[BuyMyBitcoins]

I can’t watch YouTube without an adblocker. On a surface level, I hate the ads. But, the main reason is the fact that I can’t stand how YouTube is fixated on trying to make you watch something else at all times. I need something to hide all the little cards and interstitials that pop up when pausing the video, the badges, all the obnoxious thumbnails, etc..

I also hide all of the videos on the sidebar except for the one that would be recommended next, just so I can know what might play if I leave autoplay on.

It is insane to me that the product got to this place. I get Google is all about advertising, but my goodness, YouTube is just designed to make you not pay attention for more than a few seconds.

[noir_lord]

Ublock Origin and Unhook[1]

Lets you remove as much or as little of the "UI/UX" as you want - don't want to see shorts, recommended vids, end cards etc - live comments (who even asked for that) you don't have to.

It collapses YT back to been an intentional thing - I'm looking for a video to watch, I watch it, it suggests nothing and I go on with my day instead of getting distracted by the skinner box.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

[ryandrake]

At this point this functionality should just be built into browsers. It's 2025. We shouldn't still need extensions to provide table stakes functionality like content blocking.

[Forgeties79]

This is also why I love Freetube. No nonsense, just what I want in front of me the rare instances I’m on YT these days. Only annoying thing is having to update it every few weeks

[fainpul]

As somebody already mentioned, uBlock Origin helps.

I have these in my filters to make YouTube bearable:

  www.youtube.com###comments
  www.youtube.com###related
  www.youtube.com###sponsor-button
  www.youtube.com###donation-shelf
  www.youtube.com##.ytp-endscreen-content
  www.youtube.com###chat:remove()
  www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com###chat-container

On top of that you probably want SponsorBlock, because sponsor segments are also ads.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

[cal_dent]

Thanks for this rec

[echelon]

I hate ads and use adblock on websites too, but I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for. We're counting on "normies" footing the bill for our technical sophistication.

I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.

[qntmfred]

Ad-free YouTube Premium is a Luxury Good

[nemomarx]

Even with premium you still can't hide suggested videos, shorts, the front page is still messy...

[bigyabai]

Which is why I pray everyday at the shrine of my 10tb 5200rpm spinning rust and yt-dlp client.

[carlosjobim]

Aren't luxuries supposed to be expensive?

[jimmydddd]

Youtube as we know it will probably be dead in a few years anyway. Tiktok has shortened everyone's attention span. I shockingly found myself clicking away from one of my favorite classic rock songs from my youth because I didn't want to stay the entire 3 minutes.

[pcdoodle]

There's some of us who look for long form video time stamps in our subscriptions list. I specifically like throwing on a good 20 minute video from a beloved channel while I do other things. Maybe the cure is a bandwidth limit on our "pipes".

[righthand]

No, just a portion of the population that’s into having no focus will continue to do so. You can change your habits and not be cattle without agency.

[nxor]

For meaningful focus our brains need uninterrupted periods.

I use Brave, though I know its reputation could be better.

[pipes]

Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

There is a lot of complaining on hacker news about adverts, yet when Google offer the only other viable solution (subscription fees) everyone still complains.

[j1elo]

Problem with that solution is that Youtube is not an independent company that one could be happy to pay for their services. You're paying Google, and there are more than enough reasons to not wanting to give Google any money at all.

That's the problem with corporations: they cover too much. I cannot pay Youtube while at the same time not giving an ounce of support to the company that wants to remove all remaining freedoms of the Android ecosystem.

[namibj]

Doesn't fix the app from booting into a short that thus defaults to playing with sound.

[Krasnol]

> Or pay for a YouTube subscription?

At this point, if I had no choice like ublock: I'd still not pay them. Why should I? To enforce this behaviour so everybody suffers more? What about those people who can't afford a subscription? Why is their mind and attention free to be abused?

The advertisement industry has became disgustingly evil. I hate everything about it.

[BoredPositron]

The only way to get a sane YouTube experience is to deactivate the history and only use the subscription page but that has other downsides.