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ben_dover ,

it would be amazing if they could just add a mobile ui to Smarttube (best android tv app imho) - it supports login, adblock, sponsorblock & dearrow, you can cast to it, etc. - and it's updated constantly, via a prompt in the app, no external download or play store necessary

RatCornu ,
@RatCornu@ani.social avatar

You can use Revanced which allows to log in, adblock and sponsorblock at least. I use it everyday and it works great!

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

They need to distract the MBAs with a box of crayons to eat so the adults can make good decisions.

Dvixen ,
@Dvixen@lemmy.world avatar

This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Squizzy ,

Seeing this at 21 minutes past gave me a slight pause.

Squizzy ,

Phew

Deeleres ,

In Germany, there is a law that regulates the amount and intervals of advertising for private television broadcasters: 20% or 1/5 per broadcast day may be used for advertising. Programs that are shorter than 30 minutes may have a break, otherwise there must be 20 minutes between commercial breaks - 30 minutes in the evening. Unfortunately, there are still some loopholes.

Children's programs are not allowed to have commercial breaks.

It's a shame that this law still doesn't apply to YouTube.

IdleSheep ,
@IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It's a shame that this law still doesn't apply to YouTube

If Germany is anything like Canada and other countries, applying public broadcast laws to YouTube would be a monkey's paw deal. Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I'm not considering.

Now if they made a law specifically for youtube and other online video platforms that dealt with advertising in that context, that would be a different story.

sabin ,

Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I'm not considering.

This is false. You can create laws restricting advertising without creating other laws forcing companies to display domestic content. The point about the Canadian government wanting YouTube to promote domestic content is irrelevant.

IdleSheep ,
@IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Way to miss my entire point.

In this case, a law wouldn't be created, youtube would just be integrated in already existing laws for public TV broadcasts, which is the wrong way to go about it because obviously youtube doesn't work like TV.

HawlSera ,

I literally just use the Dislike Re-Adder, also used uBlock Origin and never got an Anti-AdBlock message

jeremyparker ,

I still get block messages in Vivaldi, but not Firefox.

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

Makes me miss a time where they couldn't tell if ads were actually watched or not.

Sooner or later, ad blockers should just simulate the ad being played (in the background) with the real content going in the foreground to act as if the ad was watched.

Kind of like going to the bathroom during commercials.

Then again I wish we had a real alternative to YouTube. (Don't point me to the fediverse video stuff ... that's not what I mean.) There is no real competition for a place to freely upload videos ... or on the other side find all that content. No one wants to scale enough to compete. (Very few probably could considering the amount of new content per minute).

If only there was real competition, then YouTube would have to fight over our attention/usage by lowering ad count.

No competition means worse for all.

derpgon ,

Well, YT is literally getting petabytes uploaded to it. Every single day. Thats 1000 terabytes, and thats 1000000 gigabytes.

I bet you haven't even seen a petabyte of storage in one place (assuming you didn't go to a data center yourself). How is a small company, or even fediverse, gonna handle that? Thats absolutely insane amount of data and, without moderation or curation, it is not feasible.

It's a giant waste of space and resources, to be honest. Most videos are seen once, and the rest is mostly spam or bad quality content.

Specal ,

Actually the cost issues wouldn't be the storage it's self. Storage is pretty cheap, it's content delivery networks. YouTube is supported by being owned and run by one of the worlds larges content delivery networks. There's virtually no latency, videos play immediately.

Having millions (potentially billions in YouTube's case) of people accessing data at once is an immense challenge and YouTube perfected it pretty early on, that's part of why there's no competition.

derpgon ,

Content delivery is not cheap, but not hard to do, either. I'd wager storage would be a bigger problem, because it just keeps rising. Sadly, YouTube is the one with money, and the monetization comes from people.

Specal ,

I can speak from experience that content delivery is harder than storage. Companies like YouTube tackle the storage issue by having tiered storage levels. Trending content is stored on SSDs, new and often viewed content is stored on harddrives with a caching system similar to optane and archived storage (essentially old videos that very rarely get views) goes on tape storage. It's really cool, and it allows massive about of storage in a small space, it's costs alot to implement but because of the tape storage they essentially have "infinite" (it's not really infinite of course but it's a problem for next decade not this decade).

derpgon ,

Fair enough, but that's YouTube, who can afford all of it. Of course, if you have tons of money, you don't need to count pennies where counting them would just slow you down.

But take a competitor - how can a different service be viable if they lack money to have (virtually) infinite storage? Heavy moderation or monetization. Youtube kinda does the second one.

To reiterate, I am not saying you say things that are not correct.

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

I remember seeing a startup at one point that wanted to put mini-CDNs in people's homes. Small black boxes that would automatically be a CDN not just for your home, but the whole area. Of course, sites would have to use their CDN network, etc.

I actually thought it was a really interesting idea. Almost like federated CDNs.

Imagine if every Xfinity router has a built-in 16TB CDN: it would be an interesting way to possibly change how bandwidth works and makes it back to the DCs. Most popular stuff would be closer, faster.

Specal ,

God could you imagine the security risks though, having a physical risk in a network, that would be fun. Limewire on steroids.

Valmond ,

Well break it up "lemmy wise" or more? I mean nobody can replace youtube but it would be possible having your own fishing channel for example. If it gets wildly watched you probably have to figure out some sponsorship for sure.

BTW no I haven'tseen a PB storage, but I did write visualisation and computation software for treating and seing datastructures up to PB size with hdf5.

fosstulate , (edited )
@fosstulate@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

No one wants to scale enough to compete.

I don't consider scale important from the perspective of making and watching good videos. People get hung up on it when citing barriers to competition with Youtube, and while it's certainly there, it only matters to Google itself (so it can continue to plausibly lie to its customers about ad impression numbers). In fact YT's offering was at its creative peak when scale was lacking.

It makes no difference to me whether a knowledgeable hobbyist has 20,000 subs or 250,000. I don't care about their "content" suitability for advertisers (that creepy term can get nuked). I certainly couldn't care less whether the algorithm promotes their work, deserving as it may be. This sort of creator operates on the assumption their viewers are intelligent, and is typically savvy enough to route around YT with alternate donation/support mechanisms. These people will continue on any platform. For them, quality is an end in itself rather than a feed-in to a metric. I would rather watch a badly filmed insightful critical appraisal of a new piece of hardware than Canadian/Black Technology Man's 8K press release rehash full of slick cuts and pointless b-roll.

Scale is the concern of middlemen.

Valmond ,

I wonder about this. Youtube is made so that videos has to be long (10 minutes at least, or you won't get exposure, right?) so we get all those dragged out videos with long summaries.

Also you are supposed to earn money with it, which combined makes videos, IMO, often not very interesting.

Sure, I get it, everyone can't make videos all day long for free, but isn't that something that we shouldn't maybe want?

I prefer a genuine hobbyist making one video a year, than a sponsored person pushing one a day.

Which brings me to hosting and bandwidth needs, youtube needs a lot of that because of its business model, but say Lemmy communities could probably host quality videos without large hassle (especially if small servers wasn't defederated all the time).

Thoughts?

Corkyskog ,

I thought the 10 minute was a monetization requirement.

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

The problem is the term quality would be used to block out certain creators. The definition would wind up being vague and/or arbitrary.

What one person thinks is quality may not be quality to someone else. In a way that's a niceness of YouTube. We can each upload what we think is good.. or bad.

Even then if a video goes big viral (which is arguably something a creator may want), the bandwidth costs could skyrocket.

Then it's like: maybe we need CDNs and more storage and boom now it's even more expensive. I just don't see fediverse video working great long term without big money to back it.

lost_faith ,

Sooner or later, ad blockers should just simulate the ad being played (in the background) with the real content going in the foreground to act as if the ad was watched.

I wish adblockers did this, open the ad in a little silenced sandbox window. I don't see the ad, creator gets their pay

reksas ,

Even the advertisers don't lose out because you wouldn't have paid attention to the ad too. They might even win a little because now one doesn't have to get annoyed by the ad and deliberately not buy the thing.

lost_faith ,

Exactly, I don't overly mind the "paid advertisements" the creators do, the guys I watch that do this are extremely funny in how they do it so if I don't manually skip I get a good laugh, like the "Adstronaut"

gravitywell ,

Adnaseum is a fork of unlock that fakes viewing ads. The thing is its banned from chromes app store because google is at its core an advertising company.

lost_faith ,

Hmm, I only use chrome for my YT chan control, not watching. Watching ANYTHING is done on FF+UBO, but if adnaseum is on FF I may switch. Poor google has YET to show an ad I would be interested in, hell the tv in the 80s showed me more of interest than ads today. Thanks for the suggestion,will check it out!

gravitywell ,
lost_faith ,

I know what I am checking out tonight

atrielienz ,

There's a tool that does this. It speeds up the ad so it takes only a couple of seconds. The ad is "watched" but muted the whole time so you don't actually have to deal with it.

Edit: The article isn't great but the tool is sort of the same as what you mentioned. https://9to5google.com/2023/11/25/youtube-ads-speed-up-workaround/

SeventySeven ,

What they don't realize is people are also using those third party apps because they are offering much more customization than the stock YouTube app ever offers. I had free premium and still used Revanced because it's such a godsend. There's so much useless crap in the youtube layout.

Zatore ,

I have premium now and use revanced. I can't stand the create button in the middle of the screen. I have no desire to make shitty videos for their platform. I would use the default app if I could just customize what buttons are on screen so I don't accidentally press one. That seems like a great accessibility feature, but I guess they don't care about some people.

OADINC ,

I have premium and use revanced, I agree.

flop_leash_973 ,

Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

lorkano ,

It's kinda cute how they are utterly loosing with adblocker crackdown and now they are saying they will even handle their party apps. No company will handle an open source project full of talented people pissed of by ads.

BURN ,

Reddit managed pretty well, let’s be real. The 3rd party app protests were essentially a speed bump that lost a tiny subsection of users that advertisers didn’t want anyways. Everyone else just migrated to the official app or website.

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

In their defense, advertisers weren't seeing those same people.

lorkano ,

You can still use third party apps, they are just not in the playstore. Just like with YouTube right now

fiend_unpleasant ,
@fiend_unpleasant@lemmy.world avatar

I hear people talking about how Youtube is not paying out like it used to. So they are playing ads to us and not paying the creators. There is a growing group of people looking at open source platforms like Odysee and PeerTube.

scripthook ,
@scripthook@lemmy.world avatar

I still use FreeTube for desktop and no ads here :)

Cyyy ,

FreeTube, newpipe etc. simulate being a browser and extract the video that way..if YouTube would want to add ads for this thirdparty clients they would have to inject them directly into the video feed.

Deeleres ,

With the WebM-Format they use it might be possible. It's based on Matroska and there is a feature to replace or add chunks within the stream in realtime.

FrostKing ,

Personally, I don't think a service is in the wrong for trying to protect against ad block, especially when their revenue comes from ads. However I also don't think there's anything wrong with adblockers continuing to innovate to circumvent that. I'm rooting for Ublock Origin lol

KillingTimeItself ,

they also fucked themselves over with the ad skill issues they've had over the years. Advertisers now find it to be more worthwhile to advertise directly with creators, though that also means they make a lot more money, so.

They kinda dug their own grave, to be honest.

force , (edited )

What made me and I imagine a large chunk of other people convert to revanced/similar apps is the super aggressive advertising, it's impossible to use youtube when you get a double ad before and after every 5 second video and get 30 second midrolls every like 3 minutes. You can't skip through a video to find the part you want to see because you'll just get an ad. It's extremely infuriating and time-consuming, it used to be where I was willing to deal with it but they fucked it up. Now I can never go back to ad-riddled YouTube, even if it has a "reasonable" amount of advertising (I am now in the belief that no amount of advertising is reasonable anymore though).

GCanuck ,

Yup. I was willing to watch one or two short ads before I watch a video, but the mid rolls and unskippable 30+second ads just made me say “well that’s enough of that”. Now I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in a long time.

Renorc ,

Exactly. They lost their minds and went too far. Now I’ll never go back either.

SendMePhotos ,

Yes. Same. I was OK with banner ads. I was OK with intro ads. Started to get pissed off and annoyed at mid way ads, double ads, and unskippable ads. This is my nightmare. I hate this world and ads are a part of my pyramid of hell.

lorkano ,

Aaand now we have also sponsorblock to barely ever see ads in videos

KillingTimeItself ,

oopsies.

bcron ,

Not only monetization but also the whole sorting/ranking algorithms. Youtube is a bit better than Facebook reels and instagram due to the thumbs down button, but some people go out of their way to make nonsensical garbage because viewers will then comment, and there's no way to tell if a video is good or bad based solely on engagement. Those videos where people have some DIY hack to clean a toilet bowl and they just pour random condiments in the toilet for 3 minutes and cut the video before any conclusion, those types of videos

KillingTimeItself ,

they don't have dislikes anymore, god forbid you dont like something.

r3df0x ,

This is what Louis Rossman said. Youtube is completely in their right to kick people off for blocking ads. At the same time, it's also not a pissing match that's worth getting heavily invested in, because ultimately Youtube is going to lose unless they can start coercing people into installing proprietary apps which they already have for mobile devices.

r3df0x ,

This is what Louis Rossman said. Youtube is completely in their right to kick people off for blocking ads. At the same time, it's also not a pissing match that's worth getting heavily invested in, because ultimately Youtube is going to lose unless they can start coercing people into installing proprietary apps which they already have for mobile devices.

Ginger666 ,

Did they fuck up revanced again?

Nope, it still works...

i_have_some_enemies2 ,

Again implies they fucked it up once to start with...

Ginger666 ,
i_have_some_enemies2 ,

Strange i have been using it last 8h non stop and it's ok

Ginger666 ,

Dude you should prolly gtfo YouTube

And it was down a couple weeks ago, it hasn't been down since and this was the first time this has happened since they added the anti adblock popups that were also patched the same day in ublock

i_have_some_enemies2 ,

It's my radio man but as I said, no problems here. I don't change my version since a couple of months

Ginger666 ,

Oh that's not nearly as bad as watching YouTube 8 hrs straight. Music is good for you

MonkderDritte ,

The web should have had a Terms of Usage from start. Something like

"If you broadcast content on the internet, expect people to download it."

hightrix ,

This. I always say this exact thing.

If you provide content for free, expect people to take it for free.

Malfeasant ,

Even if you don't intend to provide it for free, if it's possible to, expect it. No different from Walmart complaining about increased theft after replacing cashiers with self checkout - tiny violins.

kratoz29 ,

Oh, I definitely have experienced "The following content is not available on this app." Before, but I thought it was just a thing of my Revanced version outdated because I rarely update it... Which I'm gonna do just now 😁

I hope this doesn't bring too many issues to Smart Tube, which is where I do 99% of my YT usage (and I have yet to be bothered with any bug).

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Never had any outage in SmartTube either, unless they pushed a faulty release (I'm on the beta channel), but even then they have reacted super fast with fixes.

So far I'm using NewPipe x Sponsorblock on my phone - apparently it has been discontinued & archived, but still works just fine as well. Only the comment view is broken since a couple weeks, but I really don't care about those to begin with.

Bebo ,

Nowadays I'm using tubular which is newpipe with sponsor block and youtube dislike incorporated.

jjlinux ,

Smart Tube in TV and Tubular on phone (plus Grayjay, but but I'm not fond of their UX).

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Grayjay

Yeah, it kind of sucks, and the performance on my phone is worse than NewPipe, but I haven't found anything else that combines feeds from other sources (Odysee, Nebula, etc), so I still use it.

There are also some missing features, like browsing channel playlists.

jjlinux ,

It has a ways to make it go, for sure. That UX reminds me of WinAmp way back in the day 🤣

sugar_in_your_tea ,

WinAmp was awesome! I loved having it as a floating bar to control my music.

But honestly, the UX is mostly okay for me, except the settings, that really needs some cleanup. Also, rotation is completely broken.

jjlinux ,

WinAmp was awesome! I loved having it as a floating bar to control my music.

Tell me we're old without saying that we're old 🤣

And in Grayjay, I the one thing that's flawless for me is the screen rotation.

100% agree that the menus and settings need a serious overhaul.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/ff1e2175-1c6f-4c78-a005-7fe6010e1338.jpeg

sugar_in_your_tea ,

the one thing that's flawless for me is the screen rotation

Really? So you can watch videos horizontally without the video randomly flipping to vertical and back?

I've tried messing with the settings, but it doesn't seem to do anything. See this bug report, finding that setting was a nightmare, and it didn't even do anything. If it was open source, I'd probably go make a fix, but it's not, so I guess I'll just complain about it.

And yeah, that menu sucks as well. I hope Futo hires a UX person because it could be so much nicer to use. I'm impressed at how well it works though, so that dev is doing a top notch job.

jjlinux ,

Yup, rotation just works out of the box. Tested on Graphene, Calyx and Stock Pixel Android on a Pixel 7 Pro.
Also, what I love about it is that it just works (other than the eventual YouTube captcha) for every instance enabled.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Weird. Mine works a lot of the time, but then randomly flips vertical and then horizontal. I can be holding my phone super stable, and it still does it.

My phone is kinda old and crappy though (Android 11), so maybe it's less of an issue on newer phones, but I don't have this issue on any other app.

jjlinux ,

That thing is still in beta, so it stands to reason that it's not able to do everything right all the time in all devices.
My suggestion is that, unless you're watching on peertube, Odysee, rumble or something like that, stick to Tubular.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I'm really trying to ditch YouTube, so yes, I'm trying to find alternatives on Odysee, Rumble, Nebula, etc.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Oh good to know, I wasn't looking for alternatives as long as it still works, but that's going to be the future then. Thanks!

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