151–160 of 191 posts
I've been a paying YouTube user since 2016 when it was YouTube Red. YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet. Both in terms of content that I personally enjoy and improves my life, as well as its role on the internet overall, where they provide a FREE service that allows EVERYONE to upload as much video as they want, and see what kind of response it gets from a global audience, and even to get paid for th…
I took off adblocking on Youtube just to see if I could get along with continuing to use Youtube in a frictionless way. The answer is no, because Youtube's current crop of ads is full of outright scams and conspiracy theory stuff. Content that would probably be massively de-emphasized by the youtube algorithm or even outright banned is apparently okay to show as long as you pay Google a few thousand dollars to run it…
I had the same experience. I will say this: at least I have not seen malvertising campagins slip through (that I have seen). That is the biggest and perennially relevant reason to have an adblocker installed.
The ad purveyors won't accept responsibility for the shit they shovel (and good luck attributing to which ad network something slipped through after the fact), so they don't need to run shit on my computer.
I have been bit my ad delivered malware before while at work. Not a pleasant experience, and of course everyone assumes that you _most_ have been doing something dodgy like watching porn.
I took off adblocking on Youtube just to see if I could get along with continuing to use Youtube in a frictionless way. The answer is no, because Youtube's current crop of ads is full of outright scams and conspiracy theory stuff. Content that would probably be massively de-emphasized by the youtube algorithm or even outright banned is apparently okay to show as long as you pay Google a few thousand dollars to run it…
The appliance ads make sense because I am actually considering getting a new washer and dryer and have been researching that, since my nearly 20 year old GE washer is showing some signs that it might be about to have problems.
The lawn and garden ads also make some sense, because I did do a fair bit of lawn work around the house over the summer, and did look into buying some of the tools I'm now seeing ads for. But I haven't looked at said tools in a couple months, so they don't make as much sense as the appliance ads.
I watch a fair number of non-performance music videos (e.g., music theory, guitar technique, and similar) so the piano and guitar less ads make sense.
The problem with all of them is that even the ones that actually have provided me useful information that might increase the chances I'll buy the advertised product if I end up buying a product in their category provide me all their useful information the first time I see the ad. The next dozen times I see the same ad is useless and annoying.
There was also an ad for something in a category I didn't know existed (Lomi [1]) that got me curious enough to go to their site. Doesn't look like it would be useful to me, but it is an interesting idea.
The oddest one was one I've gotten a single time, from Best Buy. But it wasn't advertising any particular Best Buy products. It was just an instructional video telling how to DIY mount a TV on a wall [2]. Best Buy does sell TV wall mounts, but I don't think they named the mount they used for an example in the video. It was just the "How to mount your TV" from their Geek Squad tech tips page and applies equally well to pretty much every wall mount available.
I've no idea why Best Buy decided to pay to promote that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I misinterpreted. There is a lot of cope from freeloaders trying to justify their freeloading as good for everyone in this thread. :) As for your question, I disagree. The examples you mentioned are not alternatives, they are small additions. The only exceptions I've seen are podcasts, but they've never been tied to YouTube.
I have not said that any of these expansions outside of Youtube are a replacement or alternative for Youtube, especially for content discovery. Nor am I necessarily supporting adblockers, except in sympathizing that Youtube's ad experience has continued to get more annoying. I personally solve this by paying for Premium. My point was only that if you have a core audience of subscribers, who provide value via direct s…
Niche channels suffering contains so many conditionals that it needs to be demonstrated before being considered a serious issue.
Most channels would die if they lost YouTube, so it's not a hedge.
I've been a paying YouTube user since 2016 when it was YouTube Red. YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet. Both in terms of content that I personally enjoy and improves my life, as well as its role on the internet overall, where they provide a FREE service that allows EVERYONE to upload as much video as they want, and see what kind of response it gets from a global audience, and even to get paid for th…
> YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet. This is true. > I am 100% happy to pay for YouTube. Just remember that you're giving money to the company that backs things like FLoC, Manifest v3, and WEI (recently in the news), things that threaten interoperability on the Internet. It's not friendly. If you pay them, do it with your eyes open.
And have an enormous commitment to standards and standards processes, that they have supported & helped tirelessly. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/
I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started? As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?
By far the most effective way to end ads would be to come up with an internet business model that doesn't need ads or subscriptions to stay alive. This would be a god tier level development, and would seriously cripple Google's core business (serving ads) and youtube as well (serve ads or subscription).
There are many! The problem is that the ads model supports the "winners take all" strategy that permeates Silicon Valley and all its copycats. There is no room for peaceful coexistence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
See, I like a lot of content creators on YouTube. I also think that Alphabet has such an immensely negative impact on society. Deeply and thoroughly. I just cannot bring myself to give a red cent. Not by viewing ads, and much less by giving them my credit card.
> I also think that Alphabet has such an immensely negative impact on society. Care to elaborate? Good news is that none of this matters to you since you avoid Google products.
And no, I don't buy the "SEO gamification ruined it, Google just responded" argument. They have billions of dollars and hordes of brilliant engineers. They could have done this differently. This was intentional because it made them fabulously wealthy.
I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started? As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?
Eventually it will have to become content extraction. Load the page in the background, load the ad, capture frames from the video window and use some process to detect and remove the frames that show an ad. Take the clean video feed and show it in another interface than the original page. This would also be a countermeasure against direct injection of ads into the content stream.
Also note that so far, most streaming services have succeeded in protecting their high res codecs. KodiTV can play a big variety of services but usually only at 540p (widevine L2?).
Tim Berners-Lee overriding the standards bodies and approving Encrypted Media Extensions had the desired effect of keeping the web relevant, of letting all these streaming services spring up, all accessible on the web. Because it afforda the companies enough security to feel like they can do so.
It's unclear to me how we build DVRs anew. Do we disassemble a monitor scan-out & record the embedded-Display-Port or lvds or whatever signal, and play that back? The infernalizarion of computing has proceeded apace against humanity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the many reasons that Google has never had me as a paying customer, even though I like YouTube's content enough to pay something for it. Over the years, things like this have eroded the trust I have for Google to effectively zero. Instead I pay other services like Nebula to watch creators I first discovered on YouTube. Unfortunately, most creators don't have an alternative like this in place.
What makes you think Nebula doesn't do the same thing?
That said, some other reasons that work in Nebula's favor are that the creators seem to be involved in the ownership and they can publish material without the fear of YouTube's demonetization. The value proposition isn't exactly one to one and goes beyond the advertising/funding.