11 ms·

YouTube is cracking down on consumers' favorite loophole

57 points by ilikecinnamon 3y ago

grishka 3y ago
Whenever a popular website deploys an ad blocker blocker, an ad blocker blocker blocker is only a matter of time.
- mike503 3y ago
  You can't triple stamp a double stamp!
  - imoverclocked 3y ago
    You can say that again.
- threatripper 3y ago
  uBlockOrigin and Youtube are updating blocker and blocker-blocker technology multiple times per day now.
- belltaco 3y ago
  The video website will eventually have the upper hand by embedding the ads in the video stream like Twitch in that war you mention. Now at best you get a black screen while the ad runs and you block it.
  - grishka 3y ago
    I don't know how Twitch ads work (never seen an ad on Twitch tbh) but I suppose they would still need some additional metadata, for example for the player to show the button to visit the advertiser. TV-like, non-interactive ads would be a downgrade from the advertisers' point of view. > Now at best you get a black screen while the ad runs and you block it. Why not skip it? We already have SponsorBlock that works wonderfully. How would this be conceptually different?
    - belltaco 3y ago
      The big draw of Twitch is live content and interacting with chat, they just serve you an ad and not serve the stream content during that time. How could you skip it? Youtube can make it so that it stops serving content for 30 seconds and disable buffering when it's showing a 30s unskippable ad. People without ad block would watch the ad for 30 seconds so no difference for them, people with ad blockers have to wait for 30 seconds. The only way would be to predownload like a DVR and then skip the ads or blank space, which would get annoying fast. Some people were using proxies and VPNs in some foreign countries that don't have Twitch ads served to bypass, but that's also been blocked now.
      - grishka 3y ago
        > The big draw of Twitch is live content and interacting with chat, they just serve you an ad and not serve the stream content during that time. How could you skip it? So do they just discard the livestream while serving the ad? What if you miss something important because of that? This just feels awful all-around for everyone involved.
        belltaco 3y ago
        Ads always interrupted live video for folks without Amazon Prime. Then they removed 'no ads' as a Prime perk and added it to Twitch Turbo at $8.99 per month. Now they made it $11.99 To make it a bit better they started showing the stream video without audio as a small thumbnail on top of chat when an ad plays.
        grishka 3y ago
        > Ads always interrupted live video for folks without Amazon Prime. To be honest, that's absolutely bonkers. I don't understand why people keep using Twitch if it does this to them.
        belltaco 3y ago
        Because 95% of the streams are too small to be profitable but take up a lot of bandwidth costs. Microsoft's Mixer threw in the towel and Kick is bankrolled by online casino money. There's not much competition. YT live is okay but lacks critical mass and will monetize the same way once it gets popular.
playingalong 3y ago
TLDR: they are (soft) banning adblocks.
pierat 3y ago
Meh. Ever since Screwtube blocked subscribed channels on blocking history, I just use a private non-logged-in session. And I decide what content loads and doesnt. My client is mine. If I run ublock origin or newer, that's on me. And frankly, this will push me to download and store vids on Jellyfin. Its not THAT hard. "Pierats will win this."
- ses1984 3y ago
  Some people have more time than money, other people have more money than time. If they make it take more time to have a free ad free experience it tips the scales towards subscription.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  The subscriptions page [0] is not blocked if you disable watch history. The algorithmically-generated home page is. [0] https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  They blocked the recommendations feed, not subscriptions. And good riddance, I don't need ragebait being served to me when I open the app.
superkuh 3y ago
What a dangerous perspective. When I visit a website and send a request for a URL and they chose to send back some data that is not creating a foreign embassy on my computer. There's no enclave in which their rules apply instead of mine. It's my hard drive and ram and the state of them is mine as well. Yes, it's their data. But it's my computer. I can chose to change the font size, the css attributes, or even javascript functions if I so chose. This entitlement that many corporations display towards human people is like they think you sat down on a computer terminal they own in their physical store. That's not what's happening. If I don't want to execute the code someone else sent me I don't have to. It's ignorant lawyer-think to believe otherwise.
- konschubert 3y ago
  And they can choose not to send you their data.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Right. They already have the solution in the form of the black box DRM "Encrypted Media Extensions". I have intentionally turned off support for this in my browsers so I cannot view "live" streams and commercial media on youtube. Seems like it's working fine. If youtube wants to stop acting like a free video host for non-corporate humans it's certainly going to drive down the traffic. It'd break 15 years of precedent and usage. I don't think they'll do this. Instead they'll just keep pressuring for absurd legal interpretations, threatening the technologically ignorant, and only buy district attorneys to enforce their absurd legal perspectives when someone technical rocks the boat.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Print ads and TV commercials never unexpectedly did something that lingered.
- cowl 3y ago
  you request an URL, you can not specify what content that URL provides. This is not a new precedent or perspective. It's how Internet works. You can choose what the content owner chooses to let you choose. Try to choose the css attributes, font size or javascript functions that run inside an app in iOS for example to see how misguided your view of choice is.
ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
I watch youtube a lot and I've never seen one of these adblocking popups. I use uBlock Origin. Does this actually affect uBlock Origin for some users, or is it just hitting the people who download one the thousands of other weird "Super BlockAd Xtreme" type extensions?
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  Yes, I’ve seen this happen with uBO on Firefox for Windows.
- tehbeard 3y ago
  A/b testing or rolling out country by country probably.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Raed667 3y ago
  i use unlock and started seeing them a couple of days ago. very infrequently and they go away when you reload the page. it seems like they’re collecting behavioral data.
- LightHugger 3y ago
  I've seen it with ublock but i suspect it's being triggered by sponsorblock rather than ublock
  - ta8645 3y ago
    I doubt Youtube cares about Sponsorblock. That isn't used to skip Youtube Ads, just content creator ad reads and such, that Google doesn't get any money from.
  - Probiotic6081 3y ago
    I get it with ublock but without sponsorblock too. They're AB testing.
ta8645 3y ago
Interested to know how long it will take to roll out to everyone. I've still been blissfully unaware of any change during my Youtube viewing.
- phalangion 3y ago
  Hit me for the first time this morning
fsflover 3y ago
Hopefully it's time when PeerTube becomes more popular, like it happened (is happening) with Twitter and Mastodon.
- aaronharnly 3y ago
  There is a producer/consumer asymmetry here that I think limits the potential of this to prompt significant gains in PeerTube. ie video creators are less likely to be frustrated by an ad blocker blocker.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    More importantly, content creators get paid by Youtube.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Popular creators can slowly move their audience to PeerTube by releasing videos on the latter a day earlier. AFAIK most of their income comes from sponsorship insets anyway.
      - ta8645 3y ago
        Youtube pays literally billions of dollars a year to content creators. That ads up after a while.
        fsflover 3y ago
        I guess most of the money goes to top 5-10%.
- e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
  Genuinely asking, how do you expect peertube to serve terabits-petabits of video every day? Who's gonna pay for this? Bandwidth is not free, nor are servers; Mastodon works because text is relatively cheap to serve, but video is not.
tnbp 3y ago
If Youtube makes it impossible to watch videos without ads, I will quit Youtube, not my adblocker. I will not watch ads.
- rjh29 3y ago
  That's kind of Google's intention. You are costing them money.
  - threatripper 3y ago
    If you wage war on the innovators the innovators will not stop innovating but they will innovate somewhere else.
    - rjh29 3y ago
      Running a browser extension is innovation?
  - tnbp 3y ago
    Good.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    I bet it's cheaper for a bunch of bored techies to figure out "loopholes" in whatever Google builds, than it is for Google to adapt. That sort of asymmetry is why giant companies can't stamp out piracy as well.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      Given how few people continue to use Bittorrent these days, I'd say media companies have demonstrated an ability to do pretty well at customer capture and enforcement. Similarly, they don't have to completely eradicate adblockers, just reduce their usage into the noise.
      - EA-3167 3y ago
BlarfMcFlarf 3y ago
Like 80% of my YouTube viewing has been stuff I can watch on nebula. I would much rather give them my money directly then google anyways, but I’ve been too lazy to make the jump.
Boogie_Man 3y ago
Bet
blondin 3y ago
as a subscriber, i am also very disappointed by all the issues i am having recently with youtube. this must be due to all the cracking down they are doing. it is also affecting paying customers!
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
When YouTube stops working with ad blockers, assuming it cannot be circumvented, it will be the end of my YouTube-watching days. I already stopped using Reddit when they killed off Apollo. These companies are doing me a favour by removing these time wasting activities from my life. I trialed YouTube Music recently, potentially willing to hand over my wallet, but the app is unimpressive.
bastawhiz 3y ago
Maybe this is a hot take, but I'm perfectly happy to pay for YouTube premium. It supports the creators that I watch and I don't see ads. I'd like to think that it also covers my usage of the service. For the value I get from YouTube (and YouTube Music) it seems like a no brainer. YouTube and the people making videos on YouTube are ad supported. If you don't want to pay, it seems awfully entitled to then complain that you can't get unlimited ad-free content, regardless of whether that's been possible historically.
- jodleif 3y ago
  Me too, my most used subscription service I think. Feel better about supporting YouTube creators than my Netflix or Spotify
- O1111OOO 3y ago
  > I'm perfectly happy to pay for YouTube premium. It supports the creators that I watch and I don't see ads. When I'm on TikTok, I get ads and yet... they feel completely unobtrusive. I also find myself actually watching ads on TikTok - they're relatable, fit into my interests, etc.. It's interesting too that a real effort at putting together a great looking ad is made. For example... I will see low-end ADs on TikTok re: vitamins. Not interested but... wow! They are fantastically made (AI generated: both visuals and audio). In contrast, when I'm on Youtube, the ads are obnoxious and have little to do with my interests. They may be political, they may be related to big pharma pushing pills that I have no interest in. There is little effort at even producing anything entertaining. Also, if I click on a 2 minute video, I start off with a couple of ads and I might even see an ad in the middle. I might also see the creator start off with a sponsor AD at the start or at some point in the middle. One site takes the user experience into consideration (TikTok). The other (YT) is a warzone. I can no longer access the original article (they blocked my VPN...) but I recall reading it was a laughable $14 a month. I'm laughing all the way to the alternatives...
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    That may be because you're blocking YouTube from using your personal data to target ads, whereas TikTok is extremely aggressive about harvesting your personal data with no opt-out.
tehwebguy 3y ago
If someone took away my ability to play youtube videos ad free and in the background as torture I’d crack in like 1 day. I suspect as streamers raise prices and people reevaluate their spend a very popular option will be “youtube premium + one other streamer”
_Algernon_ 3y ago
I've transferred to TubeArchivist[0] for my Youtube needs. It downloads my subscriptions for me, gives a much cleaner front-end for watching and integrates with Sponsor Block. It has the added benefit of removing other bad parts of youtube as well: tracking, advertisements, bad comments, recommendations, MrBeast-style videos and so on. [0]: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
- kyleee 3y ago
  What does it mean to remove bad comments, in the context of this software?
  - _Algernon_ 3y ago
    There are no comments, which means there are no bad (quality) comments.
dgellow 3y ago
I’ve been paying for YouTube premium for a year now. It’s so agreeable to not have any ad or interruption when watching multiple videos in a row, on any of my device. I guess their nagging ended up working in my case…
- caconym_ 3y ago
  I've been paying for it for years despite running multiple layers of adblock, because I use it a lot and they actually give me the option to pay (and apparently it's a fairly good deal for content creators too). I figure that if my ideal internet is an ad-free one, I ought to put my money where my mouth is. TANSTAAFL.
gwd 3y ago
I don't get it. If you watch YouTube and don't want ads, just... pay for a subscription? It's like one Big Mac meal a month or something.
- cowl 3y ago
  you don't get it because all complaints have never been about ads, they have always been about the entitlement to have FREE content WITHOUT Ads. Now that they have the options of having paying content without ads they all come up with the same interpretation, another fake moral banner, that Google is trying to tell them what they run on their device, a very strange interpretation because the message is not saying that, the message is simply saying "you can run adblockers on your device, but then we as content providders will choose to limit your content."
  - gwd 3y ago
    Personally I use ad blockers not because I demand free content without ads, but because on the vast majority of the internet, paying for ad-free content isn't really a practical option, and the ads are over-the-top obnoxious: they massively slow down page load time, terribly interfere with the reading experience, spy and chase me around trying to sell me the things that I literally just bought, and are often laden with malware trying their best to break into my computer. I never minded simple banner ads, and I'd be happy to pay $20/mo to have all ads on the sites I'm browsing voluntarily go away; that includes on Facebook. So yes, for some of us at least, it really was about ads.
ok_dad 3y ago
Hot take as someone who pays for premium: All the complaints about ads are true, they suck, but how is content you enjoy supposed to be created and distributed without money? Just pay for premium, or use something like PeerTube. It’s unfortunate, but you need to put your money where your mouth is. I hate ads too, a lot. I think they should be banned, but in not smart enough to know what can replace those ads for folks who cannot afford premium subscriptions so they can also watch important educational and not so important entertaining content.
- Probiotic6081 3y ago
  they could monetize differently, without ads. let creators monetize it like patreon tiers and let users make proportional donations to their favourite creators through a flattr-like system. take the ads out and a place like youtube only need like 5 guys to run.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    That is such a simplistic view, I don’t even know where to start with it. First, your final paragraph is faulty, five guys (insert overpriced burger joke) is not sufficient for running “YouTube without ads”. Second, how do people afford that if they have no disposable income? YouTube is unique in that it’s used for a lot of educational purposes; not just in school but people use it to learn how to tie a tie or do woodworking. Thanks for trying, but there isn’t a two step solution for everything.
    - Probiotic6081 3y ago
      of course they'd also need lawyers, content moderators and stuff like that. but they should just copy the files to a new server, run elasticsearch on it and give it a clean UI.
      - ok_dad 3y ago
        If up think that’ll work feel free to implement that :)
pyrolistical 3y ago
This is why i subscribed to YouTube premium when it first came out. I knew this day would come. Google is the one sending the data. They can easily bake in unskippable ads for non subscribers if they really wanted to
zht 3y ago
HN: where the 200K TC tech rockstar ninjas will wane poetic for days about why they can’t pay 15 dollars a month for YouTube premium but really need to use ad blockers to watch YouTube without ads for some ideological reason
- thinkingemote 3y ago
  You should really say that many of the users here work for companies entirely dependent on advertising. Its not that we are rich and can afford to pay to not see ads, its that we are rich because of ads!. Nevertheless I believe that we can hate ads personally. It does hurt. But the truth does that sometimes. It's better than not acknowledging it and leads to better outcomes. The ideology gets the light of truth.
blitzar 3y ago
Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide. You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription. Been getting this the last 2 days.
- sircastor 3y ago
  I started getting this. Now the close “x” has turned into a 5s countdown before I can close it.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    I am looking forward to that stage of the dialogue box I am currently ignoring.
butz 3y ago
What's the use of Youtube Premium if videos will still be littered with sponsor blocks? I prefer to support my favorite creators using Patreon.
bratwurst3000 3y ago
If they are collecting data atm maybe we should google “YouTube alternative” if the pop up occurs.
WithinReason 3y ago
[dead]
conradfr 3y ago
> Alphabet Inc., the company that owns YouTube, reported that the decrease marks the third consecutive year the social media platform faced a decline in ad revenue. They don't even try to say it's because of YouTube Premium smashing success ;)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
All the more reason why Google is pushing for v3. v3 extensions cannot inject code that can bypass this.
Ajay-p 3y ago
It is time to build a better YouTube Ad Blocker!
- theage 3y ago
  If it came down to it would you like the ability to automatically blackover the ad while it plays and mute your tab as a last ditch adblocker? Because that's an easy enough final solution to the ad problem but not everyone would want to endure the dead-air or plan for the time sink waiting for the real video to start.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Twitch is already at that point in the ad blocker wars.
  - Ajay-p 3y ago
    I do mute, yes, and have considered a script that would recognize and mute automatically, but my abilities are not that good. When an ad plays I hit the mute button on my keyboard and engage with something else until the ad has stopped. This puts a question in my mind: Do we subconsciously remember ads that we ignore more than the ones we pay attention to?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jantissler 3y ago
I don’t think that YouTube Premium is a great offer. I won’t pay $19 every month. That is $228 a year! No, thank you. If there was a smaller tier around $5 with a limited number of ad-free videos, I might consider it. But there’s already way more content out there I could ever read, listen to or watch. $19 is steep.
- anon84873628 3y ago
  Maybe they should charge based on how much you watch. For me, $19 spread over so many channels seems very cheap...
- shitlord 3y ago
  I don't understand why they have to bundle ad-free viewing with YouTube music. Nobody is going to switch from Spotify or Apple Music to YouTube.
  - ballenf 3y ago
    I also wonder how much cheaper Premium would be without music. I guess it's kind of hard to separate, since popular songs are on both and Premium allows background watching. The YT music app feels like a poorly reskinned YT app. Impossible to get basic album info, song titles are often wrong (live versions not marked, covers appearing to be original, etc.). So many "fan" releases which are often just lower fidelity copies. And search is, ironically, abysmal.
  - Jcowell 3y ago
    Not Switch but extend. I use youtube music for a variety of songs that would never be on Apple Music (covers, instrumentals, mash ups, tiktok remixes, etc.)
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    I did. Why pay twice for the same thing? YT music is perfectly adequate for my needs and also allows me to upload my own music.
    - 3y ago
tzs 3y ago
OT: in nearly every prior discussion of this, people mention that when they do watch YouTube without an ad blocker they get frequent long ad breaks. I occasionally watch on a device like an Amazon Fire Stick or an XFinity Flex which does not have an ad blocker, and so I too then have my videos interrupted by ads--but the ads YouTube gives me are mostly 15 seconds, and most of them bring up a "skip ads" button after 5 seconds. Usually the longer ads also offer the skip button after 5 seconds. Some of the ad breaks contain 2 ads, but if the first one offers the skip button it skips the rest of the first ad and also the second ad. For me then it is not really making me spend much time on ads. That raises the question of why am I mostly getting short ads with a skip after 5 seconds, while apparently many others here got long TV-like ad breaks? Do they run different lengths ads on different categories of content, and I just mostly watch the kind that gets short ads?
- belltaco 3y ago
  Maybe the ads depend on how much content you're consuming? Before I got premium I would notice the ads would get more numerous the more number of videos I watched. And would start getting more unskippable ads and multiple ones. I guess I liked to sample videos and switch to a different one so it got annoying fast. I couldn't block ads on my smart TV app so I gave up and subbed. Premium also helps a lot when I watch YT on my Oculus Quest 2.
jsnell 3y ago
Rehashed on the frontpage a dozen times: 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37869315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37869315
CAPSLOCKSSTUCK 3y ago
Can I pay for YouTube Premium without my watch history being used to build an advertising profile on me? I know I can read the privacy policy, but I'd be interested to see if anyone has any evidence to the contrary. Overall I think the ad-blocking crackdown is good for both sides here . . . I just wish I could be confident that paying for a service ensures some level of privacy (which is not the case for things like phone service, in which e.g. T-Mobile sells your location data).
dmamills 3y ago
I thought that the money was "in my data". That harvesting the viewing/browsing habits offered an insight that not even my "wife or priest" could trade in value to Google. Now I have to pay to surrender that data?
Rochus 3y ago
This is an annoying development with youtube; I would be willing to pay them $5 per month because they're providing the platform (not the content!), but certainly not 16 Swiss francs (which is close to $17) which they want to charge here. Or they could at least charge less for people like me who publish their own content for free on youtube.
- ishanjain28 3y ago
  What are you on about? A cut of that 16 francs is going to creators just as a cut of the ads you see goes to the creators. Platform cost is not the only cost and creators need to be compensated and it comes out from the subscription fees.
  - Rochus 3y ago
    The vast majority of contributors has no commercial intention (like me), or pushes content they were already payed for intentionally for free (such as public broadcasters), or make youtube videos to motivate people to sign up for a subscription with them to gain access to more services. If it was really about paying creators, youtube should do like e.g. Quora where the author decides whether his/her specific contribution is subject to monetization or free. I don't want to pay a flat rate for contributions that I don't even want to see.

57 points by ilikecinnamon 3y ago

grishka 3y ago

Whenever a popular website deploys an ad blocker blocker, an ad blocker blocker blocker is only a matter of time.

mike503 3y ago
You can't triple stamp a double stamp!
- imoverclocked 3y ago
  You can say that again.
threatripper 3y ago
uBlockOrigin and Youtube are updating blocker and blocker-blocker technology multiple times per day now.
belltaco 3y ago
The video website will eventually have the upper hand by embedding the ads in the video stream like Twitch in that war you mention. Now at best you get a black screen while the ad runs and you block it.
- grishka 3y ago
  I don't know how Twitch ads work (never seen an ad on Twitch tbh) but I suppose they would still need some additional metadata, for example for the player to show the button to visit the advertiser. TV-like, non-interactive ads would be a downgrade from the advertisers' point of view. > Now at best you get a black screen while the ad runs and you block it. Why not skip it? We already have SponsorBlock that works wonderfully. How would this be conceptually different?
  - belltaco 3y ago
    The big draw of Twitch is live content and interacting with chat, they just serve you an ad and not serve the stream content during that time. How could you skip it? Youtube can make it so that it stops serving content for 30 seconds and disable buffering when it's showing a 30s unskippable ad. People without ad block would watch the ad for 30 seconds so no difference for them, people with ad blockers have to wait for 30 seconds. The only way would be to predownload like a DVR and then skip the ads or blank space, which would get annoying fast. Some people were using proxies and VPNs in some foreign countries that don't have Twitch ads served to bypass, but that's also been blocked now.
    - grishka 3y ago
      > The big draw of Twitch is live content and interacting with chat, they just serve you an ad and not serve the stream content during that time. How could you skip it? So do they just discard the livestream while serving the ad? What if you miss something important because of that? This just feels awful all-around for everyone involved.
      - belltaco 3y ago
        Ads always interrupted live video for folks without Amazon Prime. Then they removed 'no ads' as a Prime perk and added it to Twitch Turbo at $8.99 per month. Now they made it $11.99 To make it a bit better they started showing the stream video without audio as a small thumbnail on top of chat when an ad plays.
        grishka 3y ago
        > Ads always interrupted live video for folks without Amazon Prime. To be honest, that's absolutely bonkers. I don't understand why people keep using Twitch if it does this to them.
        belltaco 3y ago
        Because 95% of the streams are too small to be profitable but take up a lot of bandwidth costs. Microsoft's Mixer threw in the towel and Kick is bankrolled by online casino money. There's not much competition. YT live is okay but lacks critical mass and will monetize the same way once it gets popular.

playingalong 3y ago

TLDR: they are (soft) banning adblocks.

pierat 3y ago

Meh. Ever since Screwtube blocked subscribed channels on blocking history, I just use a private non-logged-in session. And I decide what content loads and doesnt. My client is mine. If I run ublock origin or newer, that's on me. And frankly, this will push me to download and store vids on Jellyfin. Its not THAT hard. "Pierats will win this."

ses1984 3y ago
Some people have more time than money, other people have more money than time. If they make it take more time to have a free ad free experience it tips the scales towards subscription.
Kwpolska 3y ago
The subscriptions page [0] is not blocked if you disable watch history. The algorithmically-generated home page is. [0] https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
bastawhiz 3y ago
They blocked the recommendations feed, not subscriptions. And good riddance, I don't need ragebait being served to me when I open the app.

superkuh 3y ago

What a dangerous perspective. When I visit a website and send a request for a URL and they chose to send back some data that is not creating a foreign embassy on my computer. There's no enclave in which their rules apply instead of mine. It's my hard drive and ram and the state of them is mine as well. Yes, it's their data. But it's my computer. I can chose to change the font size, the css attributes, or even javascript functions if I so chose. This entitlement that many corporations display towards human people is like they think you sat down on a computer terminal they own in their physical store. That's not what's happening. If I don't want to execute the code someone else sent me I don't have to. It's ignorant lawyer-think to believe otherwise.

konschubert 3y ago
And they can choose not to send you their data.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Right. They already have the solution in the form of the black box DRM "Encrypted Media Extensions". I have intentionally turned off support for this in my browsers so I cannot view "live" streams and commercial media on youtube. Seems like it's working fine. If youtube wants to stop acting like a free video host for non-corporate humans it's certainly going to drive down the traffic. It'd break 15 years of precedent and usage. I don't think they'll do this. Instead they'll just keep pressuring for absurd legal interpretations, threatening the technologically ignorant, and only buy district attorneys to enforce their absurd legal perspectives when someone technical rocks the boat.
readthenotes1 3y ago
Print ads and TV commercials never unexpectedly did something that lingered.
cowl 3y ago
you request an URL, you can not specify what content that URL provides. This is not a new precedent or perspective. It's how Internet works. You can choose what the content owner chooses to let you choose. Try to choose the css attributes, font size or javascript functions that run inside an app in iOS for example to see how misguided your view of choice is.

ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago

I watch youtube a lot and I've never seen one of these adblocking popups. I use uBlock Origin. Does this actually affect uBlock Origin for some users, or is it just hitting the people who download one the thousands of other weird "Super BlockAd Xtreme" type extensions?

mananaysiempre 3y ago
Yes, I’ve seen this happen with uBO on Firefox for Windows.
tehbeard 3y ago
A/b testing or rolling out country by country probably.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Raed667 3y ago
i use unlock and started seeing them a couple of days ago. very infrequently and they go away when you reload the page. it seems like they’re collecting behavioral data.
LightHugger 3y ago
I've seen it with ublock but i suspect it's being triggered by sponsorblock rather than ublock
- ta8645 3y ago
  I doubt Youtube cares about Sponsorblock. That isn't used to skip Youtube Ads, just content creator ad reads and such, that Google doesn't get any money from.
- Probiotic6081 3y ago
  I get it with ublock but without sponsorblock too. They're AB testing.

ta8645 3y ago

Interested to know how long it will take to roll out to everyone. I've still been blissfully unaware of any change during my Youtube viewing.

phalangion 3y ago
Hit me for the first time this morning

fsflover 3y ago

Hopefully it's time when PeerTube becomes more popular, like it happened (is happening) with Twitter and Mastodon.

aaronharnly 3y ago
There is a producer/consumer asymmetry here that I think limits the potential of this to prompt significant gains in PeerTube. ie video creators are less likely to be frustrated by an ad blocker blocker.
- ta8645 3y ago
  More importantly, content creators get paid by Youtube.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Popular creators can slowly move their audience to PeerTube by releasing videos on the latter a day earlier. AFAIK most of their income comes from sponsorship insets anyway.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      Youtube pays literally billions of dollars a year to content creators. That ads up after a while.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        I guess most of the money goes to top 5-10%.
e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
Genuinely asking, how do you expect peertube to serve terabits-petabits of video every day? Who's gonna pay for this? Bandwidth is not free, nor are servers; Mastodon works because text is relatively cheap to serve, but video is not.

tnbp 3y ago

If Youtube makes it impossible to watch videos without ads, I will quit Youtube, not my adblocker. I will not watch ads.

rjh29 3y ago
That's kind of Google's intention. You are costing them money.
- threatripper 3y ago
  If you wage war on the innovators the innovators will not stop innovating but they will innovate somewhere else.
  - rjh29 3y ago
    Running a browser extension is innovation?
- tnbp 3y ago
  Good.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I bet it's cheaper for a bunch of bored techies to figure out "loopholes" in whatever Google builds, than it is for Google to adapt. That sort of asymmetry is why giant companies can't stamp out piracy as well.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    Given how few people continue to use Bittorrent these days, I'd say media companies have demonstrated an ability to do pretty well at customer capture and enforcement. Similarly, they don't have to completely eradicate adblockers, just reduce their usage into the noise.
    - EA-3167 3y ago

BlarfMcFlarf 3y ago

Like 80% of my YouTube viewing has been stuff I can watch on nebula. I would much rather give them my money directly then google anyways, but I’ve been too lazy to make the jump.

Boogie_Man 3y ago

Bet

blondin 3y ago

as a subscriber, i am also very disappointed by all the issues i am having recently with youtube. this must be due to all the cracking down they are doing. it is also affecting paying customers!

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

When YouTube stops working with ad blockers, assuming it cannot be circumvented, it will be the end of my YouTube-watching days. I already stopped using Reddit when they killed off Apollo. These companies are doing me a favour by removing these time wasting activities from my life. I trialed YouTube Music recently, potentially willing to hand over my wallet, but the app is unimpressive.

bastawhiz 3y ago

Maybe this is a hot take, but I'm perfectly happy to pay for YouTube premium. It supports the creators that I watch and I don't see ads. I'd like to think that it also covers my usage of the service. For the value I get from YouTube (and YouTube Music) it seems like a no brainer. YouTube and the people making videos on YouTube are ad supported. If you don't want to pay, it seems awfully entitled to then complain that you can't get unlimited ad-free content, regardless of whether that's been possible historically.

jodleif 3y ago
Me too, my most used subscription service I think. Feel better about supporting YouTube creators than my Netflix or Spotify
O1111OOO 3y ago
> I'm perfectly happy to pay for YouTube premium. It supports the creators that I watch and I don't see ads. When I'm on TikTok, I get ads and yet... they feel completely unobtrusive. I also find myself actually watching ads on TikTok - they're relatable, fit into my interests, etc.. It's interesting too that a real effort at putting together a great looking ad is made. For example... I will see low-end ADs on TikTok re: vitamins. Not interested but... wow! They are fantastically made (AI generated: both visuals and audio). In contrast, when I'm on Youtube, the ads are obnoxious and have little to do with my interests. They may be political, they may be related to big pharma pushing pills that I have no interest in. There is little effort at even producing anything entertaining. Also, if I click on a 2 minute video, I start off with a couple of ads and I might even see an ad in the middle. I might also see the creator start off with a sponsor AD at the start or at some point in the middle. One site takes the user experience into consideration (TikTok). The other (YT) is a warzone. I can no longer access the original article (they blocked my VPN...) but I recall reading it was a laughable $14 a month. I'm laughing all the way to the alternatives...
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  That may be because you're blocking YouTube from using your personal data to target ads, whereas TikTok is extremely aggressive about harvesting your personal data with no opt-out.

tehwebguy 3y ago

If someone took away my ability to play youtube videos ad free and in the background as torture I’d crack in like 1 day. I suspect as streamers raise prices and people reevaluate their spend a very popular option will be “youtube premium + one other streamer”

_Algernon_ 3y ago

I've transferred to TubeArchivist[0] for my Youtube needs. It downloads my subscriptions for me, gives a much cleaner front-end for watching and integrates with Sponsor Block. It has the added benefit of removing other bad parts of youtube as well: tracking, advertisements, bad comments, recommendations, MrBeast-style videos and so on. [0]: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist

kyleee 3y ago
What does it mean to remove bad comments, in the context of this software?
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  There are no comments, which means there are no bad (quality) comments.

dgellow 3y ago

I’ve been paying for YouTube premium for a year now. It’s so agreeable to not have any ad or interruption when watching multiple videos in a row, on any of my device. I guess their nagging ended up working in my case…

caconym_ 3y ago
I've been paying for it for years despite running multiple layers of adblock, because I use it a lot and they actually give me the option to pay (and apparently it's a fairly good deal for content creators too). I figure that if my ideal internet is an ad-free one, I ought to put my money where my mouth is. TANSTAAFL.

gwd 3y ago

I don't get it. If you watch YouTube and don't want ads, just... pay for a subscription? It's like one Big Mac meal a month or something.

cowl 3y ago
you don't get it because all complaints have never been about ads, they have always been about the entitlement to have FREE content WITHOUT Ads. Now that they have the options of having paying content without ads they all come up with the same interpretation, another fake moral banner, that Google is trying to tell them what they run on their device, a very strange interpretation because the message is not saying that, the message is simply saying "you can run adblockers on your device, but then we as content providders will choose to limit your content."
- gwd 3y ago
  Personally I use ad blockers not because I demand free content without ads, but because on the vast majority of the internet, paying for ad-free content isn't really a practical option, and the ads are over-the-top obnoxious: they massively slow down page load time, terribly interfere with the reading experience, spy and chase me around trying to sell me the things that I literally just bought, and are often laden with malware trying their best to break into my computer. I never minded simple banner ads, and I'd be happy to pay $20/mo to have all ads on the sites I'm browsing voluntarily go away; that includes on Facebook. So yes, for some of us at least, it really was about ads.

ok_dad 3y ago

Hot take as someone who pays for premium: All the complaints about ads are true, they suck, but how is content you enjoy supposed to be created and distributed without money? Just pay for premium, or use something like PeerTube. It’s unfortunate, but you need to put your money where your mouth is. I hate ads too, a lot. I think they should be banned, but in not smart enough to know what can replace those ads for folks who cannot afford premium subscriptions so they can also watch important educational and not so important entertaining content.

Probiotic6081 3y ago
they could monetize differently, without ads. let creators monetize it like patreon tiers and let users make proportional donations to their favourite creators through a flattr-like system. take the ads out and a place like youtube only need like 5 guys to run.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  That is such a simplistic view, I don’t even know where to start with it. First, your final paragraph is faulty, five guys (insert overpriced burger joke) is not sufficient for running “YouTube without ads”. Second, how do people afford that if they have no disposable income? YouTube is unique in that it’s used for a lot of educational purposes; not just in school but people use it to learn how to tie a tie or do woodworking. Thanks for trying, but there isn’t a two step solution for everything.
  - Probiotic6081 3y ago
    of course they'd also need lawyers, content moderators and stuff like that. but they should just copy the files to a new server, run elasticsearch on it and give it a clean UI.
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      If up think that’ll work feel free to implement that :)

pyrolistical 3y ago

This is why i subscribed to YouTube premium when it first came out. I knew this day would come. Google is the one sending the data. They can easily bake in unskippable ads for non subscribers if they really wanted to

zht 3y ago

HN: where the 200K TC tech rockstar ninjas will wane poetic for days about why they can’t pay 15 dollars a month for YouTube premium but really need to use ad blockers to watch YouTube without ads for some ideological reason

thinkingemote 3y ago
You should really say that many of the users here work for companies entirely dependent on advertising. Its not that we are rich and can afford to pay to not see ads, its that we are rich because of ads!. Nevertheless I believe that we can hate ads personally. It does hurt. But the truth does that sometimes. It's better than not acknowledging it and leads to better outcomes. The ideology gets the light of truth.

blitzar 3y ago

Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide. You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription. Been getting this the last 2 days.

sircastor 3y ago
I started getting this. Now the close “x” has turned into a 5s countdown before I can close it.
- blitzar 3y ago
  I am looking forward to that stage of the dialogue box I am currently ignoring.

butz 3y ago

What's the use of Youtube Premium if videos will still be littered with sponsor blocks? I prefer to support my favorite creators using Patreon.

bratwurst3000 3y ago

If they are collecting data atm maybe we should google “YouTube alternative” if the pop up occurs.

WithinReason 3y ago

[dead]

conradfr 3y ago

> Alphabet Inc., the company that owns YouTube, reported that the decrease marks the third consecutive year the social media platform faced a decline in ad revenue. They don't even try to say it's because of YouTube Premium smashing success ;)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

All the more reason why Google is pushing for v3. v3 extensions cannot inject code that can bypass this.

Ajay-p 3y ago

It is time to build a better YouTube Ad Blocker!

theage 3y ago
If it came down to it would you like the ability to automatically blackover the ad while it plays and mute your tab as a last ditch adblocker? Because that's an easy enough final solution to the ad problem but not everyone would want to endure the dead-air or plan for the time sink waiting for the real video to start.
- belltaco 3y ago
  Twitch is already at that point in the ad blocker wars.
- Ajay-p 3y ago
  I do mute, yes, and have considered a script that would recognize and mute automatically, but my abilities are not that good. When an ad plays I hit the mute button on my keyboard and engage with something else until the ad has stopped. This puts a question in my mind: Do we subconsciously remember ads that we ignore more than the ones we pay attention to?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jantissler 3y ago

I don’t think that YouTube Premium is a great offer. I won’t pay $19 every month. That is $228 a year! No, thank you. If there was a smaller tier around $5 with a limited number of ad-free videos, I might consider it. But there’s already way more content out there I could ever read, listen to or watch. $19 is steep.

anon84873628 3y ago
Maybe they should charge based on how much you watch. For me, $19 spread over so many channels seems very cheap...
shitlord 3y ago
I don't understand why they have to bundle ad-free viewing with YouTube music. Nobody is going to switch from Spotify or Apple Music to YouTube.
- ballenf 3y ago
  I also wonder how much cheaper Premium would be without music. I guess it's kind of hard to separate, since popular songs are on both and Premium allows background watching. The YT music app feels like a poorly reskinned YT app. Impossible to get basic album info, song titles are often wrong (live versions not marked, covers appearing to be original, etc.). So many "fan" releases which are often just lower fidelity copies. And search is, ironically, abysmal.
- Jcowell 3y ago
  Not Switch but extend. I use youtube music for a variety of songs that would never be on Apple Music (covers, instrumentals, mash ups, tiktok remixes, etc.)
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  I did. Why pay twice for the same thing? YT music is perfectly adequate for my needs and also allows me to upload my own music.
  - 3y ago

tzs 3y ago

OT: in nearly every prior discussion of this, people mention that when they do watch YouTube without an ad blocker they get frequent long ad breaks. I occasionally watch on a device like an Amazon Fire Stick or an XFinity Flex which does not have an ad blocker, and so I too then have my videos interrupted by ads--but the ads YouTube gives me are mostly 15 seconds, and most of them bring up a "skip ads" button after 5 seconds. Usually the longer ads also offer the skip button after 5 seconds. Some of the ad breaks contain 2 ads, but if the first one offers the skip button it skips the rest of the first ad and also the second ad. For me then it is not really making me spend much time on ads. That raises the question of why am I mostly getting short ads with a skip after 5 seconds, while apparently many others here got long TV-like ad breaks? Do they run different lengths ads on different categories of content, and I just mostly watch the kind that gets short ads?

belltaco 3y ago
Maybe the ads depend on how much content you're consuming? Before I got premium I would notice the ads would get more numerous the more number of videos I watched. And would start getting more unskippable ads and multiple ones. I guess I liked to sample videos and switch to a different one so it got annoying fast. I couldn't block ads on my smart TV app so I gave up and subbed. Premium also helps a lot when I watch YT on my Oculus Quest 2.

jsnell 3y ago

Rehashed on the frontpage a dozen times: 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37869315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37869315

CAPSLOCKSSTUCK 3y ago

Can I pay for YouTube Premium without my watch history being used to build an advertising profile on me? I know I can read the privacy policy, but I'd be interested to see if anyone has any evidence to the contrary. Overall I think the ad-blocking crackdown is good for both sides here . . . I just wish I could be confident that paying for a service ensures some level of privacy (which is not the case for things like phone service, in which e.g. T-Mobile sells your location data).

dmamills 3y ago

I thought that the money was "in my data". That harvesting the viewing/browsing habits offered an insight that not even my "wife or priest" could trade in value to Google. Now I have to pay to surrender that data?

Rochus 3y ago

This is an annoying development with youtube; I would be willing to pay them $5 per month because they're providing the platform (not the content!), but certainly not 16 Swiss francs (which is close to $17) which they want to charge here. Or they could at least charge less for people like me who publish their own content for free on youtube.

ishanjain28 3y ago
What are you on about? A cut of that 16 francs is going to creators just as a cut of the ads you see goes to the creators. Platform cost is not the only cost and creators need to be compensated and it comes out from the subscription fees.
- Rochus 3y ago
  The vast majority of contributors has no commercial intention (like me), or pushes content they were already payed for intentionally for free (such as public broadcasters), or make youtube videos to motivate people to sign up for a subscription with them to gain access to more services. If it was really about paying creators, youtube should do like e.g. Quora where the author decides whether his/her specific contribution is subject to monetization or free. I don't want to pay a flat rate for contributions that I don't even want to see.