this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Technology

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139
YouTube screwing itself with adblockers again (beehaw.org)
submitted 11 months ago by TheBaldness@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I "don't have watch history turned on". Okay, fine. I won't be able to browse suggested videos, and I'll spend less time on their platform.

Then I began to get warnings about using an adblocker. Okay, fine. I know they need to make money, so I turned off the adblocker. Now when I'm having my time wasted by ads, I have to ask myself, how bad do I really want to watch this video? Not badly enough? I close the tab and spend less time on their platform.

Finally, I began experiencing glitches when playing videos. The video stops, but the audio continues. This never happened before. Perhaps mistakenly, I attribute this to YouTube, which is owned by Google, trying to force me off Firefox and on to Chrome. That was the last straw.

Now I use YouTube to simply follow the channels I'm subscribed to. When I want to watch something, I copy the URL, paste it into YT-DLP, download the video and spend zero time on their platform at all.

To summarize; Now I'm watching zero commercials, and YouTube is streaming the entire video to me, even if I only watch a small portion of it, and they're collecting less information about my watching habits than ever before.

Nice job, YouTube. Nice job.

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[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If pasting into yt-dlp works for you, go ahead, but if you (or anyone reading) wants a more user-friendly experience, I recommend FreeTube for desktop and LibreTube for mobile.

Both these apps strip ads, respect your privacy, and have Sponsorblock built-in. You can import your subscriptions from YouTube via csv.

EDIT: Forgot to mention SmartTube for Android TV, which blocks ads and has Sponsorblock but is less privacy-respecting as you have to login to your YouTube account.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 points 11 months ago

Linretube only works for me about 50% of the time. I tend to default to NewPipe because of this. Both are great, when they work, though. FreeTube for desktop is amazing. The ONLY thing I don't like it about it, is that download progress isn't shown (they're working on that, I think).