Not really. YouTube provides a lot of tools to make most of their services and content pretty accessible from third party clients. If Google wanted to prevent ad blockers and force you to watch ads, trust me they could. At this point I think some users that only know how to install third party software are going to start claiming they won and ruin a good thing for everyone. You don’t want ads? Then don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Comment on YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoI agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot
timewarp@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
helenslunch@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
How are they doing that? Users who aren’t watching ads have absolutely zero value to YouTube, and only cause increased use of their computing resources. If they leave, YT has lost absolutely nothing, and gained a decrease in energy use. Most likely these people won’t leave YT altogether but just go back to watching ads or paying for premium, which is exactly the point.
Not saying I give a shit, that’s just reality.
darkkite@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
helenslunch@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
You are grossly overestimating the value of your likes and comments.
JamesFire@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Maybe they are, but it’s not “absolutely zero” like you said.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
I’d argue they risk losing users who post links to their videos online. It’s likely the same group who tend to use ad blockers are also the ones more likely to link a video online, so YouTube would miss out on all the non-adblock users clicking links and watching the videos that way.