I just tried to look up a specific video of a Nick Swardson stand up bit. All I searched was “Nick Swardson loitering”. There were 5 fucking ads before an actual user posted video, then one real human posted video that barely had anything to do with Nick, then 5 more fucking ads.

I knew they were forcing ads into videos but clogging the entire search feed with ads is unfuckingbelievable.

Is this really what it’s come to? Ads are more important than what I’m actually looking for? Are people really okay with this?

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.worldOP
      576·
      3 months ago

      Because I don’t know how to do all that shit on my phone 😭

      I’ve had several people try to explain but I just can’t fuckin do it. I’d need someone to sit down with me and show me while explaining every action.

      • superkret@feddit.org
        1924·
        3 months ago

        Use your app store to install Firefox.
        Install ublock origin Firefox extension.
        Go to Youtube using Firefox.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
            61·
            3 months ago

            You can also download and install Newpipe

            You can then subscribe to your favorite channels through that app without subscription and view videos without ads and even download the video or audio to your phone!

          • Fribbtastic@lemmy.world
            1·
            3 months ago

            I tried it but it doesn’t seem to work for me correctly or maybe I am doing something wrong. I patch the YouTube app and install it but as soon as I close and open it, all the changes made by the patch are apparently gone. Shorts that are hidden on the first start after the patch are visible again, ads seem to be reduced but still happen occasionally.

            I disabled the default YouTube app, gave the patched version a different name, disabled auto update, repatched it but nothing seems to stick after opening it again.

            And then the whole “I have to download the apk so that I can use it” because I don’t have rooted my phone is just inconvenient.

            I stick with my yt-dlp server and Plex instead.

      • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        204·
        3 months ago

        From my experience, if you’re on iOS then Brave is the only browser I know of that includes a built-in adblocker (although I have my own issues with Brave).

        If you’re on Android, should be able to just install Firefox (or a fork like Fennec), tap the three dots in the app > Extensions > uBlock Origin

        If you’re otherwise using the YouTube app, I don’t have much to add in that respect as I usually use Invidious or NewPipe.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
          7·
          3 months ago

          FYI Brave is about to start having issues with ad blocking due to the Manifest V3 shit since it’s Chromium based

        • SlippiHUD@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          Does Vivaldi not have an iOS version? It’s made by the original Opera founder that didn’t go all crypto bro and paycheck advance scammer.

        • kinttach@lemm.eeEnglish
          71·
          3 months ago

          Plenty of adblocker extensions on iOS Safari.

          For YouTube, I’d recommend Vinegar, although the more general adblockers will also work.

          • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            3 months ago

            This is what I use. Good to hear it’s not depreciated on more modern versions of the OS that my ol’ 6S Plus isn’t able to run.

        • QT1@lemm.ee
          1·
          3 months ago

          Orion Browser also has a built-in ad-blocker that also gets rid of Youtube ads. It even has some support for Firefox extensions, including uBlock Origin.

        • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23·
          3 months ago

          Brave has agreements with some ad services.

          Just use a good paid ad blocker. I have Adblock pro for years as a Safari extension and I never ever see an ad.

        • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          3 months ago

          Realistically I don’t use YouTube very often at all unless I’m searching for a video I already know the full name of.

          After all this shit I’m just not gonna be using it at all.

      • abbadon420@lemm.ee
        71·
        3 months ago

        Assuming you’re on android, you can use this download link on your phone to download the .apk for NewPipe. This link is a direct download to install the app. (If you don’t trust my link, you can got to newpipe.net yourself), so if you click it, it should immediately start downlaoading and you can follow the steps to install the app. It’s pretty self explanatory.

        It’s a frontend for youtube that removes all ads. You can’t comment or like, but you can subscribe to channels via NewPipe, just like you’re used to in youtube. But no ads. You do not need to login, it is not tied to your youtube account.

        Youtube doesn’t like ad dodging frontends, so every once in while the app won’t work and you’ll need to go back to youtube (or a different alternative) for a day or two until the folks at NewPipe fix it again. It’s kind of an arms race like that, but with advertising.

        • CubitOom@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          For Android, NewPipe is great. I think I prefer FreeTube now however. Mostly because of the ability to use the Invidious api, built in SponsorBlock, settings coss-compatibility with the desktop version, and a better way to organize and export data (IMO). However, freetube android does has a few rough spots that newpipe doesn’t have, so ymmv.

      • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
        4·
        3 months ago

        The internet with a proper ad blocker is a game changer. Take the five minutes to figure it out. You’ll save more as free time than that on your first day.

        Ironically, you could also YouTube how to install Firefox, then unlock.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        3 months ago

        Get GrayJay.

        That’s all. Just use grayjay. Either go to grayjay.app and get it, or get it off the Google play store. It’s “Grayjay” from “futo”

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            3 months ago

            Op said he doesn’t really know how to do jack shit with his phone, so I provided the easiest option l, as well as the better option.

            • Scrollone@feddit.it
              1·
              3 months ago

              Yes, you’re right and I agree with you. If OP decides to download it from the Play Store, however, he/she’s going to be disappointed when they remove the app and it stops getting updates, and then it breaks.

      • Blizzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        If you’re on android, use AdGuard that blocks ads in other apps. Or use Vivaldi browser with built in adblocker.

      • Prison Mike@links.hackliberty.org
        1·
        3 months ago

        I used to run a public TLS DNS server that would do some hardcore ad/tracking blocking. I shut it down when I switched myself, friends and family to a private Tailscale network with VPN on the exit nodes.

        It was a little janky to manage but I still have the files laying around; my point is I could turn it back on. Since it’s DNS-based it applies to all websites and apps running on your devices, and with TLS it’s also encrypted so your ISP wouldn’t be able to track your DNS requests. You would however be trusting me, a random stranger with your queries.

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1252·
    3 months ago

    The ad industry is truly one of the most reprehensible and insidious things humans have ever invited unto themselves. It’s beyond dystopian how much of our ability to move through the world is now contingent on us allowing our brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.

    I believe conspiracism is the root of all evil. But ads are gaining on conspiracism like they’re Usain Bolt being chased by an angry bee.

    I have to hand it to those soulless fucking devils though, they might have pulled off one of the most brazen but successful mindfucks I’ve ever seen: they convinced lots of people that seeing ads about topics they were interested in was some sort of concession from the ad industry, like they were begrudgingly implementing measures to make ads “relevant” to us, and that we were somehow gaming the system because of it. It was a “win” for us to have the ads being served into our eyeballs and ears be tailor-made for us. “I’m so sick of seeing ads for products I don’t even care about! I wish there was a way to make the ads be relevant to ME” said no cunt ever. But they managed to convinced us that everyone else was saying that, and that we’d won some sort of victory against them to have their advertising have the precision of a sniper rifle, versus what it was before, like some sort of shotgun fired from 150 feet away in the dark.

    An entire species of marks.

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
      341·
      3 months ago

      brains to be bukkaked with ads that are designed specifically to bypass our rationality and embed themselves in the very fabric of our beings like psychological rootkits.

      and like 90% of people think they’re completely impervious to ads lol

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28·
      3 months ago

      I have been using adblockers for decades already. And it’s been that long since I had to see ads. Occasionally some site will have some way of it getting through but even then I have the plugin scan and it sometimes can start blocking it. Essentially, my internet has been 95% ad-free and frankly I am surprised when I encounter anyone who doesn’t do the same.

      • Uli@sopuli.xyz
        101·
        3 months ago

        I’ve used an adblocker for ages as well, though I do wish content creators on YouTube could get some passive non-membership revenue from me without me having to disable my adblock and look directly into the Ark of the Covenant. I could get Premium, but at that point, I feel like I’ve negotiated with a terrorist.

        • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
          6·
          3 months ago

          Most of them earn more from Patreon and merch, that’s how you support them greatly, not by watching and clicking ads.

          Like, even the creators themselves tell you you can support them on Patreon or through their merch, they never tell you to get Premium, Join or click ads, as they don’t help much.

        • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          3 months ago

          If they have a Join in addition to subscribe that directly gives them revenue (of course not until after YouTube has taken like 80%). Also always see if they have a patreon account. I occasionally contribute to some very talented people.

          • Uli@sopuli.xyz
            21·
            3 months ago

            For sure, that’s what I meant by membership. There’s just so many different creators I watch, I can’t afford to support them all directly. Maybe I’ll make some playlists to play on the TV with ads while I’m out of the house.

            • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              Yeah I agree there are tons and it’s not your responsibility to support them. My personal approach is if I stumble upon someone I find to be extremely talented and who is clearly working very hard at something and has been persevering for a long time, I then check to see if they’re already being helped by people. If not that’s when I consider contributing a little.

              I mean I have my own family to support so it’s just a little bit here and there but it’s something. Mostly I consider it when I feel that the world is better with their work in it than without.

      • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
        2·
        3 months ago

        Remember that time when YT started showing banner ads below the video? Yeah, that was like just after the dinosaurs were wiped out and before blockchains became a thing. I was a long time ago, ok. Anyway, that’s when I was about to quit watching YT, but then I suddenly discovered the wonderful world of ad-blocking. Turns out, YT became watchable again.

    • rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      3 months ago

      That and all the people who say shit like “But I have to watch the ads to support the creators”, like there wasn’t 70 years of TV advertisements preceding this generation. I know I’m talking to a kid when someone says that. No one thought they were stealing from Burt Reynolds if they didn’t buy a Chrysler or tampons. It’s absurd.

    • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      3 months ago

      I feel your vitriol and agree with it 100%.

      When politicians of both parties say shit like “Americans like their private health insurance”… I kind of die a little.

      When a random podcast from somewhere else in the world has a local ad injected into it by the app I downloaded it with…same.

      When the godamn fucking pitcher’s mound has a CGI ad superimposed over it…same.

      We’re going to advertise and conspicuously consume ourselves into extinction. So there’s that I guess.

    • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      The link between conspiracies and ads is way stronger than that. The ad industry really went into high gear following WWII when the people working on pumping out propaganda to drive their own side of the war stepped up the game by applying psychology, new media, and a bigger budget.

      Those people and techniques then moved to the commercial market when the war ended and applied their trade to peddle us the crap their customers wanted to sell. Make us feel bad if we don’t buy product X and go on an endless consumption treadmill to try to feel good and adequate about ourselves.

      It is despicable and even worse with ads targeting children.

    • akwd169@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 months ago

      Sorry what exactly do you mean about conspiracism? As in the belief in conspiracy theories, right?

      I’m curious what you mean when you say it’s the root of all evil

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      3 months ago

      I could not agree more with your eloquently-written poignant rant, but I cannot resist being an extreme pedant—a shotgun fired at 150ft has a very small spread.

    • yboutros@infosec.pubEnglish
      82·
      3 months ago

      Don’t tell him, if too many people get ad blockers they’re just going to keep evolving

      • miridius@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 months ago

        Is that really how it works? I feel like the whole ad based economy is a sham anyway, I wouldn’t mind if it collapsed and we funded websites through micropayments or gift economy

        • avattar@lemmy.sdf.org
          4·
          3 months ago

          Would it be so bad if we want back to how it was before? Just people making their own sites about things they cared about? For fun or the love of the subject matter?

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.worldOP
      312·
      3 months ago

      9 times out of 10 the ads have zero effect on my ability to search for things.

      I’m not saying searches haven’t gotten worse but until this specific thing or Google’s ai search it’s been easy to ignore if you know what you’re doing.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
        19·
        3 months ago

        I remember being that guy.
        It never gets better, ads only ever get worse. If you are successfully ignoring ads then they aren’t doing their job, and they will keep trying different ways to get your attention until you get sick of this shit and get an ad blocker.

        You have found a specific thing that would improve, save yourself the hassle and get ublock now to fix this for you as well as a dozen other little things you are “living with” that will be much better when they’re gone.

          • miridius@lemmy.world
            15·
            3 months ago

            Firstly it hasn’t actually happened yet, I guess you fell for the misleading windowscentral headline. Secondly it’s not really kneecapped, but required them to rewrite, which the uBO author decided not to do (as a statement I guess). Other ad blockers however have made new MV3 compatible versions that are comparable to the MV2 ones, so it’s clearly possible. Also don’t forget there are other chromium browsers besides chrome, if you use Brave you don’t even need to install an ad blocker because it’s built in.

            • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldEnglish
              61·
              3 months ago

              I’m not going to get into the technical details of manifest v2 and v3, as I think it’s beside the point.

              I think we can agree that given Google has announced the end of v2, recommending uBlock Origin on Chrome right now would be pretty mad, right?

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        4·
        3 months ago

        Ads aren’t the only thing to worry about. You’re leaving yourself dangerously exposed to malware for literally no reason.

  • don@lemm.ee
    672·
    3 months ago

    Real homies don’t let homies view YouTube without proper adblockers turned on

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
    44·
    3 months ago

    I take it you haven’t been paying attention. The term that has been it coined is called “enshitification” and the Google is running at the head of the pack in their race to the sewer.

    • erusuoyera@sh.itjust.works
      111·
      3 months ago

      We should probably stop using that word and just call it by it’s proper name, "Capitalism”. The only way for an ad revenue based business to drive growth is to force more and more ads on users, and flood their platform with bots to increase engagement numbers.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
      528·
      3 months ago

      No, the kids are scared to type scary-sweary words now too stupid to know when and where they need to self-censor so the term is ensh*ttification

      OP has some catching up to do

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
    41·
    3 months ago

    What happened is that you forgot to install an ad blocker.

    edit ad blocker won’t help here

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      3 months ago

      yes, but their results are trash now. shows you 5 results, then 10 or things you’ve probably already seen completely unrelated to the search, then random “trending” garbage.

    • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      3 months ago

      This is not ad-blocking related. The search results on YouTube are literal trash and there’s nothing we can do about it.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        3 months ago

        Oh right. How amazing that one of my highest upmodded comment is the one where my comment is objectively full of shit

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    392·
    3 months ago

    Google knows the answer to this is: “What else are you going to use, Dailymotion?”

    Which is why they’re a monopoly.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 months ago

        Sure. Not watching your favorite show is always an option. But if it’s your favorite show, that really sucks.

        • gencha@lemm.ee
          3·
          3 months ago

          Yeah. It really does suck. You get over it eventually though. And, who knows, in a couple of years maybe someone releases all episodes in a single download and you’ll be enjoying them on a whole new level.

          If you really like something that is only available on a single platform, and you don’t really enjoy that platform, and you also have zero control over the platform, get out of that situation. It will always end in frustration. Try to gain back control

  • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
    392·
    3 months ago

    It’s called enshittification:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

    Enshittification is a re-prioritization pattern where online product and service providers experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. This process results in a significant deterioration of the user experience.

    Though the concept had been recognized and labeled with similar terms,[1][2] the neologism “enshittification” was coined by writer Cory Doctorow in November 2022 to describe this phenomenon. The American Dialect Society recognized the term’s relevance and impact by selecting it as its 2023 Word of the Year. Doctorow has also referred to this concept as platform decay, emphasizing the inevitable decline in service quality due to these profit-driven changes.

    To tackle and diminish enshittification, Doctorow advocates for two fundamental solutions: upholding the end-to-end principle and guaranteeing the right of exit. The end-to-end principle asserts that platforms should transmit data in response to user requests rather than algorithm-driven decisions. Ensuring the right of exit entails facilitating user departure from platforms without data loss, which necessitates interoperability. These strategies aim to uphold the standards and trustworthiness of online platforms, placing emphasis on user satisfaction and encouraging market competition.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    33·
    3 months ago

    i tried to find a clip of that olympics break dancing thing a week or two ago.

    It was fucking impossible. I literally couldn’t find shit, it was all AI generated videos.

    • eletes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      25·
      3 months ago

      That one is a Olympic copyright issue. Either NBC since they pay so much for the rights or the IOC flag videos immediately so all your left with is low quality videos.

      It genuinely ruins trying to find Olympics content if NBC doesn’t cover that specific event

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        3 months ago

        why would you ever copyright video clips of the olympics though, nobody fucking pays for cable or has time to watch streams. And we’re also only talking about like 2 minutes worth of content, I’m pretty certain that would be fair use.

        • demizerone@lemmy.world
          3·
          3 months ago

          The Olympics are less and less about the athletes and what the human body and mind can achieve and more an more about the sponsorship deals. These corps pay big bucks for exclusivity deals.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            3 months ago

            yeah but that’s all pre broadcast shit, it’s irrelevant to some 3 minute clip being uploaded to youtube containing that segment of footage.

            If you want people to care about it, it has to be accessible, and clearly, it’s not very accessible.

      • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
        4·
        3 months ago

        Thank you for this. I watched the whole thing. It’s undeniable that Raygun can do a lot of things I can’t, but her performance paled in comparison with the other competitors. Three four times I got the goosebumps when the other competitors did truly amazing moves!

    • Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      This is to be expected, Google does the same thing with their search engine; delay providing the most accurate and related results in order to get users to see more ads per search.

    • demizerone@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 months ago

      Raygun is the best, but I also failed to find it and I have YouTube Red (or whatever Google calls it now). The Olympics was on that feed like hoss on some slop.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        yeah idk i thought some of what she did was pretty good, she demonstrates good control, i think she mainly needs to work on fluidity and transitions though, some of them were awful.