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YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

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Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#101

Post by mvdtnz »

thot_experiment wrote: post #67
mvdtnz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What screws are really being turned though? This content is still available completely free of charge to anyone with an internet connection. You just need to watch a couple of ads if you're not willing to pay.

The problem is you can't just tape the shows and fast forward through the ads etc, or at least that's the direction things are going, it's a very very bad precedent.

How do you suggest creators are paid and infrastructure is maintained in your ideal world? And don't say people will donate because we all know that's BS.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#102

Post by itsoktocry »

jacurtis wrote: post #31
MBCook wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I keep seeing the discourse recently and it’s all framed as if only two options exist: People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. And Google won’t block it because it’s encouraged as the solution to this exact issue. The level of “I should get everything for…

Same here. I pay for YT Premium. I never knew this war was waging on. You click a video and it starts playing. A few days ago someone wanted to show me a video on their iPad. The video was ~10 mins long. We had to watch 2 pre-roll ads, and 2 mid-roll ads. After the second mid-roll ad I asked if this is normal. She said "of course it is, what do you mean?" as if I was living on another planet. But I had been paying fo…

>At the new pricepoint I could subscribe to 2-3 streaming services

Really? It's half the price of my Netflix sub and $1 more than a Spotify subscription (in Canada).

>There is also a huge push to shorts

Yes, this is annoying.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#104

Post by Workaccount2 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #76
Workaccount2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one else wants to run a lemonade stand because they can see customers do not want to pay for lemondade. See the Vid.me rise and fall illustrates this perfectly. Their closing letter to users even says in so many words "Ya'll don't want to pay, so how can we stay open?"

> Ya'll don't want to pay It's easy to wonder why. The status quo at the time had been that user-submitted video content (YouTube) is free. It was only free because Alphabet had their losses from YouTube subsidized by their profits from Google. Maybe not for all, but for many this is an anti-trust issue.

Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be.

Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice. Plenty of tech companies have had the technical and monetary firepower to run a youtube competitor. But you just have to read a few threads on the internet from anytime in the last decade talking about youtube and monetization to see why no one wanted to jump in. This thread included.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#105

Post by nvy »

JAlexoid wrote: post #27
PedroBatista wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me how Google is allowed to control every side of the market with no real repercussions. I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money.. That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices. Worst case scenario it help…

Why are you consuming any YT videos, then? Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?

Candidly?

1. These corporations are so user-hostile, hypocritical, and scummy that I derive a small bit of enjoyment from the pennies I cost them when I pirate their stuff.

2. The overwhelming majority of content on youtube isn't worth paying $15/mo for.

I grew up in the 90s when "Information wants to be free" and "fuck corporations" were still part of the mainstream zeitgeist, and I guess I still carry a bit of that with me today.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#106

Post by bravoetch »

JAlexoid wrote: post #43
yifanl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can't pay for Youtube. You can pay for a bundle of some mostly unrelated products that's named Youtube Premium, or you can live with an insanely degraded product experience on Youtube, but you can't pay for Youtube.

YouTube Premium is ad-free YouTube. That's literally "paying for YouTube". But it sure seems that you're trying to rationalize your unwillingness to pay for something and it does sound very entitled.

Eh, you're really just paying to remove ads. The rest of the product is available free already.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#107

Post by matheusmoreira »

trothamel wrote: post #72
spaceribs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well it's not their computer, and I'll run what I want on it (...so far)

Don't they give you that choice, with Youtube Premium?

Still has ads hardcoded in videos. Still has Google surveillance capitalism. Still sends other people videos for free which means you're paying for the privilege of segmenting yourself into the upper echelons of the market where the people with disposable income are, driving the value of your attention up and making them want to advertise to you even more.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#108

Post by hau »

nharada wrote: post #89
hau wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're right about initial value proposition, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are other things about treating youtube as netflix/hbo/hulu: - I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there - 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading - I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get…

> content of interest could be deleted next second HBO hasn't exactly been great about this either

This is a problem on all of these platforms, but to a completely different degree.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#109

Post by slimsag »

LightHugger wrote: post #85
Waterluvian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is a perfectly valid response. Equally valid is Google then saying, "well then we don't want to send you bytes."

The endgame here is adblockers that spoof ad views and even sometimes clicks rather than just blocking them. This is very very bad for google if they force adblockers to work like that. People will do it.

Another possible endgame is all YouTube videos are livestreams and you cannot skip on the timeline, with ads inserted directly into the stream.

In that world, the best an adblocker would be able to do is show a blank screen for 30s while it waits for the real video's frames to resume.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#110

Post by katbyte »

Waterluvian wrote: post #66
Clubber wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>support the creators i watch as they make more per my paid view then an ad supported view. I didn't know that. Good to know, thanks!

Either way they're making incredibly little compared to supporting them more directly like Patreon. Even Patreon takes a tasty cut. If the mental gymnastics helps, awesome. But paying Google is paying Google more than it is supporting creators.

what mental gymnastics? I pay to both avoid ads and support creators more. If i just watched YT with ads they would literally make less, regardless of supporting them directly.

and google takes 45% of premium with 55% going to creators.

feel like you are the one doing mental gymnastics

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