YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
"Youtube considering incentivizing piracy"
I imagine folks wouldn't have a problem with this if the ads weren't already so aggressive. Numerous ads before and during the content break it up too much. And if the content is extremely short form, it completely ruins the experience.
The number of ads and their length should be proportional to the length of the video. And any creator doing built-in ads should also not be able to inject a bunch of other ads. Burying content is an easy way to get avoided.
Print media had limits for advertisements, heck, in magazines they were premium real estate for the finest graphic designers to put together incredible imagery to get your attention. This level of care (not necessarily images or what have you) has yet to translate to the web.
It seems like we've all lost the plot. We'd probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn't literally jarring. Try browsing for a day on a plain-no-extension browser. If you use other web enhancement tools kill those too. Straight-up internet is cancer, especially on mobile.
It's impossible to read a 250-word article without being interrupted 5-7 times. Two of those interruptions are likely a full page overlay with give me your email, and are you sure you don't want to subscribe, just give me your credit card number.
Then there are auto-play videos on the side, some with audio on by default. I mean I came here to read something, so of course we have things flashing and moving and making noise, it's the most conducive environment for thought, right?
Ad blockers and script blocking are essentially a hazmat suit that allows us to withstand a hostile environment. Remember when we said myspace pages with audio and [marching-ants] borders was a bad UX? At least we didn't have overlays back then.
Go back to basics and consider what makes a good vs bad internet experience. The reality sounds like someone with a minor case of severe brain damage. I think we've just become unashamed of greed as a society. It's clearly all just about money.
Those annoying customers/users generate content and we have to put up with them so we can monetize it. *Sadly, It's unclear if I'm talking about youtube, reddit, or nearly any other site.
Le sigh.
We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring.
Not me, sorry. Fuck ads. I've been ad-free for like a decade, and I'm not interested in regressing.
Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive? I mean, servers and bandwidth cost money. I'm in the same boat as you where I have run ad blockers, adblocker blockers, no script, privacy enhancers, and anti-fingerprinting since forever ago.
I'd rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data. If there was a balance, this is where I'd say it was reasonable. Since not reality, I'm with you, nuke them all, and just take the content.
I fully agree. Online ads used to be some banners next to the content you came to the site for. I was fine with that. As soon as they put it in front/in between/.. the content, I very quickly got fed up with it.
If they really block adblockers, I will subscribe. To Nebula. It's got everything I want, adfree (including sponsored segments), extra content and is cheaper. And the content creators get a bigger share of the money.
There is nothing stopping you from subscribing to nebula right now. Since I haven't gotten any ads on YouTube in many years and even use sponsorblock to skip those annoying video segments I started thinking about how I am basically leeching off of most content creators. Subscribing to nebula was a no-brainer. It's about $4.16 per month on the yearly plan and lets me support all content creators I watch on there at once rather than subscribing to each and every one of them on patreon and I still don't see any ads
I never thought YouTube's business model was very sustainable. As the world economy goes down, so does the value of ads. Creators or consumers need to pay up for all the bandwidth and storage. The question is about what is a reasonable price. Are low tiers for $3/mo. possible along with premium 4k options or does everything need to be at more than that?
FreeTube, Invidious, or Rumble.
The comments in here are interesting to me. Ads and Premium are a way for your favorite content creators to get paid for the content that they produce. I've listened to a number of creators talk about the YouTube revenue sharing model and most of them (LTT and Hank Green) says that YouTube is actually really fair with how they share ad revenue and how Premium is actually a good alternative that meets the needs of the platform, users, and creators. And YouTube, the platform, DOES need to get paid as well otherwise your videos can't get to you.
I also hate ads, like a lot, and I do whatever I can to get them off of my screen because I think they are intrusive and we have proof of how they enable tracking across the internet at large. However, for those platforms that I find extreme value in (YouTube being the example here) I see how and why ads/Premium pump value into their system. If your favorite content creator isn't getting paid for their content, they won't be able to sustain it long term.
One last thought about video streaming and the content we all love that is hosted by YouTube: if we were to say that we would rather our money go directly to our favorite content creators, we would end up with a very fragmented ecosystem akin to the Streaming Service MESS we are in with TV/Movies. I would LOVE to pay LTT directly through Floatplane, but then where would I be with being able to watch other content creators?
YSK that Premium pays considerably less to creators than any other form of monetization.
So, if you want to support your favorite creator, literally send them a dollar.
One dollar is more than what that creator will ever make from a single viewer on YouTube.
I understand your argument, but I think the issue is more complex. I would wish that it was just advertisers paying money to YouTube and YouTube taking its cut and giving the rest to the content creator. It used to be like that in the beginning, but it isn't anymore. I do not pay for a YouTube subscription, because I don't want YouTube to track my videos and create a profile of me. Especially when I often have to sift through multiple videos just to find an answer to very specific question and YouTube takes that as me being super interested in that whole topic. Watching ads on the other hand is also just a large tracking apparatus that tries to squeeze money out of my pockets. My preferences over the whole Internet is being tracked to serve me "the most relevant and personalised content". Basically, they try to figure out what I want, before I do and then try to sell me that. If there is a way to directly support content creators (donations, subscriptions, etc), I usually do that. But I don't want to support shady business with my data behind my back.
Very much this. If I visit the grocery store, I am not walking through other businesses just to get to each isle.
I am perfectly happy with going back to amateur YouTube somewhere else. If it was a real community of individuals I would probably post content again myself. The whole idea of YT as career content creators only is not very interesting to me any more.
I do not use an ad blocker. I use a whitelist firewall. I only visit the websites I request. If anyone wants to show me content, it must be on the servers I wish to visit. As far as I am concerned, if I invite you into my home, you head to the bathroom, open the window and let a dozen people into my home, you're never going to get invited to visit again. This is how ads work.
If YT can't trust these people to host their content directly, that is not my problem.
Now we need a new video platform.
The bandwidth needed would be a problem unless it's peer to peer
I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.
On the other side, as a user, I just can't browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.
But to be honest, I don't see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can't pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.
The biggest issue, I guess, is the amount and obnoxiousness of the ads. I could live quite well with seeing one ad banner per page-worth of scrolling, if it's for example off to the side in a specific "your ad here" place.
Or if the ads would be thematically related to the topic at hand. I don't want to be reminded of how much our devices listen in on us by seeing ads for diapers on a website for posting news about the Ukraine War, just because I happened to talk with my gf about how my step mom has another child now. But seeing ads for a website to buy camping tools, on a website for hiking backpacks, is fine by me.
Unfortunately those types of non-intrusive ads probably aren't what's raking in the most money.
Fuck youtube anyway. Absolute sesspit of influencers, ads and stolen content.
That entirely depends on who your subscribed to. Personally all my stuff channels like Numberphile/computerphile, or SmarterEveryDay, and plenty of Blender3d tutorial channels, animators, and a whole bunch of other informative channels.
to be honest YouTube has great content because of the video length allowed. You can find all sorts of tutorials on pretty much anything. Instagram and TikTok, on the other hand, fit your description much better.
While YouTube, or any service, has bad users/channels, there are also many great users/channels for people with varying interests to enjoy. You can ignore the channels you don’t like, and get to watch some of the best content from regular people you’ve never heard of, who aren’t major television studios or corporations with an agenda. All they want to do is make videos of things they are passionate about.
Seems fair enough, I've personally been freeloading for a while. Youtube is irreplacable, so there's not much we can do.
I've started using Mastodon after the Twitter changes, Lemmy after the Reddit changes, I don't think any website is irreplaceable
laughs in SmartTube
SmartTube on my TV and NewPipe on my phone make me realise when I watch something on my Xbox just how bad regular viewing can be
I use YouTube a lot, both on my phone via ReVanced and my smart TV via SmartTubeNext, completely ad free. If Youtube manage to block videos unless the users deactivate their adblockers, even if I enjoy Youtube a lot, I'll just stop watching videos. The quantity of ad per video is just insane. No way I can stand watching all those ads.
While I don’t disagree, YouTube won’t care. Currently folk like you and I who evade their ads are freeloading. We get all the content and YouTube gets nothing in return. Having those who block ads abandon watching doesn’t lose YouTube anything, and maybe saves them a little bandwidth bill I guess?
Especially given just how intrusive they are; they completely interfere with technical explanations or comedic timing.
I'll say something unexpected: I pay for YouTube. With money! Why?
So yeah. I personally like YouTube enough to pay for it and I have the financial means to do so. Am I a clown for expressing personal appreciation towards a faceless megacorp? Yes. Yes I am. Constantly trying to win at every transaction in life is a drag though, so I think I'll continue to enjoy getting swindled.
rather than paying for youtube premium you should use an adblocker, or download all the videos you watch, then donate the money to creators you watch. if everyone who paid for youtube premium just decided to split the cost of the subscription between the creators they watch, creators would make a lot more money and as a bonus you hurt Alphabet, one of the worst companies in the world. It's a win win
Alright, let's say I do that. I'll take my $12 and split it equally between every unique channel I've watched in the last 30 days. Eyeballing my watch history shows... about 100 different channels.
Let's ignore for the sake of argument the incredible overhead I'd have to take upon myself in order to facilitate and account for 100+ recurring micro-donations. How much more money do you think these creators would get from my direct donations rather than going through greedy Alphabet? Let's do math together:
Ok. That's ~$0.06 instead of the $0.12 each creator would have gotten had I simply hand-delivered two pennies and a dime to every single individual. Now, I don't know about you... but I'm kind of too busy watching YouTube to go outside right now, so let's go ahead and factor in what would happen if I managed to donate using a platform like Patreon instead:
In other words: I'd be paying $0.52 more to donate a grand total of: no money. If we ignore the "no money" problem, there's also the issue of it being literally impossible to donate such a tiny sum in the first place. We also conveniently ignored the challenge of individually navigating numerous currency conversions...
Let's be honest and come clean with each other now: you weren't being completely serious with me when you claimed that your suggestion was about helping ✨the creators✨. Even if you were serious, I'm certain that you don't actually follow your own advice because it's quite clearly impossible for a normal person to internationally distribute $12 among dozens of strangers.
oh look, another web service who wants to strangle its users for money and ad views :D when's a peertube instance going to get some big creators on it supported by viewers? that'll do it, i bet
I'm confused about this take. YouTube clearly has hosting costs and also pays creators. That money has to come from somewhere. They offer two options, ads or subscription. You could argue that the number of ads is too many or the cost of the subscription is too high, but demanding a service be free just because it's technologically possible to block ads seems weird.
Seems unlikely that a creator would jump ship from a platform that pays them to a platform that doesn’t. That being said, lots of creators also constantly complain about demonetization, so maybe they’ll start to get fed up and move to purely in-video sponsorship things. Seems most likely from a creator that’s already on a platform like nebula
you're definitely right on most points. but, to your point, if a creator was on a federated instance of peertube then they don't have to worry about the wishy-washy, everchanging rules of youtube :3
Unpopular opinion: I like paying for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads and still make it possible for creators and YouTube to get paid and survive an keep offering me entertainment.
In addition you also get YouTube Music so no need to pay for Spotify. It might not have as good features but I listen to music specifically so I only search for what I want to listen to and don't want any algorithms anyway.
