6 ms·

Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube

49 points by intunderflow 3y ago

intunderflow 3y ago
I've just been hit with this message when opening Youtube on my work computer (I have premium on my personal account) Looks like Youtube are cracking down hard on Ad-blockers
alex3305 3y ago
You can use the tips from this thread over on Reddit to circumvent this message. At least it worked for me in Brave: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtube_antiadblock_and_ads_october_09_2023/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtu...
throwaway71271 3y ago
its funny because I am 100% sure the devs working on this feature use ublock/adblock :)
- expertentipp 3y ago
  They can't hear you over their compensation package. They might regain hearing after layoffs.
mtmail 3y ago
related "Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375
kibwen 3y ago
Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please. If the ad industry hadn't turned out to be predatory and malicious, I'd be just as apathetic to watching ads today as an adult as I used to be as a child. Google has nobody but themselves to blame for pissing in the pot and telling us to drink up. You'd have to be a fool to allow ads on your machine in the modern era.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Whoever came up with that copy must be a complete megalomaniac.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  I've recently been wondering how viable is it for me to send a ToS in a request header that basically says something along the lines of "If your server chooses to respond to this request with a non-error HTTP code and content, it constitutes your acceptance of these terms. These terms say you owe me $10 per ad you attempt to show to me."
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    It’s entirely viable to send, but said contract would be entirely invalid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds
    - genocidicbunny 3y ago
      My headcanon is that this is no different than most ToS on websites, and if those hold up to legal scrutiny, so should this. Either both are valid or neither are.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        They are largely invalid too, which is why no one catches CFAA charges for accessing YouTube in violation of their terms.
      - tzs 3y ago
        It depends on how the website handles its TOS. See this article [1] for information on how a website can make its TOS legally binding. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-legally-binding https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
cantSpellSober 3y ago
uBlock Origin was updated to address it, I've never seen it. A/B test?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- reassembled 3y ago
  They’ve been testing since at least June. That’s when I saw the first reports that they were rolling this out to random users. I just started seeing the notice but I have friends that still don’t see it. It also does not appear when I’m logged in to an alternate account. I suspect they may be showing it to users who they’ve detected using adblockers for a while but that’s just my speculation based on my non-scientific testing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
cyphar 3y ago
uBlock and YouTube have been regularly updating to counteract each other's counteractions for the past few weeks (at least, in my branch of the A/B rollout). Force refreshing the filters has usually fixed the issue for me. There's also a pinned thread on the subreddit with troubleshooting issues. I rarely use YouTube on my computer these days anyway, I mainly use NewPipe.
ozmodiar 3y ago
They cracked down on me just yesterday, although they offered a few months of free premium to make up for it. Honestly I'm a bit split, I've often thought that supporting the internet through ads and information gathering has been a huge detriment that's lead to a lot of anti-patterns, so I really should pay up since that's the logical alternative. As long as they continue to provide a reasonable alternative to viewing ads, although I'm sure they'll continue to harvest my personal data.
- AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
  YouTube Premium Lite at ~7 € was awesome for me. I am disappointed that they sent an email saying "your version of Premium Lite will be discontinued". They are forcefully ending my Lite sub next month. I will most likely upgrade to the 12 € version which is for single person (not family). It is disappointing because I don't have a use for the added benefits like "downloading" videos (offline viewing) or Google Music. Having said that, it's still worth it to me. Ads absolutely have destroyed the web. The problem is the subs they're asking for are way too expensive. I do not use Twitch Turbo for example, because that would be already well above 25 € per month with both YT and Twitch Turbo (and also Twitch's Apple TV suxx balls but I digress). Also a good time to remind ppl if you have YouTube Premium you can create more "brand channels" ot share Premium. The only downside I'm aware of is the brand channel does not seem to store the search history so if I'm on Apple TV it's annoying as I can't select previously used search terms. Only the YT account on the email (the non-brand account then) has a search history available through the TV app).
kennyadam 3y ago
Honestly, for the amount of time I spend watching YouTube content, YouTube Premium is a bargain. People have been spoiled by VC funds allowing services to run without making a profit for so long that paying for a web service that's so cash-hungry like streaming HD video to hundreds of millions of people a day is almost a foreign concept. I would rather we discuss the benefits of paying rather than how to circumvent adblock bans, which will just lead to even more unpleasant ways of recouping costs.
- t_fatus 3y ago
  I'm surprised you're getting downvoted. Running youtube costs money, some creators spend a lot of time or even make a living out of their videos, that we, the users, willingly enjoy to watch. Youtube (just like Nebula) enables us to watch content we like, and helps funnel some money from the users to the creators. The whole tracking industry sucks, contextual ads seem acceptable as an alternative to payment and still protect privacy. But there is no free lunch
- amne 3y ago
  And then there's people in the comments saying it would be cheaper without Music bundled in. I'm willing to argue Music is by design baked in so they just advertise it as extra to look good. I use both. I had YT playlists long before Music was a thing. When they bundled it with Premium it was a no-brainer. I still have my youtube-dl scripts syncing music for offline though .. just in case.
magicalhippo 3y ago
I paid for Premium Lite because I hate ads, wanted to support creators and and price was decent. However they removed that option, and now there's just regular Premium which has YouTube Music which I don't really need and offline viewing is a non-issue for me as I never watch videos over metered connections. I did sign up for Nebula[1], but there's several smaller YouTube channels that are only on YouTube so will be a bummer to go Nebula-only. I also like to watch YouTube links from others in a private/incognito session so it doesn't pollute my viewing history (it's a chore to manually clean it). But with 15 minutes of ads or whatever it is now that won't happen. [1]: https://nebula.tv/ https://nebula.tv/
- AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
  Same but at least now the solo Premium option is more visible. Last year I wasn't even aware it was there. So for me it'll be 12 € for Premium single-user (but multiple channels/accounts via brand accounts is possible). I just wish they had a sub-10 € offer. 9.99 would be a lot more digestible.
zabzonk 3y ago
i see this some days and not others. testing stuff in production - not a good idea?
exabrial 3y ago
I asked not be tracked years ago. I set all the “do not track” switches and you did it anyway. Now you want me to do this? I’ll do the same as you and do it anyway. I wanted to be exclusively exclusively opt in only years ago, but you couldn’t fathom that being an option. So me watching your ads isn’t an option I’ll fathom. I wanted to get ahold of your support for help or concerns and you ignored me. So I’ll ignore these plees too. Want to make a deal? Ok: allow me to 100% opt out of tracking, for real. Allow me to use the products without your dumb cloud attached. You first, then we’ll talk.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  You don't have to use youtube if your don't like the deal they're offering. Seems clear to me that they're no longer interested in Adblock users watching videos on their site.
  - exabrial 3y ago
    And they don't have to track me either across the internet, but I don't get a choice to opt out. Just playing by their rules.
    - biscuit1v9 3y ago
      That is a reason why they can do that: they monopol the whole category of websites with videos SFW. Being monopol and doing things by your rules is bringing up other people's interests making another platform that fills the gap the youtube doesn't have. I don't know whether someone is planning to open a platform or at least has an idea: but it wouldn't be a bad move at all.
stefanos82 3y ago
I already reported this last night and seems like they went fully aggressive with it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37863899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37863899
nla 3y ago
Just use PiHole. They can't beat DNS blackholing.
- Jamie9912 3y ago
  Until they serve ads from the youtube domain
- eps 3y ago
  YT ads cannot be blocked this way as they aren't served from a distinct domain.
- Majromax 3y ago
  Sure they can. DNS black holes can only work when ads are served from a known and distinct set of domains than than the intended website content. If the domains are the same, then one cannot distinguish between an ad and content at the DNS level. In an extreme example, DNS black holes cannot block "baked-in" sponsor reads precisely because those are indistinguishable from content. Moreover, adblock detectors tend to apply introspection to the page as it's loaded, to see if the ads have loaded or displayed correctly. A DNS black hole will often properly prevent the ads from loading, but this is exactly the situation that the adblock detector looks for. I would not expect a PiHole to offer any great advantage over something like uBlock Origin.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 8fingerlouie 3y ago
  Or even better, NextDNS, which works on every device, on every network, not just your home network.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  DNS blackholing only works for third party ad servers. Twitch has already started embedding ads right into the stream, youtube can't be far behind.
seydor 3y ago
i get it all the time now (dismissable for the moment) Youtube scraping the bottom of the barrel cannot be a good sign for google's business. In any case youtube is awful with ads so i d gladly follow my favourite creators to their other platforms that they advertise all the time instead of paying. YT is only good as long as it s free.
jsnell 3y ago
Dupe with no new information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37782171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37782171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37798150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37798150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916592
beardyw 3y ago
I know Google is the current bête noire, but shouldn't we be having a conversation about how web services are paid for? As I understand it YouTube Premium gives you YouTube without ads. What's wrong with that? If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong.
- znpy 3y ago
  > If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong. but they don't just want revenue: they want every growing revenue, for no additional benefit.
- coremoff 3y ago
  YouTube Premium also provides access to YouTube music, which many people will not want; if Google split YTM from YTP I think they would have an easier case to argue that everyone should either watch ads or pay the premium price.
znpy 3y ago
Somebody in the past argued that ad blocking is theft, and while i disagreed, i could see the point being made. However, lately youtube has been serving me so many ads so often that i don't think anyone could honestly make that point anymore. I get so much advertising that i kinda miss TV. It's that bad. So far i've setup my own invidious instance at home because ads in youtube are really unbearable. And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking.
- buggeryorkshire 3y ago
  > And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking. That's a really good point. I subscribe to YTP (costs £20 per month for 6 of us, bargain) so not an issue for me however those advertisers must be querying the value of this?
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
If you update all the uBlock Origin filters it doesn't appear anymore. I was still getting this warning when I had Sponsorblock active though. It feels like YouTube bitrates have progressively kept getting worse. I follow competitive Brood War and the difference in quality between YouTube and AfreecaTV is massive. I was paying for Premium for a few years but videos were so full of sponsored segments that I felt like it wasn't worth it. And beyond that, YouTube claims it won't show you ads with Premium but they still try to upsell you on their cable alternative bullshit. That's called a fucking advertisement, even if it's for a feature on your platform. I feel like YouTube Premium would be more compelling if you could tweek the algorithmic suggestions to suit your needs. Why can't I customize my recommendations more deeply? Give me more knobs. I'd probably start by having it stop suggesting that I rewatch content I've already seen. And allow me to apply blacklists for certain whole categories of content. Despite being owned by a search company, YouTube has also done a terrible job at innovating within that space. For starters, search has been utterly crippled and it inserts recommendations right in the middle of your results. But also, why can't I explore the topological space of adjacent / related video content? I'm sure there's tons of interesting videos out there which I'm never going to find because YouTube doesn't provide sufficiently powerful search and exploratory capabilities. Why the heck are we still limiting ourselves to searching with keywords? Is that really the peak of search and exploratory capabilities that one of the biggest tech companies in the world has been able to implement? What the heck are all the PhDs at YouTube even doing? It's tragic that YouTube has grown so large that now they're just resting on their laurels without any meaningful competition.
- AwaAwa 3y ago
  Tragic and repeated time and time again by almost every once-successful company.
expertentipp 3y ago
There are elections upcoming over here and any YouTube video is preluded and interrupted with very aggressive, primitive political propaganda and agitation. I don't even distinguish whether our politicians are such scumbags, or it's some form of malicious foreign intervention. You are a piece of trash, YouTube.
gavinhoward 3y ago
Personally, after asking [1], I decided that I'd better not risk my Google account, so I'm now not watching any YouTube. I don't want to take the chance that Google would ban my account over this. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857017
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
This still works. Just replace the 'youtube' part of the address with 'yout-ube' and it plays without ads. Edit: if the link contains '&modestbranding=1' then you might have to delete that part.
- baal80spam 3y ago
  What is the sorcery behind this?
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
Simulacra 3y ago
If the advertising agency, and by extension, YouTube had not gotten so insanely aggressive with their advertising, I would not need to block them. I don't know if it's greed, hubris, or just hate, but the advertisements across the Internet are out of control.

49 points by intunderflow 3y ago

I've just been hit with this message when opening Youtube on my work computer (I have premium on my personal account) Looks like Youtube are cracking down hard on Ad-blockers

alex3305 3y ago

You can use the tips from this thread over on Reddit to circumvent this message. At least it worked for me in Brave: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtube_antiadblock_and_ads_october_09_2023/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtu...

throwaway71271 3y ago

its funny because I am 100% sure the devs working on this feature use ublock/adblock :)

expertentipp 3y ago
They can't hear you over their compensation package. They might regain hearing after layoffs.

mtmail 3y ago

related "Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375

kibwen 3y ago

Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please. If the ad industry hadn't turned out to be predatory and malicious, I'd be just as apathetic to watching ads today as an adult as I used to be as a child. Google has nobody but themselves to blame for pissing in the pot and telling us to drink up. You'd have to be a fool to allow ads on your machine in the modern era.

tjpnz 3y ago
Whoever came up with that copy must be a complete megalomaniac.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
I've recently been wondering how viable is it for me to send a ToS in a request header that basically says something along the lines of "If your server chooses to respond to this request with a non-error HTTP code and content, it constitutes your acceptance of these terms. These terms say you owe me $10 per ad you attempt to show to me."
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  It’s entirely viable to send, but said contract would be entirely invalid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    My headcanon is that this is no different than most ToS on websites, and if those hold up to legal scrutiny, so should this. Either both are valid or neither are.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      They are largely invalid too, which is why no one catches CFAA charges for accessing YouTube in violation of their terms.
    - tzs 3y ago
      It depends on how the website handles its TOS. See this article [1] for information on how a website can make its TOS legally binding. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-legally-binding https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

cantSpellSober 3y ago

uBlock Origin was updated to address it, I've never seen it. A/B test?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
reassembled 3y ago
They’ve been testing since at least June. That’s when I saw the first reports that they were rolling this out to random users. I just started seeing the notice but I have friends that still don’t see it. It also does not appear when I’m logged in to an alternate account. I suspect they may be showing it to users who they’ve detected using adblockers for a while but that’s just my speculation based on my non-scientific testing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

cyphar 3y ago

uBlock and YouTube have been regularly updating to counteract each other's counteractions for the past few weeks (at least, in my branch of the A/B rollout). Force refreshing the filters has usually fixed the issue for me. There's also a pinned thread on the subreddit with troubleshooting issues. I rarely use YouTube on my computer these days anyway, I mainly use NewPipe.

ozmodiar 3y ago

They cracked down on me just yesterday, although they offered a few months of free premium to make up for it. Honestly I'm a bit split, I've often thought that supporting the internet through ads and information gathering has been a huge detriment that's lead to a lot of anti-patterns, so I really should pay up since that's the logical alternative. As long as they continue to provide a reasonable alternative to viewing ads, although I'm sure they'll continue to harvest my personal data.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
YouTube Premium Lite at ~7 € was awesome for me. I am disappointed that they sent an email saying "your version of Premium Lite will be discontinued". They are forcefully ending my Lite sub next month. I will most likely upgrade to the 12 € version which is for single person (not family). It is disappointing because I don't have a use for the added benefits like "downloading" videos (offline viewing) or Google Music. Having said that, it's still worth it to me. Ads absolutely have destroyed the web. The problem is the subs they're asking for are way too expensive. I do not use Twitch Turbo for example, because that would be already well above 25 € per month with both YT and Twitch Turbo (and also Twitch's Apple TV suxx balls but I digress). Also a good time to remind ppl if you have YouTube Premium you can create more "brand channels" ot share Premium. The only downside I'm aware of is the brand channel does not seem to store the search history so if I'm on Apple TV it's annoying as I can't select previously used search terms. Only the YT account on the email (the non-brand account then) has a search history available through the TV app).

kennyadam 3y ago

Honestly, for the amount of time I spend watching YouTube content, YouTube Premium is a bargain. People have been spoiled by VC funds allowing services to run without making a profit for so long that paying for a web service that's so cash-hungry like streaming HD video to hundreds of millions of people a day is almost a foreign concept. I would rather we discuss the benefits of paying rather than how to circumvent adblock bans, which will just lead to even more unpleasant ways of recouping costs.

t_fatus 3y ago
I'm surprised you're getting downvoted. Running youtube costs money, some creators spend a lot of time or even make a living out of their videos, that we, the users, willingly enjoy to watch. Youtube (just like Nebula) enables us to watch content we like, and helps funnel some money from the users to the creators. The whole tracking industry sucks, contextual ads seem acceptable as an alternative to payment and still protect privacy. But there is no free lunch
amne 3y ago
And then there's people in the comments saying it would be cheaper without Music bundled in. I'm willing to argue Music is by design baked in so they just advertise it as extra to look good. I use both. I had YT playlists long before Music was a thing. When they bundled it with Premium it was a no-brainer. I still have my youtube-dl scripts syncing music for offline though .. just in case.

magicalhippo 3y ago

I paid for Premium Lite because I hate ads, wanted to support creators and and price was decent. However they removed that option, and now there's just regular Premium which has YouTube Music which I don't really need and offline viewing is a non-issue for me as I never watch videos over metered connections. I did sign up for Nebula[1], but there's several smaller YouTube channels that are only on YouTube so will be a bummer to go Nebula-only. I also like to watch YouTube links from others in a private/incognito session so it doesn't pollute my viewing history (it's a chore to manually clean it). But with 15 minutes of ads or whatever it is now that won't happen. [1]: https://nebula.tv/ https://nebula.tv/

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
Same but at least now the solo Premium option is more visible. Last year I wasn't even aware it was there. So for me it'll be 12 € for Premium single-user (but multiple channels/accounts via brand accounts is possible). I just wish they had a sub-10 € offer. 9.99 would be a lot more digestible.

zabzonk 3y ago

i see this some days and not others. testing stuff in production - not a good idea?

exabrial 3y ago

I asked not be tracked years ago. I set all the “do not track” switches and you did it anyway. Now you want me to do this? I’ll do the same as you and do it anyway. I wanted to be exclusively exclusively opt in only years ago, but you couldn’t fathom that being an option. So me watching your ads isn’t an option I’ll fathom. I wanted to get ahold of your support for help or concerns and you ignored me. So I’ll ignore these plees too. Want to make a deal? Ok: allow me to 100% opt out of tracking, for real. Allow me to use the products without your dumb cloud attached. You first, then we’ll talk.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
You don't have to use youtube if your don't like the deal they're offering. Seems clear to me that they're no longer interested in Adblock users watching videos on their site.
- exabrial 3y ago
  And they don't have to track me either across the internet, but I don't get a choice to opt out. Just playing by their rules.
  - biscuit1v9 3y ago
    That is a reason why they can do that: they monopol the whole category of websites with videos SFW. Being monopol and doing things by your rules is bringing up other people's interests making another platform that fills the gap the youtube doesn't have. I don't know whether someone is planning to open a platform or at least has an idea: but it wouldn't be a bad move at all.

stefanos82 3y ago

I already reported this last night and seems like they went fully aggressive with it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37863899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37863899

nla 3y ago

Just use PiHole. They can't beat DNS blackholing.

Jamie9912 3y ago
Until they serve ads from the youtube domain
eps 3y ago
YT ads cannot be blocked this way as they aren't served from a distinct domain.
Majromax 3y ago
Sure they can. DNS black holes can only work when ads are served from a known and distinct set of domains than than the intended website content. If the domains are the same, then one cannot distinguish between an ad and content at the DNS level. In an extreme example, DNS black holes cannot block "baked-in" sponsor reads precisely because those are indistinguishable from content. Moreover, adblock detectors tend to apply introspection to the page as it's loaded, to see if the ads have loaded or displayed correctly. A DNS black hole will often properly prevent the ads from loading, but this is exactly the situation that the adblock detector looks for. I would not expect a PiHole to offer any great advantage over something like uBlock Origin.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
8fingerlouie 3y ago
Or even better, NextDNS, which works on every device, on every network, not just your home network.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
DNS blackholing only works for third party ad servers. Twitch has already started embedding ads right into the stream, youtube can't be far behind.

seydor 3y ago

i get it all the time now (dismissable for the moment) Youtube scraping the bottom of the barrel cannot be a good sign for google's business. In any case youtube is awful with ads so i d gladly follow my favourite creators to their other platforms that they advertise all the time instead of paying. YT is only good as long as it s free.

jsnell 3y ago

Dupe with no new information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37782171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37782171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37798150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37798150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916592

beardyw 3y ago

I know Google is the current bête noire, but shouldn't we be having a conversation about how web services are paid for? As I understand it YouTube Premium gives you YouTube without ads. What's wrong with that? If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong.

znpy 3y ago
> If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong. but they don't just want revenue: they want every growing revenue, for no additional benefit.
coremoff 3y ago
YouTube Premium also provides access to YouTube music, which many people will not want; if Google split YTM from YTP I think they would have an easier case to argue that everyone should either watch ads or pay the premium price.

znpy 3y ago

Somebody in the past argued that ad blocking is theft, and while i disagreed, i could see the point being made. However, lately youtube has been serving me so many ads so often that i don't think anyone could honestly make that point anymore. I get so much advertising that i kinda miss TV. It's that bad. So far i've setup my own invidious instance at home because ads in youtube are really unbearable. And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking.

buggeryorkshire 3y ago
> And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking. That's a really good point. I subscribe to YTP (costs £20 per month for 6 of us, bargain) so not an issue for me however those advertisers must be querying the value of this?

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

If you update all the uBlock Origin filters it doesn't appear anymore. I was still getting this warning when I had Sponsorblock active though. It feels like YouTube bitrates have progressively kept getting worse. I follow competitive Brood War and the difference in quality between YouTube and AfreecaTV is massive. I was paying for Premium for a few years but videos were so full of sponsored segments that I felt like it wasn't worth it. And beyond that, YouTube claims it won't show you ads with Premium but they still try to upsell you on their cable alternative bullshit. That's called a fucking advertisement, even if it's for a feature on your platform. I feel like YouTube Premium would be more compelling if you could tweek the algorithmic suggestions to suit your needs. Why can't I customize my recommendations more deeply? Give me more knobs. I'd probably start by having it stop suggesting that I rewatch content I've already seen. And allow me to apply blacklists for certain whole categories of content. Despite being owned by a search company, YouTube has also done a terrible job at innovating within that space. For starters, search has been utterly crippled and it inserts recommendations right in the middle of your results. But also, why can't I explore the topological space of adjacent / related video content? I'm sure there's tons of interesting videos out there which I'm never going to find because YouTube doesn't provide sufficiently powerful search and exploratory capabilities. Why the heck are we still limiting ourselves to searching with keywords? Is that really the peak of search and exploratory capabilities that one of the biggest tech companies in the world has been able to implement? What the heck are all the PhDs at YouTube even doing? It's tragic that YouTube has grown so large that now they're just resting on their laurels without any meaningful competition.

AwaAwa 3y ago
Tragic and repeated time and time again by almost every once-successful company.

expertentipp 3y ago

There are elections upcoming over here and any YouTube video is preluded and interrupted with very aggressive, primitive political propaganda and agitation. I don't even distinguish whether our politicians are such scumbags, or it's some form of malicious foreign intervention. You are a piece of trash, YouTube.

gavinhoward 3y ago

Personally, after asking [1], I decided that I'd better not risk my Google account, so I'm now not watching any YouTube. I don't want to take the chance that Google would ban my account over this. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857017

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago

This still works. Just replace the 'youtube' part of the address with 'yout-ube' and it plays without ads. Edit: if the link contains '&modestbranding=1' then you might have to delete that part.

baal80spam 3y ago
What is the sorcery behind this?

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

Simulacra 3y ago

If the advertising agency, and by extension, YouTube had not gotten so insanely aggressive with their advertising, I would not need to block them. I don't know if it's greed, hubris, or just hate, but the advertisements across the Internet are out of control.