2d ago

How to Be Bad at YouTube

So I am wondering how to be bad at using websites such as YouTube. For example, currently I do most of my youtube viewing on a Ruko Tv, where I never sign it, never comment, and never subscribe. When I select a video and an advertisement that is longer than 5 seconds shows up I will hit the back button and select the video again. I repeat this process till I get a the 5 sec ad or the video starts.

I assume this is not how google (or YouTubers) wish me to access their platform, but is there anyway I could be more disruptive to the business model?

18 comments

Use an app like Freetube to deny them ads entirely.
https://freetubeapp.io/

Nebula is a decent way to be bad at youtube. They don't have too many people on it at the moment, but there are some decent ones. And at least they get a cut.
- I like the idea and even subscribed for a time, but their videos just kept buffering for me whereas YouTube is fine even at 1440p :( I'd love to support them and their content creators, but i'm not paying for a product that doesn't work.

I self-host an invidious instance and combine that with sponsorblock. I only ever see the videos from channels I am subscribed to unless I explicitly search for something.
yt-dlp is a good tool for downloading youtube, and there are several GUI frontends built around that
- Me similar. I do not use Invidious anymore (and it was not self hosted anyway), because YouTube often breaks it. But I use FreeTube a local account only (no Google) and it comes with SponsorBlock builtin. And I also mostly watch videos I am subscribed to. And I have my own CLI frontend in the terminal for yt-dlp: yt-dlp-lemon, which makes it a bit easier to use the features I care about. (Sorry for the shameless plug.)
  
  to put the "youtube often breaks it" into perspective. In the last 6 months, I've lost access to youtube for a total of 8 days, with the longest continuous downtime being 3 days. selfhosting it works fine, for the most part.

Skip browsing YouTube, use RSS feeds of the podcasters you like. Also use Firefox with the uBlock Origin plugin to view.

Sounds like you are not being bad for the website, but for the advertisers, picking the most paying ones to sponsor your video watching time.
You might be slightly worse to the website, if instead of Atlanta, you were to travel around and decided to skip all the ads from a place where it's barely economical for them:
https://en.sni-hub.com/vpn/the-cheapest-countries-for-youtube-premium/

is there anyway I could be more disruptive to the business model?
By not using the platform. You think you're being clever but all you're doing is making them more money.

Here’s the idea: Deprive YT of their revenue and maximize their expenses.
Browse the site as usual, but never watch any videos. Instead, download them at maximum resolution. You’ll skip all the adds, and take the maximum amount of bandwidth.
The business stays profitable as long as people watch ads and don’t use bandwidth anywhere near as much as you could. Download a bunch of very long videos just to check if they’re worth watching. Ignore anything shorter than 10 minutes.
Make a channel and upload a bunch of long videos. A dash cam should be a pretty good source of data. Make sure your videos are so boring that even bots don’t like them. These videos are essentially just dead weight in the servers, but uploading them costs something anyway. Also, the storage isn’t free either, so 4K is the minimum.
You could also try reporting random videos and comments here and there. I’m pretty sure no human ever sees those inputs, but some machine learning model might. Messy data isn’t going to break the system, but you could make that speed bump a little higher.

Save yourself some clicks: https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV

Download the videos and watch offline. There are a few utilities for that.

Stop sharing YT videos, for a starter. For every shitty YT video there are thousands of good blogs explaining things in the same way (or better).

Do the same thing, but on a device that allows blocking ads entirely. From behind a proxy or VPN, so they can't even get accurate location data from your IP.
- I'm pretty sure I'm safe here in Phoenix, cause that's totally where I am. Not Atlanta at all and have never been to Portland...

I don't use it and plainly ignore its existence. As simple as that.

18 comments