Mashable reports that users ran into a black screen on YouTube, and that it stayed for about 6 seconds before the video began playing. The reports indicate it affected several browsers including Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi.

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad. While that’s certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time. A simple workaround for the black screen on YouTube is to just refresh the page, hit F5 as soon as the page starts loading. uBlock Origin’s filters were updated with a patch to resolve the problem, the add-on updates its filters automatically. If you are still experiencing the black screen issue, just open the extension’s dashboard and manually update the filters. This tug-of-war is getting annoying, but it appears to me that Google’s efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers, instead of attracting new subscribers.

  • @[email protected]
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    4 months ago

    Ironically I’m enjoying it for the first time ever at the moment.

    We were going away on holidays and would have patchy internet and I needed to make sure my iPad addicted kids has plenty of content for the the road. I decided I was too old and too busy to spend hours stealing YouTube content with shitty apps and just bit the bullet, got a VPN and signed up for a family plan of YouTube plus through Nepal for like $4 / month.

    And now without ads and the bullshit I have for the first time found creators that I like, and I put on videos throughout the day. Also because it comes with music I actually use my google speaker for more than just alarms and timers because I refuse to buy Spotify.

    The $4 is actually good value. I’m as surprised as the next person.

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      I’ve seen videos mentioning they have started cancelling plans opened on a different region to save money using VPN software, so be careful how much you rely on it.