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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#71

Post by meiraleal »

jimmaswell wrote: post #6
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.

They haven't lost any good will from me. I don't feel entitled to use an ad supported service for free without the ads. Personally I've been paying for premium for a while and I find it worth it.

> I don't feel entitled to use an ad supported service for free without the ads

So don't watch things for free. Many people think that if a company is giving things for free you are not obligated to pay them in any way. The company can stop it if they can't afford anymore.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#72

Post by pohuing »

hotnfresh wrote: post #28
philipwhiuk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nonsense. I provide a service in exchange for payment, then not paying is entitlement.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#73

Post by crop_rotation »

ozarker wrote: post #70
deadmutex wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have seen this becoming more and more common on open source projects and totally free services, where people act as if they are entitled to something as if it is their god given right. Do you count YouTube as a "free service" (with ads) in this case? I wonder if there is an overlap with people that expect free stuff and people that use uBO on YouTube. YT does offer most users YT premium, which gives users an ad f…

I think he’s referring to the Adblock as the free service here.

Correct.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#74

Post by SlackingOff123 »

I've been wondering, how much does the average YouTube viewer generate in revenue by watching ads? $0.1 a month? $0.25? $0.5 if avid viewer? Given that I'm not an avid viewer and I do not care at all for YouTube Music, I just find the monthly cost of YouTube Premium too high. I don't know what the right price should be, but by comparing with other digital subscriptions I have, I think I would be OK with paying something like $5 a month. It could be like a lighter version of Premium. Just ad-free and none of the other "benefits".

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#75

Post by ExMachina73 »

There is an adblocker for Youtube. It's called Youtube Premium for $13.99 a month. Youtube is a business pure and simple. You either pay with your attention/time (ads) or cash money. I think its hard for people to realize they are like any other streaming service like Netflix, Disney+ or Hulu.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#76

Post by cj »

At a technical level, what prevents Google from deploying unblockable ads on YouTube? I’m honestly surprised adblockers are able to block YouTube at all.

The easiest way to prevent an adblocker from blocking is to make ads and real content indistinguishable in frontend code and network requests. Tie ads and real content together in a way that if you block ads, the video also doesn’t load.

Or in the case of video ads, you could stream the ad as part of the video itself instead of a separate pre roll.

If I had a billion dollars of revenue on the line, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to make the YouTube player serve ads in a way that evades adblockers. The fact that they haven’t been able to do this makes me think I’m underestimating the difficulty of the problem.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#77

Post by crimsontech »

blindseer wrote: post #24
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 li…

> At some point these people are either going to buy premium or turn off the ad-blocker.

Or they stop going to YouTube. In the past 12mo my use of these platforms has reduced a huge amount. I no longer visit Twitter or Reddit because they blocked 3rd party apps, forcing me to view adverts, I would rather not be a user on a user hostile platform.

Deep down, most of us know these are huge time sinks providing very little real value to ours lives so it doesn’t take much friction added by the platform to make people turn away from their bad habits.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#78

Post by yukkuri »

A lot of absurd moralizing here about "you're stealing by not watching ads".

I keep adblock on for most sites because ads are so intrusive and often malware vectors. If advertisers want my eyes they need to not be obnoxious.

I started blocking YouTube ads in particular because it kept serving me ads that were brazenly homophobic ("how gross and smelly is gay sex? Find out!")

I feel no moral problem with this, if you do then your priorities are bad, IMO.

Edit: as a counter example, ubo doesn't seem to work on Twitch but I have never attempted to find a different solution as it has never run ads worse than the usual "lying about how good a product is" you always get with marketing. Further, I don't see them very often because the channels I watch the most I buy subscriptions.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#79

Post by Lammy »

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.

From first principles: any person’s most limited resource in life is their attention, and YouTube should be grateful that anyone is willing to dedicate any attention to videos on their service at all considering the power it grants The Algorithm to shape our ways of thinking about ourselves, each other, and the world we inhabit.

Ads, paywalls, and all other forms of access-control are a way of obscuring the relationship between programming and programmed, inverting it to me about me wanting to access them instead of them wanting to access me. It’s like that Cartmanland episode of South Park where telling people they can’t come to the park makes everyone want to come to the park.

This is not unique to YouTube or other streaming services, just the newest and most effective in the long line of newspapers, Hollywood, radio, TV, etc, and why all of those previous forms of media are as well-aligned with the US Government as is “““Big Tech”””. Ever gone for a Cultural Victory in Civ?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#80

Post by ThatPlayer »

meiraleal wrote: post #49
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.

Why do you ask? Because it would cause them more harm than benefit. They have thousands of people working on that and this is the conclusion they got so far. I never used youtube without adblock and won't ever use it. I hope they block adblocks so it become so annoying that better options start to appear again.

Better options don't magically appear. Especially in an unsustainable market: nobody wants an audience of users who don't watch ads and don't pay. Where's the money to make the better option coming from?
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