It seems like Google is hell-bent on squeezing every last penny out of Youtube to the point of fighting the user for blocking their ad-ridden hellscape of user-uploaded media. I personally...
It seems like Google is hell-bent on squeezing every last penny out of Youtube to the point of fighting the user for blocking their ad-ridden hellscape of user-uploaded media.
I personally cancelled our YT Premium subscriptions and have moved to alternative clients (SmartTube/Piped/Invidious/Yattee) and am testing out yt-dl because I refuse to be a part of this.
What are you planning to, or have done to fight this behavior? It seems like there are no alternatives to YT like the long defunct Vidme, unfortunately.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Being a premium subscriber, you weren't getting ads to begin with. Why would trying to stop ad-blocking (which only affected free users, not you) get you to...
Exemplary
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Being a premium subscriber, you weren't getting ads to begin with. Why would trying to stop ad-blocking (which only affected free users, not you) get you to cancel it? It didn't affect you at all.
Are you doing it out of principle? You can't have everything be free and with no ads, that's obviously not realistic. Especially for something heavy like video sharing, and especially if you want the creators to be paid for their work (which they should be)
What are you planning to
The same thing everyone is planning to do, continue to use youtube.
Big issue is the same thing that made game development hard: resolution. Back then Youtube also limited videos to 5 minutes (I think post google they upped it to 15m, then uncapped it later) and...
Big issue is the same thing that made game development hard: resolution. Back then Youtube also limited videos to 5 minutes (I think post google they upped it to 15m, then uncapped it later) and 480p was those day's "high resolution". Many were simply in 240p. You can check out some super old classic YT videos to see how well those aged. it's also telling that the biggest "alternatives" limit their videos even more aggressively but advertise it as a feature.
Now we're in days where even 1080p is simply a "decent resolution", where even mobile screen have 1440p+ resolution that they arguably don't need for video. 5 times the content to deliver, roughly speaking. So you either have to take way more data to process, or you need some smart encoding to save on how much you send to the host. and of course the raging elephant in the room is that there's some 1000x the population to support. That's only the surface level issues.
It's not like those techs are dead, but like 240p it's become outdated. those techniques worked for a certain size of internet that doesn't work anymore. And ofc IDK how much I'd love relying on seeders to deliver me some niche video (which are the kinds of videos I often watch on YT)
Bandwidth price has not nearly kept up with the explosion in video size and user counts. I did a little bit of rough math to think about the scale. The average front page video from a creator like...
Bandwidth price has not nearly kept up with the explosion in video size and user counts. I did a little bit of rough math to think about the scale. The average front page video from a creator like MrBeast has about 200M views. And these videos tend to be about 500mb in the higher qualities people expect. That's 100Pb data transfer for one video. At AWS's cheapest S3 price $0.021/gb transfer, that would cost $2,100,000 in just data transfer for just one video.
Now sure, you might be able to find a much cheaper hosting than AWS. Google isn't paying these prices for bandwidth, but it's pretty representative of the price an average small org or company would have access to.
If we can't run ads, and we can't charge the viewer a subscription price, how on earth would a competitor fund this?
I don’t think big tech had anything to do with the death of p2p. The mobile phone and even the laptop killed it. People don’t have always awake always connected devices plugged in to mains power...
I don’t think big tech had anything to do with the death of p2p. The mobile phone and even the laptop killed it. People don’t have always awake always connected devices plugged in to mains power anymore. They have data capped connections and asymmetric speeds.
Big companies would love to use P2P distribution to save on costs and there are some examples where they actually did this. But they have all died off now since it’s just not worth it.
That's true but also solvable, I think. Most people have a home with an internet connection. They could run small home servers that not only work as P2P nodes but also do their backups,...
That's true but also solvable, I think. Most people have a home with an internet connection. They could run small home servers that not only work as P2P nodes but also do their backups, communication, provide media, a VPN when they're out, and tons of other things.
You might say that's something for experienced experts, but I disagree. Modern cars, TVs and even fridges all have mulitple services builtin with similar complexity, and they are extremely popular. There is no technical reason home servers have to be configured and maintained with a CLI. Think of it like a smartphone for your home. If you can do automatic backups and install updates while you're in the woods, you should be able to do the same thing at home.
The reason this will never take off any time soon is because nobody wants to spend money on something they can get for free. Maybe some day a majority will realize that it's actually more expensive to pay with ads, because there is some overhead for production and organisation, and maybe some day people will value the improved quality of an ad-free life higher than more money for buying things they don't really need, but I'm not holding my breath.
I understand the need for a number for back-of-the-envelope calculations, but AWS is famous for having a Hotel California situation with their egress pricing: you can bring data into AWS, but you...
I understand the need for a number for back-of-the-envelope calculations, but AWS is famous for having a Hotel California situation with their egress pricing: you can bring data into AWS, but you can never bring it back out.
I also came across an article with some rough 2021 pricing. With those numbers, it seems like you'd be paying 0.065¢/GiB or about $60,000 to serve those views.
That's true, though my thinking was that a community funded non commercial video host doesn't really have the ability to work with ISPs and edge distribution, so they are just getting the basic...
That's true, though my thinking was that a community funded non commercial video host doesn't really have the ability to work with ISPs and edge distribution, so they are just getting the basic off the shelf cloud hosting pricing. And even with a much much cheaper price, the cost is still incredibly high if you can't fund it through ads or subscriptions.
It's much much more viable to run something like twitter or reddit off donations since they are mostly text.
PeerTube seems to work quite well, so I don’t think that it is am insurmountable problem. Torrents never had trouble scaling, and are much more stable than Netflix and alia that do stream in...
PeerTube seems to work quite well, so I don’t think that it is am insurmountable problem. Torrents never had trouble scaling, and are much more stable than Netflix and alia that do stream in shitty low-quality. Hell, they even cache their content specifically on ISPs’ servers to make it work!
I can't speak from experience as I never used Peertube, but I've read about other companies trying and failing to really keep p2p maintained . Spotify is the biggest example...
It may have simply been a maintancence and control problem, so this doesn't disprove that P2P is unviable, but it also aligns with my usage of torrents: they are almost magical when you are downloading popular content, and the way the internet works means covering the top 1% of content can capture 90+% of use cases.
But falling off that 1% is the equivalent of the 3rd page of a google search: you start to really wade through and are confused on why you even bother by the end. In the worst cases it may have been quicker to drive out, find the media, drive back, and rip the content yourself. And I'm often seeking stuff that isn't traditionally popular.
Well, you only need a single seeder. That can be a traditional server as well in case of a legal content, so in that case a p2p solution would only decrease loads on the few servers, yet...
Well, you only need a single seeder. That can be a traditional server as well in case of a legal content, so in that case a p2p solution would only decrease loads on the few servers, yet everything is available all the time.
Yeah in those days YouTube was basically just short meme videos, sketch comedy, and anime music video cuts. I miss the sketch comedy. The rest I could take or leave.
Yeah in those days YouTube was basically just short meme videos, sketch comedy, and anime music video cuts.
I miss the sketch comedy. The rest I could take or leave.
P2P protocols can never scale to the level of something like Youtube. ISPs allocate more downlink than uplink to consumer connections. Consumer routers cannot process the same levels of bandwidth...
Exemplary
In particular there were some really cool projects to make distributed p2p video hosting possible. This was back when things like kazza and emule were a thing. People were looking for ways to legitimately use the protocols and concepts.
P2P protocols can never scale to the level of something like Youtube. ISPs allocate more downlink than uplink to consumer connections. Consumer routers cannot process the same levels of bandwidth (e.g. their packet buffers are smaller than the buffers on commercial routers.) Internet infrastructure is a lot worse in developing countries than it is in developed countries. Internet routes change and rebalance all the time which changes the latency and bufferbloat characteristics of links on the network. Google and other big bandwidth egress entities often colocate routers within datacenters at ISPs and dedicate special links to help ease the load of transferring all this bandwidth, so that a consumer can simply grab cached data at their ISP's egress point instead of fetching the data directly from Google. P2P connections also require always-on devices which precludes mobile and other thin clients from participating because their battery life would be quickly drained keeping their modems running all the time. Then there's the bandwidth policy question, where you're assuming that no matter what network you're on, you're being allowed to transfer high amounts of bandwidth.
P2P networks are great for resiliency because you end up having multiple paths to a given chunk of content, but they're bad for scaling because it's much more expensive to build out a network with many wide pipes and lots of storage than it is to build out a network with a few ultriwide pipes and a few centers of storage. Moreover, content providers are not ISP, so there's no simple way for demand for content to shape internet infrastructure.
I remember the days of Kazaa, and transferring video was often really frustrating, and anything but the most popular of videos would often require multiple days of waiting as users came online and had the necessary chunks to transfer the full file. All of this had nothing to do with the UX of viewing videos or all of the revenue sharing and content creation incentives that Youtube also offers. Most content on Kazaa was premade by other studios and just pirated.
Peertorrent is software that works over P2P and in my experience the UX is terrible and videos often load a small chunk then fail to load at all, or just stop partway through.
For folks who feel strongly about this, I recommend trying to at least sketch out a design of their vision and get it looked over by folks knowledgeable about internet infrastructure. It seems like folks are much quicker to cancel their subscriptions and push back against service changes than to envision a solution.
Everyone loves to blame Google (including myself, quite often and loudly to the annoyance of family and friends), but claiming that they are solely responsible for their current position of power...
Everyone loves to blame Google (including myself, quite often and loudly to the annoyance of family and friends), but claiming that they are solely responsible for their current position of power and are thus somehow obligated to continue operating YouTube at a loss in order to serve humanity rubs me the wrong way. Google didn't seize their position of power and dominance by force or violence. We gave them this power. Internet users chose to exclusively use a "free" video sharing platform in exchange for their privacy and attention. Google milked that for as long as we let them, but now it's not enough to sustain the platform so they're changing the business model (introducing YouTube premium) and cracking down (punishing ad blockers).
It's fine to be annoyed or angry at Google, but I think the masses of consumers who prioritize convenience above all else and willingly flock to these social media services when we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt (thanks to numerous examples) the inevitable gold-paved, privacy-invading road they'll all eventually tread down, deserve just as much (if not more) of the blame.
You're right, poor choice of phrasing on my part. My meaning was it would be running at a loss if they removed ads entirely, the way it was in the "time before YouTube was YouTube" that ad-blocker...
You're right, poor choice of phrasing on my part. My meaning was it would be running at a loss if they removed ads entirely, the way it was in the "time before YouTube was YouTube" that ad-blocker users feel entitled to.
It helps in order to understand why no one just jumps ship to the alternatives. It's equally pointless blaming capitalism for all bad things in the world.
It helps in order to understand why no one just jumps ship to the alternatives. It's equally pointless blaming capitalism for all bad things in the world.
There seems to be a lot more charity given to consumer complaints that the complaints of service providers. It makes me think that this is an audience of folks who are not, or have not been,...
There seems to be a lot more charity given to consumer complaints that the complaints of service providers. It makes me think that this is an audience of folks who are not, or have not been, service providers.
I think blame should at least in part be shifted to our political class, who felt that the societal benefit of actual anti-trust enforcement was not worth the risk to their donors' bottom lines.
I think blame should at least in part be shifted to our political class, who felt that the societal benefit of actual anti-trust enforcement was not worth the risk to their donors' bottom lines.
I've followed the same train of though and landed on the idea that YouTube made itself into an unfocused, unrestrained video hosting blob. Like if you were to open up completely fresh YouTube...
I've followed the same train of though and landed on the idea that YouTube made itself into an unfocused, unrestrained video hosting blob. Like if you were to open up completely fresh YouTube accounts anywhere, you'd find a mix of movie trailers, music videos, viral vids, local and global news, late-night TV, TikToc/Reddit/Shorts compilations and you can still dig down into a just vast abyss of content.
Google and YouTube basically announced to the world that they are the media hosting service and not only is it free, but your videos are stored in perpetuity and they will even pay you a share of ad-rev if it is popular enough. That isn't just a deal, it's practically free money. So instead of global media giants paying to host their own news/trailers/music, they can freely throw it the same clips on seven different YouTube channels. There's content farmers uploading and re-uploading countless hours of crap. Days long white-noise, screen savers and chill beats eating up storage space. It's all there, just burning a hole in a balance sheet.
With the benefit of hindsight they could have just said that you're only entitled to rev-share in the first few years of a video being up and forcibly delist/delete a video if it doesn't generate a base level of traffic. It wouldn't have been popular but it beats just arbitrarily cancelling monetization and could have trimmed off a big chunk of fat.
I don't think they'll change their data hoarding though. I've no doubt that Google is scraping all of it for there data-models and probably driving a lot of their recent development. The conspiracy theorist in me is counting the days to when they push wholly artificial online personalities and video production.
I don’t believe that they are implying the creators shouldn’t be paid for their work. Nor can someone be excluded from protesting something that does not directly affect them. I think it boils...
Exemplary
I don’t believe that they are implying the creators shouldn’t be paid for their work. Nor can someone be excluded from protesting something that does not directly affect them.
I think it boils down to just a little disdain for a company that is worth 1.5 trillion dollars, with an annual gross profit of 156 Billion as of YE 2022, being so heavy handed on what probably amounts to less than a quarter of their users.
A lot of people don’t understand the scale of a billion dollars. It looks like this: 1,000,000,000. That’s one thousand millions, a ‘fuᴄk you’ amount of money. Now do that 156 times.
They could leave it like it is, but instead of increasing incentives for creators or content consumers, they go on the offensive.
Google doesn’t do anything but facilitate the flow of information. I have no sympathy for them when everyone else does the work, is the product, and they just sit back and rake in the cash.
At least that’s my take on it.
And I will use YouTube until I am struck out I guess.
I should add, take my opinion piece here with a grain of salt because I am a bitter and grumpy old man who feels there is a point where you make an immoral amount of money.
Google screwed us over many years ago, by getting rich off of abusing our privacy and - at that time - naivety. Then they did what every Silicon Valley company has done and is still doing (hello...
I think it boils down to just a little disdain for a company that is worth 1.5 trillion dollars
Google screwed us over many years ago, by getting rich off of abusing our privacy and - at that time - naivety.
Then they did what every Silicon Valley company has done and is still doing (hello ClearviewAI & OpenAI):
Pretend rules and precedents don't apply because 'new tech'
Rob everyone blind (neo-colonial extractivism)
Use loot to oppose, delay, weaken regulation
Use loot to create a nice work environment for talent
Make yourself inevitable by buying up the competition & big destination sites like YouTube
Make yourself inevitable by leveraging your market domination to subvert open standards to become gatekeeper, successfully undermining competitors (open web vs. Chrome, PageRank, Google AMP, etc. Android)
Pay competitors to make your products default (Google paid billions to make search default in both Firefox and Safari)
Use loot from one market to enter and overwhelm other markets
Keep robbing everyone blind with the added air of legitimacy thanks to your lobbyists, PR, and talented workers who trick themselves into thinking they're Doing Good and spread the gospel
I probably missed a bunch of things, feel free to add!
Oh, and I have something to say about YouTube and Premium and ad blocking specifically:
When you're not blocking ads, you're also not blocking trackers. So you're forced to sit there and pay attention to ads while they get to track you. If you pay for Premium you don't get ads, but they don't just get your money. They also get precise identifying data (name, location, possibly bank info). You're likely to forget that the tracking will continue even more effectively, because you're not reminded by ads.
I should add, take my opinion piece here with a grain of salt because I am a bitter and grumpy old man who feels there is a point where you make an immoral amount of money.
Same, same. Also bitter about how we never got the internet we dreamed of.
Maybe Lina Khan, the EU and the current trend of imploding platforms will pave the way to a better future.
If anything, I feel better about things. The mask's finally coming off. Deleted Facebook and Reddit, went back to caring about my privacy. Convinced my wife to switch to Linux after she's done...
If anything, I feel better about things. The mask's finally coming off. Deleted Facebook and Reddit, went back to caring about my privacy. Convinced my wife to switch to Linux after she's done with college, between proton and the steam deck, it's not a huge sacrifice anymore. I'll do everything I can to circumvent ads and trackers in YouTube, but if they make it actually impossible? Fine. Some of the channels I follow have podcasts, I'll follow those. After Reddit's collapse, I've rebuilt my rss feed library, and I honestly haven't felt this relaxed and destressed about my internet use in a long time.
I agree about the mask seems to be coming off. After the debacle of Reddit and Musk's handling of Twitter plus other instances it seems like the word of the year is "enshittification". This year...
I agree about the mask seems to be coming off.
After the debacle of Reddit and Musk's handling of Twitter plus other instances it seems like the word of the year is "enshittification".
This year the process doesn't seem like a frog in boiling water situation anymore, however. It almost seems like these companies are in a race to see just who can out enshittify each other.
I (like so many others) have left (or severely reduced) using Reddit because of it. I didn't even use 3rd party apps and I still left. For me it was just another example of a company knowingly and willingly treating their userbase like shit. "Everything old is new again" has never seemed more relevant to me. I'm completely vibing with the message board feel around here. I had lurked Tildes for a bit before finally sending an email asking for an invite. My facebook usage was never really high but now I'm using group text messaging to keep in touch with the people I want to keep up with, share pictures of the kids, etc.
By myself I'm not even a blip on any of their radars. However, I certainly don't feel alone in my choices to cut back or outright leave "social media" platforms. Youtube will be no different. I have a yearly subscription to Curiosity, Pluto.tv is free (don't even need to login) and I have a fairly robust Jellyfin server at home without even mentioning whatever "main" streaming platform we've currently rotated in for a month or 2.. (Pluto.tv doesn't seem to be horrid with ads. I mainly watch the 24/7 Godzilla channel for background noise. They're WAY less than Sling.tv was when I had it..I swear they put in additional ads during the ad break of AEW when i watched it.)
My point is that Youtube is competing for my time. I installed an adblocker years ago when I thought their ads were getting too much (an additional 25-33% of ad time of a sub 10 minute video, for example). A month ago or so I was on my phone and saw a 2-3 minute video on something I needed JIT knowlege of. Holy hell, there was 2 ads before and 3 ads during this short video. While I could skip some of them, if I hadn't turned off the video after the 5th ad just started playing there would have been like 4-5 minutes ads on this 2-3 minute video. FUCK. THAT.
If you or your groups start wanting to silo group chats separate from direct messages, I recommend taking a look at Signal. Might not be for you, and that’s fine, but I do want people to know the...
If you or your groups start wanting to silo group chats separate from direct messages, I recommend taking a look at Signal. Might not be for you, and that’s fine, but I do want people to know the option exists.
I Think 25% is absurdly generous, but if we took it at face value: YT's revenue was 30b in 2022, and that's leaving some 8b dollars on the table. from a business perspective, even if I could only...
being so heavy handed on what probably amounts to less than a quarter of their users.
I Think 25% is absurdly generous, but if we took it at face value: YT's revenue was 30b in 2022, and that's leaving some 8b dollars on the table. from a business perspective, even if I could only recover 10% of that I'd say it's worth a shot.
instead of increasing incentives for creators or content consumers
increasing incentives for creators cost them more money. And gambles that it leads to more popular content creators, which pretty hard these days.
And I don't know what incentives a casual content consumer wants. The ideal experience is to watch a video without ads, save videos and creators they like, and maybe interact with the video with comments. I'm not going to call video hosting a solved problem, but there's not a whole lot to build upon from there unless you target power users (who we establish is a small portion of the site).
Far be it for me to tell people how to make their livelihoods, but if I had a button that would revert the world back to a time where the term "content creator" didn't exist and people Let's...
Especially for something heavy like video sharing, and especially if you want the creators to be paid for their work (which they should be)
Far be it for me to tell people how to make their livelihoods, but if I had a button that would revert the world back to a time where the term "content creator" didn't exist and people Let's Played games on Unregistered Hypercam 2, I'd press it in a heartbeat.
It is possible for hobbyists to make videos as a hobby. In fact, that was the norm. It's not my fault people want their videos to look professional. I didn't ask for that.
Start a Patreon, I'm subscribed to several. However, I'm not giving YouTube money (they've already made bank on selling my info), and I'm not watching ads or sponsors.
There were also less people back then. Because not everyone has the time nor energy to do all that "as a hobby". Nowadays, you can find all kinds of challenge runs of even the most niche video...
It is possible for hobbyists to make videos as a hobby. In fact, that was the norm.
There were also less people back then. Because not everyone has the time nor energy to do all that "as a hobby". Nowadays, you can find all kinds of challenge runs of even the most niche video games out there, games that otherwise wouldn't get much more than an Angry Video Game Nerd video dedicated to mocking them.
It's not my fault people want their videos to look professional. I didn't ask for that.
I mean, this seems like an odd angle to complain about. I'm sure most people don't ask for quality in code nor art either. But people will notice if the art looks ugly or the program has bugs or is slow.
Start a Patreon, I'm subscribed to several.
histoically speaking, reaching out for charity has never ended up being a sustainable venture. Not unless you make it your full time job advertising said tip box, ironically enough.
I'm personally fine with that. I'd accept a lower level of quality and quantity if that means we go back to doing these things for fun. If it were just YouTube, or a content creator conglomerate,...
There were also less people back then. Because not everyone has the time nor energy to do all that "as a hobby". Nowadays, you can find all kinds of challenge runs of even the most niche video games out there, games that otherwise wouldn't get much more than an Angry Video Game Nerd video dedicated to mocking them.
I'm personally fine with that. I'd accept a lower level of quality and quantity if that means we go back to doing these things for fun.
If it were just YouTube, or a content creator conglomerate, I might be willing to have a different conversation. But given that Google already sells everything it knows about me, and paying them doesn't opt me out of that system, I consider my fee paid. They don't get to double dip.
I mean, this seems like an odd angle to complain about. I'm sure most people don't ask for quality in code nor art either. But people will notice if the art looks ugly or the program has bugs or is slow.
If the FOSS programs that I use started forcing ads into their apps to justify a higher time commitment, I'd complain too. This is not a trade I'm willing to make. I'll give Wikipedia 5 bucks whenever they ask. I won't watch ads, or sell them my info. Yes, this leads to lower profits. That's fine.
As far as I'm concerned, if YouTube and content creators have enough money and resources to stay in the black, whatever moral obligation I might feel has been met. It's in their interest to increase their profits, but it's not in mine.
histoically speaking, reaching out for charity has never ended up being a sustainable venture. Not unless you make it your full time job advertising said tip box, ironically enough.
I don't have a solution. There are obviously too many content creators for Patreon to be a true replacement. Many of them would either have to stop or lower their production values. Like I said, I'm personally fine with that.
I just feel this solution simply tosses the inevitable ad bone down the road, rather than preventing a monetized site. And/or we simply have long form video go the way of the dodo. Remember that...
I'd accept a lower level of quality and quantity if that means we go back to doing these things for fun.
I just feel this solution simply tosses the inevitable ad bone down the road, rather than preventing a monetized site. And/or we simply have long form video go the way of the dodo.
Remember that Youtube isn't the only way to be a content creator anymore. So I imagine that instead of getting people to "do things for fun" we end up with would be quality youtubers becomig a part of Instagram or TikTok, tailoring their content for short form consumption. I had the similar feelings with old school forums and I see the result for sticking to the old guard wasn't a filtering down to a community of quality users. They simply moved to Reddit or Twitter, or even Discord. Some may have simply moved away entirely from forums. So I think the same would happen here. They wouldn't lower their production values, they'd cease to exist to a point where Youtube wouldn't exist.
Definitely a personal opinion, but I see Youtube as the lesser of the Big 3 evils in modern day influencers. If the former died out I'd probably be one of the ones who simply doesn't consume amateur (or more specifically, non-hollywood level) video content.
You raise a good point, and one I hadn't considered. Ultimately, I have no idea where this is going. But the internet is changing in huge ways this year, and almost always in ways that are...
You raise a good point, and one I hadn't considered. Ultimately, I have no idea where this is going. But the internet is changing in huge ways this year, and almost always in ways that are detrimental to my experience, so I'm willing to roll the dice.
I feel there'll always be a space for long form videos. Maybe the audience will be smaller, but I'm just fine with Tildes' smaller audience compared to Reddit. Heck, it might even be an improvement, if the TikTok audience just isn't there anymore.
I don't know. I don't know what the internet looks like next year. But I do know that I'm not willing to sell my privacy and information for convenience, and I'm not willing to expose my brain to ads anymore either. The only thing I'm willing to give any business now is my money, and no more.
Well, if the ads will become unkillable, due due to my psychologcial safety I will simply stop watching Youtube. I did the same with other corporations' products. I just don't want to be hurt,...
Well, if the ads will become unkillable, due due to my psychologcial safety I will simply stop watching Youtube. I did the same with other corporations' products. I just don't want to be hurt, that's all. I try to support producers via Liberapay or Patreon etc., also buy CDs or DVDs whenever I feel the content is good enough. But will never watch any mind-wrecking ad. Just get out of my mind, advertisers. I don't want corporations to drive my needs.
Most artists literally were financed that way. The rest wasn’t famous until their death. Many people on patreon seem to do quite well, so I don’t think that there is a fundamental problem here.
histoically speaking, reaching out for charity has never ended up being a sustainable venture
Most artists literally were financed that way. The rest wasn’t famous until their death.
Many people on patreon seem to do quite well, so I don’t think that there is a fundamental problem here.
yes, and the artist is a career well known for their financial stability. I guess "well" is relative. The top top Patreons like Jeff Gerstmann are doing very well, even by the most conservative...
Most artists literally were financed that way. The rest wasn’t famous until their death.
yes, and the artist is a career well known for their financial stability.
Many people on patreon seem to do quite well, so I don’t think that there is a fundamental problem here.
I guess "well" is relative. The top top Patreons like Jeff Gerstmann are doing very well, even by the most conservative estimates. But that's one personality who was one of the most well known journalists on his field at the time, involved in some of the biggest controversies back in his heyday.
But when you scale down even to "big but not mega popular content creators" you see how quickly it dwindles. For example, the largest person I'm subbed to (that has a pateon) has 1.85m subscribers on Youtube and a streaming channel and a 2nd channel talking about alternate medium. And his patreon is 700 patrons, with $2/5/15 tiers. Now, even if every member was in the $5 recommended tier... $3500/month isn't chump change, but I wouldn't say it's something I'd survive comfortably on in a high COL area. And ofc he has to pay editors and Patreon gets a 5% cut and you see how quickly the money dwindles.
And remember, this is someone with over 2M subs. What chance does some smaller content creators (most of which are the ones I sub to) have living off of chharity if someone this big is just making "I can pay the bills and not much else" money this way?
I think we have a false equivalency here, as if by the current model smaller creators were making enough money, which is just false. Surely, it may not be enough to replace a traditional job in...
I think we have a false equivalency here, as if by the current model smaller creators were making enough money, which is just false.
Surely, it may not be enough to replace a traditional job in some more expensive parts of the world, but if you can apply for a part-time job and work like 3 days, and live from your hobby on the other 4, that’s a win in my book.
And quite frankly, I don’t see any way how this could be solved otherwise — if there is not enough drive for the content one creates, then by capitalist means, it’s monetary value can’t be too high.
Depends on "small" in this case. Tiny content creators aren't making a full time wage, but they can start to make a reasonable side income as "soon" as 50k subs. I have another example: one...
as if by the current model smaller creators were making enough money, which is just false.
Depends on "small" in this case. Tiny content creators aren't making a full time wage, but they can start to make a reasonable side income as "soon" as 50k subs.
I have another example: one certain youtuber did give some rough numbers on how much he made. 420k subscribers (less since these figures are a year old), daily uploads for let's play style gameplay videos with weekly more edited, sponsored videos. He made 10k USD/month, and $2k/month off of sponsorships. Unlike the other 2M sub example, this creator does virtually all the editing by himself, so this is truly a single income provided all to him.
I unnderstand if you don't call 400k subs "small", but when we're comparing it to the actual top 1% of youtubers in the millinos each, I can't call it more than a mid-sized channel. These aren't linear trends, but I imagine by 200k subs or so that you go back down to that aforementioned $3500 mark that is around "I can pay the bills" mark. A large landmark, but not infeasible.
if you can apply for a part-time job and work like 3 days, and live from your hobby on the other 4, that’s a win in my book.
so, 20 hours a week plus donations? Again, I don't think you understand the lack of money coming in Patreon for non-large creators.
That above youtuber has a patreon (full disclosure, it's one of the few I donate to). And it's 600 members but really only one tier of reward, $1, discord access. you can donate more but $1 gets you everything he provides.
$600 isn't something to sneeze at, but it's supplemental income at best, far from enough to where someone can go from full to part time minimum wage work.
none of this is a hard science and money fluctuates a lot, so don't take this as gospel. My only point here is reinforcing how much money youtubers make off of Youtube itself, compared to how much there is in charity money. I'd love a charity model, but in real world terms (at least via digital tip jars) I really don't like the "well just open a Patreon" as a line of reasoning for how/why content creators can simply move off of YouTube
I hate to not be the cynical buzzkill, but the world is a much better place because of Youtube. Sure there's a ton of shitty content creators making garbage content but there's also literally...
I hate to not be the cynical buzzkill, but the world is a much better place because of Youtube. Sure there's a ton of shitty content creators making garbage content but there's also literally every single thing you'd ever want to learn or know in video format, for free. There are thousands of amazing creators pouring their souls into making awesome videos that don't cost us a dime to consume.
Too bad Google helped nuke that into the ground when they took away the like/dislike numbers. Once upon a time Youtube was my first go to resource for trying to figure out how to do things replace...
Too bad Google helped nuke that into the ground when they took away the like/dislike numbers.
Once upon a time Youtube was my first go to resource for trying to figure out how to do things replace a car part on a hyper specific year/model of car or something else obscure like that. Since some of those types of videos only have thousands or even only hundreds of views the like/dislike ratio was a simple quick way to weed out shitty videos. I've seen videos with wrong and outright dangerous instructions but Google is simply happy to offer them up along with the one does by a master mechanic. If only they had some kind of peer-review system in place...
I feel like this issue really isn't as bad as you claim. Not only can you still sus out a bad video via just looking at the like to view ratio (if it has 100k views and only 100 likes it's...
I feel like this issue really isn't as bad as you claim. Not only can you still sus out a bad video via just looking at the like to view ratio (if it has 100k views and only 100 likes it's probably best to take it with a grain of salt) but the comments are still an easy way to see community sentiment. If they disabled comments then it's probably a safe bet to just go to another video.
Is it ideal? No, obviously not, but does it make YouTube an entirely useless platform for finding tutorials? Demonstrably no, and claiming it does is pretty over dramatic.
You honestly think there wouldn't just be another company who came out on top and choked out the competition? Either way, I don't want to have to go to dozens of video hosting sites to watch...
You honestly think there wouldn't just be another company who came out on top and choked out the competition? Either way, I don't want to have to go to dozens of video hosting sites to watch content, that's the reason I hate the current streaming ecosystem right now, convenience is king
The dozens of video hosting websites could simply share their contents, federate. You wouldn't have to go to each one of them. EU is forcing corporate social media to do this, to be...
The dozens of video hosting websites could simply share their contents, federate. You wouldn't have to go to each one of them. EU is forcing corporate social media to do this, to be interoperational. Moreover, such web already exists - it's called Fediverse.
That’s naive and is not how market economics work. Unless restricted by some outside force (government), monopolies will form that take out the competition easily (e.g. they can allow to run on a...
That’s naive and is not how market economics work. Unless restricted by some outside force (government), monopolies will form that take out the competition easily (e.g. they can allow to run on a loss for years until the competition is dead).
As someone who doesn't use ad block and does not pay for YT premium (I just watched the ads until I can skip.) To me it sounds like a lot of people who want to have their cake and eat it too.
As someone who doesn't use ad block and does not pay for YT premium (I just watched the ads until I can skip.) To me it sounds like a lot of people who want to have their cake and eat it too.
Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years. I will do everything I can to extract as much value as I can for as little capital as I can...
Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years. I will do everything I can to extract as much value as I can for as little capital as I can with every one of these businesses I come into contact with. It is not my job to make sure these companies can give their C-Suite an 8 figure bonus. I fight for me and I don't understand people who work so hard against their own best interests.
"Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years" I don't pay a monthly fee. I just watch the ads until I can skip them. I feel that I get a...
"Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years"
I don't pay a monthly fee. I just watch the ads until I can skip them. I feel that I get a lot of value for what they are asking for.
In this example, making users watch ads and selling their info. If they pay them, still selling their info. They're double dipping. Even without watching ads, they're getting their money's worth.
In this example, making users watch ads and selling their info. If they pay them, still selling their info. They're double dipping. Even without watching ads, they're getting their money's worth.
Selling info to who? Google doesn't just offer a service where you pay them money and they hand over a users data. They collect data to target ads. If you aren't seeing ads, then that data is not...
Selling info to who? Google doesn't just offer a service where you pay them money and they hand over a users data. They collect data to target ads. If you aren't seeing ads, then that data is not generating them any value.
Many people are. Other people aren't. Hence why adblockers and third party tools exist. But that wasn't my point here. My point was that it's YouTube that wants to have its cake and eat it, not...
Many people are. Other people aren't. Hence why adblockers and third party tools exist.
But that wasn't my point here. My point was that it's YouTube that wants to have its cake and eat it, not users. It wants people to watch ads or give them money. It also wants to gather, use and sell their data without reimbursing them.
If a YouTube No Spying Premium comes out, that's a different story. But as long as YouTube wants my data for free, then I consider my ticket paid.
You don't get to decide what a company wants to charge you for a product. If you believe it's to costly don't participate. I think BMWs are overpriced but that doesn't make it right to steal one...
Exemplary
You don't get to decide what a company wants to charge you for a product. If you believe it's to costly don't participate.
I think BMWs are overpriced but that doesn't make it right to steal one off of a dealers lot. If you use ad block in my eyes you're no better than they are.
I actually do get to decide, particularly because I have to fight Google everywhere on the web to keep my data to myself. I am confused as to why you see me extracting value from Google as such a...
I actually do get to decide, particularly because I have to fight Google everywhere on the web to keep my data to myself. I am confused as to why you see me extracting value from Google as such a moral failing, but Google extracting value from tens (or hundreds) of millions of people, unaware and unconsenting, without paying them a dime is... good? Value neutral?
An adblocker is less like stealing a car and more like making tea during the commercial break. Is this also stealing? You're not watching the ad, after all.
You can attempt to justify stealing any way you want, in the end of the day that's between you and google. But I'm going to continue to act the way I have been and whether you agree or not is...
You can attempt to justify stealing any way you want, in the end of the day that's between you and google. But I'm going to continue to act the way I have been and whether you agree or not is irrelevant.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion about the hypothetical on making tea during the commercial break, or changing the channel. Is that morally acceptable? Could I also advise to lower the...
I'd be interested to hear your opinion about the hypothetical on making tea during the commercial break, or changing the channel. Is that morally acceptable?
Could I also advise to lower the temperature a bit? Accussing people of being thieves isn't likely to lead to a constructive discussion. I'm not trying to change your behaviour; I just disagree with your argument. If you weren't open to being challenged, what was the point of voicing your opinion?
"Accussing people of being thieves isn't likely to lead to a constructive discussion" I really don't think there's a constructive discussion to be had. We just think the complete opposite of one...
"Accussing people of being thieves isn't likely to lead to a constructive discussion"
I really don't think there's a constructive discussion to be had. We just think the complete opposite of one another on this topic. I'd call that an impasse, it's actually best if we just end it here before it devolves into something ugly.
I really would've liked your opinion on changing channels during commercial break, because I suspect it's an analogy worth exploring in this context. But fair enough, I hope you have a good rest...
I really would've liked your opinion on changing channels during commercial break, because I suspect it's an analogy worth exploring in this context. But fair enough, I hope you have a good rest of your day.
You can switch channels or do whatever you want when ads run, just like you can during programming. I can switch tabs, go make tea or whatever when ads play on my computer. That's the relevant...
You can switch channels or do whatever you want when ads run, just like you can during programming.
I can switch tabs, go make tea or whatever when ads play on my computer.
That's the relevant analogy. Adblocking is something completely different.
I also think the comparison between theft and adblocking is sound. The implicit agreement is that you watch ads and don't break the site, then you get to view things for free. Sometimes the exchange also includes your user data to et something for free.
That's the business model we all know and agree to using. Or we go elsewhere. We don't break their site to avoid our end of the implicit agreement. That's theft.
For some reason, people get angry when you call content piracy what it is too: theft. I think for most people that reason is that they don't like being reminded that they're doing something morally indefensible that they try to rationalize to themselves. Who doesn't like getting loads of free high quality stuff for nothing?
People get angry because you're conflating two entirely different forms of infringement on another person or their property. It's not theft, it's minor trespass at worst if you're looking for an...
People get angry because you're conflating two entirely different forms of infringement on another person or their property.
It's not theft, it's minor trespass at worst if you're looking for an actually apt analogy.
I find their current business model, modern "IP" laws, their previous actions, business goals, and their shredding of the social contract morally indefensible. Why should we care about taking back control from those who would abuse such control to wring as much money possible out us?
People get angry because you're accusing people of a far worse thing than they are actually doing.
Theft is more than infringement of property. Taking someone's service without someone's consent is also a dictionary definition of theft. Again, I believe people get angry about this because it...
Theft is more than infringement of property.
Taking someone's service without someone's consent is also a dictionary definition of theft.
Again, I believe people get angry about this because it exposes their unsound rationalizations justifying their immoral behavior to themselves.
Under what conditions am I allowed to use this service?
Am I willing to agree to the conditions of using this service?
If not, I shouldn't use this service.
If I were to block ads or illegally pirate content, I'm not doing it to protest some reprehensible company, or to force change that company or whatever other justification I can make myself believe.
Let's be honest: I'm doing it to get a free lunch for me. That's the primary, overarching and immoral motivation.
It's not theft. I just looked it up in 7 different online law dictionaries, google, dictionaries, etc. It's taking of property. What you're talking about is sometimes termed "theft of services" in...
It's not theft. I just looked it up in 7 different online law dictionaries, google, dictionaries, etc. It's taking of property. What you're talking about is sometimes termed "theft of services" in legal dictionaries/laws which is a specifically defined phrase distinct from theft. Regardless, we're getting into petty semantic squabbling. Because what you're talking about requires a different specific part of law with special definitions and isn't in the various dictionary texts that I peruse, I'm going to take offense when you conflate it because the amount of offense is entirely different.
I wouldn't steal a car nor would I allow people to steal my car. However, I'm not going to care about someone walking through my property, provided they're not standing outside the house and staring in the windows or something similarly creepy. Similarly, I have trespassed on other people's property and don't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
Again, I believe people get angry about this because it exposes their unsound rationalizations justifying their immoral behavior to themselves.
I'm telling you why I'm getting angry:
The offense level of adblocking is akin to minor trespass, not theft. Nor does it qualify as theft by definition.
Under what conditions am I allowed to use this service?
I could frankly care less about stupid terms and conditions on top of a published website, if it mattered, they would require logins to access content or it wouldn't be publicly discoverable on the WWW. If you want to exercise control over your digital "services", put them behind an access wall.
Am I willing to agree to the conditions of using this service?
My cumulative cost to google for using YT while adblocking doesn't top out at over $10/year. Beyond that, they get to datamine the crap out of me in every way but ads, which I wouldn't watch or interact with on purpose anyways.
If not, I shouldn't use this service.
They're free to require logins to access or attempt to block those who run adblockers from the site. They're the ones trying to dictate how the WWW works and wall their garden but have all the benefits from open access.
I turned adblocking on when I heard cases where ads caused literal physical damage to computer components. At that point, they broke the rules first. The terms and conditions of the websites I...
Let's be honest: I'm doing it to get a free lunch for me. That's the primary, overarching and immoral motivation.
I turned adblocking on when I heard cases where ads caused literal physical damage to computer components.
At that point, they broke the rules first. The terms and conditions of the websites I visit politely ask (without any semblance of enforcement) that I allow an advertiser to pay the costs of my visit by sending additional information alongside what I’m requesting (the ads alongside the content).
And I politely ask (without any semblance of enforcement) that they send me the content without any ads alongside, which their server gleefully complies with, by delivering the content to my computer without checking for payment first.
The result is that I don't watch ads. Let's drop the analogies for a second. So the problem isn't adskipping; you're ok with making a cup of tea during the ad break. So what's the actual damage...
The result is that I don't watch ads. Let's drop the analogies for a second. So the problem isn't adskipping; you're ok with making a cup of tea during the ad break. So what's the actual damage being done, if not watching the ads isn't the problem?
It's literally not theft though. Theft in most places requires dishonest appropriate with an intent to permanently deprive someone of the thing. This is why there are different laws for temporary...
theft.
It's literally not theft though. Theft in most places requires dishonest appropriate with an intent to permanently deprive someone of the thing. This is why there are different laws for temporary car "theft" - the person taking the car doesn't intend to permanently deprive the owner, they're just joyriding it, so you need a law that says something like taking without owner's consent.
In the case of intangible stuff like eg a movie there's no physical product, so you can't appropriate it, so there's no dishonest appropriation. And the original owner still has it so there's no depriving the owner of it.
On the contrary, there could be one here if you'd be willing to elaborate on where you're coming from with your position of adblocking being an equivalent act to theft. In particular, here's what...
I really don't think there's a constructive discussion to be had.
On the contrary, there could be one here if you'd be willing to elaborate on where you're coming from with your position of adblocking being an equivalent act to theft. In particular, here's what I'd be interested in understanding your opinion on:
What property has Google lost when a user blocks an ad?
Sorry to repeat the question, but does changing/muting/ignoring the channel on TV during an ad break also constitute theft? What about fast-forwarding through commercials with a time-shifted recording?
Even though I'm of the pro-adblocking YouTube persuasion, I'm also sympathetic to the fact that ads are Google's way of keeping the lights on. However, with how predatory and intrusive internet ads are (to the point where there's guidance from the FBI recommending blocking) and Google doing nothing noticeable to buck that trend, I think there's too much at play to make a simple comparison to theft anything other than surface-level.
I will say this, when I am using their service all they ask is that I let their ads play to the point that they let me skip them. Whether I watch don't watch leave the room stay in the room to me...
elaborate on where you're coming from with your position of adblocking being an equivalent act to theft
I will say this, when I am using their service all they ask is that I let their ads play to the point that they let me skip them. Whether I watch don't watch leave the room stay in the room to me is irrelevant. Watching videos on a device is not a right It's a privilege. And if those people in charge want to eliminate ad blockers from their site they have the absolute right. I also have the absolute right not to use their product if I find anything they do intrusive.
That's my opinion and My opinion isn't worth more or less than your opinion so I fully support your right to disagree with me. And I've read all the responses sent to me, none of which agree with me by the way and I have not found one argument that has changed my thinking.
Yes, and breaking a contract (assuming a valid contract has been formed) is not theft. One of the reasons people are frustrated is that there's a conflation of civil and criminal law. Blocking ads...
when I am using their service all they ask is that I let their ads play to the point that they let me skip them.
Yes, and breaking a contract (assuming a valid contract has been formed) is not theft.
One of the reasons people are frustrated is that there's a conflation of civil and criminal law. Blocking ads is not a criminal offence, and people should stop saying that it is.
I was following this conversation because I honestly like discussing things that may be unethical but moral (or vice versa). Accusing people of "stealing" from a 1.37 trillion dollar company is...
I was following this conversation because I honestly like discussing things that may be unethical but moral (or vice versa).
Accusing people of "stealing" from a 1.37 trillion dollar company is certainly a stretch, however. They still make money off people with ad blockers through tracking.
I don't consider it "stealing" when I switch a radio station during an ad break to a station still playing music and then switching back. Do you?
I think it is more of a "take a penny, leave a penny" situation in a gas station. Ethically it is ok to use that tray, that's why it's there. However, is it immoral or "stealing" if you use a penny from that tray if you don't feel like reaching into your pocket for exact change?
There's a reason why "You wouldn't download a car" is a meme. You can't compare stealing a car, and skipping ads to watch a video. Also, while BMW has a lot of competition, the same can't be said...
There's a reason why "You wouldn't download a car" is a meme. You can't compare stealing a car, and skipping ads to watch a video.
Also, while BMW has a lot of competition, the same can't be said about YouTube.
I 100% would download a car if I could. I wouldn't even feel bad, because I wouldn't be depriving anyone of anything if I downloaded a car. The US's abomination of "Intellectual Property" laws are...
I 100% would download a car if I could. I wouldn't even feel bad, because I wouldn't be depriving anyone of anything if I downloaded a car.
The US's abomination of "Intellectual Property" laws are what is wrong here. The entire concept of intellectual property is messed up.
Intellectual property rights are an addon, an incentive, not a fundamental right.
The purpose of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Profit seeking isn't promoting the Progress of Science or useful Arts.
70 years + lifespan of the author or 90/120 years for other works isn't "limited times", unless you consider limited times to mean multiple generations have been born and died before this "right" expires.
Authors and Inventors should definitely not* compose amoral, soulless, immortal, profit-seeking engines.
The entire "Intellectual Property" BS mountain in the US and the world needs to be dismantled. You cannot own ideas or human expression.
You can't download a car so it doesn't really matter what you would or wouldn't do. You can think whatever you want about the intellectual property laws But the way things are now ad blocking on...
I 100% would download a car if I could. I wouldn't even feel bad, because I wouldn't be depriving anyone of anything if I downloaded a car.
You can't download a car so it doesn't really matter what you would or wouldn't do.
You can think whatever you want about the intellectual property laws But the way things are now ad blocking on YouTube is tantamount to stealing. Using YouTube on your phone or any other device is a privilege not a right.
No, it is not tantamount to stealing. Perhaps its on the same level as walking across someone's yard to reach a destination faster, maybe. "Intellectual property" is a privilege not a right. You...
No, it is not tantamount to stealing. Perhaps its on the same level as walking across someone's yard to reach a destination faster, maybe.
"Intellectual property" is a privilege not a right.
You can think whatever you want about adblockers, "intellectual property", and "stealing" but that doesn't make it so.
I my mind it does and I'm perfectly fine with you not agreeing. What we think or don't think is actually irrelevant. What matters is the law and what Google wants to pursue. And you can post about...
I my mind it does and I'm perfectly fine with you not agreeing. What we think or don't think is actually irrelevant. What matters is the law and what Google wants to pursue. And you can post about this all day but those facts are not going to change.
Adblocking isn't illegal and it isn't tantamount to stealing. That's what the law says. You're the one who originally said that it was tantamount to stealing. The law doesn't recognize it as such....
Adblocking isn't illegal and it isn't tantamount to stealing. That's what the law says. You're the one who originally said that it was tantamount to stealing. The law doesn't recognize it as such.
The EU courts have explicit said that adblocking is not only not illegal, but it is also not an infringement on copyright. The US courts have never even allowed an "adblocking = theft or infringement" to get very far. It's very clear that the law is not on the side of adblocking being illegal.
You can post about this all day as well, but those are the fact and they're not going to change.
Google is free to attempt to block people using adblockers from accessing the website, but as always it's going to be a cat and mouse game. There is no provision in law to give them the ability to go after individuals for "adblocking" or copyright infringement.
I have yet to see EU courts make judgement on this theoretical situation: A website clearly writes into its terms that you get access to the service for free because you're trading your user data...
I have yet to see EU courts make judgement on this theoretical situation:
A website clearly writes into its terms that you get access to the service for free because you're trading your user data and allowing ads in exchange.
Someone either takes the ToS condition above to court for being an illegally unfair contractual condition under EU law
Or a company takes adblockers to court for breaking fair ToS conditions they agreed to.
If I've just missed those judgements, I'd love to be educated. If someone's attempted to make the claim that adblockers somehow aren't a fair use-case of the software provided, I'd expect such a suit to fail horribly.
I don't think this is settled EU case law. I've tried looking to see if it is.
I think we all on some level know and acknowledge that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Taking the EU's stance on personal privacy, right to be forgotten, etc. I highly doubt such a ToS would be enforceable in the EU. Google already mines all my user data, it's not a free lunch. I...
Taking the EU's stance on personal privacy, right to be forgotten, etc. I highly doubt such a ToS would be enforceable in the EU.
I think we all on some level know and acknowledge that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Google already mines all my user data, it's not a free lunch. I just don't consent to having my attention be grabbed every possible second and my psyche manipulated for profit.
I honestly would prefer to all advertising-supported ventures be destroyed. I'm tired of people thinking that it's alright to bombard me with crap vying for my attention every time I go anywhere in the real or digital worlds. It's pollution imo.
You seem genuinely a little hostile in this thread, my friend, and seem to be taking things rather personal. I am pretty confident that even the people disagreeing with you only want to have a...
You seem genuinely a little hostile in this thread, my friend, and seem to be taking things rather personal. I am pretty confident that even the people disagreeing with you only want to have a discussion and are not attacking you. I have seen people offer to discuss things with you and ask you questions only to be met with accusations and seemingly flippant remarks. Perhaps your intent is not translating well into the written word?
FWIW, Google didn't get their 1.37 trillion dollars off of YouTube ads. The amount of money YouTube loses to ad blockers is a rounding error for a 1.37 trillion dollar company. Google, the company worth 1.37 trillion dollars, simply can't control the data once it's left their servers. That is something they contend with in their 1.37 trillion dollar business plan.
I've found when people read comments they disagree with they tend, in their minds, to read them in a hostile tone because that's certainly has not been my intent. I just happened to disagree with...
You seem genuinely a little hostile in this thread
I've found when people read comments they disagree with they tend, in their minds, to read them in a hostile tone because that's certainly has not been my intent. I just happened to disagree with most of the sentiments posted in this thread. I don't like stealing, even if it is from a trillion dollar company.
One could argue that you don't get 1.37 trillion dollars with ethics, morals, and integrity, so it's only fair to skip ads (aka "stealing" a few cents) from a 1.37 trillion dollars company.
One could argue that you don't get 1.37 trillion dollars with ethics, morals, and integrity, so it's only fair to skip ads (aka "stealing" a few cents) from a 1.37 trillion dollars company.
Yeah, I keep trying to answer the two people who are asking why people get upset when someone calls adblocking theft in various variations of what you're talking about. That attitude plus them...
Yeah, I keep trying to answer the two people who are asking why people get upset when someone calls adblocking theft in various variations of what you're talking about. That attitude plus them continually ignoring the corresponding "is it also theft if I get up and pee during ad breaks?" questions that are posed makes me question the validity of the argument or the posters like you're tempted to do as well.
Side note: I would 100% download a car if such a thing was possible. If I could somehow download a $30k physical good and cost the "car host" less than a penny in bandwidth costs but they still wanted to charge $30k, I would have no compunction about doing so.
I tire of people treating "intellectual property" as some ethically unassailable right for people to control. Copyright (and patents/similar) isn't an inherent right and is a theft from the public domain of human consciousness. Like the copyright clause in the Constitution directly states, the purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and useful arts - you know bettering humanity. Profit mongering certainly isn't advancing humanity, and I have no problem caring about personal use minor copyright violations because of it.
I'm happy with A tradeoff. I'm not happy with their tradeoff. They keep inserting more ads, longer ads and unskippable ads. I went to watch a 2-3 minute video a month ago on my phone and it had 5...
I'm happy with A tradeoff. I'm not happy with their tradeoff.
They keep inserting more ads, longer ads and unskippable ads. I went to watch a 2-3 minute video a month ago on my phone and it had 5 ads. Yes, they were skippable but even waiting the minimum time it still added nearly 50% runtime to the video. I could only imagine how long it would have added if I watched all of the ads to completion..
Since there isn't "I'm willing to watch a reasonable amount of ads" option I'll pick the side where I'll keep my computer and information safe by using script blocking and value my time more than they seem to value it and use an ad blocker.
That's absolutely ridiculous, however that hasn't been my experience. If and when that starts to become the norm that will lead me to reevaluate whether I am getting value.
I went to watch a 2-3 minute video a month ago on my phone and it had 5 ads.
That's absolutely ridiculous, however that hasn't been my experience. If and when that starts to become the norm that will lead me to reevaluate whether I am getting value.
I've noticed that ad length and skippability is different depending on what country you're in. In the US, unskippable ads are always 15 seconds, but in the UK they can be up to 20 seconds.
I've noticed that ad length and skippability is different depending on what country you're in. In the US, unskippable ads are always 15 seconds, but in the UK they can be up to 20 seconds.
Or in my case, I plan to continue to not use YouTube. Not everyone uses the platform, and I see no reason to start. That being said, I still use reddit, so...
The same thing everyone is planning to do, continue to use youtube.
Or in my case, I plan to continue to not use YouTube. Not everyone uses the platform, and I see no reason to start.
Not GP but I have a premium subscription and I still use an ad blocker and SponsorBlock to skip baked in sponsorship and ads, so I wonder if they’ll include SponsorBlock and the like in this and...
Not GP but I have a premium subscription and I still use an ad blocker and SponsorBlock to skip baked in sponsorship and ads, so I wonder if they’ll include SponsorBlock and the like in this and still ban people.
I haven’t seen any details about whether they also target premium accounts that just happen to also be running an ad blocker.
I can't see why they would. Google doesn't earn money from in video sponsors. If anything I can imagine them going the other way and banning creators from adding these sponsor sections.
I can't see why they would. Google doesn't earn money from in video sponsors. If anything I can imagine them going the other way and banning creators from adding these sponsor sections.
What Google is doing with YouTube ads is absolutely atrocious through. When a 10 minute video has 3 ad stops, and those ads can be anywhere from 5 seconds to 45 MINUTES, it begs the question if...
What Google is doing with YouTube ads is absolutely atrocious through.
When a 10 minute video has 3 ad stops, and those ads can be anywhere from 5 seconds to 45 MINUTES, it begs the question if what is more important. The content, or the ads.
For a lot of folks, 2 15 second ads in a 10 minute video should be tolerable. But I've run into 4,5, and even up to 6 add in a 10 to 15 minute video, and it makes them almost unwatchable.
And the rumors of 4 minute unstoppable ads? Dude, at that point you are not watching creator content. You are watching corporate content.
And it costs the same as a streaming service that creates their own content?
Yeah
.....
I think the consumer gas a right to be a little upset.
This right here. Now we can talk about egregious ad breaks of 5-10 unskippable ads, but we can't say it's unfair to have some way of having revenue as a business. I think this is pretty damn fair...
You can't have everything be free and with no ads, that's obviously not realistic.
This right here. Now we can talk about egregious ad breaks of 5-10 unskippable ads, but we can't say it's unfair to have some way of having revenue as a business. I think this is pretty damn fair for a free service. I gladly pay for Premium because I don't want ads and it seems like something small to fund a service I have happily used since its inception.
Similar to you, I ended up switching to Piped this week. I run a self-hosted instance for myself. It's more than just ads for me though. Youtube's recommendations are ... kind of hit and miss....
Similar to you, I ended up switching to Piped this week. I run a self-hosted instance for myself.
It's more than just ads for me though. Youtube's recommendations are ... kind of hit and miss. There is a bunch of stuff currently in my "watch later" playlist that I found purely through recommendations that came from channels I'm not subscribed to, 'nor ever watched anything from before. But I also do routinely miss new videos from channels I am subscribed to and who's videos I try to never miss. Not to mention that the "Not interested" button is, in my experience, completely useless, so my feed has usually got a bunch of crap I have no intention of watching at all. So it's very difficult to train their recommendations.
Something like Piped, or really most any other alternative frontend, helps me focus my viewing and removes the annoyance of a shitty recommendation engine trying to get me to look at what it thinks will drive the most user engagement (which seems to usually be more negative-focused videos ... ugh). Now I just see the videos that I want to see. But this does mean that I have to work harder to discover more content outside of what I'm currently following. That's a tradeoff I am happy to make.
However, I think one of the bigger issues surrounding all of these alternative frontends is how long they'll last into the future. Since some of them have been around for a while now, I'm assuming it isn't super trivial for Youtube to block otherwise they would have done so by now. But if, after so many years of not doing really anything to fight back against ad blockers (I literally have not seen a single ad on Youtube while using an ad blocker for ... gosh, at least 10 years now, easily), they now are going to start ... it makes me think that they won't just stop at fighting ad blockers, but probably will also start to fight against other forms of "free-loading" of content from Youtube. Time will tell I suppose, but I suspect these alternate front-ends are forever going to be also involved in a constant game of cat-and-mouse too.
There's also the thought in the back of my mind about supporting the content creators. I'm assuming that by using an alternate frontend for Youtube, that I'm absolutely not supporting them at all, regardless of what I watch via that frontend. And this doesn't sit right with me either, because ultimately it hurts the content creators who's content I enjoy watching. Especially so if more people switch to these methods of watching. Something I've thought of doing is subscribing to Youtube Premium anyway even if I no longer actually use the normal Youtube website, but that doesn't work either I think because the only way my Premium subscription helps content creators is if Youtube can track what I watch (which they can't, at least not down to my own personally account, if I'm using an alternate frontend).
Ugh. Anyway, I don't really have a solution here except directly donating to each content creator I watch, which is not totally feasible for me right now.
I just discovered Piped yesterday with this (very engaging) video: https://piped.video/watch?v=V-yO1DcdUFQ I think the reasons all of these 15-20 year old platforms and services are suddenly and...
I just discovered Piped yesterday with this (very engaging) video:
I think the reasons all of these 15-20 year old platforms and services are suddenly and intensely enshittifying is because capitalism requires endless growth. Not just mature businesses making a steady profit. Growth. So every penny has to be squeezed out until the quality of the product or experience of the service is negatively impacted. I am not looking forward to the future, paying $35/mo. for YouTube Ultra Premium+ with 10 unskippable ads in a two minute video.
ETA: Just saw this article. Enshittification for all streamers continues apace.
It's not just capitalism, it's because of public trading. They have to constantly please investors by constantly raising the stock price by continually cutting costs and quality to increase their...
It's not just capitalism, it's because of public trading. They have to constantly please investors by constantly raising the stock price by continually cutting costs and quality to increase their margins.
Public trading is just downright cancerous to society at this point.
Yeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The way I've finally decided to view my usage of an alternative frontend for Youtube is a "vote with my wallet" kind of ideal. It pains me that so...
Yeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The way I've finally decided to view my usage of an alternative frontend for Youtube is a "vote with my wallet" kind of ideal. It pains me that so many people laugh at this ideal today (see: most of my gaming friends laughing at me when I said this was why I wouldn't play Diablo 4, 'nor any other Blizzard game ever again), but I think one of the most important things people can do today, individually, is to hold onto your ideals, especially when it causes you a bit of inconvenience. There's no better way to make a business change its course, then to hurt their bottom line. A single person is obviously like an ant pushing a boulder up-hill, but if we keep collectively giving up because "there's no point" then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You gotta start somewhere!
So yes, I also am scared of a future of rising subscription costs for all these things with a more and more enshittified user experience that you start to feel trapped in (you can see this already slowly happening with the rising cost of a Twitch Turbo subscription too, just to name another service).
yt-dl was discontinued at some point, perhaps had something to do with it since it's no longer up to date. yt-dlp is the go to now and has been for a while.
yt-dl was discontinued at some point, perhaps had something to do with it since it's no longer up to date. yt-dlp is the go to now and has been for a while.
What I don’t get, is that we had YouTube since the late 2000s. Surely bandwidth costs have fallen by orders of magnitude. And yes, I get that they likely were burning cash back then. But it just...
What I don’t get, is that we had YouTube since the late 2000s. Surely bandwidth costs have fallen by orders of magnitude. And yes, I get that they likely were burning cash back then. But it just baffles me that now, when their operating overhead should be at an all time low, they are flooding us when ads. It’s like you said, they’re putting the squeeze the viewers.
Revanced is Youtube Vanced all over again. I recommend giving that a shot. Get the manager, the appropriate Youtube version from apkmirror, and apply patches after having installed MicroG.
Revanced is Youtube Vanced all over again. I recommend giving that a shot. Get the manager, the appropriate Youtube version from apkmirror, and apply patches after having installed MicroG.
Most probably I’ll end up subscribing if they actually go through with this. Especially if they finally launch Youtube Premium Lite in my country; I find Youtube Premium too expensive when I’m not...
What are you planning to, or have done to fight this behavior?
Most probably I’ll end up subscribing if they actually go through with this. Especially if they finally launch Youtube Premium Lite in my country; I find Youtube Premium too expensive when I’m not interested at all in their music streaming service.
I have a cronjob to run yt-dlp, pulling urls from a text file. with Sponsorblock built in, the whole process is really nice. I use it for podcasts, but it'd be perfect for videos and anything else...
I have a cronjob to run yt-dlp, pulling urls from a text file. with Sponsorblock built in, the whole process is really nice. I use it for podcasts, but it'd be perfect for videos and anything else you regularly watch.
If you do schedule it with cron, make sure you escape the % in your template.
I had always been open to paying for YouTube, but it was just illogical given that ad blockers are so easy, reliable, and legal. Why would I pay for something that’s free? Now that they aren’t so...
I had always been open to paying for YouTube, but it was just illogical given that ad blockers are so easy, reliable, and legal. Why would I pay for something that’s free? Now that they aren’t so reliable I’ve just signed up for YouTube premium. The content on YouTube is pretty good and the platform has minimal anti patterns once you pay.
If there was a version of YouTube premium that was just to turn off ads, and priced accordingly, I’d happily pay it. But I know it’s currently one of those bundle deals with features I’ll never...
If there was a version of YouTube premium that was just to turn off ads, and priced accordingly, I’d happily pay it. But I know it’s currently one of those bundle deals with features I’ll never use. I already have Spotify premium for less than $1 per year, so YouTube music (and the comparatively enormous bandwidth that would use on my phone) is a drawback more than a feature for me.
I've had YT Premium since the Google Music days so this doesn't affect me. But you are right in how there's not really an alternative platform to Youtube if this is a deal breaker. Wonder how/if...
I've had YT Premium since the Google Music days so this doesn't affect me. But you are right in how there's not really an alternative platform to Youtube if this is a deal breaker. Wonder how/if people will work around this initiative.
I disabled the app rather than watch ads on my phone, so videos load via browser (with ad & sponsorblock). I will, without question, stop using YouTube rather than watch ads. I used reddit much...
I disabled the app rather than watch ads on my phone, so videos load via browser (with ad & sponsorblock).
I will, without question, stop using YouTube rather than watch ads. I used reddit much more, quit that over less, and I'll fuckin do it again
I'm so goddamn sick of companies pushing us around.
I mainly watch YouTube when I'm on my computer. I use Brave as my browser, so I have an ad-blocker built in, and sometimes I forget that. Occasionally I will check YouTube from a device that I...
I mainly watch YouTube when I'm on my computer. I use Brave as my browser, so I have an ad-blocker built in, and sometimes I forget that. Occasionally I will check YouTube from a device that I don't control and get reminded of how many ads dominate that site. Know what I do when an ad loads? I close the tab and do something else.
I like Youtube. I use it a lot. However, like you, it's not necessary for my life and it will be fairly easy to cut it out altogether if they kill ad-blockers.
I don't think you and I are in the majority. Most people will roll along with whatever changes Google makes. Hopefully though, leaving the platform will make it that much more viable for a small competitor to start up.
Yeah, we seem like we're in the minority but as far as I'm concerned there's no part of the YouTube experience that is worth sitting through ads, and there certainly isn't any part that's worth...
Yeah, we seem like we're in the minority but as far as I'm concerned there's no part of the YouTube experience that is worth sitting through ads, and there certainly isn't any part that's worth spending money.
Same here. I've come to realise recently that Youtube offers me basically nothing of value I can't get (or get a replacement for) elsewhere. Most of what I use Youtube for is background noise. I...
Same here. I've come to realise recently that Youtube offers me basically nothing of value I can't get (or get a replacement for) elsewhere.
Most of what I use Youtube for is background noise. I stop listening to what's being said really quickly because I'm almost always just doing something else. I'll also listen to music, for similar background noise reasons, and Youtube is nice because it has uploads of covers and soundtracks and stuff that are hard to come by on other platforms.
But I also have 35 gigs worth of digital music on my laptop, and my 3DS which I carry more often than my phone makes a handy MP3 player. With just that I can replace 95% of what I use Youtube for, and the rest of what I'd use it for (tutorials, clips, etc) I look for infrequently enough that I could sit through the ads if they manage to get through uBlock.
It's a different story for most ordinary users. But for me personally, it's not a case of "get a paying Premium member" but of "lose a user who's using Youtube as a slightly more convenient Windows Media Player"
Going after adblocking users is just so pointless. More than enough users see ads, while it confuses me that everyone does not run adblocking the fact is they don't. It's also the case that it...
Going after adblocking users is just so pointless. More than enough users see ads, while it confuses me that everyone does not run adblocking the fact is they don't.
It's also the case that it turns into a game of cat and mouse, ultimately the adblocking users will find a way to continue blocking ads.
Couldnt agree more. I have older devices and youtube is a testing app i use for their web browsers. Every time i get about 3 ads at the start and 4 thru the video. Insane. Brave Browser and Opera...
Couldnt agree more. I have older devices and youtube is a testing app i use for their web browsers. Every time i get about 3 ads at the start and 4 thru the video. Insane. Brave Browser and Opera ( adblocker also built in) for the win!
This was a long time coming. Ads are YouTube's main source of revenue. People can preach all they want about being able to block parts of the webpages they load, but in the end, if you're blocking...
This was a long time coming. Ads are YouTube's main source of revenue. People can preach all they want about being able to block parts of the webpages they load, but in the end, if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing from YouTube by using their bandwidth without compensation. You can be upset by this, but they have a bottom line. What would you suggest they do instead? YouTube Premium makes them more money but way less people use it. Other than super chats, I can't think of another way the site makes money.
Youtube is willing to give me content when I go to their webpage. I don't want to see all of the content that they want to give me, so I instruct my browser to block parts of it. Youtube still has...
if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing
Youtube is willing to give me content when I go to their webpage. I don't want to see all of the content that they want to give me, so I instruct my browser to block parts of it. Youtube still has all of their content, I haven't deprived them of the content, nor have I removed it from their possession. They gave me their content willingly, without any pre-arranged contracts. I choose not to view some of the content that they give to me. I see no theft here.
Corporations are not moral patients; they do not have a right to exist and are not owed anything.
I also disagree with the argument made that viewing videos while blocking ads does nothing negative to Youtube. At a minimum, they have costs to survive. If everyone watched videos and blocked their sources of revenue, they would cease to exist
Corporations are not moral patients; they do not have a right to exist and are not owed anything.
They do have a right to set terms upon which you use their service, and to enforce them, which is what they're doing. Nobody is forcing you to use YouTube. It's not an essential service, it's...
They do have a right to set terms upon which you use their service, and to enforce them, which is what they're doing. Nobody is forcing you to use YouTube. It's not an essential service, it's entertainment. If you don't agree to their terms of use (either by subscribing or sitting through their ads), then just don't use it.
Of course they have the right to set terms. And I have the right to ignore them. I assert that, because corporations are not moral patients, I am not committing a wrongdoing when I harm them by...
Of course they have the right to set terms. And I have the right to ignore them. I assert that, because corporations are not moral patients, I am not committing a wrongdoing when I harm them by ignoring the terms they set.
Let me add, I think that the more interesting discussion is the meta-discussion about the broader role of advertising (advertising doesn't pay for servers and engineers—money does), and the extent to which google was completely responsible for knowing what sort of business it was getting itself into (serving video and landscaping are both services, but no one has these sorts of conversations about landscaping, because landscapers are not in the habit of landscaping accidentally when they had rather not). But the basic point stands—an entity may be harmed by being violated, but a corporation is not a moral patient, so it is not morally wrong to harm a corporation by violating it.
Edit:
They do have a right ... to enforce them
Of course. I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was wrong of youtube to try to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads.
My apologies, this was what I interpreted your comment to be, since the original thread is about them trying to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads. The morality argument is...
I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was wrong of youtube to try to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads.
My apologies, this was what I interpreted your comment to be, since the original thread is about them trying to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads.
The morality argument is interesting, as comparing it to landscaping. When you obtain landscaping services, you agree to pay them, typically in dollars. Not paying them for their work is immoral (and illegal). YouTube has decided to offer a service, with options of either directly paying them money for that service via YouTube Premium or indirectly by consuming ads which someone else pays them for. By doing neither, you're expecting them to provide a service at no cost, which is not what they ever agreed to do, nor should they be expected to.
I'm definitely not of the viewpoint that corporations are people (I don't think they should be able to donate to politicians, for example). But in my own opinion (I'm not the morality police), just because they're a corporation doesn't mean that it's not immoral to consume their service (which they are offering at a price of dollars or ad watches), and not pay the price that they've set.
They also make sure to have a quote or contract or at least an understanding between both parties before they begin. If a landscaping service had a simple form on their website where I list my...
The morality argument is interesting, as comparing it to landscaping. When you obtain landscaping services, you agree to pay them, typically in dollars
They also make sure to have a quote or contract or at least an understanding between both parties before they begin.
If a landscaping service had a simple form on their website where I list my address and nothing else, and then I find out they took that as a confirmation to start work, I’d be pretty unhappy and certainly hesitant to pay them.
On the flip side, if YouTube enforced the ads or payment up-front before they served me videos, I feel like that’s a much closer two-way agreement and I’d be able to make my choice about continuing to use the service or not.
I think I’d also be more comfortable turning off my ad blocker if online advertisers were actually responsible about the ads they served, but I’ve heard too many examples of ads which cause genuine physical damage to the end-users device (especially when crypto was taking off) or deliberately serving alcohol or gambling ads to people recovering from addiction.
Isn't that what they're doing, though? They do (typically) show you the ad up front, before serving the content. And within their terms of service, you can choose whether you want to sit through...
On the flip side, if YouTube enforced the ads or payment up-front before they served me videos, I feel like that’s a much closer two-way agreement and I’d be able to make my choice about continuing to use the service or not.
Isn't that what they're doing, though? They do (typically) show you the ad up front, before serving the content. And within their terms of service, you can choose whether you want to sit through it or just leave.
You can't see what's automatically blocked and the amount of people who read ToS's is a rounding error away from 0. There's no meeting of the minds in relation to this, just a www address and...
You can't see what's automatically blocked and the amount of people who read ToS's is a rounding error away from 0. There's no meeting of the minds in relation to this, just a www address and streamed content.
They don’t enforce it at all, they don’t even pretend to. They happily serve content to my computer without checking whether or not an ad played. That’s what I mean by upfront, I don’t just mean...
They don’t enforce it at all, they don’t even pretend to. They happily serve content to my computer without checking whether or not an ad played.
That’s what I mean by upfront, I don’t just mean “it happens before the video” I mean “they don’t send the content before the ad has played”
EDIT: example by contrast; Netflix does not serve their content until after payment is secured. Likewise there are a number of news websites that do the same, if you have an adblocker they will not serve the article.
A few points re landscaping, probably somewhat scattered as I am sleep-deprived: I don't have to agree to youtube's terms of use in order to watch videos on youtube. So they are really more just a...
A few points re landscaping, probably somewhat scattered as I am sleep-deprived:
I don't have to agree to youtube's terms of use in order to watch videos on youtube. So they are really more just a set of stated preferences from youtube re how they want to be treated. I think this point might be stronger if I had to make a commitment to view ads in order to watch videos on youtube, as I make a commitment to pay landscapers if I want them to landscape for me. But ...
...this is fundamentally not how the internet works—it's not really practical to collect such commitments at scale (without charging for access, as is done by e.g. netflix and spotify). Google has made the choice to play in this space, and these are the parameters of the space. They have chosen to serve their videos to all comers. Which brings me to perhaps my main point here, which is:
Landscapers don't really ever landscape by accident. They only do so having received a commitment to be paid (or a payment). If there is a desire to economise trust, they may enlist an escrow. (If you promise to pay, but don't, they may sue, but this happens rarely; they will not go in expecting it to happen.) With free internet services, again, it is simply not possible to have such an expectation of the majority of your userbase—there will inevitably be an adblock arms-race, and you will, at best, only be able to keep apace.
I think that these two are the only real differences between landscaping and youtube ads—with landscaping, you will have made a directed commitment, and there is broadly an expectation that you will follow through on it. I don't think there is a fundamental difference. I think that going back on a commitment is a personal failing, but not necessarily a moral one. I think that the difference in expectation is the main thing that makes it feel different, but I think that, fundamentally, wronging a landscaping company is just as fine as wronging youtube.
There is another confounding factor, to wit, wronging a landscaping company is likely to cause more harm to individuals than wronging youtube, in most specific instances. That's less significant here.
on what level? A coporation isn't a moral patient but is made up of them. And it has other agents that rely on its services as a livelihood. You can say that they aren't owed a job either, but...
Corporations are not moral patients
on what level? A coporation isn't a moral patient but is made up of them. And it has other agents that rely on its services as a livelihood. You can say that they aren't owed a job either, but that seems to go against the whole point of a moral patient .
they do not have a right to exist and are not owed anything.
no more so than any individual person, no. But if someone offers a service I don't expect them to altruistically provide quality on demand labor for zero cost. If they do, that's amazing but far from expected. And Google has never pretended to be altruistic.
I'm not on Youtube because I care about Google as any sort of entity. I'm there because many creators are there who I do actually care about. If you want me to move you need them to move, and there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative without them changing the format of their content.
I'm curious where I can read more about that view, because accepting that as a premise would change one's line of thinking drastically on this issue. I want to read more about how far that's...
Corporations are not moral patients
I'm curious where I can read more about that view, because accepting that as a premise would change one's line of thinking drastically on this issue. I want to read more about how far that's applied. Like are we just talking international mega-corps or large businesses, or would we also owe nothing for the services of small businesses or sole proprietorships as well if they were providing the same services?
I'm sure people have written about it, but I don't know of any references off-hand. It's my own view, but it seems somewhat self-evident. I think there may be some rare exceptions (not just a...
I'm curious where I can read more about that view
I'm sure people have written about it, but I don't know of any references off-hand. It's my own view, but it seems somewhat self-evident.
I want to read more about how far that's applied. Like are we just talking international mega-corps or large businesses, or would we also owe nothing for the services of small businesses or sole proprietorships as well if they were providing the same services?
I think there may be some rare exceptions (not just a function of being small), but broadly, yes, I think that it applies uniformly. Rather, we can consider the indirect effects on individuals. For instance, I think that, in nearly all cases, it will be quite easy to argue that stealing from a sole proprietorship harms the proprietor; the interesting party being the proprietor, not the proprietorship.
To give a pertinent example: you could make a tragedy-of-the-commons-style argument that watching youtube while blocking ads makes it unsustainable to maintain and thereby robs everybody of the great trove of human knowledge that is youtube. I would not make this argument—I think, that, in sum, youtube probably represents a net negative; it certainly does if you consider only the high-volume videos that pay their bills, but there is a long tail of more interesting and valuable things (taped conference talks, e.g.) that I'm sure they would very much like to be rid of—but one could, and I think it would be a much more interesting argument to have than one about whether we bear a moral responsibility to youtube.
This is missing the point. If you want to provide a service, it needs to break even at the minimum. Now I personally hate ads, will run an ad blocker, and don't think it's theft in the slightest...
This is missing the point.
If you want to provide a service, it needs to break even at the minimum. Now I personally hate ads, will run an ad blocker, and don't think it's theft in the slightest to do so, but I also respect there's some issues with how this entire service works.
As others have pointed out, "make it all free and then sell their data and targeted ads" is a bit of a problem for the internet, and I'd even go farther to say tech in general. For example - You want to charge $5-$50 for a phone app? How dare you! I'll jut go play this other game that's "free" with an average user spend in the $100's.
This is not healthy design or behavior, but it's also fucking hard to compete against. Google can loss leader the shit out of anyone competing, and most people don't have any moral standards when it comes to things like this and only care about getting what they want as easily as possible. Nebula is the only thing I'm aware of even trying, and even that has issues (major shame that so much of their content is click baity as well).
There's a lot of room between the extremes on this, but unfortunately it's got external problems of inertia and monopoly (not just of clients, but of infrastructure)
You are reading way to much into the word "survive", if that's what's bugging you. OP stated neutrally what would happen to YouTube and didn't include any statements about morality.
You are reading way to much into the word "survive", if that's what's bugging you. OP stated neutrally what would happen to YouTube and didn't include any statements about morality.
It's possible to read it that way but taking the whole comment into account, it's clear they are talking about the legal and more so economical issues.
It's possible to read it that way but taking the whole comment into account, it's clear they are talking about the legal and more so economical issues.
This is purely lack of imagination and a dogmatic way to generate revenue. Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord. Do you honestly believe they wouldn't abandon a platform...
At a minimum, they have costs to survive. If everyone watched videos and blocked their sources of revenue, they would cease to exist.
This is purely lack of imagination and a dogmatic way to generate revenue. Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord. Do you honestly believe they wouldn't abandon a platform to seek an alternative if one presented itself?
It's hubris for google to think people wouldn't leave youtube, as they left cable. There is even a poll within the article saying over 90% of readers would find an alternative method to block ads or leave the platform.
There needs to be a different way to generate revenue if that is what they are reliant upon, and it's not our responsibility to figure out what that is for them.
No, I think it was a set schedule and being limited to one TV per cable cord in an age where more people were using Laptops and phones for media consumption that drove people. ad-free was a nice...
Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord.
No, I think it was a set schedule and being limited to one TV per cable cord in an age where more people were using Laptops and phones for media consumption that drove people. ad-free was a nice cherry on top that is now being taken off again.
While people hate ads, I hear many more complaints about subscription services with no free model attached. Streaming TV/movies got ahead of that curve, but I imagine most the rest of the internet would suffer if they had to go premium only. Just look at how news sites are doing these days.
It's hubris for google to think people wouldn't leave youtube, as they left cable.
love to see it happen, but I'm not that optimistic. Thing is that video hosting is insanely expensive, and I don't think anyone short of a coporate trillionaire can sustain something the size of YouTube. This isn't like how maybe Mastodon or whatnot can spin up a community for disgruntled Twitter users.
I'm not so sure about the cost issue. There were plenty of video sites before YouTube, and people hosted plenty of videos on their own websites. The resolutions were low and the traffic volumes...
Thing is that video hosting is insanely expensive, and I don't think anyone short of a coporate trillionaire can sustain something the size of YouTube.
I'm not so sure about the cost issue. There were plenty of video sites before YouTube, and people hosted plenty of videos on their own websites. The resolutions were low and the traffic volumes were low, but it was still an option. There's a lot of other potential models besides a centralized platform like YouTube. If everyone goes back to hosting things on their own machines, maybe we go back to lower resolutions. Alternately, you might see a service like Amazon webservices offer video hosting options. A content creator could pay them to host videos, and the individual content creators would pay Amazon for the hosting costs. This would mean they have to pay for Amazon some money, but I imagine it would be far, far cheaper than small channels trying to host video on their own machine, serviced by a domestic cable modem. And it wouldn't have to be Amazon, videos could be hosted on any number of large scale hosting providers.
Some people might have channels that they just host as fun side projects, just like people pay to host their own blogs and websites. Maybe you start by hosting out of your own house, and if you get enough followers and your bandwidth needs grow too high, you then contract with a hosting provider like Amazon webservices.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of our expectations are based on the environment YouTube has created. Being a massive platform with enormous economies of scale, they have pushed content creators to produce ever-higher resolutions. And for some channels this is necessary, but often its not. Now we have channels that do nothing but host vlogs, just a guy talking into a microphone, that will put out videos in 4k. They do that as that is just something the algorithm expects. But you could get the same experience from a much lower resolution video.
Keep in mind, way back in the 90s, there were plenty of people hosting websites filled with images, websites they ran from 1990s computers serving content over 56k modems. What's the equivalent of that today? Maybe you can't run a 4k channel with Mr Beast level subscribers out of your house. But a 480p channel with a few thousand subscribers? You could probably run that out of your home and off a regular cable modem or domestic fiber connection. If demand for your channel grows and you start getting lots of followers, eventually things would grow beyond your ability to host directly. At that point, you can start getting patrons, possible sponsorships, and either pay for video hosting on a service like Amazon or invest in your own commercial-scale equipment and bandwidth.
It's important to keep in mind that what we are used to today is the ecosystem that Google built. And before that, there was a quite logical path forward towards more widespread and diverse video hosting. People were already hosting short simple videos and animations. Then YouTube came around with a bunch of venture capital money and started letting people host their content for free. If YouTube collapses, we can always pick up right where we left off. And because of YouTube's dominance, development has been severely stunted in this area of small-scale video hosting. If people had kept to hosting their own videos, we would have seen a whole ecosystem of new tools, standards, hosting and compression formats, and tools developed to aid in self-hosted video. Some of that does exist, but because YouTube has been sucking all the oxygen out of the room for the last 18 years, their development has been severely stunted.
I think it really depends on what you expect out of being a content creator. You can still probably find a few thousand subscribers, and even monetize them if you are very diligent in fostering...
way back in the 90s, there were plenty of people hosting websites filled with images, websites they ran from 1990s computers serving content over 56k modems. What's the equivalent of that today? Maybe you can't run a 4k channel with Mr Beast level subscribers out of your house. But a 480p channel with a few thousand subscribers? You could probably run that out of your home and off a regular cable modem or domestic fiber connection.
I think it really depends on what you expect out of being a content creator. You can still probably find a few thousand subscribers, and even monetize them if you are very diligent in fostering such a community. But the big issues is that the scale you'd need to consider going part or full time is much larger. Most people in the 00's (let alone the 90's) couldn't do that even with the comparatively smaller scale requirements to host. Not through YT adshare at least. They sought out sponsors and a few even got deals at professional studios for movies/TV.
And ofc you inevitably run into peer pressures. Happens with non-steam games, so it probably happens much more with non-Youtube videos. Or worse yet, others simply upload your video to Youtube and now you spend all this time removing videos. People will always sway back towards what was convinent, and Youtube has been around long enough to feel convinient.
Disagree, it was $80/month cable bills that come with 200 channels, but you only liked 3 of them. So you got on-demand content for a fraction of the price. That's what drove cord cutting. I'd love...
Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord.
Disagree, it was $80/month cable bills that come with 200 channels, but you only liked 3 of them. So you got on-demand content for a fraction of the price. That's what drove cord cutting.
It's hubris for google to think people wouldn't leave youtube, as they left cable. There is even a poll within the article saying over 90% of readers would find an alternative method to block ads or leave the platform.
I'd love to see an alternative to YouTube if people leave and go elsewhere. Alternatives are great, both for consumers since they have choice, but also for industry because it drives innovation to do things differently from your competitors. It would be interesting to see how a competitor can cover their costs without ads. Would something crowd-funded like Tildes actually be sustainable?
There needs to be a different way to generate revenue if that is what they are reliant upon
Of course that's what they're reliant upon. There isn't a single product or service out there that has costs and isn't reliant on revenue to cover those costs. And in this case, they even offer you two ways to pay those costs (ads or subscription).
it's not our responsibility to figure out what that is for them.
Of course not. But we do agree to their terms of service in order to use it, and currently that includes ads or subscription. If you're not going to be part of the group that makes those decisions, then you're automatically part of the group that lives by the decisions that were made if you want to use that service.
I also remember when cable was still young and most people still had rabbit ears that the cost was justified as a way to replace the ads. Instead it is like paying for YouTube Premium but still...
Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord.
Disagree, it was $80/month cable bills that come with 200 channels, but you only liked 3 of them. So you got on-demand content for a fraction of the price. That's what drove cord cutting.
I also remember when cable was still young and most people still had rabbit ears that the cost was justified as a way to replace the ads. Instead it is like paying for YouTube Premium but still getting all the ads plus more (regular ads and then ads telling you to switch to the cable company you already had).
Being an early cord cutter myself you are mostly correct. The other issue was the number of ads. You were paying $80+ to have up to 25% of your watching time be ads. However, no one ever accused you of "stealing" if you grabbed a beer during an ad.
To me the crux of the problem is not only the increasing number (and/or length) of ads that YouTube shows but also ads we see EVERYWHERE ELSE. I get ads, sorry "suggested content offers", on my big screen TV after an update. The movie theater, already expensive for a ticket, shows tons of regular ads before the upcoming movie ads (Although few people have problems with movie trailers). Game consoles have ads now. One of the main operating systems in the world (Windows) keeps playing around with ads. (Didn't Canonical get into some drama by talking about putting ads in Ubuntu once?) They're putting ads inside video games. Our tablets, Kindles and phones are little 24/7 ad machines.. It honestly reminds me of that scene in "Ready Player One" where they talk about what % of the screen they can fill with ads before it causes seizures.
In the case of YouTube, I'm sure each person would prefer 0 ads, but realistically everyone knows YouTube is a business. Each person also has their personal limit on what % of time they want to devote to ads.
So now people are discussing this from 2 different perspectives: Ethical vs moral.
Ethically, people shouldn't skip ads because Youtube is a business.
Morally, I don't think many people feel sorry for a 1.37 trillion dollar company.
Ethically, YouTube should be willing to compromise and find a balance between "not enough" ads from their perspective to "too many ads" on their users because it is what is best for business.
Morally, no one is required watch 100% of anything (ads included).
Instead of any of that, in the perpetual chase to ever higher profits, Google, a 1.37 trillion dollar company, is enshittifying their service by serving more ads, longer ads and more unskippable ads. They seem to have chosen the adversarial path against their users, ignoring the lessons of other companies who took that result and the varying results. Instead of making it easier, they're making it harder.
That thought alone is enough to make me finally get around to unlocking myself as much as I can to any 1 company. False positives are a thing. Maybe I'm staying/living/visiting somewhere where PiHole is installed and I had no control over it.
I actually brought this up to someone in my family who worked for a cable provider, and their explanation was that ads were a way to subsidize, but not completely cover the cost of programming. It...
I actually brought this up to someone in my family who worked for a cable provider, and their explanation was that ads were a way to subsidize, but not completely cover the cost of programming. It just eventually got to the price (in both ads and dollars) where the cost was no longer justified when compared to value that people were getting from traditional TV packages.
The ethics vs morals argument is interesting. I hadn't given that comparison much thought, but it makes sense if you look at the raw definitions of those.
Perhaps a hyperbolic statement, but advertisements definitely played a role. It may not have been the sole reason as I was alluding to, but it was there for plenty of people, including myself. I...
Disagree, it was $80/month cable bills that come with 200 channels, but you only liked 3 of them. So you got on-demand content for a fraction of the price. That's what drove cord cutting.
Perhaps a hyperbolic statement, but advertisements definitely played a role. It may not have been the sole reason as I was alluding to, but it was there for plenty of people, including myself.
I'd love to see an alternative to YouTube if people leave and go elsewhere. Alternatives are great, both for consumers since they have choice, but also for industry because it drives innovation to do things differently from your competitors. It would be interesting to see how a competitor can cover their costs without ads. Would something crowd-funded like Tildes actually be sustainable?
I cannot fathom a video streaming host that could operate currently without advertisements, which is why it is so frustrating. No one likes ads and it drives users away. How then can they make money? I don't think a crowd-funded service could operate at this level, but would be interested to see them try.
Of course that's what they're reliant upon. There isn't a single product or service out there that has costs and isn't reliant on revenue to cover those costs. And in this case, they even offer you two ways to pay those costs (ads or subscription).
I'm aware that's what they're reliant upon. I feel like you've misunderstood the point I was offering, or it was poorly worded. Maybe I should have written since that is what they are reliant upon, instead of if.
Of course not. But we do agree to their terms of service in order to use it, and currently that includes ads or subscription. If you're not going to be part of the group that makes those decisions, then you're automatically part of the group that lives by the decisions that were made if you want to use that service.
I have given a pass of their terms of service, and nowhere does it say viewers must view ads to view content. It goes into depth on what ads may be placed upon videos being uploaded, but not viewed. As far as I can tell from a cursory inspection, there is no such stipulation.
And, realistically speaking, if you are not in the room making the decision then we're all part of the group that lives by the decisions of the host. There is no point to pretend otherwise.
Personally, it is the number of ads that will keep me or drive me away. I subscribed to Sling TV for almost a year to watch AEW and a few other shows/sports. However, I swear to god they added an...
No one likes ads and it drives users away.
Personally, it is the number of ads that will keep me or drive me away. I subscribed to Sling TV for almost a year to watch AEW and a few other shows/sports. However, I swear to god they added an extra ad or two per ad break. It felt like it was 30% ads by time. It was annoying enough that I cancelled them.
Contrast that to Pluto.tv. I don't mind those ads because they certainly seem much shorter and less frequent. So far I've mainly watched the Godzilla channel so I don't know if other channels are worse or better.
(Full admission: I may be influenced in my assumptions because my particular uses are different between Sling TV and Pluto. On Sling I was actively watching so I noticed the interruptions. On Pluto, its mainly running on my second monitor as background noise so maybe I'm noticing as much??)
I installed a script blocker and ad blocker many moons ago after there was a slate of bad faith actors using various ad platforms as attack vectors. It was a happy benefit that it also blocked YouTube ads at the time. That was back before the put in SO.many.ads too. It shouldn't take 10 minutes to watch a 6-7 minute video.
I mean, not really — YouTube doesn’t require I agree to any terms of service before they serve me ads, and I don’t think I’ve heard “continuing to use our service” as a binding signature being...
But we do agree to their terms of service in order to use it, and currently that includes ads or subscription
I mean, not really — YouTube doesn’t require I agree to any terms of service before they serve me ads, and I don’t think I’ve heard “continuing to use our service” as a binding signature being tested in courts.
Does YT ads get paid by the click or by the download? If they’re paid by the click, the ad blockers have a 0% conversion rate and they lose money. If they’re paid by the download, design ad...
Does YT ads get paid by the click or by the download? If they’re paid by the click, the ad blockers have a 0% conversion rate and they lose money. If they’re paid by the download, design ad blockers to download the ad payloads and the not display them. YT still gets paid that way.
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out. I don’t have the technical expertise but I’ve long considered a wrapper for websites that pulls the entire website to my computer, but only displays the...
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out. I don’t have the technical expertise but I’ve long considered a wrapper for websites that pulls the entire website to my computer, but only displays the bits I care about. I think this is kinda the thing I’ve been looking for, thank you!
That source is wrong about the cost-per-view for an ad by an order of magnitude (or at least in inconsistent in what they present; the average cost comes out to $0.02 by their own numbers!)....
That source is wrong about the cost-per-view for an ad by an order of magnitude (or at least in inconsistent in what they present; the average cost comes out to $0.02 by their own numbers!). Consider this article instead, which also highlights the variability of the cost but nonethless shows that the cost is on the order of cents per ad view. Also note YouTube's cut is 45%!
Which, honestly, leaves me asking why I can't just bid for my own views and pay what the advertisers pay (which is significantly less than YouTube premium for the vast majority of users)? E.g., just load up my account with a few dollars and it automatically disburses to YouTube and the creator whose video I'm watching for every ad that would otherwise be shown?
This is disingenuous, and is dancing around the parent poster's use of the word "stealing". You are correct that you are not "stealing" according to the dictionary definition of the word, but: You...
This is disingenuous, and is dancing around the parent poster's use of the word "stealing". You are correct that you are not "stealing" according to the dictionary definition of the word, but:
You know that it costs money for youtube to store and serve you the videos you want.
You know that youtube covers its costs by serving you advertising alongside those videos.
The content you "don't want to see" is the adverts, and those are the only parts you are blocking.
You know that by doing so, you're depriving youtube of the revenue they use to serve you the videos you want.
Whether or not this is a crime, you know you are deliberately extracting a service from youtube while avoiding the thing that pays for that service. So don't pretend you're doing nothing wrong by not "stealing".
Is it also unethical to not look at the ads? What if I turn off my speakers and look at another monitor while the ads play? Is that unethical? What if I watch the ads, but never buy anything from...
Exemplary
Is it also unethical to not look at the ads? What if I turn off my speakers and look at another monitor while the ads play? Is that unethical? What if I watch the ads, but never buy anything from them? If everyone did that, ads would have no value, and YouTube would have zero revenue even if everyone watched the ads. How would you feel if YouTube tried to force you to watch all the ads via mandatory eye-tracking software?
No because the agreement is that Google serves the ad, nothing more. Now if the agreement were to change that you needed to answer a pop quiz after the ad and pass, otherwise you just get the ad...
No because the agreement is that Google serves the ad, nothing more. Now if the agreement were to change that you needed to answer a pop quiz after the ad and pass, otherwise you just get the ad again? At that point, I'd say the advertising has become too hostile to interact with.
Think of timeshares. They have incredibly aggressive advertising that involves locking you in a room and berating you for hours. In exchange, you typically get some decently valuable reward like multiple paid days at a hotel or something. It would be wrong to get the reward without going through the treatment, but there's nothing in the agreement that says you have to be a good participant. Many people sign up for these things and withstand to assault to get the prize. Personally though? I'd rather pass on it altogether.
Generally, yeah. If I said you could park in front of my house and you instead start letting all your friends park there too, it's breaking the agreement. You agreed to use their service for the...
Generally, yeah. If I said you could park in front of my house and you instead start letting all your friends park there too, it's breaking the agreement. You agreed to use their service for the payment they offered, but then broke the deal. I'm not saying it should be illegal but it is a of a dick move to break an agreement for personal gain. So if Google decides to enforce the agreement more directly, I hardly see how ad blockers have much of a leg to stand on. If you don't like it, well then don't use it.
In this context, you and I had an agreement. But I didn't really agree with Google in anything. Their videos are free, and I watch them. This is a really abstract problem. Skipping ads isn't the...
In this context, you and I had an agreement. But I didn't really agree with Google in anything. Their videos are free, and I watch them.
This is a really abstract problem. Skipping ads isn't the problem, you acknowledge, it's the principle of breaking an implied agreement? I don't agree that there's much morality to be gauged from that. I break agreements all the time. Some game devs don't want people to mod their game, and I'll do it anyway, because it's fun. Some authors don't want people to write fanfiction for their books. I'll read it anyway, if I want to.
You're free to verbalise whatever terms you like. I'll ignore them unless you enforce them strongly enough that I have no room to move, or unless I think there's a moral reason to comply. I'll pay my plumber both because it's the right thing to do and because the law will punish me if I don't. I'll adblock YouTube both because I can and it's legal, and because I feel no moral obligation to a company engaged in the largest raid of personal and intellectual information ever seen in history.
Look, I ad block too but mostly because of improved performance. For YouTube? I just buy premium because everyone gets what they want and it's a much better system than ad supported. As to...
Look, I ad block too but mostly because of improved performance. For YouTube? I just buy premium because everyone gets what they want and it's a much better system than ad supported.
As to breaking TOS, there's no such thing as absolute wrong here. Breaking TOS has various degrees of being a dick. Going against the wishes of someone without causing them any harm is hardly problematic. Breaking the agreement in a way that does cause some amount of harm is indeed a dick move. Doing it when it causes extreme harm is typically the level in which it's illegal, such as the plumber.
In all these cases, the parties involved are free to police their TOS. Games can try locking down and websites can block you back. The increased aggression may cause themselves more harm from annoyed users or maybe not. You the user are free to avoid these things.
The only time where it's not a dick move is when you've been forced to use a service you cannot agree with, such as an apartment complex requiring you to use a payment provider that spies on you. In those cases, I don't think the captive audience is at fault for raging against the machine.
If YouTube had a sub where I gave them money and they gave me a service, that's worth discussing. But my paying and using premium involves using the official client and an account, which means...
If YouTube had a sub where I gave them money and they gave me a service, that's worth discussing. But my paying and using premium involves using the official client and an account, which means they get all of my data for free as long as I use it. Nah mate, I'll make them work for it at least.
I'm at the point in my life where the only thing I'll willingly give a company is my money. Not my data, not my time, not my energy. If a company tries to double or triple or quadruple dip to extract the maximum value possible, fuck that noise, I'm circumventing it as best I can.
I've deleted Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter. Google's next, but I gotta work out some logistics. My next big move would be to get a Google Pixel that can run Graphene OS. The next one after that is switching from Windows 10 to Linux, which my wife is on board with but requires some work.
The only subscriptions I still pay are some patreons, Wikipedia, charity stuff, and that's kinda it. Still happy to make one time payments for FOSS apps, but if Google wants my money, it needs to introduce a No Spying tier sub. It won't ever do this, so I won't ever get it, and I'll continue to get around their ads until it's impossible to do so.
Sorry for the rant, I just want to emphasise how little sympathy or deference I have for Google on this.
Technically, Google let's you define the data retention duration. I don't know the shortest they offer but I know they do offer 3 months. I tried it and I wasn't a huge fan as it makes it very...
Technically, Google let's you define the data retention duration. I don't know the shortest they offer but I know they do offer 3 months. I tried it and I wasn't a huge fan as it makes it very hard for me to remember what I've seen and haven't seen (since they delete the view record).
Yes I'm sure they keep the anonymized data for AI munching and demographics sales, but you the person are I believe erased. You should give it a shot because Google really does let you take away most of the tracking. But, it does show that there are some service advantages to the data they track. It's not JUST nefarious data hording.
That's good for me to know, thanks. I have an android, so I'm still forced to engage with them until I'm able to move on graphene. That said, it's a matter of trust at this point for me too. I...
That's good for me to know, thanks. I have an android, so I'm still forced to engage with them until I'm able to move on graphene. That said, it's a matter of trust at this point for me too. I don't trust their word. I believe they'll do whatever they had to to keep as much data for as long as possible, since that makes the most money.
I'm perfectly fine not having view history or anything like that. I watch my videos through an rss feed that opens into NewPipe. If I really want to keep one, I can just favourite it, or go through my local history. Don't need recommendations either.
Google is not providing a service, they are holding culture hostage. Don't pretend people taking their own culture back into their own hands is wrong. Even if it required "stealing" proper, it...
Google is not providing a service, they are holding culture hostage. Don't pretend people taking their own culture back into their own hands is wrong. Even if it required "stealing" proper, it would be morally good to access and share cultural artifacts freely.
Google should be deprived of its revenue, YouTube should collapse (or better yet, have its servers seized), and we should have similar hosting be a public good for all to use.
That is the most contorted view point imaginable. So you think video hosting should be a government provided service (fair enough) but also think the only reason it's not is because YouTube...
That is the most contorted view point imaginable. So you think video hosting should be a government provided service (fair enough) but also think the only reason it's not is because YouTube exists?
Also, what culture are you even talking about? What is this culture that Google is supposedly hording? Video creation culture? You do know there's other video hosts out there, YouTube is just the biggest.
No, of course not, it's a systematic problem much larger than YouTube or Google. As capitalism does what it does and culture is stuck on paywalled and/or advertising and data-harvesting platforms,...
but also think the only reason it's not is because YouTube exists?
No, of course not, it's a systematic problem much larger than YouTube or Google. As capitalism does what it does and culture is stuck on paywalled and/or advertising and data-harvesting platforms, it is morally correct to take what you can and, if possible, share it with others. Everything we make is part of the cultural heritage of mankind, and we all ought to have access with no strings attached.
There are other video hosts and I do use them (shoutouts to Peertube), but it remains that the vast majority of online video is stuck on YouTube. This is a massive social failing. Corporations should not exist in the first place, let alone be the ones in charge of nearly all the cultural artifacts we interact with on a daily basis. Every single dog video, podcast with two people mumbling over each other, well-researched video essay, and 10 second clip of a thumb on a camera lens belongs to all of us and we don't owe the platforms which put up fences around our work anything. By having the wealth to eat the hosting costs before properly monetizing and us not having a public service to do the same thing, they leveraged their position to take control of it all and over time make us pay (with money or advertising views) to view what is ours.
There's nothing stopping you from pulling out your credit card and spinning up some virtual server instances with a cloud provider to provide that "public good" service.
and we should have similar hosting be a public good for all to use.
There's nothing stopping you from pulling out your credit card and spinning up some virtual server instances with a cloud provider to provide that "public good" service.
Actually, given the prevalence of regulatory capture by large tech companies, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something preventing that. It’s already happening with AI (as impossible to...
Actually, given the prevalence of regulatory capture by large tech companies, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something preventing that. It’s already happening with AI (as impossible to describe as that term is…)
Eh, I get what you're saying but video streaming is pretty much a commodity (YouTube is far from the only site, just happens to be the largest and most popular) while AI has more far-reaching...
Eh, I get what you're saying but video streaming is pretty much a commodity (YouTube is far from the only site, just happens to be the largest and most popular) while AI has more far-reaching implications. I wouldn't try to compare the two.
I can't speak for what the actual barriers to entry are but I don't think we can have it both ways that it's simultaneously really easy and cheap to run a video streaming service and also such a...
I can't speak for what the actual barriers to entry are but I don't think we can have it both ways that it's simultaneously really easy and cheap to run a video streaming service and also such a herculean effort that YouTube is going to collapse if they don't ban ad block users. The barriers to entry seem self-evident in the complete lack of any competition, or even attempt at competition, from anyone. YouTube has a complete monopoly on the market. Joe Schmo can't just show up to the party late and start YouTube 2.
Of course not, but nobody stays king forever. Someone, someday will develop a service that replaces YouTube. YouTube did start with a couple guys who started it from nothing. Then they sold out to...
Of course not, but nobody stays king forever. Someone, someday will develop a service that replaces YouTube. YouTube did start with a couple guys who started it from nothing. Then they sold out to Google who likely took losses on the service for many years before turning it into something profitable. Google doesn't owe society a free streaming service. I just don't get why people are so pissy about this. It's entertainment. If you don't like what YouTube is doing, then just don't consume it. It's not like power or cable companies where they have an actual monopoly and you're actually forced to use them to live.
Yeah, I don't know where I come down on the direct parent comment about YouTube holding culture hostage, but the vast majority of people in this thread aren't saying that. "Just don't consume it"...
Yeah, I don't know where I come down on the direct parent comment about YouTube holding culture hostage, but the vast majority of people in this thread aren't saying that. "Just don't consume it" only gets you so far when the top level comment in this subthread is someone accusing people of "stealing" for choosing not to consume some content. To the extent that I think you namecalling people in this thread "pissy" is useful (not at all), I think you're running into a problem only listening for that pissiness from people you don't agree with.
Changing gears, a monopoly is not when you are forced to go to a particular company to live, like power and cable, though that is a side effect of a monopoly in crucial industries. A monopoly is when you're forced to use a particular company if you want to consume a particular kind of good or service. The fact that I conceivably could stop consuming National Grid electricity and survive off the grid doesn't mean National Grid doesn't have a monopoly. If I want to consume electricity, I need to consume National Grid electricity. That's what makes it a monopoly. The fact that I could very easily stop consuming cable altogether, and have in fact done so, doesn't mean that Spectrum doesn't have a monopoly on cable in my region of the country. If I want to consume cable, I need to consume Spectrum cable. That's what makes it a monopoly.
Similarly, suggesting that people who don't want to watch ads can simply stop consuming online videos altogether is not an argument against Google having a monopoly on online videos. It is in fact an argument for Google having a monopoly on online videos.
I'm probably not going to respond after this just because I do not want to start one of the handful of flamewars a year that happen on this site, which are embarrassing and leave everyone feeling bad. I only jumped in at the beginning to say that I just don't think the fact that you could prop up a video hosting daemon on a VPS instance means that YouTube does not hold online video in a stranglehold and is not now working to lock that content away behind either ads or paywalls. I could prop up a PDF file hosting instance on a VPS instance too, but everyone agrees that a handful of companies hold academic articles in a stranglehold and have locked them away behind paywalls.
My intention wasn't to namecall people, but I see how that has come across. I was trying to describe or call out the behavior of people who want to consume a service by bypassing both of the...
To the extent that I think you namecalling people in this thread "pissy" is useful (not at all), I think you're running into a problem only listening for that pissiness from people you don't agree with.
My intention wasn't to namecall people, but I see how that has come across. I was trying to describe or call out the behavior of people who want to consume a service by bypassing both of the payment methods (ads and subscriptions) that the service provider has implemented, and then complain when the service provider starts cracking down on that bypassing. I'm certainly not the feelings police, and people should feel what they're going to feel. But I guess I am perplexed that people think that they are entitled to a service that a provider is charging for without paying for it (either by letting the ad play or subscribing), and are also calling out Google for enforcing that payment just because they're a large company.
I'm not expecting us to agree on this, and I too do not want to start a flamewar here. Overall, it's been enlightening reading the various viewpoints throughout different parts of this thread.
Who hosts it? The government? Do you trust any global government to, as you say, "hold culture hostage"? Who pays for it, taxpayers in whatever coutnry we choose? It's a global service by this...
we should have similar hosting be a public good for all to use.
Who hosts it? The government? Do you trust any global government to, as you say, "hold culture hostage"? Who pays for it, taxpayers in whatever coutnry we choose? It's a global service by this point so it feels odd pushing that burden onto any single country. Even if I agreed, we don't really have a good solution for a "global public good" to exist in the current world model. And videos aren't even in the top 10 of what resources deserve to be used in such a model.
Besides, while I personally don't like this argument: let's not pretend that Google put a patent on video hosting. It is not the only place to upload and share videos. And if you're fine limiting yourself in length and a vertical orientation, it's not even the only popular place to upload/share videos. You are very much free to seek alternatives if you feel this strongly.
EDIT:
This is a massive social failing.
I don't disagree, but as a personal anectdote, I've rarely found a situation where I blamed society and felt it really had much of an effect. Society as a whole doesn't always have (nor know) their best interests at heart and will choose directions against what would otherwise benefit them on an individual level, simply because the masses generally fail to see the long term. Very common dystopian theme, actually.
I’ve seen cycles like this before: if these services don’t like piracy, the solution is not to jack up the prices even higher, it’s to provide a service that’s so damn attractive that I choose to...
I’ve seen cycles like this before: if these services don’t like piracy, the solution is not to jack up the prices even higher, it’s to provide a service that’s so damn attractive that I choose to pay for it.
About a decade or so ago, you wouldn’t believe the enormous number of videos and TV shows I would torrent, because the prices were way out of whack.
Then things like Netflix came along, and suddenly the price and the convenience was great, and I’ve been a paying customer for years.
They’re starting to jack up the prices, but not because their own costs are rising astronomically. The way things are heading these days, I’m starting to consider piracy again.
I suspect we’ll see a resurgence of piracy again, until the next stage of the cycle where a company realises they can make absolute bank by charging reasonable prices for the convenience.
I’m hoping that instead, these (already incredibly profitable) services decide they have it pretty good actually, and adjust prices to maintain convenience instead of price gouging the much wealthier but much smaller crowd until they go the way of cable. I’m hoping, but I have my doubts.
I understand your feelings on this, but the way to "not be the product" is to quit using the service entirely, not to try to find ways around watching the ads that pay for it.
I understand your feelings on this, but the way to "not be the product" is to quit using the service entirely, not to try to find ways around watching the ads that pay for it.
Everything you have said is correct and I won't dispute it. However, there is an element that must also be considered; the continued decrease in the quality of service that YouTube provides. Back...
Everything you have said is correct and I won't dispute it. However, there is an element that must also be considered; the continued decrease in the quality of service that YouTube provides. Back in the days of yore, you'd watch an ad or two every few videos you watched. Now, it seems like you not only have ads before and after every video you watch, but also at least one or two in the middle, if the video is long enough. YouTube is following in the direct footsteps of cable TV, changing itself to generate more profit while undercutting the very premise that brought initial adopters to the platform in the first place. Is it wrong for YouTube to do this? No. Will it tick off many of their users? Yes. Are these people justified in bypassing the parts they don't like? Well, that's the key question, alongside whether enough people will be upset by this to hurt YouTube's bottom line. I'd wager the bean-counters have crunched the numbers and decided that there is more money to be gained by going in this direction.
Again though, there's something to be said about the decrease in YouTube's overall quality. As Gabe Newell stated:
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” explained Newell during his time on stage at the Washington Technology Industry Association's (WTIA) Tech NW conference. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
I think this quote encapsulates the core of why the majority of people who ad block on YouTube do so; it's not because they're gleefully "sticking it to the man" or simply "looking out for number one", but rather they feel as though there are unnecessary obstacles being placed between them and the videos they want to watch. There's no real control over how your YouTube experience is monetized. I don't believe I can truly select to not see automotive ads, political ads, or ads for anything that I don't want or care about. Speaking personally, if I'm trying to fall asleep to an ASMR video, only to be jolted awake by a super loud ad, I feel a certain level of justification for resenting the current YouTube monetization system.
In the end, the real issue is that someone high up in YouTube or Google decided that a sacrifice in service quality was worth alienating a portion of their userbase. So, it's obvious that those people would be mad about this. Perhaps this is the time to call out the corporation for dictating the terms without offering any kind of reasonable alternative solution with any level of transparency.
There is a pre-arranged contract: the youtube terms of service. I hadn’t read them before, but was pleasantly surprised to find they’re quite short. I believe these two sections are the most...
There is a pre-arranged contract: the youtube terms of service. I hadn’t read them before, but was pleasantly surprised to find they’re quite short.
I believe these two sections are the most applicable:
The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to:
access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders;
circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;
I don’t like ads. I have ublock origin installed on everything and despise browsing the internet without it. But service providers are entirely within their rights to suspend my access to content if I’m not paying for it: we are not entitled to anything on the internet unless we host it ourselves. That’s just how it works.
Instead I try to watch more content on platforms like Nebula that align with my ideals.
That same argument could be made about sneaking into a movie theater without paying, though. They want you to go through the ticketing line, but you went through a service entrance. They were...
That same argument could be made about sneaking into a movie theater without paying, though. They want you to go through the ticketing line, but you went through a service entrance. They were going to show the movie anyway regardless of who was in the room. The theater intends for the user flow to involve ticketing and going past the snack bar, but will also be providing the part of experience from behind where the tickets are torn to anyone who receives it. They've not been deprived of anything and all content is still in their possession...
But is it theft? The answer gets complicated there, because it depends on the jurisdiction whether this would be treated as theft, trespassing, burglary, or some other flavor of crime. In states with language around "theft of services" this would be pretty clear, like in Pennsylvania:
A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains services for himself or for another which he knows are available only for compensation, by deception or threat, ... or by false token or other trick or artifice to avoid payment for the service.
In others it's not particularly clear what you'd be charged with, but you can bet you'd be charged with something. The fact this doesn't apply to digital services is more of a quirk of the law not having caught up with the times yet, not that it's explicitly approved behavior. There's also the wrinkle that "watching ads" is effectively payment, but is it legally payment? I don't think any laws have caught up there. In Pennsylvania's case above most of the wording I removed was nostalgic specifics about stealing cable television.
But there's no paid aspect to youtube though, in terms of a movie theater, it's like walking in 15 minutes late to skip all the previous or like muting your TV during advertisements.
But there's no paid aspect to youtube though, in terms of a movie theater, it's like walking in 15 minutes late to skip all the previous or like muting your TV during advertisements.
That's actually one thing Pennsylvania almost got right in an otherwise hilariously dated law. Instead of saying payment, they use the word compensation so it's not limited to monetary...
That's actually one thing Pennsylvania almost got right in an otherwise hilariously dated law. Instead of saying payment, they use the word compensation so it's not limited to monetary transactions. Watching the ads is the compensation (at least from the viewer) that YouTube expects in exchange for serving the content without payment--this versus giving you the option of payment to skip the ads with Premium. This would be analogous to a theater showing a block of ads before the movie and allowing free tickets if you arrived early to watch them, but paid tickets to anyone who wanted to arrive right at the start of the movie.
Of course then they turn right around and say payment after that, so whoops.
I would bet trespass would be crime. You haven't paid for permission access the space. It would be like overstaying after your prepaid time at a pool or gym (assuming they did hourly rates). If...
I would bet trespass would be crime. You haven't paid for permission access the space. It would be like overstaying after your prepaid time at a pool or gym (assuming they did hourly rates). If they called the cops, they'll remove you on the grounds of trespass.
Now the theater isn't a perfect analogy either. Each seat is theoretically without cost, assuming the trespasser isn't making a mess. So the overhead of an empty theater would be the same as a full one. On the other hand, YouTube has an overhead cost per seat. You can't just sneak in and take a video without any financial harm to YouTube like you could an empty theater. Yes the harm is tiny on a per video basis, but it does add up.
In the same way that any webserver gives you content and you have the ability to send a bot to scrape those gigabytpes of content, yes. This isn't really something that has a good physical...
In the same way that any webserver gives you content and you have the ability to send a bot to scrape those gigabytpes of content, yes.
This isn't really something that has a good physical equivalent so it's hard to make a metaphor for it. But it's pretty clear that there's certain undesired content being served to you before retrieving the content you want to watch that's more or less a prerequisite. Youtube can't stop you from simply walking away from the screen, but they clearly want to make sure that content is served to furfill their part of various contracts.
It's a standard ad model since the days of radio, or even much older (I'm sure there was similar ads before classical troupe theatre centuries ago).
The movie theater analogy doesn't fully apply because you already paid for a ticket. However, I agree that YouTube could do better at improving the quality and legitimacy of the ads they're showing.
The movie theater analogy doesn't fully apply because you already paid for a ticket. However, I agree that YouTube could do better at improving the quality and legitimacy of the ads they're showing.
I’d actually be fine with the ads if they went back to only being at the beginning of videos. What I take issue with are the ones that interrupt the middle. If the person editing the video didn’t...
I’d actually be fine with the ads if they went back to only being at the beginning of videos. What I take issue with are the ones that interrupt the middle. If the person editing the video didn’t set it up with those breaks in mind, the middle-of-the-video-ads can make it unwatchable.
Even movie theaters haven’t taken this step yet, they only stick the ads at the beginning.
it's awful. You lose a couple of seconds for every interruption and either have to back up or infer. So, not only is it jarring to have a cut just land at a random location, but it also drops some...
the middle-of-the-video-ads can make it unwatchable.
it's awful. You lose a couple of seconds for every interruption and either have to back up or infer. So, not only is it jarring to have a cut just land at a random location, but it also drops some of the frames, leaving a broken viewing experience.
Sure, but: (1) that was a big part of why people left TV and moved to streaming services, and (2) everyone was okay with it back when they used to watch TV because nobody actually watched the ads,...
Sure, but:
(1) that was a big part of why people left TV and moved to streaming services, and
(2) everyone was okay with it back when they used to watch TV because nobody actually watched the ads, they switched to another show or movie, or went to the bathroom, or grabbed a beer in the kitchen, or, perhaps most importantly, they, like basically every household in America in the 2000s, had a box that recorded shows and let you fast forward through the ads.
People were only ever okay with midroll ads on television because everyone was already ad blocking television by switching shows during ads or fast forwarding through them.
Thing is I don't think Youtube really has nefarious ads. Or at least nothing more nefarious than you can see hung up on a billboard in physical life. No one is trying to say that adblock as a...
So as long as it is relatively common for annoyances like popups to exist, or for nefarious ads to get through, there will be a reason for people to try and block ads - in general, even if not as strongly with Youtube in particular.
Thing is I don't think Youtube really has nefarious ads. Or at least nothing more nefarious than you can see hung up on a billboard in physical life. No one is trying to say that adblock as a whole needs to be removed. So I don't think that's a valid reason to use an adblock on Youtube just because in a more general sense ads can be harmful.
Bologna. Using an ad blocker is no different than changing the channel during a commercial break on television or the radio. I guarantee you that if Comcast or Disney could have figured out a way...
you are stealing from YouTube
Bologna. Using an ad blocker is no different than changing the channel during a commercial break on television or the radio. I guarantee you that if Comcast or Disney could have figured out a way to prevent people from changing the channel, they would have done it. We are in a better world that they couldn't.
If Google wanted to, they could lock YouTube behind a paywall and make sure only paid subscribers get to view the content (like HBO). They could also charge content creators a fee to host videos (like cable television providers). They won't do either of those things though because Google made the calculation that the high traffic from an open venue and free content (both for them and the viewer) would net them more money than other options. Even knowing that some users will find a way to avoid ads, this is still the path they chose.
It is not just people blocking ads that want to have their cake and eat it too; it's Google and the content creators as well. The ecosystem works as-is. The majority of users don't use ad-blockers. Google gets free content from content creators, content creators get to host their content in front of a colossal audience without a venue fee, and both parties get to make money on the laziness or incompetence of the majority of users who already view their ads. These attempts to kill ad-blockers aren't about saving a fragile ecosystem; it's about maximizing profits.
I'd say it's more insidious than that. Since, you can indeed still change the channel or walk away from an ad. It's probably more akin ti fabircating data on those old school Neilson ratings...
Using an ad blocker is no different than changing the channel during a commercial break on television or the radio.
I'd say it's more insidious than that. Since, you can indeed still change the channel or walk away from an ad. It's probably more akin ti fabircating data on those old school Neilson ratings things. It takes some active action from the user to perform that.
I guarantee you that if Comcast or Disney could have figured out a way to prevent people from changing the channel, they would have done it.
probably. And they did with various techniques to encourage people not to miss various parts. But it's not really a relevant point here.
I don't think you can "change the channel" for an ad. If you back to the video after watching another video, it makes you watch the ad. The only way is to either walk away, or adblock. Would you...
I don't think you can "change the channel" for an ad. If you back to the video after watching another video, it makes you watch the ad. The only way is to either walk away, or adblock.
Would you say that changing the channel during the commercial break is stealing? I know the analogy isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn close.
I think it's more time based, I doubt if you delayed watching the video for a day that you'd get the exact same ad, exactly where it left off as if it's waiting for you. no, because companies...
If you back to the video after watching another video, it makes you watch the ad.
I think it's more time based, I doubt if you delayed watching the video for a day that you'd get the exact same ad, exactly where it left off as if it's waiting for you.
Would you say that changing the channel during the commercial break is stealing
no, because companies can't take your physical presense hostage. But adblocks aren't your physical presence.
I acknowledge there's differences (no analogy is perfect), but what is the actual moral objection here? It seems that not watching the ads isn't the problem, if changing the channel is fine. What...
I acknowledge there's differences (no analogy is perfect), but what is the actual moral objection here? It seems that not watching the ads isn't the problem, if changing the channel is fine. What is the problem, then?
I don't ultimately care about how people consume media, but I do find it hypocritical to suggest that a service is not quality and then proceed to be frustrated when it closes off workarounds it...
but what is the actual moral objection here?
I don't ultimately care about how people consume media, but I do find it hypocritical to suggest that a service is not quality and then proceed to be frustrated when it closes off workarounds it never supported to begin with. Clearly there is some value people desire there if they choice is to play cat and mouse instead of trying to establish an alternative. If people were simply honest enough to say "I don't respect Google/Youtube and I don't mind stealing from them" then I'd have no real objections (and to be fair, I have seen that here). Maybe outside the the angle from a content creator, but c'est la vie; video CC's balance out piracy as much as any other creative medium.
But I guess that's the issue, even on a platform like this there still feels like there's eggshells being walked on and people want to bring up moral justifications on how what they are doing isn't in some way stealing. Maybe it's a language issue, and part of it is definitely the growing amount of issues centered on software that doesn't map to the physical world. but "stealing/piracy" is the simplest term for it until something better pops up (and I've already failed before to try and establish new terms. I don't think this is my time either).
Of course, if we can't agree that adblock bears some semblance to stealing/piracy, then we won't really align on this issue. I'm not saying that as a moral guardian, as I too use adblock. More simply as someone who strives to be as consistent in communicating as possible.
The reason I'm harping on channel switching, the closest equivalent, is that this moral problem did not exist a decade ago. I remember plenty of services existed to record your shows and skip the...
Exemplary
The reason I'm harping on channel switching, the closest equivalent, is that this moral problem did not exist a decade ago.
I remember plenty of services existed to record your shows and skip the ads. Going to the kitchen during the commercial break was a time honoured tradition. Having a sub show for commercials to switch to was a thing every household did.
Doing your very best to avoid commercials was normal, and any technology to maximise this was readily adapted. I'm just alarmed that now it's a moral problem. Not in the 90s, 00s and 10s; all of those methods are fine, but this one isn't.
This is just an evolution of what I've been doing since the 90s. What is different about this?
Decades of "Intellectual Property" propaganda. Copyright is an incentive for the state to promote activities that further the state. "Intellectual Property" is not an inherent right that people...
Decades of "Intellectual Property" propaganda.
Copyright is an incentive for the state to promote activities that further the state. "Intellectual Property" is not an inherent right that people have. You generally cannot control other people's thoughts and deeds, yet with copyright we make and exception because the value of what is created may outweigh the value of humans copying and thinking about the ideas and expressions someone raised.
However, this falls apart when we're not advancing humanity with what we're using copyright for. When people are seeking profit, copyright doesn't apply and they can honestly get screwed for all I care. Humans have been teaching their children stories and songs since the advent of the aural and oral communication, these people don't own thoughts, ideas, and expressions.
I just wish they would be more flexible with their options. Give me a paid option just for YouTube to block adds for $5. I don't care about the other features that premium includes and $12 is too...
I just wish they would be more flexible with their options. Give me a paid option just for YouTube to block adds for $5. I don't care about the other features that premium includes and $12 is too much.
Usually with these schemes, breaking down the bundle doesn’t actually make it cheaper since the majority of users only care about a small part of the deal and it’s actually priced that way so you...
Usually with these schemes, breaking down the bundle doesn’t actually make it cheaper since the majority of users only care about a small part of the deal and it’s actually priced that way so you are getting the rest for free.
The value you're getting for blocking ads is clearly worth at least $12 for almost any reasonable person. That's less than 40 cents a day. If you use youtube somewhat regularly and live anywhere...
The value you're getting for blocking ads is clearly worth at least $12 for almost any reasonable person.
That's less than 40 cents a day. If you use youtube somewhat regularly and live anywhere in the Western world, your time would have to be worth extremely little for it not to be a good deal.
For youtube, most scale estimates put a single youtube adview at somewhere in the range of $0.10-$0.30. I think that last number must be for forced 30 second+ unskippable views on attractive content or something. It just seems high.
Using much more conservative figures, let's say you skip around 10 youtube ads a day every day with the paid version. You're probably approaching a range where youtube makes less profit off you as a user than if you'd viewed ads.
These are all rough numbers and estimates, but we all see the math: It's completely unreasonable to demand lower price points than the one we're already getting. Youtube is profitable due to scale alone.
Our pricing assumptions for many online services are unreasonably low because they've been purposely running deficits to grow at scale and so we've been getting subsidized costs for years and years if we're been paying at all.
I don't disagree with any of your assessment and yet that sounds like a Google problem, not a me problem. I think it's a similar problem to what news did to itself. It provides news online for...
I don't disagree with any of your assessment and yet that sounds like a Google problem, not a me problem.
I think it's a similar problem to what news did to itself. It provides news online for free and has found it incredibly hard to transition to a paid model.
Streaming did the same thing and now that investors want them to be profitable, they need to figure out ways to become profitable. But it was their mistake to set prices so low and I don't know that YouTube adds enough unique value compared to something like Netflix or Disney+. $12 might be a great deal compared to what they make off me watching adds, but that doesn't mean I see the value because it is not viewed in a vacuum. I don't care about their bottom line. I'm going to compare to other similar services and what they charge and their perceived value to me.
I think it's our consumer views of value that are highly skewed and need to be recalibrated. That doesn't have anything to do with the company's economy. Very many of us are irrationally...
I think it's our consumer views of value that are highly skewed and need to be recalibrated. That doesn't have anything to do with the company's economy.
Very many of us are irrationally under-spending on digital entertainment/services in ways that are not in line with our own personal values if we were thoughtfully spending our money.
(This opens a whole other can of worms in regards to regulation and the power these companies are allowed to have over us. The networking effects of all gigacompanies just seem to be too powerful in ways society shouldn't accept)
We're only underspending because they've been undercharging, with the explicit plan to raise prices when the audience is locked in. They created the expectations.
We're only underspending because they've been undercharging, with the explicit plan to raise prices when the audience is locked in. They created the expectations.
Wait, what? (apologies for the slight necro, I realise this was a week ago but I'm catching up) Sorry that's just not true. I'm a reasonable person who disagrees. Here's a cost comparison: I have...
Wait, what? (apologies for the slight necro, I realise this was a week ago but I'm catching up)
Sorry that's just not true. I'm a reasonable person who disagrees. Here's a cost comparison:
I have a service called Sky Stream. I pay £5/mo to allow me to skip ads in all content, including a couple of hundred live tv channels and all the on-demand streaming apps that are supported on the device. The only thing it doesn't cover is Youtube... Because Google.
If it was $5/mo for no ads on YT I would pay it and not blink an eye. In fact, I'd pay $5/mo to guarantee only seeing skippable ads. I am not paying double what it costs me to skip ads on literally everything else I choose to watch, just for YT.
I know a lot of people feel quite strongly about this, choosing to either block or not on principle. I'm not that invested, and judge the service based on value. To me, YT is way too expensive.
"...but in the end, if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing from YouTube by using their bandwidth without compensation." Does my data belong to me? No. Am I compensated for the...
"...but in the end, if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing from YouTube by using their bandwidth without compensation."
Does my data belong to me? No. Am I compensated for the harvesting of my data? No. They haved used my data for profit. Now they want me to waste my time and watch adds or pay them to use me? No.
I consider it an act of protest to use YouTube while cutting off their monetization with an adblocker. If they want to cut features from their mobile site and disable disliking videos, power to...
I consider it an act of protest to use YouTube while cutting off their monetization with an adblocker. If they want to cut features from their mobile site and disable disliking videos, power to them, but users should also be able to decide they don't deserve to make money for making such changes.
That doesn't make sense. YouTube implemented changes you didn't like, so rather than no longer use it, you decide to deprive it of its main source of revenue? That doesn't give Google incentive to...
That doesn't make sense. YouTube implemented changes you didn't like, so rather than no longer use it, you decide to deprive it of its main source of revenue? That doesn't give Google incentive to reverse those changes or implement others to make the platform better, only a policy like this three-strikes system that a lot of people won't like because they don't want to see ads.
Using YouTube with an ad blocker is a lot like sitting in the bar and only drinking the free water. It’s not theft, it’s not stealing, it’s not piracy, but it is costing the company money and they...
Using YouTube with an ad blocker is a lot like sitting in the bar and only drinking the free water. It’s not theft, it’s not stealing, it’s not piracy, but it is costing the company money and they have every right to kick you out if they want.
People didn't mind when Google was not being obtrusive with ads, as they needed to increase their profits every quarter they stayed doing the same stuff everyone else does. I will continue look...
People didn't mind when Google was not being obtrusive with ads, as they needed to increase their profits every quarter they stayed doing the same stuff everyone else does.
I will continue look for ad blocks and workarounds, and frankly if youtube subsudary would have to shut down due to lack of profits I won't shed a tear.
It's seems pretty probable that old school YouTube wasn't covering its costs. Google only recently started publishing youtubes financials independently so we can't know. But quite a lot of...
It's seems pretty probable that old school YouTube wasn't covering its costs. Google only recently started publishing youtubes financials independently so we can't know. But quite a lot of Google's products run at a loss
Google doesn't have problem shutting anything that's not profitable. If they run something at a loss, that's because that thing gives them something valuable.
Google doesn't have problem shutting anything that's not profitable. If they run something at a loss, that's because that thing gives them something valuable.
Apparently what is spurring this on is google got caught cheating advertisers, they sell a type of ad that is supposed to guarantee it's got the viewers attention (not muted, not loaded on an...
Apparently what is spurring this on is google got caught cheating advertisers, they sell a type of ad that is supposed to guarantee it's got the viewers attention (not muted, not loaded on an external page, etc). Then a team investigating those claims found those ads embedded into 3rd party sites muted and playing, but still counting towards advertisers ad-spend.
The way I look at it is this. We never agreed to ads. It was always an informal thing of them saying "Hey, we put out this free video streaming service, and you're totally fine to use it all you...
The way I look at it is this. We never agreed to ads. It was always an informal thing of them saying "Hey, we put out this free video streaming service, and you're totally fine to use it all you want. But we might out in some jarring interruptions every few minutes. Don't complain, it's free after all.
And then people said "sure, no problem, you're totally fine to put in jarring interruptions. But don't complain if I fix my computer to make it less jarring."
So in my mind it's fine to game the system a little, because free+ads was already a way of skirting the standard method of trade to begin with.
Like, you know how Uber lost money every quarter for a long time, but still kept going and nobody was like "Hey, isn't it your fiduciary responsibility to make money? You can't do that!"
It's actually totally fine to spend money on something that doesn't turn an immediate profit, and it doesn't even really matter if your current business plan doesn't make sense. As long as your investors don't force the issue.
And YouTube WAS originally just a free video hosting platform that was just developed as a tool to make collaboration easier.
And it's owned by Google, which has plenty of other areas to trim fat if it needs to boost profits for the next quarter.
If YouTube wants me to watch ads they need to do 3 things. Change the "skip ads" button to "skip this ad". I'll watch a 15 second ad, I won't watch a 2 minute ad. Make ads relevant. YouTube seems...
If YouTube wants me to watch ads they need to do 3 things.
Change the "skip ads" button to "skip this ad". I'll watch a 15 second ad, I won't watch a 2 minute ad.
Make ads relevant. YouTube seems to have no idea what I like. I don't block ads nor cookies, so I should be getting relevant ads but I don't.
Take more care with the ads they accept. A bunch of ads are outright scams, or are dubiously legal in England.
To point number two, I am deeply amused by trying to guess what the heck YouTube's algorithm thinks of me. I've gotten a mixture of ads about video games, horror movies, and children's toys....
To point number two, I am deeply amused by trying to guess what the heck YouTube's algorithm thinks of me. I've gotten a mixture of ads about video games, horror movies, and children's toys. Honestly really enjoyed seeing a random NERF ad. I tend to pretty specifically watch channels about video games and horror, so I'm easier for the algorithm to peg than most. I once got some local ad for a custom dress shop for little girls though, still stands out as weird.
Meanwhile, I actually prefer the 2-minute ads because those tend to be the sole ad and have a skip button about 5 seconds in. Lately I've been getting multiple strings of unskippable 15-second ads, which I find deeply annoying. I think recently I got one where the second ad was a full minute and unskippable. Frankly, they need to put a limit on ad lengths and have the "skip ads" button for anything over 15 seconds.
I’m entirely used to adblocking, so when I got linked a video from my boss at work, I was genuinely startled to see an ad start playing, but I quickly figured out if you mash F5 to refresh the...
I’m entirely used to adblocking, so when I got linked a video from my boss at work, I was genuinely startled to see an ad start playing, but I quickly figured out if you mash F5 to refresh the page, YouTube will pretty quickly give up on trying to put an ad in front of the video and just start playing it.
You just gave me a flashback to a brilliant experience in college. One of my classes had us come in on the final day to supposedly do an easy exam, but instead it was to have us present to fill...
You just gave me a flashback to a brilliant experience in college. One of my classes had us come in on the final day to supposedly do an easy exam, but instead it was to have us present to fill out those end-of-year surveys. Annoying tactic since it was my only class that day, but it was compensated by his prank. He had a link on Canvas that he said would be the instructions, and opened it on the projector to Rickroll us.
It backfired. By that point, YouTube had added an ad before the song. So we all burst out laughing. One of the few times I've truly appreciated an ad on YouTube.
I've been confused for more than a decade about why ad providers, for whom I do nothing to prevent them from profiling me, continue to serve me content that I skip every time. There's something...
I've been confused for more than a decade about why ad providers, for whom I do nothing to prevent them from profiling me, continue to serve me content that I skip every time. There's something very broken about the ad sales marketplace and I can't figure it out. I'm pretty sure the whole industry is somehow delusional about the cost effectiveness of their strategies but I don't know enough to ask good questions. I keep thinking some analytics guy is gonna shake up the industry somehow, but I've been thinking that for years.
If the ads on youtube I got were for obscure indie games I'd watch them all day. Google ads feel like payola to me so I feel sad that I'll likely never get an ad for the stuff I actually like.
If the ads on youtube I got were for obscure indie games I'd watch them all day. Google ads feel like payola to me so I feel sad that I'll likely never get an ad for the stuff I actually like.
This is why I personally stopped paying for cable and swapped to streaming when Netflix was like 8CAD, and why I'll repeatly refresh a video until I get a skippable ad or they give up (they're...
only to be screamed at
This is why I personally stopped paying for cable and swapped to streaming when Netflix was like 8CAD, and why I'll repeatly refresh a video until I get a skippable ad or they give up (they're always in pairs at the beginning, and usually begin with a 15-sec unskippable) if adblock isn't available. I don't mind the 5-sec (I think they're actually 6-sec...) ads nearly as much. But the sudden, jarring interruption of an irrelevant company throwing itself across my screen with loud music and shouted marketing buzzwords has pissed me off since I was a child. That went double for kids' ads, because they're twice as loud and obnoxious.
It really does sour my mood - and any immersion the video might have achieved - to have a sudden !!!ADVERTISEMENT!!! in the middle of a serious or intense video, especially if the subject matter is also serious and intense. Then, if it IS a skippable ad, and you don't get to the controls in time, you might be served an unskippable ad for the second one, punishing you for not being constantly on your toes and just wanting to relax. They've pushed the timing on ads over the years, seeing what users will put up with, and calculated what people with put up with versus what they'll pay. Pause in the middle of an ad or in the video itself, either way you'll be served a fresh round of screaming when you return. Removing Adblock is just another step on their path to enshittification. In turn I find myself feeling far less than charitable when it comes to the prospect of paying YouTube almost $15/month, not because I want to or because they've proved they're worth hundreds of dollars over a couple years, but because they've intentionally made the data-stealing "free" model less and less usable, straight-up.
Nebula provides a working model of an alternative for a more than reasonable cost, and I hope we'll see more services like that and Patreon going forward. I might well pay for premium and cancel another service, but it won't be truly willingly, and the second I have an actual PC to work with, I'm going sailing on a regular basis.
On point 2, YouTube can only sell you ads that are running. So they probably do know more about you but if the things you're interested in aren't paying YouTube for ad space, then you won't see...
On point 2, YouTube can only sell you ads that are running. So they probably do know more about you but if the things you're interested in aren't paying YouTube for ad space, then you won't see any of them.
There's likely some bias at play here too. You won't really notice or remember 10 ads that are mildly relevant but you will remember the one ad that pissed you off. So while the percentage of acceptable to unacceptable may be 80/20, those unacceptable ads are going to stick in your head a lot more.
Having ads stick in people's heads for negative reasons is not actually a good thing. Firestone (the tire brand) sticks in my head for negative reasons. It was all over the news when I was a kid...
Having ads stick in people's heads for negative reasons is not actually a good thing.
Firestone (the tire brand) sticks in my head for negative reasons. It was all over the news when I was a kid and remains, to this day, the brand that comes to mind when I think about car tires. That brand recognition doesn't do them any good, because I specifically avoid buying tires with the name "Firestone" due to the negative effect their branding has on my peace of mind while I'm driving.
Within months of the recall, Firestone saw their tire sales fall by 40%. I bet they wished their brand didn't stick in people's heads so much.
I didn't mean to imply that negative ads were good. I'm saying that even a few annoying ads will make a site feel like it's "nothing but annoying ads". You remember them more because they annoyed...
I didn't mean to imply that negative ads were good. I'm saying that even a few annoying ads will make a site feel like it's "nothing but annoying ads". You remember them more because they annoyed you rather than the typical ad which barely grabs your attention.
Yes! I grew up on broadcast television. A few ads in my show is not a big deal. But I'll be damned if I'm going to watch android and ios bots argue about who has the better phone for 2 minutes....
Change the "skip ads" button to "skip this ad". I'll watch a 15 second ad, I won't watch a 2 minute ad.
Yes! I grew up on broadcast television. A few ads in my show is not a big deal. But I'll be damned if I'm going to watch android and ios bots argue about who has the better phone for 2 minutes.
The other day, I'm not even joking, I got an ad that was 45 minutes .... yes 45 MINUTES!! ... of some mega-church preacher. For a 3 minute video.
Also show me more that 1-2 different ads per week, i don't need to see the same ad 10 times in a row. If you have nothing else to show maybe skip a few ad slots
Also show me more that 1-2 different ads per week, i don't need to see the same ad 10 times in a row. If you have nothing else to show maybe skip a few ad slots
Even paying for premium doesn't eliminate ads these days, even medium-size channels have in-video sponsorship ads which premium has no way to get rid of. So the covenant of "pay for ad-free" has...
Even paying for premium doesn't eliminate ads these days, even medium-size channels have in-video sponsorship ads which premium has no way to get rid of. So the covenant of "pay for ad-free" has already been broken.
Additionally, average salaries haven't kept up with inflation for a decade, yet companies are increasingly pushing subscriptions (BMW want subscription for heated seats even!).
I don't know what a better payment model is, but having everything be a subscription isn't it.
The sponsorship ads are from the creators you're watching, not from YouTube. I suppose the difference is meaningless to most. I think many channel memberships or Patreons give you access to a...
The sponsorship ads are from the creators you're watching, not from YouTube. I suppose the difference is meaningless to most. I think many channel memberships or Patreons give you access to a version of the content without sponsorships though.
I understand the difference, and the reason channels do it is because they get way more money from them compared to ad revenue. It's already a big ask to ask people to pay for something they've...
I understand the difference, and the reason channels do it is because they get way more money from them compared to ad revenue. It's already a big ask to ask people to pay for something they've had for free since the start of the platform, let alone asking them to also pay each channel.
I guess something like Nebula is a step in the right direction where it really is just single-pay for no ads (from what I've heard), but there's also the friction of getting people to switch...
Nebula looks like it has a lot of potential. The more creators that promote it, the more viewers that will switch over. It's very difficult and slow to grow a video platform competitor.
Nebula looks like it has a lot of potential. The more creators that promote it, the more viewers that will switch over. It's very difficult and slow to grow a video platform competitor.
Floatplane also exists where you can pay for each creator's channel individually, and I believe that many creators also release ad-free videos on their patreon.
Floatplane also exists where you can pay for each creator's channel individually, and I believe that many creators also release ad-free videos on their patreon.
This is my biggest beef with YT Premium AND Hulu. You covered why it’s annoying to pay for ad free on youtube just to get in video sponsorships everywhere. I pay extra for Hulu without ads but...
This is my biggest beef with YT Premium AND Hulu. You covered why it’s annoying to pay for ad free on youtube just to get in video sponsorships everywhere. I pay extra for Hulu without ads but still get ads on most shows i watch (even really old shows like Mythbusters). This is the music industry all over. I’m just done trying to go straight and am once again flying the pirate flag until they agree to be reasonable.
I don't mind channel sponsored ads since I at least know that goes towards helping creators do their thing. Especially since some do this as part or full time jobs. But if it bothers you, the...
So the covenant of "pay for ad-free" has already been broken.
I don't mind channel sponsored ads since I at least know that goes towards helping creators do their thing. Especially since some do this as part or full time jobs.
But if it bothers you, the channel ones are very easy to skip. That's the one big downside as opposed to going to Google itself to serve ads.
Yeah I don't really mind them because they're incredibly easy to skip. Maybe a problem if your hands are occupied but the real solution to creators adding too many embedded ads is to avoid them. I...
Yeah I don't really mind them because they're incredibly easy to skip. Maybe a problem if your hands are occupied but the real solution to creators adding too many embedded ads is to avoid them. I certainly don't want YouTube trying to bring their clumsy fist down on creators for embedded ads as it'll just cause more damage overall.
That's the other thing about creator sponsored ads. sponsors get to be more exclusive so you'll never see more than 1 ad per video. And you're not gonna get those thinly veiled trolling that is...
but the real solution to creators adding too many embedded ads is to avoid them
That's the other thing about creator sponsored ads. sponsors get to be more exclusive so you'll never see more than 1 ad per video. And you're not gonna get those thinly veiled trolling that is those 10+ minute "ads". Meanwhile I've heard nightmare stories about multiple ads on single minute videos, each longer than the video itself.
I certainly don't want YouTube trying to bring their clumsy fist down on creators for embedded ads as it'll just cause more damage overall.
Yeah, I don't think that will be a huge issue fortunately. There's pros/cons to channel sponsored videos, and Google is getting paid either way. Having sponsors pay content creators relieves Google of the burden of paying adshare. Google removing embedded ads would mean that they'd be in truly dire straits.
One word: Sponsorblock (available as a browser extension, or as a patch within ReVanced for Android). I rarely have to make an effort to skip sponsored segments anymore.
Maybe a problem if your hands are occupied
One word: Sponsorblock (available as a browser extension, or as a patch within ReVanced for Android).
I rarely have to make an effort to skip sponsored segments anymore.
So Linus Tech Tips have actually talked at length about this topic. Apparently YouTube actually compensates it's creators much better than some other big platforms, especially for those who...
So Linus Tech Tips have actually talked at length about this topic. Apparently YouTube actually compensates it's creators much better than some other big platforms, especially for those who subscribe to YouTube premium.
Additionally, video hosting and streaming is quite expensive, especially 4k.
I agree, companies need to be able to make money. I have no issues with YouTube putting 4k behind paywall given how expensive it is. But ads are the bane of my existence, and I refuse to award YouTube with my money when their strategy to incentivize YouTube Premium is to make non-youtube premium so shitty that it annoys you into buying.
I suspect that the users of this site are not going to be a good sample of the general public for issues like this. With that in mind, I will not be paying for YouTube. Full stop. I have YouTube...
I suspect that the users of this site are not going to be a good sample of the general public for issues like this.
With that in mind, I will not be paying for YouTube. Full stop. I have YouTube open for either music or watching game videos for background noise. In the case of music, I am extremely certain that there are better platforms if I am willing to pay money. In the case of background noise, there is Twitch or any of the other various streaming services.
However, I am very much a creature of habit. I like YouTube in the sense that I like not learning another system's quirks when I don't need to. I will continue to use YouTube until they actually kill my ability to watch it through the various means (ublock origin and ReVanced).
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw? I assume that I am close to the average user (at least in my video choices) and I don't know what they offer that can't be found in a more optimized way elsewhere.
Main one is supporting creators. I watch a LOT of youtube and follow many channels that produce content I enjoy, but I can't afford to subscribe to everyone's patreon or to donate to every...
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw?
Main one is supporting creators. I watch a LOT of youtube and follow many channels that produce content I enjoy, but I can't afford to subscribe to everyone's patreon or to donate to every streamer. Youtube premium allows me to share some revenue with these creators while giving me platform benefits.
Uninterrupted experience. No ads anywhere. I use YouTube and youtube music on pc, mobile and TV, and it's nice not to have to worry about ads anywhere. Yes I know there are alternative clients/mods for all these platforms, I've used them all, nothing beats the simplicity of having youtube just simply work everywhere like I want it to.
This one is more personal but I like getting to test beta features early.
That's basically it. Ultimately it comes down to youtube being the platform I use the most so I have no qualms with paying to get the most out of it.
I subscribe for the same reasons, plus the fact that I didn't like my kid watching ads every ten minutes. It's also why I prefer to allow gaming on Steam over playing ad-laden mobile games. It...
I subscribe for the same reasons, plus the fact that I didn't like my kid watching ads every ten minutes. It's also why I prefer to allow gaming on Steam over playing ad-laden mobile games. It does sometimes mean I have to buy two copies of the same game but it definitely beats spending a single cent on IAPs.
It's probably worth mentioning I cancelled Netflix with the end of password sharing after 10+years. I now use a grey market content provider for movies and shows until the market finds a way thru this. It is a morally ambiguous solution that has proven challenging to justify to my kid, but it makes sense for us, I simply can't afford to pay for all the different services.
When I got my first computer I was broke and couldn't afford any games. I spent countless hours on newsgroups and 0-day warez sites downloading and playing PC games. I credit this as single-handedly sparking my love affair with PC gaming. As soon as I started working and having some disposable income I began building my Steam library, and I haven't stopped since. My game library is now 1200+ titles strong and my kid's is 50+.
Once the streaming market returns to a sane value proposition I'll start paying again. Valves strategy is why I haven't pirated a game in over 20 years. Gabe Newell was exactly right all those years ago:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem..."
Valve's strategy isn't as daunting as providing for what is essentially 12 different platforms under what appears to be a single website. They focus on 2.5 ish platforms in a medium that is used...
Valves strategy is why I haven't pirated a game in over 20 years.
Valve's strategy isn't as daunting as providing for what is essentially 12 different platforms under what appears to be a single website. They focus on 2.5 ish platforms in a medium that is used to paying premium prices and take the cut from the devs to provide service. It's basically the inverse of Youtube.
Even then when we go to premium markets: games as a market also has much less leverage than the film industry. Netflix didn't have the same leverage Valve did amongsts these coporate conglomerates that proceeded to make their own "Steam" and have people actually want to use them. Valve could pull it off because they decided to host thousands of indies, some of which became mega-hits themselves. No one else except CDPR ever tried that with their stores. Meanwhile, IGF and even Youtubers couldn't do the same for Netflix. The gulf to create a "good" film vs. a "good" game is simply huge...
Yeah my big one is #1 (if I had less disposable income I'd be less concerned but as is, I can afford the subscription) and I get a lot of value from what I watch on YouTube. I also have Nebula bc...
Yeah my big one is #1 (if I had less disposable income I'd be less concerned but as is, I can afford the subscription) and I get a lot of value from what I watch on YouTube. I also have Nebula bc a ton of creators I like are there and I know they get way more money from that than YouTube.
Also I do watch a lot of YouTube on the tv these days and while it's possible to block ads there through a Pihole or something, it's trivial if you don't get ads in the first place.
Plus I'd need a music streaming subscription anyway and YT Music is honestly better than Spotify imo.
If you're invested in Google's Home ecosystem there isn't actually a better alternative if you're on a family plan. Spotify's Home implementation steals streams from other family members, so if...
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw? I assume that I am close to the average user (at least in my video choices) and I don't know what they offer that can't be found in a more optimized way elsewhere.
If you're invested in Google's Home ecosystem there isn't actually a better alternative if you're on a family plan. Spotify's Home implementation steals streams from other family members, so if you're the primary account and one of your family members starts streaming via Home it stops your stream and assumes you're using the Home now. And Apple and Tidal barely work at all.
The amount of kid-friendly content on YouTube, surfaced through autoplay, is enormous.
If you used to have a gym membership pre-Covid, you'll likely have discovered the quality of group classes on YouTube. Paying for Premium is much, much cheaper than in-person classes, and other than the social "get out of the house" aspect the quality of classes is actually better.
Wasn't there a scandal some time back about some really bad essentially automatically generated videos on yt displaying some obscene stuff like Elsa giving birth purely meant for the algorithm to...
The amount of kid-friendly content on YouTube, surfaced through autoplay, is enormous.
Wasn't there a scandal some time back about some really bad essentially automatically generated videos on yt displaying some obscene stuff like Elsa giving birth purely meant for the algorithm to pick it up into yt kids auto play?
This was a thing several years back (like 2017), but iirc YouTube created stricter guidelines for kids content and mass-deleted channels in response. It was still fucked up but honestly I think...
This was a thing several years back (like 2017), but iirc YouTube created stricter guidelines for kids content and mass-deleted channels in response. It was still fucked up but honestly I think YouTube's response there was what I would've wanted. It was also pretty quick and I'll assume it was reasonably effective bc I haven't seen them pop up in my recs the way they sometimes did back then.
Yep. But that, while disturbing, was terribly overblown. If you let your kids click through YouTube unsupervised they will absolutely end up in weird places. If you keep control of the remote and...
Yep. But that, while disturbing, was terribly overblown.
If you let your kids click through YouTube unsupervised they will absolutely end up in weird places. If you keep control of the remote and don't treat it as a parenting substitute the commercials are significantly more concerning than the autoplay content.
It's not really anything special for me. I watch a ton of youtube, and I generally hate ads. I don't mind paying to remove ads for someting I use a lot and YT's pricing for me as a single person...
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw? I assume that I am close to the average user (at least in my video choices) and I don't know what they offer that can't be found in a more optimized way elsewhere.
It's not really anything special for me. I watch a ton of youtube, and I generally hate ads. I don't mind paying to remove ads for someting I use a lot and YT's pricing for me as a single person isn't too different from other streaming services (of which I use a lot less. Except maybe Crunchyroll). The extra features you can find if you look at the YT premium landing page are nice but not something that makes or breaks the subscription, outside of aforementioned ads.
The one neat, hidden benefit I've heard of is that it does weigh me a bit heavier as a viewer for some channels. It allegedly lets me help monetize videos that were otherwise de-monetized, and my view is weighed heavier than a free one that was viewing an ad. It can help boost creators a bit more than others and that's a nice feeling
Now with all that said: would I jump to an alternative if some favored creators did? Absolutely. Outside of Meta, giving to Google is probably one of the worst feelings. But it's not even close to something like Reddit which is hard but feasible to completely replace. There isn't really any suitable replacement that can help enable creators the way Youtube does, except Twitch perhaps (which is for a specific type and different format of video). Vimeo is the closest competitor and calling it competition is a longshot. Mostly used by artists who need to show off uncompressed footage above all else (and perhaps stuff like nudity that Youtube would strike faster than light).
Youtube is a handy place for music, especially older soundtracks and stuff that may not be available to stream except on Youtube uploads, but ultimately if Youtube becomes too ad-riddled or...
Youtube is a handy place for music, especially older soundtracks and stuff that may not be available to stream except on Youtube uploads, but ultimately if Youtube becomes too ad-riddled or inconvenient for me to use to listen to music... I've got Windows Media Player and 35 gigs of FLACs and MP3s. Most people probably got rid of their physical and/or digital music collections years ago, but frankly, Youtube offers me next to nothing I could not replace with my trusty media player.
For me, the draw was something called Songza. It was one of the earlier music subscription service that had curated music lists based on thing like mood and activity. That was later bought by...
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw? I assume that I am close to the average user (at least in my video choices) and I don't know what they offer that can't be found in a more optimized way elsewhere.
For me, the draw was something called Songza. It was one of the earlier music subscription service that had curated music lists based on thing like mood and activity. That was later bought by Google Play Music, and integrated into that service. That was later morphed into something called YouTube Red and then YouTube Premium. Of the services I've tried, YouTube Music has the best algorithm of creating playlists based on my likes and dislikes, and helping me discover new music based on my tastes.
The ad-free part of that subscription is just an added bonus. I don't know that I'd pay $12/month just to not have ads on YouTube, but the whole subscription makes it worth it (and I'm only paying $10/month since I've had it so long and they haven't raised the prices on early adopters).
I pay for YouTube premium as its my only real subscription cost at the moment outside of a VPN. I keep paying for it because YouTube Music is the best music streaming service for me. I’ve tried...
I pay for YouTube premium as its my only real subscription cost at the moment outside of a VPN. I keep paying for it because YouTube Music is the best music streaming service for me. I’ve tried Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube’s recommendations are always spot on. The Super Mix along with the genre specific My Mixes have always given me music that I like. I also have weird listening habits as I often will listen to a few songs outside of my usual genres if I hear a song that I like. Both Apple Music and Spotify would see this as a change in my taste and my recommendations would be ruined for a few days. I do wish however that YouTube Music had a proper desktop application and wish it would have something like Spotify Connect. The ad-free YouTube is just a bonus to me. Modern YouTube is pretty unwatchable without SponsorBlock.
I'm returning to full pirate mode for everything. I dropped Netflix when they instituted their blocking of account sharing. I still pay for Hulu currently, and share that with my family, who pays...
I'm returning to full pirate mode for everything. I dropped Netflix when they instituted their blocking of account sharing. I still pay for Hulu currently, and share that with my family, who pays for our family Apple One subscription for Apple TV and Apple Music. And I still have Max (HBO) shared from a friend, though I canceled our Discovery+ membership when the two merged. But as of yesterday I now have 12TB (SSD) of media storage on my Proxmox server. I may even get a seedbox again so I can stream one-off garbage shows I don't want to keep locally. I'm just over it. The golden age of streaming for the consumer is over. The Balkanization of streaming is here.
I'm not a huge YouTube user. I visit occasionally if I'm looking up some gameplay videos before buying a game, or for one-off things (like disabling the annoying buzzer on my dryer, which I just did). But I will always block ads when I can. Always. The ads I end up seeing on YouTube are annoying, promoting stuff I have no interest in, and are too long. They get in the way of giving me the information I'm after, which I understand is the entire point. But YouTube will never stop the tech savvy from curating our experience.
The price of everything is going up and it's just getting to be too much. I don't care anymore. I have to look out for myself and I'm going to do whatever I want to do to have the experience I want.
Is this really the takeaway you'd want to teach to children? "You need to look out for yourself to ensure you get what you want - whatever you have to do to get it!" That seems to be a pretty...
I have to look out for myself and I'm going to do whatever I want to do to have the experience I want.
Is this really the takeaway you'd want to teach to children? "You need to look out for yourself to ensure you get what you want - whatever you have to do to get it!" That seems to be a pretty bleak banner to live by.
What level of profit is Google aiming for long term? What is their long-term target that, when they reach it, they'll decide the service is making enough money and they'll quit trying to wring...
Exemplary
Is this really the takeaway you'd want to teach to children? "You need to look out for yourself to ensure you get what you want - whatever you have to do to get it!" That seems to be a pretty bleak banner to live by.
What level of profit is Google aiming for long term? What is their long-term target that, when they reach it, they'll decide the service is making enough money and they'll quit trying to wring more out of the users?
I think you know the answer to that question. The answer is there is no upper limit to the amount of profit they're trying to make. They need to keep making ever more profit, and they will keep trying to do that indefinitely. They're concerned only with YouTube's bottom line. They will keep adding more ads. They will keep lowering the quality off service. They will keep raising the cost of Premium. Eventually they'll want to charge you $50/month for a nonshareable account that only lets you skip the eye tracking software that nonpaying users have to use that ensures they watch ads in their entirety.
In short, the service you're dealing with is fundamentally psychopathic. If a person acted like that to those around them, they would literally be a psychopath. (Imagine someone who views all their relationships as transactional and tries to wring every bit of value they can from all their friends and family.)
At the same time, it's hard not to deal with YouTube or a similar site. These large platforms have taken over the web. What was meant to be a universe of small independently hosted content turned into a centralized capitalist hellscape. And these platforms did not evolve simply from the natural evolution of the internet. Venture capitalists threw billions of dollars into these companies. Their whole plan from the beginning was to:
Offer free video hosting.
Drive smaller scale operations out of business.
Force content creators onto the platforms.
Start turning the screws (ever more ads, ever more pricey subscription options, wring every cent of value out of the creators they can.)
They're a deliberate monopoly. In a world with properly running antitrust laws, they never would have been able to do this. But we don't live in such a world, and they were able to build a monopoly.
I didn't build the media ecosystem I'm forced to live in; YouTube and other megacorps did. And as long as I'm stuck living in the world they created, I feel zero guilt about skipping ads or using any workaround I can to improve the quality of service I receive. Ideally, I would look for my media elsewhere, but I can't, because of the monopoly they deliberately created. I feel zero guilt about skipping ads and using other tools to improve the user experience.
I have no idea why this is an exemplary reply. It's basic rationalization. You're assuming that you must be entertained and must digest the service. If the costs outweigh the benefit, then decline...
Ideally, I would look for my media elsewhere, but I can't, because of the monopoly they deliberately created. I feel zero guilt about skipping ads and using other tools to improve the user experience.
I have no idea why this is an exemplary reply. It's basic rationalization. You're assuming that you must be entertained and must digest the service. If the costs outweigh the benefit, then decline to use the service. It's not a need. You will survive without streaming video.
I despise unethical and infinitely greedy corporations just like the next guy. It doesn't matter how unethical the corporation is - your actions are your own. Ever heard the phrase, two wrongs don't make a right?
We cannot escape the corporate hellscape that was created without divesting ourselves of a significant amount of relevant human culture. They're the ones that put themselves into the position of...
We cannot escape the corporate hellscape that was created without divesting ourselves of a significant amount of relevant human culture. They're the ones that put themselves into the position of acting as tolled gatekeepers for much of current human culture.
The entire concept of intellectual property is an anathema to the hundreds of thousands of years plus of human evolution, I do not much care about feeling bad about rationalizing ad blocking.
I am literally assaulted with ads in nearly every conceivable and achievable form across basically every activity outside of my household. I would ban advertising if given the power, it's just pollution into the human cultural sphere. I'm so tired of people thinking they're entitled to my attention and entitled to spending millions of dollars to subtly manipulate me via ads designed by PhD's.
Is anyone actually being harmed by enjoying an ad-free video experience? Besides the elderly who require stock numbers to go up to not be destitute in their advanced age? We already have multiple...
Is anyone actually being harmed by enjoying an ad-free video experience? Besides the elderly who require stock numbers to go up to not be destitute in their advanced age? We already have multiple lifetimes of music, movies, and educational videos. Why require that the market be continually conducive to the production of more?
Absolutely not. But in our hyper-capitalistic society, if you don't look out for yourself, who will? When I go out into the world, corporations consistently try to take advantage of me. I just...
Is this really the takeaway you'd want to teach to children?
Absolutely not. But in our hyper-capitalistic society, if you don't look out for yourself, who will? When I go out into the world, corporations consistently try to take advantage of me. I just moved and had to transfer my internet service. Despite the fact that I own all my own equipment and have had the same service for 5 years, now there's a new charge on my bill for renting their equipment that I'll have to complain about to get removed. I've been thinking about getting a new job and made my resume discoverable on Indeed. My boss is having a hard time hiring/keeping people, I know he's looking at Indeed for people, and literally days after I posted my resume, he took me aside and for the first time told me how much he appreciated me and gave me a 10% raise. I'm sorry, but I'm jaded. If I don't look out for myself, I will be taken advantage of. I don't feel this way with my friends or family, they're good people. But yeah, when it comes to companies and institutions, I just feel like you have to remain vigilant. The trust has been eroded.
Absolutely. I and my family and friends make money to live. They (corporations) live to make money. Those may sound similar but couldn't be more different.
Absolutely.
I and my family and friends make money to live.
They (corporations) live to make money.
Those may sound similar but couldn't be more different.
Here's a different perspective for those who seemingly can't conceive of a universe in which content creators aren't beholden to Youtube as their only possible, viable, imaginable business model....
Here's a different perspective for those who seemingly can't conceive of a universe in which content creators aren't beholden to Youtube as their only possible, viable, imaginable business model.
A long time ago, I ran a website that used ads by google. I was an enthusiastic supporter of theirs. We relied on the service to pay the bills.
One day we were banned for no reason. Never explained. All communication basically ignored. Outstanding amount due never paid. Basically treated like dirt, as they always have treated their users and always will.
From that day I swore I'd never, ever engage with that business again. Youtube is unavoidable right now, which means blocking and circumventing ads. My resolve has never flagged. If Youtube wants to play hardball, I will devote my full expertise to circumventing their stupid blocking attempts. If a content creator wants my support, google ads is not the way to get it. Think of literally any other way.
If you think this is unethical, feel free to get google to pay me the money they owe me, TYVM.
If you never wanted to engage with that business again, I don't see how using YouTube accomplishes that goal. You shouldn't visit the site. You're just doing the same thing to them that they've...
If you never wanted to engage with that business again, I don't see how using YouTube accomplishes that goal. You shouldn't visit the site. You're just doing the same thing to them that they've done to you.
The social contract breaks down once the entity you're dealing with is so far beyond your grasp as to render you essentially powerless. There's not human meeting of the minds, no give and take,...
You're just doing the same thing to them that they've done to you.
The social contract breaks down once the entity you're dealing with is so far beyond your grasp as to render you essentially powerless. There's not human meeting of the minds, no give and take, etc.
Secondly, judging by the OP's story, Google already broke the social contract, therefore there is no need for them to be burdened with analyzing their actions within that framework.
As someone who never had a Spotify account but had Google Play Music and all of ite variations. I've had YT premium for years now. I love it. I don't see add, YoutTube Music continues to make...
As someone who never had a Spotify account but had Google Play Music and all of ite variations. I've had YT premium for years now. I love it. I don't see add, YoutTube Music continues to make improvements. It meets all of my needs.
Haven't followed a lot of the enshitification of YouTube as of late but I hope YoutTube Premium doesn't change.
I think the idea is that they're making the platform worse for everyone who was previously able to use it just fine for free by implementing more ads per video and blocking playback when the app...
I think the idea is that they're making the platform worse for everyone who was previously able to use it just fine for free by implementing more ads per video and blocking playback when the app is closed, then selling you a subscription to fix the problems they created. Not sure where I stand on it myself, though.
I wouldn't say the YT part is a part of it. The main downside is how it was bundled with Google Play Music, and how it was replaced with a then-inferior Google Music. I've heard it's made...
I wouldn't say the YT part is a part of it. The main downside is how it was bundled with Google Play Music, and how it was replaced with a then-inferior Google Music. I've heard it's made improvements, but the core usage I had it for is long gone.
Youtube itself has certainly regressed in a few ways, but it never worsened itself only to put it behind a paywall. It's always been hostile towards downloading videos and it's served ads for much long than "classic YT" has existed.
I read their comment and we simply use it differently. Even their own comment says: I could go on for paragraphs on all the niches or technical talks/projects or odd facets of culture I found and...
I read their comment and we simply use it differently. Even their own comment says:
It's a different story for most ordinary users. But for me personally, it's not a case of "get a paying Premium member" but of "lose a user who's using Youtube as a slightly more convenient Windows Media Player"
I could go on for paragraphs on all the niches or technical talks/projects or odd facets of culture I found and engaged in through Youtube content creators, stuff mainstream news wouldn't even know existed. But for me Youtube isn't just some bootleg Spotify slash remnant of Google Play Music (I haven't even looked at YT Music since a week after Google Play Music died) .
I think you're reading a different comment from the one I meant. That is why YT Premium is part of enshittification. Premium doesn't just give extras to paying users, they're actively making...
I think you're reading a different comment from the one I meant.
I think the idea is that they're making the platform worse for everyone who was previously able to use it just fine for free by implementing more ads per video and blocking playback when the app is closed, then selling you a subscription to fix the problems they created. Not sure where I stand on it myself, though.
That is why YT Premium is part of enshittification. Premium doesn't just give extras to paying users, they're actively making non-premium worse for everyone else.
YT Premium is one of the only subscriptions I find worthwhile. It's expensive but I listen to music or YouTube eight hours per day a lot of times and that's the value for me. Netflix, Prime, etc...
YT Premium is one of the only subscriptions I find worthwhile. It's expensive but I listen to music or YouTube eight hours per day a lot of times and that's the value for me. Netflix, Prime, etc just don't get used enough for me to justify paying for them. I use Spotify a few times a month because I'm in a music league but I can't believe people pay for Spotify, it's just garbage in so many ways.
Could YouTube Premium be a bit cheaper? Yes, but I will continue to subscribe at this price for now.
At least with YouTube, when you pay for it, all the anti features go away and you are left with a nice product. If you pay for reddit premium or whatever, the platform still sucks.
At least with YouTube, when you pay for it, all the anti features go away and you are left with a nice product. If you pay for reddit premium or whatever, the platform still sucks.
But do you see how insidious it is for a company to enshittify their service to such a degree that you would rather pay to use it? And worse, YouTube doesn't even pay most of their content...
But do you see how insidious it is for a company to enshittify their service to such a degree that you would rather pay to use it?
And worse, YouTube doesn't even pay most of their content creators squat, they don't bring innovation and they don't provide any value.
I don't think you can truthfully say this. If youtube didn't provide any value, neither producers or consumers would use it. Youtube hosts and serves staggering quantities of video data, and doing...
they don't provide any value.
I don't think you can truthfully say this. If youtube didn't provide any value, neither producers or consumers would use it. Youtube hosts and serves staggering quantities of video data, and doing so costs money.
They don't pay their creators much (and I agree they probably should be paying creators more) but imagine how abysmal any online creator's reach would be without services for hosting and...
They don't pay their creators much (and I agree they probably should be paying creators more) but imagine how abysmal any online creator's reach would be without services for hosting and aggregating their content like Youtube- not to mention that hosting your content yourself would likely add a layer of cost and labour that may discourage people from trying to share it in the first place.
Youtube may not directly offer much monetary value, but nearly none of the people who have made careers and followings from their videos would have been able to do that without Youtube or some alternative that might have risen to popularity instead. In that regard, Youtube does offer immense value to its users.
I don't think that encapsulates what "enshittify" means. Youtube has had ads since not long after Google acquired the site, and they've even had the baffling long ones for years as well. It's not...
enshittify their service to such a degree that you would rather pay to use it?
I don't think that encapsulates what "enshittify" means. Youtube has had ads since not long after Google acquired the site, and they've even had the baffling long ones for years as well. It's not making its site worse directly so much as patching workarounds that were never intended to begin with.
Meta concerns with content creators aside, I wouldn't say Youtube has really made its service worse over the years. The removal of dislike counts is arguably the biggest hit in 5 years, but far from one that was core to the site's functionality.
I'm not sure there's a difference. If ads are blocked today and not blocked tomorrow, the service is worse.
I don't think that encapsulates what "enshittify" means. Youtube has had ads since not long after Google acquired the site, and they've even had the baffling long ones for years as well. It's not making its site worse directly so much as patching workarounds that were never intended to begin with.
I'm not sure there's a difference. If ads are blocked today and not blocked tomorrow, the service is worse.
One's a non-advertised workaround by an unaffiliated 3rd party and the other is an officially supported feature being cut. The effect may be the same but the intentions are almost opposite.
One's a non-advertised workaround by an unaffiliated 3rd party and the other is an officially supported feature being cut. The effect may be the same but the intentions are almost opposite.
I would argue the intentions are identical. This is a thing your program can do, and you remove that ability to increase profits. Whether it's an official feature or not, I'm not sure I see the...
I would argue the intentions are identical. This is a thing your program can do, and you remove that ability to increase profits. Whether it's an official feature or not, I'm not sure I see the difference.
Same boat here. The $10/month is well worth it now that YT music works decently well. No ads for YouTube was a bonus. I'm a little surprised that people are upset about this. YouTube is not free...
Same boat here. The $10/month is well worth it now that YT music works decently well. No ads for YouTube was a bonus.
I'm a little surprised that people are upset about this. YouTube is not free to run, and content creators want to get paid too.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but a big part of the issue is for me is around how Youtube treats many of the content creators I like. The continuing issues around demonetization and deranking of...
I can’t speak for anyone else, but a big part of the issue is for me is around how Youtube treats many of the content creators I like.
The continuing issues around demonetization and deranking of relatively innocuous videos mean I have zero faith that subscription money would actually go to support content creators. I’m happy to support the content, but “paying Google” is distinct from that.
If you have no interest in YouTube Music, then $12/mo is an extremely steep price, especially for a casual browser. The bigger issue is that their strategy has been to make the free experience...
If you have no interest in YouTube Music, then $12/mo is an extremely steep price, especially for a casual browser. The bigger issue is that their strategy has been to make the free experience worse and worse until you are annoyed into giving them money.
Yeah, I got an email saying that it will increase for me in December. I'm going to hang onto it until then since I have enough Google Play credits to cover the cost through then, and then I'm...
Yeah, I got an email saying that it will increase for me in December. I'm going to hang onto it until then since I have enough Google Play credits to cover the cost through then, and then I'm going to cancel it and switch to either Tidal for $9.99 or Amazon for $8.99.
I'm another GPM -> YT Premium subscriber who's happy to pay the bucks. Kinda surprised to see how many people are against paying for a service in any way, including just watching ads and thus...
I'm another GPM -> YT Premium subscriber who's happy to pay the bucks. Kinda surprised to see how many people are against paying for a service in any way, including just watching ads and thus "free" to them in an strictly monetary sense.
I like how there are 45 comments of people claiming why don't want to watch ads and these comments have a ton of upvotes and even more comments. Meanwhile, there are people saying "I pay for...
I like how there are 45 comments of people claiming why don't want to watch ads and these comments have a ton of upvotes and even more comments.
Meanwhile, there are people saying "I pay for YouTube premium" and it's got like two upvotes and one comment response.
Same! I immediately signed up for Google Play Music when they announced it and have been through all the Google name changes. I haven't had ads on YouTube in years! and it's been really really nice.
Same! I immediately signed up for Google Play Music when they announced it and have been through all the Google name changes. I haven't had ads on YouTube in years! and it's been really really nice.
I currently end up with like a 50/50 mix of YouTube with ads and without by virtue of watching on both my laptop (with uBlock Origin, so no ads) and my TV, and all I can really say is that it's...
I currently end up with like a 50/50 mix of YouTube with ads and without by virtue of watching on both my laptop (with uBlock Origin, so no ads) and my TV, and all I can really say is that it's insane how many and how long the ads are these days.
I'm sure there's some argument that it's because so many people use ad blockers, but even if you account for that, it seems crazy. I remember the days of 1-3 10-15s skippable ads per video, now it feels like it's often a lot more than that.
The ads on YouTube feel so much more intrusive and frequent than before. There are multiple videos where I legitimately can't watch 2 minutes before it has the first ad break. It's worse if I have...
The ads on YouTube feel so much more intrusive and frequent than before. There are multiple videos where I legitimately can't watch 2 minutes before it has the first ad break. It's worse if I have to exit a video for whatever reason and have to continue later, and then it will play all the ad breaks up to the point I stopped in quick succession.
I remember many years ago around 2009-2010 I watched an anime series on YouTube, and it played one of three commercials (yes, commercials, I recognized them from TV) before or during each one. And I do mean one of three commercials, so you can imagine how repetitive that gets over 52 episodes (and pretty sure this predated the skip button). The top comments on half the episodes were quoting the ads because it was the same three for everyone.
Somehow, that was far less annoying than the current setup. The fact people were just quoting the ads actually made it more amusing than annoying to me.
Since YouTube is just becoming a complete disaster (to name a few issues: bad moderation/customer support, the new adblock thing, and more) i will switch to alternatives like Odysee and PeerTube...
Since YouTube is just becoming a complete disaster (to name a few issues: bad moderation/customer support, the new adblock thing, and more) i will switch to alternatives like Odysee and PeerTube (i can't believe no one mentioned them! And yes they are already quite popular) but there just isn't much content yet.
The reasons people aren't talking about it is that they won't scale because of the fediverseness of it and also the content on it is unhinged at the moment.
The reasons people aren't talking about it is that they won't scale because of the fediverseness of it and also the content on it is unhinged at the moment.
Also people use YouTube because they like watching the content made by certain people. For example, I like watching people like Frost Prime, JaidenAnimations, and SmallAnt. While I haven't...
Also people use YouTube because they like watching the content made by certain people. For example, I like watching people like Frost Prime, JaidenAnimations, and SmallAnt. While I haven't checked, if I was a betting man I would be that none of them are on PeerTube. Which means PeerTube is not a valid alternative for me.
Plus I feel like the people that use less popular, more "techy" platforms like these are generally more likely to produce certain kinds of nicher content that just won't have wide appeal. Because,...
Plus I feel like the people that use less popular, more "techy" platforms like these are generally more likely to produce certain kinds of nicher content that just won't have wide appeal. Because, let's face it, as they are right now if you're using fediverse stuff you're 99% some sort of geek. Which is fine, but it also means that Auntie Ruth looking for casserole recipies and little Timmy who's learning his colours will have absolutely no reason to use your platform. That also means that people won't go there to post that kind of content, and the cycle continues until someone manages to break it.
Peer tube flat out does not work. Every time I have attempted to use it, the front page is filled with junk, the video struggles to buffer, and the federation does not work. I uploaded a video on...
Peer tube flat out does not work. Every time I have attempted to use it, the front page is filled with junk, the video struggles to buffer, and the federation does not work.
I uploaded a video on one of the major public instances, and then attempted to search it from other instances and it never showed up. Even after months.
The whole idea that server A is supposed to be able to serve servers B, C, D, E and F's content is an idea born out of a world where storage and bandwidth are cheap and exponentially growing, one...
The whole idea that server A is supposed to be able to serve servers B, C, D, E and F's content is an idea born out of a world where storage and bandwidth are cheap and exponentially growing, one that we unfortunately no longer a part of.
I don't understand how engineers that saw how the Bitcoin Blockchain needs dedicated and purpose built servers to host and search it even if it's a database where 1mb gets appended every 10 minutes, and then decided to build YouTube in a way where data needs to be duplicated in a similar fashion.
I used to watch the ads when watching on my smart TV when it was just 1 or 2 ads per video. Then they increased to sometimes 10 ads in a 20 minute video. That's when I went and got an android TV...
I used to watch the ads when watching on my smart TV when it was just 1 or 2 ads per video. Then they increased to sometimes 10 ads in a 20 minute video. That's when I went and got an android TV (how ironic) and installed Smart Tube. Haven't looked back, and I cannot be bothered to care about a $1.5T company. If they had reasonable monetization I don't mind paying, but when the free alternative is more user friendly then it's the life of a pirate for me.
I view it like this: If I'm going to pay you, there had better be a VERY distinct experience between what I can get for free one way or another, and what I get if I pay you. I've been paying for...
I view it like this:
If I'm going to pay you, there had better be a VERY distinct experience between what I can get for free one way or another, and what I get if I pay you. I've been paying for Spotify because it lets me choose any song that I like on mobile, and their library is HUGE. However, I've been told of alternative ways to accomplish the exact same thing for free (obviously NOT using Spotify), so I'm thinking about probably cancelling Spotify anyways.
Youtube... my understanding is that the only major difference between free and paid is lack of ads. yes, you can argue about downloading videos or playing music, but I already have alternative free ways to do BOTH of those. And I generally don't download videos in the first place these days.
You want me to pay for a product, I'd better have a much better experience with a paid version than the free version. Youtube doesn't deliver on that end for me, so free with adblocking it is.
I'm uncertain, I don't think I'm necessarily against this. Youtube is good service, it serves a tremendous amount of video globally, and is one of the only larger platforms whose model sustainably...
I'm uncertain, I don't think I'm necessarily against this. Youtube is good service, it serves a tremendous amount of video globally, and is one of the only larger platforms whose model sustainably (relatively speaking) promotes great journalism. However, I do think that the amount of ads that Youtube runs plus the ads that the creators themselves run inside the video has reached a point where, if I had to sit through them, I would rather not watch the video.
To that end, I do happily pay for premium, because I recognize that high quality video costs a lot of money to serve. I also think it's the right payment model for a platform like Youtube; paying per channel would crush any hope that smaller creators would have to emerge from nothing. This way, there's room for anyone, pending quality, to exist on the platform. While Youtube certainly has made large mistakes while trying to moderate and otherwise run the platform, I think that's mostly unavoidable at the scale it operates at. Moderation at large scales is an impossible problem. Which doesn't excuse the mistakes (particularily the user-hostile design changes, like the downvote removal), but none have been too egregious enough to be a deal breaker for me.
But, largely, I've been thinking to downscale my dependence on 'free' (ad-supported or otherwise) services on the internet made by for-profit companies (particularity public or aspiring to be public companies). Companies run by people who care for nothing other than profit tend to use these to crush competitors by undercutting them. And once they're gone, the service steadily gets worse and worse, until it reaches the actual sustainable steady-state, and then goes further beyond because there's no one left to compete with them. And they feel nothing for doing this, because they never really cared about what they were building in the first place. And they don't care that it won't be around once it eventually fails: they got theirs, they'll be long gone before that.
I'm precisely referring to services like Youtube. While I still think that premium is on the right side of being worth it, it doesn't escape me that the platform is precisely going through the trajectory I outlined above. I just (stupidly) hope that whenever they hit the sustainable steady-state, that Youtube will be different and not lose their way.
Something I've always wondered is, could intentionally clicking ads be a form of protest? I'm not sure if advertisers still pay more for on-click like they did before, but if they do couldn't...
Something I've always wondered is, could intentionally clicking ads be a form of protest? I'm not sure if advertisers still pay more for on-click like they did before, but if they do couldn't organizing people to repeatedly click ads on youtube or even reddit mess with monetization?
I remember back in the day people lost their youtube partnership if it looked like ads were being click-botted.
I'm not sure if clicking on ads would work as a way to mess with monetization, but when it comes to Youtubers losing their partnership, all that would result in is their videos still having ads,...
I'm not sure if clicking on ads would work as a way to mess with monetization, but when it comes to Youtubers losing their partnership, all that would result in is their videos still having ads, they just wouldn't be paid for it and Google/YouTube itself would pocket the money. Which isn't helpful if you're protesting YouTube itself.
This is a very optimistic view. There have been numerous reports of both Google and Meta using some questionable tactics to show advertiser's the effectiveness of ads, even going so far as to be...
This is a very optimistic view. There have been numerous reports of both Google and Meta using some questionable tactics to show advertiser's the effectiveness of ads, even going so far as to be not straightforward about where they're placing ads but since they pretty much have the monopoly on the market, advertising budgets still go there. There is a shockingly large amount of money companies are willing to spend on ads and the ROI on them has continued to reduce but it's just seen as the industry standard and work goes on as usual.
For those of you who are adamant about not watching ads, I'd love to know what kinds of jobs you all have and how you'd feel if your customers refused to pay after you performed some sort of...
For those of you who are adamant about not watching ads, I'd love to know what kinds of jobs you all have and how you'd feel if your customers refused to pay after you performed some sort of service or provided them a product but then they said "forget you, I'm not paying you."
If youtube was a fair platform that didn't constantly fuck over it's creators constantly and allow literally anyone to abuse their broken copyright system that literally protects false claimants...
If youtube was a fair platform that didn't constantly fuck over it's creators constantly and allow literally anyone to abuse their broken copyright system that literally protects false claimants (which is NOT required by law, don't even start), etc. I'd be a lot less averse to their ads.
I'm not there for youtube, youtube has negative goodwill, they've proven themselves to only care about money, not even the people who make them that money, and therefore I won't give them money and hope that they fail. I'm there for the creators I watch, which have been slowly migrating over to Odysee or other platforms.
Ad-blocking ain't piracy, but the same principles apply: “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue” - Gabe Newell
People routinely come into my place of work, use the bathroom, perhaps drink some water or soda, radiate heat that the AC has to makeup for, enjoy the lights at night, etc. and give nothing back...
People routinely come into my place of work, use the bathroom, perhaps drink some water or soda, radiate heat that the AC has to makeup for, enjoy the lights at night, etc. and give nothing back monetarily at the end of the day. I create "intellectual property" for my company and we sell services and physical goods. Should we toll everyone who walks through the doors the minor pennies worth of services they consume?
Youtube was originally a large marketplace and social gathering place for humanity with nearly 0 intrusive ads or anything. After ruthlessly expanding for a decade plus and continually degrading the experience, they have decided to use their near-monopoly status to start turning the screws on everyone now that they have locked a good part of human culture behind their doors. I don't feel bad about adblocking at all.
Guess I’ll become that obnoxious friend who says I’m not watching videos my friends send me unless they download the video file and send that to me instead of the link. As a bonus, it’ll be a way...
Guess I’ll become that obnoxious friend who says I’m not watching videos my friends send me unless they download the video file and send that to me instead of the link. As a bonus, it’ll be a way to prune low-quality friendships if us watching the same videos is all that kept the friendship going.
Oh no! I have as much blocked as possible on desktop where I do 95% of my youtubing, which is why it's always jarring to visit it on mobile where it is just about unusable due to ads. If that...
Oh no! I have as much blocked as possible on desktop where I do 95% of my youtubing, which is why it's always jarring to visit it on mobile where it is just about unusable due to ads. If that becomes the desktop experience, I'm going to be in a pickle. I can't sit through that shit. There are already some sites like that and I try muting, going to another tab to wait it out, etc., and sometimes if you go to another tab, it knows and makes you start over! Crap. It's torture, can't do it. Surely someone will just come up with new ways to get around it though, or at least I'm hopeful they will.
I have two devices going ofttimes, so that if there is a non blocked ad I can look at something else while I wait. For example, my phone and a laptop. I use an adblocker on my phone browser but I...
I have two devices going ofttimes, so that if there is a non blocked ad I can look at something else while I wait. For example, my phone and a laptop.
I use an adblocker on my phone browser but I also use their official app. I also watch on computer and TV sometimes without a blocker. I wonder what they will do for mixed blocking households.
It doesn't have nearly as much content and has some weird policies for their staking system that could probably be abused in the future, but Odysee has seen a lot of people moving over to it.
It doesn't have nearly as much content and has some weird policies for their staking system that could probably be abused in the future, but Odysee has seen a lot of people moving over to it.
It's the practice of bundling services that rubs me the wrong way. If they'd remove YouTube Music from the picture and offer a less expensive Premium Lite, like what was trialed in Europe, I'd...
It's the practice of bundling services that rubs me the wrong way. If they'd remove YouTube Music from the picture and offer a less expensive Premium Lite, like what was trialed in Europe, I'd consider subscribing. I'm happy to pay for what I use. Conversely, I'm actually angry about always being marketed bundles of crap I don't need because one element would likely die without the other. No one ever subscribed to those pricey digital cable bundles because they just had to have the Bald Nudist Equestrian Channel.
If you like youtube-dl check out yt-dlp It is an up to date fork of youtube-dl with additional features. Works just the same as the original. If you are on Windows you can install it with winget...
You could have an account where you subscribe to your preferred channels and then export the channels to RSS. Then log out and consume directly from an RSS reader.
You could have an account where you subscribe to your preferred channels and then export the channels to RSS. Then log out and consume directly from an RSS reader.
That's how I have it set up. I have a section in my rss feeder called YouTube, and I'm subscribed to the rss feeds in the channels I used to be subbed to. When I open it, I see if there any new...
That's how I have it set up. I have a section in my rss feeder called YouTube, and I'm subscribed to the rss feeds in the channels I used to be subbed to. When I open it, I see if there any new videos, which then open on sponsorblocked NewPipe.
No account needed. It's also faster and more minimalistic than scrolling through videos. And I have notifications for those feeds off, so I only see that there's new videos when I open it.
That's basically what I'm doing with a Firefox add-on called Feedbro. I never had an account for YT, but if I want to be notified about updates on a channel, I add the channel page to Feedbro, and...
That's basically what I'm doing with a Firefox add-on called Feedbro.
I never had an account for YT, but if I want to be notified about updates on a channel, I add the channel page to Feedbro, and it checks regularly for new videos. Works totally fine for me.
When I had my Pixel (that my wife now owns) I used LibreTube and for iOS there's Yattee. For our MiBox (Android TV) we use SmartTube which connects to your Youtube account, unlike the two above.
When I had my Pixel (that my wife now owns) I used LibreTube and for iOS there's Yattee.
For our MiBox (Android TV) we use SmartTube which connects to your Youtube account, unlike the two above.
For anyone going hard in Google's defense re theft: https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-block-news-links-canada-over-law-paying-publishers-statement-2023-06-29/
For anyone going hard in Google's defense re theft:
It seems like Google is hell-bent on squeezing every last penny out of Youtube to the point of fighting the user for blocking their ad-ridden hellscape of user-uploaded media.
I personally cancelled our YT Premium subscriptions and have moved to alternative clients (SmartTube/Piped/Invidious/Yattee) and am testing out yt-dl because I refuse to be a part of this.
What are you planning to, or have done to fight this behavior? It seems like there are no alternatives to YT like the long defunct Vidme, unfortunately.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Being a premium subscriber, you weren't getting ads to begin with. Why would trying to stop ad-blocking (which only affected free users, not you) get you to cancel it? It didn't affect you at all.
Are you doing it out of principle? You can't have everything be free and with no ads, that's obviously not realistic. Especially for something heavy like video sharing, and especially if you want the creators to be paid for their work (which they should be)
The same thing everyone is planning to do, continue to use youtube.
Big issue is the same thing that made game development hard: resolution. Back then Youtube also limited videos to 5 minutes (I think post google they upped it to 15m, then uncapped it later) and 480p was those day's "high resolution". Many were simply in 240p. You can check out some super old classic YT videos to see how well those aged. it's also telling that the biggest "alternatives" limit their videos even more aggressively but advertise it as a feature.
Now we're in days where even 1080p is simply a "decent resolution", where even mobile screen have 1440p+ resolution that they arguably don't need for video. 5 times the content to deliver, roughly speaking. So you either have to take way more data to process, or you need some smart encoding to save on how much you send to the host. and of course the raging elephant in the room is that there's some 1000x the population to support. That's only the surface level issues.
It's not like those techs are dead, but like 240p it's become outdated. those techniques worked for a certain size of internet that doesn't work anymore. And ofc IDK how much I'd love relying on seeders to deliver me some niche video (which are the kinds of videos I often watch on YT)
Bandwidth price has not nearly kept up with the explosion in video size and user counts. I did a little bit of rough math to think about the scale. The average front page video from a creator like MrBeast has about 200M views. And these videos tend to be about 500mb in the higher qualities people expect. That's 100Pb data transfer for one video. At AWS's cheapest S3 price $0.021/gb transfer, that would cost $2,100,000 in just data transfer for just one video.
Now sure, you might be able to find a much cheaper hosting than AWS. Google isn't paying these prices for bandwidth, but it's pretty representative of the price an average small org or company would have access to.
If we can't run ads, and we can't charge the viewer a subscription price, how on earth would a competitor fund this?
I don’t think big tech had anything to do with the death of p2p. The mobile phone and even the laptop killed it. People don’t have always awake always connected devices plugged in to mains power anymore. They have data capped connections and asymmetric speeds.
Big companies would love to use P2P distribution to save on costs and there are some examples where they actually did this. But they have all died off now since it’s just not worth it.
That's true but also solvable, I think. Most people have a home with an internet connection. They could run small home servers that not only work as P2P nodes but also do their backups, communication, provide media, a VPN when they're out, and tons of other things.
You might say that's something for experienced experts, but I disagree. Modern cars, TVs and even fridges all have mulitple services builtin with similar complexity, and they are extremely popular. There is no technical reason home servers have to be configured and maintained with a CLI. Think of it like a smartphone for your home. If you can do automatic backups and install updates while you're in the woods, you should be able to do the same thing at home.
The reason this will never take off any time soon is because nobody wants to spend money on something they can get for free. Maybe some day a majority will realize that it's actually more expensive to pay with ads, because there is some overhead for production and organisation, and maybe some day people will value the improved quality of an ad-free life higher than more money for buying things they don't really need, but I'm not holding my breath.
I understand the need for a number for back-of-the-envelope calculations, but AWS is famous for having a Hotel California situation with their egress pricing: you can bring data into AWS, but you can never bring it back out.
For example, I found this 2010 article on European bandwidth costs. Assuming you want to send the data across Europe, that's 0.19¢/GiB, again in 2010.
I also came across an article with some rough 2021 pricing. With those numbers, it seems like you'd be paying 0.065¢/GiB or about $60,000 to serve those views.
And prices just go down from there, when you do things like working with ISPs to bring the servers closer to the edge.
That's true, though my thinking was that a community funded non commercial video host doesn't really have the ability to work with ISPs and edge distribution, so they are just getting the basic off the shelf cloud hosting pricing. And even with a much much cheaper price, the cost is still incredibly high if you can't fund it through ads or subscriptions.
It's much much more viable to run something like twitter or reddit off donations since they are mostly text.
PeerTube seems to work quite well, so I don’t think that it is am insurmountable problem. Torrents never had trouble scaling, and are much more stable than Netflix and alia that do stream in shitty low-quality. Hell, they even cache their content specifically on ISPs’ servers to make it work!
I can't speak from experience as I never used Peertube, but I've read about other companies trying and failing to really keep p2p maintained . Spotify is the biggest example https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/
It may have simply been a maintancence and control problem, so this doesn't disprove that P2P is unviable, but it also aligns with my usage of torrents: they are almost magical when you are downloading popular content, and the way the internet works means covering the top 1% of content can capture 90+% of use cases.
But falling off that 1% is the equivalent of the 3rd page of a google search: you start to really wade through and are confused on why you even bother by the end. In the worst cases it may have been quicker to drive out, find the media, drive back, and rip the content yourself. And I'm often seeking stuff that isn't traditionally popular.
Well, you only need a single seeder. That can be a traditional server as well in case of a legal content, so in that case a p2p solution would only decrease loads on the few servers, yet everything is available all the time.
Yeah in those days YouTube was basically just short meme videos, sketch comedy, and anime music video cuts.
I miss the sketch comedy. The rest I could take or leave.
P2P protocols can never scale to the level of something like Youtube. ISPs allocate more downlink than uplink to consumer connections. Consumer routers cannot process the same levels of bandwidth (e.g. their packet buffers are smaller than the buffers on commercial routers.) Internet infrastructure is a lot worse in developing countries than it is in developed countries. Internet routes change and rebalance all the time which changes the latency and bufferbloat characteristics of links on the network. Google and other big bandwidth egress entities often colocate routers within datacenters at ISPs and dedicate special links to help ease the load of transferring all this bandwidth, so that a consumer can simply grab cached data at their ISP's egress point instead of fetching the data directly from Google. P2P connections also require always-on devices which precludes mobile and other thin clients from participating because their battery life would be quickly drained keeping their modems running all the time. Then there's the bandwidth policy question, where you're assuming that no matter what network you're on, you're being allowed to transfer high amounts of bandwidth.
P2P networks are great for resiliency because you end up having multiple paths to a given chunk of content, but they're bad for scaling because it's much more expensive to build out a network with many wide pipes and lots of storage than it is to build out a network with a few ultriwide pipes and a few centers of storage. Moreover, content providers are not ISP, so there's no simple way for demand for content to shape internet infrastructure.
I remember the days of Kazaa, and transferring video was often really frustrating, and anything but the most popular of videos would often require multiple days of waiting as users came online and had the necessary chunks to transfer the full file. All of this had nothing to do with the UX of viewing videos or all of the revenue sharing and content creation incentives that Youtube also offers. Most content on Kazaa was premade by other studios and just pirated.
Peertorrent is software that works over P2P and in my experience the UX is terrible and videos often load a small chunk then fail to load at all, or just stop partway through.
For folks who feel strongly about this, I recommend trying to at least sketch out a design of their vision and get it looked over by folks knowledgeable about internet infrastructure. It seems like folks are much quicker to cancel their subscriptions and push back against service changes than to envision a solution.
Everyone loves to blame Google (including myself, quite often and loudly to the annoyance of family and friends), but claiming that they are solely responsible for their current position of power and are thus somehow obligated to continue operating YouTube at a loss in order to serve humanity rubs me the wrong way. Google didn't seize their position of power and dominance by force or violence. We gave them this power. Internet users chose to exclusively use a "free" video sharing platform in exchange for their privacy and attention. Google milked that for as long as we let them, but now it's not enough to sustain the platform so they're changing the business model (introducing YouTube premium) and cracking down (punishing ad blockers).
It's fine to be annoyed or angry at Google, but I think the masses of consumers who prioritize convenience above all else and willingly flock to these social media services when we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt (thanks to numerous examples) the inevitable gold-paved, privacy-invading road they'll all eventually tread down, deserve just as much (if not more) of the blame.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but this is odd framing. YouTube is one of the most profitable internet entities on the planet.
You're right, poor choice of phrasing on my part. My meaning was it would be running at a loss if they removed ads entirely, the way it was in the "time before YouTube was YouTube" that ad-blocker users feel entitled to.
It’s kind of pointless to blame people for things that are part of human nature.
It helps in order to understand why no one just jumps ship to the alternatives. It's equally pointless blaming capitalism for all bad things in the world.
There seems to be a lot more charity given to consumer complaints that the complaints of service providers. It makes me think that this is an audience of folks who are not, or have not been, service providers.
I think blame should at least in part be shifted to our political class, who felt that the societal benefit of actual anti-trust enforcement was not worth the risk to their donors' bottom lines.
I've followed the same train of though and landed on the idea that YouTube made itself into an unfocused, unrestrained video hosting blob. Like if you were to open up completely fresh YouTube accounts anywhere, you'd find a mix of movie trailers, music videos, viral vids, local and global news, late-night TV, TikToc/Reddit/Shorts compilations and you can still dig down into a just vast abyss of content.
Google and YouTube basically announced to the world that they are the media hosting service and not only is it free, but your videos are stored in perpetuity and they will even pay you a share of ad-rev if it is popular enough. That isn't just a deal, it's practically free money. So instead of global media giants paying to host their own news/trailers/music, they can freely throw it the same clips on seven different YouTube channels. There's content farmers uploading and re-uploading countless hours of crap. Days long white-noise, screen savers and chill beats eating up storage space. It's all there, just burning a hole in a balance sheet.
With the benefit of hindsight they could have just said that you're only entitled to rev-share in the first few years of a video being up and forcibly delist/delete a video if it doesn't generate a base level of traffic. It wouldn't have been popular but it beats just arbitrarily cancelling monetization and could have trimmed off a big chunk of fat.
I don't think they'll change their data hoarding though. I've no doubt that Google is scraping all of it for there data-models and probably driving a lot of their recent development. The conspiracy theorist in me is counting the days to when they push wholly artificial online personalities and video production.
I don’t remember any aspect of YouTube ever costing money before Google bought them.
I don’t believe that they are implying the creators shouldn’t be paid for their work. Nor can someone be excluded from protesting something that does not directly affect them.
I think it boils down to just a little disdain for a company that is worth 1.5 trillion dollars, with an annual gross profit of 156 Billion as of YE 2022, being so heavy handed on what probably amounts to less than a quarter of their users.
A lot of people don’t understand the scale of a billion dollars. It looks like this: 1,000,000,000. That’s one thousand millions, a ‘fuᴄk you’ amount of money. Now do that 156 times.
They could leave it like it is, but instead of increasing incentives for creators or content consumers, they go on the offensive.
Google doesn’t do anything but facilitate the flow of information. I have no sympathy for them when everyone else does the work, is the product, and they just sit back and rake in the cash.
At least that’s my take on it.
And I will use YouTube until I am struck out I guess.
I should add, take my opinion piece here with a grain of salt because I am a bitter and grumpy old man who feels there is a point where you make an immoral amount of money.
Google screwed us over many years ago, by getting rich off of abusing our privacy and - at that time - naivety.
Then they did what every Silicon Valley company has done and is still doing (hello ClearviewAI & OpenAI):
I probably missed a bunch of things, feel free to add!
Oh, and I have something to say about YouTube and Premium and ad blocking specifically:
When you're not blocking ads, you're also not blocking trackers. So you're forced to sit there and pay attention to ads while they get to track you. If you pay for Premium you don't get ads, but they don't just get your money. They also get precise identifying data (name, location, possibly bank info). You're likely to forget that the tracking will continue even more effectively, because you're not reminded by ads.
Same, same. Also bitter about how we never got the internet we dreamed of.
Maybe Lina Khan, the EU and the current trend of imploding platforms will pave the way to a better future.
If anything, I feel better about things. The mask's finally coming off. Deleted Facebook and Reddit, went back to caring about my privacy. Convinced my wife to switch to Linux after she's done with college, between proton and the steam deck, it's not a huge sacrifice anymore. I'll do everything I can to circumvent ads and trackers in YouTube, but if they make it actually impossible? Fine. Some of the channels I follow have podcasts, I'll follow those. After Reddit's collapse, I've rebuilt my rss feed library, and I honestly haven't felt this relaxed and destressed about my internet use in a long time.
I agree about the mask seems to be coming off.
After the debacle of Reddit and Musk's handling of Twitter plus other instances it seems like the word of the year is "enshittification".
This year the process doesn't seem like a frog in boiling water situation anymore, however. It almost seems like these companies are in a race to see just who can out enshittify each other.
I (like so many others) have left (or severely reduced) using Reddit because of it. I didn't even use 3rd party apps and I still left. For me it was just another example of a company knowingly and willingly treating their userbase like shit. "Everything old is new again" has never seemed more relevant to me. I'm completely vibing with the message board feel around here. I had lurked Tildes for a bit before finally sending an email asking for an invite. My facebook usage was never really high but now I'm using group text messaging to keep in touch with the people I want to keep up with, share pictures of the kids, etc.
By myself I'm not even a blip on any of their radars. However, I certainly don't feel alone in my choices to cut back or outright leave "social media" platforms. Youtube will be no different. I have a yearly subscription to Curiosity, Pluto.tv is free (don't even need to login) and I have a fairly robust Jellyfin server at home without even mentioning whatever "main" streaming platform we've currently rotated in for a month or 2.. (Pluto.tv doesn't seem to be horrid with ads. I mainly watch the 24/7 Godzilla channel for background noise. They're WAY less than Sling.tv was when I had it..I swear they put in additional ads during the ad break of AEW when i watched it.)
My point is that Youtube is competing for my time. I installed an adblocker years ago when I thought their ads were getting too much (an additional 25-33% of ad time of a sub 10 minute video, for example). A month ago or so I was on my phone and saw a 2-3 minute video on something I needed JIT knowlege of. Holy hell, there was 2 ads before and 3 ads during this short video. While I could skip some of them, if I hadn't turned off the video after the 5th ad just started playing there would have been like 4-5 minutes ads on this 2-3 minute video. FUCK. THAT.
If you or your groups start wanting to silo group chats separate from direct messages, I recommend taking a look at Signal. Might not be for you, and that’s fine, but I do want people to know the option exists.
I Think 25% is absurdly generous, but if we took it at face value: YT's revenue was 30b in 2022, and that's leaving some 8b dollars on the table. from a business perspective, even if I could only recover 10% of that I'd say it's worth a shot.
increasing incentives for creators cost them more money. And gambles that it leads to more popular content creators, which pretty hard these days.
And I don't know what incentives a casual content consumer wants. The ideal experience is to watch a video without ads, save videos and creators they like, and maybe interact with the video with comments. I'm not going to call video hosting a solved problem, but there's not a whole lot to build upon from there unless you target power users (who we establish is a small portion of the site).
Far be it for me to tell people how to make their livelihoods, but if I had a button that would revert the world back to a time where the term "content creator" didn't exist and people Let's Played games on Unregistered Hypercam 2, I'd press it in a heartbeat.
It is possible for hobbyists to make videos as a hobby. In fact, that was the norm. It's not my fault people want their videos to look professional. I didn't ask for that.
Start a Patreon, I'm subscribed to several. However, I'm not giving YouTube money (they've already made bank on selling my info), and I'm not watching ads or sponsors.
There were also less people back then. Because not everyone has the time nor energy to do all that "as a hobby". Nowadays, you can find all kinds of challenge runs of even the most niche video games out there, games that otherwise wouldn't get much more than an Angry Video Game Nerd video dedicated to mocking them.
I mean, this seems like an odd angle to complain about. I'm sure most people don't ask for quality in code nor art either. But people will notice if the art looks ugly or the program has bugs or is slow.
histoically speaking, reaching out for charity has never ended up being a sustainable venture. Not unless you make it your full time job advertising said tip box, ironically enough.
I'm personally fine with that. I'd accept a lower level of quality and quantity if that means we go back to doing these things for fun.
If it were just YouTube, or a content creator conglomerate, I might be willing to have a different conversation. But given that Google already sells everything it knows about me, and paying them doesn't opt me out of that system, I consider my fee paid. They don't get to double dip.
If the FOSS programs that I use started forcing ads into their apps to justify a higher time commitment, I'd complain too. This is not a trade I'm willing to make. I'll give Wikipedia 5 bucks whenever they ask. I won't watch ads, or sell them my info. Yes, this leads to lower profits. That's fine.
As far as I'm concerned, if YouTube and content creators have enough money and resources to stay in the black, whatever moral obligation I might feel has been met. It's in their interest to increase their profits, but it's not in mine.
I don't have a solution. There are obviously too many content creators for Patreon to be a true replacement. Many of them would either have to stop or lower their production values. Like I said, I'm personally fine with that.
I just feel this solution simply tosses the inevitable ad bone down the road, rather than preventing a monetized site. And/or we simply have long form video go the way of the dodo.
Remember that Youtube isn't the only way to be a content creator anymore. So I imagine that instead of getting people to "do things for fun" we end up with would be quality youtubers becomig a part of Instagram or TikTok, tailoring their content for short form consumption. I had the similar feelings with old school forums and I see the result for sticking to the old guard wasn't a filtering down to a community of quality users. They simply moved to Reddit or Twitter, or even Discord. Some may have simply moved away entirely from forums. So I think the same would happen here. They wouldn't lower their production values, they'd cease to exist to a point where Youtube wouldn't exist.
Definitely a personal opinion, but I see Youtube as the lesser of the Big 3 evils in modern day influencers. If the former died out I'd probably be one of the ones who simply doesn't consume amateur (or more specifically, non-hollywood level) video content.
You raise a good point, and one I hadn't considered. Ultimately, I have no idea where this is going. But the internet is changing in huge ways this year, and almost always in ways that are detrimental to my experience, so I'm willing to roll the dice.
I feel there'll always be a space for long form videos. Maybe the audience will be smaller, but I'm just fine with Tildes' smaller audience compared to Reddit. Heck, it might even be an improvement, if the TikTok audience just isn't there anymore.
I don't know. I don't know what the internet looks like next year. But I do know that I'm not willing to sell my privacy and information for convenience, and I'm not willing to expose my brain to ads anymore either. The only thing I'm willing to give any business now is my money, and no more.
If this position means YouTube dies, so be it.
Well, if the ads will become unkillable, due due to my psychologcial safety I will simply stop watching Youtube. I did the same with other corporations' products. I just don't want to be hurt, that's all. I try to support producers via Liberapay or Patreon etc., also buy CDs or DVDs whenever I feel the content is good enough. But will never watch any mind-wrecking ad. Just get out of my mind, advertisers. I don't want corporations to drive my needs.
Most artists literally were financed that way. The rest wasn’t famous until their death.
Many people on patreon seem to do quite well, so I don’t think that there is a fundamental problem here.
yes, and the artist is a career well known for their financial stability.
I guess "well" is relative. The top top Patreons like Jeff Gerstmann are doing very well, even by the most conservative estimates. But that's one personality who was one of the most well known journalists on his field at the time, involved in some of the biggest controversies back in his heyday.
But when you scale down even to "big but not mega popular content creators" you see how quickly it dwindles. For example, the largest person I'm subbed to (that has a pateon) has 1.85m subscribers on Youtube and a streaming channel and a 2nd channel talking about alternate medium. And his patreon is 700 patrons, with $2/5/15 tiers. Now, even if every member was in the $5 recommended tier... $3500/month isn't chump change, but I wouldn't say it's something I'd survive comfortably on in a high COL area. And ofc he has to pay editors and Patreon gets a 5% cut and you see how quickly the money dwindles.
And remember, this is someone with over 2M subs. What chance does some smaller content creators (most of which are the ones I sub to) have living off of chharity if someone this big is just making "I can pay the bills and not much else" money this way?
I think we have a false equivalency here, as if by the current model smaller creators were making enough money, which is just false.
Surely, it may not be enough to replace a traditional job in some more expensive parts of the world, but if you can apply for a part-time job and work like 3 days, and live from your hobby on the other 4, that’s a win in my book.
And quite frankly, I don’t see any way how this could be solved otherwise — if there is not enough drive for the content one creates, then by capitalist means, it’s monetary value can’t be too high.
Depends on "small" in this case. Tiny content creators aren't making a full time wage, but they can start to make a reasonable side income as "soon" as 50k subs.
I have another example: one certain youtuber did give some rough numbers on how much he made. 420k subscribers (less since these figures are a year old), daily uploads for let's play style gameplay videos with weekly more edited, sponsored videos. He made 10k USD/month, and $2k/month off of sponsorships. Unlike the other 2M sub example, this creator does virtually all the editing by himself, so this is truly a single income provided all to him.
I unnderstand if you don't call 400k subs "small", but when we're comparing it to the actual top 1% of youtubers in the millinos each, I can't call it more than a mid-sized channel. These aren't linear trends, but I imagine by 200k subs or so that you go back down to that aforementioned $3500 mark that is around "I can pay the bills" mark. A large landmark, but not infeasible.
so, 20 hours a week plus donations? Again, I don't think you understand the lack of money coming in Patreon for non-large creators.
That above youtuber has a patreon (full disclosure, it's one of the few I donate to). And it's 600 members but really only one tier of reward, $1, discord access. you can donate more but $1 gets you everything he provides.
$600 isn't something to sneeze at, but it's supplemental income at best, far from enough to where someone can go from full to part time minimum wage work.
none of this is a hard science and money fluctuates a lot, so don't take this as gospel. My only point here is reinforcing how much money youtubers make off of Youtube itself, compared to how much there is in charity money. I'd love a charity model, but in real world terms (at least via digital tip jars) I really don't like the "well just open a Patreon" as a line of reasoning for how/why content creators can simply move off of YouTube
I hate to not be the cynical buzzkill, but the world is a much better place because of Youtube. Sure there's a ton of shitty content creators making garbage content but there's also literally every single thing you'd ever want to learn or know in video format, for free. There are thousands of amazing creators pouring their souls into making awesome videos that don't cost us a dime to consume.
Too bad Google helped nuke that into the ground when they took away the like/dislike numbers.
Once upon a time Youtube was my first go to resource for trying to figure out how to do things replace a car part on a hyper specific year/model of car or something else obscure like that. Since some of those types of videos only have thousands or even only hundreds of views the like/dislike ratio was a simple quick way to weed out shitty videos. I've seen videos with wrong and outright dangerous instructions but Google is simply happy to offer them up along with the one does by a master mechanic. If only they had some kind of peer-review system in place...
I feel like this issue really isn't as bad as you claim. Not only can you still sus out a bad video via just looking at the like to view ratio (if it has 100k views and only 100 likes it's probably best to take it with a grain of salt) but the comments are still an easy way to see community sentiment. If they disabled comments then it's probably a safe bet to just go to another video.
Is it ideal? No, obviously not, but does it make YouTube an entirely useless platform for finding tutorials? Demonstrably no, and claiming it does is pretty over dramatic.
You honestly think there wouldn't just be another company who came out on top and choked out the competition? Either way, I don't want to have to go to dozens of video hosting sites to watch content, that's the reason I hate the current streaming ecosystem right now, convenience is king
The dozens of video hosting websites could simply share their contents, federate. You wouldn't have to go to each one of them. EU is forcing corporate social media to do this, to be interoperational. Moreover, such web already exists - it's called Fediverse.
That’s naive and is not how market economics work. Unless restricted by some outside force (government), monopolies will form that take out the competition easily (e.g. they can allow to run on a loss for years until the competition is dead).
As someone who doesn't use ad block and does not pay for YT premium (I just watched the ads until I can skip.) To me it sounds like a lot of people who want to have their cake and eat it too.
Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years. I will do everything I can to extract as much value as I can for as little capital as I can with every one of these businesses I come into contact with. It is not my job to make sure these companies can give their C-Suite an 8 figure bonus. I fight for me and I don't understand people who work so hard against their own best interests.
"Companies have been double dipping on users (selling their info while charging a monthly fee) for years"
I don't pay a monthly fee. I just watch the ads until I can skip them. I feel that I get a lot of value for what they are asking for.
In this example, making users watch ads and selling their info. If they pay them, still selling their info. They're double dipping. Even without watching ads, they're getting their money's worth.
Selling info to who? Google doesn't just offer a service where you pay them money and they hand over a users data. They collect data to target ads. If you aren't seeing ads, then that data is not generating them any value.
And I get to watch programming that I enjoy. I'm fine with that trade off.
Many people are. Other people aren't. Hence why adblockers and third party tools exist.
But that wasn't my point here. My point was that it's YouTube that wants to have its cake and eat it, not users. It wants people to watch ads or give them money. It also wants to gather, use and sell their data without reimbursing them.
If a YouTube No Spying Premium comes out, that's a different story. But as long as YouTube wants my data for free, then I consider my ticket paid.
You don't get to decide what a company wants to charge you for a product. If you believe it's to costly don't participate.
I think BMWs are overpriced but that doesn't make it right to steal one off of a dealers lot. If you use ad block in my eyes you're no better than they are.
I actually do get to decide, particularly because I have to fight Google everywhere on the web to keep my data to myself. I am confused as to why you see me extracting value from Google as such a moral failing, but Google extracting value from tens (or hundreds) of millions of people, unaware and unconsenting, without paying them a dime is... good? Value neutral?
An adblocker is less like stealing a car and more like making tea during the commercial break. Is this also stealing? You're not watching the ad, after all.
You can attempt to justify stealing any way you want, in the end of the day that's between you and google. But I'm going to continue to act the way I have been and whether you agree or not is irrelevant.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion about the hypothetical on making tea during the commercial break, or changing the channel. Is that morally acceptable?
Could I also advise to lower the temperature a bit? Accussing people of being thieves isn't likely to lead to a constructive discussion. I'm not trying to change your behaviour; I just disagree with your argument. If you weren't open to being challenged, what was the point of voicing your opinion?
"Accussing people of being thieves isn't likely to lead to a constructive discussion"
I really don't think there's a constructive discussion to be had. We just think the complete opposite of one another on this topic. I'd call that an impasse, it's actually best if we just end it here before it devolves into something ugly.
I really would've liked your opinion on changing channels during commercial break, because I suspect it's an analogy worth exploring in this context. But fair enough, I hope you have a good rest of your day.
"have a good rest of your day."
You as well.
You can switch channels or do whatever you want when ads run, just like you can during programming.
I can switch tabs, go make tea or whatever when ads play on my computer.
That's the relevant analogy. Adblocking is something completely different.
I also think the comparison between theft and adblocking is sound. The implicit agreement is that you watch ads and don't break the site, then you get to view things for free. Sometimes the exchange also includes your user data to et something for free.
That's the business model we all know and agree to using. Or we go elsewhere. We don't break their site to avoid our end of the implicit agreement. That's theft.
For some reason, people get angry when you call content piracy what it is too: theft. I think for most people that reason is that they don't like being reminded that they're doing something morally indefensible that they try to rationalize to themselves. Who doesn't like getting loads of free high quality stuff for nothing?
People get angry because you're conflating two entirely different forms of infringement on another person or their property.
It's not theft, it's minor trespass at worst if you're looking for an actually apt analogy.
I find their current business model, modern "IP" laws, their previous actions, business goals, and their shredding of the social contract morally indefensible. Why should we care about taking back control from those who would abuse such control to wring as much money possible out us?
People get angry because you're accusing people of a far worse thing than they are actually doing.
Theft is more than infringement of property.
Taking someone's service without someone's consent is also a dictionary definition of theft.
Again, I believe people get angry about this because it exposes their unsound rationalizations justifying their immoral behavior to themselves.
If I were to block ads or illegally pirate content, I'm not doing it to protest some reprehensible company, or to force change that company or whatever other justification I can make myself believe.
Let's be honest: I'm doing it to get a free lunch for me. That's the primary, overarching and immoral motivation.
It's not theft. I just looked it up in 7 different online law dictionaries, google, dictionaries, etc. It's taking of property. What you're talking about is sometimes termed "theft of services" in legal dictionaries/laws which is a specifically defined phrase distinct from theft. Regardless, we're getting into petty semantic squabbling. Because what you're talking about requires a different specific part of law with special definitions and isn't in the various dictionary texts that I peruse, I'm going to take offense when you conflate it because the amount of offense is entirely different.
I wouldn't steal a car nor would I allow people to steal my car. However, I'm not going to care about someone walking through my property, provided they're not standing outside the house and staring in the windows or something similarly creepy. Similarly, I have trespassed on other people's property and don't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
I'm telling you why I'm getting angry:
The offense level of adblocking is akin to minor trespass, not theft. Nor does it qualify as theft by definition.
I could frankly care less about stupid terms and conditions on top of a published website, if it mattered, they would require logins to access content or it wouldn't be publicly discoverable on the WWW. If you want to exercise control over your digital "services", put them behind an access wall.
My cumulative cost to google for using YT while adblocking doesn't top out at over $10/year. Beyond that, they get to datamine the crap out of me in every way but ads, which I wouldn't watch or interact with on purpose anyways.
They're free to require logins to access or attempt to block those who run adblockers from the site. They're the ones trying to dictate how the WWW works and wall their garden but have all the benefits from open access.
I turned adblocking on when I heard cases where ads caused literal physical damage to computer components.
At that point, they broke the rules first. The terms and conditions of the websites I visit politely ask (without any semblance of enforcement) that I allow an advertiser to pay the costs of my visit by sending additional information alongside what I’m requesting (the ads alongside the content).
And I politely ask (without any semblance of enforcement) that they send me the content without any ads alongside, which their server gleefully complies with, by delivering the content to my computer without checking for payment first.
The result is that I don't watch ads. Let's drop the analogies for a second. So the problem isn't adskipping; you're ok with making a cup of tea during the ad break. So what's the actual damage being done, if not watching the ads isn't the problem?
It's literally not theft though. Theft in most places requires dishonest appropriate with an intent to permanently deprive someone of the thing. This is why there are different laws for temporary car "theft" - the person taking the car doesn't intend to permanently deprive the owner, they're just joyriding it, so you need a law that says something like taking without owner's consent.
In the case of intangible stuff like eg a movie there's no physical product, so you can't appropriate it, so there's no dishonest appropriation. And the original owner still has it so there's no depriving the owner of it.
On the contrary, there could be one here if you'd be willing to elaborate on where you're coming from with your position of adblocking being an equivalent act to theft. In particular, here's what I'd be interested in understanding your opinion on:
What property has Google lost when a user blocks an ad?
Sorry to repeat the question, but does changing/muting/ignoring the channel on TV during an ad break also constitute theft? What about fast-forwarding through commercials with a time-shifted recording?
Even though I'm of the pro-adblocking YouTube persuasion, I'm also sympathetic to the fact that ads are Google's way of keeping the lights on. However, with how predatory and intrusive internet ads are (to the point where there's guidance from the FBI recommending blocking) and Google doing nothing noticeable to buck that trend, I think there's too much at play to make a simple comparison to theft anything other than surface-level.
I will say this, when I am using their service all they ask is that I let their ads play to the point that they let me skip them. Whether I watch don't watch leave the room stay in the room to me is irrelevant. Watching videos on a device is not a right It's a privilege. And if those people in charge want to eliminate ad blockers from their site they have the absolute right. I also have the absolute right not to use their product if I find anything they do intrusive.
That's my opinion and My opinion isn't worth more or less than your opinion so I fully support your right to disagree with me. And I've read all the responses sent to me, none of which agree with me by the way and I have not found one argument that has changed my thinking.
Yes, and breaking a contract (assuming a valid contract has been formed) is not theft.
One of the reasons people are frustrated is that there's a conflation of civil and criminal law. Blocking ads is not a criminal offence, and people should stop saying that it is.
To me it's theft of service. You get this product and They don't ask for money, they're asking to play an ad as payment.
I was following this conversation because I honestly like discussing things that may be unethical but moral (or vice versa).
Accusing people of "stealing" from a 1.37 trillion dollar company is certainly a stretch, however. They still make money off people with ad blockers through tracking.
I don't consider it "stealing" when I switch a radio station during an ad break to a station still playing music and then switching back. Do you?
I think it is more of a "take a penny, leave a penny" situation in a gas station. Ethically it is ok to use that tray, that's why it's there. However, is it immoral or "stealing" if you use a penny from that tray if you don't feel like reaching into your pocket for exact change?
We just happen to disagree and that's okay.
There's a reason why "You wouldn't download a car" is a meme. You can't compare stealing a car, and skipping ads to watch a video.
Also, while BMW has a lot of competition, the same can't be said about YouTube.
Actually I just did. You can rationalize being dishonest all you want but it doesn't make what you are doing right.
I 100% would download a car if I could. I wouldn't even feel bad, because I wouldn't be depriving anyone of anything if I downloaded a car.
The US's abomination of "Intellectual Property" laws are what is wrong here. The entire concept of intellectual property is messed up.
Intellectual property rights are an addon, an incentive, not a fundamental right.
The purpose of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The entire "Intellectual Property" BS mountain in the US and the world needs to be dismantled. You cannot own ideas or human expression.
You can't download a car so it doesn't really matter what you would or wouldn't do.
You can think whatever you want about the intellectual property laws But the way things are now ad blocking on YouTube is tantamount to stealing. Using YouTube on your phone or any other device is a privilege not a right.
No, it is not tantamount to stealing. Perhaps its on the same level as walking across someone's yard to reach a destination faster, maybe.
"Intellectual property" is a privilege not a right.
You can think whatever you want about adblockers, "intellectual property", and "stealing" but that doesn't make it so.
Correct.
But that doesn't make it so.
I my mind it does and I'm perfectly fine with you not agreeing. What we think or don't think is actually irrelevant. What matters is the law and what Google wants to pursue. And you can post about this all day but those facts are not going to change.
Adblocking isn't illegal and it isn't tantamount to stealing. That's what the law says. You're the one who originally said that it was tantamount to stealing. The law doesn't recognize it as such.
The EU courts have explicit said that adblocking is not only not illegal, but it is also not an infringement on copyright. The US courts have never even allowed an "adblocking = theft or infringement" to get very far. It's very clear that the law is not on the side of adblocking being illegal.
You can post about this all day as well, but those are the fact and they're not going to change.
Google is free to attempt to block people using adblockers from accessing the website, but as always it's going to be a cat and mouse game. There is no provision in law to give them the ability to go after individuals for "adblocking" or copyright infringement.
This conversation is going in circles so I'm going to end it right now and just give you the last word. Best of luck
I have yet to see EU courts make judgement on this theoretical situation:
If I've just missed those judgements, I'd love to be educated. If someone's attempted to make the claim that adblockers somehow aren't a fair use-case of the software provided, I'd expect such a suit to fail horribly.
I don't think this is settled EU case law. I've tried looking to see if it is.
I think we all on some level know and acknowledge that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Taking the EU's stance on personal privacy, right to be forgotten, etc. I highly doubt such a ToS would be enforceable in the EU.
Google already mines all my user data, it's not a free lunch. I just don't consent to having my attention be grabbed every possible second and my psyche manipulated for profit.
I honestly would prefer to all advertising-supported ventures be destroyed. I'm tired of people thinking that it's alright to bombard me with crap vying for my attention every time I go anywhere in the real or digital worlds. It's pollution imo.
You seem genuinely a little hostile in this thread, my friend, and seem to be taking things rather personal. I am pretty confident that even the people disagreeing with you only want to have a discussion and are not attacking you. I have seen people offer to discuss things with you and ask you questions only to be met with accusations and seemingly flippant remarks. Perhaps your intent is not translating well into the written word?
FWIW, Google didn't get their 1.37 trillion dollars off of YouTube ads. The amount of money YouTube loses to ad blockers is a rounding error for a 1.37 trillion dollar company. Google, the company worth 1.37 trillion dollars, simply can't control the data once it's left their servers. That is something they contend with in their 1.37 trillion dollar business plan.
I've found when people read comments they disagree with they tend, in their minds, to read them in a hostile tone because that's certainly has not been my intent. I just happened to disagree with most of the sentiments posted in this thread. I don't like stealing, even if it is from a trillion dollar company.
One could argue that you don't get 1.37 trillion dollars with ethics, morals, and integrity, so it's only fair to skip ads (aka "stealing" a few cents) from a 1.37 trillion dollars company.
I wouldn't argue that You're 100% correct But I have ethics and morals of my own that I don't want to compromise.
I'm not sure, because it's just restating a theory of value, seemingly the monetary theory of value, as an absolute truth that we all must accept.
Yeah, I keep trying to answer the two people who are asking why people get upset when someone calls adblocking theft in various variations of what you're talking about. That attitude plus them continually ignoring the corresponding "is it also theft if I get up and pee during ad breaks?" questions that are posed makes me question the validity of the argument or the posters like you're tempted to do as well.
Side note: I would 100% download a car if such a thing was possible. If I could somehow download a $30k physical good and cost the "car host" less than a penny in bandwidth costs but they still wanted to charge $30k, I would have no compunction about doing so.
I tire of people treating "intellectual property" as some ethically unassailable right for people to control. Copyright (and patents/similar) isn't an inherent right and is a theft from the public domain of human consciousness. Like the copyright clause in the Constitution directly states, the purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and useful arts - you know bettering humanity. Profit mongering certainly isn't advancing humanity, and I have no problem caring about personal use minor copyright violations because of it.
I'm happy with A tradeoff. I'm not happy with their tradeoff.
They keep inserting more ads, longer ads and unskippable ads. I went to watch a 2-3 minute video a month ago on my phone and it had 5 ads. Yes, they were skippable but even waiting the minimum time it still added nearly 50% runtime to the video. I could only imagine how long it would have added if I watched all of the ads to completion..
Since there isn't "I'm willing to watch a reasonable amount of ads" option I'll pick the side where I'll keep my computer and information safe by using script blocking and value my time more than they seem to value it and use an ad blocker.
That's absolutely ridiculous, however that hasn't been my experience. If and when that starts to become the norm that will lead me to reevaluate whether I am getting value.
I've noticed that ad length and skippability is different depending on what country you're in. In the US, unskippable ads are always 15 seconds, but in the UK they can be up to 20 seconds.
I keep waiting for them to get longer but so far so good.
Or in my case, I plan to continue to not use YouTube. Not everyone uses the platform, and I see no reason to start.
That being said, I still use reddit, so...
Not GP but I have a premium subscription and I still use an ad blocker and SponsorBlock to skip baked in sponsorship and ads, so I wonder if they’ll include SponsorBlock and the like in this and still ban people.
I haven’t seen any details about whether they also target premium accounts that just happen to also be running an ad blocker.
I can't see why they would. Google doesn't earn money from in video sponsors. If anything I can imagine them going the other way and banning creators from adding these sponsor sections.
They tried to, just as sponsorships started to become more widespread. It… did not go well…
What Google is doing with YouTube ads is absolutely atrocious through.
When a 10 minute video has 3 ad stops, and those ads can be anywhere from 5 seconds to 45 MINUTES, it begs the question if what is more important. The content, or the ads.
For a lot of folks, 2 15 second ads in a 10 minute video should be tolerable. But I've run into 4,5, and even up to 6 add in a 10 to 15 minute video, and it makes them almost unwatchable.
And the rumors of 4 minute unstoppable ads? Dude, at that point you are not watching creator content. You are watching corporate content.
And it costs the same as a streaming service that creates their own content?
Yeah
.....
I think the consumer gas a right to be a little upset.
This right here. Now we can talk about egregious ad breaks of 5-10 unskippable ads, but we can't say it's unfair to have some way of having revenue as a business. I think this is pretty damn fair for a free service. I gladly pay for Premium because I don't want ads and it seems like something small to fund a service I have happily used since its inception.
Similar to you, I ended up switching to Piped this week. I run a self-hosted instance for myself.
It's more than just ads for me though. Youtube's recommendations are ... kind of hit and miss. There is a bunch of stuff currently in my "watch later" playlist that I found purely through recommendations that came from channels I'm not subscribed to, 'nor ever watched anything from before. But I also do routinely miss new videos from channels I am subscribed to and who's videos I try to never miss. Not to mention that the "Not interested" button is, in my experience, completely useless, so my feed has usually got a bunch of crap I have no intention of watching at all. So it's very difficult to train their recommendations.
Something like Piped, or really most any other alternative frontend, helps me focus my viewing and removes the annoyance of a shitty recommendation engine trying to get me to look at what it thinks will drive the most user engagement (which seems to usually be more negative-focused videos ... ugh). Now I just see the videos that I want to see. But this does mean that I have to work harder to discover more content outside of what I'm currently following. That's a tradeoff I am happy to make.
However, I think one of the bigger issues surrounding all of these alternative frontends is how long they'll last into the future. Since some of them have been around for a while now, I'm assuming it isn't super trivial for Youtube to block otherwise they would have done so by now. But if, after so many years of not doing really anything to fight back against ad blockers (I literally have not seen a single ad on Youtube while using an ad blocker for ... gosh, at least 10 years now, easily), they now are going to start ... it makes me think that they won't just stop at fighting ad blockers, but probably will also start to fight against other forms of "free-loading" of content from Youtube. Time will tell I suppose, but I suspect these alternate front-ends are forever going to be also involved in a constant game of cat-and-mouse too.
There's also the thought in the back of my mind about supporting the content creators. I'm assuming that by using an alternate frontend for Youtube, that I'm absolutely not supporting them at all, regardless of what I watch via that frontend. And this doesn't sit right with me either, because ultimately it hurts the content creators who's content I enjoy watching. Especially so if more people switch to these methods of watching. Something I've thought of doing is subscribing to Youtube Premium anyway even if I no longer actually use the normal Youtube website, but that doesn't work either I think because the only way my Premium subscription helps content creators is if Youtube can track what I watch (which they can't, at least not down to my own personally account, if I'm using an alternate frontend).
Ugh. Anyway, I don't really have a solution here except directly donating to each content creator I watch, which is not totally feasible for me right now.
I just discovered Piped yesterday with this (very engaging) video:
https://piped.video/watch?v=V-yO1DcdUFQ
I think the reasons all of these 15-20 year old platforms and services are suddenly and intensely enshittifying is because capitalism requires endless growth. Not just mature businesses making a steady profit. Growth. So every penny has to be squeezed out until the quality of the product or experience of the service is negatively impacted. I am not looking forward to the future, paying $35/mo. for YouTube Ultra Premium+ with 10 unskippable ads in a two minute video.
ETA: Just saw this article. Enshittification for all streamers continues apace.
Peacock Wants More Money From You https://www.vulture.com/2023/07/peacock-subscription-price-raise.html
It's not just capitalism, it's because of public trading. They have to constantly please investors by constantly raising the stock price by continually cutting costs and quality to increase their margins.
Public trading is just downright cancerous to society at this point.
Yeah, I definitely agree with what you're saying. The way I've finally decided to view my usage of an alternative frontend for Youtube is a "vote with my wallet" kind of ideal. It pains me that so many people laugh at this ideal today (see: most of my gaming friends laughing at me when I said this was why I wouldn't play Diablo 4, 'nor any other Blizzard game ever again), but I think one of the most important things people can do today, individually, is to hold onto your ideals, especially when it causes you a bit of inconvenience. There's no better way to make a business change its course, then to hurt their bottom line. A single person is obviously like an ant pushing a boulder up-hill, but if we keep collectively giving up because "there's no point" then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You gotta start somewhere!
So yes, I also am scared of a future of rising subscription costs for all these things with a more and more enshittified user experience that you start to feel trapped in (you can see this already slowly happening with the rising cost of a Twitch Turbo subscription too, just to name another service).
Thank you for this. I instantly just liked it, thanks for sharing the word.
I used yt-dl before, but I think youtube throttled it and I got super slow speeds. I switched to the fork yt-dlp and it was way faster.
yt-dl was discontinued at some point, perhaps had something to do with it since it's no longer up to date. yt-dlp is the go to now and has been for a while.
What I don’t get, is that we had YouTube since the late 2000s. Surely bandwidth costs have fallen by orders of magnitude. And yes, I get that they likely were burning cash back then. But it just baffles me that now, when their operating overhead should be at an all time low, they are flooding us when ads. It’s like you said, they’re putting the squeeze the viewers.
Video file sizes have gone up massively. In the 2000s you were watching 260p videos. Now people demand 1080p as the minimum, if not 4k60fps
I have an extension that automatically pops me on the 4k version of any video. Doing my best to increase their operating costs lol.
Revanced is Youtube Vanced all over again. I recommend giving that a shot. Get the manager, the appropriate Youtube version from apkmirror, and apply patches after having installed MicroG.
Most probably I’ll end up subscribing if they actually go through with this. Especially if they finally launch Youtube Premium Lite in my country; I find Youtube Premium too expensive when I’m not interested at all in their music streaming service.
I have a cronjob to run yt-dlp, pulling urls from a text file. with Sponsorblock built in, the whole process is really nice. I use it for podcasts, but it'd be perfect for videos and anything else you regularly watch.
If you do schedule it with cron, make sure you escape the % in your template.
I had always been open to paying for YouTube, but it was just illogical given that ad blockers are so easy, reliable, and legal. Why would I pay for something that’s free? Now that they aren’t so reliable I’ve just signed up for YouTube premium. The content on YouTube is pretty good and the platform has minimal anti patterns once you pay.
If there was a version of YouTube premium that was just to turn off ads, and priced accordingly, I’d happily pay it. But I know it’s currently one of those bundle deals with features I’ll never use. I already have Spotify premium for less than $1 per year, so YouTube music (and the comparatively enormous bandwidth that would use on my phone) is a drawback more than a feature for me.
I've had YT Premium since the Google Music days so this doesn't affect me. But you are right in how there's not really an alternative platform to Youtube if this is a deal breaker. Wonder how/if people will work around this initiative.
No alternatives?!?!?! What about PeerTube and Odysee?
Viable alternatives. I know, no-one uses them because there's no content, and there's no content because no-one uses them
I also use SmartTube and NewPipe with SponsorBlock, other nifty tool I use is to quick download and share some YouTube videos with a Telegram bot.
I disabled the app rather than watch ads on my phone, so videos load via browser (with ad & sponsorblock).
I will, without question, stop using YouTube rather than watch ads. I used reddit much more, quit that over less, and I'll fuckin do it again
I'm so goddamn sick of companies pushing us around.
I mainly watch YouTube when I'm on my computer. I use Brave as my browser, so I have an ad-blocker built in, and sometimes I forget that. Occasionally I will check YouTube from a device that I don't control and get reminded of how many ads dominate that site. Know what I do when an ad loads? I close the tab and do something else.
I like Youtube. I use it a lot. However, like you, it's not necessary for my life and it will be fairly easy to cut it out altogether if they kill ad-blockers.
I don't think you and I are in the majority. Most people will roll along with whatever changes Google makes. Hopefully though, leaving the platform will make it that much more viable for a small competitor to start up.
Yeah, we seem like we're in the minority but as far as I'm concerned there's no part of the YouTube experience that is worth sitting through ads, and there certainly isn't any part that's worth spending money.
Same here. I've come to realise recently that Youtube offers me basically nothing of value I can't get (or get a replacement for) elsewhere.
Most of what I use Youtube for is background noise. I stop listening to what's being said really quickly because I'm almost always just doing something else. I'll also listen to music, for similar background noise reasons, and Youtube is nice because it has uploads of covers and soundtracks and stuff that are hard to come by on other platforms.
But I also have 35 gigs worth of digital music on my laptop, and my 3DS which I carry more often than my phone makes a handy MP3 player. With just that I can replace 95% of what I use Youtube for, and the rest of what I'd use it for (tutorials, clips, etc) I look for infrequently enough that I could sit through the ads if they manage to get through uBlock.
It's a different story for most ordinary users. But for me personally, it's not a case of "get a paying Premium member" but of "lose a user who's using Youtube as a slightly more convenient Windows Media Player"
Going after adblocking users is just so pointless. More than enough users see ads, while it confuses me that everyone does not run adblocking the fact is they don't.
It's also the case that it turns into a game of cat and mouse, ultimately the adblocking users will find a way to continue blocking ads.
Couldnt agree more. I have older devices and youtube is a testing app i use for their web browsers. Every time i get about 3 ads at the start and 4 thru the video. Insane. Brave Browser and Opera ( adblocker also built in) for the win!
This was a long time coming. Ads are YouTube's main source of revenue. People can preach all they want about being able to block parts of the webpages they load, but in the end, if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing from YouTube by using their bandwidth without compensation. You can be upset by this, but they have a bottom line. What would you suggest they do instead? YouTube Premium makes them more money but way less people use it. Other than super chats, I can't think of another way the site makes money.
Youtube is willing to give me content when I go to their webpage. I don't want to see all of the content that they want to give me, so I instruct my browser to block parts of it. Youtube still has all of their content, I haven't deprived them of the content, nor have I removed it from their possession. They gave me their content willingly, without any pre-arranged contracts. I choose not to view some of the content that they give to me. I see no theft here.
Corporations are not moral patients; they do not have a right to exist and are not owed anything.
They do have a right to set terms upon which you use their service, and to enforce them, which is what they're doing. Nobody is forcing you to use YouTube. It's not an essential service, it's entertainment. If you don't agree to their terms of use (either by subscribing or sitting through their ads), then just don't use it.
Of course they have the right to set terms. And I have the right to ignore them. I assert that, because corporations are not moral patients, I am not committing a wrongdoing when I harm them by ignoring the terms they set.
Let me add, I think that the more interesting discussion is the meta-discussion about the broader role of advertising (advertising doesn't pay for servers and engineers—money does), and the extent to which google was completely responsible for knowing what sort of business it was getting itself into (serving video and landscaping are both services, but no one has these sorts of conversations about landscaping, because landscapers are not in the habit of landscaping accidentally when they had rather not). But the basic point stands—an entity may be harmed by being violated, but a corporation is not a moral patient, so it is not morally wrong to harm a corporation by violating it.
Edit:
Of course. I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was wrong of youtube to try to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads.
My apologies, this was what I interpreted your comment to be, since the original thread is about them trying to prevent people from watching videos while blocking ads.
The morality argument is interesting, as comparing it to landscaping. When you obtain landscaping services, you agree to pay them, typically in dollars. Not paying them for their work is immoral (and illegal). YouTube has decided to offer a service, with options of either directly paying them money for that service via YouTube Premium or indirectly by consuming ads which someone else pays them for. By doing neither, you're expecting them to provide a service at no cost, which is not what they ever agreed to do, nor should they be expected to.
I'm definitely not of the viewpoint that corporations are people (I don't think they should be able to donate to politicians, for example). But in my own opinion (I'm not the morality police), just because they're a corporation doesn't mean that it's not immoral to consume their service (which they are offering at a price of dollars or ad watches), and not pay the price that they've set.
They also make sure to have a quote or contract or at least an understanding between both parties before they begin.
If a landscaping service had a simple form on their website where I list my address and nothing else, and then I find out they took that as a confirmation to start work, I’d be pretty unhappy and certainly hesitant to pay them.
On the flip side, if YouTube enforced the ads or payment up-front before they served me videos, I feel like that’s a much closer two-way agreement and I’d be able to make my choice about continuing to use the service or not.
I think I’d also be more comfortable turning off my ad blocker if online advertisers were actually responsible about the ads they served, but I’ve heard too many examples of ads which cause genuine physical damage to the end-users device (especially when crypto was taking off) or deliberately serving alcohol or gambling ads to people recovering from addiction.
Isn't that what they're doing, though? They do (typically) show you the ad up front, before serving the content. And within their terms of service, you can choose whether you want to sit through it or just leave.
You can't see what's automatically blocked and the amount of people who read ToS's is a rounding error away from 0. There's no meeting of the minds in relation to this, just a www address and streamed content.
They don’t enforce it at all, they don’t even pretend to. They happily serve content to my computer without checking whether or not an ad played.
That’s what I mean by upfront, I don’t just mean “it happens before the video” I mean “they don’t send the content before the ad has played”
EDIT: example by contrast; Netflix does not serve their content until after payment is secured. Likewise there are a number of news websites that do the same, if you have an adblocker they will not serve the article.
A few points re landscaping, probably somewhat scattered as I am sleep-deprived:
I don't have to agree to youtube's terms of use in order to watch videos on youtube. So they are really more just a set of stated preferences from youtube re how they want to be treated. I think this point might be stronger if I had to make a commitment to view ads in order to watch videos on youtube, as I make a commitment to pay landscapers if I want them to landscape for me. But ...
...this is fundamentally not how the internet works—it's not really practical to collect such commitments at scale (without charging for access, as is done by e.g. netflix and spotify). Google has made the choice to play in this space, and these are the parameters of the space. They have chosen to serve their videos to all comers. Which brings me to perhaps my main point here, which is:
Landscapers don't really ever landscape by accident. They only do so having received a commitment to be paid (or a payment). If there is a desire to economise trust, they may enlist an escrow. (If you promise to pay, but don't, they may sue, but this happens rarely; they will not go in expecting it to happen.) With free internet services, again, it is simply not possible to have such an expectation of the majority of your userbase—there will inevitably be an adblock arms-race, and you will, at best, only be able to keep apace.
I think that these two are the only real differences between landscaping and youtube ads—with landscaping, you will have made a directed commitment, and there is broadly an expectation that you will follow through on it. I don't think there is a fundamental difference. I think that going back on a commitment is a personal failing, but not necessarily a moral one. I think that the difference in expectation is the main thing that makes it feel different, but I think that, fundamentally, wronging a landscaping company is just as fine as wronging youtube.
There is another confounding factor, to wit, wronging a landscaping company is likely to cause more harm to individuals than wronging youtube, in most specific instances. That's less significant here.
on what level? A coporation isn't a moral patient but is made up of them. And it has other agents that rely on its services as a livelihood. You can say that they aren't owed a job either, but that seems to go against the whole point of a moral patient .
no more so than any individual person, no. But if someone offers a service I don't expect them to altruistically provide quality on demand labor for zero cost. If they do, that's amazing but far from expected. And Google has never pretended to be altruistic.
I'm not on Youtube because I care about Google as any sort of entity. I'm there because many creators are there who I do actually care about. If you want me to move you need them to move, and there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative without them changing the format of their content.
I'm curious where I can read more about that view, because accepting that as a premise would change one's line of thinking drastically on this issue. I want to read more about how far that's applied. Like are we just talking international mega-corps or large businesses, or would we also owe nothing for the services of small businesses or sole proprietorships as well if they were providing the same services?
I'm sure people have written about it, but I don't know of any references off-hand. It's my own view, but it seems somewhat self-evident.
I think there may be some rare exceptions (not just a function of being small), but broadly, yes, I think that it applies uniformly. Rather, we can consider the indirect effects on individuals. For instance, I think that, in nearly all cases, it will be quite easy to argue that stealing from a sole proprietorship harms the proprietor; the interesting party being the proprietor, not the proprietorship.
To give a pertinent example: you could make a tragedy-of-the-commons-style argument that watching youtube while blocking ads makes it unsustainable to maintain and thereby robs everybody of the great trove of human knowledge that is youtube. I would not make this argument—I think, that, in sum, youtube probably represents a net negative; it certainly does if you consider only the high-volume videos that pay their bills, but there is a long tail of more interesting and valuable things (taped conference talks, e.g.) that I'm sure they would very much like to be rid of—but one could, and I think it would be a much more interesting argument to have than one about whether we bear a moral responsibility to youtube.
This is missing the point.
If you want to provide a service, it needs to break even at the minimum. Now I personally hate ads, will run an ad blocker, and don't think it's theft in the slightest to do so, but I also respect there's some issues with how this entire service works.
As others have pointed out, "make it all free and then sell their data and targeted ads" is a bit of a problem for the internet, and I'd even go farther to say tech in general. For example - You want to charge $5-$50 for a phone app? How dare you! I'll jut go play this other game that's "free" with an average user spend in the $100's.
This is not healthy design or behavior, but it's also fucking hard to compete against. Google can loss leader the shit out of anyone competing, and most people don't have any moral standards when it comes to things like this and only care about getting what they want as easily as possible. Nebula is the only thing I'm aware of even trying, and even that has issues (major shame that so much of their content is click baity as well).
There's a lot of room between the extremes on this, but unfortunately it's got external problems of inertia and monopoly (not just of clients, but of infrastructure)
OP didn't say anything to the contrary?!
They indicated that harming youtube by blocking ads is morally questionable. I said that there is no moral question.
You are reading way to much into the word "survive", if that's what's bugging you. OP stated neutrally what would happen to YouTube and didn't include any statements about morality.
They said:
To me, that seems like a very clear indication that they think the situation is morally murky. Do you disagree?
It's possible to read it that way but taking the whole comment into account, it's clear they are talking about the legal and more so economical issues.
This is purely lack of imagination and a dogmatic way to generate revenue. Advertisements are what drove people to initially cut the cord. Do you honestly believe they wouldn't abandon a platform to seek an alternative if one presented itself?
It's hubris for google to think people wouldn't leave youtube, as they left cable. There is even a poll within the article saying over 90% of readers would find an alternative method to block ads or leave the platform.
There needs to be a different way to generate revenue if that is what they are reliant upon, and it's not our responsibility to figure out what that is for them.
No, I think it was a set schedule and being limited to one TV per cable cord in an age where more people were using Laptops and phones for media consumption that drove people. ad-free was a nice cherry on top that is now being taken off again.
While people hate ads, I hear many more complaints about subscription services with no free model attached. Streaming TV/movies got ahead of that curve, but I imagine most the rest of the internet would suffer if they had to go premium only. Just look at how news sites are doing these days.
love to see it happen, but I'm not that optimistic. Thing is that video hosting is insanely expensive, and I don't think anyone short of a coporate trillionaire can sustain something the size of YouTube. This isn't like how maybe Mastodon or whatnot can spin up a community for disgruntled Twitter users.
I'm not so sure about the cost issue. There were plenty of video sites before YouTube, and people hosted plenty of videos on their own websites. The resolutions were low and the traffic volumes were low, but it was still an option. There's a lot of other potential models besides a centralized platform like YouTube. If everyone goes back to hosting things on their own machines, maybe we go back to lower resolutions. Alternately, you might see a service like Amazon webservices offer video hosting options. A content creator could pay them to host videos, and the individual content creators would pay Amazon for the hosting costs. This would mean they have to pay for Amazon some money, but I imagine it would be far, far cheaper than small channels trying to host video on their own machine, serviced by a domestic cable modem. And it wouldn't have to be Amazon, videos could be hosted on any number of large scale hosting providers.
Some people might have channels that they just host as fun side projects, just like people pay to host their own blogs and websites. Maybe you start by hosting out of your own house, and if you get enough followers and your bandwidth needs grow too high, you then contract with a hosting provider like Amazon webservices.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of our expectations are based on the environment YouTube has created. Being a massive platform with enormous economies of scale, they have pushed content creators to produce ever-higher resolutions. And for some channels this is necessary, but often its not. Now we have channels that do nothing but host vlogs, just a guy talking into a microphone, that will put out videos in 4k. They do that as that is just something the algorithm expects. But you could get the same experience from a much lower resolution video.
Keep in mind, way back in the 90s, there were plenty of people hosting websites filled with images, websites they ran from 1990s computers serving content over 56k modems. What's the equivalent of that today? Maybe you can't run a 4k channel with Mr Beast level subscribers out of your house. But a 480p channel with a few thousand subscribers? You could probably run that out of your home and off a regular cable modem or domestic fiber connection. If demand for your channel grows and you start getting lots of followers, eventually things would grow beyond your ability to host directly. At that point, you can start getting patrons, possible sponsorships, and either pay for video hosting on a service like Amazon or invest in your own commercial-scale equipment and bandwidth.
It's important to keep in mind that what we are used to today is the ecosystem that Google built. And before that, there was a quite logical path forward towards more widespread and diverse video hosting. People were already hosting short simple videos and animations. Then YouTube came around with a bunch of venture capital money and started letting people host their content for free. If YouTube collapses, we can always pick up right where we left off. And because of YouTube's dominance, development has been severely stunted in this area of small-scale video hosting. If people had kept to hosting their own videos, we would have seen a whole ecosystem of new tools, standards, hosting and compression formats, and tools developed to aid in self-hosted video. Some of that does exist, but because YouTube has been sucking all the oxygen out of the room for the last 18 years, their development has been severely stunted.
I think it really depends on what you expect out of being a content creator. You can still probably find a few thousand subscribers, and even monetize them if you are very diligent in fostering such a community. But the big issues is that the scale you'd need to consider going part or full time is much larger. Most people in the 00's (let alone the 90's) couldn't do that even with the comparatively smaller scale requirements to host. Not through YT adshare at least. They sought out sponsors and a few even got deals at professional studios for movies/TV.
And ofc you inevitably run into peer pressures. Happens with non-steam games, so it probably happens much more with non-Youtube videos. Or worse yet, others simply upload your video to Youtube and now you spend all this time removing videos. People will always sway back towards what was convinent, and Youtube has been around long enough to feel convinient.
Disagree, it was $80/month cable bills that come with 200 channels, but you only liked 3 of them. So you got on-demand content for a fraction of the price. That's what drove cord cutting.
I'd love to see an alternative to YouTube if people leave and go elsewhere. Alternatives are great, both for consumers since they have choice, but also for industry because it drives innovation to do things differently from your competitors. It would be interesting to see how a competitor can cover their costs without ads. Would something crowd-funded like Tildes actually be sustainable?
Of course that's what they're reliant upon. There isn't a single product or service out there that has costs and isn't reliant on revenue to cover those costs. And in this case, they even offer you two ways to pay those costs (ads or subscription).
Of course not. But we do agree to their terms of service in order to use it, and currently that includes ads or subscription. If you're not going to be part of the group that makes those decisions, then you're automatically part of the group that lives by the decisions that were made if you want to use that service.
I also remember when cable was still young and most people still had rabbit ears that the cost was justified as a way to replace the ads. Instead it is like paying for YouTube Premium but still getting all the ads plus more (regular ads and then ads telling you to switch to the cable company you already had).
Being an early cord cutter myself you are mostly correct. The other issue was the number of ads. You were paying $80+ to have up to 25% of your watching time be ads. However, no one ever accused you of "stealing" if you grabbed a beer during an ad.
To me the crux of the problem is not only the increasing number (and/or length) of ads that YouTube shows but also ads we see EVERYWHERE ELSE. I get ads, sorry "suggested content offers", on my big screen TV after an update. The movie theater, already expensive for a ticket, shows tons of regular ads before the upcoming movie ads (Although few people have problems with movie trailers). Game consoles have ads now. One of the main operating systems in the world (Windows) keeps playing around with ads. (Didn't Canonical get into some drama by talking about putting ads in Ubuntu once?) They're putting ads inside video games. Our tablets, Kindles and phones are little 24/7 ad machines.. It honestly reminds me of that scene in "Ready Player One" where they talk about what % of the screen they can fill with ads before it causes seizures.
In the case of YouTube, I'm sure each person would prefer 0 ads, but realistically everyone knows YouTube is a business. Each person also has their personal limit on what % of time they want to devote to ads.
So now people are discussing this from 2 different perspectives: Ethical vs moral.
Ethically, people shouldn't skip ads because Youtube is a business.
Morally, I don't think many people feel sorry for a 1.37 trillion dollar company.
Ethically, YouTube should be willing to compromise and find a balance between "not enough" ads from their perspective to "too many ads" on their users because it is what is best for business.
Morally, no one is required watch 100% of anything (ads included).
Instead of any of that, in the perpetual chase to ever higher profits, Google, a 1.37 trillion dollar company, is enshittifying their service by serving more ads, longer ads and more unskippable ads. They seem to have chosen the adversarial path against their users, ignoring the lessons of other companies who took that result and the varying results. Instead of making it easier, they're making it harder.
That thought alone is enough to make me finally get around to unlocking myself as much as I can to any 1 company. False positives are a thing. Maybe I'm staying/living/visiting somewhere where PiHole is installed and I had no control over it.
I actually brought this up to someone in my family who worked for a cable provider, and their explanation was that ads were a way to subsidize, but not completely cover the cost of programming. It just eventually got to the price (in both ads and dollars) where the cost was no longer justified when compared to value that people were getting from traditional TV packages.
The ethics vs morals argument is interesting. I hadn't given that comparison much thought, but it makes sense if you look at the raw definitions of those.
Ah yes, the Twitch Prime route! Still salty about that one.
Perhaps a hyperbolic statement, but advertisements definitely played a role. It may not have been the sole reason as I was alluding to, but it was there for plenty of people, including myself.
I cannot fathom a video streaming host that could operate currently without advertisements, which is why it is so frustrating. No one likes ads and it drives users away. How then can they make money? I don't think a crowd-funded service could operate at this level, but would be interested to see them try.
I'm aware that's what they're reliant upon. I feel like you've misunderstood the point I was offering, or it was poorly worded. Maybe I should have written since that is what they are reliant upon, instead of if.
I have given a pass of their terms of service, and nowhere does it say viewers must view ads to view content. It goes into depth on what ads may be placed upon videos being uploaded, but not viewed. As far as I can tell from a cursory inspection, there is no such stipulation.
And, realistically speaking, if you are not in the room making the decision then we're all part of the group that lives by the decisions of the host. There is no point to pretend otherwise.
Personally, it is the number of ads that will keep me or drive me away. I subscribed to Sling TV for almost a year to watch AEW and a few other shows/sports. However, I swear to god they added an extra ad or two per ad break. It felt like it was 30% ads by time. It was annoying enough that I cancelled them.
Contrast that to Pluto.tv. I don't mind those ads because they certainly seem much shorter and less frequent. So far I've mainly watched the Godzilla channel so I don't know if other channels are worse or better.
(Full admission: I may be influenced in my assumptions because my particular uses are different between Sling TV and Pluto. On Sling I was actively watching so I noticed the interruptions. On Pluto, its mainly running on my second monitor as background noise so maybe I'm noticing as much??)
I installed a script blocker and ad blocker many moons ago after there was a slate of bad faith actors using various ad platforms as attack vectors. It was a happy benefit that it also blocked YouTube ads at the time. That was back before the put in SO.many.ads too. It shouldn't take 10 minutes to watch a 6-7 minute video.
I mean, not really — YouTube doesn’t require I agree to any terms of service before they serve me ads, and I don’t think I’ve heard “continuing to use our service” as a binding signature being tested in courts.
Does YT ads get paid by the click or by the download? If they’re paid by the click, the ad blockers have a 0% conversion rate and they lose money. If they’re paid by the download, design ad blockers to download the ad payloads and the not display them. YT still gets paid that way.
https://adnauseam.io/
Pays for the sites, makes telemetry data useless.
Makes conversion rates worse, so advertisers stop buying ads.
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out. I don’t have the technical expertise but I’ve long considered a wrapper for websites that pulls the entire website to my computer, but only displays the bits I care about. I think this is kinda the thing I’ve been looking for, thank you!
That source is wrong about the cost-per-view for an ad by an order of magnitude (or at least in inconsistent in what they present; the average cost comes out to $0.02 by their own numbers!). Consider this article instead, which also highlights the variability of the cost but nonethless shows that the cost is on the order of cents per ad view. Also note YouTube's cut is 45%!
Which, honestly, leaves me asking why I can't just bid for my own views and pay what the advertisers pay (which is significantly less than YouTube premium for the vast majority of users)? E.g., just load up my account with a few dollars and it automatically disburses to YouTube and the creator whose video I'm watching for every ad that would otherwise be shown?
This is disingenuous, and is dancing around the parent poster's use of the word "stealing". You are correct that you are not "stealing" according to the dictionary definition of the word, but:
Whether or not this is a crime, you know you are deliberately extracting a service from youtube while avoiding the thing that pays for that service. So don't pretend you're doing nothing wrong by not "stealing".
Is it also unethical to not look at the ads? What if I turn off my speakers and look at another monitor while the ads play? Is that unethical? What if I watch the ads, but never buy anything from them? If everyone did that, ads would have no value, and YouTube would have zero revenue even if everyone watched the ads. How would you feel if YouTube tried to force you to watch all the ads via mandatory eye-tracking software?
No because the agreement is that Google serves the ad, nothing more. Now if the agreement were to change that you needed to answer a pop quiz after the ad and pass, otherwise you just get the ad again? At that point, I'd say the advertising has become too hostile to interact with.
Think of timeshares. They have incredibly aggressive advertising that involves locking you in a room and berating you for hours. In exchange, you typically get some decently valuable reward like multiple paid days at a hotel or something. It would be wrong to get the reward without going through the treatment, but there's nothing in the agreement that says you have to be a good participant. Many people sign up for these things and withstand to assault to get the prize. Personally though? I'd rather pass on it altogether.
So the moral problem isn't ad skipping, it's TOS breaking?
Generally, yeah. If I said you could park in front of my house and you instead start letting all your friends park there too, it's breaking the agreement. You agreed to use their service for the payment they offered, but then broke the deal. I'm not saying it should be illegal but it is a of a dick move to break an agreement for personal gain. So if Google decides to enforce the agreement more directly, I hardly see how ad blockers have much of a leg to stand on. If you don't like it, well then don't use it.
In this context, you and I had an agreement. But I didn't really agree with Google in anything. Their videos are free, and I watch them.
This is a really abstract problem. Skipping ads isn't the problem, you acknowledge, it's the principle of breaking an implied agreement? I don't agree that there's much morality to be gauged from that. I break agreements all the time. Some game devs don't want people to mod their game, and I'll do it anyway, because it's fun. Some authors don't want people to write fanfiction for their books. I'll read it anyway, if I want to.
You're free to verbalise whatever terms you like. I'll ignore them unless you enforce them strongly enough that I have no room to move, or unless I think there's a moral reason to comply. I'll pay my plumber both because it's the right thing to do and because the law will punish me if I don't. I'll adblock YouTube both because I can and it's legal, and because I feel no moral obligation to a company engaged in the largest raid of personal and intellectual information ever seen in history.
Look, I ad block too but mostly because of improved performance. For YouTube? I just buy premium because everyone gets what they want and it's a much better system than ad supported.
As to breaking TOS, there's no such thing as absolute wrong here. Breaking TOS has various degrees of being a dick. Going against the wishes of someone without causing them any harm is hardly problematic. Breaking the agreement in a way that does cause some amount of harm is indeed a dick move. Doing it when it causes extreme harm is typically the level in which it's illegal, such as the plumber.
In all these cases, the parties involved are free to police their TOS. Games can try locking down and websites can block you back. The increased aggression may cause themselves more harm from annoyed users or maybe not. You the user are free to avoid these things.
The only time where it's not a dick move is when you've been forced to use a service you cannot agree with, such as an apartment complex requiring you to use a payment provider that spies on you. In those cases, I don't think the captive audience is at fault for raging against the machine.
If YouTube had a sub where I gave them money and they gave me a service, that's worth discussing. But my paying and using premium involves using the official client and an account, which means they get all of my data for free as long as I use it. Nah mate, I'll make them work for it at least.
I'm at the point in my life where the only thing I'll willingly give a company is my money. Not my data, not my time, not my energy. If a company tries to double or triple or quadruple dip to extract the maximum value possible, fuck that noise, I'm circumventing it as best I can.
I've deleted Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter. Google's next, but I gotta work out some logistics. My next big move would be to get a Google Pixel that can run Graphene OS. The next one after that is switching from Windows 10 to Linux, which my wife is on board with but requires some work.
The only subscriptions I still pay are some patreons, Wikipedia, charity stuff, and that's kinda it. Still happy to make one time payments for FOSS apps, but if Google wants my money, it needs to introduce a No Spying tier sub. It won't ever do this, so I won't ever get it, and I'll continue to get around their ads until it's impossible to do so.
Sorry for the rant, I just want to emphasise how little sympathy or deference I have for Google on this.
Technically, Google let's you define the data retention duration. I don't know the shortest they offer but I know they do offer 3 months. I tried it and I wasn't a huge fan as it makes it very hard for me to remember what I've seen and haven't seen (since they delete the view record).
Yes I'm sure they keep the anonymized data for AI munching and demographics sales, but you the person are I believe erased. You should give it a shot because Google really does let you take away most of the tracking. But, it does show that there are some service advantages to the data they track. It's not JUST nefarious data hording.
That's good for me to know, thanks. I have an android, so I'm still forced to engage with them until I'm able to move on graphene. That said, it's a matter of trust at this point for me too. I don't trust their word. I believe they'll do whatever they had to to keep as much data for as long as possible, since that makes the most money.
I'm perfectly fine not having view history or anything like that. I watch my videos through an rss feed that opens into NewPipe. If I really want to keep one, I can just favourite it, or go through my local history. Don't need recommendations either.
So I'll give it a go, that sounds useful.
If you have an ad blocker, Google is still serving the ad.
Many ad blockers prevent the ad call from succeeding, so no I am not being served the ad.
Google is not providing a service, they are holding culture hostage. Don't pretend people taking their own culture back into their own hands is wrong. Even if it required "stealing" proper, it would be morally good to access and share cultural artifacts freely.
Google should be deprived of its revenue, YouTube should collapse (or better yet, have its servers seized), and we should have similar hosting be a public good for all to use.
That is the most contorted view point imaginable. So you think video hosting should be a government provided service (fair enough) but also think the only reason it's not is because YouTube exists?
Also, what culture are you even talking about? What is this culture that Google is supposedly hording? Video creation culture? You do know there's other video hosts out there, YouTube is just the biggest.
No, of course not, it's a systematic problem much larger than YouTube or Google. As capitalism does what it does and culture is stuck on paywalled and/or advertising and data-harvesting platforms, it is morally correct to take what you can and, if possible, share it with others. Everything we make is part of the cultural heritage of mankind, and we all ought to have access with no strings attached.
There are other video hosts and I do use them (shoutouts to Peertube), but it remains that the vast majority of online video is stuck on YouTube. This is a massive social failing. Corporations should not exist in the first place, let alone be the ones in charge of nearly all the cultural artifacts we interact with on a daily basis. Every single dog video, podcast with two people mumbling over each other, well-researched video essay, and 10 second clip of a thumb on a camera lens belongs to all of us and we don't owe the platforms which put up fences around our work anything. By having the wealth to eat the hosting costs before properly monetizing and us not having a public service to do the same thing, they leveraged their position to take control of it all and over time make us pay (with money or advertising views) to view what is ours.
There's nothing stopping you from pulling out your credit card and spinning up some virtual server instances with a cloud provider to provide that "public good" service.
Actually, given the prevalence of regulatory capture by large tech companies, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something preventing that. It’s already happening with AI (as impossible to describe as that term is…)
Eh, I get what you're saying but video streaming is pretty much a commodity (YouTube is far from the only site, just happens to be the largest and most popular) while AI has more far-reaching implications. I wouldn't try to compare the two.
I mean, it's the same thing stopping you from pulling out your credit card and starting your own Walmart, right? That's just not how that works.
The barrier to entry for spinning up a video streaming site is much, much lower than starting a low-margins brick and mortar retail store.
I can't speak for what the actual barriers to entry are but I don't think we can have it both ways that it's simultaneously really easy and cheap to run a video streaming service and also such a herculean effort that YouTube is going to collapse if they don't ban ad block users. The barriers to entry seem self-evident in the complete lack of any competition, or even attempt at competition, from anyone. YouTube has a complete monopoly on the market. Joe Schmo can't just show up to the party late and start YouTube 2.
Of course not, but nobody stays king forever. Someone, someday will develop a service that replaces YouTube. YouTube did start with a couple guys who started it from nothing. Then they sold out to Google who likely took losses on the service for many years before turning it into something profitable. Google doesn't owe society a free streaming service. I just don't get why people are so pissy about this. It's entertainment. If you don't like what YouTube is doing, then just don't consume it. It's not like power or cable companies where they have an actual monopoly and you're actually forced to use them to live.
Yeah, I don't know where I come down on the direct parent comment about YouTube holding culture hostage, but the vast majority of people in this thread aren't saying that. "Just don't consume it" only gets you so far when the top level comment in this subthread is someone accusing people of "stealing" for choosing not to consume some content. To the extent that I think you namecalling people in this thread "pissy" is useful (not at all), I think you're running into a problem only listening for that pissiness from people you don't agree with.
Changing gears, a monopoly is not when you are forced to go to a particular company to live, like power and cable, though that is a side effect of a monopoly in crucial industries. A monopoly is when you're forced to use a particular company if you want to consume a particular kind of good or service. The fact that I conceivably could stop consuming National Grid electricity and survive off the grid doesn't mean National Grid doesn't have a monopoly. If I want to consume electricity, I need to consume National Grid electricity. That's what makes it a monopoly. The fact that I could very easily stop consuming cable altogether, and have in fact done so, doesn't mean that Spectrum doesn't have a monopoly on cable in my region of the country. If I want to consume cable, I need to consume Spectrum cable. That's what makes it a monopoly.
Similarly, suggesting that people who don't want to watch ads can simply stop consuming online videos altogether is not an argument against Google having a monopoly on online videos. It is in fact an argument for Google having a monopoly on online videos.
I'm probably not going to respond after this just because I do not want to start one of the handful of flamewars a year that happen on this site, which are embarrassing and leave everyone feeling bad. I only jumped in at the beginning to say that I just don't think the fact that you could prop up a video hosting daemon on a VPS instance means that YouTube does not hold online video in a stranglehold and is not now working to lock that content away behind either ads or paywalls. I could prop up a PDF file hosting instance on a VPS instance too, but everyone agrees that a handful of companies hold academic articles in a stranglehold and have locked them away behind paywalls.
My intention wasn't to namecall people, but I see how that has come across. I was trying to describe or call out the behavior of people who want to consume a service by bypassing both of the payment methods (ads and subscriptions) that the service provider has implemented, and then complain when the service provider starts cracking down on that bypassing. I'm certainly not the feelings police, and people should feel what they're going to feel. But I guess I am perplexed that people think that they are entitled to a service that a provider is charging for without paying for it (either by letting the ad play or subscribing), and are also calling out Google for enforcing that payment just because they're a large company.
I'm not expecting us to agree on this, and I too do not want to start a flamewar here. Overall, it's been enlightening reading the various viewpoints throughout different parts of this thread.
Who hosts it? The government? Do you trust any global government to, as you say, "hold culture hostage"? Who pays for it, taxpayers in whatever coutnry we choose? It's a global service by this point so it feels odd pushing that burden onto any single country. Even if I agreed, we don't really have a good solution for a "global public good" to exist in the current world model. And videos aren't even in the top 10 of what resources deserve to be used in such a model.
Besides, while I personally don't like this argument: let's not pretend that Google put a patent on video hosting. It is not the only place to upload and share videos. And if you're fine limiting yourself in length and a vertical orientation, it's not even the only popular place to upload/share videos. You are very much free to seek alternatives if you feel this strongly.
EDIT:
I don't disagree, but as a personal anectdote, I've rarely found a situation where I blamed society and felt it really had much of an effect. Society as a whole doesn't always have (nor know) their best interests at heart and will choose directions against what would otherwise benefit them on an individual level, simply because the masses generally fail to see the long term. Very common dystopian theme, actually.
I’ve seen cycles like this before: if these services don’t like piracy, the solution is not to jack up the prices even higher, it’s to provide a service that’s so damn attractive that I choose to pay for it.
About a decade or so ago, you wouldn’t believe the enormous number of videos and TV shows I would torrent, because the prices were way out of whack.
Then things like Netflix came along, and suddenly the price and the convenience was great, and I’ve been a paying customer for years.
They’re starting to jack up the prices, but not because their own costs are rising astronomically. The way things are heading these days, I’m starting to consider piracy again.
I suspect we’ll see a resurgence of piracy again, until the next stage of the cycle where a company realises they can make absolute bank by charging reasonable prices for the convenience.
I’m hoping that instead, these (already incredibly profitable) services decide they have it pretty good actually, and adjust prices to maintain convenience instead of price gouging the much wealthier but much smaller crowd until they go the way of cable. I’m hoping, but I have my doubts.
I understand your feelings on this, but the way to "not be the product" is to quit using the service entirely, not to try to find ways around watching the ads that pay for it.
Why? The company doesn't follow ethics, but money why should I act honorable toward them?
Well, for me that would be because I want to be better than them.
Everything you have said is correct and I won't dispute it. However, there is an element that must also be considered; the continued decrease in the quality of service that YouTube provides. Back in the days of yore, you'd watch an ad or two every few videos you watched. Now, it seems like you not only have ads before and after every video you watch, but also at least one or two in the middle, if the video is long enough. YouTube is following in the direct footsteps of cable TV, changing itself to generate more profit while undercutting the very premise that brought initial adopters to the platform in the first place. Is it wrong for YouTube to do this? No. Will it tick off many of their users? Yes. Are these people justified in bypassing the parts they don't like? Well, that's the key question, alongside whether enough people will be upset by this to hurt YouTube's bottom line. I'd wager the bean-counters have crunched the numbers and decided that there is more money to be gained by going in this direction.
Again though, there's something to be said about the decrease in YouTube's overall quality. As Gabe Newell stated:
I think this quote encapsulates the core of why the majority of people who ad block on YouTube do so; it's not because they're gleefully "sticking it to the man" or simply "looking out for number one", but rather they feel as though there are unnecessary obstacles being placed between them and the videos they want to watch. There's no real control over how your YouTube experience is monetized. I don't believe I can truly select to not see automotive ads, political ads, or ads for anything that I don't want or care about. Speaking personally, if I'm trying to fall asleep to an ASMR video, only to be jolted awake by a super loud ad, I feel a certain level of justification for resenting the current YouTube monetization system.
In the end, the real issue is that someone high up in YouTube or Google decided that a sacrifice in service quality was worth alienating a portion of their userbase. So, it's obvious that those people would be mad about this. Perhaps this is the time to call out the corporation for dictating the terms without offering any kind of reasonable alternative solution with any level of transparency.
There is a pre-arranged contract: the youtube terms of service. I hadn’t read them before, but was pleasantly surprised to find they’re quite short.
I believe these two sections are the most applicable:
I don’t like ads. I have ublock origin installed on everything and despise browsing the internet without it. But service providers are entirely within their rights to suspend my access to content if I’m not paying for it: we are not entitled to anything on the internet unless we host it ourselves. That’s just how it works.
Instead I try to watch more content on platforms like Nebula that align with my ideals.
That same argument could be made about sneaking into a movie theater without paying, though. They want you to go through the ticketing line, but you went through a service entrance. They were going to show the movie anyway regardless of who was in the room. The theater intends for the user flow to involve ticketing and going past the snack bar, but will also be providing the part of experience from behind where the tickets are torn to anyone who receives it. They've not been deprived of anything and all content is still in their possession...
But is it theft? The answer gets complicated there, because it depends on the jurisdiction whether this would be treated as theft, trespassing, burglary, or some other flavor of crime. In states with language around "theft of services" this would be pretty clear, like in Pennsylvania:
In others it's not particularly clear what you'd be charged with, but you can bet you'd be charged with something. The fact this doesn't apply to digital services is more of a quirk of the law not having caught up with the times yet, not that it's explicitly approved behavior. There's also the wrinkle that "watching ads" is effectively payment, but is it legally payment? I don't think any laws have caught up there. In Pennsylvania's case above most of the wording I removed was nostalgic specifics about stealing cable television.
But there's no paid aspect to youtube though, in terms of a movie theater, it's like walking in 15 minutes late to skip all the previous or like muting your TV during advertisements.
That's actually one thing Pennsylvania almost got right in an otherwise hilariously dated law. Instead of saying payment, they use the word compensation so it's not limited to monetary transactions. Watching the ads is the compensation (at least from the viewer) that YouTube expects in exchange for serving the content without payment--this versus giving you the option of payment to skip the ads with Premium. This would be analogous to a theater showing a block of ads before the movie and allowing free tickets if you arrived early to watch them, but paid tickets to anyone who wanted to arrive right at the start of the movie.
Of course then they turn right around and say payment after that, so whoops.
I would bet trespass would be crime. You haven't paid for permission access the space. It would be like overstaying after your prepaid time at a pool or gym (assuming they did hourly rates). If they called the cops, they'll remove you on the grounds of trespass.
Now the theater isn't a perfect analogy either. Each seat is theoretically without cost, assuming the trespasser isn't making a mess. So the overhead of an empty theater would be the same as a full one. On the other hand, YouTube has an overhead cost per seat. You can't just sneak in and take a video without any financial harm to YouTube like you could an empty theater. Yes the harm is tiny on a per video basis, but it does add up.
In the same way that any webserver gives you content and you have the ability to send a bot to scrape those gigabytpes of content, yes.
This isn't really something that has a good physical equivalent so it's hard to make a metaphor for it. But it's pretty clear that there's certain undesired content being served to you before retrieving the content you want to watch that's more or less a prerequisite. Youtube can't stop you from simply walking away from the screen, but they clearly want to make sure that content is served to furfill their part of various contracts.
It's a standard ad model since the days of radio, or even much older (I'm sure there was similar ads before classical troupe theatre centuries ago).
The movie theater analogy doesn't fully apply because you already paid for a ticket. However, I agree that YouTube could do better at improving the quality and legitimacy of the ads they're showing.
I’d actually be fine with the ads if they went back to only being at the beginning of videos. What I take issue with are the ones that interrupt the middle. If the person editing the video didn’t set it up with those breaks in mind, the middle-of-the-video-ads can make it unwatchable.
Even movie theaters haven’t taken this step yet, they only stick the ads at the beginning.
it's awful. You lose a couple of seconds for every interruption and either have to back up or infer. So, not only is it jarring to have a cut just land at a random location, but it also drops some of the frames, leaving a broken viewing experience.
For television this is a thing, however.
Sure, but:
(1) that was a big part of why people left TV and moved to streaming services, and
(2) everyone was okay with it back when they used to watch TV because nobody actually watched the ads, they switched to another show or movie, or went to the bathroom, or grabbed a beer in the kitchen, or, perhaps most importantly, they, like basically every household in America in the 2000s, had a box that recorded shows and let you fast forward through the ads.
People were only ever okay with midroll ads on television because everyone was already ad blocking television by switching shows during ads or fast forwarding through them.
Thing is I don't think Youtube really has nefarious ads. Or at least nothing more nefarious than you can see hung up on a billboard in physical life. No one is trying to say that adblock as a whole needs to be removed. So I don't think that's a valid reason to use an adblock on Youtube just because in a more general sense ads can be harmful.
Bologna. Using an ad blocker is no different than changing the channel during a commercial break on television or the radio. I guarantee you that if Comcast or Disney could have figured out a way to prevent people from changing the channel, they would have done it. We are in a better world that they couldn't.
If Google wanted to, they could lock YouTube behind a paywall and make sure only paid subscribers get to view the content (like HBO). They could also charge content creators a fee to host videos (like cable television providers). They won't do either of those things though because Google made the calculation that the high traffic from an open venue and free content (both for them and the viewer) would net them more money than other options. Even knowing that some users will find a way to avoid ads, this is still the path they chose.
It is not just people blocking ads that want to have their cake and eat it too; it's Google and the content creators as well. The ecosystem works as-is. The majority of users don't use ad-blockers. Google gets free content from content creators, content creators get to host their content in front of a colossal audience without a venue fee, and both parties get to make money on the laziness or incompetence of the majority of users who already view their ads. These attempts to kill ad-blockers aren't about saving a fragile ecosystem; it's about maximizing profits.
I'd say it's more insidious than that. Since, you can indeed still change the channel or walk away from an ad. It's probably more akin ti fabircating data on those old school Neilson ratings things. It takes some active action from the user to perform that.
probably. And they did with various techniques to encourage people not to miss various parts. But it's not really a relevant point here.
I don't think you can "change the channel" for an ad. If you back to the video after watching another video, it makes you watch the ad. The only way is to either walk away, or adblock.
Would you say that changing the channel during the commercial break is stealing? I know the analogy isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn close.
I think it's more time based, I doubt if you delayed watching the video for a day that you'd get the exact same ad, exactly where it left off as if it's waiting for you.
no, because companies can't take your physical presense hostage. But adblocks aren't your physical presence.
I acknowledge there's differences (no analogy is perfect), but what is the actual moral objection here? It seems that not watching the ads isn't the problem, if changing the channel is fine. What is the problem, then?
I don't ultimately care about how people consume media, but I do find it hypocritical to suggest that a service is not quality and then proceed to be frustrated when it closes off workarounds it never supported to begin with. Clearly there is some value people desire there if they choice is to play cat and mouse instead of trying to establish an alternative. If people were simply honest enough to say "I don't respect Google/Youtube and I don't mind stealing from them" then I'd have no real objections (and to be fair, I have seen that here). Maybe outside the the angle from a content creator, but c'est la vie; video CC's balance out piracy as much as any other creative medium.
But I guess that's the issue, even on a platform like this there still feels like there's eggshells being walked on and people want to bring up moral justifications on how what they are doing isn't in some way stealing. Maybe it's a language issue, and part of it is definitely the growing amount of issues centered on software that doesn't map to the physical world. but "stealing/piracy" is the simplest term for it until something better pops up (and I've already failed before to try and establish new terms. I don't think this is my time either).
Of course, if we can't agree that adblock bears some semblance to stealing/piracy, then we won't really align on this issue. I'm not saying that as a moral guardian, as I too use adblock. More simply as someone who strives to be as consistent in communicating as possible.
The reason I'm harping on channel switching, the closest equivalent, is that this moral problem did not exist a decade ago.
I remember plenty of services existed to record your shows and skip the ads. Going to the kitchen during the commercial break was a time honoured tradition. Having a sub show for commercials to switch to was a thing every household did.
Doing your very best to avoid commercials was normal, and any technology to maximise this was readily adapted. I'm just alarmed that now it's a moral problem. Not in the 90s, 00s and 10s; all of those methods are fine, but this one isn't.
This is just an evolution of what I've been doing since the 90s. What is different about this?
Decades of "Intellectual Property" propaganda.
Copyright is an incentive for the state to promote activities that further the state. "Intellectual Property" is not an inherent right that people have. You generally cannot control other people's thoughts and deeds, yet with copyright we make and exception because the value of what is created may outweigh the value of humans copying and thinking about the ideas and expressions someone raised.
However, this falls apart when we're not advancing humanity with what we're using copyright for. When people are seeking profit, copyright doesn't apply and they can honestly get screwed for all I care. Humans have been teaching their children stories and songs since the advent of the aural and oral communication, these people don't own thoughts, ideas, and expressions.
I just wish they would be more flexible with their options. Give me a paid option just for YouTube to block adds for $5. I don't care about the other features that premium includes and $12 is too much.
Usually with these schemes, breaking down the bundle doesn’t actually make it cheaper since the majority of users only care about a small part of the deal and it’s actually priced that way so you are getting the rest for free.
The value you're getting for blocking ads is clearly worth at least $12 for almost any reasonable person.
That's less than 40 cents a day. If you use youtube somewhat regularly and live anywhere in the Western world, your time would have to be worth extremely little for it not to be a good deal.
For youtube, most scale estimates put a single youtube adview at somewhere in the range of $0.10-$0.30. I think that last number must be for forced 30 second+ unskippable views on attractive content or something. It just seems high.
Using much more conservative figures, let's say you skip around 10 youtube ads a day every day with the paid version. You're probably approaching a range where youtube makes less profit off you as a user than if you'd viewed ads.
These are all rough numbers and estimates, but we all see the math: It's completely unreasonable to demand lower price points than the one we're already getting. Youtube is profitable due to scale alone.
Our pricing assumptions for many online services are unreasonably low because they've been purposely running deficits to grow at scale and so we've been getting subsidized costs for years and years if we're been paying at all.
I don't disagree with any of your assessment and yet that sounds like a Google problem, not a me problem.
I think it's a similar problem to what news did to itself. It provides news online for free and has found it incredibly hard to transition to a paid model.
Streaming did the same thing and now that investors want them to be profitable, they need to figure out ways to become profitable. But it was their mistake to set prices so low and I don't know that YouTube adds enough unique value compared to something like Netflix or Disney+. $12 might be a great deal compared to what they make off me watching adds, but that doesn't mean I see the value because it is not viewed in a vacuum. I don't care about their bottom line. I'm going to compare to other similar services and what they charge and their perceived value to me.
I think it's our consumer views of value that are highly skewed and need to be recalibrated. That doesn't have anything to do with the company's economy.
Very many of us are irrationally under-spending on digital entertainment/services in ways that are not in line with our own personal values if we were thoughtfully spending our money.
(This opens a whole other can of worms in regards to regulation and the power these companies are allowed to have over us. The networking effects of all gigacompanies just seem to be too powerful in ways society shouldn't accept)
We're only underspending because they've been undercharging, with the explicit plan to raise prices when the audience is locked in. They created the expectations.
Wait, what? (apologies for the slight necro, I realise this was a week ago but I'm catching up)
Sorry that's just not true. I'm a reasonable person who disagrees. Here's a cost comparison:
I have a service called Sky Stream. I pay £5/mo to allow me to skip ads in all content, including a couple of hundred live tv channels and all the on-demand streaming apps that are supported on the device. The only thing it doesn't cover is Youtube... Because Google.
If it was $5/mo for no ads on YT I would pay it and not blink an eye. In fact, I'd pay $5/mo to guarantee only seeing skippable ads. I am not paying double what it costs me to skip ads on literally everything else I choose to watch, just for YT.
I know a lot of people feel quite strongly about this, choosing to either block or not on principle. I'm not that invested, and judge the service based on value. To me, YT is way too expensive.
"...but in the end, if you're blocking ads without paying, you are stealing from YouTube by using their bandwidth without compensation."
Does my data belong to me? No. Am I compensated for the harvesting of my data? No. They haved used my data for profit. Now they want me to waste my time and watch adds or pay them to use me? No.
I consider it an act of protest to use YouTube while cutting off their monetization with an adblocker. If they want to cut features from their mobile site and disable disliking videos, power to them, but users should also be able to decide they don't deserve to make money for making such changes.
That doesn't make sense. YouTube implemented changes you didn't like, so rather than no longer use it, you decide to deprive it of its main source of revenue? That doesn't give Google incentive to reverse those changes or implement others to make the platform better, only a policy like this three-strikes system that a lot of people won't like because they don't want to see ads.
Using YouTube with an ad blocker is a lot like sitting in the bar and only drinking the free water. It’s not theft, it’s not stealing, it’s not piracy, but it is costing the company money and they have every right to kick you out if they want.
People didn't mind when Google was not being obtrusive with ads, as they needed to increase their profits every quarter they stayed doing the same stuff everyone else does.
I will continue look for ad blocks and workarounds, and frankly if youtube subsudary would have to shut down due to lack of profits I won't shed a tear.
You wouldn't be bothered if YouTube shut down tomorrow and yet you use it every day?
Well it's called a monopoly.
It's seems pretty probable that old school YouTube wasn't covering its costs. Google only recently started publishing youtubes financials independently so we can't know. But quite a lot of Google's products run at a loss
Google doesn't have problem shutting anything that's not profitable. If they run something at a loss, that's because that thing gives them something valuable.
Apparently what is spurring this on is google got caught cheating advertisers, they sell a type of ad that is supposed to guarantee it's got the viewers attention (not muted, not loaded on an external page, etc). Then a team investigating those claims found those ads embedded into 3rd party sites muted and playing, but still counting towards advertisers ad-spend.
The way I look at it is this. We never agreed to ads. It was always an informal thing of them saying "Hey, we put out this free video streaming service, and you're totally fine to use it all you want. But we might out in some jarring interruptions every few minutes. Don't complain, it's free after all.
And then people said "sure, no problem, you're totally fine to put in jarring interruptions. But don't complain if I fix my computer to make it less jarring."
So in my mind it's fine to game the system a little, because free+ads was already a way of skirting the standard method of trade to begin with.
Like, you know how Uber lost money every quarter for a long time, but still kept going and nobody was like "Hey, isn't it your fiduciary responsibility to make money? You can't do that!"
It's actually totally fine to spend money on something that doesn't turn an immediate profit, and it doesn't even really matter if your current business plan doesn't make sense. As long as your investors don't force the issue.
And YouTube WAS originally just a free video hosting platform that was just developed as a tool to make collaboration easier.
And it's owned by Google, which has plenty of other areas to trim fat if it needs to boost profits for the next quarter.
Theft denies them of property. I've never stolen anything from YouTube.
Theft doesn't have to be physical.
If YouTube wants me to watch ads they need to do 3 things.
Change the "skip ads" button to "skip this ad". I'll watch a 15 second ad, I won't watch a 2 minute ad.
Make ads relevant. YouTube seems to have no idea what I like. I don't block ads nor cookies, so I should be getting relevant ads but I don't.
Take more care with the ads they accept. A bunch of ads are outright scams, or are dubiously legal in England.
4. Regulate the damn volume!
To point number two, I am deeply amused by trying to guess what the heck YouTube's algorithm thinks of me. I've gotten a mixture of ads about video games, horror movies, and children's toys. Honestly really enjoyed seeing a random NERF ad. I tend to pretty specifically watch channels about video games and horror, so I'm easier for the algorithm to peg than most. I once got some local ad for a custom dress shop for little girls though, still stands out as weird.
Meanwhile, I actually prefer the 2-minute ads because those tend to be the sole ad and have a skip button about 5 seconds in. Lately I've been getting multiple strings of unskippable 15-second ads, which I find deeply annoying. I think recently I got one where the second ad was a full minute and unskippable. Frankly, they need to put a limit on ad lengths and have the "skip ads" button for anything over 15 seconds.
I’m entirely used to adblocking, so when I got linked a video from my boss at work, I was genuinely startled to see an ad start playing, but I quickly figured out if you mash F5 to refresh the page, YouTube will pretty quickly give up on trying to put an ad in front of the video and just start playing it.
Just a trick if you are sick of unskippable ads
You just gave me a flashback to a brilliant experience in college. One of my classes had us come in on the final day to supposedly do an easy exam, but instead it was to have us present to fill out those end-of-year surveys. Annoying tactic since it was my only class that day, but it was compensated by his prank. He had a link on Canvas that he said would be the instructions, and opened it on the projector to Rickroll us.
It backfired. By that point, YouTube had added an ad before the song. So we all burst out laughing. One of the few times I've truly appreciated an ad on YouTube.
I've been confused for more than a decade about why ad providers, for whom I do nothing to prevent them from profiling me, continue to serve me content that I skip every time. There's something very broken about the ad sales marketplace and I can't figure it out. I'm pretty sure the whole industry is somehow delusional about the cost effectiveness of their strategies but I don't know enough to ask good questions. I keep thinking some analytics guy is gonna shake up the industry somehow, but I've been thinking that for years.
If the ads on youtube I got were for obscure indie games I'd watch them all day. Google ads feel like payola to me so I feel sad that I'll likely never get an ad for the stuff I actually like.
Ironically, that's essentially what we do anyway when we watch trailers and reviews.
It would be so easy for them to make the ad relevant to the video. It would be whole lot cheaper than whatever they’re doing now.
This is why I personally stopped paying for cable and swapped to streaming when Netflix was like 8CAD, and why I'll repeatly refresh a video until I get a skippable ad or they give up (they're always in pairs at the beginning, and usually begin with a 15-sec unskippable) if adblock isn't available. I don't mind the 5-sec (I think they're actually 6-sec...) ads nearly as much. But the sudden, jarring interruption of an irrelevant company throwing itself across my screen with loud music and shouted marketing buzzwords has pissed me off since I was a child. That went double for kids' ads, because they're twice as loud and obnoxious.
It really does sour my mood - and any immersion the video might have achieved - to have a sudden !!!ADVERTISEMENT!!! in the middle of a serious or intense video, especially if the subject matter is also serious and intense. Then, if it IS a skippable ad, and you don't get to the controls in time, you might be served an unskippable ad for the second one, punishing you for not being constantly on your toes and just wanting to relax. They've pushed the timing on ads over the years, seeing what users will put up with, and calculated what people with put up with versus what they'll pay. Pause in the middle of an ad or in the video itself, either way you'll be served a fresh round of screaming when you return. Removing Adblock is just another step on their path to enshittification. In turn I find myself feeling far less than charitable when it comes to the prospect of paying YouTube almost $15/month, not because I want to or because they've proved they're worth hundreds of dollars over a couple years, but because they've intentionally made the data-stealing "free" model less and less usable, straight-up.
Nebula provides a working model of an alternative for a more than reasonable cost, and I hope we'll see more services like that and Patreon going forward. I might well pay for premium and cancel another service, but it won't be truly willingly, and the second I have an actual PC to work with, I'm going sailing on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, obscure indie games aren't known for their advertising budgets.
On point 2, YouTube can only sell you ads that are running. So they probably do know more about you but if the things you're interested in aren't paying YouTube for ad space, then you won't see any of them.
There's likely some bias at play here too. You won't really notice or remember 10 ads that are mildly relevant but you will remember the one ad that pissed you off. So while the percentage of acceptable to unacceptable may be 80/20, those unacceptable ads are going to stick in your head a lot more.
Having ads stick in people's heads for negative reasons is not actually a good thing.
Firestone (the tire brand) sticks in my head for negative reasons. It was all over the news when I was a kid and remains, to this day, the brand that comes to mind when I think about car tires. That brand recognition doesn't do them any good, because I specifically avoid buying tires with the name "Firestone" due to the negative effect their branding has on my peace of mind while I'm driving.
Within months of the recall, Firestone saw their tire sales fall by 40%. I bet they wished their brand didn't stick in people's heads so much.
I didn't mean to imply that negative ads were good. I'm saying that even a few annoying ads will make a site feel like it's "nothing but annoying ads". You remember them more because they annoyed you rather than the typical ad which barely grabs your attention.
Yes! I grew up on broadcast television. A few ads in my show is not a big deal. But I'll be damned if I'm going to watch android and ios bots argue about who has the better phone for 2 minutes.
The other day, I'm not even joking, I got an ad that was 45 minutes .... yes 45 MINUTES!! ... of some mega-church preacher. For a 3 minute video.
Also show me more that 1-2 different ads per week, i don't need to see the same ad 10 times in a row. If you have nothing else to show maybe skip a few ad slots
Even paying for premium doesn't eliminate ads these days, even medium-size channels have in-video sponsorship ads which premium has no way to get rid of. So the covenant of "pay for ad-free" has already been broken.
Additionally, average salaries haven't kept up with inflation for a decade, yet companies are increasingly pushing subscriptions (BMW want subscription for heated seats even!).
I don't know what a better payment model is, but having everything be a subscription isn't it.
The sponsorship ads are from the creators you're watching, not from YouTube. I suppose the difference is meaningless to most. I think many channel memberships or Patreons give you access to a version of the content without sponsorships though.
I understand the difference, and the reason channels do it is because they get way more money from them compared to ad revenue. It's already a big ask to ask people to pay for something they've had for free since the start of the platform, let alone asking them to also pay each channel.
I guess something like Nebula is a step in the right direction where it really is just single-pay for no ads (from what I've heard), but there's also the friction of getting people to switch...
Nebula looks like it has a lot of potential. The more creators that promote it, the more viewers that will switch over. It's very difficult and slow to grow a video platform competitor.
Floatplane also exists where you can pay for each creator's channel individually, and I believe that many creators also release ad-free videos on their patreon.
This is my biggest beef with YT Premium AND Hulu. You covered why it’s annoying to pay for ad free on youtube just to get in video sponsorships everywhere. I pay extra for Hulu without ads but still get ads on most shows i watch (even really old shows like Mythbusters). This is the music industry all over. I’m just done trying to go straight and am once again flying the pirate flag until they agree to be reasonable.
Or just cable television. Pay however much monthly cable bill just for the luxery of getting a 20 minutes show with 10 minutes of ads.
I don't mind channel sponsored ads since I at least know that goes towards helping creators do their thing. Especially since some do this as part or full time jobs.
But if it bothers you, the channel ones are very easy to skip. That's the one big downside as opposed to going to Google itself to serve ads.
Yeah I don't really mind them because they're incredibly easy to skip. Maybe a problem if your hands are occupied but the real solution to creators adding too many embedded ads is to avoid them. I certainly don't want YouTube trying to bring their clumsy fist down on creators for embedded ads as it'll just cause more damage overall.
That's the other thing about creator sponsored ads. sponsors get to be more exclusive so you'll never see more than 1 ad per video. And you're not gonna get those thinly veiled trolling that is those 10+ minute "ads". Meanwhile I've heard nightmare stories about multiple ads on single minute videos, each longer than the video itself.
Yeah, I don't think that will be a huge issue fortunately. There's pros/cons to channel sponsored videos, and Google is getting paid either way. Having sponsors pay content creators relieves Google of the burden of paying adshare. Google removing embedded ads would mean that they'd be in truly dire straits.
One word: Sponsorblock (available as a browser extension, or as a patch within ReVanced for Android).
I rarely have to make an effort to skip sponsored segments anymore.
So Linus Tech Tips have actually talked at length about this topic. Apparently YouTube actually compensates it's creators much better than some other big platforms, especially for those who subscribe to YouTube premium.
Additionally, video hosting and streaming is quite expensive, especially 4k.
I agree, companies need to be able to make money. I have no issues with YouTube putting 4k behind paywall given how expensive it is. But ads are the bane of my existence, and I refuse to award YouTube with my money when their strategy to incentivize YouTube Premium is to make non-youtube premium so shitty that it annoys you into buying.
Well the alternative is to turn off public free videos, or possibly limit it to X number per day (the route many news sites are going).
I suspect that the users of this site are not going to be a good sample of the general public for issues like this.
With that in mind, I will not be paying for YouTube. Full stop. I have YouTube open for either music or watching game videos for background noise. In the case of music, I am extremely certain that there are better platforms if I am willing to pay money. In the case of background noise, there is Twitch or any of the other various streaming services.
However, I am very much a creature of habit. I like YouTube in the sense that I like not learning another system's quirks when I don't need to. I will continue to use YouTube until they actually kill my ability to watch it through the various means (ublock origin and ReVanced).
For the people that are willing to pay for this, what is the draw? I assume that I am close to the average user (at least in my video choices) and I don't know what they offer that can't be found in a more optimized way elsewhere.
Main one is supporting creators. I watch a LOT of youtube and follow many channels that produce content I enjoy, but I can't afford to subscribe to everyone's patreon or to donate to every streamer. Youtube premium allows me to share some revenue with these creators while giving me platform benefits.
Uninterrupted experience. No ads anywhere. I use YouTube and youtube music on pc, mobile and TV, and it's nice not to have to worry about ads anywhere. Yes I know there are alternative clients/mods for all these platforms, I've used them all, nothing beats the simplicity of having youtube just simply work everywhere like I want it to.
This one is more personal but I like getting to test beta features early.
That's basically it. Ultimately it comes down to youtube being the platform I use the most so I have no qualms with paying to get the most out of it.
I subscribe for the same reasons, plus the fact that I didn't like my kid watching ads every ten minutes. It's also why I prefer to allow gaming on Steam over playing ad-laden mobile games. It does sometimes mean I have to buy two copies of the same game but it definitely beats spending a single cent on IAPs.
It's probably worth mentioning I cancelled Netflix with the end of password sharing after 10+years. I now use a grey market content provider for movies and shows until the market finds a way thru this. It is a morally ambiguous solution that has proven challenging to justify to my kid, but it makes sense for us, I simply can't afford to pay for all the different services.
When I got my first computer I was broke and couldn't afford any games. I spent countless hours on newsgroups and 0-day warez sites downloading and playing PC games. I credit this as single-handedly sparking my love affair with PC gaming. As soon as I started working and having some disposable income I began building my Steam library, and I haven't stopped since. My game library is now 1200+ titles strong and my kid's is 50+.
Once the streaming market returns to a sane value proposition I'll start paying again. Valves strategy is why I haven't pirated a game in over 20 years. Gabe Newell was exactly right all those years ago:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem..."
Valve's strategy isn't as daunting as providing for what is essentially 12 different platforms under what appears to be a single website. They focus on 2.5 ish platforms in a medium that is used to paying premium prices and take the cut from the devs to provide service. It's basically the inverse of Youtube.
Even then when we go to premium markets: games as a market also has much less leverage than the film industry. Netflix didn't have the same leverage Valve did amongsts these coporate conglomerates that proceeded to make their own "Steam" and have people actually want to use them. Valve could pull it off because they decided to host thousands of indies, some of which became mega-hits themselves. No one else except CDPR ever tried that with their stores. Meanwhile, IGF and even Youtubers couldn't do the same for Netflix. The gulf to create a "good" film vs. a "good" game is simply huge...
Yeah my big one is #1 (if I had less disposable income I'd be less concerned but as is, I can afford the subscription) and I get a lot of value from what I watch on YouTube. I also have Nebula bc a ton of creators I like are there and I know they get way more money from that than YouTube.
Also I do watch a lot of YouTube on the tv these days and while it's possible to block ads there through a Pihole or something, it's trivial if you don't get ads in the first place.
Plus I'd need a music streaming subscription anyway and YT Music is honestly better than Spotify imo.
If you're invested in Google's Home ecosystem there isn't actually a better alternative if you're on a family plan. Spotify's Home implementation steals streams from other family members, so if you're the primary account and one of your family members starts streaming via Home it stops your stream and assumes you're using the Home now. And Apple and Tidal barely work at all.
The amount of kid-friendly content on YouTube, surfaced through autoplay, is enormous.
If you used to have a gym membership pre-Covid, you'll likely have discovered the quality of group classes on YouTube. Paying for Premium is much, much cheaper than in-person classes, and other than the social "get out of the house" aspect the quality of classes is actually better.
Wasn't there a scandal some time back about some really bad essentially automatically generated videos on yt displaying some obscene stuff like Elsa giving birth purely meant for the algorithm to pick it up into yt kids auto play?
It's absolutely still a thing and I would not recommend allowing kids to watch YouTube without supervision.
This was a thing several years back (like 2017), but iirc YouTube created stricter guidelines for kids content and mass-deleted channels in response. It was still fucked up but honestly I think YouTube's response there was what I would've wanted. It was also pretty quick and I'll assume it was reasonably effective bc I haven't seen them pop up in my recs the way they sometimes did back then.
Yep. But that, while disturbing, was terribly overblown.
If you let your kids click through YouTube unsupervised they will absolutely end up in weird places. If you keep control of the remote and don't treat it as a parenting substitute the commercials are significantly more concerning than the autoplay content.
It's not really anything special for me. I watch a ton of youtube, and I generally hate ads. I don't mind paying to remove ads for someting I use a lot and YT's pricing for me as a single person isn't too different from other streaming services (of which I use a lot less. Except maybe Crunchyroll). The extra features you can find if you look at the YT premium landing page are nice but not something that makes or breaks the subscription, outside of aforementioned ads.
The one neat, hidden benefit I've heard of is that it does weigh me a bit heavier as a viewer for some channels. It allegedly lets me help monetize videos that were otherwise de-monetized, and my view is weighed heavier than a free one that was viewing an ad. It can help boost creators a bit more than others and that's a nice feeling
Now with all that said: would I jump to an alternative if some favored creators did? Absolutely. Outside of Meta, giving to Google is probably one of the worst feelings. But it's not even close to something like Reddit which is hard but feasible to completely replace. There isn't really any suitable replacement that can help enable creators the way Youtube does, except Twitch perhaps (which is for a specific type and different format of video). Vimeo is the closest competitor and calling it competition is a longshot. Mostly used by artists who need to show off uncompressed footage above all else (and perhaps stuff like nudity that Youtube would strike faster than light).
Youtube is a handy place for music, especially older soundtracks and stuff that may not be available to stream except on Youtube uploads, but ultimately if Youtube becomes too ad-riddled or inconvenient for me to use to listen to music... I've got Windows Media Player and 35 gigs of FLACs and MP3s. Most people probably got rid of their physical and/or digital music collections years ago, but frankly, Youtube offers me next to nothing I could not replace with my trusty media player.
For me, the draw was something called Songza. It was one of the earlier music subscription service that had curated music lists based on thing like mood and activity. That was later bought by Google Play Music, and integrated into that service. That was later morphed into something called YouTube Red and then YouTube Premium. Of the services I've tried, YouTube Music has the best algorithm of creating playlists based on my likes and dislikes, and helping me discover new music based on my tastes.
The ad-free part of that subscription is just an added bonus. I don't know that I'd pay $12/month just to not have ads on YouTube, but the whole subscription makes it worth it (and I'm only paying $10/month since I've had it so long and they haven't raised the prices on early adopters).
I pay for YouTube premium as its my only real subscription cost at the moment outside of a VPN. I keep paying for it because YouTube Music is the best music streaming service for me. I’ve tried Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube’s recommendations are always spot on. The Super Mix along with the genre specific My Mixes have always given me music that I like. I also have weird listening habits as I often will listen to a few songs outside of my usual genres if I hear a song that I like. Both Apple Music and Spotify would see this as a change in my taste and my recommendations would be ruined for a few days. I do wish however that YouTube Music had a proper desktop application and wish it would have something like Spotify Connect. The ad-free YouTube is just a bonus to me. Modern YouTube is pretty unwatchable without SponsorBlock.
I'm returning to full pirate mode for everything. I dropped Netflix when they instituted their blocking of account sharing. I still pay for Hulu currently, and share that with my family, who pays for our family Apple One subscription for Apple TV and Apple Music. And I still have Max (HBO) shared from a friend, though I canceled our Discovery+ membership when the two merged. But as of yesterday I now have 12TB (SSD) of media storage on my Proxmox server. I may even get a seedbox again so I can stream one-off garbage shows I don't want to keep locally. I'm just over it. The golden age of streaming for the consumer is over. The Balkanization of streaming is here.
I'm not a huge YouTube user. I visit occasionally if I'm looking up some gameplay videos before buying a game, or for one-off things (like disabling the annoying buzzer on my dryer, which I just did). But I will always block ads when I can. Always. The ads I end up seeing on YouTube are annoying, promoting stuff I have no interest in, and are too long. They get in the way of giving me the information I'm after, which I understand is the entire point. But YouTube will never stop the tech savvy from curating our experience.
The price of everything is going up and it's just getting to be too much. I don't care anymore. I have to look out for myself and I'm going to do whatever I want to do to have the experience I want.
Is this really the takeaway you'd want to teach to children? "You need to look out for yourself to ensure you get what you want - whatever you have to do to get it!" That seems to be a pretty bleak banner to live by.
What level of profit is Google aiming for long term? What is their long-term target that, when they reach it, they'll decide the service is making enough money and they'll quit trying to wring more out of the users?
I think you know the answer to that question. The answer is there is no upper limit to the amount of profit they're trying to make. They need to keep making ever more profit, and they will keep trying to do that indefinitely. They're concerned only with YouTube's bottom line. They will keep adding more ads. They will keep lowering the quality off service. They will keep raising the cost of Premium. Eventually they'll want to charge you $50/month for a nonshareable account that only lets you skip the eye tracking software that nonpaying users have to use that ensures they watch ads in their entirety.
In short, the service you're dealing with is fundamentally psychopathic. If a person acted like that to those around them, they would literally be a psychopath. (Imagine someone who views all their relationships as transactional and tries to wring every bit of value they can from all their friends and family.)
At the same time, it's hard not to deal with YouTube or a similar site. These large platforms have taken over the web. What was meant to be a universe of small independently hosted content turned into a centralized capitalist hellscape. And these platforms did not evolve simply from the natural evolution of the internet. Venture capitalists threw billions of dollars into these companies. Their whole plan from the beginning was to:
They're a deliberate monopoly. In a world with properly running antitrust laws, they never would have been able to do this. But we don't live in such a world, and they were able to build a monopoly.
I didn't build the media ecosystem I'm forced to live in; YouTube and other megacorps did. And as long as I'm stuck living in the world they created, I feel zero guilt about skipping ads or using any workaround I can to improve the quality of service I receive. Ideally, I would look for my media elsewhere, but I can't, because of the monopoly they deliberately created. I feel zero guilt about skipping ads and using other tools to improve the user experience.
I have no idea why this is an exemplary reply. It's basic rationalization. You're assuming that you must be entertained and must digest the service. If the costs outweigh the benefit, then decline to use the service. It's not a need. You will survive without streaming video.
I despise unethical and infinitely greedy corporations just like the next guy. It doesn't matter how unethical the corporation is - your actions are your own. Ever heard the phrase, two wrongs don't make a right?
We cannot escape the corporate hellscape that was created without divesting ourselves of a significant amount of relevant human culture. They're the ones that put themselves into the position of acting as tolled gatekeepers for much of current human culture.
The entire concept of intellectual property is an anathema to the hundreds of thousands of years plus of human evolution, I do not much care about feeling bad about rationalizing ad blocking.
I am literally assaulted with ads in nearly every conceivable and achievable form across basically every activity outside of my household. I would ban advertising if given the power, it's just pollution into the human cultural sphere. I'm so tired of people thinking they're entitled to my attention and entitled to spending millions of dollars to subtly manipulate me via ads designed by PhD's.
Is anyone actually being harmed by enjoying an ad-free video experience? Besides the elderly who require stock numbers to go up to not be destitute in their advanced age? We already have multiple lifetimes of music, movies, and educational videos. Why require that the market be continually conducive to the production of more?
Absolutely not. But in our hyper-capitalistic society, if you don't look out for yourself, who will? When I go out into the world, corporations consistently try to take advantage of me. I just moved and had to transfer my internet service. Despite the fact that I own all my own equipment and have had the same service for 5 years, now there's a new charge on my bill for renting their equipment that I'll have to complain about to get removed. I've been thinking about getting a new job and made my resume discoverable on Indeed. My boss is having a hard time hiring/keeping people, I know he's looking at Indeed for people, and literally days after I posted my resume, he took me aside and for the first time told me how much he appreciated me and gave me a 10% raise. I'm sorry, but I'm jaded. If I don't look out for myself, I will be taken advantage of. I don't feel this way with my friends or family, they're good people. But yeah, when it comes to companies and institutions, I just feel like you have to remain vigilant. The trust has been eroded.
Absolutely.
I and my family and friends make money to live.
They (corporations) live to make money.
Those may sound similar but couldn't be more different.
Here's a different perspective for those who seemingly can't conceive of a universe in which content creators aren't beholden to Youtube as their only possible, viable, imaginable business model.
A long time ago, I ran a website that used ads by google. I was an enthusiastic supporter of theirs. We relied on the service to pay the bills.
One day we were banned for no reason. Never explained. All communication basically ignored. Outstanding amount due never paid. Basically treated like dirt, as they always have treated their users and always will.
From that day I swore I'd never, ever engage with that business again. Youtube is unavoidable right now, which means blocking and circumventing ads. My resolve has never flagged. If Youtube wants to play hardball, I will devote my full expertise to circumventing their stupid blocking attempts. If a content creator wants my support, google ads is not the way to get it. Think of literally any other way.
If you think this is unethical, feel free to get google to pay me the money they owe me, TYVM.
If you never wanted to engage with that business again, I don't see how using YouTube accomplishes that goal. You shouldn't visit the site. You're just doing the same thing to them that they've done to you.
The social contract breaks down once the entity you're dealing with is so far beyond your grasp as to render you essentially powerless. There's not human meeting of the minds, no give and take, etc.
Secondly, judging by the OP's story, Google already broke the social contract, therefore there is no need for them to be burdened with analyzing their actions within that framework.
As someone who never had a Spotify account but had Google Play Music and all of ite variations. I've had YT premium for years now. I love it. I don't see add, YoutTube Music continues to make improvements. It meets all of my needs.
Haven't followed a lot of the enshitification of YouTube as of late but I hope YoutTube Premium doesn't change.
YT Premium is part of the enshittification though.
How?
I think the idea is that they're making the platform worse for everyone who was previously able to use it just fine for free by implementing more ads per video and blocking playback when the app is closed, then selling you a subscription to fix the problems they created. Not sure where I stand on it myself, though.
I wouldn't say the YT part is a part of it. The main downside is how it was bundled with Google Play Music, and how it was replaced with a then-inferior Google Music. I've heard it's made improvements, but the core usage I had it for is long gone.
Youtube itself has certainly regressed in a few ways, but it never worsened itself only to put it behind a paywall. It's always been hostile towards downloading videos and it's served ads for much long than "classic YT" has existed.
The YT part is definitely part of it. Debleb already explained why.
I read their comment and we simply use it differently. Even their own comment says:
I could go on for paragraphs on all the niches or technical talks/projects or odd facets of culture I found and engaged in through Youtube content creators, stuff mainstream news wouldn't even know existed. But for me Youtube isn't just some bootleg Spotify slash remnant of Google Play Music (I haven't even looked at YT Music since a week after Google Play Music died) .
I think you're reading a different comment from the one I meant.
That is why YT Premium is part of enshittification. Premium doesn't just give extras to paying users, they're actively making non-premium worse for everyone else.
YT Premium is one of the only subscriptions I find worthwhile. It's expensive but I listen to music or YouTube eight hours per day a lot of times and that's the value for me. Netflix, Prime, etc just don't get used enough for me to justify paying for them. I use Spotify a few times a month because I'm in a music league but I can't believe people pay for Spotify, it's just garbage in so many ways.
Could YouTube Premium be a bit cheaper? Yes, but I will continue to subscribe at this price for now.
At least with YouTube, when you pay for it, all the anti features go away and you are left with a nice product. If you pay for reddit premium or whatever, the platform still sucks.
But do you see how insidious it is for a company to enshittify their service to such a degree that you would rather pay to use it?
And worse, YouTube doesn't even pay most of their content creators squat, they don't bring innovation and they don't provide any value.
I don't think you can truthfully say this. If youtube didn't provide any value, neither producers or consumers would use it. Youtube hosts and serves staggering quantities of video data, and doing so costs money.
They don't pay their creators much (and I agree they probably should be paying creators more) but imagine how abysmal any online creator's reach would be without services for hosting and aggregating their content like Youtube- not to mention that hosting your content yourself would likely add a layer of cost and labour that may discourage people from trying to share it in the first place.
Youtube may not directly offer much monetary value, but nearly none of the people who have made careers and followings from their videos would have been able to do that without Youtube or some alternative that might have risen to popularity instead. In that regard, Youtube does offer immense value to its users.
I don't think that encapsulates what "enshittify" means. Youtube has had ads since not long after Google acquired the site, and they've even had the baffling long ones for years as well. It's not making its site worse directly so much as patching workarounds that were never intended to begin with.
Meta concerns with content creators aside, I wouldn't say Youtube has really made its service worse over the years. The removal of dislike counts is arguably the biggest hit in 5 years, but far from one that was core to the site's functionality.
I'm not sure there's a difference. If ads are blocked today and not blocked tomorrow, the service is worse.
One's a non-advertised workaround by an unaffiliated 3rd party and the other is an officially supported feature being cut. The effect may be the same but the intentions are almost opposite.
I would argue the intentions are identical. This is a thing your program can do, and you remove that ability to increase profits. Whether it's an official feature or not, I'm not sure I see the difference.
Same boat here. The $10/month is well worth it now that YT music works decently well. No ads for YouTube was a bonus.
I'm a little surprised that people are upset about this. YouTube is not free to run, and content creators want to get paid too.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but a big part of the issue is for me is around how Youtube treats many of the content creators I like.
The continuing issues around demonetization and deranking of relatively innocuous videos mean I have zero faith that subscription money would actually go to support content creators. I’m happy to support the content, but “paying Google” is distinct from that.
If you have no interest in YouTube Music, then $12/mo is an extremely steep price, especially for a casual browser. The bigger issue is that their strategy has been to make the free experience worse and worse until you are annoyed into giving them money.
Yeah, I can agree that $12/mo is expensive if you don't want YouTube Music.
It’s $12/month, not $10
Ah, didn't realize that. I'm still paying $9.99 since I was grandfathered in from Google Play Music.
I think your price might finally be increasing this time around, they seem to have remembered that grandfathered subscribers exist.
Yeah, I got an email saying that it will increase for me in December. I'm going to hang onto it until then since I have enough Google Play credits to cover the cost through then, and then I'm going to cancel it and switch to either Tidal for $9.99 or Amazon for $8.99.
I'm another GPM -> YT Premium subscriber who's happy to pay the bucks. Kinda surprised to see how many people are against paying for a service in any way, including just watching ads and thus "free" to them in an strictly monetary sense.
I like how there are 45 comments of people claiming why don't want to watch ads and these comments have a ton of upvotes and even more comments.
Meanwhile, there are people saying "I pay for YouTube premium" and it's got like two upvotes and one comment response.
Same! I immediately signed up for Google Play Music when they announced it and have been through all the Google name changes. I haven't had ads on YouTube in years! and it's been really really nice.
I currently end up with like a 50/50 mix of YouTube with ads and without by virtue of watching on both my laptop (with uBlock Origin, so no ads) and my TV, and all I can really say is that it's insane how many and how long the ads are these days.
I'm sure there's some argument that it's because so many people use ad blockers, but even if you account for that, it seems crazy. I remember the days of 1-3 10-15s skippable ads per video, now it feels like it's often a lot more than that.
The ads on YouTube feel so much more intrusive and frequent than before. There are multiple videos where I legitimately can't watch 2 minutes before it has the first ad break. It's worse if I have to exit a video for whatever reason and have to continue later, and then it will play all the ad breaks up to the point I stopped in quick succession.
I remember many years ago around 2009-2010 I watched an anime series on YouTube, and it played one of three commercials (yes, commercials, I recognized them from TV) before or during each one. And I do mean one of three commercials, so you can imagine how repetitive that gets over 52 episodes (and pretty sure this predated the skip button). The top comments on half the episodes were quoting the ads because it was the same three for everyone.
Somehow, that was far less annoying than the current setup. The fact people were just quoting the ads actually made it more amusing than annoying to me.
Since YouTube is just becoming a complete disaster (to name a few issues: bad moderation/customer support, the new adblock thing, and more) i will switch to alternatives like Odysee and PeerTube (i can't believe no one mentioned them! And yes they are already quite popular) but there just isn't much content yet.
The reasons people aren't talking about it is that they won't scale because of the fediverseness of it and also the content on it is unhinged at the moment.
Also people use YouTube because they like watching the content made by certain people. For example, I like watching people like Frost Prime, JaidenAnimations, and SmallAnt. While I haven't checked, if I was a betting man I would be that none of them are on PeerTube. Which means PeerTube is not a valid alternative for me.
Plus I feel like the people that use less popular, more "techy" platforms like these are generally more likely to produce certain kinds of nicher content that just won't have wide appeal. Because, let's face it, as they are right now if you're using fediverse stuff you're 99% some sort of geek. Which is fine, but it also means that Auntie Ruth looking for casserole recipies and little Timmy who's learning his colours will have absolutely no reason to use your platform. That also means that people won't go there to post that kind of content, and the cycle continues until someone manages to break it.
Peer tube flat out does not work. Every time I have attempted to use it, the front page is filled with junk, the video struggles to buffer, and the federation does not work.
I uploaded a video on one of the major public instances, and then attempted to search it from other instances and it never showed up. Even after months.
The whole idea that server A is supposed to be able to serve servers B, C, D, E and F's content is an idea born out of a world where storage and bandwidth are cheap and exponentially growing, one that we unfortunately no longer a part of.
I don't understand how engineers that saw how the Bitcoin Blockchain needs dedicated and purpose built servers to host and search it even if it's a database where 1mb gets appended every 10 minutes, and then decided to build YouTube in a way where data needs to be duplicated in a similar fashion.
Lol, I'll just stop using youtube and that is fine with me.
I used to watch the ads when watching on my smart TV when it was just 1 or 2 ads per video. Then they increased to sometimes 10 ads in a 20 minute video. That's when I went and got an android TV (how ironic) and installed Smart Tube. Haven't looked back, and I cannot be bothered to care about a $1.5T company. If they had reasonable monetization I don't mind paying, but when the free alternative is more user friendly then it's the life of a pirate for me.
I view it like this:
If I'm going to pay you, there had better be a VERY distinct experience between what I can get for free one way or another, and what I get if I pay you. I've been paying for Spotify because it lets me choose any song that I like on mobile, and their library is HUGE. However, I've been told of alternative ways to accomplish the exact same thing for free (obviously NOT using Spotify), so I'm thinking about probably cancelling Spotify anyways.
Youtube... my understanding is that the only major difference between free and paid is lack of ads. yes, you can argue about downloading videos or playing music, but I already have alternative free ways to do BOTH of those. And I generally don't download videos in the first place these days.
You want me to pay for a product, I'd better have a much better experience with a paid version than the free version. Youtube doesn't deliver on that end for me, so free with adblocking it is.
I'm uncertain, I don't think I'm necessarily against this. Youtube is good service, it serves a tremendous amount of video globally, and is one of the only larger platforms whose model sustainably (relatively speaking) promotes great journalism. However, I do think that the amount of ads that Youtube runs plus the ads that the creators themselves run inside the video has reached a point where, if I had to sit through them, I would rather not watch the video.
To that end, I do happily pay for premium, because I recognize that high quality video costs a lot of money to serve. I also think it's the right payment model for a platform like Youtube; paying per channel would crush any hope that smaller creators would have to emerge from nothing. This way, there's room for anyone, pending quality, to exist on the platform. While Youtube certainly has made large mistakes while trying to moderate and otherwise run the platform, I think that's mostly unavoidable at the scale it operates at. Moderation at large scales is an impossible problem. Which doesn't excuse the mistakes (particularily the user-hostile design changes, like the downvote removal), but none have been too egregious enough to be a deal breaker for me.
But, largely, I've been thinking to downscale my dependence on 'free' (ad-supported or otherwise) services on the internet made by for-profit companies (particularity public or aspiring to be public companies). Companies run by people who care for nothing other than profit tend to use these to crush competitors by undercutting them. And once they're gone, the service steadily gets worse and worse, until it reaches the actual sustainable steady-state, and then goes further beyond because there's no one left to compete with them. And they feel nothing for doing this, because they never really cared about what they were building in the first place. And they don't care that it won't be around once it eventually fails: they got theirs, they'll be long gone before that.
I'm precisely referring to services like Youtube. While I still think that premium is on the right side of being worth it, it doesn't escape me that the platform is precisely going through the trajectory I outlined above. I just (stupidly) hope that whenever they hit the sustainable steady-state, that Youtube will be different and not lose their way.
Something I've always wondered is, could intentionally clicking ads be a form of protest? I'm not sure if advertisers still pay more for on-click like they did before, but if they do couldn't organizing people to repeatedly click ads on youtube or even reddit mess with monetization?
I remember back in the day people lost their youtube partnership if it looked like ads were being click-botted.
I'm not sure if clicking on ads would work as a way to mess with monetization, but when it comes to Youtubers losing their partnership, all that would result in is their videos still having ads, they just wouldn't be paid for it and Google/YouTube itself would pocket the money. Which isn't helpful if you're protesting YouTube itself.
But it's possible advertisers would pull ads if they felt the majority of the traffic they were generating was illegitimate.
This is a very optimistic view. There have been numerous reports of both Google and Meta using some questionable tactics to show advertiser's the effectiveness of ads, even going so far as to be not straightforward about where they're placing ads but since they pretty much have the monopoly on the market, advertising budgets still go there. There is a shockingly large amount of money companies are willing to spend on ads and the ROI on them has continued to reduce but it's just seen as the industry standard and work goes on as usual.
Allow me to introduce you to AdNauseum, an extension based on Ublock Origin designed for exactly that purpose.
For those of you who are adamant about not watching ads, I'd love to know what kinds of jobs you all have and how you'd feel if your customers refused to pay after you performed some sort of service or provided them a product but then they said "forget you, I'm not paying you."
If youtube was a fair platform that didn't constantly fuck over it's creators constantly and allow literally anyone to abuse their broken copyright system that literally protects false claimants (which is NOT required by law, don't even start), etc. I'd be a lot less averse to their ads.
I'm not there for youtube, youtube has negative goodwill, they've proven themselves to only care about money, not even the people who make them that money, and therefore I won't give them money and hope that they fail. I'm there for the creators I watch, which have been slowly migrating over to Odysee or other platforms.
Ad-blocking ain't piracy, but the same principles apply: “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue” - Gabe Newell
People routinely come into my place of work, use the bathroom, perhaps drink some water or soda, radiate heat that the AC has to makeup for, enjoy the lights at night, etc. and give nothing back monetarily at the end of the day. I create "intellectual property" for my company and we sell services and physical goods. Should we toll everyone who walks through the doors the minor pennies worth of services they consume?
Youtube was originally a large marketplace and social gathering place for humanity with nearly 0 intrusive ads or anything. After ruthlessly expanding for a decade plus and continually degrading the experience, they have decided to use their near-monopoly status to start turning the screws on everyone now that they have locked a good part of human culture behind their doors. I don't feel bad about adblocking at all.
I'm an employee, not management. Figuring out how to monetize is management's problem. Give me points on the package and I'll start caring.
Guess I’ll become that obnoxious friend who says I’m not watching videos my friends send me unless they download the video file and send that to me instead of the link. As a bonus, it’ll be a way to prune low-quality friendships if us watching the same videos is all that kept the friendship going.
Oh no! I have as much blocked as possible on desktop where I do 95% of my youtubing, which is why it's always jarring to visit it on mobile where it is just about unusable due to ads. If that becomes the desktop experience, I'm going to be in a pickle. I can't sit through that shit. There are already some sites like that and I try muting, going to another tab to wait it out, etc., and sometimes if you go to another tab, it knows and makes you start over! Crap. It's torture, can't do it. Surely someone will just come up with new ways to get around it though, or at least I'm hopeful they will.
I have two devices going ofttimes, so that if there is a non blocked ad I can look at something else while I wait. For example, my phone and a laptop.
I use an adblocker on my phone browser but I also use their official app. I also watch on computer and TV sometimes without a blocker. I wonder what they will do for mixed blocking households.
It doesn't have nearly as much content and has some weird policies for their staking system that could probably be abused in the future, but Odysee has seen a lot of people moving over to it.
If google wants to win that battle, they'll have to manage to effectively kill youtube themselves for normal users.
Unfortunately that arms race is destined to be lost, since DRM was made a web standard in '17.
It's the practice of bundling services that rubs me the wrong way. If they'd remove YouTube Music from the picture and offer a less expensive Premium Lite, like what was trialed in Europe, I'd consider subscribing. I'm happy to pay for what I use. Conversely, I'm actually angry about always being marketed bundles of crap I don't need because one element would likely die without the other. No one ever subscribed to those pricey digital cable bundles because they just had to have the Bald Nudist Equestrian Channel.
If you like youtube-dl check out yt-dlp
It is an up to date fork of youtube-dl with additional features. Works just the same as the original.
If you are on Windows you can install it with
winget install yt-dlpfrom a Powershell prompt.Realized this was posted in the top comment replies, but in case you didn't dive into that I'll leave this up here
Consider also https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub. It's a script to templatize and manage downloading channels.
I’d honestly pay for ad free content if it wasn’t $13 a month. I feel like at that price point I’m paying for somebody else’s ad free experience.
What a coincidence, I've also been testing Odysee as of recently.
You could have an account where you subscribe to your preferred channels and then export the channels to RSS. Then log out and consume directly from an RSS reader.
That's how I have it set up. I have a section in my rss feeder called YouTube, and I'm subscribed to the rss feeds in the channels I used to be subbed to. When I open it, I see if there any new videos, which then open on sponsorblocked NewPipe.
No account needed. It's also faster and more minimalistic than scrolling through videos. And I have notifications for those feeds off, so I only see that there's new videos when I open it.
That's basically what I'm doing with a Firefox add-on called Feedbro.
I never had an account for YT, but if I want to be notified about updates on a channel, I add the channel page to Feedbro, and it checks regularly for new videos. Works totally fine for me.
This is why Invidious and Piped exist :)
When I had my Pixel (that my wife now owns) I used LibreTube and for iOS there's Yattee.
For our MiBox (Android TV) we use SmartTube which connects to your Youtube account, unlike the two above.
Well, for me YT Premium is one of the few things worth paying on the Internet, so I'm going to continue doing just that.
For anyone going hard in Google's defense re theft:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-block-news-links-canada-over-law-paying-publishers-statement-2023-06-29/