“because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership”
not like Youtube rewards creators for viewership either (and then lying to the advertisers as well)
YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown now includes third-party apps
Submitted 7 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/15/24131338/youtube-ad-blocker-crackdown-mobile-apps
Comments
cerement@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
I think YouTubers make fractional pennies from Ads, and mostly only if its fully watched and sometimes clicked to go to the website. So if you get a 15 second ad, and skip to the content, you didn’t give the creators any money.
Also, shout out to those ads being horrible. My first time ever installing an adblocker was during a rapid anti-smoking campaign, that had body horror. 15 year old me didn’t want to smoke, nor wanted to after, but it was so disturbing that I learned how to avoid them.
Not even going into the disturbing or weird ads. One time I got an ad for a “Ching Chong Fing Fong shirt company” as a way of mocking Chinese people because their government sucks. Another time, I got a full 12 hour video by a Vietnamese couple just grilling in their backyard. No subtitles, not even sure if they were aware they enabled their videos to do that, or didn’t fully understand the process of uploading videos.
Anytime I see actual ads on the internet, not just YouTube, it just makes me go “I am perfectly justified in not seeing these weird ads.” I don’t give them any money no matter what I do, so why not have my eyes saved from bright flashing colors and scam artists?
dustyData@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If I recall correctly, ever since videos could be called up as ads you can just pay for any video to be an ad, as long as it’s on YouTube, and it doesn’t have to be yours. I don’t know if this has changed, but an essays channel figured out that that’s the fastests way someone could target a competitor’s channel. Paying to have someone else’s videobat an ad tanks that video ad revenue and discoverability instantly. Ad views count as views to the video and skipping an ad counts as a skip on the video which signals the algorithm to think that nobody wants or likes to see that video. Do it to enough new videos and you can entirely kill a previously profitable channel in a couple of months.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 7 months ago
My first time ever installing an adblocker was during a rapid anti-smoking campaign
Those ads made me want to take up smoking out of spite.
Maeve@kbin.social 7 months ago
They could probably retain users simply by running ads every 10 minutes, rather than every 3 minutes.
dojan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh but they don’t care about anything but short form content. If they could ditch supporting long form content today they would.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Money/s is the more used metric. Retention is secondary or even tertiary to money/s. Behold the algorithm, great and terrible, sheathed in robes of black and grasping sickle white.
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
At this point id rather see youtube die than watch ads
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I was watching a long video on chromecast today and I had ads every three minutes or so. That’s a two hours video. The amount of ads is disgusting.
YouTube is unwatchable without an ad blocker.
InternetUser2012@midwest.social 7 months ago
My kid would watch his videos with ads and I offered to set him up with an alternative with no ads. He said no, I like the ads. I said ok then. That was two years ago. Last week he was losing his shit because of all the ads that made it unwatchable. I set him up with the ad free alternative and I get thanked every day for it.
Youtube is tanking their own platform.
TitanLaGrange@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This is why I pay for YT Premium. No way in hell am I watching ads, but I do want to be able to use the platform, and the money has to come from somewhere. So far it’s been pretty good value, although SponsorBlock is of course still required.
Moghul@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I would like to pay for YT Premium, but I think the service is bad. The product is good, and the service is bad.
If I say I don’t want to see this video, I don’t want to see this fucking video again, youtube. I said don’t recommend this channel, and you said I won’t see it again, but I just refreshed, and there it is. I am not dutch, I don’t speak dutch, I’ve never even been to the Netherlands. I shouldn’t be seeing videos in dutch.
Routinely, I have to go through my home page and try to train the algorithm but I’ve just given up. I got an extension now that just permanently removes channels and videos I don’t want to see.
The thing is… the product is the videos, and youtube doesn’t do the videos. Youtube does the service, and the service is bad. I understand that the ads pay the youtubers but the truth is I don’t care. That pay is trash, and if they want my premium money, youtubers should unionize and force youtube to improve the service.
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Nope bankrupt youtube and rebuild from the ashes
Draegur@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Yes - AND I like that being a premium subscriber compensates creators I watch EVEN WHEN they are otherwise “demonetized” - like, if they cover news and the news contains upsetting information, YouTube will reduce their ad exposure. But my views still award them as much credit as ever, and count for, like, dozens of ad-supported views under normal circumstances.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
I haven’t seen an anti adblocker popup on youtube for a couple months now, I though they gave up. It looks like the uBlock developers and block list maintainers are just doing an excellent job staying ahead of whatever youtube is doing.
50MYT@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Revanced update fixed it on their end about two weeks ago also.
rar@discuss.online 7 months ago
Bless the Revanced guys. They made my mobile youtube binge watches as smooth as my desktop firefox + ublock setup.
FrostKing@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Personally, I don’t think a service is in the wrong for trying to protect against ad block, especially when their revenue comes from ads. However I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with adblockers continuing to innovate to circumvent that. I’m rooting for Ublock Origin lol
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
they also fucked themselves over with the ad skill issues they’ve had over the years. Advertisers now find it to be more worthwhile to advertise directly with creators, though that also means they make a lot more money, so.
They kinda dug their own grave, to be honest.
force@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What made me and I imagine a large chunk of other people convert to revanced/similar apps is the super aggressive advertising, it’s impossible to use youtube when you get a double ad before and after every 5 second video and get 30 second midrolls every like 3 minutes. You can’t skip through a video to find the part you want to see because you’ll just get an ad. It’s extremely infuriating and time-consuming, it used to be whete I was willing to deal with it but they fucked it up. Now I can never go back to ad-riddled YouTube, even if it has a “reasonable” amount of advertising.
r3df0x@7.62x54r.ru 7 months ago
This is what Louis Rossman said. Youtube is completely in their right to kick people off for blocking ads. At the same time, it’s also not a pissing match that’s worth getting heavily invested in, because ultimately Youtube is going to lose unless they can start coercing people into installing proprietary apps which they already have for mobile devices.
r3df0x@7.62x54r.ru 7 months ago
This is what Louis Rossman said. Youtube is completely in their right to kick people off for blocking ads. At the same time, it’s also not a pissing match that’s worth getting heavily invested in, because ultimately Youtube is going to lose unless they can start coercing people into installing proprietary apps which they already have for mobile devices.
rasakaf679@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
One 10-15 sec ad for an 5-10 mins video would be fair. Because if you calculate the ad shown in Cable TV it was similar I would watch them no problem. But NOOO these greedy fckrs want 3-5 ads of >15secs unskipable ads shoved down our throats. They have record profits. In a business if you are in profit then it’s a good thing. But these fcks want to increase profit year by year, not stable profit for the number of users. That want infinite growth and profit from a finite source and they crazy or what? So if anyone says blocking ads on YouTube is piracy, then fck you and those greedy fckrs. They crossed the limit long time ago and they are reaping what they had sowed.
Ginger666@lemmy.world 7 months ago
No amount of ads are “fair”
I’m done wasting my life for other people.
Go ahead tho, you do you boo
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They’re publicly traded, they have to. Thats not an excuse mind you, but if you ever like a service and they go public, just understand the end users are no longer the focus.
piskertariot@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Television shows are 22-24 minutes, because cable TV should show 6-8 minutes of ads every half hour. 30 second ads in blocks of 3 or 4, multiple times per show.
15 seonds ads are almost too short for a trip to the kitchen. I’m not saying they’re good, but if you want to compare to cable TV, you need to remember the dark times.
RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I refuse to use the official youtube app. Its so trash… I use newpipe and its amazing to just have all my favorite videos bookmarked locally in different lists.
If they take that away from me i will just stop using youtube.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Better start preparing for the coming exodus. Try Odysee, Peertube and Nebula and see what works for you. Once the enshittification hits critical mass, you’ll be ready to let go of that sinking ship.
0xblaze@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Try Tubular, newpipe + sponsor block combo!
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 7 months ago
The web should have had a Terms of Usage from start. Something like
“If you broadcast content on the internet, expect people to download it.”
hightrix@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This. I always say this exact thing.
If you provide content for free, expect people to take it for free.
Kedly@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Since the initial push, I have not even had to reset my ublock… stop using Chrome
umbrella@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
everything still fine here on firefox + ublock origin
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Wish I could say the same.
I’m also using firefox + ublock, but Ive noticed when I’m watching shorts, I’ll occasionally get an ad that’s disguised as a short. There’s no like/dislike buttons or anything.
lost_faith@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Sometimes I have to reload the page when using these 2. the page will load but just have a youtube icon in the centre of the player or the spinny circle until i hit f5
treefrog@lemm.ee 7 months ago
New pipe and inner tune still work fine.
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Somewhere out there a CEO thought this was a good idea. All it seems to be doing is pushing people to other platforms (the younger gen moving over to tiktok and the older gems moving 3rd party or just offline).
RonSijm@programming.dev 7 months ago
YouTube is bringing its ad blocker fight to mobile. In an update on Monday, YouTube writes that users accessing videos through a third-party ad blocking app may encounter buffering issues or see an error message that reads, “The following content is not available on this app.”
Yea, noticed that last week. Is already fixed again in latest revanced.
-
Delete microG, revanced manager, and YouTube revanced
-
Download and install the new gmscore, which replaces microG: github.com/ReVanced/GmsCore/…/v0.3.1.4.240913
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Download and install latest version of Revanced Manager: github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/…/v1.20.1
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Download and install YouTube 19.09.37 from APKmirror: apkmirror.com/…/youtube-19-09-37-android-apk-down…
-
kratoz29@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Oh, I definitely have experienced “The following content is not available on this app.” Before, but I thought it was just a thing of my Revanced version outdated because I rarely update it… Which I’m gonna do just now 😁
I hope this doesn’t bring too many issues to Smart Tube, which is where I do 99% of my YT usage (and I have yet to be bothered with any bug).
Ginger666@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Did they fuck up revanced again?
Nope, it still works…
Deeleres@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
In Germany, there is a law that regulates the amount and intervals of advertising for private television broadcasters: 20% or 1/5 per broadcast day may be used for advertising. Programs that are shorter than 30 minutes may have a break, otherwise there must be 20 minutes between commercial breaks - 30 minutes in the evening. Unfortunately, there are still some loopholes.
Children’s programs are not allowed to have commercial breaks.
It’s a shame that this law still doesn’t apply to YouTube.
csm10495@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Makes me miss a time where they couldn’t tell if ads were actually watched or not.
Sooner or later, ad blockers should just simulate the ad being played (in the background) with the real content going in the foreground to act as if the ad was watched.
Kind of like going to the bathroom during commercials.
Then again I wish we had a real alternative to YouTube. (Don’t point me to the fediverse video stuff … that’s not what I mean.) There is no real competition for a place to freely upload videos … or on the other side find all that content. No one wants to scale enough to compete. (Very few probably could considering the amount of new content per minute).
If only there was real competition, then YouTube would have to fight over our attention/usage by lowering ad count.
No competition means worse for all.
lorkano@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s kinda cute how they are utterly loosing with adblocker crackdown and now they are saying they will even handle their party apps. No company will handle an open source project full of talented people pissed of by ads.
SeventySeven@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
What they don’t realize is people are also using those third party apps because they are offering much more customization than the stock YouTube app ever offers. I had free premium and still used Revanced because it’s such a godsend. There’s so much useless crap in the youtube layout.
elliot_crane@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Dickheads coming to shill for YT Premium in 3… 2…
x4740N@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I just use revanced
someguywithacomputer@lemmynsfw.com 7 months ago
I kind of already hoarded so many videos from youtubes last failed adblock crusade that I barely even use the real youtube anymore. Guess I’ll show my disapproval by improving my system even more.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 7 months ago
If they fully manage to block applications from viewing YouTube, then I will just stop viewing YouTube entirely. And I will figure out channels to watch on Odyssey and peertube. That will also be my last Google service since that is the only one I use frequently since I deleted my Google account two years ago.
BrownianMotion@lemmy.world 7 months ago
krimson@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Luckily Piped, Invidious and others are still doing its thing.
mark@programming.dev 7 months ago
Speaking of, does anyone know how best to block YouTube ads on my Sony TV? It uses Android and I have the YT app on it.
Asudox@lemmy.world 7 months ago
GrayJay works great. And it’s not even limited to YouTube, there are lots of other platforms you can fill your feed with. And also, you still can get your feed directly from YouTube, so recommendations are there and channel memberships also work. You can’t use YouTube likes and comments, but you can create a Polycentric identity, and like the videos or comment on it in that “decentralized” identity platform.
scripthook@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I still use FreeTube for desktop and no ads here :)
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Lmao, because they’ve been so successful with browsers…
fiend_unpleasant@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I hear people talking about how Youtube is not paying out like it used to. So they are playing ads to us and not paying the creators. There is a growing group of people looking at open source platforms like Odysee and PeerTube.
kadu@lemmy.world 7 months ago
YouTube’s argument is the same as Linus’ from LTT: if you watch a video without ads, you’re failing to comply with your side of the transaction, thus essentially pirating that content and stealing the revenue source.
Regardless if we agree or not with that statement, I’ll absolutely side with adblockers always for a deeper issue: it’s my screen, so I get the ultimate say on what content gets rendered. Quite literally. It’s my network, my cable, my screen, my graphics card, my web browser running JavaScript on my CPU - you do not, ever, get to overreach and decide what pixels show up or not. If I don’t want your obnoxious ad for an AI girlfriend to show up, there’s no moral argument to be had here.
warm@kbin.earth 7 months ago
I was happy with an ad at the side of the video. Then they started popping up over my video, then they started appearing before my video, then they started appearing throughout my video. Companies shot themselves in the foot with online advertising, banner ads and such weren't much of a problem, but once ads start disrupting the content we visit a site for, then we look to block them ads. More people blocking ads is less revenue, so they make the ads more aggressive... and the cycle continues.
And on a side note, Linus can fuck off.
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That and the large ad networks even on sites like YouTube and Facebook literally are advertising scams. Every time I browse shorts on either get ads that are obvious scams of the “There’s a new $6400 monthly health credit see if you qualify.” variety. On one of Meta’s apps I got an ad that was for male enhancement that was straight up clips of uncensored hardcore porn. Not just nudity but full on PIV sex. If they can’t even do the work to properly screen their ads they can get fucked, I’m blocking all of it that I can.
Johanno@feddit.de 7 months ago
Non disruptive ads were meant to advertise.
Slightly annoying ads were meant to be seen more since people just ignored banners by default.
Hidden ads (like an ad in an article which you really could tell it was an ad) were meant to increase the image of a company.
Disruptive ads like in YouTube or Spotify aren’t meant for advertising. They don’t really care about the advertising money, they want to force you to buy premium. The more annoying the ad is the higher the chances you pay 20€ a month for them to go away.
OtherPetard@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Yeah, the pre-ads (unstoppable) and the massively increased loading times of the basic Youtube page makes it impossible to successfully Rickroll people
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 7 months ago
By that logic using a VCR to record television and fast-forwarding adverts with piracy.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And you see digital tv providers trying to implement fast forward blockers without chasing away their customers too much
StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
That argument was in fact made when VCRs first came out. I don’t remember how exactly it played out but in the end the courts here in the US said that VCRs were fine.
Chozo@fedia.io 7 months ago
The agreement isn't that you watch the ad, but that you allow the ad to play on your device. That's it. Whether or not you see it or hear it doesn't matter; the "cost" for this type of content is a few moment of your device's time, not your attention.
Aeri@lemmy.world 7 months ago
TBH I’m just so fucking tired of ads overstepping, back in the day there’s be a little banner on the side of a page advertising a truck or whatever, I’m sick of seeing like, enormous length ads.
One day I had a 3 hour minecraft let’s play uploaded as an ad, you think I should have to watch all of that youtube?
And the frequency is getting crazy.
JDPoZ@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 7 months ago
When YouTube Red first dropped they were putting hour-long pilot episodes of their shows as pre-roll ads. Now I notice ads on shorts are full of obvious scams related to “new monthly health credits”. Still better than getting an ad on Facebook reels that was uncensored hardcore porn.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 7 months ago
You know what, I actually agree with YouTube’s argument. Ad blocking is piracy. In fact, no, it’s worse than piracy. If I pirate a movie, Disney makes no money, but it costs them nothing at all. If I watch YouTube without an ad blocker, I’m depriving YouTube of its revenue source and I’m costing them money. Morally, ad blocking sits somewhere between piracy and actual theft.
The thing is? I don’t care. I ad block YouTube all the time and feel not a lick of guilt. The reason: Google brought this on themselves. I used to happily pay for YouTube Red. But they have continuously, both before and after that point, been actively hostile to the people actually producing the content they make. Their willingness to bow down to copyright trolls and complete inability to properly apply fair use. They extremely harsh policies on acceptable content, stopping people talking about sex education or mediaeval weaponry being able to reliably makes money.
And the straw that broke this camel’s back was when they changed the requirements to be in the Partner Program, locking out all the smaller creators from ever being able to make money on YouTube. I never considered myself a “creator”, but over the 5 years prior to that I occasionally uploaded stuff I was doing anyway. I had amassed almost $100 over those 5 years. Not an impressive amount, for sure, but having that taken away from me made me feel unwelcome. I don’t think I’ve uploaded anything public since, and I’ve been blocking ads on the site since then.
Even worse, not long after this change, they decided to start showing ads even on videos from non-partnered videos, so you can get ads on my videos even though I don’t see a single cent.
So fuck YouTube. Ad blocking is worse than piracy, and I say good.
TheBat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Google: You’re pirating our content!
Us: Yeah, so what?
JDPoZ@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My god… are you… me? Same exact shit. Created my YT account 14 years ago. Made some vids… some got some views… eventually I got a few dollars deposited like for 3 years. Probably totaled the same $100 you mentioned then boom. Shut down.
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’d agree with that logic if YouTube kept up their end of the bargain and actually vetted their ad buyers. Instead they show ads for fake stimulus scams, fake news, and blatant malware.
I manage a large network and ads are blocked at the edge of the network. Not using an adblocker is a security risk that is not acceptable for my company. I pay for YouTube premium because it’s in my means and I get value from the subscription but I don’t blame anyone who takes the same approach
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 7 months ago
You must MITM all traffic and do some magic with stripping/injecting JavaScript then? Because every time I’ve tried with pihole, its just threads and threads of people saying its not possible with DNS blocking because the ads are served from the video servers.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
TL;DR: my property rights trump Youtube’s business model.
Kid_Thunder@kbin.social 7 months ago
The problem is that there is that ad networks and ad placements are just bad actors in the consumer space. Not only has malware been passed time and time again with ads but also false ads to malware. When that happens suddenly the content creator/website/whatever 'isn't responsible' for it. Then there's the issue of ads being placed everywhere slowing down websites but even worse, getting in the way with auto play audio and video, videos autoscrolling over the content you're trying to read or whatever, etc.
As a consumer, I should not and ethically do not need to worry about another's business model. If the business model fails simply because I don't allow something that model depends on to traverse my network then it is on them to figure it out. If the ads get in the way of the content, then I just want consume the content anyway.
Some news websites use Ad Admiral or whatever it is called and I haven't bothered trying to bypass the adblock wall for them. I just simply consume the content elsewhere.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yeah I wasn’t using an Adblock on YouTube when this all started. Then the ads got so intrusive it was seriously hindering content. These days I don’t watch much YouTube, but it’s with Adblock
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I mean, the argument falls short when YT (or LTT) spew literal garbage. I might have a hint of sympathy if it wasn’t a dumpster fire of decaying babies.
The few people I sub do and do yt as a monitory source, I support elsewhere. Fuck YouTube acting as a sleezy middle-man and simultaneously playing the victim.
SaltySalamander@fedia.io 7 months ago
A sleezy middleman that happens to foot the substantial YT infrastructure bill.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
The fact that you don’t like the product doesn’t really change that their expected transaction is “watch an ad to receive it”. Every argument against the idea of not watching the ads being piracy seems to be, essentially, either “the product isn’t good” or “the price is too high”, neither of which is relevant to the fact that they’ve put a “price” on it and you’re skipping the part where you “pay”.
Quality of the videos is irrelevant. Intrusiveness of the ads is irrelevant. The ads are the price, the videos are the product. You’re getting the videos without seeing the ads.
I agree that the “price” is too high, the ads are awful, and the videos are frequently bad. I will continue to block those ads as long as I am able, but I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that I’m not skipping out on the cheque, as it were, when I do so.
Literally no one is asking you to have any sympathy. Why get so defensive when it’s pointed out that skipping ads is skipping on your side of the transaction when using an ad supported service?
Chickenstalker@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Linus Short Sebastian is an asshole. I like his channel and even bought a water bottle, but he is an asshole nontheless. His opinions are always 5 years outdated. He used to hate reddit but now liked Reddit. Probably a contrarian too.
TheBat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Cool, let’s body shame people.
MakePorkGreatAgain@lemmy.basedcount.com 7 months ago
if a content creator doesnt want people to be able to skip the ads/demonetize the ad revenue, then they should post on a platform that makes ads mandatory.
problem is that no one will watch crap on that sort of platform
starman@programming.dev 7 months ago
Another argument proving that Linus Media Group is a bunch of morons
pop@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
My guy, that’s why there is DRM. Your screen are loading pixels, because they let you. Those third party apps and frontends work because they let the users have a little freedoms.
If you steal something off the mall and bring it to your home, it doesn’t make it yours. People thinking all that code, infrastructure and labour to run something on the internet should be free because they have an internet connection are entitled as the sovcit bunch. Just cringe.
Advertisers, Malwares and Ad blockers are all to blame for the current state of the internet. We’re heading for paywalled internet and entitled basement dwellers are going to complain you miss the “old internet”
Seriously, I use adblockers but the rationale people make up for this like countless others are just plain stupid.
Eccitaze@yiffit.net 7 months ago
Fuck that victim-blaming nonsense. The entire reason ad blockers were invented in the first place were because ads in the 90s and early 2000s were somehow even worse than they are now. You would click on a website, and pop-up ads would literally open new windows under your mouse cursor and immediately load an ad that opened another pop-up ad, and then another, and another, until you had 30 windows open and 29 of them were pop-up ads, all of them hoping to trick you into clicking on them to take you to a website laden with more and more pop-up ads. Banner ads would use bright, flashing, two-tone colors (that were likely seizure-inducing, so have fun epileptics!) to demand your attention while taking up most of your relatively tiny, low-resolution screen.
The worst offenders were the Flash-based ads. On top of all the other dirty tricks that regular ads did, they would do things like disguising themselves as games to trick you into clicking them. (“Punch the monkey and win a prize!” The prize was malware.) They would play sound and video–which were the equivalent of a jump scare back then, because of how rare audio/video was on the Internet in that day. They would exploit the poor security of Flash to try and download malware to your PC without you even interacting with them. And all this while hogging your limited dialup connection (or DSL if you were lucky), and dragging your PC to a crawl with horrible optimization. When Apple refused to support Flash on iOS way back in the day, it was a backdoor ad blocker because of how ubiquitous Flash was for advertising content at the time.
The point of all this is that advertisers have always abused the Internet, practically from day one. Firefox first became popular because it was the first browser to introduce a pop-up blocker, which was another backdoor ad blocker. Half the reason why Google became the company it did is because it started out as a deliberate break from the abuses of everyone else and gave a simple, clean interface with to-the-point, unobtrusive, text-based advertisements.
If advertisers and Google in particular had stuck to that bargain–clean, unobstrusive, simple advertisements that had no risk of malware and no interruption to user workflow, ad blockers would largely be a thing of the past. Instead, they decided to chase the profit dragon, and modern Google is no better than the very companies it originally replaced.
kadu@lemmy.world 7 months ago
When I ping YouTube’s server it provides me with a stream that contains an ad and a video. What I do with that stream is my problem, and if I want to chop it up it’s something I can freely decide.
Your server can send any data it wants, but it can’t decide what I do with it, are you nuts?
daddy32@lemmy.world 7 months ago
MY hardware and infrastructure was not free either and I and ONLY I get to decide how it is used.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
So the thing that blocks the first two is equally to blame?
I remember the day I started using an Ad blocker. I used to not care at all about ads on sites, “it’s how they make money. I can live with it.” And then I encountered a banner ad that screamed “HELOOOOOOO!” every time my mouse went over it. I couldn’t download an ad blocker fast enough.
Advertisers and Malware are to blame for Ad blockers. Advertisers will get more and more annoying and intrusive until people reach the point that they won’t put up with them anymore. Seeing as the internet is one big bucket and I can’t block some ads, then I will block all ads.
tfowinder@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
If something allows it then it’s morally justified. You can’t be naked intentionally and ask me to not look at same time.
Bookmeat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I hear you, buddy and I would 100% agree if not for the fact that they have a paid option where you can skip all the ads.
Content creator gets paid. YouTube gets paid. You don’t get ads.
It’s not rocket surgery.
kadu@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I don’t see how that’s relevant. If you want to engage in the paid YouTube subscription, go for it, it’s an entirely different thing though.
My computer requests from YouTube servers a video, the server gives me a stream of data - I didn’t steal it, I didn’t hack it, the server provided me this because it wanted to - and this stream contains an ad and a video. What I do with this stream is only my concern, you can’t force me to watch the ad. That would be like walking in the street and somebody says you’re unethical because you didn’t look at an outdoor advertisement banner, and that you will be forced to either pay a fee or look at the ad.
net00@lemm.ee 7 months ago
The same Linus who can’t be arsed to spend $500 of various people’s time to properly test a product is now telling us what to do?