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.

YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers

  • YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
  • Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
  • Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
chakan2 ,
@chakan2@lemmy.world avatar

Imagine being on the YouTube ad team…that has to be the most depressing team in tech history. Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.

bobs_monkey ,

Even better, you work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with virtually unlimited resources at your disposal, and you still get your asses handed to you by a handful of people with laptops.

paraphrand ,

If they didn’t have to support the web, and various legacy platforms, the could lock it all down with drm more easily.

Quill7513 ,

Hence Google’s proposal to DRM the web

limerod ,

Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.

Ah, what. Who wants or likes to watch ads at all?

conciselyverbose ,

People watch an ad for the privilege of watching a movie/show/game trailer all the time.

ThePantser ,
@ThePantser@lemmy.world avatar

I have no problem watching a ad for a video but when I have to watch an ad just to see if I am interested in watching the video is where I draw the line. Forced ads before the video starts is the worst. Give me a min or two before forcing an ad. If I am looking for help for a particular issue I don’t want to watch ads after ad while trying to gauge the video.

InternetUser2012 ,

I get what you’re saying but I’ve reached a point in my life where I really don’t give a shit and there is absolutely no way I’m watching ads. I’m also not paying google for anything they offer.

chakan2 ,
@chakan2@lemmy.world avatar

Yea…I’m old enough to remember when that was the content that paid for the platform. Putting an ad on top of that is fucking soulless vampic greed.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

Welcome to the new Google. It’s rent seeking all the way down.

pete_the_cat ,

A lot of creators have just turned into corporate shills. I stopped watching ETA Prime’s channel about tech reviews because it was becoming pretty clear that mostly everything he got was paid for by the company. Also, most creators are putting their own ads into their content.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I know right… Why should content creators be able to make money from content. Am I right?

webghost0101 ,

The same reasons as open source software devs.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Some content creators but not most of them. A lot of open source software advertises too.

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

You’re joking, but you’re right.

Once the content has been created, the near-zero marginal cost of online distribution makes the concept of charging for copies wholly untenable.

The furry community figured this out years ago, our creators work on commission or paid subscription through Patreon or one of its ilk. They (mostly) don’t care where you freely share their work because they already got paid.

chonglibloodsport ,

The knives are out for Patreon. Apple is looking to carve a big chunk out of that revenue. Google and Amazon (owner of Twitch) will not be far behind. Believe me, Google and Twitch are very unhappy that creators skip the platform monetization methods and just tell viewers to go to Patreon to bypass the heavy commissions.

essteeyou ,

Great time for Patreon to expand more into content delivery.

db0 ,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Patreon is jacked to the tits with vc money and enshittifying at a breakneck speeds. Done expect goods innovations from it in the future

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

Patreon deserves to die, their cut of the subscription income is extortionate for what amounts to a very limited web hosting platform.

Open-source alternatives like Mirlo or Cloud Patron will take its place, it’s only a matter of time.

Cephalotrocity ,

Welcome to Youtube. It’s ads all the way down. Unless:

Firefox browser, Ublock Origin extension, Sponsorblock extension

Save 40% of your viewing time for actual content and send tips through creator’s Paypal or whatever.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

YouTube is just on demand TV with extra steps these days. I’ve stopped watching videos, I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now. 99% of the content of a 10-15 minute video can be summarized into 1 or 2 pages and read in under 2 minutes.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now.

Only a matter of time before LLMs start injecting their own ads into these responses.

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

By that point I’m pretty sure we’ll have an effective compact model that can run locally and transcribe downloaded videos on reasonable hardware. Or you can just sic a paid model like chatgpt on the task. The corporate Internet is entirely focused on subscription service models now, unless you run the model yourself on local hardware you’re going to end up paying someone somewhere a service fee.

Edit: y’all need to learn about minified models designed to run on edge hardware, they’re a thing and often work shockingly well.

pennomi ,

Nah, local LLMs are easily in the range of transcribe/summarize. I bet you could do that nicely with llama 8B without even needing a gpu.

cheese_greater ,

Cant wait to have these

Gigasser ,

You already can I think? Ollama is something you can install, and then you can set up a webui like sillytavern for roleplays, or some other more fitting ui for whatever you want. Also, Linux is great for projects like these, on windows it’s fucking a pain to set up, Linux it’s easy.

Wildly_Utilize ,

Local and open source

Shdwdrgn ,

I hope nobody lets them know that Firefox on Linux has never shown ads for any of their content.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Don’t worry. Linux is only 4% of the total computer market. They aren’t bothered with you because Linux isn’t worth it.

Shdwdrgn ,

That’s fine, we’re happy to keep the better choice to ourselves. 😆

pete_the_cat ,

SmartTube for Android TV is a must as well

chonglibloodsport ,

I don’t follow those creators!

The best part of YouTube is the small creators who are just making videos as a hobby. Once they get so big they start shilling products they wouldn’t use themselves I drop them like a hot potato. For the most part that doesn’t happen though because I prefer niche topics and creators that don’t have “sellout” personalities.

rand_alpha19 ,
  • Reviews
  • Trailers
  • Reactions
  • Travel vlogs
  • Beginner tutorials

To some extent, these types of videos advertise or promote a product, service, or experience.

bruhbeans ,

I’ve clicked in to see a movie trailer, which is basically an ad, and had to watch an ad before I could watch the ad

vvv ,

and it’s potentially an existential threat.

Rentlar ,

At least you can tell your boss “I’m working on it!”, sit on your ass, and every 6 months add one more little UI or formula change which “finally stops adblockers” but is defeated within 3 days.

Damage ,

Yeah I don’t believe they really put their hearts in it. If they truly wanted to force you into watching ads, they’d manage. Their team is just not that interested.

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Their team is probably using adBlockers more than the rest of us. They understand the depth of the surveillance baked into those ads.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

So tell the content creators you like that you don’t like YouTube. While YouTube Premium is the same price as like two coffees a month… Maybe your content creator will help you if you can’t afford it.

claudiop ,

Well, to begin with, both the watcher and the creator are clients of the platform. Both sides feel bound to it, even if both dislike it.

Then, YouTube premium is literally 20 machine coffees a month in my first world country. 15 if they’re done by someone. You seem to be speaking “privileged minority”.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the reason that there are so many Starbucks in America, like literally caddy corner from one another is because their customer base is the “privileged minority.” I’ll have to remember that line.

In all seriousness, you could argue that ads prey on poor vulnerable people unable to afford YouTube Premium that just want to use it to learn, and that would be a semi-coherent argument.

claudiop ,

What you are trying to point is that in the United States of America (and maybe Canada) you people have coffee that’s so expensive that two of them pay for YT premium. You’re only missing out on most of the internet (eg. Not the US).

Starbucks is notoriously expensive and nobody refers to it as coffee round here. Starbucks in my first world country is considered something for hipster digital nomads. You can’t find them outside areas with tourists as everyone else is happy with “regular” coffee that’s literally 10 times cheaper.

Saying that two coffees equate to YouTube premium while using Starbucks as a metric is like saying that a car only costs a watch or two while using a Rolex as the reference watch. If you consider a Rolex to be your reference watch, cool, you’re a privileged minority.

GissaMittJobb ,

I’m sure they make enough money to not care. Being in the part of the company that brings in the dough is generally a pretty good position to be in as well.

kayos ,

It’s the only consumer product they haven’t canceled.

Gsus4 ,

The other day I visited youtube without any add-ons and concluded I’d rather do anything else than use youtube under those conditions.

kinsnik ,

legit, if youtube ever beats ublock origin, i’ll just stop watching youtube

unexposedhazard , (edited )

Its an all out assault on half your senses without an adblocker. Literal torture.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

The entire web is like that without an ad blocker these days.

Gsus4 ,

I miss those cheeky gif banners from the 2000s

fasterthancat ,

[With hindsight] The commercial use of the internet should never have been allowed.

Gsus4 ,

I want the internet to be a network of digital libraries…communication, public events and sharing space…personal pages…services…the commercial motive starts from there and eventually consumes the rest :/

fasterthancat ,

I reckon without the rule changes in 1993-94 allowing commercial use that the internet would have turned into a significantly more useful utility with higher quality innovation than the advert laden train wreck that we have now.

Gsus4 ,

Ok, apparently it wasn’t as gradual as I thought, there was a determining moment in 93-94 with Netscape and HTTPS that made secure transactions possible for e-commerce.

ltxrtquq ,

Do online multiplayer video games count as a commercial use? I kind of like those

webghost0101 ,

Yt-dlp download script + text file with fav channel urls + jellyfin.

No bullshit, saves bandwidth.

Also look into invidious.

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

They were serving videos with ads spliced in, basically DAI in podcasting industry. I’m not sure how that experiment went, but if that’s how they’d serve the videos, downloaders will have ads embedded as well.

webghost0101 ,

Yt-dlp supports sponsorblock, i am not worried.

I also dont even need tools for this as my usual style of watching is with my fingers on the arrow keys to skip back and forth

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

I actually don’t know if/how the ad block people worked around it or if YouTube pulled back. The problem with DAI on podcast and in stream ads is that the ads aren’t always 1:05~1:35, the ad could be longer or shorter, then the next ad won’t necessarily start at the same time, and most definitely won’t end at the same time. So sponsor block won’t know precisely where the ads are, thereby making it much harder for a crowd sourced solution to accurately skip embedded ads. Hopefully they figured out a way, but as mentioned earlier, I don’t know what happened to that experiment.

acetanilide ,

Put it on a VHS, then use one of those VCRs that removes the ads for you.

0x0 ,

Also look into invidious.

And peertube, some content creators also post there, e.g., The Linux Experiment.

pete_the_cat ,

I’ve had YouTube Premium since the days when it was called YouTube Red, so like a decade. I’ve grown used to not seeing any ads from Google and anytime I watch a video not using my account it’s torture.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Same here. FreeTube for desktop and NewPipe are all you need though if you don’t want to pay and/or have access to music.

Wildly_Utilize ,

Tubular is newpipe + sponsorblock BTW

I use pipepipe but it’s less stable

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t tried that yet. I think Libretube also does SponsorBlock too & have seen it on F-Droid.

Wildly_Utilize ,

Ya I think you’re right.

I use pipepipe over tubular because it let’s you change the ugly red YouTube banner to black (enable eye protection)

towerful ,

As a recent YT premium-tryer, it’s amazing how many ads they put in that aren’t obviously adverts - comparing between non-premium and premium browsing.
Not sure I’ll keep YT premium beyond the free trial, until I find more decent content producers. Even then, it’s skipping those video’s paid promotion segments.
So it’s like paying for a streaming platform to not get ads… But still getting ads

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I agree… however, that is an issue with the content creators relying on using content promotions. I have noticed when skipping ahead in videos that it usually indicates in the progress bar where the promotion ends. If the content producers utilized other ways to contribute and I liked them enough, then I’d do that. YouTube now has a subscriber only feature that should help with this. There are also extensions that are supposed to block sponsors too. I don’t think YouTube has implemented any functions to make blocking sponsored ads more difficult, especially for paying users… who knows though.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

You could pay for YouTube Premium

Gsus4 , (edited )

Is that what they are trying to do? Push crap ads and try to kill adblock to get a little extra user share to pay for yet another subscription?

PS: let me add that I also watch TV and the balance between quality of content and ads and their placement is much better (yes, some countries are worse than others with this). I don’t know what they are doing in youtube ads, but it’s anti-human (not just the ads, but the design too: super slow loading, tricks you into clicking the wrong content). Like they don’t want you to “pay” by watching ads, they want to torture you until you subscribe, go away or get adblock.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t care if you block ads… but to act like Google owes you and that you deserve free content is called entitled.

Gsus4 , (edited )

Google certainly acts like it owes me nothing indeed, that’s why it will never be good enough to pay to watch.

BedSharkPal ,

I’m just glad someone is thinking of the shareholders

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I forgot… where can I get my free data center with petabytes of storage & 300TB/s fiber interconnects?

BedSharkPal ,

Wait, are we acting like YouTube isn’t profitable now? If I’m going to spend money on videos it’ll be a content creator owner platform like Nebula

towerful ,

I get what you are saying, but the balance is off.
YT premium costs (edit) more than a streaming service per month.
There are no industry leading movies or series released exclusively on YouTube.
YouTubes benefits of premium is “not being delivered ‘skip after 5 seconds’ live streams” as an ad that will play indefinitely (or at least for hours).
Also, streaming services provide much better series discovery. Ie, find a show you like and easily discover the start of that series, then binge watch the entire series in order.
YT premium is basically a “play next” queue, 1080p, and no ads.
It doesn’t (AFAIK) support creators any more. It’s literally just a fee to not-be-inconvenienced, and it’s not great at that

auzy ,

Yep… i actually looked at Subscribing. But… It’s basically mostly amateur hour and the subscription costs a huge amount.

Even worse, I don’t believe creators even get revenue until they exceed sufficient subscribers. So most people are actually paying youtube to put benefit from other people’s video’s which they have no involvement in.

stsquad ,

When did this change? AIUI creators got a larger cut of YouTube premium views compared to ad share.

bulwark ,

It’s only a matter of time until the premium users get ads. Just like Netflix, and cable TV before that. You will inevitably wind up paying to be advertised to.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Netflix has ads now? I thought that was only for their lower tier service? I had to cancel Netflix cause they haven’t came out with two more seasons of Stranger Things yet.

sunzu2 ,

yes for lower paid tiers.

Damage ,

Google makes enough money evading taxes already. Not gonna help them make more.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t care if you use ad blockers. I get annoyed when people publish articles like… “Google is losing the adblockers war” cause then advertisers are going to start pushing harder for Google to actually prevent adblockers entirely, which they could have done already. Thus far Google, despite issues, does quite a lot of good things… Android is the only open source OS out of Apple & Windows. Android lets you install third party app stores. Chrome (Chromium) is open source… etc.

These users writing this content don’t even develop the apps to block YouTube ads. If you’ve ever explored the APIs by YouTube, then you’d know that Google despite pushing ads for users without blockers, is still rather friendly to third party apps.

calcopiritus ,

Advertisers couldn’t care less about adblockers. Advertisers don’t pay if the ad is blocked.

casmael ,

Fuck that though

narc0tic_bird ,

I’d pay for YouTube Premium Lite if it didn’t state “Note: Ads will still show on music content and outside of videos.” and if that’d make them stop harvesting all my data.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

Pro tip, LLMs do an excellent job summarizing YouTube videos now. I’ve never liked YouTube content, the incentives for creators are perverse and discourage conveying accurate information simply in favor of drawing out every video to maximize ad opportunities. About 95% of the content I might have been interested in could have been better conveyed in a 1-2 page blog post and read in 2 minutes instead of stretched out into a 15 minute video. Having a robot summarize that content is so much less irritating.

Gsus4 ,

What do you use for that, fetch the transcript and just feed it to the LLM of your choice? Or are you talking of the actual LLM watching and summarizing?

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve always just used chatgpt for both tasks. I’ll ask my SO, she does more of this and she might have better tools to suggest.

NaoPb ,

Same.

I came across someone who uploaded a 90 minute video as an ad as well.

towerful ,

I remember watching some video, falling asleep for a few hours, then waking up to a livestream of an ad. One of those “skip after 5s” but it was a livestream, so it just kept playing. I couldn’t believe it!

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

It’s so bad that I 1) refuse to pay for premium so I don’t enable the behavior and 2) ended up sideloading an alt YouTube app on iOS that just doesn’t display the ads. YouTube hasn’t been able to block that one yet as it spoofs as the original YouTube app. Totally unsanctioned and a pain in the ass to keep the certificate alive but worth it. YouTube is actually enjoyable again. All that because the ads interruptions were constant. If it was every 15 min or so I wouldn’t care, but every 5!? Get the hell out of here!

gloriousspearfish ,

Once upon a time Google used few and non-intrusive ads. The ads were soo well-placed and relevant, that they almost seemed like a service to the user, rather than being forced upon you. Some of us even added exceptions for Google ads in our ad blockers, so we would not miss out.

I miss those days.

limerod ,

That was almost a decade ago or even before. I remember adockers recommending white listing search engines or recommending to disable non-instrusive ads to support websites.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t know of any day where I unblocked ads and felt good cause they were targeted directly at me

Rentlar ,

There are some ads that I’m fine with, but they have to be clearly an ad, and related to the content on the site, not based on my previous interactions, nor using tricks to disguise ads as part of the content.

On documentation pages: sure just have a thing related to CS courses, on pirating and streaming sites advertise VPNs, on horny sites advertise horny stuff, and casinos and sports advertise gambling and sports betting. But DON’T make the ad look like a section in the documentation, like another download button, like another horny video on the site, like another casino game or segment of the sports analysis. If I want to explore the ad I will, stop trying to trick me else I will try to block and avoid you entirely! If I figure out that are you spending more effort trying to trick me the less interested I will be in the product you offer.

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Meanwhile these days every time I happen to use Youtube without an adblocker I get the same car insurance ads that I’ve gotten for the last 4 years.

SlopppyEngineer ,

Then they killed the competition and there was nobody left to stop them doing to you with ads what the farmer does with geese to make foie gras.

satanmat ,

I forgot where I heard this::: If there are fewer, more relevant ads, Google and YouTube should be able to make more money with fewer ads.

The advertisers though want more ads even though they are less affective. As it forces the cost per ad down.

It is totally backwards…. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

The ads are so obnoxious and frequent. It just kills it for me.

I know the reply I’m gonna get…

SomeGuy69 ,
@SomeGuy69@lemmy.world avatar

Then google got greedy and ruined it’s own ad service. Imagine google would’ve stopped at this early point. A single, non flashing banner ad would generate as much as 5 multiple second video ads do now. But ads got used more and more inflationary, to the point where we are now.

Kongar ,

I’ll never understand the entitlement of these companies when it comes to ads. You send the content freely to my computer along with BS ads. It’s my computer. I’ll display what I want using programs I want.

If you want me to pay for that content with $ or by watching ads - then put up a hard paywall and stop sending the content for free. You can’t get uppity and complain about ad blockers - it doesn’t make any sense…

The real problem is your content sucks and nobody is willing to pay for it. And that’s your problem - not mine.

Here’s some free apples. There’s a newspaper ad stuffed in there as well. Oh you ate the apples without reading the newspaper? Foul ball! /facepalm

Edit: never mind the fact that many ads have been served that are downright malicious code…

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

“Your content sucks… And I can’t stop watching it. I also got herpes by watching too much brain rot”

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

I was paying for Google music until they took it away from me and told me it was Youtube Premium and then raised the price twice.

Not exactly what I’d call a great value proposition.

Vlyn ,

That’s a weird way to look at it, obviously you’re watching the content.

I’d rather see it like this:

  • Free tier with ads
  • Subscription without ads (and better quality)

You are currently on the free tier. Yes, you can block ads (just like you can pirate movies), but that’s not the deal you were offered. I’m using an ad blocker myself, but I can understand the corporate side too.

They absolutely could add a hard paywall, but why should they if there are plenty of users who want to watch for free by paying with ads?

Kongar ,

No, I’m on the “you’re freely posting content to the internet - some of which I want to consume(videos), others not so much (ads)” plan. I never asked them to post anything, never entered a contract, etc.

If they lock the content up, and stop freely posting it, then fine, I’ll stop consuming and go elsewhere. If I can’t live without the content, then I can decide to pay up. It’s their content - they can do whatever they want with it. But they can’t get mad at ad blockers if they put their stuff out there for free.

Vlyn ,

Totally fine by me! But by your logic you can’t get mad at them if they block you from watching due to using an ad blocker. Which brings us back to square one?

Kongar ,

Agree 100%. IF they figure it out - which they won’t for more than a day or two. They know the only real solution is to lock their content up and protect it, but they don’t, and then they get bent out of shape. The companies get weird about it - not the users.

Vlyn ,

I still hold the opinion that they could absolutely block you out. I use uBlock Origin and there was actually a time where I got blocked/warnings every day. Even with upgrading my plugin / refreshing all block lists.

At some point I finally gave in and grabbed YouTube Premium, not because of the ads (I’d rather stop watching than watch with ads), but because I needed their music service (Used Amazon Music before, the app sucked. Music quality was the highest out there though. Also cancelled Prime for a double whammy).

For example the moment an ad gets triggered they could just refuse to send you video data. And if the ad is an unskipable 15 seconds, block playback for 15 seconds. Done. Even if you block this, you get 15 seconds of nothing and will soon be pissed off enough to either start watching ads, buy Premium or leave (no longer costing them bandwidth).

Kongar ,

You may be right, but I can’t imagine how they’d actually pull it off. The internet as a medium just doesn’t work that way - there’s always going to be a flag or a call for me to go pull ad data from somewhere else, and someone somewhere will write code that ignores that command.

Great for them if they figure it out, but the medium doesn’t work in their favor. They want the frog to be an elephant, and when it proves to be a poor elephant they cry to the govt. to fix it with laws and dmca takedowns and whatnot. That’s just a waste of taxpayer money, and annoys people on the medium.

Vlyn ,

Just the way I described, I’m a software developer, it would be easy as hell.

Your browser requests the video, YouTube decides you have to watch an ad. The ad has 15 seconds unskipable. So the easiest thing they could do is not send you video data for 14 seconds (add a spare second for buffering to not piss off users who do watch ads).

Doesn’t matter if you call some endpoint, load the ad data, whatever. You’re not receiving any video for a while, which would piss people off enough to leave.

Kongar ,

But you’re describing something like a hard paywall. I have to do a thing BEFORE they publish the video. Fair game. Weird that they don’t do that, but then bitch about me using an ad blocker.

I think we’ve reached the point of “violently agreeing”. :)

Good chat.

I think if companies put effort into reasonable amounts of ads, and tried hard at keeping the malware in check - people would be more willing to let the ads through and let them make money. If they make money, I get content - win win.

JovialMicrobial ,

They make more money via ads than they ever will with a hard pay wall. The innumerable advertisers paying google/youtube will always pay more than individuals paying for a subscription for no ads.

That’s why people who paid for no ads will eventually end up with ads again, despite paying. They don’t care if we pay or not. They want that sweet sweet ad revenue.

The sad fact of the matter is that we live in an ad based economy. Advertising is more profitable than selling an actual product. Having a platform to sell infinite ad space is a money making machine, plus people making free content for them to lure in more people to watch said ads. It’s super fucked up on youtubes part.

YouTube now exists as a billboard first, content second or third.

conciselyverbose ,

They definitely couldn’t add a hard paywall. It would collapse the system overnight.

Vlyn ,

Collapse what exactly? It would actually reduce strain on their servers and provide a better experience for paying users. Obviously they won’t do it because there’s a ton of users who watch ads (think of the average guy who plays YouTube on their phone or TV, with zero adblocking).

conciselyverbose ,

Just the revenue of paid subscribers will not pay the bills of any content creator that actually has employees or spends money creating content.

They won’t do it because all of their content would have no alternative but to disappear.

Vlyn ,

It would be a huge gamble, but it could pay off. Seriously, how many people are watching YouTube every day? Hours of their favorite content creators.

Imagine a rug pull, YouTube is now a pay only service. No ads, but everyone has to pay $5 a month to access. I’d bet with you that a surprising amount of people would just pay that to continue using it.

How many? Nobody knows, but it would certainly be 30% or higher. Now imagine 30% of users paying just $5 a month how much money that would be.

It can be done, YouTube just doesn’t do it right now as they still earn plenty with ads. If suddenly everyone started to use an ad blocker then things would change very quickly.

conciselyverbose ,

Nobody knows, but it would certainly be 30% or higher.

This is an insane pipe dream.

Vlyn ,

You underestimate how addicted people are to YouTube. There is no alternative to it.

Twitch is streaming focused, the vods absolutely suck. Kick? Same.

What else is there? TikTok? Instagram? Neither of which provide long high quality videos.

After all we are talking about YouTube literally blocking everyone and putting up a banner: $5 a month or you’re out of luck. If someone already happily pays $18 a month for Netflix, what is 5 bucks?

conciselyverbose ,

30% conversion rate of people already not paying to paid subscriptions is astronomical.

Expecting 10% would be delusionally optimistic.

Vlyn ,

Amazon has around 310 million active users. Amazon has 230 million Prime subscribers, even though it costs up to $15 a month. Yes, those include cheaper student subscriptions of course, but still.

Of course 30% is optimistic, but the average people I know happily watch those fucking ads. And don’t even complain about unskipable double ads. They don’t like them, they’re still too lazy to install an ad blocker as long as they get their content. Each one of them would absolutely shell out 5 bucks to continue watching (it’s less than a single beer when you go out).

conciselyverbose ,

The comparison would be Amazon just removing non-prime purchases. It’s not possible they’d convert 8 million of those 80, let alone 24mil. The people who aren’t members have already decided Prime isn’t worth buying.

30% isn’t optimistic. It’s impossible. 10% is “optimistic”. They’d be more likely to net a drop in subscriptions when some creators announced that they were going to be forced to stop making content than they would to somehow convert 30% of people who aren’t willing to pay for YouTube.

yessikg ,
@yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Amazon includes a bunch of services with that price, I don’t see Google matching that

RangerJosie ,

Good.

Youtube is a wonderful thing. It’s a wealth of knowledge and resources unlike anything this world has ever seen.

And it’s ran by one of the worst, most predatory corps on the planet.

corsicanguppy ,

it’s ran

it’s run

BlackDragon ,

it’s ren

LinyosT ,

Ron*

nokturne213 ,

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/04/34/4d/04344d273334cdabf87b5f52129f555a.gif

RangerJosie ,

Danke. Mein Reichleiter.

Zink ,

Perfectly put. The product is great and I love how it democratizes “being on TV” and lets some people make a living doing their own thing.

But I do not like where YouTube’s cut of that ad/sub money goes, and the enshittification pushed into it.

Unfortunately, YouTube is not unique in that regard. It’s a sucky fact of life that just about any complex product you spend money on will benefit a collection of rich sociopaths skimming as much as possible from the incomes of the people actually making the thing. Gotta vote with your wallet where you can, and vote the traditional way for the systemic issues.

echodot ,

Despite all of their machinations my strategy of simply ignoring literally everything they say and continuing doing the same old same old appears to be flummoxing them.

I’ve literally not done anything and have never experienced any inconvenience. Are we sure they’re doing anything at all?

sem ,

Same, I think they must be AB testing and I don’t get assigned into the shitty group

tempest ,

They are definitely AB testing things like rejecting ad blockers.

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

I definitely got really awful, unplayably spotty playback that seemed linked to adblock usage. Then I saw an article about it and confirmed I wasn’t going crazy, and that day it stopped happening, so it felt like I was going crazy all over again. It’s like the moment they realised it was going to become a problem and they weren’t as sneaky as they thought, they turned it off. I haven’t had an issue since then.

smeenz ,

I had the same experience with shitty playback buffering every few seconds on popular videos that should be cached on a nearby cdn, and then saw lots of articles about it and then boom a week later everything was back to normal

dumbass ,
@dumbass@leminal.space avatar

I thought I was getting that blank screen long pause before videos, turns out my phone cable was damaged, fixed it and YouTube’s back to normal.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Wait, how would a phone cable cause a symptom like that…?

dumbass ,
@dumbass@leminal.space avatar

I’m guessing some of the wires being broken caused congestion or sonething, I dont know why it did it, I just know once I fixed the cable it was fine.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Was the video signal going through it? Otherwise, sounds more like a coincidence.

Fades ,

100% coincidence

smeenz ,

Maybe they’re using the phone line for their Internet ? Vsdl etc…

mightyfoolish ,

Your phone could have been switching power profiles incorrectly due to your phone rapidly switching between charging and not charging (and perhaps with a low power state depending on battery level).

@ripcord Just my guess.

Fades ,

And this phone cable damage only impacted youtube lol

Angry_Autist ,

MBAs are taught they can shape human behavior with decades disproven assumptions.

It’s fallout like this that shows their hand.

“Oh, the customers don’t like it? Fine we do it twice as hard” is fucking Pavlovian training and the executives behind the initiative should be sealed in an underground vault knee deep in hungry roaches.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

YouTube has been a dumpster fire for many many years now and it continues its slide down.

Patreon would not exist had anyone over at YT had focus beyond the next two quarters.

Sooner or later an actual real contender will be created, and you’ll see YT’s knee jerk reactions with a surprised Pikachu meme in full effect.

legion02 ,

Patreon and sites like it exist as a hedge against YouTube banning your channel.

echodot ,

I would love it but I don’t see it.

It costs an enormous amount of money to host video content, doubly so when you need to replicate it across servers. I have never seen another company come close to usurping them.

stoly ,

I agree. We don’t get a new YouTube, we get whatever comes after YouTube—some new modality.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, The problem is, the price on YouTube is so incredibly expensive because we have to pay for a million script kiddies worth of useless videos to be uploaded and permanently stored everyday.

If someone made a competing system where you had to pay a small amount to host a video and then it turned around and paid you once you’ve got enough eyeballs that would be a far more sustainable model and cause people to police their old underperforming content.

Delta_V ,

I think its more likely that YouTube will shut down and be replaced by nothing. Its existence has never made sense as anything but an act of charity from an organization with tech resources to burn.

stoly ,

Remember that Google bought YouTube only AFTER it was successful for several years. This was also before Google turned evil.

jorp ,

There are a lot of unprofitable startups that get purchased speculatively based on other factors like their user count. The idea being the buyer thinks they can monetize.

stoly ,

This was more like a merger with Google being the larger company. YouTube was already very successful.

SaharaMaleikuhm ,

I’d rather not watch YouTube videos at all than videos with ads.

polle ,

Smarttube stopped working some weeks ago for a day. I tried watching YouTube with ads, the experience was so fucking insane to me. Like multiple, non skipable ads before the video starts + more ads during the video. It just was unwatchable. Its just unusable.

WeebLife ,

Try grayjay

Vathsade ,

Newpipe still works (Google may break it, but the app is usually updated in a couple days and it works again)

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Here’s my current lineup.

Newpipe Freetube Greyjay Tubular Brave

They get through all those, I’m just going to surf peertube or odysee

Angry_Autist ,

I don’t mind one or two of their old 5 second ads, but anything beyond that is unacceptable especially on a 2 min vid.

SuperSpaceFan ,

Who could have foreseen this? s/

SirEDCaLot ,

This battle was lost before it started. Sad thing is, if they weren’t so goddamn obnoxious with the ads it wouldn’t even need to be a battle. As it stands, YouTube without ad blocker is damn near unwatchable.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

Just like the rest of the internet …

0x0 ,

I remember when google search had one text-based ad. Bearable.

CileTheSane ,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

The guy who decided to start the battle increased ad revenue for a week so he got his bonus, that’s all that matters.
“I’ll glady tank YouTube’s revenue tomorrow for an extra dollar today.”

800XL ,

That’s just executives in general. And on the wayout they’ll leech a golden parachute.

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Dangit. Now I want a burger…

mechoman444 ,

Absolutely! Everything on YouTube is somehow predicated to getting you exposed to some kind of advertising. Absolutely everything!

They’ve min maxed it so hard that without the various plugins that I use in Firefox YouTube would be almost completely unusable.

bstix ,

The ads have reached a breaking point.

If I can’t block them, I’m just not watching the YouTube. I’ll never pay.

It used to be funny to link a relevant YouTube clip, but it’s not funny if you have to sit through half a minute of ads just to see something silly.

It’s also not really a long time streaming service like TV channels or netflix etc., because the homemade content sucks in comparison to an actual documentary that I can also watch without ads on other services.

It’s like Google completely misunderstood the point of the service they initially made. Also following a decade of users attempting to “monitize” their fucking crap, you can be sure that there’s nothing worth watching on YouTube that couldn’t have been better presented in a gif or in text.

Then the player is also fucking up lately. Usually if I go there, I’ll check the written description while the ads play, just to see if the content is worth the wait, but nooo… you can’t even do that anymore, because the app will start reloading between the multiple ads and the screen scrolls around and minimizes the description and comments. They’re literally hiding any information on the clip except the title until you’ve watched the ads.

It’s fucking garbage. Enshittified to death.

Repeating: Google, if you’re listening: I’ll never pay for YouTube, no matter how intrusive you make the ads. Enshittification is not encouraging me to pay.

HappyTimeHarry ,

Gotta love when the article saying adblock-blocking doesn’t work is itself preceded by a notice to disable your adblocker

Chozo ,

They don't even believe themselves.

0x0 ,

potential account suspension.

What account?

WhyJiffie ,

But to be serious, this might be at actual risk to those who are logged in. They were locking out users of their whole google accounts for less, including their emails and the uploaded files to drive.

dsilverz , (edited )
@dsilverz@thelemmy.club avatar

I was looking at the comment section from the article and the following comment made me laugh loudly, thinking on how bizarre our current world is:

https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/237792b6-21c1-4b52-bbe7-722927c1127f.png

So a platform that is blocking adblockers is delivering an ad piece advertising an adblocker. Ha! That’s an ad I’d love to watch 😂

asexualchangeling ,

I wanna see that ad

simonced ,

You need to deactivate your ad blocker for that 😆

asexualchangeling ,

They’d have to pay me

x00z ,
@x00z@lemmy.world avatar

Every video ad needs to have the video uploaded to YouTube afaik. So it’s possible to find it, although I’m not sure if it also works for private videos.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

potential account suspension

You don’t even need an account to use YouTube lol

azl ,

I pay for Nebula and try to watch as much as I can there. The content is more “pleasant department store” and less “Mexican public market”.

I do watch YouTube regularly when channel-surfing, but if I ever see an ad (which happens only on mobile devices), I close it immediately and do something else. It’s not that I don’t think I should be able to watch everything for $0, but YouTube ads are so jarring, random, irrelevant and just make me sick. They literally ruin whatever I was watching and make me sad to exist.

It can be exhausting to wade through the absolute meat market of click bait titles and thumbnails to find something that not only looks interesting but won’t abuse me with infomercial-form audio/visuals.

YouTube enables and promotes the “content creators” who abuse human psychology to accumulate views, likes, subscriptions, etc. The best thing that could happen is they continue to be exposed as the drug dealer they are.

Chip_Rat ,

So I paid for nebula, but it seems totally vacant. I’m not mad, I’m happy to spend the money supporting small creators/any independent endeavour, but am I missing something??

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

it seems totally vacant

OP did say that “the content is more “pleasant department store””. Have you been to a department store lately? They’re pretty vacant lol

Firoaren ,

I’d check out the podcasts - I like It’s Probably Not Aliens

cammoblammo ,

The app isn’t exactly optimised for finding content. There’s a lot on there, but it always takes me a while to figure out which submenu gives me the goodies.

Evrala ,

I’ll be honest, one of the parts I really like about the show Jet Lag is when they reccomend channels to watch at the end of the episode.

Angry_Autist ,

It’s relatively new and has a small userbase. I doubt it will ever get as active as youtube but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Ragnarok314159 ,

It’s always laughable to me that these companies are able to have the meta data on our entire lives and yet show ads for shit we don’t even want.

smeenz ,

Not to mention 50 different variants of the same annoying ad, so that even when you block it, you have to do it 49 more times to actually stop seeing it.

And the problem with the same irrelevant and animated ad repeated 5 times on the same webpage

Andonyx ,

Look at it this way, Google stopped caring about their viewers as anything more than wallets to empty years ago. Now they’re going through the same cycle with advertisers. They don’t care if the ads land, or the targeting works, just that they can convince them to keep buying ad space.

Eventually the ROI will show as not worth it to the advertisers, but by then Pichai and the rest of the C-suite will be pulling the same scam at another company whose investors are more greedy and stupid than saavy.

Because the horrible truth of America now, is that CEOs and their ilk have stopped caring about creating value, or building a sustainable business model with long term revenue. Now they just look at witless investors as wallets to be emptied too.

Lynx ,
@Lynx@jlai.lu avatar

Shit you don’t want yet. That’s the idea of ads, trying to sell you shit you don’t want or need. Why advertise the stuff that you’re already buying?

saplyng ,

Because an animated 5 second ad telling me to buy more dice and horde them like the goblin I am would work on me!

Thorny_Insight ,

Advertisements are for a large part about brand recognization. Even if you’re not going to buy the product, the fact that you remember the brand means the ad has worked.

Angry_Autist ,

There are tons of products I’d impulse buy, old lego sets, spice and hot sauce samplers, custom gaming dice.

I won’t normally go out to shop for them but if they show up as an ad I may click and buy.

But they NEVER advertise anything to me that I like or am interested in. It’s always bullshit

Angry_Autist ,

the thought is “not what you want, what THEY want you to want”.

If your favorite brands and IPs aren’t as profitable as Mypillow and Regressive Fake University ads (well not mypillow anymore thankfully)

That’s the key difference and why nearly every idle auto-play leads to the alt-right within a few hundred views.

Evrala ,

I’m a lesbian, Google has enough data on me to know I’m a lesbian, I live with women, don’t really hang out with men at all. I use a bunch of Google services so I know Google knows this about my living situation.

SO MANY FUCKING ADS FOR MANSCAPED, WHHHYYYYY. I am not the target market for this Google.

I’ve taken to blocking the ads, still more Manscaped. Is it cause blocking = engagement? “Oh wow, she interacted with this ad to block it but ignored the others, what a good ad placement!”

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