At one point, Google toyed with activating the front-facing camera during ads. They were going to detect that you were watching the ad to make it count.
I suspect they’re still using it as a tracking mechanism. No reason not to collect this kind of data if you can.
I put my fingers in my ears, close the eyes and go “allallallalaala”.
Stubbornness is a feature, not a bug.
I hit mute and find something else to do, often I forget about the original video I was trying to watch anyway.
TBH these days when I get a Youtube link, unless it seems important, I just ignore it. I don’t have time for 2 ads every time a friend thinks I should see some stupid thing.
Just… use an adblocker…
PiHole, UbO, etc. FTW
Do it while it lasts, they’ll make it proper hard at some point. They keep inching toward proper dynamic DRM.
Yeah, that’s gone great so far.
Obviously, then, we shouldn’t worry about it, everything will always be fine.
Duh. 😅
/s
Because it has to be said: PIHOLE DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, NOR EVER WILL, BLOCK YOUTUBE ADS
uBlock Origin does, though.
YouTube isn’t the only website on the internet and pihole does more than block ads
or should I put that in caps
I’m aware. But well-meaning people still often recommend Pi-hole to those looking to block YT ads. Since it’s DNS-based, it can’t block YT ads as YT serves ads from the same domain as the normal content.
But it’s really good at blocking a lot of other shit.
Ublock Origin for desktops, RVX for Android phones, SmartTube for AndroidTVs.
You can setup each one in two minutes following the instructions on the download pages.
I use unblock on Firefox mobile. What are ads?
Me with 15 different ad blockers, 2 VPNs, and a DNS so anti ads it could be the Hitler to adverts everywhere:
The current state of YouTube.
A cafe has developed a sensor whose door only opens to people who “smile”!
This comment section is so Lemmy
I literally cover my face with my hand and only leave a gap in my fingers where the skip button is. I’m not watching youtubes AI filth commercials. They are super cringe and ROUGH AI.
Ads
2025
Choose one
I despise ads, but there’s a way to not see ads and also support the content you’re watching: pay for premium. If I can pay for an ad free experience I will because services aren’t free (unless they’re FOSS). Now if I can’t pay to get rid of ads, then I will block viciously with all means at my disposal
Wait till you hear about people paying Hulu to show them ads.
Just install Firefox and Ublock Origin already, seriously its not difficult.
The last time I tried that, the sports bar staff kicked me out.
TV ads. Some brands are too annoying to find a fix. The android box thingies I’ve heard of tho.
You have a TV? Perhaps right next to your landline phone?
Yes… You got access to my camera or smth lol
Oh dear, I was just joking. I… My condolences.
Smart tube on Android TV for YouTube videos. Had ad block and sponsor block.
So then you add one step: Plug in PC then install Firefox and Ublock. Still easy.
TV ads.
That’s what the mute button on the remote is there for - you improve the ad by 50% right off the bat. Also works well for those times “journalists” think sticking a microphone in a politician’s mouth qualifies as news.
An HDMI cable will solve that
Never watch flow tv or use the smart function on a tv. Hook up a computer to keep your tv dumb and you can control what it wants to show you.
Doesn’t work for Twitch ads though.
In my experience, using Streamlink will still give you an ad break, but it will just be a screen saying it’s an ad break without any actual ads
Twitch is really clever about it.
Because you’re watching a live stream, they know you’re less likely to pause or look away, and then because they’re using HLS, they just literally have the next chunk of video load from their ad servers instead of their video servers.
The most clever part? This is done at a point before your computer, so you can’t distinguish which is which as to you, it all looks like its coming from the same source.
Now, perhaps they still give you some information about the stream that they’re in a game of wackamole with block detectors over, maybe for tracking purposes or whatever, but its pretty clever, like dastardly clever but clever none the less.
Some call it clever, some call it insidious. I don’t mind though, haven’t been to that shit site since they went mad and showed me the same bullshit, unskipable ad several times in a row, over and over for a week because that’s the only thing they had for my geo location.
So now I boycott both twitch and that shit company that paid money to annoy me a bit, hit the jackpot and annoyed me massively to the point where I took it personally.
could injest the stream, play it back at 97% speed, detect scene changes (% of screen change in a timeframe). When you hit an add, hit spacebar, it realizes that you’re asking it to skip and start dumping the video buffer until the next scene change.
That sounds like an awful experience for the end user while relying on the client side for security, which is part of why google has been arguing that you modifying the js on your own fucking computer is “hacking”.
They’ve been failing so far, but given the state of corruption currently in the US and their persistence, they might just win one of these days.
Why doesn’t YouTube do this? I’m glad they don’t but it seems like it would be more effective than what they’ve tried so far
They have lots of options to make it harder.
They could put the commercials directly into the stream and disallow fast-forward/start at time commands.
They could run drm and change the key/method up so often blockers would need to change on a daily basis.
They could shrink the content into 1/4 screen and run the add at 3/4
Competition would take their lunch eventually.
There’s a balance between keeping your customers happy and making your advertisers happy.
I think its simply that its a completely different medium. People dont want to be up to date with a video, and they also aren’t fine with missing a part of the video.
With a stream, you simply never get the parts that were overtaken with ads.
That sounds awful, does the viewer or the streamer get any control over when the ads show? Or could they literally cut out the best part of the stream?
The streamer can trigger ads early to time them, but ultimately does have to show ads. They can also decide on whether there are pre-roll ads.
Set your vpn to Albania.
Since about a week, with that setup, I can not open replies to comments anymore. I click the “x replies” and nothing. Google says nothing. Do you randomly have and ideas?
Not a Firefox/uBO problem.
Check your configs. It may also be a setting on the network you’re using. My workplace’s internet has some sort of filtering system in place that happens to also disable YT comments. Pretty lame, but it’s their network. I just use my phone on 5G if I want to read YT comments or watch “18+” videos (not porn - some videos on YT are actually blocked).
I have zero desire to comment on youtube, so unfortunatley I do not have any ideas as I never have done it. But I would start by disabling all extensions and then re-enabling them one by one until it breaks. Another way to trouble shoot would be to reset firefox. When ever websites act wierd for me I will take those steps first and one or the other usually solves it for me.
No issue here. Do you have any other YouTube extensions that might be conflicting? I am also running Enhancer for Youtube.
Anybody have any tips for Roku on the television?
Pi-hole will block Roku’s homescreen ads. The various streaming apps you may have on your Roku all implement ads their own ways, though. Pi-hole only blocks ads that come from a different domain name, which is why it does not block Youtube ads. Because Youtube serves ads from the same domain as normal content.
Dont use it? /S
I really dont know but depending on your model and OS Im sure there is someone who could help. A Pi-hole might do the trick if you configure it properly.
The 0 second skippable ad:
Me using uBlock Origin and Firefox so they don’t win:
Me, just using (re)vanced for 10 years and not seeing a single youtube ad in that time.
I accidentally fired up YT on my unused (and non-ublocked) Vivaldi browser a few days ago and… holy crap.
I don’t see how people can actually stand that shit.
One of my coworkers uses youtube without any adblockers. I’ve tried convincing him, even showing him how to install one.
He says “too much effort”.
I don’t bother anymore.
I normally open links in a streaming service instead to stop the ads, but one time I was having to watch youtube on my phone browser without any ad blocker. Every two minutes, another two minutes of ads. Shits unwatchable.
On Android, you can use uBO on Firefox. On iOS, you can use AdGuard.
They give up and pay
Google isn’t getting a cent from me.
