I’m sure they are working on a youtube messaging app behind the scenes.
finally
This article is just a youtube premium ad 🤢
As far as what you get when you go Premium, you won’t see any more ads within the app or the videos that you’re watching. Plus, you’ll gain access to background play, along with being able to download videos on the go. And perhaps what makes this plan even more worthwhile is that you get access to YouTube Music, which features over 100 million commercial free songs. Now, the one drawback is that these features don’t come for free, with a subscription costing $13.99 per month in the US.
If they hadn’t gotten so obnoxious with ads that it was impossible to use YouTube without blocking them, I wouldn’t have used the vanced/revanced stuff in the first place.
They find a way to prevent using those, I’m out totally, including on the few devices I didn’t care about playing the ads because it was just background noise.
Oh well
I even had Youtube premium for a bit. Revanced is nice just to dial back some of the bells and whistles that isn’t relevant to the video platform. The official app feels clunky.
I had YouTube Premium after Vanced was killed. I gave it a fair go. No ads- great, it is now back to how it was a decade ago. But also no SponsorBlock - and my God, how many channels I realised I couldn’t listen to anymore when 50% of every video was an ad for one of three online services or games I’m definitely not going to ever pay for. So now I just… don’t watch YouTube on my phone. Hurray?
Seriously, if the ads are supposedly worth €15 a month, pay the fucking YouTubers enough that I don’t have to listen to a linguist try to sell me WarThunder
I know, right? So many creators even explain why they do that, it’s because they can’t make enough from youtube to do this full time, but they can from raid shadow legends.
YouTube premium would be worth something if all the creativity their creators have to use to make a living despite the pay was used for better content.
We need better alternatives
Also YT premium is not a good solution as it does nothing for privacy
Video is nearly impossible to host in a sustainable way. The bandwidth usage is among the most expensive things you can host. The only way you’re getting something better than YouTube is if it’s tax funded somehow.
Nebula is very sustainable.
The 20mbit bandwidth of a 4k video might have been a lot 10 years ago, but it’s child’s play now.
20 mbps may be child’s play, not often for download only, not upload, and then don’t forget that just a hundred viewers will generate 2 gbps of traffic. And hundred viewers are nothing.
Sure, most videos are not 4k. The bandwidth usage still goes up pretty quick.
I think PeerTube’s idea that viewers of the same video can serve each other is an interesting concept. Problem is, afaik most are not using dekstop computers anymore, and most of the time people are living off batteries and their traffic limited cellular data subscription, where this is probably a very costly operation for the user.
Why not? Nationalize it and treat it like the infrastructure it is. Take the ISPs, too, while you’re at it.
Also YT premium is not a good solution as it does nothing for privacy
Neither is accessing any Google service in the first place, ReVanced or not.
Using third party clients does. Think invidious or piped with apps like Libretube
Using third party clients does. Think invidious or piped with apps like Libretube
It requires a proxy (Piped acts as proxy). A 3rd party client in itself doesm not because the video files are still streamed off Google servers.
We need better alternatives
We’d need a quantum leap in storage and bandwidth first - orders of magnitude better, if we want competing to be financially sane 😮💨
Maybe when Google is (hopefully eventually) shattered into a million pieces by some US judge, YouTube could be splintered into several smaller companies, each with some portion of the infrastructure and channels/videos - thus forcing competition. Vaguely similar to the Bell divestiture.
Piped exists and has continued to work smoothly for me this whole time. There are many public instances but running your own is best
We need better alternatives
Do it and host a fediverse video platform: https://joinpeertube.org/
I have YouTube Premium but I have to use ReVanced to block shorts because it’s terrible for my ADHD. My mental health has improved ever since I ripped that fucker out of my life.
I want to control what I see, and this isn’t even about them being paid anymore, it’s just about forcing me to see what I don’t want to see.
I know it will eventually be blocked by YouTube like Twitch did but you could try ublock Origin with this filter list or another custom filter list. Works pretty well for me.
Oh on desktop it’s not a problem, I use an extension to block shorts
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-block/
You can hide them with the normal app. Just click the “x” on your main feed.