Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
I opened youtube this morning to see a big popup:
Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube
- It looks like you may be using an ad blocker.
- Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide.
- You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription
167 comments
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How did you do it? Can you link to a guide or docs to do it?
(I used to work on ads at Google, but in a different area and don't know anything about YouTube beyond what I can see in devtools.)
Funnily enough, Google doesn't allow yt-downloader extensions on the Chrome web store. They will cite you rule #4, and send you a rejection letter for "Facilitating unauthorized access to or download of copyrighted content or media, specifically, YouTube." The irony of course is that they allow downloader extensions for other websites. That they specifically prohibit youtube downloaders while allowing downloaders for almost any other website smells suspiciously like anti-competitive behavior to me.
On the other hand, Firefox's addon store is free from these restrictions, so you can find tons of yt download extensions there.
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/7860
Mainly used for allowing my kids to view some content I can screen for appropriateness, that also gets rid of the ridiculous ads.
A thing yet to do is to use a LLM to automatically categorize these downloads into folders
Speaking more broadly, there's the simple fact that people deserve to be paid for the work they do. Many places don't allow you to pay with money, they force you to pay with ads. I find viewing ads to be an unacceptably high price, so I use an ad blocker, and I just go away if they turn me away for that.
But for places that do give a money option, like YouTube, I jump for it, as I find that to be a far more ethical business model[1]. I'm happy to support businesses that give me the option to pay by doing exactly that.
In other words, I wouldn't worry so much about the very fine details. And supporting your creators on Patreon will give them way more money than any amount of individual YouTube viewership.
[1] Yes, I know they're still tracking me. That doesn't bother me as much as viewing ads or supporting the ad-based clickbait attention grabbing business model, so I think it's still a win.
I think this is true, but it still works out such that given the amount the average Premium subscriber watches, creators' typical per-view revenue is still higher for Premium views. They can apparently see the breakdown (ad revenue vs premium revenue, etc., ad-supported views vs premium views, etc.) in the backend, and various people who make Youtube content for a living have reported this to be the case. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/1513177490730061829 .
Another anecdote I've heard from several creators is that much longer videos (like a 5 hour livestream recording) are now much more profitable because of premium viewers. With ads they either need to include an ad every 10 minutes, which means 30 ads in one video and turns people away. Or they only include a few ads in which case people do watch it, but it's far less profitable than a 10 minute video with a midroll ad.
If you watch twice as much, your profit/minute must be half.
It's worse than broadcast TV. I'll usually sit through an ad at the beginning and maybe the end of a video because I want to support creators. But YT just sticks them into the middle of things, frequently ruining the experience of the surrounding content.
Meanwhile they promote absolute trash like Nikocado Avocado, which is my view is no different from shooting up heroin.
I have never had one of his videos promoted to me. You may have a different filter bubble / reccomendation algorithm pushing it towards you because you watch similar content?
If a lot of people do that, it'll even out.
I'd like to have an automated way to make my choices more random, and to weight the probabilities better toward the projects that give me the most value, or are the most generally underfunded compared to the global value they produce. At the moment, I do that more or less by guessing. Unfortunately it sounds Hard(TM) to do it right.
It'd also be nice if you didn't have to go searching for how to donate to every project.
The point here is either you're OK with ad blockers in which case, you accept all your work is charitable and unmonetizable (because you can't even advertise what you're selling directly), or you have to accept ads in any form.
I would also add that the real world isn't just black or white, one could totally be fine with a certain kind of ads and not with others, as long as is able to provide an argument for it.
The ad blockers want a free ride.
We all know what would happen to YouTube if 100% of its users were able to block ads. It would become paid-only or go out of business. The only reason it’s tolerated by so many websites is because only a small sliver of users know how to install ad-blocking software.
These are real people spending real time and money making content. On the YouTube corporate side of things, the people who make YouTube what it is are real people with real families to feed with their salaries. They work full time and then some to keep the site running and lots of resources (computers, energy, etc) are used to serve the content.
It’s funny to me how the software engineering community seems to be the most enthusiastic about stealing the fruits of their own labor. I see people on HN all the time advocating for forever licenses of software, pushing back against the service business model. It’s like you all want a lower salary.
You’d rarely find other types of professionals and artists trying to advocate for their own customers finding ways around paying for their work.
YouTube Premium is a great product and one of the few streaming services I’m enthusiastic about.
I will admit, I do use an ad blocker, but I’ve got as much right to do that as a website has the right to cripple my experience if they detect that I’m using it. In those cases, I just turn it off and add the site to my exceptions, or I don’t return to the website. It’s not a big deal.
Fantastic. Then people would have to host their videos elsewhere, perhaps on PeerTube.
Just donate to their Patreon/Kofi or click the big "Thanks" button under their video.
Not sure if it's A/B testing, or my combo of Chrome Extensions, or something else at play.
If you are a techie, you are forced to yell or silent quit the website, and most of the times I really don't have the time to waste yelling.
I agree. As a user, A/B testing is a horrible practice.
Playing devils advocate here I think it’s actually a good idea that YT are testing this. They need to understand how big of a negative impact this would be if released. If enough users hate this change as you and I suspect then hopefully YT see these results in their tests and revisit their approach.
A/b testing stops the worst user experiences from getting rolled out. Our company did a high profile a/b test that got a lot of negative feedback from users and the whole redesign it got canned because of it.
And TBH: since YouTube is not doing that, I think they might've decided the cost of that solution outweighs the projected revenue so they've chosen a cheaper solution.
In Twitch's case, more of the audience might be techy, so ad injection ended up being the more optimal option.
It's much easier for anything non-live.
They could even upsell to content creators by giving them the means to dynamically replace sponsors in old videos using the same tech, maybe with some knobs and switches for content creators to select where sponsor breaks occur.
I'm not sure about your "few steps" so this may be moot. Is there no sufficient workaround of this nature?
Google might detect that the element was removed; ad blockers use CSS shenanigans to hide the element. Google might detect such shenanigans; ad blockers are forced to change. And so on. Is there really a way for Google to end this cat/mouse game in their favor?Yet another "update" to the web extension manifest.
0: It sends a "this is totally Chrome" user agent and possibly includes other APIs that YouTube will use.
That seems extremely unlikely, Twitch has already destroyed a lot of the goodwill they had with creators. Policy changes (or attempts) regarding baked-in ads, revenue splits, forced exclusivity, there's probably more.
It's not the case with Google search, though, they don't offer me a way to pay. I will rather pay Kagi instead.
Perhaps the parent comment is talking about pre-Google and you are talking about post-Google? I don’t know if the parent’s claim is correct about a bait and switch, but I can confirm that pre-Google YouTube did not have (video) ads and felt very much like a place for small independent creators.
And from my memory, widespread ads on every video did not come into existence for many years. Originally they were only on selected monetized videos.
And it doesn't seem like a big deal; they didn't promise to host your video without ads forever, nor is that a reasonable expectation.
To be slightly fair to YouTube, they never added NC clauses to their Creative Commons declaration support, but I doubt that was evidence of a 10-year plan to demand monetization.
But on the other hand, they also made a huge stink about keeping Partner status out of the hands of people who shouldn't have it. That move now retroactively looks like YouTube trying to front-run smaller creators on ad revenue, especially if something they make goes 'viral' before they can make partner.
[0] For the purpose of this comment let's pretend that 'not monetized' satisfies whatever flimsy 'noncommercial' license declaration exists
It has and was built on piracy.
Maybe you odn't believe me because it's "different" in your opinion today.
Look anywhere else in the world, it's piracy dude. For example, here's a search for "seinfeld s01e03" for video lengths 10-30m on Bilibili:
https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=seinfeld+s01e03&from...
I don't know. On the one hand, end users take from Google by blocking ads. On the other, Google takes from creators through piracy.
At the end of the day, the problem with video is the lack of business innovation that's anywhere near comparable to games.
Shiver me timbers, buckaroo. Won't someone think about the digital robber baron tycoons?
Most of the internet was built with public dollars and content is engaged with (not necessarily hosted) generally non-commercially. If we look at total harm, content users tend to get the worst of it either by having to wade through malevolent ads or user hostile design. Yet, we collectively put up with it because we recognize the Internet is not a zero-sum game. Tay-tay is making enough money from the free marketing channels the Internet enables, she doesn't need more from a Youtube stream.
Pure adblocking doesn't.
Micropayments require cash, which sometimes is not handy to spend.
If all free video sites had ads, I think just on pure speed and scale youtube probably had higher costs overall anyway.
Normally when a business takes massive losses to drive competition out in an industry that's hard to break into, then once they're sufficiently dominant, starts to raise prices, it's an antitrust issue.
Whoever wins the online video site thing contest is going to end up making money one of two ways, subscriptions or ads. Idk that it makes a lot of sense to me to be mad at Google about it. If not them, some VC or something would have just taken the hit instead.
The company pays YouTube for every person they claim they showed the ad to. You do not need to buy a product for YouTube & the Content Creator to get paid.
How is the advertiser losing out? Not every ad has the purpose of causing a purchase. Brand awareness. Easing buyers remorse. Propaganda.
If everyone ignored or blocked ads like me, advertising wouldn't work, and YT would have to charge subscription instead. That'd also be fine by me.
Most ads are also paid at a loss, by companies doing an experiment then closing it.
Youtube only brought the marketing around their brand of being the first platform. They inherited this position from the early days of the internet.
They did acquire it for $1.65bn circa 2006, then maintained it at a great cost. But the second on the market doesn’t stand a chance.
If the amount that is paid to content creators compared to the amount of bucks that google makes, I'd agree. But its not 50/50. It's more 99/1.
I pay for the bandwidth not google. They pay toss all, they have local peering, local cache. Doesn't cost Google a dime meanwhile I have to pay for the bandwidth wasted from the advertising.
Storage, meh. Part of digital infrastructure.
Because there’s a big difference between placing a tasteful ad or two on a page, and forcing me to watch 2 or 3 obnoxious irrelevant commercials while still placing ads all over the screen and making me click annoyance-optimized [X]s or skip options.
And I’m already paying for two multi-user GSuites and Nest, despite their constant efforts to make those services shittier and claiming necessity of annual price increases. I would be far likelier to subscribe to YouTube premium if every single one of Googles products wasn’t constantly decreasing in quality over time. Google home worked better in 2018 than it does today. They don’t need my ad revenue, they need to overhaul their performance evaluation because there’s diminishing returns on how many ads a person can watch per day and they must be approaching the limit if they’re resorting to targeting techies who won’t click ads anyway.
What's an example of a site where:
1. There is no option to pay to remove the ads.
2. The ads are obnoxious and intrusive.
3. The content is worth consuming in the first place.
Advertising is not a reasonable way. A separate subscription, with a credit card interaction, for every site I happen to hit once a year, is not a reasonable way. Demanding a bunch of personal information is not a reasonable way. Trying to lock me into an "ecosystem of partners" is not a reasonable way.
Globally accessible, ungated, anonymous micropayments, with one or two universally used protocols but no central gatekeepers? Sign me up. Extra points if I get to see how much of my payment is going to the actual content creator and how much is being eaten by the "platform".
The core technolgies exist. All the pieces have been available for many years. What appears to be missing is will.
Meanwhile, I'll use an ad blocker. If you prevent me from accessing your site using my ad blocker, I will go elsewhere.
You use YouTube once a year? Please.
Actually my usage is falling off now, so it may get too low before they get around to making it possible.
You don't want advertising, you don't want to subscribe, and you don't want a network of sites using the same subscription. What possible solution exists that satisfies your criteria, which are way more demanding than "remotely reasonable"?
This is just an excuse you've fabricated to justify your own convenience, stinginess and/or laziness.
... and if a site directly tells me it doesn't like my ad blocker, I leave. I haven't gone to the ad-blocker-blocker level. I don't think that's unreasonable.
You may not be aware that many such messages are themselves blocked by the default lists in ublock origin. Examples:
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
For anybody who's interested, I just posted a question in uBlock's Reddit forum about how to stop using such ad-blocker-blocker-blocker features while still getting most of the rest of the features of the extension. https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/171rorw/optin...
Then I'll have to find out if I can survive like that...
For direct micropayments to work for sites that have users in multiple jurisdictions and do not wish to find themselves on the wrong side of the law in those jurisdictions one of these approaches is probably needed:
1. Some sort of international agreement to either make it so online sales of digital content is just taxed in the seller's jurisdiction.
2. Some sort of international agreement that makes it so that even if the seller has to collect taxes for multiple jurisdictions, they can report and remit all of the collected taxes to one jurisdiction and that jurisdiction's tax office will deal with divvying it up to the others.
Europe does something like that for VAT. You register with one EU country (Ireland is a good choice for US companies). Then you just send them a quarterly report with a list of how much you sold in each country and pay them and they deal with it. You don't have to deal with tax authorities in any other EU countries.
Another approach, which does not require any new international agreements to be made, is for sites to sell through an intermediary. You structure this so that the end user actually buys from the intermediary, and the intermediary buys from your site.
If the intermediary is handling many different sites they might be big enough that they can afford the cost of dealing with sales/VAT taxes in potentially hundreds of different jurisdictions. Your site is only transacting with the intermediary and so only has to worry about at most two jurisdictions, the one you are in and the one the intermediary is in.
I want to see advertising promoting environmental friendly products. I want advertising to promote cleaning up litter, but you don't see that do you? We have the tech.
Advertising, a blood sucking evil exploitive parasite.
I would turn off all blockers if they didn't play with PsyOp strategies of evil manipulative social exploits. Exploits that are replayed on kids, you and us. Of such that Google promotes on their network.
If advertising was clean, did not impeach on my privacy and just kept advertising to "just this video" I wouldn't block advertising. But they don't, wont.
They are vermin, evil parasites. But you don't see that do you?
That'd be a bad idea, actually, because advertising is a massive security problem as well as being bad for your brain.
Just a week or two ago they announced a WebP library bug that allowed simple images to own any of the major browsers. It's just not a good idea to let hundreds of random sources stick content on every page, even if you think you've somehow sanitized it.
When Newspapers of record are filled with 'sponsored link' leading to obvious medical scam, you know something is wrong.
I use YouTube Premium because of YouTube’s massive music collection; it and SiriusXM are the subscription services I use. I don’t mind paying for content, but what I do mind is the notion that somehow the website owner has a right to my screen and my computational resources. If I mute my TV or change the channel during commercials, it would be absurd to suggest that I’m “stealing” from the TV station. If I skip past the BMW or Tiffanys ads in a magazine, I’m not “stealing” from Time or Life or National Geographic. Why is blocking an ad on a website different? If I put a piece of paper over the ad, am I still “stealing”? Give me a break! Once something is downloaded on my computer, I have control over how the data is displayed, period. It would be different if users were hacking into systems to bypass paywalls.
My support for ad blocking is not about users feeling entitled to free content; it in reaction to the anti-consumer attitudes some website owners and advertisers have, which have led to degrading the user experience of the Web and increasingly desktop computing in general. Ads by themselves are not bad, but certain websites have brought the situation upon themselves by behaving in ways that are contemptuous to users.
I like to think that if enough of us file reports, Youtube will think their system is falsely detecting adblockers.
YouTube Premium gives creators a pretty decent cut as well, coming from someone with monetized youtube vids...
^^ Reasons I don't like youtube. I will keep looking. If I remember correctly it was like 15-20% of total revenue I was getting - of course it depended on the period.
I'd pay $2/m, or even $4 bucks, for ad-free Youtube, but I'm not buying an additional music service.
I don't take much issue with ad blockers either, but think it's totally fair enough if YouTube wants to dump their shitstream of ads on consenting users.
Just put this in your terminal once you install yt-dlp:
yt-dlp --sponsorblock-remove all URL "put a youtube URL here without quotes"
[1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp