Google will never get a cent out of me, willingly.
If it gets annoying enough, and FreeTube stops working, I'll find something better to do with my time.
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Maybe people will start torrenting youtube rips if they somehow manage to kill ad blockers.
I have already started finding peertube replacement channels.
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That's a lot of effort for a website that mostly offers background noise.
I mean, when I want to watch TV or Movies, I load it into my torrent program 🏴☠️ and let it download in the background. I could do the same with youtube videos.
I already do this. There are several apps for it but I really like Pinchflat because it has metadata settings for Jellyfin.
All I have to do is add a video to a playlist and it gets automatically downloaded. I use it for archival but there's nothing stopping you from making it the only way you consume YouTube content.
I had a time, when i had frequent internet disconnections, and connection speed was slow in general, so while i had the internet connection, i just downloaded a bunch of videos, to then watch offline. Suprisingly, downloading video even with slow internet is faster than streaming it, despite when streaming it, videos was always buffering. Now i have stable internet and i can just stream videos without the problem, even by using third party app with no ads and without account.
Yeah, I download whatever I want to watch and fire up vlc. 0 ads, 0 buffering.
Technically that's 100% buffering.
Technically VLC buffers 1.5 seconds by default which actually broke streaming over SSHFS (phone's filesystem mounted via KDE Connect) for me, had to increase buffer to 10 secs
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They've been doing this for close to 20 years. Ever since shortly after google bought them.
You know the people who created youtube are all part of the same OG corp/group that gave rise to the monsters who have created the hell we currently live in.
The PayPal mafia.
Thiel, musk, howry, Chen(yt), wong(reddit),Hoffman(LinkedIn)
And this is different from the usual YouTube jank how, exactly? I can't block ads on the YouTube TV app and it's a buggy mess and I have no idea why one of the major tech companies in the world allowed that to happen.
You can block ad on tv by side loading smarttube
On LG WebOS, the Homebrew Store has an Ad-free YouTube app that works well too.
If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.
If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?
It's a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked "no vids for u" message, you'd get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being "buggy" and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no "smoking gun" blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.
The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.
I've been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?
I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.
If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day
I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?
Because the "Why is the video being slow?" pop-up now sends you to the page blaming adblockers instead of the ISP shaming thing it used to do.
Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you're visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you're adblocking.
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They are probably trying to find that spot where it's just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.
Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.
I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.
Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.
I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can't be skipped
Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.
Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.
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If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.
If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.
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Time to pin Odysee and Peertube in my browser even though I pay for YT Premium (only $2 per month here in BD).
Holy crap that’s cheap! Honestly, I’d pay that.
I'm trying very, VERY hard to pound the correct knowledge into my brain to be able to switch my freelance business services away from Google to something like Proton Unlimited.
Leaving the Google ecosystem will literally make me lose work, but man, this shit has gotta stop
The problem is, nothing short of NA and EU governmental intervention will force Google to stop being such a nefarious, monopolistic, antitrust piece of shit. They're just so utterly ubiquitous for Western businesses. You cannot have a small business* and hope to be successful without partaking in either Google or Facebook/Meta's ad services. TikTok was becoming a huge threat to both those companies and look how viciously they were attacked.
The whole thing is beyond fucked, man. Kudos to you for trying to break free for your business, but I feel like you'll just be fucking yourself in the long run.
Edit in advance: I should clarify that there will of course be exceptions where a small business can be successful just fine without advertising, but for those that rely on being discovered on a larger scale versus purely local, it is essential.
Agree with this. For my business, and most customer facing ones honestly, Google is how people discover you. They are the modern day Yellow Pages. You don’t exist on Google and you may as well not exist. It sucks but they have that much of a stranglehold. This is why everyone is shitting themselves over Google using AI (it’s harder/unknown how to game).
FYI: Depending on your politics, you may also want to avoid Proton.
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Oh they already do as of this week. But I am sure it‘s only temporary like last time and even then it‘s better than being served an ad. Google won‘t win this feud.