Hahahahaha, do they know that using it without the ad blocker is worse than whatever else they’re going to do? I’d rather stare at 30 seconds of black screen than a 5 second ad, lmao.
YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don't turn off your ad-blocker
Submitted 11 months ago by TangledHyphae@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-warns-worse-viewing-experience-ad-blocker-2023-11
Comments
Thteven@lemmy.world 11 months ago
aceshigh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Having a blank screen will make me less angry than seeing a long advertisement. Not to mention, I come from the days of dial up. I can wait a bit until I view the video.
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 11 months ago
I remember waiting 30 minutes for 75% of a badly compressed 1 minute pornvideo to load, I can outlast whatever they throw at us.
Zerfallen@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Good thing you only needed 75% of that 1 minute porn video, or you’d have had to wait even longer.
decisivelyhoodnoises@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Well actually they can do much more, like for example decreasing quality to lets say 144p
I’m not saying that adblockers will not be able to bypass it, maybe there will be a solution as well, but wanted to say that the blank screen waiting is not their only weapon
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
*a 5 second ad every 5 minutes
Thteven@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If it was really that little I wouldn’t be so up in arms about it. I put a video on yesterday and had 30 seconds of ads before it started and then another 30 seconds of ads after a minute and a half. Fuck that nonsense.
hellequin67@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They couldn’t possibly make the experience than it already is without an ad blocker.
No adblock = No youtube
krashmo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
To paraphrase a great philosopher: executives… uh… find a way (to make things shittier)
NaoPb@eviltoast.org 11 months ago
No YouTube. It is YOU that is stuck with ME and I will make YOUR experience worse.
AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Can’t possibly make it worse than shoving ads from hate groups. On my computer, I use Firefox with adblock, but on my phone and tablet I had been using the YouTube app until a few days ago. Google decided to show me a PragerU ad on mobile, so I decided to switch to Firefox mobile to watch YouTube. And the app either moved or removed the ‘don’t show this ad’ selection.
Senseless@feddit.de 11 months ago
If you’re using android you might want to check out YouTube ReVanced.
Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you log in, know that Google knows you’re using MicroG amd has the capacity to ban your account.
Not heard of any bans yet, but I’m probably close to ditching revanced soon because this is my primary email address and Google is getting more and more aggressive
starman@programming.dev 11 months ago
Check out Sponsor Block extension too, it’s really cool
Unforeseen@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Yeah recently starting using this and it’s excellent, no more manually trying to skip over yet another nordvpn sponsor monologue
Something_Complex@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Same I no longer use the YouTube app in my telphone
100_percent_a_bot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Newpipe is pretty good, you can get it through the fk droid store
neonred@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fennec is Firefox for Android and it even supports uBlock, Dark Reader and others.
netchami@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Oh no, how unfortunate. Sadly, we don’t have alternative YouTube clients like Invidious or Piped that can be used with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links to these alternative front-ends. And unfortunately, you can’t use LibreTube or NewPipe on Android, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS, iPadOS and tvOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
GardeningSadhu@lemm.ee 11 months ago
damn this is awesome! this comment here is exactly why i hang out here instead of reddit these days. never see stuff like this there anymore, useful stuff. thank you so much!
netchami@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Lemmy actually encourages me to post comments that are hopefully helpful for others. On Reddit I was just lurking, but on Lemmy, I actually participate in discussions.
ArianaGrande@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yes, that’s such a shame. Thank you for making me aware that we have no such alternatives.
BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve seen youtube content on piped I know full well to be 4k video be blurred so badly as to be nearly unwatchable- they honestly decided to spend money to make their content worse as a lever to get you to watch ads or to submit to tracking etc
netchami@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I use Piped daily and I never experienced such issues.
masquenox@lemmy.world 11 months ago
…and your viewing experience will be far, far worse if you don’t use one.
HiddenLychee@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Right? Having an ad blocker means my video gets slowed down by a few seconds, not having an ad blocker means I get to watch a 30 second ad from a local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators. I think I know my choice lmao
masquenox@lemmy.world 11 months ago
local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators.
So now I have another reason to use an ad-blocker. This world needs fornicators, dammit.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
by a few seconds
For now.
einlander@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They had a long time to make the ad watching process less painful, or adding actual value to a premium subscription, but they are doing everything to make YouTube worse.
_number8_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
i could maybe start to swallow the actual tech getting worse (just like everything else is lately) but this arrogant, odious attitude they’re putting on lately is so obscene and anti-consumer. it’s like it’s their god-given right to serve us ads and our solemn duty to consume them. eat my ass.
DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee 11 months ago
YouTube premium should have built-in sponsorblock. That’s one of the ways that free clients are literally better than the paid service, mostly on mobile. Let me change the theme to different colours, let me show/hide the “shorts” and “create” tabs. In general, just give me the features that YouTube revanced has on the official app.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
If the price was like $5 per month and it gave you no ads and 4K steaming it might be worth it. But at the current pricing it just isn’t good value since YouTube doesn’t produce content like other streaming services (and creators still have to rely on sponsorships for their livelihood regardless of whether the viewer is a premium subscriber) that justifies paying the higher prices for the service.
Instead their attack on their customers rather than just making the service valuable enough to pay for makes me never want to give them a cent.
coyootje@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I know right? Executives just never seem to get that you actually need to provide value to have people want to sign up for it. Saying that though, there’s a lot of dumb consumers out there that just pay for it if needed.
VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I had the paid service until they jacked up the price for no reason at all. The second they announced the price hike for no reason I cancled my sub and have just been using a third party app to watch it on my phone or ublock on firefox
Smacks@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Wonder how much money they’ve wasted trying to block the blockers
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s even more weird all that invested time into people who are going to find ways to block them either way, instead of focusing on their userbase that doesn’t use them. Seems like they are rummaging through the couch cushions for pennies at this rate.
USSEthernet@startrek.website 11 months ago
Since this whole debacle started, they’ve just made ad blockers more prevalent to people who didn’t know about them. Ad blocker use is actually up now compared to when they started making this a big deal.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Considering they can use this knowledge to apply it to the entire Google ecosystem, I’d say they aren’t wasting money in learning about new ways to fuck us over.
tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
These shenanigans have me rapidly transitioning from “I don’t want to see your annoying ads” to “I don’t want you to make any money at all”.
vermyndax@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m already there, and I’m applying this thinking to every site - including the one hosting this article.
tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Same, I view the whole internet through uBlock and a pihole, so my value as an “impression” is virtually zero.
I’m not against for-profit websites making some money (and I run my own website, which generates a whopping $0), but Google has jumped the shark with their sketchy malware bullshit, and I’m starting to root for that organization to die.
Sheeple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Switched to duckduckgo purely because I wanted to stop giving Google money via searching
starbreaker@kbin.social 11 months ago
The viewing experience already sucks. I'd like to see them make it worse than it already is.
Krackalot@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
It’s google, they will find a way.
Dragomus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I watch YouTube content on my tv, and get ads, next to using it on my PC where I block them. Generally I did not mind the ads, since it is part of the business model.
But frankly the experience on the tv is degrading quickly in the last 12 months:
From 2 skippable ads at the start (and end) of a video, I now get 2 longer unskippable ones, but regularly it doubles to 4 and a 5th that is either short or skippable. And if it’s still 2 at the start then usually 1-2 mins in I see 2 more long ads … If I have the gall to rewind or forward the video I get 2 more long ads, usually followed by 2 short ones a minute or two later… Some of that is probably ad-space tagged by the creators, but clearly YT overrules that and places its own ad markers.
Slowly I feel it’s leaning towards punishment to watch content on YT, at least on the tv.
On top of that there is the annoying interface that blocks a full 30% of the screen, often blocking the one thing I wanted to look at. Then the ads that always break subtitles of the video, or somehow enforcing subtitles in a language that I can not read.
And don’t get me started on the topic-bubble the algorithm captures the user in.
YT should have left it as it was a few years ago, but it is forcing more and more ads, making things unfriendlier for both the viewer and creator, all to squeeze the viewers for more and more revenue.
It’s a shame it’s all so detrimental to the wealth of knowledge on there.
So if a good and proper alternative is able to stand on its feet I will gladly follow the creators and watch the new stuff on there.
pajn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Use smarttube instead of the official YouTube app, the ads are gone and it’s better in every other way as well. Faster, more features, quality settings stay where you left them, sponsorblock support and much more.
x4740N@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Just buy or build a pc and plug it into the TV screen
It’s more customisable than a smart tv and you can even set up something like kodi
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 months ago
I guarantee it’s a worse experience with ads.
Mongostein@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
The ads make it pretty bad. They’d have to work really hard to make it worse without ads.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Wait until they make it so you either have to wait 20 minutes to watch a video or turn off your adblocker.
Because they can do that if they want and they will if they feel it’s worth it to them.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 11 months ago
I mean… it definitely will if you turn off your ad blocker.
dan1101@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Yeah, I’ve been on YouTube with ads and if it weren’t for the Skip Ads button I could not tolerate it. Try to watch a 10 minute video and it starts with a 3 minute ad. How is that remotely reasonable?
MaxPower@feddit.de 11 months ago
They still don’t get it. “Might get worse without turning of my ad-blocker” still beats “is definitely worse without ad-blocker”
someguy@pleroma.someotherguy.xyz 11 months ago
@TangledHyphae @technology
Then, use a program that is a different YouTube Front End.
On Android phones, you can download NewPipe or LibreTube from the F-Droid store. These will allow you to subscribe to channels and to watch without ads.
You can use Invidious instances or you can setup your own to watch through a website.
Invidious Instances: https://docs.invidious.io/instances
Invidious GitHub Code: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Because YouTube does not pay most creators enough to live on, please support your favorite YouTubers using Patreon, Locals, or wherever.theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well, it’ll also make my viewing experience worse if I don’t so…
whats_all_this_then@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s been years since I’ve used YouTube without Revanced, SponsorBlock, and uBlock Origin. The vanilla experience when I see it on other people’s devices horrifies me every single time.
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Rawdogging YouTube today is a similar experience to what I had with a free trial of Hulu several years ago. The ads were so frequent and so lengthy that I cancelled several days before the trial was even over. I swear I was getting six minutes of ads for every two minutes of content.
There’s a point where the greed makes the product unusable.
I watch a lot of Tubi on my TV, and I find the ads there tolerable. They don’t just flood you with them. I’m totally ok with sitting through their ad breaks in exchange for a free watching experience.
(I don’t know if Hulu has gotten better or worse. The experience was so god awful that I’ve never even slightly entertained the thought of trying it again)
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’d rather pay the creators directly on their Patreon then allow Google to pester me with ads.
ubermeisters@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How to kill your business model step 3
thezeesystem@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oh no are there going to try to block the ad blockers but then the ad blockers block the ad blockers blockers? When will it end? They can keep on trying to make it worse but people will just keep figuring out how to bypass it.
samus12345@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Isn’t a blocked ad better than an ignored one for an advertiser? They don’t have to pay for the blocked one.
casmael@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I can’t believe the amount of bootlickers in this thread trying to justify google’s blatant attempts at capitalising on the monopoly it has aggressively acquired. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck advertising. Fuck sundar pichai and his shitty ideas about how to ‘make money’. Aww no boo fucking Hoo has the mega-corp decided it can’t run this huge monopoly at a loss anymore after literally years of doing just fucking that? Who the fuck cares? Eat shit and go bust I literally do not give a flying fuck and I hope they go fucking bankrupt if only for the obviously anti-competitive and clearly fucking incompetent business practices. Fuck off. All advertising is theft of time. Eat shit.
UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 11 months ago
And I warn Google that it would have to first find and suck my cock real good for me to consider allowing it to do that.
SamVergeudetZeit@feddit.de 11 months ago
I love how aggressive google is becoming. It drives more and more people into the arms of open source os and firefox
quams69@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Suck my fat hog google
spirinolas@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Hey buddy, it would be a damn shame if something happened to your viewer experience. Oh, no, we’re your buddies, eheheh. For a small fee, we’ll make sure your experience will be safe.”
Siegfried@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What holds youtube from blocking all videos to addblock users just as other sites do? Are they afraid of pushing youtube down the cliff?
I don’t understand why self hosted videos aren’t more popular
dan1101@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Poor YouTube only brought in 29 billion dollars in revenue for 2022. They are 11% of Googles revenue.
Now granted they are seeing some slowdown in revenue growth, you know shareholders hate that. So maybe they are trying to create some revenue growth again by making more users pay.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Sorry Google.
I’m gonna use YouTube ad free or I won’t use it.
And I ain’t gonna pay for it.
iAmTheTot@kbin.social 11 months ago
Pretty sure that they are fine with that, they are actively trying to get rid of you.
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ding ding ding. It’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s the harsh truth. This is essentially akin to a super high maintenance Karen going “I’m never going to shop here again” even though she immediately returns everything she purchases. The company isn’t making any profit off of her, (in fact they’re losing money because she demands employees’ attention whenever she’s shopping) so a sensible corporate response should be “okay, we’re glad to see you go. Please don’t come back.”
YouTube doesn’t want the users who block ads and refuse to pay. Those users are a net drain on the system. Lemmy likes to yell about FOSS, and there is a lot to love about that… But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”. Someone had to devote time and resources to building and hosting that “free” thing. The fact that they’re willing to share their effort is great! But it can’t be the expectation.
As someone who does a lot of freelance work, I’ll say the same thing that I say to clients when they ask me to work for free because of the exposure: Exposure is what people die of when they can’t pay their rent. I’m not saying YouTube is going to go bankrupt because of these users, but the users can’t reasonably expect YouTube to continue to pay for/accommodate them.
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not in the slightest. They want to have their cake and eat it, meaning they want you on the platform but using it their way. Why else would they put so much effort into this fools errand of subverting ad blockers?
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 11 months ago
If that were true they’d have restricted YouTube to logged in people.
_s10e@feddit.de 11 months ago
No.
Im pretty sure they are fine with free riders when they are not too many.
Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Does that mean I should pull all my content?
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 11 months ago
Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don't think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don't think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?
stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 11 months ago
For me personally, I would rather pay for a service than with my time via ads.
That said the services provided these days are unreliable, gatekept, metered and not enjoyable. Why should I pay for shitty service?
Therefore I’m only left with one option and my wellies are strapped tight! 🫡
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Honestly?
Not my monkeys, not my circus.
I don’t care what YouTube wants to do or how they do it, they need viewers and if they can’t figure out how to keep em, ah well.
hedgehog@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.
Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.
Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.
And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.
rebul@kbin.social 11 months ago
I don't mind paying for YouTube content. I do mind their data harvesting, however. Figured out that my life isn't diminished at all without Youtube.
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You think it costs $30b a year to run YouTube?
There’s a middleground between reckless profiteering and not making any money at all. And yet YouTube discontinued their $5 tier. But no, it’s the kids who are out of touch.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Honestly, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. If it were up to me, it would be banned.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not OP, but I personally would like to see a variety of options for how I see ads. Not what ads I see, but how they’re delivered. I imagine several less intrusive options and the option to continue ads as they are now. I would need two or three less intrusive options combined to cover my viewing, or I could take only the current annoying interrupting ads on their own.
On second thought, YouTube would just end up turning on all options and stopping playback for anyone who finds the options list.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Subsidise it with your other services
_number8_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
by being owned by google?
_number8_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
yeah, them needing the money (??) or whatever is one thing, but this arrogant fucking attitude lately is so repugnant. set up a patreon, don’t fucking fight against your users like this. it’s not exactly real TV or oxygen, it’s fucking youtube. it’s 90% garbage anyway