6 ms·

It's even worse: the incentive is to police the creators, not the advertisers. Youtube will bend over backwards for advertisers whose "brand safety" team doesn'

It's even worse: the incentive is to police the creators, not the advertisers. Youtube will bend over backwards for advertisers whose "brand safety" team doesn't want their product to appear next to a swear word, and demonetize/strike/etc those creators. But the ad content itself isn't policed nearly as relentlessly.

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important, but unfortunately YouTube is a monopoly and is addictive, so content is more or less fungible from Google's perspective. If you aren't viewing ads on creator A's content, you'll probably be viewing them on creator B's content instead. It's not like other streaming services where there is real competition and losing particular content would make people go to competitors.
- dspillett 3y ago
  > You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important YouTube's audience size and advertising metrics have long since gone through the point where individual creators or groups of them matter little. If a creator walks off the platform there are more who will fill the place, in search of potential monetisation, so youtube will still have somewhere to hang adverts off. An advertiser leaving is harder to replace than a content provider. eBay has a similar flip some years ago: they realised that there was more value caring for buyers needs than sellers: sellers swarm in attracted by the number of buyers and are difficult to put off for long as there are often few other options, buyers need to feel safe to hand around.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    It's quite obvious they either have advertiser problems or their ad serving algorithm sucks. I get so many repeats in stuff I'm not interested in at all, and completely unrelated to what I watch. I don't know if it's a matter of those ads bidding the highest or what. But YouTube's ability to show something I'm interested in is worse than even what the daytime TV ads were back in the day.
    - mikrotikker 3y ago
      That's kinda good it means whatever privacy steps you're taking are working
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I wouldn't buy ads on any of the major platforms. Twitter (when I downloaded my info, they were still called that) classified me as speaking three languages I know zero words of, and as having interests in several sports (I care for none); my YouTube ad experience is like yours; my Facebook experience today was about renouncing my US citizenship (I'm a British national); the Instagram ads are only marginally less bad — I do find myself liking them, but I have no idea what they're selling because what I get shown are all uplifting landscapes or cute animals with no sales pitch. Edit: also, a friend of mine was just playing a game, advert popped up in a language neither of us could read. I had to open Google Translate just to find out it was Romanian and which button was "close" (and also to discover that it was an ad for "easy and fast international payments"?)
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- bambax 3y ago
  > YouTube is a monopoly and is addictive Youtube is indeed a monopoly -- but it's not actually addictive. Since they started this war against adblockers I have found that I can perfectly live without it. When I absolutely would like to watch an informative video (for example, about how to fix something on my bike, etc.), I first try to open the video in a private window (with ublock on); if that also doesn't work I try to use yt-dlp. But I have completely stopped mindlessly watching videos that are not the result of a search. There's nothing necessary about youtube.
  - KMnO4 3y ago
    > but it's not actually addictive Youtube is definitely addictive to a large population of people. If you can live without it, the only thing we can infer is that it's not addictive to you.
    - dr-detroit 3y ago
      [dead]
    - BobaFloutist 3y ago
      Maybe it's habit-forming but not addictive?
      - reactordev 3y ago
        This is a more scientifically accurate description. It’s not addictive in the sense that your brain craves it’s chemicals but it definitely is habit-forming, watching video after video after video on electric motors and their construction has sent me down rabbit holes. Software topics, talks, how to’s, engineering channels, gaming drivel, it’s definitely a habit.
  - rurp 3y ago
    Being addictive doesn't mean that that literally everyone who uses it will become addicted. Most people who use alcohol, or pain killers, or gamble can stop without much trouble; that doesn't mean that there aren't a subset of users who get dangerously addicted. It's great that you're in the majority of people who aren't addicted to Youtube, but that doesn't mean everyone has the same experience that you do.
- vkou 3y ago
  > You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important, The economics of supply and demand disagree with you. A lot more people want to be creators, than there is money in the ecosystem to support them. If you want to hold platforms responsible for scams being advertised on them, you're going to need to rewrite a lot of law.
fallingknife 3y ago
In the Youtube economic model the advertisers are the customer and the creators are the vendors (the viewer is the product), so that actually makes sense and isn't really any different from any other business. The customer is king, and if a vendor pisses off a customer, that vendor is gone.
- anticensor 3y ago
  Viewers are actually feudalistic subjects that are taxed and employed for free or litkle.
varelse 3y ago
[dead]
mrweasel 3y ago
I do wonder, clearly there is a perverse incentive for YouTube to be less strict with ads, but is it also a question of availability? I've been paying for YouTube Premium, so haven't seen ads in a while, but before that I noticed that there was almost no variety in the ads. You just got the same three or four ads on repeat. What I'm wondering is: Does YouTube not have enough quality advertisers? You'd think they'd turn away the scammers, because actual business doesn't want to be on the same platform as some shady "buy/sell gold" or similar. If they don't, is that because there's no money, or not enough honest business buying ads in a sufficient amount? Or is it that YouTube just makes more on the scams?
rollcat 3y ago
True, and it's so ironic when the situation reverses... Of the ads that recently slipped through my adblockers, one was a xenophobic piece of Hungarian propaganda against illegal immigrants. It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft video (a game without binary gender); that was made by a disabled person; to people living in a city where ~50% of the population was born elsewhere. Google does have all of that context, and yet this is what their ad selection algorithm picks. This is one among many reasons why I have absolutely zero moral reservations about blocking YouTube ads. (inb4 ad money: I do support creators directly, as my budget allows.)
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Google doesn't care about the context, they care about who pays the most for the ad. Hungarian fascists have deep pockets[0] and are willing to spend shittons of money to make you watch lies about immigrants[1]. Most of that money is wasted, but if they can radicalize even one out of a million viewers, they won. So they pay loads for it. Yes, this is the same math that scammers run on - because fascism is a scam category, alongside advanced-fee fraud, refund scammers, and fake tech support companies. Your grandpa thinks the immigrants are invading the country for the same reason he thinks he needs to wire $10,000 to the 'bank' of a Nigerian 'prince'. also > It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft video (a game without binary gender) For the same reasons as above, the creator of Minecraft went from "I don't want gender in my game" to "all women are evil", because he isolated himself in an LA mansion and read nothing but Twitter. He also had a girlfriend he broke up with. This makes you vulnerable to being fed bullshit that agrees with you - in the same way that expecting a UPS package might make you vulnerable to clicking a fake UPS text that steals your login info. Either that, or Notch was a trans inclusive radical misogynist[2] the whole time! Now, let's say you're a scammer. Your 1-in-a-million odds suck - but what if you could pay more money to find more vulnerable people to send texts to? Like, even if you went from paying $1 CPM[3] for 1-in-a-million odds to $10 CPM for 1-in-ten-thousand, which is mathematically identical, you still get an advantage because less people can see what you're trying to steal. Targeted advertising lets you do this[4], and for unrelated reasons, legitimate advertisers will pay more to target their ads to a smaller but more lucrative cohort as well. So Google inherently makes more money the more they build out tools for scammers to do their scamming. You are perfectly in the right to block ads. I pay for YouTube Premium but I won't yell at anyone who uses uBlock Origin. [0] To be clear, we don't know exactly where the money comes from, though I can guess either Russia or Saudi Arabia [1] The core irony of fascism is that the most efficient way to demonize the other is to point out that the other also has a fascist wing. e.g. in America, Christofascists yell and scream that we need a Muslim ban to keep Islamofascist terrorists out. [2] See also: James Somerton [3] Cost per French thousand [4] If you read between the lines I'm accusing Google for the last decade of democratic backsliding.
phatskat 3y ago
A channel I follow does ad reads in the middle of the show, and as such had to say “Say-bay-Day” when advertising a CBD product because YT would demonetize the video if they just pronounced it as one would pronounce “See-Bee-Dee”. It’s wild that they couldn’t advertise a sponsor but YT allows scam ads to roll before their videos

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago

You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important, but unfortunately YouTube is a monopoly and is addictive, so content is more or less fungible from Google's perspective. If you aren't viewing ads on creator A's content, you'll probably be viewing them on creator B's content instead. It's not like other streaming services where there is real competition and losing particular content would make people go to competitors.

dspillett 3y ago
> You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important YouTube's audience size and advertising metrics have long since gone through the point where individual creators or groups of them matter little. If a creator walks off the platform there are more who will fill the place, in search of potential monetisation, so youtube will still have somewhere to hang adverts off. An advertiser leaving is harder to replace than a content provider. eBay has a similar flip some years ago: they realised that there was more value caring for buyers needs than sellers: sellers swarm in attracted by the number of buyers and are difficult to put off for long as there are often few other options, buyers need to feel safe to hand around.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  It's quite obvious they either have advertiser problems or their ad serving algorithm sucks. I get so many repeats in stuff I'm not interested in at all, and completely unrelated to what I watch. I don't know if it's a matter of those ads bidding the highest or what. But YouTube's ability to show something I'm interested in is worse than even what the daytime TV ads were back in the day.
  - mikrotikker 3y ago
    That's kinda good it means whatever privacy steps you're taking are working
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I wouldn't buy ads on any of the major platforms. Twitter (when I downloaded my info, they were still called that) classified me as speaking three languages I know zero words of, and as having interests in several sports (I care for none); my YouTube ad experience is like yours; my Facebook experience today was about renouncing my US citizenship (I'm a British national); the Instagram ads are only marginally less bad — I do find myself liking them, but I have no idea what they're selling because what I get shown are all uplifting landscapes or cute animals with no sales pitch. Edit: also, a friend of mine was just playing a game, advert popped up in a language neither of us could read. I had to open Google Translate just to find out it was Romanian and which button was "close" (and also to discover that it was an ad for "easy and fast international payments"?)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
bambax 3y ago
> YouTube is a monopoly and is addictive Youtube is indeed a monopoly -- but it's not actually addictive. Since they started this war against adblockers I have found that I can perfectly live without it. When I absolutely would like to watch an informative video (for example, about how to fix something on my bike, etc.), I first try to open the video in a private window (with ublock on); if that also doesn't work I try to use yt-dlp. But I have completely stopped mindlessly watching videos that are not the result of a search. There's nothing necessary about youtube.
- KMnO4 3y ago
  > but it's not actually addictive Youtube is definitely addictive to a large population of people. If you can live without it, the only thing we can infer is that it's not addictive to you.
  - dr-detroit 3y ago
    [dead]
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Maybe it's habit-forming but not addictive?
    - reactordev 3y ago
      This is a more scientifically accurate description. It’s not addictive in the sense that your brain craves it’s chemicals but it definitely is habit-forming, watching video after video after video on electric motors and their construction has sent me down rabbit holes. Software topics, talks, how to’s, engineering channels, gaming drivel, it’s definitely a habit.
- rurp 3y ago
  Being addictive doesn't mean that that literally everyone who uses it will become addicted. Most people who use alcohol, or pain killers, or gamble can stop without much trouble; that doesn't mean that there aren't a subset of users who get dangerously addicted. It's great that you're in the majority of people who aren't addicted to Youtube, but that doesn't mean everyone has the same experience that you do.
vkou 3y ago
> You'd think that creators making people want to use the site would be important, The economics of supply and demand disagree with you. A lot more people want to be creators, than there is money in the ecosystem to support them. If you want to hold platforms responsible for scams being advertised on them, you're going to need to rewrite a lot of law.

fallingknife 3y ago

In the Youtube economic model the advertisers are the customer and the creators are the vendors (the viewer is the product), so that actually makes sense and isn't really any different from any other business. The customer is king, and if a vendor pisses off a customer, that vendor is gone.

anticensor 3y ago
Viewers are actually feudalistic subjects that are taxed and employed for free or litkle.

varelse 3y ago

[dead]

mrweasel 3y ago

I do wonder, clearly there is a perverse incentive for YouTube to be less strict with ads, but is it also a question of availability? I've been paying for YouTube Premium, so haven't seen ads in a while, but before that I noticed that there was almost no variety in the ads. You just got the same three or four ads on repeat. What I'm wondering is: Does YouTube not have enough quality advertisers? You'd think they'd turn away the scammers, because actual business doesn't want to be on the same platform as some shady "buy/sell gold" or similar. If they don't, is that because there's no money, or not enough honest business buying ads in a sufficient amount? Or is it that YouTube just makes more on the scams?

rollcat 3y ago

True, and it's so ironic when the situation reverses... Of the ads that recently slipped through my adblockers, one was a xenophobic piece of Hungarian propaganda against illegal immigrants. It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft video (a game without binary gender); that was made by a disabled person; to people living in a city where ~50% of the population was born elsewhere. Google does have all of that context, and yet this is what their ad selection algorithm picks. This is one among many reasons why I have absolutely zero moral reservations about blocking YouTube ads. (inb4 ad money: I do support creators directly, as my budget allows.)

kmeisthax 3y ago
Google doesn't care about the context, they care about who pays the most for the ad. Hungarian fascists have deep pockets[0] and are willing to spend shittons of money to make you watch lies about immigrants[1]. Most of that money is wasted, but if they can radicalize even one out of a million viewers, they won. So they pay loads for it. Yes, this is the same math that scammers run on - because fascism is a scam category, alongside advanced-fee fraud, refund scammers, and fake tech support companies. Your grandpa thinks the immigrants are invading the country for the same reason he thinks he needs to wire $10,000 to the 'bank' of a Nigerian 'prince'. also > It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft video (a game without binary gender) For the same reasons as above, the creator of Minecraft went from "I don't want gender in my game" to "all women are evil", because he isolated himself in an LA mansion and read nothing but Twitter. He also had a girlfriend he broke up with. This makes you vulnerable to being fed bullshit that agrees with you - in the same way that expecting a UPS package might make you vulnerable to clicking a fake UPS text that steals your login info. Either that, or Notch was a trans inclusive radical misogynist[2] the whole time! Now, let's say you're a scammer. Your 1-in-a-million odds suck - but what if you could pay more money to find more vulnerable people to send texts to? Like, even if you went from paying $1 CPM[3] for 1-in-a-million odds to $10 CPM for 1-in-ten-thousand, which is mathematically identical, you still get an advantage because less people can see what you're trying to steal. Targeted advertising lets you do this[4], and for unrelated reasons, legitimate advertisers will pay more to target their ads to a smaller but more lucrative cohort as well. So Google inherently makes more money the more they build out tools for scammers to do their scamming. You are perfectly in the right to block ads. I pay for YouTube Premium but I won't yell at anyone who uses uBlock Origin. [0] To be clear, we don't know exactly where the money comes from, though I can guess either Russia or Saudi Arabia [1] The core irony of fascism is that the most efficient way to demonize the other is to point out that the other also has a fascist wing. e.g. in America, Christofascists yell and scream that we need a Muslim ban to keep Islamofascist terrorists out. [2] See also: James Somerton [3] Cost per French thousand [4] If you read between the lines I'm accusing Google for the last decade of democratic backsliding.

phatskat 3y ago

A channel I follow does ad reads in the middle of the show, and as such had to say “Say-bay-Day” when advertising a CBD product because YT would demonetize the video if they just pronounced it as one would pronounce “See-Bee-Dee”. It’s wild that they couldn’t advertise a sponsor but YT allows scam ads to roll before their videos