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How to use the YouTube website?
Youtube has become rather broken of late. The nagware popup complaining about my ad blocker can no longer be removed. I don't want ads and I certainly aren't going to pay. So far, I download the videos via Jdownloader. Is there a less bothersome way? How do you go about it?
You could try opening the video in a new container tab or private window see if that works.
Make sure ublock origin is updated.
Try out an Invidious instance like https://yewtu.be/
Or a installed frontend like Freetube if that's more convenient.
I think you can also watch yt videos through VLC but I'm not super familiar with that.
If you're on android try Newpipe from fdroid.
If you use a VPN try to find the node in a country that youtube doesn't have a big market in and hence won't have as much desire to push ads.
I've luckily never seen one of these popups myself, I use Librewolf with ublock origin and all filters enabled and hoping that my luck continues.
Uh.. Pay for the service ? It works great when you do that.
Maybe don’t use YouTube, then. Or just go whole hog and pirate the content like people do when they want to watch Netflix content without paying for it.
Although, in fairness, I think it’s horseshit that they bundle YT premium with a music sub, when all I care for is ad free YT.
Broken ? Actually they fixed the part where you could steal from the creators and company.
EDIT: I’ll be useful too… If you open a private browser window with the same adblocker, it’ll probably work fine. You could try just opening the video you want to watch in a new private window.
This framing ignores the fact that Google intentionally ran Youtube at a loss for well over a decade to shut out legitimate competition and dominate the video-distribution and creator ecosystem. No need to simp for a monopolistic megacorp.
This is the key point for myself. I'm not above paying for services, but I don't shed a tear for any company that preys on their customers by squeezing out the competition until they can lock in the entire customer base with fees. People pretend there's some moral dilemma at play with piracy or ad blockers, but these companies abandoned ethics a long time ago in favor of profits. I don't see why I should keep abiding by the "Code."
Eh, I wouldn’t call it simping. I just think it’s funny to call it “broken” for this behavior. It’s clearly working as intended.
Dark patterns generally are also "working as intended" and could also be considered "broken" as it relates to usability
Sure, I would agree, actually.
But, a paywall isn’t a dark pattern just because you don’t want to pay. As far as I’ve seen they aren’t doing anything egregious in terms of the UI of that popup, it has a clear way to get out, you just can’t access the content. They even give you a plethora of warnings before blocking access ! It’s pretty friendly, as paywalls come tbh.
I suppose you could make the argument that the ad experience on the site has gotten to the point that it’s almost a dark pattern itself pushing you towards Premium. They are going pretty crazy with them lately, and I miss the more moderate ad breaks from a few years back.
The whole company is a dark pattern. As another Tildesian wrote few comments higher: „company that preys on their customers by squeezing out the competition until they can lock in the entire customer base with fees.” - and for me that company itself is a dark pattern.
Yep. I pay for Youtube Premium and find it great value compared to the other subscriptions I have. People always said they would rather pay outright than watch ads, but when given the choice, many balk.
YouTube will not sell me YouTube Premium. They will only sell me an expensive bundle with an inferior competitor to the music streaming service I already pay for. I'd consider paying for it, but it's literally not an option because they are engaged in illegal-but-unenforced anticompetitive behavior.
You know, after they ran the company at a loss for nearly two decades to kill off competition. Now they leverage the ill-gotten monopoly for a foothold in another market.
This is really egregious in The Netherlands, because just prior to this move they canceled the YouTube Premium Light subscription that offered exactly what most people that consider paying want: just YouTube without the ads and nothing else. It cost 7 euros a month, half of the full premium. Now you have no choice and also pay for all the services that you're not interested in.
To make it even more confusing, they recently introduced this subscription option in our neighboring country Germany. So Germans do have that option now. It is hard to feel yourself taken seriously as a potential customer here.
I also have YouTube premium, but I'm still not really happy with it. Loads and loads of videos still have sponsorship sections, so it isn't really ad-free at all.
I'm not gonna begrudge anyone for taking sponsorship deals, but it definitely goes to show that YouTube isn't appropriately paying people making videos. If they aren't doing that, what am I really paying for? I guess it's supposed to be the infrastructure, but I truly doubt it costs anywhere remotely in the ballpark of $14 per user per month to run the service. It just doesn't feel like an appropriate price for what they provide.
Regardless of the amount paid by YT, people would still get more money by having additional sponsorship deals. I don't think even sharing 100% of the revenue would stop this.
If YouTube made content creators mark the sponsorship times in the video and I could choose to skip that section with premium, I'd be sold. I also wish the published exactly what percentage of the subscription goes to creators. I can't find anything on YouTube, just anecdotes from random places.
FWIW the browser plugin SponsorBlock crowdsources the sponsorship times in the video and lets you auto-skip them. There's a high score list on their website for who's submitted the most segments and saved people the most time, too.
Yup, sponsorblock generally works pretty great. Although it is a bit rough sometimes on fairly freshly uploaded videos. It seems that for a few creators there are a few overzealous people who mark half the video as advertisement. Which can be remedied by voting down the marked section, but makes it still a bit of a rough experience.
I am using a YouTube Premium trial, but I plan to cancel it. There were some features (besides just ad removal) that I was looking forward to trying, but it turns out that I don't like any of them. For example, I was excited to download videos for offline viewing, but it turns out that I can only do it on my phone, not my laptop.
So in effect, the only thing I'm getting out of YouTube Premium is ad removal, and the price is way too high for that. I disabled adblock about a month before I started to trial so that I could give it a fair comparison, and I'd honestly rather just watch ads than pay that much. There are a lot of other things with a much better pleasure-to-price ratio that I'd rather put that money toward.
However, if the price were half that (e.g., if there was a stripped down tier that didn't bundle a bunch of features I won't use), then I would probably keep my subscription. But I doubt that will happen; Google seems to be veering pretty hard in the exact opposite direction.
Mind you, this may be a consequence of how I spend my free time. I keep myself pretty busy with hobbies, so I tend to only watch videos to supplement my other interests (e.g., tutorials).
I feel like this is sorta where I'm at. Premium is way too expensive to just remove ads, and I have zero need or interest in YouTube Music. If they had an ad-free tier only that was reasonably priced, I'd be inclined to pay.
I feel like the problem though is even if they decoupled it and made an ad-free only version, it would still be too much for me. I don't use YouTube all that much other than as a supplement to my other hobbies/interests, so that would leave just viewing with ads. Unfortunately I find pretty much any amount of non-static ads unbearable and unacceptable, so that would lead me back to ad-blocking or just dropping YouTube altogether (which I very well may have to do).
I'm subbed to several patreons. Happy to pay YouTube. Which is the bundle that stops them from raiding my personal data? That's the one I want.
I really disagree with the "stealing from creators and company", something really doesn't sit well with me.
It is piracy, yes (although many will disagree about that too), but it is not stealing. You're not stealing actual money from them, you're just not generating it for them.
When people put something online that can be accessed for free, they should assume that 99% of people will access it for free.
If you're putting content on YouTube expecting everyone to pay for Premium or watch all the ads, you're in the wrong place.
(I do have to admit I am an advocate for piracy and I firmly believe all digital content should be free, but that's another discussion entirely and it has it's fair share of problems.
I also have been paying for Premium for over a year, mostly because I was tired of bothering with Vanced/Revanced.)
That's not the assumption though, nor is it the deal offered by Youtube to either creators or viewers. When a creator of suitable size puts stuff on YT and monetises it, they are doing so as part of a deal with YouTube where they get paid a percentage of the ad revenue from that video. As a user, your "free" access was never free, you were paying by watching ads rather than with money. That's what the terms and conditions of the site say. Lots of stuff on the internet is paid for that way and sure, it's not ideal because ads are boring - but it's not an unworkable way to ensure people get paid for their work.
If you choose to bypass that deal, you are depriving creators of revenue. Sure, some of them don't need it. But plenty do. Same as pirating movies, music, TV, books, etc. It's all a form of theft. It's not called 'piracy' because it's a cool and fun activity to do at sea, it's because pirates are thieves. Theft doesn't have to mean taking cash out of someone's hand, stopping that cash from going there in the first place is the same thing at the end of the day. I make a little money from my YT account and my bank account is slightly less well off (and I assure you it is not well off at all!) because of your adblocker. Although in this case I actually end up with slightly more money because your Premium subscription. So thanks for that!
I don't see it that way in this context though. Ignoring my Premium sub, by using an adblocker I'm not stopping the money from getting to you as it's being transferred or something, I'm just not generating that income at all.
It's akin to being on the outside of an outdoors concert but the fences aren't that high, so you can basically see your favorite artists without paying for a ticket.
I am enjoying the music without paying for it, so I didn't generate any income, but nobody would consider that stealing from the artists. At most it's a cheap move, and so is adblocking, I won't deny that.
YouTube, currently, has very low fences. It's fully in their right to raise them as they want, but that doesn't mean the people outside the fence are in the wrong for being there.
There's also the argument that we wouldn't have even engaged with your content if we didn't have the adblocker, so potential revenue was zero from the start. Right now it's quite invalid - people will go on YouTube, adblock or not, but as YouTube increases restrictions and outright ends up blocking adblock users, I could see it happening. Especially combined with the increase in ad exposures throughout the site, it could get infuriating to use.
There's a convenience threshold for anything, and while YouTube's is very high, it's not impossible for them to get to a point where it's more convenient to just go somewhere else.
I can't imagine where that "somewhere else" will be, but pirates are creative and they'll make it work (look at Sonarr and Radarr for example).
Even Bandcamp said at some point that they're fine with people ripping MP3s off their platform since blocking it would bring them no benefit.
They realized that blocking piracy doesn't bring extra income (at least not significantly), instead it just pushes the pirates to other platforms, and Bandcamp preferred them to stay on their platform since it would have boosted their metrics at least.
For YouTube you could argue that by visiting the website you agree to all its terms and conditions, which would place us inside the concert fence, and thus obligated to abide by their rules. However it's very difficult to enforce TOS. It even gets even less enforceable for people who don't have a YouTube account, since Google doesn't have any data on them (assuming the user also blocks ads everywhere else so AdSense doesn't fingerprint their device).
I do find the idea of "you click on my website, you are obligated to do X and Y and Z" not that great. Hypothetically (and very unrealistic), let's say a user has never heard of YouTube (I could say Dailymotion for this example and it would be realistic, but let's keep the YouTube theme) and a friend sends him a link to a YouTube video (not the front page or something). The user has adblock on and watches the video. Is the user wrong for watching that video, not knowing it is ad-supported and that adblocking breaks YouTube's TOS? I would say no, they are not. If they engage further with the platform I would agree they need to abide by the TOS, though.
So yeah, legally it is correct that we are breaking the TOS, however morally I don't think we are outright wrong or evil for it.
Other notes that I don't know where to put:
Digital piracy has nothing to do with real-life piracy, besides the name. Nobody gets killed, nobody loses anything on the physical level, we're just arguing regarding potential income that we're not 100% sure the rights holder would actually get. (My personal example, I never gave Microsoft a cent and would not buy Office if they blocked its piracy. So Microsoft would have never earnt money from me either way). I really wouldn't draw parallels between them besides the name.
Even in the best of all scenarios, pirates gain a benefit while nothing changes on the rights holder's side. If this is a good or bad thing, it depends on your moral compass (is it bad to benefit from something if someone else doesn't also benefit from the same thing? I would say no, it's not a bad thing, but I could definitely see and understand arguments for the other side).
As a YouTube creator, you have a contract with Google to pay you ad revenue. Google has a 'contract'/TOS with us to generate ad revenue.
However, I would argue that you can't combine both of these and assume that as a result we have a contract to generate ad revenue for you. You could make one (put all your content behind a Patreon, OnlyFans, whatever other similar platforms there are), but we aren't obligated to accept it.
This. It's this. All your other arguments fall apart completely at this point. You admit that by using an adblocker, people are breaking the site's terms of service. At that point you have jumped the fence. It doesn't matter if it's an easy fence to jump. I could quite easily do any number of crimes but that doesn't make it OK.
You can say whatever you like. That doesn't change what the legal situation is. We can argue the theoretical morality of piracy until the cows come home and honestly I'm probably going to agree with some of what you have to say - I have rtorrent running on my home server after all - but the user in that case broke a contract.
And yes, I know all about TOS being hard to enforce and all that. But that it's cheaper to ignore a certain amount of theft than enforce it away doesn't change it's still theft. Physical shops do this too, there's a certain amount of stolen goods which are cheaper than having cameras/security on every shelf. When a certain threshold gets passed, the shops (or the websites) take action. Like Youtube did.
Look, I steal TV. I also pay for TV, via the BBC License Fee and my YT premium subscription. But did I give Netflix a penny when I watched One Piece? Nope. Stole it. Like I have done with countless hours of content before, and will do again in the future. I commit that theft in full knowledge of the current perilous state of TV/movie production, I have friends and family who are working (or in some cases, desperately trying to find work) in an industry which despite your claims otherwise, is suffering from the effects of piracy. There's a whole bunch of other things messing stuff up too, not least the greed of the big networks and their desire to pinch every possible penny they can from producers/writers/etc, but the idea nobody is hurt by widescale content theft is incorrect.
I don't assume that. Your deal is with Alphabet. As is mine. We're both their customers, we both agreed to various ToS. The actual end result is the same though, you watch my content, I get money. Legally you have no contract with me, but that still doesn't mean you can't steal my stuff. I sell items in physical shops occasionally, my contract is with the shop not it's customers - but you can still walk in and lift my things.
Also, while you might never buy Office if you didn't steal it (me neither, fwiw), if you watch one of my videos with an adblocker enabled, we can say for 100% certainty that there is money I'm not making. The ad revenue which would have been generated for that view doesn't exist, so I don't get my cut. You are absolutely blocking money from my pocket in that situation.
For what it's worth, I don't actually care that much. I don't think people using adblockers are terrible people. I don't use one personally, but I get why people would. Everyone steals some stuff. Pay for some, steal some, it all balances out eventually. I don't mind at all if some people watch my content for free. I would mind if everyone does, but that's not happening. What I dislike is when people try to pretend they're not stealing stuff when they deliberately and actively circumvent payment systems. It's theft. It's also OK. Just own up to it.
The only thing I forgot to mention is that breaking a website's TOS is not illegal in the EU, unless a crime has been commited as a result. Using adblockers is not a crime as far as I am aware.
Do with that what you want.
I still like youtube, rather than youtube tv, but I'm wondering if paying for it improves the suggestion algorithm. 3-4 years ago their suggestions were great. Awesome content, related to the other videos I watched, and frequently introduced me to new content creators. I get terrible suggested videos. Ones I've already watches, all of the same people that I watch, and then random rage bait.
Outside of removing the ads, does the paid subscription provide better suggestions?
I wouldn’t say so, at least it hasn’t really been my experience. I’ve been an on/off subscriber, and I never noticed any difference in recommendation quality.
What’s odd to me is that typically the recommendations on my home page and in the video sidebars are pretty solid, even the suggested videos that it shows at the of a video are decent, but if auto-play is on it will go to some really random stuff sometimes. I ended up just disabling auto-play, and I pick a new video myself.
I mostly subscribe to the channels I want to see, and I’ll check in one them every once in a while.
Why must we be sensitive? I don't want to corelate piracy with theft, certainly, but you're at least admitting to breaking the terms of service.
The question "How to use YouTube" comes across as they don't know how to effectively use the site not "How to defeat YouTube ads" which is what the question really is. So, if they're not going to come by their actions honestly why handle with kid gloves?
Now, I block ads too. I'm a monster. I've also used YouTube Super Chat and Patreon to support the individual creators I frequent... But I know I'm a leech on the overall system. But I'm a leech on Google and they've got more than enough.
Yeah, I realize my original answer was a little insensitive, that’s why I updated it to add something actually helpful to their question. I wasn’t trying to belittle anyone for their choice, if anyone chooses to pirate something it’s not something I’ve ever cared too much about.
I guess the wording of the post/title rubbed me the wrong way a little, because it’s disingenuous to act like YT is broken now and pose the question as “How to use the YouTube website?” It’s completely usable if you pay (with money, or with eyeballs on ads), so the question is really “How do I use YouTube without paying for it?” which, again, I’m not going to judge but let’s be upfront about it. When I first saw this post title on my feed I figured there’s some bug with youtube or something.
You could pay for premium so the creators you watch get compensated for the content you consume.
If that's the goal, you're better of subscribing to their patreons and continue to ad block.
Except for the same price as one or two Patreons my entire household can show their support for dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube content creators (most of which don’t have Patreon). And we get a pleasant YouTube experience across any platform we choose.
You must logically understand that paying Google 15 dollars a month means that your hundreds of creators are seeing mere pennies out of you, even if Google is sending 100% of your money to them (they're not). You're not doing it to support them (because you're giving them each less than a quarter a month), you're doing it because you get a pleasant YouTube experience, by your own admission. Which is perfectly fine, but let's be clear about that.
If you really wanted to support them, you'd sub to their Patreon, or whatever service they use to actually fund their services.
Giving money to google is immoral (as google is an immoral company), so Patreon is the defacto better choice.
Or Nebula, if your favorite creators are on there.
Yeah but without second thought (yeah yeah I know his opinions on stuff are sometimes bad and tankie but his videos are broadly good) the service is a lot less appealing to me to be quite honest.
Quite shit takes. I'm surprised to see it on Tildes. Advertising is damaging and immoral, and the idea that those unable to afford paying $15 a month to a monopolistic megacorp should be forced to sit through manipulative drivel with their eyes glued open is gross.
The uBlock Origin adblocker is constantly updating to stave off YouTube's changes. The project yt-dlp is a command-line tool for general video downloading and works well on YouTube. There are mobile apps and websites built atop yt-dlp and related libraries: on Android, LibreTube and NewPipe, on the web Piped and many others, on iOS there's something that I forget the name of.
The anti-adblock popup is likely relatively easy to defeat but it does require some work. First, you didn't state what OS you are using (mostly just matters if it's mobile or desktop), which also contributes to what browser you are using, which contributes to what adblocker you're using.
This is probably exactly how Google expected this to play out, they make a move, which requires adblockers to make moves, and the users who use adblockers have to do something. It removes some of the simplicity of just installing an add-on and doing nothing else, and for some people that's enough to get them to buy Youtube Premium to avoid the hassle. In essence, this is the table Google has set at this point, you can jump through a hoop here or there to get the adblocker working again, pay for premium, watch ads, or skip youtube.
Without knowing any of those things I mentioned about your setup before, the simplest thing to mention would be tell you to use uBlock Origin and go to the uBlock Origin settings/dashboard and in the filter lists section, click "Purge all caches" and that seems to work for most people. Make sure to remove other adblockers or things that could function as adblockers, because if the methods Google uses to detect adblocking detects any one of the extensions, then you get detected, so the fewer ones that can fail the test the better.
Just be aware that as long as Google is employing resources to try to defeat adblockers, it will likely require some occasional interventions on the users part to keep up.
Yeah, should probably have said that I use Firefox on Windows. Anyway, I tried uBlock Origin and ... it worked straight away. I can't believe that it just ... works now. Much thanks!
The uBlock devs are actively working on the YT block so if it doesn't work either manually refresh the cache or wait a day.
Sweet. Happy surfing.
The other part about the settings/purging all caches may come in handy in the future if you notice issues. I had to do it 2 months ago, but haven't had to do it since, so that might give a rough idea that it's not something we likely have to do every week or such. Who knows when the next time I'll have to do it is, or Google might change it up completely next time and it will require something different to fix it.
uBlock Origin with firefox works flawlessly. Personally I'd just opt to not ever use YouTube (unironically) as google (and most of the unfree web tbh) is just strictly evil and a waste of energy. That's an utterly massive ask though, so I can get why people wouldn't take the radical route like I am.
Personally, I genuinely believe advertising is evil intrinsically so I don't give a shit about piracy. And neither should you honestly, YouTube has been running at a loss for decades and it's not your responsibility to pay for infinitely reproducible content, or let the site spy and invasively collect data on you.
I also use uBlock Origin on Firefox and have no issues with ads or any breaking of Youtube's webapp.
I have the same, the YT viewer app has broken for me a few times, but all I've needed to do is go into uBlock filter settings, purge cache and then click update and the viewer works again.
I don't use Youtube if I can. I don't run adblock of any kind and my idea is: If the site's ads are okay, I'm okay with consuming the site's content with the ads.
In the past I have stopped visiting a few sites purely because of how they handled the ads. They outselled themselves, you came to the site and saw only ads on the homepage because to be able to see the first actual content you had to scroll. All of the ads were of "moving" kind, not static images, nor videos (at the time). It was pain to watch and even more pain to look for the actual content.
Sad, but Youtube got to that stage. I want to see 15 minutes video and I have to spend 30 seconds on the beginning and then every two minutes watching ads. If I wanted to skip to 10 minute mark, I have to see 30 seconds of ads in the beginning (before I can even skip) and then after skipping there are another 30 seconds of ads. That is whole minute and I haven't still watched single second of the content. If I skipped on the wrong place and had to skip again add another 30 seconds. I won't tolerate this, so I simply don't visit the site anymore.
Grayjay on Android...
EDIT: spelling
Online advertising has been used as an attack vector on many occasions. You might trust the site, but who do they trust, etc.
I use newsboat and yt-dlp and mpv.
You can extract the RSS feed URL from the creator's YouTube page like this:
For the past few months I've been using Freetube to watch Youtube videos. I initially did so as a contingency plan after hearing about how Youtube was planning on blocking adblockers, but I quickly found that it gave me a better user experience, ads or no ads.
What would you say is better about the experience?
More responsive ui. Ability to set subscriptions as the default home page. Built in sponsorblock. More configurable ui.
Definitely sounds interesting, thanks!
TIL. It's disabled by default though, without any indication that you can enable it.
See this discussion from a few days ago. There are a thousand different factors that determine whether ad block will work on YouTube for a particular individual.
To answer the OP's question: I pay for Youtube Premium. Since it includes a streaming music service, I think the price is fair. But honestly YouTube Music wouldn't have been my first choice, and it does feel rather anticompetitive to have the two services bundled together.
Just use the Brave browser. I switched to it after I couldn't get ublock to work on firefox. Blocks everything even without an unblocking extension. Works like a charm
For iOS (and probably for MacOS, but I don’t use it), Orion browser automatically blocks YT ads for me.
I use Ublock Origin in Vivaldi. And I rarely log in to my Google account. The only time I log in is to subscribe to a channel or like a video in order to help support the creators. Then I log out immediately.
I haven't seen any ads or messages about blockers.
The only problem with this overall strategy is that my front page at Youtube eventually gets overrun with weird videos that I have no interest in. Right wing nutjobs show up frequently, and I don't watch any kind of political videos on Youtube. I erase the Youtube cookies and start over by manually entering the channels I follow. This works for a few weeks or months, till Youtube's bizarre suggestions start clogging up the works.
I use libredirect to automatically send YouTube links to an Invidious instance instead.
https://libredirect.github.io/
Vivaldi + ubo + youtube enhancer + sponserblock is my setup and I haven't seen the anti adblock popup once yet. I'm not sure which extension is doing it or if it's a combination, but it's worth a shot if you don't mind trying out a new browser. I recommend Vivaldi to everyone anyways though. Just so much utility, albeit pretty heavy for a browser
w/ Chrome -- I've been using this script with uBlock disabled and its been perfect. No more cat and mouse; instead it just speeds through the ad at 100x or whatever.
Brave browser is definitely the easiest way to go in my experience. I got the ad blocker nag exactly once and haven't seen it since. I assume Brave has been taking care of that but I honestly forget about it until threads like this come up.
Just a random idea - has anyone ever seen a site implement a premium scheme where buying an item shown in an ad gives you free premium for an amount of time proportional to the money spent? It seems like a better way than what YouTube is currently doing. If they show me an item that I was already going to buy or that I am glad to hear about I have no issue clicking through to purchase. But if I spent $40 and youtube got $2, shouldn't I get a few days without ads? This would make advertisers very happy, which should make Google very happy.
The current system makes it more difficult to see real results, so why make it easy? Lots of companies are throwing their money away on ads that don't work and they don't do anything that would allow them to see if they work relying on google to give them numbers which of course WAY overstate what's really happening.
Also, I've seen blogs and reviewers with Amazon links and a few other sites that gain them money when someone uses a link to make a purchase. So it's possible to make money that way, but I doubt they make a lot from each purchase so it wouldn't replace premium unless it was a "purchase this for 5 minutes of premium content" kind of deal.
YouTube Premium seems to be $13.99 a month right now. I don't really pay it because I get the benefits of a family account, but I probably would if I had to.
This website is a minefield of redirects to affiliate links and god knows what else.
I don't experience this, however I do run adblock so all I see is the video embedded.