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

Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

blog.prototypr.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 302 posts

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#101

Post by paulpauper »

rocqua wrote: post #83
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'll leave this here: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This also skips the sponsored parts of the actual videos ("this video is sponsored by skillshadow raid vpn,...")

I think this kind of add-skipping is worse. It is 'stealing' from the content creators rather than youtube. Besides, these ads are not based on surveillance capitalism but much less invasive old-school methods. Finally, there is much easier recourse against these ads. Don't watch content creators that have annoying adds. There are not many alternatives to youtube, but there are many alternatives to any given channel.…

Creators are making so much money, we should not suffer poor user experience out of sympathy. Has anyone run the math as to how much these ppl make? Hint: a lot. CPMs are crazy high, in addition to product placement.

IMHO, in-video ads are worse than the usual ads, because they subversive and break the flow. When I'm watching a math video I don't want to hear about how Euler could have used a VPN.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#102

Post by ohyoutravel »

gzer0 wrote: post #91
ohyoutravel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not seeing the connection you’re making between the admitted marvel of engineering at scale and ads.

more than 500 hours of video content on average is uploaded every minute to the platform [1]. Not sure what standard you are using for 'marvel of engineering' but to me this is truly a marvel of engineering. [1] https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/new-era-video-infrastruc...

I continue to admit it’s a marvel of engineering. There are many videos uploaded every minute and the fact that they’re able to serve it to so many users continues to blow my mind.

Though I don’t think I have a specific standard, I’d have to think about it. “I’ll Know it When I See It” has historically been my personal standard.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#103

Post by _Algernon_ »

rocqua wrote: post #83
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'll leave this here: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This also skips the sponsored parts of the actual videos ("this video is sponsored by skillshadow raid vpn,...")

I think this kind of add-skipping is worse. It is 'stealing' from the content creators rather than youtube. Besides, these ads are not based on surveillance capitalism but much less invasive old-school methods. Finally, there is much easier recourse against these ads. Don't watch content creators that have annoying adds. There are not many alternatives to youtube, but there are many alternatives to any given channel.…

Which right is higher up on the hierarchy? Content creators' right to serve me adds, or my right to decide what software to run/not run on my general purpose computer. I know what I would answer to that.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#104

Post by jrootabega »

I have a special hatred for the ads which stick an additional 5 second outro after their (false) progress timer reaches 0:00

It's lying. Trying to be unpredictable to prevent you from being able to unconsciously skip ads is one thing, but lying is unforgivable.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#105

Post by ohyoutravel »

wppick wrote: post #80
ohyoutravel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not seeing the connection you’re making between the admitted marvel of engineering at scale and ads.

There is no free lunch I think is his point. Also, I think youtube allows you to pay to have an ad free experience

That connection was implied, but not explicit. Just wanted to make sure I was drawing the right inference. I guess my thought would be that there are plenty of ad-free business models that would allow this content without (explicit playing before and during content) ads. It’s also my experience that there are still ads with their paid service, which is why I stopped paying for it. I would happily pay for a YouTube ad-free experience.

Some other user mentioned that there “was no free lunch” but explicit ads before and during videos don’t have to be the payment for said lunch.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#106

Post by paulpauper »

elzbardico wrote: post #84
paulpauper wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google and YouTube generate insane profits. they could show fewer ads and it would not impair the functionality of YouTube

Who gets to decide what is an "insane" profit? You?

Re-read the post. They could afford to run fewer ads. Right now, google is optimizing for profits at the possible cost of user experience, which may hurt google long-term. It's their right to do that, but I think it's a poor idea in the long term.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#107

Post by usui »

durnygbur wrote: post #10

Folks are completing MSc, PhDs, submitting to cutthroat recruitment processes to architect, enable, and implement this level of malicious counterproductive sophistication. Google employees, how do you find motivation to wake up in the morning? Is it >300k USD salary and FIRE before 40? What if they told you to scam your own children for additional bonus?

Your last question isn't even rhetorical. For almost everyone in USA's tech, it's only a matter of compensation. Should we expect anything different when even UC Berkeley's CS program doesn't have a single ethics requirement? (EECS has one, but their CS grad output is way lower)

I wish a tech crash like dot-com would happen already—in my very naive hope that the unscrupulous rat racers whose sole purpose is to perpetuate this infinite loop of SAT-level/IQ-test job recruitment + gamified promotion optimization will leave so they can ruin another industry. This is a terrible thought to have for peers, but after the past decade of nonsensical gatekeeping and unsustainable college major growth, I genuinely feel these people increasingly make everyday work life unbearable.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#108

Post by gberger »

alex_young wrote: post #93
ghoomketu wrote: post #43

People complain a lot about Youtube ads and how awful they are but as a thought experiment I once tried to imagine the amount of storage and bandwidth Youtube must need everyday to operate. So after some basic research it looks like they need to add almost 1 petabytes of storage and I couldn't find much info on the bandwidth and servers it uses. As much as I don't like Google for their shady business practices, I cou…

What do you think a petabyte of storage costs? SSDs currently start at $15k / PB and presumably Google’s pricing at volume is better. Data transfer is priced by connection and not by bandwidth, so that cost will not scale linearly. https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=e...

I don't think the $15/TB figure is accurate. The list drives are either unavailable on Amazon, or they are external drives which would be unsuitable for a data center.

I think we're looking at $75/TB on the lower end.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#109

Post by ajsnigrutin »

rocqua wrote: post #83
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'll leave this here: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This also skips the sponsored parts of the actual videos ("this video is sponsored by skillshadow raid vpn,...")

I think this kind of add-skipping is worse. It is 'stealing' from the content creators rather than youtube. Besides, these ads are not based on surveillance capitalism but much less invasive old-school methods. Finally, there is much easier recourse against these ads. Don't watch content creators that have annoying adds. There are not many alternatives to youtube, but there are many alternatives to any given channel.…

If I can fast-forward a VHS tape (yes, I'm that old), to skip the recorded ads, why not fast-forward the ads in youtube videos?

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#110

Post by TAKEMYMONEY »

rwc wrote: post #2

Alternate theory: A large-scale, ongoing A/B test on what gets the perfect balance between watching ads and keeping total view time high.

The multivariate test is trying to increase ad clicks, and the result is a poor UX. That's not exactly an alternate theory.

Is it a dark pattern? That's not the first term I'd use to describe it, but perhaps it falls under "Misdirection" mentioned at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.07032.pdf (page 12).

Post reply on HN