Firefox+uBlock Origin on the computer.

ReVanced on my Android phone.

SmartTubeNext on my Android TV.

I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years.

Don't forget about ReVanced and SmartTubeNext (for smart TVs)

exposure puts them at risk

they're super easy to find

that one meme with the dude surrounded by question marks

E: or that one of Trump and another dude in chairs talking about a piece of paper

I've long said to myself, the day revanced, smarttube and adblockers stop working is the day I stop browsing YT.

I watched my son showing me something the other day, he can't yet login via revanced so still has ads, what a shit show.

I asked him how he copes with all the ads, he said I'm dumb to them now I just ignore it. But still coming from zero ads to that was a very jarring experience.

I tried watching a 30 minute video on YouTube the other day and it injected ads every 1 minute for the entire video. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck Alphabet.

I think I'm understanding the playbook here.

Eventually YouTube will cost 89.99 a month and also be full of ads.

Then they will be disrupted by some startup company that will have to fight uphill for search and bandwidth access through Google's monopolistic front door.

Years later a court case will be decided and the new guy will be up and running a free service with a few ads or 1.99 a month for no ads!

And then we get to go through it all again.

Would you like to pay us and have ads?

• Google

Well, you shouldn't watch smart tv anyway. Shut off that slop and use your tv as a dumb tv through a computer. The other way is just asking to be exploited.

This is the way!!

I even subscribed to youtube premium when it came bundled with music streaming as well. back then it was a good deal. They kept raising prices and making the end product worse. Now it just seems obnoxious.

It feels insane to me that you're paying and you still get ads. I fucking refuse to do that

My uBlock Origin has been working fine on my Linux desktop running Firefox.

uBlock Origin Lite on my Chromebook, on the other hand, has gotten the "Ad blockers are prohibited" popup a couple of times.

Exactly. If every ad-dependent website went offline tomorrow and all we were left with was Wikipedia, PeerTube, government/academia sites and a bunch of Geocities-esque "labor of love" hobbyist pages, nothing of value would be lost.

They're trying to block adblockers again, it seems. I got the "adblockers are not allowed" popup again recently.

Yup I think that's it. I got a "you have playback issues?" popup today. Also it takes longer to load.

Maybe YouTube will push me away, but for now it's too convenient.

Youtube is telling me daily that they'll soon disable my youtube because I have an ad blocker. Still waiting for it to actually happen.

I've been using Ublock origin for years and I've never seen a message like that

That way I won’t get DolbyVision metadata though and getting surround sound workin is a chore, also.
Not to speak about comfortable control from my couch without a keyboard/mouse.

Instead, I use an appleTV. It’s ad free, supports all streaming services I need (including my jellyfin) and almost all common video, audio and HDR formats. Even supports VPNs for getting around geofencing.

Besides the initial purchase price (which is steep but there aren’t many comparable devices), not having adblock working in YouTube is really the only actual downside. And for that a few friends and I share a YT family subscription. Has the benefit of my views actually paying the creators for the content they provide me and us not having to pay the ridiculous amounts of solo subscriptions.

Would never use the integrated SmartTV feature of the vast majority of TV manufacturers (LG used to be so good before they put ads everywhere). My TV hasn’t seen an Internet connection even once.

Just use invidious or Newpipe if the adblock ever stops working

How does revanced work? How does it protect me from ads?