Have you read Ready Player One? The characters live in the year 2044 and they're getting ads beamed right on to their eyeballs so they can't escape them.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Comradeship // Freechat
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I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years. I must be doing something right
I cant imagine going on youtube without U block and sponsor block.
I always have my adblock on, but when I use YT without it I see the truth. I see how bad things have gotten.
Look up ReVanced on android or SmartTube on androidTV
Use Ublock Origin on Firefox, or other Firefox-based forks.
Use Youtube Vanced on Android.
Stop interracting with recommendations. The more you do, the worse it gets. Instead bookmark your favourite channels and visit them directly for videos. Also helps with minimizing doomscrolling.
Recommendations can work well if you are aware not to click or (potentially) even linger the cursor on one that you don't want to watch. For a while I had cool science and engineering videos, the kind from smaller channels where you feel like you've learned something even if you don't understand all of it. They seem to have gone as quickly as they came though.
This seems to be a general trend (it's good if you are careful, then goes the other way). I think their algorithm probably goes haywire trying to fine-tune what it believes you like and presents you with things you dislike, to see how much you dislike it, and what can it get away with. These algorithm issues and these kinds of advice (be careful what you click) have existed for at least a good 10-12 years now. They never work. Things just get shittier. Now that they probably handed their algorithm to AI, it'll probably get even worse.
The idea with bookmarks is to refuse to play with it, and just use Youtube the way you want.
This is how the Youtube sidebar used to work by the way. You could make custom folders and put all your subscribed channels in there, then navigate where you want to go. They would also let you sort them any way you want, and wouldn't sent "new uploads" to the top of the list. Instead each channel got a number next ro it to show you how many videos they've uploaded since last visited. It was a great way to sort out who you wanted to be subscribed to and who to unsubscribe from.
When they started pushing their "new" recommendations algorithm they did away with this feature to force you to rely on your Home Page for channel updates.
So use Youtube the way they originally designed and was unarguably the best functional version we got of it.
If you are interested:
The old algorithm was really effective too compared to what we got now. This is how all the big channels became the big channels. You watched a gaming review video for example? You would get recommended DIFFERENT game reviewers each time. You watched let's plays instead? You would get recommended let's players. Etc. If you stuck to a topic for a while, you'd eventually be recommended most creators with the kind of content you wanted at least once, and then it was up to you to pick who to keep watching. Occassionally, certain videos would get recommended out of the blue, but this was usually a result of the daily trends.
Following these recommendations was still fun. Doing a "youtube recommendations dive" was a fun way to kill time. It was what they tried to do with shorts, but less brainrotty. You would end up going through wildly different videos, sometimes really weird personal vlogs with 0 views too. And you usually ended up somewhere that was interesting enough to gain a subscription.
Oh yeah in 2014 or so facebook was found to be toying with their users like this. They were running psychology experiments on them by showing a portion of users mostly negative news for 2 weeks in their feed, then recording the results on these users. Another subset of users got positive news.
All done without the users' consent or even telling them they were in an experiment of course.
It was not illegal because since they are a private company they don't have to have an ethics board. Or at least at the time they didn't. In any other setting this would have been shut down for gross ethical violations before it even got drafted.
I find that yeah we basically have to consciously decide not to play by their rules. I notice for example when I link tweets to discord or telegram I get more of that topic on my feed later. Even with the plugins I have the website tracks URL clipboard copy events. Even just lingering the viewport on a certain tweet even if you never click on it is probably tracked.
Librewolf has been a godsend for me. I never click recommendations, I use the search function. Some of my favorite creators got deplatformed, and sometimes I have to wait for a ublock patch, but overall I have been extremely pleased with the experience.
idk i've been getting some banger recommendations lately. my account is also super old and i've clicked "don't recommend" on a ton of right-wing shit over the years.
ublock still beats youtube on chromium browsers that didn't break that manifest thing, but we should all be moving to one of those non-ai non-crypto firefox derivatives and get somebody in china to make a new fourth renderer.
fourth renderer
servo is supposed to be that and the linux foundation people are working on it. last i checked it's actually coming along slowly but nicely.
firefox + ublock also works on android and it's awesome.
you can use extensions like df youtube to disable recommendations entirely.
and using an rss reader and subscribing to channels that way is also pretty good actually.
On Android you can just use a native client like PipePipe. It doesn't show you ads, you can turn off recommendations and even subscribe to accounts without logging in.
I just use Firefox with uBlock origin, on Ubuntu and Android. No ads for me.
Also get sponsorblock so you can skip annoying sponsorship sections.
NewPipe is the OG but it freezes for 5 seconds before you download the media tho. Still I use it every day. You don't need an account.
Freetube app on Linux my dude. Even skips the sponsor segments for you.
I use AdNauseam, sponsor block and trackmenot but you can also use ublock origin instead of AdNauseam
Revanced, piped and greyjay all work really well as YouTube frontends on your phone if you prefer that
Ublock origin, YouTube short blocker and other extensions are basically required to make the site enjoyable to use in my opinion.
I uninstalled the YouTube app on my phone and I just watch it on Firefox with Adblock. The slightly worse experience also makes me not use the site as much.
Lol I have something like 5 different plugins to try and make YouTube bearable and custom again. If you have your language set to anything other than English it will do auto dubbing without asking you which is a good idea in theory but not when you don't need it.
edit:
- ublock origin (for ads in general)
- disconnect (for trackers in general, though I'm honestly not sure if it actually does anything)
- Improve Youtube (For Youtube & Videos)
- Clickbait remover for youtube
- SponsorBlock for youtube (the must have. I set it to skip pretty much everything - your time is precious)
- Unhook
- Youtube no translation
- Youtube nonstop (stops the "Are you still watching" pop up - fuck your bandwidth youtube it's not my problem)
- Youtube search fixer
Some of these overlap but the features from one don't necessarily work, that's why you need both. For example don't use the ad blocker from Improve Youtube, you'll only get a popup to disable your ad block. Use ublock.
It also does this for some languages if you mark not english, I was watching some none English channels with good subs, and I cant anymore
The only way to escape the stupid AI auto dubbing, on mobile at least since on desktop I don't seem to have this issue, is to spoof your device's signature to some apple tv box or whatever it's called. Titles unfortunately still get translated sometimes, and it seems that creators themselves have to turn it that off.
I never intentionally click YouPube links. If I want to watch any videos there then I consult Invidious, and if that proves too difficult then I download the videos through Parabolic. The downside is that I can’t access age-restricted videos.
I have never made a YouPube account. The community there is mostly terrible and I don’t expect the users whom I like to interact with me for more than a few seconds. Likewise, I have little skill in making videos, so, overall, there is not much reason for me to make an account. I can’t say that I have ever regretted my decision to avoid making one there, especially since I despise Google.
I believe invidious (the one that bot always links to) is a nice frontend if you wanna watch from your browser that eliminates ads. But ofc, can't have access to the googlo accout. But you can create a custom one to at least have subscriptions.
inv.nadeko.net
is such an instane from someone in Chile. You can also self host.
that's weird, i don't have that issue...maybe you're not using an adblocker as the tradition dictates? maybe you're "phonebrowsing" youtube?
I use my TV sometimes
And everyone here is talking about ad blockers as if every single YouTuber doesn't do a sponsor in every single video that can't be as easily skipped
I feel like the responses to this thread have misunderstood the point I was making.
For that you gotta use sponsorblock, and if you have an android device, there are youtube clients like newpipe that have sponsorblock built in.
To watch use invideous or newpipe. To post use Peertube or loops. Soon enough you won't even come back.
Firefox with the betterfox user.js, then add ublock origin and sponser block. Peak browsing experience
- I use Brave browser, and it automatically blocks ads without the need to even have U-block Origin or other plug-ins
- PocketTube (https://pockettube.io/) is a nice extension for organizing channels - that way you can keep an eye on new videos from channels you actually care about, and ignore whatever propaganda crap the algorithm is trying to throw at you
- YT search is indeed awful, you're better off using the web search engine of your choice and sorting by videos
- I would love to stop using YT altogether, but as of right now there aren't any alternatives that are comparable in scope - Tankie Tube is cool, but it doesn't have uploads of all the channels I follow, so still have to use YT
you should look into who runs brave
Who runs Brave? And if anyone has a suggestion for a better browser please let me know. Genuinely asking, thank you.
Firefox or Librewolf and either with Ublock
Also, use DownloadVideoHelper if you can
Altho I have a YouTube acc, I mostly use it to download videos onto my computer. I should start reuploading those videos I have to other sites like TankieTube so people don't have to use YT, but they're mostly animations and other videos for fun.
I currently use Firefox + uBlock Origin. I don't like Firefox that much though. Maybe I will switch to Brave or others someday.
As for unwanted recommendations. If you see recommended shits that hurt your brain, just click "Stop recommending this video" or "Stop recommending this channel". Your mental state would be so such healthier. This would also mean that you're telling YouTube what you actually want to see.