Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 783 posts

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#451

Post by m4rtink »

treis wrote: post #169
bsharitt wrote: post #61

I get why people are mad that something that exists is changing, though at this point I've stopped being surprised when something that was free either stops being free or has the free offering diminished. This particularly was a very weird setup where if you didn't want a share of ad revenue, you got to use the service completely for free. While Google offers ad free YouTube to users, it'd be nice if they offered a w…

This sort of thing needs to attract anti-competitive scrutiny at some point. Give away something for free, drive your competitors away, then raise prices is a text book anti-competitive move.

Yeah - good old dumping, but on the Internet.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#452

Post by majormajor »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #404
IgniteTheSun wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable TV started as paid ad-free TV also. It now has so many ads that it is almost unwatchable at times. One wonders how much further YouTube can take this - it appears they are approaching the optimal point for extracting revenue from videos, so where is their future revenue growth going to come from? I miss the YouTube of old rather than this commercialized version. To me, Tik Tok seems like more like the original…

YouTube will push the needle to the extent Cable did and a new platform will be born. It's the circle of technology. Then the next video platform will feel like the YouTube of ~8 years ago. The maximally optimal value to the end user waxes and wanes throughout the business cycle, and unfortunately we're in the trough.

It's also key to note that had Cable NOT pushed ads as far as they had, they still would have been disrupted. It was a rational decision, since revenue today is often worth more than in the uncertain-for-so-many-reasons future.

It's part of why you can't rely on the market or competitive forces alone, if you think something is an issue of public good, you need regulation.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#454

Post by Retric »

renewiltord wrote: post #424
Retric wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you own it sure. However, if you’re suddenly changing contracts after the fact that’s just theft. What if a backblaze or other backup service just decided it the copyright on all uploaded files after 1 month of non payment and started selling people’s home movies as stock footage?

Ah I see. It's a rules thing. In that case it's fine. The ToS explicitly allow this after all. So you aren't really changing things outside of what's allowed. This is like when you put into a contract "Party A may withdraw from this contract at any point" and then you withdraw at some point. That's playing by the rules.

You can put anything in a ToS, that’s simply not enough. Again, I would be fine if Google simply stopped hosting videos without consent, but behavior changes like this are different.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#455

Post by pnathan »

pletsch wrote: post #368
darrylb42 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube premium gets rid of all the ads, unless creators have embedded them in the video. There is lots of good content for toddlers on YouTube, but it is unwatchable with ads. I watch more myself now all the ads are gone, plus you get youtube music, not as good as spotify but good enough.

How is the mobile experience for YT Music? Looking at switching, I imagine they have the desktop experience down. I love Spotify, but I can't imagine a worse experience outside of their mobile app. The web player was nice but fails to load music two-three times per listening session (to be fair, they are usually 5-8hrs), the desktop application is slow, clunky, and will regularly not play music I have downloaded.

YouTube Music is so bad I shut down my use of Google for music, unplugged my Google home devices, and migrated to Alexa. Amazon Music is worse than Google Music, but better than YouTube Music.

There's a wide open market for a good music streaming company that integrates with your own albums, that is corporately stable enough not to dissipate after "An Incredible Journey Together". All the different services have weird lockins and major gaps, whether it be uploads, mobile app limitations, interop, etc.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#456

Post by intricatedetail »

apexalpha wrote: post #152
btreecat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only they are doing it on channels with out enough viewers to choose those options. Shady af.

Why is it shady, should Youtube host your video for free? Youtube is an insane free service, there's nothing that comes close to the video and stream quality. To be honest I'm surprised so many video's have been hosted without ads while the creators cash in outside of Google.

They should give creators an option to pay for hosting or to do revenue share with different ad providers. What a Google does is anti competitive and should be illegal.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#457

Post by nicpottier »

zwkrt wrote: post #377
darrylb42 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube premium gets rid of all the ads, unless creators have embedded them in the video. There is lots of good content for toddlers on YouTube, but it is unwatchable with ads. I watch more myself now all the ads are gone, plus you get youtube music, not as good as spotify but good enough.

I can't believe that you actually decided to be held hostage by google and pay them to remove content that they would otherwise only put in front of you if you were looking. Its like paying a restaurant not to harass you and then going to it when you could just go to the restaurant next door without the protection fee. There is also a lot of good content for toddlers IRL.

> Its like paying a restaurant not to harass you and then going to it when you could just go to the restaurant next door without the protection fee.

No, it's like paying the restaurant for the damn food. YouTube hosting all the world's videos forever is not a god given right, nor is being able to watch content people create for free.

I despise ads, absolutely despise them, but gladly pay YouTube the $15/mo to remove them because I know good content needs to be paid for one way or another. There's still a few channels that I like that put in ads during the videos and that's still annoying, but otherwise I never see an ad.

And this is fucking fantastic! Imagine if the web as a whole adopted this. (I know there are efforts including Google's) If I could pay $10/mo to get rid of all ads (explicit and implicit) and have that go towards the creators that I consume content for, then we'd be in a much better place. (imagine if FB just got a cut of that for example, how that would change the dynamics)

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#458

Post by mdoms »

The number of videos that now have sponsorships and ads embedded in the video (which to me is 100x worse than pre-roll ads - especially because I pay for Youtube premium) is probably a significant cause here. It has made Youtube a far worse product for me. If you watch anything DIY or car related then most of the content you're consuming is just a long-form advertisement.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#459

Post by lstamour »

tsycho wrote: post #429
pletsch wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the mobile experience for YT Music? Looking at switching, I imagine they have the desktop experience down. I love Spotify, but I can't imagine a worse experience outside of their mobile app. The web player was nice but fails to load music two-three times per listening session (to be fair, they are usually 5-8hrs), the desktop application is slow, clunky, and will regularly not play music I have downloaded.

I hated it initially, but am fine with it now. When YTM is better than GPM: 1/ Auto-created playlists, especially after you just search for a song and hit play. On GPM, it would play different covers on the same song (basically all the search results) by default, unless you started a radio, which is a cool concept but was hit and miss in practice. On YTM, it continues with similar songs, and I have liked their select…

+1 on that last issue. I don't understand why Google doesn't include ad-free YouTube as part of a perk for using Google Workspace. Also I wish I could tell Chrome to open some links in other profiles at all times, and only those links, kind of like Firefox might do. Actually, come to think of it, I probably use Chrome too much and should try alternatives instead.

Re: YouTube will now show ads on all videos even if creators don’t want them

#460

Post by Raidion »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #404
IgniteTheSun wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable TV started as paid ad-free TV also. It now has so many ads that it is almost unwatchable at times. One wonders how much further YouTube can take this - it appears they are approaching the optimal point for extracting revenue from videos, so where is their future revenue growth going to come from? I miss the YouTube of old rather than this commercialized version. To me, Tik Tok seems like more like the original…

YouTube will push the needle to the extent Cable did and a new platform will be born. It's the circle of technology. Then the next video platform will feel like the YouTube of ~8 years ago. The maximally optimal value to the end user waxes and wanes throughout the business cycle, and unfortunately we're in the trough.

I'm honestly not sure we're in the trough. The value of Youtube is pretty tightly correlated to the amount of content on Youtube. While you could argue that the signal to noise ratio is worse, it's very hard to argue that there isn't significantly more 'good' (however you define it) content on youtube that makes it more valuable.

I find paying for Youtube premium an pretty great value, because it has some of the best content for any hobby I may be into. It doesn't have the pure depth of hard core educational content like udemy/coursera/khan has, but I'm really not able to consume that type of content enough to run out.

Post reply on HN