4mo ago

What the fuck happened to YouTube!?

I just tried to look up a specific video of a Nick Swardson stand up bit. All I searched was "Nick Swardson loitering". There were 5 fucking ads before an actual user posted video, then one real human posted video that barely had anything to do with Nick, then 5 more fucking ads.

I knew they were forcing ads into videos but clogging the entire search feed with ads is unfuckingbelievable.

Is this really what it's come to? Ads are more important than what I'm actually looking for? Are people really okay with this?

291 comments

Better question is why are you not using an adblocker?
- Because I don't know how to do all that shit on my phone 😭
  I've had several people try to explain but I just can't fuckin do it. I'd need someone to sit down with me and show me while explaining every action.
  
  Use your app store to install Firefox.
  Install ublock origin Firefox extension.
  Go to Youtube using Firefox.
  
  From my experience, if you're on iOS then Brave is the only browser I know of that includes a built-in adblocker (although I have my own issues with Brave).
  If you're on Android, should be able to just install Firefox (or a fork like Fennec), tap the three dots in the app > Extensions > uBlock Origin
  If you're otherwise using the YouTube app, I don't have much to add in that respect as I usually use Invidious or NewPipe.
  
  iOS or Android?
  
  I hate to say this, but you're exactly the reason why Youtube and other services feel safe and comfortable enshittifying their services.
  
  On Android Tubular is pretty awesome.
  
  Assuming you're on android, you can use this download link on your phone to download the .apk for NewPipe. This link is a direct download to install the app. (If you don't trust my link, you can got to newpipe.net yourself), so if you click it, it should immediately start downlaoading and you can follow the steps to install the app. It's pretty self explanatory.
  It's a frontend for youtube that removes all ads. You can't comment or like, but you can subscribe to channels via NewPipe, just like you're used to in youtube. But no ads. You do not need to login, it is not tied to your youtube account.
  Youtube doesn't like ad dodging frontends, so every once in while the app won't work and you'll need to go back to youtube (or a different alternative) for a day or two until the folks at NewPipe fix it again. It's kind of an arms race like that, but with advertising.
  
  The internet with a proper ad blocker is a game changer. Take the five minutes to figure it out. You'll save more as free time than that on your first day.
  Ironically, you could also YouTube how to install Firefox, then unlock.
  
  Get GrayJay.
  That's all. Just use grayjay. Either go to grayjay.app and get it, or get it off the Google play store. It's "Grayjay" from "futo"
  
  If you're on android, use AdGuard that blocks ads in other apps. Or use Vivaldi browser with built in adblocker.
  
  I used to run a public TLS DNS server that would do some hardcore ad/tracking blocking. I shut it down when I switched myself, friends and family to a private Tailscale network with VPN on the exit nodes.
  It was a little janky to manage but I still have the files laying around; my point is I could turn it back on. Since it’s DNS-based it applies to all websites and apps running on your devices, and with TLS it’s also encrypted so your ISP wouldn’t be able to track your DNS requests. You would however be trusting me, a random stranger with your queries.
- Is piped working again?
  
  NewPipe is working again, so Piped probably too
  
  No idea, I use unlock with Firefox for YT stuff.
  Even works on android.
- I want to upvote you, but you're at 69 upvotes....
  Nice!
  
  Feel free to upvote them now

The ad industry is truly one of the most reprehensible and insidious things humans have ever invited unto themselves. It's beyond dystopian how much of our ability to move through the world is now contingent on us allowing our brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.
I believe conspiracism is the root of all evil. But ads are gaining on conspiracism like they're Usain Bolt being chased by an angry bee.
I have to hand it to those soulless fucking devils though, they might have pulled off one of the most brazen but successful mindfucks I've ever seen: they convinced lots of people that seeing ads about topics they were interested in was some sort of concession from the ad industry, like they were begrudgingly implementing measures to make ads "relevant" to us, and that we were somehow gaming the system because of it. It was a "win" for us to have the ads being served into our eyeballs and ears be tailor-made for us. "I'm so sick of seeing ads for products I don't even care about! I wish there was a way to make the ads be relevant to ME" said no cunt ever. But they managed to convinced us that everyone else was saying that, and that we'd won some sort of victory against them to have their advertising have the precision of a sniper rifle, versus what it was before, like some sort of shotgun fired from 150 feet away in the dark.
An entire species of marks.
- brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.
  and like 90% of people think they're completely impervious to ads lol
  
  HEY! YOU!!! JOIN THE NAVY!!!
- I have been using adblockers for decades already. And it’s been that long since I had to see ads. Occasionally some site will have some way of it getting through but even then I have the plugin scan and it sometimes can start blocking it. Essentially, my internet has been 95% ad-free and frankly I am surprised when I encounter anyone who doesn’t do the same.
  
  I've used an adblocker for ages as well, though I do wish content creators on YouTube could get some passive non-membership revenue from me without me having to disable my adblock and look directly into the Ark of the Covenant. I could get Premium, but at that point, I feel like I've negotiated with a terrorist.
  
  Remember that time when YT started showing banner ads below the video? Yeah, that was like just after the dinosaurs were wiped out and before blockchains became a thing. I was a long time ago, ok. Anyway, that’s when I was about to quit watching YT, but then I suddenly discovered the wonderful world of ad-blocking. Turns out, YT became watchable again.
- That and all the people who say shit like “But I have to watch the ads to support the creators”, like there wasn’t 70 years of TV advertisements preceding this generation. I know I’m talking to a kid when someone says that. No one thought they were stealing from Burt Reynolds if they didn’t buy a Chrysler or tampons. It’s absurd.
- I feel your vitriol and agree with it 100%.
  When politicians of both parties say shit like "Americans like their private health insurance"... I kind of die a little.
  When a random podcast from somewhere else in the world has a local ad injected into it by the app I downloaded it with...same.
  When the godamn fucking pitcher's mound has a CGI ad superimposed over it....same.
  We're going to advertise and conspicuously consume ourselves into extinction. So there's that I guess.
- The link between conspiracies and ads is way stronger than that. The ad industry really went into high gear following WWII when the people working on pumping out propaganda to drive their own side of the war stepped up the game by applying psychology, new media, and a bigger budget.
  Those people and techniques then moved to the commercial market when the war ended and applied their trade to peddle us the crap their customers wanted to sell. Make us feel bad if we don't buy product X and go on an endless consumption treadmill to try to feel good and adequate about ourselves.
  It is despicable and even worse with ads targeting children.
- My god that was well written. We should be friends.
- But, but, how will people know about our product?!😩
- I like the way you English.
- PREACH
- I could not agree more with your eloquently-written poignant rant, but I cannot resist being an extreme pedant—a shotgun fired at 150ft has a very small spread.
- Sorry what exactly do you mean about conspiracism? As in the belief in conspiracy theories, right?
  I'm curious what you mean when you say it's the root of all evil

Are you... raw dogging the internet without an ad blocker? You poor soul
- It’s the latest fad challenge, navigating your way through cancerous web pages
- Don't tell him, if too many people get ad blockers they're just going to keep evolving
  
  Is that really how it works? I feel like the whole ad based economy is a sham anyway, I wouldn't mind if it collapsed and we funded websites through micropayments or gift economy
- I like this sentence.
- 9 times out of 10 the ads have zero effect on my ability to search for things.
  I'm not saying searches haven't gotten worse but until this specific thing or Google's ai search it's been easy to ignore if you know what you're doing.
  
  I remember being that guy.
  It never gets better, ads only ever get worse. If you are successfully ignoring ads then they aren't doing their job, and they will keep trying different ways to get your attention until you get sick of this shit and get an ad blocker.
  You have found a specific thing that would improve, save yourself the hassle and get ublock now to fix this for you as well as a dozen other little things you are "living with" that will be much better when they're gone.
  
  username checks out
  
  Ads aren't the only thing to worry about. You're leaving yourself dangerously exposed to malware for literally no reason.

Real homies don’t let homies view YouTube without proper adblockers turned on
- But you're stealing from content creators
  
  As so often, you steal from the capitalist, not the workers
  
  Sarcasm, surely.

I take it you haven't been paying attention. The term that has been it coined is called "enshitification" and the Google is running at the head of the pack in their race to the sewer.
- We should probably stop using that word and just call it by it's proper name, "Capitalism”. The only way for an ad revenue based business to drive growth is to force more and more ads on users, and flood their platform with bots to increase engagement numbers.
  
  It can be two things.
- No, the kids are ~~scared to type scary-sweary words now~~ too stupid to know when and where they need to self-censor so the term is ensh*ttification
  OP has some catching up to do
  
  No, the kids have learned that if you mention a swear word or something that could be a swear word on capitalistic social media, you get censored.
  
  No, I just don't; the profanity is part of the point. It's meant to convey the magnitude of the deliberate running of the quality of the things in order to feed the bottomless hunger of the capitalist abomination ruling over all of our lives.

What happened is that you forgot to install an ad blocker.
edit ad blocker won't help here
- yes, but their results are trash now. shows you 5 results, then 10 or things you've probably already seen completely unrelated to the search, then random "trending" garbage.
  
  There is a neat Firefox addon which makes visits to yubbtub more tolerable by getting rid of unrelated suggestions:
  RYS — Remove YouTube Suggestions
  It has a lot of options to tailor it to your needs.
- This is not ad-blocking related. The search results on YouTube are literal trash and there's nothing we can do about it.
  
  Same with Google. Their search results are a joke now.
  
  Oh right. How amazing that one of my highest upmodded comment is the one where my comment is objectively full of shit

We estimate that we can sell up to 80% of a user's visual field without inducing a seizure.
- Make it 85% and show ads for anti-seizure medicine.

How do people not know about ublock origin/sponsorblock? Lol
- Even with ublock, the search is completely useless always mixing barely relevant videos with ones that have nothing to do with your terms at all.

How have you survived this long without UBlock?

Google knows the answer to this is: "What else are you going to use, Dailymotion?"
Which is why they're a monopoly.
- I still try Vimeo, Archives, and even PeerTube and WikiCommons.
- Not watching is actually an option.
  
  Sure. Not watching your favorite show is always an option. But if it's your favorite show, that really sucks.

It's called enshittification:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Enshittification is a re-prioritization pattern where online product and service providers experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. This process results in a significant deterioration of the user experience.
Though the concept had been recognized and labeled with similar terms,[1][2] the neologism "enshittification" was coined by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022 to describe this phenomenon. The American Dialect Society recognized the term's relevance and impact by selecting it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also referred to this concept as platform decay, emphasizing the inevitable decline in service quality due to these profit-driven changes.
To tackle and diminish enshittification, Doctorow advocates for two fundamental solutions: upholding the end-to-end principle and guaranteeing the right of exit. The end-to-end principle asserts that platforms should transmit data in response to user requests rather than algorithm-driven decisions. Ensuring the right of exit entails facilitating user departure from platforms without data loss, which necessitates interoperability. These strategies aim to uphold the standards and trustworthiness of online platforms, placing emphasis on user satisfaction and encouraging market competition.

Enshit.
- Enshat?
  
  Who's Steve Jobs?

i tried to find a clip of that olympics break dancing thing a week or two ago.
It was fucking impossible. I literally couldn't find shit, it was all AI generated videos.
- That one is a Olympic copyright issue. Either NBC since they pay so much for the rights or the IOC flag videos immediately so all your left with is low quality videos.
  It genuinely ruins trying to find Olympics content if NBC doesn't cover that specific event
  
  why would you ever copyright video clips of the olympics though, nobody fucking pays for cable or has time to watch streams. And we're also only talking about like 2 minutes worth of content, I'm pretty certain that would be fair use.
- here you go https://odysee.com/@deniel22:b/raygun:1
  
  thank god for piracy, finally i know what people were fucking talking about
  
  Thank you for this. I watched the whole thing. It's undeniable that Raygun can do a lot of things I can't, but her performance paled in comparison with the other competitors. Three four times I got the goosebumps when the other competitors did truly amazing moves!
- This is to be expected, Google does the same thing with their search engine; delay providing the most accurate and related results in order to get users to see more ads per search.
  
  i have adblock so they arent even getting any money
- I tried that yesterday to show some dinner guests. 20 videos later, I gave up
  
  this is why i keep a local archive, only my stupidity and inability to find shit in my horde make me look like a dumbass.
- Raygun is the best, but I also failed to find it and I have YouTube Red (or whatever Google calls it now). The Olympics was on that feed like hoss on some slop.
  
  yeah idk i thought some of what she did was pretty good, she demonstrates good control, i think she mainly needs to work on fluidity and transitions though, some of them were awful.

Ublock. Simple as.
- That now requires downloading Firefox first.
  
  I fail to see the issue.
  
  Oh that's a good point!
  BreadOven should add that step to their instructions

Get Firefox and install uBlock Origin
- It's still pretty shitty even with. Can't search for shit, 5 items down they're showing you completely different results from what you searched for.
  
  Gotta keep you addicted to the content they know will steal your attention.
  Psychological dopamine abuse.
- The search results are still full of ai generated videos
  
  ugh yes that is an issue. there might be extensions that replace yt thumbnails though

Youtube is useless nowadays.
We need more content in PeerTube if we want that kind of website again.
- How does peertube work exactly? If I host an instance do I need massive storage on my server to host all the videos or is it distributed amongst the other instances? Do I have control of what videos I host on my instance? I'd hate to be hosting and helping spread Nazi propaganda (or any propaganda for that matter).
  
  Most peertube instances are isolated from most of the other instances to avoid hosting a ton of videos. Honestly, your instance doesn't have to federate with other peertube instances since most people leave comments from other fediverse apps
  
  AFAIK if you open an instance videos are hosted in your instance, and may be replicated in other instances via Federation.
  Also it supposedly can work p2p if mutiple users are watching the same video it distributed the download. In my experience nowadays it always end using http download.
  Moderation an everything about ita users fall into the instance host and moderators. I don't know if you can do an approval system, I would suppose so, but I'm not certain.

Are people really okay with this?
No, thats why they use adblock. Either install adblock or just use Brave or Opera browser. Ads will be gone forever
- librewolf my beloved
- Keep in mind that Opera is a shady company. Please avoid their products if you're able and willing.
  You should not use anything from Opera. The company is chasing trends, and its most successful ventures in recent history have been ripping off poor people in developing countries and marketing to gamers with a meme social media account. The company's failed experiments have been abandoned without directly informing users, leaving them at increased risk of security problems.
- I am debating between Brave or Firefix. Any arguments for/against?
  
  Brave is run by some pretty shady people who do things like automatically adding affiliate links to your URL or collecting donations for content creators without their consent
  As far as an actual browser goes, Brave is based on Chromium so its more likely to work on every site but it has a bunch of crypto nonesense added that you probably would want to uninstall. There are more extensions that will "just work" on Chromium browsers, for example I've had issues with the Postman extension on Firefox before
  Firefox is based on Gecko, its pretty well supported and follows all the standards but there is probably a higher chance that a site might break (usually down to its pretty strict privacy defaults) there isn't really much bloat (other than a Pocket integration that you might want to turn off)
  Mozilla also feel (to me at least) like one of the last groups of Good People on the web, you can reach their manifesto to learn more.

Also, search on YouTube has been utterly broken for years. You get at most 4 or 5 results and then a random series of videos that are completely unrelated to my search query.
- It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you have to click through 10 shitty videos before finding the one you're looking for, that's 10x more engagement to sell to advertisers.

Revanced for android. Not a single add.
- I'll have to take a look at it. I've been using tubular which comes with ad-blocking and sponsorblock built in.
- uBlock in Firefox for Android. Not a single ad. Anywhere. Add Background Play Fix and you can play audio from video even when you switch apps or turn the screen off. For any video platform.

Invidious was created due to this, it’s an extremely light weight, ad free YouTube front-end. Most of YouTube’s attempts at blocking it out fixed within a week. Try it now: https://invidious.io/
- this worked very well, found exactly what I was looking for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

I've got about half a dozen plugins in Firefox specifically for YouTube to make the front page even remotely usable.
Without them YouTube isn't even worth it.
- Could you expand on those?
  
  Behind the overlay
  ClearURLs
  Click bait Remover for YouTube
  Disconnect
  Return YouTube Dislike
  SponsorBlock for YouTube
  uBlock Origin (with WaterFox web browser - cannot stress this combo enough.)
  Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended & Shorts
  YouTube High Definition
  Privacy Bager (also super important)
  If you get any of these, you block origin with waterfox is a very powerful combination for YouTube and general browsing on the internet. Couple all that with privacy badger and you'll be relatively okay.
  There are a lot of other stuff out there. Just browse through the Firefox extension plug-in store or whatever it is and they'll all be there.
  
  Yup. Now they have two dozen.

Odysee just removed all ads of their platform and seems like a great YouTube alternative. I've been using it and uploading videos to it and I'm liking it a lot.
The comments are also much higher in quality. I'd say it's comparable like Lemmy and Reddit. Much more positivity and people who actually add something to a video. You do ofcourse have a few Nazis hanging around, but freedom goes both ways and you don't really come across them.
Besides that just use NewPipe on mobile or an AdBlocker.
- I noped out at “blockchain-based”
  
  NFTs and every other cryptobro have destroyed its reputation.
  If you use Odysee you don't even have to know anything about crypto or blockchains, it just works like YouTube.

Aside from adblocking making youtube actually usable, there's been such a notorious increase in enforcement of DRM.
I couldn't watch jack anything related to Olympics because NBC got youtube to spam remove practically any footage, as if I'm going to spend cash money on their shitty streaming platform to find a 30 second clip. Same thing for any ICC highlights. Only 360p widened 2 minute videos get past the filter.
Almost no such thing as public replays, clips, montages, or highlights anymore. It all gets boxed up in some corporate ownership, never to be seen again aside from the live footage.
- funnily enough I was able to watch olympic replays on one of my city's (Hong Kong) official broadcast YouTube channels, specifically HOY TV, but all the commentary is in cantonese. But it's also region locked (I just tested it by trying a US VPN) so you need a VPN to a Hong Kong server.
- The mateys preserved a lot of it

Omg, it is full of ads... Futurama, 15 years ago...

YouTube is broke, but it was also deliberately punishing you for looking up Nick swardson I think?

If on a computer, install ublockorigin.
If on android, get revanced.
Enjoy not seeing ads at all.
- PC user with AdBlock for YouTube on both Edge and Firefox. Game. Changed.
  LOL, I was a little stunned going to YouTube when I moved to Firefox. "What is all this crap!?" thankfully they had the same extension.
  
  Edge will loose it after the changes to Chromium roll out.
- I started getting the odd server side injected ads. Refreshing the page usually works to skip it.

Short answer: money
Long answer: As more and more ad sales started rolling in, YT was like: “Yes please! Can I have some more of that sweet sweet ad money?” Advertisers were like: “Yeah, sure why not. That seems to boost sales, so how much money can we dump into this black hole?” Some users were like: “WTF! I’m installing an adblocker.”
Meanwhile, nobody was like: “Yes please. I want to see more ads. Who cares about the videos as long as there are lots of ads to watch. This is the best thing ever!”
- It's more like... YT realised they would never be profitable selling ads and needed a subscription model. No one wants to pay for a subscription so to improve the perceived value of the subscription they need to make the free offering unbearable.
  
  This is pretty much it.
  YouTube Premium is only remotely worth it because regular YouTube is an absolute shitshow
- Some people intentionally watch mobile ads and if paying youtube boots sales, people are clicking the ads and some may like them

YouTube is unusable without ReVanced or (insert preferred method for adblocking here)
- SponsorBlock (alongside an ad blocker) is great for skipping ad reads plus a lot of other annoying bullshit.
- Grayjay is amazing. It also supports different platforms like PeerTube, Odyssey, Twitch, etc. Revanced hasn't been working for me for a while now.
  
  You need to update revanced then.
  
  It still works on android like a charm. Maybe update?

Same as Google results, they've decided we can't choose for ourselves and are now going to curated results.
Rumble and Yahoo are far better.
- LibreY, search and get the results you asked for. You're welcome.
  
  Looks nice! A little too bare-bones and missing some features but thanks for putting it on my radar. I'm currently bouncing between duckduckgo and SearXNG.
- Isn't Rumble alt-right?
- Honest question....I've given Rumble a couple of tries. Every visit it seems super right-wing. And I don't mean conservative viewpoints with which I disagree, but full-blown conspiracy lunacy, hard-right fearmongering titles designed to enrage the conservative mind. That's all that shows up in recommended/trending when I visit. I don't have an account and pretty sure it's not tracking my preferences. Is that just what it is, or have I fallen into someone else's echo chamber somehow?
  For reference, title at the top of the feed right now:
  Taylor Swift Worships Satan (my favorite)
  The Deep State's New Plan to Steal 2024
  Why is "Conservative" Fox News Covering for Kamala
  The Forged Biden Resignation Will Be Exposed
  
  Yup. Tried Rumble once. It was all right wing or pro-Russia or other extremist trash.
- That's "monetizing the user base" in corpo speak

I never thought I’d say it, but I don’t even use YouTube anymore. I might go there once a month to watch a tute, but only if I absolutely can’t find help from any other website.

I've been saying for almost 5 years now, ditch youtube. Everytime i say it I get the most butt hurt responses.
- The dream is dead but we are still clinging to the memories of the good times
  
  I get it, some things are not easily replaceable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take active steps to cut ties. The biggest steps for me was uninstalling the obnoxious default install on my phone and subscribing to an actual music service.
  Going to youtube isn't taboo, for me, just with the app un-installed I have to make the conscious decision to browse the site. The site is also much less convenient; making the experience mostly untenable. People existed before youtube and will exist after. The point isn't to cripple them but to hit them hard enough so they can reflect on their dopamine pushing business practices.
- The tides will turn though. I've been denouncing google for years, and I've find it quite striking how the pushback has disappeared recently. It use to be that any negative comment about google was met by a small army of google fans. That just isn't the case any more.
- Where do you go for random videos and passing time watching things you're interested in?
  
  Pornhub.
  
  Playeur is alright, they need a few more big creators to join, but some of my favorite firearms channels have gone over there, and I discovered a botany channel on there I had never seen before.

Install Newpipe on your phone OP. That's all you got to do. Just use Newpipe whenever you want to browse YT.

Try invidious or other platforms entirely lol. Newpipe on phones. Also block ads in browsers and on networks as much as possible

I'm on YouTube revanced android. I have no idea what how stock YouTube looks like.
- Just joined the club this week. I can't believe I waited this long.
- JD Vanced

An idea for YouTube: make a way to watch ads separately and earn minutes, and then to spend earned minutes on watching actual videos without ads, lol.
- So that you can leave ads running on your computer while you go do other stuff? Doesn't seem like a good deal for Google.
  
  Google doesn't care about eyeballs, just watch time, ad dollars, and click through rates.
  
  It didn't work out so well for Perk when they paid you to watch ads. But then again I was making $100 a week from my phone farm back in the day. Had 30 phones earning points at a time.
- Don't give them ideas. If they had a reasonable number of ads, it wouldn't be a problem, but they are absolutely out of control.

Everyone say to use an AdBlock. And while for now they work it's a lose battle.
Youtube ads vs adblockers does not have the happy ending of adblockers just always prevailing.
As now embedded serverside ads are a pain to deal with. I don't know if any adblock currently can surpass those.
But next step will be youtube just putting a fence up and not letting you watch content unless you are registered, and thus banning any suspicious activity, or even just becoming a paid service.
The only win here is moving to a open platform like Peertube. That's the only future we can ensure. Adblocks won't be able to always win.
- As now embedded serverside ads are a pain to deal with. I don’t know if any adblock currently can surpass those.
  But next step will be youtube just putting a fence up and not letting you watch content unless you are registered, and thus banning any suspicious activity, or even just becoming a paid service
  Honestly, I have not seen youtube ads in ages. Every now and then, when I have taken sufficient leave of my senses after having imbibed, I may attempt to view something on youtube using a device without an ad blocker, and then I am quickly and sharply reminded of what a dumpster fire that is. But on PC - no sir or madam, no ads at all, thank you very much.
  Personally, I think the much bigger problem of sites like youtube and tiktok are the unforgivably horrible "recommendations". You search for something innocent or even just open the website, and you are recommended random closetted or open fascism, misogynie, racism, or other garbage.

{does Nick Swardson loitering search} {scrolls...} {thinking face} "i don't see what their on about most of this looks relevant..." {looks at Ublock notification bubble} *** {66 blocked}*** "oh... oh my."

Use Firefox. Use ublock origin extension. Use sponsorblock.
On iOS Safari extension Adblock. Plenty available.
I have not seen an ad in years. Decades even.
- I don't think adblockers existed in 2004 but ok. Extensions might have been a brand new concept...
  
  lol yes they did.

What I'm amazed about is that ads even work at all. Especially when they are white noise. I've never once clicked on an ad to go see more about the content because I'm here to watch a video.
- Yeah, I've got to imagine as you cram more ads into a platform the effectiveness of the ads drops dramatically. Especially once users start leaving from being overwhelmed by ads.

Even without the ads, the algorithm is so crap that I doubt you would find what you were looking for. On an iPhone you either pay for Premium for a shitty service or try building and sideloading uYouPlus. Adguard + Safari works to an extent and Brave might work better but haven’t tried it.
- Safari with ad blocker YouTube end of story. I watch YT videos ad-free for years. How doesn’t everyone do this??
- The recommendation algo works pretty well for me, and I don't know why!
  I'm a gun nut, watch tons of guntubers, so you would think I'd be overrun with right-wing crap, but I'm not. At all.
  It's annoying to watch a single video outside my typical interests and get a bunch of the same. But having said that, those recommendations quickly fade. For example, I was watching outdoor survival videos for a bit, predictably got hit with plenty more. But those are long gone.
  Watched several videos about choosing and using gas masks one night. Here comes the survivalist, right-wing shit! But it didn't really go that way. And again, faded fast.
  Anyone have insight for me?

I know this is an incredibly unpopular take on Lemmy, but YT Premium is the best value subscription on the web by my reckoning. I watch an absolute fuck ton of content on YT, and I listen to an absolute fuck ton of music on YT music. And my partner does too.
If you don't use YT enough to justify the cost of the sub, I understand being frustrated with the ads but it's a free service. I can't imagine the amount of data that YT serves daily to free users.
- Well they’ve successfully extorted you.
  Most of us use ad blockers.
  
  Extorted? Why are you so dramatic? It's a service I'm happy to pay for.
  I use ad blockers too. But I also don't mind paying for a good service. The cost of the service is worth it to me for the conveniences it offers. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't pay for it, but I also wouldn't be complaining about something I'm not paying for.
  
  Or YouTube vanced/revanced for mobile
- Yeah I'm with you on this, I actually only got it for YouTube music — which really is like "here you can play any song from the history of humanity and also yt video audios." Well actually what happened is I was using Google Music and then the assholes shut it down and merged it into YT Music which is now roughly on par. I was pissed, but user retained
  But I have been enjoying the fact that my subscription goes towards paying the ppl I watch, and I like that I'm unaffected by YT's server side ads concept (which I've always wondered why they don't do, I think it makes CDNs too hard to optimize while stitching ads directly into videos)
- best value subscription
  My problem with it is that it reinforces toxic monopoly, and I don't even know how much money goes to the creators.
  Also they raised price multiple times lately
- I'm the same regarding Spotify. Only service I pay for, but I'm happy to do so for now. Not even a big music listener, but it's damned nice to hear anything I want, anywhere I want, for a small fee.
  My most frequent use case is off in the boondocks. I can download a dozen playlists to my phone and play them all offline.
  And this is coming from a guy that used to download 20 song fragments off Usenet and compile them to get a single MP3. Also, I still steal all my video content.
- Same. I originally got it for YT music. I don't listen to as much music as I used to without a commute anymore, but my wife and I watch a ton of YouTube. And it's mildly more difficult to block ads on the Roku too. I know pi holes exist, but my wife plays those freemium games that give you currency for watching ads and blocking all ads will break shit for her and then I have to fix it. Someone will tell me there's an easy solve I'm sure, but honestly the subscription is just way easier and I really don't mind paying. $16/mo for a family plan is 100% worth it to just not deal with all of that.
- I disagree on the value part. It's more expensive than most other streaming aervices. If it was less than $10/mo I would sign up in a heartbeat
  
  I thought it was $9.99/mo. What the hell are they charging for it?

You've discovered enshittification. Bad luck.

I see what you’re doing Nick Swardson

unfuckingbelievable
if you want that without the "un" prefix, then youtube is maybe just the wrong platform for you.
and i strongly believe that youtube "wants" to force more usage of peertube, vimeo and others by enshitting yt every day a bit more. and they really work hard for that.

The tipping point for me to definitely use adblock was 2022 and the ads when forwarding in videos. It's absolutely nonsense.

I've got a friend who thinks his YouTube Red subscription helps his subs make a living... So yes, this is what people like my removed friend are bringing all of us.
I'm sorry... I really am.

you want YouTube Revanced
- I've been using New Pipe, but they seem to have broken every 3rd party front-end within the last week or so.

Are people really ok with this?
What are you gonna do about it?

If you use Brave browser, you'll get zero ads and you don't have to use an add-on. Give it a try.

I caved and subscribed during the 2020 elections. Got tired of seeing two old dipshits yell at each other in ads. Actually enjoyed it enough to keep paying $12 a month.

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