so if you're not logged in: clear cookies and resume? that'll take what, 5 minutes to be added to the ad blocker extension
Yes, Cookies, the only possible way the engineers at 1.5T dollar company thought to identify end users.
YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
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Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#272From the article: >“YouTube’s ad-supported model supports a diverse ecosystem of creators, and provides billions of people globally access to content for free with ads,” the company’s statement says. Let's at least be 100% honest with everyone and stop with the disingenuous garbage: 1. Ad-blocker usage is roughly 25-30% of US users. 2. The average YouTube content creator makes less than 0.02 per ad view and thus why…
1. Youtube creators move to sponsors where Youtube isn't getting a cut, which means youtube has to keep the lights on with only ad revenue.
2. Many users want to keep blocking/avoiding ads & don't want to pay. So they want to use the service for literally free. What other monitization method do you propose?
3. Their parent company's revenue doesn't matter. Is Google expected to run a free service that is very expensive and serves billions of users?
4. Youtube demonitizes people to keep advertisers on the platform. Users blocking ads & not paying ("freeloaders") only exacerbate the issue by being a drain on resources and further incentivizes Youtube to keep striving to preserve revenue by demonetization.
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#273I don't really understand either side of the equation here. So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't paying and them leaving is the goal. Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My tho…
They could also, like, go back where they would show a meaningful ad every 10 videos. and not 4 with every video you attempt to watch.
My child watched a 10 minute video the other day on a machine that doesn't have an adblocker installed on it.
There were 4 "commercial breaks" of 2, unskippable 30 second ads. So, 4 minutes extra.
That's an extra 40% of the original video length (10 minutes). That's 30% of the total length (14 minutes).
It's almost exactly the same as broadcast tv, maybe slightly high? TV averages 12-20 minutes per 60 of tv being ads.
Not really sure what to do with that. It feels like I should be upset, but really, it's proportionate to what already exists and I'm only upset because it's worse than it was 10 years ago.
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#274I don't really understand either side of the equation here. So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't paying and them leaving is the goal. Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My tho…
The key about ads and ad-blocking is simple: I don't care. I don't care about any of these companies. I don't care about their costs or business model. And I don't particularly care about their product, because it is ephemeral and optional to me.
There's far too many people in "business" today who think they provide anything of any real, determinable value to me rather then a passing fancy which will be easily replaced or discarded.
And this doesn't just apply to the content hosters: it also applies to their advertisers. There is nothing of value being advertised these days. It's all misrepresented junk, when it's not outright scams. It isn't worth ever exposing yourself to.
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#275You know, if YouTube wouldn't insist on absolutely annoying the living shit out of me with unskippable, bad, long, and frequent ads I wouldn't mind that much. But YouTube with ads is one of the worst things there are.
There are no ads if you pay
Until there are. You're crazy if you trust Google to not change this down the road.
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#276I already have backed off of youtube so much because of how awful they have made the experience, this will be it for me entirely if they implement this.
There are four browser extensions I use just to clean up youtube garbage. Shouldn't have to do it, but it works well enough for me.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-%F...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickbait-remover-...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blocktube/bbeaicap...
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#277Excellent news. One big reason why the deleterious adware economy has no viable competitor is that somewhat sophisticated users can partially opt out of it and get subsidized by the less savvy.
By forcing people to pay for youtube premium (which, in fairness to Google is very reasonably priced) or look elsewhere, non-surreptitiously-paid-for consumer services become much more viable.
Unfortunately, the other reason non-surreptitiously-paid-for services are currently not viable is that most people, including the vast majority of HN seem to be, uhm, not very sophisticated about reasoning about costs (to most people the k-gadzillions that google makes apparently materialize out of thin air, instead of really coming out of large_overhead_factor*k gadzillions they personally proportionally pay for). This seems hard to overcome.
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Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#278You know, if YouTube wouldn't insist on absolutely annoying the living shit out of me with unskippable, bad, long, and frequent ads I wouldn't mind that much. But YouTube with ads is one of the worst things there are.
There are no ads if you pay
It's not fair because they became a monopoly by offering a free service. Now they can ask whatever they want.
Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
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Re: YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
#280I don't really understand either side of the equation here. So, on the one hand you have people who use ad blockers. The first retort that comes to mind here is: Well, we'll take our business elsewhere. Which is odd because without ads they aren't paying and them leaving is the goal. Of course on the other hand ... when I read the title my thoughts weren't that I would be okay because I don't ad block youtube. My tho…
Good point. I don't know what were their expectations for audience reaction. It surely wasn't "oh I need to turn off my adblocker then" or "oh, YouTube Premium, that's neat, lemme get my credit card".
For me, it was, in order:
- "Three strikes" and... what? Red alert! Let me drop everything and read the damn article right now, because it could be "three strikes and you lose your Google account", which is kinda big fucking deal.
- [Couple paragraphs later] oh, only disabling playback. Whew, cancel red alert.
- My kids will not be happy though the first time it hits. Neither will we, because YouTube + AdBlock is the easiest way to play our 4yo and 2yo music, without exposing them to the brain poison of modern advertising at this early age.
- (The next easiest one is NewPipe or yt-dlp, + some manual fixup, + an old phone working as an off-line music player.)
- (Also no joke on brain poison. The way kids react to an ad that occasionally slips by us is a perfect measure of how fucked up advertising is.)
- Oh well, let's hope NewPipe keeps working.
- ... also, what took them so long? I expected this so many years ago that I actually forgot this could happen.
BTW. is it only me, or is 2023 the year of "enshittification" of SaaS shifting into high gear? Like the layoff wave earlier, this also feels like suddenly happening everywhere at the same time.