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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

#961

Post by j-bos »

aio2 wrote: post #898
j-bos wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll drop a contrarian take. I love youtube premium. The content I "comsume" (yech!) is well worth the 12ish dollars. I could skip ads with a blocker, I could join every creator's patreon, I could watch/listen in firefox on my phone, I could yt-dl the videos for offline play.. But none of that is as convenient*cheap as a premium subscription.

I agree with this. Subscriptions are one thing, but we are missing the obvious here: people don't want ads. No need to pay to remove them when you can just use an ad blocker.

tldr: the commons seems undervalued by individuals

You can just use an ad blocker, and don't get me wrong, I hate ads. But youtube ads don't load potentially malicious scripts (for now), and they provide the money that incentivizes this MASSIVE open self publisher friendly library of video data. So adblocker on youtube reminds me of leaving grocery carts in the middle of parking lots. Stores like Aldi solve this by requiring a quarter to use their carts, but that's incinvenient.

Also reminds me of the open source funding challenge. The commons requires individual buy in and conscientious support, something that seems to be on the decline because(?) no one wants to carry free riders.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#962

Post by paulryanrogers »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #945
runtime_blues wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is big, wealthy, and tech-savvy enough to, at the very least, make ad blockers unreliable and annoying most of the time for most of the users. This is not good news, and it's probably not going to be a lesson in humility for the company.

It's not about tech, it's about human psychology, monetisation and business planning. A YouTube user with an AdBlock is highly unlikely to click on any ads making them pretty much useless. So why keep bothering them?

They are likely affluent enough to afford Premium

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#964

Post by SantalBlush »

joshmanders wrote: post #942
iLoveOncall wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, YT Premium is one of the few subscriptions I think is a no-brainer and good value for money. I cannot think of any subscription that offers literally no upside beside what a free browser extension that you install in 1 click already provides. Youtube Premium is literally the worst value for money that I can think of, because I can get effortlessly the same for 0 cost.

In Google/YouTube's defense, this mentality is why we can't have nice things. You think it's cheap to host the content YouTube does? Paying for premium to remove ads is a way of saying "Thank you for providing me this service, instead of displaying me irrelevant ads, just take my money"

>You think it's cheap to host the content YouTube does?

These discussions always include bad-faith arguments about offsetting costs.

The purpose of ads on websites like YouTube is not just to offset costs, it is to maximize profits. The distinction is important; it means Google doesn't stop showing you ads once they've paid their bills, so please stop framing it this way. They will show you as many ads as they can before it starts to hurt their bottom line. They are not serving videos to be nice.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#965

Post by kingstoned »

inetknght wrote: post #915
kingstoned wrote: post #908

What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? I wanted to do it for a project I'm working on, but many solutions fail.

> What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? 1. Don't. 2. If the user blocks your advertisements, then the user doesn't want them. You should respect the user's desires. 3. If the user blocks your scripts, then the user doesn't want them. You should respect the user's desires. 4. If your site breaks because of things, then your site sucks. You should build your site to fail gracefully.

I'm not trying to block people who use adblockers or make experience worse. There are other reasons why someone might want to know if some portion of users are using adblockers. I personally use uBlock.

Do you know a reliable way to do it?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#966

Post by HWR_14 »

bagacrap wrote: post #944
DanielHB wrote: post #924

One argument I heard at some point is that google is better of if people who don't click ads use ad-block. If you care enough that you install ad-blockers you will not click on any ads anyway. If they block ad-block then their click-per-view metrics will go down which looks bad to advertisers and makes ad spots sell for less Of course that is a very simple view of a very complex problem, but there is definitely some…

Definitely Google is better off serving exactly the ads a user will click, including no ads for the user who will never ever click any ad, even one from their favorite sneaker brand. But I think a lot fewer people are actually in the never ever camp than they think. And even though I know I click ads on occasion, I still run an ad blocker.

Are we including accidental clicks in the "never click ads" demographic?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#967

Post by kingstoned »

alexb_ wrote: post #937
kingstoned wrote: post #908

What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? I wanted to do it for a project I'm working on, but many solutions fail.

Don't use ad services that collect user data and serve personalized ads. Find someone who actually wants to advertise THEIR AD on YOUR SITE, and present it as regular content. If you are trying to subvert people's ad block, you are doing it wrong.

I don't serve ads on a website and I'm not blocking users who use adblockers. I'm trying to find a reliable way to detect usage of adblockers for legitimate analysis.

Do you know a way to do it?

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#969

Post by HWR_14 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #916
Yiin wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inserting ads directly into the video stream doesn't seem to be counterable, no? It's not cheap, but might be worth it.

I've seen a browser extension that analyzes the video using AI to detect the sponsored segments, so detecting the ads would be probably even easier since they are even more disconnected from the normal content than sponsors.

Which one uses AI? The ones I've seen use crowdsourced timecodes, and AI seems like a better solution.

Re: YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

#970

Post by account42 »

SpaceNugget wrote: post #778
jamiequint wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true on random-site-X on the internet, but is not true on sites like YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Facebook, etc that run their own first-party ad platforms.

I almost fell for a scam yesterday from an instagram ad. There was an ad for fun printed workout shorts for only €4. I added a couple different prints and was about to pay when I noticed the URL was neehd dot com and the site title was some other random word. I couldn't find any reference to either name online and went back to instagram. The VERY NEXT AD was for an identical site with a different random 5 letter url.…

You not only clicked through an ad but were going to buy whatever it was trying to sell you? Wild!
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