So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.
And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I’ve been on Firefox for over a year.
Not long ago, I was watching 5 skipable ads after 10 minutes of video on Viki. It was a time when they were distributing Korean and Chinese Drama at a pace no independent subtitle team would keep up. The shows were culturally interesting, they were a community spirit you could feel even when not participating in subtitling. The video player was good with nice features like learning mode and timestamped comment. It was an acceptable tradeoff. Today’s Viki and YouTube quality is barely sufficient for not favoring pirated website which have in the mean time greatly improved their user experience.