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Comment by kamikazeturtles | Hacker News Reader

Most Youtube viewers watch on mobile or smart TVs, so adblockers aren't an issue there.

I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching. I doubt their crackdown on adblock users would affect view counts that much, but I'm just speaking from anecdotal evidence and a few Google searches

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> I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching.

This is not a safe assumption. Personally, I've stopped using YouTube entirely for entertainment; the level of annoyance dealing with it vs the value I get out of it is just not worth it any more. I'm doing other things with my time now instead of watching YouTube. Some of that is watching video on other platforms, and some of that is spending time on other hobbies instead.

Yeah, UBO and Sponsor Block are still working for me but if they stop I’ll be gone. I haven’t browsed Reddit since I switched to iOS and lost access to RedReader.

I mostly watch on desktop. Their current anti-adblock strategy does get past what I am using - but I have a different clever workaround.

When the ad starts, just refresh the page. It will act as though it's already played the ads, even if it is an unskippable ad.

This reminds of something that has been bugging me on mobile.

I click a video by accident. It begins to play the ad before the video. I have to watch the add before I can go back to looking for what I wanted to watch. eugh

> I'd assume most adblock users on web would disable it to continue watching.

Not sure if I'm typical (probably not!) but I never disable the ad blocker; if a video or site doesn't work with an ad blocker, I just move on.

> Most Youtube viewers watch on mobile or smart TVs, so adblockers aren't an issue there.

I continue to find it amazing just How Big the impact of "advertising" is in the brain of a median HN commenter vs. the attention paid (almost none) to it by citizens at large.

Like, that Liberty Mutual Duck is just weird to most folks, but to us it's somehow the greatest assault on our freedom imaginable?

duck?

It was a riff on the AFLAC duck from a few decades back, a similarly hated campaign that played everywhere and that we all survived just fine.

Maybe the humor was bad. But the point stands: advertising has been with us since the dawn of "media" and no one cares outside our oddball bubble. People sat through ads on their sitcoms in the 70's and they sit through the annoying insurance birds, and... who cares?

It's only here that people somehow believe that contra all evidence, somehow advertising on the internet is a unique affront to all that is holy. When... it's just ads!

In the 70s the ads were a one-way broadcast. Now the ads watch you back.

Far beyond the time wasted, they're an invasion of privacy.

It’s because making the choice of not being served ads is increasingly a technical challenge/hobby undertaking. Nerds like challenges. Other people are unaware it’s even a choice they have.

You're right, but it's not because it's a challenge that we like, it's not like this is something enjoyable. Nerds do it through gritted teeth, it's annoying to bypass all of that. They just know it's a possibility and care about it enough to pursue it. Most people don't know and don't care.

It’s an emu, not a duck. I hate that I’m forced to waste my time to see that and that it occupies space in my brain.

I’m also annoyed because this is a bit of a rug pull by youtube. The videos I watch of some obscure mechanical repair on a motor uploaded 15 years ago aren’t being monetized and they do not cost youtube enough to justify the multiple ads at the start and another in the middle that I have to sit through now to see it.

Youtube is going through major enshitification and is destroying the experience of consuming the largest video library in the world.

It's not an assault on freedom. But I think we'll learn over time that pervasive advertising does weird things to our brains. Consider that "advertising" is just a euphemism for "psychological manipulation to get you to want to buy something". I don't want to be psychologically manipulated! For any reason! It feels like a violation.

> But I think we'll learn over time that pervasive advertising does weird things to our brains

We nerds have been on our anti-internet-advertising kick for like 20 years now at least. I think the ship has sailed for that particular analysis.

Most people have lived with ads their whole lives, so the slow increase over decades barely registers. Many HN readers have spent the last 15–20 years avoiding them almost entirely with ad blockers, streaming, and piracy. Coming back to ad-saturated spaces feels jarring - like stepping out of a smoke-free world and into the 1960s, where everyone’s lighting up indoors.

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