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Comment by andy99 | Hacker News Reader

The article probably could just have been that statement, but I agree.

Every experience now just seems like people (companies) fighting over who can most obnoxiously distract you.

I bought a new phone recently for the first time in 8 years, and (a) had to set everything up all at once (ad blocking, no notifications, etc) which left me briefly exposed to how bad things are but (b) had to experience all the annoyingness of a modern phone trying to suggest things and sync things and bother me with stuff I don’t want.

No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.

So yeah, outside some sheltered life of luxury, it’s a constant fight to preserve focus against people wanting to steal it.

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I can’t watch YouTube without an adblocker. On a surface level, I hate the ads. But, the main reason is the fact that I can’t stand how YouTube is fixated on trying to make you watch something else at all times. I need something to hide all the little cards and interstitials that pop up when pausing the video, the badges, all the obnoxious thumbnails, etc..

I also hide all of the videos on the sidebar except for the one that would be recommended next, just so I can know what might play if I leave autoplay on.

It is insane to me that the product got to this place. I get Google is all about advertising, but my goodness, YouTube is just designed to make you not pay attention for more than a few seconds.

For meaningful focus our brains need uninterrupted periods.

I use Brave, though I know its reputation could be better.

Ublock Origin and Unhook[1]

Lets you remove as much or as little of the "UI/UX" as you want - don't want to see shorts, recommended vids, end cards etc - live comments (who even asked for that) you don't have to.

It collapses YT back to been an intentional thing - I'm looking for a video to watch, I watch it, it suggests nothing and I go on with my day instead of getting distracted by the skinner box.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

This is also why I love Freetube. No nonsense, just what I want in front of me the rare instances I’m on YT these days. Only annoying thing is having to update it every few weeks

At this point this functionality should just be built into browsers. It's 2025. We shouldn't still need extensions to provide table stakes functionality like content blocking.

I disagree. All the major browser vendors have invested into the ads space to some degree. I'd rather have my content blocker built by someone without a conflict of interest.

You mean the browser with 90% share owned by the same company responsible for the advertising?

and removed functionality that made it more difficult for the best adblocker as an extension to function.

I know - it's weird right.

Ad-free YouTube Premium is a Luxury Good

Aren't luxuries supposed to be expensive?

This question reminds me of the time Larry King interviewed Danny Pudi[1] and asked him, "What's a luxury you can't live without?"

[1] https://youtu.be/76HijAoXi6k

“Larry, I do ducktails”

What an icon

Lol, don't know who this guy is but that is an awesome response. Good socks, my man.

No, or at least not in money. An afternoon on the couch reading a good book is a luxury.

Even with premium you still can't hide suggested videos, shorts, the front page is still messy...

I wish there was a way to block those floating boxes recommending additional videos, that always cover up the end of a video

I recently noticed a tiny "Hide" control (to hide these) that pops up in the top right, which is long overdue.

It’s possible with this extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...

I use it on firefox

Have people forgotten what a bookmark is? https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

And once on a video, suggestions cannot be seen in Cinema Mode, which can be made the default. Still have the ones at the end of the video I suppose, though they show up inconsistently for me, so might be a channel creator setting.

Which is why I pray everyday at the shrine of my 10tb 5200rpm spinning rust and yt-dlp client.

The only way to get a sane YouTube experience is to deactivate the history and only use the subscription page but that has other downsides.

As somebody already mentioned, uBlock Origin helps.

I have these in my filters to make YouTube bearable:

  www.youtube.com###comments
  www.youtube.com###related
  www.youtube.com###sponsor-button
  www.youtube.com###donation-shelf
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-endscreen-content
  www.youtube.com###chat:remove()
  www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com###chat-container

On top of that you probably want SponsorBlock, because sponsor segments are also ads.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

I hate ads and use adblock on websites too, but I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for. We're counting on "normies" footing the bill for our technical sophistication.

I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.

A lot of YouTubers and streamers makes a lot of money as well. The sponsorship alone is worth a lot. There was a recent video by an influenza where they made close to 45000 dollars a day.

Who? What video? Is there a link to this?

A viral video? (I'll see myself out).

YMMV, to me there’s nothing I would watch an ad in order to use, given the choice. As in there are things I value enough to pay for, and things I don’t care if they go away. No ad-supported middle ground.

Unfortunately “normies footing the bill” means in many cases we’re stuck with engagement optimized drivel instead of actual thoughtful content, which is largely the point of the original post. I’d love a world where this was driven out of existence because people stopped watching ads.

> No ad-supported middle ground.

So instead of an ad-blocker, you have an extension that detects ads and immediately closes the tab if there are any?

The link shouldn't really exist. Inline links replaced by text everything else removed.

You could preload all linked pages and have some API to consult.

I would like to take this even further, I'd like to see what it's like to not consume any intellectual property encumbered media of any sort, so either public domain or CC licensed materials. I can, and do this easily enough with books, but for video it seems impossible. Of course, one could make the argument that would mean I'd be unable to read the comments here on Hacker News, however in practice IP protections on such tiny bits of content are rarely if ever enforced.

In a similar vein, I'd like to be able to block any YouTube content that is sponsored. This seems a lot more possible, since Sponsor Block already maintains this info.

> I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for.

For folks in the ad-enabling chain: Caring about their well-being isn't really reciprocated. Not in a tangible way.

If that ever changes, my psychological hygiene can be up for discussion.

> I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.

By the time the video is uploaded to Youtube, for the creator is a sunk cost. What most of your Youtube ad view generated money goes to is the hosting on Google’s end, not the creator. It’s a false belief that 99% of Youtube creators will go extinct if you use an ad blocker, because it’s a post pay system.

This is only really true for successful channels not most Youtube content. The ad blocker hurts Google more than YT creators.

Thanks for this rec

Youtube as we know it will probably be dead in a few years anyway. Tiktok has shortened everyone's attention span. I shockingly found myself clicking away from one of my favorite classic rock songs from my youth because I didn't want to stay the entire 3 minutes.

No, just a portion of the population that’s into having no focus will continue to do so. You can change your habits and not be cattle without agency.

There's some of us who look for long form video time stamps in our subscriptions list. I specifically like throwing on a good 20 minute video from a beloved channel while I do other things. Maybe the cure is a bandwidth limit on our "pipes".

Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

There is a lot of complaining on hacker news about adverts, yet when Google offer the only other viable solution (subscription fees) everyone still complains.

Doesn't fix the app from booting into a short that thus defaults to playing with sound.

Problem with that solution is that Youtube is not an independent company that one could be happy to pay for their services. You're paying Google, and there are more than enough reasons to not wanting to give Google any money at all.

That's the problem with corporations: they cover too much. I cannot pay Youtube while at the same time not giving an ounce of support to the company that wants to remove all remaining freedoms of the Android ecosystem.

Vimeo and Rumble both offer large, independent video sharing platforms with a no-ads option. (For Vimeo it's free!) There's a number of smaller platforms like Nebula offering the same thing in more targeted niches. But most viewers don't care, and most creators prefer to follow the audience.

They are monopolies. This is not a new problem. The remedy is that we should tax non-reproducible privilege and/or regulate them if we cannot get rid of their existence.

Georgism is a good framework for analyzing monopolies and other non-reproducible privilege. While the internet wasn't around in the 19th century, it seems the closest to diagnosing the ill of "late-stage capitalism", problems that Henry George had experienced in his lifetime.

> Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

At this point, if I had no choice like ublock: I'd still not pay them. Why should I? To enforce this behaviour so everybody suffers more? What about those people who can't afford a subscription? Why is their mind and attention free to be abused?

The advertisement industry has became disgustingly evil. I hate everything about it.

So if not by subscription revenue or advertising revenue how will YouTube pay it's costs?

I never said "no subscription".

There is also obviously a HUGE difference between advertising and advertising.

Somehow they could run the page with far less intrusive ads before. It is now a problem and not enough because you have to generate more and more revenue every year.

This is however neither a problem of the visitor nor is it required to "pay it's costs". It is pure greed. Not more and not less.

So please, do us a favour and stop using this meme. YT is not going to stop working with less greed and less mind/attention rape.

My wife got a new android phone recently and she was showing me that her picture gallery now has ads. My Android phone from 5 years ago lets you look at the pictures in the camera app, but hers does not and makes you see ads to look at the pictures you've taken. This is evil.

Ads on the picture gallery is insane. How is this even allowed?

Anything is allowed if customers allow it and keep buying the products.

Fossify Gallery

(https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fossify.gallery/)

well, it'll work until late 2026 at least :/

Name and shame: which phone and provider?

Having used GNU/Linux on all my PCs and smartphones for nearly two decades now, I feel the joy of missing out on this. It's bad enough on the Web already, I can't imagine my own devices adding their own layers on top.

What set-up do you have on your phone?

Not the parent, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

(A cheaper alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone)

PureOS 11 with Phosh. Calls and SMS generate (rare) real-time notifications, XMPP notifies as soon as I wake the phone up; pretty much everything else is pull-only (by my choice, I could set it up differently if I wanted, but I didn't have to go out of my way to have it like that either). E-mail with Geary, Matrix with Hydrogen, Mastodon with Tuba. I have various things set up as Epiphany's webapps, such as banking, public transit planner, ride-hailing, RSS reader (CommaFeed), package delivery status, Messenger and some other social media. I spend time in each of them only when I actually want to, there's no fighting for my attention with notifications or unread counters. If I need to use some Android app, I boot up Waydroid and close the container as soon as I'm done, so nothing stays running in the background (unless I want it to).

I think that is where the power of current AI chat interfaces like chatgpt beats other digital interfaces. You ask a question. Get just an answer back in more or less same format or grammer. And no ads. No distractions. Clean.

Though it is tough for ai chat providers to keep it that way for long if revenue from subscriptions / apis does not offset the exorbitant compute costs.

Yeah, I don't expect this to last too much longer, unfortunately...

Absolutely AI ads enshitification is on the timeline :(

Completely agree, and it's sad that people put their machines over relationships with other people / coworkers / focusing on those relationships.

It’s always been like that, misanthropes, psychos, regular scoundrels, etc. have always existed.

Of course in the past there were less opportunities to hide or excuse that kind of behavior.

> misanthropes

You're underestimating the impact, in my opinion.

Almost EVERYONE puts their devices over relationships.

Not as bad, but even when the relationship gets priority, it can be mediated by the device. E.g., texting close family members. It's another chance to be a victim of attention-stealing because you start the device session for a good reason.

It seems clearly possible nearly everyone you know could be a closet misanthrope/psycho/scoundrel/etc. ?

And all they needed were convenient excuses and opportunities to indulge in that behavior.

i.e. it could genuinely be their true self, unattractive as it may be.

That's uh... Quite a take

Did you accidentally submit a draft comment?

There’s nothing after “take” from what I can see.

I bought a new treadmill with a 24” screen on it. The screen should have been the red flag I guess. They want $40 a month to use the screen if I want to watch Netflix while I run, or sync my running data to Apple Health. There is no way to change this as far as I can tell and if they went out of business I’m sure my equipment would become a brick.

I guess it’s time to pop it open and do one of those classic “how I rewired this thing to work how I want” HN posts.

I was thinking about that, and then figured just paying the $40 for the next 5 years is probably cheaper.

Was the subscription pricing mentioned during the purchase flow, even if you didn't happen to see it at the time?

At $500/yr, seems like it'd be cheaper to just buy a tablet and use that instead of the built-in screen.

The subscription is described as optional and in a way which is unclear. The name of the product implies there is a free version and Pro subscription. In actuality you need the Pro subscription to use some of the features.

Perhaps I’m reaching, but why not just run outside? Cold? What’s a gym cost where you are? $40 just seems like a lot in addition to the amortized cost of the basement clothes rack, I meant exercise machine.

A typical gym where I live is $20-$40/mo per person.

I run daily and live in a climate that gets unpleasant or impassable to run outside for a good portion of the year. I also live about 20 minutes from the nearest gym so there’s also the time savings which is the primary reason for the home gym.

That's more than I pay to use the gym.

My iPad is completely silenced, but also has no ad blockers. It’s meant to stay a reading device for the bedroom, and to not become a browsing device.

The unfiltered internet is downright unbearable. Ads, notifications, modals. Reading a paragraph of text without looking at ads or surrendering your privacy is a challenge.

Now the devices themselves are getting so needy! Consoles are the most obvious example. I got a Switch as a gift, and it shows ads every time I turn it on. Operating systems embed feeds wherever they please.

It feels like we are not the customers of the products we but, but a resource to be mined.

It’s all a battle for your second screen

> No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.

This is a beautiful sentence.

I would add that under modern-day aggressive hyper-capitalism all attention can be translated to money, so it's all just products whose job is to get you to buy more products.

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