this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 146 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I haven't watched an ad on youtube for at least the last 5 years. Ad blocking is cyber security.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They have been pushing adblock detecting technologies in some regions. I'm preparing for having to stop using Youtube when they roll it out here.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here in Austria I get the anti adblocker message every single time I visit so I don't care much anymore and just dropped it. I'm rather watching shows now lol

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Also in Austria here and no ads for me with uBlock Origin + DNS block on my firewall.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What adblocker are you using? I'm also in Austria but haven't got it

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Luckily Libretube and Piped still work so I haven't had to visit the normal Youtube site in ages, I do know Youtube increased their aggression towards third party frontends too tho so we will see how long the Newpipe extractor will work I guess!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think you’ll be losing out on much. Their algorithm has gone to shit recently and finding anything new has become a chore.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

Ad blocking is basic hygiene at this point.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I recently had to adjust ublock origin manually after ads started popping up on youtube.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I read this as "YouTube will push even harder for non-skippable ads, and content creators can't stop them anymore"

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (11 children)

That's because that's what it says. They're hardly trying to hide it.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I'm getting the feeling that within the next five years I'm going to be abandoning YouTube and just living without video content going forward.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Check out PeerTube.

Smart content creators have been setting up websites, Patreons, merchandise shops, and all they need to jump ship when YouTube finally capsizes. The likely/easy/inexpensive alternative for content creators, is PeerTube.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm old enough to remember when none of this stuff existed. I have a threshold Beyond which I simply stop using the service.

I'm actually pretty close to my lifestyle from before 1995. I don't have any cable I have basic internet I don't do any of the Music Services. Video-wise I only have Prime and any free services I can get on Chromecast for TV. I'm getting close to my threshold with prime, as the annual fee is getting real high.

I'm already starting to lose interest in most YouTube channels. It's not so bad here, really. I get to experience reality more.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I seriously wish Patreon would improve the UI because I can see that being where I get my videos. Until then, Nebula is where most of my favorite creators are flocking.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Does anyone else ever notice that the changes like this they make are done piece mail, brick by brick ,they continue to shitify the service. That's intentional...Imagine you tube in the year 2009. I'm betting no one really remembers, and youtube made the same bet.

How many things have they taken away that users really like over the years think about it. Now imagine they did all those changes AT ONCE...TODAY... from 2005 at inception. Horrifying huh ?

Big companies always start off with an amazing array of "Standard Features" that they allow everyone to use, so that the users get hooked on them, then suddenly they make an announcement like this and they change, remove, or premium tier a feature. They know you wont like it... but they got you hooked and they know it and they dont care. It's all driven at profiteering as much as they can off of you. Honestly I see youtube trying to become like Netflix by continuing to increase inconvenience with ads (for their profit), and ultimately making Youtube a completely payed service subscription to everyone.

They gaslight the great majority into just giving in to more ads, shittier service, and eventually a payed subscription by breaking your outrage up into small little pieces over time. STOP LETTING THEM !

Edit: So yeah Twitter/X as predicted.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Boiling the frog is one of Google's favorite strategies

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm glad nebula exists as a good alternative for educational content. It has successfully replaced much of the time I previously spent on YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would be nice if they started recruiting people who create tutorials too. It’s almost impossible to find video tutorials on blender outside of YouTube and now tiktok

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Oh man if they brought over quality tutorial channel I'd probably just use them from now on

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Big Same. I’ve had it for three years now and it’s been really great to see a YouTube alternative actually flourish and survive. My subscription is almost due, and they have a lifetime option for $250 (normally $300, I think the discount is for my last years fee) that I’m sorely tempted by.

Edit: Just to note, so no one’s put off from subscribing, the current rate is $30/year. It was $50 last year. Which does mean the lifetime pass is 10 years at the current rate. But if they’re successful, that rate’s not going to stay static for all of that time. Not trying to be a shill for them, but if you like any of the creators on there it’s a good way of supporting them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just bought the lifetime option.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Anyways both Nebula and Curiositystream have lifetime subscriptions available right now... 90% of my YouTube viewing is from creators on those sites anyway

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've had several lifetime subscriptions that have been made into paid monthly subscriptions. Lifetime subscription is a gamble that I have yet to see pay off.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@weew @mastermind I already subscribed to Nebula and Curiositysreams, but hadn't heard of that offer. Can you tell more?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nebula: pay $300 once, lifetime access. They had it up for a week on a trial run a while ago, and they decided to bring it back for now.

curiosity stream: I think I found a deal on Stack Social, + coupon, that worked out to $180. The basic 1080p format only. Again, pay once, lifetime access.

The payoff time for Nebula is around 8 years (not counting possible price increases in the future), so you'll have to have faith that they'll last that long. I hope they do though. Curiositystream is obviously less. Then again, the immediate cash infusion they get from this can also help them survive/expand faster.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Around Black Friday time they have had sales and you get both for a year for around 20€ so the lifetime subscription doesn’t look so much of an attractive deal.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Doesn’t matter. People will still eat that shit up! YouTube is the best example of Stockholm syndrome I’ve ever seen. This shit should be taught about in schools.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's much more banal. YouTube is simply a monopoly abusing its market power. People would use alternatives if they existed.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

They exist!

  1. Peertube
  2. Odysee
  3. Rumble Above is just a few of them.
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They are not alternatives because they don't have content. Streaming video is fairly trivial. Having content is not.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Streaming video is NOT trivial.

Video files are big. There's so much costs involved in hosting, compression, transcoding, distributing across CDNs, and serving, that "free" tiers on those services are just not feasible long-term. Even a multi-billion corporation like Google/Alphabet was only willing to burn cash on that for so long.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

While it's been hard to find good stats, something to the effect of several hundreds of hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Processing, storing, and streaming that is not remotely a trivial task.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The problem is that there is no valid alternative at the moment, so I wouldn't call that Stockholm sybdrome. Hosting that much content for free costs ungodly amounts of money to Google

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No valid alternative isn’t an excuse to continue consuming shit. That’s abused wife mentality.

Just leave. You don’t need an alternative.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've massively reduced my time spent with youtube over the last year or so when I noticed that the overall experience was just getting worse and worse.

Previously I'd watch a video, and from there jump to another interesting video, and so on - now pretty much all the top level suggestions are useless already, and it's rare that after watching a video you get something worth watching recommended.

I assume it's not just youtubes fault - while I do think youtube is pushing those videos even from people I used to like I now see more videos where they go on for 20 minutes about something that should've been said in 3 minutes max.

I now almost exclusively use youtube to watch videos from people I've subscribed years ago, and as they either become annoying to go with youtubes algorithm, or eventually stop/slow uploading my usage goes down. Nowadays I often enough don't open youtube for two weeks, while previously there rarely was a day without checking at least a few videos.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

now pretty much all the top level suggestions are useless already, and it's rare that after watching a video you get something worth watching recommended.

Ok people, time to decide. Do you want targeted recommendations or do you want privacy?

Because the only way for YouTube to figure out what you may find interesting today is to go through your watch history, rummage through your engagement metrics, and suck up your profile details. Then collate and process a ton of data about you and your preferences, compare that knowledge against a vast library of channels & streams to try and figure out what would likely make you click on a given video. All while fighting spam, misinformation, and people trying to game the system with SEO and clickbait. All in real-time, as over 300,000 hours of content is being uploaded every minute.

To be clear, I'm not defending YouTube or Google. I'm just saying it's not all cut-and-dried as many people think.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

what would likely make you click on a given video [...] while fighting [...] clickbait

While most of the rest is true, clickbait makes you click, so it isn't something YouTube necessarily wants to combat.

Same with "rage-bait", or content that you'll click on just because it's so preposterous that you'd want to criticize it in the comments.

Both are trash, yet not against YouTube's interests.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Insane that there are still people who aren't using adblock these days lol.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They will lose control of the pre roll and post roll ads but maintain control of the ad breaks during the video. This is actually a smart change and data driven.

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