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

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

#151

Post by coremoff »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #60
alphakappa wrote: post #31

Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows of unread emails at the top. Right when you attempt to click on the top row, it rearranges the rows to show a few rows of ads instead (and the ads are fairly indistinguishable from the unread emails) so you end up unintentionally opening an ad. Now, there’s no…

Wait, I am curious: you see ads on GMail? I haven’t seen ads in many years. What email client do you use? web app, phone app?

the ads are displayed in the smart inbox tabs; if you have turned this off, you won't see ads

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

#152

Post by wizzard »

jerf wrote: post #136

My favorite "dark pattern" plausibly disguised as a simple bug is that the countdown timer, across multiple platforms I've used YouTube on, doesn't work correctly and very easily will let the ad play for a second or two longer than you intend. It behaves as if it's supposed to count down to 0 one second at a time, but there's a recurring event that is run every second to see if the countdown timer needs to be lowered…

Yes, on my smart TV app it's so slow and glitchy that the 5-second ad preview often plays for 10+ seconds before the "Skip Ad" button finally appears. Add to that the 5-7 seconds of black screen before the ad starts playing and the 2-3 seconds to resume my video, and it's a major annoyance during workouts and such.

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

#153

Post by coremoff »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #119
sbradford26 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I agree for just YouTube it would be excessive. But they do combo it with youtube music which makes it a slightly better deal. Also personally they have the best family plan since it allows 6 accounts total and doesn't require to be "Under the same roof" like spotify. But I agree I probably wouldn't find the full price outside of the family plan worth it.

Last time I tried YouTube music, it was an underwhelming experience. I expected it to show only official videos, but it showed any random video with music. It substituted Google Play Music, where you could have a curated library and your own uploads, with random music videos.

I think it only show "any random video with music" if you've liked the video and it appears to be a legitimate music video (i.e. without dialog/non-musical noises etc.). I use YtM a lot and the only questionable videos are ones that I've hit like on (beat saber being a prime example - I've learned not to like anything like that, these days).

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

#154

Post by crtasm »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #135
pc86 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I distinctly remember waiting an appreciable amount of time to download a single Metallica mp3 on dialup as a middle schooler - maybe 20, 25 minutes? for a ~3 minute song - and a 2GB Linux distro took me like 30 seconds a few weeks ago. I'm simultaneously hopeful for what we'll be doing 20, 30 years from now, but also worried that the rate of progress is slowing (because I am by definition comparing now to the very v…

I used to download full video game soundtracks. It would take me all night to download a single album, and I'd have been disconnected from the internet when I woke up in the morning because my ISP wouldn't support a connection length longer than 8 hours. We couldn't even stream music , let alone stream video.

How long ago are you talking? Realplayer came out in 1995, I was listening to live DJs over my dialup connection in 1996.

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

#155

Post by svachalek »

theginger wrote: post #33
mritun wrote: post #17

What is dark about the design pattern? They have an ad-free YT that anyone can pay to subscribe. Is it considered dark because they want the users to subscribe to paid version? I think labelling everything “dark pattern” just makes the term lose its meaning and it actually helps the real dark patterns go scot free

I thought that until I got most of the way through the article. It is a long winded explanation that eventually gets to its point that the skip button can appear in various formats making it a tiny bit slower to recognise and use. Without a reasonable explanation to why it needs to change it seems like dark pattern is fair.

Dark patterns are basically brain hacking, hacking someone else's brain to benefit yourself. This looks like some kind of massive A/B test to eke out a small percentage margin on advertising.

I'd give it a few dark points for that but imo advertising itself is the dark lord of dark patterns: not only is it a brain hack, not only has it hacked all the way into social acceptability, but it is the darkness from which so many other dark patterns spawn and spring forth to bring revenue to their master.

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

#156

Post by l33tman »

tristan957 wrote: post #116
mark_l_watson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I am curious: you see ads on GMail? I haven’t seen ads in many years. What email client do you use? web app, phone app?

I can't recall seeing ads on the Android app, but there are definitely ads in the web client. The ads must do a very good job of disguising themselves if you haven't noticed them. I have moved most of my email to ProtonMail. So much nicer paying for that from a company that respects me rather than using a free product from a company who has no other purpose than to drive ad revenue.

The ads are in the android app if you select a "smart" tab, like the Social or Campaigns (and I pay for google one, still get those ads). Fortunately I'm never in those tabs on the mobile client.

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

#157

Post by dec0dedab0de »

I think the biggest dark pattern is allowing skipable ads to be long. Sometimes over an hour. I spent some time in the hospital not too long ago, and it was physically painful for me to move enough to skip an ad. I would have been fine watching 30-60 second ads without skipping, but they just put infomercials in the middle of the video you're watching. it is outrageous.

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

#159

Post by qbrass »

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…

You've certainly made a case for watching ads while uploading video.

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

#160

Post by gundmc »

This article comes across as a bit conspiratorial. I feel like "dark pattern" is on the verge of losing meaning when it's applied in cases like this as opposed to for example: making accept cookies one click and reject multiple clicks (which Google is also guilty of).
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