YouTube rolls out more unskippable ads that make viewers wait even longer to watch videos

Hmmm maybe I'll just learn to read finally.

The neurolinks will patch that loophole soon.
- "Please keep focused for this brief ad from our sponsor, your information handling session will resume shortly"
I've been meaning to check out this "nature" thing, or whatever it's called. It's basically like, just lakes and woods and the sky and all kinda weird shit like that. Supposed to be pretty cool I guess, idk
- I heard the graphics are really good. And the framerates extremely high. But there are mosquitoes so it's probably not worth it.
- You mean like desktop backgrounds IRL? 🤯
Sorry, pardon?
- Try it!
Dunno, why learn to read, everything is already on the internet

I'm not worried. The minute the ad blockers stop working I'll finally be able to do something else with my time.

Most of YouTube is already a waste of time anyways.
- Just like lemmy, yet here we are. Sometimes we need to waste some time.
☝️ And it works, I can confirm.

Ublock Origin on Firefox With Sponsorblock is the answer.

Edit: Mispelling, fuck autocorrection

And ReVanced on Android, SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
- I think it's back to just SmartTube. SmartTubeNext was a temporary thing to get SmartTube back on track iirc.
- I like Tubular and/or Seal(a yt-dlp wrapper) on Android and don't use a TV, but yeah, anything but the actual YouTube app is probably better.
How do you unlock origin? I have been blocking it thinking it caused the ads
- It's a typo, they mean the ad blocking software uBlock Origin.

Youtube has ads?

Only for the paying customers, apparently. Crime pays, yarrr!
- Blocking ads isn't a crime .

uBlock Origin intensifies

They’re blocking it actively now. For me, it requires a tampermonkey script to bypass the blocker check in Firefox.
- I have no issues on Firefox or Brave. I never see ads.
- Whenever that happens, the heroes in the ublock team does push a new fix in a few hours.

Here is every single way I can think of to block YouTube ads:

uBlock Origin + Firefox

NewPipe on Android

Libretube on Android

uYou+ on iOS

FreeTube on *NIX and Windows

yt-dlp + mpv

YouTube Revanced

Invidious self hosting

Piped self hosting

And finally, last and definitely least

YouTube Premium

Donate to the creators who make content. Google does not deserve a penny of your hard earned money.

I read that Google is rolling out some ads on premium so that might need to get removed from your list.
- I believe you're thinking of premium lite, or whatever they call it.
- Amazon Premium started this trend. They're shameless.
Then stop using youtube. It sucks ever since googol bought it. Haven't used it since.
- That is right thinking. I admire that.
SmartTube for Android TV devices
You should add Brave on iOS to the list. Never seen any ad with Brave.
There's also Pipeline for *nix (and possibly Windows, but I didn't bother to check.)
I second Freetube. Not a perfect app (think it's Chromium based), but it gets the job done and they're pretty good about updating it pretty quickly whenever YT successfully breaks it.

NewPipe is my friend

I'm using a 3,5 months old version of PipePipe than magically somehow still works 😀
- The latest version works fine.
yup newpipe all the way adblocker by pihole no ads on my network 🤩

FreeTube on desktop, NewPipe on droid!

Smarttube on Android TV OS
Firefox and ublock on desktop works just as well.
- I would disagree, you’re still directly communicating with YouTube servers without a proxy in-between. Invidious or Piped are the proxies you need, they let you blend in with the other users of their services making data-collection on YouTube’s part difficult.
  We need to make feeding the algorithm as difficult as possible.
SmartTube on streaming devices!
Grayjay on desktop
Grayjay on Android

That explains the adblocker crackdown and enshittification of paid. Funnily enough, this pattern got me to block ads.

Anyone not blocking ads on YouTube needs to start blocking ads and sponsored content on YouTube.

https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

I used enhancer but it seems the dev has stopped updating it for Firefox and only updating it for chrome.
Moved to Tweaks for YouTube and am quite happy with it so far; seems to also have more options.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tweaks-for-youtube/

I have yet to see my first ad on any youtube video.

🤷 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases

I'm around long enough to have seen them, before blockers were a thing.

WHY DONT WE HAVE A MAINSTREAM ALTERNATIVE YET

By operating youtube at a loss for many years Google acted anticompetitively to kill competition or stop competition arising. Now that they've achieved that they can do what they like. Don't feel bad using ad blockers against this anti-capitalist company.
- Final stage of enshittification, now they are allowing more right wing propaganda than normal on the channel
- I am in no way defending YouTube here, but how did it act anticompetitively?
- FYI, this is currently happening with Uber.
- I never felt bad abt that for a second. Like the thought never crossed my kind XD FUCK YOUTUBE!
Hosting and storage costs, few can afford to be an alternative to an absolutely gigantic video storage platform that costs obscene money to maintain.
- I am causing a netloss to googs. I don’t pay for Google plus or whatever, and j don’t view their fucking ads. Win win if you ask me.
- @ChaoticEntropy @atlien51
  you found your way to lemmy but you don't know about https://peertube.tv/ ;)
We do, but you probably don't like it (TikTok).
- You’re right :)
  I meant idk something like Oddysse (but a website with actual moderation)
OK, so a bittorrent tracker site with a video player built in with comments underneath and you can get perks from content creators for seeding. Then of course some kind of voting system and etc. Then a creator can just get a seed box to start hosting their own videos.
It's a very difficult business model to make profitable without an already massive userbase. In fact, I think YT was actually losing money for Google for a while after they bought it. I could be misremembering though.
- Yes but not everything needs to make a profit, just not make a loss. Also it could be community supported with donations and stuff:)

Ive been using adblockers, piped and other tools for so long that i dont even remember what the last time was when i saw a youtube ad.

Same... And if they ever successfully make it impossible to avoid, I'll just stop watching YouTube
Hard to do if you watch directly from your TV using some dongle and don't know or can't modify your router to block ads.

I watch youtube on a smart TV where I don't have a way to skip ads. I know there are ways to do it, I just never implemented.

The experience with Youtube is getting so much worse. It used to be one ad at the start of the video. Then it was two. And now ads in the middle of the video. They are also so long! It completely breaks the narrative of the video and is so distracting.

All of this just makes me want to watch less Youtube, which is likely not a bad thing.

I hope I can be the motivation you need with these super simple steps (will take a few minutes).
https://smarttubenext.com/android-tv-box/
- Have they made anything like this for Roku yet?
if you TV is running android, you can use SmartTube
- SmartTube Beta has been a life changer on Android TV. I would just avoid youtube on my tv because fuck ads. But then i found SmartTube Beta, and wow. No more ads!
When the ad is playing, are you able to press up a couple of times and click on the little (i)? It might then go to a "why am I seeing this ad" page which you can then click ok on then click on don't watch this ad again and it will skip the ad. Doesn't work if you're casting a video from a phone, and it doesn't work on some channels.
- I did not know this, and I love it! Thanks for sharing!!!
- That stipped working. Now the option it gives you is to block the ad going forward after it finishes
on the rare case that i watch YouTube on tv, if it's at the beginning, i just quit the video and restart over and over again until i see a 5 sec skip. sometimes it takes longer than the ads would've taken but I'd rather do that than take it on the chin to be honest. I'm also hoping others do it too so maybe they get some telemetry data.
and if it's in the middle of the video i just quit. if it's important enough i can just watch it on my phone or PC without ads.
Even with a premium account I’m stopping using YouTube little by little ever since they made their forced translation of titles and these AI voices that make the experience for bilingual people just horrible.
- This is the most baffling feature ever. Why would anyone want to have titles translated? The video itself is not going to be translated! I guess it's because of these auto subtitles that are simply not that reliable nor do they make for a good viwing experience if you really don't know the language.
  Even Youtube's algorithm already doesn't suggest videos from languages in which you don't search in! My youtube shows me stuff only in the languages I usually google with.
  And the ads with this ai voice... Damn they are weird.
You could see if an adblock dns works, you dont even have to set up pihole for that (its just local hosted adblock/whattheheckyouwant dns).
If it makes problems you can set it to default or cloudflare or something
Setting another dns is in most cases just going to the settings and pasting a link
Edit: if you set the dns in your router it works at all devices at home
- DNS blocking doesn't work on YouTube ads because they're served by the same domain of videos.
I'm in the same boat here, I watch on my TV through a Roku and I don't think there are any options for ad blocking.

AdNauseum. Not only does it block ads but it also fucks with advertisers by sending false clicks that cost them money.

Occasionally I try the YouTube watch together thing on discord with my SO, and it really shows just how completely unusable YouTube is without an ad blocker.

The only ads I see are on a local sports podcast. The advertisers are all local businesses. From restaurants to local credit unions. And those I'm fine with.

I highly recommend creators to upload videos to another site as well.

Finally subscribed to Nebula a few days ago. Between a third and half the creators I follow are there. I'm planning to move away from YouTube entirely, even if I can pay for premium or block ads I want to make the statement I don't support their service anymore.

I'm trying out nebula because I saw your suggestion and honestly a year for $60 isn't terrible at all. But I'm having trouble finding creators (not because the app isn't good but because it seems a lot of the channels I follow on YouTube aren't on Nebula. I have two devices open actively going down the list of channels I follow on YouTube trying to find channels I want to follow on Nebula and so far I am striking out pretty bad. I hope I can get half the creators I follow on Nebula because so far it's pretty decent from what I have seen. App is easy to navigate and pretty polished etc.
Is there a way to view who's on the service (creator wise) before paying for it? Because if not that's the major flaw with it.
- I am not sure if it is possible, to be honest. I decided to move as I saw a lot of the YouTubers I follow do sponsored segments on nebula, so I knew I was going to find at least them in there. If I do find any kind of page or tool to find out I'll share it here
I tried Nebula and it's nice, bit it's too US-centric (+ something from the UK)

I'm still self hosting Invidious... Watching YouTube videos without ever visiting YouTube...

You can even access your instance with playlet on roku https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
Link? Or just Google it?
- https://docs.invidious.io/installation/
  The docker section there is what I used.

Days ago I discovered vacuumtube for steam deck. It's basically youtube with tv interface but with all the adblocks. It works wonders in game mode and even has controller support.

Jokes on you, YouTube, my Chinese phone rolls their ads over yours!

I will continue to download all my videos to avoid ads. When they break the tools in such a way that this is no longer possible, I will stop watching videos from YouTube and seek entertainment elsewhere.

yt-dlp is the goat

I’m actually looking to start a YouTube channel, but I don’t know if I should even bother since YouTube seems to be going out of its way to try to kill itself

Do other services! Like Peertube and then mirror videos on youtube and odyssey so you still get traction
Just cross post to a couple different hosters.
Since you're already in the Fediverse, I'd suggest looking into PeerTube for your videos rather than going to YouTube as your primary platform.
I currently have a channel, but am going to switch to PeerTube when I have my backlog built up again so I can post in a steady schedule. (Workin' on it...) The only things I'm going to put on YouTube are videos going, 'Hey! I have the video up here! Follow the link!' so that people can actually find it and Words of the Week shorts 'cuz I don't want to feed their AI bullshit that I can't get away from with proper stuff and it's just stick figures and rudimentary drawings with words from the dictionary. Unfortunately, it's not as user friendly to search for stuff on PeerTube as it is on YouTube. I'm hoping that gets fixed sooner rather than later. It'll make things better. sigh
Upload it to multiple platforms. If one dies you have already a plan B.

Yall I got yt premium as a perk from my carrier and tried it out, it’s fucking AWFUL. Mostly the yt app. I get better speeds, quality and less interruptions just using brave

If they circumvent uBlock, then PeerTube, here I come

You can skip or avoid ads on YouTube, so meh. What really grinds my gears though, is the stupid, fucking algorhythm, which routinely offers me videos I just recently watched, vids in languages that I can't speak, "current" affairs stories that are years old, and channels/vids that I have specifically blocked. I curse YouTube daily, but will bless anyone who has a viable alternative....

Adblocks allow you to not have to skip the ads physically, the algorithm is something else though. Now it starting to push right wing propaganda if your not logged in, and recently they said they are allowing even more now
You could put the subtitles for videos in languages you don't speak. What was much more annoying to me was the automatic audio translation (it's still available, but it seems YouTube doesn't select it automatically when you watch a video in another language).

Future uBlock/NewPipe users
Thanks for educating people about the usefulness of adblockers, YouTube ❤️
Their wallets.

testing

Does that mean if viewing numbers plummet they won't roll it out? wink wink, nudge nudge!

Very likely - but that’s not going to happen. Some people will watch less, some will complain but keep watching the same amount, and the majority will just take it as a fact of life and not change their behaviour.
- I think we've seen enough changes in social media platforms over the past few decades to say that your claim is true until it's not. As payments to content creators fall, and as garbage postings increase, the actual value to the average user of the site is clearly decreasing. So we'll see how long YouTube is relevant.

Just means I will find something else to watch. I’d pay for ad-free YouTube if it didn’t cost as much as HBO.

what's a youtube ad?

They do get they're not dealing with a generation used to ad breaks any more, right?

That's why they have to spend so much time trying to force you to watch all the get rich quick schemes, gambling, and expiring legal claims videos. What quality ad pushers they work with.

I should just read a book at this point

Oh please no, it's the reason why I switched from Chrome to Firefox when watching YouTube

https://yewtu.be/

I seem to have the right stuff on my laptop, but not on my phone. When I play escape games on the phone I occasionally need a walkthrough video, so I'm switching between 3 apps: the game, my notes (a paint app) and the video. Walkthrough videos typically have an ad at the beginning and maybe one in the middle, and I don't mind watching 15-30 seconds of ads for the YouTuber's work.

This used to be pretty seamless, but a couple weeks ago something changed. When switching back to YouTube, it would not return me to the video but to the home screen. I have to go to "You" to get the video I was just watching, and when I click it it plays the ads again, then jumps to where I left off. So now every time I switch away I have to view an ads again when I switch back, which really sucks balls. I don't think the phone is running out of memory since other apps I have open switch right back to where they left off. So I'd love to get something that will skip all that.

I forgot about that site. I knew it just as the host for TV series streams back in the day

GrayJay

NewPipe or Piped

I was using uYouPlus+ sideloaded on my phone until it broke recently, now I’ve found using Brave browser for just YouTube is the solution

GrayJay, Vanced, or ~~Pipewire~~ NewPipe is the way
- Did you mean NewPipe? Pipewire is the Linux audio/video framework.
- I meant iPhone :(

And thus we say fare thee well - U-Toob

Revanced

Shhhhjh

How about blocking this nonsense on Xbox? Need a pi hole yes?

I don't think a DNS hole is going to save you from ads served internally by YouTube.
- It might, if it just blocks YouTube

I use SmartTube on my Nvidia Shield TV box and don't ever deal with any ads. It's appalling whenever I have to use vanilla YouTube for anything.

I have zero sympathy for people who don't use an ad blocker

I'm grateful I have a job so I can afford premium 🙏

Bless your heart
Well we found the average YouTube user.
I'm grateful I have the basic technical knowledge of how to install an adblocker. 🙏
I can afford it too, but I won't pay for it on general principle when it costs more than Prime and Tidal combined.
Enjoy paying to be fucked by the corpos!