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Google admits cracking down on people using ad blockers
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- baz00 3y agobaz00 admits cracking down on using Google. Only way to do something about this crap.
- Jensson 3y agoWhy would they care about losing you when they aren't making any money on you? "McDonalds cracks down on people taking ketchup without ordering anything" "Then I'll stop taking ketchup from McDonalds, that will show em!" It is only paying/ad viewers that matters, until they start to lose those they wont care.
- tenebrisalietum 3y agoLess use of Google = less chance of me seeing Google ads. The analogy is more accurately this: McDonalds giving away ketchup--instead of selling it or providing with the order--but making you watch an ad first.
- Jensson 3y ago> Less use of Google = less chance of me seeing Google ads. But you are using an ad-blocker, you don't see google ads. If you aren't using an ad-blocker then this topic isn't about you.
- londons_explore 3y ago> It is only paying/ad viewers that matters, until they start to lose those they wont care. They prefer you use youtube ad-free than go take the crowd to another platform. Microsoft famously said that they prefer people to pirate Windows than to use Linux/Mac.
- Jensson 3y agoPirating OS users tend to become paying OS users after a while, when they need to perform a job etc. Ad blocking users aren't becoming paying or ad-viewing users, they stay unprofitable forever.
- alex7734 3y agoThey stay unprofitable forever individually but they stay on YouTube instead of making another video site popular, which on the whole is better for YouTube.
- Jensson 3y agoBut that isn't an as big deal as it sounds. Many use TikTok for example, but TikTok barely pays anything to creators so anyone who gets big on TikTok moves to YouTube to make money. As long as you make the most money at YouTube that will keep happening, and all those ads is why people make so much money making videos on YouTube. This leads to an Apple situation where Apple doesn't have the most users but most of the money goes to them since they can extract much more money per user. It isn't a bad situation to be in.
- alex7734 3y agoI would agree with that if most of the costs of YouTube were paying the creators, but my guess is they're not. If YouTube gives, for example, Vimeo the chance to become big enough and they just happen to be more efficient than YouTube and also decide to pay the creators just a little bit more than YouTube, isn't it even a tiny bit reasonable that maybe Vimeo could gradually replace YouTube in the future? Of course Vimeo would have to fight off adblockers too to compete in money extraction with YouTube but that's not my point, my point is that YouTube now has a monopoly and any actions that threaten that, such as strongarming people into watching 3 preroll unskippable ads, are in my opinion silly and self-defeating. They're just too greedy. If they made the price of YouTube Premium something reasonable ($1 or $2 a month instead of $14 or whatever it is) they would get a lot more subscribers and probably even get more revenue. $1 or $2 is not worth spending even 10 minutes digging in obfuscated JavaScript to fix an adblocker, so this whole thing would go a lot smoother for them if they charged that. Even if $14 is not a lot people just don't want to pay that much.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI pay for the ad-free versions of Hulu, HBO ("Max"), Disney Plus, and Paramount Plus. YouTube managed to sufficiently tick me off that I refuse to give them one penny.
- hnlmorg 3y agoSame here. I’ve subscribed to so many different streaming platforms and refuse to pay for Google Premium
- baz00 3y agoWhat makes you think I give a crap what they care about? This is about what I care about and choose to participate in. I choose to not take the ketchup and not go in McDonald’s. And my life is better for it. Actually I like a McPlant and an apple pie occasionally but that’s another story…
- eertami 3y agoEven if I watch the ad nobody is making any money from it. I'm just saving their bandwidth. But even with the latest 'crackdown', I haven't seen a single advert or nag screen so I guess the crackdown isn't very effective.
- Workaccount2 3y ago>Even if I watch the ad nobody is making any money from it. What?
- tomrod 3y agoBecause they mine my data and could get goodwill marketing from me if they showed they gave a damn. Instead, they've grown too big, they've grown too frail, they've grown too meaningless. So, time to move on.
- strken 3y agoI've paid for content on YouTube before, through Purchases, and I won't do that anymore if there's even a hint they'll try to detect my adblocker in the future. Thing is, I'm not going to pay their excessive and ongoing subscription fee under any circumstances. I watch maybe an hour of videos a week, but all of them are just to kill time, and they're not worth double digits a month to me. I was happy to have a transactional relationship with them for paid content, and they likely made a net profit from me even with an ad blocker, but if I can't trust them to provide ongoing access to the content I bought then I won't buy any more.
- butz 3y agoI'm going same way too. When first speculations about ad-blockers being blocked on Youtube I started investigating alternative video platforms, and reducing video watching overall. Worst thing is that many public services and companies are still using Youtube as single available video repository, not considering that their website or service use instructions end up covered with annoying ads, that are distracting and time consuming.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- genman 3y agoI would recommend them to ditch video ads and maybe people won't use ad blockers anymore. But I'm afraid that this ship has sailed.
- butz 3y agoThey probably will force users to enable webcams to detect if content is being watched, and if you as much as blink - ad will pause.
- _cenw 3y agoThey can't do that. They wouldn't do that! Because that's a Microsoft patent. https://www.vg247.com/microsoft-filed-kinect-patent-that-governs-your-movie-use https://www.vg247.com/microsoft-filed-kinect-patent-that-gov...
- INTPenis 3y agoThe free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literally created an entire market of content creators. We can't go back to torrents, we're addicted now.
- geraldwhen 3y agoVPNs are easier than ever, and so are torrents. Plex didn’t exist 20 years ago. Life is good.
- avazhi 3y agoSorry bud, Google makes its money spying on my email and my searches. Those are tradeoffs I’m willing to make. I absolutely refuse to ever watch ads, though. You say we can’t go back torrents, and maybe you can’t, but I’ll go full Luddite mode before I start watching ads on anything. I haven’t had a television for 20+ years for this very reason. Torrents and a seed box are about as easy as it gets.
- shadowgovt 3y agoThe challenge will be discoverability. Has there been any good work on solving that challenge? If I just watched a great documentary via Torrent and I want to watch another one in that vein or another one by that creator, how do I do that?
- foota 3y agoHow do you think they make money off you without ads?
- justrealist 3y agoYou could, of course, just pay YouTube $14/mo for the ad-free version instead of complaining.
- beerandt 3y agoI paid for the YouTube premium that came with the old Google Music subscription, and the problem was it regularly showed ads anyway, especially in the kids stuff. So then we still needed ad-blocking, which broke Google in a way that it tried to show even more ads (ad blocking probably disrupting the ability to track a 'premium' user/client). So we're back to relying completely on ad-blockers, and have completely cut out any Google or YouTube sourced content for the kids.
- Workaccount2 3y agoI'm curious how you got ads with premium. I have not seen any.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoYouTube kids show ads even with a premium account. Not a surprise since Google is on its way down anyways.
- tyfon 3y agoI have never seen this with my kids subaccounts on yt kids or regular yt. I've had premium for a couple years now.
- John7149 3y agoMaybe his account is not true premium as tied to old GM account. I had a few months last year. Quite pleasant compare to usual "naked" YT. But nowhere as good as vanced and then revanced, UBO, VPN+Adguard, pi-hole, and tonnes of fake Google account created from all over the world and outsourced the passworded access to 3rd world to be abused so to confuse Google algorithm. Since using all these to thwart Google tracking and ads, I stopped YT premium after 3rd months as really no point I can do better than their premium service - and cheaper too. I thought premium frees up my time to tinker but they still track and occasionally ads do get thru.
- _cenw 3y ago
- jfengel 3y agoThe word "admit" in a headline always raises my hackles. This wasn't a secret. Your reporter didn't wheedle the truth out of them. You sent an email, and they responded with what they had already said countless times.
- LargeTomato 3y agoJournalism like this should be removed.
- mmmpetrichor 3y agoI got banner messages basically telling me they're going to stop allowing ad blockers. lol.
- ajross 3y agoYeah, this is now as I count it the third or possibly fourth time this story about the 5 second delay has been recycled onto the front page of HN. I guess because the first analysis was incorrect (about user agent dependence) everyone feels entitled to try to re-jigger the spin to see what sticks?
- Nevin1901 3y agoOver the past few months I’ve stopped using YouTube all together. The service is pretty bad without an ad blocker, and I wouldn’t pay $10 per month just to waste my time.
- jorams 3y agoI used to watch YouTube quite a lot on my TV without ad blocking, but over the past few years the quantity and duration of ads became so incredibly ridiculous that I stopped doing that. It's probably not what they intended, but the primary effect is that I drastically cut down on the amount of time I spend watching YT. Whenever I do watch videos it's now on desktop or mobile with an ad blocker, and it's not enough to justify the price of Premium.
- randunel 3y agoA friend of mine has recently subscribed to his first ever subscription, youtube premium, because of the increased amount of ads on his tv, so I'd say it's an overall win for google.
- DEF14A 3y agoI can't imagine the data scientists at Google haven't already regressed minutes viewed on frequency of ads and found a negative association, though. I wonder if they have a minimum threshold of y at which point they begin reducing the frequency of ads shown.
- justrealist 3y ago[flagged]
- tomrod 3y ago> STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT ADS No. I believe you missed/ignored a few facts in your screed: 1. Ads are a malware surface 2. Ads are used to pass misinformation and other harmful content Google is failing to perform its due diligence as an ad platform for both sides of the ad two-sided market. Ergo, my browser connection will continue to use its condoms. -- Further, Google paid for little to any content creation that is loaded to YouTube. $14 subscription for hosting the median watcher's content is extreme. Charge the content creators for hosting as they are the beneficiaries with in-video subscription advertisements.
- shric 3y agoThe in video sponsors are what I would complain about, but as long as Sponsorblock works I'm happy. Been paying for YouTube premium since before it was called that.
- charcircuit 3y ago>1. Ads are a malware surface Youtube ads, Which is what we are talking about, are not. >2. Ads are used to pass misinformation and other harmful content This is a small percentage of ads.
- shric 3y agoAlso, YouTube itself is used to pass misinformation and harmful content (also in a small percentage of videos). It's up to the viewer to decide how to act on it.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoThe misinformation is insane. Diet advertisements of don't eat this, etc are disgusting. It follows the same pattern of those Google searches that pop up like 'what are some of the benefits of xyz' written by someone with 0 scientific knowledge, on a page with 0 references to studies. It is merely there as filler content to lure people to the website.
- globular-toast 3y agoWhat I wonder is who is pushing them to do this? Or is it coming from within? If they could somehow prove that everyone definitely saw each ad they played, what actual difference would it make? Is this a thing advertising companies compete with each other on? How likely it is people actually see the ad?
- qizzo 3y agoJoining the Apple ecosystem makes a whole lot more sense than paying for Google's rubbish dump. I would not have imagined saying that a year ago. But if I was to pay, I'll pay for a quiet, satisfying life. Not for Google's cheapness - for sure, there is no actual value there for me. It's just a habit. The last fifteen years have been about a habit. Oh! I can choose something else! Wait until others get that idea.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"Google justified the move by saying that "ads are a vital lifeline" or its creators that "help them run and grow their businesses"."