YouTube please give back option to stop seeing an ad | Hacker News Reader

YouTube please give back option to stop seeing an ad

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45 pointsthrow9337 comments

This is how ad's work.. I'm sick of it as well, but CNN, NBC, CNBC, etc. etc. similarly spam ads.

Kinda strange this is on HN to be honest.

I've had plenty of ads I couldn't skip before, not really sure how that's determined or if I was in an experimental group or not.

The post is about how these specific ads have different options available than every other ad.

The issue isn’t that they can’t be skipped, the issue is that you can’t say “don’t show me this again”.

I've been flooded with these too. Personally, I'm keeping them to waste their ad dollars.

Make sure to either watch the full video (don't skip if skippable) or click the link to the website since skipping at 5 seconds will very likely mean the advertiser spends zero or near zero dollars.

Two interesting things here; first of all, as noted, these ads get special treatment, being treated as basically a video, but also, the algorithm is... not very good, if it’s repeatedly spamming people who are annoyed enough by it to complain, and thus, will presumably not be voting for him anyway.

Wonder how much this pointless advertising is costing.

Edit: Also, I’m very glad to live in a country where political advertising is highly restricted. Election season in the US seems to be an endless barrage of annoyance.

It's increasingly becoming only about election these days in many countries IMO.

Political groups race to win next election. Even most of the actions of the ruling party is focused to win the upcoming election. They take every opportunity to show off their success only because they want to stay in power longer, and the opposition party takes every opportunity to bash ruling party to take the power back.

With a few exceptions in Europe, it feels that the main focus isn't the nation interest anymore. Which is very disappointing. But someone could also argue that it's all necessary and that's how it should work. Which then I think there are too many flaws on the current system.

I personally like to see an alternative model. Shouldn't be impossible to invent a model that holds politicians accountable for their actions, still involves people, and it isn't prone to corruption. Just enough support to academics to design a better system. We're spending way too much for political campaigns, yet every time there is a discussion about fixing current problems the first answer is that it's too expensive to solve and we shouldn't touch it.

I thought I was the only one bombarded with these ads every day, until I discovered this support ticket. To clarify I’ve paused search and watch history.

Political ads are one of the main reasons that people hate online ads and targeting techniques. Ad-platforms are ruining their own platform by allowing these kind of ads into their platform.

If you show an Android ad to an Apple fan, he is not going to hate it. But, political views are very different and political ads usually target people differently. It's a sensitive topic, and there have been many instances of abusing users by political ads.

Many of internet users were fine with targeted ads. Some users even preferred to see relevant ads instead of random ones, until a few years ago that everyone saw too many abuses from political ads and user tracking.

I think platforms like Facebook should blame themselves for making internet users too sensitive about ads instead of blaming Apple for providing privacy focused features that are asked by users.

here we go again. these corporations take no responsibility for any of their actions, are not held to even a modicum of responsibility, and do not care about anything other than money. they’re allowing objectively false ads to run rampant on their platform and force feeding them to people.

i hate trump with every bone in my body, view him as a traitor of the U.S., and hide all political videos and ads on youtube, and yet even i am seeing these ads. that tells me basically everyone is likely being force fed these ads. it’s scary.

Don’t like free service, pay for youtube premium. My family and I share YouTube premium and we love it. my nephews and nieces are shielded from ads on YT. To be honest I would pay money for ad free services.

Do you not see political ads on YouTube premium?

Zero ads plus you get YouTube music which I use daily

You see no YouTube ads on YT Premium AFAIK.

That's the sales pitch. It's not entirely true, even before considering how many YouTube videos are themselves ads.

splitting hairs... but ok. Adverts are different to infomercials...

Got flagged. Changed the title to a neutral tone. All I care about is the option that YouTube has taken away. Don’t care about any party.

If of of Google's "selling points" is that they tailor ads that suit what we're interested in.... but a customer of them pays huge amounts of money for them to advertise to those of us that DONT WANT TO SEE THAT CUSTOMER, then what is Googles "selling point" again?

Well it’s not a big surprise that it’s happening given how advertising is the business model. I’m sure google is raking it in and will continue to. It’s a good time to look at alternatives to YouTube

The particularly fascinating aspect of this I haven't seen discussed is that every other ad I've ever seen on Youtube has a "stop showing me this" option. Trump ads do not. I had no idea that "feature" could be disabled with a high enough sale.

I've stopped using the Youtube app on my iPad since I have no way of blocking ads there (probably what's going to get me to finally set up a Pi Hole).

I would imagine that they're treating this as a spammed feature. (Too many people have marked as this) They do have an obligation to let it finish out it's spend.

For a while (for me) YouTube removed the “stop seeing this ad” option, though it is back now. Perhaps I clicked it too much.

These days I get the same very broadly targeted ads every time which I guess means YouTube doesn’t know much about me, which is good

If you pay Google $10/mo or whatever the going rate is, you get ad-free Youtube. It's worth it for a family using one account.

It's possible political ads have separate rules, I could see some common features being disabled in the name of "fairness".

For the record, Biden (I mean anti-Trump) ads are just as insane. They probably know which candidate each person leans toward and target the opposite candidates ads. No sense preaching to the choir right? I get both and it sucks.

I can confirm that this is the case with both Biden and Trump ads (I've got ads from both which figures since I'm a centerist).

Just in case anybody was wondering.

Just wait until the leadup to Election Day, Trump's campaign basically bought up YouTube's front page: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-21/donald-tr...

that’s truly sickening. the u.s. is not even pretending to be a democracy anymore.

So your definition of a democracy is a country where one political campaign cannot buy online advertising?

do you mind pointing out where i said anything close to that? you can always ask someone to clarify rather than arguing deceptively.

Perhaps it's an option that the advertiser can pay more for.

That’s odd... I’m seeing mostly Biden/Harris ads. Could be the algos?

Do you see “Stop seeing this ad”? I’m not and that’s what bothering me.

In other news, no need to show people who are already going to vote Trump ads designed to entice them to vote Trump.

Where is the tolerance?

I'm concerned about all the people in that thread that are overly angry that there are possibly others in this world that share viewpoints other than theirs. It's not healthy at all.

That has nothing to do with it. Read stuff.

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