I pay for premium because I despise ads. I do whatever I can to remove them from my life. They are really playing with fire. Change is in the air rn anyway.
How I want a YT competitor, but I really don’t see how anyone can compete with their storage and bandwidth.
I also pay for premium, and tbh what I get out of it is worth it. I pay for 1 streaming site at a time, I pay fast mail for email. I’m not hesitant to pay for something as long as I get value out of it
Youtube is a prime example of why monopolies are bad
Decentralize! FEDERATE EVERYTHING!
I agree, the internet needs to go back to its roots. Putting your eggs in one basket is just a bad idea.
At some point the ratio of convenience to quality got all out of whack. Most people I know use maybe three different platforms at most and get angered by all of them. My internet experience peaked when I was checking 20 extremely specific forums regularly and using in-game chat 90% of the time (vent/teamspeak were reserved for raid night).
Why? Can you elaborate?
If a company has no competition, being a monopoly, it’s basically free to do whatever it wants. Youtube controls the video streaming market of the internet. If they choose to not pay content creators, to run 10 ads in a row every 3 minutes, or to ban content creators for saying something their automods think is a bad word, what will you do? Where else will you turn? Odds are there’s nothing for you on Vimeo. So you either make do with how Youtube operates, or you don’t get to watch cat videos, or video essays on WW2, or playthroughs of Super Mario Sunshine, or what have you.
I had as context in mind that they won’t allow you to watch videos without paying for it via subscription or advertisment
Bring able to skip 5 seconds into a 14-30 second ad isn’t a huge inconvenience. When doing something AFK the ad ends in a reasonable amount of time so you’re right back to your background music or whatever. I’ve never taken issue with that. I’m not a huge fan of the newer strategy that run two ads in a row, but it’s still tolerable. What I deplore is the occasional infomercial ad that’ll run for anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 hours without intervention. Those are the reason I run an ad blocker on the desktop.
On mobile there’s fewer options. Running adblock on Firefox works for now, but if that gets neutered I won’t cry. Another option is to install an app that works with the YouTube app to automatically skip ads after five seconds. If youtube takes action against those apps I’ll spend a lot less time on YouTube.
This harkens to the current reddit situation. I’m only here because I got tired of their incessant “get our app” prompts on mobile and just started looking into getting an app right when the shit hit the fan. Forcing intrusive advertising on users is a great way to alienate them.
maybe you missed the part where they are not only trying to get rid of adblockers, but also are trying to change over to at least 30 seconds of unskippable ads
As much as I dislike ads, “Company wants to make revenue from its product” is not a prime example of why monopolies are bad.
Youtube has done a lot more bad shit than push ads everywhere
deleted by creator
Relevant Tumblr post
youtube.com##+js(set,yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0) youtube.com##+js(set,ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, []) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)Here it is in text format so ya’ll don’t have to type it out. I haven’t verified that it works but by the looks of it it just makes the Adblock sensor report a false negative. [edit, fixed some spacings that sneaked it’s way into the filter upon copying it earlier.]
What absolute wankers! In case anyone’s adblock goes south, here are some YouTube alternatives:
For Watching YouTube
For Uploading
- PeerTube
- Idk, make a video blog or something.
deleted by creator
This is something I wanted since I have discovered Newpipe. Thank you, it’s very nice to have something like this on desktop
No revanced? I’ve been using it since vanced broke with an older update and it’s been working great for me
For Android:
Newpipe or Tubular (Newpipe X Sponsorblock fork)
VueTube (still under development, the team is working slow because it’s pretty small, they have a few time to spend on it and they need devs, it’s a complete FOSS alternative to Vanced, and will have most of its features including optional Google log in with interactions)
If you need to login and have a full YouTube experience: Revancedapp
Newpipe is perfect for me, been using it for months, now when I want to watch a video, I don’t wind up watching whatever, I have a more purposeful experience.
Yes, Newpipe works great, I use both because I want to interact with my favorite creators and share my history and lists with the PC so I’m forced to log in, so the best option for that is a patched YouTube app like revanced (I used to use vanced until a few months ago when they definitely killed it).
LibreTube is very good as well.
I tried it and I still prefer Newpipe, but it’s cool to have a lot of alternatives for everyone!
PeerTube is awesome. Also its federated with lemmy!
Thank you! Is Invidious going anywhere? I saw something about a DMCA takedown from YouTube.
I’d be surprised if Google completely stamped it out. They’re on Codeberg now, so that’ll make takedowns trickier. It’s also distributed, so taking down the Invidious websites is virtually impossible.
Also, while Google probably has pretty good lawyers, I’m not sure how well they’ll stand up if they go to court.
The official reason they gave for the takedown is also false. They claimed that invidious is using the youtube api without permission, which it isn’t.
deleted by creator
It’s definitely not ideal, but since YT has become my primary video media content, and it’s also my music streaming services. The cost has value for my family.
I am technical enough to get things like revanced installed, or others. Even for our set top boxes.
The amount of energy truly prevent tracking is endless. For me premium does pay the content creators more for my views and I don’t see/hear any platform ads.
It’s not ideal, but every other streaming service you sign into is profiling you too.
Inside my house/Network I do run pihole, and I use brave browser and it’s shield, as well as unlock origin.
Ideal? No, I’d rather everything be free but that’s not reality
Time to go to PeerTube. (federated! Bonus)
deleted by creator
Companies are going out of their way to ignore the fact that “the easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell
I consider adblocking to be in the same boat. Piracy/Adblocking only exists because it’s not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. By making the free version even more intrusive ON PURPOSE, they’re not pushing as many people to buy a subscription as they are pushing people to install adblockers. If YouTube only ever showed a quick 10-15 sec ad at the very beginning of a video, I’d be less inclined to go out of my way to find and install an adblocker (and maybe even eventually just buy a subscription) than if they force feed me back to back, 30-second, unskippable ads.
It’s the same with those stupid fucking commercials that run ALL the time and try and be as annoying as possible. If I find your ad to be annoying and frequent and shoved down my throat all the time, I will vehemently and actively go out of my way to AVOID that product, not be more inclined to buy it.
And also, are people who are determined not to watch advertising going to be the ones that cave and buy some crap if you can force them to watch it?
I don’t think google cares if you buy stuff or not. They are just selling ads.
But I agree with overall idea: if the ads become unavoidable, I’ll just stop watching youtube.
What if… We all got YouTube Premium, is Google then earning more or breakeven, when they cannot sell or display ads? I mean, there are companies paying Google to display there ads, that revenue would be gone.
They are still going to sell your data even if you get Premium.
Exactly - If anything ever happens to permanently disable my ability to block advertisements, I’ll drop that service cold and never look back.
I am constantly on YouTube. I have a stable of creators I follow and watching them has replaced the time I would have spent on other streaming services. It’s how I chill.
So I signed up for YouTube Premium and watch it on my TV with no ads. I have no complaints. I get full HD videos, streamers get paid, YouTube gets paid, and everyone is happy.
I’m in the same situation, and I agree. I even got the premium lite plan for 7€ which I find really reasonable with the quality of the content and the amount I watch. I’d rather pay YouTube and content creators than Netflix or Disney anyway.
I’ve blocked their ads for years. I support content creators by buying merchandise and with Patreon.
After hearing about this, I’ve decided to give YouTube Premium a try. It seems like an easier and more consistent way for me to support creators. I watch YT almost daily, and get a lot of value from it. I hate ads and refuse to watch them, but Premium users don’t see them.
I wouldn’t blame anyone for walking away from YouTube over this. But for me at least, this was kind of a no-brainer.
I know Google tracks users and targets us with ads. I’m deep in their ecosystem anyway, and rely on their services for work, hobbies, and managing my data. I am stuck with them, unfortunately.
I do block what I can (Meta, Microsoft, Amazon) with Pi Hole and browser extensions. But there’s no total escape from an internet footprint, short of dropping off the grid. I’m dependent on Alphabet to live my lifestyle, for better or worse.
I mean, that’s great and I’m glad you’re happy with that but:
-
This is a privacy forum and that is the opposite of privacy. Every video, like, click, and comment you submit is still used to profile you. There’s no opting out.
-
I love watching YT videos but the actual interface is fucking horrific: I can’t filter out the garbage I don’t want to watch like Shorts, podcasts, and live videos. This would be very simple for YouTube to ad.
They hijack my search results if the video I’m looking for is not in the top 5 to show me more “suggested” videos.
My home feed, instead of showing content relevant to my interests that I’ve expressed using likes and subscriptions, is full of garbage clickbait and videos I already watched 1 time 8 years ago, and the same fucking videos that are already in my subscription feed. It’s ridiculous how bad they are at this.
-
If I’m paying for a service I expect to not see ads and YT premium does nothing about in-video ads.
-
The actual creators are paid a tiny fraction of what YT is, despite providing the vast majority of the value. And YT treats them like garbage anyway.
When there is a competing subscription service that solves these problems and works well, I’ll be happy to sign up for that. Until then I’ll keep using LibreTube and YT can eat a Weiner.
YT can eat a Weiner.
I think this is the most important thing in this whole thread
- That happens whether you’re subscribed or not.
- Sort of agreed, not really relevant to the parent comment though. 3+4. You can’t have both “no ads allowed in-video” and “creators are paid a majority share of the money we make serving the video”. YouTube was (and still is if I understand it correctly) barely profitable, and if it is profitable right now I’m sure it is because of the worst kind of data-mining.
It is way harder to provide an effective platform for content than it is to deliver actual content, especially as effort/content has close to zero effect on vitality/attention/profitability, while the aspects we want in a platform (especially in regards to privacy) are entirely unprofitable. As someone who uses adblock and generally dislikes the corporate aspect of YouTube I at least has to acknowledge that YouTube has to make money somehow, and that in-video sponsors seems like a win-win for everyone involved, especially when you can skip them pretty much effortlessly.
Normally I wouldn’t even comment this shit, but as we are (hopefully) part of a shift to actual community driven platforms (fediverse in general), I think we have to aggressively discuss how to monetize these platforms enough so that they don’t actively drain the wallets of the people maintaining them, and this is a very relevant aspect of that discussion.
Hopefully not too ranty, extremely inebriated.
- That happens whether you’re subscribed or not.
- Sort of agreed, not really relevant to the parent comment though. 3+4. You can’t have both “no ads allowed in-video” and “creators are paid a majority share of the money we make serving the video”. YouTube was (and still is if I understand it correctly) barely profitable, and if it is profitable right now I’m sure it is because of the worst kind of data-mining.
It is way harder to provide an effective platform for content than it is to deliver actual content, especially as effort/content has close to zero effect on vitality/attention/profitability, while the aspects we want in a platform (especially in regards to privacy) are entirely unprofitable. As someone who uses adblock and generally dislikes the corporate aspect of YouTube I at least has to acknowledge that YouTube has to make money somehow, and that in-video sponsors seems like a win-win for everyone involved, especially when you can skip them pretty much effortlessly.
Normally I wouldn’t even comment this shit, but as we are (hopefully) part of a shift to actual community driven platforms (fediverse in general), I think we have to aggressively discuss how to monetize these platforms enough that they don’t actively drain the wallets of the people maintaining them, and this is a very relevant aspect of that discussion.
Hopefully not too ranty, extremely inebriated.
-
If one of your reasons for using YouTube premium is “streamers get paid”, you should probably look into things a bit further.
The vast majority of YouTube premium revenue goes towards music publishers who, statistically, don’t have any relation to the content you watch, and contribute nothing towards it.
The content you watch likely still has embedded advertising because YouTube has some of the worst, if not the worst, rates paid to people who actually create the videos on their platform (this means there’s no such thing as “ad free YouTube” without using an ad blocker, even if you pay for premium)
I also use YouTube music instead of Spotify or Apple so I am fine with music rights holders getting paid. I haven’t seen any ads on my premium and I have had it for years and use it on my laptop, tvs, and tablets. The only ads I see are the sponsored segments in videos that not even an ad blocker can block because it’s part of the video done by the creator themselves.
check out a Firefox extension called SponsorBlock. It’s updated by users but is pretty current and can be set to skip past self promotion and in video advertising.
Sponsor block is pretty good for those. But yeah I’m also a YouTube premium member for similar reasons, also had a Google music sub back in the day that converted over.
deleted by creator
Lemmy youtube when?
Right now the #1 alternative is Odysee. While Odysee itself is a centralized company its just as open sourced front end for the decentralized LBRY block chain.
As of now Odysee has far more videos, features, and download speeds then any other YouTube alternative.
If you’re interested in supporting an alternative I reccomend downloading the “watch on odysee” extension which redirects YouTube videos that areavailible on Odysee, to Odysee. (Firefox) (Chrome)
Odysee is a right wing cesspool with no moderation: https://thelinuxexp.com/Im-leaving-odysee/
TIL refusing to remove content you disagree with = right wing cesspool.
Just like YouTube is a left wing cesspool with cancel culture?
I guess you have to pick your poison.
Personally I can’t think of a single traditional value worth preserving and I’ve got nothing worth conserving - given the pollution of the right that modern day corruption has completed, I’ll stick to the lesser, at least until I can’t dodge advertising anymore.
I think you’re going by the English meaning of “conservative”. The word is badly chosen, because I don’t think they really are traditionalists. Probably “capitalist” would be a better fit. And paradoxically there are many things I find the “progressives” want to do which are in fact regressive. It’s a bit confusing and I think names should be changed to something else if it were up to me. Words have power, and words like “progressive” and “woke” have positive connotations while “conservative” has negative connotation which is sad; they don’t even apply anymore to the groups or ideas they represent.
Yes, you’re right about the English definition - talking politics is difficult in a global forum because of these strange idiosyncrasies.
I do try to use the language flatly, avoiding emotive words where possible. It’s interesting you say that “woke” has positive connotations, as I think the Republican🇺🇲 and Conservative🇬🇧 crowds have been using that word as something approaching a slur!
When I say “conservatism” I am strictly referring to the definition in the dictionary or the wiki. I feel like the UK Tory party is definitely following a more anarcho-capitalist expression of the ideology, but their trans exclusionary rhetoric does have the air of “traditional” CoE values around it. In the states, the creeping in of a Christian flavoured version of Sharia law is an interesting development under a lib president, as I would consider this an expression of conservatism.
Personally, I think the connotations that the term conservatism has earned over the last hundred years are well earned, especially as the core values of conservatism seem to be somewhat nebulous. Ultimately we can only judge by the totally flawed implementation of the system that we have - just as we have judged Communism to be a totally unworkable and flawed system by studying the facist regimes of Russia and China as examples - despite the similarities between communism and what the USSR/CCP were/are being almost nil; though this is probably what you were driving at with your closing statement! 😅
Tons of right wing nonsense on youtube
Censoring the right is always a good thing
If you don’t like it, then fork the and start your own curated version of Odysee. That’s the beauty of federated software.
And while yes in its current state the userbase is pretty toxic; that’s the price to pay when you have a platform with total free speech. The early adopters are always going to be the ones who rely on it the most (unsavory individuals). However this is no argument against free speech in the same way that criminals being the first ones to adopt privacy related projects, is no argument against privacy.
What?
Considering how big and relevant YouTube is, I don’t see it getting replaced by PeerTubr. The alternative at the moment are apps like ViewTube which is a custom front-end for YouTube that removes all the ads and tracking
Have we got any reps from ReVanced over here yet? It’s not a federated or decentralised approach, but it at least removes the layer of scum enveloping YouTube.
I suggest NewPipe, I never tried ReVanced, but NewPipe probably has the same features if not more, i find it quite good
There’s PeerTube I guess but all the videos are already on YouTube soo…
YouTube is seriously forgetting it’s role. I liked it better when it was dbz videos to Linkin Park and looney tunes. We use YouTube to not have a premium service then maybe contribute to the creators we like. We do NOT need yet another “streaming service” bill. They’re getting out of hand.
Man, 144p AMVs were peak internet.
DBZ Music Videos, that takes me back to the 00’s.
I’m gonna be honest. I don’t see anything wrong with this. I know the majority of us are just coming off some corporate bullshit from reddit, but I don’t think it’s wrong to not let your very expensive to maintain service be used for free without ads.
I promise that I’m not trying to suck a billionaire’s cock when I say that I marvel in awe at YouTube’s ability to input and output such astronomical amount of data at any given time, without any complaints.
Nah fuck that they have way too many unskipable 30 second ads for a 15min video. If it was 1 or 2 ads a video sure.
While I’m not opposed to paying for YouTube (it is a service after all) the only way to do so would be by being logged in to YouTube with whatever black box algorithmic tracking and curation that entails. There is no “proper” way to anonymously access YouTube without ads.
But this is such a shitty, hostile way to do it. And if you give in and say yes to ads they’ve already shown where that’s going to go, with 10 unskippable ads in a row and 30 second ads.
They could make subscriptions mandatory if they really believe they have a good product, and pass a fat portion of that money to the creators instead.
…except this isn’t about the creators, or the users, or the advertisers, it’s about Google making more money at the expense of every single other party involved in the platform, and the platform be damned. Textbook late stage enshittification.
YouTube premium revenue is shared with creators based on view time. I don’t know what percentage of the subscription cost is shared (I believe I’ve read 55% is shared but I didn’t validate that right now, their help docs say “most” so it’s likely over 50%). As I understand it from income breakdown from creators, income from YouTube premium does often surpass Adsense income even when only a small percentage of viewers use YouTube premium.
The larger factor in them doing this is that the value of selling ads has been decreasing substantially the last few years. This means they need to show more ads to make the same money they did before.
This is also part of why every YouTube creator now does their own sponsored ads inside videos, trying to rely only on Adsense isn’t viable for them.
YouTube know they have a good product, and lots of people do subscribe to YouTube premium, there is no reason form them to force people onto YouTube premium when lots of people are willing to watch the ads.
I’ve had youtube premium for several years now. Most of the creators I watch do their best to integrate their sponsorships in an appropriate way. Whether that’s choosing a sponsorship related to the video topic, or making it entertaining in its own right.
It’s expensive to run servers that hosts tens of billions of videos. If you don’t want to pay for access, then pay for no ads. If you don’t want to pay for no ads, then watching the ads is the only way. Remember, if you’re not buying the product, then you are the product.
Paying for YouTube premium still makes you the product, since you are still being tracked and sold. Hell you could drop over over 2k on a TV, phone, or GPU and still be getting tracked and sold. The old adage of if you aren’t paying you are the product no longer applies. It’s outdated.
I will just avoid their bullshit by using a different YouTube front-end.
Scrapers assemble!
How is scraping going to help, not a power user so just a curious question?
There are apps like NewPipe that pretend to be a regular browser but show the user an optimized video interface. And no ads of course.
They’re in a constant arms race with YouTube to figure out where the actual video and the other stuff (comments, video info, related videos etc.) are on the page, and YouTube keeps moving them around on purpose too.
I’m sure there’s a way to get around it, and if there isn’t, then I just won’t be using YouTube anymore. I survived before it existed. I’m getting tired of these companies’ bullshit.
Looks like I might test disabling Youtube from my life then
