YouTube revanced 👌
I just realised i haven’t watched a single ad in like 2 years
Thanks ublock origin!
Smart TVs are really just somebody else’s computer that you paid for to watch ads on.
This. There is a reason why dumb displays of a similar size are much more expensive. Because the manufacturer can’t feed you ads and sell your data …
I don’t understand the need for those. My smart tv is functioning exactly as a computer monitor. It is connected via a display connection to my computer, and nothing else. It does show a brief warning that it is unconnected to the internet whenever I turn it on, but it disappears after 10 seconds or so.
Yeah, but that’s not how most people use Smart TVs. Also, they’re still coming for you, next up they’ll try to insert ads via HDMI. and good luck finding a Smart TV with display port.
Displayport via USB-C could start gaining momentum.
good luck finding a Smart TV with display port.
Yeah, and that is a very recent one from a not-that-well know company. Go figure!
It’s a possibility with chromebooks because of the google ad network, but I can’t see why consoles, linux, mac, even windows tbh, has any incentive to support this. At best, they might make it an option, but there’s nothing in it for them. It actively makes their content look worse, while an ad supported OS like windows already has capability to place ads anyway.
$$$
Consoles are a shrinking market. If they were offered money by TV manufacturers to cooperate with putting more ads on it, they most certainly will.
And I suspect Microsoft/Windows will too. Apple might not, though.
Yeah. Apple is plenty evil but not having ads is, generally, part of their “premium feel.” There are exceptions to this, unfortunately, especially recently.
But I definitely don’t regret doing a factory reset on my LG TV and hooking up an Apple TV.
They can’t add ads if they’re not connected to the ibternet
That’s awful
My husband had the Tv connected to the internet, even though we watch everthing from the xbox. I changed the wifi password a few months ago, and never reconnected the TV.
Best decision ever.
I love how roku won’t let you re-order apps unless you are online. Fuck off!
TVs often do a bad job at switching on when the computer turns on, then off when it turns off/goes to sleep. Drives me spare. That was fixed in like 1995-2000 for normal monitors.
CEC has been around for years. This is probably more an issue with the PC in question rather than the TV. TVs do an excellent job at turning themselves on when CEC is enabled. 👍
PCs have almost never supported CEC. PCs use a different signalling method to indicate to the monitor that they’re on/off.
Exactly. So they aren’t talking with the same protocol. TVs can turn themselves on, but PCs just don’t send the required signals. ✔️
LibreELEC (just enough OS for Kodi) on Raspberry Pi supports CEC. Does that count as a PC?
I use mine the same way, but many people don’t. My parents would rather be logged in on the tv than connect a laptop or other pc for the same access but better results
What are the chances the 10-second warning becomes a 90-second unskippable one?
As long as it isn’t internet connected, it shouldn’t happen - unless it’s programmed to automatically connect to any nearby unprotected WiFi to fetch updates…
And now look how high $ CRTs are, even the low end ones.
I’ll never get rid of mine. You can’t get a 0 ms latency TV with zero “features” anymore. And those commercial TVs dont come with remotes. I never liked how flat screens look either. Laggy and awful colors. I’m sure a $3000 oled is great but no thanks
I also despise massive TVs so another win. People with 80" TVs in their living room are just ick.
The same reason i stopped playing on Consoles since the PS2 - there was no good reason for the People to get this kind of things on the internet.
It was just good for the Business to hold the connection to you and control whatever they produced.
I got a PS3 and a PS4 so I wouldn’t need to use Windows for gaming. That’s not an issue anymore, though.
Steamdeck here and the last time i played on Windows was like 2015/2016 but never again after Win10 shutdown my System for an Update while i played a LoL ranked Game… That was the last Time i used Windows for privat use. After that i formated the HDD and installed Linux Mint
I’m still very happy with this decision
I thought LoL was one of the games that require windows for kernel level anticheat?
Yes, but at least the kernel Anti Cheat belongs since 2024 i belive? There was a long Time before DXVK or Proton you can play nearly nothing on Linux but LoL worked “okayish”. Nothing close to play ranked but for a casual normal game it was good enought to let me switch to Linux this times and ditch Windows at all
That was a somewhat recent development, they had many years to suffer playing Leauge on Linux c:
That is a user error.
What is a user error?
The last console I owned was the Xbox 360. Once I started seeing non-gaming advertisements on my home screen, I lost all interest in the product line.
Sometimes I think internet connectivity was a mistake.
Commercial TVs are so worth the extra cost. Recently got a Samsung Commercial Non-Smart TV and paired it with my $20 debloated/deGoogled Onn 4K Streaming box from Walmart. Bam, got a media setup that I fully own.
What is the cost comparison?
Honestly under 60 inches not too bad
$453.00 # 43" Samsung HU6000F Non-Smart Hospitality TV with Pro:Idiom for Set Top Box Deployments
Nice!
yeah I got a bit lazy there, at 55 inches you are at $604
When you go to 65 though its $1004 so pretty big jump.
Oddly enough going from 65 to 75 is only another ~375 USD (1377)
To me the best deal seems like 50 or 55 inches, although your room size and seating positions are likely the most important.
Also interesting if you’re in the USA Best Buy does have some non-smart TVs and even a filter for it, although its mostly no-name brands or Samsung.
Thanks for fleshing out the full picture. So perhaps the largest TVs at the store are getting some pretty big subsidies, courtesy Advertising Inc.
And good tip on Best Buy. Thank you. What an informative lil comment, Leo 😎
Link to tv box? And did you have to debload/degoogle it yourself?
This really has nothing to do with Smart TVs in itself though… It’s just a problem if you choose to play YouTube videos on your TV, which seems like a pretty reasonable thing to want to do.
Youtube: “GOD PEOPLE KEEP SKIPPING ADS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS LOSS OF REVENUE?!”
Viewers: “Maybe have standards for length and content and moderate the platform to prevent malicious actors?”
Youtube: “I KNOW, I’LL JUST MAKE FORCED ADS LONGER AND MORE OBNOXIOUS!”
Viewers: “JUST MODERATE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM, YOU HAVE THE MONEY AND RESOURCES TO FUCKING DO IT”
Youtube: “Users are just so selfish and entitled, trying to skip ads…”
Viewers: " Fuck it installs ublock origin
If you grew up with commercial TV, not only is the frequency of ads on youtube bad, but the placement–in the middle of a sentence or a scene–is mentally and emotionally destructive.
The worst is when you’re watching something emotionally charged (pissed off or funny as fuck) they’ll put an ad exactly when the video hits you
When cable TV first came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Sirius satellite radio came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Netflix streaming came…
Adding ads to YouTube was always the plan.
That was always the plan. They were just slow walking it.
Also Youtube: DONT INSTALL UBLOCK ORIGIN OR WE’LL REMOVE YOUTUBE SHORTS!!!
Viewers:
Wait what? I have had ubo installed forever. Why is my shorts still there?!
Wait, they’re willing to reward us for using UBO?
When you see the long ad, just close the fuckin’ browser window. Immediately. And then use something else.
They’ll only get the point and change if you stop giving them your eyeballs for shit you don’t wanna see.
I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.
Ive been getting back to reading myself. Media’s become so overstimulating
Same I just bought a used kindle and jail broken it so now I have a huge library to go through and I have downloaded a bunch of movies and tv shows to my media server as well
Does the jailbreak allow you to use z-lib or Anna’s archive as the “store”?
Directly on the device no, but I can start my Calibre server and connect to it from my Kindle wirelessly through KOreader to transfer the books
So true! Also, productive screentime has been nice. Instead of doomscrolling or mindlessly zoning out to video essays, I’ve been programming, doing some 3D modeling for 3D printing, working on some simple games, and reading long form articles from my own curated news feed.
I had a book once that had a full color spread for the movie in the middle of the book. Obviously this was a skippable ad, but still, it’s inescapable.
I’ve been collecting old books for years. Currently slogging through Mellives collection of stories printed in 1968. Could find a copy of the book turned movie, printed before the movie?
Some of those old books had ads for cigarettes in them! Mostly the cheaper paperbacks. For some reason it wasn’t as annoying, it was more of a historical artifact, an indication of the context in which the book was originally read.
yeah that’s actually pretty dope lol
I’ve found old textbooks from the 30’s with handwritten notes in them :D
history is cool
I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.

No, I don’t see them and the day I cannot block ads anymore is the day I am going to stop using YouTube. It’s really not that important to life.
why wait? Give invidious a try, or see if any of the creators you follow also uploads their videos in PeerTube or odyssey or something… The creators, I do follow does that - its good.
I know of PeerTube and like the concept. Out of my 57 subscribed channels only 2 are available via PeerTube, 4 more are available on other sites. I hope this will improve. I’m not using the normal YouTube interface. I’ve customised it to my needs with injected scripts plus additional cosmetic blocking, e.g. I filter out unwanted search results and removed all shorts. For now it works well enough. Anyway, I’m already in the process of reducing YouTube consumption.
Invidious is developed really poorly. The documentation even recommends restarting the service hourly for what I assume has to do with memory leakage (they don’t actually mention the reason, but memory leaks are significant either way). I’d stay away from that project.
I use Grayhay since it makes it so all platforms I follow are on there and I can easily download videos if I want, plus follow people like Louis Rossmann on peertube, YouTube, if they have patreon or nebula there too.
I don’t think they’d give a shit if you left, it’s not like they’re making any money off you.
… Why would I care if they miss me?
Why would I care about their opinions at all? I’m pretty sure we care about each other’s opinions about equally as is.
Oh, I don’t care if they care about me. The attention of my comment was to express how unimportant YouTube has become for me.
Are you under the impression that Bad_Ideas_In_Bulk is one person? Physically they might be, but their words represent a massive amount of people. I think millions of people would stop watching if they had to endure youtube without adblock.
And given that YouTube probably loses money money on those people, I don’t think they would miss them.
For me it isn’t the length, but the frequency that is bothering me. It’s insain, it’s like every 3-5 mins depending on the video length. It’s unusable atleast in my case. Only watching from devices I have adblocker on now. Not my phone.
“unskippable”
I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube for years, with 2 simple browser plugins. Assuming you’re on a PC:
Ublock Origin Sponsor Block
If you’re using chrome, you already fucked up.
Don’t forget to use ublock and adguard !
Last time I saw a youtube ad was probably 2009. Or it might have been 2008.
Android: https://newpipe.net/
Smart TV: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
Computer: https://ublockorigin.com/
What is adblock? Can someone explain it to me like I’m five?
The day ad block stops working is the day I stop using sites with ads
Hmm somehow i havent ever gotten those kinds of ads… maybe because im using ublock? Must be something else, i am just the chosen one.
If you just click into the article you are absolutely blasted with statement after statement that this is only for TVs. Obviously if you have an ad blocker you wouldn’t see ads. 🙂
Pihole can solve that for you :)
Or just not using shitty locked down devices like that.
I have Pi-Hole for like ten years maybe, they cannot stop the YouTube ads since, idk, at least five years, maybe more.
I’ve read that YT is injecting the ads directly into the video stream, i.e. the source is not ads.someshittycompany.com, but rather videos.google.com (which you cannot block for obvious reasons). The only solution to kill ads is to use addons like uBlock or client software like Freetube, Newpipe and the like that strip out the ads in some other way.
I don’t know if they actually started injecting it into the video, but even before they did that, they were serving the ads from the same domain.
uBo on phone and computer, smart tube on TV. haven’t seen an ad on YouTube in years.
Can confirm, I’m going on nearly a decade and Pi-hole has NEVER been able to stop YT ads because they’re served by the platform’s servers rather than outside servers.
Well, I remember it actually stopping YouTube ads, 2018 or 2019 was when it changed. Or even 2020, won’t recall.
I’ve had pihole set up since 2017 and it didn’t block YouTube ads back then either
I have no proof for this except my memories. Perhaps we could find some links somewhere, but that would change nothing: it doesn’t work today. My guess that maybe it was different for different markets / locations. As I clearly remember a friend learned about Pi-Hole and bought an SBC just to deploy Pi-Hole. I’d been having it censoring the ads for my entire family, till it stopped doing that at some point. I still have that Pi-Hole deployed by the way, it continues blocking trackers and other shitty things online.
I wonder why browser extensions still work, while network-wide ad blocker does not.
Damn that sucks. But also every TV still allows you to just plug in a laptop over hdmi right? Just bypass all their shit.
I wish hahaha. Like the other user said, no blocking any ads served by the same servers as the stuff you’re watching. Never worked for YT, never worked for Twitch.
That’s why I use computers on every screen in my house, and a Pi-Hole for other ads!
Yes, Pihole can solve that.“Normal” people don’t have Piholes though. And “normal” people really do purchase televisions, and install the YouTube app and watch videos with it.Nah, Pi-Hole has never been able to block YT ads. And I’m proud of anyone and everyone I’ve ever got to switch from using shitty smart TV interfaces to cheap computers. I’m responsible for probably half the sales of the Logitech K400/plus hahaha.
Nah, Pi-Hole has never been able to block YT ads.
Thanks for the correction!
Hey YouTube? The endpoint of enshittification is this: I wipe my ass and flush you.
Keep going, YouTube. You’re not so important that we can’t just leave.
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
So keep at it.
Keep injecting unskippable ads, flooding the feed with AI slop, letting bots post porn, demonetising and hiding quality content, using DMCA like a digital SLAPP against content creators, and using the algorithm to warp reality.
Your value proposition is ubiquity. That’s it. That’s all you have. Without popular buy-in, you’re dead.
We proles? We have something better than loyalty.
We have spite.
So keep pissing people off - because watching you die on a very stupid hill of your own design will be entertaining AF.
For everyone else, see you on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !privacy@lemmy.world. Come and learn how you can replace all of these pieces of shit.
And in the meantime - yt-dlp should still work to download what you actually want to keep, and SmartTube is black magic incarnate.
You forgot https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
A vile den of scum and villainy :)
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
Exactly my thoughts too.
Yes. You will quit YouTube. But 99% of people won’t and they make YouTube more revenue via either watching more ads or giving up and subscribing
All we can do is point the way. There are alternatives - we’re using one right now.
I’m for giving people choices. People should be empowered with knowledge.
Whether they choose the act on that knowledge is up to them.
Can somebody explain peertube for me? It sounds like it should be a federated video service, but either the federation doesn’t work very well or there’s nothing on it.
The second one, sadly :(
Still, the infra is there. So, it’s one of those “if you build it, they will come” (eventually) things. Maybe.
None of those have all the creators and people don’t want to go between multiple apps.
This fight is lost. The way to win it now is legislation or blowing up data centers.
I disagree. The fight isn’t lost - it hasn’t even started yet.
People are apathetic and/or ignorant to alternatives. Some of those people can be appealed to - or on sufficient enshittification, motivated into action.
Spite is a wonderful reagent.
Additionally, the apathy of the masses has no impact on individual response.
Things already exist that marry disparate platforms (eg: Grayjay, Kodi plug ins etc).
We need not wait. And while I remain sanguine that YT will piss off enough people eventually, I’d sooner code my own app, that joins all my streams - and release it into the wild - than let others dictate what I can and cannot do.
None of those well ever compare to youtube. You think all the videos are going to stay on those platforms forever? You think they well scale to youtube levels of users?
YouTube is too big to fail” is not the flex you think it is.
No, I do not expect any one of those platforms to “become YouTube.” That is not the point. The point is reducing dependence on a platform that has spent years making itself worse because it assumes users have nowhere else to go.
Fuck that and fuck them.
Scale? Things do not need to match YouTube’s total global footprint to be useful.
They need to serve actual human beings well enough that migration becomes viable.
That is how this starts: not with 2 billion people moving at once, but with chunks of users, creators, and communities deciding they’re sick of eating shit.
As for “will the videos stay there forever?”
They are not staying on YouTube forever either. Videos get demonetised, geo-blocked, copyright-nuked, hidden by algorithmic sludge, or deleted all the time.
Centralisation does not guarantee permanence. It guarantees dependence.
I’m not for that.
That is why people mirror, self-host, archive, syndicate, and build bridges between platforms.
People imagine only one possible future: “Everyone stays on YouTube because YouTube is big.”
I am pointing at the much more obvious one:
“YouTube keeps enshittifying itself until more and more people route around it.”
It does not have to die overnight. It just has to become less necessary.
Soon enough, YT will block all the clever back doors we use with uBlock, Smartube, Revanced, Newpipe etc. Then what? Eat shit? Nah.
This thread has inspired me to roll up my sleeves and see what I can think thru. I already have a back of napkin idea for a basic MVP that joins all those services I mentioned into 1 front end. I will make it for myself and when its solid enough, throw it up on Codeberg for others to fork and improve.
You can also contribute to PipeLine, it’s a desktop client that aggregates YouTube and a few others. And it’s written in Rust.
The issue with YouTube is the network effect though. Even if you can get a lot of users to use one of those multi platform clients, it’s still hard to get the creators to leave. And till they stay, the users stay.
it doesn’t matter, when people are fed up with that shit they will just go back to watch any other platform (tv, streaming, tiktok)
scale does not matter, these alternatives are not trying to scale like youtube because youtube is unsustainable in the first place
I finally gave up and subscribed, but only because the people I wanted to watch weren’t all available elsewhere and because I was lazy
but this year I will be canceling YouTube as my last subscription
Odysee exits
ewww, nothing but far right garbage on that site
Why ewww?
















