Um well no. They still have appetite to support the business with Ads (and they offer a paid version if you don't like Ads).
The thing they no longer have appetite for is people using Ad blockers.
Google can't force people to watch their ads, unless they hold us down and pry open our eyelids, A Clockwork Orange style. Shit, I shouldn't have given our digital overlords any ideas.
No one’s forcing you to watch any ads, or videos in the first place.
So dramatic with the “I need Television without ads or it’s literally a dystopia” takes
If they try to use my computer to display ads, I will block them. If they try to detect my blocking, I will stop them.
People will go on a massive tirade, over GPL violation... then turn around and completely disregard the license terms that content is being delivered to them with.
The irony of it all is that the whole IT community literally relies on strong copyright enforcement, including FOSS community... yet many fail to extend the same courtesy to people making videos.
By the way, we are under exactly zero obligation to watch any advertisements, moral or otherwise. Best they can do is hope we watch them. They're not entitled to our attention.
It's only a matter of time before they fix the "YouTube can detect uBlock Origin" bug.
It's just that uBlock Origin is so useful and trusted that those restrictions should not apply to it. Frankly uBlock Origin should be literally built into browsers just like pop up blockers back in the day. Only thing stopping this is the inherent conflicts of interest. Google being an ad company and Firefox accepting Google money. Brave is the one going in that direction, its ad blocker is built-in.
> Also they just need to start delivering YouTube player as a wasm binary blob.
I eagerly await the day someone smarter than me creates an AI ad blocker capable of filtering ads, brands, anything really from audio and video streams. Imagine watching a sporting event and the AI just kills all those field perimeter ads. Awesome.
In that world, the best an adblocker would be able to do is show a blank screen for 30s while it waits for the real video's frames to resume.
Youtube will never monetise tech savvy users and should just stop trying. We only need to be slipperier than the average gazelle and the lions will never catch us.
To achieve this, you’ll need computation, storage, and bandwidth on the scale of YouTube. Do you think whoever offers that service will do so without ads or payment?
Your whole scheme is based on hoping “kind” and knowledgeable volunteers do free labor for you. Good luck.
I for one am tech savvy and am happy to pay $20 for the ad free service. Pretty reasonable trade if you ask me.
Personally I would not pay any amount to Google, as I believe it is unethical to support such a company. Google has a monopoly in several markets, to the point of being an unavoidable part of our lives.
No single company should have that much power. Especially since due to its nature as a for-profit corporation, Google's interests are at odds with yours.
As for myself - most of my subscription price goes to the creators and I'm happy with that.
So we really are back to reinventing cable TV
And, coming up in foundation models right now, it can remake videos to remove ads entirely, making a new video with just the content. Perhaps it'll be a feature of the RTX 6090. I bet the hallucinations will be hilarious.
You're talking about when the content creator puts an ad in their video? What would you have Google do about that?
Correct.
> What would you have Google do about that?
Block them. Just like we do.
On a more serious note, that would be google editorializing the content which I don't want. If a channel is advertising their upcoming tour, or advertising Patreon or Nebula, should google block them too? Do you want google's content policy to prevent users from mentioning or showing any product?
You're free to only watch creators that don't put ads in their videos you know.
Absolutely.
One day someone much smarter than me will create an AI ad blocker that removes that sort of thing in real time.
> On a more serious note, that would be google editorializing the content which I don't want.
Have users collectively catalogue segments of the videos then. Pretty much what Sponsor Block does. I'm sure the highly paid engineers at Google can figure it out.
> If a channel is advertising their upcoming tour, or advertising Patreon or Nebula, should google block them too?
I don't consider those things advertising. I think they're just information. If I'm watching a video from a creator whose work I enjoy, I want to know where to find more stuff.
Getting paid deals from third parties and advertising their products on your video is a completely different matter. I didn't open the video to watch that.
> You're free to only watch creators that don't put ads in their videos you know.
God people repeat this like it's a mantra.
I'm free to do any number of things. Including blocking the segments I don't like and watching only the parts I care about. Why can't people accept that?
Besides, it's not like the videos come with a warning that tells you you're gonna be advertised to. The transition to the ad is abrupt and sudden on purpose so you can't even react.
Ah I got it. We should check with you what you consider an ad or not then inform google’s content policy based on that. That makes sense.
> I'm free to do any number of things.
You’re the one wanting to take that freedom from others.
Hey, if you consider someone's patreon to be advertising, feel free to block all of it. You'll get no opposition from me.
> You’re the one wanting to take that freedom from others.
Not at all. I just defend myself when others try to take away my freedom. It's honestly offensive to me that Google even thinks they can use my computer to show me ads. It's my computer and I decide what is or isn't shown.
What if you have a product placement for jack daniels because the character in your movie is the type of character that will chug jack. Should it be up to Netflix to decide "umm, no, this character now drinks Mack Lanyals" who cares what the film maker made?
However, the alternative isn't watching unsponsored videos, it's using SponsorBlock to block the parts that you don't want (or just skipping ahead).
It's up to the viewer to decide what part of a video they don't want to watch, and there's a reason Netflix has a 'skip intro' button: it's annoying, repetitive, and takes you out of the story the video creator is trying to tell.
You and I may not consider a 5 second ad for jack daniels obnoxious, but some people do, and they should be able to skip ahead, instead of only watching content without these ads like you suggest.