YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Now Includes Third-Party Apps (theverge.com) 205
YouTube has updated its policies to no longer allow "third-party apps to turn off ads." The Verge reports: This appears to target mobile ad blockers like AdGuard, which lets you open YouTube within the ad blocking app, where you'll get to view videos interruption-free. "We only allow third-party apps to use our API when they follow our API Services Terms of Service," YouTube says. "When we find an app that violates these terms, we will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers." To get around this, YouTube once again suggests signing up for the ad-free YouTube Premium.
Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can still watch by yt-dlp then mpv. At this point I completely refuse to view youtube by any kind of web interface.
Re: Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:2)
I don't have much free time, but if I did, it'd create a project to chain yt-dl and 3rd party players as a standalone desktop app.
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I don't have much free time, but if I did, it'd create a project to chain yt-dl and 3rd party players as a standalone desktop app.
Try FreeTube: https://freetubeapp.io/ [freetubeapp.io] . It's available for Windows, Mac, and various flavours of Linux. I use it on Linux Mint.
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Does it support SponsorBlock? Many videos are just as bad for ads these days. Especially sponsor whore channels like LTT.
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You can still watch by yt-dlp then mpv. At this point I completely refuse to view youtube by any kind of web interface.
You can also watch using FreeTube on a laptop or desktop, or NewPipe on an Android phone. I haven't tried the latter on anything other than LineageOS, so if you're running the Android that came with your phone, YMMV.
As for yt-dlp, I also use it a lot, for videos I want to keep. But without a YouTube GUI of some kind, you're limited to doing full downloads of whatever a search engine turns up. I find the GUI apps - especially FreeTube - allow videos to be a lot more discoverable.
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Smarttube Next (I think they re-renamed it to just Smarttube again) still works on my Google TV, but now Google is going to step up their efforts to kill these apps allegedly. There are already frequent updates to get around their blocks, but this could mean downtime.
Downtime when I will have to... WATCH SOMETHING ELSE. Because fuck paying for Youtube after We The Users made it what it is today.
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I would suggest that some kind of update be made to these apps so that on successful download they'll "cache" the video payload, and add an option to push it up to some kind of server or network that can be retrieved from as an alternate to retrieval from Youtube.
I mean: If Youtube's going to directly attack the apps, then start working together to make the video data itself available without using their servers.
Re: Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:2)
That's a DMCA nightmare. Downloading is one thing, uploading is another.
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That's a DMCA nightmare.
Actually the DMCA has safe harbor available for system caches [eff.org] - 17 USC 512(b).
A distributed cache can be within the safe harbor.
Google ought to know about that one [ceb.com]
Re: Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:3)
Most of the time yt works fine and is reasonably pleasant in Firefox with uBlock Origin. Occasionally it doesn't play or wants to be reloaded once per video before it will play. When none of that works I do the same thing you do, except I use VLC because I prefer the interface.
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Indeed. Same here. Either they get me without ads or they do not get me as a viewer at all. Guess what is worse for YouTube.
Re:Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing: Google paying to host servers, provide storage space, software engineers to update code, and paying content creators to create content, and getting no ad-views and no paid revenue from you is the worst-case-scenario for Google.
Look, I'm no Google fan, and in fact I avoid as many of their products as possible (YouTube is the only one I still use regularly), but Google has no obligation to provide their product to you for free.
Re:Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:4, Insightful)
and getting no ad-views and no paid revenue from you is the worst-case-scenario
That is not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is I leave Youtube and take with them at least a portion of All my friends (over time) who were not bothering with Ad Blockers anyways.
This means that while me leaving saves them a tiny bit of money on network resources; It actually causes a negative network effect across their whole userbase which reduces their total number of views from people who might have considered paying for Premium or who were not even thinking of the option of Ad blockers.
Your value to a social media site is Not the amount of paid revenue from you.
It's the amount of paid revenue from you plus your network value which includes the value of $$ that can be earned off data learned from you, and the value that can be earned from other people you cause to use the site.
For example, Let's say the average revenue from a youtuber is "X", and the average network value of a youtuber is "P".
If I block ads and never pay Youtube anything, But I upload a video to Youtube that 1000 people come to Youtube to watch who would not have watched on Youtube before, then Youtube has zero paid revenue from me, but then my network value is 1000XP that day; that is potentially 10s of dollars immediately, and tens of thousands of dollars over time.
Ahh, but most people don't upload videos.. Well that is Okay as well, because if I watch Youtube, then I will inevitably end up sharing video links with some of my friends who are Not on Youtube, and referring others to Youtube, then my network value would average (number of users)*(number of referrals)*X*P -- this also adds up to quite a lot over time.
On the other hand If I stop watching Youtube altogether, then my Network value becomes negative, Because It means I will be actively discouraging friends from watching Youtube by referring them to other sources. Me No longer using Youtube will cause my Network Value to the website to become negative, and if it becomes large enough in the negative direction, then it will certainly exceed the hosting costs.
It does NOT cost much to display a video to one person, AND most people will not run effective Ad Blockers anyway, so it can be very detrimental for the site to mess with the few who do.
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Exactly. Even if I never watch any ads, my value to Google is still positive if I watch videos, especially if I leave likes and comments. And I do. No idea why so many people do not understand the economics at work here.
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Re:Go fuck yourself, youtube (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would your friends that don't use ad blockers leave exactly
Because I tell them about a podcast I listened to that's not on Youtube - while you are checking out that podcast on a Podcast site you have a good chance of finding even more things to watch that are not Youtube. Or I tell them about a cool new movie on Netflix, or suggest we watch something together which is also not on Youtube, and they will have therefore left a variable percentage of that time.
As humans our time is scarce, and Nobody's natural state involves sitting on Youtube waiting for something cool.
If I give you some neat things to watch that is Not on Youtube, then your Youtube watch hours will naturally decline as you are checking out those things, instead of things that are on Youtube.
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You are very likely guessing wrong. The point is Google needs me because my mere presence makes their product more valuable even if I never watch any ads. But I do not need Google. And I have no obligation to provide my time to Google for free.
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but Google has no obligation to provide their product to you for free.
Maybe not, but if they can serve you video, they can serve you ads. If your ad-blocker is working then maybe Google should explain the details of what's so different about that stream. Is it running a crypto miner, for example?
I agree that they're free to do this, but my ad-blockers are active for security purposes, and I am free to do that.
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That is probably what they want? You are just an expense for them I guess.
Well the YouTubers with baked in ads will probably miss you, Personally i skip 75% of those videos and move on to the next video if I am not interested enough in what they have to say.
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Obviously, the more viewers, the more attractive the platform, even if some people do not watch the ads. Every viewer that actually leaves when they force ad viewing is also one viewer less for the actual content creators and more motivation to move someplace else once a critical threshold is reached. What they are doing is prioritizing short-term profit over long-term survival, a common mental derangement among MBAs.
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I dont mind the sponsor segments in videos so much as I know that revenue is going entirely to the guy. Fair enough, he deserves to get paid for his labor. I'll still skip it, but thats probably baked into the payment assumption anyway.
That's what they're saying right back at us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Alphabet knows that the vast majority of people aren't savvy enough to find a way around this and are too locked into the service to quit. Most users will either tolerate the ads or buy the ad-free subscription (in which case Alphabet makes even more money off them). They already won this battle a long time ago.
At the moment uBlock Origin seems to be capable of blocking ads on YouTube proper just fine but doesn't seem to work properly for blocking ads in YouTube shorts (maybe it blocks some but I still get ads injected every three shorts, although I can at least just skip past them). Another key piece of this puzzle, however, is Chrome, which is of course also owned by Alphabet. Chrome and Chromium, and by extension 99% of the other browsers people use, are going to be removing Manifest v2 support pretty soon, at which point only a substantially-reduced functionality version (uBlock Origin Lite) will be able to work on Manifest v3; at that point, only Firefox users will really be able to easily block ads, and considering they've already found a way around uBO for shorts, I doubt it'll remain that way for much longer.
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there isn't really any sufficiently viable alternative to YouTube for the type of content they host and they know it (what, are you going to go to Vimeo instead?).
MSFT vs ROTW and they know it.
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You have to understand that they don't care about losing people like us. It's hard to understate just how large YouTube actually is; it's fucking huge. They don't care about losing tens or even hundreds of thousands of users to this, especially since those users don't directly generate revenue (arguably they actually cost money). They don't need the additional popularity they'd get from such people at this point; there isn't really any sufficiently viable alternative to YouTube for the type of content they host and they know it (what, are you going to go to Vimeo instead?).
I suspect it's alot higher then 100,000s of users blocking ads. How many people use youtube? Billion? More?
You will not want to waste valuable resources and manpower to play a cat and mouse game with less then 0.1% of the users. Especially since it will probably be an ongoing cost and not a one time modification of whatever they are doing. Unless of course the blocking users are as low as you say, and youtube / alphabet has too much money and wants to burn some chasing that comparative miniscule revenue.
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You will not win this. IÃ(TM)d rather not watch youtube videos at all than sit through garbage ads. Fuck. Off.
Less than a year ago, I sat through those ads. I figured, why not? These guys are providing something useful and watching some ads every now and then pays for it.
Then, almost a year ago (?) now, the ads became obnoxiously placed and aggressively pushed. YouTube became completely unwatchable. Now, rather than deal with the obvious message delivered by ad blockers, they are doubling down on their strategy.
It looks like they would rather have $0 than $2 because they want $10. I am happy to oblige that stance t
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For me, it's not so much the ads that bother me, it's the fact that algorithm gaming is to the point where all videos are converging on a particular style that is insufferable. I just steer clear. There is never really anything that I want on YT all that badly. The youths can have it. I will stick to RTFM like the old that I am.
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Youtube's bet on the opposite being true for majority seems to have held so far. If you search google for the topic, you'll find quite a few people from large youtube channels discussing their own numbers in light of long term war on adblockers by youtube.
They've all gotten the same impression from their own back end metrics that ad blocker usage has declined massively over last decade.
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My work has some level of adblocking at the firewall as a security measure. Malware has come in through 3rd party ads, so this is reasonable. There's no way end-users can disable it (outside a VPN).
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If YouTube fails me, someone else will get my "business".
Corporations mooch billions of our tax money. Call it taking back a small bit. Sorry, but we have arrived in the time of kleptocracy. Take what you can, because everyone else does.
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I support several youtube channels via Patreon.
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I don't want the steaming music bit.
LineageOS, F-droid, Newpipe (Score:4, Informative)
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people who drown panic and flail around wildly (Score:5, Informative)
And that's exactly what YouTube is doing.
YT is dying. Slowly, and it'll be around for years, but it's dying. The algorithm is starting to fail in very obvious ways, like recommending you the same videos constantly, despite you've scrolled past them a hundred times before. The content has become thinly veiled advertisement in addition to the actual advertisement they shove down your throat in increasingly aggressive manner. Most of the large content creators don't make much money anymore on YouTube and would probably jump ship the moment a competitor with a comparative audience size appears.
They're desperately trying to keep the cash cow alive somehow. And when you run out of ideas to innovate and make a good product, you start to ask yourself how you can fleece your customers for more.
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I am curious why you think this. I don't see any 'real' competition for YT in terms of place besides traditional network/syndicated media production for content creators.
Steve Crowder is a good example. Love him or hate him he has a fairly substantial audience and they are arguably as hostile to Google as it gets. He uses Rumble on his own site and actively encourages people to watch there, yet he STILL simulcasts on YouTube as far as I know; because people still watch there even though he has to censor ha
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There isn't any meaningful competition.
I've tried Rumble myself both as a viewer and as a content producer (very small channel), and it's just... not even in the same league, barely on the same continent.
But there's always a chance a competitor suddenly appears when some VCs with deep pockets decide it's worth the gamble.
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That depends on what you consider competition for YouTube.
From a creator's perspective, there may not be much that competes with it. But if you don't care about what wastes your time, YouTube is hardly the only thing you can keep droning in the background while you code, design or tinker with hardware.
Re:people who drown panic and flail around wildly (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see any 'real' competition for YT in terms of place besides traditional network/syndicated media production for content creators.
For content creators? Sure. They're going to get screwed.
But for viewers? Pretty much anything that anyone can do that isn't watch YouTube is competition. It doesn't have to be streaming video. It could be games. If enough people decide it's more worth their time than YouTube, it could be watching grass grow or paint dry. It doesn't really matter.
Meanwhile on the couch potato end YouTube charges absolutely ridiculous subscription rates, They are asking more than Netflix, Hulu, etc, and i assume people must be paying or that they think they can push people to pay to escape the ads and that they will rather than jump ship.
Exactly. If YouTube makes the viewing experience miserable enough, people aren't going to decide "I'll subscribe to YouTube!" they're going to decide "screw this, I'll do something else."
It's one thing if there's arguably a value add for a service, like better quality or earlier access or something. But YouTube Premium's "value add" is basically "we'll stop intentionally poking you with a stick." That's not a good way to get people to pay, that's a good way to get people to do something else, and there's a LOT of "something else" people can do besides watch videos on YouTube.
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I don't see any 'real' competition for YT in terms of place besides traditional network/syndicated media production for content creators.
Well, there's Twitch, Instagram, TikTok. There's more obscure things like Rumble, Vimeo is still around, there was that other one I forgot. Right now Youtube is the standard, but if they piss the viewers off enough, which they seem to be intent on doing, people will start actively looking for alternatives. They will certainly be totally safe for a long time, no question, but they may have entered a death spiral where revenues are falling, in large part because people are pissed off by all the ads, they try
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There is now a need for DeArrow, an extension that replaces YouTube clickbait thumbnails and video titles with real ones. The website for it says that this is nobody's fault, clickbait is just inevitable, but YouTube could do a lot to fix it by adjusting their algorithm.
You are right though, you have to work hard to get through it's useless recommendations. On SmartTube I made the "don't recommend this" and "don't recommend this channel" options the first and second things on the context menu because I use
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Indeed. Late-stage enshittification. I do watch and follow a small number of youtube creators, but it has been ages since I found any new ones I like. Most stuff the "algorithm" tries to show me is just shallow, political propaganda or infantile crap.
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I think you might be confused about who YouTube's customers are.
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Absolutely not. The YouTube customers are the people buying ads on the platform.
YouTube is fleecing them by raising the number of ads they can bill them for, even though they're force-showing them to visitors who have very clearly expressed that they don't want ads and are more likely to hold the ads against the customers who paid for them than see them as an incentive to buy or as a positive brand-image thing.
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Ah, correction then - maybe you might be confused about how advertising works...
People who drown don't actually do that (Score:2)
Not a good analogy. People drown silently.
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The algorithm is starting to fail in very obvious ways, like recommending you the same videos constantly, despite you've scrolled past them a hundred times before.
Understatement of the year. Their algorithms prevent me from finding anything new at all! It is insane. They would be much better off with no algorithm at all.
The way to reset it is to delete the cookie and never use YouTube with a logged in account. Every time you delete the cookie, it is like a breath of fresh air and you can see some new things for a little while.
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There is an entire generation of people who never stop using their phone.. never leaves their hand... and lots of beautiful people to create content for th
Video Will Continue After Ad. (Score:2)
No hell it won't. *click*. I don't care what website it is. If I really want to see something, I will find it elsewhere.
Ad blocking still working so far..... (Score:2)
Desperate (Score:2)
Unpopular opinion incoming? (Score:2, Insightful)
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I don't know how much gets funnelled back to the actual creators
The Linus Tech Tips channel occasionally does a breakdown of their sources of revenue. In the most recent one I recall watching (probably about a year ago) they shared that they got a massively disproportionate amount of their Youtube revenue (in a good way) from Premium subscribers. It seems to be a decent way to support creators, even if less direct than something like Patreon.
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I don't mind paying for YouTube Premium.
I would like to pay for Youtube premium. Unfortunately, I can not find a way to do it anonymously. I don't want their algorithms locking me in. It becomes airtight after only a week or two and nothing new is shown until a brand new video that fits the narrow parameters is uploaded. There is no exploring the 'long tail' of previous videos because, again, after an amount of time, you are on their rails, not your own.
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Even with YouTube Premium I still require SponsorBlock (removed in-video ads, filler, and other BS) and DeArrow (replaced clickbait thumbnails and video titles with descriptive ones).
Re:Just wait (Score:2)
Youtube is going to do the same as all the other platforms. Take Amazon for example. Prime video used to be free. Then they started putting advertisements in. Other platforms have done similar shitty things. Start pushing ads and then offer a premium tier where you pay more for not seeing them. Nothing but pure greed. Fuck them.
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I am confused. The advertising I see for YouTube Premium calls it "ad-free", not "adblocker-allowed". Are they actually showing ads to those users, or does some of their advertising say they allow ad blockers?
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I understand the logic, but it's not valid: if Google didn't say that Premium subscribers would be allowed to use adblockers, then the OP was just assuming that was allowed.
Not that I am on Google's side here -- I don't use YouTube enough to care about ads there -- but I wanted to know if the OP was actually claiming that Google did something wrong or just something that the OP didn't like.
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Accessibility/ADA (Score:2)
I'll say it again - I use ReVanced because it has accessibility settings YouTube refuses to expose (default video speed, etc.)
I use it with my YouTube Premium subscription.
Google better not violate the ADA by blocking accessibility tools - that would be a criminal act.
Moderation, heard of it? (Score:2)
There is two ways this will play out:
1. They will fail and I will keep using YouTube.
2. They break my ad blocker so I stop using YouTube.
There is actually a third option, Google make the amount of ads reasonable. The odds of that are zero, so we are really just looking at the first two options.
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There is actually a third option, Google make the amount of ads reasonable. The odds of that are zero, so we are really just looking at the first two options.
That would require reasonable management at Google. That ship has sailed long ago.
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There is actually a third option, Google make the amount of ads reasonable. The odds of that are zero, so we are really just looking at the first two options.
There is a fourth option as well, and it involves a societal ban on any advertising beyond printed words that say basically "you can get this product or service here, and this is how much it costs". No photos, video, or or other visual cues, and no audio.
Clearly, the odds of that ever happening are also zero, and always have been. But contemplating a world without advertising as we know it is an interesting thought experiment. Our world would be VERY different from what it is now - perhaps unrecognizably so
Firefox + uBlock Origin (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox with the uBlock Origin extension still works to watch ad-free Youtube.
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Vivaldi just out of the box does too (comes with AdBlockPlus).
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Re: Firefox + uBlock Origin (Score:2)
Works on PC, Android, and iOS as far as I've tested.
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You really think they didn't know? C'mon.
Re: Firefox + uBlock Origin (Score:3)
I'm sure the 4th most popular and oldest web browser and the first suggested extension to it when you click"Add Ons" was a complete secret to Google before I posted this.
Proxomitron... (Score:2)
Everyone should keep a copy of Proxomitron handy for when they do finally kill in browser ad blockers
AD's are Viruses. (Score:2)
If a program tells me to disable an anti virus scanner, I don't install it. Why? Because I don't trust it to not infect me with malware. I might whitelist a program that I absolutely trust because it happens to trip up on more modern scanners due to how the program works.
Ad's are a virus conduit that leads to malware infections. So.
If a website tells me to disable an Ad blocker, I don't use it. Why? Because I don't trust it to not infect me with malware. I might whitelist a site that I absolutely trust beca
Pi-Hole cannot quite fix the problem (Score:2)
As Youtube is servicing ads from youtube.com domain itself.
Don't buy stuff (Score:2)
As long as advertising works they are going to shove it down your throat at every opportunity.
I can live without YouTube (Score:2)
I don't know about all of you, but I would find it trivial to simply ignore YouTube.
I quit watching OTA TV and switched to cable / satellite because of the Ads.
I quit watching cable / satellite and switched to streaming because of the Ads.
When YouTube reaches the same level of annoyance with Ads, I'll simply quit watching it as well.
It really is that simple for me. There is very little I care about on YouTube that I'm willing to sit
through uninterruptible advertising. As more people reach the same conclus
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You are forgetting that there is a sucker born every day.
price (Score:2)
I'd pay google for their content that they get for free if they offered it for a reasonable price. But they don't.
Brave browser (Score:2)
Still plays YouTube ad free, no extensions needed
If they weren't so intrusive... (Score:2)
Aside from all of the browser extensions, or using a mobile browser like Brave, the biggest problem is that these ads are intrusive and put in at random times rather than being inserted at the typical "commercial break" spot. Hulu used to allow you to watch a video without interruption if you watched some extended unblockable ads up front, and quite frequently I would do just that when I had a Hulu account. It was convenient and let me watch my video uninterrupted. If YouTube would implement something li
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I can't actually remember the last time I watched anything on YouTube anyway.
Try Kings and Generals. It goes from the first recorded battle in history (older than you think) up through Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some are only a few minutees long, others can be over an hour. And it's not just combat. Some videos talk about how something came about, what certain time periods looked like, and even how certain wars came about.
Not a bad thing to watch for the historical aspect.
Re: F. Youtube (Score:2)
It's not the point. I don't really feel any need to come back to YouTube anymore. Historical things are also definitely not my thing.
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Indeed. YouTube is a prime example for Ensittification at work.
Re:F. Youtube (Score:5, Insightful)
These days it's just a bunch of influencers trying to sell you crap.
Maybe subscribe to better channels? Just in the past few days I've watched some fantastically educational videos on machine learning and GPT models (Andrej Karpathy) and on defense strategy/economics (Perun). I can't recall the last time I was served a video of an influencer selling me crap.
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There are some extremely informative channels you just have to find them due to Sturgeon's Law. Here are some of the better ones:
* Documentary: MagnatesMedia [youtube.com]
* GameDev: Sebastian Lague [youtube.com]
* GameDev: SimonDev [youtube.com]
* GameDev: RandyPrime [youtube.com]
* Hardware Reviews: GamersNexus [youtube.com]
* Hardware Reviews: Hardware Unboxed [youtube.com]
* Math: 3Blue1Brown [youtube.com]
* Math: Numberphile [youtube.com]
* Music, Rock History: Professor of Rock [youtube.com]
* Motorcycles: FortNine [youtube.com]
* Social Commentary: UpperEchelon [youtube.com]
* Social Commentary: ColdFusion [youtube.com]
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They've turned YouTube into yet another marketing platform.
Since Google took over, YouTube has always been "yet another marketing platform". After all, Google is an advertising company. YT just took longer than many other platforms to 'mature' to the point where the enshittification is starting to make it unusable for both viewers and creators.
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>> If I had to spend even $1 per creator
That's exactly the point... You don't have to.
Same as ads. You don't have to watch any ads.
Our time is too precious to watch any ad. Not worth any second of our life.
Re:I hate Google (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end if the data is on their server and they control your access to it they can just keep escalating an escalating their war on your ad blocker to the extent they will only send you data if their hardware (two camera) eyeball tracker validates that your eye has been pointing at their advertiser's content and their emotion checker shows that you have been reacting to the content appropriately. You have to think of Google as an benign version of an extremely oppressive government. The only thing that makes them benign is the fact that we can currently make other choices and that they can't yet hunt you down for refusing to use them.
There's only one way this is won, both against oppressive governments and against companies that mimic them. That's to get something like freenet [freenet.org] actually working. Data ownership and control are the keys.
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Funny, I happen to be listening to an interview with Malcolm McDowell.
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That's to get something like freenet actually working.
First of all; Centralization is not the only thing stopping replacement of Youtube. Hosting and distributing large video files is expensive -- the large companies pay a huge dollar figure not only to host those files, but also for network capacity to send those files. Your average home user internet connection has a capped upstream, and even if the internet is decentralized, you aren't able to decentralize hosting of large video files.
The other tr
Re: I hate Google (Score:4)
Re: Hosting and distributing (Score:2)
You say that Hosting and distributing large video files is expensive. Is it though? How much of that expense goes on organising the adverts, billing the advertisers etc? Surely shovelling video over the internets must be really cheap for advertisers or they would not do it?
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The sense of entitlement is also one that YouTube executives feel very much as well. They are sharing less and less ad revenue with creators. Nearly everyone I watch expresses frustration over YouTube and how their revenue has gone way down over the last two yeas. Without the creators YouTube would have nothing.
YouTube's year-on-year revenues have grown steadily. They are making money hand over fist through advertising regardless of a small percentage of viewers blocking ads.
A fair number of the channel
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Welcome to the world of kleptocracy. Corporations steal pretty much what's not nailed down and nickle-and-dime you for the rest, so you're feeling entitled to take whatever you can without paying as well.
Call it payback.
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People wonder why there is no competitor to Youtube. Likely because there is no business model to make it work without just as many ads (if not more) or collecting fees from creators and/or viewers. Try putting the bandwidth, storage, and GPU (transcoding) likely needed for a video sharing site in an AWS calc
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I hate ads as much as anyone else. But, has everything "free" on the internet has given everyone brain-rot-levels of entitlement? You can't just expect to use a service for free, refuse ads, and expect the platform to last/improve. How can someone use a platform, on a daily basis, not pay for it. and then refuse the method that the company uses to pay for that usage? If you hate ads that much, and you love watching youtube so much, you don't want to stop, pay for it. no ads, simple as that.
That's one way of looking at it, but I think it's more nuanced than that.
What an ad? It is a gamble in the form or enticement or encouragement to spend money on a thing/service. The entity placing the ad is taking a risk that the viewer of the ad is disinterested or unable to pay. That's inherent in what advertising is. If a highway is funded by billboards on the left side and I avert my gaze while I drive, that's part of the gamble. If a TV show is subsidized by commercials every ten minutes and I t
Re:how much is too much ? (Score:4, Insightful)
how many adverts are too many ?
More than 0.