Because they are embedded in the stream itself something I am not sure would be viable for youtube to do at their scale. For twitch, you basically have to use a proxy hosted in another country where they dont show ads to retrieve the stream links.
They're not embedded in the UK at least, you can confirm this by watching something via the Twitch plugin for Kodi which is sent video of a countdown timer instead.
Same with uMatrix. However I do get YouTube ads... Twitch ads sound like they would be horribly frustrating because of the real time nature of the experience !
It's rare to see Twitch ads because they don't have very much ad inventory. But if you happen to be a rare match for one of the few ads they have, you'll see that same ad over and over and over again.
I work in ad-tech. The tech to make ads unblockable has existed for years now (server side ad insertion makes ads indistinguishable from content because they're delivered through the same gateway in the same video stream thus bypassing DNS/network and DOM based ad blocking).
However, it's still rarely used because sufficiently capable users with advanced adblockers do not make up enough lost revenue over the increased infrastructure cost.
It's been fascinating watching Google lag in this area given the amount of engineering resources, market share, and platform control they have. We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads. But it appears it's not for lack of want, it seems like it's just poor execution and unexpected diminishing market share.
> We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads.
If YouTube blocks me from watching videos because I use an ad blocker then I'll stop watching videos on YouTube. I don't care if this doesn't hurt YouTube... it will help me stop spending so much time on YouTube.
Oh gosh, really? Don't you think you'll come back after a few weeks?
I think the bigger impact is that it'll impede new user adoption. I use an adblocker (but pay for YouTube,) and I never use sites that block me for using an adblocker.
You state you never use sites that block adblockers, right after disagreeing (questioning? Exclaiming??) with the parent for for expressing the exact same point?
100% this, I'm not watching ads. I haven't really seen any advertising on my electronic devices in a decade (edit: actually closer to two decades) and that's the way it will continue to be. My time is valuable, my mental space is valuable, my computer is mine. You will not make it do things I don't want it to do. Advertising is a plague on society.
(I speak from experience, I worked for 3 years at an ad agency.)
Honest question - why not? I am paying for Youtube Premium, it's not different to me than paying for Netflix or Spotify. I'm using a service which I like so I don't mind supporting it. If it helps me get rid of ads, so much the better.
it's certainly different than Netflix given that they actually make content. On Youtube you're just paying a tax to the fiefdom. Given that a lot of creators have patreon which takes a miniscule cut I'd rather pay creators as directly as possible.
Paying a company with a market dominating position 150 bucks per year to not hold me hostage with blocked UI functions is kind of ridiculous.
While I agree with your comment there is something seriously wrong with the fact that Google can use its infinite funds so that a serious competitor for YT never has any chances of appearing. If YT were a standalone company and would compete on fair terms in others, we might see some reasonable business models appear.
We know how much Netflix spends on content. In 2022, it was 52% of their revenue ($16.7B content budget, $32B revenue). We also know how much YouTube pays for the content, since their ad revenue split has been public for like a decade. It's 55% to the creators for the content, 45% to YouTube for the technical and social infrastructure.
Huh. Looks like YouTube pays more for their content than Netflix does! Given the only stated basis for your opinion turned out to be incorrect, are you changing your mind?
No, that napkin math doesn't check out unless you think Youtube is a non-profit. They pocket half of what creators make, and that has no relationship to their infrastructure cost, it's a function of their market power. They could change that revenue split tomorrow to 70/30 while they cut infrastructure costs for all you or I know.
You somehow turned my argument on its head. I don't care how much Netflix or YT pay for content, I only care that I pay directly for content, and because Netflix is a media company, not a platform, I don't need to guess how much they're squeezing creators or consumers. I transparently pay for a movie catalog, and that is the service provided.
Any money i could give to google is a drop in their ocean of ad revenue, that's why. Google is being disingenuous af, nothing new. Also Youtube has become so important it should be much more regulated.
Google would be one of the last companies I would shove money into, voluntarily.
All the ads that YT shows are paid by us when we buy products of companies that pay Google to show ads.
This is how Google is getting all their billions, from you (wether or not you personally watch ads, as long companies believe it's worth giving money for showing ads).
It's such a parasitic business model that I am glad I can be a parasite to Google
You prevent YT and Content Creators from making money when you block an ad.
Blocking ads of these products, means when you purchase a product (shampoo, razors, etc) more of your money goes into these companies that created these products.
And, in your case, who pays the content creator for the content you enjoy? and who pays for the engineering and infrastructure that delivered the content?
And, since you never saw the ad, you likely didn't buy any product either.
> And, since you never saw the ad, you likely didn't buy any product either.
That's the big con behind ads, especially online ads. If there was research showing that ads don't make any difference at all for the vast majority of purchases ...
Secondly, ads are a more insidious version of the old visa scam. They're a tax on everyone, whether they viewed the ad or not. I avoid ads, and where I can't I actively avoid the product. It's not even about being cheap, I am actively disgusted at ads these days, and that transfers to the product being advertised. I doubt I'm the only one.
Thirdly, already Youtube ads don't allow "normal" content creators to survive. Not enough money. So youtube is a con. Content creators won't keep creating ... and it doesn't matter what you do. Youtube is a pyramid scheme, in that it's making the promise of jobs, even richess if you just "produce content", and it's dependent on a constant flow of fresh suckers taking that bet. Nearly all of them will lose big.
Just about every one of "my favorite creators" have a video complaining about it (those videos are really becoming boring), yet the vast majority of their views are monetized, so even "fixing" ad blocking 100% won't help them.
sounds like you're avoiding paying creators and just making up 'rationales' for continuing to not support them. if you're unwilling to support creators and unwilling to participate in creator economy and creator platforms by watching ads - then don't participate in all parts of that creator ecosystem - don't watch their content. creators participate in it by putting their content out there. but you're selectively picking what's most beneficial to you, and watch the content while refusing to compensate creators for it in those ways, intended by the platforms, and by creators themselves, who intentionally enable monetization of their content. good for you, but the 'virtuousness' of 'not participating in platform racket' isn't checking out.
Paying or not paying into an unsustainable system is not moral, or immoral, it is only stupid. Youtube, just like Uber, Amazon and Alibaba are temporary things that cannot survive. They won't survive the influx of new "creators", and the quality is already racing to the bottom, as is the money paid out to Youtubers. I enjoy them, aware that certain events are RACING towards us.
So here's my attitude: if I'm falling to my death out of a plane, the end result completely out of my control, I hope I'll spend the time fantasizing about elaborate ways to save myself and generally enjoy the way down. Same with Youtube and other gig economy "let's underpay everyone!" attitude ... I'm not convincing myself nothing's going wrong. I'm aware fantasy doesn't change a thing. I'm aware I don't change a thing and the only thing that can keep this system going is investors hoping for profit (or a greater fool). And so I enjoy the fall.
"And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I pay the content creator, if I don't want him to go away: liberapay or Patreon
Otherwise I am already paying a fee for public broadcasters of my country.
I probably bought a product, because almost every company does ads.
This means I pay for YouTube, I pay for GMail, I pay for Android, I pay for GDocs, etc. although I don't even want to use it.
I'd rather had Android died in favor of Windows Phone
YT Premium only makes the problem worse by requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity and was used for payment processing. You just end up giving more data points to Google to track you, cross-reference with other sources and shove more ads in other platforms, still get native ads, and Google can just add their own ads later (as it is happening step by step with streaming companies).
One thing for me is that the youtube app stops the audio when the phone locks. I want to listen to a video while I'm driving, I'll even put up with the ads, but I actually can't do it unless I use an alternative front-end app - which is how I've solved the problem.
Restricting background-play is an active choice on Youtube's part to prevent what I would consider a basic function and hold it hostage behind their paywall.
That behaviour fucks me off such that I refuse to sponsor it.
Because it’s giving money to Google? Plus half the problem is the tracking, they’re not going to stop tracking me if I pay them, and then I have to use it logged in which just makes the tracking easier.
I'm not going to be extorted lol. If you're showing me something I have a right to ignore the parts I don't care about, and I have a right to have a computer do the ignoring for me so I don't waste my time/mental effort.
Extremely obvious case of apples not being oranges, in the sense of user-generated content not being the same as studio/production company generated content.
Just a passerby, but content isn't fungible; no one is replacing Technology Connections with House of the Dragon or vice versa. The diversity of YouTube's content, the back catalog, its default status, network effects, integration with devices and services, and so much more make it hard to replace.
And we shouldn't forget, rando users can upload whatever for sharing, which none of your alternatives do. Kind of the core idea there.
I love Technology Connections FWIW, completely changed how I use my dishwasher!
And I would disagree re: content isn't fungible. Nothing on YouTube is both necessary to specifically consume and entirely unavailable elsewhere. It's entertainment, and whatever "category" of entertainment you prefer, you can find content not on YouTube for that thing.
"Random users uploading content" has not been the primary use case of YouTube for many years now. It's mostly run by content creators now, with entire companies dedicated to creating content, just the same as the platforms I've listed.
I must confess I still don't understand why ads are not a CFAA violation. I mean, what are the website operators going to argue? That you voluntarily configured your user agent to display them? That argument is far too dangerous to the advertisers.
I can get stuck in a bit of a loop watching videos, but on the whole I think YouTube is an incredible resource. I've learnt so many things from it, I think it's worth working out how to use it in moderation rather than just cutting it out
I just cannot wrap my head around folks who demand content for free. How do you think the people who create this content would survive if they couldn't do it for money???
Some of us are from a time before the web was commercialized. The answer to your question is we couldn't care less. If these people who make "content" as a means of making money go bankrupt, it's no skin off our backs. It will make more room for people who host genuine works on the web.
Then I have no sympathy for you. You want to live in a world that does not exist, and your desire to do that harms the very people you claim to support, the content creators.
I'm not who you were talking to as a heads up, but as someone who blocks ads, I frankly just don't care. I view ads as a security risk and as psychological warfare. If Google thinks it worthwhile to invest resources and manages to successfully stop my blocking, fair enough, but otherwise I'm going to continue to optimize for my own well being. Google will go on continuing to be one of the richest and most powerful / influential companies on earth, and the small fraction of ad revenue that the content creator would miss out on from my ad-blocking, well, cost of doing business.
I've stopped visiting Twitch because their ad's are annoying to block. I'll stop visiting youtube if the same happens. I refuse to engage with ads if I have a choice. I've given money to a handful of people on Patreon that I want to support, but otherwise I have greater problems to deal with than the small fractions of a cent that these creators lose by me blocking.
"I don't care" is a logic, but it's not... sustainable, right? The current dynamic of some people being of your mind but most people being not that way works, but let me introduce you to the Tragedy of the Commons [0].
Or it will just lead to more sponsored segments and product placement in "free" videos. Every semi-popular youtuber already has segments where they stop the actual content and talk about NordVPN or HelloFresh or Manscaped.
It's hard for me to find good reviews of Synthesizers because almost every video about a new one is a sponsored video where the instrument was given to the youtuber for free.
I have observed a more insidious problem - the Youtubers that used to be genuine and down to earth are now themselves compromised by being sent products to give their honest opinion.
The other day I was watching a video about this nice couple who wanted to start their bulldozer that was frozen in the forest and suddenly they pull out this "powerbank 1300" (name deliberately changed) and started a sales spiel ! About how they have all these gopros and iphones and look how many ports this thing has, and how it can charge the dead dozer battery blah blah.
Matthias Wandel today released a video about a Ecobank 1300 - I am shocked at how the content creators themselves have become a poisoned well !
These 1300WH banks are waaay overpriced for the amount it would cost to buy the individual 18650 cells (probably $100 worth of cells being sold for $999), so these content creators are shills and sellouts to these marketing tactics.
I'm hoping a large part of the cost is in safety. It would be grossly irresponsible to just string together a bunch of budget 18650 cells to try and make a bigger battery. It's junk like this that has caused entities like the NYCHA to straight up ban ebikes (cheap conversion kits for ebikes seem to be giant fire hazards).
Yeah, and YT Music is included too right? Because I have YT Music and no ads and it's really cheap compared to other services. I pay COP$17900 which is little less than USD$4. I used to pay around USD$10 for Spotify.
The main reason they get paid is that their income is primarily from sponsorships and affiliate links now. Youtube premium doesn't block that, and it's a much more insidious kind of ad.
It makes you think you're watching somebody being authentic, when really it's a business disguising itself as an authentic person that's trying to sell you things (whether out of bias or strategy)
How about a smart TV, a streaming stick/box (e.g. Roku, Amazon Fire Stick), or a games console?
Pi-hole will work for some types of ad on all devices, but I'm not sure how it'd work for video ads in an app like YouTube - particularly if Google started serving the ads from the same servers as the content.
YT Premium only makes the problem worse by requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity and was used for payment processing. You just end up giving more data points to Google to track you, cross-reference with other sources and shove more ads in other platforms, still get native ads, and Google can just add their own ads later (as it is happening step by step with streaming companies).
The flip side s that you don't have to use Chrome+Google for everything. I buy ebooks and watch youtube on it, plus my phone (so I buy android apps via the same google account). And Gmail is my fallback email account so that doesn't see much traffic.
I use 3-4 browsers and because WFH + VM's for coding some incidental sandboxing.
Well, my hubby’s iPad and our iPhones don’t support ad blocking on YouTube, nor does my Smart TV, so…ad blocking only works on 1/5 of my husband’s devices and my own would actually be effective with ad blocking, for one…
(And before you say ‘just switch to Android’, I’m an iOS/WatchOS dev and a music producer for a living - if anything with the recent announcement of Logic on the iPad, I’ll be buying another iPads not reducing them…)
Actually better, because I share it with my family and no one has to deal with installing / configuring adblockers on different platforms (mobile app, TV, laptops whatever) It also includes Music so together I think it is a pretty good deal. Prices in some countries are ridiculously cheap as well (<$2 monthly in India, Turkey) , but of course that could change in time.
My only problem is the sponsored content in youtube videos, I would give some extra money to skip that crap as well.
I had YouTube Family at $15/month until this month, when they raised the price to $23. I signed up back when Google Play Music was still a thing.
I was never able to get into YouTube Music, though, so I don't actually use it to stream my music. The fact that my playlists are shared between YouTube and YouTube Music is enough for me to drop it from serious consideration as a music streaming service on its own. That, plus the lack of lossless streaming, inconsistent, clunky UI, and lack of any positive features that distinguish it from Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, is why I never used it for anything other than sharing songs with people who didn't use Tidal.
That they apparently also include ads in the albums I transferred from Google Play Music - albums that I paid for - is just added insult.
The main way I justified paying the subscription was that other people in my household got access to ad-free music streaming (and they actually used it, unlike me), Youtubers get comped more from me watching their videos, and I didn't have to worry about whole-home adblockers to remove ads from the app. But after a 50% price hike that takes it above the prices for Tidal Family ($15), Apple Music Family ($17), and Spotify Family ($16), it's not something I can justify anymore.
(Youtube Music Family is $15, FWIW, but it doesn't include Youtube itself.)
> That, plus the lack of lossless streaming, inconsistent, clunky UI, and lack of any positive features that distinguish it from Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, is why I never used it for anything other than sharing songs with people who didn't use Tidal.
The UX and performance of the YouTube Music web client is so much worse than the old Google Music web client. I used to be able to scroll my entire album collection without a hiccup on Google Music, that's now impossible with YouTube Music
I don't like paying a platform that rose to prominence because of piracy, just so that I can watch IP created by other people without youtube inserting a really intense number of ads into the experience. And all the vidoes are ads anyway, it's just via sponsorships and affiliate links now.
> I don't like paying a platform that rose to prominence because of piracy
Is that true? Yeah it's there, more so in the past, but I have to imagine that was a tiny amount of their viewership. I'd imagine most viewing is from individual channels of real people.
Something that doesn't get Google to ban accounts? Blocking a payment to Google or doing a charge-back is involved in nearly all account closure complaints on this site.
Btw: as someone who's worked in banks, I'd like to point out that there are circumstances where some banks will charge-back automatically (or outright "accept the payment", then not pay), if they suspect fraud for example.
In Europe there are a few options which let you pay with your bank account without a credit card. I tried to look up all the things Wise supports, found part of the list:
Except we paid for other streamers for an ad-free experience – until they started inserting ads again. Do we believe that Google of all companies won't pull a switcheroo in a few years?
If you wanted a contract, they'd honor it for the term of the contract but you'd have to pay for that up front but statistically nobody online likes to pay for content so the ad-funded model is pervasive. The ethical choices are either to accept the service as offered or watch something which is offered under terms you find more acceptable.
> Illegally circumventing the Terms of Service is unethical/stealing.
That seems like a difficult argument to make because laws don't always align with ethics. Given the myriad of replies around this topic, it seems like opinions on the ethics of violating the ToS are mixed. It gets even more complicated when you consider that very few people have the time/skills to read/interpret such a complex and lengthy ToS. At what point is a company not morally complicit for taking advantage of the layman's inability to understand such a legal document? It doesn't help that the UI/UX seems to deliberately provide incentive for users to blindly accept.
Doubt it. Ever been required to watch a video for a class?
There are limits to terms of service. Where does it end? Is it unethical to mute and switch to another tab to wait out the ad? How about simply looking away? Regardless of what the terms of service says I have the ultimate control of what I decide to take in. Adblocking is a way to assert that right to selectively let in stuff into my sphere of perception.
By this kind of hypothetical assumption, you shouldn't pay for anything, as the other party might change the terms in future, or in your parlance, "pull a switcheroo"
i don't even hate ads or the idea of targeted advertising in theory but 20+ years into the panopticon and the company that has the most information about my purchasing habits, interests and dislikes still has never shown me any advertising that was even remotely relevant to my life. i still have better odds of seeing something i actually want to buy just by flipping through the paper and those adverts don't demand that i put my life on pause just because corporation x spent a whole lot of money on a branding campaign that is annoying, unfunny and makes me hate them and their products.
This somewhat alludes to a question I have wondered for quite a while. Are there any compelling data that digital advertising even works?
Sure, if one clicks on an ad then immediately buys a product, then perhaps that would be more straightforward. However, I just do not think that is very common, but I could be wrong.
It just seems like there is some kind of false notion that if a company creates ads and the company has an increase in sales, then it must be because of the ads, when in reality, it could be entirely coincidental.
Tangental, but I intentionally boycott products that have annoying ads. I will walk to the ends of the Earth before I use GEICO, for example.
Isn't Linus Tech Tips an ad, though? The only times I've looked at it all I've seen is sponsored content with breaks to talk about sponsors and maybe buy some merch. Oh, and exhortations to use their affiliate links. And that's using Premium, I expect that without it the sponsored content would be broken up by youtube's ads.
Maybe my expectations are biased by subscribing to Nebula? And for those who do, Medlife Crisis just posted a fun video on the placebo effect featuring great (fake) sponsor callouts.
Keep in mind that HN/Reddit is comprised of thousands or millions of people and there may or may not be overlap between those saying the first thing and later the second.
The rule of thumb according to youtubers is that 1000 video views is worth about $1 of ad share. Youtube's ad share is about 50%, so 1000 video views should be worth about $2 of ad money for Youtube. Youtube Premium costs $12 a month which is equivalent to 6000 video views per month or ~200 video views per day. If I'm on a very youtuby mood I'll maybe watch 10 videos in a day. So, best case scenario, paying for premium comes with a 20x markup.
So your conversation actually goes:
HN/Reddit: "I would love to just give you the money directly instead of watching ads in exchange for advertizers giving you money."
Companies: "Sure, here's the ad-free version. You have to pay 20 times as much as the advertizers do though."
The people willing to pay are the ones advertisers want to reach. Obviously we don't know the breakdown, but it's reasonable to think that advertisers would be willing to spend 20x less per ad if the high value users never saw them.
What, so Google can track me better? I hate YouTube's recommendation system and only watch videos in a Private browsing window. I would happily pay for YouTube if they wouldn't track me, shovel shit in my face, or otherwise misuse my data.
There's a really simple reason for this - HN/Reddit is not one person. It consists of multiple people with different opinions, and as such, there is no singular opinion to be found.
I use YouTube infrequently and I still find it worth it. I don't at all mind paying to get rid of ads. But if there is no option to pay, and you try to force ads, I'll choose not using your service instead. An ad-based service is not something I'm interested in.
It seems inferior to a combination of ublock origin and sponsorblock. Unlike using these two, you don't have the option of staying logged out while watching videos without being bombarded by ads.
A major part apart from building a queue by getting behind is the ability of the file manager to sort, to classify, to filter, to move into folders, to search, etc. Far better than the youtube web interface, which only has the options of displaying your subscriptions as a grid or as a list. So I now have a local queue of videos which I can use, in which weird expeditions into obscure genres are into their own folders, must-match-now videos are tagged, etc, and I can pick and choose according to my own tastes of the moment.
That is one of my pet peeves in UI design in the last decade and it is not only web applications – shoebox apps are often as limited. If you want to do anything to your data or just have different sort orders or views, you only have what the app developer allows and often that is nothing.
Thanks to the web and shoebox apps I appreciate file managers like Finder even more now. It’s amazing what UI controls like NSTableView/NSOutlineView gives the user in functionality. Modern collection views often look better and I appreciate that, but I do miss the functionality which, while possible, often simply is not implemented.
Downloading is an option, though there are of course numerous others:
- You can stream directly. I do this via a bash function for cases where mpv itself doesn't play a video (for reasons I've been unable to / not had the spoons to track down):
- You can use ytdlp as a front-end to other tools, and in fact if you peek under the bonnet you'll find that many YouTube / video streaming tools are in fact using yt-dlp as their access mechanism.
- There are times when downloading a video is the only way to be assured that you'll have access to content in the future, or when offline. Note that when YouTube removes content it also removes all metadata associated with that content, including title, description, and the account which had posted it.
Mine likewise, but it still encounters errors frequently, particularly with YouTube, which my hack addresses. Even after updating to the most recently-available versions.
This is on Android / F-Droid / pip. I've hacked those specifically to keep yt-dlp and mpv as updated as possible.
You're looking for a media server. Plex, Jellyfin and Emby are the 3 popular choices, out of which Jellyfin is the only completely free open source software
I wish Peertube was more usable. The UX is generally subpar (although impressive for an ActivityPub-based system). There's also the problem that hosting servers to host video is _so damn expensive_. There is literally only one Peertube instance I ever watch videos on (https://tilvids.com/) and I'm honestly considering stopping using it altogether. I'm not sure what I want out of Framasoft really, but I don't think Peertube or any similar solution becomes viable soon without socializing costs for video hosting, encoding, etc.
Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I wish to support, which again means the costs are all centralized and extremely high.
On top of the video player hover over the "x peers" on the bottom, it will tell you how much data you downloaded, uploaded, and how much of the download came from peers or the server.
You can configure your server to download and mirror videos from other instances, but (iirc) only if the remote instance allows it, and if it allows your instance to "follow" it.
The fact that you haven to follow other servers as a server is insane. It also really fucks up federation, because some instances do not allow follows at all. Tilvids does not, which was a major factor in me shutting down my instance.
That said, the mirroring system is really nice. You have all sorts of dials to cache only the x most popular videos for y days and up to z GB. You can have it mirror videos from user subscriptions in a similar way, and right next to the 'download video' button is one that says 'mirror' that does what you think.
P2P as a client is a whole different matter, and I also have never, ever seen my client uploading. I think this is purely a function of how few users are actually on peertube. The chances of you watching the same video as another person on the planet is incredibly small.
I really, really want to like peertube, but it really is completely unusable. Discovery is abysmal because there's no global search. You can't rely on federation to find content because federation is opt-in and has a crazy nonsense mechanism.
Peertube is not fit to run a single-user instance like mastodon unless you only want to publish. It simply doesn't work at all if you only wish to consume video. The only real way to use the service at all is to sign up on the biggest instance you can find and hope they have interesting videos.
I have a server with tons of free disk and a big fat fiber line, and the idea of mirroring peertube videos of small creators sounds like a perfect use for my spare resources. I would love to mirror tilvids to help reduce their server load, but I simply can't because they choose to disallow it.
The only alternative is LBRY/Odyssey, which is vastly more popular, but has some serious issues with violent/extreme/illegal content and is fully wrapped up in blockchain bullshit.
the people who have a blockers enabled are also the lest likely to click an ad or buy anything advertised . advertisers should want these people to not be shown ads.
The people who have ad blockers installed are an extremely self-selective demographic who have taken a physical action. This type of demographic is extraordinarily valuable to sell advertising to.
Which is why allowing self serve adverts would benefit everyone. Uccasionally I want to see related items for sale, but there is no option if the video uploader hasnt already put monitized affiliate links. Seems like its leaving money, and viewer satisfaction, on the table.
Bingo. I would prefer a related items list I can click on. I might not use it often, but have nevwr in my life voluntarily clicked a banner ad or link thru a video ad.
Does YT detect that the ad wasn't played and therefore doesn't pay out for that view to the creator?
From an incentives perspective, putting the onus on the creators to convince their viewers to enable ads might be more effective, but on the other hand that feels kind of shitty to do to creators, so IDK if it's ultimately a good idea...
I only block the in video ads because they are so intrusive. I don't mind any of the other ads on the platform and am not against advertising in general. They have also gotten money from me via their 30% cut of super chat fees so I probably do earn Youtube more money than the average user.
I hope my sheer stubbornness will keep me from ever subscribing to Youtube premium.
- Google used to have Google Music, which I loved and paid for willingly as it was a good service, the recommendation algorithm was _not bad_, the UI was _okay_, and you could upload your own music and have it integrate with their system.
- Google used to by default allow you to play Youtube in the background and let you use the picture in picture mode for free - they removed that feature and put it behind a paywall.
- You can't volume control ads. I have Youtube playing in the background on my bedside table at night and having consistent volume is key. I don't want blaring audio telling me to buy X product or use Y service, waking me up when I'm trying to sleep. Yet another way for them to convince you to get Youtube premium.
- I hate all forms of advertisements. Don't shove advertisements in my face. If I want a product, I'll look for it and do my own research. I don't want algorithms and AI deciding what I want to purchase. When I've had advertising slip through, it's usually for things that I've already bought recently (mattress, clothing, etc.)
I will continue to willingly eat away at Google's profits for as long as they run YouTube.
I've been looking into some kind of open source solution that automatically grabs my Youtube history playlist and downloads and automatically catalogs these videos on a network share somewhere locally. (If someone can recommend a solution, please feel free!)
Too many times I've had videos that I've added to a playlist be removed for some inane reason (copyright violation, DMCA requests, etc. etc.)
Well said friend, I'm on the same page with almost all of these things!
I have a long term plan to setup a suite of the existing self-hosted front-ends to various services just for me and my immediate family to personally use.
Is it weird that this makes me want to subscribe to YouTube premium less than before? Feels like I've been poised to give them money for a while, since so many people seem to like the service. Now I feel like they're challenging me to a duel.
If Google didn’t have such a abysmal business model to start with, this wouldn’t be an issue.
They offered services for free without providing the disclaimer.
The attention economy is a toxic poison, I think more people than you realise are now aware of this and are less likely to pay for something Google offers because of it.
I don’t hate Google, but they’ve eroded a lot of trust.
I looked into subscribing because I don't mind paying to avoid the ads.
I don't like the spying that will go along with paying, given that it is Alphabet/Google. If they offered a plan to pay without the spying I would have signed up years ago.
I didn't try so I could be wrong but my guess is your payment will be tied directly to your login and so you need to have that login on the browser at all times to view the videos (without ads) and given all the decline of "do no evil" I don't trust them at all.
I also don't trust they wouldn't mess things up. I travel a lot. I paid for YouTube TV and the ludicrous junk they do to try and verify you are able to view things was a huge pain and failed quite a lot until it failed nearly always I and dropped it.
I imagine if they push me I will pay and then have to copy and paste every YouTube url into a sanitized browser instance only used for YouTube. But I don't trust Alphabet/Google to not constantly be attempting to use that subscription to improve and deepen their spying which annoys me quite a bit. I just trust them a tiny bit more than Microsoft (and I ditched using anything by Microsoft decades ago - other than my use of LinkedIn continuing after they bought it and very occasional uses of Bing to check on it).
You can delete your watch history after every session or have something automated do it for you. That will work fine if you only want to watch the content you subscribed to.
If you want better recommendations though you may have to tolerate some things that you may consider "spying".
Also cute these people think using incognito does anything to stop Google from tying the traffic back to them. They already finger print you off hundreds of parameters. Hell most people are literally using their web browser.
You'd also have to trust that YT doesn't track you in the incognito window, given that it's still pretty easy to identify an user and you're also most likely using Google's own browser to hide.
If you really don't want to be tracked by Google, you should probably consider not using their services.
I'm afraid you are making a mistake in assuming that Incognito mode == no tracking. The only thing that Incognito mode does is not save any local history or cookies. This is mainly of benefit for people who share a computer and don't want the other users to see their history.
Tracking has long moved way beyond cookies and Google is absolutely tracking what you do in incognito mode and doing their best (which is highly effective) to associate the tracking data with you.
This would mean YouTube will have to break compatibility with countless outdated Android / iOS apps, Smart TVs and other devices. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
> YouTube will have to break compatibility with countless outdated Android / iOS apps, Smart TVs and other devices
Minus smart TVs, this seems like the point of the policy change. (And even on the TVs, if they're watching without paying while blocking ads, that's purely a cost centre.)
If we enter Twitter as evidence into the record of yanking the cord on 3rd party apps getting a free ride off your company's hard work, then maybe Google has decided the negatives do not outweigh the positives.
You aren’t understanding. They can’t change the old unpublished APIs because it will break the old devices. We use those to get the videos without the ads.
What reason does YT have to NOT make changes that prevent those devices from working? Is there an avenue for these 3rd party devices to pay YT for their services? If these apps/devices are making a buck off of YT rent free, then they should be able to yank the cord whenever they want.
Your comment reads as if you feel that YT has some sort of obligation to continue letting 3rd parties make money from the work of YT without any compensation.
Device manufacturers not just use some private API or SDKs without making deal with Google. Except might be for Chinese noname brands from AliExpress.
All device manufacturers do have agreements with Google about support for their devices and such agreements can very well be for 10+ years or even for lifetime of the devices.
PS: Actually 10 years ago when Windows Phone was a thing Microsoft has tried to make their own YouTube client without agreement with Google and it was killed by Google almost immediately.
Google just dropped all third-party Google Home device support, leaving people with e.g. Lenovo Smart Displays twisting in the wind. It wouldn't be out of character for them to "alter the deal" w.r.t. all those old smart TVs and such.
i don’t think it’s weird, but i signed up for the premium trial a few weeks ago and it is simply astounding how much more enjoyable it makes things. i didn’t realize just how awful things had become until i tried youtube without ads.
i know some other folks are complaining about still getting tracked or whatever, but i think the simple truth is that youtube without ads is a vastly superior experience.
Last I heard, it was in the 10-50x range per view (premium vs. ad supported).
I watch enough YouTube for it to be a no-brainer for me, and I run an ad-blocker pretty much everywhere. Supporting the video creators I watch is worth it.
I signed up when it was first announced as YT Red years ago ("Member since October 29, 2015") and whenever I use a device without being logged in or I'm on an account without premium, I cringe. I can't believe people live that way. And we watch so much YouTube in this house, it's more than worth it for me, plus more cash to the creators.
I wish I got a discount for ALSO subscribing to YTTV and Google One... that'd be nice, but I'm not parting with YT Premium any time soon. It shows I've had > 790 hours of ad-free videos.
If you weren’t a paying customer, refuse to become a paying customer, and refuse to watch the ads, they don’t gain anything by having you as a user. It only costs them to retain you.
If doing something as simple as asking you to hold up your end of the deal of using their website (letting ads load for the ad-supported content) is too much to ask but paying for the website is also too much to ask, you have to be honest that you just want a free experience.
I don’t buy the argument that you were going to pay them in the future but you decided against it because they wouldn’t let you have it for free.
I wouldn't argue that the ads are terrible but it's what you agreed to by using an ad supported service. If you don't like their ad selection, the only ethical choice is either to pay for Premium or stop using YouTube. Watching someone's work without paying them isn't fair to the creators and it's a great way to ensure the market moves to worse content which is cheaper to produce.
I’m unmoved by the creators angle. Google exploits creators too. It’s best to just give them money more directly (like Patreon) than give Google money and hope they forward the creators a sensible amount.
If Google wants me off their service because I don’t watch enough ads, that’s their call. I’m not going to make a hufflepuff about it. But their ad game is garbage.
I’m not saying they’re great, but it’s a known quantity: you watch ads, advertisers pay Google, they pay creators. Yes, too much of that goes to the middleman but that’s a reason not to participate at all.
I had an issue with my payment for premium which resulted in temporary suspension of my service. A few days after fixing the payment issue, this news came out.
Considering this with the recent price increase, and some trouble with my family plan, my initial reaction was quite negative towards YouTube. They are setting a very clear trend against what I want in their service with recent changes (Removing downvote, removing android shortcuts and other features, aggressive copyright stiking policies, aggressive promotion of shorts, terrible recommendations).
I am considering cancelling. However, a more optimistic view would be that their ad block policy could result in lower subscription fees with more ad and subscription revenue.
That's crazy, the same thing happened to me. I was like what? Suddenly now my price has increased when I was on YouTube Red for the longest time. Considering canceling too
This has always been the case over in the world of freemium games.
The vast majority of the playerbase (70~80%?) are Free2Players (F2Pers), while the rest are whales (paying players) and an even smaller subset of them are space whales who spend enough in a month to buy a luxury car or two.
The games go to great lengths to retain those F2Pers because they are the ones the whales and space whales play together with and/or against. No F2Pers, no whales, no game, no business.
I think YouTube should take a similar approach and try to extract more from high value users to cover the costs of low value users. It’ll be easier to get a few thousand extra dollars from a music fan by bundling live interaction/events into YouTube than squeezing more ads into the bottom 1%.
I took the parent's comment to mean they would rather 'free' viewers leech off other people's bandwidth, as if they're not Premium and not watching ads, they are just consuming bandwidth and costing resources.
If they go to a competitor and block ads and consume bandwidth, then they are actively costing the competitor rather than costing Youtube for hosting.
Youtube allowing competitors to host would just consume youtube's bandwidth but with the 'views' also going to the competitor's domain (so the competitor could then potentially get additional sponsor support for having 'eyeballs' on their domain).
My point is that they intentionally obtained an effective monopoly on content, so it's weird of them to complain about too many people wanting to watch content there.
Ehh the problem with this is that I don't block YT ads (I watch on a tablet), but I am still constantly bombarded (and I mean that) with full-page click-through ads, banners and in-feed blocks trying to get me to buy Premium.
YouTube, I'm watching your pre-roll and mid-roll ads like you want me to, so leave me the fuck alone with this premium shit, I'm not interested.
So it's not an "either-or" scenario.. If you are using the ad-supported experience, they still disrupt it (many times a session for me) with UI-interfering elements to try to convert you. And that sucks.
I never said that them advertising their product was the problem. Please read more carefully.
If they advertised it with regular in-video ads like the rest of the ads, sure no problem, I am used to sitting through those and I accept ads as part of a good free viewing experience..
But they constantly interfere with the standard UI layout and experience to push these repetitive intrusive ads on me, that I have closed probably hundreds of times.
They should know by now that I am not going to sign up for it, so why continue to degrade the experience for me, when I am watching their ads as a free user?
They don't do this on the website so don't tell me "that's part of the trade" because it's only in the app they do this so aggressively and repeatedly.
>... you have to be honest that you just want a free experience.
No, I want an experience that commits to showing the ad(s) up front and not interrupting the video with more ads in the middle.
I use YT primarily for music. I don't mind letting ads play at the beginning. It's when they inject them into the middle of a song and, suddenly, when I'm jamming out, RIGHT at the peak of the track when I'm having the most fun, two more ads suddenly start blaring, and I'm forced to let the first one ride for 30 seconds.
There is some music that you just can't easily access anywhere but on YT for a variety of reasons. It's what keeps me using YT, but that approach of ad injection is bullshit.
Edit: Concert videos, too. Their algorithm will slap ads in the middle of a song, rather than in between them. I absolutely would not mind an ad here and there between songs, but noooooo.
> No, I want an experience that commits to showing the ad(s) up front and not interrupting the video with more ads in the middle.
Of course you would, and of course YT and its creators earns significantly more if they show ad in the middle. Not 100% sure, but AFAIK content creator could disable ad in the middle if they want to.
It absolutely does not cost them to retain you. That’s a joke. The current model completely offsets the number of users with ad-blockers by such a margin it’s silly we’re even talking about it.
The only reason we are talking about it is because shareholders want the money printer to go brrrrrr. YouTube IS profitable. Can we stop pretending one of the richest companies in the world needs me to stop blocking their ads for any reason other than greed?
And that principle is what most people balking here have a problem with.
They gain a lot thanks to network effects. Non-paying customers contribute to viewing numbers and engagement (likes + comments + subscriptions). But most importantly, they bring others to the platform by sharing links to videos and discussing them with others.
See [1]:
> In 2013, the boss of Time-Warner (which owns HBO), Jeff Bewkes, declared that piracy was: “Better than an Emmy” because more people watching the show inevitably led to more people deciding to pay for subscriptions.
Public goodwill is a thing. Also, their offer was lackluster. But with Youtube Music being a part of Premium and getting better and better overtime, more and more people are actually on the lookout for signing up.
There's also a psychological aspect of it. Remember how it feels when you're just about to do something and someone told you that you have to do it? Taking the agency and initiative away tend to annoy people and have an adverse effect on the task. You might not be personally affected by it but it's a common thing.
> more and more people are actually on the lookout for signing up
Supposedly they have over 80 million subscribers so they're definitely not hurting[0].
I am interested in seeing what happens if/when over 50% of users in the US subscribe to it. Advertisers are losing out on probably their biggest consumer market: people with enough money to handle a $12/mo subscription. Perhaps advertising income will start to shrink $12 for each user that subs to Premium?
No, they're just going to move the goalpost. Once everyone is on board with subbing to YT, and they have enough revenue. They'll reintroduce ads because that's just leaving money on the table.
> If you weren’t a paying customer, refuse to become a paying customer, and refuse to watch the ads, they don’t gain anything by having you as a user. It only costs them to retain you.
It helps yt achieve their mission /s
Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.
We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.
My $25/mo for life youtubetv subscription is now up to $80/mo. I'm regretting that now, but also kind of stuck because I have family members on the account.
I'm definitely not signing up for youtube premium.
Mate, Youtube have existed for almost 2 decades and you probably used them for most of it. I have used it to watch countless hours of lectures, talks, interviews and entertainment. You probably have the same experience of it for the past 2 decade too.
If you are not going to pay for THAT, you aren't going to pay for ANYTHING. Just admit you want free stuff. Stop deluding yourself into thinking that Youtube is somehow responsible for hosting all these for free.
Google set the standard for free online videos. It's what they used to aggressively drive other competitors out of the market. Now they want to reap the "benefits" of market dominance.
Yeah, I had this discussion with someone recently. Companies of that size can drown out competition for years, decades even, by operating at a loss (or just not making much profit at all) because they have numerous revenue streams and the pre-existing highly-profitable sources can subsidize the not-so-profitable new one. Once you have a nice big customer base, tighten the screws and wring money out of the users now that they are captive. The rate at which that process occurs varies, but it's basically inevitable, especially for publicly-traded corps.
Noone uses youtube because "it's better"(in what way even?). Everyone uses youtube because it's pretty much the only place for pre-filmed video content these days. If all content creators I watch moved to other sites, I would watch them there. I don't 'watch youtube', I watch people/channels that I follow. They've built a monopoly and now they're abusing it. I would gladly pay some low yearly subscription for Youtube without ads, but their current price is borderline insane, especially since most people won't use most of the features offered, all we want is an ad-free experience, I couldn't care less for Youtube Music. Until then, I will continue watching it via 3rd party sideloaded apps on my TV and with uBlock in web browser. Stop white-knighting corporations worth billions of dollars, they don't care for you as much as you care for them.
> Feels like I've been poised to give them money for a while
Pay for it or don't, but what is this nonsense about being poised (for a while) to maybe someday possibly consider thinking about purchasing the service?
It's $13. (In inflation-adjusted terms that's $7.12 the year I graduated high school.) What in the world are we talking about here? Buy it or don't. What is there to think about?
I just checked it's $15.99, which is a no go for me at the moment. If they offered a lower cost tier without YouTube music I would do it. However I use pandora (plus), I have for over a decade and have all my stations setup how I want them so I have no need for YouTube music. I mostly use the app anyways on my phone or tablet, so I still get ads. So it's not a big deal, but I do feel that $15.99 is to much at least for me at the moment, considering I pay for pandora and a few other streaming services.
Edit: Just realized I was viewing through the app with the Apple tax markup. However $13 is still more then ideal when I'll never use YouTube Music
There's a "lite" option for €7/month (instead of €12) which only removes ads, but doesn't include music and all the other stuff. Prices may differ per region; this is what it shows for me.
As a bonus, it is super fast because it doesn't have to justify the salaries of dozens (hundreds?) of frontend developers and can get away with server-side-rendered HTML and minimal amounts of Javascript.
Your bonus is my primary reason for using the service. Invidious, old.reddit.com, Gmail HTML Mode, are perfect examples of the great user experiences we've lost in the pursuit for New Shiny. Directly comparable with their "modern" counterparts. It would be nice if websites started to offer a cut-down version as an option, especially for users in 3rd world countries.
You can set to use old.reddit.com in account preferences, and I haven't seen new redesign since I reinstalled windows. That being said, the day the redesign gets pushed off, thats the day I stop using reddit.
If you don't care about logging into Reddit, you can try Libreddit or Teddit as read-only frontends. Bonus is you can use them without JS if that's a concern to you. Libreddit especially works better on mobile IMO
Of course these will probably only work until reddit changes their API, as they announced recently
Another alternative is Piped. https://piped.kavin.rocks. Comes with sponsorblock in addition to not showing ads. For Android users, use Youtube ReVanced if you want algorithm recommendations, NewPipe if not.
Piped works great! However it is let down by the (IMO) poor UX design. I would love for some graphics designer to step-in a create more usable CSS stylesheets for it.
I'm pretty torn here. I don't believe I deserve access to free content, and there's _nothing_ wrong with any site blocking access if you don't want to see ads.
I've done a lot of digital curtailing in my life, but Youtube has been hard to avoid. It's both good and bad, as they have some of the most amazing content in the whole world, but also some of the most addictive trash that I can't stop watching. Because the service is so addicting, I'm not sure I could justify paying for it, even though the value it brings is incredible.
Generating money by forcing ads to be shown on someone else's device, using the power and internet connection that they pay for, is also stealing if you really think about it.
In my country a publisher is liable for anything they say unless they have a license, and the license require that they abide to local laws. Youtube do not do this since they think they do not need to follow those laws, nor do they take responsibility for anything they publish (including advertisement). They don't even pay value gain taxes when selling this content in return for the service of me watching the ad.
I will respect their expectations when they respect mine.
That sounds pretty bleak, honestly. While you can disagree with Youtube and its policies, the idea of open free speech should appear, at first blush, more important than strict protections against libel or hate speech.
The kind of speech that is limited would be things like publishing malware, or doing illegal advertisement. No advertisement to kids, no alcohol, no tobacco, no prescription medicine, no guns, and no fraudulent messages.
Taxes is also pretty much defined by the expectation of compensation. If a speaker talks on a conferences and get paid to do so, they will need to pay taxes. They have as much open free speech they can get, but they are not free to demand compensation for it without paying taxes.
-google ads before the video
-google ads after the video
-google ads DURING the video, if it's too long.
-At least one "this video sponsored by our sponsor, sponsor sponsor".
There's a limit to how many ads I'm willing to sit through to watch someone tell me why Harbor Freight tools are [The Greatest Thing Ever || Worthless Garbage]
No, if you really think about it, that’s not remotely true here. A creator — myself included — is paid by Google for their content, which Google uses to attract the eyeballs that the advertisers are paying them to serve ads to… the creator doesn’t actually have any interest (financial or otherwise) in whether or not those ads are actually being watched (as opposed to being served). Since virtually all creators rely on non-Google-served advertising income streams (PayPal, merch, sponsorships, etc) for their real income, and invasive ads merely impede that, anything that Google does to drive people to ad blockers really just hurts creators. No stealing is occurring.
I produce media and I sell it to Google. Google in turn produces an interested audience for that media and sells their views to advertisers in the form of ads served. Advertising agencies in turn produce ads to sell to (for example) GM… GM is the ONLY party with a material interest in the ad actually being viewed by the (potential) consumer, as they’re the only party who can convert my media into a GM vehicle being sold. If anyone in that chain can consider an ad blocker theft, it’s GM… that’d still be wrong, of course, for the same reason ignoring a billboard on the freeway isn’t theft.
When you lay a trap and your prey refuses to be caught they aren’t harming you.
Many of the creators I listen to sell their content, and when they do, I pay for it if I can. (some do not sell their content on a service which allows for non-DRM audio purchases.)
I mean the reality is that YT has high quality content for almost any subject matter you can think of. That’s the beauty of the platform, you can find your niche. Hell, it’s even good for most things that pop into your head, podcast clips, old commercials, instruction manuals, DIY etc etc.
I listen to a LOT of amateur music on Youtube. This probably won't be most people's fancy, but I consider this to be the best performance of this particular song which exists.
There's a lot on Youtube like this. Music which is either just a cover, or is original that you literally can't find anywhere else because some hobbyist threw it up there and then stopped performing years ago.
There are also plenty of amazing lectures. I'm about halfway through this Yale course, but need to get back to watching it.
Maybe people wouldn't be locking your ads if you didn't have them jacked up to saturation level. I sometimes watch on a console and the number of ads is ridiculous, even worse than broadcast TV. Sometimes you get ads in the middle of songs.
Let's be real --- ad blockers don't have a setting to let through one ad every 30 minutes.
I agree the number of ads is absolutely shocking, which I'm reminded every time I see someone else play youtube, as I've had a subscription for about as many years as it's been available. My time is absolutely worth more than whatever I'm paying to skip these ads.
From what I’ve seen YouTube actually has fewer ads than broadcast TV and the ads are mostly shorter. It just seems like they have more because of the timing.
Broadcast TV generally syncs the ads with act breaks in the show. YouTube generally doesn’t seem to do any syncing with the content, so ads can suddenly happen in the middle of someone speaking. That’s way more disruptive.
YouTube generally doesn’t seem to do any syncing with the content
No, this is wrong. They can detect pauses and typically slot ads between songs or during applause moments. I don't watch a lot of TV but most days share some family time where we catch news, weather, and some chat show fluff, so I regularly watch some short programs that I tolerate rather than like. If I'm bored by the comedian, I amuse myself by predicting when the ad will come in. I don't think YT even needs o analyze the content as such, they can go by the user behavior: on some clients, when you seek in the video it shows you a graph of most/least favored time offsets based on aggregated play times, so they can easily time ad breaks to fit where people stop watching or skip ahead, and they line up neatly with segment changes. This kind of advertising is a bit intrusive but merely annoying. But when listening to music and being served inappropriate/poorly timed ad selections, it's truly infuriating.
I don’t block ads - I block YouTube trying to monetise things that are built into the internet and my phone - eg. Video that plays in the background when I close the website
It is just offensive that they want me to pay for something that is my phones feature not theirs.
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Downvoting does not change this fact (and if I knew exactly why my experience is different, I would provide details).
However, it's still rarely used because sufficiently capable users with advanced adblockers do not make up enough lost revenue over the increased infrastructure cost.
It's been fascinating watching Google lag in this area given the amount of engineering resources, market share, and platform control they have. We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads. But it appears it's not for lack of want, it seems like it's just poor execution and unexpected diminishing market share.
they're waiting for manifest v3
Oh gosh, really? Don't you think you'll come back after a few weeks?
I think the bigger impact is that it'll impede new user adoption. I use an adblocker (but pay for YouTube,) and I never use sites that block me for using an adblocker.
(I speak from experience, I worked for 3 years at an ad agency.)
Paying a company with a market dominating position 150 bucks per year to not hold me hostage with blocked UI functions is kind of ridiculous.
Huh. Looks like YouTube pays more for their content than Netflix does! Given the only stated basis for your opinion turned out to be incorrect, are you changing your mind?
You somehow turned my argument on its head. I don't care how much Netflix or YT pay for content, I only care that I pay directly for content, and because Netflix is a media company, not a platform, I don't need to guess how much they're squeezing creators or consumers. I transparently pay for a movie catalog, and that is the service provided.
All the ads that YT shows are paid by us when we buy products of companies that pay Google to show ads. This is how Google is getting all their billions, from you (wether or not you personally watch ads, as long companies believe it's worth giving money for showing ads).
It's such a parasitic business model that I am glad I can be a parasite to Google
Ad -> YT -> Content Creators
You prevent YT and Content Creators from making money when you block an ad.
Blocking ads of these products, means when you purchase a product (shampoo, razors, etc) more of your money goes into these companies that created these products.
And, in your case, who pays the content creator for the content you enjoy? and who pays for the engineering and infrastructure that delivered the content?
And, since you never saw the ad, you likely didn't buy any product either.
That's the big con behind ads, especially online ads. If there was research showing that ads don't make any difference at all for the vast majority of purchases ...
https://marketinginsidergroup.com/marketing-strategy/digital...
Secondly, ads are a more insidious version of the old visa scam. They're a tax on everyone, whether they viewed the ad or not. I avoid ads, and where I can't I actively avoid the product. It's not even about being cheap, I am actively disgusted at ads these days, and that transfers to the product being advertised. I doubt I'm the only one.
Thirdly, already Youtube ads don't allow "normal" content creators to survive. Not enough money. So youtube is a con. Content creators won't keep creating ... and it doesn't matter what you do. Youtube is a pyramid scheme, in that it's making the promise of jobs, even richess if you just "produce content", and it's dependent on a constant flow of fresh suckers taking that bet. Nearly all of them will lose big.
Just about every one of "my favorite creators" have a video complaining about it (those videos are really becoming boring), yet the vast majority of their views are monetized, so even "fixing" ad blocking 100% won't help them.
Currently on this same site:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35901889
So here's my attitude: if I'm falling to my death out of a plane, the end result completely out of my control, I hope I'll spend the time fantasizing about elaborate ways to save myself and generally enjoy the way down. Same with Youtube and other gig economy "let's underpay everyone!" attitude ... I'm not convincing myself nothing's going wrong. I'm aware fantasy doesn't change a thing. I'm aware I don't change a thing and the only thing that can keep this system going is investors hoping for profit (or a greater fool). And so I enjoy the fall.
"And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
Otherwise I am already paying a fee for public broadcasters of my country.
I probably bought a product, because almost every company does ads. This means I pay for YouTube, I pay for GMail, I pay for Android, I pay for GDocs, etc. although I don't even want to use it.
I'd rather had Android died in favor of Windows Phone
YT Premium only makes the problem worse by requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity and was used for payment processing. You just end up giving more data points to Google to track you, cross-reference with other sources and shove more ads in other platforms, still get native ads, and Google can just add their own ads later (as it is happening step by step with streaming companies).
Restricting background-play is an active choice on Youtube's part to prevent what I would consider a basic function and hold it hostage behind their paywall.
That behaviour fucks me off such that I refuse to sponsor it.
Before they had the total monopoly, they had very few ads. Now they have the monopoly, so they are extorting us because of it
I use these non cable/network platforms:
* https://dropout.tv <- comedy produced shows, hilarious
* https://curiositystream.com/ <- full to the brim with documentaries and educational content
* https://www.pbs.org/explore/ <- it's PBS, but online!
* https://www.britbox.com/us/ <- British TV shows! So many good ones...
And then there are the obvious platforms that aren't YT:
* HBO Max
* Peacock
* Netflix
* Paramount+
* Hulu
* Amazon Prime Video
* Apple TV+
So no, I don't really agree that YouTube has a monopoly. Too many alternatives that kick ass!
And we shouldn't forget, rando users can upload whatever for sharing, which none of your alternatives do. Kind of the core idea there.
And I would disagree re: content isn't fungible. Nothing on YouTube is both necessary to specifically consume and entirely unavailable elsewhere. It's entertainment, and whatever "category" of entertainment you prefer, you can find content not on YouTube for that thing.
"Random users uploading content" has not been the primary use case of YouTube for many years now. It's mostly run by content creators now, with entire companies dedicated to creating content, just the same as the platforms I've listed.
None of those are YouTube alternatives. They are not even remotely similar. You haven't got a clue what YouTube is about.
Here's a list of YouTube alternatives:
* Rumble
* Odysee
* Vimeo
* Twitch
* BitChute
But the alternatives are niche platforms with nowhere near the level of content that YouTube provides.
this isnt about ads. it's just another tactic for forcing users to log in.
If there’s a logic I’m missing, I’d love to hear it.
I've stopped visiting Twitch because their ad's are annoying to block. I'll stop visiting youtube if the same happens. I refuse to engage with ads if I have a choice. I've given money to a handful of people on Patreon that I want to support, but otherwise I have greater problems to deal with than the small fractions of a cent that these creators lose by me blocking.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
It's hard for me to find good reviews of Synthesizers because almost every video about a new one is a sponsored video where the instrument was given to the youtuber for free.
Matthias Wandel today released a video about a Ecobank 1300 - I am shocked at how the content creators themselves have become a poisoned well !
These 1300WH banks are waaay overpriced for the amount it would cost to buy the individual 18650 cells (probably $100 worth of cells being sold for $999), so these content creators are shills and sellouts to these marketing tactics.
Correct and I believe YT Music pays much more per listen than Spotify to the artist.
It makes you think you're watching somebody being authentic, when really it's a business disguising itself as an authentic person that's trying to sell you things (whether out of bias or strategy)
I have no problem watching the in video Gamer Nexus ads and don't expect paying for YouTube premium to skip those ads.
Pi-hole will work for some types of ad on all devices, but I'm not sure how it'd work for video ads in an app like YouTube - particularly if Google started serving the ads from the same servers as the content.
I use 3-4 browsers and because WFH + VM's for coding some incidental sandboxing.
(And before you say ‘just switch to Android’, I’m an iOS/WatchOS dev and a music producer for a living - if anything with the recent announcement of Logic on the iPad, I’ll be buying another iPads not reducing them…)
My only problem is the sponsored content in youtube videos, I would give some extra money to skip that crap as well.
I was never able to get into YouTube Music, though, so I don't actually use it to stream my music. The fact that my playlists are shared between YouTube and YouTube Music is enough for me to drop it from serious consideration as a music streaming service on its own. That, plus the lack of lossless streaming, inconsistent, clunky UI, and lack of any positive features that distinguish it from Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, is why I never used it for anything other than sharing songs with people who didn't use Tidal.
That they apparently also include ads in the albums I transferred from Google Play Music - albums that I paid for - is just added insult.
The main way I justified paying the subscription was that other people in my household got access to ad-free music streaming (and they actually used it, unlike me), Youtubers get comped more from me watching their videos, and I didn't have to worry about whole-home adblockers to remove ads from the app. But after a 50% price hike that takes it above the prices for Tidal Family ($15), Apple Music Family ($17), and Spotify Family ($16), it's not something I can justify anymore.
(Youtube Music Family is $15, FWIW, but it doesn't include Youtube itself.)
The UX and performance of the YouTube Music web client is so much worse than the old Google Music web client. I used to be able to scroll my entire album collection without a hiccup on Google Music, that's now impossible with YouTube Music
It feels deeply icky
Is that true? Yeah it's there, more so in the past, but I have to imagine that was a tiny amount of their viewership. I'd imagine most viewing is from individual channels of real people.
Btw: as someone who's worked in banks, I'd like to point out that there are circumstances where some banks will charge-back automatically (or outright "accept the payment", then not pay), if they suspect fraud for example.
Credit-cards are not that common here in Euro-land.
But debit cards are, which also work, it's not just credit cards.
Trustly, Sofort, IDEAL
IDEAL is huge in the Netherlands for example.
Companies: Here's a ad-free version. Subscribe
HN/Reddit: Why are you asking me to subscribe? I hate this
Not on my dime.
That seems like a difficult argument to make because laws don't always align with ethics. Given the myriad of replies around this topic, it seems like opinions on the ethics of violating the ToS are mixed. It gets even more complicated when you consider that very few people have the time/skills to read/interpret such a complex and lengthy ToS. At what point is a company not morally complicit for taking advantage of the layman's inability to understand such a legal document? It doesn't help that the UI/UX seems to deliberately provide incentive for users to blindly accept.
Doubt it. Ever been required to watch a video for a class?
There are limits to terms of service. Where does it end? Is it unethical to mute and switch to another tab to wait out the ad? How about simply looking away? Regardless of what the terms of service says I have the ultimate control of what I decide to take in. Adblocking is a way to assert that right to selectively let in stuff into my sphere of perception.
Yes, I just bought a mattress, of course I'm interested in getting another one.
Oh, a new fridge! Always good to have a spare! Thanks Google!
Modern internet is absolutely unbearable without adblock.
Sure, if one clicks on an ad then immediately buys a product, then perhaps that would be more straightforward. However, I just do not think that is very common, but I could be wrong.
It just seems like there is some kind of false notion that if a company creates ads and the company has an increase in sales, then it must be because of the ads, when in reality, it could be entirely coincidental.
Tangental, but I intentionally boycott products that have annoying ads. I will walk to the ends of the Earth before I use GEICO, for example.
There are several levels of ads on YouTube and paying for YouTube premium only gets rid of one.
Or just don't watch videos that are littered with sponsors ads and maybe creators will do it less.
Maybe my expectations are biased by subscribing to Nebula? And for those who do, Medlife Crisis just posted a fun video on the placebo effect featuring great (fake) sponsor callouts.
They do make videos where the entire thing is sponsored by the company whose product is the subject of the video. But it's like one or two a month.
And 5-10 seconds to mention merch is annoying sometimes but doesn't really change the nature of the video.
So your conversation actually goes:
HN/Reddit: "I would love to just give you the money directly instead of watching ads in exchange for advertizers giving you money."
Companies: "Sure, here's the ad-free version. You have to pay 20 times as much as the advertizers do though."
HN/Reddit: "Wait, what? That's bullshit. Why?"
Companies: "Fuck you, that's why."
Companies: "Sure, here's the ad-free version. You have to pay 20 times as much as the advertissers do though."
anticensor: "OK, then; what if I pay the same amount as for the ad-free one, and you show me twice as many ads as before?"
Companies: "OK, deal."
You can use third party media players like MPC-BE or MPC-HC that leverage yt-dlp to stream the video into a media player without any ads of course.
Yes, sometimes it makes sense to download if you want to keep the video, but to just watch just stream it via yt-dlp to a media player.
A major part apart from building a queue by getting behind is the ability of the file manager to sort, to classify, to filter, to move into folders, to search, etc. Far better than the youtube web interface, which only has the options of displaying your subscriptions as a grid or as a list. So I now have a local queue of videos which I can use, in which weird expeditions into obscure genres are into their own folders, must-match-now videos are tagged, etc, and I can pick and choose according to my own tastes of the moment.
That is one of my pet peeves in UI design in the last decade and it is not only web applications – shoebox apps are often as limited. If you want to do anything to your data or just have different sort orders or views, you only have what the app developer allows and often that is nothing.
Thanks to the web and shoebox apps I appreciate file managers like Finder even more now. It’s amazing what UI controls like NSTableView/NSOutlineView gives the user in functionality. Modern collection views often look better and I appreciate that, but I do miss the functionality which, while possible, often simply is not implemented.
Because it will likely get harder and harder to download from Youtube, and the option may actually disappear forever eventually.
- You can stream directly. I do this via a bash function for cases where mpv itself doesn't play a video (for reasons I've been unable to / not had the spoons to track down):
- You can use ytdlp as a front-end to other tools, and in fact if you peek under the bonnet you'll find that many YouTube / video streaming tools are in fact using yt-dlp as their access mechanism.- There are times when downloading a video is the only way to be assured that you'll have access to content in the future, or when offline. Note that when YouTube removes content it also removes all metadata associated with that content, including title, description, and the account which had posted it.
This is on Android / F-Droid / pip. I've hacked those specifically to keep yt-dlp and mpv as updated as possible.
I use invidious with Yattee on iOS/macOS/tvOS.
Total bliss.
Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I wish to support, which again means the costs are all centralized and extremely high.
Where is that info available?
You can configure your server to download and mirror videos from other instances, but (iirc) only if the remote instance allows it, and if it allows your instance to "follow" it.
The fact that you haven to follow other servers as a server is insane. It also really fucks up federation, because some instances do not allow follows at all. Tilvids does not, which was a major factor in me shutting down my instance.
That said, the mirroring system is really nice. You have all sorts of dials to cache only the x most popular videos for y days and up to z GB. You can have it mirror videos from user subscriptions in a similar way, and right next to the 'download video' button is one that says 'mirror' that does what you think.
P2P as a client is a whole different matter, and I also have never, ever seen my client uploading. I think this is purely a function of how few users are actually on peertube. The chances of you watching the same video as another person on the planet is incredibly small.
I really, really want to like peertube, but it really is completely unusable. Discovery is abysmal because there's no global search. You can't rely on federation to find content because federation is opt-in and has a crazy nonsense mechanism.
Peertube is not fit to run a single-user instance like mastodon unless you only want to publish. It simply doesn't work at all if you only wish to consume video. The only real way to use the service at all is to sign up on the biggest instance you can find and hope they have interesting videos.
I have a server with tons of free disk and a big fat fiber line, and the idea of mirroring peertube videos of small creators sounds like a perfect use for my spare resources. I would love to mirror tilvids to help reduce their server load, but I simply can't because they choose to disallow it.
The only alternative is LBRY/Odyssey, which is vastly more popular, but has some serious issues with violent/extreme/illegal content and is fully wrapped up in blockchain bullshit.
Firefox works in the background, you can stream music/podcasts with phone screen off and no adds.
From an incentives perspective, putting the onus on the creators to convince their viewers to enable ads might be more effective, but on the other hand that feels kind of shitty to do to creators, so IDK if it's ultimately a good idea...
http://github.com/4cq2/mech
- Google used to have Google Music, which I loved and paid for willingly as it was a good service, the recommendation algorithm was _not bad_, the UI was _okay_, and you could upload your own music and have it integrate with their system.
- Google used to by default allow you to play Youtube in the background and let you use the picture in picture mode for free - they removed that feature and put it behind a paywall.
- You can't volume control ads. I have Youtube playing in the background on my bedside table at night and having consistent volume is key. I don't want blaring audio telling me to buy X product or use Y service, waking me up when I'm trying to sleep. Yet another way for them to convince you to get Youtube premium.
- I hate all forms of advertisements. Don't shove advertisements in my face. If I want a product, I'll look for it and do my own research. I don't want algorithms and AI deciding what I want to purchase. When I've had advertising slip through, it's usually for things that I've already bought recently (mattress, clothing, etc.)
I will continue to willingly eat away at Google's profits for as long as they run YouTube.
I've been looking into some kind of open source solution that automatically grabs my Youtube history playlist and downloads and automatically catalogs these videos on a network share somewhere locally. (If someone can recommend a solution, please feel free!)
Too many times I've had videos that I've added to a playlist be removed for some inane reason (copyright violation, DMCA requests, etc. etc.)
I have a long term plan to setup a suite of the existing self-hosted front-ends to various services just for me and my immediate family to personally use.
They offered services for free without providing the disclaimer.
The attention economy is a toxic poison, I think more people than you realise are now aware of this and are less likely to pay for something Google offers because of it.
I don’t hate Google, but they’ve eroded a lot of trust.
I don't like the spying that will go along with paying, given that it is Alphabet/Google. If they offered a plan to pay without the spying I would have signed up years ago.
I didn't try so I could be wrong but my guess is your payment will be tied directly to your login and so you need to have that login on the browser at all times to view the videos (without ads) and given all the decline of "do no evil" I don't trust them at all.
I also don't trust they wouldn't mess things up. I travel a lot. I paid for YouTube TV and the ludicrous junk they do to try and verify you are able to view things was a huge pain and failed quite a lot until it failed nearly always I and dropped it.
I imagine if they push me I will pay and then have to copy and paste every YouTube url into a sanitized browser instance only used for YouTube. But I don't trust Alphabet/Google to not constantly be attempting to use that subscription to improve and deepen their spying which annoys me quite a bit. I just trust them a tiny bit more than Microsoft (and I ditched using anything by Microsoft decades ago - other than my use of LinkedIn continuing after they bought it and very occasional uses of Bing to check on it).
If you want better recommendations though you may have to tolerate some things that you may consider "spying".
I personally don't care for better recommendations. I just need a functional subscription/notification system and much much better search.
If you really don't want to be tracked by Google, you should probably consider not using their services.
Tracking has long moved way beyond cookies and Google is absolutely tracking what you do in incognito mode and doing their best (which is highly effective) to associate the tracking data with you.
Minus smart TVs, this seems like the point of the policy change. (And even on the TVs, if they're watching without paying while blocking ads, that's purely a cost centre.)
Your comment reads as if you feel that YT has some sort of obligation to continue letting 3rd parties make money from the work of YT without any compensation.
All device manufacturers do have agreements with Google about support for their devices and such agreements can very well be for 10+ years or even for lifetime of the devices.
PS: Actually 10 years ago when Windows Phone was a thing Microsoft has tried to make their own YouTube client without agreement with Google and it was killed by Google almost immediately.
i know some other folks are complaining about still getting tracked or whatever, but i think the simple truth is that youtube without ads is a vastly superior experience.
I watch enough YouTube for it to be a no-brainer for me, and I run an ad-blocker pretty much everywhere. Supporting the video creators I watch is worth it.
I wish I got a discount for ALSO subscribing to YTTV and Google One... that'd be nice, but I'm not parting with YT Premium any time soon. It shows I've had > 790 hours of ad-free videos.
It also pays the content creators I watch more money. So imho it’s a win win. No ads for me more money for the peoples content I enjoy
What I don't understand is why you feel entitled to benefit from this resource without supporting it in any way.
If doing something as simple as asking you to hold up your end of the deal of using their website (letting ads load for the ad-supported content) is too much to ask but paying for the website is also too much to ask, you have to be honest that you just want a free experience.
I don’t buy the argument that you were going to pay them in the future but you decided against it because they wouldn’t let you have it for free.
I used to be fine with the ads. But two breaks for a five minute video is unacceptable. I hope they fail if this is what they think is okay.
They also advertise fraudulent stuff all the time now. They don’t care. They’re just desperate for money.
It would be silly to assign some sort of morality argument to the other half of it when they behave so poorly with the ads.
If Google wants me off their service because I don’t watch enough ads, that’s their call. I’m not going to make a hufflepuff about it. But their ad game is garbage.
Considering this with the recent price increase, and some trouble with my family plan, my initial reaction was quite negative towards YouTube. They are setting a very clear trend against what I want in their service with recent changes (Removing downvote, removing android shortcuts and other features, aggressive copyright stiking policies, aggressive promotion of shorts, terrible recommendations).
I am considering cancelling. However, a more optimistic view would be that their ad block policy could result in lower subscription fees with more ad and subscription revenue.
Every minute someone watches them is a minute that they aren't watching a potential competitor
In this sense, having a free tier at all is effective to suffocate competition, even if most users enable adblock
The vast majority of the playerbase (70~80%?) are Free2Players (F2Pers), while the rest are whales (paying players) and an even smaller subset of them are space whales who spend enough in a month to buy a luxury car or two.
The games go to great lengths to retain those F2Pers because they are the ones the whales and space whales play together with and/or against. No F2Pers, no whales, no game, no business.
Actually, they would prefer if all of the ad-blocking, refuse-to-pay customers would spend a lot of time on their competitor's websites.
If they go to a competitor and block ads and consume bandwidth, then they are actively costing the competitor rather than costing Youtube for hosting.
Youtube allowing competitors to host would just consume youtube's bandwidth but with the 'views' also going to the competitor's domain (so the competitor could then potentially get additional sponsor support for having 'eyeballs' on their domain).
YouTube, I'm watching your pre-roll and mid-roll ads like you want me to, so leave me the fuck alone with this premium shit, I'm not interested.
So it's not an "either-or" scenario.. If you are using the ad-supported experience, they still disrupt it (many times a session for me) with UI-interfering elements to try to convert you. And that sucks.
So while you are correct, such investment would be irresponsible (in my case). In other words, responsibility is what’s stopping me.
If they advertised it with regular in-video ads like the rest of the ads, sure no problem, I am used to sitting through those and I accept ads as part of a good free viewing experience..
But they constantly interfere with the standard UI layout and experience to push these repetitive intrusive ads on me, that I have closed probably hundreds of times.
They should know by now that I am not going to sign up for it, so why continue to degrade the experience for me, when I am watching their ads as a free user?
They don't do this on the website so don't tell me "that's part of the trade" because it's only in the app they do this so aggressively and repeatedly.
No, I want an experience that commits to showing the ad(s) up front and not interrupting the video with more ads in the middle.
I use YT primarily for music. I don't mind letting ads play at the beginning. It's when they inject them into the middle of a song and, suddenly, when I'm jamming out, RIGHT at the peak of the track when I'm having the most fun, two more ads suddenly start blaring, and I'm forced to let the first one ride for 30 seconds.
There is some music that you just can't easily access anywhere but on YT for a variety of reasons. It's what keeps me using YT, but that approach of ad injection is bullshit.
Edit: Concert videos, too. Their algorithm will slap ads in the middle of a song, rather than in between them. I absolutely would not mind an ad here and there between songs, but noooooo.
Of course you would, and of course YT and its creators earns significantly more if they show ad in the middle. Not 100% sure, but AFAIK content creator could disable ad in the middle if they want to.
The only reason we are talking about it is because shareholders want the money printer to go brrrrrr. YouTube IS profitable. Can we stop pretending one of the richest companies in the world needs me to stop blocking their ads for any reason other than greed?
And that principle is what most people balking here have a problem with.
See [1]:
> In 2013, the boss of Time-Warner (which owns HBO), Jeff Bewkes, declared that piracy was: “Better than an Emmy” because more people watching the show inevitably led to more people deciding to pay for subscriptions.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-for-hbo-piracy-i...
Supposedly they have over 80 million subscribers so they're definitely not hurting[0].
I am interested in seeing what happens if/when over 50% of users in the US subscribe to it. Advertisers are losing out on probably their biggest consumer market: people with enough money to handle a $12/mo subscription. Perhaps advertising income will start to shrink $12 for each user that subs to Premium?
0: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/09/youtube-music-and-premium-...
yes.
It helps yt achieve their mission /s
Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.
We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.
I'm definitely not signing up for youtube premium.
If you are not going to pay for THAT, you aren't going to pay for ANYTHING. Just admit you want free stuff. Stop deluding yourself into thinking that Youtube is somehow responsible for hosting all these for free.
Pay for it or don't, but what is this nonsense about being poised (for a while) to maybe someday possibly consider thinking about purchasing the service?
It's $13. (In inflation-adjusted terms that's $7.12 the year I graduated high school.) What in the world are we talking about here? Buy it or don't. What is there to think about?
Edit: Just realized I was viewing through the app with the Apple tax markup. However $13 is still more then ideal when I'll never use YouTube Music
That gives you an annual individual plan for $15usd p.a.
It likely depends on the currency.
As a bonus, it is super fast because it doesn't have to justify the salaries of dozens (hundreds?) of frontend developers and can get away with server-side-rendered HTML and minimal amounts of Javascript.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12318250?hl=en
Of course, this cat-and-mouse game has been going on since forever, so I wonder if the next step will be downloading ads and then not showing them.
There used to be i.reddit.com, for that purpose, but they removed it a month ago or so… I wonder how long old.reddit.com will remain.
Users have less control over their OS and browser so the experience is much shittier even if you ignore styling which isn't sized for mobile.
Of course these will probably only work until reddit changes their API, as they announced recently
I've done a lot of digital curtailing in my life, but Youtube has been hard to avoid. It's both good and bad, as they have some of the most amazing content in the whole world, but also some of the most addictive trash that I can't stop watching. Because the service is so addicting, I'm not sure I could justify paying for it, even though the value it brings is incredible.
Very similar to cryptojacking malware.
I will respect their expectations when they respect mine.
Taxes is also pretty much defined by the expectation of compensation. If a speaker talks on a conferences and get paid to do so, they will need to pay taxes. They have as much open free speech they can get, but they are not free to demand compensation for it without paying taxes.
There's a limit to how many ads I'm willing to sit through to watch someone tell me why Harbor Freight tools are [The Greatest Thing Ever || Worthless Garbage]
I produce media and I sell it to Google. Google in turn produces an interested audience for that media and sells their views to advertisers in the form of ads served. Advertising agencies in turn produce ads to sell to (for example) GM… GM is the ONLY party with a material interest in the ad actually being viewed by the (potential) consumer, as they’re the only party who can convert my media into a GM vehicle being sold. If anyone in that chain can consider an ad blocker theft, it’s GM… that’d still be wrong, of course, for the same reason ignoring a billboard on the freeway isn’t theft.
When you lay a trap and your prey refuses to be caught they aren’t harming you.
What do we do now?
- Vlad Vexler
- Reporting from Ukraine
- Real Engineering
- Mustard
- Half as Interesting
- Coffeezilla
I mean the reality is that YT has high quality content for almost any subject matter you can think of. That’s the beauty of the platform, you can find your niche. Hell, it’s even good for most things that pop into your head, podcast clips, old commercials, instruction manuals, DIY etc etc.
[1] https://nebula.tv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6-8IIuJnc
There's a lot on Youtube like this. Music which is either just a cover, or is original that you literally can't find anywhere else because some hobbyist threw it up there and then stopped performing years ago.
There are also plenty of amazing lectures. I'm about halfway through this Yale course, but need to get back to watching it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
I agree the number of ads is absolutely shocking, which I'm reminded every time I see someone else play youtube, as I've had a subscription for about as many years as it's been available. My time is absolutely worth more than whatever I'm paying to skip these ads.
Broadcast TV generally syncs the ads with act breaks in the show. YouTube generally doesn’t seem to do any syncing with the content, so ads can suddenly happen in the middle of someone speaking. That’s way more disruptive.
No, this is wrong. They can detect pauses and typically slot ads between songs or during applause moments. I don't watch a lot of TV but most days share some family time where we catch news, weather, and some chat show fluff, so I regularly watch some short programs that I tolerate rather than like. If I'm bored by the comedian, I amuse myself by predicting when the ad will come in. I don't think YT even needs o analyze the content as such, they can go by the user behavior: on some clients, when you seek in the video it shows you a graph of most/least favored time offsets based on aggregated play times, so they can easily time ad breaks to fit where people stop watching or skip ahead, and they line up neatly with segment changes. This kind of advertising is a bit intrusive but merely annoying. But when listening to music and being served inappropriate/poorly timed ad selections, it's truly infuriating.
Insuper, Vendo delenda est
It is just offensive that they want me to pay for something that is my phones feature not theirs.
Sadly I expect this to get blocked just the same
Sounds like the situation is unchanged for you then?