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Comment by Telaneo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the end goal is for Youtube. I doubt they have one, and they're just doing this on instinct/reflex. Not to mention they probably wouldn't have seen a need to to this as much if they didn't go down the path of shoving more and more ads down people's throats.

If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.

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Long term, a pipeline is needed to rip from YouTube and then torrent seed with magnet links per video ID (which your browser could then lookup and expose with an extension when surfing YouTube).

perfect use case for webtorrents

The end goal is probably some low level employee who is trying to justify their job or push for a promotion. The gain for them is a lot smaller than the negative for everyone else - but it is their own gain.

The goal is to increase revenue, and one way to do that is to make the experience worse for people blocking ads. Some, like you, will keep finding new ways to bypass them. Others will give up and allow the ads, or pay for ad-free. They don’t need to stop all the ad-blocking users, just more and more each time. And if you’re a die-hard who will never allow ads, they probably don’t care what you do at all. Why should they? It’s not personal - they just want to keep increasing revenue, and it’s not coming from you no matter what, so they don’t care what your experience is like.

I have a hard time imagining a world which Youtube ceases to work in a browser with uBlock Origin. Instead we're in a world where Youtube screws us around for a bit, and then uBlock does an update and everything goes back to 'normal'. This isn't productive for either side. It's just busywork.

Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.

increasing friction for ad blockers will increase ad views will increase revenue.

It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult.

Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself

But thats even less private. If you log in, they know exactly who you are.

They likely have nearly as good an idea who you are based on what you watch from which IP address(es).

This is the reflex/instinct approach though. Sure, they increase friction for people with adblock, and then 5 minutes later, uBlock Origin does an update to undo Youtube's friction, and we're back to square one. No gain for anyone, no thought of what happens long term, just busywork.

I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.

It is very likely that you are a customer that youtube would rather not have to deal with, so the feelings would be mutual

> Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself

How many ads does YouTube have to serve in order to net $15 from the advertisers?

How much would they gross in this circumstance (vs. what they pay out to content creators)?

If Youtube's services (streaming/storage) are not paid for, they can't pay content creators.

When people do not pay for services directly with a credit card, they pay for it indirectly with ads and data collection. The internet would be a better place if companies didn't have to worry so much about monetizing indirectly. Plus, the only companies that can give out free services often have monopolistic intent.

This whole debate embodies why the internet has become what it has.

I agree with all of that. But I'm not debating; I'm trying to understand what the underlying numbers are.

ive said this before, when your [x] depends on people watching videos, you have to let people actually watch videos. its a corner youtube painted itsself into long ago, and means only so many ads can be shown, and videos must be of a minimum quality otherwise or the platform will implode.

I really wonder how much they actually care about ad blockers.

My understanding is that most people actually watch youtube on smart TVs and then smart phones. It may very well make sense for them to leave ad blockers alone and to keep youtube dominant while they make money off consumers like that which can't run ad blockers (or at least make it much harder to.)

The kinds of people who use ad blockers are also the kinds of people who start new things and convince the larger consumer oriented people to follow them. The reason YouTube is dominant is because it's still usable for that set of people.

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