Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 316 posts

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

#201

Post by thot_experiment »

mvdtnz wrote: post #101
thot_experiment wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my ideal world? Taxes mostly I'd guess, the infra to share videos should be considered a public utility, much like libraries. Practically speaking I might be willing to pay google if there was more transparency about how much of my money actually goes to creators vs how much of it goes to google, and especially I would like to be able to chose to watch unmonetized videos only. Happily paying for Nebula and some patreons though.

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

#202

Post by blacksmith_tb »

Aunche wrote: post #149
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…

> I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get a lot of advertisement, because I dared to turn SponsorBlock off. Then don't turn SponsorBlock off? Is Youtube banning that as well? I don't see why they would care.

They don't seem, to as far as I can tell. I have uBlock origin and Sponsorblock on and now that I've caved for Premium I haven't seen any kind of nagging from YT.

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

#203

Post by NemoNobody »

archontes wrote: post #81
JAlexoid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's like using TiVo to skip commercials. I don't disagree with YT attempting to show me ads, but I have control of my computer, and if I can direct my computer not to show them to me, I will. I simply won't tolerate ads for any reason. I find the experience user hostile. So I'm always going to adopt some path that delivers me content without ads. And in choosing which path to adopt, I will always choose the least co…

This is exactly how I feel with the exception of paying for YouTube premium. If I am ever unable to watch stupid videos on YouTube without seeing ads, I won't watch on YouTube.

They are creating a reason to black market a free product and I find it hilarious how quickly the market is responding to that demand.

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

#204

Post by endisneigh »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #153
endisneigh wrote: post #92

At the end of the day people just don’t want to pay: ad blockers, piracy, etc. Of course people will whine when you stop them from getting stuff for free.

Google created the youtube "moat" by giving away the service for free for 15 years. In that time, an actually good, sustainable, paid video service could have emerged and everybody would be ok with it. Instead we got current Youtube, with its inescrutable algorithmic feed, content restrictions, and demonetization rules, and Google are asking us to pay for that with the argument that nothing else like it exists. Of co…

Nothing is stopping a paid service now.

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

#205

Post by fragmede »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #52
timeagain wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it has been framed before, it’s like the lemonade stand put all the other stands out of business by handing out free lemonade.

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?"

You find the subset of "y'all" that is willing to pay. As Patreon has done. and that YouTube is doing.

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

#206

Post by zeruch »

seydor wrote: post #127
foobarian wrote: post #19

Youtube has been a fantastic demonstration of how valuable it can be to enable democratized, low-barrier-to-entry content publishing. Think of how much treasure there is on the service, with millions upon millions of hours of educational, informative, or archival content, all published and viewable for free, with incredible reliability and availability. Of course this is also fantastically expensive to build and main…

I could say the same for bittorrents, napster, kazaa and audiogalaxy in the 00s. Maybe we turned to youtube because all else had become illegal? We can still watch demonetized channels, google doesnt seem to nag me about those.

"We can still watch demonetized channels, google doesnt seem to nag me about those. "

They do.

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

#207

Post by zeruch »

thot_experiment wrote: post #201
mvdtnz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my ideal world? Taxes mostly I'd guess, the infra to share videos should be considered a public utility, much like libraries. Practically speaking I might be willing to pay google if there was more transparency about how much of my money actually goes to creators vs how much of it goes to google, and especially I would like to be able to chose to watch unmonetized videos only. Happily paying for Nebula and some pa…

"I might be willing to pay google if there was more transparency about how much of my money actually goes to creators vs how much of it goes to google"

That would be a major step forward, akin to old Bandcamp.

But that isn't YT's model.

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

#208

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #185
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be. Sorry but this take is pretty wild to me. I can understand that there is a paid option but YouTube is free today given that I can currently watch a video after watching a couple ads without paying any money. > Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice. I'm not sure this is true in theory but, regardless, to e…

Ad-supported is not the same as free. It's been a long time since youtube was free.

Again, that is a non-obvious conclusion. Many people will consider ad-supported to be free for the sole reason that it doesn't affect the amount in their bank account.

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

#209

Post by beej71 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #15

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

Google is immorally trying to control the web, is a significant difference. I pay creators through patreon or their tip jars, and it's rather more than they'd make from me paying Google.

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

#210

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Aunche wrote: post #179
timeagain wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it has been framed before, it’s like the lemonade stand put all the other stands out of business by handing out free lemonade.

Imagine if you walk into a 7/11 and just fill your bottle with soda for free without paying. They eventually decide that too many people were doing this, so they decide to place their soda machine behind the counter, so you're required to pay. Then you complain that they're putting all the other convenience stores out of business because they used to give you soda for free. This is how entitled you sound.

> they decide to place their soda machine behind the counter, so you're required to pay

Let's add another step before this:

  Understand that people are visiting the store because the soda is free in practice and allow the practice to continue until other stores don't see any business because they can't afford to offer free soda.
Now we move the soda machine behind the counter because we don't like that people are getting free soda.

Then they complain about other convenience stores being put out of business.

If we're going to start calling people entitled, my eyes are still on Google.

Post reply on HN