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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

#31

Post by jacurtis »

MBCook wrote: post #11
tekla wrote: post #8

I'm happy to pay for services and a Ad free YT experience.

Same. I keep seeing the discourse recently and it’s all framed as if only two options exist: People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. And Google won’t block it because it’s encouraged as the solution to this exact issue. The level of “I should get everything for…

Same here. I pay for YT Premium. I never knew this war was waging on. You click a video and it starts playing.

A few days ago someone wanted to show me a video on their iPad. The video was ~10 mins long. We had to watch 2 pre-roll ads, and 2 mid-roll ads. After the second mid-roll ad I asked if this is normal. She said "of course it is, what do you mean?" as if I was living on another planet. But I had been paying for YT Premium for so long I had actually forgotten how bad it was and it seems to have gotten worse.

Although, the price of YT premium just went up again (I think this is the 3rd or 4th price hike in a handful of years. At the new pricepoint I could subscribe to 2-3 streaming services, and YT videos are not worth that in my opinion.

I also have noticed the algorithm and/or content on YouTube has not been as interesting or engaging to me as it once was. There is also a huge push to shorts, which seems to be a loop of the same small collection of creators. So I may consider cancelling my subscription soon and just minimizing my time on YouTube.

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

#32

Post by gizmo686 »

PedroBatista wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me how Google is allowed to control every side of the market with no real repercussions. I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money.. That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices. Worst case scenario it help…

Google is currently defending an antitrust lawsuit.

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

#34

Post by plz-remove-card »

The ads on Youtube have really become unbearable though.

I tried to watch a podcast on my tablet, while I was preparing dinner using bluetooth headphones and couldn't readily skip ads or fast forward the video. I was subjected to at least 3 youtube ads and maybe an equal amount of ads from the youtuber themselves it was absurd.

Even if I were to pay for an add-free youtube experience, it only culls half the ads in that case!

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

#35

Post by mvdtnz »

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…

What screws are really being turned though? This content is still available completely free of charge to anyone with an internet connection. You just need to watch a couple of ads if you're not willing to pay.

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

#36

Post by BitwiseFool »

MBCook wrote: post #11
tekla wrote: post #8

I'm happy to pay for services and a Ad free YT experience.

Same. I keep seeing the discourse recently and it’s all framed as if only two options exist: People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. And Google won’t block it because it’s encouraged as the solution to this exact issue. The level of “I should get everything for…

>"But if the only two options are give everything away for free or put everything behind a paywall, the internet as everyone knows it is dead."

There's also the third option, saturate the "free" version with an increasing amount of advertisements and make it user-hostile enough to entice people into paying for the "premium" version that is ad-free. Then, create multiple tiers of the premium subscription and only make the most expensive one ad free.

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

#37

Post by throwaway743950 »

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…

Come on. This is a bad take. They "profit-share" with otherwise UNPAID creators. Other platforms license or produce content.

On top of that, the pricing feels high for most people, and no one trusts Google to not jerk them around, killing a product or changing pricing.

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

#38

Post by gretch »

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…

> I believe that we have been fortunate that Google's ad business was willing to subsidize it for us for so long with so little required in return. Unfortunately it appears that possibly the screws are getting turned, and there is less appetite for the subsidy.

Um well no. They still have appetite to support the business with Ads (and they offer a paid version if you don't like Ads).

The thing they no longer have appetite for is people using Ad blockers.

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

#39

Post by duxup »

MBCook wrote: post #11
tekla wrote: post #8

I'm happy to pay for services and a Ad free YT experience.

Same. I keep seeing the discourse recently and it’s all framed as if only two options exist: People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. And Google won’t block it because it’s encouraged as the solution to this exact issue. The level of “I should get everything for…

I'm inclined to agree. The whole internet discussion about this topic and even "eshitification" has boiled down to "I want it for free and I don't want to pay."

Meanwhile users are happy to jump to the next free thing starting the whole cycle again, until it wants to get paid for.

The web kinda stinks in ways, but users don't want to pay either... so want ends up being the product?

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

#40

Post by Clubber »

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…

I just pay the $15 a month to not get ads. The content is worth way more than that to me. I wish they would stop censoring stuff (like raw news, firearms learning channels, etc). Content warnings over just taking the videos down would be much preferred. That's really my only gripe.
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