this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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Youtube is getting on cable tv levels of bad. On a regular ~10min video you will first deal with a few preroll ads and at least one is unskippable, then the creator will have a 2+ minute sponsor segment (I don't mind those since they are usually well presented). There will also be multiple midroll ad spots.
Depending on video length, it's gonna soon be literally more ad than video. They are still stealing and selling your data though, and also making the web worse for everyone with DRM shit.
Fuck. Google.
I had already migrated to Invidious since last year because I degoogled everything. Seems like now its time to look for real youtube alternatives.
That would only be accurate if Google quintupled the price of YouTube Premium and forced these ads upon actual paying customers.
I really don't like it when pro-piracy advocates whine about being served ads or not having everything on a single unified service costing just $9.99 a month, or a fraction of how much Cable used to cost.
Now this may be a bitter pill for the Lemmy World community to swallow, but ads being annoying doesn't grant you a God given right to freeload off of other people's products and services, and this rings especially true for YouTube. The only reason I don't compare ad-blockers to piracy is due to their downright necessity in tackling malvertising, which is unfortunately all-too-common.
YouTube is the only big player in the video sharing market for a reason, and that's because hosting videos is prohibitively expensive unless you have the resources of Alphabet Inc and the existing following that YouTube already has. Many competitors have come and gone. Heck, the only competitors in this space are Dailymotion (a French platform that has been enshittified Digg v4 style) and Rumble (an extreme pro-free speech platform that's being bankrolled by alt-righters.)
You forget that many simply don't care, like me. I stopped using anything google for a reason. Their services are usually lower quality than alternatives, might get shut down tomorrow, paying them doesn't stop your data from being milked, and they continually look for ways to make the internet worse. You're supporting the biggest ads company here...
I pay for 3+ streaming services, and all of them offer me a better deal than yt. It's not about paying for me. It's simply not worth it for my low use of the platform. I only ever look at my 20 subscriptions and my watch later playlist. Until that goes away I will block ads.
I'm just waiting for the next platform to pop up, it's gonna happen sooner or later and hopefully isn't cancer...
And forget about the absolute goldmine YouTube is for Google. It's is among the most important information repositories in history and profits massively from it. There is a reason they run it at a loss. Google uses that data to categorize everything thing about you and uses it to exploit your psychology to sell whatever bullshit their advertisers are peddling this week. It then double dips by selling off that data. And I'm supposed to pay for this? Nah. Fuck Google. I'd rather see YouTube get shit canned than pay a single dime to Google.
I almost got it until I saw it cost 15 a month and they need to fix their copyright troll problem.
Nebula and Floatplane?
Nebula isn't really a YouTube replacement. If anything, the business model of Nebula still somewhat relies on YouTube for advertising. There also isn't a free version of Nebula in the way there is a free version of YouTube.
So I guess what it comes down to is people want YouTube for free without any commercials whatsoever.
We need to block ads so that ads die. Anti-angiogenesis for advertising. Get a less annoying business model.
That said, I have YouTube premium at that I don't see ads.
Invidious is having trouble to work these days. I fear google will also pull the plug on third party front ends once they get popular enough.