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The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by t

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the only option (I think ad supported content is an inherently socially corrosive model) I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. (Some people are unable to afford it but that's an entirely separate social problem, and it would be unusual for somebody with the skills demonstrated in the article to be struggling to earn a living wage.) What I would be interested in this protobuf inspection approach for would be implementing some decent parental controls. I would very much like to be able to enable/disable individual youtube channels. Currently all I can do is switch the whole site on and off. I have all the necessary infrastructure already, so I might give it a try.

dijit 3y ago
I’m in the exact same mindset as you; youtube allows you to pay to rid yourself of ads (which is ironic because the more free you are with money the more attractive you must be to advertisers)- so I think they are better than most. but if I must take an alternative position: the last time I used youtube without premium (which happens sometimes because its not so smooth to log in if its a temporary session); the number and length of the ads was absurd, multiple levels of unskippable ads, minutes long, with volume that is much higher than the content itself. Awful experience and I can see why people who don’t have the free money want to lower it a little. Thats of course not including sponsored content which contains an ad inside the video itself- even YT premium users get those.
- nerbert 3y ago
  There are extensions that mark these "premium" ads and let you skip them.
harshitaneja 3y ago
Very well put. I have tried to argue the same point here and on reddit in past. The only real argument against I get is from the privacy perspective. That people tend to use alternative youtube clients or other such hacks to be able to consume ad free content anonymously and with the current state of google are not very keen on providing it with more information about them. Personally I am trying to degooglify my life including working my own open source alternatives for some services I don't find much other good alternatives for- google keep and google books. But my youtube usage pattern being the data shared with google is quite low on the priority list for me but reasonable minds can differ. On the other hand, if enough do start to pay for youtube premium then we would be able to much more fruitfully present our demands including for privacy when we are actual customers and not the product as in the current dynamics.
fsckboy 3y ago
I too am happy pay for nice things, but I am never happy to pay a monopolist just on principle; so I don't.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  But you're happy to use the monopolist's service.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    yes, absolutely, but only inasmuch as it only decreases their producer surplus so it doesn't actually cost them anything. If the monopolist allowed competition, then I'd evaluate and choose, but I don't have that choice till then.
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      You could choose to not use YouTube out of principle. Besides these days it's barely a monopoly with TikTok.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        "you can believe in the benefits of law and order, and just walk away any time you encounter a thief who doesn't". Yes, or I can steal my stuff back which gives me pleasure. "anyway, you can switch from the high end monopolist to the low brow monopolist so I don't see what you're complaining about" Yes, you don't. the right to wear hair-shirts is not the only principle that counts.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        Do you shoplift as well to stick it to Walmart?
FireInsight 3y ago
I use Youtube through Piped (https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) to preserve privacy, block ads, and prevent getting sucked in by the algorithm. The only part of Youtube that I find valuable is the content. Not the UI, not the comments, algorithm. Free content hosting is nice, but it's not the only platform hosting videos for free. If I wanted to pay for a streaming service, it'd be Nebula (https://nebula.tv/ https://nebula.tv/), because I know it benefits creators. But I'm never turning off the adblocker, thank you.
- chii 3y ago
  > it's not the only platform hosting videos for free. You're only looking at this from your own point of view. The content producers are looking for monetization options, and youtube is the only game. Nebula might be sufficient for some small amount of content producers, but it's unlikely to hit mainstream, and not enough people want to pay. It's unfortunate, but ads are the only game in town on the internet atm.
- sspiff 3y ago
  While Nebula has some creators om it that I follow, no platform comes close to having the broad collection of channels YouYube does. I follow a wide variety of channels, but there are maybe a dozen to 20 that I would consider essential. Maybe 3-4 are on Nebula. I think for a lot of viewers and creators, YouTube is simply inevitable at this point.
  - pixelesque 3y ago
    On top of that, in my experience both CuriousityStream and Nebula's search functionality is pretty bad: I got fed up of the number of times I searched for something mentioned in a spoken "advertisment" by users like Mustard on youtube who said they have extra content on those services and then I can't find it or find out how to list all videos by those users, I stopped my subscription to them...
- commoner 3y ago
  Piped is a great web-based service, but since tvOS does not support web browsers on the Apple TV, to block YouTube ads, you either have to stream Piped videos to the Apple TV from another Apple device using AirPlay screen mirroring or use a workaround like the one described in TFA. I'm using NewPipe (https://newpipe.net https://newpipe.net) on Android TV which provides an ad-free YouTube experience just like the Android phone version of NewPipe. Piped would also work on an Android TV browser like TV Bro (https://github.com/truefedex/tv-bro https://github.com/truefedex/tv-bro). The legitimacy of ad blocking is well-established. People have been using DVRs, VHS players, and tape recorders to capture and consume ad-free broadcasts for decades.
userbinator 3y ago
I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. How is this any different from changing the channel, leaving the room, or just hitting the mute button and closing your eyes in the scenario of "regular" TV when adverts or any other content you don't want to see appears? Compelled consumption should be illegal.
- chii 3y ago
  The assumption is that not many people would leave the room, close their eyes or mute the ads. If you created a painless, super easy way to remove all ads, i'm sure that TV channels will also find it hard to sell to advertisers, and thus, their revenue would decrease.
  - Ntrails 3y ago
    In my household growing up the ads were almost always muted as soon as the roll started. I always found it bizarre that other people did not do the same
    - silverpepsi 3y ago
      My grandparents did that, it was one of the principle annoyances I had with visting them as a kid It was very shocking to go from 75dB to an ambient 30dB or something like that out in the countryside. I'd have much preferred to talk over or zone out over the commercials without the suddenly shocking lack of auditory stimulus!
    - month13 3y ago
      They train you to do this when they volume boost the ads to blow your eardrums out.
      - lloeki 3y ago
        Over here volume boosting is illegal, so instead they DSP ad audio to maximise envelope across all frequency bands. Since ad sections are your typical break from a program to get to the fridge or toilet or whatever, the DSP transform makes sure you still hear the ads and pick up dialog even when far away from the TV. Downmixing audio so that you can both hear dialogue and not lose eardrums to music and 'splosions seems to be an intractable decades old problem for the movie industry but it sure as hell been solved a dozen times over by the ad biz.
cannedbeets 3y ago
There are so many reasons to block ads. Aesthetics alone. Protecting your valuable time. Consenting to watching an ad is not the same as consenting to your entire life being tracked and monitored. But the most important issue is that as long as malware can spread through ads (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising), everyone should be blocking all ads.
- taberiand 3y ago
  Everyone should block ads and everyone who can pay for the use of the platform should.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Given that neither Facebook nor Google can appropriately police the content of their own ad networks (to the extent that they're the two biggest purveyors of malware and scams on the internet - in this rando's opinion), there is no moral argument against blocking ads. In fact, not blocking internet advertising is a security risk. If they get their house in order my opinion may change, but there's currently no business reason for them to change their existing lax systems; no pressure or threat from regulation to hold them liable for what they allow on their advertising networks.
- nevi-me 3y ago
  And instead paying for services if there's the option, right? Or should we just continue consuming people's services and effort while blocking what's sometimes their only revenue stream? I'd rather not use a service if it has ads and I can't remove them, instead of block them and make everyone else's experience worse.
- Vortigaunt 3y ago
  Yeah it's gotten so bad that the FBI recommends an ad-blocker as a means to protect yourself from malicious sites. https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624 https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624
rplnt 3y ago
The issue with paying for youtube premium is that you are still left with tons of ads. Until YouTube themselves doesn't tackle this issue as it should I refuse to pay to see sligtly less ads.
- trollied 3y ago
  I pay for YouTube premium and have never seen an ad. Not sure what's happening with you.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    Half of the content on YouTube could be considered to be an ad by itself. Also sponsors are being advertised regularly within videos which I would consider to be ads too
    - layer8 3y ago
      It strongly depends on the kind of content you watch. I watch a lot of YouTube, but hardly any of it has sponsored content.
    - Aaron2222 3y ago
      There's always SponsorBlock: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
  - rplnt 3y ago
    A lot of the videos I see have ads in them, section whith "this video is sponsored by this and that". That's definitely an ad. I would say most new (past few years) content by established channels has these. Some more obnoxious than others.
samstave 3y ago
Does anyone recall when cable TV first came out - "Pay for cable, see no ads!!!" That didn't last long...
- oneshtein 3y ago
  You can go to the cinema, buy a ticket, buy a popcorn, and then watch ads there.
  - yard2010 3y ago
    This is why you enter the theater 20 minutes after the hour that is written on the ticket
Scoundreller 3y ago
> So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the only option (I think ad supported content is an inherently socially corrosive model) Still doesn't protect you from in-video sponsorships (skullshare, OstVPN, etc.), product placements, etc. Some creators especially do these because it protects them from platform demonetization risk. Same shit with paying for cabletv & movie theatre tickets. If anything, people that pay are their most valuable targets for ads. Even a newspaper that I sub to runs ads and a zillion trackers against me. Ugh. I get where you're coming from, but the platform could more to protect paying members from this. E.g. creators with over $x revenue must tag promos so the platform ships them for paying users
- jcronenberg 3y ago
  To me at least the sponsorblock extension is completely ethical when you are using youtube premium. The creators get paid extra for a premium view anyway, plus I don't think advertisers for in video ads pay per view of that segment (if there are even tools to detect that metric) or anything like that so you're not even hurting the creator. But I agree that something built in by youtube for premium users would be nicer. Would get youtube more premium users too I think because I was e.g. initially hesitent too of buying premium because I knew I would still be getting in video sponsors.
- scrollaway 3y ago
  It doesn’t, but Nebula does. Creators don’t put sponsorships in their Nebula videos. And they had a lifetime subscription recently so personally I jumped on it and don’t have to deal with Yet Another Subscription…
happytiger 3y ago
You mean like PBS? But now they have ads.
mattigames 3y ago
By that logic we shouldn't be even a allowed to look away or mute our sound when the ads are playing, after all if enough people did it it would be just as "damaging" as people with ad blockers. Also, YouTube is a video streaming monopoly, if it didn't exist there would be a significant chance of new streaming platforms to succeed, but given that it captured the marked such chance is unlikely to exist, monopoly that they achieved hosting videos free of ads (or very light on these) and now that they have the control want to force people to pay or watch a ridiculous amount of ads.
- userbinator 3y ago
  If the advertisers had their way unimpeded, we'd be in "drink verification can" territory now.
  - mattigames 3y ago
    In case some people here don't know about that reference: https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_a_verification_can/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_...
SnorkelTan 3y ago
People paid for cable and they still forced ads on people.
- izacus 3y ago
  And YouTube doesn't. And you can stop paying when they do.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280072
    - layer8 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280895
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background-played but it doesn't without paying for premium. I'm somewhere on an "entitlement" scale here, but background-play being a premium feature really feels like it's stretching the friendship. So... alternative front-end it is. Great experience and no ads to boot.
- SergeAx 3y ago
  The said ability also exists in a premium subscription. So what you effectively saying is that YouTube offers you a valuable feature, but you refuse to pay for it.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    Correct.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    It is fair to not want pay enshittification tax to rent seekers. The said ability exists on the YT website if you use desktop mode on the mobile browser.
    - izacus 3y ago
      Asking you to pay for service costs and content is not rent seeking. That's not what that phrase means.
      - yard2010 3y ago
        No but you have to agree on the enshitification part. Youtube turned to one of the worst UX apps I have on my phone, I hate paying them for such a shitty product and I'm waiting for the time they're off this planet
Teever 3y ago
That's a way to look at it, and another way to look at it is this: I already pay Google much more than I care to and am willing to in the form of my privacy and personal data because of the ubiquitious surveillance that Google performs on as many people as they possibly can. If I could cut Google out of my life I would do it in an instant, but I can't because they won't allow it. In lieu of that I take whatever I can from them. “To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.” -- Abbie Hoffman
- izacus 3y ago
  If you could cut Google out easily, you wouldn't be using YouTube. Who are you lying to, yourself or us?
beirut_bootleg 3y ago
> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay And I dislike YouTube's hostile ad escalation in recent years. One ad - fine, two ads - hmmm, three ads - what the hell. Unskippable ads. Inappropriate ads. Loud-ass eardrum ripping ads. Ads even on Premium.
- stingraycharles 3y ago
  I have premium but don’t see any ads, except the sponsorships of the creators themselves. Which is a bit annoying but not a lot YouTube can do about.
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    >not a lot YouTube can do about. // They've tried? It seems like it would be pretty easy to detect ad sequences in larger channels.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - yard2010 3y ago
    I don't know maybe auto skip on them for premium users? I have an extension that does just that, surely google can do it too
- deltree7 3y ago
  [dead]
- anilakar 3y ago
  And even if you get rid of the ads, the sponsored content is not going anywhere.
a_imho 3y ago
I find this a false proposition, there are plenty of other ways to to support a video streaming platform. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exist in it's current form either. If a monetizing strategy does not work it is not the users holding it wrong. People consumed videos online before youtube and will be consuming after youtube just fine. It is not like Google is the creative mind behind the content either, in fact, the streaming part is by far the most boring problem. I really dislike the attitude of defending megacorps and worrying about their bottom lines, especially anti customer ones like Google.
- alsodumb 3y ago
  You claim that there are plenty of other ways to support a video streaming platform yet fail to mention even one of them. Things cost money. Every monetizing strategy involves users paying for it or the company making money from the users indirectly. OP mentions both of these. So tell me, what's a monetizing strategy other than these that works? People consumed videos online at a very limited scale before YouTube, and those videos were usually hosted by few, generous individuals. Even if every user in the world decides to contribute 50% of their device storage for a decentralized streaming platform, I doubt it would even fit a small part of all videos in YouTube's catalog right now. I really dislike the attitude of hating megacorps without really proposing any viable alternatives.
  - a_imho 3y ago
    Nitpicking alternatives is not the main point. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exists in its current form. Consider a freemium model without the threat of adxtortion, obviously this would require youtube to offer a significant value add and/or premium content besides trying to be a monopoly and gatekeeping eyes. Make it purely subscription based (e.g. Netflix before ads). Ask creators to pay for the blue checkmark. Make it a loss leader. Plenty of adult streaming sites manages to do just fine without youtube style invasive ads. I'm sure much smarter people can name countless other ways as well, it also does not need to be a 1-1 alternative either.
- fsflover 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vintermann 3y ago
By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning. I remember I had this discussion after a school political debate in the 90s, with (adult) actual politicians. Textbooks at the time were not publicly funded, and naturally the textbook companies jacked up prices for their captive audience forced to buy their books. This one party had the "brilliant" idea of ad-funded textbooks. I asked, if the textbook companies currently take $50 for the book, if it was instead funded by say McDonalds ads, how many extra burgers would each student have to buy that year? They didn't have any good answer to that.
- sneak 3y ago
  None. The textbooks would then be subsidized by McDonalds' advertising budget, reducing their profit margin. It's the same as blocking YouTube ads; Google still pays the creator as if you had watched the ads, so your video playback is being subsidized by Google's ad business profits. When you choose not to block ads, you aren't "supporting creators", you are supporting Google shareholders.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    Point is, McDonald's wouldn't do that for long. They don't have that big margins. Google's shareholders might, for a while, for the sake of "control". But either way, it's not sustainable. The anti-adblockers are right about that part. They're just wrong that watching ads without spending a ton of money on the products help matters.
- riidom 3y ago
  This happened for real, actually, at least some german science fiction publishing houses did that. They would "insert" a page into the book, which picks up the story in some really cheesy way and then bends in within two sentences towards the main character needing a quick soup now (the advertise was for soup always, they just had that one sponsor apparently). See here (picture gallery): https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ The introduction goes like: "Only Kirk kept helping himself, because he was convinced he would need strength for the upcoming events." and then below the black bars the actual ad: "The reader should do same bla e.g. soup bla takes just 5 minutes etc" Just some anecdote.
squarefoot 3y ago
> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. What about fair advertising? The main problem here nobody dares to talk about because dealing with it would undermine the very essence of capitalism: unlimited growth, is that there is no way to have fair advertising exactly as there's no way to have a fair use of any resources. Once you allow anything to be used for profit, it will be abused from the strongest players at the expense of the others until the last drop. It would be extremely easy to put well defined limits on how much advertising can be shown, and make the Internet a better place, but no way, it's anti capitalistic and therefore a no-no. Ad blockers weren't born the same day advertising came to the Internet, and many years passed until someone realized we needed them; that was the day surfing became such a horrid experience thanks to unlimited, pervasive and ever growing advertising. edit: and, by the way, I still have to see some company going bankrupt because of ad blockers.
joosters 3y ago
Nowhere in YouTube’s voluminous terms of service does it say that you have to watch the ads. Why are you defending a multi billion dollar company from something that the users aren’t obliged to do in the first place?
megous 3y ago
It's possible to download stuff you like, for free, without being funded by donations, ads, or being run by the government. P2P. People using their excess Internet connectivity, they already pay for for other reasons, to share content with others. It works for socially disadvantaged, too.

dijit 3y ago

I’m in the exact same mindset as you; youtube allows you to pay to rid yourself of ads (which is ironic because the more free you are with money the more attractive you must be to advertisers)- so I think they are better than most. but if I must take an alternative position: the last time I used youtube without premium (which happens sometimes because its not so smooth to log in if its a temporary session); the number and length of the ads was absurd, multiple levels of unskippable ads, minutes long, with volume that is much higher than the content itself. Awful experience and I can see why people who don’t have the free money want to lower it a little. Thats of course not including sponsored content which contains an ad inside the video itself- even YT premium users get those.

nerbert 3y ago
There are extensions that mark these "premium" ads and let you skip them.

harshitaneja 3y ago

Very well put. I have tried to argue the same point here and on reddit in past. The only real argument against I get is from the privacy perspective. That people tend to use alternative youtube clients or other such hacks to be able to consume ad free content anonymously and with the current state of google are not very keen on providing it with more information about them. Personally I am trying to degooglify my life including working my own open source alternatives for some services I don't find much other good alternatives for- google keep and google books. But my youtube usage pattern being the data shared with google is quite low on the priority list for me but reasonable minds can differ. On the other hand, if enough do start to pay for youtube premium then we would be able to much more fruitfully present our demands including for privacy when we are actual customers and not the product as in the current dynamics.

fsckboy 3y ago

I too am happy pay for nice things, but I am never happy to pay a monopolist just on principle; so I don't.

chpatrick 3y ago
But you're happy to use the monopolist's service.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  yes, absolutely, but only inasmuch as it only decreases their producer surplus so it doesn't actually cost them anything. If the monopolist allowed competition, then I'd evaluate and choose, but I don't have that choice till then.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
    You could choose to not use YouTube out of principle. Besides these days it's barely a monopoly with TikTok.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      "you can believe in the benefits of law and order, and just walk away any time you encounter a thief who doesn't". Yes, or I can steal my stuff back which gives me pleasure. "anyway, you can switch from the high end monopolist to the low brow monopolist so I don't see what you're complaining about" Yes, you don't. the right to wear hair-shirts is not the only principle that counts.
      - chpatrick 3y ago
        Do you shoplift as well to stick it to Walmart?

FireInsight 3y ago

I use Youtube through Piped (https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) to preserve privacy, block ads, and prevent getting sucked in by the algorithm. The only part of Youtube that I find valuable is the content. Not the UI, not the comments, algorithm. Free content hosting is nice, but it's not the only platform hosting videos for free. If I wanted to pay for a streaming service, it'd be Nebula (https://nebula.tv/ https://nebula.tv/), because I know it benefits creators. But I'm never turning off the adblocker, thank you.

chii 3y ago
> it's not the only platform hosting videos for free. You're only looking at this from your own point of view. The content producers are looking for monetization options, and youtube is the only game. Nebula might be sufficient for some small amount of content producers, but it's unlikely to hit mainstream, and not enough people want to pay. It's unfortunate, but ads are the only game in town on the internet atm.
sspiff 3y ago
While Nebula has some creators om it that I follow, no platform comes close to having the broad collection of channels YouYube does. I follow a wide variety of channels, but there are maybe a dozen to 20 that I would consider essential. Maybe 3-4 are on Nebula. I think for a lot of viewers and creators, YouTube is simply inevitable at this point.
- pixelesque 3y ago
  On top of that, in my experience both CuriousityStream and Nebula's search functionality is pretty bad: I got fed up of the number of times I searched for something mentioned in a spoken "advertisment" by users like Mustard on youtube who said they have extra content on those services and then I can't find it or find out how to list all videos by those users, I stopped my subscription to them...
commoner 3y ago
Piped is a great web-based service, but since tvOS does not support web browsers on the Apple TV, to block YouTube ads, you either have to stream Piped videos to the Apple TV from another Apple device using AirPlay screen mirroring or use a workaround like the one described in TFA. I'm using NewPipe (https://newpipe.net https://newpipe.net) on Android TV which provides an ad-free YouTube experience just like the Android phone version of NewPipe. Piped would also work on an Android TV browser like TV Bro (https://github.com/truefedex/tv-bro https://github.com/truefedex/tv-bro). The legitimacy of ad blocking is well-established. People have been using DVRs, VHS players, and tape recorders to capture and consume ad-free broadcasts for decades.

userbinator 3y ago

I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. How is this any different from changing the channel, leaving the room, or just hitting the mute button and closing your eyes in the scenario of "regular" TV when adverts or any other content you don't want to see appears? Compelled consumption should be illegal.

chii 3y ago
The assumption is that not many people would leave the room, close their eyes or mute the ads. If you created a painless, super easy way to remove all ads, i'm sure that TV channels will also find it hard to sell to advertisers, and thus, their revenue would decrease.
- Ntrails 3y ago
  In my household growing up the ads were almost always muted as soon as the roll started. I always found it bizarre that other people did not do the same
  - silverpepsi 3y ago
    My grandparents did that, it was one of the principle annoyances I had with visting them as a kid It was very shocking to go from 75dB to an ambient 30dB or something like that out in the countryside. I'd have much preferred to talk over or zone out over the commercials without the suddenly shocking lack of auditory stimulus!
  - month13 3y ago
    They train you to do this when they volume boost the ads to blow your eardrums out.
    - lloeki 3y ago
      Over here volume boosting is illegal, so instead they DSP ad audio to maximise envelope across all frequency bands. Since ad sections are your typical break from a program to get to the fridge or toilet or whatever, the DSP transform makes sure you still hear the ads and pick up dialog even when far away from the TV. Downmixing audio so that you can both hear dialogue and not lose eardrums to music and 'splosions seems to be an intractable decades old problem for the movie industry but it sure as hell been solved a dozen times over by the ad biz.

cannedbeets 3y ago

There are so many reasons to block ads. Aesthetics alone. Protecting your valuable time. Consenting to watching an ad is not the same as consenting to your entire life being tracked and monitored. But the most important issue is that as long as malware can spread through ads (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising), everyone should be blocking all ads.

taberiand 3y ago
Everyone should block ads and everyone who can pay for the use of the platform should.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
Given that neither Facebook nor Google can appropriately police the content of their own ad networks (to the extent that they're the two biggest purveyors of malware and scams on the internet - in this rando's opinion), there is no moral argument against blocking ads. In fact, not blocking internet advertising is a security risk. If they get their house in order my opinion may change, but there's currently no business reason for them to change their existing lax systems; no pressure or threat from regulation to hold them liable for what they allow on their advertising networks.
nevi-me 3y ago
And instead paying for services if there's the option, right? Or should we just continue consuming people's services and effort while blocking what's sometimes their only revenue stream? I'd rather not use a service if it has ads and I can't remove them, instead of block them and make everyone else's experience worse.
Vortigaunt 3y ago
Yeah it's gotten so bad that the FBI recommends an ad-blocker as a means to protect yourself from malicious sites. https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624 https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

rplnt 3y ago

The issue with paying for youtube premium is that you are still left with tons of ads. Until YouTube themselves doesn't tackle this issue as it should I refuse to pay to see sligtly less ads.

trollied 3y ago
I pay for YouTube premium and have never seen an ad. Not sure what's happening with you.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Half of the content on YouTube could be considered to be an ad by itself. Also sponsors are being advertised regularly within videos which I would consider to be ads too
  - layer8 3y ago
    It strongly depends on the kind of content you watch. I watch a lot of YouTube, but hardly any of it has sponsored content.
  - Aaron2222 3y ago
    There's always SponsorBlock: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- rplnt 3y ago
  A lot of the videos I see have ads in them, section whith "this video is sponsored by this and that". That's definitely an ad. I would say most new (past few years) content by established channels has these. Some more obnoxious than others.

samstave 3y ago

Does anyone recall when cable TV first came out - "Pay for cable, see no ads!!!" That didn't last long...

oneshtein 3y ago
You can go to the cinema, buy a ticket, buy a popcorn, and then watch ads there.
- yard2010 3y ago
  This is why you enter the theater 20 minutes after the hour that is written on the ticket

Scoundreller 3y ago

> So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the only option (I think ad supported content is an inherently socially corrosive model) Still doesn't protect you from in-video sponsorships (skullshare, OstVPN, etc.), product placements, etc. Some creators especially do these because it protects them from platform demonetization risk. Same shit with paying for cabletv & movie theatre tickets. If anything, people that pay are their most valuable targets for ads. Even a newspaper that I sub to runs ads and a zillion trackers against me. Ugh. I get where you're coming from, but the platform could more to protect paying members from this. E.g. creators with over $x revenue must tag promos so the platform ships them for paying users

jcronenberg 3y ago
To me at least the sponsorblock extension is completely ethical when you are using youtube premium. The creators get paid extra for a premium view anyway, plus I don't think advertisers for in video ads pay per view of that segment (if there are even tools to detect that metric) or anything like that so you're not even hurting the creator. But I agree that something built in by youtube for premium users would be nicer. Would get youtube more premium users too I think because I was e.g. initially hesitent too of buying premium because I knew I would still be getting in video sponsors.
scrollaway 3y ago
It doesn’t, but Nebula does. Creators don’t put sponsorships in their Nebula videos. And they had a lifetime subscription recently so personally I jumped on it and don’t have to deal with Yet Another Subscription…

happytiger 3y ago

You mean like PBS? But now they have ads.

mattigames 3y ago

By that logic we shouldn't be even a allowed to look away or mute our sound when the ads are playing, after all if enough people did it it would be just as "damaging" as people with ad blockers. Also, YouTube is a video streaming monopoly, if it didn't exist there would be a significant chance of new streaming platforms to succeed, but given that it captured the marked such chance is unlikely to exist, monopoly that they achieved hosting videos free of ads (or very light on these) and now that they have the control want to force people to pay or watch a ridiculous amount of ads.

userbinator 3y ago
If the advertisers had their way unimpeded, we'd be in "drink verification can" territory now.
- mattigames 3y ago
  In case some people here don't know about that reference: https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_a_verification_can/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_...

SnorkelTan 3y ago

People paid for cable and they still forced ads on people.

izacus 3y ago
And YouTube doesn't. And you can stop paying when they do.
- fsflover 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280072
  - layer8 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280895

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

I can be a petty individual at times, and the thing that convinced me to never pay a cent to youtube was their removing the ability for the app to continue to play the clip in the background when switching to another app or locking the phone. I listen to news and podcast-esque things in the car going to work or school drop-off / pick-up, on the way to sport etc. I'd begrudgingly tolerate the ads if the app background-played but it doesn't without paying for premium. I'm somewhere on an "entitlement" scale here, but background-play being a premium feature really feels like it's stretching the friendship. So... alternative front-end it is. Great experience and no ads to boot.

SergeAx 3y ago
The said ability also exists in a premium subscription. So what you effectively saying is that YouTube offers you a valuable feature, but you refuse to pay for it.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Correct.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  It is fair to not want pay enshittification tax to rent seekers. The said ability exists on the YT website if you use desktop mode on the mobile browser.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Asking you to pay for service costs and content is not rent seeking. That's not what that phrase means.
    - yard2010 3y ago
      No but you have to agree on the enshitification part. Youtube turned to one of the worst UX apps I have on my phone, I hate paying them for such a shitty product and I'm waiting for the time they're off this planet

Teever 3y ago

That's a way to look at it, and another way to look at it is this: I already pay Google much more than I care to and am willing to in the form of my privacy and personal data because of the ubiquitious surveillance that Google performs on as many people as they possibly can. If I could cut Google out of my life I would do it in an instant, but I can't because they won't allow it. In lieu of that I take whatever I can from them. “To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.” -- Abbie Hoffman

izacus 3y ago
If you could cut Google out easily, you wouldn't be using YouTube. Who are you lying to, yourself or us?

beirut_bootleg 3y ago

> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay And I dislike YouTube's hostile ad escalation in recent years. One ad - fine, two ads - hmmm, three ads - what the hell. Unskippable ads. Inappropriate ads. Loud-ass eardrum ripping ads. Ads even on Premium.

stingraycharles 3y ago
I have premium but don’t see any ads, except the sponsorships of the creators themselves. Which is a bit annoying but not a lot YouTube can do about.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  >not a lot YouTube can do about. // They've tried? It seems like it would be pretty easy to detect ad sequences in larger channels.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yard2010 3y ago
  I don't know maybe auto skip on them for premium users? I have an extension that does just that, surely google can do it too
deltree7 3y ago
[dead]
anilakar 3y ago
And even if you get rid of the ads, the sponsored content is not going anywhere.

a_imho 3y ago

I find this a false proposition, there are plenty of other ways to to support a video streaming platform. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exist in it's current form either. If a monetizing strategy does not work it is not the users holding it wrong. People consumed videos online before youtube and will be consuming after youtube just fine. It is not like Google is the creative mind behind the content either, in fact, the streaming part is by far the most boring problem. I really dislike the attitude of defending megacorps and worrying about their bottom lines, especially anti customer ones like Google.

alsodumb 3y ago
You claim that there are plenty of other ways to support a video streaming platform yet fail to mention even one of them. Things cost money. Every monetizing strategy involves users paying for it or the company making money from the users indirectly. OP mentions both of these. So tell me, what's a monetizing strategy other than these that works? People consumed videos online at a very limited scale before YouTube, and those videos were usually hosted by few, generous individuals. Even if every user in the world decides to contribute 50% of their device storage for a decentralized streaming platform, I doubt it would even fit a small part of all videos in YouTube's catalog right now. I really dislike the attitude of hating megacorps without really proposing any viable alternatives.
- a_imho 3y ago
  Nitpicking alternatives is not the main point. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exists in its current form. Consider a freemium model without the threat of adxtortion, obviously this would require youtube to offer a significant value add and/or premium content besides trying to be a monopoly and gatekeeping eyes. Make it purely subscription based (e.g. Netflix before ads). Ask creators to pay for the blue checkmark. Make it a loss leader. Plenty of adult streaming sites manages to do just fine without youtube style invasive ads. I'm sure much smarter people can name countless other ways as well, it also does not need to be a 1-1 alternative either.
fsflover 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

vintermann 3y ago

By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning. I remember I had this discussion after a school political debate in the 90s, with (adult) actual politicians. Textbooks at the time were not publicly funded, and naturally the textbook companies jacked up prices for their captive audience forced to buy their books. This one party had the "brilliant" idea of ad-funded textbooks. I asked, if the textbook companies currently take $50 for the book, if it was instead funded by say McDonalds ads, how many extra burgers would each student have to buy that year? They didn't have any good answer to that.

sneak 3y ago
None. The textbooks would then be subsidized by McDonalds' advertising budget, reducing their profit margin. It's the same as blocking YouTube ads; Google still pays the creator as if you had watched the ads, so your video playback is being subsidized by Google's ad business profits. When you choose not to block ads, you aren't "supporting creators", you are supporting Google shareholders.
- vintermann 3y ago
  Point is, McDonald's wouldn't do that for long. They don't have that big margins. Google's shareholders might, for a while, for the sake of "control". But either way, it's not sustainable. The anti-adblockers are right about that part. They're just wrong that watching ads without spending a ton of money on the products help matters.
riidom 3y ago
This happened for real, actually, at least some german science fiction publishing houses did that. They would "insert" a page into the book, which picks up the story in some really cheesy way and then bends in within two sentences towards the main character needing a quick soup now (the advertise was for soup always, they just had that one sponsor apparently). See here (picture gallery): https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ The introduction goes like: "Only Kirk kept helping himself, because he was convinced he would need strength for the upcoming events." and then below the black bars the actual ad: "The reader should do same bla e.g. soup bla takes just 5 minutes etc" Just some anecdote.

squarefoot 3y ago

> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay. What about fair advertising? The main problem here nobody dares to talk about because dealing with it would undermine the very essence of capitalism: unlimited growth, is that there is no way to have fair advertising exactly as there's no way to have a fair use of any resources. Once you allow anything to be used for profit, it will be abused from the strongest players at the expense of the others until the last drop. It would be extremely easy to put well defined limits on how much advertising can be shown, and make the Internet a better place, but no way, it's anti capitalistic and therefore a no-no. Ad blockers weren't born the same day advertising came to the Internet, and many years passed until someone realized we needed them; that was the day surfing became such a horrid experience thanks to unlimited, pervasive and ever growing advertising. edit: and, by the way, I still have to see some company going bankrupt because of ad blockers.

joosters 3y ago

Nowhere in YouTube’s voluminous terms of service does it say that you have to watch the ads. Why are you defending a multi billion dollar company from something that the users aren’t obliged to do in the first place?

megous 3y ago

It's possible to download stuff you like, for free, without being funded by donations, ads, or being run by the government. P2P. People using their excess Internet connectivity, they already pay for for other reasons, to share content with others. It works for socially disadvantaged, too.