YouTube viewers will soon have to sit through even longer ads, with Google rolling out new 30-second unskippable spots on a popular app.
Yeah thats enough to push me off the main app, I was already annoyed by the ads, the fact they are going unskippable is a end gamer for me
I just wished there was a app i could load onto my tv and play the videos on there ( i have a samsung so suggestions welcome)
While cstom ROMs of Android TV do exist, Samsung does not want you to truly own your device and has locked it down. The only option I see is to use your TV as a dumb TV: hook up any PC to your TV’s HDMI ports (I use a Raspi 5 running Ubuntu for that). The PC gives you full control over what you want to install, which may include an adblocker in the browser or free YouTube frontends such as FreeTube.
Many Samsung TVs use tizen, a Linux (non-Android) OS.
the only reason I know of that god forsaken platform is because it uses the woefully underrated EFL gui toolkit
Frustrating but predictable by Samsung thanks.
I do have a steam deck connected so I can look at using that to run a browser
Buy an Android TV box (can be a cheap one), and install SmartTube: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
Adblock and sponsorblock.
Firefox with ublock origin for desktop and mobile. Grayjay for mobile (integrates Nebula too so you can get both your feeds at once). Android TV with FCast and Smart Tube Next for your TV. Never see ads again.
A/B testing is showing they are going after people with ad blockers: https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-apparently-punishing-ad-blockers-by-hiding-comment-section-3320581/ But your specific combo seems good.
I mean, I intentionally block the comment section, but sure,
Hiding comment section? Oh no! What will I do?
Unless I’m missing a “freeze pane” option somewhere, scrolling down to read comments prevents me from actually watching the video.
If I want to see the comment section I use official app, and just pause the ad.
If I want to go blind I splash acid in my eyes
I’d recommend using lasers for that 🤣
Good call, a more targeted approach.
Wait, YouTube’s idea of punishing ad-block is removing the most toxic, worthless part of the site?
Nobody tell them. Not one fucking word. We might even get them to remove Shorts, too, if we pretend this is a bad thing.
I’m so happy they got rid of dismissing shorts and throw them in a feed more! Please don’t get rid of them!
Please Google don’t get rid of shorts! Especially the ones with the wonderful AI voice over and karaoke style closed captioning! Please don’t do that! Or else I’ll keep using adblockers.
They keep trying. The adblockers keep winning. I’ve had my fair share of videos sometimes not loading, or regularly needing to update apps to keep up with Google’s latest bullshit, but the minor glitches and headaches are worth it for all the time I don’t spend staring at a greyed out skip button.
Pretty sure several engineers from google itself might be contributors to some of them, fortunately.
That genuinely would not surprise me in the slightest.
All you have to do is close the window every time they try that bullshit and that shows up in stats. Get enough people doing it and they’ll back off
Why would I ever want to see youtube comments? Literally zero impact for me.
The one thing I like them for is nostalgic songs. Almost always a great vibe in the comments
was going to say, shoot I’m gonna install an adblocker just for that feature!
I know they are trying but so far it seems the ad-blockers are winning because I’ve not noticed any interruptions or problems with comments so far.
Are they really threatening us with a good time? No YouTube comments is a benefit, not a punishment
by hiding comments
So using adblockers is even better than I realized?
Oh, no! Not the comments, those are always so smart and insightful.
got anything for samsung tvs?
Someone else in this thread mentioned TizenTube, that sounds like what you’re looking for.
But personally I just grabbed an Nvidia Shield. It works great and if you swap out the default launcher you’ll never see a single ad on it (with the right apps). Plus the pro is beefy enough to run some decent emulators too.
Yes, just connect a small computer and then install Firefox with unlock origin on there.
My friend told me recently about TizenTube which is a youtube app with adblock/sponsorblock for Samsung TVs
Anyone know if theres such an app for LG tv’s?
I run both those and I see ads every time google breaks ublock which is monthly now. Grayjay is broken more than its not at this point and requires like 10+ tries with various ciphers.
I think the day of these ads becoming unblockable is coming soon.
Are you running Ublock on Chrome or Firefox? It works significantly better on Firefox. I’ve never seen an ad get through it.
Firefox. Google does AB testing so they roll out the anti adblocking changes ot some users. Its usually effective at blocking adblocker for a day or two. Sometimes i have to watch the Ad sometimes i have to sit and stare at a black screen for 15seconds.
Also Brave just straight up blocks ads by default across the browser. And it’s a damn good one too
or more accurately: google has made it impossible to make a useful tracker and ad blocker for chrome
Smart Tube is useless for me. Takes forever to load the video and usually craps in the process. Pass.
Do you have a weird network/Google TV setup? I run it on a stock nvidia shield with no pihole or anything and I’ve never had any issues with smart tube, it’s great.
I tried it on my Sony TV, which runs Google TV.
Grayjay only supports Android, so let me mention Tube PiP for iOS
Oh, excellent, I’ll be checking that out right away. I have an iPad that I’m stuck with from work and it’d be great to get ad free YouTube there.
Oh no, the ads I block are getting even longer!?
and only a minor inconvience as youtube delays the video for adblockers, of course they will try to make that permanent somehow.
I just purchased a new travel router that will have options for ad blocking built in. Would that block ads on any device sharing that connexion? TV, phone, PC, smart fridge,…?
Not youtube ads, sadly, if they are blocking based on domain names. For YouTube, you can use pipepipe, which do block ads as far as I have seen.
Those will not block YT ads.
They’ll block ads at a DNS level, but YouTube ads are delivered directly into the video stream.
Youtubes ads are not delivered into the videostream. That would mean reencodingevery video for every user and would need an insane amount of computing power.
That would mean reencodingevery video for every user and would need an insane amount of computing power.
You actually don’t have to, on account of how adaptive video streaming works. It’s fully possible to serve a few segments of ad content mid-stream.
Why would you need to re encode when you can literally pause one stream swap in the ad and then swap back in the paused one in the same response
Exactly. Instead of editing within the video stream you just switch to a second stream.
However from youtubes perspective that has the downside that the switching logic is where adblockers can hook in to block the ads.
Those will not block YT ads.
This is correct
but YouTube ads are delivered directly into the video stream.
This is false
And the reason is that those ad-blockers are based on DNS block lists, and YouTube ads are served by the same servers that also serve videos.
This is my understanding as well, yeah.
this is false
So far
Sure, but that can be said about almost anything.
Still, I’d be surprised if they went the route of embedding ads into the stream, in part because of measurability/skipability/etc. It’s definitely not out of the question, but I think we’re still ways to go before we get there.
And even then, tools like yt-dlp would probably be able to apply some heuristics to figure out which segments are foreign to the stream and slice them out that way. Blocking yt-dlp would require DRM, which in turn requires changing the transcoding pipeline in a pretty non-trivial way. I also doubt they would willingly go this route.
Honestly, it varies. Businesses are starting to get wise to DNS adblockers, and are serving more ads from their primary domain (this is part of why you can’t block YouTube ads with a DNS blocker anymore - you can’t block them at the DNS level without blocking all of YouTube).
You’ll see a noticeable downtick in phone ads from web browsing and ad-sponsored games, but something like a TV or fridge will probably be unaffected because the ads will be served directly from the same host as the content. You’ll see fewer ads but far from zero.
Also why are you connecting your smart fridge to a travel router? Do you travel with a smart fridge?
Fridges have ads…?
No XD i was just wondering what kind of ads it could block. It will be my dedicated VR router when not in my main setup and i’m wonder what else i could do with it.
Just FYI you don’t need a special router to block ads on the DNS level, you just need to point the DNS settings in your current router to a server that does filtering. Theres a couple of public ones set up to do that for you but you can also point them to a LAN IP and roll your own DNS server (like Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home)
Depends on how they’re served but mostly, yes
But, topically, will not block YouTube ads
not unless you figured out how to adblock on youtube tv. this isn’t for desktop clients.
I often entirely forget that youtube and most of the internet is plagued with ads. It’s a shock to use a family member’s phone or laptop that does not have adblock
As a good friend and son, I of course installed unlock origin for them. Even the light version in Chrome if I have to. Their phones I did not touch though.
My computer is covered, but which app is safe to block ads on my phone?
On my phone it’s not just the ads that aggravate but also the autoplay videos–the ones that follow you as you scroll down. I can’t prevent them from autoplaying.
Mobile firefox is compatible with desktop addons, so you can still use ublock origin on your phone. I also use pihole to cover my whole local network and wireshark to VPN my phone to my local network when out of the house. If you’re on iPhone you’re probably just out of luck.
I generally do everything in-browser and do not use any other mobile apps, so no youtube app, etc.
This is the first I’ve ever heard of following autoplay videos lol
What’s your opinion on duckduckgo on a phone?
I used to use https://html.duckduckgo.com/ as my search engine before I started self-hosting SearXNG. The duckduckgo website works fine on a phone, the same as desktop
The Internet is practically unusable without adblock. Rawdogging the web you get a postage stamp sized amount of content bordered by flashing ads and video ads. No fuckin thanks homie
I recommend Peertube. There’s not much there yet, but myself and others are trying.
Also, did you know you can upload your video to Peertube and have YouTube pull it via RSS? That’s what I’m doing!
All of my stuff you’ll find on Peertube and I don’t have to do anything else to get it up on YouTube.
No one will create content without ad revenue. Peertube is doomed to fail.
NoBOdY wIlL dO AnYThiNg wItHOuT PrOfiT mOtIvE
This book, YouTube’s history, and the span of human history say otherwise. You’re spouting capitalist rhetoric which is ultimately a lie told to us on repeat to encourage greed, selfishness, and individualism.
The platform you’re using right now was built without profit motive, there’s plenty of content. PeerTube can achieve the same.
There are already some youtubers linking to their patreon because their content gets demonetized frequently (shiey, gifgas).
I think this could be the way to go. Instead of patreon, liberapay could also be used.
People will create plenty of content for free. Basically every blog, early YT video and all of Wikipedia was made by people who just like creating stuff for free
I’m creating content and YouTube pulls from my Peertube. So I’ll never lose it. All of these content creators are leaning on Patreon as none of them can count on ad revenue anymore. So people are already doing it.
And Peer tube will never fully replace YouTube, but also, it doesn’t have to. Your local library, school, church, community space, doesn’t need ad revenue.
Lots of people did it on YouTube for years. Even more on other platforms.
This is a terrible take, as most content creators I watch already cannot survive off of Youtube ad revenue and rely on third-party monetization, like Patreon subscriptions.
Besides the fact that plenty of people make content for free, from the simple love of creating something.
Didn’t YouTube start without ads? Was doing fine back then, right?
I don’t think it had prerolls during the flash days but it had banner ads as far back as I can remember
Flash… flash macromedia… the golden age.
I don’t think people were doing it professionally as much back then.
People started doing it professionally when the ad money came in. Before that people did it for the love of the content, and it was lower production quality, but better content.
Well, no. It’s been losing money for years. But I doubt this will make it profitable.
You obviously didn’t experience the early internet
Except for all the people already making unpaid content. I guess if you ignore them then yeah, you’re right. Great job advancing the conversation in a meaningful way.
Who still watches YT without adblocker? It must be horrible.
Me on (android) TV. On PC I have ad blocker. On TV ads time is between 6 seconds and 1 minute. Sometimes ads contain AI slop. 💀
Try ReVanced.
On TV I silenced them as they start and look elsewhere meanwhile… I find joy in training myself to be unable to consciously recognise at all what is ongoing till the video start
Theres also the possibility to use a VPN and log in from Albania (I think) to avoid ads altogether because they’re not legal there.
It is Albania. I will say that it’s more correct to say that YouTube chooses not to send ads to Albania, rather than Albania banning it.
Albanians anti ad laws state that ads are required to be safe for children, with the platform being responsible for failure… So Google is not spending the effort to make the ads safe.
I didn’t know it is the other way around (Albania ban vs. YouTube not playing ads)! Thanks for elaborating.
SmartTube for Android TV gives you adblock and sponsorblock
This app is unavaliable on my TV
Its not an app you can install via appstore. You need to download the apk and install it.
Use Downloader by AFTVNews to download and install it, I guarantee it’s worth the ~5 minutes of effort it takes to do and AFTVNews Downloader is safe. I don’t know how anyone watches Youtube without ad block and sponsorblock these days, haha.
It works. Thanks
People with android phones who use YouTube app.
When I see a link to a potentially interesting YT video, I just send the link to my PC.
Ublock works on Firefox on phone. Can skip the PC step if ya want
reVanced is alive, well, good, and at this point necessary
No, Firefox with uBlock works fine!
Watching youtube in a mobile browser works, but is a completely separate form of torture
It’s not that bad if you add uBlock, Sponsorblock, DeArrow and NoYoutubeShorts.
:sweat:
Do Vanced et al even have Sponsorblock functionality?
Revanced does, that’s how I was introduced to it. And the UI is more polished than the Sponsorblock browser extension.
Someone who don’t want to lose their emails… In https://lemmy.cafe/comment/15974964 it was mentioned that their entire google account got banned for 10 years over adblocking youtube. I stopped watching youtube immediately… I’m not about to watch ads, but I don’t want to lose access to my 22 year old personal account… So many accounts are tied to that address, that I can’t manage to move to a different service.
FML what happened to “do no evil”? Now it’s “make money with the baby grinding machine for all costs”
Don’t log in on YouTube. Unless you’re uploading, there’s no point.
I would be scared as hell to rely on Google like that. You are one automated Ai decision away from losing access.
At least move your mail to a proper company. Jesus.
Good thing I use the LibRedirect plugin in Firefox to redirect YouTube link to Invidious.
In addition to uBlock, of course.
I do too. Like, exactly - I use LibRedirect to make sure I never end up at youtube but only an invidious instance, and I run ublock origin religiously everywhere (even though it’s thankfully not needed on invidious).
But I really do fear for invidious’s future. Like right now it’s totally borked because of more youtube fucking around with them. I’m sure they will get it working again soon, but there are only 3 public instances now, they’re doing it just because they’re cool, but it’s not easy to constantly be fighting against youtube’s changes, they have to pay for servers and don’t get enough in donations to make up for it, so I couldn’t blame those last 3 for burning out at some point, like ggtyler did. And that’s even if youtube doesn’t finally do something that breaks invidious for good, like how pipe is now completely broken. Sorry if I’m dooming a bit, but it does sometimes look pretty bleak.
The true global power emerging from all of the dystopic activities, including tech and business greed, is advertising.
Businesses pay youtube to show ads and viewers pay youtube to not show ads.
I want to be the tube
I don’t pay not to watch ads. Especially as “paying for no ads” has long turned into “watch less but precisely selected ads”.
We should rather start paying the content creators on some other ad free platform.
The funny part is that the people who can afford to buy the products in the ads are the ones paying to not have ads.
Why still watching youtube?
Download your videos
Firefox and ublock origin.
Smarttube on android tvs/media devices.
A dozen ways to avoid YouTube ads.
Fuck YouTube.
Grayjay.app
Nahh, just use
mpvNahhhh, just use
ravens whispering messages to your earmpv does something with yt-dlp, that makes youtube detect it and throttle it to hell, while yt-dlp alone is about 5x faster. Any clue what it is?
YouTube has ads?
Sincerely,
Ublock Origin User
I buckled and just got YouTube Premium Family. Via India. For 4 bucks a month. For 6 people.
I needed a cheap music streaming service anyway.
That’s still possible?
Only via an iPhone or iPad with an Indian Apple Account and an Apple Card with Rupees from Amazon.in
Don’t even need to log out of your original account on your device. Just need to login in with your India account in “Media & Purchases” and the YouTube app will show the Indian prices.
Anyone got an app to sideload or method of getting adfree youtube, lg, android os or apple
Newpipe or tubular
Newpipe is great, been using it for years
Or Grayjay
Yeah I use tubular or revanced on my phone, for tv it is more difficult
Firefox
For apple tv?
That’s unfortunate for the content creators. I realize that majority of their revenue comes from ads, but this is probably going to drive viewership down. The average person doesn’t have that kind of attention span anymore.
Ads are already a nuisance, making them unskippable will turn people away from the video especially if they also decide to go down the route twitch went of you having to physically be present and not minimize the ad. Creators already resort to their own product placement in their videos, which fortunately can be skimmed through. I just try to buy THEIR products to show support, if they offer.
Also, nothing makes me want a product less than intrusive annoying ads. That’s a product I would steer clear of.
SponsorBlock let’s you skip a lot of product placement. Without uBlock Origin on desktop, Revanced on Android, and SmartTube on TV: I wouldn’t be watching YouTube.
And Unwatched for iOS.
This plus Enhancer for YT are a must have for me. Can’t stand the new UI and all the bs they lock down
I get what you’re saying, and these programs are great and all, but the average viewer knows fuck all about these apps or probably how to use them. Most people are turnkey users and basically vanilla. Then there are viewers that are morally conscience who think adblock might be wrong. I’m just saying overall this could knock viewership down a few pegs.
Absolutely. I truly feel bad for those who waste their finite lives being inundated by marketing and psychology professionals, whose only goal is hijacking the human conscience: instilling a boundless urge to consume. I do what I can to spread the information and tools necessary for others to escape indoctrination and never weep for the lost revenue of vampires. I also have faith that the learned compliance to “drink a verification can” can be deprogrammed from my fellow man.
physically be present and not minimize the ad
That’s only a problem on mobile. Desktop browsers don’t disclose the state of the window to the JavaScript API. What this means is: YouTube can tell if you switch tabs, but it can’t detect if you open another browser window in the meantime and let the ad run in the background.
“unskippable” laughs in ublock/revanced
