uBlock Origin has 36,000,000 users according to Google and ABP has 46,000,000 users. Another 13,000,000 use AdGuard and 67,000,000 use AdBlock (the crappy one, but nonetheless, it blocks YouTube ads).
Also on Firefox there are 7,780,587 uBO users. Checkmate
I use uBlock origin on firefox. All my devices are always connected through a VPN with all the ad and tracker blocks turned on.
I am a YouTube premium subscriber.
There are dozens of us… dozens!!!
Me too! Im a dozen!
Same for me!
Same. There really are dozens of us.
Same. It’s expensive, but there’s absolutely no question that I use YouTube enough to justify it. If some can’t afford it I understand and that’s different.
I also am among the dozens!
Imagine being me and paying for premium and using ublock + revanced.
At the end of the day, I think I get 10 dollars in value a month, and I know hosting data isn’t free.
Edit: Right after I submitted I read the comment before me. Sorry about saying the exact same thing again 😅
I wouldn’t ever give Google a single penny. Instead, I pay for Nebula, allowing me to watch high quality videos and documentaries while supporting indie creators. And it’s just $5/month.
I will probably put my money where my mouth is, and get a nebula subscription
It’s definitely worth it. And it’s better to help independent creators instead of giving money to Google or other shady big tech companies.
Not enough content on Nebula. I subscribed because of a couple YouRubers I follow, but there’s just not much there (at least that I watch).
These are some Nebula creators I like
- TLDR News (and their other channels)
- NileRed
- PolyMatter
- ColdFusion
- TechAltar
- Ali Abdaal
- Thomas Frank
- Wendover Productions
- RealLifeLore
- Climate Town
- Half as Interesting
- Real Engineering
- BobbyBroccoli
- EposVox
- Not Just Bikes
I still occasionally use YouTube, but much less than before. I also enjoy Odysee and PeerTube. Grayjay is an amazing Android app to manage all these streaming platforms in one central place.
Thanks for the list! I actually got nebula because of RealLifeLore and Wendover. I’ve since subscribed to TLDR News and Real Engineering so I’ll have to give the other creators on your list a view.
I can give you some video recommendations for each channel I listed if you want to
Just checked out Half as Interesting and realized it’s the same guy as Wendover. Recognized the voice immediately.
I’m interested. It’s a real shame they just paywall the entire app and don’t give you a chance to explore what’s there a little.
Thank you for being this way.
I think platform greed is awful, but I think consumer greed is something that largely goes unacknowledged.
Even though I’ve been ‘over’ the genre for more than a decade, I still buy Japanese shmups when they appear on Steam - at one time they could only be found on obscure JP Warez sites, forget legally here. I do it out of a sense of something owed for past joy, and never play the Steam ver.
I’m also hypocritical to a degree. I can only afford to support so much and I don’t pay for everything, just what I would have paid for anyways. Perhaps there is some self-satisfying logic built in there lol
Chrome Web Store Firefox Add-ons Microsoft Edge Add-ons Opera add-ons Total uBlock Origin 36,000,000 7,780,587 10,000,000 12,686,907 66,467,494 uBlock Origin Lite 70,000 3,145 3,000 N/A 73,145 uBlock 700,000 N/A 10,000 N/A 710,000 AdNauseam N/A 74,478 10,000 210,616 295,094 AdBlock Plus 46,000,000 4,064,146 10,000,000 50,844,211 110,908,357 AdBlock 67,000,000 1,206,627 N/A N/A 68,206,627 AdGuard 13,000,000 1,053,029 8,000,000 10,872,145 32,925,174 Total 162,770,000 14,182,012 28,023,000 74,613,879 279,588,891 Source: Official data from extension stores
This table does not include Safari extensions, browser extensions installed through Linux package managers like the firefox-ublock-origin package on Arch Linux, browsers with built in adblockers like LibreWolf or Brave, modded YouTube mobile apps like Vanced/Revanced on Android, uYou for iOS, alternative frontends like Invidious or Piped, desktop clients like FreeTube, other mobile apps like Newpipe, Libretube or Yattee or other adblocking solutions.
Now deduplicate the numbers because I have it installed on 7 browser profiles.
If we also count other (less popular) adblockers, the Microsoft Edge addon store, browsers that come with pre-installed adblockers like Librewolf and Brave, people who use the package manager on their Linux distro to install browser extensions, alternative YouTube clients like Vanced/Revanced, Newpipe and Libretube as well as alternative frontends like Invidious and FreeTube, I’m pretty sure we still come out at over 100 million.
Watch how they steadily increase the price now (which they’ve already been doing)
It went up like four bucks this month for me this past month. I feel like I am in a no-win situation. I want to support the authors of the videos and music I like, make the platform sustainable, and I hate ads and data harvesting. There doesn’t seem to be reasonable way to satisfy all three objectives (or even two).
I’m mostly in the same boat with supporting the creators, however I don’t really like Google to be honest. I end up supporting creators outside the platform, such as via Patreon or by watching on Nebula. Most of my YT consumption is done via NewPipe, Piped and Freetube
There’s a little part of me that likes the fact that YouTube is burning a hole in Google’s finances tbh lol
Patreon for the ones you really like, and substituting watching my own content on Plex is how I’m weening myself off YouTube.
I wish there was arr software for YouTube that included Sponsorblock. Every one I’ve tried hasn’t really worked. Need it to be automated or I’m stuck using YouTube.
Unfortunately, anymore, even if you pay, companies (especially googie) are STILL harvesting and selling your data… I don’t know if there’s a way to avoid it without either unplugging entirely or going full in on dark web and anonymous browsing techniques, and even then, your data will still be harvested from other people in your life
If it wasn’t as freaking high as it is there would be a lot more premium users. Every other streaming service is full of professionally made movies and TV shows. YouTube is absolutely chock-full of berate crap where they’re barely paying anybody but the top 1%. It’s a grift. It should be priced with the absolute cheapest services out there.
The price makes a little more sense if you factor in it also includes YouTube music, which puts it more on par with a premium Spotify subscription, with the benefit of no ads on YouTube. Which is basically how I got YouTube premium, I was already paying a monthly fee for Google Play music as it was at the time, and the upgrade to add YouTube premium was only £2 extra a month.
Sure but a LOT of us don’t want the music service and have never used it once. People like me aren’t costing them a penny on music and if they offered a plan without music I’d jump in an instant.
This is my issue. I have and love Apple Music and do not want to pay for another music service. If YT gave me an option for an ad-free YT without music for only like $3 or $5 a month, I’d jump on it. For now, I’ll continue using uBlock Origin and SmartTube.
I own my music though, I don’t want to rent it.
I agree with this sentiment completely. Not sure if they still do it or not, but YTM started out letting you upload your own music and then being able to access it across any device through the app. YTM doesn’t have the best catalog now, let alone when they started so i think the upload feature was a way of acknowledging that. I uploaded both local bands that are defunct and literally nowhere online and artists that didn’t embrace the internet age and restricted their catalogs. I can still listen to the music i uploaded back then through the app or a browser. That feature set it apart from the other options available at the time. I guess I’m trying to say that i also want to own my own music, but i dont hate the convenience of some of it floating in the cloud waiting for me to pull it down. Speaking of… ownCloud is dope and what i’m transitioning to for my media. When in doubt, roll your own solution.
Wow they do! Throwback to Google Play Music days. Thanks!
As long as it own cloud doesn’t do what next cloud did and try to rename all of my files on import then only retain their names and databases. Currently holding my own with Plex /jellyfin
I was in the same boat for ages and was happy paying as I kept the original rate. Then they bumped it by almost 50% end of December. Quit before the change took effect and have been using ad block ever since. The ONLY thing I miss is YouTube music as I’ve gotten too lazy to rip the remixes/soundtracks that aren’t on other streaming services.
Yeah, that’s what made me get premium. Even before the adblocker crackdown, the prospect of supporting creators and being able to ditch Spotify’s horrible artist compensation model made it a simple choice.
While YouTube doesn’t commission, much, content it does store disproportionately more data. A streaming site has maybe 1,000,000 hours of content. That amount of content is uploaded to YouTube every day. It’s a totally different business model.
And, I don’t think I should be the one paying for that.
They should charge minor storage fees to the creators and uploaders. You pay to put your content up there if people watch it you get paid back as many multiples as necessary. It would be a fantastic method to reduce the amount of trash video stored up there that nobody ever watches.
It turns out creators don’t want to pay for the storage.
I’d say we’re at an impasse, but if I don’t buy premium and I don’t watch ads in their content, they’re not getting paid.
If they paid a pittance to keep their storage and it pushed their quality up and push the price of premium down more people would watch and they’d make a hell of a lot more money.
But let’s be honest, you’d probably block their ads if they self hosted.
I only started blocking the ads when yt started allowing 2 back to back 15 second advertisements and creators started putting in mid rolls.
This crap they’re pulling is downward spiral. They can’t get 20% more yoy by squeezing people to pay Netflix prices for crap. And most of the creators need patrion to even survive.
I truly hoped something like Odyssey could survive and we could just dht our likes. But it just becomes a sesspool.
It would be a hard-sell these days to charge someone to gamble on whether or not their content is going to get any views. My guess is that the conent economy et al is like an iceburg, it takes a lot to float it but only a little bit is worth seeing the light of day. Ie, you have to host a ton of garbage to be able to sift out the gems.
Hard sell maube but they’re the only game in town. I suspect it’s not a matter of if but when.
And then add an ad supported tier
And it still doesn’t have sponsorblock. Free is more feature rich than paid. Hahaha
Does that work on your phone?
Yes revanced has it, and some other clients too I think
It works for me on piped too
I was using revanced but it quit working for me. I figured Google finally killed it off somehow.
Edit: am idiot and was thinking of YouTube vanced. Just found revanced and got things going again. Thanks!
Nah bro I use revanced and its working like a charm atm
See my edit. Thank you for helping steer me!
Yes on Revanced
uYouPlus on iPhone through AltStore has SponsorBlock (plus normal ad blocking). It’s a pain compared to Android but it’s still super nice to have.
Firefox with uBlock Origin on my phone. Fuck their ad-riddled client.
This “Article” is short on details, And according to this article Google did not reveal data about subscriptions in the recent earnings call. I can only think this a PR piece to fluff up Google’s shares and discourage critics. Unless Google can be confident enough to explain which regions added subscribers and how much of such a subscription was part of a bundle… We can’t conclude that their anti-adblocking measures and price hikes were successful.
Example: India would fluff up numbers without adding as much revenue (bundles are common and subscription prices are low) than NA or EU
Their war on ad-blockers must be paying off
We can’t really tell for sure because:
- They left out subscriber numbers in the recent earnings call (according to this article)
- Hence, we don’t know if the subscribers were from bundles vs. individual subscriptions.
- Subscribers could be from low price regions and the revenue there wouldn’t compare to NA and EU.
Most people don’t even know that ad-blockers exit
and probably more than a few upsells from cross-marketing a yt ‘premium’ sub to those that came over from satellite for nfl games.
Just paying for it is worth it for the official apps.
Grayjay, revanced, libretube, newpipe, youtube piped, youtube invidious, and uBlock origin 👀
Don’t forget FreeTube
Then there are actual alternatives Peertube and Odyssey
Nebula is pretty cool too. It’s $5/month, but it’s run by indie creators, not some big tech company and you get access to some really great content. And you can use Grayjay to access it.
Sounds cool. I think Insane Curiosity might be on there right?
Shhh, that’s not piracy.
That’s over a billion dollars a month. If they’re still operating at a loss with all that then it’s their own incompetence at fault.
That depends on how they count family plans as well as the region of those subscribers (not every region has the same price).
You know that’s not pure profit, right? Besides their hardware, development and operational costs, which are substantial, they split that fee with creators.
didn’t ask
How public discourse works, brah.
How many of those subscribers are like me, definitely watching YouTube from Argentina.
deleted by creator
Are your recommendations in Spanish?
Heard localized recommendations were an issue with buying “from” India.
Nope. The only thing different is that I don’t pay for it in £.
marketing tactics to get even more to subscribe, ala “x amount of people got it so it must be good”.
Yet it feels like I got better things to spend it on, as I don’t watch much anymore due to algorithm changes making me miss the prior new music uploads and or newer channels to discover.
Every refresh contains the same or prior channels watched with the same content shuffled or worse, suggest old dated watched videos.
Meanwhile I’m thinking “ey, sounds like they’re getting enough money, now maybe they can leave me the fuck alone.”
“Enough money” is not a concept they understand unfortunately
Use Freetube, people.
I watch on my television tho
Use smart tube
Wish there is was a webOS variant for LGs
There is, you can enable dev mode and install the homebrew channel, here’s a guide for Dev Mode and here’s a guide for the Homebrew Channel
Get an Onn stick and adapt it to your needs.
Get old PC, install Linux use with tv. Smart TVs are such a silly concept
And also, webos is the stingiest of the smart TV OS’s
I want the creators I watch on YouTube to continue to get paid, both from YouTube and their sponsors. My contributions through premium are sliver of what they see, but if everyone stopped supporting them in that way, the total would be zero.
I back some of them on Patreon where I can, but it’s not economically feasible for me to back them all in such a way.
Found the corporate account. Fuck youtube. Steal that shit.
I do have YouTube Premium, because between the ad-free movies and TV shows and the music, the family sharing option was cheaper than Spotify and a couple of streaming services we gave up, and the few new content creators I do watch get paid more. But if they keep raising the price, I’ll look for something else.
For me, almost all the media I consume is YouTube so I’m fine paying up to a point but if it goes past 20 without a heap more features I’m out. I was already shocked they took away “continue watching” from normal users.
Revanced all the way, baby!
I had to get grayjay because revanced stopped working on an A13, but I can’t seem to find an auto play feature
I looked at it. The features aren’t worth the price at all.
I might even consider it out if they weren’t selling me music as well and if there was a family option (in my country). And no, I wouldn’t consider VPN as I won’t do extra work to be able to pay google.
Yeah, as someone who gets good mileage with YouTube Premium, I wish they offered a version just for ads without music. YouTube music sucks hard, but I can’t justify paying for another music app on top of it.
