YouTube has been getting passive aggressive lately. My homepage is gone now because I have search history off. It used to just show me videos of channels I'm subscribed to but now I have to click on "Subscribed" to instead. Anyone know a quick way to redirect the root and ONLY root page of Youtube to my subscriptions on Firefox and Safari? I'm a premium subscriber btw so this is just obnoxious. For those unaware, if you browse anonymously you get ads even if logged into Premium.
Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
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Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#42Until 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…
Sponsorblock already exists as infrastructure to slice out ads embedded into the video streams themselves. Of course, the sponsor segments weren't put there by youtube, but the same (or similar) solutions would apply if they were. It's much easier for anything non-live.
The ads don't always have to be injected into the exact same parts of a video, and YT can also choose not to stream any more bits until it thinks something's been "watched".
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#43The youtube company wants me to stop unblocking their ads. That's okay, I'll still keep watching that garbage.
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#44FWIW, 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.
I hate A/B testing. Puts the feedback and protest mechanism working on those who complain the most.
If you are a techie, you are forced to yell or silent quit the website, and most of the times I really don't have the time to waste yelling.
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#45[flagged]
I use ad-block everywhere, but this is the right take. Youtube even gives an option to use it without ads.
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#46[flagged]
Where was that logic when they were crushing all the competition by subsidizing Youtube with the rest of Google's money?
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#47The insidious aspect of this is the bait and switch YouTube did to consolidate their monopoly. A huge amount of videos were uploaded under the (idealistic and misguided) pretence they would be freely accessible without ads and so on. Had the YT UX been this way the whole time then the online video landscape would be much more competitive today.
How would youtube work without ads or subscriptions? Do you just not want there to be something like youtube?
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#48I get that it's annoying, but YouTube Premium is by far the best value streaming subscription I pay every month. I once cancelled it and couldn't make it a day before re-subscribing.
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#49The insidious aspect of this is the bait and switch YouTube did to consolidate their monopoly. A huge amount of videos were uploaded under the (idealistic and misguided) pretence they would be freely accessible without ads and so on. Had the YT UX been this way the whole time then the online video landscape would be much more competitive today.
Where did it say or imply they'd be accessible without ads? YouTube has had ads since the early days (2008 specifically).
Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”
#50[flagged]
I'm old enough to remember when YouTube neither had ads nor YouTubers created videos to make money off it.