YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#291

Post by arkh » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #4

I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. I somewhat understand Google's stance on this, as it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. They don't really have such a way to opt out of pretty much any ot…

They could let creators pay to remove ads from their video. Making Youtube like a usual hosting service.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#292

Post by foxhop » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #269

foxhop wrote: post #244

I'm pissed, I knew this was coming. Google and "Alphabet" are bastards. Will this be my last video hosted on YouTube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYrN0o-cfk | Hardneck Garlic Planted For High Yield. YouTube doesn't give me any network effect anyways (all my views are from external sources), I was just trying to do good in the world. What tech should I look at for self hosted streaming on Digital Ocean spaces and…

> I'm pissed, I knew this was coming. Google and "Alphabet" are bastards. Yeah, how dare they charge for storage, CPU encoding and bandwidth costs! Anyway, you can deploy nginx with RTMP module on any server and host videos yourself. We did this for many video providers (which then moved on to YT because it turns out hosting costs money), but it's not that hard.

They are not charging me for storage, they are putting ads on my videos with no way to opt-out. Ads of the like that I have _NO_ desire to be affiliated with, ads for pollutants like "weed killers" and "insecticides".

I don't care if they use fancy algorithms for transcoding (CPU cycles) or bandwidth costs, or storage, that was the deal. I ship to them and they host it without ads. I did this for the "promise" of networking effect but this is a lie, the algorithm hates me.

I will foot the bill for my own hosting, f them.

Does this seem like a decent guide?

https://www.nginx.com/blog/video-streaming-for-remote-learni...

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#293

Post by Supermancho » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #15

Bait and switch. This is what big companies do. They buy products that are a threat to them, or allow them to address the threat of another company. Then they offer the bought company's services for free for a period. Then it ends. The point is to kill competition so they can settle in and collect rent.

> Then they offer the bought company's services for free for a period. Then it ends.

It ends because there is an expectation of continuous growth. Eventually the predatory company starts corrupting the free model to increase revenue incrementally (all the while, internal development costs start to rise with bureaucracy) until the revenue growth is outstripped by development cost or market demand falls to equal/below a measurable amount.

Usually before, but at various times, some smaller startup with funding to stay alive or a novel business model grows with more agile process and lower cost expectations while the old predator tries to flail about (reducing ads or subscription costs) shedding users who invested, all the way down while maintaining all the bloat.

This is what happened to Yahoo, I think.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#294

Post by wldcordeiro » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

anoraca wrote: post #279

bsd44 wrote: post #118

As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decreased by more than 50% since I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock), and I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. As a result I sp…

I feel the same way about Twitch. They recently added unblockable, unskippable ads unless you subscribe to the specific channel that you're watching and I just don't watch Twitch any more for the most part. It's especially annoying when it's the same few ads in rotation over and over for products that I will never be interested in.

It doesn't help that the ads on Twitch are the lowest of the low in terms of quality so you have no desire to stay around. Also their way of doing preroll ads is just bad, you'll get to watch like 5-10 seconds of the channel before the ad just suddenly cuts it off, unlike YouTube or others where the ad is shown first then the content after.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#295

Post by puranjay » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

bsd44 wrote: post #118

As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decreased by more than 50% since I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock), and I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. As a result I sp…

20 second unskippable ads about cat food (I don't have a cat) to watch a 1 minute video.

No thanks YouTube!

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#296

Post by v77 » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #258

8ytecoder wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered paying for YouTube Premium?

I do this. Its not cheap (12$ month), but it comes with "youtube music", which I'm starting to use a bit. like all things google, its a little difficult to figure out exactly what is going on.

I signed up for Red a few weeks ago and cancelled my Spotify account. Ad-free videos, offline vides and a reasonable music service. I think it's a great deal.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#297

Post by jaypeg25 » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #196

bsd44 wrote: post #118

As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decreased by more than 50% since I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock), and I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. As a result I sp…

Reddit recently limited the number of comments you can read in Safari on iOS devices. Click "more" and you are prompted to create an account or go to their app. It's been fantastic. Reddit comments decrease rapidly in quality anyway, but I was unable to look away. Now I'm capped - one or two scrolls and I have to go find something more rewarding to do. Thanks reddit!

I had an iPHone for a few months and noticed my reddit time dropped considerably. Part of it was because iPhone (or Reddit? I don't even know who is to blame here) wouldn't let me choose the reddit app I wanted as the default. If a friend sent a reddit link to me it'd try and open in Safari and I'd get annoyed and just ignore it.

I'm back on Android now where I can choose default apps and now if a friend sends a link, I click it and read it, then I click over to the homepage, then 20 minutes goes by as I mindlessly scroll. It's a blessing and a curse to be able to use your phone the way you want to, I guess.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#298

Post by izacus » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

thdrdt wrote: post #185

cableshaft wrote: post #4

I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. I somewhat understand Google's stance on this, as it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. They don't really have such a way to opt out of pretty much any ot…

"...and pretty much have their entire business on there..." This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income. This is bad practice in every business book. I am a freelancer. If I only had one customer my business would be instantly over when they didn't hire me anymore. YouTubers put too much trust in an untrustworthy business partner.

> This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income.

More importantly, they also then decided to scam their source of income by getting money from other sources (e.g. Patreon) and are now acting surprised when their own data host isn't happy about not getting their cut of the revenue.

Reminds of a scam that cinemas attempted in my state - because the distributor wanted a % cut from movie tickets, they sold cheap tickets and then charged rent for 3D glasses required for a movie (e.g. 2EUR for ticket and 12EUR for the glasses). The distributors took their distribution rights because of that at all.

Trying to scam your most important source of revenue is just a really bad business decision.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#299

Post by mcguire » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

domano wrote: post #278

I am fine with ads but having multiple ads in a row gets on my nerves. The worst thing is that you have to skip them, so you need to interact with the tv. If the ads were reasonably long that would be fine, but sometimes there are WHOLE EPISODES OF OTHER SHOWS as ads (sometimes as long as 30 mins!). I just want to watch something without searching for the remote all the time.

One of the ads I saw recently was, literally, an hour long video.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#300

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

What about creators that did want them, and YT decided that I didn’t have enough subscribers so they demonetized me?

I’ve put up some useful videos on a few technical tasks and was happy with the few dollars/mo/video they were kicking me, but it wasn’t subscribable content; I solved your problem, why would you come back?