[HN Gopher] YouTube is testing people now?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       YouTube is testing people now?
        
       Author : ushakov
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2021-12-24 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
        
       | peakaboo wrote:
        
       | zeruch wrote:
       | The sooner the adtech economy collapses, the better.
        
       | csomar wrote:
       | Youtube ads have reached the point of ridiculous. Many people, in
       | the early days, moved from TV to Youtube to avoid ads. But the
       | last time I used the apps (on the iPhone) to listen to a song, I
       | had two unskip-able ads before and one later.
       | 
       | Today, I bother with their HTML website on Safari (because of iOS
       | ad block, it seems that I miss most of the ads) but their web app
       | is shitty (and maybe being made intentionally shitty?).
        
         | Scoundreller wrote:
         | I'm struggling with html Gmail on iOS Chrome. It keeps jumping
         | as I click on an email or category and clicks the wrong thing.
         | 
         | Maybe for the past 3 months?
         | 
         | I've got the same it's intentionally shittier feeling too.
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | YouTube Premium doesn't have ads. You get what you pay for.
        
           | csomar wrote:
           | Funny thing Youtube doesn't accept my money. It says my
           | region is not supported for Youtube Premium. I would not mind
           | paying 5-10 bucks a month for that, already does for Netflix
           | and Apple TV.
        
           | good8675309 wrote:
           | $15 per month is a little nuts - I don't know anyone who pays
           | for Youtube Premium - Though they piloted Youtube lite
           | overseas for $5 per month but it's seems unlikely they will
           | bring it to the states - If they do roll it out, I will
           | subscribe
        
             | plif wrote:
             | Also includes YT Music, making it not much more expensive
             | than other streaming music services if you're willing to
             | use it over something like Spotify.
        
               | ksec wrote:
               | I really really wish I could love Youtube Music. But I
               | just cant. It is even worst than Apple Music.
        
               | plif wrote:
               | I've been using it. It's gotten a lot better than when it
               | first came out. Super annoying that they released a
               | product that was far inferior (and probably still is
               | inferior) to Google Play music and forced everyone to
               | switch.
        
               | ksec wrote:
               | >It's gotten a lot better than when it first came out.
               | 
               | Thanks. May be I will check it out again.
        
             | npteljes wrote:
             | It must vary between regions, it's 1790 HUF for me, which
             | translates to ~$5.5.
             | 
             | Also, why is it nuts?
        
             | hatchnyc wrote:
             | YouTube's premium ad-free option is probably the best
             | subscription value I spend each month. I'd give up almost
             | any other streaming service before it. There's tons of high
             | quality documentaries, news coverage from all over the
             | world, programming tutorials, and videos of cats.
        
             | MBCook wrote:
             | I do. Worth it to me to get rid of ads. Plus I like
             | supporting creators without having to sign up for umpteen
             | Patreons.
             | 
             | And it's $12/mo from the site (not in-app).
        
             | IggleSniggle wrote:
             | I pay for YT Music. YouTube Premium is just bonus since I
             | seldom use YouTube. YT Music is still not as good as Google
             | Play Music was, but it's better than Spotify imho.
             | 
             | Also, pretty sure I pay $10 not $15.
        
             | rags2riches wrote:
             | I started paying when my kids got into YouTube. It was
             | either that or blocking it altogether.
        
             | kristofferR wrote:
             | Just VPN to India, you get 3 months of Premium for like $5
             | in total. It works fine without VPN after the initial sign
             | up.
        
             | wayanon wrote:
             | YT Premium gives me a lot - YT is transformed when you
             | don't have ads, can have it playing in the background while
             | on another app (there's a Picture in Picture beta I'm using
             | at the moment which works great). Also downloads and Music.
        
               | Shared404 wrote:
               | If you're on Android, you get all of this with
               | NewPipe[0].
               | 
               | [0] https://newpipe.net/
        
             | 5bolts wrote:
             | it works everywhere you might want to watch youtube. xbox,
             | phone, smart tv, computer, tablet, hell probably my old
             | gameboy DS.
             | 
             | guess it depends on how much youtube you consume.
             | personally it was a no brainer.. less than an hour's worth
             | of work a month to pay for it? now i only see ads when i
             | get signed out of youtube.
        
             | iscrewyou wrote:
             | Quick note: $15.99 through in app purchase, $11.99 through
             | the website.
        
           | 8note wrote:
           | YouTube premium removes one layer of ads. The content still
           | has ads, but you stop needing to watch ads so you can watch
           | ads
        
             | npteljes wrote:
             | Well it removes YouTube's ads, no? Of course it doesn't do
             | anything about sponsors, etc.
        
           | geranim0 wrote:
           | oh please
        
             | k8sToGo wrote:
             | If you use YouTube enough that ads annoy you then just pay
             | for YouTube Premium.
        
               | bogwog wrote:
               | uBlock is better, free, available in more regions, and
               | you don't have to login to your Google account to use it.
        
               | j1elo wrote:
               | You only need to use YT a couple times to already be
               | annoyed by the unskippable and numerous ads, plus inline
               | advertisement, that your face will get slapped with.
        
             | eulers_secret wrote:
             | uBlock origin still blocks YouTube ads.
             | 
             | Google is highly profitable, take the subscription fee and
             | donate it to someone who will help people instead of just
             | develop more sophisticated ads and ways to remove blocking
             | from browsers...
        
               | t-writescode wrote:
               | LTT has said in one of their WAN shows? Or their
               | financing show? That YouTube Premium members get them
               | more money than ad watchers.
               | 
               | I'm happy to help support YT creators in this way.
        
         | literallycancer wrote:
         | Don't use the official client. Problem solved.
        
       | 3np wrote:
       | Can someone expand on what this is? How does it come up for you
       | and how often? I watch YT on the regular, combination of
       | different platforms and entry points. Definitely not always with
       | adblock. Wasn't even aware this was a thing until now.
        
       | sebow wrote:
        
       | bogwog wrote:
       | There should be a law that requires any data collecting companies
       | to list the inferences that they are planning to make from the
       | data they collect. Once the study is complete, they should be
       | required to destroy the data and inform customers.
       | 
       | A question like in the OP seems like it's trying to figure out
       | your level of education, which is something that could be used in
       | discriminatory ways, not to mention that it's not something
       | everyone wants to share.
        
       | 999900000999 wrote:
       | I pay for YouTube music for this very reason. Comes with ad free
       | YouTube. I actually respect Google isn't a charity,but I value my
       | time enough to not waste it on ads.
        
         | zo1 wrote:
         | I _pay_ for YT music and just a few weeks ago started getting
         | some sort of ad inside the YT music app. It 's getting
         | ridiculous.
        
           | t-writescode wrote:
           | I would like to know more. I haven't experienced this. I've
           | had YT Premium ever since it was a thing and use YT Music
           | relatively regularly.
        
       | deadalus wrote:
       | Youtube Alternatives :
       | 
       | Centralized : Dailymotion, Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Vimeo,
       | Vidlii, DLive, Triller
       | 
       | Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
        
         | newsclues wrote:
         | If I want to host my own niche curated video community, where
         | do I start?
        
           | sschueller wrote:
           | PeerTube, https://joinpeertube.org/
           | 
           | You can use an instance that let's you upload or you can run
           | your own on a host somewhere and federated it.
        
           | WJW wrote:
           | S3? Not even joking, a static website with some html5 video
           | tags would bring you quite some way.
           | 
           | Depending on how worried you are about potential load and/or
           | egress costs, you could go for somewhere with cheaper egress
           | as well if you want.
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | S3 will be way more expensive that it has to be. Instead,
             | I'd opt for using a dedicated server from Hetzner,
             | unlimited traffic for 0 EUR/GB (besides the monthly cost of
             | the instance that is).
        
               | bushbaba wrote:
               | Their dedicated servers will be more expensive than s3.
               | their storage boxes are much cheaper.
               | 
               | You'd also want to compare google drive, Dropbox, box,
               | Amazon drive (Amazon photos), iCloud storage, and
               | backblaze
               | 
               | https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box
        
               | bogwog wrote:
               | I wonder how far you could get with Github pages? It's
               | probably againsttheir ToS anyways, but I bet you could
               | host a decent amount of (efficiently-encoded) videos
               | before they kick you off.
        
         | deadbunny wrote:
         | These are alternatives to hosting, not viewing. Hard to switch
         | platforms if the people making videos I want to watch are not
         | on the new platform.
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | Invidious lets you watch youtube videos without using
           | Youtube. It even lets you subscribe to channels, and import
           | your subscriptions from Youtube.
           | 
           | Theres an app for Android and Win/Mac/Linux called Freetube
           | that uses Invidious.
           | 
           | There are a lot of free Invidious instances out there. You
           | can also self host one if you want.
           | 
           | Use it! And if you can, donate to one of the public Invidious
           | instances.
        
             | btdmaster wrote:
             | mpv combined with yt-dlp works quite nicely too, just paste
             | the URL as an argument to mpv and it handles downloading on
             | its own. Primary issue is that yt-dlp is highly sensitive
             | to shadow API changes so rolling release is needed for it
             | to be useful, though this can still be done with custom
             | repositories on distros outside of e.g. Arch.
        
       | ajb wrote:
       | My guess is these are from Google Consumer Surveys, which anyone
       | can use. So google itself probably doesn't give a sh*t about this
       | data, although I wouldn't bet that they don't track it.
       | 
       | [Edited to add]
       | 
       | Although GCS is intended for boring stuff like which marketting
       | logo or slogan is best, you can actually use it for any question,
       | that doesn't violate the terms. In the past I've used it for joke
       | surveys as well as academic research. Although I haven't done it
       | for a while in case some turker flags me and gets my whole google
       | account banned.
        
         | tanduv wrote:
         | +1 I've previously got some of these questionable surveys from
         | the 'Opinion Rewards' app and a few other spots on Google
         | sites. Quite sure if you click on the [i] button (in OP's
         | screenshot), it displays a blurb about the questions coming
         | from a third party.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | a5aAqU wrote:
       | I wonder if it's to measure things like critical thinking skills
       | and compare them with the videos people watch.
       | 
       | The average American reads at 7th-8th grade level and might not
       | know what "false dichotomy" means, so it could be useful data.
       | It's also a logical fallacy, so it might give an indication about
       | whether a person has been exposed to the ideas of logical
       | fallacies.
       | 
       | "People who aren't familiar with logical fallacies tend to become
       | radicalized by YouTube in X months."
        
       | bemmu wrote:
       | Maybe there are questions where the value of learning a thing
       | about the user for future ad targeting is higher than just
       | showing them another ad?
       | 
       | Reminds me of the time a dating company did research (maybe
       | okcupid?) on the best question to ask for matching, and it was
       | something like "do you believe in angels?".
        
         | winternett wrote:
         | These surveys on platforms are basically a way of evading the
         | deep tracking they used to implement on their apps. Since app
         | stores and device makers clamped down on app-based tracking,
         | many social platforms lost their ability to track people deeply
         | to better target ads, so now they do covert psychological and
         | cultural profiling to get the metrics they want.
         | 
         | It's also why many platforms are handicapping their web sites
         | and why some only allow access through mobile apps, because web
         | site interactions don't give them deeper tracking cues they
         | want, like access to device cameras and microphones, without
         | alerting users first.
         | 
         | If you use TikTok or IG, you'll realize that whenever you're
         | about to share something, your camera is activated, and it can
         | capture a lot of details about you like your skin color, or
         | snapshots of where you are... App makers have been over-
         | reaching in privacy for ages now, and you're always giving up
         | something personal for using any social service, whether it's
         | your money, time spent watching ads, unrewarded labor in
         | generating their content, or your privacy.
         | 
         | I don't do any surveys, they're often driven by mis-guided
         | objectives that don't help user experience at all.
        
           | MandieD wrote:
           | Thanks for reminding me to renew the bit of electrical tape I
           | usually keep over the "selfie" camera (but had fallen off).
        
       | calllr wrote:
       | Someone needs a promotion at Google and this is the latest plot
       | to get people to train a "new" and "revolutionary" AI?
        
       | tupac_speedrap wrote:
       | I never see these surveys when I browse Youtube on my PC but the
       | bonkers shit they ask my Mum always amuses me, also Youtube is
       | very picky about about the content that YouTube creators create
       | but will happily bombard my Mum with gambling ads all the time.
       | You can opt out for "less" gambling adverts but obviously algo-
       | wankers weasel out of any responsibility so it probably won't
       | work very well since it makes them less money.
        
         | Veen wrote:
         | > bombard my Mum with gambling ads
         | 
         | I get loads of financial scams, especially crypto scams. It
         | used to be Russian wife services and gambling. Probably because
         | I turned off ad personalization for my Google account, so I get
         | the lowest grade ad stock there is.
        
           | snailmailman wrote:
           | I've also turned off ad targeting and have experienced the
           | same. Lots of scam ads, many of them for crypto. I've tried
           | to report a few of the more blatant scam ads, but the
           | reporting process is tedious and not worth wasting my time
           | on. Like the "free fortnite v-bucks" at a sketchy site is
           | 100% stealing your account right? Thankfully I don't see
           | those very often so presumably google takes them down quick.
        
         | kwhitefoot wrote:
         | If she uses a PC you might be able to install uBlock for her. I
         | never see ads on YouTube except for the mentions of sponsors
         | that are part of the video.
        
         | foepys wrote:
         | I stopped using the official YouTube app when YouTube started
         | to constantly show me literal porn as ads below videos. The
         | images were distorted a little bit but you could clearly see
         | what was going on. I wasn't able to report any ad and it kept
         | happening, so I just stopped using the app and went full ad
         | block.
        
         | soperj wrote:
         | You can opt out of all the ads just by using uBlock. I don't
         | understand how people willingly go on the internet without it.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | uBlock only supports browsers
        
             | jmchuster wrote:
             | uBlock is supported on Firefox on Android.
             | 
             | I'll mirror the parent's sentiment. It blows my mind every
             | time i see someone else use YouTube and see ads.
        
             | btdmaster wrote:
             | NewPipe[1] works fine on Android.
             | 
             | [1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | toshk wrote:
         | It boggles my mind how many scam ads are running on YouTube.
         | Only ads I get are scams, make 5k a day, get rich quick with
         | nft, fake investor ads etc. Google willingly make extreme
         | amounts of money working with these scammers on the backs of
         | ordinary people while already having billions. They are morally
         | corrupt.
        
           | newaccount74 wrote:
           | How do you think Google got so rich?
           | 
           | I'm pretty sure a significant fraction of Google's revenue is
           | coming directly or indirectly from scammers.
        
       | elcapitan wrote:
       | Can you win a washing machine that plays video clips or why
       | should anyone participate in those surveys?
        
         | the-dude wrote:
         | You are yoking, but I recently needed to visit a sewing machine
         | shop and it appears there are sewing machines with Android UIs.
         | 
         | And it was displaying a YT video.
         | 
         | My sewing machine is decade+ old second hand I got for EUR 20,
         | no YT.
        
           | elcapitan wrote:
           | It's only complete though if the washing machine is showing
           | YT ads for washing machines.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-12-24 23:02 UTC)