What are ‘ads’? 🤷🏼
I dunno. Some strange relic from the 1980s?
Kidding aside, it’s shocking how bad raw YT is. We watch it via Smartube (or PipePipe as needed). I can’t believe people watch “raw” youtube…it’s unwatchable.
If they ever quash SmartTube and PipePipe…well…I imagine Peertube, Nebula, Libby and Curiosity stream will suddenly become a great deal more popular.
I don’t think the powers that be fully grasp the (very delicate) knife edge they walk. They only stay in business so long as they aren’t annoying enough to be replaced. Actually, who am I kidding - they know that exactly and play the delicate “gently gently” boil frogs in a pot game like grandmasters.
The ads seem to be pretty variable depending on usage so I suspect not everyone is seeing the same thing. I rarely use YouTube in any form. When I do and I’m rawdogging it for whatever reason, it seems like I get a few short ads, like 30s or less. They’re annoying but not awful.
A friend keeps YouTube running constantly on his TV in the background while he works. He gets so many ads and they’re so long! Like several minutes of ads, mostly unskippable, over the course of a 15 minute video. I don’t know how people deal with that shit.
Good thing YouTube itself is skippable.
Who?
My smart tube app wasn’t working tonight so watched YouTube on the normal app. I can’t believe people live like this, it’s actually unwatchable.
Okay how good is Smart Tube for ypu? I downloaded it to my family Fire TV but my mom just refuses to use it, so we watch long, loud, unbearable ads all the time. I get that there’s no algorithm to find videos, but can you import subscriptions? My mom has noticed YT never shows her a few of her subscribed channels in her recommended anymore.
yeah. I will go to look something up that I need or want to watch, but I’m often bailing halfway through that advertisement. it’s not even worth my time
Seriously bro! I got revanced on my phone and smart tube next on the tv. I legit had to think about the last time I used the official app and it was nothing but angry memories. Waking up in the middle of a, and I’m not making this up, hour plus long ad! Always auto playing some ai slop bullshit about some murder or something slightly cosmological.
I was jarred by an ad playing during LOTR on HBO just now.
If you run Fcast receiver on your android TV device, you can cast to it from Grayjay without ads.
There’s an abundance of work arounds, for certain. I’ve been using NewPipe for a year or two now.
Mostly just annoying to go through this ritual of jury rigging every new device to use basic Internet services.
Gen X made 90 minute cassette recordings of their favorite music. Back then you could lower the volume to ignore ads and wait for the DJ to trigger your recording. Today I just use the mute on the remote and have my other device handy to watch some other content while waiting for show to come back to the main content. It’s always good to have a mantra about adverting by associating it in your head as indoctrination “Poison” which is what it is essentially.
WATCH THE ADS OR IT’S PIRACY!

Dam ads exist ? Been on YouTube Revanced for 5 years now 😂😂🖕🖕 fuck you google.
I’d very much suggest everyone try YouTube Revanced.
Though android is likely going to crack down on them before the end of the year, so new users should switch to a degoogled or open source phone OS.
Or download the videos using ytdlp, and use a cable to transfer them to your phone like it’s 2012.
I’m on graphene is already
Im using 1Blocker on Safari macOS and iOS and get no ads on YouTube.
You guys get ads ?
to the people who read stuff on /c/technology, likely not.
No, why would we? Americans maybe? They love ads, apparently…
American here, I hate ads and haven’t seen any on YouTube for years. Well, other than movie trailers and stuff I chose to watch intentionally.
Same here. It’s jarring to use someone else’s device. AdGuard does a great job on my phone.
You guys get ads ?
you guys go to YT ? I wonder how and why it’s still out there. They make it so obvious they don’t want people to watch video’s there
Only for a short break, usually with freetube, newpipe for clips, metrolist, harmony for music. Now I get my info from fedivers and RSS feeds
deleted by creator
I was part of a really annoying one recently that targeted vpn use but it seems to have stopped
We’ve got a business model that didn’t even exist 25 years ago, and we’re making insane money!
How can we fuck it up?
Remember when Google was “not evil”? :(
Do the right thing!
But like all corporations once that IPO went through they abandoned any semblance of morality at the alter of obscene profit.
laughs in uBlock Origin
Well currently they’re delaying the video start by the time it would have taken the ad to play. It’s still better than having to actually watch ads, but blockers are not in the best position right now.
That’s what they say but not what I’m experiencing. Either way, blank screen is better than ads
Same here. They really underestimate how much more annoying ads are
deleted by creator
Little do they know this is eating at people’s YouTube addiction !
What delay? click vid, yt asks if I want to know why my connection is slow, by the time I read that the vid plays. FF+UBO+Linux
I’m not watching ads so it’s doing exactly what I want it to thank you very much.
On your TV?
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but I’m running SmartTube on an Nvidia Shield here. Works amazing.
It astonishes me that the shield is still the best of the streaming boxes after all these years.
its still very capable, but best depends. iirc there are certain audio formats the shield doesnt support.
i personally would love a new shield using ~switch 2 soc just so i can move emulation/lower end pc onto it.
What format does the shield not support that other boxes do support?
I went to go look it up for my old setup, turns out its mainly for the older models, as the codecs are only supported on the newer revisions of the shield tv.
though with the shield tv, one of the missing things that would be nice to have would be AV1 support (as Nvidia only supported AV1 starting with Ampere based gpus)
It’s so versatile. One of the last great products Nvidia came up with before shooting up AI crack.
I mean there are ways, like pihole, but I like the simple option of a really long hdmi cable that I use to plug my computer into the TV, so I never have to use any of the shitty built in TV apps.
Edit: not pihole, apparently.
pihole hasn’t worked for years to block youtube ads, no?
You’re correct. Pihole works at the DNS level. Since YouTube hosts their ads on the same servers that host their videos, blocking the ads with DNS would also block the videos. Which I guess it technically works to block YT ads, but that’s a little like saying “set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
I thought so too, but maybe I missed something new with Pihole/YT Ads.
What, it works for me? Put on an 8 hour video while doing chores and had ads every 5 minutes. Filled with rage I installed pihole and no more ads.
I’m curious how. Maybe a different region? I don’t have Pihole anymore but it didn’t use to do anything for me for YouTube. Luckily we have uBlock.
Honestly, I’ve not used it, I just know of it. From a quick search it looks like you’re right tho, you’d probably need to use an external device like an android box or something.
I would love to run a long hdmi cable from my pc to my tv, but I have rabbits and they like the spicy hay
So I was watching Forrest Gump and he’s running through the jungles of Viet Nam. All of a sudden he stops running. And I know that’s not right because he hasn’t rescued “him” yet.
Turns out my jerk face rabbit chewed through the Ethernet cable.
Rabbits do love that spicy hay.
And we love them even with their destructive habits. I love my two babies 😊
When he was still with us, we loved our jerk face too.
Rabbit Tax:

What a handsome fella he was! Thank you for sharing.
Here are my buns

Oh no, I feel that, we had an orange kitty who adored his electric spaghetti! We had to run cables through that tube conduit stuff everywhere >.<
Oh the orange ones are the most fun. I had a couple oranges as a kid and they were so sweet and so dumb. I loved them lol
Look for an armored HDMI cable. They are wrapped in a steel jacket. Conduit is also an option.
Conduit is probably the best option, I just haven’t done anything with it yet. And I might have to convince partner to cut some holes in the wall to make that work. I’ll eventually figure it out.
Yeah I unsmarted my TV and just threw Mint on an old laptop. FreeTube works great on there.
I have this thing called a DisplayPort cable. So yes, uBlock origin on my TV.
Edit: I’m realizing this might be coming across really shitty, but i promise I’m just intending some tongue-in-cheek dry joking.
Smart tube is GOATED.
deleted by creator
I have a script that takes a YT URL on my clipboard and uses yt-dlp to download it to my Jellyfin folder so I can watch on my Apple TV on The Big Telly.
Fuck adverts.
I haven’t tried it personally, but have heard good things:
If you’ve got a VPN, just install that on your Apple TV. Google doesn’t show ads in certain countries (the list is Googleable). That was an absolute game changer for me.
I use an Apple TV, but I assume it’s the same as any other streaming box or appropriate smart TV.
The absolute piece-of-piss way to block all YouTube ads on it is to install a VPN like Proton, choose a relevant country (easily googleable), and there will be no ads whatsoever in YouTube.
Google doesn’t serve ads on YouTube in a handful of countries.
There are some options on some TVs. WebOS has an app which can be sideloaded.
Probably a fair percentage of users block þeir smart TVs from connecting to þe internet.
Actually, YouTube is cracking down on adblockers.
So while you might not feel the pain now, you will eventually.
They’ve been “cracking down on adblockers” for over a decade
“They” have also been trying to prevent consumers/us from taking ownership of our devices and data for the last 2-decades.
… and, ya know what? It’s working.
Nah, if Youtube blocks adblockers then I’ll just waste my time elsewhere.
Same, I low key hope they do it so I’ll read more. This might be the only way. 🙃
real maybe I’ll actually go through the mountains of DVDs and blu rays in our apartment
There’s always a workaround…
Firefox + uBlock Origin has worked well for years.
++ SponsorBlock and you got chef’s kiss
+1 combo. privacy badger, ublock origin and umatrix for fine tuning. also a youtube specific addon. seems okay
What’s a YouTube specific add on?
then theres this yt related thing. don’t think it does much


Are these from reliable sources? I’m always hesitant with extensions as they are given a lot of access and often seem to be from shady sources.
Because they don’t put the effort in.
Add a simple “the video isn’t served until the ad’s length has elapsed” and suddenly your only workaround is to spend 30s staring at a black screen.
Better than ads
Deal.
Laughs in
Txt file with favorite channels as input for a yt-dlp download script schedule. Combined with a selfhosted invidious and freetube desktop app for other then favorite videos.
Honestly I am really tired of jumping trough hoops, have to make sure yt-dlp and invidious use a proxy (cloudflare warp) or google will ban your ip for being a bot.
But having to deal with the actual YouTube site or reopening my google account is worse. Its not even (but still also) the ads at this point but pure resentment against big tech.
Why not run tubearchivist or something?
First I hear of if but a quick scroll shows it mostly to organize an existing collection so you would still need to download.
I put them straight into jellyfin which works fine for me.
You got that script handy?
I wont be home till quite a few hours.
But also its general boilerplate enough an ai can help you get you one according to your own preferences.
There are also a number of examples online.
This one looks pretty interesting https://github.com/panchi64/auto-ytdlp
The day I have to watch ads is the same day I stop youtube. So far ad blocks seem to work well for now and I’m more than willing to spend hours getting them working if needed.
The moment I’m unable to watch YouTube ad-free is the moment I never watch YouTube again.
When it reaches that point I’ll stop watching YouTube. I will never feel the pain they inflict.
Cracking down just means I don’t watch the content, still not getting ads.
I feel the pain anytime I look at a video outside of my browser. So if it becomes where I can’t find a workaround, then I’ll just have to go elsewhere. And there will be other places. There are other places, it’s just hard to get people to not go to or be on the big one. Push people hard enough, they’ll leave.
/me chuckles in umatrix
deleted by creator
Is your friend using a chromium browser?
Nothing is ever enough
Line must go up!
You just gotta love the headline in the article, it’s trying to sell it as a great new feature
VRC Non-Skip ads are now generally available, allowing brands to reach TV audiences with Google AI.
It is for their target audience. They’re not talking to you, they’re talking to their customers.
Oh I know, and that is sort of the point that their customers apparently hate humans
What’s the end game with YouTube? Will it eventually cut all videos and show nothing but ads?

The ironic part is that there was a time where I’d watch hours long compilation videos of funny ads, and even now I watch 90s nostalgia ones set to vaporwave mixes. Hell, every person and their grandmother I knew at one time watched the Superbowl “just for the ads”.
At some point, the goal of marketing shifted from “How do we keep your attention/whimsy” to “How can we force unwilling participants to comply?” Fuck that fascismo shit.
That’s always been the goal of marketing.
Demolition Man becoming increasingly prescient.
Ahhh, so similar to Facebook then. I don’t bother with that site either.
It’s called enshittification.
Unpopular opinion but youtube + music is good value.
But my journey here was unique.
I grew up during the era when ipods / mp3 players incentivized having personal libraries of music files. After itunes became hostile towards that I switched to Google Music which allowed you to upload music files and stream them to your devices. It was great because I had some obscure remixes and indy band albums that I’d lost the CD for years ago.Ended up paying for Google Music after a 3 month trial.
Eventually Google Music became Youtube Music and with it came Youtube Premium. Tried Spotify but it didn’t have some artists that I can’t remember now anyways. So I just kept paying for youtube music and not seeing ads on youtube.
… Not to be a Dick to you, but imagine paying money to Google. Wow.
We need to pick our battles. I don’t see much difference in paying Google for a service than having a Spotify family plan like I do. I know spotify has its own problems and my money would be more ethically spent on some other service, but with everything else going on life I can’t be arsed to switch to anything right now. For me it gives enough value for the money spent and that’s good enough for now.
Maybe youre too young to remember when iTunes charged $15 for a digital album in .AAC
Thanks for making lemmy just a little bit redditer. I’ll block you now
I am talking about ethics here. Not your favourite method of listening to music.
Paying money to Google is one of the worst unethical decisions you can do.
Hate me as you want, but this is just the raw truth.
If they just made the ads unintrusive people wouldn’t bother installing adblockers. But sure make the ads longer and see what happens.
Also changed how ads are served so they wouldn’t be a known security issue. Intrusive or not I will block all of them until security improves.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again.
As an IT guy I consider an adblocker an essential part of my computer security suite.
I will not reconsider until there are laws in place forcing website owners to take legal and financial responsibility for any damage sustained to my computer when visiting their site, and loading their ads.
IF the laws are changed like that, I would reconsider getting rid of my adblocker, ai still wouldn’t but I would reconsider the issue.
deleted by creator
Exactly, people used to love ads. They would sit down and watch hour long compilation videos of the funniest and weirdest ones. People would get hyped for shit like Old Spice and Skittles and never skip it. Even the Superbowl was less entertaining than the ads it had and that was a mainstream opinion.
It’s the exact same as the boomers who keep crowing “Why doesn’t anyone wanna work?!” but now it’s “Why doesn’t anyone want ads?!” lmao
It’s like you don’t care about stonks and shareholder value.
I care about those things.
I want them to go down faster >:)
Wrong. Still would.
Nah, take a look at the stats of the number of people who tried out an adblocker for the first time when Youtube attempted to ban them several months back. Streisand Effect in action.
Most people still would.
I personally wouldn’t, that’s why I use Adblock Plus. But there’s a reason everyone started hating on ABP when it started allowing non-intrusive ads by default. Most people do not want to see ads at all, no matter what.
Back in the day it was just some stuff, like “bosch screwdrivers, 29.90” or something, now it’s attention grabbing hyper annoying crap, who can even live with that?
If they made ads unobtrusive they wouldn’t be able to charge as much for them.



























