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In Firefox, install the uBlock Origin extension. Go into ublock settings, disable ad blocking filterlists, enable tracking filterlists. Personally, I'm blocking ads too as they're sometimes abused as malware vectors.
Or if you only want ads that aren't interfering, there's Adblock Plus with its acceptable ads programme. Can't vouch for whether that's a good or bad thing.
Thanks! Just curious, is AdBlock intentionally programmed to block only such advertisements? Or is it just a slightly "worse" ad blocker?
In adblock plus, acceptable ads are on by default, but optional:
"Slightly worse?"... I haven't touched abp in years, so I couldn't say. However, here's a comparison:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared
Google is paying copius sums of money to in AdBlock Plus (asuming this is the extension you are speaking about), makes sense to avoid it completely and run uBlock Origin.
https://www.insider.com/why-google-has-to-build-its-own-adblocker-2017-4
Sorry to bother but what about mobile?
Yes, uBlock Origin add-on is available in Firefox Android: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/ublock-origin/
Adblock Plus... I don't know!
My solution to this problem (which is only tangentially related to your technical question) is to block everything and really make an effort to donate to all developers of my open source programs, content creators, website hosters etc. in the services themselves or on platforms like Liberapay/Patreon.
Sorry that I cannot help with the technical stuff but maybe an idea if you don't manage it your way.
That is great! But can I ask how much do you donate? I feel that if I try to donate to all the creators that I use the tools they develop or consume the content they create, this expense will bypass my rent (unless I will give everyone a really, really small donation).
Maybe you could donate a small donation to multiple projects/creators every month? Even 1$ per month is 12$ a year per project which is of course better than nothing
Talking on the YouTube front, a trivially small donation will support them far more than watching ads ever could. Even something as small as $1/year is often far more than they would ever make from you in a year. As far as donations to developers go, it depends entirely on what you feel comfortable with. Most people who work on open source projects are unpaid volunteers, so it isn't expected that you donate, but if you choose to do so it can be quite helpful to sustaining the project. If many people in the userbase were to make small donations, that would go a long way.
In reality, ads almost entirely benefit exploitative multi-billion dollar companies such as Google and Facebook, so my personal philosophy stands against them. I much prefer donating to people directly to cut out the exploitative middle-man.
Talking on the YouTube front, a trivially small donation will support them far more than watching ads ever could. Even something as small as $1/year is often far more than they would ever make from you in a year.
I was going to write exactly that. I have a channel with tens of thousands of subs, and a $1 donation from a single user generates more income than multiple ads to that same user. Patreon, or a straight-up donation (of any amount), is so much better than suffering through ads.
Ads kill content, it disrespects users, it steals attention away from what you've created, builds frustration and breaks the flow of your content, and they serve only to benefit Google & partners.
But if YouTube doesn't earn enough how will they be able to maintain the site? Agree that they can earn a little less but for some reason it doesn't work that way (I'm not aware of a service of such scale which keep profit at minimum) 🤷
YouTube was not profitable for quite some time, just like Reddit and Twitter have been struggling with. They have massively increased their advertising and data collection over a number of years, decreased the cut paid to creators, and become more and more exploitative of user data, so at this point they now account for about 10% of Google/Alphabet's total yearly profits. While I have not seen an ad in years, I have been told that ads have become unskippable, multiple ads play consecutively, and there are numerous ad breaks throughout the video. The last time I saw an ad in YouTube, everything was skippable and ads were basically only ever at the beginning and end of videos, where creators actively wanted them. Now they are apparently incredibly intrusive and disruptive, and I'm under the impression that content creators can't even choose when they show up in the video.
YouTube enjoys an almost complete monopoly, and that isn't going to change anytime in the near future. The infrastructure costs for another company to develop a similar platform would be immense, and getting people to switch from YouTube at this point is practically impossible on both the content creator and viewer side. YouTube massively underpays its creators, and they become more and more anti-consumer and anti-creator every year. It seems they are even moving to ban in-video sponsorships in the near future because they don't make money off of them.
The only open source alternatives I am aware of that have any amount of scale are PeerTube and Odysee, neither of which come anywhere close to rivaling YouTube. I personally wouldn't worry about your decision affecting YouTube's profit margins; very few people even try to block ads, and even fewer use alternative frontends like NewPipe, Invidious, or Piped, so YouTube's profit margins will be determined by the complacency of the general masses anyway.
If you'd like to get into the ethics discussion of whether or not YouTube should profit, I'd be happy to provide my justification as to why I'd love to see Google/Alphabet as a company die. They exist solely to exploit their userbase for profit, and I don't believe that to be justifiable. But that conversation is practically irrelevant, as your decision as a single user has no realistic impact on YouTube's profits anyway.
Yeah, that's what I haven't figured out yet either. How do you make it a fair amount between a content creator and an email client developer, between one person, a corporation and a non-profit?
I have settled on not trying to make it a science. I can only give what I have, so always when I feel that I have financial breathing room (paycheck comes in and no urgent payments due) I am going to the relevant places and donate what I feel I can afford. While not perfect, I feel I should be proud about doing what I can rather than beat myself up over whether I could spend more, which a lot of free users will never think about in the first place. Otherwise I'd only go crazy.
The donations will go to what/who I feel like I have used/appreciated most since the last donations. So it's mainly donations, not subscriptions which also helps not losing track and giving more than you can afford. Come to think of it, I also do not donate to the big creators whose content I consume as I guess they are rich enough. If you want a number, my last donation was 20€ to a small ASMR content creator. And for stuff that I use regularly like programs and apps (e.g. NewPipe 4€/month and KeePass 0.5€), my OS (3€), the hoster of the Piped instance I use (4€) etc. I have set up regular payments on Liberapay and such according to their tier system. I cannot afford all that much, so I am going for the small/medium tier according to my amount of usage (and I guess you should think about if they have running costs or not). If you are not constrained by money I guess you can just go for their higher tiers and vary them according to usage.
I realise it does sound like a pretty bad science now as it's both complicated and does not sound fair at all (e.g. OS gets too little, no?), but well… This write-up actually helped me understand my own 'system' better, so thanks for asking! :)