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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”

#271

Post by q-big »

Quote from the article:

> By introducing so many versions of design, it forbids a pattern to be established and recognized by the users. Essentially, the users look at the design, get confused about if there is going to be a “Skip Ad” button or not, get tired of trying to figure it out, and finally pay less attention to it which increases the chance of them ending up watching ads that could have been skipped.

Honestly, this does not match (at least) my usage pattern: I am so annoyed by the ads that I always look for the skip button - sometimes successfully, sometimes in vain.

(by the way: I see strong evidence that Google's (and thus YouTube's) ad network has a lot of difficulties finding ads that are of interest for me - likely because I have quite different interests from the typical citizen; perhaps this is the reasons why YouTube's ads are so annoying for me that I always look for the skip button on YouTube).

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

#272

Post by q-big »

scarface74 wrote: post #202
arrosenberg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no, this is letting YouTube off the hook. The whole reason content creators started doing in-video promotions is because YT kept squeezing them for ad revenue. The top comment is absolutely correct - adfree should be adfree - that is YouTube’s problem to solve, not the customer’s.

Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes?

> Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes?

Why not downrank such videos a little bit - just like Google attempts to downrank pages that look like made by content farms?

Since a lot of YouTube creators are very concerned about their ranking, this should decrease the problem of sponsored segments/videos a lot.

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

#273

Post by nybble41 »

sophacles wrote: post #270
nybble41 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is delivering their service ad-free. It's not their fault you choose to use their ad-free hosting and distribution service to view third-party videos which contain ads.

Google's advertising says "Watch youtube ad-free". It doesn't say "watch youtube ad-free unless the video you're watching embeds ad content as well", heck it doesn't even say "Watch youtube ad-free*". So whatever they are actually providing, it's not what they are selling. As I said in several comments now: My opinion is that if you try to sell me ad-free, sell me an actually ad-free product. edit: it also occurs to…

The ads you're complaining about are not Google's ads. When you pay for YT Premium you don't see ads from Google on YouTube. End of story. Other people can still show you ads, even in videos they upload to YouTube. That's between you and the creators of those videos. You are free to watch them or not. But Google is delivering exactly what they promised. If you don't find that the service is worthwhile, just don't subscribe. There's no point complaining about it here.

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

#274

Post by q-big »

scarface74 wrote: post #203
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…

And all reports are that YouTube is still barely break even…

> And all reports are that YouTube is still barely break even…

A company can often tweak business metrics to give the message that the company wants the world to believe.

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

#275

Post by usrn »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #247
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.

It doesn't work in private mode.

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

#276

Post by alias_neo »

runarberg wrote: post #127
tpoacher wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the worst thing about ads in the middle of relaxing music is that they are typically loud and obnoxious, instantly destroying within milliseconds any mood/relaxation benefits accrued over the preceding few hours. it's as if a frat party suddenly bombs your meditation group, trashes the place in 5 seconds, then leaves

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.

I'm in the UK, but hopefully that information is useful to someone in the US. Thanks!

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

#277

Post by _Algernon_ »

scarface74 wrote: post #209
edgyquant wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is the largest social media site (or at least was a couple of years ago.) Google gets a lot more value than just cash out of it, otherwise they’d have shut it down.

What value does Google get out of YouTube besides the minuscule profit?

The second largest search engine and all the data that entails.

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

#278

Post by alias_neo »

tpoacher wrote: post #123
alias_neo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of videos of some really chill music sessions posted by the artists that I used to put on every morning when my daughter was born. I've seen the same few vids hundreds of times and I know, like I know the sky is blue and water is wet that they had no ads. Couple years later, my son is born and that morning peace time comes for me to put on a vid or two, next thing I know, a couple of ads bang in th…

the worst thing about ads in the middle of relaxing music is that they are typically loud and obnoxious, instantly destroying within milliseconds any mood/relaxation benefits accrued over the preceding few hours. it's as if a frat party suddenly bombs your meditation group, trashes the place in 5 seconds, then leaves

Yep. I don't really see ads much these days, I don't watch live TV or listen to radio because I use Netflix, Prime, Disney and NOW for TV and Spotify for music, so when it happens it really drags me out of whatever peaceful or immersed state I got to.

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

#279

Post by MiddleEndian »

usrn wrote: post #275
MiddleEndian wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't work in private mode.

Why not set it to work in private windows?

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

#280

Post by scarface74 »

spixy wrote: post #266
scarface74 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing stopping content producers from hosting their own content on something like S3+CloudFront or the cheaper (than AWS) alternatives.

and yet they are not doing it

And thus you are stuck with crappy public cable access channel style content…
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