We’ve gone full circle
You can at least pay (quite a lot less than a cable subscription) to remove them. It beats paying $80 a month for the great privilege of spending 30% of the time watching ads.
For now, of course.
My Adblocker is free
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Again, for now.
I think the day an adblocker starts charging people is the day that companies either try to sue them into non-existence with lawsuits they know will fail.
Either that or nobody will pay for it because they’re used to getting adblockers for free. They’ll just move to another one or maybe one that’s FOSS.
They’ll just move to another one or maybe one that’s FOSS.
All the major ones are already open source. uBlock Origin, uBlock, AdBlock, AdBlock Plus and AdGuard are all licensed under GPLv3. If anyone fancied starting another competing one for some reason they’d have plenty of codebases to choose from.
That doesn’t make sense. uBO would just be forked.
Soon you’ll pay AND watch ads. Maybe there will be a free tier with 5 minute ad breaks, and paid tier with 1 minute ad breaks.
I pay for premium and still have to watch all the sponsored crap within the video itself. I block all those channels manually so it’s slowly getting better.
Have you tried using SponsorBlock?
Tbh paying a package deal isn’t actually the worst thing. I get netflix, sky sports, BT sports, movies, all channels, 1gb broadband and 1 unlimited data SIM. £100 pm.
Yes it’s expensive but it’s £55 for 1gb broadband anyway. They have a stranglehold over football/soccer that it’s hard to get away from. Yes you can pirate the stream but it’s not the same.
This has fuck all to do with YT but generally getting packages individually isn’t cheaper sometimes.
I got all the sports for €3 from alibaba
How?
Go to alibaba and look up iptv subscription. Usually has loads of flags in the pictures. Ask for a free test for 24 hrs, if the stream works ok then buy it. I had all the sports, price went up and I was still finding games I didn’t have so fuck it now I have them all.
You’ll need an IPTV launcher on your device, I use tivimax on my appletv.
You can at least pay (quite a lot less than a cable subscription)
Well I should bloody well hope so, considering you also get far less than cable.
YouTube is still mostly amateur or indie content, most of it short-form, and most of it frankly just not very good. There’s still stuff on there worth watching, and I know some people really do consume a lot of content on there in the manner of watching TV back in the day, but objectively it really isn’t the same thing as professional studio content. I can watch some random guy in Ohio do a 15 minute review of some niche thing I’m interested in as much as anyone can, but there’s no way I’d consider that worth the same value as a long form TV series or feature film.
Less? I’d argue YouTube gets you way more than cable
There’s a buttload of high quality content
No, full circle would be more and longer ads.
Anyway, I’m a Smart Tube User :)
I certainly prefer fewer and longer ad breaks, over several short ones, but this still sucks.
Why prefer any of it…block em all and tell corporations to pound sand.
Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
This will probably pull down votes, but I really do want the discuss this honestly.
I despise ads. I block them on everything that I can. I am fine with anyone and everyone blocking anything they don’t want to see.
What I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset with YouTube for trying to get people watch ads?
They have to pay for all the infrastructure somehow and I’m sure it isn’t cheap. What are they supposed to do?
This isn’t rhetorical or argumentive, I’m genuinely asking what the ethical approach to maintaining this infrastructure is.
Personally, I don’t mind the idea of paying YouTube to remove ads. I’m pragmatic enough to understand that you don’t get shit for free, particularly when that shit is using unimaginable amounts of data.
What I object to is that the YT Premium family plan is now more than £20 a month.
For the cost of Disney+ and Apple TV+ I can watch semi-professional video makers talking at a camera for ten minutes. Video makers who aren’t getting paid all that much for what they do. Video makers who also include sponsors reads.
So I fired up the trusty VPN, “flew to Ukraine” and signed up for around £3 a month. Fuck ‘em.
The mad thing is; if there was a £5 a month tier that only removed ads and didn’t include YT Music, I’d sign up to that without question. I watch a good amount of YouTube content on my Apple TV; I’m happy to pay. But I’m not happy to pay what YT are asking.
THANK YOU. I’ve been saying this for ages. I really wouldn’t mind even £8 a month for the no ads since I spend a lot of time on YouTube, but I am in no way paying extra for bells and whistles I don’t need. I already have Spotify, I don’t want to and nor am I going to pay for an extra music service that I just won’t use. I’m on an unlimited data plan for god’s sake, I don’t care about downloading videos.
It’s the progressive intrusion and shady tactics. Going from multiple short ads to fewer longer ads seems like a small step. But from the original of maybe a static banner ad to the multiple full screen pop-ups, moving banners, unclosable ads, and whatever other bullshit they pull, we’ve come a long fucking way. Add onto that, harvesting data for ads and being incentivized to do so questions security.
It’s more a protest to marketing in general trying to face fuck the world for another penny and enshittified products or services gleefully ruining what was once good for a penny.
I know others have said previously, but for me I hate the amount of tracking and targeting that gets thrown into the ads that try to pull as much personal information from you as possible so they can make every cent from that info. I like to keep my life as private as I can online. YouTube by no means has any respect for that.
Having an ad here and there wouldn’t normally bother me so much if it also wasn’t for the complete lack of filtering YouTube does on what ads are “acceptable”. So many ads have been misleading, contain false information, and are just down right inappropriate. An ad for a product is fine but I really don’t want to listen to another ad with an AI voice telling me to buy a product that is a blatant scam. If they are this strict on making creators follow the YouTube Guidelines, they should make ads follow them too.
I do understand that things aren’t free and I do support the creators I watch with buying merch or through donations, wherever that may be (KoFi, Patreon, etc). I would pay for YouTube premium but it’s just way too much money for the little that I would actually benefit from it. I don’t need or want YouTube Music. I just don’t want to have ads. But for $18.99 a month, no thank you.
TL;DR: Too much tracking and privacy invasive, ads don’t follow YouTube’s own guidelines and too expensive just to simply stop ads.
On top of the tracking within the ads themselves, you also have all of the general usage data that Google sells. They’re double-dipping.
Right!? It’s insane how much data they pull from you and just the shear amount of trackers in general
I can’t recall a time in history before this last 10 hellish years where I’ve been required to watch ads. If CBS had required that I have some sort of pressure plate to make sure my ass was in the seat during the ad breaks they’d be getting hate too. They can serve all the ads they want, I can choose to watch them. They’re violating the 2nd part of it and incurring the hostility that they should. Everything is turning into a timeshare presentation.
YouTube premium is very expensive for what it is. It should be like $5 a month to be worth the value, for me personally.
My major grip with the current ads are that they are obtrusive and repetitive.
On broadcast TV, I dont mind ads as much because the shows were written, filmed, and edited with predictable ad breaks in mind. I have a good idea how long the ad break will be and when they happen. Makes it easy to plan bathroom breaks, drink refills, or discuss what we’re watching.
On Youtube, the ads seemingly pop up at random, usually in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes, there will be 2 ad breaks, and other times, there are 4 ad breaks for similar videos. If youtube would make ads consistent (30 second ad break at the half way point for < 10 mins vids; 15 second at break at 1/3 of the way through the video and a second one at 2/3 of the video for 10 - 30 min vids; etc) and content creators would edit their vidoes for these predetermined ad breaks, they would be much more palatable.
I get that the ad pool is based on tracking data/video content, but watching the same pool of 3 or 4 ads makes me less likely to buy something. Throw in some random ads in there, too, to break up the monotony.
If youtube would make ads consistent (30 second ad break at the half way point for < 10 mins vids; 15 second at break at 1/3 of the way through the video and a second one at 2/3 of the video for 10 - 30 min vids; etc)
This seems like a crazy amount of ads to me. On live TV, I wouldn’t expect more than one ad break every 15 minutes of broadcast, with fewer on things like feature films. YouTube is mostly short form content; there’s no reason why there couldn’t just be ads at the beginning for the vast majority of content, with only the longer videos needing a different approach. If you’re mostly watching <20 minute videos, you’re still getting a similar number of “ad breaks” per viewing hour.
The idea of having a 30 second ad break 5 minutes into a 10 minute video would 100% be unacceptable to me.
It was just an example of different ad structures for different length videos, not anything close to a final proposal. I mostly watch very long form content (>30mins), so my example is probably not the best for shorter vids.
This seems like a crazy amount of ads to me. On live TV, I wouldn’t expect more than one ad break every 15 minutes of broadcast, with fewer on things like feature films
It’s sadly not when compared to live TV. The thing to remember about live TV ad breaks is that commercials are longer, and so are the breaks. On TV, each commercial is closer to 30 seconds, and the breaks are closer to 3 minutes. ~12 mins/hour (4x 3 mins breaks per hour) for TV vs ~3 mins/hour (6x 30s breaks) for my example. Even if youtube doubled up and put 2x 30s ad breaks in a 10 mins vid, that’s still 6min/hour of ads.
Front-loading the ads makes sense for shorter vids. I chose the middle because youtube seems to want to put them during the video, even on the shorter vids. I chose 30 seconds based on ads being 2x 15 seconds long each, which is what I normally see while watching Youtube without adblockers. Maybe prioritize shorter ads in shorter vids? So, 2x 5 second ads instead of the 2x 15 second ads.
I honestly don’t see the problem with video ads embedded in the video stream. It seems like it’d be far harder to slip something malicious to the computer in there than banner ads served from somewhere else. It’s a system that worked for broadcast TV for decades.
To the extent they offer a paid service with no ads, that also seems ethical to me.
The part where Youtube kind of falls down for me is unlike TV shows where the broadcaster is paying for the content, youtube content is basically free to Youtube. So them collecting money seems unfair and leaves the content creators to do sponsored / ad breaks themselves to pay for the content.
so, what? 4-5 minutes instead of 2? yea, that’ll keep people watching…
something else
The problem is: what else?
Pirated and adblocked content
Still YouTube but with an adblocker
Lots of things?
🏴☠️
You’re welcome: https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube
Can vouch. This, revanced and ublock on all my different devices and I haven’t seen an ad in years
Exactly. I keep forgetting yt even has ads until I visit friends.
Anything for LG TVs? WebOS?
Haven’t used it myself but this looks popular at a glance.
Thanks for the tip! I haven’t delved too deep but it’s a shame installing these things seems like a lot of work and with potential for messing things up. Maybe I’m wrong but it’s kind of putting me off. -_-
Now I just need a Roku version.
Does this work for Roku devices?
YouTube is fully enshitified. Useless app.
I open the vanilla app on someone else’s computer the other day. Not logged in, in private browser mode, and the algorithm was immediately suggesting clips from Fox News and one of those loser Ben Shapiro types.
Even trying to find videos now. The search results seem to be clogged up of junk. Used to use it all the time to find a 30 second video for how to do some procedure or something. Now every single video is 10 minutes long and it’s some idiot talking for 9 minutes about something unrelated and somewhere in the video buried between bullshit is 1 minute of useful content.
Came to YouTube because it was faster and easier than reading the manual but that’s just not the case anymore.
The new ads suck. It’s so frustrating to use. I’m hoping a PiHole will get rid of em but I think I remember reading that Google does some nasty shit to dodge that
I use SmartTube on my Android TV and it hasn’t run into any issues so far. If you can install 3rd party apps you might want to give it a try
Yep I have it too. For now it works flawlessly. Hopefully it doesn’t take much from Google’s userbase and they just leave it alone lol.
Kudos to the Dev of that absolute gem. They constantly update and patch that app and have done so for many years.
Google uses the same domain name, pi-hole can’t block that.
Source: current pi-hole user.
Pihole only works when ads come from a third party add provider. It cannot tell the difference between YouTube videos and ads.
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Smart tube is amazing.
You can get rid of any ads right now, you only need the right solution depending on where you see the ads. Smarttubenext for TV, ReVanced for your phone, Firefox + Ublock Origin for your PC. Pihole for the rest and Adguard DNS on my phone just to be sure. I can’t tell you when I saw the last ad in my life.
That’s odd… on my TV there are no youtube ads, and no sponsor messages.
I’ve been using grayjay, it certainly has some irritating bugs but they’ll work out the kinks plus now I can watch twitch and kick with my screen off.
Not for me, 🚫ads + 🏴☠️
🏴☠️
They really can’t seem to grasp the concept they what people prefer, if they have to watch ads, is 1 short ad per video.
Not multiple short ads per video nor 1 long ad. Just 1 short (15 seconds tops) ad and that’s all.
They are going in the opposite direction
Oh they get it, there’s no way they don’t, they just want more Ad dollars with for less content that isn’t giving them Ad dollars.They’re looking for that sweet sweet middle ground where they can play more ads and you won’t just stop watching.
Cool, more reason to use Grayjay or ReVanced
The Monkey’s Paw has curled.
I wish there was a way to stop ads on Roku. I’d rather watch on my TV, but my phone doesn’t have ads, so I usually use it.
There’s this: https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
But I haven’t quite figured out how to use it yet.
I know of SmartTube for android TVs, but has anyone found a solution for TVs running Tizen?
Yes, Tizen TVs have HDMI ports where you can plugin an android powered device.
The availability of Tizen apps is abysmal
I looked around a year ago and I couldn’t seem to find anything. People just don’t seem to develop for Tizen. I ended up buying Google TV and sideloading everything I needed.
You can pay for premium, I know everyone around here gets mad about that. But I like content creators getting paid myself, and I hate ads. So it works for me.
So, TV then… 🙄
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That’s because YouTube is making ads on TVs appear less frequently, but in exchange, you’ll have to sit through longer commercials.
YouTube started testing longer but less frequent ad breaks in September, and now they’re launching across all TVs.
The change means you’ll see an updated countdown timer in the bottom-right corner of your screen that will now show how long you have left until the entire ad break ends or when you can skip.
Just like on mobile and the web, you’ll now see ads in between Shorts that you can skip through using your remote.
While I can’t say I’m too happy that I’ll get ads in between Shorts on TVs, I am kind of glad about the change to ad breaks on regular videos, as I hopefully won’t get as many small interruptions while I’m watching two-hourlong deep dives.
YouTube has had a major focus on ads and getting people to watch them this year.
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