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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

#441

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…

It can't be the perfect showcase because the service isn't even great, let alone if you compare it to "any" alternative, for example, it doesn't even have proper offline downloads, which is available for free with an alternative

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had an issue with my payment for premium which resulted in temporary suspension of my service. A few days after fixing the payment issue, this news came out. Considering this with the recent price increase, and some trouble with my family plan, my initial reaction was quite negative towards YouTube. They are setting a very clear trend against what I want in their service with recent changes (Removing downvote, remo…

That's crazy, the same thing happened to me. I was like what? Suddenly now my price has increased when I was on YouTube Red for the longest time. Considering canceling too

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#443

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 was probably the best decision I did. Amount of time saved on ads alone makes it worth it. Other bonus feature - downloading videos. If you make enough money it is a no brainer together with things like extra cloud storage from google, Apple and now ChatGPT

>YouTube premium was probably the best decision I did. Amount of time saved on ads alone makes it worth it.

Why do you get ads? I don't understand how there are people on Hacker News that don't use content blockers. Is is because of principle?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#444

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.

Premium views pay out a lot more according to LinusTechTips [0,1], and early on it was paying out based on watch time, so hugely disproportionate payouts happened[2].

0: https://linustechtips.com/topic/928915-does-ltt-actually-mak...

1: https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1486935690315112455?s=2...

2: https://youtu.be/Rh5hL47z2us?t=434

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#445

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 was probably the best decision I did. Amount of time saved on ads alone makes it worth it. Other bonus feature - downloading videos. If you make enough money it is a no brainer together with things like extra cloud storage from google, Apple and now ChatGPT

[flagged]

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Does Google need to be making a higher profit than it already does? Does YouTube deserve the extra money? For what reason should we pay?

If you are watching YouTube then yes, it is a useful service that has some monetary value.

> If you are watching YouTube then yes, it is a useful service that has some monetary value.

Huh? They asked if it deserves more money. Not if it deserves money.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#447
post #206
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no problem paying for services, even for premium tiers when free tier is available. > I don't trust YouTube Premium enough to even try it. These two statements seem to be mutually incompatible unless you're trying to argue that a premium tier doesn't really exist unless you can write the terms of service and audit the company providing it. It's also somewhat hard to follow the logic here: if you don't trust…

I like premium stake and would pay for it. I'm not eating premium stake at Cockroach Joe. His sandwiches are alright. How are they incompatible?

> I'll eat at Cockroach Joe, but I won't pay. I also like to tell people I don't pay because it goes against my virtues. But I'll still go there to eat.

Fixed.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#448
post #441

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…

It can't be the perfect showcase because the service isn't even great, let alone if you compare it to "any" alternative, for example, it doesn't even have proper offline downloads, which is available for free with an alternative

Even great compared to what? You need to cite services similar to YouTube (like Vimeo, whose pricing model will just not be acceptable to anyone at HN), not frontends to YouTube, who don't do any of the expensive backend work.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#449

What's next, "YouTube tests pausing videos when you look away from ads"? This is a slippery slope that I definitely do not want to be going down. At that rate, "drink verification can" is not far off. When I used to watch the actual TV I changed the channel, muted, or left the room during ads. My eyes, my ears, my brain. I will not be forced to consume.

I work in adtech, we're getting into eye tracking for verifying ad viewership on smart TVs. So.. yeah.

Drink a verification can.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

The comparison to imgur is interesting, as imgur is itself trying hard to make money now by removing lots of content. The history of image hosting websites is a history filled with image hosts failing for the exact same reason.

This post should be an interesting read:

https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-onli...

The thing is, there is no way to provide a free content hosting service in the long run (whether image or video)

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