Desktop replacements: FreeTube and Piped. I personally prefer FreeTube; the UI is way better than Piped.
Android: LibreTube (it also works with Piped but I just imported my youtube subscription list instead). There is also NewPipe too!
If you’d rather dump YouTube entirely, there is Odysee and PeerTube. Though for most people they’re just not viable, total replacements. Only you can decide for yourself on that matter.
Enjoy!
Edit: If you want to export your YouTube subs and playlists you’ll have to do Google Takeout; but after that it’s super easy to import/export them from Freetube and Piped whenever ya want.
You might like NewPipe for android. Same flexibility with importing subs, but cleaner and less errors, in my experience, but as long as you’re not using the YT app…
Vinegar is a Safari extension for iOS that turns the YouTube media player into a generic iOS one, completely bypassing all of these restrictions. I’m not savvy enough to know if it’s something Google can kill or not, but it’s working great for me right now. Even lets you do PiP and background play.
People who choose not to watch ads are far more likely to not spend money based on ads. I know that when I see the same crappy ads over and over, yeah, I remember the name of the product, and I remind myself every time never to buy it. I'm more likely to buy from that seller if I don't see their ads.
I can list a ton of products I by principle will never use. Athelic greens, casper mattresses, simplisafe, express/nordVPN, Honey … Some people may see a pattern there.
Ironically I might actually buy your product even if you spam annoying ads as long as you do it on a platform I block ads on.
I operate this way too. There must be literally dozens of us.
In all seriousness, I do find it somewhat surprising that some of these companies think saturating everything with ads is a good idea. As a simple matter of brand recognition, I get that the power of suggestion is a helluva drug. But all that stuff does eventually glom together in my head as general advertising nonsense – as a result I see companies that advertise less / not at all and rely on a quality product and word of mouth as a better buy.
They don’t just think it’s a good idea, marketers have convinced themselves they’re doing you a favor by pummeling you with advertisements day and night.
How else could you learn about their valuable product if not for constant, unending advertisement?
It’s more likely that they’re incompetent and haven’t checked/manually set up their video / display ads, and have let Google decide how often to show their ads. Google then decides to show their ads as often as possible because it gets clicks (even if they’re accidental) and nets them more money each time.
The best trick Google ever pulled was telling advertiser’s to trust them with their money and “leave it up to the algorithm”.
Fuck no, you set it up so Google doesn’t abuse their platform and spam your ads everywhere, ignoring everything Google tell you to do.
The shit I’ve seen in people’s accounts because Google told them to do it…
You can and should limit the amount of times your adverts are shown per day to someone. There’s a not-so-fine line between brand awareness and pissing off potential customers.
That’s because the average person is influenced by seeing the same shit over and over again, and it improves sales. Not every single person, just most of them.
Depends on the age demographic and lifestyle. For example, I pretty much buy the same things for the last 20 years. I’m not going to change my shopping patterns because of an ad.
Also, YouTube ads are about the most random things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad on YouTube for anything that I would actually buy. I’m not even nearly immune to ads, either. Show me a product that solves a problem for me and I’ll strongly consider it. Consciously and I’m sure subconsciously.
Google knows what I do for a living, where I live, and what I spend money on. Google also knows that I use YouTube primarily to watch videos in other languages. It’s not a secret to them. Yet they insist on trying to sell me products or services that have zero relevance to anything that I do. In English.
It makes me wonder if they’re even trying to profit through ads. I know the answer – no, not really – the advertiser is the customer, not me. It must be too complicated for them to realise that they could charge more for ads the more sales they led to.
Haha. This is something that they have been testing for some time now. I ended up changing to YouTube premium a few years ago from Spotify and I think it’s pretty good!
I find it hilarious that people down vote me. It’s horrible apparently to be subscribing to something that’s google…
i left spotify when they paid joe rogan podcast. the 50 shuffle limit also annoyed me because 300 songs on a playlist get missed. youtube premium is no ads youtube and music
For me it was Spotify’s patent on manipulating people’s mood with music, noped right out of there after that. I’m in a position where I can afford to go back to buying songs, so I actually did that (better for the artist and I don’t have to worry about any recommendation algorithm accidentally making me depressed because depressed = “more engagement”).
I’m not sure if it was related but, coincidentally, I found my mental state in a far better place about a year later.
The communities here can be like that. Personally if you like the service and are willing to pay, why not? Comparing this with facism is doing facism and those who live and lived under facist regimes a disservice.
Kinda weird how eager some people are to brag about how much they love paying for YouTube Premium, though. Sometimes repeatedly, and as a response to every other comment. Like a paid ad, almost. Just being proud of paying for things is weird on its own but... damn, stinks like Google's paying them back well to behave like they're starving for it to come give them a cookie. Maybe it's bots. ... Nah, humans will serve their favourite companies at no charge and without any effort to make them. Bleh.
The ads are not the true problem. The tracking and profiling is. They keep the rhetoric about the ads while forcing both. I'd be kinda okay with just untargeted ads. Maybe not fully okay but I'd be far more willing to tolerate them. This privacy violating thing the modern Internet made a norm? Hell no!
It’s weird because there’s lots of studies showing that tracking users’ interests isn’t even that much more effective than targeting based on the page content.
When you’re selling your product and school and society have told you that you need to know your demographic, when you get to that ad manager page, you want to see your ad only being paid for on that demographic.
The ads make Youtube unwatchable so if necessary I’ll figure out how to sideload Piped onto the house TV, or, failing that, just plug my laptop in and watch shit through Piped.
If you have an Android TV, I highly recommend SmartTube. You do need to sideload the APK. But once you do that, it’s smooth sailing. It has no ads + SponsorBlock. It just.doesn’t support LG’s OS or Roku.
Agreed, only for the reason to watch videos at night on my iOS device and to not be blasted by ads during a video. Now it looks like the hand is being forced on my other devices. Praise be SponserBlock still though.
It’s never enough, soon they’re going to show ads even to you, a paying customer. It’s happening to some streaming providers already, it’s coming to YouTube too, mark my words. Online streaming is turning into cable.
Yes, good idea. I have ReVanced on my mobile and a few extensions on my PC browser. I haven’t used YT on my PC in a while so I likely will need to add more to bypass this should I get it. I think I currently have Adblock Plus, Privacy Badger, YouTube Enhancer, Disable Javascript… Maybe more. I’m considering adding UBlock Origin since it seems to be a more robust ad blocker.
Youtube operated at a loss for many years. I think it still does. Google has many products. They take the profit from one product to offset the losses from youtube.
If we’re talking about Econ 101 maybe Google shouldn’t have purchased a company that couldn’t turn a profit after nearly a decade without rent-seeking.
But I’m sure a random guy on Lemmy knows a bit more than one of the largest corporations on the planet. You should apply for a job there, they might like your ideas.
I specifically remember them announcing quarterly profits from YouTube in alphabets breakdown a few years back, they are almost definitely profitable, I’m okay with being proven otherwise but as far as I know YouTube is profitable now.
Maybe they’re greedy, maybe more are using adblockers, maybe companies aren’t willing to spend as much per ad due to the economy, maybe they are profitable but the margin is too low to be worth the effort and risk associated with running a platform. We probably won’t know.
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