• Tetsuo@jlai.lu
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    8 hours ago

    Most of the time I dont see any ads on YT and I watch a lot of content there. It’s getting harder to not get ads there on all my devices but it’s doable.

    But when I go see my parents, I use their smartTV to watch YT. And I realize how horrible the experience is with all the interruptions and the impossibility to just focus on what you are watching.

    And yesterday I got multiple time ads for a crypto scam called Ryxero or something. The scam was using AI clones of Bernard Arnault, a french billionaire, pretending you could win 1000€ a day…

    The scam also had deepfakes of news outlets pretending that people in France were “queuing to ATM” to get their money…

    I think it’s absolutely unacceptable that YT let them serve crypto scams to millions in complete impunity.

    I will try to report the scam to authorities. I also reported it to YT but I dont expect them to act. The 3mn long ad was paid by an american business called “EX” which I think serves their scam abroad through YT in complete impunity.

    For me the scam and AI clones is obvious but how many got scammed with the complicity of YouTube ? Hundreds ?

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      1 hour ago

      BTW you can/should install an alternative YT frontend on smart TVs, if you want to watch YT and are forced to use a smart TV. Even something semi-suitable like Pipepipe will do, but there are also frontends more suited for TV use, e.g. SmartTube

      • Tetsuo@jlai.lu
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        45 minutes ago

        Interesting ! Thanks for the suggestion.

        Although I usually have issues with third party clients all the time.

        On Android for example I used the following clients so far :

        • Vanced YT
        • Revanced YT
        • Freetube
        • Newpipe
        • Morphe
        • Grayjay

        All of them eventually failed or were down for extended durations. Point is, these third party apps are always vulnerable to YT purposefully sabotaging them.

        But I will try it out anyway I don’t have much to lose.

        PS : Hmmm, on Smart Tube’s Github :

        My development environment was infected by unknown malicious software, as a result of which a few builds may have been affected. Once the issue was detected, I secured everything with a full disk wipe, restored a clean setup, and now all builds are scanned with VirusTotal. The F-Droid version will also be verified before release.

        • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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          37 minutes ago

          Well, yeah, the dev environment was compromised but the author restored everything and checked that it all works.

          Personally I use Pipepipe and Outertube on my android phone, and just watch through a browser with adblock on my Linux phone. Although I don’t watch youtube too often, especially on my phone (maybe twice a month or so), I didn’t notice any issues with either of those methods, and never got any ads either.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      7 hours ago

      Watching TV of any kind at other people’s homes, and especially my parents’ place, can feel like some real black mirror shit.