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Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

ericdraken.com

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Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#61

Post by sspiff »

FireInsight wrote: post #38
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

I use Youtube through Piped ( https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped ) to preserve privacy, block ads, and prevent getting sucked in by the algorithm. The only part of Youtube that I find valuable is the content. Not the UI, not the comments, algorithm. Free content hosting is nice, but it's not the only platform hosting videos for free. If I wanted to pay for a streaming service, it'd be Nebula ( https://nebula.tv/ ), b…

While Nebula has some creators om it that I follow, no platform comes close to having the broad collection of channels YouYube does.

I follow a wide variety of channels, but there are maybe a dozen to 20 that I would consider essential. Maybe 3-4 are on Nebula.

I think for a lot of viewers and creators, YouTube is simply inevitable at this point.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#62

Post by sfifs »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #55
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background…

> removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone.

Do you know that the paid version has this exact feature? This is a limitation of the ad-supported version, because advertisers are paying to actually have people watch their ad.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#63

Post by BLKNSLVR »

cannedbeets wrote: post #40
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

There are so many reasons to block ads. Aesthetics alone. Protecting your valuable time. Consenting to watching an ad is not the same as consenting to your entire life being tracked and monitored. But the most important issue is that as long as malware can spread through ads ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising ), everyone should be blocking all ads.

Given that neither Facebook nor Google can appropriately police the content of their own ad networks (to the extent that they're the two biggest purveyors of malware and scams on the internet - in this rando's opinion), there is no moral argument against blocking ads.

In fact, not blocking internet advertising is a security risk.

If they get their house in order my opinion may change, but there's currently no business reason for them to change their existing lax systems; no pressure or threat from regulation to hold them liable for what they allow on their advertising networks.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sfifs wrote: post #62
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background…

> removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. Do you know that the paid version has this exact feature? This is a limitation of the ad-supported version, because advertisers are paying to actually have people watch their ad.

[deleted]

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#65

Post by BLKNSLVR »

sfifs wrote: post #62
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background…

> removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. Do you know that the paid version has this exact feature? This is a limitation of the ad-supported version, because advertisers are paying to actually have people watch their ad.

Yes

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#66

Post by BLKNSLVR »

SergeAx wrote: post #59
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background…

The said ability also exists in a premium subscription. So what you effectively saying is that YouTube offers you a valuable feature, but you refuse to pay for it.

Correct.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#67

Post by Teever »

omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

That's a way to look at it, and another way to look at it is this:

I already pay Google much more than I care to and am willing to in the form of my privacy and personal data because of the ubiquitious surveillance that Google performs on as many people as they possibly can.

If I could cut Google out of my life I would do it in an instant, but I can't because they won't allow it. In lieu of that I take whatever I can from them.

“To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.” -- Abbie Hoffman

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#68

Post by glitchcrab »

ajkblue wrote: post #28

This reminds me of a now-dockerized Privaxy, which is a UBlock-origin blocklist compatible MITM proxy. It’s crazy to see how many ads and tracking scripts are on smart products, especially my TV where so far in my testing it’s over 40% unnecessary traffic. Its been pretty fun to try and strip out ads on my smart-tv apps. https://github.com/deetungsten/webui-privaxy is the dockerized fork of https://github.com/Barre/p…

How do you get your TV to trust the self signed cert?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#69

Post by rightbyte »

SergeAx wrote: post #59
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background…

The said ability also exists in a premium subscription. So what you effectively saying is that YouTube offers you a valuable feature, but you refuse to pay for it.

It is fair to not want pay enshittification tax to rent seekers.

The said ability exists on the YT website if you use desktop mode on the mobile browser.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#70

Post by Ntrails »

chii wrote: post #51
userbinator wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. How is this any different from changing the channel, leaving the room, or just hitting the mute button and closing your eyes in the scenario of "regular" TV when adverts or any other content you don't want to see appears? Compelled consumption should be illegal.

The assumption is that not many people would leave the room, close their eyes or mute the ads. If you created a painless, super easy way to remove all ads, i'm sure that TV channels will also find it hard to sell to advertisers, and thus, their revenue would decrease.

In my household growing up the ads were almost always muted as soon as the roll started.

I always found it bizarre that other people did not do the same

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