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YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

• jacooper 3y ago
  It doesn't look very complex, nothing a simple ublock/brave block element can't remove, at least not yet.
  • haunter 3y ago
    Yet. Twitch has some pretty hardcore ad system that even uBlock can't block straight up and you have to use a combination of tools/scripts https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions https://old.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/10fgy9y/twitch_adblock_2023/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/10fgy9y/twitch_adb...
    • grishka 3y ago
      TIL Twitch has ads.
    • Sytten 3y ago
      Because they are embedded in the stream itself something I am not sure would be viable for youtube to do at their scale. For twitch, you basically have to use a proxy hosted in another country where they dont show ads to retrieve the stream links.
      • crtasm 3y ago
        They're not embedded in the UK at least, you can confirm this by watching something via the Twitch plugin for Kodi which is sent video of a countdown timer instead.
      • haunter 3y ago
        They aren't. If you watch a stream for example with streamlink/VLC then ads looks like this when they are played https://files.catbox.moe/n7sb34.png https://files.catbox.moe/n7sb34.png
    • crtasm 3y ago
      I only have uBlock Origin and never see ads on Twitch. Downvoting does not change this fact (and if I knew exactly why my experience is different, I would provide details).
      • BlueTemplar 3y ago
        Same with uMatrix. However I do get YouTube ads... Twitch ads sound like they would be horribly frustrating because of the real time nature of the experience !
      • episteme 3y ago
        Where are you located?
      • kenhwang 3y ago
        It's rare to see Twitch ads because they don't have very much ad inventory. But if you happen to be a rare match for one of the few ads they have, you'll see that same ad over and over and over again.
    • kenhwang 3y ago
      I work in ad-tech. The tech to make ads unblockable has existed for years now (server side ad insertion makes ads indistinguishable from content because they're delivered through the same gateway in the same video stream thus bypassing DNS/network and DOM based ad blocking). However, it's still rarely used because sufficiently capable users with advanced adblockers do not make up enough lost revenue over the increased infrastructure cost. It's been fascinating watching Google lag in this area given the amount of engineering resources, market share, and platform control they have. We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads. But it appears it's not for lack of want, it seems like it's just poor execution and unexpected diminishing market share.
      • blibble 3y ago
        > We in the industry theorized that they'd use their dominant market position with Chrome and Android to protect their ad business, which is why they didn't invest much in unblockable or required ads. they're waiting for manifest v3
• mikece 3y ago
  If YouTube blocks me from watching videos because I use an ad blocker then I'll stop watching videos on YouTube. I don't care if this doesn't hurt YouTube... it will help me stop spending so much time on YouTube.
  • taneq 3y ago
    Yeah, this could be great for productivity.
  • gwbas1c 3y ago
    > it will help me stop spending so much time Oh gosh, really? Don't you think you'll come back after a few weeks? I think the bigger impact is that it'll impede new user adoption. I use an adblocker (but pay for YouTube,) and I never use sites that block me for using an adblocker.
    • benj111 3y ago
      You state you never use sites that block adblockers, right after disagreeing (questioning? Exclaiming??) with the parent for for expressing the exact same point?
  • thot_experiment 3y ago
    100% this, I'm not watching ads. I haven't really seen any advertising on my electronic devices in a decade (edit: actually closer to two decades) and that's the way it will continue to be. My time is valuable, my mental space is valuable, my computer is mine. You will not make it do things I don't want it to do. Advertising is a plague on society. (I speak from experience, I worked for 3 years at an ad agency.)
    • nickthegreek 3y ago
      …you can purchase ad free YouTube.
      • alexb_ 3y ago
• wnevets 3y ago
  On a related note as someone who uses YouTube constantly YouTube Premium is absolutely worth it.
  • AzzieElbab 3y ago
    Yeah. Subscribed as soon as my kid got old enough to use it
  • quechimba 3y ago
    Yeah, and YT Music is included too right? Because I have YT Music and no ads and it's really cheap compared to other services. I pay COP$17900 which is little less than USD$4. I used to pay around USD$10 for Spotify.
    • wnevets 3y ago
      > Yeah, and YT Music is included too right? Correct and I believe YT Music pays much more per listen than Spotify to the artist.
  • thematt 3y ago
    What makes it worth it? Isn't the experience the same as just running an ad-blocker?
    • wnevets 3y ago
      I don't run an adblocker on my phone, YouTube Music is included and the creators still get paid.
      • gentleman11 3y ago
        The main reason they get paid is that their income is primarily from sponsorships and affiliate links now. Youtube premium doesn't block that, and it's a much more insidious kind of ad. It makes you think you're watching somebody being authentic, when really it's a business disguising itself as an authentic person that's trying to sell you things (whether out of bias or strategy)
• pwg 3y ago
  Or just download with yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp).
  • SirMaster 3y ago
    Why even download? You can use third party media players like MPC-BE or MPC-HC that leverage yt-dlp to stream the video into a media player without any ads of course. Yes, sometimes it makes sense to download if you want to keep the video, but to just watch just stream it via yt-dlp to a media player.
    • wanderingmind 3y ago
      How about non windows users? Like does VLC has similar integration with yt-dlp?
      • dbtc 3y ago
        mpv url
        • dredmorbius 3y ago
          For more info on mpv: <https://mpv.io/ https://mpv.io/>
      • alexiaa 3y ago
        mpv is cross-platform.
    • ttepasse 3y ago
      > Why even download? A major part apart from building a queue by getting behind is the ability of the file manager to sort, to classify, to filter, to move into folders, to search, etc. Far better than the youtube web interface, which only has the options of displaying your subscriptions as a grid or as a list. So I now have a local queue of videos which I can use, in which weird expeditions into obscure genres are into their own folders, must-match-now videos are tagged, etc, and I can pick and choose according to my own tastes of the moment. That is one of my pet peeves in UI design in the last decade and it is not only web applications – shoebox apps are often as limited. If you want to do anything to your data or just have different sort orders or views, you only have what the app developer allows and often that is nothing. Thanks to the web and shoebox apps I appreciate file managers like Finder even more now. It’s amazing what UI controls like NSTableView/NSOutlineView gives the user in functionality. Modern collection views often look better and I appreciate that, but I do miss the functionality which, while possible, often simply is not implemented.
• greenyoda 3y ago
  Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457
• marcodiego 3y ago
  https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/
  • doodlesdev 3y ago
    I wish Peertube was more usable. The UX is generally subpar (although impressive for an ActivityPub-based system). There's also the problem that hosting servers to host video is _so damn expensive_. There is literally only one Peertube instance I ever watch videos on (https://tilvids.com/ https://tilvids.com/) and I'm honestly considering stopping using it altogether. I'm not sure what I want out of Framasoft really, but I don't think Peertube or any similar solution becomes viable soon without socializing costs for video hosting, encoding, etc. Peertube of course has the peer system, but I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from any peers, it's all from the server. There's also no way that I know of to "donate" some network/storage BitTorrent style to servers I wish to support, which again means the costs are all centralized and extremely high.
    • sundarurfriend 3y ago
      > I don't think my client has ever uploaded more than 100kb from a video I was watching, nor has it downloaded from anyone but the server. Where is that info available?
      • doodlesdev 3y ago
        On top of the video player hover over the "x peers" on the bottom, it will tell you how much data you downloaded, uploaded, and how much of the download came from peers or the server.
    • rolenthedeep 3y ago
      I ran my own peertube server for a while. You can configure your server to download and mirror videos from other instances, but (iirc) only if the remote instance allows it, and if it allows your instance to "follow" it. The fact that you haven to follow other servers as a server is insane. It also really fucks up federation, because some instances do not allow follows at all. Tilvids does not, which was a major factor in me shutting down my instance. That said, the mirroring system is really nice. You have all sorts of dials to cache only the x most popular videos for y days and up to z GB. You can have it mirror videos from user subscriptions in a similar way, and right next to the 'download video' button is one that says 'mirror' that does what you think. P2P as a client is a whole different matter, and I also have never, ever seen my client uploading. I think this is purely a function of how few users are actually on peertube. The chances of you watching the same video as another person on the planet is incredibly small. I really, really want to like peertube, but it really is completely unusable. Discovery is abysmal because there's no global search. You can't rely on federation to find content because federation is opt-in and has a crazy nonsense mechanism. Peertube is not fit to run a single-user instance like mastodon unless you only want to publish. It simply doesn't work at all if you only wish to consume video. The only real way to use the service at all is to sign up on the biggest instance you can find and hope they have interesting videos. I have a server with tons of free disk and a big fat fiber line, and the idea of mirroring peertube videos of small creators sounds like a perfect use for my spare resources. I would love to mirror tilvids to help reduce their server load, but I simply can't because they choose to disallow it. The only alternative is LBRY/Odyssey, which is vastly more popular, but has some serious issues with violent/extreme/illegal content and is fully wrapped up in blockchain bullshit.
• stevens37 3y ago
  I simply download longer videos with yt-dlp and watch it offline.
  • christophilus 3y ago
    Yep. I do this with Brave playlists.
• nashashmi 3y ago
  Can ad blockers block ads on YouTube?
  • porkbeer 3y ago
    Yes, quite well.
  • manuelmoreale 3y ago
    Some of them yes. From YouTube website at least. Not from YouTube app as far as I’m aware.
    • tcfhgj 3y ago
      The app -> use ReVanced as a drop in replacement for the app (has ads removed)
    • stanac 3y ago
      I use combination of firefox with uBO and blokada on android. I believe it would work the same without blokada. Firefox works in the background, you can stream music/podcasts with phone screen off and no adds.
  • tcfhgj 3y ago
    Well, sort of. Ads that are included in the video content, need SponaorBlock instead of a Classic adblocker like uBlock Origin
• paulpauper 3y ago
  the people who have a blockers enabled are also the lest likely to click an ad or buy anything advertised . advertisers should want these people to not be shown ads.
  • dotancohen 3y ago
    The people who have ad blockers installed are an extremely self-selective demographic who have taken a physical action. This type of demographic is extraordinarily valuable to sell advertising to.
    • porkbeer 3y ago
      Which is why allowing self serve adverts would benefit everyone. Uccasionally I want to see related items for sale, but there is no option if the video uploader hasnt already put monitized affiliate links. Seems like its leaving money, and viewer satisfaction, on the table.
  • porkbeer 3y ago
    Bingo. I would prefer a related items list I can click on. I might not use it often, but have nevwr in my life voluntarily clicked a banner ad or link thru a video ad.
    • tcfhgj 3y ago
      I did, by accident
  • Zetice 3y ago
    Does YT detect that the ad wasn't played and therefore doesn't pay out for that view to the creator? From an incentives perspective, putting the onus on the creators to convince their viewers to enable ads might be more effective, but on the other hand that feels kind of shitty to do to creators, so IDK if it's ultimately a good idea...
    • doodlesdev 3y ago
• 2h 3y ago
  If it helps, I have a tool for downloading, written in Go: http://github.com/4cq2/mech http://github.com/4cq2/mech
  • jb1991 3y ago
    Why not just use the very widely used yt-dlp?
    • 2h 3y ago
      My tool can compile to a single EXE for Windows, macOS or Linux. Plus mine works with Widewine.
• NeutralForceUsr 3y ago
  If I had to choose only one online subscription that I pay for that would be YouTube Premium.
• sys_64738 3y ago
  This might actually be great for saving people from wasting their time on youtube (like me!).
• charcircuit 3y ago
  I only block the in video ads because they are so intrusive. I don't mind any of the other ads on the platform and am not against advertising in general. They have also gotten money from me via their 30% cut of super chat fees so I probably do earn Youtube more money than the average user.
• scohesc 3y ago
  I hope my sheer stubbornness will keep me from ever subscribing to Youtube premium. - Google used to have Google Music, which I loved and paid for willingly as it was a good service, the recommendation algorithm was _not bad_, the UI was _okay_, and you could upload your own music and have it integrate with their system. - Google used to by default allow you to play Youtube in the background and let you use the picture in picture mode for free - they removed that feature and put it behind a paywall. - You can't volume control ads. I have Youtube playing in the background on my bedside table at night and having consistent volume is key. I don't want blaring audio telling me to buy X product or use Y service, waking me up when I'm trying to sleep. Yet another way for them to convince you to get Youtube premium. - I hate all forms of advertisements. Don't shove advertisements in my face. If I want a product, I'll look for it and do my own research. I don't want algorithms and AI deciding what I want to purchase. When I've had advertising slip through, it's usually for things that I've already bought recently (mattress, clothing, etc.) I will continue to willingly eat away at Google's profits for as long as they run YouTube. I've been looking into some kind of open source solution that automatically grabs my Youtube history playlist and downloads and automatically catalogs these videos on a network share somewhere locally. (If someone can recommend a solution, please feel free!) Too many times I've had videos that I've added to a playlist be removed for some inane reason (copyright violation, DMCA requests, etc. etc.)
  • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    Well said friend, I'm on the same page with almost all of these things! I have a long term plan to setup a suite of the existing self-hosted front-ends to various services just for me and my immediate family to personally use.
• Simulacra 3y ago
  Until someone builds a better blocker to the anti-ad blocker
• fear_and_coffee 3y ago
  YouTube user tests discontinuing use of YouTube unless YouTube disables ad blocker blockers
• karaterobot 3y ago
  Is it weird that this makes me want to subscribe to YouTube premium less than before? Feels like I've been poised to give them money for a while, since so many people seem to like the service. Now I feel like they're challenging me to a duel.
  • ChatGTP 3y ago
    I’m happy because I won’t pay them and now they’re forcing me off the platform, win for me.
    • thisgoodlife 3y ago
      That’s a win win. You shouldn’t be forced to use the platform. And the platform shouldn’t be forced to provide you services for free
      • ChatGTP 3y ago
        If Google didn’t have such a abysmal business model to start with, this wouldn’t be an issue. They offered services for free without providing the disclaimer. The attention economy is a toxic poison, I think more people than you realise are now aware of this and are less likely to pay for something Google offers because of it. I don’t hate Google, but they’ve eroded a lot of trust.
        • bagacrap 3y ago
          The "attention economy" has always been there. If you truly value your time so much you should be glad to have an option to pay for ads to be gone.
          • ChatGTP 3y ago
            So as I said, I'm glad they've given me more incentive to not use their products. It's ok if we disagree I guess.
  • 3y ago
• salimahmad 3y ago
  [dead]
• elorant 3y ago
  No problem, I'll start downloading them.
• taneq 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • qwerpy 3y ago
    [flagged]
• diebeforei485 3y ago
  Youtube Premium keeps raising their prices. I'd be happy to pay less for something that doesn't include Music streaming.
  • kyrra 3y ago
    I think this is the first time they've raised prices since Red was announced?
    • Prickle 3y ago
      I believe they have changed the price 3 times in my country. It likely depends on the currency.
  • arp242 3y ago
    There's a "lite" option for €7/month (instead of €12) which only removes ads, but doesn't include music and all the other stuff. Prices may differ per region; this is what it shows for me.
    • diebeforei485 3y ago
      Not available in the USA, unfortunately.
      • arp242 3y ago
        Huh, odd. Not sure why you'd want to region-limit that(?)
    • benhurmarcel 3y ago
      It's only being experimented in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
  • diebeforei485 3y ago
    I wish there was an ad-light version. No ads in the middle of the video. Just occasional pre-roll ads. I'd happily pay $5 per month for it.
• Nextgrid 3y ago
  Invidious is a third-party frontend (you can self-host) that solves this problem: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious As a bonus, it is super fast because it doesn't have to justify the salaries of dozens (hundreds?) of frontend developers and can get away with server-side-rendered HTML and minimal amounts of Javascript.
  • reaperman 3y ago
    Does YouTube get any money from this for their infrastructure costs?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • miah_ 3y ago
      Their CEO just got hundreds of millions of dollars as a bonus. I don't think their infrastructure costs are that big of a worry for them.
      • reaperman 3y ago
        Probably not but looks like this Invidious "doesn't scale".
  • LeoPanthera 3y ago
    I think you can be pretty sure that if Google doubles down on this, third party clients (as well as downloaders like yt-dlp) will stop working.
    • alwayslikethis 3y ago
      Not so fast, at least. IIRC youtube have contracts to keep API stable for a number of years for TV applications.
• everdrive 3y ago
  I'm pretty torn here. I don't believe I deserve access to free content, and there's _nothing_ wrong with any site blocking access if you don't want to see ads. I've done a lot of digital curtailing in my life, but Youtube has been hard to avoid. It's both good and bad, as they have some of the most amazing content in the whole world, but also some of the most addictive trash that I can't stop watching. Because the service is so addicting, I'm not sure I could justify paying for it, even though the value it brings is incredible.
  • AuthError 3y ago
    consuming content for free where creators expect to get paid is polite way of stealing if you really think about it
    • brokenmachine 3y ago
      Generating money by forcing ads to be shown on someone else's device, using the power and internet connection that they pay for, is also stealing if you really think about it. Very similar to cryptojacking malware.
    • belorn 3y ago
      In my country a publisher is liable for anything they say unless they have a license, and the license require that they abide to local laws. Youtube do not do this since they think they do not need to follow those laws, nor do they take responsibility for anything they publish (including advertisement). They don't even pay value gain taxes when selling this content in return for the service of me watching the ad. I will respect their expectations when they respect mine.
      • ghayes 3y ago
        That sounds pretty bleak, honestly. While you can disagree with Youtube and its policies, the idea of open free speech should appear, at first blush, more important than strict protections against libel or hate speech.
• anigbrowl 3y ago
  Maybe people wouldn't be locking your ads if you didn't have them jacked up to saturation level. I sometimes watch on a console and the number of ads is ridiculous, even worse than broadcast TV. Sometimes you get ads in the middle of songs.
  • bagacrap 3y ago
    Let's be real --- ad blockers don't have a setting to let through one ad every 30 minutes. I agree the number of ads is absolutely shocking, which I'm reminded every time I see someone else play youtube, as I've had a subscription for about as many years as it's been available. My time is absolutely worth more than whatever I'm paying to skip these ads.
    • anigbrowl 3y ago
      I whitelisted Youtube for a long time because the ads were not that intrusive. Then something changed and I chose my sanity over their business model.
  • tzs 3y ago
    From what I’ve seen YouTube actually has fewer ads than broadcast TV and the ads are mostly shorter. It just seems like they have more because of the timing. Broadcast TV generally syncs the ads with act breaks in the show. YouTube generally doesn’t seem to do any syncing with the content, so ads can suddenly happen in the middle of someone speaking. That’s way more disruptive.
    • anothernewdude 3y ago
      I keep forgetting people still live in countries where people watch broadcast tv.
      • MagicMoonlight 3y ago
        They’re trying to bring them into streaming too but I refuse to watch something with ads on a paid service
• jonplackett 3y ago
  I don’t block ads - I block YouTube trying to monetise things that are built into the internet and my phone - eg. Video that plays in the background when I close the website It is just offensive that they want me to pay for something that is my phones feature not theirs. Sadly I expect this to get blocked just the same
  • lelandfe 3y ago
    > I block YouTube trying to monetise things that are built into the internet and my phone - eg. Video that plays in the background Sounds like the situation is unchanged for you then?
    • jonplackett 3y ago
      Well, I expect they will block this too…
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• PedroBatista 3y ago
  I hope they succeed. For years I've had an ad-blocker installed and that's the only way I can stand YouTube, in which I spend WAY too much hours on. It would be nice of them to help me overcome my addiction and make me quit.
• crop_rotation 3y ago
  YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vimeo is one alternative for video hosting, and HN is surely not gonna like that model (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578). So what is the alternative? (Peer to Peer for streaming doesn't seem a reasonable alternative at any scale, since most people own phones and then laptops, and much fewer desktops).
  • beardedwizard 3y ago
    people are paying for the content with patreon, bypassing YouTube entirely. Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with? Why blame the users for YouTube failure?
    • paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Patreon is also Pay-what-you-want, so whales can subsidize lower tiers, and folks can often pay less than $15 per month.
    • grogenaut 3y ago
      Because people get real mad if YouTube tries to collect the patron money themselves and obviously takes a cut. Aka memberships.
      • LukeShu 3y ago
        So? Patreon's taking a cut (but YouTube takes a bigger cut; a quick search indicates 30% vs 8%-12%). I'm fine with YouTube memberships in principle; if a creator that I support said "consider switching your support from Patreon to YouTube", I would. But there's no way I'm signing up for YouTube Premium.
• gonzo41 3y ago
  Gosh I hope Youtube doesn't shoot it's unicorn in the face. With the number of adds that the youtubers themselves sell, it's just a bit too much. I'd be happy for this if I knew it wasn't going to just be google raking in all the money to themselves but instead had some form of payment partnership with the creators that was fair and equitable. All I see happening here is more adds overall.
  • bagacrap 3y ago
    Content creators receive approximately 55% of the revenue generated on their channels. What is fair and equitable to you? Bear in mind that the other 45% is not pure profit for YT as most of it pays for hosting, development etc.
    • gonzo41 3y ago
      One way to frame that is a 45% flat tax on the revenue that creators create for google. Time for some progressive taxation maybe? They could make it a tiered system so the low-end views pay more for creators. Ie, 90% to channels for the first 50K views, then progressive steps down to 55% share for the higher numbers.
      • bagacrap 3y ago
        Progressive taxation makes sense when you're talking about actual tax, but why does it make sense for content creators? If anything, less popular creators cost Google more, because one 10GB video with 1,000,000 views is cheaper to host and serve than ten 10GB videos each with 100,000 views. Anyway, I think we can all agree that both content and platform are necessary here, and letting content creators take home over half the revenue seems, I dunno, at least within the realm of fairness? Seems to be working pretty well for Mr Beast.
        • squeaky-clean 3y ago
          I occasionally get recommendations for videos of like 6 hour gameplay stream VODs with under 20 views. When I look at their channel they upload almost daily, 4-6 hours of them just silently playing a video game. I can't imagine how much it costs them to host one channel with hundreds or thousands of hours of video and about 10k views across the entirety of the channel history.
• 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  Writing's on the wall. As soon as they make ads mandatory, a competitor with no ads and better support will look a lot more attractive, and they could eventually face an exodus.
  • doodlesdev 3y ago
    That competitor will also bleed ridiculous amounts of money for years paying for infrastructure, legal costs, and rising engineering needs. That is, until they also start doing the same thing. Everyone here complains about what Google is doing to YouTube, but financially speaking this is the only thing they can do for now, YouTube has always been ridiculously expensive to run and hard to monetize, and with last year ad revenue not meeting expectations + the current economic scenario I don't see what else they should do.
  • syrrim 3y ago
    Either the competitor has no ads and doesn't charge money, at which point it would bleed money, or it charges a fee, and hence would be even less successful than youtube.
  • adrr 3y ago
    Why would content creators post content there if they can’t make money? Where would the content come from?
  • jacooper 3y ago
    How's this competitor going to exist without ads? How is it going to pay the bills? Massive bills mind you?
• LeoPanthera 3y ago
  YouTube Premium is one of the very few subscription services I use. It's easily worth it. Browsing through the universe of random YouTube videos about the various quirky hobbies I'm into is immensely enjoyable, and I appreciate that at least some of my money goes to the video creators.
• Etrnl_President 3y ago
  Eradicate malware injection through java script and google ads, and I will consider it. Also, if it's not individually personalized, and uncensored. You know; How YouTube used to be in the early 2000s. Give me what I want, don't collect my stuff, don't try to mess with me, and allow me to remain anonymous, and I would be willing to pay for it –anonymously, of course.
• Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  I don't think it's particularly wise to browse the internet without an ad blocker anymore. If a site decides to go so far as to actively prevent you from using it without an adblocker, I consider that to be a pretty bad sign. Fortunately almost no one does that.
• userbinator 3y ago
  What's next, "YouTube tests pausing videos when you look away from ads"? This is a slippery slope that I definitely do not want to be going down. At that rate, "drink verification can" is not far off. When I used to watch the actual TV I changed the channel, muted, or left the room during ads. My eyes, my ears, my brain. I will not be forced to consume.
  • adtech772 3y ago
    I work in adtech, we're getting into eye tracking for verifying ad viewership on smart TVs. So.. yeah.
    • sneed_chucker 3y ago
      Jesus Christ.
    • r3trohack3r 3y ago
      I don’t understand. Why would my smart TV have a camera? I’m not going to put on pants to watch TV.
      • discardedrefuse 3y ago
        Just like you can't buy a dumb TV with a high-end panel now; eventually, you won't be able to buy a smart TV without a built in camera.
        • ls612 3y ago
          You can always buy black masking tape to put over a fixed camera.
        • wkat4242 3y ago
          Something $0.01 piece of tape will easily fix :) Microphones are a lot harder to block though.
          • 3y ago
• doyouevensunbro 3y ago
  I would paid for Youtube Premium if I could get it for $11.99 a month. But since I used Youtube TV in the past my price is $15.99 a month and that’s not a price I want to pay.
• subless 3y ago
  I wonder if running PiHole would be a good work-around?
• valine 3y ago
  Other than driving a mass exodus to Firefox, I don’t see this having any real impact. Unless you own the whole software stack adblock is a game of cat and mouse. Let’s say worst case scenario google embeds ads into the video itself, and refuses to stream the actual video packets until the length of the ad has elapsed. The repetitive nature of advertising makes if trivial to detect when the served video is an ad and when it’s content. You might be able to make me wait for a video file, but you can’t make me watch an ad. My Firefox extension is gonna replace those advertising frames with a black loading screen and there’s nothing google can do to stop that.
  • waboremo 3y ago
    They don't mind the cat and mouse games, as long as they capture some people. Whether this is through showing ads or getting them to subscribe. I believe this has been successful for Twitch, growing revenue despite decrease in concurrent viewers. So the real impact seems obvious to me, even if I would personally avoid it.
  • karmasimida 3y ago
    You are not their target TBH, it is just a trade-off.
    • knallfrosch 3y ago
      Anyone on HN is too tech-savy already. YouTube "just" wants to capture the 99,9% that won't compile a homebrew YT app. As long as the grandchild can't simply click "install UBlock Origin", they're going to be fine, revenue-wise.
• kenhwang 3y ago
  I hope this leads to a viable competitor to Youtube. Youtube being the de-facto video host for medium length content has pretty noticeable effects on how content is created to tailor to Youtube's algorithms and users. I would love to see a BitTorrent-style solution to video hosting. If your video is popular, there's more seeders, but also you can just seed it yourself. Then you can have an ecosystem where there's different indexers with different recommendation algorithms but the content is the same.
  • forgotmysn 3y ago
    Odysee is the one I see referenced the most
  • stephen_g 3y ago
    That’s what PeerTube does. It’s based on WebTorrent.
    • jb1991 3y ago
      Can a creator of monetize videos on peertube?
• anshumankmr 3y ago
  YouTube ads are cancerous. The blowback will be massive for such a thing. Though, I am not sure if Google will listen as there are some real major costs to streaming at the scale YouTube does.
• dmbche 3y ago
  Kinda off topic - I'm not a dev at all, I'm wondering how inefficient it would be for creators to self host their videos? How necessary are the youtube servers? Other than that I see that the algorithm has some value in showing you things you wouldn't otherwise...but I'm not sure that's actually wanted or needed. How impossible would it be to have an internet without centralized video hosting?
  • porkbeer 3y ago
    Its about discoverability more than access. Access/hosting is just the expensive part.
  • crop_rotation 3y ago
    It is just not possible unless you have too few views (and that is ignoring all the tech know how required which is so so far beyond the average person). Look at this Vimeo example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578)
  • timbit42 3y ago
    Try Odysee.
• WorkingDead 3y ago
  I would pay for a way to block YouTube entirely. Every smart tv, tablet, game system seems to have a non-removable YouTube app preloaded. I ended up setting up having to set up a piehole and blocked it there, but the kids will eventually figure out a work around.
  • acdha 3y ago
    Buy Apple devices. Don't install the YouTube app and if you want add YouTube.com to the parental controls.
• pb7 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • endisneigh 3y ago
    Seriously, lol. Just pay the 25 dollars or enable the ads. Walk away when there’s an ad or switch tabs
    • anothernewdude 3y ago
      Or block them. It's your computer and cpu cycles.
      • pb7 3y ago
        Fair enough. It's YouTube's servers and GPU cycles and that's why they're blocking you.
      • m681 3y ago
        Sure. But don't complain when they in turn disable adblocking as if it's some great injustice lol.
        • anothernewdude 3y ago
          I'm looking forward to the day where I can break my youtube habit. They're threatening me with a good time.
  • porkbeer 3y ago
    I have no problem payin a company less terrible than youtube/google/alphabet et al, but I won't fund what they do.
    • adrr 3y ago
      Run an ad network and use your data to serve ads? So you don’t want to pay for them to not do that?
• alex_lav 3y ago
  So let’s get talking about ways to move away from YouTube. Are there any surviving competitors? Any tech tricks we can use to beat them? I won’t pay them and I won’t watch their ads.
  • mike741 3y ago
    the closest alternative to Youtube I have seen is Odysee (formerly known as LBRY) https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ it reminds me of the old youtube experience. I like that their ads are images and banners rather than video interruptions. the content and viewerbase are a bit limited at the moment but that can easily change.
• climb_stealth 3y ago
  It's incredible how many people go "I was almost ready to give them money" whilst using Youtube all the time with an ad blocker. I know it, I was one of them for years. Just buy the subscription. You get the free trial for a month. Nothing changes, the money is not missed, but you actually pay for something you use a lot. The biggest benefit is not being subjected to ads anymore just by being next to family members who don't use ad blockers. It comes with four slots for family members.
  • ThaDood 3y ago
    IIRC YouTube Premium also comes with YouTube Music, which coming from a former Google Music user, the plan was a no-brainer. If YT Music great? Well, no but it's fine. It has my music, podcasts and decent recommendation algorithm. Paired that with commerical free YT and it's a stellar offer.
    • empyrrhicist 3y ago
      I quit when they switched because I hated YT music so much. Switched to Spotify, and cut out the YT subscription entirely. I watch a lot less YT now.
    • ehsankia 3y ago
      It was definitely nowhere ready when the transition happened, but they've been constantly working on it for the past few years, unlike GPM which was mostly stuck for years. While it still has a few issues, there's a ton of cool features GPM never had either.
  • Thorentis 3y ago
    Why? Does Google need to be making a higher profit than it already does? Does YouTube deserve the extra money? For what reason should we pay?
    • Gigachad 3y ago
      Why does it need to be justified? It’s their product and they are entitled to block ad blockers. Either watch ads, buy the subscription, or stop using YouTube.
• can16358p 3y ago
  While I totally get video hosting is expensive, when it's YouTube (and Google in general) and their extremely hostile, intrusive, arrogant behavior over UX, I can't stop thinking that they fail and people keep leeching them.
• stainablesteel 3y ago
  i'm conflicted, because youtube is amazing and has the greatest content on the internet, its easily capable of replacing teachers and this is the most valuable thing you could ever have. and on the other hand, i adblock anything that looks at me the wrong way. i'm not sure where to go on this. i've seen some creator-based ads that i would be willing to look into purchasing, but that doesn't actually benefit youtube as a company, is it simply up to me to rely on people who have never heard of adblock as these folk steadily decline out over the next couple decades? i guess premium it is. i don't mind supporting the platform.
• forgotmysn 3y ago
  the end is nigh. tragic, but inevitable. adblockers are the only thing that make YT worth using. honestly hard to imagine ever going back to that site once adblockers are kaput.
• miah_ 3y ago
  My big problem with paying for Youtube is I have a workspace account for my personal domain. None of their services inter-operate with workspace services. For example, our Google Home. My wife cannot register her voice with the system because she has a 'google account' not an account on my workspace. Because of this, our Home will regularly deny her the ability to listen to "age restricted" podcasts about cooking (they sometimes swear omg). Similarly, if I pay for Youtube, I cannot "share with my family" unless they are also on my workspace. Clearly, the solution is for me to create another google account to use for these services and only use my workspace account for one thing. But then why am I paying Google to host my workspace account? Should I pay them _MORE_ for my wife and children to also be on my workspace, as well as paying for Youtube? (don't worry, I'm working on migrating off workspaces too). (and fwiw, I paid for youtube premium for years, and watch hours of youtube content a day)
  • ehsankia 3y ago
    Gsuite for personal use is and has always been very very half baked. To answer your question. I pay for it too but I also ask myself the same question as to why I don't just move my domain to a simpler service that'll host an email. But yes, the solution is definitely having a separate private gmail for those services.
    • pathartl 3y ago
      I moved to Outlook with a Microsoft 365 subscription after I found out you could have a custom domain tied to your email (via GoDaddy only, but you can still do it with the right DNS entries) and then made my Google account a free Gmail account. I got way too sick of getting features months, or even years later, than consumer Google accounts. I wish they would offer a paid tier for Google/Gmail accounts that would allow one custom domain for email.
    • hn_version_0023 3y ago
      Happy to plug Fastmail as a happy customer!
      • 3y ago
• highwayman47 3y ago
  Interesting how “free” seems to be going away with higher interest rates.
• latexr 3y ago
  Question for anyone who bought YouTube Premium and tried to cancel later: how did it go? Years ago I bought a Chromecast for a family member but ended up sending it back because it was subpar. The return process was so frustrating (not to mention the difficulty in deleting the mandatory Google Wallet account) that I vowed to never trust Google with any money again. I feel I’d rather stop watching YouTube entirely. I’m interested in experiences, good and bad, of cancelling as YouTube Premium.
  • dharmab 3y ago
    I canceled mine recently when I switched from Youtube Music to Apple Music when Classical released. It was painless.
• thomassmith65 3y ago
  I'm not angry at Youtube for blocking ads; I'm angry for Youtube existing at all. It shouldn't have to. AV content is pretty important to humanity. I want my government to tax me and spend the money on a public video repository. When some garbage for-profit outfit like Alphabet is in charge of the world's video, I expect ads and garbage content.
  • crop_rotation 3y ago
    YouTube is extremely expensive to host and that too when it relies on Google infra which is very well optimised. Please remind me of any non trivial Government software project that didn't cost ridiculous amounts of money compared to similar private products.
    • thomassmith65 3y ago
      Cost is certainly a consideration, but not the only consideration that matters (not to me, at any rate). The issue of private- vs public-run projects is complicated by culture. There's a vicious cycle / virtuous circle that happens in a given society. In a place where government projects have a bad reputation (of being wasteful and substandard), it makes it difficult for government projects to succeed. That's a long way of replying to you that you're probably correct about cost-overruns in most nations - but I don't believe it has to be that way. You can probably predict the nations I'd trot out that do a better job. At any rate, where Youtube is concerned, I'd sooner government be in charge, regardless of cost. I don't see Youtube ever making the public good its primary focus - not if its front page, recommendations, or comments section are any indication.
      • crop_rotation 3y ago
        That's the thing about cost though. It doesn't matter until it grows big enough and then it starts mattering a lot.
        • thomassmith65 3y ago
• jorisboris 3y ago
  I would probably pay if it was a standalone service with an easy sign up. But somehow everything that I have to do through Google makes me cringe the amount of friction I'll have to go through. Unclear whether this perception is justified, as I never even tried to sign up to YouTube Premium (though intended often).
• Mandatum 3y ago
  LPT: Use a Syrian VPN and Google won't advertise to you in any of their products (due to sanctions). Only use this for read-only content (YouTube, Search et al).
  • sammy2255 3y ago
    I hope you realise Syrian VPNs do not exist
    • morkalork 3y ago
      He does have an idea. Are there any VPNs that let you acquire an Iranian IP? Iran is not even a geotargeting option in Google ads because of all the sanctions. I've always wondered what Google search results looked like from inside the country? Pure and ad free?
• nstart 3y ago
  I mean if YouTube wants to block ad blockers, that's unfortunate, but I also understand the motivation. But here's the rub. Youtube premium is still not available globally. I had a weird workaround that I used a long time ago through google play but when my current credit card expires, I won't be able to use that method again and all the benefits of my membership will go away. That really sucks because I actually enjoy the ads free experience and the fact that I can pay for it. I don't understand how a giant company like Google hasn't figured out global availability of a service like this. Especially given that videos can be geo locked if needed.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > don't understand how a giant company like Google hasn't figured out global availability of a service like this Running a user-generated content business has become exponentially more complicated in the last decade. Compliance and moderation is hard. It's also difficult to scale across jurisdictions.
    • nstart 3y ago
      But the content is present globally. We are talking about a subscription to block ads. If it’s to do with some YouTube original content, they can not distribute it here for all I care. I’ve seen that content and it’s awful. If it’s about tax collection, then that’s again weird because google will take money for any other service. I genuinely don’t understand it and I can’t find a single good explanation out there for it either. Sorry if that comes across as aggressive. I promise that it’s entirely just exasperation at this point :(
• Quequau 3y ago
  I am kind of on the fence about the content on YouTube being worth paying for but the website makes it so difficult to find the content that I am actually interested in seeing that it makes the whole experience absolutely not worth it to me to pay for. Faced with blocked videos I would either figure out a way around or do something else with my time. No way I'm disabling my ad blocker.
  • absoluteunit1 3y ago
    This. I feel exactly the same way. Majority of the content I actually want to watch is very difficult to find and the remaining content I get sucked into consuming would be better spent reading a book instead. They might be doing me a favour by blocking ad blockers lol
  • timbit42 3y ago
    I use another search engine to find videos on YT. Sometimes YT search works but often it doesn't.
• _gabe_ 3y ago
  Man, the amount of misunderstanding present in the comments here is astonishing. 1. YT doesn't decide how many ads to show. The creator of the video gets to choose exactly how many ads are shown and when and where they are shown. If you see too many ads on your videos, get pissed off at the creators you're watching, not YT. 2. Ad revenue is a very large portion of income for most creators. It's definitely not as large as sponsorship deals, but it's nothing to sneeze at. You people who are entitled to your free content aren't sticking it to the man by refusing to watch ads. Instead you're directly hurting the creators you enjoy watching by specifically depriving them of any ad revenue they may otherwise have gained from you. Shut up and sit down and watch the 30 second ad or stop watching YT altogether. The creators don't give a crap either way because you clearly don't give a crap about financially supporting them in the simplest way possible. 3. If anything, I believe YT will stop showing ads if they're too prevalent. There's a feature where creators can play ads at the beginning/ending of their videos. These ads don't play all the time, and I think that's because the YT algorithm is making sure that if you're doing something like playing music it doesn't play an ad at the beginning of every single song even if the video creator tries to make that happen. Honestly, these comments read as if cable didn't exist just a few years ago (and still does today!) where they literally play 2 minutes of ads for every 5ish minutes of content. Even with DVR, skipping through the ads would take around 30 seconds (and then you have to adjust to make sure you didn't skip too far and everything) which is the length of typical YT ads. Buck up and pay up to support the "amazing" content that you selfishly indulge in and refuse to pay for out of a warped sense of entitlement. Contrary to popular belief, most content creators are not putting their content out for free. They're putting it out knowing the majority of viewers will at least watch the ads and help them make money.
  • BrotherBisquick 3y ago
    > 2. Ad revenue is a very large portion of income for most creators. Maybe we're moving past the societal stage where being a content creator is a real job. Maybe people aren't meant to make a living from putting videos on the internet.
• franczesko 3y ago
  YouTube's quality deteriorated. The amount of ads is obnoxious. Lack of dislike button to check, if a video of worth it probably inflated the view rate. They try to squeeze as much money as possible (hey Preference Max - we know it's only to allocate some of the money in the platform), until TikTok takes over. I don't need YT, the content they host is not worth paying and I wouldn't have a problem to live without it.
• tastysandwich 3y ago
  I actually subscribe to YT Premium. More than happy to for an ad-free experience. But that's tied to my personal account. Sometimes I want to watch a video on my work laptop, or just in incognito mode. I would find it incredibly irritating if that were blocked because I use an adblocker. In this case I've paid for no ads, I just don't want this particular video linked to my personal account.
  • msla 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • tastysandwich 3y ago
      Oh wow, going through my past comments. That's pretty interesting behaviour ... Just curious, do you do that for all comments you read? That's quite a time investment. Not sure how an adult paying for ad-free YouTube is inconsistent with not wanting minors on social media. I even stated in the linked comment that I do use YouTube. I'd never want to ban or censor social media for adults.
• throwaway202303 3y ago
  The YouTube app is a lousy user experience. The ads are the most intrusive and irrelevant of any service since commercial TV. For those reasons alone I would never become a paying customer. What’s worse is they have established themselves as yet another guardian of ideas. Content creators have to be careful not to talk about topics that are deemed out of line by the current msm and liberal zeitgeist. They could have been a great venue for debate during covid for example, but they censored and deplatformed world renowned scientists and doctors who dared question the cdc and wh. YouTube has the best content and I suffer through their UX to consume it but would leave as soon as there is an alternative
• golemotron 3y ago
  > A YouTube spokesperson confirmed this experiment and said the company urges viewers to try YouTube Premium or allow ads on the platform. Cutting off users access unless they do something is not "urging."
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Cutting off users access unless they do something is not "urging." The company urges all users to do that, it is also experimenting with doing more than urging. The description quoted was exactly accurate.
    • ftxbro 3y ago
      Urges and also cuts! Cutting is a kind of urging! "Extreme urging" if you will.
• stevefan1999 3y ago
  seems like Google is running dry here
  • timbit42 3y ago
    enshitification
• numbol 3y ago
  So, bought subscription for Nebula for year (maybe should have gone woth Curiosity stream bundle).
• bawolff 3y ago
  It seems like youtube is ripe to be disrupted by someone. Video hosting isn't as hard as it once was, ads are invasive, and yt is just the middleman not the content creators.
  • crop_rotation 3y ago
    Video hosting is extremely expensive. Look at the pricing of anyone who provides such base services (https://www.cloudflare.com/en-in/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-in/products/cloudflare-stream/) or alternate providers like Vimeo (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578).
    • bawolff 3y ago
      Live streaming is very different than recorded video - but yes its relatively expensive. But that is very different from early youtube days where there basically wasn't off the shelf solution. That is a huge difference.
      • ThatPlayer 3y ago
        Cloudflare Stream is both recorded and live streaming. Live streaming was actually added somewhat recently.
• toastercat 3y ago
  As someone who regularly consumes YouTube videos with uBlock Origin, the only thing this move would make me do is stop watching YouTube.
  • athorax 3y ago
    Mission accomplished for YouTube then
    • toastercat 3y ago
      I think they would be happier if I stopped using adblock instead. If there are many others like me, that means less viewers for YouTube channels.
  • cronix 3y ago
    All that would do from their perspective is save them additional bandwidth if you're not making them money by watching ads. I'm sure they'd rather you didn't watch and consume the product for free.
• siddbudd 3y ago
  Is there an ad-blocker that simply blurs and silences the ads on YouTube?
  • qball 3y ago
    Sponsorblock effectively does this- it fast-forwards the parts of the video marked by other users as advertisement.
• mrtweetyhack 3y ago
  [dead]
• shultays 3y ago
  I have youtube premium but I still prefer ad blockers or other clients if available. The funny part is even with premium, youtube is not giving you the best experiencen others do For PC i have sponsor block which allows me to skip ads in videos For TV i am using smarttube, an unofficial client which imo better and more customisable than the official one. Plus it also supports sponsor block
• ta8645 3y ago
  This has the potential to help me quit Youtube altogether. The amount of time I waste on there is embarrassing. But I will never disable my ad blocker, and I won't pay money to mindlessly waste time scrolling through videos. This will save them whatever it costs to serve me videos, and I will spend my life more productively. Win - Win.
• Lammy 3y ago
  > “We're running a small experiment globally” They sure do like that word https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/104325801/testing-new-designs-for-the-like-and-dislike-buttons?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/104325801/testing-...
• monday_ 3y ago
  The thing with the paid subscription is that the bastards still track you. Paying for the service does not exclude you from surveillance, it supposedly makes it less obtrusive. Ad-blocker is insufficient for anything close to anonymity, and so is everything else. But it does make the tracking harder and it does move you ever so slightly to the tail of every distribution that matters for fingerprinting.
  • timbit42 3y ago
    One step in avoiding being tracked is to not log in and use RSS to follow your fav channels.
• kingrazor 3y ago
  When I first started using Youtube in late 2006, it didn't have ads, and I didn't have an ad-blocker because I didn't know they existed. Since then, I've more or less used Youtube the same way as I did. I use an ad-blocker now as part of my normal web browsing, and it, thankfully, happens to work on Youtube, giving me that same experience. If I eventually lose the ability to use ad-blockers on Youtube, I'll probably just wind up using it a lot less. I'm not sure I want to add yet another monthly payment.
• anothernewdude 3y ago
  Huh. If this ends up blocking youtube for me entirely, I'll probably be happy.
• xkgt 3y ago
  My problem with Youtube Premium is that it doesn't work if you are incognito. I don't understand why I need to sell my data if I am paying for a service. If I watch a cute animal video on a whim, I would get inundated with animal videos.
• mxmbrb 3y ago
  Seems about time to download all of my playlists. Good by you beautiful era of the internet.
• jb1991 3y ago
  Does anyone have experience choosing from the many many options of OTP providers to serve original content? Every time I look into it, the sheer gamut of companies offering these services is overwhelming, seems impossible to differentiate and make an informed decision.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• wbsun 3y ago
  I use ad blocker a lot. After seeing this title, for a sec I felt frustrated about YouTube but then I realized it is better for me and my family to subscribe YouTube premium… and I just did it. Long story: We are Chinese family living in US. We listen to both Chinese and English songs. We have both Apple Music and Spotify memberships, but due to copyright, many Chinese songs are not available (sometime this is true for other languages or even English songs, that’s why we have both subscriptions). Since a few years ago, I just found that YouTube has all the songs we love, some are high quality live stage recordings that are even better to listen (kinda surprising since YouTube is blocked in China mainland). So nowadays my family are listening music on YouTube more frequently: we have our own playlists, use YouTube on iPhone Safari with AdGuard so no noisy ads. The problem is we have to keep safari open and can’t use other apps when listening to music. Also jumping in the playlist is painful especially when driving. Now this HN title just reminds me of YouTube premium that has no ads, supports background playing, and better playlist control. Then I really don’t see a reason to keep Apple Music and Spotify subscriptions which together cost more but still lack of songs we love. Disclaimer: I work for Google and this represents my personal opinion.
• account-5 3y ago
  Admittedly I'm not the target audience but for me the percentage of decent videos I'd watch on YouTube Vs the amount of shite on there is sub 0.001. If this happen to me I'd just not watch the video. I never going to pay for premium.
  • knallfrosch 3y ago
    I "watch ads" when I watch on my TV because it's too much of a hassle to disable them. I just mute the TV and watch my phone for 30 seconds..
• wheybags 3y ago
  I generally like to pay for services I use, but I just dislike google so much. I wish YouTube was separate so I could subscribe guilt free :(
• planb 3y ago
  I'd happily pay 5€ per month for YouTube premium just to get rid of the ads, but (at least in Germany) you also get YouTube music, so it's 16€. I don't understand this pricing at all. They're excluding all potential customers that already have a Spotity or Apple Music subscription - becaus who want's to pay twice for the same content?
  • ec109685 3y ago
    Their pricing takes into account that not all users use both sides of the subscription.
• haha69 3y ago
  I would have bought premium years ago if the free version lets you play in background when on mobile. This attitude of going out of your way to cripple EXTREMELY basic feature to get me to pay premium didn't sit well with me. Asking me to pay for the ability to have background play to me is akin to opening a restaurant and serving unsalted food and asking 2% extra for salt in the food. I already pay for a few other google services (google one, google cloud etc) and their customer service (that I have needed on the rare occasion) is ..... almost non existent as well. Will most probably use alternate frontends or a pihole or whatever other alternative there is for as long as I can.
• nathias 3y ago
  let me shill you this wonderful alternative https://odysee.com https://odysee.com
• xurukefi 3y ago
  It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Ad blocker detection is an arms race and considering how big YouTube is, people will definitely fight back and go very far out of their way to avoid ads. This could get really ugly given that Google controls Chrome and its extension ecosystem.
  • ddtaylor 3y ago
    > This could get really ugly given that Google controls Chrome and its extension ecosystem. It would eventually give them the smokescreen they want to pull uBlock Origin from the chrome extension store. A while ago they basically used their weight to remove most video downloading extensions and added language to their terms of service which all but says "no youtube downloaders" and I would like to say it cost them, because it should, but most consumers are absurdly apathetic and don't care. Adblockers are a larger group, but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it will have much impact. The Internet as a whole is a very large group and even though uBlock has a huge audience it's a drop in the bucket.
  • bdlowery 3y ago
    It’s not an arms race. Twitch has already figured it out. It’s absolutely impossible to use any sort of adblocker on twitch. It’s so bad that the best solution to “block ads” on twitch is to use a proxy to a country that isn’t serving ads. Unless twitch has some crazy way of inserting ads into the video stream, YouTube will be able to do exactly what twitch has done.
    • xurukefi 3y ago
      > It’s absolutely impossible to use any sort of adblocker on twitch. I have never seen any ads on twitch. I just checked with DevTools and it seems like uBlock Origin simply blocks a script called "v6s.js", that is apparantly responsible for serving ads.
      • bdlowery 3y ago
        idk what to tell you. I have uBlock Origin on and without the proxy I see ads all the time. Either you're not in the US or you're just lying. There's a thread on the uBlock origin website with over 1,000 comments of people saying the same thing. There's also posts their daily about how ads are not being blocked on twitch anymore.
• kahnclusions 3y ago
  The only reason I watch YouTube is because it’s free and ad-blockable. But why in the world would I want to pay to support YouTube’s toxic incentives, abusive copyright takedowns, and overall rubbish treatment of small content creators? The day Adblock stops working is the day I stop watching YouTube.
• spprashant 3y ago
  Ad blocker awareness is still pretty low among non-tech folks. Google will presumably wait for some critical mass of users blocking ads before if pushes this. Wonder what the economics of this is for Google? Would they rather have everyone pay $12 a month and nix ads altogether? I suspect they still would want most people watching ads, considering how central their ads business is to their business model.
• freehorse 3y ago
  It is not just about youtube. The whole internet is bloated with ads right now, and the vast majority of them quite the opposite of discrete. I just cannot browse the internet without adblocker, it is too slow, but more importantly too distracting. I could count the times that I have found an internet ad interesting in my lifetime using half the fingers of one hand. Personalised or not, the vast majority is useless, badly made, that just takes processing time both for the computer and my brain. I will not, and probably cannot, pay and subscribe to any random website I am gonna visit to remove ads to make the experience tolerable, when I can just block the ads. If a website says that I have to disable the adblocker to view it, and I cannot go around it, 99% of the times I do not visit it, I do not care. I pay the people I want to support directly and that's it. I use bandcamp to buy the music I like directly. I subscribe to patreon to the ones that I feel they bring value to my life. But for the occasional or ephemeral video or entertainment, I will just as easily live without, as the disruption ads cause is worse than not viewing that content. I believe it is my right to adjust my browsing experience by affecting how websites are rendered in my browser to a degree I find reasonable, as well as from my side what data tracking I allow, which is already a huge compromise for me (I would rather not allow js by default in most websites). If a website blocks this, I am not going to sacrifise my experience and I am not interested in browsing it.
  • bilekas 3y ago
    > I believe it is my right to adjust my browsing experience by affecting how websites are rendered in my browser to a degree I find reasonable, as well as from my side what data tracking I allow, which is already a huge compromise for me (I would rather not allow js by default in most websites). Agree completely. I know people who are fine with watching ads to support the content creators and I agree. The creators should be compensated but Google are far too agressive with their ads. Being able to manipulate my own machine and what I want to view is entirely up to me. This can't be infringed. There is always the option today to block from the client side, but I can see this changing if there's enough money involved.
    • raffraffraff 3y ago
      You also use swype style keyboard input?
• Elte 3y ago
  I currently have YouTube Music, and have looked into getting Premium a couple of times, because I watch enough YT content to want the ads disabled everywhere. But for some reason they won't let me. If I go to the YT Premium page, they tell me I can't do anything there, and I have to go to my account page, where of course there is nothing to do either. I suppose I could cancel my YT Music subscription and then try to sub YT Premium, but with notoriously bad customer support and a number of family members using it also, I kind of don't want to go deal with that also not working and me having to go through the hassle of getting everybody in again. If they want to sell premium so badly, maybe they should actually let me buy it.
• tiku 3y ago
  Recently watched ytube on a different browser, the amount of ads is insane. I've also grown accustomed to sponsor block, skipping over ad content.
• prodmanAIML 3y ago
  I guess it's time to finally deal with my youtube addiction.
• xeyownt 3y ago
  Let me tell you what come next: Advertising for premium youtube subscription.
• tomashubelbauer 3y ago
  I use YouTube with an ad blocker and I am not a Premium subscriber anymore and won't pay out of principle after the dislike button removal, which has made using YouTube for tutorials and how-to videos useless for me. Instead, I support creators whose content I enjoy off-YouTube. I am not worried about Google going forth with this. I see others asking what happens when users won't pay for a subscription and at the same time won't view ads? I believe the answer is pretty clear. YouTube will either decide to suck up that they won't see ad revenue from a portion of the audience (ad blockers are and will always be a niche thing, there is no reality in which YouTube buckles because too many people block ads, especially since YouTube is predominantly viewed on devices where ad blocking is not as easy as in the desktop browser) or they will close up shop. The fact is that YouTube currently occupies a spot in the online sphere which will always be occupied by someone: being the top service for hosting videos for free and showing them to audiences for free. There is a line of businesses which would jump on the opportunity of filling YouTube's "woeful" position of being the top dog in online video. YouTube's collapse would be devastating considering the amount of culture and history stored on there. But new video content will always find a home and reach online. And Google knows this which is why they will IMO never give up on YouTube even if it were operating with loss again. Storage is only getting cheaper and their moat with YouTube is the user-generated content. Gate it too heavily and creators will find a place where they can post content more freely and users will fine a place where they can view content more freely. I don't expect this to be anything other than YouTube pulling a Netflix with their password sharing crackdown complete with the back-paddling that ensued once they realized how replaceable they really are to a sizeable portion of their viewers loosing which would be more expensive than keeping it.
• seanhunter 3y ago
  I would happily pay for youtube premium if: - They removed the useless "shorts" - They removed the "mix" things that keep coming back like a bad smell - They let me remove youtube music - Their suggestions were less terrible. Like seriously they run the biggest data centers in the world, have some of the best ML researchers and know what I actually watch. How do they manage to be so consistently bad at this? - Their search was less terrible. They figured out search of the whole internet 20 years ago, how is search in YT worse than searching YT from duckduckgo?
  • BlueTemplar 3y ago
    - if they weren't a platform - if they weren't owned by Google I have been burned, yet again, by YouTube just deciding that my comments were spam and removing at least the last half dozen of them. At least they haven't shadowbanned them this time. And of course I got no warnings whatsoever about this, and trying to contact Google about this issue is likely to be a waste of time. This is an enormous abuse of moderation (and a violation of netiquette) that I have only ever seen on platforms.
  • scrollaway 3y ago
    I don’t understand. You would pay for YouTube premium if youtube had less features? I don’t use shorts and for a long time I didn’t use YouTube music either (despite paying for premium). I now use it because it’s rather good. And YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is crazy good, but you have to tune it. It’s a tool. You tune it by not watching shitty videos you don’t like; if you do, remove them from your history afterwards and hit thumbs down on them. Subscribe to channels you like and thumbs up videos you really like. All these things are strong signals and the recommendation algorithm will vastly improve if you do this. I mean it when I say it’s the absolute most useful tool there is in terms of discovery on the web. But yes their search sucks more ass than a donkey vacuum.
    • seanhunter 3y ago
      Yes it would be better if it didn't have those features in the same way that I would pay more for a Burrito if someone had not taken a shit in it. I might be a weird edge case. I do all the things you say but the recommendations totally suck for me. I only watch videos I like. I watch a lot of videos. If I ever watch something I didn't like I remove it and thumbs down and yet all the recommendations are total garbage. Edit to add: i get that shorts, mix and music are things some people like. I really don’t and I hate that mix I can’t remove at all and shorts I can remove for 30 days and then it comes back. It feels like google is doing this sort of dark pattern bs more and more. That said: I have been convinced by people pointing out how much more valuable premium views are to people who make the stuff I watch so have subscribed. Makes me puke just a little bit to say that.
• ben_w 3y ago
  The thing with adverts on mobile, where the ad block hasn't worked for ages now, is I can always block them by putting the phone down for 20 seconds (or whatever length the advert is). Having to do this for an un-skippable 20 second ad for one minute video, however, makes me press the back button. That said, the new plays-even-if-you-can't-see-them ad-block-proof ads on desktop are annoying to the point I'm considering just giving up on the website, possibly going to the other places like Nebula and old-fashioned podcasts instead.
  • timbit42 3y ago
    You can install uBlock Origin on Firefox on Android. You can also install NewPipe or NewPipe with SponsorBlock.
• amatecha 3y ago
  Kinda reminding me about browsing the web with images turned off so pages loaded faster. Do we need to go back to 1995 browsing habits?
• smcleod 3y ago
  What are two of the most annoying things with modern services? 1) Subscription Fatigue 2) Ads.
• janandonly 3y ago
  I've been enjoying an ad-free experience on my iPad, iPhone, and Mac by my one time purchase of "vinegar". https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar If YT would now block me completely, I would simply have one less reason to use them at all. PeerTube is my go-to first stop anyways.
• qwerty456127 3y ago
  I once visited YouTube without an ad blocker - that was a ridiculous experience, I can't believe there are people who tolerate that and watch it this way routinely.
• nottorp 3y ago
  Maybe they should drop the price by like 6x while they're at it. I don't care that it's cheaper than a Starbucks coffee. It's ... not worth it at this price.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  I stopped listening to the radio because of ads. There are podcast I don't listen to anymore because sponsors are so invasive. I installed sponsor block (which I would gladly pay for) to may youtube bearable. I pay for spotify for peace of mind. I love youtube, but If I can't watch it without being pestered by ads and without giving all my information to google, I will simply do something else. I would be ok paying for youtube premium if Google were actually not abusing their customers at any chance they get. But since they will spy on you, delete your accounts, cancel services, encourage take down abuses, I really don't want to put my whole life in their hand.
• squarefoot 3y ago
  Ads, the way are made today, totally destroy the experience, therefore I'm prepared to say good riddance to YT. Also, good luck with that; this will only mean that once there is enough demand, a video will be downloaded and shared through bittorrent.
• cl3misch 3y ago
  Ironically, I would be positively excited about Youtube really forcing ads by detecting and blocking adblockers. It would be the most effective measure against my high Youtube consumption.
• peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  YouTube could pay me to watch ads, they are using the processing power of my computer and the electricity I pay to show them. It's not like TV where nothing actually changes and I can't disable them. This move will hurt badly those content creators who appeal to a more knowledgeable user base, but I will not watch YouTube without an AD blocker. I am probably in the vast minority, I understand it, both my father and my nephews don't know that there was a version of the internet without ads and that you could block them. I guess YouTube made their calculations.
• xavor 3y ago
  Ads take up my electrivity and time. They should pay us to watch them.
• wafriedemann 3y ago
  lol who wasn't expecting this with manifest 3?
• User_1 3y ago
  I do my best to keep the ads on when I'm using services that are ads-sustained, but... Come on YouTube, you're throwing several minutes long ads at me, and if I don't click "skip" because I'm washing the dishes, then instead of compensating me for watching it by going to the video (as you do when I hit "skip"), you throw another ad at me because you know that I'm likely unable to skip that as well. Also I'm more and more convinced that YouTube listens on my microphone for running water.
• Oleksa_dr 3y ago
  I used to use Premium, but then I stopped because I don't get anything in return. Now it's just extortion from a criminal who says "pay money or you'll watch a lot of terrible ads". What I get is third-party clients (on my phone) or plugins on my PC: - can be removed from the subscriptions feed: community messages (I came to watch videos, not read posts). - remove premieres (announcements, when it comes out then I'll watch it). - remove short videos - delete broadcasts - choose to download h264 (because few laptops and phones support AV1, which is currently decoded by the processor, heating the device and draining batteries) - disable video track downloading if you need only sound (including in the terrible YouTube music) - view dislikes - disable translation of video titles. It's annoying when the title is in English or, for example, my native language, and the video turns out to be in Vietnamese, Indian, and doesn't have an additional audio track or at least subtitles. - Blocking video channels I don't like - blocking videos with titles in a language that is not interesting or pleasant to my ears (for example, Indian or Vietnamese). - sponsor block (integrated advertising, as in ltt, half of the video is advertising), and this is with mediocre content that is better prepared by blockchain games with a much smaller budget. - selection of video quality, without resetting the settings - setting the subtitle position (top/bottom) - downloading videos in open video and audio formats (for offline viewing on the go in a convenient player) - And finally, blocking the usual YouTube ads. There are many more small features in the mobile apps. What's in it for me with YouTube? Nothing! - YouTube could create several levels of subscriptions. - Create your own sponsor block. If a video has embedded ads, skip them and show your own. Or in the settings, give the author a choice: either he earns only from integrated advertising or YouTube advertising. - All the other functions provided by plugins (and this is on the client side, there are no costs on the server side). - warnings about deletion or skimming of videos in my playlist (I have 40% of videos in my music playlist for 5 years, and I don't know which videos were deleted to find the originals). - YouTube can reduce its costs by banning uploads, or by strictly moderating stupid videos of 10 hours, which are looped 10-second snippets and the like, videos for cats, dogs, snails and fantasy animals that will never buy anything from ads. - For podcasters, making it possible to download audio and previews is already a savings, because there is no need to store a meaningless "video". And also big problems with YouTube: - terrible search and filter. - It takes a lot of computer resources. - You complain about the channels not being shown to me, but they are shown anyway. - videos/channels are blocked automatically for unknown reasons and complaints from the left heel of some offended mama's son - the same thing is shown in shorts If YouTube closes the api and pushes through a manifesto so that adblockers don't work, or work terribly. Then I will use YouTube as a regular site that I will visit once or twice a month, that is, it will definitely not be a premium subscription, and there will be a meager viewing of ads. AMD has also introduced a new streaming board, and more of them will appear, and separate blogger communities will be formed that are independent of YouTube, and YouTube will have an outflow. Among my friends and acquaintances, almost no one uses YouTube anymore because it's not convenient. More of them are on social networks, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. That is, most of them will not even notice the death of YouTube, because it is almost dead for them, and they go there only when necessary.
• Casperin 3y ago
  Oh cool! I need help curing my addiction and I'm optimistic that this would do it for me. I'm only half joking.
• hannob 3y ago
  Noone seeing the obvious connection to Manifest v3? "Oh, it appears with the new Chrome extension API it is impossible to write an adblocker that bypasses this. How could that have happened? Google told us they only have our best interests in mind, so this must've been by accident."
• _8j50 3y ago
  The thing is, even when I don't block ads, their shitty sites fail to load ads on my browsers because they aren't main stream. In case you don't know, your user agent will cause any google site to act wildly different.
• hawski 3y ago
  I pay for the premium. I have a 2nd gen Chromecast. For some time there is a modified interface and it is akin to Youtube TV. So you see thumbnails for the proposed videos there. They also advertised having a remote control for the interface from the Youtube app on the phone. They display often a huge banner to sign in for the best experience. But when you try it gives an unhelpful message: "Can't sign in. You can still watch YouTube as ... bla bla". It is intentional: https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1537338169108140033 https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1537338169108140033 If you select a video from this interface you will be served with ads. Sometimes with an additional banner to sign in and enjoy Premium. I would gladly ignore this interface, but my daughter likes to select things out of it. I would just prefer to have it like it was before (just a static image until you play something) instead of this thing screaming at me. That sometimes makes me want to cancel the Premium.
• mnemotronic 3y ago
  "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." Don't remember who said it.
• lonelyasacloud 3y ago
  Sounds like Google is starting to wonder what it is going to do to maintain profits in a world where it can no longer print money from search.
• theK 3y ago
  Great I'm spending way too much time on that platform anyway!
• AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
  I think YouTube Premium LITE is definitely worth the 7 € I pay for it, and I wish YouTube would actually tell users about it. If I had known there was a LITE option I would have subbed probably years ago - but it seems like they do their damndest best to try not to tell you about it. Twitch does the same. They have some kind of site-wite subscription ("twitch turbo"). Although I think it is a tad expensive for what it is. And they do their damndest best for you not to know about it.
  • m4tthumphrey 3y ago
    I just Googled it... looks like it was released in 2021 for select countries. Still not available in UK. £7 seems like a reasonable amount and I would 100% pay that. £12 is just too much.
• elAhmo 3y ago
  YouTube seems to be slowly forcing users to think about alternatives. For me, having ads interrupt video was the line I hoped they would never cross, and I see this as something that will drive users away in the long term. Showing me 4-5 ads for videos shorter than 10 minutes is quite ridiculous, and as a result my viewing has significantly dropped.
• rixthefox 3y ago
  Personally whenever I find videos I like on YouTube I will immediate send them into yt-dlp and save it locally to view after the fact. At this point the amount of advertising has become so pervasive that I’ve lost all care. This “monetization” game as far as I’m concerned is blackmail to creators as their content is heavily regulated by the platform and god forbid you say the wrong thing and then all the money you would get per view goes away but the ads will continue playing because someone else is going to get that money. What a scam.
• Cypher 3y ago
  That isn't going to happen for me.
• ricardo_nh 3y ago
  the more the web is controlled by the big tech, the more it will become a feudal space
• SuperSandro2000 3y ago
  There will be ways to circumvent this and if I need to write one myself.
• tmtvl 3y ago
  It would be interesting if we could create some sort of digital Suica Card, where someone can load their eSuica up and whenever they visit a website that's in on the plan they can view the website without ads, without needing to subscribe, and the site would automatically charge like 3 cents (or whatever) to their card. Maybe Brave works like that, IDK, I don't use it, but I would like to see something like that in Firefox.
• shaman1 3y ago
  Google is just the middle man here, creators can turn off ads on videos if they want to but a lot of them need revenue or at least want revenue so the question becomes what's the best way to reward creators for their work? There are multiple models that I can think of but there will be much less people on yt if it would cost even a few cents. Once you're used to free stuff, even with bloated content as now it takes a while to get used to paying. The current model works because 3rd parties pay and not the actual consumer. I'm curious how does yt share profit with creators for views from paying subscribers.
• prirun 3y ago
  My beef with Youtube is that it keeps showing me the same suggestions over and over. I do use an ad blocker, originally installed for security reasons. I have found a lot of good content on YT, but lately, the suggestions are just terrible and the "hunt" is taking longer and getting frustrating - sort of like Netflix, which I cancelled. I'm guessing they keep suggesting videos that make the most money for Google, even if I don't want to watch it. If the content suggestions on YT were better, I might consider subscribing to it, but with the way it is now, ads will definitely push me to leave.
• lrvick 3y ago
  If you use FreeTube it will buffer a second stream of the video started just before ad spots then stream-and-discard the ads. When you get to an ad spot it cuts to the buffer from the second stream while the ad in your primary stream buffers. It can also optionally stream through mirror services like invidious that also strip all ads. In short, you can -always- access content provided to the anonymous internet without ads without the provider being able to tell. The creators even get paid for ads you never watched. If everyone does this advertisers will stop paying, and we can move on from this failed experiment and build better microtransaction systems. Never ever watch or listen to ads or give data to adtech companies. This is always doing more harm to society than alternatives like piracy or violating terms of service.
• npteljes 3y ago
  They should have done so long ago, but I guess they had other concerns, like building a moat. Paid content needs to be normalized on the internet, because people expecting services for free just drives providers to be toxic in a myriad of other ways. And YT Premium is ridiculously cheap for the value the brings.
• MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  They can never win this war. Eventually you’ll just have an AI pre-loading videos as you browse and trimming them down to remove ads.
• somat 3y ago
  The thing is it was youtube that pushed me to using an addblock in the first place. I was happy with umatrix, hell I preferred it, For the most part I did not mind ads, as long as they were served from the same domain. I put up with youtube ads for a long while but they got so obnoxious I started looking to see if an actual add blocker could make things better, it did and I have not gone back. At this point it is an arms race. I don't think out right refusing to serve the video will fly for long, the next target is to make the noise(the ad) undecidable from the signal. They already sort of tried this, which made it hard for umatrix to filter out the ads. but they will get better at it.
• Night_Thastus 3y ago
  Ads are a cancer on modern society. People act like they're OK, but I feel like these ads are constantly using up brain space that could be used for something else. Constantly being surrounded with messages telling you what you need, what you want, who or what you should be, how inferior your life is if you don't have X product. Ugh. They will pry my ad-block from my cold, dead hands. I will sooner stop using YT altogether than give in on this.
• Pooge 3y ago
  It'll just be more of a pain to watch YouTube videos but I'd much rather manually download the video with yt-dlp[1] than put up with this bullshit. [1]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
• column 3y ago
  I started paying for Premium when they blocked Vanced. It is so worth it. I kind of feel bad that I used Vanced for so long. The experience is the same, with the added download functionality but missing swipping up and down on one side of the video for the volume and the other side for the brighness. Plus I am ad free regardless of where I view my content regardless of an adblocker being available or not. Honestly, if you use the educational/tutorial side of YouTube as much as possible, this is as much a no-brainer as GPT Plus.
• xpdx 3y ago
  I got tired of keeping up the arms race with ad blockers. So now I just pay them. So, it worked on me I guess. I watch youtube more than Netflix and I pay for that every month too.
  • jjeaff 3y ago
    What effort is required on your part to keep up? I have had uBlock Origin for years and it keeps itself updated. I don't think I ever see ads.
• kevincox 3y ago
  Makes me really happy that I recently subscribed to Nebula. I had YouTube Premium for a while but the experience kept getting worse. They removed email notifications, added more and more ads for "premium features" that I wasn't interested in and kept making offline downloads a pain (YouTube DL is usually a better experience). On top of that the recommendations are awful and search results have random unrelated ads for "recommended videos" inline with the thing I was actually searching for. At some point I felt mistreated enough and stopped my subscription. Nebula is great. It feels like they are actually just trying to allow me to watch videos, no nonsense. I have found a few bugs and the support team is nice and responsive. I can't imagine what else I would want.
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    Do you use their app? I used Nebula for a while a year or two ago, but their Android app was almost unusably bad, so I cancelled my subscription. I'm curious if it's any better now.
    • kevincox 3y ago
      I do use their app. About 50/50 Firefox and the Android app. There is a pretty annoying bug regarding Chromecast (opening a link when already connected to a device doesn't work properly) that I reported but apparently they are working on it. But other than that I haven't had any issues.
• k12sosse 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 3y ago
    Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• faebi 3y ago
  I would be happy if Youtube Premium contained some form of sponsor blocking/skipping. I don't wanna pay not to see ads, and then being fed them anyway.
• CommanderData 3y ago
  YouTube ReVanced is magic and has better features than Premium. [0] https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager
• rafark 3y ago
  "There is zero chance I am ever deactivating it or paying for Premium now, that ship has sailed." Hmm, if google starts banning accounts they would deactivate it in a heartbeat. This is what I’m mostly afraid of when using adblockers. I don’t want to wake up to a banned account.
• pseudoramble 3y ago
  My main worry is not so much this change, but rather when they decide that this also applies to Premium. I've been paying for a bit, and run an ad blocker. I'm concerned that it will be too tempting start putting ads back into Premium and require ad blockers be disabled. Of course I'm speculating, but this is the scenario where I'm out. I could also see them splitting Premium into "Basic Premium", "Grand Premium", and "Ultimate Premium" where one shows some ads and the other shows "minimal" ads.
• crtified 3y ago
  They need to maintain a balance of sustainability for all parties. That means not pushing too hard in any given direction. YT and Alphabet may seem too-big-to-fail, but in truth there are endless reams of content and services out there vying for people's attention.
• drw85 3y ago
  I think aside from everything that's been mentioned already, i feel that companies are being very manipulative about these things. The games industry is a good example, they tune many games so that they're less fun and then try to upsell you some way to circumvent the less fun parts. I feel the same is true for youtube, twitch etc. I used to watch both without adblock, the amount of ads were generally okay. I didn't mind them much. Now i feel they've become unbearable in number and style. Especially on youtube, where they often need interaction or they will run for 2+ minutes. So watching it on TV is like some clicker exercise with the remote every 3 minutes. Many ads are also unskippable now and much louder than the content watched, they come at bad timings and interrupt the flow. Have they tuned this to oblivion so their product sucks on purpose without subscribing?
• blakesterz 3y ago
  It really surprises me that they DON'T do this for everyone yet. Is it a technical thing? Is it hard to detect blockers for them? Are they afraid of losing views? Genuinely curious what's holding them back at this point.
  • squaresmile 3y ago
    Maybe manifest v2 will be removed for real soon.
  • zeroCalories 3y ago
    This is pure speculation. 1. Youtube is profitable, so there is no pressure to do it immediately. 2. It may hurt video creators more than it helps. Many youtubers are sponsored, so they would prefer a view with adblock over no viewer. This keeps them on the platform. 3. Similarly, it keeps viewers on the platform, and maybe more importantly, away from other platforms.
  • zdragnar 3y ago
    Given that they have the largest analytics platform, they should be able to fairly easily see that sites that employ adblocker blockers suffer very high bounce rates for visits coming from search. Personally, I would absolutely stop going to youtube if they tried to block me from visiting while my adblocker is active.
    • carlosjobim 3y ago
      Exactly, they should want those people to bounce and not come back.
      • pyrale 3y ago
        What if a competitor decides to serve these customers? What if that is enough customers for that competitor to build a product good enough to also attract the people Google wants to keep?
        • 3y ago
• WestCoastJustin 3y ago
  They are going to start an arms race. This will likely lead to much further advances in ad-blocking that would be a bad outcome for them. This is a balancing act for sure. I guess they must see lots of people blocking ads to think it's worth while going for it. This could even be a smaller team looking at bumping up their metrics or hit perf goals without seeing the larger impact across the company.
  • runtime_blues 3y ago
    Google is big, wealthy, and tech-savvy enough to, at the very least, make ad blockers unreliable and annoying most of the time for most of the users. This is not good news, and it's probably not going to be a lesson in humility for the company.
    • tedivm 3y ago
      The fact that they control Chrome should scare everyone.
      • AlexandrB 3y ago
        That ship has already sailed with manifest v3, which cripples ad blockers.
      • joshmanders 3y ago
        And doing anything with Chrome to undermine people will not only harm them in this ad-blocking race, but also cause them to lose massive market share in the browsers... They won't do that. They're not that dumb.
        • juliangoldsmith 3y ago
          Chrome has no effective competition in the browser market, so Google has no need to worry about market share. Firefox's user base has shrunk to the point where it's barely relevant. (And I say this as a user myself.) Beyond that, Mozilla currently needs to follow Google's lead just to stay alive. They rely on Google financially, and need to keep up with Chrome's features to maintain what market share they have left. Brave and the like could be easily killed off by taking Chrome closed-source. Microsoft would probably strike a deal to keep Edge alive. I doubt Safari supports extensions, and Apple wouldn't have any qualms about pulling a few to keep the peace with Google. Getting us out of this will be difficult. Barring Google returning to their old slogan, the only option I can see is a move to a new set of standards. Hopefully things will move back towards decentralization as peoples' technical literacy increases.
• kingstoned 3y ago
  What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? I wanted to do it for a project I'm working on, but many solutions fail.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    Good.
  • inetknght 3y ago
    > What is the best way to detect if a user has enabled uBlock or Adblock? 1. Don't. 2. If the user blocks your advertisements, then the user doesn't want them. You should respect the user's desires. 3. If the user blocks your scripts, then the user doesn't want them. You should respect the user's desires. 4. If your site breaks because of things, then your site sucks. You should build your site to fail gracefully.
    • joshmanders 3y ago
      On the flip side: It's their site, they pay for the resources, provide the work, if they want to block people who block their ads, they have that right. You are not entitled to my website because I put it up.
      • inetknght 3y ago
        > It's their site, they pay for the resources, provide the work, if they want to block people who block their ads, they have that right. > You are not entitled to my website because I put it up. Yup, I absolutely agree. But if you want people to pay for your site, then you must force users to log in to use your content. If you put your site up without a login portal then your site is free. Advertisements sent to anonymous users are not a valid option: they are easily gamed, easily abused, and easily contain malicious content. If you want to serve advertisements, that's your business, but do it to users who have clearly opted into it. If users don't want that then they won't sign up to your site. It's a win-win on both sides.
    • kingstoned 3y ago
• techwiz137 3y ago
  They will try and fail. The solution that will be left...is one that many will not like, especially if your personal and/or work email is on Google.
  • Yiin 3y ago
    Inserting ads directly into the video stream doesn't seem to be counterable, no? It's not cheap, but might be worth it.
    • iLoveOncall 3y ago
      I've seen a browser extension that analyzes the video using AI to detect the sponsored segments, so detecting the ads would be probably even easier since they are even more disconnected from the normal content than sponsors.
      • HWR_14 3y ago
        Which one uses AI? The ones I've seen use crowdsourced timecodes, and AI seems like a better solution.
    • RobotToaster 3y ago
      Sponsorblock can already block the youtuber's own ads where they tell you how great raid shadow legends is and to like and subscribe.
      • pseudalopex 3y ago
        SponsorBlock works because those parts are at the same times for all viewers.
  • gjadi 3y ago
    I'm not sure why they would fail if they really wanted to. From what I understand, currently, the ads are distinct videos, which is why external tools can block them. For example, you don't get ads with youtube-dl. But if Youtube used the uploaded video to create a new one, with ads injected in it, I can't see how adblockers could block that reliably. Perhaps you could build a database of timestamp of ads per video? And hope that the compute power required to build new videos with ads in it is too much to be done widely? What am I missing?
• john___matrix 3y ago
  To be fair, YT Premium is one of the few subscriptions I think is a no-brainer and good value for money. Sometimes when I've forgotten to log in and see what it's like without, it's amazing anyone can watch videos on there. Like a lot of people I've generally been OK to watch ads in exchange for free content but it seems over the years instead of ads getting better and/or more relevant to my interests (even broadly), they're getting much worse. I assume this is the result of companies just accepting ££ for anything rather than having more quality control?
  • runtime_blues 3y ago
    As the old saying goes, good ideas shouldn't require force. If they have a "no-brainer" offering, no need to strong-arm people into using it, right? I get it that they are not a charity and can monetize or paywall their platforms as seen fit, but there's something just sad about the model where you build a customer-friendly and open platform, then progressively crapify it once you capture a niche and eliminate most alternatives, and then start penalizing users for trying to work around that.
    • DanielHB 3y ago
      Pretty much all big tech companies figured out this is the recipe for infinite money Only Microsoft seems to be aware this causes Dutch Disease, min-maxing your monopolistic platform revenue is terrible long-term for you company
      • gordian-not 3y ago
        Google is pretty far from maximizing their monopolistic platform What about selling your gmail data? Selling your search queries directly to third parties? Forcing your maps navigations to route near advertisers?
  • iLoveOncall 3y ago
    > To be fair, YT Premium is one of the few subscriptions I think is a no-brainer and good value for money. I cannot think of any subscription that offers literally no upside beside what a free browser extension that you install in 1 click already provides. Youtube Premium is literally the worst value for money that I can think of, because I can get effortlessly the same for 0 cost.
• JCM9 3y ago
  Google’s ad business is looking not so great these days as they increasingly lose out to the walled off app gardens they can’t get into. It’s generally not a great sign for a business when the focus of your innovations turns into increasingly aggressive ways to force folks to consume something they obviously don’t want.
• Reason077 3y ago
  I think they’ve been testing this for a while. Noticed a couple of ads slipping through uBlock on Mac Safari a few months back. Haven’t seen it happen recently, though. Personally I don’t mind a few ads, but the volume of them was just getting completely out of control for a while there on YouTube. It’s what prompted me to finally install an ad blocker!!
  • bagacrap 3y ago
    Why not yt premium? The added benefit of paying is that you won't see ads on your phone or TV.
• htrp 3y ago
  On a related note, I hate how A/B testing has become an excuse to aggravate a subsegment of your customer base to 'quantify' a feature or service. Getting an adblocker denied message on youtube to determine exactly how much YT can annoy you in the service of stuffing more ads into your videos is both actively user-hostile and very definitely evil. In most medical research, there are all types of consents that are required before you get subjected to this.
• revskill 3y ago
  I'm too busy with my life rather than browsing youtube nowsday.
  • iLoveOncall 3y ago
    Not busy enough to not contribute this absolutely useless comment apparently.
    • reportgunner 3y ago
      At least they didnt have to watch 2 unskippable ads to post the comment.
• DanielHB 3y ago
  One argument I heard at some point is that google is better of if people who don't click ads use ad-block. If you care enough that you install ad-blockers you will not click on any ads anyway. If they block ad-block then their click-per-view metrics will go down which looks bad to advertisers and makes ad spots sell for less Of course that is a very simple view of a very complex problem, but there is definitely some merit to it. For example ad-block these days has been normalised enough that too many people do it, even people that would click some ads. Also, specifically for youtube, by allowing ad-block you reduce the value of youtube premium (which is not true for google search for example, there is no google search premium)
  • bagacrap 3y ago
    Definitely Google is better off serving exactly the ads a user will click, including no ads for the user who will never ever click any ad, even one from their favorite sneaker brand. But I think a lot fewer people are actually in the never ever camp than they think. And even though I know I click ads on occasion, I still run an ad blocker.
    • HWR_14 3y ago
      Are we including accidental clicks in the "never click ads" demographic?
• pierat 3y ago
  We first get adverts. And gee-golly-whillikers, they're also malware vendors and other terribvle horrible nogood crap you just don't want. And exploits. So yeah, you block ads with Ublock Origin. Some shit site gets the idea to "block adblock". Detects a few common ones. But disabling javascript almost always works. But annoying. So http://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/#filterlist http://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/#filterlist is created. And it "anti-block adblock" is here. And works well. By the time the chumps make "anti-anti-block adblock", we'll neuter that as well. The endgame is something terrible like a WebAssembly that does forced downloads to get the content you want all in a VM like thing. That's what Widevine is already doing, kind of. Im just surprised that more for-profit news/media companies aren't doing exactly that, since now you have to pop off the payload in a container and try to detect what an ad is and isnt. As an aside: If you're running Firefox, download Sponsorblock. It skips over the shit in-video adverts on Youtube with "a message from our sponsor". Oh, and you dont get this even IF you pay youtube.
• baby 3y ago
  We all agree ads on Youtube are horrible. They waited until we were trapped there to turn them on. The price of Youtube prime is also insane compared to Netflix. What's the conclusion to this? Should Netflix start a Youtube competitor?
  • rerx 3y ago
    Youtube Premium is €11.99 per month here, including YouTube Music. Spotify is €9.99. The pricing seems very fair to me as long as you make use of the music offering.
    • baby 3y ago
      22$ for family plan
• AraceliHarker 3y ago
  Even if they were willing to pay $12 per month to hide ads, YouTube Premium is not available in all countries, so those people would have to use an adblocker.