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Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

standard.co.uk

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Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#41

Post by alex7734 »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

The free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literal…

I'd rather stop watching YouTube than start watching ads. I disabled my adblocker to see how bad is it and it is truly disgusting, I cannot conceive how people can enjoy YouTube with so many ads.

And before you say "just pay YouTube Premium", no, the moment a majority of people start paying $10 (or whatever it is) for YouTube Premium, Google is going to add ads to it again and make you pay $20 for YouTube Premium For Real(TM) to get rid of the ads (and/or just make the free tier miserable to prevent people from stopping paying). Google has proven that it is not above abusing the user to get money and there's no reason not to abuse the user further once you have them hooked after all.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#42

Post by theonemind »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

The free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literal…

Giving it away for free if way below self-sustainability in pricing until cornering the market would be predatory pricing leading to monopoly.

I would have preferred that they made it a sustainable business unit/whatever from the beginning so that we could have had a competitive market. So, that seems like a legitimate thing to be angry about to me.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#43

Post by shric »

tomrod wrote: post #36
justrealist wrote: post #29

[flagged]

> STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT ADS No. I believe you missed/ignored a few facts in your screed: 1. Ads are a malware surface 2. Ads are used to pass misinformation and other harmful content Google is failing to perform its due diligence as an ad platform for both sides of the ad two-sided market. Ergo, my browser connection will continue to use its condoms. -- Further, Google paid for little to any content creation that is…

The in video sponsors are what I would complain about, but as long as Sponsorblock works I'm happy. Been paying for YouTube premium since before it was called that.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#44

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

The free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literal…

Ah the fallacy of content piracy harm. If I steal content it doesn't cost the creator anything. I was never going to pay for said content anyway. If I enjoy content to to point of being willing to pay, I would do so anyway, even if I could keep getting it for free, if there is an agreeable way to do that.

This applies to software, books, video, music and everything else, and has been proven time and again.

Google has just taken advantage of network effects. To say that we wouldn't have it if not for Google is clearly wrong. The first internet content distribution networks (anon FTP and UUCP) were free and cooperative. If Google didn't exist we'd surely distribute video cooperatively too, and likely much more efficiently, they were just more convenient. If they stop ad blocking that's no longer the case.

The free ride is not over, it's never over. All that will happen is that business models will change as the market adapts to people's demands and behaviour. The internet has tipped market power in favour of consumers over corporations.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#45

Post by _cenw »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #33
justrealist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could, of course, just pay YouTube $14/mo for the ad-free version instead of complaining.

Why should we pay for the experience we used to have for free? It would be an easy sell if google offered some benefit to paying, but making the experience worse and then offering to put it back as a premium option rubs me the wrong way.

That it survived 15 years without a crackdown on adblockers is the real story here. Most VC-subsidized too cheap to be sustainable services don't last a year.

The storage and bandwidth YouTube consumes must be extremely massive, and it probably only survived because Google made up for the loss in other places. Of course it has to pay someday, at latest when other revenue streams are drying up.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#46

Post by globular-toast »

What I wonder is who is pushing them to do this? Or is it coming from within? If they could somehow prove that everyone definitely saw each ad they played, what actual difference would it make? Is this a thing advertising companies compete with each other on? How likely it is people actually see the ad?

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#47

Post by charcircuit »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #33
justrealist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could, of course, just pay YouTube $14/mo for the ad-free version instead of complaining.

Why should we pay for the experience we used to have for free? It would be an easy sell if google offered some benefit to paying, but making the experience worse and then offering to put it back as a premium option rubs me the wrong way.

because youtube being ad free is worth more than $12 a month to people who use it a lot

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#48

Post by okdood64 »

_cenw wrote: post #39
beerandt wrote: post #16

I paid for the YouTube premium that came with the old Google Music subscription, and the problem was it regularly showed ads anyway, especially in the kids stuff. So then we still needed ad-blocking, which broke Google in a way that it tried to show even more ads (ad blocking probably disrupting the ability to track a 'premium' user/client). So we're back to relying completely on ad-blockers, and have completely cut…

did you use brand subaccounts? those aren't included in premium.

I use one 24/7, and it is definitely using Premium.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#49

Post by Jensson »

londons_explore wrote: post #10
Jensson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they care about losing you when they aren't making any money on you? "McDonalds cracks down on people taking ketchup without ordering anything" "Then I'll stop taking ketchup from McDonalds, that will show em!" It is only paying/ad viewers that matters, until they start to lose those they wont care.

> It is only paying/ad viewers that matters, until they start to lose those they wont care. They prefer you use youtube ad-free than go take the crowd to another platform. Microsoft famously said that they prefer people to pirate Windows than to use Linux/Mac.

Pirating OS users tend to become paying OS users after a while, when they need to perform a job etc. Ad blocking users aren't becoming paying or ad-viewing users, they stay unprofitable forever.

Re: Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers

#50

Post by 0b100 »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

The free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literal…

"the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long"

The issue, at least to me, is that Google has a sort of monopoly on >99% of content on Youtube. They provide virtually nothing[0] to content creators other than free†⸸ video hosting, and in return they get to gatekeep the content itself. All of the cost is offloaded onto the consumer, and there is little to no incentive (arguably negative* incentive) for the people producing the value (videos) to move off youtube.

"It costs to make and it costs to deliver."

It costs to make, but it's not Google that has to pay. It costs to deliver, but why should Google be the only party who gets to deliver other people's content? If the situation was "watch video on youtube with ads, or watch video on Peertube, or watch video on Odysee" I don't think many people would be complaining about mandatory ads on Youtube, but because it's "watch video on youtube with ads, or don't watch the video", people resent the dilema.

[0] The most tangible, by far, value Youtube provides is the huge audience, but that's just a feedback loop, not due to quality or effort. Actually, it's probably due to the fact that many people who make great content have historically only put it on Youtube, because of the huge... and so on.

Edit: Formatting (hopefully) fixed.

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