this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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[–] Nobody@lemmy.world 340 points 10 months ago (16 children)

These tech companies have underestimated their utility. They are mostly providing mindless time wasters. If you try to charge money or create inconvenience, people will look for something else to do.

Their attention is your lifeblood, and you’re actively giving them reasons to look elsewhere. The VC grow-at-all-costs business model is fundamentally flawed. It doesn’t scale when profitability becomes a priority.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 138 points 10 months ago

i think you mean "overestimated"

[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

Their attention is your lifeblood, and you’re actively giving them reasons to look elsewhere.

👍

My attention is all the currency YouTube will ever get from me - and it should be enough. If I post videos to YouTube (for nothing in return) and I talk to people about videos I saw on YouTube or link them to videos - then I am a net gain for Google and they should treat me as such. If anything, they should be working (nicely) to try to get me to want to pay (or view ads) and just be thankful I'm there if I don't pay (or view ads). Instead they've chosen to work at ensuring everyone is so goddamn pissed off at their bullshit that they'd rather make it their full-time job to never give them another dime. Good job, Google! Smart!

PS: Oh hi there YouTube shills, I thought I would see you here.

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[–] mojo@lemm.ee 183 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There are no better adblockers, uBlock Origin is all you need and is already updated to bypass it.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 85 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unlock origin is the adblocker that people are installing. There are a lot of people with shitty adblockers out there, I guess they are switching.

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I bet all those people with shitty adblockers are also probably googling better ad/YT compatible blockers lmaoo

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[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 157 points 10 months ago (13 children)

After YouTube started filling their search results with mostly shorts, I stopped using it for new stuff. It's terrible now.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah youtubes attempt at being tiktok is just awful and they don't even have options to not have shorts show up in the feed. On top of shorts just being inferior versions of regular videos without functional controls

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 68 points 10 months ago (4 children)

This is what gets me. Wanna show me shorts? Ok. But why the fuck am I not allowed to rewind a couple of seconds if I want to? It's an artificial, completely useless limitation that had no place in 2023.

So, no thanks.

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[–] Whirling_Cloudburst@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I started blocking those from appearing when they first showed up. There are a number of ways to do it. The Blocktube extension is one.

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[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I switched to FreeTube and now all the shorts are on a separate page I can switch over to if I feel like watching them. It's also got SponsorBlock built in. Now I can enjoy youtube with a clean, faster interface and google isn't tracking a damn thing. All because google got greedy and made their user experience shit.

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[–] Tygr@lemmy.world 132 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Didn’t know about SponsorBlock until all this started. So many just found out ad blocking is possible.

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[–] Zacryon@feddit.de 109 points 10 months ago (18 children)

There’s also the option of biting the bullet and paying for YouTube Premium.

No. Never. I'd rather stop using YT at all than giving in to coerced user-tracking.

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[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 86 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 36 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I love that, in a competition between a corporation worth hundreds of billions of dollars and a FOSS project, all Google managed to do was annoy uBlock Origin users for like a week. I just had to manually update the extension and restart my browser a few times.

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[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 70 points 10 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

Meanwhile, Youtube engineers and uBlock Origin volunteers are in a war of attrition, updating both the website (youtube, to block ublock) and uBlock Origin (the ad blocker, to unblock the ublock blocker) multiple times a day every day

[–] grue@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago

I feel like uBlock Origin has been coming out ahead more often than not. I haven't had to manually refresh my lists for the last few days.

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[–] disconnectikacio@lemmy.world 66 points 10 months ago (10 children)

Spread the word to install firefox based browser, use different frontends to block youtube ads in browser, Invidious and use piped youtube apps on android to block youtbe ads: Newpipe

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[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 66 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I love that all the centralized social media networks are scrambling to become shitty for profits right around the time users are realizing that they don’t need centralized servers to host their user-generated content. Users can take their content wherever they want and let these platforms die.

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[–] gapbetweenus@feddit.de 55 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Switched finally to ff. So I guess thank you google.

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[–] silencioso@lemmy.world 47 points 10 months ago (12 children)

NewPipe in my mobile and FreeTube in my desktop. Fuck you Google

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[–] AMillionNames@sh.itjust.works 46 points 10 months ago (8 children)

I had uBlock Origin installed since forever, are people just finding out about it?

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[–] maquise@ttrpg.network 45 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Just this morning all the posts (here on Lemmy) were about how everyone was uninstalling their adblockers.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 119 points 10 months ago (5 children)

People should be uninstalling Chrome instead.

Adblocking still works fine on Firefox. Just update your UBO filters.

[–] Subverb@lemmy.world 38 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I literally have un-installed chrome. I had to use it on an office machine today and it felt weird.

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[–] ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world 51 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Why the fuck would anyone uninstall their ad blocker just because one site demands it? Whitelists exist for a reason.

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[–] yukichigai@kbin.social 45 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That article was full of such blatantly misleading crap. Headline talks about record number of adblocker uninstalls, but the actual data says it was an uptick in both installs and uninstalls. In other words it was people cycling through different adblockers trying to find one that still worked.

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[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 43 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And that didn't mention ublock origion, the blocker that still works...

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[–] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 38 points 10 months ago (7 children)

So today I've seen this article saying YouTube failed and another saying they've succeeded because of record uninstalls of adblockers.

[–] PostaL@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Considering that, after Netflix enabled anti account sharing, they got an increase in subscriptions, I've lost faith in humanity, and believe YouTube will succeed in the same way

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[–] WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (16 children)

They should fucking do an experiment - 2€/$ a month for an ad-free subscription and 3€/$ a month for higher video quality+no ads subscription. I would fucking pour my money into it.

Oh wait, that would not solve lack of sponsorblock. I guess I am not interested then...

[–] DV8@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They literally had that experiment with Premium Light. €6 for ad free watching, it was all I needed. But they literally sent out a mail they were stopping this tier right before they started implementing more anti-ad blocking measures.

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[–] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Not a penny to those bastards. Should YouTube and Google along with it rot to hell, I don't care. Maybe we'd finally get better alternatives running at full capacity.

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[–] r3df0x@7.62x54r.ru 33 points 10 months ago

Ublock Origin works

Brave is ass

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Not everybody is.

That's the thing, even if 95% of users currently using ad blockers block ads anyway or leave the service, YouTube still wins big.

They aren't worried at all about alienating users from which they can't extract ad revenue. Those on the margin that turn off ad blockers or subscribe to a paid plan are the target, not everyone else.

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[–] mystic@lemmy.world 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

reminds me of how bugs develop into superbugs after building resistance to antibiotics

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[–] affiliate@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago

who could have seen this coming

[–] trslim@pawb.social 28 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I dont even mind ads when its like one minute for 20 minutes of footage. Pluto TV is free to use and has commercial breaks but they never really bother me because they aren't that annoying and i get a lot of MST3K before I watch them. Youtube ad are cancer in comparison.

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[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago

I will never submit.

[–] heygooberman@lemmy.today 24 points 10 months ago

I'm guessing this isn't what YouTube had in mind when they started this campaign.

To quote The Joker, "It'll be funny if it weren't so pathetic...oh, what the heck, I'll laugh anyways!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[–] DLSantini@lemmy.ml 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I went the route of accepting their 2-month trial of Premium, and immediately disabled it from continuing after the 2 months. Hopefully that's enough time to come up with an acceptable solution that works the way I want it to. Honestly, if Premium was like $5/month, they'd get my money. But for almost triple that? Fuck no, never happening.

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