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As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decr

by bsd44 6y ago

As a content consumer I see this as a positive thing for me. A few months ago when YouTube decided to auto-add ads on all videos, my watch time on YouTube decreased by more than 50% since I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock), and I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. As a result I spend my free time on Coursera or listening to audiobooks instead and I log in to YouTube once a day to have a quick scroll through the subscriptions page to see if there's anything worth watching. Keeping the amount of ads in mind and the stress they cause me, I am more selective and will often not click on a video that I previously would. And I don't mindlessly binge-watch video for hours on end any longer. With the new monetisation coming in place, I can see my consumption of YouTube declining even further to the level of Google - use it as a tool, when you really have to and not just for entertainment. And I welcome it! Just thought to share a perspective of a consumer rather than a creator. On the other hand I do understand YouTube's move. After all, it's their platform and they're not running a charity - people often forget that it's not their birth right to use a company's product or a service without paying for it one way or the other.

f1refly 6y ago
> on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) I think it's amazing you're putting up with devices that work against you. If my phone would force me to watch ads I would get a new phone tomorrow.
- pedrogpimenta 6y ago
  Your phone doesn't force you to watch ads. Youtube (which has nothing to do with your phone) forces you to watch ads (if you don't have an adblocker)
  - thrower123 6y ago
    Your phone doesn't allow you to run a browser that would let you use an adblocker.
    - TACIXAT 6y ago
      Android has Firefox which has uBlock, as well as Firefox Focus. iOS has VPN based ad blocking compatible with Safari, I use AdGuard.
      - comprev 6y ago
        Or Musi for watching YT videos. Ad-free!
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I don’t see any ads in Safari with Wipr.
  - tssva 6y ago
    Youtube doesn't force you to watch ads. Pay for Youtube Premium and you will see no ads.
    - arnoooooo 6y ago
      Thats sounds a lot like extorsion.
      - dmd 6y ago
        Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there. It's shameful.
        Supermancho 6y ago
        Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return. Obviously.
        xbmcuser 6y ago
        Ah no you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription.
        Supermancho 6y ago
        > Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there. > Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return. The rough metaphor about restaurants, is not an equivalent situation. --- > you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription To clarify, you believe that there is an ephemeral currency of attention. Your attention (which was to be directed at the content creator) can be redirected forcefully, unless you pay in money. I'd be remiss to call it outright extortion, but the parallel is there.
        ixwt 6y ago
        A big difference I see is how much money does Google make me "watching"/skipping ads in a month? I find it hard to believe it's around $10/month. What are rates now a days?
- zigzaggy 6y ago
  I wish I could say the same thing. In my younger years, I was pretty hardcore about hacking devices and having complete control of them. But SO MUCH TIME was spent debugging issues and staying ahead of the "bad guys." And I couldn't count the literally years of time I've spent fixing broken devices. Nowadays I just don't have that time. And the bad guys have evolved from mischievous to felonious (and I have a lot more to lose. I still harp on privacy and security, but now I do it behind a couple of walled gardens. I love that my devices "just work." I know it's a trade off, and I'm certainly fighting for more regulations of FAANG. And I am supporting the FOSS/open device movement, and look forward to the next phase where those "just work".
  - hated 6y ago
    I will never harp on privacy and security behind a couple of walled gardens. It is a wasted effort.
- ballenf 6y ago
  How do you handle driving on roads with billboards? Or walking through a city? In most of the US, the number of outdoor places you can go without advertising attacking you is dwindling. Europe seems better regarding roads (fewer billboards and more highways with none) but similar in cities. The rise of blindingly bright LED billboards in the US feels like all the downsides of a sci-fi dystopian world without any of the upside like self-driving hover cars.
  - pferde 6y ago
    There's a fundamental difference between a billboard that is just sort of in your field of view as you walk down a street, and a billboard which blocks your path, not letting you continue on your way until you finish reading it from top to bottom.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Actually, most billboards around the roads in Czech Republic are being dismantled due to being too startling to drivers - the advertisers fought it quite hard, even placed big Czech flags instead of adds to the billboards due to some provision in the law saying you can't just remove a flag of the country. But the ultimately list and billboards around roads are going away. Also more thought is now being given to "visual pollution" where unsightly advertising is bastardising valuable architecture in cities. Hopefully both initiatives will proliferate alse to other countries. :)
    - joveian 6y ago
      Good to hear :). I think in the US some places must be much worse than others. Here in Portland, Oregon, on a 7 mile round trip (without much overlap) through the urban core that I make regularly by bike I only see maybe four billboards, and all but one (a not too large sign of a stadium that mostly advertises events there) are the traditional paper type (or whatever it is that they use). Most are near highways or highway access so I assume anyone who uses highways regularly will see more of them. There are also some small advertisements (also not LCD) on bus shelters, although there aren't many bus shelters. I rarely notice any of them unless I am stopped at a traffic light near one. It took me a while to even remember most of them. I'd still prefer fewer of them, but it isn't at all comparable to using the web without an adblocker. Additionally, there is no chance that the billboards will install malware on my computer.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  newpipe has the nicest youtube interface and doesn't show ads.
mrspeaker 6y ago
I'm the same as you regarding reduced viewing time recently... unless I'm extremely motivated, I kill the tab as soon as the ad starts. It's the same with sites that require javascript to view: I'm sure the content might be good if I whitelisted it - but most the time it's my cue to realize I'm procrastinating and should get back to creating rather than consuming!
- helmholtz 6y ago
  It heartens me to know that this sentiment is spreading. I have some black and white rules set up for myself. The day Whatsapp stops encrypting chats is the day I jump ship. The day Youtube blocks access to those using uBlock, I'll stop going to Youtube. The day old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com stop working, sayonara Reddit. I've come to realise that a) I just don't derive TOO much value from any of these websites/services, and b) I don't mind paying for value added. I'd be happy to pay for Youtube. But not 15 dollars a _month_! Youtube is an amateur platform. Charge me maybe 3 dollars a month. 5 if I'm feeling generous. But not 15. And certainly not when it's bundled with Google tracking the living bejeesus out of me.
  - callesgg 6y ago
    15 is way to much.
  - sosuke 6y ago
    I wonder how much each a YouTube user is worth? My guess is pennies. Seems like $3 would be good.
    - 6510 6y ago
      And what would a new user be worth to them? I think the value is in THE MONOPOLY?
  - QuadrupleA 6y ago
    Signal (https://signal.org https://signal.org) is an awesome WhatsApp replacement BTW - end to end encrypted, open source, and run by a nonprofit.
comprev 6y ago
Since discovering Musi [1] I don't see any YT ads on iOS.. it's a game changer! [1] https://twitter.com/feelthemusi https://twitter.com/feelthemusi
eplanit 6y ago
It is superficially sad, but as you point out the 2nd order effects are really positive. Google has really done us all a favor by being actually more authentic: they're saying "We're an Advertising company ." (the period is said out loud). They are a tech company insofar as it serves their ad business. They're not a general tech company, and they have no interests or pursuits in anything else unless it is to develop new lines of ad revenue. I've stopped using Chrome, use gmail only for dealing with companies (their spam), rarely watch YouTube anymore, and use DDG for search. It's _very_ noticeable how little targeted advertising I receive anymore. I have developed a whole new appreciation for my DVD and BluRay collection, and now feel compelled to buy up whatever is available while they last. Physical, own-able media is becoming frighteningly scarce. I think the Google situation is a deliberate result of restructuring under Alphabet, and in terms of business it's wise. Google is about ads. Other companies of theirs will be about other things.
- darrylb42 6y ago
  YouTube premium gets rid of all the ads, unless creators have embedded them in the video. There is lots of good content for toddlers on YouTube, but it is unwatchable with ads. I watch more myself now all the ads are gone, plus you get youtube music, not as good as spotify but good enough.
  - zucked 6y ago
    Agreed. I had Youtube Premium through Google Play Music until Google finally axed GPM. I was so disappointed by how poorly Google handled that process that I cancelled my subscription and lost my YT premium. Youtube is completely unbearable without premium - I have no idea how non-subscribers tolerate Youtube content. The ads are so intrusive. I would totally pay $5-$10 per month for a Youtube only subscription but I feel like the $18/mo for a family plan is a bit steep.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      FYI, YouTube Music received almost every feature of Google Play Music except the app design. An in-depth review of the two can be found over here: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/24/google-play-music-to-youtube-music-making-the-switch/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/24/google-play-music-t... Personally I wish all these music streaming services could agree on metadata sharing such that I could enable apps like last.fm to review listening history across every service, and offer my listening history and playlists to every service to receive better recommendations. It feels odd that I can listen to the same song from 4-5 different services that I subscribe to legally, yet none of the services has a complete picture of what I like to listen to unless I pick one and use it as often as I can. I had thought that playlist sync would be a way to improve my recommendations, but it seems most services look at listening history rather than playlists. It's also irritating that every company has its own way of doing playback sync between devices, whether it's AirPlay, ChromeCast, Spotify Connect, Alexa, YouTube app, etc. There is no way things should be this fractured and hard to use for music playback and recommendation in the next decade, we need more standards. :)
8ytecoder 6y ago
Have you considered paying for YouTube Premium?
- codecutter 6y ago
  Exactly my thought. As much as I hate advertising and Google business practices, I would rather pay to avoid advertisements if that is an option. For $15/month family plan for 6 users, I find it to be a reasonable deal.
  - zucked 6y ago
    Currently in the US, YT Premium (Family) is $17.99/month.
    - codecutter 6y ago
      I was grandfathered from Google music family plan for same old price of $15 + tax. I am not aware of current price for new subscribers.
    - plibither8 6y ago
      > $17.99/month That... is quite steep as compared to India, where the family plan for YT Premium (if I recall correctly) costs Rs. 99/month, approximately $1.33/month. PPP is real :|
- willis936 6y ago
  This was my first thought as well. Both coursera and audiobooks are not free or ad-supported. Would these paid alternatives be as attractive if they had ad-supported options? I watch more youtube than any other video platform and I am happy to pay the $13/month to be ad free. Is it a sustainable business model? That’s for the bean counters at Alphabet to know. For now, I am content.
  - 8ytecoder 6y ago
    I see people loudly complaining about it. I don’t watch YouTube. I went from a paying customer to ditching it entirely. But clearly everyone complaining love YouTube and are watching hours and hours of video. So why not pay for it? It’s more sustainable in the long run.
thendrill 6y ago
Use NewPipe on Android to avoid ads
- renw0rp 6y ago
  Serious question, what's the risk of losing your Gmail account?
  - tomcooks 6y ago
    You don't need to login with newpipe
  - opan 6y ago
    Newpipe is available from F-Droid and does not have a sign-in option. There's no Google account involved.
    - ravenstine 6y ago
      The APK from F-Droid has been pretty broken for the last month, and for some reason isn't getting updated. Anyone thinking of trying out F-Droid should just grab the latest release from the GitHub repo.
      - ravenstine 6y ago
        D'oh, I meant "trying out NewPipe".
- moogly 6y ago
  Sadly their new UI is unusable on Android TV (nvidia Shield)
nineplay 6y ago
Reddit recently limited the number of comments you can read in Safari on iOS devices. Click "more" and you are prompted to create an account or go to their app. It's been fantastic. Reddit comments decrease rapidly in quality anyway, but I was unable to look away. Now I'm capped - one or two scrolls and I have to go find something more rewarding to do. Thanks reddit!
- quest88 6y ago
  Hah, thanks for pointing this out. This cap always annoyed me but now I'll instead see it as a positive.
- thih9 6y ago
  A tech news website started limiting the length of RSS versions of their articles. Major improvement, previously I couldn’t stop reading their bloated articles, now I just glance at a couple of most important facts and carry on.
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  HN has a similar feature, but it’s more of a bug
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I've never seen that on HN. Reddit intentionally changed their website to prevent you from seeing comments after a couple replies without logging in.
    - NegativeLatency 6y ago
      I was making a joke about how some of the larger HN threads the replies span multiple pages and it's not immediately obvious you need to click a link to get to the next page of comments
- jaypeg25 6y ago
  I had an iPHone for a few months and noticed my reddit time dropped considerably. Part of it was because iPhone (or Reddit? I don't even know who is to blame here) wouldn't let me choose the reddit app I wanted as the default. If a friend sent a reddit link to me it'd try and open in Safari and I'd get annoyed and just ignore it. I'm back on Android now where I can choose default apps and now if a friend sends a link, I click it and read it, then I click over to the homepage, then 20 minutes goes by as I mindlessly scroll. It's a blessing and a curse to be able to use your phone the way you want to, I guess.
rv-de 6y ago
That's a very good point! Add to that YT's abysmal organization of subscribed channels and their terrible recommendation engine. I have to say I really like it.
- waynecochran 6y ago
  Maybe if they add a few more crappy features I can avoid YT altogether!
- Corrado 6y ago
  I have to agree about the recommendation engine. I know there is a lot of interesting new content that I might be interested in uploaded every day, but for some reason it's recommending years old videos that I've already watched AND voted on. WTF?!
  - _b4ut 6y ago
    Yes! I am regularly in the mood to watch something on YouTube - mostly new documentaries on societal/political subjects. But I just can't find anything relevant. Also the search function is critically handicapped. It's really frustrating. They are not increasing my time on YouTube, they reduce it.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    The recommendation engine was intentionally crippled because it was radicalizing people who were into conspiracy theories, militias, terroristic acts, etc. It sucks but I assume there's some work being done to get a new engine out without sending people down a rabbit hole.
    - rv-de 6y ago
      I don't believe that. They could have restricted this to problematic videos which promote conspiracy theories and their likes.
    - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
      For that I actually have a nice observation: I always clear my cookies and website data on browser quit, and never login into Youtube. Which means I get a pretty vanilla "recommendation" experience, additional tracking attempts from Google put aside. Visiting youtube, I could swear that the recommendations Youtube is trying to shove my way only change after several weeks or sometimes even months, it is always the same 8 videos on top of the front page for very long periods. It starts to get somewhat relevant after I watch something, but then it looks like their recommendation engine does nothing more than "Recommend to user x the n most popular videos of roughly the same category as the last video user x watched" with a little bit of shuffling 1-3 videos from a larger set between those, sometimes, and that appears to be it.
phasnox 6y ago
Use Brave browser, or Firefox with uBlockOrigin.
- kikokikokiko 6y ago
  Kiwi Browser is the best nowadays. You can install any Chome extension on it.
athenot 6y ago
I've noticed the same. When I go looking for some video on youtube, I first pause, prepare my query in my mind and then open youtube & rush to type what I prepared, sift quickly and try to find what I'm looking for, then close the tab/quit the app when I'm done. It's the same feeling as dashing into a hostile store trying to upsell you on stuff and waste your time, when all you needed is 1 thing. For actual video hosting, assuming ad revenue is not desired, Vimeo seems pretty good.
- rconti 6y ago
  I find it hilarious that YouTube's iOS app is always pushing me to try a trial of their premium product, one of the major selling points being that videos continue to play in the background when you close the app. When, in fact, closing the app is the most reliable way to get YouTube to stop playing. From inadvertent clicks in the Wrong Place on the screen that launch some crap or play some ad, to autoplay, as soon as my content is over, I can't wait to kill the app and make it all stop. It's a hell of a lot easier than finding pause/stop.
  - IgniteTheSun 6y ago
    Maybe this explains why its become frustratingly difficult for me to quickly close the app on Android.
- sixothree 6y ago
  These ads do something to my mindset that really puts me in a bad place. I used to spend hours on youtube. I loved watching videos related to my hobbies etc. Now, it seems like a chore.
longstation 6y ago
I had the same issue with YouTube ads on mobile. There's an open source YouTube app called Vanced (yes, with out "Ad") which runs exactly like the official YouTube app but you have the choice to turn off ads.
xoxoy 6y ago
I pay for YT Premium and worth it to skip all ads and be able to listen to audio in app on background. I use it a lot for recipes and great to have a corner of the internet totally ad free now.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  If you want that corner to be expanded to the full internet, install ublock origin.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    YT Premium still supports creators while Ublock Origin denies creators one of the easiest ways to be compensated for their work. That's a pretty big difference.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      True, though most of the videos I watch these days either have explicit sponsor mentions, or I support though patreon. My general feel on adblock is that it is a reasonable step against an abusive advertising industry. That it harms creators is the side effect of the advertising industry's overreach, and is not a moral fault of the end user for acting in self-defense.
      - xoxoy 6y ago
        I use the YT iOS app mostly. can’t skip it there.
      - mrguyorama 6y ago
        Nevermind the fact that for the vast majority of creators, their advertising revenue is 100% up to the whims of some bullshit black box "AI" algorithm on whether they are worthy of money they earned or not. Most of the valuable youtube creators don't care much about their ad revenue and prefer to curate out of band sponsorships and patreon. And if I wanted to actually support them, I'd invest in them through patreon, not watch an atrocious ad that will likely give them 30% of 5 cents
AlexCoventry 6y ago
There's a chrome extension which blows away the recommendations sidebar in YouTube. For me, installing that was enough to break any mindless video watching.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neya 6y ago
As a sidenote, you can consider using Firefox on Android with adblock and works like a charm :)
koonsolo 6y ago
Wow, what a bunch of selfish people here in the thread. Any mention of premium gets downvoted. If you don't want to pay in any form, then stay off that platform, no? You have 2 options here, either watch ads or pay. But noooo, everybody here wants content for free. Bunch of communist hippies ;)
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  I'm far from being a communist but I disagree with you. You have a third option in this case, block the ads. If it's possible to block ads, it's a minor weakness in YouTube's business model - which, don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good model for generating revenue with a relative small team (given it generates 5bln$ in revenue). If YouTube wouldn't allow users blocking ads it wouldn't be as popular. In the same way I don't like copyright being enforced by governments (eg. DMCA, getting ISP to disclose data about their customers): if you sell your product so much that you can't find a way to understand and legally persecute which of your users is breaching your contract and redistribute your goods, that's the way of the market to tax the wealth you're making. And I live off selling software (which gets copied and distributed on warez sites hosted where I can't touch them). I'll pay that market tax happily, given I'm getting some marketing in return and stopping it would cost me more in legal fees than anything. What I don't like is paying for an inept government to steal my money, provide crappy service and threaten me with jail if I don't pay.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Sorry, I forgot the anarchists ;)
anoraca 6y ago
I feel the same way about Twitch. They recently added unblockable, unskippable ads unless you subscribe to the specific channel that you're watching and I just don't watch Twitch any more for the most part. It's especially annoying when it's the same few ads in rotation over and over for products that I will never be interested in.
- wldcordeiro 6y ago
  It doesn't help that the ads on Twitch are the lowest of the low in terms of quality so you have no desire to stay around. Also their way of doing preroll ads is just bad, you'll get to watch like 5-10 seconds of the channel before the ad just suddenly cuts it off, unlike YouTube or others where the ad is shown first then the content after.
puranjay 6y ago
20 second unskippable ads about cat food (I don't have a cat) to watch a 1 minute video. No thanks YouTube!
- sixothree 6y ago
  It's worse when you have no idea if you're even _interested_ in the video you're going to sit through two unskippable ads to watch. It degrades the experience considerably.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    I used to use the YouTube app on my firestick to stream music while working around the house. One of my favorite bands - who I personally know and who don't put any ads on their videos - releases entire albums in a single 30-40 minute long video. YouTube now throws 4-6 ads in the middle of the videos, often right in the middle of the songs.
- 0xcafecafe 6y ago
  It's worse when you are trying to put a soothing music to put your baby to sleep and it starts with a loud ad which wakes her up. Or now that she is a toddler, her nursery rhyme videos have political campaign ads in the middle of the song.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    Of course, many of those nursery rhymes were political ads originally. Little Donny Trumpet went out on a junket, swatting his golf balls away...
- tomjen3 6y ago
  One of the best things about the ads on youtube was that if they sucked or weren't relevant you could skip them, sending a signal that the ads should not be shown. I suspect that the platforms have started to realize that personalized ads aren't better than content relevant ads, because I have several times seen ads on Facebook that were just targeted to people who live in my country and are over the age of 18, ie not targeted at all. Yet Facebook presumably showed me those ads because that is what they thought would make them the most money.
bachmeier 6y ago
Biggest issue for me is less the time cost and more the disruption created by an ad in the middle of a video. It's maybe 10% as valuable to me to watch a 10-minute video with two ad breaks in the middle vs a 10-minute video with ads at the start. It's like trying to watch a TV show while someone is throwing axes at your head.
tartoran 6y ago
This is exactly what I had in mind, I will definitely gain more time doing other things. With their recommendation engines youtube was already turning into cable television and now there's no escape from it. This will also incentive us to find other methods of sharing/consuming. P2P perhaps?
TT3351 6y ago
My trick for this is to disable the Youtube app on my phone and only use the browser to watch videos. Combined with DNS66, the few ads that do make it through on the site can be dismissed by just refreshing the page, which is easy to do in my browser.
- cyberpsybin 6y ago
  You can use Kiwi browser of phone. It's basically Chrome + dark mode + extensions(so ublock). Nothing makes it through.
- ripply 6y ago
  This also works on iOS and you can even get a shortcut to let you bypass PIP being disabled and by pausing the video 2-3 times in picture mode you bug it out and can play the video with the screen off - not very convenient for short videos but longer ones it works well with.
ogre_codes 6y ago
Unfortunately, most of my YouTube viewing is not recreational/ entertainment. I use YouTube primarily for DIY videos, Home Building, and other similar educational/ Howto videos. I just don't see a lot of alternatives out there so I'm kind of stuck with YouTube. Preroll ads are the worst because quality varies so widely I end up wading through multiple ads for crappy videos. Is there a good resource for how-tos out there for a fee?
- jbaber 6y ago
  Ad-free youtube is $10/mo. I get the impression from patreon and Consumer Reports that a lot of monthly services expect people to sign up and quit as needed.
- bserge 6y ago
  Honestly, sounds like a VPN in a small country would work great. Just tunnel through Moldova and enjoy a better Youtube and even Internet experience haha... Or just pay for premium...
- oriel 6y ago
  Most YT videos have transcriptions generated for them, maybe instead of wading through the video itself, you can skim the transcript?
EricE 6y ago
1Blocker on iOS does a great job of handling ads, but you raise a good point - perhaps I should whitelist Youtube :p
jypepin 6y ago
For me, it's the opposite - I'm very close to paying for youtube premium and not have ads anymore.
O_H_E 6y ago
Unfortunately, I use YoutubeVanced to block ads on my Android. Background playback is a plus. No root required. https://vancedapp.com/ https://vancedapp.com/
- anon9001 6y ago
  For anyone not familiar, Vanced is hacked Google binaries. It's the YouTube app, but with features enabled for free and ads blocked. They've been around a long time and are active on XDA. I use Vanced on my phone, but if you're not into hacked binaries, NewPipe is what you want: https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/
- luckyshot 6y ago
  There's the risk that Google will ban your account as it has done previously to some users, losing access and data hosted in their ecosystem (Gmail, Docs...), that's the thing that scares me the most. But yeah, Vanced (and the new YT Music) is amazing.
  - ardacinar 6y ago
    I guess the solution here is to not use your main Google account with youtube vanced?
    - O_H_E 6y ago
      I looked this up. This seems to be fear mongering. There are no confirmed cases of stuff like this happening. Too lazy to dig up the links, but go search for yourself. (Reports in YTVanced reddit and NewPipe github)
simlevesque 6y ago
On Android use Youtube Vanced and you won't see any ads. vanced.app
fartcannon 6y ago
You can use ublock origin in Firefox on Android phones.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  and there's also bromite with built-in adblocking
suyash 6y ago
so you don't use ad blocker I see :/
- squarefoot 6y ago
  They work today, but Google could fool them by embedding the ads in videos, I mean cutting a video and inserting the ad inside, not playing a separate segment, so that it can't be detected by the adblockers. But then video makers could fight back by using AI to compare it with the original without ads and distributing cue lists automatically downloadable by browsers extensions telling the player to skip from A to B to hide the ad. then Google would fight back again by making the ad embedding random at each play, so that cue lists wouldn't work anymore, or disabling skipping within the ad segment, and so on. It will never end. It is pretty clear that Google is attempting to monetize everything down to the spaces between zeros and ones, changing their own rules when it suits them, and won't stop before anything. This is extremely unprofessional; I wouldn't rely on them for anything serious.
SimeVidas 6y ago
> I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. Could you share what that amount is? One ad every how many minutes? I ask because I suspect that it depends on the geographic region of the user and other factors, and I’m curious how bad it is in some places.
Consultant32452 6y ago
This sounds like a win-win for Youtube. Only the people willing to pay (via YT premium or watch ads) will stick around.
neltnerb 6y ago
I have posted tutorials and art on YouTube since before they were Google. I am also glad that this move has finally given me the push needed to delete my channel entirely. I don't try to make money off it, I have no interest in Google getting to.
Crosseye_Jack 6y ago
> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet I dunno which mobile platform you are using but I use iOS and if you watch YT via the browser you can block ads with its content blocker and you can even use some JavaScript in an shortcut to re-enable picture in picture (it’s a little more of a hassle, you have to press share then the pip custom shortcut but it works).
timbaboon 6y ago
I understand that I can’t really complain about a service I don’t pay for. That’s fine. I just don’t use it, and my life is so much better for it! Besides, YouTube is blocked at work / on vpn anyway :)
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"After all, it's their platform and they're not running a charity - people often forget that it's not their birth right to use a company's product or a service without paying for it one way or another." A few more consumer perspectives: Google still does not own the videos. It is still not their content. They will not pay contributors for content. As someone who has been using the web since 1993 I can assure anyone reading that there would still be widepspread video sharing on the internet even if no company such as YouTube existed that tried to monetise the phenomenon. Consumers pay dearly for internet connectivity and bandwidth, many of them enjoy playing around with the internet for fun and they will use the network for all manner of data sharing, including video, even in the absence of advertisers and their service partners (who are usurping a significant portion of that user-financed bandwidth). Google may not be running a tax-exempt charity for the benefit of consumers, however they are running a corporate welfare program for over 75,000 people. (Nevermind the amount the corporation pays in tax.) This will change if and when profits start to drop. With respect to this announcement, it appears Google won't share the proceeds from ad sales unless the YouTube contributor's video meets a certain threshhold of traffic, enough to be in the so-called "Partner Program". Many video contributors will receive nothing despite their viewers having to suffer though pre-roll and other ads interrupting their "user experience". In a way this reminds me of domain name registrars that place ads at domain names that customers fail to renew. I absolutely agree with this comment though. Changes such as this are evolutionary pressure that may lead us to a better internet, one that is less commercially driven by advertising under the fiction of "free". No matter how large these websites, excuse me, "platforms", have become I still believe the web and the internet are meant to be non-commercial and user-driven. As the network has grown, most users are not corporations. Add more straw. Break the camel's back. What comes in the aftermath will surely be better.
irrational 6y ago
You just showed me that I can block ads on YouTube. I just tried it and so far it seems to be working great. Thank you!
gentleman11 6y ago
It’s not a charity, but it’s also the standard platform bait and switch: provide years of great service to capture users and creators and gain network effects, then turn on the users and content creators to exploit them after there are no alternatives. Where else do we go now? When YouTube went down the other day, billions of people stopped being able to watch most online videos for a while
nostromo 6y ago
> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) There's a simple trick to get around this: don't use the YouTube app, use the website youtube.com. Adblockers work for YouTube's website on iOS. The app is only marginally better than the website, so you won't be missing much.
ohyes 6y ago
Interestingly this will probably mess up google search results as well. There are so many things in youtube that should have been a text post but are videos on youtube (for example how to do something technical), that somehow mysteriously come out as top results on google search. They've been rendered even more useless than they were before. I'm already not willing to sit through a video if it could have been text, but I'm sure some people are. I wonder if a slate of ads before, and during, will kill of that type of content. Honestly, I consider the existence of such things kind of toxic, which is a weirdly extreme view, I admit, so I'm kinda rooting for these types of videos to get pushed out of the results.
gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
On the other hand, it makes it harder to filter out bad content. When i search for a video on some language/system architecture, it's often difficult to find the official team videos. One good thing to do is to start playing one video after another form the search results. Usually the very first one without a pre-roll Advertisement, is the one you want.
movedx 6y ago
> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) If you're on a network you control, you can do network level ad blocking :-) https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/
zeruch 6y ago
This has been the same for me, although I do find for content created by others, there should at least be a monetization split.

by bsd44 6y ago

f1refly 6y ago

> on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) I think it's amazing you're putting up with devices that work against you. If my phone would force me to watch ads I would get a new phone tomorrow.

pedrogpimenta 6y ago
Your phone doesn't force you to watch ads. Youtube (which has nothing to do with your phone) forces you to watch ads (if you don't have an adblocker)
- thrower123 6y ago
  Your phone doesn't allow you to run a browser that would let you use an adblocker.
  - TACIXAT 6y ago
    Android has Firefox which has uBlock, as well as Firefox Focus. iOS has VPN based ad blocking compatible with Safari, I use AdGuard.
    - comprev 6y ago
      Or Musi for watching YT videos. Ad-free!
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I don’t see any ads in Safari with Wipr.
- tssva 6y ago
  Youtube doesn't force you to watch ads. Pay for Youtube Premium and you will see no ads.
  - arnoooooo 6y ago
    Thats sounds a lot like extorsion.
    - dmd 6y ago
      Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there. It's shameful.
      - Supermancho 6y ago
        Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return. Obviously.
        xbmcuser 6y ago
        Ah no you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription.
        Supermancho 6y ago
        > Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there. > Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return. The rough metaphor about restaurants, is not an equivalent situation. --- > you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription To clarify, you believe that there is an ephemeral currency of attention. Your attention (which was to be directed at the content creator) can be redirected forcefully, unless you pay in money. I'd be remiss to call it outright extortion, but the parallel is there.
      - ixwt 6y ago
        A big difference I see is how much money does Google make me "watching"/skipping ads in a month? I find it hard to believe it's around $10/month. What are rates now a days?
zigzaggy 6y ago
I wish I could say the same thing. In my younger years, I was pretty hardcore about hacking devices and having complete control of them. But SO MUCH TIME was spent debugging issues and staying ahead of the "bad guys." And I couldn't count the literally years of time I've spent fixing broken devices. Nowadays I just don't have that time. And the bad guys have evolved from mischievous to felonious (and I have a lot more to lose. I still harp on privacy and security, but now I do it behind a couple of walled gardens. I love that my devices "just work." I know it's a trade off, and I'm certainly fighting for more regulations of FAANG. And I am supporting the FOSS/open device movement, and look forward to the next phase where those "just work".
- hated 6y ago
  I will never harp on privacy and security behind a couple of walled gardens. It is a wasted effort.
ballenf 6y ago
How do you handle driving on roads with billboards? Or walking through a city? In most of the US, the number of outdoor places you can go without advertising attacking you is dwindling. Europe seems better regarding roads (fewer billboards and more highways with none) but similar in cities. The rise of blindingly bright LED billboards in the US feels like all the downsides of a sci-fi dystopian world without any of the upside like self-driving hover cars.
- pferde 6y ago
  There's a fundamental difference between a billboard that is just sort of in your field of view as you walk down a street, and a billboard which blocks your path, not letting you continue on your way until you finish reading it from top to bottom.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Actually, most billboards around the roads in Czech Republic are being dismantled due to being too startling to drivers - the advertisers fought it quite hard, even placed big Czech flags instead of adds to the billboards due to some provision in the law saying you can't just remove a flag of the country. But the ultimately list and billboards around roads are going away. Also more thought is now being given to "visual pollution" where unsightly advertising is bastardising valuable architecture in cities. Hopefully both initiatives will proliferate alse to other countries. :)
  - joveian 6y ago
    Good to hear :). I think in the US some places must be much worse than others. Here in Portland, Oregon, on a 7 mile round trip (without much overlap) through the urban core that I make regularly by bike I only see maybe four billboards, and all but one (a not too large sign of a stadium that mostly advertises events there) are the traditional paper type (or whatever it is that they use). Most are near highways or highway access so I assume anyone who uses highways regularly will see more of them. There are also some small advertisements (also not LCD) on bus shelters, although there aren't many bus shelters. I rarely notice any of them unless I am stopped at a traffic light near one. It took me a while to even remember most of them. I'd still prefer fewer of them, but it isn't at all comparable to using the web without an adblocker. Additionally, there is no chance that the billboards will install malware on my computer.
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
newpipe has the nicest youtube interface and doesn't show ads.

mrspeaker 6y ago

I'm the same as you regarding reduced viewing time recently... unless I'm extremely motivated, I kill the tab as soon as the ad starts. It's the same with sites that require javascript to view: I'm sure the content might be good if I whitelisted it - but most the time it's my cue to realize I'm procrastinating and should get back to creating rather than consuming!

helmholtz 6y ago
It heartens me to know that this sentiment is spreading. I have some black and white rules set up for myself. The day Whatsapp stops encrypting chats is the day I jump ship. The day Youtube blocks access to those using uBlock, I'll stop going to Youtube. The day old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com stop working, sayonara Reddit. I've come to realise that a) I just don't derive TOO much value from any of these websites/services, and b) I don't mind paying for value added. I'd be happy to pay for Youtube. But not 15 dollars a _month_! Youtube is an amateur platform. Charge me maybe 3 dollars a month. 5 if I'm feeling generous. But not 15. And certainly not when it's bundled with Google tracking the living bejeesus out of me.
- callesgg 6y ago
  15 is way to much.
- sosuke 6y ago
  I wonder how much each a YouTube user is worth? My guess is pennies. Seems like $3 would be good.
  - 6510 6y ago
    And what would a new user be worth to them? I think the value is in THE MONOPOLY?
- QuadrupleA 6y ago
  Signal (https://signal.org https://signal.org) is an awesome WhatsApp replacement BTW - end to end encrypted, open source, and run by a nonprofit.

comprev 6y ago

Since discovering Musi [1] I don't see any YT ads on iOS.. it's a game changer! [1] https://twitter.com/feelthemusi https://twitter.com/feelthemusi

eplanit 6y ago

It is superficially sad, but as you point out the 2nd order effects are really positive. Google has really done us all a favor by being actually more authentic: they're saying "We're an Advertising company ." (the period is said out loud). They are a tech company insofar as it serves their ad business. They're not a general tech company, and they have no interests or pursuits in anything else unless it is to develop new lines of ad revenue. I've stopped using Chrome, use gmail only for dealing with companies (their spam), rarely watch YouTube anymore, and use DDG for search. It's _very_ noticeable how little targeted advertising I receive anymore. I have developed a whole new appreciation for my DVD and BluRay collection, and now feel compelled to buy up whatever is available while they last. Physical, own-able media is becoming frighteningly scarce. I think the Google situation is a deliberate result of restructuring under Alphabet, and in terms of business it's wise. Google is about ads. Other companies of theirs will be about other things.

darrylb42 6y ago
YouTube premium gets rid of all the ads, unless creators have embedded them in the video. There is lots of good content for toddlers on YouTube, but it is unwatchable with ads. I watch more myself now all the ads are gone, plus you get youtube music, not as good as spotify but good enough.
- zucked 6y ago
  Agreed. I had Youtube Premium through Google Play Music until Google finally axed GPM. I was so disappointed by how poorly Google handled that process that I cancelled my subscription and lost my YT premium. Youtube is completely unbearable without premium - I have no idea how non-subscribers tolerate Youtube content. The ads are so intrusive. I would totally pay $5-$10 per month for a Youtube only subscription but I feel like the $18/mo for a family plan is a bit steep.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    FYI, YouTube Music received almost every feature of Google Play Music except the app design. An in-depth review of the two can be found over here: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/24/google-play-music-to-youtube-music-making-the-switch/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/24/google-play-music-t... Personally I wish all these music streaming services could agree on metadata sharing such that I could enable apps like last.fm to review listening history across every service, and offer my listening history and playlists to every service to receive better recommendations. It feels odd that I can listen to the same song from 4-5 different services that I subscribe to legally, yet none of the services has a complete picture of what I like to listen to unless I pick one and use it as often as I can. I had thought that playlist sync would be a way to improve my recommendations, but it seems most services look at listening history rather than playlists. It's also irritating that every company has its own way of doing playback sync between devices, whether it's AirPlay, ChromeCast, Spotify Connect, Alexa, YouTube app, etc. There is no way things should be this fractured and hard to use for music playback and recommendation in the next decade, we need more standards. :)

8ytecoder 6y ago

Have you considered paying for YouTube Premium?

codecutter 6y ago
Exactly my thought. As much as I hate advertising and Google business practices, I would rather pay to avoid advertisements if that is an option. For $15/month family plan for 6 users, I find it to be a reasonable deal.
- zucked 6y ago
  Currently in the US, YT Premium (Family) is $17.99/month.
  - codecutter 6y ago
    I was grandfathered from Google music family plan for same old price of $15 + tax. I am not aware of current price for new subscribers.
  - plibither8 6y ago
    > $17.99/month That... is quite steep as compared to India, where the family plan for YT Premium (if I recall correctly) costs Rs. 99/month, approximately $1.33/month. PPP is real :|
willis936 6y ago
This was my first thought as well. Both coursera and audiobooks are not free or ad-supported. Would these paid alternatives be as attractive if they had ad-supported options? I watch more youtube than any other video platform and I am happy to pay the $13/month to be ad free. Is it a sustainable business model? That’s for the bean counters at Alphabet to know. For now, I am content.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  I see people loudly complaining about it. I don’t watch YouTube. I went from a paying customer to ditching it entirely. But clearly everyone complaining love YouTube and are watching hours and hours of video. So why not pay for it? It’s more sustainable in the long run.

thendrill 6y ago

Use NewPipe on Android to avoid ads

renw0rp 6y ago
Serious question, what's the risk of losing your Gmail account?
- tomcooks 6y ago
  You don't need to login with newpipe
- opan 6y ago
  Newpipe is available from F-Droid and does not have a sign-in option. There's no Google account involved.
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    The APK from F-Droid has been pretty broken for the last month, and for some reason isn't getting updated. Anyone thinking of trying out F-Droid should just grab the latest release from the GitHub repo.
    - ravenstine 6y ago
      D'oh, I meant "trying out NewPipe".
moogly 6y ago
Sadly their new UI is unusable on Android TV (nvidia Shield)

nineplay 6y ago

Reddit recently limited the number of comments you can read in Safari on iOS devices. Click "more" and you are prompted to create an account or go to their app. It's been fantastic. Reddit comments decrease rapidly in quality anyway, but I was unable to look away. Now I'm capped - one or two scrolls and I have to go find something more rewarding to do. Thanks reddit!

quest88 6y ago
Hah, thanks for pointing this out. This cap always annoyed me but now I'll instead see it as a positive.
thih9 6y ago
A tech news website started limiting the length of RSS versions of their articles. Major improvement, previously I couldn’t stop reading their bloated articles, now I just glance at a couple of most important facts and carry on.
NegativeLatency 6y ago
HN has a similar feature, but it’s more of a bug
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I've never seen that on HN. Reddit intentionally changed their website to prevent you from seeing comments after a couple replies without logging in.
  - NegativeLatency 6y ago
    I was making a joke about how some of the larger HN threads the replies span multiple pages and it's not immediately obvious you need to click a link to get to the next page of comments
jaypeg25 6y ago
I had an iPHone for a few months and noticed my reddit time dropped considerably. Part of it was because iPhone (or Reddit? I don't even know who is to blame here) wouldn't let me choose the reddit app I wanted as the default. If a friend sent a reddit link to me it'd try and open in Safari and I'd get annoyed and just ignore it. I'm back on Android now where I can choose default apps and now if a friend sends a link, I click it and read it, then I click over to the homepage, then 20 minutes goes by as I mindlessly scroll. It's a blessing and a curse to be able to use your phone the way you want to, I guess.

rv-de 6y ago

That's a very good point! Add to that YT's abysmal organization of subscribed channels and their terrible recommendation engine. I have to say I really like it.

waynecochran 6y ago
Maybe if they add a few more crappy features I can avoid YT altogether!
Corrado 6y ago
I have to agree about the recommendation engine. I know there is a lot of interesting new content that I might be interested in uploaded every day, but for some reason it's recommending years old videos that I've already watched AND voted on. WTF?!
- _b4ut 6y ago
  Yes! I am regularly in the mood to watch something on YouTube - mostly new documentaries on societal/political subjects. But I just can't find anything relevant. Also the search function is critically handicapped. It's really frustrating. They are not increasing my time on YouTube, they reduce it.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  The recommendation engine was intentionally crippled because it was radicalizing people who were into conspiracy theories, militias, terroristic acts, etc. It sucks but I assume there's some work being done to get a new engine out without sending people down a rabbit hole.
  - rv-de 6y ago
    I don't believe that. They could have restricted this to problematic videos which promote conspiracy theories and their likes.
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
    For that I actually have a nice observation: I always clear my cookies and website data on browser quit, and never login into Youtube. Which means I get a pretty vanilla "recommendation" experience, additional tracking attempts from Google put aside. Visiting youtube, I could swear that the recommendations Youtube is trying to shove my way only change after several weeks or sometimes even months, it is always the same 8 videos on top of the front page for very long periods. It starts to get somewhat relevant after I watch something, but then it looks like their recommendation engine does nothing more than "Recommend to user x the n most popular videos of roughly the same category as the last video user x watched" with a little bit of shuffling 1-3 videos from a larger set between those, sometimes, and that appears to be it.

phasnox 6y ago

Use Brave browser, or Firefox with uBlockOrigin.

kikokikokiko 6y ago
Kiwi Browser is the best nowadays. You can install any Chome extension on it.

athenot 6y ago

I've noticed the same. When I go looking for some video on youtube, I first pause, prepare my query in my mind and then open youtube & rush to type what I prepared, sift quickly and try to find what I'm looking for, then close the tab/quit the app when I'm done. It's the same feeling as dashing into a hostile store trying to upsell you on stuff and waste your time, when all you needed is 1 thing. For actual video hosting, assuming ad revenue is not desired, Vimeo seems pretty good.

rconti 6y ago
I find it hilarious that YouTube's iOS app is always pushing me to try a trial of their premium product, one of the major selling points being that videos continue to play in the background when you close the app. When, in fact, closing the app is the most reliable way to get YouTube to stop playing. From inadvertent clicks in the Wrong Place on the screen that launch some crap or play some ad, to autoplay, as soon as my content is over, I can't wait to kill the app and make it all stop. It's a hell of a lot easier than finding pause/stop.
- IgniteTheSun 6y ago
  Maybe this explains why its become frustratingly difficult for me to quickly close the app on Android.
sixothree 6y ago
These ads do something to my mindset that really puts me in a bad place. I used to spend hours on youtube. I loved watching videos related to my hobbies etc. Now, it seems like a chore.

longstation 6y ago

I had the same issue with YouTube ads on mobile. There's an open source YouTube app called Vanced (yes, with out "Ad") which runs exactly like the official YouTube app but you have the choice to turn off ads.

xoxoy 6y ago

I pay for YT Premium and worth it to skip all ads and be able to listen to audio in app on background. I use it a lot for recipes and great to have a corner of the internet totally ad free now.

MereInterest 6y ago
If you want that corner to be expanded to the full internet, install ublock origin.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  YT Premium still supports creators while Ublock Origin denies creators one of the easiest ways to be compensated for their work. That's a pretty big difference.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    True, though most of the videos I watch these days either have explicit sponsor mentions, or I support though patreon. My general feel on adblock is that it is a reasonable step against an abusive advertising industry. That it harms creators is the side effect of the advertising industry's overreach, and is not a moral fault of the end user for acting in self-defense.
    - xoxoy 6y ago
      I use the YT iOS app mostly. can’t skip it there.
    - mrguyorama 6y ago
      Nevermind the fact that for the vast majority of creators, their advertising revenue is 100% up to the whims of some bullshit black box "AI" algorithm on whether they are worthy of money they earned or not. Most of the valuable youtube creators don't care much about their ad revenue and prefer to curate out of band sponsorships and patreon. And if I wanted to actually support them, I'd invest in them through patreon, not watch an atrocious ad that will likely give them 30% of 5 cents

AlexCoventry 6y ago

There's a chrome extension which blows away the recommendations sidebar in YouTube. For me, installing that was enough to break any mindless video watching.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neya 6y ago

As a sidenote, you can consider using Firefox on Android with adblock and works like a charm :)

koonsolo 6y ago

Wow, what a bunch of selfish people here in the thread. Any mention of premium gets downvoted. If you don't want to pay in any form, then stay off that platform, no? You have 2 options here, either watch ads or pay. But noooo, everybody here wants content for free. Bunch of communist hippies ;)

jokethrowaway 6y ago
I'm far from being a communist but I disagree with you. You have a third option in this case, block the ads. If it's possible to block ads, it's a minor weakness in YouTube's business model - which, don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good model for generating revenue with a relative small team (given it generates 5bln$ in revenue). If YouTube wouldn't allow users blocking ads it wouldn't be as popular. In the same way I don't like copyright being enforced by governments (eg. DMCA, getting ISP to disclose data about their customers): if you sell your product so much that you can't find a way to understand and legally persecute which of your users is breaching your contract and redistribute your goods, that's the way of the market to tax the wealth you're making. And I live off selling software (which gets copied and distributed on warez sites hosted where I can't touch them). I'll pay that market tax happily, given I'm getting some marketing in return and stopping it would cost me more in legal fees than anything. What I don't like is paying for an inept government to steal my money, provide crappy service and threaten me with jail if I don't pay.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Sorry, I forgot the anarchists ;)

anoraca 6y ago

I feel the same way about Twitch. They recently added unblockable, unskippable ads unless you subscribe to the specific channel that you're watching and I just don't watch Twitch any more for the most part. It's especially annoying when it's the same few ads in rotation over and over for products that I will never be interested in.

wldcordeiro 6y ago
It doesn't help that the ads on Twitch are the lowest of the low in terms of quality so you have no desire to stay around. Also their way of doing preroll ads is just bad, you'll get to watch like 5-10 seconds of the channel before the ad just suddenly cuts it off, unlike YouTube or others where the ad is shown first then the content after.

puranjay 6y ago

20 second unskippable ads about cat food (I don't have a cat) to watch a 1 minute video. No thanks YouTube!

sixothree 6y ago
It's worse when you have no idea if you're even _interested_ in the video you're going to sit through two unskippable ads to watch. It degrades the experience considerably.
- puranjay 6y ago
  I used to use the YouTube app on my firestick to stream music while working around the house. One of my favorite bands - who I personally know and who don't put any ads on their videos - releases entire albums in a single 30-40 minute long video. YouTube now throws 4-6 ads in the middle of the videos, often right in the middle of the songs.
0xcafecafe 6y ago
It's worse when you are trying to put a soothing music to put your baby to sleep and it starts with a loud ad which wakes her up. Or now that she is a toddler, her nursery rhyme videos have political campaign ads in the middle of the song.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  Of course, many of those nursery rhymes were political ads originally. Little Donny Trumpet went out on a junket, swatting his golf balls away...
tomjen3 6y ago
One of the best things about the ads on youtube was that if they sucked or weren't relevant you could skip them, sending a signal that the ads should not be shown. I suspect that the platforms have started to realize that personalized ads aren't better than content relevant ads, because I have several times seen ads on Facebook that were just targeted to people who live in my country and are over the age of 18, ie not targeted at all. Yet Facebook presumably showed me those ads because that is what they thought would make them the most money.

bachmeier 6y ago

Biggest issue for me is less the time cost and more the disruption created by an ad in the middle of a video. It's maybe 10% as valuable to me to watch a 10-minute video with two ad breaks in the middle vs a 10-minute video with ads at the start. It's like trying to watch a TV show while someone is throwing axes at your head.

tartoran 6y ago

This is exactly what I had in mind, I will definitely gain more time doing other things. With their recommendation engines youtube was already turning into cable television and now there's no escape from it. This will also incentive us to find other methods of sharing/consuming. P2P perhaps?

TT3351 6y ago

My trick for this is to disable the Youtube app on my phone and only use the browser to watch videos. Combined with DNS66, the few ads that do make it through on the site can be dismissed by just refreshing the page, which is easy to do in my browser.

cyberpsybin 6y ago
You can use Kiwi browser of phone. It's basically Chrome + dark mode + extensions(so ublock). Nothing makes it through.
ripply 6y ago
This also works on iOS and you can even get a shortcut to let you bypass PIP being disabled and by pausing the video 2-3 times in picture mode you bug it out and can play the video with the screen off - not very convenient for short videos but longer ones it works well with.

ogre_codes 6y ago

Unfortunately, most of my YouTube viewing is not recreational/ entertainment. I use YouTube primarily for DIY videos, Home Building, and other similar educational/ Howto videos. I just don't see a lot of alternatives out there so I'm kind of stuck with YouTube. Preroll ads are the worst because quality varies so widely I end up wading through multiple ads for crappy videos. Is there a good resource for how-tos out there for a fee?

jbaber 6y ago
Ad-free youtube is $10/mo. I get the impression from patreon and Consumer Reports that a lot of monthly services expect people to sign up and quit as needed.
bserge 6y ago
Honestly, sounds like a VPN in a small country would work great. Just tunnel through Moldova and enjoy a better Youtube and even Internet experience haha... Or just pay for premium...
oriel 6y ago
Most YT videos have transcriptions generated for them, maybe instead of wading through the video itself, you can skim the transcript?

EricE 6y ago

1Blocker on iOS does a great job of handling ads, but you raise a good point - perhaps I should whitelist Youtube :p

jypepin 6y ago

For me, it's the opposite - I'm very close to paying for youtube premium and not have ads anymore.

O_H_E 6y ago

Unfortunately, I use YoutubeVanced to block ads on my Android. Background playback is a plus. No root required. https://vancedapp.com/ https://vancedapp.com/

anon9001 6y ago
For anyone not familiar, Vanced is hacked Google binaries. It's the YouTube app, but with features enabled for free and ads blocked. They've been around a long time and are active on XDA. I use Vanced on my phone, but if you're not into hacked binaries, NewPipe is what you want: https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/
luckyshot 6y ago
There's the risk that Google will ban your account as it has done previously to some users, losing access and data hosted in their ecosystem (Gmail, Docs...), that's the thing that scares me the most. But yeah, Vanced (and the new YT Music) is amazing.
- ardacinar 6y ago
  I guess the solution here is to not use your main Google account with youtube vanced?
  - O_H_E 6y ago
    I looked this up. This seems to be fear mongering. There are no confirmed cases of stuff like this happening. Too lazy to dig up the links, but go search for yourself. (Reports in YTVanced reddit and NewPipe github)

simlevesque 6y ago

On Android use Youtube Vanced and you won't see any ads. vanced.app

fartcannon 6y ago

You can use ublock origin in Firefox on Android phones.

_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
and there's also bromite with built-in adblocking

suyash 6y ago

so you don't use ad blocker I see :/

squarefoot 6y ago
They work today, but Google could fool them by embedding the ads in videos, I mean cutting a video and inserting the ad inside, not playing a separate segment, so that it can't be detected by the adblockers. But then video makers could fight back by using AI to compare it with the original without ads and distributing cue lists automatically downloadable by browsers extensions telling the player to skip from A to B to hide the ad. then Google would fight back again by making the ad embedding random at each play, so that cue lists wouldn't work anymore, or disabling skipping within the ad segment, and so on. It will never end. It is pretty clear that Google is attempting to monetize everything down to the spaces between zeros and ones, changing their own rules when it suits them, and won't stop before anything. This is extremely unprofessional; I wouldn't rely on them for anything serious.

SimeVidas 6y ago

> I find the amount of ads I have to go through to watch a video so annoying that I'd rather not watch it at all. Could you share what that amount is? One ad every how many minutes? I ask because I suspect that it depends on the geographic region of the user and other factors, and I’m curious how bad it is in some places.

Consultant32452 6y ago

This sounds like a win-win for Youtube. Only the people willing to pay (via YT premium or watch ads) will stick around.

neltnerb 6y ago

I have posted tutorials and art on YouTube since before they were Google. I am also glad that this move has finally given me the push needed to delete my channel entirely. I don't try to make money off it, I have no interest in Google getting to.

Crosseye_Jack 6y ago

> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet I dunno which mobile platform you are using but I use iOS and if you watch YT via the browser you can block ads with its content blocker and you can even use some JavaScript in an shortcut to re-enable picture in picture (it’s a little more of a hassle, you have to press share then the pip custom shortcut but it works).

timbaboon 6y ago

I understand that I can’t really complain about a service I don’t pay for. That’s fine. I just don’t use it, and my life is so much better for it! Besides, YouTube is blocked at work / on vpn anyway :)

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"After all, it's their platform and they're not running a charity - people often forget that it's not their birth right to use a company's product or a service without paying for it one way or another." A few more consumer perspectives: Google still does not own the videos. It is still not their content. They will not pay contributors for content. As someone who has been using the web since 1993 I can assure anyone reading that there would still be widepspread video sharing on the internet even if no company such as YouTube existed that tried to monetise the phenomenon. Consumers pay dearly for internet connectivity and bandwidth, many of them enjoy playing around with the internet for fun and they will use the network for all manner of data sharing, including video, even in the absence of advertisers and their service partners (who are usurping a significant portion of that user-financed bandwidth). Google may not be running a tax-exempt charity for the benefit of consumers, however they are running a corporate welfare program for over 75,000 people. (Nevermind the amount the corporation pays in tax.) This will change if and when profits start to drop. With respect to this announcement, it appears Google won't share the proceeds from ad sales unless the YouTube contributor's video meets a certain threshhold of traffic, enough to be in the so-called "Partner Program". Many video contributors will receive nothing despite their viewers having to suffer though pre-roll and other ads interrupting their "user experience". In a way this reminds me of domain name registrars that place ads at domain names that customers fail to renew. I absolutely agree with this comment though. Changes such as this are evolutionary pressure that may lead us to a better internet, one that is less commercially driven by advertising under the fiction of "free". No matter how large these websites, excuse me, "platforms", have become I still believe the web and the internet are meant to be non-commercial and user-driven. As the network has grown, most users are not corporations. Add more straw. Break the camel's back. What comes in the aftermath will surely be better.

irrational 6y ago

You just showed me that I can block ads on YouTube. I just tried it and so far it seems to be working great. Thank you!

gentleman11 6y ago

It’s not a charity, but it’s also the standard platform bait and switch: provide years of great service to capture users and creators and gain network effects, then turn on the users and content creators to exploit them after there are no alternatives. Where else do we go now? When YouTube went down the other day, billions of people stopped being able to watch most online videos for a while

nostromo 6y ago

> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) There's a simple trick to get around this: don't use the YouTube app, use the website youtube.com. Adblockers work for YouTube's website on iOS. The app is only marginally better than the website, so you won't be missing much.

ohyes 6y ago

Interestingly this will probably mess up google search results as well. There are so many things in youtube that should have been a text post but are videos on youtube (for example how to do something technical), that somehow mysteriously come out as top results on google search. They've been rendered even more useless than they were before. I'm already not willing to sit through a video if it could have been text, but I'm sure some people are. I wonder if a slate of ads before, and during, will kill of that type of content. Honestly, I consider the existence of such things kind of toxic, which is a weirdly extreme view, I admit, so I'm kinda rooting for these types of videos to get pushed out of the results.

gcblkjaidfj 6y ago

On the other hand, it makes it harder to filter out bad content. When i search for a video on some language/system architecture, it's often difficult to find the official team videos. One good thing to do is to start playing one video after another form the search results. Usually the very first one without a pre-roll Advertisement, is the one you want.

movedx 6y ago

> I consume all video content on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) If you're on a network you control, you can do network level ad blocking :-) https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/

zeruch 6y ago

This has been the same for me, although I do find for content created by others, there should at least be a monetization split.