YouTube Is Getting Serious About Blocking Ad Blockers (theverge.com) 286
Emma Roth reports via The Verge: YouTube is broadening its efforts to crack down on ad blockers. The platform has "launched a global effort" to encourage users to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton says in a statement provided to The Verge. If you run into YouTube's block, you may see a notice that says "video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled." It also includes a prompt to allow ads or try YouTube Premium. You may get prompts about YouTube's stance on ad blockers but still be able to watch a video, though, for one Verge staffer, YouTube now fully blocks them nearly every time.
YouTube confirmed that it was disabling videos for users with ad blockers in June, but Lawton described it as only a "small experiment globally" at the time. Now, YouTube has expanded this effort. Over the past several weeks, more users with ad blockers installed have found themselves unable to watch YouTube videos, with a post from Android Authority highlighting the increase in reports. Lawton maintains that the "use of ad blockers" violates the platform's terms of service, adding that "ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube."
YouTube confirmed that it was disabling videos for users with ad blockers in June, but Lawton described it as only a "small experiment globally" at the time. Now, YouTube has expanded this effort. Over the past several weeks, more users with ad blockers installed have found themselves unable to watch YouTube videos, with a post from Android Authority highlighting the increase in reports. Lawton maintains that the "use of ad blockers" violates the platform's terms of service, adding that "ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube."
Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
A. More people are using adblockers, enough to impact Google's projected ad revenue (in which case, it isn't only youtube that is going to be a problem.
B. More people are using Youtube than their other services, meaning *any* use of adblockers is potentially problematic.
C. Google needs more money because they keep killing new products before they become profitable and search is having issues delivering the same level of growth.
D. Google plans more invasive ads, and they need users to get used to the current level of enshitification before raising the temperature on the frog further.
E. All of the above.
Re:Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
I will NEVER buy ANY of the crap that's advertised on Youtube. Ever.
PS: What garantee do I get that if I buy that product (eg. "Grammarly") that Youtube will stop advertising Grammarly to me on every other video?
Will Google actually start paying people for their video content if advertising is obligatory?
Google wants to have their cake and eat it.
Re: Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Most likely they will do as Amazon: you buy a headset from brand A, they begin suggesting you the same product from bands B, C and D, as if you would ever need another headset before you even received the one you just purchased.
Advertisement has become the equivalent of digital cancer. It grew out of control, it spread to all companies, everyone is trying to get rid of, but just a few manage to get cured of it.
Re: Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:4, Informative)
Well, even place that sold my car started sending emails asking if I was ready to sell or trade up after only one month.
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Anyway, no profits at all for me a dedicated hard-working @YouTube content #creator I made 500+ videos bought all the guides and howtos from Roberto Blake and others made my videos search friendly and even shaved my head bald to look like @Bruce Willis to attract more views but nothing works what a scam!
Re: Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, no profits at all for me a dedicated hard-working @YouTube content #creator I made 500+ videos bought all the guides and howtos from Roberto Blake and others made my videos search friendly and even shaved my head bald to look like @Bruce Willis to attract more views but nothing works what a scam!
It took you 500+ videos to determine that YT is a scam target.ing content creators?
Re: Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean become popular by blatanty stealing others work and doing "react" videos. The lazy content creator's way of making money.
You're not the target audience (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are the minority though the most common advertisements on YouTube are from political think tanks like Prager U and outright scams like those overpriced soaps targeted to men and nutsack shavers. I'm guessing there's a female equivalent I don't see because I'm obviously a man, I mean I am here on slash Dot.
You're not going to fall for the scams but that's not the point. If you have enough education that you can string together a post like yours you're above and beyond what those scams are for. Now mind you in another 15 or 20 years if age related cognitive decline gets to you then you might enter that Target demographic whether you like it or not. It's not like you have a whole lot of control over that.
as for the political stuff it's expertly crafted to push the buttons of a certain type of person. Now it is up to you whether you want to be that kind of person but that's only if you have enough self-awareness to know if you're trending in that direction. Once you start down that path they've kind of got you whether you realize it or not. That's kind of how propaganda works. Look up a documentary called the brainwashing of my dad for a good explanation.
But I guess my final point here is that none of this is traditional advertisement intended to make you purchase a product. I guess once in a blue moon I do see an advertisement for a automobile but the profit margins on those things are so insane they just advertise everywhere.
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It sounds like The Correspondent's piece on BS in online advertising [thecorrespondent.com] is as relevant as ever.
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Good luck keeping your promise, because literally *everything* is advertised on Youtube.
Re:Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, I sometimes browse youtube without being logged in. Shows me more videos I'm interested in.
Youtube, if you're reading this, fix your f@#$ing platform. then maybe I'd consider giving you money.
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My use of Youtube has declined considerably during the last few years (and the use of adblockers has multiplied at the same time :) ), so, if Youtube manages to introduce unblockable ads, I'm going to exit Youtube fo good. Period.
Re:Beancounters demand profit, film at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
The moment my ad blocker prevents me from watching Youtube, I will happily stop watching Youtube and block it altogether at the DNS.
This is called Enshittification (Score:4, Insightful)
Cory Doctorow calls this "enshittification". His latest podcast [craphound.com] is also relevant in this respect.
The enshittification process follows:
Terms of Service? (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't agree to any terms of service.
I don't have an account there. How could terms of service apply to something you freely expose to the web?
You don't get it both ways. Either it's behind a login and there are terms that users have to agree to to get an account, or you're making it freely available on the web. There isn't a middle ground.
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You most likely agree to terms by merely using the site. You could try challenging the legality in court but your legal funds will dry up before google's.
Re:Terms of Service? (Score:5, Interesting)
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And how much does it cost in Germany to take this to trial with a conclusion? Illegality doesn't matter much in the civil space unless there's some sort of enforcement, and that's the main problem in the US and a big chunk of the rest of the world. Does Germany have the economic police on standby to slap on sanctions without going to court?
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This is illegal in Germany.
No it's not. Well it would be if this is how it happens but that's not how it happens. The terms of service is tied to your cookie / login and you had to agree prior to using the site. You may not remember doing so, but it is done (just go to Youtube using a private browsing session to see this in action).
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So, why don't they do it? I mean, surely after Google or Facebook blocks the EU, there will be massive protests demanding to bow down to those companies, hell, maybe even demanding the government double the taxes we pay and give that money to said companies as a peace offering.
Or, maybe a good alternative would be created. Right now it is difficult because of the competition from Youtube and others, but if the competition would willingly leave the EU market, that would help.
Can't be Legal (Score:2)
You most likely agree to terms by merely using the site.
]If that is in any way legal then YouTube is missing a trick: just change the terms of service to require payment and magically anyone using the site will apparently have to pay. The fact that they have not already done this suggests that this is not at all legal.
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I didn't agree to any terms of service.
I don't have an account there. How could terms of service apply to something you freely expose to the web?
You don't get it both ways. Either it's behind a login and there are terms that users have to agree to to get an account, or you're making it freely available on the web. There isn't a middle ground.
First of all, just because YouTube sometimes lets random people watch a video while ad-blocking, doesn't mean they are obligated to always allow it. They can't come after you for violating a TOS you didn't agree to. But like any business, they can certainly elect not to provide you with anything, if you are not in agreement.
In that sense, it's not a "TOS Violation". They're just informing you about their TOS for custtomers, and refusing to give you service because you're not accepting the TOS.
As for your le
No thank you (Score:4, Insightful)
Youtube unwatchable with ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Youtube's definitely unwatchable with ads. I'm a bit puzzled as to why they think banning people watching youtube is going to bring up ad revenues. Even if someone did, out of exasperation, disable ad blocking to watch a video, they are going to be upset enough that the ad certainly will be a waste of money for the advertiser. But youtube doesn't care if the ads actually reach anyone I guess.
Fortunately most of the channels I watch are also on Odysee, but I understand the company that owns it, Libry, is being shut down by the SEC because crypto.
Had a good run, youtube. I guess i'll go back to reading books and browsing forums. I'm a bit sick of people taking what should be a 5 step how-to-fix-it blog post and turning it into a 20 minute video.
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yes this. I stopped going to youtube for generic entertainment after I was blocked on YT for having an adblocker. I haven't looked back. The ads have just made youtube completely unwatchable the last few years.
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> the company that owns it, Libry, is being shut down by the SEC because crypto.
The ownership is less direct than that but to your point LBRY Inc was forced into bankruptcy by the SEC because they have a cenorship-proof video platform.
"Because crypto" didn't even work which Ripple proved in court.
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If I stop using youtube, then my patreon payments to content creators will also stop.
Creators earn a better income from patreon than google, if google wants creators to stop creating content simply because it is no longer financially viable, then please choose which foot you are going to shoot yourself in.
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Worse, if I am forced to watch garbage adverts, I will stop using youtube. If I stop using youtube, then my patreon payments to content creators will also stop. Creators earn a better income from patreon than google, if google wants creators to stop creating content simply because it is no longer financially viable, then please choose which foot you are going to shoot yourself in.
One of the benefits most creators give from a a Patreon membership is ad free video watching. If you watch it from their Patreon pages, that should work. Of course, you could also just pay YouTube and avoid their ads.
I haven't had cable TV in a long time (Score:2)
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Creators will happily be on board and pro
Re:Youtube unwatchable with ads (Score:4, Informative)
A few years ago my oldest child asked me if we could sign up for a music service. She wanted Spotify, but after doing a bit of shopping around I countered with Google Play Music. It was a new service, but it appeared to have all of the music from Spotify, plus all of the Music that got released to YouTube, plus it included a subscription to Youtube Premium. We could get enough accounts for all of the people in my family that listened to music for a pretty decent price, and I liked being able to watch my boat-building videos without having to watch ads. I also liked the idea that part of my subscription went to pay the people that made the videos (yes, I know it mostly goes to pay the people hosting the videos, but that's not necessarily a bad thing either).
I was less enthused when they discontinued Google Play Music for Youtube Music. I used to listen quite a bit from my laptop, and the web front end for Youtube Music is crap compared to what Google Play Music had, but the Youtube Premium subscription that was included meant that it was still a much better deal (in my opinion) than the competition.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Google is now going to push more and more of its customers towards a subscription. I watch more Youtube than any other streaming service by a wide margin, and I suspect I am not the only one. I pay good money for Netflix and Disney Plus, and my family uses them far less, and Youtube Premium also throws in Spotify-alike service for free.
Of course, up until now people were happy with the free version of Youtube. The ads weren't that intrusive, and with an adblocker you could basically get the subscription for free. While Youtube was growing its market share they didn't care about this freeloader problem. However, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the good times might some day come to a close.
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There needs to be an undetectable adblocker. In theory, it would be simple to do, but I am not a programmer, so what do I know.
Basically, play the ad in some kind of sandbox and do not let the video or the audio out. The user just sees a blank screen (maybe with information on how many ads there still are) until all ads are finished. The adblocker can even "click" on the ads.
So, as far as the server is concerned, the user is not using an adblocker, ads were played in full and maybe some were clicked on
If en
This all seems a little invidious to me (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Invidious might be a little slow at times, but still seems to be ad-free. At least, at the time of posting this.
https://invidious.io.lol/feed/... [io.lol]
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It might be that a lot of people are suddenly using it. This could happen if some idiot posts about it on a high-traffic site. Like, um... Slashdot? Nah.
PiHole (Score:2)
If they're YT hosted ads, that's tolerable to me
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PiHole has never worked on YouTube ads.
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But Brave Browser has no problem blocking them.
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>"But Brave Browser has no problem blocking them."
Same with Firefox + uBlock Origin. At least not logged in (I never log in) and for me, for now.
Re:PiHole (Score:4, Insightful)
>"If they're YT hosted ads, that's tolerable to me"
Really? Unskippable ads are intolerable to me- doesn't matter where they come from.
If YouTube just appended ads into the video stream and I could fast forward through them like the in-content ads, I would be fine with that.
Dear YouTube: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll consider not blocking ads when you stop putting them up for:
There's a reason we don't stand for that shite being on TV, I don't see why you should be any different.
I might even consider paying for ad-free access if you offered a cheaper bundle without that music service of yours.
Maybe some people like it but I'm not interested and, to be frank, I thought we were past that cable bundle bullshit.
Regards.
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I guess I agree with almost all of those, but what's wrong with gambling?
Also, if you're getting ads like that, maybe you should let Google associate more keywords with your advertising ID.
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I guess I agree with almost all of those, but what's wrong with gambling?
Gambling can ruin lives and there are laws here governing when such adverts can be shown. Admittedly, the watershed doesn't always apply to some media outlets but I daresay OFCOM would have something to say about the frequency with which these adverts are shown on YouTube. I'm not seeing them because I search or use gambling sites because I have never done so; the closest I get to gambling is the odd lottery ticket (bought in person, in a physical shop).
Also, if you're getting ads like that, maybe you should let Google associate more keywords with your advertising ID.
Fuck that, only a moron would willingly help an advert
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If they didn't have the abusive scam ads and just ran a 5-15 second ad at the very start and very end it would be fine and I wouldn't be bothered by the change. However, the scam junk ads every 3-4 minutes mid-sentence is garbage. Yeah, I'll keep blocking their ads. Ultimately this is a cat and mouse game they cannot win. There is 1 google and billions of us. They already lost; they just don't know it yet.
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Wouldn't it be nice if everybody aspired to that? :)
Try it... I double dog dare you (Score:2, Insightful)
The past week, I started noticing videos stalling on first play; requiring a refresh to watch. Cool... do it Google. I will be out. I mean, we've probably all accidentally jumped on Youtube without a blocker for whatever reason... it's unwatchable. You've got nothing I need, google... \_()_/
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The past week, I started noticing videos stalling on first play; requiring a refresh to watch. Cool... do it Google. I will be out. I mean, we've probably all accidentally jumped on Youtube without a blocker for whatever reason... it's unwatchable. You've got nothing I need, google... \_()_/
And that is what I call "The Internet Death Penalty" - when you attempt to monetize your site to the point that it drives away customers.
Do it! (Score:2, Interesting)
I completely support the idea that if their content is ad supported, if you block the ads, they don't have to provide the content. I think that's 100% fair game. What I expect though is that for many people,. watching youtube isn't a way of life. It's something to do while killing time at home since your friends are busy, you're tired from work or can't afford to go out.
I think the reality is there are many other things we can do besides watch youtube, and they might find that we do. I know I'll miss some h
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What I expect though is that for many people,. watching youtube isn't a way of life
YouTube is serving 70 billion "Shorts" a day. That's 10 Shorts videos for every human on Earth. Every. Day.
Between paid streaming services, "free" online video sites, social media, games and porn I suspect that "people" in developed nations have been utterly subsumed by digital content.
Fadblock -- new solution to YT crackdown (Score:5, Interesting)
Note, it appears author today added a payment mechanism after initial free trial. Available for Chrome and Firefox.
Fadbock add-on for Firefox -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
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I'd much prefer it if someone could make an extension that plays the ads from your subscribed channels in the background, silently, so they get paid but you can keep using uBlock/Smart Tube.
Even that might be problematic as I wouldn't want it messing up my watch history.
Really Google needs to introduce a £5/month family plan with just YouTube and none of the other crap.
Buh bye (Score:2)
I noticed that the last few days, nothing on youtube is so pressing for me to watch 2-3 annoying fucking ads that might even total more time than the clip I want to see sometimes. If they weren't SO obnoxious and frequent I could live with the occasional ad, but it's incessant.
It's just good incentive for me to find other sources for various media
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I noticed that the last few days, nothing on youtube is so pressing for me to watch 2-3 annoying fucking ads that might even total more time than the clip I want to see sometimes.
And something that I've noticed with several of the 'unskippable mid-video ad' insertions is that the video being interrupted seems to continue playing invisibly behind the ad, so that when the ad finishes and returns you to the video you want to watch, you've missed part of the video and have to back up to catch what YouTube so helpfully skipped for you.
uBlock filter (Score:5, Informative)
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
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youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0) youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, []) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
This was posted on reddit then later responses said it didn't work.
DO NOT USE THIS. Force a filters update instead. (Score:5, Informative)
do not use this. do not use any custom filters. official ublock origin guidance is:
1. do not use custom filters for this purpose, they will quickly become outdated and may be detected later on.
2. instead, force an update of the "uBlock filters - Quick fixes" filter list
"
I've seen people suggesting I add specific filters, use a userscript or another extension. Is that safe?
No, it's not. Most of the suggested filters going around are very outdated, some were taken from our first threads.
Even fresh filters go outdated very quickly. If they work today, they might be the exact cause of the problem tomorrow.
Userscripts have a lot of power, they can be abused to cause damage. Even "safe" ones may cause conflicts.
Same thing for extensions - better not install random ones. And, again, they may easily cause conflicts.
Even if a niche solution works for you and lasts a little longer, it's only because it's too small for YT to care. Once you popularize it, they'll take it down too.
"
See detailed steps, links to tutorial videos (on youtube, lol), and answers to frequently asked questions on the weekly master post on the uBlock Origin subreddit. this week's master post is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBloc... [reddit.com]
25 years and counting... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I HATE adverts now, I no longer watch free to air TV, (rarely watch Netflix etc, too much junk programming), dont listen to the Radio, etc.
Worst are the companies who will "Share your information with select partners" , ie anyone who will give them money. And then you have to fight to get off their bl00dy mailing list.
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Since the ad-barage of the late 90's and early 2000's began, my brain has rejected ALL advertising. It is now actually more likely for a forced ad that i'm unable to avoid, to cause me to reject a product entirely. If I see it on a gas-station pump and can't opt-out... Its basically blacklisted from my life. That working list of F-U companies that cannot seem to respect that I TOTALLY REJECT any and all form of advertising, regardless of who pays for what, seems to grow minute by minute. Some of us FLATLY REFUSE to be "Advertised" to... And we honestly do NOT care if some mega corporation likes it or not. Tough cookies. You've abused the concept and it is itself now inhuman abuse wrought upon the masses. If you block outright, I'll simply take my attention, my data, my behavioral information, my spending habits, and every other drop of data you are harvesting.... And let the next guy scrutinize and sample to their little digital devil heart's content! It is not I who need something from YOU... Little Tube. It is YOU that needs something from ME. Its ok, I noticed. Others will too ;-P
Thats great. Obviously you are the minority given advertising is still prevalent everywhere. Ad agencies expect low single digit % responses, otherwise they are happy to get into people minds for later sales.
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Thats great. Obviously you are the minority given advertising is still prevalent everywhere. Ad agencies expect low single digit % responses, otherwise they are happy to get into people minds for later sales.
Except that the open secret is that advertising doesn't work [marketingi...rgroup.com].
There were a couple of Freakonomics episodes about it that I found pretty interesting. Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 1: TV) [freakonomics.com] and Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) [freakonomics.com].
Basically, advertising has never been especially effective, and digital advertising is little more than a scam borderline on protection racket run by Google and Facebook (who combined make up almost 60% of all digital ads). It's a house of cards that's just waiti
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Since the ad-barage of the late 90's and early 2000's began, my brain has rejected ALL advertising.
No it hasn't. To be clear you think you have, and that's what makes advertising so damn dangerous. But there are plenty of psychological studies that show people who claim to be self-aware in rejecting advertising are none the less influenced by it.
youtubedl stopped working (Score:2)
a month or so ago, I have not downloaded anything since. No great loss.
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No problems with yt-dlp. It works fine so far. And I watch everything through FreeTube, which either uses invidious or youtube directly, and it still works.
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Ever since i discovered youtube-dl in 2017, all my youtube watching has been done via command line. Copy URL from browser, paste into a terminal, pipe youtube-dl output to mplayer, done. Mplayer uses hardware acceleration while firefox doesn't for some reason, plus i can EQ audio as well. What's also cool is that i can run it on the root window of X.
There are others ways to block them (Score:2)
You have to be BRAVE
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Anyone using Chrome and also complaining about Google's ads deserves whatever they get.
Preroll ads, fine. Midroll ads, oh hell no! (Score:5, Interesting)
I get that YT needs to make their money somehow. Preroll ads that I can skip after 5 seconds are not great, but not a deal-breaker. After all, if I clip skip after 5 seconds, I wasn't going to buy that product anyway. Unskippable 15-sec preroll ads just waste my time and the advertiser's dollars, but I can just mute the tab until they finish.
But midroll ads which interrupt the video in the middle of a sentence? No. That makes videos unwatchable. Especially when it happens every 3 minutes on some videos.
And c'mon, YT. You do automated transcription. You know where the sentences start and end. So interrupting them is intentional. You're making your free product unusable on purpose in the hopes it drives people to pay a monthly fee. I suspect because browsers and the EU restricting tracking means that ad money isn't what it used to be.
So, what did that drive me to do? I watch all my videos in an incognito window with AdBlock. Which is a bit obnoxious, since now I can't tell what videos I've watched before. But... YT... neither can you. I may be the product, but now I'm a less valuable one.
YouTube automatic transcripts lack punctuation (Score:2)
And c'mon, YT. You do automated transcription. You know where the sentences start and end. So interrupting them is intentional.
I doubt it. One of my long-standing gripes about video authors who rely on YouTube automated transcripts is that they don't have punctuation. Only subtitles uploaded by a video's author have punctuation. Users of https://youtubetranscript.com/ [youtubetranscript.com] can clearly see the difference between the two.
Oh, and https://youtubetranscript.com/ [youtubetranscript.com] blocks ads.
If there's an answer, it's probably not in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
It may or may not be possible to find ways to avoid some or all of Youtube's invasive, annoying ads. I'd suggest, though, that one should start with a proxy server or VPN connection based in an EU country like Netherlands or Germany. The laws there are far more consumer friendly than US laws, and Google's a lot more likely to step on its dick if it gets too aggressive about trying to punish people who succeed in evading its worst depredations.
Fuck you, Youtube (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fuck you, Youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
>"I pay for the premium version of Youtube only to find the majority of content I watch has embedded ads. As my wife said this morning, "Google is worse than Microsoft ever was".
1) Content-creator ads have nothing to do with Google/Youtube.
2) Those can be skipped through quickly and easily, like any part of the video.
3) 100% of that ad revenue goes to the creator. Not the tiny little nothing most creators get from YouTube, assuming they get nothing because of demonetization dogma.
I think very few of us care about those types of ads. The ones we find intolerable are the unskippable type. And that is YouTube's go-to for Ads.
Books and Conversation (Score:2)
No malicious ads? ha. (Score:4, Informative)
If Youtube gives me a monetary guarantee that it will never serve me another malicious ad, then I might consider it. Otherwise, no thanks.
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Accessibility fail (Score:5, Interesting)
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They literally gave you an option to pay instead of watching ads. Is "a good headspace" not worth $14 / mo to you?
BS (Score:2)
You may get prompts about YouTube's stance on ad blockers but still be able to watch a video, though, for one Verge staffer, YouTube now fully blocks them nearly every time.
I got the prompt a couple of times with uBlock last week. Now I never see it anymore. It seems a uBlock update "fixed the glitch".
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>"I got the prompt a couple of times with uBlock last week. Now I never see it anymore. It seems a uBlock update "fixed the glitch".
It is a cat and mouse game. Google changes the ad blocker blocking. uBlock works around it. Google changes it again. uBlock works around it again. Kudos to the people who contribute to uBlock- without it, the web would be absolutely intolerable.
To quote Ms Organa.... (Score:3)
The more you tighten your grip, the more customers will slip through your fingers.
Dear YouTube (Score:5, Funny)
According to my user profile, I'm only 9 years old. Could you please explain to me what these "penis enlargers" are for? Thank you.
cc: FCC.gov
Workaround (Score:2)
My account was blocked for a few days, but I found I could drag video links over to a private/incognito window, and it would play just fine every time.
ISO Or Go Home. (Score:2)
I only tolerate commercials on other folks TV's.
I haven't seen any ads on my Tor browser.
No (Score:3)
I will never allow you to interrupt my videos with advertising, and the reason is simple: The overwhelming majority of these advertisements have the purpose of deceiving me pure and simple, of trying to sell me things that aren't worth shit. And I don't need to mention the many advertisements which are effectively malware trying to get me to install viruses or steal my money.
And before you go off shouting that advertising is necessary to keep the site running, do you know which advertisements work? It's the videos of content producers actually using the products in their work, like some who restore old things and use tools and products that actually would be useful to others, rather than yet another advertisement for yet another "freemium" shitty game.
Re: (Score:3)
>"And before you go off shouting that advertising is necessary to keep the site running, do you know which advertisements work? It's the videos of content producers actually using the products in their work"
But they also work because we can fast forward through them if they are not relevant to us. Sometimes they are, and I will watch them. I do the same with DVR/TiVo watching. Nothing is forced on me and if an ad looks interesting I will watch it.
The ultimate "ad blocker" (Score:5, Informative)
My ultimate "ad blocker" is the youtube-dl script, and its modern fork of yt-dlp. It not only protects against ads, but it also protects from content being taken down, changed, or somehow unavailable.
Better yet? It can download entire playlists or youtube channels.
Of course, they will (try to) come for this next. However in the cat and mouse game, I usually find the open source developers be the ones on the top.
(If you have not done so, I could recommend checking it out at: https://github.com/ytdl-org/yo... [github.com])
The rent is too high! (Score:2)
YouTube premium is ridiculously expensive. It's the same price as Disney+, but where Disney has sunk millions of dollars into creating every *minute* of content you watch on their platform, Google gets most of its content for *free*, they just host it and pay a tiny slice to a small fraction of the channels.
If it was $5 a month for my whole family, I'd pay it. But not $14. Even if, for that $5, only non-monetized channels were ad-free. Most of the time I spend on YouTube, which isn't much, is watching rando
Ublock origin still works... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ublock origin still works, every time I get the warning I just need to update the ublock filters and thanks to the work of a bunch of people online I get no ads and no message. Doesn't matter what detection JavaScript Google ads the ublock guys will change their stuff to make it work again.
That said, the message is definitely scary enough to convince a fair few people to stop blocking ads (and maybe buy a subscription) so it is making an impact.
Beginning of the end for Google. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some things to consider:
Google sells targeted ads.
People with ad-blockers do not want to see ads.
Forcing people to watch ads just turns them off of your service, and definitely against the product the advertiser is selling.
So, preventing ad blockers from working is just a bad idea.
One other thing, ads on the internet are not like ads on a tv channel or in a newspaper, as the bandwidth and hence the cost is to the user, and not the advertiser, you then have a right to choose what you download, and if you don't want to waste your bandwidth on ads, that is your right.
I remember a time before Google, and Google is turning into exactly the type of service which prepares the ground for the next company that promises a ad-free internet experience.
Google, fire your managers who bring you these shit ideas, while you still have time. You are losing your market and opening the door to competition.
Why Does Goog Want to Rip Off Advertisers (Score:3)
I loathe ads. I have not intentionally clicked an in the last 20 years. I have never purchased anything after clicking an ad. I am openly hostile to companies in the ads which I cannot avoid. I am a terrible person who does not represent the values of the companies that advertise to me. I have returned shit I have already bought because of ads. An ad served to me is not just wasted ad spend. It could be negative ad spend.
Why does Google want to rip off its advertisers?
Literally all they need to do... (Score:3)
...is encode the ads directly into the video stream coming from the CDN and there would be no possible way to block the ads. It wouldn't take much work, all the technical challenges with CDN shuffling to keep ads up-to-date are easily dealt with using their huge developer pool, and it would solve all their problems. So why don't they? Because what they ACTUALLY want is to kill ad blockers, on principle.
Longterm, not good for YT Premium (Score:3)
Although I'm a premium subscriber (a must for smart TVs), I liked the widespread use of ad-blockers because it helped keep the premium service price in check. Now with no Plan B, it wouldn't surprise me if premium subscribers will eventually have to watch ads, too, like Prime Video.
Yup, they finally got me... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it sucks that they let you upload like 50k of your own digital audio files to stream from anywhere, at no additional cost.
Stream to what?
My phone?
The thing that goes with me pretty much everywhere?
The thing with all my music stored on it?