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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#811

Post by netsharc »

Corrado wrote: post #556
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…

I completely agree, though with a twist. Google knows everything about me and yet I get ADs for things that I would never purchase. Just because I'm a middle aged male I see trucks, and beer, and football advertisements all day long. Those are irrelevant to me. If Google would only use their immense knowledge of me and what I like, I might be more amenable to watching their ADs. Where are the ADs for geeky movies tha…

The ads probably get to you subconsciously anyway, IIRC there are studies done by psychology experts (some of them also work for the ad industry) that explains the presence of random ads.

For one thing, if you're suddenly in the market for a truck, you'll see the brand that was in an ad a long time ago and you think "Oh yeah I've heard of Ford, never heard of Isuzu, let's look at the Ford much closer.". Even a tiny nudge that the ad did helps, when selling to millions. Obviously a truck is a big purchase, and you individually probably would do more research, but the nudge applied to millions might move the needle in the heads of a few dozen people.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#812

Post by meepmorp »

madars wrote: post #362
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

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'm going to help them expand their power and influence over the web until they cross an arbitrary point with that power, at which point I'll cut them off and move to a strictly weaker competitor who will be in an even worse position by then!

GOOD plan

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#813

Post by inetknght »

jfoster wrote: post #401
inetknght wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So what's your argument? That YouTube shouldn't exist, or that it should be a charity? Something else?

> So what's your argument? That YouTube shouldn't exist, or that it should be a charity? Something else?

I've been thinking about it for a long time (years). I don't really have the right words for my thoughts, and I think charity is probably closest.

But yes, at this point, I think that many "free" services should be charities to prevent them from being corrupted by rugpulls.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#814

Post by pona-a »

snailmailman wrote: post #411
hirvi74 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is one of the things that kills me. Even in broadcasting TV, you get typical :15, :30, :60 ads with the occasional :45 or longer :90. You are absolutely on to something. I think the seemingly random length of ads makes them feel somewhat more jarring to me. I also hate how sometimes the ads are just randomly interjected into a video. I know creators can control this to some degree, but older videos seem to suf…

I’m curious if YouTube tracks the phone angle/motion through the gyroscope. I swear I always get the hour-long ads when my phone is not in my hand, and I’m not able to skip it immediately. I doubt they actually do that, but I’m sure it would increase ad view times. Im probably just only remembering the ads I don’t immediately skip.

Activity Recognition API has states ON_FOOT and STILL [0]. They can probably register to handle ON_FOOT-->STILL and wait for N minutes without touching.

This also reminds me of the Idle Detection API they tried adding in Chrome. [1]

[0] https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/google/a...

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/idle...

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#815

Post by beeflet »

yugioh3 wrote: post #235
akersten wrote: post #209

Thank you for your important work fighting this battle, it must be exhausting. The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us, the more we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright scammy ads they are hosting. If they can't leave well enough alone and look the other way on ad blocking, (which is the only way to avoid exposing myself and family to these dangerous ads), they need to be under a…

people deserve to get paid for the work they put into creating content and building platforms, no? books, movies, tv shows, news, etc, are all distributed in some way or another that costs the consumer either money or their time viewing advertising. if you don't want to watch ads, pay YouTube for a subscription.

no. maybe you can get funding through some sort of patronage, but I'm not going to watch ads.

even if I did pay for a subscription, they would find a way to jack up the price or insert new ads while collecting my data. The landscape isn't competitive enough. People like this idea that "if you don't pay for the product, you are the product" but it's not complete. Just because you pay for a product doesn't mean you're not the product. We used to pay for cable TV, only to still get ads. We used to pay for windows licenses, now with ads!

I will continue to waste their bandwidth while blocking ads until they hopefully go bankrupt and get replaced by some bittorrent-like p2p solution.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#816

Post by jeffhuys »

kerkeslager wrote: post #668
AlienRobot wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First it was "I hate how much ad companies track me and build profiles on me." Now it is "I hate how ads are irrelevant." People need to understand that ads will never be 100% perfect, otherwise you would buy something every time you saw an ad. 99.99% of the ads will miss the target, and that is normal. It would be insane if it worked any other way. For what it is worth Google has a page where you can customize what…

> First it was "I hate how much ad companies track me and build profiles on me." > Now it is "I hate how ads are irrelevant." This is an HN echo-chamber complaint, made by people who work for advertisers trying to come up with a way to make their ads seem less awful. The fact is, relevant ads aren't better . They're still ads, and ads are still inherently bad. If I'm looking for a used car, I do not want to hear ads…

Ads of that kind tell me they need ads, which tells me they’re probably not doing too well, so I’ll avoid them

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#817

Post by masswerk »

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…

On relevance: I've never seen an ad on YT that would make me buy a product. I guess, this is now a matter of principle.

Moreover, it's now also a matter of fending off GenAI content (AKA slop) for the sake of sanity.

So, I'm clearly not the audience. Which raises the question, what is YT in the business of selling, they are trying to enforce? Lifetime?

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#818

Post by ufmace »

strken wrote: post #769
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…

It's not irrelevance, it's lack of trust. I could see an ad for the exact thing I need and I still wouldn't click it. Either it's a scam, or it's technically not a scam because offering 90% off in the first month of a 12 month contract is legal, or it's the worst product on the market and the only way it can get users is blowing VC cash on ads, or there's something else that will surely disappoint me.

I feel like it's happened to me multiple times that I've seen an ad for something I actually want, but if I click through or look up the company advertised, then do a little research on that company, I discover that it's a scam or a super crappy version, then I actually purchase the thing from a more reputable company with higher quality. So I guess they succeeded in getting me to buy something, from their competitors.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#819

Post by kolektiv »

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…

As spoken by thousands of tech companies over and over - if only the ads were more relevant, users would like them! No, they never will. That's because an advert is effectively an unasked-for imposition on my attention intended to benefit somebody else more than it benefits me (should it be considered to benefit me at all). There's a name for behaviour like that: rude.

I am not blind to commercial imperatives, but expecting people to ever feel anything more positive than low-level irritation with advertising is unrealistic. People do not like feeling that others matter more than them, particularly where money is involved. Spaces without adverts in them, whether physical or virtual, are simply more mentally enjoyable to people than those with them. Imagine one of the worlds wonders, natural or otherwise. Imagine the Acropolis, the Coliseum, the Buddha of Leshan - or Lake Annecy, or the Great Barrier Reef, or the Amazon. Now try and imagine a single advert which is so wonderful that it would improve any of them, contextual or otherwise. You can't, and you won't. They're pollution that we tolerate.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#820

Post by DavideNL »

stickfigure wrote: post #277
mcdeltat wrote: post #234

I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look, but otherwise no engagement with the platform…

Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan. Nobody gets ads. It is a bargain. You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build projects without videos. But why??

> Or just pay for it?

on top of all the things already mentioned like privacy issues, etc.

- you'll also still see "Branded Content" when paying Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_content

- because of Googles "monopoly", they take a big % of your money, instead of you actually paying the content creators themselves.

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