I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. I can’t wait to find out how they screwed this one up.
My personal long-term complaint is the length of video titles.
Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”.
Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence.
So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”.
Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that.
The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV.
For example, if you pause the video by clicking the main action button brings up an overlay that takes up almost the whole screen, so you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame. How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. For some reason up means back and down means to open some additional UI with related videos and what not.
No other app is like this — Plex, Infuse, Apple, Netflix etc. abide by relatively sane UI controls where the action button pauses and unpauses, and up/down don't scroll between weird overlay elements.
The YouTube filled with these incredible non-unintuitive UX choices that drive me crazy. I never use it unless I have a clear idea of something I want to watch.
Apple TV apps, in general, are terrible. Every single one [that I routinely use] (including Apple’s apps) regularly crash or lock up, often leaving it to me, to force-quit.
Amazon has started getting into a state, lately, where it ignores the remote, unless I go back, then go forward again.
This kind of “quality” is considered “acceptable,” in today’s world.
AppleTV has a JavaScript-based development system. It also has a fairly classic native Swift system (which I use). I suspect most apps are JavaScript, though.
I have two sets (one is a 4K, and the other, a regular set). It happens on both. The crashes are different, though, for each app. Usually, it’s the app falling into a fugue state, at some point, as I am channel-surfing (I do that, a lot).
I should also qualify that it’s not really “every single one” (that’s hyperbole). It’s the ones that I routinely use (Apple, Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix).
I’ll probably get another one, sooner or later, but I’ve been waiting for them to release a new version[0],
That might be something wrong with your particular device - we've had two Apple TVs over 10+ years and they've been remarkably stable. I didn't even know how to "force quit" - I looked it up when you mentioned it.
Edit: Did have one problem where the centre channel would occasionally drop out - this would go away if you changed the volume and didn't happen that often so wasn't a big deal. I had assumed it was a problem with the Denon receiver we use but when we replaced our original Apple TV earlier this year wit a 4K model it stopped so must have been something to do with the device.
You'd think they've done it on purpose so you don't watch Youtube on TV. I tried but it's so bad you'd never open it a second time. And that's the platform where there are no ad blockers, so it must be good for them ...
I know Prime did this for quite some time, unaware if they still do. The main YouTube web app also suffers from this same issue, though at least the play button disappears.
Everytime YouTube gets an update it gets worse. This has been true for years. It's like their design and product team is run by second-graders.
> you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame
You can press up on the D-pad to dismiss that overlay, if you want to see the full paused frame.
> How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up.
Maybe we have different remotes? On the latest model, you play/pause with the same button.
One issue I’ve noticed in the app is there seems to be no way to move the cursor “up” to the channel button when the video is in the last 10% of the playback bar. If you rewind it a bit, then you’re able to move the cursor up there.
Only in the last few days have Shorts appeared at the top of my home page. I fear it may be the end for me.
You’re meant to use the dedicated pause button on the apple tv remote to pause without any overlay. Anything that uses the apple built in player has ui appear when you hit the center button. Same for Netflix.
It’s so bad. Last time I tried to use it I was unable to fill in my password for my account because Google had implement some custom input element and custom keyboard which did not contain some of the characters I have in my password. And of course there was no possibility to paste or use keychain.
> If you have an iPhone you can input with that, including paste.
That popping up on your phone is not 100% reliable, though, and even more hilariously, when using it with YouTube, it'll sometimes just take the first handful of characters and drop the text input box on the phone. Oh, how we laughed.
(this may be a generic Apple TV problem but it's something I've only noticed on the YouTube app)
The YouTube app is the worst on its own site too. I don’t login to any Google account and I turned off site history, and now the homepage is completely blank. Yup. Google won’t even show me a single video on the homepage because I refuse to turn on history. Which is actually kind of nice for preventin distractions
I have the same. While it's a bit jarring the first time you see it, I now consider this a feature instead of a bug.
Maybe it could be styled a bit differently so the search bar is more prominent and in the center of the screen, but just having a search bar without any distractions is a fantastic feature.
This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem. But no government seems to care—-and what will you do, stop watching YouTube?
> This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem
This would be true if the Android or Android TV would have been better.
It is just profit maximization combined with crappy UX/UI.
Google wants your personal data and will make UI changes to get it. (double record/send button in messages, UI elements very close to others so that they can be pressed accidentally, although there is plenty of space between other UI elements)
This is nonsense. Among other things, the YouTube app on Apple TV is superior to the one on Android TV. No loud startup sound, the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure" or if I want to go to a screensaver mode - clean straightforward UI.
Never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. And i think it’s fair to say the best and brightest at Google aren’t turning their attention to YouTube lately. Except maybe to make training datasets for Gemini N+1 :)
Long titles that put the important context beyond the fold are a form of clickbaiting, I just refuse to watch those videos entirely. I'm sure most of the videos are fine but I cannot reward bad behavior, and besides, clicking on clickbait will get you even more clickbait in the suggestions.
> Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”.
Even with the missing “ (Part 2!)” added, that’s still only 68 characters. I would probably begrudgingly call this long, but I would definitely not call it “really long”—my threshold for that would be at least 90 characters.
If they’re truncating around 60 characters, I’m content to call it unreasonable.
There are two apps called "DeArrow" and SponsorBlock that basically everyone should be using.
DeArrow replaces thumbnails and titles with crowd sourced versions. I can't use youtube without it anymore. Usually the titles get replaced with stuff like "How to build a table" instead of "Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!". Same with thumbnails. No longer are they over-saturated close up AI generated garbage images, but usually just a screenshot from the video that shows what's really going on.
At least for SponsorBlock you can run iSponsorBlockTV[1] on another computer on the same network - in addition to skipping sponsored segments, it also mutes YouTube’s own ads and auto-skips them as soon as it can.
Except that those two things are fantastic indicators for videos / channels you should be avoiding. Hiding their foolishness and then watching them anyway rewards their behavior.
There are children and there are adults. Children have more free time. Children watch more YouTube than adults. So LTT's audience is probably more children too.
Children are attracted to soy-boy suprised pikachu face on clickbait thumbnails. CHLIDREN are ATTRACTED to EVERY second WORD being IN all CAPS!!! They like the three exclamation marks. They like flashy text on MrWhoseTheBoss videos which repeat the same thing the fucking guy is talking but just with flashy text on screen. They like the whizz-bang animations and ADHD addled three-second shots. They like the Mr. Beastification of Youtube.
I'm not a child. I'm too old and weary for that. LTT wants to do it, he can. Godspeed, and may his next twenty million subscribers fill the hole in his pocket and his soul that the first twenty million couldn't. I just ain't gonna be watching.
There are great channels that have had acceptable audience growth without resorting to bucket scraping like that. In fact the channels I see that have the most engagement and the most stable view numbers video to video are the ones specifically avoiding the "gaping maw pointing at a red circle" sort of thumbnails and the "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" or "X PHENOMENON - THE RESULTS WILL SHOCK YOU" titles. Knowing how Youtube works it's more of a detriment to have those unstable views because that screws with how well Youtube promotes you in the Recommended and Trending pages, and makes it harder to have high paying deals with sponsors since they don't know if your video's going to do five million views or seven hundred and fifty thousand. The only way you can make that work consistently is if you have a captive audience, but people do get tired of it quickly and will start to reflexively avoid your videos. They'll especially avoid them if someone else tried that clickbait format and annoyed or even offended them.
I've heard this argument before as someone with a small number of subscribers, In use relevant titles and thumbnails (I do partially use AI but that is "make me a Tux image with a builders hat on"). When I post a video I get a decent number of viewers for my channel size.
So I don't believe someone like LTT needs to resort to clickbait. LTT has 16 millions subscribers and half a million views per video. They make plenty of ad-revenue from those videos. If he stopped making videos today, he would still be getting a sizeable income by doing nothing for at least a decade. Even some washed up YouTubers from the past get a low five figure income from their Channels.
"Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!" is unlikely its more like "Watch the world explode as I try to make this thing!!!!!!!!!!!!".
Google News has this same truncation problem. I thought it would be an obvious thing to, I don't know, use the `title` attribute so mouseover reveals the rest of the snews...
Remember when the Youtube app overrode the AppleTV screensavers, to show their own screensavers if Youtube was paused.
Any other app, you leave a video paused, the OS screensaver will come on. Those beautiful, aerial screensavers that are better than any screensaver I've ever seen in all my decades of working with computers. So of course the Youtube app had to block them with their own shitty variant. They have no taste and no respect.
Your comment is past tense - does that mean they’ve stopped doing this? Please, Lord. I had to set my ATV to go to screensaver in a ridiculously short amount of time to preempt the YouTube one.
> I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV.
Damn it, I still appear to be on 4.51.08/web_20251117_11_RC00 with no indication that there's a new version. Not looking forward to any updates...
> The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
I sometimes wonder if YouTube is a weird kink cult that gets off on people complaining about the ridiculously user-hostile decisions they make. Because it's either that or they're an evil troll cult that aims to make life just that little bit less pleasant for as many people as possible.
> Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence.
> So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”.
> Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that.
> The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
I'm looking at youtube right now. There's a video displayed with the title "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , ..."
That "..." is the indicator that the title has been truncated. If you hover the title with your mouse, you can see the entire thing: "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , America | Why Are They Similar?"
Not far away, there's "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support...", which expands to "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support | WIRED".
Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator?
I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use it through the browser with adblockers. (Yes, on my phone and iPad.)
It works so well I’ve gotten at least half a dozen neighbours to do the same. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a definitive step up in UX.
Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad. Seeing a product in a youtube ad now causes me to be more likely to believe it's a ripoff.
Things like a cheap $5 fan being sold for $60 as roughly: "Super efficient A/C that will save you $100s on your electricity bill and can cool a room down in just minutes"
> Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad.
Claiming that (youtube) ads are bad is a tautology at this point. What else can be expected from something competing for what is left of a user's attention at the very lowest end of a market already overflooded with crud?
The question should rather be: why would one voluntarily let one's well-being be polluted by such invasive, parasitic crap.
There is nothing normal about ads everywhere. There is nothing healthy about ads everywhere. Ads are not an inevitability.
I assume you mean all the snake oil pre-playback ads? Mostly dangerous medical advice, solar scams, or wellness quackery.
This week, an instructional video I was watching on how to repair my water heater was suddenly interrupted by a campy ad for pussy-hair razors.
It was so ill-timed, bizarre, and inappropriate I burst out laughing.
The other one I was seeing a lot of, until very recently, was pornographic static ads that were implemented as an optical illusion. If you viewed it at full scale it was an innocuous image of a closet or chair or something, so it passed all checks, but when scaled into a thumbnail, it turns into a silhouette of a woman giving oral or something else obscene. Not sure what this technique is called or how it's done. (It's not a schooner, it's a sailboat.)
If you know the sampling rate of the sampling filter you want to pass you can do some tricky encoding to show a different image at that particular resolution bypassing AI/content recognition systems. This said if it starts happening a lot Google will take those images/videos and feed them into a learning system that looks for those patterns and preemptively marks the video.
I find the downsampling thing happens on Temu ads a lot.
I do a cryptic crossword from a free UK newspaper most days, because my Dad (many thousands of miles away), also does the same crossword and we can bond over good and bad clues, and so on.
The banner ad on that page is always Temu. It always, always looks pornographic. And then you look closer, and it's completely innocuous.
I have assumed that the alogrithm is just optimising for attention, and it just so happens those images, at that scale, are going to get a lot of attention. But it does mean I can't show somebody else the crossword I'm doing for fear of looking like a degenerate pervert, and I am at risk of causing an issue if I play it on public transport.
what I don't understand is how paying for YT ads can be profitable. I've never clicked on a YT ad _intentionally_ nor I know anyone who did, having asked a few people.
I admit the brand awareness works tho.
There's a counterintuitive effect sometimes, which is that the person who tolerates a stupid ad is also more likely to buy the product. This was used by email spammers whose messages came littered with deliberate grammatical errors as an efficient filter against too-smart targets.
It would have been amazing value had Youtube Music, which came with YouTube Premium were half decent. But it is not. We got Spotify which isn't perfect, and then Apple Music, which for years didn't know what they were doing, and then Youtube Music, which is basically a company doesn't give a damn about Music.
We now have three Giant companies over the history of the past 30 - 40 years, once they grow big that make junk.
Yes, I very happily payed for YouTube Premium when it came with Google Play Music. Them turning that off in favour of the awful YouTube Music was the straw that broke the camels back.
I did the same, but I also added in a tamper monkey script to get rid of the picture in picture thing they force on you as part of their "core experience". I wish their ux designers and PMs were less arrogant and realized their preferences are just preferences and gave us back the ability to disable stuff like this in the app.
I think it is worse than that. Yes they A/B test. But they also have incentive to show how great their new feature idea is. So they are always picking the metrics that make their feature look better and ignoring the ones that make it look worse. So there is a thumb on the scale here.
Not being able to play Youtube in the background on your phone is unfortunately one of the main appeals of Premium. There's a lot of good mixes, concerts, etc that I play for the audio while doing something else that I can't do without Premium unless I wanted to leave my phone unlocked (and pray I don't pocket click a link).
My iPhone running Safari and uBlock Origin lite is able to do this. I don't have the youtube app installed. I don't even think the ad blocker is necessary for background audio, but I don't want to see ads.
1. Go to youtube.com in the browser, play the video, switch back to the home screen. Video playback will stop, which is a good default behavior.
2. Swipe down from the top of the screen which brings up "Notification Center" which somewhat strangely contains a playback control for the browser.
3. Press play. Audio resumes. If it's part of a playlist, you don't have to manually advance, it will play automatically.
No ads, no youtube premium subscription, no "desktop mode", no sideloading, no additional apps other than the beloved ad blocker.
Note: If you have a mid-range to lower end phone, battery optimization might stop your playback anyway by default. You can exclude Firefox from battery optimization though.
You can open youtube in the phone's web browser and install an extension that blocks a site's ability to tell when focus has left the page/app. This is how I listen to some music on my phone while working out.
Ad blockers help with the constant nagging about "open in the app!"
I stopped using apps like this because they were always getting broken by youtube. Obviously it's intentional sabotage but still. It felt like I had to update those apps every time I used them and sometimes there was no update at that time at all. The mobile site never breaks and you have full access to extensions if you use firefox.
I also stopped using the YouTube app in favor of the Brave browser on my desktop and my Android phone (no extensions needed). I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on YouTube!
I also use Brave on all my devices - it also works on Amazon Prime. Prime frequently made me offers to upgrade to an ad-free experience that I didn't understand... surely this is a bug, I already have an ad-free experience. Then I installed the Prime app on my TV and realized the constant barrage of ads that Brave has been protecting me from!
There's odd and end features that some people prefer with Premium. E.g. offline downloads to watch when you're out of signal, background play, etc.
And they don't want to go through alternative workarounds to do so.
For me, it's actually just being able to easily share premium with other users in my household, so that I don't have to have my ears blasted with ads when they open YT on the TV. Less effort than playing around with things like pihole and hoping it doesn't break other things.
Counterpoint: it works, you just have to wait a bit, since now the server will not actually send you the video until the mandatory (pre-skip) ad’s length has elapsed.
Which is fully in their right, I’m not complaining, it’s not like I’m any worse off (waiting on a black screen vs waiting while some bullshit ad tells me to CoNsUmE PrOduCt!!!)
Have you tried "uBlock Origin Lite"? It is by the same author, Raymond Hill (gorhill). It has been working fine. I use "optimal" level for the filtering mode. (Note: I use Chromium on Linux)
"The Firefox version of uBO Lite will cease to exist, I am dropping support because of the added burden of dealing with AMO nonsensical and hostile review process. "
There is no need to use uBOL on Firefox, just use the normal version.
EDIT: But yeah, the Mozilla reviewers are very hostile, also had to fight with them for one of my add-ons. It's ridiculous that spam and malware add-ons get a pass but privacy-conscious add-ons get rejected.
Not everything is a conspiracy theory. Mozilla's reviewers were already infamous in the XUL era. Mozilla's dumbness is not due to Google it's due to them themselves.
I do pay for YouTube Premium, I see no ads, and everything works pretty conveniently. What's your point, that with a bit of extra effort you can pirate content?
To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
So it is a payment?!? Through out the last decades advertisement has not been liable under customer protection laws that regulate sales of products, and generally avoided local laws. The stated reason has been that advertisement is not a sale since the viewer is not recompensating the publisher. A product given for free is in a completely different category of law than that of a sale.
Im old enough to remember when phone companies tried the tactic of giving away mobile phones for free, but which carried a binding contract with the carrier. Courts found that to be illegal and forced companies to sell them for 1 cent since a free product can not have a binding contract, which turned the transaction into a sale. The outcome of that meant that information of the full cost must be given to the customer in no unclear terms, since we are now dealing with a sale.
Products given for free with advertisement is also exempted in EU from value added tax. The given reason (can't find the original legal source) was that viewers may watch nothing, some or all the advertisement, and that makes putting a monetary value and taxing it difficult. If you buy a subscription it can be taxed, but watching it free with adds do not. This is true for both physical and non-physical goods.
I don't think it is piracy. Most advertising supported content is made freely available to you with the expectation that you will view the advertising. That expectation is not a contract and was a decision made without your involvement. You have no obligation to perform to someone else's expectations. If the content is made freely available you are free to watch it whichever way you choose. Choosing not to view the advertising might mean they don't get paid for producing their content, but you are under no obligation in the absence of an agreement.
Piracy involves you deciding to acquire content that has not been made freely available.
Google doesn't care about right and wrong, only what they can get away with. They don't deserve to be treated as a moral subject by you, because they will not reciprocate. You're free to be as shameless as they are in your interactions with them if you can get away with it, you're just playing the game at the same level as they are.
I'm paying for Youtube Premium, but its a plain utilitarian decision after they started hassling me with captchas and intimidations that someone at my IP address was using an ad blocker. So yeah, I'm paying protection money. But I don't feel in the least good about it.
I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)
Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?
Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?
Is it piracy to pirate a pirate? Most of the content that I view on YT is old live concerts uploaded by fans. Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings? Who should goog pay? The label? The pirate who uploaded? The OG pirate who recorded the show? So doesn’t this make them pirates too?
These are honest questions and it seems way too fuzzy to me to be making moral judgments about the whole mess.
I think saying that it is morally piracy is a little bit of an overstatement.
I think one does have the right to block ads on one’s machine if one chooses.
However, personally, because of the “if ad blocking was universalized, the services I appreciate would likely not exist” reasoning, I choose not to block ads.
As for other things like “muting/covering ads on screen”, yeah, that does seem a bit fuzzy. Sometimes I’ll even use a browser extension to fast forward an ad somewhat.
I do think this is something for the individual to decide how they will deal with ads. When I mute an ad, I don’t think I’m really free riding? For one thing, I don’t think it is contrary to the expectations of those being sold the ad slot. Me fast forwarding the ads a bit probably is contrary to their expectations, so I don’t have as good justification for it, but I don’t feel like I’m cheating when I do it. (Or, if I do, it is because the particular ad is objectionable enough that I’m willing to stick it to the advertiser)
>Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings?
If their copyright monitoring algorithm recognises the tracks being performed and the licence holders have opted to receive a share of ad revenue rather than issue a takedown notice, then I think the answer might well be yes.
perhaps it should be out of business then? it captured its market share on an ad free model... it would not have gotten to this size with this model from the start.
if tomorrow youtube decides only paid subscribers can view videos... do they maintain that market share?
In most cases of adblocking, that would be a good thing.
99% of internet content is complete crap, the equivalent of email spam, that only exists because each piece makes a few dollars a month from ads. On the old internet, without ads, there was plenty of useful content and much less spam.
And the spam crowds out good content, as seen in recipe sites for example.
I choose what code runs on my machine, not Google. Google can run their own code on their own machines, that's fine. Once data is in my processor, I'm going to do what I want with it. Google doesn't have to concern themselves with what I'm doing on my own computer.
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
I disagree. If you were buying every advertised product and falling for every advertised scam then fair enough. But assuming you were ignoring them, there is no issue with offloading the thing you would do anyway to a computer and save everyone the time/bandwidth.
The advertiser is buying the right to put an advert in front of you, not the right to a sale. Whether they convert you is up to them, their product, their offering, etc. I think you can never buy a single product from an ad and this is still piracy.
That said, a lot of advertising is not performance/pay-per-click focused as you've described and is instead brand advertising. The point of the Coca-Cola christmas ads is not to get you to buy a coke today, it's to have a positive impression that builds over years. This sort of advertising is very hard to attribute sales to, but a good example of how you don't need to buy a product for seeing the ad to be worth something to the company.
And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one.
If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.
There's an "if a tree falls in the forest" version of "if the viewer leaves the room" at which point has a theft still been visited upon the broadcaster? The business that paid for the ad?
In a newspaper if I skip over ads with my eyes do you think I've marginalized/pirated/stolen from the business that paid for the ad? They paid for placement and not an impression. I'd argue that if YouTube presents the ad and my browser/app/whatever skips it then YouTube satisfied its obligation and that's where it ends. The advertiser, knowing full well the limitations of the access mechanism, made a choice to throw money into this version of the attention economy. It's obviously worth it to them or they wouldn't do it, or haven't made as careful of an economic decision as I would imagine I suppose.
It's not piracy. You might have a problem with it ethically. But you're not breaking copyright laws by blocking ads.
Another way to look at it is additive rather than subtractive. If I visit a site with a text only browser that cannot display ads, what is your position then? And if I then implement the ability for my browser to play only the main video on any page, what then?
When it comes down to it, we have no obligation to view the content on a webpage the way the publisher of said webpage wants us to. You can think of plenty of other examples that make "adblocking is piracy" ridiculous - I invert the colors but the publisher doesn't want me to see it with inverted colors. I wear sunglasses while looking at it, which changes the way it looks. Maybe the site I use always puts an ad in the same place so I stick a bit of tape on my monitor in that location, is that bad?
Ok, let’s switch it up a bit. I give the ad-full newspaper to someone not speaking the local language. Or an illiterate person. Or a monkey trained to be good with scissors. Is this also piracy? At what point does it become piracy? How little of an ad should someone see/understand before it counts as a “valid” ad view? A few words? A full sentence? Etc.
You're trying to nit-pick where the line is drawn. The point is not where the line is drawn, it's that there is a line.
Installing an ad-blocker in your browser and never seeing an ad while consuming hours of content for free, depriving those creators of revenue, depriving the platform of revenue to support your usage of it, is in no way comparable to these at-the-margin contrived examples.
the creators are posting their content on a free platform, with hopes that it will generate enough views so that enough of those viewers are ad watching viewers so that they will gain revenue. you're acting like the view is 100% meaningless and ONLY a bad thing, and its quite the opposite.
the "free" view costs the creator literally nothing, and it gains them an additional view, if its a good video its potentially gonna help spread the video elsewhere where maybe they can find some suckers to mindlessly consume ads.
and lets be real, the platform you are "depriving of revenue" is google... they operated ad free to create massive market capture to create the current monstrosity that is youtube in 2025, think they can't cut off all users that block ads right now? there is a reason they aren't doing so.
You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube.
It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.
I’m totally cool with “screwing over” people who make their income screwing gullible people into falling for scams or buying useless, overpriced junk they don’t need. I don’t need to rationalize it for myself, I’m just trying to show some people the error in their ways, but maybe their portfolio of ad-related stocks is clouding their vision?
the creator is being harmed in no way at all, the ad free viewer is still a viewer and still could potentially generate more traffic to that creator by word of mouth algo pushing based on more views etc. Its still a net positive for the creator, just not AS net positive as an ad viewer.
its not some secret that some % of viewers, block ads.. either you lean into it and utilize it, or you pretend people should be obligated to only watch your videos by paying or watching ads, in that case find a new platform.
The choice of an individual to skip an advertisement has minimal impact on the content creator or the platform. This person isn't accountable for the decisions of others regarding whether they watch the ad or not. Ultimately, their actions only affect themselves and do not influence anyone involved in the advertisement process.
The advertiser may well think that's what they're buying, but what they're actually getting is the right to send my browser a URL, which they hope I will fetch and view.
No, piracy is defined as stealing a vendor's exclusivity by making copies and putting them up on a web site. Ad blocking is not the same as making copies and distributing.
You might as well argue that covering your ears during a TV advertisement is piracy. That's a strange definition of the word if I ever saw one.
I think content piracy is generally accepted to not require re-distributing. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but if I search "watch free movies online" and find a site streaming bad DVD rips, I fully believe that I am pirating that content against the wishes of the content owner.
I'd say generally accepted by the majority of English speaking/western society? If someone said they were going to "pirate a movie" there's next to zero chance they are referring to the distribution side of that endeavor.
I feel like OP isn't asserting anything even remotely controversial in that definition lol
Um... no? Maybe that's true for English speakers (I'm not a native speaker, so I won't make assumptions), but thinking that Western society views it that way is a big stretch, especially with streaming sites. While some might admit to watching something on a pirate site, many people don't refer to it as piracy when they're using a streaming service.
They’re welcome not to make videos. But if they make them and lay them out there for free alongside some garbage I have the right to ignore, don’t blame me if I do look at them and ignore the garbage, and since there’s so much of it I eventually get my machine to ignore them, not unlike wearing gloves when dealing with a messy task as to save you the time of scrubbing your hands from dirt/oil/etc.
Nobody has the right to put things on my screen that I don't want to see, first of all. Second, I'm never going to "convert", so I'm actually saving them money by blocking their ads, because now the ad will go to someone else who doesn't block it who might buy whatever Temu nonsense is being forced on them.
Ad blockers are recommended by the FBI as safety measures. I follow the FBI's advice. Internet ads are a vector for executing untrusted code that can invoke exploits and engage in invasive fingerprinting. Revert back to the 90s web with dumb ads and I'll look at them. It's amazing how blinkered people will be about potentially malicious programs downloaded from the internet just because it's hidden behind a browser interface.
I can absolutely decide to reject with impunity any and all packets that my computer receives, no matter if I initialized the request. I have not made a sale by reading some other website content and have absolute authority to discriminate over which data is allowed or blocked. Ads have absolutely no higher authority or preference over other packets that would obligate my bandwidth, attention, or time.
Legally able to watch and legally able to splice up are at the same level, as far as copyright is concerned. And I don't even need to make an extra copy to do the kind of live splicing an ad blocker does.
Just because you say it's piracy doesn't mean it is.
When they provide all the equipment necessary to watch the content, and pay for the internet connection and power to my house, only then will they have a claim to what commands are run on my computer.
But my computer, that I paid for, using the power and bandwidth that I pay for, does not play ads.
If they don't like those terms, they can feel absolutely free to not send me any content they don't want me to watch.
I'm pretty anti-piracy, and I don't think ad-blocking is piracy.
Metaphors are dangerous, but, for the purposes of this specific comparison, I see piracy as breaking into a video store and taking a disc, and ad blocking as allowing some people into my house but not others.
YouTube is free to block me as a user or put its content behind a paywall if it doesn't like me doing this, but I am also free to decide what comes into my browser.
While this is not an unreasonable way one could define "piracy", surely you must be aware that your definition is significantly more expansive than the one in common use?
What's the difference? Unless you take the common use of the term to mean peer to peer file sharing, which clearly isn't expansive enough (see pirate DVDs, pirate sports streaming, etc), then I'm not quite sure how it is a bad fit?
Just use AdNausem (uBlock Origin mod) that clicks ALL THE ADDS. Problem solved! Wish more people used it, so the creators could again make money from ads.
> ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content
This ship sailed when adblockers first went mainstream. (One of the early developers dropped their product because they thought it was unethical.)
I think we’ve now moved to the consensus that adblocking when viewing content isn’t pirating. It’s similar. But not the same, in intent, mechanism or effect.
This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term.
Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft?
I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad.
It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.
If we're going with bad analogies I have an opposite one - you're walking past the Nike store and the store has a promotion on "Watch 5 minutes of ads and get a free pair of shoes", but you instead kick the TV with the ads over, grab the shoes and run away.
Or are you going to pretend that there's no agreement between you and YouTube that you're going to watch ads in exchange for the free content?
Are you going to lie that you didn't know that the videos are shown to you in exchange for ads?
Entering into a contract doesn't necessarily require you to sign a document. Quite a few contracts that we make every day require no formal acceptance, like entering a shop.
No, I'm going to state the truth that I never agreed to be shown ads, and you are extremely weird for lying and claiming that I did.
Google wants to show me ads. I don't want to see them. I demonstrated this by blocking them. Google continues to show me videos anyway. Clearly they're ok with the arrangement. They are free to present me with written terms, or gate all their videos behind a login, but they choose not to do so.
You are either very confused or playing stupid for some reason that I don't understand, but it isn't amusing or cute. This will probably earn me a dang warning but I don't really care - you are full of shit. You're making claims all over this thread that you've literally just made up.
I agree with this. There was no meeting of the minds, no contract. But, the terms in the Google account probably include something about the terms for viewing youtube videos.
You seem to mistakenly believe that a contract requires some sort of a signed document or something.
You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business... right? And it doesn't matter if you noticed it or not.
> You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business
You are incorrect about that, which probably invalidates your other arguments. A condition of entry is not a contract. If you disobey the condition of entry then you have not broken a contract, and nothing changes between you and the business owner. They can ask you to leave and they can trespass you if you do not, but importantly, they can do those things for any reason they like, whether you obey the conditions of entry or not.
It is not a contract by law, nor does it meet the definition of a contract.
Similarly, YouTube can retract their website from public view, or attempt to block you specifically. But you have not entered into a contract with them by viewing the site.
As far as I can find, in the US and the UK, conditions of entry to a business are considered an implied license and not an implied contract because there's no mutual intent to form a binding legal agreement. A business can revoke the license and trespass you, but they cannot sue you for breach of contract.
A unilateral contract requires some kind of "promise accepted through performance"
I note that this does appear to be different under Australian law, if that is where you're from, although it's still not a unilateral contract.
If you bring a dog in, you cannot be sued for any sort of tort relating to breach of contract. At most, you could be asked to leave, trespassed if you refuse, and sued for damages if the dog broke something or someone.
Please don't attack others, and in general, it's not a good idea to use terms like Dunning-Kruger when you are incorrect. Ad blocking is not piracy under any statuatory or case law, period.
The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video. Your argument is like “the cashier didn’t stop me from walking out of the grocery store so it’s not stealing”
I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
I would love to be educated: when did I enter into an agreement with YouTube that I must watch ads to use their website?
YouTube is sueing me for damages. Their claim: I used their website but didn't watch the ads. (Maybe I used an ad blocker. Maybe I turned off my monitor and unplugged the speakers when the ads played. Maybe I walked away and let the ad play in a different room). What evidence do they submit in court to demonstrate I violated an agreement?
You've made quite a few comments across this thread, as have others that support your position. Not even within the YouTube TOS has anyone pointed out a contractual obligation to view ads. Not to mention YouTube doesn't require you to agree to their TOS to view videos.
With this in mind, it's perfectly understandable that someone could browse YouTube without any comprehension of something you seem totally confident on. I'm not being goofy here, I understand that YouTube wants me to view ads, I just genuinely am not aware of any contractual obligation to do so if I view videos.
I'm serious. Show me in the Youtube Terms of Service where it says that blocking ads is against the contract. I've looked. Carefully. There is no such language there.
I don't think you actually looked very closely, so it's weird you've doubled down on that lol
Item 2 of "Permissions and Restrictions" says you aren't allowed to "circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;"
where "content" is earlier defined as basically anything Google/YT sends you (which would include the ad).
A quick google search also takes you to a pretty straightforward statement from Google/YT: "When you block YouTube ads, you violate YouTube’s Terms of Service."
Definition of "Content" in their Terms of Service:
Content on the Service
The content on the Service includes videos, audio (for example music and other sounds), graphics, photos, text (such as comments and scripts), branding (including trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos), interactive features, software, metrics, and other materials whether provided by you, YouTube or a third-party (collectively, "Content”).
Where is advertising defined as "Content"? (EDIT: For clarity, this paragraph is my own words; the previous paragraph was the quote from the ToS).
Further, there's the "Our Service" paragraph:
"The Service allows you to discover, watch and share videos and other content, provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe, and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small."
The service acts as a distribution platform for "original content creators and advertisers", two different categories. There's content (made by content creators) and there's what advertisers produce.
If Youtube wanted to define advertising as part of the Content (capital letter because in legal matters, definitions in the contract matter, and that's the term that they defined), they had plenty of opportunity to do so.
The statement by Google that blocking ads is a violation of their ToS is, of course, their opinion. But what ultimately would matter in a lawsuit is the contract. And nowhere in the contract do they state that advertising is part of the Content.
Their best argument in a lawsuit would be that adblocking is "circumventing" part of the Service, because they have defined being a distribution platform for advertisers as being part of their Service. But considering that the actual function of adblocking is simply not making HTTP requests, it would be hard for them to make that hold up in court against a skilled lawyer.
I've looked at it, and I came to the conclusion that the "advertising is part of the Content" argument does not hold up to the actual terms of service, and that the "adblocking is circumventing the Service" part does not hold up either: to say that something running on my browser, that makes no attempt to change their code and only skips certain HTTP requests, counts as "circumventing" features is a stretch. It's the best argument, so thank you for making it. But it's just not strong enough to hold up to the "If Youtube wanted to explain that adblocking was a violation of the ToS, they had plenty of opportunity to lay that out in detail in plain English (well, lawyerese) in the ToS itself" argument which any skilled lawyer would present in court.
So I'll grant that it's possible to read "adblocking is a violation of the ToS" in the terms, if you peer at the penumbras and emanations of the wording. But at no point did they take the opportunity to lay it out in clear language. And statements from a spokesman are, legally speaking, worthless; only the language of the contract matters in a court case.
P.S. I've upvoted you, since you've actually taken a real look at the Terms of Service, unlike the guy making that grocery store analogy.
None at all. I walk in, I look at what's on offer, and if they don't have what I'm looking for, I leave without buying anything.
There's a legal obligation not to steal, of course, and if you want to call that a contract I can't stop you. But if you're claiming there's an implicit contract to buy something when you walk into a store, you're wrong.
Now, if I was walking into the store all the time just to stand around not buying anything, that would be trespassing, and if they asked me to leave their property I'd be obligated to follow their wishes. But if I'm walking in in order to buy some bananas, but they're nearly out of bananas and the ones they have left all look bad, then I'm perfectly within my rights to walk out without buying anything.
In what way are you claiming that the grocery store analogy holds to adblocking on Youtube?
If you want groceries you have to pay. If you want YouTube videos you need to pay by playing the ad(legally speaking, obviously you can steal if you like). I don’t see any difference.
Where's the obligation to watch ads spelled out? The legal obligation to pay for groceries is spelled out in the law: they are the possession of the store, and if you want to acquire them you need to exchange something else of value (money) for them, at which point they become yours.
What is the thing that compels you to watch ads on a service like Youtube? There's nothing in the law; if there is anything, it would be spelled out in the Youtube terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Can you find it for me? I've looked. Many times. It isn't there.
YouTube sends my browser a lot of data, a LOT of data. It's not my fault if some of that data doesn't make it to the screen, or if hardware on my network blocks certain DNS requests. No, I asked YouTube for a web page, and it sent one back to me. I'm not sure why everyone is so eager to let someone else dictate what code they run on their own machine. It's really strange.
> The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video.
Did I? Can you tell me where I made this deal? I navigated to YouTube.com, I don't see a contract, I don't see a place to sign or a hand to shake. Where is this bilateral agreement?
I think what you meant to say was, YouTube really very much wants me to watch their ads, and I don't care to, so I won't.
If your counter is that then YouTube will shut down, I say, oh well, I've already archived all the videos I care about, and someone else will replace them, or not, and either way life will go on.
> "you're circumventing the method of paying for content"
Because the payment method is a scam. Imagine if all car owners were charged the same price for fuel regardless of how much they used.
Likewise, imagine watching 10 videos and being charged the same as someone who watches 200 videos.
We should pay for what we watch. The end. Ad blocking is not piracy when the payment option is at best a blunt extraction of funds from my wallet, at worst a sleazy shakedown.
They're not getting the payment for the video either way.
Morally I don't see how they aren't equivalent. I'm not going to stand on a high horse saying you shouldn't do either, but I don't really see how you can pretend one is less harmful to creators than the other, in terms of the basic principles involved.
Piracy involves obtaining media content for free for which you should normally pay for, as a result of someone sharing the media meant for their own personal use to the general public.
YouTube does not ask for payment, it sends the video data you want alongside some bullshit you’ll ignore and waste precious human time doing so.
Ad blocking just involves offloading the ignoring to the computer, as it should, since computers are meant to automate menial tasks.
I've tried to explain this to people repeatedly and they don't get it. They're always like "oh no the AI scraper is slamming my website it's ruining everything". Um, maybe configure your web browser to not send me data if you don't want me 'scraping' your website. It's literally your server's choice to send me data. I'm just asking from a few IPs. If you want to send data to all of them that's your server's choice.
But I think people don't get the fact that they can just request payment or only send to authenticated users from authorized IPs and so on. Instead they want to send to all IPs without payment but then get upset when I use a bunch of IPs without paying. Weird.
I'm trying to read a bunch of stuff. The entire point of a computer is to make that easy. I'm not going to repetitively click through a bunch of links when a bot can do that way faster.
And what is the surefire way to stop AI scrapers from accessing your website? If there is no way, how can this be an acceptable ask?
It already sounds like you're using several IPs to access sites, which seems like a work around to someone somewhere trying to limit the use of one IP (or just lack of desire to host and distribute the data yourself to your various hosts).
Just because you can do something doesn't mean everyone must accept and like that you are doing that thing.
The answer is right there: use authentication with cost per load, or an IP whitelist.
GP is absolutely right. If your server is just going to send me traffic when I ask I’m just going to ask and do what I want with the response.
Your server will respond fine if I click through with different IPs and it’s just a menial task to have this distribution of requests to IPs, which is what we made computers for.
Yeah, you’re right of course that no one has to like the “piracy” or “scraping” or whatever other name you’re giving to a completely normal request-response interaction between machines. They can complain. And I can say they’re silly for complaining. No one has to like anything. Heck you could hate ice cream.
As long as we all understand that this mentality is advocating for the end of an open internet. This is the tragedy of the commons in action, the removal of a common good because the few that would take advantage of it do. Just because something is programmed to be a request and response interaction (although the use of blocklists and robots.txt and etc should reveal that it's not a simple request and response interaction), does not mean we should have to go all or nothing in ensuring it's not abused. We are still the operators of programs, it's still a social contract. If I block an IP and the same operator shows up with a different IP, it's like if I got kicked out of a bar and then came back with a fake mustache on and got confused why they think it's wrong because they don't have a members list.
A personal website is like a community cupboard or an open access water tap, people put it out there for others to enjoy but when the reseller shows up and takes it all it's no longer sustainable to provide the service.
Of course, it's all a spectrum: from monster corporations that build in the loss to their projections and participate in wholesale data collection and selling to open websites with no ads or limited ads as a sort of donation box; from a person using css/js to block ads or software to pirate for cheaper entertainment to an AI scrapper using swathes of IPs and servers to non-stop request all the data you're hosting for their own monetary gain. I have different opinions depending on where on the spectrum you are. But I do think piracy and ad blocking are on the same spectrum, and much closer to acceptable than mass AI scraping.
These responses were more about your comments about AI scraping then the piracy vs ad blocking conversation, but in my opinion the gap between them and scraping is quite large.
Everyone thinks that their specific pet thing is the precious commons and the other guy is the abuser. But in any case, one should be able to follow the reasoning.
If blocking ads is permissible because the server cannot control the client but can control itself; then so is “scraping”. Both services ask of their clients something they cannot enforce. And both find that the clients refuse.
If you find the justification valid but decide that the conclusion is nonetheless absurd, you must find which step in the reasoning has a failure. The temptation is epicyclic: corporations vs humans or something of the sort; commercial vs non-commercial.
But on its own there is no justification. It’s just that your principles lead you to absurdity but you refuse to revisit them because you like taking from others but you don’t like when others take from you. A fairly simple answer. Nothing for Occam’s Razor to divide.
Particularly believable because the arrival of AI models trained on the world seems to have coincided with some kind of copyright maximalism that this forum has never seen before. Were the advocates of the RIAA simply not users yet?
Or, more believably, is it just that taking feels good but being taken from feels bad?
I think everyone is fine scraping for what is already public. But there’s a lot of scrapers that just do denial of service. Of I have a 1TB of bandwidth from my provider and only 10% of it is consumed usually, it’s really difficult to not blame someone that slurps it up in 1 hour and prevent anyone else from accessing the content.
"the payment for the video" as if it's a given that my ad impression is required for me to watch some video that they made available to me on their website for free.
Morally, YouTube shows the most heinous and scummy ads 24/7 on their platform and fails to take them down when reported. Gambling, AI sex games, "cure what doctors miss" ads for human use of Ivermectin - it's your moral duty to block them.
I understand you about the implied contract. I think it's more complex than that. People were making videos before the promise of ad revenue, and they were better videos. If people go away who make videos for money - which will never happen - it would be an improvement overall. If ad blockers do win, YT could edit their ads into the videos themselves making an ad blocker's job harder. YTers who want money could make their own independent deals with advertisers, as some do today. And YT can always charge money - as they do right now with premium. But if YT did that for all tiers, they couldn't dominate and they'd have competitors spring up. They know that. They also know if they ever asked anyone whether they agree to watch ads, most would say No. The prevalence of Ad blockers are proof that people don't want to watch the ads. But, as you point out, we do accept the free content. The thing is the world would likely be better if YT would charge everyone for access. Judging from video quality these days a lot of YTers could be doing something more productive than what they're doing now - I mean in an objective sense, better for economic health. But the real reason for these $0 tech services is to stifle competition and prevent the market from working. And that works to everyone's detriment. Basic economics doesn't function without prices.
what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos. The issue is processing fees on that payment, so might as well give em a bit more.
It's wild how low the payout on ads is. Seriously, just flip people $1 every once in a while and it's more support than ads.
It's so stupid how people get all morally superior when they figure out that someone block ads.
For me, and many people, advertising is a mental health issue. I don't enjoy those ads, they are very disturbing and jarring. It causes me anxiety and I don't like the things that those ads normalize. I don't think most people, especially americans, realize how far off the rails our society is in terms of our normalization of insane shit.
So, for health reasons, I block nearly all advertisements. It is a HUGE mental health win. There is a ton of research behind this, as well.
I'm not going to pay extra money to disable a health concern. I'll block ads instead. I should not have to PAY MORE for a product that doesn't damage my health.
I will always happily directly support content creators. I will not watch ads.
> I should not have to PAY MORE for a product that doesn't damage my health.
Is this the same way of saying your mental health is important to you but you're not prepared to pay a service money to protect said mental health and support creators you like?
> I'm not going to pay extra money to disable a health concern.
Honest question: Why? You do pay for toothpaste, right? If you have a gym membership, you pay extra for the convenience not to do cardio in the woods (which is great in late May, much less so in late November). You tend to pay more for nutritious food as compared to things you get at a fast food joint.
What makes a health concern related to $genericOnlineService different?
The massive overlays of what-to-watch-next hiding most of the video much too early, ie. before the very end, of the video you were trying to watch until the end but now just ragequit and downloaded instead... are very ugly
Those are there because the content creator you’re watching decided to put them there. It’s entirely up to them whether they show up and when they show up.
I pay for YouTube Premium too (probably not much longer) but can only 'comfortably' use the site through a series of increasingly hacky extensions for Firefox. On non-web apps, there is no recourse from the UI enshittification.
The general theme is the same as the article: less real estate dedicated to actual videos you might want to watch. There were two rows of completely useless garbage that I had to add to my uBlock Origin filter just now: one for Shorts (which I have blocked in the past) and a new one for some sort of Youtube Games thing (?) that looked like the worst AI generated slop you'd never want to play.
If this is the premium experience then I don't want it.
> The general theme is the same as the article: less real estate dedicated to actual videos you might want to watch. There were two rows of completely useless garbage that I had to add to my uBlock Origin filter just now: one for Shorts (which I have blocked in the past) and a new one for some sort of Youtube Games thing (?) that looked like the worst AI generated slop you'd never want to play.
This is the same stuff you get without buying Premium. So I guess they figure you're only paying to dodge the ads.
Which seems, to me, like a lot of money compared to (ad cost * number of ads you would see).
I also pay for premium, and have for at least 15 years since it was called Red, and the experience is complete garbage.
If you turn off history, you get zero videos on your home screen. This is not because the history is needed to generate the suggestions, because the blank home only started a few years ago.
I used to never subscribe to any channels, I just got reasonable feed of suggestions based off of whatever I happened to search for explicitly or if I got there by clicking a link, or by what I chose to click on even if the list starts out totally random, except of course it never was totally random because they still have ip address and other fingerprnting signals.
After they blaked out the home screen and started showing the "you're not logged in, go here to fix this error", I subscribed to a bunch of channels to provide data for generating a feed. They still don't provide any. You can take extra clicks (which is agonizing on the Roku since it just doesn't react well and misses button presses all the time) to get to the subscriptions page, which will show recent uploads exactly from those channels and no others.
I also still get several other forms of ads in the form of the embedded/native ads and the irrelevant suggestions that come from youtube's interests instead of my own, like shorts. I also still get ads simply because I don't get to use my own account all the time. When you watch youtube anywhere but your own laptop by yourself, you are at the whims of someone else's account and some other platforms app limitations.
And even on your own machine, I absolutely resent having to tie my viewing history to my identity and have someone else log all of that. So there is reason to intentionally use no account even if you otherwise have no problem paying to support not only the content producers but even the delivery system.
Why can't I disable shorts? There is no amount I can pay to hide all shorts, but I can have it for free i=on a pc with a tampermonkey or ublock script. But that only helps on a pc. I watch mostly on a TV and I have no ability to hack the roku app. Maybe if I switch to a google tv I could use newpipe or something.
Paying for premium does not make youtube good. It does not resolve much of anything. It is not remotely the touche this smarmy comment attempts to suggest.
Paying for premium takes youtube from being like pulling out 10 of your fingernails to only pulling out 8 of your fingernails.
That 2of10 fingernals relief and for the sake of the creators, that's the only reason I still pay for premium.
I do pay for YouTube Premium - and I still get ads when someone has YT Videos embedded on their website. YouTube knows who I am, the cookies are set, there is no reason to give me ads.
It is not yet painful enough for me to invest time and energy to research less convenient ways of UX improvement. Not ... yet.
Youtube's censorship is one reason I won't pay for it. Rumble is a legitimate site even as people decry its existence (it would be less necessary if Youtube didn't decide on being the world's opinion police)
Like another poster mentioned, I use Orion on my iPad with ublock origin installed as an extension.
It’s a really great browser, only a few bugs here and there.
Wipr, Adblock Pro, Ghostery or uBlock Origin Lite. I've used all four and they perform about as well as you need them to for an adblocker. I'm currently using uBlock.
I've loved Grayjay as an alternative YouTube client. It can pull in videos from other platforms as well, and it can Cast videos! AdBlock and sponsorblock built in too.
I mean I pay for Youtube Premium because I use Youtube Music instead of Spotify.
I get a very unopinionated but effective music player that has all the music I need, and it doesn't try very hard to "upsell" itself to me unlike Spotify because to Google YouTube is the real money driver.
So to me getting no YouTube ads as well is well worth it.
for what it's worth, you could divide up your youtube premium membership cost and give that to 500 creators and they would see more revenue in their pocket than your premium watches get them.
Premium viewcount is grossly over valued by the people who pay for it, because they need to justify their sunk cost. I doubt most content creators even track it because the difference is minimal. We're talking a few bucks a month, tops.
I remember when youtube premium first came out and YT pimped this trope super hard. Then it came to light that the difference is basically nothing because most people don't pay for premium.
Can someone write about how terrible the YouTube Android app is, so that some PM can actually fix it? Its an app i use constantly and hate using it all the time. I accidently click to another video and lose the position of where i was. It used to confirm the play of another video, but now it doesn't. The offline feature is terrible; you can't play something and make it go offline. It used to cast really well, with a "casting queue". When i disconnect from my TV, its still logged in. Adding/removing/changing the watch queue is so bad that I have to use my laptop to make changes. When browsing, you can't tell whether a video is already on your watch list; it's not always accurate. Sometimes you click add, and it removes it from the watch list because it's also in the list. Many more things.. can't think of them right now.
There are 0 videos on my YouTube homepage, just a screen asking me to turn on history. Just the way I like it. Here’s what I did:
Go into the YouTube app, settings, manage all history, under the history tab hit Delete -> delete all time.
Then go to controls (still in the manage all history dialog box under settings), under YouTube history hit Turn off. It says “pausing…” Hit Pause, and Got it.
It’s been exactly 3 months since I did that. I still watch stuff from my subscriptions and when I search for something I want to watch. There are still recommended videos when you’re watching a video but they are a lot less enticing since they are not personally targeted. I curated my subscriptions so it’s more what I would want to spend time watching instead of reaction videos for instance. My actual time watching YouTube has dropped a lot.
Weirdly I've had history turned off for just over 10 years (I can tell from the date on the most recent entry), but my YouTube homepage shows me videos related to things I've watched recently anyway.
I just deleted the all-time history and now the homepage is blank as you say.
I don't think they're really deleting your viewing history, else the homepage wouldn't have looked the way it did before I deleted "all time".
I have clicked "stop showing me Shorts" several times but they keep coming back, so I don't think the homepage works properly anyway.
EDIT:
On further consideration, I think what was happening with the homepage was that it was showing me videos related to channels that I subscribe to. (But not always videos from channels that I subscribe to).
However I don't see why they can't still do that even after I delete my all-time watch history? Not that I want them to.
But if you did want them to, you could probably turn watch history back on, click on any single video, and then turn it off again, and you'd probably have a home screen dictated by your subscriptions.
Or else they just ignore the setting and it's all a lie anyway.
I see the same screen and wonder why they don't suggest videos based on subscriptions. I assume they figure no suggestions will nag people into enabling history.
I thoroughly love this experience. I open subscriptions as needed to catch up on things I care about. Otherwise I use the homepage to search for something. No distractions. No infinitely scrolling feed of slop and ads.
"Enhancer For Youtube" is a firefox extension that disables much of the nonsense in Youtube's UI. I can't use youtube without it anymore. There might be a chrome version? Idk, using chrome with youtube is dumb af tho so probably don't do that.
Using Chromium-based browsers is the only way to play HDR videos, since Mozilla is dragging their feet for years with implementing support for that. I use Firefox for everything except for YouTube because of that.
But if you're in the same boat, at least use something that has an adblocker, like Brave, Vivaldi or Opera.
Ctrl + Right click, Show controls will bring up the classic controls (play, pause, volume, seek, full screen) on Firefox. I'm sure other browsers have something similar. Haven't found a way to turn this on permanently for all videos though :/
Auto-repeat is the thing that most mystifies me about shorts. I understand the idea behind auto-play, although I disable it; but who on earth wants to watch the exact thing they just watched by default?
Given the success of TikTok, the answer is apparently, "billions of people", but I just don't get it.
My theory is that it is a way of forcefully grabbing people’s attention.
Without autoplay there is no engagement once the video is over. With autoplay there is the risk someone leaves the player on the background and ignores it. With looping videos people get annoyed and (if they’re like me) close the tab or skip to the next video just to get something different
If you disable watch history, youtube tries to "punish" you by disabling nearly the non-subscription recommendations and shorts not from your subscriptions and a number of other things.
maybe there will be another tier of youtube premium in a few years that removes shorts, and people can try to guilt you for blocking them using browser extensions like they do for ad blocking.
Low _usable_ information density is one of the main things I made Control Panel for YouTube [^0] to tackle, especially in Subscriptions.
On a 1080p monitor, my unmodified Subscriptions page currently has 6 fully-visible thumbnails, consisting of 3 livestreams from people I only subscribe to for videos, 1 watched video, 1 stream VOD (which I'll never watch), and 1 unwatched video, so that's a score of 1/6. Scroll down and you start getting into more watched videos, stream VODs, the unwanted Shorts shelf, thumbnails for Upcoming videos (i.e. videos which can't be watched), and videos from people I don't even subscribe to (via YouTube's recently-added Collaborations feature).
With everything in Control Panel for YouTube enabled and a minium of 5 videos per row configured, I have 15 unwatched or partially watched (up to a configurable %) videos every time. Same thing for Home, in which other things I don't want such as Mixes and Playlists can also be hidden.
It also tends to have fixes for the other things people rightfully complain about when YouTube comes up in these threads, such as (reads down the page) blocking ads and hiding promoted content, hiding Shorts everywhere, automatically switching to the original audio for auto-dubbed videos, hiding Related videos when they appear below the video pushing comments even further down, fixing the new oversized video controls and huge videos in the Related sidebar, etc. etc.
I honestly think that at some point, there will be no recommendations page. You'll open YouTube and it'll start autoplaying the video that they (or the advertisers) think you should see. You'll be able to skip to other videos from there, like on short-form content platforms. Likes and subscriptions will dictate how likely it'll be that you'll see a video by that creator in the future. Search and other "outdated" features will be tucked away and purposefully made even more useless than they already are.
Maybe you could have a couple of different feeds that you could choose from, we might call these "channels". You could perhaps assign numbers to the channels for convenient selection using the remote. Hmm, why does this remind me of something?
You know who has great information density? Pornhub. If you open Pornhub on a 4K screen, you will absolutely see none of the thumbnails. I think YouTube is overdoing it, but it is really a thing of: people are either using really small screens or 1080p. 4K is still not around much.
There's an old adage that if you follow the tech that porn adopts, you'll generally be ahead the average consumer curve.
I think there's another version that if porn adopts a tech that means that the tech will work. Like, a lot of VR adoption early on was porn. By a lot, I mean most.
Not sure what this comment is getting at. Those may be the collection of sites owned by a single company, but there are still -oceans- of porn of every conceivable niche, on hundreds of thousands of sites, some still bigger than those. Whereas there’s pretty much a single, monopolized provider for mainstream video: youtube. And a porn conglomerate is the problem? GP is still correct, there’s still real competition in the space, unlike youtube.
Yes. 1080p screen density is still so popular. Looking around new laptops it's still the bulk in Windows land, including OLED and ultra high refresh rate monitors. Same for TVs.
Even on macs many are using scaling factors that render close to 1080p.
The issue really would be why YouTube can't bother managing more layouts. It still blows my mind there's only one single YouTube experience per platform, when their viewership basically span the world's population.
What could users do with this quazimonopoly? YT PMs can keep being discunnected from user's needs as long and far as their personal worldview limitations allow and bare no consequences.
The content: well I guess that's the network effect.
To be honest I don't understand content creators who bitch about YouTube constantly (about "the algorithm", demonetization, strikes and more), but DON'T put their content somewhere else at least as an alternative. You don't have to _move_ but at least also publish your videos to a podcast platform or something?
It's difficult to capture into words how much contempt I hold for Google and Amazon, two companies which lost their way long ago and are now actively user-hostile.
YouTube has gotten worse with every release. Endless, pointless UI changes. Sneaky resolution downgrades. When your video says "Auto 1080p" it's like 480p quality, manually choose 1080p and watch it change.
Amazon has been working overtime to make your experience worse. The latest innovation is to eliminate invoices for US customers. This wasn't a mistake, as it was rolled out gradually over a few months, with workarounds quickly plugged as users become aware of them. Oh, there still is a "view invoice" button but it's just a redirect to order summary now.
Dark patterns galore since cancelling Prime. Every checkout flow I'm hit with a minimum of two clicks where I have to decline or change something. Ordering a packet of laundry soap feels like buying a used car.
The employees that implement this stuff dare to call themselves "engineers" yet their entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable, which they are somehow paid a disgusting amount of money to go do.
Real engineers solve problems.
These people invent new problems to then go solve, likely because they are chasing their next promotion.
There's a lot of folx who got into this business for all the wrong reasons and we're now seeing the results of that on a massive scale.
>entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable
If these changes are not hurting user metrics are they really making their lives miserable? When you are optimizing an experience for billions of users, numbers are the only thing you can trust.
I’m still using Amazon as much as I was before, it’s just a more miserable experience now which I can feel and the annoyances are compounding. I’ve not yet done anything that would show in their numbers, like cancel my prime or start trying to shop elsewhere or even boycott them altogether, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy as I was and would say they’re pushing me to a point of defection. All to say, they should be smart enough to not just do uninformed numerical analysis. They need to hone a gut feeling for how pleased people are or build metrics around that. They should see satisfaction is waning. In fact, it may be what’s driving this behavior. If satisfaction is down, people leave, sales slump, then they make more user hostile changes in hopes to cover the sales gap with existing customers, but results in satisfaction going down at every pass. It’s a vicious cycle.
This is unfortunately true. It feels like "1rem" should be the ideal body don't size. But on desktop browsers this is often quite small.
Personally I configure my browser's default font size (1rem) to something nice and readable, but I'm sure that the number of people who do this is <10%. Probably closer to 1%.
But either way I would recommend against hardcoding a size in px.
Sigh... You'd think people would know this by now. What does it even mean to be a "web developer" if you don't know the difference between pixels and text size? It seems like such a fundamental thing, like a decorator knowing how to calculate how much paint is needed for a job. But no... now we have web browsers where a pixel isn't even a pixel, it's 4 pixels, on a "HiDPI" display...
Ironically, most people I know are now using alternative YouTube front-ends not for the ad blocking, but just for tracking their subscriptions in a proper list and skipping the junk in the home page.
One of the things I dislike about the Youtube app on Apple TV is how it appears to maintain an entirely separate list of recommended videos, specific to the kinds of videos I tend to watch on TV, versus the phone and desktop (which might themselves also each have their own recommendation algorithm, but my behavior there is closer so as to not notice).
The difference is stark. I use YouTube on the Apple TV to play mostly background videos; 8 hour AI generated lofi mixes, burning fireplaces, things like that. Ambiance. Its all that gets recommended now when I pull up the app; but only on the TV.
This behavior is somewhat desirable: but the issue is, the youtube apple TV app is an abhorrent experience that feels deeply tailored to stop you from getting to any content that is not expressly recommended. And these videos are all that get recommended. A new Linus Tech Tips video might be in my feed on desktop/mobile; but finding that video on the TV literally requires me to search "Linus Tech Tips" and go to their channel -> all videos.
I certainly don't mind the platform raising the prominence of videos I tend to watch on that platform; but to me it feels like I should be able to at least scroll down on the home page a bit to get a more "centralized" view into everything my account watches and would be recommended.
Yeah, I wish the UI could let me browse the various silos of videos I like to watch instead of trying to be clever with one feed.
And it’s like Youtube thinks I only want to watch the last three genres at any moment. If I branch out, then it pops another favorite genre from the set.
Sometimes I’ll go months or even years forgetting about video genres I love until I randomly remember it.
Feels like a wasted opportunity, and it should have more in common with music apps.
For me this change was reverted quite quickly, I think within the week. On my Apple TV at least it is back to 3 (and a quarter) videos displayed at a time.
I like to think that it was the feedback I submitted that pushed them to change it. However, it was more likely a change in viewership that would cause them to revert it back. I know my viewing habits definitely changed, I found myself spending more time looking through the thumbnails and then giving up to go watch content on other platforms.
It’s not a revert, merely A/B testing to see which version leads to more “engagement”.
They’re also testing the same on the web, half the time I get the normal sidebar, half the time I get a 300% zoomed one where I can only see like 3 video thumbnails before having to scroll (jokes on them, I don’t - but then again I block ads so I don’t count either way).
If it happens to me again, I will have to find my content elsewhere. It's not even a conscious decision, I just got genuinely fatigued from the experience.
On the bright side, maybe I'd be better off. There are probably better things I could be doing with my time.
I can highly recommend using YouTube through Firefox with extensions or ReVanced that try to fix these hostile and anti user decisions. Although I do sometimes wonder why I do spend so much time on a platform that hates me so much.
I don't think so? The "I Skied Down Mount Everest" is from the Red Bull channel. It may be a commercial channel, but it's not an ad, i.e. they didn't pay for placement (doesn't say "Sponsored" like the other one).
and they are often good videos (if you like watching extreme sports related things), given the partial second video this seems likely for the account who made the screenshot
but given that half a video is not a full video this still means we are at one single full video
and an AD which is deceptively pretending to be a video
I still think regulators should ban deceptive ads and require ads to to clearly different from the main content _on the first take/glance_. They way YT, Google and co handle ads is IMHO deceptive to a point its reasonable to say they try to deceive the user into clicking on the ad when they wouldn't have done so if they new it was an ad.
And "systematically deceiving a user/customer to their detriment (wasting time) and your profit" isn't just shitty but on a gray line to outright fraud.
I mean, in terms of getting your caffeine, Redbull is basically the least poison in the game. It's not even a lot of caffeine and doesn't contain a lot of the other shit that stuff like Monsters contain.
Like really, checkout the redbull ingredient list sometime. There's not much to it.
Not saying it's healthy at all. Nobody should really be drinking energy drinks, but Redbull is probably the least awful of the bunch.
That "feature" is so egregiously bad. I regularly consume content in three languages, and hearing the wrong language coming from my speakers is so jarring. It is a uniquely awful experience that I had never encountered before, nor even imagined.
Same for auto-translated titles. It's like they can't fathom the idea of people speaking more than one language. At least give an option to turn it off!
While we’re at it can we also fire the guy who made it that we now have to click the channel’s mini thumbnail to open it, EXCEPT, when the channel is live and clicking the thumbnail takes you to the live video where you have to click the thumbnail again.
Oh, are we talking about bad YouTube UX? How about the "feature" where the right and left arrows seek the video 5s forward and back, while the up and down arrows increase and decrease the volume? That is, unless the last UI element you've touched was the volume bar, in which case the side arrows will also change the volume, and you'll have to use the mouse to clear the focus away from that volume bar to be able to seek the video again. I still wonder how they managed to break this despite it having had a sane, consistent, defined behavior for probably over a decade before that point.
> That is, unless the last UI element you've touched was the volume bar, in which case the side arrows will also change the volume, and you'll have to use the mouse to clear the focus away from that volume bar to be able to seek the video again
That is a feature (of the browser). The volume bar is selected so it takes up the controls for left/right (this is what a horizontal slider does I suppose). You can also select the volume button and mute/unmute with spacebar (spacebar does the action of the UI element, like click a button). You can tab around the buttons under the video to select options, etc. all with a keyboard. If a control doesn't support an action, it'll be propagated up to the parent, which leads to the jarring feeling that controls are inconsistent (and also the effects, left-right just adjusts the volume, up-down also plays an animation).
It's the usual low quality Google product, but it does make sense why it is so.
Googlers are obviously mentally challenged by the concept that there might be anybody in the world who has learned English as a second language.
Bet the idea to force outdated TTS whose robotic droning that is the pinnacle of annoyance on every single user who speaks more than one language was worth a nice bonus.
I agree. But for the benefit of other people struggling, I haven't found a way to disable them as a user setting, but you can at least turn them off on a per-video basis by changing the video language in the playback settings (the little gear icon).
They could at least try to vaguely match the voice and maybe cadence of the original. AFAIU it's one of these things that would have been too hard ten years ago but is fairly easy now. Too computationally expensive probably.
Yeah ElevenLabs had this over a year ago where you could just upload a 30 second clip of someone's voice in another language and hear what it was like in English and it worked really well.
I was playing a game with a friend and the chat was increasingly full of angry people complaining about cheaters easily obtaining very hard to get items. He asked what I thought about it....
Well, the game is clearly very important to these people, it is increasingly visible. They are clearly very emotionally engaged. I'd say things are going really well!
Youtube was once a miraculous technical website running circles around Google video. I'm told they used a secret technology called python. Eventually Google threw the towel and didn't want to compete anymore. They were basically on the ground in a pool of bodily liquids then the referee counted all the way to 1.65 billion.
Some time went by and now you can just slap a <video> tag on a html document and call it a day. Your website will run similar circles around the new google video only much much faster.
The only problem is that [even] developers forgot <s>how</s> why to make HTML websites. I'm sure someone remembers the anchor tag and among those some even remember that you can put full paths inthere that point at other website that could [in theory] also have videos on them (if they knew <s>how</s> why)
If this was my homepage I would definitely add a picture of Dark Helmet.
They have also gotten more aggressive on trying to get you to sign in. I have appreciated the shitty UX changes they have made which has resulted in me using it less. It’s just filler and I need less of that in life, so thanks for chasing me away.
On my work PC, they all but forced me to create an account just to watch videos. I could not find a way around it (I didn’t try super hard). I don’t use my personal accounts on that device so I just created a throwaway.
As with many other similar sites, it’s time to get off YouTube as well. The times when one could watch good content not made for money, are over. It’s about watching as much content as you can, the more addictive the better.
» I think that anyone who is technically sufficiently well-versed, is going to avoid that hellscape like the plague. So then, who is the actual audience for this stuff? My guess would be: the old folks' home around the corner, which, sooner or later, will be forced to upgrade those TVs to smart-TVs. And once those old folks put in their credit card numbers or log in with their Amazon accounts, there goes a lot of people's inheritance.
My own elderly father is wise to the scam, but not confident in his ability to navigate the dark patterns. So now, he is afraid to input his credit card information into anything digital, essentially excluding him from cultural participation in the digital age. « [1]
With that frame (the target audience for smart TVs is old people), "needing glasses" is not all that far-fetched.
I was going to disagree by saying that the menus are extremely confusing to the elderly. However if the goal is to extract money from them by generating confusion about what is an on-demand vs a streaming piece of media; you could not design a better software system. Reminds me of the theory that micro-transaction revenue in video games has driven menu UI in the direction of confusing and disorientating the player.
Yes, YT UX is awful, specially on TV. I found about SmartTube and it is great, I recommend it. You can choose the grid size, among many other things (most importantly, no ads!).
Ahh, I thought this was just happening to me. I used to watch a fair bit of YT on my PS4, but a few months ago my home screen was basically empty save a few ad videos.
It was pushing me heavily to sign in; which I do _not_ want to do.
I miss when I could search youtube for "cats" and I'd get just raw cat footage.
Now I get cat influencers and influencers selling me on them ... while they tell me how to pick a cat. Maybe I find kinda raw cat footage, with a title that is misleading, annoying music, text bubbles popping all over it :(
I just want what I searched for ... youtube doesn't give me that.
It's not that unlike when I open the home page, I've no control and so much of that isn't what I'm looking for...
For me it's 3 videos of what I searched for and then it just goes to my normal recommended. One of the issues I still haven't fixed with an extension so I just search videos via normal web search.
I hate the forced AI generated English translation of the non-english shorts with the passion of a million suns. It should never have been the default. If you are the person who made that decision, fuck you. If you know that person, please pass on my sentiments.
On desktop, press command/ctrl and minus to zoom out and increase the home page's density. It will make text on watch page harder to read, but with theatre mode, the video playback size should be unaffected.
I already have 0 videos on youtube home screen, some combination of not being logged in, firefox privacy settings and ad blocker causes youtube to post a passive aggressive message and a search bar. I kinda like that Ui.
Not really related but... have anyone else noticed that suggestions on the home page became much worse recently? I'm getting a lot of unrelated videos which are often very old, like published up to 18 years ago. OTOH, videos from subscriptions are not getting suggested, I often have to check individual channels to see if they posted anything new. What's happening?
If you pay attention, this happens every few months. This is youtube tweaking the algorithm.
Every time they tweak the algorithm, content creators scramble to figure out what changes they made so they can exploit it. That's why every few months all the major channels change their styles to all be the same. Gotta exploit that algo!
I used to lurk the Google forums (they even changed the goddamn format of the forums now to where clicking things is tedious and I'm sure it's 100% intentional) and going back years with Google and also I suspect Youtube it was full of users complaining about "You're ignoring all our advice/wants in this thread". I don't remember all of it, but it was product managers being incredibly selective
The tyranny of distance (you can do x where x is usually 'ignore feedback' and you can get away with it separated by hundreds of miles, where otherwise you might get punched in the face) kills me with companies like this. You can't just ignore all of us (the customer isn't always right but it wouldn't kill you to listen every once and a while and if you don't, we'll gradually stop using your product). But you can, because listening to The People isn't where the product managers decide it should be or isn't where the ad dollars are or whatever
It's an emperor has no clothes situation. They know it we know it everybody knows it but we're all (corporate, anyway) just going to ignore it and plug our ears
Was just talking with my son about how some YouTubers who made short videos long ago started making longer and less succinct videos because they thought the algorithm favored long videos and then TikTok happens.
You can use ublock origin browser extension per-site CSS rules to restore an arbitrary number of rows and columns to the youtube frontpage. https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube is a good source for these if you don't know how to write them or don't want to.
YouTube has become so bad that I had to resort to Tampermonkey scripts to become bearable.
First was the disgusting pink tones in the progress bar.
Then the oversized thumbnails / less videos per page.
Then the horrible over sized player controls.
And now the oversized suggestions on the side bar.
Not to mention the obnoxious amount and duration of ads.
It's getting worse and worse.
These are all symptoms that something is very wrong.
It is rapidly becoming unusual. Already needs a bunch of extensions to make things bearable.
At some point it’ll become so shit people will look at trying to sidestep their frontend entirely. In other news YouTube is clamping down on ability to download videos…what a coincidence
I'd also like to scream at Youtube for the "experiencing interruptions? find out why!" bullshit that enforces a five second wait before videos will load.
I only put 2+2 together when I was running yt-dlp and realizing there was a "Sleeping 5.00 seconds as required by the site..." before downloads would kick in and... wellp. It all makes sense now.
As an ISP representative, I am getting absolutely pissmad that YouTube is gaslighting our users and making them think that our service is "terrible" because of perceived buffering on every video load because YouTube wants to play a shitty cat and mouse game against adblockers for all.
i feel like modern youtube just does not scratch the itch that youtube once scratched , it now feels like methadone replacement therapy. available viewing options have been reduced to either short form content or long form content , there is nothing between. i dont enjoy frying my brain with short form content and i dont have the attention span to watch bloviation with the express intent of stretching out video times to maximise revenue. honestly i feel like this applies to the internet as a whole , a facsimile of its former self being puppeted to achieve control. someone probably predicted this , right ?
I usually don't mind that. Sometimes I'm looking in to a new product or hobby and really do want to see a whole bunch of that content. They also provide you a feed which purely contains channels you subscribe to, though I find it much lower quality than the normal feed.
That's not even the main problem. Youtube is basically unwatchable with all the ads. Maybe it's just me but it often feels like it's badly broken. I found skipvids a while back. I find the videos on YT and watch them there. I don't watch yt often so that's the path of least resistance for me.
> Unfortunately the YouTube PM org’s myopia is accelerating: with this data I now project that there will be zero videos on the homescreen around May of 2026 now, up from September.
There are already zero videos if you visit with no youtube history. That seems... fine?
Total enshittification has won and reality is indistinguishable from satire. And still we continue to empower the enshittifiers while complaining loudly about the self-inflicted wounds.
Neuralink was mentioned, and it immediately made me remember the sad stories of the rhesus macaques that were used as Neuralink animal test subjects for brain implants. The quality of the work was poor and they were able to pull the implants out and then the implants got loose, causing bacterial and fungal infections and swelling and the macaques had to be euthanized. But not before banging their heads against everything, picking on the holes in their skulls and going insane as their brains got increasingly infected. Reading that kind of disgusting inhumane crap makes me ashamed of being a member of the same species.
If you want to read more the search keywords are: "Animal 20" "Neuralink"
> Animal 20 was seen "pulling on port connector which is now dislodged (no longer secured)". The next day, Animal 20 was "picking at incision and occasionally pulling on implant". Soon, infections developed. On Dec. 20, UC Davis staff found antibiotic resistant E. coli and Candida glabrata, a fungal infection, at the surgical site. They discussed a "necropsy next week", meaning they planned to euthanize Animal 20.
This is normal in the meat industry. It sucks it happens to test subjects, or any living creature, but this is nothing compared to the daily cruelty inflicted upon innocent animals that we deem "food".
> maybe our mandatory NeuraLinks are coming sooner than I thought.
The founder of NeuraLink has recently proposed to deploy sentient robots to watch criminals, removing the need for incarceration. There is a lot of synergy possible here with mandatory neural links. The bot could not only watch us but also press our buttons. "Criminal", being such a flexible concept, should pose little problem to globalizing this paradigm. For one thing, it will make it possible to harvest any number of clicks necessary, so advertising becomes obsolete, and so does content.
> it will make it possible to harvest any number of clicks necessary, so advertising becomes unnecessary and obsolete
But then again, this is already possible, and has the advertising industry shit-scared, thus all the interest in blocking AI-related scrapers since they circumvent the whole “wasting human time” element.
There are lots of proposals. Recently, he retweeted a pundit who said that murderers should be hanged and that Europe achieved its level of civilization by executing 1-2% of its population for eugenic purposes:
You know the world is heading in a good direction when the world's richest man with nearly half a trillion dollars is starting to muse about whom he wants to start killing off. You know, for the "common good".
That TVs have lower information density than desktop browsers? Like, yeah, obviously.
That if you don't sign in to YouTube and don't pay to remove the ads, that you'll get prompted to sign in and you'll see ads? That doesn't seem particularly problematic.
Sure it's mildly funny that a funny projection is true in a very contrived way, but it doesn't really stand up to any criticism. I use YouTube almost exclusively through the Apple TV app, and it's fine, I'd even say it has improved a little over the last few years. I like the low information density because I sit approximately 3m from the screen and navigate with a TV remote.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures from before this change, but you used to get 5-6 videos I believe. Now you get two (and maybe one is an ad).
The point is that I made a joke projection in my last post in April that by next May there would be only one video on the homepage, because obviously that would be ridiculous, right? Then I turned on my TV and it happened.
On my Apple TV I get 2.5 thumbnails per row and 2 rows. I honestly think that's appropriate for a TV interface and I basically like the UI. I find YouTube's Apple TV app to be the least clunky of all the carousel-of-videos apps that I use.
Compare the 1.25 video thumbnails shown on the apple tv app to the thumbnails on Steam's big picture mode (designed for people sitting on a couch far away from a tv):
I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. I can’t wait to find out how they screwed this one up.
My personal long-term complaint is the length of video titles.
Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”.
Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence.
So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”.
Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that.
The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
Obnoxious.
The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV.
For example, if you pause the video by clicking the main action button brings up an overlay that takes up almost the whole screen, so you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame. How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. For some reason up means back and down means to open some additional UI with related videos and what not.
No other app is like this — Plex, Infuse, Apple, Netflix etc. abide by relatively sane UI controls where the action button pauses and unpauses, and up/down don't scroll between weird overlay elements.
The YouTube filled with these incredible non-unintuitive UX choices that drive me crazy. I never use it unless I have a clear idea of something I want to watch.
Apple TV apps, in general, are terrible. Every single one [that I routinely use] (including Apple’s apps) regularly crash or lock up, often leaving it to me, to force-quit.
Amazon has started getting into a state, lately, where it ignores the remote, unless I go back, then go forward again.
This kind of “quality” is considered “acceptable,” in today’s world.
AppleTV has a JavaScript-based development system. It also has a fairly classic native Swift system (which I use). I suspect most apps are JavaScript, though.
[EDIT: Added the “routinely use” qualifier]
I have zero experience with these, but every app crashing could also indicate a hardware issue. Faulty memory perhaps?
I have two sets (one is a 4K, and the other, a regular set). It happens on both. The crashes are different, though, for each app. Usually, it’s the app falling into a fugue state, at some point, as I am channel-surfing (I do that, a lot).
I should also qualify that it’s not really “every single one” (that’s hyperbole). It’s the ones that I routinely use (Apple, Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix).
I’ll probably get another one, sooner or later, but I’ve been waiting for them to release a new version[0],
[0] https://share.google/YL2EBlQfewN9CGDxD
That might be something wrong with your particular device - we've had two Apple TVs over 10+ years and they've been remarkably stable. I didn't even know how to "force quit" - I looked it up when you mentioned it.
Edit: Did have one problem where the centre channel would occasionally drop out - this would go away if you changed the volume and didn't happen that often so wasn't a big deal. I had assumed it was a problem with the Denon receiver we use but when we replaced our original Apple TV earlier this year wit a 4K model it stopped so must have been something to do with the device.
You'd think they've done it on purpose so you don't watch Youtube on TV. I tried but it's so bad you'd never open it a second time. And that's the platform where there are no ad blockers, so it must be good for them ...
I know Prime did this for quite some time, unaware if they still do. The main YouTube web app also suffers from this same issue, though at least the play button disappears.
Everytime YouTube gets an update it gets worse. This has been true for years. It's like their design and product team is run by second-graders.
Agreed the interface is clunky.
> you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame
You can press up on the D-pad to dismiss that overlay, if you want to see the full paused frame.
> How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up.
Maybe we have different remotes? On the latest model, you play/pause with the same button.
One issue I’ve noticed in the app is there seems to be no way to move the cursor “up” to the channel button when the video is in the last 10% of the playback bar. If you rewind it a bit, then you’re able to move the cursor up there.
Only in the last few days have Shorts appeared at the top of my home page. I fear it may be the end for me.
You’re meant to use the dedicated pause button on the apple tv remote to pause without any overlay. Anything that uses the apple built in player has ui appear when you hit the center button. Same for Netflix.
No, in the Netflix app, the main button both pauses and unpauses. Same in every other app I use — except YouTube.
It’s so bad. Last time I tried to use it I was unable to fill in my password for my account because Google had implement some custom input element and custom keyboard which did not contain some of the characters I have in my password. And of course there was no possibility to paste or use keychain.
If you have an iPhone you can input with that, including paste.
> If you have an iPhone you can input with that, including paste.
That popping up on your phone is not 100% reliable, though, and even more hilariously, when using it with YouTube, it'll sometimes just take the first handful of characters and drop the text input box on the phone. Oh, how we laughed.
(this may be a generic Apple TV problem but it's something I've only noticed on the YouTube app)
Tried it from my iPhone now, but no, paste still does NOT work.
Perhaps it's a dark pattern to keep you using the youtube app on your phone and casting it
> The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV.
The YouTube app is a walk in the park compared to the app for Hayu which is like torture sometimes it’s so buggy.
Is it a real app anyway on that platform? I doubt it.
Last time I checked, the LG webOS app was just running tv.youtube.com which only expects a TV-specific user agent.
> The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV.
I would've agreed until Netflix did their redesign and started pushing wrestling for whatever braindead reason. Some executives should just quit.
The YouTube app is the worst on its own site too. I don’t login to any Google account and I turned off site history, and now the homepage is completely blank. Yup. Google won’t even show me a single video on the homepage because I refuse to turn on history. Which is actually kind of nice for preventin distractions
I have the same. While it's a bit jarring the first time you see it, I now consider this a feature instead of a bug.
Maybe it could be styled a bit differently so the search bar is more prominent and in the center of the screen, but just having a search bar without any distractions is a fantastic feature.
This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem. But no government seems to care—-and what will you do, stop watching YouTube?
> This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem
This would be true if the Android or Android TV would have been better. It is just profit maximization combined with crappy UX/UI. Google wants your personal data and will make UI changes to get it. (double record/send button in messages, UI elements very close to others so that they can be pressed accidentally, although there is plenty of space between other UI elements)
This is nonsense. Among other things, the YouTube app on Apple TV is superior to the one on Android TV. No loud startup sound, the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure" or if I want to go to a screensaver mode - clean straightforward UI.
> the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure”
YouTube did push a version of the Apple TV app that tried this, but it would cause the app to crash/black screen, no joke. They reverted it.
I guess they just hate their users lmao
Never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. And i think it’s fair to say the best and brightest at Google aren’t turning their attention to YouTube lately. Except maybe to make training datasets for Gemini N+1 :)
In the case of industry giants malice should be assumed.
> Never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
We were talking about Google here. (you know, former search engine, don't be evil)
Can malice be emergent behaviour?
Well, psychopathy is an inherent feature of corporations. I wouldn't be surprised it malice will quickly develop where that appears profitable.
Long titles that put the important context beyond the fold are a form of clickbaiting, I just refuse to watch those videos entirely. I'm sure most of the videos are fine but I cannot reward bad behavior, and besides, clicking on clickbait will get you even more clickbait in the suggestions.
> Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”.
Even with the missing “ (Part 2!)” added, that’s still only 68 characters. I would probably begrudgingly call this long, but I would definitely not call it “really long”—my threshold for that would be at least 90 characters.
If they’re truncating around 60 characters, I’m content to call it unreasonable.
There are two apps called "DeArrow" and SponsorBlock that basically everyone should be using.
DeArrow replaces thumbnails and titles with crowd sourced versions. I can't use youtube without it anymore. Usually the titles get replaced with stuff like "How to build a table" instead of "Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!". Same with thumbnails. No longer are they over-saturated close up AI generated garbage images, but usually just a screenshot from the video that shows what's really going on.
Hey, Only 50% of one of my thumbnails are AI generated Garbage!
I do agree it is annoying. Some people do it quite a lot with car work videos to make the car look in far worse than it is.
Neither of these are available on Apple TV. Otherwise, you make a good suggestion; install them where available.
At least for SponsorBlock you can run iSponsorBlockTV[1] on another computer on the same network - in addition to skipping sponsored segments, it also mutes YouTube’s own ads and auto-skips them as soon as it can.
[1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
Except that those two things are fantastic indicators for videos / channels you should be avoiding. Hiding their foolishness and then watching them anyway rewards their behavior.
LTT specifically AB tested the stupid thumbnail vs relevant + titles.
The idiotic clickbait images and titles WORK. People don't use them because they want to, they use them because they have to.
Thus -> DeArrow.
(Or follow the channels via an RSS feed and filter there)
There are children and there are adults. Children have more free time. Children watch more YouTube than adults. So LTT's audience is probably more children too.
Children are attracted to soy-boy suprised pikachu face on clickbait thumbnails. CHLIDREN are ATTRACTED to EVERY second WORD being IN all CAPS!!! They like the three exclamation marks. They like flashy text on MrWhoseTheBoss videos which repeat the same thing the fucking guy is talking but just with flashy text on screen. They like the whizz-bang animations and ADHD addled three-second shots. They like the Mr. Beastification of Youtube.
I'm not a child. I'm too old and weary for that. LTT wants to do it, he can. Godspeed, and may his next twenty million subscribers fill the hole in his pocket and his soul that the first twenty million couldn't. I just ain't gonna be watching.
There are great channels that have had acceptable audience growth without resorting to bucket scraping like that. In fact the channels I see that have the most engagement and the most stable view numbers video to video are the ones specifically avoiding the "gaping maw pointing at a red circle" sort of thumbnails and the "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" or "X PHENOMENON - THE RESULTS WILL SHOCK YOU" titles. Knowing how Youtube works it's more of a detriment to have those unstable views because that screws with how well Youtube promotes you in the Recommended and Trending pages, and makes it harder to have high paying deals with sponsors since they don't know if your video's going to do five million views or seven hundred and fifty thousand. The only way you can make that work consistently is if you have a captive audience, but people do get tired of it quickly and will start to reflexively avoid your videos. They'll especially avoid them if someone else tried that clickbait format and annoyed or even offended them.
I've heard this argument before as someone with a small number of subscribers, In use relevant titles and thumbnails (I do partially use AI but that is "make me a Tux image with a builders hat on"). When I post a video I get a decent number of viewers for my channel size.
So I don't believe someone like LTT needs to resort to clickbait. LTT has 16 millions subscribers and half a million views per video. They make plenty of ad-revenue from those videos. If he stopped making videos today, he would still be getting a sizeable income by doing nothing for at least a decade. Even some washed up YouTubers from the past get a low five figure income from their Channels.
A single washed up Youtuber getting residual income is very different from someone running a full-ass company with a bit under 100 employees.
"Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!" is unlikely its more like "Watch the world explode as I try to make this thing!!!!!!!!!!!!".
Google News has this same truncation problem. I thought it would be an obvious thing to, I don't know, use the `title` attribute so mouseover reveals the rest of the snews...
Every time you see an ellipsis "..." you know that the designer put form over function. Hiding data from the user is never the right answer.
They could use their fancy AI to generate shorter titles.
Remember when the Youtube app overrode the AppleTV screensavers, to show their own screensavers if Youtube was paused.
Any other app, you leave a video paused, the OS screensaver will come on. Those beautiful, aerial screensavers that are better than any screensaver I've ever seen in all my decades of working with computers. So of course the Youtube app had to block them with their own shitty variant. They have no taste and no respect.
Your comment is past tense - does that mean they’ve stopped doing this? Please, Lord. I had to set my ATV to go to screensaver in a ridiculously short amount of time to preempt the YouTube one.
From what I've seen recently, they have stopped - I get Snoopy (current screensaver of choice) every time, no matter what app is running.
(Although it's on a 5 minute timer which might be short enough to pre-empt everything else.)
> I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV.
Damn it, I still appear to be on 4.51.08/web_20251117_11_RC00 with no indication that there's a new version. Not looking forward to any updates...
> The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
I sometimes wonder if YouTube is a weird kink cult that gets off on people complaining about the ridiculously user-hostile decisions they make. Because it's either that or they're an evil troll cult that aims to make life just that little bit less pleasant for as many people as possible.
> Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence.
> So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”.
> Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that.
> The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video.
I'm looking at youtube right now. There's a video displayed with the title "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , ..."
That "..." is the indicator that the title has been truncated. If you hover the title with your mouse, you can see the entire thing: "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , America | Why Are They Similar?"
Not far away, there's "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support...", which expands to "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support | WIRED".
Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator?
It’s different on Apple TV.
I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use it through the browser with adblockers. (Yes, on my phone and iPad.)
It works so well I’ve gotten at least half a dozen neighbours to do the same. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a definitive step up in UX.
Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad. Seeing a product in a youtube ad now causes me to be more likely to believe it's a ripoff.
Things like a cheap $5 fan being sold for $60 as roughly: "Super efficient A/C that will save you $100s on your electricity bill and can cool a room down in just minutes"
> Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad.
Claiming that (youtube) ads are bad is a tautology at this point. What else can be expected from something competing for what is left of a user's attention at the very lowest end of a market already overflooded with crud?
The question should rather be: why would one voluntarily let one's well-being be polluted by such invasive, parasitic crap.
There is nothing normal about ads everywhere. There is nothing healthy about ads everywhere. Ads are not an inevitability.
Run an ad-blocker, protect your mental sanity.
Now we just need someone to build AR glasses with real-world adblocking...
I assume you mean all the snake oil pre-playback ads? Mostly dangerous medical advice, solar scams, or wellness quackery.
This week, an instructional video I was watching on how to repair my water heater was suddenly interrupted by a campy ad for pussy-hair razors.
It was so ill-timed, bizarre, and inappropriate I burst out laughing.
The other one I was seeing a lot of, until very recently, was pornographic static ads that were implemented as an optical illusion. If you viewed it at full scale it was an innocuous image of a closet or chair or something, so it passed all checks, but when scaled into a thumbnail, it turns into a silhouette of a woman giving oral or something else obscene. Not sure what this technique is called or how it's done. (It's not a schooner, it's a sailboat.)
>Not sure what this technique is called or how it's done
Downscaling/downsampling attack.
Commonly used against AI systems either to pass filters or poison data.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.02456
If you know the sampling rate of the sampling filter you want to pass you can do some tricky encoding to show a different image at that particular resolution bypassing AI/content recognition systems. This said if it starts happening a lot Google will take those images/videos and feed them into a learning system that looks for those patterns and preemptively marks the video.
I find the downsampling thing happens on Temu ads a lot.
I do a cryptic crossword from a free UK newspaper most days, because my Dad (many thousands of miles away), also does the same crossword and we can bond over good and bad clues, and so on.
The banner ad on that page is always Temu. It always, always looks pornographic. And then you look closer, and it's completely innocuous.
I have assumed that the alogrithm is just optimising for attention, and it just so happens those images, at that scale, are going to get a lot of attention. But it does mean I can't show somebody else the crossword I'm doing for fear of looking like a degenerate pervert, and I am at risk of causing an issue if I play it on public transport.
The good ads are just normal videos (movies trailer, product announcements, sponsored video)
That's just... every ad. I mostly avoid products that I see in ads (like TV, radio and internet ads) ironically.
When ai slop makes it cheap to churn out the ads this is what you get. What does YT care, they get the money either way.
Enshittification continues
what I don't understand is how paying for YT ads can be profitable. I've never clicked on a YT ad _intentionally_ nor I know anyone who did, having asked a few people. I admit the brand awareness works tho.
There's a counterintuitive effect sometimes, which is that the person who tolerates a stupid ad is also more likely to buy the product. This was used by email spammers whose messages came littered with deliberate grammatical errors as an efficient filter against too-smart targets.
No, why would you allow ads lol.
>I used to pay for YouTube premium
It would have been amazing value had Youtube Music, which came with YouTube Premium were half decent. But it is not. We got Spotify which isn't perfect, and then Apple Music, which for years didn't know what they were doing, and then Youtube Music, which is basically a company doesn't give a damn about Music.
We now have three Giant companies over the history of the past 30 - 40 years, once they grow big that make junk.
Yes, I very happily payed for YouTube Premium when it came with Google Play Music. Them turning that off in favour of the awful YouTube Music was the straw that broke the camels back.
I did the same, but I also added in a tamper monkey script to get rid of the picture in picture thing they force on you as part of their "core experience". I wish their ux designers and PMs were less arrogant and realized their preferences are just preferences and gave us back the ability to disable stuff like this in the app.
Are they the PMs' preferences? Or are they A/B tested "optimizations" to hit their KPIs?
I think it is worse than that. Yes they A/B test. But they also have incentive to show how great their new feature idea is. So they are always picking the metrics that make their feature look better and ignoring the ones that make it look worse. So there is a thumb on the scale here.
Not being able to play Youtube in the background on your phone is unfortunately one of the main appeals of Premium. There's a lot of good mixes, concerts, etc that I play for the audio while doing something else that I can't do without Premium unless I wanted to leave my phone unlocked (and pray I don't pocket click a link).
My iPhone running Safari and uBlock Origin lite is able to do this. I don't have the youtube app installed. I don't even think the ad blocker is necessary for background audio, but I don't want to see ads.
1. Go to youtube.com in the browser, play the video, switch back to the home screen. Video playback will stop, which is a good default behavior.
2. Swipe down from the top of the screen which brings up "Notification Center" which somewhat strangely contains a playback control for the browser.
3. Press play. Audio resumes. If it's part of a playlist, you don't have to manually advance, it will play automatically.
No ads, no youtube premium subscription, no "desktop mode", no sideloading, no additional apps other than the beloved ad blocker.
TIL Thank you pal, it perfectly works!
I run Brave (Android) on my phone and don't have any ads on Youtube. I think it worked on Brave iOS but I sold my iPhone last year.
I let Brave run in the background and it seems to work fine.
Brave is a series scam company.
Firefox Android can play audio even when the phone is locked, and I use it regularly.
Note: If you have a mid-range to lower end phone, battery optimization might stop your playback anyway by default. You can exclude Firefox from battery optimization though.
brave on android can also do the same, not sure about ios
I'm fairly certain if you use a browser and the desktop version of the site you can listen with the screen off/locked.
If you're on Android, YouTube Revanced does this (+many other premium features)
You can open youtube in the phone's web browser and install an extension that blocks a site's ability to tell when focus has left the page/app. This is how I listen to some music on my phone while working out.
Ad blockers help with the constant nagging about "open in the app!"
NewPipe
Revanced is the best UX for Android, can remove a lot of things as well (like shorts).
I stopped using apps like this because they were always getting broken by youtube. Obviously it's intentional sabotage but still. It felt like I had to update those apps every time I used them and sometimes there was no update at that time at all. The mobile site never breaks and you have full access to extensions if you use firefox.
I never managed to install it
it complains about youtube app being separated into parts or smth like that
That's a feature: if you can't work out which YouTube apk to patch them you'll never work out the rest of the installation process.
Its a bold strategy, Cotton, lets see if it pays off for em
It also contains more ads then you tube itself.
There's no ads on Revanced...
Yes, there are. But there is a toggle to switch them on and off.
You're using a fake version that probably also has malware. https://revanced.app
Not sure why mine there's no ads... Never had to toggle, as far I remember. I used Revanced Manager.
Possibly they installed it from one of the scam sites that pop up when you search for YouTube Revanced.
It's scams all the way down!
I also stopped using the YouTube app in favor of the Brave browser on my desktop and my Android phone (no extensions needed). I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on YouTube!
I also use Brave on all my devices - it also works on Amazon Prime. Prime frequently made me offers to upgrade to an ad-free experience that I didn't understand... surely this is a bug, I already have an ad-free experience. Then I installed the Prime app on my TV and realized the constant barrage of ads that Brave has been protecting me from!
Brave is a series scam company.
There's odd and end features that some people prefer with Premium. E.g. offline downloads to watch when you're out of signal, background play, etc.
And they don't want to go through alternative workarounds to do so.
For me, it's actually just being able to easily share premium with other users in my household, so that I don't have to have my ears blasted with ads when they open YT on the TV. Less effort than playing around with things like pihole and hoping it doesn't break other things.
I've been doing this for years, but recently they have nerfed mobile web YouTube and it's limited to 360p (at least it seems to be for me).
YouTube hasn't been working for me past two weeks with uBlock Origin. Video doesn't play.
Counterpoint: it works, you just have to wait a bit, since now the server will not actually send you the video until the mandatory (pre-skip) ad’s length has elapsed.
Which is fully in their right, I’m not complaining, it’s not like I’m any worse off (waiting on a black screen vs waiting while some bullshit ad tells me to CoNsUmE PrOduCt!!!)
Are you using Firefox? Chrome breaks YouTube if you have an ad-blocker.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsor Block + YouTube Redux on Mac has been working well for me for quite some time.
Have you tried "uBlock Origin Lite"? It is by the same author, Raymond Hill (gorhill). It has been working fine. I use "optimal" level for the filtering mode. (Note: I use Chromium on Linux)
I'm gonna try, thanks.
Oh shit
https://itc.ua/en/news/ublock-origin-lite-ad-blocker-has-bee...
Parent should include text not just a link.
UBlock Origin Lite pulled from the Firefox extensions after being flagged for policy violation, now only available from GitHub.
"The Firefox version of uBO Lite will cease to exist, I am dropping support because of the added burden of dealing with AMO nonsensical and hostile review process. "
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...
There is no need to use uBOL on Firefox, just use the normal version.
EDIT: But yeah, the Mozilla reviewers are very hostile, also had to fight with them for one of my add-ons. It's ridiculous that spam and malware add-ons get a pass but privacy-conscious add-ons get rejected.
It's almost like ad monopoly company Google pays them millions of dollars.
Not everything is a conspiracy theory. Mozilla's reviewers were already infamous in the XUL era. Mozilla's dumbness is not due to Google it's due to them themselves.
I had the same problem. Updating uBlock Origin fixed it.
Make sure to update and restart Firefox.
I do pay for YouTube Premium, I see no ads, and everything works pretty conveniently. What's your point, that with a bit of extra effort you can pirate content?
Blocking ads is hardly "pirating" content
To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
So it is a payment?!? Through out the last decades advertisement has not been liable under customer protection laws that regulate sales of products, and generally avoided local laws. The stated reason has been that advertisement is not a sale since the viewer is not recompensating the publisher. A product given for free is in a completely different category of law than that of a sale.
Im old enough to remember when phone companies tried the tactic of giving away mobile phones for free, but which carried a binding contract with the carrier. Courts found that to be illegal and forced companies to sell them for 1 cent since a free product can not have a binding contract, which turned the transaction into a sale. The outcome of that meant that information of the full cost must be given to the customer in no unclear terms, since we are now dealing with a sale.
Products given for free with advertisement is also exempted in EU from value added tax. The given reason (can't find the original legal source) was that viewers may watch nothing, some or all the advertisement, and that makes putting a monetary value and taxing it difficult. If you buy a subscription it can be taxed, but watching it free with adds do not. This is true for both physical and non-physical goods.
I don't think it is piracy. Most advertising supported content is made freely available to you with the expectation that you will view the advertising. That expectation is not a contract and was a decision made without your involvement. You have no obligation to perform to someone else's expectations. If the content is made freely available you are free to watch it whichever way you choose. Choosing not to view the advertising might mean they don't get paid for producing their content, but you are under no obligation in the absence of an agreement.
Piracy involves you deciding to acquire content that has not been made freely available.
Morally, it is piracy IMO. If you applied the rule universally, the site would go out of business and then there would be no video to see.
Many people used to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks while watching a movie on TV. Was that considered piracy? Was it immoral?
Google doesn't care about right and wrong, only what they can get away with. They don't deserve to be treated as a moral subject by you, because they will not reciprocate. You're free to be as shameless as they are in your interactions with them if you can get away with it, you're just playing the game at the same level as they are.
I'm paying for Youtube Premium, but its a plain utilitarian decision after they started hassling me with captchas and intimidations that someone at my IP address was using an ad blocker. So yeah, I'm paying protection money. But I don't feel in the least good about it.
I find this argument fascinating overall!
I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)
Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?
Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?
No one if forcing them to use ads for revenue; they could choose to start charging directly for the content. Seems to be working ok for Netflix.
The same Netflix that started offering an ad-supported tier that's climbed to 190M global users?
Is it piracy to pirate a pirate? Most of the content that I view on YT is old live concerts uploaded by fans. Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings? Who should goog pay? The label? The pirate who uploaded? The OG pirate who recorded the show? So doesn’t this make them pirates too?
These are honest questions and it seems way too fuzzy to me to be making moral judgments about the whole mess.
I think saying that it is morally piracy is a little bit of an overstatement.
I think one does have the right to block ads on one’s machine if one chooses.
However, personally, because of the “if ad blocking was universalized, the services I appreciate would likely not exist” reasoning, I choose not to block ads.
As for other things like “muting/covering ads on screen”, yeah, that does seem a bit fuzzy. Sometimes I’ll even use a browser extension to fast forward an ad somewhat.
I do think this is something for the individual to decide how they will deal with ads. When I mute an ad, I don’t think I’m really free riding? For one thing, I don’t think it is contrary to the expectations of those being sold the ad slot. Me fast forwarding the ads a bit probably is contrary to their expectations, so I don’t have as good justification for it, but I don’t feel like I’m cheating when I do it. (Or, if I do, it is because the particular ad is objectionable enough that I’m willing to stick it to the advertiser)
>Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings?
If their copyright monitoring algorithm recognises the tracks being performed and the licence holders have opted to receive a share of ad revenue rather than issue a takedown notice, then I think the answer might well be yes.
I didn't look at the billboards when I was driving today.
Did I just pirate my drive to work?
Do the billboard ads fund the road maintenance? I didn’t think they did. I thought people just bought land next to the road and installed signs there.
Does Google pay for your PC, power or internet connection?
All things supported by ads should go out of business. Ads are 100% morally wrong.
perhaps it should be out of business then? it captured its market share on an ad free model... it would not have gotten to this size with this model from the start.
if tomorrow youtube decides only paid subscribers can view videos... do they maintain that market share?
In most cases of adblocking, that would be a good thing.
99% of internet content is complete crap, the equivalent of email spam, that only exists because each piece makes a few dollars a month from ads. On the old internet, without ads, there was plenty of useful content and much less spam.
And the spam crowds out good content, as seen in recipe sites for example.
1. It's not piracy.
2. I don't care.
I choose what code runs on my machine, not Google. Google can run their own code on their own machines, that's fine. Once data is in my processor, I'm going to do what I want with it. Google doesn't have to concern themselves with what I'm doing on my own computer.
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
I disagree. If you were buying every advertised product and falling for every advertised scam then fair enough. But assuming you were ignoring them, there is no issue with offloading the thing you would do anyway to a computer and save everyone the time/bandwidth.
The advertiser is buying the right to put an advert in front of you, not the right to a sale. Whether they convert you is up to them, their product, their offering, etc. I think you can never buy a single product from an ad and this is still piracy.
That said, a lot of advertising is not performance/pay-per-click focused as you've described and is instead brand advertising. The point of the Coca-Cola christmas ads is not to get you to buy a coke today, it's to have a positive impression that builds over years. This sort of advertising is very hard to attribute sales to, but a good example of how you don't need to buy a product for seeing the ad to be worth something to the company.
And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one.
If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.
But in those cases someone is still seeing the ads. It's when no one is seeing the ads that it becomes piracy, in my opinion.
A summary is not the same as the content either, that's a fairly well tested concept (fair use, etc).
There's an "if a tree falls in the forest" version of "if the viewer leaves the room" at which point has a theft still been visited upon the broadcaster? The business that paid for the ad?
In a newspaper if I skip over ads with my eyes do you think I've marginalized/pirated/stolen from the business that paid for the ad? They paid for placement and not an impression. I'd argue that if YouTube presents the ad and my browser/app/whatever skips it then YouTube satisfied its obligation and that's where it ends. The advertiser, knowing full well the limitations of the access mechanism, made a choice to throw money into this version of the attention economy. It's obviously worth it to them or they wouldn't do it, or haven't made as careful of an economic decision as I would imagine I suppose.
It's not piracy. You might have a problem with it ethically. But you're not breaking copyright laws by blocking ads.
Another way to look at it is additive rather than subtractive. If I visit a site with a text only browser that cannot display ads, what is your position then? And if I then implement the ability for my browser to play only the main video on any page, what then?
When it comes down to it, we have no obligation to view the content on a webpage the way the publisher of said webpage wants us to. You can think of plenty of other examples that make "adblocking is piracy" ridiculous - I invert the colors but the publisher doesn't want me to see it with inverted colors. I wear sunglasses while looking at it, which changes the way it looks. Maybe the site I use always puts an ad in the same place so I stick a bit of tape on my monitor in that location, is that bad?
Ok, let’s switch it up a bit. I give the ad-full newspaper to someone not speaking the local language. Or an illiterate person. Or a monkey trained to be good with scissors. Is this also piracy? At what point does it become piracy? How little of an ad should someone see/understand before it counts as a “valid” ad view? A few words? A full sentence? Etc.
You're trying to nit-pick where the line is drawn. The point is not where the line is drawn, it's that there is a line.
Installing an ad-blocker in your browser and never seeing an ad while consuming hours of content for free, depriving those creators of revenue, depriving the platform of revenue to support your usage of it, is in no way comparable to these at-the-margin contrived examples.
depriving?
the creators are posting their content on a free platform, with hopes that it will generate enough views so that enough of those viewers are ad watching viewers so that they will gain revenue. you're acting like the view is 100% meaningless and ONLY a bad thing, and its quite the opposite.
the "free" view costs the creator literally nothing, and it gains them an additional view, if its a good video its potentially gonna help spread the video elsewhere where maybe they can find some suckers to mindlessly consume ads.
and lets be real, the platform you are "depriving of revenue" is google... they operated ad free to create massive market capture to create the current monstrosity that is youtube in 2025, think they can't cut off all users that block ads right now? there is a reason they aren't doing so.
You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube.
It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.
I’m totally cool with “screwing over” people who make their income screwing gullible people into falling for scams or buying useless, overpriced junk they don’t need. I don’t need to rationalize it for myself, I’m just trying to show some people the error in their ways, but maybe their portfolio of ad-related stocks is clouding their vision?
I hate to break it to you, but you're not doing any of that.
You seem like you have a robin hood complex or something similar.
the creator is being harmed in no way at all, the ad free viewer is still a viewer and still could potentially generate more traffic to that creator by word of mouth algo pushing based on more views etc. Its still a net positive for the creator, just not AS net positive as an ad viewer.
its not some secret that some % of viewers, block ads.. either you lean into it and utilize it, or you pretend people should be obligated to only watch your videos by paying or watching ads, in that case find a new platform.
The choice of an individual to skip an advertisement has minimal impact on the content creator or the platform. This person isn't accountable for the decisions of others regarding whether they watch the ad or not. Ultimately, their actions only affect themselves and do not influence anyone involved in the advertisement process.
You're not replying directly to the last comment because it posed a hard question, and you've resorted to an emotional appeal.
> the right to put an advert in front of you
The advertiser may well think that's what they're buying, but what they're actually getting is the right to send my browser a URL, which they hope I will fetch and view.
I would prefer not to, so I don't.
No, piracy is defined as stealing a vendor's exclusivity by making copies and putting them up on a web site. Ad blocking is not the same as making copies and distributing.
You might as well argue that covering your ears during a TV advertisement is piracy. That's a strange definition of the word if I ever saw one.
I think content piracy is generally accepted to not require re-distributing. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but if I search "watch free movies online" and find a site streaming bad DVD rips, I fully believe that I am pirating that content against the wishes of the content owner.
Generally accepted by whom? There are many countries that only consider distribution illegal so I don't think it's generally accepted at all.
I'd say generally accepted by the majority of English speaking/western society? If someone said they were going to "pirate a movie" there's next to zero chance they are referring to the distribution side of that endeavor.
I feel like OP isn't asserting anything even remotely controversial in that definition lol
Um... no? Maybe that's true for English speakers (I'm not a native speaker, so I won't make assumptions), but thinking that Western society views it that way is a big stretch, especially with streaming sites. While some might admit to watching something on a pirate site, many people don't refer to it as piracy when they're using a streaming service.
> a site streaming bad DVD rips
This is redistributing.
> The advertiser is buying the right to put an advert in front of you
Is this the way YouTube ads work? If I don’t load the ad, is someone paying?
Also, Youtube pays out more to creators than anyone else on the web, they dwarf Patreon 10x. People who make youtube videos rely on ads to get paid.
They’re welcome not to make videos. But if they make them and lay them out there for free alongside some garbage I have the right to ignore, don’t blame me if I do look at them and ignore the garbage, and since there’s so much of it I eventually get my machine to ignore them, not unlike wearing gloves when dealing with a messy task as to save you the time of scrubbing your hands from dirt/oil/etc.
If its so gross you dont have to use/watch youtube!
Ignoring the "garbage" is absolutely valid, but hiding it so that you never see it is what makes it piracy.
You can say it's immoral or violates terms of service but as others have pointed out this isn't piracy, which has a very specific definition
I hope you never get a chance to talk to Congress.
Nobody has the right to put things on my screen that I don't want to see, first of all. Second, I'm never going to "convert", so I'm actually saving them money by blocking their ads, because now the ad will go to someone else who doesn't block it who might buy whatever Temu nonsense is being forced on them.
Edit: oh, I see you work at Google.
You mean DoubleClick. It's clear which business model took over after the merger.
Ad blockers are recommended by the FBI as safety measures. I follow the FBI's advice. Internet ads are a vector for executing untrusted code that can invoke exploits and engage in invasive fingerprinting. Revert back to the 90s web with dumb ads and I'll look at them. It's amazing how blinkered people will be about potentially malicious programs downloaded from the internet just because it's hidden behind a browser interface.
Forbes literally did this.
Guys, please disable your adblockers
People disable adblockers
Malware!
What you are describing is not piracy/Copyright infringement.
You can say that we should not be blocking those ads, that is fine. But blocking ads is not making unauthorised copies of the content.
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content.
Without an ad blocker I can stand up and walk to the next room - optionally muting audio output - then come back.
Is that fraud? Or should I drink a verification can?
I can absolutely decide to reject with impunity any and all packets that my computer receives, no matter if I initialized the request. I have not made a sale by reading some other website content and have absolute authority to discriminate over which data is allowed or blocked. Ads have absolutely no higher authority or preference over other packets that would obligate my bandwidth, attention, or time.
Was it piracy to leave the room and make a snack during TV ads?
It's becomes piracy when you create a new distribution without ads... which you're doing with ad blockers.
That is not what distribution means.
I am allowed to splice up my personal copies of videos.
You are allowed to splice it up, when you have a legally acquired personal copy.
But in this case you don't have one in the first place.
They are sending the data for me to watch.
Legally able to watch and legally able to splice up are at the same level, as far as copyright is concerned. And I don't even need to make an extra copy to do the kind of live splicing an ad blocker does.
https://www.tivo.com/support/how-to/how-to-use-SkipMode
A data point is TiVo who are, apparently, still around and have a 'skip ads' button on recorded content.
Still not a new distribution.
No. Ad blocking is NOT piracy. It’s really that simple.
Just because you say it's piracy doesn't mean it is.
When they provide all the equipment necessary to watch the content, and pay for the internet connection and power to my house, only then will they have a claim to what commands are run on my computer.
But my computer, that I paid for, using the power and bandwidth that I pay for, does not play ads.
If they don't like those terms, they can feel absolutely free to not send me any content they don't want me to watch.
I'm pretty anti-piracy, and I don't think ad-blocking is piracy.
Metaphors are dangerous, but, for the purposes of this specific comparison, I see piracy as breaking into a video store and taking a disc, and ad blocking as allowing some people into my house but not others.
YouTube is free to block me as a user or put its content behind a paywall if it doesn't like me doing this, but I am also free to decide what comes into my browser.
and they won't block you, because they understand that their dominance of this particular style of video content requires allowing everyone in.
While this is not an unreasonable way one could define "piracy", surely you must be aware that your definition is significantly more expansive than the one in common use?
What's the difference? Unless you take the common use of the term to mean peer to peer file sharing, which clearly isn't expansive enough (see pirate DVDs, pirate sports streaming, etc), then I'm not quite sure how it is a bad fit?
Just use AdNausem (uBlock Origin mod) that clicks ALL THE ADDS. Problem solved! Wish more people used it, so the creators could again make money from ads.
> ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content
This ship sailed when adblockers first went mainstream. (One of the early developers dropped their product because they thought it was unethical.)
I think we’ve now moved to the consensus that adblocking when viewing content isn’t pirating. It’s similar. But not the same, in intent, mechanism or effect.
> but ad blocking is definitely piracy
This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term.
Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft?
I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad.
It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.
If we're going with bad analogies I have an opposite one - you're walking past the Nike store and the store has a promotion on "Watch 5 minutes of ads and get a free pair of shoes", but you instead kick the TV with the ads over, grab the shoes and run away.
Or are you going to pretend that there's no agreement between you and YouTube that you're going to watch ads in exchange for the free content?
I will not be pretending that. I am _asserting_ it. I made no such agreement with YouTube. I am very confused why you think I did
Are you going to lie that you didn't know that the videos are shown to you in exchange for ads?
Entering into a contract doesn't necessarily require you to sign a document. Quite a few contracts that we make every day require no formal acceptance, like entering a shop.
No, I'm going to state the truth that I never agreed to be shown ads, and you are extremely weird for lying and claiming that I did.
Google wants to show me ads. I don't want to see them. I demonstrated this by blocking them. Google continues to show me videos anyway. Clearly they're ok with the arrangement. They are free to present me with written terms, or gate all their videos behind a login, but they choose not to do so.
You are either very confused or playing stupid for some reason that I don't understand, but it isn't amusing or cute. This will probably earn me a dang warning but I don't really care - you are full of shit. You're making claims all over this thread that you've literally just made up.
I agree with this. There was no meeting of the minds, no contract. But, the terms in the Google account probably include something about the terms for viewing youtube videos.
You seem to mistakenly believe that a contract requires some sort of a signed document or something.
You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business... right? And it doesn't matter if you noticed it or not.
> You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business
You are incorrect about that, which probably invalidates your other arguments. A condition of entry is not a contract. If you disobey the condition of entry then you have not broken a contract, and nothing changes between you and the business owner. They can ask you to leave and they can trespass you if you do not, but importantly, they can do those things for any reason they like, whether you obey the conditions of entry or not.
It is not a contract by law, nor does it meet the definition of a contract.
Similarly, YouTube can retract their website from public view, or attempt to block you specifically. But you have not entered into a contract with them by viewing the site.
> A condition of entry is not a contract.
It's literally a legal contract, under contract law. It's called a unilateral contract.
I didn't expect a Dunning-Kruger effect on NH, but here we are.
As far as I can find, in the US and the UK, conditions of entry to a business are considered an implied license and not an implied contract because there's no mutual intent to form a binding legal agreement. A business can revoke the license and trespass you, but they cannot sue you for breach of contract.
A unilateral contract requires some kind of "promise accepted through performance"
I note that this does appear to be different under Australian law, if that is where you're from, although it's still not a unilateral contract.
If you bring a dog in, you cannot be sued for any sort of tort relating to breach of contract. At most, you could be asked to leave, trespassed if you refuse, and sued for damages if the dog broke something or someone.
Please don't attack others, and in general, it's not a good idea to use terms like Dunning-Kruger when you are incorrect. Ad blocking is not piracy under any statuatory or case law, period.
and magically, the sneakers are also still there.
The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video. Your argument is like “the cashier didn’t stop me from walking out of the grocery store so it’s not stealing”
I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
You you do. Just because you don't understand contract law, doesn't mean that it doesn't apply.
This applies double, when you knowingly circumvent the agreement that "you're not aware of"
Sosumi?
Next time I’ll instead pay someone to watch the videos on my behalf and then summarize me the videos sans-ads.
Will you also sumi?
You claim to know more than us.
I would love to be educated: when did I enter into an agreement with YouTube that I must watch ads to use their website?
YouTube is sueing me for damages. Their claim: I used their website but didn't watch the ads. (Maybe I used an ad blocker. Maybe I turned off my monitor and unplugged the speakers when the ads played. Maybe I walked away and let the ad play in a different room). What evidence do they submit in court to demonstrate I violated an agreement?
You've made quite a few comments across this thread, as have others that support your position. Not even within the YouTube TOS has anyone pointed out a contractual obligation to view ads. Not to mention YouTube doesn't require you to agree to their TOS to view videos.
With this in mind, it's perfectly understandable that someone could browse YouTube without any comprehension of something you seem totally confident on. I'm not being goofy here, I understand that YouTube wants me to view ads, I just genuinely am not aware of any contractual obligation to do so if I view videos.
What deal? What contract?
I'm serious. Show me in the Youtube Terms of Service where it says that blocking ads is against the contract. I've looked. Carefully. There is no such language there.
I don't think you actually looked very closely, so it's weird you've doubled down on that lol
Item 2 of "Permissions and Restrictions" says you aren't allowed to "circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;"
where "content" is earlier defined as basically anything Google/YT sends you (which would include the ad).
A quick google search also takes you to a pretty straightforward statement from Google/YT: "When you block YouTube ads, you violate YouTube’s Terms of Service."
[TOS]: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms#c3e2907ca8
[Help Center]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599?hl=en#:~:...
Definition of "Content" in their Terms of Service:
Content on the Service The content on the Service includes videos, audio (for example music and other sounds), graphics, photos, text (such as comments and scripts), branding (including trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos), interactive features, software, metrics, and other materials whether provided by you, YouTube or a third-party (collectively, "Content”).
Where is advertising defined as "Content"? (EDIT: For clarity, this paragraph is my own words; the previous paragraph was the quote from the ToS).
Further, there's the "Our Service" paragraph:
"The Service allows you to discover, watch and share videos and other content, provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe, and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small."
The service acts as a distribution platform for "original content creators and advertisers", two different categories. There's content (made by content creators) and there's what advertisers produce.
If Youtube wanted to define advertising as part of the Content (capital letter because in legal matters, definitions in the contract matter, and that's the term that they defined), they had plenty of opportunity to do so.
The statement by Google that blocking ads is a violation of their ToS is, of course, their opinion. But what ultimately would matter in a lawsuit is the contract. And nowhere in the contract do they state that advertising is part of the Content.
Their best argument in a lawsuit would be that adblocking is "circumventing" part of the Service, because they have defined being a distribution platform for advertisers as being part of their Service. But considering that the actual function of adblocking is simply not making HTTP requests, it would be hard for them to make that hold up in court against a skilled lawyer.
I've looked at it, and I came to the conclusion that the "advertising is part of the Content" argument does not hold up to the actual terms of service, and that the "adblocking is circumventing the Service" part does not hold up either: to say that something running on my browser, that makes no attempt to change their code and only skips certain HTTP requests, counts as "circumventing" features is a stretch. It's the best argument, so thank you for making it. But it's just not strong enough to hold up to the "If Youtube wanted to explain that adblocking was a violation of the ToS, they had plenty of opportunity to lay that out in detail in plain English (well, lawyerese) in the ToS itself" argument which any skilled lawyer would present in court.
So I'll grant that it's possible to read "adblocking is a violation of the ToS" in the terms, if you peer at the penumbras and emanations of the wording. But at no point did they take the opportunity to lay it out in clear language. And statements from a spokesman are, legally speaking, worthless; only the language of the contract matters in a court case.
P.S. I've upvoted you, since you've actually taken a real look at the Terms of Service, unlike the guy making that grocery store analogy.
What contract do you make when you enter a grocery store?
None at all. I walk in, I look at what's on offer, and if they don't have what I'm looking for, I leave without buying anything.
There's a legal obligation not to steal, of course, and if you want to call that a contract I can't stop you. But if you're claiming there's an implicit contract to buy something when you walk into a store, you're wrong.
Now, if I was walking into the store all the time just to stand around not buying anything, that would be trespassing, and if they asked me to leave their property I'd be obligated to follow their wishes. But if I'm walking in in order to buy some bananas, but they're nearly out of bananas and the ones they have left all look bad, then I'm perfectly within my rights to walk out without buying anything.
In what way are you claiming that the grocery store analogy holds to adblocking on Youtube?
Nothing that obligates looking at in-store advertising.
Deaf and blind people are allowed to enter despite their inability to see and hear adverts and jingles.
Fully able people with headphones that avoid looking at ads are not ejected.
You have a very weak position here that isn't advanced by this analogy.
If you want groceries you have to pay. If you want YouTube videos you need to pay by playing the ad(legally speaking, obviously you can steal if you like). I don’t see any difference.
Where's the obligation to watch ads spelled out? The legal obligation to pay for groceries is spelled out in the law: they are the possession of the store, and if you want to acquire them you need to exchange something else of value (money) for them, at which point they become yours.
What is the thing that compels you to watch ads on a service like Youtube? There's nothing in the law; if there is anything, it would be spelled out in the Youtube terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Can you find it for me? I've looked. Many times. It isn't there.
YouTube sends my browser a lot of data, a LOT of data. It's not my fault if some of that data doesn't make it to the screen, or if hardware on my network blocks certain DNS requests. No, I asked YouTube for a web page, and it sent one back to me. I'm not sure why everyone is so eager to let someone else dictate what code they run on their own machine. It's really strange.
> The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video.
Did I? Can you tell me where I made this deal? I navigated to YouTube.com, I don't see a contract, I don't see a place to sign or a hand to shake. Where is this bilateral agreement?
I think what you meant to say was, YouTube really very much wants me to watch their ads, and I don't care to, so I won't.
If your counter is that then YouTube will shut down, I say, oh well, I've already archived all the videos I care about, and someone else will replace them, or not, and either way life will go on.
> I've already archived all the videos I care about
That's quite literally what we call piracy.
No, that's just a you thing.
What makes it different from VHS?
It doesn't. Recording copyrighted material that has been broadcast is, in fact, copyright infringement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....
I don't know if you're making some edge case argument without elaborating, or if you're just being ridiculous.
> "you're circumventing the method of paying for content"
Because the payment method is a scam. Imagine if all car owners were charged the same price for fuel regardless of how much they used.
Likewise, imagine watching 10 videos and being charged the same as someone who watches 200 videos.
We should pay for what we watch. The end. Ad blocking is not piracy when the payment option is at best a blunt extraction of funds from my wallet, at worst a sleazy shakedown.
lol, no it’s not pirating.
I don't really see what the difference is.
They're not getting the payment for the video either way.
Morally I don't see how they aren't equivalent. I'm not going to stand on a high horse saying you shouldn't do either, but I don't really see how you can pretend one is less harmful to creators than the other, in terms of the basic principles involved.
Piracy involves obtaining media content for free for which you should normally pay for, as a result of someone sharing the media meant for their own personal use to the general public.
YouTube does not ask for payment, it sends the video data you want alongside some bullshit you’ll ignore and waste precious human time doing so.
Ad blocking just involves offloading the ignoring to the computer, as it should, since computers are meant to automate menial tasks.
I've tried to explain this to people repeatedly and they don't get it. They're always like "oh no the AI scraper is slamming my website it's ruining everything". Um, maybe configure your web browser to not send me data if you don't want me 'scraping' your website. It's literally your server's choice to send me data. I'm just asking from a few IPs. If you want to send data to all of them that's your server's choice.
But I think people don't get the fact that they can just request payment or only send to authenticated users from authorized IPs and so on. Instead they want to send to all IPs without payment but then get upset when I use a bunch of IPs without paying. Weird.
I'm trying to read a bunch of stuff. The entire point of a computer is to make that easy. I'm not going to repetitively click through a bunch of links when a bot can do that way faster.
And what is the surefire way to stop AI scrapers from accessing your website? If there is no way, how can this be an acceptable ask?
It already sounds like you're using several IPs to access sites, which seems like a work around to someone somewhere trying to limit the use of one IP (or just lack of desire to host and distribute the data yourself to your various hosts).
Just because you can do something doesn't mean everyone must accept and like that you are doing that thing.
The answer is right there: use authentication with cost per load, or an IP whitelist.
GP is absolutely right. If your server is just going to send me traffic when I ask I’m just going to ask and do what I want with the response.
Your server will respond fine if I click through with different IPs and it’s just a menial task to have this distribution of requests to IPs, which is what we made computers for.
Yeah, you’re right of course that no one has to like the “piracy” or “scraping” or whatever other name you’re giving to a completely normal request-response interaction between machines. They can complain. And I can say they’re silly for complaining. No one has to like anything. Heck you could hate ice cream.
As long as we all understand that this mentality is advocating for the end of an open internet. This is the tragedy of the commons in action, the removal of a common good because the few that would take advantage of it do. Just because something is programmed to be a request and response interaction (although the use of blocklists and robots.txt and etc should reveal that it's not a simple request and response interaction), does not mean we should have to go all or nothing in ensuring it's not abused. We are still the operators of programs, it's still a social contract. If I block an IP and the same operator shows up with a different IP, it's like if I got kicked out of a bar and then came back with a fake mustache on and got confused why they think it's wrong because they don't have a members list.
A personal website is like a community cupboard or an open access water tap, people put it out there for others to enjoy but when the reseller shows up and takes it all it's no longer sustainable to provide the service.
Of course, it's all a spectrum: from monster corporations that build in the loss to their projections and participate in wholesale data collection and selling to open websites with no ads or limited ads as a sort of donation box; from a person using css/js to block ads or software to pirate for cheaper entertainment to an AI scrapper using swathes of IPs and servers to non-stop request all the data you're hosting for their own monetary gain. I have different opinions depending on where on the spectrum you are. But I do think piracy and ad blocking are on the same spectrum, and much closer to acceptable than mass AI scraping.
These responses were more about your comments about AI scraping then the piracy vs ad blocking conversation, but in my opinion the gap between them and scraping is quite large.
Everyone thinks that their specific pet thing is the precious commons and the other guy is the abuser. But in any case, one should be able to follow the reasoning.
If blocking ads is permissible because the server cannot control the client but can control itself; then so is “scraping”. Both services ask of their clients something they cannot enforce. And both find that the clients refuse.
If you find the justification valid but decide that the conclusion is nonetheless absurd, you must find which step in the reasoning has a failure. The temptation is epicyclic: corporations vs humans or something of the sort; commercial vs non-commercial.
But on its own there is no justification. It’s just that your principles lead you to absurdity but you refuse to revisit them because you like taking from others but you don’t like when others take from you. A fairly simple answer. Nothing for Occam’s Razor to divide.
Particularly believable because the arrival of AI models trained on the world seems to have coincided with some kind of copyright maximalism that this forum has never seen before. Were the advocates of the RIAA simply not users yet?
Or, more believably, is it just that taking feels good but being taken from feels bad?
I think everyone is fine scraping for what is already public. But there’s a lot of scrapers that just do denial of service. Of I have a 1TB of bandwidth from my provider and only 10% of it is consumed usually, it’s really difficult to not blame someone that slurps it up in 1 hour and prevent anyone else from accessing the content.
> the payment for the video either way.
"the payment for the video" as if it's a given that my ad impression is required for me to watch some video that they made available to me on their website for free.
Morally, YouTube shows the most heinous and scummy ads 24/7 on their platform and fails to take them down when reported. Gambling, AI sex games, "cure what doctors miss" ads for human use of Ivermectin - it's your moral duty to block them.
You wouldn't not download a virus.
its pirating content in a way that you dont generate revenue for youtuber that expect from ads
I'm not generating revenue for a lot of companies who are in the advertising business. That's not the definition of piracy. Find another word.
it is because the business model is you get free content in exchange from revenue from ads
Youtube gonna fail if everyone and I mean everyone suddenly stopped watching ads
But I cant expect HN chuds to learn basic economic so its my fault
I understand you about the implied contract. I think it's more complex than that. People were making videos before the promise of ad revenue, and they were better videos. If people go away who make videos for money - which will never happen - it would be an improvement overall. If ad blockers do win, YT could edit their ads into the videos themselves making an ad blocker's job harder. YTers who want money could make their own independent deals with advertisers, as some do today. And YT can always charge money - as they do right now with premium. But if YT did that for all tiers, they couldn't dominate and they'd have competitors spring up. They know that. They also know if they ever asked anyone whether they agree to watch ads, most would say No. The prevalence of Ad blockers are proof that people don't want to watch the ads. But, as you point out, we do accept the free content. The thing is the world would likely be better if YT would charge everyone for access. Judging from video quality these days a lot of YTers could be doing something more productive than what they're doing now - I mean in an objective sense, better for economic health. But the real reason for these $0 tech services is to stifle competition and prevent the market from working. And that works to everyone's detriment. Basic economics doesn't function without prices.
> Youtube gonna fail if everyone and I mean everyone suddenly stopped watching ads
Maybe that would be better? :)
cant expect much from tech bros that want people livelihood disappear
I'm sure that trillion-dollar analytics empire is worth something even without my eyeballs consuming some shitty pre-roll.
Most of the ad revenue actually goes to the people uploading content.
But sure... they're all clearly are "trillion-dollar analytics empire"
Most content creators have links to support them with donation or patreon.
Once a year choose 3 small youtubers (larger ones are already multi-millioners, they don't need your help) and drop them $5 each.
Now you just did 1000% of what they could get from you watching ads.
what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos. The issue is processing fees on that payment, so might as well give em a bit more.
It's wild how low the payout on ads is. Seriously, just flip people $1 every once in a while and it's more support than ads.
It's so stupid how people get all morally superior when they figure out that someone block ads.
For me, and many people, advertising is a mental health issue. I don't enjoy those ads, they are very disturbing and jarring. It causes me anxiety and I don't like the things that those ads normalize. I don't think most people, especially americans, realize how far off the rails our society is in terms of our normalization of insane shit.
So, for health reasons, I block nearly all advertisements. It is a HUGE mental health win. There is a ton of research behind this, as well.
I'm not going to pay extra money to disable a health concern. I'll block ads instead. I should not have to PAY MORE for a product that doesn't damage my health.
I will always happily directly support content creators. I will not watch ads.
> I should not have to PAY MORE for a product that doesn't damage my health.
Is this the same way of saying your mental health is important to you but you're not prepared to pay a service money to protect said mental health and support creators you like?
You're responding to a comment that says they pay and don't see ads
> I'm not going to pay extra money to disable a health concern.
Honest question: Why? You do pay for toothpaste, right? If you have a gym membership, you pay extra for the convenience not to do cardio in the woods (which is great in late May, much less so in late November). You tend to pay more for nutritious food as compared to things you get at a fast food joint.
What makes a health concern related to $genericOnlineService different?
You still get the autogenerated dubs by default, the comments moved to end of the earth, and many other stuff (shorts etc.) people get pissed about.
At this point ads are just one of the annoyances amoung so many others.
The massive overlays of what-to-watch-next hiding most of the video much too early, ie. before the very end, of the video you were trying to watch until the end but now just ragequit and downloaded instead... are very ugly
Those are there because the content creator you’re watching decided to put them there. It’s entirely up to them whether they show up and when they show up.
And they can be hidden, so it's not exactly entirely up to them, nor should it be. If they wanted them in the video content they could put them there.
how can they be hidden?
I pay for YouTube Premium too (probably not much longer) but can only 'comfortably' use the site through a series of increasingly hacky extensions for Firefox. On non-web apps, there is no recourse from the UI enshittification.
The general theme is the same as the article: less real estate dedicated to actual videos you might want to watch. There were two rows of completely useless garbage that I had to add to my uBlock Origin filter just now: one for Shorts (which I have blocked in the past) and a new one for some sort of Youtube Games thing (?) that looked like the worst AI generated slop you'd never want to play.
If this is the premium experience then I don't want it.
> The general theme is the same as the article: less real estate dedicated to actual videos you might want to watch. There were two rows of completely useless garbage that I had to add to my uBlock Origin filter just now: one for Shorts (which I have blocked in the past) and a new one for some sort of Youtube Games thing (?) that looked like the worst AI generated slop you'd never want to play.
This is the same stuff you get without buying Premium. So I guess they figure you're only paying to dodge the ads.
Which seems, to me, like a lot of money compared to (ad cost * number of ads you would see).
I also pay for premium, and have for at least 15 years since it was called Red, and the experience is complete garbage.
If you turn off history, you get zero videos on your home screen. This is not because the history is needed to generate the suggestions, because the blank home only started a few years ago.
I used to never subscribe to any channels, I just got reasonable feed of suggestions based off of whatever I happened to search for explicitly or if I got there by clicking a link, or by what I chose to click on even if the list starts out totally random, except of course it never was totally random because they still have ip address and other fingerprnting signals.
After they blaked out the home screen and started showing the "you're not logged in, go here to fix this error", I subscribed to a bunch of channels to provide data for generating a feed. They still don't provide any. You can take extra clicks (which is agonizing on the Roku since it just doesn't react well and misses button presses all the time) to get to the subscriptions page, which will show recent uploads exactly from those channels and no others.
I also still get several other forms of ads in the form of the embedded/native ads and the irrelevant suggestions that come from youtube's interests instead of my own, like shorts. I also still get ads simply because I don't get to use my own account all the time. When you watch youtube anywhere but your own laptop by yourself, you are at the whims of someone else's account and some other platforms app limitations.
And even on your own machine, I absolutely resent having to tie my viewing history to my identity and have someone else log all of that. So there is reason to intentionally use no account even if you otherwise have no problem paying to support not only the content producers but even the delivery system.
Why can't I disable shorts? There is no amount I can pay to hide all shorts, but I can have it for free i=on a pc with a tampermonkey or ublock script. But that only helps on a pc. I watch mostly on a TV and I have no ability to hack the roku app. Maybe if I switch to a google tv I could use newpipe or something.
Paying for premium does not make youtube good. It does not resolve much of anything. It is not remotely the touche this smarmy comment attempts to suggest.
Paying for premium takes youtube from being like pulling out 10 of your fingernails to only pulling out 8 of your fingernails.
That 2of10 fingernals relief and for the sake of the creators, that's the only reason I still pay for premium.
They keep doing it because you keep paying them.
Use the money you save to buy a media pc that can block shorts to use to watch youtube on the tv.
Just here to say thank you to everyone arguing/explaining why ad blockers are not piracy using interesting arguments better than my own.
You will never walk alone.
As a premium user I'd like to block shorts.
It's not piracy.
I do pay for YouTube Premium - and I still get ads when someone has YT Videos embedded on their website. YouTube knows who I am, the cookies are set, there is no reason to give me ads.
It is not yet painful enough for me to invest time and energy to research less convenient ways of UX improvement. Not ... yet.
If it weren't for piracy, there would be nothing on Youtube except highschool dropouts lobbing accusations at each other, and AI-generated slop.
I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use... rumble and tiktok.
Youtube's censorship is one reason I won't pay for it. Rumble is a legitimate site even as people decry its existence (it would be less necessary if Youtube didn't decide on being the world's opinion police)
Which opinions are you trying to access?
Which adblocker are you currently using? The arms race is getting pretty tiring...
uBlock Origin continues to work well, on both desktop and Android.
> Which adblocker are you currently using?
I’m really shooting myself in the foot right now aren’t I.
1Blocker and Wipr on mobile. Plain old Orion by Kagi on my Mac.
Thank you very much for taking that risk I just updated to this setup
Like another poster mentioned, I use Orion on my iPad with ublock origin installed as an extension. It’s a really great browser, only a few bugs here and there.
I use Brave 99% of the time just for Youtube.
Even on Safari with Apple’s braindead “content blocker” API, AdGuard manages to successfully block YouTube ads.
Not so braindead after all
What is a set and forget adblocker for the Apple ecosystem?
Wipr, Adblock Pro, Ghostery or uBlock Origin Lite. I've used all four and they perform about as well as you need them to for an adblocker. I'm currently using uBlock.
AdGuard Pro.
I've loved Grayjay as an alternative YouTube client. It can pull in videos from other platforms as well, and it can Cast videos! AdBlock and sponsorblock built in too.
I mean I pay for Youtube Premium because I use Youtube Music instead of Spotify.
I get a very unopinionated but effective music player that has all the music I need, and it doesn't try very hard to "upsell" itself to me unlike Spotify because to Google YouTube is the real money driver.
So to me getting no YouTube ads as well is well worth it.
And I pay for Premium, because each premium view is more valuable to the creators than the ad supported one.
for what it's worth, you could divide up your youtube premium membership cost and give that to 500 creators and they would see more revenue in their pocket than your premium watches get them.
Premium viewcount is grossly over valued by the people who pay for it, because they need to justify their sunk cost. I doubt most content creators even track it because the difference is minimal. We're talking a few bucks a month, tops.
I remember when youtube premium first came out and YT pimped this trope super hard. Then it came to light that the difference is basically nothing because most people don't pay for premium.
Creators say that premium is a huge chunk of their YouTube revenue. I'm inclined to believe them over some random like you.
Either:
I watch ten creators. I divide $10 per month between them evenly. They each get $1 per month.
Or:
I pay for YouTube premium. It costs $10 per month. I watch ten creators. The $10 goes to YouTube.
I make the following assumptions:
* YouTube only takes a portion of that $10
* YouTube divides the remaining money evenly across the creators I watch (10)
Each creator gets less than $1 per month
Which gives the creators more revenue?
Can someone write about how terrible the YouTube Android app is, so that some PM can actually fix it? Its an app i use constantly and hate using it all the time. I accidently click to another video and lose the position of where i was. It used to confirm the play of another video, but now it doesn't. The offline feature is terrible; you can't play something and make it go offline. It used to cast really well, with a "casting queue". When i disconnect from my TV, its still logged in. Adding/removing/changing the watch queue is so bad that I have to use my laptop to make changes. When browsing, you can't tell whether a video is already on your watch list; it's not always accurate. Sometimes you click add, and it removes it from the watch list because it's also in the list. Many more things.. can't think of them right now.
There are 0 videos on my YouTube homepage, just a screen asking me to turn on history. Just the way I like it. Here’s what I did:
Go into the YouTube app, settings, manage all history, under the history tab hit Delete -> delete all time.
Then go to controls (still in the manage all history dialog box under settings), under YouTube history hit Turn off. It says “pausing…” Hit Pause, and Got it.
It’s been exactly 3 months since I did that. I still watch stuff from my subscriptions and when I search for something I want to watch. There are still recommended videos when you’re watching a video but they are a lot less enticing since they are not personally targeted. I curated my subscriptions so it’s more what I would want to spend time watching instead of reaction videos for instance. My actual time watching YouTube has dropped a lot.
Weirdly I've had history turned off for just over 10 years (I can tell from the date on the most recent entry), but my YouTube homepage shows me videos related to things I've watched recently anyway.
I just deleted the all-time history and now the homepage is blank as you say.
I don't think they're really deleting your viewing history, else the homepage wouldn't have looked the way it did before I deleted "all time".
I have clicked "stop showing me Shorts" several times but they keep coming back, so I don't think the homepage works properly anyway.
EDIT:
On further consideration, I think what was happening with the homepage was that it was showing me videos related to channels that I subscribe to. (But not always videos from channels that I subscribe to).
However I don't see why they can't still do that even after I delete my all-time watch history? Not that I want them to.
But if you did want them to, you could probably turn watch history back on, click on any single video, and then turn it off again, and you'd probably have a home screen dictated by your subscriptions.
Or else they just ignore the setting and it's all a lie anyway.
You can go even further and remove the recommendations panel when you're watching a video using the eye dropper on uBlock Origin, it's so good.
I did that as well and also removed all the subscriptions form YouTube itself and instead have all the channels I like in my RSS reader
I tried to make a custom Subscriptions view for YouTube but they kept blocking me for trying to scrape hundreds of RSS feeds.
I see the same screen and wonder why they don't suggest videos based on subscriptions. I assume they figure no suggestions will nag people into enabling history.
I thoroughly love this experience. I open subscriptions as needed to catch up on things I care about. Otherwise I use the homepage to search for something. No distractions. No infinitely scrolling feed of slop and ads.
It’s crazy you can pay for premium, which is not cheap, and you can’t disable shorts.
The number of times I clicked “show less” and it has zero effect on the number of shorts.
"Enhancer For Youtube" is a firefox extension that disables much of the nonsense in Youtube's UI. I can't use youtube without it anymore. There might be a chrome version? Idk, using chrome with youtube is dumb af tho so probably don't do that.
Using Chromium-based browsers is the only way to play HDR videos, since Mozilla is dragging their feet for years with implementing support for that. I use Firefox for everything except for YouTube because of that.
But if you're in the same boat, at least use something that has an adblocker, like Brave, Vivaldi or Opera.
Shorts are up to 3 minutes long now. At this point they are just vertical videos. I fully expect the supported length to keep increasing!
Vertical videos with much shitter UI. Inability to skip ahead or turn back may be understandable for <30 second videos, but not more.
Shorts are normal videos too, so you can view them in the normal player.
I have a redirect rule that redirects https://www.youtube.com/shorts/<video-id> to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<video-id>
Ctrl + Right click, Show controls will bring up the classic controls (play, pause, volume, seek, full screen) on Firefox. I'm sure other browsers have something similar. Haven't found a way to turn this on permanently for all videos though :/
And auto repeat, sadly.
Auto-repeat is the thing that most mystifies me about shorts. I understand the idea behind auto-play, although I disable it; but who on earth wants to watch the exact thing they just watched by default?
Given the success of TikTok, the answer is apparently, "billions of people", but I just don't get it.
My theory is that it is a way of forcefully grabbing people’s attention.
Without autoplay there is no engagement once the video is over. With autoplay there is the risk someone leaves the player on the background and ignores it. With looping videos people get annoyed and (if they’re like me) close the tab or skip to the next video just to get something different
And no captions
They put seek controls on them quite a while back.
All vertical videos I've uploaded have automatically turned into shorts and there doesn't seem to be a way to toggle this.
Add black bars manually or make them longer than 3 minutes.
Nah shorts have a different culture and style. I don’t mean anything technical. For me I can’t stand the style and I avoid it completely.
New prophecy just dropped
Maybe in the future they will support horizontal shorts as well. /s
If you disable watch history, youtube tries to "punish" you by disabling nearly the non-subscription recommendations and shorts not from your subscriptions and a number of other things.
Worth a try.
What's crazy is that I can't turn them off for my children.
I complain about it to Google. They ignore it. They couldn't possibly give a shit.
I should probably complain to my congressman. Who also won't do shit even if they actually give a shit.
You could just not let your kids go on YouTube.
There's a long history of people not using it. Most people today don't use it.
I successfully kept my kids off of YouTube until their elementary school gave them Chromebooks. Then they were at least only on YouTube during class.
Ive installed a browser extension to remove them on the desktop.
There should absolutely be a better answer here.
maybe there will be another tier of youtube premium in a few years that removes shorts, and people can try to guilt you for blocking them using browser extensions like they do for ad blocking.
I don't even see any shorts, unless I click the shorts tab on the web.
In the Android app it's literally just one line, which I have to scroll down to... like two pages.
Low _usable_ information density is one of the main things I made Control Panel for YouTube [^0] to tackle, especially in Subscriptions.
On a 1080p monitor, my unmodified Subscriptions page currently has 6 fully-visible thumbnails, consisting of 3 livestreams from people I only subscribe to for videos, 1 watched video, 1 stream VOD (which I'll never watch), and 1 unwatched video, so that's a score of 1/6. Scroll down and you start getting into more watched videos, stream VODs, the unwanted Shorts shelf, thumbnails for Upcoming videos (i.e. videos which can't be watched), and videos from people I don't even subscribe to (via YouTube's recently-added Collaborations feature).
With everything in Control Panel for YouTube enabled and a minium of 5 videos per row configured, I have 15 unwatched or partially watched (up to a configurable %) videos every time. Same thing for Home, in which other things I don't want such as Mixes and Playlists can also be hidden.
It also tends to have fixes for the other things people rightfully complain about when YouTube comes up in these threads, such as (reads down the page) blocking ads and hiding promoted content, hiding Shorts everywhere, automatically switching to the original audio for auto-dubbed videos, hiding Related videos when they appear below the video pushing comments even further down, fixing the new oversized video controls and huge videos in the Related sidebar, etc. etc.
[^0] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
I love this, thank you so much for building this!
I didn't know I wanted 6 videos in a row, but now that I have it, it's so much better. Also linking youtube logo to subscriptions is great.
> On a 1080p monitor…
There’s your problem. You have normal hardware. The rich SV folks at google are probably all using 6k monitors. (only half joking)
Even on expensive, high-res screens, the homepage looks like this: https://i.k8r.eu/YOHPqQ.png
It's the same issue on big screens. I have a ultra wide 2k, and in full screen I only have 3 videos on the homepage.
This is so awesome! This is why I love the desktop, my machine is still mine.
Why. Why are they doing this. It’s the same with Netflix. I don’t understand. What is the metric that goes up when they show a couple giant videos.
It may reduce decision paralysis and they are hoping their recommendation is good enough.
I honestly think that at some point, there will be no recommendations page. You'll open YouTube and it'll start autoplaying the video that they (or the advertisers) think you should see. You'll be able to skip to other videos from there, like on short-form content platforms. Likes and subscriptions will dictate how likely it'll be that you'll see a video by that creator in the future. Search and other "outdated" features will be tucked away and purposefully made even more useless than they already are.
Maybe you could have a couple of different feeds that you could choose from, we might call these "channels". You could perhaps assign numbers to the channels for convenient selection using the remote. Hmm, why does this remind me of something?
Isn't this just Shorts already?
"Video surfing" does have a nice ring to it. You should be a Youtube PM.
Madness
I would presume the conversion rate for those specific three videos are much higher then if they're just three of twenty
It's an Ad. Next quarter their revenue is up 25%. Since they need to grow 25% each quarter, by the end of 2026 YouTube will strictly display only Ads.
"Make product worse, get money"?
https://dynomight.net/worse/
Came here to ask the same question. How do they benefit from showing less videos? I don't get it.
I assume people click on the first "video" (not realizing it's an Ad).
You know who has great information density? Pornhub. If you open Pornhub on a 4K screen, you will absolutely see none of the thumbnails. I think YouTube is overdoing it, but it is really a thing of: people are either using really small screens or 1080p. 4K is still not around much.
Because unlike YouTube, porn is an actually competitive industry with plenty of “tube” sites to choose from. So they have to compete on UX.
There's an old adage that if you follow the tech that porn adopts, you'll generally be ahead the average consumer curve.
I think there's another version that if porn adopts a tech that means that the tech will work. Like, a lot of VR adoption early on was porn. By a lot, I mean most.
Aah, the free market quazimonopolies avoid and despise at all costs (usually carried by customers)
Google "Ethical Capital Partners."
Operates:
Pornhub
RedTube
YouPorn
Brazzers
Digital Playground Men.com
Reality Kings
SpankWire
Very US centric take here. Ya know there are other countries, languages, etc out there, right?
All of the websites I listed are in Mandarin for me and have content catered towards local fetishes. I have no idea what you're talking about.
I saw "Mandarin" and "local fetishes" and thinking I'm glad I have no idea what you're talking about, too!
Not sure what this comment is getting at. Those may be the collection of sites owned by a single company, but there are still -oceans- of porn of every conceivable niche, on hundreds of thousands of sites, some still bigger than those. Whereas there’s pretty much a single, monopolized provider for mainstream video: youtube. And a porn conglomerate is the problem? GP is still correct, there’s still real competition in the space, unlike youtube.
Yes. 1080p screen density is still so popular. Looking around new laptops it's still the bulk in Windows land, including OLED and ultra high refresh rate monitors. Same for TVs.
Even on macs many are using scaling factors that render close to 1080p.
The issue really would be why YouTube can't bother managing more layouts. It still blows my mind there's only one single YouTube experience per platform, when their viewership basically span the world's population.
Because they fired a bunch of engineers, fired/reorged the PMs and whoever is left is working on the AI shlop.
They just need to fix search..
What could users do with this quazimonopoly? YT PMs can keep being discunnected from user's needs as long and far as their personal worldview limitations allow and bare no consequences.
YouTube is a monopoly, and with huge barriers to entry.
Nobody else has the money, the infrastructure and the content to build a YouTube alternative.
The money or infrastructure: factually false.
The content: well I guess that's the network effect.
To be honest I don't understand content creators who bitch about YouTube constantly (about "the algorithm", demonetization, strikes and more), but DON'T put their content somewhere else at least as an alternative. You don't have to _move_ but at least also publish your videos to a podcast platform or something?
It's difficult to capture into words how much contempt I hold for Google and Amazon, two companies which lost their way long ago and are now actively user-hostile.
YouTube has gotten worse with every release. Endless, pointless UI changes. Sneaky resolution downgrades. When your video says "Auto 1080p" it's like 480p quality, manually choose 1080p and watch it change.
Amazon has been working overtime to make your experience worse. The latest innovation is to eliminate invoices for US customers. This wasn't a mistake, as it was rolled out gradually over a few months, with workarounds quickly plugged as users become aware of them. Oh, there still is a "view invoice" button but it's just a redirect to order summary now.
Dark patterns galore since cancelling Prime. Every checkout flow I'm hit with a minimum of two clicks where I have to decline or change something. Ordering a packet of laundry soap feels like buying a used car.
The employees that implement this stuff dare to call themselves "engineers" yet their entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable, which they are somehow paid a disgusting amount of money to go do.
Real engineers solve problems.
These people invent new problems to then go solve, likely because they are chasing their next promotion.
There's a lot of folx who got into this business for all the wrong reasons and we're now seeing the results of that on a massive scale.
>entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable
If these changes are not hurting user metrics are they really making their lives miserable? When you are optimizing an experience for billions of users, numbers are the only thing you can trust.
I’m still using Amazon as much as I was before, it’s just a more miserable experience now which I can feel and the annoyances are compounding. I’ve not yet done anything that would show in their numbers, like cancel my prime or start trying to shop elsewhere or even boycott them altogether, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy as I was and would say they’re pushing me to a point of defection. All to say, they should be smart enough to not just do uninformed numerical analysis. They need to hone a gut feeling for how pleased people are or build metrics around that. They should see satisfaction is waning. In fact, it may be what’s driving this behavior. If satisfaction is down, people leave, sales slump, then they make more user hostile changes in hopes to cover the sales gap with existing customers, but results in satisfaction going down at every pass. It’s a vicious cycle.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
> If these changes are not hurting user metrics
I suspect there is no metric specifically answering the question "do users want [enshittification of the day]?"
There are probably plenty that measure success with dark patterns however, like viewership and engagement.
On a sidenote, there is surprisingly no universal agreement on a default font size and "scaling" of a website.
Common recommendation is font-size: 14px on html element, but I often encounter websites that are way off in scaling.
This is unfortunately true. It feels like "1rem" should be the ideal body don't size. But on desktop browsers this is often quite small.
Personally I configure my browser's default font size (1rem) to something nice and readable, but I'm sure that the number of people who do this is <10%. Probably closer to 1%.
But either way I would recommend against hardcoding a size in px.
Isn’t the recommendation to not use px at all? Or just “Pepperidge farm remembers”?
Sigh... You'd think people would know this by now. What does it even mean to be a "web developer" if you don't know the difference between pixels and text size? It seems like such a fundamental thing, like a decorator knowing how to calculate how much paint is needed for a job. But no... now we have web browsers where a pixel isn't even a pixel, it's 4 pixels, on a "HiDPI" display...
Sorry pal but font size is not something you decide. Font size is something I decide!
Absolutely. Would be great to have a consistent starting point.
Ironically, most people I know are now using alternative YouTube front-ends not for the ad blocking, but just for tracking their subscriptions in a proper list and skipping the junk in the home page.
One of the things I dislike about the Youtube app on Apple TV is how it appears to maintain an entirely separate list of recommended videos, specific to the kinds of videos I tend to watch on TV, versus the phone and desktop (which might themselves also each have their own recommendation algorithm, but my behavior there is closer so as to not notice).
The difference is stark. I use YouTube on the Apple TV to play mostly background videos; 8 hour AI generated lofi mixes, burning fireplaces, things like that. Ambiance. Its all that gets recommended now when I pull up the app; but only on the TV.
This behavior is somewhat desirable: but the issue is, the youtube apple TV app is an abhorrent experience that feels deeply tailored to stop you from getting to any content that is not expressly recommended. And these videos are all that get recommended. A new Linus Tech Tips video might be in my feed on desktop/mobile; but finding that video on the TV literally requires me to search "Linus Tech Tips" and go to their channel -> all videos.
I certainly don't mind the platform raising the prominence of videos I tend to watch on that platform; but to me it feels like I should be able to at least scroll down on the home page a bit to get a more "centralized" view into everything my account watches and would be recommended.
Yeah, I wish the UI could let me browse the various silos of videos I like to watch instead of trying to be clever with one feed.
And it’s like Youtube thinks I only want to watch the last three genres at any moment. If I branch out, then it pops another favorite genre from the set.
Sometimes I’ll go months or even years forgetting about video genres I love until I randomly remember it.
Feels like a wasted opportunity, and it should have more in common with music apps.
For me this change was reverted quite quickly, I think within the week. On my Apple TV at least it is back to 3 (and a quarter) videos displayed at a time.
I like to think that it was the feedback I submitted that pushed them to change it. However, it was more likely a change in viewership that would cause them to revert it back. I know my viewing habits definitely changed, I found myself spending more time looking through the thumbnails and then giving up to go watch content on other platforms.
4.51.08/web_20251117_11_RC00
It’s not a revert, merely A/B testing to see which version leads to more “engagement”.
They’re also testing the same on the web, half the time I get the normal sidebar, half the time I get a 300% zoomed one where I can only see like 3 video thumbnails before having to scroll (jokes on them, I don’t - but then again I block ads so I don’t count either way).
If it happens to me again, I will have to find my content elsewhere. It's not even a conscious decision, I just got genuinely fatigued from the experience.
On the bright side, maybe I'd be better off. There are probably better things I could be doing with my time.
How do you submit feedback?
I can highly recommend using YouTube through Firefox with extensions or ReVanced that try to fix these hostile and anti user decisions. Although I do sometimes wonder why I do spend so much time on a platform that hates me so much.
Funnily porn sites do 100x better UX than Youtube. Both on web and mobile. Probably because there is no monopoly but actual competition among them.
Yes, Manwin competes with Mindgeek competes with Aylo competes with Ethical Capital Partners.
Actually - BOTH videos in the screenshot are ads - so there are zero videos on the homescreen already
I don't think so? The "I Skied Down Mount Everest" is from the Red Bull channel. It may be a commercial channel, but it's not an ad, i.e. they didn't pay for placement (doesn't say "Sponsored" like the other one).
and they are often good videos (if you like watching extreme sports related things), given the partial second video this seems likely for the account who made the screenshot
but given that half a video is not a full video this still means we are at one single full video
and an AD which is deceptively pretending to be a video
I still think regulators should ban deceptive ads and require ads to to clearly different from the main content _on the first take/glance_. They way YT, Google and co handle ads is IMHO deceptive to a point its reasonable to say they try to deceive the user into clicking on the ad when they wouldn't have done so if they new it was an ad.
And "systematically deceiving a user/customer to their detriment (wasting time) and your profit" isn't just shitty but on a gray line to outright fraud.
I dont particularly enjoy red bulls drinks, but their ads are often cool enough to be considered content.
It's probably the only company with ads that are more enjoyable than their product.
I used to think they were a foundation dedicated to funding extreme sports who also happened to sell an energy drink as well.
Their business is basically selling poison but creating such absurd quantities of great free entertainment that everyone forgives them.
I mean, in terms of getting your caffeine, Redbull is basically the least poison in the game. It's not even a lot of caffeine and doesn't contain a lot of the other shit that stuff like Monsters contain.
Like really, checkout the redbull ingredient list sometime. There's not much to it.
Not saying it's healthy at all. Nobody should really be drinking energy drinks, but Redbull is probably the least awful of the bunch.
Technically correct, the best kind of correct
Whoever made automatic AI dubs a default and impossible to disable also needs to be fired
That "feature" is so egregiously bad. I regularly consume content in three languages, and hearing the wrong language coming from my speakers is so jarring. It is a uniquely awful experience that I had never encountered before, nor even imagined.
Same for auto-translated titles. It's like they can't fathom the idea of people speaking more than one language. At least give an option to turn it off!
While we’re at it can we also fire the guy who made it that we now have to click the channel’s mini thumbnail to open it, EXCEPT, when the channel is live and clicking the thumbnail takes you to the live video where you have to click the thumbnail again.
Oh, are we talking about bad YouTube UX? How about the "feature" where the right and left arrows seek the video 5s forward and back, while the up and down arrows increase and decrease the volume? That is, unless the last UI element you've touched was the volume bar, in which case the side arrows will also change the volume, and you'll have to use the mouse to clear the focus away from that volume bar to be able to seek the video again. I still wonder how they managed to break this despite it having had a sane, consistent, defined behavior for probably over a decade before that point.
> That is, unless the last UI element you've touched was the volume bar, in which case the side arrows will also change the volume, and you'll have to use the mouse to clear the focus away from that volume bar to be able to seek the video again
That is a feature (of the browser). The volume bar is selected so it takes up the controls for left/right (this is what a horizontal slider does I suppose). You can also select the volume button and mute/unmute with spacebar (spacebar does the action of the UI element, like click a button). You can tab around the buttons under the video to select options, etc. all with a keyboard. If a control doesn't support an action, it'll be propagated up to the parent, which leads to the jarring feeling that controls are inconsistent (and also the effects, left-right just adjusts the volume, up-down also plays an animation).
It's the usual low quality Google product, but it does make sense why it is so.
In the meantime "YouTube No Translation" addon fixes the issue. https://youtube-no-translation.vercel.app/
Googlers are obviously mentally challenged by the concept that there might be anybody in the world who has learned English as a second language.
Bet the idea to force outdated TTS whose robotic droning that is the pinnacle of annoyance on every single user who speaks more than one language was worth a nice bonus.
I agree. But for the benefit of other people struggling, I haven't found a way to disable them as a user setting, but you can at least turn them off on a per-video basis by changing the video language in the playback settings (the little gear icon).
There's no little great in embedded videos or, at least, my local newspaper actively disables it.
This is not always available for some reason
They could at least try to vaguely match the voice and maybe cadence of the original. AFAIU it's one of these things that would have been too hard ten years ago but is fairly easy now. Too computationally expensive probably.
Yeah ElevenLabs had this over a year ago where you could just upload a 30 second clip of someone's voice in another language and hear what it was like in English and it worked really well.
ReVanced allows disabling them, and there are extensions for Browsers.
"Whoever made automatic AI dubs a default"
well thats the thing, people is so lazy and dumb that whetever new feature is available, they didnt bother to find or turn on that shit
this is the power of "default", you cant test something is working on hyperscale if you didnt make it default like youtube does
Finnish to the rescue:
Change your Youtube language to Finnish, which isn’t supported by auto-dubbing (and probably never will), and all audio will be in original language.
not yet
in this age where google has monopoly for content created on the whole world, its just matter of time until they available
I was playing a game with a friend and the chat was increasingly full of angry people complaining about cheaters easily obtaining very hard to get items. He asked what I thought about it....
Well, the game is clearly very important to these people, it is increasingly visible. They are clearly very emotionally engaged. I'd say things are going really well!
Youtube was once a miraculous technical website running circles around Google video. I'm told they used a secret technology called python. Eventually Google threw the towel and didn't want to compete anymore. They were basically on the ground in a pool of bodily liquids then the referee counted all the way to 1.65 billion.
Some time went by and now you can just slap a <video> tag on a html document and call it a day. Your website will run similar circles around the new google video only much much faster.
The only problem is that [even] developers forgot <s>how</s> why to make HTML websites. I'm sure someone remembers the anchor tag and among those some even remember that you can put full paths inthere that point at other website that could [in theory] also have videos on them (if they knew <s>how</s> why)
If this was my homepage I would definitely add a picture of Dark Helmet.
https://www.rickmoranis.com
Looks like he also forgot <s>how</s> why.
Hold on, there is a setting to switch to original audio. Just click the cog wheel on the video.
The outrage over this seems completely overblown. Do people not see the setting to switch audio?
The setting does not persist, not even within the same session.
Not on web mobile frontend
Interesting! I did not realise this. Just checked and can't see it in that case either.
So, yeah, that's pretty bad.
Is there a setting to disable it globally or has every video to be switched?
Often times there is no setting to disable this
They have also gotten more aggressive on trying to get you to sign in. I have appreciated the shitty UX changes they have made which has resulted in me using it less. It’s just filler and I need less of that in life, so thanks for chasing me away.
On my work PC, they all but forced me to create an account just to watch videos. I could not find a way around it (I didn’t try super hard). I don’t use my personal accounts on that device so I just created a throwaway.
As with many other similar sites, it’s time to get off YouTube as well. The times when one could watch good content not made for money, are over. It’s about watching as much content as you can, the more addictive the better.
Reminds me of a comment I wrote just recently:
» I think that anyone who is technically sufficiently well-versed, is going to avoid that hellscape like the plague. So then, who is the actual audience for this stuff? My guess would be: the old folks' home around the corner, which, sooner or later, will be forced to upgrade those TVs to smart-TVs. And once those old folks put in their credit card numbers or log in with their Amazon accounts, there goes a lot of people's inheritance.
My own elderly father is wise to the scam, but not confident in his ability to navigate the dark patterns. So now, he is afraid to input his credit card information into anything digital, essentially excluding him from cultural participation in the digital age. « [1]
With that frame (the target audience for smart TVs is old people), "needing glasses" is not all that far-fetched.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45462816
I was going to disagree by saying that the menus are extremely confusing to the elderly. However if the goal is to extract money from them by generating confusion about what is an on-demand vs a streaming piece of media; you could not design a better software system. Reminds me of the theory that micro-transaction revenue in video games has driven menu UI in the direction of confusing and disorientating the player.
Yes, YT UX is awful, specially on TV. I found about SmartTube and it is great, I recommend it. You can choose the grid size, among many other things (most importantly, no ads!).
My latest favorite is now that the Subscriptions panel adds a bonus "Recommended" row at the top, and then two rows down, a "Recommended Shorts"
Ahh, I thought this was just happening to me. I used to watch a fair bit of YT on my PS4, but a few months ago my home screen was basically empty save a few ad videos.
It was pushing me heavily to sign in; which I do _not_ want to do.
End result was I just stopped watching YT.
Recently noticed that YouTube had also removed the button for disabling autoplay if you're not logged in. The enshittification continues.
I miss when I could search youtube for "cats" and I'd get just raw cat footage.
Now I get cat influencers and influencers selling me on them ... while they tell me how to pick a cat. Maybe I find kinda raw cat footage, with a title that is misleading, annoying music, text bubbles popping all over it :(
I just want what I searched for ... youtube doesn't give me that.
It's not that unlike when I open the home page, I've no control and so much of that isn't what I'm looking for...
For me it's 3 videos of what I searched for and then it just goes to my normal recommended. One of the issues I still haven't fixed with an extension so I just search videos via normal web search.
Sometimes it helps to use intitle:cats and other advanced search operators https://granwehr.com/blog/youtube-search-operators
Forget the METR curve, this is the real deviation-from-linear-forecast we need to be worried about in 2025.
What's the polymarket on NO videos on the homepage AND THREE ads?
I hate the forced AI generated English translation of the non-english shorts with the passion of a million suns. It should never have been the default. If you are the person who made that decision, fuck you. If you know that person, please pass on my sentiments.
On desktop, press command/ctrl and minus to zoom out and increase the home page's density. It will make text on watch page harder to read, but with theatre mode, the video playback size should be unaffected.
To YouTube's credit, at least the remaining videos aren't vertical.
Not for long: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872870
I already have 0 videos on youtube home screen, some combination of not being logged in, firefox privacy settings and ad blocker causes youtube to post a passive aggressive message and a search bar. I kinda like that Ui.
Not really related but... have anyone else noticed that suggestions on the home page became much worse recently? I'm getting a lot of unrelated videos which are often very old, like published up to 18 years ago. OTOH, videos from subscriptions are not getting suggested, I often have to check individual channels to see if they posted anything new. What's happening?
If you pay attention, this happens every few months. This is youtube tweaking the algorithm.
Every time they tweak the algorithm, content creators scramble to figure out what changes they made so they can exploit it. That's why every few months all the major channels change their styles to all be the same. Gotta exploit that algo!
Use the subscriptions page for the channels you follow. I use Unhooked to make it my home page.
I used to lurk the Google forums (they even changed the goddamn format of the forums now to where clicking things is tedious and I'm sure it's 100% intentional) and going back years with Google and also I suspect Youtube it was full of users complaining about "You're ignoring all our advice/wants in this thread". I don't remember all of it, but it was product managers being incredibly selective
The tyranny of distance (you can do x where x is usually 'ignore feedback' and you can get away with it separated by hundreds of miles, where otherwise you might get punched in the face) kills me with companies like this. You can't just ignore all of us (the customer isn't always right but it wouldn't kill you to listen every once and a while and if you don't, we'll gradually stop using your product). But you can, because listening to The People isn't where the product managers decide it should be or isn't where the ad dollars are or whatever
It's an emperor has no clothes situation. They know it we know it everybody knows it but we're all (corporate, anyway) just going to ignore it and plug our ears
As a workaround just disable the watch history. Then there are no videos on the home screen.
> I now project that there will be zero videos on the homescreen around May of 2026 now
This is already true. If you sign out of YouTube or turn your "Watch History" off you see zero videos on the home screen.
Satire is dead
that "i skied down mount everest" promotion by redbull is out of control. its the epitome of 'look at me' syndrome
They’re catching up with the recommendation technology China had 5 years ago.
HN typically use the word "steal" when Chinese companies do the same thing from American or European companies.
It's taking them 5 years stealing Chinese algorithms.
#shorts
Was just talking with my son about how some YouTubers who made short videos long ago started making longer and less succinct videos because they thought the algorithm favored long videos and then TikTok happens.
You can use ublock origin browser extension per-site CSS rules to restore an arbitrary number of rows and columns to the youtube frontpage. https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube is a good source for these if you don't know how to write them or don't want to.
But also, yikes.YouTube has become so bad that I had to resort to Tampermonkey scripts to become bearable.
First was the disgusting pink tones in the progress bar. Then the oversized thumbnails / less videos per page. Then the horrible over sized player controls. And now the oversized suggestions on the side bar.
Not to mention the obnoxious amount and duration of ads.
It's getting worse and worse.
These are all symptoms that something is very wrong.
you can do all this with one extension and no scripts: Enhancer for Youtube.
Also recommend DeArrow and SponsorBlock.
But also flip content creators a $5 every once in a while. That's more revenue than they'll ever get from you watchin their videos.
It is rapidly becoming unusual. Already needs a bunch of extensions to make things bearable.
At some point it’ll become so shit people will look at trying to sidestep their frontend entirely. In other news YouTube is clamping down on ability to download videos…what a coincidence
I'd also like to scream at Youtube for the "experiencing interruptions? find out why!" bullshit that enforces a five second wait before videos will load.
I only put 2+2 together when I was running yt-dlp and realizing there was a "Sleeping 5.00 seconds as required by the site..." before downloads would kick in and... wellp. It all makes sense now.
As an ISP representative, I am getting absolutely pissmad that YouTube is gaslighting our users and making them think that our service is "terrible" because of perceived buffering on every video load because YouTube wants to play a shitty cat and mouse game against adblockers for all.
i feel like modern youtube just does not scratch the itch that youtube once scratched , it now feels like methadone replacement therapy. available viewing options have been reduced to either short form content or long form content , there is nothing between. i dont enjoy frying my brain with short form content and i dont have the attention span to watch bloviation with the express intent of stretching out video times to maximise revenue. honestly i feel like this applies to the internet as a whole , a facsimile of its former self being puppeted to achieve control. someone probably predicted this , right ?
YouTube app on Apple TV is inexcusable garbage, likely intentionally so. Google doesn’t want you to have a good experience on an Apple product.
ublock origin \ my filters
youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer:style(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 5 !important)
Ive had that for a couple years.
Similar over at Netflix with the UI layout update they introduced in May. Oversized, limiting carousel items.
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/netflix-new-homepage-...
I just opened the YouTube app on my Android phone and there is similarly one video on the home page!
also if you watch 1 single video about a topic, the next day your feed will be full of that
I usually don't mind that. Sometimes I'm looking in to a new product or hobby and really do want to see a whole bunch of that content. They also provide you a feed which purely contains channels you subscribe to, though I find it much lower quality than the normal feed.
Turning search history off on youtube about a year ago has been one of my best personal "digital life upgrades" in a while.
I did that and now it shows only polarizing videos on the right from both ends.
Oh, mine shows no recommendations at all. Just a blank home screen.
So I basically either watch my curated subscriptions or something I specifically searched for.
Yeah, home screen is empty. But if you open some video, recommendations on right are wild.
We know. Believe me, we know. Because you guys will tell us, every single time YouTube is mentioned.
It is, apparently, very difficult for people to conceive of a video service that does what you want it to, and not what you don't want it to.
Excellent, now the collective "we" all know about it, and it never needs to be mentioned again[0].
[0]<https://xkcd.com/1053/>
Man, today's xkcd hits hard...
That's not even the main problem. Youtube is basically unwatchable with all the ads. Maybe it's just me but it often feels like it's badly broken. I found skipvids a while back. I find the videos on YT and watch them there. I don't watch yt often so that's the path of least resistance for me.
> Unfortunately the YouTube PM org’s myopia is accelerating: with this data I now project that there will be zero videos on the homescreen around May of 2026 now, up from September.
There are already zero videos if you visit with no youtube history. That seems... fine?
> There are already zero videos if you visit with no youtube history [...]
since August 2023 [0]
[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/139222780?hl=en&ms...
Total enshittification has won and reality is indistinguishable from satire. And still we continue to empower the enshittifiers while complaining loudly about the self-inflicted wounds.
Neuralink was mentioned, and it immediately made me remember the sad stories of the rhesus macaques that were used as Neuralink animal test subjects for brain implants. The quality of the work was poor and they were able to pull the implants out and then the implants got loose, causing bacterial and fungal infections and swelling and the macaques had to be euthanized. But not before banging their heads against everything, picking on the holes in their skulls and going insane as their brains got increasingly infected. Reading that kind of disgusting inhumane crap makes me ashamed of being a member of the same species.
If you want to read more the search keywords are: "Animal 20" "Neuralink"
> Animal 20 was seen "pulling on port connector which is now dislodged (no longer secured)". The next day, Animal 20 was "picking at incision and occasionally pulling on implant". Soon, infections developed. On Dec. 20, UC Davis staff found antibiotic resistant E. coli and Candida glabrata, a fungal infection, at the surgical site. They discussed a "necropsy next week", meaning they planned to euthanize Animal 20.
Fucking cowards.
This is normal in the meat industry. It sucks it happens to test subjects, or any living creature, but this is nothing compared to the daily cruelty inflicted upon innocent animals that we deem "food".
What? There's obviously 1.25 non-ad videos on the home screen, which might as well be two, so they're right on schedule! /s
> maybe our mandatory NeuraLinks are coming sooner than I thought.
The founder of NeuraLink has recently proposed to deploy sentient robots to watch criminals, removing the need for incarceration. There is a lot of synergy possible here with mandatory neural links. The bot could not only watch us but also press our buttons. "Criminal", being such a flexible concept, should pose little problem to globalizing this paradigm. For one thing, it will make it possible to harvest any number of clicks necessary, so advertising becomes obsolete, and so does content.
God, I hope I'm not a prophet.
> sentient robots to watch criminals, removing the need for incarceration
These are slap drones [1] from Banks’s The Player of Games [2].
[1] https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-drone
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games
> it will make it possible to harvest any number of clicks necessary, so advertising becomes unnecessary and obsolete
But then again, this is already possible, and has the advertising industry shit-scared, thus all the interest in blocking AI-related scrapers since they circumvent the whole “wasting human time” element.
Ah yes, the Culture solution (https://groups.google.com/g/alt.books.iain-banks/c/nbW7GxRQ6...). (Always seemed rather cruel to the drone, to me.)
There are lots of proposals. Recently, he retweeted a pundit who said that murderers should be hanged and that Europe achieved its level of civilization by executing 1-2% of its population for eugenic purposes:
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1992599328897294496#m
You know the world is heading in a good direction when the world's richest man with nearly half a trillion dollars is starting to muse about whom he wants to start killing off. You know, for the "common good".
I can see this mandatory in a country like north korea where government would gladly use this tech to control citizens from defecting etc
but after recent EU balooney request like chat control etc, I cant be so sure anymore
On desktop it has already hit zero. Clear all your tokens and go to home page, no videos.
I am being a bit obtuse of course, if you have any sort of identifying tokens it does show videos, but the irony was too good to waste on mere facts.
What's the point being made in this article?
That TVs have lower information density than desktop browsers? Like, yeah, obviously.
That if you don't sign in to YouTube and don't pay to remove the ads, that you'll get prompted to sign in and you'll see ads? That doesn't seem particularly problematic.
Sure it's mildly funny that a funny projection is true in a very contrived way, but it doesn't really stand up to any criticism. I use YouTube almost exclusively through the Apple TV app, and it's fine, I'd even say it has improved a little over the last few years. I like the low information density because I sit approximately 3m from the screen and navigate with a TV remote.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures from before this change, but you used to get 5-6 videos I believe. Now you get two (and maybe one is an ad).
The point is that I made a joke projection in my last post in April that by next May there would be only one video on the homepage, because obviously that would be ridiculous, right? Then I turned on my TV and it happened.
See the previous blog post: https://jayd.ml/2025/04/30/someone-at-youtube-needs-glasses....
On my Apple TV I get 2.5 thumbnails per row and 2 rows. I honestly think that's appropriate for a TV interface and I basically like the UI. I find YouTube's Apple TV app to be the least clunky of all the carousel-of-videos apps that I use.
> Sure it's mildly funny that a funny projection is true in a very contrived way
I think you got it -- that's the point right there, nothing more...
Compare the 1.25 video thumbnails shown on the apple tv app to the thumbnails on Steam's big picture mode (designed for people sitting on a couch far away from a tv):
1. https://emilio-gomez.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/steamos-...
2. https://preview.redd.it/new-big-picture-mode-is-finally-publ...