Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish

All the morons defending a mindless corporation in this thread forgot that Google has far overstepped it's boundaries in general. It got to where it is from harvesting free data from users. And now is initiating a web DRM that will far overstep any boundary seen. If a website decides to adopt it, everyone is screwed.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

Tbh, I block ads when I can but have a hard time getting angry about this. YouTube is both incredibly useful and incredibly expensive to operate -- seriously, what other service lets you upload hours of HD video which anyone in the world can access instantly, indefinitely, for free, and at the same scale YT does? It's a peerless engineering marvel and it would be a tragedy if it were to shut down. If seeing some short skippable ads is what it takes to keep that resource viable, that's honestly pretty fair.

“You can go ad free with YouTube premium!”

Buys premium

youtube shows ad for paramount plus under my video

Cancels YouTube premium.

So anywho there’s a thing called freetube. Just saying. Idk that it’s a perfect alternative, but it’s at least one step further from googles prying eyes and grubby hands.

So, stop using Chrome ffs, ublock and Firefox have zero issues

Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.

YouTube: starts putting 2, sometimes even 3 ads that are often unskippable before and in the middle of 10 minute videos

Also YouTube: Why are people using adblockers?

If you're on PC use Firefox with uBlock Origin.

For Android, Im personally using Libretube but using mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin also works.

PC: Install Firefox. Then install these extensions: Sponsorblock for YouTube, Enhancer for YouTube, uBlock Origins with all the filters turned on except the language filters (you can use them if you wish) and Return YouTube Dislike. Keep uBlock Filters updated by checking for filter updates once a day.

Android: There's Revanced. I use pre-built apks along with Vanced MicroG from RVX Lite in Telegram.

Android TV: Install SmartTubeNext.

Enjoy.

Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.

Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Give me "pretty much everything" for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.

Lmfao, no one is dropping YouTube. You'll be back one way or another.

You don't have a choice.

Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.

When they take out uBlock Origin, they take me out as well.

Here’s an interesting idea: pay for what you consume. We can argue whether ads or a YouTube Premium are a fair price, but I don’t think you’d have a moral or legal leg to stand on if your argument is that Google must provide you with hosting and streaming for free.

You are consuming resources on Google’s computers. I think they have a right to ask for payment.

To me, the ad tracking industry is completely out of control, and I’m not going to disable my ad blocker. So I signed up for YouTube Premium.

I'll play devil's advocate here... Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I'm not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I'm not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it's only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don't want to see and you don't want to pay for it, then please, don't use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.

Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.

I enjoy watching YouTube with no ads so I bought premium. I actually bought the family one and share it with 4 others. Personally, I find it to be a great deal.

I also pay for extra storage (even tho I have a nas) because it’s convenient to have.

I’m a pirate at heart, have a 3k movie library on Plex and use nefarious to queue download, and I’m a long time crypto nut so I understand privacy and sticking it to the man.

But I also find great quality of life improvements by simply paying fair prices for good content 🤷‍♂️

It’s a fun hobby to try and dodge ads and steal and stick it to these companies. But really can be time consuming and gets old (it did at least for me when I got old).

I hate ads as much as anyone and have been blocking them for almost as long as ad blockers have existed. I still acknowledge the fact that ads are the primary revenue source for a lot of things on the Internet, and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.

How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions? When they puts ads on their site, the unsaid agreement is that you exchange your ad views for their service.

If only peertube had the same culture as Lemmy and Mastodon.

But it feels like, imo, Peertube has fallen to the same pitfalls as other YouTube alternatives. 99% of vids I see on Peertube instances are far-right conspiracy theory videos among other obviously abhorrent content that would otherwise be banned on youtube.

Newpipe is still working great, I haven't used an official interface in like 3 years.

Is it enshittification, or how the Internet should work for commercial services? Youtube isn't publicly funded. You either pay for the product or become it in exchange for use.

I either pay to use the app or I get ads that pay for the platform to continue being used but I don't want to see the ads so my ad blocker blocks the ads.

A company is going to continue making revenue. I don't know why anyone is shocked by a company that makes ads changing a site to ask you to view more ads. Genuinely baffled that users waste their time complaining about something a big trillion dollar company owns and actively runs changing their platform to continue making them trillions of dollars then getting on here and going, "take that Google I am fed up."

Meanwhile, I have just been paying for YouTube premium with no ads supporting the content creators I love and moving on with my life.

EDIT: These comments are why Lemmy isn't growing.

Hear me out: Google makes money by selling ads. People who buy from those ads don't have an adblocker installed. People who are intelligent enough to block ads wouldn't buy from them anyway. If Google allows it to be too easy to block ads then their model collapses. I'm ok with jumping through a couple hoops to continue to block and Google doesn't lose anything while I get to still watch the content I like without wasting anyone's time. It's to Google's benefit to serve videos to only people who will actually buy that crap anyway. If Google or anyone wants to sell to me, they simply have to make a great product. If they do, I'll see it in use for it's intended purpose and buy it. For example, I didn't have to watch any ads to buy a Nintendo Switch years ago...

I use YouTube for tutorials, education, and entertainment all the time. And YouTube music is how I listen to all my music.

I've been paying for the YouTube premium version for my family since day one.

Recently they took away my grandfathered-in pricing. It really costs me a ton of money.

But I remember that I'm keeping ads off my screens, my parents' screens, and my kids screens... And we all use YouTube music all the time.... So...

Yeah, a lot of money, but honestly, probably the best subscription I have.

I could never go back to ads.

Or you can pay them $$$

I use it between half an hour and two hours every day. And I can afford it. So this is what I do. It’s worth far more than Netflix to me.

I haven't seen so many shills in one place since the Russian special military operation began.

They're begging for a direct competitor.

Ohhhh how I wish my favorite youtubers would create their own Peertube instances...
They'd have complete control of their own content, and any donations could go directly to them.

I know it's kind of a pipe dream, but let me dream dammit.

Firefox + ublock origin is the way forward.

However, as a teacher, my school IT system default browser is chrome, and adverts on YT videos when you're trying to teach a lesson can really suck all the momentum and attention from the class.

Chrome allows you to save javascript as a bookmark URL called bookmarklets. I'm not so clued up on java, but I found this code that zips through the adverts super quickly. Someone can probably improve on this;

javascript: var v = document.querySelector('video'); var t = 16; v.playbackRate = parseFloat(t)

The new word for "whitelisted" is "allowlisted"?

ublock, revanced, newpipe and more

Ad blockers are an existential threat to Google. They are - at the core - an ad company.

RIP

And nothing was lost...

Route to 0.0.0.0 instead, localhost gives a delay while zero just fails.

If you're on a browser, use invidious - https://api.invidious.io/

If you're on android, use NewPipe - https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

Fuck google with the entire alphabet and their graveyard of ideas

ublock origin + Firefox still works. try open ublock origin dashboard > Filter lists then click the purge all cachess button

I've literally never gotten any message like that I've been using a blocker forever.

You don't know how to use ublock origin so you're abandoning the most useful and entertaining platform on the entire internet?

uBlock Origin is quite apt in not showing any of that. I am thankful for the creator's attentiveness.

How does one quit YouTube?

There is just so much stuff on there and no alternative.

Sometimes I forget people like watch YouTube on purpose. I pretty much exclusively use it for music that's not on Bandcamp, short clips of old shows, and the occasional guide for something that's too visual to be described well in words.

Old man out of the loop, yells at clouds.

Odd, I have uBlock Origin and it’s blocking the ads without any pop ups or angry messages

Is there a reasom paying them is so bad? I can spit on Reddit because they basically freeloading from user generated content(or stolen content) and strongarm everyone into working for them, but at least Youtube allow their content creator to monetize their content, even though they sometime ban one stuff but not the other(one veritasium video got demonetized due to containing suicide in the story), so paying to remove ads in both youtube and music is kinda a win for me, so i'm not entirely sure why the hostility on this.

Script blocking > Ad Blocking. Block all of the tracking scripts, all of the ad-aware stuff, disable redirects and scripts embedded in the ad frames, bypass script-based paywalls, etc. It is a pain in the ass to go to a new site and have to figure out who the 20 domains are that are trying to load scripts, but finding those tracking fuckers and hitting "distrust" is so satisfying. I swear that any ads I do see are so all over the map because nobody knows who the hell I am and I like it that way.

NewPipe on Android works to block that shit just fine. As for Firefox, adblockers still work just fine. Once again, good luck Google lol

Serving 4k video is not free.

If you refuse to pay for Premium and refuse to be served ads, what do you expect to happen? You're a freeloader.

I just tried it out, watched three videos (one was 49 minutes) and nothing. I use Firefox with NoScript and U-Block (also Enhancer for Youtube, but I doubt that's relevant). I wouldn't have know this was happening if no one posted about it.

YouTube is straight up evil. We need an alternative solution.

It should be "So long YouTube and thanks for all the fish." Goddammit!

If you're going to borrow from Douglas Adams, at least get it right.

What country are you from? I use Ublock Origin + Malwarebytes on MS Edge and haven't seen any warning like that

This calls for DEFCON enshittification talk

I got this notification today for the first time. I cleared the catche on my filter lists and it seems to have solved the issue - for now.

Here is my take on this.

First, I am with OP on this, but with mild counter points:

• I block ads because they are intrusive, contain scam and viruses
• I don't want to pay YT because I am already the product, and my trust is long gone about them saying they respect my privacy
• "Hosting is expensive" is what we hear left and right but...
  • letting people upload many hours long is not what YT was supposed to be,
  • 4K vids and up are huge, so is HDR, do we really need such fat video files/streams? I don't...
  • for those who need 2000inch TV size quality, yeah, they want to charge those.
• I would be OK to pay, but google will rise the price eventually and it feels like changing a contrcat I signed to begin with and I dan't agree with that. (price raising reason are the previous points above, I am not concerned by those and I don't see why I should pay that much)
• I am a google pixel user, google already got some of my money anyway, which I am happy with.

In the same vein, I wait Netflix to raise their price again (I bit the bullet twice) but there won't be a third time.
Same for Spotify.

Those services should realize they are not essential, just bare useful, and should be priced as such.

Just my 2cts.

Try using FreeTube

I see a lot of people saying X and Y are safe. Eventually nothing will be safe. All they have to do is require login to view content. Make login require CC or SMS then enforce a ratio of content played over time.

Price wise, they're just insane. It's all B-Rate content for more then the price of any other streaming service.

i've still never seen this message outside of a screenshot; ublock origin in firefox (including tor browser, just need to hit the new circuit button sometimes) still works fine as of today. and so does yt-dlp.

the fact that some ad blockers are seeing this is a bad sign though :(

The enshitification of youtube is complete. Nothing stopping them from just upping the rate and duration of ads to the stratosphere.

I dual boot and in Windows they are blocking me now. In Linux, I am not seeing the message. So it's not IP based. I run Firefox in both instances.

I mean, it makes sense no? They are a business after all. Why wouldn't they try to enforce their ads? I personally don't watch YT that much but why not just pay up if you need ad free experience? The content on YouTube is good because creators get paid well from ads

I use FreeTube on my desktop and Newpipe on my GrapheneOS Pixel 7, I don't see any ads or graphic overlays. The family uses AppleTV and the YouTube app is a horrible experience with the amount of ads, even for a 3 minute video. Future project is to look into Pihole or something to block ads at the router level.

Something I don't think anyone is talking about is that, if this is now considered a ToS violation, Google will probably decide at some point to start banning accounts over it. Oh, you use adblock? Now your email, Drive documents, and photos are gone.

Web ads are ableist.

I use SmartTubeNext on a Fire TV and it works fine.

It even skips over in-video ads.

Copy URL, alt+F2, mpv 'paste URL'.

As soon as I have to see ads, I'm gone. Not mad, I get the business need for them. It's just not worth it for me. Most of my actual subscriptions are through a rss reader, and that effectively blocks all but the sponsorblock ones. For which I have sponsorblock.

Thank you for mentioning the overlay blocker. Never heard of it. I was just on YouTube today and haven't seen this. Are you in the US? I feared this day would come. Not sure what I'll do.

FYI if you delete your watch history, then watch one video, you can pause it again and get a proper homepage. Just don't clear that one video. I just clicked on a DJ set from someone I liked three weeks ago as that one video and it hasn't broken again since.

I switched to Firefox a few years ago when Chrome started forcing HDCP, my uBlock hasn't been affected at all in the most recent changes.

I finally bit the bullet and switched from Chrome to Firefox last night after they flagged my adblock for YouTube as malware and forcefully disabled it. Fuck that noise.

tbf i changed my mind recently as i paid for spotify but had yt vrevanced and st next. but after thinking about it, i switched the family subscription from spotify to youtube premium as it has both youtube and music while 5 out of 350 songs are missing for the same fucking price.

YouTube messed up by not being a paid only service first and later offering an advertisement supported free tier. That way around, they'd be celebrated.

I will let you know but I haven't have issues with ad blocker on PC yet

I stopped using YouTube at least 3 years ago. When they changed discovery algorithm to show me the same videos.

just use frontends like invidious - for mobile there are tons of apps for these frontends, i recommend newpipe if you dont care about shitty recommendations

I’m still surprised what platforms make money WITH the content that USERS make , charge or restrict USERS view. It’s kinda crazy model that people accepted for so many years. For one side this is good because it will make users to reconsider what they do and how they corporations make money from it. Google money model has a date of death.

Silly question if you don't mind me asking, when you got the pop up:

• Which browser/adblocker where you using (also did you use any custom filters)?
• What device are you watching youtube on when you saw the block (windows, macos, ios, android, linux)?
• Where are you located? (like which country)

I never saw these popups just curious.

Also my setups using a web browser (no issues):

• (Mac OS Soma) Firefox Stable with ublock origen stock filters
• (iPadOS 17) with adguard safari content blocker stock filters

Setups with third part clients (no issues):

• Revanced android
• Smarttube (Fire TV)
• YTLitePlus (iPadOS)

Use an alternative front end like https://piped.video

You may want to try various instances (in preferences) as the main one has been under a lot of load

You have to build a sub list with FreeTube, but it's well worth it. There's an import from youtube feature, but I haven't been successful in making it work.

honestly at this point I don't even understand using the normal youtube front end anymore. I have been using piped as my youtube app on my phone for a while, and I think it's time I switch frontends. What sucks is video is one of the few things we don't have a decent way of federating right now just due to the sheer volume of disk space required.

You could just start using a frontend like the rest of us

So with this known…when do you think YouTube will start banning accounts or giving out account strikes?

AdGuard with Firefox still works for me, I hope it stays that way.

ITT: Entitled users think they deserve YouTube without paying for it.

Be honest with yourself, you are entitled. Stop acting like youtube is fucking you over by enforcing what is a reasonable policy for those who refuse to pay with their money.

Piracy is also entitlement. I am honest with myself when I pirate and use ad blockers on the internet. Why can't you be?

You can downvote me all you want but at the end of the day I am right and you are immature for not being able to handle admitting you're doing things off the moral high road you want to believe you're on.

Stop using YouTube if you can't get what you want out of the service. A lot of lemmy users did the same with Reddit, it's within your reach. If you don't like how YouTube is (and it does suck if you arent a yt premium user) and your ad blocker no longer works, it's time to find a new platform that preserves your privacy and respects your rights as a user. Just don't act so goddamn entitled.

I have no idea how i'd replace YouTube in my life - sites like Reddit are one thing, but there is no current viable analogue to YouTube. Premium is pretty cheap for what it is - happy I made the decision to subscribe years ago

Use alternative yt front ends? YT Vanced, PipePipe, YMusic, and so on...

Firefox with exentions or on PC?

I have not seen any of this on my end, my IP does get blocked though, I just change it.

I wonder how they are rolling it out.

YouTube: "Goodbye user we just got a new premium subscriber, thanks for all the fish."

you can use ReHike to get the 2017 layout back which does not have this issue, combined with uBlock origin.

They could always make actual relationships with advertisers and host ads on their own site. And make it not interfere with the content itself. Difficult concept, I know.

the battle between ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers is eternal. adblockers will adapt.

if i block ads, it's only fair that google tries to block my blocking of their ads. calling this "enshittification" is silly, they didn't make their product worse they just are doing a better job of enforcing the rule that's always been there.

peertube is pretty great....just sayin.

What browser was this on?

fish? what fish?

I just got this for the first time today. I was able to dismiss it and go on to watch ad blocked YouTube on Firefox, but I wonder how much longer this will be an option. Nebula and Curiosity Stream are looking really good right now.

Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations

I see this as an absolute win!

Love a good Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy reference.

Hopefully I don't get this! I only started using an ad blocker on YouTube in the last year or so when the amount of ads became too much.

Once everyone views the ads, the view per ads value will drop and become worth less, no creator will ever get more money. As if YouTube will miss out and pass down their revenue to the small people, lol.

Wait, what's Youtube History?

https://revanced.net/ (Android)

For windows or linux just use Brave browser.

No more ads, no more adblock detection.

You're welcome.

It’s working perfectly in Safari, loaded up with ad blockers and Vinegar. I’m streaming ad-free tropical 4k jungle sounds from my Mac Mini as we speak.

You weren't on Piped or Invidious already? /hj

oh no think of the children - piped bot - run!

If there was no browser workaround i wound use a third party client and possibly selfhost it for family. Hard to get away from Youtube itself. I wonder how many % of the users actually use any adblockinf tool

After the History changes I switched to Grayjay.

I can't make it show that message. I tried both Chrome and Firefox with ublock. Do I need to use a different adblock to even see these warnings from youtube? I would like to verify this is true before sharing this information.

Ads for YouTube keeps YouTube free and YouTube being free is good for everyone

Sorry you have to watch a 30 second grammarly ad every 45 minutes or whatever.

On iOS I use uYou Plus loaded with SideStore. No ads, you can save videos and more.

i wanna move to odysee but idk if there'd be any memes there

While I believe that this may be a hostile decision, it was inevitable. A lot of YouTube's revenue comes from ads. Use piped or something

As a premium subscriber for many years, I and my family really get value. I do pay in UAH though.

Vinegar for Safari still works fine, it changes the player with a pure html5 one

I tried to watch a stream uploaded on YouTube and they put adrolls every 5 minutes, for a 3+ hour video. It was unwatchable. Sucks that pretty much every site is fucking over its users lately. Maybe it's a sign I should just get away from the internet for a while.

Use Brave

But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don't get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.

Why are you not using a Piped or Invidious instance?