So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.
And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I’ve been on Firefox for over a year.
You must log in or register to comment.
If it says they aren’t allowed should I turn off my ad block or should I just hit okay and leave it enabled?
Don’t give up your privacy by disabling adblocker. I enabled AdBlock on anything I own. If YT will be persistent about it, I’ll just leave. There are plenty alternatives to YouTube frontend.
Edit: spelling mistakes.
It’s only even an issue for people because they’re using shitty browsers like Chrome, lol. YouTube doesn’t even warn me and I never see ads. Firefox for life.
YouTube doesn’t even warn me
Because they’ve been slowly rolling this out. It first happened over summer to a few users and steadily to more and more. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens to you before the end of the year.
Fingers crossed it doesn’t, but in the meantime, let’s figure this out so we all can avoid the BS. I’ll check all my addons when I get home to see if there’s anything else that would be helping me. On Mobile I do have AdGuard (the one not available on the play store), but I believe I would be ad free without it just from Revanced.
Anyone here subscribed to Nebula or CuriosityStream? On paper it seems like a much better arrangement for creators and viewers but I’m curious as to anyone’s personal experience with the quality of the service.
I caught that deal some time ago where a subscription to CuriosityStream would also grant you a sub to Nebula. I love Nebula, in theory - I spend a lot of time listening to video essays, and I love the quantity and quality of creators there. But the android app has a lot of buffering for me, and up until the last time I’d used it, it wouldn’t remember my watch history / where I left off, making it really burdensome to watch long essays there, so I always just opted for YT Revanced. Just now, I went to check, and the app seems to remember my progress in a video so…!! I guess I’ll be giving it a second serious chance! :D
I tried watching some stuff on CuriosityStream, but I’ve gotten so used to YT-style essays and documentaries, that now anything that has costant background music and fast paced montages kinda bugs me out, lol. But if you like classic-style documentaries, there’s a big catalogue, I’d recommend it! Overall, I think it depends on how much you pay a year - I think I pay around 15/20$/y and I think it’s a steal, even though I enjoy but a fraction of what’s being offered to me. If I used it more consistently, I’d be happy to pay double.
I really wanna check out nebula when I have consistent income again lol
I’m subbed to both and it’s awesome. No ads, no algorithm, longer videos with better production values especially over topics that YouTube couldn’t have.
The modern conflict series is my favorite example
Great, thanks. Pretty much all of the accounts I subscribe to on YouTube advertize one service or the other and it only recently crossed my mind that maybe they’re promoting it because they… believe in it?
So there’s actually a pretty good video that one of the founders made, I think it was RealLifeLore, that talks about the making of Nebula. It’s a good watch if you want perspective on the service
It was Wendover. Sam is also now the chief content officer at Nebula.
That’s the one! I always get them confused for some reason
Wake me when they support standard payment methods. Seriously how can you even attempt to get European customers without accepting SEPA transfers.
I subscribed to Nebula for a month for Philosophytube, then I promptly unsubscribed because I couldn’t find any other content I was interested in watching. It’s way too many video essays and not a hell of a lot else. Not worth it, imo.
I think ublock origin bypasses youtubes ad detection
Just tried. It does not.
EDIT: Needed to update my browser.
Works on my machine
Firefox + uBlock Origin served me about 4 hours of video last night without an ad in sight.
Also NoScript!
I think ublock is working on a fix
It’s a cat and mouse game, except the mouse has effectively infinite lives.
That could feed a lot of cats
except the mouse has effectively infinite lives.
Thats basically how rodent ecology works, already, isn’t it? Being an r strategy reproducer is pretty much just speccing into unlimited respawns.
deleted by creator
I have never gotten a twitch ad in my life
deleted by creator
This was annoying when it happened. Fortunately there are adblockers specifically for Twitch that work fine.
Any youtube specific extensions? Or maybe you could check out the enabled rules.
What browser? It works for Firefox on my PC and mobile.
Google has slowly been really pushing their way or no-way. They announced that 3 strike policy against your account for ad-blocking, from my understanding it had only rolled out to chrome but someone within the last couple months posted an image of Firefox showing them the adblock message.
Ublock Origin does still work for some, but I believe it’s per account. Honestly, the moment I heard about the policy I immediately switched to Piped. I don’t really care about the YouTube algorithm, I hardly use the site outside of information searching (guides mostly) and so the homepage always being YT front page doesn’t bother me. I can create an account with piped and have subscriptions, can make playlists and on the LibreTube app I can download videos. That’s all I need. Unfortunately there is some downtime sometime but you can host your own instance of it really gets to you - I’m nearly at that point myself just for the peace of mind.
So, fuck YouTube and Google tracking, fuck their forced ad policy, use a wrapper like Piped/Invidious and be done with them.
I might need to update my firefox. Think thats the issue.
deleted by creator
I don’t think they’ll care or miss you, to be honest. It’s not like they’re making money off you.
They’re absolutely making money
How? How do they profit off someone who refuses to view ads?
With their personal data obviously.
their personal data that they use to show them… ads
Personal data isn’t only used for ads. In this case a users watching history can be sold especially if it’s connected in some way to a demographic profile. There could be many more ways to monetize many other things the user does.
They don’t sell data. They sell ads. Selling data would directly erode their ability to sell ads.
deleted by creator
Who would pay for data on a person you can’t advertise to?
I could totally see a company doing a market analysis paying for this data. They’d be looking for for counts of people interested in a thing or in a demographic…then they can determine if it’d be worth it to develop a product targeting that group
Do you seriously think advertisers buy each user’s data individually, and sometimes Google goes “oh hey guys just a heads up, that individual is using an ad blocker 👍🏼”?
No, but having a handful of people who will never see their ads devalues the whole package.
I stayed at a place last year that had a RokuTV, YouTube was practically unusable on it due to the absurd number of ads that would play. Even more infuriating was that they were often the same ad, repeated.
Brave Browser gets around YT’s ads.
This is why I use Smartube on my android TV and revanced/NewPipe on my phone.
The few times I’ve witnessed naked YouTube it’s made be realise that if any of the sources mentioned stop working then I’m simply not going to use YouTube.
Yeah it’s horrible. For it to somehow be worth watching with ads, the ads had to be for a legitimate and relevant product, and the algorithm / video quality had to be much better.
I highly recommend using either Piped (has an app for android, too) or invidious (several instances to choose from). No need to use adblock or anything while watching from them. Some videos don’t play, seems more common with music videos, but for most stuff it’ll work fine.
Where is this mythical app 👀
IMO the best Piped app for Android is LibreTube
The two he listed are websites. On Android a really good Piped client is Libretube, and Clipious for Invidious is… eh. On iOS Yattee for Piped.
I had a playlist that I was watching when I was working with raw meat (can’t touch the phone). Next video comes up and it’s a 8 minute ad that I can’t skip because I can’t touch my phone. Argh.
Yeah that part was especially frustrating. I like playing longform content on my 2nd monitor while gaming on my first monitor so I kept having to tab out to skip the ads.
A rich right wing lunatic (but I repeat myself) in Australia had a 45m ad for his vanity political campaign. A friend of mine sent a screenshot.
That’s ridiculous. How is there not a limit on the length of an ad? Money obviously—but still. I make a point NOT to purchase from a company if an ad is longer than 30 seconds. So annoying!
You get ads for actually real products? Literally the only ad for a real thing that is available to me was about a cleaning company for house fassades… but I don’t have a house. Everything else is stupid games or apps, or porn or straight up scams.
Very fair point!
I used to pay for premium just because it was the simplest way to watch ad free on my phone (IOS so Vanced was not an option), and being able to download videos to watch later on a flight was nice.
But then they wouldn’t let you do Picture in Picture from the app, which, like, fine. Annoying but I’ll just play it in the background and just listen to the audio.
But then they started forcing the tiktok clone onto the home page and subscriptions page. I really do not like the dopamine disinformation vortex. So I deleted the app and just started watching them through the website, which actually enabled Picture in Picture and let me hide the shorts shelf (for 30 days before I have to click the X again.)
Now I’ve just stopped paying for it and just watch YouTube in the Firefox Focus IOS browser which completely blocks YouTube ads in my experience. It won’t let me do Picture in Picture or play audio in the background on their website, but I’ve noticed embedded YouTube videos on other websites will.
So now I’m looking in to using other front ends so I can have complete normal functionality without having to watch adds or pay them money and have their stupid tik tok clone shoved down my throat.
Good job Google, you managed to completely alienate someone who was paying you cash. Now I’m the definition of a free rider on your service.
Check out uYou+ with AltStore. It lets you enable PiP and background play, and I think you can disable shorts and such.
The brave browser allows you to Picture in Picture and blocks ads!
Maybe it’s an iOS thing, but I can definitely do PiP with Premium on the official app on Android.
It may be different now, but when IOS first added PiP is was super inconsistent with the YouTube app, it worked one week, then the app updated and it didn’t work, then the next week it worked if you were logged in, then only with premium, then only if you were not logged in, then it would exit out of it it the first time you opened it but not the second time you opened PiP
It was just… a mess and it almost felt like there was some back and fourth going on between Apple and Google over how it was implemented.
I can do PiP on iOS with my premium subscription.
PiP works on iOS, even without premium (with some restrictions). At least it did very recently, I have premium now though so I can’t verify as of today
If you’re open to recommendations, sideloading uYou+ (via altstore or other methods, no jailbreak needed) is sort of like ReVanced but for iOS.
There’s also Yattee which is on the App Store or you can sideload it. It can connect to a Piped or Invidious instance to play YouTube vids.
Both of them are open source if that’s important for you
uYou+ is no longer maintained. I use uYouPlusExtra: https://github.com/arichorn/uYouPlusExtra
Thanks, I’ll look in to that.
I can do PiP on Firefox android by playing the video in fullscreen and returning home. There’s an add on for FF, Video Background Play Fix, that allows me to play in the background as well.
A bit of an aside, but did you use speech to text to post this?
No, I’m just bad at proof reading and a clumsy typer/ not the best with written grammar
That’s cool. Was curious more than anything else.
Impression I got, too.
AdGuard for iOS blocks YouTube ads. Adblock Pro has an “open in PiP mode” button that lets you open videos in PiP without YT premium, which is cool.
I don’t use the app
ReVanced can patch your YouTube client (even without root) and add (your choice of) features, for example adblocking, picture in picture, playing in background as well ad quality of life improvents like hiding the “block” of news videos, remove reels or certain buttons
They said they’re on IOS.
The reviews on the play store make this sound like a pretty trash app. Maybe I’m looking at the wrong one…
Anything revanced on the play store is fake. You cannot get Revanced from the play store. https://revanced.app/
Revanced isn’t in an app store (at least not a legit version), you have to build it yourself. Otherwise it would probably end like Vanced. Take care of scam websites, this is the real one: https://revanced.app/
Or check this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/ (yes, it’s Reddit, but the guide was really useful to me 🤷♂️)
Thanks, that’s much different! lol This looks pretty involved. Does it need to be updated all the time as Youtube updates, similar to NewPipe? Because NewPipe is a pain to keep updated but it also a lot less work. lol
ReVanced doesn’t really require frequent updates. After modifying the YouTube app, I disable auto updates and keep using it until something doesn’t work properly (usually ads reappear)- Happens maybe every 4-5 months for me.
For example, the YouTube version I’m using right now is 18.23.35 from June 10th, while the newest version that can be patched with ReVanced is 18.35.44. But since I haven’t seen any issues, I didn’t even bother to check for updates. Only your comment made me check and realize that I can update it.
What I usually do is tell the Play Store to not update it. Also, I don’t think it’s that involved. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m pretty experienced with phone modification, but I think it’s just downloading the file, opening it, selecting YouTube, choosing what modifications you want, and installing it.
I don’t find it at all annoying to keep NewPipe up to date.
I think you may need to take a look at Obtainium.
Hmm. I’ve always had premium so never looked into ReVanced. I knew it existed, but didn’t realise it might be useful for more than just bypassing ads.
Most of these should be regular settings. I want several of them. My biggest bugbear is shorts. But I also want to be rid of those little popup things and the overlay cards at the end of a video.
deleted by creator
The ads are just extremely bad in general. Betting ads for a legitimate casino would already be a huge step up form the shit I get…
For those with iOS, please watch through Firefox Focus. It blocks YT ads!
Or sideload uYou/uYou+, works really well!
I prefer using yattee, but lately most instances throw an error and has been unusable for me, hopefully it can work more consistently over time
deleted by creator
I had 4 ads stop me 4 times in 5 minutes from starting to watch my first video. And they were the long ads you can skip, but if not, they will last. I miss back when a banner at the bottom of the video was an annoyance.
x
Fuck the advertisers. I care way more about them turning screws on the creators.
