YouTube Has Started Blocking Ad Blockers (androidpolice.com) 243
An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribership grew to a record 80 million users in 2022, and Google responded by announcing it would be investing more into its subscription offerings in 2023. What we didn't realize at the time was how that could mean handicapping its free offerings to get more people to pay for its services. When watching videos yesterday, one Redditor encountered a popup informing them that "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube." The message offered a button to "Allow YouTube ads" in the person's ad blocking software and went on to explain that ads make the service free for billions of users and that YouTube Premium offers an ad-free experience. It even provided a button to easily sign up for a YouTube Premium membership.
This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
The ad blockers can not show the ads, but Google can choose when to stream video.
If they implement it correctly, the best you can do is block out the ad while still having to wait for it to end.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Informative)
(a) That's still a significant improvement given how bad a lot of the ads are.
(b) Google still don't get the ad revenue unless they're willing to lie to advertisers about how many people really saw their ad. And by deterring viewers who were never going to watch ads voluntarily anyway they might (might) reduce second order effects that help to promote their best and most profitable content. So it seems like a strategy that can't really win but could really lose.
I doubt there's any way you can beat the blockers sustainably just by trying to detect them. As with piracy, the optimal strategy to make money from video ads might be to acknowledge the reality and try to make doing what you want easier than working around it. Plenty of relatively popular channels on YouTube feature product placements or have the host openly acknowledge their commercial sponsors as an integral part of the presentation. YouTube's problem is that they haven't found a good way to take their cut of those kinds of ad revenue.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
As with most piracy strategies though, they don't need to stop everyone. As long as they can make it significantly hard for the average user to use an ad blocked on YouTube, they have accomplished their goal. Yes, you will never be able to stop a really dedicated person willing to code their own blocker, but if mom and dad can't keep up with the blocker of the week that works, they are going to give up, and that is who they really care about.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't use youtube at all until they had an adfree model. Now, I use it all the time.
Re:This will fail (Score:4, Interesting)
I am going to sound self-righteous, but I have had a YouTube subscription for a number of years. Partially because it is actual money... far more than Google would ever receive in ad revenue. Same with Spotify, although I don't use that these days -- I download stuff via Bandcamp (streaming gives zero revenue to the artists), stuff that into my collection, and go from there.
Nothing wrong with blocking ads, but it might be wise to consider going for a sub if you can afford it, if only because it helps get money to the YT channels who put out good content.
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it might be wise to consider going for a sub if you can afford it, if only because it helps get money to the YT channels who put out good content.
I sympathize with that, but when google got rid of the "dislike" count, it seemed like a deliberate decision to waste everybody's time by getting rid of our ability to surmise whether a video is quality content. And the fact that they optimize everything to keep people on the site as long as possible. The point is, it feels a lot like an adversarial relationship.
Wouldn't it be interesting if you could pay them and get a better UX as a result? What if they tried to optimize for being useful in a short time?
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not hard once a use a bypass once its implemented, it is really about how many ads are shown. If you have a few ads then that is fine most people won't even bother installing an ad blocker, but as youtube has gotten more ads and benefit ratio of ad blocker changes and people start installing it. If google didn't litter youtube with ads most people would just watch them. Once they start using an ad blocker then its an effort to remove them.
I am not against ads, I understand they are necessary, I am against excessive ads. The question is who is in the right position to determine what is excessive I don't think its google since they will always want to make more money. It probably isn't the viewer since 0 is the optimal number, however I don't mind a few, but 33% of the time in a show like it is on TV is excess.
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Interesting)
"given how bad a lot of the ads are"
It's worse than "bad"... so many of the ads on YouTube are for outright scams. Free energy generators, potions that will cure cancer, RC jets that turn out to be crappy little tin toys, etc, etc.
No matter how many times people report these scam ads, YouTube just keeps on showing them -- proving that, despite what they claim, the *only* thing YT is interested in is *REVENUE*.
example (and read the comments for proof) [youtube.com].
Re: This will fail (Score:3)
Lots of advertisers seem to target the household. So, she might get ads based on your presence. I know I started seeing lots of women's fashion ads after my gf moved in.
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By your logic Google knows the ad was skipped/black/whatever, then why they serve the video?
That depends on whether secondary effects are actually worth anything. Is a video with 500k views worth more than a video with 750k views but 250k of them blocking ads? Directly they're the same. But if a channel gets popular in its niche and that attracts more viewers and some of those viewers do watch the ads then maybe it's 750k views but only 150k blocking ads. That's 20% more ad views and ad revenue.
I imagine the real stats for these things are something that ad-supported services like YouTube try very
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Interesting)
The ads wouldn't be so bad, except that: web ads often have malware; youtube ads can be excessive in number sometimes; they have ads before movie previews (ads before ads); asinine ads.
That said, I see the ads when using the TV, there's no way to block them there. On the PC I block them; it used to just have a long delay before the video started, now the videos are starting immediately (possibly adblock caught up, given time google will catch up, it's just part of the mutli decade long episode of Hungry Games).
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This will fail (Score:5, Informative)
Plenty of people have download caps, so they too are directly paying for every byte of video, even the ads. I remember when cable TV came to my country, first there were no ads, because you were already paying for the content. Then there were ads between shows, because that didn't interrupt the show. Now there are ads during the show, and even cuts to the show's running times so they can squeeze even more ads in. It seems like Youtube is doing the same, with an added helping of tracking and datamining that cable companies could only dream about.
I have no objection to advertising and would happily accept a static ad on the side of a page (or, you know, just PAY for content. I have no problem with this). But advertising companies have consistently proven themselves to be greedy, dishonest, and irresponsible (ads for illegal products/services, scams, serving up malware, trackers and spyware,ads covering content, pretending that the ad IS the content etc). So fuck them. Block all the ads.
Re: This will fail (Score:2)
Google has more than that (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason Youtube didn't do this is they were afraid of competition. They're not anymore. Nobody is even pretending to enforce anti-trust law, so they're free to do whatever they want with zero risk of competitors. If one shows up they'll just spend a bunch of money from their Search business to undermine them until they go out of business. And there's squadoo you can do about it because we won't stop putting people in charge that won't enforce laws against mega corps.
If you don't like it, change how you vote. It does mean you'll have to give up some things, mostly culture war nonsense and moral panics. But it's tough to give those up because they're designed to push your buttons. You need to be aware when your buttons are being pushed.
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If you don't like it, change how you vote.
If voting actually did anything maybe I would.
But all the options I get when voting aren't good enough. So no voting for me and I am left really annoyed that congress can sell their vote but I can't. I want $20. That is a decent dinner for a change.
I have family alive today because a Democrat (Score:3, Insightful)
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Then I'll just have the videos buffer, strip the ad and go get the soda while it loads and buffers. YouTube thinks I watch the ad, instead my system is downloading and buffering the stream, stripping the ads as they come and serving me what I want to see.
What do you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
But hell, I would settle for you nominating slightly less crazy Republicans at this point. Their budget has been shown to be *worse* for the US economy than a default. And a default would be disastrous.
Re:What do you think? (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't anti Google (Score:2)
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Now here, I have to call Bullshit! You're entitled to express your opinions, but you should at least try to make your wild claims plausable. Either show me some citations for that absurdity or admit that you have no evidence to back up the claim that the Republicans are planning on all of the money saved by a budget cut.
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Not if they start splicing the ads into the video on the fly.
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The CPU time to encode that on the fly would cost more than the ad is worth.
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Yeah, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
ads are a scourge, and any sensible person should do as much as they can to avoid them at every opportunity.
Re:Yeah, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear ya....SO many and so often and getting LONGER too.
I don't see any ads really when watching on my desktop, but once I watch YouTube through and app, like on iPad, Apple TV (hardware) or my Fire TV Square.....I get inundated and I don't know of any way to squash them through the apps....
They're almost to the point to where I'm stopping watching except on my desktop.
Which is too bad...as that most TV content sucks .....
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I used to report every single add they showed me as "offensive" as I find all advertising offensive. I'd just hit the little i icon, reprot it as offensive, and it would stop showing me them, and any following.
They don't let me do that any more.
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They're almost to the point to where I'm stopping watching except on my desktop.
Which is too bad...as that most TV content sucks .....
I've done this. I only ever watch youtube on "real computers" now. It seemed like a hassle at first, then I realised that I am actually saving time, because I'm not wasting any time watching ads.
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I guess it depends on what you watch on youtube. If you are watching the make up or jewelry crap, then I wouldn't pay for it ether.
I watch a lot of historic and scientific videos, stuff with high quality production value. SEA and Cool Words are two that come to mind. There are few high quality history channels out there. I find this content worth paying for.
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Useful and practical too...also with brewing ciders and meads.
I'm always good on videos for photography, videography and SPFX tools...post processing, etc.
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what's super fun is having geotargeted ads.
i'm on satellite internet, i live no where near seattle
i don't care about how much washington homeowners can save by bilking government solar subsidies.
fuck off.
also how did you get past my hosts file and adblock?
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Indeed. I live in Trinidad, CO, but my ISP gives me an IP from where my connection hooks into the backbone, up near Colorado Springs, and over 100 miles from where I live. I have to be very, very careful not to let websites use that for geolocation, because if I do that, everyplace I visit gets my location badly wrong.
Re: Yeah, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
You get quite a lot for the subscription value. Ad free, the ability to watch in the background, ability to download, and YouTube Music.
I expect the real move here is to put pressure on Spotify and Apple. Apple can respond by bundling music and Apple TV. Spotify could try to upsell their unique podcast offerings. Eventually users have to choose what they want alongside their music subscription.
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The last is a worthless service to me that does nothing except inflate the already inflated costs.
Re: Yeah, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem will be the ads in the subscription version will grow, just like they did with the free version. There they started as just a few occasionally at the beginning and end up with multiple ads in every stream until the service became unwatchable forcing you to either give up, buy a subscription or install an ad blocker. If subscription goes down the same path what are you going to do?
To me the greed of advertisers reminds me of Monty python's Mr creosote. If they knew what the word restrain meant there would be no ad blockers. During a recent Linux install I searched for a solution to an issue before I got around to installing an ad blocker in Firefox. OMG I couldn't believe how out of control ads have got, such an assault on the senses, how could anyone think it was reasonable?
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Lot of assumptions in this post... but the basic rebuttal would be that if they start making changes you don't like, you can cancel at any time. It's not like cable deals or subsidized phone plans where you're locked in for years - you can discontinue it trivially.
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I do believe content creators should be rewarded so I did tolerate ads at first but when they increased 25 fold I snapped and installed an ad blocker. I had considered a subscription but it was over priced relative to the amount of content I consume and I really don't trust Google anymore after how quickly they ramped up the ads to 25 times the amount I started at once they figure I was addicted. The catch is I'm no
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You get quite a lot for the subscription value. Ad free, the ability to watch in the background, ability to download, and YouTube Music.
I expect the real move here is to put pressure on Spotify and Apple. Apple can respond by bundling music and Apple TV. Spotify could try to upsell their unique podcast offerings. Eventually users have to choose what they want alongside their music subscription.
I pay the Google tax. As far as I'm concerned it's a good deal. Unlimited (whatever that means) google drive that I use for backup, no youtube ads, They host my mail. All for not a lot of money compared to competing services.
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I would rather loose youtube than allow adverts, trackers, malware,spyware served to my by youtube.
And then I would also stop my patreon payments to content creators unless they make it available to some other platform too.
Re: Yeah, no. (Score:2)
Ethical to pay (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate YouTube ads a LOT, but I just tolerate them because YouTube creators deserve something for the effort of making videos, and that is how the money flows.
It just happens I hate giving Google money even more which is why I don't have a premium subscription to get rid of ads I hate. But I'm not going to try to cheat the system because them I'm also cheating the people that make videos.
Re:Ethical to pay (Score:4)
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Rumble is looking pretty good these days too....
Re:Ethical to pay (Score:5, Informative)
I tried. I really did. But the sheer amount of outright junk or scam ads and the inability to flag/block them made it just unbearable.
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You know, it adapts to your taste....
Re:Ethical to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be better off throwing them ONE DOLLAR on patreon and paying for 10,000 ad views that you can then go ethically block.
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The creators have their own ads and get money that way. Which is why I won't pay for YouTube Premium, Google are charging premium prices for an ad-laden experience.
That's fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody has to use it, and it's their service to do with as they see fit. Makes sense they would do this. Nothing to see here.
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They are a defacto monopoly on online video streaming. They may own the site, but they don't own the content. They also don't offer a way for many creators to opt out of their mandatory monetization of your content, even if they don't pass along the income to you.
You are the product, and I personally am not going to sit through several minutes of uninteresting, unnecessary, irrelevant shit I will never buy for any reason to watch a couple minutes of video. My time is worth more
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Insta reels, fb reels, tiktok? Some of those are even moving towards long-form video.
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Comparing it to Microsoft's ads in the O/S is intellectual dishonestly. You absolutely get to choose what's shown in your browser. You can opt out. Lots of people do it.
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No they're not. There are piles of online video streaming sites, and it's a low barrier to entry. Even Disney eventually figured out how to do it.
Most of the interesting YouTube stuff is mirrored elsewhere, whether it's Curiosity Stream, Nebula (created by youtubers annoyed at youtube), or Patreon Video.
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Should I invoice them for the electricity it costs to run ads on my computer? Just wondering if I still get to decide what my computer does with video streams served by another computer.
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If you don't consume their service, you don't see those ads. You choose to see them.
Thou shalt... (Score:2)
Since the ads are served by bots, can't they just be watched by bots too?
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And that's part of the problem. The content creators are not picking the ads, they're chosen randomly and often are unrelated to the content. I especially see this with untargeted ads; it really REALLY wants me to see ads for stupid mobile games when I'm seeing content about a PC game.
What I read that headline as (Score:5, Insightful)
"YouTube has started blocking me."
Whatever. In the great battle for my eyes, entertainment loses every time if ads enter the battlefield. I don't need YouTube, and I don't need their ads.
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thanks for the info (Score:2)
If you don't pay $ nor watch ads (Score:2)
You aren't entitled to free entertainment of whatever you want.
Re:If you don't pay $ nor watch ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck YouTube, they don't deserve any ad revenue or literally anything for the broken shitty monopoly they provide. They're owned by one of the richest companies on the internet, they're just milking you stupid ad-watching peons for your spare time and converting it to cash.
Sounds like you're a fucking idiot if you watch YouTube ads.
Re:If you don't pay $ nor watch ads (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not YouTube's content to monetize.
Why do I have to give money to ${store} even though they didn't make ${product}??? That means I'm entitled to just take it for free!
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It's not YouTube's content to monetize.
Why do I have to give money to ${store} even though they didn't make ${product}??? That means I'm entitled to just take it for free!
I can certainly watch their showdisplay for free, even if I am not buying anything ;)......
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What the parent company makes is irrelevant. Youtube runs about 18% EBIT. Healthy, but below that of other social media giants.
Re:If you don't pay $ nor watch ads (Score:5, Insightful)
With broadcast television, nobody forced you to watch the ads. Everyone knew that most people left the room to go get a sandwich or do something else. And the broadcast networks make a LOT of money this way, with curated ads, ads that didn't offend, without including malware, without popping up the next ad break a mere 5 minutes after the previous one, etc.
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With broadcast television, nobody forced you to watch the ads. Everyone knew that most people left the room to go get a sandwich or do something else. And the broadcast networks make a LOT of money this way, with curated ads, ads that didn't offend, without including malware, without popping up the next ad break a mere 5 minutes after the previous one, etc.
You're free to go get a sandwich or do something else while the YouTube ad(s) play too.
yt-dlp (Score:5, Informative)
For those unaware, yt-dlp is a great program for downloading videos from YouTube and other platforms. https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-d... [github.com]
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I should plan ahead for this stuff. Spent 5 hours sitting around in the hospital with no wifi yesterday and the tv showing dr phil. There's only so much wordscapes I can do before going crazy.
Fine with me (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads don't bother me much, take it or leave it if they get too many ads. What bugs me is the websites that start telling me to shut off my ad blocker, when the only thing I have is a program that blocks trackers.
Yes, but (Score:3)
Yes they own the site and can do what they want with it, including forcing ads, etc.
However, they do have to take reality into account. If they force feed too many of the usual repetitive stupid ads then people will get turned off and find their entertainment elsewhere, user numbers will drop which means ads values will drop and so on to the bottom line.
Ads, sure, but with balance against people's tolerance or they'll kill the golden goose. They paid 6 billion USD for it years ago but if they fuck it up it can go to zero. Hosting videos isn't rocket science.
My adblocker has an adblocker-blocker-blocker (Score:5, Informative)
Youtube with ads is unusable and I'm not paying Google for anything, ever. I'll do without Youtube if I have to.
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This. I have like six different blockers (etc.) installed that all affect youtube, including one specifically for that and nothing else. On my Google TV, I use Smart Tube. I am downright serious about not seeing ads, anywhere. They distract me too much. Google wanted to be the home of streaming video, and now they want to alter the deal, but their reputation frankly isn't good enough to sell turning them off.
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Which blocker are you using?
Don't tease us.
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Youtube with ads is unusable and I'm not paying Google for anything, ever. I'll do without Youtube if I have to.
I'd lose the ability to fix my car and many things around the house... on the first/second try...
Sorry Google, but my browser, my rules, not yours (Score:3)
With the amount of ad servers that get compromised and serve out malware, blocking ads isn't just reducing annoyances, its basic system security.
Further, its up to me what system resources and bandwidth get used for. If I don't want to waste resources for crappy ads that only annoy me and get in the way, that's my right to refuse them at a client level or redirect them to /dev/null.
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Your browser, your rules.
Their site, their rules.
The end result is that browser and site will interact only when there is alignment of both rulesets.
Is the rulesets are orthogonal, browser and site will not get along, and site will not be usable in browser.
Easy peasy.
I have no problem paying for youtube (Score:3)
It's a valuable resource
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Whereas I would LOVE to see the death of the service that has resulted in so many search results going to things that are needlessly presented as videos, with lots of filler added in to get over the minimum time for monetization and "subscribe!" crap added to the end when a simple paragraph and a diagram would be a hundred fold more useful.
YouTube COULD be useful, but it mostly promotes lower quality crap that drowns out the good stuff with volume.
Guess I'll stop watching (Score:3)
I've got better things to do.
begun, the arms race has (Score:2)
Well, leave it to the smart cookies of uBlock origin and privacy badger to get around this block, which in turn will lead the smart cookies at Google to devise a more effective ban, which in turn... you get the idea.
I'll keep viewing youtube with adblockers on (after all, the FBI recomends them*), and when a block like this hits, I'll browse youtube for a few days with adblock off, until uBlock and PB updates.
Easy peasy.
*https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/12/22/2214206/even-the-fbi-says-you-should-use-an-ad-
Exercise (Score:3)
micromeditation (Score:3)
Pay or Leave? (Score:2)
I'll show myself out.
How about reversing it? (Score:3)
Instead of blocking the ad, have a script that clicks EVERY ad a couple thousand times. Preferably distributed around all participating people carrying the plugin to ensure we have a load of unique IPs. The advertisers pay a fortune until they realize that they're being ripped off and simply stop advertising with YouTube.
How exactly do you plan to block this? (Score:3)
Have a plugin that buffers a few minutes of a video and strip the ads. Sure, it would mean that you have to start buffering a bunch of minutes before watching, but to resolve this, just have the plugin buffer every related video while you're watching the first one.
Sure, that would make YouTube lose a lot of money on having to deal with the insane waste of bandwidth but ... hey, how's that my problem, just let me skip the ads and I stop wasting your bandwidth. Deal?
I can handle short ads, it's the endless ones ... (Score:3)
The ones that need for me to click on "Skip ads" for me to not have a two minute ad play. I often keep my phone in my pocket at the gym, listening to recorded streams.
At home I let the ads play, but at the gym I use Firefox with ABP enabled, and I visit YouTube with Firefox set to display as a "Desktop site", not a mobile one. That lets me keep the display off without the stream pausing as a result. Currently the stream just plays, with no ads.
How do I unblock them? (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep getting the "Enable DRM" message whenever a website tries to play a video ad on my system (Linux, Firefox). Occasionally, I click "Enable". Then I get a message about an out of date libavcodec. I've tried to update that, but it has caused Pulse Audio to have fits and finally stop working. VLC with ALSA still works for stuff I want to watch, so I'm not motivated to waste time fiddling with my system to watch your stinkin' ads.
At any rate, the things that complain the most about DRM are ads. What? You think people actually WANT to steal that shit?
Awful ads (Score:3)
The experience of YouTube with ads is simply awful, if the only option is to watch them all, then I won't watch YouTube. Make the ads experience less awfull and then I may accept some.