Technology

Dear YouTube, if anyone there ever reads this.

I tried not to block ads, I would let the preroll go and usually not skip it.

I started skipping ads when they started getting long. I recall some were several minutes long at times.

I started leaving videos part way through when there were mid-roll ads, and those got long enough that I'd often forget what I was even watching.

I started blocking the ads outright when I would be watching a relaxing video, and a very loud mid-roll ad would blow out my goddamn eardrums.

Fuck you YouTube. You abused your users, you chased off good content creators, and now you're offering people no carrot and all stick. How about you offer to match the volume of the ads to the videos, limit the length of ads to something reasonable, and nicely tell viewers that you are making ads less annoying and that unblocking the ads helps pay the content creators.

If you’re using uBlock Origin. Go to “Filter Lists” and Purge All Caches. That may help.

to people saying YouTube is a moneysink for google:

yes it is, if you just look at direct expenses of running it. but you're overlooking the fact that it has enabled google to amass so much data(we're taking about 500 hours worth of videos being uploaded per minute) that they can train anything with it.

it's a service that's too big to fail. even whole governments, courts, and other institutions depend on it. so, I refuse to believe that YouTube will be non-existant because a sliver of users refuse to be profiled by invasive advertisements.

I am much, much more likely to be willing to pay for Ublock than I am YouTube.

I haven’t watched live tv in almost 20 years because I refuse to sit through ads, and I definitely won’t sit through them on YouTube. If it was a banner or some thing on the page or the side of video that would be more acceptable, but sitting through ads to watch a YouTube video….there’s just no way.

It's an end of an era. I've been on reddit for over a decade, and on youtube for even longer. Crazy to think I might be giving up both of those services within a few months of each other. Feels like the internet is dying. Oh well. Maybe I'll go back to reading a shitload.

If YouTube premium was $4.99 a month it'd be worth a consideration. But then again adblocking is free and privacy respecting

Yeah I could care less about people saying they'd watch ads of they were less intrusive. I'm not, I don't give a fuck about YouTube's sustainability who happened to still have major growth while I ran an AdBlock this entire time.

Maybe I'd consider paying if YouTube was the actual product I was paying for. Instead I get privacy invasive spying and my data being harvested, while am paying to do so. The product I'd want to pay for would have zero privacy invasive stuff involved. Which that isn't going to exist, so I'm never going to pay.

I don't really know how people can even use YouTube without ad blockers. Sitting through minutes of advertisement is not going to make me want to buy your product if I start mentally associating your product with frustration and annoyance. If these video ads are going to be repetitive and annoying, at least make them funny.

It seems like there is nowhere on the Internet to get away from ads currently, even here, where you thought you are safe, you are now reading an ad for my newest movie (you know the one), now also available on streaming!

Youtube is getting on cable tv levels of bad. On a regular ~10min video you will first deal with a few preroll ads and at least one is unskippable, then the creator will have a 2+ minute sponsor segment (I don't mind those since they are usually well presented). There will also be multiple midroll ad spots.

Depending on video length, it's gonna soon be literally more ad than video. They are still stealing and selling your data though, and also making the web worse for everyone with DRM shit.

Fuck. Google.

I had already migrated to Invidious since last year because I degoogled everything. Seems like now its time to look for real youtube alternatives.

Does anyone else remember back in the days of VCR, the networks wanted to push a technology that disallows you from fast-forwarding through ad breaks on the stuff you recorded?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Holy crap

Piped is about to get another user

If you're using UBlock Origin do the following:

Go to settings. Go to Filter Lists. Click purge all caches. Click update now.

That's it, this message should disappear entirely.

I haven't turned off ad-blocking in 20 years. That's because I "don't allow" companies to use my home and my computer as their place of business.

How did manipulation to make you buy specific shit become so accepted?

Google kind of sucks.

What was their last big success? Google maps? Pretty much everything they do lately is some combination of shitty or prematurely killed.

if only ads arent annoying and loud, i have no problems unblocking them. but damn, they're unbearable atleast in my region.

ublock origin still blocking everything.

Adblockers are eventually just going to become undetectable because of this. Adblockers are about to get so much better!

Unpopular opinion: They should've just started charging big creators, kind of like Vimeo. Mofos be having youtube ads, sponsorships, built-in ads, courses, merch stores and patreon, and then they whine when youtube wants them to comply with advertiser's demands.

YouTube is the cable tv of 2023

Advertisement is brainwashing and should be against human rights.

Suck my balls Google

Unpopular Opinion: I don’t like ads as much as anyone, I’d rather YouTube monetises 1440p and 4k content instead of forcing people to watch ads. YouTube is an extremely expensive business to run, so it being free forever is completely unsustainable.

Next tactic to stop adblocking: we will come to your house and break your fucking legs if you even THINK about installing ublock

Then a few days later ublock removes it

https://github.com/gilbsgilbs/NewPipeSponsorBlock

https://invidious.io/

Spread the word for non IT folks too! Fck up google! Google is evil!

See also, another attack from google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Google recently announced that it's podcast service is shutting down and moving to YouTube music, I don't want or need YouTube music so I've already moved to Podcast Republic, it has a few ads but they can be removed with a small one off payment. Google just wants to shove all it's users into YouTube and YouTube music for maximum ads and data harvesting.