Guess I'm taking another week off YouTube until someone sorts out a workaround.
I still don't know how people manage to watch it on a TV app with 2 unskippable 2 min ads before every 5 min video.
Same reason they did not block us yet - better to have some users that block ads, than have those users on other plattforms. Now too many people used ad blockers - so step by step they want to "encourage" people to look at ads again or pay for premium. But too strictly enforcing it from day one - would probably mean too many people going away. But giving more time and nagging, more might enlist for premium.
The workaround I use is called "Don't use a TV app", or any other software written by an advertising company. Watch less YouTube, never send behavioural data to an advertising company and never send HTTP requests for ads (youtube.com), only send HTTP requests for video (googlevideo.com).
Yes I wonder why some people think a service like YouTube (or any ad-funded service) should be completely free (even ad-free), as if it was a basic human right.
Especially in the case of YouTube, which has a premium version with no ads, there's no reason to complain, really.
> I wonder why some people think a service like YouTube
The history of the service matters. If you launch something that says "Ad-free videos for free" and then X years later change to "Some ads + videos for free", people will have a reaction to that. Slowly change it over the years, and each iteration will have more reactions attached to it.
I don't take the current "outrage" (wouldn't call it an outrage, but for the lack of other words) as "demands" as such. It's feedback from the users, that what they're doing sucks. Then it's up to each user to decide if it's worth leaving the service for, or not.
So people are essentially doing what you say they should do. The service changes, users give feedback, some might leave, some might not.
Why would YouTube "listen" to users with adblockers? They don't get ads, they don't pay for the premium version. They're a net loss to them (infra costs for nothing in exchange), they're better off without them so no incentive whatsoever to listen to them.
And we should think about content creators too, where does the money they get paid for the views come from?
Yes, it was initially ad-free. Then they first launched "participatory video ads", and when asked about expanding the ads into more areas, the CEO at the time said:
> we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no
A year or so later, they launched ads that ran before the video played.
Ahh, didn't know that. Still for probably 99% of the people who youtube it has always had ads given how small the userbase would've been 17-18 years ago.
YouTube introduced ads almost 18 years ago. There's a whole generation of users who have never experienced YouTube without ads. Not to mention the majority of users don't make use of ad-blockers.
Even if I'm personally paying for a premium account I do think that unpaying users still have two reasons to 'complain'.
1. There's no real competitor to Youtube so if you disagree with a certain thing but still want to watch how to fix your dishwasher there may not be any other place to turn to.
2. There's only one payment model. Someone who maybe follows a single type of video and doesn't watch videos every day still have to pay the same amount as someone who watches multiple videos per day.
I really hate the second point since so many services these days use that model (especially newspapers, just let me pay per article).
Ads didn't bother me until they started to force me to watch annoying video ads that interrupt my flow. Internet is not a bloody television, I don't like to be interrupted, it is incredibly irritating. What made the matter worse, the ads they showed were local companies or for products I actually cared and as such it did damage to the advertisers - and this was the main reason why I started using an ad blocker - to stop advertisers to damage themselves.
If you consume so many youtube videos that ads bother you then you should consider your relationship with the platform and eventually buy the subscription. Don't complain about the internet becoming television if you are glued to it as if it was television
You are completely wrong about this. I don't consume them almost at all. This does not mean that I accept to be interrupted. I don't want the Internet to become TV 2.0. Being able to define my own flow has been the main defining feature of the Internet for me.
I don't understand how people feel righteous in being furious about it.
Imagine 100% of users using adblocks. How can the site function? Are they charity?
If you get value from the site, there is a premium option, and you will see no ads (plus other features). If you don't have money to pay, or don't want to, you can use it and have some ads. I know they are annoying, but common you expect Youtube to be charity?
If YouTube launched today with ads and blocking adblockers, people wouldn't have the same reaction. Either they'd be fine with it, or they'd stop using it, and a small minority would try to work around it.
But people got used to YouTube first without any sort of ads at all, then a small bit of ads, then a lot of ads. Now another change from what people are used to is introduced, where they try to block adblockers, so of course people will have a reaction.
Not saying it's "ethically OK" or whatever, just trying to reason about why people think like they do. I do understand it somewhat.
Imagine if HN suddenly started having proper ads (not just job ads like today), then the community would also react to it, as we've built our expectations on how it is today.
YouTube went slicing the salami to display more ads over time. It got to a point where I decided to pay them for the "Premium Lite" subscription since the only feature I wanted was "no ads", I didn't care about downloads, YouTube Music, or whatever other offerings they have, I just wanted no ads and was happily paying for it.
Then they killed that subscription tier, I just got an email with 30-day notice that my Premium Lite subscription wouldn't exist anymore and I had to upgrade to Premium, that was the last straw and I'm happily using ad blockers and will continue using it for as long as they work.
I tried to pay for it, they fucked me over, I have no ethical issues with using an ad blocker, it's the only power I have left.
That's the core issue, they slowly degraded the experience to show more ads while also removing ways to pay for a no ads feature without the cruft of other unnecessary features, I won't pay for them.
Completely agree. I would happily disable my Adblock (on YouTube only, general internet is still unusable without it) if I could pay a lower price just for this feature. I strongly suspect this is also the case for the overwhelming majority of current/potential premium customers.
Agreed with this, but my main issue is the price. In Europe, the family plan is €23.99. In contrast, Netflix is €12.99 (2 devices, 1080p).
Now they obviously have very different economics and features, but in my regular use I don't really care about that, I just see double the cost for YouTube. This is doubly annoying since most of the YouTube channels I watch earn almost nothing from YouTube and instead subsist on money from sponsors. YouTube is obviously providing "free" hosting, management tools, and traffic to these channels. However, YouTube also spends nothing on content creation and assumes none of the risk.
Oh, and I'm also paying for YouTube Music, which I never use. So it just seems like an expensive, bad deal as a consumer. And my alternative is the "free" site which is has an appalling number of commercials and keeps getting worse. So bad deals all around.
Also I find it very hard to not be cynical about what google does my data even if I pay for Youtube.
I would be surprised if they did not learn from my viewing history what my interests are and then try to sell my eyeballs outside of youtube for much more money.
Also as a counter point to myself or actually rather to the whole targeted ads thing: where I can't block youtube ads (mostly iphone) I get the dumbest effing ads that I would never click or have zero interest in.
About 80% are casino, gambling, betting, etc .. absolutely zero chance I would try any of that. Rest is either feminine products or served in a language I find offensive.
They have the data on me but fail to do anything useful with it.
You've almost certainly told them not to use the data (either any data, or just YouTube watch history, which have separate controls), and they're honoring that request.
But you've now built some contorted mental model where you think they must obviously be lying about while also being completely incompetent at using said data. Just how hard is it to believe that they're not lying in the first place?
> Just how hard is it to believe that they're not lying in the first place?
Very. They have motive, means, and opportunity to lie. The consequences if caught lying about collecting and using data after they said they weren't range from non-existent to negligible.
YouTube pays creators for making them sufficient ad revenue. It depends on number of subscribers and views and such things. It is not like YouTube goes around looking for great content and asks people whether YouTube can pay them to make videos for their platform.
But aside from that, some creators manage to get funded by people, who simply like their content. This is a more natural way of creating value. I would rather like to see creators being crowdfunded, than artificially pushed creations for the sake of ad revenue. Currently creators are often afraid of getting videos demonetized, for saying anything critical.
There is a problem with this of course. It is like a bait and switch kinda thing. Creators uploaded their content to the platform that was without ads. Their contributions to the content of the platform is what makes or breaks the product. Now they see the platform being ruined.
Maybe YouTube just needs to scale back a bit. Maybe it should never have gotten this big in the first place. Maybe a "community supports it" model would work, if it was smaller. But YouTube is now designed as a money grab (regardless of whether it is a net plus for Google in the end). In an alternative universe YouTube would run libre code and would be open to anyone looking at the code and deploying it on their own servers, community driven and financed project etc.
I certainly will not feel sorry for a company like Google, when they run a platform that covers more dark pattern than most other websites combined and don't share what exactly happens with user data. Google extracts more than enough money out of unethically obtained user data. I don't think we need to be "afraid" that they could go out of business any time soon.
Also, on monetized channels, it's the content creator who has put that many ads in there. They can choose to not do that, see e.g. Asmongold's channel[0] with zero ads. (To be fair, this option is not available to the smallest non-monetized channels.)
But somehow people are angry at YouTube instead of their beloved content creators.
My understanding is most smaller channels earn peanuts from YouTube. Some channels I subscribe to occasionally break out their finances and direct YouTube payments are usually pretty small and irregular. This makes direct sponsorships almost a necessity for full-time creators.
In any event, I don't mind these since they are easy to skip and at least the creator is getting the vast majority of the money.
Creators also include a lot of educational content, why shouldn't it be a career if it's financially viable?
What a strange take on what should or shouldn't be a career. There's lots of dumb content on YouTube but there was already a lot of dumb content on TV before that (reality shows, stupid History Channel "documentaries", gossip news programs, etc.).
People have every right to be furious about it though. Look at amazon prime: they've now introduced ads for paying customers. Want no ads? - pay more. What will stop youtube from doing the same? After all, shareholders must appeased. Where does it end?
I used to not mind the Youtube ads, but it became a nuisance lately. I installed an adblocker for the first time somewhere mid-2023.
If I knew that youtube would continue to show me one skippable ad for every ~10 minutes, I would gladly disable my ad-blocker for them. Banner ads and side-bar ads are also fine.
What even is a normal ad? It's not as if the ad industry is some benign entity casually showing users random banner images or sponsor logos. Ads are now aggressive, privacy invasive entities that follow you around, spying on your every purchase and page view.
It *is* effectively being shut down *for pirates* (if you can call them that, not sure). Those are the users who are complaining. It's a little weird that those users feel so justified in being angry about it.
Isn't Youtube owned by Google? Whenever something is posted about Youtube, I see comments like this, as if they're a startup company trying to make money and the whole world is trying to undermine them by blocking the ads.
IMHO, Youtube just happens to be another way that Google makes money.
So, yes, it is a bit infuriating. Originally, Youtube became big by showing copyright material and no ads. And now that they are big, owned by Google, and have changed their tactics, I think it's perfectly reasonable for all their viewers to change theirs.
I feel that Google was never upfront with me about their business model and their intentions from the beginning. The fact that I was realistically the product for a long time has just made me too jaded to give them money. They moved the goalposts too. It was free, then got ads and more ads and what's next? Will it just be like Amazon Prime where I now have ads even though I pay for a subscription?
Occasionally I think about buying YT premium but then I just think about how scummy the company is how their attention grabbing model is just ruining my friends relationships with their kids (they're all addicted to YouTube, try blame the parents, but I don't think it's their fault) and I just can't bring myself to give them money at this stage.
I'd go as far to say that I'd probably boycott the service altogether if I was forced between giving them money or watching a high volume of ads.
I've already boycotted them for search, years of tracking and selling my info without any real opt out option or clear warnings about it, fuck them, I don't forget.
Google makes billions in profit every year, yet here you are talking about them as if they're a small company struggling to get by.
I'd gladly pay for premium if I knew that money would be invested in making the website better for its users, but that's just not how they operate. The only reason I still use Youtube is because there's no alternative.
Yes, and they only offer products/services because they generate profit. Which is why there are ads on Youtube—because they help generate profit.
People find value in watching Youtube videos (howtos, tutorials, news, vlogs, etc), and for providing that valuable service, Youtube/Google/Alphabet wishes to (a) at least be able to cover their bills (server, DCs, salaries), (b) some extra reward/return.
The value comes from the videos themselves, not from the service. If the videos were hosted elsewhere, I’d gladly stop bothering Google with my traffic.
> The value comes from the videos themselves, not from the service.
And the value that the service to creators is that they pay $0 for hosting, have a large viewing potential, have a comment system which they don't have to run/host themselves, and are able to monetize their videos fairly easily.
How many videos would be made if creators suddenly have to deal with all of that?
The value of the videos being created exists at all is because the creators don't have to worry about infrastructure.
> If the videos were hosted elsewhere, I’d gladly stop bothering Google with my traffic.
"Charity" made me chuckle. YouTube by itself had an exponentially growing revenue since first introducing ads. In 2022 the revenue was at almost $30 billion (maybe this will better show that amount: $30,000,000,000) [1]. So yeah, go ahead and defend a monopolistic corporation that came to that position by basically doing bait and switch, and ridicule a small minority of people who just want to decide what they run and don't on their own devices.
Do you remember when they removed the right to see downvotes on videos? That was it for me.
At that point they said, "hey fuck you, we're going to ram whatever we want down your throat and you won't even be able to assess how others feel about this video."
That was the minute I decided I won't be paying and I'll just use an ad-blocker.
I don't expect YT to be a charity, but I do think its current market position is a monopoly (or close enough as doesn't matter) which is worth more scrutiny. It also seems likely that they got to their current market share by being massively subsidized for over a decade, and not needing to run (many) ads. How many services would have launched but thought "nah, we can't compete with Google's infinite money machine subsidizing our competitor"?
It's pretty much what Yanis Varoufakis brings up on "Technofeudalism", Google created a digital feud with YouTube, heavily subsidised it until there was virtually no competition and now just lives by extracting rent from everyone on the platform: ads' buyers, users (we pay either Premium or with our data), content creators, etc.
YT can change the rules of the game and there's nothing anyone can do about it, they will keep extracting rent now that their platform is basically a fiefdom.
Without competition, without alternatives, we all depend on the digital land that Google took control of, just like serfs and peasants.
It'll be even better when all websites block non-Google browsers by default thanks to WEI attestation. Maybe we can have an edgy underground web again. (the fediverse kinda sorta feels a little like this sometimes)
The SponsorBlock [0] addon has already solved that for sponsored/ad segments in videos. Rather than AI, crowdsourced timestamps lets it automatically skip past adverts.
Sponsor segments are baked into the video stream by the creator, yet the sponsorblock extension exists and is really good. They just crowdsource the labeling of sponsor segments (and other segments, like intros, subscription reminders etc).
Youtube could try to serve everyone a different video stream with ads added at different times. But even that's unlikely to work: around the turn of the century we got DVRs that could automatically skip commercials in recorded television signals, and later DVR software could do the same. There are a couple of techniques to do that, but the most obvious is that commercials and commercial blocks have common lengths and very different sound from the actual program (louder and mixed differently). The same techniques would work on Youtube ads.
And of course most of the youtube ad revenue seems to come from a somewhat limited selection of ads, so fingerprinting the video stream for segments that reappear in different videos across the userbase is also a viable technique.
This is an arms race youtube can't win, no matter how much money they are willing to throw at video encoding.
This would be totally ineffective against targeted randomized ads baked into the video. It works with sponsor segments only because content creators can only submit one version of their videos.
There's quite a genius workaround to this - it's actually possible to link a credit card to your google account and buy something called YouTube Premium. Actually removes ads, even on TV, insane!
i used an ad-blocker on YT since forever, when they started blocking them I bought YT Premium over VPN in a cheaper country. not sure how google is supposed to serve 4k 60FPS videos to people all over the world without them paying. i pirate movies and shows at home so it's not like i don't get it. but the entitelment about watching YouTube for free is a bit weird to me. it worked for years, we were able to cheat the system by just blocking ads. now they're starting to prevent it. too bad for us. but ya just gotta deal with it.
i'm unhappy about it too, but i can't really blame them.
Yeah. And? They want to milk the last drops of $$$ out of their customers, as usual. If they want to block ad-blockers on their service then so be it.
i don't like the venture capital culture, enshittification pisses me off, the constant race for more revenue, growth and profits while cutting jobs and wages annoys me as well. but for me there's no moral argument against them blocking ad-blockers without criticizing the whole system around it.
do i think that services should be federated, open-source and non-profit oriented? Yes, of course. but YouTube is not that, at all, so being angry about them blocking this is just so unnecessary to me.
it seems to me that people are just veeeery pissed of that they either have to pay for it or stop using it. they don't know where to aim their anger at so they're just angry at Google.
A startup would, instead, never show an ad, allow themselves to run out of money, upload a photo of themselves crying on LinkedIn about letting go all of their staff, and then say that they just couldn't find a way to monetize the app.
Well no shit. And the people who block ads are greedy and don't want to pay anything for the service, they have a delusional expectation it should be free for them forever.
That will definitely be the day I stop using YT, which will probably trigger some withdrawal symptoms. I've used YouTube since I was a little kid, it's probably the platform I've used the most in my life, and it's not even close.
unfortunately, things don't last forever :(
but, you know. when netflix got more and more expensive and started blocking my family for using it because they dare to not live in my apartment, i switched to pirating. now i have about 500 movies at home and can watch them remotely. so. i'm actually happy for netflix turning me into a pirate ;D
I wonder what not using YouTube anymore will turn me into...
I understand your earlier comment was a bit tongue in cheek, but I find it hard to justify the £12.99 a month, when I can only imagine half of it is going towards Youtube Music which I have absolutely zero intent of using. Maybe it's a free add on and it would cost the same without it, but the idea of "wasting" money on that completely turns me off.
I'm considering doing the same as you with movies and downloading YouTube videos to my NAS with yt-dlp as they come out. Would probably be a better experience overall. Maybe this is the catalyst for me actually doing a bit of technical work for the first time in years.
> I find it hard to justify the £12.99 a month, when I can only imagine half of it is going towards Youtube Music
That's actually a good point, yes, forgot about that aspect. I think I didn't mention this because I bought my subscription over VPN in Ukraine and now pay about $2 per month. Unethical, probably. But, you know. if that stops working i'll probably have to find an alternative, as i absolutely hate and despise ads.
> downloading YouTube videos to my NAS with yt-dlp
yeah, same, this interests me as well. curate some sort of JSON file with channels you actually care about, and when new videos come out, download them locally and put them where my media streaming program can use them. then just delete them after they're watched, unless they're really important for some reason. i once started setting this up but got distracted halfway through and forgot about it :D there must be someone who already does this, but i didn't really find anything with a quick duckduckgo.
Strangely enough, maybe? It would be easier to see that as the cost of the product on its own rather than a bundle. Still a bit rich for my blood though I think when other services are cheaper and don't have ads as part of the content.
No slight against the creators, of course make that cash, but paying for an "ad free" experience is difficult when you're still getting ads. Sure you have the ad free patreons etc. from individual creators and we're right back to the mess of paying for a thousand different streaming services.
I'd give your guess an approximate 95% chance to become true, yes. As I've actually used it in the past and almost started using it as my main way to watch YT.
but the convenience of just opening the YT app on my phone while commuting and just instantly watching what i want is quite nice. at least for now.
That being said I could back to using YouTube Vanced + SponsorBlock on my Android phone, the part which is the hardest to circumvent is my Smart TV. Haven't found a way to sneak past ads there, without paying.
The way I got out was to stop using the recommendation page and the subscription feed first - if I can't remember the channel exists I probably won't miss watching it. (also your friends will remind you of some channels by sending you the video link and trying to discuss it)
I used ublock origin to block all images from youtube so I have to read the title instead of getting baited by a flashy thumbnail.
About 5 years later and I barely watch any video that isn't sent to me.
For the life of me I don't know how people don't think twice about subscribing to Netflix and others while consider it unreasonable to subscribe to YouTube. It's easily 10x the value.
It probably depends on how you use it. I mainly use it for entertainment, so Netflix and YouTube are closer comparisons. In Europe, the YouTube family plan is €23.99 (my wife would not be happy if only I got Premium). In contrast, Netflix is €12.99 for 2 devices (people).
I know the economics are complex (storage, tooling, etc.), but from a simple consumer perspective, YouTube doesn't really pay for the content creation, so why is it almost double the price?
I'll tell you why? I've always known what the deal is with Netflix, I pay them money, for a fairly discrete service that let's me watch movies.
I'm not getting targeted by adds or tracked around the internet, or any other nonsense for paying to watch a movie.
Google on the other hand is a whole other level of blurriness when it comes to my privacy and what they plan on doing with the money I give them. Does it just go to more shady addictive algorithm development and such?
Maybe if Google completely changed their model for YT to be, you pay premium and we no longer try get you hooked on some spammy click bait news feed and you get access to see "downvotes" again so you can easily identify shit content, then I'd pay, but they can't do that because they suck.
I am sure these ideas have been thrown around at YouTube, but maybe a better alternative would be limiting videos to only 720p resolution for non-premium users, for example.
There is a reason no other competitor has emerged. Not even Netflix offers 1080p on their basic _paid_ plan, which I recall being limited to 720p.
I have written a simple extension to go around the YouTube notification.
Whenever I want to view the video I click the extension. It replaces entire page with embed iframe. This allows the video to be played without problems.
I do not know if that violates YouTube policy, though.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] thread(I won't, I seldom use youtube)
Especially in the case of YouTube, which has a premium version with no ads, there's no reason to complain, really.
The history of the service matters. If you launch something that says "Ad-free videos for free" and then X years later change to "Some ads + videos for free", people will have a reaction to that. Slowly change it over the years, and each iteration will have more reactions attached to it.
If they changed their policies the right response is to stop using the service.
Someone gives me something for free for a few years, and they stop doing it. Do I really have the right to make demands?
So people are essentially doing what you say they should do. The service changes, users give feedback, some might leave, some might not.
And we should think about content creators too, where does the money they get paid for the views come from?
> we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no
A year or so later, they launched ads that ran before the video played.
They were nice by the way, Flame ones, quite spicey.
1. There's no real competitor to Youtube so if you disagree with a certain thing but still want to watch how to fix your dishwasher there may not be any other place to turn to.
2. There's only one payment model. Someone who maybe follows a single type of video and doesn't watch videos every day still have to pay the same amount as someone who watches multiple videos per day.
I really hate the second point since so many services these days use that model (especially newspapers, just let me pay per article).
Imagine 100% of users using adblocks. How can the site function? Are they charity?
If you get value from the site, there is a premium option, and you will see no ads (plus other features). If you don't have money to pay, or don't want to, you can use it and have some ads. I know they are annoying, but common you expect Youtube to be charity?
But people got used to YouTube first without any sort of ads at all, then a small bit of ads, then a lot of ads. Now another change from what people are used to is introduced, where they try to block adblockers, so of course people will have a reaction.
Not saying it's "ethically OK" or whatever, just trying to reason about why people think like they do. I do understand it somewhat.
Imagine if HN suddenly started having proper ads (not just job ads like today), then the community would also react to it, as we've built our expectations on how it is today.
Then they killed that subscription tier, I just got an email with 30-day notice that my Premium Lite subscription wouldn't exist anymore and I had to upgrade to Premium, that was the last straw and I'm happily using ad blockers and will continue using it for as long as they work.
I tried to pay for it, they fucked me over, I have no ethical issues with using an ad blocker, it's the only power I have left.
That's the core issue, they slowly degraded the experience to show more ads while also removing ways to pay for a no ads feature without the cruft of other unnecessary features, I won't pay for them.
Now they obviously have very different economics and features, but in my regular use I don't really care about that, I just see double the cost for YouTube. This is doubly annoying since most of the YouTube channels I watch earn almost nothing from YouTube and instead subsist on money from sponsors. YouTube is obviously providing "free" hosting, management tools, and traffic to these channels. However, YouTube also spends nothing on content creation and assumes none of the risk.
Oh, and I'm also paying for YouTube Music, which I never use. So it just seems like an expensive, bad deal as a consumer. And my alternative is the "free" site which is has an appalling number of commercials and keeps getting worse. So bad deals all around.
I would be surprised if they did not learn from my viewing history what my interests are and then try to sell my eyeballs outside of youtube for much more money.
Also as a counter point to myself or actually rather to the whole targeted ads thing: where I can't block youtube ads (mostly iphone) I get the dumbest effing ads that I would never click or have zero interest in.
About 80% are casino, gambling, betting, etc .. absolutely zero chance I would try any of that. Rest is either feminine products or served in a language I find offensive.
They have the data on me but fail to do anything useful with it.
But you've now built some contorted mental model where you think they must obviously be lying about while also being completely incompetent at using said data. Just how hard is it to believe that they're not lying in the first place?
Very. They have motive, means, and opportunity to lie. The consequences if caught lying about collecting and using data after they said they weren't range from non-existent to negligible.
Just a few weeks ago they had to pay fines for siphoning data from PRIVATE chrome windows.
Maybe YouTube just needs to scale back a bit. Maybe it should never have gotten this big in the first place. Maybe a "community supports it" model would work, if it was smaller. But YouTube is now designed as a money grab (regardless of whether it is a net plus for Google in the end). In an alternative universe YouTube would run libre code and would be open to anyone looking at the code and deploying it on their own servers, community driven and financed project etc.
I certainly will not feel sorry for a company like Google, when they run a platform that covers more dark pattern than most other websites combined and don't share what exactly happens with user data. Google extracts more than enough money out of unethically obtained user data. I don't think we need to be "afraid" that they could go out of business any time soon.
But somehow people are angry at YouTube instead of their beloved content creators.
(I use uBlock to block ads.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@AsmonTV
Artists playing at venues that use Ticketmaster is a similar situation.
Sure, some of these artists can _choose_ not to perform at these venues, just like the YouTube creators can _choose_ not to upload videos to YouTube.
Scapegoat as a service.
In any event, I don't mind these since they are easy to skip and at least the creator is getting the vast majority of the money.
"Creators" include what? People reacting to other videos? People pulling dumb/dangerous pranks? All for likes and subscribers?
Those using the platform to show off a handmade knife that's available for purchase or demo some animation they made, will continue to do well.
Those relying on ad-based revenue for money are not. I'm okay with that.
What a strange take on what should or shouldn't be a career. There's lots of dumb content on YouTube but there was already a lot of dumb content on TV before that (reality shows, stupid History Channel "documentaries", gossip news programs, etc.).
Nothing. And given it's their company, they get to offer their products/services however they wish.
If you don't find value in it, stop using it.
> After all, shareholders must appeased. Where does it end?
As someone who owns an S&P 500 index fund, which has Alphabet as a component, I would like to see returns to help fund my retirement.
When customers push back.
If I knew that youtube would continue to show me one skippable ad for every ~10 minutes, I would gladly disable my ad-blocker for them. Banner ads and side-bar ads are also fine.
Feel free to, but expect that YouTube will try to make it inconvenient for you.
It *is* effectively being shut down *for pirates* (if you can call them that, not sure). Those are the users who are complaining. It's a little weird that those users feel so justified in being angry about it.
IMHO, Youtube just happens to be another way that Google makes money.
So, yes, it is a bit infuriating. Originally, Youtube became big by showing copyright material and no ads. And now that they are big, owned by Google, and have changed their tactics, I think it's perfectly reasonable for all their viewers to change theirs.
Occasionally I think about buying YT premium but then I just think about how scummy the company is how their attention grabbing model is just ruining my friends relationships with their kids (they're all addicted to YouTube, try blame the parents, but I don't think it's their fault) and I just can't bring myself to give them money at this stage.
I'd go as far to say that I'd probably boycott the service altogether if I was forced between giving them money or watching a high volume of ads.
I've already boycotted them for search, years of tracking and selling my info without any real opt out option or clear warnings about it, fuck them, I don't forget.
I'd gladly pay for premium if I knew that money would be invested in making the website better for its users, but that's just not how they operate. The only reason I still use Youtube is because there's no alternative.
Yes, and they only offer products/services because they generate profit. Which is why there are ads on Youtube—because they help generate profit.
People find value in watching Youtube videos (howtos, tutorials, news, vlogs, etc), and for providing that valuable service, Youtube/Google/Alphabet wishes to (a) at least be able to cover their bills (server, DCs, salaries), (b) some extra reward/return.
And the value that the service to creators is that they pay $0 for hosting, have a large viewing potential, have a comment system which they don't have to run/host themselves, and are able to monetize their videos fairly easily.
How many videos would be made if creators suddenly have to deal with all of that?
The value of the videos being created exists at all is because the creators don't have to worry about infrastructure.
> If the videos were hosted elsewhere, I’d gladly stop bothering Google with my traffic.
If.
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[1] https://www.usesignhouse.com/blog/youtube-stats#youtube-reve...
I pay for search now, I'd pay for a service like YT that had nothing to do with Google so long as my privacy was respected.
At that point they said, "hey fuck you, we're going to ram whatever we want down your throat and you won't even be able to assess how others feel about this video."
That was the minute I decided I won't be paying and I'll just use an ad-blocker.
Nebula is worth a look, though.
YT can change the rules of the game and there's nothing anyone can do about it, they will keep extracting rent now that their platform is basically a fiefdom.
Without competition, without alternatives, we all depend on the digital land that Google took control of, just like serfs and peasants.
I miss the Open Web.
> Imagine 100% of users using adblocks.
Then why did the search engine giant choose to buy YouTube?
How expensive would it be for YouTube to encode the ad directly into the video stream?
If that ever happens I can't see any blocking solution other than have an AI pre-screen the content, identify ads and jump over them.
[0] https://sponsor.ajay.app/
Youtube could try to serve everyone a different video stream with ads added at different times. But even that's unlikely to work: around the turn of the century we got DVRs that could automatically skip commercials in recorded television signals, and later DVR software could do the same. There are a couple of techniques to do that, but the most obvious is that commercials and commercial blocks have common lengths and very different sound from the actual program (louder and mixed differently). The same techniques would work on Youtube ads.
And of course most of the youtube ad revenue seems to come from a somewhat limited selection of ads, so fingerprinting the video stream for segments that reappear in different videos across the userbase is also a viable technique.
This is an arms race youtube can't win, no matter how much money they are willing to throw at video encoding.
i used an ad-blocker on YT since forever, when they started blocking them I bought YT Premium over VPN in a cheaper country. not sure how google is supposed to serve 4k 60FPS videos to people all over the world without them paying. i pirate movies and shows at home so it's not like i don't get it. but the entitelment about watching YouTube for free is a bit weird to me. it worked for years, we were able to cheat the system by just blocking ads. now they're starting to prevent it. too bad for us. but ya just gotta deal with it.
i'm unhappy about it too, but i can't really blame them.
i don't like the venture capital culture, enshittification pisses me off, the constant race for more revenue, growth and profits while cutting jobs and wages annoys me as well. but for me there's no moral argument against them blocking ad-blockers without criticizing the whole system around it.
do i think that services should be federated, open-source and non-profit oriented? Yes, of course. but YouTube is not that, at all, so being angry about them blocking this is just so unnecessary to me.
it seems to me that people are just veeeery pissed of that they either have to pay for it or stop using it. they don't know where to aim their anger at so they're just angry at Google.
A startup would, instead, never show an ad, allow themselves to run out of money, upload a photo of themselves crying on LinkedIn about letting go all of their staff, and then say that they just couldn't find a way to monetize the app.
Please watch this video by Louis Rossmann titled “Why I will NEVER pay for YouTube Premium ever again!”:
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE
Better yet, subscribe to that channel and watch his videos.
I unsubscribed from his channel the very day I saw that video. As a YT premium subscriber, I'll support creators who have at least some self honesty
For goodness sake, YT isn't close to perfect, but it's leagues ahead of the craptastic TikTok.
unfortunately, things don't last forever :(
but, you know. when netflix got more and more expensive and started blocking my family for using it because they dare to not live in my apartment, i switched to pirating. now i have about 500 movies at home and can watch them remotely. so. i'm actually happy for netflix turning me into a pirate ;D
I wonder what not using YouTube anymore will turn me into...
I'm considering doing the same as you with movies and downloading YouTube videos to my NAS with yt-dlp as they come out. Would probably be a better experience overall. Maybe this is the catalyst for me actually doing a bit of technical work for the first time in years.
That's actually a good point, yes, forgot about that aspect. I think I didn't mention this because I bought my subscription over VPN in Ukraine and now pay about $2 per month. Unethical, probably. But, you know. if that stops working i'll probably have to find an alternative, as i absolutely hate and despise ads.
> downloading YouTube videos to my NAS with yt-dlp
yeah, same, this interests me as well. curate some sort of JSON file with channels you actually care about, and when new videos come out, download them locally and put them where my media streaming program can use them. then just delete them after they're watched, unless they're really important for some reason. i once started setting this up but got distracted halfway through and forgot about it :D there must be someone who already does this, but i didn't really find anything with a quick duckduckgo.
No slight against the creators, of course make that cash, but paying for an "ad free" experience is difficult when you're still getting ads. Sure you have the ad free patreons etc. from individual creators and we're right back to the mess of paying for a thousand different streaming services.
An yt-dlp user I figure.
but the convenience of just opening the YT app on my phone while commuting and just instantly watching what i want is quite nice. at least for now.
That being said I could back to using YouTube Vanced + SponsorBlock on my Android phone, the part which is the hardest to circumvent is my Smart TV. Haven't found a way to sneak past ads there, without paying.
but that would generally be a good idea.
I used ublock origin to block all images from youtube so I have to read the title instead of getting baited by a flashy thumbnail.
About 5 years later and I barely watch any video that isn't sent to me.
I know the economics are complex (storage, tooling, etc.), but from a simple consumer perspective, YouTube doesn't really pay for the content creation, so why is it almost double the price?
Half of the subscription goes to creators, they do pay.
I'm not getting targeted by adds or tracked around the internet, or any other nonsense for paying to watch a movie.
Google on the other hand is a whole other level of blurriness when it comes to my privacy and what they plan on doing with the money I give them. Does it just go to more shady addictive algorithm development and such?
Maybe if Google completely changed their model for YT to be, you pay premium and we no longer try get you hooked on some spammy click bait news feed and you get access to see "downvotes" again so you can easily identify shit content, then I'd pay, but they can't do that because they suck.
There is a reason no other competitor has emerged. Not even Netflix offers 1080p on their basic _paid_ plan, which I recall being limited to 720p.
This is basically Premium Lite, which YouTube axed last year: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-...
720p videos on Youtube don't look great these days so maybe your idea would work ;)
But if Youtube want to reduce costs maybe stop insisting on autoplay.
They know this, that's why they're doing the frog in a boiling pot routine.
Whenever I want to view the video I click the extension. It replaces entire page with embed iframe. This allows the video to be played without problems.
I do not know if that violates YouTube policy, though.
https://github.com/rumca-js/youtube-link-embedder
Release version https://github.com/rumca-js/youtube-link-embedder/releases/t...