YouTube tests disabling videos for people using ad blockers
Turn off the ad blocker or you’ll be cut off after three videos.
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I'm gonna be honest. I don't see anything wrong with this. I know the majority of us are just coming off some corporate bullshit from reddit, but I don't think it's wrong to not let your very expensive to maintain service be used for free without ads.
I promise that I'm not trying to suck a billionaire's cock when I say that I marvel in awe at YouTube's ability to input and output such astronomical amount of data at any given time, without any complaints.
But this is such a shitty, hostile way to do it. And if you give in and say yes to ads they've already shown where that's going to go, with 10 unskippable ads in a row and 30 second ads.
They could make subscriptions mandatory if they really believe they have a good product, and pass a fat portion of that money to the creators instead.
...except this isn't about the creators, or the users, or the advertisers, it's about Google making more money at the expense of every single other party involved in the platform, and the platform be damned. Textbook late stage enshittification.
YouTube premium revenue is shared with creators based on view time. I don't know what percentage of the subscription cost is shared (I believe I've read 55% is shared but I didn't validate that right now, their help docs say "most" so it's likely over 50%). As I understand it from income breakdown from creators, income from YouTube premium does often surpass Adsense income even when only a small percentage of viewers use YouTube premium.
The larger factor in them doing this is that the value of selling ads has been decreasing substantially the last few years. This means they need to show more ads to make the same money they did before.
This is also part of why every YouTube creator now does their own sponsored ads inside videos, trying to rely only on Adsense isn't viable for them.
YouTube know they have a good product, and lots of people do subscribe to YouTube premium, there is no reason form them to force people onto YouTube premium when lots of people are willing to watch the ads.
I've had youtube premium for several years now. Most of the creators I watch do their best to integrate their sponsorships in an appropriate way. Whether that's choosing a sponsorship related to the video topic, or making it entertaining in its own right.
It's expensive to run servers that hosts tens of billions of videos. If you don't want to pay for access, then pay for no ads. If you don't want to pay for no ads, then watching the ads is the only way. Remember, if you're not buying the product, then you are the product.
Paying for YouTube premium still makes you the product, since you are still being tracked and sold. Hell you could drop over over 2k on a TV, phone, or GPU and still be getting tracked and sold. The old adage of if you aren't paying you are the product no longer applies. It's outdated.
Why is it a bad way to show a warning and still let you watch 3 videos for free?
Why is it a bad way to show a warning and still let you watch 3 videos for free?
Nah fuck that they have way too many unskipable 30 second ads for a 15min video. If it was 1 or 2 ads a video sure.
While I'm not opposed to paying for YouTube (it is a service after all) the only way to do so would be by being logged in to YouTube with whatever black box algorithmic tracking and curation that entails. There is no "proper" way to anonymously access YouTube without ads.
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