I would not be able to watch YouTube without an ad blocker if I had epilepsy. Full stop.

I don’t think I even thought about that.

When I load up the YouTube app on my Apple TV — the only place I watch YouTube “as Google intended” — that is, no ad blocker, their official app, the ball is 100% in their court — it flickers before even getting to the account picker. My wife and I both use it, so we both have our accounts loaded in. Opening my account, it flickers before showing me the videos page with all the videos. Opening a video, the ads flicker. The timer jumps down faster, which is nice, but it’s also very distracting. Once the ad ends or I “skip” (you know, sometimes the ad just ends and the content loads; other times, the ad just keeps going forever and you have to manually skip), the video itself skips and flashes a bit for a second or two and then it’s fine.

I get none of these problems on my Macs, where I watch in Firefox with an ad blocker. The YouTube app annoyed me on my iPhone, so I deleted it. I access YouTube in Safari where I have content blockers. We have uBlock Origin on iOS now, and it works. Videos just play in Safari, I don’t think I’ve seen an ad yet. I also bought AdGuard and Wipr 2. They all do the same thing, they use Safari’s filter feature to block ads with lists they get from various places. They can cancel one another out, so you have to pick one. Presently I’m rolling with uBO and it works. I’m not sure it blocks all ads like I do on the desktop, but I generally do not see them. On my Android phone (old Galaxy S10, only works on WiFi, it’s a cosplay prop), I have Firefox with uBlock Origin, as one does when they use Android, because one can.

But the Apple TV is Google’s domain. They get to sling all the ads they want. And the flickering is freakin’ insane. I’m strongly considering looking up a gently used Intel-era Mac mini to replace it with, and just put media apps or web apps in the Dock and replace the Apple TV Remote with an old Logitech K400+ I have laying around. I boxed it because it was having issues with Windows, but now that I’m a Mac user, connecting it via a dongle (since MacBooks don’t support USB-A), it works perfectly!

So, I don’t know what this AI filter is, but YouTube “as Google intended” would be fucking dangerous for epilepsy patients and I would love to see Google sued over it, but I have no financial damage myself, so I couldn’t be the one to do it.