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YouTube is coming up with another infuriating way to force users to pay for Premium subscription or watch ads.
Or to let us know its time to quit. I have narrowed down my youtube use a lot. If it is ad only I won't bother at all.
Won't miss much frankly.
Gonna use this thread to shout out https://github.com/YTLitePlus/YTLitePlus There are more than enough options for android users out there, this one is for iOS though. Tried it out this weekend on my jailbroken iPhone 6. If i read it correctly it should also be installable without a jailbreak but not that easily. Its super cool and nowadays it feels so weird that you got the option to do such shocking things like disabling shorts or reorder the tabs, its really fun.
Had some issues a few days ago. Then the brave army of Brave browser helped quickly. The other browsers should be ok now too with addons. I do not see any problem with videos any more. Still, the dependance on Youtube is terrible, most of the vids are there and there is no serious alternative. One day, hopefully, there will be. Maybe we need to pivot and someone should come with something very new, unrestricted, moderated by community, unstoppable and with no ads. When you do not pay or do not use add blockers, watching anything is almost impossible.
There are alternatives, but there's nothing that pays and promotes like Youtube. The content creators are in it for the cash, or at the very least wouldn't not be in it if it weren't for the cash. They can't even dual post their Youtube stuff because it would be parasitic to their YT income.
For Android user I can recommend Newpipe. For the desktop I use FreeTube
Both have occassional issues when YT rolls out their latest enshittification features, but the devs are quite responsive.
Regardless, YT is a loosing battle, so prepare for the day when Google will win this arms race. That is why alternatives like PeerTube are important.
Apparently there is a way around it as I've been watching YouTube all day and haven't encountered a single ad.
There is no fucking way in hell I'll ever a) watch ads b) pay for Youtube Premium. They created this monopoly with no alternative option and now we're suppose to just get fucked while they get even more obscenely rich beyond all tasteful levels. Yeah, I don't think so. And given how I ditched everything Google, if it ever comes to it, I'll ditch Youtube too. It's basically the only thing I still even use from Google because there's just no alternative.
I was wondering why I couldn't see descriptions and comments on seemingly random videos for the past two days. Also, it's weird because I use Ublock Origin on Firefox and it's rare that these changes actually effect Ublock Origin. It seems like it may be fixed now though, but I haven't been actively checking.
So I can still watch the video, just not read the comments that I never read anyway, and can't click the "link in the description ", which hurts creators way more than it hurts me.
Makes sense ... ?
I realised a lot of my yt usage was for having something playing in the background. I've been listening to more podcasts and audiobooks instead and it's been pretty easy to cut back.
Great... Fewer humans and even more bots in the comments... That's a genius idea.
