I’ve never given Youtube a cent and I always use adblock, on the endpoints and my network, and I have had no problems watching anything I wanted on youtube. I guess you just have to mercilessly block ads at all levels to achieve dominance
I got hit hard by the cpu bombing that youtube did to punish adblocking, to the point i had to stop watching videos while playing games.
cause having a video running while playing a game would bomb my performance so hard that I’d go from 150+fps to 15fps.
I think, ultimately, Googles war against adblockers Streisand’d the fuck out of adblockers and probably got more people ultimately to use them, either out of spite of googles bullshit or because they saw the arguments and realized the web was far better with a digital condom.
I don’t know how true that is about YouTube intentionally CPU bombing ad block users specifically.
I will say though that websites run by big tech companies getting much heavier and more poorly optimized is ultimately just a fact of life. They don’t care about optimization, in fact it benefits them more that people have the latest and greatest hardware so that’s what they’re going to target. Ultimately that means that these websites will get slower on older hardware with time, and people will rely more and more on alternative frontends to access content, and it won’t really matter if you have ad blockers or not (*turning it off on a bloated site that is bogging down your CPU might actually make it worse).
Honestly, whenever I want to watch YT, I just open YT with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock in a Private Tab. Haven’t really noticed anything, and honestly it helps me to stop watching videos.
I saw the Youtube banner telling me it detected an ad blocker and wouldn’t let me watch a lot for about a week. Now it’s been over two months with nothing but smooth sailing on μBlock Origin. I’m even back to being able to block Shorts from appearing on my sub feed, where before it seemed like any YT-specific filters would let them detect the blocker.
I recently found Firefox has extensions for blocking them on your homepage works a treat with app an sponsor block.
Added them the last time my hide for 30 days expired and the option was gone.
Seriously why the fuck would I want to watch vertical videos on my desktop that if I wasn’t blocking them would be bookends by ads longer than the fucking video
Yeah, malvertising has been a thing for over a decade, maybe closer to two. And it is something hosts at every level have had to deal with, including NYT and BBC.
I’d have no issue allowing ads if company’s properly vetted what was being advertised and did so through their own host/domain, because then you’d know that there was a human between you and whomever they’re selling space to. And I’ve seen a few small blogs do this sort of thing when I’ve been deep down a rabbit hole trying to solve a problem, and I respect the hell out of them for being willing to do the legwork to own what you serve. But most places want to do ad sales at such volume that its just not ‘economically feasible’ (ie, it eats away at the money they’re getting from the ads) to do so.
Didn’t uninstall any of my AdBlock layers, but YouTube didn’t survive.
Even though I actually never saw the famous popup, the whole thing made me take steps after months of feeling that the recommendations sucked and I was often wasting lots of time watching stuff I didn’t even like.
Now I’m actually getting back into reading and audiobooks, and using invidious for the occasional watch.
YouTube slowing itself down to unusable made me write a local extension that takes any YouTube watch link and opens it in yewtu.be my life has been better since. Fuck you tube’s stance. You’re gonna make the experience terrible I’ll watch your content via another client.
Very cool! I’m walking this same route, but with LibRedirect and Invidious Instance Selector Firefox addons. Maybe libraries can do community video-hosting and moderation? But please, no more businesses
I’m not familiar with yewtu.be, but couldn’t you accomplish the the same thing with a simple Host File entry in your operating system? Get the IP of yewtu.be (by pinging it which I just did to get 104.244.72.25), create an entry that says:
youtube.com 104.244.72.25
So when your OS goes to find youtube.com, it gets directed to the IP of yewtu.be
No, the browser would still send YouTube.com as the host header. While yewtu.be could be configured to allow this to work, the TLS cert would not and the browser would get upset.
Youtube is fine for me, never stopped working here on firefox with ublock origin, but twitch though, yesterday I couldn’t watch any stream for 5 seconds without a error that only went away after turning everything off and letting the ads flow.
Keep using adblockers and don’t surrender your digital freedom to big tech corporations. Also check out private frontends for YouTube (and other plattforms: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/
I wonder if they saw a large enough down tick is user traffic to realize that endlessly badgering people with 5 ads to watch a 30 second clip is driving away their user base.
I know my YouTube consumption has decreased by a factor of 10. I used to use it for almost all of my streaming entertainment. In conjunction with other streaming services’ password sharing crackdown, I am spending more time reading and going outside than I have in the past decade. That’s a trend these providers don’t want catching on.
This. My preferred way of catching up to my favorite channels nowadays is watching their content on LibreTube with AdBlock and SponsorBlock on and supporting them on Patreon if they have one.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
uBlock seems to have won the arms race, since whenever I had problems it worked again after updating it.
With unlock I didn’t even know there was an arms race. Seamless performance the whole time!
I’ve never given Youtube a cent and I always use adblock, on the endpoints and my network, and I have had no problems watching anything I wanted on youtube. I guess you just have to mercilessly block ads at all levels to achieve dominance
I got hit hard by the cpu bombing that youtube did to punish adblocking, to the point i had to stop watching videos while playing games.
cause having a video running while playing a game would bomb my performance so hard that I’d go from 150+fps to 15fps.
I think, ultimately, Googles war against adblockers Streisand’d the fuck out of adblockers and probably got more people ultimately to use them, either out of spite of googles bullshit or because they saw the arguments and realized the web was far better with a digital condom.
I don’t know how true that is about YouTube intentionally CPU bombing ad block users specifically.
I will say though that websites run by big tech companies getting much heavier and more poorly optimized is ultimately just a fact of life. They don’t care about optimization, in fact it benefits them more that people have the latest and greatest hardware so that’s what they’re going to target. Ultimately that means that these websites will get slower on older hardware with time, and people will rely more and more on alternative frontends to access content, and it won’t really matter if you have ad blockers or not (*turning it off on a bloated site that is bogging down your CPU might actually make it worse).
The cpu bombing actually wasn’t Youtube, it was adblock plus (if thats what you were using)
Nope, I use ublock origin.
and never had a problem of youtube impacting games before.
Honestly, whenever I want to watch YT, I just open YT with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock in a Private Tab. Haven’t really noticed anything, and honestly it helps me to stop watching videos.
I saw the Youtube banner telling me it detected an ad blocker and wouldn’t let me watch a lot for about a week. Now it’s been over two months with nothing but smooth sailing on μBlock Origin. I’m even back to being able to block Shorts from appearing on my sub feed, where before it seemed like any YT-specific filters would let them detect the blocker.
How do you block shorts? Please and thanks.
I recently found Firefox has extensions for blocking them on your homepage works a treat with app an sponsor block.
Added them the last time my hide for 30 days expired and the option was gone.
Seriously why the fuck would I want to watch vertical videos on my desktop that if I wasn’t blocking them would be bookends by ads longer than the fucking video
Then, there’s this: https://restoreprivacy.com/state-spyware-extensively-using-ads-as-distribution-channel/
For this reason alone, fuck any company banning ad blockers.
Its literally always been that way. When a webmaster gives up control of their content, it gets exploited.
Yeah, malvertising has been a thing for over a decade, maybe closer to two. And it is something hosts at every level have had to deal with, including NYT and BBC.
I’d have no issue allowing ads if company’s properly vetted what was being advertised and did so through their own host/domain, because then you’d know that there was a human between you and whomever they’re selling space to. And I’ve seen a few small blogs do this sort of thing when I’ve been deep down a rabbit hole trying to solve a problem, and I respect the hell out of them for being willing to do the legwork to own what you serve. But most places want to do ad sales at such volume that its just not ‘economically feasible’ (ie, it eats away at the money they’re getting from the ads) to do so.
Didn’t uninstall any of my AdBlock layers, but YouTube didn’t survive.
Even though I actually never saw the famous popup, the whole thing made me take steps after months of feeling that the recommendations sucked and I was often wasting lots of time watching stuff I didn’t even like.
Now I’m actually getting back into reading and audiobooks, and using invidious for the occasional watch.
YouTube slowing itself down to unusable made me write a local extension that takes any YouTube watch link and opens it in yewtu.be my life has been better since. Fuck you tube’s stance. You’re gonna make the experience terrible I’ll watch your content via another client.
For those of us who can’t code their own extensions: LibRedirect does this for other sites as well, not just YouTube.
Oh, ty. This will replace a few extensions for me.
Very cool! I’m walking this same route, but with LibRedirect and Invidious Instance Selector Firefox addons. Maybe libraries can do community video-hosting and moderation? But please, no more businesses
I’m not familiar with yewtu.be, but couldn’t you accomplish the the same thing with a simple Host File entry in your operating system? Get the IP of yewtu.be (by pinging it which I just did to get 104.244.72.25), create an entry that says:
youtube.com 104.244.72.25So when your OS goes to find youtube.com, it gets directed to the IP of yewtu.be
No, the browser would still send YouTube.com as the host header. While yewtu.be could be configured to allow this to work, the TLS cert would not and the browser would get upset.
Your browser doesn’t check SSL certificates?
Never saw ads against adblock. I use firefox with ublock, and alterbative sponsorblock clients for youtube on android :)
This is what I use also, but youtube stopped it and blocked the videos. The work around was opening in an incognito window.
Youtube is fine for me, never stopped working here on firefox with ublock origin, but twitch though, yesterday I couldn’t watch any stream for 5 seconds without a error that only went away after turning everything off and letting the ads flow.
Keep using adblockers and don’t surrender your digital freedom to big tech corporations. Also check out private frontends for YouTube (and other plattforms: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/
How many still didn’t subscribe to YouTube Premium?
I do decree!
So far, no ads on YouTube. The defenses hold!
Still using Firefox + ublock origin + sponsorblock. I’ve not seen an ad on YouTube for years.
On my phone I’m using Tubular, a fork of NewPipe with Sponsorblock integration.
I wonder if they saw a large enough down tick is user traffic to realize that endlessly badgering people with 5 ads to watch a 30 second clip is driving away their user base.
I know my YouTube consumption has decreased by a factor of 10. I used to use it for almost all of my streaming entertainment. In conjunction with other streaming services’ password sharing crackdown, I am spending more time reading and going outside than I have in the past decade. That’s a trend these providers don’t want catching on.
Yeah, recently had my Android with adblockers break, and my YT consumption is almost non-existent now as I watch more on mobile devices than on PC.
As an aside, if anyone has any advice for a ReVanced-like app for iOS, I’m all ears. I miss my Pixel 🥲
If I had to watch ads, I would not use youtube. Period.
This. My preferred way of catching up to my favorite channels nowadays is watching their content on LibreTube with AdBlock and SponsorBlock on and supporting them on Patreon if they have one.