Ever since around 2017, I have not visited (or even seen) the contemporary Youtube site.
I had been using a combination of Invidious and yt-dlp (youtube-dl).
Just within the last year or two, Google has been making efforts to obstruct these tools. This can most clearly be seen with Invidious, currently suffering from a generic “This helps protect our community” error message.
It has got me thinking that Google might eventually succeed in extinguishing these islands of safety that I’ve so enjoyed.
People who still use raw, unmitigated Youtube today; how much of a hellscape has it become?
I’ve only been forced to watch YouTube with ads a few times this past year… Alcohol and gambling ads were very, very common. It’s unethical to show them, and I don’t feel bad about blocking them.
Just use Revanced. Lmfao. Been using it since highschool (4 years ago) fucking amazing. Practically Emulates Youtube premium
Pretty bad on my Roku. It really discourages you from watching more than a few videos. If I start a 10 min video and it wants to play 1 min of ads first I just go Back and hot play again, usually the ad length will get shorter. Usually have to do that 2 or 3 times to get to an ad I can skip after 5 or 10 seconds.
It’s too bad because Roku is good for everything else, fast UI and nice clean remote.
Our teacher pulled up a video to demonstrate a certain gravity experiment. The whole class got to watch two consecutive, loud, annoying and UNSKIPPABLE 20 second ads.
Needless to say, it totally justified all of the time that I spent switching Invidous instances and updating NewPipe (or Tubular).
On mobile, it’s very bearable. You can skip them quickly.
On TV, oh boy. It’s super long and now you have to skip several times in an ad block to reduce your ad duration to the minimum.
As for desktop… Idk I only sit at my desk for work.
Youtube Revanced~
