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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#461

Post by eqvinox »

zarzavat wrote: post #453
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

My perspective: Google is not an agent directed by morality when they interact with me, therefore I don’t allocate any morality when interacting with them. It’s a power relationship not a moral relationship. I do feel bad for the creators, but I would rather donate to their Patreons than buy YT premium.

> I do feel bad for the creators, but I would rather donate to their Patreons than buy YT premium.

I ended up subscribing to both Nebula and Dropout.tv, especially after noticing that a good portion of my favourite YT channels are in fact on Nebula. Sadly, this is primarly larger ones, and I do feel bad about smaller creators being kinda stuck on YT… especially when it's the odd one-time well-made video that really doesn't warrant e.g. Patreon.

But yeah, the real moral quandry is with the creators. They're more or less under the same monopoly pressure; in most cases you just can't ignore the YT audience :(

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#462

Post by vehementi »

blooalien wrote: post #390
shiroiuma wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, after all my observations of humans over the course of decades, I feel like real empathy is actually pretty rare in humans. It might be common in fictitious characters, but not in real people.

[flagged]

Sheesh

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#463

Post by eqvinox »

darklycan51 wrote: post #455
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

The real reason why anyone could never compete with Youtube was (lack of) monetization

That's actually an interesting question in itself. Google also has a domineering (though not monopoly) position in ads. If someone were to try to compete with an ad-funded service… how much of a problem would that be?

Also: part of the problem is the quality of the ads. Could you actually get "better quality" ads for a competitor video platform? Do such ads even exist in sufficient number at this point? (I vaguely remember a significant portion of larger companies reducing their internet ad budgets because they simply weren't seeing good returns…)

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#464

Post by lazycouchpotato »

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…

If you're not able to block Twitch ads, you can at least bypass them with Firefox.

I wrote a "tutorial" of sorts: https://lemmy.world/post/5452725

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#465

Post by caconym_ »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #457
caconym_ wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope. What part of my comment, specifically, is this responding to? > They need to either start charging everyone for access or stop complaining. Why?

> What part of my comment, specifically, is this responding to? The notion that detecting our adblocker and actually charging for content are equivalent. > Why? Because if they send us ads we'll delete them and there is pretty much nothing they can do about it.

> The notion that detecting our adblocker and actually charging for content are equivalent.

Well then maybe you meant to respond to somebody else, because that's not something I said at any point.

> Because if they send us ads we'll delete them and there is pretty much nothing they can do about it.

This entire HN thread and the linked article are about how they are literally doing something about it, and it's working.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#466

Post by JumpCrisscross »

boredpeter wrote: post #449
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

This reminds me of the concept of predatory pricing which is when a business lowers their prices to below cost in order to drive out all its competitors and create a monopoly. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... I do wonder if it could be argued (maybe even in the current monopoly case against google) whether youtube engaged in predatory or below-cost pricing in order to drive out all of i…

> Get VC funding, run at a loss and burn through money but gain a monopoly market share, and once you've done that you can raise your prices

Google, YouTube's owner, isn't a VC. YouTube was its best when it was burning VCs' cash.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#467

Post by lazycouchpotato »

charcircuit wrote: post #417
notacoward wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of precedent for this. Amazon has said they'll be introducing ads on Prime Video, where everyone has already paid for the service. I've seen ads on other already-paid-for services too. The simple fact is that business people will always want more ads everywhere, no matter how much it degrades the customer experience, because extra revenue is easier to measure than customer disgust. In their personal li…

Prime Video will still have an ad free tier. Having a cheaper tier that is subsidized with ads allows for more people to be able to afford it.

This isn't like Netflix where a cheaper, inferior plan was introduced. They're taking the current ad-free service introducing ads to it.

You're going to have to pay an additional $3/mo for no ads along with your existing $15/mo (Prime), $139/yr (Prime) or $8.99 (Prime Video only) plans.

This doesn't look like subsidizing to me. To me it looks more like "pay us more because we can do whatever we want".

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#468

Post by bruce511 »

hotnfresh wrote: post #115
bruce511 wrote: post #88

>> Maybe that’s how YouTube will win this war of attrition. YouTube will win because they are financially incentivised to so so. UBO and other free blockers will fail because there is so much downside, and no upside. Wars are always won by those with the most resources, whether it is money or people or both. I say this not to gloat (I'm no fan of google) but rather because it can be useful to understand both the goal…

> YouTube will win because they are financially incentivised to so so. UBO and other free blockers will fail because there is so much downside, and no upside. This has been the situation for the ad-blocking war since it started. If the pro-ads side is destined to win, they're sure taking their sweet time about it.

You call it a war, I'm not sure YouTube thinks of it that way.

YouTube revenue was 29.2 billion dollars in 2022. On the other side you have a couple guys complaining about Reddit users.

Sure, a few tech-savy folk install ad-blockers, and Google keeps the space dynamic enough to avoid it getting serious traction. But it's less a "war" and more of a minor irritation.

Winning isn't making ad-blocking go away, winning is 29.2 billion $. The entitled user base will do the rest.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#469

Post by wodenokoto »

boredpeter wrote: post #449
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

This reminds me of the concept of predatory pricing which is when a business lowers their prices to below cost in order to drive out all its competitors and create a monopoly. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... I do wonder if it could be argued (maybe even in the current monopoly case against google) whether youtube engaged in predatory or below-cost pricing in order to drive out all of i…

They did. They ran at a huge deficit for a very long time while expanding.

But this seems to be the play book for all VC funded web apps. Facebook and MySpace did the same. In fact, you can argue that moving towards profitability too soon and too fast is what killed MySpace. But that argument only works if you are willing to see the growth phase as something other than predatory pricing.

I think your comment is a sobering input to the whole startup discussion.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#470

Post by pasttense01 »

boredpeter wrote: post #449
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

This reminds me of the concept of predatory pricing which is when a business lowers their prices to below cost in order to drive out all its competitors and create a monopoly. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... I do wonder if it could be argued (maybe even in the current monopoly case against google) whether youtube engaged in predatory or below-cost pricing in order to drive out all of i…

Youtube got to its current position not by lowering prices but instead by Google making sure that Youtube videos are returned at the top of Google search results. Competing video websites don't have this advantage.
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