YouTube Free Is Silently Testing 5 Ads, Instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Free Is Silently Testing 5 Ads, Instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

gizmochina.com

26 pointsCharlesW21 comments

About two or three weeks ago there was a thread on Reddit that said something like "The first person to piss off a million people the fastest gets a billion dollars. How would you do it?" And the top comment was "Get a job at YouTube and add 5 unskipable ads"

And using Vanced on Android while ReVanced is on the works.

I am always amazed that people put up with this when ad-free alternatives like NewPipe and FreeTube exist.

Is there something on YouTube.com (other than the videos) which users can't do without?

Very good. I spend too much time on youtube this should encourage me to cut back on that.

use ublock origin and you will continue to spend as much as time and still not be bothered by ads....

And either Youtube Vanced or Newpipe if you are watching on Android

newpipe + sponsorblock. vanced is dead if i remember correctly. plain newpipe is not good enough imo

I'm recently seeing 8 unskippable ads on my smart TV's YouTube app. These are short 5-10 second ads and only appear on videos in certain categories like travel that I've noticed so far.

I can't believe people are using YT without ublock origin. It is such an improvement.

I'm also surprised that YT hasn't worked around it. It's just a matter of time I guess...

I imagine it'll be much like the old days of dialup where I would turn the computer on, go do something, come back and connect to the ISP, then go away again for a few minutes.

uBlock Origin

SponsorBlock (blocks sponsor segments as well as filler content like intros, outros, jokes, etc)

ReVanced (or Vanced while it still works)

These are all you need to remove ads on YouTube. This is also the reason why I won't use Chrome with their Manifest v3 extension mandate, Firefox all day.

I’ve seen unskippable ads that are a combined total of a few minutes long. People reporting on this have said they are five short ads.

Isn’t this rather pointless news if the five ads add up to the length of the two ads? Has anybody figured this out before reacting?

If it's five unskippable 6-second ads, that's 30 seconds of unskippable ads. The skip point for Youtube ads has always been around 5 seconds, so that's 25 seconds longer than it was back when you just got one skippable ad.

My experience has been that when I get two ads, they allow you to skip, or they're a few seconds long.

I must have been hit by this change this week, got hammered by ads and got angry. Signed up for youtube premium. Sorry everyone, I'm ruining this experiment.

Maximize profits with infinite number of ads per video.

I love ads; they tell me what to buy to improve my life.

Just wait for the next big video sharing service to emerge, hoping that it will not be acquired by a MAGMA too soon.

Don't wait and expect third parties to build the perfect world for you, they won't. Take the matter in your own hands, use Libre Software and services: https://joinpeertube.org/

Is there an Android smart tv YouTube app with a decent UI and built-in adblock?

Update: I should take a look at NewPipe.

Smarttubenext. It's awesome and has everything you need for an enjoyable experience

Thanks for the pointer, looks great!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com