YouTube isn’t happy you’re using ad blockers — and it’s doing something about it::undefined

    • Contend6248@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      True, holy shit if they wouldn’t completely bomb you with ads everywhere it might change something, but I accidentally used the official app on my smartphone and I can’t even make out content between the ads in the UI.

      Not to speak of the 50s ads for a 20s video, nah won’t ever go back to the official experience.

      It reminds me back when ad blockers came around, nobody cared for the one banner or some pictures on the site, but they ripped your arm out and cried when there were finally solutions for solving that harassment.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      I’m considering giving up Youtube right now with how many times it tries to fuck up my recommendations by sneaking far right BS into my watch history. Especially you, shorts.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE TRILLION DOLLAR SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM APPARATUS !?!

      • WolfhoundRO@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        THE DYSTOPIAN 1984 OCEANIA SUPPRESSION SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS THE TRUTH ALONGSIDE THE BIG BROTHER HAS FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW ?!?!?

  • Tygr@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    YouTube is WHY I have adblockers to this day. I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.

    Their greed is why they make $0 from me many years later.

    I think it’s rich they aren’t happy with people using them when they’re the ones that made the standard viewing experience awful in the first place.

  • fat_stig@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago
    ! 2023-10-06 https://www.youtube.com
    www.youtube.com##tp-yt-paper-dialog.ytd-popup-container.style-scope
    

    Oh no, anyway.

    • radix@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Is this a rule for an adblock extension? What does it pick out?

      • fat_stig@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It gets rid of the nag screen so you can just watch the video. For uBlock Origin, it’s a bit crude, may affect other bits of interface, I also use the Enhancer for YouTube plug-in for Firefox which is really useful.

        • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          It’ll work until they get annoyed and do what Hulu and Twitch does and bake it into the player. Then we’re kinda fucked.

        • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          I quite easily removed it with uBlock using block element, but the video is still paused.

          I guess this is a similar solution?

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    Considering how prevalent scams and actively malicious content posing as ads are across ad services in general, having an ad blocker is just basic online safety at this point.

    • realharo@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I still see fake download button ads distributed via Google’s own ad infrastructure to this day. I even reported a few that were taken down.

      For all the AI prowess Google likes to brag about, why can’t they make a simple “does this look like a download button?” detector? The scams are not that clever, most of them follow one of a small number of specific patterns.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        What’s worse is when corporations try to be funny put a fake download button and the entire ad is like “Wow can’t wait to click this skip button” and they don’t realize that sometimes youtube randomly makes those unskippable so it’s just awkward dead air for 30 seconds.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I understand that hosting video and streaming it is an expensive business that has to be paid, even if we ignore all the income Google has racked up by profiling people and (ab)using that to show ads. That said, I wouldn’t mind if they had more taste which ads play, in what number and fucking when. Most annoying thing is when the play 3 minute ads on 6 minute video. Not even shittiest TV network does that. And also unskipable ads. These days I skip all, self-promotion and in-video sponsors included.

    • Jerkules_Jerkules@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, my experience with youtube ads

      Buy a Chromebook

      PragerU

      Right wing Youtubers

      Don’t vote to make abortion a protected right by the state constitution

      Buy a ford

      Here’s a pornographic/semi pornographic anime game we are paid to show you

      BUY A CHROME BOOK!

      Hey, check out this person’s scam! They paid us to force this scam on you!

      Look at these cable news channels’ youtube channels

      Listen to this mom who is totally concerned about some bill that will kill or save all the children

      BUY

      A

      CHROMEBOOK!

      buy a jeep

      Listen to this prepper try to hock you “survival” gear and shelf stable food

      Don’t you remember when families did things? wasn’t that fun? Families, doing things?

      Soon it will also be flooded with THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!

      I am interested in none of these things

        • inverimus@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          My 6yo gets a ton of ads for insurance, about the same amount as for toys. It’s weird.

        • FraidyBear@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          You could always spice it up and see what you get.

          I use VPNs and ad blockers where I can / when they work. I also have an extension that makes my Internet traffic useless by sending random data. When I need to go to the official YouTube app and get ads I get a smorgasbord. Right now they seem to think I’m either a recently divorced middle aged man with ED who just discovered they are actually a balding gay man or a teenaged girl with period problems and a desperate need for a social media following. Neither of these even come close but it’s always entertaining to see what I get.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        That thing, you know that thing that you already buy? Here’s an ad for it! Now we get to lie and say we were the reason you bought it!

        It’s so fucking weird how I got way more ads for runescape when I played runescape, and it’s not like I watch less runescape content today. They also seem to think I’m a girl because whenever I do get something unique it’s always for purses, make up, fashion and hygiene products. All of which I have a below-zero chance of ever buying.

    • canthidium@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      These days I skip all, self-promotion and in-video sponsors included.

      Sounds like you probably use it but if not, get the SponsorBlock extension to do exactly this.

    • inverimus@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      They show those 3 minute ads because they get paid a lot for them. My favorite are the 30 minute documentary ads.

  • Worstdriver@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The day I can’t get around youtube ads is the day I stop using youtube. I already refuse to use it on my mobile device or my TV, due to the ads.

      • PeWu@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        It doesn’t block it, it doesn’t even download them or even request them. There is no concept of ad in NewPipe.

          • Stephen304@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            The official newpipe isn’t on the play store because it breaks their terms of service, which makes sense considering 2 of the 3 “newpipes” on there are just completely different apps using the name and logo of newpipe. The third is actually newpipe but with loads of ads added, not sure how long it’ll last before Google nukes it.

            But yeah for newpipe just get the offical ad free and open source version from TeamNewPipe on GitHub or on F-Droid in the main repo. Or if you want newpipe with no ads and also with sponsorblock, you want to get it from polymorphicshade on GitHub or through F-Droid with the Izzyondroid repo.

            • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              On the subject of newpipe, if you also view a lot of videos on NicoNico, Japanese yt, I recommend the pipepipe fork since it allows you to play both yt videos along with videos from NicoNico without ads. Also works with BiliBili in case you like listening to Chinese vocaloid songs or other Chinese content without ads.

    • smiletolerantly@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      YouTube ReVanced gets you completely adfree, configurably de-shittified Youtube with sponsorblock on your phone. (And Youtube Music ReVanced is premium YT music, for free, of course also without ads.)

      And Smarttube Next does the same thing on Android TVs, FireTV, and probably some others I haven’t used.

    • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      My guy there are like 34 different ways to get around YT ads on mobile and TV.

    • e_mc2@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      Or Revanced, or SmartTube or NewPipe etc etc. Fortunately and thanks to some great devs out there, we’re still able to give Google the big middle finger.

    • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Okay. Explain something to me. I’ve tried to use piped, but it’s just so dogshit slow. Unusably so.

      What am I doing wrong?

      • callmepk@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I am not sure… are you using a shared instance or self-hosting? I self-host my own instance and have no issue since my deployment

  • whaleross@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I’ve been paying the €5 ad free subscription without other premium features for years until they announced that it will be discontinued from next month.

    So then I am going to take a new look into ad blockers.

    Good job, YouTube.

      • planish@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I think it’s it’s own thing.

        The danger of advertising is not that it is able to brainwash you into changing your opinions. The danger is that repeated exposure to inauthentic stories changes your expectations, and plants paying advertisers in your memory.

        This in turn allows your behavior to be controlled, especially in aggregate. You will remember company X sells a thing you want and go buy it, or you will think other people think company Y is environmentally friendly so you will pick them for your vegan barbecue party, or you will have heard of company Z and not automatically skip over their offering in a store. But since it all operates by tampering with your heuristics instead of trying to bowl over your adopted, explicit opinions, it doesn’t trigger any of your protective responses.

        And that’s why you should never view an advertisement.

  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 months ago

    The thing is YouTube just can’t be nice about it. It just cannot. In times that it was adblocker resistant, they’d add more and longer and worse ads until they pissed off enough engineers who collectively declared it a crisis and built the many anti-YouTube-ad solutions we have, from alternative YouTube mirrors to the Firefox packages.

    We’ve seen this play out in the tech industry multiple times, and always the public wins thanks, largely to programmers who just get ticked off and spend a weekend on pizza to create a bypass.

    The executives at Alphabet know all they have to do is allow concessions to be only mildly annoying and leave them. Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content? That might be fair so long as it’s pizza ads and not Jesus ministries telling us how sinful the LGBT+ are or Matt Walsh suggesting we make it illegal for some folk to vote.

    But they can’t do that. Shareholder Primacy means Alphabet must push for record profits, even if it means enshittifying all their services, including YouTube, and that means a 1/4 ad to content ratio and increasing that until it’s intolerable and ad-based profit numbers go down due to failing viewership.

    • nephs@lemmygrad.ml
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      9 months ago

      How do you guarantee pizza ads if the jesus ministries are pushing that sweet money around, too?

      Hell, no! The world is happier without the ad industry. The Internet was run basically on pure voluntary effort, and it was great. The ads didn’t make it viable, it always was.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content?

      Yeah, and besides, that shit barely functions on TV/streaming because someone paid to have quality content created. When you’re clicking around yt and you don’t know if a video is decent or dogshit, why should you have to sit through long ads just so you can watch a minute before you decide the content sucks?

      • SeeingWhereThisGoes@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        This is frequently brought up as a problem for twitch as well. On the rare times someone decides to check out a new streamer without many viewers they get ads before the stream and most people aren’t going to sit through that for a streamer of unknown quality so it makes it even harder for new streamers to get discovered.

  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    What is it with the number of people “happy” to pay for Youtube Premium? Like “why yes, I’m glad I can give a company that spies on me day and night for the privilege!”

    • TonyOstrich@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      What kinda bothers me is that I recognize that something like YouTube is expensive to run and just switching to an alternative isn’t super feasible. I would be more than happy to pay for a service like YouTube that I use everyday. HOWEVER, not with their bullshit double dipping. If I am paying a company like Google to use their services, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that their should be an expectation or mechanism where that means I am not just no longer served ads, but that all tracking and data collection about my account(s) are stopped.

      That’s never going to happen though :/

      • pewnit@lemmings.world
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        9 months ago

        That’s a fair criticism. I personally don’t care about it because I gave up on the idea of having any privacy ages ago but I get that people may not be happy with that.

        If I were to play devil’s advocate, I can say that the data they collect is important for serving you the right videos but let’s be real here, Google definitely uses it to serve you ads everywhere else

      • teamevil@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You mean like cable that we paid for and got ads or like your cell phone/ISP provider charging you while selling your data simultaneously?

        • TonyOstrich@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yeah, I never said I thought it was tennable or that any system like I described has ever actually existed. Wishes and dreams, ya know?

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Because their “spying” doesn’t really seem to have any down sides for me, and I get better, more useful, products from it. I don’t really care if they know what woodworking videos my boring ass watches.

      • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        They don’t just keep track of what videos you watch, they also keep track of what parts of those videos, as well as everything you search for and everything you begin to search for but never actually do. They also keep track of where you are when you watch the video and what device you are watching it on.

        • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          They don’t just keep track of what videos you watch, they also keep track of what parts of those videos, as well as everything you search for and everything you begin to search for but never actually do. They also keep track of where you are when you watch the video and what device you are watching it on.

          OMG, the horror…

          • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            It is for those of us who care about our privacy. I for one don’t want nebulous corporations with questionable ethics and data security policies knowing and tracking my every movement. And while yes, I recognize that to a certain extent that is unavoidable in this day and age, I don’t condone it nor do I want it to be easy for them.

            • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              People today are just too comfortable with the death of privacy and corporations spying what you do day in and day out.

              Everything about us is up for grabs but god forbid anyone watches a meme without monetization.

          • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Its weird that you are okay with some company doing this.

            When if it was some stalker you’d be freeking out and going to the police and begging for help.

            • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Its weird that you are okay with some company doing this. When if it was some stalker you’d be freeking out and going to the police and begging for help.

              ATTENTION STALKERS!!!
              This morning I watched a video of a guy making a 5 drawer cabinet out of plywood on my Pixel 6 XL from my home. I skipped the last 30 seconds of the video because I got bored.

              • float@feddit.de
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                9 months ago

                GPS location please.

                Obviously I don’t want to know it but be sure there’s hundreds of Google employees that can freely access it.

              • Gabu@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                on my Pixel 6 XL

                Congrats, you’ve already made hacking your phone 10x easier by telling a potential attacker what model you use.

          • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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            9 months ago

            And if you are ever in a spot of trouble, they can and will hand that over to the cops to burn you with. Trouble you dont even need to be guilty of, mind you, so long as the data implies you could be.

            Like how facebook had records of a girl searching for abortion treatments, and slipped those into uncle sams pockets to put her in jail for daring to want the right of bodily autonomy.

            What thing do you do today that will incriminate you tomorrow?