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

Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 168 posts

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#31

Post by isoprophlex »

textadventure wrote: post #9

As soon as I get that, I'll be having yt-dlp very handy.

I have something ridiculously overengineered for this. An ios shortcut that you can call on a webpage, that puts the webpage url onto a queue; a worker on my home server pulls these urls from the queue and calls yt-dlp on em, downloading the urls to Plex.

Mainly used for allowing my kids to view some content I can screen for appropriateness, that also gets rid of the ridiculous ads.

A thing yet to do is to use a LLM to automatically categorize these downloads into folders

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#32

Post by IMSAI8080 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #15

FWIW, I'm not seeing this at the time I'm writing this comment. Not sure if it's A/B testing, or my combo of Chrome Extensions, or something else at play.

Pretty sure it's A/B testing. I'm logged in with uBlock Origin and no anti-adblock is visible. I've seen someone on Reddit complaining they were getting this and loads of people replied to say they were not. They're probably trying to figure out how many users/views they will lose or how many new premium subscribers they get or something like that.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#33

Post by coldpie »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #17
nickthegreek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creators get more money per view from a premium member than an ad-supported viewer. So not only does being a paying member give you a better experience, it puts more cash in the pocket of those you watch.

Not arguing for the sake of it but is that confirmed? I assume the more I watch the less each creator gets? No idea what the algorithm is they use to share the money out

You can find lots of discussion with a quick web search, but yes, it seems to be pretty well supported.

Speaking more broadly, there's the simple fact that people deserve to be paid for the work they do. Many places don't allow you to pay with money, they force you to pay with ads. I find viewing ads to be an unacceptably high price, so I use an ad blocker, and I just go away if they turn me away for that.

But for places that do give a money option, like YouTube, I jump for it, as I find that to be a far more ethical business model[1]. I'm happy to support businesses that give me the option to pay by doing exactly that.

In other words, I wouldn't worry so much about the very fine details. And supporting your creators on Patreon will give them way more money than any amount of individual YouTube viewership.

[1] Yes, I know they're still tracking me. That doesn't bother me as much as viewing ads or supporting the ad-based clickbait attention grabbing business model, so I think it's still a win.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#34

Post by Etheryte »

matsz wrote: post #16

Until YouTube starts injecting ads into the video stream (like Twitch), it's not going to be effective at all. There's no way to do a client-side anti-adblock and not have it bypassed. And TBH: since YouTube is not doing that, I think they might've decided the cost of that solution outweighs the projected revenue so they've chosen a cheaper solution. In Twitch's case, more of the audience might be techy, so ad inject…

This is, in my opinion, shortsighted. It's straightforward to create ads that you can't block on the client so long as you are the server of the ads yourself, as Google is. I'm not going to detail how since I don't want anyone on HN to get any ideas and build a business of it, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. For the time being I suspect it's cheaper to keep the current tech running since it brings in enough revenue, but if that ever stops being the case, I expect things not to end well for people who don't like ads. Google search is a good example of this, ads are literally intertwined into the search results, if you take this a few steps further you have ads that you literally can't block on the client.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#37

Post by apendleton »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #17
nickthegreek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creators get more money per view from a premium member than an ad-supported viewer. So not only does being a paying member give you a better experience, it puts more cash in the pocket of those you watch.

Not arguing for the sake of it but is that confirmed? I assume the more I watch the less each creator gets? No idea what the algorithm is they use to share the money out

> I assume the more I watch the less each creator gets?

I think this is true, but it still works out such that given the amount the average Premium subscriber watches, creators' typical per-view revenue is still higher for Premium views. They can apparently see the breakdown (ad revenue vs premium revenue, etc., ad-supported views vs premium views, etc.) in the backend, and various people who make Youtube content for a living have reported this to be the case. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/1513177490730061829 .

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#38

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #10

This is where I get conflicted with ad blockers, on the one hand most website ads are trash, on the other hand there is great content on YT and I want those creators to make enough to carry on to get to the level where they proper sponsors. But, YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times that it drives me mad and I don’t trust the creators will get fairly compensated if I go to premium.

For the creators I really care about, I make Patreon donations and the creators generally publish ad-free videos for their supporters - just take YouTube out of the mix altogether from the funding perspective.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#40

Post by GTP »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #10

This is where I get conflicted with ad blockers, on the one hand most website ads are trash, on the other hand there is great content on YT and I want those creators to make enough to carry on to get to the level where they proper sponsors. But, YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times that it drives me mad and I don’t trust the creators will get fairly compensated if I go to premium.

Louis Rossman has been saying that he gets much more money if you purchase something from his store rather than from ads, and that for this reason he doesn't care if viewers use an adblocker or not. This is just a single data point though, other youtubers have a different stance on this matter.
Post reply on HN