Beepster
Wow... that is an unfortunate name. Yanno... 'cause one of the oldest/most popular porn sites has "Tube" and "Red" in it's name. I can just imagine the shock of all the grannies googly moogly searching for cute kitten vids and... well getting "kitten" vids instead.
 
As for the youtubes and their ads...
 
For ages just having Noscript and Adblock installed made it a pleasantly ad and problem free experience. Lately though I would get the spinning bubbles for an annoyingly long time, then an error message and THEN the actual vid would play (I can only assume it was trying to serve up an ad, failing and then moving on to the actual content).
 
Even MORE recently it would never get to the actual content and all I'd get were the spinning bubbles.
 
I just didn't use youtube for a while but then got to searching the issue. Now instead of just allowing youtube.com and ytimg.com in my NoScript settings it seems a new domain (googlevideo.com) needs to be allowed for the vids to play. After allowing that it seems I have been able to go back to watching all the vids ad free as I used to. I haven't really been doing much YT viewing though so perhaps my cunning plan isn't quite as cunning as I think it is but so far it works.
 
The site really has become progressively more annoying since the google takeover. Especially the stupid forced autoplay crap that needs to be disable every new session.
 
hth

True Beep... I found out by accident when I first started going online that there is also a site "like that" that has the words "Amp" and "land"... it has nothing to do with amplifiers, lol.
As far as YT, the ads don't bother me because I've never thought about them not being there. Heck, nada is a small price to pay for free entertainment, huh? Oh, I agree, the Auto play is really annoying. I don't use YT enough to know you could disable it, I usually just pause the video that starts, then if there is something else I want to see, I load it. FB is annoying too. I think I'm just not very good at socializing, heck.. I don't even like myself.
 
J

Mosvalve
All these media sites get you hooked knowing full well they are going to make it a pay service and know you will pay for it.
 I can't wait for facebook to do this. I want to see the FB'ers screem.

Yes, no and maybe. I do not know of anyone that can provide hard drive space, bandwidth and everything else for free, when you have to pay for it, in some way. The part that is hard is that there is a way of doing this that makes sense, and then there is another way, which traps people ... and it becomes something like that Apple BS thing, and more than half did not sign up ... why? It stunk and the music was the same as anything else.
 
The part that is hard to disseminate and address is how much of that paid service only handles the bands they support and are handled by the owner of the business, and this is what radio/tv/media has been about for the last 40 years, and it is time that something else break through and show us ... some independence, because most of these (Sirius/XM the perfect example) is lousy and has nothing new to offer, and in fact, they do not think that anyone is intelligent enough to listen to something else! There was a clip on the net about it way back when ... and while listening to Tom what's his name is nice, the music is kinda passé, boring, and not inventive.

jbow
True Beep... I found out by accident when I first started going online that there is also a site "like that" that has the words "Amp" and "land"... it has nothing to do with amplifiers, lol.
As far as YT, the ads don't bother me because I've never thought about them not being there. Heck, nada is a small price to pay for free entertainment, huh?
 
J

Honestly things like unobtrusive banner ads (not annoying popups) and even quick ads at the start of a vid wouldn't bother me and in a lot of ways I kind of feel bad for blocking them because that's potentially revenue out of the pockets of the people providing the content.
 
The problem is where those ads come from and what can be hidden in them. I used to not bother with ad and scriptblockers and (aside from noisy ads or popups) they didn't really bother me at all. Then I got a virus that apparently originated through one of the ad portals on a site I frequented. After some research I discovered that these sites that feed ads via code into other peoples websites can load all sorts of nasty crap onto your system (tracking cookies, malware, spyware and even viruses).
 
Fudge that noise. lol... So I started using NoScript and ABP as well as locking up my internet security settings/browser as tight as my little pea brain could figure out.
 
It's kind of a PITA to wrestle with (like figuring out what domains need to be allowed to make certain content visible) but I've never really had any major computer critter problems since. It also speeds up webpage load times significantly (and doesn't overwhelm/freeze up my crappy internet laptop).
 
So as usual my desire to be a "nice" guy and do right by the independent (or even larger) web developers got undermined by the sneaky, greedy buttweasels out there who have no boundaries or respect for people's privacy or personal property.
 
A lot of the new "flash" and javascript stuff is pretty unpleasant anyway. Some side bars, banners or ad blocks in the middle of the content is okay. Dancing dealydoodles shreiking at me about credit reports and hot singles covering up the content I'm trying to look at... well that's just too much for my delicate sense. It agitates and distracts me a little too much.
 
 

Beepster
Honestly things like unobtrusive banner ads (not annoying popups) and even quick ads at the start of a vid wouldn't bother me and in a lot of ways I kind of feel bad for blocking them because that's potentially revenue out of the pockets of the people providing the content.
...

Bingo!
 
There is enough space in any piece, to place an advertisement and it doesn't have to slap you with it! I don't even mind this was brought to you by Kellogg's Corn Flakes and the tiger! But seeing it all over the screen at bad moments is not appreciated.

Now, some sites are detecting when you're using an ad or pop-up blocker and request that you disable it before it will show you any content.  Wonderful. 

craigb
Now, some sites are detecting when you're using an ad or pop-up blocker and request that you disable it before it will show you any content.  Wonderful. 

Yup but that's why I like NoScript because you can allow juuuust enough to make the content site's code happy but still block the reams of other nonsense they are trying to load (like the third party ad domains and analytics stuff which is usually where most of the nastiness comes from).
 
A few years back ABP also started taking bribes from certain companies to "allow (supposedly) "NON" intrusive adverstising" by default. So SOME crap gets through... unless of course you are aware of this in which case they did have the courtesy to allow you to disable that function. I have to do that every time I reinstall ABP.
 
NoScript's default "whitelist" has been getting longer and longer too (which is likely from companies bribing them as well to be added) so after I install NS I go through and remove almost all of that crap.
 
I only leave Mozilla (I think it borks out Firefox startup screen without it but I forget) and the two youtube domains needed to view vids (and I guess I'll have to add the new googlevideo.com one too now).
 
The worst though are completely flash based sites but if I can't get at content after allowing one or two domains I just don't bother going to that site.
 
Here (cakewalk forums) I have to allow the main domain (cakewalk.com) and the Google aps crap the forum software apparently needs for the commenting box (googleapis.com). It used to be just the main Cakewalk domain until the big overhaul a while back.

Really the only thing that bothers me is the ANNOTATIONS....I have no idea why some people insist on throwing them all over their videos ("Hey if you like THIS video then watch THIS one!") but it bugs the crap out of me that you can't permanently disable them. I did at one point find a setting in the ridiculous maze of YouTube options the location of which seems to change with every "update") which claimed to disable them by default, but in reality it did nothing to stop them. 

sharke
Really the only thing that bothers me is the ANNOTATIONS....I have no idea why some people insist on throwing them all over their videos ("Hey if you like THIS video then watch THIS one!") but it bugs the crap out of me that you can't permanently disable them. I did at one point find a setting in the ridiculous maze of YouTube options the location of which seems to change with every "update") which claimed to disable them by default, but in reality it did nothing to stop them. 

Agreed. Those are extraordinarily obnoxious if used in the wrong way. If it's something that corrects a statement in the vid or leads to something related then goes away in a reasonable amount of time then cool. If they are totally off topic or a bunch of them pop up in awkward places and don't go away it's just annoying. I've seen vids accumulate like a half dozen that need to be closed because the OCD uploader just HAD to get in this that or the other on top of their crap.
 
The weird conspiracy nuts are the worst for that. They take some semi coherent video content then add "SEEE!!! ZOMG!! REPTILIAN OVERLORDS!!111elevenbleergle"... meanwhile it's just a documentary about parlimentary process or pollution or the mating habits of dung beetles.
 
lulz

My insurance is going up 30% next month thanks to our new wondeful system here in the USA. No Youtube Red for me.

clintmartin
My insurance is going up 30% next month thanks to our new wondeful system here in the USA. No Youtube Red for me.

Black Friday is coming too!!!
I really don't hardly ever watch any online videos, though I have been thinking of coming out of my cave to see what alternatives to cable are actually viable. I'd rather watch it on the TV but am tired of Comcast digging in my pocket. I know I'd still use them for internet because they are by far the fasters around here but there has GOT to be a cheaper way to watch what I want to see on TV. It is warm here in the cave though..
 
As far as I know, I have never gotten a virus from any ad. I run Panicware Popup Blocker, Norton 360, and Malwarebytes Premium. It seems to keep me safe.
 
J