There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

superfes ,

I don’t understand why YouTube doesn’t just put the video ads in-stream, just seems stupid for stupid’s sake at this point.

Abnorc ,

Maybe this is some weird way of testing the waters. If they just solved the problem outright, users who wouldn’t put up with ads would just leave. This way they can see how many users will just tolerate the change without really committing.

superfes ,

That certainly seems like a possibility >_>

Gotta bleed them pennies dry.

Pyr_Pressure ,

Just stop using YouTube?

If content providers notice their viewership going down they’ll surely raise a stink to YouTube once it starts to affect their income.

dangblingus ,

Stop using butt adblockers. There’s a reason why UBO has the highest amount of downloads, is a recommended extension, and is the highest rated extension on both chromium and firefox.

electric_nan ,

Probably jinxing myself here, but I have yet to have a single problem. Linux, Firefox, ublock origin.

neutron ,

I’m using Invidious on desktop and Revanced on my android. No ads so far…

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

I use a whitelist firewall. It is like a lock on my front door. I don’t use an adblocker. I manually add only websites I wish to visit. Extorting me for only visiting websites I trust and wish to visit is criminal. I am the reason Ad Blocks are a thing. They are the lazy person’s mostly effective whitelist firewall.

All ads are are serving you another website you didn’t ask to visit and with unknown bad actors that are not effectively vetted. Ads are like a house party in your home where one of your guests opens a window in your bathroom and let’s a dozen random people into your home without your knowledge. The person that let them in sneaks around the hidden guests while trying to prevent you from noticing. It is criminal behavior. This is privateering, aka pirates that have a legal charter from a criminal government.

Akinzekeel ,

Well, if you visit Youtube to watch a video, it will serve both the video and the ads from the same website. Ads are not necessarily being loaded from another website. If they were, we could just DNS-block YouTube ads, and they would be gone in your entire home network, for instance.

Veneroso ,

Adblock detector blocker ftw!

Arthur_Leywin ,

Are ads really that useful when the users subjected to them hate ads from the start?

SrTobi ,

Not to the advertiser, but to the one getting money for the ad.

Arthur_Leywin ,

How do they get money for an ad about a product I will never give a chance to?

nnjethro ,

Product pays Google to show you the ad

Arthur_Leywin ,

Ah gotcha. Ty

dangblingus ,

Cost Per Impression

BeautifulMind ,
@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world avatar

Weird. I’ve been running AdBlock and AdGuard for years and nary an issue with youtube. I just never see ads there.

FWIW it was only when I added a vpn to my mix that I started being made to submit to captchas whenever I do anything like search

vhalragnarok ,

So they are cracking down on Adblockers and increasing the price of Premium as well.

I wish there was an alt platform that we could use, because even the FBI recommends using an Adblockers (and TBH what sane person would roll without one?)

Karyoplasma ,

I recommend Invidious.

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

The FBI does not recommend using adblockers so that you can avoid ads on YouTube. That’s just 🤦‍♂️ worthy.

Every adblocker I know of can be disabled on specific sites.

I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but Google is within their rights to show ads or make you pay. It costs more than it probably should, and they serve more ads than they should, but their platform is unique and expensive to run; most uploads do not make them money.

yoz ,

https://img.ifunny.co/images/440f50c2fbee123a9b7aea2f21d15a5c26d197a147b475a632dcf8c0e180c7af_1.jpg

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

More like just get off my lawn. Constant bitching and moaning about completely optional services and spending a few dollars to use them is getting to me.

Yes, Lemmy is free, yes the Internet is historically free (because of ad driven content), but Christ things actually do cost money folks and services have a right to charge what people are willing to pay.

If you don’t like it… Don’t use YouTube, seek out an alternative, build an alternative, tell your creators you’ll only watch them on PeerTube (which probably won’t work because they want to make money) or floatplane or whatever.

This isn’t some crusade for Google. I’m just sick of this crap being in my feed and all these comments. This isn’t “technology”, it’s one service charging money 🙄

yoz ,

Thats not how it works. Google is a monopoly and nobody can compete against it hence most regulars don’t know about peertube and other alternative. Stop being a corp simp and get out of the bubble you’re living in. “If you don’t like it , don’t use it” doesn’t apply when there’s no comparable alternative. Read more about how monopoly exploit market and lilttle brain of yours to dominate.

Dark_Arc , (edited )
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

I don’t have anything nice to say to you, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

For everybody else, consider how venture capitalism allowed for an otherwise completely non-viable product to come into existence. This isn’t a monopoly, it’s a product that could not exist any other way because of the expense of running it the way that it’s run.

You’re totally welcome to take your business elsewhere and it’s totally possible to live without YouTube. The fact is for most people (perhaps up until this point) there hasn’t been a significant motivation to create an actual alternative and get funding for it (or enough wrong with YouTube that people will actually pay what it costs to run a “YouTube without ads”). Rumble exists because the right wing wanted a similar service where they could talk without Google’s moderation policies.

I’m not endorsing Rumble, but alternatives can be started if the funds are put in place to do so and there’s a market for it. Like Lemmy, people just have to use the alternative over the existing dominant option (in this case Reddit).

PeerTube is an option as well of course, but I don’t see it taking off due to the expense and the inability for big creators to monetize on it. Floatplane has a better chance in that respect.

vhalragnarok ,

That’s not how I intended the phrasing here.

No one doubts Google is not entitled to money. The level of ads is excessive, and to be fair, we are served too many ads in our daily lives as-is, constantly, billboards, radio, Cable TV (to which you pay for the priviledge of watching ads), Gas Pumps, ect. It’s everywhere and nauseating, and I’m starting to personally doubt the efficacy of them. People have become numb to them.

But they go on a crusade against Adblockers since the amount / type of ads is excessive, and then raise premium pricing : “The Solution”.

It’s almost like they have a monopoly and the moves as of recent are anti-consumer.

The FBI recommends an ad-blocker actually because of malicious… Google Search, yes that same pesky Google, not filtering out dangerous websites in their search results under the “Suggested” part of the search (these sites spoof their web addresses and hope you click on them to deliver a malware payload on your system.)

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Gas Pumps

That one drives me especially crazy. I just want to pump my gas in peace.

It’s almost like they have a monopoly and the moves as of recent are anti-consumer.

I mean they do in a sense… But also complaining as a non-paying customer that you should have to pay is going to get you nowhere.

(Edit: I’m going to leave this part in, you were just asking for an alternative. My memory has blended other comments and a general “ugh” feeling in all these threads. So, this really isn’t aimed at you)

If you really want to make a change, stop using YouTube, create content elsewhere, try and convince the creators you watch to upload elsewhere. The thing is, most creators that are big enough for the average person to be watching are doing it because it makes them money, and Google is the best place to get that check. You could try floatplane, but my guess is it’s going to be more (not less) expensive than Google and/or might not have people you want to watch on it.

Google considered making 4k premium only because it’s so expensive. Linus tech tips did a nice video showing how 4k disrupts YouTube’s business model and imposes much higher costs. Instead of doing that, they’re raising prices and blocking ads. A more altruistic Google could reduce the ads once the adblockers are working, I kinda doubt they will, but it’s still a possibility.

The days of “free YouTube” (like so many other free Internet things) are over, it was a great deal. It’s not as great of a deal now. Maybe someone can actually afford to put up a fight now that it’s actually got to make money, maybe not. It’s still (IMO) a pretty dang good deal for all the content you get, and premium helps support the creators you’re watching (at least according to Linus) by a “significant” amount vs ad supported views.

The FBI recommends an ad-blocker actually because of malicious… Google Search, yes that same pesky Google, not filtering out dangerous websites in their search results under the “Suggested” part of the search (these sites spoof their web addresses and hope you click on them to deliver a malware payload on your system.)

Yeah you’re right on this one. I actually misremembered the reason, so I’ll take the facepalm for myself. Still, I haven’t used YouTube with ads in a while, but I remember YouTube ads being more like TV ads/a bit more reliable (and a bit too repetitive).

Shanedino ,

Fine but enforce some monopoly undercut pricing on YouTube.

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

I’m not sure what you’re advocating for here. Government regulation to cap the price?

Damaskox ,
@Damaskox@lemmy.world avatar

This made me think!

Would someone who was enjoying Internet services all the way from infancy (with no ad-blocking devices/apps), think that the amount of ads we have nowadays was the norm and that there was nothing weird or absurd about it?

vhalragnarok ,

I think they would be disgusted with it. I personally remember the Internet from the Dual Up days, and the amount of ads now is absolutely egregious.

shortwavesurfer ,

Peertube, odysee

CeeBee ,

grayjay.app

infreq ,

YouTube do not care if you buy the products or not, they care that they can tell the customer that you have seen it.

Kedly ,

It really isnt getting harder to dodge past the initial recent push. “Go to settings, purge cache, refresh list, refresh youtube” is just as many steps today as it was when this recent push started

JoeBigelow ,
@JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca avatar

YouTube thinks I’m using an outdated version of Chrome running in Windows 7

tony ,

I’ve still yet to see it… not even had to do any of those things. Something about my setup I guess neutralises it.

shalafi ,

Me neither.

  • Windows
  • PiHole (AWS Lightsail instance)
  • Edge
  • TubeBlock extension

Waiting for the hammer to drop. OTOH, I don’t watch much Tube.

jigsaw250 ,

I was, but they stopped appearing once I completely cleared browsing history and cookies. I also did another purge and update for good measure.

The only pain in the ass was that I ended up changing the username of some of my accounts but forgot to update them in my account manager, so it took a bit to find and log into them. But that was completely on me and won’t happen if you’re not being an idiot like I was.

Knightfox ,

Big thing that helps is switching off of Chrome. I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that we should stop using Chrome and I just hadn’t gotten around to it. Once the YouTube adblocker started picking up Ublock Origin even after clearing the cache I hard switched to Fire Fox and installed Ublock Origin.

I have not cleared my cache once and I haven’t seen a single ad.

Bulletdust ,

Firefox + uBlock Origin + PiHole = I’m wondering what all the fuss is about. I haven’t seen a single adblocker warning on YouTube yet.

Stop using browsers based on Chromium people, it’s not that hard.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

This. I’ve gotten this popup about four times since this happened, telling me the video player was blocked because I had an adblocker still. Each time, I purged cache and updated and it went away.

zingo ,

Freetube for the win. Built in sponsor block.

dependencyinjection ,

Im using Yattee on iOS with no issue. From the damn App Store, don’t think they’re cracking down very well.

adam_b ,

That’s because they’re targeting Desktop users only, I think and I hate to say it, we’ll inevitably face 3 choices in the future

A. Watch YT with all it’s ads B. Quit using YT C. Pay for premium

All these awesome privacy frontends that we use will be killed, just like Libreddit & Teddit, and ads on YT will be unbearable, long, repetitive, that even non techies will start thinking of ways to avoid them…

The only effective solution I see, is that content creators have the balls to selfhost their content using Peertube, or migrate to Rumble or odysee…

Many content creators like LTT straight out refused to offer another way to view their content, there is no reason why anyone wouldn’t want to Sync their content to other platform, unless they care that much about that ad revenue, which shows they support this business model

sorry about the grammar, slept for 2 hours…

jimothy ,

It’s all about how many people these platforms have to convince them to stop using youtube I guess…

null ,

Libreddit was killed? How am I still using it?

adam_b ,

From their Github

⚠️Why do I get TOO MANY REQUESTS errors? ⚠️ As of July 12th, 2023, Libreddit is currently not operational as Reddit’s API changes, that were designed to kill third-party apps and content scrapers who don’t pay large fees, went into effect. Read the full announcement here. One of the project maintainers is working towards keeping this project alive to some extent:

Some instances might still be operational, but limited…

I deleted my Reddit accounts, once Infinity stopped working, and I open reddit links in Tor ( same with Tiktok and others ), they’re not gonna have it their way

null ,

Hmm, well my personal instance works fine and has for months, no limitations that I’ve encountered. Guess I’m just lucky

adam_b ,

Yea you’re, I tried some instances they work for a while and then they give that message : too many requests

what happened to Reddit is just disgusting, they broke the law and they’re roaming free…

null ,

I wonder if it impacts public instances because it’s rate-limiting the requests, where it’s just me on my private instance so it’s not hitting the limit.

If so then it’s pretty easy to spin one up in docker and get around the issue.

Of course leaving reddit entirely is always better.

Also I’m not tuned in – what laws did they break?

adam_b ,

Maybe, but I don’t wanna try anymore, you could patch Infinity with Revanced patches and keep using it too, but I dont wanna do that either…

Of course leaving reddit entirely is always better.

Yeah, I gave up…

what laws did they break?

I think it’s called CCPA ( a US data law ), Reddit violated that law, when they restored users’ content, im guessing this law guarantees the right to be erased… ( US data laws sound good on paper, but they never work in reality 😂 )

Also they can’t just go to their terms of service and change stuff based on the situation, they even tried to stretch the meaning of some clauses in their TOS just so they can cover it up, it’s all in r/announcements, just scroll back to June 2023

JoeBigelow ,
@JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca avatar

LTT is happy to let you pay for their mediocre content plus mediocre extra behind the scenes special boi crap on Floatplane

adam_b ,

They charge for FP ??! So these people on the podcast are paying to comment ! I didn’t know that…

hmmm, that’s fine I’m not against content creators creating ways to monetize, I’m against supporting the ad business model and gaslighting people into believing “it’s working”…

As for the content quality, I only watch LTT to see what crazy ideas and experiments they come up with, I never learned anything tho, because they don’t show you how they did it, Linus just says we’re going to build a server, and boom, it’s already done… ( they do it off camera ), I mean like details, installing the distro, and how to navigate it… Etc ( his team does it for him )

Karyoplasma ,

You are looking for niche content. The last place to search for that would be a big YT channel since their videos are tailored for the general audience. I don’t know what you expected lol

adam_b ,

Well, don’t you think skipping major steps ( mind you ) renders the entire process irreproducible, or prone to error and failure ?

I don’t know what you expected lol

a Blog post would be appreciated, say : hey we skipped this ( very technical and confusing ) step, here’s the boring blog, enjoy…

I’m just saying, their content is mostly entertaining, not educational, that’s how I find it personally.

popemichael ,
@popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It wouldn’t shock me if they removed ublock origin from the chrome store

Gabu ,

Just use Firefox. It’s better as a browser, anyway.

V0lD , (edited )

I will when they finally fix dragging tabs between windows

Edit: I’m not saying the operation isn’t functional, I’m saying it lacks certain small visual feedback aspects like popping a tab out into a new window while dragging. This in and of itself isn’t breaking, but Firefox had a lot of rough edges like that every time I used it, and I’m using this specific one as a benchmark to judge if I should give the browser a shot again

Trail ,

Huh, what is the issue? Been working fine for me for years.

Moderationslog ,

Classic layer 8 problem

lemann ,

PEBCAK baby!

V0lD ,

Popping out a tab doesn’t turn it into a draggable window, but just into cursor basic cursor held object. This gives no visual feedback on what is actually happening and makes the whole operation much less visually clear

It’s a small thing, but in the times I tried Firefox, I noticed a lot of these rough edges to the point that it became frustrating to use. I’m using this specific one as a benchmark for when I’m willing to give it a shot again

SkyeStarfall ,

It never bothered me. You can just stop dragging anywhere and it will turn into a window.

TexMexBazooka ,

Could you find a smaller potato?

V0lD ,

Is that a typo, or a saying I’m not familiar with?

TexMexBazooka , (edited )

It’s a small potatoes means that’s it’s extremely inexpensive and misses the big bag of perfectly good, if not above average potatoes

V0lD ,

Thank you

TexMexBazooka ,

You’re welcome 😊

Uniquitous ,

Fuck’s sake, what a stupid thing to get hung up over.

V0lD ,

You’re all getting quite hung up about someone voicing that they’re not ready to switch to your preferred browser tbh

Like, it’s not that you are negatively affected by me having UX preferences

Yearly1845 ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    jackalope ,

    You’ll get more flies with honey than vinegar.

    Foss advocates showing once again how bad they are at persuading people.

    V0lD ,

    Correct. That is why I am not switching

    Besides, the EU is shown time and time again that it will protect its citizens if the megacorps overstep their boundaries, so the claim that chrome holds too much power is bs

    dasgoat ,

    I do that all the time with ff?

    auf ,
    @auf@lemmy.ml avatar

    Privacy >>> UI

    V0lD ,

    To some extend, yes. But convenience and workflow trumps both.for example, I moved to DuckDuckGo a while back. Not because of privacy, but because Google kept removing customisation options, and it’s search results where getting worse and worse.

    Filthmontane ,

    You seem more stubborn than smart.

    V0lD ,

    It does give a weird form of comfort to see Lemmy become more like Reddit every day

    Kedly ,

    I resemble this statement!

    Kedly ,

    I mean, no ads on youtube is HELLA more convenient than ads on youtube

    V0lD ,

    I agree

    I’m using chrome, sponsorblock and adblock+. Google hasn’t told me to turn it off yet.

    Maybe it’s because I’m in the EU?

    If it starts becoming a problem, I intend to look into writing a pull request to fix the firefox UX issues

    Kedly ,

    Fair enough! In that case I also wouldn’t be pressured to jump ship, in fact the only reason I jumped back to firefox in the first place was because chrome couldnt handle the amount of tabs I had and they started crashing

    praise_idleness ,

    I’d rather have messy Mac and cheese than pretty pile of shit please.

    systemglitch ,

    Strangely nit-picky. The reason this matters to you is because you are used to it. It’s so small an aspect of the browser though that you would forget about it quickly. Imo of course. I never even noticed this when I changed and I use the function many times a day.

    V0lD ,

    Correct, it matters to me

    So, as long as Firefox doesn’t really offer something that in my opinion outways all it’s UX issues, I am not inclined to switch

    Looking at my score, appearantly that is offensive though

    systemglitch ,

    Apparently lol, can’t be different!

    Arthur_Leywin ,

    Try Floorp?

    jackalope ,

    I switched back to ff in 2018 but then switched back to chrome after it deleted my bookmarks sporadically for the 5th time. I’ve logged bugs about it too.

    CurlyMoustache ,
    @CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world avatar

    Cool story

    zcd ,

    Fuck YouTube

    barbecue_sprinkler ,

    YouTube had a good humble beginning before monetization fucked everything up. It was a bad idea to begin with. For now, best stick with piped and all the apps that use piped as backend. NewPipe and LibreTube. Want to support a creator? Go buy merch or something. Dont give Google a second of your time.

    TexMexBazooka ,

    I mean it’s a fine idea it’s just been capitalismed to death

    CalcProgrammer1 ,
    @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml avatar

    I read this as monetization being the bad idea, and that is basically the same thing as being capitalismed to death.

    TexMexBazooka ,

    So the amount of up front investment required for something on an infrastructure level is massive. It’s the type of thing that really needs to be centralized, because it isn’t just storage. It’s massive amounts of bandwidth, a distributed content distribution network close to your end users(which is even harder on a global scale).

    Don’t get me wrong I don’t think the purely profit driven nature of YouTube is healthy at all. It’s an active detriment. But it’s hard to think of another practical way that isn’t hellaciously expensive.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Introducing… PeerTube. Bandwidth is not a problem because if a video gets popular people will be watching it and therefore sharing it to their peers Infrastructure costs don’t matter because channels would be on small instances That would not cost much to run, etc. A single company need not pay millions of dollars to host something like this when each individual who wants to be a content creator can put up a few dollars a month like maybe four or five and do it. That way the cost is distributed and not a burden on one entity.

    Dark_Arc ,
    @Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

    The issue with PeerTube, is monetization.

    You need to be able to tell anchors that draw people in and make their living from YouTube like LinusTechTips, Phillip DeFranco, and MrBeast why PeerTube is the platform for them… and losing all the money YouTube gives them is a big problem in any argument (as much as they might not like some of YouTube’s policies themselves).

    Also, storage costs are going to explode if PeerTube gets popular and maintains the “anyone can upload in 4k” that YouTube allows. Linus did a video about how expensive 4k video is compared to the 1080p videos that have been dominate in the platform for most of the platform’s life, and how that increased cost has contributed to discussions of changes (at the time) which have evidently manifested as adblocking and promoting premium (speculatively, this is in part because Google feels regulars are going to hurt its advertising business badly and they need to get subscribers that could keep the platform afloat – going back to “old models” before the Google advertising money machine made the Internet “free”).

    Shard ,

    I totally get that they had to find some way to financially support the massive infrastructure that was necessary to do what YouTube does.

    I was fine with an ad every now and then.

    I was fine with an ad at the start and end of a long video.

    Ads on a 30s video? Ads on an Ad? Multiple ads at the start, multiple ads in-between and at the end? Jesus h. Christ. Removing the dislike button?

    That was when I switched to ReVanced.

    burtek ,
    @burtek@programming.dev avatar

    Wasn’t YouTube unrelated to Google at first?

    Dark_Arc ,
    @Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

    Yes, they bought it (in 2006). However, it wasn’t what it is today, and IIRC it was “in the red” (losing money). It was in the red for years after Google bought it as well. There’s not a lot of good information on this unfortunately with regard to the current state. The last update we had was in 2015 that YouTube wasn’t making money wsj.com/…/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-for-youtu…

    That’s 9 years of operating at a loss, and probably the 9 years people think of most fondly… We were getting the service at a loss to Google.

    Strayce ,

    I give it a year, tops, before they start serving ads in premium too.

    Bongles ,

    But that’s the only benefit of premium (on YouTube itself). I guess there are still YouTube originals but that kind of died as far as I can tell.

    Strayce ,

    Yes. And? You think they care? Premium isn’t there to benefit you, it’s there to benefit Google. As soon as the money stops coming in, they’ll look for other ways to squeeze it. We’re already seeing it with streaming providers shoehorning ads into their paid services. It’s not that much of a stretch.

    hypertown ,

    The only benefit now, but what if they start to serve 30 non-skippable ads without premium and ONLY 5 with premium, what a deal! Right? If you hate ads you can just buy higher tier for ONLY $5 more.

    Let’s just keep fingers crossed for ublock…

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