PSA To people watching YouTube with AdBlockers

I was about to say add uBlock Origin to that list but apparently they don't accept donations per the bottom of their homepage.

I will not accept donations or sponsorships of any kind.

That's some fuck you energy right there.

Its crazy all my piped servers stopped working which sucks, if anyone is willing to share a server that works or a self hosted one they could let me in. Hit me up

The irony of these smalltime maintainers asking for donations when their own software is purpose made to hurt the income of smalltime creators. Particularly if they include Sponsorblock.

That's not possible though. There simply is no content on other platforms and they generally aren't as good as YouTube and probably never will be.

The only platform I could see to rival YouTube in the future is Twitch

Currently that is quite hard, because despite YouTube being an utterly insane business model it has prevailed so far.

I would love for an alternative, I personally really like PeerTube and the Fediverse in general, but mass adoption ain't there yet :(

My HTPC has accounts in chrome on there for each member of the family. All are configured the same with ublock origin but only one is getting the popups.

Web environment integrity is a non-starter because it offers avenues for bad actors to enforce "integrity" that forces malware to be loaded as well as legitimate page elements. However, that doesn't mean Google won't keep trying to stop ad blockers, alternative interfaces etc in the future.

Perhaps, but eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google. But I agree, we need regulation to determine to ensure that programs calling themselves web browsers will have to adhere to standards, and not be based on features that make certain websites work only on their browser. I think the backlash reaction to implementing "integrity" as a standard was really healthy. But there is still a lot of action to take on the regulatory front.

I'm already in the process of decoupling from gmail for this exact reason.

I've decoupled the most important things, but there's just so much stuff that is still using my gmail.

Losing access to your banks. Banks in England send you an email link to confirm your access.

I don’t think they’d ever ban users, but this game of cat and mouse will continue forever. They’ll make the service worse and worse, while alternatives like Rumble and Odysee will get more and more users.

That said, back up all your Google data, and migrate to your own email domain. Millions of people all over the world lose access to their Google accounts each year for any and no reason at all. All it takes is a capricious algorithm. They don’t have any customer support at all.

unlikely especially if they're paying for other services. they'll most likely prevent playback

I stopped using Revanced for NewPipe when it was giving me trouble. But I have a friend that swears by Revanced.

They are Android only, iirc. Practically the mobile app version of the projects someone listed in another comment.

Freetube on desktop + newpipe/libretube on mobile is pretty much my combo. I very, very rarely visit youtube's site directly anymore lol

FreeTube actually has Invidious support as well so you can use both if you like.

Youtube is just the database with video. Just use a different frontend. The problem is if I actually want recommended videos but without Google knowing about it, then it is hard due to the massive amount of videos. Only Google have the money so scan everything.

Absolutely agreed, I would love for peertube to take off

Also for anyone wondering how to set the default quality for videos.

Edit your mpv.confand add ytdl-format=bestvideo[height<=720]+bestaudio/best[height<=720] to play all videos in 720p for example.

Lemmy can't display some characters correctly. replace < with a left pointing arrow <

If you really want to kick mpv up a notch you should check out the uosc UI for mpv: https://github.com/tomasklaen/uosc

Thank you, this is an exact point I was making earlier today in a different conversation.

Google has two decades of information about me. Just as one random example, I'm hooked into their mapping app so they know everywhere I go and on what schedule, and can infer what I buy.

Not once in 20 years has Google advertised something to me that is in line with my interests and needs. Google knows I go to the cigar store every Monday to replenish my supply, and they've never suggested to me a product or service that can save me time, money, or make it more convenient.

Google's ad system seems to shove garbage products in my face like black label shit from China (raycon, manscaped, etc) and products/companies that do not operate in my region.

How hard is it to know everything about a person, and still fail to advertise one single thing that is useful to them over decades??!

Or in my country: most ads are in only one of the main official languages but not the one in my region so it's wasteful for them.

Thanks for the info. I'm on Linux and I'll check that out.

and there is also Newpipe! You can import your subscriptions. Only problem is that scam profiles' comments with NSFW profile pictures are everywhere there, I still don't know a workaround

I've started using Freetube since this adblock issue. The only feature I'm waiting for is the ability to open in new tabs. Other than that, it's an improved YouTube user experience

you can subscribe on piped

Revanced is pretty much perfect for my needs.

And SmartTube on my Android TV.

Just a note for people wanting to install it:

The only official website is www.revanced.app and www.github.com/revanced , all other websites are unoffincial and can sometimes spread malware. Unfortunetley the official site has terrible SEO and shows up very low in search results. Also the revanced team dosen't distibute prebuilt apks for copyright reasons, you have to patch the stock apk yourself.

That's a setting in Firefox.

Librewolf is Firefox configured with many privacy-related settings out of the box, uBlock Origin and it clears all data on exit by default.

Ever since I disabled every recommendation in libretube I don't watch anything on youtube anymore because I have no fucking clue that it even exists.

That's one of the reasons I like Piped, the video you are currently on does have a small similar-to feed on the side

Yeah, as good as Youtube's algorithms are at pushing hardcore right-wing content on completely fresh accounts in like 3 clicks, my accounts have been around for so long that my recommends tend to be on the money most of the time.

I discover multiple new channels each month from my recommends whereas 10 years ago I'd occasionally check a channel that a friend recommended or was embedded on a forum post

If you're on Android why not just use revanced or Newpipe? Both are excellent and I haven't had issues with revanced since this change.

Could also use Fennec or Mull on f-droid instead of Firefox Nightly with less telemetry from Google and other vendors

They all have pros and cons. For me, I wanted something that would be accessible from one central point across a zero tier network. This way I wasn't having to maintain database copies of free tube via rclone or other tool and handle merges. That pretty much just meant Invidious. Someone had actually made a tool to automate docker container deployment and build out the PostgreSQL tables. It turned out to be the simplest solution for me.

Here is a link: https://github.com/tmiland/invidious-updater

Good idea. I will soon as well.

well duh, the detection uses JavaScript.

Everyone should use script blockers. Flat out only way to reliably block the boatloads of malicious scripts that litters the internet.

It proxies content, so whatever it can get from YouTube should be displayable, my guess is that its possible but most instances do not enable it for bandwidth and performance reasons

weird, my formatting might be messed up

Try again in a bit, I've tried to fix it :)

On newpipe if you go to settings > Video and audio there is an option for show higher resolutions.

Both take resolutions and streams directly from YouTube, my guess is that it may vary a bit depending on the settings the instance host set.

Aw man this sounds excellent, pls do tell if you end up finding the info :)

for piped i just use an other host from that list and it works totaly fine https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances

Piped.video is the official instance, but there's more

piped.adminforge.de and piped.smnz.de have relatively high uptime and quick fixes in my experience.

In LibreTube, you can go to

 undefined

    
Settings > Instance > Disable Piped proxy


  

I only ever had issues with the piped proxy, not with the app itself.

Are their any downsides to self hosting this stuff?

Yes. I use piped through libretube and it works for live videos.

It works well, services not working is more about websites trying to block these tools, and I try to be understanding of the issues.

You are probably lucky, for now. I'm pretty sure they are rolling it out in waves. Boiling the frog and all that.

They're probably A/B testing it on only part of the users. I didn't get it for a long time either, but when it appeared the first time it just kept showing up again and again after that.

You lose:

• Your existing YouTube account, which can only be manually imported (subscriptions)
• Account-Based/Algorithmic Homescreen recommendations
• Some higher resolutions (e.g 4K) (very dependant on instance, I don't have a list of instances with their max resolutions)
• The UI will be somewhat different, but not necessarily hard to navigate
• probably more random stuff idk

why would I put a hexbear link when I'm on lemm.ee? 🤔

I'd double-check this isn't an issue on your end, I can't reproduce it here.

What is your process for watching a video? For me to do it like this I currently have to copy the link, open a terminal, download the video with yt-dlp, navigate to the file, open it and then watch it. And then usually delete it. I'm curious if there is a faster or simpler way..

Sorry.... watching a sponsored video for world of tanks for the 10th time, or simply safe, or whatever other garbage is there isn't going to make me want to purchase it.

I value my time... If I didn't use sponsor block, I'm still going to skip right past it.... This, just does it for me.

Sponsor block says it's skipped about 18hrs since I started using it. No way I'm going to stop using it when I have a choice.

Not being a youtuber I don't know, but do sponsors even know that you're using sponsorblock? How could they tell?

YouTube: makes ads more and more intrusive.

People: block annoying intrusive ads.

This guy: "YoU'rE jUsT hUrTiNg ThE cReAtOr!"

Companies will keep making ads worse and worse until people stop putting up with it. I'm not going to put up with their bullshit so that the content creator can get 0.0001 cents from my view. If you want to support the creator that's what Patreon is for.

You are entitled to your own opinion but it's because of Google's content monetization strategies that user-generated videos now include native content ads. Content creators are following the money. I don't have to agree with them, Google or your nonsense opinion.