Is now a paid feature?
Was playback over 2x (through the official app) ever supported for free?revanced and smarttube
So infuriating… Sadly, I can’t even boycott YouTube because of how much good content it has
Personally i only use youtube to doomscroll “shorts” because I don’t have facebook, instagram or tik tok for that. It’s really no pleasure as such, but a good way to just turn wind down.
My main issue is that most of the information and knowledge that i used to get from reading blog posts, or forum threads, has become videos, with the majority of the content being irellevant
Use Firefox and ublock Origin to remove ads.
I pay for premium in a group of 6. We pay like 6€ each and get YouTube Music on top.
People are too used to free stuff. The amount of bandwidth YouTube requires is absolutely mindboggingly huge and can’t possibly be profitable.
Youtube ad revenue: 8,9 billion USD
Total profit from services: 30,9 billion USD
Yeah bandwidth is not that expensive
bandwidth should be nationalized or otherwise a municipal public utility so people can compete easier tbh. We do this with roads, water, electricity, etc. Get libertarians on board with data privacy insurances at the federal level so big brother cant spy on public bandwidth. Massie and Rand Paul could buck for that
Yeah, it’s generally not a profitable business. But not when people make accounts, use those accounts to watch content and also comment and like-dislike content. They track your every move. They’re an ad company and that’s how they make a profit. I would have paid a subscription for the service if they were a honest company and didn’t invade other people’s privacy without their permission.
Look man, there are a lot of ways to use YouTube and have a great experience. You don’t need to pay money to them just to have a good experience. Just use YouTube in Brave Browser or Firefox with uBlock Origin enabled or maybe with an ad-block enabled on your device 🤷 Well, just my suggestion. You’re free to do as you like
You can try Morphe on your phone and SmartTube on your TV.
That’s still YouTube 😹😹
I know. Unfortunately the alternatives are pay-to-win (Odysee) or political (Rumble).
That’s exactly why I posted the main comment in the first place lol. I can replace Google Search by switching to other search engines but in terms of YouTube, there’s no competitor that is better or equal to it in terms of quality content
That way there are no ads and no fees, you become (in theory) a net negative to Google.
Not interested in those apps because I watch YouTube in Brave and it’s giving me the best experience compared to other alternatives. Why are y’all thinking I’m a normie who watches YouTube on its official app with my account logged in and with all the ads
Edit: No hate to you though
…what? Go do something else instead of watching YouTube-style content then. Read a book. Take up knitting. Do crosswords.
You can live a full life without Internet videos.
Yeah Google has been “toll-bridging” features into paid-premium since removal of ability to pause with screen off in YouTube.
I wouldnt be surprised if corporate greed forces them to remove pausing videos altogether. Not premium can’t pause!
I don’t care when my only way to watch YouTube it’s either:
- on Firefox with uBlock Origin
- on ReVanced
- on SmartTube (for Android TV)
- by downloading the video through yt-dlp
This is why I am just going to pay networks of my favorite youtubers directly when YouTube finally gets too bad to use. I’m never paying for RedTube or whatever the fuck porny ass name their premium service has so that Google gets most of my money and Mr beast gets a cut while the people I actually watch get nothing. I pay for Dropout already and that shit is so much better than Netflix and other services. Sure it’s low budget but it’s still better than the slop all the big companies are shoveling out of their troughs.
Don’t give them ideas
Then it’ll become a premium feature to choose your videos otherwise you’ll have to consult a personalised video guide to see when the videos you want to watch will be playing.
Pretty much a traditional tv
corporate greed
There’s no way YouTube is even remotely profitable even with the massive amounts of ads on the free version…
They’re almost certainly one of the more profitable Google services or they’d have been cut loose by now.
Google serves ads, YouTube is a great platform for them to serve ads, and they don’t even have to pay content creators that much, because they serve their own ads. The biggest expense is probably bandwidth and memory, which Google owns enough of to sell off bits they aren’t using.
Just use ReVanced
That’s so stupid it feels like satire. But I guess it’s not too surprising.
I have my own speed control that I can adjust or enter max speed for.
Wait until they find some stupid way to lock down Chrome extensions. I just know they will.
This extension is for Firefox. Get off the chrome platform in all the places you can
Exactly. We better stop using Chrome. I mean, we should stop using Google products altogether. But for YouTube, it’s impossible to find an alternative that has the same content.
NewPipe
also its fork Tubular if you enjoy SponsorBlock
or PipePipe
via this comment from @Imnecomrade@lemmygrad.ml
I can barely follow and absorb anything at 1.5-2x.
Beyond that, more power to you.
Yeah, this change has no practical effect on me. But removing and paywalling features is concerning nonetheless.
Speeds over 2x were never a free feature, they just used to not be an option at all.
Yeah, 2x is normally my limit, sometimes 2.5x. Very occasionally there will be content that gets 3x or more, but it’s incredibly rare. It has to be something pretty slow.
I’m ADHD and I can’t do it. XD
For extremely slow speakers 3x is possible.
Some lectures and instruction videos are only watchable at 4x or higher.
Luckily there’s extensions and alternative apps that provide a much better user experience than the default one, including being able to increase playback speed as much as you want.
$ yt-dlp <URL>
I am not one to fear the terminal, but do people actually use this to browse YT? What does this workflow look like? Searching video URLs, manually copying them into this cli, and then opening the downloaded file?
Check out MeTube. It is just a wrapper for ytp-dl. You can set extention in a way that only icon needs to be clicked. Everything is automated. No need to do anything in CLI.
No, it isn’t useful to browse.
I use it for grabbing low quality music and ‘subscribing’ to various channels (checks and downloads new videos every 10m) in order to avoid having to give the algorithm my eyeballs.
If you just want to scroll, something like FreeTube would do what you want. It blocks ads and has sponsorblock built-in. You can subscribe to videos via the app (which is all stored locally, not in any account, you don’t have to log-in.)
laughs in NewPipe
Laughs in Firefox, which allows plug-ins in mobile. I can have all my ad blockers and video speed controllers, and anything else.
You should give NewPipe or Tubular (NewPipe fork with sponsor blocker) a try, it provides a better user experience.
Laughs in Grayjay
nah owned by futo and fuck them https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
For people on „ios“ Unwatched app is good
This was a good tip, cheers!
Screw anyone who supports their little walled Apple garden of control by owning their products.
Last I heard grayjay made the choice not to include sponsorblock
sponsorblock is included alongside a comment that you should support creators
They found out a simple tampermonkey script could speed the ads up to 16x
It was never a free feature; they used to only allow up to 2X speed. Not that that justifies it at all of course.
Wdym? I can literally increase to 5x speed on my YouTube client for free rn
I could also only increase the playback speed to 2x at maximum. Firefox and no YouTube specific add-ons are used.
Lol nope, out of principle I will never pay for this even if I didn’t already hate Google.
It feels so condescending to the user, so unconcerned with their agency that I could never bring myself to support this choice with even a tiny amount of money.
100% agree. The problem is that there are more and more features that get tugged behind the subscription paywall
Same here. I’m sick of seeing people say stuff like “just pay for Premium bro”. Stfu. That’s like paying the mafia for “protection” from them. YouTube created these problems and now I have to pay them to fix it? Fuck no.
