This is the most infuriating thing about the internet nowadays. People are so willing to hurl insults and put pressure on things even if they don't fully understand it, even if it's volunteers....
It’s sad to see them leave because of some drive-by comments — new users who sign up for Reddit, leave their comments, and then delete their accounts without facing any consequences.
Sure, there are people who appreciate what the uBO team is doing. But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones.
This is the most infuriating thing about the internet nowadays. People are so willing to hurl insults and put pressure on things even if they don't fully understand it, even if it's volunteers. The entitlement is real (the idea of digital Karen's is kinda ironic to me, given it's roots, but I don't really know how else to describe it)
I hate to say it, since I use ad blockers myself, but it makes complete sense that they appeal to people who are incredibly entitled. YouTube (and many other sites) are offering services you can...
I hate to say it, since I use ad blockers myself, but it makes complete sense that they appeal to people who are incredibly entitled.
YouTube (and many other sites) are offering services you can either pay for with real money (YT Premium) or with your attention (advertisements). People using ad blockers or alternative clients on YouTube are basically saying they are entitled to most or all the benefits of YT Premium for free.
My general litmus test for determining if something is sustainable long-term, I ask what would happen if everyone else in the world decided to do it as well. If everyone used YouTube with an adblocker and Google had no way to stop that, then the site would probably shut down tomorrow. There is no way it can exist as a truly free service.
I think there’s some important historical context that’s missing here though. In the 90’s/00’s the internet was a cesspit of ads. Brightly flashing marquees, infinitely respawning pop-ups, and...
I think there’s some important historical context that’s missing here though. In the 90’s/00’s the internet was a cesspit of ads. Brightly flashing marquees, infinitely respawning pop-ups, and recursive histories that made your back button useless. Not to mention how ads running JavaScript or similar were very legitimate attack vectors for viruses. To surf the web without an ad blocker was the digital equivalent of driving without a seatbelt.
Even today, you have things like autoplaying ads and of course all of the tracking across sites.
If advertisers were willing to display static ads of reasonably high quality (like a newspaper) I think this argument would have merit. As it stands, though, online ads both noticeably detract from the user experience and collect much more meta data than any reasonable (non-technical) person could ever imagine.
I had a paragraph written about this, but removed it because it felt tangential. But you're right, adblockers became a thing because ads got too aggressive, and it's been a positive feedback loop...
I had a paragraph written about this, but removed it because it felt tangential. But you're right, adblockers became a thing because ads got too aggressive, and it's been a positive feedback loop ever since.
But back then, blocking ads was really only something us nerds did, because it required more technical knowhow than your average user possessed. You had to use an alternative browser that supported extensions, like Mozilla. Most people didn't even really know browsers other than Internet Explorer existed until Google started advertising Chrome. These days you can get adblockers for Safari on iOS from the App Store. And YouTubers themselves are regularly sponsored by VPN providers that usually list blocking ads as one of their big selling points.
So, I definitely don’t have hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect ad blockers are still rather niche. At least anecdotally, based on the amount of complaints I hear from non-technical...
So, I definitely don’t have hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect ad blockers are still rather niche. At least anecdotally, based on the amount of complaints I hear from non-technical friends and in forums about how many ads they still see, I don’t think it’s quite as main stream. From personal experience I can say that my parents and sister would not use an ad blocker if I didn’t install it for them. My wife would, but probably not the best one.
It’s probably eating into profits a bit more than before, but given advertisers consistent persistence to weaponize ads at every opportunity I really don’t blame consumers from fighting back where they can.
Hell, I'm in a software company and still feel like only about 5% of the employees here use ad blockers. If so few technical people use it, my guess is that non technical people use it even less.
Hell, I'm in a software company and still feel like only about 5% of the employees here use ad blockers. If so few technical people use it, my guess is that non technical people use it even less.
I guarantee this is some VP’s pet project and at the end of Q4 they’re going to report to Sundar that they upped revenue by $100MM and all that work and all the time wasted on ad views, ad...
I guarantee this is some VP’s pet project and at the end of Q4 they’re going to report to Sundar that they upped revenue by $100MM and all that work and all the time wasted on ad views, ad blocking and ranting will be rewarded with a short smile and a pat on the back. Their promotion is now slightly more certain!
Anecdotally, I work with someone who works with SharePoint on prem and online everyday, much tech savvier than I am when it comes to it. Whenever I look at her browser, ads everywhere. I don't get it.
Anecdotally, I work with someone who works with SharePoint on prem and online everyday, much tech savvier than I am when it comes to it. Whenever I look at her browser, ads everywhere. I don't get it.
Thank you. They are still niche. My family are always inquiring about them and I have attempted to show them just how easy it is to block ads online, they still haven't bothered doing it. One even...
Thank you.
They are still niche. My family are always inquiring about them and I have attempted to show them just how easy it is to block ads online, they still haven't bothered doing it.
One even thought that blocking ads might be illegal!
The vast, overwhelming majority of internet users see many ads every single day and do not use adblockers. This has become particularly true as mobile devices became the dominant platform to access the web on since adblocking on those is a level of difficulty beyond doing it on the desktop PC.
I have always been aware of the fact advertisers have greater reach than ever before thanks to the rise of Android and IOS with the bulk of those users running no adblocking.
YouTube will be no different, they've even branched out and seen huge growth in the TV market where adblocking can only be achieved using tools like a Pihole, far beyond the technical ability/willingness of most of their users.
Advertisers are making plenty of money, there is no crisis.
This is still true, though not quite as pervasive as it once was. Honestly, I wouldn't even use an ad-blocker if it weren't for the fact that malware is still regularly distributed through ads. I...
Not to mention how ads running JavaScript or similar were very legitimate attack vectors for viruses.
This is still true, though not quite as pervasive as it once was. Honestly, I wouldn't even use an ad-blocker if it weren't for the fact that malware is still regularly distributed through ads. I pay for sites that I frequent if they allow me to pay, I was even a Reddit Premium (or whatever it was called) subscriber for YEARS, but I just can't justify allowing a site's ad network to anonymously run whatever code their advertisers have specified on my machine.
Exactly my thinking. I try to support as many sites as I can. I am currently subscribed to NYT, Boston Globe, my local newspaper, and (in fact) YT Premium. That doesn't include the various video...
Exactly my thinking. I try to support as many sites as I can. I am currently subscribed to NYT, Boston Globe, my local newspaper, and (in fact) YT Premium. That doesn't include the various video streaming services my family wants to watch, too. I can't subscribe to every website I visit, though, and I just philosophically disagree that the only other option for viewing the content should be to put my security and privacy at risk.
What are some examples of malware getting delivered through ads recently? I tend to assume Chrome's security is pretty good, but perhaps I've missed some news.
What are some examples of malware getting delivered through ads recently? I tend to assume Chrome's security is pretty good, but perhaps I've missed some news.
Here are a couple that I remembered reading. https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/google-hosted-malvertising-leads-to-fake-keepass-site-that-looks-genuine/...
One of the national newspapers in my country served up Chrome for Android hijacking ads for years. The ad would open pop-ups that could not be easily closed and would vibrate the phone. I don't...
One of the national newspapers in my country served up Chrome for Android hijacking ads for years. The ad would open pop-ups that could not be easily closed and would vibrate the phone.
I don't know how it did this exactly but it happened repeatedly to me over a couple of years. Each time it happened to me I informed them that some bad actor was delivering browser hijacking ads on whatever ad network they were using. Never got any reply.
One day it happened and I said f-it, that was the day I rooted the phone and was able to use /etc/hosts level blocking of advertising networks at last. That solved the problem.
Of course you can just use Firefox etc with uBlock origin these days so such measures are not required but advertisers pissed off technically adept-enough users enough that many decided to just universally block ads a long time ago now, I seem to remember reaching this point some time before 2010 on my desktop PC.
If everybody in the world adblocked, businesses would have to find a sustainable way of making money without trying to psychologically manipulate people. If that means Google shuts down, good....
If everybody in the world adblocked, businesses would have to find a sustainable way of making money without trying to psychologically manipulate people. If that means Google shuts down, good. There's money to be made in there, so a better company will take its place.
Yeah, Youtube would be premium only. Which I think would be unfortunate for all involved - for people who don't like ads, you can already pretend that youtube is premium only. For the people who...
businesses would have to find a sustainable way of making money
Yeah, Youtube would be premium only. Which I think would be unfortunate for all involved - for people who don't like ads, you can already pretend that youtube is premium only. For the people who can't afford premium, they are now no longer able to watch youtube at all, even though many were willing to watch ads in return. For youtube, they likely would make less money with this scheme. Triple Ls.
I mean, I personally miss the time when the only relationship I had with a business was that I gave them some money, they gave me a product or a service, and that was the end of our interaction. A...
I mean, I personally miss the time when the only relationship I had with a business was that I gave them some money, they gave me a product or a service, and that was the end of our interaction.
A Google that makes less money is a big W for me, not an L. The only real L here is poor people, but that's a societal problem. You could suggest that movie theatres be free, but everyone needs to have a camera installed in their home so that theatres can sell that recording to ad agencies to make up for it. That'd be awful, and I'd rather pay 15 bucks or whatever than do that.
Things cost money. I am willing to pay money. I am not willing to give any company anything that's not money. Not my information, and not my time.
So it sounds like you're happy with the option of just paying for something like YouTube Premium? Then the question becomes, does it bother you that people who don't pay for YouTube can still...
So it sounds like you're happy with the option of just paying for something like YouTube Premium?
Then the question becomes, does it bother you that people who don't pay for YouTube can still access it for free by watching ads?
In a way it does for me (I'm also not the person you replied to), because as we've seen with streaming services, they're constantly comparing their premium subscription services to revenue from...
Then the question becomes, does it bother you that people who don't pay for YouTube can still access it for free by watching ads?
In a way it does for me (I'm also not the person you replied to), because as we've seen with streaming services, they're constantly comparing their premium subscription services to revenue from ad-supported subscriptions. Recently it's just been one quarterly report after another talking about how great the margins are for the ad-supported users, and how they're increasing prices for premium subscriptions to encourage more ad-supported subscriptions.
The ad-supported options for both Disney+ and Hulu will remain the same, at $8. “We’re obviously trying with our pricing strategy to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier,” Mr. Iger told analysts on a conference call.
And all the other streaming services have been doing the same thing. This also has the effect of making it so you can't just "pretend their free/ad-supported services don't exist" and just subscribe to their premium version, because it shows the pricing for their premium version isn't necessarily fairly priced. It could be, or maybe it's not, there's no way to know. If you pay for it, then they're incentivized to increase the price because it shows you were willing to pay X amount so whats X amount + a little more, and they're incentivized to do so because they'll reason that if you weren't paying, you would be watching ads which is higher margin, so you're costing them money. Then if you don't pay for it, they turn it around and say there's no interest in premium subscriptions. I don't believe the two models can co-exist.
Additionally, the cost of watching ads is an unknown, but IMO there's a cost being subsidized by the public for this. Along the lines of privatize gains, socialize losses. Conditioning people to be "willing" to accept manipulation on levels they don't even understand in return for free or lower cost products, again IMO, has to have costs. There's no free lunch. Ironic considering the subject we're talking about.
Sure, as long as Google doesn't track what I'm doing for analytics and advertising. Does Google Premium exempt you from that, or do they keep getting my information for free?
Sure, as long as Google doesn't track what I'm doing for analytics and advertising. Does Google Premium exempt you from that, or do they keep getting my information for free?
It can be. Just pretend there's only youtube premium. You give them money, they serve you video. What is the benefit to you if they stop offering a price tier that you wouldn't consider?
I personally miss the time when the only relationship I had with a business was that I gave them some money, they gave me a product or a service, and that was the end of our interaction.
It can be. Just pretend there's only youtube premium. You give them money, they serve you video. What is the benefit to you if they stop offering a price tier that you wouldn't consider?
Like I mentioned elsewhere, do they no longer collect my data in Premium? I'm not willing to give them that. That is a continuous business interaction that I don't want.
Like I mentioned elsewhere, do they no longer collect my data in Premium? I'm not willing to give them that. That is a continuous business interaction that I don't want.
This is a common fallacy I see in this thread. You pretend one part of the world changes while other parts of the world are forced to stay static. In a world where everyone had ad blockers and the...
This is a common fallacy I see in this thread. You pretend one part of the world changes while other parts of the world are forced to stay static.
In a world where everyone had ad blockers and the only exchange on the internet was cash money, what other changes would you envision?
For this, you can look at history. There is the old freeware or "freemium" method, for one. Most of the internet was like this prior to embedding ad servers into everything. Anyone remember shareware? Most news sites work this way now. There are other ways of making money as well. See the sponsored ads embedded in many videos on youtube (in addition to the youtube ad server-served ads). Youtube could understand that it's about people who want to show off their video projects and sell their servers space directly to the creators. An ad agency within Youtube could help set up creators with sponsors to show embedded in their videos. That could be a freemium model as well.
I'm officially middle aged now. I've seen the internet grow up through the late 90s-early 00s. I've seen the change. One thing remains constant. Creative people look for ways of displaying their creations, be it writing or video or photo, programming... anything. As the internet grew up, it got taken over by investors and other money-people so now, in addition to the creators, you have grifters and con-artists trying to make money via ad servers. Google regularly cons their own creators by leading them to make video creation into a job, then demonitizing them (essentially firing them) at the drop of a hat. All creators I've followed have been demonitized at one time or another. I know this because they post about it.
Google isn't hurting. It wasn't hurting prior to this change in ad blocking policy and it isn't hurting now. They are making more money than God. They were making more money than God before the change, and now slightly more after the change.
And it's not for me to dictate how a company makes money.
Google wants to make money by forcing my computer to download something I didn't ask for and explicitly don't want. It's in the name. They "redirect" to an ad server. In the old days, these redirects would go to an ad server that had such limited bandwidth that the ad would freeze and I would just have to sit there for minutes for the ad to finish stuttering. Then came along people who created tools to keep my computer from downloading things I don't want. I use those tools. If Google wanted to, they can embed ads directly into videos. I would only be able to skip them by physically reaching over to my computer and skipping them, just like in the TV/TiVo days. But that method, while ensuring I see at least a couple seconds of the ads and making things virtually un-skippable, doesn't make Google as much money as targeted ads which somehow always end up being the one with the guy dressed in yellow talking to an emu.
So Google does their thing and I do my thing. Artists and creatives will always find a way to display their work; they are generally not, at their core, doing these things for money.
Well, except for everyone who makes a career out of it. They are professionals working for money. I don't think anyone should be guaranteed a living when the market changes, but let's at least...
Artists and creatives will always find a way to display their work; they are generally not, at their core, doing these things for money.
Well, except for everyone who makes a career out of it. They are professionals working for money.
I don't think anyone should be guaranteed a living when the market changes, but let's at least acknowledge that there will be people out of work.
This actually goes as far back as the human species. People have always been creative and shared their work. Only for the last few hundred years or so they've also been getting rich as a side...
This actually goes as far back as the human species. People have always been creative and shared their work. Only for the last few hundred years or so they've also been getting rich as a side effect. Before that, they were doing it for all the other things you get back from the community: Praise, social status, the amazing feeling of contributing and inspiring others, etc. We would keep doing it even if the whole internet would shut down.
Seeing how many people can't imagine a world that isn't driven by ads makes me sad.
I mean if Google allowed me to pay just for Youtube ad-free (I think it's called "Red", but they're sunsetting it in fact) I'd be happily doing that already. Instead they want to sell me the...
Which I think would be unfortunate for all involved - for people who don't like ads, you can already pretend that youtube is premium only.
I mean if Google allowed me to pay just for Youtube ad-free (I think it's called "Red", but they're sunsetting it in fact) I'd be happily doing that already. Instead they want to sell me the Youtube-all-in-with-music (and Knuckles), and that's just not something I want. Essentially they're missing the plan level I'd be quite interested in buying. It never launched in Germany.
YouTube would probably see less total revenue, but they would also probably be a lot more profitable since premium subs would no longer be effectively subsidizing so many free users. The total...
For youtube, they likely would make less money with this scheme. Triple Ls.
YouTube would probably see less total revenue, but they would also probably be a lot more profitable since premium subs would no longer be effectively subsidizing so many free users. The total amount of content being uploaded and consumed would also likely be a fraction of what it is today, taking away a ton of their expenses.
In a broader context, yes, that's true. But each case is different, and YouTube is definitely very unique compared to other ad-supported sites. In this hypothetical ad-free utopia, I'm not sure...
In a broader context, yes, that's true. But each case is different, and YouTube is definitely very unique compared to other ad-supported sites. In this hypothetical ad-free utopia, I'm not sure how YouTube could exist at the scale that it does today.
It takes money, a lot of money, to build the infrastructure necessary to process and serve 30,000 hours of video every hour. Free decentralized alternatives like PeerTube could never hope to achieve this.
Going 100% premium, a la Nebula, wouldn't bother me so much as an adult in a first world country with a stable income, but now you're locking kids and less fortunate people out of the wealth of educational content on the site.
I have no idea how to reconcile these. Most solutions I've seen people bring up in other places basically amounted to "the government should force Google to provide it for free", which feels like a complete non-starter to me.
There's money to be made in there, so a better company will take its place.
I'm not so sure on this one. Despite the aggressive advertising and push for premium subscriptions, YouTube is basically still treading water. The aforementioned logistical insanity of the service, combined with its lack of profitability, is why nobody has really even attempted to compete with YouTube.
Then it's not sustainable service, and then maybe we need to read more books instead. I'm not trying to be facetious. I use YouTube because NewPipe works, it's easy and it's legal. Gun to my head,...
Then it's not sustainable service, and then maybe we need to read more books instead.
I'm not trying to be facetious. I use YouTube because NewPipe works, it's easy and it's legal. Gun to my head, I'd stop using YouTube if I was forced to engage with their ecosystem any more than I already am.
Maybe nothing can compete with YouTube, the same way nothing can compete with Reddit. That's fine, less convenient alternatives will do.
So you're basically saying it shouldn't exist. That's a fair opinion to have, but if you're happy with YouTube not existing, then presumably you would also be happy not using YouTube at all even...
Then it's not sustainable service, and then maybe we need to read more books instead.
So you're basically saying it shouldn't exist. That's a fair opinion to have, but if you're happy with YouTube not existing, then presumably you would also be happy not using YouTube at all even though it does exist.
YouTube nor their creators really lose anything here if the people using ad blockers or newpipe stop watching.
I'm not the one saying it's not sustainable. I'm not an economist or a businessman. But if it isn't sustainable, then it isn't sustainable. I don't follow your logic. If a restaurant was selling...
I'm not the one saying it's not sustainable. I'm not an economist or a businessman. But if it isn't sustainable, then it isn't sustainable.
I don't follow your logic. If a restaurant was selling two dollar lunches and they were gourmet, I'd buy from them. No skin of my back if they go out of business, but why would I not buy their food just because I think they can't sustain that for very long?
As long as I can legally and easily get YouTube videos without ads or sponsor messages, I will. Why wouldn't I?
I mean, it should be illegal to sell things below cost of manufacture (or running service) for extended periods in order to capture markets. All it does is let people with the largest bankroll...
I mean, it should be illegal to sell things below cost of manufacture (or running service) for extended periods in order to capture markets. All it does is let people with the largest bankroll drive out any other upstarts.
Those cheap TVs? They're cheaper than ever because now they collect about $40/mo worth of ads and resellable viewing data. Not because there's been miraculous improvements in reducing manufacturing costs. And it's becoming increasingly hard to opt-out, especially now with widespread BLE mesh you can't keep it offline.
Game consoles should not be permitted to be sold below hardware cost (though if we mandated unlockable bootloaders this problem would resolve itself).
But again, why would I not buy them whole they're being sold for $2? That's their choice, not mine. I'm not their financial advisor. It's YouTube's choice that they made their videos free, not...
But again, why would I not buy them whole they're being sold for $2? That's their choice, not mine. I'm not their financial advisor.
It's YouTube's choice that they made their videos free, not mine. It's not my responsibility to come up with a sustainable plan to make profits.
But that isn't what they're doing here. They aren't selling them for $2, people are using a clever workaround to always get them for $2, and they are plugging the hole in their system that allows...
But again, why would I not buy them whole they're being sold for $2?
But that isn't what they're doing here. They aren't selling them for $2, people are using a clever workaround to always get them for $2, and they are plugging the hole in their system that allows that to happen.
Where the entitlement comes from is all the people acting like YouTube is committing some great injustice by doing this. They aren't. Detecting ad blockers is no more right or wrong than using ad blockers, and YouTube doesn't owe free service to anyone.
The clever workaround is the equivalent of getting up to get a bag of chips when the commercials come on. We're acting like circumventing ads is some sort of new moral problem, when every single...
The clever workaround is the equivalent of getting up to get a bag of chips when the commercials come on. We're acting like circumventing ads is some sort of new moral problem, when every single human has done their damn best at doing it since the dawn of commercials in television. Should companies install cameras in people's houses to make sure they're not playing on their phone when the medicine commercials start?
I'll continue to watch the free videos they host, and I'll continue to use NewPipe as long as it works. They can continue to make this as difficult as they want.
Not to mention that the whole philophy that the ad industry is built on is shakey ground in terms of the actual demonstrable efficacy of ads. Like, sure, ads get products known, but I think...
Not to mention that the whole philophy that the ad industry is built on is shakey ground in terms of the actual demonstrable efficacy of ads.
Like, sure, ads get products known, but I think companies have an incentive to feed into the idea that ads drive higher consumption because it means ad companies will continue giving them money.
The reason everyone has an ad blocker and YouTube is still chugging along for decades is probably because it doesn't actually matter if people see all the ads or not, the company-ad agency circlejerk just kind of sustains itself with or without our participation. It's largely a bunch of hot air from people in suits picking eachother's pockets.
. The cost of YouTube running servers and hosting content is that of a private company. I'm not saying ads are good, but that's also why I pay for YouTube Premium.
spam mail helps keep the mail service in the US running
Can I get a source on that? I'd be surprised if that's true. I'm under the impression that the tax dollars that I pay help keep the mail service running in the US.
That's a false equivalency either way. The US Mail service is a public service, run by the government and paid for by the taxpayer. The cost of YouTube running servers and hosting content is that of a private company. I'm not saying ads are good, but that's also why I pay for YouTube Premium.
https://www.uspsoig.gov/our-work/did-you-know/do-my-tax-dollars-pay-postal-service The USPS is entirely funded by usage fees, so spam mail does help to keep the service running.
There's one problem with that. Many of these features didn't used to be locked behind Premium. They used to be available to everyone. Background play, high bitrate 1080p, and more used to be free....
There's one problem with that. Many of these features didn't used to be locked behind Premium. They used to be available to everyone. Background play, high bitrate 1080p, and more used to be free.
Not to mention the quantity of ads has increased exponentially while the quality of said ads has dropped. YouTube turns on ads by default, meaning creators have to go out of there way to turn off ads if they want their content to be uninterrupted and "pure" without distractions and unnecessary clutter.
Finally, while I am not entitled to various features, there are two things I AM entitled to: my time and my privacy.
I don't have all day to watch the content I want to as well as all the trashy ads I'd be forced to watch.
As for my privacy, I will use every ad and tracker blocker I possibly can to protect myself and my mind from corporate influence and my personal info from being sold around.
Finally, if I want to watch one of my favorite creators, I can support them in more meaningful ways, like patreon or merch purchases, both things I do.
My life is my own. I choose to fill it with meaningful things, not ads.
That is true, but the way you can get there is by not watching youtube. You're not entitled to watch youtube for free and no ads. The three options are: Watch youtube for free but with ads, and...
My life is my own. I choose to fill it with meaningful things, not ads.
That is true, but the way you can get there is by not watching youtube. You're not entitled to watch youtube for free and no ads. The three options are:
Watch youtube for free but with ads, and the affect on privacy, yada yada
Pay for youtube premium
Don't watch youtube
You are absolutely entitled to your time, and at least for now, your privacy. But you are not entitled to also get to watch content on youtube. That's having your cake and eating it too, which is possible now, as a result of low interest rates for the last decade and being subsidized by people who do watch ads + premium subscribers. It may not be in the near future, at least without substantial effort.
Yes, I am. This is my computer and on my computer runs what I want it to run. And that is not ads. If YouTube does not want me to see the videos without the ads, they should not deliver the videos...
Exemplary
You're not entitled to watch youtube for free and no ads.
Yes, I am. This is my computer and on my computer runs what I want it to run. And that is not ads. If YouTube does not want me to see the videos without the ads, they should not deliver the videos to my computer when it asks for them.
This may sound like a technical argument, but it isn't. This is no different than skipping all pages with ads in a free magazine to get to the one interesting article that has substance. Forcing the reader to look at all ads in the magazine sounds rather dystopian to me, yet that is what we are talking about here. The option of skipping the ads is part of the deal, it has been for ages. Just like that it is not immoral to change the channel or walk away to get a snack when the TV displays an ad. If the publisher does not like that, they should choose a different way to make money.
That is what YouTube is doing, no? You should be happy to hear then, that YouTube is currently trying to block adblock users from viewing the site. Woohoo! 🥳🥳 I wouldn't be surprised if they were...
If YouTube does not want me to see the videos without the ads, they should not deliver the videos to my computer when it asks for them.
That is what YouTube is doing, no? You should be happy to hear then, that YouTube is currently trying to block adblock users from viewing the site. Woohoo! 🥳🥳
I wouldn't be surprised if they were also working on embedding the ads directly into the video stream as opposed to being separate videos - that's how Twitch does the live ads, and it's much harder to block. Hopefully they managed to crack down on those adblockers!
No, that is not what they are doing. As explained in the article, they are running some software in my browser that blocks the video from playing. As this is my device, I have the right to not run...
That is what YouTube is doing, no?
No, that is not what they are doing. As explained in the article, they are running some software in my browser that blocks the video from playing. As this is my device, I have the right to not run that piece of code. Or, in this case, I have the right to run another piece of code that counteracts the negative effects: an adblocker. YouTube still happily serves the video if my computer makes the correct request.
And this is all not new, nor is it illegal. Programs that work by making the right request to the YouTube server have existed for ages (youtube-dl, yt-dlp, etc.) and I am sure movie and record companies would have taken them offline if they had any ground. (There was this incident where the documentation of youtube-dl contained instructions on how to directly copy a copyrighted video, but it blew over in a week, or so.)
I wouldn't be surprised if they were also working on embedding the ads directly into the video stream as opposed to being separate videos
I would be surprised if they could pull that off soon, but that is a different topic. Even if they embed the ads directly in the video stream, this would be no different than the old days, when we just taped the show and fast forwarded through the commercials. (I bet you could even teach an LLM to do that) No-one thought that was illegal or immoral.
When your moral argument depends on a technicality, it collapses when the technology changes. It seems foolish to assume the technology will change in your favor when Google holds all the cards....
When your moral argument depends on a technicality, it collapses when the technology changes. It seems foolish to assume the technology will change in your favor when Google holds all the cards.
What's the technicality? It's not immoral to change the channel during commercials. It's never been immoral, and people from the 80s and 90s would've looked at you funny if you suggested it was....
What's the technicality? It's not immoral to change the channel during commercials. It's never been immoral, and people from the 80s and 90s would've looked at you funny if you suggested it was. There's never been a moral obligation to watch ads.
I meant the technical details of how YouTube works in a browser, and therefore how adblockers work: ... Maybe, but this isn't how things work for console games or for many mobile apps, and the...
I meant the technical details of how YouTube works in a browser, and therefore how adblockers work:
This is my computer and on my computer runs what I want it to run.
...
I have the right to run another piece of code that counteracts the negative effects
Maybe, but this isn't how things work for console games or for many mobile apps, and the companies that sell you the technology needed to view YouTube aren't required to sell you a device that works the way you want.
This isn't to say we won't have general-purpose computing devices, but nothing requires YouTube to work on them.
The open web is a truce. There's always been cheating and it's generally tolerated. If it gets bad enough, though, maybe the truce could break down entirely?
That's drastic, so a safer bet is that the blocker / anti-blocker games will likely continue.
(And of course you aren't required to watch the ads regardless, but that's different from having the technology to run an adblocker.)
Aren't these just arguments that because the market tolerates certain bad things, they are actually not bad? I get your normative framing, but a game console is a phone is a computer,...
Aren't these just arguments that because the market tolerates certain bad things, they are actually not bad? I get your normative framing, but a game console is a phone is a computer, architecturally, and I doubt anyone arguing for a principled defense of adblockers wouldn't also decry those trends.
It's more of a "here's why we can't have nice things" argument. Widespread cheating results in things getting locked down more, because the companies providing the goods and services don't like...
It's more of a "here's why we can't have nice things" argument. Widespread cheating results in things getting locked down more, because the companies providing the goods and services don't like it.
Example: at one time the New York Times gave away 10 free articles a month based on cookies, people figured out how to get around it, and they stopped doing that. There was also BugMeNot which was used to share password credentials. Nowadays, archive sites are the way we often share paywalled articles, but I expect that will get shut down eventually.
Or, in a real world example, in urban areas in the US, stores started locking up the shelves where they keep detergent, due to widespread shoplifting. Sometimes if they can't get shoplifting under control, they close. In other parts of the country, they don't do that, because they don't need to.
So, I don't know if it will happen, but a plausible scenario is that widespread ad blocking will eventually cause services like YouTube to abandon the open web entirely. Or, only work in certain locked-down browsers.
Moral arguments about "I can do whatever I want on my computer" don't really engage with the idea that there's another player in the game and if it gets too one-sided, they have a say in what rules they will play by.
It's the slippery slope argument then. One person does this, then another and another and pretty soon we can't have nice things. It's an argument made in fear of losing what you currently have, so...
It's the slippery slope argument then. One person does this, then another and another and pretty soon we can't have nice things. It's an argument made in fear of losing what you currently have, so the person making the argument wants to play the gatekeeper or enforcer.
Empirically, it doesn't hold up.
To google, we are numbers that make up a statistic. Google makes so much money, it actually doesn't need youtube to make money. Apparently it has never made money directly. But... it does bring people into google's sphere of influence, and that is valuable for their overall ad business, which makes more money than God.
To you, the story's simple. "I have means (either money or time) to pay for something I enjoy. 'Cheaters' want to make this thing cost more for me, so GTFO cheaters."
But empirically, it is highly likely no part of your calculation is correct. You don't know how much you are paying for your use of youtube, so you can't know how much it costs you. If you subscribe, they make much more from tracking your activities than they ever do from the few bucks you send their way each month. If you watch ads, you have no basis for knowing how much those ads are worth. Oh, and it has nothing to do with google "supporting" creators. Google is apparently cracking down on "sponsored segments" of videos, which are deals made by creators directly with advertising agents. Why? Because the creators go around Google.
Has google ever been audited for their ad clicks and impressions to see if the payouts actually match the impressions? It's a funny money economy.
Also, how much are "freeloaders" taking away from the creator? If you watch an ad without clicking anything, or if you choose the skip button without waiting 30 seconds for a full view, very little, if anything is made from the ad. You've paid (your time), but nobody else got benefits. You were exposed to 5 seconds of a jingle and the ad buyer didn't even have to pay. Apparently adsense on youtube is divided up into CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and CPC (cost per click). If you are shown a CPC ad and didn't click, the creator didn't get paid. Google didn't get paid. Only you paid. If I watch 20 videos in a month with an ad blocker, each with a possible four ads, two of which, on average, are CPC ads (I'll never click an ad), and the other two CPM at, say $6 per thousand impressions, then I've cost various creators, drum roll, 14 cents (60% of 24 cents) that month. Less than a penny per video. I've cost google 24 cents. Does it cost 24 cents to host 20 videos and distribute it to a single person? Doubt it. Fractions of a penny.
Now, how much is my time worth? 20 videos a month, 4 ads apiece, half of which I can skip (after 5 seconds), the other half take an average of 30s of my time. That's 23 minutes for the month. Going rate for minimum wage is $15/hr, that's $5.90 Google is costing me to watch ads on youtube. Even at the federal minimum wage, it's still costing me $2.75 for the privilege of watching youtube. Obviously, many many people value their time at more than minimum wage.
And then they go and charge the advertiser $0.24 and pay each creator $.007.
How much does Alphabet make in a year for revenue? They are a public company that makes the vast majority of their revenue from adsense, and this is published. $283 BILLION. per. year. In 2022 (before they put this policy in place). They literally make $35/person/year if you count the entire world population. If you turned their ad business into a subscription business, well, I guess you pay the $12/mo subscription fee. Works out, I suppose.
But remember, you cost them only 24cents a month in ad revenue. This is why I won't subscribe. Google makes more money than God Himself, and if you pay for the "privilege" of getting things ad free, you are literally just paying double.
These arguments about YouTube’s finances are pretty speculative, and in any case, irrelevant to whether the deal they offer makes sense for consumers. I pay for a subscription because there’s...
These arguments about YouTube’s finances are pretty speculative, and in any case, irrelevant to whether the deal they offer makes sense for consumers. I pay for a subscription because there’s music I like to listen to, I don’t like watching the ads, and I can afford it. If I’m not using it much, maybe I’ll cancel.
How much money they make or choose to lose isn’t our problem, it’s theirs.
It does seem pretty clear that watching YouTube, without ads, for free, is not a deal they offer. It’s something people try to take, and they use spurious moral reasoning to justify it.
Alright, thanks for the expansion, the examples were very helpful. I guess my only response is that those proposed outcomes are ones I'd be in favour of. The sooner we stop giving businesses like...
Alright, thanks for the expansion, the examples were very helpful. I guess my only response is that those proposed outcomes are ones I'd be in favour of. The sooner we stop giving businesses like Alphabet the latitude we would to a personal blog, the better. Of course the outcome might be those, but worse: the internet isn't even treated as neutral or as a means of communication, just as the ultimate mechanism of corporate/tyrannical control. We often forget our own complicity with these things, and maybe the promise of free infinite video storage and distribution is a siren song that most of us are gladly drowning our future for.
Regarding moral arguments in general, yeah, they are not descriptive or pragmatic. That's the point, that sometimes those arguments ignore the full picture. If I own my computer, I will own it if I have the chance. Entertainment or, what, social media?, is just not worth that price on a social scale, to give so much power to such small and unaccountable parties, to ratchet the dependency on passive consumption even further, and the reality otherwise would not change that. Normatively people at that point would almost certainly pay it no mind, but child labor, pollution, and gang violence are all still worth fighting.
There are downsides. For example, I like being able to share a YouTube link with a reasonable expectation that someone else will be able to view it. This isn't the case for a Spotify link. But as...
There are downsides. For example, I like being able to share a YouTube link with a reasonable expectation that someone else will be able to view it. This isn't the case for a Spotify link.
There are alternative structures to supply the same principle services. Localities could give server space to citizens, culture could shift to one where everyone knows somebody who runs a small...
There are alternative structures to supply the same principle services. Localities could give server space to citizens, culture could shift to one where everyone knows somebody who runs a small video host, there are a ton of possible ways to allow us to share videos. But we all know that sitting in front of autoplay is bad for us, that Youtube has never been profitable, that the ease for any given video to go viral is fairly unimportant for society as long as we can still share, I could go on. Plenty of reason not to get too hung up on Youtube itself, even if we have to suffer through years of no replacement.
There’s a lot of stuff on YouTube I don’t care about (and I don’t use autoplay), but I would miss being able to watch musicians’ performances from all over the world. Often these are copyright...
There’s a lot of stuff on YouTube I don’t care about (and I don’t use autoplay), but I would miss being able to watch musicians’ performances from all over the world. Often these are copyright violations, uploads of old videos where getting the rights would be very difficult, so any alternative system would need a way of dealing with that. I don’t think it’s as easily done as you say.
What’s “important to society” doesn’t really enter into it.
I didn't say anything would be easy. There's a clear and objective value to the services Youtube offers, like you say. That doesn't mean they deserve infinite rope.
I didn't say anything would be easy. There's a clear and objective value to the services Youtube offers, like you say. That doesn't mean they deserve infinite rope.
If youtube wants to limit itself to a purpose built console or app, that's their choice. They are free to do that. They certainly can control the user experience better that way. They choose to...
If youtube wants to limit itself to a purpose built console or app, that's their choice. They are free to do that. They certainly can control the user experience better that way.
They choose to open their market to the general purpose web browser market for greater exposure. That's their choice as well.
The discussion went on without me and most things I wanted to say have already been said by others, but regarding this: This truce has already been broken for a long time. Specifically by the kind...
The discussion went on without me and most things I wanted to say have already been said by others, but regarding this:
The open web is a truce. There's always been cheating and it's generally tolerated. If it gets bad enough, though, maybe the truce could break down entirely?
This truce has already been broken for a long time. Specifically by the kind of centralized, ad-driven, rent seeking services like YouTube. They managed to push out all alternatives by spending a gigantic amount of money and now they think they have what they wanted: control over who sees what. This the opposite of that truce of the open web. If anything, ad blocking is a way to restore the balance.
I’m not sure what truce you’re imagining. If you make up some terms and try to impose them on the other party and they reject them then there’s not actually any truce at all, which is why there’s...
I’m not sure what truce you’re imagining. If you make up some terms and try to impose them on the other party and they reject them then there’s not actually any truce at all, which is why there’s a cat-and-mouse game between ad blockers and anti-blockers.
The truce I meant is the business model where we get a surprising amount of stuff for free in turn for putting up with ads. This is how Google worked from not long after it launched, though the ads were much less intrusive back then.
It’s breaking down in a lot of ways. Some newspapers couldn’t make it work so they went with subscriptions. Other websites like Netflix and Spotify have always been subscription-based. YouTube is moving in that direction too.
There’s another truce that YouTube is built on, though, which is that content providers largely put up with widespread copyright infringement because Google built a system for taking it down or alternatively getting paid. Without that, if Google hadn’t bought them, YouTube probably would have been sued out of existence long ago.
It’s a messy agreement that’s actually quite difficult to make work and nobody else has managed it, which I think is the reason YouTube competitors haven’t really worked out.
Sorry, for the confusion. I was indeed talking about something related, but slightly different. I apologize. When you mentioned the Open Web I thought of the original web, the one from before we...
The truce I meant is the business model where we get a surprising amount of stuff for free in turn for putting up with ads.
Sorry, for the confusion. I was indeed talking about something related, but slightly different. I apologize.
When you mentioned the Open Web I thought of the original web, the one from before we had services like YouTube. Back then it was generally understood that the internet was an open and free technology for communicating information. The open and free meant that on one hand everyone was free to publish whatever they wanted, in whatever form, but also on the other hand that everyone else was free to use (consume) this information the way they wanted. A good example of that was that the early versions of HTML only contained content and structural information, but hardly any way of styling the page, like colors and fonts. This was because it was assumed that everyone would read the webpage in way they preferred, adjusted for their own screen and style preferences.
So everyone and their mother was going to be a publisher of content and in some ways that has come true. There are now dozens of options if you want to start your own blog. A lot of them are free, or nearly free, and user friendly. And they are run by companies that seem to be doing well.
With video it is different. For the average user YouTube is the only realistic option. Self hosting is a lot harder, there aren't really any competitors. So for video there is not really an Open Web anymore. You will always have to deal with Google, their terms, their idiocracies and their rates.
This is different than Netflix, for example. Even though they also stream videos, no-one advocates for a Netflix equivalent of youtube-dl. People got cranky when they started disabling password sharing, because something that was always allowed suddenly wasn't. But overall it was a huge win for Netflix, they sold a lot more subscriptions.
Why these different reactions from the general public? I think it is because Netflix does not set the expectation that they are an open platform where everyone can post and watch. No-one that filmed their cat doing something funny wished there was a way they could publish it on Netflix.
A platform cannot pose as a platform for the free, open and decentralized web and on the other hand act like full on commercial service with subscribers and fees. Ad-supported platforms are not a good compromise and I am glad that they are slowly going away.
I do remember when some of the Internet was technically non-commercial (NFSNet). But that ended with the dot-com boom, before Google or YouTube existed. I think some people are redefining...
I do remember when some of the Internet was technically non-commercial (NFSNet). But that ended with the dot-com boom, before Google or YouTube existed.
I think some people are redefining “decentralization” and the “open web” to be something more than it was. The web is “open” because anyone can create their own website and you can link to anyone else’s website. There’s no particular limit on how big or commercial a web site can be, so you can start your own business. It includes very large websites like YouTube. That basic deal is still working, since people can still link to YouTube videos and link out again.
We can see this fraying with paywall sites since it discourages linking in. (We work around it with archive sites.) Also, Facebook never was very suitable for linking in, and Twitter has become hostile to both incoming and outgoing links. There are also mobile-only services that aren’t on the web at all.
Since then people have come up with other ideas about what “decentralized” means.
You’re also painting YouTube as some kind of bait-and-switch scheme, but I think it’s quite well-known that you can upload videos for free, but viewers might see ads? It doesn’t seem like people are misled about that, though they might be about other things.
I’ve uploaded a bunch of accordion videos and don’t want to pay to host them. I like that someone else pays and I can share links on other websites. Maybe you don’t like that deal, but I think it’s okay until something better comes along.
Paying the hosting costs yourself is reasonable for text and images but not for video, it seems? I haven’t really looked into the costs, though.
You’re appealing to public sentiment about YouTube versus Netflix, but I imagine that if a tool like youtube-dl were available for Netflix, many people would use it and come up with some kind of justification, much like BitTorrent users do for torrents. I haven’t looked, but I expect there are torrents of popular Netflix shows? It’s a different kind of content sharing because links to Netflix aren’t so useful and people search on the names of shows instead.
But that is what is disappearing. You can send me the link to a video, but the content behind that link is not consumable for everyone. YouTube, not the creator of the video, tries to impose...
That basic deal is still working, since people can still link to YouTube videos and link out again.
But that is what is disappearing. You can send me the link to a video, but the content behind that link is not consumable for everyone. YouTube, not the creator of the video, tries to impose restrictions on the client that consumes it. To me this means that YouTube is not open anymore.
You’re also painting YouTube as some kind of bait-and-switch scheme, but I think it’s quite well-known that you can upload videos for free, but viewers might see ads?
The bait and switch is that by making it so easy and free, they put all the alternatives out of business and now they are the only one left. Now they slowly are making it less and less free, also for the videos that were uploaded years ago. Now I don't think many people actually trusted Google to never do that, but they are making a one-sided change to the deal.
Paying the hosting costs yourself is reasonable for text and images but not for video, it seems? I haven’t really looked into the costs, though.
When YouTube started the hosting costs were a really big deal. That's the reason they became big. But I can't imagine that is still the case. Maybe for feature length movies, but not for that three minute cat video.
I imagine that if a tool like youtube-dl were available for Netflix, many people would use it and come up with some kind of justification,
Sure, there always will be piracy and also people that defend it. But to me that really is a different argument. You have to trust me on that :)
Could you say more about this? It sounds like you're claiming that for some people it's hard to view a YouTube video. It's true that there are many of us who decide not to watch YouTube videos...
But that is what is disappearing. You can send me the link to a video, but the content behind that link is not consumable for everyone.
Could you say more about this? It sounds like you're claiming that for some people it's hard to view a YouTube video.
It's true that there are many of us who decide not to watch YouTube videos when they're shared on Tildes. (I prefer to read a transcript for anything nonfiction.) but that's different from being unable to do it if we're sufficiently interested.
Yes, that is what I am saying. For something to be part of that Open Web, it must be possible to retrieve it using free and public protocols (like HTTP) and be presented in public and free formats...
Could you say more about this? It sounds like you're claiming that for some people it's hard to view a YouTube video.
Yes, that is what I am saying. For something to be part of that Open Web, it must be possible to retrieve it using free and public protocols (like HTTP) and be presented in public and free formats (Like HTML and JavaScript), so that any software that implements these protocols and formats can process it without restrictions. If something extra is necessary to process it and that something extra is not free and public, then the document/video/service is not part of the Open Web.
Google tries really hard to add that something extra and make it so that not every software program can access the video, even if that software implements all the public protocols and formats. In this case: browsers with certain extensions enabled. They are actively trying to deny access to a group of perfectly fine software implementations.
You might say that the video is still accessible, because you can disable that extension with only a few simple steps. But that is not how it works. Just about any service is accessible if you add "... and a few simple steps" to the list of instructions. My bank account is part of the Open Web if you use a browser "and a few simple steps".
A prerequisite that people use an unmodified mainstream browser to view a video is obviously not the same sort of prerequisite as needing to know ewintr’s bank password. It’s certainly true that...
A prerequisite that people use an unmodified mainstream browser to view a video is obviously not the same sort of prerequisite as needing to know ewintr’s bank password.
It’s certainly true that it’s getting harder all the time to build a new web browser that does all the things mainstream browsers do. This has consequences. The consequences are rather indirect though. They don’t break the web for most people. Some people’s workflows are affected and they may have to use other software that they don’t prefer, but they aren’t actually cut off.
The goal of having open data, that “any software that implements these protocols and formats can process it without restrictions” is a worthy one, but it’s unproblematic only when people explicitly choose to publish their work that way. Consent is important! Publishing your art on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean you want it to be screen-scraped and copied everywhere. (And used to train AI’s, too.)
This is a conflict between authors, who want to control how their content is viewed and (sometimes) make money, and viewers who want to do whatever they like and often don’t respect authors’ wishes at all.
YouTube is in the middle of that, so there are some messy compromises. YouTube is unlikely to be replaced by something that doesn’t make messy compromises. There are “pirate” websites that don’t respect copyright (a fair description of YouTube when it started) but they can’t go mainstream unless they clean up their act somehow.
Web browsers are in the middle of that, too. It reminds me of how many people got upset about DRM in the browser, which enables sites like Netflix. Somehow the world didn’t end. People kept on using Netflix - or not.
Publishing your work as open data is certainly something some authors want to do. I would like to see authors get full control over this. For YouTube authors, just like you can decide whether your video is public or not, ideally you should be able to decide whether to enable downloads or not. (In the meantime, you can link to a file hosted elsewhere.)
This isn’t what youtube-dl does, though. It’s a tool that’s fundamentally not consent-based, for ignoring what the authors want and doing whatever you like.
We are sometimes authors and sometimes the audience, and often inconsistent. On Tildes we commonly use archive websites to get past paywalls, which is surely not getting consent. Many people have music they didn’t pay for, even musicians. YouTube itself is built on widespread copyright infringement. It’s a mess. European data regulators would surely not approve.
I expect a slow evolution towards having more technical restrictions that encourage people to respect authors’ wishes somewhat more, at least when using mainstream software. Meanwhile there is movement (largely due to a push from European regulations) towards respecting viewer’s rights more. If this continues, it will result in a more rule-based Internet where you can’t get away with some stuff that you can now.
But a prerequisite nonetheless. Thus placing both at the same side of the line that divides the web into open en not open. Agreed. You should also be able to decide that the video is watchable...
A prerequisite that people use an unmodified mainstream browser to view a video is obviously not the same sort of prerequisite as needing to know ewintr’s bank password.
But a prerequisite nonetheless. Thus placing both at the same side of the line that divides the web into open en not open.
Consent is important! Publishing your art on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean you want it to be screen-scraped and copied everywhere.
Agreed.
For YouTube authors, just like you can decide whether your video is public or not, ideally you should be able to decide whether to enable downloads or not.
You should also be able to decide that the video is watchable with any app that is capable of downloading it, including the ones with ad blockers. As you said, the author should be in control. Now they are not, YouTube is.
This would not be a problem if there were alternatives that were roughly as user friendly as YouTube and where you'd have as much change to find an audience for your work, even if it would cost a small amount of money, or be a little more work. Then you could just upload your video somewhere else and let YouTube do whatever its want without your content. But these alternatives don't exist and won't be coming for some time, thanks to the bait and switch we talked about earlier.
So I still think that YouTube used to pose as an open service (in the sense that I described above), tricked everyone into uploading their videos for years so there was no viable alternative anymore, and now becomes less open for rent-seeking purposes.
I expect a slow evolution towards having more technical restrictions that encourage people to respect authors’ wishes somewhat more, at least when using mainstream software. Meanwhile there is movement (largely due to a push from European regulations) towards respecting viewer’s rights more. If this continues, it will result in a more rule-based Internet where you can’t get away with some stuff that you can now.
An internet where creators can pick from a wide range of options and conditions when publishing their work. That would be wonderful. It feels unlikely that the YouTube we know could be a big part of that ideal world.
Of course I'm entitled. Google is using my computer, my bandwidth, to redirect me to a server I didn't choose to ping. That's on them. I run software on my computer that disallows the redirect....
Of course I'm entitled. Google is using my computer, my bandwidth, to redirect me to a server I didn't choose to ping. That's on them. I run software on my computer that disallows the redirect. That's my choice.
Google does it's thing, hoping in the aggregate, most are going to allow them to use a redirect to serve ads.
I do my thing, keeping my computer from doing things I don't want it to do.
Google can always embed ads in videos so no redirect is required. Watch the video, the ad is always there, for all time. But they choose not to do that because they believe it will make them less money, in the aggregate. In fact, the reason why people see such crappy ads are because they are ubiquitously served by ad servers, rather than being narrowly tailored to the content and the people likely to be consuming said content. It makes them cheap.
I am not responsible for helping Google make money, and I have the right to make my computer do only the things I want it to. That is my entitlement. There were video servers prior to youtube, and there will be video servers after youtube. In fact, youtube is responsible for putting many of these video servers out of business.
Adblockers are a thing that almost everyone used to use. It was called "Fast Forward Buttons" and they were on every VCR and DVR in the nation. Don't worry, if everyone switched to premium to...
Adblockers are a thing that almost everyone used to use.
It was called "Fast Forward Buttons" and they were on every VCR and DVR in the nation.
Don't worry, if everyone switched to premium to escape ads, they'll just put ads in premium too. It happened with cable, it'll happen with streaming.
And blocking it will be ever-more legitimate when you have no choice to pay to opt-out.
You're probably right that there's some predilection to certain behaviors among people using adblockers, though I don't know that it's quite as you say it. If adblocking is more like magic to some...
You're probably right that there's some predilection to certain behaviors among people using adblockers, though I don't know that it's quite as you say it.
If adblocking is more like magic to some people, a useful tool or means to an end, then I could see those people having such a predilection towards entitlement. However that is true in a lot of tech fields and probably can apply to anything outside of tech that can be too complicated for the layperson to understand. It's magic, it just works...until it doesn't, then the frustration of not understanding why it doesn't work sets in, which for someone that never understood how it worked at all, the more mystifying it is when it doesn't because something in non-working state usually requires more knowledge to understand how it works to understand how it stopped working and how to get it working again.
My general litmus test for determining if something is sustainable long-term, I ask what would happen if everyone else in the world decided to do it as well. If everyone used YouTube with an adblocker and Google had no way to stop that, then the site would probably shut down tomorrow. There is no way it can exist as a truly free service.
I also do this, though in the case of Youtube, it can't be considered in a vacuum. It wouldn't just be Youtube that ceases to exist, it would be many other things. In that hypothetical world, you can't necessarily turn from one service and go to another. It would be a world where everyone would be forced to adapt to a paradigm where advertising doesn't exist, and you have to pay if you want those things, or you can choose to not pay. Basically, I think that it puts everything on an even playing field, because you know what you're paying for when you remove advertising out of the equation, and some services could actually still survive. Youtube in this hypothetical could still survive, because people might be willing to pay for it when there's no other option.
The problem with how it is now is that the cost and price of things is obscured by advertising and data collection etc., you don't know what exactly you're paying for or how much you're paying or the true cost of anything. An advertisement on reddit can be more valuable than an advertisement on twitter, or vice versa, if there's a different market on each platform to reach or if there's different datasets collected on users on those platforms that allow better targeting of ads etc. but to the user it's still an ad.
I look at it like comparing products on a shelf in a store. Maybe people just buy the brand names they know, probably because of advertising, or maybe people buy the cheapest product. When there's some balance of brand recognition, what's the deciding factor? Probably price usually, because what else do you really know? Is one toothbrush manufactured more ethically than another? Is one hair care product better for your hair in the long run than another? Perhaps one causes you to lose your hair 5 years earlier than another option would, but that might be 10 years from now, who would even know? All of these products, and process of how they come to be is so complicated and removed from our ability to actually verify all the steps of its existence that you can't necessarily do much else. On the one hand, you can assume anything that does something right, is more ethical, more sustainable, better for the environment etc. is more costly, but on the other hand, if its known you'll buy things that are more expensive because you assume it's better, then bad actors can just mark up their prices to increase margins because you'll assume its better.
So in the same way, I see adblocking as buying the cheapest product on the shelf. Of course technically you aren't buying anything, but clearly as this article is highlighting and as we're finding out over time, you're paying with your time in learning how to block ads or keep up with blocking ads. Up until recently, this cost has been so low because there's so been so little learning required. Download uBlock Origin, don't need to know anything technical at all, don't need to think anything else about it and move on. But this indicates there was some "cost" to an extent, because lots of people don't even know about it or ever have given it a thought. There's of course some people who watch ads because they feel it's the right thing to do, but I'd guess the vast majority just didn't want to think about it, didn't know about it etc. and that shows there's a cost. Now the cost is going up. Now you need to do more work to keep up with adblocking for it to work all the time. And the cost will go up again.
I think the predilection is pretty strong, just based on my admittedly very anecdotal evidence. I work in tech as a software engineer, so most of my peers know about and use ad blockers. A...
I think the predilection is pretty strong, just based on my admittedly very anecdotal evidence.
I work in tech as a software engineer, so most of my peers know about and use ad blockers. A shockingly huge number of them also pirate nearly every piece of media they consume, despite the fact that they could all easily afford it with their comfy 6-figure software engineer salaries in my state which has a pretty low cost of living. They don't pirate because it's their only option. No, they could easily afford a few streaming services and some blu-rays or rentals. They pirate because they got used to it in high school and college, when it made more sense, and now they just think they're entitled to free stuff because they know how to get it and "normies" don't.
You could be right, I don't know anymore than you do, and certainly I know don't know your peers more than you, but I think this ties in with what I was saying before. If I was in your peer's...
They pirate because they got used to it in high school and college, when it made more sense, and now they just think they're entitled to free shit because they know how to get it and "normies" don't.
You could be right, I don't know anymore than you do, and certainly I know don't know your peers more than you, but I think this ties in with what I was saying before. If I was in your peer's shoes, I'd do the same thing.
In some cases, piracy is easier and better. For people who spend their lives learning the intricacies of technology, something that is out of reach of "normies" but is like turning on the tap for water for them, it goes with what I said about the cost of things. They paid an upfront cost of learning the intricacies of technology a long time ago and then small little bits from there on out, or they just happened to be people who have the personality where it might not have even felt like a cost to learn it to begin with. And in some cases it's easier because as you mentioned, they got used to it way back when. Maybe the specific people you refer to view it as entitlement if that's been your experience of them, but I think many people in that situation wouldn't necessarily view it as entitlement. There's also the case that it's just a better experience in some ways. You pay for Netflix, Max or whatever, and the catalogue rotates and things you watch get removed. Now you have to do more work to go find the next service that has it, or sign up to all of them and hope one of them has it (I think there's still some content out there that lands nowhere, if maybe for temporary time). Then there's some situations where offline viewing isn't available with paid services. It was back in the day the case that you were forced to watch unskippable ads and intros on DVDs and blurays and what not, and while that's not the case with any streaming services as far as I know, it's just another example of how sometimes the paid products are worse. Even if you have the money, why would you pay to get a worse experience if you could get a better experience easier and for a lower cost?
I'd also guess your coworkers aren't necessarily the type to go posting in uBlock Origin subreddit complaining about it not working and shitting on the developers, forum moderators and other contributors, since they likely have some understanding of how things work. That isn't to say every person who understands the intricacies of the work are respectful, there's certainly plenty who aren't, but my initial point was that I think the predilection for being an asshole isn't necessarily that people are entitled to blocking ads, but could be that people who lack the capability of understanding how something works might have such a predilection to acting that way and because adblocking has been relatively easy for so long, there's lots of people who lack the capability of understanding that are using them.
This is exactly it. For years now there's been a perpetual cycle of "the ads are too much" "just use an ad blocker then" and the ads increase and so we go. The problem is that I don't doubt that...
This is exactly it. For years now there's been a perpetual cycle of "the ads are too much" "just use an ad blocker then" and the ads increase and so we go.
The problem is that I don't doubt that even without the ad blockers that youtube and our other capitalist overlords that this would happen anyway.
It seems this entire situation can only exist in this weird state of flux. There's no answer, because YouTube existing at all is nonsensical. They don't make money. Period. But they still offer...
It seems this entire situation can only exist in this weird state of flux. There's no answer, because YouTube existing at all is nonsensical. They don't make money. Period. But they still offer free services, and lose money doing so. People have become so very sick of ads running rampant online, but YouTube's only way of making money is advertisements. So people adblock. It's a war of attrition and nobody wins. YouTube is such a cultural phenomenon that people expect it to be free. YouTube wouldn't dare go premium only. So they're stuck in this permanent game of cat and mouse. It's silly. I'm sure their endgame is to exhaust adblock users who are barely hanging on. Users who only barely figured out how to install a chrome extension. If they make it just a little harder, they can further reduce the demographic that blocks ads, and squeeze a little more money out.
Unfortunately I have to disagree with you. As an autistic person modern digital advertising is overstimulating. What's more, in my country (Singapore), Youtube's adverts consist of, I would say,...
Unfortunately I have to disagree with you. As an autistic person modern digital advertising is overstimulating. What's more, in my country (Singapore), Youtube's adverts consist of, I would say, 70% scams read in annoying voices or misleading content. (The other 30% come from big companies with their general flashy bright colors and dumb earworm jingles that are simple enraging distraction.) It doesn't seem like Youtube is willing to address it at all either.
Like it or not, Youtube has become too big a dispensary of information for nobody to be able to avoid it. I cannot just, even though I want to, avoid using Youtube without being at a massive information inconvinence. I should not be forced to pay a company just because of my disability. I don't have that money, either.
If ads are annoying for neurotypicals imagine just how bad it is if your senses are wired up even more strongly to detect small details. I can't stand one more second of "Did you know you could make money just by posting online" read by the worst person on earth. So unfortunately, Youtube is unavoidable, and adblockers are the only way I can stay sane browsing it and indeed anywhere online. Do not roadblock or paywall people's access to crucial information.
What can be done, though? I have no clue. I wish they'd make Youtube into a non-profit but so many people make money off of it. Someone has to suffer at the end of the day but I will say the current state of Youtube advertising is unacceptable still.
It might be important to draw a distinction between common goods/services that simply exist vs goods/services provided by a for-profit company. If everyone uses a gasoline car, the CO2 emissions...
I don't know how to really solve these problems.
It might be important to draw a distinction between common goods/services that simply exist vs goods/services provided by a for-profit company.
If everyone uses a gasoline car, the CO2 emissions will cause the global temperature to rise, causing drought and famine. Classic tragedy of the commons situation-- we have a moral obligation to stop this.
If everyone uses an adblocker on YouTube, then YouTube will either need to find a way to make money or shut down. These consequences seem fine? As long as there is money to be made, a competitor will step in and offer what people want to pay for.
Companies aren't people. They don't have an inherent right to exist. We don't have a moral obligation to subsidize companies with unsustainable business practices-- and in some cases it might be better for everyone to let them fail.
This is where I think it falls apart though. YouTube has a way to make money, it's called YouTube Premium. The problem is a lot of people won't buy that because they can effectively get it for...
If everyone uses an adblocker on YouTube, then YouTube will either need to find a way to make money or shut down. These consequences seem fine? As long as there is money to be made, a competitor will step in and offer what people want to pay for.
This is where I think it falls apart though. YouTube has a way to make money, it's called YouTube Premium. The problem is a lot of people won't buy that because they can effectively get it for free with an adblocker.
Big companies are evil and only act in their own self interest, but many consumers are the same way.
My biggest problem with this situation is how entitled so many people are behaving, like YouTube is depriving them of something they are owed. But I don't think YouTube owes anybody anything. If you want ad-free YouTube, either pay up or design a better adblocker. But nobody has any room here to complain, especially not this loudly.
I'd agree that no one is entitled to YouTube videos. Arguing that YouTube owes us videos is simply absurd. YouTube exists to make money. It has just as much right to block ad blockers as consumers...
I'd agree that no one is entitled to YouTube videos. Arguing that YouTube owes us videos is simply absurd. YouTube exists to make money. It has just as much right to block ad blockers as consumers have the right to use them in the first place.
Can we still be mad that Youtube is doubling down on ad blocking? Like you, I'm split on this. On one hand, we would be naive to think that free video hosting for everyone would last forever. On the other hand, YouTube is abusing its market dominant position to squeeze both creators and consumers in a seemingly desperate play to extract more profits. In fact, this was YouTube's strategy all along: operate at a loss or at razor thin margins until they're the biggest player, then aggressively monetize.
Frankly, I don't think consumers should tolerate this kind of business practice. And this is the only point where I truly disagree with you. Subscribing to YouTube premium is equivalent to endorsing Youtube's anti-consumer business strategy. Paying them now means letting them get away with it. I couldn't argue that paying YouTube is better for anyone except for Google shareholders.
I'd prefer to see folks not use YouTube at all. In my view, using YouTube with an ad blocker still results in a better outcome for everyone than paying for the subscription. I don't think we're entitled to YouTube videos, but I think we have the responsibility as consumers to only pay for services that we think should continue to exist.
Not to get too philosophical, but have you ever read Kant? I also try to do this, I think it leads to better outcomes. (=
My general litmus test for determining if something is sustainable long-term, I ask what would happen if everyone else in the world decided to do it as well.
Not to get too philosophical, but have you ever read Kant?
I also try to do this, I think it leads to better outcomes. (=
Combinations of sheer entitlement and the desire to be "FIRST" ramped up to 11. It's one of the reasons I throughly dislike having to engage with almost any member of the public digitally now.
Combinations of sheer entitlement and the desire to be "FIRST" ramped up to 11. It's one of the reasons I throughly dislike having to engage with almost any member of the public digitally now.
It's a very self perpetuating problem imo. Everyone wants to be first and it gives them the sense of being unique in a very specific moment in time, and that kinda drives the mentality of wanting...
It's a very self perpetuating problem imo. Everyone wants to be first and it gives them the sense of being unique in a very specific moment in time, and that kinda drives the mentality of wanting to be first. The internet has really shown that we're not the most unique people anymore, for better or worse.
What's scarier to me, is that I don't think it would be easy to tell if this is a grass roots group of people doing this, or Alphabet / Google / Youtube Astroturfing a campaign to do the same...
What's scarier to me, is that I don't think it would be easy to tell if this is a grass roots group of people doing this, or Alphabet / Google / Youtube Astroturfing a campaign to do the same thing.
It's like the old saying "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." Given the ability to obscure and drown the truth on a forum like reddit, I can't say for certain it's just entitled people making those comments.
Agreed. And it makes me swing far into the opposite direction every time I make a bug report or contact support, probably too far in fact. I make sure to start every message with words of thanks,...
Agreed. And it makes me swing far into the opposite direction every time I make a bug report or contact support, probably too far in fact. I make sure to start every message with words of thanks, and am probably a bit too polite and non-threatening, to the point it actually makes the message too wordy and obnoxious.
It's hard to change that though, because I see so much shitty, dickish behavior all over the web that I feel I should try to balance it a bit, and let people who write software or make other stuff I enjoy know that they're appreciated and at least some people are really grateful for what they do...
I knew that having multiple adblockers caused issues, because it makes sense. But what the hell Youtube? This is not ok in the slightest. Just having addons shouldn't be reason for being flagged....
I knew that having multiple adblockers caused issues, because it makes sense. But what the hell Youtube?
But here’s the thing: YouTube isn’t just targeting adblockers. Use Privacy Badger? You’ll get flagged. Use Malwarebytes? You’ll get flagged. Set your Edge browser’s tracking protection to “strict”? Yep, you’ll get flagged. So a lot of people think their extensions are safe to use, but actually they’re not.
This is not ok in the slightest. Just having addons shouldn't be reason for being flagged. They have no business looking at that in the first place.
There's this ongoing effort into getting the EU to investigate whether or not this is illegal, and I sincerely hope something comes out of this that slaps alphabet on their hands and tell them to stay out of the cookie jar.
I'm incredibly happy the uBO people are doing their damndest to stay ahead of the curve, and it's terrible to see humans human other people, like we do with so many animals, the planet, and more: Impose selfish short-sightedness until something no longer exists.
I'm content with the short term wins uBO is getting, but I'm looking forward to a more structured, long-term approach that tells google no.
I really do think most people with any sort of public facing role shouldn't be doing social media at all. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Reddit. Let people talk about the technical stuff in GitHub....
I really do think most people with any sort of public facing role shouldn't be doing social media at all. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Reddit. Let people talk about the technical stuff in GitHub. You don't need someone's sob story about how because unlock origin didn't work their dog died; all you need is their log.
I have YouTube Premium, and uBlock is reportedly blocking 992 things on my YouTube right now. So, even if you are paying to not have ads, you still have to use AdBlock?
I have YouTube Premium, and uBlock is reportedly blocking 992 things on my YouTube right now. So, even if you are paying to not have ads, you still have to use AdBlock?
I think most of those are calls to Google Analytics. Most Google apps just ping Google Analytics repeatedly with an interval even if it's blocked, so the block count on Google websites can quickly...
I think most of those are calls to Google Analytics. Most Google apps just ping Google Analytics repeatedly with an interval even if it's blocked, so the block count on Google websites can quickly increase to over a 1000
Adblockers are free, youtube premium is not. It's capitalism. Youtube just has a poor business model. Or poor expectations. How about sites like wikipedia? They rely on donations and don't expect...
Adblockers are free, youtube premium is not. It's capitalism. Youtube just has a poor business model. Or poor expectations. How about sites like wikipedia? They rely on donations and don't expect to bug users into watching/looking at ads to sustain themselves. The most ad-like thing on their site is the pop-up asking for donations. If a site like wikipedia can do it, why not youtube?
Gabe Newell, Valve Software Co-Founder/President I personally haven't pirated a game in 20 years and that's largely in part due to Steam, as well as having a disposable income. I think this also...
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
Gabe Newell, Valve Software Co-Founder/President
I personally haven't pirated a game in 20 years and that's largely in part due to Steam, as well as having a disposable income. I think this also applies to Adblockers/Monetization strategies of YouTube.
I wouldn't have blocked ads if they weren't unskippable multi-minute repeats of the same thing every 10 minutes, especially if they take up double digit percentages of the total play time of a video. I didn't block ads when they were 5-20 seconds and skippable after 5 seconds if you'd seen them before.
I would pay for Youtube if it didn't constantly try to hyper-optimize my recommendations to force me to stay on the site longer and instead provided me with quality content that I asked for and might or might not watch. I do not want to have to meticulously curate my watch history to ensure that one cop/freeman interaction video I watched doesn't dominate my recommendation feed with libertarian/andrew tate/jordan peterson/maga shit for the next month. I don't want to have to watch every single video of content creators I like, upvote and comment on them to ensure I continue to see them in my feed lest they disappear because I wasn't interested in a couple of their videos.
Not only do the pirates help with removing unskippable ads but they also provide tools to make it look like I watched a whole video with one click, because I watched it somewhere else, I liked it and I want to notify the algorithm to include stuff like it in my recommendations. They also provide tools to easily block a user/channel, to watch a video "incognito", to pick and choose the content of a video I want to skip, not just ads/promos but long title cards, recaps, etc and which channels to apply those to.
I actually pay a Nebula subscription to ease my guilt of skipping in-video ads. If Youtube stopped trying to tell me how to watch its content and gave me the tools to watch it the way I want they could have that money.
The operation costs of YouTube are so much higher than those of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is mostly text. The entire Wikipedia (without the images) is a single 23 GB download. YouTube stores exabytes...
The operation costs of YouTube are so much higher than those of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is mostly text. The entire Wikipedia (without the images) is a single 23 GB download. YouTube stores exabytes of videos. You can't fund that with donations. And that's just for storage costs - YouTube also spends much more money on development and on moderation (because YouTube moderators are paid employees unlike Wikipedia moderators who are mostly volunteers)
Maybe yotube should make an actual premium tier that has features instead of no ads. The higher quality of videos could be locked behind premium, as well as the ability to speed up or slow down...
Maybe yotube should make an actual premium tier that has features instead of no ads. The higher quality of videos could be locked behind premium, as well as the ability to speed up or slow down videos. Maybe videos over an hour long are locked behind premium too? So instead of positively punishing us for not using premium (forcing ads on us) it would be a negative punishment that makes more sense: you don't pay for something, you don't get it. But this still allows people to watch basic versions of the video, so people aren't completely left out and can still see the quality of content available, thus making (and keeping) them interested in the possibility of buying premium. Want to see intricate detail on the Slow Mo Guys' channel or some art doodler channel? Pay up. Most AI art generators are like this...
Also, I did find this from a year ago:
Let's use Google Cloud Platform to calculate the opportunity cost of this storage. Google charges customers $0.01/GB or $10/TB per month for Nearline Storage.
Scale this up to a petabyte. Each petabyte is $10,000 per month.
4.3 PB would then be $43,000 / month. So in total the opportunity cost to operate YouTube increases by $188 million /year / year
Google made $257 billion in annual revenue in 2021. $188 million is roughly 0.7% of that.
So it sounds more like they're just being greedy, and the size of the site isn't that big a deal to their wallet. But I wonder what the cost is to run youtube per year.
So instead of having ads, you suggest locking basic service features behind a paywall? I'm not sure most people who use YouTube will pay for this, and it'll just push those who don't away from...
as well as the ability to speed up or slow down videos. Maybe videos over an hour long are locked behind premium too?
So instead of having ads, you suggest locking basic service features behind a paywall? I'm not sure most people who use YouTube will pay for this, and it'll just push those who don't away from using it
I don't see either of those as basic. But that's just me. I could see an equal argument being made that seeing these as basic features is the same "entitlement" as expecting ad free viewing (with...
I don't see either of those as basic. But that's just me. I could see an equal argument being made that seeing these as basic features is the same "entitlement" as expecting ad free viewing (with these features).
I have a device which doesn't have adblockers installed and use it for Youtube. And I absolutely HATE the ads. There' two reasons: first, I rarely use Youtube in the first place and when I do, I...
I have a device which doesn't have adblockers installed and use it for Youtube. And I absolutely HATE the ads. There' two reasons: first, I rarely use Youtube in the first place and when I do, I just want to go straight into the video. My time is limited )yes, I do have better things to do than watch Youtube; I only use it in this case to bring some fun for others). Second... if the ads were actually RELEVANT, I might even watch. But the vast majority of ads out there are for services or products I will never use, because I'm very, very selective about what I use. So the ads are wasting my time in two ways: not just taking up my time, but also for stuff I don't care about.
I heard about Youtube going down the drain several years ago, and it appears we've hit the point where it's just another service that's been hit with enshittification. In that case, I wouldn't mind seeing Youtube bite the dust- the only sad part is that there are a good chunk of people who depend on YT for their own income, but Twitch is always a possibility (side note: I also almost never watch Twitch either).
Another sad part if youtube goes away, is the educational videos and wholesome/fun communities will have to move, and to where? Twitch isn't for every kind of creator. I'm thinking of channels...
Another sad part if youtube goes away, is the educational videos and wholesome/fun communities will have to move, and to where? Twitch isn't for every kind of creator.
I'm thinking of channels like Dad How Do I? And the mom version, too, as well as Daily Dose of Internet.
Really we just need a competitor. Easier said than done ofc. Maybe if Firefox would have their own video site, it could compete. Or Opera, Vivaldi, etc.
This is the most infuriating thing about the internet nowadays. People are so willing to hurl insults and put pressure on things even if they don't fully understand it, even if it's volunteers. The entitlement is real (the idea of digital Karen's is kinda ironic to me, given it's roots, but I don't really know how else to describe it)
I hate to say it, since I use ad blockers myself, but it makes complete sense that they appeal to people who are incredibly entitled.
YouTube (and many other sites) are offering services you can either pay for with real money (YT Premium) or with your attention (advertisements). People using ad blockers or alternative clients on YouTube are basically saying they are entitled to most or all the benefits of YT Premium for free.
My general litmus test for determining if something is sustainable long-term, I ask what would happen if everyone else in the world decided to do it as well. If everyone used YouTube with an adblocker and Google had no way to stop that, then the site would probably shut down tomorrow. There is no way it can exist as a truly free service.
I don't know how to really solve these problems.
I think there’s some important historical context that’s missing here though. In the 90’s/00’s the internet was a cesspit of ads. Brightly flashing marquees, infinitely respawning pop-ups, and recursive histories that made your back button useless. Not to mention how ads running JavaScript or similar were very legitimate attack vectors for viruses. To surf the web without an ad blocker was the digital equivalent of driving without a seatbelt.
Even today, you have things like autoplaying ads and of course all of the tracking across sites.
If advertisers were willing to display static ads of reasonably high quality (like a newspaper) I think this argument would have merit. As it stands, though, online ads both noticeably detract from the user experience and collect much more meta data than any reasonable (non-technical) person could ever imagine.
I had a paragraph written about this, but removed it because it felt tangential. But you're right, adblockers became a thing because ads got too aggressive, and it's been a positive feedback loop ever since.
But back then, blocking ads was really only something us nerds did, because it required more technical knowhow than your average user possessed. You had to use an alternative browser that supported extensions, like Mozilla. Most people didn't even really know browsers other than Internet Explorer existed until Google started advertising Chrome. These days you can get adblockers for Safari on iOS from the App Store. And YouTubers themselves are regularly sponsored by VPN providers that usually list blocking ads as one of their big selling points.
So, I definitely don’t have hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect ad blockers are still rather niche. At least anecdotally, based on the amount of complaints I hear from non-technical friends and in forums about how many ads they still see, I don’t think it’s quite as main stream. From personal experience I can say that my parents and sister would not use an ad blocker if I didn’t install it for them. My wife would, but probably not the best one.
It’s probably eating into profits a bit more than before, but given advertisers consistent persistence to weaponize ads at every opportunity I really don’t blame consumers from fighting back where they can.
Hell, I'm in a software company and still feel like only about 5% of the employees here use ad blockers. If so few technical people use it, my guess is that non technical people use it even less.
I guarantee this is some VP’s pet project and at the end of Q4 they’re going to report to Sundar that they upped revenue by $100MM and all that work and all the time wasted on ad views, ad blocking and ranting will be rewarded with a short smile and a pat on the back. Their promotion is now slightly more certain!
Anecdotally, I work with someone who works with SharePoint on prem and online everyday, much tech savvier than I am when it comes to it. Whenever I look at her browser, ads everywhere. I don't get it.
Thank you.
They are still niche. My family are always inquiring about them and I have attempted to show them just how easy it is to block ads online, they still haven't bothered doing it.
One even thought that blocking ads might be illegal!
The vast, overwhelming majority of internet users see many ads every single day and do not use adblockers. This has become particularly true as mobile devices became the dominant platform to access the web on since adblocking on those is a level of difficulty beyond doing it on the desktop PC.
I have always been aware of the fact advertisers have greater reach than ever before thanks to the rise of Android and IOS with the bulk of those users running no adblocking.
YouTube will be no different, they've even branched out and seen huge growth in the TV market where adblocking can only be achieved using tools like a Pihole, far beyond the technical ability/willingness of most of their users.
Advertisers are making plenty of money, there is no crisis.
This is still true, though not quite as pervasive as it once was. Honestly, I wouldn't even use an ad-blocker if it weren't for the fact that malware is still regularly distributed through ads. I pay for sites that I frequent if they allow me to pay, I was even a Reddit Premium (or whatever it was called) subscriber for YEARS, but I just can't justify allowing a site's ad network to anonymously run whatever code their advertisers have specified on my machine.
Exactly my thinking. I try to support as many sites as I can. I am currently subscribed to NYT, Boston Globe, my local newspaper, and (in fact) YT Premium. That doesn't include the various video streaming services my family wants to watch, too. I can't subscribe to every website I visit, though, and I just philosophically disagree that the only other option for viewing the content should be to put my security and privacy at risk.
What are some examples of malware getting delivered through ads recently? I tend to assume Chrome's security is pretty good, but perhaps I've missed some news.
Here are a couple that I remembered reading.
For example: https://medium.com/avmconsulting-blog/malvertising-is-a-growing-menace-5127a48e951e
One of the national newspapers in my country served up Chrome for Android hijacking ads for years. The ad would open pop-ups that could not be easily closed and would vibrate the phone.
I don't know how it did this exactly but it happened repeatedly to me over a couple of years. Each time it happened to me I informed them that some bad actor was delivering browser hijacking ads on whatever ad network they were using. Never got any reply.
One day it happened and I said f-it, that was the day I rooted the phone and was able to use /etc/hosts level blocking of advertising networks at last. That solved the problem.
Of course you can just use Firefox etc with uBlock origin these days so such measures are not required but advertisers pissed off technically adept-enough users enough that many decided to just universally block ads a long time ago now, I seem to remember reaching this point some time before 2010 on my desktop PC.
If everybody in the world adblocked, businesses would have to find a sustainable way of making money without trying to psychologically manipulate people. If that means Google shuts down, good. There's money to be made in there, so a better company will take its place.
Yeah, Youtube would be premium only. Which I think would be unfortunate for all involved - for people who don't like ads, you can already pretend that youtube is premium only. For the people who can't afford premium, they are now no longer able to watch youtube at all, even though many were willing to watch ads in return. For youtube, they likely would make less money with this scheme. Triple Ls.
I mean, I personally miss the time when the only relationship I had with a business was that I gave them some money, they gave me a product or a service, and that was the end of our interaction.
A Google that makes less money is a big W for me, not an L. The only real L here is poor people, but that's a societal problem. You could suggest that movie theatres be free, but everyone needs to have a camera installed in their home so that theatres can sell that recording to ad agencies to make up for it. That'd be awful, and I'd rather pay 15 bucks or whatever than do that.
Things cost money. I am willing to pay money. I am not willing to give any company anything that's not money. Not my information, and not my time.
So it sounds like you're happy with the option of just paying for something like YouTube Premium?
Then the question becomes, does it bother you that people who don't pay for YouTube can still access it for free by watching ads?
In a way it does for me (I'm also not the person you replied to), because as we've seen with streaming services, they're constantly comparing their premium subscription services to revenue from ad-supported subscriptions. Recently it's just been one quarterly report after another talking about how great the margins are for the ad-supported users, and how they're increasing prices for premium subscriptions to encourage more ad-supported subscriptions.
For example there was this one a few months back
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/business/media/disney-earnings.html
And all the other streaming services have been doing the same thing. This also has the effect of making it so you can't just "pretend their free/ad-supported services don't exist" and just subscribe to their premium version, because it shows the pricing for their premium version isn't necessarily fairly priced. It could be, or maybe it's not, there's no way to know. If you pay for it, then they're incentivized to increase the price because it shows you were willing to pay X amount so whats X amount + a little more, and they're incentivized to do so because they'll reason that if you weren't paying, you would be watching ads which is higher margin, so you're costing them money. Then if you don't pay for it, they turn it around and say there's no interest in premium subscriptions. I don't believe the two models can co-exist.
Additionally, the cost of watching ads is an unknown, but IMO there's a cost being subsidized by the public for this. Along the lines of privatize gains, socialize losses. Conditioning people to be "willing" to accept manipulation on levels they don't even understand in return for free or lower cost products, again IMO, has to have costs. There's no free lunch. Ironic considering the subject we're talking about.
Sure, as long as Google doesn't track what I'm doing for analytics and advertising. Does Google Premium exempt you from that, or do they keep getting my information for free?
It can be. Just pretend there's only youtube premium. You give them money, they serve you video. What is the benefit to you if they stop offering a price tier that you wouldn't consider?
Like I mentioned elsewhere, do they no longer collect my data in Premium? I'm not willing to give them that. That is a continuous business interaction that I don't want.
This is a common fallacy I see in this thread. You pretend one part of the world changes while other parts of the world are forced to stay static.
In a world where everyone had ad blockers and the only exchange on the internet was cash money, what other changes would you envision?
For this, you can look at history. There is the old freeware or "freemium" method, for one. Most of the internet was like this prior to embedding ad servers into everything. Anyone remember shareware? Most news sites work this way now. There are other ways of making money as well. See the sponsored ads embedded in many videos on youtube (in addition to the youtube ad server-served ads). Youtube could understand that it's about people who want to show off their video projects and sell their servers space directly to the creators. An ad agency within Youtube could help set up creators with sponsors to show embedded in their videos. That could be a freemium model as well.
I'm officially middle aged now. I've seen the internet grow up through the late 90s-early 00s. I've seen the change. One thing remains constant. Creative people look for ways of displaying their creations, be it writing or video or photo, programming... anything. As the internet grew up, it got taken over by investors and other money-people so now, in addition to the creators, you have grifters and con-artists trying to make money via ad servers. Google regularly cons their own creators by leading them to make video creation into a job, then demonitizing them (essentially firing them) at the drop of a hat. All creators I've followed have been demonitized at one time or another. I know this because they post about it.
Google isn't hurting. It wasn't hurting prior to this change in ad blocking policy and it isn't hurting now. They are making more money than God. They were making more money than God before the change, and now slightly more after the change.
And it's not for me to dictate how a company makes money.
Google wants to make money by forcing my computer to download something I didn't ask for and explicitly don't want. It's in the name. They "redirect" to an ad server. In the old days, these redirects would go to an ad server that had such limited bandwidth that the ad would freeze and I would just have to sit there for minutes for the ad to finish stuttering. Then came along people who created tools to keep my computer from downloading things I don't want. I use those tools. If Google wanted to, they can embed ads directly into videos. I would only be able to skip them by physically reaching over to my computer and skipping them, just like in the TV/TiVo days. But that method, while ensuring I see at least a couple seconds of the ads and making things virtually un-skippable, doesn't make Google as much money as targeted ads which somehow always end up being the one with the guy dressed in yellow talking to an emu.
So Google does their thing and I do my thing. Artists and creatives will always find a way to display their work; they are generally not, at their core, doing these things for money.
Well, except for everyone who makes a career out of it. They are professionals working for money.
I don't think anyone should be guaranteed a living when the market changes, but let's at least acknowledge that there will be people out of work.
This actually goes as far back as the human species. People have always been creative and shared their work. Only for the last few hundred years or so they've also been getting rich as a side effect. Before that, they were doing it for all the other things you get back from the community: Praise, social status, the amazing feeling of contributing and inspiring others, etc. We would keep doing it even if the whole internet would shut down.
Seeing how many people can't imagine a world that isn't driven by ads makes me sad.
I mean if Google allowed me to pay just for Youtube ad-free (I think it's called "Red", but they're sunsetting it in fact) I'd be happily doing that already. Instead they want to sell me the Youtube-all-in-with-music (and Knuckles), and that's just not something I want. Essentially they're missing the plan level I'd be quite interested in buying. It never launched in Germany.
YouTube would probably see less total revenue, but they would also probably be a lot more profitable since premium subs would no longer be effectively subsidizing so many free users. The total amount of content being uploaded and consumed would also likely be a fraction of what it is today, taking away a ton of their expenses.
In a broader context, yes, that's true. But each case is different, and YouTube is definitely very unique compared to other ad-supported sites. In this hypothetical ad-free utopia, I'm not sure how YouTube could exist at the scale that it does today.
It takes money, a lot of money, to build the infrastructure necessary to process and serve 30,000 hours of video every hour. Free decentralized alternatives like PeerTube could never hope to achieve this.
Going 100% premium, a la Nebula, wouldn't bother me so much as an adult in a first world country with a stable income, but now you're locking kids and less fortunate people out of the wealth of educational content on the site.
I have no idea how to reconcile these. Most solutions I've seen people bring up in other places basically amounted to "the government should force Google to provide it for free", which feels like a complete non-starter to me.
I'm not so sure on this one. Despite the aggressive advertising and push for premium subscriptions, YouTube is basically still treading water. The aforementioned logistical insanity of the service, combined with its lack of profitability, is why nobody has really even attempted to compete with YouTube.
Then it's not sustainable service, and then maybe we need to read more books instead.
I'm not trying to be facetious. I use YouTube because NewPipe works, it's easy and it's legal. Gun to my head, I'd stop using YouTube if I was forced to engage with their ecosystem any more than I already am.
Maybe nothing can compete with YouTube, the same way nothing can compete with Reddit. That's fine, less convenient alternatives will do.
So you're basically saying it shouldn't exist. That's a fair opinion to have, but if you're happy with YouTube not existing, then presumably you would also be happy not using YouTube at all even though it does exist.
YouTube nor their creators really lose anything here if the people using ad blockers or newpipe stop watching.
I'm not the one saying it's not sustainable. I'm not an economist or a businessman. But if it isn't sustainable, then it isn't sustainable.
I don't follow your logic. If a restaurant was selling two dollar lunches and they were gourmet, I'd buy from them. No skin of my back if they go out of business, but why would I not buy their food just because I think they can't sustain that for very long?
As long as I can legally and easily get YouTube videos without ads or sponsor messages, I will. Why wouldn't I?
This is more akin to people complaining that they raised their prices after losing tons of money for years on $2 gourmet meals
I mean, it should be illegal to sell things below cost of manufacture (or running service) for extended periods in order to capture markets. All it does is let people with the largest bankroll drive out any other upstarts.
Those cheap TVs? They're cheaper than ever because now they collect about $40/mo worth of ads and resellable viewing data. Not because there's been miraculous improvements in reducing manufacturing costs. And it's becoming increasingly hard to opt-out, especially now with widespread BLE mesh you can't keep it offline.
Game consoles should not be permitted to be sold below hardware cost (though if we mandated unlockable bootloaders this problem would resolve itself).
But again, why would I not buy them whole they're being sold for $2? That's their choice, not mine. I'm not their financial advisor.
It's YouTube's choice that they made their videos free, not mine. It's not my responsibility to come up with a sustainable plan to make profits.
But that isn't what they're doing here. They aren't selling them for $2, people are using a clever workaround to always get them for $2, and they are plugging the hole in their system that allows that to happen.
Where the entitlement comes from is all the people acting like YouTube is committing some great injustice by doing this. They aren't. Detecting ad blockers is no more right or wrong than using ad blockers, and YouTube doesn't owe free service to anyone.
The clever workaround is the equivalent of getting up to get a bag of chips when the commercials come on. We're acting like circumventing ads is some sort of new moral problem, when every single human has done their damn best at doing it since the dawn of commercials in television. Should companies install cameras in people's houses to make sure they're not playing on their phone when the medicine commercials start?
I'll continue to watch the free videos they host, and I'll continue to use NewPipe as long as it works. They can continue to make this as difficult as they want.
Surely it is more than that, that sounds trivial.
Edit: that’s just how much new data is uploaded, not how much is served.
https://earthweb.com/how-many-hours-of-video-are-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
Not to mention that the whole philophy that the ad industry is built on is shakey ground in terms of the actual demonstrable efficacy of ads.
Like, sure, ads get products known, but I think companies have an incentive to feed into the idea that ads drive higher consumption because it means ad companies will continue giving them money.
The reason everyone has an ad blocker and YouTube is still chugging along for decades is probably because it doesn't actually matter if people see all the ads or not, the company-ad agency circlejerk just kind of sustains itself with or without our participation. It's largely a bunch of hot air from people in suits picking eachother's pockets.
Can I get a source on that? I'd be surprised if that's true. I'm under the impression that the tax dollars that I pay help keep the mail service running in the US.That's a false equivalency either way. The US Mail service is a public service, run by the government and paid for by the taxpayer.The cost of YouTube running servers and hosting content is that of a private company. I'm not saying ads are good, but that's also why I pay for YouTube Premium.https://www.uspsoig.gov/our-work/did-you-know/do-my-tax-dollars-pay-postal-service
The USPS is entirely funded by usage fees, so spam mail does help to keep the service running.
There's one problem with that. Many of these features didn't used to be locked behind Premium. They used to be available to everyone. Background play, high bitrate 1080p, and more used to be free.
Not to mention the quantity of ads has increased exponentially while the quality of said ads has dropped. YouTube turns on ads by default, meaning creators have to go out of there way to turn off ads if they want their content to be uninterrupted and "pure" without distractions and unnecessary clutter.
Finally, while I am not entitled to various features, there are two things I AM entitled to: my time and my privacy.
I don't have all day to watch the content I want to as well as all the trashy ads I'd be forced to watch.
As for my privacy, I will use every ad and tracker blocker I possibly can to protect myself and my mind from corporate influence and my personal info from being sold around.
Finally, if I want to watch one of my favorite creators, I can support them in more meaningful ways, like patreon or merch purchases, both things I do.
My life is my own. I choose to fill it with meaningful things, not ads.
That is true, but the way you can get there is by not watching youtube. You're not entitled to watch youtube for free and no ads. The three options are:
You are absolutely entitled to your time, and at least for now, your privacy. But you are not entitled to also get to watch content on youtube. That's having your cake and eating it too, which is possible now, as a result of low interest rates for the last decade and being subsidized by people who do watch ads + premium subscribers. It may not be in the near future, at least without substantial effort.
Yes, I am. This is my computer and on my computer runs what I want it to run. And that is not ads. If YouTube does not want me to see the videos without the ads, they should not deliver the videos to my computer when it asks for them.
This may sound like a technical argument, but it isn't. This is no different than skipping all pages with ads in a free magazine to get to the one interesting article that has substance. Forcing the reader to look at all ads in the magazine sounds rather dystopian to me, yet that is what we are talking about here. The option of skipping the ads is part of the deal, it has been for ages. Just like that it is not immoral to change the channel or walk away to get a snack when the TV displays an ad. If the publisher does not like that, they should choose a different way to make money.
That is what YouTube is doing, no? You should be happy to hear then, that YouTube is currently trying to block adblock users from viewing the site. Woohoo! 🥳🥳
I wouldn't be surprised if they were also working on embedding the ads directly into the video stream as opposed to being separate videos - that's how Twitch does the live ads, and it's much harder to block. Hopefully they managed to crack down on those adblockers!
No, that is not what they are doing. As explained in the article, they are running some software in my browser that blocks the video from playing. As this is my device, I have the right to not run that piece of code. Or, in this case, I have the right to run another piece of code that counteracts the negative effects: an adblocker. YouTube still happily serves the video if my computer makes the correct request.
And this is all not new, nor is it illegal. Programs that work by making the right request to the YouTube server have existed for ages (
youtube-dl,yt-dlp, etc.) and I am sure movie and record companies would have taken them offline if they had any ground. (There was this incident where the documentation ofyoutube-dlcontained instructions on how to directly copy a copyrighted video, but it blew over in a week, or so.)I would be surprised if they could pull that off soon, but that is a different topic. Even if they embed the ads directly in the video stream, this would be no different than the old days, when we just taped the show and fast forwarded through the commercials. (I bet you could even teach an LLM to do that) No-one thought that was illegal or immoral.
When your moral argument depends on a technicality, it collapses when the technology changes. It seems foolish to assume the technology will change in your favor when Google holds all the cards.
Maybe just enjoy watching YouTube while it lasts?
What's the technicality? It's not immoral to change the channel during commercials. It's never been immoral, and people from the 80s and 90s would've looked at you funny if you suggested it was. There's never been a moral obligation to watch ads.
I meant the technical details of how YouTube works in a browser, and therefore how adblockers work:
...
Maybe, but this isn't how things work for console games or for many mobile apps, and the companies that sell you the technology needed to view YouTube aren't required to sell you a device that works the way you want.
This isn't to say we won't have general-purpose computing devices, but nothing requires YouTube to work on them.
The open web is a truce. There's always been cheating and it's generally tolerated. If it gets bad enough, though, maybe the truce could break down entirely?
That's drastic, so a safer bet is that the blocker / anti-blocker games will likely continue.
(And of course you aren't required to watch the ads regardless, but that's different from having the technology to run an adblocker.)
Aren't these just arguments that because the market tolerates certain bad things, they are actually not bad? I get your normative framing, but a game console is a phone is a computer, architecturally, and I doubt anyone arguing for a principled defense of adblockers wouldn't also decry those trends.
It's more of a "here's why we can't have nice things" argument. Widespread cheating results in things getting locked down more, because the companies providing the goods and services don't like it.
Example: at one time the New York Times gave away 10 free articles a month based on cookies, people figured out how to get around it, and they stopped doing that. There was also BugMeNot which was used to share password credentials. Nowadays, archive sites are the way we often share paywalled articles, but I expect that will get shut down eventually.
Or, in a real world example, in urban areas in the US, stores started locking up the shelves where they keep detergent, due to widespread shoplifting. Sometimes if they can't get shoplifting under control, they close. In other parts of the country, they don't do that, because they don't need to.
So, I don't know if it will happen, but a plausible scenario is that widespread ad blocking will eventually cause services like YouTube to abandon the open web entirely. Or, only work in certain locked-down browsers.
Moral arguments about "I can do whatever I want on my computer" don't really engage with the idea that there's another player in the game and if it gets too one-sided, they have a say in what rules they will play by.
It's the slippery slope argument then. One person does this, then another and another and pretty soon we can't have nice things. It's an argument made in fear of losing what you currently have, so the person making the argument wants to play the gatekeeper or enforcer.
Empirically, it doesn't hold up.
To google, we are numbers that make up a statistic. Google makes so much money, it actually doesn't need youtube to make money. Apparently it has never made money directly. But... it does bring people into google's sphere of influence, and that is valuable for their overall ad business, which makes more money than God.
To you, the story's simple. "I have means (either money or time) to pay for something I enjoy. 'Cheaters' want to make this thing cost more for me, so GTFO cheaters."
But empirically, it is highly likely no part of your calculation is correct. You don't know how much you are paying for your use of youtube, so you can't know how much it costs you. If you subscribe, they make much more from tracking your activities than they ever do from the few bucks you send their way each month. If you watch ads, you have no basis for knowing how much those ads are worth. Oh, and it has nothing to do with google "supporting" creators. Google is apparently cracking down on "sponsored segments" of videos, which are deals made by creators directly with advertising agents. Why? Because the creators go around Google.
Has google ever been audited for their ad clicks and impressions to see if the payouts actually match the impressions? It's a funny money economy.
Also, how much are "freeloaders" taking away from the creator? If you watch an ad without clicking anything, or if you choose the skip button without waiting 30 seconds for a full view, very little, if anything is made from the ad. You've paid (your time), but nobody else got benefits. You were exposed to 5 seconds of a jingle and the ad buyer didn't even have to pay. Apparently adsense on youtube is divided up into CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and CPC (cost per click). If you are shown a CPC ad and didn't click, the creator didn't get paid. Google didn't get paid. Only you paid. If I watch 20 videos in a month with an ad blocker, each with a possible four ads, two of which, on average, are CPC ads (I'll never click an ad), and the other two CPM at, say $6 per thousand impressions, then I've cost various creators, drum roll, 14 cents (60% of 24 cents) that month. Less than a penny per video. I've cost google 24 cents. Does it cost 24 cents to host 20 videos and distribute it to a single person? Doubt it. Fractions of a penny.
Now, how much is my time worth? 20 videos a month, 4 ads apiece, half of which I can skip (after 5 seconds), the other half take an average of 30s of my time. That's 23 minutes for the month. Going rate for minimum wage is $15/hr, that's $5.90 Google is costing me to watch ads on youtube. Even at the federal minimum wage, it's still costing me $2.75 for the privilege of watching youtube. Obviously, many many people value their time at more than minimum wage.
And then they go and charge the advertiser $0.24 and pay each creator $.007.
How much does Alphabet make in a year for revenue? They are a public company that makes the vast majority of their revenue from adsense, and this is published. $283 BILLION. per. year. In 2022 (before they put this policy in place). They literally make $35/person/year if you count the entire world population. If you turned their ad business into a subscription business, well, I guess you pay the $12/mo subscription fee. Works out, I suppose.
But remember, you cost them only 24cents a month in ad revenue. This is why I won't subscribe. Google makes more money than God Himself, and if you pay for the "privilege" of getting things ad free, you are literally just paying double.
I take my moral outrage elsewhere.
These arguments about YouTube’s finances are pretty speculative, and in any case, irrelevant to whether the deal they offer makes sense for consumers. I pay for a subscription because there’s music I like to listen to, I don’t like watching the ads, and I can afford it. If I’m not using it much, maybe I’ll cancel.
How much money they make or choose to lose isn’t our problem, it’s theirs.
It does seem pretty clear that watching YouTube, without ads, for free, is not a deal they offer. It’s something people try to take, and they use spurious moral reasoning to justify it.
Alright, thanks for the expansion, the examples were very helpful. I guess my only response is that those proposed outcomes are ones I'd be in favour of. The sooner we stop giving businesses like Alphabet the latitude we would to a personal blog, the better. Of course the outcome might be those, but worse: the internet isn't even treated as neutral or as a means of communication, just as the ultimate mechanism of corporate/tyrannical control. We often forget our own complicity with these things, and maybe the promise of free infinite video storage and distribution is a siren song that most of us are gladly drowning our future for.
Regarding moral arguments in general, yeah, they are not descriptive or pragmatic. That's the point, that sometimes those arguments ignore the full picture. If I own my computer, I will own it if I have the chance. Entertainment or, what, social media?, is just not worth that price on a social scale, to give so much power to such small and unaccountable parties, to ratchet the dependency on passive consumption even further, and the reality otherwise would not change that. Normatively people at that point would almost certainly pay it no mind, but child labor, pollution, and gang violence are all still worth fighting.
There are downsides. For example, I like being able to share a YouTube link with a reasonable expectation that someone else will be able to view it. This isn't the case for a Spotify link.
But as you say, there are worse things.
There are alternative structures to supply the same principle services. Localities could give server space to citizens, culture could shift to one where everyone knows somebody who runs a small video host, there are a ton of possible ways to allow us to share videos. But we all know that sitting in front of autoplay is bad for us, that Youtube has never been profitable, that the ease for any given video to go viral is fairly unimportant for society as long as we can still share, I could go on. Plenty of reason not to get too hung up on Youtube itself, even if we have to suffer through years of no replacement.
There’s a lot of stuff on YouTube I don’t care about (and I don’t use autoplay), but I would miss being able to watch musicians’ performances from all over the world. Often these are copyright violations, uploads of old videos where getting the rights would be very difficult, so any alternative system would need a way of dealing with that. I don’t think it’s as easily done as you say.
What’s “important to society” doesn’t really enter into it.
I didn't say anything would be easy. There's a clear and objective value to the services Youtube offers, like you say. That doesn't mean they deserve infinite rope.
If youtube wants to limit itself to a purpose built console or app, that's their choice. They are free to do that. They certainly can control the user experience better that way.
They choose to open their market to the general purpose web browser market for greater exposure. That's their choice as well.
The discussion went on without me and most things I wanted to say have already been said by others, but regarding this:
This truce has already been broken for a long time. Specifically by the kind of centralized, ad-driven, rent seeking services like YouTube. They managed to push out all alternatives by spending a gigantic amount of money and now they think they have what they wanted: control over who sees what. This the opposite of that truce of the open web. If anything, ad blocking is a way to restore the balance.
I’m not sure what truce you’re imagining. If you make up some terms and try to impose them on the other party and they reject them then there’s not actually any truce at all, which is why there’s a cat-and-mouse game between ad blockers and anti-blockers.
The truce I meant is the business model where we get a surprising amount of stuff for free in turn for putting up with ads. This is how Google worked from not long after it launched, though the ads were much less intrusive back then.
It’s breaking down in a lot of ways. Some newspapers couldn’t make it work so they went with subscriptions. Other websites like Netflix and Spotify have always been subscription-based. YouTube is moving in that direction too.
There’s another truce that YouTube is built on, though, which is that content providers largely put up with widespread copyright infringement because Google built a system for taking it down or alternatively getting paid. Without that, if Google hadn’t bought them, YouTube probably would have been sued out of existence long ago.
It’s a messy agreement that’s actually quite difficult to make work and nobody else has managed it, which I think is the reason YouTube competitors haven’t really worked out.
Sorry, for the confusion. I was indeed talking about something related, but slightly different. I apologize.
When you mentioned the Open Web I thought of the original web, the one from before we had services like YouTube. Back then it was generally understood that the internet was an open and free technology for communicating information. The open and free meant that on one hand everyone was free to publish whatever they wanted, in whatever form, but also on the other hand that everyone else was free to use (consume) this information the way they wanted. A good example of that was that the early versions of HTML only contained content and structural information, but hardly any way of styling the page, like colors and fonts. This was because it was assumed that everyone would read the webpage in way they preferred, adjusted for their own screen and style preferences.
So everyone and their mother was going to be a publisher of content and in some ways that has come true. There are now dozens of options if you want to start your own blog. A lot of them are free, or nearly free, and user friendly. And they are run by companies that seem to be doing well.
With video it is different. For the average user YouTube is the only realistic option. Self hosting is a lot harder, there aren't really any competitors. So for video there is not really an Open Web anymore. You will always have to deal with Google, their terms, their idiocracies and their rates.
This is different than Netflix, for example. Even though they also stream videos, no-one advocates for a Netflix equivalent of
youtube-dl. People got cranky when they started disabling password sharing, because something that was always allowed suddenly wasn't. But overall it was a huge win for Netflix, they sold a lot more subscriptions.Why these different reactions from the general public? I think it is because Netflix does not set the expectation that they are an open platform where everyone can post and watch. No-one that filmed their cat doing something funny wished there was a way they could publish it on Netflix.
A platform cannot pose as a platform for the free, open and decentralized web and on the other hand act like full on commercial service with subscribers and fees. Ad-supported platforms are not a good compromise and I am glad that they are slowly going away.
I do remember when some of the Internet was technically non-commercial (NFSNet). But that ended with the dot-com boom, before Google or YouTube existed.
I think some people are redefining “decentralization” and the “open web” to be something more than it was. The web is “open” because anyone can create their own website and you can link to anyone else’s website. There’s no particular limit on how big or commercial a web site can be, so you can start your own business. It includes very large websites like YouTube. That basic deal is still working, since people can still link to YouTube videos and link out again.
We can see this fraying with paywall sites since it discourages linking in. (We work around it with archive sites.) Also, Facebook never was very suitable for linking in, and Twitter has become hostile to both incoming and outgoing links. There are also mobile-only services that aren’t on the web at all.
Since then people have come up with other ideas about what “decentralized” means.
You’re also painting YouTube as some kind of bait-and-switch scheme, but I think it’s quite well-known that you can upload videos for free, but viewers might see ads? It doesn’t seem like people are misled about that, though they might be about other things.
I’ve uploaded a bunch of accordion videos and don’t want to pay to host them. I like that someone else pays and I can share links on other websites. Maybe you don’t like that deal, but I think it’s okay until something better comes along.
Paying the hosting costs yourself is reasonable for text and images but not for video, it seems? I haven’t really looked into the costs, though.
You’re appealing to public sentiment about YouTube versus Netflix, but I imagine that if a tool like youtube-dl were available for Netflix, many people would use it and come up with some kind of justification, much like BitTorrent users do for torrents. I haven’t looked, but I expect there are torrents of popular Netflix shows? It’s a different kind of content sharing because links to Netflix aren’t so useful and people search on the names of shows instead.
But that is what is disappearing. You can send me the link to a video, but the content behind that link is not consumable for everyone. YouTube, not the creator of the video, tries to impose restrictions on the client that consumes it. To me this means that YouTube is not open anymore.
The bait and switch is that by making it so easy and free, they put all the alternatives out of business and now they are the only one left. Now they slowly are making it less and less free, also for the videos that were uploaded years ago. Now I don't think many people actually trusted Google to never do that, but they are making a one-sided change to the deal.
When YouTube started the hosting costs were a really big deal. That's the reason they became big. But I can't imagine that is still the case. Maybe for feature length movies, but not for that three minute cat video.
Sure, there always will be piracy and also people that defend it. But to me that really is a different argument. You have to trust me on that :)
Could you say more about this? It sounds like you're claiming that for some people it's hard to view a YouTube video.
It's true that there are many of us who decide not to watch YouTube videos when they're shared on Tildes. (I prefer to read a transcript for anything nonfiction.) but that's different from being unable to do it if we're sufficiently interested.
Yes, that is what I am saying. For something to be part of that Open Web, it must be possible to retrieve it using free and public protocols (like HTTP) and be presented in public and free formats (Like HTML and JavaScript), so that any software that implements these protocols and formats can process it without restrictions. If something extra is necessary to process it and that something extra is not free and public, then the document/video/service is not part of the Open Web.
Google tries really hard to add that something extra and make it so that not every software program can access the video, even if that software implements all the public protocols and formats. In this case: browsers with certain extensions enabled. They are actively trying to deny access to a group of perfectly fine software implementations.
You might say that the video is still accessible, because you can disable that extension with only a few simple steps. But that is not how it works. Just about any service is accessible if you add "... and a few simple steps" to the list of instructions. My bank account is part of the Open Web if you use a browser "and a few simple steps".
A prerequisite that people use an unmodified mainstream browser to view a video is obviously not the same sort of prerequisite as needing to know ewintr’s bank password.
It’s certainly true that it’s getting harder all the time to build a new web browser that does all the things mainstream browsers do. This has consequences. The consequences are rather indirect though. They don’t break the web for most people. Some people’s workflows are affected and they may have to use other software that they don’t prefer, but they aren’t actually cut off.
The goal of having open data, that “any software that implements these protocols and formats can process it without restrictions” is a worthy one, but it’s unproblematic only when people explicitly choose to publish their work that way. Consent is important! Publishing your art on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean you want it to be screen-scraped and copied everywhere. (And used to train AI’s, too.)
This is a conflict between authors, who want to control how their content is viewed and (sometimes) make money, and viewers who want to do whatever they like and often don’t respect authors’ wishes at all.
YouTube is in the middle of that, so there are some messy compromises. YouTube is unlikely to be replaced by something that doesn’t make messy compromises. There are “pirate” websites that don’t respect copyright (a fair description of YouTube when it started) but they can’t go mainstream unless they clean up their act somehow.
Web browsers are in the middle of that, too. It reminds me of how many people got upset about DRM in the browser, which enables sites like Netflix. Somehow the world didn’t end. People kept on using Netflix - or not.
Publishing your work as open data is certainly something some authors want to do. I would like to see authors get full control over this. For YouTube authors, just like you can decide whether your video is public or not, ideally you should be able to decide whether to enable downloads or not. (In the meantime, you can link to a file hosted elsewhere.)
This isn’t what youtube-dl does, though. It’s a tool that’s fundamentally not consent-based, for ignoring what the authors want and doing whatever you like.
We are sometimes authors and sometimes the audience, and often inconsistent. On Tildes we commonly use archive websites to get past paywalls, which is surely not getting consent. Many people have music they didn’t pay for, even musicians. YouTube itself is built on widespread copyright infringement. It’s a mess. European data regulators would surely not approve.
I expect a slow evolution towards having more technical restrictions that encourage people to respect authors’ wishes somewhat more, at least when using mainstream software. Meanwhile there is movement (largely due to a push from European regulations) towards respecting viewer’s rights more. If this continues, it will result in a more rule-based Internet where you can’t get away with some stuff that you can now.
But a prerequisite nonetheless. Thus placing both at the same side of the line that divides the web into open en not open.
Agreed.
You should also be able to decide that the video is watchable with any app that is capable of downloading it, including the ones with ad blockers. As you said, the author should be in control. Now they are not, YouTube is.
This would not be a problem if there were alternatives that were roughly as user friendly as YouTube and where you'd have as much change to find an audience for your work, even if it would cost a small amount of money, or be a little more work. Then you could just upload your video somewhere else and let YouTube do whatever its want without your content. But these alternatives don't exist and won't be coming for some time, thanks to the bait and switch we talked about earlier.
So I still think that YouTube used to pose as an open service (in the sense that I described above), tricked everyone into uploading their videos for years so there was no viable alternative anymore, and now becomes less open for rent-seeking purposes.
An internet where creators can pick from a wide range of options and conditions when publishing their work. That would be wonderful. It feels unlikely that the YouTube we know could be a big part of that ideal world.
Of course I'm entitled. Google is using my computer, my bandwidth, to redirect me to a server I didn't choose to ping. That's on them. I run software on my computer that disallows the redirect. That's my choice.
Google does it's thing, hoping in the aggregate, most are going to allow them to use a redirect to serve ads.
I do my thing, keeping my computer from doing things I don't want it to do.
Google can always embed ads in videos so no redirect is required. Watch the video, the ad is always there, for all time. But they choose not to do that because they believe it will make them less money, in the aggregate. In fact, the reason why people see such crappy ads are because they are ubiquitously served by ad servers, rather than being narrowly tailored to the content and the people likely to be consuming said content. It makes them cheap.
I am not responsible for helping Google make money, and I have the right to make my computer do only the things I want it to. That is my entitlement. There were video servers prior to youtube, and there will be video servers after youtube. In fact, youtube is responsible for putting many of these video servers out of business.
Do you have a source for how much money they make?
Adblockers are a thing that almost everyone used to use.
It was called "Fast Forward Buttons" and they were on every VCR and DVR in the nation.
Don't worry, if everyone switched to premium to escape ads, they'll just put ads in premium too. It happened with cable, it'll happen with streaming.
And blocking it will be ever-more legitimate when you have no choice to pay to opt-out.
A large problem that has not been addressed are ads serving malware. Even the FBI urges users to use adblockers for this reason.
You're probably right that there's some predilection to certain behaviors among people using adblockers, though I don't know that it's quite as you say it.
If adblocking is more like magic to some people, a useful tool or means to an end, then I could see those people having such a predilection towards entitlement. However that is true in a lot of tech fields and probably can apply to anything outside of tech that can be too complicated for the layperson to understand. It's magic, it just works...until it doesn't, then the frustration of not understanding why it doesn't work sets in, which for someone that never understood how it worked at all, the more mystifying it is when it doesn't because something in non-working state usually requires more knowledge to understand how it works to understand how it stopped working and how to get it working again.
I also do this, though in the case of Youtube, it can't be considered in a vacuum. It wouldn't just be Youtube that ceases to exist, it would be many other things. In that hypothetical world, you can't necessarily turn from one service and go to another. It would be a world where everyone would be forced to adapt to a paradigm where advertising doesn't exist, and you have to pay if you want those things, or you can choose to not pay. Basically, I think that it puts everything on an even playing field, because you know what you're paying for when you remove advertising out of the equation, and some services could actually still survive. Youtube in this hypothetical could still survive, because people might be willing to pay for it when there's no other option.
The problem with how it is now is that the cost and price of things is obscured by advertising and data collection etc., you don't know what exactly you're paying for or how much you're paying or the true cost of anything. An advertisement on reddit can be more valuable than an advertisement on twitter, or vice versa, if there's a different market on each platform to reach or if there's different datasets collected on users on those platforms that allow better targeting of ads etc. but to the user it's still an ad.
I look at it like comparing products on a shelf in a store. Maybe people just buy the brand names they know, probably because of advertising, or maybe people buy the cheapest product. When there's some balance of brand recognition, what's the deciding factor? Probably price usually, because what else do you really know? Is one toothbrush manufactured more ethically than another? Is one hair care product better for your hair in the long run than another? Perhaps one causes you to lose your hair 5 years earlier than another option would, but that might be 10 years from now, who would even know? All of these products, and process of how they come to be is so complicated and removed from our ability to actually verify all the steps of its existence that you can't necessarily do much else. On the one hand, you can assume anything that does something right, is more ethical, more sustainable, better for the environment etc. is more costly, but on the other hand, if its known you'll buy things that are more expensive because you assume it's better, then bad actors can just mark up their prices to increase margins because you'll assume its better.
So in the same way, I see adblocking as buying the cheapest product on the shelf. Of course technically you aren't buying anything, but clearly as this article is highlighting and as we're finding out over time, you're paying with your time in learning how to block ads or keep up with blocking ads. Up until recently, this cost has been so low because there's so been so little learning required. Download uBlock Origin, don't need to know anything technical at all, don't need to think anything else about it and move on. But this indicates there was some "cost" to an extent, because lots of people don't even know about it or ever have given it a thought. There's of course some people who watch ads because they feel it's the right thing to do, but I'd guess the vast majority just didn't want to think about it, didn't know about it etc. and that shows there's a cost. Now the cost is going up. Now you need to do more work to keep up with adblocking for it to work all the time. And the cost will go up again.
I think the predilection is pretty strong, just based on my admittedly very anecdotal evidence.
I work in tech as a software engineer, so most of my peers know about and use ad blockers. A shockingly huge number of them also pirate nearly every piece of media they consume, despite the fact that they could all easily afford it with their comfy 6-figure software engineer salaries in my state which has a pretty low cost of living. They don't pirate because it's their only option. No, they could easily afford a few streaming services and some blu-rays or rentals. They pirate because they got used to it in high school and college, when it made more sense, and now they just think they're entitled to free stuff because they know how to get it and "normies" don't.
You could be right, I don't know anymore than you do, and certainly I know don't know your peers more than you, but I think this ties in with what I was saying before. If I was in your peer's shoes, I'd do the same thing.
In some cases, piracy is easier and better. For people who spend their lives learning the intricacies of technology, something that is out of reach of "normies" but is like turning on the tap for water for them, it goes with what I said about the cost of things. They paid an upfront cost of learning the intricacies of technology a long time ago and then small little bits from there on out, or they just happened to be people who have the personality where it might not have even felt like a cost to learn it to begin with. And in some cases it's easier because as you mentioned, they got used to it way back when. Maybe the specific people you refer to view it as entitlement if that's been your experience of them, but I think many people in that situation wouldn't necessarily view it as entitlement. There's also the case that it's just a better experience in some ways. You pay for Netflix, Max or whatever, and the catalogue rotates and things you watch get removed. Now you have to do more work to go find the next service that has it, or sign up to all of them and hope one of them has it (I think there's still some content out there that lands nowhere, if maybe for temporary time). Then there's some situations where offline viewing isn't available with paid services. It was back in the day the case that you were forced to watch unskippable ads and intros on DVDs and blurays and what not, and while that's not the case with any streaming services as far as I know, it's just another example of how sometimes the paid products are worse. Even if you have the money, why would you pay to get a worse experience if you could get a better experience easier and for a lower cost?
I'd also guess your coworkers aren't necessarily the type to go posting in uBlock Origin subreddit complaining about it not working and shitting on the developers, forum moderators and other contributors, since they likely have some understanding of how things work. That isn't to say every person who understands the intricacies of the work are respectful, there's certainly plenty who aren't, but my initial point was that I think the predilection for being an asshole isn't necessarily that people are entitled to blocking ads, but could be that people who lack the capability of understanding how something works might have such a predilection to acting that way and because adblocking has been relatively easy for so long, there's lots of people who lack the capability of understanding that are using them.
This is exactly it. For years now there's been a perpetual cycle of "the ads are too much" "just use an ad blocker then" and the ads increase and so we go.
The problem is that I don't doubt that even without the ad blockers that youtube and our other capitalist overlords that this would happen anyway.
It seems this entire situation can only exist in this weird state of flux. There's no answer, because YouTube existing at all is nonsensical. They don't make money. Period. But they still offer free services, and lose money doing so. People have become so very sick of ads running rampant online, but YouTube's only way of making money is advertisements. So people adblock. It's a war of attrition and nobody wins. YouTube is such a cultural phenomenon that people expect it to be free. YouTube wouldn't dare go premium only. So they're stuck in this permanent game of cat and mouse. It's silly. I'm sure their endgame is to exhaust adblock users who are barely hanging on. Users who only barely figured out how to install a chrome extension. If they make it just a little harder, they can further reduce the demographic that blocks ads, and squeeze a little more money out.
Unfortunately I have to disagree with you. As an autistic person modern digital advertising is overstimulating. What's more, in my country (Singapore), Youtube's adverts consist of, I would say, 70% scams read in annoying voices or misleading content. (The other 30% come from big companies with their general flashy bright colors and dumb earworm jingles that are simple enraging distraction.) It doesn't seem like Youtube is willing to address it at all either.
Like it or not, Youtube has become too big a dispensary of information for nobody to be able to avoid it. I cannot just, even though I want to, avoid using Youtube without being at a massive information inconvinence. I should not be forced to pay a company just because of my disability. I don't have that money, either.
If ads are annoying for neurotypicals imagine just how bad it is if your senses are wired up even more strongly to detect small details. I can't stand one more second of "Did you know you could make money just by posting online" read by the worst person on earth. So unfortunately, Youtube is unavoidable, and adblockers are the only way I can stay sane browsing it and indeed anywhere online. Do not roadblock or paywall people's access to crucial information.
What can be done, though? I have no clue. I wish they'd make Youtube into a non-profit but so many people make money off of it. Someone has to suffer at the end of the day but I will say the current state of Youtube advertising is unacceptable still.
It might be important to draw a distinction between common goods/services that simply exist vs goods/services provided by a for-profit company.
If everyone uses a gasoline car, the CO2 emissions will cause the global temperature to rise, causing drought and famine. Classic tragedy of the commons situation-- we have a moral obligation to stop this.
If everyone uses an adblocker on YouTube, then YouTube will either need to find a way to make money or shut down. These consequences seem fine? As long as there is money to be made, a competitor will step in and offer what people want to pay for.
Companies aren't people. They don't have an inherent right to exist. We don't have a moral obligation to subsidize companies with unsustainable business practices-- and in some cases it might be better for everyone to let them fail.
This is where I think it falls apart though. YouTube has a way to make money, it's called YouTube Premium. The problem is a lot of people won't buy that because they can effectively get it for free with an adblocker.
Big companies are evil and only act in their own self interest, but many consumers are the same way.
My biggest problem with this situation is how entitled so many people are behaving, like YouTube is depriving them of something they are owed. But I don't think YouTube owes anybody anything. If you want ad-free YouTube, either pay up or design a better adblocker. But nobody has any room here to complain, especially not this loudly.
I'd agree that no one is entitled to YouTube videos. Arguing that YouTube owes us videos is simply absurd. YouTube exists to make money. It has just as much right to block ad blockers as consumers have the right to use them in the first place.
Can we still be mad that Youtube is doubling down on ad blocking? Like you, I'm split on this. On one hand, we would be naive to think that free video hosting for everyone would last forever. On the other hand, YouTube is abusing its market dominant position to squeeze both creators and consumers in a seemingly desperate play to extract more profits. In fact, this was YouTube's strategy all along: operate at a loss or at razor thin margins until they're the biggest player, then aggressively monetize.
Frankly, I don't think consumers should tolerate this kind of business practice. And this is the only point where I truly disagree with you. Subscribing to YouTube premium is equivalent to endorsing Youtube's anti-consumer business strategy. Paying them now means letting them get away with it. I couldn't argue that paying YouTube is better for anyone except for Google shareholders.
I'd prefer to see folks not use YouTube at all. In my view, using YouTube with an ad blocker still results in a better outcome for everyone than paying for the subscription. I don't think we're entitled to YouTube videos, but I think we have the responsibility as consumers to only pay for services that we think should continue to exist.
Not to get too philosophical, but have you ever read Kant?
I also try to do this, I think it leads to better outcomes. (=
Combinations of sheer entitlement and the desire to be "FIRST" ramped up to 11. It's one of the reasons I throughly dislike having to engage with almost any member of the public digitally now.
It's a very self perpetuating problem imo. Everyone wants to be first and it gives them the sense of being unique in a very specific moment in time, and that kinda drives the mentality of wanting to be first. The internet has really shown that we're not the most unique people anymore, for better or worse.
What's scarier to me, is that I don't think it would be easy to tell if this is a grass roots group of people doing this, or Alphabet / Google / Youtube Astroturfing a campaign to do the same thing.
It's like the old saying "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." Given the ability to obscure and drown the truth on a forum like reddit, I can't say for certain it's just entitled people making those comments.
Agreed. And it makes me swing far into the opposite direction every time I make a bug report or contact support, probably too far in fact. I make sure to start every message with words of thanks, and am probably a bit too polite and non-threatening, to the point it actually makes the message too wordy and obnoxious.
It's hard to change that though, because I see so much shitty, dickish behavior all over the web that I feel I should try to balance it a bit, and let people who write software or make other stuff I enjoy know that they're appreciated and at least some people are really grateful for what they do...
If I were an evil Google/YouTube exec, I'd order a lot of such drive-by comments exactly now
I knew that having multiple adblockers caused issues, because it makes sense. But what the hell Youtube?
This is not ok in the slightest. Just having addons shouldn't be reason for being flagged. They have no business looking at that in the first place.
There's this ongoing effort into getting the EU to investigate whether or not this is illegal, and I sincerely hope something comes out of this that slaps alphabet on their hands and tell them to stay out of the cookie jar.
I'm incredibly happy the uBO people are doing their damndest to stay ahead of the curve, and it's terrible to see humans human other people, like we do with so many animals, the planet, and more: Impose selfish short-sightedness until something no longer exists.
I'm content with the short term wins uBO is getting, but I'm looking forward to a more structured, long-term approach that tells google no.
Thanks, but I'm aware. Have been using Firefox for a couple of years and do not intend to use Chrome.
I really do think most people with any sort of public facing role shouldn't be doing social media at all. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Reddit. Let people talk about the technical stuff in GitHub. You don't need someone's sob story about how because unlock origin didn't work their dog died; all you need is their log.
I have YouTube Premium, and uBlock is reportedly blocking 992 things on my YouTube right now. So, even if you are paying to not have ads, you still have to use AdBlock?
I think most of those are calls to Google Analytics. Most Google apps just ping Google Analytics repeatedly with an interval even if it's blocked, so the block count on Google websites can quickly increase to over a 1000
Pretty sure there also exists non-ad related UI/UX improvement filters/rules out there.
Adblockers are free, youtube premium is not. It's capitalism. Youtube just has a poor business model. Or poor expectations. How about sites like wikipedia? They rely on donations and don't expect to bug users into watching/looking at ads to sustain themselves. The most ad-like thing on their site is the pop-up asking for donations. If a site like wikipedia can do it, why not youtube?
I personally haven't pirated a game in 20 years and that's largely in part due to Steam, as well as having a disposable income. I think this also applies to Adblockers/Monetization strategies of YouTube.
I wouldn't have blocked ads if they weren't unskippable multi-minute repeats of the same thing every 10 minutes, especially if they take up double digit percentages of the total play time of a video. I didn't block ads when they were 5-20 seconds and skippable after 5 seconds if you'd seen them before.
I would pay for Youtube if it didn't constantly try to hyper-optimize my recommendations to force me to stay on the site longer and instead provided me with quality content that I asked for and might or might not watch. I do not want to have to meticulously curate my watch history to ensure that one cop/freeman interaction video I watched doesn't dominate my recommendation feed with libertarian/andrew tate/jordan peterson/maga shit for the next month. I don't want to have to watch every single video of content creators I like, upvote and comment on them to ensure I continue to see them in my feed lest they disappear because I wasn't interested in a couple of their videos.
Not only do the pirates help with removing unskippable ads but they also provide tools to make it look like I watched a whole video with one click, because I watched it somewhere else, I liked it and I want to notify the algorithm to include stuff like it in my recommendations. They also provide tools to easily block a user/channel, to watch a video "incognito", to pick and choose the content of a video I want to skip, not just ads/promos but long title cards, recaps, etc and which channels to apply those to.
I actually pay a Nebula subscription to ease my guilt of skipping in-video ads. If Youtube stopped trying to tell me how to watch its content and gave me the tools to watch it the way I want they could have that money.
The operation costs of YouTube are so much higher than those of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is mostly text. The entire Wikipedia (without the images) is a single 23 GB download. YouTube stores exabytes of videos. You can't fund that with donations. And that's just for storage costs - YouTube also spends much more money on development and on moderation (because YouTube moderators are paid employees unlike Wikipedia moderators who are mostly volunteers)
Maybe yotube should make an actual premium tier that has features instead of no ads. The higher quality of videos could be locked behind premium, as well as the ability to speed up or slow down videos. Maybe videos over an hour long are locked behind premium too? So instead of positively punishing us for not using premium (forcing ads on us) it would be a negative punishment that makes more sense: you don't pay for something, you don't get it. But this still allows people to watch basic versions of the video, so people aren't completely left out and can still see the quality of content available, thus making (and keeping) them interested in the possibility of buying premium. Want to see intricate detail on the Slow Mo Guys' channel or some art doodler channel? Pay up. Most AI art generators are like this...
Also, I did find this from a year ago:
So it sounds more like they're just being greedy, and the size of the site isn't that big a deal to their wallet. But I wonder what the cost is to run youtube per year.
So instead of having ads, you suggest locking basic service features behind a paywall? I'm not sure most people who use YouTube will pay for this, and it'll just push those who don't away from using it
I don't see either of those as basic. But that's just me. I could see an equal argument being made that seeing these as basic features is the same "entitlement" as expecting ad free viewing (with these features).
Also, what did you think about the budget bit?
I have a device which doesn't have adblockers installed and use it for Youtube. And I absolutely HATE the ads. There' two reasons: first, I rarely use Youtube in the first place and when I do, I just want to go straight into the video. My time is limited )yes, I do have better things to do than watch Youtube; I only use it in this case to bring some fun for others). Second... if the ads were actually RELEVANT, I might even watch. But the vast majority of ads out there are for services or products I will never use, because I'm very, very selective about what I use. So the ads are wasting my time in two ways: not just taking up my time, but also for stuff I don't care about.
I heard about Youtube going down the drain several years ago, and it appears we've hit the point where it's just another service that's been hit with enshittification. In that case, I wouldn't mind seeing Youtube bite the dust- the only sad part is that there are a good chunk of people who depend on YT for their own income, but Twitch is always a possibility (side note: I also almost never watch Twitch either).
Another sad part if youtube goes away, is the educational videos and wholesome/fun communities will have to move, and to where? Twitch isn't for every kind of creator.
I'm thinking of channels like Dad How Do I? And the mom version, too, as well as Daily Dose of Internet.
Really we just need a competitor. Easier said than done ofc. Maybe if Firefox would have their own video site, it could compete. Or Opera, Vivaldi, etc.
Interesting perspective on the recent events with ublock and youtube.