Ever since around 2017, I have not visited (or even seen) the contemporary Youtube site.
I had been using a combination of Invidious and yt-dlp (youtube-dl).
Just within the last year or two, Google has been making efforts to obstruct these tools. This can most clearly be seen with Invidious, currently suffering from a generic “This helps protect our community” error message.
It has got me thinking that Google might eventually succeed in extinguishing these islands of safety that I’ve so enjoyed.
People who still use raw, unmitigated Youtube today; how much of a hellscape has it become?
So far its been alright with Brave browser on my iPhone. I don’t see nearly (any?) on there. PC, Firefox/Ublock Origin. Not sure how much it helps but also running pihole on my network too.
It’s like seeing a mud crab. Horrible.
You need to slow it down with the skyrim. Perhaps some morrowind or some daggerfall? Just to slow down the aggravation.
I only witness it whenever
any of my work colleaguesanyone with a phone wants to show me a video. Always have to sit through ads before & during the video. Absolutely horrific. Mind you they also have to close multiple pop up ads in every app they ever use on their phone. I couldn’t live with it & not learn how to deal with itEven without ads, the act of showing videos mid-conversation has never been a smooth interaction IME. Best not to fumble with devices while trying to talk with somebody.
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In the last week, I came across 2 videos that started with an ad. Both were embedded YouTube videos. They must have found a way to circumvent adblocking.
It’s loud and annoying and I don’t have the patience for this. I just didn’t watch those videos.
Depends on how patient you are.
If you’re a patient person, its annoying but fine for the most part. If you have no patience, you’ll think its completely unusable.
Exactly. It comes down to a person’s patience. The videos I watch are things from HLC, habitual line crosser, this is part of how he makes his money. I watch a video and a commercial and he gets paid. I can work with that. Also Critical Role, same thing there. If I want the entertainment then in some way shape or form they need to be paid. Either I pay them directly or I watch an ad.
Ads are usually skippable. Even if they aren’t, I click on the computer screen then wait for a whole 8 seconds to watch what I want.
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That’s odd. Haven’t seen that much of a problem. Not saying you aren’t having the problem.
Although most videos I watch are about 4 minutes. The only exception would be critical role. Haven’t really noticed a big problem when they are doing their live stream.
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What a stupid question. Just go visit it??
They don’t actually want to know the answer. Their just high roading everyone about not visiting YouTube.
Ew, why would I allow my system to create traffic to Google controlled infrastructure?
I’ve only been forced to watch YouTube with ads a few times this past year… Alcohol and gambling ads were very, very common. It’s unethical to show them, and I don’t feel bad about blocking them.
On mobile, it’s very bearable. You can skip them quickly.
On TV, oh boy. It’s super long and now you have to skip several times in an ad block to reduce your ad duration to the minimum.
As for desktop… Idk I only sit at my desk for work.
Youtube Revanced~
Pretty bad on my Roku. It really discourages you from watching more than a few videos. If I start a 10 min video and it wants to play 1 min of ads first I just go Back and hot play again, usually the ad length will get shorter. Usually have to do that 2 or 3 times to get to an ad I can skip after 5 or 10 seconds.
It’s too bad because Roku is good for everything else, fast UI and nice clean remote.
Just use Revanced. Lmfao. Been using it since highschool (4 years ago) fucking amazing. Practically Emulates Youtube premium
I don’t know, I started using Firefox for YT years ago
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I endure it at work because I can’t just modify everything to my liking. Lots of political ads lately. Use the hardware mute button when you start the video. Alt-tab to whatever tedious spreadsheet or page of code. Come back and restart the video in two minutes.
Same. Back when there was just a single ad at the beginning of a video and you could skip it after only 10 seconds, I would just mute and look away from my phone for 10 seconds (counting out loud). Those days are gone. The petty “look away” is almost becoming a petty “go get some groceries”.
For me, on Apple TV, it became unusable without a subscription.
