oh look, another web service who wants to strangle its users for money and ad views :D when's a peertube instance going to get some big creators on it supported by viewers? that'll do it, i bet

Wow the enshittification is at full throttle across silicon valley! Guess those investors gotta get those returns now that interest rates are spiking!

I imagine folks wouldn't have a problem with this if the ads weren't already so aggressive. Numerous ads before and during the content break it up too much. And if the content is extremely short form, it completely ruins the experience.

The number of ads and their length should be proportional to the length of the video. And any creator doing built-in ads should also not be able to inject a bunch of other ads. Burying content is an easy way to get avoided.

Print media had limits for advertisements, heck, in magazines they were premium real estate for the finest graphic designers to put together incredible imagery to get your attention. This level of care (not necessarily images or what have you) has yet to translate to the web.

That's funny, I'm testing YouTube alternatives.

I have had this in my ublock origin filters for quite some time. Seems to do the trick:

!www.youtube.com
##.ytp-ce-element

If you serve me Ads that lead to scams and malicious websites, you don't reserve my ad revenue.

I would rather not watch Youtube again then be exposed to terrible ads. I accidentally went on Youtube on Chrome and one of the ads was a straight up scam. $7.54 Switch! Like maybe if they had humans vet ads like you used to do maybe I would have less of a problem with it.

I just stood up a selfhosted Invidious instance the other day, and I replaced YouTube ReVanced with Clipious (an Invidious client for Android) on my phone. No ads, SponsorBlock built-in, no need for a YouTube/Google account to create subscriptions, playlists, etc. And it's highly performant since I run it behind a reverse proxy with some custom caching configuration for things like thumbnail images, static assets, etc.

Clipious can also be installed on an Android TV (has an actual Android TV interface). I'm going to end up installing it on mine, but I'm also using SmartTubeNext at the moment, which does require a YouTube/Google account for subscriptions, playlists, etc, but does have no ads, built-in SponsorBlock, and a slew of other great features. I'll be keeping both around, since I do sometimes like to cast to my TV, and SmartTubeNext allows for that (Clipious does not, at least at this time).

Unless YouTube somehow starts dynamically splicing in ads as part of the actual video stream, there's always going to be a way to block ads, unless they do something pretty elaborate. But that's probably not worth the effort on their end to go that far, since the vast, vast majority of people won't know what to do to get around that, nor will they probably care enough to try. But I think it's clear that DNS blocking using services such as AdGuard Home, PiHole, etc, are going to become less effective over time.

The comments in here are interesting to me. Ads and Premium are a way for your favorite content creators to get paid for the content that they produce. I've listened to a number of creators talk about the YouTube revenue sharing model and most of them (LTT and Hank Green) says that YouTube is actually really fair with how they share ad revenue and how Premium is actually a good alternative that meets the needs of the platform, users, and creators. And YouTube, the platform, DOES need to get paid as well otherwise your videos can't get to you.

I also hate ads, like a lot, and I do whatever I can to get them off of my screen because I think they are intrusive and we have proof of how they enable tracking across the internet at large. However, for those platforms that I find extreme value in (YouTube being the example here) I see how and why ads/Premium pump value into their system. If your favorite content creator isn't getting paid for their content, they won't be able to sustain it long term.

One last thought about video streaming and the content we all love that is hosted by YouTube: if we were to say that we would rather our money go directly to our favorite content creators, we would end up with a very fragmented ecosystem akin to the Streaming Service MESS we are in with TV/Movies. I would LOVE to pay LTT directly through Floatplane, but then where would I be with being able to watch other content creators?

We'll find a way around it, if not go to hell YT. Apart from posters in the real world, I am living a 100% ad-free life and I'm super happy about it.

Alternate headline: Users test using only YouTube ReVanced to bypass this new system

Yet another platform to boycott? Excellent!

I wouldn't mind ads if,

1. They didn't repeat the same 3 ads every few minutes on high ad videos (No It, I will not take it >:c)
2. Moderated and removed obvious scam ads
3. Remove ads that are disgusting or clearly inappropriate (I have seen some stuff that could be categorized as porn in YouTube ads and no I do not allow them to feed me ads based on my interests)
4. If ads were still not being actively used to spread malware/viruses (not sure if this happens on YouTube at all but I would rather be safe then sorry)

[EDIT] Removed a redundant word

Honestly, I pay for YouTube Premium because I find value in it. The price is reasonable for where I live, and it's my main source of entertainment. I don't like watching movies/TV shows that much so YouTube is my jam. So the convenience of being able to download videos, ad-free viewing, picture-in-picture, background playback etc. is totally worth it for me. I know if I dig hard enough and use an Android phone/tablet I can get those features without having to pay, but I don't like Android and again, the features are worth the small price.

For me, YouTube Premium and Spotify broke piracy because they're more convenient than pirating.

The ad blocking arms race churns ever onward

Although not nice for people that can't afford or don't want YouTube premium, this makes a lot of sense. Hosting videos costs a lot of money, and I doubt the YouTube Premium subscribers pay even nearly enough to pay for the hosting of all these videos. Personally I just have YouTube Premium as this also gives more money to the creators that make these videos.

I think an Open Source alternative would also have a lot of trouble with receiving enough funding to stay up. It would require a lot more donation compared to hosting mostly text based sites like Lemmy.

This will lead to an increase of ad-blocker-blocker-blocker development.

I pay for Prenium. But that's only because I also use YouTube Music. Otherwise, I wouldn't pay for it and I would do everything that I can to get rid of the ads. YouTube with ads is just hell now. There are so many of them now, it's ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I recognise the value that YouTube provides. Most things I watch and listen to are on YouTube. It's the website I use the most and I'll be glad to pay for it. I understand that it costs money to run and I want to support the creators that I watch.

HOWEVER.

I refuse to be strong armed into paying for it. Music brings me the value that I want and comparing with other prices, such as Spotify and so on, the actual "YouTube" part of the package just cost me 1€ per month which is one hell of a deal if you ask me.

But if you don't care for YouTube Music, 11€ a month (worst in the US apparently), just to get rid of ads is... ridiculous. I'd happily pay 5€ a month. It's not much and for the thing that I use the most? Yeah, I'm willing to! And I know that there is YouTube Prenium Lite. However, it's not available everywhere and it comes with a giant "fuck you" to the costumer.

You see, YouTube Prenium Lite is YouTube without ads. And that's it. So, no Background Play (which I use ALL THE TIME), no downloading of videos, none of that. You want that, well, you have to pay full price. Even though these are basic features.

Paying for getting rid of ads is one thing, and maybe accessing special features is one thing. But paying for artificial limitations that are put into place? Absolutely not. And I know the line between what's a prenium feature and what's an artifical limit is blurry. But for me it's basically this: If I can do something for free on desktop, but can't on mobile without paying. Such as background play.

I am convinced YouTube Prenium would be way more appealing if YouTube weren't being such dicks about it.

It's simple:

• Get your prices back to normal (I hear that in the US, prices have been going up for... no reason).
• Roll out YouTube Prenium Lite to everyone and rename it YouTube Prenium. So it has all the features of current Prenium except YouTube Music (put ads and disable background play only on music videos?).
• Make it at like 5 bucks a month.
• Make a variety of plans based around that. So a Prenium Family and also, a Prenium Duo, just like Spotify, for just two people. Reasonably priced.
• And you make a YouTube Prenium Music plan, which includes YouTube Music as well. So on top of all of that, for 11 bucks a month, you now have a really compelling offer because you can go, Hey, for just 5 more bucks a month, you get all of the features of YouTube Prenium AND you get a complete music streaming services.
• Oh and also: STOP DOING THIS SHIT.

Bam. All of the sudden you have compelling options. Some people will say: "Uuuh, jUsT uSe an AdbLocKeR!" and whatever. Those people are not the majority, so many people watch YouTube from their phones and their TVs now, they will be much more inclined to buy it...

...I think.

That last part is important. I recognise I'm just playing armchair business developper here and that I don't know shit, but still. I'm convinced this could work. The real issue comes down to YouTube being a monopoly and thinking that they can do whatever the hell they want, which... they likely can, due to the position they're in. It's an issue but this comment is already long enough and that is another discussion entirely, but basically: Monopolies sucks.

There's always the Revanced Project on Android. Honestly though, I've cut way back on YouTube after their algorithm started shoveling crap at me. Now it's hard to find genuinely informative videos. It's all "This guy got PERMANENT ORGASM FACE DISORDER Tears of the Kingdom" type videos, instead of ones on science, technology, and news.

YouTube is going to have a lot of trouble enforcing this. Lots and lots of people out there are going to be immediately at work finding ways around this limitation.

If they really block adblockers, I will subscribe. To Nebula. It's got everything I want, adfree (including sponsored segments), extra content and is cheaper. And the content creators get a bigger share of the money.

I've got most of the channels I sub to tracked by yt-dl so it all gets pulled to my nas. If Youtube starts forcing ads I'll just put some effort into getting things categorized properly into Plex and ditch their site.

I took the L and started paying for YT Premium since you can't really get rid of ads on LG TV otherwise

Did it with a bit of malicious compliance and opted for Family plan using argentinian VPN, totaling at less than $3 a month (and constantly dropping) for 5 people.

I use YouTube a lot, both on my phone via ReVanced and my smart TV via SmartTubeNext, completely ad free. If Youtube manage to block videos unless the users deactivate their adblockers, even if I enjoy Youtube a lot, I'll just stop watching videos. The quantity of ad per video is just insane. No way I can stand watching all those ads.

God the ads are awful. If they start blocking apps like Vanced and Browsers like brave, i will make a PiHole. And they can never block it.

The big issue for me is the content to ad ratio is completely out of whack.

Oh, cool; more reason to use Piped and Invidious lmao

Oh gosh, that's unfortunate.

Good thing I've been using NewPipe! I'm reading the post for other alternatives, but feel free to suggest some to me directly, if you'd like.

Honestly, I've always been surprised as to why YouTube even tolerates adblockers. It's basically a no-brainer for them to bake ads into the stream and disable skipping

and I'm testing Youtube Revanced on my phone for unlimited ad-free background play for nothing!

I watch youtube, I mean, who doesn't? But there is nothing on there, no creater, no content, that would stop me from going cold turkey with the site if they are actually able to pull it off.

Honestly, others do have point when they say we are basically leeching off of the platform. I honestly don't think I'd mind paying for youtube, I currently don't because it kind of just got ingrained in me that youtube was "free". I think the ad supported model is fundamentally flawed though.

Platforms will always want to make it worth it for advertisers to work for them. With the huge trove of user data that sites like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc. have they will use that to leverage personalized ads that will feed your brain with garbage all day and coax you into buying shit you don't need or sometimes even falling for scams.

I'd honestly like it better if these sites just straight up charged you right out of the gate. Maybe on top of that we could have sites be interoperable, like the fediverse, so it's not necessarily what the site offers but how they offer it to you. Making you want to pay for an experience that you truly can't get anywhere else.

Unpopular opinion: I like paying for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads and still make it possible for creators and YouTube to get paid and survive an keep offering me entertainment.

In addition you also get YouTube Music so no need to pay for Spotify. It might not have as good features but I listen to music specifically so I only search for what I want to listen to and don't want any algorithms anyway.

Knowing what I know about the costs of streaming video, I really want to know what the alternative is for a platform that can't just throw money down the drain. To my mind, there are only two options here - people watch ads (within reason, but 2 hour ads aren't resonable), or people pay YouTube (a la Premium).

If you want things for free, the only way to make that happen sustainably is ads right now. Donations simply will not work, especially for something with the costs that video incurs - to say nothing about being able to compensate creators for their time and effort.

I use ytdl-sub to downloadt the newest videos from the channels I like and import into Jellyfin. No ads, nothing, just videos. Even thumbnails.

I've been poking around with Invidious lately, does anyone know if this'd be a counter to these blocks?

I understand why they're doing this, but if you make a service that was once free, paid (whether with your time, or money), it's not a good look.

I pay for Premium (bc I watch mostly from the TV using a console or AppleTV) but this sucks. Especially because how annoying and long a bunch of these ads are now.

I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.

On the other side, as a user, I just can't browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.

But to be honest, I don't see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can't pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.

I totally get where they're coming from and I understand how expensive video delivery while also paying creators is.

But at the same time, I find it difficult to blame users that block ads. Over the last few years, ads have gotten progressively longer and more obnoxious, fewer ads are skippable, we also get multiple ads in a row and, to top it off, you'll every now and then see ads that are placed by malicious entities. It's out of control.

When it was just one short ad (each) before, during and after a video, I was fine with it and I disabled adblock on YouTube but as its gotten more and more and more - I enabled adblock again because I felt the site was extremely uncomfortable to use at that point.

Recently, I started sharing a YT Premium Family plan with a few people because I find 12€ a month for YT to be a hefty price, especially when considering that I don't ever watch "Originals" nor do I use YT Music, but I have to pay for those, too...

They can choke

Well, this certainly explains my difficulty with YouTube over the last few days. Ironically, the piped instances still seem to be fine...

This might just be enough to push me primarily over to Rumble. There are fewer and fewer reasons to use YouTube and more and more reasons not to.

Advertisers are wasting their money paying for my "views" of their ads. I'm doing them a service by blocking them.

I quit reddit, I can quit YouTube as well. I don't watch advertisements.

For folks considering paying for YT, note that you get YT Music Premium bundled in with it. The music premium alone is only $2/mo cheaper than the bundle.

I got it when I bailed on Spotify, and gotta say, the app is a little less polished, but I don't miss Spotify a bit. Just putting it out there if you were looking for a push to get yourself off Spotify or a push to get YT ad-free, there ya go. It works out to $10/mo if you get the annual plan, so same as Spotify Premium, plus yanno, the YouTube benefits. It's a pretty decent deal tbh.

Whats the percentage of YT users who use Adblock tools? i think it's a tiny number, mainly the power users.

If premium wasn't so gd expensive, I'd pay for it. It's currently about twice what it's worth, and they raise the price every year far past inflation.

I wonder how? Unless ad-blocker extensions are currently leaking some piece of info indicating to the website that we're using them?

I wonder if this would affect things like Newpipe (android YouTube client replacement with no ads) or even just playing streams via MPV. I assume that stuff is relatively safe since it's grabbing the actual video streams, but I'm sure there is still a way they could block them.

Call me lumberjack cause I wish a nigga wood pay for YouTube premium. With how many times YT tells me I’m not connected to the internet while my phone has a 3 bars of 5G (for whatever that’s worth) connection, hell naw I’m not paying for youtube premium. They move the goalpost way too often for what counts as “monetizable content” to the point that it’s neutering my favorite content creators to keep the lights on. TBH I’d rather pay Nebula

Translation: YT tests randomly pissing off users until they get fed up and leave for another site. if a site tells me I can't partake of their content with my adblocker engaged, I simply find my fix elsewhere.

I have a private piped instance running in oracle cloud free, works nicely for me.

Does this also apply to revanced?

Youtube ads are such garbage. Everyone talks about how google is 'the most advanced advertiser' - well google, you really can't figure out that playing the same ad for me 4 times in a 30 minute period is just going to make me hate both you and the advertiser?

If any state banned advertising entirely, I'd strongly consider moving there.

Back to Pornhub for family friendly content i guess

First trying to kill off invidious, and then this? What a world.

I never thought YouTube's business model was very sustainable. As the world economy goes down, so does the value of ads. Creators or consumers need to pay up for all the bandwidth and storage. The question is about what is a reasonable price. Are low tiers for $3/mo. possible along with premium 4k options or does everything need to be at more than that?

I'd be much happier to pay if I could ensure I don't get personalized recommendations and I could use it with yt-dlp. I can probably opt out of personalized recommendations, but I haven't checked yet because I don't use youtube through its main interface much.

I'm certainly not an expert in this, but surely there are ways to get around this right? Pihole? Could ad blockers fake ads being played?

Jokes on them. I'm already on invidious.

I'll say something unexpected: I pay for YouTube. With money! Why?

• I use it every day and I'm a human who likes boosting the things that I enjoy
• I think YouTube's content recommendations are a genuine value-add and not easily replaced
• A cut of my subscription fee goes directly back to the video creators that I watch
• The "premium" encoding levels are actually a substantial improvement to video bitrates
  • Important: the premium bitrate is higher than anything previously offered and probably would not have been otherwise practical to serve for free

So yeah. I personally like YouTube enough to pay for it and I have the financial means to do so. Am I a clown for expressing personal appreciation towards a faceless megacorp? Yes. Yes I am. Constantly trying to win at every transaction in life is a drag though, so I think I'll continue to enjoy getting swindled.

I test not using YouTube.

Couple years ago a Youtube-Googler told me that adblockers are their big worry. Suckers.

Did not notice yet because use Piped XD

I've been waiting for youtube to die for awhile now. I hope they do this so that users finally leave the platform. The only reason they held off this long is because they thought too many people would leave. Now they get to test that theory.

Just get an adblocker-blocker-blocker. Easy

While we are saying "fuck reddit", let's say "fuck you too YT". Fucking malware machine.

Honestly if I worked at YouTube and they asked me to implement this I'd quit.

So soon we will need an adblocker blocker blocker to use YouTube?

The only time I see YouTube ads is when I play a video in my classroom.

People will either stop using the service, or find a way to block the content (again). It's nothing to panic over because there is always a work around - what one person builds, another can circumvent.

Seems fair enough, I've personally been freeloading for a while. Youtube is irreplacable, so there's not much we can do.

Try YT subscription from Argentina...😎

Fuck youtube and fuck their ads, this shit is getting out of hand

I would happily pay for YouTube if the monetisation worked well and my home feed would actually show me things I wanted to see.

Fuck youtube anyway. Absolute sesspit of influencers, ads and stolen content.

Yeah please do, I will just stop using YouTube and that would be a good thing.

Funny thing is, at this point I'm getting these "please enable ads" errors all over the place - even on browsers that I haven't installed an ad blocker on. Even Edge's default behavior is negating the parasitic business model of these tracking scripts.

Does this include Firefox or only chromium based browsers? Hoping my switch to ff is gonna work like I hoped.

This should go quite well for YouTube. popcorn gif

I wonder if this will affect Invidious

oh this has been patched already by the adblockers iirc

Always a good time to remind everyone that the FBI (rightly) recommends the use of ad blockers for security purposes while browsing the Internet:

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.

This is old news from a month ago.

And here's my hot take on YT ads: They need to make money somehow, but unfortunately they are subject to "ad creep," where they slowly increase the intensity of the ads. I've gotten 15+20s unskippable ads before.

But what really grinds my gears are how the ads almost seem designed to annoy you. If you commonly skip ads, that's when you get unskippable ads all the time. And if you try to listen to YT in the shower expect the ads to come and go like radio, you come out listening to some skippable 30 minute long ad.

And I hate how the ads on mobile decide to cover the comment section. That's ridiculous, like imagine if you're reading a newspaper and when you get to an ad the ad suddenly expands to fill the entire page.

And the forced ads on unmonetized channels is plain cruel.

So, as much as I want to support creators (and I do leave AdBlock off on YT most of the time), I'll come out against YT over this decision. My usage of it will drop, but only minorly.

I'd be happy to pay for video content/video hosting, but I'm not happy with any of my money going to youtube or google. Peertube is the future. 😎

"Youtube considering incentivizing piracy"

I just pay for it, its worth it to me.

Just set up a pinhole. Fuck ‘em

So.. using a ad blocker that we compile ourselves?

Now we need a new video platform.

If I have to start paying to watch videos, I’ll probably just jump over to Nebula or something.

With reddit blocking 3rd party, I might actually get back to reading books. Youtube and ads will definitely see me get off that platform!

Thankfully I use Revanced YT on mobile

Pain

FreeTube, Invidious, or Rumble.

I'm in the camp that says you should really pay for premium. It's so worth the money. For every premium user that watches a video the creator gets a pretty good cut. Something like 55%. Blocking ads doesn't really hurt the creator too much. Your mainly just sticking it to Google. But if your someone who watches alot of YouTube consider premium, to help your favorite creators more. Especially you get Music included.

YouTube feels unusable without an ad-blocker. I've gotten like 30min crazy conspiracy videos as an ad that shit is bonkers.

Let's do the Peertube migration.

I guess this is the kick in the pants to go over to odysee or somewhere else, huh

I don’t think this move will destroy the platform. However, if they stick with the usual enshittification across time (loss of features, increased costs to users , etc) it may reach a tipping point. I could be wrong, but I don’t think this is the straw to break the camel’s back.

Thats why i got youtube premium using a vpn via turkey.

i use revanced and firefox with ublock you dumb bitch