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Tell HN: YouTube disabling playback after 3 videos
YouTube is stepping up the anti-adblock nonsense and will be disabling playback after 3 videos
Personally, this sort of arms race is only going to cause me to not use YouTube
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/assets/47215043/f76f8ea2-3dd4-43ef-8293-353243cc5863
(Apologies if this was shared already)
- runjake 3y ago> Personally, this sort of arms race is only going to cause me to not use YouTube This is by design. They’ll either get you to pay or leave. I personally pay for YouTube because I get a lot of value out of it. But I feel you. I abandoned both Reddit and Twitter pretty abruptly after their shenanigans. I was a heavy user of both until that point.
- thejackgoode 3y agoI'd pay Youtube if they would stop tracking me in return, but I simply cannot believe it will happen at any point
- extraduder_ire 3y agoIf anything, it's more data to track if you're paying. Plus, you can't use it in a private browsing window, since it's tied to your account.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoThat and make the like/dislike ratio visible again. They really have no reason to make you sit through a scam video long enough to be served an ad when you’re paying.
- seanthemon 3y agoThere are extensions to bring back dislike button, makes a world of a difference
- badpun 3y agoIf they stopped tracking you, they wouldn't be able to show you targeted ads, which would make the ad revenue go way down. In other words, it's not gonna happen.
- Viliam1234 3y agoAs they say, if you ain't paying, you are the product. And if you are paying, you are a premium product.
- Lionga 3y agohttps://github.com/TheRealJoelmatic/RemoveAdblockThing https://github.com/TheRealJoelmatic/RemoveAdblockThing fixes it
- mortallywounded 3y agoI've been noticing the pop up these days, but it doesn't seem like the pop up ever does anything (just annoy you). If they prevent playback, I'll just yt-dlp the the video and open in a video player shrugs.
- sphars 3y agoI'm only paying for YT Premium thanks to my grandfathered Google Play Music subscription at $7.99/mo from nearly a decade ago. But I only am logged into that account on Chrome. On Firefox, I use uBO and don't log in since it's only used for one-off videos, as FF is my main browser. I have not seen the anti-adblock popup in FF yet.
- DoesntMatter22 3y agoI've decided to drop Spotify and switch to youtube premium. I get streaming there and won't have ads. I guess it's worth it. I hate Spotify and thier interface. I used to watch Joe Rogan on YouTube but the Spotify interface sucks (to me)
- squigz 3y agoI'm on Firefox and have been seeing the popups off and on - the uBO developers are doing great keeping things updated
- sschueller 3y agoI have the "grandfathered" Google music family plan. Only issue is Google doubled the price so not much grandfathering left.
- Raed667 3y agoThere is this sentiment of "if you're not seeing ads, then you're welcome to leave" and I feel this is very short sighted and will scatter some communities that are the backbone of YT. I would assume people who are using adblockers are younger, more tech-savvy and possibly the same people that showed chrome or youtube to their peers.
- sircastor 3y agoI use an adblocker and have largely just ignored the messages from YouTube until they finally blocked me. I think it took more than 3, and I still can occasionally watch videos - so I'm not really sure what the rule is... This has been mentioned elsewhere, but the thing I'm most concerned about is this: They mention that using an ad blocker violates the TOS. So, if they're aggressive (or just automate it irresponsibly) I can see a situation where they start closing one's Google account. And that's serious (to me anyway).
- lopis 3y agoThat's my biggest fear too. Better to avoid using YouTube while logged in.
- wrigglingworm 3y agoI got blocked with an adblocker a while ago. There's a little trick I've been using to "bypass" the ads though. Click the video you want to see, ad starts, click any recommended video, then use the back button, no ad. Not ideal but saves some time.
- penjelly 3y agosorta unrelated but... has anyone else noticed the youtube app simply wont play videos sometimes? shorts always work, but full length just pause at the start and if i unpause it just stops immediately, cant get it out of that state even with app reset/uninstall/cache clear (nig also applies to downloaded videos). I contacted youtube and they couldnt figure it out. forced me to unsubscribe for a while. Also note: using a regular browser to youtube does always work.
- yoyopa 3y agoif you try to watch the fourth video they will be mad
- Supermancho 3y agoinstall brave, disable other adblockers for youtube. works for me
- Gtex555 3y agoBrave breaks too many websites.
- rabbits_2002 3y agoDidn’t think I would stop using Reddit and Youtube the same year but here we are
- bjourne 3y agoHow far along has the peer2peer federated YouTube clones come? Everyone has excess bandwidth so making something that doesn't rely in centralized servers should be possible.
- Saris 3y agoPeertube works pretty well, just not that many users.
- ChildOfChaos 3y agoThey need to make YouTube premium cheaper instead of trying to compete with Spotify but I guess the issue is the amount of licensed music on the platform and that people use it to listen to music anyway, so they have no choice?
- Gtex555 3y agoWhat you don't realize is YouTube would rather have half the users if all of them watched ads vs AdBlock users, so they actually want you to stop using YouTube. Most people will just white list it, I mean the bulk of users use mobile anyway and cant really use AdBlock.
- squigz 3y agoYou can block ads on mobile.
- LocalH 3y agoGoogle is doing what their monetary analysis says will make them more money. Same reason the whole SSSniperWolf thing is being handled so poorly.
- adocomplete 3y agoIt sucks, but running a site like YouTube is expensive. I hope the trade-off is less ads overall since everyone will be forced to watch them (at least in theory), because using YouTube today without an ad-blocker is a terrible experience. I've been paying for Premium for years now, but every now and then I'll go to YouTube when not logged in and my god is it bad.
- tsingy 3y agoThey are profitable, this is just an attempt to get more money.
- badpun 3y agoIs youtube really profitable?
- Condition1952 3y agoif they need to save money, they can bargain the $20,000,000,000 a year deal through which they pay Apple money
- uberman 3y agoIs it 30 billion a year expensive?
- kidgorgeous 3y ago[flagged]
- jerojero 3y agoI guess I'll choose my final 3 videos carefully.
- VFIT7CTO77TOC 3y agoYou don't pay and don't generate ad revenue. They won't miss you.
- greenhexagon 3y agoAdblocking users still provide value. Their clicks, watch time, shares, likes, comments, searches, related videos etc provide valuable training data for recommendations. They may share the video with others who watch with ads enabled. They still watch product placement, endorsements and advertisements embedded within the video, incentivizing creators to continue using the platform. They likely use the service on multiple devices, only some of which skip ads. Alienating their young, tech-savvy and socially connected & influential users may not harm their bottom line in the financial quarter they role out the change, but it could certainly negatively impact the longer term prospects and give an upstart the opportunity to challenge their current near-monopoly.
- gpas 3y agoInvidious for the browser, newpipe, grayjay on mobile.
- Condition1952 3y agoFreetube for the desktop
- mikewarot 3y agoI've already quit Reddit, and I'll quit YouTube if they force it. Thanks to network effects, even though I don't watch the ads, I'm still feeding their algorithm, and helping to promote their service every time I mention one of their videos elsewhere. I can promote their competitors instead, I guess.