YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers

Comments

• archomrade@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean this genuinely: I would rather YouTube die than be subject to their overlong and hyper targeted ads.

  If the ads were untargeted I’d feel less adamant, but as it is now I would sooner give up YouTube entirely.

  source

  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t mind if they used either data I entered or general trends of my watch history to serve me Degree For Men rather than Secret ads. “Data indicates this viewer is a male in his mid-30’s, serving this viewer a tampon ad is unlikely to generate sales.” I get that.

    It’s when I got the same exact ad for a Mission Impossible movie that had that annoying “Ready or not, here I come” song thing in front of every single video for three weeks straight that I downloaded uBlock Origin, stopped using the official app in favor of the website in the browser.

    It’s gotten to the point that I associate advertisements with bad products. I’ve had good functional search engines for most of my life, I’ve been able to find the products I want and need. The more you feel the need to pay to have your brand shouted at me the shittier I think your product is. Case in point: I’ve never seen a commercial for Sennheiser headphones but holy SHIT I’ve seen ads for Raycons.

    source

    • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s gotten to the point that I associate advertisements with bad products.

      I wish more marketers understood this. In fact, keeping on topic with Youtube in general, any product I see Youtubers doing sponsored ad reads for me is an instant and automatic hard pass for whatever it is. I just automatically assume that product is either crap or a scam. Or both. When I was shopping for headphones, the #1 brand I refused to consider for any price was Raycon. If I’m looking for a new game to pick up, I can guarantee you it will never be Raid: Shadow Legends or War Thunder, no matter how bored I am. If I need a new razor, it absolutely will not be from Manscaped. Etc., etc.

      If I am bombarded incessantly with really insipid ads for a particular product, the only thing it makes automatically come to my mind when shopping for a product in that category is that the one I definitely don’t want is that one with the fucking annoying ads. This is obviously completely counterproductive from the advertiser’s standpoint, and I have to imagine I’m not the only person in the world who rolls this way.

      The only possibilities I can think of are that advertisers really are dumb enough to oversaturate people’s attention to the point that they get turned off from the product entirely but keep soldiering on anyway because it earns a paycheck. Or worse, that it doesn’t matter because for every one viewer who gets pissed off and vows to never buy your product, they are outnumbered and offset by a horde of other viewers who are stupid enough to conflate repetition with truth and actually will be enticed to buy whatever it is, insipidity be damned. And the marketers probably know it.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s how I feel too. If it were to die, it gives more room for things like peertube to grow from its ashes.

    source
  • Malfeasant@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My ads aren’t targeted, at least I don’t think they are… I honestly don’t notice what they are for most of the time, so that’s a failure right there, they’re not memorable - but when I do notice, they’re for either trump or sports betting, two things which I have negative interest in…

    source

    • archomrade@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If you put up any guards at all against data tracking, they get pretty bad pretty quick. They get skewed toward the one or two datapoints that you didn’t shore up, so they think “huh, this user must really like phone games because they played doodlejump in 2016 and still has it installed on their phone”. Or at least I think. My wife gets ads that are far more on-the-nose than I do, but she doesn’t lock down her tracking data at all.

      But I don’t even like them trying to match me to ads, I don’t want to incentivize their data collection practices.

      source
• WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  • Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.

  That is the best part of it! A very welcome change! Basically the first step of becoming an independent creator, and to being able to abandon youtube for any of them.

  source
• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  potential account suspension

  You don’t even need an account to use YouTube lol

  source
• helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Eh, I dunno if I’d say they’re “losing”.

  I’ve certainly noticed disruptions on every platform except GrayJay. LibreTube stopped working for several months for me.

  Certainly these interruptions could be enough for some users to abandon them.

  source

  • BleatingZombie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

    source

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • timewarp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

      source
  • romamix@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    NewPipe/PipePipe and Freetube were affected for half a day max, these guys are super fast with the updates.

    source
• Mwa@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  if i ever get banned from youtube for using ublock origin am prob switching to odysee

  source

  • Mubelotix@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If I’m getting banned I’ll probably circumvent the ban

    source
  • cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My NewPipe app stopped working for a week and it wasn’t difficult at all living without YouTube. There’s tons of content in the world that can be consumed in its place.

    source

    • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I use NewPipe only despite having a current YouTube Premium subscription because the official app is bonkers. It’s hilariously stuffed with useless features that can’t be toggled off(games, shorts), half baked stuff like specific video quality can’t be chosen for all videos by default( has to be on a per video basis). Oh, and every other time I visit some channel, asking me to join the YouTube’s channel for additional perks. You just took money from the user to give them a sub par experience.

      source
    • Mwa@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      true

      source
    • Mwa@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      true

      source
• chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Worse part of the problem is knowing what part of the ad profit YouTube uses to pay MrBeast and his stupid content.

  source

  • Angry_Autist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There isn’t a big streamer that doesn’t strike me as a creepy tryhard.

    source
• JustARaccoon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Until they start properly filtering ads they accept they get auto disabled in my side. No weird crypto or porn ads for me, thanks.

  source

  • towerful@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Even the shitty mobile ads of “someone watching prerecorded gameplay and commenting it”.
    How obvious can you be?! “Oh wow, these 2 different people playing EXACTLY the same and saying almost the same thing”.
    That’s not an ad.
    Never mind that the gameplay in the ad is an extremely minor part of the game. The rest is some sort of city-builder with mtx shortcuts.

    It’s just whaling

    source
• MrVilliam@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pro tip: open YouTube in Chrome, signed into your YouTube account. Allow the algorithm and your subs to continue recommending videos. Find one you wanna see. Copy link address. Paste it into Firefox with adblock, not signed into Google/YouTube. Prosper.

  Just watched a YouTube video on my PS5 earlier today while cooking a food and saw for the first time that they will shoot an ad with a “next” button that skips to another ad, and then there’s a “skip” button countdown. Ridiculous. I wouldn’t bother with adblock if the ads were reasonable.

  Here’s a free idea, YouTube: build in the ability to add videos to a simple temporary queue and then only put ads in at the very start or very end of videos so they aren’t intrusive.

  source

  • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Presumably the algorithm feed will stagnate or even deteriorate if it sees you ain’t watching what it’s suggesting.

    source
  • dsilverz@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you have Plasma Integration (KDE), you can create a task for sending the link directly to Firefox without copying and pasting. Plasma Integration shows as a context menu item inside chrome, if you use KDE.

    source
  • variants@possumpat.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    what I do is open a containerized tab on firefox so that youtube has no history enabled and doesnt fill the page with obnoxious content then I search for what I went there for then I close the tab so everything is purged. for my subscriptions I use a container on my server that downloads their videos and ads them to my plex server so I can watch them there when I have time to watch stuff its all in one place

    source
  • yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Here’s a free idea, YouTube: build in the ability to add videos to a simple temporary queue

    You can have that by paying for youtube premium

    source

    • MrVilliam@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not tempted to sign up for something if I don’t even know what the features are. Maybe some of their dumbass ads should be for their own fucking product lol. I assumed that it was free from ads, and I think you can download videos and play with your screen off on your phone? Idk, Vanced has been great for me on my phone. And I wouldn’t have bothered to get that set up in the first place if the ads and lack of features weren’t so disruptively intrusive. If they find a way to shut down every way of getting around their overreaching bullshit, I’ll opt to fund a few respectable creators directly rather than pay for the platform.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Watch time affects your recommendations, so this isn’t a great solution

    source

    • MrVilliam@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      After watching, click do not recommend and say that it’s because you’ve already watched it. Problem solved.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • PhAzE@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    SmartTube on the shield. Prosper.

    source
• swordgeek@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Youtube is waging a war against their customers. If they win, they lose; and if they lose they win.

  source
• mctoasterson@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  On the one hand I understand they aren’t serving billions of hours of video for their own health. Not sure how one can justify the expenditure as a “loss leader”. But at the same time, the ad experience is horrendous.

  In the last month I have consumed YT on desktop browser, mobile, and regular TV. Guess which is by far the worst experience?

  On desktop, you can use an alternate browser or do a reg edit to re-enable manifest v2 plugins (for now) in Chrome, and continue blocking (for now). On mobile you can use alternate apps and frontends.

  TV viewing of YT is the worst experience, as there are no native alternative apps and DNS ad blocking doesn’t block YT ads. The native YouTube app (on Samsung and LG TVs at least) is horrendous. You get midroll ads sometimes mid-sentence as the content presenter is speaking. Sometimes you get pre-roll ads, disruptive mid roll ads, and then wash it down with a POST-roll ad at the end of the video. Depending on how the content is structured it is disorienting as to whether the video has ended or not.

  Say for example its a 30 minute video. I would rather they show 5-7 minutes of predictable ads at the beginning of content, so I can at least have the same experience as broadcast TV, and make an informed decision to get up and use the restroom and feed the pets while the ads roll. Then once the content starts, don’t randomly interrupt it.

  Imagine the YT model applied to broadcast television. The quarterback drops back to throw a deep pass towards the endzone, and suddenly you find yourself watching an undskippable ad for diarrhea medication, while the football is in the air.

  And we wonder why people have ADD.

  source

  • CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I watch long videos on my TV (45 min - 1 hr) and they have the audacity to shove minute+ long ad reels in my face every 15 minuets, claiming “fewer ads for this long video.” Bullshit. I have learned however that if you go to give feedback on the ad and flag it as inappropriate, it skips all the ads in that reel and sends you right back to the video! I can get past unskippable ads in a few seconds this way.

    source
  • lengau@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Fundamentally what YouTube is doing is an unprofitable model. Google bought them when they were in their “we can solve internet unprofitability with scale and more efficient data centres!” phase, but that has never really gone as planned for YouTube.

    For a while I was very hopeful that YouTube Premium would solve that, but as they started removing features and making it an overall worse experience it became no longer worth the money. I don’t have an answer to this. If I did I could probably make a lot of money on that answer. What I do know, however, is that Google’s answer isn’t the right one.

    source
• thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I pay for YouTube Family. I consume a lot of YouTube and I want to support the creators I watch. At its current price point, YouTube Family is reasonable. Several households in my family get ad-free YouTube for what is a reasonably low price point for each household.

  If the price goes up much (eg if I were paying the single price of $11 per household), the creators I really enjoy continue to get pushed out or change content because of shitty ad rules, or they pull the whole “must be in the same household” bullshit I would drop it in a heartbeat just like I’ve dropped most streaming providers. Streaming has become cable and YouTube has been shooting itself in the foot by forcibly changing content for advertisers. I come to the platform for content, not advertisers.

  source

  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Unfortunately that fee won’t stop google’s endless thirst for data mining and it’s manipulation through “personalized recommendations”, and through ads on any other website and mobile apps.

    source

    • thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If you care about that you don’t use YouTube at all or support creators that do. Even using 3rd party apps or services feeds into that. This feels like a serious non sequitur on any thread about any Google product.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Just got a one-minute unskippable ad for the first time yesterday (no way to use adbockers on a PS5). I’d rather not watch at all.

  source
• yesman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  MMW: Google plans to make Chrome a locked down browser for a proprietary web. But this is only the intermediate step before all web services will be accessed via an app. The commercial web and the public web will hard fork and the kids will never know what a “browser” is.

  source
• Teknikal@eviltoast.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Any one else watch the Linux tech tips video (degooglefying) where he tried to claim blocking ads was Piracy.

  That pissed me off because blocking ads is honestly just protecting yourself against viruses which appear even on ads on Google etc.

  source

  • lengau@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean… It probably is. It’s accessing the copyrighted content outside of the terms of the license provided by the copyright owner.

    But that shows more how broken the copyright system is than anything when piracy has such a low bar.

    source
  • Kuma@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why can not it be both? It is piracy because you access content that should be payed with your time (ads) instead of money, by bypassing the front door/line of ads and going in through the backdoor.

    You do guard yourself from virus and some data hording and it can also be true that you don’t find it worth it of your time and only want to consume without interruptions.

    I also use an ad blocker. It is the first thing I install on a browser. The internet is impossible to navigate in without it and I try to only use sites without ads if possible… But I do believe it is piracy to block it, and it is my choice.

    I only pay for nebula and Spotify so all the creators who is on there at least get something from me. But I don’t know if that is even close to enough.

    Linus is not one of them and will never be haha (I rarely like any of their video formats)

    source
  • absquatulate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not sure why you feel the need to defend your actions by drawing analogies with real piracy - it’s their attitude towards you as a content consumer that you should note in this situation, and that’s just appaling. Your actions may well be piracy but frankly that’s just a word they use to guilt you out of choosing convenience and safety. Be a pirate and be proud, goddammit!

    source
  • qaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Linux tech tips video

    🤔

    source
• ThePantser@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I already pay tons yearly for extra storage. YouTube without ads should be included. Also I was a paying customer for ad free back when Google Music was alive. They killed the best service for the shitty YouTube Music. Bring back Google Music and I will subscribe again.

  source

  • bulwark@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Same boat dude. That’s how I got YouTube premium. I uploaded like 500 GB of music for Google Music to host it and I could stream my own collection. Now I use Navidrome and my own server.

    source
• MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  and warning users of potential account suspension.

  What account?

  source
• someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And Sponsorblock. Can’t imagine going back.

  source
• daddy32@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Remember when videos had to be at least 10 minutes long, so more ads could be added to the play time? Now they don’t give a fuck.

  source

  • Impromptu2599@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Now you get a 10 minute ad for a 2 minute video

    source
• nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Image

  source
• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Image

  source
• xelar@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Meanwhile Odysee goes ads free…

  source

  • TBi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who is paying for it so?

    source

    • xelar@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      users for premium i guess

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• anthony@lemmy.cif.su ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sadly they killed Piped, and a lot Discord Bots in the Process…

  source

  • TheOSINTguy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Free tube still works, android app is kinda buggy though.

    source
  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Piped should be able to work if they implement invidious’s workaround. Unfortunately devs don’t seem to be active anymore :/

    source
  • SirMaple__@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What features aren’t working in Piped?

    I have a selfhosted Piped instance and use it daily without issue in Firefox and LibreTube on Android.

    source

    • anthony@lemmy.cif.su ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A lot of instances have been getting these “Sign in to confirm your not a not” messages, if to many people use them at the same time. It works after a while again, but only being able to watch Videos sometimes, when the right stars align properly, is to unreliable for most user, me included.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I used to just watch YouTube at default, taking the ads as they felt like.

  Now, no thanks. If I have to watch as many ads for as long as they mandate, I’ll just watch other things.

  source
• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators

  What always got me about accounts like Mr. Beast is how they never made the jump to a direct subscription service for their content. Some of the more popular Patreon accounts rarely if ever bubble up to the top of the YouTube algorithm. Yet they are clearly popular enough to bring in millions as independent artists. Meanwhile, the folks that dominate the YouTube charts are inevitably the ones that the algorithm force-feeds you in every “Recommended” feed.

  It’s almost as though YouTube needs quality content providers more than the quality providers need the ads. Almost as though the real beneficiaries of the YouTube ad-supported model are generating endless largely unappealing filler content.

  source
• pop@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The surface level entitlement in these threads are always off the charts.

  Everyone is on this bandwagon that Google hates adblockers on youtube. It certainly does but it hasn’t been this agressive as of late.

  You know why?

  The issue google has is with server farms guzzling up the entirety of their video database for training their AI. They’re using open source tools/frontends to do these downloads. That takes up lot of resource and bandwidth unlike ignoring the minority of plebs using youtube without ads.

  They want to rule the AI trend not fuel the COMPETITION. They will do whatever to keep their competition from getting ahead.

  And it isn’t cheap to keep up with server farms unlike letting miniscule numbers of terminally online mouth breathing basement dwellers who think too high of themselves block ads.

  But whatever floats your boat.

  source

  • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So, where does entitlement fit into all of this?

    source
  • FarceOfWill@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If this is the problem spending a lot of effort to also serve ads along with the real video seems like it’d increase costs.

    What you’re talking about is a real problem for Google but it’s not the only cause of the new behaviour since Neal took over

    source
  • Emmie@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It sounds like projection

    source
• drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I find the whole thing so ugly even as a youtube plus subscriber. How much possibly you could gain here? isn’t youtube already profitable? just let poor people watch and educate themselves and whatnot.

  source
• Desistance@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good.

  source
• IndustryStandard@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s a large war going on behind my uBlock plugin.

  source
• doodledup@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’d be willing to pay for their service if it didn’t entail creating an account and letting me get tracked even further.

  I don’t know what the solution is, but ads isn’t, a Google account isn’t, but piracy isn’t either.

  source
• nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s no winning a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, especially when having no moles (=viewers) left also means that you lose.

  source