Suckers paying for it
I’d bet that channel “members” don’t get ads for that channel regardless of premium status.
IMO, Google made premium, almost nobody bought it. So they went after adblockers, hoping that people would get premium to get rid of the ads. People most just Adblock harder.
While this is happening, one exec is peering over the fence at twitch. Where they only way to get away from ads without a pretty good Adblock, is to subscribe to the individual creator.
So they make “memberships” to channels a thing.
Almost nobody buys that either. So they go… What if, even if someone is premium, we give them ads, unless they’re a channel member.
Genius.
Paying to block ads per creator/channel/whatever, is a special level of bullshit that twitch has always had.
The system is working as expected. The companies are trying to find the best way to extract the most value from you using their platform.
The second i see an ad in cancelling my subscription
Good, I hope they raise pricing too and pay creators even less. Make it hurt. It’s the only language users understand apparently.
What ads? (User without premium, but proper browser and adblocker)
What I find the most hilarious is that on a rooted Android phone there is an app that hooks into the YouTube app and eliminates adds in it. Even when my PC with Firefox and UBlock get temporarily blocked in the battle between Google and ad blockers my phone using the standard app still doesn’t have adds.
I don’t know something about it is very satisfying to me.
Just use Grayjay.
Or if not that amazing app, the Revanced app.
Do you mind sharing the name of the app please?
Although I always use NewPipe / Tubular and Revanced as a backup solution.
It’s an LSposed/XPosed based app called YouTube Adaway. It also enables background playback.
YouTube ReVanced works without root
Firebox mobile + unlock origin extension + YouTube.com.
You get everything that YouTube premium can offer. Including screen off play.
Just surf the seas.
Lol, entirely unnecessary to watch YouTube.
explain your self
This looks like either a bug in the platform or people with Premium Lite. The article made no attempt at investigating this because all they did was to reprint complaints from anonymous people on Reddit. Customer support offering boilerplate reply about why someone is seeing ads sounds like par for the course here because it’s all either LLM chatbots or people in third world countries who couldn’t care less.
Or sometimes it doesn’t let me play YouTube in a minimized floating way. Seems to be if I’ve been going back and forth between horizontal and vertical vids. Both normally allow floating minimized play but something about how they interact often leads me to having to force close the app, which loses me the custom queue I’ve been constructing. If the official solution is buggy…
u/Dangerous-Pizza7054 from the article,
Seems like the user tracking “special promotion” overrides the premium. They don’t even say whether it’s expected or not. But my take away is that paying for premium may or may not show you ads, but you are definitely tracked and harvested for data. (Maybe even more so, since, well, you are more valuable to them.)
That has been my specific issue with paying for any Google product always. I understand when I am using a product for free that I am not necessarily the customer and that money has to be made off of me or the users more generally somehow. That’s “fine” (ish, not really, but that has more to do with issues of security than anything).
However when I pay for a product or service, I want to now be the customer and I want to be in control of my data and have the company cater to me. If, when paying for a Google service, there was some legally relevant things in place that insured I was no longer being tracked and used to generate revenue via third parties I would gladly pay. Probably more than they are charging now, but instead they want to have it both ways which is just not OK with me.
Wait, I haven’t seen ads on YouTube Premium (yet), and I’m just now realizing this could very likely be because Google knows my wife and I don’t watch sports.
Well yes, you didn’t get first ads. But what about second ads?
At least a subscription includes YouTube music? Isn’t that interesting and relevant.
That part of the support email almost made me puke of how fucking awful it was. “Why complain about ads when you get YouTube Music for free by paying us money”
I got the same Sunday banner in the middle of the screen similar to where shorts show up. Never in my life have I watched or cared for American football. Clearly a waste of money for the advertising company since I just closed it by pressing the x same as shorts on desktop.
So premium users put their data on a pedestal for Google? That’s fun
That’s generally; if you have an account, you are easier to track for them.
ublock is cheaper and actually works
Grayjay on Android has been working damn near flawlessly for me. No clue if the parent company is to be trusted at this point or not- but I cannot argue with the results.
Were you able to import your subscriptions? I haven’t been able to and that’s all that’s keeping me on Premium
I’d never heard of FUTO. It’s been around for a year and I can find so little information.
I know Louis Rossman is involved. I don’t agree with some of his views, but as far as tech freedom goes he seems to have the right idea.
I much prefer Newpipe, which has been amazing so far.
I just can’t take an article complaining about ads seriously when it’s that peppered with ads …
They are “complaining” (more like reporting) about ads for people who paid to not have any.
Do you have a subscription with this media company?
If this goes live, I’m out. YT premium is my most expensive subscription, but I watch enough YouTube that I’m OK with it, especially considering that it supports creators more than ad viewers. If I still get ads? Nah dawg. I’ll divy up that money amongst patreons or whatever, and install add blockers.
Why don’t you just cancel it now and use ad blockers?
If you use iOS devices for watching YouTube, look into side-loading uYou+, it’s basically an edited YouTube app that removes most of the ads. You can stream from your phone to the apple TV, too, also without ads.
Not sure what the android equivalent is, but someone else will know - hopefully they will share in the comments also.
I use it because it came with Play Music, now YouTube Music. I’ll just switch to Spotify if I see them.
Wait… You can sideload on ios? Since when?
not on US devices without jailbreaking, but I think you can on EU devices.
You can on any iOS device without jailbreaking. Look into AltStore or Sidestore. The caveat is that you can only sign 3 apps at a time, and must resign these apps every week - which is done over your WiFi to a PC running AltStore server.
If you have a $99/year Apple developer account, you can use AltStore to sign as many apps as you like, and you only need to resign once per year.
Reasonable advice, but I’d note that I pay for premium and patreon specifically because I can only afford patreon for a few creators. I’d rather pay everyone I watch. While YouTube isn’t perfect, I like the service enough that I don’t mind paying for it.
Why don’t you just cancel it now and use ad blockers?
Joel explains this in the second sentence: “I’m OK with it, especially considering that it supports creators more than ad viewers”
I mean you can probably support all the creators you like in other ways: Buying merch, donating onetime, signing up for a patreon, subscribing to nebula (if they are on there), …
Ah, sorry, that’ll teach me to read more carefully. Thanks for pointing it out <3
ReVanced is great on Android, it also enables other YouTube premium features such as picture-in-picure mode.
I used to use Vanced but switched to Newpipe, as it is noticeably lighter (also at least for me, downloads did not properly work while they were fine on Newpipe).
It is just YT testing new exciting features, nothing to worry about.
