YouTube quietly made some of its web embeds worse, including ours
theverge.com
theverge.com
I'm not sure if this is something each site can control using the embed code, but I noticed more and more that embedded videos will no longer allow you to jump youtube.com.
The more people try it, the closer we are to the critical mass of realization that their ads are just bs, and there's no going back. They could stop bs-ing people a while ago and live forever, but they chose death by their own hands - the more annoying they are, the more "product" they lose to ad blocking, the less money they generate, the less they can do about it. They are already choking hard, it's apparent from convulsions like subj, mv3, anti-block attempts, etc.
But their recommendation algorithm is so terrible that I'm wondering about stopping using by myself. Not worth it.
Any reason that they couldn't add a basic text link, below the video, with "Open In YouTube" as the text?
Unless YouTube is deliberately not allowing high traffic publishing "partners" (?) like the Verge and Vox to get the benefit of their preferred advertising?!
If a site has preferred ads they'd like to show anyway, maybe it's time for them to pay for hosting the video elsewhere.
Am I understanding this correctly? Because it sounds like the Verge is complaining about a change that should net them marginally more(?) ad $ (and is to YouTube's disadvantage) because a few readers complained, and they're just trying to blame YouTube instead.
I'm confused.
It's YouTube's choice to do whatever they like with their own product, but the reason what they've chosen to do is problematic is:
1. It's yet another bait'n'switch
2. It is shady as fuck to not only make no announcement about the change, but make it difficult to even figure out what's happened
In short; yes it's Google's prerogative to be a bag of dicks, but let's not pretend that's not exactly what they are (continuing to be)
Source for this claim? The article doesn't make this accusation, and considering this is a B2B product that requires manual approval to use, I wouldn't be surprised if they sent out this as email rather than something to their blog. Searching for "YouTube Player for Publishers", it looks like their last mention of that product was in 2018, and it was only a passing mention.
[1] >(I didn’t even really know about it until this links kerfuffle — if you listen to The Vergecast this week, you know our newsroom is firewalled from the business side of our company.)
> Somewhat straightforwardly, YouTube has chosen to degrade the user experience of the embedded player publishers like Vox Media use, and the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player *that pays us less and YouTube more*
YouTube made the B2B product worse, and in order to get that functionality back (for now), the Verge would have to take a pay cut
No, they didn't. They baited the large majority with convenience and promises of free services, who got into the trap happily.
Those of us who were warning about the importance of not giving up our self-sovereignty are free. All it requires is just a little bit of effort to self-host things.
Stop being lazy and crying for regulation, when the people themselves can take action.
Currently using a $200 laptop with linux, browsing with Firefox, watch any videos through redirect and invideous, have a host file block and using Mullvad. My phone is a $120 android with no google account getting apps though software using f-droid and auroa. I back up nothing to the cloud. I use signal for all messaging and I pay for a private and green email service.
Please don't assume what I am doing and what I am warning about. When I say "Us" I include myself because I am part of the community. When others are trapped I am also trapped because other use these services and I have to communicate through them.
I am trapped because I have to constantly use effort to get out of these traps. Asking people to "self host" when they can barely use an iPhone is just ridiculous.
It's not people that I am asking to self-host. It's the companies.
Instead of the Verge writing an article complaining about Youtube, it would be infinitely more productive if they got together with other publishers and put up one video instance platform of their own. Hell, they could even get to write more than one article about it after that.
"..why on earth wouldn’t YouTube want people to click over to its app?
The short answer is money. Somewhat straightforwardly, YouTube has chosen to degrade the user experience of the embedded player publishers like Vox Media use, and the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player that pays us less and YouTube more."
But I definitely would expect sites embedding youtube videos to show ads to users who don't pay for an ad-free youtube tier.
How is my user experience "degraded" by not having a link back to youtube and/or missing the branding? Why would I ever want to go to youtube to view the video when I can already view the video on the first party publisher's site? Does the lack of a youtube link mean every site self-hosts their own video is similarly "degraded"? Are you really sure that if the status quo was reversed, that people won't be complaining that youtube adding their branding was some sort of "greedy" money grab or whatever?
and simple refresh doesn't help - I have to ctrl+f5 to fix it
You clicked the title and went to YouTube.
What's the actual problem here: that Verge doesn't like entitled ppl complaining to them about lack of links. Verge is trying to be one of those very publishers going independent etc, so support them, expect to 'stay on site', can't have it both ways. (Unless Verge does the extra work for the users and adds a quick link under every vid)