YouTube tightens thumbscrew to crack down on ad-blockers:
Google has been testing several ways to combat users who use ad-blockers on its YouTube video streaming site. One of the first tests informed users that ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube. The prompt, which blocks access to the site, offers three options to users to react to it. The two prominent ones are to configure the content blocker to allow ads on YouTube or to subscribe to the paid service YouTube Premium.
A small close icon in the top right corner is the third and less focused option. Users have the option to click on the x-icon to close the prompt and continue using YouTube.
Now, it appears, Google is making this option less attractive to users on the site. Instead of displaying the close icon directly, YouTube is now showing a timer in its place. In other words: users who get the prompt have to wait between 30 to 60 seconds before they can close the entire prompt and start using the site.
The notification appears to hit users of different content blockers, including uBlock Origin. It seems that the majority of users are not getting these prompts, likely because Google is still testing reception and the rate of return.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Saturday August 19 2023, @01:56PM (2 children)
Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" in action.
(Score: 2) by Squidious on Monday August 21 2023, @12:15PM (1 child)
It seems to me that anyone sharp enough to be using an ad blocker is probably also sharp enough to not be clicking on ads.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 21 2023, @09:28PM
Not only not clicking on ads, not looking at them.
Developing a thing called "ad blindness".
Oh, did I ever mention that Advertising destroys every medium it ever touches? [soylentnews.org]
If you have a disagreement with someone, don't resort to arson. That only inflames the situation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday August 19 2023, @02:03PM
As long as you go to a site that shits on your preference, well, stop using that site.
It may be hard to ween yourself off of the has-anything-happened-yet bandwagon, but it will make your life so much more worth living.
Stop the abuse of your choice, simply vote by not visiting them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Saturday August 19 2023, @02:05PM (13 children)
For me, should youtube shut me out for using ublock origin, I will either use yt-dlp [github.com], or failing that, do without. I don't plan to allow ads on youtube (they kept getting worse and worse, which is why they are now ublocked), and I don't feel right about paying to un-adify youtube.
(Score: 4, Informative) by BsAtHome on Saturday August 19 2023, @02:17PM (3 children)
They will show you ads whether you pay or not. The free tier will become unusable and utter shite in the near future (more than it already is) and only subscribers can see any relevant stuff. Then they will argue "cost, cost and cost" to justify adding ads to the subscription.
Don't trust them with your money. They will abuse you anyway they can.
And yes, use yt-dlp!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday August 19 2023, @05:13PM (2 children)
If you're saying they will eventually, maybe. If you're saying they are now, no. They are ad free. In terms of library and usefulness Youtube is technically the best streaming service im paying for right now. (clarification: my job often lands in me doing research and YT is particularly helpful for it... im not saying everybody should be getting it.)
That's really only a technical nitpick. Youtube TV has jacked up its rates, and even gave ppl a family plan then decided your family can only live in your zip code. Your warning about giving them money is spot on. I have no idea why Google gets the love it does these days.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Saturday August 19 2023, @10:23PM (1 child)
Thanks for clarifying the cost. I get the feeling a lot on this site are unrealistically anti-advertising. I hate advertising as much as anyone and have numerous ads blockers set up (squid, DNS, uBlock, AdAware, etc). But YouTube must have a way to pay for bandwidth, storage, devs etc and that cost must be substantial with the volume of videos they host. There needs to be a middle option: they can’t be ad free but their proposed ads sound like crap and I’ll definitely resist ever using the site again if I _have _ to sit through 30s of a random ad about a new car.
I get they were trying to find a way to charge users for using the site, which is fair. What’s the alternative, Go bankrupt? But This solution is over the top.
I think they should stop paying content producers once they hit millions of views. For one it’ll stop people trying to make clickbait videos and secondly it’ll save YouTube money which can pay the above bills and they won’t need to shove ads in everyone’s faces. Why not charge the content creators? Either ask them for money or show them ads. You wanna upload a video to YouTube and show the world? Here’s what is going to cost you. For the viewers, it’s free. But I can see that things like bandwidth cost, which depends on quality of views, then isn’t covered. But I think the model as a philosophy is best.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @02:06AM
I'm sure they're already afraid their biggest content creators will jump ship to TicTock or whatever abomination Zuckerberg has. It looks like one Mr. Beast video gets more watches than all of the science and math channel videos I watch in a week combined.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MonkeypoxBugChaser on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:33PM (3 children)
My bandwidth isn't free, same as theirs. The ads are repetitive, obnoxious and play better than the videos themselves. Imagine video ads in your music.
I don't even care about the money but google wants a phone number too. I'm paying them on top of letting them tie my watch history to my identity, no thanks.
Maybe it would finally spur creators to upload on rumble.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Saturday August 19 2023, @08:45PM
I think that's already happening, the trouble is getting the subscribers to follow. One channel I'm subscribed to [youtube.com] has almost 1/2 million subscribers on YT and only 22k on rumble, and that's despite the fact he's putting content there that isn't edited to be "YT friendly." He's been uploading to rumble for a year and encourages viewers in the outro of every YT video to go subscribe on rumble.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 20 2023, @06:10AM (1 child)
What would be the value of switching from one commercial platform to another one? Once they have enough power, they will do the very same type of stuff Google does.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Sunday August 20 2023, @08:51AM
I.M.O. the solution is to move away from the concept of "streaming". There is no need for all of us to stream a video from the same target source. Indeed Bittorrent solved this issue decades ago (now that is a statement that makes me feel old >.<).
The problem is that people have become accustomed to instant gratification, "Visit this URL and watch immediately".
Even if a bittorrent app was written that basically did "Visit this magnet link and watch", people would not want to wait for the video to download first, they no longer have the attention span for it.
If we want to move away from big centralised video streaming sites (and all the control they exert on creators and end users), we would have to accept that we can't start watching the video the instant we click on the link, we would have to wait.
One benefit is that bandwidth improvements to date mean that it should take more than a few minutes to download, but it would still be slower than visiting a URL and seeing the video start within a few seconds.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 19 2023, @06:07PM
As much as I hate Google with a burning passion, I feel the opposite about Youtube: I watch many hundreds of megabytes of Youtube videos every day and have been for years. I believe in paying for the things I use: Youtube only asks $10 / month, I think think it's a pretty good deal and I would like to pay them. I really would.
But here's the thing: I also believe in privacy, and there's no way on God's green Earth that I'll ever open an account with Google so they can track me even more than they do now.
So while I would like to pay a measly $10 a month for all the Youtube content I consume ads free, I can't: Google's heinous corporate surveillance business model makes it literally impossible for me to pay them.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 20 2023, @03:48AM (3 children)
For people not already familiar with it it would help if you explained what yt-dlp actually is. From a quick Google search and scan of a number of web pages, yt-dlp is "a youtube-dl fork with additional features and patches".
So now you know, it's something you've never heard of that's a fork of something else you've never heard of.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Unixnut on Sunday August 20 2023, @08:55AM (2 children)
Its a command line program that lets you rip videos to disk from streaming sites. You give it a URL, and a (completely ad-free) version of the video pops up on your disk.
I use it with Youtube because the new YT GUI no longer works with javascript disabled, and with JS enabled it locks up my browser for a few minutes while it renders gobs of crap before it will load the video to stream. yt-dlp is the only real way I have to use Youtube nowadays.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 20 2023, @09:25AM (1 child)
Thanks. My comment was meant as snark about how poorly it was described online, the entire manpage description is literally "A youtube-dl fork with additional features and patches".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Sunday August 20 2023, @09:42AM
I understand, but considering how often Google has gone after developers and tried to shut down the project, I can understand why the documentation and general organisation is a mess. Quite frankly I'm grateful they have not thrown in the towel and it still gets updated and developed with time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by isj on Saturday August 19 2023, @02:49PM
Youtube is providing a service and the way they get their money is main through ads and subscriptions.
What boggles the mind (at least mine) is:
- when they show two ads at the beginning of a 5-minute video and the second ad is 40 minutes long
- when the video is about eg electronics and they show an ad for "simple trick to improve your hearing..."
As I see it the advertisers and youtube won't make money by showing those ads to me, and I'm doing them a favour by running an adblocker so they don't waste bandwidth and processing power.
For many years I ran my browsers without an ad blocker. Then came the "punch the monkey" flash ad, and I found a way to block that in my proxy. Then came CPU-intensive and obnoxious flash ads, so I installed flashblock. Rapid animation next to a text I try to read is too distracting so I used firefox's animation=once. Then came "intellitext" where almost every single word or phrase in a text page was turned into an ad link. That got into my proxy's block list really fast. Then came a really obnoxious ad that was javascript-based which made a rapid and CPU-intensive animation so my laptop fan immediately went up to full speed. That ad was sourced from multiple ad networks so I blocked them all in my proxy.
So: topical and relevant ads: sure, why not? Irrelevant and obnoxious ads: No thanks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:02PM (3 children)
It would be fair to pay Alphabet its costs, and perhaps a reasonable profit to view a YouTube video, without advertisements. The problem is that there is no good, universal, and possibly anonymous micropayments service (equivalent of cold, hard, cash). Instead, advertising revenue is used as a proxy.
In print media, many newspapers and magazines were financed in whole or in part by advertising revenue, but it was easy enough to not read the adverts, or turn the page on a full-page spread. Unskippable adverts came in with TV, both OTA with commercial channels, and cable.
If YouTube make advertisements unavoidable, I'll avoid YouTube in its entirety. It is a shame that many organisations, including not-for-profit and charities use YouTube as a 'free' video hoster.
Alphabet makes far too much money forcing advertising on us to think about making micropayments possible. I am not going to pay a subscription for my already minimal use of YouTube. Historically, subscribing to a magazine meant you paid less than cover price. I would expect the same from YouTube.
I am really looking forward to someone coming up with a viable one-off micropayment service. Many have tried.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:13PM (1 child)
In these media, ads are presented alongside the core content, and you can choose to read/look at what you want.
If youtube worked like that--presenting ad videos separate from its user videos--there would be no need to block the ads, one could just choose to view them or not as one saw fit.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 20 2023, @02:26AM
And see, that I wouldn't mind. Haven't seen one in a while (they're not blocked by adblockers, probably because they're presented as regular vids) but they used to put an ad at the top of the Recommends list, and it was usually for something halfway relevant (instead of the 30 minute infoscammercial). It would sit there static but I suppose if I clicked on it, it would play. Even if I didn't, there it was. I could pay attention or not, as I wished. Those are fine, and rather more like I expect of well-behaved advertising.
BUT as I'm not yet tired of bitching about, the day I got a 30 minute unskippable infocrapad before I could watch 5 minutes of fluff was the day I began blocking YT ads.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday August 20 2023, @09:06AM
Funnily enough, this was one of the use cases for Bitcoin back in the day when it started, "micropayments" via a browser plugin where a browser can ask for a donation (or require a payment before access), and you can pay straight from your browser.
Bitcoin now is ill suited to such a system I.M.O , but another cryptocurrency that is already established might be a decent option.
That removes payment processors, advertising and third party data "gatekeepers" from the requirements list. They become optional to website owners rather than the only way to earn something.
I know Opera has already started a bit down this path by including a crypto-wallet by default which can be interacted with via a web-api, but it is still (a) on one browser only and (b) not heavily utilised apart from crypto-specific sites (e.g. exchanges, defi, etc...).
The problem is the main sites that could benefit from this technology (e.g. Youtube) are the ones that would never want it. Alphabet/Google want the current system in place, they built it after all. Chrome will likewise never support it for the same reasons, and that is so ubiquitous that it is effectively the "Internet Explorer" monopoly of the modern era.
So at best it will remain a niche for the moment, but without large adoption web owners will not bother with the overhead of a second payment processing system just for a minority, further cementing our current predicament.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:08PM (2 children)
Since Facebook is now Meta and Twitter is now X, I suggest that when this change to YouTube goes live, Google renames it. For the new name, I nominate "YouBube".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:43PM (1 child)
How about FuckYou?
FuckYou Videos. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Saturday August 19 2023, @10:52PM
Or YouDuped.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Saturday August 19 2023, @03:35PM (3 children)
Is that really a thing? Or are we over here in Europe behind as usual?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedGreen on Saturday August 19 2023, @04:31PM
"Is that really a thing? Or are we over here in Europe behind as usual?"
I would think it is possible you are ahead and one of your privacy laws that have been enacted have already made this illegal. Or Google knows as soon as they try it, new law will be on the books nice and quick. Unlike here in North America where the parasite corporation rules for everything, screw the people and doing anything for them by the scumbag politicians bought and paid for by them.
Those people are not attacking Tesla dealerships. They are tourists showing love. I learned that on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday August 19 2023, @04:35PM
I have not seen this either, but then I do adblock and I mostly also use some other viewer (invidious.io) or it's embedded from youtube to see the videos I like. So perhaps they are there, I just have yet to notice. The only thing I have noticed if I once in a while do happen to connect to the youtube main site in the normal fashion is how horribly slow and decrepit it has become. So many things it wants to load from all over the place. The UI code for it must be god damn horrific.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday August 20 2023, @06:23AM
I haven't had a problem yet, either.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Saturday August 19 2023, @05:17PM (1 child)
YouTube is already too far right on the Laffer Curve [wikipedia.org], if you model ad revenue as "taxation". They'd get no revenue if they showed no ads. They'd get no revenue if they only showed ads. I can sense that they're too far right because I'm starting to bail on videos I'd otherwise watch because my blocker doesn't work, I'm too lazy to fire another salvo in the ads-vs-content arms race, and the ad comes in less than two minutes in to the video, even when it's a 10 minute video.
"The tighter your grip, the more systems slip through your fingers".
Alternatively, free video on demand was never a sustainable business model and they VC money and/or drain from Google's other revenue streams is drying up. I'm not paying for YouTube. It's sad; but it is what it is.
It was a nice thing to have for a while.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @01:50AM
What is missing from this analysis is probably that in all likelihood Youtube is not profitable at all and is just powered by a big fire of investor money. Youtube probably loses less money every time someone bails on a video. Nowadays, the investor money is getting harder to come by so we are seeing desperate attempts to extract money by any means they can from literally everyone else else (like asking creators to pay $150 to promote one of their own videos).
(Score: 4, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday August 19 2023, @05:37PM
If you focus on already politically de-monetized youtubers, you'll get no advertising on them for sure. 🤫
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 19 2023, @05:57PM
- On the desktop: FreeTube [freetubeapp.io] (Freetube has SponsorBlock built in too thank goodness)
- On Android: NewPipe [newpipe.net] - or even better, NewPipe SponsorBlock [github.com] (and no "Content creators", nobody wants to hear about the shitty VPN you're shilling, and nobody cares about your Youtube income woes).
And in case you didn't know, you can import NewPipe subscriptions into FreeTube.
As long as Google doesn't break them, you needn't view another Youtube video in the shitty ad-ladden, nagware-heavy Youtube webpage.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Saturday August 19 2023, @06:25PM (2 children)
Instead of running more ads, for videos that shows a product identifiable by brand, YouTube should charge the entity that posted the video for each view. Why should you have to suffer though ads to watch a video that itself is an ad?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fliptop on Saturday August 19 2023, @09:03PM
I am subscribed to a few car repair channels and they regularly use tools, solvents, lubricants, parts, etc. where the brand is clearly visible. They usually tell you when something sucks and you shouldn't buy it or if something is good and recommend it. Additionally, a lot of these channels have sponsors for their videos and usually that involves the creator doing a short ad hawking earbuds or whatever (which easily can be skipped).
ProjectFarm [youtube.com] has a channel devoted to testing just about everything, doesn't take any sponsorships, and if that's an example of a "video that itself is an ad" then at least I'm learning something.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2023, @01:16AM
Vimeo runs on a "publisher pays" model. Unlike Youtube, Vimeo is a public company, so we have the advantage of public financial statements, and it seems that Vimeo is a money-losing enterprise.
One problem is that actual sustainable business models can't really compete with companies like Youtube that are in all likelihood just burning money hand over fist. Once the cash runs out maybe we'll see something sustainable come out from the ashes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by https on Saturday August 19 2023, @07:15PM (2 children)
Would you have uploaded that video to youtube eight years ago, if you knew it would be shattered in its watching by a fundamentally different advertising model?
Remember youtube eight years ago?
Google has effectively stolen all previously uploaded content. It has thoroughly fucked the idea of agreements; Darth Vader would be envious.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gnuman on Saturday August 19 2023, @10:04PM (1 child)
I honestly don't know much about ads on youtube... never see them :P
But I did disable YouTube app on my phone which helps with battery, life enjoyment, stuff like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @04:16PM
FWIW I'm actually surprised at how effective ublock is at blocking ads on youtube. In theory google can come up with many ways to prevent ad blocking from working for youtube videos - they after all control the data.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @12:39AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @02:10AM
I'm on Mastodon and really enjoy it, but I haven't created accounts on any of the other services like PeerTube. Do you find that is necessary, or do you just browse around on PeerTube and find stuff and let it show up in your Mastodon feed? Is there a preferred way to actively use PeerTube, Pixelfed, etc.?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dale on Monday August 21 2023, @02:15PM
I only started blocking YT ads when they lost their minds on reasonableness. I quit watching any sort of broadcast/live TV because ads were eating up a third of the time. The ratio on YT is far worse than that in many cases. I'm not going to sit through a minute of ads three times in a row when flipping through "how to repair" videos trying to find one that is relevant. I also hate sitting through the same freaking ad over and over again. If you can't get enough different ads you shouldn't just do the same ad over and over again. I also loath seeing the ad from the company i also loath with no way of killing it off......and having to watch it over and over and over again. That company already screwed me once, they certainly aren't going to get another attempt at it. At least FB lets you kill of specific ads.
Given that I'm watching content created by others, it also seems unreasonable to charge more than Netflix as the monthly subscription as well. $3/month for no ads on any device I'm logged into and I'd be there in a heartbeat. I might even go as high as $5/month.
Ads also killed off the fun of dropping something like Baby Metal into someone's startup folder as a practical joke when they leave their computer unlocked.
I have some sympathy for them in principal, but their execution and level/ratio is so far out of sorts that I won't play in their sandbox.