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"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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YouTube is hostile to viewers unless you pay them £20 a month.
It’s like 15 ads per 2 mins screen time with 2 being unstoppable and 1 being 3 minutes long. Slightly exaggerated but not far from the truth. It’s horrible. And they slow everything down too, the main video fake buffers whereas when you’re in premium it doesn’t.
I didn’t mind paying a fiver but had to do it via the moon to get it cheap but now they have stopped that.
They are using automatic dubbing by default here in France! I was horrified the first time.
After some time it "learns" you don't want it.
But what grinds my gears instead are auto-translated video titles.
Because I am watching maybe 70-80% english content I decided the lesser evil is to just set the language to english instead.
Annoying as fuck but managable.
Google has always made it extremely clear that they don't believe it's possible for the human brain to know more than one language, and that anyone who claims to know more than one is a liar and a witch and has no place in their platforms.
It horrifies me as a German. They also get titles, descriptions and comments wrong all the time. It legitimately doesn't work.
I hate them for auto translating the video titles and descriptions with no way to turn them off, I even installed an extension to restore the original titles but YT broke it again intentionally or unintentionally with their unending tweaks.
This honestly doesn't surprise me, because English proficiency in France is below that of Spain, Russia and even Italy, which says a lot.
That's because the french media industry is very strong, and virtually everything is dubbed.
for Android (TV): smart tube next
For a browser (Firefox): ublock origin.
Have not seen an ad in years, and i have not paid a cent to youtube.
For anyone following the smart tube next tutorial on github you don't need to do anything after installing the "kutt.it/......." Download. You do not need to transfer an APK from your phone or computer. Literally just download the downloader, and type the beta or stable package address and install, also make sure you have developer options enabled beforehand.
Also, probably a great time to turn updates to your OS off, as Google is taking away the ability to sideload (well, kinda). It's a whole story. Highly doubt that SmartTube Next is gonna get a licence to allow signing of their app.
How do I do that on my android tv?
Settings > devices prefs > about > turn auto update off
I only pay them because I watch a stupid amount of YouTube. Hours a day, many more hours when not working.
If those ads come back while I'm paying though, the flag flies.
On broadcast TV, a 30 minute timeslot had only 23 minutes of actual content and 7 minutes of ads.
That's what we're heading back to. 20% of the watch time is ads.
Yep agreed.
It's downright disgusting to browse youtube without premium or an adblocker.
Sadly I need premium simply because I am watching on an Android TV and I am not trusting third party clients with my google account.
Too much stuff is associated with it (monetary)
Or you use adblock
I would but I primarily watch on my tv
get SmartTube Next if it's an android TV
Sadly not. Apple TV
ah. i have the same issue on my iphone. I just don't watch youtube on my iphone because fuck ads.
Get the ublock origin lite and on for safari, had worked an absolute treat for stopping YouTube ads on my iPad.
Another tip; Orion, the browser developed by Kagi can install proper Firefox extensions. You can have the real full uBlock Origin extension in the browser.
Edit: I believe it can handle Chromium extensions as well but who cares about those?
aha thanks. I just installed it, and no ads!
And God forbid you enable captions on the video or something - it'll disable itself every time an ad plays.
How do I turn that feature on?
I keep turning off captions off, and every few days they are automatically turned back on.
"That's the neat part: Fuck you >:("
- Youtube
you can force a lot of options still when you upload a video OR provide a link. Plenty do that. For example in the tags add yt:cc=on will force on captions when you play a video
And then there is the occasional 30 minute to an hour infomercial that comes on obvious stuff people watch to go to sleep! I wanted someone softly talking about outer spacey things, not you're shitty product I give so much little of a fuck about that I didn't even look at what was being advertised. I hate you so much I will not even remember your name to give you free advertising by birding about you online!
I have premium through a page that makes family groups and you pay a lot less. From time to time there is an issue with the group and you spend like two days without premium until it is fixed.
During those periods YT is unwatchable and I skip using it until the issue is fixed