YouTube puts third-party clients on notice: Show ads or get blocked

https://www.statista.com/statistics/513049/alphabet-annual-global-income/

Let's pause a moment and just appreciate how much money Alphabet actually make net (after expenses). $73,795,000,000 last year - higher than the GDP of entire nations, in profit.

The "bad" year, 2022 that drove all this change, they only made $59,972,000,000 net. Oh how terrible (!)

5 years ago, they made $34,343,000,000 net, so they've more than doubled profits.

Take a moment to appreciate that, and really consider if they "need" the money.

Shareholders: you doubled your profit last year, so I expect you to do it again this year.
- *we expect you to do better than that
  There, fify
- Pretty much. Capitalism is completely unsustainable.
That's the whole company. How much did YouTube lose for them?
- YouTube lost google -31.5 billion in 2023, approximately 10% of all of alphabet's revenue.

It's funny that free third party apps literally have more features and are more user friendly than the official app with premium.

Why the fuck would I pay for less when I can get more for free?

Some years ago ago, I was a happy subscriber to Google Music. But, they added it to the graveyard, and instead grafted on some music playing functionality to YouTube and called it YouTube Music. So, I went back to Spotify.
Then I started paying for YouTube Premium Lite. It wasn't unreasonably expensive, although it was a bit annoying I couldn't just have "YouTube" in the household, like with Netflix. So if wife would cast a video to the TV, it would play with ads.
It was about a year ago, when Google starting cracking down on adblockers, that they also removed an option to pay for the service. I think YouTube Premium Lite wasn't a thing in the US (correct me if I'm wrong), but they removed YT Premium Lite, and the only option left was a twice as expensive YouTube Premium bundle that included YouTube Music.
Tldr: fucked up Google Music, then removed an option to pay for YouTube premium, leaving a fairly expensive alternative with the pile of shit they replaced Google music with. It'll be a rough time if they manage to force ads. I won't pay for it, out of principle.
To be fair, one of the apps mentioned, [Re]Vanced, is literally just the stock app with extra features patched in and the premium features enabled for free (like no ads and downloads). It makes sense that it would be more user friendly. Allowing that modified version doesn't get them any revenue though while still costing them to host and serve the content to those users.
At least with NewPipe it supports multiple sites and is its own app with their own code and UI.
- I don't understand this argument because NewPipe still gets the video from YouTube (primarily), costing them to host...
I think there's a couple things at play:
You know enough to find a different app and make it do what you need it to. Not a hard thing, but something many non-tech savvy people could struggle with, or more likely--
People often will just use what's there. We know we have options, we are aware of the privacy concerns... but many people simply aren't and/or don't care enough to do anything about it.
We spend a lot of time here, so it seems to us like second nature to avoid intrusive apps... I find in my day-to-day life not many people are talking about that kind of stuff, or don't have much knowledge/experience in that realm. (I realize that is anecdotal).
I 100% agree with your statements--just trying to rationalize how so many people end up using/staying with these ever-worsening services/apps...
- To prove your point I am person #2, I know things liked invidious and piped exist but I just idk haven’t gotten around to it

I'll give up on YouTube before I give up my ad blocks or 3rd party apps. Fuck off Google.

That's likely what they want. If you're not viewing their ads and your third-party app is even blocking all the tracking, then you are not providing any value to them to keep you as a 'customer'. All it does is reduce their hosting and serving costs when you're blocked or when you eventually stop using it.
- Thing is you also stop sharing and commenting and engaging with other users. If it wasn't useful they would pull the plug long ago, nothing technical is preventing them.
It will go the way of Reddit…
You could just pay for premium. Then you wouldn’t have ads
- OTA TV: with ads
  OTA TV: if you record you are pirating
  Cable TV: you pay a fortune to have no ads!
  Cable TV: now with extra premium stuff!
  Cable TV: now with ads!
  Cable TV: if you record, you'll be prosecuted
  Cable TV: pray we do not alter the deal further
  Cable TV: why is everyone moving away from Cable TV?
  Youtube: your own videos!
  Youtube: your own videos are actually ours
  Youtube: our videos with ads!
  Youtube: now pay a fortune to remove ads!
  Youtube: pray we do not alter the deal further
  Youtube: if you download or remove ads you'll be banned
  This isn't the pattern you're looking for. Move along.
- I'll pass, thanks. Too many streaming platforms already.
- If the price was even relatively sane I would be okay with that honestly.
  But no, they need to keep driving the price up and up. I have to pay my part so that little Jimmy can host 297 hours of white noise on his account that no one wants to watch.
  They simply need to change their tactics a little. It cost you some small sane amount to host your videos there. If your videos don't g gather watches and make money you should be the one paying for them.
  I want to pay about nine bucks a month for a family account it's just b-f rate content. You can pay less to get actual well rated movies from other services.
  Also give me the option not to throw in Google music I don't give a s*** about Google music.
- Weird to see this downvoted. Youtube is actually a good service that also isn't cheap to run, and it also pays good(?) money to the people producing popular content on the platform so why not pay for using it? Or, you know, live with the ad infestation. Businesses need money to run, and if you don't pay for the content, then either it's the ads or eventually the whole platform needs to be shut down.
  It is a separate discussion if Premium pricing is appropriate etc. But it's quite horrifying to see people around the world having been taught into thinking that everything should be "free" even though at the same time everyone is complaining about privacy violation and ads being everywhere all the time.

Are they going to officially allow third party apps at all? The stock app is terrible, and not just because of excessive, unskippable advertising and bizarre restrictions around background play. When you search for anything, at least half of the results are completely unrelated to what you searched for in an attempt to increase user engagement metrics. It keeps trying to get you to watch shorts in its bad TikTok clone. Sometimes it recommends unrelated shorts with disturbing thumbnails in the middle of your search results. It keeps autodetecting that the video quality should be 360p on a connection easily capable of 4k, and resetting back to 360p at the start of every new video. The UI for live streams puts things on top of other things that are more important.

And all of those come down to money
Search shows you random videos because “the algorithm” is hoping to drive you through to videos that are the most monetized and the most likely to keep you on the platform based on their data
The shorts thing is because they can pack more ads into 15 second bits of content while using less bandwidth and they’re hoping to hijack your attention with an “endless stream” of short clips a la TikTok or instagram reels
The video bandwidth drops to low every time because they’re hoping people will still watch, see the ads, and not bump the quality up, saving Google on bandwidth costs
The live streams thing is just more advertising revenue again
- None of that applies if you’re a paying customer like me, and I see all the same bs. So no, it’s really just bad design, it’s not trying to do any of the stuff you mentioned.
- The live streams thing is not about advertising. Problems like putting the hearts button on top of the chat instead of next to the chat or having the chat cover up the entire left side of the stream every time a single message is sent are just because they don't care.
As soon as I have to see shorts, YouTube is dead to me. I hate the format with a passion.
bizarre restrictions around background play
there's nothing bizarre about it - the free version is shitty on purpose

Please download and archive your favorite channels and videos!

Host them yourself to watch them locally.

Especially do this for educational material, share it wide and far!

We are entering a very dark age of techno-dystopia, we need to fight it with everything we have. Pirate, seed, screen-record, download, archive, share, never give up.

Quick shout out to yt-dlp. It comes everything you need to download, transcode, and even use Sponsorblock!
- I also recommend NewPipe for Android. It lets you download in multiple formats and shows comments in a mobile format (you can get it through the F-Droid store or from github.)
This is the way.

It's funny how this comes after Chrome's switch to Manifest V3, which makes ad blocking not possible on Chrome and was purely for security reasons and not for disabling ad blockers. Now that Chrome users can't block ads on the first-party site, they're going after third-party clients. Such coincidental timing.

"security reasons" is the classic cop-out for making users lives more miserable.
Like what are you gonna do, argue that you don't care about security?
was purely for security reasons and not for disabling ad blockers.
I had not heard of Manifest v3 and actually can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I guess you are.
- They're not being sarcastic, they are repeating Google's (bs) justification
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/
  They've been trying for years to implement this at a large price to the users. They always try to hide under the guise of security.
  https://www.ghacks.net/2024/04/16/google-intensifies-fight-against-youtube-adblockers/
  https://lemmy.ml/post/14446619
- There are a ton of other WebKit based browsers to choose from! Safari, Vivaldi, Brave… not to mention good old Firefox and Gecko!

Not again ... Well, let's wait a week or so for the clients to fix that.

Third party apps: "OK. We'll show ads. Muted. Behind a black overlay. If we really can't find a workaround."

They've been trying for a minute. Must be different now that they're saying it!

Checks notes

Nope, revanced still works.

We are officially ON NOTICE
Soon be Blasted, Slammed, Potentially even Yeeted
- I'm told the past tense is yote.
That's because revanced is still youtubes app, just lightly modified.
- If I put my dick in your girl, is she still yours but lightly modified?
I simply cannot get revanced to even download to my phone, and I'm not smart enough to troubleshoot it.

My newpipe 😔

I've mostly only noticed that the comments won't load, not a big loss imo
- Likewise but im sure it wont stop there
- There's already a patch for comments in the release candidate for the new version

Gotta love this shit. Conservatives/companies: "Let the market decide!" The market: "We are tired of you cramming ads down our throats and fundamentally do not want it and will actively fight you on it." Companies: "Waaaaaa, they are fighting us."

Fuck them. I'd rather donate quadruple the money for premium to my favourite creators directly than give a single penny to this parasitic mega corporation.

The issue is not only the ads, it's the stupid shit it throws you to keep you hooked, it's the stupid shorts that literally no one asked for, it's every stupid little thing that fights for your attention. Basically the app doesn't work for you, it works against you. That's not the case with third party apps, they have you, the user, in mind, not their profits.

I've been using youtube on Firefox with ublock since the premium price raise. Even on android. The experience is not great, but that makes sure I don't have ads at all.

Also discovered unhooked addon yesterday. Is desktop only, but great for going into less youtube rabbit holes that waste my time.

don't make solutions popular.
- It's lemmy, world's smallest social media platform. We'll be fine :p

Youtube isn't some one of a kind miracle. There's at least a dozen already-established streaming platforms that would take its place. There are thousands of websites that have no problems hosting gigs and gigs of porn, so it's not as difficult as people think.

It kind of is. YouTube has decades of history. Unfathomable amounts of video. No indie platform will ever come close to hosting more than a fraction of a percent of YouTube's library and be as accessible and as fast. It would cost an unbelievable amount of money in servers and maintenance let alone moderation. The problem is this is a service, like many others that exist today, that does not bring in more money than it costs. YouTube exists because it's a branch on a megacorporation tree, but even Google will eventually need to find a way to make it profitable. It is impossible to fund this for free or anywhere close to free.
- If the modern internet teaches us anything, its that everything is ephemeral even when you stringently catalogue every last byte of data. People just dont need access to 90% of YouTube's library, yet Youtube has to pay big money to make 100% of that library available 24/7 365.
  There's already rips at the seams of these systems. Time is not on the side of YouTube.
- No indie platform will ever come close to hosting more than a fraction of a percent of YouTube’s library and be as accessible and as fast.
  The number of times I've heard "XYZ will never happen" in the area of tech from one person or another over the decades (or made the mistake of thinking so myself) is high.
  Youtube will either become reasonable in their practices again (which could include a pricing adjustment for ad-free access), or will be replaced as the de facto video service. It may not happen in the short timespan we'd all like to see, but it will happen.

I'll just use Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin then, literally anything is better than ads

And when that stops working, I'll just stop watching any YouTube videos.
- Yup. At the end of the day, YouTube provides two resources: entertainment and information. Given that I'm willing to drop any particular creator or show, which I am, entertainment can always be found elsewhere. Worst case, I suffer a little bit of FOMO. And information in the internet ecosystem is like water in nature; it finds a way to keep flowing around

As soon as 3rd party clients don't work as they do anymore, I am stopping going to YouTube. Simple as, I know it doesn't matter as a singular thing, I am just one user. Was the same with reddit, now I am here but reddit is still going (how well we don't need to debate now).

Damn, I got my setup so perfect on the TV with SmartTube. But I will not be able to tolerate ads. Then I'd rather only watch on Firefox with uBlock on my laptop.

Then pay for premium?
- Then youtube wins. No.
- I did for many years. But then I moved to Korea and they don't allow family plans and paying 4 individual ones is just not in our budget. Then probably just no YouTube for me.

Don't worry, third party clients will rectify the issue.

Honestly, huge shout out to the wave of enshittification crashing through Google and reddit and forcing me off their platforms. Decade-long debilitating addiction solved.

I’ve Invidious hosted on my Little Raspberry Pi 4, and using it’s WPA app on every device I got.

Zero ad + Decent UI + Access to highest video quality

https://invidious.io/

Heads up, "I've" is not grammatically correct when "have" is your verb. Using "have" in a contraction when you're using past-perfect tense. For example, "I've been" is an acceptable shortening of "I have been".
- Is it actually incorrect? I don't think it's necessarily wrong, but it just sounds bizarre or Shakespearean if you use it when it's not an auxiliary verb.
  "I've no need for that." is a perfectly cromulent sentence.

Showing it the middlefinger since >half a year

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/489585-ultimate-youtube-ad-remover-and-detection-bypasser/code

https://openuserjs.org/scripts/Kraust/Youtube_Embed_Redirect

That content does not belong to YouTube. And they also do not pay for 99% of it.

YouTube depends on people to use it for it's existence. They also depend on those users to upload content so that YouTube can then treat that content as if it is its own and monetize it.

If I was in such a precarious position I wouldn't go about making the experience crappy for those users that I'm desperately dependent upon.

youtube hosts, handles bandwidth, provides creator tools, deals with monetization, handles royalties, and creates the platform...

Peertube is planning on releasing an official app this year. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Hey Google, FUCK YOU.

Well, I really hope that doesn’t affect Vinegar

( Safari extension that replaces YouTube’s horrible video player with the system’s default.

It’s great, it also allows you to force Best Quality, very useful on platforms where YouTube defaults to 480p for no reason like iPadOS )

If they say like that, it means that's now is allowed to make a third party youtube client with login support?

I'd immediately install an officially sanctioned third party youtube app without shorts and without the algorithmic feed, if all i would need to do is let the phone play ads when i'm doing something else

I personally have no problem with paying for a service. However, if I buy premium to remove the ads, YT has no longer the need to collect my data. But it is Google and they won't stop collecting. That, plus the fact that Google basically has a monopoly with youtube are the reasons I don't buy premium.

Never!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The company shut down one of the most popular third-party apps, "YouTube Vanced," in 2022.

Vanced takes the official YouTube Android client and installs a duplicate, alternative version with a bunch of patches.

It also adds features the official app doesn't have, like additional themes and accessibility features, "repeat" and "dislike" buttons, and the ability to turn off addictive "suggestions" that appear all over the app.

Rather than going after the projects, Google says it's going to start disrupting users who are using these apps.

The company continues: "We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service."

If you remember back to when Google aggressively fought to keep third-party YouTube apps off of Windows Phone, the company seemed to take a similar stance against all third-party YouTube clients, even if they wanted to integrate ads.

The original article contains 344 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is just ads. They know that people will fight back and found a solution.

They want some to think it's dead.

I can't wait for that platform to implode.

Imagine buying premium to watch videos riddled with ads and sponsors in the video itself.

This format just isn't making any sense for me, they would've implemented something as sponsorblock years ago

My libretube isn't working.

Enable "Use HLS" in settings
- This. It has been broken without this option for a couple weeks now.
Newpipe
- Newpipe is not the same. LibreTube has a built it proxy to prevent leaking your IP. Newpipe doesn't have that afaik

Does this affect watching through mvp?

Start to use other services like Odysee or Elacity Cinema...

Nebula is really good. I just bought a lifetime sub. Expensive but pays itself back in only a few years. Plus the creators there run it as a coop that has a takeover poison pill of some kind.
- @rbos @EverlastongOS that's the only thing I don't understand. If it's lifetime sub, how do they fund their costs from your usage after?
  Host providers don't have a one-time payment lifetime subscription for bandwidth usage. Eventually you will surpass the bandwidth cost of your lifetime sub and they'd be losing money keeping you. Something doesn't feel right.

why would you NOT get youtube premium? it's $22 for 6 users and you get music and ad-free youtube it's honestly the best streaming service