At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I get are crypto currency scams where some paid actor walks you though deploying an eth contract that empties your wallet. I report every one and nothing changes :(
Mostly, I'm getting things like German ads for my local German supermarket (that I would've gone to anyway without the ad) dubbed badly into English with an AI that can't tell how to pronounce the "." in a price, plus a Berlin-specific "pay less rent" company that I couldn't use even if I wanted to because I don't rent.
But when I get 30 seconds of ads a minute into a video that had 30 seconds of ads before I could start watching… I don't care what the rest of the video was going to be about, I don't want to waste my life with a 30:60:30:… pattern of adverts and "content" whose sole real purpose is now to keep me engaged with the adverts. (This is also half of why I don't bother going to Facebook, every third post is an ad, although those ads can't even tell if I'm a boy or a girl, which language I speak, nor what my nationality is, and the first-party suggested groups are just as bad but grosser as they recently suggested I join groups for granny dating, zit popping, and Elon Musk).
Infomercials for all kinds of scams from buying real estate with zero down, crap products that didn't work...
Arguably weirder, since stuff like this is on sometimes:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15737708/
It's a low-budget horror host show which was made for streaming, and coincidentally ended up on the air late on Friday nights.
You are making a silly argument here. There's no equivalence at all.
Then you had guys like Kevin Trudeau and Don Lapre.
I've never seen anything like this and I see the reverse quite a bit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/1bmdy03/someone_in_...
There were many other similar ones, especially on the smaller digital ad spaces that were basically just TVs on the side of roads. And those ones were more specifically calling for empathy for the deaths occurring to Israeli people during the war on Palestine
Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder.
That's a pretty good scam.
But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions. You are literally paying to see ads, then telling people not to do the same.
Unless there's some subtlety I'm missing here. I haven't been on YouTube in at least a decade. I see no difference between a blogger pushing a VPN and Google showing an ad for a VPN.
The big draw for cable TV was that you could watch TV without ads. Then ads started appearing on cable and people said it's OK, because the content is higher quality and not available elsewhere. Then that changed, and now there is no difference between broadcast, cable/satellite, and streaming services. Except that you don't have to pay for broadcast. (Yet. It's coming.)
Youtube Premium is fighting back against the sponsor segments with this "commonly skipped segment" feature. You hit a fast forward button and it automatically skips ahead to the place most people jumped to.
No idea if that's been borne out in practice, though.
Personally I pay for youtube and I don't mind the sponsor sections. They're easy to fast forward through and income goes directly to the creator. Youtube doesn't take a cut. These are the only kinds of ads that work on me - in the rare case that the product is something I'm interested in, I go out of my way to make sure I use the creator's link.
The long story short is that there are creators I like and I want them to devote all their time to making more content. I'm glad some of them get sponsors. For many I just straight up give them money on Patreon.
It's easy to skip creator promotions. You can also choose not to engage with creators that conduct ads.
I'm fine paying YouTube not to force me to watch their ads. I can deal with product placement on my own.
I've gotten rid of 90% of the ads by paying for YouTube, the rest of the ads I skip by jumping forward in the video which is annoying but only a little OR by being legitimately interested in what the person has to say if they're reviewing a product which has been in some way paid for. I'm also just fine with someone promoting their own merch or patreon which I am sometimes actually interested in.
The subtlety I don't get why you're missing is I now have very much reduced ad exposure and the rest I do have is entirely controllable.
I never understand why well-paid HN commentators refuse to pay for their entertainment.
On the web at large, sure use an ad blocker, there's no choice there. There is on youtube though.
But I pay happily for YouTube, because I use it daily, and my home country’s propaganda was annoying enough to make it worth.
People don't want to pay (help) people they don't like. YouTube ads do not feel fair, they feel manipulative and unethical. It's expected that most people wouldn't want to willingly engage with that kind of asshattery.
Contrast that with platforms like twitch. I'd say the average twitch viewer (that interacts with streams/chats) has a slightly negative view of Twitch. But many will still willingly donate dozens of subs to streamers they like. This removes ads for other people, not themselves.
People think YouTube is greedy and untrustworthy. Why would you willingly feed that machine?
My local cinema charges me to watch a film. Sure I could sneak in through the fire escape.
That's not paying protection money.
If they say "you can watch for free if you attend our timeshare presentation first", then that's still not paying protection money.
If I want a magician to entertain me at a party, it's not paying protection money. If they say "you can watch for free but only if you listen to me drivel on about some cause first" that doesn't either.
People on HN are unwiling to pay people to entertain them. Its astounding.
I like trailers.
YouTube premium lite has been a game changer. Otherwise I would have given up on watching on Apple TV
As soon as I disable my adblocker on my PC though I only get fake scam ads.
Google YouTube TV for NFL Sunday ticket Robinhood Some dog tracker thing Detergent Peloton Liberty mutual Some truck brand Foam insulation
Other than how to buy gold ads and sandy hook promise, my ads are very mild. YMMV
2 days later, I got the same ad again.
Paying for YouTube premium lite (I think it’s new) has been the best thing in ages! The toxic ads are finally gone!
Google products' bullshit as usual, I never needed/wanted YouTube Music and the other bloat they wanted to force me to pay for, I was happily paying to not have ads...
[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365?sjid=93860...
The laws need to be changed.
Let me take things back a step - it's nearly impossible to hold people who are lying accountable. Surely the platform bears less responsibility than the liars on it?
Kind of like how South Korea (where you need a national ID to access digital services) is doing, or the UK is trying to do with their ID push.
(And then who wants this could go have a fight with the people who don't want this.)
The post was submitted by an asset (IP Address). Just send the bill to the registered owner of that asset.
We do the same thing for speeding tickets. This isn't difficult.
Do you mean the VPN provider ought to be liable? I think that's an interesting solution. Take money from bad actor anons then the bill is yours.
But I mean yeah, you could theoretically rent a car in the UK and kill somebody then flee to the US and hide. But don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
My how the worm turns.
HN users used to herald that law as the best thing since Betty White (who was older than sliced bread).
Without 230, there would be no YouTube. No Facebook. No Instagram. No social media. Forums would likely have gone extinct. Half of the tech industry and a good chunk of the jobs that people on HN do would never have happened.
Now people on HN want to get rid of the law. People who are too young to know what it was like before that protection set the internet free to create and collaborate.
I despise social media. But demonizing 230 just shows a basic lack of knowledge of history, economics, and the reasons it was created.
Sounds like a good thing to me?
> Half of the tech industry and a good chunk of the jobs that people on HN do would never have happened.
And it would be good. It's not like we do any real work. I know I don't.
Usenet was a thing. A huge thing. There was zero danger that it would go "extinct" due to the lack of extralegal protections.
> But demonizing 230 just shows a basic lack of knowledge of history, economics, and the reasons it was created.
You're ignoring the context. Section 230 was created when the Internet was nascent and we were trying to encourage broader /business/ investment into the technology.
Now that that investment has occurred and most consumers _prefer_ to do business on the Internet, whereas the opposite was previously true, we no longer need the _additional_ protections for hugely profitable businesses.
Aside from that is there some reason we can't _modify_ the law to bring it more in line with citizen expectations? We're bound to the decisions of the past absolutely? Please...
Home Depot doesn’t want me to know about it, but I saw the ad!
Normal non-tech users (from watching youtube at friends houses or at my parents), mostly get ads for fabric softener and cat litter.
Does trillion-dollar Google desperately need the 3½¢ of revenue the scam ad generates?
To put it another way, you have next to no value, and it's only by the goodwill of Google that they even let you on the platform.
That being said, I am paying for Premium, so I wonder if you are, and if you are blocking ads.
Scam videos are the chum box ads of the video world. Usually the lowest cost ads and so if you block tracking or are viewing a video in a private session you will have the highest chance of hitting these ads.
Gotcha. So you are ignorant of why people are commenting.
The OP was talking about seeing 50% scam crypto ads. Our responses were to provide a comparison. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but that 50% scam crypto ads are not the norm for everyone. It's helpful to have that comparison when providing anecdotal information.
No one is saying those ads don't happen, only that it's probably not normal.
Next time, instead of being unnecessarily antagonistic, admit to being ignorant and ask.
I am simply asking what is the point of the response to my comment. Ads of all degree exist but these scams do exist in a pretty large % of the ads shown but perhaps much lower dollar value since they get shown to profiles without a tangible viewer model.
Next time, instead of using inflammatory language please just slow down and reread or have a more thoughtful discussion. Thanks.
You were ignorant (fact) and unecessarily antagonistic (fact).
I corrected you.
> You were confused and I pointed out that
I wasn't, and claiming I was is a lie.
> I am simply asking what is the point of the response to my comment.
Yes, you were ignorant. You didn't know somehting. Ignorance isn't an insult. It's a lack of knowledge.
> instead of using inflammatory language
Take our own advice.
The ads are get rich quick, unregulated powders, crypto etc.
So again I am not even sure what you are arguing about or why you use such nasty language but read what I keep saying and relax.
Ad and "promoted" videos are different in this context. And the OP was mentioning promoted videos, not ads.
> At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos
I've never seen a "promoted video" (whatever that is specfically) that deals with crypto. Note: Premium users can still see promoted videos. I imagine these are more targetted to people who would want to watch these sorts of videos.
> Nothing to do with what it is recommending unless I am entirely conflating the root of this subject.
I was referring to recommended not in a strictly technical sense, but in a way any normal person would use the term. e.g. Recommended videos meaning: All the videos youtube shows me that it thinks I might want to watch. Whether these are officially "Recommended" or "Subscribed" or "Promoted" or whatever, I don't know.
What I do know is that I don't see any crypto scam videos or ads.
> If that is true, then of course you would never have seen these as a premium user.
Apparently, that's not the case.
tl;dr: We are talking about videos like normal people. You are wrong.
- video from screenshot[2]
- coe from video[3]
I'm guessing I get served these because I typically interact with them because I'm curious to read the code they link to see how obvious the scam is. It's also fun to reverse face search the actors and find them on fiverr.
[0](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/141808?hl=en) [1](https://imgur.com/ckAxmuk) [2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvsGCvw9AFM) [3](https://pastecode.io/s/pcp4ao4q)
And again as a premium user you won’t see chum style feed or promoted videos because premium removed the feed style and promoted will be more tailored to your preferences.
Which coming full circle leads us back to my original statement. If they don’t have a good user profile for you, you will get lower cost ads (promoted videos) which generally are going to be the chum box of ads, crypto, magic formula powders, get rich quick.