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bermuda @beehaw.org

I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is

So I've been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I've been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren't allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel's back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn't let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.

So I disabled it and... wow. It's just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn't enjoy anything that wasn't already demonetized.

And you know I'm fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it's just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.

E: I've been on Firefox for over a year.

194 comments

  • It sucks. What sucks even more for me is that, I understood the fact that a platform like YouTube costs an unimaginable amount. I get that. And I wanted to pay. As a matter of fact, I did pay, happily so, for quite while. For YouTube Prenium Lite. Until a week ago I think, where I got this wonderful email from Google titled: Kindly go fuck yourself... or at least that's how I read it... telling me that YouTube Prenium Lite was going the way of the Google graveyard. Because of course it did. And now, it was paying for full Prenium or nothing.

    So I stopped paying. I'm not paying 13 bucks a month for no ads. Especially if you're basically strong arming me in doing so, I'll do without YouTube.

    Because hey, I tried YouTube Music. It's actually quite good in many aspects (horrendously flawed in many others too, of course, but that's most Music Streaming services) but you know what? I know it's been years, but I'm still not over Google Play Music and how they killed that off for what was an inferior product back then. Why the fuck would I invest my time and money in a Google product, nowadays? I'm sorry if you reading this were one of these people, but it's like... to the people who were paying for Stadia and were shocked to learn that the service was shutting down... I'm sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you? It was bound to happen, from the moment it was announced, the entire internet started joking about the fact that this thing will be dead in two years!

    I refuse to pay for a Google product nowadays. It's like paying for a live service game at release, it's rolling the dice and betting against the colossal odds that this thing will be dead in two years. So, unless it's a Pixel, so I can slap something else than stock Android, Google can suck it. They won't get a cent from me.

    It's not like I paid for Prenium Lite because I loved YouTube. Hell, YouTube stopped being a good product a long time ago, I was paying for the content I was watching. Gotta support creators, you know? And also, because I watched a lot of YouTube on my TV, and you can't slap Ublock on that. It was a reasonable enough price. But now? Fuck YouTube, I'm done with this. I've been hating this platform more and more for a while now, the algorithm is awful, it keeps recommanding me stuff I don't want (why the hell does YouTube insist and recommanding me far right content, jesus christ, stop!). And even without ads, you still get them because monetization is so damn inconsistent creators can only depend on sponsors, I could go on and on.

    So now, it's NewPipe on mobile, Piped on desktop and I guess I'll just find something better to watch on TV. I'm paying for Nebula, it's cheap, doesn't have even a third of the people who I watched on YouTube, but at least it's creator centric and it's got a lot of good, interesting stuff on it. I've been watching lots of Twitch lately, and while yes, I agree, fuck Amazon, at least I can just pay for the people who I watch most to get no ads, it's a reasonable price, support them and Twitch ads are not nerely as horrendous YouTube's are in terms of frequency. So, yeah. I don't miss it.

  • I stayed at a place last year that had a RokuTV, YouTube was practically unusable on it due to the absurd number of ads that would play. Even more infuriating was that they were often the same ad, repeated.

  • I tried to give YouTube ads a chance at one point but they got ridiculous to the point I just can't.

  • I use NoScript to block every script from google except for ytimg and youtube and I haven't seen anything like that; though, I do only watch 1-2 videos at a time, maybe I haven't 'triggered' it.

    I can even disable origin and still not see any ads because NoScript blocks them from loading in the first place.

  • I would actually pay for Youtube Premium Family, where it not for the fact that it does not work with gsuite accounts (which I have for my family).

    We have spotify for the family, and I would cancel that and switch to youtube and music premium of google. For three dollars more we get ad-less youtube as well as music.

    Sorry google, gotta pay attention to these things.

  • Not long ago, I was watching 5 skipable ads after 10 minutes of video on Viki. It was a time when they were distributing Korean and Chinese Drama at a pace no independent subtitle team would keep up. The shows were culturally interesting, they were a community spirit you could feel even when not participating in subtitling. The video player was good with nice features like learning mode and timestamped comment. It was an acceptable tradeoff. Today's Viki and YouTube quality is barely sufficient for not favoring pirated website which have in the mean time greatly improved their user experience.

    • Use Piped as a front end for y--t---. It's open source & non-tracking, but views still count. The creator is active on the fedi too.

      Individual servers sometimes go off line or lose quality when they're rate limited. Just try a different server when that happens. If the one you're using at the time shows ads and there are too many, check preferences to turn them off.

      (My addiction is Thai. Also watch some c- and k- too.)

  • Have you tried Freetube (desktop) or Newpipe / Libretube (Android)? Working fine for me.

    • of course those work its just annoying seeing the main site crumble this way. I shouldn't have to use third party workarounds when the first party site can be making improvements easily

194 comments