Submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
YouTube viewers will soon have to sit through even longer ads, with Google rolling out new 30-second unskippable spots on a popular app.
Firefox with ublock origin for desktop and mobile. Grayjay for mobile (integrates Nebula too so you can get both your feeds at once). Android TV with FCast and Smart Tube Next for your TV. Never see ads again.
A/B testing is showing they are going after people with ad blockers: https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-apparently-punishing-ad-blockers-by-hiding-comment-section-3320581/ But your specific combo seems good.
They keep trying. The adblockers keep winning. I’ve had my fair share of videos sometimes not loading, or regularly needing to update apps to keep up with Google’s latest bullshit, but the minor glitches and headaches are worth it for all the time I don’t spend staring at a greyed out skip button.
Wait, YouTube’s idea of punishing ad-block is removing the most toxic, worthless part of the site?
Nobody tell them. Not one fucking word. We might even get them to remove Shorts, too, if we pretend this is a bad thing.
Why would I ever want to see youtube comments? Literally zero impact for me.
Oh, no! Not the comments, those are always so smart and insightful.
Are they really threatening us with a good time? No YouTube comments is a benefit, not a punishment
If I want to see the comment section I use official app, and just pause the ad.
Hiding comment section? Oh no! What will I do?
I know they are trying but so far it seems the ad-blockers are winning because I’ve not noticed any interruptions or problems with comments so far.
by hiding comments
So using adblockers is even better than I realized?
I mean, I intentionally block the comment section, but sure,
Grayjay only supports Android, so let me mention Tube PiP for iOS
Oh, excellent, I’ll be checking that out right away. I have an iPad that I’m stuck with from work and it’d be great to get ad free YouTube there.
I run both those and I see ads every time google breaks ublock which is monthly now. Grayjay is broken more than its not at this point and requires like 10+ tries with various ciphers.
I think the day of these ads becoming unblockable is coming soon.
Are you running Ublock on Chrome or Firefox? It works significantly better on Firefox. I’ve never seen an ad get through it.
got anything for samsung tvs?
Yes, just connect a small computer and then install Firefox with unlock origin on there.
Someone else in this thread mentioned TizenTube, that sounds like what you’re looking for.
But personally I just grabbed an Nvidia Shield. It works great and if you swap out the default launcher you’ll never see a single ad on it (with the right apps). Plus the pro is beefy enough to run some decent emulators too.
Smart Tube is useless for me. Takes forever to load the video and usually craps in the process. Pass.
Do you have a weird network/Google TV setup? I run it on a stock nvidia shield with no pihole or anything and I’ve never had any issues with smart tube, it’s great.
YouTube has ads?
I demonetized YouTube on my android platform long time ago
Who still watches YT without adblocker? It must be horrible.
Me on (android) TV. On PC I have ad blocker. On TV ads time is between 6 seconds and 1 minute.
SmartTube for Android gives you adblock and sponsorblock
Theres also the possibility to use a VPN and log in from Albania (I think) to avoid ads altogether because they’re not legal there.
Try ReVanced.
On TV I silenced them as they start and look elsewhere meanwhile… I find joy in training myself to be unable to consciously recognise at all what is ongoing till the video start
Someone mentioned that their entire google account got banned for 10 years over adblocking youtube. I stopped watching youtube immediately… I’m not about to watch ads, but I don’t want to lose access to my 22 year old personal account… So many accounts are tied to that address, that I can’t manage to move to a different service.
FML what happened to “do no evil”? Now it’s “make money with the baby grinding machine for all costs”
Don’t log in on YouTube. Unless you’re uploading, there’s no point.
I would be scared as hell to rely on Google like that. You are one automated Ai decision away from losing access.
People with android phones who use YouTube app.
reVanced is alive, well, good, and at this point necessary
When I see a link to a potentially interesting YT video, I just send the link to my PC.
Tubular is free and available on F-Droid.
I often entirely forget that youtube and most of the internet is plagued with ads. It’s a shock to use a family member’s phone or laptop that does not have adblock
The Internet is practically unusable without adblock. Rawdogging the web you get a postage stamp sized amount of content bordered by flashing ads and video ads. No fuckin thanks homie
My computer is covered, but which app is safe to block ads on my phone?
On my phone it’s not just the ads that aggravate but also the autoplay videos–the ones that follow you as you scroll down. I can’t prevent them from autoplaying.
Mobile firefox is compatible with desktop addons, so you can still use ublock origin on your phone. I also use pihole to cover my whole local network and wireshark to VPN my phone to my local network when out of the house.
As a good friend and son, I of course installed unlock origin for them. Even the light version in Chrome if I have to. Their phones I did not touch though.
I recommend Peertube. There’s not much there yet, but myself and others are trying.
Also, did you know you can upload your video to Peertube and have YouTube pull it via RSS? That’s what I’m doing!
All of my stuff you’ll find on Peertube and I don’t have to do anything else to get it up on YouTube.
No one will create content without ad revenue. Peertube is doomed to fail.
no content is there
It’s so fucking funny though. I would love to pay YouTube. But I will never pay a company that abuses my data the way they do.
There’s that, but I’d also like to point out, that as a paying customer, you’re still force fed that bottom tier slop with no way to filter it other than hoping some combination of reporting/not interested/don’t show me this channel again works.
But even if you say, not to recommend a channel, it can still show up. So you get to pay for low grade AI slop videos. Or “content farms” that take 2 videos and just splice them together for some reason (both horizontal and vertical). Or the “I’m just going to stare at the camera and do nothing while I play a video that’s from another platform”. Like it’s endless.
The “shorts” platform is pure garbage. Can I turn shorts off? No I can “show fewer shorts”.
So you pay, to not get ads. They sell ALL your data to double dip (since they selling your data anywho) and there’s no benefit for the content. They have all this data, all this tech, and the platform is rot with shit.
i heard they even planning ads on “paid” version eventually.
I’d be willing to get YouTube Premium just to get rid of ads, but they’re bundling it with YouTube Music and I’m not trusting Google with my music purchases any more, thank you.
They discontinued Google Play Music (fortunately only after a long long period of time allowing you to download MP3s with their bloody terrible client app, so no loss there) and told me that you can just import the purchases to YouTube Music. Which I couldn’t actually access.
Also I don’t want a music streaming service, I just want to buy the albums. It’s pretty sad that it seems the only remaining feasible local option for electronic music purchases is iTunes! Bloody iTunes!
you gladly feed them your viewing habits to increase their value to their shareholders though 🤷
what YouTube ads
I think it might be something that happens during that short pause before a video starts?
The article about crappy ads wants me to turn off my ad blocker, lol
It’s the year 2026. Irony is dead.
YouTube has ads?
Youtube: “People are blocking are ads and costing us money, what should we do?!”
The People: “Police your platform and stop advertising scams, hate speech, pornography, and all the other shit.”
Youtube: “I just have no idea what to do, so I guess I’ll just invest millions/billions into making ads harder to block, and make the ads longer and unskippable.”
The People: “YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, JUST POLICE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM ALREADY. IF YOU DID YOU WOULDNT NEED TO DO ALL THIS SHIT”
Youtube: “Oh, btw, heres another PragerU video thats 3 hours long and talks about how the black man should be grateful for the white man uplifting them via slavery, followed by a ad thats basically a woman fingering herself to advertise chinese AI girlfriends”
The People: " adblocking intensifies "
That’s the craziest part isn’t it? All of this data collection so they can build profiles of us, and then they just don’t apply any of it to ads.
I don’t like watching ads, but it would at least be slightly more tolerable if I got ads for things I actually wanted. On my TV I watch YT unfortunately not adblocked, an never once have I seen an ad for anything that appeal to me.
YouTube does police their platform, they curate it for babies and remove anything critical of the government
Fuck, I was with them when it was 1x60s ad or 2x30s ads only in the middle of the video. I would grumble at 30s/15m.
I turned off the adblock the other day to pay physics girl some ad-rev, it was fucking unreal. I was trying not to skip, her 8m video tried to give me a 30 second ad, a 5 minute ad, and a mutli-hour ad. Who the fuck would watch that, who the fuck would pay to put a multi-hour ad on an 8m video that nobody is going to watch?
One day the ads will catch up to us, they’ll just embed them in stream and refuse to let you ff/rewind. and at that point, i’ll just go back to record->comskip and store what I want to see on my nas.
Nah it doesn’t matter what ads they’d have. I’d block them regardless.
I wonder what the breaking point is for those who don’t use adblockers.
Remember that some people voluntarily pay for TV and streaming with ads.
I had been paying for it a while ago since, to be fair, the service is free otherwise and often times it pays the creator more. Then Youtube decided to give about $45mil or so worth of energy toward making pro-Israel content and suddenly I didn’t mind the ads so much anymore. Now they’re making it a lot worse and my solution is going to need to be an adblocker.
I set my VPN to Albania. Ads on YouTube are banned in Albania.
On the web, I be Albanian.
Nebula is pretty good these days, I can’t remember the last time I deliberately watched something on YouTube.
Yeah, Nebula is awesome.
What’s nebula? Where can I find it?
We need an alternative with people on it.
why not have UBLOCK origin.
That’s unfortunate for the content creators. I realize that majority of their revenue comes from ads, but this is probably going to drive viewership down. The average person doesn’t have that kind of attention span anymore.
Ads are already a nuisance, making them unskippable will turn people away from the video especially if they also decide to go down the route twitch went of you having to physically be present and not minimize the ad. Creators already resort to their own product placement in their videos, which fortunately can be skimmed through. I just try to buy THEIR products to show support, if they offer.
Also, nothing makes me want a product less than intrusive annoying ads. That’s a product I would steer clear of.
and they’ll be unskippable
I’m sure i’ve heard this before, but yt-dlp skips them fine.
Businesses pay youtube to show ads and viewers pay youtube to not show ads.
Pretty much stopped using it once they decided my 20 year old account must belong to a child and demanded my ID. (Still don’t know why that happened. The account itself is over eighteen and I don’t live in the US where that policy was supposed to take effect.) This doesn’t make it any more appealing.
I remember when you just had, like, banner ads and an ad next to the video. And now you get those gross ads for AI sexbots and stuff.
And I really don’t think the latter is just because of my own search history. I’m asexual and don’t look at porn sites. I also noticed an uptick in the sex ads after YouTube decided I was a minor, so that’s pretty freaking weird.
I wish other platforms for long form video content existed.
YouTube has ads?
Sincerely,
Ublock Origin User
Why still watching youtube?
Download your videos
I recommend turning off the device completely when an ad starts. This not only works, but has improved my entire life.
“unskippable” laughs in ublock/revanced
I buckled and just got YouTube Premium Family. Via India. For 4 bucks a month. For 6 people.
I needed a cheap music streaming service anyway.
Yeah thats enough to push me off the main app, I was already annoyed by the ads, the fact they are going unskippable is a end gamer for me
Good thing I use the LibRedirect plugin in Firefox to redirect YouTube link to Invidious.
In addition to uBlock, of course.
I was using uBlock but I kept getting messages that said blockers were not allowed. Then they started requiring me to wait to get rid of the warning. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there another add-on I can install to defeat this?
I used to pay for premium a couple years ago because I still wanted to support the creators I watched, but ever since they started implementing AI everywhere and stealing peoples videos for training data I figured Google doesn’t deserve my money no matter how small. I’d much rather watch with uBlock and spend that $20 I used to spend on YouTube Premium on the various YouTubers Patreons.
artyom@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Oh no, the ads I don’t watch are getting even longer!?
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I just purchased a new travel router that will have options for ad blocking built in. Would that block ads on any device sharing that connexion? TV, phone, PC, smart fridge,…?
circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Those will not block YT ads.
They’ll block ads at a DNS level, but YouTube ads are delivered in video stream.
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
Honestly, it varies. Businesses are starting to get wise to DNS adblockers, and are serving more ads from their primary domain (this is part of why you can’t block YouTube ads with a DNS blocker anymore - you can’t block them at the DNS level without blocking all of YouTube).
You’ll see a noticeable downtick in phone ads from web browsing and ad-sponsored games, but something like a TV or fridge will probably be unaffected because the ads will be served directly from the same host as the content. You’ll see fewer ads but far from zero.
Also why are you connecting your smart fridge to a travel router? Do you travel with a smart fridge?
artyom@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Depends on how they’re served but mostly, yes
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not youtube ads, sadly, if they are blocking based on domain names. For YouTube, you can use pipepipe, which do block ads as far as I have seen.
Ghostie@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m just imagining how spammy it would be to see this reply on every comment that has more than 69 upvotes.
Yup. At one point that number was 69 in order to get to where it is now. Good job.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
and only a minor inconvience as youtube delays the video for adblockers, of course they will try to make that permanent somehow.