- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may “experience buffering issues” or see errors such as “the following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
To play advocate of the devil here (I can feel the down votes and Foss brigade already coming) : I can understand their logic. Their whole business is fucking ads. These apps bypass their entire business. Count yourself lucky they’ve ignored them this long.
YouTube premium is actually one of the only subscription services I use. My entire family gets ad free YouTube + YouTube premium. The amount of YouTube we watch and music we listen… 100% worth it. + a premium view supports creators more than a free view, so I even get to feel a bit better about myself. (I watch too many different channels to make it financially viable for myself to send them all a dollar/month through means outside of YouTube)
“you don’t understand these companies HAVE to push lies and misleading brainwashing content on us because they’ve built their entire companies on that foundation” nah get fucked try a new paradigm
I’m not arguing Google is a holy company and inheritely good. It’s just that they offer a service and in the capitalist market we live in, they want/need to be compensated. If you don’t like it, vote with your wallet. I can live with the price I pay to use YouTube. It gives me just enough joy in life that I find the monetary fee reasonable. If they would jack up the prices, I might say fuck it and find alternatives.
My whole point is that this blocking of ad blocking apps is not a surprise at all, and even understandable from a capitalist company pov.
That doesn’t mean I support capitalism and assholes making life worse for us plebs. It just means that in this particular situation, it fits with my lifestyle as a cog in the machine. It’s too much of a pita for me personally to “pirate” YouTube vids like I do with other media content.
You’re falling victim to the dumb-as-pigshit culture of downvoting good-faith opinions. Mindless downvoters: GO BACK TO REDDIT WHERE YOU BELONG.
This was a thoughtful, thought-provoking, well-expressed opinion. Thank you.
Removed by mod
I really wish people remembered this
I’d say more: don’t use Youtube if you don’t like it.
It’s very hypocritical to see how everyone bashes at Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Uber, etc. and yet they continue using it as if life would be hell without the luxury of those completelly non essential brands. If you truly don’t like them, just let them die… look for alternatives. Supporting an alternative is what’s gonna hurt them the most if what you actually want is to force them to change.
There’s also a lot of videos from rich Youtube creators complaining about Youtube policies, and yet most of them don’t even try to set up channels on alternative platforms. Many creators have enough resources to even launch their own private video podcast services, and yet only very few do anything close to even attempt that.
Not wanting to see ads is not just about money. Firefox offers the build-in Reader View mode for clutter free reading which is like a breath of fresh air. Several people including myself have problems getting too many impulses, or attention-grabbers if you wish, e.g. like web page pop-ups, banners, ads and what not. Besides that I do like to be manipulated. Now you can say : “Pay Google for no ads” but there’s the privacy aspect.