L1 videos YouTube WAY TOO MANY ADS OMGWTF?!

I just got done watching your 8/31/2021 news video on YouTube. There were like 30 ad breaks throughout that video. I watch on a Verizon Stream TV box, so I don’t get the benefit of installing a YouTube ad blocker. Not that I want to block ads on your videos, but I don’t think for a minute you guys decided to ad-spam your own videos and I have to wonder if YouTube is dynamically injecting ads into videos based on the user that is viewing them without the creators’ consent?

That being said, I’m calling upon all of your expertise that created the L1 KVM Switch to develop some awesome remote control solution for consuming content on my TV. The remote control is important because it’s only a few buttons compared to a keyboard and mouse on a computer. Once you have the remote control developed, I’m sure it would be usable on many popular DIY platforms. Though I’m happy with the speed of the Verizon Stream TV box, the fact that it is flagged as a Google TV product when accessing apps on the Play Store prevents download of a LOT of popular apps that make life less spammy. Sideloading apps on the Verizon Stream TV is possible, but I need a remote control solution so I can just make my own stream box (return of HTPC’s anyone?) to navigate my streaming apps, and in the case of YouTube apparently just co-opting creators’ content without consent to cram more ads down viewers’ eye-holes, be able to just ad-block their garbage into the ground.

I don’t mind the ad spots that have been the norm for the past year or 2, but it seems like in the past week or 2, something had been DRASTICALLY altered and due to the high volume of ad spots, I’ve been watching a LOT less of many creators that I follow because the ad disruption makes consuming their great content just entirely untenable.

Though I have a personal interest in posting this to make my viewing experience better, I’m also hopefully bringing to your attention a serious “YouTube is destroying everybody’s viewership without their knowledge, and creators are all just thinking ‘gee, viewership is down, maybe we’re getting stale I guess?’” issue. Unless I’m the only one having this problem, and am making way too far of a leap by characterizing my experiences as something systemic that is actively affecting everyone RIGHT NOW lol! (Chicken Little? Maybe.)

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. Love the content especially the news. Cheers! :slight_smile:

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Thia is Youtube, not L1… Sometimes I watch a compilation I watch regularly, sometimes I get through the whole 4 hours of it with only a couple breaks, sometimes there is a break every like 3 minutes or so. It is literally Youtube going crazy.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon is injecting ads through this.

1. Get a different device that can run stock Android or Kodi. Doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are some examples:

  • Raspberry Pi
  • Firestick
  • Roku
  • any cheap-ass android gaming console for fiddy bucks on alibaba
  • $15 ebay Optiplex with a core 2 duo

2. Run ad blocking on your network. Such as PiHole.

3. Pay for YouTube Premium (this is frowned upon)


topkek

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I’d try to root a Chinese Android box to run your own ROM and try to build LineageOS for it at this point. Then use Newpipe. This is far better than YouTube Vanced because that still uses Google APIs.

PiHole will not block YouTube ads because if it’s going to the official app, they may have DNS over HTTPS or hard coded DNS. Plus the servers are identical to the video serving servers now.

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Currently in the 20th ad-pocalypse, advertisers and YouTube are at odds with each other and they so YouTube is making less money per ad, so they’re doubling down on ads
Also YouTube doesn’t like adblockers so a tech channel is likely to have people who know how to set up ad blockers, so both the YouTuber and YouTube makes less money, so more ads to compensate

Please consider Patreon or floatplane if you want an ad free experience

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This is the real solution

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Does Patreon remove YouTube ads from L1 videos?

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I know Floatplane is fully separate, so it’s a mirror. True ad free is Floatplane. (Floatplane doesn’t use YouTube at all for livestreams. It uses their own CDN, hence why it’s a very closed beta for specific creators to get in only)

Direct embeds though aren’t smart enough to be like “let’s only apply YouTube Premium parameters to this specific embed” with a Patreon OAuth or Cookie. You still need to be logged in with Premium. Defeats the point.

Videos directly uploaded to the platform rather than to YouTube are guaranteed not to have it.

Another alternative is Odysee. Many creators have setup YouTube mirrors to Odysee. Far less shady than Bitchute.

The remote control seems interesting at first, but I can’t think of a solution that wouldn’t end up clunky as heck;
There is 3 things to consider, the battery, the interface, and the brains/blaster.

The brains/blaster might simply be a pi zero, with an it blaster connected to gpio or something, maybe a resister or whatever.

But, the interface won’t be as slick as a universal remote control, unless it is some kind of touch screen?

And battery, it might take more battery than a normal tv remote, so might end up heavy as heck. TV remotes really sip power when on standby

Just Floatplane or Invidious.

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I can flesh out my pie-sky vision a bit more. The remote would have an IR USB dongle for whatever non-Bluetooth content streaming box (such as a basic HTPC). The remote would also have a Bluetooth transmitter inside of it for connecting to non-IR devices. The Verizon box remote will control my TV and soundbar as well. The Verizon box is definitely Bluetooth only (non-IR), and I’m not sure about my HiSense H8 TV. My Klipsch SB-400 soundbar is IR.

As for an OS, a de-Google’d ChromeOS install on whatever device you can imagine sounds like a good start. An Android environment is preferrable due to (what I perceive to be) a well developed app ecosystem with emphasis on limited interface controls like what you find on mobile devices (big buttons, on screen keyboards, etc.). A remote control with no more buttons than an Xbox controller matches right up with that.

The last reason for the remote control is for the non-technically inclined. My partner is retired, and having everything simplified into the Verizon remote control that controls all of our devices makes it actually manageable for him. Cutting the cord from cable and satellite is not something he had ever considered until we started living together and I showed him the world of being able to consume content from the Internet on your TV as easily as cable/satellite, and not have to use a virus magnet like a Windows laptop.

The non-tech folks continually get preyed upon by the Facebooks and the Googles and the Verizons of the world, and sure they’re not going away, but this is one area I think would not only be a service to that demographic as well as humanity at large, but is also a sorely missing piece of tech in the DIY community that we could really benefit from while flying in the face of big tech’s iron fist and steel vampire fangs. :wink: (Side note: I mentioned cord cutting. I feel like this is the next generation of cord cutting. It’s more like Big-Tech’s-Unbridled-Forced-Feeding-Of-Advertisements AMPUTATION lol). How great would it be to have a simple to use remote, cheap Raspberry Pi and totally ad-blocked YouTube content? The technically challenged would be saved from Big Tech’s predation damnation. It would be awesome. :wink:

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Oh no I’m getting stuff for free I don’t have 1 minute of ads to spare.

Geez some people really.

Free platform, free content, somehow it’s gotta be profitable, even if you’re Google.
Deal with it or use a payed platform (like Flatplane specifically for L1, or YouTube Premium).

1 minute is fine… I have 4 minute video interrupted by 5 and a half minute song as an ad… So 1 minute is fine…

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You know you can skip most ads after 5 seconds right? And if you can’t skip one, reload the page to get a different ad that you’re probably able to skip.

One time I had a 19 minute ad about solar, I think I funded paul’s channel for the entire month for watching all of it

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I am a heretic. I pay for Youtube Red/Music/WhatEverTheHellTheyCallItNow so I don’t get adds and a bigger portion of my viewing goes to those that I watch. In the creator dashboard, you can actually see you breakout of what comes to you through the paid service.

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Wondering does it show the other way round too? Can I see as a subscriber how much ends up at which creator?

Sidenote: Does anyone know what the requirements for the “join” button on YouTube channels are and/or why L1 doesn’t have it? I ran across it on a couple channels now (notably EposVox), but it doesn’t seem widespread. That would also get rid of ads as far as I know, but only for the channel in question.

Sometimes you can skip the ads after 5 seconds and sometimes it forces either back-to-back 7 second ads or a forced 15 second ad. This in itself isn’t a problem. Perhaps I didn’t characterize my experience well, but when I said “like 30 ad breaks”, it may have been more like 20. The video would play for maybe 2 minutes, then ad, then 2 minutes of video, then ad, then 2 minutes of video, then ad – this happened so many times in their video alone I lost count and lost track of their conversations.

Of course free services need to profit in some way, and as I already mentioned in my OP in case you missed that too, is that the past couple years have been OK. The past couple weeks have been incessant and beyond reason. They’re doing it wrong. Also, I take no issue with those that pay for Premium. I agree with if you pay, you get no ads. PhiloTV misses that mark. They charge and still play ads.

You know who’s doing it right? PlutoTV. It’s like regular TV and it’s free. I don’t mind it. I watch PlutoTV A LOT. The other big reason I took issue with this ad-raping of my viewing experience is because it’s not fixing their profit problem. It’s either going to drive people to ad-blocking or drive viewership away across the board entirely. This will not only ensure YouTube will continue to be a loss leader, it’s going to destroy content creators’ reason for even using their service.

Thanks for the perspective, mihawk90. Cheers! :slight_smile:

I also pay for YouTube Premium and it’s worth every penny.

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We only run one ad for every 20 ish mins more of content. If YouTube detects you skip an ad it will inject more. Or way more. We don’t really have a lot of control over it when it thinks you aren’t watching the ads.

I think the ads are off on the Patreon versions and floatplane is for sure ad free. YouTube red is also ad free.

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