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Please YouTube, make things even worse by embedding ads into the video itself, like twitch does. After I had to watch the same ad over and over for the new Zelda, then Aquaman 2 , I eventually managed to delete my twitch account and stop losing my time there. Hopefully will be the same with youtube, I didn't watch a single ad in 12 years, I don't understand how people does it.without sponsorblock and ublock, youtube is worse than the tv.
Paying because a service is making itself suck on purpose to create “fake value” to make you relent to their suckage is objectionable business practice, and all those that support YouTube by buying premium need to think a little deeper about the kind of future their are supporting with their money: you’re paying for pain relief instead of innovation and, frankly, condemning the Internet.
The Ads you see are only because the creator enabled them for monetization AFAIK. There are many channels without Ads.
Honestly, this is why I got rid of YouTube premium when their prices increased. The amount of ads reduced my YouTube usage to only videos that I "really" wanted to watch. Try turning off your blocker if you want to decrease your consumption :-)
Premium+SponsorBlock is the answer.
Premium + Sponsorblock is well worth my money.
1) Install Freetube client ( https://freetubeapp.io ).

2) Install Privacy Redirect browser extension ( https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect#get ).

3) In the browser extension's "Advanced" settings tab, enable the "Use Freetube over Invidious when possible" switch ( e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/user-media/previews/full/241/2414... ).

4) Import your subscriptions: https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/importing-subscriptions/
I use also newpipe on phone. Requires installation of fdroid. It cannot be installed from Play store though.
It doesn’t have sponsorblock. So it’s still worse than the website.
Here's a script Mac users can run:

    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"' -e 'set currentVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)' -e 'set volume with output muted' -e 'repeat 16 times' -e 'key code 145' -e 'delay 0.1' -e 'end repeat' -e 'delay 12' -e 'set volume output volume currentVolume' -e 'repeat 16 times' -e 'key code 144' -e 'delay 0.1' -e 'end repeat' -e 'end tell'
It will mute the sound and blank the screen for 12 second, then restore them (adjust as desired). Mac doesn't give programmatic access to the screen brightness, so that cannot be restored perfectly.

This isn't a good technical solution to ads, but it might be an acceptable life solution. Enjoy the blank screen, look around the room, breath, enjoy the quiet. And be content that this "solution" will work to block ads so long as users have control over their own computers.

The amount of ads they started adding in the last months or a year at this point is sick. Basically two at the start of every video and often not skippable. It coincided with increased offers for YouTube premium. Honestly I'd pay at this point, but know it's not going to be enough sooner or later. They'll add premium with less ads for half the price, then they'll increase the price gradually until the premium with ads costs the same as premium used to cost and so on. It's really tiring to get squeezed to the last drop on every turn, and at the same time living allegedly in a free market.
>I'd pay at this point, but know it's not going to be enough sooner or later.

Evaluate the value of the deal in the present. You can choose to not renew the subscription if it is no longer worth it.

The Ads you see are only because the creator enabled them for monetization AFAIK. There are many channels without Ads.
This might be a blessing in disguise. My youtube consumption will go down by 90% with ads.
Sucks that YouTube music is not integrated enough to YouTube proper, the discovery systems between both are also just bad
Ha! I just knew I won't need to waste money on a faster Internet to watch YouTube smoother. YouTube slows you down anyways.

But in all seriousness:

1) YouTube can slow it down all you want, ban my account if you have to, I'll not remove my adblocker.

2) YouTube should really reconsider their business strategy, and charging their advertisers more. The total amount of the garbage ads from garbage publishers on their platform is out of control, that's why I installed adblocker in the first place. Raise the price, kick those shitty ads out, good for everyone.

3) Intentionally piss off your viewers is great at converting an objective annoyance to something more personal.

From what I've heared sort of around the block: Shitty ads actually pay more per view. Scam artists have rather fat margins and are more desperate to get their ads shown. IMO the __actual__ solution to youtube ads is unironically to buy premium (and use sponsorblock). Cheap enough and I personally find the experience of ads shoved down my throat actually degrading (so have been using adblockers). Probably would get those 5-10$ worth of ads not being shown in couple evenings/mornings while listening to stuff during commute. Alternatively, something like floatplane, but the the whole yt premuium costs like 3-5 channels on floatplane, and general lack of site-wide subscription tier is a deal-braker to me, so no.

Thing is, video production, storage and distributions are expensive af. There are little to no alternatives explicitly because, especially at small scale, the model is unsustainable. If youtube presumably keeps loosing money to google, there will be no youtube outside of paid tiers, or, indeed, something like floatplane.

I fear that majority will not be as hardwilled. Majority decide trends. Money decide the outcome.
I'm not against ads in general but I'm strongly against the idea to turn Internet into TV 2.0 e.g. interuptive ad delivery channel. Text and banner ads allow the user to chose their level of engagement but forced video ads attempt to force the user to interrupt their normal flow without other options. I find it unacceptable.
we're well beyond TV 2.0. TV ads could never track you. Digital Cable knew everything about your viewing habits well before YT was invented though.
YouTube Premium exists to remove ads.
Random question: has anyone here ever purchased something they found via a youtube ad?

I never have. Approximately 100% of youtube ads I've seen are for harmful, time-wasting, unhealthy, mediocre, scammy products/services. They also tend to be blastingly-loud, and somewhat anxiety-inducing. I've never seen an interesting or informative one.

Why doesn't youtube put effort into ad quality and relevance, rather than hostility toward users who quite naturally want to avoid grotesque influences.

Ads work on the brain on many levels. Often affecting us below conscious recall. They work on us even if we don't like them.

For example a feel good video from a car company won't make us go out and buy the car. That's not the intention. The aim is not for you to click through right then and spend. The intention is about feeling of the brand. So maybe in 2 years time when you have forgotten the specific ad and are in a position of trading in your old car you will choose this brand of car compared to a similar one from a company that didn't advertise.

Ads are worse than we think. They work on many levels to manipulate us.

In fact I have a list of products that show in ads that I make sure to never purchase. I assume that if you have to advertise hard to sell your product you probably suck. Products that are amazing are sold by recommendation from enthusiastic customers.

I know people may not agree, but it’s been pretty effective for me.

> Why doesn't youtube put effort into ad quality and relevance, rather than hostility toward users who quite naturally want to avoid grotesque influences.

Because the purpose of the ad is just to keep your brain busy for a period of _your_ time.

I explicitly avoid products that happen to annoy me with forced video ads.

I have a whole list of companies in my head I will avoid as long as I don't forgot about them.

I'm kind of surprised that they waited this long to mess with ad blockers
If YouTube outright prevents access from browsers that block ads, then suddenly a huge number of the most tech-savvy viewers will be motivated to seek/develop/fund better ad blockers and/or alternative ways to access videos.

It's a difficult position. On the one hand, these users are chewing up compute and bandwidth, without providing any ad revenue. On the other hand, if they leave, it contributes to a vicious cycle (or virtuous cycle, depending on your perspective) of eyeballs being elsewhere, and content creators looking elsewhere to reach those eyeballs.

Sure, initially content creators will be posting to YouTube as well, but even a moat like YouTube's can be filled in over time.

What is interesting is that I use Firefox on Mac and Windows and I have been slowly moving over to Windows after a decade of using Macs. Anyways, the point is, on the Mac, Youtube keeps complaining about adblock and not letting me watch stuff without using a Violent Monkey patch but on Windows they don't complain yet, which I know won't last for long, but in the meantime is a nice Windows win.
On my TV YouTube wouldn’t skip to video if ads didn’t load. One could say that’s an effective guard against an adblocker as you would just get a black screen for a minute.

Of course you would also get a blank screen when the ad server wasn’t responding, because the ad server is not hooked up to the local cdn

I noticed this on mobile with adblock, some videos would pause and refuse to load at the point its supposed to show an ad and I would need to refresh
The eventual solution for YouTube is to start injecting advertisements into the content packet stream, complete with re-keyframing and altering the metadata files to incorporate the ad segments into the run length. Everything prior to that is their increasingly-desperate attempts to not have to re-code their content streaming server to dynamically modify streams with advertising on the fly. But they won’t have to do that until video ad blockers start playing the ads invisibly in a shadow of the page, without showing them to the user at all. Which is pretty advanced for a regex-based player and not something I expect to see with last-gen ad blocking. Looking forward to it!
YouTube makes money by selling access to your eyeballs. The ad / Adblock arms race is amusing and all, but the only winning move is not to play. Take your attention someplace else. This is how you win.
OK, this has been brewing on for a while, so time for a Plan B. Since I don't have enough karma do do a full AskHN, here's to hijacking a comment thread:

Question : What's the best solution for someone mainly watching STEM channels and various video essayists (Contrapoints, Stories Of Old, various art critics)?

Personally, Youtube Premium feels like paying for a protection racket. So far I'm inclined towards paying for Nebula. Any other ideas anyone?

Some youtubers are uploading their videos to alternative websites, instances of Peertube network. Sure, you probably won't find that video there, but maybe it is time to reduce online video watching or at least start watching something different, something you chose, not the algorithm. Start with tilvids.com and makertube.net . Even archive.org has a lot of stuff to watch.
Since I use Firefox, never had any issues. I guess this only happens on Chromium-based browsers...
I wish they would do the same on shorts, I regret every second I’ve spent on it.
I was wondering what was happening. It’s not just buffering for me, the entire site loads slowly/hangs. Only noticed starting 2-3 days ago.
mpv <YouTube link>
I’ve been using ublock origin and sponsor block, has been working a treat. Every week or so YouTube will detect I’m using an adblocker, click on ublock origin icon -> cogs icon -> purge all caches -> Update now.
If you’re not paying for it, you are the product. Simple as that.
I use Adblock, but also believe creators should be paid and YouTube itself cannot exist for free. If you’re not willing to pay and also don’t want ads, what’s the solution?
Is it possible to create unintrusive adBlock that will mute audio and make screen black during ads?
Don't understand why this keeps getting rehashed. The options are pretty simple:

1 - Pay for YouTube Premium.

2 - Use free ad-supported YouTube.

3 - Don't use YouTube.

I pay for family premium and share it with 5 other people (in my family). Works without issue.