Live data from Hacker News

YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

zdnet.com

11–20 of 101 posts

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#11

Chances are it's just to install a BETTER adblocker...but even if not, YouTube is being greedy here. They could still make a fairly profitable site and compete based on features and usability, but instead they are maximizing their revenue at the cost of all else. They are greedy, and instead of having a thriving business, they are making the exact same mistake as cable TV providers: choking th life out of viewers wit…

I see what you mean about Google's greed. But to be perfectly honoust there is some greed on our behalf as well. The "contract" with YouTube being: don't pay us in $$$, give us your privacy — by attempting to use without revealing our privacy gold we're somewhat free loading, being greedy. It would be better to reject the "contract" and find different ways to access the content without relying on Google's "free" dist…

Yes, I do agree with you. It is not just Google's greed but also our own. In fact, if I had the time and resources, I would love to create a different video sharing site.

It would be a site that is like YouTube but only allows 1080P video (to save on hosting). It would take a few minutes, maybe 5 to load a video, to save on bandwidth. It would have a limit on video length as well maybe,

It would also not have any analytics or recommendation algorithm, and it would have a modest paid tier (2$ a month for some additional features). It might have a Patreon-like feature from which I would take a modest percentage, just to pay for hosting.

Instead of a recommendation algorithm, it would have some basic categories and new videos would just appear in the categories that you subscribe to, but only sorted by date.

It would be a slower, simpler site for genuine video sharing, but with some limitations to keep things realistic. I am being 100% serious: I do think a slower, more modest site with less features would be quite nice, sort of like Medium but for video.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#13
post #9

Chances are it's just to install a BETTER adblocker...but even if not, YouTube is being greedy here. They could still make a fairly profitable site and compete based on features and usability, but instead they are maximizing their revenue at the cost of all else. They are greedy, and instead of having a thriving business, they are making the exact same mistake as cable TV providers: choking th life out of viewers wit…

> but even if not, YouTube is being greedy here While I agree with the greedy part, what do you specifically suggest they do? If they do nothing then the people without an adblocker are effectively subsidizing those who don't see the ads, resulting in them seeing more ads. If you don't want ads there's YouTube Premium ( even if it sucks that you need to get YouTube Music at the same time ). The worst part of that dea…

I think Google should offer a paid tier like YouTube premium, but with the following feautures:

(1) You can opt out of any analytics and tracking

(2) They would turn off ads for your OWN channel. So for example, if I have a channel and I pay for premium, then I should be able to TURN OFF ads so that OTHERS who view my channel don't see ads.

If Google had these features, I would buy premium in a heartbeat.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#14

They will win. They will setup DRM, or render the full site in canvas, or with wasm, or something, or requires a TPM trusted signatured in an approved web browser or some shit. The new generation will accept a limited client, because they know mostly locked down phones. So only a few will not accept it, and they will not have to care about it a single bit.

They won't. The movie industry has been trying to stop piracy with technical measures forever. Things still get pirated. Every measure they take will be broken.

They'll win over the masses, which is what they really care about. But they won't ever defeat the die-hards.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#15
There's an argument to be made that a site that permits ad blockers should command a higher price from advertisers than one that forbids them, since a user who would use an ad blocker is the least likely user to ever click on an ad. If you're showing ads to a userbase that consists of a mix of users who would and wouldn't use an ad blocker if able to do it, then you're increasing your impressions by policy without increasing your conversions, compared to a site that shows ads only to users who have the chance to block ads and don't.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#16
post #5

uBlock has been working fine. If you get blocked from youtube, you can go to uBlock options, click purge all caches, then "Update Now." Do a full reload in youtube and you're good to go. Tactics are changing continually.

This isn't working for me on Firefox / uBlock and Ubuntu :(

I don't get the popup, but the video is just black and the play button does nothing.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#17

They will win. They will setup DRM, or render the full site in canvas, or with wasm, or something, or requires a TPM trusted signatured in an approved web browser or some shit. The new generation will accept a limited client, because they know mostly locked down phones. So only a few will not accept it, and they will not have to care about it a single bit.

They won't. The movie industry has been trying to stop piracy with technical measures forever. Things still get pirated. Every measure they take will be broken. They'll win over the masses, which is what they really care about. But they won't ever defeat the die-hards.

Netflix killed Torrents. Spotify killed Napster.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#18

They will win. They will setup DRM, or render the full site in canvas, or with wasm, or something, or requires a TPM trusted signatured in an approved web browser or some shit. The new generation will accept a limited client, because they know mostly locked down phones. So only a few will not accept it, and they will not have to care about it a single bit.

They won't. The movie industry has been trying to stop piracy with technical measures forever. Things still get pirated. Every measure they take will be broken. They'll win over the masses, which is what they really care about. But they won't ever defeat the die-hards.

And even the die-hards will lose convenience, reverse engineering a custom WASM VM every time it's updated is massive work.

And TPM checks are really hard to bypass.

All that to watch a few videos without a 20 second ads?

Not sure it's event worth it.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't. The movie industry has been trying to stop piracy with technical measures forever. Things still get pirated. Every measure they take will be broken. They'll win over the masses, which is what they really care about. But they won't ever defeat the die-hards.

Netflix killed Torrents. Spotify killed Napster.

> Netflix killed Torrents.

Not really.

Re: YouTube's ban leads to a record number of users uninstalling their ad-blockers

#20
post #16
post #5

uBlock has been working fine. If you get blocked from youtube, you can go to uBlock options, click purge all caches, then "Update Now." Do a full reload in youtube and you're good to go. Tactics are changing continually.

This isn't working for me on Firefox / uBlock and Ubuntu :( I don't get the popup, but the video is just black and the play button does nothing.

Did you already hit their three strikes soft ban prior to updating the cache?
Post reply on HN