UPDATE So as new info comes out, I’ll be posting it here. It seems as if this Rollout Has Several Parts.
Part 1
You get a popup message over top of your video, blocking the screen:
- This is the first sign. If you see this popup AND are logged into a YouTube account, your account has been selected.
- At this stage you can likely close or block these messages with an adblocker.
Part 2
This message will change, indicating that you have 3 remaining videos to watch without ads.
Will insert photo once one has been found
- At this stage your adblocker will imminently stop working in 3 videos time.
- Personally using Firefox + uBlock Origin and tweaking filters and updates does not even fix it.
Part 3
None of the video loads now, everything looks blank.
- At this stage you must tred new ground to avoid ads. I have posted methods in the comments. If you want to bypass this end page, read down there.
End of Update
YouTube has started rolling out anti-adblock to users inside the United States, which means that they are preparing to roll this out to the entire country. Personally, I have been blocked already. I want to gauge how common this occurrence is.
I’ll just stop using YouTube like I’ve stopped using Reddit.
I’m ready for that. When being a youtuber started looking like a job I think the site lost something.
That is something you just cannot avoid with a new medium. Eventually there will always be professionalization. It just sucks that youtube now just gives us the same shit over and over instead of making it easy to find new creators, like it used to be.
Hell I think you could make a massive improvement to the site if it could realize “Hey, I’ve been suggesting the same exact video to this user 500 times in a row, and he’s never clicked it. Maybe this user likes this creator/series, but not this specific video.”
Yeah, YouTube was better when it was a bunch of amateur cat videos.
I’d say just smaller, less scripted content. Maybe that’s what tiktok is.
There was a sweet spot when cat videos went pro. Then the spam killed it.
I remember one of the early Youtube sensations was this teen chick’s vlog that turned out to be a fictional soap opera basically. Because it hadn’t occurred to anyone to do that yet.
This was BACK IN THE DAY, around the same time Boxxy became a sensation, or that one chick who just sat still in front of the camera because the Japanese liked her huge eyes.
lonelygirl15? I remember a friend telling me about that series because she wanted to share a funny video reply (Remember those?) by somebody who managed to find the same animal plushies that the girl carries around; it was a parody episode where the plushies talk about the current situation in the story and suggest that maybe the girl should drop all the teen drama stuff so they can all focus on running for their lives instead.
That’s the one, lonelygirl15. What a wild story. My internet destroyed brain immediately jumped to “Wow that was before the Youtube partner program, and it was presented as an authentic teen’s vlog at least at first…I wonder what the monetization strategy was?” And it turns out there kinda wasn’t one. They went into $50,000 worth of credit card debt to fund the series, according to Wikipedia. Like remember that episode of South Park (remember that show?) where they had the waiting room full of viral video people waiting to get their non-existent internet fame money?
probably not ublock and for sure not revanced
I’m still good with revanced
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Talk about exactly what you did to bypass it!
I dont care content makers are losing, they are all dumbarses, and if they are supporting yt still and not posting elsewhere, then they are just stupid cunts.
You had me until here. If you want to monetize online video content or get widespread appeal, YouTube is pretty much the viable choice atm, save for Twitch which only works if you’re a streamer or Nebula, which even then it alone doesn’t suffice and is very specific. If you plan on trying to “make it big” using PeerTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc. alone, your aspirations may as well be dead on arrival.
Not losing sleep over the money content creators lose over you using adblock is fine, I personally don’t put too much importance on it myself. But to call them all dumbasses or stupid cunts is just unreasonable, given the lack of a proper, popular alternative for most of them to do what they do.
I don’t agree with the name calling, but many content creators have already set a website, with some outside revenue sources like Patreon, selling merchandise, or other stuff.
They can’t leave the most popular platform, but they can set up alternatives for when it stops being the most popular, and in the meantime also target people who are leaving it already.
Oh yeah, I agree it’s a wise decision for any content creator, especially those who want to make a living from it, to diversify their sources of income. Backing up all content they post on YouTube to other sites as well is also really nice as it contributes to the push away from YouTube without having to risk little on their part as well
Not yet, and I’m already prepared to use piped if I can’t use youtube itself, and hopefully people will start reuploading content to peertube (wink) if yt just becomes inaccessible.
I didn’t get this banner yet maybe because I’m using ublock origin
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an ad on YouTube
should I vote if I’m not in the US?
If you have a good party to vote for. I’m in the UK, and I’m not so sure if any party deserves my vote.
I’m in the UK, and I’m not so sure if any party deserves my vote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&t=216 / Obligatory Piped link
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Aaaaah man, I literally added the link so you wouldn’t show up. Also your timestamp doesn’t work.
Thanks, I will keep that in mind.
i meant on the poll lol
You should always vote, if only to not let the worst party get power. Your enemies would rather you didn’t vote than vote for their enemy.
Still odd to think of countries where voting is optional. It’s compulsory here, adn the only people who can afford to not vote are the rich…
Fair enough. The thing is, do I vote for the near-anarchists, that, save for the anarchism, align with my principles? Do I vote for the party that is further away from my ideological beliefs, but doesn’t have the anarchism, and is a bit larger? Or do I vote for the main opposition, which is even further from me ideologically (and doesn’t seem to have much of a clear vision)?
That sounds like a question about how much you oppose anarchy. Any change, involves some loss of established order, so if the Overton window tells us something, is that “anarchist parties” are just the ones trying to push it stronger. Actual anarchists, wouldn’t try to be part of a government in the first place.
Okay, but then we still have the problem of FPTP. If I’m in a Labour dominated constituency and I vote LibDem, my vote wouldn’t matter cuz Labour will win anyways. And if I live in a Greens Stronghold and I vote Greens, my vote wouldn’t really matter, as they would have won with or without my vote. The way I see it, your vote can only make a difference in a constituency where there is no clear winner, and it’s everybody’s game.
Please correct me if I’m wrong in my assessment of the situation.
Then you want to fight FPTP and vote pruning by constituency, to make your vote matter.
You could vote blank, or a poop emoji to show your disconformity, but organizing or supporting a protest to reform the voting system might be more effective.
If we counted all those who don’t vote because it “doesn’t change anything”, those who vote blank or null, and those who vote knowing their vote will still get thrown away… it could actually make a majority.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I haven’t used youtube.com to watch YouTube in years. NewPipe x SponsorBlock (polymorphicshade) on mobile, SmartTubeNext on TV, Invidious, Piped, or FreeTube on desktop.
Hadn’t heard of FreeTube before, thanks for mentioning it!
Thanks! Freetube works great. Here are directions for importing YT subscriptions. https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/importing-subscriptions/
I’ve started to just download videos with
yt-dlpafter grabbing links via Invidious. Using Invidious itself has become somewhat unreliable lately, and this way I don’t have to put up with buffering and can watch in good quality. Cut out the middle menDo you self host Invidious? I have zero issues with it self hosted.
MPV can directly play yt videos (it uses a built-in copy of yt-dlp afaik), and it’s very configurable. I always watch yt videos with it.
Sometimes it would be useful if it could use a proxy like piped or invidious, but those links don’t work
Ooh, I should try that! I already use mpv, so that’d streamline things a bit
Consider upping the cache for youtube. By default it is 2 minutes, which is mostly fine, except that if you are speeding through a part with 2x or faster, you may quickly run out of that small cache, because it only loads with the speed of something between 1x and 2x.
And then you may also set up saving the cache to disk instead of RAM, because it may be quite larger. Single config option.
You can make these only apply for youtube videos only with conditional auto profiles. The doc has an example for an automatic youtube profile, it’s perfect.I don’t use the main YouTube website at all anymore. A big reason for this is that I spend a lot of time using a really weak laptop that tends to struggle with the JavaScript-laden abomination that is modern corporate web design. Firefox itself struggles as well, so I primarily use Luakit with Invidious, which runs peachy. I also put together a local html page for my bookmarks that is generated from Yaml using a small C application (which is not optimal, I know, but I’ve been learning C and this was a good opportunity). Whenever something doesn’t work in Luakit, I evade to Palemoon. I also tried watching YouTube via mpv earlier, and it’s great! It runs infinitely better than any web player at max resolution and buffers the whole video. Never going back.
I meant too increase the cache for yt videos in mpv :)
But you say it buffers the whole video, so maybe already changed something to do that
But yeah, I agree on your other points. If youtube blocks yt-dlp, mpv and proxies, then I’m done with it.
I have to wonder if once the ad blocking gets fully rolled out if yt-dlp will also cease to work?
Good question. I’d hope not
Not yet, just waiting for it.
No.
For me it’s quite strange. This first happened around 2 weeks ago, I was getting ads, however only the audio works as when the ad plays the screen is black.
I’m on Firefox with uBlock. Also I never got this popup, I just started getting ads with a black screen.
This is such a better use of their time and dollars versus improving their service to make it more attractive to customers.
If this is the change that really sets them financially straight, then I would say they have a failing business model.
If premium cost $5per month I’d pay for it, u use YouTube all the time
No way in hell it’s worth $15 a month though, their pricing is completely brwindead
Do you guys not get Youtube Premium Lite? It’s €7 per month to get rid of ads and doesn’t include stuff most people aren’t interested in like Youtube music.
Nope, not available her ein the states.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/premiumlite
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I agree. It’s around $22 NZD and that is just too steep. They have a slightly cheaper one but you can’t background play with it. I’m sick of being nickel and dimed at every possible opportunity and then hearing about how these companies are making record profits.
It’s $25/mo for family. I hate that I pay for it, but I use music, and I mostly watch YouTube on a streaming device, so I’ve never been able to use ad blockers. $15 for the fam felt worth it, but $25 has me rethinking. Maybe I can configure YT-DL to get the shows I care about on my Plex
Any android based streaming device can run SmartTube (formerly SmartTube next). On an Android phone you can patch the YouTube apk with revanced, which also gives you full access to yt music.
Just make a (digital) trip to India and get family of 5 accounts for about 1$ a month per account. This the way I did it.
I won’t give a penny to the evil google.
You are not the customer. You are the product.
Yes, but if they destroy their products (aka drive users away) their real customers (ad companies) will pull out.
Why would the ad companies back out if Youtube got rid of the people who were blocking their ads anyway? If anything, it makes Youtube a safer investment.
Less viewer numbers to show to advertisers.
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Just ask Twitter/X or what’s left ot it.
capitalism (or at least the weird version of it used in the tech world) is about short term profit. if they get good numbers from this, they can make future projections of an imaginary increase over the years and make the ad companies happy for a while. they do not care about breaking the product in the long term
I know. This was just the intelligent person view. In reality, as you said, they only care about short term profit, and can you blame them? Things can change overnight in the tech world. Google (as a product) was undisputed until ChatGPT was released and integrated into Bing, now Alphabet is falling vehind and losing its dominance on the market.
This is such a better use of their time and dollars versus improving their service to make it more attractive to customers.
Making their service more attractive to customers is precicesly what they’re trying to do.
It’s just that an advertising agency’s customers are not the folk who watch, read or hear the ads, it’s the folk who pay for the ads.
I am not sure if it will work out like this though. The amount of ads they are forcing down peoples throat is isane. Eventually it will make people consume less videos and with that less ads overall.
And thus the enshittification cycle completes
I am not sure if it will work out like this though. The amount of ads they are forcing down peoples throat is isane. Eventually it will make people consume less videos and with that less ads overall.
Sure, could be - but keep in mind that they have all the relevant usage data at hand. Any decrease in service popularity among users (or indeed any kind of user behavior) is immediately visible to them. They have the means to know exactly what annoyances the market will bear.
And considering that YouTube still holds a de-facto monopoly on video discoverability within the entire anglophone internet I feel like it’s safe to say that the market will likely bear a lot more annoyances :P
So you know that the people watching YouTube aren’t really considered “customers” by google in the traditional sense, right?
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From what I read on their own report, less than 2% use adblocks.
That is depressing
Agreed. Sadly, agreed.
pi-hole means no ads anywhere!
If your pihole can block YouTube ads please tell me how!
Actually not true, the way YouTube ads show up is more or less almost impossible for pi-holes to catch. There’s been some successes in the past, but then YouTube ads somehow find another way to circumvent it.
Source: have pi-hole
Unless the ad is served on the same domain as the video. There’s no way to block the ad through DNS without blocking the video too.
This doesn’t prevent YouTube ads. Source: have a pi-hole
If you are on Linux you can just use freetube. Maybe it’s also available on windows but that’s something I don’t know
FreeTube is available on Windows as well.
Thanks for the recommendation. Just downloaded (just in case) and I’ve gotta say, I might like this enough to switch out even if they don’t mess with my browser player.
