As with most things in the modern world that have gone to shit. It is not the monetization scheme in of itself that is the issue. It is the never ending desire for more profit this quarter than last forever.
If it was acceptable to stop trying to make even more once the cost to operate is covered and some healthy profit is made predictably then a lot less people would have issues. And enshitification would slow down.
„I don’t want to watch ads and I want everything to be free.”
My brother in christ, this is not how services work.
Free-at-point-of-service is a common feature of amenities provided by countries with socialist economies.
But they only work when the economy is actively managed. If you’re just pumping cash into a big banking machine and telling people to grab for it, you’re not incentivizing any particular economic activity. You’re just encouraging entrepreneurs to get particularly good at snatching money out of the air and elbowing one another in the face.
It would be fine if there were so many ads
Line must go up
Well companies do need to make money, yeah
Nah, they have enough money. They won capitalism. Billions in profit. Fuck advertisements. Directly support the creators in your life.
I don’t care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click “advanced resolution settings” to access this even for premium users on mobile.
ReVanced :)
Grayjay.app :)
I can do all of them already without premium.
They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.
It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!
God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.
Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
It’s crazy on both ends of the pipeline. Like, if I’m an advertiser, I want my content to be relatively exclusive. I don’t want to be the twelfth ad you see in an hour. If I’m a consumer, I want a continuous uninterrupted stream of media. I don’t want a service that repeatedly cuts out, spams me with some volume-adjusted bullshit, and then cuts back in again seemingly at random.
You could try SmartTube
It’s a great product. It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer who is constantly fighting Youtube changes to break it. If you do use it and like it, and you can afford it, please consider a few bucks a month via patreon to keep it alive.
It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer
A lot of these services are just passion projects by odd individual developers who create something for themselves and then share it with the rest of the world.
Github is great for this kind of spontaneous innovation. But it doesn’t do a good job of organizing communities at large. Why have six different “YouTube cleanup service” alternatives when you could have a single collaborative team working towards the same end-goal? Why are people constantly trying to “fix” YouTube when what we really seem to want is an alternative media host?
I am seriously thinking of cobbling together a cheap pc just to plug into my TV to watch things like YouTube without the ads.
I know right. I have Apple TV because it’s awesome and doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
I’m thinking an android tablet with revanced or similar and casting to the tv…
Casting on ReVanced will still have ads, because the ads are baked into the cast feature. The ad removal only works for the app itself.
doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
yet.
I’m not sure if it counts as an AD but seems like an AD, many many moons ago (I think when Apple TV+ was introduced), they changed the “home screen” with the apps in your Apple TV to an Apple TV+ one with their content (and some linked from other platforms).
The apps view still exists but now the “home” button gets you to the Apple TV+ one unless you click it again from there (unless you accidentally scrolled a bit and the button) or double click it to open the menu with the recently opened apps.
You can change the home button behaviour in the settings to take you to the app view.
I’ve got smartube on my fire TV
You can usually pay a radom guy in any latin American country who makes a business sharing family accounts for netflix etc. or just get ublock origin.
Try Invidious
Any good instances? All I’ve tried are dead
I’ve heard there’s too many issues and they have to keep one step ahead of YouTube all the time and it’s getting difficult. Plus, can’t use that on TV
It’s the world’s medium length video platform. If there’s an indie creator that’s good he’s there. Of course we like the whole world’s content that’s fed to us by an incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
The 1080p non-premium looks like shit, not better than 720p. I think they reduced the Bitrate a lot and premium restors the original Bitrate.
uBlock Origin 🥳
I see this recommendation all the time. It frustrates me. I’m in favor of blocking ads and modding clients and whatever it takes to optimize one’s experience, but the majority - by far - of my YouTube experience takes place on my TV. I can’t do much to control it (pihole and other DNS solutions don’t work on YouTube since their ads are hosted in the same servers as their videos).
I could perform various modifications to the operating system of my TV, and trust me it’s tempting for a lot of reasons, but it was a very expensive (by my standards) TV so I want to at least wait until the warranty expires until I start experimenting.
I could also use something hooked up to my TV and mod that, which is my favorite idea, but my wife likes the interface as it is. It’s an LGTV with the … Sigh … “Magic” remote, which I absolutely hate, but I don’t want to take it away from her. It seems like that interface, especially the “magic” cursor, would be hard to replicate. I’d prefer not to go through the tedium of having two different systems.
Especially because we also have a console hooked up and no solution I’ve found so far has provided a simple way of switching between HDMI sources without running a disgusting number of cables. I did recently order a new receiver, so hopefully that helps with the multiple origins issue.
Obviously this is very much a a first world problem, and I apologize for my privilege, I just wanted to point out that uBO (or other software based solutions) aren’t always the solution.
I recently set up dev mode on my LG TV and installed a patched version of YouTube with ad block and sponsor block. I don’t think this voids warranty.
If there’s interest I could look up the instructions I used (I’m traveling right now).
Thanks for bringing this up, because it frustrates me as well. Most of the time I’m watching on a TV, and there’s no way to block YT ads on a TV. The people I share my house with aren’t technical and will watch YouTube even with ads. So to keep them out of my house I pay for YT premium.
Suggesting that people just do something technical and janky to block ads isn’t a solution for me, not because I can’t do it, but because there’s no way my family will do it.
I think there are ways, will likely vary by TV brand. I’ve set it up for my LG TV at home, it’s better than premium.
Edit: to clarify, I didn’t set up uBlock, I set up the TV with a patched TY app that has ad block and sponsor block. The latter makes it better than premium.
Oh and I can remove shorts.
LG AI Voice Remote?! That’s a huge no from me dawg hahaha
All of my screens just have computers hooked up to them, controlled by wireless keyboards with built-in touchpads. Adblocking on everything!
Even if you have a device connected to your TV to block ads when you’re using Youtube, nothing prevents her from using the TV OS when she does.
You’re me but elsewhere it seems.
I don’t have a solution either unfortunately
Thank you for the recommendation and I’ll investigate this.
I haven’t personally used it, but a buddy likes it.
If your wife wants her familiar interface with ads, then she made the choice that you’re watching ads on YouTube on your TV.
I agree. Once my warranty expires or I get brave enough to tinker with the OS hopefully the “ads” part will no longer be relevant.
I totally get that, I have a few suggestions since I’ve been in the same situation for years and have recently improved it.
Our Yamaha stereo takes many HDMI inputs, and has a single TV output, so the TV never needs to change inputs. It’s quite easy and quick on the Yamaha.
I bought a Raspberry Pi 500 for ~$100 US and am loving it. I think it could use a speed upgrade (I hear the SD card will do it). Of course it’s mouse and keyboard, but we only use it for Netflix, YouTube, etc, so it was easy to make shortcuts and get a small/nice living room keyboard/mouse combo.
It’s led to zero ads, and the household discussion was like “would you trade some ease of use to not see this stupid ad?” And we both agreed that it’s worth it. So far it’s been really nice.
Living room? Logitech k400!
I’ve been eyeing this little gadget, maybe it would solve the inconvenience issue?
Logitech K400 on all my machines!
Thank you for the recommendation! I have, at this point, probably five forms of HDMI splitters, including at least two receivers (though admittedly no stereos). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get any of them working with the TV. I think, though I can’t confirm, that HDCP is the problem. The best I’ve managed to do is a multitude of sources plugged into the the splitter, but only two of them working; specifically my (original) switch and (also original) Steam Deck seem to be pretty recalcitrant.
I’m hoping the problem is the splitter / receiver. The new one, which promises HDCP compatibility, is set to arrive in four days. My fingers are metaphorically crossed. I’ve already replaced everything else but the consoles, so the next troubleshooting step, replacing the consoles, would be much more expensive.
Yes, certainly, fuck their ads; but that wont restore the degraded resolution now will it.
Browbeating people into buying services continues to be unpopular, film at 11.
13 per month. That’s over 100 per year. Did not expect it to be that expensive.
It is because it includes YouTube Music. A really crappy Spotify clone that nobody asked for.
I use both and find yt music is far better for discovering new music and artists and I love that it can play music from YouTube video as well. Everything else about it is worse though.
Which replaced Google Play Music, which was actually good.
Yeah that I think is the most upsetting part to me. Replace a perfectly fine product with a half baked one.
For some magical reason, YouTube music has less AI music than Spotify.
The playlists are significantly worse, but I haven’t really heard any AI Christmas music that has infested Spotify.
I unironically use ytmusic more than spotify because finding niche artists is a lot more easier, which is basically the entirety of edm and its many subgenres.
I use revanced though because I dont like google that much
The package for couples is 25. I save a dollar.
That’s almost one cent per video. Outrageous!
If you watch 43 videos per day on every day, yes…
Some of us go to work or school or whatever and can’t therefore do that every single day, especially not when the videos are longer…
Don’t assume Google et al. will ever consider enough people buy their subscription. There’s never enough money for these people.
A company isn’t successful in hyper capitalism unless they are accelerating the growth of their profits every year. They have to sell more products to existing users, acquire new paid users, charge more for their existing products, or they’re considered unsuccessful. The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth of the human race where success can only be achieved if every human alive is paying for every product offering possible, buying every upsell and microtransaction, freely giving their data to be sold so that more useless products can be created at minimum cost and sold at maximum price. But also hyper capitalism lobbies for less benefits, lower pay, etc. It inevitably collapses into neo-feudalism or just slavery
The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth
Cancer. Capitalism models cancer.
Google asking me for €13 a month? Their empire is built upon selling user data. Fuckers should be paying us.
And if you’re a content creator, you can opt in to allow your content to be used by AI… Without compensation. 🤡
At least that’s opt-in, unlike them using your Wi-Fi SSID to fine tune their location settings. Not only was that opt-out but you had to change your router settings (either change your SSID, which isn’t hard but shouldn’t be required, or hide your network, which alienated guests when mobile data wasn’t so ever present). I don’t even know if there’s still a (simple) way out.
But yes. The option you describe is clearly ridiculous.
The funny thing is, I’m nearly certain that it’s opt-in for their benefit (i.e. legal reasons) and not because it benefits the content creator, because it really doesn’t benefit the content creator at all! “Here’s my work. Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about paying.”.
I was happy to pay for youtube as a service until they broke the shit out of their algorithms and started shoving ads to my face in premium. Did a chargeback and got my money back. Fuck these monkeys.
Search is also completely broken on YouTube. It’s become useless.
That’s a nice way to lose access to all Google products, including your email account.
So far so good. The fuckers at youtube support acknowledged serving ads to me even with my premium membership, so they can suck a big fat dick.
Assuming they use Gmail in the first place
I got the 2 month free trial recently and have yet to see an ad with it. Don’t plan on continuing the service if I do see one.
Watch out for the “video suggestions” in your home feed with the title “introducing ….” These are product placements they make even with the premium subscription. I HATE ads so I pulled the plug.
yt-dlp and VLC still work. I’m good.
Do you use VLC to play the downloaded YT videos from yt-dl or is there some method to stream directly from a given YT url with VLC?
i beleive you can open a yt vid straight into vlc, not sure on the specifics of how its done tho sorry
People can’t afford yet another monthly bill.
It’s like walking in Trador Joes for snacks. Oh, hey, this is only $3! And look, this is only $5! Get to checkout: $130 please.
Seriously, that’s how this nickel and dime subscription crap works.
More like $126, if you know what I mean
This has been a thing for a while now, hasn’t it? I remember trying to watch the Noseferatu trailer a few months ago and seeing how shit it looked. Tried to up the quality only to see that it was paywalled
trailer
I mean, that’s an advertisement. I feel like if you’re going to watch an ad, that the company trying to sell the product should find a way to have the ad in full quality themselves.
It looks like the official website does use YouTube, though.
At least according to YouTube, the enhanced bitrate option is higher than 1080p normal has ever been
But what about the new normal 1080p? Has it been reduced?
No, at least according to YouTube
It’s obviously noticeable from the ones they don’t pull this shit on.
Personal experience, but I feel like it has. Especially on videos with a lot of still frames like 3blue1brown, you can see the still images become slightly better quality after all the animations stopped. I noticed a few months ago and saw 1080p premium as an option.
I’ve just seen it for the first time now. Might be because I’m situated in Europe? Or because I mostly don’t give a damn about the pixel count.
Possibly, I don’t think its on every video
Thought it was always that way.
It’s a year or two old at the most
Yes. And I thought that’s how it always had been.