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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

andadinosaur.com

411–420 of 781 posts

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have seen this becoming more and more common on open source projects and totally free services, where people act as if they are entitled to something as if it is their god given right. Do you count YouTube as a "free service" (with ads) in this case? I wonder if there is an overlap with people that expect free stuff and people that use uBO on YouTube. YT does offer most users YT premium, which gives users an ad f…

I pay for YT premium and Ads are still my #1 complaint about YT. Partly this is by design, where it seems to decide that a creator having a "merch" ad integration doesn't count as an ad. Which might be understandable (but still not what I want) if merch meant creator's face on a mug, but it also includes products where a home fix it channel will have an overlay of products from Home Depot which is literally just an a…

This is the reason I won't pay for youtube red. It doesn't do what it says. It says "ad-free" but only filters some of the ads. It's literally false advertising. It's doubly frustrating because youtube can easily fix it if they want. They would just like the extra money.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone who fears crossing photocell doors try it again and again... For years? To overcome the phobia, that's why. Nah, people need to be brought out of the protecting bubble. You give money to them, so they have a tangible evidence that their work means something. Not just stars and patting in the back. Time to stop the open source beggar movement.

Regularly having to deal with abusive comments takes a mental toll on you no matter how much of a tough guy you are. Why do you think we're entitled to them not only sacrificing their time, but also their mental heath? Donations on most open-source projects don't even come close to covering the costs of either. Again, we are not entitled to their services and assholes can and will ruin nice things for all of us.

Not really. Tbh I like to gut these people. Most of those who belittle-berate others are weak people, they compensate for something. Once I give them some treatment, 99% percent backs off, because they don't like the barrage of insults/whatever.

I never said we are entitled for anything. I don't like that oss developers get paid nothing and have to - seemingly - beg for sponsorhip/money. But the open source model was ugly from the get go. You build something up, decide to abandon it, and people fork it, expropriate it, and the original dev is forgotten. They get nothing. The actual guy, who maintains it might get something in the future, but who created the foundation - since he left the project - gets nothing. Ridiculous.

The open source movement/idea is flawed and needs to be changed, that's all.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#413
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a great take, with one exception: I think the loss of (free) ad-supported YouTube would be a devastating loss for the world at large.

I'd pay for YT if it wasn't run by Google. Google wants to track me and sell the data and wants me to pay for it, and I'm not willing to be abused that badly.

Google does not sell your data. Your data is their most valuable weapon, they use it to target ads. They wouldn't sell it for anything, it's more valuable to them to hold it.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube gets the content for almost free Google pays out about 50% of ad revenue to content creators, that isn't "almost free" that is many billions of dollars.

Yeah but what percentage of subscription costs go to paying creators?

This site says 55% since youtube take 45%:

> In the end, YouTube takes a 45% cut of a creator’s Premium earnings, just as it does for ad-generated revenue.

https://vidiq.com/blog/post/youtube-premium-creator-revenue/

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#415
post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

> YouTube is the one that feels "Entitled" to show me advertisements They show you advertisements in exchange for the free content they provide. You can just as easily not visit the website if you don't feel like the service they provide is worth the risk of being shown the ads they serve.

At a certain scale, you can no longer say "it's just business".

YouTube is where people go to post and upload videos. YouTube has a dominant place in the market and in people's minds.

Does it cost money to run? Yes. Does Google deserve to have those costs covered? Yes. Should Google be entitled to abuse their dominant position? Certainly not.

I do feel bad for who high-quality creators are not able to make ends meet, but I have zero sympathy for a business the size of Google.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#416
post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

> YouTube is the one that feels "Entitled" to show me advertisements They show you advertisements in exchange for the free content they provide. You can just as easily not visit the website if you don't feel like the service they provide is worth the risk of being shown the ads they serve.

Color me too unsympathetic, Frankly I've been stream ripping them with yt-dlp for quite a while now. I'm motivated to do more of that now.

It's one thing if Google were demanding I watch their ads to get the free video in exchange, but it is not an honest broker, because it doesn't vet the people it allows to advertise with it thoroughly enough to prevent scams and everything else from slipping through.

And frankly i'm taking a moral stand as well by blocking their ads, I refuse to allow Google to profit off of scammers in my or my families name.

ackphtttt with those typos. btw. fixed.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have YouTube Premium. But I worry that once a substantial portion of the user base goes Premium, they'll also start to slip in ads. I think the ad business has made everyone who cares paranoid.

There's plenty of precedent for this. Amazon has said they'll be introducing ads on Prime Video, where everyone has already paid for the service. I've seen ads on other already-paid-for services too. The simple fact is that business people will always want more ads everywhere, no matter how much it degrades the customer experience, because extra revenue is easier to measure than customer disgust. In their personal li…

Prime Video will still have an ad free tier. Having a cheaper tier that is subsidized with ads allows for more people to be able to afford it.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#418
post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

While I agree to an extent, to me the larger issue is that Youtube has become the default video hosting platform with no real competition.

I adblock everything but I am sympathetic to the idea that video hosting costs money. But I watch, on average, less than 1 hour of Youtube videos a month, so paying for Youtube makes no sense. Plus I have issues with privacy (part of the reason I've never created a Youtube account). The videos I do watch on Youtube are short ones for a specific need: e.g., a company showing me how to install their product in an easy way (I'd prefer a write up, but sometimes those are so bad you need to rely on a video), or a simple how-to on changing the battery in X model of car. So when I do need to go to Youtube for something, often its because the video is nowhere else. People don't even think of hosting it elsewhere. I don't watch any long form stuff there, don't listen to music there, etc., so paying for premium makes no sense.

I wish there was a free and open video platform that had a funding model like Wikipedia, where people could upload things that they had no intention of "monetizing".

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#419
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false logic. Youtube is free to not show anyone anything - once they send me data and it leaves their system, they have no claim to it. When I shout on a public street "sing me the Francoise Hardy version of I'll Be Seeing You," no one has to reply. If they do reply, but they decide to sing a 2 minute ad for a pyramid scheme first, I am free to cover my ears till the song comes on. Google's servers have a pub…

> Youtube is free to not show anyone anything - once they send me data and it leaves their system, they have no claim to it. Okay well they're about to not show you the videos. You support their latest announcement right? It is completely in line with the the philosophy you just put forward.

If you read the entire comment before replying to the comment, you would have your answer before you asked the question.

"They are free to ignore any request I shout at them"

I don't have any opinion on, nor care about their latest announcement to do with their hardware as they please. Their announcements are theirs and of no concern of mine. It's just a random website the has content duplicates available at a hundred more places. Bing video search has fifty times more results than youtube for example for any item I search.

Given that, of course, they're always going to show me their videos, because about a day after whatever change they make, software (that runs on my computer against my data) will catch up. They've made changes like this many times over many years. For about a week awhile ago the ads were not blocked and I stopped clicking youtube videos and just typed the title into bing and in 5 seconds played the same video from another source. Worked 100% of the time.

Sorry if that's not the gotcha you were going for.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implying that my not watching your short video that you sent to me is equivalent to my not paying for a service you just rendered. The fact that this extremist opinion is anything but ultra-fringe is evidence of the deeply greedy, entitled, irrational, antagonistic, dangerous, bully-ish relationship some businesses have with citizens. The internet is not a platform for exchanging services for the promise that…

Most Internet traffic happens with the agreement that you watch ads alongside the content you actually want to see. This is not a fringe position, it's the absolute majority of all traffic. If you don't want to see the ads, you can just not use my service, what's so hard to understand there.

That's actually a mentality that was "bolted on" by the advertising industry after the fact, once they realized how utterly wrong they were about their assertion that "The Internet is just a passing fad. Nobody will ever want to advertise on the Internet." (That's an almost exact quote from a lot of advertising folks I talked to back in the early days of the Internet, when websites were just starting to get popular.) Prior to their involvement in the Internet, it was purely just a network of networks, not a giant global advertising platform. They "jumped on the bandwagon" and corrupted it to their needs, and everyone else's wants and needs be damned, and then they convinced everyone "It's always been that way".
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