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And you never once considered going premium to remove the ads? Surely someone must have been able to help you out with that if you couldn’t do it yourself? Th

And you never once considered going premium to remove the ads? Surely someone must have been able to help you out with that if you couldn’t do it yourself? The answer exists, it’s right there with buttons for clicking given to you by Google, but people here on HN so often seem so entirely blindsided and insist there’s no such thing as ad-free Youtube. What gives? I just don't get it.

sophacles 4y ago
Ad-free youtube doesn't get rid of "paid content" in videos. "paid content" is just ads. So if you pay for youtube premium you get rid of some ads, not all the ads.
- delecti 4y ago
  That's clearly a different kind of thing though. Sponsored content in videos is just stuff you don't like, but it's still the video you clicked on. Youtube injected ads on top of the video is not the content you clicked on. Youtube premium unambiguously solves the problem that the top-level comment was complaining about (mid-roll ads that can be a half-hour or longer), you're just moving the goal posts.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    I'm not moving anything. If you want to call something ad-free, IMHO it shouldn't have ads.
    - nybble41 4y ago
      Google's product here is the hosting and distribution service. If you pay for YT Premium then Google doesn't place any ads in their product. The content of the videos—including any "native" ads inserted by the video creators—isn't up to them.
      - sophacles 4y ago
        If they can't deliver ad-free, they should not try to sell me ad-free. They could sell me something that isn't a lie instead.
        nybble41 4y ago
        Google is delivering their service ad-free. It's not their fault you choose to use their ad-free hosting and distribution service to view third-party videos which contain ads.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        sophacles 4y ago
        Google's advertising says "Watch youtube ad-free". It doesn't say "watch youtube ad-free unless the video you're watching embeds ad content as well", heck it doesn't even say "Watch youtube ad-free*". So whatever they are actually providing, it's not what they are selling. As I said in several comments now: My opinion is that if you try to sell me ad-free, sell me an actually ad-free product. edit: it also occurs to me that the recommender and search engine will not mark nor honor my "ad-free" status, nor will the auto-play feature. So if I pay for ad-free and google says "hey watch this video with lots of paid promotion next", wouldn't that just be google pushing more ads on me even if I supposedly pay for "no ads"?
        nybble41 4y ago
        The ads you're complaining about are not Google's ads. When you pay for YT Premium you don't see ads from Google on YouTube. End of story. Other people can still show you ads, even in videos they upload to YouTube. That's between you and the creators of those videos. You are free to watch them or not. But Google is delivering exactly what they promised. If you don't find that the service is worthwhile, just don't subscribe. There's no point complaining about it here.
  - arrosenberg 4y ago
    No, no, no, this is letting YouTube off the hook. The whole reason content creators started doing in-video promotions is because YT kept squeezing them for ad revenue. The top comment is absolutely correct - adfree should be adfree - that is YouTube’s problem to solve, not the customer’s.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes?
      - arrosenberg 4y ago
        I'd be fine with it personally, but I think that'd be a really silly way to go about it. They could provide advertiser tools to the content providers that respect premium accounts. Not super hard, but here's the catch, and oooh baby is it a doozy - they have to pay fair rates for advertising. I know that's going to be hard to stomach, but if they do pay fairly, I suspect most content producers would be happier with that arrangement.
      - q-big 4y ago
        > Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes? Why not downrank such videos a little bit - just like Google attempts to downrank pages that look like made by content farms? Since a lot of YouTube creators are very concerned about their ranking, this should decrease the problem of sponsored segments/videos a lot.
        scarface74 4y ago
        So now we want BigTech “to control what people see?” Why not just not watch content from content creators that make videos that have content that you don’t like?
    - jsnell 4y ago
      Do you have a source for this claim? As far as I know, the cut of the ad revenue going to the creators has not changed since the introduction. It was 55% a decade ago, it's 55% today.
signal11 4y ago
> And you never once considered going premium to remove the ads? I’m pretty much “no” on paying for a product that encourages clickbait and misinformation. This isn’t a uniform “no Google” thing, I use GCP, but paying for YouTube just seems icky. If it can’t survive as a business (or become so ad-heavy that it’s a UX nightmare), hey maybe there’ll be new opportunities for others. Vimeo, maybe Twitter, with Musk’s new zeal for making orgs pay for Twitter? UX nightmares always get competition. Altavista, Experts Exchange, Skype/WebEx… all faced nimbler competitors. I don’t see YouTube being an exception.
gaius_baltar 4y ago
YT Premium only makes the problem worse by still allowing native ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? What business model should Google use for YouTube? But you can always use a prepaid debit card.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? But even if you do pay, you still see (often longer!) ads because people put sponsor segments in their videos. As far as I can tell, there's no way to skip those, paying or otherwise, except resorting to something like sponsorblock, right?
    - astura 4y ago
      shrug I just fast-forward them.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Yes, there is - don’t spend time watching their content. I hate ads with a passion [1]. I pay for the ad free tier of every streaming service I subscribe to. I find YouTube a wasteland of shitty content. [1] For some reason tech podcasts ads don’t bother me and many of the ones I listen to have chapter markers for their ads.
    - gaius_baltar 4y ago
      I'm ok with sponsored segments as the only ads because they are the least offensive ads ATM. The way to prevent these ads from being blocked is to include them in the video stream itself, possibly by the original author. This has the good side effects of making them easy to skip and, more importantly, unable track users by themselves. The publishing platform can say things like "xx% of users matching rule yyyy fully watched it", but only if watching is non anonymous.
WorldMaker 4y ago
- delecti 4y ago
  I signed up for Premium before the situation got as bad as it currently is. The worst ads I had seen by that point were either 5-30 second unskippable, or 15-120 second skippable. Even at that point, signing up for Premium felt like a fantastic deal. I never felt gaslight or manipulated into it, it just felt like paying an acceptable price for a very attractive set of features. It feels like you have a counterproductive set of principles if they keep you from paying a reasonable price for a good set of features. Premium also gives a much bigger chunk of money to creators, which makes the situation seem even better to me.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    I'm happy for you that you've been lucky so far in your relationship with YouTube. It does not invalidate my experience of the relationship. I've chosen to spend the equivalent money (and more) more directly in Patreon and Bandcamp relationships with the creators I follow. I know a much bigger chunk of that money makes it to creators, and I have a good idea directly how much creator sees per dollar I spend, not just some assuaging stats from some Google algorithm that it is supposed to go to creators. (Getting back to: this relationship I have with Google/YouTube has trust issues, and that's also something that I have difficulty trusting, that Premium actually gives more money to creators.)
    - delecti 4y ago
      I watch a pretty broad variety of youtube, and also browse randomly. It's not really feasible to personally give money to each channel I happen across videos from. If your intake is limited to a narrow and consistent array of channels then maybe that's a different consideration. And here's a pretty methodical breakdown of how much more a view counts with a Premium subscription (then called Youtube Red). Youtubers make in the ballpark of 2-5x as much per minute viewed with Premium than with ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Hr0H7TwAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Hr0H7TwAo
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
But I don't mind most of the ads. To be honest, I actually like quite a few of them. It's just the ones that are longer than the content I'm watching that really get to me.

sophacles 4y ago

Ad-free youtube doesn't get rid of "paid content" in videos. "paid content" is just ads. So if you pay for youtube premium you get rid of some ads, not all the ads.

delecti 4y ago
That's clearly a different kind of thing though. Sponsored content in videos is just stuff you don't like, but it's still the video you clicked on. Youtube injected ads on top of the video is not the content you clicked on. Youtube premium unambiguously solves the problem that the top-level comment was complaining about (mid-roll ads that can be a half-hour or longer), you're just moving the goal posts.
- sophacles 4y ago
  I'm not moving anything. If you want to call something ad-free, IMHO it shouldn't have ads.
  - nybble41 4y ago
    Google's product here is the hosting and distribution service. If you pay for YT Premium then Google doesn't place any ads in their product. The content of the videos—including any "native" ads inserted by the video creators—isn't up to them.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      If they can't deliver ad-free, they should not try to sell me ad-free. They could sell me something that isn't a lie instead.
      - nybble41 4y ago
        Google is delivering their service ad-free. It's not their fault you choose to use their ad-free hosting and distribution service to view third-party videos which contain ads.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        sophacles 4y ago
        Google's advertising says "Watch youtube ad-free". It doesn't say "watch youtube ad-free unless the video you're watching embeds ad content as well", heck it doesn't even say "Watch youtube ad-free*". So whatever they are actually providing, it's not what they are selling. As I said in several comments now: My opinion is that if you try to sell me ad-free, sell me an actually ad-free product. edit: it also occurs to me that the recommender and search engine will not mark nor honor my "ad-free" status, nor will the auto-play feature. So if I pay for ad-free and google says "hey watch this video with lots of paid promotion next", wouldn't that just be google pushing more ads on me even if I supposedly pay for "no ads"?
        nybble41 4y ago
        The ads you're complaining about are not Google's ads. When you pay for YT Premium you don't see ads from Google on YouTube. End of story. Other people can still show you ads, even in videos they upload to YouTube. That's between you and the creators of those videos. You are free to watch them or not. But Google is delivering exactly what they promised. If you don't find that the service is worthwhile, just don't subscribe. There's no point complaining about it here.
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  No, no, no, this is letting YouTube off the hook. The whole reason content creators started doing in-video promotions is because YT kept squeezing them for ad revenue. The top comment is absolutely correct - adfree should be adfree - that is YouTube’s problem to solve, not the customer’s.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes?
    - arrosenberg 4y ago
      I'd be fine with it personally, but I think that'd be a really silly way to go about it. They could provide advertiser tools to the content providers that respect premium accounts. Not super hard, but here's the catch, and oooh baby is it a doozy - they have to pay fair rates for advertising. I know that's going to be hard to stomach, but if they do pay fairly, I suspect most content producers would be happier with that arrangement.
    - q-big 4y ago
      > Would you rather Google police content and not allow native ads that the content producer includes? Why not downrank such videos a little bit - just like Google attempts to downrank pages that look like made by content farms? Since a lot of YouTube creators are very concerned about their ranking, this should decrease the problem of sponsored segments/videos a lot.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So now we want BigTech “to control what people see?” Why not just not watch content from content creators that make videos that have content that you don’t like?
  - jsnell 4y ago
    Do you have a source for this claim? As far as I know, the cut of the ad revenue going to the creators has not changed since the introduction. It was 55% a decade ago, it's 55% today.

signal11 4y ago

> And you never once considered going premium to remove the ads? I’m pretty much “no” on paying for a product that encourages clickbait and misinformation. This isn’t a uniform “no Google” thing, I use GCP, but paying for YouTube just seems icky. If it can’t survive as a business (or become so ad-heavy that it’s a UX nightmare), hey maybe there’ll be new opportunities for others. Vimeo, maybe Twitter, with Musk’s new zeal for making orgs pay for Twitter? UX nightmares always get competition. Altavista, Experts Exchange, Skype/WebEx… all faced nimbler competitors. I don’t see YouTube being an exception.

gaius_baltar 4y ago

YT Premium only makes the problem worse by still allowing native ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.

scarface74 4y ago
So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? What business model should Google use for YouTube? But you can always use a prepaid debit card.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > So you don’t want to see ads and you don’t want to pay not to see ads? But even if you do pay, you still see (often longer!) ads because people put sponsor segments in their videos. As far as I can tell, there's no way to skip those, paying or otherwise, except resorting to something like sponsorblock, right?
  - astura 4y ago
    shrug I just fast-forward them.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Yes, there is - don’t spend time watching their content. I hate ads with a passion [1]. I pay for the ad free tier of every streaming service I subscribe to. I find YouTube a wasteland of shitty content. [1] For some reason tech podcasts ads don’t bother me and many of the ones I listen to have chapter markers for their ads.
  - gaius_baltar 4y ago
    I'm ok with sponsored segments as the only ads because they are the least offensive ads ATM. The way to prevent these ads from being blocked is to include them in the video stream itself, possibly by the original author. This has the good side effects of making them easy to skip and, more importantly, unable track users by themselves. The publishing platform can say things like "xx% of users matching rule yyyy fully watched it", but only if watching is non anonymous.

WorldMaker 4y ago

delecti 4y ago
I signed up for Premium before the situation got as bad as it currently is. The worst ads I had seen by that point were either 5-30 second unskippable, or 15-120 second skippable. Even at that point, signing up for Premium felt like a fantastic deal. I never felt gaslight or manipulated into it, it just felt like paying an acceptable price for a very attractive set of features. It feels like you have a counterproductive set of principles if they keep you from paying a reasonable price for a good set of features. Premium also gives a much bigger chunk of money to creators, which makes the situation seem even better to me.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I'm happy for you that you've been lucky so far in your relationship with YouTube. It does not invalidate my experience of the relationship. I've chosen to spend the equivalent money (and more) more directly in Patreon and Bandcamp relationships with the creators I follow. I know a much bigger chunk of that money makes it to creators, and I have a good idea directly how much creator sees per dollar I spend, not just some assuaging stats from some Google algorithm that it is supposed to go to creators. (Getting back to: this relationship I have with Google/YouTube has trust issues, and that's also something that I have difficulty trusting, that Premium actually gives more money to creators.)
  - delecti 4y ago
    I watch a pretty broad variety of youtube, and also browse randomly. It's not really feasible to personally give money to each channel I happen across videos from. If your intake is limited to a narrow and consistent array of channels then maybe that's a different consideration. And here's a pretty methodical breakdown of how much more a view counts with a Premium subscription (then called Youtube Red). Youtubers make in the ballpark of 2-5x as much per minute viewed with Premium than with ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Hr0H7TwAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Hr0H7TwAo

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

But I don't mind most of the ads. To be honest, I actually like quite a few of them. It's just the ones that are longer than the content I'm watching that really get to me.