Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1y ago

this seems to be the theme of the season mateys

wow just wow while i can't say i didn't see this one coming but it always amazes me where greed could lead someone

471 comments

Google is an ad company. To them, a web browser is nothing more than a tool for collecting user data and delivering ads.
When you use a chromium based browser you are allowing google, an ad company, to decide what the future of web browsing should look like. And this is the result.
Firefox is the ONLY browser which is genuinely competing with google. Do you think ad and tracking blockers are going to get better or worse once they die out, and literally every major browser is running on chromium?
Use firefox and u-block origin. Enjoy a superior, ad free, browsing experience, and support the future of an open web.
- It's so encouraging to hear so many pro Firefox opinions lately. Then I remember I'm logged into the pirate instance of a federated platform and anti-corporate sentiment is probably as high as it gets.
  Sadly most younger people haven't even heard of Firefox.
  
  Most young people are basically tech illiterate. Yeah they are fantastic with new apps and phones. But have zero idea how any of it works under the hood.
  Ask them to transfer a file from a computer to a USB drive, most will not know how. They have no idea how a file system is structured or even that an app has to specifically made for different platforms.. e.g. Facebook app on Apple is completely different from Facebook on Android and the two will contain different bugs and different settings.
  We are almost back to default browser = internet
  
  Most younger people have heard of it. Using what came with their computer is just easier to them though.
  
  It's my preferred mobile browser because you can install ublock origin and other privacy extensions which is pretty unique
  
  Right? After years of feeling like the only pro-firefox person left on the planet, the pro Firefox sentiment lately is a breath of fresh air, to say the least.
  
  Well, we are in the worst cyberpunk timeline so...
  
  It's my preferred mobile browser because you can install ublock origin and other privacy extensions which is pretty unique
  
  Young people seem to proudly go along with the biggest name, which is really sad. They think there’s merit in that, conforming means acceptance.
  Meanwhile, anytime I encounter a young non-conformist doing something very contrarian, it gives me some hope for the future. Because 99% of society is open-armedly embracing dystopia because the one thing they hate more than anything is the burden of independent thought and self-determinism. To intelligent freethinking individuals, seeing it play out is a waking nightmare.
  
  Sadly, at the end of the day I prefer edge because it ~~has cloud voices~~ is slightly faster
- Thank you for this.

No way I'll use YouTube with ads. The amount of your lifetime they waste is what I'd consider disrespectful to their users. Even if the ads were bearable, I wouldn't turn off my ad blocker on any Google site for tracking alone.
I also don't see myself subscribing to YouTube Premium, firstly because it's too expensive (stop including your music streaming service and make it cheaper maybe?), but also because YouTube is just a platform with a lot of not curated content that YouTube had no part in creating.
Let's see how the cat and mouse games between YouTube and ad blockers and alternative frontends go. If it's too much of a hassle, I'll just stop using YouTube. I don't miss Twitter, I don't miss Reddit, and I won't miss YouTube.
- Eh, I wound up with a YouTube premium subscription years ago when I subscribed to Google play music, way back when it was YouTube Red. I cannot imagine going without at this point. It became YouTube music at some point, and... Yeah.

Report issue. You're not running an adblocker! wink
Google already has trouble with support, if they have a million lightly befuddled users who are getting blocked and "don't know why", that will be a problem for Google.
- Somehow I feel like they won't care, those reports probably go directly into the bin.
  
  They'll care if enough people do it. Being flooded with reports is just as time consuming
  
  It would only work if enough people do it to show up on their metrics.
- Might report this as an issue even while I’m not seeing it, just for some extra confusion.

I haven't had this happen using ublock origin, but if they do figure out how to block ublock origin, adnausiem (ublock origin fork) might work. It's a fork of ublock origin that tricks the ad providers into thinking you clicked on every ad, which not only bypasses a lot of adblock detectors, it Actively costs them money by polluting their ad data with garbage.
- If they really want to prevent us from watching videos without ads, they can. They know of the ad is watched or not, we can have some kind of auto-mute-during-ad but that's it.
  Question is if they will kill network effect with it.
  I have already drastically reducedy yt watching because of too many sponsors... watching two minutes of sponsored material, plus two ads just to see that I don't even wanna watch the stupid video is too much.
  Not to mention those laud ads in the middle of relaxing and quiet video... few months ago one ad was starting with screaming, that's when I said no way.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
  
  That's why SponsorBlock is a godsend. I can't stand all the in-video ads.
- it Actively costs them money by polluting their ad data with garbage.
  Lmaoo, i'm going to install that

I'd say to you all: get used to bombshells dropping! At some point the investor pyramid scheme will go crashing down. It might be now. All those companies were on borrowed time. Until investors realised that "data" isn't valuable on its own - it's what you make of it. There needs to be a product that generates revenue. Spoiler alert, it is hard to come up with a business plan that takes plain usage data and makes the technical challenges worthwhile to squeeze money from it. I can feel it myself as data scientist. The honeymoon's over, investors want to see ROI.
I mean this cycle will probably recover in a few years when the markets recover but still - some lessons stick
- Holy shit! Your post made me realize that we are in Dot-com bubble burst 2.0
  It the exact same thing, everyone and their dog, had to have a webpage. Investers finally realized that most websites had no way of generating money, and stuff came crashing down.
  Same thing is happening now!
  
  Except everything is crashing this time because of interest rates going up and there being a recession happening globally.
- Holy shit! Your post made me realize that we are in Dot-com bubble burst 2.0
  It's the exact same thing, everyone and their dog, had to have a webpage. Investors finally realized that most websites had no way of generating money, and stuff came crashing down.
  Same thing is happening now!
  
  Zines are making a comeback!
- DRS GME

Really not worth watching a 10 minute video that has four minutes of YouTube ads and a minute of a sponsor pitch by the creator.
- Yeha, if they are pushing this, the least they can do is lower the amount of ads.
  2 ads before a video starts is just too much. Also the constant ads during the videos. Screw that.
  No more YouTube for me I guess.

FreeTube/Piped on PC
ReVanced on droid
uYou+ on 🍎 phone
SmartTubeNext on 📺
Youtube can do the fuck they want on their website
- add mpv+youtube-dl to thr mix and you get a full healthy dinner
  
  yt-dlp is the successor. On droid there are several beautiful front ends for yt-dlp so you don't need a terminal emulator
  
  Seal.
- there's also Newpipe x Sponsorblock on android.
- Can't they block the likes of Freetube, Newpipe, Revanced?
  
  These clients use the same set of APIs as the YouTube official client. Unlike the Twitter and Reddit clients which used APIs for 3rd-party.
- uYou can't be used on non-jailbroken devices, right?
  
  No you can. You need to choose from AltStore, TrollStore and Sideloadly depending on what works for you, then sideload the uYou+ IPA (or the IPA of any app)

The more ad-riddled they make the platform to try and monetise users, the more they make adblocks necessary to even be usable.
I didn't use to both with adblockers. I didn't like ads, but they didn't affect me enough for me to go through any effort blocking them.
Now I use blockers everywhere, on every platform. Even for creators I like, because I know how little they actually make for ads - so how bout instead of watching 12 hours of ads so they can get 2c, I just send them a dollar or buy their merch every once in a while to not watch ads at all? Etc.
Ads could have had a place. There are ads that serve a purpose, that have minimal disruption but still give businesses a way to develop awareness for those who might want to use them.
Movie trailers (including when they stopped trailing movies and started leading them) are examples of 'acceptable ads' to me. When I purchase something from a store and they include a printed card from their sponsor. When sports teams have logos for being sponsored. A work van with the business logo parked while out on call. Etc.
But the internet's online ads? Email spam? Telemarketing? These are forms of advertising that are actively hostile, and they've become the default. So now a user that wants to be on the internet at all is best served by block all ads, including the ones that would've otherwise been reasonable.
Google will never make me feel guilty for blocking ads when they're already making their search engine unusable, too.
- And while I'm at it, here's the filters to add to your uBlock Origin's MY FILTERS settings to block YT's blocker:
  youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)
  youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
  youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
  youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
  
  Blockers to block blockers. insert Xzibit meme
  Thanks BTW.
  
  I'll add this the next time I'm on my computer.
  
  Wait, surely that doesn't work? It might block the "disable your adblocker popup but there's no way this is all it takes for yt to continue serving videos?

I just don't get how these providers (Specifically Reddit with the API lockdown and now the stranglehold on mods, Twitter's new login requirement, and YouTube now cracking down on adblockers) are missing the point that their sites live and die by user generated content.
I understand these sites are hugely expensive to run, but if you keep alienating those who are bringing users to your site in the first place, people will stop submitting and people will stop visiting.
- Well, realistically there is a good chance that this will turn out just fine business-wise. They don't care if they lose some engagement or if the quality goes to shit. It's all good, as long as it makes some money.
  In my opinion, this sort of model should be considered anti-competitive. It has become apparent that these services operate on a model where they offer a service that is too good to be true in order to kill the competition, and then they switch to their actual profitable business plan. If you think about it, peertube is a much more sensible economical model with its federation and p2p streaming. But nobody has ever cared about it because huge tech giants offer hosting & bandwith "for free". The evil part of youtube is not the ads, its the fact that it allowed us to bypass them long enough for the entire planet to become dependent on it.
  
  The majority of people don’t use any form of ad block, especially on mobile so i’m not sure your argument holds there. I don’t see how Youtube wanting to monetize its users somehow will make the quality go to shit? Centralized things need to be monetized, and as much as we all would like it, a mainstream decentralized video streaming platform is not realistic given current tech.
  I don’t personally see this as in the same category as what Twitter and Reddit are doing.
- Twitter and Reddit sure but youtube is not a user generated content site. youtube has big creators and they are the main reason people go to the site.

Probably get shit for this, but…
I just pay for Premium.
YT has literally become my cable. I listen to music, watch movies, documentaries, stand up comedy, news, sports… and cat videos, obviously.
To me it’s just worth it to pay a bit of money each month and have the whole thing just available to me.
I feel like if you were to put a money value on all the complaining, stomping of feet and trying to side-step the ads I’ve seen over the last several years, you’d probably find it’s actually less to just pay and enjoy it.
Just my opinion, of course…
- you do you if you use it that much and you think it's worth your money then good for you ( i honestly mean it ) we don't like youtube ads, YES that is true but it is not the only reason :
  some of us hate youtube ( and google by extent ) for tracking
  some of us hate youtube because it's algorithms tricking us into forcing certain agendas and ideals upon us
  some of us hate youtube because the hypocrisy around how they treat content creator differently yet claiming they are all under the same "rules"
  the list goes on but what i want to say is that we don't hate people who pay for youtube we hate those who defend the platform like it's a white knight and nothing shady happening in it
- Google sucks and YouTube is evil.
  If they were not such an explicitly and overtly shitty company, I'd pay for premium no qualms.
  As it is, I wouldn't give them a dollar if the CEO would personally suck me off.
  
  If the CEO would suck me off, that would be worth a dollar to me, honestly.
- It's the principle of the matter to me. Google became the multibillion dollar corporation it is by selling my data, your data, everyones data. To then come around and demand I pay to continue using their service the way I have for over a decade? But also still continue selling our data? Nah, fuck that. When they cut me in a percentage on the data selling business, maybe then I'd consider premium.
- Given that we are in the piracy subreddit, you can change your Google account to Argentina or similar and pay Argentinian prices for premium. I'm from Europe and I pay 2€ for a family subscription for 5 people.
  
  I pay for Indian Youtube Premium with Revolut
  
  I'm doing it with Spotify :]
  
  How couldtl you do that? Asking for a friend
- Nah, can't do it on principle. I know they already make money from me for selling my data, I'm not going to also pay them to do that.
- You're paying for premium, but you're not paying it to people producing the content you enjoy. You're paying it to a middle man parasite. Content creators get a tiny fraction of your money.
  Paying because they made it deliberately difficult to use without paying is akin to giving the bully your lunch money because it's better "money value" than standing up for yourself. That's not something I can do without losing respect for myself.
  And my "trying to side step the ads" has so far taken a total of 30 seconds - installing uBlock origin, which I would have done anyway.
  Besides, to use premium you need to be logged in. Being logged in Google outside of a contained environment is idiotic if you have a shred of respect for your own privacy.
  
  That middle-man parasite enables those creators to upload their content for free and provides the bandwidth and discovery for everyone here to watch them. It's a give and take relationship. I don't see the problem here, especially as creators get more money from Premium viewers than they do ad-supported viewers. Sure you would get more from a direct payment from the viewer, but you're not subscribing to every creator you watch either.
  
  You know that this parasite in the first place enables creators to make a living? Youtube also has the best revenue split between it and the creators. They're storing exabytes of data for you, watchable at any time, in any resolution you'd like. Google has been running Youtube at a loss for a long time and ads are not going to cover the costs. They need paying users. 12.99$ a month for more videos than Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.... , unlimited music streaming and even giving your favorite creators more money (they get more revenue from premium members than from free "ad-viewing" members) is not a lot to ask for. Stop your Spotify or Netflix or Hulu or Sky subscription and get youtube premium.
- The likening to cable is noteworthy because cable started as a means of "tv without those pesky ads" and then...
- I also have been paying for Premium the last couple years and I completely agree. I get more value out of my premium subscription than I do Netflix or Max. Plus premium supports the creators more than ads do.
- I had your same mindset for years but the cost of premium went up this year and when looking at the new price vs other streaming services, it didn't make sense for my family any more. If their AdBlock thing starts screwing with my account, I just might be done with all Google products.
- It's especially worth it if you can get a sub from a developing country
  
  Hold on, this sounds like a secret way to save moneh
  
  How much is it supposed to cost? Here on Chile it is around 5 bucks
- just get revanced
- They'll probably push ads for premium users too, though
  
  If that happens I’ll probably just stop using it
- I will have to start paying for premium now ig.
- Yup I just subscribed in the Philippines, it's like 2€ per month

To everyone who is saying they use adblock and haven't seen this yet: YouTube probably rolled this out to a smaller percentage of users first. It allows them to understand how this change impacts user behaviour, e.g. how many users comply and disable their adblocker, how many more users close YouTube than usual etc. Most tech companies do this type of analysis before releasing a high impact change to all users.
- I do close youtbe much quicker than I used to. I can watch one video and rhan I'm done. The next video starts with a full minte of ads and I'm out. I know there's stuff like ReVanced, but I keep wondering wether it's all worth it.
  
  ReVanced is definitely worth setting up. It only takes a couple of minutes and vastly improves the experience using YouTube. I also homebrewed my LG tv to download a hacked YouTube ad free app for that which includes sponsorblock.
  
  You'll hear this over and over again but that's because it's true: Revanced is absolutely worth it. Not difficult to set up and the experience is life changing once you see YouTube without ads
  
  I have a premium subscription, but it logs you out. And then I see ads until I log in again and reload the page. I pay these people. I should never ever see an ad. And it's enough that I've noticed the ads are more obnoxious than they used to be. I'm about done with it.
  
  Odysee is a great, decentralised alternative if you are looking to jump ship.
  If you do end up sticking with youtube, ReVanced is good. Smart Tube Next is good for TVs, and firefox + ublock origin on desktop.
  
  For iOS users Vinegar is a nice add-on for Safari that strips out all the ads etc.

Honestly I think I'll go full hoarder with YouTube archivist and find a way to stream/synchronize on my devices. I mostly use YouTube to go to sleep so there is no way I go back to videos being interrupted by loud ass ads.
- i don't want to be a buzz kill but if this train continue its course i am afraid that they gonna do something about youtube-dl
  
  And then there will be another fork that does something about their something. Just like what happened to Vanced, for example.
  
  they wouldn't be able to do anything. youtube-dl doesn't use an API or anything like that, it just streams the video like a browser would and rips the stream. if they somehow actually managed to selectively block youtube-dl, all youtube-dl would have to do is send a different user agent. the only defense against stream ripping in general is to not stream anything at all, which Youtube obviously cannot do
  
  There would always be some ways to save the video as long as it's played on your machine
  
  This is terrifying.
  
  What's happened with invidious suggests it's already starting in that regard.
  
  A long as there is a way to view a video, there will be a way to save it.
- Protip: On Peertube (at least for now), you can sync channels really easily so you can get a full archive of a good channel.
- Better do it fast
- This is what I'm doing since the elsagate scandal, and a recent one where there was an ad of an obese dude jacking off (I'm in the middle east, this happened about 6 months ago).
  I just automate the downloads of new youtube videos and let use jellyfin to watch it.
  I don’t use youtube much, but I had to selfhost because the youtube kids app is fucking nasty. I have my pihole block youtube domains for my kid's device (firewall does captive dns/redirection of all dns requests to pihole).
  My child likes dr binocs and brave wilderness.

If you're demanding I watch ads, it's not "free". you're demanding my time and probably attention.
I really think we need to stop with this idea that "Something is free" because no money is exchanged. Some stuff ARE free, there are repos on git, where you can download software, there are websites that ask for nothing. However Gmail, Youtube, reddit, and the rest are not "Free" just because they aren't directly asking for money.

Firefox
- This. I’m pretty sure this is a result of the ad engine changes they made to chrome a few months ago. Manifest V2 is what enables uBlock Origin to be so effective iirc and they’re removing it in chrome in favor of Manifest V3.
  Firefox on the other hand still supports V2.
  
  Firefox on the other hand still supports V2.
  For now, mozilla rely heavily on google for funding.
  They dropped xul extensions to have extension compatibility with chrome a few years ago.
  
  I was curious how people feel about Braves new Browser? I usually stick to Firefox but I've given it a try. It however does seem to be chromium based.

I'm not paying for YouTube. It's algorithm sucks, it routinely sells your personal data, and virtually none of the money you spend goes to its creators--that YouTube pretends otherwise is repulsive. How did we get in the situation where we're being asked to pay more and more for worse and worse services? I'm not gonna be a part of it.
- I'd be fine with ads and even paying if the creators weren't treated like trash and the number of ads weren't ridiculously obtrusive.
  
  It's hard to imagine that situation wouldn't always lead us here. The advertiser-centric internet has got to go.
  
  Unfortunately that's always the end result as never ending greed will always lead companies there
  
  I'll never be okay with ads *on social media. They're invasive and serve no purpose. I know the psychology behind it but if you're the type of person to buy something just because you saw an ad I think you need mental help.
  *Edited for clarity. I know some advertising is necessary but not ads on social media
- Yea, their algorithm has gotten really bad for me. The new to you tag is a little better but it's still not great.

NewPipe for android is still working. Much better than the official app IMO, no ads and it actually shows the videos you subscribed to.
- YouTube ReVanced has been fine for me too
  
  NewPipe is FOSS and available in F-droid, which is a plus in my book.
  
  Youtube Revanced has a habit of going into perpetual loading for me, so I've got both it and the normal YouTube app as backup
- Never heard of NewPipe, thanks for sharing

YouTube these days is insufferable, its why I don't bother with it too much anymore. Two pre-roll ads, then two ads after about two minutes, then two more before the end and then two more at the end. And the problem is that you can't skip through a video without getting ads. So lets say you watch 30 second and then skip, well bam, two new ads even though you only watched 30 seconds. Its so goddamn annoying and they need to lessen the amount.
- It almost feels like extortion to me. Don't wanna pay for youtube? Fine, you get ads. All. The. Time.
- I wouldnt use youtube without newpipe/ adblock either. When i am at somebody elses place, i am just baffled by the amount of trash google tries to ram down your eyes. And the more ads they serve, the more people will be done with it and either get premium or look for options to get rid of it.
  Even though it seems like more and more website now lock out adblock-users, i am confident that eventually there will be a "next-gen" of adblocks, that in turn circuvent these lock outs

I get that servers, bandwidth, manpower, utilities and buildings aren't free, and with more and more people using ad blocking, all that user data they have harvested isn't worth much anymore. So I think we are going to see an increase in subscription based services, and man do I hate it.
Because You just know it's going to increase and squeeze evey last dime from their users. Because it's never enough to have their expenses covered and earn some money.. They constantly need to earn more. Just look at Netflix, declining in contents, increasing restrictions and rising price.
The way that YouTube treats their users and content creators for that matter, I'll never enter a subscription from there. Removing features, blocking people with no way of appealing and letting scammers and spammers run rampant on their platform. Yeah, no thanks.
I used to love using YouTube for music, it was great at suggesting new and exciting music. But then it was split into a separate service and they nuked the algorithm. Now I can discover music by popularity or moods, and as someone whos into EDM, hardstyle, rock, metal and heavy metal.. that's a piss poor way to find new music.
- I'm finding this with my Spotify. The discover new music algo just feeds me the same 30 or so songs that I've listened to a million times it must be broken.
  
  Don’t you have access to “Discover Weekly” anymore? My MO is: start curating some playlist based off a genre or theme, start radio from it, keep adding suggestions that fit and I like. Then have a huge playlist with my “I really liked and would play this anytime” and if I find I’m replaying a new song it goes there as well, then, based on your new searching and adding stuff, your next week’s discover might get a lot more interesting. Also shazam stuff on the go and add it to respective playlists, even maybe IFTTT to a Shazam playlist, and even (we need to find a fediverse alternative but I had IFTTT setup to add to a Reddit playlist picking from Music and ListenToThid top posts as well) . So, basically, you need to branch out first so spotify can continue to branch out for you.
  
  If you're on mobile clear your data cache. It seems to me like the app prioritizes a handful of cached songs it's already downloaded, probably to save bandwidth, and doubly so when you're in an area with poor signal.
  
  Speaking of Spotify, I wonder how long it will be before they gut their desktop app for free users. It just feels too functional to be long for this world, especially given how unusable the app is if you don't have premium.
- YouTube is the only thing I don't mind paying a subscription for. I consume an unreasonable amount of media on YouTube. They host something like 4.5 petabytes of new videos every day. For me, the value I get from there is easily worth the price of premium. I couldn't say that for any other streaming service.

Peertube, Nebula, Patreon, etc. You don’t have to use YouTube.
- Plus, Newpipe and the likes have been doing pretty well at getting around YouTube ads so far, it's just the main YouTube website that has been more problematic.
  
  Neat lil app. Would be nice if you were able to see all the YouTube playlists for a creator. When you go to a creators YouTube channel, it just lists a bunch of their random videos.
  Also, a screencast functionality would be good too!

what's the fediverse alternative to YouTube? seems like this is the way the 2020's are going
- As much as I'd like to see an alternative to YouTube on the fediverse, I can't see myself using it much unless my favorite content creators move on over there too. And I can't see them moving.
- Oddysee is built on LBRY, which I believe is the closest thing. I think there's something else called PeerTube, but I'm not sure what it is exactly (haven't looked into it).
  
  I might be too pedantic, but Odysee/LBRY is a blockchain-based decentralized network. But its not federated and it doesn't use activitypub like Lemmy and mastodon. I would only call Peertube to be part of the fediverse.
  
  I’m pretty sure peertube is just a selfhosted version of YouTube that caches YT videos locally. Not an actual separate platform to upload videos to. I could be mistaken.
- I've been tracking the Fediverse loosely since stumbling into StatusNet and OStatus in 2011. To see the fediverse alive and well after being away for so long makes me very happy, though I don't share the same political opinions as many of the people here.
  That said, I'd argue there needs to be a way to spin up PeerTube and educate the masses on how to do that instead of starting a YouTube channel.

Haven't seen that one on ublock origin + Firefox
- Same, I've seen posts saying it only affects people who use chrome
  
  Soon: "Sorry, only chrome is allowed. Please download chrome to access youtube"

I'll NEVER pay for youtube. I'll block the ads or stop using the site. Fuck them and fuck google. Time to start downloading your favorite channels

More people should try out Tubesync. It's a tool you can host yourself that essentially uses yt-dl as a backend and lets you subscribe to channels, and it'll download videos as they come out. Gets you away from the ads and you can archive content you like forever.
https://github.com/meeb/tubesync
- I wonder if they'll ever make that impossible. I used to go on a couple of 6 hour drives twice a week for a long time. A lot of the drive didn't have cell service, as it was thru a bunch of mountains. I ended up making a python script that downloaded podcast episodes to listen to, and to force my brother to watch Your Mom's House, when he was with me on the drive.
  It was surprisingly simple to do this.
  
  Imagine if widevine are required to watch any video, that would be disaster.
- Similar to that you've got tubearchivist, because it's good to have options
  https://www.tubearchivist.com/
- That's pretty cool, thanks

I remember when someone was laughing at me when i downloaded some niche videos that i liked to rewatch from yt because that someone thought that it will be there available and forever. Remember that they wanted to paywall 4K vids at some point.
- You’ll pry my downloaded Wee Sing YTPs out of my COLD DEAD PIRATE HANDS

I think it's less enforceable than they think - every system someone sets up will eventually be circumvented.
It'll be a pain for a few months, or we'll see a federated alt pick up creators.
- To be honest, YouTube would be the hardest thing to replace. And if they ever stream ads from the same URLs as content I don't see a blocker being overly successful.
  
  I disagree, something like Sponsorblock is working quite well already for ads embedded in the video and unless YouTube makes serious sacrifices in UX I don't see how they could prevent this.
  
  They already do stream ads from the same urls. It's why a pihole can't block youtube ads.
  But you can tell what's coming, since apps like SmartTubeNext and Revanced can skip them.
  It'll probably just be a cat and mouse game, as it always has been.
  
  They already do stream ads from the same urls. It's why a pihole can't block youtube ads.
  But you can tell what's coming, since apps like SmartTubeNext and Revanced can skip them.
  It'll probably just be a cat and mouse game, as it always has been.
- There are already open source Alternatives. But not federated.
  
  What about peertube? Since Twitter -> Mastadon | Reddit -> Lemmy Why not Youtube -> Peertube next :D
- you are already seeing things such as nebula. to me it's amz
- Replacing a megacorp service is only possible when the stars align and said megacorp makes a fuckup so big users start jumping and these users are still a tiny speck compared to the total userbase. Still I hope Reddit dies slowly.

Greed is what got me to the point of not wanting to watch any AD ever.
- Same. I have a policy that I won't play any video that doesn't eventually play without an ad after multiple page refreshes. In those cases, I either give up or turn to a video ripping tool such as youtube-dl. Works so far…

If in the future they make it completely impossible to use ad blockers I'll just stop actively using YouTube. I hope a good enough alternative comes around.
I've heard it is quite difficult to make one.
- I remember when someone was laughing at me when i downloaded some niche videos that i liked to rewatch from yt because that someone thought that it will be there available and forever. Remember that they wanted to paywall 4K vids at some point.
- You could give Odysee a try. I was pleasently surprised at how well it works, and how nice the UI/UX is. Especially considering it is a decentralized platform.
  It's missing a lot of the content that youtube has. Especially if you trying to look up a specific video or niche topic. But there's still a lot of great content available if you are happy to browse.
  
  Oh boy that website looks amazing, I'll be keeping an eye on it. I hope Youtube changes the direction it is going, but if it doesn't at least we have a couple alternatives, I also found out that the ''fediverse'' has its own alternative with PeerTube.

The back and forth between YouTube and the adblock developers ought to get interesting.

This seems somewhat intentionally coordinated, so that the squeeze everyone into submission.
- It is coordinated but also driven by purely financial factors that changed over the last year. Interests are rising and suddenly those tech companies can't just live by growth alone, they have to find ways to be profitable.
  
  Won't someone think of the poor tech companies?
  (Just making the joke, not at you. You are correct, that is why it's happening now.)
- Not coordinated just money drying up everywhere.

Greed didn't lead someone, this is a shareholder entity. Each shareholder doesn't even have to think about greed. The entity does it all for them. That's why companies can do horrible things and everyone can sleep at night. It's always the entity that did it not them. Shareholders are the root of all evil in this world today.
- Nah, landlords are
  
  landlords are but a branch of this tree of evil

I think ublock already got around this no? I have had 0 issues
- They haven't rolled it out to more than a small percentage of users.

Youtube should be archived, burnt to the ground, and replaced

Don’t worry too much guys this will be circumvented. It’s just a cat and mouse game, but the cat is blind.

Having to watch ads isn't free. It costs me my time and it's limited.
- Technically you pay to use Youtube by watching adds. People sometimes forget that there are no free lunches.
  
  As long as there are CEOs getting payed more than i could earn in my life for one year, i'm good with my free lunch.
  
  Someone smarter than me once said, "if your using a service, and it seems free, then YOU are the product being bought and sold"
  I don't think this is always true, but it usually is.
  
  There are, but they exist outside the market. Any company is going to want a return on its investment, and many people have even been trained to see themselves as “a business” and so operate transactionally in their personal lives, but many people don’t also. There are many people who do and give away many things with no expectation of return.

I'm not so sure that this is anything to worry about. It's just another step in the game of cat and mouse. Is it annoying? Of course! But if/when it goes mainstream, ad blockers are just going to push updates that make it possible to block the ad block blocker. uBlock Origin does a really good job at blocking ad block blockers on most sites.
- True, especially with the fuckfuckadblock list which really mitigates most aDvLoKC d3TeKteD bullshit.
  
  Honestly, using uBO (which is really the only blocker anyone should be using) I never see those popups anyway. And that list apparently causes unintended connections to google servers (warning, there's some drama in this issue between the ublock dev and the list's dev, but gorhill comes off more reasonable here.)
  So really, just turn on most of the filter lists in uBO settings as per your need and you should be good to go.
  
  I had no idea that this list existed, and even without it, I don't see any of these popups with uBlock Origin. I was an AdBlock user for years until about 9 months ago when I made the switch after learning that uBlock Origin was more robust. Apparently the devs of AdBlock have a policy against blocking ad block detection because they consider it to be unfair to website owners.
- This is google that we’re talking about, they can pull a Twitter and just fully restrict access unless logged in / subscribed. I don’t think uBlock origin can get around the Twitter / Facebook / Instagram log in to see this content modal.
  
  I do not think it will happen, but even if they do implement what you have described here, it doesn't matter. Users will be forced to sign in, and then from there, they can block ads as usual.

Internet doing a race to the bottom.

I will still use invidious while having muy subscriptions saved as RSS feeds so this change will go over my head
- let me bring you up to speed a couple days ago YouTube legal team threatened invidious devs saying they are abusing their API ToS ( trems of service ) which the devs said that the claim does not hold any truth to it since invidious is just youtube proxy\scraper and does not depend on API
  
  This just tells me that invidious is in their crosshairs but it is legally safe until YouTube tries taking them to court to create precedent over scraping webpages

Still waiting for ISPs to change their model ever since “net neutrality” was abolished. With all of this shit with YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit coming down the pipe it really does feel there has been a global change in how corporations are squeezing their customers. I am guessing ISPs are waiting for the bulk of services to change their model before they sweep in with their greed. It’s coming.
- My ISP is my power company, which is a co-op. I'm actually really thankful I don't belong to a major corporation
- If isp corpos start pulling shit like this, I'm out! I'm going to get a library membership & be done with the internet for good.
  
  I'm already archiving shit on my humble terabyte of two HDDs

We need to reclaim the internet
- Sure, once we pay for it.
- This statement is extremely stupid. YouTube is a free service to you. It is dammed expensive to run, and they pay for it by showing you ads. It's the exact same thing as ltelevision channels that show ads. it's paid for by ads. You are not freeing the internet by blocking ads, you're driving the content providers to have no money. I hate ads as much as anyone but unless you want to pay $20 a month for YouTube, then stop whining
  
  Don’t come at me with a toxic Reddit attitude. The issue is not about paying for a service. For example, people are willing to donate to the fediverse to keep servers running. The problem is that the current state of the internet is dominated by paywalls, tracking and ads. Even if I paid for YouTube they’d still track me, feed me garbage from an algorithm and try to sell things to me (relentlessly).
  
  More devices, content, and people are online than ever before, and the user experience has never been worse. It is one of the most significant advancements in human history, and its not-so-slowly going to shit because of corporate greed.
  It's Google's right to serve ads however they want, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call for a competitor that doesn't treat users like garbage.

Yt-dlp, NewPipe, Invidious...
- It'll be a very sad day when those no longer work.
  
  The day they no longer work is the day I stop watching youtube.

FreeTube is good for some users, but it's not good for some other users because it uses Electron. Alternatively, you can use Invidious instead or piped. You can use NewPipe if you use Android.
- Piped appears to be broken due to other changes over at Youtube.

Anyone seen any issues with revanced for this? I haven't experienced anything but curious if anyone has ran into anything.

FreeTube, Invidious, and Piped all seem to be fine. :)
- My NewPipe also seems to be fine, I just think it is the official website.

Greed? I mean they are not a charity and ads pay for the service. Don't get me wrong I use ad block but to call it greed..

YouTubeDL + Plex
Not so crazy anymore.

Revanced it is

I really don't think it's greed. Can't blame em for trying to win the cat/mouse game of adblocking. I'm sure it's not the end of the world, and new ways to circumvent this will show up.
- While I agree in theory, Youtube has been a money pit for Google for its entire existence. It feels a little odd for them to suddenly start caring now.
  Beyond that, I've seen a lot of discussion lately about how ads have gotten worse over time, and I agree. The old, entirely text, adwords ads that didn't try to masquerade as content are one thing. I'd be a lot more likely to allow that type. Instead, most ads now are obnoxious video, animated, scroll highjacking, etc. We've entered a crappy feedback loop where ads aren't as effective, so companies are more likely to make obnoxious ads to get the most ROI, so people who might use adblockers are more likely to use them to try and preserve a smooth browsing experience.
  There's also an argument to be made that despite the absurd amount of data collection going on, ad targeting is still pretty shitty. If I was getting ads for things I was interested in, I might be more likely to allow them.
  Ultimately I think the genie is out of the bottle on this. People who are likely to use ad blockers aren't likely to change without a large overhaul in the ad industry, and the ad industry can't afford to make those changes while still maintaining profits.
  
  All internet companies have been caring a lot more about service profitability since the rise in interest rates. Unprofitable companies are scrambling to make money and profitable companies are killing divisions that don't have a clear path to profitably.
  The Internet being so abundant that everything would be free hasn't really come about. The costs to serve a video may be fractions of a cent, but it is still not something you can round to zero yet.
- Can’t blame em for trying to win the cat/mouse game of adblocking.
  IDK; I blame them.
  YouTube has become part of the world's social infrastructure. In a way, it is the town square.
  Frankly it should be publicly owned.
  
  Well, that's not in YouTube's interest, so I don't know how you can blame them for not being publicly owned.
  If it somehow magically becomes publicly owned, your bills/taxes will reflect that (as they do with TV in many countries, it just gets added to the monthly electricity bill, whether you use it or not).
  
  Okay. I can dig a publicly owned YouTube.
  Are you willing to spend your tax dollars hosting flat earth content?
  Far right? Thinly disguised racism?
  It’s ironic: but at least by paying based on what is watched, you give money to those you consume.
- I've been using a variety of LibreTube and revanced on my phone and tablet as I only have mobile devices.
  For the first time I opened a link which went to the native app, OMG it is unusable with ads.
  If that's the expected way of using YouTube then I'm out, especially as I live in a location where I can't pay for Premium even if I wanted to
- while i agree to some extent it never been that aggressive before, have you heard that dial-er and SMS apps are no longer included in the android open source stock making it bit harder for custom roms maintainers
  
  I heard about this too, it's a really rough one. Removing essential mobile phone functionality from a mobile OS' source code makes no sense to me at all
- I also don’t understand how anyone can be offended by this. Keeping YT running no doubt is quite expensive.

What ad blockers are getting detected right now?
- don't know as i don't use "youtube" - the site - i am using a different front end
  
  Long live Piped!
- My friend saw this using ABplus, he just switched to using a piped instance for the time being. I haven't seen it at all using ublock origin. Though they said this is a "small test" so it's possible I just am not in the test.

Holy cow, is the real? On YouTube desktop? Or just on mobile?

Soon, people will join the strange and buggy world of YouTube alternative frontends
- please god don't let it be snaptube or something
- Which will provide the motivation to enable DRM the whole platform.
  
  Which will provide the motivation to remove DRM from the web standards, as it should have never existed in the first place.

I feel like we had a good relationship as it was. I don’t feel like ad blockers are mainstream enough to hinder revenue. But these changes are pushing me to divest from the platform. I’ve shared fewer YT links in discord since they went after the music bots.

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