this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] downpunxx@kbin.social 126 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I haven't watched an ad on youtube for at least the last 5 years. Ad blocking is cyber security.

[–] blargerer@kbin.social 57 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They have been pushing adblock detecting technologies in some regions. I'm preparing for having to stop using Youtube when they roll it out here.

[–] xc@artemis.camp 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here in Austria I get the anti adblocker message every single time I visit so I don't care much anymore and just dropped it. I'm rather watching shows now lol

[–] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 points 1 year ago

Also in Austria here and no ads for me with uBlock Origin + DNS block on my firewall.

[–] Baketime@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

What adblocker are you using? I'm also in Austria but haven't got it

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 12 points 1 year ago

Luckily Libretube and Piped still work so I haven't had to visit the normal Youtube site in ages, I do know Youtube increased their aggression towards third party frontends too tho so we will see how long the Newpipe extractor will work I guess!

[–] sparkl_motion@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think you’ll be losing out on much. Their algorithm has gone to shit recently and finding anything new has become a chore.

[–] blargerer@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I've never had history on so their algorithm has always been ass for me. Just depended on subs.

[–] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago
[–] algorithmae@lemmy.one 84 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I read this as "YouTube will push even harder for non-skippable ads, and content creators can't stop them anymore"

[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's because that's what it says. They're hardly trying to hide it.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's likely they don't have much of a choice as a business. The more people use ad blockers, the more ads they need to show to make up for the loss in revenue.

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And the more ads they show, the more people install adblockers.

[–] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

Yep. I doubt there were that many people using adblockers back when you only had one skippable 15 second ad at the beginning of a video. But when you have 1-2 ads every 10 minutes, on top off all the premium popups, it's just unbearable.

[–] algorithmae@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

I was pretty tolerant of YouTube ads up until a year ago, when they started playing unskippable food ads which I morally disagree with. No amount of "not relevant" made them go away so I'm hardcore ad-free now. I even tried YouTube premium until they decided to jack up the price on my second month of having it, so fuck em

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's a bit of a cycle. If it continues, they'll likely find new ways to make ads harder to block. For example, embedding the ads directly into the same video stream as the actual video and using DRM. I have no doubt they've already prototyped or even fully built out solutions like this, waiting to roll out if/when they're needed.

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago

Youtube never was a especially profitable business on it's own, they basically just need it for the traffic but I guess they might try to change that, if that's the case the logical next step would be dropping independent creators! :/

[–] DeForrest_McCoy@beehaw.org 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Does anyone else ever notice that the changes like this they make are done piece mail, brick by brick ,they continue to shitify the service. That's intentional...Imagine you tube in the year 2009. I'm betting no one really remembers, and youtube made the same bet.

How many things have they taken away that users really like over the years think about it. Now imagine they did all those changes AT ONCE...TODAY... from 2005 at inception. Horrifying huh ?

Big companies always start off with an amazing array of "Standard Features" that they allow everyone to use, so that the users get hooked on them, then suddenly they make an announcement like this and they change, remove, or premium tier a feature. They know you wont like it... but they got you hooked and they know it and they dont care. It's all driven at profiteering as much as they can off of you. Honestly I see youtube trying to become like Netflix by continuing to increase inconvenience with ads (for their profit), and ultimately making Youtube a completely payed service subscription to everyone.

They gaslight the great majority into just giving in to more ads, shittier service, and eventually a payed subscription by breaking your outrage up into small little pieces over time. STOP LETTING THEM !

[–] Apinae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

Boiling the frog is one of Google's favorite strategies

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm glad nebula exists as a good alternative for educational content. It has successfully replaced much of the time I previously spent on YouTube.

[–] nix@merv.news 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would be nice if they started recruiting people who create tutorials too. It’s almost impossible to find video tutorials on blender outside of YouTube and now tiktok

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Oh man if they brought over quality tutorial channel I'd probably just use them from now on

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

They have "classes" which I think are supposed to be going in this direction.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Big Same. I’ve had it for three years now and it’s been really great to see a YouTube alternative actually flourish and survive. My subscription is almost due, and they have a lifetime option for $250 (normally $300, I think the discount is for my last years fee) that I’m sorely tempted by.

Edit: Just to note, so no one’s put off from subscribing, the current rate is $30/year. It was $50 last year. Which does mean the lifetime pass is 10 years at the current rate. But if they’re successful, that rate’s not going to stay static for all of that time. Not trying to be a shill for them, but if you like any of the creators on there it’s a good way of supporting them.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just bought the lifetime option.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Anyways both Nebula and Curiositystream have lifetime subscriptions available right now... 90% of my YouTube viewing is from creators on those sites anyway

[–] Zellith@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've had several lifetime subscriptions that have been made into paid monthly subscriptions. Lifetime subscription is a gamble that I have yet to see pay off.

[–] ripcord@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

It also CAN'T be good for you long-term. Eventually providers start losing money on you. Which means they fail, or they start looking for other ways to monetize you that you probably won't like.

Like, say, Plex.

I choose yearly when I can for this kind of thing.

[–] heluecht@pirati.ca 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@weew @mastermind I already subscribed to Nebula and Curiositysreams, but hadn't heard of that offer. Can you tell more?

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nebula: pay $300 once, lifetime access. They had it up for a week on a trial run a while ago, and they decided to bring it back for now.

curiosity stream: I think I found a deal on Stack Social, + coupon, that worked out to $180. The basic 1080p format only. Again, pay once, lifetime access.

The payoff time for Nebula is around 8 years (not counting possible price increases in the future), so you'll have to have faith that they'll last that long. I hope they do though. Curiositystream is obviously less. Then again, the immediate cash infusion they get from this can also help them survive/expand faster.

[–] BeardyGrumps@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago

Around Black Friday time they have had sales and you get both for a year for around 20€ so the lifetime subscription doesn’t look so much of an attractive deal.

[–] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 year ago

I really like their business model, but unfortunately did not really use curiositystream in the month I tried out the superbundle. Some of the documentaries were alright, but it wasn't really my thing. I may return to nebula if google figures out a way to axe adblockers for good, though

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Doesn’t matter. People will still eat that shit up! YouTube is the best example of Stockholm syndrome I’ve ever seen. This shit should be taught about in schools.

[–] aard@kyu.de 7 points 1 year ago

I've massively reduced my time spent with youtube over the last year or so when I noticed that the overall experience was just getting worse and worse.

Previously I'd watch a video, and from there jump to another interesting video, and so on - now pretty much all the top level suggestions are useless already, and it's rare that after watching a video you get something worth watching recommended.

I assume it's not just youtubes fault - while I do think youtube is pushing those videos even from people I used to like I now see more videos where they go on for 20 minutes about something that should've been said in 3 minutes max.

I now almost exclusively use youtube to watch videos from people I've subscribed years ago, and as they either become annoying to go with youtubes algorithm, or eventually stop/slow uploading my usage goes down. Nowadays I often enough don't open youtube for two weeks, while previously there rarely was a day without checking at least a few videos.

[–] moreeni@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The problem is that there is no valid alternative at the moment, so I wouldn't call that Stockholm sybdrome. Hosting that much content for free costs ungodly amounts of money to Google

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No valid alternative isn’t an excuse to continue consuming shit. That’s abused wife mentality.

Just leave. You don’t need an alternative.

[–] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

We've been able to survive for 200,000 years without any of this s***.

[–] ThePenitentOne@discuss.online 14 points 1 year ago

Insane that there are still people who aren't using adblock these days lol.

[–] exohuman@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They will lose control of the pre roll and post roll ads but maintain control of the ad breaks during the video. This is actually a smart change and data driven.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

It's quite obvious that most people commenting here didn't read the post, given that it says 90% of creators already have all ad types enabled for pre and post video already, and that it directly leads to greater payouts to them.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 3 points 1 year ago

And i'm here wonder: do most creator care about how ads are setup? I'm pretty sure, out of the millions of creator, only a small number of them will control how ads are display, the rest only care about how much money they make. And tbf, if a platform is free, that's how they earn money.