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At some point during Covid they seemed to just decide they wanted to abuse users and its been a steady decline since. My largest use cases were watching DJ set

At some point during Covid they seemed to just decide they wanted to abuse users and its been a steady decline since. My largest use cases were watching DJ sets, music videos, stand up comedians, instructional videos, and life of (random career) videos Music videos have multiple ads before and after now. The music videos are still watchable but it sucks to put youtube on at a party now. Life of videos from channels worth watching have started to turn off ads in place of putting in their own sponsored content. Annoying but similar to TV commercials of the past and are always skippable. But they have started destroying all of the other content I enjoyed. Instructional videos are overly long with the interrupting ads to the point of questioning whether the visual information with more time but easier understanding vs the extra reading becomes a serious contemplation. But comedies and extended DJ sets are unwatchable. The ML "predicts" natural breaks in language to insert ads into. When it comes to comedies its usually right before the punch line/the laughing, but the developers do not care at all that after the commercial ends and are resuming a second or two after the punch line. Not only is the timing ruined but you often miss the joke entirely. They have not figured out what to do with DJ sets so they just randomly interrupt in the middle of songs. I had ad breaks 3 times within 10 minutes of a 60 minute set today before I switched to AirPlaying my computer with AdNauseum installed. Anything I think I might want to watch ever again is immediately added to a playlist for yt-dlp. It makes the content watchable again and protects against channels that will delete content so they can add it back later for increased later views or because of fake DMCA takedowns. https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

ricardobayes 4y ago
I use adblock plus, and don't remember the last time I watched an ad on youtube (website, not app of course).
- Larrikin 4y ago
  Google has seemed to have taken the line of pretending to not care about ad blocking web extensions in favor of aggressively making sure the mobile and casting experience has them. When there are extensions that actively fight profiling like Ad Nauseum they've abused their dominant position in developing a web browsers to block the extension on Chrome. But when you don't have an easy ability to block ads like casting to a TV on their app on Roku and Apple TV or when using an iOS device they aggressively push the ads. On Android where there is an ability to block ads, they aggressively pursue apps like Vanced.
criticism010 4y ago
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washadjeffmad 4y ago
Your timeframe is right, but it's not just about ads. In 2017, Youtube altered search results following the mass shooting at the Las Vegas nightclub "to quell the spread of conspiracy theories". [1] It wasn't their first time changing the algorithms, but since then, they've applied measures of varying degrees of severity following similar domestic and certain politically sensitive events, like the attack on the Google campus. In 2018, "YouTube announces sweeping changes to the way it handles breaking news. News videos will now be ranked based on what YouTube deems to be "authoritative." [2] In 2019, Youtube search again went on lockdown following the act of domestic terrorism on mosques in Cristchurch, disabling the ability to filter by recent across the entire site. [3] This one lasted for weeks and the original function was never fully restored. Youtube has taken a more active approach to content curation, suppression, and promotion since the Trump presidency, and it's made it a worse resource for academic and informational searches. Once relatively neutral, they've begun to exert a more overt regulation of customers' interactions with content, going so far as qualifying certain media as aligning with certain viewpoints or not, disclosing affiliations with certain groups or political bodies, and minimizing the ability to specifically or organically locate certain non-promoted content. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/05/youtube-alters-algorithm-after-searches-las-vegas-shooting-turn-up-conspiracy-theories/736548001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/05/youtube-alter... [2] https://mashable.com/article/youtube-announces-changes-breaking-news-video-search https://mashable.com/article/youtube-announces-changes-break... [3] https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-restricting-search-newzealand-shooting/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-restricting-search-newzeal...
- mkl 4y ago
  A tangential quibble: Terrorism, not domestic terrorism. The perpetrator was foreign.
martythemaniak 4y ago
This isn't a problem, people have to pay their bills somehow. You can either watch ads or pay for Premium and not watch ads.
- _ncore 4y ago
  Hi marty, Are you the creator of Blockbattle.net? You seem to be the creator of this subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/a:t5_2sezu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/a:t5_2sezu/)? I remember playing it a couple years ago but it seems to have been taken down. Have you thought about open-sourcing it potentially? I've been wanting to re-create it for a while but really like to keep to original aesthetic, so having access to the CSS and game-logic would be great so I could faithfully re-create it. You can contact me at benjamin@bartels.dev
andsoitis 4y ago
> Music videos have multiple ads before and after now. The music videos are still watchable but it sucks to put youtube on at a party now. If you want entertainment that is not funded by ads, why not subscribe to YouTube Premium? "YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free, offline, and in the background" https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium

ricardobayes 4y ago

I use adblock plus, and don't remember the last time I watched an ad on youtube (website, not app of course).

Larrikin 4y ago
Google has seemed to have taken the line of pretending to not care about ad blocking web extensions in favor of aggressively making sure the mobile and casting experience has them. When there are extensions that actively fight profiling like Ad Nauseum they've abused their dominant position in developing a web browsers to block the extension on Chrome. But when you don't have an easy ability to block ads like casting to a TV on their app on Roku and Apple TV or when using an iOS device they aggressively push the ads. On Android where there is an ability to block ads, they aggressively pursue apps like Vanced.

criticism010 4y ago

[dead]

washadjeffmad 4y ago

Your timeframe is right, but it's not just about ads. In 2017, Youtube altered search results following the mass shooting at the Las Vegas nightclub "to quell the spread of conspiracy theories". [1] It wasn't their first time changing the algorithms, but since then, they've applied measures of varying degrees of severity following similar domestic and certain politically sensitive events, like the attack on the Google campus. In 2018, "YouTube announces sweeping changes to the way it handles breaking news. News videos will now be ranked based on what YouTube deems to be "authoritative." [2] In 2019, Youtube search again went on lockdown following the act of domestic terrorism on mosques in Cristchurch, disabling the ability to filter by recent across the entire site. [3] This one lasted for weeks and the original function was never fully restored. Youtube has taken a more active approach to content curation, suppression, and promotion since the Trump presidency, and it's made it a worse resource for academic and informational searches. Once relatively neutral, they've begun to exert a more overt regulation of customers' interactions with content, going so far as qualifying certain media as aligning with certain viewpoints or not, disclosing affiliations with certain groups or political bodies, and minimizing the ability to specifically or organically locate certain non-promoted content. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/05/youtube-alters-algorithm-after-searches-las-vegas-shooting-turn-up-conspiracy-theories/736548001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/05/youtube-alter... [2] https://mashable.com/article/youtube-announces-changes-breaking-news-video-search https://mashable.com/article/youtube-announces-changes-break... [3] https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-restricting-search-newzealand-shooting/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-restricting-search-newzeal...

mkl 4y ago
A tangential quibble: Terrorism, not domestic terrorism. The perpetrator was foreign.

martythemaniak 4y ago

This isn't a problem, people have to pay their bills somehow. You can either watch ads or pay for Premium and not watch ads.

_ncore 4y ago
Hi marty, Are you the creator of Blockbattle.net? You seem to be the creator of this subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/a:t5_2sezu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/a:t5_2sezu/)? I remember playing it a couple years ago but it seems to have been taken down. Have you thought about open-sourcing it potentially? I've been wanting to re-create it for a while but really like to keep to original aesthetic, so having access to the CSS and game-logic would be great so I could faithfully re-create it. You can contact me at benjamin@bartels.dev

andsoitis 4y ago

> Music videos have multiple ads before and after now. The music videos are still watchable but it sucks to put youtube on at a party now. If you want entertainment that is not funded by ads, why not subscribe to YouTube Premium? "YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free, offline, and in the background" https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium