Is it just me?
I would rather just pay for stuff and be done with it rather than have my attention and sensorium sold to the highest bidder.
I would rather just pay for stuff and be done with it rather than have my attention and sensorium sold to the highest bidder.
I think that's an inaccurate assessment of 'people who don't want to see ads', given that statistics put internet wide usage of ad-blockers at around 42%.[0].
Maybe it's just that no one wants to pay their captors for golden ear-muffs and blinders when they themselves are the ones responsible for the poor user experience.
I vehemently refuse to pay for YouTube Premium for that exact reason. I get ads that amount to something like "You know how we just stuff ads down your eyeballs constantly? You know how it's really annoying? For just X.99 a month, we'll no longer do that!"
These enrage me to the core. Now that I have NewPipe and other methods of watching YouTube without ads and artificially freezing the stream when I switch away from the app, the official app is useless.
This is a really stupid oversight.. Twitch did subscriptions first and there they do disable ads on the channel you subscribe to (if it has them).
No one's forcing YouTube to send me the videos either. If it gives me ads, they will be deleted before they even make it to my screen. If they don't like that, they are free to return 402 Payment Required instead of giving me stuff for free.
My touchstone for excessive advertising is a Polish TV station called Polsat, which often had very good programming but also lots and lots of ads. We often joked that Polsat programming was "all ads, sometimes broken up by a few minutes of actual TV". It wasn't quite that bad, but it was true that you would get just under ~10 minutes of adverts per every 15-25 minutes of programming.
YouTube exceeds that ratio, these days. And when that happens, I'm almost positive it's time to start packing your toys and looking for a different source of entertainment.
They made a statement about people who are willing to PAY not to see ads. People don't want to pay for anything. Give me free content! And then when they don't like the ads - give me a free ad-blocker!
For me, I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for most things as long as I'm convinced I'll like it. But that's a problem with most content - uncertainty.
I would only get the first by paying, and I have found videos without ads so more more relaxing.
Apple is still not supporting any free codecs on the web. Apparently they actually do have a hardware VP9 decoder in the newest chips but it's only exposed to the YouTube app?? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decodi...
For me, I'd rather not watch Youtube at all if I have to pay to use it. I have found that it is an incredible time-waster and really adds very little value to my life. If I had the self control I would stop using it on my own.
I constantly find that youtube's algorithm just recommends me less interesting stuff over time. If I could have some decent controls on it, paying for an ad free experience would be worthwhile.
People's behavior depends on the circumstances they are given, and if "free (with ads)" is one choice, then indeed a lot of people will choose it over paying. However, if option is not given, it doesn't mean everyone who would've picked free are not going to pay at all.
There are some highly popular freemium/ad supported games but also lots of very popular games that you simply must pay for. Applying the 1% number from products where the choice is ad-free-or-paid to must-pay-for games and assuming they'd get 99x more users if given for free with ads is just completely wrong.
In general, people seem quite willing to pay for games (this may be less true in mobile, that's a rather different market). The challenge isn't that people don't want to pay, it's that the market is extremely saturated and it's hard to stand out from the crowd & produce a game that everyone wants to play over all the other choices.
No, everyone agrees that ads are annoying. I install uBlock Origin on every single browser I come across. Every single time, people take notice almost immediately. They always tell me the internet just feels so much nicer. Many times they can't explain why, they just know.
Ads are a blight on the modern web. Everyone prefers the low-noise version.
With uBlock Origin we can show them a better world.
I'm very happy with my Vive Cosmos and it works without a Facebook account and hasn't shown me any ads so far.
I sincerely don't miss the lighthouses and cables, and can make a new area in any part of the house, at any time.
I just wish it wasn't owned by Facebook. But there's no competitor, unfortunately.
Cosmos also has inside out tracking so no beacons and I honestly don't mind the cables. I never really notice them when I play. I did with the original Vive when I tried it at work, though. As for the PC, I'm an avid gamer and graphics programmer for a AAA studio. My VR is set up in my home office so I have access to a more than adequate PC, anyway.
What I really do mind is a lack of graphical fidelity. Cosmos was the first option I tried which really felt good enough for me (the original Vive always felt cool but not quite there) and I know Quest has very similar resolution. But noticeable compression artifacts sound like something that would really bother me.
That's why it's awesome that Valve is so heavily invested in VR to counter that. They might not have more money than Facebook, but they have more than enough to compete with them. Plus, they have the expertise in video games that Facebook doesn't.
It's just a shame that Valve is by all accounts a highly dysfunctional company.
What Valve is doing with the Index is really cool, but they're still operating as if they're trying to sell to VR enthusiasts, while Facebook is cornering the market by trying to sell to the general public.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
I don't think that's true. The main problem right now is that VR is still (even after all these years) an unproven/experimental consumer product.
It's like buying a game console in the 70s-80s compared to buying one today. Back then, video games were still largely experimental and you were more likely to get garbage than gold. Today, designers know what works/doesn't work, and consumers can be confident in their purchases.
VR is not like that yet. A "VR Game" is still a vague and uncertain term, and consumers can't have confidence in it yet. There are some great VR experiences out there, but there are many many more garbage ones.
I think that a company focusing on finding a good fit for VR is going to be better off long-term than one just trying to corner this early market.
Example: If Valve figures out the "secret sauce" for VR games (much like Nintendo did in the early console wars), it's not going to matter how cheap Facebook's headsets are. People (including Oculus owners) will flock to Steam for the superior experiences while Facebook scrambles to make clones. With a failed "platform", Facebook will ultimately lose.
If anything, Facebook's investments to flood the market with cheap headsets (possibly even subsidizing them) could end up helping Valve in the long term, since it just means more potential Steam customers, and it gives Valve the opportunity to experiment with the high-end stuff without worrying about the market completely dying in the meantime.
/s of course
But I don't like seeing the same ad over and over again. I don't like seeing ads of stuff that I've already bought and I especially don't like to watch a commercial for the thousandth time for a video I'm not sure even is worth watching.
I can agree that ads are not necessarily bad.
Ever heard of Edward Bernays?
However, popups or videos in front of yt, no thanks. As long as it doesn't waste my time or plays sound go ahead.
That said, I have it blocked anyway.