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.
gravitas_deficiency ,

https://media2.giphy.com/media/J8FZIm9VoBU6Q/giphy.gif

cabron_offsets ,

What’s YouTube?

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.

suction ,

All corporate IT jobs are depressing, because working in a corporation isn’t something that a thinking person is equipped to do.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Drying tears with dollar bills .gif

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.

CosmoNova ,

You‘re part of the problem then. It only got so shitty in the first place so they could trap people in the Premium subscription that will get increasingly more expensive and less useful.

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.

auzy ,

Not sure if its subscribers or views… But, I tried to monitize one or two of my videos, and it wouldn’t let me because I don’t think I had enough views or something.

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!

CosmoNova ,

That‘s where Youtube Premium comes into play for many fools who don‘t really know about adblockers. Google‘s goal isn‘t to destroy the website, but to turn it into a much more profitable Netflix subscription based on user generated content. Sadly the enshittification of the biggest video platform will continue because enough people are willing to pay a lot for it. The site will not improve until there are mainstream alternatives that actually take revenue off Youtube.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Eh, I dunno if I’d say they’re “losing”.

I’ve certainly noticed disruptions on every platform except GrayJay. LibreTube stopped working for several months for me.

Certainly these interruptions could be enough for some users to abandon them.

BleatingZombie ,

I agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Not really. YouTube provides a lot of tools to make most of their services and content pretty accessible from third party clients. If Google wanted to prevent ad blockers and force you to watch ads, trust me they could. At this point I think some users that only know how to install third party software are going to start claiming they won and ruin a good thing for everyone. You don’t want ads? Then don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

How are they doing that? Users who aren’t watching ads have absolutely zero value to YouTube, and only cause increased use of their computing resources. If they leave, YT has lost absolutely nothing, and gained a decrease in energy use. Most likely these people won’t leave YT altogether but just go back to watching ads or paying for premium, which is exactly the point.

Not saying I give a shit, that’s just reality.

usualsuspect191 ,

I’d argue they risk losing users who post links to their videos online. It’s likely the same group who tend to use ad blockers are also the ones more likely to link a video online, so YouTube would miss out on all the non-adblock users clicking links and watching the videos that way.

darkkite ,

absolutely zero value to YouTube this is not true. non-paying users will like, comment, share to others making the platform more popular. and if they’re ads were less intrusive they would actually be more likely to be shown.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

You are grossly overestimating the value of your likes and comments.

JamesFire ,

Maybe they are, but it’s not “absolutely zero” like you said.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Disagree

romamix ,

NewPipe/PipePipe and Freetube were affected for half a day max, these guys are super fast with the updates.

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.

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