In case you don't know about it, make sure to check out SponsorBlock, which optionally, automatically skips parts you don't want to see like for example sponsors (but not only). You can use this awesome DB for what you want to do.
And also Invidious.
And also their combination.
User of both, I'm unaffected by the recent adblocking issues on YouTube and I can still subscribe to channels, reliably. Without any Google account. (by the way, a simple regular RSS feed reader would do, since YouTube provides RSS feeds for each channel, but Invidious is a really convenient, specialized UI for this, without the notification / algorithm issues that seem to plague YouTube wrt this, but I digress)
All these issues are already solved by these projects. I guess one could consider contributing to them (financially or with code for instance). The official YouTube frontend actually don't need no love, others already achieve what we want.
Piped, NewPipe and FreeTube are also projects to look into (I loved NewPipe when I had a smartphone, Piped looks very good too and FreeTube looks interesting but I know less about them).
I do not have a moral obligation to waste my time on content B, merely because it has been delivered alongside content A. The advertiser paid to make that offer to be, but I am not obligated to pay it any mind. That I've instructed my computer to automatically reject such offers is no sin.
For the record I do pay for premium, but that's because I want to support creators directly. I do that a lot actually; Patreon is great. But I block ads anyway, everywhere I go. There is no moral argument you can make that will convince me to actually watch ads. If companies want to stop making stuff available for free because advertising is not a sustainable business model, good! Cut the marketing out. Let it die.
That has almost no value to them unless they can use that to show you ads. They use that data to target ads to you, that is the whole point. Do you think they care about what you do or who you are for any other reason?
55%? You mean Google shared the metadata and the resulting profile it build of you across the web 55% with the creator?
Obviously not. They give a pittance of what they make with a single ad while continuing to use the data they acquire for as long as they want without you having any say in the matter. They simply steal this "useless" data and make billions year over year.
I don't know what fantasy realm you live in where people are "trading" with Google when they watch a YouTube video. No such thing happens. No money changes hands, there is no transaction.
What does happen, is I make a request, and Google sends some bits to me over the Internet for free, and then those bits are sitting on my PC, and my PC is my property. I have the right to do whatever I want with my property and the bits on it. If I want to transform the bits in some way, render video from some of them and not from others, all on my PC in my own home, then I can. With a few exceptions, courts have upheld that general right. Ad blocking isn't illegal, circumventing their anti-ad blocking isn't illegal, and it doesn't interfere with a "trade" because there wasn't one, Google just sends some bits for free to anyone who asks the right way.
Now Google can of course choose to refuse service to me for any reason they want. They can make their anti-ad blocking more sophisticated. That's fine, I'll use a competitor in that case, and we need to make sure the government enforces the antitrust laws on the books so that there's more competition against Google anyway. Whether YouTube is a criminal monopoly or not is currently up for debate, probably the answer is yes.
At any rate your understanding of the relationship is legally and morally flawed. You claim there is a trade between me and a probably criminal organization, where in fact there is none. On the other hand my right to control my property is one of the most fundamental rights out there. You better believe Google feels that way about their property and spends billions to protect/expand their own property rights!
So I am confused as to why you want Google to have property rights, but not the rest of us.
But hey, "You will own nothing and be happy," right? We're all really just renting our hardware I guess? It's 2023 and the concept of us little peons owning and controlling anything is obsolete, just do what Master says right?
BTW, FWIW my property rights are inalienable. I possess these rights because I was born a human, yes they are also upheld in the US Constitution, UN Declaration on Human rights etc. While government has mostly upheld them they don't come from government, they come from us being born human, so even if a government said what I was doing was illegal, it would be moral to ignore that government, resist and do it anyway. What's crazy to me is that people seem to be OK with handwaving away a basic human right just so that a corporation can make more profit off of entertainment content.
By your logic, because you own your hardware and can do whatever you want with it, you should be allowed to hack into other computers. After all, it's just pressing keys on a keyboard you own and sending bits from a computer you own?
Your incredibly reductionist take does not consider the fact that you exist in an ecosystem of relationships and economics.
That’s not what he’s saying. The statement is that he’s free to manipulate his computer as his property and since all the data that resides on it. There are exceptions to this, namely when it comes to infringing on the rights of others, but with the case of client side data the argument stands true.
The flaw in your thinking comes from not knowing that one can acknowledge property rights without the notion that anything can be done with their property. A baseball bat may be mine but it doesn’t mean I have the right to hit someone else’s property with it. I can, however, paint, carve, or otherwise destroy my bat without serious consequence.
Nope. Wrong. That other system is someone else's property. You don't have the right to vandalize someone else's property, ergo, breaking into another system over the network and causing damage to it is illegal.
Property laws are just as relevant to computer systems as they are to anything else.
I'm working on that. The hardest one to cut out is Google Maps, which doesn't have an ad free option.
Anyway, the value they receive is incidental: if I like content, I'll tell my friends about it. Not all of my friends dislike ads. I "market" the content via word of mouth. The content markets the subscriptions. Or the ads. Either one.
If I stop watching the content entirely (due to it becoming harder to discover) then fewer of my friends know about it. So it's not quite as black and white as you want it to be. The "grifting" population helps content to spread to the paying population.
> The hardest one to cut out is Google Maps, which doesn't have an ad free option.
OpenStreetMaps is considerably more customizable, has much better hiking trail data, and doesn't hide train stations and street names when you zoom/pan. Google Maps has become awful in the last few years.
It has pretty clunky point of interest search. The main thing Google Maps does for me right now is "search for destination that I know exists, but whose exact address I don't have on hand, then navigate there." The entire flow when performing that task is quite polished. So far, I haven't found an OSM app that comes anywhere close to being as usable. Organic Maps gets close, but the spoken navigation is pretty bad.
OpenStreetMaps doesn't have aerial photo views, nor does it have street view. Those two let me go to almost any part of the world and see what it looks like, what the streets and houses are like in reality instead of just their marketing brochure photos.
Because they show ads to people. Do you think they should stop collecting your data just because you block their ads? I don't see why that would make any sense, they have no reason to incentivize ad block use.
But that isn't a fair trade, you argued that your data is worth enough to them that you should be allowed to use their server resources without anything extra from you. But that isn't true, every user like you costs them much more money than they earn.
In such a situation where one part pays for the other parts benefits, you should expect the part that just loses out to try to end the trade. And that is what we see happening here, youtube tries to block you since youtube doesn't want you as a user, since you lose them money.
No, you argued that my data wasn't worth anything. I argued that if it wasn't they wouldn't desperately try and get all my credit, medical, schooling, and browsing history.
What they do is incredibly immoral and despicable. There is no opt-out (even if I pay them money). Even if I never use their services they still try to vacuum up all my data.
Me watching a few YouTube videos a week is a better deal for them than it is for me.
So why are they spying on me when I still pay them? Or are you going to still pretend that hasn't been brought up 3 times now? Or that there is no opt out for their other tracking?
> So why are they spying on me when I still pay them
Since you pay them you have an account and is logged in. They do use the data they have collected about you to serve you targeted videos even if they don't serve you targeted ads, they say that in their privacy policy document. Targeted videos are for your convenience.
If you don't want it to target videos to you you can disable all that data collection here, at least I can (Not sure if you can outside of EU):
So go and disable all that if you feel their video targeting isn't worth collecting your data, but there is no way for them to target videos without having any data about you.
I don't want targeted videos. I don't even want them to know I exist. Even if I never used YouTube, that is impossible.
Their tracking is all encompassing and invasive, even without a Google account. They are a menace to the world and it should be an obligation to block their ads. If Google disappeared tomorrow the world would be better off.
Sounds like the issue is completely different then from what you brought up in your original post. You just hate Google and want to hurt them as much as possible, so then it makes sense for you to block them and consume their resources as much as possible. Thanks, that explains your position much better, why didn't you just say that from the start instead of beating around the bush for so long?
Nothing I just said is inconsistent with what I posted earlier. I have no desire to hurt them, but I'm not going to pretend that anything I do to them is immoral or tips the scale from what they've stolen from me over the years
I'm not the OP but you describe exactly my point of view :)
Though I don't just hate Google but really all big tech. I even work in it but my salary doesn't buy my loyalty, just my time. Loyalty requires respect.
It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere.
Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules. Nobody asked them to kill their competitors. Besides, I'm not really concerned for them. It's not like they are struggling.
> It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere.
Yes, but these things are far from essential. Most of YouTube is entertainment, which is as fungible as it gets, and what isn't (for example repair tutorials) can usually be solved by buying repair guides or hiring professionals. There are alternatives. You might not like them, but they exist.
> Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules.
This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free".
> Nobody asked them to kill their competitors.
YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source.
> YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source.
This is like saying Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on the PC market in the 90s because Apple had 5% of the market. They only feel comfortable designing serious limitations in MV3 because chrome owns 90% of the browser landscape.
> This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free".
This is not absurd, they got to where they wanted through massive investor led subsidies and buying out their admittedly better competitor (remember google video?) What they performed on the on-demand video market was a form of predatory dumping, and when all the competition was gone they used that position as well as other positions to extract "value" and cash out.
Only if we ignore facts. Chrome only has a 64% market share, not 90%. Nobody has ever dominated a consumer tech market in the same way that Microsoft dominated the 90s.
On top of that, YouTube is only one choice of many for user created videos. Sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all top 20 sites that host user created videos. A number of YouTube creators mirror their content to Nebula and other creator platforms. Twitch is yet another alternative and is likely more popular than YouTube’s live feature.
We also have to count every streaming video service from the legacy media companies and Netflix/Amazon/Apple as competition as well.
In the 90s you couldn’t complete basic computing tasks without Internet Explorer and Office. Even while fully admitting to YouTube’s relative dominance of its niche, the situation is not the same.
> Only if we ignore facts. Chrome only has a 64% market share, not 90%. Nobody has ever dominated a consumer tech market in the same way that Microsoft dominated the 90s.
I think that browser market share is just one facet of the power Chrome holds over the web. Open source development, w3c membership and committee assignments, leadership in the direction the web takes, should also be considered alongside how much Chrome is being used directly.
> On top of that, YouTube is only one choice of many for user created videos. Sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all top 20 sites that host user created videos.
These are primarily social media products, it's not easy or intended to use these services in the same way as you would use Youtube. Video is a "Feature".
> In the 90s you couldn’t complete basic computing tasks without Internet Explorer and Office. Even while fully admitting to YouTube’s relative dominance of its niche, the situation is not the same.
I think it's the spectre of this past that people recognize as being the inevitable conclusion of the enshittification process, which is why the alarm bells are sounding now.
While I feel like your arguments are absolutely sound in isolation, I personally don't know "how much dominance is too much dominance?" considering the stakes, and I would certainly rather be cautious. That said, what sort of act do you think is a "bridge too far" for Google to implement?
I have no sympathy for a company that operated at a loss for enough years to price out competitors to the point it was the only real game in town.
You kill competitors and now want to dictate the price (including attention) everyone pays to see user-generated content? Yeah no.
Got zero sympathy. None. You do not command my attention - a resource I am less and less willing to pay with these days.
If that results in YouTube becoming unsustainable and collapsing and something more sustainable emerging charging a price consumers are willing to pay? Well then that sounds acceptable.
If you went to the site and continued to use it, you consented. That’s how EULAs work.
Your consent was given by the fact that you directed your browser to interact with the service continually, if that’s something that you did.
You can’t say you didn’t consent to be searched if you walked into an airport. You can’t say you didn’t consent to be splashed with water if you got on the log flume ride. Your own ignorance or disagreement with the fact that you can get searched at an airport or wet on a lot flume ride isn’t really an excuse.
Comparison to real world situations when the trigger is physical presence are not a good example exactly because they require physical presence, something unachievable in the virtual world of software and internet.
Required default response to all of these comments calling me a criminal (that is the implication of grift, intended or not): I have and will never ever pay one red cent to any company to watch videos for the purpose of entertainment outside of specific creators making high quality content that I personally enjoy. You can not make me. I have zero (0) moral compunction on the subject. I will explore every legal avenue. Weep and gnash your teeth. If every other legal avenue is exhausted I will imagine new Top Cat episodes in my head. You cannot stop me.
It being junk doesn't matter, if you like to watch it then it should be fair to pay for it. If you don't like to watch it then why do you even care what YouTube does, just don't watch.
I pay for Premium and use it on one PC, but I browse logged out (with ublock) on another PC. This gives me two (slightly) different views into what the Youtube algorithm wants me to see, based on what I happen to watch on each machine. I occasionally reset cookies on the logged out machine.
I definitely avoid watching ads, except the non-national spots on local TV where I kinda like the local city flavor of the ads. Is that grifting? I dunno. The ads are still there in aggregate, I just won't give them my brain space. Give me a way to pay without being tracked and having my content streams tied to a single account, and I'm all over it instead of adblock.
Which is not something that could scale to Youtube’s levels.
> nothing
Except huge amounts of drive space and upload bandwidth. Considering most (to an overwhelming degree) people consume videos on phones, tablets or laptops with relatively tiny drives it’s not realistic.
Maybe some decentralized system with content providers hosting themselves might work.
However all that is irrelevant even if it were technically feasible because it doesn’t align with the incentives many/most content creators have (they actually want to be paid either through ads or subscriptions..)
They pay to display the ad. Think of a highway ad. If you sell a highway ad placement and then cover it with a big blanket (with maybe another ad on it) so nobody sees it, that would be a serious case of fraud.
So if you tell them the ad has been displayed so you get the video, but no ad was displayed for you, then that is a form of fraud. I don't think that would hold in court since it is such a petty crime, but it is still fraud. You lie to their server so that you can see the video without ads, that is fraud.
> Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative?
Since you got paid for it. Youtube pays you by serving you content for those ads.
Note that I also block ads. However, unlike you I don't try to tell myself that I am morally right when I do so, I know that it isn't a nice thing to do and that the content I consume when doing it is paid for by all the users who doesn't block ads.
I am not sure why you try to argue that you are morally good when you block ads. Does that really matter to you? That is the most interesting part of this discussion to me, all the people who want to see themselves as good people even though they leech off others.
It is overall better for society to block ads because ad-funded services have bad incentives, and so anything you can do to hurt the business model is a plus.
The specific act of not watching the ad is morally neutral, you can render content sent to your computer however you want or not at all.
> Since you got paid for it. Youtube pays you by serving you content for those ads.
Is that technically true though? Legally it certainly wouldn’t be, there is no explicit agreement between you and Google. Even if some people feel that they have some ‘moral’ obligation to watch those ads..
I consider pervasive advertisement a moral wrong. I don't have to tell myself anything to know that blocking ads is the ethical thing to do. They are already a moral perversion.
Edit:
I kind of consider it disgusting that watching a video is considered by anybody to be "payment", or that anybody legitimately believes it's somebody's duty to watch an advertisement. The worship of abusive corporations in our culture has gotten insane.
You already aren't understanding us when you come in believing that we're convincing ourselves of anything. We actually do have an ethical and moral map that is consistent with blocking ads, and we don't consider not watching a commercial to be the same thing as theft, or even to be morally questionable.
The simple fact is that video hosting is incredibly expensive. Do you still want information on the internet to be freely shareable via video? Ads are the price.
> Do you still want information on the internet to be freely shareable via video?
Yes. And I'm willing to pay for it in taxes, or directly to creators and hosts, but I'm not going to pay Google after the massive amounts of abuse and anti-competitive behaviors. I will never pay Google.
> Ads are the price.
I don't accept that. Ads as "funding" for "free" content is a myth.
I don’t think that true. Users have no have signed no contract and/or have any obligations to watch those ads.
Of course it would still be fraud if ad buyers were paying for ads which were never displaying it, except Google would be committing it. In most cases on a significant scale to warrant legal action.
> In case you don't know about it, make sure to check out SponsorBlock
So I don't love ads but mostly because of the privacy invasion they represent, but sponsorships I have a lot less of a problem with. Oftentimes sponsorships will have at least marginal connection with what in watch (most of the time looking at you NordVPN and Raid Shadow Legends) but to me sponsorships are the happy middle ground that allows creators to get some recompense for their labors without turning everything into an adscape dystopia.
Really I don't have a problem with ads on websites back in the day as long as they were somewhat tasteful, which they often were because the creator worked to integrate them into their work, but the constant user surveillance and spamming random nonsensical ads are what bugged me.
I mean some channels that I frequent have even turned the sponsorships into additional entertaining content (check out Ryan George's the Adstronaut or Viva La Dirt League).
Yeah, I personally hate sponsor segments but strongly sympathize with your view. I'm currently looking for a way to donate to the stuff I watch instead.
Unless you're willing to root your phone, or use a developer certificate to run an unofficial app, I don't think there's any chance of getting an 3rd party youtube client on iOS. They're breaking youtube's TOS which is why they have to be side loaded on android.
I am willing to use a developer certificate to run unofficial apps...if there is code available i'd be happy to compile and load it onto my phone. I don't think there is though.
I just cannot go back to Android after years of dealing with garbage(I owned all the Nexus phones and gave up after Nexus 5) so my options have been to limit phone usage in favor of Desktop + start working on as many homemade/ open source versions of iPhone apps that I use as possible. Luckily most apps i'd be likely to have installed are just some downloaded data(text, audio, video) and some buttons. How hard can it be to scrape and rip the content and make my own container to serve that data?
For other apps like Youtube alternatives I am in search of an app.
Invidious and Piped should actually work quite well. Not apps, but work fine in a browser. That's what I'm using on the PinePhone and on regular computers. Though I don't know if Safari still has limitations that make it a pain to use. Invidious is a pain on the iPad 2 because of some dumb design decisions in Safari but I expect it to have improved since then. And maybe third party browsers will at last be allowed on iOS through third party stores, maybe also allowing SponsorBlock to be used on this platform.
I'm missing some features like being able to select a play next video easily, so I may look into writing an Invidious-based client of some sort for this, but they are so many things to do for a strongly limited time.
Maybe Piped has the features I'd like to have, I should check it out.
You can use an app currently in the App Store called "yattee" -- you can add an Invidious source in the settings, and viola you're good to go. I self-host mine, but you can totally point it at a community hosted one.
I don’t know what you watch, but the videos I watch just have sponsorships for jewelry and other luxury products.
It’s not really worth it for me to block fashion sponsors who tell me what is popular, when I would otherwise have to go research to find the same information.
Fair, I have never seen a single jewellery / luxury sponsor (It's more Raycon, Raid shadow legends etc for me), however I wouldn't ever purchase them even if I did.
My experience is that most sponsors are overpriced, largely garbage products, that they must pay YouTube to promote in order to sell.
And also Invidious.
And also their combination.
User of both, I'm unaffected by the recent adblocking issues on YouTube and I can still subscribe to channels, reliably. Without any Google account. (by the way, a simple regular RSS feed reader would do, since YouTube provides RSS feeds for each channel, but Invidious is a really convenient, specialized UI for this, without the notification / algorithm issues that seem to plague YouTube wrt this, but I digress)
All these issues are already solved by these projects. I guess one could consider contributing to them (financially or with code for instance). The official YouTube frontend actually don't need no love, others already achieve what we want.
Piped, NewPipe and FreeTube are also projects to look into (I loved NewPipe when I had a smartphone, Piped looks very good too and FreeTube looks interesting but I know less about them).