YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
Ads are an anti-pattern for me. If I have to sit through your bullshit I am NOT buying your product. It’s in your best interests for me to run an ad blocker. I also run Sponsorblock to skip the product-shilling parts, similar reasons. I buy things on merit after researching, not because I saw it on a video.
Still, by watching the video, it will be recommended to other people because it’s popular. Being a little tounge-in-cheek here but I like to think that by watching it, I am crowdsourcing the ad revenue aspect to other viewers who will sit through the ads.
Yup. If I see an ad for a thing, it means they spent more money trying to trick me into buying the thing than just making the thing better in the first place. An ad for a thing means the thing is shit!
Same. Seeing an ad, especially an obnoxious one, is more likely to make me avoid a product or brand. Also listening to a WAN show a few months when Luke & Linus started talking about how Linus can't "see" ads kinda blew my mind because I've always been that way too. I imagine a lot of people of a certain age reflexively developed the ability to read pages full of ads and still manage to extract info from them.
Yes, the annoyance of the ads is the bigger problem. Give short, non-annoying ads (the solar ones are some of the worst) and I won't work to stop them.
Or at the very least, show me a healthy variety of ads, instead of spamming the same ad over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and--
their ad algo sucks. You search diets, and suddenly your inbox is spammed for months with weightloss adds. or they determine you're a stay at home mom because you let your SiL on your network one time... and now you get shit loads of bra adds. (okay, maybe they just determined I have really nice boobs. Which is kinda why I was looking for the diet... manboobs aren't really all that attractive.)
Well that sucks. I forget about ads on YT since I watch mostly on pc with Ublock on occasion I will watch something on the TV from YT and instantly am reminded how annoying the YT ads are.
I guess it's an unpopular opinion but I don't mind paying for YouTube premium or watching ads on the platform since the content creators get a cut of YouTube's revenue. If a creator is making good content they deserve to get paid.
I don't mind paying for YouTube premium either. I hate ads though and use an adblocker everywhere, including running my own pihole.
Ads have gotten ridiculous. I don't mind an unobtrusive banner here or there or a 15 second pre-roll every so often, especially if it is something that I'm interested in to begin with. But the infinite growth mindset infects this area just like every other facet of society, making the companies that run ads put more, and more, and more ads, crowding out content. There's always a tipping point for people. My threshold is probably lower than most, but I think everyone has one and these companies just keep pushing and pushing and are surprised that more and more people get pissed or abandon ship altogether.
What really grinds my gears are things that are supposed to be "premium" but still have ads/micro-transactions. Mobile games have perfected this. Pay for a game, still offer in-game currency for real money. But then I hear about services like Hulu and Twitter charging money for "less" ads. I want to tear my hair out.
It's definitely an unpopular opinion in many corners of the internet. I don't think I've ever seen as much entitlement as people talking about how they deserve free YT.
I agree. I really like the creators I follow and don’t mind supporting them (especially when it means additional features and no ads). What do people expect? Do they really think a video sharing platform as widely used and performant as YouTube would be free?
I have been signed up for YouTube Premium for a long time (and Red before that). I never see ads as a result and I support the platform and it’s creators.
Same. I watch at least 60 hours of Youtube every week. Either in the background or actively watching. I don't mind paying for a service that I am constantly using. I know I'm likely in the minority, but it's something I don't mind paying.
A few years ago my YouTube account was suspended (without warning, IIRC, and for a templated reason), and the message they sent me told me not to start another account to evade the ban (and I haven't). FWIW I soon after joined niconico and Vimeo, and took an interest in Wikicommons videos and Internet Archives.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Videosofmusic
and,
The Pretty Reckless Fucked Up World ( Director's Cut)
https://archive.org/details/testytesty
That's a good way to make me quit YouTube too.
Everybody's leaving or have left YouTube anyway.
Who is "everyone"? Lmao YT is by far the largest video site still.
I don’t even see the point of ads. I mostly get ads for things I already did research on and have bought.
The cat and mouse war continues.
PeerTube migration time! Federate everything!!!
Unfortunately video hosting is pretty expensive compared to other formats.
Yeah YouTube a loss leader. I can't even imagine how much anyone would need to sink in to have something even remotely close