Hey YouTube? The endpoint of enshittification is this: I wipe my ass and flush you.
Keep going, YouTube. You’re not so important that we can’t just leave.
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
So keep at it.
Keep injecting unskippable ads, flooding the feed with AI slop, letting bots post porn, demonetising and hiding quality content, using DMCA like a digital SLAPP against content creators, and using the algorithm to warp reality.
Your value proposition is ubiquity. That’s it. That’s all you have. Without popular buy-in, you’re dead.
We proles? We have something better than loyalty.
We have spite.
So keep pissing people off - because watching you die on a very stupid hill of your own design will be entertaining AF.
For everyone else, see you on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !privacy@lemmy.world. Come and learn how you can replace all of these pieces of shit.
And in the meantime - yt-dlp should still work to download what you actually want to keep, and SmartTube is black magic incarnate.
You forgot https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
Exactly my thoughts too.
Yes. You will quit YouTube. But 99% of people won’t and they make YouTube more revenue via either watching more ads or giving up and subscribing
All we can do is point the way. There are alternatives - we’re using one right now.
I’m for giving people choices. People should be empowered with knowledge.
Whether they choose the act on that knowledge is up to them.
None of those have all the creators and people don’t want to go between multiple apps.
This fight is lost. The way to win it now is legislation or blowing up data centers.
I disagree. The fight isn’t lost - it hasn’t even started yet.
People are apathetic and/or ignorant to alternatives. Some of those people can be appealed to - or on sufficient enshittification, motivated into action.
Spite is a wonderful reagent.
Additionally, the apathy of the masses has no impact on individual response.
Things already exist that marry disparate platforms (eg: Grayjay, Kodi plug ins etc).
We need not wait. And while I remain sanguine that YT will piss off enough people eventually, I’d sooner code my own app, that joins all my streams - and release it into the wild - than let others dictate what I can and cannot do.
None of those well ever compare to youtube. You think all the videos are going to stay on those platforms forever? You think they well scale to youtube levels of users?
YouTube is too big to fail” is not the flex you think it is.
No, I do not expect any one of those platforms to “become YouTube.” That is not the point. The point is reducing dependence on a platform that has spent years making itself worse because it assumes users have nowhere else to go.
Fuck that and fuck them.
Scale? Things do not need to match YouTube’s total global footprint to be useful.
They need to serve actual human beings well enough that migration becomes viable.
That is how this starts: not with 2 billion people moving at once, but with chunks of users, creators, and communities deciding they’re sick of eating shit.
As for “will the videos stay there forever?”
They are not staying on YouTube forever either. Videos get demonetised, geo-blocked, copyright-nuked, hidden by algorithmic sludge, or deleted all the time.
Centralisation does not guarantee permanence. It guarantees dependence.
I’m not for that.
That is why people mirror, self-host, archive, syndicate, and build bridges between platforms.
People imagine only one possible future: “Everyone stays on YouTube because YouTube is big.”
I am pointing at the much more obvious one:
“YouTube keeps enshittifying itself until more and more people route around it.”
It does not have to die overnight. It just has to become less necessary.
Soon enough, YT will block all the clever back doors we use with uBlock, Smartube, Revanced, Newpipe etc. Then what? Eat shit? Nah.
This thread has inspired me to roll up my sleeves and see what I can think thru. I already have a back of napkin idea for a basic MVP that joins all those services I mentioned into 1 front end. I will make it for myself and when its solid enough, throw it up on Codeberg for others to fork and improve.
it doesn’t matter, when people are fed up with that shit they will just go back to watch any other platform (tv, streaming, tiktok)
scale does not matter, these alternatives are not trying to scale like youtube because youtube is unsustainable in the first place
Like others, desktop I’m using Firefox with ublock origin. Android phone, Firefox with ublock origin. Android TV, SmartTube. Ad blockers have always outpaced Google in my experience though I use youtube maybe like twice a week and I don’t randomly browse reccomendations. Just there for specific stuff
Enjoy it while it lasts. With Google forcing developers to register their Android apps (or they’re not allowed to be installed, unless you’re a developer), it puts pressure on applications like Firefox (or ublock origin) to tow-the-line.
This won’t happen tomorrow or next year, but the writing is on the wall, unless people push back or the government begins to push back on Big Tech.
The removal of device owner rights has always been a soil boil.
You can still install them, they announced the rules weeks ago.
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You need to go into the phone settings and enable developer mode (this doesn’t mean YOU’RE a developer)
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Flip a setting to on that will allow it
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See some scary prompts and acknowledge no one is asking you to do this
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Reboot the phone (its intended to cut off communication with who might be scamming you). (edit: I think this reboot step specifically is a clever idea)
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Wait 24 hours.
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Install the app
From there you can keep the phone in the ‘unlocked’ state, or allow it to relock after 7 days.
I’m not saying this is good, but it IS still possible.
Also, somehow preventing adblock would trigger the creation of a corporate competing product. This is a bigger threat to Google than people stealing their bandwidth.
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I’m hoping by the time googles Android goes to shit, GrapheneOS is readily available on more phones or PostmarketOS. Same with Linux with KDE Plasma Bigscreen running on a minipc rather than using an android TV box
On mobile I’ve noticed there’s a button have to click to remove the ad. It’s maddening. I click the button to skip. So they added layers of ads. You gotta click skip twice to get to the video. Now there’s shit covering up my interface that I have to remove. So much shit.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
I thought it was FUCK /U/SPEZ
The problem is if those take off how do they make money or cover their cost? Sure federated whatever someone still has to pay the bandwidth. And video streaming is a hell of a lot more demanding then text.
My solution is to just close youtube. There’s nothing on there I want to see that badly.
Mine is Firefox + adblockers.
I like watching SciShow and Crashing Out.
My setup to make YouTube bearable:
Firefox mobile and the following extensions:
- uBlock Origin
- DeArrow
- Hide-Shorts
- SponsorBlock
I suggest adding “fix youtube search” to get rid of the stupid suggestions you get when searching.
If you’re getting the ads you’re there to watch something you wanted to watch.
what Buddahriffic said. :) I ain’t got that kind of time. (Caveat–am looking at little things occasionally on my phone–this must be a nightmare for people using YT TV.)
And you can decide the thing you want isn’t worth the cost.
But they’re coming for everything. There won’t be anywhere to go to get information. You’ll give up everything?
I accidentally found myself outside my ad blocking bubble the other day and looking at youtube. It immediately pissed me off to have to put up with.
ikr whenever I visit my elderly aunt, she has cable TV on. I timed it once and there’s like 10 minutes of ads for every 20 minutes of content.
sounds about right. half hour tv shows last about 21 minutes. hour long ones last about 42. you used to get a little more time but there was like a minute or two of wiggle room each episode. hour longs used to last 52. writing for streaming is more fun because you get the flexibility you want, but people still expect 30/60 minute shows.
The ads themselves got worse too, not just about skipping them.
I see toooooooooo many ads about Taichi for men over 60. Fml, now it becomes Military calisthenic for men over 40…Also those ads with the zombie games…
I’m getting this weird fucking modal popup for the ad it just displayed. It sticks around in the bottom left corner of the screen after the ad ends, displaying throughout the duration of the actual video and blocking out like 20% of the screen (until I explicitly close the damn modal).
Almost all of the ads I see on the home page are of type “Hot ${GROUP} in your area.”
I use the YouTube TV app.
If I see ad breaks that are longer than ~20 seconds, I just back out and try again (if I’m just starting to watch a video) or go to history and resume (if in progress). YouTube can try to show another godawful long ad, but I’ll just back out again and again until they stop being stupid.
Protip: Number may go bigger, but I’m not changing this behaviour.
I hope the advertisers demand meticulous statistics, and are asking YouTube why so many users balked after 1 second.
Actually over the Easter holidays, my tablet was having horrible time with YouTube (the Android app is absolute garbage and doesn’t like old devices, and by old I mean 5 years) and sometimes ads made the YouTube app go suck mud and the tablet needed to be rebooted (!!!) before it worked again. So I watched YouTube on my laptop instead. With uBlock. Silence. Beautiful silence.
Ha! I do this too! You can hit back and then OK three times in rapid succession to break out of the ad too.
Do yourself a favor and never turn on WiFi on your smart TV, get an android streaming box, and install projectivy launcher on it. Then you can sideload smartube the adfree YouTube client with downvotes, dearrow and sponsorblock built in.
Yeah, Though I don’t see ADs myself as I use Ad blockers, my friends do and they told me how bad it is. It was bad before with 60 second ADs, and now, its worse.
Lets all just collectively refuse to engage with or buy a product from any company that runs a 90 second unskippable add on youtube.
Me using SmartTube and PipePipe/Tubular:
lol wut?
Don’t forget Unwatched if you’re on iOS platforms!
Thank you for this! I did not know this was an option.
Seems like youtube forces sign-in using Unwatched on iOS? An alternative is Vinegar which replaces the video player in Safari, and skips the ads, mostly and usually (until youtube updates some things then vinegar needs to catch up).
Why would you even use them when revanced is there now
It’s like they want people to block ads holy crap. Next chance I get I’m installing invidious on my parent’s roku so they can skip this garbage.
Maybe there was this one dev who joined the company 20 years ago, and has seen it deteriorate ever since. He’s worked his way up to the top, and thinks the company needs to be destroyed, but they’re an ad company, so the only way to do that is to kill ads.
After years of planning, he came up with the idea of making the ads so horrible, that people stop using services, or the ad blockers become ungodly powerful they can never be stopped.
Ultimately, it will be the end of Google, but it is the long play.
🤣
Personally I think it’s time to just move on you tube is done.
But if it’s roku they can add the playlet channel. Youtube without ads.
the only real alternatives to youtube for me are probably curiousity stream and floatplane, both of which cost subscriptions i can’t afford at the moment.
edit also Nebula! forgot about that one.
floatplane
With Linus? You couldn’t pay me to watch that.
Edit: I did grab a subscription to Nebula for a year for €25 because I like someone on there. Seemed reasonable for a whole year of everything they have, and I do like watching Legal Eagle these days.
It’s run by Luke technically, but yeah it’s under Linus Media Group. A lot of creators I like (such as Wade from Dank Pods) are on there.
I would never give that clown a dime.
yeahhh thats the invidious frontend i was gonna install.
got it. It is as simple as them adding the channel. It doesn’t have a lot of features, but it is serviceable.
YouTube will not be done until a viable alternative is established.
every time a viable alternative is established google will buy it
Its done for me, there is nothing there I need to see.
I’m really surprised by this. YouTube is such a great source for adding skills and knowledge if you can weed through the crap.
It is admittedly more and more difficult to weed though.
YouTube is such a great source for adding skills and knowledge
Slowly though. Watching is wasting a lot of time, and nearly everyone on there stretches it out in the name of “content” and sponsers.
There are a few that don’t, but realistically, that knowledge is elsewhere. It’s a shame people don’t self host videos as much any more. I just embed them in my web page if I absolutely need to.
Or simply make the files available, which if you look around, a lot of them are out there, so download and watch at your pace, and delete when done.
Youtube: “GOD PEOPLE KEEP SKIPPING ADS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS LOSS OF REVENUE?!”
Viewers: “Maybe have standards for length and content and moderate the platform to prevent malicious actors?”
Youtube: “I KNOW, I’LL JUST MAKE FORCED ADS LONGER AND MORE OBNOXIOUS!”
Viewers: “JUST MODERATE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM, YOU HAVE THE MONEY AND RESOURCES TO FUCKING DO IT”
Youtube: “Users are just so selfish and entitled, trying to skip ads…”
Viewers: " Fuck it installs ublock origin
If you grew up with commercial TV, not only is the frequency of ads on youtube bad, but the placement–in the middle of a sentence or a scene–is mentally and emotionally destructive.
When cable TV first came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Sirius satellite radio came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Netflix streaming came…
Adding ads to YouTube was always the plan.
Also Youtube: DONT INSTALL UBLOCK ORIGIN OR WE’LL REMOVE YOUTUBE SHORTS!!!
Viewers:
That was always the plan. They were just slow walking it.
