I was watching a video on landscape mode on my phone on YouTube. And then when a wild midroll ad appears, the ad thinks it’s a good idea to play a ultrawide-screen video inside a TikTok style vertical phone window, and then puts that in a widescreen video. The whole thing also got smaller to display the CTA at the right.
Which reminds me, I hate how YT ads on mobile try to forcibly cover up the entire screen. It’s like seeing a billboard that suddenly expands to fill most of your vision. They didn’t used to do that, instead they just took over the video portion of the screen, but you could keep browsing comments while the ad plays.
This is basically YouTube’s fault. I was one of those who initially did not block the ads to “support” creators I watched, and just used the app. Now they’ve made that completely insufferable and think my alternative is going to be to pay the subscription. Idiots.
First they started kicking you out of incognito and then add whatever you were watching to your account. It used to be that the video you were watching would also close.
Then if you don’t skip the first ad, they play a 5 minute ad after with the most obnoxious shit hoping you’re not there to click.
Then they tripled the amount of ads you have to skip, and making part of them 15-30 seconds unskippable ones. Now ads are about 1/4 of my watch time which is on par with the old cable model.
The straw that broke the camel’s back is now when you open the app, IT AUTO PLAYS SHORTS FULLSCREEN! At least if it was the creators I normally see in my shorts, but now it’s some garbage trending youtuber I don’t know. AND NOW THAT IVE WATCHED 1 SECOND OF IT THEY ARE NOW RECOMMENDED IN MY CONTENT.
I used to juggle accounts to focus the algorithm of certain type of videos for certain accounts, and youtube has completely ruined that too. Fuck that, went with the webapps and skipped the ads entirely. Fuck you youtube, you spat on those who gave you the least trouble. Never going back to the app.
I don’t understand why people use apps. Just like, in general. If there’s a browser version, it’s almost always waaaaaay better.