[HN Gopher] YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
Author : smitop
Score : 861 points
Date : 2025-06-20 17:01 UTC (1 days 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
| ilkke wrote:
| You can easily and quickly turn off watch on mobile. Don't
| remember if it's a hassle in the browser.
| k12sosse wrote:
| IME this turns off the premium benefits, stupidly
| frollogaston wrote:
| Oh that's weird
| 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.
| arccy wrote:
| I just have a different tab with the history page open to pause
| / resume history you don't even need to refresh the page you
| use to play videos
| nick_ wrote:
| YES. I've been wanting this for years. I want a switch that
| signals to the analytic/algorithm system that I am consuming
| this content either...
|
| A) sincerely, trustfully, optimistically, etc.
|
| ...or...
|
| B) critically, skeptically, experimentally, observationally,
| etc.
| pests wrote:
| Just delete it from watch history when your done, is what I do.
| dbbk wrote:
| If you create a new profile and switch to it it keeps your
| Premium benefits with its own watch history. I do this for
| communal watching on the living room TV.
| 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The next step is to auto download all the videos you might want
| to watch onto your plex server and strip the ads
| 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.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| No, I'm going to continue watching YouTube while also
| avoiding their ads. If they want to engage in an
| adversarial relationship then I will as well. Until
| there's another competitor in the space that provides the
| same value, I will just take value from the only game in
| town. They don't owe me their service, but I also don't
| owe a bad faith monopolist anything. I do pay for
| premium, and I also block all of their analytics and ads
| at the network level.
|
| EDIT: also, I think everyone should block ads. We should
| snub advertisers and surveillers all of the time. If they
| want to be hostile towards users, users should be hostile
| towards them.
|
| Capitalists have had it too good for too long. It's time
| consumers stop caring about how the poor capitalist will
| make their dime.
|
| Until the capitalists take the time to respect us, the
| consumers, we don't owe them anything.
|
| It's time for reciprocity. If they're hostile, we
| reciprocate. If they're cooperative, we reciprocate.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I do pay for premium_
|
| You pay for Premium?
|
| Then why are you complaining about ads when you don't
| even see them?
|
| And why are you talking about being hostile to a company
| when you pay them every month?
|
| I'm even more confused than before.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| giving them $13/month is not being hostile to them, it's
| being a long term customer. they have exactly the
| relationship they want with you, minus your adblocking. i
| too pay for premium, run a pihole and use ubo. i pay for
| premium because the company sells a quality product at a
| good price and adfree. sponsor segments is another thing,
| but solveable. i also use sponsorblock and have a docker
| setup to autoskip segments on devices connected to my
| wifi. but out of all streaming services out there, yt
| actually seems like the least vampiric.
| 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.
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| I agree and feel it is a reflection on social decline.
| While I don't think prohibition it the way forward it is
| unsettling that we tolerate this as a society. Would we
| tolerate youtube advertising for heroin or even
| recreational marijuana? We certainly don't for tobacco
| and we probably shouldn't for alcohol.
|
| I work in mental health and I am seeing more people who
| spend a substantial amount on "parlays". Many examples
| downplay or hide the behavior from their social network
| and the extreme examples spend a significant amount. The
| advertising is obviously predatory and goes against what
| we know about control dynamics in addict behavior but we
| tend to view that as a personal moral failing rather than
| exploiting basic biology and as a result allow the dealer
| to ruin countless lives before any action is taken (see
| Purdue and Teva lawsuits)
| 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!
| fourg wrote:
| Google does what is best for their bottom line. The worse the
| ad experience is the more likely people are to pay for
| premium.
| 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.
| bitpush wrote:
| > manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.
|
| Manufacturers make things when there's a market. If
| Google didnt build Google Analytics, someone else would
| (Maybe Microsoft, or Apple) because the demand exists.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Other people steal, run scams, etc. Doesn't mean I have
| to. Google doesn't _have_ to create surveillance software
| even if they suppose someone else will.
|
| Why haven't they created crypto miners for even more
| profit? It would be more ethical and less wasteful than
| the surveillance/ads combo. Obviously others will and
| have done it.
| Teever wrote:
| Sure, there's a need for a product like GA, and in a
| vacuum someone else would create a similar product but
| whatever value it provides to the market and the users
| does not justify socially malignant behaviour from a
| convicted monopolist
|
| If GA didn't exist there's no guarantee that the
| alternatives would create the same negative externalities
| that damage privacy of strangers while delivering value
| to the users of the software.
|
| Google Analytics ultimately operates the way it does not
| because it's necessarily the best way to provide value to
| the sites that use it, but because it serves Google's
| monopolistic and unscrupulous interests.
| 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.
| recursive wrote:
| Creators will take what they're given. They have no leverage.
| 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?
| kevindamm wrote:
| I suspect the difficulty is due to a fear of it turning away
| too many users, not necessarily a technical one.
| recursive wrote:
| Turning them to where? Doubt it. Those are low value users
| anyway.
| ilkke wrote:
| If the value was low they wouldn't be squeezing it.
| recursive wrote:
| Get valuable or leave I guess.
| 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.
| k12sosse wrote:
| How does Twitch do it? They're super aggressive and even using
| third party clients that do a good job and not displaying ads,
| you still get an occasional "commercial break" screen where
| they're not serving you the content, or the ad, just a "let's
| all go to the lobby" screen.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Those clients could be doing a better job - when twitch
| starts playing an ad on the main stream, they also provide a
| secondary stream that shows the actual content.
| plopz wrote:
| i believe that secondary stream is used for picture in
| picture so its lower quality, like 480p or something
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Maybe; I don't know anything about it. I will note that
| that belief could easily develop, true or not, if twitch
| streams start out in low resolution and increase as you
| buffer them.
|
| A third-party client has room to make a dramatic
| improvement on the twitch experience by not dropping
| audio while you make the switch from the ad stream to the
| content stream.
| ekimekim wrote:
| Twitch puts the ads directly in the HLS stream, but as
| seperate segments from the content (a HLS stream is made of
| many small video files, on twitch they're about 2s long).
| They're trivial to recognize and filter out (they're actually
| explicitly tagged as ad segments) but it still won't serve
| you the actual stream you were trying to watch - the ad
| segments override it. The best you can do is just block until
| the first non-ad segment arrives.
| noman-land wrote:
| There exists crowdsourced adblocking based on timestamps
| (SponsorBlock, Tubular). Soon we will have realtime on-device
| content-aware AI adblocking. They will ever win.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Once we get content-aware AI adblocking, every video and
| podcast will turn into a product placement.
| ekianjo wrote:
| They are already doing product placement everywhere..'
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Few shows are relentless about it.
|
| In the future, everything will be like that vapid chicken
| wing podcast (the one where they bring on an interesting,
| talented person and then waste half an hour interviewing
| her about sriracha)
|
| So Ira Glass will be narrating _This American Life_ while
| simultaneously reviewing different varieties of Doritos,
| etc.
|
| ...or the producers of _The Rest is History_ will add the
| Planters Peanut Man as a third host
|
| ...or Marques Brownlee will review every product _in
| relation to how well it works with Bose headphones_
| squigz wrote:
| No, the future will not be like that.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| I've seen the future, and it kills 99.99% of germs,
| bacteria and viruses...
|
| ...it powers through tough grease and grime
|
| ...with no harsh smells!
|
| _The future is Fantastik(r)._
| sodality2 wrote:
| > Few shows are relentless about it.
|
| My favorite relentless one is Tracker (Amazon Prime), who
| spend approximately 30% of screen time dedicated to
| showing off a GMC pickup and Airstream, but the most
| egregious was one dialog line:
|
| > As Colter enters and gives them hugs, Velma remembers
| that they got a gift for him. Reenie hands him the gift -
| very conspicuously packaged in an Amazon box with its
| trademark logo and blue tape - and says, "I've gotta say,
| next-day delivery is pretty sweet. Thank you, Amazon
| Prime!"
| nickthegreek wrote:
| that is not what they do on hot ones. sean is an
| intelligent interviewer and their team goes above and
| beyond to find interesting lore in people's past to
| showcase. guests are routinely impressed.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| If a person enjoys a show that is also a brand of hot
| sauce, it's not for me to say they shouldn't. It's just
| not my thing; I have too many hangups.
| noman-land wrote:
| Even though I hate advertising I think Hot Ones is one of
| the few efforts to do a good job with this.
|
| 1. Interviewing a guest while they are eating insanely
| spicy food is an extremely novel idea and the guest's
| reactions and answers end up being really interesting and
| unexpected as a result. It humanizes famous people in a
| way I've never seen before because you can't just bluff
| your way through it.
|
| 2. The hot sauce vendors are often small companies or
| indie makers (at least they used to be). This is way
| different than reviewing 11 bags of Superman Transformers
| 3D Doritos Walmart Product Placement for the next
| blockbuster.
|
| 3. Hot sauce is interesting! Nearly every culture on
| every continent has hot sauce. They are made from a huge
| variety of interesting and unusual ingredients but are
| also simple and can be made at home. Hot sauce hasn't
| been explored in this way in popular culture.
| xnx wrote:
| I use content aware ad blocking to remove inserted and
| native ads from podcasts. The next level adblocking will be
| rewriting content that is overly commercial.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| LLM ad blockers as content processors are next.
| noahjk wrote:
| Any info on how you do that?
| coppsilgold wrote:
| I imagine you can do it by AI-transcribing the podcast
| while preserving timestamp metadata for each symbol. Use
| LLM to identify undesirable segments (ask it to output
| json or something) and then cut them out from the audio
| with ffmpeg.
|
| Then you would need to set up a server that would do all
| this and serve as a 'mirror' to your podcasts without the
| ads.
| noahjk wrote:
| I actually found a project which does almost exactly what
| you've described:
|
| https://github.com/jdrbc/podly_pure_podcasts
| xnx wrote:
| You almost exactly described my process: podcast-dl >
| whisper > Gemini > ffmpeg > ftp > cheap web host
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| If you've gone through that much effort, you might as
| well turn it into a subscription service. It would be
| resource intensive, but some people would gladly pay
| through their nose to rid their podcasts of ads.
| xnx wrote:
| I'd definitely like to make it easier to use and spread
| it more widely, but I can't directly distribute the
| edited (copyrighted) podcast files. Might share
| transcript markers of the text right before and after ad
| segments, which is like a slightly more complicated
| version of what SponsorBlock does.
| walthamstow wrote:
| What's your prompt for Gemini like, does it include
| examples of ads? Assume you're using Flash for cost?
|
| I also have a setup like this, I transcribe with Whisper
| and send it to OpenAI 4o-mini to detect ads then clip
| those segments with pydub, but my prompt must be lacking
| because the success rate on detecting ads is maybe 60%
| xnx wrote:
| My Gemini Flash 2.0 prompt: "Below is the transcript of a
| podcast preceded by a line number. Reply with the line
| numbers that are likely to be from advertisements,
| promotions, commercials, sponsorships, or ending
| credits."
|
| I think it's better than 60%, but I should definitely set
| up some evals.
|
| I split the text by sentence, but was considering having
| the LLM try and put into paragraph (that might
| conceptually chunk commercial sentences together), but
| what I've got has been good enough for me.
|
| I wanted to switch to Flash 2.5, but it looks like they
| increased the price a lot.
|
| I think I could do a fair bit of ad identification just
| with text heuristics: "This podcast is
| sponsored/supported by...", etc.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| got any links to set this up?
| xnx wrote:
| Not yet. It's an extremely crude collection of scripts
| and code, but I should still put it out there soon.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| It's already a race to the bottom, blocking tech improves
| and so does marketing. The latter will pump out as much as
| you're scientifically proven to accept before switching
| off.
| bitpush wrote:
| I'm sorry to burst your bubble but ad blockers are on
| borrowed time.
|
| This is like saying I was able to sneak into a concert. Sure,
| but at some point the restrictions are gonna come down hard.
| grugagag wrote:
| There will always be a cat and mouse chase, regardless of
| technology advancements.
| noman-land wrote:
| All I ask is that I can pay the creator directly for
| content without any middle-man. Anything less will be
| routed around.
|
| It's not like sneaking into a concert. It's like attending
| a free concert at a mall and wearing a mask so the cameras
| can't read your lips. Or covering your phone screen with
| your hand when you show a friend a private photo of a
| special moment.
| bitpush wrote:
| > It's like attending a free concert at a mall
|
| Who pays for the electricity, upkeep, security and
| airconditioning of the mall? Who pays for the sound
| stage, the technicians, the lighting of the mall?
|
| The band decided to perform at the mall, because they
| like the facilities there. They always had a choice to
| perform at their house ("own website"), but they chose
| the mall ("YouTube") and as long as YouTube is hosting
| their videos, YouTube deserves to be compensated.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That is between the band and the mall. The public didn't
| sign up for anything.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's not analogous to sneaking into a concert. YouTube is
| open and public, always has been. It would not be YouTube
| if it wasn't.
| johan914 wrote:
| Nobody can stop you from putting a black screen over the
| ad, or a scenic nature video.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| They don't want to boil the frog too quickly. Eventually,
| Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream. As the post
| mentions: To be clear this isn't server-side ad
| insertion; the ad and content streams are still separate
| (YouTube is doing a server-side ad insertion experiment, but
| that's separate from fake buffering)
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yep. It's been pretty funny actually both here but especially
| on r/youtube.
|
| Pretty much since YouTube started cracking down on
| adblockers, r/youtube top post Every. Single. Day. is usually
| someone complaining that they just got hit with "adblock
| detected" and comments split between "Yeah it sucks, hit me
| last month" and "Huh, uBlock Origin works fine for me. I must
| be super smart. YouTube can't defeat me"
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Eventually, Youtube will embed ads directly into the stream
|
| We've all seen what they're doing with AI-generated video,
| and we know their market and political power. Eventually
| they'll be remaking the video so the person or animal or rock
| or tree on the screen is giving AI-generated product
| testimonials.
| peer2pay wrote:
| It has to be a cost thing. HLS is so insanely optimised down to
| the hardware level that adding any kind of compute for
| targeting would increase costs exponentially.
|
| I'm not too deep into it anymore but there's some great
| articles from Netflix out there talking about the crazy
| optimisations done to their edge servers for streaming.
| esperent wrote:
| It would break all the time stamps as well, unless you had
| fixed length ads. Sponsorblock already skips ads embedded in
| videos, so I don't think this would make ads much harder to
| block.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| True, it would be sorta impossible to make timestamps work
| without sending the length of the ad section, so you could
| easily skip it programmatically.
| cyberax wrote:
| > HLS is so insanely optimised down to the hardware level
| that adding any kind of compute for targeting would increase
| costs exponentially.
|
| Not really. They'll just need to recode for you that one
| minute with the ad. The rest of the video can stay the same.
|
| If they're doing it smartly, they can even avoid full
| recompression and just splice in the ad.
| oneseventwonine wrote:
| Agree, it has to do with cost, considering the sheer number
| of videos they have. Plus, oftentimes the ad won't be
| relevant after a week or two, in which case they can't re-
| encode again.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If they had balls they'd force the user to be logged in.
| Retr0id wrote:
| One could splice ads _out_ of the video on the client just as
| easily as they splice them in, assuming you can detect them
| (which could be done via crowdsourced databases a la
| sponsorblock).
| cyberax wrote:
| They can splice the video just for you at a random location.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Sure, and I can use "technology" to identify those splices,
| and fix them in various ways that work for me because I
| control the client (unlike Chrome users) and that gives me
| the power to make the web behave how I want it to, if I'm
| willing to put in the effort (or someone else does it for
| me.)
| smitop wrote:
| YouTube is currently running an A/B test for server-side
| insertion according to what some other people have posted. I'm
| not getting SSAI ads so I can't really know much about them
| though.
| rasz wrote:
| They are working on it. Web YT player no longer fetches
| separate video and audio streams from the server, it requests
| them pre bundled and receives a single server side muxed
| stream.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I think it's only a matter of time before it's reality.
|
| They own the hosting website, if they want to show their user
| ads, they will find a way, even if it takes a few year.
| layer8 wrote:
| Injecting the ads directly would make them skippable.
| Unskippable ads are inherently detectable (because the
| unskippability has to be communicated to the client-side player
| controls), so there's no easy way out.
| bspammer wrote:
| Twitch seems to have won the war against adblockers by
| injecting directly into the video stream. It's been months
| now and I still see ads. I assume it isn't as easy as you say
| to skip them otherwise uBlock would have done it already.
| chippiewill wrote:
| For livestreaming it's easier because you can't skip
| forward anyway
| Strom wrote:
| The core difference is that when Twitch plays an ad,
| they'll never send you that part of the video. [1] So
| buffering doesn't help. If YouTube would do this, you could
| have a custom player that preloads enough of the video so
| that all ads could be automatically skipped and as a viewer
| you wouldn't notice their existence. However, on Twitch,
| even if you're willing to give up the live factor and would
| buffer, you still would have missing parts of the video
| where an ad was placed. So you would lose content. [2]
|
| --
|
| [1] They do send a super low resolution stream with no
| audio, but not the actual quality you are watching in.
|
| [2] Right now Twitch does not stop sending content in
| markets where they don't have ad inventory. So there are
| actually browser extensions already that will use a custom
| foreign market server to proxy the video during ad breaks,
| so that you can still have an 100% effective ad blocker.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The server can just ignore the player and send the bytes for
| the ad until its finished.
| layer8 wrote:
| The server can't completely ignore the player, as it would
| have to adjust the embedded timestamps to be consistent
| with the skip operations, or otherwise the player won't
| show the video. In other words, the server would have to
| act as if the ad is embedded wherever you skip to in the
| video. Not only would it mean that users lose their
| position in the video when they try to skip, since after
| the ad it would continue in a different place, but it would
| also mean that timestamps don't uniquely identify positions
| in the non-ad parts of the video anymore, which is a
| nonstarter in many ways.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| JS on the client (which is already required) can be
| instructed by the server to manipulate the timeline. You
| could zero it out completely (or stop it from moving at
| all) while an ad is playing and then return it to the
| right spot after, this is not rocket science.
| layer8 wrote:
| For JS on the client side to be able to behave in the way
| you describe, it has to be informed by the server about
| the unskippable parts. Thus browser extensions are
| informed as well, and can take action correspondingly. In
| the worst case, they'll behave as YouTube's new hold
| screen does now.
|
| Anything that JS on the client can do is also under
| control of browser extensions. We are talking about
| YouTube's options under that constraint.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I don't think there's any reason the JS would have to
| know ahead of time, and the server still controls what
| video fragments are served when, so I don't think JS can
| be reliably used to skip ads that are embedded in the
| video stream, especially if the download speed is limited
| to somewhere close to the playback speed.
| layer8 wrote:
| When the player performs a skip, it waits for stream
| packages whose timestamps match the new position after
| the skip. It's the client who requests a different
| segment of the video, and waits until it receives the
| respective segment, as identified by the embedded
| timestamps. Skipping isn't a purely server-side operation
| in that sense, the client side has to cooperate. The
| server has no control over which timestamps the client
| wants to play.
|
| The only other alternative is to make the video a live
| stream of indefinite length where the user can't skip
| forward beyond the farthest point they already played.
| 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.
| Velorivox wrote:
| That is the user's choice. If a user comes to a bookshop
| wherein they are allowed to read the books for free but
| only in the store, they have little right to argue that
| they should be allowed to take the books home like paying
| customers because the store's lighting is not to their
| liking and they want to read in 6000K. They are free to
| picket outside and claim that the store is ruining
| people's eyesight, but no one sane will take them
| seriously.
|
| Furthermore, the appropriate solution to this "problem"
| would be to stop letting people read anything for free.
| simion314 wrote:
| So if Samsung makes a TV that will use 10x more energy if
| you decide not to buy the Premium Subscription you will
| comment that is actually a Good thing, free markets and
| so on, fuck that environment and fuck the "Don't be evil
| promise" .
|
| Today Big Tech moto should be "Be as evil as you are able
| if it makes money".
|
| Hopefully some civilized countries can add laws about
| wasting energy and killing devices for no good reason.
|
| EDIT: The Google/Samsung exampel is affecting the entire
| planet not only the individual that "choose" that he
| really wants his device to be screwed and his energy bill
| to increase. So the individual "freedom" is screwing the
| entire planet for no fucking good reason , at least if
| you waste the battery to show ads I can understand it.
| 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 )
| k12sosse wrote:
| For babies crying I just come to the YT premium threads on
| HN.
| 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.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| there are an absurd amount of different takes on it, its
| pretty crazy. I probably focus too much on the bad
| content, meant to grab attention. For that reason i have
| a distaste for youtube because it sorta pushes that type
| of stuff to the top, which in my mind makes more people
| make similar cash grab type content.
|
| meanwhile youtube is actively attempting to keep user's
| viewing as long as possible... netflix probably doesnt
| really care if you watch for 2 hours a week vs 10 hours a
| day, they just want the monthly payment.
| 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?
| icehawk wrote:
| People make the videos, and then sometimes youtube pays
| them for it.
| pyth0 wrote:
| People make videos because there is a platform which
| makes it incredibly easy to share that video all across
| the planet without cost to them. And in turn that
| platform has an enormous base of viewers for that
| content. To suggest that a world without YouTube (or a
| similar service) would look the same is ludicrous.
| icehawk wrote:
| > To suggest that a world without YouTube (or a similar
| service) would look the same is ludicrous.
|
| It could be ludicrous, if that argument were being made.
| 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.
| ge96 wrote:
| I might be convinced here, I was under the impression that
| even after you bought premium you would still see 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Whole bean is the same price
| 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.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Yeah I've been getting the initial delay with the popup "find
| out why playback is slow." No thanks, I already know, and it's
| not so bad.
| Moru wrote:
| It certainly has to be better than getting an ad that fills
| no need of mine. I can't say I noticed any slow loading times
| on youtube though that might be because the last clip I
| watched was probably a month ago. Only search for diy fixes
| on problems I have, rest online attention goes to fediverse
| nowadays.
| Toritori12 wrote:
| Out of curiosity I clicked the link and it is funny how they
| try to blame the extension when is them actually causing the
| problem.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The extension is stealing from them. I get stealing a zero
| marginal cost good is minor but the agreement you make with
| YouTube is that you watch an ad in exchange for the video.
| Why should they serve you the video if you refuse your part
| of the agreement?
| squigz wrote:
| > Why should they serve you the video if you refuse your
| part of the agreement?
|
| I've held the position that, if YT wants to, they can
| block me from their platform for using an adblocker, and
| I would have no moral ground to stand on.
|
| However, that isn't what they do. They try to circumvent
| it. They try to make it technically impossible. They try
| to mislead users into thinking their extensions are
| malicious.
| sodality2 wrote:
| > the agreement you make with YouTube is that you watch
| an ad in exchange for the video
|
| I never made that agreement. And if some software on my
| computer somehow gets YouTube to deliver me the content
| anyway, that's not my fault. In my view, it's a cat and
| mouse game, they can do whatever they want to try to stop
| me, and vice versa. If they win, I won't complain; but if
| I do, so be it.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > I never made that agreement
|
| By clicking on the video you did. It is in their terms of
| service.
|
| How is you purposefully trying to block ads not your
| fault? Whose fault is it that you installed an Adblock?
| If you went to a grocery store and told the clerk you
| already paid and they let you leave would that not be
| your fault either?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Terms of service aren't legally binding. Theft is of
| course illegal.
| asadotzler wrote:
| No, you didn't make that agreement.
|
| TOS is a NOTICE, not a contract.
|
| There's zero agreement happening when you visit a
| website.
|
| Assuming you didn't do something actually illegal while
| using their service, without a contract the most they can
| do is ban you from the service, or try to.
| mcphage wrote:
| How are you making an agreement? You can't say "I'll
| watch this video in exchange for X minutes of ads"
| because YouTube will never tell you how many minutes
| they're going to show you, and because they have zero
| interest in committing to some number of minutes of ads.
| It's constantly getting worse, and this process will
| continue until it kills the service.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The agreement is you watch the ads YouTube serves you.
| Why would that agreement have to include the amount of
| ads served? If you are unhappy with their business model
| you can always pay for premium or stop using it. Or you
| can steal from them, that's what I do. I'm just not
| afraid to admit it.
| mcphage wrote:
| That's not an agreement, that's just YouTube doing
| whatever they want. Which they can--but then--I can just
| do whatever I want, too. You don't need to imagine some
| sort of covenant being involved.
|
| > Or you can steal from them, that's what I do. I'm just
| not afraid to admit it.
|
| I don't even do that, I just watch it as-is. I just don't
| need to imagine that YouTube and I have agreed to
| anything.
| asadotzler wrote:
| There is no agreement. TOS is a _notice_ not a contract.
| It 's not stealing because it's public content, publicly
| accessible to anyone with the technology to do so.
|
| If Google wants to make YouTube a service with actually
| binding contracts and not TOS notices no one reads or
| respects, it can put the whole thing behind a login and
| end un-authed public web traffic. They're free to do that
| but they won't because they know that would kill the site
| dead, and quickly so.
| rwmj wrote:
| I think you need to read about contract law before
| continuing to double down. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Contract#Common_law_contracts is as good a place as any
| to start). A notice you put up on a website does not form
| a contract.
| nradov wrote:
| It won't kill the service. The media executives who run
| YouTube are well aware of how advertising volume affects
| viewership so they'll titrate up or down as needed to
| maximize profit.
|
| But don't worry, something else will eventually kill
| YouTube. Most likely they'll miss some sort of disruptive
| innovation. Like maybe in 30 years everyone will have
| content beamed directly into their neutral implants and
| only a few old people will still watch online videos.
| mcphage wrote:
| The time line for these sorts of things seems to be:
| they'll slowly make YouTube worse and worse, but just not
| bad enough to kill it. And then something else will come
| along, and people will be so dissatisfied with the
| quality of YouTube that people dump it en masse.
| Toritori12 wrote:
| I've never said they should, they are free to implement
| any anti-ad-block for all I care. I just pointed out
| their lack of honesty about the source of the problem,
| they should say they are actively blocking the extension
| rather than the extension is malfunctioning.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I'm happy to make the agreement I need to so I can access
| the thing I like, then turn around and violate those
| terms when it benefits me. Why should I feel a sense of
| personal obligation towards google?
| asadotzler wrote:
| You're not even making an agreement. You're reading a
| notice, if that. In most cases it's entirely moot legally
| and only really useful as a policy tool for the provider
| to hang its "we're blocking you" authority on.
|
| Having said that, I 100% agree. If Google allows for non-
| logged in users, it's a public website and we can consume
| it however we like, until Google decides to _try_ to
| block us. That 's what it's doing now, _trying_ to block
| users from consuming the content however they like, a
| core feature of the public web. Fortunately, blocking us
| is very very hard for sites not behind a login. If they
| want not-logged in use, they either go to war with my
| tech, favored by platform, or they let it slide.
|
| Now, Google owns Chrome, so they can also go to war in
| the browser and standards bodies as well. But for now,
| the web is open and accessible and that means, wiht the
| right technology (Firefox plus uBlock Origin for me) you
| can watch all those video ad-free and there's nothing
| Google can do to stop you.
| asadotzler wrote:
| TOS is not an agreement, it's a notice, an assertion from
| the provider that mandates absolutely nothing from you.
|
| TOS is like me putting a sign up at the end of my
| driveway saying if you approach my home, you owe me $10.
| If you pull up to my house, I demand the $10, and you
| don't pay me, I cannot forcibly take $10 from you, nor
| can I call the cops or sue over the $10.
|
| You never agreed to anything and certainly not in any
| legally binding format.
|
| Notices are not contracts and TOS notices are notices.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Taking something without paying for it is theft. You can
| get into whatever legalize you want but that doesn't
| change the fact that you are doing what the vast majority
| of people recognize as the common definition of theft. Is
| it illegal? No idea frankly but it's certainly a decent
| reason for YouTube to stop serving you videos. Getting
| mad at YouTube for not serving you when you are not
| playing by their rules makes absolutely no sense to me
| and really just seems overwhelmingly entitled.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I never agreed to that. Shrinkwrap contracts don't count.
| Also, if they don't want to serve me the video without
| ads, they're welcome to do that.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > Also, if they don't want to serve me the video without
| ads, they're welcome to do that.
|
| That's what they are actually trying to do lol.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Are they really trying? They have vast resources and
| engineering talent. I doubt they are sincerely trying and
| failing to implement something that radio and broadcast
| television have managed to do for the better part of a
| century.
| rf15 wrote:
| turns out you rather stare at an empty plate than being
| served shit
| BrtByte wrote:
| It's like the difference between waiting in line vs being
| trapped in a loud sales pitch
| redml wrote:
| Funny, until now I assumed the "buffering" was just something
| shoddy with the google infrastructure. Youtube has a reputation
| for pushing buggy/undesirable changes and already has slow
| javascript widgets on it so at this point I expect it and "just
| deal with it". It didn't even occur to me they were trying to
| poison the well with regards to adblockers.
| 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
| ge96 wrote:
| Firefox mobile has ublock origin
| frollogaston wrote:
| *not on iPhone
| Aachen wrote:
| Trying to watch a walled garden inside another walled
| ecosystem. No wonder that works how _they_ want it and you
| can 't simply do what _you_ want
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yeah, it's true. iOS 9 Safari actually had the ability to
| play YouTube in the background without paying for that,
| and in iOS 10 they went out of their way to prevent it.
| And Apple signaled willingness to go along with WEI back
| when that was on the table.
| deanc wrote:
| Use Orion. It supports FF and Chrome extensions on mobile
| and desktop
| Squarex wrote:
| Ublock Origin still does not work on Orion mobile sadly.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Orion is a buggy mess. Horrible experience overall.
|
| I just use Vinegar [0] and watch YT on Safari. It also
| allows me to listen to the videos with the phone locked.
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-
| cleaner/id1591303...
| pirates wrote:
| Safari + Vinegar is my favorite way to watch youtube on
| any platform. One minor bug I sometimes notice is that
| the PiP option stops working between videos until you
| actually hit refresh.
|
| Agreed about Orion, I keep it around and update it and
| try it out every now and again but I don't think the
| experience is there yet.
| frollogaston wrote:
| It's too bad, the stock Safari in iOS 9 did both those
| things. Nowadays the rare times I want to watch YT on
| Safari, I just refresh the page once or maybe twice,
| which somehow makes it not show an ad.
| ZeroClickOk wrote:
| "We are working hard to make your life miserable"
| 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
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > An unfortunate aspect is that I'm frequently recommended
| videos which I would have to pay to watch.
|
| That's older than the "membership" concept. They licensed a
| bunch of television and movies and made them pay-per-view.
| 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.
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| Commenting to share my experience: I ran into and ended up
| with youtube because it bundles youtube music as well,
| allowing me to consolidate. I was able to invite my
| household to the same account.
|
| I also wanted to ensure my views resulted in the creators
| being paid, it goes without saying that the royalties for
| streaming are abysmal and is a separate conversation, but
| it was a contributing factor for me.
| torgoguys wrote:
| In the USA I subscribe to Youtube Premium family. The rate
| is just $3.00 a month more than Spotify family. For that
| price you get both the Spotify-equivalent Google-owned
| service (confusingly called YouTube Music) AND you get ad-
| free Youtube as a bundle. Basically just $3/month for no
| ads on Youtube is worth it and much easier to justify for a
| household on a tight budget.
|
| It might be worth looking into if the pricing differential
| is similarly minimal where you live.
| 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, which could be considered similar to
| production costs making up a majority of expenses.
| mirashii wrote:
| Just for comparison, Netflix in 2024 spent somewhere
| between $14B and $17B on content, and made $34B in
| revenue.
| smoe wrote:
| I switched from Spotify to Youtube Music a couple of years
| ago because of Spotify showing disruptive ads/promotions on
| the premium plan. YT Premium for Music + Videos is worth it
| for me, being about 2.5USD more expensive per month than
| Spotify where I live. But I agree that one should just be
| able to subscribe to them separately.
| vunderba wrote:
| You're not wrong, but the amount of content on YouTube
| (that they need to index, store, and stream) is _several
| orders of magnitude_ more than what 's on Netflix.
|
| And for that matter, the number of active viewers is also
| significantly higher since there's no paywall. _AND_ they
| also support live streaming.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| But Netflix doesn't let you upload your own videos and show
| them to anyone on earth. The businesses are different.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| $14 is the average cost for a McDonald's trip. It's really
| not that much.
| dieortin wrote:
| Assuming your numbers are correct, you're ignoring all the
| rest of the infra
| pie_flavor wrote:
| Premium is a good deal _if_ you would have already had Music,
| and Music is pretty great while also being a good deal. They
| also have a cheaper 'Premium Lite' these days, though
| apparently some content still has ads if you use it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >some content still has ads if you use it
|
| It's for content that use music. As you said of you want ad
| free music you need the full one.
| grandiego wrote:
| At least on TV I occasionally catch randomly interesting ads...
| sometimes. On YT, I'm stuck with the same obnoxious commercial
| from a company whose service I strongly dislike, playing on
| loop ever since they associated me to some related product
| category. They think pestering me with more interruptions will
| win me over, but their analytics are working in reverse. I
| can't understand why they're so clueless.
| sidrag22 wrote:
| its creating a problem and selling the solution to that
| problem. im surprised there isnt more of a distaste for youtube
| out there for just their overall product... ads aside. One of
| the better things ive done for myself this past year is remove
| the right sidebar as well as almost all of the homepage.
|
| my youtube homepage is just that left sidebar, which has dots
| if a new video for one of the channels i care about uploads. It
| totally frees me from clickbait thumbnails, and "youtube rabbit
| holes".
|
| youtube has just been getting slaughtered with horrible trends
| of mindless content, low effort documentary stuff, all sorts of
| low effort garbage with high effort thumbnails/titles. it is so
| nice to just rid myself of all of it.
| frollogaston wrote:
| They created the product before creating the problem
| sidrag22 wrote:
| market capture and figure out monetization later :)
|
| like a forest preserve deciding theyd like billboards in
| the middle of their paths after a few years.
| paulcole wrote:
| Adding something that users don't like but that makes the
| company money to those who are unwilling/unable to pay for it
| seems very reasonable.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| Is it actually expensive though? Or does it just feel that way?
| A movie costs $15, or roughly 13 cents per minute of watch
| time.
|
| The average daily YouTube watch time is north of 40 minutes per
| day for adults in the US. That's a penny per minute for
| YouTube... 11x cheaper than a movie.
| callc wrote:
| It's a psychological problem. Going from $0 to $1 is a
| mountain.
|
| Starting a product or service at $30 / month sets
| expectations up front (no ad supported free tier)
|
| This is an incompatible strategy with venture backed "get all
| the market share possible by offering services for free to
| crush competitors so we can have a monopoly to exploit later"
| mindset
| 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.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| yeah I think the free market can figure ad load out. creators
| who go overboard on sponsored segments will get less views,
| less engagement. there's a natural equilibrium.
| oblio wrote:
| In many countries ad sections have to be clearly marked for
| another reason the "free market" hasn't solved: disguised
| advertising. I wish the US got with the times.
| spudlyo wrote:
| I'd love an option to be able to filter out all videos from
| my feed that have sponsored segments. For me, I find the best
| content is the underground stuff made by folks who don't have
| a clear profit motive.
| hollerith wrote:
| Yes, this is the change that would most improve YT for me.
| bspammer wrote:
| This is a feature that could probably be added to
| sponsorblock. They have the data already.
| fsmv wrote:
| They actually do have this but it's only on the mobile app.
| Most videos if you tap to skip forward an auto skip button
| shows up.
| xmgplays wrote:
| I have recently started seeing this on the website, too. It
| also shows up after you use the temp 2x speed mode by holding
| left mouse button on the video/tap-holding the video on the
| app.
| 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.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Admittedly don't watch LTT because basically the content is
| the advertisement. Maybe it's changed.
| pests wrote:
| It's crazy to ram as they did a revenue breakdown recently
| and the sponser segments was way tinier than I expected -
| like 10% or in that range. I was annoyed just knowing they
| shit on their videos just for that tiny profit boost.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Oh just get the screwdriver already, will you?! :)
|
| LTT does have some interesting videos, but yeah, most of
| their output is full of ads.
| bird0861 wrote:
| Please don't associate actual journalists GamersNexus with
| those hucksters.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Floatplane is doing well according to the WAN show.
| 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.
| vunderba wrote:
| Agreed. I've told YT about a thousand times I have zero
| friggin interest in YouTube Shorts and lo and behold a few
| weeks later they guiltily try to sneak back into the home
| page.
| Aachen wrote:
| > I pay for YouTube premium (which gives me YouTube music too)
|
| I'm curious about a buyer's perspective: would you say this is
| "tying"? (Seems like an ambiguous word for it but I can see no
| other translation for koppelverkoop)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
|
| To me it seems like trying to undermine the market for music
| streaming (which is currently somewhat healthy with a handful
| of competing services worldwide where you can get access to
| most artists' work) by abusing the monopoly on videos that
| people often want a subscription on. The parent corp has so
| much cash to spare, giving away music for nearly free is worth
| it to make it extremely difficult to compete in this other
| market. From an individual's point of view, you're a thief of
| your own wallet if you don't get this two in one deal (assuming
| you want both). I'm not sure how to feel about people who buy
| this
| 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.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Absurd but true in a similar way: I get a tiny spark of
| nostalgia on those occasions where a bit of sponsored promotion
| pops into part of some podcast i'm listening to as a YT video
| while I do chores. (Ublock running, so no third party ads at
| least)
|
| The thing about those idiotic third party ads on YouTube, which
| is so grotesquely annoying is that, unlike TV ads of old, some
| of then can literally run for dozens of minutes at auto-
| increased volume unless you go to your device and skip them at
| some point. That is some particularly shitty nonsense right
| there.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| It's worse, because at least cable commercials can be skipped.
| spuz wrote:
| Cable commercials can be skipped?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Since DVRs, which we've had since 1999.
| icehawk wrote:
| When was that? I'm genuinely asking, since I remember the
| breakdown from when I was recording TV to my computer and
| editing out the commercials, as 10 minutes of commercials and
| 20 minutes of TV show.
| tzs wrote:
| Are you mostly watching short videos? I mostly watch videos
| that are 10+ minutes and I've never had YouTube come anywhere
| near either the number or total length of ads that I saw on
| cable or that I see on broadcast TV.
| UltraSane wrote:
| I have every right to try to block YouTube ads and YouTube has
| every right to try to defeat whatever I do.
| k12sosse wrote:
| And they too, to try to stop people using their platform from
| doing so.
| squigz wrote:
| No they do not have that right. They do not have the right to
| try to circumvent what I'm telling my browser to do. If they
| don't like what it's doing, they can block me from the
| platform.
| UltraSane wrote:
| At the most fundamental they have the right to send or not
| send video data to you.
| rasz wrote:
| Problem is Google also controls what used to be called "user
| agent".
| UltraSane wrote:
| I use Firefox and uBlock Origin
| dbbk wrote:
| They could very easily just ban ad blockers from the Chrome
| extension store, but they haven't
| UltraSane wrote:
| Serious people use Firefox and uBlock Origin.
| redml wrote:
| im sure that's for antitrust reasons.
| thangalin wrote:
| Mostly stolen from elsewhere: ! Stop sites from
| prompting to sign into Google account
| ||accounts.google.com/gsi/*$xhr,script,3p ! Stop
| annoying reels from littering friend feeds
| www.facebook.com##[aria-label="reel"]:upward(2)
| youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element youtube.com##.ytp-ce-
| element-show youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPo
| pupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)
| youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
| youtube.com##+js(set,
| ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
| youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd,
| true) ! Don't use the obnoxious new bold font for
| titles, use the old font instead www.youtube.com###title
| h1 yt-formatted-string:style(font-family: Arial, sans-serif
| !important; font-weight: 400 !important;)
| www.youtube.com##h3.ytd-playlist-panel-renderer .title .yt-
| formatted-string:style(font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important;
| font-weight: 400 !important;) ! Remove branding bugs
| in the bottom corner www.youtube.com##div.iv-branding
| www.youtube.com##.annotation.annotation-type-custom.iv-branding
| ! Disable live video previews on hover
| www.youtube.com##+js(aeld,
| /^(?:mousemove|pointermove|pointerenter)$/, buttons)
| ! Remove "Scroll for details" www.youtube.com##.ytp-
| button.ytp-fullerscreen-edu-button ! Remove "This
| video contains paid content" warning
| www.youtube.com##.ytp-paid-content-overlay ! Remove
| badges www.youtube.com##.ytd-compact-video-
| renderer.style-scope.badges www.youtube.com##ytd-badge-
| supported-renderer.ytd-video-primary-info-renderer !
| Remove badges in lists, expand video title to fill that space
| again www.youtube.com##.ytd-badge-supported-
| renderer.style-scope.badge-style-type-verified.badge
| www.youtube.com###menu > .ytd-compact-video-renderer.style-scope
| www.youtube.com##.ytd-compact-video-renderer.style-
| scope.metadata:style(padding-right:0!important) !
| Remove chat www.youtube.com###chat ! Remove
| sidebar www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-renderer.ytd-
| app.style-scope www.youtube.com##ytd-app[mini-guide-
| visible] ytd-page-manager.ytd-app:style(margin-
| left:0px!important) ! Remove the shadow over the top
| of videos www.youtube.com##div.ytp-gradient-top
| www.youtube.com##.ytp-chrome-top ! Reduce opacity of
| the shadow over the bottom of videos
| www.youtube.com##div.ytp-gradient-bottom:style(opacity: 55%
| !important) ! Reduce opacity of video length labels
| www.youtube.com##ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer.ytd-
| thumbnail.style-scope:style(opacity:75% !important)
| ! Remove Next button. I only ever hit this accidentally, losing
| my place ! and my playback buffer >:-[
| www.youtube.com##.ytp-left-controls > .ytp-button.ytp-next-button
| ! Remove Miniplayer button www.youtube.com##.ytp-
| button.ytp-miniplayer-button ! Force YouTube to
| display the complete copyright information in the description
| www.youtube.com###expanded-metadata:style(display:block
| !important) ! Don't load the preview image before
| the video loads (saves some bandwidth)
| ||i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/*/maxresdefault.webp
| ||i.ytimg.com/vi/*/maxresdefault.jpg ! Remove
| interactions (eg if you never login to YouTube)
| www.youtube.com###like-button www.youtube.com###dislike-
| button www.youtube.com###sponsor-button
| www.youtube.com###hover-overlays
| www.youtube.com###subscribe-button
| www.youtube.com###flexible-item-buttons
| www.youtube.com###button-shape www.youtube.com###reply-
| button-end ! Remove sidebar items that are only
| applicable to logged-in users www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-
| section-renderer.ytd-guide-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1)
| www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-section-renderer.ytd-guide-
| renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2) ! Remove "Watch
| Later" and "Add to Queue" www.youtube.com###hover-
| overlays ! Remove the "skeleton" shown before the
| page loads www.youtube.com##.skeleton
| www.youtube.com###info-skeleton www.youtube.com###meta-
| skeleton www.youtube.com###owner-name
| www.youtube.com##.skeleton-bg-color
| www.youtube.com###home-page-skeleton
| www.youtube.com###masthead-skeleton-icons
| ||www.youtube.com/s/desktop/*/cssbin/www-main-desktop-watch-page-
| skeleton.css ||www.youtube.com/s/desktop/*/cssbin/www-
| main-desktop-player-skeleton.css ! Remove the live
| previews on the scrubber bar (saves some bandwidth, but !
| not worth it IMO) ||i.ytimg.com/sb/*
| www.youtube.com##div.ytp-tooltip-bg
| www.youtube.com##div.ytp-tooltip-image
| www.youtube.com##div.ytp-tooltip:style(border-
| radius:0px;!important)*
| Madmallard wrote:
| Is this something to put in host file? What is this
| tcfhgj wrote:
| perhaps filter rules for uBlock Origin
| vlod wrote:
| ublock-origin, open dashboard > "my filters" list
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| These are filters for uBlock Origin.
| ronsor wrote:
| uBlock filters
| tzs wrote:
| > ! Remove "This video contains paid content" warning
|
| Why?
| thangalin wrote:
| > Why?
|
| I didn't write the filter, hence, "Mostly stolen from
| elsewhere."
| gs17 wrote:
| Not sure if it's the same one, but I managed to consistently
| click the "includes paid promotion" banner on video
| thumbnails so I open a tab with the help page explaining what
| sponsorships are instead of the video.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| If YouTube's ads were like the TV ads of olden days, they might
| even be marginally tolerable. They're not however.
|
| In my experience, they not only deliberately increase volume to
| pretty much screech whatever insipid bullshit is being offered at
| you, but they also can sometimes run for dozens of minutes unless
| you manually go to your device and press "skip". TV ads never did
| these sorts of utterly shitty, tedious things.
|
| I even wonder how anything so fucking hostile and annoying to a
| YT free user can possibly be effective? Who's actively paying for
| all this garbage ad placement with such scummy little playback
| mechanics?
| Belopolye wrote:
| > TV ads never did these sorts of utterly shitty, tedious
| things.
|
| Until the CALM Act was passed in 2010, networks actually did
| increase the volume on advertisements.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudn...
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Didn't know about that, but unsurprising. At least they
| couldn't extend their length almost indefinitely too, unless
| you manually skipped.
| Belopolye wrote:
| It was around that time that I stopped watching cable
| television altogether.
|
| If you want to back down memory lane, search on YouTube for
| old recordings of network TV ad breaks from the late 90s
| and early 2000s- they're just obnoxious.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yeah, I was reading this and thinking wut, TV sucks. Like
| half the time watching a show (most likely a rerun) is
| ads, even if it's a paid cable channel. And even after
| that 2010 law, pretty sure the ads are louder than the
| shows. And the ads are even worse nowadays because the
| ads exclusively target old people, so 90% are drugs or
| gold-buying scams. Somehow the cable STBs are super laggy
| nowadays too, like they rewrote the video decoder in
| Javascript or something, cause it used to be fine.
|
| The only thing I miss at all is being able to leave a TV
| on and have it keep playing something reasonable, not
| convince itself that watching a car review means I want
| to watch a screaming kid trolling in Minecraft followed
| by the Syrian Civil War.
| pests wrote:
| Live TV apps like Pluto scratch that last itch for me.
| Can put it on a movie channel or stargate reruns and just
| leave it alone.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >exclusively target old people, so 90% are drugs or gold-
| buying scams.
|
| Haha, so then what if i'm young but want some shady gold
| investments while I look into trying Ambien?
| frollogaston wrote:
| Oh the gold buying ads come by mail, you only _sell_ your
| gold on TV. I heard they pay even higher than market rate
| if you order some orbexlitol with it.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Some did, some of the time. And many of us stopped watching
| those stations when it really kicked in back in the early
| 90s.
| ge96 wrote:
| If adblock stopped working I would leave, which is interesting to
| me as I wonder what I'd do with my new time.
|
| Funny I make YT videos too trying to build an audience, I'd like
| to not put ads on it but not my choice
|
| I don't understand how people can just accept ads it drives me
| insane when some random shit starts playing
|
| I already lost money with YT, I bought so many UHD movies on
| their platform ($20 ea) and they won't stream it in HD unless
| you're on a supported device or ad-ridden tv
|
| edit: alright, aftrer seeing it's $13 I will get it, I have been
| converted
| arccy wrote:
| "I want free hosting and an audience but I don't want to pay
| for it"
| ge96 wrote:
| Yeah I get if that's why I said it
|
| I do pay for it, the time to make the content
|
| Sucks how everything is like that nowadays, IG, Reddit
|
| (have to join a platform to be seen)
| PurestGuava wrote:
| You pay to make the content. You would have to "pay" to
| make the content no matter where you hosted it. You don't
| pay YouTube to host it. That's a silly argument.
|
| You seem to ignore that you would probably _have_ no
| audience - or have a significantly smaller audience - were
| it not for YouTube hosting your content. They are providing
| you a service, but you seem to think that nobody - not you,
| not your viewers - should have to trade anything for that
| service, despite the hosting and streaming of video being
| one of the most expensive possible tech services in the
| world (bar perhaps running genAI models.)
|
| I dunno it's just very annoying how a lot of people have
| memed themselves into this train of thought where the big
| tech companies aren't actually providing them anything of
| value, when if they decided to suddenly _stop_ providing
| their services they would be up a creek without a paddle.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Well, no one pushes YouTube to give free services right? Come
| on, make us pay for it! See what happens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _make us pay for it! See what happens_
|
| I pay for YouTube and Nebula.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That's your choice and I respect that.
| stavros wrote:
| They are, aren't they?
| Kranar wrote:
| You can pay for Youtube and you won't get ads.
| ge96 wrote:
| I thought you still got ads guess I'll find out
|
| I'll compromise, I'll get premium but still have my
| adblock
| PurestGuava wrote:
| There are no ads on Premium.
|
| Source: I have Premium and have adblock disabled on
| YouTube - no ads.
| arccy wrote:
| you don't get ads from Youtube. the people you watch may
| still say sponsored stuff.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| YouTube Premium has existed for years now... You're
| absolutely able to pay for an ad-free experience, and it
| provides more financial support to creators than ads do
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That is a good point. But I usually pay through Patreon.
| I wonder which one is better, and if I can attribute YT
| premium to a specific author?
| PurestGuava wrote:
| YT Premium revenue goes to the same creators you watch
| otherwise but they get compensated more for your views
| than they do for any other person's views.
|
| e.g. Linus Tech Tips posted up their share of revenue
| from AdSense in 2024; YT Premium made up 37% of their
| revenue despite being 29% of their views.
|
| Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeCP-0nuziE
|
| Whether that makes a given creator _more_ money versus
| Patreon depends on how much you watch them, frankly.
| arccy wrote:
| That's different though. Paying through Patreon is
| directly giving the creators a larger share, but neither
| party (you or the creator) pays for video hosting service
| in this transaction.
|
| Your argument only makes sense if you watch the creator's
| videos exclusively on Patreon (paid by the cut they take
| from your transaction) or on a platform like Vimeo (paid
| directly by the creator for hosting). In which case, what
| Youtube does isn't relevant to you.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| The existence of premium is not the same as parent
| poster's, "make us pay for it" idea, aka a paywall.
|
| If YouTube and its content actually has value, then
| presumably a paywall would have no effect of revenues of
| YouTube or creators. On the other hand if the content is
| actually nearly worthless, the vast majority of people
| would find something better to do with their time.
|
| I know which outcome I'd be betting on!
| asadotzler wrote:
| the OP said "make us pay" not "give us the option to pay"
|
| Until they make us pay, put the entire site behind a
| paywall or similar, I'll keep enjoying their public web
| content using my clients of choice, some of which modify
| the content in various ways for various reasons, entirely
| of my choosing.
| bird0861 wrote:
| Youtube will not win this battle.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Before YouTube loses, blocking ads will be criminalized.
|
| Capitalism always wins
| squigz wrote:
| Criminalized where?
|
| Not everyone is American.
| Aachen wrote:
| Ransomware doesn't have to be illegal in North Korea to
| convict a North Korean who did it, either in absence or
| with extradition, in the country where the damage was done
|
| With Alphabet being from a country with extreme capitalism,
| the comment you're replying to seems applicable no matter
| where the viewers are (regardless of whether I agree with
| their viewpoint/outlook). YouTube's owners can choose to
| block or prosecute whoever doesn't comply with their terms.
| Not saying that's likely, just that: this isn't a matter of
| needing to be on the American continent
|
| Edit: perhaps interesting to realise that, conversely, laws
| in North Korea might make it illegal for Alphabet to have
| certain terms if they want to serve consumers in their
| market. (A better example here would be EU with copyright
| legislation that makes it illegal to sign away your moral
| rights, for instance.) It works both ways and both could
| legally prosecute the other at the same time and both win
| in their area! But with YouTube being able to gatekeep the
| content here, one has more power than the other..
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I mean most adblocking software is open source and easily
| acquired, a lot like torrenting software it'd be near
| impossible to actually enforce anything.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Yep, they need viewers to click the like/subscribe button. They
| need that so content creators keep on providing content to
| Google for free in exchange for popularity metrics. Which they
| need to close sponsorship deals (because Google isn't paying
| them a whole lot).
|
| So, Google is merely optimizing the ad clicks and impressions
| here. If they succeed in becoming too obnoxious with their ads,
| viewers might leave for other platforms, and then content
| creators would follow. So, fighting ad blocking has diminishing
| returns and can actually have a negative impact on them. Which
| is why ad blocking is still effective in 2025 and why Youtube
| has thrived by being not too effective with their anti ad
| blocking measures. This is more about selling the notion to
| advertisers that they are a really good advertising platform
| than it is about fighting the minority of users who block their
| ads no matter what. It won't work. But it won't matter as long
| as advertisers keep on paying for advertising on Youtube.
|
| The irony of their latest efforts is that it is driving away
| users from Chrome to more effective alternatives (Firefox,
| Brave, etc.) and it's driving content creators to depend on
| sponsor ship deals instead of advertising money from Google.
| The only reason Chrome exists is actually ads. So, more
| effective counter measures against ad blocking in Chrome could
| end up hurting their ad revenue. And Google's behavior is
| actually causing for increasingly stronger calls to break up
| Google. None of that is good for Google and their advertising
| revenue.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I don't care when YouTube does a buffer thing because blocking
| ads for me is about distractions and context switching. My
| cognitive load is already very high and it's extremely
| frustrating to have to filter out more garbage.
| paulcole wrote:
| You could just pay the $13/month? Would save the worries about
| context switching further taxing your already high cognitive
| load? And I would expect your high cognitive load helps you
| earn well above $13/month?
| frollogaston wrote:
| You can 1. pay the $13/mo 2. try to make the adblocker work
| or 3. not watch YouTube. So far options 2 on desktop and 3 on
| iPhone have been ok for me.
| paulcole wrote:
| You're forgetting: 4. Don't use an adblocker and watch
| YouTube.
|
| I've been doing #1 for over 5 years and will never do
| anything different (up to say $50-ish USD a month).
| dmd wrote:
| Except they want it both ways. I tried Youtube Premium for a
| few months. Slowly but surely the ads came back, so back to
| blocking and not paying I went.
| betenoire wrote:
| what? I don't see ads unless the creator themselves are
| doing it, and even then it's two clicks on the right arrow
| button and we move on
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Sponsorblock is a god send. It automates all that
| jbm wrote:
| I don't know if this is serious or not but I get zero ads
| with Youtube Premium even on my phone.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Youtube premium can look very different between
| places/people. Many with premium still see them. Youtube
| seems to be testing various markets to see how many ads
| it takes before people cancel their subscriptions. Also,
| you have to accept google cookies and such for them to
| identify you as a subscriber, so many privacy-focused
| users will see ads regardless of premium subscriptions.
| iamjackg wrote:
| I'd love more info about this, because I've been paying
| for Youtube premium for years and I haven't seen a single
| ad.
| conradkay wrote:
| They have "premium lite" as an option for me (US) which
| says "most videos ad-free*"
| dleslie wrote:
| Paying for YT doesn't remove the ads.
|
| On the other hand, the golden era of YouTube has passed. You
| aren't losing out on much if you simply stop using it.
| frollogaston wrote:
| To be clear, you mean it doesn't remove YouTube-placed ads
| inside the video? Edit: I'm not talking about the creator's
| own sponsorships, or the YouTube homepage showing static
| ads for movies or whatever.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I pay for YouTube premium, it absolutely removes YouTube-
| placed ads. Creators also get a kickback when premium
| users watch their videos, as they don't make money off
| the YouTube ads anymore.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Ok, that's what I thought too.
| aftbit wrote:
| I wish it would also remove YouTube's internal
| advertising. I pay for YouTube Premium, but I can't
| permanently hide shorts or prevent it from popping up
| whatever random topic they want me to engage with. Every
| 30 days or so, I have to click "Show Fewer Shorts" and
| every week or two, I have to opt out of the topic du
| jour, and I have to do this separately on every device.
| pier25 wrote:
| Youtube premium does remove all Google's ads.
|
| Obviously not the ads the content creator has put into the
| video itself.
| chasebank wrote:
| There's an add-on called sponsor block, which works
| remarkably well, that will just skip sponsored ads inside
| videos.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| SponsorBlock is amazing. It tells you how much time
| you've saved. It adds up quick. I can't say I've met
| anyone who misses random two minute breaks about weird
| scam cooking services, etc.
| tasuki wrote:
| I don't use sponsor block and don't think I've ever seen
| an ad like that.
|
| I'd like to think some content creators are more
| scrupulous than others, and I have good enough taste not
| to watch the unscrupulous ones ;-)
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Some creators do a better job and anyone is free to
| whitelist those creators. There are a few creators I have
| whitelisted, but to be honest, they don't run "better"
| ads than other creators. Sure, some make them more
| "digestible" by making them jokes, but even a content
| creator I support a ton is still just running your basic
| Squarespace ads. Creators do the best they can to map the
| available sponsorships to their audience, but the fact
| remains that the lions share of sponsorships available
| are for services we are not interested in and advertising
| has stopped being an effective way to lure audiences.
| dleslie wrote:
| Depends on the Premium tier.
|
| But yes, uBlock and Sponsorblock together do a much
| better job of removing the ads.
| sadeshmukh wrote:
| There's also a button to skip commonly skipped sections -
| basically sponsor skip.
| thordenmark wrote:
| There is too much good content on YouTube to simply stop
| using it. It is a gold mine of tutorials on niche subjects.
| I just watched best ways to patch an air mattress, and a
| video on making theater quality popcorn! (and it was
| delicious)
| hedora wrote:
| I asked kagi's llm for a recipe on theater quality
| popcorn (which I do all the time), and it gave the basic
| recipe (though it suggested butter, when clarified butter
| is superior in my opinion) with a list of tips. I've been
| having trouble with unpopped kernels (maybe a few dozen
| per batch), and one of the tips pointed to an excellent
| tutorial on avoiding unpopped / burnt kernels:
|
| https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_popcorn/
|
| This took me far less time than watching YouTube videos,
| since that's one of 5 references the LLM summary
| included, and the other 4 are information I didn't need.
| deedree wrote:
| How would you know you won't get sick? LLM's scare me
| with the random stuff. It can be useful in specific cases
| but I certainly wouldn't get any recipes that way. I
| would seriously reconsider friend.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| There are no ads when I use YT premium, except for the
| creators' Hello Fresh type segments. Which perhaps they'd
| be less incentivized to pursue if people didn't use ad
| blockers.
| cyberax wrote:
| SponsorBlock will help you to get rid of those!
| dleslie wrote:
| It depends on the Premium tier.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You mean just Premium Light? Still has no ads on videos.
|
| Just sponsored shorts and banners when browsing. But
| we're talking about videos here.
| dleslie wrote:
| Shorts and music, for now. They'll undoubtedly expand it
| to all videos eventually.
| mindslight wrote:
| Giving them money rewards them for pulling a bait and switch
| where they set the price of hosting plus watching video at
| free, but are now trying to extort the ecosystem after so
| many people spent effort uploading. Don't encourage hostile
| behavior.
| frollogaston wrote:
| What did you want them to do instead, put ads or charge
| money per view starting in 2005?
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure, that would have been one honest option. Dumping an
| artificially free option into the market crowded out
| other options from being adopted or even developed.
| frollogaston wrote:
| This is how all tech companies got funded, and still do.
| YouTube doesn't even have much of a network effect, it's
| just that nobody made anything comparable that was
| actually better.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _This is how all tech companies got funded, and still
| do_
|
| This isn't really germane to _what 's right_. We all know
| how the surveillance industry operates - subsidizing
| investment, lock in, and then enshittification. And sure,
| it seems to work for it in a pragmatic sense. But that
| doesn't mean we should find virtue in rewarding it, which
| was what the original argument is about.
|
| > _YouTube doesn 't even have much of a network effect_
|
| I'm not interested in arguing with goalposts being moved,
| especially by ignorance.
| paulcole wrote:
| How did you expect them to pay for the cost of the service?
|
| The cost of hosting still seems to be free. Isn't it the
| watching that comes with a cost?
| adzm wrote:
| Seriously, it's a great price for a great service.
| nradov wrote:
| How is it possible to have a high cognitive load while watching
| YouTube? Are you watching surgery training videos in the middle
| of conducting a heart transplant or something?
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I am trying to stay as recent with offerings from teams like
| LangGraph. The rate these frameworks, research, etc. is fast.
| Either way, if I've set aside some time to focus on a video
| about X it's very frustrating for me to first disregard a few
| unrelated Y.
| nicbou wrote:
| It's the digital equivalent of being stopped by canvassers on
| your way to something important.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| And the arms race continues.
| knowitnone wrote:
| They can advertise to me all day and I wouldn't buy a thing
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep. And I kinda hate Grammerly now. Whatever it is.
| jordigh wrote:
| The point of most ads isn't to get you to buy things. Most ads
| just want you to think of the product and be aware it exists.
| Their objective is to slowly hijack your brain.
|
| If you know what "it gives you wings" or "the happiest place on
| earth" means, the ads already worked.
|
| Ads are trying to combat obscurity. A brand with bad reputation
| is far better than a brand nobody's ever heard of.
| Belopolye wrote:
| I gave up and wrote a script to scrape the channels I like with
| yt-dlp into my Plex server.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's a good idea for channels you know you like.
| Belopolye wrote:
| Discovery is always going to be an issue, but for those who
| want to get away from doomscrolling their life away for the
| algorithm-god, it's a rather comfy way to enjoy content.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| I haven't discovered anything on YT for a looong time, and
| now I also installed unhook, so I don't even see any
| recommends.
| paulcole wrote:
| I gave up and paid for YouTube Premium. Probably a top-3
| subscription that I'll never cancel.
| Belopolye wrote:
| Having sailed the high seas since middle school I suppose it
| was only natural that I continue to build upon my multi-
| terabyte horde of movies, archived websites, books, music,
| and video games to include content from hobbyist HAM radio
| operators and long-form urban legend documentaries from YT
| channels.
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm more than happy to pay for Youtube Premium to remove ads for
| all the family and ensure content creators can monetize their
| work.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fuck that.
|
| My household uses Newpipe we don't pay for shit.
| otterley wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what pays your own salary?
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm sure that's pure curiosity and not trying to make a
| point in a roundabout way...
| debugnik wrote:
| Not the same poster, but: Products and services that
| someone actually signed a contract to pay for. Google is
| free to not send me free video if they don't want to, I'm
| just connecting to their website using my browser.
|
| But the only reason so many creators are exclusively on
| youtube is the fact that anyone can watch there. Google
| tolerates my ad blocker to some degree (unlike other sites)
| because the alternative is losing market share and they
| know it.
|
| If creators feel cheated, they can ask youtube to stop
| serving their videos for free for its own interests. I'd
| like to see the status quo change actually.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Exactly. YouTube wants to have its cake and eat it too.
| YouTube would not be what it is today if it wasn't public
| and free at the point of use.
|
| Anyone is free to do something in private and ticket
| people for it. I'm doing a concert tonight in my home,
| it's 100 credits for a ticket, hope you'll come! I can't
| guarantee anyone will come, but I can guarantee anyone
| who comes will pay.
|
| There are platforms like Floatplane that use this model.
|
| Then there's the busking model. You do it in public. You
| can't guarantee anyone pays, but they'll definitely come,
| and some will probably pay.
|
| YouTube wants both. It wants to be the place where people
| busk (like the public square) but also force advertising
| on you. You can't have it both ways. Either go private or
| accept that this is public and I will do what I want with
| my browser.
| debugnik wrote:
| I love the concert/busking framing, I'm definitely using
| that from now on.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| Stealing from creators shouldn't be celebrated.
| myself248 wrote:
| I support a _shitpile_ of creators on Patreon and Kofi and
| more. I subscribe to Nebula, and I get as much as I can
| from the creators' own pages on those services.
|
| I'm doing my best to move my viewing off of YouTube, and
| move the money off of YouTube, in hopes that it eases the
| creators moving off of YouTube.
| eviks wrote:
| But you'll invariably watch from a way way bigger
| shitpile of creators, so without some more efficient
| mechanism you won't be able to spread your support
| properly
| myself248 wrote:
| This is a problem itching for a solution. I'm determined
| to find a solution other than Youtube.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| Google's way of spreading that support is truly the most
| efficient (10s to 100s of millions per year right to the
| CEOs pocket).
| myself248 wrote:
| Had me in the first half...
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Ah, the old "stealing" line.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It's not stealing from creators. The creators have an
| agreement with Google not with me. If they feel they have
| been shorted, they can take it up with Google.
| gblargg wrote:
| If watching with an adblocker is stealing because the video
| creator doesn't get ad revenue, is not watching also
| stealing, since they also don't get revenue? If not, how is
| one taking from them and the other not? What have they lost
| in the first case but not in the second?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| It costs money to serve video. In exchange for being
| served the video, you watch the ad. By not watching the
| ad, you're stealing from YouTube and creators.
| vjulian wrote:
| I find it hard to discern whether your post is sarcasm.
| Assuming it's not, I'm surprised that someone is so cheerfully
| and voluntarily paying an extra fiat to the virtual landowner.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Video hosting is expensive. Making videos is expensive.
| You're not noble for stealing from Youtube or its creators.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It's not stealing. It's using. I have no obligation under
| any legal framework to use their content the way they wish
| I would. Trust me, or pay a lawyer to learn the same truth
| at considerably more cost.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| You're legally and morally in the wrong. Just accept this
| instead of getting defensive. I pirate literally all of
| the media I consume but I don't think I;m in the right
| for doing so.
| Lio wrote:
| It's not stealing; no one is deprived of anything except
| rent.
|
| If anything the cost of making the video is sunk by the
| creator just once and then rapidily payed off.
|
| Once that happens it's just hosting costs and Moore's,
| Kryder's and Koomey's Laws are brining that down
| exponetially.
|
| Funnily enough though you never see the amount of
| avertising shown getting shorter to represent the lower
| costs involved eh?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| It costs money to serve video. You're stealing from
| YouTube and by extension creators. No amount of mental
| gymnastics will change this.
| trinix912 wrote:
| If it's costing YouTube so much, then they can freely
| switch to showing no videos to non-paying users at all. But
| they won't do that, because people watching without paying
| is what got them to where they are.
|
| As for the creators, it's up to them to decide whether they
| want to publish under these terms and risk having their
| content viewed without being paid for, or not put it on
| YouTube.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| Have you ever made a video before? It's actually quite a lot
| of work, especially if it's any good. Hours upon hours of
| time.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Think of it like you're a street musician. You put a basket
| on the floor, play your music, people go by, some might pay
| you, most won't.
|
| Is it wasted time? That's up to you to decide, then choose
| whether you want to keep doing that or not.
|
| If you want to charge for it directly, then sell tickets
| for a concert (put videos on Patreon).
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Hah, this so much. For me it's worth the money for the family
| plan just to not be exposed to ads playing on family members'
| devices.
| nicbou wrote:
| I create a different kind of content that Google used to train
| their AI and offer AI summaries. Those same summaries mean I
| will soon need to find another way to make rent.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I refuse to, because we all know where that road ends. YouTube
| pilots brief pre-roll ads for Premium users. Then mid-roll ads.
| Then longer ads. Then they open the floodgates. Google reliably
| acts with contempt for its users, I'm only responding
| accordingly.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| And because of people like you I can enjoy their services for
| free. Thank you.
| akersten wrote:
| _Thank you_ for your important work fighting this battle, it must
| be exhausting.
|
| The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us, the more we
| should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright
| scammy ads they are hosting. If they can't leave well enough
| alone and look the other way on ad blocking, (which is the only
| way to avoid exposing myself and family to these dangerous ads),
| they need to be under a lot more scrutiny for the ads they choose
| to run.
| timmg wrote:
| > The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us...
|
| You can... just not visit youtube, right?
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm going to assume thats much more difficult than one would
| expect.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| They're a monopoly benefiting from network effects.
| cpitman wrote:
| Or just pay for Youtube.... $8/ month gets rid of most of the
| ads in videos, $15/month to remove ads from music, shorts,
| and search results.
| conradfr wrote:
| Lite is not available everywhere, also those streaming
| services basically up their price every year, like we're
| frogs.
| gardnr wrote:
| I had YouTube Lite for a couple years. They sent me an
| email saying it was being discontinued in my country. I
| had always been watching with an Ad Blocker. The main
| difference now is that they refuse to accept the money I
| am willing to pay them.
| al_borland wrote:
| I pay for Premium, and have for several years now. The Lite
| version is not what anyone wanted. I want no ads on
| YouTube, without also paying for YouTube Music (which I
| never use). If $8/month still gets me random ads on some
| videos, it's no good. I'm sure their thought was people
| would turn the normal YouTube app into their music player,
| but I'm not so sure. Eliminating background play from Lite
| may solve that well enough. I'd be fine with that as a
| compromise. I watch a lot of music related content on
| YouTube that isn't stuff I'd just listen to in a music app,
| that I think would get caught my the music filter. On the
| Apple TV, videos it thinks are music don't show comments
| (even when there are comments on the website). I assume all
| those videos would get ads on the Lite subscription, and
| there are a lot of them.
|
| I've tried cancelling my subscription, thinking it would
| make me watch less YouTube. I didn't last 48 hours. The ads
| were too annoying and I signed back up.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| YouTube music isn't really a different service rather
| than a different YouTube app. Under the hood YouTube
| music is just YouTube with a music player UI. Taking it
| away wouldn't really lower the cost much.
| al_borland wrote:
| That's part of the problem with YouTube Music. I tried to
| use it, but having music playlists clutter up my video
| playlists is pretty terrible, among other things.
|
| I find it hard to justify paying for 2 music streaming
| services, so I cancelled Apple Music, because I'm paying
| for YouTube Music through Premium. However, I don't like
| it, so I'm back to manually managing a local music
| library in Apple's Music app. This is probably a better
| long-term approach than renting access to a music library
| on a monthly basis.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| But that's my point, YouTube music isn't really a music
| streaming service, it's just YouTube premium.
|
| The whole "YouTube music free!" is just marketing and a
| music focused app wrapped on YouTube.
|
| YouTube premium without YouTube music would be pretty
| much the same cost.
| al_borland wrote:
| That may be their internal justification, but due to
| their marketing, it feels like I'm forced to buy two
| things, when I only ever wanted one. This is why people
| have been asking for a YouTube Premium Lite, and what
| they delivered isn't what anyone asking really wanted.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| What people are asking for isn't viable, and people are
| confused. That's what I am explaining here.
|
| YouTube premium would not be any cheaper without YouTube
| music. It's a marketing gimmick.
| zevon wrote:
| Can I ask what you mean by "having music playlists
| clutter up my video playlists? I use YT music (along with
| my local music library) specifically _because_ it uses
| YouTube content - which means that all sorts of live /
| niche / otherwise hard to find music is there. However,
| my YouTube music playlists are not visible on "regular
| YouTube".
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Bundling services is another mode of anticompetitive
| behavior that Google/Youtube use to obscure their
| pricing.
| akersten wrote:
| Harder than it sounds! So much of what we interact with
| online winds up with YouTube in the dependency chain. Kids'
| coursework, how-to videos, etc. I could also just pay the
| $$/month to "solve" this problem, but I need my petty cash
| more than Google does. I'm confident the brilliant minds
| there can figure out how to monetize my visit even without
| the real-time bidding industrial complex burning my CPU
| cycles.
| grugagag wrote:
| Download the content offline, make a playlist. You can also
| archive the content forever. No distractions, its organized
| however you want. Yes, it does take some effort but it
| fixes all the problems
| free_bip wrote:
| So long as we're pretending to care about the Youtube
| TOS, offline downloading without premium is against their
| TOS. And even then you're only permitted to download and
| view offline through the YouTube phone app.
| grugagag wrote:
| I care about their TOS as much as they care about their
| users
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > I need my petty cash more than Google does
|
| I appreciate the fact that you brought up the possibility
| of paying for ad-free content, but frankly I don't buy
| this. You can either see 100% of the content for free with
| some mildly annoying ad content mixed in from time to time,
| or you can pay them a pretty small amount to not see the
| annoyances.
|
| Google is a for-profit company trying to sell a product
| that you find valuable. Not everything they do is squeaky-
| clean, but this offering couldn't be much fairer, really.
| jmbwell wrote:
| I was visiting my kid's class one day. They were using some
| YouTube product that seemed oriented at schools, that I'd
| never seen before. An ad would pop up, and one of the kids
| (whosever turn it was next?) would run up and tap the skip ad
| button.
|
| So even if you're trying to use YouTube for something of
| value, you're battling ads. Or at least our kids are.
| petepete wrote:
| I hope there's no ads before educational videos on how to
| do CPR or perform the Heimlich manoeuvre!
| johnisgood wrote:
| Well, first you have to log in. And yeah, there are ads
| even in such videos. :D
| denkmoon wrote:
| You can also just not watch TV. And not listen to the radio.
| And not receive newspapers. All mediums that have
| advertisements, and those advertisements are regulated to
| stop the most egregious types (eg. advertising sugary foods
| at children, tobacco products, hopefully gambling products
| soon).
|
| Media, on the whole, is a good thing. We know more about the
| world. We know more about the excesses of the aristocracy. We
| know more about the violence committed by violent people (and
| I don't mean local petty crime. Genocide.) Before we can
| improve these things, we need to know about them. "just don't
| consume media" is a regression to a time where people knew
| little outside their local sphere.
|
| Youtube/Google has a monopoly on one part of the modern media
| landscape and it has to be fixed. Not just put our heads in
| the sand.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| YouTube shows ads that would never be allowed on network
| television, including tobacco advertisements. They can get
| away with it because it's hard for regulators to observe.
| randcraw wrote:
| No. Youtube is a monopoly. For a huge amount pf historical
| video, they are the only game in town. Regulating the hell
| out of them -- especially gigantic fines for the insane
| amount of copyright piracy their business model depends upon
| -- is LONG overdue.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, although the problem is that trying to regulate them
| out of existence will destroy the archive. Especially if
| you try to insist on copyright traceability.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It's incredible to me how YouTube has an uncountable number
| of "movie clip" and "TV show clip" channels with randomly
| generated names, to the point that you can watch pretty
| much any movie end-to-end, but people lose their minds
| about AI training using books.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Read up on vid.me, which broke YouTube's "monopoly" back in
| 2016-2017.
|
| Seriously, go see what happened to them.
|
| Turns out everyone complaining about YouTube, when given
| the option to jump to a new fresh user focused service,
| still blocks ads and refuses subscriptions.
|
| This thread, and the hundreds like it, are why people nope
| the fuck out when considering creating a YT competitor.
| someone7x wrote:
| You seem so certain on the betrayal of the content-
| creators.
|
| > Read up on vid.me, which broke YouTube's "monopoly"
| back in 2016-2017
|
| Okay, sounds interesting.
|
| > May 21 (Reuters) - Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab
| Google has persuaded a federal judge in California to
| reject a lawsuit from video platform Rumble (RUM.O),
| opens new tab accusing the technology giant of illegally
| monopolizing the online video-sharing market.
|
| I see what I expected: that google cheated and got away
| with it. Where is the betrayal?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-defeats-
| rumb...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Who is Rumble and what do they have to do with vid.me?
|
| I don't know if you are confused, but Vid.me was a
| totally different platform than whatever Rumble is...
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Thank you for your important work fighting this battle, it
| must be exhausting.
|
| Indeed, if there was a 'thin adblock writer line' flag it'd
| already be on my bumper. Than you for your service, we salute
| you.
| yugioh3 wrote:
| people deserve to get paid for the work they put into creating
| content and building platforms, no? books, movies, tv shows,
| news, etc, are all distributed in some way or another that
| costs the consumer either money or their time viewing
| advertising. if you don't want to watch ads, pay YouTube for a
| subscription.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| YouTube spent about a decade and a half running unintrusive
| banner ads. Until they secured enough of the market that
| network effects locked content creators and consumers
| together in a two-sided market where it's hard for either
| group to leave unilaterally. Then they ramped up the length
| and intrusiveness of their ads while flouting content
| regulations on what they're even allowed to advertise.
|
| Why should I reward that by paying them?
| cebert wrote:
| Ok, well either pay or don't use YouTube then if you don't
| want ads.
| spencerflem wrote:
| My current thought re: piracy is that I never pirate
| unless I'd be happy if the company I'm pirating from went
| out of business.
| cwillu wrote:
| The browser is my agent, and it will do my bidding, not
| google's. You building your company on something that can
| be legally circumvented is not my problem.
| apitman wrote:
| > The browser is my agent, and it will do my bidding, not
| google's
|
| I've got bad news for you
| chii wrote:
| and that's why people choosing chrome over firefox has
| that bad news.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| "I can get away with it, therefore it's OK" is an
| interesting moral philosophy
| chii wrote:
| It's how the world has worked for a very long time, and i
| dont think that has changed much today.
| spaceribs wrote:
| I'm enjoying this holier-than-thou attitude that seems to
| pervade a lot of comments, as though following the
| "rules" is all we need to do and is morally justifiable.
|
| These "rules" weren't voted upon by either creators or
| consumers. Most of them are arbitrary and capricious.
| Features implemented by YouTube, like showing where
| people skip to the most, are also an attempt to cut into
| sponsorship dollars, was that within the "rules"?
|
| Let me be clear: Following the "rules" under these
| monopolistic circumstances is the philosophy of cowardice
| in the face of power and doesn't hold as much
| intellectual merit as you might think.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| Did the person I was replying to say any of that? You're
| putting words in both their mouth and mine
|
| I'm receptive to various arguments here that invoke power
| differentials, pragmatism, even deliberately breaking the
| terms of a service to help affect change, etc. I'm not
| necessarily someone who always follows the rules, and
| even though I do pay for YouTube I don't view it as a
| real moral failing to use the free service with an ad
| blocker turned on
|
| The comment I responded to didn't have any of that, it
| just boiled down to "I can do it and they can't stop me,
| so they can suck a dick". Maybe not the end of the world
| when it's directed towards Alphabet, but I hope that
| mindset doesn't extend to everyone they interact with
| cwillu wrote:
| I'm the person you were replying to, and I endorse
| spaceribs' comment.
|
| My computer is my property, it will do what I ask it to
| just like my refrigerator, my tv, and my paper and
| pencil. I will remove corporate logos from my belongings,
| and entirely fail to look at the advertising that comes
| in my mail box. And if google tries to tell my computer
| to show me advertising, I am _entirely_ within my rights
| to tell my computer not to.
| cwillu wrote:
| Janie Crane: An off switch?
|
| Metrocop: She'll get years for that. Off switches are
| illegal!
|
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Th
| e_B...
| cwillu wrote:
| I'm also amused that you equate "legally circumvented"
| with getting away with something.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not as interesting as "And that's 100% ok when the big
| people operate like that, but very very bad when the
| little people try to stop them."
| ta1243 wrote:
| That tends to be the approach large companies take, and
| are championed for it. "It's not their fault the tax code
| allows them to spend $50m on accountants and lawyers to
| find a $5b loophole" etc.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Considering that is the framework FAANG in its entirety
| is based on, I find your reaction quite surprising
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| That's how google set up this relationship with their
| users.
|
| "What goes around comes around," shouldn't be
| surprising."
| probably_wrong wrote:
| If YouTube agreed with this point of view they would put
| up a paywall, the same way neither Nebula nor Netflix are
| available for free.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You can keep bringing up Google, but you're still glossing
| over the part where you're not paying the people creating
| the content you're watching.
|
| Seems awfully convenient.
| baobun wrote:
| If enough people do it, monetizing on Youtube becomes
| untenable for most, driving creators to hopefully
| healthier platforms who might now stand a chance.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| So if I don't like Visa and Mastercard, do I also get
| moral carte blanche to not pay anyone because hey I'm
| totally urging them to only use merchants that I prefer?
|
| Sounds like awfully convenient motivated reasoning.
| daniel-grigg wrote:
| That's how the market works. You avoid paying extra taxes
| than required right? Even though that denies the
| government extra funding. The only difference being one
| has been decided as wrong and the other is fine.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| This is a weird framing
|
| Yes, society has deemed that it's fine to make use of the
| avenues that have been explicitly created to reduce your
| tax burden - that's why they were created. Society is
| also relatively fine with using unintended loopholes for
| the same purpose (although it is a lot more controversial
| and criticized), because we don't tend to punish people
| for breaking laws, rules and regulations that don't
| exist. When we end up caring a lot about them, we plug
| the gaps
|
| The other person was talking about straight up not paying
| for goods and services that are sold at a given price,
| which is stealing. The more apt comparison would be to
| tax evasion (actually breaking the law), which is a
| crime, widely considered wrong and punished accordingly
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It isn't how the market works, and you absolutely don't
| take this line of reasoning when paying someone rendering
| services to you which is why you instead tried to
| analogize it with taxes.
|
| You only use this argument for Youtube content creators
| because it's trivial to avoid payment and then backsplain
| it with unique moral justifications.
| spaceribs wrote:
| Are you asking what we should do about this situation?
|
| Split up any and all monopolies, and nationalize what
| should provide a common good such as payment networks and
| internet infrastructure.
| matwood wrote:
| As a Google shareholder, I would love for YT to be spun
| out.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Arent Visa and Mastercard defacto global monopolies that
| have had many controversies in the oast or bowed to
| outside pressure, refusing to handle payments for many
| perfectly legal businesses ?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| mono, like in monopoly, means single. They would be a
| duopoly. Which they aren't anyway because there is also
| amex and discover. So maybe a quadopoly?
| baobun wrote:
| Oligopoly, typically.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Yes. And they get some of your money in almost every
| transaction. Does that mean you are morally justified to
| dine out for free now?
| beeflet wrote:
| The metaphor doesn't work because I can still pay in
| cash. A better metaphor would be choosing not to tip the
| waiter because you don't believe in the custom of tipping
| rbits wrote:
| Relying solely on YouTube monetisation is already
| untenable for many channels. That's why they do
| sponsorships and Patreon
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| No I'm not blocking the ads, I'm just avoiding YouTube as
| much as possible and desperate for someone to break their
| stranglehold.
|
| If I were blocking the ads, I wouldn't be aware of how
| bad it's gotten.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Vid.me broke the stranglehold back in 2016-2017.
|
| Their story reveals that all these people hating on
| YouTube are actually just selfish children doing mental
| gymnastics.
|
| Their savior came, disrupted YouTube pretty deeply, then
| went bankrupt.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| That's a needlessly hostile remark. This is part of my
| point. A content platform is a two-sided market, and you
| can't unilaterally defect from a Nash equilibrium. Back
| in 2017, YouTube wasn't running unskippable investment-
| scam and tobacco ads. They were doing their best to
| attract content viewers and producers away from
| competitors by offering a good experience. Once they'd
| driven the alternatives to the ground and achieved
| network lock-in, they began twisting the screws,
| gradually running ever more intrusive and distasteful
| ads.
|
| Nebula might have a shot at breaking the stranglehold,
| and I support them, but it remains to be seen if they can
| do it. A lot of content creators would have to move
| there, and there's a lot of random stuff (recorded
| lectures, video instructions, music, etc) that probably
| never will because it doesn't fit their premium original
| content model.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Vid.me.was loved and celebrated as an escape from
| YouTube. I'm not sure what makes you think YT wasn't
| hated in 2017 too, premium had already been out for 2
| years and any casual glance at comments from back then
| make it clear people were not happy.
|
| Nebula has no shot. It has a <1% conversion rate.
| Creators make almost nothing from it compared to their yt
| channel.
|
| My point is that the fundamental problem with the
| Internet and Internet services is the users entitlement
| to free things. The Internet would be a _dramatically_
| better place if it worked for users and not for
| advertisers. Vid.me was dramatically better, but it died
| learning that 99% of people in threads like this is full
| of shit and actually just entitled.
| charlie0 wrote:
| I used to pay Nebula precisely because they had premium
| original content, however they let in a lot of other
| creators to widen the (see the tyranny of the marginal
| user) type of content. I've since canceled my
| subscription because it's gotten bloated with too much
| lower quality content.
|
| The whole point of Nebula is NOT to become another YT,
| it's meant to be curated source of media.
| lifty wrote:
| It's not possible to subscribe to the stuff that you're
| interested to?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I give my favorite creators money through the ubiquitous
| patreons.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Perhaps controversial, but I rather just have ads. Not
| that I do not think this is a preferable model, but
| rather, donates cost real money and ads cost nothing
| except time.
|
| While time is finite and valuable, if I am already on
| YouTube, then I have already committed to choice of
| wasting that nebulous amount of time in the first place.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I'd absolutely rather give money. For me there's a lot
| less friction in that even if technically it costs time
| all the same. With a job I have control over how I
| convert time into money; not so with watching ads.
|
| As much as youtube can waste time, I also feel like I've
| been given genuine value by certain people on the site,
| so I wouldn't say it's simply wasting time.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| I watch quite a large array of channels. I am not sure I
| could feasibly afford to donate a meaningful amount to
| all them. So then, I am forced into the dilemma of
| deciding which ones are more worthy than others, and that
| is not something I am particularly willing to do.
|
| If one's patreon did have perks associated with it, then
| I would be more inclined to 'donate', as well.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I feel perfectly able to decide where to allocate money.
| For instance, one channel has functionally introduced me
| to modern philosophy and inspired me to start reading a
| ton. I took a class and read a bunch of books I otherwise
| wouldn't have. Another channel makes funny ten minute
| joke videos once a month. I feel totally okay giving the
| former way more money; they've provided me more value by
| a long shot.
| al_borland wrote:
| I just subscribe to YouTube Premium. From what I hear,
| views from Premium viewers are worth more to the creators
| than ad funded views, and I don't need to deal with
| deciding which patreons to back, and spend 10x (or more)
| trying to pay for each individual.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Sure, if that works better for you.
| cma wrote:
| Patreon is also getting enshittified, grandfathering
| rates for the legacy people who give it a network effect,
| and then jacking them up on new creators to take
| advantage of their moat.
| efdee wrote:
| I'm very much willing to pay for their content, but not
| in the way of watching ads during the videos.
| chii wrote:
| Your individual willingness is irrelevant.
|
| There are not enough people with your willingness to make
| this mechanism work by itself.
|
| So the choice is either to have the content exist, but
| rely on ads, or not have the content exist. And it's not
| your choice - it's the content creator's choice.
| notpushkin wrote:
| If it's not my choice, then there's no problem if I block
| the ads, right?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Youtube Premium has existed for 10 years and creators get
| paid from it.
| lokar wrote:
| Do you happen to know if they get the same amount per
| view?
| ta1243 wrote:
| > YouTube channels earn revenue from viewers with YouTube
| Premium. Throughout this month (August 2018), I earned
| approximately 55p per 1000 regular views and 94p per 1000
| Premium views, so it appears that if 75% of your viewers
| went Premium, that would actually be beneficial.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/9agg5f/how_does
| _yo...
|
| > Per user, creators usually get a LOT more from premium
| than ads. If I divide my monthly views by my monthly
| unique viewers, I get about 1.9 cents per viewer.
|
| > The way premium works is, first youtube takes a cut--I
| believe it's 45%. The remaining amount is divided among
| all the creators you watch based on how much you watch
| them. I believe that's based on view time.
|
| > So if the YT premium price is $13.99, the creators get
| 55% or $7.69. You would have to watch 405 different
| creators for each one to get 1.9 cents.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/16c80eb/how_do_
| you...
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| So you do pay for YouTube Premium then? Or are we not
| going to hear back from you?
| eadmund wrote:
| > Why should I reward that by paying them?
|
| Do you want to have a great YouTube experience? Paying for
| it gets you that.
|
| I watch YouTube videos frequently. Never see an ad. It's
| great.
| cvoss wrote:
| If I can actually pay someone for content, then, if I don't
| pay, I should expect not to be granted access to content.
|
| But that's not how YT works. YT doesn't charge you for good
| stuff. It charges you for not delivering crap. That's not
| legitimate business, that's a racket. I have no qualm
| punishing YT for that. Content creators are free to find
| other ways to monetize their labor, if their labor is
| actually valuable. (And so many of the good ones do, quite
| successfully.)
| Uehreka wrote:
| YouTube gives you two (2!) ways to pay for content. You can
| choose to pay with money, or you can choose to pay with
| your time and attention. If you don't like paying with your
| time and attention, then either pay with money, or don't
| use the service.
|
| This "It charges you for not delivering crap." line is
| bullshit. Serving video content costs money, they've given
| you the choice of how to pay for it, and you don't like the
| choices but want to keep getting the content.
| gausswho wrote:
| Worse. It charges you by building a profile about you.
|
| 21st century nation states can better solve video scale
| delivery without middle parasites like Google.
| PurestGuava wrote:
| > 21st century nation states can better solve video scale
| delivery without middle parasites like Google.
|
| If it's that easy, why has nobody done it?
|
| (Hint: governments don't want to run YouTube, probably
| shouldn't run YouTube, and nobody else wants or can
| afford the immense costs that come with running YouTube.)
| gausswho wrote:
| I'm unconvinced. I suggest that YT's outlay is a sneeze
| among the budget of the US. In my estimation, all nations
| are lagging in the definition of what constitutes a
| public utility. In a decade we will be facepalming why
| advertisements were even needed for this common
| infrastructure.
| PurestGuava wrote:
| Most things are a sneeze compared to the budget of the
| federal government of the US, that doesn't mean that's a
| reasonable expectation for the US government (or any
| government) to run them.
| gausswho wrote:
| I challenge the idea that private enterprise could solve
| the scaling component better than a government could.
| We've reached this comedy of ads and surveillance
| capitalism because private strategies are flailing.
| agent327 wrote:
| As a thought experiment, is it realistic to get every tax
| payer to pay for funny cat videos? Because that will be a
| reality in your non-capitalist utopia.
|
| Or maybe there just won't be any cat videos, because the
| state has decreed them unnecessary or even harmful? How
| about political messages, is the state going to allow
| those to be posted on its platform? There are bound to be
| a few that go against state policy...
|
| You could argue that the same is true for broadcast TV,
| and I would 100% agree. The state has no business running
| or even funding public television.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| If it followed the USPS model there would be a retention
| fee for the uploader and a transfer fee for the
| downloader, both based on size. There would also likely
| be a stipulation that fees not dip below the actual costs
| incurred which would protect private entities that might
| wish to compete. (Such fee minimums can be seen with some
| municipal internet service regulations.)
| PurestGuava wrote:
| > If it followed the USPS model there would be a
| retention fee for the uploader and a transfer fee for the
| downloader, both based on size.
|
| The problem here is that we're already only having this
| debate because _people refuse to pay_ , even when what
| they're paying _with_ is functionally intangible (i.e.
| their letting an ad play on their PC for 30 seconds _.
|
| So any model which relies on people _physically paying
| real actual money* is doomed to fail to begin with
| because you're not solving the issue.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I kind of but kind of don't agree. Arguably BigTech
| dumping free product is the only reason we ended up here.
| Of course the average consumer isn't going to pay if
| someone else offers the full featured product fee of
| charge.
|
| There's also an issue with the payment model. Creating an
| account, sharing a bunch of personal info, and
| subscribing on a recurring basis is entirely different
| from the USPS model where I walk into the post office and
| pay a one time fee in cash to get my letter where it
| needs to go. I suppose an analogous service might charge
| $/gb/mo paid up front without requiring an account. Like
| catbox.moe except paid.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You're literally describing how content censorship
| already works on YouTube and Meta. Both companies
| _curate_ content and have selective - opaque - policies
| about what gets boosted and what gets deboosted.
|
| Also remember that legitimate creators keep being
| demonetised for no reason because AI moderation has a
| brainfart and no human is in charge.
|
| And then there's the clusterfuck around malicious
| copyright strikes made for bad faith reasons by non-
| owners.
|
| With public infrastructure there's at least some nominal
| possibility of democratic accountability - not so much in
| the US, large parts of which are pathologically
| delusional about public infrastructure as a concept, but
| it should be an option in countries with saner and more
| reality-based policies.
| chii wrote:
| why should US taxpayers subsidize a service for which
| non-US citizens could get a benefit from without paying
| any taxes?
|
| "The gov't should pay for it" is not a solution to
| private problems.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > why should US taxpayers subsidize a service for which
| non-US citizens could get a benefit from without paying
| any taxes?
|
| Because US citizens would benefit? Preventing outsiders
| from incidentally benefiting isn't a constitutional
| mandate (yet).
|
| Would you oppose an anti-pollution measure even though it
| would also provide cleaner air to neighbouring countries?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Phone service is recognized as a public utility. What
| difference justifies the failure to label internet
| service as a public utility?
|
| Most governments operate a postal service. Why then
| should governments not provide bare bones email and video
| services? You have government agencies using Zoom and
| similar. The analogy would be discontinuing the USPS and
| sending official government post via a wholly unregulated
| Fedex. It's absurd.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The term is natural monopoly. These are things which
| cannot have competition for practical reasons.
|
| Zoom and email are not natural monopolies.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Neither is Fedex (see UPS, DHL, GSO, Amazon, the list
| goes on). We've still got USPS. What's your point?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| USPS (and most government mail services) are to provide
| communication to every citizen. USPS delivers to every
| address in the US. So the government can send ballots,
| send census forms, send tax forms, etc. Sure you can use
| FedEx to send a parcel to remote Alaskan town, but if you
| watch the tracking you'll see that they just hand off to
| USPS in Anchorage.
|
| USPS is not a natural monopoly, it's a government service
| that no one else wants to do (nor would they).
| someone7x wrote:
| > In my estimation, all nations are lagging in the
| definition of what constitutes a public utility. In a
| decade we will be facepalming why advertisements were
| even needed for this common infrastructure.
|
| I'm just glad others feel this way.
|
| Why the hell can't I have my own spam free email account
| from the post office? Because the ads, the precious ads.
| krelian wrote:
| The mental gymnastics some will go through to justify being
| a cheapskate...
| shakna wrote:
| I block ads, everywhere, because I keep getting epilepsy-
| inducing ones.
|
| The browser is my agent, just like my screenreader is.
|
| Google is to blame here - and I'm saying that as an author
| who does advertise there because of marketshare.
| hahn-kev wrote:
| So is your DVD player but it doesn't mean you don't have to
| pay for the movies
| Hasnep wrote:
| No, but if someone is handing out free DVDs with adverts
| on them I can put a sticker over the adverts. If the
| adverts are in the movie, I'm allowed to skip them.
| shakna wrote:
| Google are free to ban me, free to not hand me the data.
| But if I tell them who I am, what agent I'm using, and
| then they hand me data... I'm also free to throw half
| that data in the bin.
|
| Especially if I'm protecting myself.
| belorn wrote:
| Those are two different problems. Paying creators and
| requiring online platforms to follow laws and not participate
| in crime like fraud are not the same issue.
|
| If they want to sell a service in exchange for payment, then
| they are free to do so. For legal reasons they are not doing
| that. The explicit legal definition used by lawyers and
| politicians is that advertisement supported services are not
| a payment, but an optional content that the viewer might or
| might not look at. This _optional_ aspect of advertisement is
| how laws distinguish between it and a sale. From a legal
| perspective there is a difference between selling a sample
| product for 1 cent, compared to giving it away for free. One
| is a sale, and the other is a free giveaway, and thus they
| are under different legal definitions.
|
| There are similar legal theory for when a platform should be
| held legal responsible their products, for their
| advertisement, and when local laws applies and how. News
| papers, radio, and TV has each been forced to handle local
| advertisement laws and regulation, and there is a reason why
| most had departments to curate which advertisement they could
| publish. They also get held responsible if they break local
| law.
| beeflet wrote:
| no. maybe you can get funding through some sort of patronage,
| but I'm not going to watch ads.
|
| even if I did pay for a subscription, they would find a way
| to jack up the price or insert new ads while collecting my
| data. The landscape isn't competitive enough. People like
| this idea that "if you don't pay for the product, you _are_
| the product " but it's not complete. Just because you pay for
| a product doesn't mean you're not the product. We used to pay
| for cable TV, only to still get ads. We used to pay for
| windows licenses, now with ads!
|
| I will continue to waste their bandwidth while blocking ads
| until they hopefully go bankrupt and get replaced by some
| bittorrent-like p2p solution.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| I resisted paying for premium (out of spite) until very
| recently and only because my girlfriend complained.
|
| I have been astounded at how scammy those ads are. There is a
| major class of ads that make fairly significant bullshit
| medical claims and I'm semi convinced the purpose is not for
| someone to make money but to wage psychological warfare on
| vulnerable people. Another class of ads says "the US government
| is going to collapse and that's why you should buy a freedom
| battery" and the ad couches itself as a battery advertisement
| but how many vulnerable people hear that in the background 16
| times a day and don't end up subconsciously accepting some part
| of it?
|
| In any case it's all a manipulative cesspool and it's bizarre
| to me that a property that Google otherwise values is willing
| to sling such slop at its users. I suspect a large part of this
| is that the executives who run YouTube never see their ads.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I've seen ads on YouTube that are straight-up illegal.
| Including ads for tobacco. And one that was a deepfake of the
| Canadian minister of finance pitching a crypto investment as
| being risk-free and backed by the government. Another that
| was a deepfake of Elon Musk saying he was going to give free
| money to people who click the link. YouTube will run anything
| because they know they won't get in trouble.
| grugagag wrote:
| Screencapture it and you may have a lawsuit
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You are getting those ads because you are likely not very
| well tracked, so you get the lowest tier ads.
|
| Most users are regular non-tech folks who are (unknowingly
| perhaps) well tracked and profiled. They (like my family
| members) get normal big name ads like you see on TV.
| mr_toad wrote:
| All I get is adds for Grammarly. Every single time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and
| downright scammy ads they are hosting
|
| This is one of the things that kills me. Even in broadcasting
| TV, you get typical :15, :30, :60 ads with the occasional :45
| or longer :90. The ad pods are also defined so that you get a
| set number say something like 3:00 max.
|
| YT has scammy ads where if you are just trying to let something
| stream in the background while you focus on other things where
| an ad plays past the 5s skippable time, they have some that are
| full on half hour if not even longer infomercials that takes
| completely out of the flow of whatever you were watching.
| That's down right criminal to me. The fact that long form
| content can be used as something that interrupts someone else's
| content is such a strange thing to allow. They must pay out the
| nose for those ad impressions
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > _This is one of the things that kills me. Even in
| broadcasting TV, you get typical :15, :30, :60 ads with the
| occasional :45 or longer :90._
|
| You are absolutely on to something. I think the seemingly
| random length of ads makes them feel somewhat more jarring to
| me. I also hate how sometimes the ads are just randomly
| interjected into a video. I know creators can control this to
| some degree, but older videos seem to suffer more.
|
| I have had ads on Youtube that were _hours long._ Obviously,
| at that length, they can be skipped. I know have some kind of
| 'trauma response' that when I watch Youtube on a computer
| while laying down, AFK, I have to have my wireless mouse in
| close proximity in case one those long ads appears. If I
| could predict the intervals in which the ads occurred and for
| how long, then I would probably just let them run and tune
| them out of my mind.
|
| Regardless, I swear Youtube serves me such long ass ads as a
| punishment sometimes. Sadly, my suspicion is supported by
| extremely weak evidence and confirmation bias. I'll just say
| this... Sometimes when I get served the same ad too many
| times, I report the ad for something like being offensive,
| inappropriate, or whatever. The ads seem to never come back,
| but I _swear_ within a day or two, I start getting longer ads
| -- even movie-length ads. I have also reported ads if they
| happen to be something like +30s and unskippable. This makes
| the ad instantly dismiss (or it used to, at least).
| snailmailman wrote:
| I'm curious if YouTube tracks the phone angle/motion
| through the gyroscope. I swear I always get the hour-long
| ads when my phone is not in my hand, and I'm not able to
| skip it immediately.
|
| I doubt they actually do that, but I'm sure it would
| increase ad view times. Im probably just only remembering
| the ads I don't immediately skip.
| pona-a wrote:
| Activity Recognition API has states ON_FOOT and STILL
| [0]. They can probably register to handle ON_FOOT-->STILL
| and wait for N minutes without touching.
|
| This also reminds me of the Idle Detection API they tried
| adding in Chrome. [1]
|
| [0] https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/g
| oogle/a...
|
| [1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-
| apis/idle...
| sean2 wrote:
| My anecdote is the opposite: I never get the hour long
| ads when my tablet is sitting there, only when I'm
| holding it. I always thought they knew the long adds were
| playing to an empty room, holding my place in the video
| till I came back to skip, and YT was deliberately trying
| to coax me back to watch with short ads.
|
| I also let the hour long ads play when I'm holding my
| phone (just to mess with the algorithm) so maybe that is
| just my experience.
| lobf wrote:
| I use a plugin on Safari called Vinegar, which converts all
| videos to HTML5. Because of this, I can just scrub right
| through an ad of any length. Only use it when signed out of
| your account, though, because they will eventually ban you
| if you do it while logged in.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| You realize don't have to watch youtube right?
|
| I'm not saying I like it. I'm saying that because I don't
| like it I don't watch.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's such a low effort bit of criticism of me calling out
| their scammy behavior. Yes, I could not watch, but that
| does nothing to solve the actual problem. By ignoring the
| problem, you're just giving them the okay to continue with
| scammy behavior. If they behaved like normal broadcasters
| and had standards on what ads they showed, I'd have much
| less of a problem. Some of the content that theGoogs allows
| and accepts and distributes is appalling.
|
| Being unable to accept critical comments and just brush
| them off with "just don't watch" is just really not
| appropriate. You can also just not reply to comments on HN
| when you don't have anything that contributes the
| conversation, but yet you chose _not_ to do that yourself.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| "You criticise society, yet you live in it. Curious."
| hansvm wrote:
| I'm shocked and appalled that you'd call the "virtual harems"
| YouTube tries to get me to install either scammy or wildly
| inappropriate. I've reported them a dozen times, and they're
| still on the platform, so I'm sure Lord Google knows something
| I don't about their saintlihood.
|
| /s
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm sorry, but Youtube got to keep its servers up somehow and
| pay the content creators. This means ads.
|
| If you don't like them, then pay for Youtube Premium and you
| can get ad-free experience. Although if it's not available in
| your country, then adblocking is a reasonable approach.
| jfoster wrote:
| The sheer resistance to paying for YouTube Premium is proving
| the need for ads.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| YouTube has an estimated worth, if it were a stand-alone
| company, of $475 billion to $550 billion. I'm sure they'll
| survive off just fine continuing to sell my personal
| information just like that always have.
| jfoster wrote:
| Yes, it's a perfectly suitable model. I don't have a
| problem with it. (but I do use YouTube frequently enough
| that I decided to pay for premium)
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Google do not, and literally never have "sold your
| personal information."
|
| They deliver targeted advertising due to the information
| they have. That's the model. They make literally zero
| dollars a year selling personal information.
| madeforhnyo wrote:
| Source? Google is literally an online ad monopoly, and
| being sued for it. They did track and continue tracking
| users, and they sell data though their SSP, DSP, ad
| networks, ad exchanges they own.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| That is not "selling data".
|
| That is exactly what I said. They sell targeted
| advertising.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| The data is their golden goose. They only sell the eggs.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Find the webpage where you can buy googles user data. Not
| where you can buy ad slots, but where you can buy the raw
| tracking data like data brokers sell.
|
| I'll wait.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Or just pay for Premium... No one's forcing you to do anything.
| inetknght wrote:
| Wait until Google shows ads in premium too. Paid-for cable TV
| did the same rugpull decades ago.
| jfoster wrote:
| So what's your argument? That YouTube shouldn't exist, or
| that it should be a charity? Something else?
| morsch wrote:
| Both sound like good options to me. Split it up or turn
| it into a nonprofit. Although I suppose the former would
| man paying 15 bucks to each baby YouTube, so maybe not.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| How about advertising without the tracking? Advertising
| not shown specifically to me because of any attributes
| Google thinks apply to me? Advertising limited to a 5s
| lead in at the start of the video (today, this video is
| sponsored by ...) and a static banner hidden when going
| full-screen. Advertising held to high standards, and
| advertising which can be vetoed by the video's uploader.
| In short, ethical advertising.
|
| Google can surely figure this out and still turn a profit
| on Youtube. Greed stops them from doing this.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Google almost certainly doesn't turn a profit on YouTube
| _now_. It would unquestionably lose billions of dollars a
| year with the advertising you want.
| Lio wrote:
| Why? Surely knowing the content of the video gives them
| enough context to serve advertising relevant to the
| viewer without tracking.
|
| At the very least they could guarentee that YouTube
| Premium tracking doesn't get used for profiling later. I
| think that would be a very acceptable solution but they
| don't offer it.
|
| You pay but you're still snooped on.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _So what 's your argument? That YouTube shouldn't
| exist, or that it should be a charity? Something else?_
|
| I've been thinking about it for a long time (years). I
| don't really have the right words for my thoughts, and I
| think charity is probably closest.
|
| But yes, at this point, I think that many "free" services
| should be charities to prevent them from being corrupted
| by rugpulls.
| oefrha wrote:
| That's the thing about modern capitalism. Making profit
| isn't enough, the profit has to keep growing. So once the
| market is saturated, you either reduce perks, jack up
| prices, bundle new features to jack up prices (my GSuite
| bills doubled in ~3 years before I went in and adjusted the
| plan; the latest price hike "reflects the significant added
| AI value"), or find new ways to monetize the same users
| (ads, "partners", etc.). It's inevitable.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Sure, then stop paying for it when they start showing ads
| in premium. It's a monthly subscription.
|
| Not paying for it because it might become bad some time in
| the future is not a great argument.
| al_borland wrote:
| I'm a Premium subscriber. If they show me a single ad I
| will unsubscribe immediately.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Without the ads, I'd probably spend way too much time on
| YouTube. I need something to push me into the rage-quit
| territory after enough time has passed.
| al_borland wrote:
| I subscribe to Premium and quit a while back with this idea
| in mind. It didn't work. The ads made me rage-sign-up-for-
| premium.
|
| Of the various streaming platforms I subscribe to, I
| probably get the most value from YouTube.
|
| Though I wish there was an option to get it for less
| without YouTube Muisc, that didn't also lead to ads on
| YouTube itself. I was excited when I saw Lite announced,
| then I read the details and my excitement quickly faded and
| turned into disappointment.
| tptacek wrote:
| Or, you could just honor the terms you clearly understand the
| content is being offered under, and just not use the service.
|
| Not as fun to write about as coercion is, though.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Or you could instead give them the middle finger and take
| anything they put out there. TOS are not binding contracts
| and until you're contractually bound to do otherwise, taking
| what they're handing out is completely reasonable.
| tptacek wrote:
| Alright, but when they give the middle finger back at you
| in other ways, you made your bed.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _TOS are not binding contracts_
|
| American courts have had no difficulty in holding that TOS
| are binding IF done correctly. It wouldn't be prudent to
| imagine that YouTube's lawyers don't know how to do that.
|
| Santa Clara Law professor Eric Goldman knows approximately
| everything about this subject. He posts frequent updates on
| his blog.
|
| https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/category/licensingcon
| t...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's absolutely #%^*ing insane how bad and often inappropriate
| the ads are, to the point that I swear YouTube is in growth
| trouble. It feels like there's just management layers who need
| their bonus or promotion, driven by some percent growth or some
| KPI so their standards are at the floorboards. I've seen porn
| in the still frame ads on mobile once (much worse than Evony
| Online if you remember those ads...)
| snailmailman wrote:
| I have all ad targeting features turned off on my account -
| which I assume means i unfortunately get the bottom-of-the-
| barrel ads.
|
| The still frame ads are _always_ NSFW games or ads for
| viagra-like products. In shorts, the ads are _always_ scams
| of some kind. Usually deepfakes of elon musk "giving
| investment advice" but also "medical experts" recommending
| likely dangerous scams, or "free money the government isnt
| telling you about" if you give them all your information, or
| weird ai generated videos advertising mystery products that
| certainly don't actually exist.
|
| In front of (and in the middle of) actual videos, it's a mix
| of the all the scams, plus the occasional ad for a legitimate
| product, but rarely in my native language. Usually Spectrum
| internet ads exclusively in spanish.
|
| I got a gun ad a few times several months ago. Advertising
| features such as "no license required" and "easy to sneak
| through security". As blatantly illegal as it was, the ad ran
| for at least a full month. I reported it every time I saw it,
| but I'm convinced those reports aren't ever viewed by anyone.
|
| I continue blocking these ads on my desktop without remorse.
| I only encounter the ads on my iPhone.
| wincy wrote:
| YouTube has decided that my family is African American and
| Spanish speaking at some point, and nothing will convince
| them otherwise. We are neither of those things. At one
| point a few years ago my daughter wanted to listen to the
| Peppa Pig album in Spanish and I guess maybe that's why?
|
| It's crazy how bad and mistargeted it all is.
| kr2 wrote:
| > The still frame ads are always NSFW games or ads for
| viagra-like products. In shorts, the ads are always scams
| of some kind. Usually deepfakes of elon musk "giving
| investment advice" but also "medical experts" recommending
| likely dangerous scams
|
| WHAT?? This (and similar anecdote in parent comments) is
| completely shocking, I had no idea this was a thing. All
| ads I get on YouTube are blue chip companies or (big
| budget) movie trailers...seeing a porn still in an ad on
| YouTube would floor me
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| I haven't seen porn in an ad, but there was a month when
| I kept getting deepfake Elon Musks giving investment
| advice _every time_ I tried to watch something on
| YouTube.
|
| Maybe YouTube puts us into different ad groups, or
| something like that.
|
| So, from my perspective, YouTube ads have an opposite
| effect... when I see something advertised on YouTube, I
| automatically suspect that it is some kind of scam.
| simianwords wrote:
| Idk man instead of freeloading how about paying for the
| service? I generally avoid dismissive comments like these but I
| think it needs to be said.
|
| If you don't like ads pay for the service. You don't deserve
| content for free.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Even if you pay for YouTube you will still see ads inserted
| by the content creators.
| vikramkr wrote:
| That's not up to YouTube, that's what the creator is doing.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| YouTube could stop it if they wanted.
| johnisgood wrote:
| The creators must specify the start and end timestamp of
| the ad (some do), so you would be allowed to skip it
| easily.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| You can if you have Premium. If you start manually
| skipping forward, the UI gives you a 'Jump ahead' button
| that skips straight to the end of the segment (based on
| crowd-sourced data, it seems).
| delecti wrote:
| No, this is clearly a false equivalence.
|
| You see the content you choose to click on. Should my
| premium membership mean that Youtube blocks me from viewing
| Superbowl commercials the day after? Or movie trailers?
| Premium is simply paying Youtube so that Youtube will not
| show you Youtube's ads.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| So what? It's still paying to see less ads. If ads bother
| you, pay
| noqc wrote:
| You are no more freeloading by ignoring the ads they serve
| you than by watching them.
| Lapel2742 wrote:
| I start paying them when they start paying me for my data.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >forcing
|
| Why people say this? You can either not use Youtube or pay for
| premium. Nobody is forcing you to download hundreds and
| hundreds of gigabytes of video?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Maybe stop using Google services then? It's very straight
| forward to boycott something you don't agree with.
| dbbk wrote:
| Your position is that you should be able to use YouTube
| completely for free then? How is that financially sustainable?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Cue a long list of people who will say "I would pay for
| Premium except X Y and Z".
|
| The fact is free YouTube is only possible with ads, and
| potentially only with the extremely detested ads we're
| talking about here. The other major UGC video platform
| (Twitch) is not profitable.
|
| Broadcast TV and even cable or fixed content library
| streaming is A LOT cheaper to run than something like
| YouTube. I don't mean purely machine-wise, I also mean in
| terms of salaries, and those do matter to keep the service up
| and running, not to mention growing
| josephcsible wrote:
| > This locks a few global objects by using Object.defineProperty
| to set them as non-writable, which prevents later code from
| overwriting them with a Proxy that alters their behaviour. So
| uBlock Origin can only proxy JSON.stringify if it can run before
| this locker script does.
|
| This seems like a bug in browsers, or possibly in the spec. Page
| content and scripts should never be able to restrict what browser
| extensions can do.
| rasz wrote:
| >This seems like a bug in browsers
|
| oh its a Chrome feature! Around 2 years ago Chrome pushed an
| update that speedup time to load first initial page by delaying
| Extension initialization. Last page you closed Chrome on will
| load before uBo, will be able to bypass all filters/block and
| will be able to detect uBo being loaded.
| uzerfcwn wrote:
| Feel free to write a bug report to Chrome developers or
| ManifestV3 authors. In the meantime, Firefox users can override
| any delivered content with the webRequest API.
| mcdeltat wrote:
| I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly
| haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours
| per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific
| content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't
| need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone
| sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look,
| but otherwise no engagement with the platform.
|
| I'd highly recommend everyone try reducing their intake of
| passive entertainment like youtube and redirecting that time
| towards more creative or mindful pursuits.
| grugagag wrote:
| Large parts of the world population are addicted to these
| platforms. It's tobacco 2.0
| satoru42 wrote:
| Tiktok is opium 3.0, but this time it's not UK selling the
| drugs.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Not surprising at all. We delude ourselves into thinking we're
| better because our brand of slop is educational, but it's still
| slop.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan. Nobody
| gets ads. It is a bargain.
|
| You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build
| projects without videos. But why??
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm with you on this one. I pay for YT premium family,
| and it's basically the only subscription in 2025 that feels
| worth it to me. My wife watches YouTube instead of cable TV,
| so it's already a cheap cable bill. But you also get YouTube
| music! Which I'll admit is a slightly janky music app since
| it also kind of sits on top of YouTube videos that it decides
| are mostly music. But their actual music selection is good if
| you kinda know how to navigate the UI to the "real" music.
| tabony wrote:
| A lot of people will spend $30 at a coffee shop in a week.
| Maybe $150 in one month.
|
| I think $15 for a whole month of entertainment, tutorials,
| and useful content and to pay the people who create the
| videos is worth it.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| You also have to account for whatever awful thing Google
| is likely to do with your $15.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Like giving 55% of it to content creators
| salawat wrote:
| Or routing it to support work for countries with
| profitable contracts, but questionable dedication to
| human rights.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| As do coffee roasters.
| Karupan wrote:
| I'd gladly pay for YouTube or other Google services when they
| offer an option to not track my activity at all. For me it's
| not about seeing ads just on YouTube, but being tracked all
| through the web and still being served inappropriate or
| spammy ads.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > when they offer an option to not track my activity
|
| this right here, im not opposed to paying for content, but
| the tracking and sharing is a big concern for me too
|
| if all i'd watch are tv shows like netflix its one thing,
| but yt has such broad content i'd rather not be
| advertised/tracked about stuff i just clicked once and
| never again...
| euleriancon wrote:
| While I strongly doubt this fully disables tracking, you
| can at least disable your watch history on youtube which
| will have the effect of the recommendation algorithm not
| adjusting to your preferences.
|
| You can change it from Google account > Data & Privacy >
| History Settings > youtube History
|
| If you have youtube premium + a general purpose ad
| blocker + disable watch history its really hard to tell
| if you are being tracked.
|
| If you do decide to disable watch history, be prepared
| for just how terrible the median youtube interest is. All
| recommendations become beyond worthless.
| dimator wrote:
| at this point, there's no use in implanting the goal posts
| into the ground, they're going to be moved again in a few
| seconds.
| BeetleB wrote:
| If someone really likes Youtube content - sure, I guess. For
| me the cost isn't worth it - when I compare with other
| streaming services.
|
| I got rid of the Youtube app from my Roku many months ago,
| and I haven't missed it. That wouldn't be the case for most
| other streaming apps that I still have.
|
| I think for me - right from the day Youtube launched - I
| never liked the interface. It's the worst streaming interface
| of all the streaming services.
| the_af wrote:
| Hm, in my opinion there's no such thing as "YouTube
| content". Content, that's the blanket word I object to.
|
| What there _is_ is people (and companies) uploading stuff.
| Some useful, some entertaining, some mindless, some for me,
| some not for me.
|
| I cannot say "YouTube content" is -- or is not -- for me
| because the notion is meaningless. Individual videos and
| channels _are_ definitely for me, and are hard to find
| elsewhere. YouTube by itself is not a thing.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| Yeah putting a reaction video in the same category as a
| video essayist/documentary is strange. In a sea of
| content farm videos there are still many interesting
| islands of thought-provoking stuff on youtube.
| throwawaygmbno wrote:
| Or just block the ads, let others subsidize it for me until
| the executive greed eventually turns the product to crap and
| we collectively move on to the newer options that have filled
| the gap. Cable used to mostly be ad free as well. Now normal
| TV shows are 21 minutes with 9 minutes of ads. Older TV show
| reruns are actually sped up with parts cut out of them.
| Google created a monopoly by making the product great with
| unobtrusive ads and now is trying to change the deal. There
| is absolutely already a plan in place where the number of
| paying premium users hits some critical number and they "test
| out" short ads. I am not going to reward them.
|
| I just checked my uBlock stats inside of AdNauseum on my
| personal laptop. This is a machine I have not used regularly
| in over 2 years. Being generous I am assuming every ad
| blocked was static, not animated, had no sound, and required
| no interaction by me to skip, so just was a one second
| glance.
|
| I have gotten back 115+ days of my life to do things I
| actually want to do. 10.34 million ads. From one single
| machine, in just Firefox. I now have AdGuard on my network
| and use Tailscale to block ads on all my devices. There is no
| world where I ever go back to seeing ads that I can block and
| definitely will not be rewarding them for trying to push ads
| on what was a great product.
| scoofy wrote:
| Everyone wants to talk about _other people_ being greedy
| when justifying their own coincidental preference for not
| giving away money they don't have to.
|
| Nebula is there, it's not free either.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Things at scale are so incredibly cheap if you take out
| unnatural profits.
|
| This argument doesn't really hold.
| scoofy wrote:
| They split revenues 55/45 with creators. That level of
| profit sharing is basically unheard of in television,
| film, books, etc.
|
| Again, yea, there are monopoly concerns, but you're going
| to move the goalposts to "anything scalable" being worth
| stealing from then good luck to you.
|
| I'm not going to pretend I don't use Adblock, but when
| sites actually enforce using it, I'm not going to pretend
| they're evil for doing it.
| JetSpiegel wrote:
| They are not responsible for the content, so they are not
| a publisher, more like the company that prints the
| newspapers. Imagine if NYT printers charged more if NYT
| decided to raise the sticker price?
|
| Why not charge creators for the infrastructure cost?
| PurestGuava wrote:
| Making _any profit at all_ on a service that hosts and
| streams 4K video from everyone to everyone over the
| Internet while also compensating the creators of that
| video is no mean feat.
| layer8 wrote:
| We don't know that YouTube has become profitable yet.
| solannou wrote:
| I'm barely sure that the long term strategy of YouTube is
| "more ads". The premium account won't be always ads free
| jvolkman wrote:
| But it is now. And there's no contract, so it's easy to
| cancel if that ever changes.
| motoxpro wrote:
| This is a big misunderstanding of the business model. The
| price might go up, but there will always be a tier with no
| ads.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Unfortunately, the way ads work, the people who pay to
| avoid ads are inevitably the ones worth advertising to.
| The Nash equilibrium is that every user sees ads.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That sounds off to me. I would think that the people who
| pay to avoid ads are very likely to jump to ad blockers
| if the ad-free subscription ceases to exist. Not to
| mention that they're going to be very unlikely to convert
| on advertising.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You would, but most people who pay are not technically
| savvy enough to get the right adblock, keep it up to
| date, etc.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| The paid service would of course have to offer something
| else other than "no ads" if they started showing ads in
| it
|
| The type of people who have already indicated that they
| have disposable income, and are willing to pay for a
| service, are more attractive to advertisers than people
| who are known to have opted for a worse experience for
| free
| stickfigure wrote:
| If that ever happens then we can reopen the discussion of
| the morality of adblockers on youtube. In the mean time,
| just pay for it.
| stiray wrote:
| People dont understand how world works. Management reward are
| tied to earning more money. As long this is true, the next
| year, the reward will be tied to earning even more. The more
| you pay, the more it will cost. And when people wont be
| prepared to pay more, alternative model will be invented,
| like adding ads to paid content. There is only one way to
| stop this - break it from the start and make it nonviable,
| don't pay.
|
| They are trying to block ads blockers as some manager wasn't
| able to get reward. Or is worried he wont get it. And this
| means that money that can be collected from ads has peaked.
| Now come the "optimizations", now payable, then no longer
| free, later payable with ads, then they will squeeze content
| creators, that will move to other platforms where you will
| have to pay for multiple platforms where you were once
| watching it for free on YT.
|
| Sounds familiar?
|
| Made it as short as possible, but this could be wall of text,
| from comparing to what happened to streaming services etc.
| Without piracy (not advocating but it is a fact that it
| forced publishers into internet model) we would probably
| still buy content on CDs and DVDs, maybe BluRays.
|
| Greed of infinite growth in finite system has destroyed the
| planet and you can bet it will destroy YT too.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Except the alternative model will be invented even when
| people can pay more -- do both and make even MORE.
|
| It used to be practically shameful for large companies to
| run ads on their websites. They had clean websites with
| only their content. Especially for subscribers. Now they're
| all filled with ads!
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Or just pay for it?
|
| So I do now, but only since I moved to a country where it
| doesn't cost so much. I watch maybe 6 hours absolutely tops
| of YouTube a month? I get charged $7/m for it, which still
| feels usurious, but in the UK they want almost $17/m which is
| firmly in "go fuck yourself" territory. I'd like them to tier
| pricing so casual users like me aren't paying for people who
| are using YouTube as their primary entertainment mechanism.
| mcdeltat wrote:
| My higher point was you probably don't need video
| entertainment in your life. Surely you would agree that just
| about any hobby is more holistically enriching than watching
| youtube? Not to mention other issues surrounding mass video
| content.
| layer8 wrote:
| YouTube provides a lot of information and learning material
| for hobbies. That's what I mostly use it for, besides
| music, and movie reviews which save so much time compared
| to having to watch the movie (so do reduce time spent with
| video entertainment).
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I used to, but I stopped recently.
|
| 1. They still serve ads. Often for Google products underneath
| the videos and in the feed. Content creators are also allowed
| to turn on contextual ads over the top of videos, as well as
| merchandise underneath their videos.
|
| 2. Sponsored segments are unbelievably widespread now, and
| can take up significant portions of the video. These are ads,
| and they are also permitted by YouTube.
|
| 3. YouTube has been making the service worse and worse as
| time goes on. I cannot turn off shorts, even though I despise
| them. They're all over my feed. Removing the downvote score
| means I cannot tell if a video is spam before clicking on it
| now. Ostensibly YouTube serves more video hours now, but at
| our expense.
|
| 4. YouTube recently raised my price 40% overnight.
|
| There was space for reasonable prices without making their
| service worse. They crossed that line for me and I think for
| many others too.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It sounds like you don't like the experience and an
| adblocker isn't going to change that. If you don't like
| youtube and you don't watch it... it's fine? Everyone is
| entitled to their preferences.
|
| Specifically though:
|
| 2. Content creators shill for things, sure. Youtube doesn't
| stop you from fast-forwarding through these segments. These
| creators are real human beings that put a ton of work into
| bringing me content and I don't begrudge them making some
| money. These are the ads that work on me; I deliberately
| use their affiliate links. I _want_ them to spend more time
| making content. Hell there are a dozen different Youtube
| creators I pay monthly on Patreon just because!
|
| I don't find these sponsorships terrible and at any rate
| it's not Youtube's fault.
|
| 3. Yeah I would love to have a Shortblocker extension in my
| browser, no argument there. But I don't think the visible
| downvotes make any material difference. The recommendation
| algorithm is _excellent_ and I don 't see spam.
|
| 4. The price is still extremely reasonable compared to the
| value I get. Maybe it isn't for you, that's fine. But the
| fact is you can pay for no-ads; complaining about adblock
| behavior rings incredibly hollow.
| I_Can_Fix_YT wrote:
| If you use Firefox Nightly (mobile) then you can:
|
| 1. Fully block ads with uBlock Origin
|
| 2. Block in-video sponsorships with Sponsorblock
|
| 3. Block all shorts permanently with Hide Youtube-Shorts
|
| These 3 extensions fix your issues. There is also an
| extension to bring back downvotes. I do not use it but I
| think it is widespread enough to be useful as spam
| detection.
|
| This also allows you to listen to videos with your screen
| turned off and gives you the option to have the video
| playing in a tiny screen so you can watch it while doing
| other things on your phone.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I will never pay for an ad-supported product. As long as
| YouTube accepts money from advertisers, their loyalty is
| split between users and advertisers. And advertisers will
| eventually win: if YouTube Premium gains traction,
| advertisers will be willing to pay more for access to premium
| users, and YouTube can only ignore that for so long. YouTube
| Premium _will_ have ads eventually--it 's just a matter of
| time. It already happened to cable, it happened to Prime, and
| it will happen to every streaming service that relies on ads
| eventually.
|
| The only answer is to support companies that do not receive
| any money from ads (i.e. Kagi). Until that exists for
| streaming, I'm blocking ads and not giving them a cent.
| entropie wrote:
| > Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan.
|
| Thats exactly what some mobster would say to you when
| asking/forcing you for some money to buy protection for his
| etablisment.
|
| I see that you can argue that you use a service that costs
| money. Yes. But the advertising is unacceptable not only
| because it is advertising, but also because of its content
| AND the way it is delivered. You can't support that.
| DavideNL wrote:
| > Or just pay for it?
|
| on top of all the things already mentioned like privacy
| issues, etc.
|
| - you'll also still see "Branded Content" when paying Google:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_content
|
| - because of Googles "monopoly", they take a big % of your
| money, instead of you actually paying the content creators
| themselves.
| righthand wrote:
| > You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build
| projects without videos. But why??
|
| > redirecting that time towards more creative or mindful
| pursuits.
| dleslie wrote:
| Turns out some of the best science shows are on PBS and Nebula.
| edoceo wrote:
| 3-2-1 Contact
| memset wrote:
| What do you do with all the extra time? How do you keep from
| sliding back?
| alexjplant wrote:
| I install the "Undistracted" extension in all of my Brave
| instances. In addition to having the ability to block
| arbitrary URLs it has many site-specific options like
| blocking YouTube recommendations or the LinkedIn timeline,
| all of which I ruthlessly enable. You can also set it to only
| work on certain days and times of the week. It's immensely
| useful.
|
| I also pay for Kagi which has the ability to block certain
| domains from results. I'd imagine that blocking Instagram,
| Reddit, Youtube, etc. would also prevent rabbit-holing.
| joshvm wrote:
| Top tip from using only high-latency satellite internet for
| long periods: add a significant delay to every request to
| problematic sites. As soon as the dopamine loop is broken,
| you'll find the wait so frustrating that you won't bother.
| safety1st wrote:
| I love this idea, what sort of technical methods do you
| have in mind for implementing it?
| joshvm wrote:
| I imagine there are tools that will artificially slow
| down requests.
|
| The lazy way would be to VPN somewhere as far away as
| possible and throttle your bandwidth. That would get you
| 250ms of round trip latency for free. In Antarctica we
| had up to 3000ms on a bad day. You learn to do stuff
| offline, build from source instead of download compiled
| binaries and use Kiwix. Nowadays it's less of an issue
| because you can ask LLMs questions and have them search
| for you and all you need to transfer is text. Much much
| easier than loading heavy websites.
|
| This app looks fun:
| https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/index.html (randomly
| interferes with your packets)
| adzm wrote:
| Wait you people have extra time?!?
| mcdeltat wrote:
| I started reading again. Which has been quite enjoyable after
| the initial bump of "reading is boring compared to <favourite
| new video content>". Also putting more time into things I
| know I find more rewarding. And sometimes, just doing nothing
| much is nice as a brain break.
| t0lo wrote:
| i deleted my youtube accounts and switched to patreon- can
| still see new videos on youtube from my patreon people cause im
| notified but it's far more intentional and quality content
| coffeefirst wrote:
| I'm increasing obsessed with the idea that the user--not some
| engagement algorithm--should be in the drivers seat. This is
| an interesting way to go about it...
| wussboy wrote:
| I'm starting to look at "engagement" as an anti-statistic.
| Like, if you're chasing engagement, what other more
| meaningful thing are you ignoring? Or, the more engagement
| something has, the less value it has to society.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can use YouTube with just the subscriptions list and
| never visit the algorithmic tab. That's how I use it most
| of the time.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| I did the same thing with Netflix. Also, killed off my Prime
| subscription and quit the entirety of Amazon. Well, except for
| AWS, because that's going to be impossible until they
| accidentally all the data.
|
| As for youtube, I just pay for ad free. If they ever start
| violating that they'll also be banished to the corn field.
| mayli wrote:
| True, I have the same feeling. It's nice to limit my time
| spending on yt or other passive entertainment.
| the_af wrote:
| For some of us, YouTube _is_ part of our creative and mindful
| pursuits. It either drives our interests (much like reading a
| magazine about specialized topics would, in the past), or
| explains how to do something, or simply builds a community of
| like minded people all over the world.
|
| I find the argument of "how much you don't need in your life"
| not very compelling.
|
| On one hand, we "need" very little: health, food, shelter. On
| the other, a life worth living is made of everything else that
| is not, strictly speaking, truly needed: ideas, hobbies,
| passions, entertainment, projects, etc.
| uncircle wrote:
| Passively consuming content is not the same as reading a
| magazine or a book.
|
| Agreed that anyone can fill their own free time with whatever
| they want. But youtube is just junk food for the mind,
| packaged as stuff that interests you. It's conveniently split
| to increase ad revenue, uses clickbait to drive engagement,
| and all the techniques developed on TV the past 80 years to
| keep us glued in front of the screen. Youtube and the
| "content" itself is designed to keep you watching.
|
| And I say that as someone who used to mainly watch long form
| essays, not the trending bullshit. It's all just distraction
| and opium for the masses, disguised as edutainment.
| the_af wrote:
| > _But youtube is just junk food for the mind, packaged as
| stuff that interests you_
|
| This is demonstrably false.
|
| There's no such thing as "YouTube stuff", there's thousands
| of people uploading videos, some interesting to you, some
| not, some junk, some very in-depth, some garbage, some very
| thoughtful -- Sturgeon's Law applies. There are music
| videos, science videos, history videos, hobby videos,
| videos analyzing everything under the sun (e.g. the amazing
| Every Frame A Painting), etc.
|
| I don't know which videos _you_ watch, but mine aren 't
| "junk food".
| uncircle wrote:
| It is not _demonstrably_ false. You operate under the
| assumption that more knowledge and the more you know
| about things, the better. So from your point of view
| spending 12 hours watching philosophy essays and history
| videos can only be a good thing.
|
| Well, I strongly disagree with this (widespread) premise.
| It is still marketing-driven consumption and another form
| of pervasive distraction which plagues the modern world,
| whether you spend 6 hours watching reality TV or essays
| on the conquests of Genghis Khan. What matters is how
| much time you spend in a stupor passively receiving
| useless information, to detach yourself from a reality
| you have no control over; the content itself is just a
| matter of taste.
|
| I want to stress there is of course a difference between
| decompressing with a nice and well-written YouTube video
| after dinner and wasting your life watching memes. But it
| is still a form of distraction, and YouTube does its
| utmost to make the experience as exciting and addictive
| as possible, just like McDonalds.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It is not demonstrably false_
|
| Yes, yes it is. I only have to find one non-junk video to
| invalidate your assertion, and since I've found hundreds,
| your assertion is false.
|
| > _You operate under the assumption that more knowledge
| and the more you know about things, the better. So from
| your point of view spending 12 hours watching philosophy
| essays and history videos can only be a good thing_
|
| No, I said nothing of the sort. It's very difficult to
| discuss anything with someone having such a difficulty
| engaging with the arguments as stated.
|
| By the way, if you're going to make the claim that
| knowing more (or being curious about the world) is not a
| good pursuit in life, then... good luck with that! You
| won't find many people who agree.
|
| > _What matters is how much time you spend in a stupor
| passively receiving useless information, to detach
| yourself from a reality you have no control over; the
| content itself is just a matter of taste._
|
| Wow. Stupor? Useless? Who are _you_ to determine what is
| stupefying or useless to _others_? (By the way, I fixed
| my toilet thanks to a YouTube video teaching me how. Was
| this useless and stupefying?).
|
| > _But it is still a form of distraction, and YouTube
| does its utmost to make the experience as exciting and
| addictive as possible, just like McDonalds._
|
| Everything that is not sleeping, eating and taking a dump
| is a form of distraction. This doesn't provide any
| insight.
|
| Don't make the mistake of thinking that the kind of
| videos _you_ find in YouTube is what someone else arguing
| with you is watching. Maybe you watched junk videos, and
| they shaped your opinion of YouTube. Maybe you 're logged
| off, in which case YouTube's recommendations are so
| random and garbage, they could give you a bad impression.
| I'm always logged in, and the recommendations I get are
| mostly relevant and good quality; I seldom get
| recommended meme videos or garbage.
|
| PS: I'm sure someone once made the same argument you're
| making, only about books.
| mcdeltat wrote:
| Each to their own. I'm not saying youtube is all garbage
| useless content, definitely there are quality conversations
| about varying topics. The level of community probably varies
| between interests and for my interests, youtube was hardly a
| core facet of the hobby. Perhaps for you it's different.
|
| However, I will add 2 counterpoints. Firstly, I don't think
| consuming a huge amount (e.g. the amount I was) of passive
| video content is good for your wellbeing. Second, I think
| it's interesting to examine why youtube must "drive" your
| hobby/interest to a large degree. Is there perhaps a mental
| trap of thinking you must be in with the crowd and the latest
| and greatest? What about growing your creative pursuit
| organically through your own journey? Just things to consider
| - may or may not be applicable. It was applicable for me and
| my photography hobby. There's tonnes of photography content
| out there but most of it is generic crap and I've found it
| more rewarding to go my own path so to speak.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Second, I think it 's interesting to examine why youtube
| must "drive" your hobby/interest to a large degree. Is
| there perhaps a mental trap of thinking you must be in with
| the crowd and the latest and greatest?_
|
| No? There's the "human as a social animal" aspect, I enjoy
| being part of a community.
|
| Nothing particular to YouTube here.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > mostly quality educational/scientific content
|
| Probably because it wasn't. In my experience even the stuff
| people consider quality on YouTube is still kinda gross
| engagement bait, especially things like video essays (which are
| an absolute plague imo)
| p2detar wrote:
| I have also greatly decreased the time I watch YT and I have
| not been missing it. I used to have playlists, favs, lots of
| channels to follow. I stopped doing all that. Occasionally I'd
| "watch" something on the background while I work, but it has to
| be non-engaging. The truth about YT is--you don't need it.
| gizmodo59 wrote:
| Same! It has gotten a lot more expensive and even if I pay for
| premium, content creators show sponsored ads. I don't know what
| I'm paying for.
| tlogan wrote:
| Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content
| we're consuming isn't free to create and even if the content is
| free, it still costs money to store and distribute?
|
| We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be
| intrusive or annoying. But let's asking ourselves: Why do we feel
| entitled to get this for free?
|
| This isn't a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the
| reasoning.
| charcircuit wrote:
| There is a category of people for where if they are able to get
| away with not paying for something than they think it would be
| foolish not to.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Some websites will stop me from accessing content because I use
| an ad blocker. I think that's fair play, and take my attention
| somewhere else. I don't hide that I use adblocker, and it's
| easy enough to identify.
| aniviacat wrote:
| Watching ads just offloads the cost on other people. I would go
| as far as saying that watching ads is immoral (if you can avoid
| it), as you are effectively stealing from others.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Why do we feel entitled to get this for free?
|
| With how user-hostile and anti-competitive Google is behaving,
| this is like asking why soldiers feel entitled to shoot at the
| enemy. Keep giving them money, keep watching their ads that
| they sell on rigged auctions [1], and eventually the only way
| to access the web will be with locked-against-the-user browsers
| [2], and everything will be surveilled (though it nearly
| already is - Google never asks itself why it should feel
| entitled to follow users around the web, or in real-life,
| despite opt-outs [3], and you'll find support for any
| alternative OSes mysteriously withering due to secret anti-
| competitive contracts between Google and manufacturers [4]). I
| know this isn't the reasoning people use, but that is what the
| outcome will be.
|
| As for ads - it has always been hard, nearly impossible to
| block them, and few people did. Just like you can't block a
| billboard next to the freeway, you can't block a jpeg that's
| served as part of the webpage you're visiting, as it's
| programmatically indistinguishable from native content.
|
| What people actually block are not ads, but a hybrid half-ad-
| half-surveillance entity, that's called an "ad" by historical
| accident.
|
| [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-
| three-t...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
|
| [3] https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb
|
| [4]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.proto...
| throw123xz wrote:
| Back when I started using Google Adsense, they had a 3 ad per
| page rule. You could be banned if you went above that limit.
| Today you can easily find web pages with 10, 15 or even more ad
| spots... one after each paragraph, sidebar, full page "popup",
| etc.
|
| On YouTube, we went from a banner on the video to a few seconds
| of a video before to multiple ads before the video to multiple
| ad pauses even on relatively short videos (under 10 minutes).
| Add to that the sponsored sections of the video itself, which
| are added by the content creator, and other ads (stores,
| tickets, etc) that sometimes YouTube adds under the video even
| if you pay for premium.
|
| Google Search pages used to have one or two ads at the top,
| with a different background colour than search results. Now
| sometimes I have to scroll down to see organic content, because
| sponsored content fills my screen.
|
| I don't think I'm entitled to have access to all this for free,
| but we went too far... and so I use an adblocker on all my
| devices.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| AdSense had that rule when you manually placed the ads on
| your website. Ever since they started doing automatic
| placements with AI or whatever, they simply spam the page
| with ads.
|
| Pretty much all article-based sites, recipes, news, blog
| posts, anything built with wordpress to blogspot. Their
| algorithm seems to ensure that there is always 1 ad visible
| on screen at all times. With font sizes as big as they are
| these days this means 1 ad every two paragraphs.
|
| And the auto placement is enabled by default on new accounts,
| and all these new "features," get automatically enabled from
| time to time. I'm sure there is a mountain of webmasters that
| didn't even notice that their websites have gotten filled
| with ads.
|
| The worst one is that interstital that appears whenever you
| click a link. I'm pretty sure Google had a rule against that
| type of popup, and then they literally made the popup
| themselves.
|
| On the other hand, all of this can be disabled.
|
| The question is how much money does a website need to make to
| stay online. If it could survive with fewer ads, I'm sure
| there would be fewer.
| arcbyte wrote:
| For the same reason I had all the ads cut out of my newspaper
| before I read it back in the day - i don't want to see them.
|
| It's my browser, my copy of the website, and I'll have my user
| agent do whatever I want.
| dleslie wrote:
| They should follow in the steps of news media and simply block
| users who use ad blocking.
|
| But they seem hesitant to, probably because that would risk
| losing the engagement of those users.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Because the paid plan isn't anonymous and you have no guarantee
| that they won't sell your history to advertisers, even if you
| don't see ads.
|
| Perhaps you also have to show your YouTube history when you
| enter the US.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| There's no morality one way or the other. Google couldn't care
| less about me; I have no personal connection with anyone there.
| They'll treat me as poorly as the law allows (and then some) if
| it increases their bottom line. By the same measure, I'll do as
| much as I can get away with to remove the bad aspects of their
| service. If we lived in a system where I was using a service
| made by a person I knew and could talk to, then maybe there'd
| be more obligations to the exchange, but in this impersonal
| setup I feel no such obligation.
| psychoslave wrote:
| It takes a lot of time, money, care, education and love to grow
| human individual. Who would dare to even start considering
| paying high fees for the honor of receiving some of their time
| and attention? Why are video provider not paying people to
| obtain this privilege? No one dare to think they can get that
| for free, right?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| They are paying you, they are paying you with free content.
| It's actually a trade. Free content in exchange for your
| attention on ads
| vehemenz wrote:
| It's my GET request. I can do what I want with it.
|
| If Google want to force ads, they can put them in the video
| stream. If not, then they're trying to have it both ways.
| bitpush wrote:
| Great analogy. Its the same reason why I grab stuff off of
| supermarkets and walk out. If they really cared about it,
| they'll invest in better technology to stop me. Suckers.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| Your analogy is terrible. GET requests can be denied.
| whatshisface wrote:
| You're asking the question in a way that's unreflective of how
| people think. They can do it and want to do it and would need a
| reason to _not_ do it. So the question is, what would make
| someone feel like they were ethically compelled to watch an
| advertisement? It sounds impossible to me, maybe someone with a
| very unique perspective could chime in about themselves.
|
| Here's an attempt at a double-negative answer: you can't be
| ethically compelled into an unethical contract, and since
| advertisements are manipulative, voyeuristic and seek to take
| advantage of the limitations of human attentional control, it's
| a priori impossible for watching an ad or downloading a tracker
| to ever be ethically compulsory.
| nadermx wrote:
| Taking this in a more tangential, but similar thought. The
| copyright holder does not own the copyrights of the ad.
| Different copyrights.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There's a very simple answer.
|
| You want to watch some content. The content provider offers
| you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and
| also sit through some ads.
|
| You are _not obligated_ to watch ads. You are opting to watch
| them in exchange for the free content, then _skipping out on
| a commitment you volunteered for_ while still taking the free
| content.
|
| The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because you
| made a choice but didn't live up to it. Instead of either
| paying or not watching, you watched anyway.
| whatshisface wrote:
| All the best to you, I hope you enjoy watching your ads.
| :-)
| zdragnar wrote:
| I actually pay, rather than watch the ads, but a large
| part of that was also dumping Spotify and using the
| YouTube music app instead for listening in the car.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| this is ridiculous.
|
| The provider is welcome to serve ads, and i am welcome to
| not watch them. When there are Ads on TV and I get up to go
| to the kitchen, am i skipping out on a commitment? Am I now
| a freeloader? Should the TV have a camera to make sure I
| watch all the ads like a good little boy?
|
| People have been fastforwarding/skipping ads for decades.
| this is nothing new.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Technically, the provider only really cares that the ads
| played, not that you were paying attention to them.
|
| Unlike DVR for TVs, you are not welcome to skip playing
| them entirely. They've been pretty clear that skipping
| them via the use of ad blockers is a violation of the
| terms of service.
| tock wrote:
| > Technically, the provider only really cares that the
| ads played, not that you were paying attention to them.
|
| Advertisers do care about them. It's just that they don't
| have a way to track/measure it.
| wussboy wrote:
| And if they could find a way to make you pay attention
| you'd better believe they'd do it in a heartbeat
| nofunsir wrote:
| When Apple first launched face ID, there was talk (I
| can't remember where) of developers being excited about
| the possibility of tracking where their users were
| looking.
| malwrar wrote:
| So if ad blocking extensions could make YouTube think you
| watched the ad, then they'd be fine?
| nofunsir wrote:
| Ironically, they'd try to get you ... or someone...
| anyone! on fraud. Can you imagine the same argument made
| in the example of getting up and going to the kitchen?
|
| > Your honor, they agreed to our terms and conditions
| which stipulate you MUST stay in the recliner facing
| forward the whole time. By getting up to <do something
| important and not waste their life watching ads>, they've
| defrauded our advertisers! We demand to be repaid in the
| form of 43 lazyboy hours per year.
| malwrar wrote:
| Whenever I'm in a situation where I can't skip an ad
| (e.g. TV, radio, on foreign computer, etc), I usually
| turn down the volume and look away. Am I, in some sense,
| _stealing_ whenever when I am not thoroughly considering
| each of the generous offers that Brand and Company have
| _paid money_ to have delivered personally to devices of
| people like me? Is this inconvenient time spent while
| avoiding their message my penance, and is trying to skip
| it altogether somehow what turns my actions into sin?
|
| Of course it's all about everyone getting paid! I always
| just find it silly when my fellow plebeians try to echo
| some false obligation to abide by this system when people
| like us have been avoiding it for as long as it has
| existed.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| AdNauseum simulate ad clicks, which I've always found to
| be an interesting concept. Sadly it will never reach a
| critical mass of users for it to be effective.
|
| https://adnauseam.io/
| PurestGuava wrote:
| There's a difference between letting an ad play and you
| simply ignoring it, and using technical means from
| preventing that ad playing at all.
|
| Principally - the latter actually affects the
| compensation given to the creator of whatever video
| you're watching. The former does not.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Except TV and YouTube can offer similar, but not
| necessarily same, purpose.
|
| TV, speaking of cable, is exclusively for entertainment.
| YouTube is used for pretty much everything these days.
| Imagine being in a panic, looking for a video how perform
| CPR, and getting 30 seconds unskippable ad.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Then it seems that blocking ads is the more honest thing
| to do! Otherwise the company placing the ad would be
| unfairly paying money for a service not actually
| delivered. This also makes the market more efficient, as
| blocking ads is a clear signal their products aren't
| desired.
| throwaway31094 wrote:
| Do the less fortunate not deserve to have access to culture
| and information without being subjected to the
| psychological abuse that is advertising?
| zdragnar wrote:
| If they can't afford a YouTube subscription, they're not
| going to be buying anything that would be advertised
| anyway.
|
| Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy
| things, but "psychological abuse" is a pretty extreme
| hyperbole, especially for people already in such tight
| poverty. They've got enough going on that someone trying
| to get them to buy shitty knives or switch their car
| insurance isn't going to be impactful.
| throwaway31094 wrote:
| > Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy
| things
|
| The issue is that those are not the only ads Youtube is
| showing to people. You can basically upload any video and
| make it an ad. Sometimes Youtube's moderation fails and
| some nasty stuff slips through the cracks:
|
| > In the latest incident, a Redditor describes how their
| young nephew was exposed to an explicit ad while watching
| a Fortnite stream by the well-known YouTuber Loserfruit.
|
| > "My 7yr nephew was watching Loserfruit (Fortnite
| streamer) and then came up to me asking what Loserfruit
| is doing because this ad started playing," the concerned
| uncle shared.
|
| Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-
| explicit-ads-proble...
|
| Hell, they'll show weight loss ads to people with eating
| disorders - and this one might just be intentional rather
| than a failure of Youtube's moderation:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18g
| x1v... (Just one example but it's not hard to find more)
|
| "Psychological abuse" is very much _not_ hyperbole in the
| worst case scenarios. And as an extra bonus, Youtube
| promotes scam ads as well:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39117360
| e44858 wrote:
| This seems to be a very big problem for YouTube:
| "In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads,
| slightly up from the prior year, and suspended 12.7
| million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the
| previous year," the platform told us at the time.
|
| I wonder what proportion of those 5.5 billion
| inappropriate ads were removed only after people watched
| and reported them.
| debugnik wrote:
| > ads are trying to get you to buy things
|
| Are they? The last time I made the mistake of watching
| youtube without an ad blocker I got served US right-wing
| propaganda. I live in Spain, always have, and Google
| knows enough about me to know I'd despise that content.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Have you tried watching YouTube in the west without
| Adblock or YouTube premium?
|
| Psychological abuse doesn't even begin to describe
| experience.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I have. It was mostly the usual nonsense- overpriced
| kitchen knives, stupid phone games, car insurance,
| clothes, that sort of thing.
|
| Nothing about anything I saw rose even close to the level
| of psychological abuse.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Showing multiple ads across a couple of minutes video and
| at least one add at the start is not a psychological
| abuse to you? I'm not binge watching YouTube anymore, and
| I have premium, but this is borderline insane. Imagine
| EVERY action that you do is being monetized and you're
| literally prevented from doing anything while the ad is
| showing.
| gblargg wrote:
| Google isn't obligated to pay the bandwidth costs just so
| the population can have ad-free access, no.
| eviks wrote:
| > The content provider offers you two options: pay and get
| no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads.
|
| You're wrong in both parts.
|
| 1. There is no way to pay to only remove all ads. YT
| premium bundles some music nonsense and also doesn't remove
| ads added by creators.
|
| 2. "Watching" isn't part of the contract, only "injected
| ads" are. Do you read every billboard in exchange for the
| benefit of better roads financed with ad revenue?
| kalleboo wrote:
| The music nonsense is bundled because YouTube is full of
| music videos and music in the backgrounds of videos and
| they have to pay the record labels to play the music in.
| They have "YouTube Premium Lite" that doesn't include
| music, but then you get ads on videos that have music in
| them.
| eviks wrote:
| This makes no sense, it's not hard to filter out music
| videos, and music in regular videos wouldn't cost the
| same as the whole music premium, also Lite isn't just
| about music:
|
| > Ads however may appear on ... Shorts, and when you
| search or browse.
|
| So again, you can't pay just to replace ads. (By the way,
| there is another huge difference - premium is a
| subscription, so not tied to ad time replaced)
| wiseowise wrote:
| YouTube music is nice, though.
| monktastic1 wrote:
| It being "nice" does not negate the fact that there's no
| way to pay for _only_ ad removal.
| asadotzler wrote:
| >You want to watch some content. The content provider
| offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for
| free and also sit through some ads.
|
| Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That
| means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find
| a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention
| that being on the public Web gives them.
|
| There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite
| options to the user here. Google may prefer you engage in
| only one of two ways, but they have no legal ground to
| require that with content on the public Web.
| simianwords wrote:
| This is a pedantic response to a reasonable suggestion.
| It is not reasonable to complain about a product or
| service you are not paying for.
| nofunsir wrote:
| The pedantry comes not from someone using their User
| Agent however they want to use it. It comes from a
| company trying to (with receipts and lawsuits to prove
| it) LITERALLY redefine the World Wide Web into their own
| money making machine, and punish anyone who rocks their
| boat. They can cry "legal argument" all they want. At the
| end of the day, they're trying to force pedantry on their
| users. The only problem is most of the public has bought
| it Hook, Line and Sinker.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > have no legal ground
|
| That's moving the goalposts of the conversation.
| nofunsir wrote:
| No it's not. It's shining a light on where the real WWW
| goalposts are and always have been.
| nofunsir wrote:
| >I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a
| way to exclude me without excluding all the attention
| that being on the public Web gives them.
|
| This is the unsung argument everyone forgets! It goes to
| the very start of why someone might register a domain
| name and set up a website on the... World Wide Web... for
| people to visit with their User Agent software, ask for
| some HTML and get some HTML back. "HOW DARE YOU NOT DO A
| RANDOM SOCIALLY DEFINED THING AFTER ASKING FOR OUR HTML
| (AND OTHERS' MP4S)?"
| speff wrote:
| I feel like you can make the same argument in favor of
| being allowed to DDOS. Yes it's public, but I don't think
| that gives you a moral out for viewing the content in a
| way the publisher doesn't want.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > The content provider offers you two options: pay and get
| no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads.
|
| Wrong. The content provider explicitly states "ad-free",
| yet I still see ads from content creators themselves.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The terms of the contract are the terms encoded in the HTTP
| protocol. They are:
|
| - I, as the user, (or my user agent on behalf of me) ask
| for a resource.
|
| - YT, as the provider, (or the server on YT's behalf)
| _decide_ whether to send that resource to me.
|
| - If you do, I'll use or not use it in accordance with my
| user agent configuration.
|
| I asked for the video, and YT _chose_ to send it to me. I
| 'm not going to lose sleep over the morality of using the
| web as it was intended to be used.
| tlogan wrote:
| Why isn't simply avoiding YouTube considered a viable
| solution?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Stop playing dumb
| wiseowise wrote:
| "Why isn't simply avoiding de facto standard video delivery
| platform isn't simply an option?"
| tlogan wrote:
| You brought up something I've been thinking about too:
| the real issue is that YouTube has effectively become a
| monopoly. It's the de facto standard for online video.
|
| It makes me wonder: is there room for meaningful
| competition or an alternative platform? And if so, how
| could it be made sustainable? Are there any viable
| revenue models beyond ads and surveillance capitalism?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Just want to point out, adding on to OP, that creators on
| youtube get 55% of revenue.
|
| I get that Google has infinite money and infinite evil. But how
| convenient you also get to skip out on paying the majority
| expense, which goes to the creator...
|
| And yes virtuous commentor, I know you are one of the 1.5% that
| convert to a patreon supporter. Now ask everyone else why they
| get to eat for free (while endlessly complaining that the
| restaurant sucks).
| anothernewdude wrote:
| People create for free. The content that is created in order
| to earn revenue suffers because of it.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Creators choose to host their content on platform that puts
| it on the public Web where ads are easily blocked. If
| creators have an issue, it is with Google, not my ad blocker.
|
| I don't owe creators anything; I have no agreements with
| them. Google is the one with creator contracts.
|
| Google may owe creators something, but I certainly don't and
| I'm not going to adopt Google's burden on that.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Honestly the kind of video out there made solely to make
| money aren't what I'm looking after, I wouldn't mind if they
| all went away.
|
| YouTube has always been the guy showing how to replace a 97
| Honda civic oil filter in an unedited 5 minutes video and
| 240p, or the one sharing their passion. You know, the
| genuinely interesting stuff.
| spixy wrote:
| Right, because all that hardware needed for storing and
| streaming all that video is free.
|
| 55% is OK
| nurumaik wrote:
| Do I even need justification for not doing what I don't want to
| (watching ads)?
| usernamed7 wrote:
| ads are awful on a good day. YOUTUBE ads are 5x worse.
|
| I'm not going to sit there, waste my time, watching the same
| ads for the 5th time that has no relevance to me. Adblockers
| make youtube tolerable. If there were no adblockers i genuinely
| would be unable to use it.
|
| Has nothing to do with a sense of entitlement, they are ads for
| things I would never purchase. so whats the point then? Why is
| it OK for people to pay to waste my time just because they paid
| to? What gives them the right to force me to watch that? Hard
| no. It's my browser, and I'll do as i damn well please.
|
| I WOULD pay for youtube if it was a good product. But it's not.
| I'm not going to opine on all the reasons it's not. if/when
| they make it good i'll pay. That's a them problem.
|
| but there is NO WAY i am going to start accepting ads back into
| my life. I'll just stop watching youtube.
| rbits wrote:
| I don't feel entitled to it. I don't like the company Google
| zarzavat wrote:
| ARE YOU OVER 40 AND THE ONLY AI YOU KNOW IS CHATGPT?
|
| The burden of proof is on the ads to justify why they should be
| watched, given that the ads _themselves_ provide zero value to
| the viewer.
|
| YouTube ads in particular are a cesspit of scams. I don't want
| to watch ads for things like Scientology.
| bitpush wrote:
| Huh? You're on their website to watch videos. And it costs
| them money to send you those bits. And they offer two ways
| for you to compensate. Watch ads, or pay premium.
|
| What is so difficult for you to understand this business
| relationship?
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's Google. The relationship is not consensual but
| adversarial. Google attempts to get free things from me. I
| attempt to get free things from Google.
|
| It's like asking a lawyer why does he defend an obviously
| guilty client? Because it's adversarial system, his job is
| to protect his client, not to worry about the other side.
| The other side is trying to maximize their advantage too.
| Google has defined my relationship with it in such terms
| through its behavior.
|
| If YouTube were still an independent operator I would be
| more amenable to your argument.
|
| In any case, the fact I can recite an ad from memory shows
| that I am at least watching some of their ads, notably on
| mobile.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| It's funny that you think that me sending a GET request to
| an IP makes me enter a business relationship.
| gessha wrote:
| Back when I listened to Spotify Premium, they would mess around
| with the shuffle or add a "smart" shuffle to the UI that you
| can't opt out of. They would try to insert songs to my
| playlists where they don't belong. Gtfo let me listen to my
| music.
|
| I listen to Spotify Freemium. There's a special ad that says:
| "Enjoy the next 30 minutes of ad-free listening". 2 minutes
| later I get 2-3 ads back to back.
|
| Enough. Happy Jellyfin user. I'll buy up my music gradually.
| tomasphan wrote:
| Ads are a litmus test for how much a service values its users
| and the ecosystem it's built upon. When premium cable first
| replaced broadcast television it had no ads in lieu of a
| subscription cost. Now you pay a subscription and get ads. The
| same is true for streaming services which switched to ad
| supported subscriptions. Let's look at YouTube; in the early
| years ads were few and far between, then came mid roll ads,
| then end roll ads, then multiple ads in a row. Now YouTubers
| started doing their own ad reads, baked into the video. We're
| in a growth oriented era, so companies and individuals will
| take more and more, as much as they can to keep the numbers
| going up. What they're taking is your time; a very precious
| commodity in my opinion.
|
| Why do I Adblock? Because a line must be drawn or else this
| marketing growth engine will consume everything. I mean
| literally without any consumer pushback this attention
| extraction engine will continue expanding until every moment of
| digital consumption is monetized. It's already destroyed too
| much of the internet.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I don't, I pay for YouTube premium. I think YouTube deserves
| money for its service, and it needs money for its employees and
| infrastructure.
|
| I'd block ads if there wasn't premium (or if premium had ads).
| YouTube still deserves and needs money, but ads don't "extract"
| the money from me. At best (and most likely*) every ad shown to
| me is effectively the advertiser paying YouTube to waste my
| time. At worst (if I actually buy the product), the ad is
| effectively me paying the advertiser and getting something
| useless or harmful. The chance a YouTube ad shows me something
| _beneficial_ is too small to remotely justify the other ads
| which waste my time (or if I buy, the Earth 's resources or my
| attention or etc.).
|
| I also block ads on newspapers and other smaller sites, but
| don't buy their premium. Honestly, I don't think this is fair,
| although I think it's small in the grand scheme of things. The
| problem is, I don't feel those sites justify me paying, and I'd
| be spending well over $100/month if I subscribed to every one;
| I'd rather not see each site than pay, although currently I do
| see them without paying which is unfair (showing me ads is
| wasteful, as explained earlier, so I don't even consider it an
| alternative). You know what, I'll probably subscribe to a few
| (maybe AP and Reuters) and every other story I encounter, see
| if I can find the version on one of those sites.
|
| * "But ads work on you subliminally." I hear and read this a
| lot, but I really doubt it for invasive ads like YouTube's
| (also billboards etc. I'm not talking about covert ads or
| "good" non-invasive ads like Show HN). First, I recognize many
| of the big advertisers (e.g. those VPNs and sodas) and will
| never buy their products, so those ads shown to me specifically
| are wasted. Moreover, I'm particularly methodical when buying
| things. I always go in with a plan: sometimes it's a simple
| plan like "buy the second-cheapest with a good description and
| decent reviews" or "buy what your parents do", but I never buy
| something because I recognize it. In fact, if something seems
| familiar I pay extra attention, and if I recognize it was
| invasively advertised, I become less likely to buy it, because
| I suspect invasive ads correlate with low value and want to
| actively dissuade invasive ads in general. "But your parents
| and the reviewers buy based off ads, and you buy based off
| them"...OK, show my parents and reviewers the ads, not me.
|
| Ultimately, invasive ads waste my time and annoy me, and I
| don't see their benefits which justify that. I'd rather pay a
| small fee than see or hear every invasive ad (like with YouTube
| premium), and I suspect the advertisers would benefit from that
| too.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Blocking ads needs no justification.
|
| Why they think I should waste my finite time, compute and
| bandwidth on things I don't want needs justification.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Your brain baffles me. I have already decided that i will never
| ever buy any of the shit in these ads, it would save THEM TIME
| AND MONEY AND LYING TO THE AD BUYERS to not show me the ads.
| THEY are doing the immoral thing here to force waste my time
| for no positive benefits
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content
| we're consuming isn't free to create and even if the content is
| free, it still costs money to store and distribute?
|
| In this situation, the ads are contributing barely anything to
| the content creation, and storage and distribution drop in
| price every year while youtube increases the amount of ads and
| decreases the video quality. So people get upset and block
| everything. That's part out of being fed up, and that's part
| out of having no way to make the ads become less bad in a non-
| block way.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > Why do we feel entitled to get this for free?
|
| It's not _free_ when they already track and sell user data to
| the highest bidder. YouTube is just trying to double-dip at
| this point. I 'd gladly pay for premium if there was a
| guarantee that my user data would not sold.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It's because people are fucking lazy and completely lost in the
| digital world. Thinking YouTube should somehow be free is
| absurd and I'm sick of seeing this bullshit on this site in
| particular where a lot of the people here are actively involved
| in this kind of thing. Avg salary on this site is probably
| north of $200k and they're bitching about paying a few bucks a
| month for YouTube.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Advertising is predatory by design. It is my moral duty not
| only to resist advertising, but to do everything I can to make
| it as ineffective as possible.
| dbbk wrote:
| You can avoid the advertising by paying for the service then
| Derbasti wrote:
| How much is a media service worth? How much does it cost to
| produce? Can I pay a reasonable fee to the right people?
|
| Most websites do not offer reasonable payment options. They'd
| earn fractions of a cent from the ads they'd show me, but the
| cheapest subscriptions they offer are several dollars.
|
| On YouTube, the value of the service is provided by creators,
| but too little of the subscription is going towards the
| creators. To make matters worse, Google seems to pull every
| string they can to make creators as miserable as possible.
| Their actions are a detriment to the service, and not worth
| supporting. An 80/20 revenue split would seem much more
| reasonable.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I pay for YouTube Premium, but I don't share your moral
| opposition to ad-blocking. It's not entitlement, because the
| service is totally free to stop serving me the videos.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Once you have something, you don't want to let it go. Even if
| it's not morally justifiable.
|
| Otherwise wealth would be much more equally spread across
| northern and Southern hemisphere.
|
| Personally I hate advertisement, i will do everything I can to
| disable it but I know that at this point I'm almost pirating.
| There is no shame in that, internet is the Wild West : Google
| and their AI crawling bots aren't better than me, they leech
| contents other made, other host, to build their ai and then
| makes money on top of it.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| This is the same situation as with the media industry, e.g.
| music and movies and piracy. Studies have shown that people who
| pirate wouldn't buy the product even if they had the
| opportunity (i.e. is if they had the money or if it was easy to
| buy). So I guess the content is not good enough.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content
| we're consuming isn't free to create and even if the content is
| free, it still costs money to store and distribute?
|
| Shall we do the same to open source?
|
| "Watch this ad for 30 seconds before checking out a branch! Git
| commit, oops: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS"
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Because I control my computer, and if I don't want to see ads,
| I have the right to automatically filter them out on my side.
| (Yes, yes, and Google has the right to block me from accessing
| their servers.)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Very simple. I don't self flagellate because it hurts and I
| don't like it. And there's no need for me to self flagellate.
| So why would I? In exactly the same way, there's no need for me
| to watch stupid ads. I've had ad blockers ever since they came
| into existence. There is no incentive for me to disable them.
| When I need to, I actually pay for content on Amazon, Spotify,
| Netflix, Apple, etc. It's not a money issue.
|
| I haven't done that with Youtube because 1) I don't need to, 2)
| Google is pretty bad about paying content creators properly
| (they prefer keeping the money for themselves) and 3) I feel no
| guilt whatsoever about not sponsoring trillion dollar companies
| by exposing myself to the pain of watching their shitty ads.
|
| Luckily for Google, most people aren't smart enough to figure
| out ad blockers. Which is why they are making lots of money
| with Youtube and why they are a trillion dollar company. Good
| for them; no need to feel sorry for them.
|
| Luckily for me, Google seems pretty conflicted about fixing
| this properly because they are making so much money with the
| way things are. If they lock down Youtube properly (not that
| hard technically), users and content creators might move
| elsewhere. They can't afford to. So good for me.
|
| It's that simple. There is no moral dilemma here.
| Borgz wrote:
| Perhaps one justification for blocking ads is protecting users
| from personal information harvesting, tracking, and malware
| delivered through advertising networks. Aside from that, I
| can't think of a justification.
|
| I actually think it would be good if there were filter lists
| that whitelisted ads that were not harmful to users in those
| ways, but that sounds difficult/impossible to fairly maintain,
| and I doubt anyone else wants it.
| JanneVee wrote:
| I've harped on this before: the problem is that the ads if they
| are fraudulent or harmful in other ways and the companies
| making money when presenting deserve get their shit blocked.
| Especially if they can target ads to vulnerable people. These
| are huge profitable companies that moderate the content they
| profit of but as soon as someone pays them they turn the blind
| eye.
| squaresmile wrote:
| Yep, it's a straight up safety issue with all the scam ads. I
| pay for YouTube premium but sometimes my parents and
| grandparents don't log in, accidentally sign out, watch it on
| the browsers, etc that it's safer to block them all. It only
| takes one to get through and gen AI is not helping.
| eur0pa wrote:
| I don't need to justify jack
| joelthelion wrote:
| Ads are bad for you and bad for the planet. Google is a
| monopoly and doesn't even create the content themselves.
|
| I understand ad blocking isn't morally perfect but I can live
| with it.
| commandersaki wrote:
| I use an ad blocker for a safer experience. There's far too
| many malicious advertisements on youtube, google, etc. and I
| don't want to be anywhere near that.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I don't feel entitled to anything. YouTube is free to stop
| serving me content at any time. It's trivial to refuse to serve
| people content they haven't paid for.
|
| Why do advertisers feel entitled to my attention when I never
| agreed to give it to them? Simply visiting a page with ads
| doesn't mean I agree to view ads.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I don't pretend I have some moral high ground, I just don't
| want to see ads, and if I can do that and still not pay, I will
| do that. I don't care if it's unobtrusive, I don't care if it's
| relevant or not, I don't care if it's for a service I love and
| would otherwise be happy to talk/hear about, advertisements are
| a cancer that should be eradicated and I will not pretend to
| care about the opinions of people whose livelihoods rides on
| selling me crap.
|
| I'd rather not use Youtube entirely (aka be blocked off by
| Google) than ever be subjected to even a single microsecond of
| an ad. Ads are psychological manipulation and I refuse to
| subject myself to some slimy marketer's ad campaign. If I were
| made God Emperor of the Earth for the day, the one and only
| thing I'd do with that power is make sure these people rot away
| in a dark hole forever, that's how much I detest this whole
| "market" and the "people" involved in it.
|
| Even paying for this stuff isn't a guarantee of anything. Their
| "Lite" tier has verbiage to the effect of "No* Ads (* Some will
| still be shown)". We've seen with cable television that the
| insidious cancer that is advertising creeps its way in as well,
| and cable was _NOT_ cheap. Plus, it 's known that for
| advertisers, people who actually shell out cash are even
| juicier targets, and you'd have to be a genuine imbecile to
| trust the likes of Google or Meta to not abuse you even harder,
| even if you pay for the service.
|
| MAYBE I'd be willing to pay Google if I had a guarantee that no
| advertisement will EVER be shoved in anywhere in the future,
| and that I get a guarantee that they will punish those
| sponsored sections that creators put into their videos if I pay
| for it, and if I get a guarantee that they won't continue to
| profile me incessantly to shove ads at me everywhere other than
| YT. We all know that's not happening though, and I have
| absolutely 0 interest in lining their coffers with both my
| money and my data.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I mean, props for being honest, but you are exactly the
| reason companies like YouTube have to work so hard to trounce
| and blockers. And you're likely the reason legislation will
| eventually move in YouTube's favor. Your "no moral high
| ground" claim is a bold way to say you just want content,
| which costs people money to make, for free
| vultour wrote:
| I was trying to show someone a scene from a 45-minute YouTube
| video the other day. I didn't know where it was so I was
| randomly choosing points to watch. _Every single time_ I
| clicked on the scrubber I was hit with a 30-second
| advertisement. Mind you, I always watched maybe 3 seconds of
| the actual content before moving on. After the 8th time I gave
| up and vowed to never open YouTube on a device without adblock
| again. This was so beyond the pale I'm never going to give
| Google another cent.
| gblargg wrote:
| I would happily pay a few dollars a month to use YouTube ad-
| free, and with a bandwidth limit. I don't need to watch
| everything in 1080p and higher. For podcasts 144p is fine. Let
| me pay for the bandwidth I use.
| interestica wrote:
| What does "free" mean to you?
| rwmj wrote:
| I'll think about the morality of ad blocking around the same
| time that Google thinks about the morality of all the crap they
| do all the time.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| > Why do we justify blocking ads ...
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/cdyhoTqWFSc?si=aSV46HfI8_0kUIy1
|
| ^ Replace the women with any "why" arguments you might have for
| not using ad blockers.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Don't consume YT content on YT. That's the secret.
| ianpenney wrote:
| I'm not gonna buy your stupid hoodie. Stop shaming me into
| feeling I'm not a man because I don't have one. Absolute trash.
| tzs wrote:
| Another thing they are sometimes doing is failing to add videos
| that you watched with ad blocking on to your history.
|
| That means if those videos show up in a search, or on your home
| page, or in a recommendation they do not have the red bar on the
| bottom that indicates that you have already watched them.
| rs186 wrote:
| Curious -- why adblocks like uBlock Origin are not very effective
| at streaming services like Netflix/Hulu (at least the last time I
| tried)?
| pabs3 wrote:
| Wonder if people will start moving away from the YT frontend to
| other apps like Grayjay.
| ai_assisted_dev wrote:
| Perfectly fair. It's not like YouTube is some free open source
| platform. Infra needs to be paid, creators need to be paid, they
| have a whole eco-system. Why not just pay for premium if you use
| it that much?
| nadermx wrote:
| What's the actual % of people using ad blockers anyways? I feel
| it cant even be near double digits.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| I'd pay for it if youtube was worth it (it's not)
| hrhhggf wrote:
| Dang it
| apitman wrote:
| > On Firefox this is easily resolvable - you can use a HTML
| filter to filter out the script tag from the source HTML before
| the page even starts being parsed. But that relies on extension
| APIs that Chromium doesn't support.
|
| I'm shocked
| madars wrote:
| The second Chrome drops uBlock Origin (as part of their
| "Manifest V3 without blocking Web Request" plan), I'm off to an
| alternative browser. Enough is enough.
| gregoryl wrote:
| Do it now? I use Firefox on all devices, it's completely
| fine.
| xingped wrote:
| Seconded. Been on Firefox for years and greatly prefer my
| experience on Firefox both on desktop and mobile (Android)
| compared to any other browser.
| owebmaster wrote:
| I use PWAs a lot and Firefox dropped support
| tjlingham wrote:
| I agree, but I do need to keep a chromium browser around
| for the odd times that: my webcam decides to flicker
| uncontrollably during a meeting, a website just happens to
| put JS that runs terribly on Firefox in the hot path and it
| slows to a crawl, or a new feature is being demonstrated
| with Chrome only support.
|
| Beats ads, as far as I'm concerned, but I can't help but
| feel like your average user wouldn't agree.
| zargon wrote:
| I used to keep a Chrome-based browser installed "just in
| case." But for about the last 5 years I've simply refused
| to have it on my machine. It's not needed.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| A few years ago I uninstalled all remainders of
| Chrom(e|ium) from my laptop. Last week I had to get
| install it again because of a webflasher for a device
| that would only work on it. It's now gone again, and not
| missed.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I worked for Mozilla for 25 years and kept other browsers
| around the whole time. There's nothing wrong with having
| other browsers, and nothing technical that prevents it,
| so do that :D
|
| I can't think of a time I didn't have more than one
| browser, even in 1995 when I made Netscape my default, I
| kept Cello around for some things. More browsers are
| better than fewer, not only for the industry, but for
| individuals too.
| cobertos wrote:
| Didn't this already happen? It just seems like it was only
| progressively rolled out to Chrome browsers. My work PC was
| hit with this about a month ago, and now I get ads there...
| Evidlo wrote:
| On the upside, if they do, it might obviate the need for
| YouTube's anti adblocker measures because of the small market
| share of non-chromium browsers
| wiseowise wrote:
| I've heard this threats for 8 years.
|
| "If they press their shoe on me _even further_ , then I'm
| leaving!"
|
| Firefox been free and there for you for decades, yet you
| still use this spyware crap from an Ad company. Disgusting.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > I'm going to help them expand their power and influence
| over the web until they cross an arbitrary point with that
| power, at which point I'll cut them off and move to a
| strictly weaker competitor who will be in an even worse
| position by then!
|
| GOOD plan
| top_sigrid wrote:
| Youtube pushing ads in this way has convinced several non-
| technical friends who couldn't care less about their browser-
| choice to switch to Firefox with uBlock origin. Blocking ads in
| Chrome became such a hustle and is basically not working for
| Google's own services. Recommending people how don't care to
| not use chrome in the past was basically hopeless and now I
| have seen some switch basically from their own. Which I don't
| want to interpret too much into, but gives a little hope.
| qiine wrote:
| GOOD
| osigurdson wrote:
| I downloaded some free songs back in the Napster days but now I
| happily pay for or watch ads for any content that I consume. I
| have zero interest in ad blockers / other tricks as I want the
| content creators to get compensated.
| jekwoooooe wrote:
| I pay for YouTube premium. Surely everyone here can too. This
| stuff isn't free so either deal with ads or pay for premium
| asadotzler wrote:
| This stuff is freely available on the open web and I don't deal
| with ads or pay for premium because there's zero compelling
| reason to do so.
|
| If creators have a problem with the revenue loss, their
| contract is with Google and they should take up those concerns
| with Google. If Google has a problem with how I consume their
| public content, they can make it non-public or try to block me
| in some other way.
|
| I owe neither of those entities anything and until they either
| make the content non-public or find a way to block me without
| blocking others they want to see their content, I'll keep on
| consuming it how I like.
| jekwoooooe wrote:
| It's not "freely available" it's available with ads. You are
| just circumventing the ads which is akin to piracy. I'm not
| making a moral judgement but at least be honest about it. You
| are trying to consume nonfree content without paying anything
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm curious, has someone tried the authenticated Youtube Premium
| API in third-party clients?
|
| I'd love to use Invidious or Peertube to watch the videos, but I
| also want my subscription money to go to the video creators.
| Youtube allocates it proportionally to the viewing time.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Discord recently started using a fake loading screen if you have
| an ad blocker enabled. What's hilarious (and a little
| infuriating) is that the app is still obviously working under the
| hood -- you can literally see masked text updating in real time
| when people send you messages. It's not "loading," it's just
| refusing to render content locally. They're not even blocking
| access to the service -- they're just trying to frustrate you
| into disabling your ad blocker without explicitly saying that's
| what they're doing. Classic dark pattern.
|
| What's worse is the privacy side. Discord apparently leaves the
| microphone open even when you're using push-to-talk. There's been
| anecdotal evidence from users monitoring their network traffic
| that mic input is still active in the background, likely being
| piped to local buffers or held in memory under the guise of
| latency reduction. That might sound innocent, but the distinction
| between "open but not recording" and "recording" is razor thin
| when the user has explicitly told the app not to listen until a
| key is pressed. At minimum, it's a trust violation -- at worst,
| it's surveillance theater.
|
| This is the standard bait-and-switch. Build a good product, earn
| user trust, then slowly degrade it with tracking, telemetry, ads,
| and manipulative UX until it's barely recognizable. Discord used
| to be a breath of fresh air compared to Skype or Teamspeak, and
| now it's another data-harvesting machine with a gamer paint job.
| It's telling that more users are looking into self-hosted options
| or jumping to alternatives like Matrix or Mumble. Discord doesn't
| have ads yet, but all the groundwork is being laid -- and people
| are right to be wary.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their
| irrelevance. That's not to say whether or not the advertisement
| is for a product or service for which the viewer is interested in
| purchasing but how it relates to the context in which it is
| viewed.
|
| People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway
| because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the
| countryside. Actual complaints may be about how the billboards
| block a scenic view but that also seems like another way of
| complaining about the irrelevance. Similarly, if I am watching a
| Youtube video, I am never thinking that a disruptive message from
| a commercial business is relevant to my current activities (uh,
| passivities?). No advertisement is relevant, not even in-video
| direct sponsorships, hence SponsorBlock.
|
| If I go to Costco and see an advertisement for tires... well, I'm
| at Costco, where I buy stuff. Things are sold at Costco and
| people go there to have things sold to them. I might need tires
| and realize I can get that taken care of while I'm at Costco.
| Nearly every advertisement I see at Costco is relevant because
| it's selling something I can buy in the same building, indeed
| usually something juxtaposed close to the advertisement.
|
| I don't complain about advertisements at Costco because that
| would be insane. I complain about the advertisements on Youtube
| because they're irrelevant and weird but somehow normalized.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Imagine if the tire advertisement at Costco stood in front of
| you for 30 seconds and wouldn't let you pass or turn around
| until a minimum amount of time passed.
| vntok wrote:
| What would Costco offer you in exchange, like a rebate on the
| tire itself or on anything bought at Costco maybe? Then
| surely a lot of people would stay.
|
| Youtube is offering access to entertainment in exchange for
| 30s ads, that's a valuable proposition to many.
| scoofy wrote:
| You can also _pay_ for YouTube. I do. It's nice, not crazy
| expensive. No ads. Creators get paid. Everyone wins.
| whyenot wrote:
| Yes, I also appreciate the skip ahead feature that lets you
| fast forward over the sponsorship ads that a lot of creators
| have started insetting into their videos.
| stiray wrote:
| You lose on long run. In few years, you will pay more and
| still watch ads while YT will no longer be free. (let me
| remind you of video streaming services)
|
| Managers want their rewards that are tied to earnings and
| stockholders want to earn more.
|
| And once they both get their money, the next year reward will
| be tied to even more earnings. And stockholders will want to
| earn more.
| scoofy wrote:
| I'll switch to Nebula if that ever happens.
|
| Content creators have no loyalty to YouTube and will share
| their content elsewhere when YouTube annoys their paying
| fans.
| stiray wrote:
| There is no if. This is how corporate greed works.
|
| What will happen is, that content creators will spread to
| different providers, that also have managers and
| stockholders/owners.
|
| Look what Netflix was like and how many various payable
| video streaming providers you have now. More than you are
| prepared to pay for content.
|
| In few years, you will be torrenting content that today
| you watch for free.
|
| And only because people decided to pay, showing the world
| that there is money to be made in YT model.
| scoofy wrote:
| Yes, businesses want money. The point is that YouTube
| _has no leverage on creators._ they have to play nice
| because the barrier to entry is nil as competitors
| already exist in Twitch, Dailymotion, Nebula, Vimeo,
| Dropout, etc.
|
| None of that helps you if you want it to be free, but for
| those of us willing to pay, we can happily ally with
| creators if YouTube gets shitty.
|
| That's how it's supposed to work. It's a good deal now
| and I'm happy to take it. None of that matters if you are
| comparing it to piracy... obviously.
| stiray wrote:
| We will see how prepared you will be to pay, where each
| of creators you watch will be on different network and
| you will have to pay for each network $10/month, while
| you watch 20 creators.
|
| Again, this is nothing new. It already happened with
| video streaming, where Youtube now is Netflix then.
| scoofy wrote:
| This already happened with Dropout.tv when college humor
| left YouTube.
|
| Yes, it ain't perfect. The alternative _is the creator
| literally stop making videos._ YouTube is already not
| serving ads for demonetized videos. People doing it for
| the love of filmmaking can already do it for free.
| stiray wrote:
| No, the alternative is that you DONT pay. That you
| deliberately not do what is the easiest move(1) and on
| top of that even feel _special_ for doing it. That you
| suffer a short time for better next. That you fight them
| with technical means. That you vote with your wallet,
| squeeze your teeth hard and show them you just wont pay
| and they will lose ad watcher if they show more ads.
|
| And now you will tell, that people are not disciplined
| enough for that, that majority wont pass the
| marshmallow(2) experiment? That some Mike Judge movie was
| actually documentary?
|
| Yes, I know.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booby_trap , _A common
| trick is to provide victims with a simple solution to a
| problem, for example, leaving only one door open in an
| otherwise secure building, luring them straight toward
| the firing mechanism_
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_exp
| erimen...
| scoofy wrote:
| How do creators get paid under your rubric?
|
| They already get 55% of revenues at YouTube which is
| basically the highest percentage in any creator industry.
| How do we pay creators under your rubric and allow them
| to be discovered?
| stiray wrote:
| Looks like it worked and it works, without any changes,
| while the number of views is keeping their earnings to
| small group that will not increase as there is not
| infinite number of time to watch the movies. And dont
| "creators" me. It is about google earning more money for
| their stockholders and managment collecting their
| rewards, not about "think of the children".
| scoofy wrote:
| >And dont "creators" me. It is about google earning more
| money for their stockholders and managment collecting
| their rewards, not about "think of the children".
|
| Classic _consumer-only_ socialist. You have no model for
| production except business is bad. If you care about
| labor then you care about _labor getting paid_. So far
| you 've demonstrated that _you have no model of paying
| content creators_. You would rather they go away then
| actually pay for their services. You pretend you should
| be able to get it for free. If you have no model of
| production, then you have no model.
| stiray wrote:
| No, it is much simpler. Success of a company is not
| limited on constant growth of profit but rather of
| providing to workers and owners a normal life.
|
| And in our case, it is paid in current model (actually
| even in model with less ads). It doesn't need any growth
| of profit.
|
| Everything else is pure greed. Now the question opens,
| are you paying for videos or greed?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| What's a "normal life"? And who gets to decide that?
|
| > And in our case, it is paid in current model (actually
| even in model with less ads). It doesn't need any growth
| of profit.
|
| Who are you to decide that?
| stiray wrote:
| Looks like the planet will. It has already started to
| sanitize flee infestation called humanity. And, contrary
| to what it was told to you, planet is fine. Nothing wrong
| with it. Scratching. And will joyfully survive for
| millions years to come. We wont.
| scoofy wrote:
| You have no model for how labor gets paid.
| stiray wrote:
| Sure I do, by suckers watching ads, like it always was.
|
| The whole thing about Google is that they are not
| software company (as people like to falsely believe),
| they are advertising company, financing everything else
| from ads. Including search, youtube, android, gmail and
| all other side projects.
|
| And those side projects brings them data, to advertise
| more efficiently.
|
| Now, seeing a trend to monetize their side toys is just
| pure greed, they don't really need that.
|
| This is also the reason, why no one can compete with
| them. As competing with free products is impossible
| unless you have side financing.
|
| By the way, did you (and everyone else) maybe read this
| study? https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/l
| eave_my_br... It is very eye opening.
| scoofy wrote:
| Your model for paying labor is "Other people should pay,
| but I shouldn't have to pay." That fails the basic
| categorical imperative.
| stiray wrote:
| It worked until now for, what, 20 years? And it worked
| very well, check Google stock.
|
| Don't be afraid, they have calculated people not paying
| into the strategy.
|
| And it wont stop working because you wont pay Google
| extra money. But it will become worse for most of people,
| including you, if you set yourself into position of slave
| and pay, confirming their theory that they can exploit
| you so much more.
|
| Btw, did you check the link? You should really learn from
| it.
| scoofy wrote:
| I had already looked at your link, I did not find it
| particularly helpful.
|
| I will tell you one last time that your entire premise is
| based on stasis in economics. Something as trivial as the
| passage of time and the proliferation of technology
| (Adblock to normies) renders your position untenable. You
| have no theory of labor compensation while grasping at
| the accouterments of socialism.
|
| I would strongly suggest training in economics or at
| least political philosophy, but you seem like the type of
| person who already has it all figured out, and figured
| out in such a way where you happen to get special
| privileges.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| "vote with your wallet" is like trickle down economics,
| it's like if only everyone used paper straws we could
| prevent climate catastrophy. Split up FANGM should be the
| bare minimum.
| stiray wrote:
| It is not, but discipline is needed instead consumerism.
| And every half intelligent marketing guy will make it
| harder than to just pay. Paper straws you mentioned are
| just paper straws.
|
| Splitting should happen 10 years ago. I doubt it will
| have any special impact now.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > Paper straws you mentioned are just paper straws
|
| No they are the decipline you are talking about, the
| delusion is, if everyone used paper straws we would save
| the ecological destruction of the oceans. The structural
| problems of endless profit maximization machines can not
| be addressed by appealing to individual action.
|
| > Splitting should happen 10 years ago. I doubt it will
| have any special impact now.
|
| That depends on the amount of pieces, don't you think?
| stiray wrote:
| Ok, I wanted to avoid it, but since you didnt understand,
| paper straws are just straw men. They have absolutely
| nothing with voting with wallet, it is just some lame
| scenario, comparable at nothing and kicked instead of the
| real thing.
|
| Or said differently: plastic straws are only a minor part
| in ocean pollution, while people not voting with their
| wallet is the main reason for all corporate shenanigans
| we are experiencing.
|
| And yes, I agree it depends on number of pieces, but I
| don't put any trust into USA as state, even without
| Trump, being able to persecute billion $ corporation.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > while people not voting with their wallet is the main
| reason for all corporate shenanigans we are experiencing
|
| That's what I'm getting at is wrong. The paper straws are
| an analogy, if everyone stopped driving cars and lived in
| the woods we could reduce carbon emissions significantly,
| therefore the reason we can't stop climate change is
| people not voting with their wallets. Everything is
| people not voting with their wallets, it applies to
| everything, that's why it applies to nothing.
| stiray wrote:
| If you are having troubles understanding, you can read
| more about it here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Most of your suggestions are fiction but tiktok and insta
| are real competitors to YouTube shorts.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm glad there's competition for the one part of YouTube
| that I dislike even more than the ads.
| blitzar wrote:
| Content creators have loyalty to the magic money tree on
| the internet, they will shake as many of the trees they
| can, right down to begging for $1 from every 'fan' to add
| to the $50,000 they make a month.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've paid for YouTube Premium from the beginning (remember
| YouTube Red?) and it has been a mostly great service for
| 10+ years. The value I get is vastly greater than Netflix
| or any other streaming service. But if they ever start
| putting ads in the paid subscriptions (like many streaming
| services now with their basic tier) I'll jump ship.
| stiray wrote:
| Yep, you were a test project. Will people pay for free
| content or punish them by leaving the platform. And will
| they start to pay if you increase number of ads. Now they
| moved to next stage.
|
| Anyway, not there yet. Frog is boiled slowly, slow enough
| that people dont notice until it is to late.
|
| First they need to kill ad blockers tier. Then you
| increase number of ads to unbearable (they are already
| doing that) and get as much people as possible to paid
| content. Also market must be ripe enough, so there will
| be no more ships to jump. Then you will get ads,
| different tiers to pay, segmentation of content etc.
| tempodox wrote:
| Exactly, it's the enshittification trajectory as
| explained by Cory Doctorow. Without laws and regulations
| that stop companies from doing that, it's inevitable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#Examples
| phito wrote:
| So what's your alternative if I don't want ads (content
| is not free to make), want the creators to be paid, and
| paying for premium is tempting YouTube to abuse pricing?
| (or so you say)
| stiray wrote:
| Are they paid now? What are you fixing by paying, if
| nothing is broken (yet)?
| frabcus wrote:
| Block the adverts, and pay the creators via Patreon. And
| join Nebula to build other alternatives.
| matwood wrote:
| I hear you, but I can only live in the now and not
| whatifs. I refuse to watch ads and will pay to avoid
| them. If a service I use makes that impossible, then I'll
| no longer use the service.
|
| And there is more content in the world right now than any
| single person will ever be able to consume. I have zero
| concerns about dropping a service.
| stiray wrote:
| But you don't need to drop a service. You can keep it as
| good as it is. You just don't reward google predatory
| tactics by paying, as you are literally making YT worse.
| matwood wrote:
| So if I don't pay and I don't want to watch ads then
| what? I'm not going to jump through mental gymnastics to
| not pay creators and Google for offering the service. If
| you truly don't want to reward Google, then don't use
| anything from Google.
| stiray wrote:
| How did it work until now? Anyway, we both know that care
| for "creators" is "think of the children" thing, but I
| will play along: pay them using patreon (or, I have
| bought this: https://theduranshop.com/the-duran-gold-
| eagle-premium-t-shir..., triple time overpriced but they
| deserve it).
|
| For Google, don't worry. You have payed them, with your
| data, thousand times over. And if you stop providing
| today, your existing data will be exploitable for years
| to come.
|
| On top of it, by paying, you create a direct trail from
| watched video (data) to your account, from there to your
| credit card and from credit card to physical person. So
| you are giving them even more data.
|
| Anyway, if Google goes bankrupt, because of you, you can
| consider yourself a saint.
|
| Someone who has really done something very good for the
| whole planet and human society.
|
| I will lit a candle each day into your honor.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| YouTube sucks because it works for advertisers, not
| users.
|
| If everyone just paid like you pay for anything else in
| life, YouTube would work for users, and be dramatically
| better.
|
| Unsurprisingly, the people who consume resources while
| giving nothing back are the ones making it suck the most.
| vntok wrote:
| > Noone goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
| tempodox wrote:
| In theory, yes. In practice, Google's core business is
| selling ads, not selling access to movies.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| But that is exactly the business they are trying to morph
| YouTube into. If we agree that being exposed to
| persuasion always has negative value, then ads are bad.
| Watching ads is the only behavior that causes them to
| persist. If everyone blocked them, YouTube would go out
| of business or switch entirely a paid model. If everyone
| paid, then they switched to a paid model already. The
| only choice the causes ads to persist and increase is to
| both refuse to pay, refuse to block, and still watch. So
| don't do that.
| tempodox wrote:
| > But that is exactly the business they are trying to
| morph YouTube into.
|
| They had so much time to do that, yet TFA is about ads
| getting more aggressive, not less.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. I _was_ a test subject? The test
| still seems to be ongoing after 10 years. I fail to
| understand how any of these alleged experiments involve
| me.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If he had used YouTube premium for a hundred years you
| would still say the same? Ten years is longer than world
| war two lasted.
| troupo wrote:
| > I've paid for YouTube Premium from the beginning
| (remember YouTube Red?) and it has been a mostly great
| service for 10+ years.
|
| I struggle to see the difference between Youtube Premium
| and regular Youtube with the exception of ads.
|
| It's the same shitty recommendation algorithm. It's the
| same "you will watch shorts or else". It's the same
| nerfed unusable search. It's the same "we randomly
| decided that your bandwidth isn't enough, here's a 480p
| version of the video you're currently watching".
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yes, it's mostly just the ads. There are some nice-to-
| haves like video downloads and background audio on the
| iOS app. I almost never use search, recommendations, or
| shorts, but I'm sure you're right to criticize those
| features.
| Eavolution wrote:
| Can you download the videos to mp4 or is it some
| proprietary DRM thing that only plays on YouTube? If not
| that just sounds like a worse version of yt-dlp
| stiray wrote:
| https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
| Y_Y wrote:
| I've stopped recommending this (except for in-person to
| friends) because it's so valuable, and I'm seriously
| worried about it getting stomped by YouTube.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Number of video streaming services who have removed their
| ad free tiers: zero.
| raincole wrote:
| By this logic you lose in long term no matter what you do.
|
| If you pay premium: they'll add ads to premium too.
|
| If you watch ads: they'll add more ads.
|
| If you use ad-blocker: they'll embed ads into the video.
|
| If you use another platform: the said platform will need to
| monetize and you are back to square one.
| ChromaticPanic wrote:
| You just described the evolution of every streaming
| platform out there
| draugadrotten wrote:
| > If you use ad-blocker: they'll embed ads into the
| video.
|
| Someone will eventually make an AI adblocker that will
| dynamically update the video with all ads removed or
| replaced. For example, let's say that I specify to my AI
| streaming video editor that "detect all bottles and
| glasses with alcohol and replace their contents with
| water and their labels with Liquid Death"
|
| Similar technology will be/is already used to e.g.
| display a Coke can for some markets and a Beer can for
| other markets, depending on who paid for that market.
| uncircle wrote:
| I have paid for Youtube Premium for a long time. Now it's
| pushing shorts (you tried to hide the section and it told you
| "ok, we won't show you shorts for 30 days." I don't want to
| see them ever, respect my goddamn choices. Now you can't hide
| shorts any more), telling I'm not interested is like yelling
| into the void, search is useless to the point of being
| insulting and full of clickbait. Youtube Music is so smart it
| keeps putting non-music videos in my playlists. Creators are
| deplatformed, demonetised and paid even less.
|
| Youtube can take a hike, I'm not giving that company a dime
| and hope it fails. After some changes in my personal life as
| well, it's good that I am not spending too much time on that
| awful website
| wincy wrote:
| At least it respects it for 30 days, the Facebook app
| (which I use to keep in touch with family) is a desolate
| place where literally every time you open the app your feed
| is filled with shorts and posts from people you aren't
| friends with. And those aren't event the ads!
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Doesn't respect it on any of my tvs.
| matwood wrote:
| Agreed. This isn't a situation where you can't pay. YT has a
| clear, reasonably priced solution for no ads. It also comes
| with YT music.
|
| If people don't think there's enough value in YT, then don't
| pay _and_ don't use it.
|
| Reminds me of the early justification of Napster where people
| would complain the latest B. Spears song was garbage and not
| worth paying for, yet it was the most downloaded song.
| PurestGuava wrote:
| > If people don't think there's enough value in YT, then
| don't pay and don't use it.
|
| The most common throughline of all pro-piracy discourse is
| that there's a lot of people who feel completely entitled
| to free entertainment, and they will come up with all sorts
| of bizarre mental gymnastics to justify that as something
| other than "I want free entertainment and don't want to see
| ads."
|
| I don't think anyone could articulate a coherent logical
| argument as to why they feel they should get YouTube's
| services, and the entertainment produced by the creators
| who are on YouTube, while not paying either of them through
| any means, other than pure selfishness.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Even worse, it's come to the point where it is actively
| destroying the internet. Everything from every news site
| being paywalled to click bait mania to brain rot content
| focused on the bottom suckers who can't ad block.
| dimator wrote:
| You'll notice that it's always YouTube that is the
| target, though. People feel entitled to free YouTube as
| though by birthright. If someone doesn't like Netflix,
| they cancel and move on, they don't usually claim they
| deserve it free.
|
| Maybe because it was not monetized originally, and so
| those who were around back then argue it must remain that
| way?
| Oarch wrote:
| Agreed, this is one of the times I'm fully behind a Google
| business model. I'd happily pay for products rather than have
| them datamine me senseless.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You have to have an account and log in to it!
| notpushkin wrote:
| I would gladly pay for YouTube as well, but I'm sure
| they'll mine the shit out of me either way.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| This is still hacker news not well behaved consumer news. A
| friend once said to me ,,if you have some self respect as a
| techie you don't pay for streaming" ;)
|
| I currently pay for Apple Music though ha
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I pay for youtube too and it still completely sucks. I hate
| when people try this bs.
|
| * I don't want to have to have an account and be logged in to
| it.
|
| * I pay for youtube but I don't always get to use my account.
| Other people's houses and devices exist. Other people's
| accounts exist even on my own device.
|
| * I pay for youtube and still have to get all the baked in
| ads.
|
| * I pay for youtube and have a wonderful black screen with no
| suggestions or discoverability because I have history turned
| off. (the feature does not depend on the history data,
| because for years this was never a problem, only a few years
| ago they suddenly decided to essentially penalize people who
| don't play ball like good little data cows). This even after
| I partially gave in and subscribed to a bunch of channels,
| which previously I never did.
|
| * I pay for youtube and still have no control to disable
| shorts. (don't tell me about browser plugins. The world is
| far more varied than one browser on one pc. There is no
| youtube browser plugins for roku or the 100 other platforms
| that have youtube players. And even on a pc, you're not
| always on your own pc where you are free to hack on the
| browser.)
|
| Here is the value you get from paying for youtube:
|
| It's having only 8 of your fingernails pulled out instead of
| all 10.
| raincole wrote:
| Sure. All you said is completely true. I have a good
| solution: don't use YouTube then.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| My comment was in response to : "You can also pay for
| YouTube. I do. It's nice, not crazy expensive. No ads.
| Creators get paid. Everyone wins."
|
| "then don't use youtube" is a non-sequitur to that.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You can have zero finger nails pulled out if you don't
| watch YouTube...
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Still a non sequitur. Irrelevant. The comment claimed
| that paying for youtube makes it good. Not using youtube
| does not address the claim thst paying for it makes it
| good.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What does "disable shorts" even mean?
| detaro wrote:
| presumably "not being shown or suggested Shorts"?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Yes. If I'm paying money, why can't I have what I want
| instead of what they want to shove at me? I thought
| paying for it made it nice? It's not like it would be
| either a technical or ui challenge.
|
| Answer is paying does not make it nice. Paying does one
| thing, which is significant, but the experience ovarall
| still sucks, including even that one thing, ads, because
| you still get ads.
| ayewo wrote:
| I think the gp meant YouTube Shorts [1], Google's answer
| to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| >...only a few years ago they suddenly decided to
| essentially penalize people who don't play ball like good
| little data cows...
|
| I'm extremely skeptical that the company that makes most of
| it's money on the collection of data isn't still collecting
| data on your viewing habits (and other assorted account-
| related activities) just because you clicked a checkbox. I
| don't have a lot of great evidence to back this up but I
| would still see videos related to my viewing history in the
| after-video suggestion grid as recently as a few months ago
| ( before I realized I could zap it with Ublock)
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Absolutely there is no reason to believe they aren't
| still collecting data.
|
| But the checkbox _claims_ that they aren 't logging, and
| so by clicking it they know your intention is not to
| cooperate in their fundamental business model.
|
| It's just yet another little deniable dark pattern
| pressure, making the service suck a little when you don't
| do what they want.
|
| And my outrage point is you get this dark pattern
| pressure even while you are actually paying money at the
| same time.
|
| They make more money from the free users and ads than
| they do from subscriptions. They actually don't want
| paying users, they just kind of hsve to offer the option
| to keep those users pacified.
| golergka wrote:
| > * I don't want to have to have an account and be logged
| in to it.
|
| The whole point of YouTube is watching your subscriptions
| or recommendations based on your previous history. What is
| your use case if you don't even want to be logged into it?
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| That's only partially true for me. Recommendations? Not
| at all.
|
| Subscriptions less and less. I can think of two that I
| regularly watch, and even those I'll just binge their
| most recent 2-3 every couple of months.
|
| For me it's Ctrl/CMD+L "y [thing I'm searching for]"
| Enter.
|
| I've dabbled with tools like PinchFlat to archive/stream
| via Jellyfin but there's niggles I haven't tackled.
| zwnow wrote:
| Why would you pay though its really simple to block ads and
| youtube is already rich enough. Why bow down to consumerism
| and enrichment of the already rich?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > youtube is already rich enough
|
| maybe, hard to say. but the people who make videos, and get
| 55% of the revenue (give or take a bit), frequently are not
| (unless you insist on watching mega channels only).
| zwnow wrote:
| Well it should be a hobby to be a youtuber not a job.
| Monetizing it destroyed the whole platform.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| While I think there is certainly a lot of questionable
| content because of monetization, some of my favorite YT
| channels exist because of it.
|
| For example, there's a guy who rebuilt a early-1900's
| sailing boat from scratch, funded almost entirely by
| revenue from his channel. The videos are crazy high
| quality hand-construction porn and would never exist
| without the monetization aspect. Oh, and I had no prior
| and no current interest in boat building.
|
| Most of the channels I follow (via RSS, rather than YT
| itself) are like this, and YT generally does an excellent
| job at putting new channels in front of me from time to
| time that marry my interests (even one's I didn't know I
| had) with phenomenally great story telling via video.
| zwnow wrote:
| I know that it creates opportunities for people. The
| question is, could that guy have done it without the
| monetization part? Certainly, would've just taken a lot
| longer...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| He would have given up the project. It was a full time
| thing for him, not a side project.
| dimator wrote:
| Why pay for clothes? Nordstrom's is already rich enough,
| just walk in and take something.
| golergka wrote:
| Because they provide a great service that delivers more
| value than the subscription is worth.
| zwnow wrote:
| The people provide the value, the platform just happens
| to have a monopoly standing in that domain...
| wiseowise wrote:
| Except for some reason I have to watch ads installed by the
| creators themselves despite paying 26 EUR.
| jonex wrote:
| I find that annoying too. In case you haven't seen, there's
| the sponsor block extension for that, which is not limited
| by anti-adblock measures.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Not on tvs.
| harvey9 wrote:
| On the rare occasion I watch YouTube via my Roku stick,
| ads cause me to mute the tv and skip when I can. I guess
| I could put a mini pc behind the TV and get all the
| browser extensions but this compromise is good enough for
| my lazy self.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Smarttube Next...
|
| https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube
| mrob wrote:
| I think paying for Youtube will increase the chances of my
| Google account getting banned. I've never heard of Google
| banning somebody for rejecting adverts. But if I pay them
| money, there's a chance there will be a problem with the
| payments, and that risks triggering false positives on
| automatic fraud detection. If that happens I assume I would
| be banned with no recourse and no human intervention. The
| safest thing to do is never change how you interact with
| Google in any way unless you absolutely have to.
|
| I don't like depending on Google in this way but I've had a
| Gmail account for a very long time and changing to a
| different email address would be a major inconvenience.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I think paying for Youtube will increase the chances of
| my Google account getting banned. [...] The safest thing to
| do is never change how you interact with Google in any way
| unless you absolutely have to. I don't like depending on
| Google in this way but I've had a Gmail account for a very
| long time and changing to a different email address would
| be a major inconvenience.
|
| I recall that even _logging_ into Youtube with your Google
| account could have that danger: if for some reason Google
| decided that your name isn 't your real name, under its
| "real names" policy your whole account could get banned,
| even from other services like Gmail and Google Talk. It's
| for that reason that I've been very careful to never log
| into Youtube with my Gmail account, even though that
| account always used my real name, and even though Google+'s
| deep integration with YouTube is AFAIK no longer relevant.
| xigoi wrote:
| Then I'd have to use the official YouTube app, whose UX is
| utter garbage compared to Tubular.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| The value I get for paying YouTube doesn't match the price.
|
| Ad blocking is already free and was free for two decades, why
| would I want to start paying for it now? It's not like I am
| breaking ToS (despite their pop-ups stating otherwise) and
| even if I did it is my computer and it is entirely up to me
| what kind of content it is and isn't going to display.
|
| Personally I don't care if creators get paid or not, I have
| enough financial problems as it is and I have no capacity to
| add the problems of complete strangers on the internet to the
| pile.
|
| Everyone wins aside from me, the end user. I am paying for
| something that is already free to do, I get nothing out of it
| (I still have to run stuff like Sponsorblock to get the
| content I actually want) and I participate in the upkeep of a
| business model that not only doesn't have my interests in
| mind but also has no issues with tricking me (there is no
| content moderation for YouTube ads and there are plenty of
| cases in which users are served scam ads).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Personally I don't care if creators get paid or not, I
| have enough financial problems as it is and I have no
| capacity to add the problems of complete strangers on the
| internet to the pile.
|
| Then stop watching youtube. You're just free-riding on the
| backs of whatever mechanisms exist to motivate the people
| who make videos to keep doing so. Plenty of other things to
| do in life other than watch videos you think are worth
| precisely zero <currency-units>.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It doesn't get rid of the ads. Most medium to big youtubers
| will have one or more sponsored segments inside the video.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| But that's their choice, not youtube's.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Specifically it's about $14 a month in the US, from what I
| see.
|
| I say this number so people know how to think economically
| about this. Anyone who is complaining about this is annoyed,
| but not $14/month level annoyed on net. Otherwise they'd just
| get the subscription, or stop watching YouTube.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their
| irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly
| attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody
| in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were
| all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
|
| The YouTube ads are hated because that's the whole point.
| YouTube has something we want (the video), and they're keeping
| it from us until they we do something we don't want to do
| (watch an ad). We dislike these ads almost by definition. If we
| liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something
| else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way.
| When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to
| stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have
| problems
|
| I don't mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can
| preoccupy ourself. When it's a 90 second ad we are forced to
| watch just to watch a 45 second video I'm gonna make certain
| we don't watch that ad
| nielsbot wrote:
| Why should _I_ have to look the other way? It 's the
| billboard that's an imposition, an intrusion, and a
| nuisance. (Especially when there are multiple)
|
| https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/07/sao-paulo-city-with-
| no...
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Nothing is wrong with billboards.
|
| Elaborate.
| freedomben wrote:
| Benefit of the doubt that perhaps that was the entirety
| of the comment at the time you posted this reply, but
| they _did_ elaborate if you could take the time to read
| the whole thing:
|
| > _Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other
| way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I
| have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we
| have problems_
|
| > _I don't mind watching a video with an ad. My child and
| I can preoccupy ourself. When it's a 90 second ad we are
| forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I'm gonna
| make certain we don't watch that ad_
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange
| for making someone money.
|
| There are places where billboards act as rather effective
| sound barriers, shielding quiet neighborhoods from road
| noise.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Then build a sound barrier , no need for an advertisement
| on them. Or decorate it with art if you want to make them
| less ugly.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Found marketing director of an ad agency.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive.[1]
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're
| worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll
| look at the data.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| wiseowise wrote:
| It's a joke, calm your knickers.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I highly doubt a billboard is thick or dense enough to
| effectively block freeway sound. It's not like you have a
| seamless wall of billboards "protecting" a neighborhood
| rascul wrote:
| It'll block some. It's not generally big enough to be
| effective.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A solid, tall, wall of wood ... Like maybe a fence? Many
| small towns put up fences to keep highway noise out. The
| residents don't see the billboards, not from their side.
| Only the drivers ripping by notice them.
| ptero wrote:
| Trees, dissipating sound instead of reflecting it, are even
| more effective.
| vntok wrote:
| How can dissipating be more effective than reflecting?
| Wouldn't you need multiple dense rows of trees to reach
| the efficacy of a single pane of sound-reflecting
| material?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Impedance matching (dissipation) converts more energy
| into heat while also reflecting and transmitting energy
| as sound waves.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is some weird shilling for capitalism or weird devil's
| advocate tbh. Don't feel like you have to find solutions or
| positive sides to everything you see on the internet.
| Billboards are visual noise, road noise is audible noise,
| neither is desireable.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And I'm sure the rural landowners dont care a jot about
| the opinions of drivers flying past on the highway.
| Nobody is going to pay them to not put up ads.
| antisol wrote:
| Do you know what's better on those surfaces than ads? Art.
| Or nothing.
| balanc wrote:
| [flagged]
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > That's not how the economy works.
|
| Kind of seems like how the economy works quite a lot of the
| time
| parineum wrote:
| How do those people end up making money if nobody wants
| what they are selling.
| nehal3m wrote:
| In the case of advertising that is the million dollar
| question. Determining the relationship between ad spend
| and revenue is next to impossible, whatever bullshit ad
| companies feed you to get you to spend more on ads.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We
| hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers
|
| If you read the rest of the paragraph it becomes clear that
| this is what was meant by irrelevant.
| nehal3m wrote:
| It's probably stretching the meaning of the word, I think
| obtrusive would fit better.
| chongli wrote:
| No it's using the common usage of the word irrelevant
| rather than the ad industry term of art. In common usage,
| almost all ads are irrelevant unless they simply help you
| find what you were already looking for (like a search ad
| leading to the exact website you were searching for).
|
| The ad that convinces you to buy something you hadn't
| thought of before (while watching a video related to that
| topic) would be considered relevant by the ad industry.
| But that's still irrelevant in common usage because you
| were watching a video, not shopping.
| Defletter wrote:
| Steel-manning the argument, near where I live, it's not that
| uncommon to see small to moderately sized advertisements
| along the road, such as a sign outside/near the entrance of a
| farm that's selling eggs, meat, etc. I am wholly unopposed to
| this. In fact, I'm very supportive of this, and used them to
| find a farm to buy local honey from. Whereas the
| stereotypical massive slabs whose advertisements get
| wallpapered on, I think those are distracting menaces,
| particularly if the primary way you see them is by driving.
| thejazzman wrote:
| And where I live it's an ever growing hell of political
| signs, dominos pizza, and anyone else who realizes there is
| no enforcement against this wide scale littering. The signs
| are never removed and continue piling up. Abandoned /
| unmonitored lots are also a frequent target.
|
| And it's rapidly getting worse
|
| Glad you're cool with it though, I guess? Cuz I've
| considered running for office on the sole platform of
| having them perpetually removed and perpetrators
| prosecuted.
|
| There are literally signs advertising to hire people to
| place more signs.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| Driving through the south is always fun.
|
| > Go to church or the devil will get you!
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Where I live, there are sign regulations (total 30 sqft
| of road signs per lot, or less for smaller lots, 6ft
| maximum height, minimum 200 ft spacing, up to 2 temporary
| signs/lot for a maximum 60 days/year, regulations around
| needing to look nice, etc.). There are signs, but they
| are much less noticable and more function as a navigation
| aid rather than a call for attention.
| jdeibele wrote:
| In Portland, it's against the city code to staple signs
| to telephone poles.
|
| This is, of course, completely ignored.
|
| There are also signs stuck on wire next to freeway exits
| or other prime traffic areas. Typically they're on public
| land because a property owner would want permission or
| would just remove it.
|
| There are people who angry enough about the sign
| proliferation that they cut the sign in half so you can't
| read the phone number or address or whatever.
|
| You should be able to go online and pay a small fee (like
| $1 or even $.25) per sign that you put up for your garage
| sale or business. The money could be divided among the
| city, the pole owner, and people who are paid by the city
| to remove signs that don't have a QR code or has one that
| expired.
|
| The fee could be adjusted so that garage sale signs cost
| much less than business signs. Business signs could only
| be allowed for businesses who started less than X days
| ago. Etc.
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| You'd get my vote! These boulevard signs are totally out
| of control. They are technically against bylaws in my
| town, but nobody enforces it. Two anecdotes about how
| insane these are:
|
| 1. I saw one last week advertising a halloween party, so
| it's been in the ground for over 6 months. It is on a
| sidewalk near the university and is passed by about 1000
| people per day, and in 6+ months not ONE SINGLE PERSON
| said "Oh, I should talk this down".
|
| 2. I once saw a city employee get off their riding lawn
| mower to move one of these signs out of their way, cut
| the grass, then get off the mower again to put the sign
| back!
|
| And echoing the GPs comment, what really gets me about
| these is that we all have our lives diminished so that
| one person or company can earn a little extra...maybe. Or
| in other words, 1000's of people are subjected to this
| and perhaps 1 person might bite?
|
| I'll close with my favorite interpretation of
| advertising: Advertisers essentially steal your sense of
| self-satisfaction so they can sell it back to you.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > It is on a sidewalk near the university and is passed
| by about 1000 people per day, and in 6+ months not ONE
| SINGLE PERSON said "Oh, I should talk this down".
|
| Weren't you one of those people? Why didn't you do it?
| dietr1ch wrote:
| On a few nice towns here there's no regular advertisements,
| but shops are allowed to have nice wooden signs matching
| the aesthetics of the town signs.
|
| You can still find your way around, and discover things,
| but looking around feels like you are finding things
| instead of looking at things yelling at you to find them.
| Terr_ wrote:
| In Washington state, the law is that signs along the
| highway have to be things you can actually purchase in the
| same property.
|
| I think that rule helps strike a decent compromise:
| Adjacent local businesses can draw attention to themselves,
| but it blocks the business-plan of erecting a forest of
| billboards to auction off, flogging cell-phone providers or
| prescription drugs etc.
|
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=47.42.040
| exegete wrote:
| Have other states adopted this? Definitely would change
| things in NJ.
| macintux wrote:
| Similarly, I've found numerous small businesses/attractions
| thanks to highway billboards while traveling. Yes, I find
| billboards tedious and a nuisance, but I'm happy with the
| tradeoff.
|
| Except digital billboards, especially those that can switch
| to blinding white backgrounds at night. Those can rot in
| hell.
| sdeframond wrote:
| > If the billboards were all about driving-related products
|
| Well, I don't complain about road signs.
| ptero wrote:
| The road signs are also unwelcome eye sores. However, they
| provide a lot of value by achieving safer road traffic so
| we tolerate them.
|
| That value still needs to be compared and evaluated for
| delivering information vs delivering annoyance. If
| information were delivered by giant, flashing, multicolored
| road signs every 50 meters the answer would be different.
| My 2c.
| sdeframond wrote:
| Precisely. Thank you.
|
| Road signs are _relevant_ so we dont complain about them
| despite being an ugly eyesore.
| ptero wrote:
| We don't complain not because road signs, in addition to
| being an eye sore, are relevant to our current activity,
| but because they provide significant value.
|
| While relevance has some correlation to value, that
| correlation is pretty weak; it is easy to find examples
| of high relevance and very negative value. We should not
| conflate those.
|
| Your opponent (with whom I agree) argued that the problem
| with most YT ads and billboards is negative value. Which
| will stay even if google makes them relevant. My 2c.
| sdeframond wrote:
| It seems we have a slightly different definition of
| 'relevant'.
|
| Regardless, we all agree: roadsigns are ugly but ok,
| billboards are just plain bad.
| onion2k wrote:
| Here in the UK we have _several_ campaigns for reducing
| 'street clutter', which includes excessive use of road
| signs.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| > If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them
| something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."
|
| I like these things but I do not seek them out.
| Sophira wrote:
| Many people do, though. I've heard people say proudly that
| they "only watch the Super Bowl for the ads".
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > If the billboards were all about driving-related products,
| they'd still suck.
|
| To be clear, this is my primary point because I'm driving,
| not shopping. Something that gets close to maybe agreeable (I
| would still dislike it) would be an advertisement for a
| gas/charging station on a long highway. But even then we
| already have official roadsigns that only show logos and are
| otherwise relatively unobtrusive. Similar ones for fast food,
| actually.
|
| Such signs seem agreeable given there is some relevance (I
| legitimately might be low on gas/battery charge/food
| satiation levels in a context which I am actually likely to
| have a specific product need from one or more of the
| advertised businesses) and they are small enough to be
| ignorable when they are not actually relevant. The biggest
| issue I think about with that is how a business gets
| themselves on the sign but it's probably not that hard once
| they are operating next to a highway exit.
|
| (I _loathe_ advertisements, so when I say "agreeable" I mean
| something like "not wholly disagreeable".)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for
| something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it. In the
| context of roads, these are businesses putting their signs on
| the side of the road. For example I usually find
| billboards/signs pointing to the nearest supermarket,
| restaurant or gas station to be useful, because that's the
| kind of thing I may want do do when I am driving, and I am
| getting useful information out of them.
|
| Driving-related products like tires are annoying on a
| billboard on the side of the road because I am obviously not
| going to look at my tires while I am driving, and it is
| usually not something you have an urgent need for. They are
| however relevant (and therefore less annoying) in a gas
| station, where you can check your tires as you are filling up
| your tank. It may even give you the idea of checking tire
| pressure, which is a good thing. One of the most clever
| driving-related ad was a letter I received from the garage I
| did car maintenance with, reminding me a couple of weeks
| before the next scheduled maintenance that it was to be done
| (with, of course, an offer on their part). It was useful, yet
| 100% an ad.
|
| And yeah, we usually call things "ads" when they are annoying
| and by some other word when they are not, and advertisers
| tend to avoid the word for this reason. Calling it
| "sponsored" for instance. But it doesn't change that fact.
| antisol wrote:
| > If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for
| something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it.
|
| Yes, I would. When I'm looking for something, I search for
| it until I find it, and then after that I'm not looking for
| it anymore. I _don 't_ go for a drive through the
| countryside in the hopes that system76 have put up a
| billboard which blocks the view of the countryside but
| shows me the specs for their latest laptop model.
| therealpygon wrote:
| This is the problem. Ads may not work as well for some
| people (who hate them) but they work great on others.
| Unfortunately, because the ones it does work on spend
| money, the rest of us are stuck in advertising hell.
|
| I don't want AR glasses for productivity or the social
| media bs they want to push; I want them to blight out
| every f'n ad that is everywhere. When they can do it in-
| device with no internet connection and I'll fork over 1k
| for glasses immediately.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Given that so far the nearest things to successful AR
| glasses have been produced by Google and Meta, I think
| the relationship between wearing AR glasses and seeing
| ads is unlikely to go the way you are hoping.
|
| (I too would love there to be AR glasses that you can put
| arbitrary software on, only under your control, rather
| than that of some rapidly-enshittifying company that has
| the device locked down. I suppose it's not _strictly
| impossible_ that that might happen, but it doesn 't seem
| like it's the way to bet.)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The thing is that you are not looking for a new laptop
| _while you are driving_ , but you may be looking for a
| gas station because your "low fuel" light just turned on.
| And how are you going to find that gas station (which may
| not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if there
| is no sign advertising for it?
|
| You can tell me you can pull over and look at a map, or
| program it on your navigation app. Not only it is not the
| most convenient, maybe even unsafe, but how do you think
| that gas station ended up on that map? Most likely the
| business paid for that, making it an ad.
|
| That's the idea, we dislike that laptop ad because we
| usually don't buy laptops while we are on the road, it is
| an irrelevant attention grab, especially when that
| billboard is disproportionately large. But a gas station,
| restaurant or convenience store is relevant to a
| significant fraction of the people on the road, and when
| the sign is reasonable, we don't usually call it a
| billboard, even though it is an ad and not a sign like a
| speed limit.
| x3ro wrote:
| ,,For next gas station take exit 31" is not an ad in the
| sense most people understand ads, just as a ,,toilet"
| sign on a door is not an ad for that toilet. I feel like
| you are constructing a case of ads that doesn't really
| fit the common definition, but maybe I misunderstand.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| When's the last time you stopped for food or gas on a
| road trip and used billboards rather than a maps app to
| help you choose a place to stop?
| wingspar wrote:
| 12 days ago, driving thru North Carolina. Several times.
|
| Gas and another restrooms.
| antisol wrote:
| > And how are you going to find that gas station (which
| may not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if
| there is no sign advertising for it?
|
| Well, actually, in all serious travel I do, I tend to
| know exactly where I'm going to stop for fuel before I
| ever set off. It's programmed into my gps as part of my
| route. And I'm going to find it using my gps software.
|
| If I'm doing a less-serious trip somewhere and I don't
| pre-plan my stops, the way I find places to stop for fuel
| is I drive along on my route, and if I need fuel, when I
| see a "gas" station, I stop there. Again, no billboards
| needed.
|
| > You can tell me you can (snip) program it on your
| navigation app. Not only it is not the most convenient,
|
| I find it super convenient. Much much more convenient
| than running out of fuel or not knowing if I have enough
| to make it to a particular place.
|
| > how do you think that gas station ended up on that map?
| Most likely the business paid for that, making it an ad.
|
| Well, that's debatable. It's a listing for an amenity of
| a certain type (fuel station) on openstreetmap. To be in
| the "Fuel" category that shows up on my gps software,
| you'll need to sell fuel (or your entry will get edited
| and you'll show up in a different category). In much the
| same way as a sign saying "public toilet, this way" isn't
| an ad.
|
| But the debate about the blurry lines of "what is an ad?"
| is beside the point: have you noticed how that pattern
| of: "I want a thing, I search for it, I find it, and then
| I'm not looking for it anymore" holds true here? And also
| how no obnoxious billboards were involved?
|
| Even if it is an "ad", it's in an appropriate place - on
| openstreetmap, in the "fuel" category, and searchable by
| gps coordinates. I can toggle whether I want things in
| the 'fuel' category to be visible in my gps software very
| easily - I can turn that "ad" off with exactly 2 button
| presses if it bugs me. It's _not_ a huge obnoxious
| billboard blocking my view of the countryside, lit up
| with 10000W of lights at night time.
| Xelbair wrote:
| Of course I would hate it.
|
| Ads are just mental warfare against you. Its someone trying
| to manipulate you for profit.
|
| If I drive somewhere I know where I want to go. If I need
| supplies I can pull over and check on the map where the
| nearest store is.
|
| In such case I don't care what store it's, just it's
| proximity.
| anton-c wrote:
| You sound like an ad exec. I never want ads ever, they are
| by their nature intrusive. I have never bought anything
| from a targeted ad on social media. If one plays and I
| can't turn down the volume quick enough I will make noise
| to avoid hearing it.
|
| If an ad is placed in a way that forces you to look at it
| you have every right to want to remove it. If it's in my
| personal power, I do.
| chistev wrote:
| Have you read those comments about how people who says
| ads don't work on them fail to realize it works on them
| subconsciously when they go shopping?
| Retric wrote:
| I actively avoid products I see mass market advertising
| for. It's a useful heuristic, if you see a YouTube
| advertising campaign you can basically guarantee the
| product is poor value for the money. That extends to
| basically all name brand products like soap.
|
| Cheap signs along the road don't trip that heuristic
| because they cost so little it doesn't change the
| underlying economics.
| anton-c wrote:
| I too use the metric of seeing a YouTube sponsor or ad
| usually means it's bad.
|
| I was actually interested in some of those privacy/info
| removal services but after doing research found those to
| - as you said - lack value for the money.
| chistev wrote:
| How does an ad being on YouTube mean it's a bad product?
| nemomarx wrote:
| If a product needs to pay people to talk about it, it
| must not have organic buzz and popularity. Think VPNs
| sponsoring YouTubers, or those cheap wireless earbuds
| from a small brand. I wouldn't trust their quality.
| lrvick wrote:
| Exactly why I do not own any Apple or Google products or
| have any subscription services. Advertise to me products
| I can not actually own or control for myself and I hate
| you.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Personally my guess for VPN, earbuds, food delivery is
| that the quality is fine but it costs an extra 50% to pay
| for the ads.
| Retric wrote:
| It's an economic argument. The product could be fit for
| purpose, ie Nord VPN could work just fine.
|
| However when you're advertising a VPN on a cooking
| channel the cost per customer is quite high so they need
| to recuperate that high cost by charging extra. This is
| more true the longer the advertising campaign runs and
| the less a channel is related to the product, each of
| which drive up new customer acquisitions costs.
|
| Obviously it's not a perfect predictor, but it doesn't
| need to be.
| chistev wrote:
| Ok, this makes sense. But then how would people market
| their product then?
| t400 wrote:
| Such a claim needs evidence; by its nature, it insulates
| itself from counter-arguments based on experience.
|
| If person X says "ads don't work on me", the state "I
| experience no influence from ads because they don't work"
| is indistinguishable from "I experience no influence from
| ads because they're so sneaky that they only affect me
| subconsciously".
|
| Unfortunately, it's very hard to get individual-level
| evidence. You can get population-level evidence, but
| sometimes that evidence shows that the ads don't actually
| work (for instance, The Correspondent's 2019 articles
| about the subject).
| anton-c wrote:
| Which is borderline nonsense nowadays. If this were
| another website, I'd convey it thru the meme of SpongeBob
| showing Patrick all the diapers* with captions of "sports
| betting" "pokemon speculation" "monetization in games"
| with maybe the last panel being "diamonds are valuable"
|
| They have always had powerful psychological tools but
| they are next level nowadays. Best to just avoid.
|
| * https://i.imgflip.com/2yg87r.png
|
| (I don't think pokemon intentionally wants such a toxic
| secondary market tbf)
| adrr wrote:
| If it didn't work on people companies wouldn't spend
| hundreds of billions of dollars on ads. Everyone says the
| same thing that ads don't work on them but the data says
| otherwise.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I think you are complaining about the signs that happen
| inside cities particularly on roads where traffic gets
| backed up and slow. Beyond that it's
| gas/food/hotels/motels/tourist attractions... and religious
| speech. But in urban areas where it's AC repair, plumbers,
| injury lawyers or whatever lets be real: you're not missing
| much of a view.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want
| to do _(pay for the service)_.
|
| Fixed that for you.
| scrps wrote:
| I pay for youtube with generous monthly donations to ad-
| block devs and list maintainers... Also how about all the
| ads on paid services now?
|
| Oh and I pay for plenty of services just not from vampires
| like youtube who rip off the actual talent and hold their
| audience captive.
|
| Arrr Matey, the sails may have been luffin but they be full
| again!
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We
| hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers
| that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for
| making someone money. If the billboards were all about
| driving-related products, they'd still suck.
|
| I like billboards when I'm driving down an interstate and I
| want to decide if I should get off at the next stop and I
| want to know what food options there are. (example: Driving
| down I5 from SF to LA). I like billboards when they tell me
| about an attraction coming up. (Winchester House has a
| billboard) I like billboards when they advertize
| concerts/entertainers. (Driving down the I15 from Ontario to
| Oceanside there are ads for who's playing at Yaamava
| (https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater), Pala
| (https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-
| concerts/), etc...
| gausswho wrote:
| Even if they were relevant, they'd still be holding global
| internet video culture behind a paywall.
|
| First pay with your identity (carrier phone number required for
| a Google account). Then double pay through Premium in the
| illusion you won't end up seeing ads anyway.
| user3939382 wrote:
| They're disagreeable because you're having your attention
| robbed unsolicited for the purpose of someone else trying to
| get your money. The whole concept is an insult. At best they
| drive materialism.
| PurestGuava wrote:
| You're trading your attention for entertainment you don't
| otherwise have to pay for.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Not true, cable TV runs ads and costs money. Many sports
| channels cost money in a cable package and still have ads.
| The *paid* Netflix plans have ads now.
|
| It's pretty clear that companies can't stop salivating over
| how lucrative ads are, and will continue to shove ads down
| our throats inside of paid products as long as we live.
| PurestGuava wrote:
| OK, but we're _very specifically_ discussing YouTube
| here, which as discussed, you _don 't have to_ pay for;
| but if you do, you don't see ads.
| agent327 wrote:
| ...for now. But I do wonder how well this statement will
| age.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| All of the people commenting on this thread will be dead
| and buried one day. That's how well all of this will age.
| agent327 wrote:
| Society used to have the wisdom to plant trees for its
| children to sit under. On the whole I think I like that
| attitude a lot better than this "apres moi, le deluge"
| thinking we see so much of now.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you do, you don't see _pre-roll and mid-roll ads_. You
| still see embedded ads, sponsor mentions, "all the tools
| we used are linked below", etc.
| vntok wrote:
| That's on the video creator, not YouTube. Just tell them
| to stop or you won't watch their videos anymore.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Except, you do.
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/more-ads-are-coming-to-youtube-
| pre...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Clearly they are referring to the ad-free plan, not the
| cheaper ad-subsidized plan.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Ad subsidized is not the same as ad free.
|
| Many hybrid products/services exist to lower costs by
| taking on some ads. The low tier Netflix plans and $200
| smart TVs are examples of this.
|
| Sports TV is just a monopolist scam though.
| owisd wrote:
| You do in the end because you're buying the products that
| are funding the ads.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I don't like ads but keep in mind the only 100% "relevant" ad
| is disguised as content. Is that what you want? Sponsored or
| generated stuff that feeds you some agenda while you think you
| watch something different...
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Consuming content online has always been about agency. You
| choose the content. Previous media landscapes were largely
| passive endeavors. Broadcast media choices were limited. You
| either muted the ads, turned off the TV/radio or endured the
| advertisements. I often find myself closing YT when ads are
| played.
|
| Not only are they largely irrelevant, but they are frequently
| in the wrong language. If I want to immerse myself in the local
| language, I will go outside and interact in that language. If I
| am listening to a podcast in English, typically around
| Anglophone cultural or political topics, why would they invade
| my space with non-English content?
|
| I don't want to hear local music or K-Pop when I am listening
| to classical music.
|
| In many cases, the language isn't even local to the country
| which I reside in. If I cannot have an English-only space on my
| own computer, I won't be using the site. There's a time and a
| place for immersion into other cultures. My personal computer
| in my home office isn't the place.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance._
|
| Bane: For you
|
| I dislike them because they're loud, flashy, annoying, and
| (most of all) because YT saturates them. It even tries to put
| them _in the middle of songs_ when it detects a transitional
| pause. And they are served so often. It 's literally worse than
| broadcast TV, which is an incredibly low bar to step over.
|
| Platforms should not allow advertisers free speech. They should
| limit the content to static imagery/shots, dissolves, and
| spoken narration, ie the form rather than the content. Don't
| tell it can't work, this was how adwords worked on Google
| Search for years and everyone made handsome profits.
| Advertising is cancer if allowed to go full spectrum. The
| people who work at Youtube should be deeply ashamed of what
| they have allowed it to become and the trash monetization
| incentives they've established.
| Corrado wrote:
| I completely agree, though with a twist. Google knows
| everything about me and yet I get ADs for things that I would
| never purchase. Just because I'm a middle aged male I see
| trucks, and beer, and football advertisements all day long.
| Those are irrelevant to me. If Google would only use their
| immense knowledge of me and what I like, I might be more
| amenable to watching their ADs. Where are the ADs for geeky
| movies that I might enjoy (is there a new Superman movie coming
| out)? Or books by my favorite authors? Or video games or
| computer equipment or electric cars? Hell, I have grandkids so
| stuff for them might work on me.
|
| To be clear, it's not only Google, all the big providers have
| so much information on all of us, but they don't seem to take
| advantage of it at all. I've turned the AD "customization"
| on/off for all kinds of things and it doesn't seem to matter in
| the slightest. Nearly everything I see is irrelevant to me.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Their incentive is to make money, not serve you relevant ads.
|
| If a geeky movie studio pays X to show an ad to people of
| your profile, while a car manufacturer pays X*2, Google is
| better off showing you the car, even if they are internally
| 100% sure you'd buy the movie instead.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The next Superman movie might correctly conclude that
| you're going to go see it anyway, so advertising it to the
| hypothetical you isn't very valuable.
| Eavolution wrote:
| I could be wrong but I was under the impression that ads
| paid primarily per click, in which case surely the
| relevancy is important too?
| palmfacehn wrote:
| In many cases the buyer pays per impression.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Even if they pay per impression, pricing is ultimately
| driven by clicks.
|
| Even if you pay-per-view of an ad, a company selling
| tampons will not pay as much for 1 thousand views of
| their ads on a youtube channel for construction workers,
| as on a youtube channel for girl's fashion. Because the
| former drives no clicks/revenue, and the latter does.
|
| So yes relevance is extremely relevant to make money.
| ptek wrote:
| I would like to see a advertisement for "The C Programming
| Language - ANSI edition". Yes I have a copy but would like to
| see it advertised on YouTube. Wish my copy was signed :/
| kccqzy wrote:
| > Google knows everything about me
|
| No it doesn't. Google is highly restrained when it comes to
| using what it knows about you to serve you ads. Way more
| restrained than for example Meta or the newer Chinese apps
| like TikTok.
| setsewerd wrote:
| I agree with your point, but you're also making a different
| argument than the point you're replying to. Google knows
| way more about you than they're legally able to apply to
| advertising. Just because they can't use it for that
| specific purpose doesn't mean they lack the information.
| chistev wrote:
| Is there a reason? Is it a matter of principle or?
| bevr1337 wrote:
| It's an established strategy to serve you irrelevant ads.
| When the targeting gets too specific, the people start to
| notice and panic.
|
| Target is a fun example - they had cases where they revealed
| pregnancies through targeted ads. Now, they'll put an ad of a
| lawnmower (untargeted) next to the bassinet (targeted) and
| customers are less creeped out
| seadan83 wrote:
| Idk of it is a strategy, would be interested for any
| background reading.
|
| My XP at an ad-tech is that there is only so many targeted
| ads, and the advertisers cap how many times they want to
| show you an ad. When it comes time to bid to show you an
| ad, all of the targeted ads might have exhausted their
| campaigns (shown you the ad X times already, or the
| campaign ran out of spend). In this case, all the
| advertisers that would bid a _lot_ in auction are sitting
| out. There are still other bidders, but these are less
| targeted and are bidding less money. Because the highly
| targetted ads are exhausted, these lower targeted ads might
| look random. Their targeting might be instead of based on
| gender, city, income, the targeting might be based on just
| geography. The fewer targeting parameters, the lower the
| bid.
|
| In effect, once all the highpy targeted campaigns are done
| with you, they stop bidding, and the ads with less
| targeting which have cheaper bids are now the auction
| winners. If those are exhausted too, then there is a very
| large pool of low rent ads which have even less targetting.
| netsharc wrote:
| The ads probably get to you subconsciously anyway, IIRC there
| are studies done by psychology experts (some of them also
| work for the ad industry) that explains the presence of
| random ads.
|
| For one thing, if you're suddenly in the market for a truck,
| you'll see the brand that was in an ad a long time ago and
| you think "Oh yeah I've heard of Ford, never heard of Isuzu,
| let's look at the Ford much closer.". Even a tiny nudge that
| the ad did helps, when selling to millions. Obviously a truck
| is a big purchase, and you individually probably would do
| more research, but the nudge applied to millions might move
| the needle in the heads of a few dozen people.
| Kamq wrote:
| > Just because I'm a middle aged male I see trucks, and beer,
| and football advertisements all day long
|
| Well, yeah. Those companies will pay to send their ad to all
| middle aged men. Those companies could slice and dice more to
| get better demographics, but they don't think it's worth it.
|
| Google's business isn't to slice and dice the demographics to
| show you better ads. It's to slice and dice the demographics
| in any way that the advertisers will pay for.
|
| Because the people who are willing to pay money are,
| ultimately, the customers.
| ljm wrote:
| It's better they don't. Hyper-targeting of ads to achieve
| political aims has been happening for the past decade with
| Meta leading the way.
|
| There is zero situation where this technology doesn't get co-
| opted by adverse interests to make your life measurably
| worse.
|
| Better to keep them dumb and then grow a regulatory spine to
| put a stop to the endless proliferation of ads. It was done
| for advertising on other media.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| The most successful marketing campaign of all time was the
| marketing department convincing companies that they need
| marketing.
|
| If you're Coca Cola and you spend PS1,000,000,000 on a
| Christmas TV ad of a bear drinking cola, does that increase
| your sales? No. It does nothing. But every year they'll do it.
|
| The only marketing that works is at the point of sale, and free
| samples. Anything which is just random and in public will not
| result in anything.
|
| But the genius of the scam is, it's not measurable. You bill
| PS1,000,000,000 a year for marketing, and they can't measure if
| it worked. How do you know if a TV ad worked? But they can't
| withdraw the funding, because you'll tell them their
| competitors will win. So the scam keeps going.
| mrob wrote:
| I don't drink cola myself, but it seems logical to me. The
| point of the expensive advert is showing everybody how rich
| Coca Cola is. That increases the trust people have in their
| products being safe and reliable because they know Coca Cola
| has something to lose. If they didn't advertise they'd be
| like those Chinese sellers named as random strings of
| uppercase letters. I definitely wouldn't buy cola from one of
| those.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Think about all the ways you a smarter than the average
| person.
|
| Well this is one of them too, unfortunately.
|
| Ads work extremely well. Often they are the single most
| important aspect of product. Google and Meta are two of the
| largest corporations on Earth entirely because thin brains
| click their ads all day. Your hate for ads isn't misguided,
| but you are hitting the wrong mark.
| meyum33 wrote:
| I don't get how YouTube advertises. Because we use VPN in
| China, YouTube simply pushes ads in whatever local language my
| proxy server happens to be. Which baffles me quite a lot since
| even the most basic tracking and use history (I have two
| decades in Google) would tell them at least the language I can
| understand.
| blitzar wrote:
| The parasitic nature of ad tech attracts the laziest get rich
| quickest tech workers who go on to management where they hire
| the griftiest of grifters into their ranks.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > If I go to Costco and see an advertisement for tires... well,
| I'm at Costco, where I buy stuff. Things are sold at Costco and
| people go there to have things sold to them
|
| If you visit content on the internet that the Google Ad network
| thinks suggest you might be interested in purchasing new tyres,
| then showing you ads for companies that sells tyres is,
| unfortunately, relevant no matter what your doing now, because
| you're more likely to click them, or remember the company/brand
| when choosing a purchase.
|
| Also a large proportion of ads aren't designed to affect
| immediate purchase - cars, movies, coca-cola, and other brands
| are hoping to get into your (sub) consciousness so you'll
| remember when you buy days, weeks or months later.
| meroes wrote:
| The most disagreeable thing is they are psychologically
| insidious.
| raincole wrote:
| I really hope ads to stay as irrelevant as possible, for as
| long as possible.
|
| However it seems impossible to last for our society with all
| the tracking, product placement and astroturfing.
| qwery wrote:
| You're right to point out the "relevance factor" is not what
| people commonly take it to be. The context is (as always)
| crucial. Of course, the degree to which an individual
| _tolerates_ advertising varies for a multitude of reasons.
|
| > billboards [...] countryside
|
| I think people simply find this to be an ugly thing. They
| object to the ugliness of it. They're in the countryside --
| i.e. not the town/city -- and they find themselves unable to
| escape ( _even here!_ ) from this seedy miasma. Putting disgust
| into words is not a simple thing, perhaps this is the reason
| for the inconsistent reasoning you've noticed.
|
| All advertising is ugly, it's an ugly business -- money
| grubbing manipulation. It's inherently weird to be subjected to
| the endless torrent of uncanny twisted art that is advertising
| every day for your entire life. The ads on Youtube are
| normalised by the same force that normalises all the other
| advertising -- the ads in one context normalise the ads in
| another. The ads on the side of the bus, on the LCD panels on
| the train, _on the same screen that shows the timetable_ at the
| station, before the movie starts, by the seemingly sensible ads
| in Costco. One hand washes the other.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| We're all living in Truman's world. About the only thing that
| might make it better is maybe some of this nice Ovaltine
| recommended by 9 out of 10 doctors.
| andoando wrote:
| This pretty much applies to all ads everywhere. I mean Im a guy
| and I get ads for tampons on TV or a million odds for all sorts
| of diseases I dont have.
|
| Shit I rather willingly give info about myself so irrelevant
| ads can be filtered out and I dont have to waste time on them
| and the advertiser doesnt waste money on me
| v5v3 wrote:
| You don't get it. You are not the target
|
| Most advertising is seeking the less intelligent consumer. Or
| the young and still naive consumer.
|
| They outnumber you 1 million to 1.
|
| It's why female musicians make more money putting their name to
| a makeup brand then their music.
|
| It's why Elon will make some promise that is unrealistic.
|
| It's why Apple put low paid everyday tech support staff in
| their stores and called them Geniuses.
|
| You have to put yourself in the shoes of the mainstream buyer.
| They see a headline and believe it.
| dakiol wrote:
| Couldn't youtube easily discern those who are young and naive
| from those who aren't so that the latter don't get ads? It
| would be a win-win for everyone: youtube spends less (no need
| to spend bandwidth), companies dont get hated that much, non-
| naive-young consumers are not bombarded with ads.
| latexr wrote:
| > It would be a win-win for everyone
|
| Not the naive young ones. Who are also the prime target for
| radicalisation.
| v5v3 wrote:
| People are known to buy stuff on eBay when they are drunk.
| So they don't want to miss out on opportunism!!
|
| But lots of companies are now allowing people to pay to not
| see ads.
| Barbing wrote:
| Anecdotally, YouTube will show to boomer home owners scam
| solar product ads which they'd never show their younger,
| more scam-resistant counterparts. So they at least make
| some adjustment.
|
| Also wouldn't we farm & sell our ad-free accounts
|
| PS: maybe they could just show us Coke ads, whichever
| ubiquitous brands necessarily advertise to stay in our
| consciousness etc.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| Spot on. As technically apt people, we grossly overestimate
| the technical ability of the average user.
| joyjayking11 wrote:
| It makes sense
| b0a04gl wrote:
| they aren't failing at relevance they're succeeding at
| something else entirely. they're not designed to match context,
| they're designed to create friction. disruption was not just
| side effect, it's the mechanism. you don't skip because the
| ad's irrelevant. you skip because you're reminded this space
| isn't yours. that skip button is intentional friction it trains
| you. not to buy, but to tolerate. and over time, less skip,
| more forced watch, more normalisation. so maybe the endgame
| isnt better ads, it's users who've stopped expecting control
| maelito wrote:
| No, we just hate ads because they're trying to tell us what to
| buy. It's the definition of illiberal.
| franga2000 wrote:
| 10000x NO!
|
| I absolutely hate advertisements in stores specifically because
| of their releavance. If I go there to buy cereal, I expect to
| go to the cereal shelf, look at the options, evaluate them and
| pick the optimal one for my set of criteria.
|
| What I absolutely do not want is for one cereal brand to be
| placed right as I come in, exploiting my psychological quirks
| to get me to either buy it on the spot without going to
| evaluate other options or just occupy a slightly larger part of
| my attention to skew my evaluation process when I get to the
| shelf.
|
| Advertising is just another money multiplier. If you have a ton
| of money to throw at ads, you'll make more money than those
| that don't. And to make up the ad investment, you'll
| necessarily have to be a worse deal for consumers.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Yes, advertising is bad because it works. At its core it's
| manipulative and well targeted adverts are the most
| manipulative.
| comprev wrote:
| When you are next in the cereal aisle take a close look at
| how they are arranged. What you see is advertising. Shelf
| space is at a high premium and companies tussle for your
| attention.
|
| The product which is easiest to reach - for an adult on
| cereal shelves and a child in the toy section - pays a
| premium to be there. The smaller unknown brands are pushed to
| the bottom and on top where you have to stretch.
|
| It's no different to a large Kellogg's cereal advert in your
| face as you walk in the shop.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is the
| whole thing. There is nothing good about ads, ever. If I want
| information about a product, I'll go looking for it, and I
| won't go to an advertiser. If I'm looking to watch a YouTube
| video, there is absolutely no condition under which I want to
| hear about a product unless that's explicitly what I went to
| that video to hear about.
|
| All ads are lies. There is _never_ an ad that tells you about
| the flaws in a product or compares it honestly to competing
| product. I 'm simply not interested in being lied to.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| Well, obviously. If the message was relevant or a good offer
| for the customer, they wouldn't need to pay to advertise it.
| Advertisement is for products which have low enough
| cost/benefit for the customer to not sell themselves.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| When Google started ads they were praised for being relevant.
| But, as long as advertisers are willing to pay more, they can
| buy off the relevancy, not really caring about directly
| measurable conversion rates.
| BrtByte wrote:
| The worse the experience, the more likely people are to pay to
| remove ads entirely. So we end up with this weird situation
| where the ad experience degrades on purpose, rather than
| improving relevance or fitting the context, because annoyance
| drives subscriptions.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Lol you sweet summer child, they don't care if the ad is
| relevant to you, you're not the customer.
| https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c9...
|
| Your eyes are the supply. The demand (customer) is people
| wanting your eyes. Relevance in ads is if your eyes are a
| candidate to at some point buy their orid8.
|
| What your taking about at costco is essentially house ads or
| really signage.
|
| Remember unless you are a brand you are not the customer for
| ads.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Lol you sweet summer child, they don't care if the ad is
| relevant to you, you're not the customer.
| https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c9...
|
| Your eyes are the supply. The demand (customer) is people
| wanting your eyes. Relevance in ads is if your eyes are a
| candidate to at some point buy their product.
|
| What your taking about at costco is essentially house ads or
| really signage.
|
| Remember unless you are a brand you are not the customer for
| ads.
| pantulis wrote:
| This is correct.
|
| But the real customer, the brand, cares if the ad is relevant
| to you because they are either paying for impressions or
| traffic. Either way, if the ad is not relevant the analytics
| tools will show that campaigns in Google perform worse than
| campaigns bought in, say, Meta or TikTok.
| strken wrote:
| It's not irrelevance, it's lack of trust.
|
| I could see an ad for the exact thing I need and I still
| wouldn't click it. Either it's a scam, or it's technically not
| a scam because offering 90% off in the first month of a 12
| month contract is legal, or it's the worst product on the
| market and the only way it can get users is blowing VC cash on
| ads, or there's something else that will surely disappoint me.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think the theme you and other posters are stating in
| various ways, is that being expised to persuasion always has
| negative value. The motivation for some actors can be good,
| but it will never be universal. When seeking out information
| to make a purchase, one of the primary taks is to identify
| and filter out persuasion in the process, in the form of
| sponsored listings, or reddit shills. I have seen calls to
| ban paid persuasion, or even all paid speech. I don't know if
| that is compatible with the notion of free speech, or if I
| agree it is a good idea, but it certainly would have some
| good effects in addition to any bad ones.
| ufmace wrote:
| I feel like it's happened to me multiple times that I've seen
| an ad for something I actually want, but if I click through
| or look up the company advertised, then do a little research
| on that company, I discover that it's a scam or a super
| crappy version, then I actually purchase the thing from a
| more reputable company with higher quality. So I guess they
| succeeded in getting me to buy something, from their
| competitors.
| sfasdfh123 wrote:
| For videos media, you also have to factor in tone and pacing .
| Totally kill the flow of watching a video essay when a loud
| talking ads jump out for 5 second. That's why I have a kinder
| view for Youtube sponsors, since it's read by the literally
| same person making this video, and have total control when to
| place it. Even if it's NordVPN ads in a middle of a history
| channel.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The primary thing is that they're there, that they make the
| world a worse with their nash equilibrium of "everyone is doing
| it so everyone must continue doing it", and that they're
| basically rich people begging you to give them more money.
| Outside of a context where you have made a conscious choice to
| spend money, at that.
|
| I'd argue that even in a supermarket they're mostly useless and
| manipulative. I came in to buy bananas, you don't need to tell
| me doritos are buy 9, get 3 free.
|
| Fuck ads.
| Akronymus wrote:
| > People complain about billboards next to a countryside
| highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through
| the countryside.
|
| They also are a distraction, which seems pretty ironic when
| billvoarda are used to remind drivers to not drive distracted.
| freehorse wrote:
| I hate the ad-centered nature of modern web anyway, but I don't
| understand why ads are not based on the content of a
| webpage/video. I am much less disturbed by ads eg on a podcast
| where the podcaster gives a sponsored message about a service
| relevant to the topic of the podcast. And prob if I watch the
| podcast I am already most probably part of the target audience.
| There is no need to profile me over the websites I visit or
| apps I am using and invade my privacy, and still fail to target
| me correctly. And even if you can correctly infer that fishing
| is my big hobby and now you should bombard me with ads about
| fishing, _maybe_ this is not what I want to see or hear about
| when I am watching a lecture on a computer science subject, and
| I will definitely not want to buy anything then? Maybe it would
| make for a less distracting and annoying experience when I
| watch some videos about fishing?
| imiric wrote:
| Well said.
|
| > I don't complain about advertisements at Costco because that
| would be insane. I complain about the advertisements on Youtube
| because they're irrelevant and weird but somehow normalized.
|
| They're normalized because we've been conditioned over many
| decades to accept them.
|
| We were psychologically manipulated to associate brands with
| specific feelings engineered by advertising firms. Cigarettes
| were "torches of freedom". The Marlboro Man was a symbol of
| masculinity and confidence. Coca-Cola was the happy Christmas
| drink. Ads with catchphrases became cultural phenomena: "Just
| do it", "Whasssuuuuup", and so on.
|
| We watched ads on cable TV even though we were paid
| subscribers. We watched 30 minutes of ads before a movie in the
| cinema. We read ads in newspapers and magazines even though we
| paid for them, and then when we could get them for "free", we
| liked even more paying with our attention than our money. We
| consumed TV and radio shows where "brought to you by" was just
| part of the content. We accepted ~20 minutes of ads for every
| hour of TV we watched.
|
| So it was natural for advertising to also take over the
| internet. With the technology built for advertisers by very
| smart people who got rich in the process, they're able to
| create campaigns that target potential buyers much more
| accurately. They can build profiles of people in various
| invasive, shady and inventive ways, and their profits have
| never been higher because of it.
|
| Never mind the fact that the same technology is used to
| manipulate people into thinking and acting in certain ways
| unrelated to their purchasing behavior, and that this is
| largely responsible for corrupting democratic processes,
| toppling governments, and the sociopolitical instability of the
| past decade. Several birds, one stone.
| jader201 wrote:
| Ads have been on TV since the beginning of TV. And before that,
| that were -- and still are -- on radio.
|
| Where they're also "irrelevant".
|
| But the relevancy to our current activities isn't tied to their
| effectiveness.
|
| I know that they're effective, because I had impressionable
| teens tell me they wanted me to pick up Prime drinks at the
| store, all because they were convinced drinking Prime was cool.
|
| But let me be clear -- I hate ads, too. I hate them on TV,
| radio, YouTube, billboards, in my mailbox, in my email inbox,
| and when they cover up 50% of real estate on websites. Pretty
| much everywhere they show up.
|
| But the purpose of ads aren't for me to like them, or to be
| tied to where I'm at a place I can purchase something.
|
| The purpose is to leave a lasting impression.
|
| And, like it or not, they're effective enough, for some people
| and for some products, that they're going to keep doing them,
| regardless of the fact that nearly everyone hates them.
| tzs wrote:
| > But let me be clear -- I hate ads, too. I hate them on TV,
| radio, YouTube, billboards, in my mailbox, in my email inbox,
| and when they cover up 50% of real estate on websites. Pretty
| much everywhere they show up.
|
| The mailbox ads can actually be quite useful. Since I started
| looking at them instead of just tossing them straight into
| the recycling bin I've discovered they often contain coupons
| for good deals at restaurants that I semi-regularly already
| go to. Those coupons have saved me noticeable amount of money
| on those visits.
|
| Similarly on groceries. In the grocery case it is not coupons
| but advertisements of sales. 97% of the time I shop at the
| large supermarket nearest my home, which usually has the best
| prices. But occasionally there is a very good deal on
| something expensive like meat somewhere else and it is their
| mailbox flyers that let me know about it.
| masswerk wrote:
| On relevance: I've never seen an ad on YT that would make me
| buy a product. I guess, this is now a matter of principle.
|
| Moreover, it's now also a matter of fending off GenAI content
| (AKA slop) for the sake of sanity.
|
| So, I'm clearly not the audience. Which raises the question,
| what is YT in the business of selling, they are trying to
| enforce? Lifetime?
| kolektiv wrote:
| As spoken by thousands of tech companies over and over - if
| only the ads were more relevant, users would like them! No,
| they never will. That's because an advert is effectively an
| unasked-for imposition on my attention intended to benefit
| somebody else more than it benefits me (should it be considered
| to benefit me _at all_ ). There's a name for behaviour like
| that: rude.
|
| I am not blind to commercial imperatives, but expecting people
| to ever feel anything more positive than low-level irritation
| with advertising is unrealistic. People do not like feeling
| that others matter more than them, particularly where money is
| involved. Spaces without adverts in them, whether physical or
| virtual, are simply more mentally enjoyable to people than
| those with them. Imagine one of the worlds wonders, natural or
| otherwise. Imagine the Acropolis, the Coliseum, the Buddha of
| Leshan - or Lake Annecy, or the Great Barrier Reef, or the
| Amazon. Now try and imagine a single advert which is so
| wonderful that it would improve any of them, contextual or
| otherwise. You can't, and you won't. They're pollution that we
| tolerate.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I totally disagree. There have once or twice been adverts
| that I've seen where I've thought "yes! I do want one of
| those!". _Obviously_ I like those adverts.
|
| If there really was a way to magically make all adverts
| relevant then yes - users _would_ like them!
|
| But that's a totally impossible ask. Not only do websites
| mostly have no idea what's relevant to me (even with all the
| tracking) but they obviously have huge financial pressure to
| show me crap that I wouldn't ever want.
|
| So, yes. Relevant advertising is good, but also basically
| impossible.
| lrvick wrote:
| Even if it is something I would like if a friend told me
| about it, if I am bombarded by ads I hate it and often will
| find or make an alternative.
| derefr wrote:
| > That's because an advert is effectively an unasked-for
| imposition on my attention intended to benefit somebody else
| more than it benefits me
|
| "Adverts" are a pretty incoherent category here. There are a
| lot of things that are technically advertising -- placement
| of a product, or informational content about that product,
| paid for by some company's marketing department -- that most
| people would never think to call "an ad."
|
| For example, the end-caps in a grocery store? Ad space,
| auctioned off by the retailer each month!
|
| But you're already shopping, looking for things you need,
| comparing brands; and these end-caps are effectively just
| putting things you might have been looking for anyway, where
| you'll find them sooner. So people don't tend to think of
| these as ads.
|
| (They _are_ ads, insofar as they succeed in getting many
| people to never go to the regular place in the store where
| that thing is, and therefore never doing a fair compare-and-
| contrast of the product to its alternatives, being swayed by
| alternatives that might be running sales, etc.)
|
| But do they steal your time? No, in fact the opposite; if you
| pay attention to products on store end-caps at all, and ever
| buy anything from them, then they mostly will end up _saving_
| you a tiny bit of time. So consumers don 't tend to
| _perceive_ these as ads.
|
| ---
|
| Now take this one little bit further: sponsored search
| results. These sometimes feel like ads and sometimes don't.
|
| If you think about it, sponsored search results are a lot
| like store end-caps... except that their existence makes the
| regular "store shelves" of the SERP page take longer to get
| to.
|
| If they end up showing you the thing you were actually
| looking for (as they might if you're searching for a specific
| brand, and that brand has paid-for placement for their own
| name -- perhaps to defend against others placing for their
| name; or perhaps they're bad at SEO and their website ranks
| badly in the organic SERPs for their own name) then these
| sponsored SERPs feel like they performed a genuine service
| for you.
|
| Likewise, if they end up showing you something _better_ than
| what you were looking for (as they might if the organic
| listings, ranked by SEO-ness, end up ordered askew to actual
| product value or popularity; while the sponsored listings,
| ranked by auction, end up ordered by, essentially, the paying
| company 's stock price, and thereby by how much consumers
| already interact with them), then you _also_ might come away
| pleased with the existence of these "ads."
|
| But the other maybe 90% of the time, they look and feel and
| act like ads -- things less-relevant than the organic SERPs,
| that you want to just get out of the way of the search -- and
| so are perceived as ads.
|
| ---
|
| And now, consider, say, the catalog of other products
| available for purchase, that used to come in-box with
| products from some manufacturers. You'd buy e.g. a LEGO set,
| or a couch from Sears, and end up with a glorified flyer
| telling you about all their other products -- often in much
| _greater_ detail than you 'd get by viewing the products in a
| retail store. (This has been mostly superseded by the
| existence of online stores and product unboxing+review videos
| -- but it's still a good object lesson.)
|
| Were these catalogs, ads? Maybe. Probably the majority of
| people who received such a catalog never ordered anything
| from it, and had their time wasted having to dispose of it.
| But because these catalogs were being sent to people who the
| manufacturer knew _already had shown willingness to purchase
| from them_ , it's likely that a much _larger_ percentage of
| people were "called to action" by these catalogs than by
| what you'd normally think of as an advertisement.
|
| And, in fact people sometimes would just read this type of
| "ad" _for fun_ : fantasizing about things they might one day
| own! (I recall doing this myself, as a child, with certain
| toy-brand catalogs)
|
| ---
|
| One more turn of the screw: is a movie or TV show that stands
| on its own as a work of entertainment, but which was made at
| least in part _with the motivation_ of getting people
| interested in purchasing things from the franchise licensor
| 's universe of branded products... an ad?
|
| Certainly, back in the 80s, when advertising laws were more
| lax, and there were kids' cartoons running untrammeled with
| "integrated" advertising: embedding ads for the merchandise
| itself; showing the equivalent merch in the show; etc --
| there was every reason to call those shows "ads."
|
| But is _Hello Kitty and Friends (2020)_ an ad?
|
| Now, if you said yes to that, try again with: is a Marvel
| movie an ad?
|
| If you said yes + no: what's the difference? Prestige?
| noqc wrote:
| >The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| The _primary_ thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| the system that disputes my indisputable right to ignore them.
| If I paid someone to cut the adverts out of my newspaper before
| I read it, would I be stealing from the publisher?
|
| Silicon valley has spent the last 30 years getting the internet
| to run on lies, and depends upon the charity of people willing
| to be lied to. Now that trillions of dollars depend upon this
| system, they can no longer afford to leave it up to charity,
| and believe that they must go to war. This is a war that they
| will lose.
|
| Ban advertising, formally enshrine the right of adblockers to
| operate, and use the new regulation to work out a new business
| model, or perish in the arms race that you are absolutely
| destined to lose.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| How old are you? I wonder if you were exposed to the world
| before advertising took over every aspect of our lives. Before
| the most valueable companies in the world were based on media
| and advertising sales.
|
| If you were alive before ad tech ate the world, you'd have a
| very different take on this whole thing.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| it's shocking how bad youtube ads are compared to say instagram
| or google search. maybe i'm just not targeted well.
| fracus wrote:
| > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| We hate advertisements because they unsolicited manipulations
| to get our money.
| Sophira wrote:
| > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is
| their irrelevance.
|
| Disagreeable to whom, exactly?
|
| Personally, I would _rather_ the adverts were irrelevant if it
| meant I didn 't have my every move tracked on the web.
|
| The main problems I have with ads are, in order from most
| problematic to least:
|
| * the lengths that ad networks go to to track me, * the very
| real possibility of getting malware, * the lengths advertisers
| go to to ensure their ads are seen. (We have popup blockers in
| pretty much every browser nowadays for a reason.)
|
| Take away those, and you could convince me to disable my ad
| blocker. Until then? Not a chance in hell.
| l33tfr4gg3r wrote:
| The way I've come to think about this is that the relevance of
| the ad to you (as a YouTube viewer), is irrelevant. It matters
| not whether they are relevant to the content/topic of the
| video, or whether they are of the kind that SponsorBlock
| blocks, or those shown by YT algos. The ads serve one purpose,
| and one purpose alone - to bolster revenue for Google. What may
| have started out as a 'well-intentioned' (using the term
| loosely) means to recreate Costco-like ads for the digital
| realm in the early days of the web, was quickly consumed, like
| most everything else, by Corporate greed and morphed into a
| source of user frustration over time.
| barrkel wrote:
| This is not true. The primary thing is that they are a tax on
| attention and a threat to the user's sovereignty over their
| focus.
|
| The more relevant ads are, the _worse_ they are. Relevant ads
| are more distracting and more likely to hijack the user 's
| attention and focus against their will.
| layman51 wrote:
| To me the annoyance primarily depends on how shady or high-risk
| the industry being advertised is. I cannot stand getting ads
| that have AI puppets of people like Ilia Calderon (a journalist
| and TV news anchor) to sell supplements or convince people to
| join investment chat groups.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Thinking YouTube should be free is ridiculous. Pay for a
| subscription or deal with ads. This discussion is so fucking
| stale.
| vixen99 wrote:
| So stale that ~750 folk have commented.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| youtube's not reacting to adblockers, they've been planning for a
| post openweb model for years. this just lines up with that.
| killing adblock is one piece. the bigger shift is turning the
| site from a semiopen platform into something way more locked down
| limited playback, enforced UI, no 3rd party clients, all of that.
|
| just track what they've stopped letting you do. there's a
| pattern. they're tightening every surface they used to ignore.
| because ig they're done pretending the open parts matter
| butz wrote:
| Good time as any to inform about existence of PeerTube instances.
| And maybe, to think about better use of your time and watch less
| videos on the internet? This video could've been a blog post and
| all that jazz :)
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| meanwhile 40m seems to be the new 10:07
|
| videos getting more bloated, recycling the same crap with 90%
| filler. just like google blog spam.
|
| and tell me how much are your shitty ads worth without anyone to
| watch them?
|
| YOUTUBE is getting F_CKED!!
| gausswho wrote:
| What new feature of significance has YouTube actually delivered
| in years?
| areyourllySorry wrote:
| the topics at the top of the homepage, sorting comments by
| timestamp, the little card when you click on someone's profile
| picture with other comments on the same channel (which was only
| on mobile for a while), they improved auto captioning recently
| and are toying with dubbing, modern codecs... it's the little
| things that make it better
| gausswho wrote:
| I do appreciate the auto captioning and codec fight. _shakes
| fist at patent trolls_
|
| Could care less about the social bits. Comments have been
| filtered better but I will never trust their black box. With
| Enhanced YouTube extension I remove all of that so I can
| retain focus apart from the video at hand.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Fake buffering is much better than watching an ad, even if it
| were longer. Looking at a wait spinner probably is much better
| for the brain than some attention grabbing ad content.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Even as a uBlock and Firefox user, I get the occasional delay at
| the start of some videos. My workaround is to click on another
| random video (which, for some reason starts playing immediately),
| and then go back to my original video, and that starts playing
| straight away. No-mo waiting.
| elric wrote:
| I wouldn't be adverse to paying for YT (or similar services) if
| they took cash payments. But no, you have to get a subscription.
| Which involves giving Google your personal details, thus giving
| the world's biggest data hoarder even more data.
|
| Imagine going back in time 20 years. You want to buy a newspaper
| from a stall. And the vendor tells you to wait and stare at an
| add for 30 seconds before you can pick up the magazine. The
| alternative is that you give that vendor a copy of your ID and
| credit card. It's insane.
|
| Most of these problems would go away if we had "online cash"
| (please don't start talking about cryptocurrency). Want to watch
| a video? Watch an add or pay EUR0.01. Of course all the money-
| laundering hysteria will prevent that from happening.
|
| Ultimately, terrorism is why we have ads.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| I just use yt-dlp (YTDLnis on Android, which has a great UI that
| makes it quite YouTube-like). Downloading instead of streaming
| (read: downloading then automatically deleting) is so much
| better.
|
| 1. It's all offline play, so I can use my favorite players like
| VLC. Also, no buffering (after the initial download, of course).
|
| 2. I can do anything I want to the video: make edits, splice ads
| out, extract audio, generate subtitles or dubs, etc.
|
| 3. It saves Google server costs! Well, comparing to streaming the
| same video from them multiple times with adblock on, at least.
| tigrezno wrote:
| AI will kill youtube. You'd be able to watch youtube with like 20
| seconds global delay while an AI will silently skip all the ads
| it finds.
|
| It will be our personal content censor.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| That's a level of optimism I haven't encountered in a while.
|
| Sure AI will stream Youtube for you, but it will be chock-a-
| block full of its own ads.
|
| The actors will pause mid sentence, turn to the camera and
| smile while they slam down a coke and tell us all about the
| latest samsung phone.
| johan914 wrote:
| As a young person, I get perfectly normal corporate
| advertisements on YT, with the very rare porno dating ad. My
| parents on the other hand, get a never ending stream of the
| shittiest scams, AI voiceovers of Joe Rogan and Zelensky, dick
| pills. It's clear their tracking targets elderly users with
| scams. I would never pay for YT premium.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I don't use youtube anymore. I'm not paying them for slop content
| they don't even produce. I'm not watching slop ads.
|
| I was watching hours every day, and I don't even miss it. There's
| so much content to watch on streaming platforms that I can never
| run out.
| SilverSlash wrote:
| I've seen several people argue about the quality of ads on
| YouTube. For me it's not about that. I've been using ad blockers
| for almost 15 years now. Youtube has been free AND ad free for me
| for a very long time. I don't want to be interrupted with ads now
| or ever regardless of their quality.
|
| The point is, I'm making zero excuses about why I don't want to
| see ads on youtube. It's been that way and I want it to remain
| that way. No subscriptions and no ads. People watching yt on
| their phones and TVs will still see ads or pay for premium and
| they can support the service.
| everyone wrote:
| If I cant watch Youtube without ads, then I just wont watch it at
| all.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I also noticed fake buffering[0], it is disgusting but it seems
| like they are usually on their adblocker blocking spree for a few
| weeks and then they give up. Their goal is to annoy you not to
| unblock adblocker and watch ads but to make you buy YouTube
| Premium because they would earn more money from subscription than
| they would from you watching ads.
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/v1YSWVM.png
| mycatisblack wrote:
| Here's something many people probably don't know.
|
| I live in a west-Eu country with several well-defined language
| borders. Each time we cross a border (on holiday), the youtube
| ads change language. When I'm logged in. I don't have a driver's
| license, yet the most common ad I get is for second hand cars.
| I'm in a relationship, yet I regularly get ads for dating sites.
| I have a job, get ads for jobhunting advice. And the other day I
| got an add specifically for people born before my birth-year
| minus one.
|
| YouTube's ads are on the same level as Spotify's nagging for
| their subscription: it's meant to annoy users into buying their
| ad-free plan. They use real ads as a thin veneer.
| powvans wrote:
| Well, it works. Unfortunately it doesn't remove sponsored
| content in the videos. I'm paying for an ad free experience,
| but I'm still hearing about AC1. Annoying.
| itsmevictor wrote:
| You should check SponsorBlock out:
| https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| First it was "I hate how much ad companies track me and build
| profiles on me."
|
| Now it is "I hate how ads are irrelevant."
|
| People need to understand that ads will never be 100% perfect,
| otherwise you would buy something every time you saw an ad.
| 99.99% of the ads will miss the target, and that is normal. It
| would be insane if it worked any other way.
|
| For what it is worth Google has a page where you can customize
| what sort of ads are relevant to you.
| https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-Help/answer/12155451...
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > First it was "I hate how much ad companies track me and
| build profiles on me."
|
| > Now it is "I hate how ads are irrelevant."
|
| This is an HN echo-chamber complaint, made by people who work
| for advertisers trying to come up with a way to make their
| ads seem less awful.
|
| The fact is, _relevant ads aren 't better_. They're still
| ads, and ads are still inherently bad.
|
| If I'm looking for a used car, I _do not_ want to hear ads
| from Bob 's Lemon Shop about why they're the best place to
| buy cars. If Bob's Lemon Shop is the best place to buy cars,
| I'll find that out from independent reviewers who have
| shopped their before. An ad from Bob's Lemon Shop is relevant
| to my interest, but _that makes it worse_ because now I 'm
| susceptible to manipulation by the company that paid the most
| for ads instead of making a more rational decision based on
| true information from unbiased sources. Having more relevant
| ads _is not_ good for me, it 's good for advertisers.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Ads of that kind tell me they need ads, which tells me
| they're probably not doing too well, so I'll avoid them
| mycatisblack wrote:
| You're turning things around.
|
| When the largest ad company in the world, which also has the
| largest fingerprint silo in the world, spews out ads that are
| 100% irrelevant ...
| tsoukase wrote:
| My kids are watching some kid stuff and ads about sanitary
| napkins show up. At least google degrades the experience and
| helps me fight the screen time war.
| BrtByte wrote:
| And it's hard to believe with all the data they collect that
| the system is really that dumb...
| _bent wrote:
| Ralf Schumacher?
| dkga wrote:
| Dear YouTube,
|
| It's not so much that I don't want to see ads - nobody does, but
| very very often the ad breaks the vibe of what I am watching and
| it displeases me to the point I will invest my soul and energy to
| block ads. Some real-life examples:
|
| - watching a video about coding where the creator has a
| monotonic, calm voice that keeps me engaged, and VS Code in dark
| mode which is easy on my eyes in my dark room at 2am, then
| suddenly comes an ad with bright lights, incredibly high sound
| and a high-energy backtrack.
|
| - watching a meditation video, the exact same ad appears.
|
| You get the idea.
|
| At the very least, please ensure the ad is in the same volume as
| the original video. That alone wouldn't be too hard. In addition,
| please at least try to match the background overall brightness or
| color, and the vibe. All this would create value because people
| would actually watch much more ads.
| commandersaki wrote:
| And please, no 30 minute ads.
| danparsonson wrote:
| I'll add another one:
|
| - music mixes, good lord - three minutes into some great mix
| and suddenly I'm hearing from Uber Eats yet again
|
| I want to support the creators, but thank goodness for yt-dlp
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >All this would create value because people would actually
| watch much more ads.
|
| I'm very skeptical about this statement.
|
| There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for premium.
| It's 100% effective and works right now.
|
| What you are saying is that you want Google to make your ad
| experience better because you don't want to pay money to use
| their service.
|
| You somehow use it enough for ads to bother you but not enough
| to pay for it.
|
| This paradoxal type of user is too common and makes no sense to
| me.
| vprcic wrote:
| > There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for
| premium. It's 100% effective and works right now.
|
| For now. With the ever increasing number of "premium"
| services that promised no ads, but slowly start introducing
| them, it is just a matter of time before YouTube does the
| same.
| dxdm wrote:
| At which point, if it ever gets to that, you're free to
| stop paying them. I do not understand what point you're
| making here.
| chongli wrote:
| Yeah the problem for YouTube is that they bundle a bunch
| of other services with the premium package. They
| occasionally conduct surveys to gauge user awareness of
| these features. I myself don't use any of them, just the
| ad-free experience.
|
| Thus trying to reintroduce ads to the premium users will
| remove the only reason I'm paying for it in the first
| place.
| ptero wrote:
| Not the poster, but the point I think that Google is
| engaging in a clear-cut bait and switch. First, "free
| email, good UX", "free video hosting, minimal ads". Then,
| once the dependency sets in, use a standard playbook of
| degrading the lower tiers and charging for removing the
| inconveniences.
|
| I am not claiming that Google is the only company doing
| that; it is not. But there is a reason that bait and
| switch is illegal in most places. My 2c.
| harvey9 wrote:
| This is not bait and switch, going by the definition on
| the Wikipedia page. It's closer to 'dumping' where goods
| or services are supplied below cost to drive out
| competitors.
| commandersaki wrote:
| _There is a simple way to stop watching ads_
|
| Requires getting out a credit card. Even simpler is an ad
| blocker.
|
| As for the ethics of ad blocking, I'll consider unblocking
| ads when Google stops with the unethical (think Tai Lopez)
| and downright malicious ads (deepfakes of Elon suggesting to
| invest in crap like "Quantum AI"), and only then will I
| reconsider removing the blocker and maybe even paying.
|
| Put simply, ad blockers provide a safer browsing experience.
| dxdm wrote:
| Of course it's nicer to get stuff for free. Leeching is
| leeching, though, no matter how you try to justify it.
| Maybe you can find some alternative way to support the
| creators of the content you seem to be enjoying.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Agreed. I've probably got a few thousand hours on youtube,
| more than just about everything else. It's immensely
| valuable, yet I refuse to pay for Youtube. Not quite sure
| why.
|
| I'm perfectly happy paying for two $5 coffees a month that I
| hardly remember consuming, just because I was perched and a
| bit tired while on a walk in the city. I pay $25 for a more
| comfy seat for a 3 hour flight. I pay $15 for a single movie
| ticket, and another $15 for $3 worth of snacks. I pay $30 for
| a 30 minute cutting of my hair. I pay $20 for a 3 minute
| slingshot at the fair. I pay $30 for a 20min taxi.
|
| Yet I refuse to pay $14 for Youtube that I use 30 hours a
| month, because with adblockers I don't have to. And if
| Youtube makes adblocking awful enough, I simply will pay. As
| annoying as youtube ads are, I'd never think to complain
| about them because it has an easy solution.
| latexr wrote:
| > There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for
| premium. It's 100% effective and works right now.
|
| It may be effective at not showing you ads _on YouTube
| specifically_ , but then you're helping Google build a more
| accurate profile on you (from your watch habits) to exploit
| further. Personally, I'm not comfortable with that because
| Google has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted.
|
| I would pay for Nebula.tv if it had a few other specific
| creators.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| Using YouTube enough for ads to bother someone _does not_
| imply it's "enough" to pay for. There's nothing paradoxical
| about it.
|
| Humans don't value things as a binary decision between it
| either being worth it as free or equal to the cost it's being
| sold at. Everyone has a price point for a service they think
| is fair, for which they'll start seeking alternatives when
| exceeded. This is how markets work.
|
| Time spent does not correlate with cost-independent value.
| This is doubly true with social media platforms.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| Any business model where ads can be paid off has no incentive
| to make good ads. Ads are meant to be annoying enough so that
| people prefer paying. Hence the war on ad-blockers.
| sltkr wrote:
| This is too simplistic. Youtube started as an ad-supported
| service and today ads still generate the lion share of
| Youtube's revenue. Youtube ads are some of the most expensive
| to buy; Google has no incentive to push viewers off the ad-
| supported tier.
|
| Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription, but
| it doesn't necessarily care which; they make money off you
| either way.
|
| The reason Youtube offers a premium tier at all is to cater
| to the minority market of time-poor money-rich users who
| would rather pay than watch ads, which is just a smart move
| to broaden their audience and diversify their revenue
| streams. But it's not the primary way Youtube makes money and
| likely never will be.
| chii wrote:
| depending on what they watch and how much time watching,
| youtube might actually lose money on a premium user. I
| imagine it's not easy to watch enough be worth $12 dollars
| worth of ads in one month tho...
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| Using a $20 CPM [1] (Cost Per Mille, the money
| advertisers pay per 1000 views), $12 turns out to be
| 12/20 * 1000 / 30 = 20 ads per day. I would argue that
| the average youtube premium user watches less than that.
|
| And I would argue that youtube really knows the numbers,
| and google would not lose money. Don't forget they've
| turned evil ;)
|
| [1] source is the most recent Big Time video
| sltkr wrote:
| The main problem with this analysis is that not all
| Youtube viewers are of equal value to advertisers.
| Premium subscribers are the people who have demonstrated
| that they are willing and able to spend money on
| luxuries. These are also the primary audience of
| advertisers (compared with, say, the elderly living off
| welfare, minors without a credit card, people living in
| poor countries).
|
| Every premium subscription Youtube accepts reduces the
| value of its ad-supported audience, not just in an
| absolute sense (i.e. this user won't watch ads anymore),
| but in the sense that it lowers the CPM advertisers are
| willing to pay for the remaining "cheapskates". The
| premium subscription price has to account for that, which
| is why the price should be significantly higher than the
| average ad revenue per user.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > Google wants you to watch ads OR pay for a subscription
|
| Actually I suspect the logical operator here is `AND`. In
| fact, this is largely what holds me back from paying for
| any Youtube subscription; frankly I don't trust them to
| show me zero ads ever regardless of what fee I pay. So I
| will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game as long as it
| lasts.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Do they serve you ads today when you have a paid
| subscription?
|
| If they ever start doing that, you could stop paying. But
| not paying now for the hypothetical possibility that they
| may start serving you ads in the future sounds more like
| an excuse.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| YouTube doesn't, but many video creators do. Not
| something YouTube has much control on though, for them,
| that's just content and is served as such. You can use
| the SponsorBlock extensions to automatically skip these
| if you want.
| sltkr wrote:
| Right, but the claim was "GOOGLE wants you to watch ads
| AND pay for a subscription" and that doesn't seem to be
| supported by the evidence.
|
| I get that as a premium subscriber you still see in-
| stream sponsored content, but that's because the creator
| wants that, not Google. I think Google would rather have
| those sponsored messages be run as regular Youtube ads
| instead, so they can take their 45% (?) cut of the ad
| revenue while letting premium subscribers skip them.
| tim333 wrote:
| Google did well my making the main search ads not too
| annoying - just a bit of text rather than flashing dancing
| nonsense. If they'd done the later people would have switched
| to bing or what have you.
| BrtByte wrote:
| Yep, the worse the ads, the more likely you are to pay to
| avoid them. It's no wonder the user experience keeps
| degrading
| AstroBen wrote:
| Huh? Who do you think are creating and buying the ads? Ads
| are supposed to get the word out about products. No-one is
| making ads with the intention to annoy people
| a2128 wrote:
| And videos like this one really shouldn't ever have ads, they
| shouldn't try to block playback for having an adblocker
| installed, and they shouldn't tell you to "sign in to confirm
| you're not a bot"[0], and it feels like YouTube should be
| liable for negligent manslaughter when they do all of the
| above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtYSTrjKonU
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/8SDKRkZ.png
| malfist wrote:
| I'm anti ads as much as the next person, but negligent
| manslaughter for showing ads? That isn't reasonable.
| a2128 wrote:
| They've captured the online video provider market by price
| dumping in a way nobody but Google could afford, and have
| become THE video website. Now they're implementing
| restrictive measures in a negligent manner that affect
| first-aid videos that people have come to rely on.
|
| Google clearly has the AI know-how to label when videos are
| important medical videos. They could skip ads and skip
| forced sign-in, but they don't care enough. There was a
| viral tweet once about somebody's grandma choking on a
| fishbone where YouTube responded telling them to buy
| YouTube Premium, so they're probably aware, but don't care
| enough. And they're implementing more measures like the
| forced sign-in for scraping prevention that happen to
| disproportionately affect public networks at restaurants
| and hotels. That's negligence.
|
| Why's it so unreasonable?
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Uploader choose to monetize vid, not Google. It's a per
| video option.
| a2128 wrote:
| That's no longer true as of around 5 years ago. They'll
| show ads on any video they like.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2475463?hl=en
| "YouTube may also place ads on videos in channels not in
| the YouTube Partner Program."
|
| If you become eligible and join the YouTube partner
| program I believe there may be a toggle then, but for non
| partners it's completely up to YouTube.
|
| And the forced sign-in of course never was controllable
| by creators.
| malfist wrote:
| There's a big difference between being a monopoly and
| negligent manslaughter.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| WebMD decided to put ads on that video. Every uploader has
| that option, to monetize or not.
|
| YouTube is the most creator friendly social media platform
| that exists now. Creators choose when to include ads and
| receive a large amount of the revenue.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's laws dictacting ads for TV, one of them was raising the
| volume for ads, the other was banning increasing the loudness
| of the ad to have the same effect as raising the volume without
| raising the volume. I presume these all apply - or should apply
| - to YT and co as well.
|
| It's not enough of course.
|
| Anyway, ads being annoying and disruptive is the point, they
| want to sell premium subscriptions because a steady $10 a month
| on a subscription often forgotten about for years is more
| valuable and profitable to them than showing ads. (I presume)
| miyuru wrote:
| I don't think YT will implement any of these. annoying people
| with ads is feature not a bug.
| dandanua wrote:
| But you have remembered those ads, YouTube's main objective has
| been achieved.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I will raise you an ad about politicians loudly accusing each
| other of rape while watching a black and white Christmas
| cartoon with the family around a fireplace.
| reaperducer wrote:
| And I'll raise you a string of six ads in a row for various
| less-than-legal products and services interrupting the
| Christmas mass stream from Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
|
| I haven't watched YouTube since.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Do I have to go show up at Youtube's HQ and start deliberately
| slowing people down from entering the building?
|
| Note: when security shows up, I'm going to tell them "maybe
| later" if I'm asked to leave.
| CrossVR wrote:
| > As I'll explain, the fake buffering is 80% of the length of the
| ads you would've seen, so even with fake buffering you're still
| saving time using an adblocker.
|
| I don't care if the fake buffering is 100% of the ad length. Not
| having to see the pre-roll ad and no ad breaks during the video
| is worth the wait.
| ocfnash wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised nobody seems to have mentioned
| http://fixyt.com
|
| I have a bookmarklet:
|
| javascript:(function() {window.location=window.location.toString(
| ).replace(/^https:\/\/www.youtube\\./,'http://fixyt.');})()
|
| and whenever I want to watch a YouTube video, I just click that
| and enjoy an ad-free experience.
| jenders wrote:
| YouTube is enabling creative people to make a living wage from
| doing what they love the most and providing immense value to
| niche communities. If you get value from it, just pay for it.
| constrictpastel wrote:
| I get ads for secret solar panel information that the 'Electric
| Companies don't want me to know about'. Concern-troll ads, that
| feel like psychological warfare, about every health ailment that
| I might potentially have. Boomer-bait 'Patriot-Power Pack!
| Survival food, ammo and eagle coins. Kolon-Klense type product
| depicting a woman sitting on the porcelain throne complaining
| that she can't crank a shit. Las but not least. An over-eager
| Sylvester Stallone excited to show me his one amazing....salt
| trick?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| ITT: advertisers, pretending there's something that could be
| changed about ads that would make them not ads.
|
| Fundamentally, ads are bad. There just isn't a change you can
| make to ads that makes them okay.
|
| At a personal level, ads distract us, they tell us we don't have
| enough, aren't attractive enough, just generally _aren 't
| enough_. They _don 't_ inform us: a one-sided view of a product
| absent criticisms or comparison to competing products is
| effectively just a lie.
|
| At an economic level, ads break any benefit to capitalism.
| Instead of companies competing to provide the best product at the
| lowest cost, ads make it so a worse product at a higher cost can
| become the market leader. Ads are one of the primary drivers of
| the enshittification of everything. Ads allow companies to launch
| with garbage products that nobody would ever pay money for, slap
| ads on them to monetize, and thereby prevent competing products
| actually worth paying for from ever even coming to market.
|
| The only answer is to refuse, on principle, to view ads. If a
| company receives money from advertisers, you're the product, not
| the user. If a product has a "free" tier paid for by ads, paying
| to hide ads doesn't help because you're still competing with
| advertisers for that company's loyalty, and advertisers will
| always win in the end (i.e. ads in cable TV--mark my words, there
| will be ads in all the premium-tier streaming services
| eventually).
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I'll take 12 seconds of silence over seeing the same goddamn
| T-Mobile ad for the 100th time. Seriously, I can watch a 5 minute
| video and at it'll play the exact same ad _THREE TIMES_ , at the
| start, somewhere in the middle, then at the end again. And it's
| always the most loud, obnoxious ad imaginable.
|
| I was skeptical of SmartTube but it really is the only way
| YouTube is tolerable anymore.
| peenoise wrote:
| Dear dkga, you willing to invest your soul but cant even pay 3
| bucks a month. You have a cheap soul. Hey Cheapoo. Dont forget
| the creators you so willingly watch are paid through them,
| without ads, there are no creators you so love.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I have been fed over 1000 meat stick advertisements in the past
| couple months. I'm probably consuming all their ad budget as
| digital meat sticks.
| qwertox wrote:
| When I start a video and it shows an ad, and 15 seconds into the
| video I reload the page (similar to switching a channel on tv
| forth and back again), why do I need to view intro ads again?
|
| Google is so greedy that they don't care the slightest bit about
| being fair.
| BrtByte wrote:
| Makes me wonder how sustainable this arms race is long-term...
| will users just give up and pay for Premium, or will adblockers
| keep finding creative ways around it?
| gblargg wrote:
| On my outdated Firefox (with uBlock Origin of course), I've found
| that opening videos in a new tab (middle click) eliminates ads,
| while left-clicking reliably shows an ad. I've gotten the fake
| buffering recently no matter how I open videos.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Dear Google, just reduce the price of premium to sane levels. no
| way you are displaying 15$ worth of ads per person per month.
| interestica wrote:
| I accidentally did something. I don't get ads on YouTube in
| Chrome on iOS. I have a few ideas on how
| jenny91 wrote:
| Most likely is that you are in some control group to determine
| effects of ads in general.
| interestica wrote:
| Nah. I get ads in the app and on other browsers. It happened
| after I was futzing around with dns settings years ago.
| There's some combination of whatever I did that keeps chrome
| ad free. It has persisted through iOS updates as well.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I would love YouTube to include comments in their ads as they do
| with all other videos. To borrow a current phrase, they chicken
| out on actual critical feedback and keep pushing their money
| making agenda with an iron fist. If YouTube actually cared to
| make their users happy, public comments in ads would filter out
| all the garbage ads in hours and the entire platform would be
| forced to accept a minimum yet independent and user driving bar
| for advertising.
| felineflock wrote:
| There are 3 primary undesirability aspects of ads:
|
| 1) ads as irrelevant intrusions (in spite of all data Google
| collects, ads are mostly irrelevant for any person)
|
| 2) ads as ugly or blockers of beauty
|
| 3) ads as thieves of attention or downright theft (scam ads,
| illegal products)
|
| Then, should we pay to get rid of ads or not? Two opposite
| opinions:
|
| 1) paying YouTube support creators
|
| 2) paying YouTube rewards the "shitification" of the platform
|
| But even for those who pay there are issues: the content
| creator's own sponsorships, shorts, the risk of account banning
| by Google.
|
| Then how about compensating creators directly? (Patreon or PayPal
| for example)
|
| What I don't get is the questioning on the morality of ad
| blocking. No one should be obligated to watch an ad in one's own
| device, regardless of whatever "Terms of Service" (which is not a
| contract). It may be unfair to the content creator who relies on
| that revenue though.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > the content creator's own sponsorships, shorts...
|
| Many of the people I watch add "jump ahead" buttons for these
| sections now, which is neat.
| immibis wrote:
| Install the Sponsorblock extension. It does this
| automatically, provided someone watched the video before you
| and told it where the sponsor is. It can also, optionally,
| skip over "like and subscribe!", "buy my merch", intro and
| outro jingles, and other potentially low-value segments.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It's actually YouTube that adds those as a feature for
| Premium subscribers. It infers the locations automatically
| using viewing data.
| zouhair wrote:
| I have only one: Ads.
|
| Ads shouldn't exist. The fact that most human endeavours now
| are forced to use ads is insane.
| Aicy wrote:
| I like adverts. They inform me about good things I could buy
| that I otherwise wouldn't have known about.
| lblume wrote:
| You seem to use the word "good" very liberally.
| felineflock wrote:
| Ads are a brute force approach to the challenge of having
| useful information (company X offers Y) reach their target
| (people who needs Y presently or in the future).
|
| If you say no ads should exist, then what alternatives would
| you have for that challenge?
| chippiewill wrote:
| No one is obligated to watch ads though. No one is obligated to
| use the service.
|
| As someone who uses an ad blocker I do think it's immoral, and
| I do pay for YouTube premium and other stuff where reasonable.
| noqc wrote:
| When you ignore or don't click on the ads, is that also
| immoral?
| leereeves wrote:
| > Then, should we pay to get rid of ads or not? Two opposite
| opinions:
|
| > 1) paying YouTube support creators
|
| > 2) paying YouTube rewards the "shitification" of the platform
|
| I have a third opinion. I expect that if enough people pay
| Google, they will remove the free service altogether, add ads
| to the paid service, and perhaps introduce a new, more
| expensive ad free tier. Paying them not only rewards the
| enshitification, it encourages the next step.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I don't have a YouTube account and yet their algorithm creates a
| feed for me anyway. Pretty sweet.
|
| This means they're also collecting data about some random person
| in my area but I don't have a Google account either so that data
| isn't really useful.
|
| Ad block FTW
|
| At some point I gotta do a network-wide block instead of per
| computer.
| squarefoot wrote:
| It's so ironic that they resort to these tactics that ultimately
| ruin the experience for everyone and ultimately attract more
| users into using adblockers. I wouldn't be surprised at all if
| the number of users with adblockers installed was so small that
| Google actually spent more money implementing all those
| techniques against them than it could lose in lost advertising
| just by not doing anything.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| What about the gross content of their shorts clips?
|
| I'm not the kind of person to be inclined to buy 'premium'
| because they progressively enshittified their free service to
| make premium seem like the only rational option, but I'm even
| less inclined to give money to a company that promotes the
| complete trash and borderline adult and often fraudulent content
| of their shorts.
|
| I usually refuse to login to YouTube to find the occasional
| thing, and I'm always bombarded with this trash.
|
| How can anyone support that? Gross.
|
| Also, it should not be forgotten that the FBI, no less, recommend
| ad blocking just for general internet safety. YouTube has just as
| much scam advertising as the rest of the internet, since it's
| almost all Google (who don't seem to be able to police their own
| platform, and don't seem to be held to account for such
| dereliction of duty).
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| Ad tech is the reason our society is so polarized. YouTube and
| Google fund the disinformation and propaganda universe. These
| fringe people never had a chance to broadcast let alone become
| wealthy before Google put ads on everything. And now, not only
| are they given a platform, they're rewarded for being the
| loudest, most angry, most polarizing, most obnoxious people
| possible.
|
| Rewarding sensationalism without any oversight is the core
| problem with society today.
|
| Profits over priciples.
|
| What's nuts is reading thought this thread and reading comments
| from all the people who think that earning money with digital
| content is a right. And worse, that because they've earned money
| in the past, they're entitled to do it forever.
|
| There are no longer any guard rails on sensationalism and since
| the only measure of success is by the very Fox guarding the
| Henhouse, it's optimized for the Fox's profit, not public's
| health and society's principles.
|
| Advertising ruined the world. Ad Tech is a cancer.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I watched all the ads, just at 100x speed. It doesn't work
| anymore - RIP the Ad Accelerator - but I could use it guilt free
| knowing the ads were watched and google collected their money
|
| https://github.com/rkk3/ad-accelerator
| mythrwy wrote:
| Never once have I seen an ad and thought "I need that" and
| purchased the item. Not in my entire life that I recall and I'm
| 54.
|
| Maybe this is not the norm but I don't perceive most advertising
| as being particularly effective.
| righthand wrote:
| Somebody start a non-publicly traded ad-based video hosting
| company and this will be resolved for the most part. If the
| concern is never "line goes up" then there is less incentive to
| enshittify the entire platform.
| wwweston wrote:
| Paying for YouTube has probably been the digital subscription
| with the single greatest return on a dozen dollars.
|
| Content is uninterrupted without having to engage in the arms
| race. Music selection is great. Random movies are available.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Music selection is great. Music recommendation (and video
| recommendation) is utter crap. I know running something as big
| as youtube means there is unlikely to be a true competitor but
| there is sooooooooo much low-hanging fruit to do a better job.
|
| My home page is on average 60% wasted/irrelevant.
|
| I'm a little surprised they haven't added "AI" yet. They add
| some prompt "tell us what you like". I tried it the opposite
| "Do not show me cat videos!" and of course it was just keyword
| based and started showing me cat videos.
|
| On the video front, my Japanese is pretty good. I watched one
| high level Japanese language video. Now my feed is full of
| beginner Japanese language videos. I'm pretty confident if I
| could ask some LLM "Don't show me beginning level Japanese
| videos" it could figure it out.
|
| Same with Music. If I play any song from the 80s their shit
| algo will decide what I want is "hits of the 80s", not "more
| songs similar to the song I just played". Again, I feel like I
| could tell an LLM that. Play me songs by band X and songs
| similar to band X". "Play me songs that influenced band X" (LLM
| can reference interviews for that).
| mNovak wrote:
| Agreed the algorithm is significantly flawed. I often have
| the experience of being interested in a one-off video, but
| don't watch it because I don't want to pollute the algorithm
| recommendations with similar stuff.
| eurekin wrote:
| Same here. Netflix, Hulu, Disney plus, HBO... I've had them
| disabled after months of zero usage.
|
| YouTube on the other hand...
| strathmeyer wrote:
| But how is it different than those of us who access it for
| free? I get a popup asking me to pay once a month but that's
| about it. Are you just happy to throw your money away if it
| goes to a giant corporation?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| You get rid of the ads, so it's not exactly throwing money
| away.
| nbf_1995 wrote:
| > Are you just happy to throw your money away if it goes to a
| giant corporation?
|
| 45% (which is a lot) of the money goes to the giant
| corporation. The other 55% gets divided up among the people
| whose content you watched.
|
| I mostly watch smaller creators, so I don't mind 55% of my
| membership fee ending up in their pockets so they can keep
| making videos for me to enjoy.
|
| I don't watch ads, the people I watch get paid because I
| watched. And obviously I'm not happy about the cut google
| takes and I would rather a higher percentage of my money go
| to the creators.
| dbbk wrote:
| It's a premium service with premium features... ad-free,
| offline downloads... maybe you should look into it
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'd gladly pay for ad free youtube if they weren't double
| dipping by stealing my data.
| SvenL wrote:
| Yes, one thing for me is, that Youtube is offering music (in
| the form of videos) which you can't get on any other platform.
| faragon wrote:
| The more YouTube does that, the more I use Spotify.
| TJTorola wrote:
| Not sure what this says about me, but I ran into youtube putting
| a 3 video limit on me because I was using adblocking and when I
| hit that limit I just ended up going outside to have a lovely
| day. Honestly wish video limits was just a feature I could turn
| on.
|
| Funny enough, awhile back they made it so that if you turned off
| watch history, they would disable the front page feed. Not sure
| if that was seen as a punishment to try to encourage people to
| turn back on watch history but that also ended up being a welcome
| change.
| kapitanjakc wrote:
| I don't have watch history on.
|
| I don't see anything on my home page.
|
| I specially open youtube when I want to look at something and I
| have to search for it.
|
| I still watch related videos, but it's way better compared to
| what I got on home page.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| I just can't pay youtube a penny, because it solidifies their
| monopoly and control. They can and do ban content that they think
| is "harmful" for whatever reason, they push content that they
| (not me) like, I don't want to reward any of this.
| j3th9n wrote:
| I switched to Firefox because of the latest measures after 2
| decades of using Chrome.
| gloosx wrote:
| Im in A/B group for this, and I had to disable ublock for youtube
| or videos wont play showing a funny warning. Interestingly the
| specific autoskip ads extension for youtube still works
| perfectly, and I dont see any backoff or delay, maybe a short 1s
| flash is happening and video starts playing. If they block this
| too I dont mind just predownloading every video with yt-dlp out
| of spite.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I'd noticed this behaviour while using Brave browser and
| experienced the half-dozen second lag and a small popover on the
| bottom left that when clicked on said "it's because you're
| blocking ads"
|
| I see also now that the "don't recommend channel" option has been
| removed (at least for me) which was handy for removing AI slop
| recommendations. It's fast coming to the point where I'll just
| avoid YouTube for spending some idle time.
| bawana wrote:
| Wait till the ads are interspersed into chatGPT output (and
| Gemini and Claude too). I'll need an local LLM to filter out the
| ads from the LLM I'm using in the cloud.
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