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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#581

Post by chii »

hotnfresh wrote: post #127
cj wrote: post #76

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,…

> 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. Ads that the creators themselves put in their videos are exactly what you're suggesting. Yet there exist fairly-effective (if not perfect) ad blockers for those, too.

If it's statically spliced, yes. but if it is dynamically spliced in, it'd be harder to do the same to block it. You'd have to detect the ad itself, and YouTube may not allow the video to be timeseeked, which might make the viewing experience suck with a black screen for the duration the ad.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#582

Post by pb7 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #244
ysavir wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ad blockers are free. They’re made available to be downloaded for free. It is not at all our responsibility to make their business model work. Open source developers are entitled.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#583

Post by somenameforme »

ls612 wrote: post #57
tomComb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt YouTube is going for zero. I suspect they only took action recently because ad blockers have become very common.

I thought it was still something stupid low like 10% of people using adblockers?

Statista has a pretty nice writeup available here. [1] Granted some of the data is going to be contradictory, because they are an aggregator and not a source. So for instance in one section they claim the overall rate of ad blocking in the US is 26.4%, yet in another section their data suggests 30% of mobile users are blocking ads, while 51% of desktop users are. Pretty hard to see how that adds up to 26.4% overall.

Regardless of the noise in the data, it at least seems clear that whatever the number is - it's way above 10%, and growing. This is probably why YouTube is willing to go to war with their users over it, one of the very few things Google has ever done that could directly imperil one of their monopolies. Potentially driving off a substantial number of your users at the time when there are more viable alternatives than ever is a quite a bold move. Let's see how it plays out.

[1] - https://www.statista.com/topics/3201/ad-blocking/#topicOverv...

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#584

Post by nashashmi »

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…

i have never found myself to be in agreement with any ads. That is just how it works. I don't like alcohol ads. I don't like ads that start off with one topic, get viewer's interest, and then switch topics (geico, progressive). I don't like ads that advertise holiday travel with barely clothed women (what's driving the sales?). I don't like clickbait ads.

If we were to work off of morals, commerce and morals don't go hand in hand.

So going back to topic, is it moral to block the ad and stop the revenue to a content creator? The content creator should not be getting revenue from alcohol companies or companies that profit off of intoxication. But everything else? No restrictions.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#585

Post by figmert »

philistine wrote: post #476
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…

> And no, I won't pay for YouTube Premium — because that wasn't part of the deal either. There's also the ridiculous fact it is literally impossible to pay to remove the ads without also getting the horrible Youtube Music service.

Why does this matter? Can't you just not use it?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#586

Post by pb7 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #225
ysavir wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One is free high quality security software, and the author doesn't even accept donations. The other is "free" videos that come with malware.

One is the best, most reliable video serving platform on the planet and the other is a scriptkiddie’s project that evidently doesn’t even work and he’s so salty about it that he had to make a post.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#587

Post by chii »

buggeryorkshire wrote: post #200
adrr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s streaming, YouTube can just embed the ads directly into the stream.

It's not Twitch, video is encoded in advance in various formats for different devices. Embedding the ads into the stream is pretty difficult.

It's not uncharted territory. It's just more expensive comput-wise, and I expect google to make that calculation to conclude it's not worth the cost yet.

But compute costs could drop, and change the equation.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#588

Post by ginko »

I would have expected for youtube to splice the ads directly into the video stream ages ago. Combined with some stream throttling it'd make it almost impossible to skip (or at least waiting for the ad to be over).

Any reason why this hasn't been done so far?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#589

Post by guappa »

daeros wrote: post #507
belltaco wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moral issues, security issues, etc. How is blocking ads not a moral issue? Video creators also get hurt by ad blockers, not just YT, which does have costs associated with serving you video. > So on those you never see ads? I think they started showing ads on them, just fewer. They do cost storage and bandwidth, so what's wrong with that? > Well, I can't speak for anyone else but I'm a middle-aged historian, so star…

Yes but, how are the content creators my problem, especially when Google isn't vetting their ads well enough to keep scam and malvertising people off their and networks. I could raise you to counter that the morally right thing to do is block those ads, at least until Google starts vetting its advertisers well enough to keep scammers out. How do content creators feel, profiting from the scamvertising going on on goog…

Content creators do a lot of scamming from their part as well.

They advertise nordvpn claiming that without using it, all of your traffic is unencrypted for example.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#590

Post by chii »

bruce511 wrote: post #468
hotnfresh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You quoted a revenue number, but revenue is irrelevant. Profit is.

YouTube for the longest time does not turn a profit. Google has never revealed any YouTube profit since the acquisition.

I imagine they don't because it is negative. Likely propped up afloat by YouTube data that feeds into Google's other ad businesses.

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