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YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

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Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#161

Post by chunes3 »

Zetice wrote: post #70
mikece wrote: post #3

If YouTube blocks me from watching videos because I use an ad blocker then I'll stop watching videos on YouTube. I don't care if this doesn't hurt YouTube... it will help me stop spending so much time on YouTube.

I just cannot wrap my head around folks who demand content for free. How do you think the people who create this content would survive if they couldn't do it for money???

Some of us are from a time before the web was commercialized. The answer to your question is we couldn't care less. If these people who make "content" as a means of making money go bankrupt, it's no skin off our backs. It will make more room for people who host genuine works on the web.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#162

Post by senectus1 »

mertd wrote: post #148
crop_rotation wrote: post #126

YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vime…

I have YT premium and it is easily the best money I spend most months. I'll just play devil's advocate. Maybe people are imagining a pay per view type of experience?

completely agree. ESPECIALLY if you have children. they can piggyback of your subscription and they wont get fed those horrendous adverts while they're searching for tutorial videos.

Its how the kids learn faster these days.. tutorial videos in small bites about specific subjects.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#163

Post by crop_rotation »

beardedwizard wrote: post #145
crop_rotation wrote: post #126

YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vime…

people are paying for the content with patreon, bypassing YouTube entirely. Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with? Why blame the users for YouTube failure?

The amount of people paying with patreon is just so so tiny compared to people watching YouTube in any country or city that I am not even sure what your point is.

> Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with?

What does this even mean? I hope you are not suggesting in good faith that YouTube should grab money from other companies somehow? Money that was given to that company by people with specific expectations in mind.

What exactly is YouTube failure here? The patreon citation is just so irrelevant because of scale. Taking all of Patreon revenue would not cover YouTube hosting costs.

People on HN love to talk about patreon as an alternative to youtube premium because it is an easy way out. But if it was representative of real world actions, Patreon would be processing a lot lot more money.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#164

Post by nntwozz »

jacooper wrote: post #61
pwg wrote: post #6

Or just download with yt-dlp ( https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp ).

You can use alternative front ends like piped, invidious or apps like libretube.

This is the way.

I use invidious with Yattee on iOS/macOS/tvOS.

Total bliss.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#165

Post by bagacrap »

anigbrowl wrote: post #92

Maybe people wouldn't be locking your ads if you didn't have them jacked up to saturation level. I sometimes watch on a console and the number of ads is ridiculous, even worse than broadcast TV. Sometimes you get ads in the middle of songs.

Let's be real --- ad blockers don't have a setting to let through one ad every 30 minutes.

I agree the number of ads is absolutely shocking, which I'm reminded every time I see someone else play youtube, as I've had a subscription for about as many years as it's been available. My time is absolutely worth more than whatever I'm paying to skip these ads.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#166

Post by kenhwang »

haunter wrote: post #8
jacooper wrote: post #2

It doesn't look very complex, nothing a simple ublock/brave block element can't remove, at least not yet.

Yet. Twitch has some pretty hardcore ad system that even uBlock can't block straight up and you have to use a combination of tools/scripts https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions https://old.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/10fgy9y/twitch_adb...

I work in ad-tech. The tech to make ads unblockable has existed for years now (server side ad insertion makes ads indistinguishable from content because they're delivered through the same gateway in the same video stream thus bypassing DNS/network and DOM based ad blocking).

However, it's still rarely used because sufficiently capable users with advanced adblockers do not make up enough lost revenue over the increased infrastructure cost.

It's been fascinating watching Google lag in this area given the amount of engineering resources, market share, and platform control they have. We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads. But it appears it's not for lack of want, it seems like it's just poor execution and unexpected diminishing market share.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#167

Post by crop_rotation »

esprehn wrote: post #153
crop_rotation wrote: post #126

YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vime…

YouTube has caching like that too, see: https://peering.google.com/#/ And https://peering.google.com/#/learn-more/faq And specifically the section on: "What content can Google serve from an edge node?"

This is not comparable to Netflix et al. YouTube catalog is effectively infinite, and people watch all kinds of random content. Storing 10k movies and 20k TV episodes is a cakewalk compared to this.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#168

Post by aegis4244 »

dylan604 wrote: post #131
candiddevmike wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try youtube-dl or one of the clones.

How does this work for users that are not using a desktop OS/browser? Is there a mobile app that does this and holds the content for local viewing?

Newpipe.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#169

Post by post_break »

mertd wrote: post #148
crop_rotation wrote: post #126

YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vime…

I have YT premium and it is easily the best money I spend most months. I'll just play devil's advocate. Maybe people are imagining a pay per view type of experience?

I don't like paying for premium, but at the same time I have been able to do things I never could have on my own, save tens of thousands of dollars in DIY projects, etc. My fear is they will raise the pricing and boil the frog.
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