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.

SirStumps ,
@SirStumps@lemmy.world avatar

It just doesn’t play on my Firefox anymore.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I got no issues whatsoever. Are you using any browser addons besides uBlock origin? I’ve been using ghostery for quite some time (which also has an ad-suppression engine) and that cocked up with youtube. Removed it and now I can use it as always. Firefox 120.0.1.

SirStumps ,
@SirStumps@lemmy.world avatar

Good information. I will remove it.

SirStumps ,
@SirStumps@lemmy.world avatar

Interesting

Reddfugee42 ,

Curious

crispy_kilt ,

Peculiar

vaultdweller013 ,

Weird

crispy_kilt ,

Most unusual

Reddfugee42 ,

YES, QUITE!

Honytawk ,

Privacy Badger is better than Ghostery anyway.

Instead of using a commercial server, it build its own anti-tracking list over time.

Made by a non-profit digital rights group.

And it works fine on Youtube.

sw2de3fr4gt ,

Open your videos in Incognito mode, the block is cookie-based. I open YT on my browser in normal mode to see all my subscriptions, then open the videos in incognito with adblock enabled.

Cagi ,

Remember when every billionaire apologist was telling us how no one would do shit like this when net neutrality was being gutted?

superduperenigma ,

I still remember Ajit Pai’s dumbass teeth as he smugly insisted that you’ll still be able to “‘gram’ your food” before covering a Chipotle bowl in a mountain of flaming hot Cheetos and an ocean of Sriracha. And that was one of the least irritating moments of that video. That whole fucking video was basically “you can still waste time with your bread, circuses, and creature comforts, you fucking peasants, now shut up and let the corporations do their thing” while ignoring every legitimate criticism of the decision to gut NN.

yiliu ,

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. Google is not an ISP. With or without net neutrality, Google could fuck with YouTube users.

C126 ,

Thank you

atrielienz ,

Technically false. Google is an ISP. But they aren’t using their position as an ISP to slow down traffic or fast track other traffic in this instance so no it has nothing to do with net neutrality.

TrickDacy ,

Only if we narrow our scope to the commonly thought of types of net neutrality. I think if we had foreseen intentionally treating browsers differently, this type of thing would have 100% been rolled into that original conversation about net neutrality. It’s the same idea: artificially modifying a web experience for capitalist gain.

I personally wish it could be illegal for them to do this, but I do think it would be really hard to enforce such a law.

yiliu ,

Illegal to do…what? Not offer high-res videos? To have any delay before streaming videos? To refuse to serve you videos, even if doing so caused them to lose money? How would you enforce that on Google, much less on smaller startups? Would it apply to PeerTube instances?

Google sucks for doing this. It’ll drive people to competitors–hopefully even federated competitors. But laws to ‘fix’ the problem would be nearly impossible to craft–and would be counterproductive in the long term, because they’d cement the status quo. Let Google suck, so that people switch away from it.

TrickDacy ,

Discriminate against browsers.

And I did write that it would be too hard to enforce. I’m a software developer so I understand that it’s more complicated than it sounds.

yiliu ,

I think they claimed they’re not discriminating against browsers, they’re just better at identifying adblockers on Firefox or something.

QuaternionsRock ,

I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying, but they aren’t really discriminating against browsers at all. As far as I understand it, they pretty much have an


<span style="color:#323232;">if (!adPageElement.isLoaded)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    showStupidPopup();
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

in there somewhere. It doesn’t rely on any nefarious browser implementation-specific extensions; everyone gets that same code and runs it. As for the 5 seconds thing, IIRC some FF configurations were triggering false positives, but I think it was patched. It does seem awfully convenient, and maybe they only patched it because they got caught, but they also must have been morons to think something that obvious wouldn’t be noticed immediately.

applebusch ,

Google is literally an ISP. They provide my internet service.

yiliu ,

Well, fair. But even in that case, they have every right to degrade your YouTube experience, as owners of YouTube. As ISP (I mean, assuming NN was still a thing) they couldn’t selectively degrade traffic, but YouTube has no obligation to you under net neutrality.

Cold_Brew_Enema ,

DAE nET nEUtrAliTY?!?!

alekwithak ,

Not just YouTube. Now I have to say I’m not a robot when searching from my phone because I dare use a VPN that’s not theirs.

Reddfugee42 ,

This is because scammers and criminals often use VPNs. They actually should be doing that.

CmdrShepard ,

What’s scammy or criminal about doing a Google search?

Reddfugee42 ,

It’s probably part of their DDOS protection.

zergtoshi ,

Do you know the old saying:
if privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

Just because people might do stuff with things that isn’t intended or even illegal doesn’t mean you should be banning said things.
Otherwise we’d be in a world where we have no kitchen knives, axes, wrenches, food, money, cars, planes, ships, bikes, hands, feet - you know what I mean?

CthuluVoIP ,

And guns.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

There are many legitimate uses of VPN such as protecting your privacy from private interests and bypassing censorship. That’s collective punishment.

Malfeasant ,

You know what else spammers and criminals often do? Breathe. We need to make that more difficult.

Reddfugee42 ,

Straight to slippery slope fallacy. Cute.

Reddfugee42 ,

Sure if you consider captcha to be a punishment. Poor baby.

I use VPNs but I’m not going to be a slave or a fanboy to avoiding facts and reality.

Synthead ,

Whatever happens on my browser is client side, which is hardware and software I own. I can make what I own do what I want. It’s a right.

It’s like Google saying that I can’t skim a magazine in my home, and that I must read the ads. Google can do what they want server-side, and I’ll do what I want client-side.

deegeese ,

Client side DRM is coming.

They’re mostly there on Android already.

BaroqueInMind ,
@BaroqueInMind@kbin.social avatar

You forgot to mention it's also coming to all Chromium based browsers (i.e. Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc) as well in the form of ManifestV3

billbasher ,

Couldn’t they fork Brave and have both a current and a ManifestV3 version?

Engywuck , (edited )

Usually Brave already strips away invasive/unfavolrable stuff from Google before releasing. OTOH, browsers with inbuilt adblockers won’t be affected by MV3, as the latter only applyes to extensions. Inbuilt adblockers are part of the browser itself and aren’t constrained by whatever rule Google may want to put in place.

Evilcoleslaw ,

Manifest V3 doesn’t really have the real client side DRM. It just has the ad-blocker breaking API changes. The real DRM will be whatever comes of the abandoned Web Environment Integrity API. (It’s not really abandoned just shifted over to only Android WebView.)

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

That’s ok. Us nerds have been defeating DRM in its many forms for decades. This will be no different.

lastweakness ,

Not really true for video games. Plenty of popular games still with uncracked denuvo…

jtk ,
@jtk@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It’s called a “User Agent” for a reason.

Wrench ,

And as a service provider, they can choose to degrade your experience. It goes both ways.

Synthead ,

Yep, they can send me 500s if they want to, too

TheEntity ,

Technically 400s would be more appropriate here. :)

gravitas_deficiency ,

Response codes only matter to good-faith actors

Chickenstalker ,

Except they want to send you videos. The power is with you, the viewer. Without you, advertisers will have no reason for buying ads. Google can’t collect your data either. Realise that you have this power. Youtube is not like electricity or clean water. We can live without it if push comes to the shove.

ElectroNeutrino ,

To be fair, what they want is to make money off of you, be it through metadata or through advertising. It’s just that sending you videos happens to be the model which they use to get the metadata or advertising income.

gamermanh ,

If they wanted to make money off of me then they should have kept the Pixel Pass as a thing so I’d have a reason to have YT premium

Or make YT premium worth it

But nah, they’d rather ruin the product I was paying for, so now they get nothing. At least then I’m not paying for it to get worse

JohnEdwa ,

They don’t want to send us videos, they want to serve us ads and annoy us into buying Youtube Premium, which someone using adblocker won’t see, or need. From their point of view they would win either way - if they successfully block adblockers it either converts us into ad watchers, premium subscribers, or we fuck off and stop using their bandwidth.

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

It’s funny because I pay for premium and have noticed a worse experience since this was revealed. They don’t seem to check if a user has adblock and pays.

lastweakness ,

They don’t seem to check if a user has adblock and pays.

They definitely seem to have checks in place for it. I have Family Premium and so far no issues at all.

Edit: to clarify, not a fan of any of this. Just saying it does work for me

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

Weird. It’s not happening to me today. Maybe it was something else.

Malfeasant ,

Well, I don’t pay for premium, and I use an adblocker, and I haven’t had any problems. Not having a problem doesn’t prove anything if they’re only targeting a subset of their users…

voidMainVoid ,

The article says that this isn’t happening for all users, which indicates that they’re still experimenting with it and haven’t fully rolled it out yet.

lastweakness ,

I do have the issue when I’m logged out

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

You have no value to advertisers if they can't serve you ads. By not doing so, they'll also cut down on bandwidth costs, so it's a double positive for them.

CosmicCleric , (edited )
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

You have no value to advertisers if they can’t serve you ads. By not doing so, they’ll also cut down on bandwidth costs, so it’s a double positive for them.

When you take your comment to its logical end though your comment makes no sense, as hence there’s now no one to watch the videos and earn money from them doing so.

You can’t force someone to consume your content, and if you earn money by people consuming your content, then the power is ultimately with them.

Plus, all this discussion, we’re assuming that serving ads is the only way that Google can make money off you when watching the videos, which is not true. They can do the same kind of things they do with Gmail and make money from that.

cole ,
@cole@lemdro.id avatar

this assumption is only correct if EVERYBODY is using as blockers. They aren’t - so it makes sense to cut off the proverbial leeches

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

this assumption is only correct if EVERYBODY is using as blockers. They aren’t - so it makes sense to cut off the proverbial leeches

That’s why I said logical conclusion.

My bet would be the vast majority of people (what you call leeches) would eventually use ad blockers, as people in general usually do not like to watch commercials. (Again, speaking in endgame scenarios, AKA ‘logical conclusion’).

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

"Logical conclusion" does not mean that you suddenly add in an unjustified premise of "all people will endure some amount of hassle to use an ad blocker".

I think the best analogy is Netflix's password sharing, which not only didn't hurt them, but actually brought them a lot of subscribers.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

“Logical conclusion” does not mean that you suddenly add in an unjustified premise of “all people will endure some amount of hassle to use an ad blocker”.

You’ll have to elaborate. In my eyes, justified or not is a non-sequiteur. The premise is people will want to avoid the commercials, and as Google gets more draconian with commercials more people will attempt to avoid them, either by using adblockers, or by paying the sub fees.

I think the best analogy is Netflix’s password sharing, which not only didn’t hurt them, but actually brought them a lot of subscribers.

People take the most direct path to avoiding aggravation (as the Netflix case shows, as its easier to just pay the unjustified extra cost than having to cancel their sub and finding another streaming service).

Having to constantly watch a bunch of commercials is way more aggravating that clicking a few buttons once to add an addon to your browser that removes the bigger constant aggravation of commercials.

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

I'd say that the more accurate version of that premise is that people will exert some limited amount of effort in order to avoid ads (or fees, for that matter), and the challenge for the service provider is to make blocking ads more annoying than simply paying the fee. The real question is how successful Google will actually be at that, and that is admittedly a bit of an open question. That said, we know that there is a limit to how much effort people will put in, because it's not that hard to pirate literally anything, but plenty of people don't bother with piracy because it's a hassle.

It'll be interesting to see how things ultimately shake out. Google is in a bit of a privileged position though, given that they own the service and the browser most people are viewing YouTube. There's also more and more of a shift towards watching it on mobile devices and TVs, where they can control the client environment a lot more tightly. And at the end of the day, it is a solvable problem; beyond that, they don't have to even win the cat and mouse game. They just have to make playing it annoying enough that most people won't bother.

Wrench ,

No no no, he’s right. The logical conclusion of every online argument is a strawman.

SinningStromgald ,

If the service degrades to far due to using ad blockers then I’ll just stop watching anything on YouTube. Easy.

Wrench ,

Okay then. That was always allowed.

BradleyUffner ,

Umm, ok. You were not making them any money before, when you were blocking their ads, why would they care if you left?

CrowAirbrush ,

Because the big channels will get a significant drop in views which lowers their sponsor pay and willingness to work with them.

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

I think you're overestimating how many people care enough about this.

Remember when killing password sharing was gonna be the death of Netflix, and then they saw a significant increase in subscriptions and profits?

gian ,

A possible answer is because the creators that have their own sponsors in their videos want the view even if you don’t see the Google ads, so Google on one hand want you to watch their ads while on the other hand cannot afford to really lose you since that would reflects on the creators and then if a creator leave for another platform (a big if, I agree) Google lose all the traffic generated by said creator, both who use an adblocker and who don’t use an adblocker.

CrayonRosary ,

Google can do what they want server-side

Sure, like not sending you videos. 🤔

FMT99 ,

They’re not saying you can’t have an adblocker. They’re saying their software will try not to serve you their data if you do, or at least make it inconvenient.

You have a right to your computer. You do not have a right to their service.

Synthead ,

That’s exactly what I said, yeah

SendMePhotos ,

Me after reading the 1st comment: “OK. True. Fair.” Me after reading the 2nd comment: “OK. True. Fair.” Me after reading the 3rd comment: “OK. Also true. Also fair.”

Rai ,

Me reading you:

Fourth gosh darn level of agree

I’ll never disable my PiHole or turn off ublock tho

theherk ,

Fair.

Archer ,

I wish PiHole wasn’t so absolute dogshit about DNS requests from outside the local subnet, might use it then

SendMePhotos , (edited )

I’m going to try ad guard today… That way I can keep my DHCP

Update: adguard does not block YouTube ads.

AtariDump ,

You can use PiHole without their DHCP.

SendMePhotos ,

Oh yeah? I didn’t know. I thought I read on the pihole website that if you use pihole on a system on your network, you have to use static ips and cannot use DHCP.

AtariDump ,

Nope. You can use whatever DHCP server you’d like; you just have to set the pihole as your DNS server in DHCP.

SendMePhotos ,

I’ll relook at it, thanks.

AtariDump ,

Permit all origins, allow all destinations. In the settings.

Archer ,

Tried that, it just reverts back after a few weeks :/

AtariDump ,

Open an issue on the forums if it hasn’t already been fixed.

Mine doesn’t revert.

What OS/computer?

Archer ,

Tried it bare metal on a Pi 4 and as a VM. I have my LAN using the 10.0.0.0/8 space and I couldn’t have DNS breaking all the time

AtariDump ,

And it would set itself back?

Archer ,

Yep. Default is to not reply to DNS outside the subnet it’s in, and it would randomly flip back to that

AtariDump ,

Open a bug report; that shouldn’t happen.

Also, think about running two DNS servers

Klear ,

There was a rabbi arbitrating a dispute between neighbours. One of them complained that the other one gathers apples that fall off his apple tree and into the other neighbour’s garden. “Those are my apples grown on my tree. He’s stealing them!”

“You’re right,” says the rabbi. But the other neighbour counters.

“But the branches of the tree are above my property. If he doesn’t want them to fall on my garden, he can cut off the branch. But he lets them fall into my garden making them my apples.”

“You’re right,” says the rabbi and adjourns the diapute to be able to think about it. He’s at his wit’s end and tells the whole story to his wife when he gets home.

“That doesn’t make sense. They can’t both be right.”

“You’re right.”

vitamin ,

No, you don’t have a right to it. If they want to they can put the entire site being a subscriber paywall. That’s their call. But until they do that i will continue to access the site with my adblocked browser.

Synthead ,

You do have a right to your computer. After content is delivered to you, you have downloaded data, and your own hardware and software acts to consume said downloaded data. After it is downloaded, even if it is in a browser in a cache, it is considered offline content. This also applies to streaming media chunks, too: once it’s downloaded, you have acquired it locally.

Honytawk ,

They don’t have the right to disregard my right to privacy either, yet here we are.

SendMePhotos ,

Well… They do because it’s their tos, no?

ferralcat ,

But their software is just blocking based on browser. Their message to you is not “don’t use an ad blocker”. It’s “use chrome and you won’t have this problem”. Theyre literally just hoping to abuse their position as a monopoly in video to try and strengthen their monopoly on browsers.

Perhyte ,

Is that why I haven’t had any problems? I thought it was either Google A/B testing again or my ad blocker updating often enough to keep up, but I do have a user-agent changer installed in Firefox that’s configured to tell YouTube I’m on Chrome…

1rre , (edited )

You can, but as a part of doing what they want serverside they can ask for some kind of proof you don’t have an adblocker on the server-side, you can reverse engineer that and spoof the checks and it becomes an arms race just like we have now… You’re effectively just saying the status quo is a-ok with you

Synthead ,

I don’t personally enjoy the status quo, but they’re not obligated to serve me any videos if they don’t want to. However, if they have given me media to consume on my devices, it’s up to me to decide how I consume the media that was already delivered.

gosling ,
@gosling@lemmy.world avatar

Let’s just hope they don’t start injecting their ads into the video stream itself

Yoz ,

Why can’t people just stop using google? Genuinely curious

Laticauda ,

Because most alternatives aren’t nearly as functional due to them dominating the market.

cryptix ,

Yes alternate platforms with good level of UX exists. But without content its no good. YouTube - Peertube Google maps - Organic maps & OSMAnd (open street maps) Reddit - Lemmy (bigger is better)

sw2de3fr4gt ,

Google Maps actually sucks for things like hiking and trails, there’s a lot of better alternatives like Maps.me.

ultra ,

For the others, maybe. But YouTube? It’s strength is in the sheer amount of content. It’s going to take a lot of time and resources to create and host that content on the fediverse.

Nath ,
@Nath@aussie.zone avatar

It is frightfully expensive to host video content. YouTube would cost Billions per year to run.

jol ,

I always wonder about this. I pay only a few bucks per month for Nebula. I highly suspect Nebula is running at a loss.

Jaigoda ,

Not necessarily. Nebula operates at a far, far smaller scope, with an emphasis on quality of videos over quantity, and every user is a paid user. If every user of YouTube was paying a couple bucks per month, they’d be making in the high tens of billions of dollars of revenue per year, several times more than they do with ads. Plus YouTube has a ridiculously huge amount of essentially worthless videos because literally anyone can upload a 10 hour video, so surely their hosting costs are higher per user than Nebula.

jol ,

Oh right, I somehow forgot about that.

LibreFish ,

Subscriptions are really lucrative. Iirc most ads pay like 0.1-0.5 cents per view, so you’d need to watch an insane amount of videos to equal the cost of a $2 subscription. I could probably make a site that brings in money if I had 5 $2 subscribers and a half 100 medium quality vids. Start scaling that up and it can be really profitable while offering subscribers a fair shake.

Reddfugee42 ,

By and large, that’s where the content is.

Zeroxxx ,
@Zeroxxx@lemmy.my.id avatar

So what is equal or better alternative than Google Maps, Youtube and Google Search?

bruhduh ,
@bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been using duckduckgo for half a year already they’ve became quite good compared to Google search, Google maps alternative is any popular maps app just try what’ll fit your tastes, but YouTube is certainly don’t have alternatives YET just because libre alternatives though exist but not yet in shape enough (basically we need datahoarders who’ll hoard and host whole youtube to libre alternatives such as framatube and others) for now we can only rely to custom frontends such as clipious, piped and others and custom apps of course

ryan_ ,

I started ditching google apps last spring and my “alternatives” are: bing/apple maps, invidious, and SearXNG. I self-host the last two to keep even more control of my data.

archchan ,

OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps (OSM would be even better if more people used and actively contributed mapping data to it), no real youtube alternative yet (but see Piped/Invidious, Peertube, and Odysee), and there’s plenty of alternative search engines like Duckduckgo, Brave search (has its own index), etc

friction1393 ,

there is no such “better” alternative. how could we compare a company that has been digging up their user data and built something with it, vs some community or even a solo developer who build something out of nowhere without collecting or selling data?

but, what are the alternative?

Google Maps

  • OpenStreetMap, is not as complete as Google Map, the amount of places won’t be the same. but it’s enough to help you navigating from a district to another district, and use much lower resource too

YouTube

  • Odysee, couldn’t explain, think of it like YouTube
  • Rumble, couldn’t explain, think of it like YouTube
  • PeerTube, a fediverse software where you can upload videos and do livestream, you own your data
  • Piped, NewPipe, PipePipe, Invidious are just alternative frontend for YouTube, its good if you are watching an exclusive content from their platform. But why do we keep letting YouTube has our data?

Google Search

wow, really?

  1. DuckDuckGo, controversial, but enough
  2. Brave Search, controversial, honestly aint using it
  3. Searx, host it yourself, you own your data

and hey, why didn’t you mention about the browser, mails, and many more? There is firefox, tuta, and much more.

Thorny_Insight ,

There’s no alternative to youtube that isn’t complete garbage

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

Revealed preferences. As much as people won't admit it, these services do provide legitimate value, and they also cost a lot of money to operate.

namingthingsiseasy ,

However bad they may make it, it can’t possibly be worse than it is for non-adblock users.

But hey, if they want to torpedo their own services, have at it. It’s not like they have a reputation for it or anything…

MaxVoltage ,
@MaxVoltage@lemmy.world avatar

i am more worried about the old videos wipe thats coming soon

Sooo many peoples uploaded memories and documentaries are going to becone lost forever

zovits ,

Wait, what?

monkE ,

Wait what?

VinnieFarsheds ,
@VinnieFarsheds@lemmy.world avatar

Who’s going to wipe the old videos?

1995ToyotaCorolla ,
@1995ToyotaCorolla@lemmy.world avatar

Google’s going to delete inactive google accounts. So if you see a channel whose last upload was six years ago, there’s a good chance it’s about to be deleted

Sacha ,

Oh I suppose my diseased father’s small channel with a few of his live music performances will be deleted. Lovely.

Riven ,
@Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

By the look of it they won’t be but I would make an offline copy just to be safe. Maybe re-upload it on a newer account/website.

MaxVoltage ,
@MaxVoltage@lemmy.world avatar

Save it bro to your cloud

capital ,

Grab those vids.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube-dl

Candybar121 ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    capital ,

    It’s just my go to for a “this is a thing” comments.

    Has an explanation and links to the site.

    manwichmakesameal ,

    Goddamnit, I didn’t even think about this when I saw they were doing the mass delete. Here’s to hoping that they’ll at least keep the videos up. Waaaay too much stuff on YT to lose it all. Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

    At this point you got to imagine that archives hardware infrastructure has to be as big or bigger than Google’s.

    Obi ,
    @Obi@sopuli.xyz avatar

    Man this stuff should not be left to the hands of random corporations.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    I was just speaking towards server hardware and infrastructure, and their costs, and not making a value judgement on corps vs. not-corps.

    VinnieFarsheds ,
    @VinnieFarsheds@lemmy.world avatar

    Thanks. I looked it up and read that Google decided according to the latest news they’re not deleting YouTube accounts with video uploads. We’ll see.

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    I wonder why they would kill old videos instead of just removing those 10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches. You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space.

    pokemaster787 ,

    You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space

    Someone above posted an article saying they aren’t actually. But you’d be surprised at how little space those 10 hour videos can actually take. They’re highly compressible since they’re just the same still image and the same audio on repeat. A good compression algorithm (which Google certainly is using) would basically compress it into one instance of the song and how many times to repeat it (more complex than that, but that’s the idea)

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    Sometimes they are, if it’s just audio and a static image. Some of them definitely are not that though. The ones with visualizers or full music videos or the like are not nearly as compressible.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

    I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

    isgleas ,

    Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

    I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

    Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

    Definately not the same. Also, what “nobody watches” is in the eye of the beholder.

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

    Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

    The first two minutes are an ad, and having a loud voice talking to you all of a sudden in your bedroom while you are asleep tends to wake you up.

    Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

    With compression techniques being as they are today, I truly don’t even worry about the bandwidth.

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn’t use an ad blocker on YouTube? All of those problems that you listed have incredibly easy solutions that you can execute with zero training.

    And realistically if they are looking for profit (and they absolutely are) I still see no reason why they would keep these up. The benefits are absolutely minimal at best and the drawbacks are quite large.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn’t use an ad blocker on YouTube?

    My YouTube app on my phone, which doesn’t have an ad blocker. And as far as I know, there’s no way to restart a video at a certain timestamp, it just restarts from the very beginning. I’d be glad to hear otherwise though?

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    Ah! A few ways to do things:

    1. Go into the YouTube “three dots” options and you can “Create Clip” which will allow you to shave out or repeat any length of video you want. If you shave it out, you can make it private and just repeat the single video. and / or
    2. Use any YouTube download site (say like this one) and just get the MP3 or video which you can play over and over using any media player. and / or
    3. If you’re on a phone, use a third-party YouTube app like GrayJay and it’ll block ads.

    If you have questions, ask away!

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Thanks for the info, much appreciated!

    NikkiDimes ,

    They aren’t wiping videos.

    From a literal 5 second Google search: rollingstone.com/…/is-youtube-deleting-old-videos…

    PersnickityPenguin ,

    About a week ago YouTube rolled out a new interface for ads. I cannot skip 90% of ads now. Many are around a minute in length. Always 2 ads at the beginning of every video, even if it’s only 10 seconds in length. Always 2 ads at the end of every video.

    SuperSpruce ,

    I’m not getting that many ads. Could I see the new interface?

    grayman ,

    As a premium subscriber, it’s definitely gotten worse for me over the last month. Whatever they’re doing on the back end, it’s pretty terrible.

    Fades ,

    Why are you paying your abuser

    IntrepidIceIgloo ,

    Stockholm syndrome

    Mercival ,

    Stockholm syndrome was made up to cover for police incompetence

    cybersandwich ,

    Thats the first I’ve heard of that. Got a link? this sounds like a rabbit hole I’d like to go down.

    Mercival , (edited )

    Here’s a springboard article, if you want to do your own research.

    nzz.ch/…/how-the-myth-of-stockholm-syndrome-came-…

    The woman, based on whom the term was coined (the psychiatrist never even talked to her) wrote an autobiography “I became Stockholm Syndrome”.

    There’s also the works of Allan Wade, a Canadian psychologist, who has talked to the victims throughout his career.

    Basically when you’re at the whims of an armed lunatic, you might cozy up to them in order to appease them. The victims were also really afraid of the police coming in and shooting them. Which is pretty justified, considering the police couldn’t even identify the perpetrator before conceding on his demands and bringing in his prison buddy.

    The guy with a gun, whom they’ve been talking to for days and has not hurt them in the slightest looked much less dangerous than the impending doom of the police barging in and shooting the wrong person.

    Appoxo ,
    @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Honestly: I’d rather pay for YT and pirate Netflix.
    The amount of Entertainment I get from YT exceeds the scale of Netflix and I use it daily at 2-3h per day.

    And while yes, it’s free, I can also support the creators with a better click price than a regular click.
    Is it a better solution then the respective patreon/whatever? Nope
    Do I want to pay 5€/month or video each time? Fuck no. I am not king Midas.

    wishthane ,

    Yup, that’s how I see it too. I don’t like seeing ads, the creators do at least get more money, and the actual value I get out of YouTube is pretty high

    FehrIsFair ,

    Not to mention not every creator will have a patreon anyway so this covers that scenario as well.

    grayman ,

    There’s a ton of educational content only on YT and so it’s a part of our homeschool curriculum. My kids were getting a lot of super inappropriate ads a while back, so I got premium to avoid all ads.

    there1snospoon ,

    What homeschool curriculum provider are you using?

    grayman ,

    Acton and we participate in a state program and several private programs depending on the kids’ interest.

    Wogi ,

    I’m not sure what the hell is going on at YouTube but I’ve noticed a significant drop in decent videos being recommended, and a huge uptick in videos I’ve already seen showing up at the front of the feed. Probs gonna drop it when the price picks up and just go to nebula.

    EdyBolos ,

    Fuck Google and YouTube, but the title is misleading, and it’s an article from three weeks ago. I’m quite surprised that this post is so upvoted, and nobody else flagged this before.

    lemmyingly ,

    I wonder if there are bot farms for Lemmy/Fediverse… There must be

    ademir ,
    @ademir@lemmy.eco.br avatar

    Why would someone do it?

    lemmyingly ,

    Someone who wants to push an agenda by trying to make a certain stance look popular. Downvote those who have an opposing opinion to try to hide the submission from people’s eyeballs.

    Some people might believe a Lemmy account is worth something if they add value to it, just like what people believe with Reddit accounts.

    TangledHyphae OP ,

    Interesting, it came up in news feeds on other sites. I’ll check more in the future, that’s the first time I’ve had that happen.

    anarchy79 ,
    @anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

    FAKECIENT OLDS!

    Imhotep ,

    I just read the article and I don’t see how it’s misleading. Google introduced a delay before video starts for adblock users

    PutangInaMo ,

    But the register wasn’t able to reproduce it, and goes on to suggest it might be testing the capability with a random subset of users.

    voracitude ,

    Genuine question (because I’m looking too): without YouTube, where would you go to watch all the diverse videos they host? It’s a really difficult business model. Look at how expensive Floatplane is to the user. Luke and Linus have talked about how difficult it is to run on WAN Show, too: youtube.com/watch?v=1mZrsunukUA

    A fediverse platform would almost definitely be a worse experience in terms of speed and video quality because residential internet (at least in the majority of the US) just doesn’t have the upload to support multiple HD video streams. Therefore, it’s not really possible to host at home; a basic server at Hetzner could probably do a dozen or two direct streams with no conversion, but storage is kind of expensive just because there’s so much content, and then there’s the need for moderation, high uptime, security, “good” UX design…

    Then of course on top of all that when you don’t have creators getting paid by ad revenue, fewer will be able to spend the time on production quality because they’ll be doing it after work, so the length and/or quality suffers.

    I dunno dude, I really hope someone smarter than me has figured this out, but it’s a tough problem.

    yessikg ,
    @yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Peertube is already just as good in terms of performance, it does need more content and better discoverability for sure

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Peertube is already just as good in terms of performance

    I don’t think you can judge performance in an ‘apple versus oranges’ (pop usage) scenario though.

    yessikg ,
    @yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    They are using known tech, they did not reinvent the wheel

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    They are using known tech, they did not reinvent the wheel

    That’s not my point though. My point is how much capacity versus how many people are using the service.

    You’re trying to equate the same level of capacity when there’s different levels of usage.

    Finally, how you implement the tech is as important as the tech itself, as it can be done either well, or poorly.

    c0mbatbag3l ,
    @c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

    Does that performance scale once the user base matches even a fraction of YouTube? Probably not.

    yessikg ,
    @yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    It uses P2P so I don’t see why not

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    You are correct. Fundamentally, it’s the hosting and storage issue that’s the crux of all this.

    And the only choices available are another corporation hosting and paying/passing on the cost, or all of us hosting on a peer-to-peer network, which will be slow, but doable.

    Having said that, the peer hosting method would work though, and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. We just shouldn’t expect the same level of service we do from YouTube or any corporation hosting videos.

    Appoxo ,
    @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    I mean torrenting works but i’ll be damned if I’d need to wait for the buffer to fill up every 30sec for the 1440p video.
    You’d need multiple versions pre-encoded to reduce network transfer and serverside transcoding.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean torrenting works but i’ll be damned if I’d need to wait for the buffer to fill up every 30sec for the 1440p video. You’d need multiple versions pre-encoded to reduce network transfer and serverside transcoding.

    It would definately be a slog to watch, vs a service that can just deliver the video to you in real time on demand.

    My only point is that you would be able to watch the video, after the slog, so that avenue should not be discounted as an option. Its not a great option, but still, an option.

    steelrat ,
    @steelrat@lemmy.world avatar

    Still not going to give them a dollar ever.

    Kakaofruchttafel ,

    I mean they’ve also consistently been making YouTube worse for everyone not using Adblock, so it’s only fair.

    KonalaKoala ,
    @KonalaKoala@lemmy.world avatar

    Sounds like its beginning to reach the point someone may decide to code an add-on or extension that adds a “F*** YouTube” button to a Youtube Video page where if you click that button, it would take you over to the equivalent YewTu.be page of the video currently being viewed.

    KonalaKoala ,
    @KonalaKoala@lemmy.world avatar

    I have LIbreWolf with uBlock Origin and NoScript (and Redirector I can turn on to redirect me from watching videos on YouTube.com to YewTu.be on a moments notice of something funky going on with YouTube), and so far, I have not noticed any ads or anything for a long time. I’m probably at the point of beginning to wonder what a YouTube Ad is.

    onlinepersona ,

    Great, I’ll use it less if that’s the case 🤷

    ILikeBoobies ,

    That’s not a bad outcome for them

    onlinepersona ,

    If everybody with adblockers quit youtube and used alternative platforms, I agree, that would be great.

    ILikeBoobies ,

    Saves them money because they aren’t delivering content for free

    And the remaining population won’t raise the issue when they add more

    linearchaos ,
    @linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

    I moved over to new pipe. No more algorithm on regular basis. I have the 20 or so people that I want to see. If one of my existing 20 people recommend somebody else, I’ll go check them out.

    Between getting rid of reddit algorithm and YouTube’s algorithm I’m clawing back huge swaths of time.

    TheObviousSolution , (edited )

    As a Premium user who still had uBlock installed, I was noticing the other day a loading problem when I had it activated until I deactivated and reloaded. Still, Google is entirely within it’s right to target people even according to one of its greatest critics: youtu.be/KMLMQRS3Krk?t=175

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Still, Google is entirely within it’s right to target people even according to one of its greatest critics:

    [Citation required.]

    Could you give us a timestamp of when he says that?

    TheObviousSolution ,

    It starts at 2:55, when I linked it, but it’s a long argument. You can forward into 3:20 for the first short conclusion, 4:57 for his rebuttal of a common counterargument, and you can forward into 5:40 for his own experience with freeloaders. You can fast forward to 12:40, to 13:15, to 13:46, and to 14:16 as well, but he’s pretty based throughout the whole video and the point remains consistent throughout.

    CosmicCleric ,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    It starts at 2:55, when I linked it, but it’s a long argument. You can forward into 3:20 for the first short conclusion, 4:57 for his rebuttal of a common counterargument, and you can forward into 5:40 for his own experience with freeloaders. You can fast forward to 12:40, to 13:15, to 13:46, and to 14:16 as well, but he’s pretty based throughout the whole video and the point remains consistent throughout.

    Thanks for the timestamps. I think just starting at 13:53 would be more than enough to make your point of “Google is entirely within it’s right to target people”.

    Having said that, generally speaking I would also strongly suggest people listening to the next point directly after that at 14:25 as well, and especially what he says starting at 15:43.

    TheObviousSolution ,

    Yeah, but the point beginning on 14:25 is really for the business to determine, not something to demand or not demand from a consumer side. YT has had over a decade to determine what works for it and to see what’s working for its competitors, and it may really be a last hail mary to save their business model with the collapse of easy investor money from silicon valley banks and stricter data privacy laws. As to 15:43, that’s what I do already, I just pay for YT Premium even with uBlock Origin installed and data collection disabled as much as I can.

    shirro , (edited )

    Long time family premium user (household of parents and kids). Anything Youtube do to preserve their revenue within reason doesn’t bother me too much as long as they don’t reduce the split with quality creators. If they were successful with all this bullshit perhaps they wouldn’t have needed to notify me that subs are almost doubling next year. My guess is all they are doing is fucking things up for everyone. It is only going to get worse if their premium subscription base reduces. They should be pricing premium as an alternative to ad-blockers but instead they are pushing people including premium subscribers towards ad-blockers.

    I already have ad-blockers and apps for circumventing youtube ads. Not using them in favour of a fairly priced (to me) subscription was a choice but sadly one Google seems to be discouraging.

    vonbaronhans ,

    I’ve also felt like YouTube Premium was a pretty good deal, given the sheer amount of YouTube content I consume and how much I detest ads.

    That said, I also feel like most of what I really value from YouTube is on Nebula, to which I am also subscribed. I constantly wonder if it would be worth it to drop YouTube altogether, to save some money but also a huge amount of time.

    The only other thing really keeping me on YouTube Premium is the included YouTube music. Not like Spotify is much cheaper, and I’m not much into manually managing libraries of my own music files like I did in the days of my 2nd Gen iPod (it had a touch wheel!).

    EmperorHenry ,
    @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    if you get adguard for desktop and load it with userscripts from greasyfork to block youtube’s bullshit it’s still okay, I barely ever have any hiccups since I loaded 5 different userscripts to block youtube’s anti-adblock bullshit. I sometimes get an error telling me the video couldn’t be played, but I almost never see their bullshit telling me to turn my adblocker off.

    There’s also “FreeTube” which is an app for several desktop operating systems. there’s also the many instances of invidious you can check out and access from almost any device with a web-browser.

    Dultas ,

    I’m running uBlock Origin and a pi Hole and I haven’t seen shit change for months. Not sure what voodoo I have going on judging by other experiences.

    EmperorHenry ,
    @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    recent updates to ublock for firefox have made its adblocking way more powerful.

    Where do you go to get pi hole? is that the one that requires docker?

    linearchaos ,
    @linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

    Pi-hole.net

    You can install a container or you can install it as a package on debian or Red Hat based distros.

    EmperorHenry ,
    @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    I tried to do that, I looked it up right after I typed my comment. I wasn’t able to get docker to work on my system. Does it have anything to do with core isolation being enabled? I don’t have anything installed on my system that should be blocking it.

    Adguard for desktop is working for now. I don’t need it to work right this second.

    linearchaos ,
    @linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

    Not sure I’ve been using this one to be exact

    hub.docker.com/r/devzwf/pihole-dot-doh

    cashews_best_nut ,

    I’ve got Adguard installed on my router (openwrt). 👍

    EmperorHenry ,
    @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Well, I’m disabled and can’t work, unfortunately I can’t afford a place of my own or my own router to install my VPN or adguard onto.

    cashews_best_nut ,

    Being born German is a terrible affliction but I didn’t realise it counted as a disability. My condolences on your Germanity.

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