YouTube Threatens to Cut Off Ad Blocker Users After Just Three Ad-Less Vids | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Threatens to Cut Off Ad Blocker Users After Just Three Ad-Less Vids

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36 pointsourmandave50 comments

I am becoming happier by the day with my decision to become a pirate again. I have no regrets and will continue to support artists and creators I like personally. But enough is enough. Plex pass is all I need for now and with a private tracker and a lifetime pass I pay nothing, no ads, 4k with all different codecs. Honestly, after being visually-raped by advertisers for so long I just got sick of it. And considering how execs treat us plebs I have little moral qualms too.

After going as long as I have without advertisements, I've realized just how psychologically violent they are. The colors, sounds, and manipulation are all over the top. I don't think I could handle watching that stuff anymore. Or, at least I don't want to go back to that.

Yep, that was my epiphany as well - after trying Netflix and its then ad-free experience about 10 years ago, TV and other ad-infested 'entertainment' was ruined for me forever. I currently pay for YT Premium and unsubscribe from any channels that force in-video ads. While I didn't stay a Netflix streaming member (and will stop being a DVD member when they kill that service), I thank them for showing me how much better things could be.

You can use SponsorBlock [1] to skip in-video ads.

[1]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

at the risk of being histrionic, I view ads as memetic viruses. when you think about what an ad is actually is trying to achieve, its pretty wild that we just accept them as the status quo.

When you consider how many mistaken ideas people have about beauty, health, and identity just because of advertising. There are people who will literally fight you if you bad mouth their "Brand." Not to mention the trillions of dollars wasted on products that literally do nothing or are actively harmful to their users. It's insanity.

The most insidious part is that by the time advertising has completed it's work, most people don't even know that their ideas originated from an advertisement.

Piracy is never as seamless as you make it sound.

I dispute and resent this. Yes, maybe 10 years ago, but with 2 private trackers, a small server I run at home (seed boxes are good too, up to you really, I like home NAS) plus the *dar ecosystem provides the bots. I type one line to discord and have 4k, commercial free goodness in less than 5seconds.

Edit: for the curious I have a Roku 4k stick (so cheap) and a cheap 4k 50inch. I can queue entire seasons with *dar and Requestrr. Merrily, merrily, merrily, pirating is but a dream.

I was a member of a private tracker that went defunct. It seems like the next steps to continue on that path would be to hunt for other tracking that are taking applications, write an essay with my application, go through an interview process, and finally get an account. It's easier to interview for a job and just use the raise to pay for content.

Yes, that complex setup (which will inevitably require future maintenance) is what I mean by non-seemless.

It took like an hour to setup? I just use Plex and Requestrr+*darr. The only hard part would probably be getting a private tracker invite but honestly all you need is to not be too prickly of a person. An afternoon, mayhaps a weekend max, to set yourself free from ads? Worth it.

And to whoever made Requestrr you ROCK. Super seamless, and free. Keep making the world a better place!

What requires maintenance though? It's not like there's going to be a breaking change to bittorrent protocol that requires you to update. Most of the pieces of the process are connected just by files in directories (if you don't use a transmission-api compatible torrent client, any client that can watch a folder for .torrent files will do the job), the arrstack picks up completed files from a specific location and drops them where plex can see them. The most important thing to update is the torrent feed aggregator (prowlarr) so new torrent sites will be available, but I just enabled 5 or so reputable-looking sites about 2 years ago and haven't needed to go into the UI since so even then you can just let one version run for a long time and it'll be fine. It's very low-touch after the initial setup. In the years I've used it, the only time I needed to touch it is when I'm impatient and want to check when the digital release for something is, which is usually approximately when stuff shows up on torrent sites - give or take a couple hours for popular content and give or take a day or two for less popular content.

I've used Plex by itself with a semi-static video library, and it worked, but even that isn't no-touch. I have to keep a somewhat capable server up first of all, then Plex always has its own random issues. The auto-pirate software, tracking lists, and torrent sources are all additional moving parts without really dedicated support.

It's fine for a hobbyist to deal with, but it's not seamless, otherwise way more people would be doing it. Kinda like how desktop Linux users tend to downplay the rough edges.

I'm surprised if you had something like plain plex on a bare debian install break. It's been rock solid ime. And many people do do it, *arrstack has a huge community. I think lots of people experience some sysadmin-type issue and then extrapolate that adding all these extra apps will linearly scale up the likelyhood of breaking. But the extra apps are dead simple and do not cause additional issues ime. There is practically no startup config for most of the stuff (sonarr/radarr/prowlarr) save for a config volume mapping - the docker-compose for those looks extremely bare. And all the addon components are widely updated automatically in the community and I've never so much as seen a complaint of a failed update (I'm not even sure if there are any kind of schema migrations, never seen anybody get a corrupted DB). Sure plex DB does get corrupted for some people but I suspect there is some exacerbating factor since I have never had a plex DB issue - perhaps it's more prone to issues for people using DVR, plex plugins, etc. I just use a stock plex setup with movies and TV shows and the default metadata settings. Never had an issue.

I guess to put it more concisely, adding the *arrstack doesn't really add many (hardly any?) additional failure modes. All the reasons it might break are the same reasons that the plex or the whole system would break. If your system runs out of storage, it might break. If you change the file permissions of some config or data folder, plex might break, and so would arrstack if you chmoded the config files so it couldn't read it. If you can keep plex running on a bare OS, adding arrstack is not really more work other than the initial setup.

My shows appear on my Plex Home Screen immediately after they air. What’s the hard part?

It really depends on your approach, and your flexibility on your content

They have gotten shameless in their ad abuse. Watch an hour show - starts out with initial ads, then after 15 minutes another. But by the end of the show its every 5 minutes. Extortion: you want to see the end? Watch our crappy redundant ads over and over!

I'm beginning to really hate youtube.

Go the extra mile. Don't just install UBlock Origin, also install SponsorBlock:

https://sponsor.ajay.app

2023 Year of the greedy CEO

The year of the markets drying out.

On the other hand, I sometimes watch youtube videos on the work laptop where I can’t use an adblocker… i grt more ads than on tv. It’s unbearable.

Did twitter and youtube coordinate this? One (maybe) rolling out, and the other announcing a rollout, of anti-freeloader measures on the same day? I'm waiting for them to announce that archive.is has been shut down by a court order.

edit: after reflection, I guess they were both taking advantage of the Supreme Court decisions and the holiday weekend.

I'm confident we will see something like AdNauseam for YouTube soon.

It shouldn't be too difficult to open every 4th video in an invisible tab and just automatically click on anything that moves. Google gets their clicks to monetize and I don't have to waste my time watching ads.

It's a win-win, except for the people paying for ads. But they're already getting screwed over by Google anyway. (JediBlue) So not much changes.

I wonder how much viewership has to fall off for this to be a bad decision. For immediate profits I can see it makes sense but like web sites there's many I can do without visiting. Alternatives exist and will be sought out when motivated.

Paywalls (for casual content) and excessive or intrusive ads I consider to not be the free/open internet I care to support.

I threaten to cut off YouTube. Good -- I've been putting off curbing this addiction for a while, now...

For those that are willing to pay for YT premium but find it too expensive, find a country that supports YT premium that is charged at longer price and purchase it via VPN.

I’m paying $3AUD monthly via this method.

Put stuff behind a paywall then or stop trying to act as a free video host, nothing new to solve here. Netflix & other OTT players are thriving anyway

https://archive.is/aGrYS

i hate ads as much as the next guy, and also use adblockers. no fan of any of these big tech companies,

but at the same time, the entitlement here to content is astonishing...

Time to find another source. Any competitor willing to step up?

A lot of the best creators on youtube are part of Nebula which is cheap ($10 a year or so) and for now run by caring people.

Check out Rumble. I go there by default nowadays because most of the content creators I follow have been banned from YouTube and moved there as a replacement.

Yeah, but then you are surrounded by a bunch of neo nazi. It's like Voat.

Has it improved? In the past, whenever I've seen someone share a Rumble link, it was always the cringiest right-wing stuff, basically Parler for video.

You’re asking someone who is seeking out that sort of content, I don’t think you’re going to get the answer you’re looking for.

Peertube seems interesting.

LBRY/Odysee

Users have become so entitled expecting everything to be free and without ads.

Come on guys just pay a few dollars for a service you spend 30+ hours on per month. It's like 2-3 starbucks coffees.

YouTube Premium is not available in some countries in the world. More than that, even just traveling to a country where it's not available is enough to lose the YouTube Premium features.

I was a loyal, paying customer for years. I paid for the high def-and commercial free. Then the content began to splinter. I ended up with $80+/month to watch some of what I wanted in 4k without commercials… so no, no a couple coffees. Most services you pay for have ads still. Then you pay more just to get 4k. It is never ending and so I decided to just pirate again. Oops.

Nah, I'll just stop using YT if they want to do this.

Ya lol, parent must work for one of these inane companies. I just cancelled my YT premium, despite loving it actually, because I honestly would rather prove a point.

I'm not even mad at them, it's just not personally worthwhile for me to watch ads. Might've considered YouTube Premium if they were less annoying about it. So if they don't want me as a user, I'll leave.

Ya I bought it a year ago in an all out effort to excise ads from my life. But I still have my pi-hole, that will do for now, goodbye YT!

I don’t have a problem paying for ad free services - but why should we pay 3x or more of the revenue generated by the free tier? YouTube premium is $12/mo… there’s no way I would be watching $12 worth of ads a month at my current usage without adblock.

I’m definitely watching enough YouTube that $12/mo is a no-brainer to get many minutes of my life back.

Pricing is based on notions of value. The question is: why would you pay $12 to skip ads in the official app without any more fiddling? Many of us take that offer.

For me it's that the creators I watch get more money if I pay than watch ads and I get a better service (and extra services on top)

I would pay to be a respected customer. I will not pay to be a product.

> expecting everything to be

decent.

The same naily clip repeated a hundred times per session?!

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