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An experiment that could become permanent:
YouTube's annoying ads often push those who don't want to pay $120 for YouTube Premium to use ad blockers. But Google isn't happy about this potentially lost revenue, and has decided to experiment with a feature that urges ad-blocker users to think again.
Redditor Sazk100 posted a screenshot earlier this week showing a YouTube popup warning that ad blockers are not allowed on the platform. It notes that ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide, and that an ad-free experience is available via the paid-for YouTube Premium. The message finishes with two options: Allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium, which is $11.99 per month or $119.99 per year for access to original programs and no ads.
Some users who've seen it say they have been able to simply close the pop-up and continue blocking ads on YouTube, but it's likely that Google will clamp down on this, or make the pop-up appear regularly enough to be a distraction.
The moderators of the YouTube subreddit wrote that an employee had confirmed the ad-blocker message was an experiment by YouTube. A Google spokesperson expanded on this in a statement to IGN.
"We're running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium," they said. "Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers."
While most online companies make their revenue from ads, some complain that YouTube has gone too far, citing its increasing number of unskippable and extended mid-roll ads.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday May 12, @11:25AM (23 children)
It's the gratuitous javascript which carry the ads which are the problem. Many would accept ads in and of themselves, but the javascript-laden advertisements often carry a malware payload [theguardian.com], that applies even at reputable sites [nytimes.com]. This push to force gratuitous javascripts down everyone's throats is neither necessary nor safe.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, @11:33AM (19 children)
I think 99% of the blocker users are in fact thinking of the ads, not rare malware payloads. Though blocking ads and their scripts is always a big help on slower computers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday May 12, @11:57AM (16 children)
Probably, but when YouTube expects people to sit through ads that are literally longer than the videos that they are placed on, that is a problem. Some of the ads are 20+ minutes and even though you are allowed to skip most of that, you have to manually do so, which means that you need a free hand to skip it. So, if you're listening to the content while doing something else, you get inconvenienced.
Then there's all the videos that should be monetized, but aren't and the content that gets buried because Google doesn't think that it's adequately profitable or crosses over an arbitrary rule that wasn't a rule when the video was posted. Really, they've got nobody to blame but themselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12, @02:00PM (12 children)
>you get inconvenienced.
Don't you know? That's what the $120 is for.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday May 12, @02:02PM (11 children)
Yes, but $120 and I'm sure they'll still bury the content that I want to see. It's a ridiculous amount of money to charge for the content that other people create. Many of whom don't receive any of that because they're not a large enough channel to be monetized. Assuming that there isn't a specific reason that YouTube can get around having to pay that at all.
It's a pretty disgusting company to deal with, but it is the most popular, which makes it difficult to avoid.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12, @03:18PM (10 children)
I was "banned" from YouTube about 6 years ago because I let my (then 13 year old) son post videos he made using my account. He did PBS mashups, nothing offensive, but not the highest quality either. After a year or so of posting literally thousands of these videos, PBS started playing coy games about "it's not a copyright strike, but it's not permissible for advertising revenue in some jurisdictions" - which was fine, the videos were never monetized anyway - he had 700 followers, but the average video would get 50 looks, 2 likes and maybe one comment. Then they started hitting harder, and I honestly didn't understand the policy which was stated "three strikes in one six month period will result in account suspension." Well, suspension sounds temporary, and we've been dinking around with copyright related noise for 18 months, so if that third strike hits within a 6 month period it sounds to me like the account will be suspended for six months at the most.... Yeah, no, once you cross their threshold you are effectively banned for life - under that user ID (which I have had for going on 20 years now...)
So, of course, my son just created another account, got 1500 followers, got banned again after a year or two (Beatles music this time), and now he's on his at least third account, this time with over 2000 followers, still not playing with monetization but maybe he's learning something about not pissing off the Copyright trolls.
Meanwhile, "Real" people who try to make a living on YouTube? Yeah, welcome to the machine, bitches. It's here to profit from you, and we will dangle just enough incentive to keep that quality "attractive" content flowing. Since lottery style incentives seem to be the most efficient motivators, that's what they're using. I have found, in six years of having no YouTube posting access - because why ban eyeballs that might click on ads? - I miss it not at all. When I have felt the need to share videos (about 3 times in the past 6 years) I use Vimeo now. I used to post recreationally to YouTube because it was fun and easy, I had a catalog of about 100 random videos, can't say that I miss them, and there are all kinds of other hosts that seem to be less problematic than YouTube, depending on what you're publishing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/7v1ld5/knead_a_tropical_donut/ [reddit.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @04:44PM (1 child)
This is a good example of, pissing off the customer (even non-paying) can bite you hard in the end.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12, @07:00PM
I sincerely believe their policies are carefully crafted and administration of them is tweaked to piss off just the right amount of just the right demographics without significantly impacting the profit growth. They are serving masters on multiple sides, gotta piss off some of each if you still want to keep them all basically happy.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday May 12, @06:19PM (7 children)
And before you stated to pay Google $120/yr for this service.... why? The Internet, as it is today, is unusable without uBlock Origin and NoScript. I use both. This site is one of very few that doesn't trigger either. Furthermore, l already pay less for Amazon Prime which comes with enough Prime Video to make me happy...
So, if Google wants to block uBlock Origin or NoScript, ok, then if I can't avoid it, I will stop looking at the YouTube time waster. There is definitely some educational material there, but it's mostly in forms of opinions. But I have a feeling maintainers and users of uBlock Origin will be highly motivated to block their blockers and work around it. There will be some arms race there. Google's control of Chrome will probably not impact that arms race -- they've tried before to limit URL filters and there was a backlash on that.
Finally, I've been using ChatGPT for 2 moths now and I have to say it's far superior to Google. Reason for this is ads, again. Google search results are completely polluted with click-bait trying to leach more ad revenue and Google is complicit in this. This makes it more difficult to get answers than to use ChatGPT as a search engine and then narrow down to actual source once you have the basics. If it wasn't for Wikipedia in last decade+, the internet would have been mostly a desert of ads.
As for JS, it's mostly a no-op since JS is sandboxed. I'm least worried about JS in its current form. With sandboxing, it has serious advantages to traditional programs. Look up "Javascript Containers" for example -- very handy to make web apps ;) JS is allowing the "Network is the computer" paradigm and there is no going back on it. Single Page Applications have a huge potential of being safe that server generated content does not. But I digress ....
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12, @06:58PM (6 children)
>And before you stated to pay Google $120/yr for this service.... why?
No, I stated that's what the $120 is for: convenience. There are people who will pay, and pay, and pay. just for a little worthless convenience.
I use ad blocks, I don't even know which ones, don't pay much attention to them, but I see evidence sometimes that they are working. I still see a ridiculous amount of advertising as well, but like you note: you can steer yourself away from the worst of the spam-ver-spam-iti-spam-sing.
>using ChatGPT for 2 moths now and I have to say it's far superior to Google. Reason for this is ads, again.
Oh, just you wait.... they are in the honeymoon build an addicted audience mode at the moment. This is a seemingly inevitable trend with good internet services that provide a service without ads, well without too much advertising, well the ads are at least not distractingly placed, well at least the content loads at the same time as the ads, well I can still tell content from advertising, well... the content I was looking for might be here somewhere inbetween all this crap...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday May 12, @08:09PM (5 children)
I actually paid for it! It's something I would not pay Google for. Or even GitHub for their completion version of ChatGPT - it's just less useful.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12, @08:25PM (4 children)
Congrats. For my common research use cases ChatGPT makes inaccurate stuff up far too often, like 30-45% of the time. On the softer side, I tried to use it to write poetry/songs, and I noticed that by the time I was done with something I liked, the finished product had 5% or less content as written by ChatGPT - it may have been a semi-useful idea starter, but I never really liked anything it wrote.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday May 13, @07:35PM (3 children)
For myself, it's fairly accurate. It would definitely pass basic interview questions. But it's incapable of handling more involved problems and has mistakes. It's also incapable of actual thinking -- you tell it something is wrong, it will say "yes, sorry about that" and proceed to write same thing.
But, it's very nice for basics. For example, ask what is the international code for Baby Formula on import forms and where to find it. Or what is this s390 subsystem doing without digging through IBM's mainframe manuals. It can definitely be wrong so you have to double check, but it's a massive time saver when you have general issues where you don't know where to start. Or even if you know where to start but don't want to write some basic stuff like unit test for these and that cases or but reproducer.
It has its benefits.
As for creativity, I can imagine it being as creative worse at it than a 5 year old. It really is an average answer generation tool.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 13, @08:05PM (2 children)
Yeah, my last query to it was: why does nmcli bridge creation give an "Access Denied" error in Ubuntu. It gave me a typical guess "you need to use sudo" bzzzt. A) you do not need to use sudo, and B) it was actually because nmcli has different permission structure when called via ssh terminal and I believe won't work via sudo that way either. You might say it was an unfair question, but that's how the question was put to me (with no statement "I'm running this script via ssh even though the instructions say to use a terminal on the console" just "Here's the log with the error...") First search result via Google didn't come right out and say "ssh is your problem" - but a careful read did yield the clue enough for me to bust my colleague with "Are you running this via ssh?"
As for the creative side, yeah, it's really "on the nose" with most stuff, very little subtext or metaphor - probably none on purpose.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday May 14, @09:12PM (1 child)
GPT-4 was more informative. See #4. I asked "nmcli bridge creation give an "Access Denied" error in Ubuntu." with nothing else. GPT-3.5 was as you describe.
But it still doesn't try to ask for more information... and it doesn't learn, even in context of the conversation. But such is life with tools.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 14, @11:23PM
That's so much worse, giving you a bunch of stuff to do that still is wrong...
At least on StackExchange you can usually tell when the poster is.... under informed.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @03:04PM (2 children)
A 20 minute advertisement? What kind of stupidity is that? Surely you meant 20 seconds?
The biggest issue will be getting my wife to stop using YouTube. I'd rather ditch YouTube as a whole than not use an adblocker. Currently, I actually have a subscription to floatplane, because reasons. So, I could still get some tech news and just be sad that I don't have access to the vast trove of videos that YouTube has. Pretty much the only thing I go to YouTube for are a few specific channels that are interesting and whatever game review/playthrough/walkthrough, etc. I would rather drop YouTube like the bad habit it is, than give up my adblocker. I would rather give up on the majority of the internet than let my adblocker go. They can pry my adblocker from my cold dead hands. Okay, maybe that's a bit too far, but they started it. Perhaps, it should be more of a they can just wither and die and good riddance, comparatively. That's better.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aafcac on Friday May 12, @03:56PM
I haven't had any that couldn't be skipped, but I do regularly get ones that are 20+ minutes long if I don't manually press the skip button. It's ridiculous. How many people are going to watch an ad that long before the video they clicked for?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Saturday May 13, @09:52AM
I can also confirm. I use ad blockers, but one of my coworkers put on some music one very quiet Friday afternoon and then left me to suffer when he got up and chatted with someone else down the hallway. I was about ready to chuck that sucker out the window.
He got back before the ad was over and we could see it was going to last about 20 minutes. I cannot fathom why anyone at Google would think this is a good idea. Once we skipped past the ad, it resumed in the middle of the song it had interrupted.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @04:47PM
Advertisements are annoying. It just so happens that they're also scummy. Which generally leads to a hive of scum and villainy.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 12, @08:57PM
I think some users are thinking of bandwidth when they use ad blockers. I, myself, have only recently been able to get 100 meg internet. Only months ago, I was on DSL, oftentimes getting little more than half of the 10 meg I was paying for. Share that with the whole family, and you don't have much bandwidth.
Blocking ad servers made that bandwidth stretch a whole lot further!
I mean, NO ONE wants to sit for half an hour watching Youtube buffer through a ten minute video!!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Friday May 12, @11:37AM (1 child)
"even at reputable sites [nytimes.com]"
Well, that was a coffee spit moment.
No one is forcing anyone to go to sites with JavaScript. They do so of their own free will.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @04:46PM
Yeah, hit me with a paywall banner. I'm not going to be going to your site anymore. Or at least not, if I remember that was one of those draconian sites.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday May 13, @03:00AM
What got me to using an adblocker on Youtube was the day they presented me with a 30 minute unskippable ad before I could watch five minutes of fluff.
The ads are excessively long, loud, annoying, irrelevant, too frequent, and largely for borderline-scams.
THAT is why they get blocked, not because they're ads.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.