How well does it work? On my iPad, Safari Adguard can only black out ad content. (Screen is black during ad, and it displays how many seconds of ad is left)
And you have the agency and ability to either pay for the service or investigate other means of avoiding them. Complaining about them is just annoying.
My favorite experience in this regard was watching YouTube on xbox (i know, i know)... They played a 40 minute redbull "ad" on a five minute video. In what sane world should ads be 8 fucking times longer than the content?!?!1?
I had a similar experience on my YouTube TV app, I was watching old history channels in bed, and there was a full length documentary for an "ad". I could have skipped after 15 seconds or whatever, but I had to INTERACT with the TV before it would resume. I was distracted so it ended up playing like 15 minutes of an hour+ documentary ad.
It was just a documentary that was shoved into an ad space. Something about their aerial stunts/races. Dunno. I got like, five seconds into it because FUCK THAT SHIT.
I wish using freetube kept Ernie calm, but it just doesn't work half the time. Invidious has the same issue. Which is significantly more annoying than just using YT, which Ernie has uBlock Origin for.
I do update freetube about 1 time a week these days (which is approaching the annoyance level of ads).
I used to have a lot more issues with it when I didn't update so frequently - or maybe that was just a different stage in the arms race; I'm sure the reliability will vary, and eventually the developer of freetube will give up.
I mean, I wont be throwing out the bat or anything crazy like that.
is there a similar solution for casual browsing -- meaning, allow the algorithm to pick which video plays next? I think yt-dlp is only effective if you know in advance what you'll be watching
Just out of curiosity, what do yall expect to happen when the only response to an ad supported free tier of something, is to block the ads? I know YouTube/google aren’t great companies, but when you run an ad blocker you also deprive the creators you love watching any revenue from your view. So you hurt the creators. If you can afford it, just sub to premium and stop acting like you’re entitled to everything for free. I despise ads just as much if not more than the next dipshit, but complaining about them, when there’s myriad ways of avoiding them, just makes you sound like a dingus.
Obligatory shout out to Nebula as a cheaper alternative for non-fiction/edutainment content.
Or alternatively, run and adblocker and literally give the creators you watch 1$ per month and you're still supporting them 100 times more than turning on ads would, and you still get to keep some semblance of privacy.
So your suggestion is to manage 15 subscriptions instead of one? Not every creator has a patreon or means of direct support. Not to mention some of these creators only upload once a year. And what happens when I want to watch someone new? Do I have to drop another creator to give this new person money
If you’re watching youtube and signed into an account you said goodbye to that level of privacy so long ago that an ad blocker isn’t going to do much.
So the alternative is to manage a subscription for every single creator I watch? Currently I sub to Nebula and YT premium. For ~$20 a month. If I were to go through and sub to every creator I watch’s lowest patreon tier, we’d be talking about dozens of individual subs totaling probably more than double what I pay now.