[HN Gopher] YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
Author : smitop
Score : 52 points
Date : 2025-06-20 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (iter.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (iter.ca)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I get they want to work against ad blockers, but as a Premium
| member I really wish there was an easy way to watch a video
| without it polluting my history or recommendations. I don't want
| to watch ads just due to that.
| bitpush wrote:
| Account Switcher > Turn on Incognito. (Not the chrome
| incognito, but YouTube incognito)
| _345 wrote:
| IIRC i stopped using this because it takes way too long to
| toggle on/off and another crucial mistake they make is that
| YouTube acts like its chrome incognito where you want full
| privacy and an anonymous browsing experience, I do not want
| that, I still want to be able to see my own history like my
| last few search bar queries, I just dont want NEW entries
| added when in incognito mode. essentially i want read only
| mode
| james_pm wrote:
| I would love something like what Spotify has - private
| listening. In the meantime, I just go into the YouTube history
| and remove anything that I don't want to pollute my
| recommendations. Turning off search history entirely also is
| good.
| sc11 wrote:
| You can remove videos from your watch history and in my
| experience that does have an impact on the recommendations as
| it's not factored in anymore
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Right, but that's annoying and you gotta remember. Something
| easier would be nice.
| absurdo wrote:
| I was wondering when buffering was going to be a thing. I've been
| seeing it on YT and figured it's the Adblock wars getting heated
| up.
|
| The next step is to scrape the videos, strip the ads, store them
| on a torrent magnet and serve that instead. Yes it would have to
| be from a shady RU or CN or NK or IN site. I'm fine with that.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| If they ran less hostile ads, people wouldn't be as hostile to
| watching their ads. Some of the ads they run are just ridiculous
| and awful. Ads for scams, soft-core porn ads, just the worst of
| the worst.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I think that's a rationalization. Most people just don't like
| ads no matter what they are. And I can't blame them, ads are
| terrible. But this is a case where they offer a nice
| subscription that takes them all away, so people ought to buy
| that instead.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| I don't think it's a rationalization. I have two normie
| friends who were mostly fine seeing ads on the internet,
| until one night they saw one too many scum ads on YouTube.
| They asked me to help them install an adblocker. It was
| specifically the scumminess of these ads that got them to
| start using adblockers, which by the way the FBI recommends
| as a matter of course. People should buy YouTube premium for
| the convenience features it offers, but everyone should be
| blocking ads for their own safety and sanity. There is no
| reason to engage in the ad economy. Everyone should be
| blocking all ads.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Well, I don't particularly enjoy ads on Reddit, Gmail, and,
| when I used them, Tiktok, Facebook, etc but I wasn't
| particularly pissed off by them either. On YT it seems just
| so in your way and in your face and egregious. It's like
| every couple minutes there's an other ad. You can't even
| chromecast videos to your tv to play in the background
| because you have to constantly babysit it or else it will
| load up an ad that goes on forever or 10 minutes until you
| come back to skip it.
| theMMaI wrote:
| The YT Premium subscription suffers from being low value imo,
| forced bundling with YT Music which inflates prices, and
| little to no synergy with Google One subscriptions in most
| countries.
| ndiddy wrote:
| They offer a cheaper version that isn't bundled with
| Youtube Music, but then you get ads on official music
| uploads since I guess that's how the licensing works out.
| https://www.youtube.com/premiumlite
| theMMaI wrote:
| Not available (anymore) in many countries
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Premium Lite has ads, just less. _Currently_ , it's
|
| > Ads however may appear on music content, Shorts, and
| when you search or browse.
|
| -
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15968883?hl=en
| wat10000 wrote:
| I find it to be an excellent value. It's the only streaming
| service I pay for. It's full of stuff I want to watch and
| well worth the price.
| random_ind_dude wrote:
| I pay for YouTube Premium, but what I am afraid will happen
| is that once enough users opt to pay for the service, YouTube
| may pull an Amazon Prime and show ads, and then ask for more
| money to not see the ads.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Same. But I'll certainly enjoy it while it lasts.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Where are you located? I've never seen any of those.
|
| Pretty much all of my YouTube ads are for TV shows, movies,
| cars, mobile games, consumer products, and various consumer
| services. Volkswagen, Dove, TurboTax, etc. All incredibly
| mainstream.
|
| Maybe you're located in a country or region maintain
| advertisers avoid?
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| I get all the ads you mention but I have also gotten the
| deepfake crypto scam ads. Youtube doesn't discriminate as
| long as the check clears.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| I'm in America. I only see these scummy ads I talk about, and
| I assume it's because I'm extremely aggressive about
| preventing myself from being tracked and profiled. My friends
| made the horrible mistake of looking into cryptocurrency on
| Google while signed into their account, so they got targeted
| by scum crypto ads.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It sounds like you've explicitly opted yourself into the
| lowest common denominator ads. It's understandable that
| mainstream companies want to maximize their advertising
| impact by only targeting the viewers where there is data to
| suggest the viewers will actually be interested in their
| products.
|
| I'm honestly not really sure why you're complaining. If you
| don't want to be tracked or profiled, you're going to get
| the lowest quality ads. Why do you think higher-quality
| advertisers should be wasting money trying to reach you,
| when you are going out of your way to avoid any interest in
| them?
|
| To be clear, I'm not criticizing what you're doing to avoid
| tracking, or your stance against it. But I'm questioning
| why you would then complain about the ads you receive.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| I'm not complaining that higher-quality advertisers
| aren't spending money trying to reach me. I'm saying the
| fact that the lowest common denominator ads are so
| hostile is reason enough to completely avoid them.
|
| This might be a controversial take, but I don't want to
| see soft-core porn ads. I don't want to see scam ads. I
| don't want to see the worst of the worst. It is not a
| necessary state of affairs that the lowest common
| denominator ads are ads that are explicitly attempting to
| prey upon the least informed, most vulnerable members of
| society.
|
| The fact that the worst ads are the way that they are is
| indicative of YouTube's willingness to engage in user-
| hostile activities.
|
| If they were less willing to engage in hostile ads, there
| would be less hostility towards their ads.
|
| YouTube's solution is extremely simple: vet ads and don't
| accept money to run hostile ads.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _is reason enough to completely avoid them._
|
| Right, then avoid them. Either don't use YouTube, or else
| pay for Premium so you don't see them.
|
| You claim people are hostile to watching YouTube's ads
| because of their quality. But I don't think so -- I think
| they're mostly seeing normal ads, not scammy ones.
| Because they're not taking measures against tracking.
| Your experience would seem to be very much an outlier.
|
| I simply don't see the ads you're talking about, not even
| a little bit, so I can't really speak to YouTube's
| acceptable ads policies. But just so you know -- you can
| also mark checkboxes in your Google profile around which
| categories of ads you are and aren't interested in. I
| actually did that, and got less ads for categories I have
| zero interest in. That may help your ads experience, and
| make your ad quality complaints go away, if you're
| philosophically OK with that, since you're providing data
| freely rather than through tracking.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Weird way to blame the victim and not the organization
| pushing scams on people. I vaguely recall that 20 years
| ago, Google served things like nonprofit or government
| PSAs when they didn't know what to serve (or thought you
| were botting), not financial scams.
|
| Speaking of PSAs, the US federal government issued a PSA
| a couple years ago recommending use of an ad blocker to
| avoid becoming a victim of financial scams/fraud (purged
| now for some reason). Why they don't prosecute the ad
| companies for being the ones to select and deliver the
| mark is anyone's guess.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221221123349/https://www.ic
| 3.g...
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| I don't get soft core porn ads but I do scams all the time.
| Bullshit supplements, pyramid schemes, "buy my program to
| make money" type things. Otherwise it's mostly political ads,
| more legitimate consumer products like dishwasher detergent,
| gambling, and mobile games. NE USA for reference
| edwardbernays wrote:
| Personally, for my own value system, I consider the
| gambling ads to be as bad as scam ads. I think we'll soon
| come to see the social harm of gambling ads to be as bad as
| tobacco ads. We should strive for a culture where people
| see an ad for addictive services or substances and feel an
| instinctive, pre-conscious disgust. They are the dirty,
| disgusting, bloodsucking bedbugs of society.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| Victim blaming much?
| furk wrote:
| In Germany, they keep showing me Israeli propaganda ads.
| Couldn't imagine a better adblock reminder myself.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Subtle Godwin's law
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Yeah, I find instagram ads not that annoying, and they actually
| promote things I would buy (I've bought a couple of things over
| the years through their ads).
|
| Youtube/google ads? Never bought anything, automatically assume
| they are a scam.
| forinti wrote:
| I don't get such nasty ads, but the ones I get are extremely
| repetitive. I see the same 3 ads all the time: one for a car,
| one for a bank, one for clothes.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Even google can't keep malware ads out of their system. If we
| say have geek squad remove the malware, its $149.99, all
| because google wanted to show me a $0.0001 value ad. No thanks.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| why would you pay geeksquad to run some programs
| nine_k wrote:
| You underestimate your attention's value by two orders of
| magnitude. A typical YouTube ad impression cost is about half
| a cent or so, sometimes several cents. We're talking serious
| business here!
| nine_k wrote:
| Maybe they just want you to buy Premium and get rid of ads
| altogether. I think it's really good value now, especially the
| family plan, if you use YouTube heavily, like my kids do.
| kyriakos wrote:
| All my ads are local brands, supermarkets, sport stores and
| delivery apps. Never seen any had ads, they are annoying but
| nothing abnormal.
| _345 wrote:
| What if people just paid for services they use and depend on
| frequently
| xnorswap wrote:
| I don't want to use it. I only view because others exclusively
| host content there.
|
| If people hosted video elsewhere, I would gladly never visit
| youtube again.
|
| Creators are not going to start paying for uploads when they
| can push their costs to the viewers.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Why do you think the creators you like exclusively host
| content on YouTube?
| xnorswap wrote:
| That's not difficult to answer, it's because it's free /
| they get paid.
| bitpush wrote:
| .. and that's YT's problem? This is like being angry with
| Apple, because an app developer created only an iOS app
| and didnt create an Android. What did Apple do wrong if a
| developer _chose_ to only create an iOS app?
| xnorswap wrote:
| YouTube is the system, you've not heard of "don't hate
| the player, hate the game"?
|
| If I "blamed" the creators, you'd be telling me it's not
| their fault, they're just incentivised by the system,
| they're just playing the game.
|
| But when I "blame" the system, you're telling me the
| system is not at fault, that it's individual choice to
| choose a near-monopoly on video discoverability that is
| propelled by and heavily benefiting from the same
| company's actual monopoly of search.
|
| Is it "YT's problem?"? No, it's to YT's massive benefit,
| it's my problem when I have to suffer through adverts.
| bitpush wrote:
| > YouTube is the system
|
| But isnt YouTube a mere player in the game as well?
| xnorswap wrote:
| I think viewing YouTube in that manner would be a
| nihilist point of view.
|
| I can't think of an adjective less suitable for
| Alphabet/Google/YouTube than "mere".
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Alphabet is the fifth largest company in the world, has
| earnings higher than most countries' GDP, and is
| established to have engaged in illegal behavior as a
| monopolist. It's fair to say they're closer to "the
| system" than "a player".
|
| Not that this was part of the suit, but the whole
| practice of giving things away for free and subsidizing
| them with stalking and ads obviously distorts or
| completely destroys markets, so yes they can be blamed
| for doing that. The behavior of these companies is so bad
| that people in a recent thread were claiming things like
| chat services (where a single computer can provide
| service for millions of users) _cannot be sustainably run
| by charging money_.
| crazygringo wrote:
| There's a long tail of people who don't use YouTube frequently
| but click play on videos embedded on other sites, or on videos
| linked.
|
| So of course they're never going to pay. That's the problem
| advertising solves -- infrequent users can be monetized.
|
| YouTube _already_ has an option to pay to avoid ads, for
| frequent users. And lots of people subscribe to it.
| Teever wrote:
| What if Google didn't horde whatever data it could about me
| from the analytics systems that it has installed on a myriad of
| websites without my consent?
|
| What if Google wasn't a monopoly who amassed insane amounts of
| capital to do this?
|
| What if Google didn't lobby governments around the world for
| special treatment?
| bitpush wrote:
| > What if Google didn't horde whatever data it could about me
| from the analytics systems that it has installed on a myriad
| of websites without my consent?
|
| Arent you voluntarily using their website? Nobody is forcing
| you to open your browser, and type y-o-u-t-u-b-e-dot-c-o-m.
|
| > What if Google wasn't a monopoly who amassed insane amounts
| of capital to do this?
|
| MKBHD, LTT and others are willingly uploading videos to
| YouTube. YT doesnt have an exclusive deal with any of those.
| Infact, those folks are free to upload the same video to
| Vimeo, Twitch and others. What is YT doing wrong here?
|
| > What if Google didn't lobby governments around the world
| for special treatment?
|
| Such as?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Google analytics tracking is embedded in probably millions
| of non-Google websites, and YouTube videos get embedded in
| all sorts of pages.
| bitpush wrote:
| Arent websites voluntarily embedding Google Analytics?
| They can decide today, if they wanna switch to Plausible,
| or any of the other analytics providers right?
|
| I still fail to understand how this is a fault of a
| company? Would you blame Apple if everyone bought
| iPhones? What should Apple do? Ask people _not_ to buy
| their phones?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| If airtags were used almost solely to nonconsensually and
| surreptitiously stalk people (i.e. not to track the
| belongings of the people buying them), yes I think it
| would be fair to blame Apple. Especially if that were the
| advertised purpose, as it is with GA.
| bitpush wrote:
| Google Analytics is a tool that websites use to track
| users, similar to how a store might use a pen & paper to
| keep track of phone numbers or names. The store made the
| decision to buy the pen to track users. Why are you angry
| with the pen company?
|
| Google Analytics is not going around tracking users. They
| provide a service that the website you decided to go to
| (cnn.com, bbc.com) is using. If you have to be angry, be
| angry with cnn or bbc.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Pens have a purpose other than surveillance, and aren't
| as capable as machines. A better analogy would be
| Bluetooth trackers and cameras with machine vision to
| identify and watch people's movements and eye gaze as
| they move around the store. And yes, that is creepy and
| the manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.
|
| Also, client side scripts do not run on the website's
| property. They are taking advantage of the wide-open
| security model of web clients (the model they
| coincidentally get to define because they dump massive
| amounts of money into giving away a free browser, making
| competition in the space nearly impossible) to use
| people's computers for unauthorized purposes. It's a
| malware payload just like a crypto miner. They should be
| treated the same way (or more severely) that they would
| be if they published miners and told web developers to
| add them to get free money (taking their own cut of
| course). The operator and the tool creator should both be
| blamed for shady behavior when the tool is designed and
| advertised for shady purposes.
| Teever wrote:
| It's the fault of the company because they leverage their
| illegal monopoly position to do this.
|
| You're operating under this unrealistic assumption that
| Google is an innocent entity that has not broken the law
| to get to the position that they are in.
|
| This is false. Google does not play by the rules and as
| such your assertion that people should in turn play by
| the rules when interacting with Google is unreasonable.
| bitpush wrote:
| I dont follow your logic. The website you visit (cnn,
| bbc) has made the decision to use Google Analytics. They
| can very well stop using the GA, and nothing would
| happen.
|
| Imagine all the restaurants in the world used IKEA for
| their tables & chairs. Can you say OMG IKEA has a
| monopoly? No sir, IKEA didnt go into the stores and
| install the tables & chairs, the restuarants did. Will
| you be angry with IKEA?
| Teever wrote:
| I would imagine that those sites use GA because it's the
| best tool for their needs. It's probably the best tool
| for their needs because it is both a very well developed
| tool with superior integration with other parts of their
| platforms and has a large developer base that is familiar
| with it. These advantages come from Google's monopolistic
| practices and the money and resources that it provides
| them.
|
| I can certainly imagine such a thing but I'm not sure
| it's particularly relevant to the situation as IKEA has
| as far as I'm aware never been ruled to be a monopoly
| while Google has.[0]
|
| Ultimately my position on this subject comes down to
| this: Google does things that are hostile to me. They do
| things that are hostile to you. They do things that are
| hostile to society writ large. They break the law and
| violate the social contract. My morals necessitate
| responding to such an entity with disregard for whatever
| they're legally entitled to.
|
| I don't like the way that I'm surveilled by Google and I
| don't like the way that they abuse their monopoly
| position and lobby the government to make it impossible
| for me to evade that surveillance.
|
| To bring the conversation back to where it started: I
| already pay them with my privacy, I pay for the economic
| harm their monopolistic practices have on society, and I
| pay for the corrosive effects their lobbying has on the
| political structure.
|
| I'm not going to be paying them for an ad free Youtube
| experience.
|
| [0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/05/business/google-loses-
| antitru...
| create-username wrote:
| If people were just paid for services that used them and
| manipulate them with tracking and behaviour profiles
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I've always paid for cable without complaining, but the adtech
| surveillance reality that was innovated by the tech industry
| makes me less willing to support them.
| lurk2 wrote:
| The only reason people use YouTube is because it has had a de
| facto monopoly on video distribution for the last 15 years.
| iterance wrote:
| I have to wonder whether they are tracking changes in consumer
| confidence. Subjectively, I have noticed a significant drop in
| confidence from my peers. I do not know whether my experience
| generalizes, but if it does, they are playing with fire.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the
| video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not
| that I want any ads personally). You could also rate-limit it to
| the playback speed to prevent pre-downloading the stream easily.
| But now that everything uses HLS/DASH, it's easy to inject
| different content right in the middle of the stream without re-
| encoding anything.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Creators will never accept it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've also wondered about this for a long time. It seems like
| there must be something difficult about it, but I can't even
| guess. Otherwise it seems like they _would_ be, no?
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| The creators themselves will include sponsor segments in their
| videos, but some users go a step further and use sponsorblock
| to automatically skip through.
| walthamstow wrote:
| That's how some podcast houses do it. Sometimes they'll be mid
| sentence and the ad will come in.
|
| I pay for a subscription to The Athletic, who used to offer ad
| free podcasts in their app. Last month they signed an exclusive
| deal with Acast, and now I cannot possibly listen to their
| podcasts without ads.
| simion314 wrote:
| I have no respect for Youtube/google developers, like they have
| apps where you need to pay to use them with the screen turned
| off, so they screw your battery (reducing your device live) and
| wasting energy so their boss gets a bigger yacht (cecause it
| seems ads are not enough)
| jahsome wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree but it's not a Google problem.
| It's a human problem.
|
| For example: What value does your comment provide the world?
| Enough value to offset the carbon emissions from
| transmission/storage/retrieval/display? Personally, I'd answer
| no. Thus your comment itself is a waste of energy.
| gxs wrote:
| Reframing a problem with anything as a human problem is a
| tautology - why even go out of your way to write?
|
| Only pointing it out because of the irony given the content
| of your post
|
| Otherwise yeah, don't understand what parent comment is
| trying to say
| jahsome wrote:
| > Reframing a problem with anything as a human problem is a
| tautology
|
| I respectfully disagree.
|
| > don't understand what parent comment is trying to say
|
| They're trying to say Google and those who work there are
| greedy. I shared my "tautology" to illustrate while OP's
| point may be largely correct, greed is not unique to
| Google.
| simion314 wrote:
| >They're trying to say Google and those who work there
| are greedy.
|
| More then that, sure they show you ads, GREAT but they
| screw your device and environment, this makes them no
| money , a small fraction of users might buy premium but
| the rest of the users will waste energy and bdevice life,
| the developers contribute to killing devices and wasting
| energy.
| simion314 wrote:
| Can you guess how much is my comment energy usage compares
| versus all the devices that run YouTube with the screen on?
|
| What about those electronic devices that will end their life
| sooner because of that?
|
| My hope is that other people will read my comment, add their
| own support or feedback and maybe at least one single person
| will think mroe and had the morals to refuse implementing
| anti environment and anti user features.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| How else would you propose they make money (and satisfy
| contract obligations)? Because nobody else has figured out a
| better solution.
| pirates wrote:
| it's funny that you bring up contractual obligations while
| google ignores the iOS app store rule (contractual
| obligation) about locking features like PiP behind paywalls.
| simion314 wrote:
| >How else would you propose they make money (and satisfy
| contract obligations)? Because nobody else has figured out a
| better solution.
|
| Do they make money from those millions of devices that run
| with the screen on? How ? Is some devil paying them for the
| damage caused to the environment?
|
| For ads it makes sense but not for this shit policy, if they
| hate the users that they use youtube for free and ads are not
| enough for them then either put more ads, or find some other
| methods that do not screw then environment (maybe use the
| sound of crying babies each 30 seconds if you are not a
| premium )
| brentm wrote:
| YouTube Premium costs about the same as 2 cold brew coffees and
| is worth the money.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's by far the best value of any of the streaming media
| services.
| rafram wrote:
| Yeah, I will unabashedly shill for YouTube Premium. It's cheap,
| it pays video creators more than ads do, and it includes
| YouTube Music so you can ditch Spotify.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Still has a nefarious algorithm.
| jamesponddotco wrote:
| And tracking.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Paying 13 bucks per month, which is a non trivial amount for a
| lot of people if it competes with other subcription services,
| merely to block ads on a website that _doesn 't even produce
| its own content_ is in my opinion one of the worst deals on the
| internet.
|
| That's equivalent to a Netflix subscription, which puts what,
| 20 billion into original content each year?
| bitpush wrote:
| > doesn't even produce its own content
|
| How do you think those video bits get streamed all around the
| world? Magic?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I assume with the same amount of magic as they do at all
| the other streaming platforms, but they still manage to
| serve up original content. Hence, as a consumer, this seems
| like a shoddy deal. You're basically paying for ad-free
| slop, which by the way like Amazon these days you have to
| crawl through an entire mountain of because the site barely
| has any content management features either
| bitpush wrote:
| We're comparing two different companies here. Netflix et
| al, are in the business of producing original content
| (good for them), while YouTube et al are in the business
| of serving user-generated content.
|
| That's not a bug, but a feature. Its the same difference
| as a high end restaurant, and a hole in the wall
| restaurant. Both are serving food, yes, but they are
| doing business in different _categories_. You cant go to
| the second restaurant and be like, the food you served
| didn 't come with a smile like this other restaurant
| here. They seem to have figured it out, why cant you.
|
| Or similarly, you cant go to the high end restaurant and
| be like - you charge for water now? Why cant you be like
| this other hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the entire point is that in this analogy youtube is quite
| literally the mega chain self serving restaurant on the
| most decrepit corner, somehow charging you premium prices
| despite you having to refill your own water.
|
| They're curating nothing, there's garbage everywhere and
| you're expected to pay 13 bucks so there's no hairs in
| your food
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Netflix costs around double of Youtube Premium for the
| technical equivalent experience (No ads, UHD playback).
| It's not like they're charging the same amount for some
| much better service.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's interesting to see such different experiences.
|
| To me, YouTube is the gateway to those wonderful hole-in-
| the-wall places where you get real food made from scratch
| by people who care. Yeah, there's also a ton of shit. You
| have to actually make choices, not just take whatever it
| puts at the top of your recommendations. But the good
| stuff is there, and it's really good. A gigantic
| corporation may be intermediating, but the content is
| real stuff from real people.
|
| Services like Netflix are the soulless mega-chain
| restaurants serving committee-designed meals that have
| been focus-grouped and cost-optimized to death.
| bitpush wrote:
| > you're expected to pay 13 bucks so there's no hairs in
| your food
|
| Then dont go to the restaurant if the "hygiene" is not
| upto your standards? Why do you insist on eating food
| from that resturant, and insist that it needs to be free?
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't care what they pay to create content. I care about
| how much stuff they have that I want to watch. YouTube knocks
| this out of the park. Netflix fails. I actually have Netflix
| for free (with some ads) through my cell phone plan and I
| haven't used it in a year. I use YouTube daily and the
| subscription fee is well worth it to remove the ads.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| A family plan says it's $23/month. That's well over the cost of
| a 3 lb tin from Costco ($18.69 by me), which is several weeks
| if not a month of cold brew.
| rafram wrote:
| We're kind of getting off track here, but a 3-lb tin of
| preground coffee is not going to taste very good by the time
| you finish it, if it ever tastes good at all. It's pretty
| likely to be low-quality and stale before you even pull it
| off the shelf.
| ysavir wrote:
| I've been getting these buffer loading times recently, and
| ironically, I don't mind them all that much. The annoyance of ads
| isn't primarily in the time it takes up, but in having the audio
| play and a video feed run that isn't the video I clicked on.
|
| If an actual ad played, I'd be irritated beyond belief. But when
| there's a 12 second buffer, I have enough patience training for
| slow load times that I instinctively just quickly check my email
| or spend a brief moment lost in thought. Especially when it's
| every video. If it was one in every 5 videos, I'd notice it and
| be bothered. When it's every video, it's part of the experience
| and my brain just cuts it out automatically.
| zaran wrote:
| while ad blocking has grown in prevalence over the years, for
| something like youtube I'd figured it was more than counteracted
| by the shift to mobile / TV (where ad blocking is more
| complicated)
|
| whatever the merits, this (and google's neutering of extensions
| in chrome) signals a fundamental attitude shift from ~10 years
| ago; they're more interested in squeezing margins out of their
| dominant platforms instead of growth
| ZeroClickOk wrote:
| "We are working hard to make your life miserable"
| bitpush wrote:
| Business asking for money for goods and services rendered is
| _checks notes_ making your life miserable?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > checks notes
|
| This is obnoxious.
| ttyyzz wrote:
| Having to pay for something so that's "less annoying" is the
| worst business model. YouTube Premium is very expensive. I had it
| for a while when I got a Pixel smartphone with a few months of
| YouTube Premium included. It was great. I also understand that
| streaming on this scale must entail incredibly high operating
| costs; the money has to come from somewhere. It's simply a
| dilemma. But there has to be a better way. Any ideas?
| xandrius wrote:
| Create a built-in Patreon to access premium videos and
| communities and take a cut.
| nick_g wrote:
| They're attempting that now with "memberships." I'm not a
| heavy patreon user, but the current implementation leaves a
| lot to be desired. I expect they'll be able to iterate on it.
|
| An unfortunate aspect is that I'm frequently recommended
| videos which I would have to pay to watch. As a youtube
| premium subscriber, feeling like I'm constantly being upsold
| has begun to grate on me. I'd really appreciate a feature to
| hide these videos as a premium subscriber, which I have
| little faith in them implementing. On my laptop it's easy
| enough to hide these thumbnails (as I already do with shorts)
| using ublock origin. However this is making me reconsider my
| subscription. Why should I have to use a third party tool to
| best use this service which I'm paying a fairly significant
| fee for? I've similarly used ublock origin to work around
| recent change where only three videos were shown on each row
| thallium205 wrote:
| Youtube Premium is very expensive?
| ttyyzz wrote:
| I would pay that 130EUR / year if I was alone. I have to be
| responsible with the money I earn as I have to feed 3 kids
| and my wife is not working. We also use other different
| streaming services like netflix, spotify family... adding
| youtube premium seems not reasonable for me at the moment.
| mbac32768 wrote:
| In 2025 it's actually not that expensive. CDNs aggressively
| drive down the cost of streaming video.
|
| A 1080p music video costs about one tenth of one cent to serve
| to one person at retail CDN rates.
|
| You could easily host this yourself and decide what the terms
| are to view it. E.g. ads, or paywall or free because you
| benefit from the exposure.
|
| Once upon a time AdSense/YouTube saved you from getting an
| unmanageable $5,000 bill from your ISP because your content
| went viral but nowadays their value proposition is more about
| network effects plus built-in revshare scheme.
| briffle wrote:
| Youtube is $14/month. netflix is $17/month. That is VERY
| expensive, considering that most of Netflix's cost is
| production. Youtube has almost no production costs. Their
| users create content.
|
| Maybe if they paid their users more, so they didn't also have
| to add 'sponsor segments' inside their video's it would make
| more sense. The bundling music for the same price is the same
| crap cable and phone companies have been doing for decades,
| that most people hate. Let me buy just youtube without ads,
| and keep spotify.
|
| But as it sits right now, $14/month for video's without
| youtube ads, but still with ads added by the creators
| themselves (or paid promotion, I guess) is pretty expensive,
| compared to $17/month for actual movies with no ads at all.
| BXlnt2EachOther wrote:
| YouTube gives, I think, 55% of revenue (not just profits)
| to creators, so that might also be considered production
| costs making up a majority of expenses.
| dieortin wrote:
| Assuming your numbers are correct, you're ignoring all the
| rest of the infra
| sc11 wrote:
| I'd be happy to pay for premium if it actually removed all ads
| from the platform. I wish they forced creators to declare which
| segments of a video are ads for their sponsors and then removed
| or skipped them for premium users. Basically built-in
| Sponsorblock except not crowd-sourced.
|
| Alternatively, many creators already upload ad-free versions to
| their Patreon or other paywalled platforms, they could upload
| those to YouTube as well to be shown to premium users if YT
| allowed for it and forced them to.
|
| Alas I'm not willing to pay 13EUR a month for just slightly fewer
| ads.
| dingaling wrote:
| I don't think YouTube should get further into the dangerous
| spiral of chaperoning the content of videos. If there are too
| many sponsored segments in a video, take it up with the creator
| or stop watching that channel.
| brightmood wrote:
| So you buy premium - now you don't have ads from YouTube anymore.
| But now YouTubers such as LinusTechTips and who else not want
| monthly payments for their exclusive content. Yea, that's not
| going to work. Now your watchers don't watch your content.
| bitpush wrote:
| That's a self correcting situation. If LTT sees a huge drop in
| their views/subscribers, they'll correct the situation.
|
| .. or a competitor (who's a competitor to LTT? GamerNexus?
| MKBHD?) would take their place.
| FerretFred wrote:
| > fake buffering is 80% of the length of the ads
|
| I run Brave on multiple devices and there's now a "glitch" a few
| seconds after what wouod be the ads, starts. I put up with this
| because the alternative is to put up with ads that treat viewers
| like morons with one hand in the mouse and other in the wallet.
| krosaen wrote:
| I pay for YouTube premium (which gives me YouTube music too) and
| am happy with the lack of ads, even though many creators still
| mix paid sponsors into their videos. It seems the creators are
| motivated to keep things minimal or they will lose engagement.
|
| What I am not happy with is a lack of control over the homepage
| and recommendations. I would really like to be able to easily
| block channels from ever showing up, but you can only sort of do
| this if you click "don't recommend this channel anymore" from the
| homepage. But you can't do this if a video shows up recommended
| from another video. And overall, it just feels like they are
| spending so much effort trying to get me to watch the next video
| instead of enjoy the one I am trying to watch.
|
| For my kids, I came up with an ad hoc policy where they can watch
| from the homepage / recs on weekends but during the week have to
| stick to a personal playlist they can only add videos to on the
| weekends. This removes the algorithmically driven addictive
| nature of YouTube and unsurprisingly they end up moderating their
| use of Youtube within their alotted screen time much better. It
| distinguishes between, "I want to watch this" and "I want to pull
| the slot machine lever." But I would be a lot happier if I could
| better curate access to content for my kids too. Youtube Kids
| sucks, it ends up filtering out a bunch of interesting stuff like
| carpentry and nature content that hasn't been marked "for kids"
| in favor of videos of kids shopping for toys and stuff.
| ghfhghg wrote:
| The "don't show this channel" feature also feels like there is
| some kind of expiry because I've blocked a few channels
| multiple times now via that method.
|
| Totally a theory but sometimes YouTube has a button that says
| roughly "show me something new". I think that may be the source
| of those channels returning.
| nine_k wrote:
| Off topic, but I must praise the simple, no-nonsense, readable
| design of the linked post, and how it loads instantly. Kudos.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Google is intentionally throttling YouTube, slowing down users
| with ad blockers_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44304293
| bryankaplan wrote:
| I've come to rely on a robust method of adblocking YouTube which
| I believe to be perfectly reliable and impossible for YouTube to
| circumvent: avoid watching YouTube. Incidentally this method also
| reliably prevents false buffering.
| tmaly wrote:
| The number of ads they run reminds me of the good old days where
| half of the TV show time was commercials.
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