Meanwhile I installed the User Agent Switcher extension for firefox to change my user agent every 30 seconds to something random to avoid tracking. A few websites don’t accept it. I just quit those websites and find a non-billionaire-owned alternative like Kagi or Fastmail. So far it’s working out well.
That likely makes you easier to track. User agents don’t really matter all that much if an advanced tracking script is used. When your IP address is the same, your browser engine is the same, your canvas data stays the same, your window size stays the same, your operating system stays the same, then they will just know that you also use an extension that makes your user agent not reflect your system and track you based on that too.
Use Mullvad Browser without changing anything important (change the default search engine at most) and preferably use a proper VPN to actually avoid tracking during regular internet usage. Or use LibreWolf to at least fool naive scripts.
I would suggest reading this too:
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/3.3-Overrides-[To-RFP-or-Not]How is that easier? That’s just only very slightly harder, not easier. Most sites will not have such sophisticated logic. And anyway, the purpose is to suss out which websites do this kind of tracking and avoid them entirely, not to thwart the tracking.
Technically, yes, most sites won’t have such sophisticated logic. But any Google, Microsoft, or Meta service you use most definitely will.
I really liked CreepJS’s “Visits” feature where it would show a counter for how many people have visited with exactly the same browser fingerprint (which would usually be 1 unless you were using Tor Browser or Mullvad Browser), but they seem to have removed it for some reason along with “Lies” and “Trust Score”. You can still check it out here though to see just how much identifying information even a simple hobby project can gather in less than a second.
That’s a good example of why the goal should be to find services which are less intrusive and less monitoring heavy.
I don’t think there are any services that can compare to YouTube in any way.
YT forces me to login if I am using a VPN these days, if I use Firefox or Safari. Brave avoids this. I will have to try Mullvad.
Try a different VPN server if you get the “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error. If you’re using Mullvad VPN, the Netherlands Amsterdam 203 server should work.
I finally gave up when they started blanking out my home page as I turned off history… I don’t even miss it
NewPipe told me I was IP banned last week but it went away.
I’d rather stop using than give them money.
This happens to me too when I watch to many videos of the same kind. Restarting my router solves it.
The whole internet has gone to shit
Not here though. This is the good stuff
There are people actually paying for this crap?
I have a hot take. I pretty much exclusively watch YouTube as my form of TV entertainment. On most days, I watch many hours between putting something on to go to sleep or actually watching stuff in the day such as training courses or whatever. Sure, I could easily set up my TVs and devices to work around it, but I think it’s actually worth it to just pay for Premium and not have the hassle. I feel I get more than my fair share out of it.
I’m similar - and my kids even more so. As they only watch YouTube on the main TV it’s a pain to get alternate frontends on it I also like the fact there are no ads. I think the creators get a bigger cut per premium view Vs ad views, especially if they get blocked.
Same here. I’ve cancelled Netflix, never got Disney plus, never use prime (though I think I have access to something through prime shipping).
YouTube however; I watch this every single day, use it for learning, relaxation, documentaries etc.
It’s a fantastic platform and well worth the subscription AFAICS.
Yeah, and let’s not forget that as good portion of that premium sub goes directly to content creators
What I’m not ok with YouTube premium :
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The price is too high for a subscription. For that price I could get thousands of movies on a competing service like Netflix.
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Even if you take YouTube premium they are still farming your data and selling it to third parties.
So even if I watch a ton of YT I refuse to pay to sell my data.
If I pay for YT they have to not track me and not sell my data (at least data coming from YT).
So yeah taking YT is hassle free but is quite the scam if you think about it. Before paying you were the product. After paying you are still the product but on top of that you give them money.
I think the price is a far better deal than Netflix. Even when I had Netflix, basically all I watched was Breaking Bad. Shows I like or want to view now just live on my media server. It came to a point I couldn’t find anything interesting to watch and cancelled it. I don’t remember the last time I watched an actual movie. There is so much more than I’ll ever have the time to watch on Youtube. If they want to use what I watch to attempt to show me ads I’m very likely never going to see elsewhere, I honestly don’t care. They are going to try to show me ads which will almost certainly get blocked, anyway. I’m not watching anything on Youtube I wouldn’t mind telling anyone about anyway.
I don’t feel scammed, and it impacts my day-to-day life in no ways aside from saving me time having to fiddle with my network for 30 minutes every time an actual video won’t load because I’m trying to block a 30-second ad at the router.
Netflix also sells data to 3rd party marketing services.
Even if you take YouTube premium they are still farming your data and selling it to third parties.
The big data-farmers like Google aren’t selling it to third parties. It’s worth far more if kept to themselves and used to build an ad platform.
It’d be real nice if people would actually use their brains and realize this.
Your second point is specifically the reason I don’t pay for Premium. I would actually really like to but unless there is some kind of guarantee they won’t be double dipping, I’m not going to.
As long as people are actually willing to get scammed (and boy did the threshold get low in the last decades), scammers will scam.
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I honestly wouldn’t mind paying for it if it didn’t feel like such a fucking rip-off.
For example, for £19 a month I could sub to Netflix top tier. For that, I and three others could watch their stuff in UHD, all at the same time. And sure, Netflix content might be somewhat average these days, but it’s still reasonably high quality and costs a decent packet to produce.
By contrast, YT Premium for family is £20 a month, with which I can access a bunch of videos that, while enjoyable, do not cost Google anything to make. Yes, hosting costs money, and yes, they (theoretically) pay the video creators. But it doesn’t feel like £20 a month, y’know?
Part of the trouble is that they lump YT Music in to the same subscription. But I don’t want or need that. I have Apple Music with its lossless catalogue, and library that I’ve built up over many years. If YT offered a straight up ad-free plan that I could share with my family that cost a tenner a month, I’d probably go for it. It would mean being able to watch videos on Apple TV without having to fuck about downloading them to my Plex folder first, because they’ve injected SO MANY ADVERTS in now that the YT app is completely unusable.
YouTube pays about 50% of that to creators you watch according to what I’ve read
It’s too expensive agreed. However YouTube has a lot of discounted memberships through other services. I wouldn’t pay full price for it, but through my mobile phone company I get more than 50% off and that’s a bloody great deal.
Amazon is doing the exact same thing. Just got an email today that they’re shutting down the family Prime sharing thing. Had that for ten years now.
What?!
Yeah, sucks. Give this a read.
I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don’t need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don’t need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it’s easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you’re sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don’t give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).
And Prime? Don’t think people won’t start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don’t need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.
People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure…but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.
Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. “It’s 2 days from when the order is processed.” I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it’s processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you’re telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?
This depends heavily where you are. In urban areas the one day and overnight options have expanded quite a bit, but seemingly at the expense of rural two day options.
I think it’s important to keep expectations realistic though…
in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it’s still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don’t know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.
Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there’s been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory…it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it’s not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It’s just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further…
I’ve been using Nebula, and I dig it. It’s owned by the creators and there’s no algorithm. Only sucks you can’t really share since it’s all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.
I had recently heard about that service for the first time and I do think it’s a good step forward. But like you said, being properly walled off is a big miss w.r.t the ideal vision of Internet culture. I think that’s why I like the idea of server bill crowdfunding (same model that Lemmy instances use basically). Some people need to step up and pay for it, and once a threshold is reached, the content is publicly available for all. But it’s not like the people who pay are martyrs, since of course if nobody pays then the thing is lost entirely.
For a video hosting service, I feel like paywalling features is a good compromise, too. Once the bills are covered, everyone gets to enjoy ad-free, unsponsored videos… something along those lines would be preferable, at least to me since I feel like the openness of the internet is a great component to what makes it such a special place. Not that I mind private internet spaces either. I think both are important. So I think Nebula has a place in my personal utopian internet landscape too lol
No they are keeping the family plan but shutting down the non household sharing. Now it is “one additional adult and four kids.”
I’m on my brother’s premium. I told myself if my brother stopped wanting to pay for it I’d pay for it myself because I hate ads that much.
On the other hand, if Youtube itself takes it away from me I’m going to just stop watching Youtube.
Revance if you’re on android man. I mean I pay for premium but I still use it to patch the app at least.
I’m using Grayjay on android, I wonder how the feature set compares to Revanced? I like that Grayjay has sponsorblock built in.
On desktop, check out VacuumTube which is app that acts as a wrapper for YouTube Leanback (tv/console version) and has ad blocking built in.
Ahh classic, punishing paying costumers while pirates don’t have to deal with any of this shit. I guess the beatings will continue until profits increase!
punishing paying costumers
Time to dress up as a pirate I guess.
For those select few that have an iPhone
You have a few options:
- be EU citizen and sideload a cracked YouTube (similar to vanced, but you need certificates on iOS which sucks)
- pay for a dev account and sideload regardless of above
- buy two apps: vinegar and AdGuard. AdGuard speaks for itself, vinegar is a tool that forces YouTube to use the html 5 player inside of safari and thus forcing it to your will
I know iPhones are hated here, but I saw the android will stop sideloading coming from a mile away. At least here in the eu apple can suck one and I can still sideload whatever I want
Vinegar seems awesome. Thanks! Also, the dev’s other apps are pretty amazing too!
Thanks! Will look into the other apps too!
I just use Brave on iOS. It works fine for YouTube.
you need certificates on iOS which suck
I can still sideload whatever I want
??
I got certificates
ergo, there are extra steps, which is a pita, but not insurmountable.
You can sideload up to three apps without a paid dev account, they just expire in 7 days. Use something like AltStore (or better yet SideStore) and you have an easy way to install and re-sign two other apps. They also have the ability to essentially “offload” apps so you can have more than two other sideloaded apps, but only two can be active at a time (other than the signing app)
Yeah or services as Signulous could take a bit of strain away if you don’t want to be limited by the 7 days and 3 apps limit
So is it YouTube family or YouTube household?
Either way, probably need to setup site to site VPN and route YouTube traffic through a central location, if you can block geolocation.
Anyone who actually pays for this shit has it coming.
legally pay for youtube music.
legally add family to family account.
legally share it with them even though they’re not in the house
youtube: nope not gonna work for me; account deleted
use yt-dlp to rip songs
save to folder
add folder to jellyfin
share jellyfin with family
youtube: suddenly i can’t see
Gotta give it to them. They are extremely innovative in coming up with ways of enshitifying stuff.
Firefox + ublock origin still works to block all YouTube ads
Invidious is a frontend for YouTube that blocks all their trackers and ads
PeerTube is an alternative community ran platform to replace YouTube in the future
ff+ubo+privacy badger (ff on my distro suggested privacy badger, can’t remember exact number but when ubo blocks over ~1k privacy badger has like 2 - 4 on it, surprising me a little there are not more trackers) on pc, my phone has no adblocking atm and I know their info on me is wrong because all I do see are gambling ads and I have never gone to a gambling site, I don’t even get the scam game ads my gf does on her phone. One day I may try out one of the “delete my dam info” places just to see how much they really have on me
Just use Firefox Mobile to watch YouTube.
Ad blocking through uBO and can enable playing with locked screen.
Just use Firefox Mobile
to watch YouTube.There we go, fixed it for you
I keep trying to convert my friends to using Firefox mobile for this reason. I generally try not to evangelise too much, but I have so many friends who keep complaining about ads when browsing the internet on mobile, and this would literally solve their problem. One friend complained about ads so frequently that they ended up getting irked at me telling them the problem was solvable. Our unhappy compromise was that I would stop telling them to use Firefox and uBO if they stopped complaining about this so much in front of me.
I respect their choices, but by God, I’m baffled by them. I get that inertia makes it hard to make switches like this, but when you’re spending so much time complaining about how much effort it takes to use the internet on your mobile, why would you not just solve the problem?
I had someone say “Well, yours doesn’t do ads” and, in the year of 5 manufacturers pumping out 10 different SKUs a year, we had the same model phone.
I said “Yours doesn’t have to, if you set it up that way.”
The answer? “Well, c’mon, play the video.”
Like, yeah, let’s just brush past the… What? Five or six tap solution? And before anyone asks, not a romantic opening. Generally people don’t make passes at bridge trolls who evangelize for open source software.
Running personalDNSFilter (whole phone, non-root adblocker) blocks ads just fine for me in the official unmodified Youtube app.
I really wanted to like and use Peertube more, but it’s so devoid of any content aside from political podcasts, as far as I can tell. I can’t tell if the search function is bad, or I’m using it wrong, or there really is just that little content. Any recommendations for Peertube content?
Invidious sadly doesn’t allow for an account and subscriptions, at least not without running your own server which appears… complex.
That part is working now
I can load in my subscriptions.csv file from youtube into my subscriptions list on my Invidious account.
And that all works through a web browser
Chrome + Ublock Origin Lite also still works, fyi.
Youtube can suck a peener. I will pirate whole channels if they keep fuckin’ up.
How? All the tools I looked up don’t work anymore
yt-dlp. You’ll need to either learn some light command line, or just look up what you’re trying to do ie scraping an entire playlist Etc
I love that program
It also works with other stuff besides YouTube. You can download porn with it with
yt-dlp https://xvideos.com/insert-porn-video-123
