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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

#641

Post by ThatPlayer »

sircastor wrote: post #115

So YouTube is going to make it impossible to watch without ads. Reddit's communities are going dark because Reddit (essentially) wants more ad revenue. Facebook and Instagram have been plastered with ads for longer than they haven't. And we're just a short hop from ads being "Attention required" with eyeballs tracked. I wonder if there's a possibility that this will shake Youtube from it's dominance.

> if there's a possibility that this will shake Youtube from it's dominance.

Yes, I'm sure everyone is fighting for an audience who refuse to pay and block all ads. And of course the audience who do sit through ads or pay are therefore not going to switch and stick with YouTube.

So unless you want to burn money, I really don't see a viable business model there. Unless you think you can take the initial hit to grow a big enough audience and then force ads and paid subscriptions on everyone to make that money back.

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

#642

Post by tofuahdude »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #318

Honestly, seeing an old spice ad isn't going to make me buy old spice. And seeing a 1 hour ad for some guy telling me to stop eating what I'm eating to have no-wipe bowel movements isn't going to make me buy the stuff. There have been studies done about plumbers. The ones that pay money to get on top in the White Pages have worse reviews than the ones that work by word of mouth. I go by the same thing. If you feel th…

Yet here you are talking about old spice due to their ads. It worked. They got what they wanted from you.

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

#643

Post by mynameisash »

There's a 402 PAYMENT REQUIRED[0], but apparently it's been reserved for future use forever. I'm surprised there isn't a scheme by which websites can charge micropayments for content. In principle, I'm not opposed to loading up an account with $20 and paying $0.10 for an Economist article or $0.02 for a YouTube video or whatever.

I honestly don't know if this exists now or has ever existed, but I would love to directly support content creators without the total garbage game theory equilibrium we seem to have settled into of every expert hocking their nutritional supplements.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_...

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

#644

Post by switch007 »

miki123211 wrote: post #324

If you're on iOS, I highly recommend Yattee[1], a free Youtube app with no ads, background playback and sponsor block built-in. The way they get around App Store restrictions is by claiming that they aren't a Youtube app. They're technically a video-watching app which is supposed to be used with your own personal server. The server API they require, however, is supported by Invidious[2], an open-source, privacy-prese…

I love this just for the getting around of Apple's restrictions

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

#645

Post by grishka »

sircastor wrote: post #115

So YouTube is going to make it impossible to watch without ads. Reddit's communities are going dark because Reddit (essentially) wants more ad revenue. Facebook and Instagram have been plastered with ads for longer than they haven't. And we're just a short hop from ads being "Attention required" with eyeballs tracked. I wonder if there's a possibility that this will shake Youtube from it's dominance.

Not impossible. It's not like they're going to DRM this shit with treacherous execution environments and all that. Your browser is still your user agent. I'm sure an extension to bypass this would pop up days after the wide rollout, if any.

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

#646

Post by karaterobot »

JCharante wrote: post #258
user3939382 wrote: post #230

If Google had the power to implement a device that forced your eyelids open to look at ads they would do it. Their company is user hostile and we should move as far as possible away from their services.

How are they user hostile? It's people who do not want to pay for the service and do not want to watch ads to use the service who are the problem. How else should Youtube make money from those users? They must literally lose money on those users.

It's not really a problem to lose money on some users if they are making money over all. And they are, because Youtube is very profitable and drives billions of dollars in ad revenue a year. They never really cared about every user being a profit generator for them. Except, last quarter, they missed their ad revenue growth expectations—as did much every big company around—and they are freaking out. That's what this is. It's not a question of whether Youtube can afford to keep the lights on, it's that Alphabet wants them to be continually _growing_, and this seems like a way to do that. I think Netflix empowered them to do this by cracking down on shared passwords, which was successful for them (at least in the short term).

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

#647

Post by immibis »

miki123211 wrote: post #324

If you're on iOS, I highly recommend Yattee[1], a free Youtube app with no ads, background playback and sponsor block built-in. The way they get around App Store restrictions is by claiming that they aren't a Youtube app. They're technically a video-watching app which is supposed to be used with your own personal server. The server API they require, however, is supported by Invidious[2], an open-source, privacy-prese…

I heard the next version of iPhone will be forced to allow sideloading, so you could just install this app without jumping through hoops. Thanks, EU!

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

#648

Post by Dalewyn »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #226

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…

While annoyance certainly plays a role, it's not the primary reason why I block ads.

No, I block ads because they are fucking malicious and dangerous. As far as I'm concerned, an ad in this day and age is literally malware. I am not going to even try and tolerate that bullshit. Adblockers are an anti-virus measure.

Ads are malvertisements and deserve to be blocked with the fury of a thousand suns.

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

#649

Post by RandallBrown »

mynameisash wrote: post #643

There's a 402 PAYMENT REQUIRED[0], but apparently it's been reserved for future use forever. I'm surprised there isn't a scheme by which websites can charge micropayments for content. In principle, I'm not opposed to loading up an account with $20 and paying $0.10 for an Economist article or $0.02 for a YouTube video or whatever. I honestly don't know if this exists now or has ever existed, but I would love to direct…

Google (sort of) used to offer this feature! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

You put money in your account and basically bid against the ads that would be shown on websites you visited. I think you could even pick the images you'd see instead of ads.

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

#650

Post by kevincox »

mynameisash wrote: post #643

There's a 402 PAYMENT REQUIRED[0], but apparently it's been reserved for future use forever. I'm surprised there isn't a scheme by which websites can charge micropayments for content. In principle, I'm not opposed to loading up an account with $20 and paying $0.10 for an Economist article or $0.02 for a YouTube video or whatever. I honestly don't know if this exists now or has ever existed, but I would love to direct…

Coil [1] was an attempt to do this via Web Monetization [1].

[1] https://www.coil.com/

[2] https://webmonetization.org/

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