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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#291

Post by paulryanrogers »

gwd wrote: post #191
wredue wrote: post #141

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. Ad networks are currently scum of the earth, easily giving lawyers a good name. If ad networks were riddled with crime, invasion of privacy, and other bullshit, people would be much more willing to entertain them. Today though, they’re obnoxious AND invade your privacy AND may actually jus…

> 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.

Google Contributor did offer something like that for a while.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#292

Post by pasttense01 »

adrr wrote: post #22
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.

They don't want to show the same ads to everybody: they maximize their advertising income when they show different ads to different people depending on what people are interested in and buy.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#293

Post by praisewhitey »

yukkuri wrote: post #78

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…

This is the kind of content adblock users are missing out on.

https://twitter.com/baroquespiral/status/1716488758030118931

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#295

Post by andersrs »

yukkuri wrote: post #78

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…

The moralizing is a bit pointless since every big tech company is trying to monopolize and lock-in users as much as possible. It's just the old blitzscaling enshitification cycle. They have deep enough pockets to subsidize the cost until monopoly status is achieved. Pot meet kettle.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#296

Post by lamontcg »

nmz wrote: post #235
lamontcg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pay for YT if it wasn't run by Google. Google wants to track me and sell the data and wants me to pay for it, and I'm not willing to be abused that badly.

They'll have your data regardless if you pay for the service or not. And nothing is free, they need to pay for the service, now, if you do pay for the service they should enable more privacy.

> if you do pay for the service they should enable more privacy.

They're never doing that.

I pay for ad-free Kagi search. I'd pay for an ad-free YT competitor. It would need to be run by someone other than Google though since I'd never trust them if they said they were giving me more privacy.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#297

Post by matheusmoreira »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #289
matheusmoreira wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Expecting that the videos will be free with no qualifiers (such as an ad playing) is also entitlement. Not that you have said that explicitly but that seems to be a common assumption among many adblock users.

YouTube switching entirely to a Netflix-like paid model or going bankrupt are entirely acceptable outcomes.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#298

Post by carlosjobim »

zeraholladay wrote: post #181
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.

Think we agree that blocking ad blockers is in YouTube's immediate, short-term interest. However, I'm not sure it's in their long-term interest because it goes against the principle of reciprocation. Regarding reciprocation, a lot of platforms offer a free tier and then offer additional features for paid subscribers. There's the principle of reciprocation at play: they give me something for free and that then makes m…

Why aren't you hostile against your Internet service provider for charging you for access? Why do you accept paying the ISP to access YouTube, but not paying YouTube or video creators?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#299

Post by zimpenfish »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #56
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…

> especially when you consider that there are only two people on the uBO team Why in the world are there only two ? That's your problem right there. How many competent devs are right here in the comment section? Why is it so difficult to get their help?

> Why in the world are there only two?

You may have missed "there are only two people on the uBO team dealing with YouTube" rather than "on the whole team".

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#300

Post by gwd »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #267
gwd wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no context where a rational businessman would choose not to advertise to you. ...except, the businessman wanting to show me an advert doesn't have a choice. The website chose DoubleClick; I'm paying DoubleClick not to show me any ads. Websites that don't choose DoubleClick either get adblocked, or I avoid, thus making less money from me. There is some expected value that DoubleClick will get from me in the…

Then they realize you're paying about $150 a year to avoid ads. That fact alone increases the value of your attention. Thus you gotta pay them even more money to avoid ads. Which increases the value of your attention further. At some point the value exceeds what you're willing to pay and it's back to ads. Then they start selling your personal information to the highest bidder which includes the fact you have enough d…

> That fact alone increases the value of your attention.

OK, but does it increase my value to more than $150/year? I mean, just how much are people willing to pay for me to see ads?

I mean ultimately, if someone is paying $5 to show me an ad, either they're going to go bankrupt, or it's going to be pretty darn good. If paying $12 once means I'm on the "costs $5 to show this person ads" list, then that's probably still worth it. :-)

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