• YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
  • Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
  • Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
  • daddy32@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Remember when videos had to be at least 10 minutes long, so more ads could be added to the play time? Now they don’t give a fuck.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    MMW: Google plans to make Chrome a locked down browser for a proprietary web. But this is only the intermediate step before all web services will be accessed via an app. The commercial web and the public web will hard fork and the kids will never know what a “browser” is.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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    6 months ago

    The other day I visited youtube without any add-ons and concluded I’d rather do anything else than use youtube under those conditions.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      That‘s where Youtube Premium comes into play for many fools who don‘t really know about adblockers. Google‘s goal isn‘t to destroy the website, but to turn it into a much more profitable Netflix subscription based on user generated content. Sadly the enshittification of the biggest video platform will continue because enough people are willing to pay a lot for it. The site will not improve until there are mainstream alternatives that actually take revenue off Youtube.

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Pro tip, LLMs do an excellent job summarizing YouTube videos now. I’ve never liked YouTube content, the incentives for creators are perverse and discourage conveying accurate information simply in favor of drawing out every video to maximize ad opportunities. About 95% of the content I might have been interested in could have been better conveyed in a 1-2 page blog post and read in 2 minutes instead of stretched out into a 15 minute video. Having a robot summarize that content is so much less irritating.

      • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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        6 months ago

        What do you use for that, fetch the transcript and just feed it to the LLM of your choice? Or are you talking of the actual LLM watching and summarizing?

        • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I’ve always just used chatgpt for both tasks. I’ll ask my SO, she does more of this and she might have better tools to suggest.

      • towerful@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        I remember watching some video, falling asleep for a few hours, then waking up to a livestream of an ad. One of those “skip after 5s” but it was a livestream, so it just kept playing. I couldn’t believe it!

    • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’ve had YouTube Premium since the days when it was called YouTube Red, so like a decade. I’ve grown used to not seeing any ads from Google and anytime I watch a video not using my account it’s torture.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        You‘re part of the problem then. It only got so shitty in the first place so they could trap people in the Premium subscription that will get increasingly more expensive and less useful.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators

    What always got me about accounts like Mr. Beast is how they never made the jump to a direct subscription service for their content. Some of the more popular Patreon accounts rarely if ever bubble up to the top of the YouTube algorithm. Yet they are clearly popular enough to bring in millions as independent artists. Meanwhile, the folks that dominate the YouTube charts are inevitably the ones that the algorithm force-feeds you in every “Recommended” feed.

    It’s almost as though YouTube needs quality content providers more than the quality providers need the ads. Almost as though the real beneficiaries of the YouTube ad-supported model are generating endless largely unappealing filler content.

    • polle@feddit.org
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      6 months ago

      Smarttube stopped working some weeks ago for a day. I tried watching YouTube with ads, the experience was so fucking insane to me. Like multiple, non skipable ads before the video starts + more ads during the video. It just was unwatchable. Its just unusable.

      • Vathsade@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Newpipe still works (Google may break it, but the app is usually updated in a couple days and it works again)

        • polle@feddit.org
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          6 months ago

          It just didn’t work for a day. They are really fast in patching. But good to know that newpipe is working also an androidTV.

  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago
    • Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.

    That is the best part of it! A very welcome change! Basically the first step of becoming an independent creator, and to being able to abandon youtube for any of them.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    6 months ago

    Despite all of their machinations my strategy of simply ignoring literally everything they say and continuing doing the same old same old appears to be flummoxing them.

    I’ve literally not done anything and have never experienced any inconvenience. Are we sure they’re doing anything at all?

    • dumbass@leminal.space
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      6 months ago

      I thought I was getting that blank screen long pause before videos, turns out my phone cable was damaged, fixed it and YouTube’s back to normal.

        • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          No, it potentially impacts cpu power profile (if it’s toggling between AC and DC because of a loose connection)

          This would adjust throttling of the cpu, which could impact playback in certain cases, so it’s possible. Likely other apps would be affected but OP was probably most often watching videos while plugged so noticed mostly there 🤷

    • eatCasserole@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      One time they told me I had 3 days left to enjoy YouTube with my ad blocker, and then I would have to buy premium, or they would just lock me out of the site. I was like “welp, it had a good run, I guess that’s it for ol’ YouTube.”

      But then the 3 days went buy and nothing ever came of it.

      That tactic probably did get them some preemptive subscriptions though, unfortunately.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        I definitely got really awful, unplayably spotty playback that seemed linked to adblock usage. Then I saw an article about it and confirmed I wasn’t going crazy, and that day it stopped happening, so it felt like I was going crazy all over again. It’s like the moment they realised it was going to become a problem and they weren’t as sneaky as they thought, they turned it off. I haven’t had an issue since then.

        • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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          6 months ago

          I had the same experience with shitty playback buffering every few seconds on popular videos that should be cached on a nearby cdn, and then saw lots of articles about it and then boom a week later everything was back to normal

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          6 months ago

          That would be quite a funny strategy that they could definitely implement. Creepy as hell but clever.

          They know everything you do and look at, so they know if you’re the sort of person that would look up a fix for this or just take it on the nose. If they realize you’re looking at articles about the problem they just turn the function off.

    • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      MBAs are taught they can shape human behavior with decades disproven assumptions.

      It’s fallout like this that shows their hand.

      “Oh, the customers don’t like it? Fine we do it twice as hard” is fucking Pavlovian training and the executives behind the initiative should be sealed in an underground vault knee deep in hungry roaches.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I find the whole thing so ugly even as a youtube plus subscriber. How much possibly you could gain here? isn’t youtube already profitable and being run by one of the world’s richest corporations? just let people watch and educate themselves and whatnot.

  • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    I pay for YouTube Family. I consume a lot of YouTube and I want to support the creators I watch. At its current price point, YouTube Family is reasonable. Several households in my family get ad-free YouTube for what is a reasonably low price point for each household.

    If the price goes up much (eg if I were paying the single price of $11 per household), the creators I really enjoy continue to get pushed out or change content because of shitty ad rules, or they pull the whole “must be in the same household” bullshit I would drop it in a heartbeat just like I’ve dropped most streaming providers. Streaming has become cable and YouTube has been shooting itself in the foot by forcibly changing content for advertisers. I come to the platform for content, not advertisers.

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Unfortunately that fee won’t stop google’s endless thirst for data mining and it’s manipulation through “personalized recommendations”, and through ads on any other website and mobile apps.

      • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        If you care about that you don’t use YouTube at all or support creators that do. Even using 3rd party apps or services feeds into that. This feels like a serious non sequitur on any thread about any Google product.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Unfortunately that’s not an option. Youtube she’s not only host “fun” videos, bit repair videos, learning materials and even university course leaning materials, none of them to be found elsewhere.

          • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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            6 months ago

            There is literally no way to opt out of Google’s data collection if you are going to use their products. Using another frontend shifts the data profile but it still exists and provides value to them. It’s reasonable to say it’s a bad thing. It’s unreasonable to say there are no other ways. I grew up in a public library and I can still get most of the information I need from a public library without Google products (things I can’t get usually come through inter-library loan or direct connections with subject matter experts at, say, a maker space). This seems to be less of “I’m against invasive corporations” and more of a “I don’t like the solutions available to avoid invasive corporations.”

            • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Using another frontend shifts the data profile but it still exists and provides value to them.

              I wouldn’t care if they would only keep aggregate statistics, not stats about individual users, and when watching through a public frontend my usage blends in with that of many other people.

  • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Gotta love when the article saying adblock-blocking doesn’t work is itself preceded by a notice to disable your adblocker

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Honestly it makes me appreciate Lemmy more. Like we’re all on here enjoying an ad free experience… it’s clearly feasible to do

      • cartoon meme dog@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        there are several orders of magnitude difference between text-forums with almost all multimedia content hosted externally, and hosting/streaming video.

        a big Lemmy instance is a manageable cost for a few well-paid people to run out of their own disposable income.

        anything even vaguely approaching YouTube is not.

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      My NewPipe app stopped working for a week and it wasn’t difficult at all living without YouTube. There’s tons of content in the world that can be consumed in its place.

      • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        I use NewPipe only despite having a current YouTube Premium subscription because the official app is bonkers. It’s hilariously stuffed with useless features that can’t be toggled off(games, shorts), half baked stuff like specific video quality can’t be chosen for all videos by default( has to be on a per video basis). Oh, and every other time I visit some channel, asking me to join the YouTube’s channel for additional perks. You just took money from the user to give them a sub par experience.