I highly recommend creators to upload videos to another site as well.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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what other sites are there to use?
true
Ive been using adblockers, piped and other tools for so long that i dont even remember what the last time was when i saw a youtube ad.
Same... And if they ever successfully make it impossible to avoid, I'll just stop watching YouTube
Hard to do if you watch directly from your TV using some dongle and don't know or can't modify your router to block ads.
SmartTube is on AndroidTV
Kodi can be installed through the play store, you can transfer files over smb and ftp and move the apk using it.
You're welcome.
Excuses:
I use a Roku or Roku TV
Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.
I use AppleTV
Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.
FTP? SMB? Apk? What are these, words?!
These terms can be searched for and learned about.
Why not just use Kodi?
You're ahead of the game, find a plugin pack and enjoy
I should just read a book at this point
Occasionally I try the YouTube watch together thing on discord with my SO, and it really shows just how completely unusable YouTube is without an ad blocker.
The only ads I see are on a local sports podcast. The advertisers are all local businesses. From restaurants to local credit unions. And those I'm fine with.
Here is every single way I can think of to block YouTube ads:
uBlock Origin + Firefox
NewPipe on Android
Libretube on Android
uYou+ on iOS
FreeTube on *NIX and Windows
yt-dlp + mpv
YouTube Revanced
Invidious self hosting
Piped self hosting
And finally, last and definitely least
YouTube Premium
Donate to the creators who make content. Google does not deserve a penny of your hard earned money.
SmartTube for Android TV devices
Absolutely. And they update pretty quickly when YouTube breaks something.
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I just use a frontend to remove ads + Extra Privacy too
WHY DONT WE HAVE A MAINSTREAM ALTERNATIVE YET
By operating youtube at a loss for many years Google acted anticompetitively to kill competition or stop competition arising. Now that they've achieved that they can do what they like. Don't feel bad using ad blockers against this anti-capitalist company.
Final stage of enshittification, now they are allowing more right wing propaganda than normal on the channel
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People get proccupied with emulating YT, which is indeed cost prohibitive. But that response assumes one is emulating all of it. What about only pursuing sections of it to cater to particular audiences? Serving 100% of YT's video might be too much even for Amazon (for example) but what about 1%?
Why couldn't Amazon host Booktube? And the manga/anime enthusiasts and other varietes of weebs to go along with them? They already own ebook retail. A VOD service to chip off some of YT's viewership would be a more productive investment than The Rings of Power...
A YT competitor needs a bit of scale, sure, but not as much as YT itself. A fraction will do.
I believe the main cost is in hosting all the videos. A lot of them are probably junk that were never meant to see the light of day. I certainly use it as an extra backup for many of my videos with no context and random UUID titles.
For everything else, a potential solution is to have everyone come in with their own videos hosted elsewhere and the platform just integrated with a bunch of APIs for fetching and serving those videos. For small time creators, the cost should be fairly low to none since a lot of platforms allow you to store a small number of files for free.
Hosting and storage costs, few can afford to be an alternative to an absolutely gigantic video storage platform that costs obscene money to maintain.
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When ads get in the way I simply don't watch the videos. It's not like anybody ever really needs to watch any particular video.
Educational content is hard to come by outside of YouTube, so it would suck to have to avoid watching those videos because of ads.
But I'll do what I have to do in order to avoid ads for as long as possible. And I'll archive important content in the meantime.
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I will continue to download all my videos to avoid ads. When they break the tools in such a way that this is no longer possible, I will stop watching videos from YouTube and seek entertainment elsewhere.
yt-dlp is the goat
Laughs in Ad Blocker. Still going strong.
what's a youtube ad?
Oh please no, it's the reason why I switched from Chrome to Firefox when watching YouTube
I was using uYouPlus+ sideloaded on my phone until it broke recently, now I’ve found using Brave browser for just YouTube is the solution
GrayJay, Vanced, or ~~Pipewire~~ NewPipe is the way
Did you mean NewPipe? Pipewire is the Linux audio/video framework.
Damn, fixed, I had a brainfart and was installing Arch while browsing Lemmy lol
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That explains the adblocker crackdown and enshittification of paid. Funnily enough, this pattern got me to block ads.
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I haven't seen an ad on Youtube in several years, thanks to uBlock Origin.
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daily motion has way better video quality and a lot less censorship.
I forgot about that site. I knew it just as the host for TV series streams back in the day
AdNauseum. Not only does it block ads but it also fucks with advertisers by sending false clicks that cost them money.
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Jokes on you, YouTube, my Chinese phone rolls their ads over yours!
Stop using it. I did and now I only use unofficial ways of watching the videos I want. And I download the ones I wanna watch again.
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