This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
uBlock Origin has 36,000,000 users according to Google and ABP has 46,000,000 users. Another 13,000,000 use AdGuard and 67,000,000 use AdBlock (the crappy one, but nonetheless, it blocks YouTube ads).
Also on Firefox there are 7,780,587 uBO users. Checkmate
I use uBlock origin on firefox. All my devices are always connected through a VPN with all the ad and tracker blocks turned on.
I am a YouTube premium subscriber.
There are dozens of us... dozens!!!
Imagine being me and paying for premium and using ublock + revanced.
At the end of the day, I think I get 10 dollars in value a month, and I know hosting data isn't free.
Edit: Right after I submitted I read the comment before me. Sorry about saying the exact same thing again 😅
I wouldn't ever give Google a single penny. Instead, I pay for Nebula, allowing me to watch high quality videos and documentaries while supporting indie creators. And it's just $5/month.
| Chrome Web Store | Firefox Add-ons | Microsoft Edge Add-ons | Opera add-ons | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| uBlock Origin | 36,000,000 | 7,780,587 | 10,000,000 | 12,686,907 | 66,467,494 |
| uBlock Origin Lite | 70,000 | 3,145 | 3,000 | N/A | 73,145 |
| uBlock | 700,000 | N/A | 10,000 | N/A | 710,000 |
| AdNauseam | N/A | 74,478 | 10,000 | 210,616 | 295,094 |
| AdBlock Plus | 46,000,000 | 4,064,146 | 10,000,000 | 50,844,211 | 110,908,357 |
| AdBlock | 67,000,000 | 1,206,627 | N/A | N/A | 68,206,627 |
| AdGuard | 13,000,000 | 1,053,029 | 8,000,000 | 10,872,145 | 32,925,174 |
| Total | 162,770,000 | 14,182,012 | 28,023,000 | 74,613,879 | 279,588,891 |
Source: Official data from extension stores
This table does not include Safari extensions, browser extensions installed through Linux package managers like the firefox-ublock-origin package on Arch Linux, browsers with built in adblockers like LibreWolf or Brave, modded YouTube mobile apps like Vanced/Revanced on Android, uYou for iOS, alternative frontends like Invidious or Piped, desktop clients like FreeTube, other mobile apps like Newpipe, Libretube or Yattee or other adblocking solutions.
Watch how they steadily increase the price now (which they’ve already been doing)
It went up like four bucks this month for me this past month. I feel like I am in a no-win situation. I want to support the authors of the videos and music I like, make the platform sustainable, and I hate ads and data harvesting. There doesn't seem to be reasonable way to satisfy all three objectives (or even two).
I'm mostly in the same boat with supporting the creators, however I don't really like Google to be honest. I end up supporting creators outside the platform, such as via Patreon or by watching on Nebula. Most of my YT consumption is done via NewPipe, Piped and Freetube
There's a little part of me that likes the fact that YouTube is burning a hole in Google's finances tbh lol
Patreon for the ones you really like, and substituting watching my own content on Plex is how I’m weening myself off YouTube.
If it wasn't as freaking high as it is there would be a lot more premium users. Every other streaming service is full of professionally made movies and TV shows. YouTube is absolutely chock-full of berate crap where they're barely paying anybody but the top 1%. It's a grift. It should be priced with the absolute cheapest services out there.
The price makes a little more sense if you factor in it also includes YouTube music, which puts it more on par with a premium Spotify subscription, with the benefit of no ads on YouTube. Which is basically how I got YouTube premium, I was already paying a monthly fee for Google Play music as it was at the time, and the upgrade to add YouTube premium was only £2 extra a month.
Sure but a LOT of us don’t want the music service and have never used it once. People like me aren’t costing them a penny on music and if they offered a plan without music I’d jump in an instant.
This is my issue. I have and love Apple Music and do not want to pay for another music service. If YT gave me an option for an ad-free YT without music for only like $3 or $5 a month, I’d jump on it. For now, I’ll continue using uBlock Origin and SmartTube.
While YouTube doesn’t commission, much, content it does store disproportionately more data. A streaming site has maybe 1,000,000 hours of content. That amount of content is uploaded to YouTube every day. It’s a totally different business model.
And it still doesn't have sponsorblock. Free is more feature rich than paid. Hahaha
This "Article" is short on details, And according to this article Google did not reveal data about subscriptions in the recent earnings call. I can only think this a PR piece to fluff up Google's shares and discourage critics. Unless Google can be confident enough to explain which regions added subscribers and how much of such a subscription was part of a bundle... We can't conclude that their anti-adblocking measures and price hikes were successful.
Example: India would fluff up numbers without adding as much revenue (bundles are common and subscription prices are low) than NA or EU
Their war on ad-blockers must be paying off
We can't really tell for sure because:
Grayjay, revanced, libretube, newpipe, youtube piped, youtube invidious, and uBlock origin 👀
That's over a billion dollars a month. If they're still operating at a loss with all that then it's their own incompetence at fault.
How many of those subscribers are like me, definitely watching YouTube from Argentina.
Use Freetube, people.
I watch on my television tho
Use smart tube
Wish there is was a webOS variant for LGs
There is, you can enable dev mode and install the homebrew channel, here's a guide for Dev Mode and here's a guide for the Homebrew Channel
marketing tactics to get even more to subscribe, ala "x amount of people got it so it must be good".
Yet it feels like I got better things to spend it on, as I don't watch much anymore due to algorithm changes making me miss the prior new music uploads and or newer channels to discover.
Every refresh contains the same or prior channels watched with the same content shuffled or worse, suggest old dated watched videos.
Meanwhile I'm thinking "ey, sounds like they're getting enough money, now maybe they can leave me the fuck alone."
"Enough money" is not a concept they understand unfortunately
Found the corporate account. Fuck youtube. Steal that shit.
I do have YouTube Premium, because between the ad-free movies and TV shows and the music, the family sharing option was cheaper than Spotify and a couple of streaming services we gave up, and the few new content creators I do watch get paid more. But if they keep raising the price, I'll look for something else.
I looked at it. The features aren't worth the price at all.
I might even consider it out if they weren't selling me music as well and if there was a family option (in my country). And no, I wouldn't consider VPN as I won't do extra work to be able to pay google.
I’ll be honest. I did. With a VPN. It costs me $2.50 a month.
I live in a place where its just $2.50. No YouTube ads ever is great.
