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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#261

Post by torgoguys »

ttyyzz wrote: post #70
thallium205 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube Premium is very expensive?

I would pay that 130€ / year if I was alone. I have to be responsible with the money I earn as I have to feed 3 kids and my wife is not working. We also use other different streaming services like netflix, spotify family... adding youtube premium seems not reasonable for me at the moment.

In the USA I subscribe to Youtube Premium family. The rate is just $3.00 a month more than Spotify family. For that price you get both the Spotify-equivalent Google-owned service (confusingly called YouTube Music) AND you get ad-free Youtube as a bundle. Basically just $3/month for no ads on Youtube is worth it and much easier to justify for a household on a tight budget.

It might be worth looking into if the pricing differential is similarly minimal where you live.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#263

Post by like_any_other »

tlogan wrote: post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

> Why do we feel entitled to get this for free?

With how user-hostile and anti-competitive Google is behaving, this is like asking why soldiers feel entitled to shoot at the enemy. Keep giving them money, keep watching their ads that they sell on rigged auctions [1], and eventually the only way to access the web will be with locked-against-the-user browsers [2], and everything will be surveilled (though it nearly already is - Google never asks itself why it should feel entitled to follow users around the web, or in real-life, despite opt-outs [3], and you'll find support for any alternative OSes mysteriously withering due to secret anti-competitive contracts between Google and manufacturers [4]). I know this isn't the reasoning people use, but that is what the outcome will be.

As for ads - it has always been hard, nearly impossible to block them, and few people did. Just like you can't block a billboard next to the freeway, you can't block a jpeg that's served as part of the webpage you're visiting, as it's programmatically indistinguishable from native content.

What people actually block are not ads, but a hybrid half-ad-half-surveillance entity, that's called an "ad" by historical accident.

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-three-t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

[3] https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.proto...

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#264

Post by tzs »

Another thing they are sometimes doing is failing to add videos that you watched with ad blocking on to your history.

That means if those videos show up in a search, or on your home page, or in a recommendation they do not have the red bar on the bottom that indicates that you have already watched them.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#265

Post by throw123xz »

tlogan wrote: post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

Back when I started using Google Adsense, they had a 3 ad per page rule. You could be banned if you went above that limit. Today you can easily find web pages with 10, 15 or even more ad spots... one after each paragraph, sidebar, full page "popup", etc.

On YouTube, we went from a banner on the video to a few seconds of a video before to multiple ads before the video to multiple ad pauses even on relatively short videos (under 10 minutes). Add to that the sponsored sections of the video itself, which are added by the content creator, and other ads (stores, tickets, etc) that sometimes YouTube adds under the video even if you pay for premium.

Google Search pages used to have one or two ads at the top, with a different background colour than search results. Now sometimes I have to scroll down to see organic content, because sponsored content fills my screen.

I don't think I'm entitled to have access to all this for free, but we went too far... and so I use an adblocker on all my devices.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#266

Post by smitop »

ranger_danger wrote: post #9

I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not that I want any ads personally). You could also rate-limit it to the playback speed to prevent pre-downloading the stream easily. But now that everything uses HLS/DASH, it's easy to inject different content right in the middle of the stream without re-encoding anything.

YouTube is currently running an A/B test for server-side insertion according to what some other people have posted. I'm not getting SSAI ads so I can't really know much about them though.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#267

Post by satoru42 »

grugagag wrote: post #244
mcdeltat wrote: post #234

I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look, but otherwise no engagement with the platform…

Large parts of the world population are addicted to these platforms. It’s tobacco 2.0

Tiktok is opium 3.0, but this time it's not UK selling the drugs.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#268

Post by hansvm »

akersten wrote: post #209

Thank you for your important work fighting this battle, it must be exhausting. The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us, the more we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright scammy ads they are hosting. If they can't leave well enough alone and look the other way on ad blocking, (which is the only way to avoid exposing myself and family to these dangerous ads), they need to be under a…

I'm shocked and appalled that you'd call the "virtual harems" YouTube tries to get me to install either scammy or wildly inappropriate. I've reported them a dozen times, and they're still on the platform, so I'm sure Lord Google knows something I don't about their saintlihood.

/s

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#269

Post by xdfgh1112 »

mcdeltat wrote: post #234

I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look, but otherwise no engagement with the platform…

Not surprising at all. We delude ourselves into thinking we're better because our brand of slop is educational, but it's still slop.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#270

Post by spencerflem »

cebert wrote: post #258
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube spent about a decade and a half running unintrusive banner ads. Until they secured enough of the market that network effects locked content creators and consumers together in a two-sided market where it's hard for either group to leave unilaterally. Then they ramped up the length and intrusiveness of their ads while flouting content regulations on what they're even allowed to advertise. Why should I reward th…

Ok, well either pay or don’t use YouTube then if you don’t want ads.

My current thought re: piracy is that I never pirate unless I'd be happy if the company I'm pirating from went out of business.
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