Smart TVs are really just somebody else’s computer that you paid for to watch ads on.
The same reason i stopped playing on Consoles since the PS2 - there was no good reason for the People to get this kind of things on the internet.
It was just good for the Business to hold the connection to you and control whatever they produced.
I got a PS3 and a PS4 so I wouldn’t need to use Windows for gaming. That’s not an issue anymore, though.
Steamdeck here and the last time i played on Windows was like 2015/2016 but never again after Win10 shutdown my System for an Update while i played a LoL ranked Game… That was the last Time i used Windows for privat use. After that i formated the HDD and installed Linux Mint
I’m still very happy with this decision
I thought LoL was one of the games that require windows for kernel level anticheat?
Yes, but at least the kernel Anti Cheat belongs since 2024 i belive? There was a long Time before DXVK or Proton you can play nearly nothing on Linux but LoL worked “okayish”. Nothing close to play ranked but for a casual normal game it was good enought to let me switch to Linux this times and ditch Windows at all
That was a somewhat recent development, they had many years to suffer playing Leauge on Linux c:
That is a user error.
What is a user error?
The last console I owned was the Xbox 360. Once I started seeing non-gaming advertisements on my home screen, I lost all interest in the product line.
Sometimes I think internet connectivity was a mistake.
Commercial TVs are so worth the extra cost. Recently got a Samsung Commercial Non-Smart TV and paired it with my $20 debloated/deGoogled Onn 4K Streaming box from Walmart. Bam, got a media setup that I fully own.
What is the cost comparison?
Honestly under 60 inches not too bad
$453.00 # 43" Samsung HU6000F Non-Smart Hospitality TV with Pro:Idiom for Set Top Box Deployments
Nice!
yeah I got a bit lazy there, at 55 inches you are at $604
When you go to 65 though its $1004 so pretty big jump.
Oddly enough going from 65 to 75 is only another ~375 USD (1377)
To me the best deal seems like 50 or 55 inches, although your room size and seating positions are likely the most important.
Also interesting if you’re in the USA Best Buy does have some non-smart TVs and even a filter for it, although its mostly no-name brands or Samsung.
Thanks for fleshing out the full picture. So perhaps the largest TVs at the store are getting some pretty big subsidies, courtesy Advertising Inc.
And good tip on Best Buy. Thank you. What an informative lil comment, Leo 😎
Link to tv box? And did you have to debload/degoogle it yourself?
This really has nothing to do with Smart TVs in itself though… It’s just a problem if you choose to play YouTube videos on your TV, which seems like a pretty reasonable thing to want to do.
Youtube: “GOD PEOPLE KEEP SKIPPING ADS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS LOSS OF REVENUE?!”
Viewers: “Maybe have standards for length and content and moderate the platform to prevent malicious actors?”
Youtube: “I KNOW, I’LL JUST MAKE FORCED ADS LONGER AND MORE OBNOXIOUS!”
Viewers: “JUST MODERATE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM, YOU HAVE THE MONEY AND RESOURCES TO FUCKING DO IT”
Youtube: “Users are just so selfish and entitled, trying to skip ads…”
Viewers: " Fuck it installs ublock origin
If you grew up with commercial TV, not only is the frequency of ads on youtube bad, but the placement–in the middle of a sentence or a scene–is mentally and emotionally destructive.
The worst is when you’re watching something emotionally charged (pissed off or funny as fuck) they’ll put an ad exactly when the video hits you
When cable TV first came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Sirius satellite radio came out it didn’t have ads because you were paying for the service. When Netflix streaming came…
Adding ads to YouTube was always the plan.
That was always the plan. They were just slow walking it.
I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.
I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.
I just realised i haven’t watched a single ad in like 2 years
Thanks ublock origin!
I haven’t seen an ad in 16 years. Thanks ublock origin/dns hole/not watching TV/not going to the movies/not reading magazines.
And FM - the local radio stations are the biggest dumpholes of ads
“unskippable”
I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube for years, with 2 simple browser plugins. Assuming you’re on a PC:
Ublock Origin Sponsor Block
If you’re using chrome, you already fucked up.
Better specify your browser: Firefox
The same fucking comment every single time.
This platform is so predictable.
Ads on YouTube are a solvable problem. Why not spread the knowledge?
because guillotines are not legal everywhere
It’s a good reply even if it helps but one person
When you see the long ad, just close the fuckin’ browser window. Immediately. And then use something else.
They’ll only get the point and change if you stop giving them your eyeballs for shit you don’t wanna see.
youtube has ads?
Yeah, it is a great advertisement company, that lets you watch ads for free, but sometimes it shows videos that are not ads. I am glad that they are slowly patching up this issue. /s
might be hard to do if its a SMART TV/
Nobody in their right mind connects their TV to the internet. If they do, well they are already fucked.
Haven’t seen a YouTube ad on TV in years. SmartTube works great.
Last time I saw a youtube ad was probably 2009. Or it might have been 2008.
Android: https://newpipe.net/
Smart TV: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
Computer: https://ublockorigin.com/
SmartTube is for Android, as is NewPipe. You need a Smart TV with Android TV. Other TVs do not have a way out.
SmartTube is for Android
And the developer has left from what I read, its still working for now but Im starting to see a few videos that wont play
Huh? Last release is from three days ago and the last commit to SmartTube’s GitHub repository is two hours old.
Where did you read that the developer left?
SmartTube
the version I have has not had any updated for months. Theres an error on it saying it will no longer be updated
The repo was compromised and you need to change sources. Check the announcements
I will check that thanks
You need a Smart TV
No.
Hmm somehow i havent ever gotten those kinds of ads… maybe because im using ublock? Must be something else, i am just the chosen one.
If you just click into the article you are absolutely blasted with statement after statement that this is only for TVs. Obviously if you have an ad blocker you wouldn’t see ads. 🙂
Pihole can solve that for you :)
Or just not using shitty locked down devices like that.
I have Pi-Hole for like ten years maybe, they cannot stop the YouTube ads since, idk, at least five years, maybe more.
Damn that sucks. But also every TV still allows you to just plug in a laptop over hdmi right? Just bypass all their shit.
Yes, Pihole can solve that.“Normal” people don’t have Piholes though. And “normal” people really do purchase televisions, and install the YouTube app and watch videos with it.
Hey YouTube? The endpoint of enshittification is this: I wipe my ass and flush you.
Keep going, YouTube. You’re not so important that we can’t just leave.
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
So keep at it.
Keep injecting unskippable ads, flooding the feed with AI slop, letting bots post porn, demonetising and hiding quality content, using DMCA like a digital SLAPP against content creators, and using the algorithm to warp reality.
Your value proposition is ubiquity. That’s it. That’s all you have. Without popular buy-in, you’re dead.
We proles? We have something better than loyalty.
We have spite.
So keep pissing people off - because watching you die on a very stupid hill of your own design will be entertaining AF.
For everyone else, see you on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !privacy@lemmy.world. Come and learn how you can replace all of these pieces of shit.
And in the meantime - yt-dlp should still work to download what you actually want to keep, and SmartTube is black magic incarnate.
You forgot https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
A vile den of scum and villainy :)
Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.
Exactly my thoughts too.
Yes. You will quit YouTube. But 99% of people won’t and they make YouTube more revenue via either watching more ads or giving up and subscribing
All we can do is point the way. There are alternatives - we’re using one right now.
I’m for giving people choices. People should be empowered with knowledge.
Whether they choose the act on that knowledge is up to them.
Can somebody explain peertube for me? It sounds like it should be a federated video service, but either the federation doesn’t work very well or there’s nothing on it.
The second one, sadly :(
Still, the infra is there. So, it’s one of those “if you build it, they will come” (eventually) things. Maybe.
None of those have all the creators and people don’t want to go between multiple apps.
This fight is lost. The way to win it now is legislation or blowing up data centers.
I disagree. The fight isn’t lost - it hasn’t even started yet.
People are apathetic and/or ignorant to alternatives. Some of those people can be appealed to - or on sufficient enshittification, motivated into action.
Spite is a wonderful reagent.
Additionally, the apathy of the masses has no impact on individual response.
Things already exist that marry disparate platforms (eg: Grayjay, Kodi plug ins etc).
We need not wait. And while I remain sanguine that YT will piss off enough people eventually, I’d sooner code my own app, that joins all my streams - and release it into the wild - than let others dictate what I can and cannot do.
None of those well ever compare to youtube. You think all the videos are going to stay on those platforms forever? You think they well scale to youtube levels of users?
YouTube is too big to fail” is not the flex you think it is.
No, I do not expect any one of those platforms to “become YouTube.” That is not the point. The point is reducing dependence on a platform that has spent years making itself worse because it assumes users have nowhere else to go.
Fuck that and fuck them.
Scale? Things do not need to match YouTube’s total global footprint to be useful.
They need to serve actual human beings well enough that migration becomes viable.
That is how this starts: not with 2 billion people moving at once, but with chunks of users, creators, and communities deciding they’re sick of eating shit.
As for “will the videos stay there forever?”
They are not staying on YouTube forever either. Videos get demonetised, geo-blocked, copyright-nuked, hidden by algorithmic sludge, or deleted all the time.
Centralisation does not guarantee permanence. It guarantees dependence.
I’m not for that.
That is why people mirror, self-host, archive, syndicate, and build bridges between platforms.
People imagine only one possible future: “Everyone stays on YouTube because YouTube is big.”
I am pointing at the much more obvious one:
“YouTube keeps enshittifying itself until more and more people route around it.”
It does not have to die overnight. It just has to become less necessary.
Soon enough, YT will block all the clever back doors we use with uBlock, Smartube, Revanced, Newpipe etc. Then what? Eat shit? Nah.
This thread has inspired me to roll up my sleeves and see what I can think thru. I already have a back of napkin idea for a basic MVP that joins all those services I mentioned into 1 front end. I will make it for myself and when its solid enough, throw it up on Codeberg for others to fork and improve.
You can also contribute to PipeLine, it’s a desktop client that aggregates YouTube and a few others. And it’s written in Rust.
The issue with YouTube is the network effect though. Even if you can get a lot of users to use one of those multi platform clients, it’s still hard to get the creators to leave. And till they stay, the users stay.
it doesn’t matter, when people are fed up with that shit they will just go back to watch any other platform (tv, streaming, tiktok)
scale does not matter, these alternatives are not trying to scale like youtube because youtube is unsustainable in the first place
I finally gave up and subscribed, but only because the people I wanted to watch weren’t all available elsewhere and because I was lazy
but this year I will be canceling YouTube as my last subscription
Odysee exits
ewww, nothing but far right garbage on that site
Why ewww?
Don’t forget to use ublock and adguard !
It has been nearly ten years since I purchased the lifetime AdGuard membership for Android.
I can’t believe most people are out there raw dogging the internet. It’s damn near unusable and the dark patterns aren’t even hidden anymore.
For me it isn’t the length, but the frequency that is bothering me. It’s insain, it’s like every 3-5 mins depending on the video length. It’s unusable atleast in my case. Only watching from devices I have adblocker on now. Not my phone.
Like the other person commented, I use Firefox Plus adblocker on my phone and it’s fine.
Why not use adblock on your phone too? Like Firefox+Adblock(FF allows addons like on desktop)
Can you run Firefox extensions on iPhone?
Not that I know of. But Brave blocks YouTube ads on iOS. I know brave is somewhat problematic, but options on iOS are limited
Ublock must be blocking them. Huh, oh well.
I have noticed lately that in FF with ublock the videos have refused to play for an ad like length of time. Probably ab testing something.
If the video refuses to play, just reload the page. That fixes it for me.
Yeah I don’t wait for it either but it does cause me click the play button a few times and watch the throbber spin for a second before I do.
I notice that I don’t pay attention to videos as much any more. It’s just stuff playing in the background while I game or edit an image or browse piefed or something. So if it “hangs” for a couple seconds while ublock fights the ads, it doesn’t really bother me.
AFAIK that is youtube delaying the video stream on purpose because you were supposed to watch ads in that time. If you wait 5-10 seconds it will start playing. For me it happens only on the first video, and autoplay is still instant afterwards. I am gladly waiting out the loading screen than watch ads. Knowing that I probably make google lose money on every view makes the wait even more bearable (I am never logged in, and anyways I always run youtube in private mode, so there’s almost no profiling happening)
You could try to change the user-agent to make it a little bit faster (google slows down youtube on firefox btw) or you could try to sue google for unfairness or smth
Seriously. I’m not seeing any ads… just AirPlay YouTube to my Apple TV, and I’m good to go
Ublock Origin, NewPipe, and Grayjay, haven’t seen a YouTube ad in over a decade. 😌
+SponsorBlock
Like others, desktop I’m using Firefox with ublock origin. Android phone, Firefox with ublock origin. Android TV, SmartTube. Ad blockers have always outpaced Google in my experience though I use youtube maybe like twice a week and I don’t randomly browse reccomendations. Just there for specific stuff
Enjoy it while it lasts. With Google forcing developers to register their Android apps (or they’re not allowed to be installed, unless you’re a developer), it puts pressure on applications like Firefox (or ublock origin) to tow-the-line.
This won’t happen tomorrow or next year, but the writing is on the wall, unless people push back or the government begins to push back on Big Tech.
The removal of device owner rights has always been a slow boil.
edit: fixed typo
You can still install them, they announced the rules weeks ago.
-
You need to go into the phone settings and enable developer mode (this doesn’t mean YOU’RE a developer)
-
Flip a setting to on that will allow it
-
See some scary prompts and acknowledge no one is asking you to do this
-
Reboot the phone (its intended to cut off communication with who might be scamming you). (edit: I think this reboot step specifically is a clever idea)
-
Wait 24 hours.
-
Install the app
From there you can keep the phone in the ‘unlocked’ state, or allow it to relock after 7 days.
I’m not saying this is good, but it IS still possible.
I understand and agree with your sentiment, but try explaining how ”developer mode" does not make you a developer to my Grandma.
It’s the same b.s. optics that invented “sideloading” as some technically shady practice, when it has always been: just installing the stupid app.
Maybe your grandma who doesn’t understand that, shouldn’t be installing unverified apps without someone like yours guidance? That’s not a hard concept if they’re going as far as installing something else not from a store.
You’d still need “developer mode” to install f-droid or epic games apk.
People shouldn’t be scared or intimidated out of installing non-google store fronts.
…but yes, Grandma should avoid random apks pulled from the internet.
Also, somehow preventing adblock would trigger the creation of a corporate competing product. This is a bigger threat to Google than people stealing their bandwidth.
-
I’m hoping by the time googles Android goes to shit, GrapheneOS is readily available on more phones or PostmarketOS. Same with Linux with KDE Plasma Bigscreen running on a minipc rather than using an android TV box
maybe adblock is good
Firefox/Ublock origin + adguard DNS + sponsorblock. My personal devices are not billboards, and they haven’t allowed ads in years
Edit: youtube revanced on Android. Sponsorblock has saved me over 4 hours since I reinstalled the app earlier this year
and smarttube for android tv. i had friends over “wait, youtube without ads is actually enjoyable???”
You should look I to Morphe now. Apparently main dev of ReVanced left and made it.
