Anyone else remember when new technology used to be fun and exciting instead of miserable?
YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads
Submitted 17 hours ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24248391/youtube-pause-ads-widely-rolling-out
Comments
barsquid@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
lemmeout@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
Long gone are the days when I used to read update notes for new features… No I just hope they don’t god damn force an update on me.
msage@programming.dev 11 hours ago
Just use Free and Open Source Software!
It can always fuck up with updates, but usually you just get more free stuff and it’s awesome.
PhreakyByNature@feddit.uk 16 hours ago
I went back to an old APK of Twitch and refuse to update to the current dumpster fire.
spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Somewhere along the line, maybe the early to mid 2000’s they stopped making products “for” the end-user and flipped it around so the end-user (their data) is now the product, and the customers are governments, corporations, and share holders.
omarfw@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Because those shareholders (billionaires) and corporations drained the consumers of all of their money and now they’re the most profitable demographic to market to.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
That’s part of the reason why new community oriented projects are way more interesting to me now than most software. There are some outliers in the space who still have dedicated people in their craft rather than for money but it is fewer and farther between.
loam@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Absolutely. Although, this is just making old technology worse because web 3.0 and AI aren’t performing to corpo expectations.
gwen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
That’s what happens when you aren’t the (sole) paying customer.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 13 hours ago
Some of it is. Just different (not mainstream) technology.
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 17 hours ago
Soon: when you pause a video, it starts playing a video ad with audio, to make sure no silence time gets wasted from your speakers.
18_24_61_b_17_17_4@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
And your speakers are on subscription plans that charge you for every second that they play noise. Better upgrade to the next tier if you want to listen to anything else!
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 15 hours ago
That’s fine, the ad co struck a deal with speaker co to not bill for those sound-seconds.
EmpatheticTeddyBear@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
There is also a tax on when the speakers are not in use.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
Imagine if they pulled that on the idle timeout pause screen too…
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
This already happened. People looking up CPR instructions because a loved one is dying, only to be met with three unskippable ads.
Goodbye Meemaw.
retrieval4558@mander.xyz 7 hours ago
Not defending YouTube here, but CPR is so time sensitive that if they were looking up instructions, she was a goner anyway.
baru@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Have you had CPR training? What you stated isn’t true. Every second counts. But looking up instructions and seeing a easy video will still help massively.
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yeah, that may be so, but priorities man. Priorities! Think of our profits man! In this harsh economy, ever ad counts! We’re only controlling 90% of the internet while we strive for 100%. That’s 10% short. 10%! We only had a revenue of 305 billion in 2023 which is not nearly enough to cut down on ads. Billionaire lives matter man! Come on, everybody, say it all together: Make millionaires billionaires again! Billionaires first! Meemaws don’t consume enough anyway. Screw her. By the way, want some penis enlargement pills?
NotationalSymmetry@ani.social 13 hours ago
What if you paused so you could see something? You’re not allowed to read that text in the background because ads
Jeffool@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I already find this to be a problem with the recommendations that pop up when paused, and the end-video elements they throw over everything despite having that turned off everywhere I can find it. It’s all so dumb. Just so damn dumb.
philodendron@lemdro.id 12 hours ago
They’ll likely do what other platforms have done and let you X out the ad til you unpause
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
God I hope my adbock holds up…
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
If it doesn’t goodbye Youtube. I love the creators, but hate you as a platform.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Yeah, uBlock Origin not working would take me from liking YouTube a fair bit to making it unusable.
- I use Proton but keep legacy Gmail accounts around to ensure I still have access to accounts I may have forgotten about or people I knew a long time ago sending a stray email. The only other usage is logging into YouTube.
- I use a Captcha solver extension.
- I use uBlock Origin to block all their ads.
- I don’t use their DNS.
- I use DDG over their search engine and Firefox over their browser.
- I don’t use Google Drive or their office suite (I think the latter is abysmal to use tbf).
- I use DeepL over Translate.
- I use NewPipe for YouTube on mobile and have a subscription to Nebula.
- I no longer use Google Maps, opting for OSM instead.
- I still use Android and unfortunately can’t unlock the bootloader but have degoogled as far as I know how, including never even registering a Google account with it (F-Droid + Aurora Store).
YouTube is far and away the biggest means by which I interact with Google, and that falls off a cliff if I’m forced to interact with a mess of their ridiculously shitty ads every time I have to use it. uBO has likely saved hundreds of hours of watching ads over my lifetime (and probably thousands of dollars from not being subconsciously influenced by ads), and I’m not paying a subscription fee to such an unethical company to get rid of the ads. This would bring me from YouTube as a timewaster to YouTube only as strictly necessary. Even though I don’t support them directly through ads, I do support them by supporting creators I like monetarily, by sharing links and maintaining the network effect, and by giving them plenty of metadata by interacting with their service. If they do this, they ensure that I continue to monetarily support competitors like Nebula and permanently lose a grip they’ve had on me since I was a kid.
AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
That’s what we need tbh. If people get fed up and leave then eventually creators will too
linearchaos@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
If it doesn’t I will make something that records the entire f****** stream and removes the commercials out of it the old fashioned way If I have to. Not my first rodeo.
ironsoap@lemmy.one 16 hours ago
Yt-DLP and it’s variation (Seal, YTDLnis, etc.), newpipe and it’s variation (Tubular, Newpipe Sponsorblock, etc) already allow you to do this without having to get manual.
Fester@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
I will find text versions of everything I need to learn about and create my own video, and then watch it.
parpol@programming.dev 16 hours ago
If it happens, and you do, set up a donation box too.
someguy3@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Like way to Kool your platform for anything educational where you want to pause to like at a graph.
Copernican@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Look at the article linked to it. It has a render of a pause ad being a banner that shrinks the video player somewhat, but the paused video is viewable.
Clasm@ttrpg.network 12 hours ago
That’s a lot of faith that the ads would be SFW, let alone not distracting.
tatterdemalion@programming.dev 9 hours ago
Don’t most YouTubers make more money with their own sponsorships than from YT ads? Can we start the mass migration to PeerTube already?
noodlejetski@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
I don’t think Peertube would handle mass migration of Youtube creators, unless each and every one of them set up their own instance.
Tregetour@lemdro.id 8 hours ago
YT will likely attempt to play creators and viewers off one another. Similar to how hospitality does so with patrons and staff re: tips. You could see a FUD campaign aimed at anyone republishing their work on competitor sites.
fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
This has been the case since some time before the Adpocalypse iirc.
Mwa@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
odysee can also be a option from peertube as well but odysees privacy policy they sell non pii data according to them
KingJalopy@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
Are they so dumb They don’t realize that when we pause a video we are likely not watching or even near our fucking phone or screen at that time?
Drusenija@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
They do, they’re probably just hoping the advertisers don’t and keep paying for more ad space.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
They don’t care. If the advertisers pay for that spot then they make money! This has been the story with TV ads for decades.
bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
They do, and they don’t care. The algorithm is actually tailored to find out if/when you fall asleep while watching videos, and then recommends longer videos in autoplay when it believes you are, because they’ll get to play you more ads and cash out more. When/if they implement pause ads advertisers will have an even bigger case against against yt inflating ad watch time to make more money. Facebook has this issue as well.
hikaru755@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
The algorithm is actually tailored to find out if/when you fall asleep while watching videos, and then recommends longer videos in autoplay when it believes you are, because they’ll get to play you more ads and cash out more.
You might be misremembering / misinterpreting a little there. This behavior is not intentional, it’s just a side effect of how the algorithm currently works. Showing you longer videos doesn’t equate to showing you more ads. On the contrary, if you get loads of short videos you’ll have way more opportunities to see pre-roll ads, but with longer videos, you’re just to just the mid-roll spots in that video. So YouTube doesn’t really have an incentive to make it work like that, it’s just accidental.
Here’s the spiffing Brit video on this, which I think you might have gotten this idea from: youtu.be/8iOjeb5DTZI
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Advertising these days is less of a way to show people things and more of an infinite money glitch. Of course websites that serve ads will deny this vehemently because advertisers who become aware of such practices (typically known as click fraud) will cut off those websites from ad revenue very quickly and stop serving ads there.
The idea is to trick the advertising companies into thinking that we are there and we are watching, so that they will pay money.
Copernican@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It’s the opposite. If you pause the ad you the viewer are almost always looking at the screen. The pause button on a mobile phone or web browser is literally on the player. You are guaranteed to see it immediately after you push the button. You will see it when you in pause. These ads are display banners not video.
Unlike video ads that just auto play, especially when the video player auto plays more videos, there probably is more probability you aren’t actually watching, unlike pause ads that require user activity and focus on the screen to push the pause button.
erenkoylu@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
not if you use ublock origin or newpipe
Scrollone@feddit.it 9 hours ago
And SmartTubeNext on Android TV
problembasedperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
I use both!
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
I wonder what made their leadership continue to escalate into increasingly bullshit decisions. What happens if I need to pause because I need my PC to be quiet so I can address something and still an ad suddenly starts playing? I’ll tell you what happens, I’ll either find some way to disable that from happening, switch to a service that doesn’t do it if I can, or just begin avoiding it all together. Brilliant planing, YouTube. Whoever has been left as its leadership is a dumbass.
Rider@eviltoast.org 7 hours ago
Not to mention it’ll push more people towards using Adblockers. And since chrome is cracking down on Adblockers as well, people start using another browser altogether. It seems like Google is self-sabotaging with these kind of decisions.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Hilarious isn’t it? I stopped using Google search because they fucked it up too bad. I stopped watching YouTube years ago too because they already fucked it up.
I guess they just don’t want users anymore.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
Whoever has been left as its leadership is a dumbass.
Not in the slightest. More likely their annual bonus depends on boosting revenue right now. So they’re incentivised to generate short term increases in revenue but not for longer term. Plus, also, if/when Youtube goes tits up they’ll just get a different CEOing job (with “increased revenue by 25% in 2024 on their resume”) rinse and repeat.
ColonelPanic@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
Money.
Also I imagine the ads will be silent but animated, like a regular website ad but full screen, essentially turning whatever you’re watching it on into a giant billboard.
It’s just another thing to block I guess.
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
I should have opened the article, that’s a lot less intrusive than what I thought. If this is the extent of it, and frankly considering that Google let’s you opt out of personalized tracking when many sites have begun forcing them onto users and forcing me to constantly clear their cookies, that makes me a lot less mad with them.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
Stallman was right.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
When they said?
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 5 hours ago
I’m guessing not when he justified pedophilia and zoophilia.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
when he said that software should be free as in freedom, because that would solve this problem
foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
Bruh, it’s no more a multimedia player, it’s a advertising screen.
x4740N@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
And good people argue how adblock and sponssrblock are fair game for your shitty company practices
danc4498@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Just gonna say I hate this when other apps do this. I pause cause I need to concentrate on something else. Showing an ad just makes that even harder. Now I have to pause AND close the app.
randon31415@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I hate it when I go to full screen and one of my (100s of) tabs has a youtube short that thinks “Oh, time to start playing again!”
Now I’ll have paused tabs start making noise and I won’t be able to find it until the ad is over.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That’s your fault for having 100s of tabs open.
Seriously. What’s wrong with you?
Coreidan@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Nice. I don’t care.
I stopped watching YouTube years ago.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 17 hours ago
Is anyone even remotely surprised by this?
Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 16 hours ago
It’s like all the sci-fi stories of ads everywhere
Binette@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
What ads? 😏
where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
It’s their private website, they do on it whatever they want. Right, lemmy?
You can run your own federated streaming service that will have no ads and will be free of charge, yeah?
ViscloReader@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
🤮
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
YouTube premium, only time I hear ads are when my coworkers crank their shit too loud in the office, or when I have a brand new phone and have forgotten to log in.
Worth every red nickel.
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Did I miss some detail? I get the impressions from the comments this is some really poor choice for user experience as people will often pause to check something
But in my experience pause ads are nothing new at all and they start after the device has been idle. What did I miss that makes this different?
Dju@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
And next… after opening the app you will have to watch ad before you can do anything
PunnyName@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Having a hard enough time just trying to fucking skip back 20 seconds without accidentally tapping on the creators’ page.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
God, they better not be unskippable
cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
YouTube is unwatchable. No way I can make it through those ads.
DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The sad thing is that most people won’t even give a damn.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Yeah and when someone needs to watch a video on CPR in an emergency get ready for a shitstorn
sentientity@lemm.ee 33 minutes ago
It’s excellent that alternatives and ad blockers do exist but we need regulatory action to hold companies accountable for things that are designed to worsen user experience to pressure people into paying. It’s also a serious accessibility issue, to increasingly have everything be bright and loud and motion filled and unpausable all the time. This trend goes beyond YouTube and it sucks, we need to regulate this nonsense.