Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnivol | Hacker News Reader

There is clearly a significant increase in ads on youtube. It's now as bad as old cable TV channels, its disgusting, personally started reducing youtube consumption. They must've turned on the "milk youtube" knob. Hoping there will be a youtube competitor, they are pretty much a monopoly .

View on HN

No fucking way. Cable TV channels had as much ads as they had content. Youtube is around 2x1min ad per 30 min video, longer ones are skippable and you get no ads if you pay for $15/m for it.

You paid cable TV $90/m for 12-15 min of ads on 30 min shows.

Cable TV has 12-15 minutes of ads per hour depending on network. It's been that way for a very long time, but slightly on the rise for the last few years.

Aside from noise cancelling headphones and a roomba, paying for YouTube to avoid ads is the best quality of life improving purchase I have made.

Youtube Vanced. Google can't expect my $10 when they take all my data for free.

So you’re willing to hurt creators earnings because Google has some data on you?

A lot of creators have multiple revenue streams that one can support (merch, patreon, affiliate links). Not watching youtube ads does not have to mean you are hurting creators.

Not watching YouTube ads means they get less money. Yes, there are still alternatives for them to eek out some revenue, but they are making less than if you just watched the ad or got YT premium

So you just pay more on Patreon right?

This is anecdotal, but it seems like most career youtube creators are only relying on youtube ad revenue for a small portion of their total income. Video claims and unreliable monetization have long plagued youtube so it makes sense for creators to look to things like brand deals and patreon for the majority of their income. I’d much rather not watch ads and then compensate for it by supporting them through some other means.

We shouldn't want to want people watch advertising. It's mental real estate that doesn't need to be there.

Yes.

Not parent. The few YT channels that I know of and that produce worthwhile stuff are either unmonetized or can be supported via merch or directly, so no harm done blocking ads.

Especially now that there's ads even on videos by unmonetized channels and YTers who do and share shit because they authentically enjoy it. You know, those that made the site worthwhile in the first place in 200x.

And the mind-crushing amount of clickbait and spam by "professional content creators"? Well, that can go the way of the dodo.

Youtube is probably varying the rate of ads displayed for each user based on some factors. I was watching an hour long interview and was shocked that I was served a 30 second ad every 3-4 minutes. I scanned the comments for outrage, but there were no negative comments. I think YT may have increased my ad rate because I was using a VPN.

I think they will use ads as a form of tax, to discourage certain behavior, and even certain content. I think I notice this more on libertarian leaning videos (although I definitely haven't done any rigorous analysis re that).

Can't wait for the day everything is decentraly hosted, and we access it through whatever portal we want.

> I think they will use ads as a form of tax, to discourage certain behavior, and even certain content. I think I notice this more on libertarian leaning videos (although I definitely haven't done any rigorous analysis re that).

That is an extraordinary claim, and needs some extraordinary evidence to back it up.

I watched a Jordan Peterson video on Dr. Oz's official channel, and I got an ad every 3 - 4 minutes. What do you make of that evidence (given I'm not lying)? None of the comments acknowledged it.

I'm not sure if you mean that's a lot of ads or not but I thought creators chose where the ads are played.

I thought so too, but it's been so periodic and so often that I thought it couldn't be the content creator. The fact that no one complains in the comments makes me think there are other options as well, and not ones that the content creator controls.

I think it means Dr. Oz is extraordinarily greedy since his channel chooses when to show ads.

Been lurking on hn for a year now, finally made an account because I can give some value with a comment

Youtube content creators can choose where to put the ads themselves. You will come across many videos with only the first ad or the ads set sparely in the video, some even put the ads in breaks. You can also chose to let YouTube put the ads but that’s also a one and done, one setting per video. I can confirm though that YouTube, on the automated setting, put way more ads in the past year or two than before.

I've had several videos now where I get an ad every few minutes, and I'm curious how consistent it could be when none of the comments acknowledge it. Are you aware of different viewers getting different numbers of ads?

Isn't there a limit on how often you can run ads? I remember some Youtuber talking about how people are deliberately making their videos just over 10 minutes long because then they can also put an ad in the middle, not just at the beginning or end, or something like that.

I'm from India and YouTube Premium is less than $3/m for family plan here. Definitely worth it

Those competitors will also need to cover their costs somehow, they'll either resort to ads or subscriptions. YT premium is just 12$/month, it's the best 12$ I spend every month, YT music is a bonus.

For those who don't want to support YouTube or Google, an app called NewPipe can be installed with F-droid that lets you watch videos without ads.

> don't want to support YouTube or Google

AND the content creator as well.

Disc: Googler.

YouTube doesn't support the content creators I watch, they've mostly been demonetized or had their viewership hit by random algorithmic changes. I use patron or streamlabs to support the people who make what I like, not the monopolies who control the infrastructure and try to influence the overton window of society.

Yep. Almost every creator I watch is either demonetized or got banned. I'm sick of watching podcasts or gaming videos where people are saying creepy codewords to get around the censorship algorithm.

For everyone else, it's not just objectionable political stuff (right wing bullshit) being demonetized, it's stuff advertisers don't like. Tons of good content is getting cut just because someone decided they didn't like how it made their corporation look. Anything related to computer/physical security, firearms technology, and of course, anything an AI deems to be copyrighted, regardless of what it actually is. Also, usage of profanity (because who the fuck swears these days), any mention of a controversial issue (regardless of the maturity of the discussion), and anything they deem overly referential to other content, including your own.

This 'think of the creators' argument is a low-effort appeal to emotion that deviates from the core issue. Neither youtube premium or youtube ads value my privacy.

I am happy to support content creators through patreon or whatever monetization platform they choose.

What I am not ok with is having every single click and watching period profiled and stored. I would happily not block your ads if you weren't building up user profiles.

A business model with generic vanilla ads based on the video I am watching instead of my profile would still provide millions upon millions for Google and shareholders.

Targeted ads only benefit Google by selling the illusion of advertisement metrics to marketers. Neither users or content creators stand to benefit from targeted advertisement quite the contrary.

sure. and the principled way to not support them is to not consume their content. I will never understand how people rationalize this to themselves as if they're on the moral high ground here.

This is a fragile holier-than-thou argument to claim that you can go through the modern world without looking at a youtube video someone linked.

The claim of moral ground is made even less robust when they literally have a platform that attempts to track your every single move in order to monetize on targeted advertisement.

There are other business models to achieve the same profitability without privacy invasion, and I do pay for and favour those business models.

I will repeat it again targeted ads only benefit Google by selling the illusion of advertisement metrics to marketers. Neither users or content creators stand to benefit from targeted advertisement quite the contrary.

Targeted advertisement should be as illegal as robocalls.

This is my picture: you are presented two options to pay, through ads or through plain cash. you refuse both and yet still feel entitled to the content. what do you object to in this framing?

To be clear, in the context of this discussion I don't care how you feel about paying through ads. It is their right to lock their content behind those gates.

It is not binomial, plenty of content creators want their videos ad free and ask for donations through a donation platform. I engage with those.

If youtube wants to cover it's infrastructure costs with ads I will allow it when they stop tracking users.

I'm not familiar with how content creators get paid by YouTube. If it's by views or view duration, does NewPipe not increase those on YouTube when a video is viewed via NewPipe?

And there are other ways to support creators if someone were to insist on it. A lot of channels that I support have moved to Nebula, other channels have Patreons, or push their own products.

You expect advertisers to keep paying if nobody is actually watching the ads?

> AND the content creator as well.

Ahh mostly not.

Most youtubers I watch gave up on youtube ads long ago. They make money with parteon, merchandize and in video sponsors.

The ones who still get some kind of relevant revenue from Youtube constantly bitch about demonetization, takedowns and some big entities calming their content.

Your own creators are your own worst critics.

“This video is sponsored by xxx”. You can’t escape that.

Well, almost (https://sponsor.ajay.app/)

My trained hand hits the +10s button in a fraction of a second :)

Usually when I'm watching "mainstream" content on Youtube I just skip the first one or two minutes entirely. There's always a lot of ceremony, "don't forget to like and subscribe", fancy intros etc. It takes me a couple of seconds to find out where the content _actually_ starts -- and it almost always starts after the 1 minute mark.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant

> The Wadsworth Constant is an axiom which states that the first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no worthwhile or interesting information.

Ha, for me YouTube Music is a small but negative value contribution. I'd rather choose to never see any YouTube Music-related UI or marketing even if I am technically paying for it as part of YouTube Premium.

Another component of "negative value" is that videos keep playing in the background on mobile.

Killing the app is the easiest way to get it to shut up.

FWIW you can turn background play off.

You can change that in the settings. In addition to disabling it, you can have it enabled only if headphones are connected.

Just as importantly, those competitors will need to attract content creators. And guess what most of those content creators want... more ad revenue.

Google is heavily pushing YouTube premium now, so they're trying to make the experience as crappy as possible for free users.

I don't watch nearly enough YouTube to justify $12 a month, but I'm starting to consider ad blockers. Or just stop watching Youtube altogether, which wouldn't be all that hard. There are only a couple of channels I check out from time to time, and one isn't monetized so the ads are fairly reasonable. The other however had ad breaks every 5 minutes, which is just killing it for me.

Pro tip from SWIM: Vpn into india just one time during signup and pay ~$1.50/mo

> I'm starting to consider ad blockers

Go for it. You won't regret. Youtube is unusable without ad blocker (regardless if it's their premium offering or a browser extension).

I download every video with yt-dl before watching. Started doing since the enforced age verification, won't give my CC or ID to Google for sure

...or you could go ad-free with youtube premium?

based on the responses from the past stealing, I mean not paying is easier for many of the replies youll get.

I have YouTube TV - which is great by the way - but the fact it doesn't include YouTube Premium for free or the ability to add YouTube Premium for something like $5/month just sticks in my craw. So being the stubborn mule that I am I refuse to pay the $12/month for YouTube Premium and now I'm watching less and less of YouTube as a result.

That’s an odd hill to die on. YouTube without ads is a lovely experience for what I’d consider a very reasonable price.

I’m on the same hill, I just think twice about YouTube altogether now. I don’t lose sleep over it.

uBlock Origin works pretty good on YouTube. I've no idea why video ads are built in a way that can be blocked quite easily.

At a guess, for the same reasons visual ads are - they've got some kind of targeting logic that needs to pick from a pool of ads and send them to the viewer. Though of course if YT started serving them all from indistinguishable sources, or composited them together on the fly, or ... I'd be sad.

https://freetubeapp.io/ for PC

https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/ for TV

Sorry I don't watch YT on mobile so I have no suggestion for that

NewPipe on Android

I don't know why and I don't want to jinx it but I get no ads at all when using youtube on my laptop. Only on my mobile which is why I don't watch youtube there.

IME, uBlock Origin does a pretty good job of blocking YouTube ads (assuming you're not on a locked down mobile platform of course).

I use ublock origin, no advts. on Youtube. I turn the addon off if I want to support the creators. For android, I use NewPipe.

I whole heartedly refuse to use the youtube app or youtube on a vanila browser. If I use youtube it is typically because someone sent me a link. I used to open it in firefox with ublock (both on desktop and Android).

Youtube has gone one level beyond with the auto play nuissance and the new hostile EU consent forms. I am at a point that I will just refuse to engage with the platform and only play a video by copying the video id into the url:

www.youtube.com/embed/<video-id>

And then just open it in ff or mpv

They could have extracted a fortune with banner ads and the like. But it is never enough for shareholders, they wanted to scale this further and keep hogging data and profiling everyone.

Targeted advertisement should be as illegal as robocalls.

>I am at a point that I will just refuse to engage with the platform and only play a video by copying the video id into the url:

n.b. that if you have `youtube-dl` and `mpv` built with lua support,

  mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...`

Just Works. Also handy for red-band trailers.

Further, you can also do things like

  mpv --no-video https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=5qap5aO4i9A  # chilled cow

which is very nice inside a tmux pane or something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com