11 ms·
anecdotally youtube seems to have aggressively increased the number of ads just in the last few weeks or so i see ads on almost all videos i watch now, there a
by tempsy 6y ago
anecdotally youtube seems to have aggressively increased the number of ads just in the last few weeks or so
i see ads on almost all videos i watch now, there are two ads before the video (the first one i can’t skip at all, the second i can sometimes skip after a few seconds), and then some videos have more ads at different points in the actual video that show up out of nowhere.
and then there’s the search ads that take up the entire mobile interface plus ads beneath the video
given i’ve mostly been using youtube for recipes lately and skip around the video a lot the experience is like being forced watching 30 seconds of ads for every 5 minutes of content.
it’s completely completely unbearable
- paulie_a 6y agoYou can pay a nominal fee and not get ads.
- Kye 6y agoYou aren't imagining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291
- localhost 6y agoYouTube Premium is by far the best $10/month that I spend. Zero ads on YouTube and creators get a share of that, which is typically more $ than they would get from ads.
- ekianjo 6y agoYou can get the exact same thing with ad blockers.
- tempsy 6y agoi use the app on my phone - guessing there isn’t a way?
- ekianjo 6y agouse NewPipe.
- MayeulC 6y agoNewPipe [0] is great for this. I watch youtube videos very occasionally, so I'm not going to shell out $10 for this. It does break sometimes, though, as Youtube changes their website on purpose to thwart NewPipe and youtube-dl, that both parse the website (which, incidentally, is a great way to spur innovation for a generic website parser). Another option is ublock origin on Firefox mobile. [0] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe (a bit slower to update there, but I prefer it as I have the f-droid OTA on my phone for automatic updates).
- mardifoufs 6y agoIf you're on android, YouTube Vanced is amazing. It's actually one of the reasons why I can't see myself switching to iOS anytime soon.
- jeffhuys 6y agoI use Cerctube on iOS, no ads. (no jailbreak either)
- mardifoufs 6y agoWow, that looks amazing. Didn't know you could sideload apps with the .ipa trick. Maybe I'll finally start using my ipad to watch youtube again.
- Antipode 6y agoI don't see an app with that exact name, and I see endless close variants.
- LanternLight83 6y ago
- aglavine 6y agoHow much of your ad blockers go to creators.
- ekianjo 6y agoI don't subscribe to ads as a concept. I don't even want to see them in front of my eyes.
- qw3rty01 6y agoThose ads support the people who created the videos; if you don't subscribe to ads "as a concept", then that's even more a reason to buy youtube premium--the content creators are losing out by your adblockers, not youtube
- ekianjo 6y agoThere's something called Patreon. Or about a bazillion of look-alike alternatives. > the content creators are losing out by your adblockers, not youtube Why do I have to financially support content creators without question? Please explain this to me.
- bluGill 6y agoYou don't have to. However if you support them they get enough money to make it worthwhile to do more. Some of the bigger ones make enough money that producing videos you like is their day job, if you don't pay them (ads count) then they will have to find a new job. Only some. One of my favorite channels isn't sponsored at all, and is ad free.
- tziki 6y agoThen perhaps you can, I don't know, avoid the sites that have ads?
- ekianjo 6y agoNo, I browse the web as usual, and don't see ads. The best of both worlds. Magic.
- ElijahLynn 6y agoI would much rather pay the content creators with YouTube Premium than by using an ad blocker.
- jacobush 6y agoYou also pay Google, which is much worse.
- coldpie 6y agoI don't know if I agree. I like showing that revenue models that are not ad-based can be viable. Maybe we can break the ad-supported business model that has destroyed the web by showing there are alternatives.
- madacoo 6y agoThis would seem to be contingent on paying businesses that don't rely on ad-based revenue models. Rather than paying a company on top of their ad-based revenue. Afterall, it might be the case that non ad-based revenue is only viable once you've secured enough ad-based revenue. I hope that isn't the case though.
- jacobush 6y agoGoogle should be broken up. It’s a rent-seeking behemoth no longer innovating except in ever tuned rent seeking.
- ekianjo 6y agoI'm sure Google needs your financial support.
- rnet85 6y agoI’m constantly surprised At how people think video hosting costs nothing.
- 6y ago
- Sieglend 6y agoIt is always a pleasure to watch people explain away why they deserve a good or service without having to pay.
- FactolSarin 6y ago"I only block ads because of privacy reasons." "OK, then we'll offer the option to pay a small fee to support the content creators and not have to deal with ads." "Why would I do that when ad blockers are free?"
- ekianjo 6y ago> "I only block ads because of privacy reasons." Did you see me saying that anywhere? Are you a mind reader?
- sJ646U9k6c6gME9 6y agoI work for a programmatic advertisement company. It’s a big name in the space. Whenever someone shares their screen during a meeting I pay special attention to their browser. Every single one of my colleagues runs some kind of ad blocker. Some run multiple. Many run additional browser extensions that block trackers and cookies and otherwise improve privacy. I go even further and run a VPN with pihole as its DNS server. Ads are easy to block these days. Why not block for free instead of spraying cash here and there?
- judge2020 6y agoI guess for moral reasons. For YouTube and most websites, the 'Quid Pro Quo' for using the service is supporting them via ads, or in certain circumstances like YT, via a monthly subscription.
- sJ646U9k6c6gME9 6y agoYouTube doesn’t need your support, but creators do. Many offer a more direct way to funnel donations than via ads on YouTube, ie Patreon, merch, Twitch subs, etc.
- GijsjanB 6y agoPaying Google to destroy the web and your privacy? That sounds very immoral to me
- gaius_baltar 6y ago> You can get the exact same thing with ad blockers. Even better because you can prevent google from tracking every single video you watch and linking this information into your IRL details through the payment info. Paying Youtube for privacy is nonsense. You need to send Google more information and log in your account to get rid of the ads and then google will track the videos you watch, link this information to your real life name, CC number, phone, billing address, etc. and then allow advertisers to use this information to push you more ads on other Google services. Just use a good ad blocker, Firefox Multi-account Containers (forcing YT to only open in a dedicated container) and Cookie AutoDelete (despite the name it handles LocalStorage too). When you close the last Youtube tab, your tracks will be erased and the next one will get a clean one -- but, for sake of mental sanity, never click on any of that trashy first page videos :) On Android, just use NewPipe.
- bcrosby95 6y agoYou can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device.
- gaius_baltar 6y ago> You can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device. But how can we be sure that Google is not storing, using, or keeping this information? If disabling tracking has the same (apparent) effect of not letting it grab the information, I prefer the later. At least I can help them to not "accidentally" track me ;-) This may sound too pessimistic, but I lost all confidence and respect for these companies.
- danShumway 6y agoThe experience stinks because Youtube makes it stink. NewPipe handles video resuming, downloading, subscriptions, RSS feeds, pulling multiple videos from different services into the same viewer/manager, and they're currently looking into options to do syncing between devices/clients by doing automatic data exports and imports and pushing them into Syncthing. All while being (imo) easier to use and (objectively) less resource intensive than the official Youtube client. It is possible to build good video clients/services without sacrificing people's privacy. The reason Google's tracking is essential for stuff like video resume is because Google integrated those features into their tracking systems from day one, and now they don't know how to separate them. Another example here -- if I turn off search & web tracking in my Google account, Google loses the ability to save locations in Google maps on my phone. They never considered that they could just save my locations locally and not send them to the cloud. Google is being honest when they say they can't do stuff like auto-resume without tracking me, but they're being dishonest when they give the reason they can't do it. It's not because privacy and convenience are so impossible to reconcile, it's because (being charitable) Google engineers and managers don't have the first clue how to build a service that even tries to reconcile those ideas. The less charitable possibility is that Google deliberately makes their services terrible when privacy options are enabled to reinforce the idea in people's minds that it's impossible to have both privacy and convenience. But while I don't assume the best of Google, I still lean towards blaming incompetence over maliciousness.
- bagacrap 6y agoexcept when you're using a smart TV, or a chromecast, or the yt app on your phone, etc etc
- input_sh 6y agoThere are network-wide adblockers for that. Pi-Hole, AdGuard VPN, NextDNS, etc.
- localhost 6y agoI like to think about this as not being transactional. Rather, I like to think about this as funding the creation of additional content. Regarding funding Google, I like the discoverability that they provide, and the infrastructure that delivers the content. I continue to delight in the value that I get from the YouTube recommendation algorithm. I have discovered content that I would have likely never found in the past - it expands my horizons. Of course, YMMV, and you are certainly entitled to make your own choices here. I thought that I'd share my perspective for others who may find it valuable.
- personlurking 6y agoI use Ublock on Safari as my only extension and it always worked great but, as of about a month ago, most of the time now I have to hit Disable Extensions, then reload the page, in order to watch a video. If I don't, I just get a black screen soon as the page loads (not the entire screen, just where the video should be). Every several videos, with Ublock enabled, it lets me watch it like normal while blocking ads.
- Cub3 6y agoNot cross device eg. iOS or TV
- vbezhenar 6y agoIt is not available in my country.
- Eupolemos 6y agoAnd you get to download stuff to your phone and listen with the screen turned off. YouTube has a lot of good, quirky stuff you don't find on, say, Spotify. It is a bummer they've turned up the commercials - but then again, paying makes for a potentialy healthier ecosystem. I use YouTube so much paying just to get rid of the "new video commercial" was a no-brainer.
- seandoe 6y agoTotally agree with quirky music options. One thing that really pisses me off is I make lists of my favorite music videos/live recordings. When I go back to them, some have been removed for copyright or whatever reason and I can no longer see the name of the original video. Then I don't know which videos I'm missing. This fact alone turns me off from curating my music on YouTube. If they at least kept the name of the video I could look for an alternative or something. On a different note, does anybody know if the stream is cut down to audio only when the screen is turned off? Or if there is anyway to get an audio-only stream? Streaming video when I'm off WiFi and I just want to listen to audio seems wasteful.
- Majestic121 6y agoI'm pretty sure Youtube music is audio only, but I can't tell for the actual Youtube app
- MrOwen 6y agoAnecdotally, I've tested this by having a network monitor traffic throughput and once a video is playing audio only, there is a noticeable drop in throughput which goes back up when you pull the video back up. Tested this a while ago so hopefully it's stayed like that.
- tracker1 6y agoI also pay for premium, since it includes Google Play Music, though they're shutting that down in favor of YouTube Music... which kind of sucks, because I prefer the UX of Google Play Music, and really liked how well their "Station" lists were compared to other services. Yet another google service I use shuttered in favor of something worse for me. About half my TV watching is via YouTube on my ShieldTV box for channels I watch regularly. I got sick of the ads and willing to pay to support what I watch and listen to. I am hoping tha Bitchute and others become more popular, as I really don't like what's happening to the platform in general.
- reportgunner 6y agoI'm listening my music the same way I did 10 years ago and nobody can stop me. Download, transfer to device, plug in headphone jack, press play. It's very convenient actually.
- tracker1 6y agoI just tend to like differing styles of music together... it takes time to find new content/music/artists/albums, let alone curating playlists... I don't like listening to the same songs all the time. I have a massive music collection, and sometimes I'll pull up a specific album or artist... but mostly prefer the streaming options were others' time are used to curate the play lists. I kind of wish that independent streaming services weren't effectively crushed. I miss DJ curated content with fewer commercials.
- reportgunner 6y agoCheck out radio paradise, I fall back to that when I want to find new music or listen to mixed genres. https://radioparadise.com/ https://radioparadise.com/ They also have a phone app that supports caching for offline listening and once you rate at least 75 songs higher than 6 out of 10 you can have your own stream composed of your favorites.
- zelly 6y ago> Bitchute FYI and for anyone reading this, Bitchute is not P2P or decentralized at all. 100% of its requests are served from data center IPs in Kansas. It's a fraud.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoIt's $12/month, not 10.
- jorvi 6y agoThis is not something from the past few weeks, it has been a thing for nearly a year.
- tempsy 6y agoit’s gotten much worse recently
- hourislate 6y agoI'm sure you're aware that a content/ad blocker (ex: uBlock Origin) will stop those ads.
- notassigned 6y agoIt really bothers me how YouTube updated the mobile UI so that ads can now change the size of the player window to take up most of the vertical space and can require more than one tap just to get back to the video/comments.
- overlordalex 6y agoWhat really grinds my gears about the ad experience on mobile is how some ads will take over the comment section as well. Meaning that if you were reading a comment or a comment thread, the entire context is lost when an add pops up over it. Once the ad is over you have to re-enter the comments, scroll back down to where you were, enter the chain, scroll down to where you were reading... It's a torturous flow, but I suspect the "engagement" metrics look great on their dashboard. I can imagine a product manager somewhere is getting a raise after doubling user interaction with a single feature
- ffpip 6y agoI'm never installing the YT app. I'm sticking to NewPipe
- abstractbarista 6y agoOh yea, the ads are really aggressive these days. I don't blame them. I'll block as long as I can. They have to make money somehow.
- HumblyTossed 6y ago> anecdotally youtube seems to have aggressively increased the number of ads just in the last few weeks or so Yes. I've noticed that almost every video I've watched I have to sit through two ads (first 15 seconds, second I can stop after 5ish) first. And if the video is long enough I get the ads at the bottom of the video and sometimes one or two more video ads. I get it, it's free, but at some point it won't be worth the frustration.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoYes ads have increased. I wish they would keep the ad time proportionate to the length of the video. For example, a 3-minute clip would keep it to maybe 15 seconds of ads and only one interruption. For 30 minutes, an ad every 10 minutes might be tolerable.
- reportgunner 6y ago> I wish they would keep the ad time proportionate to the length of the video. They have 0 incentive to do that, it would only reduce the revenue they get from ads.
- phatfish 6y agoYes, there are more ads. I watch sometimes on mobile and have seen the increase. Seems to have synced up with restrictions placed on people during the virus outbreak. I assume there are a lot more Youtube hours watched recently. I'll be finally setting up that Pi Hole server for my wireless network when I have a chance. It's obnoxious right now and I have no interest in giving Google money to make them go away.
- savingsPossible 6y agoIf you are watching on a browser, ublock origin fixes that If on android, you can download newpipe (first download and install f-droid, a "google play for free/open source", and then download newpipe from there)
- ffpip 6y agoOr just get it from github. Much faster and no delay in updates. https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases
- hojjat12000 6y agoNewpipe is good. But not good for discovery and the subscribed page is a disaster. I use Firefox on Android, plus two addons: Ublock Origin, and also UltraWideo to fix the aspect ratio and fit the video to my screen. This way I get the same experience as on my computer. The only downside is using picture-in-picture is a little tricky. You can always send the url to Newpipe if you need more control.
- bagacrap 6y agois that YouTube's fault? I thought content owners were in charge of deciding whether and how much to monetize. Recipes are some of the most over monetized content on the web, YouTube or not. Most recipe sites are totally unusable on a phone.
- AnonsLadder 6y agoIf you want an ad-free mobile experience, I recommend 'YouTube Vanced'. I used it for years now, it's basically the YouTube app minus the ads, so you can still use the discovery feature if you'd like. I'm not sure if the original YT app allows this, but i'm able to minimize videos while it's playing or shut off my phone while listening to a video, which I recall you had to pay premium for
- bitsoda 6y agoI've noticed this too. If there's one thing that'll get me to kick my YouTube addiction, it'll be the increased ads. If it gets any worse, I think I'd rather read a book or just go to sleep earlier -- not a bad thing, really.