13 ms·

YouTube on TVs getting unskippable 30-second and pause screen ads

• thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  'YouTube on connected (smart) televisions is adding 30-second "non-skips." These unskippable ads will appear on YouTube Select content, which is what the company deems to be the top videos. This longer format allows marketers to "use existing assets in front of the most-streamed content."' 'The second big announcement are ads that appear "when people pause a video." What you’re watching will shrink and an advertisement will appear next to that window. In the example provided, we see an "Ad" that’s labeled with some text and a QR code. There’s a "Dismiss" button at the bottom to presumably return to the normal fullscreen pause screen, or you can just hit play again to resume.' We are quickly approaching the "drink verification can"-level of ad injection and user hostility: https://i.redd.it/t9hsu8y6cts11.png https://i.redd.it/t9hsu8y6cts11.png Sony wants users to play an "ad game": https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en Google wants you to acknowledge an ad to unpause a video.
  • tehbeard 3y ago
    So looking forward to pausing a video on the TV to answer the phone / talk to someone in the room, only for said TV to start blaring an advert at a stupid volume, as I assume the horrible audio level mixing on regular TV will be present here.
    • whitemary 3y ago
      Exactly. This sounds like Hell.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Don't you worry. Most (all?) companies in smart TV space are also making their own mobile phones, so of course they'll offer you a special service that mutes the ads when it detects you're close to the TV and are picking up a phone call. There is no problem adtech creates, that cannot be solved by more invasive telemetry.
      • ballenf 3y ago
        There's also the silver lining that eavesdropping on the call would be complicated by ad audio.
      • JohnFen 3y ago
        > There is no problem adtech creates, that cannot be solved by more invasive telemetry. Well, except for the "invasive telemetry", of course.
      • WWLink 3y ago
        > so of course they'll offer you a special service that mutes the ads when it detects you're close to the TV and are picking up a phone call. But only when YOUR phone gets the call. Also the TV won't come with a remote. You'll be expected to pair with your phone using an app that spies on everything. And if you want other users to be able to control the TV with their phones, well, that's gonna cost you extra on a monthly subscription. But hey, that's what the "family" plan is for! EDIT: Just you wait. They'll add "notification" support to TVs, and next thing you know, your TV will be turning itself on to display ads when you're not even watching it.
        • TeMPOraL 3y ago
          > and next thing you know, your TV will be turning itself on to display ads when you're not even watching it. Oh no no, that would be wasting advertiser money. Not fair. The opposite will happen - the TV will come equipped with a suite of sensors, including "structured light" cameras, which, combined with telemetry from the TV app on your phone, will allow the TV to power down the screen when no one is looking at it, and power down the speakers when no one is within earshot. This will be advertised as eco-aware, planet-and-wallet-saving Intelligent Smart feature.
  • albert_e 3y ago
    > "drink verification can" This reminds me ... There was a video ad many many years ago (2004 or older) that showed a future with strict authentication and access controls ... where employee has to "submit a DNA sample to continue" when they log into a workstation. The ad shows a bald man first running his hand over a completely bald head deviod of any hair, then opening a couple of buttons of his shirt only to find his chest is also completely hairless (presumably already used for previous logins) then he finally sighs and starts to unzip ... ad cuts to black. I have never been able to locate this again nor recollect what product / service / brand the ad was for. It was probably some cybersecurity or consulting firm. Anyone here remembers?
    • rideontime 3y ago
      I do remember this, why do you ask?
      • albert_e 3y ago
        Great! I would like to know which brand or service it was for. Curious to know what they ridiculed as the absurd future -- and how far/close actual biometric security has come in these two decades since. Sorry it is off-topic, just my curiosity.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Reminds me of a more mundane version in an excellent sci-fi TV series, Incorporated (cancelled for $deity knows why, while lesser series continued). IIRC, it featured login authorization by DNA sample, with a neat-looking circular device that would stick a needle in your finger to draw blood. Another interesting concept from that show was NDAs being treated quite literally - per the agreement, if you're to quit or get fired, you'll be put in a device that wipes all covered corporate secrets from your memory. The process wasn't perfect, and could result in a total memory wipe, removing all your memories from the employment period. Allegedly. It's not like there are people who remember it happening.
      • mnw21cam 3y ago
  • bheadmaster 3y ago
    Write a small essay on the advantages of capitalism to skip this ad. The world is really turning into an episode of Black Mirror.
    • xg15 3y ago
      And with LLMs we now would actually have the ability to automatically verify such an essay. The future is gonna be fun ...
      • darreninthenet 3y ago
        And with LLMs we also have the ability to automatically write it... the background running adblocking process in the future and just going to be AI battlegrounds
  • wpietri 3y ago
    As a person with a low tolerance for ads, I work hard to avoid them in all contexts. So it's absolutely wild to me what people will put up with. There seems to be some sort of unholy alliance between "number must go up" and "cooking the frog slowly" that means things are going to keep getting worse. I figure there must be a breaking point somewhere, but I would have expected it to come years ago, so I genuinely wonder how bad it can get.
  • mkl 3y ago
    Half the time when I pause a video, it's to have a better look at something on the screen. The related videos that pop up on pause are annoying enough, but at least I can close that panel.
    • wussboy 3y ago
      Drives me crazy
  • Ajedi32 3y ago
    I mean, obviously more ads are annoying, but I don't see how this is functionally worse than TV ads. You can't skip those either, and unlike with YouTube there's not even an option to pay to get rid of them.
    • out-of-ideas 3y ago
      1) people use youtube to not have to see TV ads 2) tv ads of today are wildly different that TV ads of years ago; they (ads) are simply getting more aggressive every year 3) electronic DRMs means an AD company knows exactly which microseconds were watched and by whom; many folks do not want to be tracked like that (and more folks simply "dont care" and offer "logic" along the lines "everybody poops, who cares if they know when i go poop", ect
      • tssva 3y ago
        > 1) people use youtube to not have to see TV ads Then the good news is they still can by paying for YouTube Premium. The service has to be paid for somehow and Google gives you two choices, your eyeballs or a subscription.
        • stuaxo 3y ago
          The way Google acts makes you resent them enough to never want to pay them.
          • thiht 3y ago
            Yes. I just don’t trust Google to not add some ads even for Premium users at some point.
            • tssva 3y ago
              Luckily YouTube Premium isn't a life long commitment. If Google starts injecting ads for YouTube Premium users just quit.
          • 3y ago
  • lern_too_spel 3y ago
    To unpause an ad. But who is pausing ads anyway unless they're really interested in the ad?
  • bagacrap 3y ago
    > Google wants you to acknowledge an ad to unpause a video. You can just press play as normal
• uncletaco 3y ago
  YouTube following in porn's footsteps I see.
  • bick_nyers 3y ago
    Advertisers hate him! Here's one weird trick to block ads...
• Zetice 3y ago
  YouTube’s ad platform had a bug in it yesterday that looped the new Little Mermaid ad through most of the 4th quarter of an NBA playoff game, and I haven’t seen much from them about it. Twitter was on fire about it, so I don’t think it was just me.
  • hqudsi 3y ago
    For me it was that coinbase ad.
  • mrg2k8 3y ago
    Nobody mentioned the SmartTube Android TV app, which you can configure to skip sponsored content on top of ads.
• sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  It was bound to happen.
• ipython 3y ago
  Glad I kept my 10+ year old TiVo equipment around. Sounds like time to switch back to “old school” cable tv.
  • gspencley 3y ago
    I bought a "tiny PC", installed Kubuntu on it, bought a USB remote control and used KDE's insane configurability to set it up to look and feel like a TV OS in order to turn my "smart" TV into a "dumb" one. One where I can watch YouTube in a full-screened web browser with an ad blocker installed.
    • Jochim 3y ago
      A potential alternative for those with AndroidTV devices is sideloading SmartTubeNext[0]. I've been using it on my nVidia Shield for a while now. No ads, a lot of UI customisation, and Sponsorblock is integrated as well. [0] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
      • bentcorner 3y ago
        This app also works on Fire TVs. The Fire TV UI is kind of a dumpster fire but installing and using SmartTubeNext on them is pretty easy.
    • wisam 3y ago
      That's interesting. Would you share the details of the hardware setup (MiniPC, USB remote control) and screenshots of your configured KDE/Plasma desktop?
    • czx4f4bd 3y ago
      Yeah, I plugged a NUC into my TV, installed Pop OS on it, and got a Pepper Jobs USB gyro-remote to control it, and it instantly upgraded my living room. I previously used my PS4 for watching everything, but having a full desktop OS is just way better: I can browse the web on my TV, control it remotely with my laptop's keyboard and mouse using Barrier, open multiple live feeds in picture-in-picture mode, play music in the background of whatever I'm watching, etc. Also, when I'm watching sports and they go to a side-by-side commercial break, I use the zoom accessibility feature to zoom in on the tiny live feed so I can watch that full screen without seeing any ads haha. I'd be curious to know more about how you configured KDE. I run a pretty vanilla Pop OS setup right now, which is more usable than I expected with my USB remote, but I've been meaning to explore how to set up something more "smart TV"-like that's a bit easier to navigate. My initial thought was to write a browser extension or a custom app with an embedded browser, but that feels like a bit too much work for something that's supposed to be a leisure/entertainment setup.
• superchroma 3y ago
  Well I guess we're in the worst timeline where Susan Wojcieki's hand-trained goon somehow manages to have worse ideas about how to run youtube than she did.
• Barrin92 3y ago
  I mean, just hook your TV up to a PC, even a raspberry pi can handle streaming video. Spares you the janky remote control navigation as well. Not sure why anyone even bothers with all the terrible smart TV apps.
  • doublepg23 3y ago
    You don’t know why people prefer hitting a button that says “YouTube” vs. setting up a raspberry pi?
    • icybox 3y ago
      You still can, SmartTube could be sideloaded on smart TVs and/or TV sticks with usbOTG cable. https://smarttube.app/ https://smarttube.app/ It can skip ads and/or sponsor segments, intro, outro etc.
      • jon-wood 3y ago
        Or I can pay YouTube for the premium tier without ads. I’m aware these things exist, but I’m also allergic to having to sysadmin things that I use to unwind after a day of sysadmining things.
  • ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    How do I control my PC from across the room?
    • mkl 3y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wireless+keyboard+with+trackpad&atb=v279-1__&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wireless+keyboard+with+trackpad&at...
    • Barrin92 3y ago
      through the magic of bluetooth peripherals you can buy for 15 bucks on amazon
    • 3y ago
• rchaud 3y ago
  > The second big announcement are ads that appear “when people pause a video.” What you’re watching will shrink and an advertisement will appear next to that window. In the example provided, we see an “Ad” that’s labeled with some text and a QR code. An ad strategy inspired by pirate soccer streaming websites. What's next, a "Close Ad" button that moves a few pixels away when you try to click it?
  • Arrath 3y ago
    No there's an 'X' in the usual close ad button spot but its just part of the picture/video. The real close button is camouflaged with the contents and hidden in a random sot.
• ddeck 3y ago
  Such is the nature of public companies and the need for continued growth. Much like search before it, they've saturated the market, and so instead of growing by adding eyeballs, they now need more revenue per eyeball.
  • ramraj07 3y ago
    Or maybe consider this is a somewhat necessary evil for the service provided (free HD streaming of infinite amounts of video that also rewards creators in the most sustainable fashion for any social media platform). Bandwidth, storage and monetization isn’t free. What exactly do you want? A service that will spend their money to deliver arbitrary HD video on demand and lose money? YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix and provides infinitely more value for the money at this point. Every single person I nonconsensually forced YouTube premium on has come back to thank me for doing so. The last time people were happy i techno-assaulted them was when I introduced them all to Dropbox a decade back.
    • sircastor 3y ago
      > YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix My family just ditched YT premium because they upped the price to $22.99/month. Or Netflix subscription is $9.99.
      • nickthegreek 3y ago
        You just compared a family YT plan to a single user Netflix plan. The single user plans are equivalent in cost as are the family plans.
        • sircastor 3y ago
          That’s fair, I was comparing the prices I was paying. That said, as of this writing Netflix’s premium plan is $19.99/m. YouTube’s is $22.99. While they are comparable, they are not equivalent.
      • ramraj07 3y ago
• belltaco 3y ago
  There's also a new "1080p Premium Bitrate" option in the resolution settings menu for some videos now which needs a sub to YouTube Premium to unlock.
• baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
• epiccoleman 3y ago
  Someone really needs to make the Sonarr equivalent for YouTube (or maybe it already exists) where you plug in your list of subscriptions and it just automatically downloads them and adds them to Plex/Jellyfin. Sidestep this bullshit entirely. YouTube is a lot like reddit in that, if you're curating your subscriptions, there's a lot of good and worthwhile stuff to be found, but if you're just taking the default stuff that the site pushes to you, you're going to be mired in absolute garbage non-stop. Take the power back!
  • bentcorner 3y ago
    Tubesync? I actually just tried this out a few days ago and it didn't appear to work out of the box - I need to play with its knobs and switches to figure out why it isn't indexing the channels I fed it. In any case according to the instructions on the tin it should work.
  • dageshi 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      Why give YouTube money? They make plenty off Premium, ads, and user data and still do shit like this. Not to mention the fact that they censor legal content, their algos have gotten worse, they broke search, they manually select most of the trending tab, false DMCAs get accepted constantly, and what little algos do work snuff out small channels who struggle to reach viewers like me because I keep getting recommended the same 5 videos regardless of what I watch. Tl;dr fuck YouTube I genuinely hope LBRY or Peertube take its place sooner rather than later.
      • dageshi 3y ago
        Because youtube is probably one of the most expensive sites on the net to run, it's also one of the most useful sites on the net full stop. If ads are the problem, google provides a solution in Youtube Premium, a solution I should add that I frequently hear people on HN begging for e.g. "Don't make me deal with ads, let me just pay for it". When the rubber meets the road though, people won't actually pay to remove ads, they, like you, will come up with any number of excuses to avoid doing so.
• whateveracct 3y ago
  Pause screen ads disgust me
• ericmay 3y ago
  Feels like it's better to be an investor in $GOOG than to be a user...
• tikkun 3y ago
  If you can afford it, YouTube Premium is well worth it. It's high up on my list of time and annoyance saved vs $ spent.
  • whalesalad 3y ago
    It’s well worth it. Unfortunately it’s also increased my binge YouTube consumption but I haven’t seen an ad in years and it’s so refreshing.
  • kldavis4 3y ago
    I totally agree. Over time it has became one of our family's most consistently used streaming services. Seeing this actually reminded me that we were using premium (I had forgotten about the free option). The subscription also includes Youtube Music (which is a passable replacement for Spotify).
  • mkl 3y ago
    But you have to be logged in. I often pop into an incognito window to watch a video that I don't want YouTube to recommend things related to, which seems to work. YouTube Premium prevents that, right?
    • ZeroCool2u 3y ago
      I've found that just removing the video from my watch history after I watch it side steps this issue entirely. Frankly, seems a bit easier than opening a whole incognito window and being forced to watch ads anyways.
      • mkl 3y ago
        It's hardly an ordeal to press ctrl-shift-n, or right-click and "Open link in incognito window". There are no ads with uBlock Origin allowed in incognito windows. There is no need to worry about manually maintaining watch history either.
        • 3y ago
• bsaul 3y ago
  It’s going to be funny to see if the rest of the world adapts to the stupid amount of ads beeing shown on american TV, now that youtube seems to embrace that road (.) My guess is they won’t, and youtube will collapse. But it may take some time.. (.) I vividly remember my first attempt at watching a movie on public tv in the US, 20 years ago. The movie was cut because there was so many ads that the total length of the movie would have occupied the whole afternoon. so they simply removed random scenes, and as a result, the story didn’t make any sense at all.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I expect Youtube to thrive and grab some of the revenue that cable/satellite TV and other companies in the media delivery chain used to. Various pricing tiers would segment the customers based on their ability and willingness to pay. Pay $100 per month to avoid all ads, pay $50 for some ads, pay $0 for all ads. And then throw in family/individual discounts and music, or Google Drive/Gmail bundles, etc.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      And couple years down the road, when they hit diminishing returns on subscriptions again, that $100 per month is going to start showing ads too. Once advertising is on the table, there is no stopping.
  • tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    They even speed up TV shows to fit more ads in. And to think the whole point of paying for cable was initially to remove the need for ads.
  • wdr1 3y ago
    > It’s going to be funny to see if the rest of the world adapts to the stupid amount of ads beeing shown on american TV, now that youtube seems to embrace that road (.) I'm not sure what you mean by "rest of the world". If you mean broadcast tv services in the rest of the world, they already have 30 second TV commercials. (They're actually the norm.) If you mean other streaming services, Hulu, Peacock, Pluto, Paramount+ etc all already have 30 second non-skippable ads.
• butterfi 3y ago
  My Home button always works. Frankly, there’s so much content that I just move on if the service pisses me off.
• paul7986 3y ago
  I rarely watch any other streaming app! 95% to 98% of what I watch is YouTube. I've gotten so use to the short clips that I noticed I haven't had any interest in watching any Disney plus shows and I loved season one and two of The Mandalorian.
• Double_a_92 3y ago
  For this to work they would need to really improve the recommendation algorithm by a lot! E.g. if I knew that I had a couple of high quality videos lined up to watch this evening, I might tolerate a couple of minutes of ads in between. But I would not tolerate them between random short trash videos... I would just watch a lot less Youtube then (which would maybe be a good thing tbh).
• maxbaines 3y ago
  Rare I say this but I think broadly YouTube has a good offering even with 30second ad's. If you don't want ad's pay for premium I do and get more entertainment and education value than say Netflix and others. For instance in the UK there is a service called NowTV run by Sky, you pay ~£10 a month for entertainment package and more for sport and then still get ad's which for me makes it a no go.
• bhanu423 3y ago
  I also seem to get ads on TV if I cast on it from a different account. Both the accounts in question have premium, so it seems Google has also forced ads on casting by non-primary users. Does anyone else face same issue ?
  • tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    Honestly expect this to only get worse as a Premium user. Now its ads on cast, next it’ll be a 15s ad every video, and so on and so forth till you’re forced to watch 1m ads per video. And it’ll absolutely cost more too. Us non-Premium users? Probably unskippable 5m before, during, and after.
• deafpolygon 3y ago
  This is user hostility on purpose- Google knows it's not what people want, but they need something to strong-arm them into picking up YT Premium. What better way than to provide a feature their advertiser want, and a way to push YT Premium?
• pers0n 3y ago
  They need that money to try to invest more into the AI war
• colpabar 3y ago
  If they ever lock down the ability to use your own machine with your own media through an HDMI port and ignore all the “smart” features I’m going to riot.
• hdlothia 3y ago
  Fine by me, and we should bring commercials back to regular tv too. I enjoyed the golden age of streaming as much as anyone else, but I always wondered how streamers were able to replace the huge sums of money from advertisements with just subscription money. Turns out they can't? We'll see, but I don't find advertisements to be as much of a plague as the rest of my generation.
• kjsingh 3y ago
  If you are averse to ad blockers getting your browser history, you can disable video auto play. For me it freezes the ads and brings to Skip Ad button.
• add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Cable style commercials are ideal for me, out of all the possible choices. I have full control over the DVR video stream, nothing is unskippable. Streaming technology had to be temporarily superior in order to win adoption, but now that it's mature it will only evolve in the direction of taking away control and privacy from viewers. And if I'm watching live and can't skip ads, I prefer a full 3-minute break at a predictable cadence to more random and frequent 10-30 second interruptions. I have time to get up and do something, or else mute and browse on my phone for a few minutes.
  • likeclockwork 3y ago
    1. Build goodwill 2. Destroy competitors 3. Degrade service in pursuit of maximum profit Is anyone else starting to feel cynical? I feel like anything good today is just portending a tomorrow even worse than yesterday.
    • api_or_ipa 3y ago
      Embrace, extend, extinguish. A tale as old as any in computing (and more broadly, many other product areas)
      • password4321 3y ago
        Embrace, extend, extinguish, enshittify
    • JohnFen 3y ago
      > I feel like anything good today is just portending a tomorrow even worse than yesterday. Everything has a lifespan, without exception. The only variable is how long that lifespan is. That's just how things work.
    • jjulius 3y ago
      >Is anyone else starting to feel cynical? Been here for a long while. Welcome, friend!
    • 3y ago
• smallmouth 3y ago
  Yeah, youtube is the new boobtube and it's become somewhat of a mild addiction for me. Maybe if I start seeing these 30 second unskippables it will help in the cure. There are so many more productive things to be doing than watching youtube.
• vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago
  [dead]
• liampulles 3y ago
  If you are watching for free, then you are the product (for advertisers). This is not a new thing. If you don't like ads, pay for a subscription.
• zamnos 3y ago
  I have discovered the ultimate secret to skipping YouTube ads! See what you've got to do is sign up for YouTube Premium and then the ads magically go away! Crazy, innit?
  • cheeze 3y ago
    I don't understand why some people are SO OPPOSED to YouTube Premium. Maybe it's that I watch a tooon of youtube, but it's the best subscription I have. Easily worth the cost IMO. Hell, don't get ads in my browser with yt regardless (ad blockers) but I pay for premium solely so that when I'm watching _youtube on someone elses TV_ I don't see ads. IDK. I'm fine with them having to make money. And I'm fine just paying instead of having to sit through ads. If you're not paying the company, you're the product. I'm happy that I can pay to not get ads. I do the same with Twitch Turbo as well. It just... seems straightforward to me that this would be the preferred option for someone who can't sit through an ad.
    • unpopularopp 3y ago
      >I don't understand why some people are SO OPPOSED to YouTube Premium. Making something worse then let people paying for to make it better is not a deal at all.
      • pb7 3y ago
        They’re not making it worse, they’re monetizing it in a way that’s palatable by those that can’t afford to pay. Video is expensive to serve. There’s no way around it.
        • haupt 3y ago
          > They’re not making it worse, they’re monetizing it in a way that’s palatable by those that can’t afford to pay. If it were so palatable I don't think there'd be such a fuss about it (which there clearly is). Most people don't like ads at all.[1] 1. https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2019/03/28/advertisers-paths-reaching-on-demand-live-TV-view https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-repor...
• out-of-ideas 3y ago
  am i the only one worried that this will be one step closer for youtube to fight against yt-dlp and others, with a means to say it is circumnavigating more of their stuff?
• johnwalkr 3y ago
  I don't mind unskippable ads so much when I am watching a 10 minutes video. But a lot of information these days is mostly on youtube as opposed to text content. For example, how to change an obscure setting in windows or how to replace an alternator. But these videos also usually have a lot of background fluff. It's infuriating to skip back and forth to find the one relevant bit of info. If it takes 3 attempts to find the right timestamp, that's potentially up to 3 skippable ads and 3 unskippable ads before you get there. Ironically videos with misinformation get demonetized and you can consume those much more conveniently.
• adamredwoods 3y ago
  Are YouTube unskippable ads reviewed for content, or is it a free-for-all system like the current ads? That's the problem I have as some of the current content is annoying, if not disgusting, the ad I saw that showed cartoon poop was awful.
• xnx 3y ago
  YouTube doing its best to get people to shift their time to Tiktok where (for now) you can skip any ad immediately.
• lsllc 3y ago
  "Did you know Nova Scotia has over 13,000 miles of coastline? Wanna bet?" I have seen that same damn ad 1000's of times over the last few months while watching Picard in the Paramount LG TV app -- it's usually played twice, back to back to fill a 60 second slot ... I see it at every ad break. What is the point? That's why I have an adblocker for Y-T.
  • rhtgrg 3y ago
    > What is the point? Well, I don't see you signal boosting any of the less annoying ads here...
    • brewdad 3y ago
      Is it really a signal boost if the only way to know what that ad is for is to have seen it? I certainly don't have a clue what is being sold.
      • lsllc 3y ago
        It appears to be to promote Tourism in Nova Scotia. So aside from pissing me off by showing me the same ad literally 100's of times, incl multiple times in a row, I assume they're also ripping off the taxpayers of Nova Scotia by charging them over and over for the same ad impression? It's really an indictment on the very sad state of ads on streaming platforms, if someone like Paramount or YouTube wants to "force" ads, then at least do it properly! I actually don't mind when a Y-T content-creator wants to pitch (not South but ...)-VPN or whatever, because at least they make a effort to tell my why it's so great and maybe there's a discount code that actually might be interesting to me.
        • jeauxlb 3y ago
          At first blush I assumed it was an ad for Wikipedia and its invaluable ability to quickly educate people on ideas like the Coastline Paradox [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• masswerk 3y ago
  There really should be some mechanism to accidentally skip the contents between ads. E.g., requiring to visit a link via QR tag using your phone for metrics verification (a "legitimate interest"!) in a timely manner, as soon as the QR tag shows up, otherwise, retry after the next 30 secs ad block… (Disclaimer: this comment demonstrates prior art to any similar patent applications.)
• charlie0 3y ago
  What's next, not being able to mute an ad?
  • clnq 3y ago
    I think I was in an A/B test a while ago on YouTube where muting the ad paused it. I remember that behaviour from somewhere...
    • justsomehnguy 3y ago
      "Please drink a verification can."
• toadi 3y ago
  what is happening with me is I start to consume less and less content online. Many movies and series are crap and I don't like them. Video games the same. I'm not sure it is because I'm getting older and have the classic it used to better before syndrome. But what is happening and this is probably due to getting older I am more careful what I spend my time on. Consuming crap content or in a way it is a crappy experience... fuck that I will go outside and touch some gras.
  • RGamma 3y ago
    Another phenomenon being the modern content tsunami. Just the new things coming out already overwhelm one's consumption capacity by several orders of magnitude, nevermind the older stuff that I haven't gotten to (includes SNES titles e.g.). Makes me want to switch off entirely, or at least be hyperselective. Given everything I've seen most is simply not worth it anyway, and at the rate new shit comes out we must long be looping already.
• PeterStuer 3y ago
  I love youtube, but if it wasn't for my family premium subscription I would probably not enjoy it much.
• DonBarredora 3y ago
  Wow, they keep getting worse and worse.