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YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

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Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#81

Post by archontes »

JAlexoid wrote: post #27
PedroBatista wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me how Google is allowed to control every side of the market with no real repercussions. I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money.. That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices. Worst case scenario it help…

Why are you consuming any YT videos, then? Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?

It's like using TiVo to skip commercials.

I don't disagree with YT attempting to show me ads, but I have control of my computer, and if I can direct my computer not to show them to me, I will.

I simply won't tolerate ads for any reason. I find the experience user hostile. So I'm always going to adopt some path that delivers me content without ads. And in choosing which path to adopt, I will always choose the least costly. Right now that's free. If in the future google successfully blocks in-browser ad blockers, I will either pay for YT premium or a third party service that downloads and delivers the content without ads, whichever is cheaper.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#82

Post by yifanl »

JAlexoid wrote: post #43
yifanl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can't pay for Youtube. You can pay for a bundle of some mostly unrelated products that's named Youtube Premium, or you can live with an insanely degraded product experience on Youtube, but you can't pay for Youtube.

YouTube Premium is ad-free YouTube. That's literally "paying for YouTube". But it sure seems that you're trying to rationalize your unwillingness to pay for something and it does sound very entitled.

Am I paying for an ad-free Youtube or a Spotify competitor? I'm not at all confident the money I'd be paying is going to the creators of the videos, or even feature development of the main Youtube platform.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#83

Post by genocidicbunny »

JAlexoid wrote: post #27
PedroBatista wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me how Google is allowed to control every side of the market with no real repercussions. I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money.. That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices. Worst case scenario it help…

Why are you consuming any YT videos, then? Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?

> Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?

I don't feel entitled to them, but I do feel entitled to control what code is run and what content is shown on systems I own. I don't like watching ads, so as long as I can do it without onerous effort on my part, I will block them. Ultimately, if Youtube doesn't want me messing with the bytes they sent me, they shouldn't send them to me at all.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#84

Post by mvdtnz »

contravariant wrote: post #64
Workaccount2 wrote: post #15

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

This isn't about paying for youtube, this is about ads. People don't want youtube ads, and frankly it's their good right to not have to download, display and watch them if they so choose. What youtube now wants is proof that people have watched ads. This is problematic for 2 reasons. The first is that there is no way to prove you've watched an ad in a way that's not a privacy nightmare and extremely hostile to users.…

There's a sure-fire way to avoid 100% of YouTube ads without paying a cent, though.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#85

Post by LightHugger »

Waterluvian wrote: post #61
spaceribs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well it's not their computer, and I'll run what I want on it (...so far)

I feel this is a perfectly valid response. Equally valid is Google then saying, "well then we don't want to send you bytes."

The endgame here is adblockers that spoof ad views and even sometimes clicks rather than just blocking them. This is very very bad for google if they force adblockers to work like that. People will do it.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#87

Post by genocidicbunny »

zdragnar wrote: post #78
dixie_land wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to YT videos without ads. But at the same time, Google is not entitled to dictate how my user agent renders a page, locally, on my own computer . I'd have no problem if google just inject ads directly into the video streams. ( by which time, equally I'm entitled to configure my own video player to skip whichever frames I want )

If allowing ads is part of the terms of their service for non-paying users, then they are in fact free to not grant you access to the video feed. It's still shitty, but this isn't a thing where you can have your cake and eat it too.

> then they are in fact free to not grant you access to the video feed.

Correct, but as long as they do grant me access to the video feed, I should be free to modify how it is rendered on my end as I wish.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#88

Post by newZWhoDis »

Clubber wrote: post #40
foobarian wrote: post #19

Youtube has been a fantastic demonstration of how valuable it can be to enable democratized, low-barrier-to-entry content publishing. Think of how much treasure there is on the service, with millions upon millions of hours of educational, informative, or archival content, all published and viewable for free, with incredible reliability and availability. Of course this is also fantastically expensive to build and main…

I just pay the $15 a month to not get ads. The content is worth way more than that to me. I wish they would stop censoring stuff (like raw news, firearms learning channels, etc). Content warnings over just taking the videos down would be much preferred. That's really my only gripe.

This. I pay to not get ads, but I absolutely despise the censorship on YouTube and can’t wait to jump ship.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#89

Post by nharada »

hau wrote: post #73
Workaccount2 wrote: post #15

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

I feel like you're right about initial value proposition, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are other things about treating youtube as netflix/hbo/hulu: - I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there - 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading - I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get…

> content of interest could be deleted next second

HBO hasn't exactly been great about this either

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#90

Post by JAlexoid »

yifanl wrote: post #68
itsoktocry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can pay for some unrelated product that's named Youtube Premium What do you mean "unrelated"? For the price of your Spotify subscription, you get an YouTube Music and ad-free YouTube. Seems like a good value prop. I'm a subscriber.

I mean unrelated as in unrelated, I, nor anybody have I talked to want a Youtube Music subscription or yet another podcast app.

Most of ads on YouTube are there to cover copyrighted music. YouTube Music is the free addon.
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