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Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

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Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#101

The insidious aspect of this is the bait and switch YouTube did to consolidate their monopoly. A huge amount of videos were uploaded under the (idealistic and misguided) pretence they would be freely accessible without ads and so on. Had the YT UX been this way the whole time then the online video landscape would be much more competitive today.

How would youtube work without ads or subscriptions? Do you just not want there to be something like youtube?

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#102
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsorblock already exists as infrastructure to slice out ads embedded into the video streams themselves. Of course, the sponsor segments weren't put there by youtube, but the same (or similar) solutions would apply if they were. It's much easier for anything non-live.

Sponsorblock would be easy to work around if ad-breaks were randomly selected. Whenever you upload a video YT could process the video and "search" for good ad-break locations, at display time client bits get pushed ads randomly, making time-code blocking useless. They could even upsell to content creators by giving them the means to dynamically replace sponsors in old videos using the same tech, maybe with some knobs…

Maybe someone could use train a AI for something useful like skipping advertisement? Switching from time to content id, i.e. like they use for copyright strikes, would work even better than status quo.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#103
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to pay for content, as soon as sites provide me with a remotely reasonable way of doing that. Advertising is not a reasonable way. A separate subscription, with a credit card interaction, for every site I happen to hit once a year, is not a reasonable way. Demanding a bunch of personal information is not a reasonable way. Trying to lock me into an "ecosystem of partners" is not a reasonable way. Globally ac…

Give me a break. You don't want advertising, you don't want to subscribe, and you don't want a network of sites using the same subscription. What possible solution exists that satisfies your criteria, which are way more demanding than "remotely reasonable"? This is just an excuse you've fabricated to justify your own convenience, stinginess and/or laziness.

I said what solution I wanted. Micropayments have been researched for 30 years. Anonymous crypto payments have been deployed for maybe 10. Yes, there are scaling issues. No, they're not that hard. The real problem is getting everybody to agree on what to use.

... and if a site directly tells me it doesn't like my ad blocker, I leave. I haven't gone to the ad-blocker-blocker level. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're mad they didn't start charging and pushing ads earlier?

I'm annoyed that people act like it's narcissistic or entitled for users to be mad that now that YouTube has killed most of their competition by subsidizing the business with Google money, they want to start doing the exact thing everyone else had tried to do, except now there isn't any other comparable option. Normally when a business takes massive losses to drive competition out in an industry that's hard to break…

The income has to come from somewhere. All new businesses will probably operate at a loss for some length of time. Sure, maybe if they forced ads earlier on, in an effort to be a profitable division earlier another competitor would have arisen.

Whoever wins the online video site thing contest is going to end up making money one of two ways, subscriptions or ads. Idk that it makes a lot of sense to me to be mad at Google about it. If not them, some VC or something would have just taken the hit instead.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#105
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to pay for content, as soon as sites provide me with a remotely reasonable way of doing that. Advertising is not a reasonable way. A separate subscription, with a credit card interaction, for every site I happen to hit once a year, is not a reasonable way. Demanding a bunch of personal information is not a reasonable way. Trying to lock me into an "ecosystem of partners" is not a reasonable way. Globally ac…

Give me a break. You don't want advertising, you don't want to subscribe, and you don't want a network of sites using the same subscription. What possible solution exists that satisfies your criteria, which are way more demanding than "remotely reasonable"? This is just an excuse you've fabricated to justify your own convenience, stinginess and/or laziness.

I don't want advertising tracking me. I don't want advertising introducing products I don't want. I want advertising to let me choose what advertising I want to see.

I want to see advertising promoting environmental friendly products. I want advertising to promote cleaning up litter, but you don't see that do you? We have the tech.

Advertising, a blood sucking evil exploitive parasite.

I would turn off all blockers if they didn't play with PsyOp strategies of evil manipulative social exploits. Exploits that are replayed on kids, you and us. Of such that Google promotes on their network.

If advertising was clean, did not impeach on my privacy and just kept advertising to "just this video" I wouldn't block advertising. But they don't, wont.

They are vermin, evil parasites. But you don't see that do you?

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#106
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsorblock already exists as infrastructure to slice out ads embedded into the video streams themselves. Of course, the sponsor segments weren't put there by youtube, but the same (or similar) solutions would apply if they were. It's much easier for anything non-live.

Sponsorblock only works because YT allows you to skip anywhere in a video.

Even if they try to prevent that, with a modified client, you can skip anywhere in a video and there's nothing they can do about it.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsorblock only works because YT allows you to skip anywhere in a video.

Even if they try to prevent that, with a modified client, you can skip anywhere in a video and there's nothing they can do about it.

That requires them to pre-serve you the bits for the part of the video after the ad, which they aren't going to do.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#108
I cancelled YT premium because it would still show me ads while using chromecast sometimes. 100% chance they will start showing ads to premium users if they actually manage to shut down ad blockers. Just like cable TV does. Pay for the service, watch ads half the time anyway.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they try to prevent that, with a modified client, you can skip anywhere in a video and there's nothing they can do about it.

That requires them to pre-serve you the bits for the part of the video after the ad, which they aren't going to do.

Unless they want to completely break the ability to seek in the video timeline, regardless of ad placements, that's not going to work.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#110
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google search is a good example of this, ads are literally intertwined into the search results, if you take this a few steps further you have ads that you literally can't block on the client. I'm not sure about your "few steps" so this may be moot. Is there no sufficient workaround of this nature? document.querySelector('.waste-of-money')?.remove(); Google might detect that the element was removed; ad blockers use…

> Is there really a way for Google to end this cat/mouse game in their favor? Yet another "update" to the web extension manifest.

That will affect a large number of users but if word gets out that this weird fork of Firefox[0] will allow them to view YouTube with no ads, Google is suddenly forced to enable browser attestation such that only versions of Chrome will allow people to use YouTube. That will likely affect those in the US but EU authorities sometimes like to curb these antitrust behaviors. I also get the feeling that such a change will cause them to lose American business to competitors. Amazon seems primed to start eating their lunch with Twitch; they would mostly need to start building and promoting more video on demand features.

0: It sends a "this is totally Chrome" user agent and possibly includes other APIs that YouTube will use.

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