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It 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

It 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 ago
Seems like a balanced approach, people can watch videos with adblockers but it won't count towards youtube's public facing metrics.
- john_moscow 1y ago
  This 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 ago
    I 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.
  - geerlingguy 1y ago
    I'd argue use the adblocker, but if you want to ensure views are counted, add an exception for the URL in question, for example [1]. [1] https://github.com/Scrxtchy/ReturnYoutubeView https://github.com/Scrxtchy/ReturnYoutubeView
  - NoahZuniga 1y ago
    But this is not Google's doing? Adblockers are not sending requests to increment the view count, so yt doesn't increment the view count.
- kulahan 1y ago
  Makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a view counter. People want to know how much it was watched, not how much money YouTube made off of it. They’re pretending people care about their internal metrics, when people really do not. Maybe the creator, but again, they’re probably also just interested in eyeball counts. It’s dumb in almost every direction I can imagine. The only one that makes sense is if you’re simply at war with adblockers and you’re trying to turn the public tide of opinion against them.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    Especially in terms of baked in ads from the creator, whose terms are based on views, separate from YouTube revenue.
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    The view counter isn't for you. It's merely a convenience that you're showed it at all. View counts are for monetization. If a view isn't monetized, why count it? Purely foe vanity? You, a viewer, are nearly irrelevant to YouTube. You exist purely as a revenue source and no other reason. View metrics and monetization are what count, not your subjective experience. YouTube does not care one tiny bit about how much you like the site or interface or what you think of the view counter.
    - ianbutler 1y ago
      It's for sponsors too so yes a total view count is important since creators use views to negotiate deals. I have adblock[0], but I still watch sponsor spots. 0: I just side step this entirely these days by paying for premium.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - nandomrumber 1y ago
        Why should sponsor care sent viewers who block their advertising? I’ve been a premium member for about 15 years.
- CAP_NET_ADMIN 1y ago
  You can still have in-video sponsor spots, in fact, most of the creators have them. Viewership is an important metric to those sponsors.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Use the SponsorBlock extension to autoskip in-video ads.
- jsnell 1y ago
  The comment you replied to explained that nothing was changed on the YouTube side. This was an adblocker choosing to start block a non-ads, non-tracking, samesite API call that had probably been in place for like a decade. So it's quite amazing that even with that context you still managed to hijack that into a discussion about the merits of what Google did with this "balanced approach" bait. This isn't a balanced approach! It's not an approach at all! It is the ad blocker willfully choosing to break totally normal and benign site functionality. Google had no agency in this, and doesn't have much recourse.
  - speff 1y ago
    The comments that really get me are the ones putting the onus onto Youtube to refactor their view approach to "just" count it from the backend. Rhymes with consumers asking gamedevs to add multiplayer to games.
  - kasabali 1y ago
    EasyList is the ad blocking list. EasyPrivacy is tracker blocking list. The culprit was in EasyPrivacy (tracker) list, not EasyList (ad blocking).
- granzymes 1y ago
  There is no balancing happening here. YouTube needs to make an API call to attribute a view to a video, and easylist started blocking that API call. YouTube was perfectly happy a month ago to count views for users that were blocking ads, and presumably remains happy to do so. The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API.
  - justinclift 1y ago
    > The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API. Wonder if there's a good reason they started blocking that API?
  - hananova 1y ago
    The do not need an API call, obviously they know that the video is being watched, because it's being streamed.
    - granzymes 1y ago
      YouTube serves videos from CDNs, many of which it does not own.
      - moffkalast 1y ago
        I missed the part where that's our problem.
        zeroimpl 1y ago
        Metrics from the CDN will be wildly inaccurate. Also downloading a video isn’t the same as watching it.
granzymes 1y ago
Thanks for lifting up my comment. It’s amazing how quickly people want to point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in. Someone even relied to your comment implicitly assuming that YouTube cares about conditioning views on whether a user has an adblocker enabled when what happened is easylist added the view counter API to their privacy list.
- shimbucktwo 1y ago
  At this point the "peanut gallery" of the web is essentially just a firehose of misinformation, best avoided. Not two minutes before this I read some comment confidently stating that the last time Apple offered iPhone leather cases was for iPhone 11.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    Accurate but I don’t think it’s new. It’s a property of human intelligence called “hallucination” where facts are made up. I don’t know about this leather thing but the participants on non-technical forums like Reddit or HN frequently do this.
    - yndoendo 1y ago
      I wouldn't call it hallucination. It would be coherent stories that fit their belief system and allows them to short their brain. [0] Coherent stories that are blatantly false are great tools in misinformation and social engineering. [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    Why not just look for sources for factual information instead of avoiding all of it?
    - irjustin 1y ago
jasonlotito 1y ago
The latest comment suggests otherwise: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3305403844 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme... From the comment: The recent YT issues aren't related to Easylist/Easyprivacy. Edit: To be fair, your comment came before this comment. I'm merely posting the latest update.

j-bos 1y ago

Seems like a balanced approach, people can watch videos with adblockers but it won't count towards youtube's public facing metrics.

john_moscow 1y ago
This 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 ago
  I 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.
- geerlingguy 1y ago
  I'd argue use the adblocker, but if you want to ensure views are counted, add an exception for the URL in question, for example [1]. [1] https://github.com/Scrxtchy/ReturnYoutubeView https://github.com/Scrxtchy/ReturnYoutubeView
- NoahZuniga 1y ago
  But this is not Google's doing? Adblockers are not sending requests to increment the view count, so yt doesn't increment the view count.
kulahan 1y ago
Makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a view counter. People want to know how much it was watched, not how much money YouTube made off of it. They’re pretending people care about their internal metrics, when people really do not. Maybe the creator, but again, they’re probably also just interested in eyeball counts. It’s dumb in almost every direction I can imagine. The only one that makes sense is if you’re simply at war with adblockers and you’re trying to turn the public tide of opinion against them.
- tracker1 1y ago
  Especially in terms of baked in ads from the creator, whose terms are based on views, separate from YouTube revenue.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  The view counter isn't for you. It's merely a convenience that you're showed it at all. View counts are for monetization. If a view isn't monetized, why count it? Purely foe vanity? You, a viewer, are nearly irrelevant to YouTube. You exist purely as a revenue source and no other reason. View metrics and monetization are what count, not your subjective experience. YouTube does not care one tiny bit about how much you like the site or interface or what you think of the view counter.
  - ianbutler 1y ago
    It's for sponsors too so yes a total view count is important since creators use views to negotiate deals. I have adblock[0], but I still watch sponsor spots. 0: I just side step this entirely these days by paying for premium.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - nandomrumber 1y ago
      Why should sponsor care sent viewers who block their advertising? I’ve been a premium member for about 15 years.
CAP_NET_ADMIN 1y ago
You can still have in-video sponsor spots, in fact, most of the creators have them. Viewership is an important metric to those sponsors.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Use the SponsorBlock extension to autoskip in-video ads.
jsnell 1y ago
The comment you replied to explained that nothing was changed on the YouTube side. This was an adblocker choosing to start block a non-ads, non-tracking, samesite API call that had probably been in place for like a decade. So it's quite amazing that even with that context you still managed to hijack that into a discussion about the merits of what Google did with this "balanced approach" bait. This isn't a balanced approach! It's not an approach at all! It is the ad blocker willfully choosing to break totally normal and benign site functionality. Google had no agency in this, and doesn't have much recourse.
- speff 1y ago
  The comments that really get me are the ones putting the onus onto Youtube to refactor their view approach to "just" count it from the backend. Rhymes with consumers asking gamedevs to add multiplayer to games.
- kasabali 1y ago
  EasyList is the ad blocking list. EasyPrivacy is tracker blocking list. The culprit was in EasyPrivacy (tracker) list, not EasyList (ad blocking).
granzymes 1y ago
There is no balancing happening here. YouTube needs to make an API call to attribute a view to a video, and easylist started blocking that API call. YouTube was perfectly happy a month ago to count views for users that were blocking ads, and presumably remains happy to do so. The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API.
- justinclift 1y ago
  > The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API. Wonder if there's a good reason they started blocking that API?
- hananova 1y ago
  The do not need an API call, obviously they know that the video is being watched, because it's being streamed.
  - granzymes 1y ago
    YouTube serves videos from CDNs, many of which it does not own.
    - moffkalast 1y ago
      I missed the part where that's our problem.
      - zeroimpl 1y ago
        Metrics from the CDN will be wildly inaccurate. Also downloading a video isn’t the same as watching it.

granzymes 1y ago

Thanks for lifting up my comment. It’s amazing how quickly people want to point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in. Someone even relied to your comment implicitly assuming that YouTube cares about conditioning views on whether a user has an adblocker enabled when what happened is easylist added the view counter API to their privacy list.

shimbucktwo 1y ago
At this point the "peanut gallery" of the web is essentially just a firehose of misinformation, best avoided. Not two minutes before this I read some comment confidently stating that the last time Apple offered iPhone leather cases was for iPhone 11.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  Accurate but I don’t think it’s new. It’s a property of human intelligence called “hallucination” where facts are made up. I don’t know about this leather thing but the participants on non-technical forums like Reddit or HN frequently do this.
  - yndoendo 1y ago
    I wouldn't call it hallucination. It would be coherent stories that fit their belief system and allows them to short their brain. [0] Coherent stories that are blatantly false are great tools in misinformation and social engineering. [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  Why not just look for sources for factual information instead of avoiding all of it?
  - irjustin 1y ago

jasonlotito 1y ago

The latest comment suggests otherwise: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3305403844 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme... From the comment: The recent YT issues aren't related to Easylist/Easyprivacy. Edit: To be fair, your comment came before this comment. I'm merely posting the latest update.