Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

piunikaweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 212 posts

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#41

Post by BrenBarn »

nikanj wrote: post #34
kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads

If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they should never have made YouTube free in the first place.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#42

Post by tjpnz »

kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

No worse than what a lot of their other "brilliant" minds are working on - ads.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#43

Post by jy14898 »

kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#44

Post by keepamovin »

kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

Maybe ads-as-business-model is like political ideology - it is not a human universal but must adapt to the place: for instance collectivism over individualism in East Asia, theocratic conservatism over democracy in Afghanistan -- maybe ads as business model is despicable to some regions, but accepted in others? Albania it's apparently illegal for YouTube to serve ads?

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#45

Post by reddalo »

jy14898 wrote: post #43
kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

>If you don't like free services, stop using them

Problem is, there's no real alternative for YouTube. It's a monopoly.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#46

Post by reddalo »

BrenBarn wrote: post #41
nikanj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads

If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they should never have made YouTube free in the first place.

They made it free just like any other startup makes a free tier to obtain market share.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#47

Post by wazoox »

nikanj wrote: post #36
p4bl0 wrote: post #32

What a shame. What's the point even? I'm not going subscribe to YouTube premium anyway, and even less install and use the YouTube app. What happens with this move is just that I will just use YouTube less. I believe that's the case for most people who chose to use YouTube in a browser precisely for background playback. As an example: knowing that I won't be able to keep the sound playing for the 5 minutes in between…

The point is that youtube is an ad-funded service, and if you're not watching the ads, Google is losing money on you.

Bwaaa an evil monopolistic empire won't get our money, that's so sad really. They're racking up tens of billions of money every quarter, we don't. I carefully do my best not to give any money to Microsoft, Google and the likes. They must be dismantled anyway.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#48

Post by latexr »

kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

Maybe we should stop with that tired fallacious rhetoric? Just because you work at a massive company doesn’t make you “brilliant”.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#49

Post by tjpnz »

jy14898 wrote: post #43
kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

Is this product or hampering the way the web works with video? Go to any other site with a tag and you won't face similar issues.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#50

Post by renewiltord »

p4bl0 wrote: post #32

What a shame. What's the point even? I'm not going subscribe to YouTube premium anyway, and even less install and use the YouTube app. What happens with this move is just that I will just use YouTube less. I believe that's the case for most people who chose to use YouTube in a browser precisely for background playback. As an example: knowing that I won't be able to keep the sound playing for the 5 minutes in between…

Perhaps that's what they desire. Serving YouTube video has marginal cost and you provide marginal zero value. Losing you as a customer is probably desired.
Post reply on HN