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To cure your youtube addiction, just disable your adblocker. Works very well.

by cm2187 4y ago

Waterluvian 4y ago
Is it just me or is Google quietly in serious distress? Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.” Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising until I scroll down and find results.
- cpsns 4y ago
  Same nonsense on Facebook. It’s all payday loans, crypto scams, and magic mushrooms. People say it’s based on your history, but I don’t buy that as none of what it shows me is even slightly relevant. It just seems like they don’t have enough relevant ads to show, so they throw shit at the wall.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Interesting. It’s the same on my end. I’m not interested in any of the stuff I see and I have no idea why an algorithm would think so. Crypto is relentless. Payday loans are around, but not as prevalent. I get a lot of ads for weird novelty toys too. I’m not sure I’ve ever clicked one, let alone looked them up. I’ve wondered if it’s because I’m into 3d printing and many other people who are into are interested in action figures/minis/what have you. Possible connection? In any case ads do seem to be getting less relevant and skeezy themes are developing. The worst one I’ve been seeing a lot of is “single Ukrainian women”. One went as far as showing a quick and easy process of selection and “purchase”. I have no idea how that would be targeted at me, but it see a lot of them.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Maybe there's a "HN User" stamp on your ad profile? Jokes aside, if you do your data request from FB you should see your advertising selectors come back. Before I deleted my account, FB thought I was a 17 year old girl interested in boy bands and makeup.
    - zupa-hu 4y ago
      That’s not as shocking as you’d think. While FB may not know you well, we don’t either. :)
- halkony 4y ago
  On this topic, what do people recommend for mobile adblocking? I've been using AdAway which redirects ads to your phone's loopback in non-root mode.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    On iOS I use AdGuard and Hush. These don’t affect ads in apps though. There might be more involved solutions that work better but I’m not interested in accumulating stuff I have to maintain.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    So far so good on Android: Firefox with ublock origin.
  - LorenDB 4y ago
    Blokada 4
  - sanroot98 4y ago
    I just use private DNS ,dns.adguard-dns.com
- metasaval 4y ago
  nobody pays for premium so ads get worse.
- fleddr 4y ago
  For me it was especially shocking because I've experienced no transition, straight from 0 to 100 instead. I've always exclusively interacted with Youtube from my PC, with uBlock enabled. I don't see ads and because I haven't for such a long time, I've normalized that state. Until I got a new TV, with a fancy TV OS. My mother-in-law was visiting and I was trying to play some clips of her favorite music via the TV app. I was absolutely shocked. Every 2 minutes or so, 2 brief ads in succession. It makes viewing anything with joy impossible. You can't get into the moment as its constantly stopped in its tracks. Absolute hellish ad regime.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    We used to let the kids watch YouTube videos. But now it’s “daaaaad Ad…” every two minutes. YouTube is now banned on the TV. And while we’re on this topic: Google’s rockstar elite engineers and designers removed the ability to force a resolution for YouTube + Chromecast. But it also wrongly auto detects my gigabit internet as being too weak so it’s literally impossible to get anything above 480p on my basement TV. (Twitch and others stream in HD without issue)
    - ipqk 4y ago
      I pay for Google Premium for my nephews. I saw the "advertisements" they were showing, and wasn't going to let them see that.
- poser-boy 4y ago
  It's getting really bad. I've seen horrible voice dubs over Elon Musk keynote presentations advertising crypto in the YouTube ads!
clnq 4y ago
Yes, I have shaken my YouTube addiction this way. It naturally makes YouTube less appealing. It also lengthens the habit-forming action->random outcome cycle by 20 or more seconds with pre-roll ads. Enabling ads on YouTube is the opposite of autoplay in terms of addiction.
- gundmc 4y ago
  Ads on YouTube haven't been inconvenient enough to deter me yet. Minor annoyance, but if the ads are longer than 15 seconds I can skip. Twitch on the other hand? If I'm watching on mobile I'll regularly get 90 seconds or more of unskipable ads every 10 minutes. Most of the time this makes me close the app and overall has torpedoed my watch time.
csomar 4y ago
This is no joke. I used to watch lots of youtube on background when I had a desktop with multiple screens. I’d put mostly the news. Now I’m on the road and I have a laptop and an ipad. I’ve got no extra screen and the extra tab will be expensive on my battery. I tried the iPad YouTube app but I’d get an ad for every 4-5 minutes. After a couple weeks i stopped watching YouTube altogether. I was considering getting a premium subscription but found out later that I don’t miss it that much. I think the $5/month will be used to stream bitcoin to podcasts over lightening.

To cure your youtube addiction, just disable your adblocker. Works very well.

by cm2187 4y ago

To cure your youtube addiction, just disable your adblocker. Works very well.

Is it just me or is Google quietly in serious distress? Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.” Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising until I scroll down and find results.

cpsns 4y ago
Same nonsense on Facebook. It’s all payday loans, crypto scams, and magic mushrooms. People say it’s based on your history, but I don’t buy that as none of what it shows me is even slightly relevant. It just seems like they don’t have enough relevant ads to show, so they throw shit at the wall.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Interesting. It’s the same on my end. I’m not interested in any of the stuff I see and I have no idea why an algorithm would think so. Crypto is relentless. Payday loans are around, but not as prevalent. I get a lot of ads for weird novelty toys too. I’m not sure I’ve ever clicked one, let alone looked them up. I’ve wondered if it’s because I’m into 3d printing and many other people who are into are interested in action figures/minis/what have you. Possible connection? In any case ads do seem to be getting less relevant and skeezy themes are developing. The worst one I’ve been seeing a lot of is “single Ukrainian women”. One went as far as showing a quick and easy process of selection and “purchase”. I have no idea how that would be targeted at me, but it see a lot of them.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Maybe there's a "HN User" stamp on your ad profile? Jokes aside, if you do your data request from FB you should see your advertising selectors come back. Before I deleted my account, FB thought I was a 17 year old girl interested in boy bands and makeup.
  - zupa-hu 4y ago
    That’s not as shocking as you’d think. While FB may not know you well, we don’t either. :)
halkony 4y ago
On this topic, what do people recommend for mobile adblocking? I've been using AdAway which redirects ads to your phone's loopback in non-root mode.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  On iOS I use AdGuard and Hush. These don’t affect ads in apps though. There might be more involved solutions that work better but I’m not interested in accumulating stuff I have to maintain.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  So far so good on Android: Firefox with ublock origin.
- LorenDB 4y ago
  Blokada 4
- sanroot98 4y ago
  I just use private DNS ,dns.adguard-dns.com
metasaval 4y ago
nobody pays for premium so ads get worse.
fleddr 4y ago
For me it was especially shocking because I've experienced no transition, straight from 0 to 100 instead. I've always exclusively interacted with Youtube from my PC, with uBlock enabled. I don't see ads and because I haven't for such a long time, I've normalized that state. Until I got a new TV, with a fancy TV OS. My mother-in-law was visiting and I was trying to play some clips of her favorite music via the TV app. I was absolutely shocked. Every 2 minutes or so, 2 brief ads in succession. It makes viewing anything with joy impossible. You can't get into the moment as its constantly stopped in its tracks. Absolute hellish ad regime.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  We used to let the kids watch YouTube videos. But now it’s “daaaaad Ad…” every two minutes. YouTube is now banned on the TV. And while we’re on this topic: Google’s rockstar elite engineers and designers removed the ability to force a resolution for YouTube + Chromecast. But it also wrongly auto detects my gigabit internet as being too weak so it’s literally impossible to get anything above 480p on my basement TV. (Twitch and others stream in HD without issue)
  - ipqk 4y ago
    I pay for Google Premium for my nephews. I saw the "advertisements" they were showing, and wasn't going to let them see that.
poser-boy 4y ago
It's getting really bad. I've seen horrible voice dubs over Elon Musk keynote presentations advertising crypto in the YouTube ads!

clnq 4y ago

Yes, I have shaken my YouTube addiction this way. It naturally makes YouTube less appealing. It also lengthens the habit-forming action->random outcome cycle by 20 or more seconds with pre-roll ads. Enabling ads on YouTube is the opposite of autoplay in terms of addiction.

gundmc 4y ago
Ads on YouTube haven't been inconvenient enough to deter me yet. Minor annoyance, but if the ads are longer than 15 seconds I can skip. Twitch on the other hand? If I'm watching on mobile I'll regularly get 90 seconds or more of unskipable ads every 10 minutes. Most of the time this makes me close the app and overall has torpedoed my watch time.

csomar 4y ago

This is no joke. I used to watch lots of youtube on background when I had a desktop with multiple screens. I’d put mostly the news. Now I’m on the road and I have a laptop and an ipad. I’ve got no extra screen and the extra tab will be expensive on my battery. I tried the iPad YouTube app but I’d get an ad for every 4-5 minutes. After a couple weeks i stopped watching YouTube altogether. I was considering getting a premium subscription but found out later that I don’t miss it that much. I think the $5/month will be used to stream bitcoin to podcasts over lightening.