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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

#91

Post by pajko »

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?

I'd rather support (and do) content creators directly, and fortunately there's an option to do that directly on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YpeNBACYbQ

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

#93

Post by dotnet00 »

duxup wrote: post #39
MBCook wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I keep seeing the discourse recently and it’s all framed as if only two options exist: People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. And Google won’t block it because it’s encouraged as the solution to this exact issue. The level of “I should get everything for…

I'm inclined to agree. The whole internet discussion about this topic and even "eshitification" has boiled down to "I want it for free and I don't want to pay." Meanwhile users are happy to jump to the next free thing starting the whole cycle again, until it wants to get paid for. The web kinda stinks in ways, but users don't want to pay either... so want ends up being the product?

That's a very slanted and bad faith interpretation of the discussion.

Enshittification is about companies running all other competition out of the market with their free service, then once they've secured their near monopoly, they clamp down with increasingly user hostile changes and act like it's unreasonable that people don't want to pay for the product whose "selling" point was that it was effectively free.

This argument is even more stark when considering that YouTube has just been burning goodwill from everyone and coasting on its weight for many years now.

The success of Patreon style models is also a pretty clear indicator that people are willing to pay for things they like as long as they aren't being dragged through a bait-and-switch.

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

#94

Post by bravoetch »

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…

People might be less disgusted with paying for YouTube if their model was "make a good product for end users" instead of "premium is to make the experience less worse by removing the worst part of a bad experience".

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

#95

Post by mschuster91 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #60
mschuster91 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can use ad blockers, or Google can block them and annoy people. Thing is, we're still getting ads because AG1, NordVPN, Guardio and similar services/products of questionable nature keep throwing tens of thousands of dollars at youtubers to insert 1-2 minutes of sponsor blocks. > There is a very good third option for people: pay for the (expensive due to bandwidth) service you’re using and you see no ads. So…

Then don't watch those YouTubers.

It's hard to avoid them, given the money that the "sponsors" throw out. That shit's everywhere.

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

#96

Post by matheusmoreira »

mvdtnz wrote: post #65
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)

Well it's their server, they will serve what they want to whom they want.

We're okay with that. They're free to return 402 Payment Required.

If they try to use my computer to display ads, I will block them. If they try to detect my blocking, I will stop them.

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

#97

Post by jjcm »

I'm fine with them blocking adblockers now that they offer a no-ad paid tier. I think it's likely healthy for consumers to know they have to pay one way or another.

What I'm really curious about though is whether competitors can do the same - can a YouTube rival today launch with anti-adblockers and a paid tier and compete? This might be a barrier to entry that's too high for your day to day consumers, especially for a new platform. I'm not sure what the solution is here (aside from kickstarting with VC funded free tiers and pivoting later once users are hooked, which feels bad), but I hope at the very least that the general population adjusts to this "ad or paid" future that we seem to be heading in.

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

#98

Post by HlessClaudesman »

gretch wrote: post #38
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 believe that we have been fortunate that Google's ad business was willing to subsidize it for us for so long with so little required in return. Unfortunately it appears that possibly the screws are getting turned, and there is less appetite for the subsidy. Um well no. They still have appetite to support the business with Ads (and they offer a paid version if you don't like Ads). The thing they no longer have app…

Am I breaching Yotube's TOS if I look away and / or mute their ads? No. So what's the difference If I automate that? Plenty of people won't, and they will still make money.

Google can't force people to watch their ads, unless they hold us down and pry open our eyelids, A Clockwork Orange style. Shit, I shouldn't have given our digital overlords any ideas.

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

#99

Post by logifail »

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…

> Of course this is also fantastically expensive to build and maintain

"Fantastically expensive" is quite the claim.

Google won't tell us, but how much do we think it actually costs to operate it?

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

#100

Post by PedroBatista »

jncfhnb wrote: post #41
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…

Such a call would be extremely dangerous as antitrust evidence imo. This seems very unlikely.

The "call" could be when their deal with Mozilla is up for renewal or just a chat during some private family together. Let's not forget most of these people know each other personally. In SF it's actually a much smaller World than it sometimes seems.

Google has been fighting lawsuits like this for a reasonable long time, they are careful but also confident in their abilities to make them toothless and/or defeat them. As of right now nothing of substance made them not do anything important for them.

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