this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
64 points (86.4% liked)

Technology

64013 readers
7280 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock are still free.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 hours ago

Freetube (desktop) and newpipe (android) is great for those who would like a subscription feed without an account, local Playlist, download videos, and save view history while remaining account free.

I use pipepipe on mobile with it being a fork of newpipe with sponsor block, and lets you use a throw away YouTube account it uses only to access age restricted videos.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 55 points 9 hours ago (6 children)

blocks most ads

Super important and makes this completely useless.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

"ad-free" sure, I heard that before.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah we're like a decade into Hulu having an "ad free" plan that includes ads. I lump them in with companies like Verizon offering "unlimited" internet with data caps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

In 1990 Tele+ started as a pay-tv channel which featured only movies all day long, with no advertising!. It didn't take long for them to start having ads, although not in the middle of the movie.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 hours ago

Good for them. Still won't give them money ever

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Eight dollars a month for fucking "premium-lite" is insane.

[–] HeyJoe 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Considering i get premium Peacock for like $6 a month after discounts I agree. I get the live channel plus a ton of other stuff and other pre-made channels to watch. Some sports as well plus the Olympics when they are relevant. Asking $8 just to remove some ads sounds awful. I will stick to using Firefox on mobile and pc with ublock origin which removes all ads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I feel the same. I pay $5/month for my Nebula subscription, and I think that's a bit high for my usage.

Could I get an ala carte option where my first X hours are ad free? I don't watch a ton of YouTube, but I'm willing to pay a little to support the platform. Or let me pay for the handful of channels I actually watch.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

The only problem I have with the premium subscription is the lack of ad control from the content creator. They should have to put them into some kind of wrapper that I, as a premium member can decide to enable or not. As a paying subscriber I should be able to watch it 100% ad free without going through sponsorblock, which is a big pita to do on set-top boxes.

I will sit through ads of the people I watch that are small and trying to make a buck above YT's pittance. OR, maybe YT could share a little of that sweet sweet profit with them and then not allow them to do their own ads (hahahahaha)

[–] ch00f 1 points 6 hours ago

Check out Nebula. Lots of YouTubers host there. Subscriptions go straight to the creators, and they cut the sponsor blocks out of the versions they post there.

[–] Evotech 5 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

Sponsorblock built in would be nice.

[–] roofuskit 7 points 10 hours ago

It's built in on free apps that block the rest of the ads.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

Yeah especially without full feature parity with YouTube premium. This $7.99 price should omit music but everything else from premium should be included, and even that feels a little expensive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

I heard people still get ads even on full price

[–] ovalofsand 7 points 3 hours ago

Nope. Unless you're talking about sponsors that content creators hock.

The app allows you to skip to commonly skipped-to-areas, which often makes skipping that kind of content very quick and simple. I'm not sure if that's a a feature of the free version though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

Had it for years no ads ever anywhere on YouTube.

[–] dtrain 16 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Have it . Never seen an ad besides what the creator makes in his video.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 hours ago

What about homepage?

[–] electric 7 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

I don't get the people shitting on this. It's a very fair plan. Something I've been wishing existed for the past month, even. Like the article states, it's for people who use YT to watch TV (me).

I just hope there's a yearly plan to get a little bit more of a discount. Student plan is the same price but no yearly plan, so it comes to ~$90 per year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

I don't like that a paid plan gives worse experience than free tools. For example, the downloads not being files you can store indefinitely and play by anything. Or not all ads being guaranteed to be blocked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

I have HTPC for that, connected to my TV, with uBlock Origin.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

I can only speak for myself, but I refuse to give Google a dime because they're unfriendly to consumers.

I pay way more in Patreon subscriptions than I would pay for YouTube. I don't see ads, and the creators make more money from me. And, importantly, Google sees none of it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

With YouTube Lite, customers will be able to watch videos across verticals like gaming, fashion, beauty, cooking, news, and more, ad-free

Oh wow. They'll remove some, but not all, ads!

[T]he new tier won’t offer several benefits in the full YouTube Premium ($13.99 per month) subscription, like downloads, background play, or the ability to watch music videos ad-free.

Price-gating downloads seems pretty evil. The feature doesn't cost Google any extra money. It could even save them a little server strain if a user wants to watch the same video repeatedly. But clearly, this is where Google's surveillance pays off: they know what people want, and they know to demand an extra $6/month for it.

[–] toynbee 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Is "verticals" marketing speak for "categories" or "genres" or does it mean something else?

[–] slumberlust 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It varies by org but yes verticals are usually product silos that serve certain types of customers or needs.

[–] toynbee 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I appreciate the information and that you took the time to answer, but I hate that combination of words.

Still ... Thank you for the response.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

It definitely sounds a tad dehumanizing, and I'm not sure if that's intentional or not...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Vertical market, where they do all of one thing soup to nuts, as opposed to a horizontal market, where they do a little bit of one thing but sell it in a wide variety of scenarios.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Too little too late, I wish there was a non-US alternative to YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Nebula is US based, but it's quite different and has some overlap with some popular YouTube channels. $6/month or $60/year, and you can find discounts through various YouTube channel referral codes

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

PeerTube isn't one of these "YouTube, but without ads" apps? I might check it out, but I still think YouTube has the total monopoly on video form content right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Peertube is like, "what if people could self-host their own YouTube videos"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 hours ago

I'll continue watching ad-free as I please with my extensions, thank you. Until YouTube has the balls to shut down UBlock Origin and all ad-blockers, you can take your premium tier and shove it.

Oh a corporate advertising shill downvoted me. Aren't you cute? Don't you love being marketed to? Idiot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Or get uBlock for $0 😁

load more comments
view more: next ›