I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform.
Then I began to get warnings about using an adblocker. Okay, fine. I know they need to make money, so I turned off the adblocker. Now when I’m having my time wasted by ads, I have to ask myself, how bad do I really want to watch this video? Not badly enough? I close the tab and spend less time on their platform.
Finally, I began experiencing glitches when playing videos. The video stops, but the audio continues. This never happened before. Perhaps mistakenly, I attribute this to YouTube, which is owned by Google, trying to force me off Firefox and on to Chrome. That was the last straw.
Now I use YouTube to simply follow the channels I’m subscribed to. When I want to watch something, I copy the URL, paste it into YT-DLP, download the video and spend zero time on their platform at all.
To summarize; Now I’m watching zero commercials, and YouTube is streaming the entire video to me, even if I only watch a small portion of it, and they’re collecting less information about my watching habits than ever before.
Nice job, YouTube. Nice job.
The YouTube adblocker battle is going to be a constantly moving target, so take this with a grain of salt as who knows when it’ll break.
I use Firefox with ublock origin and watch directly on YouTube. I don’t sign in, and I track the content I follow via rss. No ads, no nags, no issues.
Piped and similar as well as yt-dlp are also great and are better options for giving YouTube the middle finger, which I fully endorse. Just giving another option.
They’ve destroyed all the competition by offering a free service on the back on unlimited funding and then switching to an aggressive payment model once they have complete market dominance.
Google doesn’t care if ad block users stop watching. They want ad block users to watch ads or go away.
Ya know, I wouldn’t mind ads,
If google would just FUCKING LISTEN TO MY CURATING DECISIONS!!
No, I’m never going to buy a car based off an ad. Block em all.
No, I’m never switching insurance companies based on an ad.
No, I’m not interested in mobile games. Ever.
And yet when I tell google, block this content, not interested, I don’t want to see this particular topic.
It just doesn’t fucking listen.
You’d think this would be an absolute GOLD MINE of information that google would want, to better focus their ads,.
But they just ignore it,
It’s not about linking people to stuff they are interested in and taking a percentage… it’s about wasting everyone’s fucking time, and then they wonder why people run ad blockers.
More often than not, adverts are about brand awareness. You might not buy that car based off that advert right now, but when you do decide to buy a car, you’ll remember that brand name and they become a consideration.
I hate adverts.
It still has to be remotely relevant to me. If they showed me 10 different cars that look like Mini’s aesthetics, hey, I’d probably keep those in mind. Instead they show me 5 SUVs and 5 pickup trucks, and unless I actually start to make enough money to start that llama-petting-zoo-cafe I dream about in my worst work moments, I will never need or want either of those vehicle classes.
Research shows it still affects you, though. You’ll have more brand awareness, whether you want to or not. Everyone in the US & Canada know what a RAV4 and Forester are. You don’t need that explained to you when your coworker tells you about their new car.
And even if you don’t drink pop at all, you still know Coke is better than Pepsi.
I do have brand awareness, if i get ads shoved in my face about a brand, that brand goes into a shit list to NOT buy from
Do you tell your friends how shitty that brand is, so they can go and check it out for themselves…? 😜
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Even if it’s only people who think you’re full of shit, who go check out a brand you criticize, that’s still working as advertised.
Veblen goods can also benefit from brand recognition by people who can’t afford them. It’s why Rolex, Ferrari or Lamborghini advertise to everyone, so the rich kids know they can flaunt their wealth in your face. Interestingly, the likes of Bentley barely advertise outside of their target market.
What’s funny is Google pushed me to turn off all my targeted ad preferences + watch history on YT. I basically did what you did and they started pushing me PragerU and other weird conservative ads, so I just straight turned everything personalized off. And pretty much stopped using the platform.
Less popular ads can pay more to get shown, so while Google charges by the click, at some point fewer clicks from a less targeted ad at a higher price, can make them more money than more clicks from a more targeted ad at a lower price.
And yet… that’s still less enshittification than with the likes of TikTok. Expect for it to get much worse.
If pasting into yt-dlp works for you, go ahead, but if you (or anyone reading) wants a more user-friendly experience, I recommend FreeTube for desktop and LibreTube for mobile.
Both these apps strip ads, respect your privacy, and have Sponsorblock built-in. You can import your subscriptions from YouTube via csv.
EDIT: Forgot to mention SmartTube for Android TV, which blocks ads and has Sponsorblock but is less privacy-respecting as you have to login to your YouTube account.
Linretube only works for me about 50% of the time. I tend to default to NewPipe because of this. Both are great, when they work, though. FreeTube for desktop is amazing. The ONLY thing I don’t like it about it, is that download progress isn’t shown (they’re working on that, I think).
I love the empty top page. It’s the single best update they’ve ever done.
