Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here… Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I’m not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I’m not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it’s only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don’t want to see and you don’t want to pay for it, then please, don’t use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.
Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.
I’ll start giving a shit about youtubes bottom line when youtube starts caring about the creators bottom lines. Youtube fucks creators so god damn hard.
Just look at this for example’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QtwGfILTo
Jesus Christ, man. I said Youtube isn’t perfect. It’s a fucking corp. They should burn the board of directors at the stake. HOWEVER, creators still rely on payment from them.
And??? Nobody owes anybody a fucking ad view. If you like the channel there are many ways to support most if not all.
Patreon, other donation venues, shit even fucking memberships on or off YT. You say you aren’t shilling yet you desperately want their ad campaigns to continue pushing forward?
You don’t have to give YT any data, look at Piped and other alts
And the creators know how Google could pull the rug at any moment. This is why they also have sponsorships, which is a more stable revenue stream not dictated by Google’s greedy whims.
Okay it’s clearly imperfect but I don’t see other similar platforms doing any better (most are doing much worse, e.g TikTok/Twitch)
A decentralized alternative would be nice but, I don’t see many ad-block users out here donating their own $ to these projects
That is because Google just buys up any competition they can.
Ehhhh I’m not so sure. Adblockers don’t stop on-air reads, for starters. I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I’m also not sure it’s impacting the creators as much as it impacts YouTube’s vacuuming our telemetry data.
And you know what? I watch on-air reads, when they’re good. Simon Whistler does a great job, so does Aging Wheels, and Jay Foreman, and a bunch of others. You want me to watch an ad, all you have to do is make it entertaining. That’s clearly possible, because some people do it.
That’s where everyone gets ad data wrong. Youtube doesn’t really care if you watch an ad or not. The ad buyers do, and so Youtube keeps them happy by doing things like disallowing adblockers, but Youtube doesn’t give a shit about BolexForSoup. Your age, your sex, your location, and the last time you upgraded the Macbook you are logging onto their site with, that’s what they want to know. They want to sell your data, not you. They will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to the pile and sell the whole pile. No one will care who you are. You are the product, and Youtube just needs to make sure your ingredient label is correct.
They charge ad buyers per imoression. They care if you see and especially if you click on the ad.
Exactly. And I like to keep it as opaque as possible! If a creator does an ad read, I watch it. Idgaf.
Look at what you’re defending.
I’m not defending anything, I’m stating fact.
I liked youtube more back when it was random personally created videos, not ‘creators’ making commercial content pretending to be run out of someone’s basement.
Yeah, my favorite YouTube content has been the type that are just random uploads from people who don’t even post frequently or ever again, and just sharing something because they thought it was cool along the vein of reddit and lemmy. So doesn’t have that whole artificial production vibe and intentionally lengthened videos with begs for likes and so on, since there was no monetization motive to begin with.
Crappy thing is that those type of videos are suppressed and hidden by the algorithm that pushes the big channels to the top in searches. YouTube really pushes the personality/influencer driven content for obvious reasons, but it’s why I haven’t really fallen into the YouTube hole of endlessly watching it.
There’s still an enormous amount of great content on youtube. You don’t need to watch the commercial shit.
I know, but there is more crap to filter out and fewer opportunities to stumble across little gems.
That is just because there is a whole of a lot more content.
There are even more little gems out there now than we did before.
Idk I never had issues with that. My recommendations are pretty good and relevant generally.
I would say that ads like YT’s are the kind that pushed adblockers into being popular. Well, that and redundant/audio/popups ads that are annoying. Sometimes I turn off the adblocker and generally it’s an immediate mistake.
I know it wouldn’t be a large portion of content (though having control over the final look could widen the appeal), but I think Google could’ve gotten vector content supported in HTML5 spec (in collaboration with software, and maybe some kind of automated conversion to hybrid video) and thus supported on YT. It can be significantly less data for high-fidelity visuals, and unlike rendered video it’s the same data for 720p as it’d be for someone with a 16K monitor or whatever in 20+ years from now.
Actually reducing costs in this manner would probably be too generous to competitors, just as Flash being killed off was good for YT. AV1 does help, but is still likely a big resource cost to store/serve at 4K+ (or just in general) not to mention re-encoding hardware and knowledge needed.
Kinda just like how WEBGL tech didn’t actually include a container format (the reason why so much Flash content was easily archived by normal people) as it does not benefit content hosts to allow downloads (even if it’d lower cost of repeat viewings particularly by users who don’t actually provide the host with revenue).
This is why you don’t use YouTube at all and use Piped or similar services.
Fuck YT and fuck their strong-arming ad bullshit.
Youtube gets free content that it has full rights to use however it likes. Google takes that free content and uses it everywhere on the internet, to make fistfuls of cash. The ads are just bonus garnish.
I really dont care about youtubes bonus garnish, no matter how hard you “totally arent shilling, guys!”
yousay free but none of the operations and technology that support the possibility to even receive and globally distribute that content along with the plethora of features are free, nor free to run.
Oh no, what?? Youtube has to pay to keep the thousands of free hours of content it harvests daily??? Oh gosh, why didnt you say so? God forbid there be upkeep costs for being given content worth literally millions of dollars in entertainment value, production cost, and overall manhours absolutely scott free!
Oh side note, did you know of all the areas of tech, data compression and storage have progressed as one of the fastest? You can fit a terrabyte and more into a card the side of your pinkie, with no loss of quality or information.
Gee wizz, I wonder if the largest company on the internet who makes money not really by running ads but actually by scraping and selling user data knows about that?
Crocodile tears, dude. No one gives a shit about the upkeep costs, google will happily pay the pennies it costs to maintain in exchange for more user data patterns they can sell. The ads are a garnish to buff out the yearly portfolio.
You should educate yourself on the topic. theres really more to it than “how much storage can fit on an sd card.” operating at the size and scope of youtubes database and userbase really is a challenge and considering how smoothly youtube runs for the most part isnt “pennies” worth of operating cost
Plus, its already known from their earnings reports that youtubes profit mostly comes from ads
Youtube the subsidiary, yeah. Because youtube the subsidiary does not do any data selling. Alphabet does. Alphabet is also the ones paying for every single step in the youtube process.
Because they make their money selling data. Not ads.
For someone telling others to educate themselves on the topic, you really dont understand how corporate earnings works, huh?
can you provide a source for alphabet paying for youtubes operating costs? i work for a subsidiary of a different rather large it consulting company (80k+ members) and we very much do and have our own budgeting because we are a profit generating subsidiary
odd that alphabet would pay for youtube’s operating costs since youtube operates at a multi-billion dollar profit.
and i apologize for presuming youre not educated in the industry. it actually came off worse than i meant. just some of your comments just do not align with my experience in the industry.
Not a source I can cite without risking a friends job, which isnt worth an internet argument.
Alphabet wants youtube making profit, obviously, but they are a data selling business. They didnt buy youtube up because they wanted a cut of their ad market. They shunt data upstream like its their primary job. And from my understanding? Thats exactly how youtube is viewed internally.
So, yeah, Im not really pressed about ad blockers. The company has no funding issues.
so… you were calling me ignorant because of info youve gathered from a friend? lol …
yeah, lets not waste anymore of our time here. have a good day.
Its not free. They harvest your data and sell that. Ad revenue is secondary. And all of this is ran by the most powerful company in history. Adblock doesnt even put a dent in Google’s profits. And content creators? Ad revenue is basically dead now that YT is pushing for child friendly content. And they make millions in corporate deals and have patreons and direct donations in addition to being able to work a stable job in addition to making videos.
This isnt being “owed” anything. Im already paying with my privacy.
And even if I wasnt already paying, fuck Google. Evil company that more than deserves loosing the $0.02 my ad viewership would have earned.
Not really. Youtube is already profitable. They’re trying to test if people’s standards are low enough for them to make even more profit.
The fact you think this equates to ‘owed everything for free’ just shows me what a proud rube you are.
Fuck off.
I guess it’s true what Mark Twain said. It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled.
And it’s easier to believe an idiom is true if you believe someone famous said it. I think Wayne Gretzky came up with that one. Maybe it was Micheal Scott.
It actually doesn’t matter who said it.
But of course you’re going to try and deny it’s true because it applies to you, ironically further proving its legitimacy.
Gonna block you now.
I hope you actually do, because I would love to know you’ll never be able to throw stupid mis-attributed quotes at me again. God forbid we have any original thoughts anymore.
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You’re expresing the most common opinion in the thread. Your not a devils advocate especially when you start to whine openly about replies that have differing opinion than your own.
No one is whining. Second, I said I was playing devil’s advocate because no one else had responded yet, and I was responding directly to OP.