YouTube's ad-blocking crackdown goes global

RiveDroite

@Catweazle I don't see anything wrong with Google enforcing adblockers to be disabled. Video streaming is extremely expensive and the sheer volume of bandwidth necessary to run a site such as YouTube is mindboggling.

You don't think that Google/YouTube should get ad revenue for hosting the video? How would they afford to run the service?

wintercoast

@Catweazle said in YouTube's ad-blocking crackdown goes global:

If they placed ads, YT paid them for the income and received a commission.

But now YT puts ads on the videos, way more as before, whether the author wants it or not and if he didn't want it, he doesn't receive any money for it, leaving YT with all the commission.

It's up to them what they do here, though ideally it ought not be applied retrospectively to existing creators?

Either way what is really nasty and arguably fraudulent is this...

A creator is demonetised by Google for whatever reason meaning they judge that the content (a video or the whole channel) is not suitable for advertising.

But Google still runs the ads and pockets the revenue itself! That happens, although I don't know whether it's short-lived post-monetisation or not.

edwardp

WRT the videos I recently saw that contained sponsor commercials in the middle of them, if I were paying for YT Premium and saw one of those sponsor commercials in a video, it would be the last time I watched a video from that particular creator.

If more and more creators do this, which they currently have the right to do (unless YT eventually tells them they can't), I believe it defeats the purpose of offering a premium service. Whether it's an un-skippable ad placed anywhere in the stream, or a sponsor's commercial placed in the middle of a video, it's an ad that you shouldn't have to pay to see.

Catweazle

@RiveDroite, so far YT has made very good money with its platform (more than $30M net last year), far from having problems with its servers. Naturally, income is necessary for a streaming service, but as I said before, there are other methods to make money than bothering users and content creators, as they are doing now.

There are other streaming platforms that also make money using other policies and can even allow themselves to reward the user for subscribing to channels, as Odysee and others do, there is no need to abuse the income with prices that would embarrass even Netflix.

Look at the prices that YT Video Club requires for renting a movie, they are prices with which I would buy the video in a store.
It is not necessity that drives YT but pure greed, abusing its monopoly position.

No one would be bothered by seeing banners and advertising videos on the page, without having to hammer the videos with multiple ads, many of which are of dubious value. Adding clickbaits in almost all the thumbnails and the annoying habit of pausing the playlists after a certain time, with no option to avoid it, Premium or not, without using corresponding extensions (Clickbait Remover and YouTube non stop)

RiveDroite

@Catweazle I totally get what you're saying, but the costs of running YouTube are drastically higher than those of something like Odysee.

A banner ad doesn't pay enough.
I'm not familiar with YT Video Club though, but the prices for renting a movie, etc are set by the movie companies rather than YouTube is it not?

That being said, I'm no Google/YouTube apologist, just trying to see both sides. I have huge beefs with how YouTube handles demonitization and other topics, but I won't get into those here.

Catweazle

@RiveDroite, just look at Google's revenue to know that no one believes this "we're going to die of hunger when you don't sign up for YT Premium." YT I had income last year in amounts I never had before, but as I said, monopoly leads to abuse. No, it is not out of necessity, the same thing is going to happen with Twitter, after Musk bought it and destroyed it with disastrous administration and unacceptable conditions, which caused a massive flight of users, including journalists, companies and important people.
Well, Mastodon and Fediverse in general appreciated it.

Article in AlternativeTo

Despite efforts to reform its ad strategy, YouTube's decision to increase the price of YouTube Premium and discontinue the cheaper Premium Lite plan could impact its appeal to potential subscribers. Not to mention free alternatives that are gradually gaining more popularity, like PeerTube and NewPipe

As said, Cobra Effect, obviously unknown by current Admins and Accountances in Google. "F... the users and creartors, only the interests of shareholders and investors matter".

wintercoast

@edwardp said in YouTube's ad-blocking crackdown goes global:

WRT the videos I recently saw that contained sponsor commercials in the middle of them, if I were paying for YT Premium and saw one of those sponsor commercials in a video, it would be the last time I watched a video from that particular creator.

The reason you see a lot of them is primarily due to YT's irrational and unpredictable moderation/censorship rules such that no creator who is monetised can count on that always being the case and certainly not for every video they post.

YT's moderation is also another reason why there's no way I would ever pay for YouTube Premium. I'm not going to do that if I can't count on my favourite creators having all their content shown or with the chance that they can be deplatformed without notice.

wintercoast

@Catweazle said in YouTube's ad-blocking crackdown goes global:

No, it is not out of necessity, the same thing is going to happen with Twitter, after Musk bought it and destroyed it with disastrous administration and unacceptable conditions

Musk's decisions have been chaotic, to put it mildly. However, with respect to free speech, Twitter is better than it was under the previous management, and he uncovered illegal US state-laundered censorship via the Twitter Files (though there was mostly ignored evidence of this from almost exactly three years ago).

Azuraia

I run YT on Adblock Browser on mobile, and have an ad block on desktop. Edge. Yes, that Edge.
hides from possible criticism But I only watch silly fiction on it, so it is fine! Poor Explorer.

Pesala

News of X’s death have been greatly exaggerated

People are spending 14% more time on 𝕏, with a 20% increase consuming video
Gen-Z is the largest and fastest growing segment — almost 200 million every month
There's a ton of activity on 𝕏 — with 100 billion impressions every day
A lot of content is created by its users -- with 500 million posts a day on 𝕏
Every single day, 1.5 million people sign up (that's up 4% from last year)
Creators have 10x since June.
𝕏 has paid almost $20 million dollars to creators via its ad rev

Some content providers are making good money from 𝕏 — in a few years, it may be the platform of choice.

Elon’s Interview with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Elon is not the loose cannon that the MMM make him out to be. He is a deep thinker, and an expert in tech. Don’t forget that it was his company x.com that merged with PayPal, before he started Tesla with the profits for the sale of his stake.

He speaks the truth as he sees it, even if it is against his short-term financial interests.

Catweazle

Another nice Desktop client (FOSS), which works very well, no ads and not only for YT (OpenSource)

MotionBox accesses and aggregates videos via the VBML language.
It supports DuckDuckGo, BitTorrent, TMDB, Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, Odysee, PeerTube, Last.fm and SoundCloud.
All of this inside multiple tabs and without ever showing an ad.

https://omega.gg/MotionBox/

I installed it and works great and blazing fast

RiveDroite

@Pesala Exactly this. Twitter's an extremely active site even to this day. People like Stephen King keep saying they're leaving but end up coming back, because that's where all the interaction is.

AbhiSR03

@Catweazle

It was last updated almost a year ago
is it safe?

Catweazle

@AbhiSR03, I think so, the community is pretty active. The MotionBox browser is made by several different FOSS, each with its own developement, eg. the VLC player script is part of this app.

edwardp

YouTube is being criminally charged under Irish law.

https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-criminal-spying-charges-ad-blocker-detection-3384885/

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/11/meta_youtube_criminal_charges/

Azuraia

@Pesala
Cheap media, cheap noise.
Keep going, Elon Musk.

electronvolt

@Catweazle Frist time hearing about this, thanks! Here are other few options:
Freetube.io for desktop
Newpipe for Android

From any browser:
https://redirect.invidious.io/

edwardp

I have noticed some content providers now embedding ads as part of their videos, which an ad-blocker has no affect on, because the ad is part of the actual video.

But a user can always fast-forward or skip thorugh such ads.

Pesala

@edwardp This approach is better for everyone. Content creators can get paid to promote relevant products and content consumers don’t get bombarded with irrelevant ads.

Creators will soon learn from user feedback if the promotion is some sort of scam, as their followers will comment to alert others to the scams.

edwardp

@Pesala I agree with that.

PC Gamer is reporting YouTube has been experimenting with ads that play while the video is paused.