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YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

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Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#121

Post by concerned_user »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #66
jorvi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, same here. They used to have either one 5s ad or a skippable 20s+ ad. At some point they've started to roll two 5-10s ads back to back, or unskippable 10-30s ads, and only the 30s+ are skippable. The topmost video in the app is always an ad as well, in addition to all the text ads you mentioned. I get that video hosting costs beaucoup bucks but the amount of ads is getting ridiculous.. Its happening on other si…

youtube has served me an hour + ad. The non skippable ads keep getting longer as well. But the ad AI is so bad it won't take a full watched ad as a signal, rather it keeps pushing things I want have previously skip over/ simular where they will be skipped.

You have to press report and select irrelevant, or not interested, it helps after a while, it is not immediate. I used to get tons and tons of mobile game ads but after doing this to 10-15 of those amount of those is almost none. I get one occasionally, so it definitely works in a way.

I don't think it is possible to get no ads by banning all the categories this way, it will just become random at that point I guess.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#122

Post by concerned_user »

kibwen wrote: post #29
czottmann wrote: post #11

I ditched the YT iOS app last night as the web interface is finally quite usable in Safari (iPad). Fullscreen works fine, quality and speed settings work fine, PIP mode works out of the box… Both on my Pi-hole-powered internal network and my nextdns.io based mobile setup the experience is so. much. calmer. I recommend giving it a shot. If pi-hole is not an option for you, check out NextDNS. Solid tracker & ad blockin…

Seconded. I've never seen a single one of the popups from the OP myself, which I thought was curious until the author mentioned they were using the Android app, whereas on mobile I only use Youtube from within Firefox, which is perfectly serviceable (and apparently less annoying).

Yes native android app gives you popup to enable premium trial once a week or so, from my experience.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#123

Post by cptskippy »

izacus wrote: post #73

YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it. It's a sustainable service which actually earns more for creators than ads and data mining (at least according to last CPC values I've seen for video ads). And yet, it seems like the author of this piece still feels entitled to complain about being asked to pay the price of service and th…

> YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it

Except that's not what it is. They've bundled Ad Free with YouTube Music and YouTube Originals, which I personally have no interest in. How much of that ridiculous price is going to the production of that original content and music licensing fees?

$15 a month is a big ask when I see zero value in 2/3 of the offer.

Bundling is what is driving cord cutting and piracy. People don't want to subsidize crap they don't want and didn't ask for.

\* I would probably think differently if I was a YouTube Red or Music subscriber and they gave me access to Ad Free and Originals as bonus for my subscription fee but I'm not and don't want to be.

Amazon Prime did something similar but by bundling Video and Music but I was already paying for Prime just for the free shipping so it was just extra.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#124

Post by cptskippy »

zamadatix wrote: post #108
wazoox wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's literally the service a monopolist would naturally come to after it killed all competition. First, kill everyone in the field by offering a service for less than what it costs; once the field has been cleared, begin harassing people for their money. This is absolutely despicable. Break Google up, it's way past time.

Why can't we want to break up Google and fund creators without ads at the same time? Neither of these preclude the other.

Most Creators aren't making money from YouTube, if they were then most wouldn't be on Patreon, have merch stores, or put ads in their videos. Pretty much every channel I subscribe to does one or all of those things.

Many creators, AvE springs to mind, are pretty candid about how useless YouTube monetization is to anyone who isn't a PewDiePie with multimillions of subscribers.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#125

Post by bogwog »

izacus wrote: post #110
bogwog wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about breaking up Google? Seems like that'd solve a lot more problems than it'd create.

Which problems mentioned in the original article would that solve? Concretely? Would stand alone YouTube not want payment for their service?

If YouTube were an independent company, they would have less leverage in the marketplace overall since they no longer are backed by Google's resources, no longer a part of Google's walled garden. Google will no longer have reason to give YouTube preferential treatment in ranking, advertising, etc. There's a lot of foundational things that will be shaken up, things which will force YouTube to actually be competitive, and actually provide value to users. Competitors will actually have a chance to dethrone them, and then the competitive forces of the marketplace, much like evolution, will lead to the crappiest business practices (like this premium spam) dying off and the market power shifting over to the users/customers.

That's of course assuming there's sufficient competition, and the power doesn't just shift over to Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft or some other anti-competitive giants.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#126

Post by ianai »

bogwog wrote: post #125
izacus wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which problems mentioned in the original article would that solve? Concretely? Would stand alone YouTube not want payment for their service?

If YouTube were an independent company, they would have less leverage in the marketplace overall since they no longer are backed by Google's resources, no longer a part of Google's walled garden. Google will no longer have reason to give YouTube preferential treatment in ranking, advertising, etc. There's a lot of foundational things that will be shaken up, things which will force YouTube to actually be competitive,…

Which is why you can’t just break up one component of an oligopoly.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#127

Post by lucb1e »

cameronbrown wrote: post #33
Hokusai wrote: post #2

Welcome to the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8 Tech companies are an oligopoly with a few actors. Competitions do not offer enough pressure to make them change. Regulation is the only way forward if we do not want to end in a dystopia.

It's not about competition or regulation. Someone needs to find a way to drive down the cost of bandwidth. Disclaimer in bio.

> Disclaimer in bio.

Honest question: why not just write "I work for Google" instead of asking people to click through first? It's not significantly longer if that's what you're trying to avoid.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#128

Post by icebraining »

cptskippy wrote: post #124
zamadatix wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we want to break up Google and fund creators without ads at the same time? Neither of these preclude the other.

Most Creators aren't making money from YouTube, if they were then most wouldn't be on Patreon, have merch stores, or put ads in their videos. Pretty much every channel I subscribe to does one or all of those things. Many creators, AvE springs to mind, are pretty candid about how useless YouTube monetization is to anyone who isn't a PewDiePie with multimillions of subscribers.

Supposedly YouTube Premium viewers are much more profitable for video creators than regular ad-watching users.

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#129

Post by blibble »

izacus wrote: post #73

YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it. It's a sustainable service which actually earns more for creators than ads and data mining (at least according to last CPC values I've seen for video ads). And yet, it seems like the author of this piece still feels entitled to complain about being asked to pay the price of service and th…

if the app didn't constantly pop up modal dialogs trying to trick me into signing up for the trial I might have considered it

however I refuse to reward that sort of dark pattern, and yesterday created a new google account for youtube and installed youtube vanced on my phone

Re: YouTube’s annoying Premium spam

#130

Post by matheusmoreira »

izacus wrote: post #73

YouTube Premium is literally the service HN wants: honest payment to support a Google service costs and creators publishing on it. It's a sustainable service which actually earns more for creators than ads and data mining (at least according to last CPC values I've seen for video ads). And yet, it seems like the author of this piece still feels entitled to complain about being asked to pay the price of service and th…

> It's like demanding that music authors just send you MP3s for free without paying for it at all.

That's exactly what should happen. Creators need to figure out how to get paid before the work is created. They need to get paid for the work of creating, not for the end result which should be public domain.

They should also publish a lossless FLAC instead of an MP3.

> I personally hope that more companies allow me to pay for their services instead of being plagued by behavioural ad tracking.

You are still being tracked. Also, the service isn't likely to remain free of ads. Cable TV was once ad-free but the opportunity to milk even more money out the audience was just too irresistible to pass up:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

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