YouTube is going to stop you from using ad blockers | Hacker News Reader

YouTube is going to stop you from using ad blockers

tomsguide.com

11 pointspieshop23 comments

That’s a great way to give market share to another platform.. perhaps a critical market share.

Result: 5 years increased profits, afterwards: google is finito.

YouTube is all they got at this point

What kind of market share though? Creators aren't going to move to a platform whose viewership refuses to pay a subscription and doesn't watch ads.

There is nothing on youtube I need, and I am prepared to walk away from it if I'm made to watch ads. At no point did I ever like the content enough to watch ads, particularly multiple jammed in at inopportune times. They will never get a cent from me, and there is nothing they can do to change that.

I like music. I mainly use it for music on my phone at the moment. Spotify is a better business case if I'm going to have to pay for something to solve that issue.

You don't have to watch ads. You can pay for premium instead, which also gives you a Spotify equivalent.

YouTube music is not remotely equivalent to Spotify or Apple Music.

I will never give google a cent willingly.

YT has been pretty terrible and only getting worse in terms of both cintent AND advertising. This push only solidifies my own distancing from the platform, and sureley countless others.

good luck with that one

they can't even figure out how to block yt-dl

Worst case, yt-dlp will "pretend to watch the ad." Slower, sure. But I will happily decouple the downloading from the watching to avoid ads.

TIL. Thank you!

oh sorry - I meant in theory (unless it does do this - in which case, cool!)

Can't figure out how to, or just haven't bothered to?

They probably could block yt-dl (or at least create an annoying cat-and-mouse game for them) if they really wanted to. They probably just don't care enough, or figure there are enough positive benefits to allowing it. Some people (including other content creators) will always have a legitimate need to download YouTube videos.

They've been serving reduced bitrate video at 1080p lately, with a big upsell for "Premium" in the resolution menu. They have to realize this just means "YouTube like like ass now" to me, as opposed to some incentive.

Does Firefox count? It totally changes the experience of page and video viewing. I don't use ad blockers but it seems like Firefox manages video play somewhat aggressively.

>I don't use ad blockers

I can't imagine living in this world, even if Firefox might have some built-in measures.

I'm way more likely to move to PeerTube than YouTube Premium, sorry Tom/Rory.

Nothing of a value is lost.

Does anybody know what currently the most expensive part about YouTube is?

Storage

Bandwidth

Processing/encoding

Linus Tech Tips had a good video about six months ago where they dived into the sheer amount of storage YouTube needs since they now allow 4k uploads, and the costs associated with this.

Is it the most? Not sure, but it is certainly a large number.

Shareholder greed

Surely not labor

Or so they think

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