7 ms·

> Ads shorter than 30-seconds, including the 20-second spots, can be made unskippable. uBlock Origin will continue to serve me well.

vvggff 10y ago
Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.
- imglorp 10y ago
  Yeah we should probably whitelist youtube to sponsor the vids there. That's reasonable. HOWEVER the real assholes are whoever is serving bloat and ads that will do anything to get malware onto your machine and track your every breath. This is really why we're blocking.
  - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
    That's the actual problem with these ads: bloat, bandwidth usage, javascript, profiling, de-anonymization, tracking, attacks on privacy, sound, unskippable videos, etc. I will feel no remorse for adblocking until advertisers go back to static, single-request, non-tracking, non-targetting ads.
- whatismyip 10y ago
  When it's available in my region, sure. It's coming up to 2 and a 1/2 years old and still only available in 5 countries.
  - ReverseCold 10y ago
    End of October 2015 - Feb 2017 Huh, that's about right. It feels like it was released after that.
- crestedtazo 10y ago
  Surely this comment is against HN guidelines and should be removed....
  - Rumudiez 10y ago
    Regardless of opinions, the poster's first sentence does present an argument. Having to block ads in the first place makes the ad creators and deliverers assholes, but not the user, as explained in other comments.
- lightbyte 10y ago
  >Look, bandwidth costs money. You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. I only get a set amount of data each month, so you can be sure I'm going to block 100% of the ads I can to stop them from wasting my limited bandwidth.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    > You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. No, you paid for bandwidth from your ISP to you. Your ISP doesn't pay anyone else for traffic. YouTube also has to pay your ISP and that cost is made up from ads.
    - ue_ 10y ago
      I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. But even that is beside the point. I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. I see no moral problem here, and I will choose what the bandwidth I pay for is spent on.
      - fjdlwlv 10y ago
        Yeah and my supermarket is totally cool with me shoplifting because they haven't stopped me yet.
        ue_ 10y ago
        The supermarket is obviously not cool with you shoplifting beacuse they have security guards that try to stop you from doing it, and they call the police when it happens.
      - Veratyr 10y ago
        > I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. It's not your responsibility to make YouTube profitable but if you enjoy the content, it's in your best interest to contribute to it, whether it be through watching ads or subscribing. The service needs some amount of money just to cover bandwidth and maintenance but more importantly, most of the money from those ads/subscriptions goes to the people who make the content you watch, many of whom can't do so without that money. Those people also can't choose to block adblockers. > If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. They do. It's called ads. You can't watch the video until you watch the ads. > And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. Or they don't want to get into an arms race just yet. > I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. The download of the thing you don't want here is the payment, not the product. Most of us do pay for things we want. > I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. What's your profession? I believe it's okay for me to promise you payment in exchange for your work then take it without payment.
- svantana 10y ago
  What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the techies.
  - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
    > they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.
    - dukeluke 10y ago
      I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
      - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
        > I don't understand. What do you mean by this? Ads embedded in the video stream (i.e. "burnt" as one with subtitles) can't be blocked but also can't deliver any active content (JS, Flash, etc) used for tracking or infecting users.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    That wouldn't be a silver bullet; MythTV already has ad-blocking tech that works for a single stream.
- maqr 10y ago
  Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them? If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model. No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.
  - AjithAntony 10y ago
    > If giving out free videos Are they giving out free videos? The content creator gets to choose how to monetize, right? The platform does allow for free, and the creator chose to get paid.
  - Rumudiez 10y ago
    For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see people defend businesses without viable models. If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for, "selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is usable despite the income generating parts. Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable enough to, well, be "in business."
    - always_good 10y ago
      Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially blocked. We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking like adblockers won. Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.
- jameskegel 10y ago
  That type of discourse is not needed here and does not contribute to the topic of conversation.
- city41 10y ago
  The problem is people can be an "asshole" with no repercussions and completely no way Google can stop them. Almost all business models rely on receiving payment before delivering product, simply because of the fact we can all revert to being assholes quite easily. So Google and other companies that largely depend on online ads just have to accept the fact that some people are going to disable them. They have complete ability to do so and simply no way it can be stopped. It's inevitable. If ad blocking becomes so rampant that businesses start to collapse, we'll likely see the internet really ramp up subscription models.
- camus2 10y ago
  > Look, bandwidth costs money. For the user too, do you think people have unlimited data plans? I'm not paying to see ads. > Don't be an asshole. Because insults are going to rally people to your cause?
  - hasenj 10y ago
    You're getting the videos for free ... So that's a weird excuse.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - ReverseCold 10y ago
    > do you think people have unlimited data plans My phone has unlimited data (only plan advertised by T-Mobile) but it's possible for my home internet not to be (restriction removed on the gigabit plan, which I have). So if the company only cares about the US then... "Hahaha yyolo rigt?!1!" - some exec
- rchaud 10y ago
  Nothing's stopping Google from simply charging people to access Youtube. The reason they don't do it is because YT offers network effects and user lock-in that have significant economic benefits. I trust that a large corporation with some of the smartest minds in the world working there would have changed the YT business model if they were worried about their bandwidth costs.
bpodgursky 10y ago
Youtube has a totally reasonable subscription which hides all ads. If you want to run adblockers on random news sites, whatever, I'm not going to argue, but there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit"
- notatoad 10y ago
  >there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit" or perhaps the slightly more valid excuse of "i don't live in australia, mexico, korea, new zealand, or the united states"
  - aarongolliver 10y ago
    That's not an excuse. They're short ads, not paywalls.
    - mcintyre1994 10y ago
      I literally can't buy Youtube Red. I would have done and I'd probably never have moved to Spotify if I could, but I can't so I'll just block their ads because they're awful. One day they might let me pay them, but unless their originals become competitive with Netflix I probably can't be bothered now.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- forgotpswdagain 10y ago
  I refuse to pay for youtube to watch pirated material something just doesn't sit right with me about that ymmv
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    I.... What? You're happy to _watch_ the pirated material for free, but you refuse to pay for it? (Not even challenging the fact they do aggressively take down copyrighted material) This is the most pathetic tortured excuse I have yet seen.
owlninja 10y ago
Ad-blockers are great, but people using them are reaching crossfit-levels of just having to let you know.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Crossfit might kill you, but as a user there's no practical downside to ad blocking. Faster web? Less chance of malware? Less annoyance? Heck, a product marketed as doing all of those things could probably be sold all on its own if not for the meta-irony of an ad for an ad blocker. Seriously though, this is a good thing. Everybody needs to know about and install one. It should be considered a part of basic internet literacy.
  - kyrra 10y ago
    The downside: all content starts becoming premium or paid content. Or it disappears behind all together. Without ads, YouTube would not exist in its current form. Though something like vimeo make take over, not everyone wants to pay to host their content.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Naw, content becomes filled with native ads
- bittercynic 10y ago
  Everyone here is well aware of ad-blocking technology, but MANY people in the world either don't know how much difference it makes, or think it would be too difficult to set up. Helping an unsavvy person set up an ad-blocker may make a substantial positive difference in their life.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  You should try adding ad-blocking to your crossfit routine. My old trainer, Brandon, recommended using AdBlock Plus, but my new trainer, Duncan, got me to try uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Ghostery, and my clicking finger is so pumped. I can't even pick my nose with it any more!~
AjithAntony 10y ago
What country are you watching from? Seems that others are seeing ublock fail. https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/5ua042/youtube_ads_getting_through/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/5ua042/youtub... https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/295 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/295

vvggff 10y ago

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

imglorp 10y ago
Yeah we should probably whitelist youtube to sponsor the vids there. That's reasonable. HOWEVER the real assholes are whoever is serving bloat and ads that will do anything to get malware onto your machine and track your every breath. This is really why we're blocking.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  That's the actual problem with these ads: bloat, bandwidth usage, javascript, profiling, de-anonymization, tracking, attacks on privacy, sound, unskippable videos, etc. I will feel no remorse for adblocking until advertisers go back to static, single-request, non-tracking, non-targetting ads.
whatismyip 10y ago
When it's available in my region, sure. It's coming up to 2 and a 1/2 years old and still only available in 5 countries.
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  End of October 2015 - Feb 2017 Huh, that's about right. It feels like it was released after that.
crestedtazo 10y ago
Surely this comment is against HN guidelines and should be removed....
- Rumudiez 10y ago
  Regardless of opinions, the poster's first sentence does present an argument. Having to block ads in the first place makes the ad creators and deliverers assholes, but not the user, as explained in other comments.
lightbyte 10y ago
>Look, bandwidth costs money. You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. I only get a set amount of data each month, so you can be sure I'm going to block 100% of the ads I can to stop them from wasting my limited bandwidth.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  > You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. No, you paid for bandwidth from your ISP to you. Your ISP doesn't pay anyone else for traffic. YouTube also has to pay your ISP and that cost is made up from ads.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. But even that is beside the point. I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. I see no moral problem here, and I will choose what the bandwidth I pay for is spent on.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Yeah and my supermarket is totally cool with me shoplifting because they haven't stopped me yet.
      - ue_ 10y ago
        The supermarket is obviously not cool with you shoplifting beacuse they have security guards that try to stop you from doing it, and they call the police when it happens.
    - Veratyr 10y ago
      > I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. It's not your responsibility to make YouTube profitable but if you enjoy the content, it's in your best interest to contribute to it, whether it be through watching ads or subscribing. The service needs some amount of money just to cover bandwidth and maintenance but more importantly, most of the money from those ads/subscriptions goes to the people who make the content you watch, many of whom can't do so without that money. Those people also can't choose to block adblockers. > If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. They do. It's called ads. You can't watch the video until you watch the ads. > And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. Or they don't want to get into an arms race just yet. > I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. The download of the thing you don't want here is the payment, not the product. Most of us do pay for things we want. > I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. What's your profession? I believe it's okay for me to promise you payment in exchange for your work then take it without payment.
svantana 10y ago
What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the techies.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  > they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
    - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
      > I don't understand. What do you mean by this? Ads embedded in the video stream (i.e. "burnt" as one with subtitles) can't be blocked but also can't deliver any active content (JS, Flash, etc) used for tracking or infecting users.
- icebraining 10y ago
  That wouldn't be a silver bullet; MythTV already has ad-blocking tech that works for a single stream.
maqr 10y ago
Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them? If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model. No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.
- AjithAntony 10y ago
  > If giving out free videos Are they giving out free videos? The content creator gets to choose how to monetize, right? The platform does allow for free, and the creator chose to get paid.
- Rumudiez 10y ago
  For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see people defend businesses without viable models. If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for, "selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is usable despite the income generating parts. Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable enough to, well, be "in business."
  - always_good 10y ago
    Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially blocked. We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking like adblockers won. Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.
jameskegel 10y ago
That type of discourse is not needed here and does not contribute to the topic of conversation.
city41 10y ago
The problem is people can be an "asshole" with no repercussions and completely no way Google can stop them. Almost all business models rely on receiving payment before delivering product, simply because of the fact we can all revert to being assholes quite easily. So Google and other companies that largely depend on online ads just have to accept the fact that some people are going to disable them. They have complete ability to do so and simply no way it can be stopped. It's inevitable. If ad blocking becomes so rampant that businesses start to collapse, we'll likely see the internet really ramp up subscription models.
camus2 10y ago
> Look, bandwidth costs money. For the user too, do you think people have unlimited data plans? I'm not paying to see ads. > Don't be an asshole. Because insults are going to rally people to your cause?
- hasenj 10y ago
  You're getting the videos for free ... So that's a weird excuse.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  > do you think people have unlimited data plans My phone has unlimited data (only plan advertised by T-Mobile) but it's possible for my home internet not to be (restriction removed on the gigabit plan, which I have). So if the company only cares about the US then... "Hahaha yyolo rigt?!1!" - some exec
rchaud 10y ago
Nothing's stopping Google from simply charging people to access Youtube. The reason they don't do it is because YT offers network effects and user lock-in that have significant economic benefits. I trust that a large corporation with some of the smartest minds in the world working there would have changed the YT business model if they were worried about their bandwidth costs.

bpodgursky 10y ago

Youtube has a totally reasonable subscription which hides all ads. If you want to run adblockers on random news sites, whatever, I'm not going to argue, but there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit"

notatoad 10y ago
>there's really no excuse on youtube except "I'm a cheap shit" or perhaps the slightly more valid excuse of "i don't live in australia, mexico, korea, new zealand, or the united states"
- aarongolliver 10y ago
  That's not an excuse. They're short ads, not paywalls.
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    I literally can't buy Youtube Red. I would have done and I'd probably never have moved to Spotify if I could, but I can't so I'll just block their ads because they're awful. One day they might let me pay them, but unless their originals become competitive with Netflix I probably can't be bothered now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
forgotpswdagain 10y ago
I refuse to pay for youtube to watch pirated material something just doesn't sit right with me about that ymmv
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  I.... What? You're happy to _watch_ the pirated material for free, but you refuse to pay for it? (Not even challenging the fact they do aggressively take down copyrighted material) This is the most pathetic tortured excuse I have yet seen.

owlninja 10y ago

Ad-blockers are great, but people using them are reaching crossfit-levels of just having to let you know.

Karunamon 10y ago
Crossfit might kill you, but as a user there's no practical downside to ad blocking. Faster web? Less chance of malware? Less annoyance? Heck, a product marketed as doing all of those things could probably be sold all on its own if not for the meta-irony of an ad for an ad blocker. Seriously though, this is a good thing. Everybody needs to know about and install one. It should be considered a part of basic internet literacy.
- kyrra 10y ago
  The downside: all content starts becoming premium or paid content. Or it disappears behind all together. Without ads, YouTube would not exist in its current form. Though something like vimeo make take over, not everyone wants to pay to host their content.
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    Naw, content becomes filled with native ads
bittercynic 10y ago
Everyone here is well aware of ad-blocking technology, but MANY people in the world either don't know how much difference it makes, or think it would be too difficult to set up. Helping an unsavvy person set up an ad-blocker may make a substantial positive difference in their life.
logfromblammo 10y ago
You should try adding ad-blocking to your crossfit routine. My old trainer, Brandon, recommended using AdBlock Plus, but my new trainer, Duncan, got me to try uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Ghostery, and my clicking finger is so pumped. I can't even pick my nose with it any more!~

AjithAntony 10y ago

What country are you watching from? Seems that others are seeing ublock fail. https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/5ua042/youtube_ads_getting_through/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/5ua042/youtub... https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/295 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/295