Smart TVs are really just somebody else’s computer that you paid for to watch ads on.
This. There is a reason why dumb displays of a similar size are much more expensive. Because the manufacturer can’t feed you ads and sell your data …
I don’t understand the need for those. My smart tv is functioning exactly as a computer monitor. It is connected via a display connection to my computer, and nothing else. It does show a brief warning that it is unconnected to the internet whenever I turn it on, but it disappears after 10 seconds or so.
Yeah, but that’s not how most people use Smart TVs. Also, they’re still coming for you, next up they’ll try to insert ads via HDMI. and good luck finding a Smart TV with display port.
Displayport via USB-C could start gaining momentum.
It’s a possibility with chromebooks because of the google ad network, but I can’t see why consoles, linux, mac, even windows tbh, has any incentive to support this. At best, they might make it an option, but there’s nothing in it for them. It actively makes their content look worse, while an ad supported OS like windows already has capability to place ads anyway.
$$$
Consoles are a shrinking market. If they were offered money by TV manufacturers to cooperate with putting more ads on it, they most certainly will.
And I suspect Microsoft/Windows will too. Apple might not, though.
They can’t add ads if they’re not connected to the ibternet
good luck finding a Smart TV with display port.
Yeah, and that is a very recent one from a not-that-well know company. Go figure!
Ads via HDMI shouldn’t work if the TV doesn’t have internet connection, by my understanding. So I do not see any problems there.
oh don’t worry, they’ll start participating in mesh networks with your neighbors’ smart devices and getting internet access that way
or using like 4g/5g network for ads for free, sucking up all the data bandwidth from smartphone users so they can make sure we got our daily ad dosage!
ANTI-CORPORATE PROPAGANDA DETECTED. PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN.
I seem to recall reafing that smart TVs have a list of default passwords they use to try and connect to the to wifi networks they find…
So they try to brute force in to our wifis? Why no one sued them?!
Ads over HDMI are being worked on.
My husband had the Tv connected to the internet, even though we watch everthing from the xbox. I changed the wifi password a few months ago, and never reconnected the TV.
Best decision ever.
I love how roku won’t let you re-order apps unless you are online. Fuck off!
TVs often do a bad job at switching on when the computer turns on, then off when it turns off/goes to sleep. Drives me spare. That was fixed in like 1995-2000 for normal monitors.
CEC has been around for years. This is probably more an issue with the PC in question rather than the TV. TVs do an excellent job at turning themselves on when CEC is enabled. 👍
PCs have almost never supported CEC. PCs use a different signalling method to indicate to the monitor that they’re on/off.
Exactly. So they aren’t talking with the same protocol. TVs can turn themselves on, but PCs just don’t send the required signals. ✔️
LibreELEC (just enough OS for Kodi) on Raspberry Pi supports CEC. Does that count as a PC?
What are the chances the 10-second warning becomes a 90-second unskippable one?
As long as it isn’t internet connected, it shouldn’t happen - unless it’s programmed to automatically connect to any nearby unprotected WiFi to fetch updates…
And now look how high $ CRTs are, even the low end ones.
I’ll never get rid of mine. You can’t get a 0 ms latency TV with zero “features” anymore. And those commercial TVs dont come with remotes. I never liked how flat screens look either. Laggy and awful colors. I’m sure a $3000 oled is great but no thanks
I also despise massive TVs so another win. People with 80" TVs in their living room are just ick.
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.
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.
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?
That was a somewhat recent development, they had many years to suffer playing Leauge on Linux c:
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 is a user error.
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.
Link to tv box? And did you have to debload/degoogle it yourself?
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 😎
“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.
The problem stays the same, why should the answer change?
Mostly because the problem is systemic, so the response should be as well. Your answer was individualistic.
Individual change always places the blame on you. The real focus should be on the system that puts you under this pressure.
It wasn’t my answer, but I’ll play the part.
I agree with you in cases where individual change is hard, costly and has barely any influence on the big picture (like your “individual CO2 footprint”). But in this case the individual solution is to quit using a terrible browser and install a free extension in the new one, and it has all the impact it needs because it makes the problem go away. I can’t take anybody seriously who will willingly put themselves through youtube ads when they are this easily avoided.
In your example you say reducing your individual CO2 print is hard. It’s not. It just has no real effect against the larger problem. The same thing is true here.
And that’s why the ads will always exist and people will always complain about them. It also funds them to eventually find ways around your individual solutions.
I guess answers like these misunderstand that you’re fighting a losing battle.
Its not like those are mutually exclusive. Long term vs short term fix.
The problem stays the same, why should the answer change?
because chromium introduced a newer addon system that restricts what addons can do… effectively forcing adblockers to do a lot more work to keep functioning, with some features being impossible now
https://blog.adblockplus.org/blog/how-adblock-plus-is-getting-ready-for-manifest-v3
I dunno, I was just hoping for something more insightful.
Grayjay
Edit: instead of making a snarky comment, I should probably do the right thing for fellow lemmings and explain:
I’m fucking old and I’ve seen this before. It’s the same model as it was with TV and Cable. Air tv becomes so ad ridden than when Cable comes “ad free” we all start paying and switch over. A decade later the “base” cable TV plan is so ad ridden that they come up with “premium channels”, so you sign up for that so you can watch a movie without 10 minute ad break in the middle or 4 minute ad breaks on series. Then channels start splitting into “base” and “premium” versions (e.g. Discovery or History). Base channel is now just RealityTV garbage.
I got fed up and started following creators on Google Video (then YouTube), Vimeo, listening to stuff on ShoutCast (that was winamp’s podcast/radio thing). Then Netflix comes out, decent service. Every other media company wants a piece of the pie. Slowly but surely every decent movie/series on Netflix gets moved to their respective production company’s service: disney, HBO, Paramount+… Netflix starts toying with ads, now disney…
Slowly YT starts adding ads on the sidebar, then in the lower third, then pre-rolls. Now there’s “premium bitrate” behind a paywall. At some point I said “fuck it I’m not playing ball anymore”. Why pay premium? it’ll be the same as it’s always been. Soon enough “premium” yt will be the only way to watch over 360p quality, they’ll lower a bit the cost of YT Premium, ppl will jump in and down the road they’ll add ads back.
I’d rather donate a buck to my favorite creators, it’ll be 100x more income that whatever they’d get off my views.
Something more insightful than the obvious solution screaming in your face?
I was hoping for some comments that realized not everyone wants to go to such lengths to avoid watching ads.
Or that people use devices such as Chromecasts.
If you use a Google service on a locked down Google device, what magic fix are you hoping for? There are limits. If you’re unwilling to make any meaningful change, then unfortunately you’re out of luck and either need to suck it up and watch the ads, or pay Google for an ad-free experience. Or you can leave their ecosystem and be free.
If there’s no solution to your device, then the only solution is a new device. At some point, it made sense for me to switch out my Chromecast (gen 1? puck) and go with a dedicated media pc. Now the Chromecast lives in the garage to stream music uninterrupted while I can still watch YouTube tutorials
That’s a lot more hassle than most people are willing to go through just to watch YouTube.
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
No, I don’t see them and the day I cannot block ads anymore is the day I am going to stop using YouTube. It’s really not that important to life.
why wait? Give invidious a try, or see if any of the creators you follow also uploads their videos in PeerTube or odyssey or something… The creators, I do follow does that - its good.
I know of PeerTube and like the concept. Out of my 57 subscribed channels only 2 are available via PeerTube, 4 more are available on other sites. I hope this will improve. I’m not using the normal YouTube interface. I’ve customised it to my needs with injected scripts plus additional cosmetic blocking, e.g. I filter out unwanted search results and removed all shorts. For now it works well enough. Anyway, I’m already in the process of reducing YouTube consumption.
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I use Grayhay since it makes it so all platforms I follow are on there and I can easily download videos if I want, plus follow people like Louis Rossmann on peertube, YouTube, if they have patreon or nebula there too.
I don’t think they’d give a shit if you left, it’s not like they’re making any money off you.
… Why would I care if they miss me?
Why would I care about their opinions at all? I’m pretty sure we care about each other’s opinions about equally as is.
Oh, I don’t care if they care about me. The attention of my comment was to express how unimportant YouTube has become for me.
Are you under the impression that Bad_Ideas_In_Bulk is one person? Physically they might be, but their words represent a massive amount of people. I think millions of people would stop watching if they had to endure youtube without adblock.
And given that YouTube probably loses money money on those people, I don’t think they would miss them.
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.
Also Youtube: DONT INSTALL UBLOCK ORIGIN OR WE’LL REMOVE YOUTUBE SHORTS!!!
Viewers:
Wait what? I have had ubo installed forever. Why is my shorts still there?!
Wait, they’re willing to reward us for using UBO?
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.
Ive been getting back to reading myself. Media’s become so overstimulating
Same I just bought a used kindle and jail broken it so now I have a huge library to go through and I have downloaded a bunch of movies and tv shows to my media server as well
Does the jailbreak allow you to use z-lib or Anna’s archive as the “store”?
Directly on the device no, but I can start my Calibre server and connect to it from my Kindle wirelessly through KOreader to transfer the books
So true! Also, productive screentime has been nice. Instead of doomscrolling or mindlessly zoning out to video essays, I’ve been programming, doing some 3D modeling for 3D printing, working on some simple games, and reading long form articles from my own curated news feed.
I had a book once that had a full color spread for the movie in the middle of the book. Obviously this was a skippable ad, but still, it’s inescapable.
I’ve been collecting old books for years. Currently slogging through Mellives collection of stories printed in 1968. Could find a copy of the book turned movie, printed before the movie?
Some of those old books had ads for cigarettes in them! Mostly the cheaper paperbacks. For some reason it wasn’t as annoying, it was more of a historical artifact, an indication of the context in which the book was originally read.
yeah that’s actually pretty dope lol
I’ve found old textbooks from the 30’s with handwritten notes in them :D
history is cool
I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.
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.
Their way out is using an external device.
Of course, but it’s a bit misleading. I thought it might be helpful to add that comment.
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.
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
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/
It works somewhat on a TV. You can close and reopen the video until it starts without or just a 5s skippable ad.
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.
Ublock Origin, NewPipe, and Grayjay, haven’t seen a YouTube ad in over a decade. 😌
+SponsorBlock
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 :)
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?
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
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.
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
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.
Odysee exits
ewww, nothing but far right garbage on that site
Why ewww?
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.
Can confirm, I’m going on nearly a decade and Pi-hole has NEVER been able to stop YT ads because they’re served by the platform’s servers rather than outside servers.
Well, I remember it actually stopping YouTube ads, 2018 or 2019 was when it changed. Or even 2020, won’t recall.
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I have no proof for this except my memories. Perhaps we could find some links somewhere, but that would change nothing: it doesn’t work today. My guess that maybe it was different for different markets / locations. As I clearly remember a friend learned about Pi-Hole and bought an SBC just to deploy Pi-Hole. I’d been having it censoring the ads for my entire family, till it stopped doing that at some point. I still have that Pi-Hole deployed by the way, it continues blocking trackers and other shitty things online.
I wonder why browser extensions still work, while network-wide ad blocker does not.
I’ve read that YT is injecting the ads directly into the video stream, i.e. the source is not ads.someshittycompany.com, but rather videos.google.com (which you cannot block for obvious reasons). The only solution to kill ads is to use addons like uBlock or client software like Freetube, Newpipe and the like that strip out the ads in some other way.
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.Nah, Pi-Hole has never been able to block YT ads. And I’m proud of anyone and everyone I’ve ever got to switch from using shitty smart TV interfaces to cheap computers. I’m responsible for probably half the sales of the Logitech K400/plus hahaha.
Then there’s me using Revanced and Unlock Origin
Also, if you have an Android TV you can use SmartTube there
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
Where?
Oh! On the web interface? n_n I don’t use the web interface. It’s video, so I use a video player. I see no ads, ~ if I do [like ads read out by the podcast host], I skip ahead.
on YouTube’s TV app
That’s where you went wrong. Come to the free software community. We can mend bugs (like malicious features (like ads)) with free software, being free to use, study, share & change the software.
if I do [like ads read out by the podcast host], I skip ahead.
That’s what Sponsorblock is for. :)
I just restart the video ~5 times until it starts without ads. I figure even if it takes extra effort and time if I don’t know what’s being advertised then I win.
I used to do this on Apple TV before I paid for premium. I wonder if they track that behaviour, because I swear they started showing me longer ads more often and no ads less often.
I used to back out and restart the video half a dozen times and I’d get it to play without ads. it went up and up until it seemed like I was doing it dozens of times and it would still play ads
