Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#571

Post by festive-minsky »

brewdad wrote: post #549
makeitdouble wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay People don't want to pay for half-baked products: - Workspace accounts don't work - Even with standard accounts, it won't work on many devices (eg. TV apps), so you still get ads even as you paid - As Google regularly kills people's account, it also means most of us have multiple Youtube accounts that…

What? YT Premium doesn’t block ads on the TV apps? Really? If that’s true, they will never see a cent from me. I was on the fence, mainly since my usage varies a lot month to month in rather unpredictable ways. If YT Premium means I still see ads on the 65” screen, then no way no how.

It works fine on my tv, could be something specific to their setup

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#572

Post by wbsun »

I use ad blocker a lot. After seeing this title, for a sec I felt frustrated about YouTube but then I realized it is better for me and my family to subscribe YouTube premium… and I just did it.

Long story: We are Chinese family living in US. We listen to both Chinese and English songs. We have both Apple Music and Spotify memberships, but due to copyright, many Chinese songs are not available (sometime this is true for other languages or even English songs, that’s why we have both subscriptions). Since a few years ago, I just found that YouTube has all the songs we love, some are high quality live stage recordings that are even better to listen (kinda surprising since YouTube is blocked in China mainland). So nowadays my family are listening music on YouTube more frequently: we have our own playlists, use YouTube on iPhone Safari with AdGuard so no noisy ads. The problem is we have to keep safari open and can’t use other apps when listening to music. Also jumping in the playlist is painful especially when driving.

Now this HN title just reminds me of YouTube premium that has no ads, supports background playing, and better playlist control. Then I really don’t see a reason to keep Apple Music and Spotify subscriptions which together cost more but still lack of songs we love.

Disclaimer: I work for Google and this represents my personal opinion.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#574

Post by plorkyeran »

tired-turtle wrote: post #566
Veserv wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month [1]. Ads average something like $2 per 1000 views to the creators (in some of the most common categories) [2]. Youtube takes a ~45% cut, so Youtube makes ~$4 per 1000 views from ads. So, to reach $12/month, you would need to average 3000 views per month. At a a…

You also get YouTube Music, which is not as great as Spotify, but nonetheless worth something. In fact, that’s the primary reason everyone I know who has YouTube Premium subscribes: music steaming + ad-free YouTube. That needs to be factored into your calculation, no?

No, a bundled second thing that I won't use is worth $0 and so does not have to be factored in.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#575

Post by rocqua »

tired-turtle wrote: post #566
Veserv wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month [1]. Ads average something like $2 per 1000 views to the creators (in some of the most common categories) [2]. Youtube takes a ~45% cut, so Youtube makes ~$4 per 1000 views from ads. So, to reach $12/month, you would need to average 3000 views per month. At a a…

You also get YouTube Music, which is not as great as Spotify, but nonetheless worth something. In fact, that’s the primary reason everyone I know who has YouTube Premium subscribes: music steaming + ad-free YouTube. That needs to be factored into your calculation, no?

I don't need youtube music and am lucky enough to have youtube premium lite available at 6€. That just eliminates ads for half the price.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#576

Post by occz »

deltree7 wrote: post #78
wnevets wrote: post #4

On a related note as someone who uses YouTube constantly YouTube Premium is absolutely worth it.

HN/Reddit : For years, "I'm happy to pay for services that has no/few ads". Companies: Here's a ad-free version. Subscribe HN/Reddit: Why are you asking me to subscribe? I hate this

There's a really simple reason for this - HN/Reddit is not one person. It consists of multiple people with different opinions, and as such, there is no singular opinion to be found.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#577

Post by cornholio »

Veserv wrote: post #514
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…

No, it perfectly showcases that people do not want to pay 1000% more money for the privilege of paying a monthly subscription. Youtube Premium costs $12/month [1]. Ads average something like $2 per 1000 views to the creators (in some of the most common categories) [2]. Youtube takes a ~45% cut, so Youtube makes ~$4 per 1000 views from ads. So, to reach $12/month, you would need to average 3000 views per month. At a a…

This could easily be fixed by paying the creators a much larger per view fee whenever a premium user watched their content. 1cent per view is 10$/cpm, that is 3-6 times more than what ads pay and would strongly incentivise creators to encourage subscribers go premium and create premium-only content for them. Now you can't do that because premium is a ghost-town and you lose ad revenue, but if, say 25% of users are premium then it starts to make financial sense.

Your suggestion to cut the price is unlikely to strongly increase premium subscriptions, YouTube has probably already set it to a revenue maximizing value.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#578

Post by PartiallyTyped »

WheatMillington wrote: post #479
kerkeslager wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conten…

>YouTube Premium fails because the content isn't worth paying for. I beg to differ. As a hobbyist type, and also someone interested in semi trashy niche content (true crime), having access to a virtually unlimited catalogue of fresh content, a lot of it exceptionally good quality, makes it absolutely worth the money. If I could have any one subscription, it would be YouTube 10 times out of 10. And as someone who abho…

I have YouTube Premium, it comes with YouTube music; I am perfectly happy paying for that as I consolidate music streaming with ad-free watching in my bed.

It replaced apple music and spotify for me; plus it gives me access to all sorts of music that is only released there as videos.

If I ever have to watch youtube with ads, I am going to just not YT at all.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#579

Post by arp242 »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #541
arp242 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a "lite" option for €7/month (instead of €12) which only removes ads, but doesn't include music and all the other stuff. Prices may differ per region; this is what it shows for me.

Not available in the USA, unfortunately.

Huh, odd. Not sure why you'd want to region-limit that(?)

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#580

Post by asdfman123 »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #240
Nextgrid wrote: post #82

Invidious is a third-party frontend (you can self-host) that solves this problem: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious As a bonus, it is super fast because it doesn't have to justify the salaries of dozens (hundreds?) of frontend developers and can get away with server-side-rendered HTML and minimal amounts of Javascript.

Your bonus is my primary reason for using the service. Invidious, old.reddit.com, Gmail HTML Mode, are perfect examples of the great user experiences we've lost in the pursuit for New Shiny. Directly comparable with their "modern" counterparts. It would be nice if websites started to offer a cut-down version as an option, especially for users in 3rd world countries.

The reddit redesign was just downright horrible and for some reason it’s stayed and we all have to live with it.
Post reply on HN