Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may “experience buffering issues” or see errors such as “the following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
You know, they’d probably get a tenfold increase of Premium subscribers if they just, I don’t know, dropped the prices a smidge and had better regional pricing. Not everyone can or will subscribe, but Google is only making this more difficult for themselves by making it such an expensive service.
I was a happy subscriber when I was paying $15/mo for a family plan for 6 people. I was grandfathered into a low rate for being an early adopter of Google Play Music All Access.
Then they decided that grandfathered plans no longer applied and wanted me to start paying $23/mo, a more than 50% increase, so I canceled. I switched to Spotify for the music, where I pay less, and just watch less YouTube since the ads are ridiculous.
If they kept it at $15/mo, I’d still be a subscriber. If they sold just ad-free YouTube for like $3/mo, I’d consider subscribing to that and keeping my Spotify subscription.
It costs $23/mo for fucking YouTube? And to get the same experience you get with a free browser add-on? Fuck all of that. Absolutely not.
Yep. Their excuse is that you also get YouTube music out of it, but there is no option to buy them separately.
At this point I have no interest in moving away from Spotify, so Google’s gonna have to play ball if they want to get me back. It’s sad, too, when it seems like every other YouTube link I visit from my phone brings up a prompt begging me to subscribe again.
lol then one day youtube music appears in https://killedbygoogle.com/
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Right, cause YouTube/Google are really struggling so much that their only option is to increase prices while offering less value and making everyone’s experience worse. Maybe, and hear me out here, the massive billion dollar corporation could make less money.
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As far as I know, YouTube does not lose money(feel free to correct this with a source) and even just from a logical perspective if YouTube loses google money why keep pouring so many resources into it? The correct answer imo is YouTube doesn’t lose money theyre just greedy pigs but Alphabet(the parent company behind both google and YouTube) makes 10s of billions of dollars in profit, they are not struggling to pay the bills hell even if YouTube was losing then money fucking good they shouldn’t be allowed to hoard that much wealth anyway, but feel free to keep being a corporate bootlicker.
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You people really throw logic out the window when you talk about shit like this. You want corporations to make less money? Go fix the fucking tax laws not bitch about average membership fees like a fuckwit.
The problem is not that YT cannot make money, the problem here is that the options are that you can choose if watching video, with or without ads, for free (well, paying with your data) or pay with money and your data to watch videos with ads.
I am not saying I have some god-like right to watch videos for free but on the other hand it seems that at YT they are trying as hard as they can to make me install adblocker to be able to use their service with minimun hassle.
YT, like every other company, is learning that if they don’t care about customers then customers don’t care about them. They are making the false equation “one less user with adblocker == one more user on Premium|without adblocker”, which is obviously false. And they are forgetting that they have a lot of more or less direct competition.
YT, like every other company, is learning that if they don’t care about customers then customers don’t care about them.
Quite a statement to say that Google (YouTube) would care about customers.
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It reads to me like you think these companies are entitled to a user base. They aren’t. Just because it costs money to run a service, it does not mean we have to accept the price they charge or the anti consumer practices.
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That was a whole lot of assumptions about me. That, with the emotional language being used tells me that this interaction isn’t going anywhere useful or productive, so I’mma go ahead and step out.
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You need to pay for services you use. I’m exhausted with online entitlement that it all should be free.
So, why Youtube Premium has ads ?
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Loads of videos have ads in there. They’re put in there by the content creators. This as YouTube doesn’t pay enough. YouTube premium doesn’t block those.
It’s strange that you haven’t noticed those.
Loads of videos don’t have those either. I watched three to four car repair videos yesterday and none had sponsored segments.
Some of my followed creators have them, but they are the minority. I’d love to see some overall stats, as my experience may not be the norm.
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The Internet is actually free. Services on it aren’t always. The issue with YouTube monetizing, for me, is 1) they are doing it retroactively and 2) they’re monetizing content made by others.
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I was about to pay for it when they doubled the cost. No joke I told my wife I was going to start paying since we watch it all the time. The next week they doubled the cost. It irritated me. Not because I couldn’t afford it but because they added no value with the increase. Nothing changed.
I believe there’s a sort of death-loop phenom taking place here. The enshitification, you know.
How much you think the salaries of the pencil pushers are, the ones who get paid for little else but squeezing every single possible cent out of the supply/demand curve? The corporate greedsters, err the “revenue maximizers”.
Startup founders are told:
Raise your prices. You’ll triple them and only lose 10% of your customers, and it will be your worst 10% of customers.
Lol good luck Google. No way im watching YouTube with ads.
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Yeah let me fork over my rapidly disappearing regular people money for a service which used to be free, whose price will only keep going up, and whose features will only keep disappearing to be locked behind a higher tier of paid subscription, thus giving me less and less, for more and more payment. You meet me over there. Let me just grab my little red wig and honk my nose a few times first and I’ll be right over.
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Yes, I’m the “ignorant fuckwit” who is “throwing a tantrum”. Read above and behold me being immature, for the crime of calling out the poor little giant corporation who reportedly generated $31.5 BILLION dollars last year. Clearly they’re just trying to keep the lights on, and not kowtowing to investors whose sole, stated goal, is to buy low, and cash out when line goes up. I’m the fuckwit for pointing out that this shouldn’t be the system we’re all just okay with accepting. Clearly.
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No need for that tone old bean!
Youtube Premium offers a fraction of the benefits of something like Newpipe.
Does it even have content you can only see with Premium like Red did?
YouTube Red content can only be seen with Premium, but not only does Premium not have new exclusive content, Premium features don’t work with member videos if you’re paying for channel membership
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it just freeloads
I watch a number of creators that YT has demonetized so I’m not worried about it.
YT can clearly see what people want in these apps. They simply need to provide the exact same functionality and set a price. They won’t though because they want control and data as well.
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To be clear I wouldn’t give them my money even if they did offer all the same features.
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There’s multiple issues with this but a lot of them come down to: it’s Google.
They will charge. They have heaps of money, they will enzhittify. They will kill and recommend a new less capable app.
They’re Google and I’m moving away from them hard.
I do use YT a lot, and for now I pay. But give me a little time and that won’t be as true.
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Just 10mins ago I was thinking how great the digital age started. I liked that when I bought something I can store it anywhere, play/listen (don’t remember if digital movies was a thing) it without any internet connection etc. Then we got Netflix and eventually Spotify and we got even more options, do you want to pay a reasonable price a month and watch/play essentially anything or do you want to keep your stuff forever and pay more? But then other companies wanted that piece of pie and started their own services, neutered existing services, raise prices often, got more aggressive with drm and other limitations. My point is, when things start and they seem good in this tech world of ours, just think a bit outside of the box about how bad it can get, because believe me, you are likely correct with that. When this digital age started, people were fearful too, and most of their fears came true.
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Sorry, I think I worded it poorly. I was saying that Netflix and Spotify were good, but Netflix got a bit neutered after other companies came in. Spotify is still amazing though.
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I was simply explaining why I’m bailing on them.
Google graveyard has happened. YT makes them a lot of money, so it’s not likely destined there. But, like search, they will eventually make it more about $ extraction than value for the customer.
It hasn’t happened yet. Early adopters and early leavers shape things.
Ads don’t support YouTube. Actually if you have premium that does a better job supporting both YouTube and the creators because they get paid more per view with premium than they would with ads. That’s why google pushes premium so hard and is bundling it with the services it thinks it can get away with.
What you’re describing has basically already happened and the ads are getting worse because they just don’t provide enough income.
But that doesn’t get rid of the ads, it just get rid of some. Sponsorblock would still be needed. Why pay a huge amount for something ineffective?
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To. Support. The. Creators. I. Watch.
Did you ask those creators how much money they get? Loads of them make way more from inserting advertisements themselves.
It’s also telling that you’re saying it’s about supporting those creators while responding negatively towards the person who blocks ads and gives money directly.
when I like a creator I give them a dollar instead of giving google a dollar so they can give a penny of it to the person who actually makes the thing I want
Hard pass. I donate to good creators who provide me hours of content by buying them a coffee or supporting on Patreon.
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Ah, so pay for premium to support creators, but if you support creators in another way then that’s bad because… reasons.
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If it was fairly priced then maybe, but as of now yt premium just isn’t a good opntion
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Because YouTube is well known for actually paying their creators… A lot of the creators I watch get a lot of their videos demonotized for nothing really, so I’d have to become a channel member to support them, at wich point I might as well just completly switch to their patreon. And just because it’s on par with other stupid subscriptions, doesn’t make it fair. There are a ton of useless perks to me I’d have to pay for. Doest Premium still come with YT music? Yeah that kinda shit. I you use all the stuff, fair, but I certainly wont, so no the price is not fair for me
Did you really come in here with a mini youtube premium go back to reddit.
By now just paying for adblocking alone wouldn’t cut it, I have also grown accustomed to YouTube sponsorblock in my client.
Indeed, paying for YouTube would still result in loads of advertisements. So it’s pretty crazy that Google (and various people) are saying you need to pay because you’d just pay and still see loads of ads.
It’s not just the ads either. Automatically skipping interaction reminders, zelf promotion and non-music parts is such an improved experience that it’s just too painful to go back.
I said the same thing for Reddit before the third-party apps crackdown; instead of cracking down on users who just want a better experience, they could allow third-party apps to be officially used if you have a paid/Premium subscription?
That way Google gets paid, and the users who enjoy their third-party apps can keep using them without worrying about them suddenly breaking.
That doesn’t solve the privacy issue which is a good reason why people use these, but at least it partly solves the monetary issue.
It would only work if it was still a massive privacy invasion. They either feed you ads or sell your data, they’re not going to offer a service that can’t at least do one of those.
It’s ok google, we have just as many engineers across the world that hate you and your ads and want to watch videos without your predatory pricing.
Indeed. However, they have that web DRM thing in their back pocket. The more we resist (as we should) their efforts to shut ad circumvention down, the more they’ll look at web DRM I’m sure. And they’ll have all large media outlets with them when they load that ball into the cannon.
Go ahead, as the only Google service I regularly interact with, I am looking for a reason to finally ditch it, so that I can say that I no longer use any Google services at all for any reason.
Even if my client couldn’t block ads, I’d still keep it for the downvote button count and sponsor block.
Fuck Google and their price gouging.
No. No fucking ads, or lack of swipe controls.
Google lost the battle even in their own browser so now they’re trying to save face by attacking third party apps, dumbass just don’t know how to take the L.
Aren’t they implementing manifest v3 for addons soon, which will cripple adblockers on chrome?
When they do it’s only a matter of time for users to search how to block ads and move to a new browser
Firefox
They attempted to blocking videos for adblock users on YouTube some time ago, it was effective for like, I don’t know, a few days?
Chrome is still the most used browser
I uninstalled the YouTube app on my phone a long time ago. I only visit the site in an ad blocking browser.
Had no idea you could do that. I just went and did it, thanks for the tip. I use Newpipe anyway
Does anyone know how to add my subscriptions and channels from regular YouTube to newpipe? There isn’t a login feature.
You have to export your youtube data at “google takeout manager” and import it in new pipe. Also you can read about it at newpipe FAQs
Thanks to my internet friend. Got it working!
