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YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

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Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#131

Post by bastard_op »

I never, repeat, never open links on my phone for youtube, as I'm immediately blasted with annoying ads. Using everything from noscript to ublock on my desktop, I started getting these warnings on youtube, and simply closed the window every time I was blasted with it or an ad. Way to go youtube, I'll go back to pretending you're not there.

I stopped buying cable tv in the 90's because commercials were disgusting, and simply found the internet then to replace it. I simply _do_not_want_ads_ period. If you force me, you will lose a customer.

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#132

Post by LispSporks22 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #14
pprotas wrote: post #5

I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started? As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?

Boycott YouTube in favor of other video services? Pay for YT Premium? Why spend so much energy bypassing compensation for an otherwise free service? It just pushes more ads in front of less sophisticated users or encourages producers to lock all content behind paywalls.

I don’t want to be logged in. I don’t want them invading my privacy.

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#133

Post by arnvidr »

datpiff wrote: post #41
solardev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Nebula. https://nebula.tv/ Many of my favorite channels (mostly civil engineering, science, history) are there, and release there first before YouTube. Sadly the UI is not as good, and there are no automatic captions like YouTube. But it's cheap and it works... And of course there's Patreon.

Patreon doesn't seem to do video very well (or at all anymore?) Most Patreon accounts I've seen just link to unlisted Youtube videos.

The account I support that regularly posts videos uses Patreon's own video service still. It seems to work pretty good?

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#134

Post by nusl »

This is somewhat interesting. YouTube seemingly started losing enough money to ad blockers to start caring to combat them seriously, and the number of ad blocker install/uninstalls supports that there are very many folks interested in blocking ads.

I’m not sure of where this will end up but I can only see hatred for ads and adoption of ad blockers increasing over time. I’m not sure YouTube will win this war.

The nice thing is that YouTube is now forcing ad blocker devs into attrition, or to try harder and innovate. I suspect the latter will be the result and YouTube/other ad providers will have an even harder time combating it.

Disclaimer: I pay for YT premium but also run a combo of extension and DNS based blockers. Premium is mostly so that I don’t have to care about ads on the many devices I use, though their change in stance is making me rethink the subscription

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#135

Post by fragmede »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #86
pprotas wrote: post #5

I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started? As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?

By far the most effective way to end ads would be to come up with an internet business model that doesn't need ads or subscriptions to stay alive. This would be a god tier level development, and would seriously cripple Google's core business (serving ads) and youtube as well (serve ads or subscription).

Given that things cost money, I'm not sure how you want to accomplish that in a sustainable fashion. Somewhere, someone down the line is paying money, even if it's not you. And if it's not you, you're the product, as the popular saying goes. So paying a subscription fee really is the best solution.

One can imagine a different structure, where a wealthy philanthropist or organization funds the site, but that's just shifting the costs around. The other option is the government runs it, out of our tax dollars, which could work, if there wasn't a powerful vocal contingent of politicians that still buys the line that government can't do anything right.

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#136

Post by fragmede »

zeroCalories wrote: post #72
stetrain wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an individual creator you can make that decision, but if YouTube as a whole annoys your viewer base to the point that they use YouTube less then you have a problem.

That's a stretch. Even if Google, an entirely metrics driven company, decided to destroy their metrics, there isn't any good alternatives to Youtube. At best you'll be going to TikTok, but most YouTube channels can't be sustained on TikTok's revenue model.

For those ofnus less intimately familiar with the TikTok platform and their payouts and their revenue, can you explain why not? I thought they show (video) ads and use money to run the company and pay creators.

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#137

Post by zeroCalories »

stetrain wrote: post #125
zeroCalories wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is massive cope. These are second or third order effects that will likely impact a very small segment of the population, if they will impact any at all. This is not like when Youtube killed short form content a decade ago. Show me a Youtuber that has been affected by this. Ping me in a year too. And no, going to these other sites is not a signal. Creators use these sites as additional revenue sources by posting…

A cope for what? I was just responding to the idea that "I think many content creators have recognized that it's important to expand their brand outside of youtube so they're not so beholden to YouTube." Do you disagree with that statement?

Maybe I misinterpreted. There is a lot of cope from freeloaders trying to justify their freeloading as good for everyone in this thread. :)

As for your question, I disagree. The examples you mentioned are not alternatives, they are small additions. The only exceptions I've seen are podcasts, but they've never been tied to YouTube.

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#138

Post by qntmfred »

karaterobot wrote: post #77
qntmfred wrote: post #36

I've been a paying YouTube user since 2016 when it was YouTube Red. YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet. Both in terms of content that I personally enjoy and improves my life, as well as its role on the internet overall, where they provide a FREE service that allows EVERYONE to upload as much video as they want, and see what kind of response it gets from a global audience, and even to get paid for th…

Do you ever skip past the shout-outs to the sponsor, or do you sit and pay attention to them out of admiration for the creators who spent so much time making free content for you?

I skip, but the goal of sponsors is getting their name out there, which is still achieved even if I skip ahead. I've used promo codes for several products bc of these sponsorship deals/ads as well

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#139

Post by brucethemoose2 »

pprotas wrote: post #5

I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started? As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?

Help starving lone devs keep up important projects.

The big fish are Ublock Origin and AdBlock Plus, as well as YT front ends like yt-dl, Invidious and Newpipe, but by favorite project is https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Bromite already almost died before uazo took over.

I think YouTube is eventually going to assert control through Chrome, and the community is going to be caught flat footed with everyone still relying on Chrome extensions.

The entire adblock industry feels like https://xkcd.com/2347/

Re: YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

#140

Post by stetrain »

zeroCalories wrote: post #137
stetrain wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cope for what? I was just responding to the idea that "I think many content creators have recognized that it's important to expand their brand outside of youtube so they're not so beholden to YouTube." Do you disagree with that statement?

Maybe I misinterpreted. There is a lot of cope from freeloaders trying to justify their freeloading as good for everyone in this thread. :) As for your question, I disagree. The examples you mentioned are not alternatives, they are small additions. The only exceptions I've seen are podcasts, but they've never been tied to YouTube.

I have not said that any of these expansions outside of Youtube are a replacement or alternative for Youtube, especially for content discovery. Nor am I necessarily supporting adblockers, except in sympathizing that Youtube's ad experience has continued to get more annoying. I personally solve this by paying for Premium.

My point was only that if you have a core audience of subscribers, who provide value via direct subscription or as audience for your sponsorships, you might be worried about Youtube making changes to their system that annoy those users or makes it harder for them to watch your content.

And Youtube could make changes that help Youtube's numbers (ie more ad impressions, more views overall, pushing short form video over long form) that can hurt an individual channel by driving away their niche audience or surfacing their videos to subscribers less often (Youtube already loves to do this one).

Extending outside of Youtube to let this core audience give you money and directly watch your videos (ie Nebula, Patreon, Discord communities) is a hedge against this. Being less beholden to Youtube for your weekly viewership and the relationship with your audience doesn't mean completely replacing Youtube with an alternative.

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