6 ms·

Apparently Ad Blockers are not allowed on YouTube. Is this a new thing?

66 points by josephcsible 4y ago

villgax 4y ago
They could have gone paywall but Ad revenue is too good. FTC should check them for promising to be a free of cost video host but having such strings attached to viewing content as well
- dado3212 4y ago
  There literally is a paywall version. Just pay for YouTube Premium.
  - archerx 4y ago
    I will never pay for Youtube Premium even if that means never using Youtube again.
    - dean2432 4y ago
      What I like least about youtube is their use of shadowbanning in the comment section. Absolutely shameful. Freedom of speech on Google's terms.
  - villgax 4y ago
    Not exactly pay wall
AHOHA 4y ago
Good, it’s the time for YouTube to die for good, no more useless contents, no more “content creators” having silly faces as a thumbnail to trick the algo, maybe another service will arise soon that has the same contents as the old youtube and somehow like tiktok now, an interest based, for fun and entertainment videos, posted by average cameras and normal people unlike the atrocities we see now in YT..
- secretsatan 4y ago
  While there is a lot of that, there's still an awful lot of good content, especially for niche interests, you don't have to watch the stuff you don't like. I don't have much, if any, come up on my feed.
- eiiot 4y ago
  This is a bad take. There’s a lot of genuinely good content on YouTube, it’s just that band content tends to get more attention. Even with the bad content, that’s not a reason for YouTube to “die for good.” Just because you have to spend more time seeking out good content doesn’t make the platform invaluable.
  - SapporoChris 4y ago
    invaluable: of great value, priceless. Seriously, youtube is not that. Let's go with a more reasonable definition that youtube is valuable. Value of time vs value of content. I can easily see having to spend more time seeking content resulting in the platform no longer being valuable.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Of course there’s good content on YouTube, but the vast majority is crap or even anti-content and YouTube pushes bad content with its algorithm. I think it’s a function of preferring longer content to show more ads so what was once a 4 minute read blog post is now a 15 minute video that meanders around and around killing time. People watch it, very much, so it’s not YouTube’s fault entirely. But I wish they would incentivize valuable content over chaff. I think there’s a lot of bloat wastage that exists only because YouTube pays more and encourages it.
- hardware2win 4y ago
  Uh, are those silly faces actually tricking the algo or tricking humans?
tjpnz 4y ago
The enshittification of Google products continues.
Paul-Craft 4y ago
That's news to me. I roll with at least 2 adblockers everywhere I go. I can't stand what the modern web looks like with all that bullshit.
- treadmill 4y ago
  Which ones do you use?
  - MaxikCZ 4y ago
    not OP but "uBlock Origin" is the golden standard. I use that + "Behind The Overlay", "NoScript", "Google Search Ad Remover And Customizer", "Personal Blocklist(not by Google)", "SponsorBlock for YouTube - Skip Sponsorships"
ukuina 4y ago
I don't understand the mentality that everything on YouTube should be free. Sure, there's plenty of junk, but there are glorious slices that I am compelled to support, both via YouTube Premium and via Patreon where applicable.
- danjc 4y ago
  Seems unreasonable that you're downvoted for this comment. You can't complain about ads and also complain about paying a subscription.
  - salawat 4y ago
    ...Yes you absolutely can. The web was never meant to be your monetization tool. A bunch of mouth breathing, money grubbing assholes came up with the idea that the web should be the next great advertising frontier. And as the creation of the Universe was, so to was the web becoming the next advertising frontier widely considered a bad move. So get off my web, and go set up your monetized fiefdom elsewhere. This place was not meant for your ilk. Leave us, and take your shitty rip-off content syndication farms with you. Leave and sully our search indexes no more! Go and find your own damn playground. Oh, wait, what's that? Don't want to move somewhere or build a network that requires opt-in to your shitty monetization schemes because you'd miss out on all the eyeballs that won't follow you? Well... Now you know why we complain. Because your arse feels entitled to pollute the shit out of our indexes and poison our wells.
    - hardware2win 4y ago
      >The web was never meant to be your monetization tool. Who defined what web was meant to?
      - prepend 4y ago
        You’re not asking a rhetorical question. The web was designed and you can read the original paper, https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html And you can read other parts as they were designed and added.
throwuxiytayq 4y ago
Amazing, looks just like all the websites I don’t use! Looks like my video content addiction will have a cure very soon.
archerx 4y ago
If ad blockers are blocked on Youtube I will just stop using Youtube and buy a sub to Nebula/Curiosity stream instead because most of the interesting Youtubers are slowly migrating over to it.
lastangryman 4y ago
Bold move. I don't know of any data that backs this up but my perception is advertising on YouTube has gotten way heavier in the last 12 months. Used to be short ads, usually 1, that you could skip after a few seconds. Now it seems there are multiple ads on each video, some unskippable, even the longer ones. I don't expect YouTube to be completely free, and of course it's their platform they can do what they like, but at what point are they just getting greedy and should perhaps realize the result of that is going to be more people using ad blockers. I mean, their 2019 revenue was 15bn, it was almost 30bn in 2022. They hardly struggling to monetize. Will be interesting to see where this goes. Perhaps it's an attempt to push people to premium.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Apparently they did that even without asking content authors, so even those that don't do ads, were surprised to wake up to a sea of complaints regarding ads on their content.
- snowe2010 4y ago
  They have a lot of profit but it’s going to dwindle as people start posting more 4k content. Linus has a video on it. https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI
- secretsatan 4y ago
  Def got heavier, used to get 1 ad at the beginning, now its 2, then another 2 after 5 mins or so? If I pause the video to do something, another couple of ads will play after restarting. I wouldn't be surprised if they ramped up the ads the more you used it, new users would get less ads to make it more attractive. After you build up some hours, have some subscribers they might reckon they could squeeze more in there as you're more invested in the platform.
seanhunter 4y ago
Firstly it's interesting that they think they get to decide whether the user runs an adblocker or not. I'm going to decide that for myself thank you very much yt. Secondly, the yt experience without adblocking is so poor that I cringe any time I have to watch something on a device (eg my phone) that I don't have adblocking set up on. For whatever reason at the moment I get bombarded with get-rich-quick scams promising to teach me trading (thanks but I used to work in the city - I don't need your bs "advice") and deepfake scams saying Elon Musk is giving away his money.
- thirtyclowns 4y ago
  I use youtube vanced (now Revanced) for android
dt2m 4y ago
Out of all the monthly subscriptions I have, YouTube Premium is by far my favourite. I don’t see an issue with paying for something I use so much everyday. Let’s be real, at this point YouTube is too big to fail. Without Google’s capital it would be impossible to do this at scale. Also I would much rather support Google and independent creators rather than Netflix and the entertainment industry.
- latexr 4y ago
  > Also I would much rather support Google and independent creators Of the independent creators I know about, not a single one is satisfied with YouTube and their draconian rules. They all have their own sponsors in the videos and Patreon accounts. Google, like other major tech companies, has proven time and again they care about their bottom line above all. Let’s not pretend they are good guys standing up for the little guy. > rather than Netflix and the entertainment industry. Wasn’t Netflix specifically a big supporter of independent creators, giving a lot of them a chance they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise? There was even a running joke that anyone could get a show on Netflix. Perhaps I’m mistaken or that has changed but it seems like any other of the big streaming services would be a better target for that comment.
- jacooper 4y ago
  I would subscribe if it stopped all the draconian tracking, but unfortunately it doesn't.
- deeznuts1234123 4y ago
  [flagged]
- noahjk 4y ago
  YouTube premium is a great example of a convenience product. My main YouTube consumption has moved from my browser to my Apple TV, where there's no good way to block ads, so I just pay for premium. Added benefit is being able to share ad-free with a few friends. I really don't like giving YouTube the money, but I REALLY don't like seeing ads.
- tpoacher 4y ago
zb3 4y ago
That's technically interesting, how do they plan to enforce this?
- worksonmine 4y ago
  It's not really that difficult. If the ads are blocked the servers can just return 403 for the videos. Since they have their own ad platform they can easily verify if a specific ad was served from the server which is difficult to work around from the client. Even if someone puts in the work to download the ad without playing it to satisfy the server Google still makes money so they're happy. When it comes to corporations like Google I don't really mind watching ads but I don't want to help them with their revenue.
  - zb3 4y ago
    After analyzing the code I see that it's indeed the server that's supposed to return whether to display this popup (so presumably the video info data would not be included in that response). However this still doesn't mean there's a reliable channel to detect whether the ad was actually displayed, and as far as I understand there might be some architectural limits as to what data can be collected by a given server (for example, the CDN). Now, I don't think advertisers 'd be very happy if Google counted simply downloading the ad as an impression :)
    - worksonmine 4y ago
      > Now, I don't think advertisers 'd be very happy if Google counted simply downloading the ad as an impression :) That's how it's been done for years, and verified with tracking pixel from a third-party to correlate numbers. I used to work at a startup in the ad space ages ago and most third-parties were on block lists, we weren't. So we couldn't get paid for real impressions because the numbers didn't add up. How would a site confidently verify that a video was actually played as opposed to simply downloaded? The path of least resistance is good enough, and Google is Google, advertisers do what they say. If they're unhappy is there even a way to let them know?
Waterluvian 4y ago
Something in Google/YouTube's books is horribly wrong. I feel surprised there aren't major articles about "something seems very unhealthy at YouTube." The last 12 months of advertising on YouTube has taken a nosedive: - Regularly see static ads for fake Mario Android games that are an OBVIOUS violation of Nintendo copyright. - Regularly see snakeoil ads. Complete garbage that Google used to be too good for. Now they'll take anyone's money. - Regularly get an entire page of ads when I search for something on mobile. Not a single actual result until I scroll below 3 rows of ads. - Ad breaks have seemingly doubled. - Unskippable ads were 5, then 7, now up to 15 seconds.
exciliado 4y ago
There is nothing on youtube that makes me pay for the subscription, so go ahead YT and try to force this measure and see how it goes. bye bye
theironhammer 4y ago
I guess it's time to Rumble https://rumble.com https://rumble.com
numbol 4y ago
So, bought subscription for Nebula for year (maybe should have gone woth Curiosity stream bundle).

66 points by josephcsible 4y ago

They could have gone paywall but Ad revenue is too good. FTC should check them for promising to be a free of cost video host but having such strings attached to viewing content as well

dado3212 4y ago
There literally is a paywall version. Just pay for YouTube Premium.
- archerx 4y ago
  I will never pay for Youtube Premium even if that means never using Youtube again.
  - dean2432 4y ago
    What I like least about youtube is their use of shadowbanning in the comment section. Absolutely shameful. Freedom of speech on Google's terms.
- villgax 4y ago
  Not exactly pay wall

AHOHA 4y ago

Good, it’s the time for YouTube to die for good, no more useless contents, no more “content creators” having silly faces as a thumbnail to trick the algo, maybe another service will arise soon that has the same contents as the old youtube and somehow like tiktok now, an interest based, for fun and entertainment videos, posted by average cameras and normal people unlike the atrocities we see now in YT..

secretsatan 4y ago
While there is a lot of that, there's still an awful lot of good content, especially for niche interests, you don't have to watch the stuff you don't like. I don't have much, if any, come up on my feed.
eiiot 4y ago
This is a bad take. There’s a lot of genuinely good content on YouTube, it’s just that band content tends to get more attention. Even with the bad content, that’s not a reason for YouTube to “die for good.” Just because you have to spend more time seeking out good content doesn’t make the platform invaluable.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  invaluable: of great value, priceless. Seriously, youtube is not that. Let's go with a more reasonable definition that youtube is valuable. Value of time vs value of content. I can easily see having to spend more time seeking content resulting in the platform no longer being valuable.
- prepend 4y ago
  Of course there’s good content on YouTube, but the vast majority is crap or even anti-content and YouTube pushes bad content with its algorithm. I think it’s a function of preferring longer content to show more ads so what was once a 4 minute read blog post is now a 15 minute video that meanders around and around killing time. People watch it, very much, so it’s not YouTube’s fault entirely. But I wish they would incentivize valuable content over chaff. I think there’s a lot of bloat wastage that exists only because YouTube pays more and encourages it.
hardware2win 4y ago
Uh, are those silly faces actually tricking the algo or tricking humans?

tjpnz 4y ago

The enshittification of Google products continues.

Paul-Craft 4y ago

That's news to me. I roll with at least 2 adblockers everywhere I go. I can't stand what the modern web looks like with all that bullshit.

treadmill 4y ago
Which ones do you use?
- MaxikCZ 4y ago
  not OP but "uBlock Origin" is the golden standard. I use that + "Behind The Overlay", "NoScript", "Google Search Ad Remover And Customizer", "Personal Blocklist(not by Google)", "SponsorBlock for YouTube - Skip Sponsorships"

ukuina 4y ago

I don't understand the mentality that everything on YouTube should be free. Sure, there's plenty of junk, but there are glorious slices that I am compelled to support, both via YouTube Premium and via Patreon where applicable.

danjc 4y ago
Seems unreasonable that you're downvoted for this comment. You can't complain about ads and also complain about paying a subscription.
- salawat 4y ago
  ...Yes you absolutely can. The web was never meant to be your monetization tool. A bunch of mouth breathing, money grubbing assholes came up with the idea that the web should be the next great advertising frontier. And as the creation of the Universe was, so to was the web becoming the next advertising frontier widely considered a bad move. So get off my web, and go set up your monetized fiefdom elsewhere. This place was not meant for your ilk. Leave us, and take your shitty rip-off content syndication farms with you. Leave and sully our search indexes no more! Go and find your own damn playground. Oh, wait, what's that? Don't want to move somewhere or build a network that requires opt-in to your shitty monetization schemes because you'd miss out on all the eyeballs that won't follow you? Well... Now you know why we complain. Because your arse feels entitled to pollute the shit out of our indexes and poison our wells.
  - hardware2win 4y ago
    >The web was never meant to be your monetization tool. Who defined what web was meant to?
    - prepend 4y ago
      You’re not asking a rhetorical question. The web was designed and you can read the original paper, https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html And you can read other parts as they were designed and added.

throwuxiytayq 4y ago

Amazing, looks just like all the websites I don’t use! Looks like my video content addiction will have a cure very soon.

archerx 4y ago

If ad blockers are blocked on Youtube I will just stop using Youtube and buy a sub to Nebula/Curiosity stream instead because most of the interesting Youtubers are slowly migrating over to it.

lastangryman 4y ago

Bold move. I don't know of any data that backs this up but my perception is advertising on YouTube has gotten way heavier in the last 12 months. Used to be short ads, usually 1, that you could skip after a few seconds. Now it seems there are multiple ads on each video, some unskippable, even the longer ones. I don't expect YouTube to be completely free, and of course it's their platform they can do what they like, but at what point are they just getting greedy and should perhaps realize the result of that is going to be more people using ad blockers. I mean, their 2019 revenue was 15bn, it was almost 30bn in 2022. They hardly struggling to monetize. Will be interesting to see where this goes. Perhaps it's an attempt to push people to premium.

pjmlp 4y ago
Apparently they did that even without asking content authors, so even those that don't do ads, were surprised to wake up to a sea of complaints regarding ads on their content.
snowe2010 4y ago
They have a lot of profit but it’s going to dwindle as people start posting more 4k content. Linus has a video on it. https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI
secretsatan 4y ago
Def got heavier, used to get 1 ad at the beginning, now its 2, then another 2 after 5 mins or so? If I pause the video to do something, another couple of ads will play after restarting. I wouldn't be surprised if they ramped up the ads the more you used it, new users would get less ads to make it more attractive. After you build up some hours, have some subscribers they might reckon they could squeeze more in there as you're more invested in the platform.

seanhunter 4y ago

Firstly it's interesting that they think they get to decide whether the user runs an adblocker or not. I'm going to decide that for myself thank you very much yt. Secondly, the yt experience without adblocking is so poor that I cringe any time I have to watch something on a device (eg my phone) that I don't have adblocking set up on. For whatever reason at the moment I get bombarded with get-rich-quick scams promising to teach me trading (thanks but I used to work in the city - I don't need your bs "advice") and deepfake scams saying Elon Musk is giving away his money.

thirtyclowns 4y ago
I use youtube vanced (now Revanced) for android

dt2m 4y ago

Out of all the monthly subscriptions I have, YouTube Premium is by far my favourite. I don’t see an issue with paying for something I use so much everyday. Let’s be real, at this point YouTube is too big to fail. Without Google’s capital it would be impossible to do this at scale. Also I would much rather support Google and independent creators rather than Netflix and the entertainment industry.

latexr 4y ago
> Also I would much rather support Google and independent creators Of the independent creators I know about, not a single one is satisfied with YouTube and their draconian rules. They all have their own sponsors in the videos and Patreon accounts. Google, like other major tech companies, has proven time and again they care about their bottom line above all. Let’s not pretend they are good guys standing up for the little guy. > rather than Netflix and the entertainment industry. Wasn’t Netflix specifically a big supporter of independent creators, giving a lot of them a chance they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise? There was even a running joke that anyone could get a show on Netflix. Perhaps I’m mistaken or that has changed but it seems like any other of the big streaming services would be a better target for that comment.
jacooper 4y ago
I would subscribe if it stopped all the draconian tracking, but unfortunately it doesn't.
deeznuts1234123 4y ago
[flagged]
noahjk 4y ago
YouTube premium is a great example of a convenience product. My main YouTube consumption has moved from my browser to my Apple TV, where there's no good way to block ads, so I just pay for premium. Added benefit is being able to share ad-free with a few friends. I really don't like giving YouTube the money, but I REALLY don't like seeing ads.
tpoacher 4y ago

zb3 4y ago

That's technically interesting, how do they plan to enforce this?

worksonmine 4y ago
It's not really that difficult. If the ads are blocked the servers can just return 403 for the videos. Since they have their own ad platform they can easily verify if a specific ad was served from the server which is difficult to work around from the client. Even if someone puts in the work to download the ad without playing it to satisfy the server Google still makes money so they're happy. When it comes to corporations like Google I don't really mind watching ads but I don't want to help them with their revenue.
- zb3 4y ago
  After analyzing the code I see that it's indeed the server that's supposed to return whether to display this popup (so presumably the video info data would not be included in that response). However this still doesn't mean there's a reliable channel to detect whether the ad was actually displayed, and as far as I understand there might be some architectural limits as to what data can be collected by a given server (for example, the CDN). Now, I don't think advertisers 'd be very happy if Google counted simply downloading the ad as an impression :)
  - worksonmine 4y ago
    > Now, I don't think advertisers 'd be very happy if Google counted simply downloading the ad as an impression :) That's how it's been done for years, and verified with tracking pixel from a third-party to correlate numbers. I used to work at a startup in the ad space ages ago and most third-parties were on block lists, we weren't. So we couldn't get paid for real impressions because the numbers didn't add up. How would a site confidently verify that a video was actually played as opposed to simply downloaded? The path of least resistance is good enough, and Google is Google, advertisers do what they say. If they're unhappy is there even a way to let them know?

Waterluvian 4y ago

Something in Google/YouTube's books is horribly wrong. I feel surprised there aren't major articles about "something seems very unhealthy at YouTube." The last 12 months of advertising on YouTube has taken a nosedive: - Regularly see static ads for fake Mario Android games that are an OBVIOUS violation of Nintendo copyright. - Regularly see snakeoil ads. Complete garbage that Google used to be too good for. Now they'll take anyone's money. - Regularly get an entire page of ads when I search for something on mobile. Not a single actual result until I scroll below 3 rows of ads. - Ad breaks have seemingly doubled. - Unskippable ads were 5, then 7, now up to 15 seconds.

exciliado 4y ago

There is nothing on youtube that makes me pay for the subscription, so go ahead YT and try to force this measure and see how it goes. bye bye

theironhammer 4y ago

I guess it's time to Rumble https://rumble.com https://rumble.com

numbol 4y ago

So, bought subscription for Nebula for year (maybe should have gone woth Curiosity stream bundle).