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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

#431

Post by pier25 »

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…

If Google removed the useless YouTube Music + exclusives and lowered the price it would be a lot more popular.

I pay for YouTube premium and for me it's worth it to remove the ads with the family plan. But paying for extra stuff you don't want sucks.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#432

Post by zamalek »

renonce wrote: post #426
TeMPOraL wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

YouTube Premium means you are paying YouTube for content made by someone else than YouTube, while YouTube generates lots of ad revenue from non-Premium users. Makes me feel I’m compensating the wrong person. I wish a higher percentage of my fees go directly to video makers and that they indicate clearly how much I gave each creator.

According to many creators, YT premium views are extremely lucrative for them.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#433

Post by k4ch0w »

pier25 wrote: post #431
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…

If Google removed the useless YouTube Music + exclusives and lowered the price it would be a lot more popular. I pay for YouTube premium and for me it's worth it to remove the ads with the family plan. But paying for extra stuff you don't want sucks.

+1, I will pay for the removal of the adds but I couldn't care about YouTube TV or music. The price already feels too high but it's the one I don't rotate through compared to Netflix/Disney/Hulu/HBO which I watch a show then cancel.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#434

Post by blitz_skull »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #156
karaterobot wrote: post #67

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…

It absolutely does not cost them to retain you. That’s a joke. The current model completely offsets the number of users with ad-blockers by such a margin it’s silly we’re even talking about it.

The only reason we are talking about it is because shareholders want the money printer to go brrrrrr. YouTube IS profitable. Can we stop pretending one of the richest companies in the world needs me to stop blocking their ads for any reason other than greed?

And that principle is what most people balking here have a problem with.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#435

Post by kerkeslager »

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've said it before and I've said it again: ad-based content and pay content are incompatible business models. YouTube Premium fails because the content isn't worth paying for. The content is not worth paying for because it's been designed from the ground up to sell ads.

When a website designed to sell ads fails to sell content, that's not evidence that selling content doesn't work, it's evidence that selling content designed to sell ads doesn't work.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#436

Post by myself248 »

ajhurliman wrote: post #359
TeMPOraL wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So YT is too greedy and shows you a lot of ads and loses trust, but if they were to play it cool and stop showing ads you’d sign up for premium?

I think it's more nuanced than that. Personally I love/hate YouTube:

Love:

* Most of my favorite creators are there

* Ahh, that's it.

Hate:

* Seems to have no actual humans working there, or no way to reach them in the event of disputes. If someone posting to HN about their business locked out of their account is the best way to get support, there's a problem.

* Keeps getting better and better at..... pushing extremist content and crypto scams.

* Removes tools (like dislike counts) that helped users spot bad content.

* Charges $23/mo for premium which bundles a bunch of stuff I don't give a rat's ass about (youtube music? no thank you!), in addition to just removing ads. (That's only $2 less than I pay for my cable modem, like, seriously ridiculous territory.)

* Doesn't disclose how much of that subscription actually ends up in creators' pockets.

If they solved those last two issues, would I sign up? Ahh, no. They're still a net negative.

I'd much rather try to drag my favorite creators into posting elsewhere. I've signed up for Nebula and I support roughly two dozen creators on Patreon and similar tipjar/support systems. I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is, because IMO YouTube is circling the drain and getting desperate, and the sooner we develop viable alternatives, the better.

So, no, there's nothing YouTube (and their parent corporation DoubleClick wearing a Google mask) can do at this point would make me cut them a check. I'm working as hard as I reasonably can to make them obsolete.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#437

Post by superkuh »

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…

Peer to peer using automated torrenting for video distribution of copyrighted media libraries has been reinvented and worked 3 separate times over the last decade (popcorntime, etc). It just doesn't work in the sense that as soon as it works and becomes popular it's attacked legally until it stops existing.

The problem is legal not technical.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#438

Post by AkBKukU »

renonce wrote: post #426
TeMPOraL wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

YouTube Premium means you are paying YouTube for content made by someone else than YouTube, while YouTube generates lots of ad revenue from non-Premium users. Makes me feel I’m compensating the wrong person. I wish a higher percentage of my fees go directly to video makers and that they indicate clearly how much I gave each creator.

Youtube is my living, Premium pays out a LOT more than ads do per view. It might be nearly 3X for me. So a Premium subscription definitely helps out the creators, a lot more than even watching ads.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#439

Post by jltsiren »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #399
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…

This exactly, but even one step further - it’s time consuming and expensive to produce the videos themselves! Who’s going to create quality content if they can’t get paid for it?! This is the major value YouTube provides. They bridge the gap between consumers who don’t want to pay with producers that NEED to get paid. Want free peer to peer streaming? Hard to build a content ecosystem on that.

The problem is that YouTube consists of two fundamentally different services.

One is a content hosting service like Imgur. The people hosting the content are the users. If there are any expenses involved, it's a matter between them and the service provider. The audience doesn't use the service deliberately. They just go there because someone wants to show them something.

The other is a platform where people try to make money with the content they produce. The audience are the users, and it's fair to expect them to pay one way or another. I'm not personally interested in using that YouTube, because I seem to be incompatible with videos as a content format. Pretty much every YouTube video like that I've seen would have been better as a written article.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#440

Post by crop_rotation »

superkuh wrote: post #437
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…

Peer to peer using automated torrenting for video distribution of copyrighted media libraries has been reinvented and worked 3 separate times over the last decade (popcorntime, etc). It just doesn't work in the sense that as soon as it works and becomes popular it's attacked legally until it stops existing. The problem is legal not technical.

Popcorn time is again like Netflix, not YouTube. Serving 10k movies is a vastly easier problem than YouTube (The few gaming channels I watch have more video content length than the movies on Netflix)
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