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Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

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Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#61

Post by pests »

nickthegreek wrote: post #14
simonbarker87 wrote: post #10

This is where I get conflicted with ad blockers, on the one hand most website ads are trash, on the other hand there is great content on YT and I want those creators to make enough to carry on to get to the level where they proper sponsors. But, YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times that it drives me mad and I don’t trust the creators will get fairly compensated if I go to premium.

The creators get more money per view from a premium member than an ad-supported viewer. So not only does being a paying member give you a better experience, it puts more cash in the pocket of those you watch.

It depends. The last numbers YT released was that they took a 45% cut and that they used watched minutes, not views. The obvious way is distributing the remaining 55% out porportionally based on what you watch.

If you watch twice as much, your profit/minute must be half.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#62

Post by eastbound »

avalys wrote: post #36

[flagged]

No, most Youtube videos by far are created for free and at a loss.

Most ads are also paid at a loss, by companies doing an experiment then closing it.

Youtube only brought the marketing around their brand of being the first platform. They inherited this position from the early days of the internet.

They did acquire it for $1.65bn circa 2006, then maintained it at a great cost. But the second on the market doesn’t stand a chance.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#63

Post by JohnFen »

fifteen1506 wrote: post #44
IMSAI8080 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure it's A/B testing. I'm logged in with uBlock Origin and no anti-adblock is visible. I've seen someone on Reddit complaining they were getting this and loads of people replied to say they were not. They're probably trying to figure out how many users/views they will lose or how many new premium subscribers they get or something like that.

I hate A/B testing. Puts the feedback and protest mechanism working on those who complain the most. If you are a techie, you are forced to yell or silent quit the website, and most of the times I really don't have the time to waste yelling.

> I hate A/B testing.

I agree. As a user, A/B testing is a horrible practice.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#64

Post by [deleted] »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #10

This is where I get conflicted with ad blockers, on the one hand most website ads are trash, on the other hand there is great content on YT and I want those creators to make enough to carry on to get to the level where they proper sponsors. But, YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times that it drives me mad and I don’t trust the creators will get fairly compensated if I go to premium.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#65

Post by pests »

anigbrowl wrote: post #18
simonbarker87 wrote: post #10

This is where I get conflicted with ad blockers, on the one hand most website ads are trash, on the other hand there is great content on YT and I want those creators to make enough to carry on to get to the level where they proper sponsors. But, YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times that it drives me mad and I don’t trust the creators will get fairly compensated if I go to premium.

YT is so egregious with its ad insertions at times It's worse than broadcast TV. I'll usually sit through an ad at the beginning and maybe the end of a video because I want to support creators. But YT just sticks them into the middle of things, frequently ruining the experience of the surrounding content. Meanwhile they promote absolute trash like Nikocado Avocado, which is my view is no different from shooting up he…

> they promote absolute trash like Nikocado Avocado

I have never had one of his videos promoted to me. You may have a different filter bubble / reccomendation algorithm pushing it towards you because you watch similar content?

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#66

Post by doublerabbit »

avalys wrote: post #36

[flagged]

> Google pays for the bandwidth and storage, and in many cases, pays royalties to the video creator.

If the amount that is paid to content creators compared to the amount of bucks that google makes, I'd agree. But its not 50/50. It's more 99/1.

I pay for the bandwidth not google. They pay toss all, they have local peering, local cache. Doesn't cost Google a dime meanwhile I have to pay for the bandwidth wasted from the advertising.

Storage, meh. Part of digital infrastructure.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#67

Post by hot_gril »

Retr0id wrote: post #25
matsz wrote: post #16

Until YouTube starts injecting ads into the video stream (like Twitch), it's not going to be effective at all. There's no way to do a client-side anti-adblock and not have it bypassed. And TBH: since YouTube is not doing that, I think they might've decided the cost of that solution outweighs the projected revenue so they've chosen a cheaper solution. In Twitch's case, more of the audience might be techy, so ad inject…

Sponsorblock already exists as infrastructure to slice out ads embedded into the video streams themselves. Of course, the sponsor segments weren't put there by youtube, but the same (or similar) solutions would apply if they were. It's much easier for anything non-live.

Sponsorblock only works because YT allows you to skip anywhere in a video.

Re: Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”

#69

Post by kmeisthax »

fidotron wrote: post #26

The insidious aspect of this is the bait and switch YouTube did to consolidate their monopoly. A huge amount of videos were uploaded under the (idealistic and misguided) pretence they would be freely accessible without ads and so on. Had the YT UX been this way the whole time then the online video landscape would be much more competitive today.

There's several instances in which creators deliberately uploaded videos unmonetized under the understanding that this would comply with some kind of noncommercial licensing requirement[0] (e.g. NCommander's video on the MSWord 1.0 source). Such uploads are now retroactively illegal unless you're already partnered, since YouTube now only allows partners to disable monetization.

To be slightly fair to YouTube, they never added NC clauses to their Creative Commons declaration support, but I doubt that was evidence of a 10-year plan to demand monetization.

But on the other hand, they also made a huge stink about keeping Partner status out of the hands of people who shouldn't have it. That move now retroactively looks like YouTube trying to front-run smaller creators on ad revenue, especially if something they make goes 'viral' before they can make partner.

[0] For the purpose of this comment let's pretend that 'not monetized' satisfies whatever flimsy 'noncommercial' license declaration exists

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