YouTube cracking down even harder to punish user for skipping ads | Hacker News Reader

YouTube cracking down even harder to punish user for skipping ads

9to5google.com

43 pointsdbajaj65 comments

SmarTube works amazingly well. I expect them to circumvent those limitations as usual.

I see it as a morale duty to not watch ads and also not pay an ethically dubious company like Google.

They are free to try to stop me but I'm also free to not watch their brainwashing ads.

FreeTube for desktops. Despite making what I'd call some dodgy UI decisions, it's still a much more friendly experience than watching YT on the web or, heaven forbid, mobile. Removes interstitial ads, and has SponsorBlock built in as well.

Why not just stop using YouTube?

I would love to do that but unfortunately Network effect means that a lot of creators don't upload their video anywhere else. It is unfortunately becoming the default for everything.

I paid for Vimeo and other services in the past. But I will not pay for Youtube/Google

So you want their free hosting, but don't want to pay for it either directly, or indirectly?

Yes.

For me, it's not the concept of paying. I'd gladly pay someone to host YouTube. I just don't think paying Google is a good thing.

Who asked for Google to be the custodian of our culture? I don’t owe them rent just because they were so presumptuous to put themselves into that position.

There used to be a thriving variety of video hosting sites.

That's exactly how I feel as well. I don't want them to be the default but here we are.

And I'm definitely not going to pay which would encourage/send the signal that this is what we want.

Yes. I'm fine with them dying and a better company taking over that I would then support.

YouTube spent about ten years convincing their users that videos will be offered with only unobtrusive banner ads or short, pre-video ads. Then once the network effects were safely locked in, they changed it to a protection racket where multiple loud, frequently offensive ads (including for scams!) will interrupt a one-minute video and new ads are triggered by so much as rewinding, but you can pay to not see them.

I'd much rather support a different platform, myself.

If they weren't already stealing my data, I'd gladly pay them for ad-free. My data is worth far more to me and goog won't even offer me an option to not steal it because it is worth far more to them as well.

Or just pay for premium (it’s worth it)

That’s the 21st century equivalent of becoming an ascetic monk.

That’s like asking a large segment of the population to stop using the Internet altogether. YouTube is basically a utility now, you can’t avoid it in many cases.

Youtube ads are bad and obnoxious (and at times creepy). Nowhere near as bad as Facebook ads though.

FB ads these days are actually serving up malware.

When the big tech companies can get their ad shit together, I will stop blocking ads.

Yep, a recent FB ad for clothing I tried to buy was a fake scam company. I had to cancel my card. Youtube ads sometimes have wierd 30m cult-like ads.

I just pay because I already collude with hundreds, possibly thousands of ethically dubious companies every day.

I'd rather pay google with my money than my data or eyeballs anyway. (Not that paying for YouTube actually helps much with this angle... but at least it kinda sorta looks like the transaction I want. Money for services.)

> I'd rather pay google with my money than my data or eyeballs anyway.

If you pay them money, they don’t stop collecting your data and eyeballs, so you’re paying purely for the user experience with the site.

Paying for YT Premium encourages them to continue what they are doing.

I got so used to Brave skipping any type of ads on YouTube that one day I was mindlessly scrolling YouTube shorts until I saw a video which was clearly an ad, despite any clear indication. My immediate reaction was to close down the tab.

Maybe the ad blocker will figure this out in the next update, but until then all Google did was kick out my video scrolling habit.

Was the headline changed? Because it now reads "YouTube cracking down on third-party apps that block ads".

That aside, "punish" is an odd choice of word. Users aren't "punished"—no fines, no accounts locked, etc. They're simply prevented from viewing the videos. Annoying? Yes. But given a premium, ad-free version exists, it's hard to blame Google.

Might be A/B testing on the title ?

My guess is the person who submitted it chose a more sensational title to get upvotes.

Hi! Sorry, I didn't want to just post a link without doing any value-add so I wrote down the title as the summary of what I got from it.

That's specifically against the HN Guidelines, which say: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you want to say something more about the article, you can post a comment after you've submitted the article.

Wow, downvoted for honesty. Good to know that being a bad actor is more rewarding. Nevertheless, I appreciate the link to faq.

The Guidelines also say: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." (For the record, I wasn't the one who downvoted you.)

Other posts I read said that playing could proceed after a long synthetic delay, which can be considered a small form of punishment.

The window on being able to archive your favorite channels with yt-dlp is definitely closing fast.

I'm subscribed to the Premium Family plan to get rid of the ads and for the music service, which I think at the current price is a great deal. I just wish they would add more options to the premium plan, like:

- add proper filters (e.g. for sponsored content, low effort content creators, any content about spending/winning money, other obvious nonsense which exists just to increase views, etc. etc.)

- detect and filter generated and other low effort crap content

- add proper parental controls (it's a family plan, after all and YouTube Kids does not count, it sucks)

- disable Shorts (if there's one thing that's going to make me cancel my subscription it's the cancer that is Shorts)

> - detect and filter generated and other low effort crap content

> - disable Shorts

Absolutely. YouTube Premium has been one of my most used streaming service and the one where I've gotten the most value, but no more. I'm not sure if they changed their recommendation algorithm but it insists on pushing Shorts, auto-generated garbage, it doesn't react to any type of input and I'm afraid that the content it pushes is starting to affect my mental well-being.

I've been avoiding YouTube for a few days now and I now considering just cancelling, the ads will keep me away in the future, so in that sense it's nice that they help me not to return.

They are only targeting apps that use the API to skip the Ads. Use htlm-parsing 3rd party client such as NewPipe instead.

Oh, I was worried that NewPipe would break! It's a great app. Currently I use Tubular, though, which is a fork of NewPipe with SponsorBlock and Return dislike embedded in.

I definitely understand why YouTube have this policy

I wonder if advertisers feel the same way. If I was buying ads on YouTube, my least favorite audience would be the people who go out of their way to not see them.

Versus what, tv where the medium demand the highest cost per eyeball and every single person is a captive audience (unless you DVR)? Still smells like a good deal for advertisers unless the idea have changed significantly in the years since I cared to know anything about the ad markets.

Its like they forget people go to the fridge or bathroom or pull up the phone when there is a commercial. No one watches the shamwow slot with bated breath unless they have a mental illness.

Advertisers have zero self awareness how stupid their copy is. Ever see the latest reddit ads? “TIL the acura rdx is best in class edmons power train muh lease rates” yeah, its not pretty but its obvious the people defining this ad spend are just throwing shit at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

I think advertisers haven't adapted well to the youtube market at all. They're still operating under the TV model where ad breaks are an expected part of the tv viewing experience and don't understand that on youtube they are intrusive as hell . This also couples negatively with advertisers viewing youtube apparently not putting any limits on ad length as an opportunity to deliver a sermon. I think most people would be annoyed but not totally put off by a couple 15 seconds ads but the issue is that users just have no idea if they'll get a 15 second ad or a 15 minute ad so they skip everything out of extreme frustration with the entire experience.

I don't know about that. Ads seem to mostly work on inundation, not cultivating positivity.

Premium seems like it would be well worth it but YouTube doesn't have a right to tell me what code I can run client side on my machine

I'm kind of curious to see where this cat and mouse game ends up. I'm definitely never watching ads again personally and all my mission critical stuff is moved off gmail (I basically have one google account that is just used for google play on one ancient backup phone at this point) so if they take it as far as banning my account I can create an infinite number of additional accounts as needed or go without an account (the stuff I care about is subscribed via rss in a third party application I self host). it's just going to push me to not login and then eventually to not use youtube and go without.

I wonder what happens to everyone else the first time they get their account deleted? Do they kowtow to this bs or do they start down the path off their crappy platform for the mission critical stuff so they don't have to care anymore?

But frankly, youtube has become unusable without some kind of ad blocker. I can't use ad blockers on my work laptop (security policy) and on my iphone and OH MY GOD i want to nuke the google plex in california every single day.

I don't use VPNs. I used to use a vpn for work, but I haven't been on the company vpn for months.

* I get multiple advertises in a single batch.

* Sometimes I get the same advertising over and over again, particularly in long videos.

* I get advertising for stuff i clearly won't buy (like bus-based tourist travel service in Ireland[1] where have no interest or plan visiting as a tourist)

* I get advertising for products i CAN'T buy (some kind of chocolate brand they don't sell in Italy where I live -- Cadbury i think?)

* Aldi advertising... In German, about German stores. I recognize the Aldi logo, I don't speak German.

* I get advertising in languages (both audio and text) i don't speak (already mentioned German, but lately Spanish as well).

* God forbid I open a video from a link that points at some second in the middle of the video... Some moron Product Owner has decided i MUST catch up with all the advertising i would have watched otherwise before i can watch anything past the custom starting point. Yesterday I had to watch eight pieces of advertising before i could start watching a video.

* God forbid i skip something like a third of a video... i have to catch up with advertising first.

* I'm getting A LOT MORE advertising, A LOT MORE OFTEN.

It's unbearable. I hate youtube/google so much, with passion. It hurts me so much because I used to keep them in such high regard when both me and they (as a company) were younger.

They're effectively bullying me into getting youtube premium.

[1] Hey Paddy Wagon Tours, Google has been scamming you out of advertising money for months i think - Same happens for Cadbury I guess.

As before, will continue to keep up with the workarounds. I'd be far more open to paying up if Google hadn't burned up all their good will by being awful to content creators. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, they want your data, they want to bully and steal from creators without offering proper support, and despite all that they still want you to pay them.

give it a week, there will be a workaround. unless they auth every user they can't stop it.

Even if they auth every user, what's stopping me from making my own API key and feeding it to my favorite app?

Seems perfectly reasonable. Y'all think this shit is cheap and easy to build and maintain? Just buy YT Premium, jeez.

If it made them no money it wouldn’t be worth billions

buy YT Premium and then yt-dlp all the videos you want

Stop feeding me malware through ads, and I will unblock, and watch a few.

Stop censoring lawful creators, and I will buy premium.

And you don't have to simp for Google publicly, but ya are.

you would be amazed at what bigtech cogs are ready to do once their paychecks depend on Ads.

If YouTube wants me to watch their ads or pay for premium they need to get rid of sponsored content where 20% of video is just about the sponsor.

Yes, this bothers me as well. I pay for YouTube premium but that does not skip the "native" ads that YouTube considers part of the content. Sometimes, it legitimately is something interesting as product like when LTT launched their screwdrivers (I decided they were too much for me, but were worth a look), but to hear about Better Help, Hello Fresh, Nord VPN, or Raid Shadow Legends again... it pisses me off.

YT isn't adding those sections, the creator is. Maybe instead of blaming YouTube, ask your favourite YouTuber to not add the sponsorship section? And when they reply saying they need them to pay their bills, send them your reply of what business model they should instead adopt ?

How come YouTube is advertising to me but not giving back enough to the creator such that that creator then has to take sponsors to pay the bills? If YouTube's ad tech were good and the deals fair, the sponsors would just advertise on YouTube and the creators would get paid too. the fact this isn't happening means the process is failing, and it's certainly not my job nor my problem to fix it. Until they figure that shit out, I'm going to keep blocking both.

It is a YouTube problem. They can suspend and remove creators who have ads in their videos. They just don't care and want people to pay for premium.

SponsorBlock skips those. The downside is the video sometimes needs to be a couple of hours old before someone gets around to adding the skip sections.

how much longer do you think google is going to allow that?

A couple of years I imagine.

Google doesn't embed or control those adverts and doesn't benefit directly from them, and they might not want to anger the minority of their user base with this addon any more than they already are by forcing yet more unskippable ads on them.

If the seek bar was disabled while a "this video is sponsored by" segment started playing, I would just stop using YouTube immediately.

Of course hosting YouTube isn't cheap, but giving money to google is unethical. If a less dangerous company owned YouTube it'd be a different story.

I recommend Nebula for any channels which are on there; they make much more money that way. I recommend NewPipe for channels that aren't on Nebula; let YouTube die if it needs to be so user-hostile to survive. (Yes, I know it's a lot easier for me to say when I haven't staked my livelihood on YT and I wouldn't be the one being sacrificed if YT were to actually die. I don't really have an answer to that except that I'm supporting alternatives where I can.)

... Or a lifetime Nebula membership, if you want to support a company that deserves it.

I think it's expected. Even if YouTube have some large scale advantages, it cannot be cheap to run their infrastructure.

As a YouTube Premium subscriber, where I think the argument breaks down is how absolutely garbage their recommendation algorithm has become. While I don't agree with the tactic, I can see why YouTube would push content that keeps the users engaged/pacified and don't see why exactly they would use the same shitty algorithm on people who pay to not see ads. A great up-sell could be better control of the recommendations, perhaps set a "target profile" for yourself.

For the free-tier I still think YouTube dialed the monetization knob up way to fare. There are currently way to many ads and the quality of those ads is rather low and their relevance is questionable. I don't blame YouTube for attempting to crack down on ad-blockers, but they need also need make ads more tolerable. The current allowed ads, their runtime and placement basically makes the actual videos impossible to watch.

YouTubes current quest for ever growing revenue has resulted in an insane manipulation of its users, pushing ever more brain numbing content and its going to cost them users if they also crack down on ad blocking to hard, while not increasing the incentive to pay for Premium. It's a vicious spiral of pushing ads so hard that more and more people tries to avoid them.

Then they can use the same content filters they demonetize channels for to filter out the gross, deceptive, and outright scam ads. But I haven’t seen any initiative for that to happen on googles end.

Who decided that they became the de-facto default for video hosting? They have terrible policies (censorship) and nobody should trust Google.

Sorry, no, paying for this "service" would be the same as paying the mafia for their protection service.

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