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Part of the objection to ads is the tracking. If you subscribe to YouTube premium you’re making yourself even more identifiable. You end up seeing more creepy

by Lio 3y ago

Part of the objection to ads is the tracking. If you subscribe to YouTube premium you’re making yourself even more identifiable. You end up seeing more creepy ads elsewhere on the web using your viewing history to target you. Versus an adblocker which will help hide you from Google everywhere.

rvnx 3y ago
What I find very unfair, is that I am paying for YouTube Premium, whose promise is "No ads", but the "poor content creators" are injecting ads that are directly embedded inside the stream. Like "Linus Tech Tips". I think YouTube should force streamers to tag the timecode of their in-stream ads, and auto-skip them for Premium users. It's like if you play a game and you purchase the In-App upgrade to remove the ads, and at the end there are still ads.
- thaanpaa 3y ago
  The solution is to stay away from poor content creators such as LTT. I'd rather want a filter that filters all videos that have '...reacts to...' in the title or certain channels such as LTT that get pushed to my front page, even though I really, really don't want to see them.
- dawnerd 3y ago
  SponsorBlock effectively does this without the creators help. Even directly subscribing to creators these days isn’t enough, they want you to buy their merch and they almost never consider that a sponsorship. Need to stop acting like these big players are barely making any money.
  - db48x 3y ago
    I second the recommendation for SponsorBlock! You've saved people from 10,945 segments ( 2d 17h 9.6 minutes of their lives ) You've skipped 4,006 segments ( 1d 9h 11.8 minutes )
    - spiderice 3y ago
      It doesn’t help on TV/mobile though, right? I do appreciate that a lot of creators have been putting the “progress bar” during the sponsored segment that make them easier to skip
      - anonymousab 3y ago
        I think it works on Firefox for Android.
      - db48x 3y ago
        There’s a reason your TV’s manufacturer doesn’t allow you to install browser addons (or for that matter any software that you really control) on your TV.
- elif 3y ago
  Yea baked in ads are actually against YouTube TOS but I've tried to report one of the most obnoxious bad actors (they run 90 second TV-style ad breaks made up of 4-5 premade ads with nothing to do with the presenter) YouTube legal basically told me to kick rocks.
imglorp 3y ago
I'd like to address the concept of "ads are creepy" which you will hear often. It's a false equivalence. Most prominently you'll see the flag under "privacy settings" something like "don't show me relevant ads"; this is obviously a manipulative placebo. Ads are not the problem. That creepy feeling is the awareness that "they know everything about you", or literally how your vivisected intellect is presented in a marketplace for all bidders to insert their ideas. They will continue surveillance and attention assault whether you let them show you a hint or not. They will continue to sell your identity, behavioral patterns, associates, interests, finances, grades, location, moods, biometrics, and anything else they can monetize. They will continue to attempt to alter your mental state and force you into doing things you wouldn't ordinarily do. However you set that "relevant ads" button, you can be sure the trillion dollar corporation will not lose a penny when you check that box; they'll show you a different, equally profitable, ad, and your data firehose is still for sale.
- Lio 3y ago
  That’s a very interesting point. It does seem weird though that the surveillance firms would go to the lengths of using dark patterns and persistent nagging to get users to allow targeted ads if it didn’t matter to them.
  - imglorp 3y ago
    I haven't seen a lot of nagging, usually it's a checkbox in an options page. Where are you seeing them?

by Lio 3y ago

rvnx 3y ago

What I find very unfair, is that I am paying for YouTube Premium, whose promise is "No ads", but the "poor content creators" are injecting ads that are directly embedded inside the stream. Like "Linus Tech Tips". I think YouTube should force streamers to tag the timecode of their in-stream ads, and auto-skip them for Premium users. It's like if you play a game and you purchase the In-App upgrade to remove the ads, and at the end there are still ads.

thaanpaa 3y ago
The solution is to stay away from poor content creators such as LTT. I'd rather want a filter that filters all videos that have '...reacts to...' in the title or certain channels such as LTT that get pushed to my front page, even though I really, really don't want to see them.
dawnerd 3y ago
SponsorBlock effectively does this without the creators help. Even directly subscribing to creators these days isn’t enough, they want you to buy their merch and they almost never consider that a sponsorship. Need to stop acting like these big players are barely making any money.
- db48x 3y ago
  I second the recommendation for SponsorBlock! You've saved people from 10,945 segments ( 2d 17h 9.6 minutes of their lives ) You've skipped 4,006 segments ( 1d 9h 11.8 minutes )
  - spiderice 3y ago
    It doesn’t help on TV/mobile though, right? I do appreciate that a lot of creators have been putting the “progress bar” during the sponsored segment that make them easier to skip
    - anonymousab 3y ago
      I think it works on Firefox for Android.
    - db48x 3y ago
      There’s a reason your TV’s manufacturer doesn’t allow you to install browser addons (or for that matter any software that you really control) on your TV.
elif 3y ago
Yea baked in ads are actually against YouTube TOS but I've tried to report one of the most obnoxious bad actors (they run 90 second TV-style ad breaks made up of 4-5 premade ads with nothing to do with the presenter) YouTube legal basically told me to kick rocks.

imglorp 3y ago

I'd like to address the concept of "ads are creepy" which you will hear often. It's a false equivalence. Most prominently you'll see the flag under "privacy settings" something like "don't show me relevant ads"; this is obviously a manipulative placebo. Ads are not the problem. That creepy feeling is the awareness that "they know everything about you", or literally how your vivisected intellect is presented in a marketplace for all bidders to insert their ideas. They will continue surveillance and attention assault whether you let them show you a hint or not. They will continue to sell your identity, behavioral patterns, associates, interests, finances, grades, location, moods, biometrics, and anything else they can monetize. They will continue to attempt to alter your mental state and force you into doing things you wouldn't ordinarily do. However you set that "relevant ads" button, you can be sure the trillion dollar corporation will not lose a penny when you check that box; they'll show you a different, equally profitable, ad, and your data firehose is still for sale.

Lio 3y ago
That’s a very interesting point. It does seem weird though that the surveillance firms would go to the lengths of using dark patterns and persistent nagging to get users to allow targeted ads if it didn’t matter to them.
- imglorp 3y ago
  I haven't seen a lot of nagging, usually it's a checkbox in an options page. Where are you seeing them?