YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don't turn off your ad-blocker

TangledHyphae@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 697 points –
YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don't turn off your ad-blocker
businessinsider.com
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For me personally, I would rather pay for a service than with my time via ads.

That said, the services provided these days are unreliable, gatekept, metered and not enjoyable. Why should I pay for shitty service?

Therefore I’m only left with one option and my wellies are strapped tight! 🫡

I...honestly don't think you're particularly honest about this.

Mainly because Youtube red exists and it's main sell is removing ads, but we already know the answer to that. (Most people don't actually want to buy the service)

And it's not like it's shitty service. It's Youtube without ads.

I don’t need music, I just want ad free YouTube. There isn’t an option for users like me.

yt-dlp A bit of an inconvenience, but if it comes to having to sit through ads to see it on YT, I will download the video to prevent that. I already archive a couple of channels I love.

...?

Just use the ad free youtube...and don't use the music section?

That's what I do 90% of the time....

The price reflects including the music service whether you want it or not.

How much do you really think they would take off of the price tag if you didn't have music? most similar subs are within the same price range....

I always figured youtube music only existed to make the sub more incentivizing. It probably doesn't even cost them anything they aren't already spedning on youtube.

It needs to be about half the price, if not less tbh. At its current price it’s rivaling netlflix, paramount, etc which are full studio’s producing the content, not just hosting it.

Well, if YouTube were truly so terrible that you think it offers no real value, you wouldn't use it at all. If you yourself don't use it, that's all well and good, but if you do still use it anyway but block ads, then you're admitting that it offers some amount of actual value while refusing to pay for it. In that case, it's hardly unreasonable for YouTube to decide to not take on the cost of offering the service to those that aren't going to pay for it. You'd probably be more than a little annoyed if your boss told you that you'll be working extra hours for free.

There’s nothing inherently valuable to YouTube other than the fact that it’s the default video hosting website because it got there first. You can find other similar websites that provide video hosting that is equivalent, just without the massive audience YouTube has. Keep in mind your argument only works for G rated content because anything that is slightly controversial, even history based content, gets demonetized and there’s an entire other website called patreon that gained popularity because YouTube wasn’t paying its content creators for their work.

YouTube has lots of options for getting people to pay for their content. If they opt to pursue ad revenue they need to accept that a subset of their audience will use 3rd party apps to get around that. Most people don’t have ad blockers so it’s really only people smart enough to download the plugins. To me this is akin to Reddit pissing in the face of their users for the sake of maximizing profits. I get why they’re doing it, but for every trick they employ to get around ad blockers someone will come up with a workaround and I’ll just download that plugin each time.

@BraveSirZaphod this is pretty much what I was going to respond to you with

I understand people need to be paid, I’m just not willing to pay in my time. The paid service is also questionable as well.

I rediscovered this guy very recently, he talks a lot about the same points I’ve been making and I think he does it in a pretty fair way, I’m curious what your thoughts are (anyone feel free to jump in of course)

https://youtu.be/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS

YouTube is okay. I'll watch it if it's free or very cheap. I won't watch ads for it.

And they may decide in kind that they don't want to offer a service to you for free.

They've already decided that. If they make it too difficult to watch it without ads then I'll stop watching. No skin off my nose.

This is an interesting perspective. Many people are willing to put in time and effort to get around restrictions on adblockers, but not willing to give up time to ads or give up money to avoid ads.

I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.

The minority would go elsewhere to find other entertainment at an acceptable price.

I mean, I'm a happy, paying subscriber to Nebula. Any content where I have a choice to watch it there, I do. It's stupidly cheap, too. Usually you can find a promo to get it for under $20/yr.

But I am also not pretending that Google owes me free & ad-free YouTube on my terms. They don't. Nor do the creators owe me uploading their videos to my platform of choice. I'd prefer both these things to be true, but I at least can understand that it is not reasonable. YouTube, frankly, is probably the ONLY killer product I couldn't do without made by Google, other than some open source software.

People should pirate all they want. I don't really give a fuck. I don't consider it some great moral evil. But pirating from YouTube is not some symbolic, ethical stand for your values. If you really think what they're doing is bad, stop using the service and pressure the YouTubers to upload elsewhere (which they pretty much ALL could do without consequences from Google). The entire platform only exists because of advertising. Period. If you hate ads as much as I do, pay for the ad-free versions.

I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.

Given the success of Netflix's ban on password sharing, I think you're right here. Most people really don't care about this nearly as much as the average tech enthusiast.

But YouTube Premium is incredibly reliable, unlimited, famously has very little content moderation, and is full of enjoyable content? (i.e., all of YouTube)

I think you just don't want to pay.

if people can get things for free

they’re going to get things for free

Mmm not the whole truth, and that is why they get away with it:

https://youtu.be/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS

Netflix does similar things it would seem

What other video platforms does Louis Rossmann upload his stuff to, by the way?

He does, you know. But I notice you aren't watching him there.

Not sure I use a proxy application to watch YouTube videos

So you could be using and supporting alternate platforms, but YouTube is so valuable to you that you don't bother.

Who said I don’t? Why can’t I use both?

You’re trying to fabricate a point here, and I just don’t think it fits me

I don't believe you do because you would've linked to it instead of YouTube. You claim to hate that business, yet you direct people to engage on it.

You're getting on a moral high horse about how it's fair and right to pirate from YouTube because of their bad behavior, yet when given a free alternative platform to view the videos from a creator you respect enough to link, you don't. You go to YouTube.

Let's give an example:

I think you underestimate how much pirates and the opposition truly hate google and their practices and the lengths they will go to in order to get the content they want.

Apparently not very hard at all, since there was a totally Google-free way to get the content you want that supports the creator even better and is free and yet here you are not using it.

I Square peg doesn’t fit the round hole.

  1. I linked the video out of my application, which links google. Further, less people would reach his content if I posted an invidious, piped, etc link if they aren’t familiar (and my target audience isn’t people using these services, so obviously I would choose the option that would get my target audiences attention best)

  2. I don’t represent that entire community, as much as you’d like to repaint me into a group. I’m an individual who shares some things in common with masses, and other things are unique to me.

  3. Moral high ground? It’s fucking simple. Give me quality service for what I pay, or I go elsewhere.

I’m done arguing with you about MY OWN viewpoint which I think everyone else very clearly understands.

Talk about being on a high horse LMAO the irony.

You legitimately do not understand that there are alternatives to YouTube. It's fucking embarrassing.

Give me quality service for what I pay, or I go elsewhere.
Apparently not. You'll keep going there no matter how much you claim to hate them.

And that's no small part of why Google has such market control. Because people like you give it to them enthusiastically.

PS: it's Rumble. That's the actual alternative (with a HEAVY emphasis on the "alt" in "alternative") you could use to watch Rossmann if you really are so passionate about how bad Google is. Plus Rossmann also is one of the cofounders of GrayJay.