Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
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Lol it was some Google employee’s job for months to work on this anti AdBlock method and uBlock Origin bypasses it like same day
Don’t assume ineptitude.
I’ve been in the position of being asked to implement an anti-feature. I made it take as long as possible to drive up the cost and designed it to be trivially bypassable because I’m not motivated to intentionally trash my own project.
I don’t know who you are, or what you write, but thank you.
Subterfuge at work, a fun subject to study.
Some of my favorites from a declassified WWII “simple productivity sabotage” manual:
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Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
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Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
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When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
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Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
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Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
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Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
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Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable"and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
When I first saw these I was like goddamn, psyops got to my executive director!
Sounds like how work is done in large corps
Or public administration
Wow, most of these points just sound like a responsible way to handle all the bullshit requests from employees. I’m not saying make it unnessecarily painful for employees to request changes. However, I currently work at a company that did the “just do it” approach for years, got big with it and now our department needs to clean up the bullshit of many years to get the company up to code with whatever regulations we are under and people still think we can continue working just like that.
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“Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.”
See also: lean manufacturing
Sounds like how I buy shoes and jackets.
It’s I think the CIA sabotage handbook
OSS’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944 (declassified)
Good memory, it was the precursor to the CIA.
What’s funny about this is all of this pretty much comes naturally when you’re doing something you don’t want to do without a reason to do it.
Do you know if there is a book (extensive article) which covers that in detail?
CIA sabotage handbook, if I remember correctly
Thanks, I’ll take a look at.
OSS’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944
There’s a link at the top for the full pdf. And do note, OSS is Office of Special Services, the WWII precursor to the CIA - not Open Source Software lol.
Thanks (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
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Destroying them from the inside I see
Not all heroes wear capes, but you are a godsend!
the prejudice, assuming they don’t wear a cape.
I always thought if youtube pushes the anti ad policy too hard they risk alienating the tech people who will end up on another platform which will start growing much faster. What they do is come up with half assed ad blocking. So casual people and people on locked systems like iPhone YouTube app are forced to watch ads.
Anyone not bothered by ads or Lacy enough will make Google money by watching ads. So they’re squeezing as much money without going too far. If they wanted to, they could have ads which would be unblock-able.
Based
Good guy.
90% chance the dev knew and didn’t care
If only they could do the same for Twitch
Adblock solutions still exist for twitch. I’m using one right now. Never seen a single ultra intrusive pre-roll or full screen ad in months. Banner ads occasionally sneak through.
It does break every now and then for a week or so when twitch updates things, but still infinitely better than sitting through ads.
Which addon do you use because I’ve tried like all of them. They still manage to get thru
Ive had to dick around with my adblock settings once every few days lately.
Firefox + ublock origin = I haven’t had to do anything for the last year and stuff just gets blocked with no downsides.
Yeah this is the way. I honestly forgot they had ads until I pulled a video up on my phone to show a friend the other day.
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to clean a condom*
And don’t forget to show your appreciation to the people who maintain that whole shebang - of course, only if you’re able to. Sending here and there 10 bucks, for example to the Newpipe or libretube team - or to your resident open source adblocker - doesn’t hurt, it’s only a few clicks and it really makes a difference.
ublock origin doesn’t accept donations, donate to filter list maintainers instead
How would one do this? I use ublock origin on Firefox, but I’ve started seeing the same pop-ups on YouTube the last few days and would love to get rid of them.
On PC: Click on the little uBlock Origin symbol on the url bar, then click on the little gears in the middle right to go to the dashboard, and then select the Filter Lists tab.
To begin, ensure that the first option, auto-updating filter lists, is turned on unless you have a reason for it to be off.
Then, make sure that you have ALL the ad-related filters turned on, and all the annoyances filters selected as well. Only some are selected by default so you need to look them over carefully. Look over the other filters while you’re at it and turn on any others you’ve missed that you think you might want.
Then, once you have enabled all your desired filters, select “Apply changes” and then “Update Now” via the two large buttons at the top left of the page. You should see all the filters go from an orange triangle to something else. Export your new settings if you want a backup of what you just did, and close.
If a filter list you turned on breaks something, just turn the newly enabled ones off again OR whitelist the broken site. But honestly you shouldn’t have any problems, the uBlock Origin filter lists are pretty fine-tuned these days. I have them ALL turned on, lol.
I’ve done this several times over the last few weeks as I’ve been trying out Linux distros and refuse to use Firefox without ad-blocking. Let me know if you have any problems.
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Great call, thanks for adding that.
We need more people like you in the world.
Sadly it looks like Google/Youtube have now circumvented Ublock again. After implementing the changes you suggested above, it got rid of the pop-ups on Youtube for me for a week, and now they’re back and I can’t get around them even after updating Ublock. Hopefully Ublock gets around these quickly.
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I’m sure that it’ll just be an ongoing battle between Ublock & Youtube both updating themselves to get around the other. I’ve transferred over to watching more & more on Nebula as it’s better for the creators, ad free, and way cheaper than Youtube Premium.
uBO! ublock is unrelated.
I had that problem as well, I had to make sure I didn’t have any other blockers/privacy/enhancer addons that changed YouTube in some way, after that, ublock worked properly again.
Ah, I am also using Sponsorblock. That may be doing it.
That still works for me. I had to disable “Enhancer for Youtube” and the Firefox-internal “Enhanced tracking protection”
You’re right. Sponsorblock still works, but I needed to disable my “Return Youtube Dislikes” extension. After that was turned off, all good!
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Just with these latest new pop-ups that YouTube has implemented within the last couple weeks.
They worked fine in combination with one another until that.
All the morons defending a mindless corporation in this thread forgot that Google has far overstepped it’s boundaries in general. It got to where it is from harvesting free data from users. And now is initiating a web DRM that will far overstep any boundary seen. If a website decides to adopt it, everyone is screwed.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Tbh, I block ads when I can but have a hard time getting angry about this. YouTube is both incredibly useful and incredibly expensive to operate – seriously, what other service lets you upload hours of HD video which anyone in the world can access instantly, indefinitely, for free, and at the same scale YT does? It’s a peerless engineering marvel and it would be a tragedy if it were to shut down. If seeing some short skippable ads is what it takes to keep that resource viable, that’s honestly pretty fair.
I just pay for YouTube Premium. It gets me YouTube Music, so for slightly more than the cost of Spotify I get music streaming and ad-free YouTube, and the channels I watch on YouTube get more value out of my streaming than if I watched with ads. And far more than if I watched with an adblocker.
Google Play Music was so much better than YouTube Music, unfortunately, but YouTube Music is still usable.
I understand that everyone hates ads. I hate ads, too. But video streaming and content creation aren’t free. I want to support the platform and support the creators whose content I enjoy, and I don’t want ads. So YouTube Premium seems like the easy option.
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I’ll admit I make good money. I work in software.
But I’ve been paying that since before I was making good money. Again, this is my music streaming platform. I would be paying $10/month to Spotify if I weren’t paying $14/month to YouTube.
(Actually I looked into my subscription while typing this, and I’m still paying the grandfathered price of $9.99/month for YouTube Premium. Pretty sweet, that.)
FYI, that grandfathered price goes away after December
That’s a shame, but the benefits still outweigh the cost in my mind. I hate ads, so what I get out of a YouTube Premium subscription is far more than what I get from Netflix or Max.
(And I realize I can get all of this for free by going around the TOS, but if I have the money I might as well support the service.)
Not really being reasonable. I don’t make much above min wage but buy YT Premium
Its reasonable for a lot of us
AdGuard and Vinegar on safari, uYouPlus from Altstore
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But your “solution” sounds like you don’t contribute at all. Especially none of the content creators gets a dime out of your consumption.
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Using AdGuard and Vinegar to use YouTube in Safari, I can’t remember when I last saw an ad. It’s not ideal, but it works well enough.
Ads should be separate from content and not interfere with it. Ad blockers likely wouldn’t be a thing if this were followed. Also, ad networks are a security issue. Host them on your own servers with relationships with advertisers if you must have them.
The way ads are displayed effects how effective they are which in turn effects how valuable they are. More people turning to adblockers reduces the effectiveness of the ads and devalues the advertising method as a whole, more adblockers being used, lower effectiveness. YouTube then has to resort to putting in effort to combat adblockers which itself costs even more, ads have to become more intrusive to retain their value so YouTube can maintain it’s own servers and pay it’s content creators and it becomes an endless cycle of “fuck you I want your service for free and you are trampling my rights for trying to profit off me using your product”. In return all YouTube asks of you to obtain an ad-free video watching session for a month is $4 ($22/month split among 6 users)
I would have more sympathy for Youtube if 1. it wasn’t the de-facto standard where essentially all video media gets uploaded to (which Youtube itself has done everything in its power to make happen) and 2. the company that owned it didn’t also own the most popular phone OS, most popular search engine, most popular email provider, most popular ad network, most popular maps, most popular online office suite, most popular airline booking, 2nd most popular cloud hosting… The list goes on
Until a federated solution like peertube gains more traction I have no problem paying content creators directly via patreon, and do everything in my power to not pay Google a dime. Trust me, they can afford it just fine.
The tragedy is that the centralized, profit-driven, socially-damaging platform keeps so much value under ransom because the parent company can operate it for so long at a loss.
I get that the platform is a marvel, it’s just disappointing that its purpose is tailored to keep eyes watching more ads rather than contribute to society as a whole.
I only looked into blocking ads sometime around like 2014-2016? I was perfectly fine with them for a very long time, they got more and more invasive and poor quality to the point I looked into blocking them. Haven’t gone without an ad blocker ever since. No way in hell am I dealing with the current state of YouTube ads which are drastically worse than what pushed me to start blocking them to begin with.
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Just like a few of the other posts, I honestly don’t get it. If they can’t sell your data and can’t serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free? There’s so many people complaining how YouTube has a monopoly and how it’s not even that hard to run, but I seriously doubt these people. Transcoding video and distributing it worldwide while having automated moderation is not easy or cheap. If there were serious contenders in the space people would have moved on, and I don’t think it’s just the network effect that keeps YouTube as a dominant player here.
People despise ads, but then they want content for free. They use adblockers to bypass a primary revenue source for a website, then go all surprised Pikachu face when that website doesn’t welcome them. And then they get upset that they don’t want to be the product despite not willing to be a source of ad revenue. I’m willing to pay for YouTube premium (and other subscription models to get rid of ads), but a lot of people aren’t. And honestly, I really would rather those people simply leave the site. It would lower operating costs for YouTube (I don’t expect my subscription fees to go down but maybe their engineers will have more free time to work on features besides adblocker-blocking), and more people on different sites would lead to more competition.
If you aren’t willing to eat ads, and you aren’t willing to be the product, and you aren’t willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you’re entitled to content?
People despise ads, but then they want content for free.
You have it perfectly backwards: YouTube wants content for free, and to not have to share any but the most pitiful fractions of ad income with the ACTUAL content creators.
YouTube does not produce content, others do. YouTube has gone out of its way to dick the vast majority of them, especially the smaller ones, to the point that as such, unless you have a Patreon, a website or store of your own, corporate sponsors, merch, or some other side hustle in addition to making YouTube content, you’re literally making content for a fraction of a penny per view, and entirely at your own cost.
And even then, you’re subject to an algorithm over which you have no control and which can just as fickly ban your content to oblivion as it can raise your content to the multi-million views club. By skipping YouTube ads and finding other ways to support the content creators I enjoy, I help give my creators a financial buffer from the unpredictable vagaries of the algorithm and also withhold reward from YouTube as well.
When YouTube shared ad revenue with content creators in a much more equal fashion, I did not have a problem with their ads. But several years ago – I want to say six or seven, but it’s been going on for at least ten – YouTube got greedy with the ads AND with becoming incredibly unstable and unreliable for creators in all manner of ways AND decreasing payouts to creators all along the way, at which point it became clear that me watching an ad or not no longer affects the content creators I enjoy at all. And they are the only reason I am on YouTube to begin with.
(And don’t get me started on all the copyright/demonetization scams there are on YouTube now: I have a friend who got a copyright strike for playing a C scale on a piano because some asshole claimed it and YouTube lets them do it: even when a creator gets views, they can get demonetized at a drop of a hat even for obviously ridiculous claims, and then that revenue goes to the person making the copyright claim. Win/win for everyone except the person who actually made the content.)
Over the years, YouTube has never failed to excel at two things: server space, and fucking its golden geese, the creators of the actual content, without which no one would be making any money there at all. So get back to us when YouTube recognizes the creators of the gold mine they have in the content hosted there, and once again finds a way to respect for the amount of time and effort and cost that goes into creating that content by sharing revenue with content creators in a more equitable manner.
TL;DR: Why should I watch ANY YouTube ads at all when I can support content creators via Patreon or a creator’s website and know that a much more equitable amount of that revenue will go straight to the creator of that content, where it belongs?
YouTube still pays creators pretty high comparatively (55% of ad revenue according to https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-influencers-get-paid-on-instagram-tiktok-youtube). You are simply getting a service (hosted, searchable, collection of the largest collection of web videos in an extremely nice interface) that costs money even outside of the creator’s cost. For creators they are allowing that 45% cut of ad revenue to get access to the YouTube audience, paid hosting that simply works, nice creator tools, etc.
You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate, but the evidence is that there aren’t many alternatives that do better. Today we do have things like PeerTube (which I think all creators should consider selfhosting with ads/subscriptions and federating the free stuff after a delay) and joining creator owned video services like Nebula (which could be made even better with federation). Unfortunately, with both you run into the discoverability problem, something creators and their audiences are paying to solve when you are hosting on YouTube.
I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you - why should you pay for internet service when it’s the content of the videos you watch not the wires that deliver it that have value? If you hacked around your neighbors WIFI to get some free network access, you could zero-cost get something you might not necessarily want to budget for, and you get quite a nice service out of it. Why shouldn’t that be okay when you still Patreon the creators of your videos given your reasoning about YouTube providing no value?
You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate . . .
I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you . . .
why should you pay for internet service . . .Yeah, except I didn’t say that, nor any of the other strawmen you erected to slam down.
What asinine aggrandizements and distortions. “Why should you pay for internet service” lol. (Reading your response I am momentarily rethinking it, certainly.)
Get back to me when you can address what I actually wrote, and not what you need me to have written. Thanks.
I honestly don’t get it. If they can’t sell your data and can’t serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?
They shouldn’t. If they can’t figure out how to make money with it they should close it down. If they insist on thinking about it as a product and it doesn’t make money, it’s a product that doesn’t make sense and should not exist. If the only way you can make people use your product is by giving it away, what does that tell you about it?
They could lock down the platform behind paywall but they don’t want to do that. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all the free videos being uploaded but they don’t like all the free viewers. Unfortunately they go hand in hand.
If you aren’t willing to eat ads, and you aren’t willing to be the product, and you aren’t willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you’re entitled to content?
You’re overthinking things. I click one button once and I never see ads, for years at a time without needing to tweak it at all. This is also completely free to set up and completely legal.
The fact of the matter is that this technology exists, and they can do nothing to stop it. Despite this, they continue to rely on the ad supported model. Curious, no?
then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?
Because if I post a link to a video and as a result someone sees an ad —or better, signs up for premium—then boom, they just made a profit. There is of course a critical threshold of adblockers where this no longer works but we’re not near it yet so they won’t change their revenue model.
Note: I am not taking a moral high ground here, just pointing out how it works. Yes, you are subsidizing me, thanks for that.
Well, the devil is in the details. People like you, who has actually figured out how to use an adblocker properly for YouTube, and me, who is willing to actually pay for YouTube premium (you’re welcome for the subsidy), surely form a small proportion of the actual number of YouTube content consumers.
Maybe I’m wrong, but my view is that the majority of users just want to watch videos without having ads and they aren’t willing to devote time (for adblockers) or money (for subscription services) and are completely ignorant that they are the product regardless. And those users act like they are entitled to content and that leaving YouTube is somehow significant to the big picture.
I totally agree. I am a Youtube Premium user for this exact reason. No ads means less financial incentive to track me (I remember a statistic where one user was worth 4cents per year, could be wrong about the exact number though). In a perfect world we would habe monetization networks instead of ad networks, on a pay per view or subscription model instead of ads. This would not only make the companies more money, but also reduce the incentive for them to track you (I would even claim that unnecessary tracking would hurt their business).
We can either have a free (as in no costs) or a free (as in liberty) internet, not both
They are still tracking you though. Removing ads is a reason to pay for YouTube premium, but it’s not to get less tracking. Less tracking is not the selling point or service offered by YouTube premium.
They’re definitely still tracking their premium users, I agree. But my counterpoint is, what business, online or not, doesn’t track me? If I go out and buy something at a retail store I’m gonna bet my ass I’m being tracked. If I don’t want to be tracked, then I should be making sure information I consider to be sensitive is not being exposed. If there is no reasonable expectation to privacy in the public, then I think it’s fit that there’s no reasonable expectation to privacy when I’m surfing the internet.
Read the comment I responded to. They said YouTube premium provides them with less incentive to track them. I’m informing them that is not the benefit of paying for YouTube premium. Too many people mistakenly believe paying means they stop being the product.
In a sense I agree with that piekay though. If they can’t serve me targeted ads on YouTube they lose that money trying to develop technology to track me in that regard. How much money that is I guess is hard to say, since the tracking on YouTube certainly can carry over to other parts of Alphabet.
I’m not sure how having a paid account is supposed to lead to less tracking when the algorithm meant to push viewers into a viewing loop is made possible by tracking. Accounts with more information make for more useful demographic data.
Not having ads is a benefit of YouTube premium, but less tracking is not a benefit when there is a reason to track even without ads. For better products and surveillance. There is less reasons to not track.
That’s because they still have a financial incentive to do so: Google doesn’t offer a fully paid version of their service
What angers me is the capital deciding to control everything. Enshittifying ads, pushing narratives, censoring valuable content. If it were a worse service but with better owners, I’d pay more.
Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Luxembourg, and others have it as part of law that Works Councils get 33% of the seats on the board of directors, and employees are elected to take up those roles. In Slovenia, Germany, and Slovakia, it is as high as 50%. That’s the kind of ownership we should demand and then some, where average people get to have a say in what’s going on at YouTube. Then maybe we’d get more ethical business decisions and choices we’d be more on board with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors
This reminds me of how certain universities in the US allow space for Student Senate representatives so that the student body directly has influence on the outcomes of the university. Great idea really
Wow I didn’t know. Thanks!
If google cant afford youtube, they could sell it. But they easily can, so Im not losing sleep over the $2 a week they lose from me.
Or, alternatively, if the ads were reasonable, next to no one would feel any real obligation to block them. But they arent, so why should I be concerned about the sites funding?
Like, google isnt some poor struggling indie dev who cant make ends meet. Im not exactly overflowing with sympathy for their business decisions. Theyre the reason adblock is required for modern internet use.
Perhaps ads become more unreasonable because so many people block them that those who do watch them are forced to pick up the slack?
No, it’s just following the curve, until their metrics show them that people stop watching they reduce the number of ads 10% until next cycle.
They have been using the frog boiling method, and crossed my limit like two years ago, when they went from a 5 second ad each x videos to two ads for every video.
When businesses are required to increase profits by 30% every year to not be seen as a failure, they would increase the ads no matter how many of the users watch them.
Nah…the cable company charges you to watch commercials , cell phone providers charge you to sell your data…on and on
The issue is that ads on YouTube used to be fairly innocuous. Now I get batshit conspiracies pushed, non-stop Aussie gambling ads and so on.
Where I was once happy to sit through some food ads, or some tourism ads to support the platform. I’m not happy being blasted with non-stop, low-quality propoganda.
Granted the $22 family plan for me and my wife has worked well. We both use youtube music extensively as well. It’s the only streaming service I pay for, the only other subscription I have is for a VPN.
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YouTube is greedy. They make plenty of money without stuffing in more ads and pulling crap like this. I don’t use an ad blocker, but I’ve considered it (or just dumping YouTube completely) because they have really ramped up the ad interruptions. I’d subscribe if they had a cheap YouTube-only plan. But they don’t. You either have to pay for bundled music or TV and I don’t want or need either.
Yes, there are business costs, but they don’t produce the content they air, and their payout to those who do produce the content is a relative pittance. Their infrastructure is shared among other Google products, so it’s not like they’re having to pay for all their server racks out of a single budget. And I’m sure Google is trying to figure out how to train AI on all the content that’s posted there. Not to mention all the pirated content posted to YouTube that Google is making money from, without compensating the creators or copyright holders.
If was running a competing business like Facebook, or Amazon, I would seriously consider ramping up a competing product.
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The amount of ads on YouTube only seems to get more and more invasive over time. And I’d have less of a problem with them if they didn’t keep showing me the same ads over and over and over again.
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Even with all that, I would pay (subscription wise, not like I haven’t rented/bought movies from them) if I actually knew where the money was going. YouTube is surely expensive to operate, but we don’t know how much money it costs to actually run it vs how much money is extracted via executives and shareholders.
If you read around you’ll find (perhaps surprisingly to you) that YouTube operates at a loss. So in response to your points:
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You can pay to get the ads removed. They make less money off of you when they can’t serve you ads, and I’m sure they’re trying to operate at less of a loss.
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Alphabet is a public company, and it must release certain information about YouTube. Anyways, I’m pretty sure they aren’t using the money to directly line the shareholder profits. The reality of it is that it’s probably just another arm that Alphabet uses as part of its monopolistic tech deathgrip, so it’s not gonna be a straightforward computation. Maybe Disney could be used as a metaphor here?
If you don’t wanna pay to support that, I don’t exactly blame you. But practically, I don’t really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return. Either you eat ads, you pay for a subscription, or you become the product (unfortunately this last point might be true irregardless).
Basically every tech company “operates at a loss” because of overzealous growth and money going to their investors/parent company/shareholders. I’ve never seen a detailed breakdown of any tech company’s financials released publicly, so I doubt there’s any way to prove this one way or another.
They make less money off of you when they can’t serve you ads
Genuinely I’d be interested in seeing a source for this since every metric I’ve seen from third parties is that ad free purchases gives them waaaaaay more money per user compared to the tiny RPU from ads. But maybe Google being its own ad provider changes that
But practically, I don’t really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return.
Never said I was owed anything by them, just that I have no moral or ethical qualms continuing to use adblock on a giant corporation
Where do you read that Youtube is operating at a loss? The last article I can find mentioning that is from something like 10 years ago.
In the last few years they have split Youtube income out of the overall income and it’s not like they aren’t making money with it - roughly $7B in the last report I can find.
Let’s not forget that the strategy of operating at a loss is arguably anticompetitive and monopolistic - not every company has the luxury of doing that, making it extremely difficult to compete against them. Seems pretty clear, with the incessant ads, that they’ve accomplished the first step in that and are rounding the corner to extracting capital from their users now. So they’re not exactly a benevolent actor in this either.
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The problem is that YouTube went from “short skippable ads” to almost all ads. It also is a major invader of privacy.
Reminder that YouTubers control how many ads are on a video and until last year or so you could even host video and have it served to millions with zero ads. Now the minimum is one skippable pre roll but like shit costs money to serve 20 million people an hour log 4k video.
I share the same sentiment but I can see why someone might want to not support Youtube in any way because they don’t want to support Google’s stranglehold on the internet. Unfortunately the correct way to address that problem is sensible regulation. Call me skeptical, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.
Agreed. I’ll fuck around with the workarounds for as long as they work but once YouTube truly manages to make adblocking a complete headache I’ll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium. I’ve been watching tens of thousands of hours of ad-free content on that site for as long as it has existed. I can’t, with a straight face, complain about the fact that they would like to make some money from it too.
I’ll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium
I’ve thought about doing this, but worry about it fucking up my recommendations, which I’m actually pretty happy with. Do you know if that’s an issue?
I don’t know, but I doubt it’s an issue. Your recommendations are probably mostly based on your watch history and not location.
My problem is that I paid for YouTube premium, for “an ad free experience” in their words. Then I immediately had an ad for paramount plus embedded under my video.
So I canceled and they can go fk themselves. I was willing to support them directly, but they straight up lied about what I was buying from them.
Look at all the free image / video services that either never took off or went bust. Especially streaming is quite expensive and isolating only this single aspect of Youtube - cost to operate: what do people expect? Everybody wants few to no ads at all and no subscription either.
As I said, I don’t want to even touch any other topic here like Youtube’s (perceived) quality or their (spicy) business decisions. If you don’t like the product, don’t use it. There is no right to free consumption of entertainment videos. Imagine paying for a taxi like you (don’t) pay for Youtube.
And if you know better, start your own platform.
I think we attribute different meanings to the word “tragedy”. Stuff such as tutorials and documentaries (and, you know, books…) have existed well before YouTube was even conceived and will exist after it disappears, not taking into account that 90% of YouTube is just clickbaity videos with the stupid “surprised face” thumbnail anyway. YouTube is given too much credit for what it is and it is frankly overrated as a source of reliable information.
The real tragedy is the unhealthy addiction to YouTube of such a huge amount of people seem to have developed.
LBRY does.
“You can go ad free with YouTube premium!”
Buys premium
youtube shows ad for paramount plus under my video
Cancels YouTube premium.
So anywho there’s a thing called freetube. Just saying. Idk that it’s a perfect alternative, but it’s at least one step further from googles prying eyes and grubby hands.
So, stop using Chrome ffs, ublock and Firefox have zero issues
YouTube: starts putting 2, sometimes even 3 ads that are often unskippable before and in the middle of 10 minute videos
Also YouTube: Why are people using adblockers?
Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.
If you’re on PC use Firefox with uBlock Origin.
For Android, Im personally using Libretube but using mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin also works.
PC: Install Firefox. Then install these extensions: Sponsorblock for YouTube, Enhancer for YouTube, uBlock Origins with all the filters turned on except the language filters (you can use them if you wish) and Return YouTube Dislike. Keep uBlock Filters updated by checking for filter updates once a day.
Android: There’s Revanced. I use pre-built apks along with Vanced MicroG from RVX Lite in Telegram.
Android TV: Install SmartTubeNext.
Enjoy.
Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.
Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Give me “pretty much everything” for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.
Lmfao, no one is dropping YouTube. You’ll be back one way or another.
You don’t have a choice.
Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.
When they take out uBlock Origin, they take me out as well.
Here’s an interesting idea: pay for what you consume. We can argue whether ads or a YouTube Premium are a fair price, but I don’t think you’d have a moral or legal leg to stand on if your argument is that Google must provide you with hosting and streaming for free.
You are consuming resources on Google’s computers. I think they have a right to ask for payment.
To me, the ad tracking industry is completely out of control, and I’m not going to disable my ad blocker. So I signed up for YouTube Premium.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here… Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I’m not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I’m not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it’s only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don’t want to see and you don’t want to pay for it, then please, don’t use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.
Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.
I’ll start giving a shit about youtubes bottom line when youtube starts caring about the creators bottom lines. Youtube fucks creators so god damn hard.
Just look at this for example’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QtwGfILTo
Jesus Christ, man. I said Youtube isn’t perfect. It’s a fucking corp. They should burn the board of directors at the stake. HOWEVER, creators still rely on payment from them.
And??? Nobody owes anybody a fucking ad view. If you like the channel there are many ways to support most if not all.
Patreon, other donation venues, shit even fucking memberships on or off YT. You say you aren’t shilling yet you desperately want their ad campaigns to continue pushing forward?
You don’t have to give YT any data, look at Piped and other alts
And the creators know how Google could pull the rug at any moment. This is why they also have sponsorships, which is a more stable revenue stream not dictated by Google’s greedy whims.
Okay it’s clearly imperfect but I don’t see other similar platforms doing any better (most are doing much worse, e.g TikTok/Twitch)
A decentralized alternative would be nice but, I don’t see many ad-block users out here donating their own $ to these projects
That is because Google just buys up any competition they can.
hurts the content creators first
Ehhhh I’m not so sure. Adblockers don’t stop on-air reads, for starters. I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I’m also not sure it’s impacting the creators as much as it impacts YouTube’s vacuuming our telemetry data.
That’s where everyone gets ad data wrong. Youtube doesn’t really care if you watch an ad or not. The ad buyers do, and so Youtube keeps them happy by doing things like disallowing adblockers, but Youtube doesn’t give a shit about BolexForSoup. Your age, your sex, your location, and the last time you upgraded the Macbook you are logging onto their site with, that’s what they want to know. They want to sell your data, not you. They will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to the pile and sell the whole pile. No one will care who you are. You are the product, and Youtube just needs to make sure your ingredient label is correct.
They charge ad buyers per imoression. They care if you see and especially if you click on the ad.
Exactly. And I like to keep it as opaque as possible! If a creator does an ad read, I watch it. Idgaf.
Look at what you’re defending.
I’m not defending anything, I’m stating fact.
Adblockers don’t stop on-air reads, for starters.
And you know what? I watch on-air reads, when they’re good. Simon Whistler does a great job, so does Aging Wheels, and Jay Foreman, and a bunch of others. You want me to watch an ad, all you have to do is make it entertaining. That’s clearly possible, because some people do it.
I liked youtube more back when it was random personally created videos, not ‘creators’ making commercial content pretending to be run out of someone’s basement.
Yeah, my favorite YouTube content has been the type that are just random uploads from people who don’t even post frequently or ever again, and just sharing something because they thought it was cool along the vein of reddit and lemmy. So doesn’t have that whole artificial production vibe and intentionally lengthened videos with begs for likes and so on, since there was no monetization motive to begin with.
Crappy thing is that those type of videos are suppressed and hidden by the algorithm that pushes the big channels to the top in searches. YouTube really pushes the personality/influencer driven content for obvious reasons, but it’s why I haven’t really fallen into the YouTube hole of endlessly watching it.
There’s still an enormous amount of great content on youtube. You don’t need to watch the commercial shit.
I know, but there is more crap to filter out and fewer opportunities to stumble across little gems.
That is just because there is a whole of a lot more content.
There are even more little gems out there now than we did before.
Idk I never had issues with that. My recommendations are pretty good and relevant generally.
Youtube gets free content that it has full rights to use however it likes. Google takes that free content and uses it everywhere on the internet, to make fistfuls of cash. The ads are just bonus garnish.
I really dont care about youtubes bonus garnish, no matter how hard you “totally arent shilling, guys!”
yousay free but none of the operations and technology that support the possibility to even receive and globally distribute that content along with the plethora of features are free, nor free to run.
Oh no, what?? Youtube has to pay to keep the thousands of free hours of content it harvests daily??? Oh gosh, why didnt you say so? God forbid there be upkeep costs for being given content worth literally millions of dollars in entertainment value, production cost, and overall manhours absolutely scott free!
Oh side note, did you know of all the areas of tech, data compression and storage have progressed as one of the fastest? You can fit a terrabyte and more into a card the side of your pinkie, with no loss of quality or information.
Gee wizz, I wonder if the largest company on the internet who makes money not really by running ads but actually by scraping and selling user data knows about that?
Crocodile tears, dude. No one gives a shit about the upkeep costs, google will happily pay the pennies it costs to maintain in exchange for more user data patterns they can sell. The ads are a garnish to buff out the yearly portfolio.
You should educate yourself on the topic. theres really more to it than “how much storage can fit on an sd card.” operating at the size and scope of youtubes database and userbase really is a challenge and considering how smoothly youtube runs for the most part isnt “pennies” worth of operating cost
Plus, its already known from their earnings reports that youtubes profit mostly comes from ads
Youtube the subsidiary, yeah. Because youtube the subsidiary does not do any data selling. Alphabet does. Alphabet is also the ones paying for every single step in the youtube process.
Because they make their money selling data. Not ads.
For someone telling others to educate themselves on the topic, you really dont understand how corporate earnings works, huh?
can you provide a source for alphabet paying for youtubes operating costs? i work for a subsidiary of a different rather large it consulting company (80k+ members) and we very much do and have our own budgeting because we are a profit generating subsidiary
odd that alphabet would pay for youtube’s operating costs since youtube operates at a multi-billion dollar profit.
and i apologize for presuming youre not educated in the industry. it actually came off worse than i meant. just some of your comments just do not align with my experience in the industry.
Not a source I can cite without risking a friends job, which isnt worth an internet argument.
Alphabet wants youtube making profit, obviously, but they are a data selling business. They didnt buy youtube up because they wanted a cut of their ad market. They shunt data upstream like its their primary job. And from my understanding? Thats exactly how youtube is viewed internally.
So, yeah, Im not really pressed about ad blockers. The company has no funding issues.
This is why you don’t use YouTube at all and use Piped or similar services.
Fuck YT and fuck their strong-arming ad bullshit.
I would say that ads like YT’s are the kind that pushed adblockers into being popular. Well, that and redundant/audio/popups ads that are annoying. Sometimes I turn off the adblocker and generally it’s an immediate mistake.
I know it wouldn’t be a large portion of content (though having control over the final look could widen the appeal), but I think Google could’ve gotten vector content supported in HTML5 spec (in collaboration with software, and maybe some kind of automated conversion to hybrid video) and thus supported on YT. It can be significantly less data for high-fidelity visuals, and unlike rendered video it’s the same data for 720p as it’d be for someone with a 16K monitor or whatever in 20+ years from now.
Actually reducing costs in this manner would probably be too generous to competitors, just as Flash being killed off was good for YT. AV1 does help, but is still likely a big resource cost to store/serve at 4K+ (or just in general) not to mention re-encoding hardware and knowledge needed.
Kinda just like how WEBGL tech didn’t actually include a container format (the reason why so much Flash content was easily archived by normal people) as it does not benefit content hosts to allow downloads (even if it’d lower cost of repeat viewings particularly by users who don’t actually provide the host with revenue).
Its not free. They harvest your data and sell that. Ad revenue is secondary. And all of this is ran by the most powerful company in history. Adblock doesnt even put a dent in Google’s profits. And content creators? Ad revenue is basically dead now that YT is pushing for child friendly content. And they make millions in corporate deals and have patreons and direct donations in addition to being able to work a stable job in addition to making videos.
This isnt being “owed” anything. Im already paying with my privacy.
And even if I wasnt already paying, fuck Google. Evil company that more than deserves loosing the $0.02 my ad viewership would have earned.
Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.
Not really. Youtube is already profitable. They’re trying to test if people’s standards are low enough for them to make even more profit.
The fact you think this equates to ‘owed everything for free’ just shows me what a proud rube you are.
Fuck off.
I guess it’s true what Mark Twain said. It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled.
It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled.
And it’s easier to believe an idiom is true if you believe someone famous said it. I think Wayne Gretzky came up with that one. Maybe it was Micheal Scott.
It actually doesn’t matter who said it.
But of course you’re going to try and deny it’s true because it applies to you, ironically further proving its legitimacy.
Gonna block you now.
I hope you actually do, because I would love to know you’ll never be able to throw stupid mis-attributed quotes at me again. God forbid we have any original thoughts anymore.
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