this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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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

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[–] code_is_speech@lemmy.fmhy.ml 191 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com 112 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

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.

[–] Ragerist@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 121 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works 90 points 1 year ago (22 children)

Not the main point, but this is the first time I've seen "allowlisted". Lol

...are they trying to avoid saying whitelisted because of the word "white"?

[–] OneDimensionPrinter@lemm.ee 42 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Yeah, at my company we switched to allow/block listed last year. Whitelisted and blacklisted are verboten

[–] static@midwest.social 32 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The best reasoning I saw for this change was for clarity for non native English speakers. If you're learning the language "allowlist" is definitely more clear in meaning than "whitelist"

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[–] Tired8281@lemmy.world 83 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.one 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Somehow I feel like they won't care, those reports probably go directly into the bin.

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[–] gh0stcassette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 72 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] doolittle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 70 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] platypus_plumba@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] trepX@sh.itjust.works 69 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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

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[–] Anon@lemmy.one 68 points 1 year ago (14 children)

FreeTube/Piped on PC

ReVanced on droid

uYou+ on 🍎 phone

SmartTubeNext on 📺

Youtube can do the fuck they want on their website

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[–] Manticore@lemmy.nz 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Manticore@lemmy.nz 61 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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)

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[–] DrummyB@lemm.ee 56 points 1 year ago (35 children)

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…

[–] mr_right@lemmy.dbzer0.com 58 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] Fontasia@feddit.nl 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] prtm@lemm.ee 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

To everyone who is saying they use adblock and haven't seen this yet: YouTube probably rolled this out to a smaller number 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.

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[–] zos_kia@lemmy.fmhy.ml 54 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] mr_right@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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

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[–] Kinglink@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Gainwhore@lemmy.fmhy.ml 48 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Whats up with all these online companies just deciding to be assholes this year.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Companies are becoming even more greedy recently across the board and at a rapid pace. Some people would want you to believe Youtube wouldn't generate billions of dollars as income annually for Alphabet for some reason. But the truth is the platform is extremely profitable already. Youtube simply wants even more now because competition has done the same. We've seen prices spiraling up and quality dropping in pretty much all sectors of the economy and this trend will continue for the forseeable future.

In short: Because they can (some are really stretching their boundaries, though)

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[–] Banzai51@midwest.social 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Like another poster said, investors are pushing for profits. The Sillicon Valley model of throwing money at it until they figure it out is suffering with the downturn in the markets. So with the VC and investor money drying up, sites are pushing to make money to keep the lights on.

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[–] bashfluff@lemmynsfw.com 45 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] techgearwhips@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ivyZorz@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] Ragerist@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (14 children)

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.

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[–] imnotneo@vlemmy.net 36 points 1 year ago (14 children)

what's the fediverse alternative to YouTube? seems like this is the way the 2020's are going

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[–] nickiam2@aussie.zone 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

NewPipe for android is still working. Much better than the official app IMO, no ads and it actually shows the videos you subscribed to.

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[–] cccc@aussie.zone 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Peertube, Nebula, Patreon, etc. You don’t have to use YouTube.

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[–] Kevnyon@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] iso@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Haven't seen that one on ublock origin + Firefox

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[–] Soltros@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

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

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[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

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

[–] hismajesty@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] LeHappStick@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] Nothus@infosec.pub 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Newpipe has been keeping up with the dance for a long time.

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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.

[–] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] GINTegg@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Orbitrix@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This seems somewhat intentionally coordinated, so that the squeeze everyone into submission.

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[–] translucentwings@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think ublock already got around this no? I have had 0 issues

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