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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#161

Post by crop_rotation »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #149
crop_rotation wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube has been such a big boon to the world in helping people learn. The amount of people who have learnt several skills from YouTube enabling them to make a living is very very large. I know several people who had non STEM education and taught them CS via YouTube and went on to have good SWE careers. Whole of MIT OCS is hosted on Youtube. All of Khan Academy videos are also hosted on Youtube.

They could be hosted elsewhere. Why should free education material that is already funded by donations be locked behind ad based hosting? Hosting is not that expensive if you're using only those services. Especially in the countries where it's mostly being used.

Hosting is very expensive, e.g https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-cr...

That is why almost nobody bothers to do it themselves outside of big tech.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#162

Post by zeroonetwothree »

SlackingOff123 wrote: post #74

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 someth…

It looks like the average revenue is $1/user/month. However, the "average" isn't very interesting because the typical person that signs up to this would likely be far above average--no one is going to pay $5/month if they watch a single video, but if you watch 2 hours/day that's a great deal. So it's hard to say what a "fair" price would be.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#163

Post by lolinder »

dutchCourage wrote: post #105
MostlyStable wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 for…

> I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer. I agree with your statement but I'm not sure how it applies to ads. I hate ads as much as the next person, but blocking them is kind of like using the service and refusing to pay for it. There are two proper ways to not see ads on Youtube. You can either pay for Youtube premium, or not watch Youtube videos. There are legitim…

When a website actually tells me that I can't use it with an ad blocker, then I leave and don't come back. I don't have an ad-blocker-blocker-blocker, there's no technical barrier to detecting my ad blocker and responding accordingly.

Until that happens, I'm forced to assume that the service actually does get enough value from my attention that it's not worth it to them to lose my business (such as it is), and I am certainly not going to voluntarily subject myself to ads that aren't actually essential.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#165

Post by j1elo »

alin23 wrote: post #62

As the dev of a macOS app that breaks all the time because of external hardware, the tone of the article hits close to home. (I’m talking about https://lunar.fyi/ whose brightness control commands can be blocked by USB-C hubs, “smart” monitors, too long cables etc.) I had to disable public GitHub issues on the app repo [1] because people seemed to fuel each other with spiteful comments and “why can’t you just!!” sent…

I believe that FOSS maintainers should jump to the public showroom of providing open source software with a much stronger mentality of quoting and adhering to the license more frequently. That solves a lot of the user entitlement, in my experience. Just like a proprietary software provider would first try to be helpful but otherwise point to some rules that limit their responsibility.

Paraphrasing most if not all of the open source licences, the software is provided with no guarantee, not even with a promise that it will be fit for any purpose. Most users don't even think of the possibility that, given how the source code is offered, private contractors can be hired to make whichever modifications are deemed useful by anyone. I like to remind that to people who get too insistent.

That's basically a less lazy reply form of "just fork it", but it tends to draw the line pretty well. Just quote the license, folks. Otherwise, people usually don't bother to read it.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#166

Post by meindnoch »

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 shouldn’t they go thermonuclear?

What does "going thermonuclear" look like in this context?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#167

Post by anonymouskimmer »

Analemma_ wrote: post #7
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.

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?

I occasionally buy content from Youtube (primarily complete episodes of various series, occasionally a movie or movie rental).

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#168

Post by zeroonetwothree »

I use an ad blocker but I'm not entitled. If YouTube decides to stop me from using it I'll either pay for Premium or stop watching YouTube. I don't think I have any right to watch it for free without paying if they don't want to allow that.

It's hard to know if in the long run they will start requiring subscriptions, develop better anti-blocker tech, or just give up and eat the loss. But somehow I wouldn't bet on #3.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#169

Post by genocidicbunny »

paulcole wrote: post #143
MostlyStable wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 for…

> I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer I love this sort of mental gymnastics (the passive voice is a nice addition, too). You know you can win this game quickly by not visiting YouTube again or by paying YouTube $15/month? But no, it’s much better to exert your “rights” to try and control what gets sent to your computer. Also known as what you requested (since you…

By that same logic I have no right to complain when a website uses 3rdparty trackers, or tries to run a monero client without my knowledge, because after all, I should have known they would do that ahead of time and not visited the site. But since I did, since I 'requested' it, I should just take everything I'm given and do exactly as told, mmhm.

> But no, it’s much better to exert your “rights” to try and control what gets sent to your computer.

But no, it's much better to exert your "rights" to try and control what gets run and shown on end-users computers.

> Also known as what you requested

I requested the video, nothing else. I don't care what you think I should or shouldn't know, I'm only trying to access the video and I am only requesting the video. If Youtube doesn't want me messing with the bytes they're sending me, they should not send them to me.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#170

Post by hotnfresh »

adrr wrote: post #30
frebdo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're currently forcing logged-in users to share screenshots if they want to share something with non-logged-in friends and preserve any context whatsoever (you can no longer see replies, or what a xit was in response to, if you're not logged in—all you can see is a single xit). Search also doesn't work anymore if you're not logged in, and if you visit a user's page, their xits are ordered by some even-more-nonsensical-than-usual algo that puts years-old xits near the top. The site's basically totally unusable if you don't have an account.

This may be making some metric (account signups, presumably?) go up, but sure seems risky to me.

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