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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#541

Post by anigbrowl »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #414

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…

The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance.

Bane: For you

I dislike them because they're loud, flashy, annoying, and (most of all) because YT saturates them. It even tries to put them in the middle of songs when it detects a transitional pause. And they are served so often. It's literally worse than broadcast TV, which is an incredibly low bar to step over.

Platforms should not allow advertisers free speech. They should limit the content to static imagery/shots, dissolves, and spoken narration, ie the form rather than the content. Don't tell it can't work, this was how adwords worked on Google Search for years and everyone made handsome profits. Advertising is cancer if allowed to go full spectrum. The people who work at Youtube should be deeply ashamed of what they have allowed it to become and the trash monetization incentives they've established.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#542

Post by layer8 »

coffeefirst wrote: post #332
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i deleted my youtube accounts and switched to patreon- can still see new videos on youtube from my patreon people cause im notified but it's far more intentional and quality content

I’m increasing obsessed with the idea that the user—not some engagement algorithm—should be in the drivers seat. This is an interesting way to go about it…

You can use YouTube with just the subscriptions list and never visit the algorithmic tab. That’s how I use it most of the time.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#543

Post by CaptainFever »

I just use yt-dlp (YTDLnis on Android, which has a great UI that makes it quite YouTube-like). Downloading instead of streaming (read: downloading then automatically deleting) is so much better.

1. It's all offline play, so I can use my favorite players like VLC. Also, no buffering (after the initial download, of course).

2. I can do anything I want to the video: make edits, splice ads out, extract audio, generate subtitles or dubs, etc.

3. It saves Google server costs! Well, comparing to streaming the same video from them multiple times with adblock on, at least.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#544

Post by wiseowise »

zdragnar wrote: post #322
whatshisface wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking the question in a way that's unreflective of how people think. They can do it and want to do it and would need a reason to not do it. So the question is, what would make someone feel like they were ethically compelled to watch an advertisement? It sounds impossible to me, maybe someone with a very unique perspective could chime in about themselves. Here's an attempt at a double-negative answer: you can'…

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…

> The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads.

Wrong. The content provider explicitly states “ad-free”, yet I still see ads from content creators themselves.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#545

Post by jonex »

wiseowise wrote: post #524
scoofy wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find that annoying too. In case you haven't seen, there's the sponsor block extension for that, which is not limited by anti-adblock measures.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#546

Post by nicbou »

nradov wrote: post #251
ddtaylor wrote: post #143

I don't care when YouTube does a buffer thing because blocking ads for me is about distractions and context switching. My cognitive load is already very high and it's extremely frustrating to have to filter out more garbage.

How is it possible to have a high cognitive load while watching YouTube? Are you watching surgery training videos in the middle of conducting a heart transplant or something?

It's the digital equivalent of being stopped by canvassers on your way to something important.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#547

Post by areyourllySorry »

gausswho wrote: post #487

What new feature of significance has YouTube actually delivered in years?

the topics at the top of the homepage, sorting comments by timestamp, the little card when you click on someone's profile picture with other comments on the same channel (which was only on mobile for a while), they improved auto captioning recently and are toying with dubbing, modern codecs… it's the little things that make it better

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#549

Post by top_sigrid »

apitman wrote: post #353

> 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

Youtube pushing ads in this way has convinced several non-technical friends who couldn't care less about their browser-choice to switch to Firefox with uBlock origin. Blocking ads in Chrome became such a hustle and is basically not working for Google's own services. Recommending people how don't care to not use chrome in the past was basically hopeless and now I have seen some switch basically from their own. Which I don't want to interpret too much into, but gives a little hope.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#550

Post by johan914 »

bitpush wrote: post #259
noman-land wrote: post #110

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.

Nobody can stop you from putting a black screen over the ad, or a scenic nature video.
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