this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now

There's already a workaround (found, again, here), but I figured I would use this opportunity to tell people that projects like Piped and Invidious exist, which both allow you to watch YouTube without loading their ads, with improved Privacy and (in the case of Piped) even Geoblocking-Circumvention and SponsorBlock out of the box.

They're both great tools, and using something like LibRedirect you can even automatically go to Piped or Invidious when clicking/opening a YouTube link (and more).

Both don't load ads, but unless changed in the settings Individous may still make connections to Google/YouTube to load the video(s) themselves.

Bit of a shameless plug for these projects, but I figured this is a really good time to show these projects as I often see people asking what they are in threads on here

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[–] [email protected] 173 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I'd like to add to the sentiment of this post by saying that if you ever used any of those amazing websites, I'm sure the developers will highly appreciate it if those with the means could consider contributing to their projects.

We all know how greedy and shameless YouTube can be, and yet those developers give us incredible products for free. And if you ever saw the entitled requests of some users on their projects' pages whenever YouTube implements some changes, and they have to rush to fix their code, I'm sure you would appreciate them even more. I've personally seen quite a few projects being abandoned because of the sometimes thankless job of being a developer, and I would hate it for any of these to suffer a similar fate.

So if you can and are willing, feel free to join me in contributing to:

[–] [email protected] 107 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I was about to say add uBlock Origin to that list but apparently they don't accept donations per the bottom of their homepage.

I will not accept donations or sponsorships of any kind.

That's some fuck you energy right there.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 11 months ago

Lmao serious 'fuck you' energy.

Out of curiosity I went to the project's page and saw more info on why they don't take donations:

Free. Open-source. For users by users. No donations sought. If you ever want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which are available to use by all for free.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

Not uncommon, the project I am maintainer of doesn't accept donations either

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

What a King.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In my opinion anything that is just a frontend for Youtube is just a bandaid, and if they get to much attention Google will make using them increasingly untenable.

The real answer is moving to competing platforms outside of Googles control.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (3 children)

That's not possible though. There simply is no content on other platforms and they generally aren't as good as YouTube and probably never will be.

The only platform I could see to rival YouTube in the future is Twitch

[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Lemmy users are just delusional in that regard. You can't just switch away from Google, its not the tech that makes in great, its the content. It's the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?

Thankfully the only creator I regularly watch that does non-educational videos uploads them on their own website. For everything else nebula actually is an alternative, although I'm not subscribed to it at the moment

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Maybe it's unlikely for this to happen, but I wonder if it'd be possible for yt to go down like reddit did. Yt makes a series of bad decisions, so a lot of people move from there to similar platforms. The other services don't have much content right now, but from what I here, neither did Lemmy before the "exodus."

I get that reddit and youtube are very different types of platforms and that the whole reddit thing happened because of pretty specific circumstances, but idk, maybe something vaguely similar could happen.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

"go down like Reddit did" ... But did Reddit "go down"? It definitely lost users and content quality dropped, but still, everyone I talk to (that isn't a total nerd like us lemmings) still uses Reddit and has no idea what Lemmy is.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I was going to try and contradict you, but I guess most of the people I know well IRL are also total nerds

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (10 children)

YouTube is insanely large in size and scope but…

The key is just a platform that actually pays creators.

Nebula is one I expect to succeed for its niche.

Something like Floatplane with direct subscriptions is an option too.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Nebula at least for educational content

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am using Ublock and sponsor block,so far no adverts but it is always good to have more tools,just in case.Thank you for the links :)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

My HTPC has accounts in chrome on there for each member of the family. All are configured the same with ublock origin but only one is getting the popups.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Unless people mass-migrate away from Chrome-based browsers (basically everything expect Firefox) Google will at one point enable their Web Environment Integrity thing, force all other browsers to enable it too because otherwise a lot of websites will stop working in them, and no alternative frontend will have access to the video streams anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (11 children)

How long until Google says "fuck it" and outright starts banning adblock users? Considering how deep a lot of people are into the Google ecosystem, this is potentially devastating. Imagine losing access to you email, photos, etc., with no way to appeal. Good luck if you want to actually speak to anyone human at Google.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'm already in the process of decoupling from gmail for this exact reason.

I've decoupled the most important things, but there's just so much stuff that is still using my gmail.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Revanced also works with no problems

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I’ve found for me, freetube works better than invidious and piped. Much better response time and freetube has subscriptions nd a good UI.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Freetube on desktop + newpipe/libretube on mobile is pretty much my combo. I very, very rarely visit youtube's site directly anymore lol

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I wish PeerTube gained enough traction to be the competition of YT. I hate that Google think they know you better than yourself and uses that broken algorithm to send you thing you don't want to see. If I tell 5 times I don't want something a correct algorithm would say "I'm not sending you any more of this" instead of trying other 100 times to make you swallow the videos they want.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

started using FreeTube (the installed version) - after importing my YT account data it's basically the same thing as YT just outside the browser - but without ads/etc

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

FreeTube can proxy through Invidious as well.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'd also like to point out that mpv has youtube-dl built-in (and can also use the cooler fork, yt-dlp). You can open YouTube links directly in mpv and they will play with no bullshit. It can even pull 4K streams.

There are browser plugins that let you open links directly in external programs like mpv, although they are a bit of a hassle to set up (especially if you are on Ubuntu with their godforsaken Snaps).

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Has Google considered making their advertising engine better? Allow us to skip every ad. Allow us to block all those fucking cryptocurrency scam ads. Forcing me to watch an ad for a company that I'm not interested in guarantees that I will hate that company and never buy their product even if I need it. I will go out of my way to buy something from a company that hasn't tried to ram their advertisements down my throat. If ads weren't so fucking terrible I might agree to watch them.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just use newpipe on android and freetube on linux.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Once there was Vanced and now there is Re-Vanced. (if you're on Android)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

and there is also Newpipe! You can import your subscriptions. Only problem is that scam profiles' comments with NSFW profile pictures are everywhere there, I still don't know a workaround

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do away with YouTube and use software like freetube, no adds, sponsorblock, and google can't track my habbits

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

I've started using Freetube since this adblock issue. The only feature I'm waiting for is the ability to open in new tabs. Other than that, it's an improved YouTube user experience

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

I was having really bad time with the constant adblocker warning pop-up yesterday so I disabled all other extensions, restored uBlock Origin to the default settings aswell as cleared the catche and updated filter-lists. Then I cleared all Firefox cookies and restarted it. This morning I did not get the warning unlike the few past days, so far so good. I'm sure this isn't a permanent fix, but for those of you still struggling with it, these are the steps you might want to try.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

No account access, not for me. I've curated this account for many years and I really like the feed of videos and creators I get. Until one of them can use my account, I'm going to keep battling the ads.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'll stick with revanced, there really isn't anything they can do to stop it long term.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Revanced is pretty much perfect for my needs.

And SmartTube on my Android TV.

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