Same. I only visit when someone links to a video or I absolutely have to to get information.

Used to visit YouTube’s front page as part of my daily routine, effectively using it as a social media site - which it definitely is; it’s just that the posts are all videos, the comment section is like every other but moderated by the video poster, and the front page is completely algorithm driven.

One thing which seriously improves my experience is using the "Block element" feature on non-ads as well. Suggested videos, youtube shorts, banners, etc, all get blocked. Leaves the site much more lean and leaves less distracting visual clutter.

I use this strategy on a lot of sites (which sadly includes stackoverflow lately).

You might wanna use Unhook.

Potentially, for now I can get away with my custom filter list :)

I generally try to limit the total amount of extensions I have on my browser, to a list of tools I feel that I can trust. I apply the same mentality for dependencies in my software. Limits the surface area for supply chain attacks.

How do you use the Block element feature? I looked in the uBO menu but cannot find how to do it. Can you give an overview, please?

When you right-click an element on the page (and you have uBlock installed at default settings) there should be a dialog for it at the bottom.

If I right click on an item I get a block element option in the context menu. But that doesn't seem to make them persist. I usually use it to make irritating popups go away that I'm to lazy to read or that seem intentionally confusing since it is less mental load to just zap it blindly.

Thanks to all who replied. I will check the suggestions out.

I'm trying Grayjay, which works great, and I've noticed one big thing: it doesn't keep showing me an endless stream of stuff to keep me on the site. It just shows my subs and a handful of suggestions.

As a consequence, my time spent on the site is way down, and the time I do spend is higher quality material.

But I'm with you. There's no way I'm watching an ad on YT. If they figure out how to only stream with unblockable ads, I will never visit the site again.

Patreon to pay the creators.

I think Grayjay is a great idea. Many creators have alternate accounts on platfroms like Odyssey (e.g. Hardware Unboxed and Veritasium), in those cases you can subscribe to the non-youtube platform. If enough people do this, it might help us move away from youtube. Of course the last step is also important for this to work (Pay the creators.)

>If they figure out how to only stream with unblockable ads, I will never visit the site again

That's their goal. If you're not earning them money, they don't want you. You don't exist to them and you not watching their ads/videos is no threat at all.

It's a win-win!

Fine with me. I'm not threatening--just stating with clarity that they will not get a dime in any case.

> As a consequence, my time spent on the site is way down, and the time I do spend is higher quality material.

For me, I've found DeArrow (clickbait "blocker") has had exactly the same effect. I find myself no longer mindlessly scrolling through the suggested feed and am more particular about what I choose to watch.

What does Grayjay do? Is it some kind of aggregator?

Read the FAQ:

https://grayjay.app/faq.html

Thanks.

I'm not seeing any YouTube adds. I'm using ublock origin with firefox and didn't do anything special. What YouTube adds are everyone talking about?

Seems to be not hitting every user the same way. I also did not have any direct message about ad blockers, but I did notice videos not loading correctly and requiring a page refresh to work. Updating uBlock seemed to fix that issue. It was only afterwards that I heard of others having problems.

They have been rolling out ad-blocker detection with warning popups telling you to disable it. Mine were skippable the first few times but that lead to a final 3 warnings with the player refusing to load after. They seem to be doing a lot of A/B testing with the system currently.

Turn off Ublock, reload the page, then turn it back on. Usually solves the problem for me.

you can block the detection popup itself with uBlock. Seems to have done the trick for me.

No don't do that. And stop spreading misinformation. There is a thread on Reddit explaining why this is absolutely stupid and will only result in you losing access to YouTube. Or do you really think YouTubes for works like this.

The biggest problem currently are people spreading those types of misinformation see https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17j6ygs/youtu...

How is that misinformation? The site you linked even says it works, just not for long an maybe with negative side effects:

> I was able to hide the popup simply by blocking it with uBO's Picker. Why aren't you doing that?

> This only works temporarily. For stages 1-3. You're still reach stage 4 by doing this. And this might cause scrolling issues and not let videos autoplay.

Maybe you should stop using words as "absolutely stupid" because it makes you look like a snob, and when it turns out you were wrong, it makes you look like a fool.

How would one lose access? Is Youtube blocking IP addresses? Fingerprinting browsers in a way that Firefox's ResistFingerprinting setting doesn't handle?

The biggest problem is people playing YouTube's game. Let them block all their users, by all means. That can only lead to good things.

In my experience, it ahs not been hitting super users. But somehow they have been targeting people with adblock installed by someone else.

My parents both have been targeted and had to instruct them on how to refresh the quick updates, which has not been easy.

Can't you copy the url and open in incognito?

If you are using Firefox you can open it in a container that is not logged into YouTube no ?

I did that a little. The friction is irritating and enough for me to walk away from the computer after only a few videos. It was just enough to break me from my normal veg and consooooom cycle.

Fair enough.

To be fair Youtube has to make a profit somehow. Ad revenue, direct and/or through profile data collection is easy and effective but the worst businessmodel for human sanity.

I like that they at least offer an alternative for the ad viewing part through Youtube premium. I don't know about the US as streaming services seem to have catalogues orders of magnitude more extensive than over here in Europe, but compared to the likes of Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+ and several local offerings, YT Premium is a steal in terms of value proposition.

And like most here I fail to understand how anyone can stand YT with ads.

You wiil seriously start to dislike the podcasts for speaking in video ads though.

YouTube Premium isn't available worldwide.

YouTube premium pricing is ridiculous. $14 a month for android and $19 a month for iOS? Get out of here

How much could they possibly make from ads in a given month off a single user. Best case scenario with a user that watches YouTube like 4 hours a day 6 days a week and clicks through once every week. $4? Probably not even that. And yet somehow YouTube premium needs to be almost $230 a year for apple users?

I bet they’d make way more with a lower premium tier that just removed ads and had no other premium features for like $20/year. Wouldn’t make as much obviously but I bet they’d do way more volume. I wonder if they have some dipshit mba arguing against something like this because it “makes them seem cheap” or “delegitimizes the platform against more traditional streaming networks” or some nonsense to justify charging Hulu prices for YouTube content

Especially when you consider you could VPN to Turkey and get it for 1.15 USD a month, if you do it for five people then it's 0.46 USD per Youtube Premium account. https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/14mwf6h/how_to_enjoy_y...

FWIW we would hate them less too.

The family plan is 18€/month for 5 accounts, so about 3.60 pp. I honestly don't know if Premium has any features besides no ads and background play on mobile. There used to be a smidgen of exclusive content, but I think they gave up on that years ago.

I do not like Google's business model, nor their politics either. Thing is they do have a defacto monopoly on viable creator VoD. Yes, other services exist, but they are too fragmented to be viable.

So, do I perpetuate this situation by giving them sub money? Yes. But pragmatically I'm still not going to have my kids be subjected to ad barrages in the meantime, while rooting for true competition to emerge.

Well I use to have them on whitelist for all these reason, but a) lately the amount of ads has gotten crazy and b) a large amount of videos are fraudulently copyright striken and revenue stolen from creators https://www.streemtunes.com/post/how-did-pewdiepie-get-a-cop...

I think it's egregious how YouTube treats content creators in general and how expect us to foot the content distribution bills in particular, especially since many of the video themselves are ads (they include product placement, or are straight up teasers for products)

I think there's a case to be made at least for non indies to pay proportionally to the minute viewed of their content, to decrease the pressure on monetizing indies.

(b) is totally ridiculous. Anyone who isn't helping bleed YouTube to death is ultimately hurting creators and keeping them locked into an abusive platform.

Also wanted to add to my previous point, ads at the beginning of the video are absolutely obnoxious. Often there are English titled video in non English language showing up on Google, and you have to go trough the ads just to discover the video is not for you, and so off you go searching another video and consuming more ads, without getting anything in return.

> To be fair Youtube has to make a profit somehow.

I don't care, I still won't watch ads, and if I pay for something, I want to pay for something for that does actively track my watching habits and sell my data, so they are out of luck.

I think you’re missing a “not” somewhere in there…

> To be fair Youtube has to make a profit somehow

If they were not Google, I'd be ready to pay about 10 euro/m.

Since it's Google, they can rot in hell for all I care. I'll happily freeload them as most as I can.

>To be fair Youtube has to make a profit somehow.

I'd gladly pay for Youtube sans ads, but not if google also gets to steal my data.

I've gotten so much value out of YouTube over the last 15 years, I added an exception for them.

Maybe YouTube isn't the bad habit, but how (metaphorical) you use it?

I still use adblocker on everything else and I know YT without adblock / premium is terrible.

However, YT premium is only 2-3 USD/mo in India. So, I use that to get ad-free experience on YT and also YT music is great.

You are now "paying" google twice - once with money and twice by giving them your data.

Your data is worthless if they can’t use it to show you targeted ads.

Even if you pay for Youtube, Google still shows ads in their other products (search/maps etc...). So the data is not worthless. It also gets stored forever and Google can figure out other ways to monetize it.

Same. I have accidentally clicked links a few times and, interestingly, I haven't seen the anti adblock message again despite not updating the uBlock filters.

For the information that only seems to be available on YouTube I use Invidious.

Oddly, I had the soft warning first.. then 3 views until blocked warning... and now, nothing. Working like it did before. Strange. I don't feel relaxed yet, but it seems they back-off if you hold-out, for now.

It's randomly on and off for me since a couple of weeks.

ublock works perfectly for me on Youtube. I never see ads there. Plenty of sponsored videos but no ads. I use Firefox; that might be the difference.

does not work if you are logged in

It does, you just have to purge and then update the filter rules

You are just being lucky. Youtube have been rolling out new adblock filtering globally for the last few weeks.

See https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/31/23940583/youtube-ad-bloc...

This works for me too having my youtube account logged in.

Steps: click the U icon, click the gear, click filter list, click Purge, click Update.

Ads are gone again while logged in. You might have to do it again every now and then.

I am logged in.

I have been using invidious for a while and apart from having to switch instances every few months, it's been a pleasure

I still don't understand how ad blocking in videos can work. I mean all it would take to force users to watch the ads is to ensure that after the ad starts streaming, you can't request any frame of the actual content until N seconds (The full ad length) later?

I'd still rather stare at a blank screen for 20s than view the ads.

Sure, but that doesn't sound like something people would install an ad blocker to achieve...

I often open videos in the background, and watch them later. So this would work perfectly well here.

Use Invidious.