As YouTube declares war on ad blockers, Google sponsors ad blocking conference
404media.co
404media.co
Seems like anyone who wants their video to get maximum exposure would want to eliminate ads for anyone who's willing to watch it and should be able to buy out the ads on their end.
The actual income is either from sponsorship, Patreon, merch, or just plain "advertising yourself" (seemingly the case of many photo/videography channels).
It's not too much of a stretch to say YouTube ads are detrimental to any of these revenues.
You're posting from within YouTube and engagement largely depends on getting YouTube to show it to the largest possible demographic, which in turn must respond by seeing and then viewing the video. It's a symbiotic thing: it has to start with YouTube algorithmically deciding your video is going to be popular and that they stand to benefit from it being popular, and then the audience justifying this assumption.
This is why you can get YouTube hammering you with particular video suggestions: it's decided that video is going to be popular and insists on you giving it a watch. It'll try for a while even if you don't bite.
The FIRST step here is YouTube deciding your video is going to be popular in such a way that it will benefit them. They've recently taken steps to remove people's ability to even specify that they don't want to run certain kinds of ads: my assumption has been that this pressure was already in place, and that they favored video makers who went along with what YouTube wanted, namely default ad pressure as they define it, mid-rolls and so on.
I would say that outside of external regulatory pressures, YouTube will punish video makers who don't serve YouTube's ad purposes to the fullest extent. I observe this myself, and have got about 10k subscribers by now in spite of very non-clickbaity, obscure content with low-pressure thumbnails and editing.
That's my approach: I will use ad blockers personally, and expect my audience to be more predisposed to using ad blockers, while also turning over my video output to the preferences of YouTube with the understanding that if I don't comply, YouTube will punish me for it.
It's pretty trivial to algorithmically scan a thumbnail to see if it says 'AMAZING' in big letters, or has striking value and hue contrasts, and then hype such videos more than the others on the grounds that they're better able to get clicks and thus ads. It's still fairly trivial to scan the video and see whether it's cutting from shot to shot more than once a second, and then hype such videos more than the others on the grounds that zoomers want it that way.
Whether you click the 'enable mid-roll ads' checkbox is the MOST trivial signal you can send YouTube about whether you're serving their interests. It's direct interaction with their algorithm, intended to withhold something from which they make money. The idea that they don't respond to this signal is kind of ridiculous.
So… you've got it backwards. The audience might like not getting badgered with ads, but if you're a YouTuber you don't serve your audience, you're working for YouTube or they'll literally take your audience away from you. You serve them first and they are your boss.
What I would like to know is who uses an ad blocker and not uBlock, and why? What's the point of using an inferior product if the best one is free and ubiquitous?
1. Your friends are imaginary (pretty close: right in your head)
2. Your enemies are your own split personalities (even closer)
Dissociative Identity Disorder results in exactly this situation (source: I have it)
> 2. Your enemies are your own split personalities (even closer)
... touchè
(I don‘t have any other video subscriptions)
It's ok it's a 1-month contract, not a lifetime one.
In terms of it being not worth it I agree, but if two people have a music subscription to Spotify for example, you can replace it with YouTube premium for family which includes Youtube music and the ad removal is essentially free.
If they provided a way to move subscriptions, viewing history, playlists, etc. to a vanilla account, I'd do that. Without that, I've invested too much time in curating things to start over. Especially without knowing what steps in user experience degradation lie ahead.
YouTube Premium is the subscription I get the most value from, even if I could do without the forced YouTube Music subscription, but my wife likes the music streaming.
If there were a platform where the creators paid a share of their revenue to the platform operators, not the other way around, I'd pay. This model where the platform operator pays a share of ad revenue to the creators will always allow the platform to take actions I disagree with, since all the power is with them.
Given that the platform operator is _Google_, it's a non-starter for me. They're already performing actions against creators — and other content based actions — I disapprove of.
It's probably just my personal preference, but what I'm looking for is long form. Lectures, classes, essays, analysis... This sort of stuff.
And it seems that from my viewpoint we're now in some sort of race to the bottom. There seems to be more and more of a push towards short Tiktok style stuff. And I hate that with passion.
My current solution is probably subscribing to Nebula, not YouTube Premium.
they also need to help remove blocking popups like youtubes one which works and act exactly like an ad.
I'm sure this could bring more usage to these browsers. I've moved to vivaldi and never looked back
Standard Oil YouTube is where you will get your videos.
I have been using Piped to watch a few programming related videos, though.
https://github.com/yattee/yattee
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
Guide https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_u...
Tangentially, I would sometimes buy Switch games from Nintendo's online Hong Kong store.
This cost slightly less (like, USD$57 instead of $60) than buying them from the US store. But, if you connect your Switch through a VPN to Hong Kong, your Hong-Kong-purchased game will unlock according to the local time in Hong Kong, getting you almost a full extra day compared to the US release date. (I actually used a VPN to Singapore; that's what's available on Digital Ocean. Still works.)
What I read was a fascinating story about how conflicted the whole space is, and how Google is sponsoring developers to work on ad-blocking technology, and about how Google concedes that advertisement is problematic from many sides, privacy, distraction, inappropriate context....
Personally I loathe and detest advertisements, and the entire advertising industry because "consumerism" is a derelict philosophy.
But from a simply practical stance, I use video clips in education, so yt-dlp ensures I have a reliable offline copy for lectures. Having ads show up in a lesson or conference would be wholly inappropriate.
On the other hand I've read comments from people here who say they love ads. They say they find them useful, and even that targeted ads bring value to their lives.
If those people are being sincere (and why would they not be?), then there's obviously a market for advertising. And a need for ad-free technology too. I'm all for diversity. It's nice that different people have different tastes and needs.
So if YouTube were sincere, and technically capable, we'd simply have two URLs
https://noads.youtube.com/ and https://ads.youtube.com/
People could choose what they want. Ads or no ads.
Instead of that we get "war", which is always a bonfire of wealth, and psychologically deleterious to all involved.
So some thoughts come to mind;
Maybe The people who say they "like ads" aren't sincere. They are either paid mouthpieces for the advertising industry, or they suffer from "identification" (aka fanboyism) which leads them to make dishonest comments.
Or perhaps YouTube haven't realised how stupid they are being spending millions on fighting ad-blockers when instead they could just offer an ad-free channel to those that want it.
Or even more silly; nobody has realised that the optimal solution (economically and politically) is just giving people what they want in the first place, rather than turning it into a childish battle of wills.
They do. The noads one is available with a subscription.
You can _pay_ not to be inconvenienced and harmed. Whereas they could simply be less greedy and make money from the folks for whom advertisements are a harmless convenience.
That's precisely what makes YouTube (and therefore Google) an unethical company.
I mean, you made the case for me! I was avoiding saying that Google are wicked and evil by presenting a rational win-win - along with the possibility that they might have missed the rational solution :)
But your observation that they _exploit_ the discomfort of others (rather than providing a valued product) , when there is no need to, says everything that needs to be said.
TFA presents Google as being "conflicted" by a "complex landscape". So much so that they "sponsor" ad-blocking researchers. And we are supposed to be sympathetic and say; "geee yah, ain't business hard"
The reality is that they're just greedy and totally full of shit.
But just asking for money or ads is pretty common in business. And basically no one likes either. Just because people don't want to part with their cash doesn't make it unethical to demand it in exchange for goods or services, does it? Or to demand money for a higher-value product.
I figure a lot of this seemingly contradictory behavior is out there for plausible deniability when they go before the judge. "No, see we weren't trying to force people into a certain product by leveraging our majority market position. We're trying to give them options!"
But their number one goal is to make money, so, yes, they are greedy in that regard.
> Just because people don't want to part with their cash doesn't make it unethical to demand it in exchange for goods or services, does it?
I don't think I said or even implied that. There are many ways to provide value and run a good business. And "cash"! I'm probably one of the biggest advocates of that around here :)
> I figure a lot of this seemingly contradictory behaviour is out there for plausible deniability when they go before the judge. "No, see we weren't trying to force people into a certain product by leveraging our majority market position. We're trying to give them options!"
That, very much. So, in Cantor's style, let's add dishonesty to the infinite set of all ways Google are unethical :)
I fully agree. The Bill Hicks position on advertising and marketing always seemed a little charitable to me.
And yet there is space, indeed a great necessity, for companies like the one Google used to be. Independent commercial actors are an absolutely vital element of our information ecosystem. Otherwise, who wants to rely on governments and regulators to oversee search and manage "truth" ?
Here, we all know that the story of Google is a story of "The Fall" (Not Mark E Smith's band). And we always talk of that corruption as if it were "inevitable", a fact of human nature no less. But I don't think so, and remain optimistic that "How we stop the enshitification of everything?" remains a vital question.
Google is the lesson.
Google became an ad company. They fucked up. They dropped the ball. They turned their back on a worthy and moral mission. They turned their back on truth. In the end nothing achieved at Google by all those smart hard working people will be remembered as anything but a cheap manipulation. Just another crappy advertiser who took the immense potential of "The Information Age", held it in their hands, and then utterly betrayed it.
What is it worth to wholly control the algorithm by which the whole world is shown its media, and have it summed up as 'the algorithm' and neither publicized nor questioned? How much would you pay to be in that situation? How much could you ask of third parties if you are the choke-point by which everyone gets their limited picture on the world: limited by specifically you, and you get away with it?
Monopoly in this kind of space is WAY more valuable than getting paid by users. You literally control the world on a statistical basis, which is how that is done in the first place. It's power arguably beyond states and governments, in a black box that just goes on operating, without much argument.
That's better than revenue, if you can keep it up and running, which Google has no trouble doing. There's a reason they do.
I think Google is tightening up the business to keep the party going.
That would be an example of trading on the true power of monopoly, algorithm and YouTube, and then having it turn and bite you. If you're selling influence to bad actors for exorbitant sums, you'd better win, by which I mean THEY had better win. Otherwise you're left holding the bag.
If it's that, I'm happy to have them pivot. Because that would be a pretty apocalyptic scenario, even as a nebulous strategy that was never implemented. If it WAS ever implemented, I'm betting it backfired and they're desperate to fall back on more seemingly normal behavior.
Somebody on the panel asked if it was acceptable to get up and go to the bathroom during an ad, and the TV executive was forced to answer that it was.
I do not feel any moral obligations to such companies.
The CFAA is written broadly enough that adblockers could already be considered illegal under it.
A sure fire way to guarantee this access, is to sponsor said conference.
The code has been cracked. We know that by the existence of utilities like Invidious and youtube-dl yet people still behave as if we are somehow helpless in the face of Big Tech. You guys should be offering solutions but you seem content to just bellyache about it. I am sorry to see that.