- YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
- Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
- Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
Imagine being on the YouTube ad team…that has to be the most depressing team in tech history. Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.
Even better, you work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with virtually unlimited resources at your disposal, and you still get your asses handed to you by a handful of people with laptops.
If they didn’t have to support the web, and various legacy platforms, the could lock it all down with drm more easily.
Hence Google’s proposal to DRM the web
And people’s response has shown its not easy or even working.
in tech*. most people don’t even know or care about it
That’s far less true now that they’re breaking the functionality of tons of adblockers that it was a few years ago.
most normies i know don’t care about it.
i have no idea how they use the internet without them, but here we are.
At least you can tell your boss “I’m working on it!”, sit on your ass, and every 6 months add one more little UI or formula change which “finally stops adblockers” but is defeated within 3 days.
Yeah I don’t believe they really put their hearts in it. If they truly wanted to force you into watching ads, they’d manage. Their team is just not that interested.
Their team is probably using adBlockers more than the rest of us. They understand the depth of the surveillance baked into those ads.
And because they have to test the ads.
Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.
Ah, what. Who wants or likes to watch ads at all?
A lot of creators have just turned into corporate shills. I stopped watching ETA Prime’s channel about tech reviews because it was becoming pretty clear that mostly everything he got was paid for by the company. Also, most creators are putting their own ads into their content.
Welcome to Youtube. It’s ads all the way down. Unless:
Firefox browser, Ublock Origin extension, Sponsorblock extension
Save 40% of your viewing time for actual content and send tips through creator’s Paypal or whatever.
I hope nobody lets them know that Firefox on Linux has never shown ads for any of their content.
Don’t worry. Linux is only 4% of the total computer market. They aren’t bothered with you because Linux isn’t worth it.
YouTube is just on demand TV with extra steps these days. I’ve stopped watching videos, I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now. 99% of the content of a 10-15 minute video can be summarized into 1 or 2 pages and read in under 2 minutes.
I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now.
Only a matter of time before LLMs start injecting their own ads into these responses.
I know right… Why should content creators be able to make money from content. Am I right?
You’re joking, but you’re right.
Once the content has been created, the near-zero marginal cost of online distribution makes the concept of charging for copies wholly untenable.
The furry community figured this out years ago, our creators work on commission or paid subscription through Patreon or one of its ilk. They (mostly) don’t care where you freely share their work because they already got paid.
The knives are out for Patreon. Apple is looking to carve a big chunk out of that revenue. Google and Amazon (owner of Twitch) will not be far behind. Believe me, Google and Twitch are very unhappy that creators skip the platform monetization methods and just tell viewers to go to Patreon to bypass the heavy commissions.
Patreon deserves to die, their cut of the subscription income is extortionate for what amounts to a very limited web hosting platform.
Open-source alternatives like Mirlo or Cloud Patron will take its place, it’s only a matter of time.
Or SubscribeStar or any of the other alternatives.
The same reasons as open source software devs.
Some content creators but not most of them. A lot of open source software advertises too.
I’m sure they make enough money to not care. Being in the part of the company that brings in the dough is generally a pretty good position to be in as well.
So tell the content creators you like that you don’t like YouTube. While YouTube Premium is the same price as like two coffees a month… Maybe your content creator will help you if you can’t afford it.
Well, to begin with, both the watcher and the creator are clients of the platform. Both sides feel bound to it, even if both dislike it.
Then, YouTube premium is literally 20 machine coffees a month in my first world country. 15 if they’re done by someone. You seem to be speaking “privileged minority”.
I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the reason that there are so many Starbucks in America, like literally caddy corner from one another is because their customer base is the “privileged minority.” I’ll have to remember that line.
In all seriousness, you could argue that ads prey on poor vulnerable people unable to afford YouTube Premium that just want to use it to learn, and that would be a semi-coherent argument.
Once upon a time Google used few and non-intrusive ads. The ads were soo well-placed and relevant, that they almost seemed like a service to the user, rather than being forced upon you. Some of us even added exceptions for Google ads in our ad blockers, so we would not miss out.
I miss those days.
That was almost a decade ago or even before. I remember adockers recommending white listing search engines or recommending to disable non-instrusive ads to support websites.
I don’t know of any day where I unblocked ads and felt good cause they were targeted directly at me
i consider unblockable ads to be direct attack on my psyche, trying to worm in and make me think in a way they want. I will never tolerate them and would rather see anything relying on them burn. My mind is my own and no one else has any business influencing me without my permission.
They can keep going, it just makes want to leave these platforms for good
I agree with that… somewhat. Except they are providing a service.
The content is not produced by YouTube, but it is made available by YouTube. There’s a cost to provide that service and value to the consumer for having videos available to watch.
I doubt you want to pay for the service, so how is it supposed to work? What pays YouTube’s costs so we can all keep watching videos for months and years to come?
I get that this comes across as someone simping for YouTube. I’m not trying to do that though. I’m just intrigued by this worldview and would like to understand if there is more to it or if you believe YouTube should not be compensated some other way.
Is it a “Fuck you. I got mine.” mentality where people watching ads and paying premium cover the cost for you to use the service for free? Or is there some nuance I’ve missed?
Nationalize youtube and turn it into a public utility financed by the UN. Create a kind of patreon system that distributes funds to creators similar to how it’s done for music collection agencies.
There are always alternatives, but not until people demand an alternative to constant brainwashing. Right now it’s unthinkable because people insist that there cannot be an alternative and therefor the status quo mustn’t be endangered.
At this stage burning it all down would be preferable although that would never happen until we’re seen widespread system collapse.
Yeah, but the issues there are any musicians that aren’t Taylor Swift don’t make enough on their music alone. They have to either continue working, or go to other extreme lengths with frequent touring, extensive merch offerings, etc. They have to work the equivalent of 3 full time jobs (somehow) to make the money worth it.
If they were to nationalize YT in the same way, there would be 0 content creators. There is already so much effort that goes into that work, lowering the amount people earn even more would kill that as a career path.
Just my speculation of course, but I don’t think the answer is always “make the governments pay for it”. That will come back around in taxes, and the everyone is paying for YouTube Premium.
Well even if you’d keep advertising if you turn YT into a public utility or non-profit, MUCH more of that money would go to creators. And/or much less advertising. Or less annoying or more discerning ads. And of course no demonetization because you talk about problematic issues.
Without advertising you’d need some kind of revenue. I imagine something like e.g. a EU wide “universal content subscription” or something like that. So if you create good content the various distribution channels simply track what you watch, anonymize it (firefox has this new system that got them in hot waters) and distribute the money from the giant pool to the creators.
Maybe start with a universal newspaper subscription so we’d have a free press again, new newspapers or channels that produce independent news with only the viewer as a customer, without ads.
For music in the EU / Germany there are collection agencies that already do this sort of thing. So it’s not even without precedent.
Obviously there are tons of issues to work out, but the biggest is simply that the elite do everything to gain and maintain power or wealth and this would go contrary to that.
Make your platform so bad in the interest of shareholders so no one wants to use your platform anymore. It’s a story as old as capitalism.
“Should we moderate our ads and get rid of 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn,scams and fake products?”
“No, no. Thats to much effort. Lets spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to force people to watch our 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn, scams and fake products. Thats clearly the way forward.”
This decision process brought to you by Prager U proceeds into 30 minutes about how slavery was good for the black man and he should be grateful for it
Good.
Youtube is a wonderful thing. It’s a wealth of knowledge and resources unlike anything this world has ever seen.
And it’s ran by one of the worst, most predatory corps on the planet.
it’s ran
it’s run
Perfectly put. The product is great and I love how it democratizes “being on TV” and lets some people make a living doing their own thing.
But I do not like where YouTube’s cut of that ad/sub money goes, and the enshittification pushed into it.
Unfortunately, YouTube is not unique in that regard. It’s a sucky fact of life that just about any complex product you spend money on will benefit a collection of rich sociopaths skimming as much as possible from the incomes of the people actually making the thing. Gotta vote with your wallet where you can, and vote the traditional way for the systemic issues.
I’ll never understand the entitlement of these companies when it comes to ads. You send the content freely to my computer along with BS ads. It’s my computer. I’ll display what I want using programs I want.
If you want me to pay for that content with $ or by watching ads - then put up a hard paywall and stop sending the content for free. You can’t get uppity and complain about ad blockers - it doesn’t make any sense…
The real problem is your content sucks and nobody is willing to pay for it. And that’s your problem - not mine.
Here’s some free apples. There’s a newspaper ad stuffed in there as well. Oh you ate the apples without reading the newspaper? Foul ball! /facepalm
Edit: never mind the fact that many ads have been served that are downright malicious code…
I was paying for Google music until they took it away from me and told me it was Youtube Premium and then raised the price twice.
Not exactly what I’d call a great value proposition.
That’s a weird way to look at it, obviously you’re watching the content.
I’d rather see it like this:
-
Free tier with ads
-
Subscription without ads (and better quality)
You are currently on the free tier. Yes, you can block ads (just like you can pirate movies), but that’s not the deal you were offered. I’m using an ad blocker myself, but I can understand the corporate side too.
They absolutely could add a hard paywall, but why should they if there are plenty of users who want to watch for free by paying with ads?
-
“Your content sucks… And I can’t stop watching it. I also got herpes by watching too much brain rot”
YouTube has been a dumpster fire for many many years now and it continues its slide down.
Patreon would not exist had anyone over at YT had focus beyond the next two quarters.
Sooner or later an actual real contender will be created, and you’ll see YT’s knee jerk reactions with a surprised Pikachu meme in full effect.
Patreon and sites like it exist as a hedge against YouTube banning your channel.
I would love it but I don’t see it.
It costs an enormous amount of money to host video content, doubly so when you need to replicate it across servers. I have never seen another company come close to usurping them.
I think its more likely that YouTube will shut down and be replaced by nothing. Its existence has never made sense as anything but an act of charity from an organization with tech resources to burn.
Remember that Google bought YouTube only AFTER it was successful for several years. This was also before Google turned evil.
I want the statistic on how many Google employees use ad blockers now. It’s basically a necessity.
I’m sure Google employees get Premium for free
Despite all of their machinations my strategy of simply ignoring literally everything they say and continuing doing the same old same old appears to be flummoxing them.
I’ve literally not done anything and have never experienced any inconvenience. Are we sure they’re doing anything at all?
One time they told me I had 3 days left to enjoy YouTube with my ad blocker, and then I would have to buy premium, or they would just lock me out of the site. I was like “welp, it had a good run, I guess that’s it for ol’ YouTube.”
But then the 3 days went buy and nothing ever came of it.
That tactic probably did get them some preemptive subscriptions though, unfortunately.
Eh, I dunno if I’d say they’re “losing”.
I’ve certainly noticed disruptions on every platform except GrayJay. LibreTube stopped working for several months for me.
Certainly these interruptions could be enough for some users to abandon them.
I agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot
Not really. YouTube provides a lot of tools to make most of their services and content pretty accessible from third party clients. If Google wanted to prevent ad blockers and force you to watch ads, trust me they could. At this point I think some users that only know how to install third party software are going to start claiming they won and ruin a good thing for everyone. You don’t want ads? Then don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
I pay for Nebula and try to watch as much as I can there. The content is more “pleasant department store” and less “Mexican public market”.
I do watch YouTube regularly when channel-surfing, but if I ever see an ad (which happens only on mobile devices), I close it immediately and do something else. It’s not that I don’t think I should be able to watch everything for $0, but YouTube ads are so jarring, random, irrelevant and just make me sick. They literally ruin whatever I was watching and make me sad to exist.
It can be exhausting to wade through the absolute meat market of click bait titles and thumbnails to find something that not only looks interesting but won’t abuse me with infomercial-form audio/visuals.
YouTube enables and promotes the “content creators” who abuse human psychology to accumulate views, likes, subscriptions, etc. The best thing that could happen is they continue to be exposed as the drug dealer they are.
It’s always laughable to me that these companies are able to have the meta data on our entire lives and yet show ads for shit we don’t even want.
I’m a lesbian, Google has enough data on me to know I’m a lesbian, I live with women, don’t really hang out with men at all. I use a bunch of Google services so I know Google knows this about my living situation.
SO MANY FUCKING ADS FOR MANSCAPED, WHHHYYYYY. I am not the target market for this Google.
I’ve taken to blocking the ads, still more Manscaped. Is it cause blocking = engagement? “Oh wow, she interacted with this ad to block it but ignored the others, what a good ad placement!”
what, women don’t shave their coochs? (coochiii? what is the multiple of cooch?)
by analogy with goose,
ceech
On the one hand I understand they aren’t serving billions of hours of video for their own health. Not sure how one can justify the expenditure as a “loss leader”. But at the same time, the ad experience is horrendous.
In the last month I have consumed YT on desktop browser, mobile, and regular TV. Guess which is by far the worst experience?
On desktop, you can use an alternate browser or do a reg edit to re-enable manifest v2 plugins (for now) in Chrome, and continue blocking (for now). On mobile you can use alternate apps and frontends.
TV viewing of YT is the worst experience, as there are no native alternative apps and DNS ad blocking doesn’t block YT ads. The native YouTube app (on Samsung and LG TVs at least) is horrendous. You get midroll ads sometimes mid-sentence as the content presenter is speaking. Sometimes you get pre-roll ads, disruptive mid roll ads, and then wash it down with a POST-roll ad at the end of the video. Depending on how the content is structured it is disorienting as to whether the video has ended or not.
Say for example its a 30 minute video. I would rather they show 5-7 minutes of predictable ads at the beginning of content, so I can at least have the same experience as broadcast TV, and make an informed decision to get up and use the restroom and feed the pets while the ads roll. Then once the content starts, don’t randomly interrupt it.
Imagine the YT model applied to broadcast television. The quarterback drops back to throw a deep pass towards the endzone, and suddenly you find yourself watching an undskippable ad for diarrhea medication, while the football is in the air.
And we wonder why people have ADD.
Fundamentally what YouTube is doing is an unprofitable model. Google bought them when they were in their “we can solve internet unprofitability with scale and more efficient data centres!” phase, but that has never really gone as planned for YouTube.
For a while I was very hopeful that YouTube Premium would solve that, but as they started removing features and making it an overall worse experience it became no longer worth the money. I don’t have an answer to this. If I did I could probably make a lot of money on that answer. What I do know, however, is that Google’s answer isn’t the right one.
If they want to fight hard, they just add the ads into the stream.
Like Twitch you mean? I think that has been blocked as well. And other addblockers can even skip adds within yt videos
What do you use to block twitch ads?
Gotta love when the article saying adblock-blocking doesn’t work is itself preceded by a notice to disable your adblocker
Honestly it makes me appreciate Lemmy more. Like we’re all on here enjoying an ad free experience… it’s clearly feasible to do
there are several orders of magnitude difference between text-forums with almost all multimedia content hosted externally, and hosting/streaming video.
a big Lemmy instance is a manageable cost for a few well-paid people to run out of their own disposable income.
anything even vaguely approaching YouTube is not.
