[HN Gopher] YouTube videos are skipping to the end for users wit...
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       YouTube videos are skipping to the end for users with adblockers
        
       Author : josephcsible
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2024-05-27 19:14 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (9to5google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (9to5google.com)
        
       | grobbyy wrote:
       | Google has entered into a phase where short term profits outweigh
       | long term growth.
       | 
       | If you're a startup, don't do this. Maximizing the growth
       | exponent does a lot more than tweaks on per-user revenue.
       | Intentionally annoying users is bad business.
       | 
       | When companies do this, it's also good to look at PE ratios,
       | since it suggests they don't anticipate growth.
        
         | lkdfjlkdfjlg wrote:
         | > Google has entered into a phase where short term profits
         | outweigh long term growth.
         | 
         | I has entered this phase at least 10 years ago.
        
         | pompino wrote:
         | It might well be good for business, but I'm cheering that the
         | slow erosion of trust with Google continues and leads to their
         | demise in a decade or so. The cherry on the cake would be if we
         | can get lawmakers with a backbone to put such companies in
         | check.
        
         | zeruch wrote:
         | "Google has entered into a phase where short term profits
         | outweigh long term growth."
         | 
         | Indeed. The question I have is does that mean it goes
         | eventually the way of Microsoft/IBM, or the way of SGI/Computer
         | Associates?
        
       | khrbrt wrote:
       | Thank God, now I can finally kick my YouTube addiction.
        
       | downrightmike wrote:
       | Don't use Adblock, use ublock origin, that Dev actually gives a
       | shit and isn't taking ad money on the backend.
        
       | camel-cdr wrote:
       | Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script
       | that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions (RSS, but
       | could also pull channels once a day), and detect and remove the
       | ads?
       | 
       | Or an extension/program that lets me pre download the first few
       | minutes of a video, so I can start watching it after 2-3 minutes
       | and won't get annoyed by ad that plays within the buffered amount
       | of time.
       | 
       | Or an extension/program that silences, blacks out ads, and
       | notifies me when the ad is over.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | I imagine there's loads more to do on the JavaScript player
         | that selects which video segments to download and play. They
         | feed you a crap list of segments, then have the JavaScript skip
         | past if it decides you're watching like they want.
        
         | pompino wrote:
         | It would be logical for them to fight tooth and nail on this as
         | it puts their business model at risk.
         | 
         | Personally, as much as I dislike Google, I'd rather everyone
         | get off their youtube addiction, rather than use adblockers (or
         | other similar circumvention methods. Their popularity (IMO)
         | sends a strong signal to the platform owner that people value
         | their content so they should keep fighting against such tools.
         | 
         | The pressure Google puts on content creators forces them to
         | skew greatly towards quantity not quality, and other terrible
         | metrics like "engagement". Adblockers put further pressure on
         | them to go out and personally find sponsors. IMO this makes the
         | situation worse as they're focusing on not pissing off
         | advertisers, and stay away from being opinionated, etc. All
         | this probably won't affect established creators, but pushes
         | everyone else to be vanilla.
        
       | blackeyeblitzar wrote:
       | People can build AIs that play the videos, extract the content,
       | and replay it later.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-27 23:02 UTC)