Ive been using adblockers, piped and other tools for so long that i dont even remember what the last time was when i saw a youtube ad.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Occasionally I try the YouTube watch together thing on discord with my SO, and it really shows just how completely unusable YouTube is without an ad blocker.
The only ads I see are on a local sports podcast. The advertisers are all local businesses. From restaurants to local credit unions. And those I'm fine with.
I was using uYouPlus+ sideloaded on my phone until it broke recently, now I’ve found using Brave browser for just YouTube is the solution
GrayJay, Vanced, or Pipewire is the way
Oh please no, it's the reason why I switched from Chrome to Firefox when watching YouTube
Laughs in Ad Blocker. Still going strong.
daily motion has way better video quality and a lot less censorship.
I forgot about that site. I knew it just as the host for TV series streams back in the day
what's a youtube ad?
Stop using it. I did and now I only use unofficial ways of watching the videos I want. And I download the ones I wanna watch again.
I will continue to download all my videos to avoid ads. When they break the tools in such a way that this is no longer possible, I will stop watching videos from YouTube and seek entertainment elsewhere.
When ads get in the way I simply don't watch the videos. It's not like anybody ever really needs to watch any particular video.
Educational content is hard to come by outside of YouTube, so it would suck to have to avoid watching those videos because of ads.
But I'll do what I have to do in order to avoid ads for as long as possible. And I'll archive important content in the meantime.
I pay for nebula, they have a lot of educational content and the price is low enough that I don't mind it
Here is every single way I can think of to block YouTube ads:
uBlock Origin + Firefox
NewPipe on Android
Libretube on Android
uYou+ on iOS
FreeTube on *NIX and Windows
yt-dlp + mpv
YouTube Revanced
Invidious self hosting
Piped self hosting
And finally, last and definitely least
YouTube Premium
Donate to the creators who make content. Google does not deserve a penny of your hard earned money.
You should add Brave on iOS to the list. Never seen any ad with Brave.
I read that Google is rolling out some ads on premium so that might need to get removed from your list.
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Yall I got yt premium as a perk from my carrier and tried it out, it’s fucking AWFUL. Mostly the yt app. I get better speeds, quality and less interruptions just using brave
Jokes on you, YouTube, my Chinese phone rolls their ads over yours!
WHY DONT WE HAVE A MAINSTREAM ALTERNATIVE YET
People get proccupied with emulating YT, which is indeed cost prohibitive. But that response assumes one is emulating all of it. What about only pursuing sections of it to cater to particular audiences? Serving 100% of YT's video might be too much even for Amazon (for example) but what about 1%?
Why couldn't Amazon host Booktube? And the manga/anime enthusiasts and other varietes of weebs to go along with them? They already own ebook retail. A VOD service to chip off some of YT's viewership would be a more productive investment than The Rings of Power...
A YT competitor needs a bit of scale, sure, but not as much as YT itself. A fraction will do.
By operating youtube at a loss for many years Google acted anticompetitively to kill competition or stop competition arising. Now that they've achieved that they can do what they like. Don't feel bad using ad blockers against this anti-capitalist company.
I never felt bad abt that for a second. Like the thought never crossed my kind XD FUCK YOUTUBE!
Final stage of enshittification, now they are allowing more right wing propaganda than normal on the channel
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I am in no way defending YouTube here, but how did it act anticompetitively?
Hosting and storage costs, few can afford to be an alternative to an absolutely gigantic video storage platform that costs obscene money to maintain.
I am causing a netloss to googs. I don’t pay for Google plus or whatever, and j don’t view their fucking ads. Win win if you ask me.
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OK, so a bittorrent tracker site with a video player built in with comments underneath and you can get perks from content creators for seeding. Then of course some kind of voting system and etc. Then a creator can just get a seed box to start hosting their own videos.
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They do get they're not dealing with a generation used to ad breaks any more, right?
That's why they have to spend so much time trying to force you to watch all the get rich quick schemes, gambling, and expiring legal claims videos. What quality ad pushers they work with.
AdNauseum. Not only does it block ads but it also fucks with advertisers by sending false clicks that cost them money.
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That explains the adblocker crackdown and enshittification of paid. Funnily enough, this pattern got me to block ads.
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You can skip or avoid ads on YouTube, so meh. What really grinds my gears though, is the stupid, fucking algorhythm, which routinely offers me videos I just recently watched, vids in languages that I can't speak, "current" affairs stories that are years old, and channels/vids that I have specifically blocked. I curse YouTube daily, but will bless anyone who has a viable alternative....
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How about blocking this nonsense on Xbox? Need a pi hole yes?
I don't think a DNS hole is going to save you from ads served internally by YouTube.
It might, if it just blocks YouTube
Can't view ads if you can't view videos. Checkmate.
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