[[[ 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)
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.