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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”

#221

Post by iforgotpassword »

scarface74 wrote: post #206
lbriner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder whether another approach would be starting to delete old videos with not many clicks unless you pay. This would seem to reduce storage bandwidth but I suppose they still have to support the insane amount of uploads! Another thing would be if you upload stupid crap that no-one wants to watch, you get banned or sent a nasty letter or something...I don't know, I don't work in customer retention ;-)

Storage is cheap at scale. Bandwidth isn’t.

But is it at YouTube scale? I just tried it, I can click 10 years old videos with ~10 views and it starts playing after 3 seconds. How does that work? How can you have ever video ever uploaded on hot storage? What kind of storage are they using? Flash is probably too expensive, even if it has higher density than spinning disks by today. So was that video on a spinning disk? Then it also didn't seem to have been some spun down disk, because it should have taken more than three seconds then. It just boggles my mind that every video ever uploaded to YouTube is ready to be accessed instantly. You think anything that hasn't been accessed in a few years should be tugged away on some tape somewhere and needs a minute or two to start playing

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

#222

Post by solarkraft »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #157

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.

Also annoying when you're doing something else while just listening. Then again there are some videos that are interesting enough for me to watch for a few minutes, but that makes it extra terrible that you can't scrub.

On the flip side I always chuckle when a text-only (with crappy music) ad comes on.

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

#223

Post by gaius_baltar »

zimpenfish wrote: post #217
scarface74 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? What business model should Google use for YouTube? But you can always use a prepaid debit card.

> So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? But even if you do pay, you still see (often longer!) ads because people put sponsor segments in their videos. As far as I can tell, there's no way to skip those, paying or otherwise, except resorting to something like sponsorblock, right?

I'm ok with sponsored segments as the only ads because they are the least offensive ads ATM.

The way to prevent these ads from being blocked is to include them in the video stream itself, possibly by the original author. This has the good side effects of making them easy to skip and, more importantly, unable track users by themselves. The publishing platform can say things like "xx% of users matching rule yyyy fully watched it", but only if watching is non anonymous.

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

#224

Post by jrootabega »

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…

I've seen it skip a second (e.g. go straight from 3 to 1) roughly as much as I've seen it do the opposite. I don't suspect foul play but I understand why someone would.

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

#225

Post by throw7 »

youtube music will often interrupt startup and ask you to signup now with a large button at the bottom. There is small text below it (not even a button) to say "not now". That line of text is wedged in really close to the "close" button.

frankly, also, shutting down an existing app (well liked google play music) and implementing a less functional replacement (for their benefit) should be called the Google Two Step Dark Pattern Shuffle.

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

#226

Post by user_7832 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #157

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.

I once got one of those Apple events (I think the second-last hardware event) as an ad. Like, the whole 2 hours plus event, as a youtube ad. I still don't know what to make of it and cannot fathom why someone would spend money for that.

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

#227

Post by jerf »

jrootabega wrote: post #224
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…

I've seen it skip a second (e.g. go straight from 3 to 1) roughly as much as I've seen it do the opposite. I don't suspect foul play but I understand why someone would.

I've seen that too. Mostly I suspect foul play just because it's so damned obvious what the problem is, and there's a hack fix that's pretty easy (run the thing that updates the number every .1 seconds instead of every second). Not that the correct fixes are that hard, or that likely to have interactions with other things... on a technical level, anyhow.

If it is incompetence, it's a rather shocking amount of it in a very important part of the app that has a bajillion metrics tied to it. I can't say this is impossible. But I can't call it the most likely outcome.

Note that this particular behavior will never let you stop the ad early. It can only extend the amount of time it will play, by scheduling the thing that finally lets you in only when the current time is greater than or equal to the 5 seconds it is supposed to play. Jumping from 3 to 1 doesn't mean you skipped a second, it means the 3 wasn't moved to 2 at the correct time.

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

#229

Post by woojoo666 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #217
scarface74 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? What business model should Google use for YouTube? But you can always use a prepaid debit card.

> So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? But even if you do pay, you still see (often longer!) ads because people put sponsor segments in their videos. As far as I can tell, there's no way to skip those, paying or otherwise, except resorting to something like sponsorblock, right?

Youtube ads are to support youtube. Sponsored segments are to support the creator. They are completely separate. If you don't want youtube ads, Youtube provides an alternate payment method. If you don't want sponsored segments, that's up to the creator to provide a way out

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

#230

Post by Teever »

scarface74 wrote: post #207
Teever wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulators. And since the US seems to have abrogated those responsibilities they are falling to the EU.

So you want regulators to decide how much of a profit corporations should have for a non essential service like watching videos ?

"So you want regulators to decide how much of a profit corporations should have for a non essential service like smoking cigarettes?

Yes I want regulators to dictate how a behemoth corporate entity like Alphabet uses a platform like Youtube in ways that they both unduly profit from and are unacceptably detrimental to society as a whole.

Entities like Alphabet continue to grow and grow and the corrosive effects of their growth need to be checked some how. If you don't advocate for regulation than what mechanisms are you anticipating will mitigate the negative aspects of these kinds of entities?

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