Because the overall button is disabled you can click the little clock icons next to each category which forces an immediate refresh. This will sometimes pick up new signatures that haven't crossed the threshold for the "time to check for updates" refresh timer.
I noticed this myself as I had been using Firefox with ublock to mostly listen to music on youtube.
It seems like there's a sometimes-auto-downgrading where any video above 360 p gets throttled and causes buffering. I've recently been trying out a Chrome extension called Clear Skies which has been working well. It's not an adblocker but it does hide and skip ads and avoids the performance hit that I was seeing previously when viewing youtube with Firefox.
Not if you use Vinegar [0]. This extension is the main reason I can't switch from Safari to Orion as my main browser. The hit areas on YouTube's player controls are so obnoxious, I installed this just to work around them but it has the side benefit of loading the videos directly into the native video player without ads.
Nobody for 200,000 years prior had the need to pay off others in order to not be forced to endure crazed, blatantly manipulative, deceptive, and generally poor quality advertisements in order to access content not even made by the people enforcing this advertisement scheme. I'm not going to start now.
To be fair I'm sure any time after the agricultural revolution had performances or something.
Seriously, though, advertisement is a tumor on society. It's psychological manipulation we've allowed for profit purposes. I don't think we take it seriously enough. It's an addiction machine and a life waster, designed to ruin your brain slowly over time. I consider hyper-consumerism an addiction, but even if you look past that into food, tobacco, alcohol, and medicine you'll see "real" addiction.
Anyway, my pet theory is that if advertisement was simply banned we'd solve a lot of problems. Ones we don't even intend to solve.
The product is the videos. YouTube is just a tool. If your tool breaks and there's no compatible tool anymore, you lose your videos or bother to remake them with another tool. People aren't gonna continue to use a broken tool.
YouTube Music in many ways is an alternative frontend to YouTube with a large supplementary collection of licensed audio.
Music videos, DJ mixes, live music streams, 10 hours of _____, classical for studying, etc. all pop up in Music.
It's actually kind of nice if you spend any time on things like lofi girl, DJ mixes, "___ Hours of ___ for ___", since Music's interface is more lightweight and those videos can be added to otherwise audio-only playlists.
can't wait for your reaction 5 years in when they downgrade you to youtube premium lite "same advantages but with ads", if you want to keep the same advantages subscribe to premium++.
when looking at these thing you gotta ask yourself what would happen if everybody does it ? would the company be satisfied and say yes we got enough money, or would they just try to squeeze more juice out of you because where else would you go ?
Come back when I can split up my subscription feed within a single account and don't need to use like three accounts to keep stuff in order. I'm not paying for three subscriptions because their ui is rubbish
Given a single Google account, you can create multiple YT brand accounts / channels. Each of them will have the Premium features enabled, each can have separate subscriptions, and you can switch between them with the account switcher without logging in/out.
So you can already do exactly what you want with just the single subscription. I'm sure you're delighted to hear this, and won't react by moving the goalposts.
I wouldn't be willing to bet on it either, but in this case I was very much delighted and am not gonna move the goalposts (ok, maybe a bit, now I want a migration feature to collect my channels into a single account)
Sorry! I was channeling frustrations of how multiple past discussions around this subject have gone, and shouldn't have. You were not involved in any of those, and definitely didn't deserve the snark.
It's sad that this is the most down voted comment. Do you all seriously expect to get massive amounts of content for free without ads? What is the solution here? Please do tell because I can't figure it out.
They're also ignoring the fact that content creators profit from the ads as well, which is obviously a huge incentive for them to produce good content.
I asked this elsewhere, I’m gonna ask you here again: if I pay for premium am I then going to be served a version of the video without the creator’s built in sponsor ad reads? No? Then most creators are also part of the problem.
Am I complaining? I support creators directly because it’s a more fair exchange imo. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy in this whole situation when it comes to YouTube and paying for premium.
> I support creators directly because it’s a more fair exchange imo
Ok that's nice. But what you're doing is an add-on, not a replacement for the original product being sold at the seller's terms (what you're complaining about).
If the creators you want to support choose to distribute their content exclusively from an ad-funded system, then you have no choice to but to either (1) watch the ads (2) pay to not watch the ads or 3) stop supporting the creator.
If you choose (2) and the creators still sneak ads into their content, then you have still the choice to (2a) watch the ads (2b) fast forward the ads (3) stop supporting the creator.
You're choosing (1) and then complaining that you have to watch ads, which doesn't make sense.
You're forgetting option 4) Use an adblocker, don't watch ads, contribute in other ways.
And again, I'm not complaining about anything. I run adblockers, my youtube consumption is probably < 30 minutes a year so it's not even an issue for me personally. I'm just pointing out the double standard applied to creators: we're hurting them when we block ads but we should be fine getting served ads from them even when we're paying for an ad free experience.
> You're forgetting option 4) Use an adblocker, don't watch ads, contribute in other ways.
Well this thread is about how using an adblocker is becoming increasingly difficult, which is causing a lot of upset. And "contribute in other ways" is not really a solution. If everyone did what you do, YouTube would shut down.
> I'm just pointing out the double standard applied to creators
I don't think it's a double standard. The creators are choosing to inject ads into their content because they want more money. If people like you were paying for Premium instead of blocking ads maybe they wouldn't feel the need to do this as often, who knows.
Either way, it's their choice and they're free to make their channel 99% ads if they think it will benefit them. As a paying Premium subscriber, I don't like injected ads either. If I see them I fast forward, and if that gets too annoying then I unsubscribe.
Absolutely, I'm just asking why they get a pass. If companies do it we're all enraged but if creators do it it's fine. It's just plain weird.
> If I see them I fast forward
Would you do the same if youtube started showing you ads even though you're subscribed to premium? Would you just shrugh it out as a "well they want more money"? I'd bet no, you'd probably be pissed and rightfully so.
I agree, I don't know why people criticize Google but not the creators. Personally, I'm not criticizing either.
> I'd bet no, you'd probably be pissed and rightfully so.
I'd be disappointed, and then I'd have to decide if I wanted to keep paying them or take my business elsewhere. I wouldn't be pissed, though. Because Google doesn't owe me anything.
Just like the creators, they're running a business, so it is what it is. I believe in free markets and if Google stops making a product worth paying for it will work itself out via a competitor taking market share or something else.
My problem is that I don't use YouTube to consume massive amounts of content. I use it to watch a single video every 3-4 months about how to replace a filter in my car, or adjust a valve in my sodastream. Ads are unacceptable, and premium is terrible value for me.
I don't consider any commercial advertisements in my life to be acceptable.
I feel strongly about that, and in general, I'm willing to pay to avoid ads, or to forego things that have unavoidable ads.
As far is the web goes, I've been blocking ads since ~2000 (using Intermute's AdSubtract at the time).
One time I took a plane flight where they began the flight by turning off the in-flight entertainment controls, playing some ads on the in-seat TVs, and piping the audio over the plane's PA system. I wrote to the airline as well as the advertisers to express my disgust for that practice. (Thankfully, that doesn't seem to have become a regular thing since then.)
The only ads I'm subjected to on any regular basis are highway billboards, and I write to my representatives every year or two to remind them that we should ban billboards, or at least hold a referendum so that citizens can decide whether we should be allowing them. (Which I expect would pass overwhelmingly, with a margin like the Alaskan ballot measure.)
So, yeah, that's how I feel about ads.
As I've said, the problem with YouTube Premium is just that it's bad value for my use... if I stop being able to access ad-free YouTube, it's probably cheaper for me to just stop fixing my own things (e.g. I'll pay the dealer to swap my air filters and I'll just throw out the sodastream and buy a new one.) I guess if I ever run into high-value things to fix myself, I'll just churn YouTube like people do other streaming platforms; sign up for Premium, fix my thing, (and save the video, assuming yt-dlp still works) and then cancel my subscription.
A much better idea would be to donate all that money to EFF or similar organizations. They'd fight to protect your privacy and security. Funding megacorps doing the exact opposite hurts everyone.
It's also worth mentioning that Youtube Premium will only help Google build better profiles of its subscribers. Subscribers will be required to surrender their contact information and be forced to log in before watching videos.
> A much better idea would be to donate all that money to EFF or similar organizations
So how do you suggest we fund content creators? Or should they all just start working for free to entertain you without exposing you to those horrible dangerous ads?
False dilemma. I'm sure there are ways for content creators to make money without us getting spied on or served malware. It's also a poor excuse as most of them can't live off of what Google pays them to begin with. Not to mention that Google's bots can take away that revenue on a whim.
> I'm sure there are ways for content creators to make money without us getting spied on or served malware
Name one. And please make sure your solution actually exists and isn't just a fantasy of how the world should work.
> It's also a poor excuse as most of them can't live off of what Google pays them to begin with
It's not all or nothing. Creators can be incentivised to earn money even if it's not enough to live off of. And by the way, many do quite well, to the point where it replaces and surpasses their family income.
YouTube would not be what it is today without the money incentive.
> Not to mention that Google's bots can take away that revenue on a whim
Agree but that's a risk they've determined is worth taking, again because of the money incentive.
Looks like barely any content on there compared to YouTube. Probably an steep uphill battle for them to get to the point where creators can make anything close to what they can make today on YouTube. And I can only watch one video before I have to get my credit card out. Hard pass.
> Patreon, Floatplane
I don't think the "subscription fee per content creator" model is a good comparison. We have subscription fatique already. Imagine if YouTube required you pay $/month per channel to watch anything. No way.
Patreon doesn't host videos. Each of the video creators I support on Patreon simply uploads their rewards as unlisted YouTube videos or uses a Vimeo integration.
You're effectively claiming that anything a monopoly does is fundamental to how the world works and anything short of that is equivalent to starving content creators.
What a ridiculous assumption. If you can't even agree that conducting mass surveillance or distributing malware should be off limits, there's nothing you can do to make me take your claims seriously.
> It's not all or nothing.
Exactly, Google doesn't have to screw over people this hard to deliver ads. But they do it because they can.
> And by the way, many do quite well, to the point where it replaces and surpasses their family income.
That sounds exactly like what you'd hear from a get rich quick scheme. Still doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people aren't going to "make it." It's not a reliable source of income.
> Agree but that's a risk they've determined is worth taking
Creators haven't determined anything, they just have no choice because network effects and barrier to entry is granting Google a monopoly.
I don't know what to tell you. Millions of people watch YouTube because they get something from it, ads or not. Creators put in a ton of effort to produce content for YouTube because they believe it's worth it for to them to do so.
Everybody has a choice.
You've decided to boycott Google (I'm assuming, otherwise you're a massive hypocrite), which is also a perfectly fine choice.
Just like with songwriting, I’m going to keep creating and posting videos, whether or not there is any monetary compensation. People who do things for their own enjoyment will find a way to do it.
If it’s on a centralized site like bandcamp or YouTube/Vimeo, that’s fine. If not, I can host the files myself.
Anecdotally, Youtube has gotten pathetically slow for me over the past few months. It freezes constantly and on any video longer than ten minutes I have to refresh the page part way through. My response will not be to disable my adblocker, but to stop using youtube completely. Youtube is the very last Google product I still use, and like most other parts of Google it seems Youtube has run out of good ideas and is now pushing bad ideas.
No, as they encouraged using their network and compute for free as a method of monopolizing the market. Getting people addicted for free and then demanding they pay after the fact certainly isn't something the market should encourage as "working as intended".
They encouraged people to use their network and compute in return for watching ads in order to make a profit. If you're not giving them anything in return, they would prefer you not use their resources at all. GGP seems to think he is sticking it to the man, but he is doing exactly what the man intended for him to do.
- Whether I skip over embedded host-read advertising
- What I search for
- What sidebar vids I tend to click on and whether I watch those or tap out
All of this information is already sold to other companies, and already used to push ads in the Google search results. They can f*$% off with their ads in the video.
> All of this information is already sold to other companies, and already used to push ads in the Google search results
That's not how it works. This information gets them money by displaying targeted ads that advertisers pay for. If they can't show you ads, collecting and processing that data is pure cost.
The service provider always has an advantage as they move first. It's like trying to reverse engineer an API. They can break your unofficial access tomorrow.
That is true up to a certain point beyond which the annoyance of the ads in combination with the service provider's aggressive moves to make them unavoidable outweighs the benefits of the service. If Youtube can not be visited without being subjected to aggressive and obnoxious advertising then Youtube will not be visited. There are plenty of alternatives out there after all, Youtube does not have a monopoly on video distribution.
Source: my own experience. I never use Youtube directly. I use Peertube to distribute whatever video content I publish - not much but there is some - and use a proxy of some sorts whenever I have to get something from Youtube. When the proxy stops working - which happens every now and then since they are essentially web scrapers - I search elsewhere using my own SearxNG instance. If I do not find the video elsewhere I usually just wait for the proxy to start working again. Only in exceptional circumstances will I go to the Youtube site directly and in those cases only in a 'private' browser window/tab. I do not remember the last time I had to do this so it is not a regular occurrence but what I do remember for the few times I visited that site is just how slow and bloated it is compared to my normal way of using it.
The more serious issue here is that other sites will use what YouTube is doing as a license to do this.
It's happened before. YouTube was instrumental in kicking off the acceptance of killing IE6.
Their point was that YouTube has influence, not that they’ve always used their influence for bad things. They’re doing bad things now though, and with their level of influence those bad things might spread all over the web.
I wonder how much money they're spending in trying to fight this rat race. It's not just engineering hours but also people switching from chrome to Firefox, and the bad press associated with it.
I never thought adblocker usage was so prevalent, but this is just personal experience. No one I knew personally, normal people I mean, used adblocked. I remember I had a class in university where they encouraged people to install adblock, only a handful of us already had it installed. There were some pretty interesting ethical arguments for using adblock, sad that I can barely remember any!
No one (and I mean that in the sense of a significant number) is switching to Firefox over this. Our user numbers are consistently heading downwards.
Besides Google does other things to slow YouTube down on Firefox so this isn’t really a compelling reason to switch browsers for most people. They’ll likely just disable their ad blocker. For the person who values privacy that much, they’re likely staying off Google properties anyway, and for the average user, their YouTube experience is more important.
I seriously find it hard to believe that most people who are computer-savvy enough to use adblockers would choose to live with ads again rather than switch to a virtually identical product that doesn't allow companies to disturb users in the same way (at least for now).
The bar for how savvy you have to be to use an ad blocker is a lot lower than it used to be.
There’s 2 different issues here: privacy and user experience. A lot of YT users are probably signed in to YT through their gmail/google account, in which case the ad blocker is not providing them privacy. If you don’t care about privacy and only care about user experience (e.g. not seeing any ads) there will not be an alternative to YT for long that can operate free to the user without showing ads.
Most people will opt for a better content catalog, load times, and device battery life over leaving YT, even the computer savvy.
The FBI recommends using ad blockers to keep yourself safe online. Despite that there are still billions online who don't use any form of one, as the highest estimate is aroundd 32% of ad block users.
Same for the German BSI (Federal Office for Information Security)
"Ad blockers are an important way of safeguarding users online, since they effectively protect against malware attacks carried out by externally embedded advertising."
Most people know some dirty nerd that can provide help here, so even people not so affine with tech ("normal people") have them installed by now. Everyone that had an ad blocker once will never want to go back.
Ads do finance some infrastructure, especially platforms like youtube and large commercial social media sites. But that is not all infrastructure at all and I believe there is a strong ethical case that you should protect people from unwanted advertising in any case.
It's day 2 for me and I almost got productive today. A few more days and I might start working on some forgotten hobbies again instead of spending time in front of meaningless YouTube videos.
So this marks yet another [1] instance of Google serving malicious code to users. I'm sure I'd instantly be put behind bars if I tried anything like this on the same scale. Don't be evil, what a joke.
Are we going to keep fighting megacorps in this cat and mouse game or do what’s needed and split them up? A big problem is the same company influences/controls web standards, builds the most popular browser, operates the biggest ad network, and controls a public facing utility for hosting videos (YouTube).
Quite a small number of people seems to get this: the value of PeerTube is not in providing a global alternative for the whole of YouTube, instead it allows an alternative for specific content creators that can control everything about how they monetize their content, and for which, me as a viewer, can make the proper arrangements if I want to support them.
Or maybe creators that want to run their passion project as businesses should do what other businesses to and pay for their expenses and that includes hosting and serving their videos.
We can't even keep NPR running without people saying it's an evil empire built by demons to suppress traditional thought. If you think the Government could run, let alone find funding for a public-resource social media then you've got another thing coming.
Maybe it's not a bad thing to go back to a time where people that wanted to share something cool published it at their own expense. Using their "hobby money".
101 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadIt seems like there's a sometimes-auto-downgrading where any video above 360 p gets throttled and causes buffering. I've recently been trying out a Chrome extension called Clear Skies which has been working well. It's not an adblocker but it does hide and skip ads and avoids the performance hit that I was seeing previously when viewing youtube with Firefox.
[0] https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar
on a serious note, i can't reproduce with firefox maybe it's not rolled out yet
Seriously, though, advertisement is a tumor on society. It's psychological manipulation we've allowed for profit purposes. I don't think we take it seriously enough. It's an addiction machine and a life waster, designed to ruin your brain slowly over time. I consider hyper-consumerism an addiction, but even if you look past that into food, tobacco, alcohol, and medicine you'll see "real" addiction.
Anyway, my pet theory is that if advertisement was simply banned we'd solve a lot of problems. Ones we don't even intend to solve.
Music videos, DJ mixes, live music streams, 10 hours of _____, classical for studying, etc. all pop up in Music.
It's actually kind of nice if you spend any time on things like lofi girl, DJ mixes, "___ Hours of ___ for ___", since Music's interface is more lightweight and those videos can be added to otherwise audio-only playlists.
when looking at these thing you gotta ask yourself what would happen if everybody does it ? would the company be satisfied and say yes we got enough money, or would they just try to squeeze more juice out of you because where else would you go ?
So you can already do exactly what you want with just the single subscription. I'm sure you're delighted to hear this, and won't react by moving the goalposts.
I want to say this snark is unjustified, but I also wouldn't be willing to bet on it.
Yes.
> I support creators directly because it’s a more fair exchange imo
Ok that's nice. But what you're doing is an add-on, not a replacement for the original product being sold at the seller's terms (what you're complaining about).
If the creators you want to support choose to distribute their content exclusively from an ad-funded system, then you have no choice to but to either (1) watch the ads (2) pay to not watch the ads or 3) stop supporting the creator.
If you choose (2) and the creators still sneak ads into their content, then you have still the choice to (2a) watch the ads (2b) fast forward the ads (3) stop supporting the creator.
You're choosing (1) and then complaining that you have to watch ads, which doesn't make sense.
And again, I'm not complaining about anything. I run adblockers, my youtube consumption is probably < 30 minutes a year so it's not even an issue for me personally. I'm just pointing out the double standard applied to creators: we're hurting them when we block ads but we should be fine getting served ads from them even when we're paying for an ad free experience.
Why that double standard exists? No clue.
Well this thread is about how using an adblocker is becoming increasingly difficult, which is causing a lot of upset. And "contribute in other ways" is not really a solution. If everyone did what you do, YouTube would shut down.
> I'm just pointing out the double standard applied to creators
I don't think it's a double standard. The creators are choosing to inject ads into their content because they want more money. If people like you were paying for Premium instead of blocking ads maybe they wouldn't feel the need to do this as often, who knows.
Either way, it's their choice and they're free to make their channel 99% ads if they think it will benefit them. As a paying Premium subscriber, I don't like injected ads either. If I see them I fast forward, and if that gets too annoying then I unsubscribe.
Absolutely, I'm just asking why they get a pass. If companies do it we're all enraged but if creators do it it's fine. It's just plain weird.
> If I see them I fast forward
Would you do the same if youtube started showing you ads even though you're subscribed to premium? Would you just shrugh it out as a "well they want more money"? I'd bet no, you'd probably be pissed and rightfully so.
I agree, I don't know why people criticize Google but not the creators. Personally, I'm not criticizing either.
> I'd bet no, you'd probably be pissed and rightfully so.
I'd be disappointed, and then I'd have to decide if I wanted to keep paying them or take my business elsewhere. I wouldn't be pissed, though. Because Google doesn't owe me anything.
Just like the creators, they're running a business, so it is what it is. I believe in free markets and if Google stops making a product worth paying for it will work itself out via a competitor taking market share or something else.
I feel strongly about that, and in general, I'm willing to pay to avoid ads, or to forego things that have unavoidable ads.
As far is the web goes, I've been blocking ads since ~2000 (using Intermute's AdSubtract at the time).
One time I took a plane flight where they began the flight by turning off the in-flight entertainment controls, playing some ads on the in-seat TVs, and piping the audio over the plane's PA system. I wrote to the airline as well as the advertisers to express my disgust for that practice. (Thankfully, that doesn't seem to have become a regular thing since then.)
The only ads I'm subjected to on any regular basis are highway billboards, and I write to my representatives every year or two to remind them that we should ban billboards, or at least hold a referendum so that citizens can decide whether we should be allowing them. (Which I expect would pass overwhelmingly, with a margin like the Alaskan ballot measure.)
So, yeah, that's how I feel about ads.
As I've said, the problem with YouTube Premium is just that it's bad value for my use... if I stop being able to access ad-free YouTube, it's probably cheaper for me to just stop fixing my own things (e.g. I'll pay the dealer to swap my air filters and I'll just throw out the sodastream and buy a new one.) I guess if I ever run into high-value things to fix myself, I'll just churn YouTube like people do other streaming platforms; sign up for Premium, fix my thing, (and save the video, assuming yt-dlp still works) and then cancel my subscription.
It's also worth mentioning that Youtube Premium will only help Google build better profiles of its subscribers. Subscribers will be required to surrender their contact information and be forced to log in before watching videos.
So how do you suggest we fund content creators? Or should they all just start working for free to entertain you without exposing you to those horrible dangerous ads?
Name one. And please make sure your solution actually exists and isn't just a fantasy of how the world should work.
> It's also a poor excuse as most of them can't live off of what Google pays them to begin with
It's not all or nothing. Creators can be incentivised to earn money even if it's not enough to live off of. And by the way, many do quite well, to the point where it replaces and surpasses their family income.
YouTube would not be what it is today without the money incentive.
> Not to mention that Google's bots can take away that revenue on a whim
Agree but that's a risk they've determined is worth taking, again because of the money incentive.
Patreon, Nebula, Floatplane
Looks like barely any content on there compared to YouTube. Probably an steep uphill battle for them to get to the point where creators can make anything close to what they can make today on YouTube. And I can only watch one video before I have to get my credit card out. Hard pass.
> Patreon, Floatplane
I don't think the "subscription fee per content creator" model is a good comparison. We have subscription fatique already. Imagine if YouTube required you pay $/month per channel to watch anything. No way.
What a ridiculous assumption. If you can't even agree that conducting mass surveillance or distributing malware should be off limits, there's nothing you can do to make me take your claims seriously.
> It's not all or nothing.
Exactly, Google doesn't have to screw over people this hard to deliver ads. But they do it because they can.
> And by the way, many do quite well, to the point where it replaces and surpasses their family income.
That sounds exactly like what you'd hear from a get rich quick scheme. Still doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people aren't going to "make it." It's not a reliable source of income.
> Agree but that's a risk they've determined is worth taking
Creators haven't determined anything, they just have no choice because network effects and barrier to entry is granting Google a monopoly.
Everybody has a choice.
You've decided to boycott Google (I'm assuming, otherwise you're a massive hypocrite), which is also a perfectly fine choice.
If it’s on a centralized site like bandcamp or YouTube/Vimeo, that’s fine. If not, I can host the files myself.
- Stats on what I watch
- Stats on how far in I watch
- Whether I skip over embedded host-read advertising
- What I search for
- What sidebar vids I tend to click on and whether I watch those or tap out
All of this information is already sold to other companies, and already used to push ads in the Google search results. They can f*$% off with their ads in the video.
That's not how it works. This information gets them money by displaying targeted ads that advertisers pay for. If they can't show you ads, collecting and processing that data is pure cost.
Source: my own experience. I never use Youtube directly. I use Peertube to distribute whatever video content I publish - not much but there is some - and use a proxy of some sorts whenever I have to get something from Youtube. When the proxy stops working - which happens every now and then since they are essentially web scrapers - I search elsewhere using my own SearxNG instance. If I do not find the video elsewhere I usually just wait for the proxy to start working again. Only in exceptional circumstances will I go to the Youtube site directly and in those cases only in a 'private' browser window/tab. I do not remember the last time I had to do this so it is not a regular occurrence but what I do remember for the few times I visited that site is just how slow and bloated it is compared to my normal way of using it.
That was... not a bad thing?
I wonder how much money they're spending in trying to fight this rat race. It's not just engineering hours but also people switching from chrome to Firefox, and the bad press associated with it.
I never thought adblocker usage was so prevalent, but this is just personal experience. No one I knew personally, normal people I mean, used adblocked. I remember I had a class in university where they encouraged people to install adblock, only a handful of us already had it installed. There were some pretty interesting ethical arguments for using adblock, sad that I can barely remember any!
Besides Google does other things to slow YouTube down on Firefox so this isn’t really a compelling reason to switch browsers for most people. They’ll likely just disable their ad blocker. For the person who values privacy that much, they’re likely staying off Google properties anyway, and for the average user, their YouTube experience is more important.
There’s 2 different issues here: privacy and user experience. A lot of YT users are probably signed in to YT through their gmail/google account, in which case the ad blocker is not providing them privacy. If you don’t care about privacy and only care about user experience (e.g. not seeing any ads) there will not be an alternative to YT for long that can operate free to the user without showing ads.
Most people will opt for a better content catalog, load times, and device battery life over leaving YT, even the computer savvy.
We're a drop in the ocean, unfortunately.
It’s hard to find concrete data but I’ve seen everything from 30% up to 70% depending on the type of audience.
"Ad blockers are an important way of safeguarding users online, since they effectively protect against malware attacks carried out by externally embedded advertising."
https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbr...
Ads do finance some infrastructure, especially platforms like youtube and large commercial social media sites. But that is not all infrastructure at all and I believe there is a strong ethical case that you should protect people from unwanted advertising in any case.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-googl...