PSA To people watching YouTube with AdBlockers

You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now

There’s already a workaround (found, again, here), but I figured I would use this opportunity to tell people that projects like Piped and Invidious exist, which both allow you to watch YouTube without loading their ads, with improved Privacy and (in the case of Piped) even Geoblocking-Circumvention and SponsorBlock out of the box.

They’re both great tools, and using something like LibRedirect you can even automatically go to Piped or Invidious when clicking/opening a YouTube link (and more).

Both don’t load ads, but unless changed in the settings Individous may still make connections to Google/YouTube to load the video(s) themselves.

Bit of a shameless plug for these projects, but I figured this is a really good time to show these projects as I often see people asking what they are in threads on here

bufalo1973,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

I wish PeerTube gained enough traction to be the competition of YT. I hate that Google think they know you better than yourself and uses that broken algorithm to send you thing you don’t want to see. If I tell 5 times I don’t want something a correct algorithm would say “I’m not sending you any more of this” instead of trying other 100 times to make you swallow the videos they want.

rush,

Absolutely agreed, I would love for peertube to take off

Mio,

Youtube is just the database with video. Just use a different frontend. The problem is if I actually want recommended videos but without Google knowing about it, then it is hard due to the massive amount of videos. Only Google have the money so scan everything.

bufalo1973,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

And Google can pull the plug on the database whenever they want, just like Reddit or Twitter did with third party apps.

Mio,

Yes, they can, like any other company or organization can. But they can’t remove the humans producing. That means the humans will just go anywhere else. Youtube is a standalone product that they probalby want to keep as I think it pays for itself with that amount of ads.

flop_leash_973,

In my opinion anything that is just a frontend for Youtube is just a bandaid, and if they get to much attention Google will make using them increasingly untenable.

The real answer is moving to competing platforms outside of Googles control.

rush,

Currently that is quite hard, because despite YouTube being an utterly insane business model it has prevailed so far.

I would love for an alternative, I personally really like PeerTube and the Fediverse in general, but mass adoption ain’t there yet :(

newIdentity,

That’s not possible though. There simply is no content on other platforms and they generally aren’t as good as YouTube and probably never will be.

The only platform I could see to rival YouTube in the future is Twitch

spader312,

Nebula at least for educational content

clb92,

Nebula has about 10.000 videos, from only select creators. Youtube has around 1 billion videos, and everyone can upload. Nebula is not actually a Youtube alternative unless you’re in one of two specific target audiences:

  1. Already established educational content creator looking for alternative platform
  2. Person watching educational video content and not much else

I don’t see Nebula opening up their site to everyone and letting anyone upload content any time soon, and for that reason I don’t see them as a Youtube competitor at all. They’ve found their niche with curated quality over quantity.

Fun fact: The difference between 10.000 and 1 billion is… around 1 billion.

Double_A,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I wouldn’t really mind a smaller pool of videos, if it’s guaranteed to have a standard of quality.

I’d even pay for YouTube if they offered such a service, where they curate their creators. E.g. I sometimes like to watch repair channels where someone tinkers with something. I have a handful of channels that I like for that… but what if there are many more that I just can’t find?

AProfessional,

YouTube is insanely large in size and scope but…

The key is just a platform that actually pays creators.

Nebula is one I expect to succeed for its niche.

Something like Floatplane with direct subscriptions is an option too.

newIdentity,

Yeah haven’t thought of that, but they aren’t really YouTube alternatives. You don’t use them instead of YouTube, but as an addition.

euphoric_cat,
@euphoric_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

there is odysee and peertube that I know are direct alternatives, the only thing is every competitor has the same problem of becoming an alt right echo chamber

newIdentity,

They aren’t as good as YouTube though and that’s the problem. YouTube isn’t great. It’s just the best platform like this that we have.

euphoric_cat,
@euphoric_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

youtube… “good?”…??? odysee is actually pretty good besides the right wing stuff

newIdentity,

You’ve never uploaded a video to YouTube have you? Their creator tools are actually incredible and their stats are a good way to tune their videos. Of course you shouldn’t completely rely on them.

Also it isn’t just the content. I rather use YouTube over Odysse, even if it’s the same content. It’s such a better experience, especially on mobile. Odysee is on the level YouTube was 10 years ago.

Also making a free video streaming site isn’t really profitable. I don’t know if YouTube still isn’t profitable, but I’ve read reports from 2015 that it still wasn’t profitable.

It makes sense that they now try to push things that make them money. They wouldn’t push ads so hard if they weren’t desperate.

euphoric_cat,
@euphoric_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

never cared about any of it, only talking about the viewing experience anyway

newIdentity,

But most people aren’t you.

euphoric_cat,
@euphoric_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

most people aren’t uploading videos and even using those special tools, most people are watching

newIdentity,

Most people want a great discovering experience and viewing experience and a good looking and smooth UI.

Odysee feels laggy as hell.

HerrLewakaas,

Lemmy users are just delusional in that regard. You can’t just switch away from Google, its not the tech that makes in great, its the content. It’s the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?

Thankfully the only creator I regularly watch that does non-educational videos uploads them on their own website. For everything else nebula actually is an alternative, although I’m not subscribed to it at the moment

sphere_au,

The alternative exists, but it costs money. Most big YouTuber accounts (at least the ones I’m subscribed to) post on either Nebula, Patreon or some platform like that. It would cost quite a lot to subscribe to them all, but still less than YouTube premium in my country. So in the worst case scenario where YouTube really blocks all ad free interfaces except paid use, that’s my answer. I don’t like it as I think a lot of the content is overpriced for what it is, but it’s better than having $$$ swallowed up by some mega corporation that is just interested in screwing authors and viewers over as much as possible.

Kevnyon,
@Kevnyon@lemmy.world avatar

It’s the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?

This is so difficult. How many people would be willing to switch to Signal or Wickr for one friend? And then what if none of their friends don’t want to switch? And then the friends of those people, etc. Trying to switch workgroups, family, friends and all of their friends as well is a lost cause, it would never happen.

octochamp,

that’s why what we really need is guaranteed service interoperability!

pca.st/…/d79ca535-186c-4ee0-b658-165a148dcca5

Kase,

Maybe it’s unlikely for this to happen, but I wonder if it’d be possible for yt to go down like reddit did. Yt makes a series of bad decisions, so a lot of people move from there to similar platforms. The other services don’t have much content right now, but from what I here, neither did Lemmy before the “exodus.”

I get that reddit and youtube are very different types of platforms and that the whole reddit thing happened because of pretty specific circumstances, but idk, maybe something vaguely similar could happen.

Double_A,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

First reddit didn’t go down, despite having an user base which had some kind of a brain.

While YouTube has everyone as users. Even like the most normie, boomer, zoomer users that think YouTube is the internet. No way they are going to switch for ideological reasons, unless the app just stops working.

reinar,
@reinar@distress.digital avatar

Yt makes a series of bad decisions

It’s not like it’s making any bad decisions right now. Pretty calculated, I’d say - they feel safe market-wise, so they can increase amount of ads/fight ad-blockers/push people to buy subscription.

Kase,

Oh yeah I don’t disagree. The wording was unclear, but I meant that more in the future/hypothetical tense. It just seems like that’s what all the big social media sites have been doing lately, so I was assuming that yt’s quality will take a nosedive sooner or later, but I guess it’s unfair (and hopefully wrong) to assume that. Thx for the correction

reinar,
@reinar@distress.digital avatar

I get where you are coming from, however it’s important to remember that big players are not equal - they have really, really different people in the leadership. Elmo is just a too-big-to-fall clown with insane ego, spez is a manchild who took VC money like there’s no tomorrow and in the end had no idea how to provide ROI, but youtube is ran by very competent people with solid track record and deep pockets.

Maybe they are not too innovative business-wise recently… but they are good at catching up (except live streaming - screen layout is dogshit and nobody wants to get hyped in their tiny chatbox from a fucking google account with family photo as an avatar) and at leveraging what they already have, which is quite a lot, tbh.

SoBoredAtWork,

“go down like Reddit did” … But did Reddit “go down”? It definitely lost users and content quality dropped, but still, everyone I talk to (that isn’t a total nerd like us lemmings) still uses Reddit and has no idea what Lemmy is.

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT,

I was going to try and contradict you, but I guess most of the people I know well IRL are also total nerds

SoBoredAtWork,

Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn’t use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn’t seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.

fosstulate,
@fosstulate@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

You should refer her to Cory Doctorow’s writing, namely his concept of enshittification. He’s one of the most effective political communicators alive today. If anyone can get her to understand the import of the issues surrounding Reddit’s Simple Jack routine, it’s him.

SoBoredAtWork,

I know the term enshitification, so maybe I’ve already read his stuff. I’m going to check it out more. Thanks!

Kase,

Y’know, good point. I haven’t actually been on reddit since the blackout, so I probably shouldn’t be confidently basing any theories on just what I’ve heard about now-reddit from other people, lol. Thanks for the correction.

I guess my idea of how much reddit “fell” and how much Lemmy/Mastodon grew is a bit inflated, probably because I spend all my internet time here now.

SoBoredAtWork,

(copy/pasted my response to another comment)

Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn’t use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn’t seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.

dangblingus,

Using FF with UBO, absolutely no problems. “May detect”? I’m pretty sure they either can or can’t. They’re not going to detect some FF with UBO and not others. The only thing that may affect whether or not you’re detected is if you’re using a VPN or other encryption.

rush,

uBlock Origin’s default lists with both Firefox and uBO being on their latest is currently undetected. By that I mean they’ve already released fixes.

rush,

They will actually, as they’re looking for specific things to be blocked/altered using JavaScript that is easily affected by enabling certain custom lists. In case you don’t believe me, you can look on uBO’s official statement regarding this.

turbowafflz,

Well it detects it for me and I am neither using a VPN nor any additional encryption. I’m guessing it’s just their normal thing of slowly rolling out changes instead of to every user at once.

filefly,

Congrats, you’ve managed to make a post in which nothing makes sense

Iam,

Libredirect is really nice. Question: Can it bypass the front page without being turned off, then back on for links opened in tabs etc? Can’t work out if it can.

rush,

The extension menu has “redirect” and “back to original” buttons (or something similar, can’t check cuz I’m on mobile rn)

You could use this to visit the homepage and then let new tabs/videos redirect

brax,

Your link to “Piped” doesn’t work for me on mobile. I think you accidentally put some asterisks at the start of it.

rush,

weird, my formatting might be messed up

Try again in a bit, I’ve tried to fix it :)

brax,

Yeah, it’s good now 👍

Lemmling,

Thank you! I am making a comment so I can find this thread later.

glibg10b,

Why not just save the post?

Lemmling,

I see the option now, Thanks 😄

ebenixo,

yea just stop opening youtube urls period. i didn’t know bout libredirect thanks, there is addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/invidioucious/ too

BrioxorMorbide,

Unless people mass-migrate away from Chrome-based browsers (basically everything expect Firefox) Google will at one point enable their Web Environment Integrity thing, force all other browsers to enable it too because otherwise a lot of websites will stop working in them, and no alternative frontend will have access to the video streams anymore.

sphere_au,

Web environment integrity is a non-starter because it offers avenues for bad actors to enforce “integrity” that forces malware to be loaded as well as legitimate page elements. However, that doesn’t mean Google won’t keep trying to stop ad blockers, alternative interfaces etc in the future.

spark947,

Perhaps, but eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google. But I agree, we need regulation to determine to ensure that programs calling themselves web browsers will have to adhere to standards, and not be based on features that make certain websites work only on their browser. I think the backlash reaction to implementing “integrity” as a standard was really healthy. But there is still a lot of action to take on the regulatory front.

BrioxorMorbide,

eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google

Which won’t matter (for access from third-party apps), because to be accepted by websites they need to prove their trustworthiness, so you can’t just use a different one to circumvent it.

spark947,

It can be very similar to the TLS scheme we use today, where certificates are signed by regulated CA’s. The only difference is that currently there is no regulation to ensure that Google will build chrimium to trust other authorities for browser integrity other than itself. That is definitely a major concern. Fortunately, I don’t think that it is long term viable. First, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple would be extremely unhappy with this scheme. That’s right off the bat. So there will definitely be resistance on that front because eventually it would do something like break youtube compatibility with Firefox.

Now, I do think that it is plausible that these organizations could come to a agreement that is still ultimately bad for web browsers. There fore, this should be considered by government regulators as something to pay attention to. I’m not too pessimistic about them doing this. There us political will to preserve the open internet, especially in the EU. It looks like the US is also set to re-adopt net neutrality rules. So, im just not as pessimistic about it.

The only issue is that in the short-term, alot of these services that are free are going to degrade. This is what we are seeing with youtube. That is too bad, but I am hopeful and optimistic that it will lead to a more open internet. The fact that we are having this conversation on a decentralized social network is a positive sign.

BrioxorMorbide,

It still doesn’t matter. A website can choose which attestors to trust (if they had to trust all of them the whole thing would be useless), so Youtube can just deny access to the video streams to anything that isn’t a trusted browser environment, and anything third party like Invidious, Piped, Newpipe, Freetube… won’t be able to work anymore.

spark947,

Well yeah. But those clients could ultimately just say they are firefox if Mozilla is open enough, which they tend to be. It ends when Google decides that stuff like YouTube should only work on chrome. That would be bad, and I think regulators would treat it as bad, especially the EU.

Just to be clear, I don’t think forcing this standard down everyone’s throats for naked commercial reasons is a good idea either.

BrioxorMorbide,

IIRC the proposal includes some crypto-handshake verification to make sure the attestor is who it claims to be, so no, apps can’t just fake it. Or, if some of those secret keys leak and apps use it, sites won’t accept it anymore.

spark947,

It’s a question of trust. Google will select the certificates they trust for the services they provide, and the entities that own those certificates will decide what do to with them. If they trust a certificate from Mozilla, and Mozilla agrees to make that certificate open to everyone for instance, than Google’s only choice is to stop trusting it. But if Mozilla decides that is the certificate Firefox will use, than Google has to choose kicking off Firefox as well as other third party apps. Same with Microsoft and Apple, but I think Mozilla is more likely to oppose this kind of standard rather than try to reach some kind of agreement with Google.

The other way that this could play out every browser dev makes some kind of arrangement. Very unstable when we are talking about competitors.

At the end of the day, it requires a level of co-operation with the browser developers and internet service providers that I don’t think a lot of people will go for, for various reasons. Especially not regulators. I guess I am just more optimistic about the open internet.

yuunikki,

deleted_by_author

    •
    grumpyrico,

    Watching Videos without adds and keeping your data private is the point.

    Glad i can help

    yuunikki,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    grumpyrico,

    Just get premium then … Sorry to tell ya

    yuunikki,

    As if I’d pay for YouTube

    grumpyrico,

    You’re funny

    rush,

    me when I loose my downloads — locally saved downloads from YouTube — after 3 days of inactivity

    rush,

    No, but subscriptions can be imported manually.

    The point is to not load tracking tech YouTube ships with as well as staying relatively anonymous.

    frogbellyratbone_,
    @frogbellyratbone_@hexbear.net avatar

    just as a heads up i did the workaround linked in OP’s post and it worked for me

    piped fucking rules tho

    cricbuzz,

    FYI, that ‘Piped’ link in your post ain’t workin homie

    Looks like you put in “hexbear.net/post/**https://github.com/…/piped”

    rush,

    why would I put a hexbear link when I’m on lemm.ee? 🤔

    I’d double-check this isn’t an issue on your end, I can’t reproduce it here.

    BenLeMan,

    Thank you all for the great suggestions. I’ve been using NewPipe on my phone for a while now. Do any of these YT alternatives come with support for 1440p resolution? I noticed Invidious is capped at 1080p and sometimes struggles to maintain a stable nitrate at high resolution.

    rush,

    Both take resolutions and streams directly from YouTube, my guess is that it may vary a bit depending on the settings the instance host set.

    stardust,

    On newpipe if you go to settings > Video and audio there is an option for show higher resolutions.

    BenLeMan,

    Thank you for your response, but I was thinking more about the desktop implementations. Resolution is fine on my phone but I would like to max out my 37" WQHD screen.

    stardust,

    I haven’t found a good alternative to going directly to YouTube when it comes to resolution offerings on desktop.

    HeavyRaptor,

    Do any of Piped/invidious/freetube work in 4k? Every time I try these out the quality options seem quite bad. I would be happy to self host if it meant working 4k videos. Are there instances that do 4k, or is this just a limitation of the tech?

    rush,

    It proxies content, so whatever it can get from YouTube should be displayable, my guess is that its possible but most instances do not enable it for bandwidth and performance reasons

    p000l,

    mpv and yt-dl user reporting in. What ads are we talking about?

    Churbleyimyam,

    What is your process for watching a video? For me to do it like this I currently have to copy the link, open a terminal, download the video with yt-dlp, navigate to the file, open it and then watch it. And then usually delete it. I’m curious if there is a faster or simpler way…

    gkpy,

    mpv has an integration with ytdl (and forks), which should let you just open the url and stream it directly

    akrot,

    Isn’t the speed limited though? Last time I checked it buffered for so long, the watching experience was not continuous.

    bort,

    yt-dl has a speedlimit. yt-dlp has not.

    sounddrill,

    Even vlc does this iirc

    Churbleyimyam,

    I got it working with yt-dlp. I had to reinstall mpv as a flatpak from flathub; it wouldn’t work with a package install from my repo or a flatpak from fedora. I think at least as of yesterday it needed to be a very up-to-date release. Posting in case this helps someone else.

    p000l,

    There are many browser extensions to choose from.

    NahMarcas,

    Piped.video

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