Thanks uBO team I don’t even know yt is trying anything
Using uBO, but have noticed a slightly longer delay of a few seconds between hitting play and the video starting, but I can deal with that over being forced to watch 30s of ads.
Honestly it just felt like youtube’s servers were shittimg themselves again, so I baely even register it as a real interruption.
There have been periods where one of my accounts was getting an ad-length black screen with buffering throbber (I hate that name) and, the most recent time, it was accompanied by a pop-up asking me if I’d like to find out why that was happening. Yeah. I know why that’s happening, thanks.
Then that stopped happening again. Either they gave up or UBo have worked around it somehow. Never ending arms race.
This happens to me too, especially when it’s a computer that I haven’t used in a while, which makes me think that yeah it’s the arms race. It stops once my browser is open long enough for uBO to update
It’s the people that make blocking lists that we should thank. I don’t think uBO makes anything themselves
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.
I have already started finding peertube replacement channels.
Please share!
I’m happy I am finding some people on Nebula but being a payed service, it’s doomed to eventually show ads.
I now watch Climate Town and City Nerds on Nebula. I wish Dr Becky would move. I love her videos.
https://video.katehildenbrand.com/w/3PD7HDunumrCR1zJKHUVfo
Kate Hildebrand is a marine ecologist that has a bunch of videos on her peertube instance.
https://peertube.wtf/w/adtBd3vNKKJ7Y5dvWU7ivq
Parker’s microbes combine music and microscopy in OC creations.
Maybe people will start torrenting youtube rips if they somehow manage to kill ad blockers.
I have already started finding peertube replacement channels.
Any recommendations?
Techlore, futurism, jeff geerling
Thanks
Reminder Techlore is an Apple shill
Yep, lol. Same mindset here. Although I doubt YouTube will ever do a hard cut on piracy. That would lead to a major decline in viewership and wouldn’t look good to shareholders.
If you are a content creator please consider upload your content on other video platforms too.
The trouble with that is that there is barely any money outside of YouTube.
They can upload to multiple platforms at once and still keep their YouTube money + grow an audience on a different website??
Yeah, some of the Linux Youtubers do that. With a channel on Peertube as well. And Science Youtubers often advertise Nebula.
I read somewhere that nebula was paying a good bit more per view, and paid per minute watched
Pretty sure you still have to be invited to join nebula.
If it forces you to pay and have an account, how is it better than YT?
It’s basically netflix not youtube.
Then it’s not an alternative
If it pays “a good bit more per view” than YouTube when basically no one on YT pays and many users have adblockers, someone is getting ripped off here
That’s because of missing views though mostly, no? The ad revenue isn’t big anyways I think.
Idk how one gets content on Nebula, but I wish more creators would join. Ik nebula isn’t Fediverse like PeerTube, but I still really like it and think it’s worth the $30/year to not get ads.
Being a majority artist owned co-op is in the fedi spirit. I know Rebecca Watson is crushing it on Mastodon, are there any other nebula/fedi crossover creators you’d recommend?
Then support them monetarilly
Bro those Mf should’ve started doing that YEARS ago like…
Oh no! You are going to make your platform work like ass? And you expect us to do mental gymnastics in such a way that instead of blaming you (you know the one that has control over the platform) we blame uBlock? The same uBlock that has made using your platform bearable for many years, to the point that I will sit in silence with the screen off instead of watch with ads?
I think even if you make us wait a min before playing the video most would take that over an ad.
I would prefer an ad 🤷 if it doesn’t last a stupid amount of time
That’s what they’re banking on, but we know that eventually they will f*** it up and lose everyone.
Unless we have some serious alternatives, that won’t happen anytime soon
Video hosting is really expensive. Every service running for free will eventually enshitify and turn out similar, because there’s no such thing as free massive servers
Peertube has already delivered the sustainable model: creators host their own videos and viewers assist distribution.
All they need that I see is missing, is a way to discover / search everyone from any instance. Like, a consolidated / federated search.
Not precisely what you’re after but https://sepiasearch.org/
Not exactly, but pretty damned close!
It is now a shortcut on my desktop!
Who pays for the servers? Because if even big platforms like Signal sometimes struggle to pay the bills, in part because they spend a lot on their servers, then it’ll be dozens of times worse with video hosting
Content creators. It’s hard to host everyone’s videos, and it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary, as it prevents new entrants. It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted). It becomes harder when you suddenly become popular, a situation which Peertube explicitly compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers, which scales with popularity.
Signal makes it’s own bed like YouTube by being a single centralised server for everyone. Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP
It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted).
Do you really expect more than even 5% of all youtube channels to do it? You have high hopes.
compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers
I believe it’s done in a kinda P2P way? Didn’t really check, but wouldn’t that just not work with NAT internet connections, which many people have because that’s just more secure this way? Also, bad for privacy.
Using a TURN server would also add huge costs so it’s basically like hosting your own server
Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP
I don’t so I wouldn’t, but if I was, I would be wondering, as I always do. Anyways, I believe XMPP doesn’t store stuff and only transmits, and Matrix doesn’t store things forever (and doesn’t store videos like YT), and the main instance is funded by donations, and smaller instances are just pretty small and have media wiped when needed
it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary
That’s the POV of people in !technology@lemmy.world or selfhosted. Most people can’t be bothered with this shit and are pretty tech illiterate. Some don’t want to waste even a minute. And that’s the case of the very vast majority of people on the internet.
Don’t care, still better than the ads.
I’ll sit for 2 minutes in front of a black screen and it’ll still be better than 45 seconds of ads.
Did exactly that early days of hulu.
Same. That ole “You seem to be using a proxy service” text served as a nice break 🙌
Stop feeding me dog shit AI videos about a condom delivery boy who has to deliver some to a hotel only to find his girlfriend cheating on him and maybe I’ll stop blocking ads you fuck sticks
Condom delivery service you say? 🤔
Seems like a great ad
Not only that but the bit-rate as of late seems horrendous, 1080 looks more like 720 or lower with artifacts all over the place.
Yes, some video have a 1080p Premium high nitrate quality option that you need to pay for. It’s just the standard quality, but the free 1080p is now shitty.
It’s very sad there isn’t anything that can even remotely compare to YouTube at this time. All the content is there, can’t get it elsewhere. At least with Firefox, ublock and SponsorBlock, it’s bearable.
Oh, did you not pay for YouTube Extra Premium Plus for the enhanced bit rate?
Bloody peasant…
And really you’re just paying extra for the original 1080 bitrate. What a fucking scam, like I’d pay for that crap.
Artificial scarcity so you’ll pay their dumb subscription fee
I was paying for a whole family (premium). But I will not pay and send money to a fascist state. We’ve cancelled all our us based services.
They will never be happy with how much money they squeeze out of it. When people are watching videos that are 99% ads and the content is limited to two alternating pixels they will still find a way to further optimize their profit-taking. Nothing is ever good enough for the hyper-capitalist; product managers are a disease.
Eventually they’ll start demanding you run their crypto-miners in order to watch a video.
meh, its still not inconvenient enough to pay 10+ dollars a month. The state of adverts online is so egregious that I would probably sooner stop watching Youtube than pay or put up with ads.
Nebula’s getting better and I spend more time there now than on YouTube. Happy that YouTube is working hard to encourage this transition.
I wish the videos were longer than 8 min on nebula.
There’s a ton of content that’s much longer. There’s no 8-minute limitation.
Philosophy tube and jet lagged are both longer than 8 minutes, I think nilered is on there as well and is definitely longer than 8 minutes.
I’ll never go there. Paid is a no way situation.
So you prefer ad supported content?
Nope.
“I want endless curated content for FREE! NO ADS. NO PAY. ONLY CONTENT.”
This guy, probably.
Probably also thinks the minimum wage is theft.
Why be an asshole? Yes I like free I also make things for free. Not everything has to cost.
For ongoing series I like I support directly, like anyone else. Not the platform.
But to charge up front for who knows what? Nope.
so you’d pay if there was a free trial?
That would be an improvement, how would I know I want anything in a store I have to pay before I even consume anything?
I have several subscriptions ditectly to people making things I like.
On the otherhand, I miss when people made things because they liked to. I still do that. I run several sites that has no ads, no charge, because I like the communities I am sharing with.
Then again, it’s not my job so I am afforded that luxury I guess.
It also might be worth saying that watching people do things is not my favorite thing. I would rather actually do things.
You clearly have absolutely no idea what infrastructure costs to run.
Lol, OK.
Thanks for proving my point.
Sure anytime.
Uh, it’s called a “library”.
Libraries are paid for with taxes.
you think libraries are free?
most public libraries and librarians spend a great deal of their time applying for grants, asking for donations, and parsing out the meager state and federal funds they receive. You can tell that a lot goes on in a public library besides what patrons see!
Did you know that staff salaries, books, other library materials, office supplies, and utilities are funded primarily by city and county taxes? (link)
Taking this chance to say support your local libraries! Even just being a patron will show that it’s a necessary resource that needs to continue. My partner and I just were talking about the library today and how we both used to go at least once a week back in the day but we’ve fallen off in the past decade.
It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s reasonable to pay for a platform that pays its content creators fairly. I spend a lot of things watching videos, and even though my income is limited, some kind of payment for the service makes sense.
I don’t mind blocking ads on YouTube because they used unfair practices (endless resources from Google) to destroy the competition and become the only video provider. They put us in a corner and deserve to be put in one too.
I think I should be more clear: I agree that it is reasonable to pay a platform that is fair.
The comparison to youtube is where it gets lost for me:
The issue is that, in general, the value of watching what is typically on youtube is about the level of free. If it cost me money, I could do without, it just isn’t that important. I will find better ways to spend my time. So with Nebula, you have a platform that is more like just another streaming service, albeit a good one for independent creators. But that leaves me thinking what do they have that I would bother watching? Which is a pretty high bar (I didnt even own a tv for nearly 20 years). It seems less like youtube and more like HBO for independents on paper, and without free access how would I know the difference?
I mean that’s fair : value is relative.
The main value of Nebula is no ads. I have YouTube on Firefox with uBlock Origin, so no ads either, but shitty performance due to YouTube fighting the AdBlocker. But more importantly I don’t think the ability to watch YouTube with no ads is a given, so I want to have a viable alternative.
And secondly, I want to support the creators and a platform that sees me as a customer, not as a data-cow to be milked.
I’m sure Nebula will eventually have a free tier, but that can incur high costs and degrade the experience for paying users. They’ll do it when they feel comfortable.
Having to wait with a black screen before the video starts is completely acceptable to me.
Having to watch Ads is not.Seems like its already happening.
Yeah, for at least 6 months.
Now you’ll actually get a pop-up claiming “click here to find out why” in regards to the slowness.
I’ve gotten that before too
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)
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’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?
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.
Relevent Username: If you went to Tau Zero, you can finish watching every youtube video in mere moments from your point of view
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.
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’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?
In the ultimate, you’d need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.
In worst case, you can’t start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.
And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.
Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.
AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn’t line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn’t line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.
I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like “I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure” that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.
No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don’t want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn’t exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.
The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You’ll have to watch out for that one on your own.
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.
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.
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 added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).
i added 2-3 other adblockers
Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.
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.
So you don’t find something else to do.
If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).
i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.
That’s probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.
