There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

DragonConsort ,

Invidious works absolutely great as an alternative way to access all the content uploaded to YouTube. No ads at all and a way better search function.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

…until they block APIs which is also in progress right?

orcrist ,

Of course that’s true, but in the medium run the site is destroying itself through enshittification. We don’t need to care about that, as long as we can access the videos we want to access for the time being.

In other words, I completely agree with you, and it’s not a scary message.

Maeve ,

They are now blocking content from playing, on one and loading on the other.

coffinwood ,

So you neither pay with money nor by watching ads for a very expensive to maintain service, but you won’t leave it be either.

I know I’m making myself Unpopular here, but what is it that you’re bringing to the table? Currently you cost YouTube money because streaming video is really expensive. You block out all the ads so every creator is cut off monetization too. This is not a publicly funded library (yet).

LazerDickMcCheese ,

Your words are poopoo

TragicNotCute ,
@TragicNotCute@lemmy.world avatar

Streaming data is expensive, but when you’re vertically integrated to the point Google is, it starts to get significantly cheaper. I’ve been paying creators directly through Patreon for literal years now, and I’ve said before I’d be happy to pay for my usage on Google (including a markup), but paying a flat fee and giving a handful of creators a watch a few cents while Google keeps the lion’s share isn’t good enough for me.

Sabata11792 ,

It’s not my job to fit into a mega corporations business model.

coffinwood ,

as long as it’s not your salary that gets ad-blocked.

Sabata11792 ,

Thats an HR issue at a mega corporation I don’t work for. Not my problem they are mismanaged and poorly scaled.

Bonesince1997 ,

I love that their warning is an admission of failure

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Am I the only one that pays for YouTube Premium? I get not wanting to pay for things. I don’t feel bad for Google here, but I also don’t understand what people expect. The government happily subsidizes Musk to litter outerspace. Maybe the government should be subsidizing YouTube?

kitnaht ,

You might want to watch this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE

lawrence OP ,

Did you mean this? yewtu.be/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE

mle86 ,

I want to pay for the content on youtube and I believe that the creators deserve it as well as I understand that the platform costs money. But the UX is so bad and youtube very obviously does not care at all about their viewers, that I morally just can’t justify giving them money for that level of service.

sharkfucker420 ,
@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml avatar

Use newpipe or freetube and just send the creators you watch most that money. Google can go fuck themselves

MrVilliam ,

I’m okay with seeing an acceptable level of advertisement. Content creators have ad reads within their videos which are skippable, and they’ve resorted to that because YouTube doesn’t pay very well. It used to be that you’d get a short ad at the start of every video or two, and maybe another short ad per 7 minutes or so. Now, it’s pretty common for every video to have at least 20 seconds of ad before starting and another 10-30 seconds of ad every 3-5 minutes or so. I like watching on my PS5 while doing chores, so I’m subject to all of these ads. I actually have fully abandoned videos halfway in because of ads that were 60 seconds before I would have the option to “skip” the ad.

I pay for enough things in my life that I was okay with the trade-off of the ads on YouTube. Now, it’s (no joke) about 5 minutes of ads interrupting a 20 minute video, and there’s usually a 2 minute ad read within that 20 minute video, so really 7 minutes of ads per 18 minutes of content. But it’s not really 18 minutes of content because there’s an intro, an outro, and a “remember to like, comment, subscribe, and smash that bell” bullshit too. It’s roughly 2:1 ratio of actual content to ads and fluff. I’m not fucking paying to take it from 2:1 to 3:1 and they can eat my entire asshole for even suggesting such a thing. Maybe instead of trying to hold eyeballs ransom with the choice of either subscription payments or and overabundance of ads, they should charge for uploading videos to their servers. Sound like a terrible idea? Then I’m sure they’ll do it within 5 years. Because fuck everybody, that’s why.

Fuzzy_Red_Panda ,

Yep. Google treats their service like television, but it’s not television. We all watch the videos on computers and computers are owned by users and each user gets to decide what their computer does, full stop.

The ad model for youtube will always be circumvented by the fact that our computers can run whatever code we want it to (despite Microsoft’s and Apple’s efforts). If that means that youtube goes subscription only, so be it. If that means youtube can’t sustain itself as a business with ad revenue, then so be it. It would mean that decentralized alternatives gain popularity and it would most likely be to the benefit of everyone who isn’t a corporation.

Youtube has a stranglehold on creativity, open speech, and fair use. Youtube will demonetize a video for saying too many swear words. They’ll demonetize or restrict a video for talking about non-sexual lgbt content. They’ll take down legal and legitimate videos for copyright infringement even though it’s fair use.

Youtube is bad for creators and it’s bad for users.

reddig33 ,

I’d pay for it if they didn’t overcharge so much. Their content is provided to them for free, but they charge more than Netflix to distribute it. Fuck that.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

But in theory they’re paying for that content out of Premium subscriptions.

Probably not enough, but that’s supposed to be part of what it’s for.

Kolrami ,

YouTube ad tier: $0
Netflix ad tier: $6.99
YouTube premium: $13.99
Netflix standard: $15.49

Huge caveats incoming.

They don’t charge more than Netflix, but most of their content is definitely provided to them for free. On top of that, most of YouTube’s original content is behind their premium subscription paywall. I tried to see how many of their originals shows are actually viewable with their ad tier and it’s hard to pin down a number. My speculation is it doesn’t matter because either so few people are willing to pay for premium or their originals aren’t very marketable. Off the top of my head I’d heard of exactly one YouTube original.

reddig33 ,

Netflix lowest ad-free price was $9.99 until three days ago.

theverge.com/…/netflix-ad-free-basic-plan-discont…

Kolrami , (edited )

Oh thanks I was looking at old information.

EDIT: I realized now you’re just giving supplemental old info.

Kolrami ,

I should’ve specified I was citing Netflix’s current US pricing help.netflix.com/en/node/24926 and YouTube’s current US pricing www.youtube.com/premium.

Honytawk ,

I’d pay for it with money, but I am already paying with my data you see.

jakemehoff11 ,
@jakemehoff11@lemmy.world avatar

That sucks. Do you have access to a VPN with servers in Albania or Moldova? They still don’t allow ads in youtube videos.

Happened to me last month, I set proton VPN to an Albanian server and everything worked until uBlock got updated to suppress the black screen of death again. Good luck!

Maeve ,

Black screen of death? I got a black monitor earlier while doing some work and listening to YouTube. I thought maybe my device overheated. Is this a thing YouTube is doing?

KazuchijouNo ,

If things keep going like this I guess I’ll abandon Youtube completely. How brighter my life will be

DarkCloud ,

That’s where things are heading. I wonder what video services will replace it.

Bahnd ,

It wont be, the scale of service and ease of revenue sharing will keep it as the king of video distribution untill Google kills it (like they do to all their products). FOSS projects and self hosting can not accomodate a viral hit (the slashdot effect), and also a self-hosted project like that would have to find a way to make money for the host to keep the lights on, and even Youtube fails at that one.

Tregetour ,
@Tregetour@lemdro.id avatar

scale

Who does scale really benefit, though? I don’t see how it matters from the audiences’ point of view. Say I watch Youtube for fishing videos - all the competitor needs to do to attract and keep me is offer fishing videos. I don’t really care that I can’t watch music videos on it, or cookery, or make-up tutorials, etc.

The preoccupation we have with scale should be re-examined when it comes to video distribution. A combination of user-friendly banner advertising, modern codecs, and P2P hosting should go an awful long way. If I knew ad placements provided material funding for a video site/community I loved, I’d whitelist the URL.

Video needs fragmentation.

unexposedhazard ,

All you need is a federated link aggregator like lemmy/mastodon with a UI made for videos.

You post a link to whichever video hosting service and attach a bunch of metadata (thumbnail, description, tags) and the comment section is built in already for each post. Nobody cares where a video is hosted, as long as they can follow creators and topics.

kugel7c ,

I think scale matters because almost no person is as much of an island as your example fishing video guy. I actually have noticed almost the opposite in most people I know, YouTube is the default place to get entertainment. Across all their interests.

From both sides the network effect might be strongest with YouTube, the creators can’t leave because YouTube has virtually all of the audience, and consumers don’t want to watch singular people on other platforms because on YouTube you can stumble over interesting videos and all the people you like to watch are already there.

The only way I see for other platforms to actually grow is forced interoperability, as in videos of other platforms appearing in the YouTube frontend. Which Google would never do so the government would need to force them.

JeffKerman1999 ,

Yep, my entertainment is 90% YouTube and the rest some show. On YouTube I find everything: from a dude that does reviews of air filter for cars to somebody explaining some obscure Japanese woodworking techniques to the omniscient Indian dude that explains complex programming concepts. If there was fragmentation I wouldn’t be even able to find stuff, like in the early days of the internet that you knew the website existes because somebody shared the URLs in some usenet or some forums, before search engines became a thing.

Tregetour ,
@Tregetour@lemdro.id avatar

You make good points, but I still think what I envision would be able to attract enough people interested in specific hobbies, without achieving anywhere near Youtube’s scale. I’m thinking of a scenario where the video platform is more an extension of a web community, such an an old-school forum, rather than a straight video host where the primary aim is to gain any engagement whatsoever, and where (let’s face it) all engagement is generally fungible. It’d be something member-funded and run, like good torrent trackers, and the content is an interest ‘ecosystem’ - so not only fishing content, but fishing gear coverage, and camping and hiking stuff, and meat prep and storage, and boating, etc.

This couldn’t be any worse for either creator or viewer than what YT subjects them to. There would be no having to optimize for an opaque algorithm. The pressure to self-censor would be greatly relieved. Monetization scope and content guidelines would be accountably managed - ie. by the community itself. Creators would still have their Patreon/Liberapay/etc income streams. The platform can place the odd banner ad too, like 4chan.

I wonder how much convenience and (perceived) income security is a passionate creator prepared to sacrifice in order to start exercising power over Youtube by uploading elsewhere? We all know creators hate the place…

TheFriar ,

The benefit of scale is it attracts the creators. The people making the content we want to watch aren’t all doing it as a hobby, so the chance of attracting a large audience needs to be there. Otherwise they won’t come and the site is populated with really random, low-choice stuff.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Twitter and TikTok

Kowowow ,

Could just make a system to automate the ads like muting(or white noise) them and automatically clicking skip, is not as good but still feels like a small win

zerofk ,

Skipping ads violates YouTube’s terms of service!

  • Video playback will be blocked until you allow us to shove ads down your throat.
  • You can also opt for YouTube premium, where we’ll allow you to skip the last 5 seconds of any ad! (*)

(*) ads shorter than 5 minutes do not support skipping the final 5 seconds.

monkeyslikebananas2 ,

The funniest part is they want to watch an ad (trailer) but they aren’t allowed to watch that ad without watching other ads first! Xzibit would be so proud.

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