Ever since around 2017, I have not visited (or even seen) the contemporary Youtube site.
I had been using a combination of Invidious and yt-dlp (youtube-dl).
Just within the last year or two, Google has been making efforts to obstruct these tools. This can most clearly be seen with Invidious, currently suffering from a generic “This helps protect our community” error message.
It has got me thinking that Google might eventually succeed in extinguishing these islands of safety that I’ve so enjoyed.
People who still use raw, unmitigated Youtube today; how much of a hellscape has it become?
So far, YouTube itself with uBlock Origin (Firefox) and SponsorBlock is working swimmingly.
Until they ban Firefox and/or proper adblockers I’m still using it, and everything works as intended.
+1 to this. Firefox, uBlock, Sponsor Block. Haven’t had a single issue, ever
If they ban Firefox or make it more difficult to watch videos with Firefox, I fully expect state AGs to bring antitrust proceedings.
Our teacher pulled up a video to demonstrate a certain gravity experiment. The whole class got to watch two consecutive, loud, annoying and UNSKIPPABLE 20 second ads.
Needless to say, it totally justified all of the time that I spent switching Invidous instances and updating NewPipe (or Tubular).
I’ve only been forced to watch YouTube with ads a few times this past year… Alcohol and gambling ads were very, very common. It’s unethical to show them, and I don’t feel bad about blocking them.
It’s absolutely unwatchable. It’s so infested with ads that it’s not worth even trying. You get frustrated and give up.
What a stupid question. Just go visit it??
Ew, why would I allow my system to create traffic to Google controlled infrastructure?
I endure it at work because I can’t just modify everything to my liking. Lots of political ads lately. Use the hardware mute button when you start the video. Alt-tab to whatever tedious spreadsheet or page of code. Come back and restart the video in two minutes.
Same. Back when there was just a single ad at the beginning of a video and you could skip it after only 10 seconds, I would just mute and look away from my phone for 10 seconds (counting out loud). Those days are gone. The petty “look away” is almost becoming a petty “go get some groceries”.
