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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#241

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…

> 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…

You still have ads despite paying YouTube not to show you ads. They're hardcoded into the videos themselves now. You're also tracked and profiled by Google which is an indignity unto itself.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were an advertiser on YouTube I would be very wary of YouTube's efforts on this. I wouldn't want to be paying YouTube for ad views of people who find advertising so annoying that they make such an effort to block it. Best case scenario, frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away, so I'm paying the same price for less value, sometimes as low as zero. Worst case scenario, these u…

The trouble is that ads frequently don't try to make you love a brand. What they do is build up familiarity - for example, a rule of thumb they all use, that you will notice everywhere, is to repeat the product name at least 3 times. Then when you're at the store or buying a service, you are more likely to choose a product you are familiar with. Even if you don't consciously acknowledge that familiarity. Nobody is im…

> Nobody is immune to advertising

Someone pulled the wool over your eyes to sell you ads if you believe this. Maybe they even showed you a study they funded.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the comparison is not 1:1 but the result is the same in the two cases. I don't see the ads, one of them I have more control on how effective I can prevent ads. Also in both cases I pay for the bus from my money so that I pay for the internet connection from my own money. The internet is built on free protocols and I can use it whatever I want. Google does not pay TCP/IP..etc designers/operators a portion of the…

Because it costs them money to host the videos on their servers, you're not paying for the protocol to deliver the content, just like you're not paying for the roads when you ride the bus. Additionally it cost the content creators time, money, and energy to make the content. People should get paid for that. So you're also paying the bus driver, the mechanics, etc.

People pay for the roads that is being used while riding a bus. It is built and maintained by their taxes. Bus fares is going towards other costs from operations to salaries. YouTube on the other hand is a freeloader on the internet infrastructure.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#244
post #95
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think deadmutex is pointing at a bit of irony and hypocrisy at how we're saying it's bad for people to feel entitled to free adblock support (and ask for more) but champion people feeling entitled to free videos by blocking the ads or refusing to pay for no ads.

Not hypocritical at all.

There is no "entitlement" to videos. They are free. YouTube sends them to us for free. They do so hoping we're gonna look at the ads. We're under exactly zero obligation to actually do that though. It is not at all our responsibility to make their business model work.

Abusing open source developers is the true entitlement.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#245
post #53

I use NewPipe on my phone, SmartTubeNext on my Android TV, and uBlock+FF inside of a container without being logged in on my laptop. I was at a friend's house yesterday and they showed me a video on YouTube. I couldn't believe how many ads there were. It was unwatchable. Not sure how people don't pay for premium or block ads. What a miserable experience.

I presume that you don't pay for Premium? And that the average user isn't interested in installing a tech cocktail on their systems?

Not the GP but I spend very little time on YouTube. Even me binging YouTube is watching maybe one or two videos in a row. I hate YouTube ads because they're usually worse than the most obnoxious TV ads with blaring audio or just obnoxious content.

I don't watch YouTube enough that Premium is anywhere close to worth the money. So I happily block ads and will drop YouTube in a second if they block me for using an ad blocker.

They'd be better off limiting the quality of streams to ad blockers. By blocking those users YouTubers lose paid placement online advertising.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#246
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that for YouTube to get that payment, I have to give them, and other ad networks a major view in to my whole life. Wait... does that mean, Google could offer "DoubleClick Premuim", where I pay to not see any DoubleClick ads whatsoever, anywhere on the web, but the websites I visited would still get their funding? I think I'd pay $10/mo for that.

Pay-per-view creates a perverse incentive to make SEO noise and make it more difficult to find what you want. You would be mostly paying to make your life worse. Better to just block ads, encourage and help others to block ads, and hope those sites die.

I certainly understand the perverse incentive, but that's already the incentive we're working under. And how do you propose we fairly compensate people for the value they've created when making content? How can we support artists, journalists, and so on to do the work that we enjoy?

If everyone did as you suggest, spammy SEO sites will be the last to die, because the effort invested to make them is so much lower than the effort of quality content.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#247
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 for…

> 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.

Ars Technica used to autoplay a video every time you browsed on their website.

I am (was) flabbergasted by the sheer amount of pretentiousness that they thought that was ok...

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#248
post #99

I wonder why Youtube does not try other kinds of ads.why not ads in the sidebar, under the videos etc. They know which products and keywords are mentioned, and sometimes i google them anyway. Why do they insist on silly clickbait ads that are much worse than old-time TV ads. I don't want that because i don't like people wasting my time beyond a few hundred milliseconds. They d probably have made more money if they sh…

Banner ads are completely ineffective.

> Google ad revenues from search alone were at $42.6 billion, up from $40.7 billion in the second quarter of the previous year. This marked a 4.8% annual rise. Meanwhile, gross revenue from YouTube ads came in at just under $7.7 billion, a 4.4% increase from the $7.3 billion in Q2 2022.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#250
I feel like if you're the type of person to download uBlock and set specific filters you're the type of person to never click on an ad on purpose.

I don't understand why Youtube is doing this, wouldn't it make their numbers look better if the people that won't click ads never have them delivered to them (5% of users clicked on ads vs 1% of users clicked on ads)

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