662
Frustrated YouTube viewers seek explanation for hour-long unskippable ads (Update: Statement)
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
662 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
61227 readers
4594 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While their statement is entirely correct, they're still wrong. YouTube is basically unusable without an ad blocker. Multiple 10 to 15 second long unskippable ads before the video even starts, and unless you watch videos all the way through you end up watching as much ad as you do content. It is damn near impossible to hop around between videos trying to find the one you want because of the pre-roll ads on every vid. On the other hand, with an ad block enabled YouTube is actually quite nice. The engagement algorithm is fucking trash of course but if you know what you're looking for and you go directly to it it's pretty good.
Do you habitually not watch videos all the way through, or am I misunderstanding your comment?
No judgement, you obviously should consume media in the manner you find most enjoyable, but once I start and enjoy a video - YouTube or otherwise - I tend to get invested and want to watch as much as is available.
If you're looking for tutorials or other immediately applicable information, you've often got to skip a LOT of bullshit before even determining if this video is relevant to you.
"Hey everybody it's Mike from Mike's the guy named Mike, it's a snowy day out there, I got my coffee, took my dog for a walk, it's been the morning of a day, and now I'm out here in the garage and I figured I'd make a video about a topic a bunch of you have been asking me about. You guys have been asking me a lot lately "Hey, Mike's the guy named Mike, could you show us how to properly lick a drill press?" Well let's find out.
10 second title screen because Mike thinks he's making TV
"So a lot of you guys have been asking me "Hey, Mike's the guy named Mike, could you show us the right way to lick a drill press?" Before we get into that, be sure to leave a like, drop a comment below and be sure to subscribe. It'll really help me out more than you can think..."
19 minutes into a 21 minute video and there hasn't been a drill press on screen yet.
Three weeks later Mike's the guy named Mike along with his entire family is killed in a rock slide. The UN declares it an international day of celebration.
What was I talking about?
You need to get sponsor block. Not only does it block all the sponsor segments because they are also ads, that the ad blockers don't otherwise block, but they also block all of the other annoyances, like instructions to subscribe and intro animations.
yeah that's really the key to an acceptable youtube experience. after google nuked UBO on chromeOS, sponsorblock is still there to do the heavy lifting. I'll be switching to a windows machine soon, but for now all I have is my chromebook, which is still functional even without the real UBO-- but I'm sure they're working on a way to fuck us out of the "lite" version of it and take away extensions like sponsorblock
Can you run Firefox on a Chromebook?
Yes*
*Either you go with the Android build or you take one more step towards joining the cult of Linux.
technically chrome is is built on Gentoo.