Technology

Okay, fine, I am ready to come out of the closet: I've been a YouTube Premium subscriber for two years. Lynch me if you like. I thought it hypocritical to crucify YouTube and have a Spotify or Netflix or Hulu subscription, and I found the cost acceptable.

Three price increases and a worsening of service later, I cancelled my subscription as soon as I received the email about a price increase.

Incidentally, I think that's the thing to do: you get a price increase, there is no tangible benefit to the increase, you immediately drop the service. None of that "Whatchagonnado?" stuff. The only thing these services react to is an instant drop of revenue. You can live for a month without Spotify (or YouTube Premium), they can't live for a quarter without subscribers.

We always have to remember that the short-term focus of modern capitalism is their weakness: a stupid mistake, a sudden drop in revenue, and the CEOs are flying out the window faster than Putin's generals.

Revanced is free

Youtube is also sending notifications about a coachella live stream, even if the notification settings/preferences are turned off.

Even if you have Revanced.

Cool. I stopped paying for it back when it was still called "YouTube Red", during one of their many crackdowns on creators' freedom in the name of benefitting advertisers. I dumped it and installed an adblocker, and eventually YouTube Vanced and its successor Revanced.

Cool. Just canceled my sub. Back to Freetube it is.

Yet the FOSS alts are still free. Hot damn.

My proposal: cancel YouTube premium, donate $1 to Smart Tube developer, donate $1 to Firefox. ublock origin doesn't accept donations as far as I know.

What was the advantage again, except for seeing a few less ads if you are to stupid to install an adblocker?

I would pay a lot for YouTube Premium if it actually blocked all the ads. Unfortunately, it does not. The video itself is allowed to contain ads inside the video, which YouTube does not block. I have heard that if the creator declares it, it can be skipped, but SponsorBlock (aims to) skip all of them by default, and for free.

I have an iPhone — the second worst device for consuming YouTube on, tied with the iPad for the same reason. On my old Android phone, I have Firefox with uBlock Origin. Same with my Macs, and my work PC (which is at work). The worst device for consuming YouTube on, I also own — the Apple TV streaming box (which is ironically the best streaming box due to it not having ads in the OS — I'm dead serious, even if you're Android all the way, you should get one).

On my iPhone, I've deleted the YouTube app. Instead, I have a shortcut to YouTube on my home screen that opens in Safari. I have a Safari plugin called Wipr 2 that I paid $5 for, one time, to a solo developer who uses the Fediverse (Mastodon) and is a woman (this shouldn't matter, but I do enjoy minority representation, and seeing girls win). I occasionally see ads on YouTube, but it's rare, and typically, refreshing Wipr (updating its block lists) fixes the issue.

That's on an iPhone. Wipr2 is not available for tvOS. So mostly, I consume YouTube content on my MacBook, which I can mirror to my TV. Ironically, the TV itself (which runs Android TV) is better at mirroring my MacBook (which is between 1 and 2 metres away) than the Apple TV box, at the same distance. (Make that make sense.) (So, you often hear about Apple and Google being rivals around iOS and Android, respectively, but Apple actually licenses AirPlay to Google for inclusion in Android TV. That is actually a thing, and it works great.) I can also run a Thunderbolt/USB-C to HDMI cable and make my TV a monitor for my MacBook, and just drag a Firefox window up to the TV. But it's a MacBook Air, I still have to keep the lid open, and the screen on (I turn the brightness all the way down though).

I've never paid a subscription for YouTube. It's been, what, like $10/mo for ten years? Can buy a lot of media drm free for that $1200.

I used to pay less than the single plan for a family plan, split between 5 people. Back when ad-free YouTube was an afterthought and my primary reason for using it was Google Play Music's unlimited music storage and streaming.

The amount they just increased the cost of YouTube is about how much I'd be willing to pay total for no ads. Until then, they're competing against zero ads (but no casting) for free.

YouTube is the new cable, and it will take monumental effort to dethrone it. Hosting video at this scale is expensive. And people loathe having to go to multiple places to get video. Users, including people on Lemmy, want all of their video entertainment on one platform. They hate multiple subscriptions. They hate having their games in multiple storefronts.

There are user behaviors that enable these bad things to happen. And people need to start ranting about these factors and educating people about how multiple platforms are good, actually. Multiple options for account servers are good, actually. Multiple video hosts are good, actually. Paying creators for content is good.

The solution is not to hack YouTube and put a different front end on their infrastructure.

Libretube, smarttube and the like. You realise the amount of bloated shit there is on YT when you use one of those. They are like a front end on the infra I suppose. Not familiar with Loops, must go digging!

Annnnnd it's gone!