YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls | Hacker News Reader

YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Spurs Record Uninstalls

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69 pointsbluish29179 comments

I've been a paying YouTube user since 2016 when it was YouTube Red.

YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet. Both in terms of content that I personally enjoy and improves my life, as well as its role on the internet overall, where they provide a FREE service that allows EVERYONE to upload as much video as they want, and see what kind of response it gets from a global audience, and even to get paid for their content. I am 100% happy to pay for YouTube. And the bonus is, I don't have to see ads. Sure, many of the videos I watch these days are sponsored and have some short shout-out to the sponsor, but it doesn't bother me.

See, I like a lot of content creators on YouTube. I also think that Alphabet has such an immensely negative impact on society. Deeply and thoroughly.

I just cannot bring myself to give a red cent. Not by viewing ads, and much less by giving them my credit card.

> I also think that Alphabet has such an immensely negative impact on society.

Care to elaborate?

Good news is that none of this matters to you since you avoid Google products.

The web was one of the best opportunities we had to steer the ship in a positive direction. Instead of encouraging and fostering the creative and self-expressive web, Google optimized for sucking the wealth out of us at the expense of everything else.

And no, I don't buy the "SEO gamification ruined it, Google just responded" argument. They have billions of dollars and hordes of brilliant engineers. They could have done this differently. This was intentional because it made them fabulously wealthy.

There is no way to avoid "Google products". Google are everywhere via Google Analytics.

Maybe I'm missing something but AFAIK Google can't force anyone to install Google Analytics on their website. It would make more sense to me if you were upset with those that do.

And if you're someone that knows enough to dislike GA then you're probably already blocking it.

You seem to have completely forgotten about their sole money-making product: the ads and spyware they inject everywhere across the web. Or is the web officially a Google Product now?

It's not free: you're supposed to watch the ads. You pay with your limited seconds of lifetime. You don't get those seconds back, ever.

Of course, it's not free, they're making billions of dollars of targeted advertising and stealing your attention to sell ads.

They also seem to be in the shady business of getting kids completely hooked on the service. Most of my friends kids are just staring at YouTube day day out. I could blame the parents, but there is a reason why selling drugs is illegal too I guess.

Nice try, Google, but no.

That's great! Thank you for keep supporting Youtube!

Support wikipedia. Youtube doesn't need support they have deep pockets making money selling ad space to scammers

It's not clear Wikipedia need your help at this point. Support the Internet Archive.

Wikipedia doesn't need your money - their endowment has enough money ($200m+) to run the encyclopedia bit for decades Support the EFF.

That would suggest you're paying 40% more for it now than when you started. It's the cable TV model but with public access TV content.

Do you ever skip past the shout-outs to the sponsor, or do you sit and pay attention to them out of admiration for the creators who spent so much time making free content for you?

I'll admit, I don't mind the ad reads for Michael Fisher's channel (MrMobile, gadget channel). This is because Fisher had done TV commercials as a young man and understands the importance of voice training and making ads feel friendly and natural.

I skip, but the goal of sponsors is getting their name out there, which is still achieved even if I skip ahead. I've used promo codes for several products bc of these sponsorship deals/ads as well

It depends on whether it's engaging or relevant to me. I don't begrudge the creators for including sponsored content, but if I do sit through it, it's not out of admiration for them. It's because I want to know more, or am cleaning the kitchen and don't want to reach for the remote.

> where they provide a FREE service that allows EVERYONE to upload as much video as they want

If it was a FREE service to EVERYONE, they wouldn't care about adblockers. It is paid, then.

Free, in this context, means ad supported. Context is important.

'Not Free' would be the clearest context.

> YouTube is imo one of the best sites on the internet.

This is true.

> I am 100% happy to pay for YouTube.

Just remember that you're giving money to the company that backs things like FLoC, Manifest v3, and WEI (recently in the news), things that threaten interoperability on the Internet. It's not friendly.

If you pay them, do it with your eyes open.

Ironically, the reason Google has so much Orwellian power is because people are so much more willing to view ads than pay a subscription.

Youtube itself would be a far better product if it was subscription only. It would mean that the users, not the advertisers, are the customer to be catered too.

> Youtube itself would be a far better product if it was subscription only.

Isn’t that what a lot of big names kinda move to? “Get more videos by signing up on patrebula”

They also built an incredible browser full of amazing capabilities that I do love.

And have an enormous commitment to standards and standards processes, that they have supported & helped tirelessly. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/

I think that's a relatively simplistic way of viewing this. Although I don't disagree with the core argument, Google will always implement and ship "standards" that fit their business model or their vision of the web. A Chrome API becomes a defacto standard regardless of the state of consensus between engine vendors. Chrome can bulldoze through the standards process because of the massive amount of Chrome installations (and derivatives).

There are standards that have never been fully accepted by Mozilla [0] or WebKit (famously webusb for instance, because of security implications) but they are still in Chrome and now Firefox or Safari are effectively a "worse" browser because they don't support "standard" X that never reached consensus but Chrome implemented anyway. It always starts as an "experimental" feature under a config flag while the supposed discussion is taking place "just to see how it works, promise" before Google decides to remove the experimental flag and ship it. WEI started to play out exactly in the same way but given the massive outrage they decided it was too damaging to keep pursuing it (they still sneakily implemented it in Android WebViews).

So although I don't disagree that, yes Google has certainly improved on some things when it comes to standard processes they have abused their powerful position and continue to do so to push forward whatever they think it benefits them.

[0] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

If there were peers out there beyond Mozilla, Apple, and Edge, I'd agree more. Safari has long been the web's boat anchor that keeps it from going anywhere. Mozilla has lots of good moments, but they also have been snotty meanspirited aggressive press hounds talking mad shit about sensor support, web USB, web midi, and other really amazing capabilities.

Google has no peers who are pro web. So them not having full consensus on what they do try bothers me not the slightest.

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’ve shown Chrome is the new IE of the web. How the world turns…

They did, this is true. And so does Mozilla, for that matter.

But what's also true is that the market leader is incentivized to break interoperability and lock out other vendors. That was Microsoft; now it's Google. Or, put another way, I don't hear the EFF complaining about Edge at the moment.

I'm happy that Google is at least trying to standards-track these bad ideas and not just unilaterally putting them in Chrome. But I wouldn't bet a dime that they aren't going to do exactly that in the future. 70% of the market is a lot of weight.

"Hm, Google tracks me everywhere I go and tries to store data about everything I do. It's pretty terrible, but what should I do about it? I know, I'll link my account to a real identity and credit card!"

I totally agree. I think we're still in the golden age of YouTube and YouTube red w/ YouTube music is totally worth the $15 or whatever I pay every month. I have YouTube on in the background for hours and use it to look stuff up all the time. If you don't want to see ads, pay for the ad free service! Especially since it's cheap as shit compared to cable. It blows my mind that people expect these free services. I am totally pro paying a small amount for services I value (and I do) than only have a crappy free ad filled option. I pay for kagi, I pay for YouTube and I pay my favorite creators via patreon or whatever because I want them to be able to keep doing whatever they're doing.

This does read soooo much like an ad. Uncanny. not telling it is really one though.

is it that hard to fathom that other people might have generally positive experiences with products and companies that you may consider warrant criticism?

whatever valid criticism or discussion may exist regarding ad blocking policies, it doesn't change the fact that there are clear benefits to this service existing, even if those benefits comes with tradeoffs like watching ads or directly paying for the service. can't get everything for free, ya know!

Another bonus is YT Music.

Even though it is true YouTube is a hugely valuable resource, if it takes YouTube going as far as blocking adblockers for me to pay for premium at this point, I don't think I could bring myself to do it. In a word - and I know it sounds like a cop-out to say this - it feels like capitulation. Letting up on blocking ads on YouTube would not make me give up uBlock Origin for all other websites, and I think that would cause me to have a lot of cognitive dissonance in my decision. It's an issue of conflicting mental signals and the mood that results from the resulting implication - it's like saying "ads are not okay under any circumstance - until they start locking the doors."

I feel like it could be the same for a lot of people who can afford the cost. Ability to pay may not always be the issue. Paying the price could become a symbolic indicator of Google finally triumphing over even the most obstinate anti-timewasting user, and mentally it's not a good feeling to give that up that fight after years and years of holding on to the adblocking creed, regardless of the resulting betterment of the service from paying.

At the same time, it doesn't result in a justification for being set in one's ways, only a possible explanation of why people would decide not to use premium. This strategy only works so long as uBlock Origin's team of volunteers holds more patience than Google's salaried employees.

Just a friendly reminder that you're promoting a platform that happily demonetizes people reporting on important events (like Tiffany Fong) and supports doxxing (as long as the doxxer is a cash cow like SSSniperWolf).

I have subscribed to it for a long time too. I mean, I watch YouTube more than any other streaming service like Hulu or Netflix or whatever. I've guarded my viewing habits jealously so it doesn't feed me any of the toxic BS that can invade the platform. My feed is mostly food and guitar related...with some interesting science bits thrown in. I too am happy to pay for a service I use so much.

And it's also so I don't hear any ads. I have trouble falling asleep, and I use it to watch/listen to relaxing videos that calm me down and let me fall asleep. Sure, if I watched everything on a computer, I could just use an ad-blocker. But I rarely watch it on my computer. I watch it on my tablet, and mostly on my streaming box attached to my big TV in the living room. Can't put an ad-blocker on there easily...especially since YouTube can change the way they stream to suddenly nullify how the ad-blockers work. So then you have to somehow update the ad-blocker and tweak it and by that time, you're spending more time than you want to just to watch the fricken video. Yeah, I know...they make watching the ad supported YouTube as obnoxious as hell to push you to just subscribe. But the content I watch, in my opinion, is worth it for me.

Yeah, I know. I'll get the "but your contributing to a corporation that does blah blah blah". Okay, but that's a slippery slop. The only way to NOT contribute to myriad of "evil corporations" is to buy and own nothing. Just live in an empty room with a mattress and a single light-bulb hanging from the ceiling. But wait! Is that light-bulb powered by a fossil-fuel electric plant??? I'm a monster!

How do you feel about YouTube’s gradual shift in focus from promoting evergreen content to “grab your attention for the next X seconds” content?

I'm not sure I agree that that is an accurate premise, but even if it is, I'd probably feel about it the same way that I feel about grocery stores putting tabloid magazines and candy near the cash registers.

My opinion of the for profit ad blockers is so low that I assume this article is sponsored content from at least one of them. I'd guess Adlock refused to pay, as bizarrely they're the only one who don't get their product linked to despite claiming to have solved the problem.

I always find it strange to hear so many people still use non uBlock Origin ad blockers. I feel like any discussion I've seen about ad blockers in the past decade has been overwhelmingly full of recommendations for uBlock Origin, deservedly so.

Recently Xboxes have been starting up with a huge ads for some dumb game. People are outraged and claiming they'll go game on PC. And what're they gonna run on those PCs? Linux? Unlikely. They'll load windows. And get the same treatment.

There's that George Carlin joke "imagine how stupid the average person is then realize half of all people are stupider than that."

This wasn't sponsored content. Not sure why you assume that. A link to AdLock was accidentally not included. It's in there now

Things like the complete lack of a mention of uBlock Origin, despite it having a rather drama filled few weeks. Or that a similar article was posted elsewhere claiming that though uninstalls were way up, it was mostly people moving to ad blockers that work. Your article feels like pandering for what I view as rather scummy companies.

I wonder if anyone in the industry has any insights in how a regular developer can help improve ad blockers? Where to get started?

As a huge fan of blocking ads, this makes me feel inspired to join the fight against Google. How can I help?

Boycott YouTube in favor of other video services? Pay for YT Premium?

Why spend so much energy bypassing compensation for an otherwise free service? It just pushes more ads in front of less sophisticated users or encourages producers to lock all content behind paywalls.

Note that when paying for YT premium, you have to be logged in. Google will still collect the data, build your profile, just not show you the resulting ads on youtube. But they will use that data to show you targeted ads elsewhere. Plus now you cannot invalidate that data by dropping cookies, etc.

This is one of the many reasons that Google has never had me as a paying customer, even though I like YouTube's content enough to pay something for it. Over the years, things like this have eroded the trust I have for Google to effectively zero.

Instead I pay other services like Nebula to watch creators I first discovered on YouTube. Unfortunately, most creators don't have an alternative like this in place.

What makes you think Nebula doesn't do the same thing?

Like I said, there are several factors in my decision making. At this point I assume most services will eventually succumb to enshittification. So, bouncing between ships, bailing as they start to sink feels like the name of the game. It's not necessarily that I trust Nebula, it's that I don't trust the advertising company, Google.

That said, some other reasons that work in Nebula's favor are that the creators seem to be involved in the ownership and they can publish material without the fear of YouTube's demonetization. The value proposition isn't exactly one to one and goes beyond the advertising/funding.

Have you seen YouTube with ads? They slap 2-3 15s ads in a 5m video. It's unwatchable.

Yes, and that has not been my experience. Perhaps the creators you enjoy are more aggressive about monetization?

Happily paying my $10 for YT premium. Best value of $10 a month I can get in this economy. Thousands of hours watched ad-free, and supporting the platform and the creators.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36807803

I don’t want to be logged in. I don’t want them invading my privacy.

Sounds like a boycott is the only real solution for you.

Why you want to fight with service provider? What you expect to have in the end? Dead site?

Yes.

Eventually it will have to become content extraction. Load the page in the background, load the ad, capture frames from the video window and use some process to detect and remove the frames that show an ad. Take the clean video feed and show it in another interface than the original page. This would also be a countermeasure against direct injection of ads into the content stream.

Meanwhile: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Though if youtube is really going to end up blocking ad-blockers, this one may stop working too, of course.

Agreed. Computers are slowly being maimed to the point where we are going to go back to using DVR (digital video recorder, a time shifting device like tivo) but for computers.

Also note that so far, most streaming services have succeeded in protecting their high res codecs. KodiTV can play a big variety of services but usually only at 540p (widevine L2?).

Tim Berners-Lee overriding the standards bodies and approving Encrypted Media Extensions had the desired effect of keeping the web relevant, of letting all these streaming services spring up, all accessible on the web. Because it afforda the companies enough security to feel like they can do so.

It's unclear to me how we build DVRs anew. Do we disassemble a monitor scan-out & record the embedded-Display-Port or lvds or whatever signal, and play that back? The infernalizarion of computing has proceeded apace against humanity.

The maiming of computers is the logical outcome of allowing walled gardens to become acceptable, thanks to the halo of Apple. The rest is numbers and history.

By far the most effective way to end ads would be to come up with an internet business model that doesn't need ads or subscriptions to stay alive.

This would be a god tier level development, and would seriously cripple Google's core business (serving ads) and youtube as well (serve ads or subscription).

Blockchain?

Given that things cost money, I'm not sure how you want to accomplish that in a sustainable fashion. Somewhere, someone down the line is paying money, even if it's not you. And if it's not you, you're the product, as the popular saying goes. So paying a subscription fee really is the best solution.

One can imagine a different structure, where a wealthy philanthropist or organization funds the site, but that's just shifting the costs around. The other option is the government runs it, out of our tax dollars, which could work, if there wasn't a powerful vocal contingent of politicians that still buys the line that government can't do anything right.

Here’s your solution: YouTube, but backed by blockchain. Instead of hashing or whatever nonsense happens on blockchain, your “mining” actually does something mildly useful and serves videos. You get coins or something. Since there’s no real value in blockchain products and everything is completely fabricated, you can show people their coin value is going up, because why not. So they can continue to “invest” with their compute.

Been feeling inspired by the SBF case lately.

Jokes aside, distributing compute to users is one way to avoid having expensive servers, which tend to be powered by ads, if not direct payments. There is the fediverse. Not sure how well that would work here, but there’s probably some potential. And before that there has been e.g. torrenting communities that require certain seed ratios. Basically: the product is “free” but you need to participate in some form that adds value rather than just leeching. The distributed model is established, I just don’t think it will ever outcompete a centralized one, if for no other reason than distributed communities have strategy and cash flow problems. As in, they don’t really have any functional mechanism to build, fund, and execute on a competitive strategy like YouTube can. All they can really do is make a product and hope people like it. But competing on merit is never enough.

This is called peertube, and the topmost viewed video on peertube.tv sorted by "Global views" had 57K views in total.

Youtube, OTOH, used, and currently uses a number of marketing strategies to drive traffic to their site, and paid out ~$10B++ annually for content creators. GP's comment on "Given that things cost money" is not governed by compute, rather, cost of customer acquisition for the platform, and cost of content creation by creatives. Somebody, somewhere, has to pay for these. That is the merit of this battleground.

> By far the most effective way to end ads would be to come up with an internet business model that doesn't need ads or subscriptions to stay alive.

There are many! The problem is that the ads model supports the "winners take all" strategy that permeates Silicon Valley and all its copycats. There is no room for peaceful coexistence.

Peer to peer networks. "Tim Berners-Lee's vision for the World Wide Web was close to a P2P network in that it assumed each user of the web would be an active editor and contributor, creating and linking content to form an interlinked "web" of links."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Help starving lone devs keep up important projects.

The big fish are Ublock Origin and AdBlock Plus, as well as YT front ends like yt-dl, Invidious and Newpipe, but by favorite project is https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Bromite already almost died before uazo took over.

I think YouTube is eventually going to assert control through Chrome, and the community is going to be caught flat footed with everyone still relying on Chrome extensions.

The entire adblock industry feels like https://xkcd.com/2347/

I wonder if this will increase subs to nebula? I have ubo and sponsor block installed but I still prefer to watch people over on nebula vs youtube, not only for the lack of ads, but also sponsor spots (sb doesn't always detect them) and the massive amount of begs for patreon, subs, etc.

Honestly, if I have to pay $14 / mo or watch ads? I'm just going to focus on other hobbies like reading.

I hope so, Nebula is great.

+1 to reading, also. I used to spend way to much time on "junk food" articles & podcasts on the internet, but switched to reading more books & audiobooks about 5-10 years ago. Much better content-to-fluff ratio.

I used to read a LOT as a kid, but it gradually wound down in adulthood for some reason. Then I tried audio books and man, they're fantastic, esp for non fiction.

Yeah, same. I get through maybe 1-2 paper books or ebooks in a year, but I average 1-2 audiobooks per week, because I can listen to it while driving, walking the dog, cooking food, doing yardwork, etc.

The YouTube app on my AppleTV never showed me ads until the past few days. I do use NextDNS, but by all accounts it did nothing for YouTube ads. On my desktops I have ublock origin so I didn't see ads there and attributed it to that extension. It was glorious.

Then suddenly YouTube started showing ads. Terrible. Literally worse than classic "free" television in its prime. Multiple ads pre-roll. Frequent ads just injected randomly at times through the video. Horrendous.

This is probably because of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) rules, which prevent personal data from leaving the device for ads without consent. This means YouTube on AppleTV can't target you at an individual level, and thus the ad inventory is less valuable. Maybe now they have more demand side budgets and are finding ways to spend it even on Apple devices. Or maybe their privatization technology is finally mature enough to make that inventory valuable enough to sell.

This is somewhat interesting. YouTube seemingly started losing enough money to ad blockers to start caring to combat them seriously, and the number of ad blocker install/uninstalls supports that there are very many folks interested in blocking ads.

I’m not sure of where this will end up but I can only see hatred for ads and adoption of ad blockers increasing over time. I’m not sure YouTube will win this war.

The nice thing is that YouTube is now forcing ad blocker devs into attrition, or to try harder and innovate. I suspect the latter will be the result and YouTube/other ad providers will have an even harder time combating it.

Disclaimer: I pay for YT premium but also run a combo of extension and DNS based blockers. Premium is mostly so that I don’t have to care about ads on the many devices I use, though their change in stance is making me rethink the subscription

I took off adblocking on Youtube just to see if I could get along with continuing to use Youtube in a frictionless way.

The answer is no, because Youtube's current crop of ads is full of outright scams and conspiracy theory stuff. Content that would probably be massively de-emphasized by the youtube algorithm or even outright banned is apparently okay to show as long as you pay Google a few thousand dollars to run it as an ad.

So now I just use Invidious.

This is the real problem. I don't mind good ads at all. But youtube ads are terrible. Seriously the worst of the worst crap.

Same for me, I don't have adblock on my mobile yet and I evaluate that less than half of the ads I see on youtube are even legal in my country.

Conspiracy theories, fake products, casino type games, get quick rich schemes and fake medical products are common.

Then I hear PR ads on the radio on how Google supports small local businesses, when you are big enough, the reality doesn't matter anymore.

I had the same experience.

I will say this: at least I have not seen malvertising campagins slip through (that I have seen). That is the biggest and perennially relevant reason to have an adblocker installed.

Malware is the reason I continue to run an ad blocker.

The ad purveyors won't accept responsibility for the shit they shovel (and good luck attributing to which ad network something slipped through after the fact), so they don't need to run shit on my computer.

I have been bit my ad delivered malware before while at work. Not a pleasant experience, and of course everyone assumes that you _most_ have been doing something dodgy like watching porn.

Heh. You talk about unpleasant experiences at work. I had a colleague pull me into a side call, because his Chrome browser started randomly popping up porn sites.

Turns out - one of his extensions he had installed had gotten purchased by someone shady, and it started doing crazy shit. Once he removed the extension, it was fine again. But the extension was made by someone reputable, and well-reviewed in the chrome web store. Yes, the maker may have gotten hacked, but it's also apparently common for extension makers to not ask too many questions when someone shows up with a check for 10-20k.

I got several ads from a well known scammer, full of conspiracy bullshit about how school is a way for the "elites" to hide some grand truth from the masses. It promotes his "re education" portal, which is actually a get-rich-fast type of scam, à la Andrew Tate.

I reported the ad, twice, but YT claims it doesn’t violate any policies. I’m pretty sure it violates EU laws about disinformation, but no one is going to listen to me right ?

> from a well known scammer, full of conspiracy bullshit about how school is a way for the "elites" to hide some grand truth from the masses

not a nice thing to say about Peter Thiel! /s

Remember when people were voluntarily allowing Google ads through their ad blockers, because they were text-only, clearly marked as ads, mostly for legit products/businesses, and often had some relevance to the site you were looking at?

Those were the days.

Same experience. The ads weren't just things I didn't want to see, I found it viscerally disturbing that some of the scams I saw are getting pushed in front of kids and teens. Have the ads always been this way on youtube?

Online advertising is insidious because it isn't monitored or regulated to nearly the same extent as TV, radio and print ads.

Back in the mid-2000s, Google was rife with ads for:

- 'cheap RX meds from Canada',

- 'free iPod' (if you sign up w CC for 12 random services)

- 'mail order brides from [war torn country]'

- 'legal grow at home indica buds'

Those are just the ones I remember. I'm sure the modern ads aren't any better, I just don't see them thanks to Adblock.

I get much the same - I suspect because I perpetually adblock, cookie block, script block, etc everything they can determine better what I want, for a reason. As a base, I get the most scammy ads one can imagine, which you really do not want to send to an IT professional that knows the game already. It's just so bad, a total race to the bottom...

Please use sponsorblock in addition to whatever you like.

I'm getting a few of those, but mostly ads for appliances, lawn and garden tools, piano lessons, and guitar lessons.

The appliance ads make sense because I am actually considering getting a new washer and dryer and have been researching that, since my nearly 20 year old GE washer is showing some signs that it might be about to have problems.

The lawn and garden ads also make some sense, because I did do a fair bit of lawn work around the house over the summer, and did look into buying some of the tools I'm now seeing ads for. But I haven't looked at said tools in a couple months, so they don't make as much sense as the appliance ads.

I watch a fair number of non-performance music videos (e.g., music theory, guitar technique, and similar) so the piano and guitar less ads make sense.

The problem with all of them is that even the ones that actually have provided me useful information that might increase the chances I'll buy the advertised product if I end up buying a product in their category provide me all their useful information the first time I see the ad. The next dozen times I see the same ad is useless and annoying.

There was also an ad for something in a category I didn't know existed (Lomi [1]) that got me curious enough to go to their site. Doesn't look like it would be useful to me, but it is an interesting idea.

The oddest one was one I've gotten a single time, from Best Buy. But it wasn't advertising any particular Best Buy products. It was just an instructional video telling how to DIY mount a TV on a wall [2]. Best Buy does sell TV wall mounts, but I don't think they named the mount they used for an example in the video. It was just the "How to mount your TV" from their Geek Squad tech tips page and applies equally well to pretty much every wall mount available.

I've no idea why Best Buy decided to pay to promote that.

[1] https://lomi.com/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujwpCKBAs4

I think many content creators have recognized that it's important to expand their brand outside of youtube so they're not so beholden to youtube.

I wonder if this is opening cracks for competitors.

I know of one person doing their own thing except for Patreon. Are there many more?

Nebula and Floatplane both come to mind. Lots of creators on those two services.

This Week In Tech hosts their own content, in addition to youtube uploads and other services.

I don't see how this comment tracks with the events.

Content creators on Youtube are paid from ads and subscriptions. If they want to give their content away for free, they can turn off Youtube ads since they are the ones turning them on in the first place.

Also sponsor spots that cut out YouTube entirely

As an individual creator you can make that decision, but if YouTube as a whole annoys your viewer base to the point that they use YouTube less then you have a problem.

That's a stretch. Even if Google, an entirely metrics driven company, decided to destroy their metrics, there isn't any good alternatives to Youtube. At best you'll be going to TikTok, but most YouTube channels can't be sustained on TikTok's revenue model.

They don't have to destroy their own metrics as a whole to drive away your niche audience as an individual creator. I can certainly imagine scenarios that would increase Google's metrics, user base, and ad revenue while causing problems for some existing creators.

The push towards non-youtube channels like Nebula and Patreon signals that some creators are at least worried about their entire audience being delivered via Youtube's whim.

This is massive cope. These are second or third order effects that will likely impact a very small segment of the population, if they will impact any at all. This is not like when Youtube killed short form content a decade ago. Show me a Youtuber that has been affected by this. Ping me in a year too.

And no, going to these other sites is not a signal. Creators use these sites as additional revenue sources by posting early and exclusive content. They funnel their audience to them through other sites. No one discovers new content on these sites.

A cope for what?

I was just responding to the idea that

"I think many content creators have recognized that it's important to expand their brand outside of youtube so they're not so beholden to YouTube."

Do you disagree with that statement?

Maybe I misinterpreted. There is a lot of cope from freeloaders trying to justify their freeloading as good for everyone in this thread. :)

As for your question, I disagree. The examples you mentioned are not alternatives, they are small additions. The only exceptions I've seen are podcasts, but they've never been tied to YouTube.

I have not said that any of these expansions outside of Youtube are a replacement or alternative for Youtube, especially for content discovery. Nor am I necessarily supporting adblockers, except in sympathizing that Youtube's ad experience has continued to get more annoying. I personally solve this by paying for Premium.

My point was only that if you have a core audience of subscribers, who provide value via direct subscription or as audience for your sponsorships, you might be worried about Youtube making changes to their system that annoy those users or makes it harder for them to watch your content.

And Youtube could make changes that help Youtube's numbers (ie more ad impressions, more views overall, pushing short form video over long form) that can hurt an individual channel by driving away their niche audience or surfacing their videos to subscribers less often (Youtube already loves to do this one).

Extending outside of Youtube to let this core audience give you money and directly watch your videos (ie Nebula, Patreon, Discord communities) is a hedge against this. Being less beholden to Youtube for your weekly viewership and the relationship with your audience doesn't mean completely replacing Youtube with an alternative.

I feel like we're looping now, but here I go:

Niche channels suffering contains so many conditionals that it needs to be demonstrated before being considered a serious issue.

Most channels would die if they lost YouTube, so it's not a hedge.

But I'm not hypothesizing losing YouTube. I feel like you've imagined an argument that I haven't made."not so beholden to YouTube" does not mean leaving YouTube or replacing or killing it.

From an individual standpoint, you want to try to preserve your ability to access your audience and make money from them. Whether or not other channels live or die or flourish under future Youtube algorithm and monetization changes doesn't matter to you nearly as much.

For those ofnus less intimately familiar with the TikTok platform and their payouts and their revenue, can you explain why not? I thought they show (video) ads and use money to run the company and pay creators.

You can find quick comparisons of the payout per/view for TikTok and YouTube. The difference is huge. Of course videos get more views on TikTok, but it's not enough for most. Long form videos are simply more economical. Many channels would need a huge reimagining of their business model to survive a transition.

Youtube runs ads on content that isn't monetized, the creator just doesn't see any of that money.

The creator absolutley sees that money. It comes in the form of free hosting, bandwidth, and analytics platform.

Which is why many content creators expand outside of youtube, so their source of incoming isn't solely from youtube.

That's was my point, actually.

There's Nebula. https://nebula.tv/

Many of my favorite channels (mostly civil engineering, science, history) are there, and release there first before YouTube. Sadly the UI is not as good, and there are no automatic captions like YouTube. But it's cheap and it works...

And of course there's Patreon.

Patreon doesn't seem to do video very well (or at all anymore?)

Most Patreon accounts I've seen just link to unlisted Youtube videos.

The account I support that regularly posts videos uses Patreon's own video service still. It seems to work pretty good?

Maybe it's based on what the subscribers prefer?

It also seems like they don't allow all types of accounts to use it: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/6598555214477-...

There are a few other usage restrictions that make it worse than just hosting on Youtube.

Rather surprising that they don't offer sign up with Facebook/Google.

I know, i know, but that's pretty big speed bump in the onboarding process.

No one wants to be a competitor. People are so deluded on this topic that they cannot even think straight.

No one wants to watch ads.

No one wants to pay a subscription.

Those two things are factually true, and why youtube sucks, why it has no competitors, and why the future looks bad for it.

Vid.me ran an experiment a few years ago and made a serious push to upend youtube. They had great success and it really took off. But eventually they went bankrupt and closed shop. Why?

No one wants to watch ads.

No one wants to pay a subscription.

Get this through your skull everyone.

I agree it's a dead end if you're not Youtube-scale, but people do pay for subscriptions. Spotify and Netflix come to mind, but yes, they are both approaching the price point at which it no longer feels worthwhile to keep.

And guess what? No one needs Youtube. Content delivery will continue to exist if youtube stops existing.

then make it a public service, payed by the UN and its constituent states.

The biggest video site in the world, with the 3rd biggest cloud is admitting they can't make money with adblocking on. Most of the world is not even using adblockers, as they're on mobile apps where it's harder.

Why would anyone want to enter this market?

I think a more reasonable conclusion is that they can no longer continue growing their revenue with ad-block enabled, not that they aren't profitable.

Remember, companies are about maximizing profit, not merely making a reasonable profit.

If they want to maximize profit, they should be playing hardball on their Google Cloud contracts instead of shoving more ads into every video. They're obviously GCP's biggest user, and that would give them enormous leverage to cut a better deal.

>The biggest video site in the world, with the 3rd biggest cloud is admitting they can't make money with adblocking on.

When did they admit this? They've definitely been very profitable. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

That article only mentions Youtube's revenue, it doesn't say that it was profitable.

Uninstalls? Would’ve thought most people savvy to blocker extensions in the first place would know how to disable them for specific troublesome sites, but... (shrug emoji).

I think the suggestion is that users are uninstalling their current ad blocker in order to install another ad blocker that they hope can still block ads on YouTube, not that they're uninstalling the ad blockers entirely.

Ah, good point — although, given what I’m reading elsewhere about this cat-and-mouse game, they won’t be happy campers for long, if at all.

I wonder what % of users never click the extension's button once the entire time they have it, and if that figure has increased now that all the browsers want to wrangle them up into a folder by default. They might legitimately be unaware that any options besides 'install' and 'uninstall' exists.

that was a surprising to me as well. Every adblocker extension's UI make it clear that you can disable it for the site you're on.

The title is misleading:

> The available data suggests last month saw a record number of adblockers uninstalled—and also a record for new ad blocker installs as people sought alternatives that wouldn’t trigger YouTube’s dreaded popup.

A whole article about adblocking and no mention of gorhill's uBO? DNS level filtering? Come on Wired...

I don't think DNS filtering has worked on Youtube in a very long time. They serve ads from the same domains as the videos.

Fair point.

I avoid anything with Ads and will simply avoid YouTube, as I already have been avoiding it for a long time for simply not having useful content.

To suggest YouTube doesn't have "useful" content seems objectively false. I think it should be considered the 8th wonder of the world. Need to see how to install a car seat? Need to fix a burner on your stove? Need to learn Hindi? Need to hear a live version of a Tom Waits song he only played once? Need to learn more about Philippine-American War? Need to learn what the difference between effect and affect is? My wife's friend's husband has a channel where he literally only reviews air purifiers and has millions of views. You get the idea. YouTube has become an unrivaled global database of human knowledge. I fail to see how anyone can call that useless.

> I think it should be considered the 8th wonder of the world.

Second that. If YouTube videos disappeared, I think internet would lose half its worth.

I still hate their limited suggestions and discoverability, but the content is top notch. Many researchers publish YT videos for their papers, and don't publish on any other platform. So YT is the cutting edge of science as well.

There were video sites before YouTube, and Limewire before that. The internet wouldn't lose its worth at all, the content would be distributed elsewhere.

It's useless because there are thousands of idiots with a camera who record pointless clickbait videos to extract ad money. The signal-to-noise ratio is completely out of wack. There are are tons of 10+ minute videos about topics which say absolutely nothing. It's like college papers with a minimum page requirement where the student has to just fill the page with words which mean nothing. There very little actual value in most of the videos. IMO anyone who enjoys and watches youtube regularly uses it as a mind numbing medication to exit our terrible existence of life for a few hours.

You know you can train the feeds, right? Or are you one of those "but Google will sell my viewing habits to better represent my demographic" people?

There are thousands of channels that put out top-tier content regularly. I am subbed to over 100 channels and always have a plethora of new stuff to watch.

If your interests don't extend beyond stupid click-bait content, I don't find it surprising to think that youtube is only full of stupid clickbait content.

I shudder at the words "video essay" for this reason. Imagine the world's slowest PowerPoint with the worst voice over you've ever heard.

I’ve not used it much in the last few years since I think Google is the antichrist, but when I have gone on Youtube I’ve had trouble finding what I was looking for. In my recent experiences the relevant content has been drowned out by the loud, click-optimized spam where - if the information I’m looking for is present at all - it’s buried in a bunch of fluff

Youtube is my #1 site and I pay the monthly fee to be ad free. I hate ads but don't understand why people don't think Youtube is worth paying for.

Because they have backdoored their way to free access for the last 15 years.

Now the door is being closed and they are pissed.

I would gladly pay for Youtube, except for the fact that Google will still sell me out to advertisers. Ad companies like Google have destroyed the possibility of a consumer trusting a company. As far as they are concerned, our only purpose in life is to be persuaded to buy stuff based on the ads they show.

Youtube should be paying us for watching ads

Take a 1M view clip on youtube, say 4 ads, $0.15/view; Revenue 600k, Creator: 3k

That's a money fire hydrant only a monopoly can have. Advertisers are desperate to reach consumers, and right now they have to go through Youtube. What Youtube is actually selling is our attention without paying us our cut.

That's why we end up with this false dilemma between being force fed ads, or paying a hefty subscription. Tbh google don't want you to buy a subscription, they make more off the ads. No wonder we're all pissed.

The vintage Google thing about this is right in the middle of anti-trust hearings they start this fight with ad blockers/consumers - are we really that dumb?

The thing the gets me the most, maybe, about this situation is that there can't be that many of us using ad blockers, eh? As big and as profitable as Youtube is, do they really need to come after such a small segment? It seems so petty and venal.

Petty? Do you think someone at Google decided one day to spit in your face out of spite? Lol. Some product manager looked at the metrics and determined it would be worth the engineering effort to try out.

The average user has seen an enormous increase in the # of ads on YouTube in the past few years. Multiple, unskippable pre-roll ads before a 3 minute video. They’re downloading the blockers in enormous volumes nowadays.

My first thought was, "There is no way that's true. Most people would just toggle it off for YouTube. Most of them give you a big on/off button." Sure enough, the headline is a technically-true lie (emphasis mine):

> Previously unreported figures from ad blocking companies indicate that YouTube’s crackdown is working, with hundreds of thousands of people uninstalling ad blockers in October. The available data suggests last month saw a record number of adblockers uninstalled—and also a record for new ad blocker installs as people sought alternatives that wouldn’t trigger YouTube’s dreaded popup.

I've being waiting for this since the day1 I've used ad blocks! And glad this day is finally coming that Google will seriously try to crack down on ad blockers and hurt itself badly while doing it.

I never, repeat, never open links on my phone for youtube, as I'm immediately blasted with annoying ads. Using everything from noscript to ublock on my desktop, I started getting these warnings on youtube, and simply closed the window every time I was blasted with it or an ad. Way to go youtube, I'll go back to pretending you're not there.

I stopped buying cable tv in the 90's because commercials were disgusting, and simply found the internet then to replace it. I simply _do_not_want_ads_ period. If you force me, you will lose a customer.

I've been running youtube with:

- youtube revanced on my android

- sponsorblock + adnauseum on firefox

no ads, no sponsorship messages. so far works well. my daughter switched to this from chrome when chrome started to complain, it works for now.

so far no mobile webpage crackdown. install extension that sets as mobile page, with adblocker. no ads.

Sometimes I'm on another computer and foolishly try to use youtube. I'm not sure how people can use it without an ad-blocker, but I wish them the best of luck!

I wouldn't mind paying for Youtube if they promise not to track and sell my info. Ads I can tolerate, paying for them to track and profile me on the other hand is what I object to.

lol, nice try. I'll never uninstall ubo.

I'd honestly forfeit YouTube before I uninstall UBO.

Note: Dog that didn’t bark in that wired piece, any mention whatsoever of alternate video platforms to YouTube.

> and also a record for new ad blocker installs as people sought alternatives that wouldn’t trigger YouTube’s dreaded popup.

Good, the fight isn't over. We cannot let ads win. We cannot be forced to be manipulated into buying things we don't need for the good of capitalism. It is not our duty to be allowed to be indoctrinated for the good of Google's bottom line.

Ads are driving consumerism which is literally burning the planet. Fighting against ads is necessary for our survival as a species.

Revance and redpipe don't seem to have a problem (yet).

misread ignore this lol

The article here talking about record uninstallations of the ad-blockers not YouTube apps (and the crackdown doesn't affect them anyway).

Sure, maybe in general but it seems it was true with Twitter; it's just that the collapse has been slow. First they lost tons of advertisers, then some people to Mastodon and now it's valuation is halved and it's become embarrassing trash otherwise.

The article is about record uninstalls for Blockers, not for Youtube. If anything it claims the Tech company is "winning"

I'm also a bit confused by the article; I think the record uninstalls are users looking around for a blocker that works, or even trying different browsers, so I highly doubt the crackdown is working as well as it purports.

I agree, Facebook was dead recently, share price is now absolutely exploding.

I've never seen anyone talk about how we have this underclass of internet user that subsidizes the services of everyone more tech-savvy because they don't use ad-blockers.

I'm a big proponent of these crackdowns and hope we see a renormalization of the subscription model.

Ads mostly make money for Google not the channel owners, there is a reason most creators look to other services (sponcers, patron, etc)

That's not true. The revenue share has been stable at 55% to the creators / 45% to YouTube for more than a decade.

Youtube takes half their revenue?! That's crazy. Man, I thought the app store 30% was bad.

That's for ads.

After a quick googling, Youtube takes 30% of direct memberships. And apparently Twitch takes 50% of the membership fee, reduced to 40% for its bigger channels.

It looks like Patreon will take 12% of direct memberships at the tier that lets you upload video, but Patreon is shit for discovery, especially video discovery, so it's not necessarily pure upside.

Either way, people like to parlay the fact that Youtube has a revenue share into some sort of moral justification for giving the content creators $0 on that platform.

Someone has to pay for bandwidth,storage, compute etc.

What cracks me up is that this is the obvious perspective, but not the one the poster you responded to ever considered.

This is trivially untrue. Youtube content creators are the ones who turn on ads and receive the majority revenue share from ads. They also make money from Youtube Premium subscribers, and users can even directly subscribe to channels on Youtube for a monthly fee just like on Patreon.

All of those tools are already there on Youtube, so I'm not convinced the crackdown is changing the dynamic for content creators nor for the users who make them money.

As someone who never posted a video, I want to ask if I upload a video without turning on the ads, does this mean that people who are watching this video will not see any ads?

I believe you need to have a certain amount of subscribers before you have the option to turn them off.

It's always funny watching people try to justify why their freeloading is actually moral and/or beneficial for others. And I don't particularly care for subscriptions, but youtube is actually a really good deal.

How much do you pay to use this site Freeloader?

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