I just tried to look up a specific video of a Nick Swardson stand up bit. All I searched was "Nick Swardson loitering". There were 5 fucking ads before an actual user posted video, then one real human posted video that barely had anything to do with Nick, then 5 more fucking ads.
I knew they were forcing ads into videos but clogging the entire search feed with ads is unfuckingbelievable.
Is this really what it's come to? Ads are more important than what I'm actually looking for? Are people really okay with this?
From my experience, if you're on iOS then Brave is the only browser I know of that includes a built-in adblocker (although I have my own issues with Brave).
If you're on Android, should be able to just install Firefox (or a fork like Fennec), tap the three dots in the app > Extensions > uBlock Origin
If you're otherwise using the YouTube app, I don't have much to add in that respect as I usually use Invidious or NewPipe.
Assuming you're on android, you can use this download link on your phone to download the .apk for NewPipe. This link is a direct download to install the app. (If you don't trust my link, you can got to newpipe.net yourself), so if you click it, it should immediately start downlaoading and you can follow the steps to install the app. It's pretty self explanatory.
It's a frontend for youtube that removes all ads. You can't comment or like, but you can subscribe to channels via NewPipe, just like you're used to in youtube. But no ads. You do not need to login, it is not tied to your youtube account.
Youtube doesn't like ad dodging frontends, so every once in while the app won't work and you'll need to go back to youtube (or a different alternative) for a day or two until the folks at NewPipe fix it again. It's kind of an arms race like that, but with advertising.
The internet with a proper ad blocker is a game changer. Take the five minutes to figure it out. You'll save more as free time than that on your first day.
Ironically, you could also YouTube how to install Firefox, then unlock.
I used to run a public TLS DNS server that would do some hardcore ad/tracking blocking. I shut it down when I switched myself, friends and family to a private Tailscale network with VPN on the exit nodes.
It was a little janky to manage but I still have the files laying around; my point is I could turn it back on. Since it’s DNS-based it applies to all websites and apps running on your devices, and with TLS it’s also encrypted so your ISP wouldn’t be able to track your DNS requests. You would however be trusting me, a random stranger with your queries.
The ad industry is truly one of the most reprehensible and insidious things humans have ever invited unto themselves. It's beyond dystopian how much of our ability to move through the world is now contingent on us allowing our brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.
I believe conspiracism is the root of all evil. But ads are gaining on conspiracism like they're Usain Bolt being chased by an angry bee.
I have to hand it to those soulless fucking devils though, they might have pulled off one of the most brazen but successful mindfucks I've ever seen: they convinced lots of people that seeing ads about topics they were interested in was some sort of concession from the ad industry, like they were begrudgingly implementing measures to make ads "relevant" to us, and that we were somehow gaming the system because of it. It was a "win" for us to have the ads being served into our eyeballs and ears be tailor-made for us. "I'm so sick of seeing ads for products I don't even care about! I wish there was a way to make the ads be relevant to ME" said no cunt ever. But they managed to convinced us that everyone else was saying that, and that we'd won some sort of victory against them to have their advertising have the precision of a sniper rifle, versus what it was before, like some sort of shotgun fired from 150 feet away in the dark.
brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.
and like 90% of people think they're completely impervious to ads lol
I have been using adblockers for decades already. And it’s been that long since I had to see ads. Occasionally some site will have some way of it getting through but even then I have the plugin scan and it sometimes can start blocking it. Essentially, my internet has been 95% ad-free and frankly I am surprised when I encounter anyone who doesn’t do the same.
I've used an adblocker for ages as well, though I do wish content creators on YouTube could get some passive non-membership revenue from me without me having to disable my adblock and look directly into the Ark of the Covenant. I could get Premium, but at that point, I feel like I've negotiated with a terrorist.
Remember that time when YT started showing banner ads below the video? Yeah, that was like just after the dinosaurs were wiped out and before blockchains became a thing. I was a long time ago, ok. Anyway, that’s when I was about to quit watching YT, but then I suddenly discovered the wonderful world of ad-blocking. Turns out, YT became watchable again.
That and all the people who say shit like “But I have to watch the ads to support the creators”, like there wasn’t 70 years of TV advertisements preceding this generation. I know I’m talking to a kid when someone says that. No one thought they were stealing from Burt Reynolds if they didn’t buy a Chrysler or tampons. It’s absurd.
The link between conspiracies and ads is way stronger than that. The ad industry really went into high gear following WWII when the people working on pumping out propaganda to drive their own side of the war stepped up the game by applying psychology, new media, and a bigger budget.
Those people and techniques then moved to the commercial market when the war ended and applied their trade to peddle us the crap their customers wanted to sell. Make us feel bad if we don't buy product X and go on an endless consumption treadmill to try to feel good and adequate about ourselves.
It is despicable and even worse with ads targeting children.
I could not agree more with your eloquently-written poignant rant, but I cannot resist being an extreme pedant—a shotgun fired at 150ft has a very small spread.
Is that really how it works? I feel like the whole ad based economy is a sham anyway, I wouldn't mind if it collapsed and we funded websites through micropayments or gift economy
9 times out of 10 the ads have zero effect on my ability to search for things.
I'm not saying searches haven't gotten worse but until this specific thing or Google's ai search it's been easy to ignore if you know what you're doing.
I remember being that guy.
It never gets better, ads only ever get worse. If you are successfully ignoring ads then they aren't doing their job, and they will keep trying different ways to get your attention until you get sick of this shit and get an ad blocker.
You have found a specific thing that would improve, save yourself the hassle and get ublock now to fix this for you as well as a dozen other little things you are "living with" that will be much better when they're gone.
I take it you haven't been paying attention. The term that has been it coined is called "enshitification" and the Google is running at the head of the pack in their race to the sewer.
We should probably stop using that word and just call it by it's proper name, "Capitalism”. The only way for an ad revenue based business to drive growth is to force more and more ads on users, and flood their platform with bots to increase engagement numbers.
No, I just don't; the profanity is part of the point. It's meant to convey the magnitude of the deliberate running of the quality of the things in order to feed the bottomless hunger of the capitalist abomination ruling over all of our lives.
yes, but their results are trash now. shows you 5 results, then 10 or things you've probably already seen completely unrelated to the search, then random "trending" garbage.
Enshittification is a re-prioritization pattern where online product and service providers experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. This process results in a significant deterioration of the user experience.
Though the concept had been recognized and labeled with similar terms,[1][2] the neologism "enshittification" was coined by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022 to describe this phenomenon. The American Dialect Society recognized the term's relevance and impact by selecting it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also referred to this concept as platform decay, emphasizing the inevitable decline in service quality due to these profit-driven changes.
To tackle and diminish enshittification, Doctorow advocates for two fundamental solutions: upholding the end-to-end principle and guaranteeing the right of exit. The end-to-end principle asserts that platforms should transmit data in response to user requests rather than algorithm-driven decisions. Ensuring the right of exit entails facilitating user departure from platforms without data loss, which necessitates interoperability. These strategies aim to uphold the standards and trustworthiness of online platforms, placing emphasis on user satisfaction and encouraging market competition.
That one is a Olympic copyright issue. Either NBC since they pay so much for the rights or the IOC flag videos immediately so all your left with is low quality videos.
It genuinely ruins trying to find Olympics content if NBC doesn't cover that specific event
why would you ever copyright video clips of the olympics though, nobody fucking pays for cable or has time to watch streams. And we're also only talking about like 2 minutes worth of content, I'm pretty certain that would be fair use.
Thank you for this. I watched the whole thing. It's undeniable that Raygun can do a lot of things I can't, but her performance paled in comparison with the other competitors. Three four times I got the goosebumps when the other competitors did truly amazing moves!
This is to be expected, Google does the same thing with their search engine; delay providing the most accurate and related results in order to get users to see more ads per search.
Raygun is the best, but I also failed to find it and I have YouTube Red (or whatever Google calls it now). The Olympics was on that feed like hoss on some slop.
yeah idk i thought some of what she did was pretty good, she demonstrates good control, i think she mainly needs to work on fluidity and transitions though, some of them were awful.
How does peertube work exactly? If I host an instance do I need massive storage on my server to host all the videos or is it distributed amongst the other instances? Do I have control of what videos I host on my instance? I'd hate to be hosting and helping spread Nazi propaganda (or any propaganda for that matter).
AFAIK if you open an instance videos are hosted in your instance, and may be replicated in other instances via Federation.
Also it supposedly can work p2p if mutiple users are watching the same video it distributed the download. In my experience nowadays it always end using http download.
Moderation an everything about ita users fall into the instance host and moderators. I don't know if you can do an approval system, I would suppose so, but I'm not certain.
Most peertube instances are isolated from most of the other instances to avoid hosting a ton of videos. Honestly, your instance doesn't have to federate with other peertube instances since most people leave comments from other fediverse apps
You should not use anything from Opera. The company is chasing trends, and its most successful ventures in recent history have been ripping off poor people in developing countries and marketing to gamers with a meme social media account. The company's failed experiments have been abandoned without directly informing users, leaving them at increased risk of security problems.
As far as an actual browser goes, Brave is based on Chromium so its more likely to work on every site but it has a bunch of crypto nonesense added that you probably would want to uninstall. There are more extensions that will "just work" on Chromium browsers, for example I've had issues with the Postman extension on Firefox before
Firefox is based on Gecko, its pretty well supported and follows all the standards but there is probably a higher chance that a site might break (usually down to its pretty strict privacy defaults) there isn't really much bloat (other than a Pocket integration that you might want to turn off)
Mozilla also feel (to me at least) like one of the last groups of Good People on the web, you can reach their manifesto to learn more.
Also, search on YouTube has been utterly broken for years. You get at most 4 or 5 results and then a random series of videos that are completely unrelated to my search query.
It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you have to click through 10 shitty videos before finding the one you're looking for, that's 10x more engagement to sell to advertisers.
uBlock in Firefox for Android. Not a single ad. Anywhere. Add Background Play Fix and you can play audio from video even when you switch apps or turn the screen off. For any video platform.
Invidious was created due to this, it’s an extremely light weight, ad free YouTube front-end. Most of YouTube’s attempts at blocking it out fixed within a week. Try it now: https://invidious.io/
uBlock Origin (with WaterFox web browser - cannot stress this combo enough.)
Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended & Shorts
YouTube High Definition
Privacy Bager (also super important)
If you get any of these, you block origin with waterfox is a very powerful combination for YouTube and general browsing on the internet. Couple all that with privacy badger and you'll be relatively okay.
There are a lot of other stuff out there. Just browse through the Firefox extension plug-in store or whatever it is and they'll all be there.
Aside from adblocking making youtube actually usable, there's been such a notorious increase in enforcement of DRM.
I couldn't watch jack anything related to Olympics because NBC got youtube to spam remove practically any footage, as if I'm going to spend cash money on their shitty streaming platform to find a 30 second clip. Same thing for any ICC highlights. Only 360p widened 2 minute videos get past the filter.
Almost no such thing as public replays, clips, montages, or highlights anymore. It all gets boxed up in some corporate ownership, never to be seen again aside from the live footage.
funnily enough I was able to watch olympic replays on one of my city's (Hong Kong) official broadcast YouTube channels, specifically HOY TV, but all the commentary is in cantonese. But it's also region locked (I just tested it by trying a US VPN) so you need a VPN to a Hong Kong server.
Odysee just removed all ads of their platform and seems like a great YouTube alternative. I've been using it and uploading videos to it and I'm liking it a lot.
The comments are also much higher in quality. I'd say it's comparable like Lemmy and Reddit. Much more positivity and people who actually add something to a video. You do ofcourse have a few Nazis hanging around, but freedom goes both ways and you don't really come across them.
Besides that just use NewPipe on mobile or an AdBlocker.
Long answer: As more and more ad sales started rolling in, YT was like: “Yes please! Can I have some more of that sweet sweet ad money?” Advertisers were like: “Yeah, sure why not. That seems to boost sales, so how much money can we dump into this black hole?” Some users were like: “WTF! I’m installing an adblocker.”
Meanwhile, nobody was like: “Yes please. I want to see more ads. Who cares about the videos as long as there are lots of ads to watch. This is the best thing ever!”
It's more like... YT realised they would never be profitable selling ads and needed a subscription model. No one wants to pay for a subscription so to improve the perceived value of the subscription they need to make the free offering unbearable.
Looks nice! A little too bare-bones and missing some features but thanks for putting it on my radar. I'm currently bouncing between duckduckgo and SearXNG.
Honest question....I've given Rumble a couple of tries. Every visit it seems super right-wing. And I don't mean conservative viewpoints with which I disagree, but full-blown conspiracy lunacy, hard-right fearmongering titles designed to enrage the conservative mind. That's all that shows up in recommended/trending when I visit. I don't have an account and pretty sure it's not tracking my preferences. Is that just what it is, or have I fallen into someone else's echo chamber somehow?
For reference, title at the top of the feed right now:
Taylor Swift Worships Satan (my favorite)
The Deep State's New Plan to Steal 2024
Why is "Conservative" Fox News Covering for Kamala
I never thought I’d say it, but I don’t even use YouTube anymore. I might go there once a month to watch a tute, but only if I absolutely can’t find help from any other website.
The tides will turn though. I've been denouncing google for years, and I've find it quite striking how the pushback has disappeared recently. It use to be that any negative comment about google was met by a small army of google fans. That just isn't the case any more.
I get it, some things are not easily replaceable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take active steps to cut ties. The biggest steps for me was uninstalling the obnoxious default install on my phone and subscribing to an actual music service.
Going to youtube isn't taboo, for me, just with the app un-installed I have to make the conscious decision to browse the site. The site is also much less convenient; making the experience mostly untenable. People existed before youtube and will exist after. The point isn't to cripple them but to hit them hard enough so they can reflect on their dopamine pushing business practices.
Playeur is alright, they need a few more big creators to join, but some of my favorite firearms channels have gone over there, and I discovered a botany channel on there I had never seen before.
It didn't work out so well for Perk when they paid you to watch ads. But then again I was making $100 a week from my phone farm back in the day. Had 30 phones earning points at a time.
{does Nick Swardson loitering search} {scrolls...} {thinking face} "i don't see what their on about most of this looks relevant..." {looks at Ublock notification bubble} *** {66 blocked}*** "oh... oh my."
Everyone say to use an AdBlock.
And while for now they work it's a lose battle.
Youtube ads vs adblockers does not have the happy ending of adblockers just always prevailing.
As now embedded serverside ads are a pain to deal with. I don't know if any adblock currently can surpass those.
But next step will be youtube just putting a fence up and not letting you watch content unless you are registered, and thus banning any suspicious activity, or even just becoming a paid service.
The only win here is moving to a open platform like Peertube. That's the only future we can ensure. Adblocks won't be able to always win.
As now embedded serverside ads are a pain to deal with. I don’t know if any adblock currently can surpass those.
But next step will be youtube just putting a fence up and not letting you watch content unless you are registered, and thus banning any suspicious activity, or even just becoming a paid service
Honestly, I have not seen youtube ads in ages. Every now and then, when I have taken sufficient leave of my senses after having imbibed, I may attempt to view something on youtube using a device without an ad blocker, and then I am quickly and sharply reminded of what a dumpster fire that is. But on PC - no sir or madam, no ads at all, thank you very much.
Personally, I think the much bigger problem of sites like youtube and tiktok are the unforgivably horrible "recommendations". You search for something innocent or even just open the website, and you are recommended random closetted or open fascism, misogynie, racism, or other garbage.
Even without the ads, the algorithm is so crap that I doubt you would find what you were looking for. On an iPhone you either pay for Premium for a shitty service or try building and sideloading uYouPlus. Adguard + Safari works to an extent and Brave might work better but haven’t tried it.
The recommendation algo works pretty well for me, and I don't know why!
I'm a gun nut, watch tons of guntubers, so you would think I'd be overrun with right-wing crap, but I'm not. At all.
It's annoying to watch a single video outside my typical interests and get a bunch of the same. But having said that, those recommendations quickly fade. For example, I was watching outdoor survival videos for a bit, predictably got hit with plenty more. But those are long gone.
Watched several videos about choosing and using gas masks one night. Here comes the survivalist, right-wing shit! But it didn't really go that way. And again, faded fast.
I know this is an incredibly unpopular take on Lemmy, but YT Premium is the best value subscription on the web by my reckoning. I watch an absolute fuck ton of content on YT, and I listen to an absolute fuck ton of music on YT music. And my partner does too.
If you don't use YT enough to justify the cost of the sub, I understand being frustrated with the ads but it's a free service. I can't imagine the amount of data that YT serves daily to free users.
Extorted? Why are you so dramatic? It's a service I'm happy to pay for.
I use ad blockers too. But I also don't mind paying for a good service. The cost of the service is worth it to me for the conveniences it offers. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't pay for it, but I also wouldn't be complaining about something I'm not paying for.
Yeah I'm with you on this, I actually only got it for YouTube music — which really is like "here you can play any song from the history of humanity and also yt video audios." Well actually what happened is I was using Google Music and then the assholes shut it down and merged it into YT Music which is now roughly on par. I was pissed, but user retained
But I have been enjoying the fact that my subscription goes towards paying the ppl I watch, and I like that I'm unaffected by YT's server side ads concept (which I've always wondered why they don't do, I think it makes CDNs too hard to optimize while stitching ads directly into videos)
I'm the same regarding Spotify. Only service I pay for, but I'm happy to do so for now. Not even a big music listener, but it's damned nice to hear anything I want, anywhere I want, for a small fee.
My most frequent use case is off in the boondocks. I can download a dozen playlists to my phone and play them all offline.
And this is coming from a guy that used to download 20 song fragments off Usenet and compile them to get a single MP3. Also, I still steal all my video content.
Same. I originally got it for YT music. I don't listen to as much music as I used to without a commute anymore, but my wife and I watch a ton of YouTube. And it's mildly more difficult to block ads on the Roku too. I know pi holes exist, but my wife plays those freemium games that give you currency for watching ads and blocking all ads will break shit for her and then I have to fix it. Someone will tell me there's an easy solve I'm sure, but honestly the subscription is just way easier and I really don't mind paying. $16/mo for a family plan is 100% worth it to just not deal with all of that.
What I'm amazed about is that ads even work at all. Especially when they are white noise. I've never once clicked on an ad to go see more about the content because I'm here to watch a video.
Yeah, I've got to imagine as you cram more ads into a platform the effectiveness of the ads drops dramatically. Especially once users start leaving from being overwhelmed by ads.
if you want that without the "un" prefix, then youtube is maybe just the wrong platform for you.
and i strongly believe that youtube "wants" to force more usage of peertube, vimeo and others by enshitting yt every day a bit more. and they really work hard for that.
I've got a friend who thinks his YouTube Red subscription helps his subs make a living... So yes, this is what people like my retarded friend are bringing all of us.
I caved and subscribed during the 2020 elections. Got tired of seeing two old dipshits yell at each other in ads. Actually enjoyed it enough to keep paying $12 a month.
All these comments about adblockers - you’re truly naive if you think those are going to last in any capacity.
Chrome/Edge are already going to be neutering the majority of the functionality with manifest v3.
Firefox is already starting to see some commercialization/enshitification with this new exec. Adblocker days are numbered. Soon they’ll be streaming the ads in-line with the videos everywhere and you’ll need to have a special hacked up rig just to content filter and be forced to sit in silence for X minutes.
Just because the problem is at your neighbors house, doesn’t mean it won’t come to yours.
I got both of those. I've been with YouTube since it came out and was called YouTube red however many years ago. My family plan has 5 or 6 slots. Between YouTube music and the video side and how many other family get to use it it's an insane value. Plus half the money goes back to the creators I watch. I can't find a single downside to paying.
I've been experiencing a ton of buffering issues lately trying to use YouTube with uBlock Origin. I'm pretty much on the brink of subscribing myself too. It's by far the most valuable online platform for me and I've used it for free well over a decade. It was a good run and I'm not even mad.
Not to mention a good portion of the sub goes back to all the creators you watch. People don't want YouTube to make money for hosting costs, and people don't want creators to make money for making video through ads. Really weird expectations.
You're doing exactly what they want you to do then. Why not try some alternatives for ad-free watching like Newpipe or Freetube or some such? Youtube is not worthy of your hard-earned cash...