YouTube is killing one of its most annoying features in April | Hacker News Reader

YouTube is killing one of its most annoying features in April

androidcentral.com

19 pointsKomoD44 comments

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It's overlay ads, for folks who don't want to click through.

click-bite title should be edited to reflect this.

What's that? I use NewPipe

NewPipe + selfhosted SponsorBlock + uBlock Origin + locally hosted DNS w/ filter lists and DNS intercept.

RSS feeds for platforms that still support it. JavaScript-stripping proxies like Nitter for those that don't.

Sometimes I even turn off media loading. I like my internet to look more like a newspaper (before they were filled with ads too) than a blinking neon casino.

I like your style. What do you use for RSS?

Maybe they can wait till the video finished before blocking 75% of it with suggestion overlays too.. of course then the buffer some videos have at the end would be unless, but still ok.

some of the best YouTube videos are those that just run for 1-2 minutes and get straight to the point in answering a question you have or showing how something is done

the overlay suggestions that they show have many times obscured the actual content of the video

I am amazed this feature did not get killed instantly

every pixel and every frame of a video is potentially useful content...how can they force overlays that cannot be turned off or dismissed

Original source: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/204945026/

Does this include the Youtube TV offer that I have to decline every couple of days?

Probably not

I was hoping for “Shorts”

I was, too. Shorts are a serious plague on my YouTube experience. I really wish there were a way I could filter them out.

The following UBlock Origin filter works for filtering shorts on my subscription page:

  www.youtube.com##yt-icon.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer.style-scope:not([hidden]):upward(6)

Alas, I do not use a browser to watch YouTube.

You could use revanced!

When I read the title, I thought for a second that they are killing the censorship “feature”. I find it quite annoying.

Could this be rewritten as “YouTube recognized that making ads so annoying that YouTube was unusable without an ad blocker made people install ad blockers, thus making even the unobtrusive ads go away”?

I wish I could turn my screen off while using the app without having to pay

I wish I could go to a supermarket and take whatever I want without having to pay /s.

I generally dislike Google's business strategy, but I do like YouTube Premium. YouTube gives me a lot more value than any other streaming service, and I'm happy there's an option to pay for an ad-free experience.

I do wish for that. However that isn't the same as streaming with the screen off. Phone batteries drain far too quickly.

NewPipe

on iOS?

I get your analogy but I would not say it's the same thing, is it?

Sometimes when I listen to something on Youtube, I put my phone away while doing something else. So I don't see the ad either way, I just hear it.

The only difference this makes is my phone lasting longer.

burning watts to punish a non-paying customer is a pretty crummy strategy towards the world at large, not just the leech of a user.

I like the feature that turning the screen off pauses the app. It is an easy way to pause the video when I want to direct my attention elsewhere. I have refused to sign up for paid since I don't want to lose the feature.

Revanced

Good luck installing it and getting it to work

Works without issue for me, on both of my phones, both rooted and non-root.

As reported on a Web site with overlay adverts, which disrupt the reader being able to read the article.

That's all well and good, but I'd prefer a way to let us hide "mixes" and "shorts".

Instead, they've actually removed the ability to select "not interested" using the Android app. Clicking the button to do so simply plays the mix! Very vexing.

I've never seen the overlay ads (because I use Premium), but from their description, they sound like exactly the sort of ads that broadcast TV stations started doing. Those ads are what got me to stop watching broadcast TV.

Huh, these were the oldest youtube ads, they used to just have the "ads by google text ads" in a box back in the day youtube let you have custom CSS for your profile.

Perhaps I have seen them, but forgot all about them? I don't know. But I watched very nearly zero YouTube videos before I signed up for premium, because the ads put me off. That the ads put me off implies that I did see the overlay ones and have blocked the memory of them from my mind.

In any case, I don't know precisely what they are and am assuming they're like the ones broadcast TV uses.

I understand that there's a weird critical mass issue with adblocking. If everyone blocked ads, they'd do more to either paywall everything or fight harder against the blockers. That said, in a harmful world, we should be taking defensive action. Nobody should be using YouTube or anything else on the internet without adblocking.

To be fair to YouTube, they at least give you the option of giving them money to make the ads go away.. except sponsored videos.

So, no chance of YT banning ads that have double the video's volume?

Nothing will ever be more annoying than in-video sponsorships

Yes. Tell me all about this magical VPN service. I'll be listening while I look for the jump-ten-seconds button.

SponsorBlock is a good solution.

Really? Nothing?! I much prefer skippable in-video sponsorships that pay the creator directly over biddable ads or paywalls.

And if this really bothers you, there's this Firefox extension to skip them:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

But YouTube has no control over those.

They make the rules? They can "outlaw" those any time they wish and ban anyone not complying.

And if crap funded by cheap airbuds, sketchy VPNs (reliant on fear-mongering/false advertising), pay-to-win mobile games, etc goes away with it that's even better.

That's far more of a risk for YT to get rid of these than you expect...

Most YT creators earn about jack shit from views on the platform itself. Like, maybe if you have a fair amount of viewers you could earn $1000 on a view that likely cost you that much to produce. The in video sponsors cost YT nothing AND keep people on the platform without them having to pay.

Take it away and all of a sudden you may leave an opening for a competitor to show up.

Even worse, you may get taken to court via some anti-trust ruling.

They could, I suppose. But actually doing so would be pretty disastrous for a lot of smaller YouTubers who derive income from their channels. I would consider that a loss, as the smaller channels are the only things on YouTube that I find valuable. If they went away, I would too.

If ads have to happen, I prefer those to the one YouTube does because at least those aren't tracking me.

I can't believe that I'm arguing in favor of ads here. Strange days indeed. But I'm not in favor of ads, just pointing out the tradeoffs involved.

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