YouTube wants me to watch a 4m30s ad for middle-aged men who want to stay healthy. I won’t watch it. Hence, it never goes away.
I suppose this makes sense… I won’t play almost any video that has an ad that doesn’t have a 5s timeout button. I even skip those, most of the time.
I download videos using Downie, youtube-dl, or yt-dlp, and I watch them offline. So, the result is that I never complete the super long ad that YouTube wants me to watch, hence, it never stops being offered. I think that’s what’s going on here.
I just wanted to run a sanity-check to see if others agree that this is why this extreme garbage is being served. It can’t be that YouTube is serving ~5m ads to lots of people on a regular basis and people let them play, right? I think people would be outraged if this was common. But I’m not sure.
Background (unnecessary info to provide context):
I live in a nearly ad-free world because I deliberately cut them out with software. Thus I don’t really have a good sense of what average people tolerate. I haven’t tolerated ads for over 20 years. That’s when I cut the cord on television and switched to pirating content, later buying from iTunes, then streaming when that became available.
I live in a bubble and was offended at the idiocy of TV ads when I’d visit family for the holidays back when the iPod was on every single ad-break (and I’m an Apple / Mac user). I been un-desensitized for so long that TV ads have seemed alien and offensive for a long time.
It has to be that I keep getting this ad because I won’t complete YouTube’s stupid challenge-quest of “watch a super long ad one time,” right? I won’t complete the challenge to confirm that it goes away, so I need others to tell me if they think I’m right that this is why I keep seeing it. If I let it play, do you think they’d serve short ads again and it would be rare for such a long ad to be served? I’m not going to do so either way. Fuck YouTube and fuck ads.
Aside: when I can no longer download videos to avoid ads, I’ll stop watching YouTube videos. Spare me your lectures on them needing monetization to pay for servers. We won’t agree for reasons beyond the scope of this question.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Aside: when I can no longer download videos to avoid ads, I’ll stop watching YouTube videos.
Why do people keep saying this like it’s a “fuck you”? They know, and they don’t care. If you’re not watching the ads or paying for the subscription, they don’t give a damn what you do.
I mean, I agree with the sentiment, but the way people keep spitting these words out with such spite and aggression is just funny to me.
“If you stop me from watching YouTube, I’m going to stop watching YouTube. I’m fucking serious.”
“If you persist in trying to make money off the free service you offer, I will be forced to stop being a drain on your resources!”
Ublock origin + sponsorblock on Firefox or revanced on mobile is still working fine for me.
This is speculation, but I suspect long-form ads are snuck in occasionally to catch out people who have auto-play on whilst doing something with their hands occupied.
Someone who just lets YT run auto-play in the background might not notice/be able to skip the ad running.
Yeah, supper annoying when i put on a Playlist while I start working clay and get those thirty min adverts with an old man pretending to have invented batteries powered by a cornflake or how he’s uncovered a scheme from the inland revenue where they’ll give you 164% return on your investments if you buy war bonds for the battle of trafalgar.
It’s about the one time I’d consider using voice to control my computer
You’ve got two options:
- Fight back with ad blockers. Tubular or ReVanced on Android, uBlock Origin on PCs.
- Pay up. (This is the unethical option.)
B-b-b-but think of the shareholders!
To paraphrase Louis Rossman, he doesn’t need the fraction of a penny he’d get from you wasting your time, and if YouTube wants your money then they should earn it.
Sure but he also monetizes videos rather than turn it off, let’s say every browser by default blocks adverts and skips sponsored segments is he still going to support it?
The argument that a behavior is acceptable because only a small amount of people do it is a bad argument, if he doesn’t like adverts he has the actual option to turn them off and not to accept sponsorship. His income comes from the fact most people watch the adverts so he supports and agrees with the advertising model.
Sure you can argue it’s not worth the effort to stop 5% of users freebooting but when is it worth the effort? If creators can’t afford to create because there’s no money in it then the platform dies, so where is the line?
How will they afford to buy another yacht?
With the money they already have? Don’t be foolish.
Ads are atrocious and despicable. It’s brainwashing. Our generation has been saturated. Half of the population currently puts up with it while many, like us, won’t. I just avoid them when possible and always look for new ways to block them. It’s about all we can do
The funny part is if it was a sane amount if ads we might put up with it. But since it is always an absurdly ridiculous money grab they have the internet as a whole working together to defeat them.
freetube?
You get ads? Pihole, Firefox + Ublock origin…
Desktop: ublock origin
Android: revanced
Android TV: SmartTubeNext
IOS: sideloadly + uYou+
You can also use FreeTube on desktop if you prefer a native client. If you want to use your browser, there are private frontends for YouTube that also block ads: Invidious and Piped. Both can be used with LibRedirect, which automatically redirects all YouTube links to your desired frontend. Other options for Android are LibreTube, NewPipe and Tubular. On iOS you can use Yattee with this guide, it’s on the app store, so you don’t even have to sideload it. It also works on iPadOS, macOS and tvOS. If you have an LG TV, you can use this app for webOS.
A simple solution for Samsung TVs would be a godsend
disconnect it from wifi, and use an Android tv dongle for “smart tv” features
I began using Freetube exclusively to watch YouTube when YouTube complained about my ad blocker.
That sounds insanely annoying.
I only see ads on YT when I watch something on the “smart” TV - which is obviously not smart enough to filter YT ads. Neither my desktop nor my laptop show YT ads.
deleted by creator
You’re doing it almost right, just gotta dump Brave
What’s the best browser to recommend to people who want to dump Brave but either can’t or won’t switch to Firefox, due to things like unoptimal behavior of sites like YouTube while playing games, for example?
The best I’ve come up with is Thorium, a de-Googled Chromium fork, optimized for speed.
What are you referring to by unoptimal behavior? I’m curious because I use Firefox and have never had issues watching YouTube videos while gaming.
Live streams will stutter badly when a game is going on, something I have experienced in Firefox but not Chrome.
And of course Chromium has billions of dollars at its disposal while Mozilla can’t even accept donations from users for Firefox so it’s not exactly surprising that the browser with worse funding and management doesn’t run as well.
Strange. I’ve never had an issue like that and Firefox has always performed just fine for me. Sorry to hear you’re having issues.
Are you using hardware acceleration? I frequently watch livestreams while gaming and have never had this issue except for when hardware acceleration was disabled.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I think it is because of Brave, there was some controversy about it.
I wish people told me about it instead of just mashing the downvote.
Just pay the $10 for ad free. It’s a shitty answer, but one of the only services that’s still worth it if you use it enough.
YouTube is the only streaming service I pay for at all and haven’t had to deal with ads in years
$10-14 (whatever it is) per month for music, podcasts, informational vids/diy, etc. Then just pirating any shows is the only way to do it nowadays. No ads and still exponentially cheaper than tv 20 years ago which was pretty much 50% ads.
It’s like $15 a month now. I paid for premium when it was $10 and included music streaming. When the raised the price 50% I immediately cancelled. I use Smart Tube Next on my Sheild and have Firefox focus on iOS. + PiHole, + unlock Origin. Ads can go screw themselves.
So you stopped using YouTube right?
I mean, surely you don’t think everything you have should be free?
Google data mines the fuck out of me, even with all my blocking of ads. So yeah I think YouTube without ads is fair trade for all the money they’ve made off my data. They don’t get my money as well as being able to do whatever they want with my data.
Decent rebuttal. I like it and can even accept it.
You are the very first person to have a reasonable answer, other than the guys that are like me and just say that I’m too cheap to pay for it, I can totally at least respect the honesty therein.
I mean nowadays I just use ad supported versions.
Other than the Hulu Disney combo, but I think that’s worth the money with Fox, Marvel, and Disney movies on it.
I used to have prime, Netflix, and Hulu but then they got greedy as fuck
No but I don’t think I must enrich billion dollar corporations with my valuable attention span either so they can continue to exploit and extract labour value from the working class if you want to get philosophical about it.
So … taking people’s work for free is what you’re criticizing them for?
Yeah, it’s a shitty answer, when there are multiple free options that eliminate the problem.
You dont negotiate with terrorists.
Totally agree. For-profit platforms won’t exist if they can’t generate revenue, either from ads or subscriptions. If I use a commercial offering I expect to pay for it.
If you use the platform and sidestep paying, you’re just foisting the expense off on paying customers.
