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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”

#241

Post by nybble41 »

sophacles wrote: post #179
delecti wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's clearly a different kind of thing though. Sponsored content in videos is just stuff you don't like, but it's still the video you clicked on. Youtube injected ads on top of the video is not the content you clicked on. Youtube premium unambiguously solves the problem that the top-level comment was complaining about (mid-roll ads that can be a half-hour or longer), you're just moving the goal posts.

I'm not moving anything. If you want to call something ad-free, IMHO it shouldn't have ads.

Google's product here is the hosting and distribution service. If you pay for YT Premium then Google doesn't place any ads in their product. The content of the videos—including any "native" ads inserted by the video creators—isn't up to them.

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

#242

Post by runarberg »

duskwuff wrote: post #174
runarberg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the USA, I think it is illegal to play ads at a louder volume then the surrounding content. You can file an FCC complaint if you see that.

As far as I'm aware, that only applies to broadcast radio and over-the-air TV, not all media.

I’m not a lawyer but it looks like the law might apply to chromecast as well:

> as such recommended practice concerns the transmission of commercial advertisements by a television broadcast station, cable operator, or other multichannel video programming distributor. [emphasis mine]

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ311/html/PLA...

I think it would be worth it to file a complaint. Or if anybody here on HN has done so already, I would be interested in hearing the response.

EDIT: Looking at the code (which I’m woefully under-qualified at) I see this:

> (13) the term “multichannel video programming distributor” means a person such as, but not limited to, a cable operator, a multichannel multipoint distribution service, a direct broadcast satellite service, or a television receive-only satellite program distributor, who makes available for purchase, by subscribers or customers, multiple channels of video programming;

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/522

I don’t see how a chromecasting a youtube playlist (human curated or autogenerated) over GoogleTV, does not apply to this definition.

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

#243

Post by sixothree »

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…

This kind of thinking is really disappointing to me. It's the same mindset that caused so many people to migrate to GMail in the first place.

When GMail was introduced, google was offering a gigabyte of storage when most providers were offering a 1/10th or less of that. Many people gladly gave up access to the contents of their email in exchange for something that seemed at the time to be technologically impressive.

As of today a few gigabytes of email storage seems fairly trivial. But we still gave up a lot to enjoy that privilege.

Trust me, in 10 years this impressive amount of data will be less impressive to you.

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

#244

Post by dylan604 »

lbriner wrote: post #131
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…

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 ;-)

>I do wonder whether another approach would be starting to delete old videos with not many clicks unless you pay

You click to view a video like this, but instead receive a message that states, please return in up to 2 hours while we fetch this content from cold storage.

It'll help ensure you don't ever need to retrieve that content, the content is technically still available, but as the host you can start to whittle down online storage needs.

Edit: Or, you can have the viewer pay for the rush to retrieve the content from cold storage with a viewer-pays model

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

#245

Post by delecti »

WorldMaker wrote: post #238
delecti wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I signed up for Premium before the situation got as bad as it currently is. The worst ads I had seen by that point were either 5-30 second unskippable, or 15-120 second skippable. Even at that point, signing up for Premium felt like a fantastic deal. I never felt gaslight or manipulated into it, it just felt like paying an acceptable price for a very attractive set of features. It feels like you have a counterproduct…

I'm happy for you that you've been lucky so far in your relationship with YouTube. It does not invalidate my experience of the relationship. I've chosen to spend the equivalent money (and more) more directly in Patreon and Bandcamp relationships with the creators I follow. I know a much bigger chunk of that money makes it to creators, and I have a good idea directly how much creator sees per dollar I spend, not just…

I watch a pretty broad variety of youtube, and also browse randomly. It's not really feasible to personally give money to each channel I happen across videos from. If your intake is limited to a narrow and consistent array of channels then maybe that's a different consideration.

And here's a pretty methodical breakdown of how much more a view counts with a Premium subscription (then called Youtube Red). Youtubers make in the ballpark of 2-5x as much per minute viewed with Premium than with ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Hr0H7TwAo

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

#246

Post by sophacles »

nybble41 wrote: post #241
sophacles wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not moving anything. If you want to call something ad-free, IMHO it shouldn't have ads.

Google's product here is the hosting and distribution service. If you pay for YT Premium then Google doesn't place any ads in their product. The content of the videos—including any "native" ads inserted by the video creators—isn't up to them.

If they can't deliver ad-free, they should not try to sell me ad-free. They could sell me something that isn't a lie instead.

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

#247

Post by MiddleEndian »

usrn wrote: post #35

They'll probably find some way to block this. In firefox type cs-] then press the right arrow 4-5 times, then alt-tab, then tab until "Skip add" is highlighted and hit space. No need for extra extensions or anything. Note: this lets you skip unskipable ads too.

If you have Firefox anyway, why not just install uBlock Origin? I don't think I've ever seen a Youtube ad in Firefox.

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

#249

Post by WorldMaker »

delecti wrote: post #245
WorldMaker wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy for you that you've been lucky so far in your relationship with YouTube. It does not invalidate my experience of the relationship. I've chosen to spend the equivalent money (and more) more directly in Patreon and Bandcamp relationships with the creators I follow. I know a much bigger chunk of that money makes it to creators, and I have a good idea directly how much creator sees per dollar I spend, not just…

I watch a pretty broad variety of youtube, and also browse randomly. It's not really feasible to personally give money to each channel I happen across videos from. If your intake is limited to a narrow and consistent array of channels then maybe that's a different consideration. And here's a pretty methodical breakdown of how much more a view counts with a Premium subscription (then called Youtube Red). Youtubers mak…

Again, it's a big stretch to think your single subscription gives money to each channel you happen to watch videos from. I don't have any illusions/trust that even ad revenue is split to every single channel I see ads on.

But more importantly, yeah I absolutely feel that I have to curate the channels I follow to as small as possible and as explicit a set as possible and cannot trust YouTube enough to just broadly browse randomly. I don't trust YouTube's recommendations algorithm at all (and have had many problems with it over the years), disable YouTube's Autoplay "feature" in almost every way that I possibly can, and generally try to use other streaming services as much as possible and curated media outside of YouTube to guide my discovery of the few channels that I do watch on YouTube.

(The recommendations algorithm adds its own distrust to my relationship with YouTube. It's certainly not as bad as the dark patterns: dark patterns imply an intent to deceive. The recommendations algorithm suffers from the exact opposite: there's no intent there, just a intentless/mindless casino with bad odds and worse incentives.)

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

#250

Post by scarface74 »

thiht wrote: post #232
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.

There’s no business model YouTube could adopt that I would accept because I don’t trust Google. Even as a paying customer, they still extract your data, and probably sell it. I use adblockers and alternative YouTube clients wherever I can and I don’t care, because I have no choice.

You don’t have any choice but to use YouTube?
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