If I understand correctly, there's nothing about Firefox that makes ad blockers any harder to detect. What can Firefox and uBlock do to stop Google from blocking adblock users on the site?
That said, I use Firefox and uBlock myself, and I've yet to see YouTube stop me from using the site.
They don’t care about Firefox. Chrome is the browser market, they have weakened extensions, they implemented DRM, and here we are.
This would become an Anti trust suit I would imagine.
It doesn't matter if YouTube can detect uBlock. The great thing about uBlock is you can just block the anti-adblock script. Since Javascript is executed on the user's computer, it's trivial to just tell your computer to ignore it. And moving it to server side would cost them too much money in processing power.
That's why they want everyone to adopt their DRM, so they don't have to worry about it.
This logic is so flawed lol. It's also completely trivial for them to detect when their anti-adblock script has been blocked. If it gets blocked, then they can just stop serving you videos.
There are websites that already do this; it's not theoretical. The website just doesn't work if it detects an adblocker.
OK, show us an example. I've never run across a website that adblockers just didn't work on, but maybe you know of one. Give us an example, and we'll see if we can bypass that. Then we'll know which of us understands how Javascript works, and which doesn't.
Firefox currently enjoys protection from being "relatively niche" in the browser market (aka not Chromium based trash).
But if I had to place a bet on which browser would put effort in to protecting your privacy, including which extensions are installed, my bet would be on Firefox over Chrome.
i think it's mainly the list maintainers staying on-the-ball with changes to sites. they can move quicker than a giant corporation can develop, test, and roll-out potentially site-breaking changes that could adversely affect 'billions' of users.
It has always been my understanding that uBlock and uBlock Origin were two totally different extensions for ad blocking. Is this not correct? Back several year ago when ad blockers were new, I recall seeing two different Firefox listings for them, and people would caution users to get uBlock Origin and not the other truncated named one
I am assuming that is metaphorical?
Just another Firefox fan boy. They do this shit when as blockers get brought up too as if Brave, Vivaldi, etc isn't going to strip out the ad blocker nonsense when they build their versions. Just because these versions use Chromium as a base in no way means they have to use their code. Firefox fan boys are too busy talking about Firefox to understand this.
I fully expect that without a change of current course, Google will ensure yt will just stop working on Firefox at some point.
Firefox + uBlock Origin user here. I started getting those popups a few days ago.
Purge and update your filter cache, check to make sure you have Anti-adblock filters enabled. If that doesn't work do some troubleshooting with the extensions, one user found that other extensions were interfering and after disabling the problematic extension it worked.
I'll try this. Thank you very much!
People who choose not to watch ads are far more likely to not spend money based on ads. I know that when I see the same crappy ads over and over, yeah, I remember the name of the product, and I remind myself every time never to buy it. I'm more likely to buy from that seller if I don't see their ads.
"just enough to justify not paying their workers livable wages" FTFY
Also, YouTube ads are about the most random things. I don't think I've ever seen an ad on YouTube for anything that I would actually buy. I'm not even nearly immune to ads, either. Show me a product that solves a problem for me and I'll strongly consider it. Consciously and I'm sure subconsciously.
Google knows what I do for a living, where I live, and what I spend money on. Google also knows that I use YouTube primarily to watch videos in other languages. It's not a secret to them. Yet they insist on trying to sell me products or services that have zero relevance to anything that I do. In English.
It makes me wonder if they're even trying to profit through ads. I know the answer – no, not really – the advertiser is the customer, not me. It must be too complicated for them to realise that they could charge more for ads the more sales they led to.
Clicks are the core part of how ads work… Cost-per-Click, Click-Through-Rate, etc.
Yeah. I'm completely allergic to ads. If this goes through I'm simply not going to use YT anymore.
I operate this way too. There must be literally dozens of us.
In all seriousness, I do find it somewhat surprising that some of these companies think saturating everything with ads is a good idea. As a simple matter of brand recognition, I get that the power of suggestion is a helluva drug. But all that stuff does eventually glom together in my head as general advertising nonsense -- as a result I see companies that advertise less / not at all and rely on a quality product and word of mouth as a better buy.
They don't just think it's a good idea, marketers have convinced themselves they're doing you a favor by pummeling you with advertisements day and night.
How else could you learn about their valuable product if not for constant, unending advertisement?
I work in Google Ads every day.
It's more likely that they're incompetent and haven't checked/manually set up their video / display ads, and have let Google decide how often to show their ads. Google then decides to show their ads as often as possible because it gets clicks (even if they're accidental) and nets them more money each time.
The best trick Google ever pulled was telling advertiser's to trust them with their money and "leave it up to the algorithm".
Fuck no, you set it up so Google doesn't abuse their platform and spam your ads everywhere, ignoring everything Google tell you to do.
The shit I've seen in people's accounts because Google told them to do it...
You can and should limit the amount of times your adverts are shown per day to someone. There's a not-so-fine line between brand awareness and pissing off potential customers.
I can list a ton of products I by principle will never use. Athelic greens, casper mattresses, simplisafe, express/nordVPN, Honey ... Some people may see a pattern there.
Ironically I might actually buy your product even if you spam annoying ads as long as you do it on a platform I block ads on.
No Ad is good sunscreen.
then they are succesfully livin in your head rent free
Lamo this will introduce more people to revanced
You know why it's called revanced? Because youtube came after vanced. They wont ignore it forever, unfortunately.
Its a monetization approach, same motives as what youtube does here with the ads so doubt itll ever go away.
The thing is that Revanced follows a new distribution model. Rather than distributing a modified app, they instead distribute patches for the normal YouTube APK so that the user modifies the app on their own device. Thus, ReVanced never distributes any of Google's IP. It's kinda like game modding. ReVanced will be a lot harder for Google to kill.
The one downside for ReVanced is that it's harder for ordinary users to install, so that will limit its popularity.
True enough, but there are always options.
Rerevanced will be popular
Oof, one day soon, we'll all be watching torrented rips of youtube videos, like we already do TV shows.
I know if I'm not wrong vanced got in trouble for using YouTube logo and reverse engineering the YouTube app. Revanced technically not breaking any law as it not directly modifying YouTube like vanced.
Yeah, but YT can change the terms, and now blocking ads, its clear they are stepping up the aggression in chasing profitability.
What are they gonna do? Revanced is just a patcher, unlike the previous version that fully distributes modified YouTube apk. There is a separate repo that has patched YouTube apk, but if that repo got taken down, the revanced manager still live on.
it's YouTube re-Advanced
Or, you could buy YouTube TV, which gives you YouTube Premium as a undisclosed bonus I’ve found. A great option because it helps content creators and allows you to cut cable. I may have some bias on the topic of paying for media content services, but in general pirating hurts the creators. I hate that I’m old and wise enough that I might have been more receptive to Metallica’s arguments during the Napster era. I do feel though that it is in the best interest of creators for certain content to be previewable. The problem with YouTube video monetization are that most are not going to be rewatched.
I simply find that when I am logged into YouTube with my same account that purchased YouTube TV I receive no ads. I am not using an add blocker or anything. I assumed that was because of my purchase of YouTube TV. It might be a bug with my account because I still get a splash occasionally to buy premium, however no ads ever.
Adblock is one of the greatest human inventions of all time.
The best anti virus innovation in decades.
Oh my, the creators get paid?!?
https://influencermarketinghub.com/...
Oh... So no, not really...
Sounds like they're lying to me!
It's common since quite a few years. And blocklist as counterpart
It comes from the act of voting using a black or white ball. Black was a no vote, white was yes. It goes back to ancient Greece.
As of the perception of words has no relevance
It's not been cancelled.
I'm sure someone raised concerns over racist origins, or that they were uncomfortable with the terms. Or perhaps programmers did it themselves as a part of introspection that came around with GitHub changing from "master branch" to "main branch".
Which likely lead people to realise that blacklist and whitelist aren't really descriptive.
Blacklist came from the 1600s, regarding regicide. And the opposite of that is obviously whitelist.
But it doesn't actually describe what it's doing, and ultimately it is an idiom.
Removing idioms in coding is generally good practice.
And you can have other things like "FilterList" or "AdminList" or whatever.
You are predictably behind the curve
Even the FBI recommends you use an adblocker, for your personal safety. Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/...
Two days ago I noticed when watching through the app on my phone that I could no longer just skip ads, and the trick of reporting them to skip didn't work anymore either. I effectively had to just sit and wait.
That same day I got NewPipe, imported my subscriptions, and honestly even if this is just a phased trial or something, I won't be going back to the standard YT app.
Creators make pennies from ad revenue. If I want to support them, I'll make a donation or subscribe to their Patreon or something.
I won't just sit and suffer a slew of ads while my data is harvested under the false pretense that it's all to support the creators.
I'm unironically considering ditching any online interaction(s) on the internet and use my PC solely for offline content (write documentaries, texts, play retro games). Because I really don't want to use the internet with that level of intrusion in my pc.
Take any cybersecurity class and you'll want to burn your tech in a dumpster. In most cases it's security by obscurity from sheer numbers that hackers/sites don't give a crap about you alone.
Additionally, every site you have ever visited tracks your browser, IP, OS, location, and more. This AdBlock tracker is just observing that you have a plugin for ad blocking. That's the least intrusion that YouTube does.
In summary, there's no need to be paranoid, but only because everything that can be stolen or observed already has been.
Also to add to what you said, switch away from (Google) Chrome everyone!!
Imagine this message, but on every website, and it literally cannot be prevented, as the browser itself will sooner than later just straight up tell the sites "yo, your content has been modified, maybe block the user from viewing", snitching on you.
Come to think of it now, I wonder if this will affect poorly implemented sites using that feature to accidentally (or intentionally…) disable dark mode/reader extensions.
And then, due to Chrome's market share, if left unchanged, web developers/companies will at some point just not bother anymore. Imagine "this works best in Google Chrome, download now" you see for some web apps today, but even with the most basic text based site that can't prevent you from using your Adblocker in e.g. Firefox or Safari.
every site you have ever visited tracks your browser, IP, OS, location, and more.
This is wrong to a degree of paranoia. That's simply not true. Every site can observe it, some might even log it, but that's a far cry for tracking it.
In most cases it's security by obscurity from sheer numbers that hackers/sites don't give a crap about you alone.
Also no, maybe in the 90s, but modern systems are (increasingly) designed to be secure by default.
There's a great way I figured out to differentiate quickly between Cybersec Fud and legitimate discussions related to security. The usual main difference is that they are meant exclusively to sound scary there's no room for constructive criticism, discussion about it, or finding solutions to the problems presented, and I've found that if you try to steer these discussions in said direction the person will usually try to shoot you down.
Someone might say there are no solutions but see, here's the thing, there are always solutions, you're just not looking in the right places. After all lack of source code and sparse dubious documentation didn't stop people from studying and disabling IntelME, and believe it or not while security Vulnerabilities are usually bad, some can be your best friend and the key to the solution. (Not saying it's easy, I'm saying it's possible, contrary to what most open source advocates say).
Honestly if someone wants to have one of these discussions with me and they don't want to discuss it constructively or think about possible solutions I don't want to hear it because it's not meant to promote intelligent discussion. It's more like scary campfire stories but it's portrayed in a way that seems constructive and intelligent. It's also usually very patronizing since many times (not necessarily this specific commenter) the people making the statements tend to inadvertently talk down to you, this was my experience from hearing similar ones from colleagues.
It is like people freaking out over giving out their phone number and SS number. I guarantee you that info is already out there in countless databases.
I’ve had the same thought before but then I don’t want to become one of those older out of touch people. I think each generation feels like the world was in better shape when they were younger. But the truth is that many of the young kids today will look back on 2023 with the same fondness and nostalgia as I do when I think about the 1990s. Back in the day older people would warn us that video games and television would rot our brains. Now we warn our kids that TikTok will do the same. Everything is always getting faster and faster but young people are adaptable and I think they’ll find their way.
Desktop replacements: FreeTube and Piped. I personally prefer FreeTube; the UI is way better than Piped.
Android: LibreTube (it also works with Piped but I just imported my youtube subscription list instead). There is also NewPipe too!
If you'd rather dump YouTube entirely, there is Odysee and PeerTube. Though for most people they're just not viable, total replacements. Only you can decide for yourself on that matter.
Enjoy!
Edit: If you want to export your YouTube subs and playlists you'll have to do Google Takeout; but after that it's super easy to import/export them from Freetube and Piped whenever ya want.
Oh yea forgot about NewPipe. I'm happy with LibreTube but I'll edit my post to add it.
Odysee has an extension that redirects youtube videos to odysee if its available
https://github.com/kodxana/Watch-on-Odysee
Vinegar is a Safari extension for iOS that turns the YouTube media player into a generic iOS one, completely bypassing all of these restrictions. I’m not savvy enough to know if it’s something Google can kill or not, but it’s working great for me right now. Even lets you do PiP and background play.
Let's not forget: https://github.com/revanced
For IOS peeps: I’m using Orion browser, which supports some firefox entensions like UblockOrigin that blocks ads. Brave also works.
Downside is they’re missing a good number of features, and changing playback speed messes up the audio
Just yesterday they stopped allowing me to see home page and recommendations unless I turn on watch history, which I am not doing ever. So they can keep forcing my hand and see how far it goes. If anything am stubborn enough to enjoy this kind of petty behavior from major players. They keep thinking "oh they will just do what we ask them to", but I'll do the opposite out of spite. I'll just use !videos or similar communities to find my recommendations until the day comes where I stop using it completely. I quit Facebook this way, quit Reddit and Twitter, quit WhatsApp. Keep at it guys, let's see who's more stubborn.
YouTube has also started showing me a blank "home" screen since I turned off my watch and search activity history on privacy settings.
Joke's on them, all I want is to see my subscriptions anyway
Sucks but on the flipside it means that I’ll have more time for myself.
I already spend less time on social media because R/all sucks balls and lemmy doesn’t have too much content. I don’t have any other social media.
I also don’t have cable or pay for streaming services, so I found a replacement in the form of YouTube and Spotify (podcasts). I’m ok if these options go away.
There are a lot of hobbies that I want to do and the less distracted I am, the higher chance that I’ll choose to do them instead of dicking around.
Tldr: brings it on!
The ads are not the true problem. The tracking and profiling is. They keep the rhetoric about the ads while forcing both. I'd be kinda okay with just untargeted ads. Maybe not fully okay but I'd be far more willing to tolerate them. This privacy violating thing the modern Internet made a norm? Hell no!
Efficacy man not always translate to ad sales.
When you're selling your product and school and society have told you that you need to know your demographic, when you get to that ad manager page, you want to see your ad only being paid for on that demographic.
Unfortunately from their perspective that isn't apples to apples. They can charge higher rates for targeted ads.
I just canceled my youtube premium account after about 7 years of constant membership.
The recent price increase was crap. The service I receive hasn't improved - actually with their shitty compression even on "4k" videos my enjoyment has really decreased.
But, the big driver were ads. With premium I didn't see ads, instead I was increasingly bombarded with "words from our sponsor" all over videos.
Anyway, I recommend freetube. For now at least, it actually blocks all ads including sponsor blocks.
I won't pay a monthly fee to be google's advertising product.
Start downloading and archiving videos you like. Especially educational content, share it with others, keep the information free and accessible for all.
If this has the same effect as reddit/lemmy.. wow peer tube is about to get so good
Purge cache and update Ublock Origin
*uBlock Origin
Note: There's a fake one called uBlock out there, so it's best to point people to uBlock Origin or simply uBO as it's abbreviated.
I personally am ok with sponsors. They directly support the creators, and are easy enough to skip. Much better than unskippable targeted ads to "support" a multi-billion-dollar company...
Pretty sure they still do get paid since it's based on views, SponsorBlock is just an Auto-skipping tool it's not any different than scrubbing the bar manually to bypass it, though by being automated it is pretty seamless most of the time.
If they really force me to subscribe, I will... to Nebula.
Not with the same clickbait YT content there.
What Nebula really needs is some content that isn't just people talking about stuff. I can appreciate a video essay now and then, but it's the whole platform. I have a subscription right now, really only because of Philosophytube, but I can't really find anything I'm that interested in watching.
It really needs some like sketch comedy, tech reviews, dumb little videos of people out doing stuff, or like, cats sitting on roombas. Cater to something other than wanting to listen to people blather their opinions all day.
I get what you are saying.
For me, though, almost everone I am subscribed to is on Nebula, except of the Linus Youtubematic Universe. Not aure though if they are worth the floatplane subscription.
Are you really asking this right now?
Yeah, probably not. But tbh, I watch them only for entertaiunment and the stupid stuff. I'd never go for their product reccommendations, even before the current storm.
I only watch 2 channels from youtube that are on nebula and as far as I've seen they've taken out the ad reads. I'd be pretty annoyed with a channel if they still did the ad read on a paid site.
It's been a loooong time since I looked at nebula but at the time that seemed to be true for the few I looked at. Maybe it's gotten better, that would be nice. I'll have to check it out again
I don't see the problem with that. The difference is you pay instead of being served YouTube pre-roll ads. And they get a bigger cut than it would off of YouTube premium.
As many hours as it takes to make a video It's kind of amazing some people upload different versions on each platform, they don't really have to.
Cutting out the sponsor segment would be less than a minute's work though.
I don't think I've noticed any adreads or sponsorship stuff on any of the content ive watched there actually, though of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, I may have just been lucky with my subscribe list.
Won't matter. As soon as those alternatives get big enough, they'll either sell out or look for more ways to maximize profits. The Internet is wholely infected by corporations now. Just need better ways to beat them back somehow.
It still does matter because as long as enough people keep abandoning mature (rotten) corporations for the younger ones, the right and unignorable signal will be sent.
Like where? There's really no direct competition to YouTube, and probably won't be for a very long time.
None of those have a monetisation policy, and some of them even charge YOU for hosting your videos, above a certain number of views.
Until earlier this year I just watched the ads because in some small way it supports creators and I could deal with it. Then they increased the number of ads per watch-time to egregious levels.
I certainly wasn't going to reward a company for making the existing service worse by subscribing. Started using the apps people mention immediately and also setup pihole to block more ads.
Well they need ads to pay for streaming all of those conspiracy videos, aliens crap, repackaged copies of other videos, ai generated crap, shitty "click and subscribe!" videos, etc...
Been an avid Youtube viewer since the very beginning. Now, I'm paying for the site and using a bunch of extensions just to get a worse experience than I was getting on youtube 5 - 10 years ago. After seeing all of my favorite content become unprofitable and die off, I am so ready to jump ship. I think in the immediate future, Patreon and Nebula are providing the alternative that will get creators paid reliably.
Ublock Origin users: purge cache and update. A fix has been deployed.
purge cache and update
Music to my ears.
Like play video games
I didnt say anything abouth that, i meant in general, i myself play 90% retro games and the other 10% low spec games that thend to be indie since i only have a potato device and am poor. Dont know were that came from, although I agree with the fact that modern AAA gaming sucks but this felt agressive, so chill out m8.
Very much agree, the older games generally are better, and even the non-retro ones are generally low-spec.
I actually have a very high end Laptop but I also have a Tab problem (I don't close them often) which means even with Firefox I usually burn though a lot of the RAM on tabs (assuming I haven't clicked on the old ones yet after a restart)
Most of the really good games are older games, there are a few gems out there that are newer but a large majority of them are the old ones.
cool. don't need YouTube and the constant "OMG you won't believe what happens next" crap littered in the feed
YouTube can, in the strongest possible terms, absolutely go fuck itself lol
I remember when there were no ads. Ugh.
Not just that. I have always turned of history and analytics since 2020. I use you tube to check news about happening events in my region(politics and stuff), so I can open the video on invidious or newpipe. But yesterday, as I opened you tube, it threw me this message... So, now I feel better, but seems, they have never stopped tracking what I search and watch, even when I opted to keep it off. Also maybe it is due to new feature where we can see the full video in hover mode, without clicking it to watch. But whatever, I wanted to let lemmy people to know that something like this happened yesterday to me.
There used to be a trick where you can skip ads in youtube app by pretending to report it. i’ve used that to skip the 2x30s unskippable ads over the years, but that was patched recently.
So instead of occasionally watching ads while scrolling through comments, I’ve now opt to watch youtube in browser with UblockOrigin. And good luck to google for playing catch-22 with adblockers.
Shame that I used to have youtube in my adblock whitelist
PeerTube looks quite promising with its decentralised model. Surely it will never be perfect. But decentralisation is essencial. Also because the types of videos I like to see in YouTube either are monetised by themselfs in some way. Or are not monetised at all. YouTube does not seem necessary for those creators.
Lol, I've seen that but still just use the adblocker and it plays as normal.
I think it's meant to scare non tech savvy people. I don't see how they can stop us using adblockers....
I don't think corpos ever win in the digital world. as long as there is paid content, people will find a way to get it for frwe
I wonder what'll happen when the bubble bursts this time around, will it be as bad as the Dot-com crash or worse? (Enshitification is the reaction to not having enough money and needing to try to make money quickly to pay back investors).
Im honestly considering getting a flip phone at this point it's kind of ridiculous.
YouTube is so horrible now I hope it’s reaching the tipping point where even non tech people may get sick of it and look elsewhere. There is no reason to have ONE giant main fucking video site and that’s it for most of the English speaking world. I need to look up how to do grout…or open this smoke detector…or beat this video game…no reason that all these videos cannot be hosted via other websites or just self hosted with the affordability of bandwidth. I’ve loved most of what google has done for a long time and they won the browser wars, crushed Mapquest, destroyed hotmail and yahoo mail…now everything is turning to shit. Google search all but refuses to find what you’re searching for. 15 second video…30 second ad. No.
I don’t know if federation is the answer but YouTube being ubiquitous for internet video has got to go.
Same is true about Reddit but we all here
It's not even close. Text and image content doesn't come near what YouTube has to deal with.
Reddit does have video, lemmy (at least for now) doesn't, and I'm sure a huge part of that is cost.
In saying we are here I’m not saying we are succeeding…I’m saying we’re trying
Yeah, yeah, it's all about the creators' well being.
I definitely recommend people check out Youtube Premium if you hate ads and use YT a lot on smart TVs and mobile where ad-blocking is more difficult.
The majority of my video watching time is YT and I primarily do it on my phone or TV, so it is worth it for me. I wish I could cut out YT Music and save some money while using a music streaming service I prefer though.
The future looks grim if that WEI thing comes to practice. But it's my understanding that identifying the 'undesired' browser is done by fingerprinting? In that case you could just fake it by using JShelter, even fake the extensions you're using. Not sure how they're gonna fend Revanced if at all.
Stay strong everybody
YouTube ads come from the same domain as their video streams, so DNS-based ad blocking like PiHole can’t work on them.
They didn’t mention that—did they edit their comment?
Quick edit: everyone should also have a PiHole, mine hasn’t been touched in years and does a bang-up job at blocking any regular ads (ads that, like the commenter I’m replying to mentioned, aren’t hosted on the same server you’re viewing stuff on)
YouTube premium is the one subscription I will gladly pay for, I use it so much daily and you also get YouTube music which is a superior app to Spotify/Others, the family plan value is unmatched.
What do you think about the YouTubers' answer to this: CuriousityStream?
YouTube Premium is actually decent value if you also listen to music a lot.
Nope.
👏👏👍
Yeah, I don't see why people have a hard time with a platform trying to support itself. Video hosting is expensive and there is a reason why there are few competitors that allow such open upload limits that is easy for anyone to use. Right now it is a good price for what it gives since YouTube Music is somewhat decent.
A decent share of the Premium cost goes towards actual channels that you watch, if more people had the attitude to pay for the service, we would probably see less ad integration for a lot of creators and they could actually be paid from the Premium subscribers
It's so funny to me how triggered people get when I say that.
Cope and seethe, in my view.
It got replaced by YouTube music, which does the same things.
Yt music is so much worse for curated music. It's all algorithmically generated. No actual official curated playlists.
I quite like the generated playlists though.
Unpopular opinion here but service providers should be allowed to enforce whatever conditions they want (within the law) for accessing and using their service.
There are plenty of other video hosting services. If you don't like what YouTube is doing, don't use their service. Not sure why people feel entitled to free content AND the ability to keep them from earning revenue.
The expectation of free content with no revenue stream attached is unsustainable. Pay for the content, or let them monetize it
And this is coming from someone who runs pi-hole on their network for security reasons.
There's a problem when they have a sort of diagonal integration into the industry, as they're kind of pulling up the ropes from competition while monetizing the product. It reeks of looming antitrust.
If I want to distribute billions of videos to billions of people on my own site, that'd be great, but my options are basically to pay Google, Amazon, or Microsoft for help.
I'm happy to talk about antitrust and breaking up conglomerates. But that needs to be a big conversation across many industries not just "Google bad, grrr".
If you're referencing WEI, btw, it is one of the topics people have been most misled about. Can link you to my Mastodon thread where I break down all the misunderstanding if you'd like
There's no overarching anti-trust conversation to be had because there's currently no anti-trust cases, if there ever will be. The comments under each individual instance of it being required is the "big conversation". As a content aggregation site (mainly news) the only place it could realistically occur is under some wishful thinking self-post nobody would care about.
I also saw people pine for trust busting just the other day under some Amazon article, there's simply nowhere else to post about it at the moment.
I meant to say that I'm much more inclined to have conversations with people about the need for stricter antitrust laws and enforcement than I am about a single subsidiary of a multinational corp. protecting their revenue stream
I don't understand this comment at all. Hosting your own video is actually super easy. HTML5 video is as simple as HTML5 images. It's just the cost factor.
You can do it all without the cloud as well, you just have to actually go buy the servers or rent them from traditional virtual private server hosts. Not everyone has gone to the cloud.
You said on your own site. The fact that YouTube exists and makes that easier isn't the argument against YouTube you think it is...
Nothing about that tag requires the site to be static either, but whatever.
Okay, but those independent content creators are often doing this trying to make money.
YouTube actually does have a pretty fair deal for "if you make us lose money, we won't charge you" and "if you make us money, we'll give you 55%." That includes increased revenue to those creators if you are a YouTube premium subscriber.
Getting in the way of monetization here isn't just hitting Google's bottom line, it's hitting those creators using Google's platform as well.
I used ad blockers for YEARS until YouTube added a paid option and once I started using YouTube more (again) I went for that option quickly. I switched my mentally a few years ago to "if it's not worth paying for, it's not worth it" and that cleared a lot up for me in terms of priorities.
An aside but, I'm extremely annoyed with the pro-piracy, sentiment against paid game mods, and general attitude against paying people money for the work they're doing attitude, that I've seen on Lemmy (and in gaming communities) recently. It's like everyone wants to be paid a six figure salary when it comes to their life and then they want to get everything they enjoy on a computer for free.
The hell are you talking about? Premium is $13.99/mo, removed all ads, includes YouTube Music with all it's licensed music, among other things. What exactly does your math represent? The amount of hours you'd need to watch to generate revenue equal to the cost of the service? That's a ridiculous thing to base your calculation on. If you think watching ads is such a better value than Premium then watch the damn ads?
Like, this is basic supply and demand economics. They know that there is less tolerance for ads in terms of exchange of value so the "cost of the service" when payment is in ad viewing time is less than the upfront cost if you get premium. That is really simple economics.
It's a fact that YouTube pays out more to creators per view for a subscriber than for an ad user, and in the words of LinusTechTips (despite the current backlash he had literally no reason to lie), it's "a lot more."
It may actually be the case that it's a pool of money that's distributed based on what parts of the YouTube service you use. So if you watch 100% Mr. Beast, 55% of your subscription goes to Mr. Beast... I really don't know how that works, it's not to my knowledge clearly explained.
If you don't believe Mr. Beast deserves 7.7/mo or so, then you're welcome to use ads or see if Mr. Beast will upload his content somewhere else.
The fact of the matter is though, it really isn't a scam for creators where YouTube just milks them for profits in an unfair exchange. They get an entire professionally hosted platform for free the entire time they grow, they get their old videos hosted indefinitely, and they pay nothing for that service. They could quit tomorrow, start losing YouTube money on heaps of 4k video, and be on the hook $0.
God forbid you pay them rather than steal bandwidth.
I look forward to hearing about this continuously for weeks if it gets implemented widely, followed by a handful of people taking their worthless views elsewhere, and the rest finally shutting up about it.
YouTube got bills to pay, sweetie.
Haha. This is something that they have been testing for some time now. I ended up changing to YouTube premium a few years ago from Spotify and I think it's pretty good!
I find it hilarious that people down vote me. It's horrible apparently to be subscribing to something that's google..
Which is fine… until YouTube premium gets a massive price increase to try and capitalise on subscription apathy.
Some people just love the taste, you know?
Kinda weird how eager some people are to brag about how much they love paying for YouTube Premium, though. Sometimes repeatedly, and as a response to every other comment. Like a paid ad, almost. Just being proud of paying for things is weird on its own but... damn, stinks like Google's paying them back well to behave like they're starving for it to come give them a cookie. Maybe it's bots. ... Nah, humans will serve their favourite companies at no charge and without any effort to make them. Bleh.
The communities here can be like that. Personally if you like the service and are willing to pay, why not? Comparing this with facism is doing facism and those who live and lived under facist regimes a disservice.
🙄
For me it was Spotify's patent on manipulating people's mood with music, noped right out of there after that. I'm in a position where I can afford to go back to buying songs, so I actually did that (better for the artist and I don't have to worry about any recommendation algorithm accidentally making me depressed because depressed = "more engagement").
I'm not sure if it was related but, coincidentally, I found my mental state in a far better place about a year later.
Guess we found the stone with blood in it.
sUbSriBin 2 aNy guGeL sErviCes mAkez u ev1LL...
How dare YouTube enforce their own policies on their own website?
I would love if everything was free, too.
And I'm not a Google lover. Ditched Chrome on all my devices a couple weeks ago.
I just think seeing everyone scream and cry about the movie theater hiring security guards cuz kids sneaking in the back are flooding the seats is pretty funny. Everyone wants their cake and to eat it, too. Both Google and their users.
I think a lot of people feel that youtube is getting to eat all of the cake and is only offering crackers in return.
I think people accept that services need to advertise to survive, but become upset when that level of advertisemeant becomes excessive.
The optimist in me thinks that if all the free users currently using ad blockers switched to paid users or free users that aren't using ad blockers, the amount of ads that actually get shown could be lessened... And in an ideal world that's what would happen. The pessimist in me says Google's current management is going to keep the ads where they are though.
There may be a market force in play here too though where they went "can we add more ads?" and they saw that if they added any more than they currently have, people just stop using the service. If that's the case/what they're bumping into (or what they start to bump into), there could genuinely be a drop in the number of ads after this rolls out.
Services are funded by advertisers. Advertisers are funded by their customers, the general public, after charging more for their products to fund advertisement. This is a symptom of the commodification of the collective consciousness. Absolutely disgusting.
No one would have adblock if the ad situation on websites never grew completely out of control.
This is absurdly inaccurate. I've been on the internet since AOL and adblockers have been around since the VERY beginning.
A company called Juno used to offer free dial up internet if you allowed a permanent banner of ads at the bottom of your screen. This was the early 2000s. Guess what existed even then, to block the ads? Just cuz a company was trying to get SOMETHING for providing something for free? Yup, adblockers. The narrative "oh, the companies started it!!" Is very easy to parrot, but companies advertising themselves is not wrong or unethical and blaming them for doing it is absurd.
They were niche back then. The amount of adblock users was effectively nothing compared to today.
Not how I remember it
And it would never have gotten completely out of control, if people didn't use ad-block.
We should never have tried to fund the web with ads in the first place. We're perfectly willing to pay for data plans, phone service, electricity. Web services should have been the same from the start.
Oh, I fully agree, the moment we accepted the deal of ads for "free" stuff, it was always going to end this way.
There will only be a cease-fire when users start paying for what they use again. And even then, now that pandora's box is open, some will pull a hulu and try to double dip on both ads and a payment.
Obviusly. But this was an arms race that was always going to pan out this way the moment we started expecting ads to fund the web.
And it would never have gotten completely out of control, if people didn’t use ad-block.
"I wouldn't get so carried away beating you if you didn't make me so much angrier by trying to run when I smack you."
We should never have tried to fund the web with ads in the first place.
I agree. But here we are. And until it's illegal to do so (and, honestly, afterwards too), when a website I'm viewing politely asks me to download toxic ad content filled with psychological manipulation and malware, my computer will politely whisper "no." I might revisit this policy in the future if the entire advertising industry takes a huge step back to tone down their abusive shit, but in the meanwhile, I have no problem blocking malignant content from my presence. No means no.
A business plan that requires psychological abuse and exploitation of your customers is not an ethical, sustainable, or valid plan and the people who push it are not worthy of my consideration.
I have YouTube premium included in my pixel pass subscription, so this doesn't necessarily effect me. However, you have a grossly uninformed opinion on data and how it works. You think data caps and fast lanes would've saved us from advertising? I'm sorry but the sad truth is it wouldn't have, the money from the ISPs isn't going to trickle down to the website owners, that's not how it works, that's not how any of this works. That's kind of one of the big arguments against data caps and fast lanes, it limits those websites from receiving traffic and in turn ad revenue. If anything those data caps would make things worse.
I think he means that instead of everything on the early internet being ad supported, they should have just made people pay. Think about it; how much of our problems are because everything is a race to the bottom to capture the most eyeballs? Clickbait, recommended algorithms designed to make you angry, news as entertainment, etc.
This was always the outcome of ads. If you want it to stop, start directly paying for things. If you want to continue this arms race to the bottom, keep doing what we've been doing. (not you you)
You have a grossly misinterpreted understanding of my comment. We pay for things like data because it just being free would never work.
Just like youtube or spotify being free has never really worked. I'm saying we should start paying for services like those the same way we pay for our data plans.
Which part of my comment made you think I was suggesting our data plans should somehow pay for our web services? That would be fucking stupid.
Unfortunately people like things for free, so "Free" means faster user acquisition.
But what really sucks is now everything feels like it's a microtransaction haven.. It's not just "subscriptions" but "Ad ons" and more.
Paying for a program feels almost dead, paying for a service is on the way out, because you're now paying to be on a ad supported service, and they'll keep trying to push that as "how it should be".
There are 18 year olds who have never bought a piece of software before. And there's probably plenty that have only purchased games. Push Xbox Game Pass more and we may even have people who never bought anything, because the modern world isn't about you "Owning" anything, it's about leasing, licensing, and reoccurring payments.
I don’t think Google will miss my skipping their ads, look at their bottom line. It’s ridiculous how many ads there are now and I’m not paying 12 bucks a month to watch a guy show me how to fix shit in my house.
They take away dislike button, something I consider essential to navigate content, the algorithm is like a hyperactive drug dealer always ready to sell you the next big hit thing "you might like watch" and according to google itself the last YT revenue was 29.24 billion USD - so, it's not like they are going to sink without it isn't it.
So, yeah no thank you. They are doing extremely well, this is just squeezing every penny they can out of normal people so that the line goes up.
If they also stopped selling all my online data as a part of that subscription then I might consider it but it's hard to trust companies these days.
last YT revenue was 29.24 billion USD
That's a huge number, but it is meaningless. It's more important to focus on profit (or net income) and unfortunately those numbers aren't as easy to get. You can see all the financials but while Youtube gets revenue numbers, how much they pay to partners, and they spend on google services isn't itemized.
They are probably operating at a profit, but definitely not 29 billiuon dollars of profit
You don’t have a moral responsibility to pay someone who is selling your time and attention on top of someone else’s work. “The servers aren’t free!” Ok. Landlords are entitled to zero profit. The sooner we get there, the better. That’s the main thing Adam Smith and Marx agree on: rentiers are useless.
They're paying that person for their work if it's making them money and not charging them if it's losing them money.
You don't have a moral responsibility to use their service, but just because it's been free for years, that doesn't mean you have a right to it either.
I pay for YouTube Premium or whatever it’s called (because I hate ads) and I even own some Google shares. It is good for me in a very narrow sense when people watch YouTube ads.
But from a philosophical and economics standpoint, rent-seeking monopolists are bad for society and the economy as a whole, whether it’s a landlord charging rent to productive people, a toll road, or a monopolist dictating terms to productive people for the use of their infrastructure.
Google did not make any of my favorite YouTube videos. They do not give creators anywhere near 100% of the ad revenue. Maybe the split is fair but since they have a monopoly, it’s not. They are the equivalent of pre-capitalist English land barons who added very little (besides maybe some accounting) and took more than their share. YouTube’s profits are a tax on the creator economy in the same way Apple’s App Store tax is terrible for developers. We do not have a moral responsibility to pay taxes to private companies.
I disagree with the classification of "rent seeking". It's a service, with active expenses that you're not paying.
If you buy a toaster, the company that made the toaster isn't paying for the power that made the toast. That's different from say, a ticket to a zoo, a kayaking trip company, mini-golfing, cable, Internet, phone, or the power bill itself.
They do not give creators anywhere near 100% of the ad revenue.
And nobody could, even if you operated your own site, you'd have operating costs.
Maybe the split is fair but since they have a monopoly, it’s not.
I honestly don't even think it's fair to say they have a monopoly. Their service offering is unique, but there are other models that aren't YouTube clones. Reddit, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, and even "X" have video hosting options in slightly different formats.
The lack of a clone of a literal clone of YouTube is not a lack of competition. Additionally YouTube's business model is extremely expensive and requires significant investment in storage.
They are the equivalent of pre-capitalist English land barons who added very little (besides maybe some accounting) and took more than their share. YouTube’s profits are a tax on the creator economy in the same way Apple’s App Store tax is terrible for developers. We do not have a moral responsibility to pay taxes to private companies.
IMO, those are some serious mental gymnastics equating renting land you need to survive, that you're forced to pay to a government entity, or an app store which is the only possible source of apps for an entire operating system vs a website you have the choice to use or not use and that had active and large operating costs because of its extensive catalog of freely uploaded content.
You'll get downvoted to oblivion for common sense logic because people's biases are far stronger but who gives a shit about virtual popularity. I agree with you, it's their service, it's their terms. Fuck off if you don't agree. I can see more and more that the Lemmy community loves their own echo chamber and hates anything that goes against it.
I'm with you guys, as I put in another comment:
I'm extremely annoyed with the pro-piracy, sentiment against paid game mods, and general attitude against paying people money for the work they're doing attitude, that I've seen on Lemmy (and in gaming communities) recently. It's like everyone wants to be paid a six figure salary when it comes to their life and then they want to get everything they enjoy on a computer for free.
@lemmy.world
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
go to feed...
I actually didn't care when there was an ad in the beginning of the video or what not. It was when I had to start watching multiple ads in the middle of a 10 minute video as well. Like come on, not even broadcast TV is that annoying.
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