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YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround

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  • "If your adblock doesn't work, a workaround is to pay for YouTube Premium"

    AW NO I HADN'T FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT

    Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

  • Or even better, Librewolf.

    Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER?
    In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?

  • Three out of four of the paragraphs in the article's solution were spent convincing people of the benefits to buying premium. Still feels like an ad despite the tiny mention of uBlock Origin at the very bottom.

    I do agree that Youtube, premium isn't bad value. But I refuse to support google or youtube directly with my money. If I ever want to support a creator, I can throw them a couple dollars on patreon and help them far more than buying premium ever would have.

    Yeah, the site is pretty garbage and every article reads like an ad.

    "Tom's hardware" is still an amazing resource, but "Tom's guide" is so shit I can't tell if it's a ripoff site or just how they find the good one. Especially since the sites look the same, just different background color.

    I'm used to it now so I didn't mention that, but for people who don't know about the site it makes sense why they were thrown off.

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    Adguard still works too

  • Maybe it is a regional thing? I was watching YouTube 30 mins ago with no issues and haven't ever had any unless I open a new tab but don't try to watch until the next day. Then I just need to refresh and it is off to the races.

    Work PC and I have to use edge there with Ghostery (ugh). Was trying to find a decent coding tutorial. Every page load of a video was a playback error that instantly vanished when I hit reload. No problems on FF with uBO today, though.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    I don't care what YouTube's costs are, I don't want to pay. I'll leave that to people like you.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    For my wife and I, whose main background noise/entertainment is Let's Play style videos on YouTube (Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, RTGame and such), paying for premium just makes sense. Like you said, we can and should criticize them for how they handle things, but everyone making a fuss about premium existing just makes no sense.

  • Sadly i have to stop using it. Librewolf has start getting some graphic bug, i also can't upload pictures to some website (it show just lines). Now i'm trying Floorp.

    This is caused by not allowing the website to access your html canvas data. You can fix this in the address bar by clicking the icon on the left of the URL to grant permissions.

  • Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER?
    In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?

    Yes. I consider it better because it's preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla's telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.

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    That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    Or..... You could just ditch Chrome altogether!

    I don't know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It's a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.

    I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that's become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don't even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.

    And if you don't want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.

    All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).

    Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.

  • I think you stopped scrolling too early

    That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    They even link to what I assume is that process.

    But...

    It costs the same as Spotify

    I used Google Play music and it was awesome, when it shuttered I tried Spotify and didn't like it.

    YouTube premium is worth it just for music on your phone/car, getting YouTube ad free is kind of just a bonus. But there's a couple podcasts I watch on there, and I've found a couple really good channels for all the crazy science stuff that's been happening. Not to mention a lot of UK shows upload full episodes, and there's more than one account that somehow uploads full runs of shows after being upscaled to 4k.

    I really don't understand why so many people are against YouTube premium. It makes sense if someone just pirates all their other media. But people pay for a music streamer and a couple TV streamers.... It seems like an arbitrary line.

    Edit:

    The article is from "toms guide" not "toms hardware".

    The guide has every article like this where it reads like paid advertising. The "hardware" one is a good resource.

    But yeah, pretty much anything from "tomsguide" is going to read like paid advertising for something. I legit don't know if they're affiliated or it's a ripoff site built to confuse people with the "hardware" site.

    I read that. But the way the article is written suggests that the workaround they're implying is to buy YouTube premium.
    I am not per se against YT premium, after all its normal business to take money and serve a product, but what my biggest cons are

    1. The price
    2. I already use all of the mentioned premium features and more but for free

    For example:
    YT music -> ReVanced (background play, no ads)
    YT App -> ReVanced (no ads, Sponsorblock, no shorts)
    YT on browser -> Extensions (uBlock, Sponsorblock, block yt shorts)

    If I were to pay for premium and use the regular app, I would lose that functionality and 130€ per year. This money would support a company whose business model involves extensive collection of personal data, which is then sold to third parties, effectively contributing to the global surveillance infrastructure.

    I would rather not use YouTube than pay for it.

  • I am willing to completely ditch YouTube and not access it, but there are a couple of channels that just aren't anywhere else that I do enjoy watching.

    Currently, I use RSS feeds in order to stay up to date with their videos, and I use new pipe to actually watch the videos, but still, it's annoying. I would like to stop using them and cannot. I feel as though I'm being held hostage.

    I have this running on a local server: https://github.com/alexta69/metube

    It’s a frontend for yt-dlp and whenever I want to watch something I just download it and have a copy saved locally. It makes it harder to binge youtube feeds that the algorithm tries to shove down my throat, and that’s a good thing.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don't or can't block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn't deserve our money for Premium.

    Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads... how long did that last?

  • Yes. I consider it better because it's preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla's telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.

    I'm more worried about the updates not happening in a timely fashion. Is it just a passion project by a handful of devs, or is there some kind of funding?

  • I don't care what YouTube's costs are, I don't want to pay. I'll leave that to people like you.

    I care about making google lose money. They deserve it. I will only make accounts on big tech just to abuse them.

    All of big tech deserves to be bankrupt, convince me otherwise.

    They only care about money. No ethics, no rights, no environment, just money. And money IS NOT more important than ethics, rights, etc.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    Sure, if paying them ment that they also didn't data mine the shit out of you and sold it to 3rd parties...but no they insist on double-dipping so they can get fucked.

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    Everyone breaking the website so they can watch gigabytes of content without ads or subscription: You're not allowed to break things just because you disagree with the other party! You should find an amicable alternative!

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    I don't watch enough YouTube to make premium worth it. If they had a lower tier with a cap on ad-free watch time, I probably would pay.

  • That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    Or..... You could just ditch Chrome altogether!

    I don't know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It's a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.

    I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that's become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don't even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.

    And if you don't want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.

    All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).

    Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.

    Or at least use a Chrome fork, if you must use it for compatibility or something.

    TBH I think it's just an accessibility issue. It's easier to install an extension than find another browser and swtich to it for most people. Hence Internet Explorer lasted as long as it did.

  • I care about making google lose money. They deserve it. I will only make accounts on big tech just to abuse them.

    All of big tech deserves to be bankrupt, convince me otherwise.

    They only care about money. No ethics, no rights, no environment, just money. And money IS NOT more important than ethics, rights, etc.

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    Which is an ecological measure, not a technical one, and can be circumvented by existing technologies like cooling towers
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    Boycott Microsoft.
  • Security vulnerability for Nvidia drivers on Linux/Windows

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    mimicjar@lemmy.worldM
    ::: spoiler do not click gottem :::
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    tonytins@pawb.socialT
    It was a failed attempt. I get that. You can drop it now.
  • We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent

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    dsilverz@friendica.worldD
    @technocrit While I agree with the main point that "AI/LLMs has/have no agency", I must be the boring, ackchyually person who points out and remembers some nerdy things.tl;dr: indeed, AIs and LLMs aren't intelligent... we aren't so intelligent as we think we are, either, because we hold no "exclusivity" of intelligence among biosphere (corvids, dolphins, etc) and because there's no such thing as non-deterministic "intelligence". We're just biologically compelled to think that we can think and we're the only ones to think, and this is just anthropocentric and naive from us (yeah, me included).If you have the patience to read a long and quite verbose text, it's below. If you don't, well, no problems, just stick to my tl;dr above.-----First and foremost, everything is ruled by physics. Deep down, everything is just energy and matter (the former of which, to quote the famous Einstein equation e = mc, is energy as well), and this inexorably includes living beings.Bodies, flesh, brains, nerves and other biological parts, they're not so different from a computer case, CPUs/NPUs/TPUs, cables and other computer parts: to quote Sagan, it's all "made of star stuff", it's all a bunch of quarks and other elementary particles clumped together and forming subatomic particles forming atoms forming molecules forming everything we know, including our very selves...Everything is compelled to follow the same laws of physics, everything is subjected to the same cosmic principles, everything is subjected to the same fundamental forces, everything is subjected to the same entropy, everything decays and ends (and this comment is just a reminder, a cosmic-wide Memento mori).It's bleak, but this is the cosmic reality: cosmos is simply indifferent to all existence, and we're essentially no different than our fancy "tools", be it the wheel, the hammer, the steam engine, the Voyager twins or the modern dystopian electronic devices crafted to follow pieces of logical instructions, some of which were labelled by developers as "Markov Chains" and "Artificial Neural Networks".Then, there's also the human non-exclusivity among the biosphere: corvids (especially Corvus moneduloides, the New Caleidonian crow) are scientifically known for their intelligence, so are dolphins, chimpanzees and many other eukaryotas. Humans love to think we're exclusive in that regard, but we're not, we're just fooling ourselves!IMHO, every time we try to argue "there's no intelligence beyond humans", it's highly anthropocentric and quite biased/bigoted against the countless other species that currently exist on Earth (and possibly beyond this Pale Blue Dot as well). We humans often forgot how we are species ourselves (taxonomically classified as "Homo sapiens"). We tend to carry on our biological existences as if we were some kind of "deities" or "extraterrestrials" among a "primitive, wild life".Furthermore, I can point out the myriad of philosophical points, such as the philosophical point raised by the mere mention of "senses" ("Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, ..." "my senses deceive me" is the starting point for Cartesian (René Descartes) doubt. While Descarte's conclusion, "Cogito ergo sum", is highly anthropocentric, it's often ignored or forgotten by those who hold anthropocentric views on intelligence, as people often ground the seemingly "exclusive" nature of human intelligence on the ability to "feel".Many other philosophical musings deserve to be mentioned as well: lack of free will (stemming from the very fact that we were unable to choose our own births), the nature of "evil" (both the Hobbesian line regarding "human evilness" and the Epicurean paradox regarding "metaphysical evilness"), the social compliance (I must point out to documentaries from Derren Brown on this subject), the inevitability of Death, among other deep topics.All deep principles and ideas converging, IMHO, into the same bleak reality, one where we (supposedly "soul-bearing beings") are no different from a "souless" machine, because we're both part of an emergent phenomena (Ordo ab chao, the (apparent) order out of chaos) that has been taking place for Æons (billions of years and beyond, since the dawn of time itself).Yeah, I know how unpopular this worldview can be and how downvoted this comment will probably get. Still I don't care: someone who gazed into the abyss must remember how the abyss always gazes us, even those of us who didn't dare to gaze into the abyss yet.I'm someone compelled by my very neurodivergent nature to remember how we humans are just another fleeting arrangement of interconnected subsystems known as "biological organism", one of which "managed" to throw stuff beyond the atmosphere (spacecrafts) while still unable to understand ourselves. We're biologically programmed, just like the other living beings, to "fear Death", even though our very cells are programmed to terminate on a regular basis (apoptosis) and we're are subjected to the inexorable chronological falling towards "cosmic chaos" (entropy, as defined, "as time passes, the degree of disorder increases irreversibly").
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    I imagine not, though I haven't looked into it.
  • Understanding the impacts of generative AI use on children

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    That's fine, just use ChatGPT...
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    Oh sorry, my mind must have been a bit foggy when I read that. We agree 100%