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YouTube just made it harder to avoid ads with a tiny skip button
(www.androidpolice.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Queue all the people in the comments talking about ad blockers or alternative apps.
Those might be great (and ad blocking is important in general), but I've found I ultimately just watch YouTube less.
A good chunk of my favorite creators had been pushing Nebula for the past couple years, so I finally tried it out and it's pretty decent. I've even found new channels there that would have been buried on YouTube. Still tons of room for improvement for the platform, but it's functional now.
Other creators have their own websites with text content, or podcasts hosted elsewhere.
It's only a small handful of channels I check for on YouTube anymore. It kind of sucks that it's mostly small channels where video is a key component and they don't fit with the edu-tainment vibe of Nebula, and I don't know of another platform for them. Lots of DIY home improvement, self-sufficiency (not religious or conspiratorial lol), music videos, and channels dedicated to specific videogame franchises.
I know LTT has Floatplane too. I wonder if all of these other videos streaming options getting worse will start driving more people to smaller platforms.
You might want to give Grayjay a try. It's a cross platform video app that lets you connect to people's YouTube accounts but also Nebula and other video platforms. Don't download it from the Play Store though, sideload the apk file directly from the website. I've only used it for YouTube so far but it lets you do the things you would have needed Vanced for before and I love it
Cue*
Maybe they really just want to line them up in a large queue 🤷♂️
I was kinda worried with the LTT drama unfolding since DankPods does use Floatplane as a source of income. While Floatplane and LMG are technically separate, because it spun off of LTT people might not see it as such.
And yeah, I notice I watch YouTube a lot less now, ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page. Maybe that's for the better. I still have a watch later backlog I should export to a text file or something.
They still build recommendations even if you're not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it's all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.
They can base the recommendations on your subscriptions.
By that same logic, you should worry about the creators on YT when advocating actions harmful to YT.
Speaking for myself, I disagree.
YT is bad, and so is LTT, and by extension, Floatplane.
After LTT unambiguously showed their true colors, and doubled down, I unsubscribed and removed all of trace of their ecosystem from my digital habits.
YT is a bit harder to do that with, so I use alternative methods to extract the value/uses from their service. It works for me.
Yeah we've just cut back our consumption a lot and what we do watch is a lot more intentional and not just riding the algo for hours. And what we do watch now is done via JDownoader > Plex for the most part.