I’ll be sad when I can no longer watch my subs but as they say, live by the corporate whim, die by the corporate whim.
this just makes me want to cancel my subscription more
I really need to get around to doing that. It’s the one service I pay for.
Just use an Invidious instance instead. It’s more private and free of ads.
No issues ublock and FF.
You ever get the “You are disconnected from the internet” screen? It goes away with a refresh so it’s not a big deal, but it would be even cooler if it didn’t happen.
A new issue for me is the video sometimes skips/very slow while the audio is fine. Restarting the browser and pc doesn’t change anything.
Same here
PipePipe on degoogled android lol
Apparently there is a way around it as I’ve been watching YouTube all day and haven’t encountered a single ad.
YouTube has been shadowbanning ad blocker users, where you comments appear to post but actually haven’t, for a while now.
I think the issue is with the EasyPrivacy list blocking the heartbeat signals that tell YouTube you are actually someone interacting with the page and not a bot.
Brave doesn’t seem to have this issue as they whitelist those scripts but it has other issues so I recommend keeping it as a YouTube only browser.
So I can still watch the video, just not read the comments that I never read anyway, and can’t click the "link in the description ", which hurts creators way more than it hurts me.
Makes sense … ?
I can say that I solved this problem for me (at least in the short term, we shall see) by using a random User Agent switcher, uninstalling and reinstalling uBlock.
For Android user I can recommend Newpipe. For the desktop I use FreeTube
Both have occassional issues when YT rolls out their latest enshittification features, but the devs are quite responsive.
Regardless, YT is a loosing battle, so prepare for the day when Google will win this arms race. That is why alternatives like PeerTube are important.
I was using newpipe but it wasn’t working for a bit, been having great luck with PipePipe though
I’ll stop using YT before i start watching ads.
True that
I’ll start paying for YT before I ever start watching ads. I won’t as long as I don’t have to, but the second they finally figure this out, I’m subscribing.
It’s well worth the money considering how much I use it and for how long I’ve used it for free. It’s honestly one of the few streaming services actually worth paying for.
Does premium also block sponsors? Because if not, YouTube would still be unusable without an adblocker.
Granted, YouTube would probably be the hardest service for me to walk away from. Even without the entertainment aspect. How-tos on car repair and building projects etc are quite valuable.
I’m in agreement with this, I’m mostly a content thief, because my use is so extremely limited it simply cannot justify paying any even more than a dollar for any service.
But when it comes to youtube, I get most of my scientific education there, all of the developments in astrophysics and sciences are there. I think I’d go bonkers without it, and yeah, I am not going to be watching no motherfucking ads.
Same. Especially since there’s more AI slop.
For people who only go off headlines and comments and don’t read the article, here’s the important bits:
- This only affects some users, not everyone
- The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty
- The issue goes away with a refresh, you don’t need to turn off the adblocker, though you’ll have to refresh every video
- It affects all videos
- The link to adblockers is due to everyone who is reporting the issue being a user of an adblocker, and turning it off fixing the issue permanently until it’s turned on again
- There’s no specific browser or adblocker mentioned in the article
- It affects Premium users too
edit: added “the article” after “don’t read” to clarify
Wouldn‘t be surprised if this was an accident. Wouldn‘t be the first time something gets messed up after a Youtube update where Youtube simply changed how some things work for functionality. These things can make Adblockers act up in a weird way.
I for example noticed last week the first video of a session starts at an automatic resolution of 360p. I have to manually change it to 1080p. Then it remembers this and keeps it for a while. I could blame Youtube for this but I bet it has something to do with the fact I‘m skipping ads and Youtube suddenly doesn‘t know anymore in what resolution the video should be served. Perhaps it‘s getting an error and thinks I have a worse connection than I do and tries it‘s best to load the video anyway.
What I‘m trying to say is: We don‘t know why exactly Youtube acts up. Could just be a bad interaction from an update that is purely unintentional. Either way Adblocker devs will find a fix for it quickly like they always do.
“there’s currently no way around it”
“The issue goes away with a refresh”
lol. sounds more like a bug if it’s also affecting Premium users though
Not just the premium part, but also it affecting descriptions makes me think this is some kind of bug. At least partially. There’s not really any point to disabling descriptions specifically, most people don’t read them anyway.
“there’s currently no way around it” “The issue goes away with a refresh”
The way I understand it, the issue only resolves if you refresh while on the video you want to watch. Navigating to another video would unfix it again. So it’s not really a real fix the way most people expect a fix to look like. They want something they can apply and then they don’t have to deal with the problem anymore. Which, based on this article, only disabling your adblocker achieves.
YouTube premium membership, for when you like paying to be fucked over.
The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty
So it makes the page even better?
Right. That isn’t a problem at all. The only times I use either is when I’m looking for time stamps, but I can live without that.
All those issues have existed for a while now in non-Chromium based browsers; hell I get them using the app on my smart TV and that doesn’t even block ads. Especially with YouTube Shorts. I don’t think it has anything to do with blocking ads. It’s just youtube being shit in general.
This is why I will never get premium. You pay the motherfuckers money and still have to take it up the ass.
I’ve expressed this a few times already on Lemmy to little fanfare to say the least, but I use YouTube a lot. I use it a lot on my phone. I’d use it offline on planes. I want to pay for it. But I’m a yucky VPN user and I’m not even allowed to pay a blanket inflated price for it.
The algorithm is still absolutely amazing for music discovery. I already have channels I automatically yank things via YT-DLG from, but like using the service normally is nice too. I don’t see ads on my computer, but I suspect they might be feeding me extra ads on the phone to compensate. Because if this is the standard ad density for phone users it is vomitingly absurd.
Theoretically the folks you watch get paid from the fee. I don’t hate that system. I’m willing to pay, my payment is ready, I’m willing to pay 5 or 20 or however many bucks for it. But using a VPN to watch YouTube on a paid account can get your account banned. Incredible stuff. This is just about the only media subscription I can see myself using. And they’re cutting off all VPN users like that.
I’ll never get it because first-party ads are only a small part of the problem. Shitty rec algos, Shorts absolutely rammed the fuck down your throat, third-party ads, dislike counters, gaslighting you about the resolution, clickbait blockers, cross platform feed, etc. These are all solved with third party clients.
Yeah but if you were a YouTube Premium subscriber surely you’d disable the adblocker on youtube.com so you never get this issue.
I… Honestly don’t even think about my adblocker enough to even think to disable certain websites in it. Generally if I like a site enough to disable ads, I’ll also generally like them enough to pay them more money than they would have gotten from me turning ads off for a year
Why? So they can serve you ads on top of something you’re already paying money for?
But… you do not get ads if you have Premium, that’s the point.
Then why would it fucking matter if you have an adblock on? Google shouldn’t give a fuck at that point.
You occasionally still get ads, even with premium.
I’ve had premium for a couple years now, no idea what you’re talking about
Same here, been using premium since it was bundled with google music when that was a thing. Aside from the creators sponsors, I never received a single ad as long as I was signed in properly to my account.
I had it for more than 5 years before abandoning it. I still got ads. I’d complain and YouTube would tell me it was a rare bug, or my browser, or the phase of the moon. They’d promise it’d never happen again and it still kept happening. I suspect it was a test to see what they could get away with.
Others in the comments have similar stories.
There have been some users reporting they get ads despite being Premium users, especially in regards to Youtube’s efforts to bypass adblockers (even if they weren’t using one). I always assumed that’s because their measures were misidentifying the lack of ads as using an ad blocker, even if that lack was due to using premium.
Just wanted to give an actual explanation. I’m not qualified to actually confirm or deny whether those user reports were factual or made up. But people usually consider them factual because of herd mentality.
there’s no point. I tried the free trial of youtube premium cause i’m on Qutebrowser and the adblocking isn’t the greatest. even with Premium i’d still randomly get ads every now and then. IF i were paying for it I’d be pissed.
Now I circumvent this by just opening all the videos in MPV.
I’ve never gotten an ad with premium. Been subscribed for about 5 years.
With respect, I don’t believe you. I paid for Premium for half a decade and never saw a single ad. I stopped my sub and will advise people against it going forward, but your claim is highly suspect to me.
Imagine being a paying Premium member and still get caught by this… That said, the YouTube comments are worth shit, so not much is lost there. The descriptions can be quite annoying when missing.
I really should start looking into yt-dlp or something. Anybody know if that’s still working fine these days?
“Who’s still watching in 2026”
first
Praise Jesus
One thing is certain: Your distro’s repository’s version of yt-dlp - even on bleeding edge distros - is likely out of date, and you’ll have to find and run the appimage version from the devs.
You can just pass the
--updateflag when invoking yt-dlp. I don’t think the package itself needs to be up to date in order to work reliably.
Doing the lord’s work 🙏
Sounds like updating firefox and/or ublock will get past most of it.
Personally? I am not as opposed to google making life harder for people who want to run an adblocker, considering that is the site’s revenue (specifically the targeted ads based on user data). But I actually pay for youtube premium and have been having to refresh every video between clicking and watching it and that is just fucking stupid.
Although, it also means that shorts no longer autoplay. So when I actually want to watch a short that a channel I like put up, I only see THAT short rather than however many others before I click away.
So my adblocker now also removes youtube comments? That’s more of a feature than a hurdle!
When adblox inevitably fixes this, you can block comments, and a bunch of other crap, on purpose with Unhooked
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/
What ad blocker are you using?
uBlock Origin (I’m still seeing the comments, though).
Are you still seeing the ads?
No, ads are still blocked.
Splendid. Thank you!
I have that on Firefox but I still have to use Chrome for a few things that seem to glitch out on Firefox. I have AdGuard on Chrome. Right now it seems to be working on Youtube as well. I am still seeing comments.
I usually find the comments more useful than the video, sometimes more entertaining too.
Then you really should watch better videos.
There is no fucking way in hell I’ll ever a) watch ads b) pay for Youtube Premium. They created this monopoly with no alternative option and now we’re suppose to just get fucked while they get even more obscenely rich beyond all tasteful levels. Yeah, I don’t think so. And given how I ditched everything Google, if it ever comes to it, I’ll ditch Youtube too. It’s basically the only thing I still even use from Google because there’s just no alternative.
Soon will be a good time to quit YT completely. Suddenly, you’ll have lots of time to do all the things you were supposed to do long ago. You know like taking a walk, cooking nice food, reading books, getting to bed early etc.
My ad blocker won’t let me watch YouTube. I didn’t know there was a problem. Good ad blocker.
you can kind of ungoogle youtube by using invidious https://invidious.io/
I just use it without account and subscribe to my favorite channels using external RSS feed reader. This way I still keep track of my fav content and doing it entirely outside of Google. If they track me as guest, I really don’t care that much.
Ironically, YouTube is one case that’s much better with personalized recommendations. I even open links from social media in incognito tabs so as to not pollute my recommendations accidentally.
Any time I happen to open Youtube’s main page in an incognito tab, it’s filled with complete trash that’s offered to my region by default. It’s not even my usual snobbery talking — the content is like wall-to-wall Jerry Springer Show.
the hardest thing to stop them tracking you is digital fingerprinting. they don’t need you to sign in, they have a profile with dozens of data points unique to your hardware/browser, unless you’ve got things installs specifically to prevent fingerprinting
That site is brutal. No matter what I do or what browser setup I use, it always says that I have a unique fingerprint
i think the message is there’s no such thing as 100% private/anonymous–there’ll always be something giving you up
Don’t forget the phone. Almost everyone with a smartphone is either an Apple or Google user via it, and everyone seems to forget that.
68% of people who responded to the poll at the link say that they are not affected. Only 10% of responders are.
Probably A/B testing.
I’m not lowering my security for Google.
I had this happen to me. I simply disabled ublock origin’s quick filters and everything worked fine after.
