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YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers
https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375
- stackedinserter 1y agoMark my word, in 10 years pirating youtube videos will be a thing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- NotPractical 1y agoAre views also decreasing on channels without ads enabled? Is it possible that some endpoint that needs to be hit to register a view is being blocked by privacy-related (not ad-related) lists that adblockers use? If the answer to both is no, maybe Google's intentionally punishing creators whose viewers use adblockers. But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation?
- pimlottc 1y agoI agree, this seems more like a policy decision to turn creators into anti-adblocker advocates than a technical problem registering views accurately.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoWhy would most creators be pro ad blocking in the first place? Don’t most of them want to earn money via advertising?
- cogman10 1y agoBecause most creators use the internet and have experienced the internet with ads. I imagine most don't think about ads seriously, they think about youtube and sponsor revenue.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoIsn’t sponsor revenue ad revenue? And I would expect most creators to be smart enough to realize that the money they get from Youtube will be at least loosely related to the ad revenue Youtube can earn from whatever the creator made.
- cogman10 1y ago> Isn’t sponsor revenue ad revenue? It is, but it's functionally different because the content creator you are watching is both directly getting that revenue and often doing the testimonial for you. They have an incentive to avoid being annoying about the ad as it reflects bad on them if they go nuts. It's also usually a lot easier to skip. It doesn't capture your video playback and force watching. The money you get from youtube make things ambiguous. Especially if someone is watching your stream with youtube premium.
- bluGill 1y agoThat isn't clear. Some earn money from ads of various forms. Some earn money from patreon like things and the youtube views are loss leaders. Most are not earning enough money from ads to care (generally 0, but sometimes a few bucks). Even if you earn money from ads, view count is only a proxy at best. Youtube seems to track ads seen not view count (payments from youtube have not changed). Other ads track effectiveness of the ad, and viewcount is only a proxy - if youtube changes the count it means that the constant applied to viewcount in the formula changes but otherwise the payment is the same. Thus if you get significant money from YouTube adds you care about ad blocking. None of the others need to care (they might, but it could go either way how they feel)
- PaulHoule 1y agoWhat videos you see on YouTube really varies from one person to another: I have one browser where it shows me predominantly videos with titles like "Why Brand X has lost it's way" or "Why the Y industry is broken" where X could be a fast food chain or a game studio and Y could be housing, video games, private equity, etc. That kind of creator expresses a lot of negativity towards YouTube, as X is frequently "YouTube" or "Google" and Y is "Big Tech", "Social Media", etc.
- pseudalopex 1y agoPro and expressly anti are not the only positions. Some were indifferent because their income from YouTube ads was much less than their income from sponsorships or subscriptions. But view counts affect sponsorship income. Some said blocking ads hurt them but they couldn't blame people when ads included scams. And so on.
- jordanb 1y agoI understand that they've massively reduced the compensation creators receive from monetization. This is why the creators all do sponsorships now. But they force creators to monetize to get reach (if the video isn't monetized it won't be recommended, even to subscribers). My guess is that yeah, now they're going after people's sponsorship revenue by under-reporting views if their monetized content is being viewed by people with adblockers.
- bluSCALE4 1y agoRegarding recommendations. I recently disabled history and recommendations and the subscribed tab has everything I’d expect. No more surprises and no more political garbage.
- portaouflop 1y agoThat’s crazy, when I am logged out I only get political garbage and the most insane braunrot you can imagine. My recommendations are really good on YouTube, I find a lot of interesting stuff
- bluSCALE4 1y agoYou must fight the urge to click on controversial topics. If you mentally subscribe to any fringe idea, the algo immediately feeds you echo chamber / bubble content. It's crazy.
- coolcoder613 1y agoI usually open videos of any topic I don't want in my recommendations in a private window.
- rightbyte 1y agoYe if you watch some woodworking bench videos YT spams them at you. I guess that is what PCA gives you. Lunatic videos is some distinct component too.
- 1y ago
- s1mplicissimus 1y agoMy current theory is that this whole "mystery around viewcounts" thing is fabricated by google. From a PR viewpoint it's much better to just imply that adblockers are bad, so in case of backlash they can go "Idk why the community is going ham about this, we didn't even say directly you shouldn't adblock, you people are kwuaazy"
- Macha 1y agoHonestly I'm willing to bet that the contacts/account managers at Google genuinely didn't know that easyprivacy had added their view tracking to the blocklist, and reached out to some people internally who's job is implementing youtube and not anti-adblock features who correctly said they didn't change anything, and would have no reason to know that easyprivacy had changed anything. Then the AMs just issue vague statements to the youtubers as it feels more like saving face than admitting they have no idea
- ge96 1y agoIs it possible not to have ads? It seems like YouTube puts them in there regardless, unless once your channel is monetizable you can choose to not show ads.
- rwmj 1y agoUploaders can disable mid-roll adverts, ie ones that appear in the middle of the content.
- vintermann 1y ago> But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation? Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing" but they know it won't work if people see them as the source of the message. They want video makers to internalize their message, do what the boss wants on their own initiative, so Google only want to drop hints.
- thewebguyd 1y ago> Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing" Ah yes, the good old "don't copy that floppy" argument. The advertising industry brought this upon themselves. The web is straight up unusable without an ad blocker. Between malicious ads, drive-by-downloads, content shifting, and other dark patterns, websites are now more ads than content. It's like in the days of streaming (when it was still good and not enshitified) reducing piracy rates - companies can get me to disable my ad blocker if they start becoming good citizens actually make their site or service usable without it. Get rid of the invasive tracking, dark patterns, un-dismissable modals, etc. Stop jamming your content so full of ads and SEO spam and maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker as much.
- PaulHoule 1y agoI bought a new Mac for a secondary computer, particularly for my wife to use, and she was driven crazy by ads in just one hour of browsing on Safari without a proper ad blocker. Adding an ad blocker to Safari required using an Apple account which she doesn't have and I didn't want to use it for mine (never plan on buying NERFed apps from the NERFed mac app store which is 99% spam anyway) so I switched her to Firefox which lets me add an ad blocker without signing in.
- xandrius 1y agoMake her an account with throwaway everything or switch her to a sane browser, as you did :)
- squigz 1y agoIs there any hard, reliable data on how much money is "lost" by users with ad blockers? Some of the measures Google has taken with regards to ad blockers seem wholly disproportionate to my own impression of how common they really are.
- jdiff 1y agoIf this is what they're doing, then it would seem to be negligible. The channels I've heard talking about this don't seem to be taking home any less money despite tanking viewcounts. Earnings are constant, but the numbers supporting those earnings have shuffled around unpredictably. When it's your income, you really don't like things to be shuffling around without warning.
- MarkusQ 1y agoIf you don't like random/inexplicable changes in your income, you probably shouldn't have youtube involved.
- jdiff 1y agoYouTube's where the money is. There are very few other places where you can make money like YouTube. Yes, that also means having to deal with their many, many issues, many of which directly threaten that money, but the solution is to work to solve those problems and highlight new ones. YouTube's too big to ignore, and too big to die no matter how many paper cuts and gaping wounds it gives itself.
- Arcuru 1y agoI think you're not understanding. The claim is that view counts are down but revenue is not because people using ad-block previously did not contribute to revenue but did contribute to view count, and now they are not counted as either. So view counts are down and creators are getting the same ad money because they already earned no money from the adblocking people. When channels are claiming their view count is dropping 30% but still earning the same amount of money, that would indicate that they are losing out on 30% of their potential revenue because of ad blockers.
- motrm 1y agoJeff Geerling has been sleuthing into this lately too - my biggest takeaway is that it's only viewer counts that are suffering, he's not seen revenue drop which is key. Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :) https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/digging-deeper-youtubes-view-count-discrepancy https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/digging-deeper-youtub...
- happytoexplain 1y agoYou're saying that YouTube implemented a change that significantly reduces creators' viewer counts but won't affect their revenue, and they haven't told creators? "Here, have a heart attack"?
- Ajedi32 1y agoI'm guessing the viewers who now suddenly aren't being counted were already not contributing to revenue because they block ads.
- MarkusQ 1y agoIt could be the causality runs the other direction; I know that my youtube viewing is way down since they decided that they could decide what software I may/may not run on my computer.
- pndy 1y agoOn your computer? Could you elaborate?
- MarkusQ 1y agoThey told me I couldn't run ad blocker/anti-virus software on my computer while watching their videos. So I stopped watching their videos. (Technically, the videos aren't theirs, but belong to the creators. Many of them provide the same (or better) content on other platforms),
- kouteiheika 1y agoYou adblocker is misconfigured; I haven't seen any ads or anti-adblocker popups in months.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mikert89 1y agoI wish their algorithm would show me videos with my actual interests, instead of some kind of repeat material click maximization
- smusamashah 1y agoI get good recommendations. They key is to not getting distracted by videos you don't really want to see in the feed. Its very tempting some times and watching just one video can mess up the feed. Takes a while to get back. Same with twitter.
- grues-dinner 1y agoI'm getting videos with under 10 views in my recommendations now. They're AI generated "educational" videos, but sound like interesting documentaries. Considering how many users YouTube had the chances that I could be in the first 10 viewers for a listed video are tiny unless I personally know the creator or the place is absolutely flooded in AI shit and there is O(users/10) of these videos being uploaded regularly.
- pndy 1y agoI'm seeing abundance channels with generated content - doesn't matter if it's official page, "proxy" services or apps. It's always heartbreaking stories about poor senior women whose lives are hell because of their families or homeless girls who want to eat leftovers from the plates of the rich, or supposed death of celebrities. Considering I have zero interest in this stuff it seems their algorithm pushes such trash by cross-referencing with the closest thing possible - even by a digital picometer distance.
- kouteiheika 1y agoHave you tried clicking on the the dot dropdown menu and selecting "Not interested" or "Don't recomment channel"?
- hightrix 1y agoI've found that "Not Interested" does either nothing or sends an engagement signal to show me more of the same. "Don't recommend channel" does seem to work with that channel, at least.
- imglorp 1y agoCould it be the recommendation algorithm is so terrible that people can't even? Mine is just a sewage firehose so yes, I watch less now, and I use NewPipe on mobile to have a chance to see my subscriptions.
- portaouflop 1y agoAs noted above my recommendations are excellent and a source of great joy. I don’t get how other people have such an inverse experience
- Measter 1y agoHere's my experience of recommendations right now: videos I've already seen, videos on topics I have no interest in, or a completely empty page.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoThe trending page is usually so decadent and tasteless that I'm ashamed.
- aszantu 1y agoPretty sure it's caused by the algorithm not serving the user anymore... Unless I block a channel forever I only get served the same channels over and over or it's an endless reel of ai slop with that dead crappy voice on all kinds of variations...
- jlarocco 1y agoYeah, these companies are pushing AI so hard they don't see it's destroying the value they had. I don't want to watch an AI reading Wikipedia, showing stock photography, and I doubt anybody else does, either. And lately they're starting to get more malicious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHW24jOYVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHW24jOYVw
- magicalhippo 1y agoI too have noticed a lot more slop in my feed the last several months, and generally have to explicitly check my subscriptions to be sure I don't miss videos. And I'm quite deliberate with avoiding ragebait and slop, and I remove stuff from my watch history if I get duped etc. That said, I have noticed a trend amongst the creators I've subscribed to that the average video length has gone up. This has been a longer term trend, but many who used to do 30-40 min videos now often to 1-1.5 hr videos. I've heard YouTube punishes people quitting a video midway, so perhaps there's something going on there too. At least for myself I often have to watch these videos over multiple sessions, and chances are there that I just forget and move on. So perhaps some compounding factors making things worse.
- bachmeier 1y agoMaybe views are simply down. I can't be the only one getting tired of the out-of-control sponsored videos. Even if you pay for YT Premium, you get hit with that crap on most of the popular channels.
- meatmanek 1y agoAnd you think everyone simply made the same decision as you on the same exact day?
- bachmeier 1y agoIt's possible that the YTers complaining about this are affected once you bring the algorithm into it.
- SoftTalker 1y agoAnecdotally I am watching less. Not because of sponsorships, but because more and more content is AI-generated slop or copied (stolen) from other channels and reposted.
- jdiff 1y agoBut we're talking about a substantial viewership drop, across a single platform (only desktop), all simultaneously on a single day. That's clearly not any sort of organic change.
- bachmeier 1y agoEverything is driven by the algorithm. You can have big changes on one day and for specific platforms, even if it's something that's been building up gradually, because that might be the day the algorithm adjusted. It's hard to talk about "this caused that to happen" if you don't know what the algorithm is doing.
- pier25 1y agoAnecdotal but my usage has been slowly dropping in the past year or two as the experience has gotten worse. First it was the terrible search results and then with shorts plaguing the whole thing.
- metalman 1y ago[flagged]
- faangguyindia 1y agoi used to watch lots of videos, but since LLM came into being i find them much faster than watching videos. Infact, i used to watch videos because they used to be more "targeted" at problem solving when i ran into any issues. but these days LLM ftw.
- the_af 1y agoHow are LLMs an alternative to videos? They are different mediums. What's your use case?
- shagie 1y agoNot OP (and I don't use it for this case), but I suspect that the instructional "how do you do X" videos that supplanted the "look up the blog post" of even longer ago. "How do you start a react application" and going to https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+do+you+start+a+react+application https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+do+you+star... (incognito or private session suggested to avoid search history getting you react application suggestions for the next several months) and watching those videos. For many people looking for a guide, they've switched to an LLM which gives them a more tailored experience.
- faangguyindia 1y agoExactly this! Not sure why i am being downvoted it seems people don't like me using LLM over Videos. But i've not watched a single "tutorial video" this year.
- the_af 1y ago(I didn't downvote you) Surely "tutorial videos" are only a tiny fraction of YouTube videos? And also, some tutorial videos cannot be replaced by a textual (or even graphical) LLM description, especially if the topic being described is visual in nature and it helps to see the other person doing it.
- izacus 1y agoInteresting, I thought it was due to absolutely horrible TV UI redesign which now shows exactly 1 and a bit of a video thumbnail on my 77" TV. Who the heck designs that.
- Insanity 1y agoHuh, I'm having a hard time interpreting what that looks like. Have a link to a photo you can share anywhere? The "1 and a bit" part is confusing.
- izacus 1y agoNot around the TV right now, but they increased the size of the thumbnails in the first row of "Recommended" content to the point where only one is visible fully. (Not unlike new Netflix UI) I might be in some A/B test tho.
- Insanity 1y agoahh, that sounds like a poor UI indeed given the screen real-estate.
- euLh7SM5HDFY 1y agohttps://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/YouTube-TV-Roku.png https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/YouTube-TV-Ro... - this is best case scenario, 2 whole thumbnails fit on the screen. And depending on category (selected on left) it might be just one - just imagine it truncated at the place right support bracket is.
- driverdan 1y agoSource: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597 https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597
- SchizoDuckie 1y agoGo complain to Youtube, where the views should be measured on the backend instead of via an API call. Does anyone realize how many missed views this implies??
- archerx 1y agoI realized this when I watched one of my friends music videos to give the extra view (they had less than 100) but the views number didn’t go up because of my ad blocker.
- SchizoDuckie 1y agoafairc sub-100 views are not counted in realtime anyway.
- reddalo 1y agoI think it was 300.
- ConfuSomu 1y agoThen it used to stop at 301 views, while the system was verifying the veracity of the views, or at least, that's what I've been told…
- archerx 1y agoWhen I watched it without the ad blocker the views went up by one. I feel like it's a lot more realtime now because I swear I see the view counter updating as I'm watching some videos.
- esafak 1y agoBecause Google still can't count that low, amirite?!
- poly2it 1y agoHow many?
- ecshafer 1y agoI am not sure why this is a bug? Youtube is tracking people, this blocks them tracking people. A side effect of a view not being counted on Youtube, is 100% Youtube's problem, and doesn't effect the user in any way.
- cluckindan 1y agoSounds like YT is trying to mobilize creators and influencers against adblocking.
- avian 1y agoI don't think YouTube needed to do anything. The change influenced creators' bottom line so they are motivated on their own to mobilize their viewers against this change.
- cluckindan 1y agoIt was YT that changed the ad delivery mechanism to prevent view counting, not adblockers.
- kllrnohj 1y agoIt was an easylist change (so adblockers) that caused the issue: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/2d39de407dc96904f00ec91b89d5fa91d29fbfa0 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/2d39de407dc96904... Whether or not you consider that an issue shrug but it's not directly YT's fault.
- mustyoshi 1y agoAds are how they get paid until they're big enough for alternative revenue generation.
- zelphirkalt 1y agoThis actually hints at a way out of the YouTube monopoly. Make creators' business model no longer work on YouTube, by blocking the tracking. Make it so that creators are forced to go to other, paid video platforms, instead of them feeding the YouTube monopoly. This might temporarily lead to a collapse in video creator business, but in the long run might result in more viable businesses for creators, without them having to push shit onto their viewers. Make videos and enjoy them being seen, or make paid content and have people pay for that, but don't try to shoehorn it into viewing videos that are accessible for anyone running a Youtube search.
- throw_m239339 1y agoWhat's the meaning of this? Is Google trying to make content creators tell their viewers not to use adblockers? I don't think it's easylist's problem here. I don't understand.
- euLh7SM5HDFY 1y agoIt was mostly panic. As in: it didn't apparently affect revenue in any way, but content creators always check view stats/graphs for their own videos to see how well each of them is doing. So sudden drop made YT the main suspect. It didn't help some changes to video visibility for "children" profiles was pushed at same time.
- slaymaker1907 1y agoThe interesting question is how/if this impacts the recommendation engine. If it does impact recommendations, then that will directly penalize channels with more adblock users.
- this_user 1y agoBut are really this many users actively using ad blockers? Presumably, a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native app that doesn't even support this. If we subtract them, then a significant share of users on browser would have to be using EasyList.
- charcircuit 1y agoThe view drop only happened for desktop views.
- Eji1700 1y agoI would suspect it affects specific channels more than others. Obviously smaller tech channels are probably hit the hardest % wise
- Workaccount2 1y agoSomething like ~30% of desktop users use ad-block. If you are tech or tech-adjacent content, it can double or triple that.
- geerlingguy 1y ago40-50% of desktop users on my channel, heh. I don't hold it against anyone. YouTube's ads are horrible, and overstuffed into videos. I use premium and know not everyone can afford it, but one concern I have is premium views are also not counted if someone still uses the adblocker while logged into YouTube premium. (So you miss out on the view and on that extra bit of premium revenue).
- miyuru 1y agoFirefox on Android supports uBlock Origin.
- drnick1 1y ago"a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native app that doesn't even support this." Laughs in NewPipe.
- pier25 1y agoSo Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers? Wouldn't surprise me if we now see a new trend of "click like, bell, and suscribe and don't forget to disable your ad blocker!". Obviously they don't care about these views since they are not generating ad revenue. Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals etc do care though.
- reddalo 1y ago>Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals Laughs in SponsorBlock
- jjice 1y agoHell, YouTube even added that feature where it'll autoskip commonly skipped section so it's basically a built in SponsorBlock at this point (no doubt helped powered by those who skip via SponsorBlock). I'm surprised I haven't seen any controversy from people who are having their sponsors pay less because of this.
- netsharc 1y agoHah, the next move will be picture-in-picture ads (whether the ad or the content will be in the box in the corner depends on the desperation... Reminds me of F1 racing coverage on a free-to-air German TV network being reduced to a letterbox..
- FinnKuhn 1y agoIn my opinion the only sponsorships that actually work are the ones that are integrated into the content. For example Linus Tech Tips wearing his clothing in his videos and using his screwdriver. For car and/or hardware channels I often see sponsors products being used throughout the video as well, which you can't skip with Sponsor block.
- StackRanker3000 1y ago
- charcircuit 1y ago>Whatever, there's no problem for user. EP is for user and not for those so called creators or site owners. It's sad to see how little sympathy there is for people other than oneself and how changes are affecting the larger ecosystem. Especially for a site as critical as YouTube to people's livelihoods. Though having said that, at the same time I'm not surprised that someone who spends their time modifying sites to remove ads and analytics to make their personal experience better at the expense of everyone else would act this way would have this kind of selfish mindset.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoYoutube could fix it by counting when the video page is loaded from the server.
- doright 1y agoI don't think they'd be interested in fixing this. I suspect YouTube is trying to create a double bind for users of adblockers by pitting them against creators' incentives. People in the thread were discussing ways of disabling uBO filters to restore view reporting.
- charcircuit 1y agoThe work to do this isn't free. YouTube already has their code working, but they don't expect browsers to be blocking arbitrary requests or injecting their own javascript into the page. These kind of breakage are not free for YouTube to fix and often YouTube is the one taking the reputational hit for their site being broken. It ultimately is antisocial behavior to be breaking other's sites even if technically they can workaround the bugs being added.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> antisocial behavior This is hard to take seriously in defense of YouTube. I suppose the most respectful answer is that I'll be willing to stop when they do.
- bArray 1y agoCounter-argument: Youtube's aggressive anti-ads campaign resulted in failed loads, videos that appear stuck, etc. The more techy people would have updated, but others were left with the choice of a buggy experience or dreadfully long ads. Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.
- shadowgovt 1y agoThis article is less about view counts dropping due to people abandoning the platform and more about view count spikes and troughs that are a consequence of the measure-countermeasure game of YouTube tweaking its code to account for ad blockers vs. ad blockers tweaking their code to account for YouTube ads. Ad blockers (especially for complex sites and data streams) are basically like using a chainsaw to remove a mosquito(1); sometimes innocuous or beneficial features get omitted too because they're too "ad-shaped" for the heuristic. (1) Anyone who thinks I'm under-selling the risks of unblocked ads has never seen the consequence of an unlucky bite from Aedes aegypti.
- sebastiennight 1y agoThis is the last thread I would ever have expected to see those little striped monsters mentioned. Not sure about the chainsaw analogy, but I guess Aedes Aegypti is a fair metaphor for the cumulative effect of the tiny daily (hourly?) annoyance of the free-with-ads model.
- shadowgovt 1y agoAnd like the mosquito, ads can sometimes give you viruses!
- PaulHoule 1y agoPlus so many ads are malware, dangerous, or scams that even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/ YouTube is one of the worst offenders for scam ads. Even today you sometimes find an ad that talks about some scary health risk and points to some ad that drones on and on for 45 minutes and if you get to the end they try to sign you up for an $80 a month subscription for some worthless supplement.
- thrance 1y agoPutting my tinfoil hat on, maybe they knew ad blockers would mess with their new implementation and expected the freak out to mount "creators" against ad blockers?
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago> I don't want views going down for creators on youtube. Agree to disagree. That's kind of the point of an ad blocker. If you want to support creators, stop blocking their ads.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoViews support the videos in the algorithm. Do you think someone like Louis Rossman, who wants to use Youtube to share his message but doesn't use YT as a business, would rather views or ad money?
- humpty-d 1y agoPresumably Louis wants to reach as many people as possible and would like to know how many people he's reaching though.
- Telaneo 1y agoI suspect his desire for people to block ads ranks higher than his desire for statistics.
- bobsmooth 1y agoRossman has a separate business to support him.
- bazmattaz 1y agoI block ads on my favourite channel but then support the guy through Patreon every month. I figure he’ll get more revenue form that than the shitty ads
- yard2010 1y agoYouTube has ads?
- tehwebguy 1y agoView counts are on borrowed time anyway, I’m sure.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Gualdrapo 1y agoYesterday I wanted to watch a video of a song which was made originally english. It was auto translating lyrics to german. I just speak some spanish and some english. Couldn't decide if I should be annoyed with it translating to a language I just know a handful of words or should be thankful because it's trying to help me learn more of it.
- Venn1 1y agoIf you're unfamiliar with the creator dashboard there is a spot reserved for notifications from YouTube. This should have been front and center last week, not buried in a creator help thread. Why wasn’t it? That's open to speculation. As someone with a small tech channel, I'm glad I was following this. If not, I would have spent the last week swapping out thumbnails and video titles, which seem about as effective as percussive maintenance. But hey, you have to try something. Well over a decade ago a gentleman by the name of Brian Brushwood said, and I'm paraphrasing, “YouTube is like working for an AI manager that never tells you what it wants but punishes you severely if you get it wrong.” Welcome to 2025.
- ScamSchoolBrian 1y agoHah! I'm so happy that quote landed with you. I'm starting to do a lot more talking and thinking about how that stuff works, so it's a thrill to see it quoted out in the wild.
- paol 1y agoI use uBo which uses easylist, and when I watch youtube videos they are marked as viewed, so this explanation does not seem likely?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoHow do you know they're marked as a view on the video?
- 827a 1y agoThe fact that a client-side change can impact reported views is wild. Its so wildly the wrong place to track views that it forces me to wonder if its an intentional & malicious decision by Google to mobilize YouTube creators against the idea of viewer privacy.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mbirth 1y agoDid we hear anything about people using ad blockers and still having YouTube's watch history enabled reporting that a watched video didn't pop up in the history?
- jsnell 1y agoThis is how it has worked for ages. If you think about it for a bit, I think you'd come up with all kinds of reasons for why this can't be done with just server-side signals. For example, how do you account for skipping over already fetched parts of the video or rewatching the same section multiple times? Or for the entire video being cached and researched? For bots downloading the video? The idea that this is some malicious anti-adblocker time bomb implanted a decade ago is preposterous.
- donmcronald 1y agoYeah. How does the client get trusted and could someone write a view amplifier that reports extra views to YouTube? I would assume it’s already being abused if they trust the client side to report views. If they’re not trusting the client, the ad blocker explanation doesn’t work. It makes no sense.
- NoSalt 1y agoAm I the only person who is confused by the anger from people who use a free service (like YouTube) or participate in a gig service (like Uber), and get upset when it doesn't go their way? Meaning, they get upset when they cannot make money off services provided by a company. Seems like entitlement to me.
- Insanity 1y agoDisagree - the services make money _from_ the users. It's a symbiotic relationship, and I totally understand the frustration. Especially when decisions are opaque and you're left guessing about what 'the platform' is doing.
- mtrovo 1y agoLol honestly, not sure how they can be compared. Uber is a shitty proposition in any way and is mostly a way for us to get easy access to cheap labor. Nobody ever got rich driving for Uber. There's no way you can say the same about YouTube, the value proposition is quite good and it leveled the field in a way traditional media would never do, just think for a moment what's the chance of seeing someone like MrBeast surging as a TV personality.
- bobsmooth 1y agoYes. People feel entitled to free shit and refuse to pay even with their attention.
- brokenmachine 1y agoWithout creators, what videos would youtube be featuring?
- NoSalt 1y agoMaybe the creators should pay a fee if they want people to see their videos.
- devinprater 1y agoDon't forget to like, subscribe, hype, hit the bell, and turn off your adblocker! Thankfully I think Sponsorblock has a section for those points in the videos.
- xandrius 1y agoNever mention that word, the fewer the people who know about it the better. It's one of my favourite things in my online life xD
- jenadine 1y ago> the fewer the people who know about it the better. Don't you need more people using it so they can flag the sections?
- moffkalast 1y agoNow that you mention it, I sure haven't heard one of these annoying ass lines in a while, people really do flag these sections.
- kjuulh 1y agoYouTube even has a feature now that if you skip, it will skip over sections that other people skip to. Which in practice does the same thing as sponsorblock, except that you have to press skip ;)
- MaxikCZ 1y agoTheres always that bit of manufactured friction.. Yes, I can hide shorts, but I have to do it every 20 days, no way to hide them for good. Unless, ofc, I use extension. No wonder Google tries to end extension freedom...
- moolcool 1y agoYouTube showed me the same phishing ads depicting an AI version of the Canadian Prime Minister. Why should I not filter ads from a provider who is OK with people stealing from me?
- tomrod 1y agoMorally, you should filter ads. If ads could be relevant, vetted, non-intrusive, and ancillary to the experience, all actions that are required to be performed by the ad platform Youtube/Google, then you wouldn't have much moral leg to stand on. Due to YT/G's moral failings to host a sufficiently serviceable platform for their product, your eyes, then your only real recourse outside adblocking is to buy a device and put on a separate network with no reasonably important traffic. I don't lose one bit of sleep knowing that adblocking prevents Google from externalizing their curation costs onto me.
- Workaccount2 1y agoNo, no, no. Morally you should stop using youtube. It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous. When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
- tomrod 1y ago> Morally you should stop using youtube > When you don't like something, you don't use it. Morality in your approach is absolute, and it represents the best possible outcome. For all others stuck in the morass, you must navigate the BATNA.
- batch12 1y agoIs it morally wrong to fast forward ads on your TV or mute the volume?
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- mock-possum 1y agoI wonder if YouTube/creators can tell at what point viewers abandon the video - and I wonder if they can tell how many times I’ve opened a video, been greeted with another grating Liberty Mutual ad, and immediately closed the tab.
- trilogic 1y agoYouTube is history, last time I used it was covid time. Blame AI if you want but time don´t stop for anything. That´s it and that´s all.
- LeicaLatte 1y agoYouTube's messaging is the more frustrating part about all this. Panic might drive more creators toward direct monetization, that might just be the better net outcome.
- johnklos 1y ago"Because you're using adblockers, we're going to punish them." Sounds about right for Google.
- mindaslab 1y agoI use Newpipe on my mobile, and Adnauseum + Firefox on my laptop to escape from Youtube Ad's.
- stronglikedan 1y agoTechLinked's take is pretty good (as usual): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ5pATTvc2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ5pATTvc2o
- duxup 1y agoThe difference where they see dramatic PC views dropping and phone and tablets remaining steady and the quote do seem to hint at ad blockers being the cause. But it's not at all clear to me 100% if this really is an ad blocker problem / there's not any real proof. Meanwhile I'm getting another add for "stuck poop" and scam health products ...
- teekert 1y agoAh yes because they can’t measure streams with blocked ads. And what’s up with that “subscribing”, never saw the use for it, yet many (respectful, great) creators beg for it. I almost feel bad for not using the feature. I mean, I’m watching the content, that must count for something?
- chatmasta 1y agoOff-topic, but this 9to5google blog is the first I’ve seen “top comment” embedded inline with the blog post. That’s really cool. It’s more like how you’d comment on a google doc rather than threaded conversations appended to the end of it. I’d like to see more exploration of this UX…
- georgeofjungle7 1y agoKinda ironic — the tools meant to block ads end up hurting creators by messing with view counts.
- flohofwoe 1y agoI don't think it's a counting issue but that the various experiments that YouTube did recently to block adblockers are causing people with adblockers to leave the page early before the video starts playing, because they are greated with infinite loading spinners, incomplete page loads or in the best case 10 second delays until the video starts. I happily watch the embedded ad-segments of YouTubers, but not the aggressive scam/slop-ads that YouTube puts before the actual videos thank-you-very-much.
- spankalee 1y agoIt seems like this statement from YouTube[1] and this Github issue (referenced by granzymes[2]) have key information being missed by a lot of commenters. From YouTube: > Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts. Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion of users utilizing such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic related to updates to these tools. Quoting granzymes: > According to the GitHub issue, YouTube didn’t change anything. There are two endpoints that can be used to attribute a view. One is called multiple times throughout a video playback and has been in the easylist privacy filter for years. The other is called at the start of a playback, and was just added to the list (the timing lines up with the reports of view drops from tech YouTubers). Source from the GitHub issue for easylist: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3299750332 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme... [1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597 https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45277768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45277768
- j-bos 1y agoSeems like a balanced approach, people can watch videos with adblockers but it won't count towards youtube's public facing metrics.
- john_moscow 1y agoThis looks like an additional incentive to channel owners to somehow convince their audience against the ad blocker use. Makes sense, better than trying to win an unwinnable arms race against the blocker maintainers.
- Krasnol 1y agoI hope by admitting defeat and shifting the blame for the numbers to creators, they also stop this ridiculous fight with adblockers. I'm sure they could allocate the investments in this elsewhere.
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- bitpush 1y agoIts frustrating to see how HN commenters just jumped onto conclusions without even doing any bit of critical thinking. The top comment on HN says > So Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers? When even a cursory look would show that if you block stats-aggregation endpoint .. stats go down. Sometimes it is occam's razor.
- philjohn 1y agoThe question becomes ... why are they relying on client side counting of views? They know how much of a video they've distributed to a given client on the backend after all (YouTube does buffer, but not the whole video).
- arccy 1y agobecause distributed CDN means it doesn't necessarily hit a backend?
- spankalee 1y agoYouTube has a crazy CDN. They very well might not be able easily attribute exactly what the client requests to specific accounts.
- gregschlom 1y agoNot necessarily. Youtube makes extensive use of third-party CDNs. A lot of the videos aren't coming from their servers at all. I believe that's also why it's so hard for them to embed the ad directly in the video. They instead having to rely on splicing the ads client-side, which makes it possible to block. Disclaimer: I work at Google but not at Youtube and have no idea how things work really. This is just based on some info I read online.
- therein 1y agoYeah they give caching boxes to ISPs as far as I can tell, and videos are served from there if they exist in that cache. About 8-10 years ago, they had an issue with that and they'd serve you the wrong video because your neighbor had watched something and it was in the cache. Literally title of the video wouldn't match what is playing.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoLengths Google are going to fighting ad blockers when really it's a small niche of people who can't stand to use their platform without one is getting silly and this feels like a tactic to try and push the onus on making people turn them off on their favorite youtubers
- arccy 1y agois it a small niche when the youtube creators can see it in their stats and are panicking?
- th0ma5 1y agoIt seems politically inconceivable to discuss advertisement network security, ethics, consolidation, negligence, etc etc. I cannot more strongly recommend running an ad blocker.
- dyauspitr 1y agoYouTube finally was able to block me from using ublock (and all the workarounds) a couple of weeks ago. This has finally prompted me to shift from Chrome to Firefox.
- drnick1 1y agoNo, I won't turn my ad blocker off. In fact, I go further and use uMatrix to block ALL third party content by default on ALL websites (uBlock in advanced mode can also do this). That's on top of an aggressive DNS-level blacklists targeting ads and trackers. Some manual adjustment to allow CDN on some websites is needed, but 95% of the cruft is left out. That cruft is usually malware in a broad sense: ads, trackers, embedded Youtube videos that seem benign but allow Google to follow users across the Internet, etc.
- roscas 1y agoBut how many people know how to do that? Almost zero. So it is up to us tech guys to teach them about the danger it is to open a single web site without protection. Several levels of protection. Including stop being abused by Windows, switch to Linux. But there is so much more to do, that it is very hard to teach and make people do it. Everything is created to abuse you, and most of people don't have a single clue about what is going on.
- AlgebraFox 1y agouMatrix is not maintained. Use NoScript or uBlockOrigin.
- ranguna 1y agoThose are not as good as umatrix unfortunately
- manbash 1y agoMaybe a "view", however YT defines it, is a poor metric? It doesn't show engagement and it's time for YTers to have better means for analytics. I have an Android TV device, and YT has been so horrible with its constant ads popping up, that I have to put it on MUTE to prevent any further brainrot. I wonder when they're going to blame me muting my TV and harm their viewership. Or maybe they will just prevent me from being able to mute it.
- bl4kers 1y agoSmartTube is way better and free: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
- Curzel 1y agoWAN Show is going to be wild this week
- elAhmo 1y agoI have been contacted more than once by close family members because of ads that look like system prompts inside Youtube feeds asking to delete photos, free up space, clear phone from viruses, and this is not even including AI slop and porn stuff. Blocking ads is the way to go, and I am sure creators will survive this.
- everyone 1y agoI'm so sick of tech companies choosing to build something a certain weird way and then in the media blaming something else.
- eurekin 1y agoOh how incredibly convenient. Plus, making ad blocking a channel owner's problem is kind of genius.
- Acrobatic_Road 1y agoCould we test this theory with an unlisted video?
- The_President 1y agoWe're ripe for a situation where YouTube subpoenas ISPs MPAA 2.0 style over their users habitually accessing video and audio content streams without paying or validating through their ad chain. Google has every way from Sunday to identify users very accurately and I see it being an option on the table to ban accounts to the name, and potentially seek damages. RIAA did it for MP3s, MPAA for video content; rule of thirds? Ultimately most sane people see ads as vomitpuke and this will continue to be a contention.
- thousand_nights 1y agoi've noticed recently youtube added a "most commonly skipped to" marker on their videos which is very useful when watching on my TV which doesn't support sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments more and more youtube creators seem to be integrating their sponsors in their videos in a way where if you skip it you miss an integral part and i do wonder if this is youtube's way of fighting against being left out, but then again, i don't know shit, just an interesting observation
- drozycki 1y agoHave you looked at https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV ?
- belorn 1y agoI would find it exceptional interesting if youtube moved away from the concept of providing content for free without an expectation for repayment, to a model of selling a service. Selling a services is covered under a very different kind of laws, and where I live, tax law, while giving away content for free with ads has their own little exception carved out for it. It is similar to how phone companies had to charge 0.1 cent for phones, rather than advertise it as gratis. The law said that companies could not advertise a product as being gratis if they also expect the customer to pay for it in terms of a binding contract with a provider, but they can sell the phone for any amount greater than 0 and have it as a combined sale with a binding contract. Thus companies changed how they sold their product, and also had to inform the customer of the binding terms (and if I recall, expected total cost) in the advertisements. As one politician put it; You can't put a sale tax on services supported through advertisement since the customer may watch the full add, half the add, or none of it. Since the tax office can't determine how much of an add, if anything, is watched, there is no value in the exchange for which to tax.
- brikym 1y agoNo problem YouTube. I'd rather give my data to the browser extension which brings back dislikes.
- throwmeaway222 1y agoGreat, finally a thread Youtube employees might be looking at. Ever since the election you guys RAMPED up the ads, please drop it back down. It's becoming unbearable to get a 50 minute podcast AD every 5 minutes of video I watch when I'm shingling a roof and my phone is in the truck. There HAS to be some limits here.
- thetrb 1y agoDo you think a random Youtube employee makes that decision and can just drop it lower?
- throwmeaway222 1y agoNo, but feedback goes into the machine in odd ways. This has a 1000x higher factor of being considered and thought of more than any other forum.
- pluto_modadic 1y agoI don't think the grunts get to decide. youtube is now governed by the dude who used to run AdSense, and has a mandate to fix revenue losses.
- sojournerc 1y agoFirefox and ublock origin, or... Just pay for it
- desolate_muffin 1y agoIf you use YouTube this much, just get YT Premium maybe? It comes with YT Music, which seems like 70% as good as Spotify to me.
- citizenpaul 1y agoLet me guess they are not blaming the terrible ad experience that cause people to use ad blockers?
- meinersbur 1y agoFrom the GitHub issue it becomes clear that blocking happens by the EasyPrivacy blocklist. The blocked URL youtube.com/api/stats/atr is/can also be used for tracking users, this is why some are arguing that it legitimately on that blocklist. The tracking not malicious. YouTube has a legitimate interest to verify views, e.g. to recommend popular videos to others. If a view counter was increased by just invoking an API, view counts could be manipulated easily. Also see the video [1] from ... 13 years ago ... so it might be slighly outdated. Just slightly. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI
- cakealert 1y agoWhat is the technical challenge behind stealthily blocking ads? Making the backend unaware if ads are actually being seen or not - just fetched. This may even serve as some accelerationism for invasive web tech where ad middlemen may resort to doing render checks. The invasive practice may with low likelihood advance some web technologies into blocking such measures.
- Bilal_io 1y agoNot sure what the technical challenge here is either. I use an ad blocker and I assumed YouTube already counted my view, since the video can be found in my YouTube history.
- Macha 1y agoI imagine watch history view tracking and view count view tracking and possibly even ad impression view tracking are three disconnected systems. Google is still going to update your history view even if it thinks you're a bot so you don't know you're being filtered out for example. The data to power that UI can also be partitioned by user while the ad and view count data needs to be aggregated performantly across large numbers of users in different slices. On the other hand your watch history doesn't keep multiple entries if you watch the same video multiple times in a day (say a music video on loop) but does want to charge for each ad impression seperately.
- pluto_modadic 1y agorender the video twice -> gotcha, the GPU needs to run TPM code and knows where the buffer will go.
- tithos 1y agoI’ve been using Brave browser to watch YouTube for years. Haven’t seen one ad in years. I’m probably part of the problem
- tracker1 1y agoHeaven forbid Google/Youtube actually count/measure the streaming output themselves. Same goes to CBS/Paramount whose whole service breaks (on some streams) when using a pihole.
- officehero 1y agoHordes of people skipping ads is a reasonable price to pay for market monopoly.
- cyberax 1y agoDear Youtube. Please, just give us an API to get the video data for the _premium_ subscribers. I can use my own viewer then, instead of relying on your ever-worsening website. It's win-win. I keep paying you, you get accurate view counts.
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- josalhor 1y agoSeems almost incredible that no one is pointing out the YT incentives behind this. YT has a war on two fronts: ad-blockers and in-video sponsors. That is because in-video sponsors don't get YT money, so they want to be in the monetization loop. So, by decreasing the views, sponsors are now less attracted to in-video sponsorships and YT ads look better in comparison.
- fishbacon 1y agoThis is completely unspoken by most of the youtube channels that are making videos about this. The reason they are worried is not because of the algorithm or vanity. Especially for channels like LTT it is economical. They get the vast majority of their money from getting a lot of views. The interesting thing here is that since youtube did not change anything, it is actually adblockers successfully making sponsored content less viable. Something youtube has been trying to, at least on premium ([ytp]), where I get a little "Jump ahead" button on all platforms when sponcon is detected (in aggregate people skipping forward, it also does it for intros and similar). I wonder if it will have a measurable impact on placement in the algorithm for channels like RLM that are seeing the drop. But rely on crowdfunding and youtube ads.
- gempir 1y agoWith the risk of sounding like a fanboy. LTT makes 9.2% of their revenue on In-Video Sponsors and 12.5% on Sponsored Projects (which are like full videos for a sponsor) I wouldn't call this the vast majority https://youtu.be/GeCP-0nuziE?si=2ob1AixcwGZwR4VC&t=719 https://youtu.be/GeCP-0nuziE?si=2ob1AixcwGZwR4VC&t=719
- callamdelaney 1y agoA huge % of that overall revenue figure is their e-commerce business which will be relatively low margin. They are making roughly double in sponsored videos and sponsored projects than with adsense. It makese sense that some of that sponsor revenue is tied to youtube viewcounts.
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- brokenmachine 1y agoEvery now and then I have accessed youtube on a PC with no adblocker. It's absolutely dire. I mean, ridiculously bad. Unbearable. If it's that or nothing, it's the easiest of choices.
- Havoc 1y agoSame with on phone. Pretty much always just close it. I’d rather just not have yt than deal with their ads with a sprinkling of content on to approach
- gethly 1y agoIf it dies, it dies. - Ivan Drago
- internet_points 1y agoThey're streaming all that data to each client, can't youtube notice that? Why are they dependent on a separate endpoint for the client to send to?
- romanovcode 1y ago> Why are they dependent on a separate endpoint for the client to send to? So they can turn video content-creators against those who use ad-blockers. I do not get how is this not obvious.
- jsiepkes 1y agoGoogle must have thought: "Never let a good crisis go to waste.".
- esskay 1y agoI think the funniest thing about this whole mess is Youtubers asking their viewers to unblock it. Or in LTT's case, consistently banging on about it like it affects their audience - the audience really do not care (nor should they need to), it has no bearing on them.
- ik83 1y agoCould the move from Windows 10 EOL to 11 have something to with it? Whemn people run Edge for the first time does it turn on or reccomend the builtin adblocker setting?
- Razengan 1y agoThe advertisement industry is one of the worst plagues of current human civilization. Just imagine an individual person doing the things that advertisers do: Constantly follow you around, demand your attention, gaslight you, pester you to give him/her your money, and snoop through your private life so he/she can do those things even more. Ads condition us to normalize the worst attributes that nobody tolerates on a personal scale. A constant mental barrage, waste of time, defacement of public space, and often thinly veiling misinformation... And worst of all, it's an Emperor with no Clothes: Almost nobody goes out to buy a product because of an ad. In fact, the more frequently someone sees ads for something that they don't already buy on their own anyway, it's more likely to permanently turn them OFF from the product! (Fuck you Grammarly!) If I don't buy your shit after the first 3-5 times I skipped your shitty ad, I'm not going to buy it. In fact, shoving your ad in my face even more just makes certain that I NEVER buy it. … Ads ARE the problem: Everything else is a symptom. Society needs to figure out a better mechanism of promoting products: Empower search systems and stop gimping filters, to let people find exactly what they want. Let people TELL companies what they like instead of spying on people to figure what they want: You can't ever get it right anyway!
- ricardo81 1y agoWith Google aggressively blocking bots on search, likely due to AI scraping- it wouldn't surprise me that the view counts are also affected by bot detection.
- jack_pp 1y agoI'm still baffled that youtube doesn't simply splice ads in the video stream directly and relying on client insertion through API endpoints which can be blocked. If they did video injection on the backend they wouldn't have any problems with ad blockers, it would literally be impossible to block. Even if the client would recognise ads somehow the server can just decide to serve the video of the ad while ignoring any seeking from the client so at best the client can mute the ad.
- callamdelaney 1y agoThere would likely be huge processing overhead for splicing ads into a stream, right?
- jack_pp 1y agoNo, you can concatenate video segments with basically zero cost if the segments are encoded using the same encoding parameters and afaik youtube already re-encodes user videos.
- dandellion 1y agoWhat's to prevent ad-blockers from just skipping ahead when there's an ad playing?
- jack_pp 1y agoSimply refuse to send original stream packets / ignore seek requests by the client until the ad duration has passed. Sure you could pause / mute / alt tab for that duration but the point is being annoying so people buy premium if they hate ads so much.
- Lucasoato 1y agoDon't give them ideas! Also I think that there's a non trivial engineering effort required to inject ads into the video stream as well, for example with bookmarks and so on. Probably they'll do it but as last resort.
- QuantumNoodle 1y agoCall me pessimistic, but it is in YouTube's interest to have creators complain and be effected. Then Google and YouTube "solves this problem" with a drastic measure that tries to kill ad blocking content on the platform. The drastic measure will be viewed hostile but they will point to "complaining creators whose monetization is affected". Even Linus Tech Tips mentioned view counts are off but not revenue count.
- 01jonny01 1y agoA lot of heat here, but there are two separate issues getting conflated: Attribution mechanism: YouTube's public "view" appears to come from a client endpoint distinct from ad/monetization events. EasyList recently started blocking on of those endpoints that will naturally drop public views from desktop users with blockers, even if the video still streams. That's not a shadow change by YouTube so much as an external filter change. Metric design: Having one ambiguous "view" counter that's used for everything (social proof, discovery, sponsor decks) guarantees drama when any attribution channel breaks. If YouTube wants less speculation and paranoia on this issue, the fix isn’t "evade EasyList", but to separate metrics. I think plays should be public and keep monetized views in the Studio. Source: I've done lots of testing on skipvids.com whilst using ad blockers and I can confirm they can effect view count