- YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
- Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
- Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
The other day I visited youtube without any add-ons and concluded I’d rather do anything else than use youtube under those conditions.
legit, if youtube ever beats ublock origin, i’ll just stop watching youtube
Its an all out assault on half your senses without an adblocker. Literal torture.
The entire web is like that without an ad blocker these days.
I miss those cheeky gif banners from the 2000s
[With hindsight] The commercial use of the internet should never have been allowed.
I want the internet to be a network of digital libraries…communication, public events and sharing space…personal pages…services…the commercial motive starts from there and eventually consumes the rest :/
I reckon without the rule changes in 1993-94 allowing commercial use that the internet would have turned into a significantly more useful utility with higher quality innovation than the advert laden train wreck that we have now.
For this to happen, everyone using the internet should know HTML or there has to be a easy to use, MS Word-like web designer. And there should also be easy to use, free web hosting providers (neocities exists).
Owning a website as a non-techie should be normalized and be portrayed as “cool”
Do online multiplayer video games count as a commercial use? I kind of like those
Yt-dlp download script + text file with fav channel urls + jellyfin.
No bullshit, saves bandwidth.
Also look into invidious.
They were serving videos with ads spliced in, basically DAI in podcasting industry. I’m not sure how that experiment went, but if that’s how they’d serve the videos, downloaders will have ads embedded as well.
Yt-dlp supports sponsorblock, i am not worried.
I also dont even need tools for this as my usual style of watching is with my fingers on the arrow keys to skip back and forth
I actually don’t know if/how the ad block people worked around it or if YouTube pulled back. The problem with DAI on podcast and in stream ads is that the ads aren’t always 1:05~1:35, the ad could be longer or shorter, then the next ad won’t necessarily start at the same time, and most definitely won’t end at the same time. So sponsor block won’t know precisely where the ads are, thereby making it much harder for a crowd sourced solution to accurately skip embedded ads. Hopefully they figured out a way, but as mentioned earlier, I don’t know what happened to that experiment.
Put it on a VHS, then use one of those VCRs that removes the ads for you.
YouTube had beaten ublock origin for a while so I resolved to using invidious.
I’ve had YouTube Premium since the days when it was called YouTube Red, so like a decade. I’ve grown used to not seeing any ads from Google and anytime I watch a video not using my account it’s torture.
You‘re part of the problem then. It only got so shitty in the first place so they could trap people in the Premium subscription that will get increasingly more expensive and less useful.
Pro tip, LLMs do an excellent job summarizing YouTube videos now. I’ve never liked YouTube content, the incentives for creators are perverse and discourage conveying accurate information simply in favor of drawing out every video to maximize ad opportunities. About 95% of the content I might have been interested in could have been better conveyed in a 1-2 page blog post and read in 2 minutes instead of stretched out into a 15 minute video. Having a robot summarize that content is so much less irritating.
What do you use for that, fetch the transcript and just feed it to the LLM of your choice? Or are you talking of the actual LLM watching and summarizing?
I’ve always just used chatgpt for both tasks. I’ll ask my SO, she does more of this and she might have better tools to suggest.
That‘s where Youtube Premium comes into play for many fools who don‘t really know about adblockers. Google‘s goal isn‘t to destroy the website, but to turn it into a much more profitable Netflix subscription based on user generated content. Sadly the enshittification of the biggest video platform will continue because enough people are willing to pay a lot for it. The site will not improve until there are mainstream alternatives that actually take revenue off Youtube.
It’s so bad that I 1) refuse to pay for premium so I don’t enable the behavior and 2) ended up sideloading an alt YouTube app on iOS that just doesn’t display the ads. YouTube hasn’t been able to block that one yet as it spoofs as the original YouTube app. Totally unsanctioned and a pain in the ass to keep the certificate alive but worth it. YouTube is actually enjoyable again. All that because the ads interruptions were constant. If it was every 15 min or so I wouldn’t care, but every 5!? Get the hell out of here!
Same.
I came across someone who uploaded a 90 minute video as an ad as well.
I remember watching some video, falling asleep for a few hours, then waking up to a livestream of an ad. One of those “skip after 5s” but it was a livestream, so it just kept playing. I couldn’t believe it!
Once upon a time Google used few and non-intrusive ads. The ads were soo well-placed and relevant, that they almost seemed like a service to the user, rather than being forced upon you. Some of us even added exceptions for Google ads in our ad blockers, so we would not miss out.
I miss those days.
That was almost a decade ago or even before. I remember adockers recommending white listing search engines or recommending to disable non-instrusive ads to support websites.
There are some ads that I’m fine with, but they have to be clearly an ad, and related to the content on the site, not based on my previous interactions, nor using tricks to disguise ads as part of the content.
On documentation pages: sure just have a thing related to CS courses, on pirating and streaming sites advertise VPNs, on horny sites advertise horny stuff, and casinos and sports advertise gambling and sports betting. But DON’T make the ad look like a section in the documentation, like another download button, like another horny video on the site, like another casino game or segment of the sports analysis. If I want to explore the ad I will, stop trying to trick me else I will try to block and avoid you entirely! If I figure out that are you spending more effort trying to trick me the less interested I will be in the product you offer.
disguise ads
While the intentions behind this are mostly evil nowadays, there’s also the design aspect to be considered.
Imagine a nice, modern and minimal UI, and suddenly some flashy colorful element in the feed. it just hurts a designers feeling.
I forgot where I heard this::: If there are fewer, more relevant ads, Google and YouTube should be able to make more money with fewer ads.
The advertisers though want more ads even though they are less affective. As it forces the cost per ad down.
It is totally backwards…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then google got greedy and ruined it’s own ad service. Imagine google would’ve stopped at this early point. A single, non flashing banner ad would generate as much as 5 multiple second video ads do now. But ads got used more and more inflationary, to the point where we are now.
Meanwhile these days every time I happen to use Youtube without an adblocker I get the same car insurance ads that I’ve gotten for the last 4 years.
The ads are so obnoxious and frequent. It just kills it for me.
I know the reply I’m gonna get…
I unblock ads on AVForums. And honestly, the ads are either really well targeted (because I’m probably going to buy that amplifier eventually), or random ebay stuff.
If they started serving up the generic “reduce belly fat in 2 seconds with this simple trick” with some AI generated picture, I’d re-evaluate very quicly.
Then they killed the competition and there was nobody left to stop them doing to you with ads what the farmer does with geese to make foie gras.
I’ll never understand the entitlement of these companies when it comes to ads. You send the content freely to my computer along with BS ads. It’s my computer. I’ll display what I want using programs I want.
If you want me to pay for that content with $ or by watching ads - then put up a hard paywall and stop sending the content for free. You can’t get uppity and complain about ad blockers - it doesn’t make any sense…
The real problem is your content sucks and nobody is willing to pay for it. And that’s your problem - not mine.
Here’s some free apples. There’s a newspaper ad stuffed in there as well. Oh you ate the apples without reading the newspaper? Foul ball! /facepalm
Edit: never mind the fact that many ads have been served that are downright malicious code…
I was paying for Google music until they took it away from me and told me it was Youtube Premium and then raised the price twice.
Not exactly what I’d call a great value proposition.
That’s a weird way to look at it, obviously you’re watching the content.
I’d rather see it like this:
-
Free tier with ads
-
Subscription without ads (and better quality)
You are currently on the free tier. Yes, you can block ads (just like you can pirate movies), but that’s not the deal you were offered. I’m using an ad blocker myself, but I can understand the corporate side too.
They absolutely could add a hard paywall, but why should they if there are plenty of users who want to watch for free by paying with ads?
No, I’m on the “you’re freely posting content to the internet - some of which I want to consume(videos), others not so much (ads)” plan. I never asked them to post anything, never entered a contract, etc.
If they lock the content up, and stop freely posting it, then fine, I’ll stop consuming and go elsewhere. If I can’t live without the content, then I can decide to pay up. It’s their content - they can do whatever they want with it. But they can’t get mad at ad blockers if they put their stuff out there for free.
Totally fine by me! But by your logic you can’t get mad at them if they block you from watching due to using an ad blocker. Which brings us back to square one?
Agree 100%. IF they figure it out - which they won’t for more than a day or two. They know the only real solution is to lock their content up and protect it, but they don’t, and then they get bent out of shape. The companies get weird about it - not the users.
I still hold the opinion that they could absolutely block you out. I use uBlock Origin and there was actually a time where I got blocked/warnings every day. Even with upgrading my plugin / refreshing all block lists.
At some point I finally gave in and grabbed YouTube Premium, not because of the ads (I’d rather stop watching than watch with ads), but because I needed their music service (Used Amazon Music before, the app sucked. Music quality was the highest out there though. Also cancelled Prime for a double whammy).
For example the moment an ad gets triggered they could just refuse to send you video data. And if the ad is an unskipable 15 seconds, block playback for 15 seconds. Done. Even if you block this, you get 15 seconds of nothing and will soon be pissed off enough to either start watching ads, buy Premium or leave (no longer costing them bandwidth).
You may be right, but I can’t imagine how they’d actually pull it off. The internet as a medium just doesn’t work that way - there’s always going to be a flag or a call for me to go pull ad data from somewhere else, and someone somewhere will write code that ignores that command.
Great for them if they figure it out, but the medium doesn’t work in their favor. They want the frog to be an elephant, and when it proves to be a poor elephant they cry to the govt. to fix it with laws and dmca takedowns and whatnot. That’s just a waste of taxpayer money, and annoys people on the medium.
Just the way I described, I’m a software developer, it would be easy as hell.
Your browser requests the video, YouTube decides you have to watch an ad. The ad has 15 seconds unskipable. So the easiest thing they could do is not send you video data for 14 seconds (add a spare second for buffering to not piss off users who do watch ads).
Doesn’t matter if you call some endpoint, load the ad data, whatever. You’re not receiving any video for a while, which would piss people off enough to leave.
They definitely couldn’t add a hard paywall. It would collapse the system overnight.
Collapse what exactly? It would actually reduce strain on their servers and provide a better experience for paying users. Obviously they won’t do it because there’s a ton of users who watch ads (think of the average guy who plays YouTube on their phone or TV, with zero adblocking).
Just the revenue of paid subscribers will not pay the bills of any content creator that actually has employees or spends money creating content.
They won’t do it because all of their content would have no alternative but to disappear.
It would be a huge gamble, but it could pay off. Seriously, how many people are watching YouTube every day? Hours of their favorite content creators.
Imagine a rug pull, YouTube is now a pay only service. No ads, but everyone has to pay $5 a month to access. I’d bet with you that a surprising amount of people would just pay that to continue using it.
How many? Nobody knows, but it would certainly be 30% or higher. Now imagine 30% of users paying just $5 a month how much money that would be.
It can be done, YouTube just doesn’t do it right now as they still earn plenty with ads. If suddenly everyone started to use an ad blocker then things would change very quickly.
Nobody knows, but it would certainly be 30% or higher.
This is an insane pipe dream.
You underestimate how addicted people are to YouTube. There is no alternative to it.
Twitch is streaming focused, the vods absolutely suck. Kick? Same.
What else is there? TikTok? Instagram? Neither of which provide long high quality videos.
After all we are talking about YouTube literally blocking everyone and putting up a banner: $5 a month or you’re out of luck. If someone already happily pays $18 a month for Netflix, what is 5 bucks?
They make more money via ads than they ever will with a hard pay wall. The innumerable advertisers paying google/youtube will always pay more than individuals paying for a subscription for no ads.
That’s why people who paid for no ads will eventually end up with ads again, despite paying. They don’t care if we pay or not. They want that sweet sweet ad revenue.
The sad fact of the matter is that we live in an ad based economy. Advertising is more profitable than selling an actual product. Having a platform to sell infinite ad space is a money making machine, plus people making free content for them to lure in more people to watch said ads. It’s super fucked up on youtubes part.
YouTube now exists as a billboard first, content second or third.
And in all tiers: make an additional profit by selling your information without your consent (it has been decided in many courts that burying subtext deeply in forced terms of service isn’t consent)
We are already paying them by letting them harvest our data, ads or not.
Then they double or triple dip with the scenarios you describe. I am still paying them by being on their site with an ad blocker as they harvest my data and sell it to the highest bidder. Not to mention quadruple dipping with using our info and content without consent to train AI to sell.
They use the argument “your data/art/photos/videos are freely posted on the internet, so we can use them how we please”. If they publish content openly on the internet, then we are free to do with it as we please.
They can’t use the argument but say “no no no, it doesn’t apply to things WE put out”
They are either pirating our content and data constantly or ad-blocking is not pirating.
-
Good.
Youtube is a wonderful thing. It’s a wealth of knowledge and resources unlike anything this world has ever seen.
And it’s ran by one of the worst, most predatory corps on the planet.
Perfectly put. The product is great and I love how it democratizes “being on TV” and lets some people make a living doing their own thing.
But I do not like where YouTube’s cut of that ad/sub money goes, and the enshittification pushed into it.
Unfortunately, YouTube is not unique in that regard. It’s a sucky fact of life that just about any complex product you spend money on will benefit a collection of rich sociopaths skimming as much as possible from the incomes of the people actually making the thing. Gotta vote with your wallet where you can, and vote the traditional way for the systemic issues.
i consider unblockable ads to be direct attack on my psyche, trying to worm in and make me think in a way they want. I will never tolerate them and would rather see anything relying on them burn. My mind is my own and no one else has any business influencing me without my permission.
Agreed. It’s a form of cyber terrorism and needs to have an end put to it.
I agree with that… somewhat. Except they are providing a service.
The content is not produced by YouTube, but it is made available by YouTube. There’s a cost to provide that service and value to the consumer for having videos available to watch.
I doubt you want to pay for the service, so how is it supposed to work? What pays YouTube’s costs so we can all keep watching videos for months and years to come?
I get that this comes across as someone simping for YouTube. I’m not trying to do that though. I’m just intrigued by this worldview and would like to understand if there is more to it or if you believe YouTube should not be compensated some other way.
Is it a “Fuck you. I got mine.” mentality where people watching ads and paying premium cover the cost for you to use the service for free? Or is there some nuance I’ve missed?
Nationalize youtube and turn it into a public utility financed by the UN. Create a kind of patreon system that distributes funds to creators similar to how it’s done for music collection agencies.
There are always alternatives, but not until people demand an alternative to constant brainwashing. Right now it’s unthinkable because people insist that there cannot be an alternative and therefor the status quo mustn’t be endangered.
At this stage burning it all down would be preferable although that would never happen until we’re seen widespread system collapse.
Not our problem. They can go the twitch.tv’ish way and add subscription models for people to subscribe and support their favorite content producers and Youtube can take a cut.
Just because they can’t think of a profitable business model other than annoying and exploiting the internet’s userbase while deplatforming, demonetizing and having their own myriad of problems doesn’t mean that’s on us.
Doesn’t mean you’re simping. You have a valid point, but when’s enough enough when they’re squeezing everything out of us for ad revenue and finding new ways to fuck with our psyche/psychological things like Facebook does with its highest paid employee(s) to rake in attention for cost-per-click and cost-per-view? We’re more than just ‘metrics’ and KPIS. We’re humans, we deserve joy. If youtube dies, there’s decentralized solutions out there that can become more mainstream. People can self-host and host their own content.
yup and I’ve always felt just like this even as a kid, fuck ads
They can keep going, it just makes want to leave these platforms for good
Despite all of their machinations my strategy of simply ignoring literally everything they say and continuing doing the same old same old appears to be flummoxing them.
I’ve literally not done anything and have never experienced any inconvenience. Are we sure they’re doing anything at all?
Same, I think they must be AB testing and I don’t get assigned into the shitty group
I definitely got really awful, unplayably spotty playback that seemed linked to adblock usage. Then I saw an article about it and confirmed I wasn’t going crazy, and that day it stopped happening, so it felt like I was going crazy all over again. It’s like the moment they realised it was going to become a problem and they weren’t as sneaky as they thought, they turned it off. I haven’t had an issue since then.
I had the same experience with shitty playback buffering every few seconds on popular videos that should be cached on a nearby cdn, and then saw lots of articles about it and then boom a week later everything was back to normal
That would be quite a funny strategy that they could definitely implement. Creepy as hell but clever.
They know everything you do and look at, so they know if you’re the sort of person that would look up a fix for this or just take it on the nose. If they realize you’re looking at articles about the problem they just turn the function off.
I guess that’s possible, and a very creepy thought, but more likely they saw the level of general attention on the issue and backed off globally.
The kicker there is … Nobody I know is going to think “wow, playback on this video sucks, I should disable my ad blocker”.
Like, it wouldn’t occur to ANYONE I know that a piece of software we consider necessary could be the problem, ESPECIALLY if everything else is working fine.
That’s not even number ten on the list of troubleshooting steps and most people don’t make it past one or two before giving up.
WTF were they thinking?
Honestly it sounds like someone was paid to do something about adblocking and just like… did something. Like if you were tasked with reducing adblocking, and your first and most obvious idea of “reduce the obnoxious ads” was disallowed because enshittification is mandated, you could say no, which most workers won’t do, or you could just do whatever random bullshit feels like it might work because it’s punitive. Or at least it’s a gesture that shows your boss you’re trying.
Authoritarian systems like capitalist corporations are inherently low-information for exactly this reason. People on the low rungs doing the real work who understand what needs to be done will typically not report problems to their superiors. And when they do, those superiors tend not to listen, because the idea that lower workers know something they don’t threatens their leadership status.
Also our society’s legal system trains us to believe punitive measures must do something even though they don’t.
Also I guess another reason they might wind up at this strategy is that straight up telling users that the problem is their adblock is the fastest way to get adblockers to block your countermeasure, so they think they have to be sneaky.
They are definitely AB testing things like rejecting ad blockers.
MBAs are taught they can shape human behavior with decades disproven assumptions.
It’s fallout like this that shows their hand.
“Oh, the customers don’t like it? Fine we do it twice as hard” is fucking Pavlovian training and the executives behind the initiative should be sealed in an underground vault knee deep in hungry roaches.
One time they told me I had 3 days left to enjoy YouTube with my ad blocker, and then I would have to buy premium, or they would just lock me out of the site. I was like “welp, it had a good run, I guess that’s it for ol’ YouTube.”
But then the 3 days went buy and nothing ever came of it.
That tactic probably did get them some preemptive subscriptions though, unfortunately.
I thought I was getting that blank screen long pause before videos, turns out my phone cable was damaged, fixed it and YouTube’s back to normal.
Wait, how would a phone cable cause a symptom like that…?
Maybe they’re using the phone line for their Internet ? Vsdl etc…
I’m guessing some of the wires being broken caused congestion or sonething, I dont know why it did it, I just know once I fixed the cable it was fine.
Was the video signal going through it? Otherwise, sounds more like a coincidence.
100% coincidence
Your phone could have been switching power profiles incorrectly due to your phone rapidly switching between charging and not charging (and perhaps with a low power state depending on battery level).
@ripcord@lemmy.world Just my guess.
And this phone cable damage only impacted youtube lol
No, it potentially impacts cpu power profile (if it’s toggling between AC and DC because of a loose connection)
This would adjust throttling of the cpu, which could impact playback in certain cases, so it’s possible. Likely other apps would be affected but OP was probably most often watching videos while plugged so noticed mostly there 🤷
“Should we moderate our ads and get rid of 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn,scams and fake products?”
“No, no. Thats to much effort. Lets spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to force people to watch our 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn, scams and fake products. Thats clearly the way forward.”
This decision process brought to you by Prager U proceeds into 30 minutes about how slavery was good for the black man and he should be grateful for it
Woah, youtube ads in the US are so much more interesting. Don’t get me wrong, fuck pro slavery propaganda, it’s just completely exotic to someone who only saw bank loan and lame product ads (when visiting parents who use official app on their tv)
Its real funny when you see a video get demonitized because they said a no no naughty word in the first like fe wminutes, but the first advertising you see is literally almost completely nude art of women bouncing around screen for the latest scam mobile game.
Like, Saying Fuck to early in a video is no no bad for the kiddies. but cartoon tiddies 96% uncovered in a 3 minute ads is perfectly okay for the kiddies.
Sounds really healthy
YouTube has been a dumpster fire for many many years now and it continues its slide down.
Patreon would not exist had anyone over at YT had focus beyond the next two quarters.
Sooner or later an actual real contender will be created, and you’ll see YT’s knee jerk reactions with a surprised Pikachu meme in full effect.
Patreon and sites like it exist as a hedge against YouTube banning your channel.
I would love it but I don’t see it.
It costs an enormous amount of money to host video content, doubly so when you need to replicate it across servers. I have never seen another company come close to usurping them.
Yeah, The problem is, the price on YouTube is so incredibly expensive because we have to pay for a million script kiddies worth of useless videos to be uploaded and permanently stored everyday.
If someone made a competing system where you had to pay a small amount to host a video and then it turned around and paid you once you’ve got enough eyeballs that would be a far more sustainable model and cause people to police their old underperforming content.
I agree. We don’t get a new YouTube, we get whatever comes after YouTube—some new modality.
I think its more likely that YouTube will shut down and be replaced by nothing. Its existence has never made sense as anything but an act of charity from an organization with tech resources to burn.
Remember that Google bought YouTube only AFTER it was successful for several years. This was also before Google turned evil.
There are a lot of unprofitable startups that get purchased speculatively based on other factors like their user count. The idea being the buyer thinks they can monetize.
This was more like a merger with Google being the larger company. YouTube was already very successful.
I’d rather not watch YouTube videos at all than videos with ads.
Smarttube stopped working some weeks ago for a day. I tried watching YouTube with ads, the experience was so fucking insane to me. Like multiple, non skipable ads before the video starts + more ads during the video. It just was unwatchable. Its just unusable.
Newpipe still works (Google may break it, but the app is usually updated in a couple days and it works again)
It just didn’t work for a day. They are really fast in patching. But good to know that newpipe is working also an androidTV.
Try grayjay
Here’s my current lineup.
Newpipe Freetube Greyjay Tubular Brave
They get through all those, I’m just going to surf peertube or odysee
I don’t mind one or two of their old 5 second ads, but anything beyond that is unacceptable especially on a 2 min vid.
Good fucking riddance.
The sooner they realize the enshittification isn’t working, and is only increasing the amount of people participating in the largest global consumer boycott ever, the sooner they’ll actually try to improve the platform, or die resisting.
YouTube has continuously made the experience worse, adding more and more ads to users not using ad blockers, to compensate for those using them. Guess what, genius? People block ads because they suck. Adding more won’t stop people from using ad blockers!
And they have the audacity to try selling YouTube Premium for a whopping $14/mo (nowhere near the actual revenue generated from a user watching ads,) then don’t even provide any real benefit past ad blocking, after they deliberately killed YouTube Originals because it didn’t instantaneously bring in immense profits.
And the content creators I personally know have shown me the amount of money they get from Premium users, and it’s sometimes less than the value of an ad-supported user, even though the Premium user generates more revenue than an ad-supported one.
I would pay for YouTube Premium if it was a reasonable rate, and actually came with exclusive content, similar to Nebula, but it doesn’t.
Instead, YouTube has continued to make the interface more and more bloated, slow, and inefficient, and increased the incentives for low-quality, mass-produced content, all while not paying creators enough to support themselves on YouTube’s own platform.
YouTube can’t see itself as being the cause of its own issues, because it’s blinded by bad ad-driven fiscal policy that has only been a proven failure.
Those surfshark maps… ugh. No, I’m not searching for ublock origin. Why would I it’s been installed since time immemorial. You have to measure install base, not search interest. Leave search interest for celebrity gossip.
And the content creators I personally know have shown me the amount of money they get from Premium users, and it’s sometimes less than the value of an ad-supported user, even though the Premium user generates more revenue than an ad-supported one.
Can you expand on this? I don’t follow what you mean here
i read it as - the Premium money is mostly going to YouTube HQ, instead of to video makers.
Every creator I’ve seen talk about it said they get more from Premium viewers, so that’s why I’m confused
I’m not entirely sure myself, but the people I’m talking to have much smaller channels than the ones I often see talking about their Premium earnings, so that may have something to do with it.
I’m not sure if this has an impact as well, but I do know there has also been a lot of users spoofing their locations to regions where the cost of Premium is cheaper (and thus generates less revenue for everyone involved) the vast majority of their viewer numbers are from the US though, so that doesn’t seem to make much sense.
I do believe it can simply vary in terms of revenue-per-view depending on the creator, though.
Regardless, I think that, overall, YouTube and YouTubers would make more money if YouTube didn’t price Premium so high, and actually invested a portion of their profits into original content for subscribers. I have a hard time believing that YouTube is generating anywhere near $168/yr from ad supported users, compared to the monthly Premium subscriber cost.
YouTube’s share of Google’s global revenue is around 10%, but it would need to account for nearly half of Google’s yearly revenue to be earning the same rate as Premium costs, and that’s already including current higher-paying Premium subscribers.
Obviously, not every user is going to be buying Premium if it becomes cheaper, but YouTube isn’t incentivizing Premium users past just “please don’t use an adblocker, pay us instead.” which I think will inevitably lead to them just not converting enough new subscribers.
Enshittification actually does work, but only up to a point. Unfortunately, all the corporations have all the subtlety of a Sherman tank, so they always go all in on it.
YouTube is also aggravating customers who use their official apps by increasing the frequency and length of the ads. In just 4-5 months, I’ve seen YouTube ad lengths on Roku go from 10-15 seconds to 30 seconds, to a minute.
They’re trying to recoup lost ad revenue by pissing off the one demographc most likely to sit in front of the TV the longest.
On rare occasions YouTube will play exceptionally long videos as ads. When YouTube Red came out I got multiple entire hours long shows as ads (as a “free preview!”) I’m pretty sure Ive gotten one of the movies they put up for free viewing as an ad before.
Obviously you can skip after 5 seconds or whatever but they hope to catch someone playing stuff in the background. Probably to increase their crappy view count for those features to sell actual ads later.
I’ve noticed this on my TV’s YouTube app as well. It went from 15 second I shippable ads, to 2 ads where I need to watch at least one and only then can I skip, to sometimes at least 30 seconds before I can skip. It’s worse on the longer video essays that I like watching, where they say “Fewer ad breaks for this long video”, but in reality they have the same amount of ads that you need to watch more of to skip. I absolutely fucking hate it :D
I think they should have included “ad free YouTube” as a perk for their YouTube TV service, which I had for a short while. Instead they wanted you to pay an extra subscription cost for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads.
The dark pattern game they play with the “skip” options and the increasing amount and random placement of ads is really offputting.
Gotta love when the article saying adblock-blocking doesn’t work is itself preceded by a notice to disable your adblocker
They don’t even believe themselves.
Honestly it makes me appreciate Lemmy more. Like we’re all on here enjoying an ad free experience… it’s clearly feasible to do
there are several orders of magnitude difference between text-forums with almost all multimedia content hosted externally, and hosting/streaming video.
a big Lemmy instance is a manageable cost for a few well-paid people to run out of their own disposable income.
anything even vaguely approaching YouTube is not.
The ads have reached a breaking point.
If I can’t block them, I’m just not watching the YouTube. I’ll never pay.
It used to be funny to link a relevant YouTube clip, but it’s not funny if you have to sit through half a minute of ads just to see something silly.
It’s also not really a long time streaming service like TV channels or netflix etc., because the homemade content sucks in comparison to an actual documentary that I can also watch without ads on other services.
It’s like Google completely misunderstood the point of the service they initially made. Also following a decade of users attempting to “monitize” their fucking crap, you can be sure that there’s nothing worth watching on YouTube that couldn’t have been better presented in a gif or in text.
Then the player is also fucking up lately. Usually if I go there, I’ll check the written description while the ads play, just to see if the content is worth the wait, but nooo… you can’t even do that anymore, because the app will start reloading between the multiple ads and the screen scrolls around and minimizes the description and comments. They’re literally hiding any information on the clip except the title until you’ve watched the ads.
It’s fucking garbage. Enshittified to death.
Repeating: Google, if you’re listening: I’ll never pay for YouTube, no matter how intrusive you make the ads. Enshittification is not encouraging me to pay.
Jesus christ i didnt think it was THIS bad. Google really needs that ad revenue lol
Can’t even rickroll people properly now
I’ll stop using YouTube altogether before I disable my ad blocker. My time is simply more valuable than whatever video I’m watching.
Who could have foreseen this? s/
