Live data from Hacker News

YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

iter.ca

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#21
post #7

If they ran less hostile ads, people wouldn't be as hostile to watching their ads. Some of the ads they run are just ridiculous and awful. Ads for scams, soft-core porn ads, just the worst of the worst.

I think that’s a rationalization. Most people just don’t like ads no matter what they are. And I can’t blame them, ads are terrible. But this is a case where they offer a nice subscription that takes them all away, so people ought to buy that instead.

The YT Premium subscription suffers from being low value imo, forced bundling with YT Music which inflates prices, and little to no synergy with Google One subscriptions in most countries.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#22
while ad blocking has grown in prevalence over the years, for something like youtube I'd figured it was more than counteracted by the shift to mobile / TV (where ad blocking is more complicated)

whatever the merits, this (and google's neutering of extensions in chrome) signals a fundamental attitude shift from ~10 years ago; they're more interested in squeezing margins out of their dominant platforms instead of growth

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#23

I have no respect for Youtube/google developers, like they have apps where you need to pay to use them with the screen turned off, so they screw your battery (reducing your device live) and wasting energy so their boss gets a bigger yacht (cecause it seems ads are not enough)

I don't necessarily disagree but it's not a Google problem. It's a human problem.

For example: What value does your comment provide the world? Enough value to offset the carbon emissions from transmission/storage/retrieval/display? Personally, I'd answer no. Thus your comment itself is a waste of energy.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#24
post #6

What if people just paid for services they use and depend on frequently

There's a long tail of people who don't use YouTube frequently but click play on videos embedded on other sites, or on videos linked.

So of course they're never going to pay. That's the problem advertising solves -- infrequent users can be monetized.

YouTube already has an option to pay to avoid ads, for frequent users. And lots of people subscribe to it.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#25

If they ran less hostile ads, people wouldn't be as hostile to watching their ads. Some of the ads they run are just ridiculous and awful. Ads for scams, soft-core porn ads, just the worst of the worst.

Where are you located? I've never seen any of those. Pretty much all of my YouTube ads are for TV shows, movies, cars, mobile games, consumer products, and various consumer services. Volkswagen, Dove, TurboTax, etc. All incredibly mainstream. Maybe you're located in a country or region maintain advertisers avoid?

I get all the ads you mention but I have also gotten the deepfake crypto scam ads. Youtube doesn't discriminate as long as the check clears.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#26

If they ran less hostile ads, people wouldn't be as hostile to watching their ads. Some of the ads they run are just ridiculous and awful. Ads for scams, soft-core porn ads, just the worst of the worst.

Where are you located? I've never seen any of those. Pretty much all of my YouTube ads are for TV shows, movies, cars, mobile games, consumer products, and various consumer services. Volkswagen, Dove, TurboTax, etc. All incredibly mainstream. Maybe you're located in a country or region maintain advertisers avoid?

I'm in America. I only see these scummy ads I talk about, and I assume it's because I'm extremely aggressive about preventing myself from being tracked and profiled. My friends made the horrible mistake of looking into cryptocurrency on Google while signed into their account, so they got targeted by scum crypto ads.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#28

If they ran less hostile ads, people wouldn't be as hostile to watching their ads. Some of the ads they run are just ridiculous and awful. Ads for scams, soft-core porn ads, just the worst of the worst.

Yeah, I find instagram ads not that annoying, and they actually promote things I would buy (I've bought a couple of things over the years through their ads).

Youtube/google ads? Never bought anything, automatically assume they are a scam.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#29
Having to pay for something so that's "less annoying" is the worst business model. YouTube Premium is very expensive. I had it for a while when I got a Pixel smartphone with a few months of YouTube Premium included. It was great. I also understand that streaming on this scale must entail incredibly high operating costs; the money has to come from somewhere. It's simply a dilemma. But there has to be a better way. Any ideas?
Post reply on HN