You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now
There’s already a workaround (found, again, here), but I figured I would use this opportunity to tell people that projects like Piped and Invidious exist, which both allow you to watch YouTube without loading their ads, with improved Privacy and (in the case of Piped) even Geoblocking-Circumvention and SponsorBlock out of the box.
They’re both great tools, and using something like LibRedirect you can even automatically go to Piped or Invidious when clicking/opening a YouTube link (and more).
Both don’t load ads, but unless changed in the settings Individous may still make connections to Google/YouTube to load the video(s) themselves.
Bit of a shameless plug for these projects, but I figured this is a really good time to show these projects as I often see people asking what they are in threads on here
I’d like to add to the sentiment of this post by saying that if you ever used any of those amazing websites, I’m sure the developers will highly appreciate it if those with the means could consider contributing to their projects.
We all know how greedy and shameless YouTube can be, and yet those developers give us incredible products for free. And if you ever saw the entitled requests of some users on their projects’ pages whenever YouTube implements some changes, and they have to rush to fix their code, I’m sure you would appreciate them even more. I’ve personally seen quite a few projects being abandoned because of the sometimes thankless job of being a developer, and I would hate it for any of these to suffer a similar fate.
So if you can and are willing, feel free to join me in contributing to:
I was about to say add uBlock Origin to that list but apparently they don’t accept donations per the bottom of their homepage.
I will not accept donations or sponsorships of any kind.
That’s some fuck you energy right there.
Lmao serious ‘fuck you’ energy.
Out of curiosity I went to the project’s page and saw more info on why they don’t take donations:
Free. Open-source. For users by users. No donations sought. If you ever want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which are available to use by all for free.
Not uncommon, the project I am maintainer of doesn’t accept donations either
What a King.
Its crazy all my piped servers stopped working which sucks, if anyone is willing to share a server that works or a self hosted one they could let me in. Hit me up
The irony of these smalltime maintainers asking for donations when their own software is purpose made to hurt the income of smalltime creators. Particularly if they include Sponsorblock.
In my opinion anything that is just a frontend for Youtube is just a bandaid, and if they get to much attention Google will make using them increasingly untenable.
The real answer is moving to competing platforms outside of Googles control.
That’s not possible though. There simply is no content on other platforms and they generally aren’t as good as YouTube and probably never will be.
The only platform I could see to rival YouTube in the future is Twitch
Lemmy users are just delusional in that regard. You can’t just switch away from Google, its not the tech that makes in great, its the content. It’s the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?
Thankfully the only creator I regularly watch that does non-educational videos uploads them on their own website. For everything else nebula actually is an alternative, although I’m not subscribed to it at the moment
Maybe it’s unlikely for this to happen, but I wonder if it’d be possible for yt to go down like reddit did. Yt makes a series of bad decisions, so a lot of people move from there to similar platforms. The other services don’t have much content right now, but from what I here, neither did Lemmy before the “exodus.”
I get that reddit and youtube are very different types of platforms and that the whole reddit thing happened because of pretty specific circumstances, but idk, maybe something vaguely similar could happen.
“go down like Reddit did” … But did Reddit “go down”? It definitely lost users and content quality dropped, but still, everyone I talk to (that isn’t a total nerd like us lemmings) still uses Reddit and has no idea what Lemmy is.
I was going to try and contradict you, but I guess most of the people I know well IRL are also total nerds
Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn’t use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn’t seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.
You should refer her to Cory Doctorow’s writing, namely his concept of enshittification. He’s one of the most effective political communicators alive today. If anyone can get her to understand the import of the issues surrounding Reddit’s Simple Jack routine, it’s him.
Y’know, good point. I haven’t actually been on reddit since the blackout, so I probably shouldn’t be confidently basing any theories on just what I’ve heard about now-reddit from other people, lol. Thanks for the correction.
I guess my idea of how much reddit “fell” and how much Lemmy/Mastodon grew is a bit inflated, probably because I spend all my internet time here now.
(copy/pasted my response to another comment)
Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn’t use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn’t seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.
Yt makes a series of bad decisions
It’s not like it’s making any bad decisions right now. Pretty calculated, I’d say - they feel safe market-wise, so they can increase amount of ads/fight ad-blockers/push people to buy subscription.
Oh yeah I don’t disagree. The wording was unclear, but I meant that more in the future/hypothetical tense. It just seems like that’s what all the big social media sites have been doing lately, so I was assuming that yt’s quality will take a nosedive sooner or later, but I guess it’s unfair (and hopefully wrong) to assume that. Thx for the correction
I get where you are coming from, however it’s important to remember that big players are not equal - they have really, really different people in the leadership. Elmo is just a too-big-to-fall clown with insane ego, spez is a manchild who took VC money like there’s no tomorrow and in the end had no idea how to provide ROI, but youtube is ran by very competent people with solid track record and deep pockets.
Maybe they are not too innovative business-wise recently… but they are good at catching up (except live streaming - screen layout is dogshit and nobody wants to get hyped in their tiny chatbox from a fucking google account with family photo as an avatar) and at leveraging what they already have, which is quite a lot, tbh.
First reddit didn’t go down, despite having an user base which had some kind of a brain.
While YouTube has everyone as users. Even like the most normie, boomer, zoomer users that think YouTube is the internet. No way they are going to switch for ideological reasons, unless the app just stops working.
It’s the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?
This is so difficult. How many people would be willing to switch to Signal or Wickr for one friend? And then what if none of their friends don’t want to switch? And then the friends of those people, etc. Trying to switch workgroups, family, friends and all of their friends as well is a lost cause, it would never happen.
that’s why what we really need is guaranteed service interoperability!
The alternative exists, but it costs money. Most big YouTuber accounts (at least the ones I’m subscribed to) post on either Nebula, Patreon or some platform like that. It would cost quite a lot to subscribe to them all, but still less than YouTube premium in my country. So in the worst case scenario where YouTube really blocks all ad free interfaces except paid use, that’s my answer. I don’t like it as I think a lot of the content is overpriced for what it is, but it’s better than having $$$ swallowed up by some mega corporation that is just interested in screwing authors and viewers over as much as possible.
YouTube is insanely large in size and scope but…
The key is just a platform that actually pays creators.
Nebula is one I expect to succeed for its niche.
Something like Floatplane with direct subscriptions is an option too.
Yeah haven’t thought of that, but they aren’t really YouTube alternatives. You don’t use them instead of YouTube, but as an addition.
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They aren’t as good as YouTube though and that’s the problem. YouTube isn’t great. It’s just the best platform like this that we have.
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You’ve never uploaded a video to YouTube have you? Their creator tools are actually incredible and their stats are a good way to tune their videos. Of course you shouldn’t completely rely on them.
Also it isn’t just the content. I rather use YouTube over Odysse, even if it’s the same content. It’s such a better experience, especially on mobile. Odysee is on the level YouTube was 10 years ago.
Also making a free video streaming site isn’t really profitable. I don’t know if YouTube still isn’t profitable, but I’ve read reports from 2015 that it still wasn’t profitable.
It makes sense that they now try to push things that make them money. They wouldn’t push ads so hard if they weren’t desperate.
Nebula at least for educational content
Nebula has about 10.000 videos, from only select creators. Youtube has around 1 billion videos, and everyone can upload. Nebula is not actually a Youtube alternative unless you’re in one of two specific target audiences:
- Already established educational content creator looking for alternative platform
- Person watching educational video content and not much else
I don’t see Nebula opening up their site to everyone and letting anyone upload content any time soon, and for that reason I don’t see them as a Youtube competitor at all. They’ve found their niche with curated quality over quantity.
Fun fact: The difference between 10.000 and 1 billion is… around 1 billion.
I wouldn’t really mind a smaller pool of videos, if it’s guaranteed to have a standard of quality.
I’d even pay for YouTube if they offered such a service, where they curate their creators. E.g. I sometimes like to watch repair channels where someone tinkers with something. I have a handful of channels that I like for that… but what if there are many more that I just can’t find?
Currently that is quite hard, because despite YouTube being an utterly insane business model it has prevailed so far.
I would love for an alternative, I personally really like PeerTube and the Fediverse in general, but mass adoption ain’t there yet :(
I am using Ublock and sponsor block,so far no adverts but it is always good to have more tools,just in case.Thank you for the links :)
My HTPC has accounts in chrome on there for each member of the family. All are configured the same with ublock origin but only one is getting the popups.
Unless people mass-migrate away from Chrome-based browsers (basically everything expect Firefox) Google will at one point enable their Web Environment Integrity thing, force all other browsers to enable it too because otherwise a lot of websites will stop working in them, and no alternative frontend will have access to the video streams anymore.
Web environment integrity is a non-starter because it offers avenues for bad actors to enforce “integrity” that forces malware to be loaded as well as legitimate page elements. However, that doesn’t mean Google won’t keep trying to stop ad blockers, alternative interfaces etc in the future.
Perhaps, but eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google. But I agree, we need regulation to determine to ensure that programs calling themselves web browsers will have to adhere to standards, and not be based on features that make certain websites work only on their browser. I think the backlash reaction to implementing “integrity” as a standard was really healthy. But there is still a lot of action to take on the regulatory front.
eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google
Which won’t matter (for access from third-party apps), because to be accepted by websites they need to prove their trustworthiness, so you can’t just use a different one to circumvent it.
It can be very similar to the TLS scheme we use today, where certificates are signed by regulated CA’s. The only difference is that currently there is no regulation to ensure that Google will build chrimium to trust other authorities for browser integrity other than itself. That is definitely a major concern. Fortunately, I don’t think that it is long term viable. First, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple would be extremely unhappy with this scheme. That’s right off the bat. So there will definitely be resistance on that front because eventually it would do something like break youtube compatibility with Firefox.
Now, I do think that it is plausible that these organizations could come to a agreement that is still ultimately bad for web browsers. There fore, this should be considered by government regulators as something to pay attention to. I’m not too pessimistic about them doing this. There us political will to preserve the open internet, especially in the EU. It looks like the US is also set to re-adopt net neutrality rules. So, im just not as pessimistic about it.
The only issue is that in the short-term, alot of these services that are free are going to degrade. This is what we are seeing with youtube. That is too bad, but I am hopeful and optimistic that it will lead to a more open internet. The fact that we are having this conversation on a decentralized social network is a positive sign.
It still doesn’t matter. A website can choose which attestors to trust (if they had to trust all of them the whole thing would be useless), so Youtube can just deny access to the video streams to anything that isn’t a trusted browser environment, and anything third party like Invidious, Piped, Newpipe, Freetube… won’t be able to work anymore.
Well yeah. But those clients could ultimately just say they are firefox if Mozilla is open enough, which they tend to be. It ends when Google decides that stuff like YouTube should only work on chrome. That would be bad, and I think regulators would treat it as bad, especially the EU.
Just to be clear, I don’t think forcing this standard down everyone’s throats for naked commercial reasons is a good idea either.
IIRC the proposal includes some crypto-handshake verification to make sure the attestor is who it claims to be, so no, apps can’t just fake it. Or, if some of those secret keys leak and apps use it, sites won’t accept it anymore.
It’s a question of trust. Google will select the certificates they trust for the services they provide, and the entities that own those certificates will decide what do to with them. If they trust a certificate from Mozilla, and Mozilla agrees to make that certificate open to everyone for instance, than Google’s only choice is to stop trusting it. But if Mozilla decides that is the certificate Firefox will use, than Google has to choose kicking off Firefox as well as other third party apps. Same with Microsoft and Apple, but I think Mozilla is more likely to oppose this kind of standard rather than try to reach some kind of agreement with Google.
The other way that this could play out every browser dev makes some kind of arrangement. Very unstable when we are talking about competitors.
At the end of the day, it requires a level of co-operation with the browser developers and internet service providers that I don’t think a lot of people will go for, for various reasons. Especially not regulators. I guess I am just more optimistic about the open internet.
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How long until Google says “fuck it” and outright starts banning adblock users? Considering how deep a lot of people are into the Google ecosystem, this is potentially devastating. Imagine losing access to you email, photos, etc., with no way to appeal. Good luck if you want to actually speak to anyone human at Google.
I’m already in the process of decoupling from gmail for this exact reason.
I’ve decoupled the most important things, but there’s just so much stuff that is still using my gmail.
It took me a couple of years to migrate away from Gmail but it was completely worth it. People lose their Google accounts for any and no reason at all. People don’t realise how many important accounts would be lost without access to their email. Now, with my own domain, I can move hosts at any moment.
Any email services you recommend?
Fastmail and Proton. Don’t shoot me but iCloud is actually a good option if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem. Personalised domains are included if you’re paying for any iCloud tier, even the very cheap one. That will support personal email domains for the whole family. For families I think it’s the best value. iCloud also includes other things like cloud storage/backup, “hide my email,” and private relay.
Losing access to your banks. Banks in England send you an email link to confirm your access.
Set u a forward from the Gmail address to the new one, and maintain the account at least minimally. As a reference, I have an account created at least 14 years ago still forwarding email. Should be enough time to change the profiles.
in case of a bank Im sure you can just walk to a physical office and get your account linked to another email
things will get hard with things like steam
I migrated my Steam library off Gmail last month. You’re allowed to change email addresses.
În uk there’s many online only banks
I had this exact thought. I’ve since bought a domain name, moved my email over to tutanota, did a takeout request, and installed DeGooglified LineageOS on my phone. I went nuclear. Fuck Google - remember when their motto was “Don’t be evil” ? Ha!
I don’t think they’d ever ban users, but this game of cat and mouse will continue forever. They’ll make the service worse and worse, while alternatives like Rumble and Odysee will get more and more users.
That said, back up all your Google data, and migrate to your own email domain. Millions of people all over the world lose access to their Google accounts each year for any and no reason at all. All it takes is a capricious algorithm. They don’t have any customer support at all.
Millions is definitely a huge stretch
unlikely especially if they’re paying for other services. they’ll most likely prevent playback
There’s plenty of stories online
. It’s all automated and if it decides you’re bad, you’re out. No questions asked, no appeals.
Googlesearch it up and you’ll find many more.
Revanced also works with no problems
I stopped using Revanced for NewPipe when it was giving me trouble. But I have a friend that swears by Revanced.
They are Android only, iirc. Practically the mobile app version of the projects someone listed in another comment.
I’ve found for me, freetube works better than invidious and piped. Much better response time and freetube has subscriptions nd a good UI.
Freetube on desktop + newpipe/libretube on mobile is pretty much my combo. I very, very rarely visit youtube’s site directly anymore lol
I haven’t visited the site intentionally from my devices in years
FreeTube actually has Invidious support as well so you can use both if you like.
I wish PeerTube gained enough traction to be the competition of YT. I hate that Google think they know you better than yourself and uses that broken algorithm to send you thing you don’t want to see. If I tell 5 times I don’t want something a correct algorithm would say “I’m not sending you any more of this” instead of trying other 100 times to make you swallow the videos they want.
Youtube is just the database with video. Just use a different frontend. The problem is if I actually want recommended videos but without Google knowing about it, then it is hard due to the massive amount of videos. Only Google have the money so scan everything.
And Google can pull the plug on the database whenever they want, just like Reddit or Twitter did with third party apps.
Yes, they can, like any other company or organization can. But they can’t remove the humans producing. That means the humans will just go anywhere else. Youtube is a standalone product that they probalby want to keep as I think it pays for itself with that amount of ads.
Absolutely agreed, I would love for peertube to take off
started using FreeTube (the installed version) - after importing my YT account data it’s basically the same thing as YT just outside the browser - but without ads/etc
FreeTube can proxy through Invidious as well.
switched to freetube yesterday, pretty good so far, though I cant figure how to import my playlists over.
Just navigate to the playlist in a browser and copy/paste the url over to freetube there. I think you can save it from there.
Can’t make playlists on FreeTube yet though.
ah, makes sense why it wouldn’t take the playlists i exported from youtube then.
no playlists yet but you can export your subscriptions (from youtube) - https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/importing-subscriptions/
I did the same yesterday and was pleasantly surprised with how much more responsive it is compared to normal YouTube in a browser. The interface is very snappy. FreeTube also has Sponsor Block built in as an optional feature.
I would love to use it, instead of YouTube but two things hold me back.
- Sometimes I like to just browse the home page and watch some recommended videos, and Freetube does not have that.
- Blocking channels with Freetube is kinda bothersome. Having to copy-paste the name of every channel I don’t want to see is tedious, especially since I use the Blocktube extension, and at this point have hundreds of channels blocked. I would be happy if there was a similar option in Freetube, or if I could import my blocklist from BlockTube.
I think the last update made it better. I used to get errors loading pages and feeds… It would still work but it would post an annoying error bubble. Now it doesn’t! This is one of my must haves for a Linus install.
I’d also like to point out that mpv has youtube-dl built-in (and can also use the cooler fork, yt-dlp). You can open YouTube links directly in mpv and they will play with no bullshit. It can even pull 4K streams.
There are browser plugins that let you open links directly in external programs like mpv, although they are a bit of a hassle to set up (especially if you are on Ubuntu with their godforsaken Snaps).
Also for anyone wondering how to set the default quality for videos.
Edit your
mpv.confand addytdl-format=bestvideo[height<=720]+bestaudio/best[height<=720]to play all videos in 720p for example.Lemmy can’t display some characters correctly. replace
<with a left pointing arrow <If you really want to kick mpv up a notch you should check out the uosc UI for mpv: https://github.com/tomasklaen/uosc
Ooh, never heard of this before and it looks super cool. Thanks for the tip!
Has Google considered making their advertising engine better? Allow us to skip every ad. Allow us to block all those fucking cryptocurrency scam ads. Forcing me to watch an ad for a company that I’m not interested in guarantees that I will hate that company and never buy their product even if I need it. I will go out of my way to buy something from a company that hasn’t tried to ram their advertisements down my throat. If ads weren’t so fucking terrible I might agree to watch them.
Thank you, this is an exact point I was making earlier today in a different conversation.
Google has two decades of information about me. Just as one random example, I’m hooked into their mapping app so they know everywhere I go and on what schedule, and can infer what I buy.
Not once in 20 years has Google advertised something to me that is in line with my interests and needs. Google knows I go to the cigar store every Monday to replenish my supply, and they’ve never suggested to me a product or service that can save me time, money, or make it more convenient.
Google’s ad system seems to shove garbage products in my face like black label shit from China (raycon, manscaped, etc) and products/companies that do not operate in my region.
How hard is it to know everything about a person, and still fail to advertise one single thing that is useful to them over decades??!
While you’re right that Google isn’t very good at targeting ads, I don’t think more accurate ads is what we want.
It’s what I want.
I worked for years in tech, and adjacent to marketers and sales people.
I know from direct experience that people want relevant advertisements for things that will solve a problem in their lives.
Going back to my example, I would very much appreciate an advertisement for a cigar store that will either give me a discount, introduce a new product to me, or deliver my product on my schedule.
I also make and buy mechanical toys, and I’ve had an interest in them for decades. I would really appreciate an ad that highlights a new collection of mechanical puzzles.
But instead I get badgered by Google ads for things that are nuisances and of no relevance to my life.
Instead of sharpening service for the professional barber clippers I own, because Google knows I cut my own hair, I get advertisements for Manscaped.
I steadfastly maintain there is an opportunity to advertise to people in a helpful way, but Google doesn’t do it.
Or in my country: most ads are in only one of the main official languages but not the one in my region so it’s wasteful for them.
Once there was Vanced and now there is Re-Vanced. (if you’re on Android)
and there is also Newpipe! You can import your subscriptions. Only problem is that scam profiles’ comments with NSFW profile pictures are everywhere there, I still don’t know a workaround
the workaround is to disable comments, you’re not going to miss out on anything anyway.
I just use newpipe on android and freetube on linux.
Thanks for the info. I’m on Linux and I’ll check that out.
Do away with YouTube and use software like freetube, no adds, sponsorblock, and google can’t track my habbits
I’ve started using Freetube since this adblock issue. The only feature I’m waiting for is the ability to open in new tabs. Other than that, it’s an improved YouTube user experience
No account access, not for me. I’ve curated this account for many years and I really like the feed of videos and creators I get. Until one of them can use my account, I’m going to keep battling the ads.
you can subscribe on piped
I can subscribe, or I can transfer over 15 years of subscription, watch history, saved videos, etc? Because those are very different things and I’m only interested in the ladder.
You can definitely transfer subscriptions and saved videos, but I don’t believe there is a way to transfer your watch history. Google allows you to download XML files with details of the former, but not the latter.
That’s the case with Invidious anyway, I don’t use piped.
I dont think importing is possible :\
