71–80 of 168 posts
The 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.
The 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.
It has and was built on piracy.
Maybe you odn't believe me because it's "different" in your opinion today.
Look anywhere else in the world, it's piracy dude. For example, here's a search for "seinfeld s01e03" for video lengths 10-30m on Bilibili:
https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=seinfeld+s01e03&from...
I don't know. On the one hand, end users take from Google by blocking ads. On the other, Google takes from creators through piracy.
At the end of the day, the problem with video is the lack of business innovation that's anywhere near comparable to games.
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 r…
I'm not sure about your "few steps" so this may be moot. Is there no sufficient workaround of this nature?
document.querySelector('.waste-of-money')?.remove();
They're not actually ad blockers. They are javascript exploit protection. It just so happens a good fraction if not the majority of exploits come in through ad systems in general. It's a rare thing a website itself is going to attack you. It's always some code/media imported from a third party domain/ip. ie, ads.
You're right, YouTube ads are notorious for being JavaScript heavy and served by a third party.
(I used to work on ads at Google, but in a different area and don't know anything about YouTube beyond what I can see in devtools.)
I do not understand why people refuse to pay for other people's work, even indirectly. YouTube Premium gives creators a pretty decent cut as well, coming from someone with monetized youtube vids...
As soon as I get that, I'll be having yt-dlp very handy.
While that works for now, if Google ever took interest in it I think it would be pretty straightforward to break any libraries like that. If you change either the endpoints or the model or etc with any reasonable frequency the library authors couldn't possibly keep up. Google can orchestrate their rollouts so their things always keep working while the library users are always in for a surprise. This is one of those t…
Funnily enough, Google doesn't allow yt-downloader extensions on the Chrome web store. They will cite you rule #4, and send you a rejection letter for "Facilitating unauthorized access to or download of copyrighted content or media, specifically, YouTube." The irony of course is that they allow downloader extensions for other websites. That they specifically prohibit youtube downloaders while allowing downloaders for almost any other website smells suspiciously like anti-competitive behavior to me.
On the other hand, Firefox's addon store is free from these restrictions, so you can find tons of yt download extensions there.
The 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).
Perhaps the parent comment is talking about pre-Google and you are talking about post-Google? I don’t know if the parent’s claim is correct about a bait and switch, but I can confirm that pre-Google YouTube did not have (video) ads and felt very much like a place for small independent creators.
And from my memory, widespread ads on every video did not come into existence for many years. Originally they were only on selected monetized videos.
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Because there’s a big difference between placing a tasteful ad or two on a page, and forcing me to watch 2 or 3 obnoxious irrelevant commercials while still placing ads all over the screen and making me click annoyance-optimized [X]s or skip options.
And I’m already paying for two multi-user GSuites and Nest, despite their constant efforts to make those services shittier and claiming necessity of annual price increases. I would be far likelier to subscribe to YouTube premium if every single one of Googles products wasn’t constantly decreasing in quality over time. Google home worked better in 2018 than it does today. They don’t need my ad revenue, they need to overhaul their performance evaluation because there’s diminishing returns on how many ads a person can watch per day and they must be approaching the limit if they’re resorting to targeting techies who won’t click ads anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
> 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. I'm not sure about your "few steps" so this may be moot. Is there no sufficient workaround of this nature? document.querySelector('.waste-of-money')?.remove(); Google might detect that the element was removed; ad blockers use…
Yet another "update" to the web extension manifest.
The 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).