- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may “experience buffering issues” or see errors such as “the following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
Revanced and UBlock Origin still working for me on Android and Firefox respectively. As the new Chrome update launches and every Chromium based browser follows suit, I do wonder if Google will just straight up block Firefox in the near future. Eventually, I think Google will win this by breaking YouTube on everything except their own apps. Unfortunately, YouTube is kind of the only ubiquitous platform that could pull a disastrous move like that and remain on top.