I know reddit is low hanging fruit, but I just can't with these dweebs.
Something has changed. Using an adblocker goes against the YouTube ToC, so Google has started to detect them. You need to disable Adblock for YouTube, and it should go back to normal.
fuck google for doing this.
Well, Google has every right to do so. It has to pay the content creators for their work, so people need to pay either (as you and I do) through Premium or by having advertisements. When people use an ad-blocker to watch YouTube, they are freeriding on the creators' work, which is disrespectful to say the least.
why yes, I talk about people who use ad blocker to not have their consciousness invaded by advertisements using "welfare queen" language. how did you know?
They don't pay creators on YouTube as much as they used to.
I'm not surprised. People are blocking ads all over the place.
YouTube has recently been cracking down on ad-blockers, because they deprive content creators of their rightful fees. Recent changes have caused ad-blockers to misbehave.
Or just, you know, pay for the content? It's called YouTube Premium. People don't complain about Netflix or Amazon Prime charging money.
Anyway, it's your decision what you choose to do. I choose to pay.
Sorry I don't want my 6yo child seeing fucking ads for alcohol, P2W mobile games, and sex pills
It's bad enough he's so susceptible to click-bait "minecraft parkour" type bullshit videos...
I had turned the ad blocker off for a bit when YT first started blocking them and saw a fucking Goblin Slayer mobile game ad.
I installed Playlet and got rid of YouTube on my Roku-based TV(which is also a cesspool of ads) after my kid's YouTube junk food stuff started serving up ads for Disaronno. Like he was watching KooKoo Kangaroo or one of those magnetic metal ball ASMR videos.
I'd have a pihole running too but we have AT&T fiber and they don't let you change some settings needed for a pihole.
I honestly wouldn't even know how to raise a kid in this day and age. So much advertising vying for their attention, trying to whittle away at their already tiny attention span. It must be hard.
It fucking sucks for a lot of reasons. The oldest is just starting to learn that things cost money and he can't just get stuff because he wants it. His grandparents spoiled him for the first couple of years and I told them I didn't want them to buy him a ton of toys and stuff, but they did. I explained to my wife that the reason was partially because my own grandma spoiled us and then got shitty when she would come over and we'd ask for gifts. It's unhealthy conditioning for a developing mind. Thankfully the inlaws now mostly buy him and our youngest utilitarian stuff like clothes.
Oldest does seem to know at least to some extent that right now we are working with a single income and a teacher's salary at that. Keep him fed and let him play Switch and he's mostly good.
But I even had a plan early on that I didn't want him exposed to commercials and ads to the extent that I could help but life got busy and that fell apart and next thing I know, he's watching a bunch of consumerist product influencer shit on YT. We don't have regular TV so like those commercials aren't an issue but Prime and Hulu still stuffs ads at the beginning of movies and Twitch injects ads into their streams. It's awful. Like way worse than when I was a kid. They took cigarette ads away from magazines(justifiable) because they figured out they influenced children but unfettered consumerism ads for dumb shit made out of plastic is ok?
Sorry for the rant. It's just something that sets me off.
Hey, no worries, rant away. It does sound very frustrating, the grandparents part in particular. It's hard to convince people who are just used to ads and consumerism all the time that it isn't healthy or good, and it's borderline impossible to get them to stop pushing those habits onto the people around them, it feels like an addiction sometimes.
I had no idea Prime and Hulu have ads as well though, isn't the whole point of a streaming service to avoid that sort of thing? Might be a good idea to try and find a way to install an adblocker on all your kid's devices, if you're able to. Might help a lot with you peace of mind.
The main trick with an adblocker is that it would have to be either on our tv or between the tv and our router since we have one tv and that's the central entertainment source. I tried setting up a pihole with my old RP2+ only to find out that I need port forwarding(I think) turned on and our provider has their routers locked down in some ways and that's one of them.
I did install Playlet, and get rid of Youetube. Playlet is a Invidious front end for Roku so that is helpful. But we also have Google Dislays that he uses and those are locked out so nothing I can do. I wanna get rid of all the Google stuff tbh.
But yeah, Hulu's cheapest package has ads, and Prime has always had it but like it's ads for the rest of their shit, which is also plastered all over their UI anyway. Like we get it Amazon, you guys have 8-10 shows that I absolutely need to watch...
And I'm trying not to shield my kid completely but also don't really want him to realize how shit the world is so soon. He's gone from not understanding the effects of ads to going "Ugh, ads..." now and he's calling stuff click-bait so maybe a parenting win in a consumerist hellscape?
I have a 6 TB hard drive plugged into my computer that acts as our media server and am slowly adding stuff to it so hopefully we can get rid of streaming services and cut back a bit more on ads.
Sounds like you're doing everything you can, at least your oldest is getting old enough to really recognise when they're being advertised to. I think I know what you mean about wanting to not completely shield your kid. They're going to find out eventually about this stuff and it's probably better if you're explaining it to them rather than them going to a friend's house and seeing a bunch of awful white supremacist ads while watching videos or something. I would be terrified of what the other kids might be exposed to and how they would influence my kid if I was a parent, especially as they get older and start being more active online. I'm sure that things will work out for you though, you clearly love your kids a lot and are trying your best to parent them properly, which is far more than some people get.
We are trying but it's hard lol. Thanks for the kind words.