Who still watches YT without adblocker? It must be horrible.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Me on (android) TV. On PC I have ad blocker. On TV ads time is between 6 seconds and 1 minute. Sometimes ads contain AI slop. 💀
Theres also the possibility to use a VPN and log in from Albania (I think) to avoid ads altogether because they’re not legal there.
It is Albania. I will say that it's more correct to say that YouTube chooses not to send ads to Albania, rather than Albania banning it.
Albanians anti ad laws state that ads are required to be safe for children, with the platform being responsible for failure.... So Google is not spending the effort to make the ads safe.
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what YouTube ads
I think it might be something that happens during that short pause before a video starts?
I wonder what the breaking point is for those who don’t use adblockers.
Remember that some people voluntarily pay for TV and streaming with ads.
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Youtube: "People are blocking are ads and costing us money, what should we do?!"
The People: "Police your platform and stop advertising scams, hate speech, pornography, and all the other shit."
Youtube: "I just have no idea what to do, so I guess I'll just invest millions/billions into making ads harder to block, and make the ads longer and unskippable. You know, Just make the platform almost completely unusable without adblocking"
The People: "YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, JUST POLICE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM ALREADY. IF YOU DID YOU WOULDNT NEED TO DO ALL THIS SHIT"
Youtube: "Oh, btw, heres another PragerU video thats 3 hours long and talks about how the black man should be grateful for the white man uplifting them via slavery, followed by a ad thats basically a woman fingering herself to advertise chinese AI girlfriends"
The People: adblocking intensifies
That's the craziest part isn't it? All of this data collection so they can build profiles of us, and then they just don't apply any of it to ads.
I don't like watching ads, but it would at least be slightly more tolerable if I got ads for things I actually wanted. On my TV I watch YT unfortunately not adblocked, and never once have I seen an ad for anything that appeal to me.
This is tinfoil hat stuff, but based on the ads I’m shown, it’s almost like they pick ones they know won’t appeal to you since they know anger drives up engagement. Google can probably guess from my search history that I’m trans and asexual, since I’ve asked questions online relating to that. And then the majority of the ads I get on YouTube are porn and anti trans things.
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YouTube has ads?
Sincerely,
Ublock Origin User
Pretty much stopped using it once they decided my 20 year old account must belong to a child and demanded my ID. (Still don’t know why that happened. The account itself is over eighteen and I don’t live in the US where that policy was supposed to take effect.) This doesn’t make it any more appealing.
I remember when you just had, like, banner ads and an ad next to the video. And now you get those gross ads for AI sexbots and stuff.
And I really don’t think the latter is just because of my own search history. I’m asexual and don’t look at porn sites. I also noticed an uptick in the sex ads after YouTube decided I was a minor, so that’s pretty freaking weird.
Then I also get far right ads about how trans people are terrible, that are basically hate speech and propaganda.
I wish other platforms for long form video content existed.
Of course, the whole age verification idea is so the pedo-in-chief can target children more easily.
For your own health I recommend an ad blocker. uBlock Origin works on the YouTube website and dodgy apps like NewPipe don't show ads.
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and they'll be unskippable
I'm sure i've heard this before, but yt-dlp still skips them fine.
Yt-Dlp has been breaking recently and requiring cookies to be entered in order to work at all.
I've never seen a company quadruple dip on something before. It's like surviving enshittification and then still continuing to push for further revenues.
Error retrying ...
Rate limited, waiting 60 seconds ...
Video not found
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I buckled and just got YouTube Premium Family. Via India. For 4 bucks a month. For 6 people.
I needed a cheap music streaming service anyway.
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Yeah thats enough to push me off the main app, I was already annoyed by the ads, the fact they are going unskippable is a end gamer for me
I just wished there was a app i could load onto my tv and play the videos on there ( i have a samsung so suggestions welcome)
While cstom ROMs of Android TV do exist, Samsung does not want you to truly own your device and has locked it down. The only option I see is to use your TV as a dumb TV: hook up any PC to your TV's HDMI ports (I use a Raspi 5 running Ubuntu for that). The PC gives you full control over what you want to install, which may include an adblocker in the browser or free YouTube frontends such as FreeTube.
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Good thing I use the LibRedirect plugin in Firefox to redirect YouTube link to Invidious.
In addition to uBlock, of course.
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Yeah, no.
Not even an acceptable ad. Burn this site.
I was using uBlock but I kept getting messages that said blockers were not allowed. Then they started requiring me to wait to get rid of the warning. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there another add-on I can install to defeat this?
Use a VPN and be Vietnamese. They are rolling out a law against unskippable ads, IIRC.
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When I had this problem in the past it was actually other addons causing the problem. Do you have any other addons? If so, try disabling all your addons (except ublock) and checking if the problem is gone. If so then you can re-enable them one by one until you find the offender. For me it was actually an addon which shouldn't have affected YouTube or ads at all which was causing the problem.
If that doesn't work or you don't have any other addons, try going into the ublock settings (click the icon in your taskbar and then click the gears) and click restore to default settings at the bottom. If that still doesn't work then you might have to seek help elsewhere (the official support page is r/ublockorigin if you're okay with using reddit)
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I already stopped using YouTube on my tvs native interface without adblock after I saw several 1.5m ads
Anyone got an app to sideload or method of getting adfree youtube, lg, android os or apple
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All i read is that nobody will be watching all these ads and YouTube will have to shutdown.
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