I'm trying very, VERY hard to pound the correct knowledge into my brain to be able to switch my freelance business services away from Google to something like Proton Unlimited.

Leaving the Google ecosystem will literally make me lose work, but man, this shit has gotta stop

You can block ad on tv by side loading smarttube

Yeah, I download whatever I want to watch and fire up vlc. 0 ads, 0 buffering.

Technically that's 100% buffering.

For about the last 3 years I've been hearing about YouTube cracking down on ad blockers. Not once has it affected my. Ublock still stops ads on the browser. Revanced stops em on the phone.

If you are a content creator please consider upload your content on other video platforms too.

But I don't have adblockers installed and I still get told to turn my blocker off. I have no extensions and YouTube randomly stops my video to tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Edit: I guess this is the result when dealing with the kind of users who refuse to watch ads, but also can't fuck off like decent human beings. Just millions of people who will climb your fence, pick your locks, smash your window, because they deserve to watch content, but they won't pay or watch ads.

It's a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked "no vids for u" message, you'd get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being "buggy" and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no "smoking gun" blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.

The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.

I mean, when I want to watch TV or Movies, I load it into my torrent program ‍️ and let it download in the background. I could do the same with youtube videos.

For about the last 3 years I've been hearing about YouTube cracking down on ad blockers. Not once has it affected my. Ublock still stops ads on the browser. Revanced stops em on the phone.

Umm.... Maybe. Let's take a look.

Redirecting to /statistics/267606/quarterly-revenue-of-google/

(www.statista.com)

In the first quarter of 2025, Google's revenue amounted to over 89.52 billion U.S. dollars, up from the 79.97 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same quarter a year prior.

... They'll survive.

I guess the content creators take the hit when users block ads or refuse to use premium.

Edit: your addendum is false. Technically YouTube freely delivers (answers http gets and posts), the user just refuses to watch all of their content or take part in the tracking. No broken windows or climbed fences.

Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.

I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.

But I don't have adblockers installed and I still get told to turn my blocker off. I have no extensions and YouTube randomly stops my video to tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Edit: I guess this is the result when dealing with the kind of users who refuse to watch ads, but also can't fuck off like decent human beings. Just millions of people who will climb your fence, pick your locks, smash your window, because they deserve to watch content, but they won't pay or watch ads.

The problem is, nothing short of NA and EU governmental intervention will force Google to stop being such a nefarious, monopolistic, antitrust piece of shit. They're just so utterly ubiquitous for Western businesses. You cannot have a small business* and hope to be successful without partaking in either Google or Facebook/Meta's ad services. TikTok was becoming a huge threat to both those companies and look how viciously they were attacked.

The whole thing is beyond fucked, man. Kudos to you for trying to break free for your business, but I feel like you'll just be fucking yourself in the long run.

Edit in advance: I should clarify that there will of course be exceptions where a small business can be successful just fine without advertising, but for those that rely on being discovered on a larger scale versus purely local, it is essential.

Time to pin Odysee and Peertube in my browser even though I pay for YT Premium (only $2 per month here in BD).

Umm.... Maybe. Let's take a look.

Redirecting to /statistics/267606/quarterly-revenue-of-google/

(www.statista.com)

In the first quarter of 2025, Google's revenue amounted to over 89.52 billion U.S. dollars, up from the 79.97 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same quarter a year prior.

... They'll survive.

I guess the content creators take the hit when users block ads or refuse to use premium.

Edit: your addendum is false. Technically YouTube freely delivers (answers http gets and posts), the user just refuses to watch all of their content or take part in the tracking. No broken windows or climbed fences.