Adguard blocks YouTube ads on my laptop.

Smarttube blocks YT ads on my TV.

Revanced allows me to block YT ads on my phone.

But yeah, keep pushing adverts /s

firefox and uBlock Origin. I don't see ads. Fuck Google and their AI.

Migrated away from Google because they're just genuinely useless.

Search results are infested with AI bullshit and SEO slop, can't actually search for anything useful unless you know the website you're looking for, in which case I just go to the website directly.

Youtube curates a selection of completely irrelevant videos to try to shove ads down your throat, I still have to change my user agent string every time because YouTube throws a hissy fit at firefox with ublock.

Gmail is pretty much the same as any other email provider but comes at the expense of your data being sold for advertising purposes.

Don't even get me started on the shit show that is Android.

I run GrapheneOS, Fedora and debian, self host what I can and use decent providers for what I can't. I'm the furthest away from the big tech corps than I've ever been and it feels great to have computers that actually compute and not serve me useless fucking ad drivel.

Because advertisers want viewers to associate their products and brand with feelings of annoyance, aggravation, and frustration?

YouTube really likes to just destroy itself huh?

They already did something similar back in the day. I remember watching a music video some ~10 years ago where they placed an ad like five seconds before the end of the song, right at the musical climax, ruining the mood with surgical precision. I was absolutely infuriated and went off to Google wondering if there's a way to block ads. And the rest is history.

I am a YUGE fan of FreeTube, a cross-platform YT client for the desktop. You can subscribe to channels, create, save, import, and export playlists...and no. Ads. Tis the bees knees.

And just a friendly reminder to donate to your favorite FOSS projects.

Imagine ...

THIS IS SP....

Insert unskippable ad here.

ARTA!

It would be wrong to call it a replacement, but this is a good place to plug !peertube@lemmy.world - there's more quality content on there than many might suspect, especially if you are into FOSS and people tinkering with stuff they are passionate about.

You should pay off you don't like the ads.

YT + Music is a fantastic value.

Queue a line of people screaming it's trash while not being able to get over their addiction of the service.

Gemini also being forced on me more and more in Android. Seriously considering a linux phone next.

I am used to listening to streams while walking, but I've been noticing the most annoying ads pop-up when I'm interested in something they are saying. This isn't going to make me pay attention to those ads, it's going to drive me to the plethora of other services I can use. The worst thing about it is that it doesn't even pause and cache the stream, meaning that if I was listening to something interesting, the ad just causes me to miss it. Google just keeps eating its own tail.

OK let's all skip to the middle of sponsor segments so the ads cover the sponsor segment. Win win

Why do you need "AI" for this? That is something that can be done client side on a 30 year old phone without sweat if you already have a list of timestamps and number of engagements for a video?

I stopped using YouTube years ago. Fuck that shit.