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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

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
    To be fair it's mental effort that you now have to expend when you didn't before. I stopped reading the news because it just became too tiring. Not saying it's right or wrong. It's just - I understand.
    - autoexec 1y ago
      I don't think there was ever a time when critical thinking and fact checking wasn't needed. Nobody has the time to do deep dives into everything, but the more important something is to you, or the more likely it is to impact your life the more it's worth investing the time it takes to do a couple web searches. Today CNN says that Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has skin cancer. Is that true? Damned if I know. Will I spend the time trying to verify that? Nope.
      - SchemaLoad 1y ago
        The speed and spread of nonsense is accelerating. Within a day the story about youtube view counts spread with hundreds of angry comments about youtube and enshitification. People are getting ragebaited repeatedly on a scale that is new. Not that misinformation in general is new
        bethekidyouwant 1y ago
        I’m not sure about that is there’s something that could’ve happened in the 60s that is so oddly technical, yet understood by millions of people? that it could be misinterpreted and spread like this: add block users mistaken as bots? It would just sound like gobbledygook to someone in the 1960s.
        brookst 1y ago
        Nonsense is just a subset of information; the speed of information is absolutely accelerating.
      - cm2187 1y ago
        I think the idea that newspapers and TV were ever honest is an illusion. I remember my parents and grandparents ranting about the lies published by major newspapers in the 80s and 90s either on topics or people they knew. We tend to forget the bad things in distant past, particularly a past we haven’t lived through. I don’t think news sources are worse today. They were always bad.
- NoPicklez 1y ago
  God forbit someone makes a mistake
apercu 1y ago
YouTube immediately pointed fingers at creators by saying that certain audiences are more likely to use ad blockers. :)
- paxys 1y ago
  That's not pointing fingers but an objective fact. Technical audiences are more likely to use adblockers than the general population. If your channel caters to them you will be disproportionately affected.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    This makes sense in principle, but is not really what this is primarily about. Or at least I'm not aware of such excessive disparities, and haven't heard this being the primary angle. Consider Charlie (penguinz0 / MoistCritikal). Hardly a techtuber. Despite this, he has seen a drop in computer-originating views to the tune of 1.4M (avg, eyeballed) -> 800K (avg, eyeballed): https://youtu.be/8FUJwXeuCGc?t=290 https://youtu.be/8FUJwXeuCGc?t=290 Lots of people use adblockers, sure, even those not terminally online and tech enthusiast. But to have nearly half the (computer-originating) views evaporate? https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users Even from that perspective though, what would be the dominant effect then is the share of computer-originating views compared to other origins, rather than a disparity in adblock use habits for the given audience.
    - MichaelZuo 1y ago
      It seems pretty likely for well over half for a channel like that to use ad blockers.
    - Workaccount2 1y ago
      Tech adjacent has similar levels of ad blocking as tech. If it's mostly people who internet a lot on a PC in your audience, expect a lot of ad blocking. Back in the day a gaming forum I was part of revealed that 85% of users were ad-blocking. The forum had a few banner ads.
    - 1y ago
taurath 1y ago
> point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in YouTube monetizes based on view count. They also send the data to the client. That client data is in anyway involved, and could be blocked, is YouTube’s design problem.
- Konnstann 1y ago
  A number of YouTubers have made the claim that their views were affected but not revenue, so it seems like the monetization is based on ad-watching views at least.
  - hypeatei 1y ago
    Couldn't that affect third party sponsorships, though? Both getting them and reporting numbers to existing ones?
    - Intralexical 1y ago
      Presumably, it would affect that, and also long-term channel growth. Which would be dastardly if it were intentional, because it would basically cull the platform of channels who voice support for ad blocking. I wonder if CTR was affected. Could one of the affected channels could have detected that not adding up? I guess it was probably already blocked for privacy. Maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas. Interestingly, anybody can now measure what percentage of any channel's viewers run ad blockers, by using publicly available data on how much their views dropped during this period.
  - Intralexical 1y ago
    The entire way this issue was figured out was because it only affected desktop views that weren't monetized to begin with, which the guy in the linked video guessed meant adblockers. If the monetization weren't limited to ad-watching views, we'd probably still be trying to figure out what happened.
  - taurath 1y ago
    Well at least people's primary source of income isn't hidden behind a black box by corporate overlords or anything
Intralexical 1y ago
If Dirty Stan spends an hour making guests uncomfortable at your house, some of those guests might come to think of you as a bad host even though Stan's behavior was the issue. I think it's reasonable to attribute moral responsibility to the entity that owns and has the most control over the platform, even if the technical details aren't quite so simple. Doubly so in this case since YouTube is a profitable business. Given [0], it sounds like this bug with view counts is a direct result of YouTube choosing to start an arms race against users who run ad blockers. [0]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3297246128 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

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
  To be fair it's mental effort that you now have to expend when you didn't before. I stopped reading the news because it just became too tiring. Not saying it's right or wrong. It's just - I understand.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    I don't think there was ever a time when critical thinking and fact checking wasn't needed. Nobody has the time to do deep dives into everything, but the more important something is to you, or the more likely it is to impact your life the more it's worth investing the time it takes to do a couple web searches. Today CNN says that Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has skin cancer. Is that true? Damned if I know. Will I spend the time trying to verify that? Nope.
    - SchemaLoad 1y ago
      The speed and spread of nonsense is accelerating. Within a day the story about youtube view counts spread with hundreds of angry comments about youtube and enshitification. People are getting ragebaited repeatedly on a scale that is new. Not that misinformation in general is new
      - bethekidyouwant 1y ago
        I’m not sure about that is there’s something that could’ve happened in the 60s that is so oddly technical, yet understood by millions of people? that it could be misinterpreted and spread like this: add block users mistaken as bots? It would just sound like gobbledygook to someone in the 1960s.
      - brookst 1y ago
        Nonsense is just a subset of information; the speed of information is absolutely accelerating.
    - cm2187 1y ago
      I think the idea that newspapers and TV were ever honest is an illusion. I remember my parents and grandparents ranting about the lies published by major newspapers in the 80s and 90s either on topics or people they knew. We tend to forget the bad things in distant past, particularly a past we haven’t lived through. I don’t think news sources are worse today. They were always bad.
NoPicklez 1y ago
God forbit someone makes a mistake

apercu 1y ago

YouTube immediately pointed fingers at creators by saying that certain audiences are more likely to use ad blockers. :)

paxys 1y ago
That's not pointing fingers but an objective fact. Technical audiences are more likely to use adblockers than the general population. If your channel caters to them you will be disproportionately affected.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  This makes sense in principle, but is not really what this is primarily about. Or at least I'm not aware of such excessive disparities, and haven't heard this being the primary angle. Consider Charlie (penguinz0 / MoistCritikal). Hardly a techtuber. Despite this, he has seen a drop in computer-originating views to the tune of 1.4M (avg, eyeballed) -> 800K (avg, eyeballed): https://youtu.be/8FUJwXeuCGc?t=290 https://youtu.be/8FUJwXeuCGc?t=290 Lots of people use adblockers, sure, even those not terminally online and tech enthusiast. But to have nearly half the (computer-originating) views evaporate? https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users Even from that perspective though, what would be the dominant effect then is the share of computer-originating views compared to other origins, rather than a disparity in adblock use habits for the given audience.
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    It seems pretty likely for well over half for a channel like that to use ad blockers.
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    Tech adjacent has similar levels of ad blocking as tech. If it's mostly people who internet a lot on a PC in your audience, expect a lot of ad blocking. Back in the day a gaming forum I was part of revealed that 85% of users were ad-blocking. The forum had a few banner ads.
  - 1y ago

taurath 1y ago

> point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in YouTube monetizes based on view count. They also send the data to the client. That client data is in anyway involved, and could be blocked, is YouTube’s design problem.

Konnstann 1y ago
A number of YouTubers have made the claim that their views were affected but not revenue, so it seems like the monetization is based on ad-watching views at least.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  Couldn't that affect third party sponsorships, though? Both getting them and reporting numbers to existing ones?
  - Intralexical 1y ago
    Presumably, it would affect that, and also long-term channel growth. Which would be dastardly if it were intentional, because it would basically cull the platform of channels who voice support for ad blocking. I wonder if CTR was affected. Could one of the affected channels could have detected that not adding up? I guess it was probably already blocked for privacy. Maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas. Interestingly, anybody can now measure what percentage of any channel's viewers run ad blockers, by using publicly available data on how much their views dropped during this period.
- Intralexical 1y ago
  The entire way this issue was figured out was because it only affected desktop views that weren't monetized to begin with, which the guy in the linked video guessed meant adblockers. If the monetization weren't limited to ad-watching views, we'd probably still be trying to figure out what happened.
- taurath 1y ago
  Well at least people's primary source of income isn't hidden behind a black box by corporate overlords or anything

Intralexical 1y ago

If Dirty Stan spends an hour making guests uncomfortable at your house, some of those guests might come to think of you as a bad host even though Stan's behavior was the issue. I think it's reasonable to attribute moral responsibility to the entity that owns and has the most control over the platform, even if the technical details aren't quite so simple. Doubly so in this case since YouTube is a profitable business. Given [0], it sounds like this bug with view counts is a direct result of YouTube choosing to start an arms race against users who run ad blockers. [0]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment-3297246128 https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]