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Tell HN: YouTube disabling playback after 3 videos

35 points by squigz ↗ HN
YouTube is stepping up the anti-adblock nonsense and will be disabling playback after 3 videos

Personally, this sort of arms race is only going to cause me to not use YouTube

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/assets/47215043/f76f8ea2-3dd4-43ef-8293-353243cc5863

(Apologies if this was shared already)

44 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 93.6 ms ] thread
adocomplete
It sucks, but running a site like YouTube is expensive.

I hope the trade-off is less ads overall since everyone will be forced to watch them (at least in theory), because using YouTube today without an ad-blocker is a terrible experience. I've been paying for Premium for years now, but every now and then I'll go to YouTube when not logged in and my god is it bad.

uberman
Is it 30 billion a year expensive?
tsingy
They are profitable, this is just an attempt to get more money.
badpun
Is youtube really profitable?
Condition1952
if they need to save money, they can bargain the $20,000,000,000 a year deal through which they pay Apple money
jerojero
I guess I'll choose my final 3 videos carefully.
VFIT7CTO77TOC
You don't pay and don't generate ad revenue. They won't miss you.
greenhexagon
Adblocking users still provide value.

Their clicks, watch time, shares, likes, comments, searches, related videos etc provide valuable training data for recommendations. They may share the video with others who watch with ads enabled. They still watch product placement, endorsements and advertisements embedded within the video, incentivizing creators to continue using the platform. They likely use the service on multiple devices, only some of which skip ads.

Alienating their young, tech-savvy and socially connected & influential users may not harm their bottom line in the financial quarter they role out the change, but it could certainly negatively impact the longer term prospects and give an upstart the opportunity to challenge their current near-monopoly.

gpas
Invidious for the browser, newpipe, grayjay on mobile.
mikewarot
I've already quit Reddit, and I'll quit YouTube if they force it.

Thanks to network effects, even though I don't watch the ads, I'm still feeding their algorithm, and helping to promote their service every time I mention one of their videos elsewhere. I can promote their competitors instead, I guess.

runjake 

  > Personally, this sort of arms race is only going to cause me to not use YouTube
This is by design. They’ll either get you to pay or leave.

I personally pay for YouTube because I get a lot of value out of it.

But I feel you. I abandoned both Reddit and Twitter pretty abruptly after their shenanigans. I was a heavy user of both until that point.

thejackgoode
I'd pay Youtube if they would stop tracking me in return, but I simply cannot believe it will happen at any point
extraduder_ire
If anything, it's more data to track if you're paying. Plus, you can't use it in a private browsing window, since it's tied to your account.
Tabular-Iceberg
That and make the like/dislike ratio visible again. They really have no reason to make you sit through a scam video long enough to be served an ad when you’re paying.
seanthemon
There are extensions to bring back dislike button, makes a world of a difference
badpun
If they stopped tracking you, they wouldn't be able to show you targeted ads, which would make the ad revenue go way down. In other words, it's not gonna happen.
nkootstra
But you’re not getting ads when being subscribed to premium, right?
badpun
True, but you still get ads in search and other places, so tracking your viewing preferences on youtube is very valueable.
Viliam1234
As they say, if you ain't paying, you are the product. And if you are paying, you are a premium product.
mortallywounded
I've been noticing the pop up these days, but it doesn't seem like the pop up ever does anything (just annoy you).

If they prevent playback, I'll just yt-dlp the the video and open in a video player shrugs.

sphars
I'm only paying for YT Premium thanks to my grandfathered Google Play Music subscription at $7.99/mo from nearly a decade ago. But I only am logged into that account on Chrome. On Firefox, I use uBO and don't log in since it's only used for one-off videos, as FF is my main browser. I have not seen the anti-adblock popup in FF yet.
DoesntMatter22
I've decided to drop Spotify and switch to youtube premium. I get streaming there and won't have ads. I guess it's worth it. I hate Spotify and thier interface. I used to watch Joe Rogan on YouTube but the Spotify interface sucks (to me)
squigz
I'm on Firefox and have been seeing the popups off and on - the uBO developers are doing great keeping things updated
sschueller
I have the "grandfathered" Google music family plan. Only issue is Google doubled the price so not much grandfathering left.
Raed667
There is this sentiment of "if you're not seeing ads, then you're welcome to leave" and I feel this is very short sighted and will scatter some communities that are the backbone of YT.

I would assume people who are using adblockers are younger, more tech-savvy and possibly the same people that showed chrome or youtube to their peers.

sircastor
I use an adblocker and have largely just ignored the messages from YouTube until they finally blocked me. I think it took more than 3, and I still can occasionally watch videos - so I'm not really sure what the rule is...

This has been mentioned elsewhere, but the thing I'm most concerned about is this: They mention that using an ad blocker violates the TOS. So, if they're aggressive (or just automate it irresponsibly) I can see a situation where they start closing one's Google account. And that's serious (to me anyway).

lopis
That's my biggest fear too. Better to avoid using YouTube while logged in.
sen
You don't need to be logged in for them to know who you are and/or what accounts are yours.
sircastor
I wonder how far that goes. They don't show ads on embedded content, but is possession of an adblocker enough to get their algorithmic wrath pointed toward you?
wrigglingworm
I got blocked with an adblocker a while ago. There's a little trick I've been using to "bypass" the ads though. Click the video you want to see, ad starts, click any recommended video, then use the back button, no ad. Not ideal but saves some time.
penjelly
sorta unrelated but... has anyone else noticed the youtube app simply wont play videos sometimes? shorts always work, but full length just pause at the start and if i unpause it just stops immediately, cant get it out of that state even with app reset/uninstall/cache clear (nig also applies to downloaded videos). I contacted youtube and they couldnt figure it out. forced me to unsubscribe for a while. Also note: using a regular browser to youtube does always work.
yoyopa
if you try to watch the fourth video they will be mad
Supermancho
install brave, disable other adblockers for youtube. works for me
Gtex555
Brave breaks too many websites.
rabbits_2002
Didn’t think I would stop using Reddit and Youtube the same year but here we are
bjourne
How far along has the peer2peer federated YouTube clones come? Everyone has excess bandwidth so making something that doesn't rely in centralized servers should be possible.
Saris
Peertube works pretty well, just not that many users.
ChildOfChaos
They need to make YouTube premium cheaper instead of trying to compete with Spotify but I guess the issue is the amount of licensed music on the platform and that people use it to listen to music anyway, so they have no choice?
Gtex555
What you don't realize is YouTube would rather have half the users if all of them watched ads vs AdBlock users, so they actually want you to stop using YouTube. Most people will just white list it, I mean the bulk of users use mobile anyway and cant really use AdBlock.
squigz
You can block ads on mobile.
LocalH
Google is doing what their monetary analysis says will make them more money. Same reason the whole SSSniperWolf thing is being handled so poorly.