[HN Gopher] YouTube is now blocking Ad Blockers - So I just make... ___________________________________________________________________ YouTube is now blocking Ad Blockers - So I just make ads run 16x faster Author : znpy Score : 208 points Date : 2023-11-23 21:33 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (old.reddit.com) (TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com) | colesantiago wrote: | Does YouTube work without JS? This might be one way to avoid ads | as well as a network wide Pi Hole. | | I hate it when YouTube / Google needs to exploit everyone's data | and privacy in order to make money. | rollcat wrote: | Does anything at all run without JS these days? I swear all I | wanted was to read a blog post, and it loaded more megabytes of | JS than the text and pictures combined. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | One example that comes to mind is Kagi. | | They makes it a design point that Kagi should work even | without javascript enabled. | lagrange77 wrote: | > Pi Hole | | They serve the ads from the same domain, as the site itself. | colesantiago wrote: | Surely it's possible to block the paths to the ad on the site | itself. | mirashii wrote: | Not with DNS blocking, which is what the pihole is | kuroguro wrote: | Pi Hole just blocks on DNS level, I believe. | Salgat wrote: | The problem is that it will refuse to play content if it | can't play the ad. | tiagod wrote: | Pihole is only intercepting DNS resolve requests. Those | only resolve the domain itself. If they don't use a | different domain to serve ads, then it can't be blocked | that way. | potatopatch wrote: | Good thing the whole site is a bug, though I rarely end up on | YT by accident since videos are marked in web etiquette. | | For twitter.com a filter option here on HN would be nice but | a domain blocker might do. | recursive wrote: | Not even close. | ipsum2 wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38327017 same idea, but open | sourced. | rKarpinski wrote: | Thanks for the shoutout :) | | Got a pr about increasing the speed to 16x wonder if it's same | person. I only set the ad speed for 10x, since it can access | the skip button and do button.click() if there are longer adds. | | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-accelerator/gpbo... | | I was also surprised most of the downloads are from Japan | dudul wrote: | I got to say this arm race is interesting to watch. | | I wonder if we'll reach a point where YT asks viewers to pass a | captcha at the end of an ad to prove that they watched it before | getting back to their video. | hervature wrote: | Q: When Bob greeted Alice at the door, what purse did Alice | have? | | A: Louis Vuitton | LoganDark wrote: | > I wonder if we'll reach a point where YT asks viewers to pass | a captcha at the end of an ad to prove that they watched it | before getting back to their video. | | GPT-4 has entered the chat | idonotknowwhy wrote: | It still gets them wrong a lot of the time | LoganDark wrote: | So do people. | xattt wrote: | _"Please proceed to purchase the item being advertised in order | to continue watching."_ | jfim wrote: | They already do a poll thing where they ask "which of the | following brands have you seen ads for recently?" | tiagod wrote: | I had no idea, ublock is still doing a decent job... But I | get those prompts on Waze when stopped at red lights and it's | super annoying! | kenhwang wrote: | I built the industry first version of that product :) | | Fun way to screw with Google is to pick the worst answer | (haven't seen any of the products, worse impression of the | brand, etc). | | Advertisers are starting to try to measure advertising | effectiveness (did the user actually see our ad and like our | product) instead of easily game-able metrics (impressions, | time on screen, click through). | | However, we found that poor ad experiences would result in | poor metrics. Advertisers really don't like it when they | spend millions of dollars in advertising to get a report that | says "your target demographic is less likely to consider your | product now after seeing your ads". | professoretc wrote: | Please drink verification can. | socceroos wrote: | A classic. It was such a joke back in the SA/Slashdot days. I | feel like we've come a long way...into the pit...since then. | Prickle wrote: | A decent amount of that meme has come true. At least, in | the sense of printer ink. | maxglute wrote: | I'm waiting for the end game where AI processes a native | instance of the desktop and outputs a modified desktop | according to criteria. Ads can be displayed and playing in the | background but they get swapped by random gifs to fill time, | dark ui patterns get identified and highlighted. Everything | gets post processed sanitized on the final disaply layer with | no interaction to the outside. | AeroNotix wrote: | I'd rather just let the AI watch the video at that point and | go play with my kids. | idonotknowwhy wrote: | Hopefully the AIs learn to pass captchas soon. I've tested gpt4 | and it still gets them wrong a lot of the time. | DarkNova6 wrote: | Yep, I have been doing this for a very long time as well. Works | like a charm. | Twid3 wrote: | Youtube still works as normal (no ads, no problems) for me with | the latest Firefox and uBlock Origin. | einpoklum wrote: | Same here (I also use EFF Privacy Badger though). Also not | getting ads with Chromium and uBlock Origin. | | Could this be a country-specific thing? | 13415 wrote: | I suspect that, too. I got two weeks of anti-ad blockers that | required refreshing uBlock Origin. Then all anti-adblock | messages stopped. Maybe Portugal has low priority. As far as | I can see, practically no one will pay for Youtube Premium | here. | kuroguro wrote: | I sometimes get blocked but refreshing the ads and quickfixes | lists on ublock solves it every time | underseacables wrote: | Since Firefox is apparently going to follow google with | blocking ad blocks, do you have any thoughts of what browser | you might move to next? | | _Firefox said it will adopt Manifest V3 in the interest of | cross-browser compatibility._ | | https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/11/chrome-pushes... | littlecranky67 wrote: | They adopt manifest v3 in addition to their current APIs. I.e | adblockers on Firefox are going nowhere. | acover wrote: | Having v3 is good, but only having v3 is bad. Is Firefox | removing v2 support? | bc_programming wrote: | Firefox's implementation of Manifest V3 will work with | software like ad blockers as it does not have the same | limitations imposed on the browser side. | FpUser wrote: | Does not "block blockers" for me. Hopefully stays this way or I | am out of it | charcircuit wrote: | Or you could get youtube premium and not have to bother with a | bookmarklet | willsmith72 wrote: | The only times I've put up with ads so far is when casting to my | TV. | | I don't mind the ad recommendations on home and after a video, | but having to watch an extended ad or 2 before a video, and | continuosly throughout the video, is enough for me to get off | YouTube as an entertainment platform. | | Still useful for tutorials, but that much advertising makes the | experience completely unenjoyable. Doubly so if the ad has to be | "skipped" or else will run for 3 minutes, and I'm in the middle | of something with hands occupied (cooking, working out...) | thallium205 wrote: | You can pay to turn off ads. There I saved YouTube as an | entertainment platform for you. | willsmith72 wrote: | im good. for entertainment SoundCloud and netflix are good | enough, youtube just makes good recommendations. not worth | >$100/year | llbeansandrice wrote: | It's like $16/month which is insane | namtab00 wrote: | Am in the same place... I consume YouTube on my SmartTv (native | app on LG WebOS). | | Am contemplating buying a Chromecast with Google TV, and | installing SmartTubeNext on it, just so I can escape the ad | barrage: - 2 ads on video start, unskippable - multiple (at | least 2) 2 ad breaks during even a 10 minute video, almost | always unskippable. | | And the worst thing? It's the same 5-10 ads that you get!... | they rotate in and out on a weekly basis, but the sensation is | you see the same frickin ones over and over again! I don't work | in marketing, but if I ever get to speak to someone who does, | I'll definitely tell them that repeatedly seeing your ad will | definitely put me off your client's product, even if it is the | best choice on the market. | | I already own a Chromecast Ultra, but it sits unused for more | than a year now. | | I'll never get YouTube Premium. I (maybe) can afford it, but | it's too much for what I get in return. | hbn wrote: | I don't get why people have no problem paying for Netflix, Hulu, | Disney+, etc but are so stubborn about YouTube in particular, | when myself and I know many others watch more YouTube than any | streaming service. | | Even when ad blocking extensions work, it's only for browsers. If | you're on Android you can install hacky modified apks, but | YouTube breaks them every once in a while and then you're waiting | for an update and having to go through some patching process | again (I have to do this with YouTube Vanced to watch YouTube on | the cheap Kindle Fire I use exclusively for YouTube in bed). If | you're watching on a smart TV YouTube app or Apple TV or | something... I assume there's options, but you're again gonna be | wasting so much time on maintenance and keeping things up to date | in the ad-blocking arms race, I'd rather just pay. And I don't | know why anyone should expect YouTube to be infinitely ad-free | and payment-free forever. All that storage and data transfer | ain't free. | | Far from it that I'll defend Google, but I don't know what's so | special about YouTube where it's the one service people use more | than anything else they pay for, but they won't pay for it. | xnx wrote: | Even with YouTube Premium, many YouTube videos contain | sponsorship messages within the video. I know they're there for | reasons, but having two types of advertising does make YouTube | different than Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ etc. | hbn wrote: | YouTube isn't paying for server costs with the $0 they make | on ad reads that go from the sponsor directly to the creator. | | You can just tap right on your keyboard a few times to get | past those anyway. | recursive wrote: | Netflix definitely has some "placed" products in some movies. | hotnfresh wrote: | One of the episodes of Stranger Things took like a one- | minute break to do a soda ad. Probably the most jarring and | disruptive "produce placement" (but really, it was more of | an embedded ad) that I've seen. | tiew9Vii wrote: | I'm with you. I get a lot of value out of YouTube, mostly | consume though the TV app. I pay for YouTube premium. | | What is really annoying is the mobile app. The mobile app is | constantly pushing shorts on me, I have no interest, that's not | why I use YouTube and if I only used the mobile app I don't | think I'd pay and instead use YouTube less. The mobile app Home | Screen is junk content for me now where as the TV app brings | relevant longer content...although they are sneaking in one or | two shorts. | weebull wrote: | Netflix invests in content creation, as do other streaming | platforms. YouTube piggybacks it's business on amateurs, | largely paying them with "exposure" and some fractions of a | cent per view. | cesarb wrote: | > I don't get why people have no problem paying for Netflix, | Hulu, Disney+, etc but are so stubborn about YouTube in | particular, when myself and I know many others watch more | YouTube than any streaming service. | | I never used any of these platforms, but I can guess the | reason: these platforms were always paid, which sets the | expectation that one has to pay to get access to them. YouTube, | on the other hand, has for a very long time been available as | non-paid (and even logging in is optional, with rare | exceptions). Furthermore, YouTube has for a very long time | worked even when the user has an ad blocker installed and | enabled (few people customize their ad blocker; if they | installed it because they were annoyed with DoubleClick | animated ads, or with DoubleClick tracking their every move | across the whole web, they won't care what else the default | lists of their ad blocker blocks). People are used to viewing | YouTube without having to pay, and if they use ad blockers, | without ads (and people who are not used to viewing ads are | going to be _more_ annoyed at excessive ads then people who are | already used to watching some ads). It 's natural to feel some | anger at the other party altering the deal, and having to pray | they don't alter it any further. | | And beyond that, it has always been socially acceptable to | ignore and/or reject ads; I might be showing my age with these | examples, but things like going to the bathroom during the ads, | muting the audio, pausing the recording during an ad break (or | fast-forwarding through them during playback), and so on, were | always acceptable, and nobody would scream that you _MUST_ | watch the ads or you 're stealing from the TV station. Why | should YouTube be any different (and it even has "Tube" in its | name to make the analogy stronger)? | SeanAnderson wrote: | I don't understand why this is any different than adblock. If | this is an effective, client-side means of defeating ads, and | Youtube has an effective way of defeating client-side prevention | methods, then isn't this just going to be patched in the same way | as adblock? | | Said differently, this is clearly an arms race. I have more trust | in uBlock winning an arms race than any other extension. If it | fails then I don't believe any other will succeed. | Buttons840 wrote: | One endgame is ad-blockers just blank the video and mute the | sound in an undetectable way. Given the negative spiral that | modern Internet usage often is, a moment of quiet to breathe | and maybe break the cycle I would welcome. | SeanAnderson wrote: | I can see it now - YouTube puts a quick yes/no question after | the ad to confirm comprehension. :) | | Relevant green text: https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png | AeroNotix wrote: | It's the company's fault for making you want it so much. | yulker wrote: | Please drink a verification can. | chongli wrote: | Speaking of enshittification, whatever happened to imgur? | That image does not load directly despite being a deep | link. Plus it's so low resolution the text is unreadable! I | guess they are one step away from just taking down the http | server altogether and just forcing everyone into their app | which will connect via some proprietary protocol. | SeanAnderson wrote: | That's interesting. It loads directly for me and the | quality seems fine. I have experienced the issue you're | describing when attempting to direct link to Reddit | images lately, though. I wonder why we're experiencing | differences? | tedunangst wrote: | Imgur tracks which pages you've loaded and won't show you | the image until you see the html. Literally what you're | complaining about. | hanniabu wrote: | That actually would be pretty nice. It would also help break | the mindless loop of going from video to video. | conradfr wrote: | They'll force you to have your webcam and mic available to | watch YouTube. | YurgenJurgensen wrote: | Mandatory eye-tracking. | candiddevmike wrote: | Someone needs to make TiVo, but for YouTube | cnees wrote: | UBlock can't fly under the radar, but maybe this can for a | while. | BolexNOLA wrote: | I mean, isn't this is basically a reason not to do any sort of | prevention for most things? | marcosdumay wrote: | It's a reason to pile all the effort into the same tool. | | But the it ignores the fact that it may be able to work just | because it's small. | SeanAnderson wrote: | I think I'm just biased because I built an extension a decade | ago that made YouTube a better music player. It flew under | the radar for a couple of years, then got popular, then I got | C&D'ed and lawyered into the dirt [1][2]. | | It makes me sad watching people get excited about releasing | their totally new, innovative YouTube extensions as if this | is a welcoming space. | | These extensions don't exist because they get destroyed not | because it's a space ripe for innovation. | | [1]https://thenextweb.com/news/how-youtube-killed-an- | extension-... [2]https://imgur.com/15gaOf6 | augustulus wrote: | probably more effective than trusting ublock is to find an | obscure method. ublock is too much of an easy target for | google. on the flipside, something obscure is possibly harder | to trust | Aurornis wrote: | The ad blocker arms race is still a victory for the companies. | The average user is going to get tired of fighting the | constantly changing strategies and debugging why their latest | combination of extensions isn't working today despite working | yesterday. Even if they can figure it out half the time, that | still means they're watching 50% of the ads instead of 0%. | | I also see many people capitulating, especially among my peers | who realize that spending potentially hours every month keeping | up with the latest adblocker tricks is not a good use of their | time relative to the trivial amount of money they're saving on | YT premium. | | The die hards will always fight this battle and don't seem to | care how much effort it takes. Some people derive a sense of | satisfaction from gaming the system or "winning" against | corporations. They all have their justifications, but it | doesn't matter much. | | As long as it's sufficiently annoying to deal with, the number | of people fighting it and succeeding will be negligible small. | The problem was when as blockers were so easy that they jumped | from a small number of techie users and started catching on | among the general public. Once an ad-supported company starts | seeing a significant number of users evading the ads _and also_ | refusing to pay, they have to do something. | throw_pm23 wrote: | This is true from the corporations point of view, but as a | user, why should I take that perspective? If me and my family | don't have to see ads, and it is a minor effort, it's still a | victory for me. | xnx wrote: | > Said differently, this is clearly an arms race. | | Definitely. The next phase is an AI agent "watching" (through | the "analog hole") if necessary and applying computer vision | systems to detect and remove ads. | devmor wrote: | This is essentially the level that high end competitive video | game cheating is reaching now too. | | Plugging directly into the computer as a separate device that | emulates monitor, mouse and keyboard. | paulcole wrote: | YouTube Premium is a top 5, maybe top 3 subscription service that | I pay for. Others in that tier would be Amazon Prime, Apple One+, | NYT Crosswords, and 1Password. | | Watching on every device without praying that this week's | ridiculous workaround continues to function for only like | $15/month feels like a bargain. | EGreg wrote: | and that's how they get you :-) | | Remember folks... when running away from a bear you don't have | to outrun everyone, just the slowest person | | And similarly, to get people or organizations to pay, you just | have to make it much more expensive for them at every moment to | hack or fork your service than just pay you. It gets harder the | bigger the organization is, but works like a charm on the long | tail! | | If you've got an open source platform, it's a major | consideration because a competitor can just fork your service | and start offering it. So you have to have enough of a network | effect and lock-in (e.g. ethereum nodes only taking ethereum | gas as payment) that the fork is not as accepted for years, | despite being faster and better (e.g. polygon). You can | centralize trust (Amazon), Liquidity (exchanges) and ease-of- | use through vertical integration (Apple). | yurishimo wrote: | Same. I figure that since I watch this much YouTube, it's | probably worth paying for. At the moment, the rev share seems | to be _okay_ compared to other creator platforms, so I take | that bit of solace as well. | conradfr wrote: | That's fine but all the streaming platforms get more expensive | every x months nowadays. | paulcole wrote: | Is it too expensive today? If not, sign up and then cancel | when it gets too expensive. Plus at work, I get a raise every | x months nowadays, too. Gotta spend it on something. | genocidicbunny wrote: | I wouldn't be able to enjoy my usage of it. I have a strong | moral objection to ads, so to me paying to get rid of ads is | akin to paying off the bully so they will stop beating you up. | Next week they might decide you haven't paid enough, or that it | doesn't even matter that you paid up -- they're bored and want | to beat someone up. | | I'd rather give the bully a whack in balls instead. | sanswork wrote: | Asking people to provide compensation for a service isn't | bullying. They even give you a choice on how you pay. You | hate ads, they give you an option to avoid them and now you | hate paying to avoid them. You're trying to makes yourself | sound self righteous and you just sound like you believe you | are entitled to others resources. | genocidicbunny wrote: | I'm not trying to be righteous, my moral compass is mine. | | I'd be fine with YouTube being a purely paid service. | Either pay, or the server returns a 500. I might even be | willing to pay for it then, knowing that the only ads i | might encounter are sponsor segments in the video | themselves (that i can also skip right on by.) | paulcole wrote: | You've been regularly commenting on a website that's an | advertising/marketing channel for a VC firm since 2018. | | Seems like it's more accurate to say that you have a moral | objection to either ads you don't like or things you have to | pay for? | genocidicbunny wrote: | HN doesn't force me to watch or read the ads. I can always | ignore the posts that are mainly advertising. | | So perhaps my moral objections are to obnoxious, in your | face, unavoidable advertisements. | oldkinglog wrote: | I've been reading HN since around that time, and it's | hasn't made me sympathetic toward VC. If anything it's | hardened my views against consumption, greed and | advertising. | djur wrote: | I agree. If you watch a lot of YouTube it's a great deal. Way | cheaper than cable. | idonotknowwhy wrote: | I'm happy to pay for it, but I don't always want to be logged | in and gave an echo chamber created for me. When I'm not logged | in, I don't want to watch ads | krona wrote: | Watching one ad and then clearing cookies seems to work for me. ( | _shrug_ ) | AeroNotix wrote: | Well trained, citizen. | bcrl wrote: | I just wish I could convince Google that I will _never_ buy | certain products that they force feed me ads on continuously. No, | I will never buy a Chromebook, so please stop putting that ad | everywhere. No, I am not going to switch to an Android phone | either. | codetrotter wrote: | In fact, everyone should instead band together to finance | development of more maximally open hardware for laptops and | phones and tablets. | genman wrote: | I bought my current car only because I was able to block the | car maker being stupid and force me to watch their ads on | Youtube. I didn't use ad-blocker before but interruptive video | ads were the last straw for me. | throwaway346434 wrote: | We need to kick this up a notch, with automated recognition of | the advertiser and either complaint letters generated to their | sales team email addresses, a media regulator, or for those | with physical stores, geofenced notifications on your device to | remind you how intrusive the brand has been/directions to the | nearest competitor's store at the tap of a button. | | You can absolutely advertise on an intrusive platform, but as | consumers, we can aggressively boycott/make your marketing work | against you. | actionfromafar wrote: | How can you prove you are trustworthy? | brookst wrote: | Everyone feels that way, but in a large population some | percentage will be swayed. Display ads are a statistics game, | not a transactional one. | bcrl wrote: | But there are oodles of other things that I would consider | buying! They'd do better with random ideas for Christmas | gifts for family members, which would be nice given that it | is the season... | gnicholas wrote: | Yes, but they can get you to talk about Chromebooks and Android | phones by advertising them incessantly. See, you just did it | again! | agumonkey wrote: | And I take great pleasure to manually shift to invidious | instances just out of spite. | endisneigh wrote: | Why don't people just not use YouTube if they don't like the ads? | Simple. | | Peertube is there for those folks. People keep whining about the | monopoly but won't go to another service to help grow it. | | People also whine about sponsor ads, as if you have to watch | those videos or those channels. Don't consume their content if | you don't like it. | | At the end of the day, if you don't want to be tracked, hate ads | and hate Google the solution is simple: stop using YouTube. | | The anti Facebook people understand this, which is why we don't | see incessant posts about facebooks anti-Adblock on HN. The kind | of people on HN who hate Facebook probably just don't visit the | site at all. Same with Reddit vs mastodon. Twitter vs threads. | Quora vs ChatGPT. | | Anti YouTubers seem unique in their constant whining yet | reluctance to stop using what they hate. | marcosdumay wrote: | Because it's the only platform you can find on a Google search. | calamari4065 wrote: | >Why don't people just not use YouTube if they don't like the | ads? | | Simple: the videos they want to watch don't exist elsewhere. | PeerTube doesn't help you if nobody you watch publishes to it. | | I use PeerTube, I run my own instance. PeerTube really sucks | compared to YouTube. Even with all of the enshittification and | google crippling the service, the quantity, quality, and | discoverability of videos on YouTube has no comparison at all | anywhere. | | People use YouTube for the reason they use anything: there | simply is no viable alterative. | | Whining at people to use PeerTube doesn't help. You have to | convince people to publish there before anyone _can_ use it. | TheMode wrote: | Because these websites create expectation. If everyone is using | YouTube, won't you be missing something by not going? If you | started using the service when you felt it was great and it | deteriorated since, would it really be unfair to feel a sort of | betrayal? | | You should go tell drug addict to just stop, not that hard. | Maybe also to everybody complaining about house pricing, after | all our ancestors build theirs with log and dirt why would you | need something else. | kimixa wrote: | And surely it's self evident that if everyone blocked ads, the | service would stop functioning? | | So all this is about being the "Special Few" who can get away | with it, despite often positioning themselves as the Moral | Choice because the adverts are bad. | creativenolo wrote: | I'm oddly OK for now with the pop up. Still would rather it to an | ad. Makes me reflect on if I really want to have surfed to where | I am. And I find myself moving on or seeking elsewhere. | | This may all change. But the friction\value trade offs are a bit | 'shrug' for me. Maybe instant video is still novelty and waiting | a few seconds to see it, isn't so different. | russellbeattie wrote: | I think it's odd that YouTube hasn't simply proxied the ads into | the same stream to make them indistinguishable from the video. | Technically the browser is pulling chunks of video from their | servers, and the ad content is pulled from different servers | which ad blockers restrict. If the ad chunks weren't | identifiable, there would be no practical way of blocking them. | It'd be like removing commercials - or those in-video sponsorship | segments - from a live broadcast. | | It seems YouTube is creating an arms race with ad blockers and | alienating users by threatening bans than simply changing the way | the ads are served. Yes, there's a whole industry around bidding | for, dynamically serving and tracking ads using VAST and all | that, but I'm positive Google has the market power to change | that. | tentacleuno wrote: | > I think it's odd that YouTube hasn't simply proxied the ads | into the same stream to make them indistinguishable from the | video. | | Yeah, same -- cable TV has been doing that since god knows how | long. There must be some internal engineering reason(s) behind | it. | markdown wrote: | The cost of doing so would be magnitudes more than what they | could make from ad money. | tedunangst wrote: | I could build such a system for a mere billion. | eigenvalue wrote: | YouTube premium is one of the best value purchases I've made. If | you subscribe to Netflix you're probably better off canceling | that and replacing it with YouTube premium. Also, you can get the | family plan for not much more and share with your parents and | siblings (or in-laws!)-- they will be very appreciative if they | watch YouTube and don't already have premium. It's not just for | skipping ads, it also lets you download videos locally on your | phone and the audio continues in the background when you switch | to another phone app. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | YT premium is one of the few subscriptions I find reasonable | tbh. Youtube music, no ads on youtube, my conscience is clean, | and I support creators. | vetinari wrote: | > no ads on youtube | | Really? No ads baked-in into videos by the creators? I.e. | those skipped by another add-on, sponsorblock? | | > and I support creators. | | Are you sure about that? Why do they need to put their own | ads into videos then? | | By paying Netflix, Amazon Prime, or other streaming service, | you surely would: Netflix and Amazon have to pay for the | content. But Youtube? They get it for free. | | > my conscience is clean, | | But your privacy-awareness should be on alert. For YouTube | premium, you have to be logged in. You can bet, that Google | profiles you based on what you watch. They just don't show | you the ads right on the YouTube, but surely they do | elsewhere on their network. | | Think of it like browser equivalent of the smart tv connected | to net. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | > Really? No ads baked-in into videos by the creators? I.e. | those skipped by another add-on, sponsorblock? | | Sponsorblock, yes. | | > Are you sure about that? Why do they need to put their | own ads into videos then? | | For the people who use ad-blockers. Not me specifically and | youtube doesn't provide a functionality to skip certain | parts on paid views. | | > But your privacy-awareness should be on alert. For | YouTube premium, you have to be logged in. You can bet, | that Google profiles you based on what you watch. They just | don't show you the ads right on the YouTube, but surely | they do elsewhere on their network. | | I use kagi (paid), and ad-blockers for everything else. | | I can live with google having access to my [poor] music | taste and view history. | _the_inflator wrote: | Same here. No hassle whatsoever. I cannot remember seeing an ad | for years now, honestly, I do not get the discussion about | blockers when you have everything via Premium. I use YT a lot, | more often than Apple Music for example. | cvhashim04 wrote: | Hard to pay for something that was always *free* | djur wrote: | YouTube has had ads forever. It's never been free. | prolapso wrote: | >skip ads | | >download videos locally on your phone | | >the audio continues in the background when you switch to | another phone app | | Y... you mean like NewPipe already does? | kzrdude wrote: | There's also a firefox addon (firefox for android) that can | help you play youtube video audio in the background. | thallium205 wrote: | YT Premium is the only media subscription needed. | mattrighetti wrote: | I use YouTube A LOT. | | I follow a bunch of developers and engineering channels on it | and I learn a lot of stuff on YouTube in general. | | A couple of years ago, after running AdguardHome on my network, | I've noticed that YouTube ads became more and more aggressive | and that was hard to unnotice since I mostly consume YouTube on | mobile devices that don't have adblockers. I just gave up and | convinced myself that YouTube, of all the services, is the one | that probably deserves my money, so here I am, paying for the | student plan which is 6.99EUR a month. Now, after almost a year | of premium, it's probably the only plan I could not give up | along with Spotify's. I'm not used to ads anymore, I listen to | a lot of stuff in background mode and I love it more than | before. | | Only thing that got on my nerves is that they now decided that | if you don't activate watch history you're not going to get a | Home feed, which is crazy if you ask me. | SeanAnderson wrote: | How will you feel when YouTube introduces quick ads for premium | users and longer ads for free users? | | There's absolutely nothing stopping the arms race from | continuing past the point which you are currently satisified. | | Just look at Hulu, for example. | | Also, it's ridiculous that YouTube was able to convince people | it's acceptable to have audio pause when in the background. If | YouTube on Desktop paused audio when the tab was not the active | tab it would be fundamentally unusable. | afavour wrote: | Not to mention you get YouTube Music too. The app is inferior | to Spotify but it's good enough and let me get rid of another | subscription. | thesagan wrote: | [delayed] | net23 wrote: | Blipvert | coffeecloud wrote: | Just pay the $15 for the ad free version? The entitlement people | feel for a free service that takes hundreds of millions of | dollars in compute and human hours to run boggles me. | | Don't like ads? Don't like subscription fees? Don't like large | tech companies? Great! Go to the library and check out a book. | hobs wrote: | They are entitled, but just like any commercial service this | will just bloat to "ad lite" and then "full ads but you can | still pay for it" - cable did the exact same thing. | drivers99 wrote: | When's that? It's been 8 years so far, so good. | blindhippo wrote: | It's already there, except the ads are baked into most | content as "sponsored videos". They make it easy to skip over | the ads (seriously, just fast forward 20-60 seconds depending | on the video). | | For better or worse, the vast majority of my media | consumption is youtube these days and of all the subs I pay | for, it's the one I get the most value out of. I don't get | the cynicism. | saos wrote: | Erm No. | jmprspret wrote: | Oh boo hoo. | AndroTux wrote: | For me personally it's the way they're bullying me to pay it. | For years I wanted YouTube and Twitter to introduce a paid plan | with less ads. And then they did, and immediately started | harassing everyone who didn't purchase it right away with ads | every few seconds. It's just rude and I don't like being | bullied into doing something. | blindhippo wrote: | What's the alternative here? Just offer the service with | minimal ads and just hope people decide to sign up for the | ad-free version - a value proposition that makes little sense | since the ads are minimal? | | They aren't bullying anyone. They are trying to make a | business model work as efficiently as possible. Anything that | relies on ad revenue is going to be predatory like this. | makeitdouble wrote: | Your point is they're not bullies, just mere predators ? | dade_ wrote: | I'm fine with paying for this type of service,but the last | thing I want to do is give money to YouTube so it can become an | even bigger defacto monopoly. | analognoise wrote: | The deal was they siphon off all our private data, ruin society | and get filthy rich, we get an infinite place to store cat | videos. | | They're breaking the implied contract, not us. | arsome wrote: | I mean the entire point and value of that whole data siphon | thing is literally the ads. | throw_pm23 wrote: | Spoken like a true hacker. | dvngnt_ wrote: | no. sponsor block, downloading, kodi playback is free whereas | you're paying for a worst experience while being tracked | arsome wrote: | I pirate everything anyways, why in the hell would I pay for | YouTube? | adamgordonbell wrote: | 55% net goes directly to the creators making the videos. The | very video you are watching. | | Encourage what you want to see in the world. | namlem wrote: | No. They're making my pay for the bundle of YouTube Music plus | ad free YouTube. I'm happy with Spotify, I refuse to pay extra | for a service I won't use. | NavinF wrote: | If it was $10+$5 for YouTube+music, this thread would be full | of people complaining that Google is nickel and diming them | because there's already music on YouTube.com | xienze wrote: | I 100% guarantee you that eventually the $15 tier will have | "limited" ads and then the upcoming $25 tier is ad free, rinse | and repeat. It's happened with cable, it's happened with | streaming, it'll happen with YouTube. | NavinF wrote: | Doubt it. Most streaming sites are still ad free and their | prices only increased with inflation. Both YouTube and | creators already get way more revenue from premium | subscribers than ad watchers so I doubt that'll change this | decade | yumraj wrote: | > Just pay the $15 for the ad free version? | | Why not pay people to watch the ads by a similar logic? | | BTW, curious has anyone ever anywhere in the world, any media, | tried creating a channel/stream which just shows ads and pays | people if they watch? Wondering if that'll work. | | Also, I rarely watch YT, so for me personally $15 or whatever | the price is, is too high. | | Another thing, ad blockers also help in privacy. $15 may result | in no ads being shown in YT, but does that also mean that | Google is not collecting data? I'll consider paying to Google | for a no-data-collected mode. | devmor wrote: | I'll pay for the ad free version when youtube stewards a | responsible and accountable platform - both in moderating | content and in proving transparent appeals instead of giving an | open path for copyright trolls to harass and cause monetary | harm to creators. | | Until then, they get no money and I watch no ads. | tshaddox wrote: | How are you using the word "entitlement" here? A very small | number of people are looking for technological solutions to | block ads, presumably motivated more by the enjoyment of the | intellectual pursuit than by the disdain of ads. | | I don't see any statements or actions even remotely hinting at | feeling _entitled_ to an ad-free viewing experience. They're | simply trying to figure out how to achieve an ad-free | experience. | | If someone locally modifies a website's visuals to implement | dark mode, would you lambast them for feeling _entitled_ to | dark mode? | UncleMeat wrote: | Yeah the rage here is wild to me. People _constantly_ say | "just give me an option to pay" but Youtube Premium has existed | forever and remains an option. | zerr wrote: | Can ad publishers filter out ad blocking users as not being their | target audience? Forcing someone to watch your ad most likely | triggers negative connotations about your brand. | SnorkelTan wrote: | I think advertising still works even on people who don't like | it and prefer that if not. | riku_iki wrote: | Some ML likely doing this: they track your interests, for | example you searched adblockers in the past, it goes as a | feature to ML model, and model predicts that it is unlikely you | will click and make purchase, and they will bid on you much | lower, as result you will see lots of cheap junk Ads.. | zogrodea wrote: | While reading your comment, I thought abouts ads for ad | blockers like "hey, we noticed you searched for ad blockers | so here are the top 10 best!". That's not a good idea though. | JD557 wrote: | > That's not a good idea though. | | I wonder why you say that. At least an ad for a specific ad | blocker sounds like a great idea. | | - Ideally, you don't send ads to users of your product - | Users of inferior products will see your ad, and it might | be super effective (if you used MY adblocker, you wouldn't | be seeing this ad) - Everything else is a user that doesn't | have an ad blocker, and it's probably an easy sell to say | "would you like to never see ads like this?" | hnick wrote: | This is one argument I've used in my head for ad blockers - | you're removing hostile viewers so it might be a net win. It's | like dropping flyers in a "no junk mail" box. I wonder if | anyone studied it. | keithnz wrote: | using edge with ublock origin I haven't seen any ads. If I use | chrome I get problems. | fallat wrote: | YouTube, Google - just pull the trigger guys. Make YouTube a | completely paid for platform. | bad_alloc wrote: | This instantly loses the main selling point: Massive audience. | If they manage to get 20% of people to pay (which would be | huge) they'd lose hundreds of millions of viewers still. | jacobwilliamroy wrote: | There are so many people currently employed at Google whose | livelihood (think mortgage payments, food, gasoline) depend on | having a problem that they can work on but never solve. | iamacyborg wrote: | If only regulatory bodies were as motivated in combating | advertising's huge data privacy issues inherent in RTB as Google | are in beating down people trying to not have their data sent to | hundreds of third parties without consent. | DevKoala wrote: | What is the stance of the people who work against the revenue | generation of the services they consume? | | Should YouTube be a free service or what? | | It's only a semi-ironic question. Perhaps someone has a vision | for how it all works out. | | Full disclosure: I work on programmatic advertising technologies. | tehbeard wrote: | You're never going to capture the "will never watch ads" group. | | What is being destroyed by YouTube's current policy that led to | this anti adblock attempt, is pushing too far with the ads. | | Crap quality and overstuffed. | | A 5 second ad on a 4 minute video? Fine. | | 1:30 ad, one of TWO... on same video? | | Fuck. That. Noise. | | It's the same segmentation issue as piracy, y'all get | hyperfocused on the group that will NEVER play ball, and ruin | the experience so much for those that would, that they "swap | teams". | joenathanone wrote: | If the USPS was never a public service America would literally | look differently. Maybe social media(including YouTube) is the | modern day USPS, the primary way Americans interact/communicate | with each other. | adityamwagh wrote: | I'm ready to pay about a $2 per month for YT as a paid service. | Personally, paying more than $2 for a software makes me want to | avoid using it completely. | bigyikes wrote: | Ad-supported services account for the fact that some users | block ads. | | If users blocking ads is enough to make the service | unprofitable, the service should switch to a paid model or shut | down. | | It's an adversarial relationship. The service is within their | rights to shove ads down your throat, and you're within your | rights to fight back. | | (I pay for YouTube Premium) | mathgradthrow wrote: | The right to block advertisements is the right to close your eyes | and plug your ears. Google is trying to argue that its a | violation of their terms of service to close your eyes and plug | your ears. It's a violation of my person to try and detect | whether I'm not paying attention to your ad. | kristopolous wrote: | I find this interesting. Do you consider YouTube to just be a | consumer product or does it occupy a different space in your | mind? | l33tman wrote: | There is an old Black Mirror episode where people have to sit | in cubicles with 4 screens around them looking at ads to gain | credits or something, and it tracks if you close your eyes it | simply pauses the ads... | fxtentacle wrote: | I believe Google still has the right to waste 3 seconds of your | time, so if they only verify that you wait for the duration of | the ad, that would be a fair equivalent to you closing your | eyes. | | And I guess that's the next line of defense: GPU shaders to | just replace ads with something more pretty to look at. | zare_st wrote: | I (Firefox+uBlock Origin on FreeBSD, Windows 10, Rocky, CentOS), | logged in, have not encountered this yet. | | I also run a small channel mostly with ROIO bootlegs. The channel | has never been penalized, it has a small but growing user base, | and all the videos have been monetized by someone else. I also | sometimes watch a video from my cellphone where the ads run. | | These might be the factors why I still didn't get the Youtube | stick. | | P.S they've been monetized by companies that have no rights to | monetize them whatsoever. However I have no rights over the | material and if legal holders wish to battle the record companies | that hogged my videos, that's great. If I have a recording of TV | broadcast of singer-songwriter playing his material in a public | festival, the record label that paid and released studio version | of those songs has no stake in that. There can be a complex | contract between broadcaster, festival and the performer, but I'm | sure record company is not part of it unless it has explicitly | funded the festival or the broadcast, which is a rarity, not | applicable to my videos. The algorithm IDs these tracks as studio | versions or as official live version which then trigger | "ownership" by those record companies. | | So let's not pretend Youtube is some fair entity that needs to be | paid fairly. They don't play fair themselves. | corn-dog wrote: | Hey the creator here, was not expecting this to blow up at all. I | made this I guess because of the Streisand effect, I probably | never would have bothered if it weren't for all the news about ad | blockers not working. | | I intend this as a second line of defence against ads, where the | first line would be a conventional ad blocker. | | After work I'm going to investigate the same technique for | speeding up paid sponsor portions of the video. | | My background is a web dev, but I make extensions in my spare | time :) I recommend making some yourself they are a fun little | project | | If you want to see a way more awesome extension I've created | check this out - https://mobileview.io/ | nottorp wrote: | Hmm. You'd still have to disable uBlock Origin on youtube and | thus let google track you? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-23 23:00 UTC)