• mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 days ago

    Having to wait with a black screen before the video starts is completely acceptable to me.
    Having to watch Ads is not.

  • shaquilleoatmeal@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    I pay for YouTube premium so that I can leave the app and listen to videos. I still get ads even though I’m paying. I don’t think there’s a single surefire way to avoid them.

    • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Get Revanced or Newpipe or something like that. You get the same benefits you’re paying for, plus many that you aren’t, and it’s all for free. Not only that, but you’re not giving you’re money to Google.

    • JackFrostNCola@aussie.zone
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      6 days ago

      Use Firefox + ublock origin.
      Start the video, get out of the app/lock you phone, then swipe down and click on ‘play’ on the media controls.

      This works on andriod, unsure about ios.

  • Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I have revanced on my phone and adblock on my laptop so I don’t see ads on youtube on them, but I can’t get rid of the youtube ads on my smart TV so I’m forced to deal with the ads for now… and the contrast shows just how insufferable youtube has become. They’re so fucking aggressive with the ads now. I’m starting to get a full minute of unskippable ads for a 2 minute meme video. It’s completely ridiculous. Not only that but the number of skippable ads, short ads, or videos with just one ad are quickly decreasing. Youtube is destroying itself.

    • Schal330@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Using uBO, but have noticed a slightly longer delay of a few seconds between hitting play and the video starting, but I can deal with that over being forced to watch 30s of ads.

      • Ricky Rigatoni@retrolemmy.com
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        8 days ago

        Honestly it just felt like youtube’s servers were shittimg themselves again, so I baely even register it as a real interruption.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      8 days ago

      There have been periods where one of my accounts was getting an ad-length black screen with buffering throbber (I hate that name) and, the most recent time, it was accompanied by a pop-up asking me if I’d like to find out why that was happening. Yeah. I know why that’s happening, thanks.

      Then that stopped happening again. Either they gave up or UBo have worked around it somehow. Never ending arms race.

      • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachts
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        8 days ago

        This happens to me too, especially when it’s a computer that I haven’t used in a while, which makes me think that yeah it’s the arms race. It stops once my browser is open long enough for uBO to update

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Google will never get a cent out of me, willingly.

    If it gets annoying enough, and FreeTube stops working, I’ll find something better to do with my time.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    They’ve been doing this for close to 20 years. Ever since shortly after google bought them.

  • MemmingenFan@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    If you are a content creator please consider upload your content on other video platforms too.

      • sexy_peach@feddit.org
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        7 days ago

        That’s because of missing views though mostly, no? The ad revenue isn’t big anyways I think.

      • atlien51@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        They can upload to multiple platforms at once and still keep their YouTube money + grow an audience on a different website??

        • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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          8 days ago

          Yeah, some of the Linux Youtubers do that. With a channel on Peertube as well. And Science Youtubers often advertise Nebula.

      • yumpsuit@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I read somewhere that nebula was paying a good bit more per view, and paid per minute watched

    • moseschrute@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      Idk how one gets content on Nebula, but I wish more creators would join. Ik nebula isn’t Fediverse like PeerTube, but I still really like it and think it’s worth the $30/year to not get ads.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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    9 days ago

    If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.

    If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?

    • TauZero@mander.xyz
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      9 days ago

      It’s a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked “no vids for u” message, you’d get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being “buggy” and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no “smoking gun” blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.

      The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        9 days ago

        I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?

        • TauZero@mander.xyz
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          9 days ago

          Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you’re visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you’re adblocking.

        • zurohki@aussie.zone
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          9 days ago

          Because the “Why is the video being slow?” pop-up now sends you to the page blaming adblockers instead of the ISP shaming thing it used to do.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        8 days ago

        I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.

        If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I’ve been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?

        • TauZero@mander.xyz
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          8 days ago

          In the ultimate, you’d need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.

          In worst case, you can’t start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.

          And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.

          Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.

          • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn’t line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn’t line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.

            • TauZero@mander.xyz
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              7 days ago

              I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like “I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure” that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.

              No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don’t want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn’t exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.

              The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You’ll have to watch out for that one on your own.

    • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
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      9 days ago

      They are probably trying to find that spot where it’s just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        9 days ago

        Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.

        I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.

        • iopq@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can’t be skipped

          • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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            9 days ago

            Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.

            Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.

        • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).

          • Frellwit@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            i added 2-3 other adblockers

            Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.

      If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.

    • tabular@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        That’s probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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    8 days ago

    Oh no! You are going to make your platform work like ass? And you expect us to do mental gymnastics in such a way that instead of blaming you (you know the one that has control over the platform) we blame uBlock? The same uBlock that has made using your platform bearable for many years, to the point that I will sit in silence with the screen off instead of watch with ads?

    I think even if you make us wait a min before playing the video most would take that over an ad.

      • fodor@lemmy.zip
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        8 days ago

        That’s what they’re banking on, but we know that eventually they will f*** it up and lose everyone.

        • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
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          8 days ago

          Unless we have some serious alternatives, that won’t happen anytime soon

          Video hosting is really expensive. Every service running for free will eventually enshitify and turn out similar, because there’s no such thing as free massive servers

          • brisk@aussie.zone
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            7 days ago

            Peertube has already delivered the sustainable model: creators host their own videos and viewers assist distribution.

            • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
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              7 days ago

              Who pays for the servers? Because if even big platforms like Signal sometimes struggle to pay the bills, in part because they spend a lot on their servers, then it’ll be dozens of times worse with video hosting

              • brisk@aussie.zone
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                7 days ago

                Content creators. It’s hard to host everyone’s videos, and it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary, as it prevents new entrants. It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted). It becomes harder when you suddenly become popular, a situation which Peertube explicitly compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers, which scales with popularity.

                Signal makes it’s own bed like YouTube by being a single centralised server for everyone. Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

                • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
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                  6 days ago

                  It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted).

                  Do you really expect more than even 5% of all youtube channels to do it? You have high hopes.

                  compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers

                  I believe it’s done in a kinda P2P way? Didn’t really check, but wouldn’t that just not work with NAT internet connections, which many people have because that’s just more secure this way? Also, bad for privacy.

                  Using a TURN server would also add huge costs so it’s basically like hosting your own server

                  Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

                  I don’t so I wouldn’t, but if I was, I would be wondering, as I always do. Anyways, I believe XMPP doesn’t store stuff and only transmits, and Matrix doesn’t store things forever (and doesn’t store videos like YT), and the main instance is funded by donations, and smaller instances are just pretty small and have media wiped when needed

                  it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary

                  That’s the POV of people in !technology@lemmy.world or selfhosted. Most people can’t be bothered with this shit and are pretty tech illiterate. Some don’t want to waste even a minute. And that’s the case of the very vast majority of people on the internet.

            • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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              7 days ago

              All they need that I see is missing, is a way to discover / search everyone from any instance. Like, a consolidated / federated search.

          • Rin@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            It is… they’ve out spent the competition. Now that no one else is around, they’re trying to make all the money they can. Luckily, it won’t be long before some other alternative will pop up anyway.

  • Uruanna@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Don’t care, still better than the ads.

    I’ll sit for 2 minutes in front of a black screen and it’ll still be better than 45 seconds of ads.

  • phantomwise@lemmy.ml
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    8 days ago

    If it takes too long to load I just use yt-dlp to download the video or whole playlist and watch it later. Do I care that it’s putting additional strain on YouTube’s servers? Indeed, I’m devastated and overtaken with guilt 😂 These are tears of regret, I swear 😂

    • rhpp@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      And as an added bonus yt-dlp defaults to maximum quality! Even more strain on YouTube servers!

    • Krompus@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      yt-dlp is fucking awesome and it will be a sad day if it ever gets taken down or blocked.