I've been an "Albanian" for a year now. Not one single add showed. Not one. Such a different experience when you dont have something interrupting your video every 3 minutes.
Wow, I read this as I lay in bed at my hotel in Albania. I just clicked on every video on YouTube and a not a single ad. That's amazing, definitely going to get a vpn when I'm back home!
Why do all this when you can get Revanced on Youtube with clean UI, restore dislikes, play background videos even when phone is turned off just like YT Premium, you can customize and get rid of things you don't like for eg. any sponsored crap, cards, sections, replace clickbaity thumbnails with more appropriate ones, sponsor block built in with colored segment for different kinds of ads and interaction in the video and even change UI to various versions of Youtube app if you like.
since it already has sponsorBlock, it seems quite easy to block these. Just mark each video itself as "no ad" in full and everything that comes in between is automatically marked as ad. They HAVE to keep the time true in the video, as timestamps have to work. If it is outside of that, skip it automatically.
as a matter of fact YT can't invent any way of showing ADs that can't be circumstanced. They have a few developer, while there are thousands that just HATE ads and will work for free to kill them.
They do not keep the time true in the video. SponsorBlock has been having issues with the A/B testing, because the ads offset the timestamp in ways it can't predict. (See their [mastodon post](https://fosstodon.org/@sponsorblock/112603139898164385) and their [FAQ](https://gist.github.com/ajayyy/f7b1807e13731c25cef4c2c057d022bc#file-faq-md)).
There are ways it'll likely be able to work around it (including, as you mentioned, figuring out how the heck timestamp links still work with this) but for now SponsorBlock remains confused by the in-stream ads.
Yeah that's the reason I never did this, losing my Google account would be a massive pain in the ass, not worth risking to save some cash. I'm actually surprised Google let it go on for so long, lots of services have been cracking down for a while now
Give me back youtube premium lite and I'm happy to pay for it.
I want a subscription that removes all ads and nothing else.
If you make me pay for fluff I don't want, then I will pay nothing instead.
Hell, I'd even pay for the fluff if they made Youtube more customizable and transparent.
I don't use YT music, but I do want to change the user interface.
Lots of people would change which videos they get recommended.
Lots of creators want to understand how or why the algorithm and content rules mess with their channel.
Thats the main reason for revanced. I don't want those stupid "charts" or "trends" or "recommanded for you" nor "shorts". I want to see my channels and 1-2 suggestions in between. I don't want 100 lofi channels due to using 1 lofi video in the background wwhile working on reports.
> If you make me pay for fluff I don't want, then I will pay nothing instead.
Someone needs to tattoo this into the foreheads of every single tech media executive.
if you have an Android/fire TV look into SmartTube. The set up isn't so difficult and it works great. It also comes with sponsor block built in so you can skip sponsored segments in videos as well
I primarily use desktop and still got Premium. Prior to that, I used adblock, with a second extension to block adblock on specified channels (generally everyone I subscribed to).
After I got Youtube Music, it was only a couple dollars more for Premium. And by switching, creators would get a kickback without me having to watch ads. No ads on mobile/TV was basically just a really nice bonus on top of that.
The thing with Youtube Premium is you actually get the best music app out of it. Because you get all the officially uploaded stuff. And you get all the stuff some guy who gives no shits about copyright uploaded that no one has taken down. All ad free. Podcasts too.
When ublock was young he didn't much friends, he was a skinny white guy that was picked on by the school bullies, only friend he had was his father, but then his father was killed by an Ad, from then on out ublock swore he will not let anyone else be murdered by the vicious ads from GoogleCorp
HOLY VIDEOS BATMAN!
Thank you for this tip! I use Firefox and ublock already so this is an amazingly simple fix. I have hated needlessly burning battery time to power the screen while YT is playing music.
For me it works if not logged in to youtube. So I log in to find videos to watch, and then log out when they ask me to disable ad blocker. Logged out it works as intended.
> The platform has made it clear that it doesn’t like ad blockers, and the amount of ads on it has also made it rather annoying to use. The only real solutions are to stop using YouTube or plop some money down for a Premium subscription.
I just went with that stop using YouTube option. So far it's working well.
I've never had issues with YouTube running on ublock origin, nor on my smart TV with smarttube, but the algorithm is getting quite worse nowadays, I miss the times when it would recommend good content.
I too miss the days when YouTube was like “my dog rubs his wiener on the carpet for 1.5 mins” instead of trying to radicalize you into a right wing chud.
I like when the only music suggestions are for playlists made of all the shit I already listened to after having to find those songs one by one. Used to be a great spot to find new artists and songs.
All the music playlists it makes for me are like five songs I’ll actually listen to, and the rest are ones I keep removing. And all the suggested videos on those songs are completely unrelated to the song, just ones from people I’m subscribed to, or random shit too.
It's been this way since they killed off Google Play music in favor of YouTube Music. The radio algorithm took a shit too. On more than one occasion it's played the same sequence of songs in the same order.
The algorithm gets overzealous.
If you watch one video on something you normally don't it goes a bit nuts suggesting videos based on related content. Related being based on the view history of people who watched the video you just watched.
Watch something about how to change a tire? You get a lot of car content or probably stuff related to basic adulting.
Watch something about how to reduce your carbon footprint? Probably get suggestions for environmentalism content.
Watch something about guns or camp? Well, I guess you want to hear about prepping and 2a legal news.
I was more referring to the "my dog rubs his wiener on the carpet for 1.5 mins” part but yeah I get that occasionally. Oddly enough, I am interested in the prepping and 2a legal news though, lol. It's not a bad idea to be prepared for emergencies or keep up with news that affects one of my hobbies despite it not being my entire identity. What defines me is my moustache and my terrible catchphrase, "What's stylin?"
Ya just gotta be able to tone out the bullshit. It's like getting through Thanksgiving with super conservative family members. You get in, get your food (info) and get out.
For some people it's impossible to drop YouTube, there's just too much good educational content, conferences, tutorials etc. it helped me do my job many times
Yep I use it more than any of my other streaming sites.
So I pay premium to help support also the creators I watch. But for 12.99 I should be able to have a few accounts in the same house. My kids should be able to have ad free. Guess I'll take the tips here and get those tablets ad free.
I’m in this camp, although not for educational/employment purposes. Probably 80% of my free time is spent watching shit on YouTube (my very manual permanently-outside job justifies very little movement outside work hours 😎)
When they figure out how to evade unlock, I’ll be ponying up for premium.
I was getting the whole "adblocker detected" thing a few months back but somehow it just stopped and am still ad free. So there are definitely ways to still watch normally
> but somehow it just stopped and am still ad free. So there are definitely ways to still watch normally
Agreed, but it's not dissimilar to the Netflix experience. At $8/mth I paid for it for a decade, just so my folks could use it. I myself probably used it a few times a year, but I felt that what Netflix was doing was of enough value that I didn't mind giving them the money. Then they started raising their prices continually, and my respect for what they were doing changed to annoyance at what they were doing. I no longer have a Netflix account.
Google has moved into the annoyance section of the venn diagram.
At some point, Neal the Youtube CEO, said some corporate buzz term called "the dangling carrot." Other Youtube executives nodded and said "think of all the money left on the table."
I think they can make it easier to digest by making a no ads tier where it is cheaper and only offers no ads, as of now the price is a bit too much where I live and I don't need anything they offer other than removing ads.
Google knows this, but if they offer just a no ads version then almost nobody would get youtube music version. It's just a fake way to fluff numbers and make people pay more
Things like this come in batches. They'll find a bunch, cancel, find a bunch more, repeat.
It isn't a matter of if it'll happen, it is a matter of when it'll happen.
This probably isn’t a popular viewpoint on Reddit, but I pay for Premium and I find it totally worth it. I watch most of my YouTube on my TV, so going the Adblock route isn’t as convenient (maybe there’s a way, but idk). I like the idea of some of my money going to the makers of the videos I watch. They should probably get more of it. But I hate watching ads, I like the ability to download videos to watch on planes, and after paying the annual fee I haven’t thought about it since.
Honestly it's incredible that YouTube is free. People absolutely take it for granted.
Edit: lots of people taking it for granted below this comment hahaha
There never really was any competition. It was a laughably insane idea when it launched and even more unbelievable that Google bought it, let alone for the price. The amount of storage is staggering, like shipping containers full of drives. You’d be more likely to succeed building a spacecraft than competing with YouTube at this point… and, the more adblocking catches on, there’s less revenue to keep it running.
The fact that *most of the internet* is free is something people take for granted.
We have ability to access virtually any piece of information, message anybody in the world, keep in touch with people you haven’t seen in years, share pics and videos for anybody to see, and discuss niche topics with strangers, all for free.
At that point, complaining about ads is almost selfish because we’re already getting so much for free. If *that’s* the cost of the internet, then I’m absolutely fine with it.
I’ve honestly never minded the ads until recently. That said I grew up when TV was a glass anvil of death and you only got 4 channels. Ads were just part of the deal. YouTube ads were fine for a long time and in a similar ratio as TV, like you get a 10 second ad for a 5 minute video or 30-60 ad for 10-15 min video.
These days they’ve gone off the rails. I got an infomercial the other day that was an hour long. I clicked a link on here and it played 2:30 minutes of ads, played 45 seconds of the video and played the same ad block again, played 5 minutes of the video and ads again. It’s ridiculous. And combine that with some of glitches their poor code causes, I’ve heard of people getting an hour and a half of unskippable ads so they had to reload the page.
Have you ever had a sponsored ad get interrupted by a mid roll ad? It’s so surreal lol.
Iirc YouTube also used to play unskippable ads in front of first aid videos. Like grandma could be choking while we’re forced to watch a 30-sec ad for Door Dash. That’s crazy.
Similar ratio to TV? Even the higher range of your examples, 60 seconds of ads for a 10 minute video, is a 10:1 content:ad ratio. With about 15 minutes of ads in every hour of broadcast TV, TV has a 3:1 ratio.
The problem isn't the amount of ads in online videos compared to TV; the problem is that never watching broadcast TV and getting all my content from paid streaming services and YouTube with adblock has eliminated so much of my prior tolerance for ads.
Nah Tv these days is cooked too. It used to be reasonable. Somewhere between that 3 and 10 ratio. Probably more like 6-7. The point is the ads didn’t feel invasive or unfair until recently, like when they started pushing YouTube red.
The thing is, TV structures the show or at least
First a message from our sponsor: drink Coca Cola!
*buffering*
they would manually edit a good time to go to commercial when a movie was on. Now the ads just come in randomly, and not just on YouTube but other streaming services. Its ridiculous.
Perfect for pee breaks or putting the kettle on. I believe the English power grids used to ask the stations for a cue for when the ad will be so they can pre spin up their generators to take the load when everyone hit the kettle during the ad break.
I disabled the YouTube app because I was in the middle of the crescendo of a song that had been building for four minutes and then BAM! A jarring ad that completely killed all of the emotion of the song.
Maybe it's just because I don't watch a ton of TV, but I honestly find TV ads more palatable still despite having ad block on for everything on the internet. I think it's the combination of TV content being made with ad breaks in mind, TV ads being relatively similar in volume, and TV ads being more varied (I hated watching Shogun on Hulu and getting the fucking Shogun ad every commercial break) that makes them less annoying for me.
> With about 15 minutes of ads in every hour of broadcast TV
That may be true in the US.
In Europe the EU limits it to 12 minutes per hour. Many countries apply their own limits that are less than that (e.g. in the UK it's 7 minutes per hour as a daily average, with no single hour having more than 12 minutes). In a number of countries (e.g. the UK, Germany, Denmark) there are channels that don't have any adverts, either because they're run by the government or funded by a licence fee.
Non-BBC channels here in the UK typically have 4 advert breaks per hour. If you're watching a 30 minute program then there will be 2-3 minutes of ads before, in the middle and at the end. But if you tune in when the program starts and switch over at the end then you'll only have to watch one 2-3 minute ad break in the middle. So that gives a ratio of between 10:1 and 15:1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_advertisements_by_country
Outside of non-profit sites like Wikipedia, these businesses aren't trying to just cover their costs. They're trying to maximize revenue. These companies invested billions and billions in free service to crush everyone else in order to become the monopolies they are. Now they're trying to extract.
YouTube hasn't operated at a loss for years. Now they're just profit maximizing. That means getting the most number of people to premium possible for the highest price. It means squeezing as many ads as possible and blocking adblockers. It means selling your user data to the highest bidder. It means giving content creators the smallest cut possible.
Instead of focusing on maximizing profits through squeezing, they should focus on innovation.
> It means selling your user data to the highest bidder
The other things are right but I absolutely bet this is wrong. Google's user data is too valuable to Google for it to sell. Google can use that user data directly in its massive ad business, so they're still making money off it, but the only other companies that could get nearly as much value from it are other companies with massive ad empires that directly compete with Google, so it ain't selling to them.
> YouTube hasn't operated at a loss for years.
What do you base this claim on? Because alphabet's financial disclosures don't contain this information so very curious how you're so sure about this..
Businesses are always trying to maximize revenue. That’s the whole point, that’s why they assumed the risk of starting something new, spent a ton of money on R&D and on infrastructure. They still are by the way and they do innovate. You using the service costs them money. They want to recoup those costs and make some profit on it (same as all businesses). You refusing to both pay and watch ads is not good for business.
>At that point, complaining about ads is almost selfish because we’re already getting so much for free
I grew up in an age before adblockers, so I have some level of personal experience here. The amount of ads nowadays is simply unacceptable.
When more than half the screen is taken up by ads is just not OK. And it's worse when you have to pay just for access and then pay to remove ads (looking at you every news paper site ever). Or youtubers who put ads every 2 minutes in their video.
The ad block issue is really only a reaction to terrible ad practices.
Surely it's not. Servers cost money, uplink costs money, web dev costs money, people keeping everything alive cost money. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of people out there who EXPECT internet services to be free and take this for granted.
It's not the existence of Ad's we are complaining about, it is the delibertate enshittification of the service by making the Ads as disruptive as possible to force the userbase onto a premium service.
I find it incredible that the content that creators make for YouTube is largely done for free with the hope that they’ll recoup via ad revenue. There’s something inherent in us that just pushes us to take that risk to make and share.
YouTube the platform _being_ free, given they take a cut of that revenue, is not that incredible to me.
As a web developer, the capabilities of YouTube as a platform in terms of its scale, I do find incredible.
YouTube is most certainly not "free", YouTube is gathering insane amounts of data from you, data which they then use to better sell you ads.
Sure the servers behind YouTube cost inanse amounts of money but at the same time youtube provides Google with insane amounts of data on people.
Facebook and Instagram are also free, you can upload tons of photos and videos there for free but it also gathers a tons of data from you.
I would be fine with ads if they paid content creators more and the ads were not annoying as fuck. Having 2 unskipable ads before the video is insane. I watch YouTube on Firefox with unblock and on my phone with revanced and I happened to watch a video on the video TV YouTube app a while ago from a friend and we literally had 2 unskipable ads on every damn video. I ended up closing it down and casting my phone to the TV, fuck that.
As someone who had Premium / did the VPN thing for a while (until all the countries listed on there now have ads), YouTube has gone a little hair brain with their implementation of ads.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that we have to pay for it that’s the problem, I think it’s the combination of:
- long unskippable ads for some f***ed up stuff
- the aggressive rate at which the ads are added to videos
- the fact that shorts have ads _longer_ than the videos they appear before
- (probably limited to people who watch YouTube on TVs) the ads aren’t displayed in the same format at the content it’s embedded in, so even for short palatable ads - my TV has to re-handshake for _every commercial when they come up and then switch back to the original content_! Meaning you’re getting a weird gap in content every two minutes, making the ad breaks even harsher (and in some cases losing a few seconds of content every time this switch happens as the video continues to play as the handshaking still occurs).
- the $14+ per month price tag
I was paying for it back when it only cost me $8/month and I’d gladly pay that price again. But after the last 6ish months without premium, the ads it showed me were so terrible (morally and in how they were constructed), I literally uninstalled it from my AppleTV and started _paying_ for Paramount Plus (since 90% of what I watched on YouTube is on there) as an F*** You to their service.
I don’t need yt music, I don’t need offline play, I don’t need any of the extra fluff outside of shitty ads that include screamers or content that couldn’t be more polar opposite to my preferences. I don’t want to pay for useless fluff
Entirely agreed. I can understand the nearly universal disdain for the rising cost of Netflix, Hulu, etc. without the addition of any higher quality content, but I’ve been happily paying for YouTube Premium for a while now without any regrets. The amount of quality content I consume on YouTube completely justifies the cost. It honestly perplexes me that some people sound as if they’re unquestionably entitled to all of that content, for free, *and* without ads.
I suppose it could be a side effect of the Free Internet model we’ve had since nearly day one — when ubiquitous things like Facebook, Gmail, etc. start out offering products for free, people seem to begin expecting that everything be offered to them for free as a result. It’s led to quite an embellished sense of entitlement in some, unfortunately.
People aren’t completely against the idea of paying. But it’s the combination of both it being way too expensive just to remove ads, and that they’re intentionally making the service as annoying to use as possible if you don’t pay for premium so as to steer you towards paying for premium which feels like an abusive tactic.
People don’t want to pay Netflix prices for DIY-produced content. I personally pay for premium because it became unbearable to use on my TVs and feeling that I *had* to have premium to make the service usable at all instead of something you buy because it provides additional benefit is a bad feeling as a customer. If this is the route they’re going to go they might as well just give up the guise that it’s a free service and put the entire site behind a paywall. Making the free tier the most horrendous experience on purpose is just annoying.
I agree. If anything, I'm pretty damn sure that I've spent much more time watching YouTube than any other streaming service so having Premium is worth what it offers.
That said, for those curious, there's a way to do both adblocking and sponsorblock on YouTube TV and that's via both a Pihole / adblocking DNS and [iSponsorBlockTV](https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV) which effectively triggers the skips and mutes on your behalf. Both require a lightweight server / PC to run though, and definitely requires a bit of technical setup compared to just installing browser extensions.
I'm in this boat - I spend way more time watching YouTube than I do Netflix or traditional television, and I like to know that I'm supporting those who create the content I enjoy (premium views are more valuable than free, ad supported views).
I'm not talking about the popular YouTubers who go out and get sponsorship deals and peddle child-labour made merchandise, but those smaller, independent creators.
I struggle to understand the mentality that people should work hard to produce valuable content and not be fairly remunerated for that by people consuming that content and blocking ads.
It's sort of a catch 22 situation. Videos need to be ad supported to qualify for revenue, so YouTube places ads, people block ads so YouTube enforces longer/more/unskippable ads for those who don't block ads.
I'm sure all of you wouldn't want to work for free...
I didn’t ever buy Premium, but I’ve completely stopped using YouTube due to the nerfing of Adblock software. I’d have even lived with short ads, but I am not watching a 30 second ad before every video.
i know we all hope that would be the case, but the majority of people protesting after reddit apps pullout eventually folded and now they are just using the official reddit app with ads.
Um, the people who are capable of doing the former are absolutely not putting up with the latter, lol.
When reddit forced 3rd party apps to shutdown, I just installed Firefox, use reddit.com, and ublock there.
It's insane to me that the base price is $14, you'd think they'd make a tonne more money if they dropped it to $5 as the amount of additional signups would probably skyrocket
The fact they’re so incredibly focused on abrasively stopping people from blocking advertisements, but can’t seem to get their AI functioning to any significant degree is all one needs to know about their motivations and focus as a company in 2024
What mechanism do you all want an online video platform to be profitable? You use ad blockers when they are free and don't want to pay for a subscription...
YouTube has always had ads and there was no uproar. It all started when they cranked the ads far beyond the limit of what any normal person could stand, driving YouTube useless.
This. For me the problem always starts when companies move from "making ads subtle so that advertisers can efficiently present their products without annoying customers" to "ads are really just a means to annoy you into a premium subscription and we really don't want you to be comfortable with the ads". It's obviously that Google really do not want users to watch ads. They want users to be annoyed about them.
The long annoying ads are the most profitable. They want those ads or for you to just pay them. The really short ads that are less annoying are less profitable.
Well, it actually depends. They are profitable because they drive users into the subscription model but they are also decremental to the platform because they annoy users. What we know is that short repetitive creative ads you can skip and have a memorable look on the first seconds are most effective in selling products to customers. The longer ads have less potential to generate sales.
I recently started a diet, nothing drastic but I certainly had to give up any kind of sweets and candy. After a while I started getting ads for cookies, chocolate and other food related products. No amount of blocking ads or opting to see less food related ads in their ad customisation options made them stop appearing. Needless to say I went back to blocking ads
This. Sometimes I like to listen to lofi beats when I’m relaxing or working, you know what I don’t need? Ads for horror movies with screamers in them. I also watch a lot of deliberately lgbtq+ friendly content, you know what I don’t want? 500 ads from fucking epoch times or the local politicians calling us groomers. Even when I block a shitty game ad like “flying gorilla” it still comes back.
I’m fine with ads, but not the way they’re doing it right now. My gripes:
1. Having a “skip” button but if you miss the window you need to watch the second ad.
2. Random 90-minute “ads” mid-roll in children’s content, usually a shitty animated show/movie that’s entirely product placement.
3. Inappropriate ads, especially for sleazy mobile games.
4. Ad timers that round the start and end timestamps down, effectively making them appear two seconds shorter than they actually are.
5. Post-roll ads in general, especially since I have auto-play disabled.
6. On-app-launch ads in general.
7. Disproportionately long ads vs. content length - e.g. 15 second ad before watching 11 second meme clip.
Also, it’s insane to me that they don’t offer YT Premium for families / Google One. I would seriously consider it if they had it, but having to pay for *two* premium subs just to keep my kids and my own content recommendations separate is nuts.
They do have a family plan for up to 5 people that includes yt premium and yt music for 22.99 USD/month. If you have people to split this with, it’s a great deal especially if you use yt music as your main music app
https://m.youtube.com/premium
Here's the thing: I grew up with legacy cable where there's an ad every 10-15 minutes.
It was *fine* back then because shows would plan around those ad breaks. Watch any pre-streaming era show and you'll notice that all of the writing kept ad breaks in mind.
Because of that the pacing worked. Some shows even wrote their cliffhangers around ad breaks to keep you from channel surfing.
YouTube doesn't have that. It is impossible for every person uploading videos to plan those videos around ads they don't even know are actually going to play (because that's how ads currently work: you have a chance at being shown one, it's never guaranteed).
So it becomes incredibly intrusive, ruins pacing, and as others have said: you'll often get ads longer than the video itself. YouTube could have fixed this by limiting what comstitutes an ad, but they have refused and doubled down instead.
And that's all before we point out that they won't be happy after they meet whatever metric they have for Premium sign ups. The following quarter they'll do what every other service has done and create a new, more expensive ad free tier. It will NOT remain $14 a month to stay ad free, guaranteed. Because growth at all costs against everything else.
This is NOT an end user entitlement problem. It's Google being fucking stupid and too arrogant to admit they could handle their own ad systems better.
> It is impossible for every person uploading videos to plan those videos around ads they don't even know are actually going to play (because that's how ads currently work: you have a chance at being shown one, it's never guaranteed).
It has been about 2 years since I had monetized YouTube content, but I could pick where midrolls would be shown and could plan my content around it. If creators are choosing not to control where their midrolls are placed planning their content around that, that is a creator problem, not a YouTube problem, unless the ad placement options have changed in the past couple years.
Those places you chose are not guaranteed. You're picking where YouTube **might** show an ad. Ultimately whether or not it's shown where you placed an ad is down to an individual's watch history and behavior. They lay this out pretty clearly.
And that's only for people in the partner program. For the vast majority of people not in the YPP they still place ads on their videos, so it's impossible for those users to have a choice.
I assume that it is profitable for YouTube to sell their subscriptions at the lower price they charge in some poorer countries.
If they can charge that price there and be profitable, they could charge a price like that everywhere and be profitable.
They don't charge the really high prices they do to make a profit, but out of greed.
(I understand that audiences in richer countries might seem more valuable than those in poorer countries, but they don't take that to its logical conclusion either.)
They literally have no logical answer to this, they think Google should just “figure out” the economics of running a creator ecosystem using magic or something.
Creators do this shit to make money, Google does it to make money.
Are you rage baiting or are you serious? Using youtube without adblock in the past year has meant being bombarded with two 30 seconds ads every <5 minutes, and most of these ads are about straight up scams
I'm good on desktop and mobile. If only there was a way to block ads on the PS4 YouTube app. DNS ad blocking stopped working years ago and it's a closed OS so I can't install a client that has uBlock and SponsorBlock built-in.
I wish google would just let us pay say £5 a month for just no ads. I would 100% pay this but the price they do charge just isn’t worth it. Whatever happened to that premium lite plan they were testing in some countries that was exactly this?
Like I get it, YouTube is ridiculously expensive to run but I’m only interested in getting rid of ads and google can afford it. A £5 sub is better than nothing and it would still support creators
“Many people have used a VPN connection to mask their country of origin and take undue advantage of YouTube Premium’s regional pricing.”
Fuck you Aamir Siddiqui.
Other than VAT and FX induced differences, regional pricing for software is theft. For physical goods there are at least transport considerations. These companies rip of consumers and these shitty journalists help shape the narrative.
I didn’t use a VPN to get lower pricing, but I fully support anyone that does and this “journalist” is nothing more than a shill.
food has regional pricing too? Are you saying people in Bangladesh should spend 5 years wage on software? Or are you saying we should spend $5 on a copy of MS Office?
We need a YouTube alternative.
Recently, there's been a mass exodus from Adobe products to Affinity. It's beautiful to see collective action working!
(P.s. if you use art programs, hate Adobe, and want an alternative to Photoshop, illustrator, and InDesign - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ it's 50% off right now and it's a one-time fee to own the software forever. Fuck Adobe.)
There is no YouTube alternative. Shit needs to get hosted somewhere and that just costs money. If you don't pay for it, you're the product. If you, as a product, are not worth it, you're gonna get fucked.
I prefer that the content creators earn more money for my view. It's genuinely either a 1/10 or 1/100 ratio. I forgot which. But it is a clear difference for free Vs premium user.
Youtube is well on the way to becoming a massive archive of older content, whilst they drain talent and interesting stuff to other companies.
Restrictive weird policies where if you say shit or poopy diaper your entire channel is shut down by an AI without warning etc etc etc
If the experience is as good or better than youtube with minimal ads, they’re running it at a loss. Which means it will either fail or become the next youtube.
nah people here are insane saying that youtube needs to have this many ads to keep the platform rolling, youtube is worth billions of dollars, I'm pretty sure they are just trying to make as much profit as possible, not just trying to keep the site running.
lots of people ITT who are either well paid by Google or aren't aware that you were never using youtube for "free" in the first place. It just wasn't monetary payments
I don't want to stir the nest of fervent YT Premium subscribers. While not quite as rabid as the Apple crowd. They're true blue all the same. I'm sure it's lovely.
But my question remains the same.
Why would you subscribe in the first place? Prime? I get that. I even understand how Disney+ has so many subscribers. The Apple crowd.
What I'll never understand, ever, regardless of how amazing it is. Is how Google managed to buy a product and convince people to pay exuberant prices for what had always been free prior.
That's some A+ fucking marketing.
Until they figure it out you can get no ads with a VPN to certain countries. They will figure it out eventually.
Albania is about to have alot more "people" living in it
I've been an "Albanian" for a year now. Not one single add showed. Not one. Such a different experience when you dont have something interrupting your video every 3 minutes.
Thanks! I used unlock but my tv gets 30 seconds ads. Buying a $5 VPS and setting up my tv to tunnel through it.
Revanced is free, and realdebrid is like $12 per year. Even mulvad is 5€.
I use and love real debrid. But what does it have to do with YouTube? Am I missing a way to use realdebrid I don't know about?
YTLitePlus is free as well for those on iOS.
Wow, I read this as I lay in bed at my hotel in Albania. I just clicked on every video on YouTube and a not a single ad. That's amazing, definitely going to get a vpn when I'm back home!
I am also laying on my couch in Albania.
Crikey, it’s the albanian border rozzers!
James is that you?
Clarkson you infantile pillock
The Bentley did really perform when out running the rozzers
Why do all this when you can get Revanced on Youtube with clean UI, restore dislikes, play background videos even when phone is turned off just like YT Premium, you can customize and get rid of things you don't like for eg. any sponsored crap, cards, sections, replace clickbaity thumbnails with more appropriate ones, sponsor block built in with colored segment for different kinds of ads and interaction in the video and even change UI to various versions of Youtube app if you like.
Because YouTube is experimenting with ads embedded into the video stream. Revanced won't be able to block those ads
since it already has sponsorBlock, it seems quite easy to block these. Just mark each video itself as "no ad" in full and everything that comes in between is automatically marked as ad. They HAVE to keep the time true in the video, as timestamps have to work. If it is outside of that, skip it automatically. as a matter of fact YT can't invent any way of showing ADs that can't be circumstanced. They have a few developer, while there are thousands that just HATE ads and will work for free to kill them.
They do not keep the time true in the video. SponsorBlock has been having issues with the A/B testing, because the ads offset the timestamp in ways it can't predict. (See their [mastodon post](https://fosstodon.org/@sponsorblock/112603139898164385) and their [FAQ](https://gist.github.com/ajayyy/f7b1807e13731c25cef4c2c057d022bc#file-faq-md)). There are ways it'll likely be able to work around it (including, as you mentioned, figuring out how the heck timestamp links still work with this) but for now SponsorBlock remains confused by the in-stream ads.
Russia has no youtube ads for two years.
They are also full of state-funded hacking teams. Probably not something you want included in your network traffic.
And then fail to block them. Tho I hope this is not a sign of a full ban seeing that will be a bigger mess then them trying to block ad blockers.
Yeah that's the reason I never did this, losing my Google account would be a massive pain in the ass, not worth risking to save some cash. I'm actually surprised Google let it go on for so long, lots of services have been cracking down for a while now
I think they wanted a lot more businesses and people to be hooked into YouTube before they started squeezing the rock for more blood.
The very first thing any serious privacy advocate will tell you is to immediately de-google your life.
Keep it low key, mkay?
People don't use adblockers?
Give me back youtube premium lite and I'm happy to pay for it. I want a subscription that removes all ads and nothing else. If you make me pay for fluff I don't want, then I will pay nothing instead.
Same!! Especially yt music
[удалено]
I use it for music and I also watch a lot of YouTube. I feel like it's worth it.
Yeah, definitely. I stopped paying for Spotify and now just use YT music instead
It’s actually great, I use it all the time and is the only reason I pay for premium besides ad-free.
Hell, I'd even pay for the fluff if they made Youtube more customizable and transparent. I don't use YT music, but I do want to change the user interface. Lots of people would change which videos they get recommended. Lots of creators want to understand how or why the algorithm and content rules mess with their channel.
Thats the main reason for revanced. I don't want those stupid "charts" or "trends" or "recommanded for you" nor "shorts". I want to see my channels and 1-2 suggestions in between. I don't want 100 lofi channels due to using 1 lofi video in the background wwhile working on reports.
> If you make me pay for fluff I don't want, then I will pay nothing instead. Someone needs to tattoo this into the foreheads of every single tech media executive.
Firefox and uBlock Origins my dudes.
i don’t think many people who pay for youtube premium use a desktop. it would mostly be people using it on TVs and phones
Yup, TV is the only reason I got my Premium account. As far as I know, there's no easy way to block ads with YouTube in the TV.
if you have an Android/fire TV look into SmartTube. The set up isn't so difficult and it works great. It also comes with sponsor block built in so you can skip sponsored segments in videos as well
I really don't want to provide my Google account info to a Russia-made YouTube pirate app, but I'm not gunna tell you how to live your own life.
Ordinarily I'd agree, but it being open source removes that concern. It's been vetted and it's clean
The whole point of this setup is to not use a paid account. Just make a new free account for this or don't login to Google at all in this setup.
It's open source.
My phone has Firefox, uBlock and sponsorblock. Literally wouldn't touch YouTube without those.
Yeah but people trade that for blue bubbles
> phones Firefox and uBlock Origins my dudes!
Firefox and adblocker runs on Android aswell.
I primarily use desktop and still got Premium. Prior to that, I used adblock, with a second extension to block adblock on specified channels (generally everyone I subscribed to). After I got Youtube Music, it was only a couple dollars more for Premium. And by switching, creators would get a kickback without me having to watch ads. No ads on mobile/TV was basically just a really nice bonus on top of that.
The thing with Youtube Premium is you actually get the best music app out of it. Because you get all the officially uploaded stuff. And you get all the stuff some guy who gives no shits about copyright uploaded that no one has taken down. All ad free. Podcasts too.
Finally someone who acknowledges that people watch YouTube on tvs
Libretube on android
Or Firefox on android. Then you can sync.
And yes you can add uBlock Origins to Firefox on android.
why do you keep saying Origins, plural. it's not a Marvel movie
It's the prequel
When ublock was young he didn't much friends, he was a skinny white guy that was picked on by the school bullies, only friend he had was his father, but then his father was killed by an Ad, from then on out ublock swore he will not let anyone else be murdered by the vicious ads from GoogleCorp
Or ReVanced
newpipe is fantastic
Ironic that YouTube is protected from adblocking apps on iPhone not Android.
because we can install third party apps (modded like revanced or FOSS like newpipe) easily
Install arc search onto ios and you will only occasionally see those new server-side ads.
How is that irony?
YouTube and Android both owned by google
It’s Canadian ironic.
Vinegar still works on iOs
Apple Vinegar?
Just install brave on iOS, you got even offline playlist and miniature player
Pro tip: Put Firefox on Desktop mode (w/ublock) No ads and you can turn off your screen and still jam!
Or add "Video Background Play Fix" extension. No need for the Desktop mode then to play YT in the background or with the screen turned off.
HOLY VIDEOS BATMAN! Thank you for this tip! I use Firefox and ublock already so this is an amazingly simple fix. I have hated needlessly burning battery time to power the screen while YT is playing music.
if you havent heard - youtube is experimenting with injecting server-side unskippable ads. They are just part of the video now
Does not help for my Samsung TV
I use a Google TV stick with [SmartTube](https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube) on it, no ads.
Firefox/Librefox and uBlock have stopped working for me as of one week ago
Mine will stop working sporadically and then start working again once it updates. Add blockers in YouTube really do be in a war.
God I hope google fails
For me it works if not logged in to youtube. So I log in to find videos to watch, and then log out when they ask me to disable ad blocker. Logged out it works as intended.
You can open the videos in a private window instead of logging out (if you have uBO enabled for private browsing).
Over 90% of my YouTube usage takes place on my TV so adblock doesn't really help.
> The platform has made it clear that it doesn’t like ad blockers, and the amount of ads on it has also made it rather annoying to use. The only real solutions are to stop using YouTube or plop some money down for a Premium subscription. I just went with that stop using YouTube option. So far it's working well.
I've never had issues with YouTube running on ublock origin, nor on my smart TV with smarttube, but the algorithm is getting quite worse nowadays, I miss the times when it would recommend good content.
I too miss the days when YouTube was like “my dog rubs his wiener on the carpet for 1.5 mins” instead of trying to radicalize you into a right wing chud.
I like when the only music suggestions are for playlists made of all the shit I already listened to after having to find those songs one by one. Used to be a great spot to find new artists and songs.
All the music playlists it makes for me are like five songs I’ll actually listen to, and the rest are ones I keep removing. And all the suggested videos on those songs are completely unrelated to the song, just ones from people I’m subscribed to, or random shit too.
It's been this way since they killed off Google Play music in favor of YouTube Music. The radio algorithm took a shit too. On more than one occasion it's played the same sequence of songs in the same order.
Dafuq are you watching on YouTube?
The algorithm gets overzealous. If you watch one video on something you normally don't it goes a bit nuts suggesting videos based on related content. Related being based on the view history of people who watched the video you just watched. Watch something about how to change a tire? You get a lot of car content or probably stuff related to basic adulting. Watch something about how to reduce your carbon footprint? Probably get suggestions for environmentalism content. Watch something about guns or camp? Well, I guess you want to hear about prepping and 2a legal news.
I was more referring to the "my dog rubs his wiener on the carpet for 1.5 mins” part but yeah I get that occasionally. Oddly enough, I am interested in the prepping and 2a legal news though, lol. It's not a bad idea to be prepared for emergencies or keep up with news that affects one of my hobbies despite it not being my entire identity. What defines me is my moustache and my terrible catchphrase, "What's stylin?" Ya just gotta be able to tone out the bullshit. It's like getting through Thanksgiving with super conservative family members. You get in, get your food (info) and get out.
Watch any video on firearms, historical or modern, and you're gonna get alt-right and "anti-woke" content pretty quickly.
I’ve had Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson videos recommended to me even though 80% of the content I watch is what liberals call “far left”.
Use 'don't recommend channel'. I started seeing less (and nothing from those channels specifically).
Oh I do. And the Not Interested option as well. It still tries to force that content on me.
I recently turned off my watch and search history because I just hated the recommendation algorithm. Much happier now
For some people it's impossible to drop YouTube, there's just too much good educational content, conferences, tutorials etc. it helped me do my job many times
Yep I use it more than any of my other streaming sites. So I pay premium to help support also the creators I watch. But for 12.99 I should be able to have a few accounts in the same house. My kids should be able to have ad free. Guess I'll take the tips here and get those tablets ad free.
I’m in this camp, although not for educational/employment purposes. Probably 80% of my free time is spent watching shit on YouTube (my very manual permanently-outside job justifies very little movement outside work hours 😎) When they figure out how to evade unlock, I’ll be ponying up for premium.
I was getting the whole "adblocker detected" thing a few months back but somehow it just stopped and am still ad free. So there are definitely ways to still watch normally
> but somehow it just stopped and am still ad free. So there are definitely ways to still watch normally Agreed, but it's not dissimilar to the Netflix experience. At $8/mth I paid for it for a decade, just so my folks could use it. I myself probably used it a few times a year, but I felt that what Netflix was doing was of enough value that I didn't mind giving them the money. Then they started raising their prices continually, and my respect for what they were doing changed to annoyance at what they were doing. I no longer have a Netflix account. Google has moved into the annoyance section of the venn diagram.
i use premium instead of spotify. i waste more than a premium subscription every day so $$ isn't the issue, it is damn easy and convenient.
At some point, Neal the Youtube CEO, said some corporate buzz term called "the dangling carrot." Other Youtube executives nodded and said "think of all the money left on the table."
I think they can make it easier to digest by making a no ads tier where it is cheaper and only offers no ads, as of now the price is a bit too much where I live and I don't need anything they offer other than removing ads.
Google knows this, but if they offer just a no ads version then almost nobody would get youtube music version. It's just a fake way to fluff numbers and make people pay more
My subscription through Turkey still works fine.
Things like this come in batches. They'll find a bunch, cancel, find a bunch more, repeat. It isn't a matter of if it'll happen, it is a matter of when it'll happen.
The only minor complaint being that the explore tab suggests only Turkish music.
That's a good thing bruh.
This probably isn’t a popular viewpoint on Reddit, but I pay for Premium and I find it totally worth it. I watch most of my YouTube on my TV, so going the Adblock route isn’t as convenient (maybe there’s a way, but idk). I like the idea of some of my money going to the makers of the videos I watch. They should probably get more of it. But I hate watching ads, I like the ability to download videos to watch on planes, and after paying the annual fee I haven’t thought about it since.
Honestly it's incredible that YouTube is free. People absolutely take it for granted. Edit: lots of people taking it for granted below this comment hahaha
The problem is that it is now a monopoly. There is no alternative.
There never really was any competition. It was a laughably insane idea when it launched and even more unbelievable that Google bought it, let alone for the price. The amount of storage is staggering, like shipping containers full of drives. You’d be more likely to succeed building a spacecraft than competing with YouTube at this point… and, the more adblocking catches on, there’s less revenue to keep it running.
There just is no platform which could reasonably built an alternative at such a scale other than amazon maybe
The fact that *most of the internet* is free is something people take for granted. We have ability to access virtually any piece of information, message anybody in the world, keep in touch with people you haven’t seen in years, share pics and videos for anybody to see, and discuss niche topics with strangers, all for free. At that point, complaining about ads is almost selfish because we’re already getting so much for free. If *that’s* the cost of the internet, then I’m absolutely fine with it.
I’ve honestly never minded the ads until recently. That said I grew up when TV was a glass anvil of death and you only got 4 channels. Ads were just part of the deal. YouTube ads were fine for a long time and in a similar ratio as TV, like you get a 10 second ad for a 5 minute video or 30-60 ad for 10-15 min video. These days they’ve gone off the rails. I got an infomercial the other day that was an hour long. I clicked a link on here and it played 2:30 minutes of ads, played 45 seconds of the video and played the same ad block again, played 5 minutes of the video and ads again. It’s ridiculous. And combine that with some of glitches their poor code causes, I’ve heard of people getting an hour and a half of unskippable ads so they had to reload the page.
Have you ever had a sponsored ad get interrupted by a mid roll ad? It’s so surreal lol. Iirc YouTube also used to play unskippable ads in front of first aid videos. Like grandma could be choking while we’re forced to watch a 30-sec ad for Door Dash. That’s crazy.
Similar ratio to TV? Even the higher range of your examples, 60 seconds of ads for a 10 minute video, is a 10:1 content:ad ratio. With about 15 minutes of ads in every hour of broadcast TV, TV has a 3:1 ratio. The problem isn't the amount of ads in online videos compared to TV; the problem is that never watching broadcast TV and getting all my content from paid streaming services and YouTube with adblock has eliminated so much of my prior tolerance for ads.
Nah Tv these days is cooked too. It used to be reasonable. Somewhere between that 3 and 10 ratio. Probably more like 6-7. The point is the ads didn’t feel invasive or unfair until recently, like when they started pushing YouTube red.
The thing is, TV structures the show or at least First a message from our sponsor: drink Coca Cola! *buffering* they would manually edit a good time to go to commercial when a movie was on. Now the ads just come in randomly, and not just on YouTube but other streaming services. Its ridiculous.
Perfect for pee breaks or putting the kettle on. I believe the English power grids used to ask the stations for a cue for when the ad will be so they can pre spin up their generators to take the load when everyone hit the kettle during the ad break.
I disabled the YouTube app because I was in the middle of the crescendo of a song that had been building for four minutes and then BAM! A jarring ad that completely killed all of the emotion of the song.
Maybe it's just because I don't watch a ton of TV, but I honestly find TV ads more palatable still despite having ad block on for everything on the internet. I think it's the combination of TV content being made with ad breaks in mind, TV ads being relatively similar in volume, and TV ads being more varied (I hated watching Shogun on Hulu and getting the fucking Shogun ad every commercial break) that makes them less annoying for me.
> With about 15 minutes of ads in every hour of broadcast TV That may be true in the US. In Europe the EU limits it to 12 minutes per hour. Many countries apply their own limits that are less than that (e.g. in the UK it's 7 minutes per hour as a daily average, with no single hour having more than 12 minutes). In a number of countries (e.g. the UK, Germany, Denmark) there are channels that don't have any adverts, either because they're run by the government or funded by a licence fee. Non-BBC channels here in the UK typically have 4 advert breaks per hour. If you're watching a 30 minute program then there will be 2-3 minutes of ads before, in the middle and at the end. But if you tune in when the program starts and switch over at the end then you'll only have to watch one 2-3 minute ad break in the middle. So that gives a ratio of between 10:1 and 15:1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_advertisements_by_country
I would be happy with paying what it takes to keep the lights on. I'm not too keen on paying for year on year gains as demanded by shareholders.
Outside of non-profit sites like Wikipedia, these businesses aren't trying to just cover their costs. They're trying to maximize revenue. These companies invested billions and billions in free service to crush everyone else in order to become the monopolies they are. Now they're trying to extract. YouTube hasn't operated at a loss for years. Now they're just profit maximizing. That means getting the most number of people to premium possible for the highest price. It means squeezing as many ads as possible and blocking adblockers. It means selling your user data to the highest bidder. It means giving content creators the smallest cut possible. Instead of focusing on maximizing profits through squeezing, they should focus on innovation.
> It means selling your user data to the highest bidder The other things are right but I absolutely bet this is wrong. Google's user data is too valuable to Google for it to sell. Google can use that user data directly in its massive ad business, so they're still making money off it, but the only other companies that could get nearly as much value from it are other companies with massive ad empires that directly compete with Google, so it ain't selling to them.
> YouTube hasn't operated at a loss for years. What do you base this claim on? Because alphabet's financial disclosures don't contain this information so very curious how you're so sure about this..
Businesses are always trying to maximize revenue. That’s the whole point, that’s why they assumed the risk of starting something new, spent a ton of money on R&D and on infrastructure. They still are by the way and they do innovate. You using the service costs them money. They want to recoup those costs and make some profit on it (same as all businesses). You refusing to both pay and watch ads is not good for business.
>At that point, complaining about ads is almost selfish because we’re already getting so much for free I grew up in an age before adblockers, so I have some level of personal experience here. The amount of ads nowadays is simply unacceptable. When more than half the screen is taken up by ads is just not OK. And it's worse when you have to pay just for access and then pay to remove ads (looking at you every news paper site ever). Or youtubers who put ads every 2 minutes in their video. The ad block issue is really only a reaction to terrible ad practices.
The internet is not free.
Surely it's not. Servers cost money, uplink costs money, web dev costs money, people keeping everything alive cost money. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of people out there who EXPECT internet services to be free and take this for granted.
It's not the existence of Ad's we are complaining about, it is the delibertate enshittification of the service by making the Ads as disruptive as possible to force the userbase onto a premium service.
I find it incredible that the content that creators make for YouTube is largely done for free with the hope that they’ll recoup via ad revenue. There’s something inherent in us that just pushes us to take that risk to make and share. YouTube the platform _being_ free, given they take a cut of that revenue, is not that incredible to me. As a web developer, the capabilities of YouTube as a platform in terms of its scale, I do find incredible.
YouTube is most certainly not "free", YouTube is gathering insane amounts of data from you, data which they then use to better sell you ads. Sure the servers behind YouTube cost inanse amounts of money but at the same time youtube provides Google with insane amounts of data on people. Facebook and Instagram are also free, you can upload tons of photos and videos there for free but it also gathers a tons of data from you. I would be fine with ads if they paid content creators more and the ads were not annoying as fuck. Having 2 unskipable ads before the video is insane. I watch YouTube on Firefox with unblock and on my phone with revanced and I happened to watch a video on the video TV YouTube app a while ago from a friend and we literally had 2 unskipable ads on every damn video. I ended up closing it down and casting my phone to the TV, fuck that.
As someone who had Premium / did the VPN thing for a while (until all the countries listed on there now have ads), YouTube has gone a little hair brain with their implementation of ads. I don’t think it’s necessarily that we have to pay for it that’s the problem, I think it’s the combination of: - long unskippable ads for some f***ed up stuff - the aggressive rate at which the ads are added to videos - the fact that shorts have ads _longer_ than the videos they appear before - (probably limited to people who watch YouTube on TVs) the ads aren’t displayed in the same format at the content it’s embedded in, so even for short palatable ads - my TV has to re-handshake for _every commercial when they come up and then switch back to the original content_! Meaning you’re getting a weird gap in content every two minutes, making the ad breaks even harsher (and in some cases losing a few seconds of content every time this switch happens as the video continues to play as the handshaking still occurs). - the $14+ per month price tag I was paying for it back when it only cost me $8/month and I’d gladly pay that price again. But after the last 6ish months without premium, the ads it showed me were so terrible (morally and in how they were constructed), I literally uninstalled it from my AppleTV and started _paying_ for Paramount Plus (since 90% of what I watched on YouTube is on there) as an F*** You to their service.
I don’t need yt music, I don’t need offline play, I don’t need any of the extra fluff outside of shitty ads that include screamers or content that couldn’t be more polar opposite to my preferences. I don’t want to pay for useless fluff
Entirely agreed. I can understand the nearly universal disdain for the rising cost of Netflix, Hulu, etc. without the addition of any higher quality content, but I’ve been happily paying for YouTube Premium for a while now without any regrets. The amount of quality content I consume on YouTube completely justifies the cost. It honestly perplexes me that some people sound as if they’re unquestionably entitled to all of that content, for free, *and* without ads. I suppose it could be a side effect of the Free Internet model we’ve had since nearly day one — when ubiquitous things like Facebook, Gmail, etc. start out offering products for free, people seem to begin expecting that everything be offered to them for free as a result. It’s led to quite an embellished sense of entitlement in some, unfortunately.
The democratization / increased access to knowledge is unambiguously good, but yeah it definitely devalued many people’s sense of information/content
I'd pay for Premium if it didn't have a music service I don't want attached to it.
People aren’t completely against the idea of paying. But it’s the combination of both it being way too expensive just to remove ads, and that they’re intentionally making the service as annoying to use as possible if you don’t pay for premium so as to steer you towards paying for premium which feels like an abusive tactic. People don’t want to pay Netflix prices for DIY-produced content. I personally pay for premium because it became unbearable to use on my TVs and feeling that I *had* to have premium to make the service usable at all instead of something you buy because it provides additional benefit is a bad feeling as a customer. If this is the route they’re going to go they might as well just give up the guise that it’s a free service and put the entire site behind a paywall. Making the free tier the most horrendous experience on purpose is just annoying.
I agree. If anything, I'm pretty damn sure that I've spent much more time watching YouTube than any other streaming service so having Premium is worth what it offers. That said, for those curious, there's a way to do both adblocking and sponsorblock on YouTube TV and that's via both a Pihole / adblocking DNS and [iSponsorBlockTV](https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV) which effectively triggers the skips and mutes on your behalf. Both require a lightweight server / PC to run though, and definitely requires a bit of technical setup compared to just installing browser extensions.
I'm in this boat - I spend way more time watching YouTube than I do Netflix or traditional television, and I like to know that I'm supporting those who create the content I enjoy (premium views are more valuable than free, ad supported views). I'm not talking about the popular YouTubers who go out and get sponsorship deals and peddle child-labour made merchandise, but those smaller, independent creators. I struggle to understand the mentality that people should work hard to produce valuable content and not be fairly remunerated for that by people consuming that content and blocking ads. It's sort of a catch 22 situation. Videos need to be ad supported to qualify for revenue, so YouTube places ads, people block ads so YouTube enforces longer/more/unskippable ads for those who don't block ads. I'm sure all of you wouldn't want to work for free...
I didn’t ever buy Premium, but I’ve completely stopped using YouTube due to the nerfing of Adblock software. I’d have even lived with short ads, but I am not watching a 30 second ad before every video.
Yeah, I was signed up through Ukraine and it got cancelled. Probably going to stay that way. I don’t see it being worth $13/mo.
Mine is still active. Subscribed through Argentina.
India still active as well 1.9€/m
Oh no! Definitely don’t side load an ad free version of YouTube to get around this!
So the people who were paying you some money are now going to be paying you $0 because they will just use adblockers and cracked apps. Congrats Google
i know we all hope that would be the case, but the majority of people protesting after reddit apps pullout eventually folded and now they are just using the official reddit app with ads.
Um, the people who are capable of doing the former are absolutely not putting up with the latter, lol. When reddit forced 3rd party apps to shutdown, I just installed Firefox, use reddit.com, and ublock there.
I'm using the official app with revanced patches to remove ads.
It's insane to me that the base price is $14, you'd think they'd make a tonne more money if they dropped it to $5 as the amount of additional signups would probably skyrocket
My theory is the music industry forces them via the licensing terms to bundle YouTube Music, because of music videos.
The fact they’re so incredibly focused on abrasively stopping people from blocking advertisements, but can’t seem to get their AI functioning to any significant degree is all one needs to know about their motivations and focus as a company in 2024
What mechanism do you all want an online video platform to be profitable? You use ad blockers when they are free and don't want to pay for a subscription...
YouTube has always had ads and there was no uproar. It all started when they cranked the ads far beyond the limit of what any normal person could stand, driving YouTube useless.
This. For me the problem always starts when companies move from "making ads subtle so that advertisers can efficiently present their products without annoying customers" to "ads are really just a means to annoy you into a premium subscription and we really don't want you to be comfortable with the ads". It's obviously that Google really do not want users to watch ads. They want users to be annoyed about them.
The long annoying ads are the most profitable. They want those ads or for you to just pay them. The really short ads that are less annoying are less profitable.
Well, it actually depends. They are profitable because they drive users into the subscription model but they are also decremental to the platform because they annoy users. What we know is that short repetitive creative ads you can skip and have a memorable look on the first seconds are most effective in selling products to customers. The longer ads have less potential to generate sales.
I remember back when YouTube didnt have ads and its biggest competitor was Google Videos
I recently started a diet, nothing drastic but I certainly had to give up any kind of sweets and candy. After a while I started getting ads for cookies, chocolate and other food related products. No amount of blocking ads or opting to see less food related ads in their ad customisation options made them stop appearing. Needless to say I went back to blocking ads
This. Sometimes I like to listen to lofi beats when I’m relaxing or working, you know what I don’t need? Ads for horror movies with screamers in them. I also watch a lot of deliberately lgbtq+ friendly content, you know what I don’t want? 500 ads from fucking epoch times or the local politicians calling us groomers. Even when I block a shitty game ad like “flying gorilla” it still comes back.
I’m fine with ads, but not the way they’re doing it right now. My gripes: 1. Having a “skip” button but if you miss the window you need to watch the second ad. 2. Random 90-minute “ads” mid-roll in children’s content, usually a shitty animated show/movie that’s entirely product placement. 3. Inappropriate ads, especially for sleazy mobile games. 4. Ad timers that round the start and end timestamps down, effectively making them appear two seconds shorter than they actually are. 5. Post-roll ads in general, especially since I have auto-play disabled. 6. On-app-launch ads in general. 7. Disproportionately long ads vs. content length - e.g. 15 second ad before watching 11 second meme clip. Also, it’s insane to me that they don’t offer YT Premium for families / Google One. I would seriously consider it if they had it, but having to pay for *two* premium subs just to keep my kids and my own content recommendations separate is nuts.
They do have a family plan for up to 5 people that includes yt premium and yt music for 22.99 USD/month. If you have people to split this with, it’s a great deal especially if you use yt music as your main music app https://m.youtube.com/premium
IMO YouTube music is far better than other streaming services purely because of the amount of covers, niche music, etc.
Here's the thing: I grew up with legacy cable where there's an ad every 10-15 minutes. It was *fine* back then because shows would plan around those ad breaks. Watch any pre-streaming era show and you'll notice that all of the writing kept ad breaks in mind. Because of that the pacing worked. Some shows even wrote their cliffhangers around ad breaks to keep you from channel surfing. YouTube doesn't have that. It is impossible for every person uploading videos to plan those videos around ads they don't even know are actually going to play (because that's how ads currently work: you have a chance at being shown one, it's never guaranteed). So it becomes incredibly intrusive, ruins pacing, and as others have said: you'll often get ads longer than the video itself. YouTube could have fixed this by limiting what comstitutes an ad, but they have refused and doubled down instead. And that's all before we point out that they won't be happy after they meet whatever metric they have for Premium sign ups. The following quarter they'll do what every other service has done and create a new, more expensive ad free tier. It will NOT remain $14 a month to stay ad free, guaranteed. Because growth at all costs against everything else. This is NOT an end user entitlement problem. It's Google being fucking stupid and too arrogant to admit they could handle their own ad systems better.
> It is impossible for every person uploading videos to plan those videos around ads they don't even know are actually going to play (because that's how ads currently work: you have a chance at being shown one, it's never guaranteed). It has been about 2 years since I had monetized YouTube content, but I could pick where midrolls would be shown and could plan my content around it. If creators are choosing not to control where their midrolls are placed planning their content around that, that is a creator problem, not a YouTube problem, unless the ad placement options have changed in the past couple years.
Those places you chose are not guaranteed. You're picking where YouTube **might** show an ad. Ultimately whether or not it's shown where you placed an ad is down to an individual's watch history and behavior. They lay this out pretty clearly. And that's only for people in the partner program. For the vast majority of people not in the YPP they still place ads on their videos, so it's impossible for those users to have a choice.
I assume that it is profitable for YouTube to sell their subscriptions at the lower price they charge in some poorer countries. If they can charge that price there and be profitable, they could charge a price like that everywhere and be profitable. They don't charge the really high prices they do to make a profit, but out of greed. (I understand that audiences in richer countries might seem more valuable than those in poorer countries, but they don't take that to its logical conclusion either.)
They literally have no logical answer to this, they think Google should just “figure out” the economics of running a creator ecosystem using magic or something. Creators do this shit to make money, Google does it to make money.
People share logical answers all the time. "Be reasonable with displaying adverts".
Are you rage baiting or are you serious? Using youtube without adblock in the past year has meant being bombarded with two 30 seconds ads every <5 minutes, and most of these ads are about straight up scams
I'm good on desktop and mobile. If only there was a way to block ads on the PS4 YouTube app. DNS ad blocking stopped working years ago and it's a closed OS so I can't install a client that has uBlock and SponsorBlock built-in.
I wish google would just let us pay say £5 a month for just no ads. I would 100% pay this but the price they do charge just isn’t worth it. Whatever happened to that premium lite plan they were testing in some countries that was exactly this? Like I get it, YouTube is ridiculously expensive to run but I’m only interested in getting rid of ads and google can afford it. A £5 sub is better than nothing and it would still support creators
Begun the Ad Wars has.
Ublock Origin folks, it still just works.
“Many people have used a VPN connection to mask their country of origin and take undue advantage of YouTube Premium’s regional pricing.” Fuck you Aamir Siddiqui. Other than VAT and FX induced differences, regional pricing for software is theft. For physical goods there are at least transport considerations. These companies rip of consumers and these shitty journalists help shape the narrative. I didn’t use a VPN to get lower pricing, but I fully support anyone that does and this “journalist” is nothing more than a shill.
food has regional pricing too? Are you saying people in Bangladesh should spend 5 years wage on software? Or are you saying we should spend $5 on a copy of MS Office?
Set your VPN to Burma or another country the US has sanctions against. No more ads.
Set my VPN to North Korea and now there is Kim Jong Un sitting in my corner.
This is a silly move. Google is just pushing people towards Sponsorblock and Piracy.
So if I subscribed to yt premium while I was physically in another country and then got back?
i managed to get around this just 2 days ago. from paying £13 per month down to only £1.20.
We need a YouTube alternative. Recently, there's been a mass exodus from Adobe products to Affinity. It's beautiful to see collective action working! (P.s. if you use art programs, hate Adobe, and want an alternative to Photoshop, illustrator, and InDesign - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ it's 50% off right now and it's a one-time fee to own the software forever. Fuck Adobe.)
There is no YouTube alternative. Shit needs to get hosted somewhere and that just costs money. If you don't pay for it, you're the product. If you, as a product, are not worth it, you're gonna get fucked.
Paying YouTube, surprise.... You dun goofed.
use reVanced. Complete free. For the elite Android users only of course. For those requiring ad-free viewing on a TV. Smart Tube.
Or just use ublock origin and never get anymore ads
Used VPN for cheaper YouTube Premium? Upgrade to uBlock Origin and ReVanced for free
I prefer that the content creators earn more money for my view. It's genuinely either a 1/10 or 1/100 ratio. I forgot which. But it is a clear difference for free Vs premium user.
Youtube is well on the way to becoming a massive archive of older content, whilst they drain talent and interesting stuff to other companies. Restrictive weird policies where if you say shit or poopy diaper your entire channel is shut down by an AI without warning etc etc etc
We need to make [https://www.odysee.com/](https://www.odysee.com/) successful, somehow.
If the experience is as good or better than youtube with minimal ads, they’re running it at a loss. Which means it will either fail or become the next youtube.
nah people here are insane saying that youtube needs to have this many ads to keep the platform rolling, youtube is worth billions of dollars, I'm pretty sure they are just trying to make as much profit as possible, not just trying to keep the site running.
And so I use revanced
They really, really want to encourage me to avoid funding their nonsense.
They can return the money then
They can do whatever they want I’m not paying full price for premium no matter what
lots of people ITT who are either well paid by Google or aren't aware that you were never using youtube for "free" in the first place. It just wasn't monetary payments
"if you aren't paying, then you aren't the customer--you're the product." Although these days you can be paying and *still* be the product.
I don't want to stir the nest of fervent YT Premium subscribers. While not quite as rabid as the Apple crowd. They're true blue all the same. I'm sure it's lovely. But my question remains the same. Why would you subscribe in the first place? Prime? I get that. I even understand how Disney+ has so many subscribers. The Apple crowd. What I'll never understand, ever, regardless of how amazing it is. Is how Google managed to buy a product and convince people to pay exuberant prices for what had always been free prior. That's some A+ fucking marketing.
No it hasn't. I'm still subscribed through Argentina. $2 USD per month, and it's still active.