Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish

Don't assume ineptitude.

I've been in the position of being asked to implement an anti-feature. I made it take as long as possible to drive up the cost and designed it to be trivially bypassable because I'm not motivated to intentionally trash my own project.

If only they could do the same for Twitch

Firefox + ublock origin = I haven't had to do anything for the last year and stuff just gets blocked with no downsides.

deleted by creator

I had that problem as well, I had to make sure I didn't have any other blockers/privacy/enhancer addons that changed YouTube in some way, after that, ublock worked properly again.

Next you’ll tell me cognito mode isn’t keeping my browsing completely private! /s

Surely they'll actually comply, not be caught in an audit years down the line and given a friendly "Now now, we talked about this: don't get caught breaking the law again!" slap on the wrist for failing to delete and instead further monetising that data?

Ads should be separate from content and not interfere with it. Ad blockers likely wouldn't be a thing if this were followed. Also, ad networks are a security issue. Host them on your own servers with relationships with advertisers if you must have them.

Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Luxembourg, and others have it as part of law that Works Councils get 33% of the seats on the board of directors, and employees are elected to take up those roles. In Slovenia, Germany, and Slovakia, it is as high as 50%. That's the kind of ownership we should demand and then some, where average people get to have a say in what's going on at YouTube. Then maybe we'd get more ethical business decisions and choices we'd be more on board with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors

Perhaps ads become more unreasonable because so many people block them that those who do watch them are forced to pick up the slack?

If you read around you'll find (perhaps surprisingly to you) that YouTube operates at a loss. So in response to your points:

1. You can pay to get the ads removed. They make less money off of you when they can't serve you ads, and I'm sure they're trying to operate at less of a loss.
2. Alphabet is a public company, and it must release certain information about YouTube. Anyways, I'm pretty sure they aren't using the money to directly line the shareholder profits. The reality of it is that it's probably just another arm that Alphabet uses as part of its monopolistic tech deathgrip, so it's not gonna be a straightforward computation. Maybe Disney could be used as a metaphor here?

If you don't wanna pay to support that, I don't exactly blame you. But practically, I don't really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return. Either you eat ads, you pay for a subscription, or you become the product (unfortunately this last point might be true irregardless).

People despise ads, but then they want content for free.

You have it perfectly backwards: YouTube wants content for free, and to not have to share any but the most pitiful fractions of ad income with the ACTUAL content creators.

YouTube does not produce content, others do. YouTube has gone out of its way to dick the vast majority of them, especially the smaller ones, to the point that as such, unless you have a Patreon, a website or store of your own, corporate sponsors, merch, or some other side hustle in addition to making YouTube content, you're literally making content for a fraction of a penny per view, and entirely at your own cost.

And even then, you're subject to an algorithm over which you have no control and which can just as fickly ban your content to oblivion as it can raise your content to the multi-million views club. By skipping YouTube ads and finding other ways to support the content creators I enjoy, I help give my creators a financial buffer from the unpredictable vagaries of the algorithm and also withhold reward from YouTube as well.

When YouTube shared ad revenue with content creators in a much more equal fashion, I did not have a problem with their ads. But several years ago -- I want to say six or seven, but it's been going on for at least ten -- YouTube got greedy with the ads AND with becoming incredibly unstable and unreliable for creators in all manner of ways AND decreasing payouts to creators all along the way, at which point it became clear that me watching an ad or not no longer affects the content creators I enjoy at all. And they are the only reason I am on YouTube to begin with.

(And don't get me started on all the copyright/demonetization scams there are on YouTube now: I have a friend who got a copyright strike for playing a C scale on a piano because some asshole claimed it and YouTube lets them do it: even when a creator gets views, they can get demonetized at a drop of a hat even for obviously ridiculous claims, and then that revenue goes to the person making the copyright claim. Win/win for everyone except the person who actually made the content.)

Over the years, YouTube has never failed to excel at two things: server space, and fucking its golden geese, the creators of the actual content, without which no one would be making any money there at all. So get back to us when YouTube recognizes the creators of the gold mine they have in the content hosted there, and once again finds a way to respect for the amount of time and effort and cost that goes into creating that content by sharing revenue with content creators in a more equitable manner.

TL;DR: Why should I watch ANY YouTube ads at all when I can support content creators via Patreon or a creator's website and know that a much more equitable amount of that revenue will go straight to the creator of that content, where it belongs?

[...] you aren't willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you're entitled to content?

You CANNOT pay for your content there, even if you want to.

Has it never occurred to you that YouTube gets all their content FOR FREE?

You can only pay to make Google even richer. That's all your money can do there. Nothing else.

I totally agree. I am a Youtube Premium user for this exact reason. No ads means less financial incentive to track me (I remember a statistic where one user was worth 4cents per year, could be wrong about the exact number though). In a perfect world we would habe monetization networks instead of ad networks, on a pay per view or subscription model instead of ads. This would not only make the companies more money, but also reduce the incentive for them to track you (I would even claim that unnecessary tracking would hurt their business).

We can either have a free (as in no costs) or a free (as in liberty) internet, not both

If you aren't willing to eat ads, and you aren't willing to be the product, and you aren't willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you're entitled to content?

You’re overthinking things. I click one button once and I never see ads, for years at a time without needing to tweak it at all. This is also completely free to set up and completely legal.

The fact of the matter is that this technology exists, and they can do nothing to stop it. Despite this, they continue to rely on the ad supported model. Curious, no?

then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?

Because if I post a link to a video and as a result someone sees an ad —or better, signs up for premium—then boom, they just made a profit. There is of course a critical threshold of adblockers where this no longer works but we’re not near it yet so they won’t change their revenue model.

Note: I am not taking a moral high ground here, just pointing out how it works. Yes, you are subsidizing me, thanks for that.

I'll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium

I've thought about doing this, but worry about it fucking up my recommendations, which I'm actually pretty happy with. Do you know if that's an issue?

Nah I prefer Libretube.

Did you install it from fdroid? There is a problem in fdroid version that crashes app when trying to play video. Its already fixed on github but fdroid is slow to update.

Hey I had a lot of problem with invidious how can u mitigate the long loading times and what about the front page ... it changes content maybe once a day yeah I know I probably consume too much yt but it's pretty annoying to search for content manually...

Use Altstore and sideload uYouPlus

Use a product not designed to remove all control from you as its number one core design principle

But replacing Youtube is sadly much harder.

I bet we'll just get better ad blockers.

See ya when you need a video on how to fix something, a review releases, or you get sent a video from a friend.

Jesus Christ, man. I said Youtube isn't perfect. It's a fucking corp. They should burn the board of directors at the stake. HOWEVER, creators still rely on payment from them.

Okay it's clearly imperfect but I don't see other similar platforms doing any better (most are doing much worse, e.g TikTok/Twitch)

A decentralized alternative would be nice but, I don't see many ad-block users out here donating their own $ to these projects

That's where everyone gets ad data wrong. Youtube doesn't really care if you watch an ad or not. The ad buyers do, and so Youtube keeps them happy by doing things like disallowing adblockers, but Youtube doesn't give a shit about BolexForSoup. Your age, your sex, your location, and the last time you upgraded the Macbook you are logging onto their site with, that's what they want to know. They want to sell your data, not you. They will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to the pile and sell the whole pile. No one will care who you are. You are the product, and Youtube just needs to make sure your ingredient label is correct.

There's still an enormous amount of great content on youtube. You don't need to watch the commercial shit.

yousay free but none of the operations and technology that support the possibility to even receive and globally distribute that content along with the plethora of features are free, nor free to run.

Fuck off.