YouTube Ads
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I regularly keep a small command window open with yt-dlp.exe ready to accept the URL. If my ad blocker fails to stop the ads, I go to the command window, type 'yt-dlp ' and paste the URL. I have fiber connection, so it takes just a few seconds to transfer the clip (if they are not too long), and I can doubleclick the downloaded video for undisturbed viewing. (I often use yl-dlp even when there are no ads, if I might consider archiving the clip.) The ads I am not watching wouldn't make me buy anything anyway, so noone looses any sale from me suppressing the ads. 95% of them are aimed at the US market, not the Norwegian one; most products aren't even available here. For the rest: My lifestyle is of a different kind; I am not a consumer of the kinds of products typically advertised on internet/TV. So who am I cheating by not watching ads for products that I would never buy anyway?
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
+1 for yt-dlp. For decades the best I could get from my ISP was 5mbps. Not great for streaming video, but YouTube at 720p could juuuuust barely keep up. Assuming absolutely nothing else was going on at the same time over my network. I now have 25mbps through another ISP...but, they slow you down to 3mbps (worse than I had before!) when they detect you're streaming video. Or so their marketing material claims. I don't stream nearly enough video to say I've noticed. But then maybe I'm not noticing because that's (close to) what I'm accustomed to. I could've sworn the CRTC (Canada's closest thing to the US's FCC) had slapped that one down a few years ago. Is the whole packet inspection / net neutrality thing still a thing in this day and age? I mean, how else would they know?
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Wow, thanks for the heads up. I don't (ever) get that, but then again I only ever watch / listen to music videos.
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
That's the smart move, it seems. :laugh: For me, I use Apple Music for that.
Jeremy Falcon
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Heh, how much shelf space have you got? :)
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
Enough for the CDs that I buy (mostly classical music).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
And right there at the top... "YouTube Premium members also appear to be impacted." Seems you're paying to still get screwed :rolleyes: I'm not going to pay for YouTube because I don't use it often enough.
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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Just pay for it, FFS
Coming soon to a browser near you! "Want the most pertinent search results for you query? Sign up for Google Extra today!" (Terms and conditions apply. Your initial subscription of $4.99/m may be doubled without warning, tripled if you search for pr0n)
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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I regularly keep a small command window open with yt-dlp.exe ready to accept the URL. If my ad blocker fails to stop the ads, I go to the command window, type 'yt-dlp ' and paste the URL. I have fiber connection, so it takes just a few seconds to transfer the clip (if they are not too long), and I can doubleclick the downloaded video for undisturbed viewing. (I often use yl-dlp even when there are no ads, if I might consider archiving the clip.) The ads I am not watching wouldn't make me buy anything anyway, so noone looses any sale from me suppressing the ads. 95% of them are aimed at the US market, not the Norwegian one; most products aren't even available here. For the rest: My lifestyle is of a different kind; I am not a consumer of the kinds of products typically advertised on internet/TV. So who am I cheating by not watching ads for products that I would never buy anyway?
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
another +1 here for YT-dlp. I have a share on my main PC that my media server can see. All I do is yt-dlp the videos I come across during a day that I want to watch, yt-dlp them into this folder, then when I go to bed, I just open my TV's media player and they show up in my media server under "YouTube Queue" I never used to have a problem with advertising, still don't really, what I have a problem with is the mis-management of advertising, esp with the large media ad networks like google. Fact of the matter is quite simple. I HAVE NEVER HAD a virus/malware attack or even the sniff of a threat of one since I started network/ad blocking the large ad networks. When I used to allow all these ad's I regularly used to see pop ups and warnings on a daily basis from my AV software, even while browsing good, friendly sites. My biggest beef with You-Tube specifically right now however, is how they actually detect the ad-blocker. They don't check to see if it's just them that can't get an advert in, they check for the presence of the blocker as an extension. I tested several ad-blockers, and whitelisted you-tube in them, and still I got the "ad-blockers are against the Ts&Cs", the only thing that got rid of the messages was to wholesale uninstall every single bit of browser protection I have installed, leaving me fully open to every single ad-network, tracker, data-miner and god knows what else on the internet. I refuse to do this. I don't just have an ad-blocker because I don't like ad's, I do actually white list quite a few sites, esp the ones who just use simple advertising, like a single image that doesn't move and stays quiet in a side bar, and more specifically is served from your OWN DOMAIN, not some 3rd party mega tracking data mining corp. I have no desire for a huge creative to jump out of it's sidebar and fling itself open over my entire screen, while it starts pumping out 20 million decibels of shouty shouty narrative, in the middle of my work day, when I'm looking up something to do with the code problem I'm working on, it has the same effect on my mental model as the dreaded "do you have 5 minutes" tap on my shoulder. Once the ad-networks start getting their house in order, toning things down, ensuring they are not a vector for spreading malware crap, and generally just start being more responsible, then I'll start allowing their ad's again, it's pretty much that simple. Sorry... yes that did turn into a bit of a rant :-) didn't intend it too. :cool:
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Heh, how much shelf space have you got? :)
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
Heh, he owns a physical copy of the music he loves that he can always listen to, at least a long as the CD lasts. With YouTube, you're at the whim of any number of factors for the music you love. Artist decides to remove their music from YouTube? Gone. Music exec thinks they can make their own YT, gone. etc etc. I honestly would pay for the YouTube service, but I wouldn't get that much value out of it. I watch maybe 10 videos on there a month and the ads are overly obnoxious when I watch something without an ad blocker.
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
Why is that not sabotage?
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Why is that not sabotage?
In the old paper newspaper days, I regularly threw the ad inserts into the wastepaper bin without looking at them. That was sabotage, too. I didn't feel sorry for being a saboteur. Also, when a friend laid down his newspaper, I often asked if I could read it. Not buying my own copy was stealing. Public libraries are for stealing, too. At the London tube, you see a lot of newspapers left on the seats - so many that I made a remark about it to a London friend of mine. He told that if you bring a newspaper to read on the tube on your way to work (or home), it is a matter of politeness to leave the paper on the train for others to read. That is sort of stealing, too, even if the second and third person reading the same copy may be one who never would consider buying his own copy.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Do I think YouTube is worthless? No. Do I think the advertisements are excessive? Yes. Do I think YouTube is worth paying for? No. I didn't mind when there was a short ad at the beginning of a clip, or even every few clips in a playlist. I do mind when clips are interrupted for a chain of ads. I will therefore continue to use ad blockers on YouTube until their use becomes too onerous, at which time I will switch off YouTube. As long as CDs are produced, I can get all the music that I want by purchasing CDs and ripping them - no subscription fees, no "disappearing" clips, and no restrictions on playback (for personal use).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
I have ripped copies from youtube of music that is NOT available (any more) on CD. In some cases, I have a (paid for) "hardcopy" of the music, but that vinyl record is so worn and scratched that the sound quality is much better on the youtube rip. As long as the music is available on CD, I, too, prefer to have the real thing, the CD, in my shelves. That goes for books, too (although not as frequently): Maybe a dozen of the books in my shelves I read before I owned it. I borrowed it from a friend or the public library, read it and decided that I definitely would want to have my own copy of that book for the day I decide it is time to re-read it. Note that Norwegian law explicitly grants you the right to make copies of copyright protected works, as long as it is for private and non-commercial use only. (There are a few minor restrictions, such as you cannot go to someone else to have them make copies for you.) That is a lot more liberal than in many other countries. Lots of the music that I taped from radio broadcasts many years ago, I later bought on CD.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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In the old paper newspaper days, I regularly threw the ad inserts into the wastepaper bin without looking at them. That was sabotage, too. I didn't feel sorry for being a saboteur. Also, when a friend laid down his newspaper, I often asked if I could read it. Not buying my own copy was stealing. Public libraries are for stealing, too. At the London tube, you see a lot of newspapers left on the seats - so many that I made a remark about it to a London friend of mine. He told that if you bring a newspaper to read on the tube on your way to work (or home), it is a matter of politeness to leave the paper on the train for others to read. That is sort of stealing, too, even if the second and third person reading the same copy may be one who never would consider buying his own copy.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
Thank You for your informative reply. It is not clear to me why throwing ad inserts into the bin is sabotage. Deliberately and maliciously slowing a PC which can cause harm or even if it does not but merely degrades performance to the detriment of the user must be. As for leaving a paper on the tube it is not obvious to me such is legally stealing as it seems to me to be nothing more than the equivalent of lending to a friend a copy of exempli gratia a book recommended which I assume we all here have done. I am not a barrister nor solicitor nor solicitor advocate nor lawyer but I will be surprised if YouTube is not taken to court re/ this matter. So I conclude Alphabet Inc. is ether stupid or impudent.
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
I've been against non-print advertising since cable television became widespread. Prior to that, television was free (to use) because advertising paid for it. At least here in North America. Today, you pay your cable or satellite provider who pays the content providers who still collect the advertising revenues. The consumer now pays way more and still has to watch advertising. Now the streaming services are going to start advertising. If you pay for premium service, you will get fewer ads. Advertising must work or advertisers would not continue to advertise. Print advertising has never bothered me because you can turn the page without losing the train of thought in the article you are reading.
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I regularly keep a small command window open with yt-dlp.exe ready to accept the URL. If my ad blocker fails to stop the ads, I go to the command window, type 'yt-dlp ' and paste the URL. I have fiber connection, so it takes just a few seconds to transfer the clip (if they are not too long), and I can doubleclick the downloaded video for undisturbed viewing. (I often use yl-dlp even when there are no ads, if I might consider archiving the clip.) The ads I am not watching wouldn't make me buy anything anyway, so noone looses any sale from me suppressing the ads. 95% of them are aimed at the US market, not the Norwegian one; most products aren't even available here. For the rest: My lifestyle is of a different kind; I am not a consumer of the kinds of products typically advertised on internet/TV. So who am I cheating by not watching ads for products that I would never buy anyway?
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
I do this as well. It also allows me to control the sound quality better for podcasts.
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
I pay for YouTube Premium with no ads. I use YouTube for financial research on my investments, so It's worth it for me to pay so I can shorten the time spent researching every night. But the trigger was the last election cycle in 2022 when I got bombarded with political ads that infuriated me, the same ads running over and over. That's when I clicked on the free trial and never looked back.
If it ain't broke don't fix it Discover my world at jkirkerx.com
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
Quote:
Just pay for it, FFS.
Uh huh. That's exactly the attitude that people had when cable TV started to become popular. You can get this better product if you pay for it! Look at where we are now. Free TV is dead, cable TV has more advertisements than free tv ever did. No one won. Now it's Youtube's turn. You can get this "better" youtube if you pay for it! No ads, I double pinky-promise swear. And when it's all said and done, free youtube will be gone, and paid youtube will be just as shitty as free youtube is now with respect to ads.
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From the newsletter: > YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat, likely as part of its draconian war on ad blockers Just pay for it, FFS. I subscribed to 'Music Premium' recently and it's great. Cheap as chips and well worth the money (not affiliated in any way). I can also turn my phone screen off or switch away to another app, what's not to like?
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
When the ads get on my nerves or I am watching a long video and they decide to hit me with a chain of them every 2 minutes. I just connect to vpn from a country where ads are banned and enjoy my content in peace. Maybe they will eventually catch on, but until then, it works well.
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When the ads get on my nerves or I am watching a long video and they decide to hit me with a chain of them every 2 minutes. I just connect to vpn from a country where ads are banned and enjoy my content in peace. Maybe they will eventually catch on, but until then, it works well.
Smart work! Thanks for posting.
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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another +1 here for YT-dlp. I have a share on my main PC that my media server can see. All I do is yt-dlp the videos I come across during a day that I want to watch, yt-dlp them into this folder, then when I go to bed, I just open my TV's media player and they show up in my media server under "YouTube Queue" I never used to have a problem with advertising, still don't really, what I have a problem with is the mis-management of advertising, esp with the large media ad networks like google. Fact of the matter is quite simple. I HAVE NEVER HAD a virus/malware attack or even the sniff of a threat of one since I started network/ad blocking the large ad networks. When I used to allow all these ad's I regularly used to see pop ups and warnings on a daily basis from my AV software, even while browsing good, friendly sites. My biggest beef with You-Tube specifically right now however, is how they actually detect the ad-blocker. They don't check to see if it's just them that can't get an advert in, they check for the presence of the blocker as an extension. I tested several ad-blockers, and whitelisted you-tube in them, and still I got the "ad-blockers are against the Ts&Cs", the only thing that got rid of the messages was to wholesale uninstall every single bit of browser protection I have installed, leaving me fully open to every single ad-network, tracker, data-miner and god knows what else on the internet. I refuse to do this. I don't just have an ad-blocker because I don't like ad's, I do actually white list quite a few sites, esp the ones who just use simple advertising, like a single image that doesn't move and stays quiet in a side bar, and more specifically is served from your OWN DOMAIN, not some 3rd party mega tracking data mining corp. I have no desire for a huge creative to jump out of it's sidebar and fling itself open over my entire screen, while it starts pumping out 20 million decibels of shouty shouty narrative, in the middle of my work day, when I'm looking up something to do with the code problem I'm working on, it has the same effect on my mental model as the dreaded "do you have 5 minutes" tap on my shoulder. Once the ad-networks start getting their house in order, toning things down, ensuring they are not a vector for spreading malware crap, and generally just start being more responsible, then I'll start allowing their ad's again, it's pretty much that simple. Sorry... yes that did turn into a bit of a rant :-) didn't intend it too. :cool:
Just a bit :)
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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And right there at the top... "YouTube Premium members also appear to be impacted." Seems you're paying to still get screwed :rolleyes: I'm not going to pay for YouTube because I don't use it often enough.
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
Curiously, I am not (impacted). Not yest, anyway, but if I am I shall reconsider.
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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Thank You for your informative reply. It is not clear to me why throwing ad inserts into the bin is sabotage. Deliberately and maliciously slowing a PC which can cause harm or even if it does not but merely degrades performance to the detriment of the user must be. As for leaving a paper on the tube it is not obvious to me such is legally stealing as it seems to me to be nothing more than the equivalent of lending to a friend a copy of exempli gratia a book recommended which I assume we all here have done. I am not a barrister nor solicitor nor solicitor advocate nor lawyer but I will be surprised if YouTube is not taken to court re/ this matter. So I conclude Alphabet Inc. is ether stupid or impudent.
Stupid, I think
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
