YouTube is full of ads.

Unlock Origin for browsers (mobile and desktop)

NextDNS or PiHole (for everything)

FOSS apps for ad free apps that do exactly what the ad-full and premium apps do but free

And minimize usage of software that sells your data wherever possible

Everyone needs to be doing these things. Corporations gaslight folks into thinking they need ads and your info to upkeep and improve their services, but it isn't true. They pocket the revenue while making their products shittier and shittier.

Don't support shitty buisinesses

Strange to read your comment then notice that you are writing that from Cloudflare’s centralised walled garden. Not supporting corporate technofeudal shitholes entails staying outside of Cloudflare.

Normally i don't read a wall of text in post images, but damn. Every sentence is true.

Yeah the wall of text is the medium for this art piece and it’s very effective.
- It really matches the exhaustion of dealing with tech in 2025.
Same. I am having PTSD flashbacks

There are people who are building and participating in alternatives. They deserve support. But people have also become accustomed to getting a lot for free.

Now I'm not defending YouTube, but they have to store billions of hours of videos and serve millions of people at a time, just so you (and me) can stream 10hrs of video a day just to listen to lo fi study music or watch let's plays. that's very expensive. The whole model is ass-backwards, that content creators exist to get paid. YouTube should be charging content creators for storing their videos, and if the creator wants to saturate their shit with ads and e-begging, then it be their choice.

The free/cheap entitlement definitely seeps into FOSS areas. I periodically see things like "this app/platform NEEDS to have all of the functionality of the paid one, be free and easy to set up" or particularly contradictory "a Linux phone NEEDS to have reliable calls, texts, support my banking apps, WhatsApp, have modern hardware, and cost $200"
(or variations thereof)
- I like the idea of free software, but users shouldn't expect people to do the work for them for free. If there's software I need that's free, great. If there's no free version, I'm not owed one and I'm not gonna complain until I get one.
You’re right, but this benefits rich content creators at the cost of new ones creating more income inequality in the content creation business.

Made me angrier than it should have.

Because it's SO damn true..
- If I wasn't in IT and knew how to run my own servers I would probably have given up on technology by now
you are exactly as angry as you should.
We're updating our Terms of Service. Read on to discover how our legal department plans to screw you over in the future.
- You agree to arbitration.
  You agree to data collection.
  You agree to letting our partners, and non-partners and 3rd parties to reuse your data.
“This feature only exists for Apple”
my Linux, windows, and Apple-having ass: okay

Original from xkcd

I wonder how much more they need to do before more people start using tools like uBlock and such. The internet is practically unusable without it, and I'm not using hyperbole--most websites have so much garbage on them that you literally can't read them without an ad blocker and/or reading mode.

Since Google removed support for ad blockers, I convinced my wife to switch to Firefox. She noticed a huge improvement immediately, especially on mobile.

I went as far as installing network level ad blocking on both my home network as well as devices.
Recently, I've had a few friends over whom are... not as technologically adept. They were incredibly surprised that after joining my guest WiFi, suddenly they were able to browse most websites almost completely unobstructed. No ads, no popups, no BS. Aside from the usual cookie agreements, of course.
If you can, help your friends, install ad blockers for them, make their internet experience better. Even DNS level adblocking is relatively easy to set up, and the only thing this hurts is the unscrupulous megacorporations that want to milk you for every single bit of personal information to sell.
- My friend hates it, because it breaks some sites and services. Everytime he's here he says "oh, right.. you got that blocker thing on the network", because he hit a snag once again.
  I'm not sure what he does or how he uses the internet, but I don't even notice that it's there.
Pihole is your friend.
- Pihole is great, except my wife can't turn it off if it breaks something (at least not without Extra work to set it up on my end). And when she leaves our wifi, she's stuck with ads again.
  That's why I typically recommend end-device adblockers. Easier for most users to use and configure.

I FUCKING HATE HAVING TO DELETE MY ACCOUNT BY SENDING EMAILS IN A LENGTHY AND UNNECESSARY SUPPORT TICKET EMAIL CHAIN

give me a button. give. me. a. delete. acount. button. I am asking this not of the corporations, but of the government. Right to be forgotten should mandate making it convenient. When I want to delete my account I click Delete Account and recieve a confirmation email. I click the link in the email. My account gets deleted right then and there.

Youtube shorts / short form content has driven me so mad that I've now deleted all social media, with only voyager to access lemmy. I actually couldn't handle how shit it all is, which I kept going back to like a drug

There's browser extensions/addons to block YouTube shorts. Combine it with SponsorBlock, DeArrow and a decent adblocker and YouTube becomes somewhat useable. The only thing you still notice is content creators wasting time and beating around the bush so they can abuse your watch time for ad money and better watch statistics.

Embrace free software and piracy. No account needed. No ads. No spam.

Google has mostly killed off the piracy option. Any Invidious instance that gets traction gets cut off by Google.
The FOSS option is newpipe, but if you use that over Tor (for privacy from Google), Google blocks connections.
- yt-dl still works fine. Download, re-host.

It's the wild west all over again until they establish law and order in the tech world. No standards, just everyone trying to make their millions (billions nowadays?). I can' help but think the end result of all this is an empty husk of a planet, floating dead through space because people wanted to collect money tokens of various values and denominations.

Yeah capital is basically free to inject unwanted messages as often and as long as they want.
It's time theft, indoctrination, intrusion, invasion, mind control, etc.
I really don't understand people who feel some "moral" obligation to cooperate.

You know, if ads actually worked, I wouldn't mind them. We have AAAAALL this tech to try to find the exact thing I might want to buy, and they still can't do it. If the ads in my feed were 100% things I would buy, I wouldn't actually mind them because it's things I like and either have bought or would want to buy. Instead, I hate ads because it's all things I don't and never would buy!

When I was growing up watching Cartoon Network, obviously there were ads, and those ads actually were suited to me, because I was a child watching children's programming. When they advertised a toy, I saw it and I thought "Ooh I want that!"; I didn't always get it, but I definitely wanted it. That was in the late 90s, with 1000x less information on me personally than they have now.

The purpose of advertising isn't always to sell you something you need or want. A lot of the time, it's to build a desire for something you don't. This is why it comes off as invasive and uncanny: it's all that unsolicited, undsesired content that gets you.
- Advertising exists because there's a demand for it from businesses. There's never going to be a 1:1 match of advertisements to customers. It's its own market, and, often, as a consumer, you will be served ads that don't make sense to you because someone is making money.
Ads do work. We have this whole surveillance dystopia to track how people behave online and the data shows that it is profitable to show them ads. All those eCommerce companies know how many sales they got via ads and yes, that's profitable. It is the reason why there are so many ads.
Ads do work. When I mention ad blockers people who dont use them say "The ads in my feed are things I would buy". I dont care if the ads are exactly what I want to buy, I dont think they pay the site enough to warrent wasting my time and ruining the experience of what im actually trying to interact with. 50s ad on youtube isnt even paying out a cent. Thats stupid.

People need to learn that just because you see an ad for something doesn't mean you need to DO the thing. Take the time to learn who you are and then look at all these external things and ask yourself if you need this shit in your life. 95% of the time, the answer is no. If you're confident in who you are as a human, you can pick and chose and neuter the things you want and avoid the ones you don't.

Besides the solid list from @HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world, use an Invidious front end. Even just search for a video on DDG and play it there.

I'm reading Cory Doctorow's latest book, Enshittification. As Ed Zitron said, never forgive them for what they did to the internet...

Listened to it on a long drive. I knew all of the big players were sketchy, but did not expect the degree to which they are. Google "brand-matching" searches (adding invisible brand names to search queries) to direct people to brands' sites and then charging those same brands for "more traffic" is just cartoon villain level shit.

@CurlyWurlies4All Relevant essay from Ed Zitron. It's well-worth a read, for those who haven't already.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can. As they browse the web, websites like NBCnews.com feature stories from companies like “WorldTrending.com” with advertisements for bizarre toys written in the style of a blog, so intentional in their deceit that the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the bottom saying it’s an ad.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
While far from concise, this article is one of the best summaries of the state of modern technology I've read in a long time. I've followed some of his analysis of the AI market and generally he's got a good understanding of what's at play. It's amusing (and somewhat depressing) to consider how much I've internalized the current state of affairs as "normal" and have developed my own methods for compensating or navigating around the toxicity of commercial tech. Read this and then his "Rot Economy" article. I hadn't read this before, thanks to @Chamomile for posting.
Using the computer in the modern age is so inherently hostile that it pushes us towards corporate authoritarians like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta — and now that every single website is so desperate for our email and to show us as many ads as possible, it’s either harmful or difficult for the average person to exist online.

Steal what you can, live without the rest. Its shockingly easy to unplug from the majority of platforms.

Its shockingly easy to unplug from the majority of platforms.
FYI, you’re using the most abusive privacy abusing platform in silicon valley: Cloudflare. I suggest leaving lemmy.world.
- Oh word? Perhaps I will switch then.

A lot of this I'm on board with, and I know Patreon is a shitty company with its own problems, but including "join my Patreon" in this list is silly.

Creative people deserve to be supported by the people enjoying what they've created. If the complaint is strictly about Patreon or about how Patreon has monopolised the "creator support" space then I agree, but the wording makes it seem that there's something wrong with artists who have Patreon memberships.

It would be better of them to encourage direct donations or something ofc but 🤷‍♂️ I just felt that one item missed the mark!

I would imagine the problem isnt paying creators or artists with membership support as a concept, but more that its still annoying to be bombarded with all of these different costs. I'm paying for this, I'm paying for that, where am I supposed to get the money to pay a monthly subscription for this one creator? You can't enjoy anything without being reminded theres another bill. I am annoyed by patreon subscription requests, I don't have the money. Whether or not the money is going to a better place doesn't necessarilly make being reminded everything costs money and that you are broke ass bitch any more fun
- I sympathise with you. I often have to rotate which creators I can monetarily support month to month because money is very tight. However, if I enjoy hours of videos from somebody, or if a painter or hobbyist I really enjoy releases something for sale, I think it's important that I support them materially so that they can afford to keep doing what they do. I want more of their work, I appreciate what they create.
  There's nothing morally wrong with not paying for work that's provided free of charge at all! And of course, in this economy, it's important to take care of yourself and your needs first - but for me, if I have a choice between buying some sweets and a cola for myself, or giving a podcaster who I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of scripted and edited shows from a couple of quid, I'm gonna do the latter where I can!
but including “join my Patreon” in this list is silly.
Credit card companies make hundreds of billions a year on taking 3%. Patreon takes 10% and another 3% to cover the credit card. Direct pay to creators needs to be a thing.
- I totally agree with you.
I would just assume the patreon part is about creators who dont need it
(and not some small artists how actually need the money)
- I guess my question would be: what creator wouldn't need direct funding from their fans?
  That system of fan-to-creator patronage would cut out the parasitic marketer middle-man, starving them of ad placements and taking their ability to control the main creative hubs of the internet through judgement of whether content is "ad friendly" away, empowering creators to create what they (or their fans, as has always been the case to some degree) want.
  I am definitely making assumptions though. My Patreon/Kofi donations go to miniature painters, webcomic creators, video essayists, podcasters, and people discussing the sports I enjoy, rather than any huge companies or anything, so my experience with Patreon is very much biased in that direction.
- I wonder (hope?) if it’s an otherwise inoffensive concept that was included because it’s one of many straws on the camel’s back.
Yea, not gonna lie, that one bummed me out a bit.
Probably a fair comment

Youtube is not full of ads.

This comment was brought to you by Invidious gang.

No ads on my side, either.
This comment was brought to you by the uBlock Origin gang.
- Team Kodi checking in. Also on team ad blockers.
When Google started its attack on Invidious, I was forced to try direct YT access. The ads were so frequent and intrusive that I had to walk. It’s intolerable.

no ads on my side either.

greetings from the ~/.bin/yt gang.

use like yt fHYNyCi2lnA where fHYNyCi2lnA is the youtube video id.

    
#!/usr/bin/bash

# usage example: yt fHYNyCi2lnA
if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
    echo "Usage examples:"
    echo "   yt fHYNyCi2lnA"
    echo "   yt https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=a1oxZ6RtpPk"
    exit
fi

ADDRESS="$1"

# change https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=a1oxZ6RtpPk to a1oxZ6RtpPk

if [[ "$ADDRESS" == *"watch"* ]]; then
    arr=(${ADDRESS//'v='/ })
    ADDRESS="${arr[1]}"
fi


echo video id: "$ADDRESS"

mpv  "https://youtube.com/watch?v=%24ADDRESS"

Many of the reasons OSS and OSH are so critical to a post-information world.

Our governments' failure to protect our rights from corporations is monumental. And when politicians are captured by money and not the people, we have no choice but to do things ourselves.

Hence dbzer0's mission and vision! Come join!

uses proprietary crap and wonders why it sucks

You say that, but plenty of FOSS projects are getting worse every day too.
- but you don't understand, 500 megabytes of dependencies in a slow language bundled with a web browser is the only way to make modern user interfaces
- Get the new version of our messenger app, it has no feature parity with the old one, is somehow slower, and three times larger.
  Oh and it is intended to work with the new self-hosted setup, which now requires Kubernetes to run 10+ containerized services to chat between a handful of people.

Youtube is full of ads?

Some people raw dog it
- how do you disable them on iphones? asking for a friend seriously
They kicked me off YouTube premium because "I don't live in Istanbul"
So I've moved to revanced and haven't regretted a second if it.
Side loaded a similar app on my android tv and it's good too, plus I enjoy the spk sponsorblock so it's actually a net positive

The internet used to be anything we wanted it to be

It was a better place when it was designed & run by wizards instead of corporations
- 🤗
It still can be
- Yep, this right here.
  For me and my brain's secret blend of eleven herbs and neurospices, I am most content when my world is small but I am intensely focused on the people/pets/things in it.
  So in the physical world, I work a lot on my house and yard to make it my family's happy enriching little oasis. We're involved in the community, especially the local elementary school, which is close enough to walk my kid to. (my middle aged american mind cannot comprehend this walkability witchcraft /s... but seriously I have to drive to every other destination))
  On the internet, while I do still exist in the eyes of Meta and Google -- it may NOT surprise you to learn that Facebook is the center of the internet for my corner of white conservative suburbia, including for local official organizations -- I choose to only open Lemmy when I want to just BS and read opinions online.

The shit that really killed me is when my favorite card game, Magic the Gathering, went all in on making cross-promotional sets. Who knew fucking card games could have ads too? Had to cut that shit out of my life.

More people need to have this mentality. If your favourite thing in the world turns to shit. drop it, cancel it. No matter how weaved into their ecosystem you think they trapped you in. You can always get out. This goes for any form of entertainment, devices, politics, friends and even family.
well the strongest card was always the credit card.
but yes, hearthstone player here. The starcraft crossover set was the worst and most-nerfed set in history, released a year ago and is STILL getting nerfed.
Games have an 8 year life span, change my mind.

Reject consumerism, embrace FOSS.

What the fuck is with that write an email to cancel your account by the way? Seriously what the fuck is that? I ran into that a few months ago and I was so fucking furious.

I'm glad the governor of my state made this shit illegal. Basically: if you can acquire a service through a certain channel/medium, cancellation must be available through that same channel/medium. The law is from 2007; it was originally made to address a few traditional roach motels (newspaper, TV, gyms, credit cards, internet providers), but it works wonders against this sort of e-arsehole too.
If they put enough hurdles in the way, you might not bother deleting your account so they can continue to sell your info, bill you for subscriptions (gym memberships for example), or just pad their user numbers making them look bigger/more popular than they are for investors.
- Yeah I know why they did it, I think we all get that, I'm just fucking furious about it. Knowing is not half the battle. Knowing just makes it even worse.
Blizzard won't let you delete your Battle.Net account without your photo ID.
I once joined a gym that required a paper written letter to cancel.
Worst one I had was "call this weird phone number to cancel." What a pain in the ass that was. I ended upon hold for ages before having to tell them I wanted to cancel like 6 times.

Who the actual fuck has ever clicked on an ad inhibiting you from watching the rest of the video you were enjoying? I will carry a grudge for businesses that hound me like that. Keep your fucking ads off my monitor. If I want to watch ads, I'll tune into the Superbowl qYearly. This is why TV stations and ad executives were told to fuck off when the VCR was invented and released for consumer purchase and they tried to regulate them and make it so people could not FFW through ads and the SCOTUS had to settle it. This is the same shit different medium. If your advertisers don' think they are getting a good bang for their buck, tough shit. Stop paying inane shitinfluencers so much money to further expedite the fast track to idiocracy and you wouldn't need to rely on ad revenue.

There are a lot of people who just let it happen. Watching ads, clicking on ads accidentally and all that shit. If i see an ad on my screen i'd rather spend a day figuring out how i never have to see an ad again, than play their stupid little game.

Spot on summary

We do not ask for this capitalist Internet. We were good at year 2.000 where most of the content were made by and for fans because they love what they were doing.

We were good at year 2.000
You sure about that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
- Sure thete was spyware and other viruses, but it wasn't mandatory for anything; it was shit idiots fell for. In the same category as, like, 3doorsdownkryptonite.exe
  Nobody had to work around not having browser toolbars.
- This being the worst example you thought of disproves your own argument.

I think I encounter at least one of these phrases daily. The internet is so fucking gross.

It's all so tiring, honestly...

I just stopped, I only use non shit stuff nowadays. It feels amazing.

The username in this image: ::chef's kiss::

This is why I'm angry and weirdly into Cybersecurity practices.

I like it when I see a black box saying "We're sorry we can't show this content in your country" - I'm like "WTF? You're sorry you can't annoy me? I don't even want to see your lousy ad, let alone you being sorry about content only you care about!"

I'm sorry, but this is kinda epic.

I'm not sorry. This is art.
- Hey Art,
  Sorry I misnamed you.
- Hi Art, I'm dad.

I am getting tired with all of this ad nonsense. I just want to watch a video, ffs

This wall text doesn't list a single one alternative

It's a good rant, covers plenty of bases, but yeah, i know what you mean. Personally i haven't seen an ad in over 10 years but then i don't use mainstream social media, and i do use a vpn and uBlock Origin, and prefer a high-seas life (ahoy mateys) to the subscriber experience. I kind of like Patreon. As for location blocking, vpn solves that, etc. etc. other solutions etc. But still, a good solid rant.
- It's not a good rant, list the alternatives

Tailscale pointed to nextdns (or just plain nextdns) with blocklists enabled is pretty effective for those wanting to go that route. Its made my online experience so much better. You get similar results to pihole but quicker to set up with less to manage.

I know tailscale has a pretty positive image right now, but it is also yet another company you just have to trust with your data. I am not comfortable using their services, it just shifts the issues from one company to another.
- https://headscale.net/

Yeah, it's not looking great right now. For spotify on pc I use blockify, which makes the ads silent and about one second long. It does just kind of break whenever this one ad tries to play, but you just have to reload the site. For the visual ads on pc, I use ublock origin, which works well. On mobile, I use this app called newpipe instead of youtube. Patreons and memberships are so that the creators get more money. Some of them need the money, some of them obviously don't. Ai features and dogshit updates are everywhere, and I hate it. I don't personally have any workarounds for them. Shows and movies can just be pirated using one of the sites on yarrlist and an adblocker. Only being able to play games with wifi, yeah, that's pretty annoying. The account stuff sucks ass. Things are in fact, shit.

I use Tubular instead of NewPipe. Integrates SponsorBlock.

What I do, eschew as much shit as possible. Download books and vids for free and read and watch those.

You can install adblocks on the android Firefox app too. Also, if you set the youtube site on desktop mode (browser setting) you can keep listen the audio playing with the display turned off. I do that for audiobooks and music all the time.

You can get background play in the actual YouTube app with Revanced if you want a mobile UI.

I was introduced to this post by the burialgoods video

It's the same channel narrating the video may i have some oats with the two pigs!

Great channel, cannot recommend enough

I work with a guy in his 70s who has gotten his credit card or bank card info stolen at least 5 times in the last year. He simply doesn't have the digital education to identify a spam email or a scam call from a real one. It's all just too overwhelming for him.

I got one call from the coast guard asking me if I had a package from Mexico coming in. He tried to sound aggressive and had an Indian accent. Total scam of course.
I just was aggressive right back. Like have you opened the package? If so, what's in it? Money? Cause I'll take that! He keeps pressing me for what's in the package. I said, you tell me. I'm sure you opened it already? Just hangs up. Believe nothing you get from a phone call and always verify multiple ways.
- I got someone calling me midnight, trying to convince me she's my daughter, and she needed me to send her money. I regret not making some name on the spot to waste the scammer's time, but at the time I was genuinely worried some clueless girl was actually trying to call her dad. (I don't have children, mind you.)
That will be us, sooner or later no matter how savvy we are now. The tech will keep up with the grift, but at some point we won't be able to keep up with the tech.
That midnight FaceTime from your daughter will look and sound just like her, and she'll be calling from where she said she was going and her best friend will be there with her.
- And she will have recently found a job selling holographic magazine subscriptions...

This is what we built our nations to fund! This. Is. Freedom!

I read this in the robot voice from Fitter, Happier.

like a pig, in a cage... on antibiotics

TS Eliot would be proud.
So would Edgar Alan Poe, for that matter.

Aw hell... Dante, too.
The techbrahs and enshittifiers deserve the 9th circle, they are inch by inch savoring their betrayal of humanity.

The 9th circle was made for them, and sending them home is as good as doing the same for a Nazi.
Not that most of them aren't also Nazis.

Amen.

I sometimes use the official YouTube app to chromecast stuff to my tv and its hilarious. What an experience :) Im just laughing.

Shiver me timbers!

Has yt just...stopped working for anyone else? I assume it's due in some part to the various addons I have blocking ads and js, but it was just getting jankier and laggier (lagging my whole system) by the day until the latest ui update broke it completely. I've just moved off the site entirely now, so probably for the best, but I struggle to understand how progressively making the user experience worse is supposed to generate higher profits. So dumb.

Yeah I had to turn off "uBlock filters – Quick fixes" in uBlock origin on firefox to get youtube working again. Otherwise I would get just a black frame where the video should be. I haven't noticed any ads getting through with that filter disabled, but I make no assurances.
- I've found alternatives already, but yeah, I figured it was an aggressive incompatibility with some adblock or another. Still don't know why it lagged my entire desktop when yt was open in a browser.

This makes me think we had similar complaints before the dawn of enshitification:

A lot of this is legit but some of it is whining about shit