I don't think paying for entertainment content is a terrible thing at all, especially if there's profit sharing happening with content creator. And I know it cost them a lot of money to run...
I don't think paying for entertainment content is a terrible thing at all, especially if there's profit sharing happening with content creator. And I know it cost them a lot of money to run YouTube.
What I dislike about YouTube, however is that they knew from the get go that it costs money, but they pressed on and on and on at a loss until they monopolized the landscape. Then they're using the monopoly to strong arm money.
I just don't like this model of running business. It works and it has enabled a lot of content creators to make a living but it still sucks....I wish.....that our collective tax dollars could be used to fund publicly valuable content creators and to support local arts.....
If you live in Canada, it does. There are at least four federally funded organizations with artist financial assistance programs that I know of up here: https://canadacouncil.ca/funding...
I wish.....that our collective tax dollars could be used to fund publicly valuable content creators and to support local arts
If you live in Canada, it does. There are at least four federally funded organizations with artist financial assistance programs that I know of up here:
The government funding is still small fries compared to the money that YouTube can provide content creators. However, the YouTube model doles that money out by worldwide views, so it isn't particularly good at fostering new talent or region specific talent, whereas the government funded programs are typically designed to do exactly that.
Twitch has been doing this for years. I am alarmed that this hasn't been used on youtube before. This is likely going to be enough to get me to leave youtube entirely, since this version of the...
Twitch has been doing this for years. I am alarmed that this hasn't been used on youtube before.
This is likely going to be enough to get me to leave youtube entirely, since this version of the cat and mouse game requires a lot more effort to continue.
I wouldn't mind if it felt like paying for the platform actually got me away from the predatory bullshit, but from what i've seen this is just not the case. As is I just tried to watch a smaller...
I wouldn't mind if it felt like paying for the platform actually got me away from the predatory bullshit, but from what i've seen this is just not the case.
As is I just tried to watch a smaller channels video and it just looped ads forever, so that's neat.
I've considered paying for YouTube. I watch too much YT content (admittedly with UBO) to just give it up entirely. As long as I don't get any ads, I'm good. Though I guess the question is: do the...
I've considered paying for YouTube. I watch too much YT content (admittedly with UBO) to just give it up entirely. As long as I don't get any ads, I'm good. Though I guess the question is: do the content creators get any of that subscription revenue if there are no ads displayed to paying users?
Content creators actually get more revenue per viewer from Youtube Premium subscribers than they do from ads, and afaik it's still based on watchtime. I remember one Youtuber I used to watch...
Content creators actually get more revenue per viewer from Youtube Premium subscribers than they do from ads, and afaik it's still based on watchtime. I remember one Youtuber I used to watch mentioning that downloading his videos as a Youtube Premium subscriber is good money for him bc it pays him like you watched the whole video when you download it, and he made long unedited Let's Plays.
The problem is that while yes they do get some shared amount from premium subscribers, as a premium subscriber you are a paypig for YouTube's shovelware. I don't want YT music. I don't give a shit...
The problem is that while yes they do get some shared amount from premium subscribers, as a premium subscriber you are a paypig for YouTube's shovelware. I don't want YT music. I don't give a shit about downloading videos for offline use. I just want the ads gone. The price is just too high for that. I'd rather spend $14/mo on the creators directly, thanks.
I'm surprised it took them that long. This sounds like it will also break the output of tools like yt-dlp, which are used under the hood of other applications when youtube is an acceptable video...
I'm surprised it took them that long. This sounds like it will also break the output of tools like yt-dlp, which are used under the hood of other applications when youtube is an acceptable video source.
That's a broken output, though. Are the ads permissible in the functionality of the third party app? If it's a karaoke video, for example, a random ad in the middle completely breaks the video....
That's a broken output, though. Are the ads permissible in the functionality of the third party app? If it's a karaoke video, for example, a random ad in the middle completely breaks the video. And do the ads change? If the ads change, does the video length not include the ad length (so it's broken all the time) or does it include the ad length (so it changes every time, breaking caches)?
Like I care? They're the ones that stifled and suffocated any competition in its crib and now I'm stuck with this mess of a platform. I'm getting super disillusioned with the internet the longer...
Like I care? They're the ones that stifled and suffocated any competition in its crib and now I'm stuck with this mess of a platform.
I'm getting super disillusioned with the internet the longer it lasts, where all power is in the hands of a few ad conglomerates and I'm just supposed to agree with that business model. Or opt out of society completely I suppose. Which at some point may actually sound compelling if it's continuing this trend of squeezing every person until wrung dry.
You don't care about their profit and they don't care about what they see as freeloaders, hence we're in this situation. In a capitalist society getting angry at this is like getting angry at...
You don't care about their profit and they don't care about what they see as freeloaders, hence we're in this situation. In a capitalist society getting angry at this is like getting angry at weather. Premium pricing is pretty reasonable but if you want to stick it to the man subscribe via VPN through India or some other low income country.
This is how I see it, and I'm someone who blocks the ads. It's fair game for them to try to come up with these methods and inconvenience adblockers, though as with all similar things, I expect...
This is how I see it, and I'm someone who blocks the ads. It's fair game for them to try to come up with these methods and inconvenience adblockers, though as with all similar things, I expect there will be some collateral damage in this move. Similarly there were video game publishers that fought against people easily cracking their games and then stepped up their DRM, which to some degree some of it has worked, but it also has some collateral damage that makes it so people who actually pay for the games get a worse experience in some cases.
I also recognize that adblocking and fighting the adblocking is part of the game if you are gonna go that route. I do think that there's some part of my mindset that has grown accustomed to it being so easy for so long, that you just installed an extension and everything worked flawlessly and you didn't have to check for new workarounds every couple months that it is frustrating to have to deal with it. Of course that was just taking for granted that over the years more and more people were going online which maybe satisfied the capitalist thirst for growth at every turn. Now it's probably hit more of a saturation point, much like Netflix did at one point and then cracked down on password sharing, and cracking down on adblockers is a way to keep satisfying that capitalist growth.
It won't stop me from also advocating for a society that moves away from advertising. I do think people should pay for what they use, but as long as advertising exists no other model will be developed to take its place because a lot of people don't recognize the harm in it. While there's a lot wrong with the economy in the US, and you can frequently find statistics about people living paycheck to paycheck, I think some of that comes from the fact that people are manipulated by incessant advertising to buy things they don't really need.
I also don't think paying X amount for unlimited use of something is a viable model for everyone or every service. I don't use Youtube that often, so I'm still better off fiddling with adblockers here or there to watch a video occasionally than I am to pay $14 per month.
Even if premium pricing were reasonable–which I contest, but even if–they used the vast resources of Google, a monopoly, to create another monopoly on content delivery, which they're using to...
Even if premium pricing were reasonable–which I contest, but even if–they used the vast resources of Google, a monopoly, to create another monopoly on content delivery, which they're using to squeeze consumers. That sits fine with you, does it?
The plan is explicitly for people "who live within the same residential address" (household). It's just another thing for them to clamp down on in a similar fashion in the future once subscription...
Or we keep playing this cat and mouse game. I'm not going to concede, why should I? They won't. I'll keep blocking it until impossible. It's not just YouTube either. The entire web is borderline...
Or we keep playing this cat and mouse game.
I'm not going to concede, why should I? They won't.
I'll keep blocking it until impossible.
It's not just YouTube either. The entire web is borderline useless without an adblock. And sometimes it's even dangerous if they inject malicious stuff into the ads.
I have and will whitelist websites that are not being actively hostile. There are still websites that earn their monetization.
They don't even have to inject anything malicious in the ads. Most of the time they are misleading already, including but not limited to mimicking e.g. download buttons, they frequently link to...
They don't even have to inject anything malicious in the ads. Most of the time they are misleading already, including but not limited to mimicking e.g. download buttons, they frequently link to scams, and can also link to something malicious in another location. There are laws against some of these, but zero enforcement from even the biggest corpos like Google or Meta. Some people are even getting ads for illegal gun dealers and other such ludicrous abuses.
Using a VPN to get another country's regional pricing eventually screws over the people in that country. When YouTube decides to notice that the numbers don't add up (and they will notice) they...
Using a VPN to get another country's regional pricing eventually screws over the people in that country. When YouTube decides to notice that the numbers don't add up (and they will notice) they may raise or just stop doing regional prices. Then the people who actually live in that country won't be able to afford the new price. It's happened before with other services and it can happen again with YouTube.
I do see what you mean, but capitalism is more like a bubble dome than actual weather. We can and should and do push against capitalistic oligarchies, and by doing so we can sometimes create...
In a capitalist society getting angry at this is like getting angry at weather.
I do see what you mean, but capitalism is more like a bubble dome than actual weather. We can and should and do push against capitalistic oligarchies, and by doing so we can sometimes create meaningful changes. Like labour unions, two day weekends, overtime pay, safety standards etc etc etc.
We do see what you mean, we just don't think we should lay down and accept it without some push back
We're cat-and-mousing for now, but that can't last forever. IMO, we need a three-step solution: Decouple youtube-the-app from youtube-the-platform (we've already done this with e.g. Freetube; it's...
We're cat-and-mousing for now, but that can't last forever. IMO, we need a three-step solution:
Decouple youtube-the-app from youtube-the-platform (we've already done this with e.g. Freetube; it's a third-party app whose (clientside) features are not dictated by Google)
Make the youtube-app (Freetube etc) platform-agnostic, so that you can subscribe to and watch videos from the same person on multiple platforms at once (e.g. RealLifeLore is on both Youtube and Nebula, so you can just toggle the video over to the Nebula version)
Get enough users onboard the platform-agnostic app(s) to make an outright youtube-boycott feasible.
I don't think it's fair to say it's stupid. My own argument is rather indefensible if I take it beyond just looking at it from my own selfish perspective. Turn it around and I wouldn't want people...
I don't think it's fair to say it's stupid. My own argument is rather indefensible if I take it beyond just looking at it from my own selfish perspective. Turn it around and I wouldn't want people to just freely take from me because they find it morally justified. Where does it end?
They do have to pay for the hosting and I'm not entitled to the content they host and pay for. I just feel there's extenuating circumstances as to how we got here in the first place that make it morally ok to give them the middle finger when it comes to ads. But that's just my opinion at best. I don't think it's fair to say others are stupid for thinking otherwise. Now I don't agree with them, but they aren't stupid either.
Unless stupid means working against your own short term interests.
Youtube is a private monopoly with insurmountable advantages (related to licensing and infrastructure) that make competing against it pretty much impossible. I don't mind paying in itself, but I...
Youtube is a private monopoly with insurmountable advantages (related to licensing and infrastructure) that make competing against it pretty much impossible. I don't mind paying in itself, but I disagree with being forced to pay this specific private company (one way or another) in order to participate normally in society in the cultural context in which I'm inserted. Money is tight currently, but I'd sooner pay for Nebula! (And I say this while acknowledging that there are things that youtube does very well, technologically.)
Google deliberately put themselves in this position of owning too much internet infrastructure and being essentially unavoidable. Most e-mail goes through them one way or the other. Most smartphones require their services to function. Most websites ping their servers - for CAPTCHAs, for fonts, for maps and more. Most people use their web browsers, so their word is law in standards bodies, to the detriment of user interests. And they have no qualms with ruthlessly abusing this position for harvesting data and redirecting people's attention - in search results, on youtube, on maps, everywhere - toward the services of their paying (ad) customers. The only thing they're ridiculously bad at is creating new services for taking over new market segments without killing them shortly afterwards, but it's not for lack of trying. Honestly, it would be nice if they were run as a utility.
In any event, in this case I'm more worried about things that were built to use youtube videos as part of a pipeline breaking... I don't know to what point it's possible for third party software to convey the identity of a user as a premium paying user to youtube through yt-dlp or other means. You might need to put trust into the third party pipeline that compromises the security of your credentials?
The problem is YouTube doesn't have an "ad-free YouTube Only" tier. They force you into YouTube music as well, which not everyone wants. This means to get the ad-free experience you're shelling...
The problem is YouTube doesn't have an "ad-free YouTube Only" tier. They force you into YouTube music as well, which not everyone wants. This means to get the ad-free experience you're shelling out $14/mo, which is a lot more than many would want to spend. I know I only occasionally use YouTube, and there's no way I'd pay $14/mo for how much I use it.
I just wish they'd actually provide a reasonably priced ad-free only version that doesn't bundle other things. They had one in the EU for a time but killed it.
Kill the competition by running at a loss and setting the expectation that the service will be free. (We'd probably be using Vimeo or Dailymotion otherwise.) Also own a music service in a...
Kill the competition by running at a loss and setting the expectation that the service will be free. (We'd probably be using Vimeo or Dailymotion otherwise.)
Also own a music service in a relatively competitive market.
Make the original service obnoxious to use unless you pay for a bundle deal for a leg up over competition with the music service.
???
Profit!
This is the same behavior Microsoft was prosecuted for in the 90s, and were long past due for world governments to backhand them for it.
Yeah it's funny. This whole thing made me look at youtube premium again and made me do a double take. It's more per month than any other subscription service I have.
Yeah it's funny. This whole thing made me look at youtube premium again and made me do a double take. It's more per month than any other subscription service I have.
The minute they offer a standalone plan at a reasonable rate that doesn't try to leverage their monopoly into getting me to also switch from Spotify to Google Music I'll be a paying customer.
The minute they offer a standalone plan at a reasonable rate that doesn't try to leverage their monopoly into getting me to also switch from Spotify to Google Music I'll be a paying customer.
Does that $14 include other, non-YouTube related stuff? Google's product matrix is confusing... I just checked my Google account, and I'm paying $7.99/mo for music + ad-free YouTube.
Does that $14 include other, non-YouTube related stuff? Google's product matrix is confusing... I just checked my Google account, and I'm paying $7.99/mo for music + ad-free YouTube.
You might be in some sort of student plan or grandfathered into a lower tier plan (or different country). Currently the $13.99/mo includes ad-free videos, ability to download to watch later,...
You might be in some sort of student plan or grandfathered into a lower tier plan (or different country). Currently the $13.99/mo includes ad-free videos, ability to download to watch later, background play (playing the video with your screen off/locked on mobile, a feature that used to be free and then they pay walled), and then YouTube music streaming.
I really don't watch videos on my phone so I don't care about the download to watch later features or the background play. I have no desire to switch to YouTube music either. I just want to watch my videos without ads. That is not worth $13.99/mo. I'd also argue it's not worth $7.99/mo when YouTube isn't even the one creating the content, they are just hosting it.
This is false. Or at least, a lawyer's truth. From this Louis Rossmann video, you have to be connected to the internet to watch the downloaded video. The killer feature of the $$/month is that it...
ability to download to watch later
This is false. Or at least, a lawyer's truth. From this Louis Rossmann video, you have to be connected to the internet to watch the downloaded video.
The killer feature of the $$/month is that it more directly supports the youtube channels, except per that same video no it doesn't.
I can confirm from experience that you wan watch downloaded videos with no network connection whatsoever. You have to connect the device to internet once every 30 days otherwise the video becomes...
I can confirm from experience that you wan watch downloaded videos with no network connection whatsoever.
You have to connect the device to internet once every 30 days otherwise the video becomes unplayable. But implying that you must be connected to play at all is verifiably false.
Rossmann talks about a time limit of 72hr, and according to Google's official docs it can in some countries be as low as 48hr. This is low enough to where I would agree, that it hardly counts as...
Rossmann talks about a time limit of 72hr, and according to Google's official docs it can in some countries be as low as 48hr. This is low enough to where I would agree, that it hardly counts as downloading. Though I didn't find the part where he mentions that creators don't get supported by the premium subscription. His only gripe with it is downloads not being eternal. It would also go against all accounts by different YouTubers of it being a significant improvement.
Wow I did not know that. My list of "benefits" was pulled straight from YouTube's site about what you get for YouTube premium. That's kind of insane that you need to connect to the Internet to...
Wow I did not know that. My list of "benefits" was pulled straight from YouTube's site about what you get for YouTube premium. That's kind of insane that you need to connect to the Internet to watch a downloaded video.
In case you didn't know, creators get a portion of the YouTube premium subscription costs when you watch their videos too. It doesn't all go to YouTube.
In case you didn't know, creators get a portion of the YouTube premium subscription costs when you watch their videos too. It doesn't all go to YouTube.
Yes I'm aware of that, and it's a significantly better portion than the ad revenue share they get so that's one positive I can say about premium. Still not worth the price for me personally though.
Yes I'm aware of that, and it's a significantly better portion than the ad revenue share they get so that's one positive I can say about premium. Still not worth the price for me personally though.
They will do whatever is legal in pursuit of profit, and probably skirt rules a lot. I live in a country where I must be allowed to opt out of data processing, which I did.
They will do whatever is legal in pursuit of profit, and probably skirt rules a lot. I live in a country where I must be allowed to opt out of data processing, which I did.
I couldn’t care less. After what Google has done, I wouldn’t give them money for any reason. Besides, they will not stop at covering their costs. They won’t stop at any amount. No for-profit...
I couldn’t care less. After what Google has done, I wouldn’t give them money for any reason.
Besides, they will not stop at covering their costs. They won’t stop at any amount. No for-profit corporation does.
It's unreal to me the lengths people will go to defend giga corporations that will do everything in their power to profit, no matter how evil or unethical those practices are. They couldn't care...
It's unreal to me the lengths people will go to defend giga corporations that will do everything in their power to profit, no matter how evil or unethical those practices are. They couldn't care less about any individual person, and they're certainly not doing anyone a favour as some people try to imply.
They will steal yours and everyone else's data without consent, they will train AIs on stolen content, they will purposely ruin the internet experience for thousands of people who aren't and won't ever be their customers. They will do everything they can to strangle the competition and any other player, big or small, that would arise, so that they become the only real option in the market. It's not a consumer's choice. They're not playing a fair and even game. We should collectively stop inferring that it is.
TikTok wasn't banned for being a competitor to YT though, but because ByteDance is run by a foreign hostile entity. They're using the app's algorithm to push misinformation and influence...
TikTok wasn't banned for being a competitor to YT though, but because ByteDance is run by a foreign hostile entity. They're using the app's algorithm to push misinformation and influence democratic processes.
...You are aware that domestic tech companies are doing exactly the same thing, exactly as deliberately, and to the same degree, yes? I hate it too, but it'd be a little gross to only get mad when...
They're using the app's algorithm to push misinformation and influence democratic processes.
...You are aware that domestic tech companies are doing exactly the same thing, exactly as deliberately, and to the same degree, yes?
I hate it too, but it'd be a little gross to only get mad when a Chinese company does it. Which I'm not accusing you of; just that it's a common sentiment here in the States.
Here's the problem with comparing Chinese things with American tech surveillance : when Americans get caught, there'll be trials, there'll be discovery, there'll be freedom of information and...
Here's the problem with comparing Chinese things with American tech surveillance : when Americans get caught, there'll be trials, there'll be discovery, there'll be freedom of information and investigations and maybe heads will roll, and then maybe regulations with tighten and things might change. Or they won't. But the journalists working on the story don't have people knock on their parents' doors at 3am, they don't get "chats" from the company's Party division, they don't have the risk of being arrested for "making trouble". And the citizens being spied on can mostly go about their lives yelling obscenities at the president and saying whatever they want about their employers without repercussions.
Even granted they're doing "exactly" the same things, how each State uses that information and what it means for the freedoms and safety of its civilians are drastically different.
It's like saying every parent checks the report cards of their kids and obviously there's encouragement and discouragement. And then you find out one of them is beating the stuffing out of their kids for getting C's. It's not the same.
Moreover, foreign interference is more dangerous than domestic misinformation campaigns.
I think they should be forbidden from having such an intense monopoly, especially on multiple industries as Google currently does. If that was the case, we'd be a lot better off, ad injection or...
I think they should be forbidden from having such an intense monopoly, especially on multiple industries as Google currently does. If that was the case, we'd be a lot better off, ad injection or not. I do however find marketing as a whole to be an insidious and disgusting industry, and would adblock regardless. But I have no issue with, for example, paying for Nebula.
As for TikTok, I oppose that ban, even though I loathe that platform as well. But that's for separate reasons that are rather off-topic.
Sure, but there's a major issue with say, work accounts. I have a work account for youtube (mainly because I use other API features for google), but I also use this to do my light work browsing....
Sure, but there's a major issue with say, work accounts.
I have a work account for youtube (mainly because I use other API features for google), but I also use this to do my light work browsing. Obviously not all of this is productive, most of it is just a quick way to put on music (which could easily be worked around), but the big one are the leagues and leagues of "how the fuck do i do this?" videos all over youtube.
Most companies are not going to start paying for their tech division to have youtube premium so they can quickly access the information they need (and is often linked to directly from the vendor). This has always been a hanging issue with youtubes loss leader approach, but at this point it's basically assumed that whatever company will be putting its guides and information on youtube.
Unfortunately, right now, it just seems to loop me ads. I'm assuming they'll fix that, but given the days where I am diving through the proverbial video trash to figure out what my specific nightmare is, this is going to waste a lot of time, and it'll add up fast.
To add my own sentiments: I actually wouldn't mind YouTube ads as much if they weren't so damn disruptive. I've discussed it on Tildes before, but the current way they're implemented is just bad....
To add my own sentiments: I actually wouldn't mind YouTube ads as much if they weren't so damn disruptive. I've discussed it on Tildes before, but the current way they're implemented is just bad. I can get ads longer than the video itself, and often encounter a second round of ads two minutes into the video. More recently I've had ads that have the countdown to the "skip" option, but then don't actually let me skip and play the next one. So a 5-second ad can turn into a ten-second one.
Ads are a necessary evil to keep YouTube running, but I hate Google's implementation. There are so many better ways to implement ads, but they're just going for the worst options to make it as frustrating and irritating as possible. That just drives more people to use adblock.
They're probably doing it in part to annoy people into buying premium, but for me at least, it's not working. I watch YouTube enough I could justify paying for a premium account, and I would if it weren't $14 a month. It's just too expensive to bother, especially since I wouldn't even bother with the other perks.
Side-note: I'm weirdly nostalgic for the time I binged an anime on YouTube around 2009/10 that always featured the same three commercials (as in literal commercials pulled from TV). The top comments on every episode were just quoting the commercials. The fact we were all enduring the same commercials gave me a strange sense of connection and camaraderie.
I've been using UBO for so long on YT (and everywhere) that I was legit confused why I was seeing ads yesterday. I took about 10min of refreshing and logging in/out and then googling for me to...
I've been using UBO for so long on YT (and everywhere) that I was legit confused why I was seeing ads yesterday. I took about 10min of refreshing and logging in/out and then googling for me to realize what had happened. I'd forgotten how incredibly jarring and disruptive it is to have ads all over the damned place.
I was actually ok with it when it was one at the beginning. The interruptions completely make me lose the thread of whatever I was watching. This isn't old style TV, where the interruptions were...
I was actually ok with it when it was one at the beginning. The interruptions completely make me lose the thread of whatever I was watching.
This isn't old style TV, where the interruptions were planned for and handled.
This whole thing is Google simply pushing to maximize profits. Not go into profit, not recover from losses; to make more. They ran Youtube at a loss for years, but that was in the early days when...
This whole thing is Google simply pushing to maximize profits. Not go into profit, not recover from losses; to make more. They ran Youtube at a loss for years, but that was in the early days when they had first bought it. While they don't break Youtube's financials out in their external reporting, my understanding from finance and market experts is it's considered fairly unlikely Youtube is being run as a loss leader. And Google, along with Alphabet, as a whole is certainly profitable.
If Google feels Youtube isn't generating enough return, they have a lot of other moves they could make that don't involve trying to turn ordinary internet citizens into some kind of criminal over AdBlock. Off the top of my head, Youtube could stop streaming official music and movies (which presumably they pay a fee for every time that happens). They could also investigate commercial accounts (any company, from solo to full on big corporate, that use Youtube as their repository for customer facing video material that benefits that company rather than Google) and charge those companies for using Youtube as an excuse to not develop their own video hosting infrastructure.
And they could end revenue sharing. That has done more to screw Youtube up than anything with the ads. The moment they offered revenue sharing, millions of people tumbled out of the farthest corners of the planet in a mad scramble to upload anything that might direct some money into their accounts. Most of those millions aren't putting in any effort, and few have any actual honest interest in or desire for genuine quality material they put their name on. It clutters Youtube, turns any search into a slog trying to find real content amid all the low effort bullshit clogging up the service.
I don't remember ever having any kind of "This is it, I'm out" moment with tv, but ads were the reason I drifted away. I'd have the TV running, sometimes watching a specific thing, other times just letting it run, and at some point in the 90s the ads pushed past my limits. I was listening more to ads than I was to actual content.
By the 00s I was no longer a TV person, and had turned to other methods to get programs I did specifically want. Because of ads.
If Google turns Youtube into cable television, stuffing ads into every video the way cable stuffed ads into programs, I'll find other ways to get access to any Youtube content I decide I specifically want. And the best part is I don't even have to turn myself into a l33t haxxor to figure that out; l33t haxxors who hate ads as much or more than me are already very interested in winning the arms race against Google over Youtube ads.
Who knows what workarounds the hackers will come up with, but in a race between tech companies and non-corporate hackers ... I'll bet on the hackers. Right now there are tech folks considering "server side ads" and "embedded ads in streams" and thinking about how they might defeat that. Some of them are doing it because they find it fun, some because it's a challenge, some because they hate The Man, some because they hate Google, some for the lolz, and some just because they believe in the cause.
There are more of them than there are Googlers working in Youtube. Some of them probably even work for Google, and certainly know how to help those anti-ad efforts even if they have to be discrete and covert about it.
Youtube isn't a right, but let's not pretend Google doesn't get value out of "unmonetized viewers." Those viewers "contribute" data profiles that are used to build vast, ever updating databases on consumer behavior. Very granular data. Stuff like "13-24 year old women in (insert specific geographical area) meeting (insert seventeen other specific demographic categories) are very likely to (insert list of consumer behaviors)."
Turning Youtube into 50% ads and 50% content is just naked greed. They make plenty of money from every click, even if you're not signed into an account. And if you do have an account, odds are you've given them more than enough information to be able to granulate the shit out of your data profile in their databases. A profile they monetize.
Google isn't out of pocket on Youtube. This is just some executives who decided to squeeze. Probably because they wanted to look good and increase their chances of making the next rung of seniority and power. "I directed efforts to monetize the shit out of Youtube and brought in (insert number) extra revenue, and that's why you should hire, promote, and love me."
If Google could guarantee that my YouTube Premium usage wouldn’t get tracked at all and would have zero impact on personalized data collection and advertising across their other platforms, I’d be...
If Google could guarantee that my YouTube Premium usage wouldn’t get tracked at all and would have zero impact on personalized data collection and advertising across their other platforms, I’d be willing to pay for Premium. I use YouTube enough and get enough value out of it to pay for it. But as it stands, even if you pay for premium they are still monetizing you for advertising, just not directly in the videos.
Even as a premium user, my experience is not premium. I get random buffering issues, seeking/scrubbing issues, etc. This is on a powerful PC and a consistent, well-performing 1.2gbps connection....
Even as a premium user, my experience is not premium. I get random buffering issues, seeking/scrubbing issues, etc. This is on a powerful PC and a consistent, well-performing 1.2gbps connection.
I've noticed many channels / creators actually moving to their own platforms and having YT just as a second-class "you get some of the content, but long after it has aired on our own site" platform. The creators cite numerous reasons, from content policies/demonetizaton problems (which are focused on appeasing advertisers), slowing revenue, and just not providing what the creators need, they feel restricted.
I watch enough channels that I really don't know what else to do other than use premium and just deal with Youtube's UI/stability being a dumpster fire. I kinda just want to give YouTube the finger and leave the site, and just make that the final "degoogling" of my life. But, there is solid content there I want to see.
I wonder if I should disable YT premium- search a number of these creators and just subscribe for roughly the same cost, to a few different patreons and such as an alternative.
I subscribe to Twitch Turbo as that gets you zero-ads across the entire site, and Twitch doesn't provide a great experience either- but it has been more stable than YouTube for me. I watch enough Twitch content that it makes sense to keep Turbo for me.
Not sure. I've tried disabling all sorts of them (ad-blockers, youtube-enhancers, etc) and still get weird problems from time to time. They'll go away for weeks at a time, and then it seems, maybe...
Not sure. I've tried disabling all sorts of them (ad-blockers, youtube-enhancers, etc) and still get weird problems from time to time. They'll go away for weeks at a time, and then it seems, maybe coincidentally, when YouTube/Google are reported to be changing things that it worsens again.
The issues don't happen on other sites, and I've had them happen on multiple computers. Moving the progress slider in a few minutes seems to be when it happens the most. But I'll have videos just randomly stop buffering, or start then stop then start again when I'm playing them for the first time. It's intermittent.
I thought it could be an internet issue again- I had a router issue in the past that was causing packet loss and so on, but as far as I can tell it's not an issue this time around as it's passing all the same kinds of tests it was failing before. My latency, jitter, packetloss, bandwidth are all consistent and look good.
But, I can genuinely watch videos on any other video site online and not have the same problems. It definitely seems specific to YouTube. Maybe being on Linux throws an extra wrench into things, but again it's the only site that is so fussy.
I can even use a third-party interface like PokeTube, the Freetube desktop application, play videos directly in MPV, etc and none of those whether in-browser or out have a problem, it's only specifically on the YouTube site itself
Like @PleasantlyAverage, I don't have any issues with YouTube Premium in a browser. Granted, I do most of my YouTube watching on my Samsung TV (while my wife and my daughter do so on Samsung...
Like @PleasantlyAverage, I don't have any issues with YouTube Premium in a browser. Granted, I do most of my YouTube watching on my Samsung TV (while my wife and my daughter do so on Samsung phones), but none of us have had any issues across any platforms. On the rare occasion that I use a browser (Firefox on Windows), I don't notice any difference.
Update: my issues might actually be a Firefox-specific bug (possibly triggered by changes YouTube has made): Bug 1878510 FURTHER UPDATE: Definitely seems to be this. A workaround of using h264ify...
Update: my issues might actually be a Firefox-specific bug (possibly triggered by changes YouTube has made): Bug 1878510
FURTHER UPDATE: Definitely seems to be this. A workaround of using h264ify to force videos to play in h264 and not VP9 solved the issue for me. Issue was repeatable and cannot repeat it now with the workaround. FF 127.0.2 should resolve once it's out on the ~25th. See specific comment/discussion here: Bug 1878510 - Comment 113
Interesting, does it mean that I will be able to skip ad-blocks entirely just by skipping video for a 15-30 seconds? Currently we are forced to watch first 5-15 or more seconds of ads, so,...
Interesting, does it mean that I will be able to skip ad-blocks entirely just by skipping video for a 15-30 seconds? Currently we are forced to watch first 5-15 or more seconds of ads, so, honestly, this will be an improvement.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it will be possible to create ad-blocker that will skip ad-blocks by analyzing separate frames of video.
Whatever happened to YouTube blocking users who had adblocks on? I got the threatening 'you will be blocked if you continue to use ad blockers' warning, switched to FreeTube for a few weeks, and...
Whatever happened to YouTube blocking users who had adblocks on? I got the threatening 'you will be blocked if you continue to use ad blockers' warning, switched to FreeTube for a few weeks, and then switched back over to YouTube with adblock on with zero problems.
I think they realized it was a futile effort, smart people will always find a way around their attempts and share them with everyone. They can't win that game, so they're trying a new approach
I think they realized it was a futile effort, smart people will always find a way around their attempts and share them with everyone.
They can't win that game, so they're trying a new approach
When they started that, I began paying very close attention to the Ublock Origin community. I was already using it, but now I had a reason to care about UBO news. I remember there was a few weeks...
When they started that, I began paying very close attention to the Ublock Origin community. I was already using it, but now I had a reason to care about UBO news. I remember there was a few weeks where once every three to five days Google would push some sort of change through, and UBO would need a few hours to implement a fix, but that was the extent of it.
I also stopped using a logged-in Google account on my browser, and switched over to a Firefox Private window for my Youtube browsing. I already have a VPN, and was prepared to run my browsing through that if necessary. It would give me a good excuse to figure out a virtual machine was the worst I expected it to get, but the anonymous window combined with UBO fixed everything.
What did I lose? Access to "the algorithm". Which was being enshittified anyway. I'd lost count of how many times I'd marked some channel as "ignore" or "do not show me" or whatever they'd called it, and still got that shit popping up next to videos I did click on. Boohoo, big loss.
Web browsers have these things called bookmarks. I didn't "lose" anything since I already had any channels I was interested in bookmarked.
It’s surprising YouTube took this long. It’s a good change imo. Not only makes it difficult for adblockers (twitch has been very effective with it), but it’s a better experience for users with...
It’s surprising YouTube took this long. It’s a good change imo. Not only makes it difficult for adblockers (twitch has been very effective with it), but it’s a better experience for users with poor connections.
I wonder how hard it would be to detect and remove ads with a neural net. Ads are a lot louder and completely unrelated to the content, so it might not be that hard. This may not be workable for...
I wonder how hard it would be to detect and remove ads with a neural net. Ads are a lot louder and completely unrelated to the content, so it might not be that hard.
This may not be workable for live viewing, but for yt-dlp it could be.
Would something like this not also be able to be adapted to live viewing that has in-line advertising on other platforms, like say sports or such? A lot of the advertisements are the same, if it's...
Would something like this not also be able to be adapted to live viewing that has in-line advertising on other platforms, like say sports or such? A lot of the advertisements are the same, if it's like a commercial for an insurance company for example, the commercial on Youtube might be the same one or slightly edited from a commercial that also aired on ESPN during a sporting event. Granted on Youtube it's something where you can skip ahead, and live viewing you cannot, but then it would just be a matter of modifying the action to block/mute the video until the detected advertising is over.
Is there somebody else who doesn't watch Youtibe anymore. I left when they increased default mid-rolls to every 2 minutes of the video (or so it seems) and never looked back. I stumble on Youtibe...
Is there somebody else who doesn't watch Youtibe anymore. I left when they increased default mid-rolls to every 2 minutes of the video (or so it seems) and never looked back. I stumble on Youtibe video (tutorials mostly) here and there but I don't ever visit Youtube.com bymyself to have a look what's up. I even deactivated the app on my phone.
I pay for LTT on Floatplane and recently jumped on Nebula. I hate paying for streming, but hese two at the very least give money directly to creators.
I don't think paying for entertainment content is a terrible thing at all, especially if there's profit sharing happening with content creator. And I know it cost them a lot of money to run YouTube.
What I dislike about YouTube, however is that they knew from the get go that it costs money, but they pressed on and on and on at a loss until they monopolized the landscape. Then they're using the monopoly to strong arm money.
I just don't like this model of running business. It works and it has enabled a lot of content creators to make a living but it still sucks....I wish.....that our collective tax dollars could be used to fund publicly valuable content creators and to support local arts.....
If you live in Canada, it does. There are at least four federally funded organizations with artist financial assistance programs that I know of up here:
https://canadacouncil.ca/funding
https://production.nfbonf.ca/en/filmmaker-assistance-program-fap/
https://cmf-fmc.ca/our-programs/
https://telefilm.ca/en/we-finance-and-support/our-programs
And each Province/Territory has its own similar programs. E.g. https://www.arts.on.ca/grants
The government funding is still small fries compared to the money that YouTube can provide content creators. However, the YouTube model doles that money out by worldwide views, so it isn't particularly good at fostering new talent or region specific talent, whereas the government funded programs are typically designed to do exactly that.
Canada is so great at supporting art. It's much easier to concentrate on your art when you don't need to worry if you can eat tomorrow.
France does this too!
Bookmarking this for later. Thank you for these resources. Yay Canada! I guess I was too harsh on ourselves
I'm wondering at what point YouTube got to break-even? I don't think they shared much financial information about that at first?
Twitch has been doing this for years. I am alarmed that this hasn't been used on youtube before.
This is likely going to be enough to get me to leave youtube entirely, since this version of the cat and mouse game requires a lot more effort to continue.
I wouldn't mind if it felt like paying for the platform actually got me away from the predatory bullshit, but from what i've seen this is just not the case.
As is I just tried to watch a smaller channels video and it just looped ads forever, so that's neat.
I get it. The ads on twitch made me leave the platform too.
I am, however, paying for YouTube and I’m happy with what I get in return.
Twitch ads are unbearable. I'm willing to pay for YouTube as I can get my money's worth.. Twitch honestly has no value
I've considered paying for YouTube. I watch too much YT content (admittedly with UBO) to just give it up entirely. As long as I don't get any ads, I'm good. Though I guess the question is: do the content creators get any of that subscription revenue if there are no ads displayed to paying users?
Anyway, I'd probably cancel Netflix to do this.
Content creators actually get more revenue per viewer from Youtube Premium subscribers than they do from ads, and afaik it's still based on watchtime. I remember one Youtuber I used to watch mentioning that downloading his videos as a Youtube Premium subscriber is good money for him bc it pays him like you watched the whole video when you download it, and he made long unedited Let's Plays.
Yes, they get a proportion of the subscription revenue based on your watch time.
The problem is that while yes they do get some shared amount from premium subscribers, as a premium subscriber you are a paypig for YouTube's shovelware. I don't want YT music. I don't give a shit about downloading videos for offline use. I just want the ads gone. The price is just too high for that. I'd rather spend $14/mo on the creators directly, thanks.
I'm surprised it took them that long. This sounds like it will also break the output of tools like yt-dlp, which are used under the hood of other applications when youtube is an acceptable video source.
Well, it won’t break it, yt-dlp will just also download ads now.
That's a broken output, though. Are the ads permissible in the functionality of the third party app? If it's a karaoke video, for example, a random ad in the middle completely breaks the video. And do the ads change? If the ads change, does the video length not include the ad length (so it's broken all the time) or does it include the ad length (so it changes every time, breaking caches)?
People are forgetting YouTube costs money to run and that YouTube Premium exists. If this is too inconvenient then there's a paid tier.
Like I care? They're the ones that stifled and suffocated any competition in its crib and now I'm stuck with this mess of a platform.
I'm getting super disillusioned with the internet the longer it lasts, where all power is in the hands of a few ad conglomerates and I'm just supposed to agree with that business model. Or opt out of society completely I suppose. Which at some point may actually sound compelling if it's continuing this trend of squeezing every person until wrung dry.
You don't care about their profit and they don't care about what they see as freeloaders, hence we're in this situation. In a capitalist society getting angry at this is like getting angry at weather. Premium pricing is pretty reasonable but if you want to stick it to the man subscribe via VPN through India or some other low income country.
This is how I see it, and I'm someone who blocks the ads. It's fair game for them to try to come up with these methods and inconvenience adblockers, though as with all similar things, I expect there will be some collateral damage in this move. Similarly there were video game publishers that fought against people easily cracking their games and then stepped up their DRM, which to some degree some of it has worked, but it also has some collateral damage that makes it so people who actually pay for the games get a worse experience in some cases.
I also recognize that adblocking and fighting the adblocking is part of the game if you are gonna go that route. I do think that there's some part of my mindset that has grown accustomed to it being so easy for so long, that you just installed an extension and everything worked flawlessly and you didn't have to check for new workarounds every couple months that it is frustrating to have to deal with it. Of course that was just taking for granted that over the years more and more people were going online which maybe satisfied the capitalist thirst for growth at every turn. Now it's probably hit more of a saturation point, much like Netflix did at one point and then cracked down on password sharing, and cracking down on adblockers is a way to keep satisfying that capitalist growth.
It won't stop me from also advocating for a society that moves away from advertising. I do think people should pay for what they use, but as long as advertising exists no other model will be developed to take its place because a lot of people don't recognize the harm in it. While there's a lot wrong with the economy in the US, and you can frequently find statistics about people living paycheck to paycheck, I think some of that comes from the fact that people are manipulated by incessant advertising to buy things they don't really need.
I also don't think paying X amount for unlimited use of something is a viable model for everyone or every service. I don't use Youtube that often, so I'm still better off fiddling with adblockers here or there to watch a video occasionally than I am to pay $14 per month.
Even if premium pricing were reasonable–which I contest, but even if–they used the vast resources of Google, a monopoly, to create another monopoly on content delivery, which they're using to squeeze consumers. That sits fine with you, does it?
The plan is explicitly for people "who live within the same residential address" (household). It's just another thing for them to clamp down on in a similar fashion in the future once subscription growth slows down, and it similarly won't require any change in terms.
So far.
Or we keep playing this cat and mouse game.
I'm not going to concede, why should I? They won't.
I'll keep blocking it until impossible.
It's not just YouTube either. The entire web is borderline useless without an adblock. And sometimes it's even dangerous if they inject malicious stuff into the ads.
I have and will whitelist websites that are not being actively hostile. There are still websites that earn their monetization.
They don't even have to inject anything malicious in the ads. Most of the time they are misleading already, including but not limited to mimicking e.g. download buttons, they frequently link to scams, and can also link to something malicious in another location. There are laws against some of these, but zero enforcement from even the biggest corpos like Google or Meta. Some people are even getting ads for illegal gun dealers and other such ludicrous abuses.
Using a VPN to get another country's regional pricing eventually screws over the people in that country. When YouTube decides to notice that the numbers don't add up (and they will notice) they may raise or just stop doing regional prices. Then the people who actually live in that country won't be able to afford the new price. It's happened before with other services and it can happen again with YouTube.
I do see what you mean, but capitalism is more like a bubble dome than actual weather. We can and should and do push against capitalistic oligarchies, and by doing so we can sometimes create meaningful changes. Like labour unions, two day weekends, overtime pay, safety standards etc etc etc.
We do see what you mean, we just don't think we should lay down and accept it without some push back
We're cat-and-mousing for now, but that can't last forever. IMO, we need a three-step solution:
And on top of it there are people constantly defending these corporations for some stupid reason.
I don't think it's fair to say it's stupid. My own argument is rather indefensible if I take it beyond just looking at it from my own selfish perspective. Turn it around and I wouldn't want people to just freely take from me because they find it morally justified. Where does it end?
They do have to pay for the hosting and I'm not entitled to the content they host and pay for. I just feel there's extenuating circumstances as to how we got here in the first place that make it morally ok to give them the middle finger when it comes to ads. But that's just my opinion at best. I don't think it's fair to say others are stupid for thinking otherwise. Now I don't agree with them, but they aren't stupid either.
Unless stupid means working against your own short term interests.
Youtube is a private monopoly with insurmountable advantages (related to licensing and infrastructure) that make competing against it pretty much impossible. I don't mind paying in itself, but I disagree with being forced to pay this specific private company (one way or another) in order to participate normally in society in the cultural context in which I'm inserted. Money is tight currently, but I'd sooner pay for Nebula! (And I say this while acknowledging that there are things that youtube does very well, technologically.)
Google deliberately put themselves in this position of owning too much internet infrastructure and being essentially unavoidable. Most e-mail goes through them one way or the other. Most smartphones require their services to function. Most websites ping their servers - for CAPTCHAs, for fonts, for maps and more. Most people use their web browsers, so their word is law in standards bodies, to the detriment of user interests. And they have no qualms with ruthlessly abusing this position for harvesting data and redirecting people's attention - in search results, on youtube, on maps, everywhere - toward the services of their paying (ad) customers. The only thing they're ridiculously bad at is creating new services for taking over new market segments without killing them shortly afterwards, but it's not for lack of trying. Honestly, it would be nice if they were run as a utility.
In any event, in this case I'm more worried about things that were built to use youtube videos as part of a pipeline breaking... I don't know to what point it's possible for third party software to convey the identity of a user as a premium paying user to youtube through yt-dlp or other means. You might need to put trust into the third party pipeline that compromises the security of your credentials?
The problem is YouTube doesn't have an "ad-free YouTube Only" tier. They force you into YouTube music as well, which not everyone wants. This means to get the ad-free experience you're shelling out $14/mo, which is a lot more than many would want to spend. I know I only occasionally use YouTube, and there's no way I'd pay $14/mo for how much I use it.
I just wish they'd actually provide a reasonably priced ad-free only version that doesn't bundle other things. They had one in the EU for a time but killed it.
Kill the competition by running at a loss and setting the expectation that the service will be free. (We'd probably be using Vimeo or Dailymotion otherwise.)
Also own a music service in a relatively competitive market.
Make the original service obnoxious to use unless you pay for a bundle deal for a leg up over competition with the music service.
???
Profit!
This is the same behavior Microsoft was prosecuted for in the 90s, and were long past due for world governments to backhand them for it.
Yeah it's funny. This whole thing made me look at youtube premium again and made me do a double take. It's more per month than any other subscription service I have.
The minute they offer a standalone plan at a reasonable rate that doesn't try to leverage their monopoly into getting me to also switch from Spotify to Google Music I'll be a paying customer.
Does that $14 include other, non-YouTube related stuff? Google's product matrix is confusing... I just checked my Google account, and I'm paying $7.99/mo for music + ad-free YouTube.
You might be in some sort of student plan or grandfathered into a lower tier plan (or different country). Currently the $13.99/mo includes ad-free videos, ability to download to watch later, background play (playing the video with your screen off/locked on mobile, a feature that used to be free and then they pay walled), and then YouTube music streaming.
I really don't watch videos on my phone so I don't care about the download to watch later features or the background play. I have no desire to switch to YouTube music either. I just want to watch my videos without ads. That is not worth $13.99/mo. I'd also argue it's not worth $7.99/mo when YouTube isn't even the one creating the content, they are just hosting it.
This is false. Or at least, a lawyer's truth. From this Louis Rossmann video, you have to be connected to the internet to watch the downloaded video.
The killer feature of the $$/month is that it more directly supports the youtube channels, except per that same video no it doesn't.
I can confirm from experience that you wan watch downloaded videos with no network connection whatsoever.
You have to connect the device to internet once every 30 days otherwise the video becomes unplayable. But implying that you must be connected to play at all is verifiably false.
Rossmann talks about a time limit of 72hr, and according to Google's official docs it can in some countries be as low as 48hr. This is low enough to where I would agree, that it hardly counts as downloading. Though I didn't find the part where he mentions that creators don't get supported by the premium subscription. His only gripe with it is downloads not being eternal. It would also go against all accounts by different YouTubers of it being a significant improvement.
Wow I did not know that. My list of "benefits" was pulled straight from YouTube's site about what you get for YouTube premium. That's kind of insane that you need to connect to the Internet to watch a downloaded video.
Thanks for the response. I guess I just have a grandfathered rate.
In case you didn't know, creators get a portion of the YouTube premium subscription costs when you watch their videos too. It doesn't all go to YouTube.
Yes I'm aware of that, and it's a significantly better portion than the ad revenue share they get so that's one positive I can say about premium. Still not worth the price for me personally though.
If I pay for Premium, do they stop stealing all my data for free, or is that always a bonus for them?
They will do whatever is legal in pursuit of profit, and probably skirt rules a lot. I live in a country where I must be allowed to opt out of data processing, which I did.
I couldn’t care less. After what Google has done, I wouldn’t give them money for any reason.
Besides, they will not stop at covering their costs. They won’t stop at any amount. No for-profit corporation does.
This is why they inject ads. Do you believe they should be forbidden from doing so? What's your stance on banning YouTube competitors like TikTok?
It's unreal to me the lengths people will go to defend giga corporations that will do everything in their power to profit, no matter how evil or unethical those practices are. They couldn't care less about any individual person, and they're certainly not doing anyone a favour as some people try to imply.
They will steal yours and everyone else's data without consent, they will train AIs on stolen content, they will purposely ruin the internet experience for thousands of people who aren't and won't ever be their customers. They will do everything they can to strangle the competition and any other player, big or small, that would arise, so that they become the only real option in the market. It's not a consumer's choice. They're not playing a fair and even game. We should collectively stop inferring that it is.
Exactly. The videos are a source of valuable training data for them. "They should be paying us"
TikTok wasn't banned for being a competitor to YT though, but because ByteDance is run by a foreign hostile entity. They're using the app's algorithm to push misinformation and influence democratic processes.
...You are aware that domestic tech companies are doing exactly the same thing, exactly as deliberately, and to the same degree, yes?
I hate it too, but it'd be a little gross to only get mad when a Chinese company does it. Which I'm not accusing you of; just that it's a common sentiment here in the States.
Here's the problem with comparing Chinese things with American tech surveillance : when Americans get caught, there'll be trials, there'll be discovery, there'll be freedom of information and investigations and maybe heads will roll, and then maybe regulations with tighten and things might change. Or they won't. But the journalists working on the story don't have people knock on their parents' doors at 3am, they don't get "chats" from the company's Party division, they don't have the risk of being arrested for "making trouble". And the citizens being spied on can mostly go about their lives yelling obscenities at the president and saying whatever they want about their employers without repercussions.
Even granted they're doing "exactly" the same things, how each State uses that information and what it means for the freedoms and safety of its civilians are drastically different.
It's like saying every parent checks the report cards of their kids and obviously there's encouragement and discouragement. And then you find out one of them is beating the stuffing out of their kids for getting C's. It's not the same.
Moreover, foreign interference is more dangerous than domestic misinformation campaigns.
I think they should be forbidden from having such an intense monopoly, especially on multiple industries as Google currently does. If that was the case, we'd be a lot better off, ad injection or not. I do however find marketing as a whole to be an insidious and disgusting industry, and would adblock regardless. But I have no issue with, for example, paying for Nebula.
As for TikTok, I oppose that ban, even though I loathe that platform as well. But that's for separate reasons that are rather off-topic.
Sure, but there's a major issue with say, work accounts.
I have a work account for youtube (mainly because I use other API features for google), but I also use this to do my light work browsing. Obviously not all of this is productive, most of it is just a quick way to put on music (which could easily be worked around), but the big one are the leagues and leagues of "how the fuck do i do this?" videos all over youtube.
Most companies are not going to start paying for their tech division to have youtube premium so they can quickly access the information they need (and is often linked to directly from the vendor). This has always been a hanging issue with youtubes loss leader approach, but at this point it's basically assumed that whatever company will be putting its guides and information on youtube.
Unfortunately, right now, it just seems to loop me ads. I'm assuming they'll fix that, but given the days where I am diving through the proverbial video trash to figure out what my specific nightmare is, this is going to waste a lot of time, and it'll add up fast.
I suppose it could cut the mp4 up to remove the ads
To add my own sentiments: I actually wouldn't mind YouTube ads as much if they weren't so damn disruptive. I've discussed it on Tildes before, but the current way they're implemented is just bad. I can get ads longer than the video itself, and often encounter a second round of ads two minutes into the video. More recently I've had ads that have the countdown to the "skip" option, but then don't actually let me skip and play the next one. So a 5-second ad can turn into a ten-second one.
Ads are a necessary evil to keep YouTube running, but I hate Google's implementation. There are so many better ways to implement ads, but they're just going for the worst options to make it as frustrating and irritating as possible. That just drives more people to use adblock.
They're probably doing it in part to annoy people into buying premium, but for me at least, it's not working. I watch YouTube enough I could justify paying for a premium account, and I would if it weren't $14 a month. It's just too expensive to bother, especially since I wouldn't even bother with the other perks.
Side-note: I'm weirdly nostalgic for the time I binged an anime on YouTube around 2009/10 that always featured the same three commercials (as in literal commercials pulled from TV). The top comments on every episode were just quoting the commercials. The fact we were all enduring the same commercials gave me a strange sense of connection and camaraderie.
I've been using UBO for so long on YT (and everywhere) that I was legit confused why I was seeing ads yesterday. I took about 10min of refreshing and logging in/out and then googling for me to realize what had happened. I'd forgotten how incredibly jarring and disruptive it is to have ads all over the damned place.
I was actually ok with it when it was one at the beginning. The interruptions completely make me lose the thread of whatever I was watching.
This isn't old style TV, where the interruptions were planned for and handled.
This whole thing is Google simply pushing to maximize profits. Not go into profit, not recover from losses; to make more. They ran Youtube at a loss for years, but that was in the early days when they had first bought it. While they don't break Youtube's financials out in their external reporting, my understanding from finance and market experts is it's considered fairly unlikely Youtube is being run as a loss leader. And Google, along with Alphabet, as a whole is certainly profitable.
If Google feels Youtube isn't generating enough return, they have a lot of other moves they could make that don't involve trying to turn ordinary internet citizens into some kind of criminal over AdBlock. Off the top of my head, Youtube could stop streaming official music and movies (which presumably they pay a fee for every time that happens). They could also investigate commercial accounts (any company, from solo to full on big corporate, that use Youtube as their repository for customer facing video material that benefits that company rather than Google) and charge those companies for using Youtube as an excuse to not develop their own video hosting infrastructure.
And they could end revenue sharing. That has done more to screw Youtube up than anything with the ads. The moment they offered revenue sharing, millions of people tumbled out of the farthest corners of the planet in a mad scramble to upload anything that might direct some money into their accounts. Most of those millions aren't putting in any effort, and few have any actual honest interest in or desire for genuine quality material they put their name on. It clutters Youtube, turns any search into a slog trying to find real content amid all the low effort bullshit clogging up the service.
I don't remember ever having any kind of "This is it, I'm out" moment with tv, but ads were the reason I drifted away. I'd have the TV running, sometimes watching a specific thing, other times just letting it run, and at some point in the 90s the ads pushed past my limits. I was listening more to ads than I was to actual content.
By the 00s I was no longer a TV person, and had turned to other methods to get programs I did specifically want. Because of ads.
If Google turns Youtube into cable television, stuffing ads into every video the way cable stuffed ads into programs, I'll find other ways to get access to any Youtube content I decide I specifically want. And the best part is I don't even have to turn myself into a l33t haxxor to figure that out; l33t haxxors who hate ads as much or more than me are already very interested in winning the arms race against Google over Youtube ads.
Who knows what workarounds the hackers will come up with, but in a race between tech companies and non-corporate hackers ... I'll bet on the hackers. Right now there are tech folks considering "server side ads" and "embedded ads in streams" and thinking about how they might defeat that. Some of them are doing it because they find it fun, some because it's a challenge, some because they hate The Man, some because they hate Google, some for the lolz, and some just because they believe in the cause.
There are more of them than there are Googlers working in Youtube. Some of them probably even work for Google, and certainly know how to help those anti-ad efforts even if they have to be discrete and covert about it.
Youtube isn't a right, but let's not pretend Google doesn't get value out of "unmonetized viewers." Those viewers "contribute" data profiles that are used to build vast, ever updating databases on consumer behavior. Very granular data. Stuff like "13-24 year old women in (insert specific geographical area) meeting (insert seventeen other specific demographic categories) are very likely to (insert list of consumer behaviors)."
Turning Youtube into 50% ads and 50% content is just naked greed. They make plenty of money from every click, even if you're not signed into an account. And if you do have an account, odds are you've given them more than enough information to be able to granulate the shit out of your data profile in their databases. A profile they monetize.
Google isn't out of pocket on Youtube. This is just some executives who decided to squeeze. Probably because they wanted to look good and increase their chances of making the next rung of seniority and power. "I directed efforts to monetize the shit out of Youtube and brought in (insert number) extra revenue, and that's why you should hire, promote, and love me."
Zero Cool says "Hack the planet!"
If Google could guarantee that my YouTube Premium usage wouldn’t get tracked at all and would have zero impact on personalized data collection and advertising across their other platforms, I’d be willing to pay for Premium. I use YouTube enough and get enough value out of it to pay for it. But as it stands, even if you pay for premium they are still monetizing you for advertising, just not directly in the videos.
Even as a premium user, my experience is not premium. I get random buffering issues, seeking/scrubbing issues, etc. This is on a powerful PC and a consistent, well-performing 1.2gbps connection.
I've noticed many channels / creators actually moving to their own platforms and having YT just as a second-class "you get some of the content, but long after it has aired on our own site" platform. The creators cite numerous reasons, from content policies/demonetizaton problems (which are focused on appeasing advertisers), slowing revenue, and just not providing what the creators need, they feel restricted.
I watch enough channels that I really don't know what else to do other than use premium and just deal with Youtube's UI/stability being a dumpster fire. I kinda just want to give YouTube the finger and leave the site, and just make that the final "degoogling" of my life. But, there is solid content there I want to see.
I wonder if I should disable YT premium- search a number of these creators and just subscribe for roughly the same cost, to a few different patreons and such as an alternative.
I subscribe to Twitch Turbo as that gets you zero-ads across the entire site, and Twitch doesn't provide a great experience either- but it has been more stable than YouTube for me. I watch enough Twitch content that it makes sense to keep Turbo for me.
Any chance the performance issues are due to an add-on or the browser in general? I personally don't have any issues in that regard.
Not sure. I've tried disabling all sorts of them (ad-blockers, youtube-enhancers, etc) and still get weird problems from time to time. They'll go away for weeks at a time, and then it seems, maybe coincidentally, when YouTube/Google are reported to be changing things that it worsens again.
The issues don't happen on other sites, and I've had them happen on multiple computers. Moving the progress slider in a few minutes seems to be when it happens the most. But I'll have videos just randomly stop buffering, or start then stop then start again when I'm playing them for the first time. It's intermittent.
I thought it could be an internet issue again- I had a router issue in the past that was causing packet loss and so on, but as far as I can tell it's not an issue this time around as it's passing all the same kinds of tests it was failing before. My latency, jitter, packetloss, bandwidth are all consistent and look good.
But, I can genuinely watch videos on any other video site online and not have the same problems. It definitely seems specific to YouTube. Maybe being on Linux throws an extra wrench into things, but again it's the only site that is so fussy.
I can even use a third-party interface like PokeTube, the Freetube desktop application, play videos directly in MPV, etc and none of those whether in-browser or out have a problem, it's only specifically on the YouTube site itself
Like @PleasantlyAverage, I don't have any issues with YouTube Premium in a browser. Granted, I do most of my YouTube watching on my Samsung TV (while my wife and my daughter do so on Samsung phones), but none of us have had any issues across any platforms. On the rare occasion that I use a browser (Firefox on Windows), I don't notice any difference.
For what it's worth, we are in the United States.
Update: my issues might actually be a Firefox-specific bug (possibly triggered by changes YouTube has made): Bug 1878510
FURTHER UPDATE: Definitely seems to be this. A workaround of using h264ify to force videos to play in h264 and not VP9 solved the issue for me. Issue was repeatable and cannot repeat it now with the workaround. FF 127.0.2 should resolve once it's out on the ~25th. See specific comment/discussion here: Bug 1878510 - Comment 113
Interesting, does it mean that I will be able to skip ad-blocks entirely just by skipping video for a 15-30 seconds? Currently we are forced to watch first 5-15 or more seconds of ads, so, honestly, this will be an improvement.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like it will be possible to create ad-blocker that will skip ad-blocks by analyzing separate frames of video.
Chunks. I posted my thoughts here.
Whatever happened to YouTube blocking users who had adblocks on? I got the threatening 'you will be blocked if you continue to use ad blockers' warning, switched to FreeTube for a few weeks, and then switched back over to YouTube with adblock on with zero problems.
I think they realized it was a futile effort, smart people will always find a way around their attempts and share them with everyone.
They can't win that game, so they're trying a new approach
When they started that, I began paying very close attention to the Ublock Origin community. I was already using it, but now I had a reason to care about UBO news. I remember there was a few weeks where once every three to five days Google would push some sort of change through, and UBO would need a few hours to implement a fix, but that was the extent of it.
I also stopped using a logged-in Google account on my browser, and switched over to a Firefox Private window for my Youtube browsing. I already have a VPN, and was prepared to run my browsing through that if necessary. It would give me a good excuse to figure out a virtual machine was the worst I expected it to get, but the anonymous window combined with UBO fixed everything.
What did I lose? Access to "the algorithm". Which was being enshittified anyway. I'd lost count of how many times I'd marked some channel as "ignore" or "do not show me" or whatever they'd called it, and still got that shit popping up next to videos I did click on. Boohoo, big loss.
Web browsers have these things called bookmarks. I didn't "lose" anything since I already had any channels I was interested in bookmarked.
Any idea how this will affect Invidious or NewPipe?
It’s surprising YouTube took this long. It’s a good change imo. Not only makes it difficult for adblockers (twitch has been very effective with it), but it’s a better experience for users with poor connections.
I wonder how hard it would be to detect and remove ads with a neural net. Ads are a lot louder and completely unrelated to the content, so it might not be that hard.
This may not be workable for live viewing, but for yt-dlp it could be.
If it's literally baked into the video and its positioning isn't dynamic then perhaps SponsorBlock's crowd sourcing will be sufficient?
Even if positioning is dynamic, sponsor block could host a database of ad key frames. I think that could work as well.
Would something like this not also be able to be adapted to live viewing that has in-line advertising on other platforms, like say sports or such? A lot of the advertisements are the same, if it's like a commercial for an insurance company for example, the commercial on Youtube might be the same one or slightly edited from a commercial that also aired on ESPN during a sporting event. Granted on Youtube it's something where you can skip ahead, and live viewing you cannot, but then it would just be a matter of modifying the action to block/mute the video until the detected advertising is over.
I think it could work too, it's just a bit more challenging to do it in real time.
This seems like something that AI could actually be good at... Identifying the beginning and the end of an ad.
Is there somebody else who doesn't watch Youtibe anymore. I left when they increased default mid-rolls to every 2 minutes of the video (or so it seems) and never looked back. I stumble on Youtibe video (tutorials mostly) here and there but I don't ever visit Youtube.com bymyself to have a look what's up. I even deactivated the app on my phone.
I pay for LTT on Floatplane and recently jumped on Nebula. I hate paying for streming, but hese two at the very least give money directly to creators.
Does this screw with timestamped links or have they accounted for that?
Knowing Google, they will just tell us that timestamp linking is now a premium feature so they don't have to make it work