Thanks, Google. I was trying to cut down my usage of YouTube.
What are the best Fedi alternatives?
Not fediverse, but Nebula is good
I don’t think it’s fedi but I like odysee
When I checked the Fedi alternatives were far-right hangouts. Part of that unfortunate “free speech absolutist” == “asshole” phase.
It’s not Fediverse but I like Nebula. It’s more like a co-op so I don’t mind paying for it at all.
Invidious if you don’t wanna install a bunch of software
I mean alternative platforms, not alternative ways to use YouTube (although this looks useful in the meantime, so thanks anyway)
Nebula sound promising.
I like nebula but it is pretty limited. Its mostly educational and essay type stuff. For the price it is amazing and the only streaming platform i have anymore. But i dont know if id call it a youtube alt unless you only watch that type of video. They have a handful of other things too but the variety just isnt there yet. The other thing i both like and dislike is the lack of comments.
I do recommend it though. Crazy affordable, owned by the creators, ad free. Just kind of niche still
What are the best Fedi alternatives?
Peertube, but lacks content.
If that’s the only issue, then it’s good enough.
It’s what Lemmy was when I started up after reddit killed their 3rd party apps. Like a year later Lemmy exploded
Peertube it is, then.
Pure greed.
Grayjay, feetube, Smartube, Newpipe etc etc…
deleted by creator
It’s all fine and fun until Google prevents people from installing third party APKs in a few months…
Can they? Because I’ve got a modified YouTube ipa on my iPhone and that’s more closed than Android could ever become in the span of the next few months.
Where can I find more info about this .ipa?
I don’t remember the exact procedure for this, but here’s the summary. You’ll first want to install sidestore or sidestore + livecontainer. Computer needed for that. You’ll also want a stock YouTube ipa file that you can then mod with YouTube Plus or similar utility.
You’ll have to update livecontainer (if you installed it) and YouTube every 7 days unless you have a dev license but Sidestore does it with a single button press in-app so it’s not that inconvenient. You can install ipas within sidestore (limited amount at a time) or livecontainer (as many as you want I believe, but it’s more complicated) without connecting to a computer once the initial setup is done
Invidious
they wont. thats just bs. there will be advanced flow to use ,and adb to install.
For us advanced users true, but for the bulk of people where ”just use this app instead” has worked previously, will not do it anymore. Whole lotta more hoops to jump through and google knows many will not be able to.
There will be an advanced flow for now, maybe (they didn’t explain how it will work). But our freedom is getting restricted nonetheless
I clearly need to up my adblock game. But do y’all also use PeerTube, Nebula, Curiosity Stream? Happy to vote with dollars if there’s a good candidate.
Nebula is pretty good and I’m happy to support creators making quality content.
UBlock Origin on Firefox murders all YouTube ads. Works great. Would recommend.
My issue with those sites is that since they’re not direct mirrors, they don’t have a dedicated archive. And since archive.org has stopped saving youtube videos, that could lead to a lot of lost media. It’s a cultural cornerstone that’s been around for nearly two decades. If I can’t access 15 year old YGOTAS videos then it’s just not a viable replacement to me lol
I’ve been using grayjay lately and when it needs to play an unskipable add you just get a nice looking blank screen to look at instead.
deleted by creator
If they just made the ads unintrusive people wouldn’t bother installing adblockers. But sure make the ads longer and see what happens.
If they made ads unobtrusive they wouldn’t be able to charge as much for them.
Exactly, people used to love ads. They would sit down and watch hour long compilation videos of the funniest and weirdest ones. People would get hyped for shit like Old Spice and Skittles and never skip it. Even the Superbowl was less entertaining than the ads it had and that was a mainstream opinion.
It’s the exact same as the boomers who keep crowing “Why doesn’t anyone wanna work?!” but now it’s “Why doesn’t anyone want ads?!” lmao
Most people still would.
I personally wouldn’t, that’s why I use Adblock Plus. But there’s a reason everyone started hating on ABP when it started allowing non-intrusive ads by default. Most people do not want to see ads at all, no matter what.
It’s like you don’t care about stonks and shareholder value.
I care about those things.
I want them to go down faster >:)
Also changed how ads are served so they wouldn’t be a known security issue. Intrusive or not I will block all of them until security improves.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again.
As an IT guy I consider an adblocker an essential part of my computer security suite.
I will not reconsider until there are laws in place forcing website owners to take legal and financial responsibility for any damage sustained to my computer when visiting their site, and loading their ads.
IF the laws are changed like that, I would reconsider getting rid of my adblocker, ai still wouldn’t but I would reconsider the issue.
deleted by creator
Back in the day it was just some stuff, like “bosch screwdrivers, 29.90” or something, now it’s attention grabbing hyper annoying crap, who can even live with that?
Wrong. Still would.
Nah, take a look at the stats of the number of people who tried out an adblocker for the first time when Youtube attempted to ban them several months back. Streisand Effect in action.
Time to double down on the adblocks, then. I get it conceptually, but I still don’t understand this need for infinite growth at everyone’s expense.
Right? If I don’t otherwise pay for the service then sure, some ads are fine. Problem is that at this point I’m seeing ads every few minutes, and if the video restarts in a weird spot and reloads funny after I reopen my laptop I might even get the same ads looping after literally two seconds of video.
Also, I was paying for the service and then they gave a fuckload of support to Israel to spread propaganda so I stopped.
We’ve got a business model that didn’t even exist 25 years ago, and we’re making insane money!
How can we fuck it up?
Remember when Google was “not evil”? :(
Do the right thing!
But like all corporations once that IPO went through they abandoned any semblance of morality at the alter of obscene profit.
yt pops up that ‘slowdowns? read more…’ nag while i’m not watching the ad. make me feel special
The slowdown is becsuse the adblocker had to take an additional 0.002 seconds to block the ads.
seems to pause for 5-10 seconds, while the ad plays out of sight. i can wait
What are ‘ads’? 🤷🏼
I dunno. Some strange relic from the 1980s?
Kidding aside, it’s shocking how bad raw YT is. We watch it via Smartube (or PipePipe as needed). I can’t believe people watch “raw” youtube…it’s unwatchable.
If they ever quash SmartTube and PipePipe…well…I imagine Peertube, Nebula, Libby and Curiosity stream will suddenly become a great deal more popular.
I don’t think the powers that be fully grasp the (very delicate) knife edge they walk. They only stay in business so long as they aren’t annoying enough to be replaced. Actually, who am I kidding - they know that exactly and play the delicate “gently gently” boil frogs in a pot game like grandmasters.
The ads seem to be pretty variable depending on usage so I suspect not everyone is seeing the same thing. I rarely use YouTube in any form. When I do and I’m rawdogging it for whatever reason, it seems like I get a few short ads, like 30s or less. They’re annoying but not awful.
A friend keeps YouTube running constantly on his TV in the background while he works. He gets so many ads and they’re so long! Like several minutes of ads, mostly unskippable, over the course of a 15 minute video. I don’t know how people deal with that shit.
Man, they must LOVE people like him!
Surely, he must know he’s actively contributing to the issue. No?
I would be shocked if he cared. It’s just not amongst his concerns.
laughs in uBlock Origin
On your TV?
I have a script that takes a YT URL on my clipboard and uses yt-dlp to download it to my Jellyfin folder so I can watch on my Apple TV on The Big Telly.
Fuck adverts.
If you’ve got a VPN, just install that on your Apple TV. Google doesn’t show ads in certain countries (the list is Googleable). That was an absolute game changer for me.
I haven’t tried it personally, but have heard good things:
Smart tube is GOATED.
I use an Apple TV, but I assume it’s the same as any other streaming box or appropriate smart TV.
The absolute piece-of-piss way to block all YouTube ads on it is to install a VPN like Proton, choose a relevant country (easily googleable), and there will be no ads whatsoever in YouTube.
Google doesn’t serve ads on YouTube in a handful of countries.
Probably a fair percentage of users block þeir smart TVs from connecting to þe internet.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but I’m running SmartTube on an Nvidia Shield here. Works amazing.
It astonishes me that the shield is still the best of the streaming boxes after all these years.
its still very capable, but best depends. iirc there are certain audio formats the shield doesnt support.
i personally would love a new shield using ~switch 2 soc just so i can move emulation/lower end pc onto it.
What format does the shield not support that other boxes do support?
I went to go look it up for my old setup, turns out its mainly for the older models, as the codecs are only supported on the newer revisions of the shield tv.
though with the shield tv, one of the missing things that would be nice to have would be AV1 support (as Nvidia only supported AV1 starting with Ampere based gpus)
It’s so versatile. One of the last great products Nvidia came up with before shooting up AI crack.
There are some options on some TVs. WebOS has an app which can be sideloaded.
deleted by creator
I mean there are ways, like pihole, but I like the simple option of a really long hdmi cable that I use to plug my computer into the TV, so I never have to use any of the shitty built in TV apps.
Edit: not pihole, apparently.
I would love to run a long hdmi cable from my pc to my tv, but I have rabbits and they like the spicy hay
Look for an armored HDMI cable. They are wrapped in a steel jacket. Conduit is also an option.
Conduit is probably the best option, I just haven’t done anything with it yet. And I might have to convince partner to cut some holes in the wall to make that work. I’ll eventually figure it out.
Oh no, I feel that, we had an orange kitty who adored his electric spaghetti! We had to run cables through that tube conduit stuff everywhere >.<
Oh the orange ones are the most fun. I had a couple oranges as a kid and they were so sweet and so dumb. I loved them lol
So I was watching Forrest Gump and he’s running through the jungles of Viet Nam. All of a sudden he stops running. And I know that’s not right because he hasn’t rescued “him” yet.
Turns out my jerk face rabbit chewed through the Ethernet cable.
Rabbits do love that spicy hay.
And we love them even with their destructive habits. I love my two babies 😊
When he was still with us, we loved our jerk face too.
Rabbit Tax:
What a handsome fella he was! Thank you for sharing.
Here are my buns
Yeah I unsmarted my TV and just threw Mint on an old laptop. FreeTube works great on there.
pihole hasn’t worked for years to block youtube ads, no?
What, it works for me? Put on an 8 hour video while doing chores and had ads every 5 minutes. Filled with rage I installed pihole and no more ads.
I’m curious how. Maybe a different region? I don’t have Pihole anymore but it didn’t use to do anything for me for YouTube. Luckily we have uBlock.
Maybe? My region is Sweden. I really haven’t had any ads on YouTube since installing pihole. “Works on my machine”
You’re correct. Pihole works at the DNS level. Since YouTube hosts their ads on the same servers that host their videos, blocking the ads with DNS would also block the videos. Which I guess it technically works to block YT ads, but that’s a little like saying “set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
I thought so too, but maybe I missed something new with Pihole/YT Ads.
Honestly, I’ve not used it, I just know of it. From a quick search it looks like you’re right tho, you’d probably need to use an external device like an android box or something.
I have this thing called a DisplayPort cable. So yes, uBlock origin on my TV.
Edit: I’m realizing this might be coming across really shitty, but i promise I’m just intending some tongue-in-cheek dry joking.
/me chuckles in umatrix
Actually, YouTube is cracking down on adblockers.
So while you might not feel the pain now, you will eventually.
There’s always a workaround…
Firefox + uBlock Origin has worked well for years.
+1 combo. privacy badger, ublock origin and umatrix for fine tuning. also a youtube specific addon. seems okay
What’s a YouTube specific add on?
Are these from reliable sources? I’m always hesitant with extensions as they are given a lot of access and often seem to be from shady sources.
then theres this yt related thing. don’t think it does much
++ SponsorBlock and you got chef’s kiss
Because they don’t put the effort in.
Add a simple “the video isn’t served until the ad’s length has elapsed” and suddenly your only workaround is to spend 30s staring at a black screen.
Deal.
Better than ads
They’ve been “cracking down on adblockers” for over a decade
“They” have also been trying to prevent consumers/us from taking ownership of our devices and data for the last 2-decades.
… and, ya know what? It’s working.
Cracking down just means I don’t watch the content, still not getting ads.
The day I have to watch ads is the same day I stop youtube. So far ad blocks seem to work well for now and I’m more than willing to spend hours getting them working if needed.
When it reaches that point I’ll stop watching YouTube. I will never feel the pain they inflict.
The moment I’m unable to watch YouTube ad-free is the moment I never watch YouTube again.
Nah, if Youtube blocks adblockers then I’ll just waste my time elsewhere.
deleted by creator
real maybe I’ll actually go through the mountains of DVDs and blu rays in our apartment
Laughs in
Txt file with favorite channels as input for a yt-dlp download script schedule. Combined with a selfhosted invidious and freetube desktop app for other then favorite videos.
Honestly I am really tired of jumping trough hoops, have to make sure yt-dlp and invidious use a proxy (cloudflare warp) or google will ban your ip for being a bot.
But having to deal with the actual YouTube site or reopening my google account is worse. Its not even (but still also) the ads at this point but pure resentment against big tech.
Why not run tubearchivist or something?
First I hear of if but a quick scroll shows it mostly to organize an existing collection so you would still need to download.
I put them straight into jellyfin which works fine for me.
You got that script handy?
I wont be home till quite a few hours.
But also its general boilerplate enough an ai can help you get you one according to your own preferences.
There are also a number of examples online.
This one looks pretty interesting https://github.com/panchi64/auto-ytdlp
I feel the pain anytime I look at a video outside of my browser. So if it becomes where I can’t find a workaround, then I’ll just have to go elsewhere. And there will be other places. There are other places, it’s just hard to get people to not go to or be on the big one. Push people hard enough, they’ll leave.
deleted by creator
Is your friend using a chromium browser?
I support Iran striking Google offices and datacentres
My smart tube app wasn’t working tonight so watched YouTube on the normal app. I can’t believe people live like this, it’s actually unwatchable.
If you run Fcast receiver on your android TV device, you can cast to it from Grayjay without ads.
There’s an abundance of work arounds, for certain. I’ve been using NewPipe for a year or two now.
Mostly just annoying to go through this ritual of jury rigging every new device to use basic Internet services.
Okay how good is Smart Tube for ypu? I downloaded it to my family Fire TV but my mom just refuses to use it, so we watch long, loud, unbearable ads all the time. I get that there’s no algorithm to find videos, but can you import subscriptions? My mom has noticed YT never shows her a few of her subscribed channels in her recommended anymore.
It’s great. I’m pretty sure you can sign in so you get your algorithm and subscriptions. But it’s an incredible app. Infinitely better than the normal YouTube app.
Seriously bro! I got revanced on my phone and smart tube next on the tv. I legit had to think about the last time I used the official app and it was nothing but angry memories. Waking up in the middle of a, and I’m not making this up, hour plus long ad! Always auto playing some ai slop bullshit about some murder or something slightly cosmological.
I was jarred by an ad playing during LOTR on HBO just now.
yeah. I will go to look something up that I need or want to watch, but I’m often bailing halfway through that advertisement. it’s not even worth my time
What a bad idea.
I’ll check out Nebula if YouTube gets to the point where I can’t avoid ads. But, till then, I won’t pay for what I can get free, simple as. If it comes to it, and most of the producers are there that I want to see, I will pay, whereas I won’t knowingly give Google one cent. I expect, though, if Nebula gets popular enough, they too will start with ads.
