Mashable reports that users ran into a black screen on YouTube, and that it stayed for about 6 seconds before the video began playing. The reports indicate it affected several browsers including Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi.
Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad. While that’s certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time. A simple workaround for the black screen on YouTube is to just refresh the page, hit F5 as soon as the page starts loading. uBlock Origin’s filters were updated with a patch to resolve the problem, the add-on updates its filters automatically. If you are still experiencing the black screen issue, just open the extension’s dashboard and manually update the filters. This tug-of-war is getting annoying, but it appears to me that Google’s efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers, instead of attracting new subscribers.
6 seconds?! GASP
I can understand, I would feel better watching a black screen than an ad trying to psychologically manipulate you in a personalized way.
Those that make peaceful ad-blocking impossible make violent rage quiting inevitable.
Ever since YouTube started this nonsense I moved to invidious and haven’t looked back
I have a lot of love for invidious, but I love in fear of yt finding a way to nullify it with some fuckery.
Recently they started blocking ips of VPS providers… so I can’t run an instance on a VPS, it has to be local.
This nonsense is about one step away from affecting Invidious too.
I tried using invidious but its was super slow and i only ever got 720p max is this fixed?
I’ve been seeing the black screen on Firefox. Still better than an ad, but it would be nice to be gone lol
Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad.
This isn’t a joke. I would literally rather see a black screen than an ad.
Fully agree, I YouTube a lot for white noise as I fall asleep, and while I’ve had premium for a few years now the advertisements that I had before premium were much higher volume then anything else and I would much rather have no audio than a random advertisement blasting
I can’t be fucked to set up a pi hole so YouTube on my Roku in the living room had ads. I unironically mute the tv and check my phone during ads. I’d take a black screen any day
Also before the better twitch adblock that let you bypass adtime with a lower quality video, people do literally use the plugin that replaced the ads with purple screen.
I remember a time when ads weren’t crazy intrusive. They weren’t being shoved into every os and app and website.
There wasn’t 20 of them on every page, and advertisers weren’t trying to harvest my data to the point where they knew every last detail of my personal life.
And I didn’t mind having them in order to have “free” content. But they got greedy and now I’ll block them in every chance I get.
Maybe forcing ads into everything isn’t the answer.
Not to mention that ads are a prime vector for malware and spyware (well, more spyware on top of the ad vendor itself).
I went to my banking account page, where I can make transfers and look at my money. My ad blocker had blocked a GIANT ad in the center of the screen.
you’re misremembering the time. ad blockers aren’t new and they were invented for a reason. people forget pop up ads could literally cover your entire screen and they were so bad that blocking them was a browser feature. popups are blocked by default even today.
They block pop-up windows but now website designers have discovered they can just do soft pop-ups. The worst websites have at least 3, the cookie wall, the newsletter and some pay wall or offer, often overlapping.
yeah, not my point though. my point is there’s never been a time for unintrusive, respectful ads.
I’m actually annoyed that NewPipe stopped working again and Invidious’ download speeds are glacial
Grayjay seems to fix things real fast, been using that a lot lately
Grayjay has been staying on top of it. Had several plugin updates lately.
Did it stop working again tonight? It was working earlier today on my tablet.
Been 2 days that it stopped for me. Won’t play or download any videos
If I’m watching YouTube I’m not too worried about my time. The black screen is worth it as long as it directly spites their greedy asses.
Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad.
Yeah. The time lost is a shame but the ad is far worse.
It’s not so bad. You can just treat it as the dimming of the lights/countdown timer you see in theatres, in the lead-in of the film.
They should play some chill classical music to replace whatever ad that’s being blocked
if im gonna lose time regardless, i’d rather spend it staring at 6 seconds of black nothingness, than 15 seconds of PragerU talking about how slavery was a boon the black man.
Out of principle, if I can’t block or skip an ad, I’m closing the window. I’d rather not use the service than be force-fed advertising.
I take public transit on the daily, and that’s just about the only place I can’t avoid advertising.
I’ve been enjoying Odysee a lot. It doesn’t have much content but it works great. Hopefully content creators start uploading there as well.
What’s the endgame here for users?
Do we just want a reasonable subscription price? Something we can genuinely afford?
If youtube doesn’t play ads then they cant remain a service. At least not as it is today. Hosting costs money.
Im not shilling for them, i dont want ads either. And google are a terrible company. But im trying to be realistic.
Do we want cheap subscription?
Or a reduced service that can be maintained without so many ads
Do we just want 5 second skippable ads back?
Im just seeing this fight progressing to the point were youtube becomes subscription only and the ad blocker users have to pay or lose the service they obviously want to access.
Remember when good ads used to be unobtrusive? Return to that.
I’m actually rediscovering YouTube right now. A few years back it seemed like too many attempts were a huge unskippable ad, for a short video. Ads were way too high a percentage. And even when a video was a bit longer, any attempt to scroll was met with more ads, and maybe getting reset to the beginning
This time around, I typically see one ad, skippable after 5 seconds, then another every 15 minutes or so. While I’d rather not have ads, it’s not bad. Even better, content has matured enough in the years since I first tried it, that there’s actually longer stuff worth watching: the percentage of ad time is much lower, so I do get entertainment value rather than just be fed constant ads. I could watch that.
I’d seriously consider a sub that just removed ads if the price is fair. I don’t give a shit about premium, red or whatever it’s called.
Do we just want a reasonable subscription price?
Yay, basically. I paid for premium when I could afford it because I want the platform to keep working and I hate ads.
Premium prices went up without a lot of value for me so I quit paying. Technically premium offers a lot but the core feature that I actually cared about (YouTube without ads) never changed in value. If I had the option of only paying for that, I’d do it. To me, YT is a higher priority than any other streaming service. But they don’t provide a way for me to only pay for the stuff I care about
There already is a subscription service, it’s called YouTube Red or Premium or something.
Yes, i said that, that one point was more about making it cost less so its affordable.
I’ve been toying with a “Pay Per View” model for a bit. But it’s sort of modified.
Basically you can “pay what you want” on a per view basis. You as a user get to decide how valuable your view is and pay a creator that much each time you watch a video. Maybe this gets linked to watch time somehow to avoid people just spamming short content. YouTube presumably gets a cut to keep the lights on.
Creators making actually good content will hopefully attract viewers willing and able to pay, and viewers that have the means and really like a creator can up the amount they are paying. This could be on a per channel basis, or just a blanket setting of I pay someone ¢10 a view or something.
Idk, seems like a bit of a silly idea now I type it out
Its very socialist. So i like it.
I think the baseline of what I would want is:
- Have actual moderation of the ads. Don’t allow malware ads, don’t allow porn ads etc
- Don’t allow obtrusive ads, or at least categorize them and have preferences. Do NOT play my ads 2x the volume of whatever I was watching.
- Don’t interrupt my video with ads. Play before or after. Ideally after, but I can see why that would not be feasible. I guess it is also feasable if the creator marks ad breaks, like the current-day sponsor segments.
I genuinely thing Youtube premium is alrightish as it is. I wouldn’t pay for it; though, since I do not want to give my money to Google. They are getting enough out of me that I don’t want to give them.
I honestly just want the alternatives, like PeerTube, to have a funding model, which allows creators to get paid. Donations? Sure. Optionally ads? Sure. I think peertube having opt-in ads that go for the creator would go a long way.
Don’t interrupt my video with ads. Play before or after. Ideally after, but I can see why that would not be feasible. I guess it is also feasable if the creator marks ad breaks, like the current-day sponsor segments.
FYI ad placement and type is decided by the creator not youtube. If you see a video full of ads in the middle it’s because the creator of that video chose it to be so.
That’s not necessarily true (though I’m sure in most cases it is). I remember cases where creators had to specifically ask Youtube support to disable mid-roll ads since they were disabled on the creators side but viewers still saw them. Also happened with non-monetized videos/channels. But it’s been at least a year since I saw the last case of that, so maybe Youtube has fixed it in the meantime.
Yeah, just like Twitch, it seems that YouTube has a way of conveniently “forgetting” these directives every now and then
Yep. Sadly, in both companies management seems to be kinda inept when it comes to building proper user support
Not inept, malicious.
I remember the days of tasteful ad banners on the internet. Those are long gone. Now everything has to be an obtrusive unskippable autoplay 30 second ad or cover half the screen.
It is not reasonable the browse the internet without an adblocker anymore, regardless of privacy concerns…
I remember when banners weren’t tasteful and the internet was the wild west
Let creators choose: normal ads or sponsors. Not both. YouTube getting part of the sponsorship deal.
If they choose ads, YouTube goes back to 1 shippable ad after 1 second.
OR
A subscription which is just “no ads”. No YouTube music, not Google drive, no nothing. Just a cheap “no ads” subscription.
That being said, even if option 1 happens, I’m probably not uninstalling ublock. Once YouTube forced me to install it, it’s impossible to use the internet without it. Actions have consequences.
My problem is that paying for premium doesn’t actually remove the ads. YouTube fucked creators so hard that they started running their own sponsorship segments and product placements. So with premium I’m still paying to watch ads.
Well thankfully SponsorBlock still works whether or not you’re a Premium subscriber. There’s also always YouTube ReVanced for mobile (which has SponsorBlock built-in). There’s no reason to ever have to put up with an online ad, no matter the source.
Sure but I’m not gonna pay for something I still have to actively fight with is the point.
Me personally? I just want to watch them burn. Google I mean. This is my endgame
I love this
Yeah if we applied modern politics to corporations I think a lot of solid bbq could come out of it.
We need to start to shit on exxon like we shit on republicans
They’re already harvesting my data. The greedy fuckers can fuck right off if they think I’m going to pay a subscription for that. It’s not as if Google isn’t profitable as it is. They just want more, and it will never be enough.
the moment I see a damn grammarly ad on freetube I’m dropping $100 on real debrid
When I stream YouTube to my TV, I get 15-30 seconds of unskippable ads with the ability to skip enabling at the 15 or 30 second mark. The full length of the ad is 90+ seconds (according to the timer that never goes down). Would this implementation work similarly? 6 seconds of a silent black screen is fine; 90 or more seconds because the skip button is also missing would be more annoying (or be a nice time for a bathroom break).
If your tv is using an Android-based OS: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
I recently had to watch YouTube with ads on my tv, because smartube stopped working and needed to wait a day for a new patch.The ads are insane and i stopped watching anything on yt. I can’t imagine anyone consuming content this way.
A few years ago I‘ve been traveling in Morocco. And as long as I was there, YouTube didn’t show me any ads! Neither in the web player nor in the app (on iOS). Does anybody have a VPN with a server in Morocco to test if this is still working?
Not Morocco, but I’ve experienced this before. Been to a country where YouTube didn’t display any ads.
I saw some social media post from proton recently, where they showed a lost of countries without ads (obviously with the hint “we have servers there 😉”). Not sure Morocco was among them, but there definitely seem to be countries like that.
Edit: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7zEbEDMdhd/?igsh=MXBnYW00YzNnandhdg==
