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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#521
post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

This is the same situation as with the media industry, e.g. music and movies and piracy. Studies have shown that people who pirate wouldn't buy the product even if they had the opportunity (i.e. is if they had the money or if it was easy to buy). So I guess the content is not good enough.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck. The YouTube ads are hated because that's…

Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad

> Nothing is wrong with billboards.

Elaborate.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#523
post #426

The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That’s not to say whether or not the advertisement is for a product or service for which the viewer is interested in purchasing but how it relates to the context in which it is viewed. People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the countryside. Actual complaints may b…

You can also pay for YouTube. I do. It’s nice, not crazy expensive. No ads. Creators get paid. Everyone wins.

Why would you pay though its really simple to block ads and youtube is already rich enough. Why bow down to consumerism and enrichment of the already rich?

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#524
post #426

The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That’s not to say whether or not the advertisement is for a product or service for which the viewer is interested in purchasing but how it relates to the context in which it is viewed. People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the countryside. Actual complaints may b…

You can also pay for YouTube. I do. It’s nice, not crazy expensive. No ads. Creators get paid. Everyone wins.

Except for some reason I have to watch ads installed by the creators themselves despite paying 26 EUR.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very simple answer. You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You are not obligated to watch ads. You are opting to watch them in exchange for the free content, then skipping out on a commitment you volunteered for while still taking the free content. The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because…

this is ridiculous. The provider is welcome to serve ads, and i am welcome to not watch them. When there are Ads on TV and I get up to go to the kitchen, am i skipping out on a commitment? Am I now a freeloader? Should the TV have a camera to make sure I watch all the ads like a good little boy? People have been fastforwarding/skipping ads for decades. this is nothing new.

There's a difference between letting an ad play and you simply ignoring it, and using technical means from preventing that ad playing at all.

Principally - the latter actually affects the compensation given to the creator of whatever video you're watching. The former does not.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists crowdsourced adblocking based on timestamps (SponsorBlock, Tubular). Soon we will have realtime on-device content-aware AI adblocking. They will ever win.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but ad blockers are on borrowed time. This is like saying I was able to sneak into a concert. Sure, but at some point the restrictions are gonna come down hard.

It's not analogous to sneaking into a concert. YouTube is open and public, always has been. It would not be YouTube if it wasn't.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just pay for Premium... No one's forcing you to do anything.

Wait until Google shows ads in premium too. Paid-for cable TV did the same rugpull decades ago.

Sure, then stop paying for it when they start showing ads in premium. It's a monthly subscription.

Not paying for it because it might become bad some time in the future is not a great argument.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#528
post #362

> On Firefox this is easily resolvable - you can use a HTML filter to filter out the script tag from the source HTML before the page even starts being parsed. But that relies on extension APIs that Chromium doesn’t support. I'm shocked

The second Chrome drops uBlock Origin (as part of their "Manifest V3 without blocking Web Request" plan), I'm off to an alternative browser. Enough is enough.

I’ve heard this threats for 8 years.

“If they press their shoe on me even further, then I’m leaving!”

Firefox been free and there for you for decades, yet you still use this spyware crap from an Ad company. Disgusting.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#529
post #121
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want free hosting and an audience but I don't want to pay for it"

Yeah I get if that's why I said it I do pay for it, the time to make the content Sucks how everything is like that nowadays, IG, Reddit (have to join a platform to be seen)

You pay to make the content. You would have to "pay" to make the content no matter where you hosted it. You don't pay YouTube to host it. That's a silly argument.

You seem to ignore that you would probably have no audience - or have a significantly smaller audience - were it not for YouTube hosting your content. They are providing you a service, but you seem to think that nobody - not you, not your viewers - should have to trade anything for that service, despite the hosting and streaming of video being one of the most expensive possible tech services in the world (bar perhaps running genAI models.)

I dunno it's just very annoying how a lot of people have memed themselves into this train of thought where the big tech companies aren't actually providing them anything of value, when if they decided to suddenly stop providing their services they would be up a creek without a paddle.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#530
post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

> Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute?

Shall we do the same to open source?

“Watch this ad for 30 seconds before checking out a branch! Git commit, oops: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS”

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