[HN Gopher] YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad ...
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
Author : jacooper
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-05-10 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| fear_and_coffee wrote:
| [dead]
| karaterobot wrote:
| Is it weird that this makes me want to subscribe to YouTube
| premium less than before? Feels like I've been poised to give
| them money for a while, since so many people seem to like the
| service. Now I feel like they're challenging me to a duel.
| mikece wrote:
| If YouTube blocks me from watching videos because I use an ad
| blocker then I'll stop watching videos on YouTube. I don't care
| if this doesn't hurt YouTube... it will help me stop spending so
| much time on YouTube.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > it will help me stop spending so much time
|
| Oh gosh, really? Don't you think you'll come back after a few
| weeks?
|
| I think the bigger impact is that it'll impede new user
| adoption. I use an adblocker (but pay for YouTube,) and I never
| use sites that block me for using an adblocker.
| benj111 wrote:
| You state you never use sites that block adblockers, right
| after disagreeing (questioning? Exclaiming??) with the parent
| for for expressing the exact same point?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| 100% this, I'm not watching ads. I haven't really seen any
| advertising on my electronic devices in a decade (edit:
| actually closer to two decades) and that's the way it will
| continue to be. My time is valuable, my mental space is
| valuable, my computer is mine. You will not make it do things I
| don't want it to do. Advertising is a plague on society.
|
| (I speak from experience, I worked for 3 years at an ad
| agency.)
| nickthegreek wrote:
| ...you can purchase ad free YouTube.
| tpoacher wrote:
| except ad free youtube still has ads (in the form of
| sponsored content). and your data on youtube is still mined
| to serve you more ads elsewhere.
|
| this isnt about ads. it's just another tactic for forcing
| users to log in.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Which I will absolutely never be doing.
| izacus wrote:
| Why should they care about your indignation then? You're
| literally just costing them money in resources.
| Insanity wrote:
| Honest question - why not? I am paying for Youtube
| Premium, it's not different to me than paying for Netflix
| or Spotify. I'm using a service which I like so I don't
| mind supporting it. If it helps me get rid of ads, so
| much the better.
| jona-f wrote:
| Any money i could give to google is a drop in their ocean
| of ad revenue, that's why. Google is being disingenuous
| af, nothing new. Also Youtube has become so important it
| should be much more regulated.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Google would be one of the last companies I would shove
| money into, voluntarily.
|
| All the ads that YT shows are paid by us when we buy
| products of companies that pay Google to show ads. This
| is how Google is getting all their billions, from you
| (wether or not you personally watch ads, as long
| companies believe it's worth giving money for showing
| ads).
|
| It's such a parasitic business model that I am glad I can
| be a parasite to Google
| grupthink wrote:
| The money flow looks like this:
|
| Ad -> YT -> Content Creators
|
| You prevent YT and Content Creators from making money
| when you block an ad.
|
| Blocking ads of these products, means when you purchase a
| product (shampoo, razors, etc) more of your money goes
| into these companies that created these products.
|
| And, in your case, who pays the content creator for the
| content you enjoy? and who pays for the engineering and
| infrastructure that delivered the content?
|
| And, since you never saw the ad, you likely didn't buy
| any product either.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Honest question - why not?
|
| YT Premium only makes the problem worse by requiring you
| to log in using an account that is tied to your real
| world identity and was used for payment processing. You
| just end up giving more data points to Google to track
| you, cross-reference with other sources and shove more
| ads in other platforms, still get native ads, and Google
| can just add their own ads later (as it is happening step
| by step with streaming companies).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's certainly different than Netflix given that they
| actually _make content_. On Youtube you 're just paying a
| tax to the fiefdom. Given that a lot of creators have
| patreon which takes a miniscule cut I'd rather pay
| creators as directly as possible.
|
| Paying a company with a market dominating position 150
| bucks per year to not hold me hostage with blocked UI
| functions is kind of ridiculous.
| igetspam wrote:
| While I wouldn't pay for YT either, they do have serious
| infrastructure costs so it's not quite as you describe.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| While I agree with your comment there is something
| seriously wrong with the fact that Google can use its
| infinite funds so that a serious competitor for YT never
| has any chances of appearing. If YT were a standalone
| company and would compete on fair terms in others, we
| might see some reasonable business models appear.
| jsnell wrote:
| We know how much Netflix spends on content. In 2022, it
| was 52% of their revenue ($16.7B content budget, $32B
| revenue). We also know how much YouTube pays for the
| content, since their ad revenue split has been public for
| like a decade. It's 55% to the creators for the content,
| 45% to YouTube for the technical and social
| infrastructure.
|
| Huh. Looks like YouTube pays more for their content than
| Netflix does! Given the only stated basis for your
| opinion turned out to be incorrect, are you changing your
| mind?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| No, that napkin math doesn't check out unless you think
| Youtube is a non-profit. They _pocket_ half of what
| creators make, and that has no relationship to their
| infrastructure cost, it 's a function of their market
| power. They could change that revenue split tomorrow to
| 70/30 while they cut infrastructure costs for all you or
| I know.
|
| You somehow turned my argument on its head. I don't care
| how much Netflix or YT pay for content, I only care that
| _I_ pay directly for content, and because Netflix is a
| media company, not a platform, I don 't need to guess how
| much they're squeezing creators or consumers. I
| transparently pay for a movie catalog, and that is the
| service provided.
| topicseed wrote:
| That's kind for the video makers you're _actively_ not
| supporting.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I'm not going to be extorted lol. If you're showing me
| something I have a right to ignore the parts I don't care
| about, and I have a right to have a computer do the
| ignoring for me so I don't waste my time/mental effort.
| Zetice wrote:
| You're not being extorted, you have _no_ right to access
| to YouTube 's content unconditionally.
| jstanley wrote:
| You can always watch on one of the Invidious mirrors if YouTube
| proper becomes unusable.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Or download it locally with yt-dlp and watch in a video
| player.
| taneq wrote:
| Yeah, this could be great for productivity.
| Zetice wrote:
| I just cannot wrap my head around folks who demand content for
| free. How do you think the people who create this content would
| survive if they couldn't do it for money???
| joe__f wrote:
| I can get stuck in a bit of a loop watching videos, but on the
| whole I think YouTube is an incredible resource. I've learnt so
| many things from it, I think it's worth working out how to use
| it in moderation rather than just cutting it out
| cute_boi wrote:
| same, i think that will save me a lot of time.
| wnevets wrote:
| On a related note as someone who uses YouTube constantly YouTube
| Premium is absolutely worth it.
| corvec wrote:
| I had YouTube Family at $15/month until this month, when they
| raised the price to $23. I signed up back when Google Play
| Music was still a thing.
|
| I was never able to get into YouTube Music, though, so I don't
| actually use it to stream my music. The fact that my playlists
| are shared between YouTube and YouTube Music is enough for me
| to drop it from serious consideration as a music streaming
| service on its own. That, plus the lack of lossless streaming,
| inconsistent, clunky UI, and lack of any positive features that
| distinguish it from Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, is why I
| never used it for anything other than sharing songs with people
| who didn't use Tidal.
|
| That they apparently also include ads in the albums I
| transferred from Google Play Music - albums that I paid for -
| is just added insult.
|
| The main way I justified paying the subscription was that other
| people in my household got access to ad-free music streaming
| (and they actually used it, unlike me), Youtubers get comped
| more from me watching their videos, and I didn't have to worry
| about whole-home adblockers to remove ads from the app. But
| after a 50% price hike that takes it above the prices for Tidal
| Family ($15), Apple Music Family ($17), and Spotify Family
| ($16), it's not something I can justify anymore.
|
| (Youtube Music Family is $15, FWIW, but it doesn't include
| Youtube itself.)
| jacooper wrote:
| My main issue is the tracking, if youtube premium stopped the
| awful tracking i would be fine, but it doesn't.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Yeah. Subscribed as soon as my kid got old enough to use it
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I don't like paying a platform that rose to prominence because
| of piracy, just so that I can watch IP created by other people
| without youtube inserting a really intense number of ads into
| the experience. And all the vidoes are ads anyway, it's just
| via sponsorships and affiliate links now.
|
| It feels deeply icky
| thematt wrote:
| What makes it worth it? Isn't the experience the same as just
| running an ad-blocker?
| lostgame wrote:
| Well, my hubby's iPad and our iPhones don't support ad
| blocking on YouTube, nor does my Smart TV, so...ad blocking
| only works on 1/5 of my husband's devices and my own would
| actually be effective with ad blocking, for one...
|
| (And before you say 'just switch to Android', I'm an
| iOS/WatchOS dev and a music producer for a living - if
| anything with the recent announcement of Logic on the iPad,
| I'll be buying _another_ iPads not reducing them...)
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| YT Premium only makes the problem worse by requiring you to
| log in using an account that is tied to your real world
| identity and was used for payment processing. You just end up
| giving more data points to Google to track you, cross-
| reference with other sources and shove more ads in other
| platforms, still get native ads, and Google can just add
| their own ads later (as it is happening step by step with
| streaming companies).
| wnevets wrote:
| I don't run an adblocker on my phone, YouTube Music is
| included and the creators still get paid.
| M4v3R wrote:
| You can watch on all of your devices, even the ones where
| setting up an ad-blocker is non trivial or impossible.
| greenthrow wrote:
| In theory, but you actually help the creators you enjoy
| watching.
| quechimba wrote:
| Yeah, and YT Music is included too right? Because I have YT
| Music and no ads and it's really cheap compared to other
| services. I pay COP$17900 which is little less than USD$4. I
| used to pay around USD$10 for Spotify.
| wnevets wrote:
| > Yeah, and YT Music is included too right?
|
| Correct and I believe YT Music pays much more per listen than
| Spotify to the artist.
| 2h wrote:
| If it helps, I have a tool for downloading, written in Go:
|
| http://github.com/4cq2/mech
| pwg wrote:
| Or just download with yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp).
| jacooper wrote:
| You can use alternative front ends like piped, invidious or
| apps like libretube.
| mkmk wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, is there an easy way to automatically
| stream files you've downloaded to your local machine to play on
| an iPhone later?
| christophilus wrote:
| I use Brave on iOS, and it has the ability to download videos
| for offline watching. It's one of my favorite features.
| marcodiego wrote:
| https://jellyfin.org/
| SirMaster wrote:
| Why even download?
|
| You can use third party media players like MPC-BE or MPC-HC
| that leverage yt-dlp to stream the video into a media player
| without any ads of course.
|
| Yes, sometimes it makes sense to download if you want to keep
| the video, but to just watch just stream it via yt-dlp to a
| media player.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| How about non windows users? Like does VLC has similar
| integration with yt-dlp?
| ttepasse wrote:
| > Why even download?
|
| A major part apart from building a queue by getting behind is
| the ability of the file manager to sort, to classify, to
| filter, to move into folders, to search, etc. Far better than
| the youtube web interface, which only has the options of
| displaying your subscriptions as a grid or as a list. So I
| now have a local queue of videos which I can use, in which
| weird expeditions into obscure genres are into their own
| folders, must-match-now videos are tagged, etc, and I can
| pick and choose according to my own tastes of the moment.
|
| That is one of my pet peeves in UI design in the last decade
| and it is not only web applications - shoebox apps are often
| as limited. If you want to do anything to your data or just
| have different sort orders or views, you only have what the
| app developer allows and often that is nothing.
|
| Thanks to the web and shoebox apps I appreciate file managers
| like Finder even more now. It's amazing what UI controls like
| NSTableView/NSOutlineView gives the user in functionality.
| Modern collection views often look better and I appreciate
| that, but I do miss the functionality which, while possible,
| often simply is not implemented.
| salimahmad wrote:
| [dead]
| elorant wrote:
| No problem, I'll start downloading them.
| taneq wrote:
| HN: I hate ads, just let me pay for good content with no ads.
|
| Google: You can subscribe to YT Premium for an ad-free YouTube.
|
| HN: Absolutely fkn _not_
|
| (Yeah I realise these are two different groups yada yada)
| greenyoda wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457
| marcodiego wrote:
| https://joinpeertube.org/
| doodlesdev wrote:
| I wish Peertube was more usable. The UX is generally subpar
| (although impressive for an ActivityPub-based system). There's
| also the problem that hosting servers to host video is _so damn
| expensive_. There is literally only one Peertube instance I
| ever watch videos on (https://tilvids.com/) and I'm honestly
| considering stopping using it altogether. I'm not sure what I
| want out of Framasoft really, but I don't think Peertube or any
| similar solution becomes viable soon without socializing costs
| for video hosting, encoding, etc.
|
| Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my
| client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's
| all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to
| "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I
| wish to support, which again means the costs are all
| centralized and extremely high.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb
| from a video I was watching, nor has it downloaded from
| anyone but the server.
|
| Where is that info available?
| doodlesdev wrote:
| On top of the video player hover over the "x peers" on the
| bottom, it will tell you how much data you downloaded,
| uploaded, and how much of the download came from peers or
| the server.
| jacooper wrote:
| It doesn't look very complex, nothing a simple ublock/brave block
| element can't remove, at least not yet.
| haunter wrote:
| Yet. Twitch has some pretty hardcore ad system that even uBlock
| can't block straight up and you have to use a combination of
| tools/scripts
|
| https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/10fgy9y/twitch_adb...
| Sytten wrote:
| Because they are embedded in the stream itself something I am
| not sure would be viable for youtube to do at their scale.
| For twitch, you basically have to use a proxy hosted in
| another country where they dont show ads to retrieve the
| stream links.
| crtasm wrote:
| They're not embedded in the UK at least, you can confirm
| this by watching something via the Twitch plugin for Kodi
| which is sent video of a countdown timer instead.
| haunter wrote:
| They aren't. If you watch a stream for example with
| streamlink/VLC then ads looks like this when they are
| played https://files.catbox.moe/n7sb34.png
| crtasm wrote:
| I only have uBlock Origin and never see ads on Twitch.
|
| Downvoting does not change this fact (and if I knew exactly
| why my experience is different, I would provide details).
| episteme wrote:
| Where are you located?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Same with uMatrix. However I do get YouTube ads... Twitch
| ads sound like they would be horribly frustrating because
| of the real time nature of the experience !
| grishka wrote:
| TIL Twitch has ads.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Until someone builds a better blocker to the anti-ad blocker
| stevens37 wrote:
| I simply download longer videos with yt-dlp and watch it offline.
| christophilus wrote:
| Yep. I do this with Brave playlists.
| NeutralForceUsr wrote:
| If I had to choose only one online subscription that I pay for
| that would be YouTube Premium.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Can ad blockers block ads on YouTube?
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Well, sort of. Ads that are included in the video content, need
| SponaorBlock instead of a Classic adblocker like uBlock Origin
| porkbeer wrote:
| Yes, quite well.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Some of them yes. From YouTube website at least. Not from
| YouTube app as far as I'm aware.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| The app -> use ReVanced as a drop in replacement for the app
| (has ads removed)
| stanac wrote:
| I use combination of firefox with uBO and blokada on android.
| I believe it would work the same without blokada.
|
| Firefox works in the background, you can stream
| music/podcasts with phone screen off and no adds.
| paulpauper wrote:
| the people who have a blockers enabled are also the lest likely
| to click an ad or buy anything advertised . advertisers should
| want these people to not be shown ads.
| Zetice wrote:
| Does YT detect that the ad wasn't played and therefore doesn't
| pay out for that view to the creator?
|
| From an incentives perspective, putting the onus on the
| creators to convince their viewers to enable ads might be more
| effective, but on the other hand that feels kind of shitty to
| do to creators, so IDK if it's ultimately a good idea...
| dotancohen wrote:
| The people who have ad blockers installed are an extremely
| self-selective demographic who have taken a physical action.
| This type of demographic is extraordinarily valuable to sell
| advertising to.
| porkbeer wrote:
| Which is why allowing self serve adverts would benefit
| everyone. Uccasionally I want to see related items for sale,
| but there is no option if the video uploader hasnt already
| put monitized affiliate links. Seems like its leaving money,
| and viewer satisfaction, on the table.
| porkbeer wrote:
| Bingo. I would prefer a related items list I can click on. I
| might not use it often, but have nevwr in my life voluntarily
| clicked a banner ad or link thru a video ad.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| I did, by accident
| scohesc wrote:
| I hope my sheer stubbornness will keep me from ever subscribing
| to Youtube premium.
|
| - Google used to have Google Music, which I loved and paid for
| willingly as it was a good service, the recommendation algorithm
| was _not bad_, the UI was _okay_, and you could upload your own
| music and have it integrate with their system.
|
| - Google used to by default allow you to play Youtube in the
| background and let you use the picture in picture mode for free -
| they removed that feature and put it behind a paywall.
|
| - You can't volume control ads. I have Youtube playing in the
| background on my bedside table at night and having consistent
| volume is key. I don't want blaring audio telling me to buy X
| product or use Y service, waking me up when I'm trying to sleep.
| Yet another way for them to convince you to get Youtube premium.
|
| - I hate all forms of advertisements. Don't shove advertisements
| in my face. If I want a product, I'll look for it and do my own
| research. I don't want algorithms and AI deciding what I want to
| purchase. When I've had advertising slip through, it's usually
| for things that I've already bought recently (mattress, clothing,
| etc.)
|
| I will continue to willingly eat away at Google's profits for as
| long as they run YouTube.
|
| I've been looking into some kind of open source solution that
| automatically grabs my Youtube history playlist and downloads and
| automatically catalogs these videos on a network share somewhere
| locally. (If someone can recommend a solution, please feel free!)
|
| Too many times I've had videos that I've added to a playlist be
| removed for some inane reason (copyright violation, DMCA
| requests, etc. etc.)
| sys_64738 wrote:
| This might actually be great for saving people from wasting their
| time on youtube (like me!).
| charcircuit wrote:
| I only block the in video ads because they are so intrusive. I
| don't mind any of the other ads on the platform and am not
| against advertising in general. They have also gotten money from
| me via their 30% cut of super chat fees so I probably do earn
| Youtube more money than the average user.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-10 23:01 UTC)