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Comment by vram22 | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays while watching videos in YouTube, I get more occurrences of ads, even in short videos, compared to just a few days back. Very irritating. Started looking out for other options than YouTube.

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I often forget YouTube even has any ads, but then again I am using uBlock Origin.

Youtube without uBlock origin is a traumatizing experience, and it's gotten worse in the last month or so. It went from bearable to let's plug the laptop to the TV unbearable. A couple of weeks ago, I had 3 blocks of ads in 10 minute-videos for the first time. Now, I have 3 blocks of ad (before/middle/after) in 5 minute videos.

What boggles my mind is that for many many people this is their lived experience. They experience an internet inundated by ads. It's in equal parts incredible, sad and depressing.

Shakes fist at sky.

Saying that as someone who has always used ad blockers but is also paying for the youtube premium family plan.

Seeing normal people navigating the Internet is always a sobering experience. The way they use it is so far from my own that I learned to stop relying on my instincts when arguing about a website feature.

Yeah, I was staying at an Airbnb last week and they had a TV with YouTube. Absolutely horrendous, I couldn't get through a short video without it being cut in the middle. Was quite a shock after getting so used to Ublock.

I find it infinitely amusing the number of people, in HN for God's sake, that DO NOT use uBlock origin on every device they own. Every time I read that "40% of people use adblockers", I think about the average HN user and say to myself: "No way that stat is real".

if only there was a way to block ads on WebOS on a LG TV...

I only consume YouTube via its official app on the TV. There are no alternatives that allow ad blocking.

It's utter shit without Premium... And I'm saying this while holding some non marginal number of GOOGL class A..

Smartvs are a joke. Once again: it amazes me that I'm an exception among this crowd, in having a laptop connected to my living room TV HDMI port 100% of the time. It's my workstation, and it's my entertainment center. Wireless mouse + wireless keyboard, the ultimate input medium. Whyyyyy don't ALL tech savy people do this is beyond my comprehension.

i have my desktop pc connected to a tv hdmi port (and playstation and a raspberry pi) and i can plug my laptop in with vga too but i have it networked to my pc anyway and don't bother much. i used to use a wireless keyboard but it made me too lazy to sit at the desk and work.

I perform my daily work duties on a computer, I’m (mentally) done with them by the time I get to relax.

I never see ads however, YouTube is not really a tv worthy outlet for me and otherwise I just AirPlay it (ad blocked).

The solution, is unfortunately, to get a smart stick, such as the Android TV Chromecast or Nvidia Shield, to have Android and sideload all the apps you want.

Right, for now that still works

They got me to pay for premium just to avoid ads. But I’m really struggling to justify paying for it, and its more likely that I’ll abandon the platform altogether.

I'm paying and I find it worth it because YT Music is included so I could cancel my Spotify subscription.

Yep same here. If Apple had something similar to YouTube I’d ditch paying them tho for Apple one

Only a matter of time now before Premium goes from no-ads to 'reduced-ads' ... bet on it

I've actually started to get short ads (3-4s) on YT starting about 3-4 months ago even though I've been paying YT premium for years at $18/month. I realized it's only when I cast it to my TV, so maybe that's how they can get away with it. It doesn't happen every time but was still pretty pissed about it.

> .. only when I cast it to my TV

Was it a LG TV? it could be the LG's own ad.

No it's clearly within Youtube, you can see the countdown within the app. My TV is over 10 years old and I've never seen an ad like this.

It might be the casting depending on the device. I believe casting just refers a url to the device. Since you're not logged in there it will not know you have premium. TV apps where you can log in should work fine.

I don't think that's it because when I tried casting YT from an account that doesn't have Premium, I get way more ads, i.e. 10-20x as many, and much longer ads, just like in the app, so maybe 100x the total ad time. When I cast with YT Premium they're literally 2-3 second ads, and they occur very rarely, so it looks to me that these ads are specifically "calibrated" for YT Premium subscribers, maybe on the order of 1% (or less) of the total ad time of a basic account. And they only occur if I've watched a lot of YT, maybe over 3-4 hours in a day. I don't understand why Google thought it would still be worth pissing off Premium accounts for this little ad time.

Might very well be the case. We do not seem to be having that yet in our locality.

I’m so hopelessly addicted to YouTube that premium only made sense. I should probably work on that, though.

Last night was the first time I can remember where I intentionally avoided YT. I just couldn’t stand trying to find what I wanted amongst all the click bait and advertisements.

The good news is I found what I wanted and didn’t have to deal with a barrage of bullshit and click bait videos.

Yea I used it later on and found some user info but I’m finding that I hesitate to bother with it now.

I'd considered it, but so many videos are just filler to drive ad impressions that I can't justify it because the content quality is still lacking for what I want.

I think I broke YouTube?

I signed up for the Premium trial. The day before the trial expired, I cancelled and deleted my card info. This was weeks ago, and I still haven't seen a single ad ever since. There are ads in the home feed, but none in the video streams themselves. I'm not using an ad blocker.

They won't bill you until the end of the month

YouTube web on chrome seems to not have (interstitial video) ads while iOS native app has an absurd number. It almost seems like a ‘bug’

Adblockers work to block them. If you use an Adblock in chrome that’s likely why you don’t see them.

I use an iOS Adblock tool and have replaced my native YouTube app with a shortcut to the safari site. That way Adblock works there too.

I don’t have any adblocker installed in iOS / Chrome. Chrome does have a native setting to block popups.

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