Youtube is harassing us!

Unlock origin + Firefox! The harassment stops. I'd rather donate to the unlock team monthly instead of paying google for a solution to a problem they created.

- I don't know, most creators I watch put a creative spin on those, and it's fun to watch. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
- I got me some new devices recently. Researching and adding privacy/security add ons to Firefox was surprisingly enjoyable.
  The idea that I have some measure of control over what I experience - and what I give in return - is novel to me.
  The -10 or so extensions work well enough. It's still the internet, but it's an earlier version. Better than what currently exists.
- Actually YouTube kinda built in the feature lol. It detects sections of the video most people skip and gives you a button to skip it as well. All right inside the YouTube app.
- SponsorBlock also comes by default on SmartTubeNext for Android TV.
Pi-Hole + VPN and you can stop mobile ads as well. (You connect your phone to your VPN, whose traffic passes through your Pi-Hole)
Ublock Origin also works on Firefox mobile for Android, but that only works inside the browser.
You need the Pi-Hole network-level blocking to block ads in apps.
- AdAway (F-Droid) will do the same but on-device (so it works everywhere), and if you're rooted it'll do it without the VPN by directly updating the hosts file.

You don't get to say "No" to YouTube, Microsoft, or the thousands of websites that ask to you to give them your email. There's only a "Maybe later".

I fuuuhuhuhucking hate this condescending, pestering dark pattern that apparently every single designer on the planet is required to use

Would you like to review our app?: Yes or Not Now.

I always say yes then give one star and complain about being asked to review it
- This is the way
If an open source app asks me to do so, I usually give it a five star review. It's the least I can do to support them and make them visible on Google Play.
Maybe Later
Pro-tip: apps can't ask for leaving a review twice, so if you press yes and then go immediately back, it will never ask again.
Yes, 1 star.

Uhm, that' s just capitalism in a nutshell.

Everything is just routing around people telling you "no."

Government regulation is literally the epitome of being told "no" and they spend all the money in the fucking world to force it into a "yes."

I mean, these people are so far up their own asses, I've seen ad industry people say seriously that people avoiding ads is breaking a contract. The genuine attitude that if they paid for the ad, in real life or online, that we owe them our eyes on it because they spent money on it. They're so far out of touch that they can't even face small risk.

Is it really a shock that a lot of people in corporate America are actual fucking rapists?

Gates, Weinstein, Musk, Trump, McMahon, I could go on... Plenty of these guys are well documented as not being able to take "no" for an answer, even if there's no evidence they raped anyone (Gates, for example).

I sometimes open the official YouTube app and set it to autoplay and mute while doing dishes, so they can be happy that I watched their fucking ads.
I fear that at some point the feds will knock to make sure I'm not distracted while an ad plays.

No means no but ask me later means ask me later. You never said no. Source: the option doesn't exist

Use inspect element to change the button from "ask me later" to "no" and then click it
I should try that when dating to see how long it takes for a court order to arrive.
- Learning from the best

Why is tech so hell bent on removing consent. We need to frame this in a way that makes their pr teams shit themselves.

I just assumed it was because they secretly wanted me to use SmartTube

No means "I'll ask you again in 30 days, because we really really want shorts to be a thing."

Even the shorts from your subscriptions they "optimize" using their algorithm instead of showing them chronologically. It's such a hassle.

Sorry man I don't make the rules

The way you say no is by not visiting the site.

This^. You don't have to use YT.
- But there's no real alternative to YouTube.
  And no, using a proxy service is like using YouTube itself with uBlock or whatever.

Firefox mobile>ad blocker>YouTube.com

Invidious or Piped are great options, that also let you hide all the distractions like suggested videos, the toxic dumpster fire that's the comments section, and so on. Piped even implements SponsorBlock without needing to install the addon.
Revanced
- And SmartTubeNext if you have an Android TV.
- You still have to do all that patching and stuff. I do enough IT for work, I won't wanna always be doing it at home.
Firefox mobile sucks. I use Brave as my browser (yes I know what I'm doing I don't want a lecture on this) and Grayjay as my YouTube app.
- (yes I know what I'm doing I don't want a lecture on this)

Their full screen popups when I first open the app have started to load the subscribe button a second before anything else on screen. I keep catching myself about tap it out of pure reflex and I think they doing it on purpose.

Very few, if any tech companies care about consent.

As Louis Rossman says, they have a rapist mentality.

Yes they are. But no one who can do anything about it is doing anything about it.

Not just Youtube. Google is! Ever try to use Gmail or Google Drive or Google Docs in a non-Chrome browser? That’s another level of harassment!

I can't recall any popups when I use G-Suite Apps on Firefox. I use Keep Notes, Docs, Excel.
The main thing I notice is the imposed loading time (Gmail animation takes like 10 seconds on FF and seemingly doesn't exist on Chrome)
Yes, every day. I don't know what you're referring to.

They delete like 99% of comments

Imo this should actually be illegal. I'm find with reasonable promotional displays and offers, but there needs to be some legal option to permanently decline. Having to tell YouTube "no" literally hundreds of times is legitimately ludicrous

You go to a coffee shop, you order a coffee, open your laptop and start working. After you're done with your coffee the waiter comes and asks you whether you would like to pay. You say no and continue working. One hour later they ask you again whether you would like to pay. You say no and continue working. Two hours later the waiter insists you either pay and leave, or pay for two coffees, and they bring you another one, then you can stay and work. You call the police because you're being harassed, and post on lemmy about predatory coffee shop practices trying to upsell you a second coffee. The police arrests the waiter and you get 9000 upvotes on lemmy.

Running a video-on-demand platform is very, very expensive. Just an FYI.

Why did the coffee shop have a "Free coffee and unlimited sitting time" sign in front of it?
- No it didn't. It said "entry for free, coffee either for money or with ads".
In the comments to your coffee shop story someone points out that coffee shops deserve to be paid for the coffee and the working space you occupy. The comment gets heavily downvoted with other commenters providing great counter-arguments, like "the coffee is ridiculously overpriced, like a 100% margin, it's an evil for-profit business and we shouldn't pay those" and "they just had a coffee, it costs them almost nothing, the rest of the time they werr just working, which didn't incur any costs on the coffee shop. The coffee shop are assholes, if they let the OP work till the evening, they would've paid for their coffee". Someone even suggested a new commercial model for the coffee shop: everyone makes their own coffee, it's free, and so is seating, funding is donation-based. They have certainly seen such a place before, although, they themselves would never be up for running one cuz they have a day job to pay the bills.
- Then you are walking along the street when the city folds in on itself. You realize Leonardo Dicaprio is there. This is a dream? As if from afar, you hear a faint voice crying, "Murph! Don't let me leave, Murph!"

$5 a month and you can share with 5 other users. That’s 90c per person. Why would anyone not have YouTube premium?

Where are you at where it's $5 a month for the family plan? In the US it's $15 for the single user, or $23 for the family plan.
- I pay ₴150 (Ukrainian hryvnia) for a family plan of 6, which is currently roughly $3.60 (after the currency tanked due to war). hide the pain dab
- That's interesting, here in Poland you pay ~$12 for the family plan.
  I didn't know it was that expensive in US. That sucks, man.
- South Africa
first and foremost you're paying for a worse experience than just installing an adblocker.
Paying for convenience isn't the same as paying to not be inconvenienced.
- I pay for Premium for a few different reasons:
  I don't need to even think about fighting with ad block blockers.
  I also get YouTube Music, so I no longer need to pay for Spotify.
  Premium views pay creators more than regular views.
- Youtube premium gives you a higher bitrate option as well.
  I think it's only for lower resolutions (other than 4k) but if the video was uploaded with an absurdly high bitrate you can see a slightly less destroyed version.
It is not about money. Google created a problem and then asked money to solve it. If I were a billionaire I still wouldn't paid a single penny.
- They created the problem of creators needing to be paid without using ads?
Because I can get the same results + more for free
- By not paying the content creators for the content you consume.
Because I’m not giving Alphabet any information about me. It’s also why I don’t create a YouTube account and use browsers with common fingerprints.
- Trying to avoid fingerprinting often results in easier fingerprinting.
  Your browser might have a common fingerprint, but other points of configuration (screen size, window size, webrtc, etc) belie those.
  Usually it just gets you put in the "People who don't like ads" advertising bin. They have specific ways to try to target us.
  Relevant Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXi-9kA4ERM&t=75s
  I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now, too.
  "Oh you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that 'anti-marketing dollar.' That's a good market, he's very smart."
It's £20 ($26.33) per month here. You are either lying or are in an exceptionally cheap country.
I can think only for one legitimate reason:
Google bought out YouTube and operated it at loss for most of its life, effectively making it a monopoly in the process, and only started to earn money on it when there was no way any other alternative would come up and endanger it.
If you ignore this, YouTube Premium is a pretty good offer. And I personally like the fact that I support content creators, without the need of watching ads that are nothing more than cancer for society.
That said, I would still prefer YouTube to return to its roots and separate from Google, since it's pretty much possible for it to stand on its own right now, I guess.
Because it’s £15 in the uk ?
- They speak of sharing with others, so they're talking about the family plan, so it's actually £20 in the UK.
In Germany, the family plan costs €23.99, but the worst part is that even when you pay for it, there are still ads from the creators within the videos. Essentially, you’re paying for nothing, not to mention that they are much more expensive than all other video platforms.
Because it’s $15 in the us? lol