Youtube General thread (formerly Youtube Censorship discussion thread)

[Tomoko]

I just use furryfox and im honestly thinking about switching to brave.
Furryfox is sus and runs worse than chrome now.

 

[neger psykolog]

I think they also did this move because Mozilla Firefox is approaching bankruptcy and they want to transition as an advertising company. Which means Firefox will be less of a priority.

They're doing this because of the antitrust lawsuits and other things. There is a very real possibility that YouTube becomes a separate company from Google/Alphabet entirely. There would be huge financial consequences if that happened.

 

[bliblblblbbllb]

I have premium for my kids and nephew, but if they're going to hike the prices up I guess I'll just have to install ad blockers for them. Does anyone know what works best for android phones?

Just use Newpipe, and maybe consider how much YouTube your kids should be watching in general.
Newpipe also makes it a bit easier to build custom feeds vs. using the YouTube algo. The YouTube algo is going to introduce kids and tweens to lots of shit that parents would likely never choose their children to be introduced to that way, without their knowledge.

It's important to keep it updated- it breaks every few months due to YouTube trying to break it, but they've always been good about fixing it within hours or a couple days max.

 

[Mr. Ghoul]

I'm still grandfathered into the $8 Premium because I was an OG Google Music (RIP) user. But if they ever increase the price by even a penny I'm cancelling and just going to rely on adblockers from that point. I've been slowly trying to de-Google but it's tough when you're family also rely's on their services. Just getting them to switch to a something like Signal was hard enough.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I have premium for my kids and nephew, but if they're going to hike the prices up I guess I'll just have to install ad blockers for them. Does anyone know what works best for android phones?

For non-technical people, just using Brave is going to be the best solution.

 

[Bob Barbas]

I thankfully haven't had any issues myself yet so still no ad cuckery for me.

 

[eDove]

For non-technical people, just using Brave is going to be the best solution.

It doesn't hurt to put dns.adguard.com in their phones' Internet settings too, or an equivalent adblocker. Trying to use apps without it is suicide-inducing.

 

[Heather Mason 2]

Does anyone know what works best for android phones?

Youtube Revanced is what I use. Haven't seen an ad on my phone in 5 or more years

They're doing this because of the antitrust lawsuits and other things. There is a very real possibility that YouTube becomes a separate company from Google/Alphabet entirely. There would be huge financial consequences if that happened.

If Youtube has to stand on its own there's no way they'll survive without insane welfare or outside investment. Has video hosting ever been profitable in the entire history of the Internet? It seems like it's always been a complete net-negative

I wouldn't be surprised if they start limiting uploads to paying customers only so our dear schizophrenics aren't allowed to upload hour-long rants every single day, clogging up their disk space for free

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

It doesn't hurt to put dns.adguard.com in their phones' Internet settings too, or an equivalent adblocker. Trying to use apps without it is suicide-inducing.

I've always been a little leary of trying to set up something like that for people outside my household. I've pushed people who I'm family tech support for who are on Android towards using RethinkDNS, which I adopted after it was recommended on the Software Endorsements thread, for a similar purpose.

The really good thing about doing the blocking this way is that you can set it up with reasonable block lists, verify that they won't block things like Google Maps widgets on websites or Uber from working (which some of the more extreme and not recommended blocklists in there do), and then when it's been set up there is a big button to stop the blocking if it is interfering with an 'important user function' like your mother 'watching an ad to get a bonus powerup in a color matching game'. A more technically savvy user might even remember that button exists, and even though they probably won't it's easier to tell them to go to the 'Rethink DNS' app and hit stop than try and figure out how to get them to adjust DNS settings directly. And if the blocking setup generally works well for people but stops Candy Crush from working, you can just get them to turn it off for now and sort out adding an IP or DNS based exception to the blocklists next time you have hands on their phone.

 

['Ole Dente]

The small issue is that they haven't killed adblock though lol

When a company makes a move like this, you can be sure of either two things:

1. YouTube knows exactly how to defeat ad-blockers after their previous failure and they are preparing to unleash it soon.
2. They know it's fruitless to attempt to defeat ad-blockers so they are just going with Step 2 of their original plan with the intention of promising additional features that they don't currently have yet.

Companies are very predictable creatures. They care about money, they do not care about you, if there is a way to fuck you to their benefit without creating a riot over it, they will do it happily and without so much as a second thought. Now that I think about it, this goes for government too.

If Youtube has to stand on its own there's no way they'll survive without insane welfare or outside investment. Has video hosting ever been profitable in the entire history of the Internet? It seems like it's always been a complete net-negative.

Video hosting should be a tax subsized thing done by the government so when they attempt to remove your video, it becomes an issue of constitutional rights and not some gay shit about saying the word "faggot" 35 times in 2 minutes. Considering my above comment though, I don't see that ever happening.

 

[tehpope]

I have premium for my kids and nephew, but if they're going to hike the prices up I guess I'll just have to install ad blockers for them. Does anyone know what works best for android phones?

you can install fdroid and then have it automatically update any apps it installs. If you want sponsorblock too, you can add the izzy on droid repo and install tubular. Its a fork of newpipe since the main devs don't want to add sponsorblock support.

 

[Oliver Onions]

I try my best to advocate for these solutions to friends and family, but they insist that they could never do it, and that I'm somehow just way too smart because I can Google something

I can relate. I bought my mother a new laptop last year, set it up for her and the first thing I did was install Firefox with Ublock and NoScript. Had to go help her fill in some forms recently and she was using fucking Edge. I don't understand why it's so hard for boomers.

Does anyone know what works best for android phones?

If you don't want any hassle just install the Brave browser and use the YouTube website through that. Also install Brave any way because Chrome is homosexual.

 

[Troonos]

Anyone have a very succinct and retard-difficulty guide to getting PiHole working and optimized on my RPi?

 

[Zjierb]

Anyone have a very succinct and retard-difficulty guide to getting PiHole working and optimized on my RPi?

I used this video along with the pihole docs to get started. The firebog.net blocklists are also a great starting point. I did have a couple of hiccups with my install, but I learned that was the fault of my SD card, so don't use Chinesium garbage. I also recommend Tailscale but be sure to configure Tailnet Lock so you can manually sign devices to use your pihole remotely.

I totally recommend Grayjay or Revanced for mobile YouTube, but I can't seem to get them to open links by default, which is very annoying. Brave also works if you don't feel like mucking about with apps. If you're using any variant of an Android TV device (Nvidia shield) then definitely use Smarttube. It was absolutely a game changer.

 

[Civillian 18]

Anyone have a very succinct and retard-difficulty guide to getting PiHole working and optimized on my RPi?

You have asked this in the YouTube thread, so I just wanted to mention PiHole will not block those ads, as they are served from the same domain as the video content, so blocking the ads would block the video.
YouTube ReVanced as @Zjierb mentioned is great for the phone if you have Android, it is a bit complex to set up initially (they do not provide/distribute pre-patch APKs to avoid drawing excessive attention apparently) as you need to download a specific version of YouTube and apply selected patches.

but I can't seem to get them to open links by default

There is a patch you can enable to change the app name to "YouTube Revanced", this was the patch that let me have an entry in the "default apps" section so I could set it to open all the different URLs. You can also get adb for your computer and hard disable the YouTube app to prevent it updating/coming back.

 

[Troonos]

You have asked this in the YouTube thread, so I just wanted to mention PiHole will not block those ads, as they are served from the same domain as the video content, so blocking the ads would block the video.
YouTube ReVanced as @Zjierb mentioned is great for the phone if you have Android, it is a bit complex to set up initially (they do not provide/distribute pre-patch APKs to avoid drawing excessive attention apparently) as you need to download a specific version of YouTube and apply selected patches.

There is a patch you can enable to change the app name to "YouTube Revanced", this was the patch that let me have an entry in the "default apps" section so I could set it to open all the different URLs. You can also get adb for your computer and hard disable the YouTube app to prevent it updating/coming back.

Is there a solution that will block ads but also still allow me to cast videos to my TV from both my Android and my laptop?

 

[Zjierb]

Is there a solution that will block ads but also still allow me to cast videos to my TV from both my Android and my laptop?

If you're using most smart TVs I can't stress enough that SmartTube exists. You'll have to use the remote to menu, but it's a great alternative. The only downside I've seen is the errant bug, but that's not really an issue for the most part since the fix is almost always rebooting.

 

[Civillian 18]

Is there a solution that will block ads but also still allow me to cast videos to my TV from both my Android and my laptop?

SmartTubeNext as recommended, and they have a section on their FAQ about casting from your phone to your TV.
Definitely still do the PiHole install though, just because it does not work for YouTube does not mean it does not make a massive difference for your experience with the general slop riddled internet.

 

[plgfarts]

I use Brave, SponsorBlock, AdNaseum, and ProtonVPN. I have yet to see a single ad anywhere, let alone Youtube. Next step will be a PiHole once I get out of this apartment

 

[30+GameOvers]

Yewtu.be has problems displaying videos once again. Looking things up is fine for now, but only Nadeko has actual working videos from what I can tell.
It's crazy how they're targeting yewtu.be above all else, this isn't the first time that this particular instance went down all of a sudden and it's easily the most mainstream one.
Edit: Checked again, now I can't get channel info or search anything on yewtu.be. Nadeko works fine.
Fuck Google.