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YouTube gets more aggressive in pushing adblock warnings with countdown timer
- von_lohengramm 3y agoI've never seen an anti-adblock message on YouTube. Do they only appear when people use crappy (likely malware) adblock extensions?
- eukara 3y agoIt's in the rollout phase. They generally don't test features or design changes globally and at once.
- von_lohengramm 3y agoI've also heard of YouTube bypassing ad blockers every now and again, but again that's never happened to me.
- phildenhoff 3y agoWhile I disagree with trying to prevent Adblock, I’m a recent convert to YouTube premium and it’s just so nice. I only tried it after using my girlfriend’s account on our TV for a bit, I was vehemently against it prior. Am I super happy about paying for YouTube? No. Is it worth ~CAD$30/mo to not worry about ads anywhere, have background playback on mobile, and support the folks I watch? Absolutely.
- pyuser583 3y agoI agree. I’ll pay for quality.
- hulitu 3y agoThere is no quality on youtube.
- thomassmith65 3y agoThe terrible thing is that, buried deep under the mound of trash, somewhere among the million videos of pathetic grifters and desperate attention-seekers and supremely-confident cranks, there is quality content.
- pyuser583 3y agoThere some amazing lectures on YouTube
- realusername 3y agoThat's also part of the issue of YouTube premium, we talk a lot about the pricing but the fact that you can't search videos makes the platform less valuable as a media platform. Google is designing YouTube as a ad distribution platform, not as a media platform and it shows
- gmerc 3y agoAh the good old breaking your legs in economy to make you appreciate the ‘value’ of business. Works every time.
- phildenhoff 3y agoNot sure what you mean? I’m also not super happy paying the amount that I do for rent. That doesn’t mean I don’t like my apartment or that I’m not willing to stomach that extra amount for the value I get. I’d prefer they were both cheaper. That doesn’t prevent me from seeing the value they provide me.
- IcyClAyMptHe 3y agomy problems are 1. it's insanely expensive for what you get, and 2. background play was a feature everyone had until google put it behind a paywall. finally, without something like sponsorblock you still end up with ads uploaded as part of the video. I can't overstate how much I despise advertising.
- ssl232 3y agoI'd pay maybe $5/month max, which is infinitely more than they make from me now given I block everything and have as far as I recall never willingly clicked on an internet ad in my life.
- esyir 3y agoSounds like they're justified for blocking you then.
- ssl232 3y agoEven though $5 > ~$0?
- pb7 3y agoYou don’t set the price, they do.
- realusername 3y agoThey can ask whatever they want, it doesn't mean they are going to get it
- matsemann 3y ago$30 a month?? No way I'd consider YT worth as much as all other streaming services combined.. Maybe I'd consider $3. Especially since even "ad free" videoes themselves now have lots of ads baked into them by the creators. Not a fan of the double dipping.
- aaronmdjones 3y agoSponsorBlock skips those.
- dharmab 3y agoIf you pay in UAH, it's only $3 ;)
- phildenhoff 3y agoThat’s a family membership IIRC. It’s for 5 or 6 people. We don’t have any other streaming services and spend a lot of time watching and listening to YouTube, so it’s well worth it. If you want to remove those embedded ads, SponsorBlock and DeArrow are great extensions to make YouTube more bearable!
- thomassmith65 3y agoAm I super happy about paying for YouTube? I would gladly pay money for Youtube, but I'd sooner eat a live subway rat than pay money to Youtube. Even if I believed a for-profit model were appropriate for the largest repository of the world's video content, I wouldn't want AlphaGoogle to be the company implementing that model.
- chii 3y agoSo if youtube wasn't owned by google, you'd be happy to have paid? I actually think this is irrational, because reason google is forcing thru anti-consumer features is _because_ they can't get enough revenue out of youtube!
- gameoverhumans 3y agoYoutube generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue per year, for a company that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue per year. If you're skeptical about how/if massive corporations are able to leverage their market power and monopolization to generate monstrous profits and force through very anti-consumer features, I'd encourage you to read Goliath from Matt Stoller: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/Matt-Stoller/9781501182891 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/Matt-Stoller/...
- bsder 3y ago> So if youtube wasn't owned by google, you'd be happy to have paid? Maybe. YouTube should have to police copyright for the little guys as strongly as they do for the big guys. Instead, YouTube is happy to flat out steal content from little guys while stomping all over fair use when the big guys are involved. I don't wish to support that. I want YouTube to go under so we can maybe get a video site that doesn't suck.
- realusername 3y agoI'm not against paying premium personally but the pricing is INSANE, it's probably 10x higher than what they would get with ads per user. I'm skeptical they even consider YouTube premium a real option internally or if it's just there for potential regulators. I also don't like the trend to blame adblock, Google is losing money now because there's an advertising scandal where they lied to customers, that's not adblocks fault.
- keiferski 3y agoSame here. Apparently paying for products is a controversial thing these days. Never mind that the monthly cost is about the same as a single meal at an average fast-casual restaurant. $20 a month for unlimited, unrestricted access to literally millions of hours of high quality content is a really good deal. I regret having waited so long and wasted so much time waiting to click through ads.
- mentalfist 3y agoProtip: You should download a non-stock YouTube app to your TV instead, for instance: https://smartyoutubetv.github.io https://smartyoutubetv.github.io It has YouTube premium and more, e.g. Sponsorblock, it's over all superior. And free.
- radlad 3y agoI use that app for SponsorBlock - I can't live without it now. However, I find the app's UX to be a little off-putting compared to the actual Youtube app.
- phildenhoff 3y agoSmartTube Next is great, and I do use that on my Shield now for sponsorblock. On web I recommend adding DeArrow to your YouTube extensions to make the experience a bit more bearable. Hopefully they add that in soon too!
- Natsu 3y agoProblem is that services like that always get more ads eventually. They just can't resist.
- hedora 3y agoI won’t pay them a cent unless doing so disables all tracking of me across their ecosystem.
- pseudo0 3y ago> and support the folks I watch? YouTube takes a 45% cut. So out of that $30, YouTube pays a few cents for bandwidth, and takes $13.50 thanks to its dominant market position. I'd much rather watch with AdBlock and donate via Gumroad or Patreon.
- pb7 3y agoCare to show your math on how you arrived at that few cents in bandwidth?
- phildenhoff 3y agoRight. And the other 55% goes to… the folks I watch. Steam takes a 30% cut or something when I buy video games. I’m not about to start pirating games and mailing cheques to the developer. I don’t assume that my YT Premium is paying for lavish meals for my favourite channels. But I watch lots of different channels, not all of which I’m going to sponsor on Patreon. They at least get something.
- lysp 3y agoIf you live in Turkey, or happen to "visit" there for a short period of time, Youtube premium is $15cad / $11usd for 12 month subscription, or alterantively a few dollars a month.
- thenickdude 3y agoWow, here in New Zealand I'm only paying 10 NZD/month (8.04 CAD), grandfathered in from when it used to be a Google Play Music subscription. It's fantastic value for that price, but I would definitely think twice at 30 CAD/month.
- phildenhoff 3y agoThat’s the family plan
- thenickdude 3y agoAh, that makes more sense!
- zarzavat 3y agoThe problem with YT premium is that I often browse in Incognito for enhanced privacy and YouTube premium doesn’t work in incognito. So I would still be seeing ads half of the time, if I didn’t use an adblocker.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWait, you actually believe that Incognito Mode gives you privacy? Have you looked into that with facts and data?
- zarzavat 3y agoWhat other option is there?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoThat depends on your goals, the scope of the privacy you wish to achieve, and the services you wish to use while preserving that privacy.
- TheUnhinged 3y agoI have two issues with paying Google for YouTube Premium: 1. I don’t trust Google at all and am very reluctant about giving them any personal information. 2. Even if I pay, I still get all the promotional crap that the content creators put in their videos.
- wruza 3y agoYoutube also lies regularly about the current quality. I often see 1080p (Auto) or 720p (Auto) which it selects by default. But when I reselect it manually, because it’s clear that it’s not, it suddenly starts rebuffering. Happens all the time.
- chii 3y agoIt's not exactly lying per se, but i suspect what's happening is that the player is trying to buffer the higher resolution version of the video stream, while playing the lower resolution (so as not to interrupt the video). However, the higher res stream is taking a while to download, and if that happens, the current video position has surpassed the buffered high-res video length, and so the process starts again (and the end result is that the user end up downloading chunks of the high-res video, but never watching any of it). This is why i prefer to force high-res in the first place, and have it buffer enough to play the entire video without stopping. Unfortunately, google considers this wasted bandwidth, or something...this option is not available unless you use browser mods to do it.
- bagels 3y agoThey're optimizing for not buffering. It's one of the key metrics they track for service health.
- wruza 3y agowhile playing the lower resolution (so as not to interrupt the video) That is another thing, which I don’t mind (if I understand it right). Sometimes internet becomes worse temporarily and that approach is okay. But in the described case it plays a whole video in this hypothetical “mode”, never trying to go up. My internet is not greatest, but when I switch from “720p (Auto)” to “720p” it takes only a couple of seconds to then play it without any further interruptions. It doesn’t add up. I believe they are simply saving traffic on those who look at the quality setting and either think “well, maybe it’s just shitty bitrate 720/1080p” or have no clue at all.
- dns_snek 3y ago
- lfmunoz4 3y ago[dead]
- _V_ 3y agoYeah, still not budging. They keep shoving multiple obnoxious ads every few minutes in the video. It is the same as the predatory monetization approach in the (mobile) gaming industry where authors makes the original product so awful deliberately only so they can shove subscription down your throat. Basically selling you solution for a problem they created. Screw that mentality, not paying them. And I don't mind paying for a service btw - I have a premium Odysee for example.
- yummypaint 3y agoAgreed, it makes a difference how a service came to be in its current state. The present offerings are the product of a long decline after years of deliberate enshitification. Don't support the rent seekers at google.
- eastbound 3y agoI don’t want to give Google my credit card, because in case of any problem/litigation, they can take away my Gmail. They’ve painted themselves in a corner with routinely deleting accounts for political reasons.
- _V_ 3y agoYup, that's the other part of my problem with YT/Google: No support. If something goes wrong, you are just SOL. No recourse, nothing and nobody can really help you.
- phito 3y agoHow about stopping using Gmail then?
- eastbound 3y agoSwitching from a 0.028% probability to 0.0028% isn’t worth more hassle than just having ads every day, all the time.
- mPReDiToR 3y agoAside from the issue here, and the PRIVACY mess, it's the best thing since email was invented. Availability, universally accepted, free (to the product: you), large storage, easy to use. There is no serious competition, and I say this as a Hotmail user since well before Larry and Sergey opened their doors. I have a vanity domain which MX's to Gmail so I can move it to another service _when_ they bumrush me, but I don't want to have that happen so I keep my account in good standimg. Other than self-hosting or a paid service, do you have a suggestion for an alternative? I know I'm not the OP, but I'm genuinely interested in this.
- PebblesHD 3y agoI don’t know if it’s the same in the other ‘developed but not America’ economies but Youtube premium is really expensive in Australia. It’s literally double the price of a Netflix subscription and represents way less ‘value’ for me. Part of that could be the bundled music subscription, which has zero value for me when I use and prefer Spotify, but it just seems like a very expensive niche product here which makes me surprised they’re pushing it so hard. They have a straight ad-free offering in some markets that seems much closer to something I’d actually pay for. Lose the music stuff and charge A$9.99 a month and you’d have me. Edit: I realised I was looking at the Apple subscription price at $19.99 for an individual rather than the online sign-up one. $14.99 still seems too high when my entire Amazon subscription with a video service and free-delivery is still roughly $10/mo.
- phito 3y agoThere's exactly that, it's called YouTube premium lite. But apparently it's only available in a few countries.
- Dalewyn 3y agoSorry Youtube, all I have is a whitelist.
- pxeger1 3y agoI pay for and am happy with Nebula (https://nebula.tv https://nebula.tv). If I had to watch YouTube with ads I think I would just stop, and only watch Nebula.
- CSMastermind 3y agoHow long do you think until they start adding in ads for Premium subscriber? I'd put the under/over at about 5 years from now.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoPremium subscribers already have ads in the form of sponsored segments hard coded into the videos. They are paying to watch ads.
- Roark66 3y agoI wonder how are they "detecting adblock". Let's say I have an alternative youtube client like smartyoutubetv. What will they do? Check if ads are loaded? Fine, the software can be written to load the ads, but not display them. Will they check the timing info? (that you pull a part of the video, then pull the ad for 30s,then the rest?). Will they encode the ad right into the video stream? The app can be coded with a play buffer. Like the tivo "skip ads on TV feature" of decades ago. There is no way youtube can win this battle using "brute force". The only way they can win this is by offering a new better service, not deteriorating existing ones. What could that new service be? How about recommendations that don't suck? I used to watch a lot of youtube on my TV from the main page. These days I only use a list of my subscribed channels and a search feature. Also, if youtube gets really aggressive people will go elsewhere.
- freefaler 3y agoIt'll be really hard to win that battle with Google, because: 1. they own the browser (Chrome is the dominant browser) and with their "Web Integrity API" proposal they can do whatever they want. Also v3 doesn't help adblockers. 2. they own youtube and all the content. I've seen many youtube creators speak against adblocking, because no ads = no income for them. Most people can't create content at consistently high level without getting paid for their time or their team time. So Google and content producers both are better off without ad-blockers. The web in 5 years sadly will lose most of the freedoms we take for granted, because nothing is "free" if it requires human time and resources. May be with crypto some pockets would emerge but large scale monopolies like Youtube with strong network effects wouldn't bulge.
- karmakaze 3y agoWhy does it all need to be so complicated? Any time an ad should play, the content can effectively be paused (unable to be played/buffered) for the duration of the ad so you could skip the ad, but would still have to wait to resume the content.
- jsnell 3y ago> There is no way youtube can win this battle using "brute force". The only way they can win this is by offering a new better service, not deteriorating existing ones. What could that new service be? How about recommendations that don't suck? It seems like you're saying that people are mainly using adblockers because the recommendations aren't good enough, and if the recommendations were improved they'd respond by turning off the adblock? That doesn't sound realistic. People use ad blockers because they don't like to watch ads, and since the adblockers let them avoid ads with no effort or cost. The site offering "better service" doesn't change that equation. > Also, if youtube gets really aggressive people will go elsewhere. Oh, no! The people who are not willing to pay for the service and who are blocking ads are going elsewhere! How can the platform and the creators possibly survive without that $0 in revenue?
- insickness 3y agoYoutube seems to have a monopoly in the same way that Reddit does--it offers a product with network effect that you can't get anywhere else. However, most of what I use Youtube for is entertainment, same as Reddit. When Reddit turned to problematic, I had no problem not using it and switching to other forms of entertainment.
- Simulacra 3y agoI absolutely will not watch advertisements. Am I unique in this regard? I consciously block out advertisements, mute them, and use every method available to block them.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYou're not alone. Nobody wants to see this garbage. I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across and people always comment on how the web has suddenly become much nicer. They know. Even when they can't explain why, they know. I too mute my TV and pick up my phone when obnoxious ads start playing. Who wants to listen to this crap? Can you imagine TV companies pushing for technology that disables the mute, change channel and even on/off buttons while ads start playing? Magazines setting themselves on fire if you rip out the ad pages and throw them in the trash? If it seems like people are accepting of ads, it's really because they think it can't be helped. They think there's nothing they can do to prevent the unending flurry of corporate spam from grabbing their attention. If you show them a better world, I guarantee they'll like it.
- orwin 3y agoI currently only have two brands I'm really boycotting over obnoxious ads (Samsung and head&shoulders btw) ('really' because I used to be a client), I guess my boycott list will only grow, as most video ads are obnoxious.
- ghusto 3y agoThe first day my adblocker stops working is the last day I'll be on that site. No big loss for me.
- _V_ 3y agoAgreed. I even stopped using Safari on Mac when uBlock stopped working way back in Catalina. Even though I had to get rid of Apple Pay and good battery life.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoSame here. If uBlock Origin stops working, I might switch to downloading the videos with yt-dlp instead. If that stops working, I'll just drop YouTube like I dropped Twitter when they screwed with Nitter.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoEven their language is offensive. "Ad blockers are not allowed". Who are they to "allow" anything? It's my computer. They get exactly zero say in the matter. Their assumption of authority only ensured I will go out of my way to block the ads just to prove them wrong.
- rabbits_2002 3y agoI have noticed a few ads slip past uBlock the past few days. They dont have video just audio.
- johnboyega 3y agoservers cost money too. nothing is free.