this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago

I should just read a book at this point

[–] [email protected] 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I highly recommend creators to upload videos to another site as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Ive been using adblockers, piped and other tools for so long that i dont even remember what the last time was when i saw a youtube ad.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

Same... And if they ever successfully make it impossible to avoid, I'll just stop watching YouTube

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Hard to do if you watch directly from your TV using some dongle and don't know or can't modify your router to block ads.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

SmartTube is on AndroidTV

Kodi can be installed through the play store, you can transfer files over smb and ftp and move the apk using it.

You're welcome.

Excuses:

I use a Roku or Roku TV

Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.

I use AppleTV

Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.

FTP? SMB? Apk? What are these, words?!

These terms can be searched for and learned about.

Why not just use Kodi?

You're ahead of the game, find a plugin pack and enjoy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I just use a frontend to remove ads + Extra Privacy too

[–] [email protected] 21 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Occasionally I try the YouTube watch together thing on discord with my SO, and it really shows just how completely unusable YouTube is without an ad blocker.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

The only ads I see are on a local sports podcast. The advertisers are all local businesses. From restaurants to local credit unions. And those I'm fine with.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I was using uYouPlus+ sideloaded on my phone until it broke recently, now I’ve found using Brave browser for just YouTube is the solution

[–] [email protected] 6 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

GrayJay, Vanced, or Pipewire is the way

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

Did you mean NewPipe? Pipewire is the Linux audio/video framework.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

I mean, yeah. What did you expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)

Here is every single way I can think of to block YouTube ads:

uBlock Origin + Firefox

NewPipe on Android

Libretube on Android

uYou+ on iOS

FreeTube on *NIX and Windows

yt-dlp + mpv

YouTube Revanced

Invidious self hosting

Piped self hosting

And finally, last and definitely least

YouTube Premium

Donate to the creators who make content. Google does not deserve a penny of your hard earned money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

SmartTube for Android TV devices

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Absolutely. And they update pretty quickly when YouTube breaks something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

You should add Brave on iOS to the list. Never seen any ad with Brave.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 23 hours ago

Laughs in Ad Blocker. Still going strong.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

what's a youtube ad?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago

Oh please no, it's the reason why I switched from Chrome to Firefox when watching YouTube

[–] MangioneDontMiss 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

daily motion has way better video quality and a lot less censorship.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago

I forgot about that site. I knew it just as the host for TV series streams back in the day

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I will continue to download all my videos to avoid ads. When they break the tools in such a way that this is no longer possible, I will stop watching videos from YouTube and seek entertainment elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

yt-dlp is the goat

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

When ads get in the way I simply don't watch the videos. It's not like anybody ever really needs to watch any particular video.

[–] Showroom7561 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Educational content is hard to come by outside of YouTube, so it would suck to have to avoid watching those videos because of ads.

But I'll do what I have to do in order to avoid ads for as long as possible. And I'll archive important content in the meantime.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I pay for nebula, they have a lot of educational content and the price is low enough that I don't mind it

[–] Showroom7561 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds good, but if I search "microwave repair" or "improve vo2max" , it comes up with zero results.

That's the sort of stuff we'd lose if creators don't move away from YouTube. 😟

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 minutes ago

Thats true, I once had to repair my washing machine and I could only find 1 video about the same model and same repair. It was a large Russian man that I could not understand (this was before auto generated subtitles).

Anyways, I just looked at the video and copied everything he did and I fixed my machine.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (9 children)

WHY DONT WE HAVE A MAINSTREAM ALTERNATIVE YET

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

People get proccupied with emulating YT, which is indeed cost prohibitive. But that response assumes one is emulating all of it. What about only pursuing sections of it to cater to particular audiences? Serving 100% of YT's video might be too much even for Amazon (for example) but what about 1%?

Why couldn't Amazon host Booktube? And the manga/anime enthusiasts and other varietes of weebs to go along with them? They already own ebook retail. A VOD service to chip off some of YT's viewership would be a more productive investment than The Rings of Power...

A YT competitor needs a bit of scale, sure, but not as much as YT itself. A fraction will do.

[–] howrar 1 points 12 hours ago

I believe the main cost is in hosting all the videos. A lot of them are probably junk that were never meant to see the light of day. I certainly use it as an extra backup for many of my videos with no context and random UUID titles.

For everything else, a potential solution is to have everyone come in with their own videos hosted elsewhere and the platform just integrated with a bunch of APIs for fetching and serving those videos. For small time creators, the cost should be fairly low to none since a lot of platforms allow you to store a small number of files for free.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago (4 children)

By operating youtube at a loss for many years Google acted anticompetitively to kill competition or stop competition arising. Now that they've achieved that they can do what they like. Don't feel bad using ad blockers against this anti-capitalist company.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Final stage of enshittification, now they are allowing more right wing propaganda than normal on the channel

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Hosting and storage costs, few can afford to be an alternative to an absolutely gigantic video storage platform that costs obscene money to maintain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I am causing a netloss to googs. I don’t pay for Google plus or whatever, and j don’t view their fucking ads. Win win if you ask me.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Stop using it. I did and now I only use unofficial ways of watching the videos I want. And I download the ones I wanna watch again.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Jokes on you, YouTube, my Chinese phone rolls their ads over yours!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Yall I got yt premium as a perk from my carrier and tried it out, it’s fucking AWFUL. Mostly the yt app. I get better speeds, quality and less interruptions just using brave

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 day ago (5 children)
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