[[[ Solved - Using FreeTube for now ]]]
It seems youtube is breaking into the middle of long-form video much more often. And most of the ads are for snake oil - Fear mongering “Tinnitus will KILL your brain in three years” baloney.
Is there a Fediverse equivalent to YouTube? Can the Fediverse be applied to this? Will it solve the above complaint?
I have been to Odysee but with very few exceptions none of the content I want is there (They have Veritasium, and minute Physics, but not Vsause, Technology Connections, or Stand Up Maths)
I use Firefox with UBlock and I don’t see any ads on Youtube. You should try this.
As for a fediverse version of YouTube there’s peertube, but realistically hosting video is more expensive and you would never see a collection as large as YouTube on the fediverse IMO.
Somehow my Ublock origin got turned off, I turned it back on. I use FreeTube to watch the channels I am subscribed to. I go to YouTube itself to watch things I search for.
My solution appears to be a bit unique, at least on the deskfop.
I have four extensions on my Librewolf browser. Ublock, NoScript, Alter, and Chameleon.
Additionally, I use newsboat rss reader which reads a list of youtube rss urls from a simple txt file. This keeps my youtube subscriptions without subbing on google’s platform. Whenever I open one of these rss feeds via newsboat, Librewolf opens and uses the Alter extension to redirect to an Invidious instance. Ublock and Noscript block everything. Chameleon feeds a fake fingerprint to invidious as well. The invidious url remains in tact. I copy this url.
In a terminal on Linux, I invoke yt-dlp on this url. I include a sponsorblock flag that literally cuts out the mention of sponsors and the sponsored content. I watch it with mpv/devour, often including the captions as well.
On my GrapheneOS phone, its more simple, i just use Libretube which has sponsorblock turned on. To avoid ads otherwise I use mull browser with ublock, noscript, and a few other about:config settings. I also bypass paywalls for major news sites using ublock and a list I yoinked from somewhere on github.
Free tube is a porn site, don’t listen to this person if you are at work
FreeTube is a YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux built around using YouTube more privately. You can enjoy your favorite content and creators without your habits being tracked. All of your user data is stored locally and never sent or published to the internet. FreeTube grabs data by scraping the information it needs (with either local methods or by optionally utilizing the Invidious API). With many features similar to YouTube, FreeTube has become one of the best methods to watch YouTube privately on desktop.
