Invidious/Piped + RSS feeds for subscriptions
The ads on YouTube were bad before but now they really take the fucking piss. I got two 30 second unskippable ads halfway through a video once, and because it was in the app I couldn’t just refresh the page to skip them like I normally do
The only reason I even watch YouTube sometimes still is because it’s pretty much a habit, been using since like 2011 now. My love for YouTube is all but gone. It used to be a great place for finding a new content but everything about it is so corporate now. Mr Beast being the most subscribed channel that isn’t a music channel is all the proof I need of that
I used to watch quite a bit of YouTube, even when they put short ads at the start of videos. Then they started interrupting videos multiple times, made the ads longer, made it practically impossible to search for videos, and added this shitty algorithm that auto plays videos that are entirely unrelated to anything I have ever actively watched. Haven’t really used it since.
With or without an ad blocker the website is unusable unless you know exactly what channel to look for. It’s a shame really as there’s some good content on there. But what’s the point if you can’t watch what you want to watch? I could search for the exact words in the title of a video that I know exists on YouTube and never find it. Who tf would design a search bar like that and expect people to pay for it? Jfc.
Netflix and Disney are going the same way, for different reasons. I’m trying to find a movie—the raisin d’etre of your shitty, parasitic platform—stop hiding all the movies to show me a fucking game and stop showing me series when I explicitly click the big button labelled ‘MOVIES’ and vice versa.
All these platforms should be perfected by now to make it as easy as possible to binge watch exactly what you want to see. I’m the type whose health would suffer for binge watching if they made their services work. But the software is so user unfriendly that I just don’t watch things anymore unless someone sends me a direct link and says, ‘watch this’.
Someone must have done the numbers and decided it was more profitable to do whatever the fuck they’re doing but I can’t be the only one who just gave up. Nevermind, it’s just more time for me to read theory and agitate for revolution. It’s double loss for them in the long run.
Through invidious the YouTube video search is a lot better. But even through invidious I’ve noticed that sometimes when I search for a topic that is not popular right now I get pages upon pages of completely unrelated (often clickbait) videos.
I’ll try that, thanks. I do like the links in the tankiereplybot.
Additionally, if you use Android there is the Revanced app that not only removes adds but also skips sponsor plugs and has a ton of other options like removing shorts and stuff, background play options, mini player options, etc.
Then there is one called Newpipe which also allows you to download anything in different format options and quality options. Only thing with that one is it doesn’t let you connect to an existing account.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
