[HN Gopher] YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach agains...
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YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
Author : prhrb
Score : 530 points
Date : 2023-06-29 06:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.androidpolice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.androidpolice.com)
| lazyboy892 wrote:
| [dead]
| behnamoh wrote:
| That's what happens in monopolies. Until we find a way to move
| most useful YT content to another platform (e.g., Vimeo), we'll
| have to deal with YT's greedy policies.
| justapassenger wrote:
| YT is monopoly, yea. But them trying to fight people using
| costly service for free isn't big monopoly concern.
| dahart wrote:
| A little too much spin there. They don't have to offer a free
| service, they _choose_ to. YT can do whatever they want with
| their platform as far as I'm concerned, but implying that
| people are stealing is disingenuous. YT got popular in the
| first place by offering a free service, and they are still
| offering a free service with ads that I'm not obligated to
| watch. They could, if they wanted, charge admission for all
| viewers, and skip the ads, they could choose to not offer
| free service. They're intentionally not doing that so that
| they can have their cake and eat it too by offering a free
| service but inserting ads into it. It's YT's choice alone to
| offer the costly service for free, their wish is that people
| watch the ads, but fortunately whether we watch them is our
| choice. Note that YT's testing here isn't primarily to punish
| people, in part it's to do an experiment to find out if
| they'll lose viewers by demanding they watch the ads,
| precisely so that they can continue to choose to offer a
| 'free' service, and in part it's to normalize the kind of
| spin you're repeating here, to get people to believe they
| should submit to ad-watching and that they're obligated to
| participate. They have been turning the screw on this for
| years and they will continue to, because it statistically
| works, but by participating in their narrative, by suggesting
| people are grifting when ad-blocking, you're helping them
| normalize this concept.
| cruano wrote:
| You don't have to watch YouTube videos, you choose to.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Youtube has effectively become a monopoly by offering a
| free service. My other choice is to become a social
| pariah and not watch any videos at all.
| dahart wrote:
| Correct.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Is sneaking to see a live concert stealing? No, I don't
| think so. But concert organizers have all the rights to
| enforce that people don't sneak in.
| dahart wrote:
| If the venue is fenced and charges admission, then yes
| sneaking in is stealing. Legally speaking.
|
| Wait, you consider ad-blocking to be stealing, and
| sneaking into a paid concert, for which you could face
| legal consequences to be not stealing? That seems very
| weird.
|
| Anyway that analogy is not at all what YouTube is doing
| though. The valid analogy would be more like there's a
| free concert in the park and people accuse you of
| stealing if you don't buy their optional T-shirts, or I
| dunno watch an optional real-estate presentation
| beforehand or something.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I don't see the point in continuing this conversation, as
| you don't engage in a good faith.
|
| YouTube is not free. It's ad/subscription supported. Just
| because they didn't fight ad blocking in the past doesn't
| make it free.
| dahart wrote:
| > YouTube is not free.
|
| Hahaha you need to tell YouTube that, not me. Lol why are
| accusations of bad faith always made in bad faith? I
| guess you just don't want to address your own
| inconsistency? You didn't answer the question of why you
| consider sneaking into a paid concert to be not stealing
| yet claim you must pay for YouTube somehow. That makes no
| sense. You could be fined or jailed for sneaking into a
| concert because it's illegal, it's stealing by
| definition. You cannot be fined for not watching YouTube
| ads.
|
| What, exactly, is your definition of free? Does YouTube
| agree with your definition, do they say it's not free?
| Where? Can you link to language that outlines the non-
| premium YouTube payment procedure? Can you demonstrate
| that failure to pay could result in legal consequences?
|
| YouTube is in fact free in the sense that it does not
| cost the viewer money to watch. And unlike concert
| tickets or any other paid product, there is no legal
| obligation or expectation to "pay" for YT with time or
| attention, and there is no tracking or record of any such
| payment. Just because they want you to watch ads while
| not asking for money does not make YouTube not free.
| JCharante wrote:
| Right because I'm sure other platforms would love to have users
| who don't want to pay or watch ads.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If this really comes, I think it would be not too hard to modify
| the ad blockers, that ads are being "served" but into the void
| (muted, invisible container). In a way, that makes it hard or
| impossible for ad blocker dedection. Blocking youtube ad videos
| will be more hard to block without detection.
|
| Not an optimal solution, as it still uses more data, but nothing
| is, if we cannot solve the base problem that we have an ad
| financed internet.
| liendolucas wrote:
| You might want to try: https://adnauseam.io/
| k4rli wrote:
| And 1080p quality is somehow a "premium" feature now. Could
| YouTube be the next platform to ditch after reddit died? At least
| the official clients, NewPipe is quite nice.
| BXlnt2EachOther wrote:
| 1080p as it existed before is still available for all users;
| they added a new, higher-bitrate 1080p format to premium.
| pinkgazelle wrote:
| There's many other platforms serving video. Youtube highly
| constraints their content, in the same way Google does, in ways
| that often don't align with my searches
|
| More and more I end up using other platforms like Rumble or
| Rutube
| nfriedly wrote:
| I've had an adblocker in my browser for ages, but I wasn't a big
| youtube user because it just didn't have sufficient information
| density for me, even before google put ads in the platform.
| (Google only stuck ads in YT after they ran all of their
| competitors out of business!)
|
| Finding Vanced (and now ReVanced) with adblocking, SponsorBlock,
| and the ability to set the speed higher than 2x made it so that I
| actually use YouTube more regularly. (Despite the name,
| SponsorBlock can skip over a lot more than just sponsor segments
| - intros, outros, recaps, jokes, etc.)
|
| Any time I see YouTube on someone else's device I'm shocked by
| how awful it's become in it's default state. If I can't watch
| YouTube without adblock/sponsorblock/etc, I'll probably just go
| back to not watching YouTube.
|
| The one point where YT has improved over the years is the comment
| section. Aside from the occasional scammer impersonating the
| creator and trying to get me to send them money off-platform, the
| comments don't seem nearly as awful as I remember from 5-10 years
| ago.
|
| Also, as an aside, I pay for Nebula, and out-of-the-box, Nebula
| is a far superior experience to YouTube. But, I still think
| ReVanced has a leg up on Nebula thanks to skipping intros and the
| like. However, the biggest problem with Nebula is that it just
| doesn't have as much content that I'm interested in as YT does.
| It does seem to be improving, though.
| okdood64 wrote:
| YouTube Premium is a far superior experience to Nebula.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| The experience yes, but not the price. At least in my
| country.
| sentenc123 wrote:
| [dead]
| blibble wrote:
| so if you're not logged in: clear cookies and resume?
|
| that'll take what, 5 minutes to be added to the ad blocker
| extension
| explaininjs wrote:
| Yes, Cookies, the only possible way the engineers at 1.5T
| dollar company thought to identify end users.
| blibble wrote:
| unless they're willing to ban entire households/CGNATs,
| there's really not much they can do about it
|
| (short of requiring a login to watch videos)
| explaininjs wrote:
| Not at all. They simply must build a function to determine
| the probability that a given {browser fingerprint, IP} will
| block ads. If the probability exceeds some threshold
| (derived from expected potential ad revenue vs cost of
| service, perhaps), they won't be served video.
|
| This is downright trivial for a google engineer, and I bet
| you could and would do it too if your company's finances
| (aka your salary/livelihood) depended on it.
| blibble wrote:
| > They simply must build a function to determine the
| probability that a given {browser fingerprint, IP} will
| block ads.
|
| this is all extremely gameable if you have a CGNAT ip
| (like say, if you own a mobile phone)
|
| > If the probability exceeds some threshold (derived from
| expected potential ad revenue vs cost of service,
| perhaps), they won't be served video.
|
| that's not what they've described in the article though
| is it
|
| > This is downright trivial for a google engineer
|
| I dunno, seems like they hire anyone these days
| sentenc123 wrote:
| [dead]
| friends34 wrote:
| [dead]
| friends34 wrote:
| [dead]
| van8902 wrote:
| [dead]
| folugna37 wrote:
| I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but the sight of many
| ads on the internet makes my blood boil like nothing else. I
| think it's because some ads treat your intelligence like you're a
| brainwashed idiot who will fall for anything. Ads like these are
| the reason I use adblock.
| sledgehammers wrote:
| _Everything_ is getting more shit day after day.
|
| Internet is burning. The sources of information are getting
| scarce, it's almost unbelivable.
| van8902 wrote:
| [dead]
| BasedAnon wrote:
| It's a good thing I regularly archive the channels I like
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| So far haven't noticed any issues on FreeTube.
|
| https://freetubeapp.io/
| whos564 wrote:
| [dead]
| rumori wrote:
| I've subscribed to Youtube when I found no way to block state
| propaganda in my country. Instagram lets me hide ads I don't
| like, while there's no way to get rid of them on Youtube. Maybe
| I'm the proof that the strategy works but now I despise Youtube
| and Google with a passion while being surprisingly sympathetic
| with Instagram and happily accepting ads there. Both of them
| serve completely irrelevant ads for me though.
| squaresmile wrote:
| Yep, I've also commented on how harmful ads seem to be more
| common on YouTube compared to Instagram and Facebook. Maybe
| Facebook use more human reviewers in smaller regions compared
| to Google? Maybe Facebook have better data due to their social
| network? Idk but the YouTube ads in my country are also
| shockingly bad compared to YouTube in the US.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| Again they chose to not tell users about Premium LITE. Why?
|
| Wouldnt it convince more people to pay? And Google can try to
| entice users later to upgrade to the full Premium. Would t that
| make sense?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I hate ads so much that I'm actually paying for Youtube premium.
| I work in IT, I build systems, I know there are various
| solutions, but none of them guarantee that I can travel freely
| with my cellphone and connect it to any smart TV and get an AD-
| free experience.
|
| So I'll gladly pay for that freedom.
|
| Freedom is very important to me, not just that it's open source,
| or that I have power over ads, but also freedom of time and
| leisure. Ads take away freedom from me, it's a powerless feeling
| when an ad comes on. Real 1stworldproblem here but since we're on
| the topic...
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| The only trick I know of is to use a VPN provider to connect to
| Argentina or Turkey and buy YouTube Premium from there. Works
| with your normal account. Showed this trick to my dad and he
| now pays $2 per month instead of $16. In India you can buy a
| whole year for $16, but our credit cards didn't work.
|
| I'm happy with uBlock Origin :D
| INTPenis wrote:
| That's wild, if true. I mean I pay about 11 USD/month for my
| Youtube premium, but 2 dollars sounds insane. And I think
| youtube music is included in that.
| jmercan wrote:
| It is because without price localization, most of USD based
| subscriptions or purchases would be lunacy. For example if
| the US price of Factorio was directly converted into
| Turkish Lira, it would cost ~10% of monthly minimum wage.
|
| But please, I plead people to not abuse it. It only forces
| developers to bump up prices and make games and digital
| goods inaccessible. [1]. There was already a x10 price bump
| last year with Steam Turkish localization exchange rate
| update and rumors say another x2 is coming soon.
|
| I understand people like cheap stuff but please don't pull
| the ladder on us. I apologize for not being born in the
| "correct" country but getting out isn't as easy and we
| deserve to have some minor entertainment meanwhile. There
| is already an economical crisis going on.
|
| [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/588650/view/33
| 467576...
| whos564 wrote:
| [dead]
| crush0923 wrote:
| [dead]
| crush0923 wrote:
| [dead]
| torham wrote:
| The price for premium just doesn't make sense. I would buy it if
| it were $1 or less per month. This seems reasonable to me, how
| much could they possibly make off of me in a single month with
| ads?
| [deleted]
| vintermann wrote:
| I quit twitch over their attempts at adblock-blocking, and I will
| for YouTube too if it becomes a thing.
| robert8923 wrote:
| [dead]
| robert8923 wrote:
| [dead]
| franczesko wrote:
| The experience on the platform became so hostile to users, while
| content is turning into a cable tv, I wouldn't miss it, if I
| would be blocked.
|
| It's not blocking an ad or two, but a full spam marathon,
| sometimes longer than a movie itself. Of course, it's not
| possible to see which movies are worth to watch, as dislikes are
| not visible, so more video opens, more disappointment, but
| also... more ads.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I'm a family premium member. After the recent price hike, it's
| the most expensive streaming plan I have, by a long shot. uBO
| does so much more than block ads and I have a no-exceptions
| policy on whitelisting, even when I'm paying for the service. I'm
| curious if they'll still try to stop me.
| eBay54 wrote:
| [dead]
| eBay54 wrote:
| [dead]
| guy98238710 wrote:
| Bloody fools. They don't know what beast they are waking up.
| Certain portion of ad blocker users are zealots. These people are
| insane and quite a few of them are quite resourceful. Just a few
| problems that are going to hit YT:
|
| - torrents and other piracy
|
| - rapidly evolving ad-blockers
|
| - undetectable ad-blockers sitting in a new page layer invisible
| to page scripts
|
| - visual ML ad-blockers detecting ads no matter how they are
| loaded
|
| - new ad-free P2P video sharing websites
|
| - influential users discouraging everyone from using YT
|
| - popular content creators moving off YT and advertising other
| hosting options
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| Friction is enough. At Intel they had a product where they
| wanted to prevent certain use cases ( I forget which), but they
| were satisfied keeping out everyone who didn't have $50 of
| equipment and a little knowledge to defeat their mechanism.
| They weren't afraid of electrical engineers defeating them --
| they expected that. They just put in enough friction to prevent
| _most_ people -- pareto-optimization.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| As someone who has no "special love" for YouTube, I feel like the
| equation for YouTube is different for me that what they have in
| mind. YouTube chose to host a public mode of displaying videos
| that someone in a third world country made or Linus Sebastian
| made. As long as they don't put everything behind Netflix style
| login, I will fight tooth and nail with UBO. I don't care about
| "ethics" of ad blockers. If its public, I will do what I darn
| want. Want to stop me, well put it behind a paywall.
|
| That does two things.
|
| I don't use Netflix so any content there is of 0 interest to me.
|
| You don't get to stay public and expect ad dollars. It doesn't
| work like that on the internet.
|
| Same for NYT. I don't pay for it and have no use for content
| there. If if were an ad supported one, then I could use an ad
| blocker.
|
| Think of it this way. If you screen your movie in a cinema hall,
| I will watch it if I pay for a ticket. Fair and square. If it is
| played on a public roadshow, I will skip all ads or skip it
| altogether.
|
| The org has to decide. Either make content pay per use or free.
| No middle ground.
| midoridensha wrote:
| > If its public, I will do what I darn want. Want to stop me,
| well put it behind a paywall.
|
| The ethics are pretty clear I think: if I navigate with my
| browser to YouTube, or any site with ads, I'm able to see the
| content, plus annoying ads. I don't have to watch the ads: I
| can use an ad-blocker to tell my browser to not render those
| ads. The site has every right to serve me HTML/JS/video however
| they wish, but they have no right to tell me what to do with
| that data. If I want to ignore part of it, that's my right, and
| if I use automated means to ignore selected parts, that's also
| my right. If they want to spend massive resources trying to
| figure out ways to get around my automated means, or to detect
| my ad-blocker and refuse to send me data, they can do that too,
| but at what cost?
|
| But if they want to avoid this arms race of ad-blocking, they
| can just do what Netflix does: require payment and an account
| to get in.
|
| As for paywalls, those are really the same thing as ads
| usually: they load the article, then use JS to block it. You
| can block the JS and read the article.
| pen98271 wrote:
| [dead]
| pen98271 wrote:
| [dead]
| jraph wrote:
| I wonder what effect it will have on Invidious. By the way, this
| seems to coincide with their attempts to kill it [1].
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1688025600&dateRange=custom&...
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| You know, if YouTube wouldn't insist on absolutely annoying the
| living shit out of me with unskippable, bad, long, and frequent
| ads I wouldn't mind that much. But YouTube with ads is one of the
| worst things there are.
| jvolkman wrote:
| There are no ads if you pay
| makeitdouble wrote:
| There's a lot of small prints for Youtube Premium.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Imagine paying for an ostensibly free service. It's like
| getting mugged and then offering to give the mugger even more
| money. Whose fault is it that YouTube isn't charging enough
| to cover hosting costs?
| jvolkman wrote:
| I find the service valuable, so I'm happy to pay for it. I
| don't understand the opposition. If you don't want to pay,
| they offer an ad-supported version.
| scblock wrote:
| Until there are. You're crazy if you trust Google to not
| change this down the road.
| musictubes wrote:
| You pay for the service that they offer now. If they add
| ads later on you can quit. Not paying now because of
| something they could do in the future doesn't make any
| sense.
| [deleted]
| jvolkman wrote:
| They charge monthly. You can cancel.
| amelius wrote:
| It's not fair because they became a monopoly by offering a
| free service. Now they can ask whatever they want.
| elkos wrote:
| keep in mind that several videos do have sponsored segments
| so again you can't get away from that without sponsorblock
| kurthr wrote:
| That's not true at all. There are many
| advertisements/sponsorships within large YouTube creator
| channels now. It's regularly 1min or more in every 10min of
| video. I don't mind so much, because they are skippable and
| since it's the creators themselves rather than totally
| unrelated garbage.
| [deleted]
| kervantas wrote:
| SponsorBlock is the answer.
| jvolkman wrote:
| I don't think those in-content sponsorships are what this
| is about?
| kurthr wrote:
| I'd love to understand the downvote venom, but what what
| do you call in-content sponsorships after you've paid for
| YouTubeRed, if not ads?
|
| Are they not advertisements for products? Or ads only
| count, if they're auctioned words from Google? What's the
| new definition.
| jvolkman wrote:
| They're not ads that are controlled by Google/YouTube, so
| I guess I'm able to view them as pragmatically different.
| They also don't bother me much because they're generally
| presented by the content creator that I'm interested in
| watching, rather than being completely unrelated.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Honestly, seeing an old spice ad isn't going to make me buy old
| spice.
|
| And seeing a 1 hour ad for some guy telling me to stop eating
| what I'm eating to have no-wipe bowel movements isn't going to
| make me buy the stuff.
|
| There have been studies done about plumbers. The ones that pay
| money to get on top in the White Pages have worse reviews than
| the ones that work by word of mouth. I go by the same thing. If
| you feel that your product needs an ad, it's probably overpriced
| and / or doesn't do what it says it does.
| Pent wrote:
| it's been about mindshare for awhile now, you just mentioned
| <brand> so you're inadvertently advertising for them for free
| on hn
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Yet here you are talking about old spice due to their ads. It
| worked. They got what they wanted from you.
| etchalon wrote:
| At some point, the only option left will be to bake the ads into
| the video, so they can neither be skipped nor blocked.
|
| I assume the only reason this isn't done is dynamic insertion,
| but at some point the CPU horsepower necessary to do that on-
| demand will be available.
| noja wrote:
| Last week I clicked a link and got TWO 15 second unskippable ads.
| I closed my tab after the first one. I don't want to watch a
| video that much.
|
| Today I tried to watch a long video and there adverts every five
| minutes. Closed again.
| world9871 wrote:
| [dead]
| practice8912 wrote:
| [dead]
| world9871 wrote:
| [dead]
| practice8912 wrote:
| [dead]
| o_m wrote:
| I don't have a Youtube/Google account and I don't use any of
| their apps, so how are they going to block me, go for my IP
| address? I don't see a reason to have an account, RSS works just
| fine for subscriptions.
| gochi wrote:
| From other articles, it wouldn't be an account ban but rather
| at the video level. So you use a browser with adblock and try
| to watch 3 different videos, then the video player will stop
| loading at all, changing browsers or clearing cookies/data
| would likely reset the count but apply again after 3
| detections. Although I do assume they would use a combination
| of other data like your IP to be more aggressive with detection
| blocks.
| crease34 wrote:
| [dead]
| hen987433 wrote:
| [dead]
| hen987433 wrote:
| [dead]
| pera wrote:
| This is very bad: If you have ADHD ad-blockers are essential to
| use platforms like YouTube as they let you block comment sections
| and suggested content, which are highly distracting.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You can configure uBlock origin to only let through the ads,
| but still block the other garbage. Or you can pay for youtube -
| or you can find something else.
|
| I hope this move will strengthen alternatives.
| pera wrote:
| Yeah but if they are simply detecting user agents with ad-
| blockers (which is often the case) then it won't matter
| cuttysnark wrote:
| > they are simply detecting user agents with ad-blockers
|
| The browser's user agent string doesn't change based on
| plugins installed, or at all--unless end user changes it
| purposefully.
|
| The ad-block detection is likely and usually a separate
| script that runs an interval check on the
| existence/visibility of ad-related DOM elements (which
| would be false when hidden/removed by a plugin or even the
| developer tools)
| pera wrote:
| A "browser" is a user agent: https://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wo
| rk/wiki/Definition_of_User_Agent
| crease34 wrote:
| [dead]
| jullie23 wrote:
| [dead]
| ytthrowaway wrote:
| you can use vpn to sign up to youtube premium from india or some
| other cheap location without strict address requirements and pay
| two bucks a month
| xnorswap wrote:
| Advocating fraud to save a fiver a month?
| freediverx wrote:
| Because only corporations and billionaires are allowed to
| commit it?
| xnorswap wrote:
| Thinking it's wrong to advocate fraudulently billing in a
| poor country to avoid a small charge, does not preclude
| thinking it's wrong for corporations or billionaires to
| commit fraud.
| blablablerg wrote:
| It is not just about thinking that
| corporations/billionaires are doing something wrong, it
| is also about them getting away with it, governments
| doing nothing about it and being powerless yourself to do
| something about it. If this world rewards the rich
| cheating for example by using tax havens, why not cheat
| themselves out of some dollars a month by using a 'cheap
| haven' yourself? Seems fair to me.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| Isnt youtube basically merged with google, thus you need to
| have separare indian account jusr for google?
| kayxspre wrote:
| Not really. You need a separate payment profile in the
| country you intend to subscribe to it. My Play Store profile
| is USA-based, but I'm in Thailand and I subscribe for the
| 1-year plan for $44.99. A new payment profile is created for
| YouTube billing, though I deleted it as it's quite a hassle
| to manage different profile; I'll create a new one if needed.
| eimrine wrote:
| Who needs Google search in 2023? The only google services I
| use are Gmail, Translate, Youtube and their core project -
| 8.8.8.8
| Wazako wrote:
| You have deepl to replace translate, it's incredibly better
| and can replace words. The only advantage of Translate is
| ocr camera.
| eimrine wrote:
| Thank you, I will definitely use it for short sentences.
| But my typical scenario is to throw a whole webpage from
| HN if I am too tired to read it in English. I do not see
| how deepl can translate a whole webpage, all I see is
| 1500 symbols with no registration.
| no_time wrote:
| While probably unintended, this still benefits them because
| this normalizes paying for premium either way. And a few years
| later when they decide to pull the plug, your chance of paying
| full price will be greater as a result.
|
| Never give a SV tech company money.
| earth9802 wrote:
| [dead]
| jullie23 wrote:
| [dead]
| earth9802 wrote:
| [dead]
| insectjack wrote:
| [dead]
| insectjack wrote:
| [dead]
| ball823 wrote:
| [dead]
| svantana wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Spotify
| announced that it would start to crack down on adblockers in 2019
| [1], but I've been using ublock origin on their web player since
| then and haven't noticed any issues (apart from the odd glitch
| when the blocker is trying to skip the ad). Did they get cold
| feet or was it mostly a PR move?
|
| https://gizmodo.com/spotify-may-suspend-your-account-if-it-c...
| judge2020 wrote:
| Sometimes it's just for the scentiment. For example, YouTube
| has had a policy since 2015 that you can't have third-party
| brand logos in your videos unless that brand also buys out all
| of YouTube's banner and in-video Ads in the video, and it
| couldn't be a pre-recorded ad, it had to be a sponsor spot
| integrated into the content. Supposedly there was no outrage
| and this policy stayed in place, and was just never enforced.
| https://youtu.be/t17PVwreKEE?t=93
| ball823 wrote:
| [dead]
| anen2031 wrote:
| [dead]
| i-hate-ads wrote:
| [dead]
| anen2031 wrote:
| [dead]
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| I already have backed off of youtube so much because of how awful
| they have made the experience, this will be it for me entirely if
| they implement this.
| dontknowmuch wrote:
| There are four browser extensions I use just to clean up
| youtube garbage. Shouldn't have to do it, but it works well
| enough for me.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-%F...
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout...
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickbait-remover-...
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blocktube/bbeaicap...
| cewweftg wrote:
| Oh. Yeehah!
|
| Thanks for some of those. What a relief.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Honestly, my feed is so full of rubbish, clickbait thumbnails
| and misinformation that I really can't even believe it's a
| Google product. It's just so polluted.
|
| It's really come to the stage where I actually "hope" the
| search helps me find what I'm looking for, the sea of bullshit
| on YT is vast and difficult to navigate now.
|
| For a time, I would say I was quite addicted to YouTube, but
| now I'm so turned off by it and I find that it is mostly full
| of really low grade content. I hardly even think to look the
| front page it unless I'm looking for something very specific. I
| treat it like a bank job now, race in, get what I need then
| straight back to the get away.
|
| Personally, I feel similar to you, if they force me off it with
| Ads, good. I had though about paying but the smut they suggest
| I watch is just a turn off.
| Regnore wrote:
| > Honestly, my feed is so full of rubbish, clickbait
| thumbnails and misinformation that I really can't even
| believe it's a Google product. It's just so polluted.
|
| This is not all that different than my experience with even
| Google Search these days. Half the time I search for
| something on Google the top 10 are all ads/SEO spam sites.
|
| There are certain things that I search that still give the
| best results out of all search engines (usually very specific
| queries), but more and more I want to be able to pay Google
| to leave out the shit.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Time to spin up some docker containers folks.
|
| https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| I wonder if we're gonna see an ad-blocker-blocker-blocker kinda
| race going on here. As long as the code runs in the users'
| browser, there should be a way around it.
|
| Makes me wonder if they'll ever move to WASM... though I assume
| there's gonna be ways to block ads regardless.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| I'll just stop using YouTube if they make ads unblockable. The
| quality of content on the site has decreased dramatically as
| the result of of their pushing corporate media/youtube
| "creators" to the top of search results. It's literally not
| worth it to me to pay for a subscription that _might_ reduce
| the number of ads I see.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| This. I recently re-setup my HTPC and forgot to add the usual
| plugins and suddenly instead of actually being able to watch
| youtube stuff, there was a BS ad every few minutes. It was
| essentially unwatchable. But I would never pay premium for
| that. Sure I care about _some_ of that content, but it 's not
| a lot and if I had to pay for it, I'd rather pay the author
| directly via say Patreon than to give it to Google and the
| author may or may not get some of that _and_ they constantly
| have to try and "be nice to the algorithm" in order to get
| their share of the money. I really don't care if the
| algorithm thinks they're worthy of being listed in people's
| feeds. I like their content, period.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| And most serious (tech) channels are on other platforms
| too. So most times no problem.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Honestly the algorithm they use to pick and choose which
| ads they show me is as annoying as video feed algorithm.
|
| I didn't mind the 5-second ads. Two to three of them before
| a video? I'd deliberately sit through those. Seemed a fair
| deal. That's now largely gone away (in my experience) and
| now it wants to show me longer, un-skippable ads. Not only
| at the beginning but randomly in the middle of videos
| regardless of what's going on in the video. At least on
| Television has natural commercial breaks "baked in" to the
| format.
|
| Oh. And stop showing me the same four cookie-cutter ads
| every few minutes. It's annoying at best, condescending at
| worst. If you must advertise to me at least give me some
| variety.
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| I feel you. It's a shame though, the interesting content is
| still there. Hopefully those youtubers will branch into other
| platforms.
| TillE wrote:
| That's exactly what's been going on with Twitch for the past
| several months, and frankly Twitch is winning.
|
| All of the ad blockers are now pretty jank. Sometimes they
| don't work at all, sometimes you need to refresh a couple times
| to get the stream to play. I think Alternate Player somehow
| still works despite being unmaintained, but its stream is
| always 5+ seconds behind no matter how you tweak the buffer
| settings.
| psychphysic wrote:
| The easiest way to win this war is if an adblocker is
| detected just make your site unreliable outright claiming an
| error is risky (see the infamous AARD code[0]) so better let
| the user come to the realisation.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
| Jnr wrote:
| Could it be that they are testing it only on some users? Or
| maybe the limits of manifest V3 come into play for Chrome? (
| https://www.ghostery.com/blog/ublock-origin-stopped-
| working-... )
|
| I am using Firefox with uBlock origin and don't have those
| issues on Twitch.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| there's already: new pipe, revanced, and invidious.
|
| I could see Google trying and eventually giving up after
| blocking the the most obvious workarounds just like everything
| else they do
| rolph wrote:
| im assuming there's gonna be ways to bypass y0utub3 and go
| straight to the videos. in the meantime g00gle continues to
| footgun, provide motivation and traction for exodus and
| competition, and a peertube-like non-exclusive for the masses.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised that Google hasn't directly injected the
| ads into the video itself, so it can't be skipped beyond some
| kind of AI looking for drastic scene changes.
| fragmede wrote:
| Google doesn't do it but the creators already do. There's
| sponsorblock for that though. Paying for things is also on
| the table.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Creators have already started interspersing the sponsor
| with the content so if you skip the sponsor section, you
| miss out on part of the video.
| latexr wrote:
| SponsorBlock crowdsources the location to skip to. If
| YouTube spliced ads in the video that would no longer work,
| as timestamps would be different for each
| person/region/however they target ads.
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| Shhhh, don't give them ideas.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| They definitely have had the idea for a long time. It is
| almost certainly a technical limitation stopping them. I'd
| guess that decoding, splicing, and then re-encoding is too
| compute intensive for it to be worth it.
| waselighis wrote:
| No need to re-encode the video. Just split the video at a
| keyframe and inject an ad at that point, no re-encoding
| required. Most video files have keyframes every few
| seconds or so. The proper term is I-frames, though
| they're commonly known as keyframes as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_t
| ype...
| M95D wrote:
| Not so easy with audio. With any variable bitrate audio
| codec, there will be sync problems.
| latexr wrote:
| Right now they force you to watch for a number of seconds
| before you can skip ahead. If the ad were in the video, you
| could skip immediately. Perhaps not to the exact moment it
| ends, but you can scrub or jump in 10 second increments until
| there's no ad. You check with your eyes, no AI necessary.
| It's basically what we did decades ago with VCRs.
| Panoramix wrote:
| The greedy bastards won't even pay taxes. If there was a good
| alternative I would switch in a heartbeat. I am happy to pay
| content creators, but paying $12 or $18 per month just so they
| disable some anti-patterns _really_ rubs me the wrong way.
| kernal wrote:
| They paid 11.4 Billion in 2022 and 14.7 Billion in 2021.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| So they're effectively paying one half of one quarterly
| profit each year. Where can I sign up for this tax rate?
| exabrial wrote:
| Do it! We'll finally have reason to buy the Nebula subscription
| and we can get out of the monopoly market.
| throwawaymobule wrote:
| Here's hoping someone writes a youtube-dl extractor for that
| site soon. Haven't gotten around to doing it myself, despite
| manually downloading a bunch of videos using Firefox's network
| tab.
| qbrass wrote:
| yt-dlp has one.
| throwawaymobule wrote:
| I hadn't noticed. Thanks. Now I just have to put a token
| somewhere in my mpv/yt-dlp setup.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Time to stop using my Google account when using YouTube. Too bad
| for all those subscriptions YouTube channel owners lose.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Enjoy the absolute garbage that will appear on the home screen
| when you open it up!
| clsec wrote:
| Maybe try FreeTube[1]. You can subscribe to channels with it.
|
| [1]https://freetubeapp.io/
| boughtbars wrote:
| [dead]
| smith9081 wrote:
| [dead]
| smith9081 wrote:
| [dead]
| acomjean wrote:
| I mean they want you to subscribe to YouTube premium. At least
| they're being honest about this and give you the option. I have a
| few issues with google but this isn't one (After being forced to
| spend many hours upgrading to google analytics rev 4....)
|
| It's expensive, but I've done it, but it also includes YouTube
| music which I like.
| dan1234 wrote:
| I actually switched away from Apple Music when I subscribed to
| YouTube premium, so it's only really cost me PS2 extra per
| month.
|
| YouTube music is definitely not as good as Apple Music (or
| Spotify) but it's acceptable for the combined cost.
| arketyp wrote:
| I found YouTube Music surprisingly full-fledged. The library is
| not as complete as Spotify or Apple Music of course, but, you
| also get the user uploads, which is a much more reliable
| resource for those few odd tracks.
|
| With Premium you also get to minimize the YouTube app on the
| phone. It's nice for talks and discussions that are not
| uploaded as podcasts.
| graftak wrote:
| With Apple Music you can add your privately owned music to
| the library too. It even outdates Apple Music with a now
| legacy service called iTunes Plus that allowed you to stream
| your private music collection with iTunes from 'the cloud'
| for EUR25/year.
|
| Back in the day I even used this to 'white-wash' low quality
| mp3 files to 256kbps acc files instead.
|
| I think it is actually user-hostile to force users to pay for
| YouTube Music when you want access to ad free YouTube videos,
| probably why in Europe YouTube Premium _Lite_ exists (without
| Music), because tie-in purchases (translated term) are
| generally not allowed here.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| ReVanced solves minimizing
| tcfhgj wrote:
| You can pay a overly expensive fee, but you still won't have an
| ad free experience, since in-video ads aren't removed.
|
| ReVanced is the only option I know so far.
| superb_dev wrote:
| SponserBlock will block in-video ads. Also if you use Safari,
| the Vinegar plug-in replaces the video player with a native
| one which blocks all ads, allows Picture in Picture,
| background play, huge improvements overall
| skyyler wrote:
| Were in-video ads put there by the entity that you're paying?
|
| I don't see in-video ads, but I don't watch "content
| creators" with sponsors.
| morjom wrote:
| NewPipe with Sponsorblock for Mobile,
|
| FreeTube for PC
| gnyman wrote:
| At least over here in Finland you can get premium light which
| is just 6.99e per month, and does not include youtube music.
|
| Which was the thing that finally made me upgrade, as I already
| have a preferred music streaming service, I refused the premium
| bundle out of principle for a long time.
|
| As a principle, I think each product and service should stand
| by itself and bundling things up just makes the experience
| worse for the end user (Teams etc). But that's a bit different
| discussion.
| SJetKaran wrote:
| Exactly, I would buy YouTube Premium if they have a cheaper
| option without music here in the US
| graftak wrote:
| But that still does not allow for offline playback,
| background playback from a mobile app so they can still suck
| it.
|
| It also makes no sense that you need a family account for
| more than one profile with a single paid account. At least
| price wise it is a tough sell against actual streaming
| services with actual (developed or licensed) content that do
| offer multiple profiles per account.
| honey212 wrote:
| [dead]
| tom901 wrote:
| [dead]
| boughtbars wrote:
| [dead]
| tom901 wrote:
| [dead]
| etchalon wrote:
| YouTube Premium is one the best deals in tech. For 10/mo you get
| a functionally infinite content library that's refreshed every
| day, and you never see an ad.
| honey212 wrote:
| [dead]
| midoridensha wrote:
| This should be interesting. I wonder how (or if) the pop-up
| warning works with 3rd-party apps.
| Verdex wrote:
| I don't really understand either side of the equation here.
|
| So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The
| first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our
| business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't
| paying and them leaving is the goal.
|
| Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts
| weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My
| thought wasn't that I should buy youtube premium to avoid ads. My
| thought WAS that if I ever get falsely flagged, then I'll just
| buy a nebula subscription (or whatever) and never use youtube
| again.
|
| In fact I went over to nebula to check it out.
|
| Somebody has to pay something for youtube to be viable. But
| youtube got big via offering a free service and now if feels like
| they're trying to pull up the ladder behind themselves.
| XorNot wrote:
| The key about ads and ad-blocking is simple: I don't care. I
| don't care about any of these companies. I don't care about
| their costs or business model. And I don't particularly care
| about their product, because it is ephemeral and optional to
| me.
|
| There's far too many people in "business" today who think they
| provide anything of any real, determinable value to me rather
| then a passing fancy which will be easily replaced or
| discarded.
|
| And this doesn't just apply to the content hosters: it also
| applies _to their advertisers_. There is _nothing_ of value
| being advertised these days. It 's _all_ misrepresented junk,
| when it 's not outright scams. It isn't worth _ever_ exposing
| yourself to.
| pengaru wrote:
| +1000
|
| My first thought upon hearing this was "oh, I guess my time
| lost to youtube-dl + mpv of those few channels I have
| bookmarked will finally be reclaimed!" (assuming this breaks
| it)
|
| This move makes zero sense on their part. Cutting off your
| addicts is a horrible approach to being a drug dealer. You
| _always_ keep them hooked to your supply, if you wholly
| interrupt it they 'll quickly seek replacement. That's
| literally what created the illicit opioid crisis - folks lost
| their prescription opioids and immediately pivoted to street
| dealers.
|
| Surely youtube has better options than outright blocking
| users of adblockers... Why wouldn't you first just restrict
| the quality of videos they can access to extremely low-res.
| It lessens the bandwidth burden on you, and may be enough to
| keep them under your spell and away from the competitors
| supply.
| wincy wrote:
| They've already done that in a way, I can only watch 720p
| on mobile with safari + Adblocker and it always always
| between each video resets to 360p unless I tap to change it
| every time. To get higher res than that I have to download
| the app.
| pca006132 wrote:
| I'm really puzzled with the ad business model. I always wonder
| if those silly mobile game ads can get really bring the mobile
| game developer additional revenue? And even for other ads that
| look less stupid comparing with those mobile games, I think I
| had never been attracted to purchase something due to ads, nor
| I would prefer them when I actually need to buy something (note
| that I keep my spending minimal, so I am probably not their
| targets anyway...)
| gbear605 wrote:
| The mobile games are the weirdest to me, because most of them
| that I see are ads for games that are also primarily ad
| supported. It's ads all the way down. I suspect that a lot of
| it is riding on VC funding that will eventually dry up,
| breaking everyone's business models.
| [deleted]
| nness wrote:
| It's almost like the growth plan of every tech company in the
| last decade or so... Grow big by burning capital ("to hell with
| cost of acquisition our CLV will be so high once they're locked
| in"); build an ad network; realise an operating profit; fight
| tooth and nail to protect that ad network...
|
| Even Uber is becoming an ads company...
| amelius wrote:
| There are too many perverse incentives linked to the
| advertisement business model. Perhaps we should just ban it.
| xp84 wrote:
| Question: If you'd rather they didn't exist than be ad-
| supported, why not just ignore them? Surely VC money wasn't
| going to keep things like YouTube, Uber, and the rest
| artificially cheap or free with no strings forever, right?
|
| I feel like due to the VC-enabled delayed monetization that
| tends to happen with startups, we have all (me included)
| become convinced that it's sustainable to expect a bunch of
| ad-free, subscription-free content that just creates itself
| and teleports onto our computer, forever and ever. TANSTAAFL
| though.
| southwesterly wrote:
| On a long enough timeline every company becomes and ads
| company.
| nness wrote:
| It's like "Carcinisation" for tech companies.
| timthelion wrote:
| Are the oil companies ads companies?
| causality0 wrote:
| If lobbying governments to ignore the world slowly
| boiling to death is ads, then yes.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Do you happen to know anybody who denies climate change?
| Because their talking points came from an oil company.
| Verdex wrote:
| Maybe? Every gas pump I've gone to in the past half
| decade has had a TV playing ads at me. So at least part
| of the oil company ecosystem has an ad component.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I recently moved back to a city where I rarely have to
| drive, which is nice, but I was driving a lot last year,
| and "do the pumps have those godawful TV ads or not"
| became my #1 criterion when deciding where to buy gas.
| What an unbearable racket!
| Verdex wrote:
| > Even Uber is becoming an ads company...
|
| Yeah, with youtube it kind of makes sense that the ads would
| be there. Uber (TIL), Windows 11, and non-media
| experiences/services/goods in general looking for ways to
| sell ads makes my skin crawl.
|
| Just wait until doorbells play you an ad when you press the
| button.
|
| If given a single magical wish, I wonder how much havoc I
| could wreck by wishing that immediately before someone
| intends to purchase ad time or join an ad network or whatever
| they mystically gain an understanding of exactly what the ROI
| is going to be for them. My conceit is that 99% of entities
| that purchase ad time have a significantly negative ROI
| because at the end of the day the only thing that an
| advertiser has to be good at selling to exist is their own
| services.
| reaperman wrote:
| Things like doorbells/thermostats/light switches I'm not
| too worried about because they don't have network effects
| -- I can build my own with very little time investment and
| it can have better features and more reliability than most
| other options. The boundary here is currently probably
| TV's, it's insane to me that I can't get an affordable high
| quality TV without tracking and ads. I can block the TV at
| the router, but something like Amazon Sidewalk could be
| used to get around my sandboxing.
|
| Platforms which require network effects to function like
| YouTube, Twitter, Email (deliverability), etc have a
| different dynamic. They're very difficult to abandon once
| you've come to rely on them.
| Longlius wrote:
| > Things like doorbells/thermostats/light switches I'm
| not too worried about because they don't have network
| effects
|
| Until the government comes in and mandates you need such
| and such light switch/thermostat/doorbell because of some
| regulation and conveniently all of the ones on the market
| which meet that spec are adware-infested nightmares.
| Verdex wrote:
| And it doesn't even need to be some sort of authoritarian
| thing. Someone could just offer really cheap, highly
| functional devices that just happen to also have ads.
|
| You can get your own doorbell, but if everyone else has a
| doorbell with ads on it, then you kind of still have to
| deal with it.
|
| "It's okay, I'll just text them instead of going to their
| front door." Oh they'll consider that too. The free
| monthly subscription is only valid when you end up with
| at least 10 ad plays during that month. You don't even
| have to push the button, the doorbell sees you and plays
| the ad. And your friends have an incentive to take just a
| few extra seconds to get to the front door even though
| they texted back that the door was unlocked and they're
| right there.
| wincy wrote:
| I doubt this will happen but then again I never saw "Gas
| Station TV" (the most obnoxious ads ever at the fill
| pump) coming.
|
| I saw a brand new machine for measuring blood pressure at
| the store and sat down because why not. It had
| unskippable screens demanding my personal info then it
| says "gathering your data" for a full THIRTY seconds
| after measuring my blood pressure which was conveniently
| just the amount of time to show me a commercial. It made
| me want to throw up.
|
| I'm sure Walmart threw out all the old blood pressure
| machines that worked for 30 years and put these
| abominations in. It just makes my skin crawl how
| dystopian that machine was.
| dayvid wrote:
| It costs a lot of money to run YouTube. If someone wants to
| make a competitor, they're free to do so, but most will charge
| because of how expensive it is or you could use a PeerTube-like
| system. I pay for YouTube Premium and get value out of YouTube.
| I'm also an adult with a decent paying job so it's not a big
| deal for me.
|
| Maybe the mistake of these conglomerates is getting people
| accustomed to a certain level of service for free.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nebula charges about $10 a year, and makes a pretty good
| profit right now.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Why would you not use an ad blocker?
| recursive wrote:
| Perhaps because you believe that using an ad blocker
| escalates an arms race that leads to bad outcomes for all
| internet users.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Good point. I don't know what were their expectations for
| audience reaction. It surely wasn't "oh I need to turn off my
| adblocker then" or "oh, YouTube Premium, that's neat, lemme get
| my credit card".
|
| For me, it was, in order:
|
| - "Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop
| everything and read the damn article right now, because it
| could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account",
| which is kinda _big fucking deal_.
|
| - [Couple paragraphs later] oh, only disabling playback. Whew,
| cancel red alert.
|
| - My kids will _not_ be happy though the first time it hits.
| Neither will we, because YouTube + AdBlock is the easiest way
| to play our 4yo and 2yo music, without exposing them to the
| brain poison of modern advertising at this early age.
|
| - (The next easiest one is NewPipe or yt-dlp, + some manual
| fixup, + an old phone working as an off-line music player.)
|
| - (Also no joke on brain poison. The way kids react to an ad
| that occasionally slips by us is a perfect measure of how
| fucked up advertising is.)
|
| - Oh well, let's hope NewPipe keeps working.
|
| - ... also, what took them so long? I expected this so many
| years ago that I actually forgot this could happen.
|
| BTW. is it only me, or is 2023 the year of "enshittification"
| of SaaS shifting into high gear? Like the layoff wave earlier,
| this also feels like suddenly happening everywhere at the same
| time.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > because it could be "three strikes and you lose your Google
| account", which is kinda big fraking deal.
|
| Google accounts are fragile like people; they can suddenly
| cease operation, for no known reason.
|
| I keep everything Google isolated. It's all in it's own
| browser or container. As for youtube, it ~only gets watched
| on a dedicated device attached to a TV.
| Verdex wrote:
| > Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop
| everything and read the damn article right now, because it
| could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account",
| which is kinda big fucking deal.
|
| This is an interesting point. Like, they're not doing it
| today, but ... yeah, I might checkout the alternative
| streaming services again when I get a moment. Because you
| know if this initiative doesn't make a chart start to go
| upwards, then sooner or later somebody in a board room is
| going to suggest it. Better to just get off of youtube now.
|
| > (Also no joke on brain poison. The way kids react to an ad
| that occasionally slips by us is a perfect measure of how
| fucked up advertising is.)
|
| My kids absolutely freak out whenever they see an ad. "What's
| happening? Is the TV broken?" I feel like their reaction is
| proof that I've done at least one thing right as a parent.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yeah, Google has me by the balls because they have my Gmail
| account. Time to write to my representatives telling them
| that Google is too big and I support anti-trust
| enforcement.
| nprateem wrote:
| Jeez it's like HN just learnt a new word. Would love to never
| read enshittification again. Someone uses it on every other
| submission. This is what happens when cheap money ends and
| businesses actually need some profitability.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I hate this word, but it seems to have caught on, so I
| don't feel like quibbling over the label we use to name the
| problem - it kind of distracts from the problem itself.
| Specifically, I gave up after I discovered this term was
| either coined or popularized by Cory Doctorow - if he's
| pushing it, I may just as well accept it.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Enshittification, Immiseration, Impoverishment
|
| The words likely to sum up this decade.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Disenfranchisement was one of those for the prior decade.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's not gone
| [deleted]
| timmytokyo wrote:
| I hope the word becomes more pervasive. I would like to see
| people start calling tech CEOs "Chief Enshittification
| Officers". The more the word enters the lexicon, the more
| the enshittifiers will begin to feel at least some
| resistance -- similar to the way "second-hand smoke" helped
| to trigger the decline in cigarette use in the west.
|
| The era of free money may be over, but that doesn't mean
| we're required to present our gaping maws willingly as
| receptacles for the enshittifiers' effluent.
| nprateem wrote:
| No totally. But it was fun while it lasted and if you
| don't want to help them make some money that's fair
| enough. No point being too disappointed though. C'est la
| vie
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > My kids will not be happy though the first time it hits.
| Neither will we, because YouTube + AdBlock is the easiest way
| to play our 4yo and 2yo music, without exposing them to the
| brain poison of modern advertising at this early age.
|
| This isn't worth 40 cents a day to you? 20 cents per child
| per day? You can't even get a banana for 20 cents these days.
| judge2020 wrote:
| YouTube Premium reached 50 Million subscribers in 2021, so
| they're doing pretty well: https://blog.youtube/news-and-
| events/50-million/
| imbnwa wrote:
| I wonder how many subscribers watch YouTube on a smart TV?
| That's solely the reason I subscribe myself as I can't
| install an ad blocker there and as far as I know things
| like pi-hole cant block ads in Smart TV streams either.
| throwaway462910 wrote:
| On Android TV there's SmartTubeNext, not sure about
| anything else, it's funny that Google's platform is the
| one that's easiest to block their ads on
| charrondev wrote:
| > YouTube + AdBlock is the easiest way to play our 4yo and
| 2yo music, without exposing them to the brain poison of
| modern advertising at this early age.
|
| How is this easier than paying a subscription? You get ad-
| free YouTube and YouTube music.
|
| I've listened to 1000s of hours of YouTube since I started my
| premium subscription with 0 advertisements. We paid a few
| dollars more for a family plan and now my father and
| grandfather no longer watch ads either.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I've listened to 1000s of hours of YouTube since I
| started my premium subscription with 0 advertisements.
|
| If most people choose to do this, your _premium_
| subscription will start to have a few _premium, curated_
| ads, and you 'll have to buy the next tier up to get ad-
| free again. Four years later, you'll have to by the next
| tier up just to get the premium, curated ads back.
| xp84 wrote:
| > your premium subscription will start to have a few
| premium, curated ads, and you'll have to buy the next
| tier up to get ad-free again.
|
| This has never happened to me even once with any service
| that I pay for. Hulu is the closest, but they replaced a
| free tier with a cheap-with-ads tier. Their expensive
| tier at least once had "some ads that were contractually
| required" but i never saw them.
|
| And I think if "most people" paid for YTP they'd be
| drowning in revenue so I doubt that they'd be desperate
| to screw that up by repositioning YTP as something other
| than "ad-free."
|
| I might get flamed for this, but while I see the reason
| to hate and adblock mainstream sites that have awful ads
| and have no paid ad-free option (see most newspapers and
| TV stations, especially local ones, everything that has
| those idiotic bottom-feeding ads at the bottom of an
| article, Yahoo, AOL, Newsweek, Gizmodo etc.) ... in
| contrast, YTP is there, it's twelve bucks a month, I
| don't see why anyone wouldn't pay for it instead of
| trying to cheat. Not saying it's a crime or even immoral,
| but they don't owe you video content and trying to
| subvert the conditions they place on access seems like
| basically cheating. Kind of like not paying your water
| bill (when you could afford it) and just using the public
| restroom next door 10 times a day. Not illegal, but...
| seems like a bad plan.
| Draiken wrote:
| Not to mention you basically can't skip the in-video
| sponsors that content creators need to survive. I pay for
| premium and watch it on the TV (no SponsoBlock there), so
| it's getting to a point where I'm holding the fucking
| remote/phone to skip ads on every freaking video.
|
| I absolutely hate this.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Do the creators need sponsorships to survive? I have no
| idea about how YouTuber revenue works.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _How is this easier than paying a subscription? You get
| ad-free YouTube and YouTube music._
|
| First of all, isn't YouTube Music dead? Didn't it die twice
| already? Secondly, I don't know. I didn't look into YouTube
| Premium _precisely because_ they 're pushing it _way_ too
| hard. I don 't trust Google, I don't trust them handling
| ads and child-related content on YouTube right, after
| various YouTube Kids fiascoes. I don't trust people who are
| pushing their products/services this hard - so far, I was
| never wrong. Whatever curiosity I had about YouTube
| Premium, they burned it by the third time in a day I got
| interrupted by a full-screen "activate a trial" ad,
| optimized to have distracted people subscribe by mistake.
|
| Not to mention, the way YouTube Premium story evolves, this
| really feels like extortion. It technically isn't, and
| they're in their rights, but _perception matters_ - and
| because of that, I 'm willing to spend a lot of effort, and
| even a lot of money _with someone else_ , just to not have
| to deal with YouTube Premium, YouTube ads and other YouTube
| bullshit, while retaining easy access on the relatively
| infrequent occasion I want to play something from their
| catalogue.
| recursive wrote:
| > First of all, isn't YouTube Music dead? Didn't it die
| twice already?
|
| Nope. Never died. I've been using it for at least a year.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| Good points. Just to answer, Google is dying. Search and
| YouTube are legacy technology. It looks like they hit a
| runaway economic train where they must enshittify their
| product worse to keep the balance shit, which drives more
| people away, which requires further enshittification.
| Google is in major trouble.
| jvolkman wrote:
| YouTube Music replaced Google Play Music, which is what
| Google shut down. I use YouTube Music all the time.
| xp84 wrote:
| As for YouTube, what should they do? I see 3 options but
| maybe I'm missing some:
|
| 1. Make everyone pay
|
| 2. Make everyone either watch ads or pay, user's choice
|
| 3. Eliminate all ads. Since there would be little reason to
| sign up for YTP once ads are eliminated, they're going to
| have to have "Pledge drives" where they try to beg you to pay
| just out of generosity, to support a public service for all.
| Somehow this seems like it'll never not lose huge amounts of
| money.
|
| 4. (sort of the status quo up till now) Nerds get to block
| ads, and are subsidized by Premium subscribers and suckers.
|
| Admittedly option 3 sounds stupid, I just can't think of any
| other options for YouTube where it doesn't cease to exist.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > BTW. is it only me, or is 2023 the year of
| "enshittification" of SaaS shifting into high gear?
|
| I think the West is escalating its war on user control of
| _anything_ networkable, and content blocking is a security
| hole. Western governments prefer that everyone be using the
| same few monitorable, censorable, and compliant communication
| mediums in the same way, and is ignoring or supporting
| massive private media /tech businesses when needed in order
| to reach that goal.
| sendos wrote:
| Honest question: if you and your kids use YouTube to the
| degree you describe, why not pay for the ad free experience?
| Why go through so many hoops? Is it the amount of money, is
| it the principle, or something else?
| nmilo wrote:
| HN readers massively overestimate the willingness of the
| average person to "fight the power" or whatever. When Netflix
| cracked down on password sharing, I was fully expecting
| people to realize how bad Netflix has become and to move on
| to other platforms. Everyone here thought they were shooting
| themselves in the foot. But no, the password sharing fix did
| exactly what they wanted it to do, and subscriptions actually
| increased. The truth is that no one but a couple of techies
| know or care what NewPipe or yt-dl are. This move by YouTube
| will work and there's not really anything we can do about it.
| recursive wrote:
| > people to realize how bad Netflix has become and to move
| on to other platforms
|
| What's supposed to be bad about it. I'm still using Netflix
| and never even shared my password the first time. I like
| it.
| gbear605 wrote:
| More than half of my non-techie friends have cancelled
| their Netflix subscriptions in the last few months because
| of the changes. They were already on the edge of having it
| anyway, so when Netflix said to pay twice as much they just
| left.
| aio2 wrote:
| It's cause some people are so fucking stupid
| Brometheus wrote:
| They could also, like, go back where they would show a
| meaningful ad every 10 videos. and not 4 with every video you
| attempt to watch.
| Loughla wrote:
| My child watched a 10 minute video the other day on a machine
| that doesn't have an adblocker installed on it.
|
| There were 4 "commercial breaks" of 2, unskippable 30 second
| ads. So, 4 minutes extra.
|
| That's an extra 40% of the original video length (10
| minutes). That's 30% of the total length (14 minutes).
|
| It's almost exactly the same as broadcast tv, maybe slightly
| high? TV averages 12-20 minutes per 60 of tv being ads.
|
| Not really sure what to do with that. It feels like I should
| be upset, but really, it's proportionate to what already
| exists and I'm only upset because it's worse than it was 10
| years ago.
| Reubachi wrote:
| In your summary, you described: -A service you pay for
| (traditional cable) has 30-40 percent of it's time
| -dedicated to charging you more. (time cost to watch the
| ads). -It has gotten worse both traditionally and on
| streaming media. -Your child, who is in no way associated
| with the payment structure, is forced to absorb malicious
| ads despite being too young to consent to the information
| being "forced". -(my observation) Media spot advertising
| does not work, is largely targeted incorectly.
|
| We're PAYING for our kids to become desensitized to
| attention-vampiricity and we're unsure if it is ok to be
| upset? Yes!
| keb_ wrote:
| > So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The
| first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our
| business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they
| aren't paying and them leaving is the goal.
|
| I use an ad blocker. If I can no longer block ads on YouTube,
| yes I will just stop using YouTube, or use an Invidious/Piped
| instance. I think your mistake is believing everyone who uses
| ad-block also believes ad-free YouTube is worth paying for. I
| do not.
|
| Further, if Invidious, Piped, NewPipe, and yt-dlp stop working
| as well, I will simply just watch drastically less YouTube,
| which is what Google wants.
|
| > Somebody has to pay something for youtube to be viable.
|
| I don't care. Would I care if YouTube was run by a small
| company that didn't employ dark patterns or fuel unhealthy
| addiction of innappropriate content in kids? Probably, but
| YouTube is run by megacorp, so no, I don't care about their
| server costs.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| >I think your mistake is believing everyone who uses ad-block
| also believes ad-free YouTube is worth paying for. I do not.
|
| No, they are saying that they will not "lose your business"
| because there was no business in the first place, which is
| true.
| asdff wrote:
| Nonpaying users still have value. If they didn't, companies
| wouldn't pay for bots to follow them on social media.
| keb_ wrote:
| It was hard to parse that sentence; I see now what they
| meant, thank you. Although that also seems to imply ad-
| block users are indignant. I don't mind leaving YouTube.
| techwizrd wrote:
| I have YouTube Red so I'm not affected, but I really hate how
| it's implemented for Google accounts with your own domain.
| Bringing your own domain and paying Google for the privilege
| makes you a second-class citizen with Google services. I oppose
| this because paying Google is not enough, and often makes for a
| worse customer experience.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Not yet. See Netflix. They will push ads on paying customers
| and then add a higher tier that is ad free (saying nothing
| about you, you might just pay more to stay add free, no
| judgment about you here)
| kurthr wrote:
| Yep, see CNN!
|
| Remember when you paid for cable so there weren't ads (yeah,
| I'm old)?
|
| The best was a retrospective (20th or 25th) on CNN one
| NewYears in the early 2000s, which had old footage of CNN. In
| one of them, the anchors were bragging about how they didn't
| have ads that biased their coverage of events... Then it
| broke to an ad. I had to laugh, because the (unpaid?) intern
| who put that together had to know how it was going to look
| when actually viewed by the public.
| AzulMarino wrote:
| Summary of this discussion: https://tinyurl.com/3y4xfw5r
| patrickdavey wrote:
| Just make YouTube lite available everywhere...
| BasedAnon wrote:
| "You have nothing! Nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do
| with all your strength."
| stefanos82 wrote:
| What a fascinating opportunity is given to us to finally break
| free from YouTube and computer in general; no more cat videos
| lol!
| thomas9012 wrote:
| [dead]
| dizzycaviar wrote:
| [dead]
| oldmen983 wrote:
| [dead]
| dizzycaviar wrote:
| [dead]
| oldmen983 wrote:
| [dead]
| pcurve wrote:
| More ads, more blockers.
|
| Use of blocker has been on the rise because YT has been failing
| in modulating amount of ads vs annoyance.
|
| Rooster coming home to roost. And not for users, but for YT. They
| should tread carefully.
| thomas9012 wrote:
| [dead]
| phoneworld23 wrote:
| [dead]
| tchbnl wrote:
| Can't blame Google for finally getting to the point of doing
| this. There's probably a lot of extra money left on the table
| because of ad blockers.
|
| YouTube isn't a public service. You can either pay the $12/mo for
| Premium for no ads and other perks or watch ads to subsidize the
| site.
| redeeman wrote:
| or you can just block it, atleast for now. an option that many
| choose to make use of :)
| bitwize wrote:
| "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're
| going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on
| an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch
| the button you're actually stealing programming." --Jamie Kellner
| phoneworld23 wrote:
| [dead]
| clark9082 wrote:
| [dead]
| dogleash wrote:
| I pay for twitch turbo, I even had youtube tv during football
| season. So I'm not that cost sensitive, and don't oppose giving
| youtube money for a service.
|
| But logging in on every browser and device I watch youtube on?
| Fuck, I'd rather not. Also, I _never_ login to my personal google
| account at work.
|
| Before google bought youtube, my account there was called
| something like "duntwantacct".
| incident5 wrote:
| [dead]
| clark9082 wrote:
| [dead]
| stevenicr wrote:
| The primary reason I use an adblocker is to prevent malware /
| viruses.
|
| I would be more accepting of ads in general if:
|
| 1 - they were all served from the primary websites server - eg
| yahoo blaming third party ad servers for injecting virus scripts
| and taking no responsibility is not okay with me.
|
| 2 - I had easy choices to block ads for things like gambling and
| alcohol at the ip level, not just browser level.
|
| 3 - no flashing animated ads on static text pages. I am amazed at
| some pages I see trying to read 6 sentences and instead I get
| three at a time with 3 moving ads taking up most of the space.
|
| Obviously it'd be fine to have moving ads during a 'commercial
| break' in a video.. but overlay a banner over it or next to it
| and having it moving is just wrong imho.
|
| I didn't use youtube much at all for a long time, but have
| recently trained the thing to give me interesting videos about
| CSS, new tools like framer io, clickup, AI, 'productizing' and
| other helpful content is now available to me easier now..
|
| So if I could not block ads on youtube now, I would have to pay
| the $12 for premium if that's what it costs.. I would suggest
| having a checkbox to add in a $5 bucket for tips to content
| creators and give a way to tip multiple of 10 cents or something
| - as I would like to support some of the folks adding value to
| the platform, and I'm guessing going 12 premium wouldn't help
| them much if at all.
|
| A few days ago I brought up some lists of 'YT watch history' -
| it's a decent amount for me the past few months - if 2 minutes of
| time was added to each one, and I had an employer, that company
| would be burning a fair amount of money for me to wait for ads
| each week at this point.
|
| I also worry that ads at beginning of videos can be unfair when
| it seems a good percentage of videos I click then skip into a bit
| and find that they are not what I was expecting / hoping for and
| the click itself, 3 second buffering, and 2 second seek - were a
| huge waste of time, I can't imagine getting hit with added ads in
| those equations.
| anurag6892 wrote:
| 51% of the $12 premium is distributed to creators of videos one
| watches.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > they were all served from the primary websites server
|
| > I had easy choices to block ads for things like gambling and
| alcohol at the ip level
|
| ???
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, I really want one of those ethical ad programs to go
| somewhere - limit the JavaScript substantially and serve
| everything first party, use Cloudflare/Apple's PAT scheme to
| assert real user presence vs. spoofing, etc. The problem is
| that advertisers really want cross domain tracking so we really
| need tracking protection to become popular enough that they're
| willing to give up that dream, and that's not going to happen
| with Chrome.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Most ads are a pile of garbage crafted in a way to brainwash
| people into thinking they need something that they actually
| don't. And the more sophisticated they are, the more costly they
| become and need to be pushed again and again down the users
| throats to remain profitable. My point is that unless there is
| some sort of pro-users regulation against advertising, ads use
| will be abused just like anything that is not regulated is abused
| by the strongest animals in the pack at the expense of the
| weakest. Those of us who remember how was surfing the web in its
| infancy recall the text ads, the small banners, then side frames,
| then animated ones, then popups, then interstitials, then videos
| with one ad at the beginning, then more ads scattered during play
| time, etc. Advertising has been growing since day one, and will
| continue to grow; no matter what the users accept today, it won't
| be enough tomorrow, and more and more annoyances will come. This
| must be stopped, either by regulation or by the use of ad
| blocking. I think we'll see some development in AI regarding this
| field. If i had the skills, I'd explore the possibility of a
| headless browser that unbeknownst to Google uses local AI to
| fully play ad filled videos, then remove all crap and pass them
| to the user browser.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but
| something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is
| _why_ people block ads.
|
| It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody
| blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter
| or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers
| became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually
| and audibly), in your face, and resource hungry (remember those
| flash ads that'd keep your CPU pegged?). The web became unusable
| if you didn't have a blocker installed.
|
| Web advertisers seem like a classic case of taking miles when
| given an inch.
| traveler01 wrote:
| Its a vicious cycle. The more adblocking people do the worse
| that ads get since they need to be more agressive to make more
| money to make for the people who use AdBlock.
| nprateem wrote:
| This doesn't make sense. If I've blocked ads I won't see them
| regardless how obnoxious you make them.
| kergonath wrote:
| "You made me do it" is a standard gaslighting technique,
| common in abusive relationships. If they want compliance,
| they just have to be nice. A sequence of 3 ads, some of them
| uninterruptible, before a 10-minutes video, plus breaks in
| the middle is _not_ being nice, particularly as they jump up
| the volume to painful levels every time.
|
| No amount of content justifies subjecting ourselves to this
| brain washing. And I'm not even talking about malware in ads
| (not on YouTube, but since you mention Adblock...)
| paulddraper wrote:
| > "You made me do it" is a standard gaslighting technique
|
| Is the comment wrong? Or is it right?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's wrong. In a magical world with zero ad blocking,
| advertising is still multiple different players all
| competing with each other who will jump at ramping up
| effectiveness no matter how damaging it could be. It's a
| competition for a limited resource and there's a ratchet
| effect.
| timmg wrote:
| > "You made me do it" is a standard gaslighting technique,
| common in abusive relationships....
|
| Amusingly, when I first started reading this I thought you
| were referring to all the comments justifying using ad
| blockers for the various reasons.
|
| Funny that things like this go both ways...
| barrkel wrote:
| Part of it is justifying the ad load by comparison with
| American broadcast TV (up to 18 minutes of every hour),
| while not recognizing that that level of ad load is not
| well known in Europe, for one thing.
| pengaru wrote:
| Adblocker use is not responsible for Google's need to
| constantly impress its shareholders every quarter.
|
| Don't forget YouTube used to let you skip _all_ ads, it wasn
| 't even that long ago.
|
| None of this is the result of blockers. It's the result of
| Alphabet needing to earn more money and becoming increasingly
| desperate to snatch up every little bit left on the table.
|
| On the plus side, this is only making it easier to compete
| with them. They're increasingly turning YouTube into what
| broadcast television has become; a raging dumpster fire of
| advertising and propaganda.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| "Need to" is doing a lot of work here; do they really _need
| to_ , or are they just hungry for countless more low-tax
| billions (i.e. want to)?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Some ads also contain(ed) crypto miners and malware in general,
| in addition to all of what you said. My feeling is that Google
| should be free to do what they feel they have to, and ad-
| blockers should feel free to engage in an arms race with them.
|
| The worst that happens is Google drives away a chunk of its
| user base, opening the door for competition.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Google controls the vast majority of the "user agents" on the
| internet, and I suspect Manifest v3 has some role to play in
| this.
| pimanrules wrote:
| This annoyed me particularly _because_ I pay for YouTube
| premium... but I can 't sign into my Google account on my work
| computer. So if they block ad blockers, paying for YouTube
| isn't even enough to get rid of the ads for me.
| ck2 wrote:
| How long do you figure until youtube premium also starts
| showing ads, just promising fewer than the free edition?
|
| Because other services have done that model change too.
|
| Another possibility is google could kill gmail accounts from
| youtube ad blockers someday, who is going to stop them?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| While annoyance certainly plays a role, it's not the primary
| reason why I block ads.
|
| No, I block ads because they are _fucking malicious and
| dangerous_. As far as I 'm concerned, an ad in this day and age
| is literally malware. I am not going to even try and tolerate
| that bullshit. Adblockers are an anti-virus measure.
|
| Ads are malvertisements and deserve to be blocked with the fury
| of a thousand suns.
| hedora wrote:
| People also block ads because they are worried about privacy
| and profiling.
|
| I can't pay google to stop profiling me, so there's no way I'm
| paying for youtube premium.
|
| [edit: honestly, the new three strikes for ad blockers policy
| looks like a usability improvement to me. It makes sure I don't
| watch more than three videos without clearing cookies]
| mihaaly wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| But they do not take my second inch, let alone a mile. I simply
| avoid places with agressive ads, like youtube (and the products
| advertised), and TV in general long long ago. I stopped to care
| about the content, not least because the content thinned up
| with plethora of ad hungry nothing, uninteresting, deceiving,
| ad optimised nothing. Content pushed on me based on ad strategy
| and not my interest, navigating to something truely similar or
| favoured is obscured (just like in movie streaming services
| wich pushes trends and obfuscates navigation). Not to mention
| the shameless tracking. No point going to such places, there is
| plenty of life elsewhere.
| Macha wrote:
| > This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium,
| but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to
| grasp is why people block ads.
|
| As many services like Hulu, cable TV or even just premium
| hardware have shown, paying for a service doesn't mean a
| company will never succumb to the perceived revenue opportunity
| of showing ads to paying subscribers too. I also pay for
| premium, but it's very much a case of "Doesn't affect me.. yet"
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Compare it with TV though, which is what youtube is; nobody
| blocked ads because they couldn't, there was no escaping them
| unless you physically exit the room. In my country that worked,
| because ads were neat 5 minute blocks every 15 odd minutes, but
| in the US it seems every few minutes there's an ad interrupting
| - but they're too short to tune out / do something else. The
| news channels are even worse, where the energy levels of the
| ads overlap with the news so there's less of a clear boundary
| between the two.
|
| Re: web ads, they were bad, but then Google came in and showed
| that they can be non-disruptive as well, their plain text ads
| took over the online ad market. For a while anyway.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Speak for yourself, I blocked TV ads since 1999 when I bought
| a TiVo series 1.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Back when I still watched cable which was ~14 years ago at my
| parents' house, I used a TiVo to do so partially because it
| allowed me to skip ads (the other reason being so I could
| catch late night programs the next day).
|
| After moving out I never subscribed to cable or satellite and
| don't watch terrestrial broadcasts either, partially because
| of the advertising. If I were to subscribe now it'd probably
| be contingent on my ability to use a modern TiVo-like DVR for
| the same reasons.
| TingPing wrote:
| I had a VCR that auto-skipped commercials 20 years ago.
| crummy wrote:
| How did it work? How did it know the difference between an
| ad and regular tv?
| TingPing wrote:
| I believe it detected the hard cut between content and
| commercial. It was honestly flawless as long as I had it.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Watching live TV is outright painful with the sheer amount of
| time spent on ads.
|
| I mean, just watching a show on whatever streaming source...a
| "30 minute" show is typically more like 21:30 to 22:30 long.
| That means 7:30 to 8:30 of the time is ads. At least 25% of
| the time.
|
| 6 minutes of content, 2 minutes of ads. It's awful, and it
| feels so much worse when watching a movie. Movies are all
| about building tension for an hour or more, and that feeling
| of build-up is just _destroyed_ by ad breaks.
|
| How anybody can stand that is beyond me.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And of course it's not 22 minutes of content and 8 minutes
| of ads, it's 1 minute of ads played 8 times, because that's
| more effective at brainwashing you than not buying up all
| the ad space to prevent anyone else from getting your
| attention.
|
| And then the ads are designed to be seen one time, so when
| they get repetitive you start noticing things that you
| wouldn't care about after one showing but will drive you
| insane after you see it for the 50th time in a row. An
| actor flubbed their line and they didn't fix it, a laugh
| sounds a little awkward, a sound is out of place, all sorts
| of things that pique your subconscious and you can't tune
| out.
|
| How many of you can sing an advertising jingle from your
| childhood decades later? That is clearly a crime against
| humanity.
| SCdF wrote:
| >there was no escaping them unless you physically exit the
| room.
|
| I have no idea what you did when TV was still relevant, but
| when ads came on my family used to either change channel or
| mute the tv and talk about stuff until the show came back on.
| You got very good at feeling out how long ad blocks were and
| switching back at the right time.
|
| Regardless though, there were strict laws on the ads that you
| could put on TV, the claims you could make, how you could
| master them (ie sound volume), and in what timeslots.
|
| Based on the scams you endlessly see in YouTube ads, I'm
| pretty sure they don't bother with any of that.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In the US at least, "Truth in advertising" laws are
| anything but. They have loopholes you could drive a train
| through.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I only ever watch TV when there's a sporting event on. But
| every time I've noticed two things:
|
| - Just how many ads there are. And it's not even that there
| are a bunch of different ads, it's the same 3-4 ads played in
| a loop.
|
| - The absurd number of drug commercials. The last time I was
| I was at a friends place to watch a football game we played a
| drinking came called "ask your doctor". Anytime a drug ad
| said "ask your doctor is X is right for you", you take a
| shot. We were all drunk by the end of the game.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I'm assuming you're not watching American football. That
| has become so much 'the game is filler between the ads'
| that they stop the live game in the stadium (TV timeout) so
| as not to annoy people being fed ads watching it on TV.
| skydhash wrote:
| Maybe that's why they won't promote soccer in the US.
| 2x45 minutes of game separated by only 15 minutes. And I
| wish the NBA was like F1 where you pay a subscription and
| you have access to pretty much everything. I don't mind
| sponsored labels and name drops.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more
| loud (both visually and audibly),
|
| Too bad the FCC's CALM act can't be applied to the internet as
| well: "The CALM Act applies only to commercials aired on
| television--it does not apply to radio commercials or
| commercials aired on the internet or via streaming services."
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/areas/sound-volume-commercia...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The FCC cannot regulate internet communications, by law.
| That's not the proper agency. Maybe the FTC or maybe a new
| federal law.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Like I said, it's too bad. Doesn't matter the hows and whys
| of the fact.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I block ads because they're psychological warfare that
| corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the
| ads are. I don't care if the ads don't track me. I grew up
| changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping
| adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. I
| vote for billboard bans whenever I can. I have zero tolerance
| for ads of any sort.
|
| Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved.
| They'll eagerly exploit a teenager's self-conscious body issues
| to sell useless beauty products. They sell sugar water to fat
| people and at every turn promote the rampant consumerist
| culture that is destroying our planet. They're lower than pond
| scum and I never want to see a single ad from them ever.
| notyourwork wrote:
| > psychological warfare
|
| I have bad news for you. The world is also out to get you if
| you classify digital advertisements as warfare. Obnoxious
| yes, warfare, no you can willingly avoid surfaces.
| dogleash wrote:
| > The world is also out to get you if you classify digital
| advertisements as warfare.
|
| The world is out to get _everyone_. Just in ways we pretend
| don 't count, so we don't have think too hard about it.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I block ads because they 're psychological warfare that
| corporations wage against me._
|
| Preach it. Blocking ads is tantamount to washing your hands
| or wearing a condom. It's simply good mental hygiene.
| zeekaran wrote:
| I wish this view was mainstream. I also used to change the
| channel when ads came on, or at least muted and briefly did
| something else. I will never tolerate ads, and especially
| never pay to be advertized at.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I'm curious: what's the alternative to ads then? How do you
| find new stuff that you might need?
| theossuary wrote:
| Hah I've run into this exact issue. I've always been the
| same way, if a medium has unblockable/unremovable ads I'd
| tend not to consume it; things like radio, magazines, etc.
| But I realized when I wanted to buy something I didn't even
| know what brands were in the space. It made doing research
| a bit trickier.
|
| That doesn't mean ads are necessary though, frankly any
| system which depends on spending more than your competitors
| will never produce the best recommendations. Instead I
| learned to first build a list of companies in a space, then
| research those companies. I use things like Wirecutter,
| Reddit, and Productchart to help decide as well.
|
| What I need aren't ads; I need good, user-centric,
| recommendation and discovery products. Sadly we fell into
| the local-minimum of ads instead. That said sometimes I do
| choose to let a company advertise to me in a specific
| channel (separate email or social media account) so I can
| keep up with their products and potential deals. That seems
| like a good middle ground for me.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| > But I realized when I wanted to buy something I didn't
| even know what brands were in the space.
|
| I this is one of the reasons why Reddit became so popular
| Konnstann wrote:
| At least if I get an advertisement I immediately
| understand the biases behind whoever served it to me,
| with stuff like reddit or blogs I can never be sure how
| astroturfed it is, or whether the people reviewing things
| even know what they are talking about.
|
| I'm not a proponent of advertising in the modern sense,
| but it's probably the least dishonest way that companies
| pay to promote their product. Professional reviewers are
| a good medium but it takes time to find those in a new
| space where you're not sure if their standards and
| preferences match yours
| ambicapter wrote:
| ...Talking...to people?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Talking to people, and seeking things out myself when I
| perceive a need for something. If my shoes wear out then
| I'll decide for myself to seek out new shoes at a shoe
| store. If I don't know what brands are good, I ask other
| people what brand they use and if they're happy with it.
|
| If I'm missing out on some product that I might like but
| I've never heard of because I block ads, that doesn't
| matter to me. If I don't know that I would want it, then I
| don't want for it. But generally, people talk about things
| worth talking about and I'd rather hear about new products
| from real people who don't have a commercial stake in
| promoting the thing.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| lol
| tetraca wrote:
| Without advertisements, you have to be bothered by things
| enough to actually want to implement or look up a solution.
| When it comes to banal consumer goods, if you can't think
| of a product on your own, you probably don't actually need
| it.
| strongly-typed wrote:
| [dead]
| jordanpg wrote:
| The more important question is what can replace the ad-
| based business model of the internet?
|
| Other than paid subscriptions, which is only a partial
| solution.
| cewweftg wrote:
| I am struggling to know if this is a troll or not?
|
| I don't let Ads tell me what I 'might' need. I already know
| what I need (I might 'want' something but that is a
| different topic).
|
| Ads try to convince me that I 'need' whatever it is they
| are 'selling'.
| christofosho wrote:
| Not OP but anecdotal experience: Every once in a while I'll
| go to a store and wander the isles. I see things that I
| find interesting, but most of the time I don't buy them.
| Sometimes I think to myself: I would love to know more
| about topic X. So I use search engines and forums to look
| for more information on topic X. I happily filter ads
| because there is no net positive benefit from them for my
| life. I get excited about things without them, find things
| I need without them, and have no trouble with either.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Yes, this is the question for the ages. How can you
| _possibly_ survive if you don 't buy more stuff you didn't
| even know you needed. Clearly, that more than justifies any
| and all intrusive, exploitive, unethical practices. Won't
| someone think of the children (buying stuff they don't
| need).
|
| P.S.: I have had any number of marketing types push back
| (vehemently) when I expressed my distaste for oppressive ad
| overload with "well _you_ tell me what the alternative
| is...how else am I supposed to reach customers ". And I
| have stopped even trying to be nice about it: Figuring that
| out is _your goddam job_. My job would be _vastly_ easier
| if I could just say "all that stuff about ethics,
| regulation, legislation and simple common decency...that's
| really inconvenient and I'm going to ignore it". But I
| don't get to ignore any of that; I still successfully do my
| job. So why should marketing be somehow different.
|
| Anyone in marketing who says " _You_ tell _me_ how to do my
| job without crapping on people " is lazy and incompetent.
| flangola7 wrote:
| >what's the alternative to ads then? How do you find new
| stuff that you might need?
|
| How did it we accomplish it for the earlier 99.99% of human
| history?
| vikramkr wrote:
| The earlier 99 percent of human history was pretty
| garbage. Ads are pretty garbage too but I really don't
| get why people keep doing this thing where they're like
| "well how did we manage in the past?" In the past we just
| died of war and disease and stuff. The past is awful.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The past was awful for lots of reasons of course, but one
| was that we just weren't very productive. We're pretty
| productive nowadays. We could at least try a system where
| there's enough stuff, but we find it naturally or by
| carefully weighing the pros and cons.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >but we find it naturally or by carefully weighing the
| pros and cons.
|
| This system doesn't make sense... the incentives for
| producers don't line up with reality. Producers are
| incentivized to find ways to break your rules and
| advertise as if they do it alone, they will profit
| massively.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >The earlier 99 percent of human history was pretty
| garbage.
|
| I don't think ads are what changed this.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I'm not saying ads are good. I'm saying the comparison to
| the past is stupid and it doesn't help the case against
| ads.
| pixl97 wrote:
| That's really kind of an ignorant statement...
|
| I would speculate that if all ads disappeared right now,
| you would be without a job in mere days. Simply put
| economies work these days because people buy endless
| amounts of shit they don't need. The parts of our
| economies that provide necessities are minority factors
| today, as where you creep back over 150 years and 'needs'
| were the vast majority of work in an economy.
|
| I'm definitely not saying we're in a good state
| currently, but breaking our current state without a state
| replacement plan isn't going to put us in a better
| position.
| OJFord wrote:
| I see ads when I watch Youtube on my TV, and basically not
| otherwise. I have _never_ seen one and thought Oh yeah I
| want /need that, more often it's laughably off base. They
| could've trivially targeted to the video, but instead
| decided I might have some niche health concern which is
| demographically impossible.
|
| Typically the content I'm trying to watch (even if
| unsponsored) is a far superior advert. I didn't know I
| wanted a powered/active cooler box (and definitely don't
| need one) until I saw an AvE video of one last night. Now
| I'd quite like Makita's, and in fact now I come to think of
| it I did even share the link with someone who _is_ in the
| market for one. But the malgorithms did their best to make
| me learn about and want to buy shitty VPNs and maltesers
| instead. If I 'm watching tool/DIY videos give me the tool
| ads? I might actually be interested? I might warm to the
| brand, associating it with my favourite channels?
|
| Not that I _want_ to be manipulated like that, it just
| seems bafflingly poorly targeted whenever I do see them
| that it 's irritating and I'm glad I block them everywhere
| else.
| mock-possum wrote:
| You go out and do your own research, you ask the people you
| trust for their own personal experiences.
| Solvency wrote:
| Right! Most days I'm just mindlessly clawing around my
| house, desperately unaware of what I "need" to live without
| the aid of hundreds of slow-loading data-tracking
| overwrought boxes of advertising festering my every vantage
| point.
|
| Just this morning, I was on the toilet, about to finish up
| a shit. I reached instinctively to my left to grab... wait,
| the little roller is empty!
|
| But...what used to be there? What was I about to grab? This
| is crazy, my mind is completely blank!
|
| If only there were some kind of an unskippable 30 second
| movie with dancing animated bears that could remind me what
| product I might use adjacent to a toilet bowl to complete
| my biological morning ritual!
| toldyouso2022 wrote:
| I laughed, but it's about finding new stuff not stuff you
| already know exists, and it works sometimes. Of course
| they made ads too intrusive so we block them now, but
| even then I did buy something I found very useful after
| seeing some of the few ads that slipped. I think early
| 2000 adsense ads were the best. Just simple text or
| images and contextual to the content of the page you were
| on.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I find that ads are usually a very poor source of
| information when trying to figure out what product to
| buy. Ads are designed to deceive. They're _supposed_ to
| make the product larger than life, more perfect than
| possible, and absolutely essential to your continued
| existence.
|
| What I find more helpful is authentic experience from
| other consumers of that product. The authentic part is
| getting harder and harder to validate, of course.
| midasuni wrote:
| Some adverts are informative. I saw a poster a few years
| ago saying Jason Donovan was in Joeseph in London as
| Pharaoh, I likely wouldn't have known that without that
| poster at the station.
|
| I didn't mind skippable YouTube preroll adverts. Now they
| are unskippable, multiple ones, and appear mid video.
|
| Howver I don't watch YouTube enough to justify paying
| more than Netflix and Disney combined just to skip
| adverts (but not skip the burnt in sponsor adverts)
| dizhn wrote:
| Is that how much it really costs??? Damn. I have to go to
| the top and read the comments again with this new
| information. I pay the equivalent of around $2.5 for 6
| people. No way I would pay the same amount as Netflix or
| Disney, let alone the two together.
| californical wrote:
| I wanted a new small camera recently. How did I find it?
| By trying to find opinions of people who had owned
| different cameras, and comparing their opinions about the
| ones that they owned.
|
| I didn't need an ad to tell me to buy a camera. I didn't
| see any ads at all! Rather, I decided "I wish I had
| something to take pictures with", so I started
| researching how I could accomplish that thing.
|
| And ads would not have helped me find the best camera
| option at all, in fact it's probably a slightly negative
| signal -- they must have big profits to spend lots of
| money on ads, compared to a company that just makes the
| best product and has their customers promote it for them.
|
| Same thing with any other product. I see my coworkers
| using a terminal app I've never seen. It looks better
| than the normal one, so I ask them about it.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Yea aside from it indicating less budget for R&D,
| anything that's ridiculously promoted probably means u
| would b spending significantly more than you _should_ be
| for that lol.
|
| It's very simple and not even nuanced I'm just unsure why
| many seem to gloss over that. Perhaps I'm more jaded than
| most
| asdff wrote:
| The new stuff you can buy is always limited to whats
| already available at your market. Your market might be
| your grocery store, walmart, amazon, a little local
| bodega, whatever, but if its not there you don't get it
| ads or not, and if its there chances are you can find it
| without an ad by going down the right aisle or using the
| right keywords.
|
| Plus ads are fundamentally inefficient sources of
| information. Billboard lawyers like to flood the
| interstates with their "Accident? call me" signage, on
| the off chance someone without a lawyer has an accident
| and looks up and sees Jacob Emrani smiling on them. Big
| payoff for the lawyer if they do get a job from this ad,
| but for the vast majority of the millions of commuters a
| day who pass such an ad its probably a useless waste of
| thought to even catch one in your periphery.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Both of you are missing the point because you're
| confusing online advertising with traditional media
| advertising. PPC advertising is about making a conversion
| on the spot, since ROI can be directly measured. Media
| advertising is about context poisoning for eventual
| conversion.
|
| You already know you need toilet paper. There are only so
| many brands to choose from. Every month, you have to make
| a decision about one of them based on whatever factors
| are important to you at that time. (For me, it's usually
| cost, ply count, and how likely it is that someone in the
| house is going to flush a massive wad of it and clog the
| pipe.)
|
| The point of print/radio/television ads are to groom you
| into associating some positive feeling with a _specific_
| choice, whether or not it 's new or you know about it. So
| the next time you're looking at the wall of toilet paper,
| you recognize the bear, the colors, the jingle, the
| florid language about its delicate softness upon your
| tender starfish, and get you to feel something positive
| enough to get you to gravitate toward it despite its
| higher price. Joy, lust, anger, and vanity are easy to
| appeal to.
|
| They're not trying to inform you of anything or make you
| a die-hard fan. They're buttering you up to tilt your
| next purchasing decision in their favor. That's why
| advertising never _stops;_ it 's an endless loop of a
| handful of charlatans competing with each other to coerce
| you into buying _their_ version instead of the other guy
| 's.
| jeltz wrote:
| Targeted ads are terrible at that. They are quite often
| overly specific and just try to convince me to buy more
| of the things I already know about.
| allarm wrote:
| Like, what new stuff? If that's something that's been
| around for years (like cameras), go ask friends or read
| some reviews or bug a salesperson in a camera shop. If
| that's something that nobody knows about (yet) - well,
| you don't know it exists hence you don't need it. Don't
| overcomplicate, keep it simple. That's basic mental
| hygiene.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Professional review sources like Consumer report, ATK,
| and Wirecutter are far better sources than a random ad. I
| don't think I would ever buy a random product from an ad
| without reading reviews unless it was something
| completely disposable, like a new soda, or something that
| you have to willfully make terrible to screw it up, like
| a t shirt
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Are you often in the position where you need something but
| do not already know that you do?
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > I block ads because they're psychological warfare that
| corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive
| the ads are.
|
| I hate ads as much as the next guy. But that's the economic
| model most of the web is built on. Anybody without a youtube
| premium subscription who rants about youtube ads is just
| hypocritical. How should this be financed? Either you give
| your money or your eyeballs. Nobody is going to work for free
| so you can watch cat videos.
|
| Please don't come with morals here. Expecting things for free
| is just as morally problematic.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| The ads interrupt the videos in really obtrusive ways: not
| at sensible commercial break points like TV ads or before
| the movie like in a movie theater, but frequently with
| timing that totally destroys the mood and experience of the
| surrounding seconds or minutes of the video. And they're
| getting longer and longer - I recently experienced half a
| minute of two back-to-back ads partway through an 8-9
| minute video, and I'm not at all sure there wasn't also an
| ad before the video in addition to that. What an awful
| ratio of content to ads.
|
| It bothers me far less to have ads at the start of a video,
| between videos, or even at transition points between
| coherently separate segments within a video than what
| YouTube is now doing. That's not hypocritical.
|
| (Tangent: I do have a YouTube Premium subscription, but for
| irrelevant reasons we usually watch using my wife's account
| and she does not have one. So I see the ads anyway. Maybe
| that's the reverse kind of hypocrisy to the one you mean,
| where I'm wasting my money instead of being stingy?)
| ozim wrote:
| I have an argument:
|
| They made people to expect stuff for free. It was their
| market strategy to offer basically free service to get
| people locked in. It is their fault they should pay for it.
|
| It is called bait and switch which is a blatant fraud. Only
| that they stretched it into long years.
|
| Now they switch by introducing pains option and making free
| one unusable by shoving ads every minute.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > It is called bait and switch which is a blatant fraud.
|
| Sorry, this is just not true. If you let yourself get
| baited, then it's your responsibility. Don't lift the
| responsibility from the general populace of mostly mature
| adults. If they like to see ads then it's their problem.
| wruza wrote:
| If enough people get baited, that creates a network
| effect and locks creators into that, no matter how much
| of a smart fish you are. Most people don't like to see
| ads. They like to see the content without thinking too
| much about a platform it resides in.
| wruza wrote:
| This model not only profits from the aforementioned, but
| also aggressively competes with other activities people
| could participate in instead of watching ads mixed with
| highly monetized cat videos. The implied question here is
| what would happen if it fails? The answer is something
| else, not the end of the world. If it can't be financed (or
| at least behave) otherwise, maybe it simply shouldn't.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| I agree! So, stop using the service then.
|
| Apparently most people don't care though. So, whom are
| you criticizing? Youtube for providing a service that's
| populare despite their way of financing which you
| personally don't like, but others don't have a problem
| with? Or the other viewers for not joining your boycott?
| wruza wrote:
| The model of shouting in your face, of course. And not
| only that, but also $subj.
| AegirLeet wrote:
| If the current economic system doesn't allow for a web
| where I can watch cat videos for free without being
| psychologically terrorized by megacorps, then perhaps the
| economic system is the problem.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| You want an economic system that provides you cat videos
| for free?
|
| I'm quite ok with markets and capitalism. Should be
| regulated, but if you get your wish then there will be
| 300+ Americans who also want a wish. I rather have people
| pay for their wishes.
| elijaht wrote:
| Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available?
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available?
|
| Not OP, but I block ads for similar reasons. I do pay for
| ad-free experiences, but
|
| 1) often I'm shown ads anyway, and 2) there's typically no
| privacy-preserving way to pay. So in practice paying often
| implies a significant loss of control over managing your
| privacy
|
| So my personal take is that we're not there yet in terms of
| having robust viable alternatives to the ad-block
| experience.
| BGZq7 wrote:
| > 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay
|
| This is exactly my problem. I log into as few services as
| possible and clear my cookies on browser exit. Of course
| this is supplemented by ad-blocking and blocking most
| 3rd-party scripts and cookies to avoid cross-site
| tracking. I have no way to pay for a service while
| maintaining that level of privacy.
| delfinom wrote:
| >I block ads because they're psychological warfare that
| corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive
| the ads are.
|
| Lol, then there are ads like the Liberty Mutual ads. All I
| know is I will never, ever purchase car insurance from that
| shithole from having been made to watch their obnoxious ads
| on loop.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| Bless you! In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads
| out of my life. I noticed they were propaganda and
| brainwashing usually with seriously dark undertones. I
| stopped watching sports and TV, stopped reading news
| articles, stopped looking at billboard highway signs, etc. I
| had no idea how much the advertisements controlled how I felt
| and thought. I wish we could have stricter laws against
| advertisers. I believe people would be much happier if they
| took an honest look at their tradeoff of "free things" for
| advertisement glances. If people did this, I believe we could
| radically transform our society, and live in one where
| advertisement is small, and people give small amounts of
| money to the things they want to see.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads out of
| my life.
|
| Have you also cut everything out of your life that's
| financed through ads? So I'm expecting you to not use any
| Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube or other modern web
| content.
|
| I agree that ads are manipulative. That's their very
| essence. But they exist for a reason. Not to enrich people,
| but the uphold one side of a bargin. You can't expect
| everything to be for free.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Please spare us _this_ moral preaching. Google is block
| ads because it hurts _their_ bottom line. They could care
| less about the people who actually make the things people
| come to the platform for.
|
| All of the examples exist there to enrich those running
| the platform, and not for the benefit of those producing
| content. Those companies are worth what they're worth now
| because they only pass on a pittance of the advertising
| money they draw in.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| I'm not even talking about those producing content. It's
| their choice to upload things.
|
| But the platform itself needs to be paid for as well. You
| think Youtube should provide video hosting for free?
| Facebook should provide their .. social network stuff for
| free? Twitter should serve tweets for free? No? Then
| either pay or watch ads.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| A) for a long time most of them did not provide an option
| to pay to remove ads.
|
| B) Many of these companies have such large content
| hosting fees because of the very nature they chose to set
| up under. For example: YouTube chose to centralize and
| host all of the videos itself, and it chose to continue
| pursuing that route rather than experiment with
| technologies that could distribute that load and make
| their server costs significantly decrease. Why? Because
| it gives them a choke point with which they can extract
| money and leverage over everyone else.
|
| Further, just like I don't have a right to tell Facebook
| how their computers should run, they don't have a right
| to tell me what my computer has to display.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| > B) Many of these companies have such large content
| hosting fees because of the very nature they chose to set
| up under.
|
| If an economically more viable alternative exists then
| you are welcome to create a competitor. The fact that
| there is no such thing is strong evidence that they've
| already hit the economical sweet spot.
|
| > Further, just like I don't have a right to tell
| Facebook how their computers should run, they don't have
| a right to tell me what my computer has to display.
|
| Correct. Nor do you have a right to tell them not to try
| to prevent you from avoiding that ads are being displayed
| on your computer.
| myworkthrowaway wrote:
| > I block ads because they're psychological warfare
|
| Conversely, ads are how companies are able to pay for network
| and infrastructure costs, pay their employees, and pay the
| people who create the content you watch.
|
| > Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved.
|
| Perhaps, but if you're not watching ads or paying for the
| service, this is a justification to avoid paying for the
| service you're using -- not exactly a moral high ground.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I never opted into this economic arrangement. It's not my
| problem if businesses are operating business models that
| wouldn't work without advertisements. I'll continue
| blocking them, and if the business dies or needs to start
| charging me money to survive, then I'll decide if it's
| worth it to me to pay them or cry about the dead business.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| That's the companies choice. How I interact with the
| company via my user-agent is my choice.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| And what they do to circumvent what you are doing to
| avoid seeing the ads is also their choice.
| immibis wrote:
| Yes. Companies get paid to use psychological weapons on
| you.
|
| Would you tolerate a cafe in Ukraine having reduced prices
| because it informs Russia when soldiers are visiting, so
| Russia can use weapons on the soldiers (i.e. shoot them in
| the face) and Russia pays it for that?
| 26fingies wrote:
| [dead]
| jai_ wrote:
| I don't mean to be rude but your response really sounds
| like it could be turned into a dril Tweet.
|
| "advertising may be immoral, but it also helps pays for the
| content you watch, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or
| not,"
|
| https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762
| starbugs wrote:
| If that was the case why would YT be tolerating adblockers
| for so long and initially not even be playing so many ads?
| Why would they change their tune now?
|
| Ah, could it be that they need to first get a market share
| that's so significant that they can actually enforce these
| rules, because there are only very limited options to
| choose from for people?
|
| Cry me a river about YT not being able to pay their bills.
| That's ridiculous.
| chelical wrote:
| Because interest rates were historically low for the
| entirety of YT's existence until recently. You're seeing
| this happen with multiple platforms and companies
| suddenly caring way more about being profitable.
| allarm wrote:
| > if you're not watching ads or paying for the service,
| this is a justification to avoid paying for the service
|
| Ugh, no? I'm not under any obligation to watch ads, thank
| you very much.
| Halan wrote:
| Why not paying YT premium if you care that much about
| morality.
| visarga wrote:
| The fundamental problem of advertising is that they are
| selling other things than we need.
| colordrops wrote:
| If you need something you don't need an ad to find that
| out.
| wruza wrote:
| Ads can be useful for marketing moves, e.g. if you sell
| at discount or just a new product. Otherwise people would
| never know you have X too (or cheaper) because they
| remember that you didn't last time.
|
| But every time I turn adblock off accidentally or on
| purpose, it's the same generic shit unrelated to my
| obvious interests. Nasal sprays, supplements, car
| dealerships, be-a-programmer courses. I have a non-zero,
| negative interest in these.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Need? Sure. But there are plenty of things that would
| make my life better that I learned about through ads.
|
| I do run an ad blocker, because the web has spent too
| long spreading viruses and malware through ads to be safe
| _not_ running one. But I don't mind ads conceptually;
| they just need to be safe, not obnoxious, and not take up
| more of my time than the placement is worth (ie, a 20s ad
| pre-roll on a 15 second video).
| interroboink wrote:
| If you haven't seen it, you might like this Bill Hicks
| standup routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
|
| "If anyone here is in advertising or marketing ... kill
| yourself" (:
| colordrops wrote:
| classic
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The ENTIRE POINT of an advertisement is to extract wealth
| from you by getting you to spend money you wouldn't otherwise
| spend. If I want to learn about products and decide what to
| buy or try and solve a problem I have, advertising provides
| negative value to that, because advertising is inherently
| inaccurate and dishonest.
|
| Advertising is just a disgusting tax on capitalism by a few
| cartels.
|
| Get a billboard ban passed in your state. It's absolutely
| wonderful.
| wesapien wrote:
| What's ironic in my case is that I actually liked looking at
| ads in print. It doesn't matter if it's newspaper, magazine
| or comics.
|
| I agree with the other commenter that ads have become so
| obtrusive that it's being dealt with in the same vein as
| malware. It's just malware from the techno oligarchy.
| permo-w wrote:
| ads in print are one of the few ads I see as somewhat okay.
| if I want to go and look in the classified section of the
| newspaper for a car or a specific service or something
| else, fantastic. I can _choose_ to do that and then look
| away and do something else. it isn 't moving and flashing
| in my face, it isn't assaulting my ears, it isn't even a
| smell that's been carefully engineered to be recognisable
| from 30m down the street. it's still not ideal, especially
| when it's a full colour spread on the first page of the
| publication, but it's better. the other ads I see as
| acceptable are for example in the window of an estate agent
| or in a brochure for a particular service or set of
| services. stuff you have to actually consent to see
| wesapien wrote:
| They also sent us boxes and boxes of magazines. We had a
| stack of National Geographic magazines that was at least
| seven feet high. We had Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone,
| Popular Science/Mechanics, and others I can't remember
| now.
| wesapien wrote:
| When I was growing up in the east, we received boxes of
| recorded TV from our relatives in the USA. I loved
| watching all the ads especially the toy ads. All my
| friends wanted to hangout in our place because we have so
| much movies, cartoons and tv shows on VHS.
| kroltan wrote:
| There is a name that we used, for a few precious years,
| that describes most digital advertisement nowadays:
| spyware!
|
| (And uh, yes, adware, but that's usually the programs
| themselves. A website with intrusive ads is adware, but the
| ads are spywares)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Exactly. The ads aren't just passive images or video,
| they're also actively trying to weasel information out of
| your personal device.
|
| Fits the definition of spyware.
|
| The larger problem is that this behaviour has been
| normalised to such a degree that "the world wide web" as
| a whole could be described as spyware.
| digging wrote:
| I like coupons, which are ads. Companies are paying _me_
| for my attention. Maybe I get a few dollars off a sandwich
| that I otherwise wouldn 't have bought, but it's a pretty
| fair deal.
| Exuma wrote:
| I feel exactly the same as you about ads, and have
| built/owned my own ad network, as well as run nearly 90% of
| my business through ads. My business partners don't use ad
| block but I always use it, and they always tease me about it.
| Even if 1 second of my precious energy and mental well being
| is spent on hearing an ad accidentally I feel sick.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved.
| They'll eagerly exploit a teenager's self-conscious body
| issues to sell useless beauty products. They sell sugar water
| to fat people and at every turn promote the rampant
| consumerist culture that is destroying our planet. They're
| lower than pond scum and I never want to see a single ad from
| them ever.
|
| Well said. While I recognize the right of people to put out
| messaging, advertisers seem to put out some of the most
| disgusting messaging ever.
|
| The recent pushing of incredibly obese people as all healthy
| and normal is a very dangerous phenom. Many of us could
| afford to lose a few pounds, but the idea that BMIs > 40 are
| healthy is going to get people killed for certain.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Remember, they're not regular people putting out messaging
| because they believe in something (or even lying because
| it's funny), they are part of a machine that is
| incentivized financially to put out messaging regardless of
| whether the people making it believe what they're saying.
| That's a different ball game, and tbh, it should be illegal
| or tightly controlled.
| gochi wrote:
| Most people you see on the media are unhealthy. From the
| largest to the smallest, they're mostly all unhealthy and
| performing very dangerous things like prolonged
| dehydration.
|
| So it's interesting to see how much focus gets shifted onto
| obesity specifically while ignoring all else. It's all
| disgusting messaging, that young model selling you a
| perfume who hasn't eaten anything but an almond all day,
| that shredded guy telling you to buy compression shorts,
| those obese people telling you these pants stretch.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > psychological warfare that corporations wage against me
|
| I see them as environmental pollution that affects the mind
| instead of the body (this also includes offline ads btw, I
| actually wish there were adblockers for the real world).
| Zak wrote:
| This seems like one of the best possible applications for
| consumer AR. I'd love glasses that would replace display
| cute animals on top of real-world ads.
| nneonneo wrote:
| Unfortunately, given current trends, you're going to get
| glasses that put ads on top of cute animals instead.
| e-neko wrote:
| I block ads because they're a security risk. I have
| encountered browser-based attacks from ads that are supposed
| to come from reputable ad brokers, including on YouTube once.
| As long as the brokers don't properly vet the ads, those
| malware bits are not getting into my computer.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I really don't understand how Google and Facebook lost
| control of their own platforms to the extent that they
| actually serve malicious advertising.
|
| Some people use the excuse of 'scale', and "can't monitor
| everything", but it's not like Google and Facebook don't
| have the resources to solve it, it's just that they have no
| motivation to solve it because it's not costing them
| anything to be a platform for malware and scams.
| naikrovek wrote:
| I watched this happen over the last 2-3 decades.
|
| when click rates go down, advertisers always choose to make
| the ad more noticeable by making it more obnoxious. at first
| it was a very small movement every few seconds. then two.
| then more movement more frequently until there were full
| games in the space of an ad. sounds and video came.
| interstitial ads came, and full page ads which covered what
| you were reading as you scrolled.
|
| so, ad blockers were developed. at first they blocked simple
| URL patterns and that was enough to completely block ads from
| those who serve them. advertisers caught on and changed how
| they serve ads. rapidly. adblockers had to advance to keep
| up.
|
| where does it end? it can't end, because one side or the
| other will win and there are enough people who don't want
| that outcome so they keep fighting for their own side.
|
| things that are bad often follow this pattern, it seems. if
| you are in an arms race of any kind you are either someone or
| something who wants money or authority more than anything
| else, or you are fighting against that force. both sides feel
| 100% justified in their actions. everyone nearby suffers.
| amykhar wrote:
| I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use
| daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love
| would go away because it's not sustainable to employee people
| to write code and run servers without some sort of revenue.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run
| everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get
| enough value to justify the cost.
|
| They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor
| man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other
| improvements to the service.
|
| If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of
| play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without
| blinking.
|
| So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge
| difference but instead they're too busy removing voting
| buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.
| kroltan wrote:
| Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing and/or
| gradual rollouts!
|
| I have had the "continue playing from another device"
| feature for a good couple months at least, and it is
| clearly labeled as a "Premium" benefit.
|
| Whenever I pause a video on one device, and open Youtube
| on another (Confirmed web desktop -> mobile app or mobile
| app -> web desktop, but I don't have a TV to test), the
| video that was playing on the other device shows up
| paused, as the given platform's miniplayer. Below you can
| see a desktop screenshot.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Leq2cJs.png
|
| You could view this cynically as paying to be a lab rat,
| or you can also take it at face value.
| s17n wrote:
| Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don't see why
| anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same
| thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at
| no extra charge.
| Macha wrote:
| Really the only reason I used Spotify over YouTube Music
| at all was that I could use my own clients with Spotify,
| but once Spotify killed that it was over to YouTube music
| for me for my streaming usage (though I buy a lot more
| downloads these days than my peak spotify usage days).
| YouTube Music doesn't have third party clients either,
| but with that selling point removed, ad-free youtube was
| a better add-on than anything spotify offered.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I don't see why anybody uses Spotify
|
| Maybe the force feeding of obnoxious podcast hosts
| actually attracted some users?
| tough wrote:
| A lost occasion to also blame advertising
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I use Spotify because I don't want to pay any money to
| Google.
|
| Although I did subscribe to Google Play Music, and it was
| great, until they killed it. And that was it for me and
| Google.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Curious if you found another viable alternative. Ive gone
| over to using Plex/Plexamp for music sync/cloud play and
| its been pretty okayish on the whole. Biggest issues are
| my server strength and internet connection
| asdff wrote:
| I'm thinking about making the move off spotify. Does
| youtube premium let you locally download music?
| gretch wrote:
| Yes it does.
|
| Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform -
| iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not
| possible for all songs or countries in the world.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What about the ad-free experience? Isn't that worth
| paying for premium, considering the enormous amount of
| content on YouTube you can watch without ads?
|
| > If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity
| of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price
| without blinking.
|
| Probably you wouldn't. Then it would be some other
| feature needed to open the wallet.
| Hextinium wrote:
| I was at first super confused by this comment, because
| cross play has been a thing for at least a year or two
| without YouTube premium. You just have to enable YouTube
| history and it will populate across devices. I know a lot
| of people disabled YouTube history because it tailors the
| experience but it's a fair tradeoff for continuity.
| asdff wrote:
| You should be able to get api access with youtube premium
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah. I'm not about to pretend I have a right to get
| content for free, so if the site offers a paid option to
| remove ads that I find obnoxious I'll take advantage of it.
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| I might consider paying for premium if this wasn't Google
| we're talking about, which I imagine is tracking your
| viewing habits in their profile of you so they can serve
| targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Agreed. It's association with Google makes it get less
| appealing to support.
| amf12 wrote:
| > I might consider paying for premium if this wasn't
| Google we're talking about, which I imagine is tracking
| your viewing habits in their profile of you so they can
| serve targeted ads on other sites that use Google Ads.
|
| So basically, you won't pay for premium because Google
| makes money by serving ads, but you also use an Adblocker
| (assumption)?
| convalescindrey wrote:
| Sadly, a Youtube Premium subscription only removes the
| ads. They still collect all the data about you.
|
| Remember that you are not just paying with ad eyeballs,
| but also with your data. When what where how much you
| watch. That's nobodies business. I'd pay for not having
| this be in somebodys DB, ready to be exploited (and/or
| leaked).
| bee_rider wrote:
| A hill I'm happy to die on is: the standard of behavior
| appropriate for websites is you send whatever (not
| actively malicious or illegal) content you want, and the
| user renders it however they want.
|
| If sites want to send me useful content and additional
| annoying content, I'll just render the useful bit.
|
| If sites decide they aren't willing to send the useful
| bit unless enter some other sort of arrangement with
| them, that's fair on their part, I'll evaluate their
| other options.
|
| I don't feel any obligation to render ads or make their
| business model viable, of course it is no problem if they
| decide they don't want me around as a result!
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| OJFord wrote:
| But then to circle back on the submission, do sites have
| any obligation to make it easy (or no harder than it
| initially was) for you to separate the useful from the
| annoying? No more than you have right (which I agree
| with) to render it differently to their desire, I'd
| argue.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think they do have that obligation. But the
| business model where ads are hosted in some ad network
| makes it pretty easy to differentiate between the good
| and bad content. It is a happy coincidence that this is
| the source of the most annoying ads generally.
|
| Of course, business models might change. In that case my
| preferences probably will too, but I don't think my
| reasoning will.
| coding123 wrote:
| > A hill I'm happy to die on is
|
| Just circling back a bit, what IS advertising? I work at
| a relatively unknown company - it's not in anyone's daily
| vocabulary. It exists, but barely. It will actually die
| if it's not marketed, advertised.
|
| Now I can just go, fuck it, I don't want to work for any
| company that advertises. Great. Where should I work?
| djbusby wrote:
| Don't your existing clients refer new clients? Its the
| oldest trick in the book.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| And I have every right to block each and every single one
| of your advertisements, wherever I am. Guess your company
| will die.
| samtho wrote:
| I feel like the problem here is that we do not have an
| effective way to match products with consumers who may
| find it useful without bad actors gaming the system.
| Companies with a modest marketing budget try to be as
| targeted as possible with advertising but companies with
| stupidly large budgets will optimize for "engagement and
| enragement" which will end up with them creating
| obnoxious advertisements that are spammed across all
| channels they can regardless of relevance because they
| can.
|
| It's a sad problem that we can't expect to solve if we
| continue to limit our discussion around the symptoms of
| the diseased advertisement industry rather than the root
| causes of this cancer that ruins it for everyone like
| your company and most other small and medium sized
| players.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If advertising was required, nobody would be using most
| open source applications. Nobody had to sell me linux.
|
| A company website that tells me what the elevator pitch
| is, is advertising arguably, but is not in the same
| category as putting a message in something I want to
| consume. The difference is push vs pull. If I have to
| seek out your message, if I ask you a question, then it's
| perfectly acceptable to answer.
|
| The second you answer a question I've never asked, you
| are morally repugnant and harming society as a whole.
| It's an inevitable slippery slope to literal mental
| manipulation at that point. There is no "push"
| advertising that can NOT go that route, as it is
| inherently a hostile relationship, with independent
| competitors.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Maybe a government contractor?
| s17n wrote:
| What if the "arrangement" is a TOS that you agree to,
| wherein you agree to render the content how they want?
| Will you stop using the site, or just ignore the TOS?
| belorn wrote:
| I will follow their TOS if they follow my local laws
| regarding advertisements and legal liability (both in
| term of providing honest and fully disclosed commercial
| messages and in cases of malware). I strongly doubt they
| want that deal.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer but in the US at least, from what I've
| heard TOS requires affirmative consent.
|
| I try to quickly check if I'm agreeing to a cookie
| consent thing, or if it is a full TOS. But sites have so
| much garbage when you first show up nowadays. I'll have
| to be more careful there.
| euroderf wrote:
| > I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and
| ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read
| them.
|
| Roger that. Always turning over a full-page ad to verify that
| no content text would be lost.
|
| And then there's the magazines that put the ads on right-hand
| pages and the content on left-hand pages.
| jawr wrote:
| Storing and streaming is an expensive model, and the
| subscription price is a premium in the majority of the world.
| It's actually impressive that so much content (both
| incredible and bad) is available, for "free" to so many.
|
| I'm an ideal world there would be no ads, but we don't live
| in one.
|
| If you have such disdain for ads you should probably pay the
| premium or not use YouTube.
| pembrook wrote:
| The problem is, consumers also have no morals and are equally
| entitled.
|
| They have an insatiable hunger for emotionally triggering
| junk food content. They value their time at 0. Present them
| with the slightest bit of nuance (opposing views) or the
| slightest bit of friction (ie. Like asking them to pay for
| the works they are consuming), and they will ironically spend
| hours seeking out ways to steal what you have created for
| free.
|
| How much content do you pay for? If you're expecting the
| commons to serve you up valuable content painstakingly
| written by humans, for free, you're no better than the
| advertiser "pond scum" you complain about.
| lolinder wrote:
| They're making a much broader point about advertising in
| general, while you're fixated on internet advertising.
|
| What benefit do freeway billboards provide to my life? How
| about the spam mail I get in my mailbox? The bright and
| flashy signs for businesses along the road?
|
| Every time I'm on the freeway I pass a few dozen ads
| selling liposuction or some other expensive and unhealthy
| "beauty" treatment. What value are those companies bringing
| to the world, and why should I have to put up with their
| ads? Just because someone bought property adjacent to the
| freeway?
| spacemadness wrote:
| This reminds me of a softer version of the famous Bill Hicks
| standup routine on advertising that hilariously really pisses
| off people in advertising in Youtube comments. Advertising
| does a lot of good for the world according to people that
| majored in marketing. Alas, I have to agree with Bill on this
| one.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| > _To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold
| eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this
| valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein
| realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men.
| Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes,
| competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they
| were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that
| inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation._
|
| > _The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in
| their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package
| grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and
| "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of
| militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height
| on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They
| knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain
| containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed"
| into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew
| how much price and package manipulation the customer would
| accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern."_
|
| > _And we 're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists
| and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the
| espionage arm._
|
| The Santaroga Barrier,
|
| Frank Herbert, 1968
| lolinder wrote:
| > It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for
| money as to see the rich asking for more money. And
| advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would
| be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all
| holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with
| one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really
| assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the
| ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me
| money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It
| is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our
| towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements.
| Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are
| very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men
| who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment
| of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to
| decorate their houses.
|
| -- G.K. Chesterton, _The New Jersusalem_
|
| http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/GKC_New_Jerusalem.html
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Profound. Thanks for sharing this. That really frames what
| I've been struggling to describe. Advertising isn't some
| necessary lifeblood of many industries. It can often be
| something like the endless trench warfare between Pepsi and
| Coke, vying for slivers of mindshare.
|
| I also think that advertising is often a crutch for
| incompetence. Build a good product and it can take off all
| on its own. People advertise for you. Or build crap and
| hire an industry to manipulate people into wanting your
| crap. Advertising is manipulation. Watch any ad and ask,
| "what emotion are they trying to con me into feeling?"
| yafbum wrote:
| Good products hardly ever take out on their own. I'm not
| sure what computer you're logged on from, but to take
| that as an example, I'm pretty sure it's made by a
| company that would likely go under if it chose _not_ to
| advertise.
|
| Advertisement is sometimes just to inform and build
| awareness, sometimes to build brand, but often to
| persuade, and sometimes it exploits unethical persuasion
| techniques. The gap between ethics allowed by society and
| your own personal ethics are very variable from place to
| place and person to person. For example in a lot of
| places it's illegal for doctors and pharma to advertise;
| some might consider it a good thing not to exploit
| hypochondriacs, but is it ethical if it results in
| patients not knowing about an actual cure for their
| condition? These things are endlessly debatable, they're
| very far from a black and white situation.
| lolinder wrote:
| Do good products fail to take off on their own because
| advertising is an absolute necessity, or is it because
| advertising allows bad products to saturate the market so
| thoroughly? In a hypothetical world without advertising,
| would it still be true that good products couldn't take
| off on their own merits? Or would they spread effectively
| by word of mouth in the absence of the noise generated by
| the advertising industry?
|
| I don't have an answer to this question, it's purely
| hypothetical. And even if it is true that in this
| hypothetical world, good products would spread, we're
| still left with a prisoner's dilemma to resolve in the
| real world.
| cryptoz wrote:
| I've been thinking about this comment for a few minutes
| and do find it interesting. But the extremes of the
| comments and quotes above make it clear that even
| displaying your product is an ad; demonstrating how it
| works to a crowd would be an ad; telling someone that it
| exists would be an ad; there seems to be no way to tell
| the market that your product exists without that being
| defined as an ad.
|
| So I would answer you with, given the extremes defined
| above, that indeed advertising is a necessity since good
| products would otherwise rot inside the inventor's home.
| It being illegal (say, for example) to have ads would
| mean that it is illegal to even tell anyone that you
| invented a product.
|
| I think there's got to be some kind of give from the
| anti-ad side if we want to have _things_ in the world
| that do stuff - because if I can't even say "I made a
| better product that does x,y,z" then how the heck is
| anyone ever gonna find out about it? Where does the word-
| of-mouth kick off even?
|
| You gotta _tell_ people you made something - but that's
| an ad.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > You gotta _tell_ people you made something.
|
| I think that the rest of your discussion hinges on this
| assumption, and I completely disagree with it.
|
| What you need actually is for people to know that your
| product exist.
|
| People have needs & problem beyond the fake ones created
| by advertising.
|
| People can _ask_ for what options exist to solve their
| problem. And that to me is fundamentally different.
|
| Having a way for consumers to go out and pull information
| in about what options exist is fundamentally different
| from having advertising shoved down their throat.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > People need can _ask_ for what options exist to solve
| their problem.
|
| Where do you propose people ask? Who would fulfill those
| queries? What formats would you allow the information to
| be expressed in? Would you filter out any non-objective
| characterization ("best car in the world")? Would you
| constrain packaging (eg color, creativity, etc.) so that
| it isn't attention-grabbing? Etc.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I'm not sure how it would all work out. But let's start
| where we are now with search engines.
|
| Remove the ads and make people pay to use them beyond
| some number of queries a month. This alone gets rid of
| the problem of the platform intentionally shoving ads
| down your throat.
|
| Find a shitty website that SEO'd it's way to the top and
| got through the cat and mouse game? Then allow people to
| blacklist websites so they stop appearing in results.
| Then as the provider investigate and downrank sites that
| people downrank and block often.
|
| Maybe also preferentially treat companies that don't load
| their own sites with other people's ads and tracking
| scripts. Oh and tell the user how many of those trackers
| exist on the site.
|
| This obviously don't solve the problem of companies
| pushing ads onto you. But it:
|
| 1. Sets up your information provider to not be the
| biggest and worse ad pusher of them all.
|
| 2. It gives people the tools to start penalizing bad
| content and ads and to outright block them from their
| results.
|
| This alone, I strongly believe, would be a great
| improvement.
| gAI wrote:
| So I've been producing ads for a couple of decades, and I
| agree that they're basically psychological warfare. I
| justify it to myself because I usually get to make ads
| for products that help people, but the war over mindshare
| is absolutely depraved. That said, there does need to be
| a place for people to access information about products
| and services. I'd just prefer it be a place that people
| go to intentionally learn about products and services,
| rather than something ingrained in every aspect of modern
| life.
| prox wrote:
| One of my clients make really good products. I would say
| the best you can get (this is a mobility product) It has
| ergonomic properties that blows away any competition, and
| build quality is second to none.
|
| However, it's expensive. It has been a really tough
| uphill climb to connect to our audience and convince them
| the money is worth it here. In a market with marked up
| shitty quality products it has been a journey to position
| ourselves, especially since our budgets are maybe 1/10th
| of that of aforementioned shitty producers who outmarket
| us.
|
| I honestly feel the work I am doing is near to a
| community service. Although still advertising our ads are
| honest of what the products can do.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I'm not sure what computer you're logged on from, but
| to take that as an example, I'm pretty sure it's made by
| a company that would likely go under if it chose not to
| advertise.
|
| What a strange example. Other than Apple products, I'm
| not sure if most people could tell you what computer they
| are using, or can recall seeing an ad for any of them.
| "PCs" are a generic, interchangeable object to most
| people.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I don't view advertising. I use ad block everywhere, no
| TV, download everything I watch.
|
| I still found a computer to buy.
|
| How?
| [deleted]
| transistor-man wrote:
| What's remarkable is this quote comes from a book written
| in the 1920's
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A period of rapidly-expanding advertising.
|
| See Hamilton Holt's _Commercialism and Journalism_ ,
| dating from 1909:
|
| <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft>
|
| And I do mean _see it_. Read the damned thing, or at
| least the first dozen pages or so. It 's a highly-
| readable, information-dense, and exceedingly insightful
| look at the development of commercial publishing in the
| US at the time, and its author is a magazine publisher
| himself.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Hard to believe this was already being articulated so
| clearly over a century ago:
|
| > No wonder that the man who realizes the significance of
| all these figures and the trend disclosed by them is
| coming to look upon the editorial department of the
| newspaper as merely a necessary means of giving a
| literary tone to the publication, thus helping business
| men get their wares before the proper people.
| [deleted]
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for
| money as to see the rich asking for more money.
|
| Does this guy really not understand the difference between
| someone asking for money in exchange for nothing as opposed
| to asking for money in exchange for something of value? If
| Coca-Cola was advertising a Venmo address to send them
| money in exchange for nothing it would be much more
| annoying than what they currently do.
| lolinder wrote:
| In context he's responding to the negative views that his
| fellow English expressed at the time (1920) towards
| people who were aggressively selling their services as
| tour guides in Jerusalem. He's pointing out that they put
| up with equivalently aggressive sales tactics in London,
| with the only difference being that it's the rich asking
| for more money rather than poor people trying to scrape
| by.
| amatecha wrote:
| Materially speaking, there's barely a difference. It's
| actually funny you mention pop/soda, because it's nearly
| free to produce. It's water with some flavour and sugar,
| in a plastic or glass bottle.
| leetcrew wrote:
| this is kind of disingenuous. the "bill of materials" for
| a bottle of soda may be measured in cents, but most of
| the $1.75 you pay at the store is the cost of getting it
| there and storing it. it's not a phenomenally profitable
| business.
|
| but besides that, people actually _enjoy_ drinking soda.
| I certainly do from time to time, and I don 't find the
| price unfair.
| amatecha wrote:
| Uhhh, yes, soda is phenomenally profitable, especially
| considering all the accounting loopholes to make expenses
| appear far higher than reality (not that this is unique
| to any given corp).
|
| > CocaCola revenue for the twelve months ending March 31,
| 2023 was $43.493B
|
| > CocaCola net income for the twelve months ending March
| 31, 2023 was $9.868B
|
| > CocaCola net profit margin as of March 31, 2023 is
| 22.69%.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KO/cocacola/rev
| enu...
|
| (note I also specifically argue that soda is nearly free
| to produce, not nearly free to store, or transport, or
| market, etc.)
| greatwave1 wrote:
| > CocaCola net profit margin as of March 31, 2023 is
| 22.69%.
|
| Which means that it costs them $1 to produce every $1.23
| of soda that you purchase. This is a long-shot from being
| "nearly free" as you claimed earlier, and materially
| different from "asking for money in exchange for
| nothing".
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'd like to know what it costs if you remove advertising
| and any other cost that doesn't directly contribute to
| getting sugar water into the bottle.
| amatecha wrote:
| It doesn't actually though. Like someone else mentioned,
| they spend an untold amount of money on advertising. Like
| $4 billion in 2022, aka 10% of their revenue.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/286526/coca-cola-
| adverti...
|
| That's not a cost to produce their product, or even ship
| it, or store it. That's strictly just "buying more
| customers", which has no bearing on my initial claim -
| that soda is extremely cheap to produce.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Which means that it costs them $1 to produce every
| $1.23 of soda that you purchase.
|
| That's not correct. The $1.23 you pay at the store
| includes wholeseller/distributor and retailer margins.
| The wholesale price of that soda is maybe a quarter of
| the retail price. So for Coca Cola the bottle the
| production cost and shipment to a distributor was less
| than 20% of the retail price.
| nneonneo wrote:
| So why do fountain drinks also cost $1.50? Fountain
| drinks are shipped as concentrated syrup in boxes,
| costing much less to store and ship.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the concentrated syrup is indeed much cheaper to get to
| the retail location, and typically the retailer does make
| a large margin on fountain drinks. at a restaurant, this
| typically offsets the very tight margins on their other
| offerings, similar to alcohol.
|
| tangent: I've been to some restaurants that charge $5+
| for a fountain drink, presumably to mitigate the lost
| profit on alcohol. it would be interesting to know why
| the business model is that way, instead of just pricing a
| moderate profit into both food and drink.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Hasnt there been numerous reports of Coca-Cola consuming
| so much drinking water in local communities to make their
| product that the locals end up having to buy Cola for
| hydration instead?
| amatecha wrote:
| Pretty much https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2020/apr/23/pepsi-coke-b...
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| In some places local communities are also dependent on
| bottled water because their tap water isn't safely
| drinkable ... and it's not rare for Coca-Cola to own one
| of the major bottled water brands, as well as Coca-Cola
| being a popular drink itself. Everything I just described
| is true in Mexico for example.
| yafbum wrote:
| And yet
|
| > It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
| brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from
| their regard to their own self-interest. We address
| ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and
| never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their
| advantages."
|
| -- Adam Smith
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Pay close attention and note that Smith is talking about
| individuals-as- butchers, brewers, and bakers.
|
| Not multinational conglomerate monopolist meat-packing,
| alcohol, and shelf-stable baked goods manufacturers.
|
| As individuals, Smith's artisans would have faced ample
| competition both within a community and from others
| nearby if they attempted to strong-arm customers or
| degrade products (though there was plenty of both going
| on, as attested by food-quality and food-purity laws
| dating back to Hammurabi). They lacked any appreciable
| ability to lock in more than a very localised monopoly
| absent armed force or coercion, though those too were
| abundantly evident (see: America's Colonies and the
| British East India Company, both of which Smith also
| writes of).
| npunt wrote:
| Yeah, Smith's little chestnut requires heavy
| interpretation and contextualization. Definitely not the
| 'anytime any person or organization sells anything in
| self-interest it is good for everyone because markets'
| definition which it often gets dragged out for.
| valval wrote:
| This is the part of the leftist ideology that drops me
| every single time. Every massive corporation is just a
| lot of pooled talent in that field, be it butchery or
| brewery.
|
| Why are you so easily fooled by the facelessness and lack
| of intimacy of the large company that you lose all sense
| on the matter? If people stopped buying meat today, the
| single man operations would go bankrupt in very much the
| same manner the 50,000 man operations would - in the
| latter case, however, 50,000 people just lost their
| income and ceased to pay taxes instead of the one man.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm having difficulty determining what your point is
| here, and with whom you're agreeing and/or disagreeing.
|
| Care to clarify?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I'd suggest reading David Graeber. Smith's
| characterization of human economic behavior is... very
| narrow vs historical evidence.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| With all due respect to Graeber, and acknowledgement of
| Smith's faults, far _more_ of the apparent contradictions
| in Smith come from those who grossly misrepresent him,
| whilst at the same time strongly discouraging others from
| reading him directly.
|
| I'd compiled a set of quotes from Karl Marx and Adam
| Smith a ways back and encouraged people to tell which
| came from whom:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26127620>
|
| The "butcher, brewer, and baker" quote is most often seen
| in a form that ties it together with another passage
| hundreds of pages from it within _Wealth_. That
| construction was created in the early 20th century, more
| than 100 years after Smith wrote his work, by Jacob
| Viner, at the monopolist-defending University of Chicago.
| My understanding is that this was initially an exercise
| to show how much one could twist Smith 's meaning by
| selectively editing his work. It's since come to be taken
| as a flat statement _by_ Smith, as originally intended,
| when it is in fact no such thing.
|
| In fact, the chapter in which the vastly over-exaggerated
| and greatly misconstrued phrase "invisible hand" occurs,
| begins with a discussion of restraint of trade _by
| monopoly interests_ , including of the previously-
| mentioned butchers:
|
| _BY RESTRAINING, either by high duties, or by absolute
| prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign
| countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the
| home market is more or less secured to the domestic
| industry employed in producing them. Thus the prohibition
| of importing either live cattle or salt provisions from
| foreign countries secures to the graziers of Great
| Britain the monopoly of the home market for butcher 's
| meat. The high duties upon the importation of corn, which
| in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give
| a like advantage to the growers of that commodity. The
| prohibition of the importation of foreign woollens is
| equally favorable to the woollen manufactures. The silk
| manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign
| materials, has lately obtained the same advantage. The
| linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making
| great strides toward it. Many other sorts of manufactures
| have, in the same manner, obtained in Great Britain,
| either altogether, or very nearly a monopoly against
| their countrymen. The variety of goods of which the
| importation into Great Britain is prohibited, either
| absolutely, or under certain circumstances, greatly
| exceeds what can easily be suspected by those who are not
| well acquainted with the laws of the customs._
|
| <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Boo
| k_IV...>
|
| The late Gavin Kennedy's blog, "Adam Smith's Lost Legacy"
| covers this misrepresentation in depth:
|
| <https://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com/>
|
| (I'd need to hunt through that to find specific posts of
| note, though I'd encourage anyone reding this to go
| through it on your own.)
|
| There's a book of the same title:
|
| <https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230511194>
|
| Kennedy's hardly the only person to point this out. John
| Kenneth Galbraith made much of how Smith was
| misrepresented during his lifetime, and Steve Keen is
| amongst present-day economists doing similarly, if memory
| serves.
| hrldcpr wrote:
| I'd never thought of it quite like that, in terms of rich
| beggars versus poor beggars. Thanks for sharing.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people
| make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like
| advertisements.
|
| In other words, the average person isn't advertising; at
| least, not in an intrusive way.
|
| Indeed, the best at any particular job probably are not
| advertising, because the effort they spent on advertising
| is effort that was not spent on the job. After buying
| expensive medication in the United States, I come home and
| the TV is showing a 90 second commercial from a
| pharmaceutical company with a catchy song and is overall
| very well made--guess I know why my medication was
| expensive. Do we even need advertisements for prescription
| medication?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Even with this stance, it's effectively stealing, or
| "privateering", freeloading, whatever you want to call it.
| YouTube, streaming services, etc. provide you a service in
| exchange for you also allowing ads to be loaded on your
| computer. Even if blocking is moral to you, YouTube has every
| right to try to punish this behavior or stop providing their
| service to you - such as by blocking ads, or even by deleting
| your account.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > YouTube, streaming services, etc. provide you a service
| in exchange for you also allowing ads to be loaded on your
| computer.
|
| Users don't 'allow' anything: YouTube send data, the owner
| of the receiving device can choose what to do with that
| data (modulo copyright infringement, hate speech laws,
| etc.).
|
| YouTube's business model is to _bet_ that adspace included
| alongside videos can be sold for a profit. The price they
| can charge for that adspace depends on market conditions,
| which includes factors like the prevalence of adblocking.
| Blocking ads is not 'stealing', in the same way that using
| coupons isn't 'stealing'.
|
| > YouTube has every right to try to punish this behavior or
| stop providing their service to you - such as by blocking
| ads, or even by deleting your account.
|
| Obviously. That's why it's never 'your' account; it's owned
| by them, they can do what they want (modulo copyright
| infringement, hate speech laws, etc.).
| mcpackieh wrote:
| [flagged]
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I have a right to determine what is displayed on my own
| devices.
| judge2020 wrote:
| And they don't have to serve you content.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| That is fine. They don't have to. I'll just go somewhere
| else.
| trympet wrote:
| Exactly this. Why do so many people feel entitled to free
| stuff at the operator's expense? It boggles the mind.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| YouTube is a vertically integrated monopolist in the
| video space. There is no where else I can go to consume
| the majority of content they host.
|
| Why would any regular person empathize with the criminals
| in the commission of their crimes?
| chriswarbo wrote:
| I'm sure there are some people out there who feel such
| entitlement. I haven't seen anyone claiming such
| entitlement here though.
|
| Personally, I agree with the 'my device, my rules'
| comment. If YouTube want to (try to) block me, they can
| go ahead. They're under no obligation to serve me video
| content even if I _didn 't_ block ads, so it makes little
| difference.
| floomk wrote:
| Why do so many people feel entitled to tell me how to use
| my computer? If they choose not to serve their webpages
| to me, that's fine. To be realistic, I probably won't
| even notice their attempt because my adblocker will
| already have updated to bypass their silly attempt.
|
| But yes, it is their right to try. Just as it is my right
| to install & use an adblocker.
| [deleted]
| mcpackieh wrote:
| They don't have to, but they do. Let them stop, because I
| won't.
| eastbound wrote:
| The upside if they stop is, they'll stop for our entire
| class of people. The reason we watch Youtube is that our
| entire generation watches it instead of doing something
| else.
|
| If an entire class of people were drawn to something
| else, such as watching Nebula or going to coffee shops,
| both would be more interesting than they are now.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Is it stealing if you watch the ad but close your eyes and
| plug your ears?
|
| Why does Google want to charge advertisers to show ads to
| someone so determined to ignore them? If anything, if they
| force me to watch their ads and I ignore them, then Google
| is the one stealing from the advertisers.
|
| I'm not going to buy an advertiser's product regardless of
| whether or not I'm forced to see its advertisement, and any
| counterargument to that must be built on the premise that
| advertisements can nonconsensually convince me to take
| action, in which case we're back to the beginning arguing
| about psychological warfare, where I certainly have a right
| to defend myself.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's sad to see this sort of thing on HN. A web browser is
| a _user agent_ that operates on behalf of the user. Let 's
| say it again for emphasis: the web browser serves the user,
| not the site owner. The user is free to manipulate the
| received web page however they see fit. If the site
| operator wants to get paid, they can put the service behind
| a login paywall, or else they can go pound sand. There has
| never, ever been an obligation for users to respect the
| wishes of site owners; once it is off your server and on my
| machine, it is _my_ data to do with as I see fit, including
| blocking whatever ads the data happens to contain.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > If the site operator doesn't like it, they can put the
| service behind a paywall or they can go pound sand.
|
| see: > YouTube has every right to try to punish this
| behavior or stop providing their service to you - such as
| by blocking ads, or even by deleting your account.
| kibwen wrote:
| That doesn't absolve the first sentence that attempts to
| frame adblocking as theft. This is playing into the
| propaganda from companies like Google that are attempting
| to ahistorically distort the social contract by asserting
| that _they_ control the content that is displayed on my
| screen, which is not how the web works or has ever
| worked. It 's not "stealing", "freeloading",
| "privateering", it's a public resource that companies
| have _imposed themselves upon_ and are now attempting to
| assert ownership of.
| ttrn wrote:
| > YouTube, streaming services, etc. provide you a service
| in exchange for you also allowing ads to be loaded on your
| computer.
|
| I don't remember signing a contract with YouTube. They send
| my browser a list of "things" and their URLs required to
| render a page and, as my agent, my browser can freely load
| or ignore them.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > You are not allowed to:
|
| > access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit,
| broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or
| otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content
| except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or
| (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if
| applicable, the respective rights holders;
|
| > circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or
| otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or
| attempt to do any of these things), including security-
| related features or features that (a) prevent or restrict
| the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use
| of the Service or Content;
| fluoridation wrote:
| That would appear to be describing attempting to hijack
| or interfere with the YouTube servers. Someone
| instructing a program on their computer to do something
| other than what the operators of the Service thought it
| would do has no bearing on the Service's ability to
| continue operating or on the availability of the Content.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Tell me where this shows up in the process of watching a
| YouTube video. On a fresh device I can navigate to their
| page, select a video, and watch it. Never in that chain
| of events is this agreed upon.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Your use of the Service is subject to these terms, the
| YouTube Community Guidelines and the Policy, Safety and
| Copyright Policies which may be updated from time to time
| (together, this "Agreement").
|
| > Please read this Agreement carefully and make sure you
| understand it.
|
| > If you do not understand the Agreement, or do not
| accept any part of it, then you may not use the Service.
|
| Even if it's not binding, it illustrates what Google
| intends to do (stop providing the service via an anti-
| adblocker script) if you do not follow their TOS.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Cool story, illegal in my country. Also, the popup is
| blocked, so I don't even get to agree to it or not.
|
| It doesn't matter what Google intends to do. Only what I
| do in response. TOS are not legally binding, they're a
| bunch of crap.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I wonder if the reverse would also work. If my browser's
| source code included a "TOS" that "by uploading content
| to and executing code on my machine you give me a
| permanent and irrevocable right to view/read the content
| using any software of my choosing" would that bind Google
| as well? Wouldn't that illustrate my intent in accessing
| Google's services just as a EULA I never get to read
| illustrates theirs?
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > it illustrates what Google intends to do (stop
| providing the service via an anti-adblocker script) if
| you do not follow their TOS.
|
| Yes. They have complete discretion over what 'list of
| "things" and their URLs required to render a page' they
| decide to send any particular user agent (modulo
| copyright infringement, hate speech laws, etc.). There is
| no requirement that HTTP connections to 'youtube.com'
| should receive video data; or even HTML; or even that
| anything's listening on that port.
| trifurcate wrote:
| From some Tor exit nodes (not all!), YouTube does present
| a modal to make you agree to the ToS before you are
| allowed to interact with the page. Probably some
| localities actually legally require you to do this, and
| so Alphabet complies.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| They can wave that EULA around all they want but I'm not
| going to sign it. And even if I signed it, I wouldn't
| honor it. Why should I play fair with corporations,
| particularly corporations the likes of google?
| belorn wrote:
| You really do not want to use those kind of words around
| places with value added tax. The law basically says that if
| a person or company is providing a service in exchange for
| money, goods or services, the seller will have to pay value
| added tax on that exchange.
|
| The way that advertisements in the past has managed to
| avoid paying this tax is that the service or product is
| given away for free along side the advertisement. Since it
| is not an exchange of services, and the product is being
| giving away for free with no expectation of any money,
| goods or services, there is no tax to be applied.
| leereeves wrote:
| On the other hand, many ads are deceptive, which is also a
| form of theft. If ads were honest, they wouldn't be
| effective.
|
| And ad blocking is self defense.
| voz_ wrote:
| I find that there are often useful ads which inform me
| about niche products or services that I would not
| otherwise have known about.
|
| It's a fine line.
|
| A lot of ads are just shit though.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I have never seen an ad that was more valuable to me than
| when I go out looking for a product or service to solve a
| problem or ask a friend for advice. The shotgun affect of
| push advertising makes even those theoretically "useful"
| ads negative value, because they have to compete for my
| brain and attention with all the other ads, meaning they
| have to be just as optimized for manipulation.
| judge2020 wrote:
| You are inherently freeloading off of everyone that does
| pay for Premium or watches ads.
|
| I didn't say that doing is is immoral, or that we should
| collectively feel ashamed, just that it is inherently
| <not paying> for YouTube, and that YT has every right to
| try to stop this behavior - of course, balancing kicking
| people off the platform with any ground they lose to
| competing UGC streaming services.
| leereeves wrote:
| If not consuming the content exactly as provided is
| "freeloading", then I guess I'm freeloading when I fast
| forward past ads on my DVR too.
|
| Do you do that? I hope you're consistent with your
| principles and watch every ad.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > You are inherently freeloading off of everyone that
| does pay for Premium or watches ads.
|
| You seem to be assuming that watching ads would reduce
| the number of them, or reduce the price of Premium. All
| evidence is to the contrary (e.g. the presence of ads on
| pay-for TV, like cable)
| judge2020 wrote:
| It wouldn't reduce the rate of ads or price of premium,
| but if everyone ran an ad blocker and didn't pay for
| Premium, YouTube would either shut down or make the
| uploaders pay per watch or per GB served, perhaps,
| leading to a worse experience.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| _Would_ that lead to a worse experience? It would
| certainly cut down on spammy, AI generated content. I
| already fund many of the creators I watch through Patreon
| or other means so I suspect it wouldn 't change much for
| me.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| Yeah, my 9-year-old grandson could not upload his
| hillarious videos about dinosaurs anymore. Please explain
| to him that he can open some Patreon to support his
| Youtube fees instead.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > You are inherently freeloading off of everyone that
| does pay for Premium or watches ads.
|
| So what if I am?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| It's not freeloading when the alternative is
| psychological damage.
| convalescindrey wrote:
| The alternatives are stop watching the content or pay for
| it. If you chose the ad-supported version then that's on
| you.
| jvolkman wrote:
| An alternative is to pay the subscription fee.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| I realized a truism years ago: Anytime there are 3 or more
| parties involved in a business deal, at least one of them
| is getting fucked. And it's usually the least powerful
| party, which 99% of the time is just the ordinary
| user/consumer/taxpayer. However, not always. And sometimes
| it's two parties getting screwed. This happens a _lot_ with
| government contracts. Where the people paid for it, the
| government got garbage, and the contractor(s) got rich.
|
| Here's is the quintessential example:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-
| promis_b_5... We paid $400 billion dollars to entrenched
| ISPs and got _absolutely nothing_ for it.
|
| And advertising is almost always a 3 party business deal.
| The merchant. The advertiser. The unwitting public.
| Sometimes the merchant gets screwed. Sometimes it's the
| advertiser. But almost always the target audience.
|
| So when it comes to adblocking, I have zero sympathy for
| the advertiser or the merchant. I want zero advertisements
| in my life. But I get them anyway.
| hibikir wrote:
| Online advertising is even more fun than that: There's
| the merchant/website, the advertiser, the ad network, and
| the public. You can even add the advertiser's
| competitors! The public gets ads they don't want, the
| merchant can fake some of their traffic, or maybe it's
| the advertiser's competitors. The ad network is
| ultimately not all that interested in giving the
| advertiser that great a deal, or even if they are, they
| might still lose to those trying to steal ad revenue. You
| then see a company that was trying to sell ads to sports
| fans in indiana, that see that all their budget really
| went to ads placed in front of a bot farm from
| Philippines. I know of a failed alcohol startup who,
| after analysis, saw that 40% of their youtube marketing
| budget ended up attached to channels playing Peppa Pig.
|
| So sure, adblock away, but don't think that the consumer
| is the sole loser in the ads race: It's far worse than
| that.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Yeah, in advertising there's supply side and demand side.
| So even more parties can get screwed!
| cm2012 wrote:
| In that case, you better either subscribe to Youtube premium
| or not watch Youtube. It makes _me_ sick when people
| "exploit" all of these amazing videos people have made on
| Youtube but refuse to help compensate them for their work by
| not at least subscribing to premium.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Every creator I watch gets their money through merch,
| patreon, sponsors, basically everywhere BUT youtube,
| because nearly every single video will be "unmonitized" or
| copyright claimed by someone who doesn't even own the
| rights and cannot be challenged in an unbiased setting.
|
| The only people who make meaningful advertising money from
| youtube are the ones in the extreme high value advertising
| niches, like Swell Entertainment when she does a tech
| related video (though she still makes way more money from
| sponsorships) or all the Logan pauls making clickbait
| screaming content for literal children to mindlessly
| consume all day because their parents can't afford baby
| sitters because all the money goes to advertising behemoths
| instead of the workers.
|
| I actually WANT youtube to be a great, pro-creator
| platform, where I have to pay to see people who feel that
| youtube gives them support and good tools to do their damn
| job. But that's not an option. The only option available is
| for me to pay youtube to remove their horrifically
| overbearing advertising, often from advertisers that are
| fraudulent, so I can watch videos from creators who
| genuinely hate youtube for making their lives hell.
|
| I will not give youtube a dime until they stop viewing
| creators as replaceable cogs in a machine designed to grind
| them to dust for every second of content they can produce
| and then cast them aside.
|
| I mean fuck, does youtube even send content creators
| documents to help them prepare their taxes? These people
| are all technically self employed, couldn't a behemoth like
| google help them get a pooled health care scheme that was
| affordable to middle size creators?
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| There is so much content on YT where the creators don't
| even get paid though. Even a popular video that would make
| money can become demonetized (but still runs ads!!). I much
| prefer to subscribe via patreon or other forms to support
| creators more directly.
|
| This also ignores the in-video sponsorships and ads that
| creators will often include.
| kroltan wrote:
| I pay for Premium.
|
| I also run an ad blocker, with extra rules to ban content I
| don't want to see, such as the terrible "shorts" mind-
| ebola, as well as a bunch of regexes for clickbait titles
| and a big ban list of channels that is updated often.
|
| SponsorBlock to remove baked-in advertisements and other
| misfeatures like interaction reminders.
|
| Now I am also using the beta DeArrow extension to disarm
| the thumbnails/titles a little bit by replacing them with
| random frames from the video.
|
| I think the hip way to say it is "I'm between jobs"
| currently, but when I had a stable income source I would do
| eventual donations to channels of my interest, which
| according to some creators even a single USD is way more
| than the average lifetime return of a single viewer due to
| ads/YTP.
|
| The only reason I haven't subscribed to Nebula /
| CuriosityStream instead, which seems to be a much healthier
| platform, is precisely because they advertise it so much.
| Also because I do appreciate more entertainment-y videos
| sometimes, not just edutainment.
| electriclove wrote:
| How do you block YouTube Shorts?
| digging wrote:
| Or find them on Nebula so they can actually get paid.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Web advertisers seem like a classic case of taking miles when
| given an inch.
|
| It's a classic case of tragedy of the commons.
|
| Your gutter ads don't convert as well and they are blocked just
| as readily as the loud ones.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I started blocking ads personally when I saw the double-click
| ads.
|
| You guys will know what I'm talking about - random words in
| text, underlined twice, which if you hover over, will get an
| obnoxious ad.
|
| Google bought them not long after:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick....
|
| Ads have been obnoxious for at least 15 years already.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Much longer than that! The first really user-hostile move was
| pop-up ads, then pop-UNDER ads, which were just offensively
| intrusive, so bad that all the browsers stopped them. Then
| the advertising industry started to innovate, and it became
| necessary to block everything. I've been blocking ads since
| the late 90s.
|
| Once they lose you, once you get so pissed off that you go to
| the trouble to install and configure an adblocker, they NEVER
| get you back.
|
| They do not understand this, and so they'll simply push more
| people to adblockers. Maybe Chrome's manifest v3 won't
| suffice, so people will move to Firefox or Brave to do it.
| Either way, Google loses.
| savanaly wrote:
| >Web advertisers seem like a classic case of taking miles when
| given an inch.
|
| I think there's a distinction between that and the tragedy of
| the commons. Advertisers face a game theory scenario where they
| can increase the obnoxiousness of their individual ad, which
| will enrich themselves, but it hurts the industry as a whole
| because users are marginally more likely to figure out a way to
| block ads altogether after seeing an obnoxious ad.
|
| But it is only fitting since advertising is an arms race
| regardless of the nature of online advertising or the ability
| to be obnoxious. All companies would be better off if they
| collectively decreased their marketing budgets, but that would
| require coordination and a way to guarantee no one defects.
| vonwoodson wrote:
| Don't forget that we block ads for privacy, too.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Not why I block ads. I simply hate them in any form.
| oofnik wrote:
| What you have to understand about the contemporary media
| industry is that their primary business objective is to sell
| advertisements. Your attention is the product now; the more of
| it they can sell to advertisers, the more profitable the
| business becomes. It's much easier to present positive
| quarterly earnings reports by selling eyeballs and clicks than
| it is selling pretty much anything else. In the before times,
| when media companies were primarily in the business of selling
| content for a monthly or yearly subscription fee, this was much
| less of an issue.
|
| You can't block access to their most profitable raw material
| and expect them to just sit and take it.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Well, content providers provide less consumable content now
| (while the raw amount explodes), that is for sure, we see it,
| we experience it. The result? We do not try consuming content
| since we see there is much less, but with much more garbage
| and adverse consequences.
|
| We - wife, me, and some I know - cancels providers as they
| are not serving the consumer, and we feel that. Let them sell
| their service to ad companies then, when less and less
| consumers go to their site, good luck with that in the long
| run. They lost one customer for sure, and looking at the mood
| here there may be more, or will be more if they carry on like
| this.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Content is also advertisement. They benefit just as well from
| platform-specific content that, statistically, puts ads in
| front of a lot of people, and more relevantly, creates a
| market for people to pay YouTube to place their content in
| front of people.
|
| I'm far from convinced this isn't relevant to YouTube history
| with controversial content. I think somebody is paying to do
| that, covertly or overtly. Sort of payola? I think there are
| ways to pay off YouTube to promote your content.
| amatecha wrote:
| Heck, content is also advertisement in the sense that the
| show/film you're watching is an advertisement for all the
| related merchandise that will be on store shelves the same
| day as the media is published :) I wonder how many
| $millions Baby Yoda has brought in for Disney?
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| [dead]
| kjs3 wrote:
| On this point, I realized recently is that at one time, auto-
| plying audio or video on a web site would have been a cause for
| torches and pitchforks. It was one of the most asshole things a
| site could do. Now a significant fraction of the websites I hit
| (esp anything 'news') immediately pop up an unrequested live
| video window with full audio, and even if I close it, as soon
| as you scroll over any media on the site, it auto-plays, and
| when you scroll past, the window pops back up playing video.
|
| When did this become ok? Telling them to get off my lawn hasn't
| worked.
| Dwedit wrote:
| > Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in
| the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames
|
| There were programs way back then that acted as a proxy server
| that would remove image tags that matched the size used by
| banner ads. See WebWasher or Proxomitron.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Proxomitron
|
| I haven't heard that name in a long time. Is that how it
| worked, by image size? I thought it was URL pattern matching.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Web advertisers seem like a classic case of taking miles when
| given an inch.
|
| Besides the sensory assault "ads" are also running arbitrary
| code in your browser and trying to track you individually
| across websites. I find it absurd when an ad block detector
| says something like "please support us". It's really "please
| support us...by letting AdTech track everything you do without
| informed consent and resell all of that information to
| innumerable downstream buyers also without consent by the way
| watch this blaring ad for something entirely unrelated to the
| topic of this webpage".
|
| To make things _even worse_ AdTech networks have ended up to be
| major malware vectors because they do effectively zero
| filtering or curation of uploaded content.
|
| In principal I don't mind advertisements. Someone has a thing
| for sale they want to show me is for sale. It's not a big deal.
| I never really had issues with print advertisements, even a
| full page ad wasn't intrusive on my life and I could just turn
| the page if I was uninterested. But modern web "advertising" is
| just the worst fucking thing. The only sane option is to block
| it because it is so invasive and intrusive.
| marban wrote:
| Worst thing is even if you pay, they'll throw them at you.
| Looking at WSJ, FT, NYT,...
| kervantas wrote:
| The Economist does this too. It's infuriating to see ads in
| the app when I pay for a yearly subscription.
| asdff wrote:
| Whats even worse are the newsletters from news
| organizations imo. There's no ublock origin for Apple Mail
| content viewers. I either lose content like imagery or I
| have to go all in and load all their remote content,
| tracking pixels, the works. The ads will be for things like
| "pills the doctor doesn't want you to know about" and other
| phishy sounding stuff.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| I was a subscriber more than 10 years ago but gave up when
| they started to have pushy, navigation blocking ads. It was
| like being unable to turn page before some time passed on
| the ad. How hostile is that?! Very! Analogy: you see an ad
| in the street and you are not allowed to walk on for some
| period of time, forced to stay at the ad. I requested ad
| free subscription for elevated price or promising
| cancellation, it became a cancellation.
|
| I still buy the paper format occasionally, I love their
| articles - it is also easy jumping over ads in the physical
| format -, but I will not subscribe for paper version due to
| the amount of paper used and my trust in their electronic
| version is gone. I did not try their app since (and my
| tablet use sinked too, I might need much more push now to
| give a second try).
| renlo wrote:
| No longer a WSJ/NYT subscriber specifically because of this;
| why is my subscription money not enough?
| efields wrote:
| Because their subscription revenue does not cover their
| cost of business and/or revenue goals.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| They're free to provide a tier that does cover costs and
| provide profit, why don't they do that?
| kenhwang wrote:
| As someone who has worked with WSJ/NYT/LAT/Tribune on
| adtech in the past: that completely ad free subscription
| cost is significantly more expensive than you think.
|
| Partially because those sponsored articles (native ads)
| pay a lot of money to be there.
|
| Partially because they'd have to build and support a
| whole other version of the newspaper without ads, and if
| the subscriber count is low, that
| engineering/infrastructure cost isn't spread as much.
|
| Those Google display ads do pretty much pay garbage
| though.
|
| When we ran the numbers, it'd have to be a 3-5x increase
| in subscription cost to replace advertising completely.
| None of those newspapers think anyone would be willing to
| pay those costs.
| coldpie wrote:
| The usual reason is people who are willing to pay to
| avoid ads are also the most valuable people for
| advertisers to advertise to. That decreases the value of
| their advertising business, which means they have to push
| the subscription prices up even further, which may make
| the business unviable. Especially because they have to
| compete with other businesses that will happily copy
| their content and put ads on it with no paywall.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Because _nothing is ever enough_. You were already enough
| of a sucker to pay for one thing, why shouldn't you be
| suckered into paying a little more?
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| I know this isn't exactly the same, but I used to work at
| an adtech startup and my boss was very savvy in the
| industry, and right in front of me did some quick napkin
| math showing that Hulu probably makes about $20 a month off
| of people in the free tier, and only $13 from their ad-
| free* subscription.
|
| So by subscribing Hulu makes _less_ money off of you.
|
| The main reason is video ads pay the most, which doesn't
| apply to papers, but does apply to websites. So what's
| their excuse now?
|
| *Their "ad-free" tier has ads.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Newspapers were never free of ads even with subscripts. Ads
| subsidized your subscription. $0.25 for a full news paper
| and $1.50 for the bigger sunday addition is never going to
| pay for everything on its own (assuming a subscription
| actually lowered the full rate).
|
| The only thing that I recall that was ever advertised as
| free from ads with a subscription was premium cable like
| HBO. Even magazines were full of ads. Hell, certain
| magazines were bought more for the ads than the content
| (thinking fashion mags).
| hibikir wrote:
| Back when newspapers involved paper, providing an ad-free
| experience for people that subscribe would have been
| extremely expensive: A very large part of a newspaper's
| footprint was actually setting the paper into pages in a
| sensible fashion, printing and distribution. Printing an
| extra copy of the paper that has no ads would have been
| quite expensive, regardless of advertiser revenue.
|
| Today, it'd be quite simple, as most ad blockers prove
| every day. I'd argue that today, many small newspaper
| websites are virtually unreadable without an ad blocker.
| 2-3 videos playing all at once, plus regular banner ads,
| while trying to make close buttons invisible. The same
| number of ads appear in a mobile browser too, leaading to
| basically no space to read any of the actual content.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm not buying your premise. You seem to be implying that
| the cost of running the paper could have been sustained
| by subscription only foregoing any ad sales. I'm saying
| the exact opposite in that even if 100,000 people paid
| full price for the paper every day, that would not raise
| enough money to run the paper. This is why it is said
| subscriptions were subsidized by the ads. To eliminate
| ads, the subscription price would have to increase
| significantly beyond what people would accept.
|
| You seem to only be coming from the expense of layout
| which is just not true. The world has increased in size
| from only paying attention to the local news with maybe a
| few specialty sources. Now, you can have access to news
| from any country at any time. Expecting people to pay for
| subscriptions to that is not realistic either. So since
| people are not paying for subscriptions, each company is
| depending on income for other places which has always
| been ads. The key difference today for me is that ads can
| now be malicious beyond their original purpose. Seeing an
| ad in print or tv or hearing one on the radio was never
| able to drain you of resources whether that be compute
| power or something much more nefarious. Because they
| cannot (or will not) control that, they have lost all
| sympathy from me about ads.
| js2 wrote:
| Does the clothing you wear sport a logo? That's an
| advertisement, right?
|
| Does your computer have an Intel Inside sticker on it? An
| Apple maybe? Perhaps it's emblazoned with Lenovo.
|
| How about the car you drive? Does it not proudly display the
| manufacturer's logo? Did you ask the dealer to remove their
| stickers and plate surround?
|
| As I look around my house, all I see are ads! For things I
| paid for!
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| No, no and yes but also yes for me. I won't say it's
| particularly common, but there are absolutely some of us
| out there that will go out of our way to be a free walking
| billboard. For me personally, a manufacturer identifying
| their product is fine but anything else I will aggressively
| squash (e.g. My car manufacturer's logo is fine, but I
| absolutely make the dealer remove anything they've added
| with their name/logo on it for every car I buy).
| Given_47 wrote:
| Specifically that car point struck me the other day when I
| was walking on the street and took in how blatantly car
| manufacturer logos are plastered about. The subconscious
| brand awareness is a hell of a thing
| evandale wrote:
| > Does the clothing you wear sport a logo?
|
| Yeah but it's not against their TOS to buy the clothes and
| cut the logo out.
|
| > Does your computer have an Intel Inside sticker on it?
|
| Yeah but it's not against their TOS buy an Intel processor
| and take the sticker off.
|
| > An Apple maybe?
|
| Yeah but it's not against their TOS to buy an Apple laptop
| and put a sticker with a 4 pane window on top of the Apple
| sticker.
|
| > Perhaps it's emblazoned with Lenovo.
|
| Perhaps it is, but it's not against their TOS to put an IBM
| sticker over the Lenovo sticker.
|
| > How about the car you drive? Does it not proudly display
| the manufacturer's logo? Did you ask the dealer to remove
| their stickers and plate surround?
|
| Yeah but it's not against the TOS to..
|
| Hopefully the point is clear.
| js2 wrote:
| I was being cheeky and besides, the person I was replying
| to didn't mention Terms of Service. So this is a new
| argument. But it's not against the TOS to block ads on
| WSJ, FT, or NYT either. Here's NYT:
|
| https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014893428
|
| I didn't check the others.
| evandale wrote:
| Why are you being cheeky and muddying the waters in a
| serious discussion?
|
| We're discussing more than if the WSJ, FT, and NYT allows
| ad blockers or not. We're discussing how stupid it is
| that a service shows ads in the first place for premium
| service people pay for. WSJ and NYT are only two
| examples.
|
| We're discussing how there's precedent to pay for a
| service and still see ads and how it wouldn't be a shock
| if Google pulled the same stunt.
|
| We're discussing concepts and ideas, not specific
| companies and their policies.
|
| Furthermore, the link you provided has a section "4.
| PROHIBITED USE OF THE SERVICES" which is an overly broad
| section that reads exactly like Google's TOS and could be
| interpreted as banning ad blockers if NYT wanted to say
| that's its purpose.
| [deleted]
| aendruk wrote:
| If left uncontested, yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of those
| are ads, offensively and intolerably on things I paid for.
|
| I don't understand how everyone else seems to be okay with
| this norm. I dyed the advertisement on my rain jacket black
| to make it invisible. I disassembled my phone dock and
| ripped out the glowing advertisement. I sought out a foil-
| backed sticker to fully block the illuminated advertisement
| on the lid of my laptop. I ordered custom printed stickers
| to cover the advertisement on the frame of my bicycle. I
| ripped out the advertisements embroidered onto my shoes.
|
| As I look around _my_ house, I see sanctuary from our
| dystopia.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Now I'm thinking about a world where the architect's
| name/logo is massively and obnoxiously engraved on the
| front of everyone's home.
|
| Anyway rlly enjoy your comment you've given me some great
| inspiration
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I've seen brass plaques set in the concrete advertising
| for driveway companies.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Slightly expanding on my previous comment, the only
| "individual billboard" logos that would seem justifiable
| in principle would b certain foss projects since the
| overall community benefits from greater awareness. With
| anything else, the increased brand awareness only serves
| to further enrich that company.
|
| Is at least my quick assessment. Interested in your
| thoughts
| aendruk wrote:
| Agreed, there's a distinction between absentmindedly
| promoting commercial schemes and deliberately promoting
| causes that you think are worthwhile. I'm certainly not
| without agenda and several of the commercial ads I've
| covered are replaced by designs with socio-political
| purpose.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Good to make that distinction of intentionality (tho the
| people buying a good solely to purport "status" is a
| whole different topic lol)
| godelski wrote:
| We can also look at pirating as another reasoning.
|
| Music pirating happened because it was simply impossible to get
| a lot of music you wanted to. Then when you could find it,
| you'd pay a large amount. Maybe not even knowing if you liked
| the work. Napster and Limewire come in because they let you get
| whatever and even one song at a time. Music industry comes in
| with DRM and makes it harder to rip CDs, but the mouse always
| wins. Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify killed a lot of music
| pirating because they offered most of the advantages that
| pirating had: access and portability. It made things easy.
|
| Or look at movies. The "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" ad started in
| 2004, when a ticket cost under $10 (I think I paid around
| $6-$8). Now that same ticket is $18-$20, which is $11-$13 in
| 2004. Not to mention the crazy prices for refreshments. People
| didn't stop liking going to the movie theaters, they were
| priced out (along with the studios migrating towards
| international audiences and diverging from our cultural
| standards to theirs). Home streaming didn't fix that because
| they charged the same price or more for a ticket. Netflix
| killed a lot because people would rather wait (and especially
| after they started making their own content). Then more
| streaming services popped up and pirating is back because it
| re-simplified things. PopcornTime was incredibly popular for a
| bit and was simple enough for my grandma to use.
|
| This is all really due to incredibly short sighted thinking.
| Chasing one marker to the next not realizing that they're
| veering away from the actual goal. I know this link isn't
| exactly the same thing, but we should be able to see the
| parallels here because it is the exact same game going on[0],
| just with profit maximization rather than policy making (we can
| formulate markets as a social choice theory problem).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goQ4ii-zBMw
| badtension wrote:
| I listen to some podcasts to sleep and it is infuriating to get
| even 12-45 (!) min long ads! I wouldn't be that upset with
| 5-10s ads every 10 minutes (as long as the volume level doesn't
| kill me) but half a freaking hour? What the hell is this?
|
| If there was a company with clear community intentions and
| sound morals, yeah I would consider paying for it and support
| the creators. But YT that treats me like trash with their dark
| patterns and algorithms showing me stuff to hijack my brain
| instead of stuff I am looking for? No way in hell.
| crummy wrote:
| That's crazy. What podcast was this that had 45min long ads?
| badtension wrote:
| Don't remember since I browse random stuff that don't
| absorb me too much as I fall asleep. The only thing I
| remember is it was a religion related crap... seriously.
| Like a protestant sermon or something.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The obnoxious ads generate more money though. Guess what gives
| YouTube (and creators) more money, an ad that can be skipped
| after 5 seconds or an unskippable 6 second ad followed by
| another unskippable 15 second ad?
|
| Similarly, what gives the newspaper more money, the
| unpersonalized ad respecting your privacy or the personalized
| ad that first loads a fingerprinting framework to track you
| across the web and then show you more targeted ads?
| metiscus wrote:
| There is a saying that goes something like this: It is
| difficult to get a man to understand something that his
| paycheck depends on his not understanding.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Ads also constitute a security and privacy threat and are
| frequently an attack vector for phishing schemes - even on
| Google search. I'm not going to disable my adblocker and risk
| becoming a crime victim.
| binkHN wrote:
| > This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium...
|
| I'm subscribed as well, but it's becoming less valuable as more
| and more content creators run sponsored ads in their videos and
| these play regardless of your subscription status.
| jbm wrote:
| Let's not forget that so many advertisements are for things
| that are objectively damaging to you. "It's good for the
| economy and OK for you" school of advertising.
|
| High interest loans, fast foods, cable channels (with more
| advertising), sports gambling, et cetra.
|
| I still cannot understand why I paid to get a specific
| streaming service (Sportsnet) and had to sit through Wayne
| Gretzsky ruining his legacy by selling sports gambling to my 3
| children.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| It's shocking, these days you can even buy a paid service and
| still be forced to watch ads (Hulu)
| sujinge9 wrote:
| Not sure why it's shocking. In the same space, you pay for
| cable and still are shown ads. Same for movies at the
| theater. Though most of the ads are for new shows/movies to
| encourage recurring usage/payment.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > I still cannot understand why I paid to get a specific
| streaming service (Sportsnet) and had to sit through Wayne
| Gretzsky ruining his legacy by selling sports gambling to my
| 3 children.
|
| Why did they do it?
|
| Money.
|
| They wanted more money and you wouldn't stop watching your
| sport.
|
| It's not a surprise. If given the option, people will
| actively shop to get the best bang for their buck. Given two
| options, they will opt for the one that gets them the most of
| what they value.
|
| Why did you do it?
|
| Because you valued your viewing habits over other things.
|
| It's all really simple.
| jbm wrote:
| Actually I cancelled it after a month. I had moved from
| Tokyo back to Canada and didn't realize how far things had
| gone.
|
| Your point stands in general.
| paulddraper wrote:
| How much do I have to pay them to not?
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| I had to turn off the sports. Used to love NHL (and TV),
| but it was not worth the dark destructive undercurrent in
| my life. It really robbed me of happiness and potential.
| It became much easier just to turn hockey off. If a
| service does not have an ad-free version, it is simply
| not available to me.
| jbm wrote:
| The irony is that, in Japan, the NHL offered a service
| with no advertising for a fair price.
|
| I assume making a decent return off a large number of
| people is of less importance than fleecing true fans.
|
| I used to think the Japanese baseball league was insanely
| commercial due to it using corporate sponsor names
| instead of the city name (Hanshin Tigers, Yomiuri Giants,
| etc..) but in retrospect, the commercialization was only
| skin deep while the NHL is completely and
| unapologetically corrupted.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Stop paying them anything. Get everyone you can to stop
| paying them anything.
|
| The transphobic fiasco with bud light made it pretty
| clear that boycotts WORK, if only we had the balls to do
| them, and maybe endure minuscule """suffering""" to
| continue them.
| squaresmile wrote:
| The ads could be worse: drugs that treat cancer, diabetes in
| 1 month, supplements that cure Hepatitis and so on. If
| YouTube can show fast food and gambling ads instead, that
| would be a nice improvement.
|
| I assume because the ads are in language and region Google
| don't care as much, there's less priority or resource to
| filter them out. Maybe they should ask Meta how to do it
| since FB and Insta ads are way more "reasonable".
| mcpackieh wrote:
| What good are ads for cancer drugs? If I have cancer then
| I'll go to a doctor who should know the relevant drugs. If
| I don't trust my doctor, I'll get second opinions from
| other doctors. If I don't trust any doctor, I'll hit the
| books and start doing searches of the academic literature.
| At no point is it rational for me to turn on the television
| and see what cancer drugs are being advertised on it.
| KMag wrote:
| I believe the GP is saying that in their language,
| they're getting advertisements for over-the-counter
| cancer "treatments".
|
| Sure, if everyone is smart, well-educated, rational, and
| has access to affordable licensed doctors, there isn't
| much harm in such garbage advertising. However, the
| problem is that these advertisements are being displayed
| to people who live in the real world.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| The Doctors are being privately lobbied behind the
| scenes. Then the patient comes in with the idea for the
| drug. A preemptive match is already made in heaven. It's
| capitalizing and profiteering off medical conditions.
| What they do to Doctors is probably far worse than their
| idiotic ads warning you of sudden heart failure, stroke,
| etc.
| haburka wrote:
| I don't understand why this is top comment. Ads on youtube are
| skippable after a few seconds and you can pay to not watch
| them. It's weird to conflate that with some adspam website,
| which may have a ton of flashy ads and a video.
|
| However, more importantly, there's no such thing as a free
| lunch. Ads enable content creators to get paid. Frankly,
| youtube barely eeks out a profit. When you block ads instead of
| paying to remove them, you're making it harder for Youtube to
| justify its existence.
|
| Personally, I think it's fine to block ads if you're actually
| quite poor or if it makes the web unusable. But if you're just
| doing it because "web advertisers deserve it" or some other
| kind of hare brained rationalization, then you should
| reconsider your position. It's not rebellious or brave to use
| an adblocker when there are affordable paid ad free
| experiences, it's simply theft.
| highwind wrote:
| I block ads by default and turn it on for the sites that I
| want to support. Main reason for blocking by default is
| privacy. I don't want super targeted ad. If I'm on a
| particular site consuming particular content, that should be
| sufficient context for choosing what ad to show me. Do not
| follow me around all over the internet trying to sell me on
| stuff.
| kurthr wrote:
| I'm not sure how variable this is, but I've definitely
| experienced unwatchable levels of ads (mostly on
| mobile/Android). Having an ad before you even know if the
| content has interest is already a challenge (eg a how to
| video), and most that I see are in the 5-15sec range before
| watching and every 5-10min after that.
|
| However, I have had a dual 30sec ad before starting a video
| that repeated every 2min on something I actually wanted to
| watch, but quickly stopped, because it was "unwatchable". I
| consider that level to be at about 10% of watch time (regular
| TV is about 25% 8/30 min in larger blocks).
| Applejinx wrote:
| This came out on an Android website. I wonder how much of
| it is mobile-related.
| figassis wrote:
| Interestingly premium is not available in my country, so my
| choice is ads or no youtube. I pick the latter.
| makestuff wrote:
| I pay for YT premium because the ads were getting ridiculous (I
| think this is partly their goal to push people to premium
| subscriptions) and I want to support the creators. However, now
| every video has a damn host read ad embedded in it. I find it
| incredibly frustrating that my $15/mo isn't enough. I watch on
| my TV mainly so I can't use one of those plugins that skips
| host read ads. I just manually skip them. Maybe that makes me
| an asshole and anti-creator, but I already pay for premium and
| its getting ridiculous when a 10-15 minute video as a 60 second
| host read ad in the middle of it.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| My first inclination is that embedded ads happen because
| individual creators are having difficulty wrestling the
| algorithm to funnel enough views and subscribers their way
| and because not enough of the Premium subscription fee goes
| to creators.
|
| This isn't always true as there are a few giants that do
| embedded ads too, but most of the sponsor reads I see on
| YouTube are from smaller or more niche channels.
| belthesar wrote:
| In general, I don't mind sponsor reads in a video for a
| couple reasons:
|
| 1. They're produced much more mindfully in context of the
| video your watching. At their most basic, they're a small ad
| read at the beginning of a video, at their best, they're a
| much more likely to be relevant to me (the consumer) ad that
| doesn't cause me to lose focus on the video's original
| context. When a YouTube ad plays on my iPad while I'm
| listening to something during my daily shower, I don't really
| fear that a sponsor read is going to cause me to lose focus
| on the topic, largely because the automated ad inserter isn't
| going to accidentally cut out a second or two before a
| natural break, or even worse, in the middle of a sentence.
|
| 2. I know the proceeds of the ad are going directly to the
| creator, instead of to a machine that does ads in a way that
| myself, and a slough of psychologists, believe is damaging to
| a human.
|
| I would much rather pay for YT Premium, or other services for
| ad free content viewing, however a lack of job security has
| lead me to sock away that and other funds that would go to
| paying for content like this to my rainy day fund. If it were
| a binary choice of pay for YT or not right now, I wouldn't,
| and I'd miss out on some fun, informative, and entertaining
| content, but in a way, I wish that was the case. It'd come
| with some awful consequences for an entire ecosystem of
| content creators, but ultimately that's the consequences of
| pedaling tech drugs, and that's a whole different
| conversation.
| hippich wrote:
| See if you can install
| https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext - it has
| sponsorblock in it
| crazygringo wrote:
| That totally applies to ads on things like news websites.
|
| But not on YouTube. They're just commercials like you've been
| watching on TV for decades, except you're able to skip a lot of
| them after 5 seconds, and sometimes you get 15-second spots,
| and occasionally a 30-second spot.
|
| TV in the US usually has 8 minutes of commercials against 22
| minutes of content in a standard 30-minute block. If you skip
| ads when given the option, my experience with YouTube is more
| like 1-3 minutes of commercials against 22 minutes of content
| (usually about 10-30 seconds of ads every 5 minutes or so).
|
| So in this particular case with YouTube, "taking miles when
| given an inch" doesn't seem to apply at all.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| YouTube has gotten progressively worse with its ads over
| time, though. They're slowly turning up the heat to
| eventually boil the frog. Without opposition, YouTube ads
| will eventually be as bad as TV ads have become.
|
| On that note, I haven't watched network TV in over a decade
| because to the ads. None of the content on offer on cable and
| satellite TV is worth the asking price of both a subscription
| fees and ads, especially when most of it can be found in
| other legitimate sources, usually in higher quality.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _YouTube ads will eventually be as bad as TV ads have
| become._
|
| There's no evidence of that though. Users will easily close
| a tab because the preroll ad is too long, because there are
| plenty of other immediate things on the internet. In a way
| that TV viewers had no choice, because the other channels
| are just as bad.
|
| Yes, YouTube ads have been getting a little longer from
| their previous almost-nothing. But YouTube has also been
| extremely conservative in that direction, as they know
| they're walking a fine line. The idea that ads will get as
| bad as broadcast TV seems _exceedingly_ unlikely.
| jowdones wrote:
| I have YouTube premium but sometimes I can't login to my
| Google account and have to use plain, ad-infested version
| of YouTube and it's really unusable.
|
| I swear that listening to a 3 minutes content I am played
| at least 6 ads of at least 20 non-skippable seconds and
| in volleys of 2 or sometimes even 3 ads one after
| another.
|
| It's not "getting terrible", they're already way past
| that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What country are you in?
|
| I've watched YouTube for years and years and I've never
| in my life encountered more than 2 ads in a row. I've
| never encountered an unskippable ad longer than 15
| seconds, and every ad that is skippable is skippable
| after just 5 seconds. And while ads are often included at
| the start, once they've played I've never seen ads get
| inserted before the 3-minute mark -- they're usually
| around minute 4 or 5.
|
| (It's true that _after_ a 3-minute video finishes playing
| they 've started playing another set of ads, but you can
| just hit pause and navigate to your next video. You never
| need to watch them.)
|
| I've never encountered _anything_ even remotely close to
| 2 minutes of ads to watch 3 minutes of content as you 're
| describing. It's usually 10 or 15 seconds total. But I'm
| in the US, maybe there are countries where it's
| different?
|
| I'm particularly curious if there are objective stats
| around this. It's crazy to me that our experiences could
| be so completely opposite.
| matteoraso wrote:
| Don't forget how bloated they are. On some websites, I can
| halve the amount of RAM used with an adblocker.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I feel like the services are well aware of the why but
| ultimately a video ad is probably worth 50x what a link on the
| side is.
|
| On mainstream sites ads are almost always not that obnoxious
| imo. Pop-up ads used to be the standard.
| ianbutler wrote:
| I recently unblocked ads on a website that I use semi
| frequently in an effort to contribute to them as they had
| crossed my threshold for something I feel I should pay for. The
| page erupted into animation and sound. I immediately turned my
| blocker back on. Sorry website, you're quite useful but I won't
| subject myself to that.
| asdff wrote:
| It would be one thing if it was just a little couple kb image
| banner ad but this stuff is just abusive to your local
| resources. Taking the moral high ground and unblocking ads
| like some HN users seem to do basically says "I will tolerate
| an underperformant computer and diminished battery life for
| the rest of this devices shortened lifespan, and contribute
| to the ewaste crisis ever sooner"
| saeirtkawierjt wrote:
| I've had adblockers installed for decades. I'm always amazed at
| how bad the internet is without them when occasionally I view a
| website on my phone. When there's one completely unrelated
| video ad playing, and then a second also unrelated video ad
| pops up on top of the first, I wonder if the first advertiser
| knows or cares that their ad is being covered by another ad.
| And then I have two or more audio streams playing
| simultaneously, so I can't understand any of them ... and I
| regret working in tech.
| worksonmine wrote:
| You can use uBlock Origin (and a few other addons) on Firefox
| for Android.
| gsatic wrote:
| TV/Cable/Radio ads are regulated I think. You can't play more
| than some N minutes of Ads per hour of content.
|
| But the fucking Internet ad world there doesn't seem any upper
| limit to how much of someone's time you can waste.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Were you there, when pop-ups were a thing? Like, you opened a
| site, and there was this new window loaded? Ads has not got
| that much more obnoxious. For real.
|
| It is mainly that the internets have become 'real life' instead
| of some hidden away tech thing for us. We can't be deprived
| alone anymore without society falling down in pieces around us
| ...
| [deleted]
| miki123211 wrote:
| If you're on iOS, I highly recommend Yattee[1], a free Youtube
| app with no ads, background playback and sponsor block built-in.
|
| The way they get around App Store restrictions is by claiming
| that they aren't a Youtube app. They're technically a video-
| watching app which is supposed to be used with your own personal
| server. The server API they require, however, is supported by
| Invidious[2], an open-source, privacy-preserving Youtube front
| end. If you configure an Invidious instance in settings[3] (you
| don't have to host your own, there are plenty of them out there),
| you effectively get access to the entirety of Youtube.
|
| It's not a replacement for the official app by any means, it
| doesn't have a recommendation feed, it doesn't let you log in
| with a Google account, so it doesn't sync watch history with your
| other devices, it doesn't let you cast to Youtube-enabled
| devices, post comments, scroll through shorts etc, but if you
| have a playlist or a specific, longer video in mind, it's quite
| good. It also supports Invidious accounts, which let you manage
| channel subscriptions.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629 [2]
| https://invidious.io/ [3] https://gonzoknows.com/posts/yattee/
| immibis wrote:
| I heard the next version of iPhone will be forced to allow
| sideloading, so you could just install this app without jumping
| through hoops. Thanks, EU!
| nostromo wrote:
| Here's a much simpler approach: use the Brave browser on iOS
| and use the YouTube website.
|
| It blocks all YouTube ads, allows background playback and
| picture-in-picture, etc.
|
| You also get all of your regular YouTube features, like
| recommendations, etc.
|
| I haven't used the official YouTube app since.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Using the Brave browser on iPadOS at least, YouTube will just
| refuse to served HD content after one video. Enjoy your 4K
| video downscaled to 360p.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Using Brave to defeat YouTube ads.....ironic.
| comprev wrote:
| Musi on iOS [0] is a fantastic YouTube client which removes
| ads. The trick, albeit slightly inconvenient, is to copy/paste
| the exact YT title you wish to view. The search functionality
| isn't that good. Some things live like streams don't work
| however this has never been an issue for me.
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-
| streaming/id...
| topicseed wrote:
| Or just pay for YouTube Premium?
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I pay for Premium. Sadly it doesn't stop creators from
| inserting their own ~ads~ sponsorships into the videos
| directly so Sponsorblock is still a non-negotiable component
| of Youtube for me.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I highly recommend Nebula. Not only is it adfree and
| sponsor free, it's also much more curated than YouTube so
| the odds of finding good quality videos there are very
| high.
|
| Plus I paid for the lifetime subscription there so ... no
| subscription for me.
| dxxmxnd wrote:
| 16 USD a month just to block ads seems ridiculous.
| abawany wrote:
| It's cheaper if you pay annually (129usd, afair). And YT
| Premium also includes access to YT Music, which is also ad-
| free. Plus the annual subscription doesn't auto-renew.
| ecliptik wrote:
| Yattee + Tailscale + Piped greatly increased my consumption of
| Youtube videos.
|
| Missing most of the features mentioned (recommendations, watch
| history, google account, shorts) are all pros instead of cons
| to me. Just an app for intentionally watching content in a no-
| frills private environment, it's refreshing.
| Jaxan wrote:
| Oh this is amazing! Even works on iOS 15! Thanks for the
| recommendation.
| dceddia wrote:
| This seems great, and it's open source, too:
| https://github.com/yattee/yattee
|
| And there's a native Mac app! And tvOS!
|
| Maybe I'm just getting old, but as I was reading through the
| list of features this doesn't have, I just got more and more
| excited. My watch pattern is pretty much watching videos to
| solve problems or research some particular thing, and I feel
| like I find most of them through Google or YouTube search. The
| recommendations _can_ be pretty good, but there 's always those
| clickbaity, completely unrelated ones mixed in, trying to pull
| me into a totally separate rabbit hole.
| RajT88 wrote:
| There's also NewPipe on Android:
|
| https://newpipe.net/
| JackGreyhat wrote:
| and LibreTube:
|
| https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
| switch007 wrote:
| I love this just for the getting around of Apple's restrictions
| dybber wrote:
| Does this exist for Apple TV as well?
| bradly wrote:
| It does.
| Animats wrote:
| " YouTube users will have only two options: to disable their ad
| blocker and allow ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium to get rid
| of all advertisements."
|
| Or Vimeo, or Facebook, or TikTok, or ...
| rektide wrote:
| Or tivo/dvr'ing our own computers.
|
| It's just a big stupid farce when technology is used to bluntly
| cudgel users. Even if the user intents arent what corporations
| want.
| Vecr wrote:
| You mean, setting up a computer with image recognition to
| listen to RSS feeds (multiple of https://www.youtube.com/feed
| s/videos.xml?channel_id=WHATEVER), go to the videos in the
| feeds when new ones show up, and record only non-ad sections
| to a capture card? You would then be able to watch the videos
| ad-free from a USB stick or SSD at a later time.
| Gigachad wrote:
| None of those platforms are a realistic alternative to youtube.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Since I started using TikTok, my demand for YouTube is down
| 95%
| Gigachad wrote:
| Should have specified further. Sure, if you are only
| looking at memes and youtube shorts, TikTok might be an
| alternative. Personally my youtube use is mostly 20min / 1
| hour educational videos or background noise played on a TV.
| Nothing but youtube really covers this use case well.
|
| I'm quite satisfied with the platform since all the
| enshitification is removed on the premium version which
| provides pretty good value for money.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yeah, YouTube is great if you want to see long form
| videos from people youre already subscribed to, but I
| find their recommendations to be quite inferior to
| tiktoks. Less than 10% success rate.
|
| Come to think of it, the only people I've newly
| subscribed to on YouTube in the past year I've discovered
| through TikTok.
|
| It's a shame YouTube prioritizes ads so far above user
| experience - they have everything needed to build the
| best video recommendations platform besides the will to
| prioritize that above ad revenue.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Since I started using heroine, my demand for cigarettes is
| down 95%
|
| Youtube can be used in a very unhealthy way. TikTok cannot
| be used in a healthy way.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Seems like you've been guzzling the sinophobic
| propaganda. Tiktok is a much better platform than Youtube
| for user experience.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I think the fact that you felt the need to explain that
| heroine actually feels way better than cigarettes (after
| I didn't even say otherwise) and personally insult me for
| saying otherwise (after I didn't) should give you pause.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Tiktok would much more aptly compared to vaping - they
| are both addictive, but youtube is much more harmful
| because it's filled with toxins - their algorithm sends
| you to videos about conspiracy theories and hate rhetoric
| instead of just "interesting stuff that may encourage
| continued scrolling".
|
| Further, youtube's algorithm rewards creators that waste
| their viewers' time, while tiktok punishes it.
| Zambyte wrote:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tiktok+trend
|
| ?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| My girlfriend insisted for months that she watches
| educational non-meme content on tiktok but even she
| ultimately had to admit it's just a cope for scrolling
| tiktok for hours for the dopamine hit.
| Spivak wrote:
| Eh, I think it's a bit harsh. I've gotten so many good
| music, makeup, fashion, cooking, adhd, and art recs from
| TT. If your interests map to TT's format then it works
| well, if it doesn't then it doesn't.
|
| If you're gonna spend a few minutes scrolling through
| your phone because you have an awkward amount of time
| then TT is to me the cream of the crop.
| Reddit/News/Twitter just makes me angry and feel bad,
| Pinterest/Tumblr are stale, Facebook is for old people.
| Zambyte wrote:
| What is an awkward amount of time?
| Spivak wrote:
| An amount of time that is too long to just wait but too
| short to start something else.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I don't think that believing such a time exists is
| healthy.
| impissedoff1 wrote:
| Vimeo, odysee, bitchute, lbry , theta, livepeer, etc etc...
| wruza wrote:
| Chances that creators you like are there are basically
| zero. These alternatives are potential, not actual. The
| biggest of them, Vimeo doesn't even have a user-facing
| frontpage.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Last I saw, Vimeo charged the uploader to host the
| content. And it's only use case was corporate videos
| where you wanted to ensure there was no suggested content
| or adverts around your own content. Though these days I'm
| not sure companies care as I haven't seen a vimeo link in
| a long time.
| janAkali wrote:
| Or, more likely, wait until adblock developers figure out how
| to circumvent adblock detection. In the mean time you could
| probably switch your VPN country to Russia, as there's
| literally zero advertisements right now from google.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Hey Youtube: I've never logged in to you because I don't want you
| tracking me. I've never subscribed to, voted on, or commented on
| a video because all those things require logging in. For the
| handful of creators I like, I support them on Patreon. For the
| other random crap that I occasionally find useful, I use ad
| blockers or youtube-dl, and I'll continue using them until they
| stop working. When that day comes, you and I part company.
|
| You do what you gotta do, and I'll do what I gotta do.
|
| Cheers!
| incident5 wrote:
| [dead]
| bereb092 wrote:
| [dead]
| hexa872 wrote:
| [dead]
| hexa872 wrote:
| [dead]
| bereb092 wrote:
| [dead]
| phneutral26 wrote:
| >> Before the reliance on ad blockers, people turned to YouTube
| Vanced to enjoy a Premium-like experience for free. However, the
| service was shuttered in March last year due to legal pressure
| from Google. With ad blockers now seemingly on the way out, it
| looks like free users may only be left with the option of sitting
| through ads
|
| That is simply not true. There are numerous alternatives to
| YouTube Vanced, including NewPipe, LibreTube or SkyTube. Only to
| name a couple. And then there still is invidious. So no, you
| don't have to sit through ads.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| And revanced
| charcircuit wrote:
| Personally I would like it if a certain amount of membership /
| superchats would give you the ability to block ads or unlock
| YouTube premium.
| patrec wrote:
| Excellent news. One big reason why the deleterious adware economy
| has no viable competitor is that somewhat sophisticated users can
| partially opt out of it and get subsidized by the less savvy. By
| forcing people to pay for youtube premium (which, in fairness to
| Google is very reasonably priced) or look elsewhere, non-
| surreptitiously-paid-for consumer services become much more
| viable.
|
| Unfortunately, the other reason non-surreptitiously-paid-for
| services are currently not viable is that most people, including
| the vast majority of HN seem to be, uhm, not very sophisticated
| about reasoning about costs (to most people the k-gadzillions
| that google makes apparently materialize out of thin air, instead
| of really coming out of large_overhead_factor*k gadzillions they
| personally proportionally pay for). This seems hard to overcome.
|
| reply
| kerim023 wrote:
| [dead]
| RalfWausE wrote:
| Hah, first twitter, then reddit and now youtube... let big tech
| kill itself!
| transmobility wrote:
| [dead]
| theme8972 wrote:
| [dead]
| kerim023 wrote:
| [dead]
| theme8972 wrote:
| [dead]
| dahwolf wrote:
| Since about a year ago, we entered the era of consolidation. The
| margin call of tech. A decade of outsized unprofitable interest-
| free investments sure is fun, but there comes a time to pay it
| back. That time is now.
|
| Companies that are not profitable should very soon be profitable.
| Companies that are profitable yet are stagnating need to show
| their next growth. And that's why you have this intensity in
| amping up monetization across several companies.
|
| You can be absolutely sure that tech leaders are keenly watching
| the effects of bold moves at Twitter, Reddit, the like. Companies
| testing the waters to see how far they can go.
|
| We had it coming and probably shouldn't complain that much. As
| the dutch saying goes: when shaven, sit still. Your expectations
| are based on party mode, but the party stopped.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I need to write something that uses yt-dlp to download videos and
| play as they download, then delete after it is no longer needed.
| Arcuru wrote:
| Several media players will do that in the background for you,
| 'mpv' and 'vlc' come to mind. 'mpv' even has a sponsorblock
| script that will skip the sponsored segments if you so chose.
|
| I occasionally use this for convenience, even though I pay for
| YT Premium.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Sure but I want something integrated into the browser. I
| don't think anything like what I described exists just yet.
| karaterobot wrote:
| They're completely within their rights to try to enforce their
| policies. On the other hand there's an approximately 0% chance
| I'll go back to watching Youtube with ads. People seem to like
| Youtube Max or whatever they call their subscription fee. On the
| other hand it's hard to get me to pay for something I already had
| by taking it away and making me pay to get it back. I bet I'll
| end up paying them someday, but I think I'll try just not going
| to Youtube anymore first and see if that sticks.
| transmobility wrote:
| [dead]
| RandomBK wrote:
| I feel this was the inevitable outcome of the increased
| availability/popularity/awareness of ad blockers - a tragedy of
| the commons scenario that's set us on an escalating feedback loop
| that won't end well for anyone involved.
|
| EDIT: I do wonder if the price point of youtube premium is too
| high to capture an audience that simply doesn't want ads but
| doesn't care about any other features. $6/mo feels higher than
| the typical per-user ad revenue.
|
| EDIT2: While I don't know youtube's average revenue per user,
| both Facebook and Google's ARPU for the NA segment is
| ~$100-$200/y, which would put $6/mo quite close to the
| replacement cost of lost ads revenue.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It will end just fine. It'll become a bit harder to adblock,
| less people will do it as a result, and because of that it will
| drop off the radar again and we can keep adblocking as usual.
| tdeck wrote:
| YouTube brought this on themselves by ratcheting up the ads
| like crazy. Back in the day I preferred YT because they were
| one of the only video sites that didn't have preroll ads.
| YouTube used to basically have adsense ads and little banners
| below the video for years. Unobtrusive and I didn't mind them
| at all.
|
| Then they added postroll ads. Then preroll ads. Then midroll
| ads. With these ads I find YouTube unusable for any period of
| time.
| Corrado wrote:
| Ok, I thought it was just me. For the past several weeks I've
| noticed a marked uptick in ADs on YouTube. Just last night I
| was watching a short (~5min) video on how to clay bar your
| car and there were almost more ADs than content. I even
| completed the survey before the video thinking that would buy
| me some time. Nope!
| xeyownt wrote:
| yes, recently YT is just becoming extremely sh!tty.
| pravus wrote:
| > I do wonder if the price point of youtube premium is too high
| to capture an audience that simply doesn't want ads
|
| It's this plus the fact that I get virtually no value-add with
| YouTube. I have to fight with its algorithmic recommendations
| more than I would ever want to if I were paying any money for
| the service. I also don't want YouTube Music and would like it
| completely removed from my YouTube experience altogether. My
| music listening is done through a separate universe using my
| own collection.
|
| I would happily pay money for a service that could provide the
| videos I watch regularly with a reasonable recommendation
| system that worked for me. And it needs to be priced for
| basically what it is: network egress.
| imposterr wrote:
| I'm okay with this if it means more platforms start to offer
| paid access with no ads. There are so many ad supported
| services out there that don't even have a paid option.
| sircastor wrote:
| I'm curious about that myself. We dropped our Youtube premium
| family plan when they upped the price to $22. We just recently
| got an email that Paramount was doubling our Paramount+
| subscription price and "adding" Showtime. I don't want
| showtime. I just want to pay a small price to be ad free. The
| lower price tier is with Ads.
|
| The trouble is apparently that Ads are worth more to these
| companies than ad-free subscribers.
| anurag6892 wrote:
| agree with the last part. The average YouTube user seems to
| be clicking through ads more often than we think. This is
| similar to credit cards, where banks get most of their
| interest revenue from few users.
| kgwxd wrote:
| All Google has to do is remove the dependency on the users
| browser from the "advertising" system. No other form of
| advertising in history required users to partake in the process
| of displaying the ad. The only reason we can block them is
| because they're forcing us into the process. Calling them "ads"
| is a euphemism, they're tracking mechanisms first and foremost.
| maltem02 wrote:
| [dead]
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > "In cases when viewers feel they have been falsely flagged as
| using an ad blocker, they can share this feedback by clicking on
| the link in the prompt."
|
| At this point, such a statement almost feels as though it is
| explicitly stating that the "feedback" will be ignored. It
| probably won't be _in aggregate_ but why should I expect that my
| individual report will be acted upon?
| nottorp wrote:
| It's google. There will never be any feedback unless your
| complaint makes it to the HN front page.
| maltem02 wrote:
| [dead]
| numbol wrote:
| Personally, one solution is to subsrcibe for Nebula +
| CurisoityStream bundle to support creators (bought 2
| subscriptions for me and friend)
| https://curiositystream.com/?coupon=nebula and use something like
| PeerTube for the rest of the stuff.
|
| Youtube have great catalogue of the lectures and other
| educational material, so it is still kinda irreplaceable
| isaacremuant wrote:
| > Premium [...] looks like free users may only be left with the
| option of sitting through ads
|
| False dichotomy.
|
| Free users will continue to either block their ad practices, stop
| watching in YouTube, download the videos, etc.
|
| It's my computer/devices. I don't simply consume because YouTube
| decides to operate at a loss to gain market Monopoly and targets
| competitors in anti competitive ways.
| provide9218 wrote:
| [dead]
| provide9218 wrote:
| [dead]
| stow34 wrote:
| [dead]
| aorth wrote:
| I had a YouTube Premium family plan (US) for awhile because I
| don't want my family to see ads. The problem is that I need to
| use a VPN all the time for it to work because I live outside the
| US. That gets cumbersome... so I cancelled it and use ad blockers
| and a rooted LG TV for now.
|
| In the modern world there are so many people that are citizens
| some place, but work or revel often in other places. These kind
| of restrictions are a nuisance.
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| YouTube with ADs is virtually unusable in my opinion.
|
| It's bad enough the spam of shorts I struggle to block. And now
| I'm getting alerts for shorts.
|
| It's long overdue for a decent alternative to YouTube.
| stow34 wrote:
| [dead]
| annael32 wrote:
| [dead]
| HissingMachine wrote:
| So does this mean YT will stop demonetizing creators I watch?
| flangola7 wrote:
| Which creators?
| HissingMachine wrote:
| Majority of them actually, about every channel I sub to
| mentions about being demonetized for one reason or other and
| have alternative means to support them, and I do mean
| majority, guitar channel plays too many bars of a song,
| demonetized, channel covering ukraine war or other conflicts,
| demonetized, podcast has a guest, demonetized, news channel
| covers a topic, demonetized. YT is garbage, but that's just
| my personal perspective.
| annael32 wrote:
| [dead]
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| They're going to break yt-dlp aren't they.
| lovable4 wrote:
| [dead]
| lovable4 wrote:
| [dead]
| mynameisash wrote:
| There's a 402 PAYMENT REQUIRED[0], but apparently it's been
| reserved for future use forever. I'm surprised there isn't a
| scheme by which websites can charge micropayments for content. In
| principle, I'm not opposed to loading up an account with $20 and
| paying $0.10 for an Economist article or $0.02 for a YouTube
| video or whatever.
|
| I honestly don't know if this exists now or has ever existed, but
| I would love to directly support content creators without the
| total garbage game theory equilibrium we seem to have settled
| into of every expert hocking their nutritional supplements.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_...
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Google (sort of) used to offer this feature!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
|
| You put money in your account and basically bid against the ads
| that would be shown on websites you visited. I think you could
| even pick the images you'd see instead of ads.
| kevincox wrote:
| Coil [1] was an attempt to do this via Web Monetization [1].
|
| [1] https://www.coil.com/
|
| [2] https://webmonetization.org/
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I wish this could become a thing. I'd pay for a stupid NYT
| article every once in a while. I don't want a subscription. Let
| me just give you 25 cents or something. Even the work arounds
| are annoying so I end up just not reading the article. No one
| wins there.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I'm for this.
|
| Ad blockers mean that the least tech savvy people increasingly
| subsidize the more techy people. They endure increasingly worse
| ads. It doesn't scale.
|
| Watch ads, pay for premium, or gtfo imo. Those should be the
| options.
| yellowgazelle wrote:
| [flagged]
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| It scales for me just fine, thanks.
| anna022 wrote:
| [dead]
| anna022 wrote:
| [dead]
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Is there some business school teaching people that the sure way
| to profit is through an arms race against your own customers?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Googles customers are the advertisers. The viewers are the
| product. It's amazing google has tolerated bad product (Ad-
| block users) as long as they have.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Presumably Google (you know, the people who run Ad Sense)
| find the sheer amount of viewing data valuable on its own,
| given the marginal cost of "bad product" as you put it. How
| many advertisers would pay to have that sort of marketing
| data pipeline?
| acdha wrote:
| It's no coincidence that this is happening against a
| background of budget cuts. I suspect Google is seeing less
| demand for ads right now while simultaneously dealing with
| expectations that their profits not go down
| correspondingly.
|
| One thing I'm sure the mess over at Twitter has done is
| getting companies to reconsider the value of their ads in
| general, too. That's always hard to measure which means it
| looks like an east spot to cut, and I believe there've been
| multiple companies claiming that cutting to zero didn't
| affect sales so I'd be surprised if Google wasn't looking
| at a soft market where cost cutting looks like a more
| reliable path to improve their profitability.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >I suspect Google is seeing less demand for ads right now
| while simultaneously dealing with expectations that their
| profits not go down correspondingly.
|
| This seems like the root of the problem right here. Why
| shouldn't corporate profits go down when the economy
| falters? This should be expected. If you just keep
| running the company the same way and not pissing off the
| users/customers, things will improve when the economic
| situation improves. Rocking the boat just increases risk.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes but investors don't care. They will immediately drop
| their stock and tank your value the moment a competitor
| offers a higher return.
|
| We should have some kind of model that incentivises long-
| term investment not this kind of short term profit
| extraction.
| acdha wrote:
| How are people who don't pay for what they use customers? They
| cost YouTube money but if they're not watching ads they're not
| bringing in revenue and it's highly unlikely that they're
| bringing enough promotional value to defray that.
|
| I could see some push for ethical ads or security but at some
| point you need to pay for what you like, either by subscribing
| to premium or watching ads.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the ethics of interacting with the likes
| of Youtube or Google are a fair bit more complex than you're
| giving it credit for, but I'm also pretty sure that this
| isn't the platform for that debate. Suffice it to say that as
| others have pointed out the definition of "customer" in the
| world of data brokers and advertising has become a lot less
| meaningful.
| acdha wrote:
| It's not complicated unless you're trying to avoid honoring
| the terms of the deal. YouTube is a completely optional
| service - you can use it with ads or pay not to have ads,
| that's it. If you don't like it, don't use the service -
| and that goes a thousand times over for privacy concerns
| since there's no way to avoid giving Google your activity
| data unless you don't use their service.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| What deal? I didn't make a deal with Youtube.
| acdha wrote:
| You did when you used their service under the offered
| terms. You might not like them but that doesn't mean
| there isn't a legal relationship.
| chienandalou wrote:
| When someone wants to sell me apples, I can pay for them
| or choose not to buy them. That's capitalism.
|
| But if someone hands me apples for free, they really
| can't force me to study the ads on the wrapping paper,
| can they? I have never signed anywhere that I agree to
| this 'deal'. That's not how capitalism works as far as I
| understand it.
|
| And their terms aren't legally enforceable.
|
| Where I live adblockers are legal. When I access YT with
| Firefox and uBlock Origin it's legal for me to filter YTs
| datastream how I want to.
|
| If this was a capitalistic transaction of goods, I would
| have to login to use their service. I would have to agree
| to some kind of legally binding contract. I would first
| have to pay, and could then use their product or service.
| But all that isn't necessary to watch videos on YT.
|
| There is no legally binding 'deal' between YT and me.
| acdha wrote:
| YouTube never handed you apples, you went there and asked
| for them because you didn't want to pay for apples
| directly and they had a sign up saying "apples are free
| for ad watchers".
|
| > There is no legally binding 'deal' between YT and me.
|
| It's at the bottom of every page. Your continued use of
| their service is subject to their terms of service, and
| they are free to block you if you don't follow the deal
| you accepted.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| At a fundamental level the HTTP protocol is a
| negotiation, where the client asks (on behalf of the
| user) for a file from a server, and the server decides
| (on behalf of the site owner) if it sends the file. HTTP
| provides plenty of error codes to deny that request. 403
| or 451 come to mind. The server sending the file implies
| that it is OK with my use of the file.
|
| If the server sends a file that's on the server. A
| license agreement hosted on a server that needs to be
| _accessed in order to read it_ doesn 't change that.
| Reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide:
|
| >"But the plans were on display..."
|
| >"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar
| to find them."
|
| >"That's the display department."
|
| >"With a flashlight."
|
| >"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
|
| >"So had the stairs."
|
| >"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
|
| >"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the
| bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
| lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the
| Leopard."
| acdha wrote:
| I suggest reading more carefully - I like Douglas Adams
| too but that's irrelevant to the situation here. People
| are whining about Google's servers not returning the
| content they want when they're detected as using an ad
| blocker.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Until this very moment google has considered the wisest move
| to be trying to keep all potential users on their platform,
| and it's arguably part of why they have maintained such
| dominance. It has always depended on network effects and the
| nearly uncompensated efforts of creators.
|
| They have been getting greedier and greedier under the
| relentless quarter over quarter pressure to grow. Now we have
| mandatory ads on all videos, including non-monetized ones,
| and creaters who made the mistake of trusting youtube are
| systemtically defrauded through arbitrary demonetization.
|
| I certainly feel no obligation to pay tithes to google.
| acdha wrote:
| Paying for what you use isn't tithing. It's straight up
| capitalism - if you don't like it, don't take the deal.
| It's completely optional and you'll probably be better off
| for it given how many people describe their YouTube usage
| as an addiction.
| yummypaint wrote:
| It's important to remember that piracy and theft are also
| capitalist practices. Companies routinely break the law
| and do unethical things, and consider it a sucess as long
| as money was made overall. Yet there is somehow this
| sense that individual consumers MUST play by the unfair
| rules often set up by these monopolies themselves. The
| incredible asymmetry in how copyright law is abused is an
| example. These companies deserve the same level of
| contempt they show their users.
| acdha wrote:
| Nobody is saying consumers MUST do anything. YouTube is
| not oxygen, if you don't like it you can live a perfectly
| full and rich life without it.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Are healthy competition and several good options for
| consumers benefits of capitalism? If so, then this ain't
| capitalism.
|
| What I mean is people often tout the merits of capitalism
| while ignoring that the merits aren't actually happening.
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| It's not even capitalism. Socialism definitely involves
| paying for services rendered. Exchanging something for
| something else is a basic building block of human
| society.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Surely the corollary to this is users monetizing their
| data? Or is it just Youtube allowed to freely extract
| whatever value they feel like?
| acdha wrote:
| That's what's happening: YouTube offers things people
| want which cost money to produce and host, while users
| pay for those costs either directly (Premium) or by
| selling their attention and activity data to a middleman
| (Google).
|
| Understanding that is key to understanding why ad blocker
| users complaining about being blocked is unreasonable. If
| you don't like the terms of a deal, you can ethically
| walk away from it but not decide you don't want to pay.
| If you prefer to mooch, sure, it's not a huge crime but
| you don't have any standing to complain, either.
| pixxel wrote:
| Here's another line of thought: YT could have straddled
| P2P tech and hosting directly (premium 4K offerings
| etc.). But Google wants all the content and all the
| control. The world's video library is controlled by one
| corporation. They could farm the cost to peer tech but
| they won't. So fuck them, I'll circumnavigate my way into
| the library to watch some guy in his shed work on his
| hobby who isn't begging for likes and subs.
|
| And if I did pay? Google will still be logging my data.
| So fuck them once again.
| acdha wrote:
| Sure, nobody says you have to like them any more than you
| have to like every restaurant in town. The solution in
| both cases is not to give them your business - not
| complain when they refuse to give you freebies.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| The definition of "customers" has shifted in the ad-supported
| tech world. There's nothing inherently wrong with that model
| when it's unobtrusive and useful ads; It's when they get
| overly aggressive with the advertising that it drives people
| to block, IMO.
|
| Also there's a pattern in the industry of introducing ads (or
| "promotions" to get around legalese) to "ad-free"
| subscriptions once they have sufficient lock-in.
| acdha wrote:
| My point is simply that Google is providing something which
| costs money to produce. They offer two ways to pay for it
| but someone who rejects both of them has no reason to
| expect Google to subsidize their activity - it's like
| whining that the concert hall closed the window you used to
| camp out at for free music.
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| Customer is generally whoever is giving you money. With
| YouTube ads it's advertiser with the viewer being a second
| customer as the viewer gives YouTube the attention/click
| through. That falls apart if the user refuses to engage in
| that transaction
| [deleted]
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| Alphabet self immolation in progress. Piss off 80% for a 4% bump
| in premium.
| search43 wrote:
| [dead]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Not sure if it's related, but I'm noticing that my principle
| Invidious instance (yewtu.be) has been knocked offline,
| apparently by its cloud provider, and that my usually-reliable
| Piped fallback (piped.kavin.rocks) is showing YouTube comments on
| video links ... but not the video itself).
|
| I am able to play audio however using yt-dlp.
| goda90 wrote:
| YouTube needs a history-less mode. I want to watch random videos
| without them impacting my recommendations. I have Premium, but
| I'll use ad blocker in a private browsing session specifically
| for this.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Log out of Google.[1]
|
| Browse in Incognito mode.
|
| Better: access through an Invidious or Piped instance.
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. And never log back in again.
| exitb wrote:
| As far as I understand it, you can you set it that way by
| disabling activity tracking here
| https://myactivity.google.com/product/youtube
|
| Some of my recommendations are based on my subscriptions (but
| only directly), others are just random things based on my
| location and language.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| If I go to https://www.youtube.com/feed/history, I can hit
| "Pause watch history". Isn't that enough?
| wruza wrote:
| I go to History afterwards and delete specific videos from
| there with "x". That still works.
|
| But even self-curated history and other tips I've got here
| still produce an echo chamber. Even "New to you" tab which
| appears once a month for few minutes becomes too narrow. I gave
| up recently and removed youtube from my bookmarks bar, to
| suffer less often. I find the idea of paying for it pretty...
| strange?
| xlbuttplug2 wrote:
| At least on the android app, there is an incognito mode. But
| you do lose your ad-free experience last I checked.
| Forbo wrote:
| This was exactly the reason I cancelled my subscription. I'm
| paying for no ads, so don't shove them down my throat when I
| want to watch something without it fucking up the algorithm.
| Just because I want to watch a video my friend swnt to me of
| Alex Jones say some disgusting heinous shit one time doesn't
| mean I want to have it fed to me like I'm being prepared to
| be made into foie gras.
| SllX wrote:
| I'm the type that wouldn't even tap the link if I saw that
| it was garbage (seriously, you can set boundaries with
| friends, an Alex Jones clip will do nothing to improve your
| life); but for the odd misclick, or if I go in not knowing
| what I'm watching, I instantly nuke that shit from my
| history.
|
| But yeah, the incognito mode is bollocks.
| shmde wrote:
| YouTube without recommendations is absolute pure cancer. On
| chrome desktop there is an option to delete cookie everytime
| you close browser. That resets your recommendation history.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If Google had the power to implement a device that forced your
| eyelids open to look at ads they would do it. Their company is
| user hostile and we should move as far as possible away from
| their services.
| xnx wrote:
| This is true of every advertiser. With regards to advertising,
| in most cases, Google is very admiral compared to its peers.
| thrown1212 wrote:
| They're the admiral of their peers in this space, no doubt of
| that.
| JCharante wrote:
| How are they user hostile? It's people who do not want to pay
| for the service and do not want to watch ads to use the service
| who are the problem. How else should Youtube make money from
| those users? They must literally lose money on those users.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Paying for services doesn't prevent advertising companies
| from continuing to insert ads. Consumers would be stupid to
| trust that game as you advise, flock to the membership
| program and promote continued YouTube dominance. You advise a
| kind of "penny wise (fewer ads now!) pound foolish (anyone
| complaining should just start paying them)" approach.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No trust is required. You can simply just stop using the
| service then. Or now. There's no real stickiness since it's
| not essential to have Youtube.
| jacooper wrote:
| As if subscribing would stop google from tracking me? I use
| an adblocker mainly for privacy, and YouTube premium doesn't
| solve that.
| acdha wrote:
| Neither does your ad blocker. If you don't want to give
| Google tracking data - a very valid position - don't use
| their services at all. They don't need to sell an ad to
| track what you watch, from where, or what devices you use.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| This makes no sense. The fact that users don't want to pay
| and don't want to watch ads is a pretty clear indication that
| YouTube is user hostile.
|
| And why are you assuming that YouTube _should_ make money at
| all? It is YouTube 'job to find a business model that works
| without coercing users. If users don't want to pay (money or
| attention) then YouTube is not offering anything worth
| paying. And it's _their_ fault, not the users '
| cruano wrote:
| > YouTube is not offering anything worth paying
|
| That's for you to decide, and if you (and the other tens of
| people that think the same) end up leaving the platform
| that would reduce YouTube's costs, which makes sense for
| them.
|
| Your argument is basically the same people use for piracy.
| If you don't want to pay for Photoshop, don't use it. If
| you don't want to pay for YouTube, don't.
| jacooper wrote:
| This doesn't work for Photoshop. As using pirated
| Photoshop doesn't change anything for adobe, but using
| YouTube without ads costs google money.
| CrypticByte87 wrote:
| I'm confused at this argument, you're saying that since
| it's easy to steal the content we should assume it's
| youtube's fault for trying to charge for it?
|
| I imagine most things that people pay money for they'd
| prefer to get for free, but that's not an actual option on
| the table.
|
| YouTube provides a service you can either pay for with
| money or attention, and sure if people don't think it's a
| worth while expenditure of either then by all means they
| shouldn't watch it.
|
| Why are you assuming YouTube _should_ provide their service
| for no compensation?
| renewiltord wrote:
| They aren't coercing anyone. They're offering a service
| with a service agreement. It's as much coercion as my ISP
| saying they won't give me internet access if I don't pay.
|
| Both outcomes of "pay and we'll give you access" and "I
| won't pay and I won't get access" are reasonable outcomes
| in a free society.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| They steal your data without telling you (complex legal
| verbiage on multi-pay TOS's is not a justification). After
| they steal your data, they push you advertisements that are
| devoid of morality. Even if I buy their service, I cannot go
| to their home page without them pushing violence, animal
| abuse, drug use, provocative sex, biased politics, etc. Even
| if I buy their service, I must expect they are funneling my
| data in terrible ways. Even if I follow all the rules, the
| service continues to abuse me.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > How else should Youtube make money from those users? They
| must literally lose money on those users.
|
| For example, YouTube could increase the price of advertising
| on their platform to make up for the fact that a certain
| fraction of users never see the ads, thus keeping everyone
| who matters happy.
| JCharante wrote:
| 1. That kinda already happens to a degree. A significant
| part of the youtube audience is outside of US & Europe and
| so those users are worth less to advertisers because
| advertising budgets are somewhat proportional to the
| population's disposable income. However youtube still has
| the same cost whether they're serving a user who
| advertisers would pay a lot for or a user where advertisers
| won't pay a lot for.
|
| 2. That's just making the experience worse for the people
| who do watch ads. Imagine it's a restaurant and you're
| raising the price so half the people can eat for free (this
| way everybody stays happy).
| delecti wrote:
| Ad networks work on a bid system. If the impressions/clicks
| were worth more, bidding would be more competitive and
| prices would already be higher.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Why should advertisers pay more for ads that fewer people
| watch? Why would an advertiser be okay with sponsoring
| people that avoid their ads? It's not the advertisers'
| jobs.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Those people are more valuable:
|
| People who react with antipathy to ads have been removed,
| increasing the value of the brand messaging by negating
| brand damage in large-scale ad campaigns.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Neither is it my job to buy the advertisers' product. Why
| should the advertiser have to pay for being shown to
| people who are so hostile to advertisements that they
| would block them if they could?
|
| When I used to watch broadcast television I used to do
| the utmost to avoid the ads by muting during ad break.
| However, on the occasions that an ad would actively
| interfere with my watching experience, such as an
| animation on the channel logo, or a sudden ad break with
| an ad premeditatedly designed to catch you by surprise
| (often by "sponsors") I made an explicit decision to
| boycott said product if I had an opportunity. There are
| brands that I stopped buying because of these things.
| epups wrote:
| Except Google, who would presumably lose advertisers by
| increasing prices, and the advertisers themselves who now
| have to pay more.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's not really a problem to lose money on some users if they
| are making money over all. And they are, because Youtube is
| very profitable and drives billions of dollars in ad revenue
| a year. They never really cared about every user being a
| profit generator for them. Except, last quarter, they missed
| their ad revenue growth expectations--as did much every big
| company around--and they are freaking out. That's what this
| is. It's not a question of whether Youtube can afford to keep
| the lights on, it's that Alphabet wants them to be
| continually _growing_, and this seems like a way to do that.
| I think Netflix empowered them to do this by cracking down on
| shared passwords, which was successful for them (at least in
| the short term).
| Faark wrote:
| I did consider paying. But I also want to do quite a bit of
| YouTube in private browser tabs. their age gate already makes
| that quite annoying. I certainly won't pay and still get such
| blocks...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Then that's nothing against YouTube, you've basically ruled
| out paying for _any_ service on the internet because you
| refuse to stay logged in and apparently can 't be bothered
| to log in each time you open a private tab.
|
| Not really sure how you expect content creators to be paid
| at all for what they produce, then.
| antonymy wrote:
| I think I'm at the point where I value an ad-free internet more
| than I do youtube content. Certainly not enough to pay $12/mo to
| watch it without ads.
| SirMaster wrote:
| I watch all my youtube through yt-dlp piped into a media player,
| so there are just no ads to even happen that way.
| data871 wrote:
| [dead]
| search43 wrote:
| [dead]
| data871 wrote:
| [dead]
| ocfnash wrote:
| I've been using fixyt.com to avoid YouTube grossness for years.
| Thanks to the bookmarklet below, whenever I land at youtube.com
| I'm only ever a click away from escaping their awful, awful app.
|
| javascript:(function() {window.location=window.location.toString(
| ).replace(/^https:\/\/www.youtube\\./,'http://fixyt.');})()
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Strange move, people use adblockers for a reason, 2-3 unskipable
| bs ads. Instead better limit quality to 480/720p. This way
| they'll save money for traffic. No adblocker?, Can go up to
| 1080p. Yt premium?, Welkome to 4k. Yt premium+?, Welcome to >8k
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/23/23612647/youtube-1080p-pr...
| tetris11 wrote:
| Its not worth it. You don't watch YouTube videos for the fancy
| graphics, you listen to it for the commentary with some visual
| guides. 480p is more than enough for most
| blooalien wrote:
| At least 720p if a screencast is involved (educational
| videos). 480p screen text often becomes nearly unreadable
| mush.
| shostack wrote:
| I watch a lot of gaming videos or instructional videos that
| benefit from better resolution when viewing on my iPad. It is
| beyond aggravating I can't set them to at least 1024 by
| default.
| acdha wrote:
| You might not, but there's a ton of great content where the
| quality is very noticeable - anything related to nature,
| astronomy, sports, the tons of niche genres which involve
| looking at real world things in detail like rail fans,
| building/architecture fans, bird watchers, etc. is really
| unpleasant to watch at 480p. That's the size of an iPad icon!
|
| Stuff like conference talks, of course, really don't matter
| but there's so much material that no generalization won't be
| inaccurate for millions of watchers.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| imo it's woth it not for the sake of user conversion, but for
| the sake of minimizing the cost for network load. Technically
| they'll have the same revenue, but profit will increase due
| to optimizing the delivery and since most yt users dont have
| premium I believe this can be a big chunk of money
| cruano wrote:
| > This way they'll save money for traffic
|
| If people leave because of this that cuts their costs to zero.
| What's their incentive not to do this ?
| Moldoteck wrote:
| People'll not leave. Yt is pretty only option for this type
| of content+monetisation
| Lolaccount wrote:
| When Youtube stop serving me un-reportable "Meet young women from
| Ukraine" unsexy-supposedly-"alluring"-AI-uncanny-valley picture
| adverts ...
|
| Or the current rubbish "Shop like a billionaire ... buy Nike
| trainers for 55 cents" crap-verts ...
|
| When Youtube stop serving me the above bullshit, perhaps I'll
| take their advertising efforts more seriously ...
| henry871 wrote:
| [dead]
| auditorjavelin wrote:
| [dead]
| henry871 wrote:
| [dead]
| auditorjavelin wrote:
| [dead]
| operatingthetan wrote:
| Are there ways for the adblockers to make another move and be
| more discrete in a way youtube can't see?
| FrostKiwi wrote:
| Anyone know, if there is an adblocker with a "hide" mode instead
| of a "block" mode? I mean, instead of blocking the connection
| fetch the ad, but hide it visually? I would be fine with a
| YouTube ad blocker, that allows ads to play, but just mutes and
| `display:none`'s the video player element.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| That's really a clever idea. And when companies will realize
| they are paying lots of cash to YT but very few users are
| actually watching the ads, maybe they'll stop paying YT.
| lemper wrote:
| adnauseam[1]. it does load all the ads, but makes them
| invisible and clicks all of them.
|
| [1] https://adnauseam.io/
| guerrilla wrote:
| There is one but I can't recall the name...
| downrightmike wrote:
| My Browser My Rights. I don't allow ads because no matter how
| good you are, someone will figure out how to get malware into
| ads. Once a system is compromised, best to burn it and start
| over. And now there are UEFI viruses that can reinstall malware
| even after the OS is wiped. And then there is the recent Gigabyte
| Motherboard discovery they were loading EXEs silently without
| approval. So no, I will not lower my protection.
| cwmma wrote:
| I mean that's totally within your rights, but it's also within
| their rights to be like, ok no ads, no free service.
| eli wrote:
| I don't think anyone is disputing that? Google isn't saying,
| for example, that you're violating CFAA or DMCA by blocking
| ads. They're just saying they're going to block you. That's
| their right.
| Octabrain wrote:
| For me is not even a question of security but a question of
| sanity. It feels like torture. You are watching something with
| your brain in that context and suddendly, a commercial about
| something I am not remotely interested is thrown to my face.
|
| I am simply not that kind of consumer. That's not the way I
| learn about products I'll buy later. In fact, I've never ever
| bought something I saw in a youtube commercial. IMHO, the
| current model of advertisement is broken.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Their site, their rights (to block you)? You're going to cost
| them bandwidth and give nothing in exchange, so it's only fair.
| Nothing forces you to visit the site.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's a straw man. Nobody is saying they don't have the right
| to stop serving content to people who block ads.
| darig wrote:
| [dead]
| mikro2nd wrote:
| "I don't allow ads" because ads _are malware_ for the human
| brain. An ad is explicitly designed to hack our minds
| /emotions, and I, for one, won't go there (as far as I am
| able).
| flir wrote:
| Same applies to an awful lot of youtube's actual content.
|
| (If you enjoyed this comment, please like and subscribe. It
| really helps me create more great content like this.)
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Exactly. _Snow Crash_ explores the idea of a "mind virus",
| which seemed a little silly when I originally read the book.
| But nowadays, it's clear that most ad campaigns are exactly
| that: hacks of the brain.
|
| Just think about the ad strategies of, say, Coca-cola and
| Pepsi. They don't tell you about a new product. They don't
| inform you about any benefits of their product, or advantages
| relative to the competition. They purely exist to keep the
| brand names in your head, and associate the brand names with
| images of people having fun. And the saddest part is, it
| works! We desperately need regulation to prevent companies
| from hacking consumer's brains into zombies who grab products
| on the shelf based on how many times they've heard the name
| spewed out of their television in the last 24 hours.
|
| On the flip side, I would be happy to allow purely
| _informative_ , _contextual_ , non-tracking ads in my
| browser. Objective statements about new products I'm actually
| interested in? Sure! Privacy invading, mind manipulating
| mental malware? No thanks.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Recently, this has been reminding me of all the hand wringing
| about "prompt injection vulnerabilities" - like e.g. when you
| have an LLM summarizing articles for you, or going over your
| inbox, and a malicious actor sneaks in a well-crafted bit of
| text that makes that LLM return you false information, or
| forward all your e-mails to attacker's address, etc.
|
| Well guess what, ads are exactly such prompt injection
| attacks, but on humans.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Exactly. They are designed to do exactly that. I remember ads
| for companies that no longer exist. I remember ad campaigns
| that the companies abandoned decades ago. That was designed
| to be in my brain. To be the 'first choice' on products when
| equivalents exist. Some of this stuff was so effective it
| literally changed the way people buy things and why they buy
| them (mmmm bacon).
| sbergot wrote:
| I mean it works both ways no? Their server their right? If they
| don't think they can benefit from you viewing the content they
| serve, they can choose not to serve it?
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| That's what 403 errors are for. But once you send your
| program to my personal machine to be run, I will use whatever
| tools at my disposal to make it useable, as is my right.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| And so will they.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes, which is the reason I don't really care that much. If
| youtube dies tomorrow, something else will pop in its place.
| That is how internet is supposed to work. Route damage and
| whatnot. We all just got really happy and complacent with the
| current batch of benevolent overlords.
|
| Edit: Let me them turn on the screws, I says.
| adrianN wrote:
| Someone has to pay for the bandwidth and the servers. You
| can only convince investors so many times to burn their
| money for years so that everybody has access to video
| hosting. Maybe governments should step in.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Or.. and I know how people are averse to paying their own
| money, people don't rely so much on other people's
| infrastructure? Yeah, it will require people to learn
| some things, but it would make web a little less
| unbearable again.
|
| But I dream.
|
| edit: I just thought about a little more. How would that
| work with UDM. Would they be able to detect that?
|
| edit 2: to the downvoters, tell me how I am wrong. Argue
| your point. Don't simply assume status quo is the desired
| state.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I lived through that and had self-hosted video. It's both
| expensive and painful: YT just delivers video very well,
| with auto captioning, and comments. I remember when you'd
| view a random site and hope video would play. If it's
| YouTube I expect it to work. Huge UX improvement.
| computerboy891 wrote:
| [dead]
| mxxx wrote:
| I purchased a year of YouTube premium while I was on holiday in
| Turkey and it didn't cost much. I mostly did it for YouTube music
| but the no ads thing is pretty great too.
| Khaine wrote:
| Youtube ads are bad in several ways: 1) they have these ads that
| pop-over and hide the content 2) there ad breaks are cut into
| content at in-opportune moments. At least on TV, the content is
| designed around the ad breaks 3) I have recently seen ads for
| gambling powered by cryptocurrencies, how can Google allow these
| ads baffles me
|
| Collectively, these things make the ads on YouTube infuriating.
| It's then made worse by the ramp up in the volume of ads. Either
| work with content creators on when ads are displayed to make the
| content and ad experience better (a la tv) or come up with a
| different method. And for the love go god, git rid of those
| stupid ads that pop over the content.
| cruano wrote:
| > or come up with a different method
|
| Let me introduce you to Paying for the services you use(tm)
| [deleted]
| computerboy891 wrote:
| [dead]
| solarreport wrote:
| [dead]
| solarreport wrote:
| [dead]
| atonse wrote:
| Please do it, YouTube. I need something to break my YouTube
| addiction and this'll do it. I'll just buy a no-ads kindle and
| read like an old man.
| impissedoff1 wrote:
| Stop supporting drm, get the better kobo
| shmde wrote:
| You can jailbreak Kindle.
| stive923 wrote:
| [dead]
| michelb wrote:
| A few day ago I disabled my ad blocking to test something and
| then browsed some of my daily sites. If ad blocking ever becomes
| impossible, I'll quit using the web immediately.
| stive923 wrote:
| [dead]
| appleboy9081 wrote:
| [dead]
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| This is a rather disturbing move to me, as I am a YouTube addict
| and adblocker user. I use NextDNS, a DNS-based service that's
| like your own PiHole in the cloud.
|
| It is sometimes tricky for me to disable adblocking! There are a
| couple of approaches. Resetting my DNS servers to defaults is
| disruptive and error-prone; it's a non-starter. I find it
| peculiar that there is no knob on NextDNS that says "disable
| blocking features and act like normal DNS" even though they
| themselves enable such a feature if you run out of free monthly
| queries. You can disable a bunch of features one-by-one, but of
| course that affects all sites, not just the one. You can
| whitelist any domain you want, but that involves a cycle of
| testing and guessing which ones are emanating from the site you
| want to use.
|
| In short, there's no straightforward way of just telling NextDNS
| "don't block ads while I'm on YouTube.com" and it's for that
| reason that I sort of miss uBlock Origin. However, YouTube does
| use native domains for all its ad serving, and I see them all now
| anyway, so I don't believe that this new policy will adversely
| affect my usage profile.
| [deleted]
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Have you considered just paying for something that you use a
| lot?
| stemlord wrote:
| If I had to pay for all of the web platforms I use (on top of
| paying for internet access to begin with) on a daily basis I
| would have no disposable income. And I'm not ready to live in
| a world with even more micro micro-transactions. I don't
| think the world is economically capable of supporting the web
| the way big tech companies wish to be supported if they
| couldn't continue just selling our harvested data alone.
| 0xFF0123 wrote:
| I suppose the point is that if someone is a self described
| addict of a particular service, it's not entirely
| unreasonable to expect them to pay for that service
| (directly via premium, or indirectly via ads).
| AwaAwa wrote:
| Instead of 'stop being an addict', you have chosen the
| route of 'pay the dealer.' Interesting choice.
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| I did this. I was skeptical at first but it's such a big qol
| improvement. I got a family plan so now that's what I bring
| to the streaming service exchange with the family and they
| love me for it
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| > Have you considered just paying for something that you use
| a lot?
|
| Where did I say that I do not pay for it?
| Gigachad wrote:
| I was kind of against it since it seemed like a waste to pay
| for spotify and youtube music, but its honestly worth it just
| for ad free youtube alone. Only video streaming service I pay
| for.
| Jnr wrote:
| How does it work? Youtube for a long time now has been serving
| video ads from the same domain names as videos so you can not
| block video ads on DNS level. As far as I know, the only way to
| block ads is by using ad blocker in a browser, or modified or
| 3rd party Youtube app.
| rngname22 wrote:
| You can just very easily subscribe to Youtube's paid no-ad
| offering most likely.
| wandering23 wrote:
| [dead]
| eimrine wrote:
| I love this idea because finally there is some force which can
| make me less watching youtube and I certainly am not going to
| deepen my profile with a bank credentials (but I would pay for
| premium with crypto if it will be possible)
| unmole wrote:
| > deepen my profile with a bank credentials (but I would pay
| for premium with crypto if it will be possible
|
| Bull fucking shit. There are services like Privacy.com which
| allow you to pay without _deepening your profile_.
| eimrine wrote:
| I am not an US citizen. And even if I would, I do not believe
| that privacy.com does not give anything and everything to
| FATCO.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| What crypto are you using that you're not worried about
| just being tracked on-chain? XMR?
| eimrine wrote:
| I use Bitcoin + several wallet.dat each of those is bond
| to a different VPN. It means that I absolutely do not
| care about on-chain tracking on each wallet.dat because I
| am sure that nobody can tie my different addresses to a
| single person.
| EternalUsenet wrote:
| This seems quite unnecessary and over-complicated. Trust
| me, Google will have you tracked one way or the other, so
| it might be better to just grab a prepaid visa gift card
| for your Youtube Premium subscription and save yourself
| the trouble. Any grocery or convenience store can sell
| those to you with untraceable cash with ease.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| Not everyone lives in the US, buddy
| unmole wrote:
| > Not everyone lives in the US
|
| Nor do I. Banks themselves in the EU and India offer
| virtual cards. There's also Wise with much wider
| availability.
|
| _I won 't pay for YouTube because they don't accept magic
| jellybeans_ is a bullshit excuse and you know it.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| Yes, they cards are virtual but all of your KYC data is
| passed to the card network whenever you make a payment.
| Your name, address, etc.
|
| source: I work on card payments
| EternalUsenet wrote:
| There is a workaround to this that is quite simple. Get a
| prepaid visa gift card. You can make up whatever nonsense
| info you want on those and pair that with the
| subscription. Then once the balance runs out, get another
| card and repeat the process. Problem solved.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Nice, then google decides to block your account one day
| for an unspecified reason and they are asking you for a
| drivers licence with those credentials to let you back
| in.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Youtube is trash now. I could move on pretty easily. If anything
| I might be better off watching actual content instead of youtube.
| woeful32 wrote:
| [dead]
| appleboy9081 wrote:
| [dead]
| woeful32 wrote:
| [dead]
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Large companies have become money sucking dinosaurs. Much like
| IBM, Oracle, Microsoft of the 90s. Can't wait to see some
| competition eating them.
| Qem wrote:
| > Can't wait to see some competition eating them.
|
| We let them get too big. Nowadays they just buy the competition
| in the cradle, even if just to drive nascent products into the
| ground.
| nness wrote:
| Until a competitor devices a revenue stream that is just as
| profitable as advertising and data capture (obviously it won't
| be a subscription model) then we're stuck in the perpetual
| cycle of "enshittification" as companies move to protect their
| revenue.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The ads business is certainly one of enshittification. But,
| it becomes too shitty when the incumbents start milking every
| possible inch of the screen for as many seconds as they can.
| This happened with tv, cable, newspapers, and now streaming
| services.
|
| There is a always a chance that the next generation gets
| hooked on to a different platform. That phase where an
| emerging competition is eating the incumbent's lunch is the
| best time to be there.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Competition has been banned and legislated away. Remember
| YouTube only became big because it mostly served copyrighted
| content in the early days. If you tried that now you would get
| sued into oblivion
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I get that people hate companies but $7 a month for unlimited
| video on any device with 500 hours uploaded every minute. That's
| a decent deal. The only drawback is that you don't get
| Sponsorblock on smart devices. People seem to overestimate how
| much the average person care about online outrage. Netflix,
| Reddit, Twitter.. They all seem fine despite being declared dead
| numerous times.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't watch many YouTube videos. Maybe 1-5/month. And it
| depends on many factors so isn't predictable.
|
| I don't want to pay$7/month so when I do get a link I don't get
| annoyed by YouTube's UX.
| est31 wrote:
| I remember people saying years ago that reddit's redesign is
| not a problem because it has API access and you can use third
| party clients...
|
| The $7 is the current price, it does not reflect future
| changes. If the pool of potential customers is dry, they will
| try other means of increasing revenue, including increases of
| that price.
|
| They might also turn the $7 into a requirement to watch YouTube
| at all, and show ads anyways.
| prirun wrote:
| > They might also turn the $7 into a requirement to watch
| YouTube at all, and show ads anyways.
|
| Yep. All cable channels started out ad-free. When cable was
| introduced, the cost was $35/mo for all channels (there were
| no movie channels initially), justified by not having ads.
| jraph wrote:
| I think I would pay for a respectful video service which also
| pays the people who make the videos.
|
| Giving money to Google though, would hurt so much!
|
| I'll consider it the day they stop the dark patterns company
| wide and commit to stop being ad-supported. Making the users
| pay for the service is a step in the right direction but I
| don't see them stop the ads company wide and I don't want to
| feed this.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| YouTube is actually regarded quite high in terms of revenue
| sharing and Linus has praised them numerous times. It's for
| example partly (26% in 2020) why LTT have around 100
| employees. YouTube do have a ton of other issues (spam, lack
| of support, content moderation, etc) but I don't believe
| revenue sharing is a big one.
|
| https://twitter.com/BobDuckNWeave/status/1613846589482598403
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/100fmgx/linu.
| ..
| midasuni wrote:
| $7 sounds great, I'd pay that. They want PS16 a month from me,
| that's $20 a month.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| It's not their content though. Most people upload stuff without
| any intent to monetize or otherwise control it. YT, like other
| large sites, was built through mass-scale theft of what was
| supposed to be public domain works.
|
| Sure it's their servers, but then it's their fault they don't
| allow redistribution via third party channels.
| danielEM wrote:
| I'm not entirely convinced that youtube is actually worth $7 a
| month. Ofc, I'm also far away from saying it is worth nothing,
| but not gonna pay 7USD unless I'm getting something extra (I
| mean content, maybe movies???) than just no ads. Otherwise once
| blocked will switch to other platforms, eg. https://d.tube/,
| vimeo, etc...
| cyberneticist wrote:
| [dead]
| sBqQu3U0wH wrote:
| >$7 a month for unlimited video on any device with 500 hours
| uploaded every minute.
|
| This is irrelevant. 99.9% of content is garbage and / or not
| relevant to me. Also, I really don't watch that much so why
| should I be paying ~8 EUR a month to watch a few videos without
| ads? Moreover, I don't earn that much, so even that amount is a
| noticeable loss.
| cruano wrote:
| > 99.9% of content is garbage and / or not relevant to
|
| Then don't use it ? That's like saying you only like one show
| on netflix so they should give it to you for free
| voxadam wrote:
| When I glance at https://youtube.com/premium it quotes $12 a
| month. Are you talking about the student offer?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Does it really change his point?
| odessacubbage wrote:
| it kind of boils down to a question of who is the actual
| customer? me or advertisers? if i'm paying a subscription to
| youtube, then i don't want post-adpocalypse censorship &
| sanitization.
| drcongo wrote:
| Doubt I watch as many as 3 videos per month on YouTube. I hate
| everything about it, it's cesspool of scamming, racism,
| conspiracy nutters and people debasing themselves for clicks. I
| hope this kills it.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Doubtful that it will kill it. But if it can jumpstart some
| alternatives and normalize video hosting _outside_ of YouTube,
| we 'll get a healthier market of options for watching videos.
| Like you, I probably watch a single-digit number of videos per
| month on YouTube. But there's no other option for the folks who
| I follow, who are simply following the path of least resistance
| to "get people to watch my videos on the internet." Paying for
| YouTube Premium isn't even a real option for me because I'd end
| up paying multiple dollars _per video_ based on my viewing
| habits. Strange that YouTube seems to want to incentivize heavy
| viewership per user, even for paid accounts -- I suppose that
| tells you that the user data is _actually_ the most valuable
| part of your account!
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| There's a lot of amazing content on YouTube. It's just not
| mainstream and so unlikely that it'll be recommended to you.
| ncallaway wrote:
| What are some of those channels?
| [deleted]
| petepete wrote:
| Some I enjoy:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater (electronics, computers)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Tantacrul (music software ui)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@LinusBoman (graphic design)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections (tech)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Astrobiscuit (astrophotography)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@CityBeautiful (city planning)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER (synthesizers)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Wintergatan (engineering, building
| musical marble machines)
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| The channels that I had in mind when I wrote that are
| channels by experts in their fields, which somehow often
| happen to be low production value - because you know real
| scientists are about substance, not style :-)
|
| So here's a random one in that category: this guy decided
| to try and build a mass spectrometer from scratch
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=nIKhUizkXxA
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I don't follow channels. But...
|
| I watched a 23-episode Yale class on the History of
| Ukraine, by prof. Tim Snyder. In fact I binged it. Then I
| went out and bought Bloodlands and On Tyranny. On Tyranny
| is a thin book, I read it in a couple of hours. But
| Bloodlands is fat; I read it in two days.
|
| Snyder is a very engaging lecturer. I wish even one of my
| uni lecturers had been half so engaging.
|
| In the first lecture, he asked his students to report back
| on whether any other universisty was offering classes on
| Ukrainian history; several students researched it, and came
| back in lecture 2 to tell him his class was unique in the
| USA. Which in the light of contemporary events seems pretty
| sad.
|
| I won't be dropping my UBlock pants for Youtube. I watch
| about an hour every two weeks, on average; I certainly
| don't rely on it, and I certainly won't pay for Premium.
| coldpie wrote:
| Oh man! I watch a ton of YouTube. I'll take up an
| opportunity to promote some of my favorites. Presented in
| no order, just scrolling through my subscriptions:
|
| Older tech: LGR, Cathode Ray Dude, Techmoan
|
| Video games: Cinemassacre, Masahiro Sakurai, Jeremy Parish,
| Cybershell, Basement Brothers, Retro Game Mechanics
| Explained, Brian David Gilbert, GTV Japan, Displaced Gamers
|
| Synthesizers/music theory: Red Means Recording, Alex Ball,
| Andrew Huang, Rob Scallon, Rachel K Collier, David Bruce
|
| Hardware/engineering: Element14, Technology Connections,
| Applied Science
|
| Guitar: Justin Johnson, Rhett Shull, Guitar Salon
| International, Andertons, Brandon Acker, Philip McKnight,
| Alamo Music Center
| selykg wrote:
| For Guitar, I'd remove Rhett Shull, dude is just a
| YouTube channel hocking gear he gets for free. It used to
| be interesting when he talked about touring but now that
| he's a full time YouTuber and doesn't play live or
| touring he's just selling ads and his courses. Courses,
| which, frankly are not that unique or good.
|
| I'd add a few different guitarists in here though. Paul
| David's genuinely seems like a great dude. Stewmac has
| fun stuff though it is generally driven around selling
| their stuff, but I think they're still highly educational
| most of the time. Emerald City Guitar's has some really
| cool videos now and again, and I dig their videos on some
| of the vintage gear they have and find inspiration in
| that. Gracie Terzian has great music theory videos, she's
| the one that helped me fully understand the circle of
| fifths. I also really enjoy Eric Haugen, he has a few
| courses on TrueFire now as well.
|
| I also dig Alamo Music Center, watching Cooper shred an
| acoustic is always a good way to spend 10-15 minutes.
| Dude can play.
| coldpie wrote:
| I still like him, but yeah, that's a totally fair take :)
| Will look into some of your suggestions, thanks.
| niyaven wrote:
| It really depends what you're into and the languages you
| speak. Given we're on hackernews, maybe you're an English
| speaker who could be interested in math? 3Blue1Brown[1] is
| a nice channel.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw
| /vid...
| selykg wrote:
| One of my favorites lately is SmarterEveryDay
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@smartereveryday
|
| A super solid recommendation is the series on nuclear
| submarines, I also really enjoyed the one about how
| carburetors work (he makes a clear plastic one to use as a
| demo, it's... wildly cool). In general this channel is just
| _full_ to the brim of really great stuff.
|
| A fellow Michigander Alexis Dahl has really cool videos
| about a bunch of unique places in Michigan and the state's
| history:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@AlexisDahl
|
| Diana, aka Physics Girl, who is currently still suffering
| greatly from long COVID hasn't posted in awhile but her
| back catalog is amazing:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl
|
| A good recommendation that I really enjoyed was the video
| on Rodney Mullen:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFRPhi0jhGc
|
| There's some really great stuff on YouTube, I'm sad that
| it's only offered on YouTube and wish some would move to
| something else simultaneously, like Floatplane or something
| where I could just pay a small monthly fee to get the
| videos at the same time.
| rdlw wrote:
| It's weird, I feel like the people who refuse to use YouTube
| with an account are the same people who insist all the
| content is garbage. I use it logged in and ~70% of my
| recommendations are math videos or other things I would like.
| When I see something I don't want to watch, I just select
| "not interested" and I feel like it immediately improves my
| reccommendations. This way I see maybe one
| reactionary/misogynist/conspiracy video every two months, and
| I just don't watch it and say I'm not interested.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| On the contrary, I use youtube exclusively without account.
| I use a Firefox container to ensure cookies don't stick. I
| follow a bunch of channels via RSS.
| drcongo wrote:
| Oh I'm sure there is, but dealing with all the awfulness is
| enough to make me not bother. Those stupid faces people pull
| in their thumbnails actually have quite a strong repellent
| effect on me (yes, I've got clickbait remover installed, yes
| I also use Vinegar because the YouTube player is deliberately
| designed for mis-clicks). The whole thing is just Idiocracy
| and I end up angry at the sheer stupidity and lack of dignity
| of the human race.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| What I've been doing for 3 or so years, which works great
| for me, is have a Firefox container just for YouTube with
| cookies disabled, ublock origin, subscribe to these
| channels via RSS, and crucially _don 't_ discover content
| via YouTube's own discovery.
| fortyseven wrote:
| That's more of a "you" problem. There may be a lot of garbage,
| but there's also a great deal of quality content made by some
| amazing people. Your unnecessarily broad dismissal of YouTube
| completely omits this. As with most social media, it's all
| about the company you keep. Be selective, curate your
| connections, and you'll find the quality of your experience
| changes for the better, dramatically.
| drcongo wrote:
| It is a me problem, that's true. But the widespread racism
| and conspiracy nonsense is an everybody problem.
| mark09237 wrote:
| [dead]
| garciasn wrote:
| From the article:
|
| >"YouTube's ad-supported model supports a diverse ecosystem of
| creators, and provides billions of people globally access to
| content for free with ads," the company's statement says.
|
| Let's at least be 100% honest with everyone and stop with the
| disingenuous garbage:
|
| 1. Ad-blocker usage is roughly 25-30% of US users.
|
| 2. The average YouTube content creator makes less than 0.02 per
| ad view and thus why many of the large ones choose to use
| sponsors instead. Most YouTube content creators aren't making ANY
| money, let alone enough for them to care all that much. For those
| that are, they're doing just fine w/ad-blockers being used.
|
| 3. Google made nearly $70 billion in Q1; they're not hurting at
| all, especially their executives.
|
| 4. The on-going rise in the use of ad-block technologies is
| simply because platforms, sites, etc, are all absolutely
| inundating viewers with so much trash in an effort to make more
| money that it's almost a requirement to use them without having a
| shitty experience.
| basq wrote:
| You touch on what is effectively the biggest problem I see with
| ads: how aggressive they are.
|
| Interrupting my watching experience so you can show me 15
| seconds of some chips bouncing around on the screen only serves
| to frustrate me and cause me to despise whatever you're
| selling. It's reminiscent of the "butt in chair" managerial
| mindset, and does not convey a solid understanding of how an
| intelligent person makes purchase decisions or meaningfully
| interacts with whatever you're peddling.
|
| The most effective advertisements are the ones you don't even
| realize are advertisements. If you've ever searched reddit for
| product recommendations, you've likely read covert marketing
| campaigns disguised as casual suggestions. I'm not saying those
| are better, they're actually just as bad if not worse, because
| they are fundamentally dishonest.
|
| In my opinion, a tolerable ad is one that does not aggravate
| me. Non aggressive, non intrusive, quick, to the point, and at
| least somewhat relevant without having to spy on me. Showing me
| ads for travel or hotel bookings during a video about
| videogames or hobby model making isn't useful to me (or anybody
| I presume).
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| You're not their target audience, then.
|
| It's like spam having obvious misspellings as a bandpass
| filter for lowered reasoning faculties. YouTube ads are made
| to appeal to the type of person who doesn't use adblocking.
| They don't care if they're intolerable to you - they already
| know you're not going to engage.
|
| The question is, if ads are forced on the rest of us and we
| can't walk into the proverbial other room while they're on,
| how might we allow ads, make them useless for capturing real
| data about us, but have them appear valuable?
| dim13 wrote:
| One correction: ads are not like spam. Ads are spam.
| ipqk wrote:
| Spam is unsolicited, and will keep coming no matter what
| you do.
|
| Web ads are implicitly solicited. You go to websites
| knowing that they will serve ads. If you don't like it,
| you can stop going to said websites and no more ads.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >3. Google made nearly $70 billion in Q1; they're not hurting
| at all, especially their executives.
|
| This is disgusting. Google's executives do an incredible amount
| of valuable work, easily thousands of times more than other
| employees, and deserve rich compensation packages. People need
| to be willing to pay a lot for Premium, or watch more ads, so
| that these executives can afford bigger yachts.
|
| Why do you hate rich people so much?
|
| /s
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Not me, I fully support billionaires in yachts. I think they
| should all have yachts and spend lots of time with the
| exuberant aquatic wildlife off the Iberian coast.
| hn666 wrote:
| I think they should even venture a bit more into the ocean,
| maybe observe some historical submerged ships from up
| close.
| paddim8 wrote:
| To be fair, you can't expect YouTube to bleed money just
| because the parent company is doing well. They're not a
| charity.
| JCharante wrote:
| 1. Youtube creators move to sponsors where Youtube isn't
| getting a cut, which means youtube has to keep the lights on
| with only ad revenue.
|
| 2. Many users want to keep blocking/avoiding ads & don't want
| to pay. So they want to use the service for literally free.
| What other monitization method do you propose?
|
| 3. Their parent company's revenue doesn't matter. Is Google
| expected to run a free service that is very expensive and
| serves billions of users?
|
| 4. Youtube demonitizes people to keep advertisers on the
| platform. Users blocking ads & not paying ("freeloaders") only
| exacerbate the issue by being a drain on resources and further
| incentivizes Youtube to keep striving to preserve revenue by
| demonetization.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Considering that even the FBI recommends [0] using one fir
| security, no surprise.
|
| [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-recommends-installing-an-
| ad-b...
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > Google made nearly $70 billion in Q1
|
| Very disingenuous argument. That's their revenue, not their
| profit, and that includes their entire business, not just
| YouTube. Or is your point just that Google is big, therefore
| even if YouTube is operating at a loss (I don't know if it is
| or not) they should maintain that indefinitely just because
| they can?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| No one is forcing YouTube to operate, at a loss or otherwise.
| They can stop any time they want.
|
| If YouTube disappeared tomorrow it would arguably the best
| thing that happened to internet video since its inception.
| You can only imagine the variety of services that would
| spring up, maybe a standard way of finding and viewing videos
| would emerge.
|
| People don't realise how damaging (essential) monopolies are,
| abusive or not.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Countering adblock is one way Google is "stopping loss-
| making operations any time they want".
|
| And everyone here is behaving like pissy 6 year olds in
| response
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| And adblocking will just counter them back.
|
| By your standards, Google is acting even more juvenile.
| It will not defeat or reduce adblocking and will likely
| alienante paying customers. It's less than pointless.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Don't forget that YouTube will actively "demonetize" videos of
| small/medium creators, and take whatever ad rev. was made on it
| for themselves and kill the reach of a video.
|
| Curiously the same content from bigger brands gets a pass.
| lennixm wrote:
| I think you're being completely disingenuous here. Using an ad-
| blocker is free-riding and nothing less. We consume a service
| provided by Google through server capacity, monetization
| enginea, and improved discovery and by the creators through
| sweat and tears in creating video content without paying for
| it. You can consume the content without being exposed to ads
| while paying Google and the creators their share by buying
| Youtube Premium but you choose to instead steal it by both
| consuming it and not paying for it.
|
| It's completely fair to argue that Google makes more than
| enough money to not have to rely on your ad revenue but after
| all you're still free-riding.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Google is free-riding on my internet connection.
|
| Add up all their users and that's many billions of dollars of
| networking they're getting for free, paid for by those users.
| nazka wrote:
| Ya people want their cake and eat it too. Or we want a free
| and open internet and that means ads or we really don't want
| ads and that means to the app/platform/creator/website to go
| private and with a paywall. It will never be sustainable to
| have something free out there without ads and quality.
| Quality in anything won't just come out of nowhere when it
| require investment, sweat and tears.
| jimkoen wrote:
| No, I think most people are fine with paying for a service,
| it's just that most people in this thread are completely
| right.
|
| 1.) Google drove up ad coverage in front of videos to the
| point where I have to watch 2, sometimes 3 ads before I can
| watch a video. This is insane. I'd rather go back watching
| TV instead.
|
| 2.) Simultaneously, they have made it impossible for
| creators to support themselves by using ad payouts -
| indicated by how many creators chose to go with third party
| sponsorships. So even when I'm using adblock, I'm watching
| ads, only this time I'm usually okay with it, because I can
| skip them and even if not, it supports the creators I'm
| watching (although I'm sure advertisers will slowly figure
| this out as well and creep over to surreptitious
| advertising).
|
| > that means to the app/platform/creator/website to go
| private and with a paywall
|
| You pretend like this isn't already happening. Google is so
| detached from their customer-base, that Linus Tech Tips is
| currently starting his own streaming service, that does
| exactly this. Using their YouTube platform as a way to
| advertise it.
|
| Larger content creators will just build their own
| platforms, as Linus proves.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Alternative take, Google introduced the "customer as the
| product model", at least they did that at scale. Then
| honestly, we became dependent on their services as the web
| became Google, so I don't think it' totally fair to take
| that view.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| Users are also part of the content-generation algorithm.
| Youtube uses my view history in their recommendation
| algorithm to others. YT uses my interactions the same way,
| whether it's engaging with the creator in the comments or
| providing feedback for other viewers or just simply giving it
| a like.
|
| Yes, I'm consuming the service, but I'm also contributing to
| it. Less users = less engagement, and maybe that's good for
| YT's bottom line but it's harmful to the ecosystem.
|
| Using words like 'theft' to describe visiting an openly-
| accessible webpage with a browser extension that modifies the
| presentation of that webpage is a bit extreme.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| Did Google ever unfairly dominate competition? Did Google
| ever use their power tyrannically? Did Google ever release a
| product or design that caused untold social damage? Does
| Google deserve stellar treatment because they treat us
| stellar? Even if you view their ads or buy their product, is
| the product still not free of exploiting you? Why is it not
| the correct moralism that we have a right and a duty to take
| everything from them until they are no more?
| hg35h4 wrote:
| Still not free-riding when you consider the data they are
| collecting from viewers even with ad-blockers. People still
| have accounts to save channels/videos, lots of people or
| households have Android phones that makes it stupidly easy to
| link to people, places and purchases. There is significantly
| more value they still gain from it even if youtube itself
| operates at a loss.
|
| Maybe if they weren't allowed to collect so much information,
| or had to pay back the users they are collecting data on
| could I see the point that ad-blocking is free-riding.
| taeric wrote:
| Calling it free-riding is somewhat absurd in this framing,
| though. Is it free-riding of google to literally play music
| in my house? They don't pay for it, after all. Consider, you
| could easily frame this such that they are free riding on my
| trust to let them sell access to other companies. That they
| can't deliver on that purchased transfer of trust is their
| problem, not mine.
| dang wrote:
| In case anyone is wondering, that quote is from
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23778879/youtube-videos-d...
| - we merged the other thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36526224) hither
| Nathan2055 wrote:
| > The average YouTube content creator makes less than 0.02 per
| ad view
|
| The number I see tends to fluctuate between $1 to $1.50 per
| 1,000 views, or about $0.001 to $0.0015 per view. (YouTube
| makes around twice that in direct gross revenue, and splits it
| up 55% to 45% between the creator and the platform,
| respectively.)
|
| This obviously fluctuates substantially: if you produce videos
| that are viewed by prime demographics advertisers are more
| interested in, you tend to make more. YouTube also has better
| individual deals signed with their topmost creators, giving
| them a better revenue split or a different advertiser pool
| that's willing to pay more for the most popular YouTubers.
| Shorts and livestreams also work a bit differently, but that's
| too complicated to get into here.
|
| CGP Grey has a great video on how YouTube ads work:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo
|
| Sponsors, meanwhile, typically offer _massively_ better rates.
| Estimates very a lot more, and it depends on your individual
| track record as a creator, but I've seen numbers thrown around
| ranging from $2.50 to $10 per 1,000 views at the lower end. The
| biggest creators are apparently being quoted $50 or more per
| 1,000 views, and that number goes up exponentially as your
| channel grows.
|
| That's why seemingly every YouTuber is taking those deals,
| they're _unbelievably_ lucrative compared to the integrated
| YouTube ads. Combine that with a healthy Patreon and it's no
| wonder why YouTubers are still able to do so well despite
| Google infamously difficult behavior.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| There are entire sites that I won't visit on mobile - since in
| 2023 I can't install a working ad blocker (despite there being
| a few on the App Store).
|
| Mobile experience with ads is the most user hostile experience
| in tech.
| garciasn wrote:
| Wiper for iOS seems to work for me in most cases except on
| YouRube.
|
| E: keeping the misspelling.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >>"YouTube's ad-supported model supports a diverse ecosystem of
| creators, and provides billions of people globally access to
| content for free with ads," the company's statement says.
|
| Before I switched to using adblocking on my phone for youtube
| (like I did for my desktop), I made sure I will never ever buy
| whatever crap was presented in YT ads.
|
| I believe I am not the only one for which ads have a contrary
| effect to the desired effect.
|
| So, some companies payd Youtube money and end up actually
| losing money from sales.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| I am looking to build a house, and a few days ago I was
| driving on the highway and saw a billboard for a custom house
| builder. I made a mental note never to contact that company.
| If your ad is on the highway, you are not building my house
| :)
| everdrive wrote:
| When I was younger, and more energetic, I would actually seek
| out an owner's website after seeing an advertisement. There
| would be a big splash ad for a movie on IGN or something, and
| I'd find the site for the movie, find the email address, and
| write some internet-crazy rant about how I'd never watch the
| movie, and tell everyone I knew that the movie sucked, all
| because I was shown an advertisement for the movie. It was
| pretty immature of me, but I felt so strongly about it at the
| time.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I don't think it was immature. I think wanting to fight for
| less crap online was idealistic.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Did you ever get any replies?
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I get very suspicious of things I see advertised too much. It
| either implies that the company has way too much money and is
| blowing it on ads, implying some predatory monetisation, or
| that it's spending money it doesn't have on ads, which means
| it's going to either implode in a few months or have to jack
| up prices.
|
| Remember: "Ad-supported content" isn't really ad-supported,
| it's supported by the customers of whoever's buying the ads.
| kernal wrote:
| >3. Google made nearly $70 billion in Q1; they're not hurting
| at all, especially their executives.
|
| The CEO of YouTube is probably sweating as their performance is
| tied to YouTube net profit. YouTube is one of many revenue
| streams that Alphabet will be tightening over the years. I
| expect the Android division to also start bringing in revenue
| that is not connected to Google Play.
| mark09237 wrote:
| [dead]
| kidneycurved wrote:
| [dead]
| movement3 wrote:
| [dead]
| mango912 wrote:
| [dead]
| kidneycurved wrote:
| [dead]
| movement3 wrote:
| [dead]
| zarathustreal wrote:
| If you can't afford to host the services, don't host the
| services. If users can't afford to provide you with free content,
| users shouldn't provide you with free content.
|
| It is immoral to fund an ostensibly free service that you cannot
| afford to host for free by forcing users to do something they
| don't want to do.
|
| Granted, Google abandoned "don't be evil" a long time ago
| mango912 wrote:
| [dead]
| _gabe_ wrote:
| This is just so funny to me. Google has to have the absolute
| worst PR for any company I've ever seen to make this happen.
| Somehow, they've duped the general public (at least on HN) into
| believing they insert the ads into videos. All they need to do is
| run a marketing campaign about how as a content creator _you_ get
| to decide when ads play, whether they 're unskippable, and how
| many ads to place in your video. Blast that all over the internet
| so people realize that the ads in videos are not there because of
| YT (unless that channel has < 1K subs and < 4K watch hours, then
| that's definitely YT).
|
| Leave angry comments on the videos you watch and tell the
| creators your pissed at them for how many ads they place. This is
| one area YT gives almost full autonomy to the creator. They can
| choose everything except which ads get played.
| Fargren wrote:
| I don't think content creators can choose not to have ads in
| their videos. Creators can turn off monetization, but YouTube
| can still play ads, they just won't pay the creator.
|
| https://www.makeuseof.com/youtube-ads-without-paying-creator...
|
| I do agree with your general point. Creators can choose to show
| less ads, and we should prefer channels that choose to monetize
| less.
|
| EDIT: I'm no longer sure whether YouTube is displaying ads when
| you do this. The wording I found in their help pages is
| ambiguous. I think they reserve the right to display video ads
| if monetization is off, but they are not displaying ads
| (currently).
| _gabe_ wrote:
| Well now I'm intensely curious about this. I've turned off
| monetization on this video https://youtu.be/liJac6RysE4 .
| Please let me know if you see any ads on the video, I'm
| curious if YT will still display them regardless of my input.
| (So far I'm not seeing any ads).
|
| Edit: Also, when I click on the help icon next to the
| monetization bubble, the entire Google help article[0] talks
| about turning _on_ ads. Which seems to imply they 're off by
| default, but they don't mention turning off ads, so who knows
| if that's just "clever" writing to indicate there's no way to
| turn ads off.
|
| [0]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/94522?hl=en
| zaptrem wrote:
| No ads on your video. I confirmed I'm not blocking them by
| switching to another video...instant ads.
| Fargren wrote:
| Thanks for doing this. Maybe I was wrong. I edited my post
| to reflect this.
| berdario wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong, this change was widely
| advertised in 2020:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/11/18/yout
| ube...
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2475463?hl=en-
| GB
|
| That said, I checked the parent's video, watching it all
| the way though... and I also didn't see any ad (and I
| even watched it on my Chromecast, which usually triggers
| a lot more ads on Youtube, which is a reason why I never
| use it for Youtube, but only for Netflix, Disney+, etc.)
|
| I assume that ads might be shown, but only rarely.
| Probably Youtube wants to run them, to have the
| flexibility to recoup on some of the infra costs for
| videos which wouldn't otherwise earn revenue (i.e. they
| aim net zero for non monetized videos... but this is my
| speculation)
| pimanrules wrote:
| Partners can choose to disable all types/placements of ads
| ("skippable video ads", "non-skippable video ads", "pre-roll
| ads", "mid-roll ads", and "post-roll ads") except for
| "display ads" (that is, banner ads). As for whether those
| options actually work, I can only assume so, but the article
| you linked is specifically about non-partners.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/RynaVin.png
| xp84 wrote:
| Another point is that the algorithm (which decides what
| videos are shown on the homepage, sidebar recommendations,
| notifications, etc. and provides the majority of views to
| videos) essentially ceases to promote at all any video that's
| not monetized.
|
| Which I think is fair -- after all, I think they're already
| doing non-monetized creators a favor by footing the entire
| bandwidth bill, they don't owe them free promotion!
|
| But it obviously puts a limit on what a creator can do about
| ads if they are actually trying to make money (even if they
| don't want any Adsense money and only want to do their own
| in-video sponsors, or heck, even if they're just looking for
| "exposure"). If they turn off monetization, they'll drop off
| the face of the Earth, essentially.
|
| Hence why creators care so much about a single demonetized
| video, basically it means the video goes into a black hole
| and earns them basically no views. It exists, but it may as
| well not.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Correct mostly.
|
| But keep in mind it would kill YT business model. Youtubers
| disabling ads means fewer ad views and clicks, so less profit
| for YT. Less reach also means advertisers agree to pay less, so
| even less profit. And finally there is no reason to sub to
| premium, so even less profit.
|
| YT doesn't want to be just a free hosting because transcoding
| and serving petabytes is expensive I guess, and it does not
| want to be a paid hosting because it would make YT a commodity
| and no one wants to be a commodity.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Do you not think YouTube will penalize channels for choosing to
| present less ads? I know that I go with their suggested
| defaults, on the assumption that I will be punished if I depart
| from that. I assume that people will run adblockers if they've
| got any sense: my demographic is probably more likely to do
| that.
|
| I'm on desktop, adblocking the entire internet to the best of
| my ability. I daresay if YouTube got pushy with me as a video
| watcher, I would watch less and would be the better for it. Go
| ahead, make my day ;)
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Do you not think YouTube will penalize channels for
| choosing to present less ads? I know that I go with their
| suggested defaults, on the assumption that I will be punished
| if I depart from that.
|
| Sounds like grounds for an investigation that could develop
| into a lawsuit.
| crazygringo wrote:
| A lawsuit based on what law?
|
| I don't know why it would be illegal for YouTube to use its
| recommendation algorithm to favor videos with ads.
|
| It's a for-profit business after all.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Yes, it would fall under the category of 'dark patterns'.
|
| If you're not allowed to block ads, you sure as hell
| don't have a right to be promoted while refusing to RUN
| ads. I've assumed the worst for years now.
| zapdrive wrote:
| Also, I believe that the algorithm prioritises monetized
| videos over non-monetized ones. I wouldn't be surprised if
| videos choosing more ads are also prioritised.
| s3p wrote:
| No. I don't think they do that. Creators will naturally want
| to turn on ads because the return is amazing. YouTube just
| recommends videos that it thinks individual users will enjoy
| the most.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If people though of ads as something the creator controls,
| I suspect many creators would turn off ads, or maybe do a
| single pre-roll ad, and double down on sponsorships
| instead. It places the creator much more in control over
| the exact ad content that plays, and if you manage to get a
| good match between channel and sponsor can be much less
| jarring than youtube ads.
|
| Of course youtube wouldn't want that, because they don't
| get any money out of that deal. And judging by how things
| are going at Twitch, the platform trying to get a cut by
| forcing sponsorship deals to happen via their platform just
| gets people up in arms.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > "Leave angry comments on the videos you watch and tell the
| creators your pissed at them for how many ads they place."
|
| This will get your account shadowbanned, i.e. you'll be able to
| see your comments and votes but nobody else will be.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Part of their value is insulating creators from this. It's like
| Ticketmaster protects artists from pricing concerns.
| notatoad wrote:
| and the downvotes on this comment prove it's working. nobody
| wants to believe that their favourite youtubers are actually
| the ones who want all these ads, it's much more comfortable
| to blame the big evil company instead.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Haven't a substantial number of creators turned towards
| sponsorships and embedded advertising because they felt like
| YouTube was being too capricious with their monetization
| policies?
| notatoad wrote:
| yes, but those creators typically don't turn off youtube
| monetization. they just decided they wanted _even more_
| money than they were getting from youtube ads.
| xp84 wrote:
| They effectively can't turn off monetization and get any
| benefit from the platform. YT doesn't promote non-
| monetized videos so they may as well be unlisted, cuz
| that's how many views they'll get. Which I think is fair
| -- it's a free service, if Youtubers want free promotion
| it's fair for YouTube to get their beak wet with some of
| the profits from the video.
| anticensor wrote:
| A non-monetised video gets recommended though, albeit
| fewer times than monetised ones (even to premium
| users!!).
| aio2 wrote:
| Uhm... Youtube still puts in ads for those videos, regardless
| of whether or not the creator wants to.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Sounds like an absolutely terrible business strategy for
| YouTube. You can't fix this problem through product decisions
| when the problem is that they are an advertising company with a
| profit motive.
| Arcuru wrote:
| It's possible that Google has chosen to take the brunt of the
| complaints to shield the creators.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The Ticketmaster Tactic[tm].
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I would pay, but most of YT is junk, filled with clickbaits and
| commercials. So, it's not worth it for the rare truly interesting
| thing I can find there.
|
| If I can't watch it with ublock, I will search for some
| alternative measures that will still allow me to watch without
| seeing ads. If no such measures will exist, then I'll quit
| watching youtube. Maybe I'll go for Vimeo or DailyMotion.
| Merad wrote:
| They've become increasingly hostile about ads in general. I
| sometimes watch youtube on my TV via Roku, which sadly doesn't
| have ad blockers, and there's been a noticeable rise in long ads
| that can't be skipped. It's pretty routine now to get 30s long
| ads that are unskippable, and just a few days ago I got one that
| was nearly 90s.
| Alexa871 wrote:
| [dead]
| Alexa871 wrote:
| [dead]
| plumsfeliz wrote:
| [dead]
| plumsfeliz wrote:
| [dead]
| KMag wrote:
| So... this is pretty evil... but I thought of it a while ago and
| I'm not that bright, so I'm sure plenty of others have also
| thought of it.
|
| How long until Google / Meta / whomever just starts having faster
| response times and higher resolution content for people who have
| clicked on an add in the past N minutes?
|
| People who don't click on ads either (1) self-select away from
| the platform (or at least reduce their time on the platform), (2)
| begin to engage in quasi click-fraud, or else (3) consume fewer
| of the service's resources.
|
| It seems like a pretty simple way to improve the ratio of
| consumed resources to ad revenue.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| As an advertiser, I don't want them to incentivize people to
| click on ads, because then people will do it despite lack of
| interest in my product, and thus just add noise to my numbers.
| Unless it also leads to an increase in conversions (doubtful)
| that just makes the individual clicks worth that much less to
| me.
| KMag wrote:
| It simultaneously incentivizes clicking on ads, but also
| increases the concentration of ad-susceptible users on the
| platform. Depending on the correlation between a high
| propensity to click on ads and a high propensity to buy once
| on a website, such a change might actually increase the
| quality of clicks that you get.
| finger wrote:
| Could you, in theory, stream a "video" of a website to the user
| and handle only the input (mouse, keybord) from the user? The
| user would then not interact with a website but with a "video"
| where everything is rendered server side thus making it
| impossible to block any ads.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Too bad Stadia got (mostly) killed off, sounds like the perfect
| use case
| govg wrote:
| Sounds like ssh -x.
| leduyquang753 wrote:
| You can then try to calculate how much more ad time would be
| needed to cover the cost of pulling over that move.
| sircastor wrote:
| So YouTube is going to make it impossible to watch without ads.
| Reddit's communities are going dark because Reddit (essentially)
| wants more ad revenue. Facebook and Instagram have been plastered
| with ads for longer than they haven't.
|
| And we're just a short hop from ads being "Attention required"
| with eyeballs tracked. I wonder if there's a possibility that
| this will shake Youtube from it's dominance.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| Nah Reddit is pretty much back to normal. The protest is over.
|
| There are a few big subreddits like r/interestingasfuck that
| are still closed, but these are more like meme channels than
| communities. People can just get the same dozen gifs a day from
| r/damnthatsinteresting, r/whoadude, etc.
| coremoff wrote:
| That might be true today - but tomorrow (1st July) may be
| different; that's when the API changes take effect and 3rd
| party apps no longer work.
|
| If, as is widely (self) reported, many mods and power users
| interact with reddit via 3rd party apps; we won't see the
| true impact of the API changes until they're active.
| Balgair wrote:
| Already, r/all is now a lot more of strange subreddits
| (trurateme?) that really shouldn't be there and were
| founded on much smaller communities.
|
| If what the mods say about their tools is in fact true,
| then:
|
| Next, you're going to see a _lot_ more spam as mods tools
| are gone and most of America is on a long weekend with a
| family holiday at the end.
|
| Next, the spammers are going to quickly figure out the mods
| are asleep/gone and up the crap game even more.
|
| Next, the creeps are going to post more less-than-kosher
| material, with reporting of it essentially going into
| unread inboxes by overworked mods.
|
| Next, r/all is going to be, well, boring and gross. All the
| spam will make you go, huh, that's not very interesting.
| All the less-than-kosher stuff is going to make you go
| yuck.
|
| Then, you're going to say to yourself, we'll see how long
| this lasts. And if it lasts until ~July 8th or so, you'll
| have found your next reddit fix.
|
| Again, all predicated on what the mods are saying is true.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > Next, the creeps are going to post more less-than-
| kosher material, with reporting of it essentially going
| into unread inboxes by overworked mods.
|
| If anything can hurt Reddit, it's that kind of material.
| Advertisers really, really don't like controversial
| content, and are the first to pull out of any service
| that even smells of controversy or political
| incorrectness, see what happened to Twitter revenues
| after the Musk takeover. The Reddit protests would have
| been far more effective if people started posting (and/or
| moderators stopped removing) gore, porn and Swastikas
| everywhere, maybe with a sprinkling of racism and
| homophobia on top.
| lozii wrote:
| That may look like it, but I think the most important 1% has
| already left or will leave Reddit this week. Those people are
| the people that are also the bigfest contributers of the
| platform, be that as content creators, moderators or app/tool
| developers.
|
| Even more important: Alternative platforms had a huge surge
| in usercount. They don't reach the number of Reddit of
| course, but rheu don't need to. They are their own thing and
| many do now have enough users to replace Reddit for most
| usecases of many users.
|
| I've been having a blast on the Ferdiverse for the last few
| weeks. I'm also trying out tildes.net and squabbles.io. It's
| all very refreshing and reminds me of early reddit and old
| forums.
|
| I'm actually somewhat glad this all happend. I'd have never
| dicovered all these platforms otherwise. And I'm not alone in
| that perspective
| BananaaRepublik wrote:
| Not really though. The impact of the API issue being
| protested hasn't even occured yet. It'll be up to individuals
| tomorrow to cope with the objectively worse experience of
| browing reddit mobile on browser with the ads and annoying
| naggy pop-ups or the official app. I went back to reddit
| after the protests, but I fully expect the degraded
| experience to naturally nudge me towards lemmy and HN. I just
| can't imagine dealing with that shit when I whip out my phone
| during a toilet break.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| > if there's a possibility that this will shake Youtube from
| it's dominance.
|
| Yes, I'm sure everyone is fighting for an audience who refuse
| to pay and block all ads. And of course the audience who do sit
| through ads or pay are therefore not going to switch and stick
| with YouTube.
|
| So unless you want to burn money, I really don't see a viable
| business model there. Unless you think you can take the initial
| hit to grow a big enough audience and then force ads and paid
| subscriptions on everyone to make that money back.
| smarkov wrote:
| > I wonder if there's a possibility that this will shake
| Youtube from it's dominance.
|
| Sadly, very unlikely. I recommend AdBlockers and YouTube app
| alternatives without ads to basically everyone and the vast
| majority of people would rather watch ads than deal with
| installing something even if it'll take a few seconds.
|
| There's enough of us (adblock users) for Google to want to take
| profit from but not enough to make a dent in YouTube's monopoly
| even if we all moved to something else.
| grishka wrote:
| Not _impossible_. It 's not like they're going to DRM this shit
| with treacherous execution environments and all that. Your
| browser is still your _user agent_. I 'm sure an extension to
| bypass this would pop up days after the wide rollout, if any.
| tantalor wrote:
| > impossible to watch without ads
|
| https://www.youtube.com/premium
|
| > Enjoy watching YouTube uninterrupted by ads whenever you sign
| in - on your mobile device, desktop, or enabled TV.
| ryan-allen wrote:
| The warning screenshot posted in the article says that you can
| enjoy YouTube without ads if you sign up for Premium.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > So YouTube is going to make it impossible to watch without
| ads.
|
| There is an option.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| Everything will have ads eventually. Capitalism doesn't leave
| money on the table.
| thiht wrote:
| The only option is uBlock + SponsorBlock.
|
| YouTube premium is still full of ads.
| ryan-allen wrote:
| What country are you in? I have YouTube Premium and I don't
| get _any_ ads at all from YouTube, only the sponsored
| segments from creators directly (and no, NordVPN, I don't
| need a VPN, yes I know you exist).
| nameless_prole wrote:
| [dead]
| thiht wrote:
| These _are_ ads.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| They aren't Google's ads.
| thiht wrote:
| They're still ads which I don't want to see
| JCharante wrote:
| Blame the creators you watch
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| There are extensions to skip those.
| thiht wrote:
| Yes sponsorblock, which I cited above. But at this point,
| why pay for YouTube premium? If I have to install
| sponsorblock, I might as well install uBlock origin and
| get a better user experience for free.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The point is, uBlock origin is supposedly not going to
| work with the new system. You claimed that there "will be
| no way to avoid ads", which is strictly untrue. Youtube
| Premium + sponsorblock is the counterpoint.
| thiht wrote:
| And my point is I don't pay to have to install another
| extension.
|
| If uBlock doesn't work anymore, either I'll use YouTube-
| flow/yt-dlp, or I'll stop using YouTube altogether.
|
| I'm ok to pay for services, but paying and still getting
| ads is my hard limit.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| so those ads are cool to skip?
| Doxin wrote:
| Youtube won't take my money even if I wanted to give it
| to them. I've got no credit card nor the desire to get
| one, and it's the only payment method accepted.
| kernal wrote:
| They're likely referring to creator ads spliced into
| their content.
| sircastor wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that we're not far off from YouTube
| including ads even if you pay. We've already seen other
| streaming services start to do this. I think the streaming
| services will become more interested in ad revenue than they
| are in paying subscribers.
| JCharante wrote:
| That's just ad-supported plans like Hulu etc. They still
| have tiers to watch ad-free.
| recursive wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet that we're not far off from YouTube
| including ads even if you pay.
|
| If you're right, then I'm not that far off from cancelling
| my subscription. But I think you're wrong.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Reminds me of 'PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN' copypasta
|
| Ads are truly a cancer on human culture, I hope society decides
| to wage a war on them soon.
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Didn't you hear? It's now EAT VERIFICATION SANDWICH:
| https://www.gamespot.com/articles/get-diablo-4-early-beta-
| ac...
|
| They're doing another promotion for cosmetics too. And it's
| not even per sandwich, it's per purchase. So to get them all,
| you have to have 4 separate transactions.
| lozii wrote:
| The commercialization of the internet ruined it for the most
| part. Ads and tracking everywhere and people are centralized
| in a handful of networks of a handful of companies that want
| to make the most profit at all costs.
|
| It's refreshing to see how people are starting to revolt on
| platforms like Reddit and Twitch. People are done with this
| stuff. Even if it is only a small percentage of the total
| amount of users, it allows for new platforms to thrive and
| grow, while the old platforms slowly decay. I hope this day
| will come for Youtube as well.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| And replace them with what? Direct payment options?
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Yes.
| reportgunner wrote:
| Don't replace them.
| thiht wrote:
| It's too late for that. On YouTube even if you pay for
| premium, you still get ads in the form of sponsored
| segments, and probably in the recommendation algorithm (I'd
| be surprised if big corps had no way to pay to bump their
| videos in search results).
|
| More and more platforms will try the << paid subscription
| with ads >> in the coming years.
| cwkoss wrote:
| When people recognize how cognitively harmful ads really
| are, there will be a movement to pirate and rehost all
| content decentrally, edited to remove interstitials and
| sponsored segments.
|
| Ads targeting children would be an international crime if
| our world was just.
| thallium205 wrote:
| But with premium the scroll bar at least will tell you
| where to scroll to to skip the ad via the histogram.
| thiht wrote:
| With SponsorBlock it will skip the ad for you.
| ryan-allen wrote:
| The sponsored segments as in advertising that creators
| have negotiated directly? I have YouTube Premium and
| that's the only type of ad I get, I don't get anything
| else.
| thiht wrote:
| I have SmartTubeNext and I don't even have that.
|
| When a free experience can do better than the premium
| experience, your product have a problem.
|
| I'm not even sorry about SponsorBlock, creators still get
| their money, I don't have to watch the sponsored segment,
| and advertisers have no way to know I didn't watch it. So
| it's zero impact on the creator, big impact on my sanity.
| kernal wrote:
| >and advertisers have no way to know I didn't watch it
|
| So YouTube has no idea that the content was skipped by
| SponsorBlock? I find that hard to believe.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, it's unquestionably tracked what exact portions of
| a YT video your browser actually loads and plays. All
| playback is controlled by JS and there's no reason YT
| doesn't hook into those actions and record metrics of
| every play/pause/seek/mute/etc. user action (in addition
| to actual network requests made by the browser).
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > advertisers have no way to know I didn't watch it
|
| Actually per-segment viewership gets tracked by YouTube
| and displayed in the YouTube creator tools. I wouldn't be
| surprised if those statistics get used when negotiating
| deals with sponsors.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Probably 10 times as effective per money unit
| DeathArrow wrote:
| For some yes, for some no.
|
| In late 90s and early 2000s, before all Youtube, Facebook
| and Instagram crap, some passionate people produced content
| wich was available for free on their web pages.
|
| I don't feel the need for need mass culture and mass
| entertainment crap, but if I would feel such a need, I
| would install cable TV and/or pay for it.
| quags wrote:
| This era had shoutads/clickagents, eads and doubleclick
| for monetization. Banner ads were obtrusive and
| complained about at the time. I remember text ads google
| was pushing were actually a welcome change.
| avnigo wrote:
| I'd like to imagine a future where I can stream fractions
| of a cent per minute/hour to the video provider or creator
| in exchange for consumption of that content. That way I
| only pay for however much I actually consume and the
| platform doesn't have to serve me ads to be profitable or
| sustainable. This could even work without needing to
| register for an account, using the HTTP 402 Payment
| Required response status code that already exists [0][1],
| something your browser could handle in the background.
|
| [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402
|
| [1]: https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-
| network/l40...
| smazga wrote:
| I know all things cryptocoin are anathema here on HN, but
| one of the stated goals in the satoshi whitepaper was
| enabling micropayments. I don't want to give my credit
| card info out to every video creator I watch, but what if
| I could load a digital wallet and pay for streams exactly
| as you suggest?
| gretch wrote:
| In such a world your digital wallet Id becomes just as
| important as your credit card number and you're back to
| where you started.
| Draiken wrote:
| That sounds very interesting and fair but way less
| profitable than just selling ads, so it'll never happen
| under capitalism.
|
| It's easy to forget that in reality it's almost never a
| case where we "can't find alternatives", it's that they
| are incompatible with profit seeking.
| hn666 wrote:
| Just my 2c as a layman:
|
| This makes sense in my head, if there's an incredibly
| small cost to watching someone (which would add up if
| that someone thousands of views) and the experience
| doesn't revolve constantly around trying making me
| constantly want to consume something else.
| tiger923 wrote:
| [dead]
| juujian wrote:
| Love this, this may actually help me to reduce my consumption of
| Youtube videos even further. That would be a good thing. All
| creators I like are also on other paid platforms. Thanks google
| for helping me migrate.
| crazy8923 wrote:
| [dead]
| vaultertight wrote:
| [dead]
| vaultertight wrote:
| [dead]
| crazy8923 wrote:
| [dead]
| tiger923 wrote:
| [dead]
| lizknope wrote:
| Part of the reason youtube ads are so annoying is that many of
| them are played at random times while you are watching a video.
| There is no smooth transition to the ad. When watching news or
| sports on television the announcers will say "And now we're going
| to a commercial break" and they play some outro music. Then they
| play some music to welcome you back.
|
| When watching a sitcom or drama the script writers plan in the
| commercial breaks where you would have the different acts in a
| play. They are natural stopping points to take a short break.
|
| Youtube ads are just random interruptions.
| Nathan2055 wrote:
| Some creators do put in fairly natural ad breaks, since there
| is an option to manually define where to run ads.
| RedLetterMedia is the best example that comes to mind; they get
| to a stopping point and cut to black and then an ad plays, and
| then they cut back afterwards. If you're paying for Premium or
| otherwise blocking ads, it just looks like a segment
| transition.
|
| The problem is that YouTube has on several occasions actually
| gone in and added huge numbers of additional automatic ad
| breaks, showing at random places in the video, and has stated
| that the "opt-out" is YouTubers manually going in and deleting
| those new ad breaks for every single video.[1] Most YouTubers
| don't care enough to spend the time to manually fix it for
| every video, or just accept the excuse of "oh, but you get more
| revenue this way" and don't bother. So then baking in smooth ad
| transitions becomes retroactively useless since YouTube is just
| running ads at random points in the video anyway.
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/redlettermedia/status/111398430485249228...
| ProtoAES256 wrote:
| I can't recommend enough of the spiritual successor to Vanced
| since the article briefly mentioned that. It's called Revanced.
| It requires more hoops than usual but I'm sure the intelligent
| folks here won't have a problem with that. It's on Github. Other
| results are probably fake.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I wouldn't have a problem with it if it actually worked, it
| always crashes when patching for me.
|
| NewPipe is another option which works since it's a full client,
| though it doesn't handle logging in and youtube without an
| account and personalized recommended is like swimming in a
| river of garbage.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| I've had plenty enough of a problem with it. The original
| required me to install a separate app in order to install it.
| I've yet to successfully make revanced work. Admittedly I only
| tried once but the hassle was enough to just use newpipe. It
| isn't perfect at all and is lacking a lot of what I want but it
| works. It just works.
| casanova1111 wrote:
| [dead]
| bad89 wrote:
| [dead]
| bad89 wrote:
| [dead]
| referavoid wrote:
| [dead]
| firefoxkekw wrote:
| For me, being able to block/remove all the videos in the main
| page, shorts, the other people also..., the video recommendations
| and all the crap that Youtube have these days is so important.
|
| I would pay a lot for a service that gives me the most useful
| answers instead of what is most likely to make me watch for
| longer, I know that is their business model to maximize view time
| to sell more adds but I wish they would sell me a subscription
| that allows me to customize the UI to show only a search bar,
| show only educational content when I use the search function and
| when I'm watching a video don't show me any recommendation or try
| to pull any tricks on me to spent more time in the platform,
| nothing more, I would gladly pay 50$ a month for this type of
| service on Youtube, until then uBlock origin to the rescue, my
| attention span and productivity is worth more than all the crap
| the Youtube team tries to pull.
| referavoid wrote:
| [dead]
| casanova1111 wrote:
| [dead]
| cat81 wrote:
| [dead]
| cat81 wrote:
| [dead]
| Cyder wrote:
| the real issue, is that when enough people consume a service, it
| becomes a 'utility', and you are penalized if you don't use it.
| As such, if a percentage of the population uses something, it
| should be regulated as a 'utility'. Copyright laws should reflect
| this also.
|
| Most jobs I've seen (even outside of tech ) require familiarity
| with Windows and Office, ie. basic skills linked to one platform.
|
| Google is used enough and thus influential enough, it should be
| classified a public utility and forced to comply with strict
| utility laws ( which requires government approval to modify
| prices ).
|
| IANAL, but I'm sure there are layers that could contrive the
| social penalties of not using Google service.
|
| People make this logical leap in their brains without recognizing
| it when they use a service for years and rely on it for their
| daily information, then turn on the high paid exec's who are
| trying to squeeze a dollar from every user. Red Hat, Reddit,
| Google, Microsoft, Comcast, all need reigning in because of their
| necessarily high required utility in civilization.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I agree. Eventually companies become so big that not using them
| is, in D&D terms, a -2 to all stats for your entire life.
|
| I mean, in exchange for giving them so much money that its
| gravitational field warps all of democracy, can we not get a
| little customer service when needed?
| no_time wrote:
| This is bad. Unlike netflix, its not even viable to pirate all
| the content due to the sheer number of videos.
| boy8768 wrote:
| [dead]
| squeamish3 wrote:
| [dead]
| doggy89021 wrote:
| [dead]
| boy8768 wrote:
| [dead]
| doggy89021 wrote:
| [dead]
| zb3 wrote:
| I hope they succeed, that would be beneficial for my mental
| health, productivity and happiness.
| squeamish3 wrote:
| [dead]
| ducks13213 wrote:
| [dead]
| ducks13213 wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xfedbee wrote:
| > Child is dying from choking.
|
| YouTube search: how to stop a baby from choking
|
| > Two 30 second ads about how important vitamins are for me to
| get pregnant
|
| Meanwhile baby is dead.
|
| Install adblocker so I can save my next eligible heir quickly.
|
| > Next baby is choking.
|
| Quickly open YouTube.
|
| YouTube: you are blocked.
|
| Now I have two dead babies but thank god I know how to get
| pregnant again because of those Vitamins.
| defrost wrote:
| Sounds crazy, who lives like that?
|
| Try this (or equivilant):
|
| https://stjohnwa.com.au/first-aid-training
|
| and qualify for additional pay if you work onsite and are
| prepared to be listed as a first on scene (while the
| professionals are in transit) responder.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Ad-free experience: Hey what's up child-rearing nation! I hope
| you're having a wonderful day! Today we're gonna be about
| saving your child from choking! I know right, my kid is
| choking, your kid is choking, it just keeps happening! They're
| blue in the face and gagging and you don't know what to do!
| *laughs* But before we get to that, I need to tell you about
| our sponsor, ridge wallet, _fuck, skip ahead_ alright, that was
| great, now the first step is to locate your kid, if they 're
| choking they may not be making a lot of noise so you need to
| look carefully. Then you need to make sure they're actually
| choking, are they breathing or what, maybe just holding their
| breaths. Then to fix the problem, well I'm gonna tell you about
| that but first let me give a shout out to NordVPN, you wouldn't
| want someone to download your IP address while you're out
| looking for dying kid tutorials *skip ahead* alright and what
| you do next is you call 911, and they'll maybe know what to do.
| Alright, that's it for today, don't forget to slap that like
| and subscribe button and next time we'll talk about what to do
| when your frying oil's caught fire [ominous cut to running
| faucet]
| crote wrote:
| That's what SponsorBlock is for.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Ah yes, if i just watch the ads, google will be sincerely
| generous and there will be no ads in the content anymore.
|
| If i do everything the corporations think is good for me,
| life will be so great :)
|
| I am just underhanded and thats why we don't deserve good
| things :(
| 0xfedbee wrote:
| This is spot on.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| If a kid is choking and your impulse is to open youtube and
| search for tutorial, you should buy a phone. 911 or equivalent
| is free
| 0xfedbee wrote:
| Most of the world's population lives in regions without "911
| or equivalent", ever thought about that?
| lm28469 wrote:
| With that logic everything should be free and provided on the
| spot, even for the 0.001% scenarios
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I'm being a bit silly but the thought of implementing
| constant free public transport to allow for evacuation during
| a nuclear attack made me smile.
| [deleted]
| blastersyndrome wrote:
| I use an ad blocker and I haven't gotten any such notifications
| about this. Are they only deploying it on certain devices and not
| others?
|
| I exclusively watch Youtube through the browser on desktop.
| capybara_2020 wrote:
| I wonder, will Google be liable if someone clicks on a malicious
| ad and gets infected or worse?
| m3047 wrote:
| I don't block ads, I block technology, for largely political
| reasons. I have the technical skills to do so, which almost
| certainly puts me in a minority. But all the whining from ad-
| supported corps is just whining, and if that doesn't work an
| attempt at extortion.
|
| If the copy said "Looks like you're blocking trackers and content
| from properties we don't own" instead of "Looks like you may be
| using an ad blocker" it would be more truthful. Maybe somebody
| should go after them for deceptive advertising.
| Krisjohn wrote:
| Two things spring to mind: My experience with a YouTube premium
| trial ended immediately upon being told that I couldn't play
| music in a second place at the same time. And ad-blocking is part
| of my security posture.
|
| I have plenty of local storage. Moving forward, maybe good videos
| won't just go into a playlist with the assumption that YouTube
| will continue to be available.
| seydor wrote:
| the best type of ads is the sponsorships that youtubers already
| do. Why doesnt youtube take advantage of them and create a
| platform for them? the ads they run are disruptive, annoying as F
| , loud, they last unpredictably long etc etc.
| micy87 wrote:
| [dead]
| chemist823 wrote:
| [dead]
| sailorpetty wrote:
| [dead]
| micy87 wrote:
| [dead]
| chemist823 wrote:
| [dead]
| sailorpetty wrote:
| [dead]
| buddha345436 wrote:
| [dead]
| galkk wrote:
| YouTube premium family is best value for money for all streaming
| services. Just don't waste time on adblocking, as it works
| reliably only on desktop.
|
| I used ublock and it was more or less cuccessfully fighting ads
| on desktop, but they still were present on phone (new pipe just
| sucks, and I moved to iPhone anyways), iPad, Xbox and tv.
|
| Premium removed all of them. Also gave downloads for offline
| viewing.
|
| I still use sponsorblock on desktop though. And miss it a lot
| everywhere else.
|
| Mandatory disclaimer. I'm Google employee but do not work for
| YouTube and I'm paying for premium with my own money.
| neverminder wrote:
| I use Firefox mobile with Ublock on my phone, plus I have DNS
| ad blocking, so I don't see ads on the apps either.
| rakoo wrote:
| > new pipe just sucks
|
| What's wrong with newpipe ?
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| Incessant crashing, for one.
| galkk wrote:
| It was crashing like all the time on stock Galaxy Note 9.
| Also downloads somehow were much slower than native youtube.
| rakoo wrote:
| Newpipe has to use workarounds to the limitations put in
| place by youtube; I find it expected that downloads will be
| slower, since they won't be using secret shibboleth done by
| youtube on the backend and on the app but standard web
| access.
|
| It has been crashing for me as well but since it's so
| stateless it has never been an issue: playback continues,
| playlists remain, ads ana tracking stay nonexistent.
| mozman wrote:
| I never watch youtube on my phone, always desktop and like you
| sponsorblock has become essential.
|
| I can't bring myself to give YT money when I can address my use
| case for free. YT's hostile user approach also rubs me the
| wrong way, I can't reward that behavior
| unmole wrote:
| How exactly is YouTube user hostile?
| mozman wrote:
| Aggressively pushing shorts, opaque/biased moderation, lack
| of appeals, removing power user features such as sorting
| creator videos, disabled the like button, totally ruined
| comment hierarchy when G+ was pushed aggressively, etc.
| asimovfan wrote:
| I use ublock on desktop and newpipe on mobile and i only see
| ads when i am looking at someone elses screen.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| After Elsagate, I am flabbergasted any parent would trust
| YouTube kids to show appropriate content. Even one that works
| for Google.
| eimrine wrote:
| > Also gave downloads for offline viewing.
|
| I used to have those "downloads" on Youtube. There are not a
| real downloads because I do not have an access to the file.
| Also the feature tends to be misworking - from time to time one
| of "downloads" just stucks with eating 100% of 1 CPU core and
| the recipe is to remove all the "downloads". This was one of
| the stupidiest features I ever had, because if I need a video
| for offline wieving but do not want to get a file, I can just
| watch 100% of video (of course with adblock because YT
| advertisements use to destroy cache) and do not close the tab,
| then suspend my PC and unsuspend it in the place I want to
| watch.
| galkk wrote:
| Downloads are working and very useful on mobile - they give
| you offline version on a device that you can later watch.
|
| I click download on videos that I'm interested in morning and
| have something to listen to during commute without worrying
| about spotty connections and mobile traffic consumptions. So
| yes, file is downloaded to the device.
|
| If I want to download something to have it forever, I use yt-
| dlp on pc.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| I use new pipe for downloading and ReVanced for watching
| Gigachad wrote:
| The downloads feature works pretty good when you are going to
| be on a plane or train without an internet connection.
| Predownload a bunch of educational content and then you'll
| have it for your trip.
| SSLy wrote:
| > _I moved to iPhone anyways_
|
| https://github.com/yattee/yattee
| prhrb wrote:
| Just use revanced or libretube, who uses stock YouTube app!?
| walrus01 wrote:
| The next step in the adblocker-blocker wars will be something
| like the Firefox ublock origin plugin that instead of blocking
| the ad, accepts it and plays it (looking to the httpd on the
| other end like the data transfer has occurred and it's being
| displayed in the browser), but at the end user GUI end, sends the
| ad to the graphical equivalent of /dev/null so the adblocker-
| plugin-user never sees it.
| buddha345436 wrote:
| [dead]
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I do think this:
|
| Youtube has excellent content form people who put a lot of effort
| into it, but do not have a lot of subscribers, don't earn a lot
| and don't produce a lot of traffic.
|
| Then there are millions of low effort videos that produce
| millions of clicks.
|
| Youtube should have a model that adapts to this.
| joeythedolphin wrote:
| Anyone know how to stop sites from saying, "It looks like you're
| using an adblocker... blah blah blah"
| AHOHA wrote:
| UbO, go to settings and enable the filter saying "anti-adblock
| killer".
| helloguy77 wrote:
| [dead]
| lazyboy892 wrote:
| [dead]
| throwing_away wrote:
| If they break uBO and yt-dlp, it might actually kill the
| platform.
| Zinu wrote:
| Money from advertisers doesn't decrease long-term without
| uBO/yt-dlp users (since they don't watch ads and pay for them).
| So less operating costs for Youtube, and more money for
| creators (in theory, if YT doesn't keep the costs savings).
| That should help the platform, not kill it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It's not about that. It's the network effect and motivating
| making alternatives viable. Other sites might get good as a
| result of the exodus.
| helloguy77 wrote:
| [dead]
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