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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

#251

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 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 There's also a factor of quality and trust. I don't trust YouTube Premium enough to even try it. This is mostly colored by their constant, invasive disruption of my YouTube experience (particularly apparent on mobile) with YT Premium a…

FWIW, I've had it for years and it's great. I've basically forgotten YouTube has ads.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#252

Writing's on the wall. As soon as they make ads mandatory, a competitor with no ads and better support will look a lot more attractive, and they could eventually face an exodus.

Why would content creators post content there if they can’t make money? Where would the content come from?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#253
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep, of all my subscriptions, YTP will be the last to go. The experience truly is a premium one, only marred by the inability to disable YouTube shorts. (I recently made near exactly the same comment in a recent, related story thread - but it's worth repeating).

The one thing I don’t like is incognito mode in the YT app disables YT Premium.

From time to time I turn it in to look something up quick. Maybe a recipe or something. A topic I don’t want recommended to me constantly for the next few weeks.

But it also turns all ads back on. Instead you can watch it normally and remove it from your history, but I’m not sure that works.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#254

Is it weird that this makes me want to subscribe to YouTube premium less than before? Feels like I've been poised to give them money for a while, since so many people seem to like the service. Now I feel like they're challenging me to a duel.

If you weren’t a paying customer, refuse to become a paying customer, and refuse to watch the ads, they don’t gain anything by having you as a user. It only costs them to retain you. If doing something as simple as asking you to hold up your end of the deal of using their website (letting ads load for the ad-supported content) is too much to ask but paying for the website is also too much to ask, you have to be hones…

> they don’t gain anything by having you as a user.

Every minute someone watches them is a minute that they aren't watching a potential competitor

In this sense, having a free tier at all is effective to suffocate competition, even if most users enable adblock

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#256

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 think you make a good point but I think part of the problem is that it is difficult to get people to pay for something that they have gotten used to getting for free.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#257
post #40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it worth it? Isn't the experience the same as just running an ad-blocker?

You can watch on all of your devices, even the ones where setting up an ad-blocker is non trivial or impossible.

It is pretty trivial on every device I have used. Which ones are a challenge?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#258

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…

> And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs Why can't Google do this? They already have presence at ISPs

Youtube has ~500 hours of video uploaded every minute. Netflix only has content from the past few months/years, and probably only a few thousand hours _total_.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content creators receive approximately 55% of the revenue generated on their channels. What is fair and equitable to you? Bear in mind that the other 45% is not pure profit for YT as most of it pays for hosting, development etc.

One way to frame that is a 45% flat tax on the revenue that creators create for google. Time for some progressive taxation maybe? They could make it a tiered system so the low-end views pay more for creators. Ie, 90% to channels for the first 50K views, then progressive steps down to 55% share for the higher numbers.

Progressive taxation makes sense when you're talking about actual tax, but why does it make sense for content creators? If anything, less popular creators cost Google more, because one 10GB video with 1,000,000 views is cheaper to host and serve than ten 10GB videos each with 100,000 views.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that both content and platform are necessary here, and letting content creators take home over half the revenue seems, I dunno, at least within the realm of fairness? Seems to be working pretty well for Mr Beast.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#260
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be ok woth paying for their service, as we use youtube a lot. But youtube forces you to create a google account and stay logged in. This way they can easily track almost everything you do on the web, and I'm definitely not ok with paying for being tracked. If this was a youtube-only account (as it was in the past) then I'll immediately start paying for their service.

This is a fair point. I too would appreciate some way to have an isolated YouTube account.

Firefox containers, set one up for youtube.
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