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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#21

Post by Shekelphile »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

YouTube will "lose" the war, but they'll make adblocking difficult enough for a while that it might get some premium subscribers in the short term in exchange for the loss of goodwill.

I don't think they will lose. The average luddite doesn't care about seeing ads and will look perplexed at you if you tell them about ad blockers. Other services injecting ads into video streams have already been 'winning' for years. Ultimately youtube will push the envelope until even the people paying for premium will be seeing ads and savvy people will move on to pre-downloading videos and stripping ads from them before watching or similar janky solutions.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#22

Post by adrr »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

YouTube will "lose" the war, but they'll make adblocking difficult enough for a while that it might get some premium subscribers in the short term in exchange for the loss of goodwill.

It’s streaming, YouTube can just embed the ads directly into the stream.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#23

Post by MostlyStable »

ketzo wrote: post #8

Why, from first principles, should YouTube allow this? Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? I understand ads are annoying - I block as many as I can! - but I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice.

Neither side is wrong. Youtube has every right to try as hard as it can to get users to view ads. And users have every right to try as hard as they can to block those ads.

I don't have a right to ad-free youtube, but I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer. If I (and people like me) are abundant enough and succesful enough, then youtube and other services will be forced to abandon an ad-supported model. I'm personally ok with that.

But as long as they are attempting to pursue ad revenue, I'm going to try and avoid those ads, for a host of reasons.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#24

Post by blindseer »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

YouTube will "lose" the war, but they'll make adblocking difficult enough for a while that it might get some premium subscribers in the short term in exchange for the loss of goodwill.

I think YouTube will "win" this war, unfortunately. Even people that "join" individual channels cannot watch content from those channels if they use AdBlock. At some point these people are either going to buy premium or turn off the ad-blocker.

It boggles my mind that engineers and managers that have kids and are working on the YouTube team think this is okay and this is what the future of the platform should look like.

It's the beginning of the end of an era, and I'm immensely sad to see what the internet has become and where it is heading.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#26

Post by philipwhiuk »

crop_rotation wrote: post #9

Apart from the Youtube stuff, the post also highlights something else, entitlement towards free services like uBlock origin. > It’s one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It’s quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. > And then one of the moderators actually deleted their Reddit account. “The ID in the post wasn’t updated because my mother was hospitalized,” they said. It’s sad to see them leave becau…

If they didn't have such entitlement they wouldn't be blocking the ads in the first place.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#27

Post by kiernanmcgowan »

This ad block debate makes me think about patio11’s post “The optimal amount of fraud is non zero”. Essentially in trying to make a system as fraud-free as possible you make it too difficult to work with / the cost of fighting fraud is higher than the cost of the fraud.

Ads vs Ad Blockers seem to be in that space, but on the cost of customer good will. Can YouTube squeeze more money from ads by doing this? Sure. Is it worth the customer anger? Maybe?

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#28

Post by hotnfresh »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #26
crop_rotation wrote: post #9

Apart from the Youtube stuff, the post also highlights something else, entitlement towards free services like uBlock origin. > It’s one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It’s quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. > And then one of the moderators actually deleted their Reddit account. “The ID in the post wasn’t updated because my mother was hospitalized,” they said. It’s sad to see them leave becau…

If they didn't have such entitlement they wouldn't be blocking the ads in the first place.

"I sent you data so you have to use all of it exactly the way I want" is the entitled perspective.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#29

Post by afterburner »

ketzo wrote: post #8

Why, from first principles, should YouTube allow this? Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? I understand ads are annoying - I block as many as I can! - but I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice.

They totally could. But then I would probably watch way fewer videos, just like before.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#30

Post by adrr »

frebdo wrote: post #18
Analemma_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're neither paying YouTube any money nor watching their ads, meaning you're a pure money sink, why should they care about your goodwill?

Because you're an active user and thus help make the site "popular". We're seeing on Twitter what happens when management starts ignoring this basic logic of the internet.

Twitter pissed off their advertisers by pulling back content moderation. That is their biggest problem in terms of cash flow.
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