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

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

#251

Post by oerpli »

logifail wrote: post #99
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…

> Of course this is also fantastically expensive to build and maintain "Fantastically expensive" is quite the claim. Google won't tell us, but how much do we think it actually costs to operate it?

Quite a bit? You have a lot of videos, most of which in many formats, often up to 4k. Storage alone likely costs a few pennies (if not more).

Then all the network traffic (a sizable fraction of the entire internet traffic), transcoding & upkeep for all these things. That's only VoD.

Then there's live video which is basically the entire thing above with the additional constraint that there's less room for error and latency.

Some other services tried live video as well, e.g. Netflix or Apple for some keynotes in the past.

For Netflix I recall a few were covered in the media, e.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/16/23685828/netflix-love-is-....

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

#252

Post by eddythompson80 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #242
mvdtnz wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally this entire thing is about Youtube refusing to send the video to non-premium users who are blocking ads. Do you even know what you're commenting on?

It's actually about a silly arms race with uBlock Origin which they'll lose because we're the ones in control of the client. It's only a matter of time before they fix the "YouTube can detect uBlock Origin" bug.

I hate to tell you who is in control of chrome. It wasn’t too long ago that Google announced changes to chrome that ublock origin thought would completely stop it from working. They found a way, but nothing stopping another future change that makes it much harder. Also they just need to start delivering YouTube player as a wasm binary blob.

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

#253

Post by JAlexoid »

logifail wrote: post #99
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…

> Of course this is also fantastically expensive to build and maintain "Fantastically expensive" is quite the claim. Google won't tell us, but how much do we think it actually costs to operate it?

YouTube gets 4.3Petabytes of data every day.

To just receive, transmit and store that in AWS S3, just one day's worth of data is - 317 thousand dollars.

That's literally doing nothing other than transmission and storage. Just that.

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

#254

Post by candiodari »

slimsag wrote: post #109
LightHugger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endgame here is adblockers that spoof ad views and even sometimes clicks rather than just blocking them. This is very very bad for google if they force adblockers to work like that. People will do it.

Another possible endgame is all YouTube videos are livestreams and you cannot skip on the timeline, with ads inserted directly into the stream. In that world, the best an adblocker would be able to do is show a blank screen for 30s while it waits for the real video's frames to resume.

Luckily now with AI this is not the problem it once was.

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

#255

Post by matheusmoreira »

cykros wrote: post #199
dixie_land wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to YT videos without ads. But at the same time, Google is not entitled to dictate how my user agent renders a page, locally, on my own computer . I'd have no problem if google just inject ads directly into the video streams. ( by which time, equally I'm entitled to configure my own video player to skip whichever frames I want )

Well, they are entitled to code the page how they'd like, provided it's not anything that meets criminal standards for malware. And if they do start putting ads in video streams then I will likely be writing them off for dead just like I did months ago with Reddit. Til then I'll be using the various moles that still haven't been whacked (there's a good few) and not suffering through the experience. If they think they…

> they are entitled to code the page how they'd like

Yeah, and as the owners of the computers we are entitled to alter or even delete that code as we see fit. They should pray we do not alter it further.

> provided it's not anything that meets criminal standards for malware

Google spies on us. Pretty much everything Google ships is malware since spyware is malware by definition. I also consider anything that so much as tries to circumvent uBlock Origin to be malware.

> And if they do start putting ads in video streams then I will likely be writing them off for dead just like I did months ago with Reddit.

Same.

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

#256

Post by JAlexoid »

katbyte wrote: post #110
Waterluvian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way they're making incredibly little compared to supporting them more directly like Patreon. Even Patreon takes a tasty cut. If the mental gymnastics helps, awesome. But paying Google is paying Google more than it is supporting creators.

what mental gymnastics? I pay to both avoid ads and support creators more. If i just watched YT with ads they would literally make less, regardless of supporting them directly. and google takes 45% of premium with 55% going to creators. feel like you are the one doing mental gymnastics

You should also be aware, that that 45% also includes licensing of copyrighted content.

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

#257

Post by lamontcg »

bhelkey wrote: post #176
lamontcg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if it wasn't run by Google, I'd be more likely to pay for it. And paying for it will result in most of my money going to Google and asshats like xQc even though I'd never willingly watch one of his videos and barely know who he is. And I've watched the algorithm wreck some youtube channels that I used to enjoy as the creators chase after revenue. (Not to mention that the ads that Google shows are fucking awful)

> And paying for it will result in most of my money going to Google and asshats like xQc even though I'd never willingly watch one of his videos and barely know who he is. 55% of the subscription goes to the channels you watch [1]. This money is divided based on your watch time [1]. If you don't watch a channel, none of your subscription pays for that channel. [1] https://support.unionforgamers.com/hc/en-us/articles/…

Uh no, that doesn't say that.

> To determine how much subscription revenue each channel receives, YouTube will aggregate viewing data from Premium users to determine a value based on watch time.

The word "aggregate" there is particularly important.

And:

> The exact amount of money you will receive for each minute of YouTube Premium viewer watch time will always vary based on viewing habits, and there are complex aspects of the distribution algorithm that are not disclosed by YouTube

That's a very long way from 55% of _my_ subscription going out to the channels that _I_ watch. That would have been a simple thing for them to state, and they certainly didn't state anything close to that.

I'm pretty convinced by those statements actually that a good chunk of my subscription would go to xQc and his ilk to keep him on youtube collecting more views since he's more valuable to the platform than anyone that I watch.

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

#258

Post by 4star3star »

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…

Ads are not necessarily the problem. It's the way they're delivered.

For one thing, if they are so damn dominant at advertising, why can't they show me a better variety of ads?

Another problem is the jarring nature of ads. They are just IN YOUR FACE all of a sudden, and it's basically rude the way they're presented. Is there not a more "polite" way to go about it?

You could have me watch 5 minutes of straight ads, reset every 12 hours, and I'd be OK with that. I'd even be glad to rate each ad along the way. Are they hellbent on interruptions, or do they just want the ads to be seen? I hate the interruption.

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

#259

Post by matheusmoreira »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #247
matheusmoreira wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix should also block movies with product placement. Absolutely. One day someone much smarter than me will create an AI ad blocker that removes that sort of thing in real time. > On a more serious note, that would be google editorializing the content which I don't want. Have users collectively catalogue segments of the videos then. Pretty much what Sponsor Block does. I'm sure the highly paid engineers at Googl…

> I don't consider those things advertising. Ah I got it. We should check with you what you consider an ad or not then inform google’s content policy based on that. That makes sense. > I'm free to do any number of things. You’re the one wanting to take that freedom from others.

> We should check with you what you consider an ad or not

Hey, if you consider someone's patreon to be advertising, feel free to block all of it. You'll get no opposition from me.

> You’re the one wanting to take that freedom from others.

Not at all. I just defend myself when others try to take away my freedom. It's honestly offensive to me that Google even thinks they can use my computer to show me ads. It's my computer and I decide what is or isn't shown.

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

#260

Post by JAlexoid »

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…

So what you're saying is that I, someone that makes woodworking videos on YouTube, have to accept you getting my videos without compensation.

Because I, not you, choose to host them on YouTube and give Google about half of revenue from ads. And now because I chose YouTube - you feel that it's OK for you to screw me...

This is the level of entitlement I will never accept.

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