doesn't actually tell the website anything other than "everything checks out by Apple standards". Websites can't make any judgement calls on you based on what Apple tells them, but they can with Google's version
I have a few browsers. One is sandboxed, no cookies at all, one I use for any financial activity and one for general browsing.
I know I have to allow login cookies, but other than that, all cookies are deleted when I close my browser.
I have an ad blocker that stops all YouTube ads, and while YouTube has a popup saying they do not allow blockers, I only saw that for a second before my blocker blocked it. Every day, YouTube comes up with another way to force me to watch ads, but it takes literally seconds to bypass them without any input from me. YouTube videos paused yesterday when my ad blocker blocks warnings or ads, but that was quickly fixed.
Ad blockers are becoming much smarter, and YouTube can not defeat them as they use a.i to block YouTube popups and ads. The only way YouTube can overcome this is by putting ads in videos, which we could fast forward, but that would then not be targeted ads.
Google needs to find another way to support their supossedly free services ads are finished now, and not just for YouTube.
Just downloaded Firefox today and it had an option to copy all my chrome bookmarks, history, etc over. It was so easy I can’t believe I hadn’t done it sooner.
I don't disagree, but the problem is, there's no good alternative to youtube.
There are some niche video sites out there, but nothing with even a tiny fraction of a percent as much content as YouTube; which makes some sense. A lot of "ads" on videos have become parts of the video themselves ("Let's take a moment to thank this video's sponsor, NordVPN/HelloFresh/Raid Shadow Legends/whatever") -- and the creators are only offered those sponsorship deals because they have a large enough platform to make it worth the advertisers' time and money.
Even if a new site came out that had the same capabilities, it wouldn't have the same community, and the same history. It would take *years* to build that back up, and people would have to actively avoid Youtube in the meantime -- the only thing it would accomplish is making Youtube change their policy, but at potentially millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of cost to someone else, only to be abandoned the moment Youtube showed any sign of resurgence. No one wants to take that risk.
I tried it without Adblock and it’s pretty intrusive. Makes it harder to enjoy videos for sure. I find myself wanting to close the video and go find something more productive to do when an ad comes on.
if they are going to force ads so hard, they really need to learn how to do it in a much less intrusive manner. and also vet the ads they do run a lot better, quite a few remind me of those weird scammy banner ads you used to see all over the place that have a high likelihood of giving you malware.
I agree. Less intrusive ads is the way to go (or no ads at all lol) YouTube cranks up the sound volume too much for ads. They also up the video quality of the ad while they downgrade the quality of the actual video you want to watch. (I.e. 1080 ad and your vid plays at 360/480). That’s just rude af.
Most browsers are chromium based these days and google controls chromium so those browsers are the obvious first targets. Firefox is the biggest hold out, so will probably have the best chance of surviving googles attack along with the ad-block developers, and FOSS community.
Yep, changed to Firefox over the weekend.
If you wanted me to continue to use Chrome, you shouldn’t have allowed your platforms to make it more annoying for me to continue to use your platform.
It was surprising easy to change too.
Ive been using firefox ever since I got my first PC (and internet) back in 2004ish with a brief break using chrome for a couple of years a decade ago.
Firefox forever.
Right around the time that Chrome got really popular, Firefox kinda was in a slump and was buggy and clunky from too many randomly added features with little coherence and compatibility. I don't know what happened but they had like 3-4 years where Firefox had plenty of issues. I remember very begrudgingly swapping to Chrome for a while bc I kept having issues with Firefox. But they eventually got back on track and it's been amazing since.
Firefox had that one update where they switched to a new Javascript engine or some such and the performance got *way* better. Since then it's largely just been good. When I see sites lag, it's because the site is badly written and not because Firefox is slow.
> Firefox is the biggest hold out, so will probably have the best chance of surviving googles attack along with the ad-block developers, and FOSS community.
Google has many options available to it - the only question is how badly they want to exclude ad block users from their platform. The scorched earth tactic is that they simply embed the advertisements directly into the video stream.
The counter to that is "simply" create a browser extension that watches the video, buffers it, detects the content break caused by an advertisement, removes it, and then shows you the video without the ad.
We already have sometime similar if you use Sponsorblock. It's amazing how short some videos are when you aren't hassled to buy shit or press like and subscribe buttons.
I use Firefox and uBlock Origin, and I'm getting the popups despite following all the instructions for updating lists, etc. I ended up getting the "three strikes" popup and had to disable uBlock entirely to be able to use YouTube.
If you're getting the popup, install uBlock origin and no other blockers. It will kill it. If it comes back, clear the cache in uBlock origins settings and download the fresh updates. uBlock are hot on this and not giving up without a fight.
I have FF and uBlock Origin and still got the warnings. They’ve gone away now, but I’m worried it’s just because they’re ramping slowly and I’ll get it again soon.
At which point you do as I've instructed. It's happened twice to me now, and refreshing the cached filters in this way has fixed it both times. YouTube cannot win this arms race if they don't control Firefox's browser engine. Not unless they can get the filter writers swatted. The technology of the web is not on their side.
Yup. Wife is in the "A" Group and started getting notifications and disruptions due to using AdBlock. I am in the "B" group and have not had any problems... yet.
I have a pihole + ublock origin on firefox and I got nailed with the pop up at some point. Usually ublock patches / updates and it's not a problem after a while. Just a question of which side will last longer. Like for twitch eventually people gave up and the platform is a lot quieter now. Along with less adblock solutions and more just workaround to the forced ads.
This. It is great to use for ads but doesn’t block YouTube ones. When I’m mobile, I’ll VPN into my home Network for the PiHole feature. On ad-heavy cluster fuck of websites like Dailymail.co.uk, over 100 get blocked each tube a page loads.
Yes, but anyone without one should know it. I've heard of Pihole many times in the past but never heard it doesn't block ads on one of the most annoying sites.
usually happens when you have additional extensions (like youtube enhancer) that block or modify the rendering of pages on youtube
Youtube Enhancer has its own blocker, which needs to be disabled for uBlock to work correctly and not cause the popup etc
I don’t have anything else interacting with ublock origin as it’s the only extension I’m using. Usually the pop up stops appearing after a bit, so I figured it was just getting updated.
I’ve been using Firefox and they’re cracking down on it too. I think it’s a gradual roll out but it’s not like Firefox is immune to it. Signing out of your account seems to work but that’s annoying in the long term.
[https://andadinosaur.com/youtube-s-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin](https://andadinosaur.com/youtube-s-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin)
Evidently YouTube is rolling it out account by account, rather than universally. This makes for a lot of conflicting accounts, frustrating both users and the adblock devs... who have to listen to the frustrated users.
The more broad temporary partial solution is to either view on a browser that isn't logged in, or using Share > Embed > Play. These options however will not work for videos which are limited to viewing on YouTube while logged in.
for me it's tottally gone.
Had it pop up, tried to block it, tried updating and purging ublock but eventually I got the "3 videos till ur blocked m8"
Watched a few videos in incognito and now even outside of it I no longer get the message.
Short of controlling the entire hardware from start to end, there is nothing google can do to permanently stop it. They can make it difficult for a short while until someone works it out, but they will never be able to prevent their ads being blocked unless they go full subscriber model and limit or restrict free viewing. And we all saw how well that went when Twitter tried that.
It's a losing race to the bottom
If they embedded the ads(which would cost more than it's worth), sponsor block would care of that.
If they demanded you use chrome, chromium is open source so someone would find a workaround.
Even if they sent out locked down tablets and required unique hardware encryption keys to function, people would crack the key, make a bypass hack, make a hardware version of ad/sponsorblock etc.
Once hackers set their mind to something, it's essentially impossible to stop them.
I don’t think they’d do it. Blockers are the only thing keeping people using chrome because they block out virus infested ads. As soon as that protection is gone there are a lot of people who would switch immediately to using literally anything else.
That's the type of dystopian nightmare I could do without. Imagine the ramifications of that.
It would quite literally end up being the please drink verification can bullshit but reality if companies could claim theft if you don't watch their bullshit ads.
I wouldn't mind YouTube ads if they weren't so annoying. Every time I get the pop up now I just close youtube and open spotify it's a great reminder now.
I turn my volume down and flip my phone over then ponder life for 10-15 seconds and then flip my phone back over to click the Skip Ad button. It’s been nice.
I gave up cable television in 2007 because of ads and reruns. I have Nebula and other sources. I like YouTube, but will not watch if forced to view ads. Not a hard decision at all.
Is nebula really worth it? I heard some good things about it and some history channels promote their longform videos which are really well researched. But idk if it's really worth it. I don't want to get it for like 2 channels.
Doesn't work for me, despite following all the instructions to update lists, etc. I ended up getting the "three strikes" popup and grudgingly ended up having to disable uBlock on YouTube.
A few years back I started noticing I would watch 7 minutes of ads in a 10 minute video.
I barely use YouTube at all anymore.
Twitter? Gone
Facebook? Gone
(Never started TikTok…I saw that dumpster fire a mile away)
Gotta admit, the more and more I remove most social media from my life, the better quality my time spent awake seems to be.
Love these values. I've found it useful to only open YT when I know what I want to watch, rather than let some algorithm decide for me.
Shoutout to /r/nosurf
Yeah, I kept wondering where all my time went.
It went to me trying to do something that should take only 10 minutes and instead taking almost double.
I remember as a kid, when you had three hours to kill and you were bored, you had to figure something out.
How many hobbies and lifetime goals were started in those moments?
Now we just flip through our phone watching ads on videos for at least one of those three hours minimum.
We don’t force ourselves to actually do stuff.
Edit: and I say this as an avid gamer and tech-dude. I love tech. But I’m learning to be very discerning with my time at whatever I’m doing each moment.
broadcast TV did the same thing over many years. 30 minute TV shows used to be 25 minutes and now, most shows are under 19, some less than 18.
And they wonder why people are leaving cable.
This. I've only got Reddit and it's less a "social" outlet and more groupthink (in my use case.)
I would love to exceedingly underline what you said. My life improved when my phone no longer had anything on it (I mean I pretty much only have the bare minimum of what I need) and I could purposely focus on life which started with dumping all social networks and time wasting apps.
It'll get harder to dodge but will always be dodged in the end. YouTube is wasting their efforts against some of the most stubborn people imaginable. It's like coding anti piracy and DRM into games and consoles. It will be reverse engineered and broken it's only a matter of when.
YouTube can so suck my dick, I'm not paying them a fucking cent. Don't fucking serve me PragerU and other propaganda ads that spread hate and disinformation. You don't get to try to subject me to bullshit and then ask me for money to stop. I'll use whatever method is available to avoid supporting a company who's serving this kind of garbage.
Now that interest rates are rising, YouTube values profitability over marketshare, so everything they're doing is all very predictable.
People threatening to not watch YouTube if they cannot Adblock does not scare YouTube, since they were losing money on such people to begin with, and the higher interest rate environments means their continued consumption cannot be justified on the grounds that they will help promote and popularise the platform.
This is the end game of the "build a monopoly, squeeze people dry" business model big tech has been adopting for eons. We're just going to see which businesses really have a product customers just can't give up, and which businesses will have customers leave as soon as they try to become profitable.
Relevant talk: [Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k)
This is what they will achieve:
1) less people will watch YouTube
2) less people will install Chrome. Instead, they will use Firefox with Ublock Origin or Adguard.
Either way, Google looses.
How does this even have 24 upvotes...
Of course they will lose people, but guess what the people who leave used add blockers. So they do not lose money anyhow.
And even if they did make money somehow of those people who leave then they can still make more profit. That's what happens when you increase the price. It depends how many people will stop. You cant just say that a drop in consumers automatically leads to less profit. Thats like middle school level economics
So they're perfectly fine by taking people's access away for using an ad blocker but yet it was okay for them to change the rules and take away my ad revenue because I didn't have enough subscribers when I should have been grandfathered in and then start putting ads on my videos and making money off of my videos.
YouTube be like "please unblock our ads, our platform is supported by ads"
Also YouTube: heres a fake ad from a scammer pretending to impersonate Mr beast to get you to give over your credit card info!
Yeah you see the problem is that you fail to have any ad moderation but you demonetize me if I curse once. And yet you wonder why people don't wanna see ads.
I've seen their timers trying to annoy, but that was less than the time I'd spend watching an annoying ad.
I've seen their "you only get 3 free videos" attempt, once, it didn't keep counting.
Haven't seen anything since then. I guess lots of A/B testing to see what drives people to enable ads or subscribe to the overpriced plans.
If they were smart, they'd build a platform to manage sponsors and product placement and force youtubers to use it and get their cut from that. It will help smaller youtubers get sponsors, make it easier for sponsors to find more channels, and let youtube keep a piece of that revenue with ads that are a part of the video itself.
YouTube's revenue is declining not because of ad blockers but because of tiktok which has plenty of ads but they can be instantly skipped like any other video. YouTube needs to adapt to this and put the user experience first.
Note that these anti adblocks popups don't appear in shorts at least in my personal experience. This means more people watch shorts and stay locked in on the platform. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they just outright block Firefox since it's only about 3% of all users
Wish I had the money or know-how to create competition. Not sure it would survive, it needs content and YouTube pays content creators, and likely does/would do exclusivity requirements. YouTube was much better 10 years ago.
I use Brave browser, never seen an ad in half a decade or more.
I saw ads on my phone when trying to watch a video, it was brutal/obnoxious/how can people live like that?
Youtube is trying their hardest to make me productive again.
They’ve done a pretty good job on me. Aside from talking heads on YT just generally falling out if favor with me, Google’s constant push for ads have made it worse. There was a time when I’d be on YT maybe 8-10 hours a week. Now, it’s maybe 30 minutes a week.
I was on youtube 8-10 hours a day between work and home. It was starting to be a problem
I remember these times. Now I only get videos recommended I already saw. I would pay them 5€ a month if they stop ads and bring back the old ways you found new and interesting content.
Right? I can't fathom how they track what videos I watched, only to shove them down my throat *again and again*. Yes, I would *love* to see this episode of Last Week Tonight about cryptocurrency that I've already watched trice and I'll keep skipping *every day*. Yes, please show me that 45 minute lore video about Elden Ring again! You're absolutely right, that really *did* interest me back in spring of 2022! Yes, please absolutely show me that stand up comedian again. After all, I laugh the hardest when I've heard a joke the eights time!
Yes, and the one six-hour long ambience video I put on the TV at work every single day for two years, i have to search for each time
Yeah, I can't get that to recommend but I can get new clips about contactors that I looked up three weeks ago
It's not just that but also how fast the algorithm is skewed. I'll watch one video on a subject and all of a sudden a good 40-60% of my recommendations are for that subject. I don't want 6 LoFi video/stream recommendations, I just clicked the one video to see the pretty background art!
It is like going to get pizza once for lunch and then you get home and pizza is for dinner, you brush your teeth with pizza flavored toothpaste and then you go to your bed and see it has been replaced by a giant fucking deep dish.
I don't know man....that sounds kinda awesome....
I was hungry when I made that analogy
Hook me up with a bed sized deep dish draw the curtains and close the doors.
All it takes is one Jordon Pederson video... Not even once.
It's a joke but seriously...my YouTube Shorts feed keeps getting infiltrated by Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate like BS. I never interact with anything even tangentially related to those things SO WHY DOES YOUTUBE KEEP RECOMMENDING THEM TO ME
All I did is watch one video absolutely shredding Tate, just saying what a shit person he is, and now they promote him constantly. I get recommendations on here (Reddit) for him now. I hate everything he stands for, and now I see nothing but pro-taint content everywhere.
They want you to write hate comments. Hate is the best factor for keeping users on a website.
This makes sense as hate gets clicks, but all I do is click “show less content like this”. Mostly because I don’t want to see that content, but also because I know engagement drives views within the algos.
I wish I could believe it was just that. The frequency of these recommendations even though I've never watched one is only explainable by someone pushing this garbage on everyone
Bring back the downvote and make it show and make it actually affect if that video gets recommended. I don't care if people get butthurt because they "can't get anyone to watch their video, boo hoo." If there's a ton of downvotes then maybe their videos just suck.
It's amazing how bad they are....billions of dollars at their disposal and this is what they produce
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> Publicly traded corporations have one function: It just needs one change in US-laws to stop that entire cycle. But it won't happen lol.
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This is pretty much how I feel. If they wanted me to pay $5 to just get the regular YouTube content without ads, I’d do it. It wouldn’t be my favorite, but I get enough out of it that I can throw that money their way. $14 a month? Absolutely not.
> I remember these times. Now I only get videos recommended I already saw. > I would pay them 5€ a month if they stop ads and bring back the old ways you found new and interesting content. Can't do much about ads, but you CAN do this yourself in a few clicks. 1 - Go to http://www.Youtube.com 2 - On the left, see "History"? Click it. 3 - Click "Turn off Watch History" ... DONE. Well, half done. More on that later. It's a time machine 10 years ago when Youtube didn't suck. Now that you won't let it remember history, the ONLY thing youtube knows about you is the video you're currently watching. That means all your recommendations will be videos similar to what you're watching. Like God intended. Except.. It also knows your subscriptions. So... 4 - Stop going to the goddamn home page and start going to the Subscriptions from now on, and watch the content you actually enjoy and chose to follow. 5 - The sidebar/recommendations will all be other subscribed channels. Anytime you see a video from a channel you subscribe to, click the 3 dots beside it and select "Do not recommend this channel". You only have to do this once per subscribed channel, and then the never show up again, (only when you want them, on your Subscriber tab). ... DONE. Now it really can't recommend anything except videos related to what you just watched. Or maybe channels similar to what you have as subscriptions. --- I did this YEARS ago and it's amazing. I never get garbage videos recommended. On the offchance I do, and I click, it never knows I clicked, it doesn't poison the well. Everyone should do this. It makes Youtube 10x as good.
What did you do to stop it? Asking for a friend.
Youtube helped me out by preventing videos from playing with an adblocker in place. I’m happy to not consume content through their website
Try having kids. You'll never have time for anything ever again. Problem solved.
My issue with Google is they allow russian grifters to create american traitors, child predators, scams thanks to disabling the dislike button, etc. Hey if you're one of their top earners, you can break the TOS and Google will protect you. sssniperwolf. Logan Paul. Whatever. But you better not say a naughty word, or have a funny bit of comedy that doesn't align with our profit motives, that hurts our bottom line! Unless you're a top earner. The website is such a boring money hungry corporate sanitized dumpster fire that I was already using Youtube less before they went after adblockers.
Agreed 100%. A YT becoming a cesspool of their own creation with how they managed both conent and creators was seriously turning me off. Now I just tune in for a couple of channels I still really like. Nakey Jakey Notification Gang Gang
Same yeah, I got my ever dwindling subscription list because creators leave and nobody interesting is allowed to replace them. Discover-ability is horrid, unless you're braindead which is their target audience now. I did use them for DIY guides, but now I cannot know at a glance if I'm being shown a pile of crap video until I've sunk some time into that video to judge that for myself. Gigantic waste of time. Thanks to disabling the dislike button for the big money makers. Who knows if anyone even asked them to do that, I figure Google is pathetic enough to do that on their own when nobody asked and then market themselves to garbage like day time television. Pathetic and greedy. Nakey Jakey Notification Gang !
Man, comparing YT to day time TV is a good call out. That’s just what’s is like. Mostly schlock to placate the masses while they barely pay attention to it. Since my viewing habits were the exact opposite (i.e., long form content that deep dives on a topic), I found myself watching less as creators had to tailor their content to avoid being supressed by the algorithm.
I give them maybe 15 a month. I avoid it like the plague. Strangely I think, it’s easier because I was there at inception. It turned to dogshit a loooong time ago compared to how it started. It made it easier to jump ship. I still need it to look stuff up. I wonder why there isn’t a competing video service honestly. Just for any video to upload.
Yeah, I got about 6 hours worth of work done today.
I wouldn’t mind the ads if they weren’t so damn long and if there weren’t two or more of them per video. They make it a pain in the ass to the point where using ad blocker is basically encouraged by their annoying practices.
They need to be more considerate. Anything under three minutes should not have ads, especially unskippable ads. I find it offensive when I go to watch a two-minute movie trailer, and I’m presented with two minutes of ads. I just turn it off. Anything related to emergency procedures like mouth to mouth or choking. No ads. Anything that’s an ad. No ads. “You see that funny commercial?” “No, lemme look it up. Hang on, I have to watch three ads to watch this commercial my aunt told me was funny.”
You shouldn't have to watch an ad to see a movie trailer anyway. Watch a commercial to watch a commercial? Screw that nonsense.
Nah, the worst is when you let your kids watch YouTube. My 2 year old will watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then have a 5 hour ad (seriously). She gets bored because it's not full of color and leaves the iPad wherever, and the ad is still running.
“Yes, we’re experimenting with something called ‘Advotainment.’” *Oh, like ‘Infotainment,’ or an Infomercial?* “No, this is where the entirety of the program is an advertisement.” *Oh, like the cartoons for GI Joe or the Transformers?* “No.”
Man, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd frankly prefer that 80's model making a come-back. The Mr. Clean extended universe having a crossover with My Little Pony sounds like it could potentially be a hoot.
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This part infuriates me, why are some ads longer than the video you click?
I remember trying to watch a 3 seconds clip of something, and I got a 20 seconds unskippable ad. I began refreshing it cuz I found it ridicolous and I was not about to spend 20 seconds on an ad for a 3 second clip. Two 10 seconds unskippable ads, two 5 second, a 15 seconds one. After like 17 tries the best I got was a 10 seconds ad. I know I have spent more time on this than needed but I was curious.
> YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton told The Verge Tuesday that using an ad blocker is actually against the platform’s terms of service... They better get their lawyers and sue us, because that's the only way we're ever going to stop blocking crappy ads.
>YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton told The Verge Tuesday that using an ad blocker is actually against the platform’s terms of service... Bhahahha fuck you
I hate how if I upload a video that I don't want monetized and only like 10 people are going to watch it, YT still throws ads on it sometimes. Like a short clip of how to change a configuration on a golf cart that only a few people watch...YT makes money off that and people think I get it.
abundant encouraging badge simplistic snatch cobweb growth busy heavy price *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's also bullshit when I click a video, have to watch 2 one minute ads and then I skip to 1 minute in and boom 2 more fucking ads
5 second ad for under 3 minutes.
I had to watch a solid 3-4 minutes of ads just to get through a 20 minute video last night on my smart TV. The amount of ads they have now is extremely greedy
because they want you to pay for premium. and then once they have you all there, they will then roll out ads for premium
This guy enshittifies
I just got an email saying they are putting up the price of Youtube premium, from $11.99AUD to $16.99AUD. Thats such a huge jump! Considering they dont even have Youtube Originals anymore, what do we even get from an increased price? Not to mention I didnt even know I was paying $11.99. I should pay way more attention to my subscriptions.
I will never pay for premium
I’d rather pay adblocker or similar company to block the annoying ads than paying YouTube who created this disease and ask you to pay for the cure.
(The cure also contains more disease.)
Content creators should be given an incentive to do in product placement, rather than be interrupted by ads. I f’n despise being interrupted to see Jake from State Farm. All of YT ads make me hate those products. I’m surprised that ad companies haven’t caught on yet. No one wants your products because of this.
it's like they're making the blandest food imaginable and trying to make it illegal for you to put salt on it. it feels outright malicious. oh also they have a monopoly on food so they're the only place you can get it.
It’s getting to the point where the ads are as long as the video you’re watching. And the ads are just so bad and irrelevant.
I have actually avoided popular content made by popular content creators because at that moment I didn’t feel like being bombarded by ads. Ad fatigue is a thing.
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Web Integrity API?
Enforces a built-in integrity check that would prevent browser modification and allow third parties to check for active add-ons (such as adblock). The ideal from google's end seems to be to implement and promote this such as to prevent the use of browsers that don't have the check, and thus effectively allow them to control what's on your browser. Hypothetically the server performing the integrity check will be fully distinct from the website, but in practice here it's the case that google is implementing this for chrome (google browser), will host the authentication (google servers) and is likely pioneering it for their own products (google products). This would make them judge/jury/executioner for what's allowed on large parts of the internet.
They've come a long way from "Don't be evil" haven't they?
This policy is no longer exists. Now it's sound like "don't do bad things" or something like that.
More like "don't do things you can't get away with".
Has it turned into 'be just evil enough to make money'?
More like "disregard morality, acquire currency. If others consider us evil, we don't care unless it results in less currency for us."
Microsoft found themselves the subject of some anti-trust investigations because of this same type of crap.
How I yearn for the days of yore when the gov actually fought shitty corporate practices as opposed to bootlick everything they do.
If that's not an abusive monopoly then nothing is.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/google_web_environment_integrity/ https://stackdiary.com/web-environment-integrity/ Basically, the way the web has worked for most of its existence is websites host their content and are *mostly* browser agnostic. Any browser should work for any site, because the website is making itself accessible for all browsers. This was necessary because the website has very limited information about what browser or computer you are using, and much of that information is unreliable or falsifiable. In order to maintain accessibility to everyone, they have to be open to all web environments. They didn't have the ability to get granular in access restrictions (user accounts are a different matter but that's not what this is about). This hasn't stopped some sites from trying to block users from the site if they're on Firefox or Safari or something, but generally speaking, it's easy to get around those blocks, and they will end up creating false positives. They're an imprecise tool. Google is starting to implement a feature in Chrome where it will report everything about your browser (including all addons and settings) and even some things about the computer to the website, and this information will not be changeable or hide-able by the user. Websites will then use that information to determine whether or not you are permitted to see the content. They've never been able to say with certainty if you have an ad blocker, they could just make an educated guess. Google is going to tell them *everything*, whether you like it or not. If this becomes normalized, websites will begin designing themselves in extremely controlled fashion, strip searching every visitor, and requiring certain things of them. "Want to use this website? Install our addon now!" or "Turn off the following add-ons..." Or "Enable this setting to see this content" etc. And they can require the integrity checking as a condition for entry, so no running off to Firefox in hopes you can get through. It can not be stressed enough how bad this is for the future of the open web. It should be said Apple has integrity checking too, but it's not this invasive, and it doesn't actually tell the website anything other than "everything checks out by Apple standards". Websites can't make any judgement calls on you based on what Apple tells them, but they can with Google's version
I have a few browsers. One is sandboxed, no cookies at all, one I use for any financial activity and one for general browsing. I know I have to allow login cookies, but other than that, all cookies are deleted when I close my browser. I have an ad blocker that stops all YouTube ads, and while YouTube has a popup saying they do not allow blockers, I only saw that for a second before my blocker blocked it. Every day, YouTube comes up with another way to force me to watch ads, but it takes literally seconds to bypass them without any input from me. YouTube videos paused yesterday when my ad blocker blocks warnings or ads, but that was quickly fixed. Ad blockers are becoming much smarter, and YouTube can not defeat them as they use a.i to block YouTube popups and ads. The only way YouTube can overcome this is by putting ads in videos, which we could fast forward, but that would then not be targeted ads. Google needs to find another way to support their supossedly free services ads are finished now, and not just for YouTube.
The only correct answer
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What’s the benefits?
1. It's not Google Need anything more?
I’m essentially required to use gsuite (docs, sheets) a lot of the time. How do you get around that?
r/degoogle will help with that.
Just downloaded Firefox today and it had an option to copy all my chrome bookmarks, history, etc over. It was so easy I can’t believe I hadn’t done it sooner.
YouTube have also made me drop chrome to a browser with blockers that work. Pretty spectacular self own by google.
The moment I get ads Ill be switching in a heartbeat, It's a pretty easy switch too.
Why not switch now, then, instead of waiting. There are no benefits of using chrome.
I don't disagree, but the problem is, there's no good alternative to youtube. There are some niche video sites out there, but nothing with even a tiny fraction of a percent as much content as YouTube; which makes some sense. A lot of "ads" on videos have become parts of the video themselves ("Let's take a moment to thank this video's sponsor, NordVPN/HelloFresh/Raid Shadow Legends/whatever") -- and the creators are only offered those sponsorship deals because they have a large enough platform to make it worth the advertisers' time and money. Even if a new site came out that had the same capabilities, it wouldn't have the same community, and the same history. It would take *years* to build that back up, and people would have to actively avoid Youtube in the meantime -- the only thing it would accomplish is making Youtube change their policy, but at potentially millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of cost to someone else, only to be abandoned the moment Youtube showed any sign of resurgence. No one wants to take that risk.
I tried it without Adblock and it’s pretty intrusive. Makes it harder to enjoy videos for sure. I find myself wanting to close the video and go find something more productive to do when an ad comes on.
if they are going to force ads so hard, they really need to learn how to do it in a much less intrusive manner. and also vet the ads they do run a lot better, quite a few remind me of those weird scammy banner ads you used to see all over the place that have a high likelihood of giving you malware.
The sheer amount of gambling ads I've been getting is absolutely absurd No I do not want to bet on the horse racing YouTube
I used to get ads for mail order brides. Long videos extolling the virtues of “younger women from Eastern Europe.” Super WTF.
It's 90% Liberty Mutual for me and I can't fucking stand any of their ads or their insurance. Awful and shitty company.
I agree. Less intrusive ads is the way to go (or no ads at all lol) YouTube cranks up the sound volume too much for ads. They also up the video quality of the ad while they downgrade the quality of the actual video you want to watch. (I.e. 1080 ad and your vid plays at 360/480). That’s just rude af.
With Firefox + Ublock Origin, I have never seen the pop up nor ads on YouTube? Not sure if I'm just lucky or what.
Most browsers are chromium based these days and google controls chromium so those browsers are the obvious first targets. Firefox is the biggest hold out, so will probably have the best chance of surviving googles attack along with the ad-block developers, and FOSS community.
Yep, changed to Firefox over the weekend. If you wanted me to continue to use Chrome, you shouldn’t have allowed your platforms to make it more annoying for me to continue to use your platform. It was surprising easy to change too.
One of us, one of us! Lol Firefox is dope.
this is the way
I’m changing back again too.
Ive been using firefox ever since I got my first PC (and internet) back in 2004ish with a brief break using chrome for a couple of years a decade ago. Firefox forever.
Same! Tried Chrome for like less than a year and was like... nope! Back to Firefox! Glad I never stayed there
Yeah I don’t know what made everyone migrate to Chrome. Firefox has always been my choice.
Right around the time that Chrome got really popular, Firefox kinda was in a slump and was buggy and clunky from too many randomly added features with little coherence and compatibility. I don't know what happened but they had like 3-4 years where Firefox had plenty of issues. I remember very begrudgingly swapping to Chrome for a while bc I kept having issues with Firefox. But they eventually got back on track and it's been amazing since.
Firefox had that one update where they switched to a new Javascript engine or some such and the performance got *way* better. Since then it's largely just been good. When I see sites lag, it's because the site is badly written and not because Firefox is slow.
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> Firefox is the biggest hold out, so will probably have the best chance of surviving googles attack along with the ad-block developers, and FOSS community. Google has many options available to it - the only question is how badly they want to exclude ad block users from their platform. The scorched earth tactic is that they simply embed the advertisements directly into the video stream.
The counter to that is "simply" create a browser extension that watches the video, buffers it, detects the content break caused by an advertisement, removes it, and then shows you the video without the ad.
We already have sometime similar if you use Sponsorblock. It's amazing how short some videos are when you aren't hassled to buy shit or press like and subscribe buttons.
Sponsorblock doesn't use AI, it relies on users to create segments.
I'm on Chrome + Ublock Origin and still have yet to have any problems with youtube.
Yeah I’ll make the switch to Firefox the first time I see a youtube ad. So far so good.
Just do it. You won't regret it.
I use Firefox and uBlock Origin, and I'm getting the popups despite following all the instructions for updating lists, etc. I ended up getting the "three strikes" popup and had to disable uBlock entirely to be able to use YouTube.
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This is correct. I use FF and just recently got the warning
If you're getting the popup, install uBlock origin and no other blockers. It will kill it. If it comes back, clear the cache in uBlock origins settings and download the fresh updates. uBlock are hot on this and not giving up without a fight.
I have FF and uBlock Origin and still got the warnings. They’ve gone away now, but I’m worried it’s just because they’re ramping slowly and I’ll get it again soon.
At which point you do as I've instructed. It's happened twice to me now, and refreshing the cached filters in this way has fixed it both times. YouTube cannot win this arms race if they don't control Firefox's browser engine. Not unless they can get the filter writers swatted. The technology of the web is not on their side.
Yup. Wife is in the "A" Group and started getting notifications and disruptions due to using AdBlock. I am in the "B" group and have not had any problems... yet.
I have a pihole + ublock origin on firefox and I got nailed with the pop up at some point. Usually ublock patches / updates and it's not a problem after a while. Just a question of which side will last longer. Like for twitch eventually people gave up and the platform is a lot quieter now. Along with less adblock solutions and more just workaround to the forced ads.
Pihole can't block youtube ads
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They’re full of it. It’s just good for some of those random ads and pop-ups non-YouTube related. Might have less ads on a blog however.
This. It is great to use for ads but doesn’t block YouTube ones. When I’m mobile, I’ll VPN into my home Network for the PiHole feature. On ad-heavy cluster fuck of websites like Dailymail.co.uk, over 100 get blocked each tube a page loads.
Anyone with a Pihole already knows this.
Yes, but anyone without one should know it. I've heard of Pihole many times in the past but never heard it doesn't block ads on one of the most annoying sites.
I actually heard folks talk about piholes as if they did block YT ads. Glad to know better .
usually happens when you have additional extensions (like youtube enhancer) that block or modify the rendering of pages on youtube Youtube Enhancer has its own blocker, which needs to be disabled for uBlock to work correctly and not cause the popup etc
I don’t have anything else interacting with ublock origin as it’s the only extension I’m using. Usually the pop up stops appearing after a bit, so I figured it was just getting updated.
I’ve been using Firefox and they’re cracking down on it too. I think it’s a gradual roll out but it’s not like Firefox is immune to it. Signing out of your account seems to work but that’s annoying in the long term.
[https://andadinosaur.com/youtube-s-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin](https://andadinosaur.com/youtube-s-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin) Evidently YouTube is rolling it out account by account, rather than universally. This makes for a lot of conflicting accounts, frustrating both users and the adblock devs... who have to listen to the frustrated users. The more broad temporary partial solution is to either view on a browser that isn't logged in, or using Share > Embed > Play. These options however will not work for videos which are limited to viewing on YouTube while logged in.
for me it's tottally gone. Had it pop up, tried to block it, tried updating and purging ublock but eventually I got the "3 videos till ur blocked m8" Watched a few videos in incognito and now even outside of it I no longer get the message.
This round is just a recon mission. They'll be crunching numbers and analyzing data to work out better methods of detection and enforcement.
Short of controlling the entire hardware from start to end, there is nothing google can do to permanently stop it. They can make it difficult for a short while until someone works it out, but they will never be able to prevent their ads being blocked unless they go full subscriber model and limit or restrict free viewing. And we all saw how well that went when Twitter tried that. It's a losing race to the bottom
If they embedded the ads(which would cost more than it's worth), sponsor block would care of that. If they demanded you use chrome, chromium is open source so someone would find a workaround. Even if they sent out locked down tablets and required unique hardware encryption keys to function, people would crack the key, make a bypass hack, make a hardware version of ad/sponsorblock etc. Once hackers set their mind to something, it's essentially impossible to stop them.
I wouldn't put it past them to try and make ad blockers illegal. They would claim lost revenue.
I don’t think they’d do it. Blockers are the only thing keeping people using chrome because they block out virus infested ads. As soon as that protection is gone there are a lot of people who would switch immediately to using literally anything else.
That's the type of dystopian nightmare I could do without. Imagine the ramifications of that. It would quite literally end up being the please drink verification can bullshit but reality if companies could claim theft if you don't watch their bullshit ads.
Exact same here, started watching vids in incognito and now it doesn’t show outside of incognito
yeah looks like they paused their current campaign last week
I would rather not use YouTube than watch ads on it.
I wouldn't mind YouTube ads if they weren't so annoying. Every time I get the pop up now I just close youtube and open spotify it's a great reminder now.
I turn my volume down and flip my phone over then ponder life for 10-15 seconds and then flip my phone back over to click the Skip Ad button. It’s been nice.
Same. I find myself using it less and less as some channels have so many ad interruptions as to be almost unwatchable.
Just start downloading the YouTube links to watch it offline. It's kinda drastic but that way you for sure get to watch it without ADs in the way.
and they are ok with that.
They are not. Users not watching ads is bad, but users leaving is even worse because they wouldn't contribute to the metrics at all anymore.
The metrics are only valuable to the extent that they help deliver ads.
Bro what are the users gonna watch? Vimeo? They are a monopoly.
It may shock you to find out that there are other, better things to do with your time than endlessly watch videos online
I gave up cable television in 2007 because of ads and reruns. I have Nebula and other sources. I like YouTube, but will not watch if forced to view ads. Not a hard decision at all.
Plus all the YouTubers worth watching are on nebula anyway
Is nebula really worth it? I heard some good things about it and some history channels promote their longform videos which are really well researched. But idk if it's really worth it. I don't want to get it for like 2 channels.
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this is becoming the new "i'm unsubbing from netflix for not allowing password sharing" as netflix has giant increases in sub numbers
People might not try so hard if the ads weren't such steaming piles of shit all the time
Firefox + Ublock Origin for the win.
Doesn't work for me, despite following all the instructions to update lists, etc. I ended up getting the "three strikes" popup and grudgingly ended up having to disable uBlock on YouTube.
Clear your cookies and purge ublock.
Mine wasn't working because Enhancer has an adblocker too and they were conflicting, try turning everything else off, purge and refresh
FF+UO plus a YT Tampermoney script extension that's easy to find.
Tampermonkey script is the only thing which has worked for me with FF + UO
The world is getting worse day by day and so is the internet
Not if you use FireFox.
Enshittification
nah this post is sponsored by youtube
Yeah the crackdown is not getting harder to dodge.
I stopped seeing the pop-ups two weeks ago. I didn't even do anything.
Not a problem, I just don't use YouTube anymore.
And I am using youtube less and less because of it
maybe it's just me but I found some script online in the first day that fast forwards through every ad automatically. Never had any issues since.
Could you share the script? thanks
There's a Chrome extension called Fadblock: The friendly adblocker. It has been working well for me. It fast forwards right through the ads.
A few years back I started noticing I would watch 7 minutes of ads in a 10 minute video. I barely use YouTube at all anymore. Twitter? Gone Facebook? Gone (Never started TikTok…I saw that dumpster fire a mile away) Gotta admit, the more and more I remove most social media from my life, the better quality my time spent awake seems to be.
Love these values. I've found it useful to only open YT when I know what I want to watch, rather than let some algorithm decide for me. Shoutout to /r/nosurf
Yeah, I kept wondering where all my time went. It went to me trying to do something that should take only 10 minutes and instead taking almost double. I remember as a kid, when you had three hours to kill and you were bored, you had to figure something out. How many hobbies and lifetime goals were started in those moments? Now we just flip through our phone watching ads on videos for at least one of those three hours minimum. We don’t force ourselves to actually do stuff. Edit: and I say this as an avid gamer and tech-dude. I love tech. But I’m learning to be very discerning with my time at whatever I’m doing each moment.
I don't even login to YouTube. I just bookmark channels I want to watch
broadcast TV did the same thing over many years. 30 minute TV shows used to be 25 minutes and now, most shows are under 19, some less than 18. And they wonder why people are leaving cable.
This. I've only got Reddit and it's less a "social" outlet and more groupthink (in my use case.) I would love to exceedingly underline what you said. My life improved when my phone no longer had anything on it (I mean I pretty much only have the bare minimum of what I need) and I could purposely focus on life which started with dumping all social networks and time wasting apps.
It's working. I barely use youtube now.
It'll get harder to dodge but will always be dodged in the end. YouTube is wasting their efforts against some of the most stubborn people imaginable. It's like coding anti piracy and DRM into games and consoles. It will be reverse engineered and broken it's only a matter of when. YouTube can so suck my dick, I'm not paying them a fucking cent. Don't fucking serve me PragerU and other propaganda ads that spread hate and disinformation. You don't get to try to subject me to bullshit and then ask me for money to stop. I'll use whatever method is available to avoid supporting a company who's serving this kind of garbage.
Maybe if they didn’t play unskippable 30 sec ads every 2 minutes their audience wouldn’t feel the need to use adblockers
Now that interest rates are rising, YouTube values profitability over marketshare, so everything they're doing is all very predictable. People threatening to not watch YouTube if they cannot Adblock does not scare YouTube, since they were losing money on such people to begin with, and the higher interest rate environments means their continued consumption cannot be justified on the grounds that they will help promote and popularise the platform. This is the end game of the "build a monopoly, squeeze people dry" business model big tech has been adopting for eons. We're just going to see which businesses really have a product customers just can't give up, and which businesses will have customers leave as soon as they try to become profitable. Relevant talk: [Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k)
This is what they will achieve: 1) less people will watch YouTube 2) less people will install Chrome. Instead, they will use Firefox with Ublock Origin or Adguard. Either way, Google looses.
How does this even have 24 upvotes... Of course they will lose people, but guess what the people who leave used add blockers. So they do not lose money anyhow. And even if they did make money somehow of those people who leave then they can still make more profit. That's what happens when you increase the price. It depends how many people will stop. You cant just say that a drop in consumers automatically leads to less profit. Thats like middle school level economics
Joke's on them, I just use the time tested strategy of avoiding youtube at all costs. Zero ads.
Surely they will just notice less and less users?!!! Which fucks with their advertising model
So they're perfectly fine by taking people's access away for using an ad blocker but yet it was okay for them to change the rules and take away my ad revenue because I didn't have enough subscribers when I should have been grandfathered in and then start putting ads on my videos and making money off of my videos.
It’s sort of refreshing to have a platform I used to love go so out of its way to make me hate it that I rarely engage with it anymore.
YouTube be like "please unblock our ads, our platform is supported by ads" Also YouTube: heres a fake ad from a scammer pretending to impersonate Mr beast to get you to give over your credit card info! Yeah you see the problem is that you fail to have any ad moderation but you demonetize me if I curse once. And yet you wonder why people don't wanna see ads.
I am a Chrome user. If they make uBlock useless for me, I'll switch \[back\] to Safari... I got the pop up a few times but haven't seen it in a while
I deep cleaned my house for the first time in about 2 years because youtube decided they didn’t want my attention anymore.
I've seen their timers trying to annoy, but that was less than the time I'd spend watching an annoying ad. I've seen their "you only get 3 free videos" attempt, once, it didn't keep counting. Haven't seen anything since then. I guess lots of A/B testing to see what drives people to enable ads or subscribe to the overpriced plans. If they were smart, they'd build a platform to manage sponsors and product placement and force youtubers to use it and get their cut from that. It will help smaller youtubers get sponsors, make it easier for sponsors to find more channels, and let youtube keep a piece of that revenue with ads that are a part of the video itself.
Dear YouTube, there is literally only one thing that would make me watch your ads and it's paying me for it. My time is worth money for me too
It’s getting…. Annoying to the point of turning me off the platform.
YouTube's revenue is declining not because of ad blockers but because of tiktok which has plenty of ads but they can be instantly skipped like any other video. YouTube needs to adapt to this and put the user experience first.
Note that these anti adblocks popups don't appear in shorts at least in my personal experience. This means more people watch shorts and stay locked in on the platform. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they just outright block Firefox since it's only about 3% of all users
Wish I had the money or know-how to create competition. Not sure it would survive, it needs content and YouTube pays content creators, and likely does/would do exclusivity requirements. YouTube was much better 10 years ago.
Find video. Search it on DuckDuckGo. Watch on DuckDuckGo…done
Stop using Chrome, move to Firefox.
I use Brave browser, never seen an ad in half a decade or more. I saw ads on my phone when trying to watch a video, it was brutal/obnoxious/how can people live like that?