I mean, I dont actually mind ads… within reason. But over the past few years I have watched less and less youtube content due to the ratio of ads to the actual bloody content I wanted to view.
One recent video about a bloke’s guitar amp was great. The ads not so much. I had to view two lots of 30 second unskippable ads before the 9 minute video would start. The guy starts this amazing guitar solo half way through, only to be cut off by TWO MORE bleeding adverts. The solo continues, the guy shreds it out then the video ends… two more adverts, 30 seconds each no skips (I reloaded the browser in the end which seemed to trigger a 2 minute ad at the start of another video).
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money. The real solution is to tell everyone we know to use other platforms as much as possible and avoid Youtube. Tell every creator we love and respect to diversify where their content goes.
I know people here dont like the politics and trolling that happen on other platforms but thats because they’re insulated. With more exposure those platforms will tackle it. Or quarantine it. The other danger is if we dont diversify our viewing and creator hosting then Alphabet will just hold a monopoly and strangle any other real chance.
For as long as people have complained about YouTube ads even before they started the crackdown, I don’t think it’ll matter. Tons of people didn’t block them even before the option went away.
Personally, I bit the bullet and got Premium last year because I didn’t feel like maintaining a DNS solution on my wifi and like using my TV for it. YouTube is basically the main form of “TV” that I watch when I’m in a couch potato mood. Most actual TV shows that come out aren’t interesting to me.
I’m not really advocating everyone just go buy premium. Even in my case I’m not jumping up and down to give Google my money by any means. But for my situation it’s an expense that I justify for myself
YT Premium is not available in my location and, as yet, adblock still working fine.
When they catch up with my location I’ll use either revanced or LibreTube.
Excellent point.
Those of us that adblock are probably a single digit percent of their total traffic.
They just don’t want that to increase.
Just use smarttube