• Pamasich@kbin.earth
    2 months

    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

    • MutantTailThing@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      This is why I will never get premium. You pay the motherfuckers money and still have to take it up the ass.

      • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
        2 months

        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.

      • biscuit@lemdro.idEnglish
        2 months

        Yeah but if you were a YouTube Premium subscriber surely you’d disable the adblocker on youtube.com so you never get this issue.

          • nokama@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2 months

            But… you do not get ads if you have Premium, that’s the point.

            • Pamasich@kbin.earth
              2 months

              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.

              • MrQuallzin@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2 months

                I’ve had premium for a couple years now, no idea what you’re talking about

                • skribe@piefed.socialEnglish
                  2 months

                  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.

                • TheRagingGeek@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2 months

                  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.

            • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.worksdeleted by creatorEnglish
              2 months

              Then why would it fucking matter if you have an adblock on? Google shouldn’t give a fuck at that point.

            • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2 months

              Counterpoint, it doesn’t make your experience ad free as many YouTubers have sponsored content.

        • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lolEnglish
          2 months

          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

      • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        English
        2 months

        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.

        • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
          2 months

          For what it’s worth, I used a VPN on my Premium account many times over several years and never got banned, or even a warning. I would specifically use it to watch videos that were not normally available in my region.

      • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
        2 months

        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.

        • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 months

          I’ve never gotten an ad with premium. Been subscribed for about 5 years.

        • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
          2 months

          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.

          • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            2 months

            These kinds of things are often A B testing to see what they can get away with - especially in countries like the US where consumer protection laws basically don’t matter. It’s kinda like when they raise subscription prices in one country but not another, but with showing some people in that country a certain amount of ads per watch time vs another group with a different amount of ads. They see how much they can get away with before people start complaining, and then what they can get away with before people start cancelling.

            I watched a video just this morning talking about how YouTube has built-in systems for similar A B testing with video thumbnails to tell creators which gets more watch time. You give it 2 thumbnails and it randomizes which one people see, and then tracks click-through rates and watch time percentages before giving you a result of which one performs better.

            • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
              2 months

              There’s a difference between AB testing, and fraud. Charging someone a sub cost to not see ads, and then AB testing if you can get away with still showing them ads, is fraud. If they saw ads with Premium, it’s a million times more likely it was an error, but I frankly just don’t believe it. That’s just my opinion.

              • qaeta@lemmy.caEnglish
                2 months

                Have you been paying like… literally any attention to US corpo activities lately? Fraud is not only not being punished, but actively rewarded, so long as you bend the knee to Trump, which Google has.

          • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
            2 months

            I didn’t say it was constant. I only said every now and again on the free trial I’d get an ad. Maybe it’s because I only used it with Qutebrowser. I don’t know. but I know that sometimes I would get an ad on a video.

          • WraithGear@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2 months

            my folks pay for premium, and i have to sit through constant tide or liberty mutual commercials surrounding every video when i visit. i asked why they pay for premium and they say it’s worse without it

                • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
                  2 months

                  A cheaper tier than Premium that offers fewer features. Along with this, there’s still some ads.

    • fistac0rpse@fedia.io
      2 months

      “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

      • Pamasich@kbin.earth
        2 months

        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.

    • kadu@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
      2 months

      The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty

      So it makes the page even better?

      • myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 months

        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.

    • Decq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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?

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        2 months

        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.

        • midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2 months

          You can just pass the --update flag when invoking yt-dlp. I don’t think the package itself needs to be up to date in order to work reliably.

          • TractorDuffy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2 months

            That only works if yt-dlp was installed as a standalone binary or via pip. If it was installed from a distro repository, the self-update mechanism is intentionally disabled because the package manager controls the version. In that case --update does nothing : /

    • arcine@jlai.luEnglish
      2 months

      Comment sections removed ? That should be a feature !

      I had an extension that removed those, amongst other things, but that part broke. Most video comments on YouTube are incredibly stupid, I’d rather just not have to see them.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
      2 months

      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.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukEnglish
      2 months

      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.

      • MetalSlugX@piefed.socialEnglish
        2 months

        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.

        • entwine@programming.devEnglish
          2 months

          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,

          It’s hard to tell on the internet; is this sarcasm?

          • stray@pawb.socialEnglish
            2 months

            There is a TON of educational content on YouTube. You can spend all day watching nothing but documentaries and classroom-style lectures/tutorials if you want. I would prefer to not use a Google service, but the actual content-creators include some wonderful people.

      • itsamelemmy@piefed.zipEnglish
        2 months

        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.

        • stray@pawb.socialEnglish
          2 months

          If, when the ad read starts, you double-tap to fast forward, a little skip button will pop up which allows you to skip the sponsored section.

          With a browser addon you can skip automatically without Premium. It doesn’t work with very fresh videos though, because they need time for the timestamps to get added into the database.

    • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Yeah uBlock Origin has worked fine through every single one of these “adblockers are broken!” articles I’ve seen

      I don’t mind, it’s still good to raise awareness about Youtube’s bullshit - especially since I’m getting ads for Border Patrol, OpenAI, and the fucking Melania movie now when I do see them (when I am lazy and using my Roku TV instead of HDMI). But it hasn’t been a problem for me yet.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2 months

        Could just be because they address it rather fast.

        It could also be due to chrome limiting what uBlock can do.

        UBlock + Firefox seems like the ideal combo.

        • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 months

          I actually just realized I apparently disabled UBO for some reason on Youtube - can’t imagine why - and it was actually just Brave Browser blocking everything on its own.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2 months

      Dont let them know… They probably never even tested on Firefox. :)

    • stochasticity@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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.

  • remon@ani.socialEnglish
    2 months

    So my adblocker now also removes youtube comments? That’s more of a feature than a hurdle!

  • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
    2 months

    uBlock Origin on Firefox with default settings and filterlists still works successfully on Youtube.

    • Stitch0815@feddit.orgEnglish
      2 months

      Raymond Hill is the absolut GOAT

      “No way around it” always ends the same After 2 days uBlock just works.

      Taking no donations, just maintaining out of pure spite

      Love to see it

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 months

        I’m still waiting for them to just to implement Wildvine. It has to happen at some point.

        • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
          2 months

          Yes, I wonder why they hadn’t done it yet, except for paid movies.

          • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2 months

            Yeah, they probably already have the tooling in place. Maybe the power (heat + work) cost to encode a Mr. Beast video hurts the profit too much.

            Maybe they’re afraid of putting widevine at the working end of the likes of ublock origin and brave. iIIRC some of the WV keys are in the wild, they just keep em close to the action not to make them rotate them out.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2 months

      Works on my machine fails to account for A/B testing. Everytime someone says something’s not working, they also mean it’s not working on my machine/account.

      • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
        2 months

        uBlock origin is the same code on mine or yours machine. It does not need a graphics card, nor uses some particular instuctions of the CPU.
        On Firefox Stable on Flathub at the time of writing, with default settings and default lists, it will work as expected on Youtube.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2 months

          Google does not always provide the same Youtube code/challenges to you and me. That’s what A/B testing is about.

          • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
            2 months

            Is uBlock Origin working for you specifically, enabling it alone with no other add-on?

    • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Yep. Still working on mine. I also use windows 10. Dunno if that matters or not.

    • StinkyRedMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Stopped working for me last weekend if i’m logged in. Youtube deploy this kind of things in waves usually.

    • LordPassionFruit@lemmy.caEnglish
      2 months

      Mine isn’t working flawlessly with this exact set up, but it’s just forcing me to refresh the page every time I load a new video. Still no ads.

        • LordPassionFruit@lemmy.caEnglish
          2 months

          Nope, just uBlock. If I disable uBlock before loading the page everything works fine as well, so I’m pretty sure it’s uBlock.

          But I’m on Linux (openSuse Tumbleweed) and have had some interesting “distro specific” bugs in recent months, so I’m chalking it up to “my OS + Firefox” and not “uBlock”

          • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
            2 months

            I am also on openSUSE Tumbleweed, but using Flatpak Firefox.
            Perhaps you can try disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox to see if it chinges anyting.

            • LordPassionFruit@lemmy.caEnglish
              2 months

              I’ll give it a shot. I don’t use flatpaks, but I think I’ve already disabled hardware acceleration for a previous issue? I’ll report back once I’ve checked/tried it out.

            • LordPassionFruit@lemmy.caEnglish
              2 months

              Reporting back, you were absolutely correct. Hardware acceleration was turned back on, and turning it off fixed the problem.

  • chasteinsect@programming.devEnglish
    2 months

    “Based on these reports, users see a message stating “Comments are turned off,” which appears across a wide range of videos”

    Seems like a win to me.

  • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2 months

    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.

    • turboSnail@piefed.europe.pubEnglish
      2 months

      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.

      • SeeMarkFly@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2 months

        My ad blocker won’t let me watch YouTube. I didn’t know there was a problem. Good ad blocker.

      • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2 months

        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.

        • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2 months

          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

          https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

          • morto@piefed.socialEnglish
            2 months

            That site is brutal. No matter what I do or what browser setup I use, it always says that I have a unique fingerprint

            • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2 months

              i think the message is there’s no such thing as 100% private/anonymous–there’ll always be something giving you up

          • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2 months

            Why does firefox allow random people to farm all that information? That’s the real problem here.

            • U7826391786239@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2 months

              it’s not just firefox. pretty sure that’s just how the web works. i use librewolf with privacy badger, canvas blocker, and ublock, but it’s still built around firefox. i get a “unique fingerprint” notification, but also “you have strong tracking protection”

        • pet the cat, walk the dog@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 months

          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.

    • Brewchin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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.

      • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2 months

        The main issue with phones are fucking banks. Their bullshit insisting on phones having to have locked bootloader is so fucking annoying. I used phone with LineageOS but it was nightmare to work with my bank and they all do this shit to “protect the user”. Yeah right.

        Yes, I do use Android phone, but I used ADB AppControl and just deleted and disabled all the Google shit on it (easier on Samsung since they have their own services which I prefer over Google if I have to). I also run DNS level filtering using Hagezi Ultimate list which filters so much shit. Not ideal still, but it works.

        • Brewchin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 months

          Yup. That’s the main thing stopping me from yeeting Google from my phone (also Samsung): the tickbox sanctity of a non-rooted phone that financial (and some other) apps require. Very frustrating.

  • fierysparrow89@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2 months

    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.

  • pleaseletmein@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2 months

    I’ve stopped using YouTube for the most part. Cut down a lot once they broke the search function and I could no longer find what I was looking for because every result would be flooded with random shorts and other irrelevant content.

    Then, my account, which was made in either 05 or 06, got flagged as belonging to a minor and they asked me to verify my age with an ID. Why this even happened when the account itself is over 18 now, and I’m not in the US (which I thought was the only place their age verification BS was being implemented) is beyond me.

    I wish there were more options for long form video sharing, since YouTube seems to be the only viable platform for it at the moment.

    • RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2 months

      I got flagged as a minor, despite an old account. They would not accept my card that I pay for premium with as a valid card. It’s valid enough to pay them the stupid fucks.

      You can do the selfie thing, except use a 4k video of someone talking to the screen and it’ll probably work. I used an Evan Edinger video, scanned that and passed fairly easily. AI probably works if you can get a high fidelity image but all the free ones are well under 1080p and just don’t really register.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2 months

      alot of time its right wing shorts, or thirst traps videos. and this from not logging in.

    • coolfission@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      YT search is completely broken. It used to be that the first 3-4 videos were relevant and the rest were YT shorts or stuff you previously watched. Now, not even the first result is related to what I search for. I have to use Google in order to get the video I actually want. Even incognito in YT doesn’t help much nowadays.

  • Iconoclast@feddit.ukEnglish
    2 months

    Apparently there is a way around it as I’ve been watching YouTube all day and haven’t encountered a single ad.

    • FG_3479@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      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.

      • entwine@programming.devEnglish
        2 months
        1. Why the fuck are you posting YouTube comments?
        2. Why the fuck are you using Brave?

        Stop using the YouTube app/website, get an alt frontend like FreeTube, Grayjay, Revanced, etc. Not only do they remove ads and make it impossible for Google to track you, they have better UX than the official apps.

      • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2 months

        I noticed one of my comments was shadowbanned, I thought it was the channel that did it. Hmm, I don’t comment much on YT, I guess I won’t at all now. NBD.

        • FG_3479@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 months

          The issue is with your ad blocker, not YouTube, though YouTube has no incentive to tell you what is going on as it would help out bots trying the same thing.

          I don’t like Brave but they seem to have gone to the effort of whitelisting the heartbeats, so use that for YouTube comments.

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2 months

    YouTube is coming up with another infuriating way to force users to pay for Premium subscription or watch ads.

    Or to let us know its time to quit. I have narrowed down my youtube use a lot. If it is ad only I won’t bother at all.

    Won’t miss much frankly.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Yes, but you are the minority.

      I dated a girl over the summer, and we were watching youtube videos in bed.

      My phone has revanced, and it kills all the ads.

      Then she shows me one of her videos.

      It was…oh my god. Do you have ANY idea how awful the vanilla youtube experience is?

      And thats just how most people watch it. They just watch youtube, with the official app. Ads and all, and are fine with it.

      So even if all the fediverse minded people quit youtube in unison, it would still be less than 1% of their viewership.

      • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 months

        It often makes me wonder why you tube keeps squeezing then. If the majority don’t block ads it seems like it would be an acceptable loss.

        At this point, I am kind of done with youtube either way. The more I go on with life the more I want to actually do things instead if passively just watch things.

      • chasteinsect@programming.devEnglish
        2 months

        It was…oh my god. Do you have ANY idea how awful the vanilla youtube experience is?

        Whether or not that matters depends on how much and how you watch it.

        Ads while I listen to music = annoying

        I want to navigate fast to different videos on PC to find something and almost every time an ad appears on a new video = annoying

        I’m watching some chill drive or walk while reading a book and a loud ad appears = annoying.

        But when I just go and watch 1-3 videos before bed on my ipad? I don’t care if I get those 2-4 ads, I just mute and wait those couple of seconds. I have no youtube adblockers or different clients on ipad / phone for that reason.

    • Jeffool @lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Like was already said, I’m considering cancelling YouTube Premium too but our numbers won’t really matter. The reports of worsening Firefox compatibility almost some me in and I didn’t even notice.

      I have a family plan with my brother and cousin on it. I know they’re cracking down on sharing with people who don’t live together, but if they cut them I’m done. I’ll figure it out. And I’m probably petty enough to comment about it on everyone’s videos that I follow. (Which also won’t really matter, but I’ll feel better voicing the discontent.)

  • Triumph@fedia.io
    2 months

    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 … ?

    • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      YouTube comments are almost never worth reading in the first place (top comment is usually: who is here in <<current year>>? 😆). I never look at the descriptions, and the only time I watch YouTube is for either music videos or concert captures or links someone has sent me. Congrats YouTube, I don’t care about any of the features you turned off.

    • IratePirate@feddit.orgEnglish
      2 months

      Exactly! I can no longer read ads for crypto scams, right-wing misinformation and porn bot spam? Do not threaten me with a good time.

  • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2 months

    I don’t really get the sentiment here - what’s happening is the standard development if a public good (that youtube kind of was before google purchased them) gets privatized. It’s the same with communications (isn’t AT&T great?), water, electricity, rail infrastructure and trains, roads - investors are never good for the public good. They’re only good at lining their pockets.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2 months

      I suspect that if Google hadn’t bought them, it would have been only a matter of time. Storage back then was hella expensive and without the ad cache, i don’t know they could have afforded to grow and stay ‘free’.

      YouTube was pretty damned good for quite a while, even after Google purchased it.

      Back in the day, when you got 1 30-second ad, or even two 30-second ads, right in the center.

      Things started to go to shit around the 1 min unskippable ads.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2 months

    I find getting rid of YouTube to be incredibly difficult. I use both peer-tube and odysee as much as possible, but still find myself on YouTube more than I’d like. Of course, I’m only doing YouTube through a newpipe, but it’s still accessing YouTube.

    • CafeFrog@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      2 months

      odysee as much as possible

      Just a heads up, Odysee became bankrupt after its parent company LBRY (owned by a hyper racist and fascist ancap who was trying to politically takeover New Hampshire with a right-wing libertarian community to, among other things, revoke child-labor protection laws before being kicked off the board for his racism) did a pump’n’dump of their LBRY coin without reporting it on their taxes, which the government sued them for since it was illegal.

      Odysee was then bought out by Arweave; a blockchain crypto scam company created and owned by Forward Research, which itself is owned by Sam Williams; another venture capital crypto techbro libertarian/ancap who also bought a big NFT company during the Odysee aquisition. So unfortunately, Odysee is no better than Google.

      Peertube is great though.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2 months

        I am fully aware of what odysee is. I still choose to use it because I’m a libertarian myself, and it’s still a competitor to Google.

        • CafeFrog@lemmy.cafeEnglish
          2 months

          I see. Does the crypto aspect of Odysee and its new NFT-liking owner concern you at all? If not, have you seen this video?

          • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2 months

            I use Monero myself and I’m fully aware that NFTs are total scams. At least the way they were done several years ago. And probably still today. I stay away from all that mess.

            I haven’t seen the video, but am watching it now. It’s always good to get multiple viewpoints on a subject.

            As I said above though, I only use Monero so I don’t feel as though I’m subject to all that NFT mess, but I do want to watch the video to see if they cover anything like that, but I doubt it.

    • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      It surely doesn’t help that YouTube has replaced broadcast TV for most people. You can’t even go back if you wanted to because TV is all but dead these days. Not unless you don’t mind 24-7/365 marathons of Ridiculousness on MTV, and nothing but reality TV and old reruns catered to 80-year-olds on the remaining channels, cause that’s the only demographic left still watching TV.

  • Tigeroovy@lemmy.caEnglish
    2 months

    They did successfully disable uBlock Origin for me on chrome but I found a workaround that so far seems to be sticking fine despite further updates. Still see comments and descriptions fine on youtube. Occasionally things take a little longer to load than I would expect but I’ll take a longer load time on a black screen over being stuck watching dogshit ads relentlessly.

    uBlock also seems to just continue to work on FireFox which also plays youtube fine.

    • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 months

      Ublock Lite still works on Chrome. There are no custom filters and it doesn’t block a lot of annoyances (like “Sign In With [brand]”), but it gets the job done for most people.

      But honestly if you want have the most reliable adblocking experience, then Firefox w/Ublock Origin is still your best bet (also YouTube ReVanced for mobile and SmartTube/SmartTubeNext for TVs).