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YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

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Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#401
I've been using fixyt.com to avoid YouTube grossness for years. Thanks to the bookmarklet below, whenever I land at youtube.com I'm only ever a click away from escaping their awful, awful app.

javascript:(function() {window.location=window.location.toString().replace(/^https:\/\/www.youtube\./,'http://fixyt.');})()

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#402

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

Interestingly premium is not available in my country, so my choice is ads or no youtube. I pick the latter.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#403

I feel this was the inevitable outcome of the increased availability/popularity/awareness of ad blockers - a tragedy of the commons scenario that's set us on an escalating feedback loop that won't end well for anyone involved. EDIT: I do wonder if the price point of youtube premium is too high to capture an audience that simply doesn't want ads but doesn't care about any other features. $6/mo feels higher than the ty…

I'm curious about that myself. We dropped our Youtube premium family plan when they upped the price to $22. We just recently got an email that Paramount was doubling our Paramount+ subscription price and "adding" Showtime. I don't want showtime. I just want to pay a small price to be ad free. The lower price tier is with Ads. The trouble is apparently that Ads are worth more to these companies than ad-free subscriber…

agree with the last part. The average YouTube user seems to be clicking through ads more often than we think. This is similar to credit cards, where banks get most of their interest revenue from few users.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#404

I can't recommend enough of the spiritual successor to Vanced since the article briefly mentioned that. It's called Revanced. It requires more hoops than usual but I'm sure the intelligent folks here won't have a problem with that. It's on Github. Other results are probably fake.

I've had plenty enough of a problem with it. The original required me to install a separate app in order to install it. I've yet to successfully make revanced work. Admittedly I only tried once but the hassle was enough to just use newpipe. It isn't perfect at all and is lacking a lot of what I want but it works. It just works.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#405

I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I don't care if the ads don't track me. I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. I vote for billboard bans whenever I can. I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Advertisers have no morals, they're comple…

> It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “B…

What's remarkable is this quote comes from a book written in the 1920's

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#406

I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I don't care if the ads don't track me. I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. I vote for billboard bans whenever I can. I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Advertisers have no morals, they're comple…

>I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are.

Lol, then there are ads like the Liberty Mutual ads. All I know is I will never, ever purchase car insurance from that shithole from having been made to watch their obnoxious ads on loop.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#407
Hey Youtube: I've never logged in to you because I don't want you tracking me. I've never subscribed to, voted on, or commented on a video because all those things require logging in. For the handful of creators I like, I support them on Patreon. For the other random crap that I occasionally find useful, I use ad blockers or youtube-dl, and I'll continue using them until they stop working. When that day comes, you and I part company.

You do what you gotta do, and I'll do what I gotta do.

Cheers!

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#408

I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I don't care if the ads don't track me. I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. I vote for billboard bans whenever I can. I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Advertisers have no morals, they're comple…

What's ironic in my case is that I actually liked looking at ads in print. It doesn't matter if it's newspaper, magazine or comics.

I agree with the other commenter that ads have become so obtrusive that it's being dealt with in the same vein as malware. It's just malware from the techno oligarchy.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#409

This doesn't really affect me since I subscribe to premium, but something that a lot of ad-based services don't seem to grasp is why people block ads. It's because they've become increasingly obnoxious. Nobody blocked ads when they were a simple column of links in the gutter or maybe an animated GIF banner with 3 frames. No, adblockers became popular because ads kept getting more loud (both visually and audibly), in…

There is a saying that goes something like this: It is difficult to get a man to understand something that his paycheck depends on his not understanding.

Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

#410
When Youtube stop serving me un-reportable "Meet young women from Ukraine" unsexy-supposedly-"alluring"-AI-uncanny-valley picture adverts ...

Or the current rubbish "Shop like a billionaire ... buy Nike trainers for 55 cents" crap-verts ...

When Youtube stop serving me the above bullshit, perhaps I'll take their advertising efforts more seriously ...

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