Technology

I'd give up YouTube before ad blockers.

YouTube is WHY I have adblockers to this day. I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.

Their greed is why they make $0 from me many years later.

I think it’s rich they aren’t happy with people using them when they’re the ones that made the standard viewing experience awful in the first place.

I really don’t give a fuck what Youtube is happy about

! 2023-10-06 https://www.youtube.com
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Oh no, anyway.

The day I can't get around youtube ads is the day I stop using youtube. I already refuse to use it on my mobile device or my TV, due to the ads.

Ironically unreadable article, littered with ads.

Considering how prevalent scams and actively malicious content posing as ads are across ad services in general, having an ad blocker is just basic online safety at this point.

Advertising is just legal targeted harassment

The thing is YouTube just can't be nice about it. It just cannot. In times that it was adblocker resistant, they'd add more and longer and worse ads until they pissed off enough engineers who collectively declared it a crisis and built the many anti-YouTube-ad solutions we have, from alternative YouTube mirrors to the Firefox packages.

We've seen this play out in the tech industry multiple times, and always the public wins thanks, largely to programmers who just get ticked off and spend a weekend on pizza to create a bypass.

The executives at Alphabet know all they have to do is allow concessions to be only mildly annoying and leave them. Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content? That might be fair so long as it's pizza ads and not Jesus ministries telling us how sinful the LGBT+ are or Matt Walsh suggesting we make it illegal for some folk to vote.

But they can't do that. Shareholder Primacy means Alphabet must push for record profits, even if it means enshittifying all their services, including YouTube, and that means a 1/4 ad to content ratio and increasing that until it's intolerable and ad-based profit numbers go down due to failing viewership.

I understand that hosting video and streaming it is an expensive business that has to be paid, even if we ignore all the income Google has racked up by profiling people and (ab)using that to show ads. That said, I wouldn't mind if they had more taste which ads play, in what number and fucking when. Most annoying thing is when the play 3 minute ads on 6 minute video. Not even shittiest TV network does that. And also unskipable ads. These days I skip all, self-promotion and in-video sponsors included.

What is even more infuriating, I'm from one of the countries that had YouTube Premium Lite available. €6,99 for adfree YouTube with none of the 'offline' or YouTube Music nonsense that I wouldn't be using anyway.

My wife and myself have been subscribed for about 6 months now, totally seeing the value of it. Literally one month after signing my mum also onto it, she gets an email telling her that her subscription will end in a month from now.

Fuck that shit.

YouTube Premium Lite was perfect, affordable and removed exactly the main issue with YouTube: ads. Endless stupid amounts of ads.

I'll go back to Firefox with any amount of extensions that block ads and block the ad-block blockers. Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.

Too fuckin bad for YouTube. I won’t change my behavior, I’ll just not use YouTube.

Fuck em

I'm torn because fuck ads, but also YouTube is probably the most expensive website on earth to run (just the website itself, obviously a shipping company with a website will cost more.) Video is just obscenely expensive to store and they let free accounts upload 4k and keep it private.

I honestly don't know the solution here because YouTube being free is amazing, but they've literally never made money. I think a business model like nebula is more sustainable, but it sucks for those that can't afford it.

(To head off any arguments, I'm pro piracy, I just can't blame YouTube to trying to stop people)

I don't give a single fuck what they are Happy about.

Me, using Piped: what?

uBlock Origin for the win.

I've been paying the €5 ad free subscription without other premium features for years until they announced that it will be discontinued from next month.

So then I am going to take a new look into ad blockers.

Good job, YouTube.

If people don't want to engage with your business, maybe you need a better business

What is it with the number of people "happy" to pay for Youtube Premium? Like "why yes, I'm glad I can give a company that spies on me day and night for the privilege!"

YouTube, I've been using ad-blockers since the advent of pop-up ads in the late 90s. You've never been able to stop this, and you aren't going to now.

I don't use the YouTube app or watch your videos on my browser. I use FreeTube on desktop, LibreTube and GrayJay on mobile and FCast on TV so 🖕

we are not happy to endure 4minutes of ads for product we don't care about, each time we play a video.

Fuck you YouTube/Google I'm gonna use an Firefox + ublock origin till death do us apart. If there's no adblocker I'll just quit the internet.

YouTube can get bent with its biased algorithm pushing alt-right conservative crap to the masses.

Maybe I'll disable AdBlock if you get rid of unskippable ads. What's that, you're not gonna? Then I'm not gonna.

I'm not happy about YouTube and I'm doing something about it too.

What about android apps like "revanced" which allow you to have all the premium features and ad blocking without having to pay premium. It is legal as well.

All a person has to do is google search for it and download a proper version YouTube apk and then patch it and they are off to the races!

I used to pay for YouTube family for years, but they got greedy and raised prices. Now after about 30 mins of getting it set up once I never have to pay again.

Users are not happy with the amount of ads on YouTube and are doing something about it. What YouTube does not seem to recognize is that if you take their ads, plus the sponsored videos on the platform, it is all WAY too much. Like way way way too much and thus they are fighting a loosing battle here.

The core issue here is that there are many players involved in a video that all need to get paid. You have the YouTuber, YouTube, and most of all, shareholders who legally demand a return on their investment and will squeeze every last cent they can, even if it kills the company which seems to be the path we are on.

There are decentralized alternatives for video like Lemmy is for discourse, but like Lemmy, most rather use a big, “safe”, corporate service so here we are. How far will we have by to fall before we recognize that centralized services with shareholders are a dead end? Based on the stagnant price of Bitcoin for the past year or so, it seems we prefer falling and being exploited. Not the smart people here though as we are not seeing any ads on Lemmy. Decentralization is the solution, but far too many are spending time installing and maintaining ad blockers versus just leaving for less exploitative decentralized alternatives.

Oh well. Human gonna human and YouTube is gonna be a corporation to ensure shareholders get their return as they have no choice. Like literally they have no choice as directors legally need to do everything they can to drive shareholder value, not customer value.

That felt good to write. Rant complete I guess.

TL,DR:

YouTube is going to kill your grandma on Christmas Eve unless you disable as blockers AND send all the money you have to them in an unmarked envelope. No cops...