YouTube’s argument is the same as Linus’ from LTT: if you watch a video without ads, you’re failing to comply with your side of the transaction, thus essentially pirating that content and stealing the revenue source.
Regardless if we agree or not with that statement, I’ll absolutely side with adblockers always for a deeper issue: it’s my screen, so I get the ultimate say on what content gets rendered. Quite literally. It’s my network, my cable, my screen, my graphics card, my web browser running JavaScript on my CPU - you do not, ever, get to overreach and decide what pixels show up or not. If I don’t want your obnoxious ad for an AI girlfriend to show up, there’s no moral argument to be had here.
EDIT: I think some of you are missing the point of this comment. There’s no reason to reply to me countering the argument in the first paragraph, as it is not my comment, in fact, I specifically mentioned how it’s YouTube (and Linus’) argument.
I’d agree with that logic if YouTube kept up their end of the bargain and actually vetted their ad buyers. Instead they show ads for fake stimulus scams, fake news, and blatant malware.
I manage a large network and ads are blocked at the edge of the network. Not using an adblocker is a security risk that is not acceptable for my company. I pay for YouTube premium because it’s in my means and I get value from the subscription but I don’t blame anyone who takes the same approach
You know what, I actually agree with YouTube’s argument. Ad blocking is piracy. In fact, no, it’s worse than piracy. If I pirate a movie, Disney makes no money, but it costs them nothing at all. If I watch YouTube without an ad blocker, I’m depriving YouTube of its revenue source and I’m costing them money. Morally, ad blocking sits somewhere between piracy and actual theft.
The thing is? I don’t care. I ad block YouTube all the time and feel not a lick of guilt. The reason: Google brought this on themselves. I used to happily pay for YouTube Red. But they have continuously, both before and after that point, been actively hostile to the people actually producing the content they make. Their willingness to bow down to copyright trolls and complete inability to properly apply fair use. They extremely harsh policies on acceptable content, stopping people talking about sex education or mediaeval weaponry being able to reliably makes money.
And the straw that broke this camel’s back was when they changed the requirements to be in the Partner Program, locking out all the smaller creators from ever being able to make money on YouTube. I never considered myself a “creator”, but over the 5 years prior to that I occasionally uploaded stuff I was doing anyway. I had amassed almost $100 over those 5 years. Not an impressive amount, for sure, but having that taken away from me made me feel unwelcome. I don’t think I’ve uploaded anything public since, and I’ve been blocking ads on the site since then.
Even worse, not long after this change, they decided to start showing ads even on videos from non-partnered videos, so you can get ads on my videos even though I don’t see a single cent.
So fuck YouTube. Ad blocking is worse than piracy, and I say good.
My god… are you… me? Same exact shit. Created my YT account 14 years ago. Made some vids… some got some views… eventually I got a few dollars deposited like for 3 years. Probably totaled the same $100 you mentioned then boom. Shut down.
I uploaded what I think was the first tutorial on how to use Photoshop’s then-new “Content-Aware Fill” to help create panoramas, and also a tutorial about…something, I forget what, to do with the music engraving software Sibelius. They were things I was doing all the time, but there didn’t seem to be any guide on how to do it, so I thought I’d help out. And I got rewarded with a little cash and a few tens of thousands of views. Felt good.
There are much better, higher-polish videos that deal with those subjects now, I’m sure. But still, it didn’t feel good getting that ripped out from under me, and being told I was no longer welcome.
I refuse to use the official youtube app. Its so trash… I use newpipe and its amazing to just have all my favorite videos bookmarked locally in different lists.
If they take that away from me i will just stop using youtube.
Better start preparing for the coming exodus. Try Odysee, Peertube and Nebula and see what works for you. Once the enshittification hits critical mass, you’ll be ready to let go of that sinking ship.
At this point id rather see youtube die than watch ads
I was watching a long video on chromecast today and I had ads every three minutes or so. That’s a two hours video. The amount of ads is disgusting.
YouTube is unwatchable without an ad blocker.
This is why I pay for YT Premium. No way in hell am I watching ads, but I do want to be able to use the platform, and the money has to come from somewhere. So far it’s been pretty good value, although SponsorBlock is of course still required.
Nope bankrupt youtube and rebuild from the ashes
I haven’t seen an anti adblocker popup on youtube for a couple months now, I though they gave up. It looks like the uBlock developers and block list maintainers are just doing an excellent job staying ahead of whatever youtube is doing.
Revanced update fixed it on their end about two weeks ago also.
If you are looking for a specific video, use DDG search, then click videos. No ad’s!
Obviously not useful if you’re just randomly browsing content.
One 10-15 sec ad for an 5-10 mins video would be fair. Because if you calculate the ad shown in Cable TV it was similar I would watch them no problem. But NOOO these greedy fckrs want 3-5 ads of >15secs unskipable ads shoved down our throats. They have record profits. In a business if you are in profit then it’s a good thing. But these fcks want to increase profit year by year, not stable profit for the number of users. That want infinite growth and profit from a finite source and they crazy or what? So if anyone says blocking ads on YouTube is piracy, then fck you and those greedy fckrs. They crossed the limit long time ago and they are reaping what they had sowed.
Luckily Piped, Invidious and others are still doing its thing.
Can anyone tell me what’s up with LibreTube not playing videos recently?
It’s probably due to Invidious and Piped instances getting rate limited. LibreTube uses them as the source of the videos, i think.
But what makes me wonder is that I can use Firefox to play videos from the Piped instances I use, yet not in LibreTube when I set the same instance.
Dickheads coming to shill for YT Premium in 3… 2…
YouTube is bringing its ad blocker fight to mobile. In an update on Monday, YouTube writes that users accessing videos through a third-party ad blocking app may encounter buffering issues or see an error message that reads, “The following content is not available on this app.”
Yea, noticed that last week. Is already fixed again in latest revanced.
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Delete microG, revanced manager, and YouTube revanced
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Download and install the new gmscore, which replaces microG: https://github.com/ReVanced/GmsCore/releases/tag/v0.3.1.4.240913
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Download and install latest version of Revanced Manager: https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases/tag/v1.20.1
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Download and install YouTube 19.09.37 from APKmirror: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/youtube/youtube-19-09-37-release/youtube-19-09-37-android-apk-download/
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everything still fine here on firefox + ublock origin
Wish I could say the same.
I’m also using firefox + ublock, but Ive noticed when I’m watching shorts, I’ll occasionally get an ad that’s disguised as a short. There’s no like/dislike buttons or anything.
Just block shorts alltogether, it’s a win win.
But… my doomscroll :<
Just read climate news.
New pipe and inner tune still work fine.
Same with revanced right now.
If they ever manage to kill it I’ll simply quit YouTube and be better for it.
For now
If they fully manage to block applications from viewing YouTube, then I will just stop viewing YouTube entirely. And I will figure out channels to watch on Odyssey and peertube. That will also be my last Google service since that is the only one I use frequently since I deleted my Google account two years ago.
Making you leave is their point since you cost them money.
True, but if enough people leave, then creators will start leaving as well, and that is something they do not want.
Sounds great in theory, but won’t happen. The internet is too consolidated now for the majority of people to give a shit, there’s people buying YouTube Premium because of all this. Look at reddit, barely a dent in it after all the fiascos, twitter is holding on too. People don’t care.
Speaking of, does anyone know how best to block YouTube ads on my Sony TV? It uses Android and I have the YT app on it.
Install SmartTube and use that instead of the official YouTube app.
It’s even better than the real YouTube app because, unlike that, it’s native.
Pihole maybe. Even though I have heard its not as reliable lately
You can’t block YouTube ads with PiHole generally because the ads come from legitimate Google domains so you can’t block them easily
I hope they understand soon why we have ALL of those tweaks and adblockers. Because vanilla youtube SUCKS, Ads everywhere, not customizable and tracking even if you are paying.
In Germany, there is a law that regulates the amount and intervals of advertising for private television broadcasters: 20% or 1/5 per broadcast day may be used for advertising. Programs that are shorter than 30 minutes may have a break, otherwise there must be 20 minutes between commercial breaks - 30 minutes in the evening. Unfortunately, there are still some loopholes.
Children’s programs are not allowed to have commercial breaks.
It’s a shame that this law still doesn’t apply to YouTube.
It’s a shame that this law still doesn’t apply to YouTube
If Germany is anything like Canada and other countries, applying public broadcast laws to YouTube would be a monkey’s paw deal. Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I’m not considering.
Now if they made a law specifically for youtube and other online video platforms that dealt with advertising in that context, that would be a different story.
Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I’m not considering.
This is false. You can create laws restricting advertising without creating other laws forcing companies to display domestic content. The point about the Canadian government wanting YouTube to promote domestic content is irrelevant.
Way to miss my entire point.
In this case, a law wouldn’t be created, youtube would just be integrated in already existing laws for public TV broadcasts, which is the wrong way to go about it because obviously youtube doesn’t work like TV.
