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Comment by 0000000000100 | Hacker News Reader

If there was one thing I wish Twitch would change, it’s the entry ads to streams. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve closed the tab while browsing for something to watch because I get an unskipable 30 second ad before I even get to see if there’s something worth watching.

For reference, Twitch has invested very heavily in anti adblockers and it’s pretty difficult to sidestep the ads these days without paying $5/month for a subscription.

Compare this to streaming on YouTube, which has a (much) worse UI, but tolerates ad blockers and lets you watch the parts of the steam you missed. I’m not optimistic that Twitch will be able to survive if YouTube manages to get their shit together and make a half decent UI.

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The worst part is they put more effort into stopping adblockers than they do into actually selling ads, so the ads they force you to watch are endlessly repeated from a tiny pool. It's just Squarespace ad after Squarespace ad after Squarespace ad, punctuated by filler ads for other Amazon properties like Audible because they haven't sold enough real ads to fill the space.

FWIW there is a GitHub repo [0] which keeps track of currently-working ways to block Twich ads. If you don't need chat, ff2mpv [1] can be used to send streams directly to MPV by right clicking on them in the browser. This bypasses the entire proprietary Twitch frontend and displays a silent purple screen during ad breaks.

[0] https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ff2mpv/

They don’t tell you this on the whole, but there is an adfree turbo subscription: https://www.twitch.tv/turbo

Which does nothing [1] for the streamers you actually watch, only for Twitch itself.

"Paying" the streamer for the ad(s) being not shown due to Turbo, i.e. fractions of a cent. If you're mainly watching 1-2 streamers subscribing directly to them does more for them for almost the same money. The streamer is still only getting 50% of the sub fee but at least that's ~ $2.50 rather than a few cents per month for many hours of watched content.

I know (and I support many streamers actually, 4 on a permanent basis) but in some cases it is useful.

I stopped using it when my Prime subscription no longer removed ads.

I was a very regular user, 2-4 hours a day, then boom, forced ads, and I never went back.

I know this isn't going to be the most popular solution, but I find that Twitch Turbo isn't much discussed. I think it's $8 and eliminates ads from all channels. It may make more sense financially for some viewers, but it doesn't support any streamers.

If you think UI is whats holding Youtube back you dont understand anything about the space.

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