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YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

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Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#31

Post by bravoetch »

louison11 wrote: post #17

This marks the moment Google officially decided it didn’t know how to innovate any longer, and that it’s time to grab all they can to increase the bottom line. Most technology companies follow this same cycle. When they’re in the innovation/disruption phase, there are less rules, they just focus on giving people the best experience. When they start stagnating, suddenly every cent matters. The irony is that the profil…

Put simply, the end user is not the customer. The shareholders are. As in "we need a product that harvests money from people" instead of "let's solve a problem for people while adding value".

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#32

Post by windowshopping »

I have such mixed feelings about this. I can't stand to waste the time on ads so I started using an alternative client that doesn't have any ads.

However, I do recognize that I've been using youtube for 15+ years without paying a cent or watching any ads - which is pretty unreasonable. No streaming service or television channel has ever been free with no ads. I can't really justify it.

And yet, I'm not willing to pay for youtube. It having been free all these years makes that a hard pill to swallow, somehow it just feels wrong now.

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#34

Post by ToucanLoucan »

konschubert wrote: post #24
louison11 wrote: post #17

This marks the moment Google officially decided it didn’t know how to innovate any longer, and that it’s time to grab all they can to increase the bottom line. Most technology companies follow this same cycle. When they’re in the innovation/disruption phase, there are less rules, they just focus on giving people the best experience. When they start stagnating, suddenly every cent matters. The irony is that the profil…

I’ve been blocking ads for a long time but I’m not going to cry about mistreatment when somebody shuts the back door that I’ve been using to get free lunch. The ads are annoying, I might just use nebula more.

I find myself using Nebula more and more because most of the creators I watch are there and their app, while imperfect, is miles better than YouTube on the Apple TV. I'm currently subbed to YouTube Premium so I don't get ads either way, but if Google ever changes that, you can bet I'm unsubbing immediately. I only tolerate how expensive it is because of the sheer amount of content I watch from there, and because I watch the majority through Apple TV's where adblocking is a lot more complicated than I'm willing to deal with.

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#35

Post by sva_ »

bravoetch wrote: post #31
louison11 wrote: post #17

This marks the moment Google officially decided it didn’t know how to innovate any longer, and that it’s time to grab all they can to increase the bottom line. Most technology companies follow this same cycle. When they’re in the innovation/disruption phase, there are less rules, they just focus on giving people the best experience. When they start stagnating, suddenly every cent matters. The irony is that the profil…

Put simply, the end user is not the customer. The shareholders are. As in "we need a product that harvests money from people" instead of "let's solve a problem for people while adding value".

Pretty sure the customers are the entities who buy advertisement space.

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#37

Post by LanzVonL »

Aken wrote: post #10

I feel like I'm in the minority that has zero problem paying for an ad-free experience. I get tremendous value out of YouTube in both professional and personal ways. I have a daughter who watches it often. Suppressing ads while supporting the service my family enjoys regularly seems like a no-brainer to me. And I never have to worry about them circumventing my ad blocker.

[dead]

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#38

Post by louison11 »

bravoetch wrote: post #31
louison11 wrote: post #17

This marks the moment Google officially decided it didn’t know how to innovate any longer, and that it’s time to grab all they can to increase the bottom line. Most technology companies follow this same cycle. When they’re in the innovation/disruption phase, there are less rules, they just focus on giving people the best experience. When they start stagnating, suddenly every cent matters. The irony is that the profil…

Put simply, the end user is not the customer. The shareholders are. As in "we need a product that harvests money from people" instead of "let's solve a problem for people while adding value".

Solving a problem is harvesting money when it’s well done. It’s when they stop solving new problems that they have to optimize their existing revenue streams at the cost of user satisfaction.

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#39

Post by Terr_ »

10000truths wrote: post #28
izzydata wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it is done for certain, but with absolute control of the client you could send any information back to Youtube that you wanted. So if all Youtube was requesting was that the minimal amount of time of ads be watched before playing the video you just tell them that you have. I'm sure it is getting far more complicated than this, but I suspect this is the basic idea of this back and forth arms race of a…

If YouTube wants full control over the ads experience, they will have to splice the ad into the video stream itself, and block seeking requests until: 1. The entirety of the ad portion of the video stream has been successfully sent to the client 2. A length of time equivalent to the ad duration has passed A sufficiently advanced ad blocker would be able to block the ad, but you would still be forced to sit through se…

They could also have some sort of "skip ahead by giving information about the ad you just partially watched" feature, although seems vulnerable to a sufficiently good bot. (Unless they make it so complicated that it only works for very engaged native speakers of a particular language.)

Re: YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

#40

Post by gpm »

10000truths wrote: post #28
izzydata wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it is done for certain, but with absolute control of the client you could send any information back to Youtube that you wanted. So if all Youtube was requesting was that the minimal amount of time of ads be watched before playing the video you just tell them that you have. I'm sure it is getting far more complicated than this, but I suspect this is the basic idea of this back and forth arms race of a…

If YouTube wants full control over the ads experience, they will have to splice the ad into the video stream itself, and block seeking requests until: 1. The entirety of the ad portion of the video stream has been successfully sent to the client 2. A length of time equivalent to the ad duration has passed A sufficiently advanced ad blocker would be able to block the ad, but you would still be forced to sit through se…

If youtube did that then they would no longer be able to accurately measure the number of ad views... which probably would make both the advertisers and the video-creators mad sooner or later.
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