Pretty sure that they are fine with that, they are actively trying to get rid of you.
Not in the slightest. They want to have their cake and eat it, meaning they want you on the platform but using it their way. Why else would they put so much effort into this fools errand of subverting ad blockers?
Ding ding ding. It’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s the harsh truth. This is akin to a super high maintenance Karen going “I’m never going to shop here again” even though she immediately returns everything she purchases. The company isn’t making any profit off of her, (in fact they’re losing money because she demands employees’ attention whenever she’s shopping) so a sensible manager’s response should be “okay, we’re glad to see you go. Please don’t come back.”
YouTube doesn’t want the users who block ads and refuse to pay. Those users are a net drain on the system. Lemmy likes to yell about FOSS, and there is a lot to love about that… But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”. Someone had to devote time and resources to building and hosting that “free” thing. The fact that they’re willing to share their effort is great! But it can’t be the expectation.
As someone who does a lot of freelance work, I’ll say the same thing that I say to clients when they ask me to work for free because of the exposure: Exposure is what people die of when they can’t pay their rent. I’m not saying YouTube is going to go bankrupt because of these users, but the users can’t reasonably expect YouTube to continue to pay for/accommodate them.
Free in FOSS means free as in freedom not free as in beer.
But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”.
The F in FOSS does NOT mean gratis. I absolutely hate that we decided to call it Free. There have been attempts at saying another word like libre (aka FLOSS) but those haven't worked out.
I don't agree with the FSF on a lot, but their definition of free software is as follows:
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
In other words software can be paid and still be FOSS. In fact, I want to see MORE paid software that's FOSS.
Gratis software only works in very rare cases, when an entity other than the user of the software pays for it, but that is NOT the case with FOSS.
I want more FOSS software that is monetized. Charging for FOSS software is not only permissible but desirable. This model ensures that developers are compensated for their skilled labor, fostering an environment where innovation is rewarded. It's about creating a sustainable ecosystem where the values of open-source are upheld without sacrificing the financial viability of the developers.
When software is open-source and monetized, it strikes a critical balance. Users gain the freedoms associated with FOSS – the liberty to run, modify, and share – while developers receive the financial recognition for their contributions.
Paid FOSS software also opens doors to more professional and polished products. When developers are remunerated, there's a greater incentive to maintain, improve, and support software. This, in turn, encourages wider adoption, as users are more likely to rely on software that is regularly updated and supported.
Moreover, a paid FOSS model disrupts the surveillance capitalism model. It negates the need for monetizing user data, as the revenue comes directly from the users in exchange for the software. This aligns perfectly with the principles of respecting user privacy and data ownership.
I WANT to pay for FOSS software that respects my rights and freedoms. The payment becomes an investment in a world where software is not just a tool, but a statement of principles. It's a declaration that I support an ecosystem where the power and control lie with the users, not in the hands of a few large corporations.
By paying for FOSS, we're contributing to a marketplace that values ethical practices over profit maximization. We're fostering a space where software developers don't have to resort to underhanded tactics like data mining or invasive advertising to make a living. Instead, they can focus on creating quality, user-respecting software.
This isn't to say that all FOSS should come with a price tag. There will always be a place for gratis FOSS, especially in educational and non-profit sectors, tho in such cases developers should strive to ask for donations. But for the software that powers businesses and our daily lives, a paid model is more sustainable and ethical.
The beauty of this approach is its alignment with the principles of free-market capitalism. It's a voluntary exchange where value is given and received. Users pay for the freedom, quality, and respect that FOSS offers, while developers are compensated for their ingenuity and hard work.
A nice example of this is Ardour: A DAW that's free in the sense that the source code is GPL, but the prebuilt official binaries have to be paid for.
When software is open-source and monetized, it strikes a critical balance. Users gain the freedoms associated with FOSS – the liberty to run, modify, and share – while developers receive the financial recognition for their contributions.
I never understood how these two concepts can coexist.
Lets say you made something FOSS and sold it to one person. Can't that person just... redistribute it for free? Which kinda makes you trying to make a living out of selling it much much more difficult or downright impossible?
Of course, people can be dishonest, but nothing stops the same from happening with proprietary software. Cracks do and will always exist.
As Louis Rossmann aptly put it, "If you choose to steal paid FOSS software nobody is stopping you, that's between you and your God."
While it's technically feasible for a purchaser to redistribute FOSS software, this act doesn't negate the continuous value a developer can offer. Think of it akin to a chef in an open kitchen; the recipe may be visible to all, but the chef's expertise in crafting and adapting the dish, as well as the dining experience provided, is what customers pay for.
In the world of proprietary software, the illusion of control is often just that – an illusion. Despite the efforts to safeguard against unauthorized distribution such as DRM, software licenses, verification servers, etc. piracy remains a prevalent issue. The key difference is that FOSS is upfront about this reality, building its model on transparency and trust rather than control.
Morally speaking, the FOSS model respects user freedom and fosters a community built on mutual respect and collaboration. It acknowledges the possibility of misuse but chooses to focus on positive engagement and the creation of value that extends beyond mere code. In this way, FOSS aligns more closely with the principles of intellectual freedom and individual empowerment, encouraging a market where ideas and innovations are shared and improved upon collectively, rather than hoarded for profit.
The assertion that non-paying customers do not provide value to a business is patently and demonstrably false. Especially in a free market.
A platform like YouTube benefits from non-paying customers because these customers still drive engagement and help solidify market share.
Non-paying customers still consume sponsor spots, which benefits creators, keeping creators on YouTube and therefore still benefitting YouTube.
Non-paying customers will promote YouTube just by using it, even for free, and create the impression that YouTube is the only game in town, instead of looking for and promoting alternatives.
Having a non-paying customer on your platform is in most ways better than having that customer become a paying customer on a competing platform.
The only time this dynamic no longer holds true is if YouTube believes their position is so entrenched that there is no more competition and they can squeeze the users all they want (end game enshitification).
The only time this dynamic no longer holds true is if YouTube believes their position is so entrenched that there is no more competition and they can squeeze the users all they want (end game enshitification).
Uuuhhh... Pretty sure that's where we're on now soooo....
I don't think that's entirely true. Or at least not in the longer term view of it. YT isn't just some random store that doesn't want to deal with an unruly customer. It's a big tech monopoly platform. Like the other tech giants, their strategy has always hinged on becoming the only game in town. And they predictably use the same tactics monopolies have been using for the past century:
Offer the product at such a low price that you take a loss and use your hoard of money to outlast would-be competitors who don't have a massive pot of money to burn. In YT/Google terms this is the fact that it's a free site and up until very recently they've done little to nothing about adblocking users despite being one of the biggest tech companies in the world, knowing it is happening, (It was in their chrome extensions search, plus they don't pay the creators for the no-ad views.) and having the capability to stop it at least for their browser, which a lot of people were already using. Why not go to war with adblockers sooner when their entire business is built on advertising? Because that's the cost they were willing to bear to turn YT into a monopoly. They could take the hit on not getting ad revenue from some users, but some hypothetical competitor certainly couldn't.
Make switching hard. A site that's grown as large as YT has massive network effects. For viewers, that's where all the videos are. For creators that's where all the viewers are. For both that's where there is enough of a community that there are lively discussions in comments. Nobody outside nerds like us is going to some external site they've never heard of. If you want to get your stuff out there, you use YT. Then there are things like creator contracts to further discourage switching.
Ad block users aren't valueless to YT, or at least they weren't. They were a portion of those viewers and commenters that contributed to YT becoming THE video social media site. They comment, share videos around, maybe even contribute directly to creators to allow them to keep making YT video. You maybe lose a out on a couple cents from the lost ad views for each one of them, but the value of the network effect gained by keeping them around this long far outweighs that loss.
EDIT: Oh and how could I forget: They get data from you. Sure, they can't directly sell ads for you off that data, but the more data they have in general, the better they are able to make predictions about other similar users, which is valuable.
They're doing this now because they can. They no longer have meaningful competition to kill off. The few that kinda cross into their market are also massive tech platform monopolies that are currently engaged in the exact same thing. They can't expand their customer base anymore, so now they're extracting more money from the captive audience they have.
And it's not just adblock users they're increasing the "price" for. YT has added an insane number of ads to their videos and increased the price of YT Premium. If adblockers died tomorrow, they wouldn't be like "What a relief, now that we've gotten rid of the freeloaders, we can finally lower our prices for everyone since they aren't bearing the burden of the non-payers." They just get to tighten the screws even further because they would have gained an even more dominant position over their users.
In a fairer world, we'd all pay a reasonable amount for the things we use or move on to an alternative if we'd rather not. But we don't live in that world. We live in capitalist hell world where everything is a monopoly and the government is so captured by those corporate interests that they basically never enforce even the meager anti-trust laws we do have.
this is a salient point sure, but you are perfectly capable of wording it in a way that doesn't also suck off a shitty malignant corporation. why the fuck would you sympathize with google? they have trillions of dollars, it is literally not at all comparable to your work.
thank you for being so mature and telling us peons the Real Mature Truths. your bravery is commendable.
Well said. Their business model is shit.
They already make money off of us, what the fuck are you talking about?
On I 100% agree with you here. But here's my (and I think a lot of people's) logic:
It's slightly different in the case of YouTube. The shop isn't putting Karen (and everyone else) under a microscope the second she walks into the store, and using that data to tailor what she sees in their other branches so she's more likely to buy. They're not creating what's effectively a gigantic influence market out of the data, and I don't think you are doing that to your clients either (although to be honest, I'd be pretty impressed if you were).
YouTube is free because "we are the product". They're harvesting our data whether we block ads, skip ads, watch ads, or pay for premium (as far as I know, please correct me if I'm wrong). It may not be profitable on its own but it sure as hell is bringing value to Google's other services. All the while, it's actively getting worse for end users (more and more ads, no more dislikes, not respecting video quality choices as well as it used to, hiding quality settings behind obtuse menus on mobile, no home page without watch history...)
Ultimately, "line no go up big like last year grug mad" is what matters to Google's shareholders and what ultimately drives their decisions. I firmly believe that we'd still be having this conversation if YouTube somehow making a profit with ad blockers on, so fuck em.
If that were true they'd have restricted YouTube to logged in people.
What?
They are trying to get rid of people with ad-blockers, not random by-passers that view 5/5 ads.
Could you explain that? Don't views or engagements count if you're not logged in?
I mean if they really didn't care about random visitors and cared more about making people watch ads. There's a very simple way to accomplish that, they only let you watch if you're logged in, and give your account a temp ban if you're blocking ads. But since they're not doing that they obviously see some value in anonymous visitors.
I'm thinking anonymous visitors are harder to track, and ad-watching farms are probably a thing too, I imagine.
I'm guessing the value is simply a semblance of goodwill, to not be as transparent about their ad-watching mania. Maybe?
No.
Im pretty sure they are fine with free riders when they are not too many.
Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don't think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don't think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?
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.
I don't care what YouTube wants to do or how they do it, they need viewers and if they can't figure out how to keep em, ah well. They gotta create a service that caters to my behavior, not the other way around.
That’s a flippant response when you were asked specifically to pretend they were your monkeys.
That's true!
Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn't you, they don't have to, and actively shouldn't, cater to you at all.
You're just saying "I don't have an actual answer" in a roundabout way.
Well, I don't, but it isn't my problem.
Google makes enough money as is, I don't really care if the make poor decisions and end up with an unviable business model. I'll do other things with my time.
I don't really care about Google's wellbeing. I pay directly to the content creators I like and I hate seeing ads anywhere in my life and I'm willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.
If they say that the marketing data they scrape from user activity isn't enough for em, well, sucks to suck I guess.
The reason I don't bring them revenue is because they continue to make the experience worse. Paying isn't going to make that stop, it's just going to temporarily shift the bar a little; the bar is however still moving towards a shittier experience for all.
Why would I look at this and go "Yes, I'll pay!" There are a lot of services I would genuinely pay for if I didn't have an impending dread that the service is just about to get worse again regardless of if I pay or not. It's not like paying is a magic bullet, either, it comes with a ton of different issues like privacy. They still sell your soul to advertisers if you pay them.
I paid for Lynda.com, and it could have easily taken in more business if YouTube wasn't working so hard for Google ads. There are a lot of paid (and free) services that suffer because of YouTubes ad-money business model.
Netflix could use the extra business. There are plenty of services failing to thrive while YouTube exists. Peertube would be wide open if YouTube went the way of most of Google's stable of apps. PeerTube is wide open even if YouTube doesn't go away anyway.
People genuinely hate ads. It's a high degree of enshitification. YouTube could divide into paid content and free content in a simple Freemium model.
Or, add third tier with ads, which any user can opt out of in the same way contributers can. I'd be happy to click subscribe on an ad free experience with less content available to me.
Or, add an option for a couple of free tier items per month, week, or day. Like Medium's business model.
In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.
Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.
Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.
And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.
I don't mind paying for YouTube content. I do mind their data harvesting, however. Figured out that my life isn't diminished at all without Youtube.
You think it costs $30b a year to run YouTube?
There's a middleground between reckless profiteering and not making any money at all. And yet YouTube discontinued their $5 tier. But no, it's the kids who are out of touch.
Not OP, but I personally would like to see a variety of options for how I see ads. Not what ads I see, but how they're delivered. I imagine several less intrusive options and the option to continue ads as they are now. I would need two or three less intrusive options combined to cover my viewing, or I could take only the current annoying interrupting ads on their own.
On second thought, YouTube would just end up turning on all options and stopping playback for anyone who finds the options list.
Subsidise it with your other services
Why would they? It's not like it's going to be bringing customers to their other services and Google isn't a charity.
They’re not a charity, they’re a monopoly. So fuck them I don’t care how people circumvent their increasingly shitty service
From a financial standpoint, that doesn’t make any sense though. Why would you continue to run a service that is a net drain on the rest of your business? Unless it can offer some meaningful, tangible benefit to the company, why continue to operate it at all? If a service needs to be subsidized to survive, why does it need to survive?
Google has basically used it to increase their tracking capabilities across the web. They know when you visit any site with an embedded YouTube video. But that’s only possible because they’re already a massive company. And it’s not reasonable to expect them to continue subsidizing it out of the goodness of their hearts. After all, if you’re willing to ask them to subsidize it, why aren’t you willing to help by paying for premium? It’s easy to say “just subsidize it” when it’s not your money.
To be clear, I don’t pay for premium and probably never will. But this thread has a lot of emotionally charged “because I want it” responses, which aren’t really grounded in reality. YouTube has operated at a loss for a decade, and only continued to operate because it had the backing of a tech giant. But if that tech giant wants to stop subsidizing the site and finally make the site profitable, that’s their prerogative. Yes, it’s the final step in the enshittification process. Yes, it means free users will have a worse experience. But ultimately, the company isn’t required to care about the free users.
If YouTube operates at a loss and they decide to ditch their service its their problem, not mine. I'm not here to save google
I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Additionally, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. Spending resources to manipulate people is not really beneficial to humanity as a whole. If it were up to me, it would be banned.
yeah, them needing the money (??) or whatever is one thing, but this arrogant fucking attitude lately is so repugnant. set up a patreon, don't fucking fight against your users like this. it's not exactly real TV or oxygen, it's fucking youtube. it's 90% garbage anyway
Hahahahaha, do they know that using it without the ad blocker is worse than whatever else they're going to do? I'd rather stare at 30 seconds of black screen than a 5 second ad, lmao.
Having a blank screen will make me less angry than seeing a long advertisement. Not to mention, I come from the days of dial up. I can wait a bit until I view the video.
I remember waiting 30 minutes for 75% of a badly compressed 1 minute pornvideo to load, I can outlast whatever they throw at us.
Good thing you only needed 75% of that 1 minute porn video, or you'd have had to wait even longer.
Well actually they can do much more, like for example decreasing quality to lets say 144p
I'm not saying that adblockers will not be able to bypass it, maybe there will be a solution as well, but wanted to say that the blank screen waiting is not their only weapon
*a 5 second ad every 5 minutes
If it was really that little I wouldn't be so up in arms about it. I put a video on yesterday and had 30 seconds of ads before it started and then another 30 seconds of ads after a minute and a half. Fuck that nonsense.
Usually the only thing I find YouTube uses for is those short 30 seconds of a video I have searched for. Like how to DIY something or quick, visualdemonstrations of concepts.
As bad as YouTube has gotten, it's already super common for me to skip over the first four or five search results, which are usually YouTube links, and just go to like the 4th or 5th one down, and fine. It's just as useful. If I was blind or couldn't read, that would suck, but I can live without YouTube like, I mostly already do, and used to, too.
They couldn't possibly make the experience worse than it already is without an ad blocker.
No adblock = No youtube
To paraphrase a great philosopher: executives.. uh.. find a way (to make things shittier)
No YouTube. It is YOU that is stuck with ME and I will make YOUR experience worse.
Can't possibly make it worse than shoving ads from hate groups. On my computer, I use Firefox with adblock, but on my phone and tablet I had been using the YouTube app until a few days ago. Google decided to show me a PragerU ad on mobile, so I decided to switch to Firefox mobile to watch YouTube. And the app either moved or removed the 'don't show this ad' selection.
If you're using android you might want to check out YouTube ReVanced.
If you log in, know that Google knows you're using MicroG amd has the capacity to ban your account.
Not heard of any bans yet, but I'm probably close to ditching revanced soon because this is my primary email address and Google is getting more and more aggressive
Look in to switching to a privacy respecting email. It's not for everyone, but i am very happy with the Proton suite of apps.
I might do that, I made this email when I was 13 and didn't know much about the digital world
I think what you have in mind is YouTube Vanced. ReVanced doesn't use the MicroG Suite.
Even Walmart lets shoplifters return to their stores after like three years. Think about that, if you owned a shop, what would mean to welcome back as a customer someone who previously stole from you?
Not that blocking ads is stealing, that they need us a lot more than we need them. Can build the nicest, fanciest store around with all the best things for sale, doesn't mean shit if nobody shops there.
If the experience gets any worse, I just won't watch YouTube videos. I already watch way less than I used to when it was a cool video hosting platform, before it started enshitifying.
Oh no, how unfortunate. Sadly, we don't have alternative YouTube clients like Invidious or Piped that can be used with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links to these alternative front-ends. And unfortunately, you can't use LibreTube or NewPipe on Android, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS, iPadOS and tvOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
damn this is awesome! this comment here is exactly why i hang out here instead of reddit these days. never see stuff like this there anymore, useful stuff. thank you so much!
Lemmy actually encourages me to post comments that are hopefully helpful for others. On Reddit I was just lurking, but on Lemmy, I actually participate in discussions.
I'm glad I chose to live here now
same
Yes, that's such a shame. Thank you for making me aware that we have no such alternatives.
I've seen youtube content on piped I know full well to be 4k video be blurred so badly as to be nearly unwatchable- they honestly decided to spend money to make their content worse as a lever to get you to watch ads or to submit to tracking etc
I have no idea what you're talking about. I use Piped daily and I never experienced such issues.
...and your viewing experience will be far, far worse if you don't use one.
Right? Having an ad blocker means my video gets slowed down by a few seconds, not having an ad blocker means I get to watch a 30 second ad from a local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators. I think I know my choice lmao
local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators.
So now I have another reason to use an ad-blocker. This world needs fornicators, dammit.
They had a long time to make the ad watching process less painful, or adding actual value to a premium subscription, but they are doing everything to make YouTube worse.
i could maybe start to swallow the actual tech getting worse (just like everything else is lately) but this arrogant, odious attitude they're putting on lately is so obscene and anti-consumer. it's like it's their god-given right to serve us ads and our solemn duty to consume them.
YouTube premium should have built-in sponsorblock. That's one of the ways that free clients are literally better than the paid service, mostly on mobile. Let me change the theme to different colours, let me show/hide the "shorts" and "create" tabs. In general, just give me the features that YouTube revanced has on the official app.
If the price was like $5 per month and it gave you no ads and 4K steaming it might be worth it. But at the current pricing it just isn't good value since YouTube doesn't produce content like other streaming services (and creators still have to rely on sponsorships for their livelihood regardless of whether the viewer is a premium subscriber) that justifies paying the higher prices for the service.
Instead their attack on their customers rather than just making the service valuable enough to pay for makes me never want to give them a cent.
I know right? Executives just never seem to get that you actually need to provide value to have people want to sign up for it. Saying that though, there's a lot of dumb consumers out there that just pay for it if needed.
I had the paid service until they jacked up the price for no reason at all. The second they announced the price hike for no reason I cancled my sub and have just been using a third party app to watch it on my phone or ublock on firefox
They should allow premium users to use third party YouTube clients using an API, like Reddit before Spez's war on third party apps.
I remember what the internet was like before we had ad-blockers. I concur with others who have said turning the blocker off would make it even worse. There no fucking way I'm turning off ad-blocking under any conditions. I'd rather just stop using the internet altogether. I can not verbalize how much I hate ads. I stopped watching TV because of ads a long time ago. Never again.
Oh man, I wish I could get a pair of AR-glasses with ad-blocking in real life. No more ads polluting the streets. That would be great.
Pretty sure any AR-glasses from the megacorps will add ads to real life soon enough. Any AR-glasses not from megacorp will be bought out to shut them down. Not like there is functional antitrust.
Yup, that's bound to happen, which is why I've written off actual AR-glasses long ago. Maybe if there's an OpenSource solution, but seeing how slow Linux phones are coming along, I'm not holding my breath. But I can still dream!
OpenSource phones are crippled by the phone duopoly and apps for everything. Apps for some things you really need. My business bank now requires an app for "security" and that app won't run on rooted or alternative ROMs Androids. Least I've not managed to make it do so. I'm going to have to get an insecure, Google owned, muggle phone just to use our business banking at all.
We need the market regulating before OpenSource phones, or any alternatives, can thrive.
The website normally works fine. No app required.
This is true of my personal bank. But the business bank we use need a security device, but they have dropped that and there is now an app for Android or iOS. That's that does what is basically one time codes.
If there’s anything I’ve learned, some open source genius hacker will figure it out, publish an early demo with 99% of features, and then disappear off the face of the planet before they ever make it available.
That is because the technical challenge of making a prototype that is 90% of the way there is not the same as that last 10% and building a business around it. Those are very different skills. So you start needing a team, a business and money. It absolutely can be done, and there companies like Pine64 that do it. I've got a small one. Running a business is very hard. Running an open source business is harder as you are going against the grain of that world.
To be fair, when we have GrapheneOS there's no need for Linux phones, as Graphene has the FOSS-ness, privacy, security, etc. So very few actually care more than "yeah linux phone would be cool"
Hey, how else are they going to make money from that $1500 pair of AR glasses you bought?
I cannot stand ads anymore to the point that when I happen to watch TV stream and ad break come up, I put the TV on mute and go browse Lemmy on my phone.
I remember the first time I saw ads on YouTube, I had just set up a new computer and wanted to test everything. So I opened Firefox and loaded a YouTube video. I got a preroll and wondered "wait ad's, on YouTube?" Then I realized I had been using AdBlock for so long I never witnessed the transition from ad free YouTube to YouTube with ads.
These days I use unlock origin, Sponsorblock and revanced. For now it still works but maybe I'll leave YouTube soon :/
I'm in the same boat and often wonder what right these billboard companies have to put their messages in my face
Billboards are illegal in several states. It's one of the ways they've kept Hawaii beautiful.
Yesterday a site for image translation I was using didn't load the image. so I thought maybe it's the adblock and man that was a horrible experience. How can people Stand all those flashing bullshit.
Wonder how much money they've wasted trying to block the blockers
It's even more weird all that invested time into people who are going to find ways to block them either way, instead of focusing on their userbase that doesn't use them. Seems like they are rummaging through the couch cushions for pennies at this rate.
Since this whole debacle started, they've just made ad blockers more prevalent to people who didn't know about them. Ad blocker use is actually up now compared to when they started making this a big deal. So, in a way, they actually screwed themselves.
Ah, the good ol' Streisand effect.
Considering they can use this knowledge to apply it to the entire Google ecosystem, I'd say they aren't wasting money in learning about new ways to fuck us over.
I watch YouTube content on my tv, and get ads, next to using it on my PC where I block them.
Generally I did not mind the ads, since it is part of the business model.
But frankly the experience on the tv is degrading quickly in the last 12 months:
From 2 skippable ads at the start (and end) of a video, I now get 2 longer unskippable ones, but regularly it doubles to 4 and a 5th that is either short or skippable.
And if it's still 2 at the start then usually 1-2 mins in I see 2 more long ads ... If I have the gall to rewind or forward the video I get 2 more long ads, usually followed by 2 short ones a minute or two later...
Some of that is probably ad-space tagged by the creators, but clearly YT overrules that and places its own ad markers.
Slowly I feel it's leaning towards punishment to watch content on YT, at least on the tv.
On top of that there is the annoying interface that blocks a full 30% of the screen, often blocking the one thing I wanted to look at.
Then the ads that always break subtitles of the video, or somehow enforcing subtitles in a language that I can not read.
And don't get me started on the topic-bubble the algorithm captures the user in.
YT should have left it as it was a few years ago, but it is forcing more and more ads, making things unfriendlier for both the viewer and creator, all to squeeze the viewers for more and more revenue.
It's a shame it's all so detrimental to the wealth of knowledge on there.
So if a good and proper alternative is able to stand on its feet I will gladly follow the creators and watch the new stuff on there.
Use smarttube instead of the official YouTube app, the ads are gone and it's better in every other way as well. Faster, more features, quality settings stay where you left them, sponsorblock support and much more.
Is that better than newpipe?
I don't think Newpipe is available on GoogleTV, but I could be wrong. You can log into your Google account with SmartTube so it functions more like the YouTube app with adding to your watch history, keeping your subs synced, and getting recommendations in the GoogleTV UI on top of having sponsorblock. It's more like Vanced than Newpipe.
Yeah. The current amount of unskippable ads means there cannot possibly be a worse experience. Any kind of ad blocking, even if it means learning to write and compile your own code is better than base YouTube.
These shenanigans have me rapidly transitioning from “I don’t want to see your annoying ads” to “I don’t want you to make any money at all”.
I'm already there, and I'm applying this thinking to every site - including the one hosting this article.
Same, I view the whole internet through uBlock and a pihole, so my value as an “impression” is virtually zero.
I’m not against for-profit websites making some money (and I run my own website, which generates a whopping $0), but Google has jumped the shark with their sketchy malware bullshit, and I’m starting to root for that organization to die.
I mean what's the difference between me not watching ads and me watching ads but still not buying their shit because I don't need it? I go out of my way to not buy anything I get ads for, so all it does is waste my time. I'm saving the advertisers money because they don't need to pay to show me ineffective ads.
Switched to duckduckgo purely because I wanted to stop giving Google money via searching
The ads make it pretty bad. They’d have to work really hard to make it worse without ads.
Wait until they make it so you either have to wait 20 minutes to watch a video or turn off your adblocker.
Because they can do that if they want and they will if they feel it's worth it to them.
I kinda want to see what the folks behind ublock origin would do if they did do that...
It could be that they don't have any recourse. At some point, I think Google will decide that the data they can harvest from people blocking ads will not be worth the cost of the server time and bandwidth. uBlock Origin has been doing well so far, but Google has far more money and resources to throw into this than they do. They're going up against a Goliath and in these cases, Goliath often wins.
I'm not saying I want any of this to happen. I just know Google.
I mean... it definitely will if you turn off your ad blocker.
Yeah, I've been on YouTube with ads and if it weren't for the Skip Ads button I could not tolerate it. Try to watch a 10 minute video and it starts with a 3 minute ad. How is that remotely reasonable?
I guarantee it's a worse experience with ads.
They still don't get it.
"Might get worse without turning of my ad-blocker" still beats "is definitely worse without ad-blocker".
I'm taking my chances.
I'd rather pay the creators directly on their Patreon then allow Google to pester me with ads.
Well, it'll also make my viewing experience worse if I do so...
It's been years since I've used YouTube without Revanced, SponsorBlock, and uBlock Origin. The vanilla experience when I see it on other people's devices horrifies me every single time.
On Android phones, you can download NewPipe or LibreTube from the F-Droid store. These will allow you to subscribe to channels and to watch without ads.
Because YouTube does not pay most creators enough to live on, please support your favorite YouTubers using Patreon, Locals, or wherever.
Oh no are there going to try to block the ad blockers but then the ad blockers block the ad blockers blockers? When will it end? They can keep on trying to make it worse but people will just keep figuring out how to bypass it.
Rawdogging YouTube today is a similar experience to what I had with a free trial of Hulu several years ago. The ads were so frequent and so lengthy that I cancelled several days before the trial was even over. I swear I was getting six minutes of ads for every two minutes of content.
There's a point where the greed makes the product unusable.
I watch a lot of Tubi on my TV, and I find the ads there tolerable. They don't just flood you with them. I'm totally ok with sitting through their ad breaks in exchange for a free watching experience.
(I don't know if Hulu has gotten better or worse. The experience was so god awful that I've never even slightly entertained the thought of trying it again)
Funny you brought up Tubi.
I was using it the other day and I remarked "this isnt bad, it's kinda like cable TV before it went to shit with ads"
At present, it's a pretty solid service. I'm old, so I don't need to watch all the latest shows. Tubi has plenty to keep me occupied.
For now
Until they enshittify too
Twitch is the same. I don't block ads on Twitch because it's usually just a minute per half an hour to 45min of video. It's even better if the streamer initiates the ad breaks manually, like when they stand up to stretch/walk around, because then I don't even miss anything. That's reasonable and fair, although they do have pre-roll ads and those obviously suck.
Okay now I feel a little bad for blocking ads on twitch if their ads are reasonable. Maybe I should consider adding it as an exclusion?
And at least for now with Tubi, the ads come from a separate domain that you can block and only get a blank screen for the ad break.
I can’t believe the amount of bootlickers in this thread trying to justify google’s blatant attempts at capitalising on the monopoly it has aggressively acquired. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck advertising. Fuck sundar pichai and his shitty ideas about how to ‘make money’. Aww no boo fucking Hoo has the mega-corp decided it can’t run this huge monopoly at a loss anymore after literally years of doing just fucking that? Who the fuck cares? Eat shit and go bust I literally do not give a flying fuck and I hope they go fucking bankrupt if only for their obviously anti-competitive and clearly fucking incompetent business practices. Fuck off. All advertising is theft of time. Eat shit.
But they're a billion dollar company, we have to think about their bottom line...
And I warn Google that it would have to first find and suck my cock real good for me to consider allowing it to do that.
Luckly they're pretty good at searching for obscure stuff that nobody's seen in a while.
There's probably a SEO result already there in the top position for UraniumBlaser cock.
They used to be sure, but google has lied to me so many times in the past few months it's ridiculous
I love how aggressive google is becoming. It drives more and more people into the arms of open source os and firefox
100% true facts. I am basically permanently open source OS and firefox now. (Shoutouts to EndeavorOS, going to wipe this PC clean of ubuntu next.)
Already switched to Firefox for work on linux and I'll switch on my "entertainment" windows install as well soon... just need to find time to do the sync stuff
Good job!
I love my desktop with Gentoo Linux and LibreWolf as my browser (basically Firefox on steroids with massive privacy and security improvements and preinstalled uBlock Origin) as well as GrapheneOS with Mull (the closest thing to LibreWolf on mobile) on my phone.
Nice! Will switch to Graphene too, when I find the time.
Isn't a blocked ad better than an ignored one for an advertiser? They don't have to pay for the blocked one. Google, of course, doesn't care if an ad is seen, only that they got paid by advertisers to show it.
Poor YouTube only brought in 29 billion dollars in revenue for 2022. They are 11% of Googles revenue.
Now granted they are seeing some slowdown in revenue growth, you know shareholders hate that. So maybe they are trying to create some revenue growth again by making more users pay.
Let's not forget the unmentioned income thanks to gathering all that user data.
The real value of Youtube (and social medias in general) is not the raw revenue they generate.
It's being able to be able to predict what will trend in advance to sell ads to anyone, anywhere. Which is proven by their 200+ billions in revenue from ads from all services.
It's extremely likely that in an alternate universe where Google doesn't own YouTube, their profit today is lower than what they currently have.
But like you said, poor YouTube is not making money explicitly on its own so they'll use it to justify any cost increase attempt when they already know what the real money maker is.
Legit curious: How much were their expenses though? 29 billion in revenue is a lot, but if it costs more than that to run, then it's not profitable.
If it costs more than that to run it they are doing something wrong.
I wasn't able to find YouTube expenses or a number for profit, but since they are a public company it should be in their 10-K and Annual Report.
YouTube made my viewing experience worse for the past decade already, and I'm not just talking about the fucking ads, which I don't see either way and never will be, regardless of what they do. If they think this is going to make me want to support them, then they should just drink the bottle of bleach as their next fabulous idea.
Their algorithm certainly made videos worse the moment they started priorizing the promotion of longer videos over shorter ones leading to an increase in incredibly long winded videos that waste everyones time.
Their algorithm is generally just complete garbage. Watch a video from channel X and it throws everything form channel X at you. Watch anything from category Y and it throws any video about category Y at you. It also loves to push "recently uploaded" videos. Meaning some garbage 47 views video of some random idiot uploading some random ass video that might be roughly related to a topic I'm potentially interested in. It also constantly recommends me the videos that I've already seen, so I have to tell YT every fucking time that I already watched the video and don't want to see it again. Or all the garbage clickbait titles & thumbnails that are just the fucking norm apparently. I cold go on an on and on... I watched so much videos in the past and nowadays it's almost nothing. It's all just shit.
i love how they're trying to introduce pReMiUm 1080p which looks slightly less shitty than normal 1080p. what fucking dipshit children do they have thinking of this rancid garbage
The more Google keeps going down this path as they inevitably always would, the more viscerally I will fight against it.
so little people use adblockers already, the few sheckles they'd get form those willing to turn them off, is that really worth it?
Or is it about power? its about power isnt it
"Hey buddy, it would be a damn shame if something happened to your viewer experience. Oh, no, we're your buddies, eheheh. For a small fee, we'll make sure your experience will be safe."
What holds youtube from blocking all videos to addblock users just as other sites do? Are they afraid of pushing youtube down the cliff?
I don't understand why self hosted videos aren't more popular
What holds youtube from blocking all videos to addblock users just as other sites do?
It's a constant game of cat and mouse, an arms race till the end of time. You can't block videos from ad-block users if you can't tell which users are using adblock and which are not.
I don’t understand why self hosted videos aren’t more popular
It's quite complicated technologically, and requires quite a lot of storage space. Viewers only go where the creators go, and the creators have no reason to go to someplace that is more of a pain in the ass to host videos.
And people will fight this even harder.
im confused. I use firefox and ublock and haven't noticed any change in the way youtube works for me.
Video background play fix. Long winded title. Let's me play youtube videos in FF mobile while leaving shitty comments on the fediverae.
That enshittification may continue until the ad revenue improves.
(aka never)
Ironically, I cannot read the article because I use an ad blocker.
Yeah bring it on Google. I didn't thought I could leave Reddit as there is so much content and I thought I always would fall for the sheer quantity of content that Reddit has. I am suprised by myself how easily I accepted Lemmy over Reddit even all these Month later. Maybe I could leave Youtube too and would be okay with another platform that does not provide so much content. And you know how I find out? Not by doing it on my own. But by getting a really good incentive to make this step. If youtube thinks I am gonna bend over and accept hours of ads in my life they are wrong. I will choose the alternative. As soon as they force me to disable adblock, I have all the reasons to pack my coach wagon and go west searching for another life. Maybe it will not be better, but I will certainly be free. And it will be exciting to be part of something new. Bring it on Google. Make me leave you!
Youtube drove me away when they started autoplaying misogynistic and alt right nonsense.
How could it get worse?
I have premium... Have had it for many years. The service has really gone downhill a lot in the last few months. Lots of stalls, inadequate buffer, and very low bit rates on my very fast and adequate ISP service.
Imagine being so cocky that you think pirated YouTube videos can't be a thing.
You can however, almost certainly correctly, predict that most people are not going to care enough to bother pirating YouTube videos, especially given how many people watch YouTube on phones or smart TVs now.
Pirates aren't most people. Piracy finds a way among pirates.
It does happen though. For example, in China, people would reupload YouTube videos to the local video platforms (e.g. bilibili) without permission from the video owners.
I have a separate app just to watch YouTube through which lets me subscribe and all the rest without an account and without ads and it was Uber easy to install.
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.
“Let’s hook Americans on consumerism and turn them into animals, then we can surprise pikachu when said animals eat our faces”
They don't care. You were costing them money to show you video while not giving them anything.
I'm not referring to the people not giving anything. More people will leave that originally watched ads.
The post says that they're targeting people who use adblockers, though.
Right. My point is that their response will have a large impact on other demographics. Their attempt is likely to backfire over time.
I pay for Youtube premium as a carry-over from Google Music (back when it was called Youtube Red). I let it run because I enjoy the screen off feature when I'm driving. On my desktop uBlock Origin still blocks 340 scripts/trackers even when logged into Premium. They not only want to eye-rape us with ads, but they want to track the fuck out of us across the web.
Youtube can eat shit and post it to 'shorts' before I turn my ad-blocker off.
Do they have a way to cut off FreeTube? I just started using it recently.
Not really, unless they start requiring you to log in before you can watch any content.
In theory they can cut off everything, but it takes some more intrusive behavior on your phone. Essentially they can build a layer required to authenticate your phone as unmodified before allowing it to access any content, using a special api.
ever since they've been getting so obnoxious and haughty lately i've deleted the app (which is barely worth having without premium; esp with them INTENTIONALLY DISABLING background playback on mobile which is a fucking joke and should literally be against the law) and honestly barely visit anymore. i don't think my quality of life has dropped at all
Literally listening to youtube in the background right now without premium. Firefox mobile ftw.
Video background play fix is the add-on I use.
Fuck 'em.
I'll just start downloading the YouTube videos I wanna watch. Maybe even have it on my Plex server.
That's what I did for ~6 years before I started using Piped with LibRedirect in my browser and LibreTube on my phone. It's honestly the best YouTube experience I ever had. FreeTube is great if you prefer a desktop app, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
Here I'm just talking about pasting the link into another website to download. I just learned quite a bit from your comment lol.
I'll definitely be checking out the stuff you linked to
Hey Google, you gotta remember that you won’t get any ad revenue from people who get fed up with your shit and just stop going to YouTube.
How about invest in actually using all the data you have on me to show me ads for products I would actually be interested in? I wouldnt hate ads so much if it wasn't so repetitive and for crap that is useless to me.
That's fine. The more they do stuff like this the less I watch YouTube.
Plenty of other things to watch out there.
Well, looks like I'll just stick to using Invidious.
I mean, it's already terrible.
don't care suck my balls
It's not the first time I stopped paying for a service that use to be good. If it effects me I'll drop the service and stop using the platform altogether.
Would they make it worse than watching ads?
of course that's infuriating, but you want to know something else that's infuriating? I've been paying for YouTube PREMIUM all these years, and one of the perks has been that we could hear the audio from videos even when our screen is off, or while multitasking on different apps.
Well imagine my DISMAY over the last few months, that is no longer true for me. The video stops playing after exactly 120 seconds if my screen is off. I'm paying for YouTube PREMIUM! I should be able to hear the audio from the videos when my screen is off!
As far as I know I'm the ONLY one experiencing this because other people on Lemmy have told me they can still hear YouTube audio when their screen is off.
someone please help me. You know how there is no YouTube customer service.
have you tried turn off youtube app's battery optimization setting. this happened to me before, until i turned off my phone's battery saver settings.
And I vaguely recall getting a notification sometime ago that YouTube was taking up too much battery and they asked me if I wanted to optimize the settings? I'm like "sure yeah whatever."
But since then I think that's when I haven't been able to play the video while phone is hibernating or while I multitasking on different apps.
Thank you. hopefully now that I switch the setting I can go back to my full premium perks.
Or, you know, try LibreTube. Does the job for free, and it includes SponsorBlock. Just don't forget to change the battery setting to unrestricted.
+1 for LibreWolf, I love it. Would you mind explaining why it's important to set the battery to unrestricted? I've been running it on optimized for a long time and never had any issues.
Valid question. If I leave LW on optimized, Android will kill it about a minute after I turn my screen off, which ruins my podcast experience (I like to sometimes watch my podcasts as well as some of them are enhanced by visuals)
Mobile game ads are the worst now. I could not turn ads on and watch with others because its soo bad.
YouTube is one of those sites that are so powerful.
Could they not just show less frequent ads but charge more for the advertising space? Surely they get decent click rates on their ads compared to the average web sites.
In that case their corporate buddies will lose precious profits. Instead, they try to wring the consumers dry.
And yet- Everyone will continue to bitch about this while NO ONE will do the right thing and just stop using the service.
Part of the problem is there are effectively no alternatives to YouTube. The other options are either just front-ends or completely lack enough creators to have the enormous wealth of videos and information.
I am sorry but I don't have the money to pay for YouTube premium :( so I guess it's a goodbye for me Youtube!
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I noticed it's too slow these days
lol fuck outta here. Goog is creating a market for competition.
Unfortunately if we've learned anything from Twitter and Reddit is that captive audiences are suuuuper captive.
But they're not doing any favors to the goal of stopping the bleeding towards TikTok that would have happened anyway, that's for sure.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
YouTube appeared to confirm reports that people with ad-blockers installed were experiencing a multi-second delay before being able to watch a video.
The Android-based news website Android Authority reported that people who weren't using Chrome noticed the delays, citing Reddit users who said they've experienced this delay while using browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
"In the past week, users using ad blockers may have experienced suboptimal viewing, which included delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using.
Users who have uninstalled their ad blockers may still experience a temporary delay in loading, and should try refreshing their browser," a YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider.
In June 2023, it began preventing users with ad blockers turned on from watching videos and reportedly experimented with pop-up warnings.
More recently, X users began complaining and sharing screenshots of YouTube pop-ups warning them to not use ad blockers.
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh, do you want my viewing experience to be worse? Well don't worry, because I'm doing my best so PeerTube has quality content in a weekly basis, while you also have the same content in a monthly basis.
Sorry Google.
I'm gonna use YouTube ad free or I won't use it.
And I ain't gonna pay for it.
Pretty sure that they are fine with that, they are actively trying to get rid of you.
Not in the slightest. They want to have their cake and eat it, meaning they want you on the platform but using it their way. Why else would they put so much effort into this fools errand of subverting ad blockers?
Ding ding ding. It’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s the harsh truth. This is akin to a super high maintenance Karen going “I’m never going to shop here again” even though she immediately returns everything she purchases. The company isn’t making any profit off of her, (in fact they’re losing money because she demands employees’ attention whenever she’s shopping) so a sensible manager’s response should be “okay, we’re glad to see you go. Please don’t come back.”
YouTube doesn’t want the users who block ads and refuse to pay. Those users are a net drain on the system. Lemmy likes to yell about FOSS, and there is a lot to love about that… But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”. Someone had to devote time and resources to building and hosting that “free” thing. The fact that they’re willing to share their effort is great! But it can’t be the expectation.
As someone who does a lot of freelance work, I’ll say the same thing that I say to clients when they ask me to work for free because of the exposure: Exposure is what people die of when they can’t pay their rent. I’m not saying YouTube is going to go bankrupt because of these users, but the users can’t reasonably expect YouTube to continue to pay for/accommodate them.
Free in FOSS means free as in freedom not free as in beer.
The F in FOSS does NOT mean gratis. I absolutely hate that we decided to call it Free. There have been attempts at saying another word like libre (aka FLOSS) but those haven't worked out.
I don't agree with the FSF on a lot, but their definition of free software is as follows:
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
In other words software can be paid and still be FOSS. In fact, I want to see MORE paid software that's FOSS.
Gratis software only works in very rare cases, when an entity other than the user of the software pays for it, but that is NOT the case with FOSS.
I want more FOSS software that is monetized. Charging for FOSS software is not only permissible but desirable. This model ensures that developers are compensated for their skilled labor, fostering an environment where innovation is rewarded. It's about creating a sustainable ecosystem where the values of open-source are upheld without sacrificing the financial viability of the developers.
When software is open-source and monetized, it strikes a critical balance. Users gain the freedoms associated with FOSS – the liberty to run, modify, and share – while developers receive the financial recognition for their contributions.
Paid FOSS software also opens doors to more professional and polished products. When developers are remunerated, there's a greater incentive to maintain, improve, and support software. This, in turn, encourages wider adoption, as users are more likely to rely on software that is regularly updated and supported.
Moreover, a paid FOSS model disrupts the surveillance capitalism model. It negates the need for monetizing user data, as the revenue comes directly from the users in exchange for the software. This aligns perfectly with the principles of respecting user privacy and data ownership.
I WANT to pay for FOSS software that respects my rights and freedoms. The payment becomes an investment in a world where software is not just a tool, but a statement of principles. It's a declaration that I support an ecosystem where the power and control lie with the users, not in the hands of a few large corporations.
By paying for FOSS, we're contributing to a marketplace that values ethical practices over profit maximization. We're fostering a space where software developers don't have to resort to underhanded tactics like data mining or invasive advertising to make a living. Instead, they can focus on creating quality, user-respecting software.
This isn't to say that all FOSS should come with a price tag. There will always be a place for gratis FOSS, especially in educational and non-profit sectors, tho in such cases developers should strive to ask for donations. But for the software that powers businesses and our daily lives, a paid model is more sustainable and ethical.
The beauty of this approach is its alignment with the principles of free-market capitalism. It's a voluntary exchange where value is given and received. Users pay for the freedom, quality, and respect that FOSS offers, while developers are compensated for their ingenuity and hard work.
A nice example of this is Ardour: A DAW that's free in the sense that the source code is GPL, but the prebuilt official binaries have to be paid for.
I never understood how these two concepts can coexist.
Lets say you made something FOSS and sold it to one person. Can't that person just... redistribute it for free? Which kinda makes you trying to make a living out of selling it much much more difficult or downright impossible?
Of course, people can be dishonest, but nothing stops the same from happening with proprietary software. Cracks do and will always exist. As Louis Rossmann aptly put it, "If you choose to steal paid FOSS software nobody is stopping you, that's between you and your God."
While it's technically feasible for a purchaser to redistribute FOSS software, this act doesn't negate the continuous value a developer can offer. Think of it akin to a chef in an open kitchen; the recipe may be visible to all, but the chef's expertise in crafting and adapting the dish, as well as the dining experience provided, is what customers pay for.
In the world of proprietary software, the illusion of control is often just that – an illusion. Despite the efforts to safeguard against unauthorized distribution such as DRM, software licenses, verification servers, etc. piracy remains a prevalent issue. The key difference is that FOSS is upfront about this reality, building its model on transparency and trust rather than control.
Morally speaking, the FOSS model respects user freedom and fosters a community built on mutual respect and collaboration. It acknowledges the possibility of misuse but chooses to focus on positive engagement and the creation of value that extends beyond mere code. In this way, FOSS aligns more closely with the principles of intellectual freedom and individual empowerment, encouraging a market where ideas and innovations are shared and improved upon collectively, rather than hoarded for profit.
The assertion that non-paying customers do not provide value to a business is patently and demonstrably false. Especially in a free market.
A platform like YouTube benefits from non-paying customers because these customers still drive engagement and help solidify market share.
Non-paying customers still consume sponsor spots, which benefits creators, keeping creators on YouTube and therefore still benefitting YouTube.
Non-paying customers will promote YouTube just by using it, even for free, and create the impression that YouTube is the only game in town, instead of looking for and promoting alternatives.
Having a non-paying customer on your platform is in most ways better than having that customer become a paying customer on a competing platform.
The only time this dynamic no longer holds true is if YouTube believes their position is so entrenched that there is no more competition and they can squeeze the users all they want (end game enshitification).
Uuuhhh... Pretty sure that's where we're on now soooo....
I don't think that's entirely true. Or at least not in the longer term view of it. YT isn't just some random store that doesn't want to deal with an unruly customer. It's a big tech monopoly platform. Like the other tech giants, their strategy has always hinged on becoming the only game in town. And they predictably use the same tactics monopolies have been using for the past century:
Offer the product at such a low price that you take a loss and use your hoard of money to outlast would-be competitors who don't have a massive pot of money to burn. In YT/Google terms this is the fact that it's a free site and up until very recently they've done little to nothing about adblocking users despite being one of the biggest tech companies in the world, knowing it is happening, (It was in their chrome extensions search, plus they don't pay the creators for the no-ad views.) and having the capability to stop it at least for their browser, which a lot of people were already using. Why not go to war with adblockers sooner when their entire business is built on advertising? Because that's the cost they were willing to bear to turn YT into a monopoly. They could take the hit on not getting ad revenue from some users, but some hypothetical competitor certainly couldn't.
Make switching hard. A site that's grown as large as YT has massive network effects. For viewers, that's where all the videos are. For creators that's where all the viewers are. For both that's where there is enough of a community that there are lively discussions in comments. Nobody outside nerds like us is going to some external site they've never heard of. If you want to get your stuff out there, you use YT. Then there are things like creator contracts to further discourage switching.
Ad block users aren't valueless to YT, or at least they weren't. They were a portion of those viewers and commenters that contributed to YT becoming THE video social media site. They comment, share videos around, maybe even contribute directly to creators to allow them to keep making YT video. You maybe lose a out on a couple cents from the lost ad views for each one of them, but the value of the network effect gained by keeping them around this long far outweighs that loss.
EDIT: Oh and how could I forget: They get data from you. Sure, they can't directly sell ads for you off that data, but the more data they have in general, the better they are able to make predictions about other similar users, which is valuable.
They're doing this now because they can. They no longer have meaningful competition to kill off. The few that kinda cross into their market are also massive tech platform monopolies that are currently engaged in the exact same thing. They can't expand their customer base anymore, so now they're extracting more money from the captive audience they have.
And it's not just adblock users they're increasing the "price" for. YT has added an insane number of ads to their videos and increased the price of YT Premium. If adblockers died tomorrow, they wouldn't be like "What a relief, now that we've gotten rid of the freeloaders, we can finally lower our prices for everyone since they aren't bearing the burden of the non-payers." They just get to tighten the screws even further because they would have gained an even more dominant position over their users.
In a fairer world, we'd all pay a reasonable amount for the things we use or move on to an alternative if we'd rather not. But we don't live in that world. We live in capitalist hell world where everything is a monopoly and the government is so captured by those corporate interests that they basically never enforce even the meager anti-trust laws we do have.
this is a salient point sure, but you are perfectly capable of wording it in a way that doesn't also suck off a shitty malignant corporation. why the fuck would you sympathize with google? they have trillions of dollars, it is literally not at all comparable to your work.
thank you for being so mature and telling us peons the Real Mature Truths. your bravery is commendable.
Well said. Their business model is shit.
They already make money off of us, what the fuck are you talking about?
On I 100% agree with you here. But here's my (and I think a lot of people's) logic:
It's slightly different in the case of YouTube. The shop isn't putting Karen (and everyone else) under a microscope the second she walks into the store, and using that data to tailor what she sees in their other branches so she's more likely to buy. They're not creating what's effectively a gigantic influence market out of the data, and I don't think you are doing that to your clients either (although to be honest, I'd be pretty impressed if you were).
YouTube is free because "we are the product". They're harvesting our data whether we block ads, skip ads, watch ads, or pay for premium (as far as I know, please correct me if I'm wrong). It may not be profitable on its own but it sure as hell is bringing value to Google's other services. All the while, it's actively getting worse for end users (more and more ads, no more dislikes, not respecting video quality choices as well as it used to, hiding quality settings behind obtuse menus on mobile, no home page without watch history...)
Ultimately, "line no go up big like last year grug mad" is what matters to Google's shareholders and what ultimately drives their decisions. I firmly believe that we'd still be having this conversation if YouTube somehow making a profit with ad blockers on, so fuck em.
If that were true they'd have restricted YouTube to logged in people.
What? They are trying to get rid of people with ad-blockers, not random by-passers that view 5/5 ads.
Could you explain that? Don't views or engagements count if you're not logged in?
I mean if they really didn't care about random visitors and cared more about making people watch ads. There's a very simple way to accomplish that, they only let you watch if you're logged in, and give your account a temp ban if you're blocking ads. But since they're not doing that they obviously see some value in anonymous visitors.
I'm thinking anonymous visitors are harder to track, and ad-watching farms are probably a thing too, I imagine.
I'm guessing the value is simply a semblance of goodwill, to not be as transparent about their ad-watching mania. Maybe?
No.
Im pretty sure they are fine with free riders when they are not too many.
Does that mean I should pull all my content?
Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don't think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don't think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?
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.
Honestly?
Not my monkeys, not my circus.
I don't care what YouTube wants to do or how they do it, they need viewers and if they can't figure out how to keep em, ah well. They gotta create a service that caters to my behavior, not the other way around.
That’s a flippant response when you were asked specifically to pretend they were your monkeys.
That's true!
Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn't you, they don't have to, and actively shouldn't, cater to you at all.
You're just saying "I don't have an actual answer" in a roundabout way.
Well, I don't, but it isn't my problem.
Google makes enough money as is, I don't really care if the make poor decisions and end up with an unviable business model. I'll do other things with my time.
I don't really care about Google's wellbeing. I pay directly to the content creators I like and I hate seeing ads anywhere in my life and I'm willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.
If they say that the marketing data they scrape from user activity isn't enough for em, well, sucks to suck I guess.
The reason I don't bring them revenue is because they continue to make the experience worse. Paying isn't going to make that stop, it's just going to temporarily shift the bar a little; the bar is however still moving towards a shittier experience for all.
Why would I look at this and go "Yes, I'll pay!" There are a lot of services I would genuinely pay for if I didn't have an impending dread that the service is just about to get worse again regardless of if I pay or not. It's not like paying is a magic bullet, either, it comes with a ton of different issues like privacy. They still sell your soul to advertisers if you pay them.
I paid for Lynda.com, and it could have easily taken in more business if YouTube wasn't working so hard for Google ads. There are a lot of paid (and free) services that suffer because of YouTubes ad-money business model.
Netflix could use the extra business. There are plenty of services failing to thrive while YouTube exists. Peertube would be wide open if YouTube went the way of most of Google's stable of apps. PeerTube is wide open even if YouTube doesn't go away anyway.
People genuinely hate ads. It's a high degree of enshitification. YouTube could divide into paid content and free content in a simple Freemium model.
Or, add third tier with ads, which any user can opt out of in the same way contributers can. I'd be happy to click subscribe on an ad free experience with less content available to me.
Or, add an option for a couple of free tier items per month, week, or day. Like Medium's business model.
It's not hard to stop sucking!
In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.
Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.
Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.
And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.
I don't mind paying for YouTube content. I do mind their data harvesting, however. Figured out that my life isn't diminished at all without Youtube.
You think it costs $30b a year to run YouTube?
There's a middleground between reckless profiteering and not making any money at all. And yet YouTube discontinued their $5 tier. But no, it's the kids who are out of touch.
Not OP, but I personally would like to see a variety of options for how I see ads. Not what ads I see, but how they're delivered. I imagine several less intrusive options and the option to continue ads as they are now. I would need two or three less intrusive options combined to cover my viewing, or I could take only the current annoying interrupting ads on their own.
On second thought, YouTube would just end up turning on all options and stopping playback for anyone who finds the options list.
Subsidise it with your other services
Why would they? It's not like it's going to be bringing customers to their other services and Google isn't a charity.
They’re not a charity, they’re a monopoly. So fuck them I don’t care how people circumvent their increasingly shitty service
From a financial standpoint, that doesn’t make any sense though. Why would you continue to run a service that is a net drain on the rest of your business? Unless it can offer some meaningful, tangible benefit to the company, why continue to operate it at all? If a service needs to be subsidized to survive, why does it need to survive?
Google has basically used it to increase their tracking capabilities across the web. They know when you visit any site with an embedded YouTube video. But that’s only possible because they’re already a massive company. And it’s not reasonable to expect them to continue subsidizing it out of the goodness of their hearts. After all, if you’re willing to ask them to subsidize it, why aren’t you willing to help by paying for premium? It’s easy to say “just subsidize it” when it’s not your money.
To be clear, I don’t pay for premium and probably never will. But this thread has a lot of emotionally charged “because I want it” responses, which aren’t really grounded in reality. YouTube has operated at a loss for a decade, and only continued to operate because it had the backing of a tech giant. But if that tech giant wants to stop subsidizing the site and finally make the site profitable, that’s their prerogative. Yes, it’s the final step in the enshittification process. Yes, it means free users will have a worse experience. But ultimately, the company isn’t required to care about the free users.
If YouTube operates at a loss and they decide to ditch their service its their problem, not mine. I'm not here to save google
I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Additionally, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. Spending resources to manipulate people is not really beneficial to humanity as a whole. If it were up to me, it would be banned.
yeah, them needing the money (??) or whatever is one thing, but this arrogant fucking attitude lately is so repugnant. set up a patreon, don't fucking fight against your users like this. it's not exactly real TV or oxygen, it's fucking youtube. it's 90% garbage anyway
Hahahahaha, do they know that using it without the ad blocker is worse than whatever else they're going to do? I'd rather stare at 30 seconds of black screen than a 5 second ad, lmao.
Having a blank screen will make me less angry than seeing a long advertisement. Not to mention, I come from the days of dial up. I can wait a bit until I view the video.
I remember waiting 30 minutes for 75% of a badly compressed 1 minute pornvideo to load, I can outlast whatever they throw at us.
Good thing you only needed 75% of that 1 minute porn video, or you'd have had to wait even longer.
Please, I'm not a marathon runner.
I only needed 3 seconds.
Well actually they can do much more, like for example decreasing quality to lets say 144p
I'm not saying that adblockers will not be able to bypass it, maybe there will be a solution as well, but wanted to say that the blank screen waiting is not their only weapon
*a 5 second ad every 5 minutes
If it was really that little I wouldn't be so up in arms about it. I put a video on yesterday and had 30 seconds of ads before it started and then another 30 seconds of ads after a minute and a half. Fuck that nonsense.
Usually the only thing I find YouTube uses for is those short 30 seconds of a video I have searched for. Like how to DIY something or quick, visualdemonstrations of concepts.
As bad as YouTube has gotten, it's already super common for me to skip over the first four or five search results, which are usually YouTube links, and just go to like the 4th or 5th one down, and fine. It's just as useful. If I was blind or couldn't read, that would suck, but I can live without YouTube like, I mostly already do, and used to, too.
They couldn't possibly make the experience worse than it already is without an ad blocker.
No adblock = No youtube
To paraphrase a great philosopher: executives.. uh.. find a way (to make things shittier)
No YouTube. It is YOU that is stuck with ME and I will make YOUR experience worse.
Can't possibly make it worse than shoving ads from hate groups. On my computer, I use Firefox with adblock, but on my phone and tablet I had been using the YouTube app until a few days ago. Google decided to show me a PragerU ad on mobile, so I decided to switch to Firefox mobile to watch YouTube. And the app either moved or removed the 'don't show this ad' selection.
If you're using android you might want to check out YouTube ReVanced.
If you log in, know that Google knows you're using MicroG amd has the capacity to ban your account.
Not heard of any bans yet, but I'm probably close to ditching revanced soon because this is my primary email address and Google is getting more and more aggressive
Look in to switching to a privacy respecting email. It's not for everyone, but i am very happy with the Proton suite of apps.
I might do that, I made this email when I was 13 and didn't know much about the digital world
I think what you have in mind is YouTube Vanced. ReVanced doesn't use the MicroG Suite.
Even Walmart lets shoplifters return to their stores after like three years. Think about that, if you owned a shop, what would mean to welcome back as a customer someone who previously stole from you?
Not that blocking ads is stealing, that they need us a lot more than we need them. Can build the nicest, fanciest store around with all the best things for sale, doesn't mean shit if nobody shops there.
If the experience gets any worse, I just won't watch YouTube videos. I already watch way less than I used to when it was a cool video hosting platform, before it started enshitifying.
Check out Sponsor Block extension, if you aren't using it. It's really cool
Yeah recently starting using this and it's excellent, no more manually trying to skip over yet another nordvpn sponsor monologue
Same I no longer use the YouTube app in my telphone
Newpipe is pretty good, you can get it through the f droid store
Fennec is Firefox for Android and it even supports uBlock, Dark Reader and others.
Oh no, how unfortunate. Sadly, we don't have alternative YouTube clients like Invidious or Piped that can be used with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links to these alternative front-ends. And unfortunately, you can't use LibreTube or NewPipe on Android, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS, iPadOS and tvOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
damn this is awesome! this comment here is exactly why i hang out here instead of reddit these days. never see stuff like this there anymore, useful stuff. thank you so much!
Lemmy actually encourages me to post comments that are hopefully helpful for others. On Reddit I was just lurking, but on Lemmy, I actually participate in discussions.
I'm glad I chose to live here now
same
Yes, that's such a shame. Thank you for making me aware that we have no such alternatives.
I've seen youtube content on piped I know full well to be 4k video be blurred so badly as to be nearly unwatchable- they honestly decided to spend money to make their content worse as a lever to get you to watch ads or to submit to tracking etc
I have no idea what you're talking about. I use Piped daily and I never experienced such issues.
...and your viewing experience will be far, far worse if you don't use one.
Right? Having an ad blocker means my video gets slowed down by a few seconds, not having an ad blocker means I get to watch a 30 second ad from a local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators. I think I know my choice lmao
So now I have another reason to use an ad-blocker. This world needs fornicators, dammit.
in saunters the Alphabet subsidiary gang
They had a long time to make the ad watching process less painful, or adding actual value to a premium subscription, but they are doing everything to make YouTube worse.
i could maybe start to swallow the actual tech getting worse (just like everything else is lately) but this arrogant, odious attitude they're putting on lately is so obscene and anti-consumer. it's like it's their god-given right to serve us ads and our solemn duty to consume them.
YouTube premium should have built-in sponsorblock. That's one of the ways that free clients are literally better than the paid service, mostly on mobile. Let me change the theme to different colours, let me show/hide the "shorts" and "create" tabs. In general, just give me the features that YouTube revanced has on the official app.
If the price was like $5 per month and it gave you no ads and 4K steaming it might be worth it. But at the current pricing it just isn't good value since YouTube doesn't produce content like other streaming services (and creators still have to rely on sponsorships for their livelihood regardless of whether the viewer is a premium subscriber) that justifies paying the higher prices for the service.
Instead their attack on their customers rather than just making the service valuable enough to pay for makes me never want to give them a cent.
I know right? Executives just never seem to get that you actually need to provide value to have people want to sign up for it. Saying that though, there's a lot of dumb consumers out there that just pay for it if needed.
I had the paid service until they jacked up the price for no reason at all. The second they announced the price hike for no reason I cancled my sub and have just been using a third party app to watch it on my phone or ublock on firefox
They should allow premium users to use third party YouTube clients using an API, like Reddit before Spez's war on third party apps.
I remember what the internet was like before we had ad-blockers. I concur with others who have said turning the blocker off would make it even worse. There no fucking way I'm turning off ad-blocking under any conditions. I'd rather just stop using the internet altogether. I can not verbalize how much I hate ads. I stopped watching TV because of ads a long time ago. Never again.
Oh man, I wish I could get a pair of AR-glasses with ad-blocking in real life. No more ads polluting the streets. That would be great.
Pretty sure any AR-glasses from the megacorps will add ads to real life soon enough. Any AR-glasses not from megacorp will be bought out to shut them down. Not like there is functional antitrust.
Yup, that's bound to happen, which is why I've written off actual AR-glasses long ago. Maybe if there's an OpenSource solution, but seeing how slow Linux phones are coming along, I'm not holding my breath. But I can still dream!
OpenSource phones are crippled by the phone duopoly and apps for everything. Apps for some things you really need. My business bank now requires an app for "security" and that app won't run on rooted or alternative ROMs Androids. Least I've not managed to make it do so. I'm going to have to get an insecure, Google owned, muggle phone just to use our business banking at all.
We need the market regulating before OpenSource phones, or any alternatives, can thrive.
The website normally works fine. No app required.
This is true of my personal bank. But the business bank we use need a security device, but they have dropped that and there is now an app for Android or iOS. That's that does what is basically one time codes.
If there’s anything I’ve learned, some open source genius hacker will figure it out, publish an early demo with 99% of features, and then disappear off the face of the planet before they ever make it available.
That is because the technical challenge of making a prototype that is 90% of the way there is not the same as that last 10% and building a business around it. Those are very different skills. So you start needing a team, a business and money. It absolutely can be done, and there companies like Pine64 that do it. I've got a small one. Running a business is very hard. Running an open source business is harder as you are going against the grain of that world.
To be fair, when we have GrapheneOS there's no need for Linux phones, as Graphene has the FOSS-ness, privacy, security, etc. So very few actually care more than "yeah linux phone would be cool"
Hey, how else are they going to make money from that $1500 pair of AR glasses you bought?
I cannot stand ads anymore to the point that when I happen to watch TV stream and ad break come up, I put the TV on mute and go browse Lemmy on my phone.
I remember the first time I saw ads on YouTube, I had just set up a new computer and wanted to test everything. So I opened Firefox and loaded a YouTube video. I got a preroll and wondered "wait ad's, on YouTube?" Then I realized I had been using AdBlock for so long I never witnessed the transition from ad free YouTube to YouTube with ads.
These days I use unlock origin, Sponsorblock and revanced. For now it still works but maybe I'll leave YouTube soon :/
I'm in the same boat and often wonder what right these billboard companies have to put their messages in my face
Billboards are illegal in several states. It's one of the ways they've kept Hawaii beautiful.
Yesterday a site for image translation I was using didn't load the image. so I thought maybe it's the adblock and man that was a horrible experience. How can people Stand all those flashing bullshit.
Wonder how much money they've wasted trying to block the blockers
It's even more weird all that invested time into people who are going to find ways to block them either way, instead of focusing on their userbase that doesn't use them. Seems like they are rummaging through the couch cushions for pennies at this rate.
Since this whole debacle started, they've just made ad blockers more prevalent to people who didn't know about them. Ad blocker use is actually up now compared to when they started making this a big deal. So, in a way, they actually screwed themselves.
Ah, the good ol' Streisand effect.
Considering they can use this knowledge to apply it to the entire Google ecosystem, I'd say they aren't wasting money in learning about new ways to fuck us over.
I watch YouTube content on my tv, and get ads, next to using it on my PC where I block them. Generally I did not mind the ads, since it is part of the business model.
But frankly the experience on the tv is degrading quickly in the last 12 months:
From 2 skippable ads at the start (and end) of a video, I now get 2 longer unskippable ones, but regularly it doubles to 4 and a 5th that is either short or skippable. And if it's still 2 at the start then usually 1-2 mins in I see 2 more long ads ... If I have the gall to rewind or forward the video I get 2 more long ads, usually followed by 2 short ones a minute or two later... Some of that is probably ad-space tagged by the creators, but clearly YT overrules that and places its own ad markers.
Slowly I feel it's leaning towards punishment to watch content on YT, at least on the tv.
On top of that there is the annoying interface that blocks a full 30% of the screen, often blocking the one thing I wanted to look at. Then the ads that always break subtitles of the video, or somehow enforcing subtitles in a language that I can not read.
And don't get me started on the topic-bubble the algorithm captures the user in.
YT should have left it as it was a few years ago, but it is forcing more and more ads, making things unfriendlier for both the viewer and creator, all to squeeze the viewers for more and more revenue.
It's a shame it's all so detrimental to the wealth of knowledge on there.
So if a good and proper alternative is able to stand on its feet I will gladly follow the creators and watch the new stuff on there.
Use smarttube instead of the official YouTube app, the ads are gone and it's better in every other way as well. Faster, more features, quality settings stay where you left them, sponsorblock support and much more.
Is that better than newpipe?
I don't think Newpipe is available on GoogleTV, but I could be wrong. You can log into your Google account with SmartTube so it functions more like the YouTube app with adding to your watch history, keeping your subs synced, and getting recommendations in the GoogleTV UI on top of having sponsorblock. It's more like Vanced than Newpipe.
Can't be worse than the experience with the ads..
Yeah. The current amount of unskippable ads means there cannot possibly be a worse experience. Any kind of ad blocking, even if it means learning to write and compile your own code is better than base YouTube.
These shenanigans have me rapidly transitioning from “I don’t want to see your annoying ads” to “I don’t want you to make any money at all”.
I'm already there, and I'm applying this thinking to every site - including the one hosting this article.
Same, I view the whole internet through uBlock and a pihole, so my value as an “impression” is virtually zero.
I’m not against for-profit websites making some money (and I run my own website, which generates a whopping $0), but Google has jumped the shark with their sketchy malware bullshit, and I’m starting to root for that organization to die.
I mean what's the difference between me not watching ads and me watching ads but still not buying their shit because I don't need it? I go out of my way to not buy anything I get ads for, so all it does is waste my time. I'm saving the advertisers money because they don't need to pay to show me ineffective ads.
Switched to duckduckgo purely because I wanted to stop giving Google money via searching
The ads make it pretty bad. They’d have to work really hard to make it worse without ads.
Wait until they make it so you either have to wait 20 minutes to watch a video or turn off your adblocker.
Because they can do that if they want and they will if they feel it's worth it to them.
I kinda want to see what the folks behind ublock origin would do if they did do that...
It could be that they don't have any recourse. At some point, I think Google will decide that the data they can harvest from people blocking ads will not be worth the cost of the server time and bandwidth. uBlock Origin has been doing well so far, but Google has far more money and resources to throw into this than they do. They're going up against a Goliath and in these cases, Goliath often wins.
I'm not saying I want any of this to happen. I just know Google.
I mean... it definitely will if you turn off your ad blocker.
Yeah, I've been on YouTube with ads and if it weren't for the Skip Ads button I could not tolerate it. Try to watch a 10 minute video and it starts with a 3 minute ad. How is that remotely reasonable?
I guarantee it's a worse experience with ads.
They still don't get it.
"Might get worse without turning of my ad-blocker" still beats "is definitely worse without ad-blocker".
I'm taking my chances.
I'd rather pay the creators directly on their Patreon then allow Google to pester me with ads.
Well, it'll also make my viewing experience worse if I do so...
It's been years since I've used YouTube without Revanced, SponsorBlock, and uBlock Origin. The vanilla experience when I see it on other people's devices horrifies me every single time.
@TangledHyphae @technology
Then, use a program that is a different YouTube Front End.
On Android phones, you can download NewPipe or LibreTube from the F-Droid store. These will allow you to subscribe to channels and to watch without ads.
You can use Invidious instances or you can setup your own to watch through a website.
Invidious Instances: https://docs.invidious.io/instances
Invidious GitHub Code: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Because YouTube does not pay most creators enough to live on, please support your favorite YouTubers using Patreon, Locals, or wherever.
Oh no are there going to try to block the ad blockers but then the ad blockers block the ad blockers blockers? When will it end? They can keep on trying to make it worse but people will just keep figuring out how to bypass it.
Rawdogging YouTube today is a similar experience to what I had with a free trial of Hulu several years ago. The ads were so frequent and so lengthy that I cancelled several days before the trial was even over. I swear I was getting six minutes of ads for every two minutes of content.
There's a point where the greed makes the product unusable.
I watch a lot of Tubi on my TV, and I find the ads there tolerable. They don't just flood you with them. I'm totally ok with sitting through their ad breaks in exchange for a free watching experience.
(I don't know if Hulu has gotten better or worse. The experience was so god awful that I've never even slightly entertained the thought of trying it again)
Funny you brought up Tubi.
I was using it the other day and I remarked "this isnt bad, it's kinda like cable TV before it went to shit with ads"
At present, it's a pretty solid service. I'm old, so I don't need to watch all the latest shows. Tubi has plenty to keep me occupied.
For now
Until they enshittify too
Twitch is the same. I don't block ads on Twitch because it's usually just a minute per half an hour to 45min of video. It's even better if the streamer initiates the ad breaks manually, like when they stand up to stretch/walk around, because then I don't even miss anything. That's reasonable and fair, although they do have pre-roll ads and those obviously suck.
Okay now I feel a little bad for blocking ads on twitch if their ads are reasonable. Maybe I should consider adding it as an exclusion?
And at least for now with Tubi, the ads come from a separate domain that you can block and only get a blank screen for the ad break.
I can’t believe the amount of bootlickers in this thread trying to justify google’s blatant attempts at capitalising on the monopoly it has aggressively acquired. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck advertising. Fuck sundar pichai and his shitty ideas about how to ‘make money’. Aww no boo fucking Hoo has the mega-corp decided it can’t run this huge monopoly at a loss anymore after literally years of doing just fucking that? Who the fuck cares? Eat shit and go bust I literally do not give a flying fuck and I hope they go fucking bankrupt if only for their obviously anti-competitive and clearly fucking incompetent business practices. Fuck off. All advertising is theft of time. Eat shit.
But they're a billion dollar company, we have to think about their bottom line...
And I warn Google that it would have to first find and suck my cock real good for me to consider allowing it to do that.
Luckly they're pretty good at searching for obscure stuff that nobody's seen in a while.
There's probably a SEO result already there in the top position for UraniumBlaser cock.
They used to be sure, but google has lied to me so many times in the past few months it's ridiculous
I love how aggressive google is becoming. It drives more and more people into the arms of open source os and firefox
100% true facts. I am basically permanently open source OS and firefox now. (Shoutouts to EndeavorOS, going to wipe this PC clean of ubuntu next.)
Already switched to Firefox for work on linux and I'll switch on my "entertainment" windows install as well soon... just need to find time to do the sync stuff
Good job!
I love my desktop with Gentoo Linux and LibreWolf as my browser (basically Firefox on steroids with massive privacy and security improvements and preinstalled uBlock Origin) as well as GrapheneOS with Mull (the closest thing to LibreWolf on mobile) on my phone.
Nice! Will switch to Graphene too, when I find the time.
Suck my fat hog google
Isn't a blocked ad better than an ignored one for an advertiser? They don't have to pay for the blocked one. Google, of course, doesn't care if an ad is seen, only that they got paid by advertisers to show it.
Poor YouTube only brought in 29 billion dollars in revenue for 2022. They are 11% of Googles revenue.
Now granted they are seeing some slowdown in revenue growth, you know shareholders hate that. So maybe they are trying to create some revenue growth again by making more users pay.
Let's not forget the unmentioned income thanks to gathering all that user data.
The real value of Youtube (and social medias in general) is not the raw revenue they generate.
It's being able to be able to predict what will trend in advance to sell ads to anyone, anywhere. Which is proven by their 200+ billions in revenue from ads from all services.
It's extremely likely that in an alternate universe where Google doesn't own YouTube, their profit today is lower than what they currently have.
But like you said, poor YouTube is not making money explicitly on its own so they'll use it to justify any cost increase attempt when they already know what the real money maker is.
Legit curious: How much were their expenses though? 29 billion in revenue is a lot, but if it costs more than that to run, then it's not profitable.
If it costs more than that to run it they are doing something wrong.
I wasn't able to find YouTube expenses or a number for profit, but since they are a public company it should be in their 10-K and Annual Report.
YouTube made my viewing experience worse for the past decade already, and I'm not just talking about the fucking ads, which I don't see either way and never will be, regardless of what they do. If they think this is going to make me want to support them, then they should just drink the bottle of bleach as their next fabulous idea.
Their algorithm certainly made videos worse the moment they started priorizing the promotion of longer videos over shorter ones leading to an increase in incredibly long winded videos that waste everyones time.
Their algorithm is generally just complete garbage. Watch a video from channel X and it throws everything form channel X at you. Watch anything from category Y and it throws any video about category Y at you. It also loves to push "recently uploaded" videos. Meaning some garbage 47 views video of some random idiot uploading some random ass video that might be roughly related to a topic I'm potentially interested in. It also constantly recommends me the videos that I've already seen, so I have to tell YT every fucking time that I already watched the video and don't want to see it again. Or all the garbage clickbait titles & thumbnails that are just the fucking norm apparently. I cold go on an on and on... I watched so much videos in the past and nowadays it's almost nothing. It's all just shit.
i love how they're trying to introduce pReMiUm 1080p which looks slightly less shitty than normal 1080p. what fucking dipshit children do they have thinking of this rancid garbage
The more Google keeps going down this path as they inevitably always would, the more viscerally I will fight against it.
so little people use adblockers already, the few sheckles they'd get form those willing to turn them off, is that really worth it?
Or is it about power? its about power isnt it
"Hey buddy, it would be a damn shame if something happened to your viewer experience. Oh, no, we're your buddies, eheheh. For a small fee, we'll make sure your experience will be safe."
What holds youtube from blocking all videos to addblock users just as other sites do? Are they afraid of pushing youtube down the cliff?
I don't understand why self hosted videos aren't more popular
It's a constant game of cat and mouse, an arms race till the end of time. You can't block videos from ad-block users if you can't tell which users are using adblock and which are not.
It's quite complicated technologically, and requires quite a lot of storage space. Viewers only go where the creators go, and the creators have no reason to go to someplace that is more of a pain in the ass to host videos.
And people will fight this even harder.
im confused. I use firefox and ublock and haven't noticed any change in the way youtube works for me.
Video background play fix. Long winded title. Let's me play youtube videos in FF mobile while leaving shitty comments on the fediverae.
That enshittification may continue until the ad revenue improves.
(aka never)
Ironically, I cannot read the article because I use an ad blocker.
Bring it.
Yeah bring it on Google. I didn't thought I could leave Reddit as there is so much content and I thought I always would fall for the sheer quantity of content that Reddit has. I am suprised by myself how easily I accepted Lemmy over Reddit even all these Month later. Maybe I could leave Youtube too and would be okay with another platform that does not provide so much content. And you know how I find out? Not by doing it on my own. But by getting a really good incentive to make this step. If youtube thinks I am gonna bend over and accept hours of ads in my life they are wrong. I will choose the alternative. As soon as they force me to disable adblock, I have all the reasons to pack my coach wagon and go west searching for another life. Maybe it will not be better, but I will certainly be free. And it will be exciting to be part of something new. Bring it on Google. Make me leave you!
Youtube drove me away when they started autoplaying misogynistic and alt right nonsense.
How could it get worse?
I have premium... Have had it for many years. The service has really gone downhill a lot in the last few months. Lots of stalls, inadequate buffer, and very low bit rates on my very fast and adequate ISP service.
Imagine being so cocky that you think pirated YouTube videos can't be a thing.
You can however, almost certainly correctly, predict that most people are not going to care enough to bother pirating YouTube videos, especially given how many people watch YouTube on phones or smart TVs now.
Pirates aren't most people. Piracy finds a way among pirates.
It does happen though. For example, in China, people would reupload YouTube videos to the local video platforms (e.g. bilibili) without permission from the video owners.
I have a separate app just to watch YouTube through which lets me subscribe and all the rest without an account and without ads and it was Uber easy to install.
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.
“Let’s hook Americans on consumerism and turn them into animals, then we can surprise pikachu when said animals eat our faces”
🤷🏻♂️ I just work here
phones and tv puts the viewing experience in their app in most cases, too, and out of the reach of effective ad blockers.
desktop pc user share on yt has to be pretty low nowadays.
Firefox mobile+uBlock Origin+Video background play fix.
Asian dude and butterfly meme... Is this a premium.
YouTube surprised at sudden lack of consumers
They don't care. You were costing them money to show you video while not giving them anything.
I'm not referring to the people not giving anything. More people will leave that originally watched ads.
The post says that they're targeting people who use adblockers, though.
Right. My point is that their response will have a large impact on other demographics. Their attempt is likely to backfire over time.
I pay for Youtube premium as a carry-over from Google Music (back when it was called Youtube Red). I let it run because I enjoy the screen off feature when I'm driving. On my desktop uBlock Origin still blocks 340 scripts/trackers even when logged into Premium. They not only want to eye-rape us with ads, but they want to track the fuck out of us across the web.
Youtube can eat shit and post it to 'shorts' before I turn my ad-blocker off.
Do they have a way to cut off FreeTube? I just started using it recently.
Not really, unless they start requiring you to log in before you can watch any content.
In theory they can cut off everything, but it takes some more intrusive behavior on your phone. Essentially they can build a layer required to authenticate your phone as unmodified before allowing it to access any content, using a special api.
ever since they've been getting so obnoxious and haughty lately i've deleted the app (which is barely worth having without premium; esp with them INTENTIONALLY DISABLING background playback on mobile which is a fucking joke and should literally be against the law) and honestly barely visit anymore. i don't think my quality of life has dropped at all
Literally listening to youtube in the background right now without premium. Firefox mobile ftw.
Video background play fix is the add-on I use.
Fuck 'em.
I'll just start downloading the YouTube videos I wanna watch. Maybe even have it on my Plex server.
That's what I did for ~6 years before I started using Piped with LibRedirect in my browser and LibreTube on my phone. It's honestly the best YouTube experience I ever had. FreeTube is great if you prefer a desktop app, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
Here I'm just talking about pasting the link into another website to download. I just learned quite a bit from your comment lol.
I'll definitely be checking out the stuff you linked to
Hahahahahahahaha get fucked google
Hey Google, you gotta remember that you won’t get any ad revenue from people who get fed up with your shit and just stop going to YouTube.
How about invest in actually using all the data you have on me to show me ads for products I would actually be interested in? I wouldnt hate ads so much if it wasn't so repetitive and for crap that is useless to me.
That's fine. The more they do stuff like this the less I watch YouTube.
Plenty of other things to watch out there.
Well, looks like I'll just stick to using Invidious.
I mean, it's already terrible.
don't care suck my balls
It's not the first time I stopped paying for a service that use to be good. If it effects me I'll drop the service and stop using the platform altogether.
Would they make it worse than watching ads?
of course that's infuriating, but you want to know something else that's infuriating? I've been paying for YouTube PREMIUM all these years, and one of the perks has been that we could hear the audio from videos even when our screen is off, or while multitasking on different apps.
Well imagine my DISMAY over the last few months, that is no longer true for me. The video stops playing after exactly 120 seconds if my screen is off. I'm paying for YouTube PREMIUM! I should be able to hear the audio from the videos when my screen is off!
As far as I know I'm the ONLY one experiencing this because other people on Lemmy have told me they can still hear YouTube audio when their screen is off.
someone please help me. You know how there is no YouTube customer service.
have you tried turn off youtube app's battery optimization setting. this happened to me before, until i turned off my phone's battery saver settings.
Hey, thanks, you may be right. I just checked my settings and it was originally clicked on the last one, restricted. So I switched it to the top one. unrestricted.
And I vaguely recall getting a notification sometime ago that YouTube was taking up too much battery and they asked me if I wanted to optimize the settings? I'm like "sure yeah whatever."
But since then I think that's when I haven't been able to play the video while phone is hibernating or while I multitasking on different apps.
Thank you. hopefully now that I switch the setting I can go back to my full premium perks.
Or, you know, try LibreTube. Does the job for free, and it includes SponsorBlock. Just don't forget to change the battery setting to unrestricted.
+1 for LibreWolf, I love it. Would you mind explaining why it's important to set the battery to unrestricted? I've been running it on optimized for a long time and never had any issues.
Valid question. If I leave LW on optimized, Android will kill it about a minute after I turn my screen off, which ruins my podcast experience (I like to sometimes watch my podcasts as well as some of them are enhanced by visuals)
Mobile game ads are the worst now. I could not turn ads on and watch with others because its soo bad.
YouTube is one of those sites that are so powerful.
Could they not just show less frequent ads but charge more for the advertising space? Surely they get decent click rates on their ads compared to the average web sites.
In that case their corporate buddies will lose precious profits. Instead, they try to wring the consumers dry.
And yet- Everyone will continue to bitch about this while NO ONE will do the right thing and just stop using the service.
Part of the problem is there are effectively no alternatives to YouTube. The other options are either just front-ends or completely lack enough creators to have the enormous wealth of videos and information.
I am sorry but I don't have the money to pay for YouTube premium :( so I guess it's a goodbye for me Youtube!
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I noticed it's too slow these days
lol fuck outta here. Goog is creating a market for competition.
Unfortunately if we've learned anything from Twitter and Reddit is that captive audiences are suuuuper captive.
But they're not doing any favors to the goal of stopping the bleeding towards TikTok that would have happened anyway, that's for sure.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
YouTube appeared to confirm reports that people with ad-blockers installed were experiencing a multi-second delay before being able to watch a video.
The Android-based news website Android Authority reported that people who weren't using Chrome noticed the delays, citing Reddit users who said they've experienced this delay while using browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
"In the past week, users using ad blockers may have experienced suboptimal viewing, which included delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using.
Users who have uninstalled their ad blockers may still experience a temporary delay in loading, and should try refreshing their browser," a YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider.
In June 2023, it began preventing users with ad blockers turned on from watching videos and reportedly experimented with pop-up warnings.
More recently, X users began complaining and sharing screenshots of YouTube pop-ups warning them to not use ad blockers.
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh, do you want my viewing experience to be worse? Well don't worry, because I'm doing my best so PeerTube has quality content in a weekly basis, while you also have the same content in a monthly basis.