Given that the big draw of premium is the lack of advertisements, I want to ask about the current state of youtube's advertising. I think the other big draw is sponsorblock, which is just another...
Given that the big draw of premium is the lack of advertisements, I want to ask about the current state of youtube's advertising. I think the other big draw is sponsorblock, which is just another adblocker.
I was part of their tests for the threat model where they said they'd restrict views after blocking ads X number of times. I was never restricted from viewing anything despite not caring about the message.
I was also part of their tests for in-stream ads. These sufficiently annoyed me that I closed the website as soon as they popped up (which is likely a win for the advertising team at Google).
It seems like they have removed both of those from me at least. Are they still doing both or either of those things? Is there some new fancy measure that they have in place that I am not part of some A/B testing on? I don't use the site often enough to say that I've noticed anything in at least a few months.
Haven't had any difficulty watching with ublock still. Never got any of the flags people identified. I do watch on an app sometimes though so I get some ads regardless Edit: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN...
Haven't had any difficulty watching with ublock still. Never got any of the flags people identified. I do watch on an app sometimes though so I get some ads regardless
Same here, the maintainers of uBO and its filter lists must have been doing some awesome work behind the scenes if I've had no issues to this day. If you're still using the stock YouTube app,...
Same here, the maintainers of uBO and its filter lists must have been doing some awesome work behind the scenes if I've had no issues to this day.
If you're still using the stock YouTube app, Grayjay is the best client for Android. I don't know what options may exist on the iOS side of things but I imagine anything uploaded to the app store that can block YouTube ads would get taken down fairly quickly.
Grayjay looks interesting! Does it block ads and use Sponsor block at all? I currently use ReVanced which seems to require an update every few months to keep working which always ends up being a...
Grayjay looks interesting! Does it block ads and use Sponsor block at all?
I currently use ReVanced which seems to require an update every few months to keep working which always ends up being a ballache to manage at my end.
Grayjay is the new kid on the block, and what a powerhouse for an app so fresh. It's aggressively open source, and it's created by and backed up by FUTO (aka Fuck Up Tech Oligopoly) which is about...
Grayjay is the new kid on the block, and what a powerhouse for an app so fresh. It's aggressively open source, and it's created by and backed up by FUTO (aka Fuck Up Tech Oligopoly) which is about as close as you'll ever see to a project that matches Tildes' own philosophy. It's backed by Eron Wolf's billions. He seems pretty generous about sharing the wealth.
Imagine that Three Cheers for Tildes could support any/thousands of websites running Tildes code, and swizzle the content from all of them together for you on your own terms regardless of what any one node wanted to impose on you. That gives you an idea what Grayjay does for sites like Youtube, Twitch, Rumble, Patreon, etc - it turns them all into nothing more than content nodes at your disposal, denying them their advertising and privacy violations. It does still support you paying the content creators, though - just cutting out the pesky middlemen. With Grayjay you can follow any creator across any platform, and probably won't even notice if one of their channels or videos gets taken down as long as it's on another one.
It's a ballsy project. I'd normally roll my eyes at something like this, but frankly, their code slaps. I sense a competent tech team. They already kicked Youtube's ass too - they have the legal resources. Youtube hates them so much that any mention of Grayjay's name on any video will immediately trigger a copyright strike on that content. You cannot even talk about it without being banned.
Aha, found it! Had to go digging through a watch history export for that one. I'd enjoy them while it lasts because I suspect Rossman's channel is going to get nuked at some point. He is a...
Had to go digging through a watch history export for that one. I'd enjoy them while it lasts because I suspect Rossman's channel is going to get nuked at some point. He is a gargantuan pain in their ass and they delete channels for far less egregious offenses.
True, but none of those channels have the track record of Rossman nor the dedicated following of people interested in effectively this very subject. Nuking his channel is very likely to cause a...
True, but none of those channels have the track record of Rossman nor the dedicated following of people interested in effectively this very subject. Nuking his channel is very likely to cause a Streisand effect of such significance that Youtube will might be a bit more hesitant in pulling the trigger here.
Usually the big name I see associated with Grayjay (and FUTO) is Louis Rossman, who has been the chief evangelist for Right to Repair and has started making a pretty successful secondary (or...
Usually the big name I see associated with Grayjay (and FUTO) is Louis Rossman, who has been the chief evangelist for Right to Repair and has started making a pretty successful secondary (or tertiary?) career as a YouTuber where he highlights various anti-consumer practices.
I know that in the past you could build a raspberry pi machine that would connect to your homes router and do the same thing that UBlock does but for your whole house. It's something I gotta look...
I know that in the past you could build a raspberry pi machine that would connect to your homes router and do the same thing that UBlock does but for your whole house. It's something I gotta look back into, though I'm only on my phone on YouTube on break at work.
As someone else said, @Tmbreen was talking about PiHole, which is a network-wide ad-blocker. In layman's terms, you set it up, tell your router to push all your internet traffic through it, and...
As someone else said, @Tmbreen was talking about PiHole, which is a network-wide ad-blocker. In layman's terms, you set it up, tell your router to push all your internet traffic through it, and then it scrubs out any ads. Any device that's on your network automatically gets ad blocking for free.
While it's great and I recommend anyone savvy enough to set it up, it's not perfect. It does a really, really good job when browsing the web, but it's not good at blocking ads from streaming services. The way that it works under the hood is by blocking traffic from known advertising domain names. With most streaming services, the ads are coming from the service themselves, not from a third party, and you obviously don't want to block all traffic from YouTube or Netflix. The only streaming service (that I've found) PiHole cuts out ads for is Peacock, because their ads are coming from a 3rd party domain name - that means that any shows we steam on peacock have no ad breaks, and live events (like the primetime Olympics) just have placeholder images during the ad breaks :-) the on-demand events didn't have any ad breaks.
Yeah so I definitely don't have the time, energy, interest, etc for building my own TV or network setup. I have too many stressors not to let both be as plug and play as possible. There's...
Yeah so I definitely don't have the time, energy, interest, etc for building my own TV or network setup. I have too many stressors not to let both be as plug and play as possible.
There's something about this topic that always has a lot of people explaining a lot of things. I promise I appreciate the intent but I don't need any of the knowledge!
Roku devices are notoriously unmoddable. They don't want you using anything third party. In this case your best bet is to buy something simple like an Amazon FireTV Stick or any of the...
Roku devices are notoriously unmoddable. They don't want you using anything third party.
In this case your best bet is to buy something simple like an Amazon FireTV Stick or any of the alternatives for about fifty bucks. Those devices run proper Android, and so you can install SmartTube on them, which solves any advertisement problems.
For all the garbage operating systems being loaded on newer televisions, they all have HDMI input ports, and so you can plug something you control into that port to bypass the manufacturer's bullshit.
Sorry, let me reiterate what I said in another thread. I do not have the time or energy to bootstrap or build anything for TV or my network in general. The TV is where I see ads the most with...
Sorry, let me reiterate what I said in another thread. I do not have the time or energy to bootstrap or build anything for TV or my network in general.
The TV is where I see ads the most with Android's app second, so while I might side load an app, I'm probably not fucking with the TV (and for reasons I even have a Roku stick for a non-smart TV). I had a Chromecast too but my laptop has been broken for a couple of months and I don't have the cash/time to fix it at the moment.
So I appreciate the info, but I don't need it. /Gen
The entire process wouldn't even take you one hour on an idle tuesday, for about $50 and precisely zero risks to any device as it never changes them at all. You plug it into the tv like it's a blu...
The entire process wouldn't even take you one hour on an idle tuesday, for about $50 and precisely zero risks to any device as it never changes them at all. You plug it into the tv like it's a blu ray player or game console, you turn it on, you switch the tv input to it, join it to your wifi like anything else, let it update while you get coffee. Then you install one app from an app store over your wifi, open the app, and use it to open an .apk file you downloaded on your computer and put on a USB stick or just downloaded to the device directly. That installs the better youtube client. This is as simple as a bypass gets, since after that it self-updates. This works on all tvs, all makes, all models, all years.
If something that simple is too much work to avoid the ads (and I mean all of them, including sponsors, to the millisecond, forever) then that means the ads aren't enough of a problem for you personally that you'd want to put in one hour of activity to avoid them. That's the point where I stop taking the complaints seriously - an hour is nothing. This isn't setting up a home four zone firewall or anything remotely technical like pi holes and other enthusiast toys. It's just plugging a better brain (full android where you actually have administrator privs on the hardware you paid for) into the tv and using that device for your viewing.
Google is still creeping on your data in this scenario, so it's not perfect, but using that better youtube client will put a dent in that if you like. It does everything incognito, which is kinda de-referencing google's index and making your activity harder to see as a 'thing' rather than random noise in their collection tools.
Well I already knew you didn't take my words seriously when I very politely told you I did not want or need that information and you decided to tell me, very condescendingly, how easy it was and...
Well I already knew you didn't take my words seriously when I very politely told you I did not want or need that information and you decided to tell me, very condescendingly, how easy it was and explain it in detail
you don't care about my complaints so I won't subject you to them unless you click
Why don't I want to spend literally any energy on this?
I work full time, and take care of my disabled partner at home the rest of the time. I hardly have a chance to watch TV because even when I have physical time, my mental health and attention span have tanked in the past 2 years, despite therapy and medication for my ADHD. I have a wide variety of apps to watch because my partner is home all day so he watches quite a few things. I've even considered paying for YouTube Premium and dropping Spotify as a trade off.
It is a very minor annoyance in my life. If it gets too bad, I close the app and go back to listening to an audiobook. I do not currently have 50 bucks to buy one if I wanted to, which I don't, because I had to make a bunch of extra hospital trips this past week and the wheelchair van uses a ton more gas than my CRV.
But none of that matters, because I told you I wasn't interested and you decided it was more important to tell me how simple it was and that if I didn't bother you didn't take my complaints seriously. It would be insulting but with all due respect IDGAF if you take my complaints seriously, especially when I didnt complain. I just asked you not to keep giving me unwanted advice. Try to do that this time. Please.
I try to avoid YouTube, but it was recently reported that they've started displaying ads when a video is paused. While I haven't seen that, I have seen some terrible implementations of it in other...
I try to avoid YouTube, but it was recently reported that they've started displaying ads when a video is paused. While I haven't seen that, I have seen some terrible implementations of it in other streaming apps.
There are functional requirements around pausing. Some content is even designed to be paused, with backgrounds that are filled up with points of interest. When I was using YouTube regularly, I found the UI and features to already have several issues (search comes to mind,) but it sounds like they're at a point where they're willing to actively destroy core functionality in hopes that people jump on these higher priced ad plans?
Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, but with the way things are going at YouTube and other streaming companies, I honestly wouldn't trust them to resist putting some kind of ads in premium at some point.
Those pause ads happen sometimes when my husband is watching things on the AppleTV app. It's irritating not because the picture is zoomed out, but because you can't resume the video by pressing...
Those pause ads happen sometimes when my husband is watching things on the AppleTV app. It's irritating not because the picture is zoomed out, but because you can't resume the video by pressing the play button.
Wait, what?! How you do resume video playback then? Are you able to close the ad to view the video frame's content? The most-common reason for my pausing a video is to study the contents in that...
Wait, what?! How you do resume video playback then? Are you able to close the ad to view the video frame's content? The most-common reason for my pausing a video is to study the contents in that frame - if I can't do that, I'd feel like the platform is getting pretty broken. I don't mind clicking the ad to close it, I understand they've got to make money.
Oh, you just press the select button instead. It’s just irritating because it is literally the only app we use that does this. Come to think of it the YouTube app overrides or doesn’t implement a...
Oh, you just press the select button instead. It’s just irritating because it is literally the only app we use that does this.
Come to think of it the YouTube app overrides or doesn’t implement a lot of AppleTV functionality. You can’t do things like wheel scrubbing. There was a point where they had overridden the screensaver functionality so instead of seeing pictures of my beloved memories I saw random “background” videos - until that broke so I see neither of those and I get screen burn-in instead. Even typing with your iPhone for search is broken. Google really doesn’t care much about Apple users it seems.
I assume they are, but I rarely engage with youtube from a browser or their app. I use third party apps that keep track of everything without my needing an account. These apps strip out all ads...
I assume they are, but I rarely engage with youtube from a browser or their app. I use third party apps that keep track of everything without my needing an account. These apps strip out all ads completely, most I ever see is a half-second delay in the video stream when they eat up and edit out an ad that was embedded in it.
When they first started testing this stuff, for about one weekend, those apps were a bit more wobbly than normal. I might have to restart a video, for example. After that weekend and a flurry of updates, there was no evidence anything had changed. I can and do watch whatever I like (and bypass age-gating) without ads or messages or other irritations. Even the new ads that are injected dynamically into the stream are skipped instantly.
Frankly, the only thing Youtube can possibly do here to 'win' this is to require an account to view their service. Then they can control and punish accounts that don't use their tools or run programs they don't approve of. Until they are willing to do this, nothing changes. If they were to do this, I expect they'd drop double digit percentages of their total traffic, damaging the value to advertisers in the process. Bit of a catch-22 for them.
I look forward to seeing them flail around ineffectively for a few more years over this before giving up. The winning move was to just consider it 'breakage' and never bother doing anything about the ads being skipped in the first place. So far every nickle of developer time and server infrastructure they've invested has been a waste of their money.
That's a lot of assumptions. People thought the same about Netflix's crackdown on family sharing, but that was an immense success for Netflix. You don't have to get the most technical, most...
I look forward to seeing them flail around ineffectively for a few more years over this before giving up.
That's a lot of assumptions. People thought the same about Netflix's crackdown on family sharing, but that was an immense success for Netflix. You don't have to get the most technical, most hardcore users in the end, just make it too annoying for the 95% of casuals who install u-block because reddit tells them to.
I've watched piracy reign undefeated for about fifty years now. I think Alphabet is the one making the silly assumptions. The only thing they can do is eventually make their service so bad that no...
I've watched piracy reign undefeated for about fifty years now. I think Alphabet is the one making the silly assumptions. The only thing they can do is eventually make their service so bad that no one will use it any longer, and that is always how this story ends... more times than I can count.
Only Valve ever scored a draw, because they realized that convenience is the only way to beat piracy, and they don't have to explain it to a board of vapid vulture capitalists who have no understanding of technology.
Piracy serves as an important check against the market. Every service must provide enough value to keep most people away from piracy. When they're doing a good job, the vast majority don't bother....
Piracy serves as an important check against the market.
Every service must provide enough value to keep most people away from piracy. When they're doing a good job, the vast majority don't bother. Piracy is somewhat risky, it's technically immoral, and it's not that convenient. Much easier to give up a few bucks a month for convenience, reliability, and peace of mine.
Get too lazy or greedy and piracy starts to look more appealing. I think piracy is a necessary evil. It serves as natural competition, even in mostly monopolized spaces.
People seem to forget the Napster age. Everyone and their grandma was hopping on the "holy crap I don't need to pay $20 for a CD, I can just download the 2 songs I want for free" train. Even on...
People seem to forget the Napster age. Everyone and their grandma was hopping on the "holy crap I don't need to pay $20 for a CD, I can just download the 2 songs I want for free" train. Even on dialup downloading a few songs a day was viable.
Piracy is the real reason we have these streaming services at all. While artists got royally screwed over by the rise of them, the alternative was the complete and utter collapse of the music industry as we know it.
In the end, I think it would have been better for the music industry to fully collapse. I think a new, better model would have arisen from the ashes, rather than having the existing companies shamble along absorbing most of the remaining money.
The vast majority, even me, wouldn't mind a pair of skippable ads over thirty minutes of video. If it worked like that, no one would even bother to take the time to create the apps that block the...
The vast majority, even me, wouldn't mind a pair of skippable ads over thirty minutes of video. If it worked like that, no one would even bother to take the time to create the apps that block the advertisements.
Even cable television was originally advertisement-free, that was the entire point of paying for television. Fast forward seventy years and we still pay for it, but are lucky to find ten minutes of content for every thirty minutes of advertisements. Go ahead and compare average running times on television shows from 1950-2020 and watch that inexorable decline in episode run time. Watch the credits speed up, watch the title segments get shorter, watch the commercial break points in the episodes become more and more frequent. Greed gets these poor saps every. single. time.
Now I get to sit back and watch Alphabet make all the same mistakes thinking they are smarter than all the saps who fell into this trap before. I swear it never gets old, and never fails to make me laugh. It's good news, it means youtube is going to be toast, and we'll get some better platforms... at least until their owners get greedy and the cycle starts again.
What if pirated content is mostly watched on YouTube? I can only speak for myself. Nowadays I mostly use YouTube to watch recordings of live performances of songs from jazz concerts. These are...
What if pirated content is mostly watched on YouTube?
I can only speak for myself. Nowadays I mostly use YouTube to watch recordings of live performances of songs from jazz concerts. These are professional videos, sometimes released on DVD or Blu-ray to begin with, and then someone uploaded them to YouTube. I don't know how I'd have found them otherwise, and I don't necessarily want my own copy. I don't even have a Blu-ray player.
But I'm happy somebody cared enough to save them and share them. YouTube is great for that!
There are also official videos put out by the musicians themselves, or their labels.
If I had my choice, every local library worldwide would have a data center under it and a digital archived copy of every single work in history. Break out the holostorage. If it's got a copyright,...
Exemplary
If I had my choice, every local library worldwide would have a data center under it and a digital archived copy of every single work in history. Break out the holostorage. If it's got a copyright, it's in the library, on release day, no exceptions. That is where the band's uploads would go (for free) to be replicated out to every other library, and corporations wouldn't even be involved in this mess.
As for accessing this data... that's not online. You have to physically go to the library or at least close enough to get their local wifi - and the street of shops that would arise around that would be something to see. Imagine putting the smart people of the world who want to learn something in close proximity to each other in that environment. Maybe even let schools and college campuses get in on this too.
This assumption that corporations have rights over this data is probably my largest pet peeve here. There are better ways to manage an information society. Youtube's business model is to lock up the world's art behind an advertisement-ridden paywall so their execs can pick up another private jet. It's fundamentally a sick, twisted mentality when looked at this way. They are middle men, extorting a tax, and they always need a little more next quarter.
I'm sure we can find better ways to get this done, and that'll get easier as storage and bandwidth continue to get better and cheaper. Pretty soon that library fits in your pocket.
My local library, despite being a fairly small one, definitely has room to wedge in a 42U rack. For about $20k, you can build a 2U server with 60TB of RAID10 storage. You buy 5 of those, spread...
My local library, despite being a fairly small one, definitely has room to wedge in a 42U rack.
For about $20k, you can build a 2U server with 60TB of RAID10 storage. You buy 5 of those, spread out 1 each over a 5 year lifecycle, and you've got dedicated 25GB of space per person in my town, with room to spare....plus the other half of the rack for power and networking and such. Hire a single full-time IT guy to manage the rack (and the rest of the library computing resources TBH, they are severely understaffed), and that total comes out to be about $30 per household annually.
That's kinda playing the game their way, though. I'd go a lot bigger - the libraries, at least in the usa, are a critical social infrastructure. They are intended to be the one place a kid with...
That's kinda playing the game their way, though.
I'd go a lot bigger - the libraries, at least in the usa, are a critical social infrastructure. They are intended to be the one place a kid with just a nickle in his pocket (and everyone else) can go to get free access to the world's knowledge, and at least in the usa, that right is considered with real gravity. Free brain upgrades, this is the building where you can get as much of that as you can handle... every day. In fact they are often staffed by walking, talking encyclopedias called librarians who put internet search engines and most teachers to shame.
They are also themselves upgrading away from this 'cathedral full of books' (which take too much space to store and cost too much money to care for) into something a lot more like a cross between college learning centers and computer gaming halls. This is a giant lounge full of information and cozy chairs, desks, workstations, reading nooks, music listening booths, and in some places they aren't shy about integrating restaurants, gyms, coffee shops, bookstores, and public houses in the mix, complete with alcohol. This is a social space for curious people. The only one protected by law.
Going bigger is fun. You build them their own digital network, ultra-high bandwidth, and hey, they can rent rack space for local businesses as well as any other data center. Maybe everyone has the right to a unix shell account and an email address at their local branch there too.
You invest some real money into bringing one of the many promising holostorage technologies to fruition - they already have superman memory crystal at the Library of Congress. A government funded research sprint here on behalf of the us library system is something I won't mind supporting.
Now you can store blocks or discs of quartz like you used to store tapes in the olden days of the data center. Racks and racks of yottabytes... and something's different. These ones don't wear out (until after earth does), don't mind the heat and the cold so much. In fact the machines moving them around from rack to rack to pipe things upstairs and load media into the local hot cache mind a lot more than the discs do. This is what it would take to honestly store that much of humanity's data. We're already at (est) sixty zettabytes and that's too big for this system. But we're just concentrating on the long term archival of important shit (not your youtube channel).
The idea of building out these systems is probably less daunting than figuring out how to index it all, coordinate the archival and distribution of new media, and keep the entire network running so that it's highly distributed, with all of the data at multiple nodes. This is a spicy tech challenge. Dewey decimal has to get digital.
These discs are the data backup, so that after the world ends the next wave won't have to start from scratch again. This much data on media this strong will outlast fires, floods, solar flares, and nukes. That's something our current media cannot even pretend to do. Everything else is toast in fifty years maximum, but locking holograms into quartz crystals solves that problem.
Then there's the downstream effects of boosting this tech for libraries and commercial data centers - it'll seep into the public sphere. You can leave a petabyte time capsule anywhere you like. It should make hard drives (and rare earth magnets) a lot less necessary, they aren't ideal for this job, and the current tapes are literal toxic waste. It'd help in many ways.
I do think this crackdown was a bit more targeted than it was played up to be. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky but my family has continued sharing Netflix without issue through the whole thing.
People thought the same about Netflix's crackdown on family sharing, but that was an immense success for Netflix.
I do think this crackdown was a bit more targeted than it was played up to be. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky but my family has continued sharing Netflix without issue through the whole thing.
This is intriguing. Can you share a name or a pointer?
I use third party apps that keep track of everything without my needing an account. These apps strip out all ads completely, most I ever see is a half-second delay in the video stream when they eat up and edit out an ad that was embedded in it.
This is intriguing. Can you share a name or a pointer?
My favorite three apps. ;) On android television sets, you want the beta version of SmartTube Next. On android mobile, you want Grayjay. For the command line, you want yt-dlp. All of these work...
Wait, is this a feature in Youtube Premium yet? I have Premium and have still been using the extension on my computer, and I haven't noticed any sponsorblock on my TV (where I watch through the...
I think the other big draw is sponsorblock, which is just another adblocker.
Wait, is this a feature in Youtube Premium yet? I have Premium and have still been using the extension on my computer, and I haven't noticed any sponsorblock on my TV (where I watch through the app and thus have no access to extentions like I do in browser).
It’s not automatic but it’s there. When you double tap to skip forward, there is a button that pops up. I forget what it’s called, but it’s something like “recommended skip ahead”. Click that and...
It’s not automatic but it’s there. When you double tap to skip forward, there is a button that pops up. I forget what it’s called, but it’s something like “recommended skip ahead”. Click that and you should be good to go. I only use the iOS apps though, so I don’t know how it works on desktop.
Just a reminder that Nebula exists and is pretty good, not to mention a lot cheaper. They'll never really be a true YouTube competitor, since you can't join the platform as a creator as easily,...
As for video streaming, YouTube has no real competition, so you'll either have to put up with the ads or pay the higher subscription fees.
Just a reminder that Nebula exists and is pretty good, not to mention a lot cheaper. They'll never really be a true YouTube competitor, since you can't join the platform as a creator as easily, but several of my favourite YouTubers are on Nebula as well.
Second for Nebula. Great platform: they share revenue with creators and work with them to make amazing originals. I pay it to support creators because I don't want to give a dime to Google. That...
Second for Nebula. Great platform: they share revenue with creators and work with them to make amazing originals. I pay it to support creators because I don't want to give a dime to Google. That being said, the app has some slight rough edges but is miles ahaid of what it was a year or two ago and still improving. The support also actually responds to emails, which you would never have with Youtube.
I recently asked my colleague from India to create a premium account for me and he was happy to help. Seeing how the Netherlands is getting bumped to a whopping 26 a month, I made the right choice...
I recently asked my colleague from India to create a premium account for me and he was happy to help.
Seeing how the Netherlands is getting bumped to a whopping 26 a month, I made the right choice paying half that a year.
I don't think I have the moral high ground here, if enough people do what I did, the prices would have to go up for everyone else. But with the absolute horrid state of YouTube ads I'm not going to lose sleep over it. My primary intention and near sole use of that account is to have my kid be able to watch Miffy without being mind poisoned by an ad.
Perhaps if Google managed to actually curate their ads properly rather than serve me outright scam ads I might reconsider.
Regardless, with all those price hikes across almost all markets -not just streaming- I'm increasingly worried we're going to hit a breaking point. It becomes untenable from both ends to sustain the cost.
Outright collapse? Slow degradation? Revolts?
I wonder.
Yeah I know, but you need a residence and a bank account in India to pay with rupees in the first place. So these guys made an account while in India, using their residence and payment. It's a...
Yeah I know, but you need a residence and a bank account in India to pay with rupees in the first place. So these guys made an account while in India, using their residence and payment. It's a little safer than me spoofing every thing.
If it's banned, it's banned. I can lose 15 euro.
Edit to add: so most notably, it's a throwaway used only for YT Premium on one device. If it's banned I lose no other access.
Just be aware that Google is known to ban associated accounts as well. It's likely that they know that your throwaway and primary accounts belong to the same person. If you rely on your Google...
Just be aware that Google is known to ban associated accounts as well. It's likely that they know that your throwaway and primary accounts belong to the same person. If you rely on your Google account for a lot of things, it might be a good idea to make sure you update your Google Takeout often.
First i've heard of that. got any sources to back up that claim? To me that sounds like something that could put Google in some legal trouble if they did that.
First i've heard of that. got any sources to back up that claim? To me that sounds like something that could put Google in some legal trouble if they did that.
I somehow managed to get grandfathered in to a $7.99/month plan for music and YouTube premium together, I think because I was an early Google Music subscriber. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, but...
I somehow managed to get grandfathered in to a $7.99/month plan for music and YouTube premium together, I think because I was an early Google Music subscriber. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, but I fully expect them to cancel the situation at any moment.
My "grandfathering" ended in December, sadly. I was subscribed since 2015 or so. Was paying $10/month and this year is raised to $14. So you may also be on borrowed time. Loyalty is never...
My "grandfathering" ended in December, sadly. I was subscribed since 2015 or so. Was paying $10/month and this year is raised to $14. So you may also be on borrowed time.
Loyalty is never respected and then businesses wonder why customers are so fleeting.
Yes, I'm aware that could be the intention, but nagging me into becoming a customer generally fails. I have no choice for my TV -again, mainly for my daughter's benefit-, but my computers and...
Yes, I'm aware that could be the intention, but nagging me into becoming a customer generally fails. I have no choice for my TV -again, mainly for my daughter's benefit-, but my computers and phones all have alternative methods of blocking ads. If it becomes any more expensive I'll simply drop it, I have plenty of other methods.
That said, I think there's an ethical argument to be made that YouTube shouldn't be able to serve me actual scams as ads. As long as they can do this without repercussion, I feel no moral obligation to accept their monetization efforts fairly.
I see this a lot, but I don't know why people think this. Youtube isn't have more ads, and longer ads to nag you into joining YtP; they're doing that to make more money from ad spots. Longer ads...
but nagging me into becoming a customer generally fails
I see this a lot, but I don't know why people think this. Youtube isn't have more ads, and longer ads to nag you into joining YtP; they're doing that to make more money from ad spots. Longer ads are more expensive, and of course running more them is more money.
If it becomes any more expensive I'll simply drop it
And that is what it is. It's a win-win; you no longer contribute to youtube's server costs, and you no longer have to watch ads.
I get frequent pop ups to sign up for premium and (I can't emphasize this enough) literal scams disguised as ads are a way for YT to push people towards premium. Ads are not the moneymakers, at...
I get frequent pop ups to sign up for premium and (I can't emphasize this enough) literal scams disguised as ads are a way for YT to push people towards premium.
Ads are not the moneymakers, at least not pound for pound as subscribers are.
Even so, I was talking about my own experience. Dropping it would mean going back to adblock or circumventing it in other ways. Or simply not watching it on my TV but elsewhere with adblock.
The only problem with Youtube Premium is Youtube Music. When Youtube Premium Lite was trialed, it was arguably perfect; the price was reasonable, and it was a simple, unbundled product - Youtube...
The only problem with Youtube Premium is Youtube Music. When Youtube Premium Lite was trialed, it was arguably perfect; the price was reasonable, and it was a simple, unbundled product - Youtube without ads. If they offered a less expensive option like Lite, I'd subscribe in a minute.
Surprisingly not affecting the UK. I don't get why people are so anal about paying for YouTube Premium yet have the gall to whinge about ads and advocate for the widespread use of ad-blocking...
Surprisingly not affecting the UK.
I don't get why people are so anal about paying for YouTube Premium yet have the gall to whinge about ads and advocate for the widespread use of ad-blocking software, as if it's their God given right to freeload off of Google's servers.
YouTube Premium isn't even a bad deal when you consider the fact that it gives you the ability to save videos for offline playback and listen to a music library that easily dwarfs Spotify (even if the YT Music app itself is a bit shit.)
I largely agree, though not in as strong terms as you. However, while you seem to have no issue with product tying I do think it is a bad anti-competitive practice. I personally still prefer...
I largely agree, though not in as strong terms as you. However, while you seem to have no issue with product tying I do think it is a bad anti-competitive practice.
music library that easily dwarfs Spotify (even if the YT Music app itself is a bit shit.)
I personally still prefer Spotify yet can't refuse YT Music. This does make it overpriced from that perspective.
I am going to use my personal usage here as example and I have no idea how common it is. In the past year I have watched less than ten hours of that content six of which was a single one off...
I am going to use my personal usage here as example and I have no idea how common it is.
In the past year I have watched less than ten hours of that content six of which was a single one off tutorial series. Paying for premium would mean +- of 20 cents per minute. The ads on the other hand are genuinely insane, one after the other several times per less than half an hour video and with severely questionable content.
If they actually let me pay a price that was commesurate with even an order of magnitude more than it actually costs them, no problem. Once that gets into orders of magnitude in maybe high single digits then that is different. Not even mentioning the bundling and other tricks.
If they had tried less hard to become the default that might also be a different story.
Does YouTube Premium exempt me from them raiding my personal information for profit? If not, I'm using an ad blocker and FreeTube/NewPipe. It's not a God given right, it's just a normal government...
Does YouTube Premium exempt me from them raiding my personal information for profit? If not, I'm using an ad blocker and FreeTube/NewPipe. It's not a God given right, it's just a normal government given right, as ad blockers aren't illegal in my country. The second they stop trying to steal my personal data at every interaction, then I might pay, like I do for content creators and podcasters in Patreon that I particularly like. But I'm not giving Google a cent.
I canceled my YouTube premium for good during the last round of price hikes for American users. To block ads, I now use the SmartTube app side loaded on my NVIDIA Shield where I do probably 90% of...
I canceled my YouTube premium for good during the last round of price hikes for American users. To block ads, I now use the SmartTube app side loaded on my NVIDIA Shield where I do probably 90% of my YouTube streaming. It is heavily customizable and capable of blocking ads, sponsored segments, intros, and more. On my phone (iOS), I watch all YouTube videos through the Safari app (deleted the YouTube app) with AdGuard Pro enabled. It all works pretty seamlessly for me.
on ios, are you able to play video in the background? ive been using brave for awhile and im still searching for a client or anything that does more than the bare minimum of adblock and background...
on ios, are you able to play video in the background? ive been using brave for awhile and im still searching for a client or anything that does more than the bare minimum of adblock and background play.
im content with it, id just like to check this years public consensus in case something better is emerging.
Nope, that's one lost feature, but it doesn't really bother me. If I'm listening to something in the background, it's almost never Youtube content, and if it is, I'm most likely in front of a...
Nope, that's one lost feature, but it doesn't really bother me. If I'm listening to something in the background, it's almost never Youtube content, and if it is, I'm most likely in front of a computer anyway.
I'm sure no one needs to be convinced of this for Google, but this is why monopolies are bad. You give someone full control, they can just price hike like this with no viable alternative to go to....
I'm sure no one needs to be convinced of this for Google, but this is why monopolies are bad. You give someone full control, they can just price hike like this with no viable alternative to go to. We needed proper competition a decade ago and this is the consequence.
The price increase here in Denmark is quite crazy. From €24 to €35 for a family subscription. We do use both Youtube and Music in our household, so comparing to something like Spotify plus another...
The price increase here in Denmark is quite crazy. From €24 to €35 for a family subscription. We do use both Youtube and Music in our household, so comparing to something like Spotify plus another video streaming service, the price doesn't really have a bundling deal to it anymore. I am surprised they haven't even tried to market this alongside something extra added value to their platform. At least make us feel we get something we didn't before. I do get more value out of other streaming services because I watch a ton of movies, but Youtube is still used quite a bit by all family members for various shorter video content. We can easily afford it, but it does really feel like getting royally screwed.
Yeah, the product tying in the first place makes it already a bit of a problem. Previously I didn't really have an issue with it as the family bundle was still fairly reasonably priced. With this...
Yeah, the product tying in the first place makes it already a bit of a problem. Previously I didn't really have an issue with it as the family bundle was still fairly reasonably priced. With this price hike I personally rather would have had the option to not get YT music.
It would almost seem I had made good choice to leave Youtube altogether. I spend my money on Nebula and on LTT on Floatplane. Kids are watching Youtube on TV through Kodi plugin which is ad-free...
It would almost seem I had made good choice to leave Youtube altogether. I spend my money on Nebula and on LTT on Floatplane. Kids are watching Youtube on TV through Kodi plugin which is ad-free and yet it still works for some reason. Good riddance!
I just... it's so easy to install NewPipe on your phone and FreeTube on your computer. This isn't a problem if you get frontends. It's not illegal, and quite simple.
I just... it's so easy to install NewPipe on your phone and FreeTube on your computer. This isn't a problem if you get frontends. It's not illegal, and quite simple.
Given that the big draw of premium is the lack of advertisements, I want to ask about the current state of youtube's advertising. I think the other big draw is sponsorblock, which is just another adblocker.
I was part of their tests for the threat model where they said they'd restrict views after blocking ads X number of times. I was never restricted from viewing anything despite not caring about the message.
I was also part of their tests for in-stream ads. These sufficiently annoyed me that I closed the website as soon as they popped up (which is likely a win for the advertising team at Google).
It seems like they have removed both of those from me at least. Are they still doing both or either of those things? Is there some new fancy measure that they have in place that I am not part of some A/B testing on? I don't use the site often enough to say that I've noticed anything in at least a few months.
Haven't had any difficulty watching with ublock still. Never got any of the flags people identified. I do watch on an app sometimes though so I get some ads regardless
Edit: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN ADVICE ON THIS.
Same here, the maintainers of uBO and its filter lists must have been doing some awesome work behind the scenes if I've had no issues to this day.
If you're still using the stock YouTube app, Grayjay is the best client for Android. I don't know what options may exist on the iOS side of things but I imagine anything uploaded to the app store that can block YouTube ads would get taken down fairly quickly.
Grayjay looks interesting! Does it block ads and use Sponsor block at all?
I currently use ReVanced which seems to require an update every few months to keep working which always ends up being a ballache to manage at my end.
Grayjay is the new kid on the block, and what a powerhouse for an app so fresh. It's aggressively open source, and it's created by and backed up by FUTO (aka Fuck Up Tech Oligopoly) which is about as close as you'll ever see to a project that matches Tildes' own philosophy. It's backed by Eron Wolf's billions. He seems pretty generous about sharing the wealth.
Imagine that Three Cheers for Tildes could support any/thousands of websites running Tildes code, and swizzle the content from all of them together for you on your own terms regardless of what any one node wanted to impose on you. That gives you an idea what Grayjay does for sites like Youtube, Twitch, Rumble, Patreon, etc - it turns them all into nothing more than content nodes at your disposal, denying them their advertising and privacy violations. It does still support you paying the content creators, though - just cutting out the pesky middlemen. With Grayjay you can follow any creator across any platform, and probably won't even notice if one of their channels or videos gets taken down as long as it's on another one.
It's a ballsy project. I'd normally roll my eyes at something like this, but frankly, their code slaps. I sense a competent tech team. They already kicked Youtube's ass too - they have the legal resources. Youtube hates them so much that any mention of Grayjay's name on any video will immediately trigger a copyright strike on that content. You cannot even talk about it without being banned.
Ooh, do you have any links to info about their legal battle with Youtube? I'm fascinated by IP law so I'm super curious about the details.
Aha, found it!
Had to go digging through a watch history export for that one. I'd enjoy them while it lasts because I suspect Rossman's channel is going to get nuked at some point. He is a gargantuan pain in their ass and they delete channels for far less egregious offenses.
True, but none of those channels have the track record of Rossman nor the dedicated following of people interested in effectively this very subject. Nuking his channel is very likely to cause a Streisand effect of such significance that Youtube will might be a bit more hesitant in pulling the trigger here.
I am absolutely certain that Louis would... maximize the drama.
Usually the big name I see associated with Grayjay (and FUTO) is Louis Rossman, who has been the chief evangelist for Right to Repair and has started making a pretty successful secondary (or tertiary?) career as a YouTuber where he highlights various anti-consumer practices.
GrayJay does block ads, no sponsorblock. It also has excellent downloading functionality.
SponsorBlock functionality works for me, it just presents a small (non-intrusive, but easy to miss) skip button.
Ah, never looked into it but they do have it indeed. Thanks!
YMMV, but I've not had much trouble keeping ReVanced functioning. At most I've had to manually update it about once a year or so.
I use Firefox Mobile on Android for YouTube, with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock enabled
I may look into it. It's mostly watching on the Roku TV that gets me.
I know that in the past you could build a raspberry pi machine that would connect to your homes router and do the same thing that UBlock does but for your whole house. It's something I gotta look back into, though I'm only on my phone on YouTube on break at work.
You're thinking of Pi-Hole.
I have zero interest in building my own TV setup. I just want to turn the TV on and watch things.
As someone else said, @Tmbreen was talking about PiHole, which is a network-wide ad-blocker. In layman's terms, you set it up, tell your router to push all your internet traffic through it, and then it scrubs out any ads. Any device that's on your network automatically gets ad blocking for free.
While it's great and I recommend anyone savvy enough to set it up, it's not perfect. It does a really, really good job when browsing the web, but it's not good at blocking ads from streaming services. The way that it works under the hood is by blocking traffic from known advertising domain names. With most streaming services, the ads are coming from the service themselves, not from a third party, and you obviously don't want to block all traffic from YouTube or Netflix. The only streaming service (that I've found) PiHole cuts out ads for is Peacock, because their ads are coming from a 3rd party domain name - that means that any shows we steam on peacock have no ad breaks, and live events (like the primetime Olympics) just have placeholder images during the ad breaks :-) the on-demand events didn't have any ad breaks.
Yeah so I definitely don't have the time, energy, interest, etc for building my own TV or network setup. I have too many stressors not to let both be as plug and play as possible.
There's something about this topic that always has a lot of people explaining a lot of things. I promise I appreciate the intent but I don't need any of the knowledge!
As somebody said you are thinking of pihole but it’s quite different from ublock, in that it can only block domains.
Roku devices are notoriously unmoddable. They don't want you using anything third party.
In this case your best bet is to buy something simple like an Amazon FireTV Stick or any of the alternatives for about fifty bucks. Those devices run proper Android, and so you can install SmartTube on them, which solves any advertisement problems.
For all the garbage operating systems being loaded on newer televisions, they all have HDMI input ports, and so you can plug something you control into that port to bypass the manufacturer's bullshit.
Sorry, let me reiterate what I said in another thread. I do not have the time or energy to bootstrap or build anything for TV or my network in general.
The TV is where I see ads the most with Android's app second, so while I might side load an app, I'm probably not fucking with the TV (and for reasons I even have a Roku stick for a non-smart TV). I had a Chromecast too but my laptop has been broken for a couple of months and I don't have the cash/time to fix it at the moment.
So I appreciate the info, but I don't need it. /Gen
The entire process wouldn't even take you one hour on an idle tuesday, for about $50 and precisely zero risks to any device as it never changes them at all. You plug it into the tv like it's a blu ray player or game console, you turn it on, you switch the tv input to it, join it to your wifi like anything else, let it update while you get coffee. Then you install one app from an app store over your wifi, open the app, and use it to open an .apk file you downloaded on your computer and put on a USB stick or just downloaded to the device directly. That installs the better youtube client. This is as simple as a bypass gets, since after that it self-updates. This works on all tvs, all makes, all models, all years.
If something that simple is too much work to avoid the ads (and I mean all of them, including sponsors, to the millisecond, forever) then that means the ads aren't enough of a problem for you personally that you'd want to put in one hour of activity to avoid them. That's the point where I stop taking the complaints seriously - an hour is nothing. This isn't setting up a home four zone firewall or anything remotely technical like pi holes and other enthusiast toys. It's just plugging a better brain (full android where you actually have administrator privs on the hardware you paid for) into the tv and using that device for your viewing.
Google is still creeping on your data in this scenario, so it's not perfect, but using that better youtube client will put a dent in that if you like. It does everything incognito, which is kinda de-referencing google's index and making your activity harder to see as a 'thing' rather than random noise in their collection tools.
Well I already knew you didn't take my words seriously when I very politely told you I did not want or need that information and you decided to tell me, very condescendingly, how easy it was and explain it in detail
you don't care about my complaints so I won't subject you to them unless you click
Why don't I want to spend literally any energy on this? I work full time, and take care of my disabled partner at home the rest of the time. I hardly have a chance to watch TV because even when I have physical time, my mental health and attention span have tanked in the past 2 years, despite therapy and medication for my ADHD. I have a wide variety of apps to watch because my partner is home all day so he watches quite a few things. I've even considered paying for YouTube Premium and dropping Spotify as a trade off.It is a very minor annoyance in my life. If it gets too bad, I close the app and go back to listening to an audiobook. I do not currently have 50 bucks to buy one if I wanted to, which I don't, because I had to make a bunch of extra hospital trips this past week and the wheelchair van uses a ton more gas than my CRV.
But none of that matters, because I told you I wasn't interested and you decided it was more important to tell me how simple it was and that if I didn't bother you didn't take my complaints seriously. It would be insulting but with all due respect IDGAF if you take my complaints seriously, especially when I didnt complain. I just asked you not to keep giving me unwanted advice. Try to do that this time. Please.
As you wish.
https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
For iOS, outside of sideloading, there’s
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
I try to avoid YouTube, but it was recently reported that they've started displaying ads when a video is paused. While I haven't seen that, I have seen some terrible implementations of it in other streaming apps.
There are functional requirements around pausing. Some content is even designed to be paused, with backgrounds that are filled up with points of interest. When I was using YouTube regularly, I found the UI and features to already have several issues (search comes to mind,) but it sounds like they're at a point where they're willing to actively destroy core functionality in hopes that people jump on these higher priced ad plans?
Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, but with the way things are going at YouTube and other streaming companies, I honestly wouldn't trust them to resist putting some kind of ads in premium at some point.
Those pause ads happen sometimes when my husband is watching things on the AppleTV app. It's irritating not because the picture is zoomed out, but because you can't resume the video by pressing the play button.
Wait, what?! How you do resume video playback then? Are you able to close the ad to view the video frame's content? The most-common reason for my pausing a video is to study the contents in that frame - if I can't do that, I'd feel like the platform is getting pretty broken. I don't mind clicking the ad to close it, I understand they've got to make money.
Oh, you just press the select button instead. It’s just irritating because it is literally the only app we use that does this.
Come to think of it the YouTube app overrides or doesn’t implement a lot of AppleTV functionality. You can’t do things like wheel scrubbing. There was a point where they had overridden the screensaver functionality so instead of seeing pictures of my beloved memories I saw random “background” videos - until that broke so I see neither of those and I get screen burn-in instead. Even typing with your iPhone for search is broken. Google really doesn’t care much about Apple users it seems.
I assume they are, but I rarely engage with youtube from a browser or their app. I use third party apps that keep track of everything without my needing an account. These apps strip out all ads completely, most I ever see is a half-second delay in the video stream when they eat up and edit out an ad that was embedded in it.
When they first started testing this stuff, for about one weekend, those apps were a bit more wobbly than normal. I might have to restart a video, for example. After that weekend and a flurry of updates, there was no evidence anything had changed. I can and do watch whatever I like (and bypass age-gating) without ads or messages or other irritations. Even the new ads that are injected dynamically into the stream are skipped instantly.
Frankly, the only thing Youtube can possibly do here to 'win' this is to require an account to view their service. Then they can control and punish accounts that don't use their tools or run programs they don't approve of. Until they are willing to do this, nothing changes. If they were to do this, I expect they'd drop double digit percentages of their total traffic, damaging the value to advertisers in the process. Bit of a catch-22 for them.
I look forward to seeing them flail around ineffectively for a few more years over this before giving up. The winning move was to just consider it 'breakage' and never bother doing anything about the ads being skipped in the first place. So far every nickle of developer time and server infrastructure they've invested has been a waste of their money.
That's a lot of assumptions. People thought the same about Netflix's crackdown on family sharing, but that was an immense success for Netflix. You don't have to get the most technical, most hardcore users in the end, just make it too annoying for the 95% of casuals who install u-block because reddit tells them to.
I've watched piracy reign undefeated for about fifty years now. I think Alphabet is the one making the silly assumptions. The only thing they can do is eventually make their service so bad that no one will use it any longer, and that is always how this story ends... more times than I can count.
Only Valve ever scored a draw, because they realized that convenience is the only way to beat piracy, and they don't have to explain it to a board of vapid vulture capitalists who have no understanding of technology.
That seems like the result of being in a bubble. Piracy will always exist, but the vast majority of people who view content are paying users.
Piracy serves as an important check against the market.
Every service must provide enough value to keep most people away from piracy. When they're doing a good job, the vast majority don't bother. Piracy is somewhat risky, it's technically immoral, and it's not that convenient. Much easier to give up a few bucks a month for convenience, reliability, and peace of mine.
Get too lazy or greedy and piracy starts to look more appealing. I think piracy is a necessary evil. It serves as natural competition, even in mostly monopolized spaces.
People seem to forget the Napster age. Everyone and their grandma was hopping on the "holy crap I don't need to pay $20 for a CD, I can just download the 2 songs I want for free" train. Even on dialup downloading a few songs a day was viable.
Piracy is the real reason we have these streaming services at all. While artists got royally screwed over by the rise of them, the alternative was the complete and utter collapse of the music industry as we know it.
In the end, I think it would have been better for the music industry to fully collapse. I think a new, better model would have arisen from the ashes, rather than having the existing companies shamble along absorbing most of the remaining money.
The vast majority, even me, wouldn't mind a pair of skippable ads over thirty minutes of video. If it worked like that, no one would even bother to take the time to create the apps that block the advertisements.
Even cable television was originally advertisement-free, that was the entire point of paying for television. Fast forward seventy years and we still pay for it, but are lucky to find ten minutes of content for every thirty minutes of advertisements. Go ahead and compare average running times on television shows from 1950-2020 and watch that inexorable decline in episode run time. Watch the credits speed up, watch the title segments get shorter, watch the commercial break points in the episodes become more and more frequent. Greed gets these poor saps every. single. time.
Now I get to sit back and watch Alphabet make all the same mistakes thinking they are smarter than all the saps who fell into this trap before. I swear it never gets old, and never fails to make me laugh. It's good news, it means youtube is going to be toast, and we'll get some better platforms... at least until their owners get greedy and the cycle starts again.
What if pirated content is mostly watched on YouTube?
I can only speak for myself. Nowadays I mostly use YouTube to watch recordings of live performances of songs from jazz concerts. These are professional videos, sometimes released on DVD or Blu-ray to begin with, and then someone uploaded them to YouTube. I don't know how I'd have found them otherwise, and I don't necessarily want my own copy. I don't even have a Blu-ray player.
But I'm happy somebody cared enough to save them and share them. YouTube is great for that!
There are also official videos put out by the musicians themselves, or their labels.
If I had my choice, every local library worldwide would have a data center under it and a digital archived copy of every single work in history. Break out the holostorage. If it's got a copyright, it's in the library, on release day, no exceptions. That is where the band's uploads would go (for free) to be replicated out to every other library, and corporations wouldn't even be involved in this mess.
As for accessing this data... that's not online. You have to physically go to the library or at least close enough to get their local wifi - and the street of shops that would arise around that would be something to see. Imagine putting the smart people of the world who want to learn something in close proximity to each other in that environment. Maybe even let schools and college campuses get in on this too.
This assumption that corporations have rights over this data is probably my largest pet peeve here. There are better ways to manage an information society. Youtube's business model is to lock up the world's art behind an advertisement-ridden paywall so their execs can pick up another private jet. It's fundamentally a sick, twisted mentality when looked at this way. They are middle men, extorting a tax, and they always need a little more next quarter.
I'm sure we can find better ways to get this done, and that'll get easier as storage and bandwidth continue to get better and cheaper. Pretty soon that library fits in your pocket.
My local library, despite being a fairly small one, definitely has room to wedge in a 42U rack.
For about $20k, you can build a 2U server with 60TB of RAID10 storage. You buy 5 of those, spread out 1 each over a 5 year lifecycle, and you've got dedicated 25GB of space per person in my town, with room to spare....plus the other half of the rack for power and networking and such. Hire a single full-time IT guy to manage the rack (and the rest of the library computing resources TBH, they are severely understaffed), and that total comes out to be about $30 per household annually.
That's kinda playing the game their way, though.
I'd go a lot bigger - the libraries, at least in the usa, are a critical social infrastructure. They are intended to be the one place a kid with just a nickle in his pocket (and everyone else) can go to get free access to the world's knowledge, and at least in the usa, that right is considered with real gravity. Free brain upgrades, this is the building where you can get as much of that as you can handle... every day. In fact they are often staffed by walking, talking encyclopedias called librarians who put internet search engines and most teachers to shame.
They are also themselves upgrading away from this 'cathedral full of books' (which take too much space to store and cost too much money to care for) into something a lot more like a cross between college learning centers and computer gaming halls. This is a giant lounge full of information and cozy chairs, desks, workstations, reading nooks, music listening booths, and in some places they aren't shy about integrating restaurants, gyms, coffee shops, bookstores, and public houses in the mix, complete with alcohol. This is a social space for curious people. The only one protected by law.
Going bigger is fun. You build them their own digital network, ultra-high bandwidth, and hey, they can rent rack space for local businesses as well as any other data center. Maybe everyone has the right to a unix shell account and an email address at their local branch there too.
You invest some real money into bringing one of the many promising holostorage technologies to fruition - they already have superman memory crystal at the Library of Congress. A government funded research sprint here on behalf of the us library system is something I won't mind supporting.
Now you can store blocks or discs of quartz like you used to store tapes in the olden days of the data center. Racks and racks of yottabytes... and something's different. These ones don't wear out (until after earth does), don't mind the heat and the cold so much. In fact the machines moving them around from rack to rack to pipe things upstairs and load media into the local hot cache mind a lot more than the discs do. This is what it would take to honestly store that much of humanity's data. We're already at (est) sixty zettabytes and that's too big for this system. But we're just concentrating on the long term archival of important shit (not your youtube channel).
The idea of building out these systems is probably less daunting than figuring out how to index it all, coordinate the archival and distribution of new media, and keep the entire network running so that it's highly distributed, with all of the data at multiple nodes. This is a spicy tech challenge. Dewey decimal has to get digital.
These discs are the data backup, so that after the world ends the next wave won't have to start from scratch again. This much data on media this strong will outlast fires, floods, solar flares, and nukes. That's something our current media cannot even pretend to do. Everything else is toast in fifty years maximum, but locking holograms into quartz crystals solves that problem.
Then there's the downstream effects of boosting this tech for libraries and commercial data centers - it'll seep into the public sphere. You can leave a petabyte time capsule anywhere you like. It should make hard drives (and rare earth magnets) a lot less necessary, they aren't ideal for this job, and the current tapes are literal toxic waste. It'd help in many ways.
To be clear, I'm 100% behind your vision. I was just outlining how cheaply we could get started.
I do think this crackdown was a bit more targeted than it was played up to be. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky but my family has continued sharing Netflix without issue through the whole thing.
This is intriguing. Can you share a name or a pointer?
My favorite three apps. ;)
On android television sets, you want the beta version of SmartTube Next.
On android mobile, you want Grayjay.
For the command line, you want yt-dlp.
All of these work far better than any of the official apps ever did, in my experience.
Awesome, thank you!
Wait, is this a feature in Youtube Premium yet? I have Premium and have still been using the extension on my computer, and I haven't noticed any sponsorblock on my TV (where I watch through the app and thus have no access to extentions like I do in browser).
It’s not automatic but it’s there. When you double tap to skip forward, there is a button that pops up. I forget what it’s called, but it’s something like “recommended skip ahead”. Click that and you should be good to go. I only use the iOS apps though, so I don’t know how it works on desktop.
I mostly browse YouTube on an app on my smart tv anyway, so I reckon it'll be a little before it hits me.
Just a reminder that Nebula exists and is pretty good, not to mention a lot cheaper. They'll never really be a true YouTube competitor, since you can't join the platform as a creator as easily, but several of my favourite YouTubers are on Nebula as well.
Second for Nebula. Great platform: they share revenue with creators and work with them to make amazing originals. I pay it to support creators because I don't want to give a dime to Google. That being said, the app has some slight rough edges but is miles ahaid of what it was a year or two ago and still improving. The support also actually responds to emails, which you would never have with Youtube.
I recently asked my colleague from India to create a premium account for me and he was happy to help.
Seeing how the Netherlands is getting bumped to a whopping 26 a month, I made the right choice paying half that a year.
I don't think I have the moral high ground here, if enough people do what I did, the prices would have to go up for everyone else. But with the absolute horrid state of YouTube ads I'm not going to lose sleep over it. My primary intention and near sole use of that account is to have my kid be able to watch Miffy without being mind poisoned by an ad.
Perhaps if Google managed to actually curate their ads properly rather than serve me outright scam ads I might reconsider.
Regardless, with all those price hikes across almost all markets -not just streaming- I'm increasingly worried we're going to hit a breaking point. It becomes untenable from both ends to sustain the cost.
Outright collapse? Slow degradation? Revolts?
I wonder.
Edit: typos
Be aware that Google has been known to ban the accounts of people who use this trick without actually living in the country in question.
Yeah I know, but you need a residence and a bank account in India to pay with rupees in the first place. So these guys made an account while in India, using their residence and payment. It's a little safer than me spoofing every thing.
If it's banned, it's banned. I can lose 15 euro.
Edit to add: so most notably, it's a throwaway used only for YT Premium on one device. If it's banned I lose no other access.
Just be aware that Google is known to ban associated accounts as well. It's likely that they know that your throwaway and primary accounts belong to the same person. If you rely on your Google account for a lot of things, it might be a good idea to make sure you update your Google Takeout often.
Hmm I wasn't aware of that policy, that's more troublesome.
First i've heard of that. got any sources to back up that claim? To me that sounds like something that could put Google in some legal trouble if they did that.
I somehow managed to get grandfathered in to a $7.99/month plan for music and YouTube premium together, I think because I was an early Google Music subscriber. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, but I fully expect them to cancel the situation at any moment.
My "grandfathering" ended in December, sadly. I was subscribed since 2015 or so. Was paying $10/month and this year is raised to $14. So you may also be on borrowed time.
Loyalty is never respected and then businesses wonder why customers are so fleeting.
Same, I had the YouTube Red Family plan for the longest time, the price bump stung, but if you split it 6 ways, it's worth it IMO.
If Google curated their ads better, you'd have less incentive to join, no?
Yes, I'm aware that could be the intention, but nagging me into becoming a customer generally fails. I have no choice for my TV -again, mainly for my daughter's benefit-, but my computers and phones all have alternative methods of blocking ads. If it becomes any more expensive I'll simply drop it, I have plenty of other methods.
That said, I think there's an ethical argument to be made that YouTube shouldn't be able to serve me actual scams as ads. As long as they can do this without repercussion, I feel no moral obligation to accept their monetization efforts fairly.
I see this a lot, but I don't know why people think this. Youtube isn't have more ads, and longer ads to nag you into joining YtP; they're doing that to make more money from ad spots. Longer ads are more expensive, and of course running more them is more money.
And that is what it is. It's a win-win; you no longer contribute to youtube's server costs, and you no longer have to watch ads.
I get frequent pop ups to sign up for premium and (I can't emphasize this enough) literal scams disguised as ads are a way for YT to push people towards premium.
Ads are not the moneymakers, at least not pound for pound as subscribers are.
Even so, I was talking about my own experience. Dropping it would mean going back to adblock or circumventing it in other ways. Or simply not watching it on my TV but elsewhere with adblock.
The only problem with Youtube Premium is Youtube Music. When Youtube Premium Lite was trialed, it was arguably perfect; the price was reasonable, and it was a simple, unbundled product - Youtube without ads. If they offered a less expensive option like Lite, I'd subscribe in a minute.
Surprisingly not affecting the UK.
I don't get why people are so anal about paying for YouTube Premium yet have the gall to whinge about ads and advocate for the widespread use of ad-blocking software, as if it's their God given right to freeload off of Google's servers.
YouTube Premium isn't even a bad deal when you consider the fact that it gives you the ability to save videos for offline playback and listen to a music library that easily dwarfs Spotify (even if the YT Music app itself is a bit shit.)
I largely agree, though not in as strong terms as you. However, while you seem to have no issue with product tying I do think it is a bad anti-competitive practice.
I personally still prefer Spotify yet can't refuse YT Music. This does make it overpriced from that perspective.
I am going to use my personal usage here as example and I have no idea how common it is.
In the past year I have watched less than ten hours of that content six of which was a single one off tutorial series. Paying for premium would mean +- of 20 cents per minute. The ads on the other hand are genuinely insane, one after the other several times per less than half an hour video and with severely questionable content.
If they actually let me pay a price that was commesurate with even an order of magnitude more than it actually costs them, no problem. Once that gets into orders of magnitude in maybe high single digits then that is different. Not even mentioning the bundling and other tricks.
If they had tried less hard to become the default that might also be a different story.
Does YouTube Premium exempt me from them raiding my personal information for profit? If not, I'm using an ad blocker and FreeTube/NewPipe. It's not a God given right, it's just a normal government given right, as ad blockers aren't illegal in my country. The second they stop trying to steal my personal data at every interaction, then I might pay, like I do for content creators and podcasters in Patreon that I particularly like. But I'm not giving Google a cent.
I canceled my YouTube premium for good during the last round of price hikes for American users. To block ads, I now use the SmartTube app side loaded on my NVIDIA Shield where I do probably 90% of my YouTube streaming. It is heavily customizable and capable of blocking ads, sponsored segments, intros, and more. On my phone (iOS), I watch all YouTube videos through the Safari app (deleted the YouTube app) with AdGuard Pro enabled. It all works pretty seamlessly for me.
on ios, are you able to play video in the background? ive been using brave for awhile and im still searching for a client or anything that does more than the bare minimum of adblock and background play.
im content with it, id just like to check this years public consensus in case something better is emerging.
Nope, that's one lost feature, but it doesn't really bother me. If I'm listening to something in the background, it's almost never Youtube content, and if it is, I'm most likely in front of a computer anyway.
I'm sure no one needs to be convinced of this for Google, but this is why monopolies are bad. You give someone full control, they can just price hike like this with no viable alternative to go to. We needed proper competition a decade ago and this is the consequence.
The price increase here in Denmark is quite crazy. From €24 to €35 for a family subscription. We do use both Youtube and Music in our household, so comparing to something like Spotify plus another video streaming service, the price doesn't really have a bundling deal to it anymore. I am surprised they haven't even tried to market this alongside something extra added value to their platform. At least make us feel we get something we didn't before. I do get more value out of other streaming services because I watch a ton of movies, but Youtube is still used quite a bit by all family members for various shorter video content. We can easily afford it, but it does really feel like getting royally screwed.
Yeah, the product tying in the first place makes it already a bit of a problem. Previously I didn't really have an issue with it as the family bundle was still fairly reasonably priced. With this price hike I personally rather would have had the option to not get YT music.
We pay for YouTube Premium to not get ads, yet we still have to pay more to watch a movie on the same platform. Shrug.
It would almost seem I had made good choice to leave Youtube altogether. I spend my money on Nebula and on LTT on Floatplane. Kids are watching Youtube on TV through Kodi plugin which is ad-free and yet it still works for some reason. Good riddance!
I just... it's so easy to install NewPipe on your phone and FreeTube on your computer. This isn't a problem if you get frontends. It's not illegal, and quite simple.