• BoofStroke
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    782 years ago

    There is something fundamentally wrong with a service that shows more ads than content.

        • @mjs@lemmy.world
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          72 years ago

          There’s a reason why they are the only ones. It’s very hard to scale a platform to YouTube scale. Like insanely hard and very expensive. The only other players that could take over are Meta and maybe Microsoft. Not sure if they would be any better.

          • @webadict@lemmy.world
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            62 years ago

            Is pirating stealing? Nothing was taken from YouTube. You could say it’s unauthorized access, or unauthorized duplication of data, but none of that leaves YouTube down any data.

            • @TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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              82 years ago

              In their defense, it costs bandwidth to Google.

              In my attack, fuck Google. Costing them money is a good thing. They are literally trying to lock down corporate control over the Internet.

              • Richard
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                32 years ago

                Right. It really pains me to see how many people simply buy into nonsensical corporate propaganda. This is a matter of our freedom and our democracy, and every single day that the mega-corporations are expanding their hold of our information retrieval and processing, we get one step closer to not being able to control what’s happening to us anymore, to tell reality apart from deception, to innovate, to build our own futures. 1984 is such a good piece of literature because it is shocking, but I find it even more shocking that we are accelerating ever more into such a future.

        • @Tenniswaffles@lemmy.world
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          -72 years ago

          And that’s how things die due to no revenue. Running YouTube is expensive af and the more people who used things like revanced, the worse things will become for everyone else.

          • Richard
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            32 years ago

            Maybe they shouldn’t operate in the first place if they cannot think of a sustainable business model without f*ing their users up.

            • @Tenniswaffles@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              Basically everything within capitalism fucks over someone that’s just business as usual 8n out society. Usually to a much worse degree, think the children who likely made your clothes for next to nothing. I’m all for tearing down the system, but there’s not a whole lot as an individual that I can do.

          • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            122 years ago

            It’s funny how you put all the blame on the users and none on the people that run the site. They fail to pay creators properly, fail to protect them from copyright claim abuse, and all the while they expect those creators to keep making content to keep their site relevant. It’s going to come crashing down eventually.

            Also, in matters of taste the customer is always right. If people are so fed up with ads that they adblock en masse and/or leave, then youtube are the only ones to blame.

            • @Tenniswaffles@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              My point in my comment was about how YouTube is expensive to run and that the more people who refuse to generate revenue for it (I feel dirty writing that and strongly disagree with it, by my feelings have no effect on reality,) then it has to make shittier and shittier decisions to generate that revenue.

              I 100% agree that YouTube should pay their creators more and protect them from bullshit copyright, but that would just compound the issue of the cost of running the site.

              What is this entitled attitude everyone has where they believe they should be handed things for free? It completely unsustainable and childish. Corporations do not do things for free, they can’t. They exist solely to generate revenue and if they can’t, they die. I generally hate corporations on principle, but again my feelings don’t change reality.

              • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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                12 years ago

                Nobody is saying they should be handed things for free, we are saying that youtube is doing a bad job and shouldn’t be enabled.

                Piracy is not a moral problem, it is a service problem. They are making their service worse with their decisions, and if it’s not sustainable long term then it will die, which I believe is inevitable at this point.

                Again, this isn’t about individual behaviour, it is about mass behaviour. None of us can control that. If youtube wants to succeed, they have to navigate the reality that adblocking will happen on their service, and I don’t believe they can do that. It’s not that it would be physically impossible, they just lack the capacity to find a solution because of how they are structured. The problem is that they will not accept a lower bottom line, they have to keep increasing revenue so they are squeezing people, and eventually they will go too far. Once they get just a little bit too close to the sun they will start their death spiral and then they’re done.

                Federated networks prove that we don’t need some central overlord to run our networks for us, and once there is a way to own our own video sharing network I would have absolutely no problem giving some money to support it. I’m not going to give money to a big corporation to enable them to keep squeezing us. They don’t make a good service, they make a shitty, awful service that we have to fight them in order to use properly. The only substantial thing they’re doing is server hosting, and we don’t need them to do that. The only real barrier is critical mass of users and creators, and eventually they’re going to push enough people away that that happens.

          • @yuunikki@lemmy.world
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            12 years ago

            Do I care? Lol fuck ads. I’m not paying for YouTube when I can get it all for free. Cry about it.

            • @Tenniswaffles@lemmy.world
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              02 years ago

              You’ll care as more and more people have to quit YouTube or make progressively more shit content to appease the algorithm. It also makes it harder and harder for new people to start on YouTube.

      • @emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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        492 years ago

        Google has been shamelessly destroying all their projects the last few years in a desperate fit to make money. They’ve weakened ad blockers on chrome, they’ve altered the search algorithm so random BS is mixed in with regular to drive towards sponsored content, their starting to setup browser level DRM and creating un skipable ads. None of this is for anything more than greed and desperation. They no longer see anything other than money as the end goal and don’t care if their selling a shittier product at a higher price than no one was ever even willing to pay for. F*ck google.

        • @regbin_@lemmy.world
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          -212 years ago

          YT Premium costs less than $4 for me and I also get YT Music. It sure beats paying $4 for only a music service.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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        272 years ago

        Personally I don’t want to pay Google out of principle tbh, the creators I support can benefit from my Patreon donations and Nebula subscription

        • @regbin_@lemmy.world
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          -212 years ago

          That’s way too expensive and I can’t afford it. YTP is less than $4 a month so at least the creators gets at least a few cents from my views, and I watch a lot of creators.

          • ThrowawayOnLemmy
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            72 years ago

            Where the hell are you paying less than $4 a month? It’s $14 here in America. Even with a student discount, it’s still twice the price you’re quoting.

        • @BeeOneTwoThree@sh.itjust.works
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          -252 years ago

          I find this take wierd. If you do not want to support Google, stop using services created by them.

          The content creators can upload videos to multiple platforms if they want to

      • 👁️👄👁️
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        272 years ago

        Oh nooo, who will think of the big tech who continue to get record profits every year?

        • @regbin_@lemmy.world
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          -132 years ago

          I want creators to get paid when I watch them but I also don’t want ads. YT Premium is affordable (it costs less than $4 a month for me) for me and I also get YT Music with it. I watch hundreds of hours worth of video from multiple creators so it’s a fair deal.

          • @rabbit_wren@lemmy.world
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            82 years ago

            Quit bragging and start sharing that code you’re using for $4/month YT Premium that the rest of us have to pay $13.99 after last month’s price hike.

          • 👁️👄👁️
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            32 years ago

            Woah dude that’s crazy. Anyways, I’m still going to AdBlock them and pirate yt music. Big tech can suck my

      • @widerporst@feddit.de
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        92 years ago

        I’ll gladly pay for a service that doesn’t thrive on pushing propaganda down people’s throats to maximize watch time and that isn’t actively trying to make my user experience miserable by removing downvotes, forcing shorts and so on.

        I’d rather pay someone to kick me in the nuts. Sounds like a better deal tbh.

      • mishimaenjoyer
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        652 years ago

        if google made youtube premium like $3/month no one would bat an eye and sub. but they’re approaching netflix prices and that’s just way to much. i rather support the creators directly than throwing money at google who will give the creators crumbs until they demonetize them because google is doing google things. also won’t solve the privacy problem that comes with using their native site/apps.

        • @R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          212 years ago

          I think part of the problem is that they’re hosting so much more content than Netflix. It really is crazy that it’s free to upload to YouTube to just store all your videos on there. Probably 99.9% of YouTube content does not get enough views to justify the cost of storing it.

          All that being said, YouTube premium comes with a bunch of shit nobody wants so surely they could cut that stuff to lower the price (or tiered pricing for people who want it).

          • @Anamana@feddit.de
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            52 years ago

            And you realize that YouTube will do everything in their hands to stop you from using these apps in the future right? That was kinda the point of the article.

            Making people pay (with their time and attention) while they are already paying for subscription will not encourage more people to buy premium.

      • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        2 years ago

        No. This is why if a service loses sight of its core value proposition, it dies.

        If youtube is actually successful in killing adblocking on their service - which I suppose a server-side timer could actually do - then they will only succeed in killing their relevance, just like so many social media seem to be doing right now.

        I pay for services like a debrid and VPN, because they provide me with the services I need. For very few dollars a month I can get 4K streaming from their servers 24/7. That is all hosting should cost. If the fediverse version of youtube, peertube, became mainstream then collectively people should have absolutely no problem maintaining those costs from the users’ side.

        Once that happens and mainstream video streaming is part of the fediverse, I think the network effect that governs social media might snowball until eventualy centralised social media is a thing of the past.

        Do not pay for youtube, whatever you do. Let them die.

        • @Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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          92 years ago

          You think too much of the average person. This sort of thing might affect you, but it won’t affect your friend’s 8 year old brother or his parents who just want a convenient way to watch pewdiepie

          • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            2 years ago

            Social networks don’t succeed or fail on casual viewers alone. Youtube is a video sharing site, not a content producer. If they get so toxic that the content producers start finding alternatives, then the casual viewers won’t all leave right away.

            If it gets so bad that big creators, like pewdiepie, have alternatives that grow in relevance and youtube loses its critical market share then it will eventually lose the casual viewers too, especially if those alternatives aren’t up to their eyeballs in ads.

            We saw this with digg losing its place to reddit, where they sold out their content to publishers. Content got thinner and worse until the vast majority of users left for reddit.

            This may not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. For reddit it was the API lockdown, for twitter it’s… well I could point to any number of individual decisions but let’s just call them Elon Musk. Facebook hasn’t quite hit that tipping point yet I don’t think.

            With youtube I can easily see this being part of a string of decisions to promote publisher content over user content. They’re already selling views which could really sink them in the end.

          • AgentOrangesicle
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            122 years ago

            Perhaps, but you can only crush so much blood from a stone and the masses are slowly becoming destitute.

        • @focusedkiwibear@lemmy.world
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          -72 years ago

          lol this post is nothing more than a tantrum from a leech of a service they’re too cheap to pay for and scrabbling for reasons other than said cheap-ness

          you may get likes on the internet for this wholly selfish take but we all know it’s nothing more than that.

          • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            22 years ago

            It’s just devastating when you invent unwholesome motivations for my words to attack as an alternative to attacking the ideas themselves.

            My ego is in tatters.

        • peopleproblems
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          82 years ago

          “Soon we will have a new web. One far younger and far more powerful.”

        • @Vlyn@lemmy.world
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          -52 years ago

          You do realize the average person watches YouTube on their TV or their phone, with ads? You are not the target audience for Google.

          So I fully expect YouTube to kill adblocking at some point and they might lose what? 10% of users? Of which 5% either come back to watch ads or pay the subscription because all the content is on there?

          I’m 100% pro adblocker, the internet is a mess without, but it’s stupid to think YouTube wouldn’t cut you off the moment you don’t provide any benefit to their service (For example despite adblocking you might give Superchat money to streamers, or join Streamer memberships).

          • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            2 years ago

            Audience is only part of the equation, arguably not the largest part. How many content creators use adblock? The big ones already know how completely meaningless ad revenue is because youtube doesn’t pay them enough and they are already aware of how easy it is to block ads. Also they’re more likely to be using youtube on a desktop because they use one to create, and they also are more aware of the alternatives like revanced. A lot of big creators have spoken out over the years in favour of adblocking.

            If youtube makes it impossible for creators to use their own platform they’ll leave in droves, and they will have the voice to encourage their audience to follow. Youtube isn’t the main voice on their own site, the creators are.

            Another thing this will impact is the ability for creators to collaborate, since they would have to watch others’ ads in order to see their videos.

            Once that happens, the audience will naturally follow. That’s how social media sites have failed in the past. They’ve pissed off the power users to the point they finally left, then the content declined, then users followed.

            Youtube is making the same mistake all capitalist entities do, of mistreating the people who actually make the product they’re selling. It’s a fundamental contradiction that only leads to decline in the end, it’s just a matter of when. This may not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, if this isn’t it, then something down the line will be.

            • @Vlyn@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              Dude, it’s at most 20 bucks a month to get rid of all ads (with YouTube music on top). Any creator who has some following can pay that from pocket change. The big content creators (1M+ subscribers) pull in millions with a mix of ad money and sponsorships. And it would be a business expense on top for them…

              Creators are the last person to actually care about YouTube forced ads, it’s their job, they can afford it easily.

              The only ones really impacted are power users, people who use adblock right now to watch. Which would also include me. But what do you want to do? There is no other platform, if they block adblockers I either have to watch ads or finally pay them money. I’m not going to leave for another platform because there is none. Twitch is there, sure, but it’s only for livestreams and awful for VODs.

                • @Vlyn@lemmy.world
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                  12 years ago

                  demanding they pay for a service that is worse than what adblockers already offer

                  Or you could say they have tolerated adblockers until now and allowed you to use their service without a paywall. Yes, it sucks, we’re used to blocking ads, but it was like having free lunch.

                  whilst also running a business that relies solely on critical mass of users rather than any actual value that youtube themselves can uniquely provide

                  There have been plenty of other platforms who tried to do what YouTube did, they all failed. YouTube provides a massive infrastructure, about one hour of video is getting uploaded to their servers every second. And it must be kept around, so the amount of data only goes up. A total nobody can upload a 100 hours of video and YouTube will gladly accept that and still make those videos available 5 years from now.

                  To say they don’t provide a relatively unique (or at least very difficult) service is insanity.

              • Nepenthe
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                12 years ago

                $20/mo would have kept me fed for the better part of a month a couple years ago. Money has almost never not been tight, often to the point of being inhumane.

                If they start forcing ads, I’ll just do what I used to do when I didn’t have home internet and start downloading videos instead. Which is nicer to be able to hold onto anyway. If someone doesn’t like me “stealing,” they can fucking pay me.

                • @Vlyn@lemmy.world
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                  02 years ago

                  Not sure what kind of shit take that is if you bought a $70 game recently (Baldur’s Gate 3, even I’m waiting for a sale and money is not tight for me), you have cats and probably a Nintendo Switch with Zelda, that’s just what I read on the first page of your profile. So you obviously have money to spend on entertainment, like most adults.

                  $20 is clearly too much just to get rid of ads (though it also gets you YouTube Music, like Spotify), but I was talking about content creators who can easily afford this. And most people spend hours on YouTube, probably more time than they use Netflix if we’re being honest.

                  I don’t like Google either, but at some point they need to make money. That’s the simple truth. If everyone used adblockers we’d see a lot more content locked down behind a paywall. It is what it is. Then you either pay or you find some other source of content.

                  And let’s be real, people pay for entertainment. If I go outside and throw a stone it would probably hit someone with a Netflix/HBO/Disney+/Spotify/Prime or whatever subscription. It’s difficult to find a person who doesn’t have Netflix for example. If Google forces this through YouTube will just be another subscription service (or you get ads). Or they start limiting uploads to save on cost, which would actually kill their platform (as probably 99% of uploaded videos are barely or never watched, around one hour of video per second is getting uploaded right now).

      • @Durotar@lemmy.ml
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        192 years ago

        I support the sentiment, but today everything is a service that wants your money, this resource is finite. And when it comes to YouTube, it’s not even about whether you like it or not: YouTube is a monopolist.

    • 1ird
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      -7
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      2 years ago

      Ehh. I wouldn’t suggest someone go use any old patched client. Do your due diligence and be safe.

      Hard to believe people down voted this. I’m just saying make sure you get stuff from official sources like https://ReVanced.app

  • CTdummy
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    92 years ago

    Is the photo for this article two naked chicks smoking at a bar for anyone else?

    • @deleted@lemmy.world
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      12 years ago

      Go home CTdummy. You’re drunk. /s

      I don’t see any photos other than youtube logo.

      Memmy for lemmy on iOS.

    • Eggyhead
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      12 years ago

      Fellow camper here. The two topless chicks were quite a shock.

    • Eggyhead
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      32 years ago

      @hariette

      I think there might be something glitchy with Artemis.camp’s federation of this article. Lemmy.world and kbin.social is showing this as a generic YouTube thumb, but Artemis.camp, both in and out of the app, is showing two nude women smoking in a bar.

      • Chozo
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        12 years ago

        It’s with Kbin, in general, I think. Kbin.social is having similar issues with caching the wrong thumbnails lately. Been happening for a few days.

    • jon
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      52 years ago

      On Artemis, yes. On kbin.social, no. Was kinda wondering why no one else was talking about it.

    • PinGZ
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      42 years ago

      I have the same image, also on Artemis/ camp

  • @anywho@lemmy.world
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    1202 years ago

    I am paying for YouTube Premium, and yet I still have to skip over US-exclusive sponsor sections which almost every Youtuber has nowadays…

    • ironic_elk
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      392 years ago

      That’s why I still use Vanced. Sponsorblock is something I can’t live without even though I have YouTube premium.

    • Norgur
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      292 years ago

      Yeah, almost exclusively either Us-centric and not even available where I live, or so gosh darn expensive that I just will never use the stuff advertised (looking at you, magic spoon)

        • @joshuaacasey@lemmy.world
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          -102 years ago

          you should check out linustechtips. The sponsors they get/accept are actually decent reputable companies with decent products.

          • @Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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            142 years ago

            Linus’s video on their sponsors gave them way too much benefit of the doubt for scummy practices I would have dropped a company for

            • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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              42 years ago

              To be fair a lot of us here on Lemmy are likely to be more principled or have staunch opinions on companies and products - we’ve abandoned the orange R, and likely centralised social media for one thing.

              From my POV, Linus seems to tone down his views in videos, and his writers are the ones doing the research for the video rather than him. He’s a lot more critical of companies on the WAN show from what I’ve seen

              • @NightOwl@lemmy.one
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                32 years ago

                Doesn’t really matter if he is critical on one segment but not so much either. Or that the blame is shifted to the writers. But, I guess it’s just to say whoever it is sponsored segments are not to be trusted by default, and best being ignored.

                Like even pro athletes end up shilling and using products that end up hurting them despite being in the 1% in their field like Lonzo Ball and his crappy shoes.

                • Norgur
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                  42 years ago

                  Here in Germany, the national soccer team has been advertising Nutella for decades. I don’t think they eat the chocolate flavored sugar-fat as much as they are paid to pretend…

          • @NightOwl@lemmy.one
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            2 years ago

            My first impression for anything on YouTube is untrustworthy spam. Don’t matter who it is. It’s just the reality of paid sponsorships, and anyone being paid is going to generally talk up the positives, and talk up how much integrity they have. It’s not just a YouTube thing either. I assume the same for celebrity endorsements even if it is in an area they are an expert in like sports, since product they use isn’t the quality that reaches consumers. Sometimes even the products they use is crap and ends up hurting them. Example Lonzo Ball and the shoes he endorsed.

            It’s just general good skepticism towards the marketing machine. Nobody is to be trusted when it comes to what they are paid to shill.

          • @TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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            22 years ago

            Linus is getting sponsorship from either actually useful tech software that is for enterprise or it’s some weird niche software or product that no one ever needs.

      • RaivoKulli
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        102 years ago

        It’s funny how we need uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock and maybe even DeArrow (same dev as SB) to make Youtube tolerable.

        • @viking@infosec.pub
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          22 years ago

          I’d love DeArrow to be merged into SmartTubeNext.

          Watching quite some youtube on my TV, and the clickbait suuuuuuucks.

    • @CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      32 years ago

      Yeah, those are frustrating. Some channels I watch have a ton of annoying YouTube ads, where premium becomes a must for sanity. But some others have baked in sponsors that can’t be skipped (but no native YouTube ads). I wish they’d reconcile the two. It doesn’t make sense that you can pay to only block some ads, and depending on what videos you watch, that could be either the majority of ads or none at all!

    • @TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world
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      22 years ago

      What changed after the switch? I kept subscribing since the music + YouTube video was well worth the value for me, and haven’t noticed a change.

      • @9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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        22 years ago

        They kept trying to push videos into my feed. I want a music service period

        Also it was sometimes hard to tell if i’m listening to official content from the band, or some bootleg copy uploaded by user “SomeGuy83771”

        There were a bunch of other annoyances that i cant really remember off the top of my head right now… Its beeb many years since i left

  • @moitoi@feddit.de
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    432 years ago

    This is one of these problem with multiple unsolvable issues:

    • people are used to ad block and won’t change
    • the price is too high for part of the population (-> ad block for part of them)
    • $1/month, $10/year would attract new paid account but not that much
    • people can’t afford/don’t want a subscription everything
    • users don’t see any value in it
    • a fraction of the paid will go ad block with the price increase
    • people will circumvent the ad block block
    • capitalism
    • @Pechente@feddit.de
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      152 years ago

      They already solved it. Premium was way cheaper before they started bundling it with Music which is just utter garbage. I’d pay like 5€ / month for YouTube Premium without Music IF the experience was actually good and they didn’t shove shorts in my face everywhere like that non-dismissable panel that breaks up my subscriptions now.

    • @tibi@lemmy.world
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      52 years ago

      I think a lot of people would subscribe if they had a lower price tier where they have a reduced amount of ads (like an ad every few videos). Without ad blockers, youtube is unwatchable, you get more ads than you would on TV (where in many places ads are legally capped at around 15mins/hour).

      • @Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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        12 years ago

        I think they are likely to pull a Netflix and create a lower premium tier with ad support and missing other premium features like picture in picture

    • Kushan
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      212 years ago

      I’m confused, if ublock origin and sponsor block and all those are bypassing this, then who is it actually targeting?

      • @stealin@lemmy.world
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        212 years ago

        They want to frame it so that internet ID is the solution. That way you as a person can be banned, not just the account or ip. Good luck buying and selling when everything becomes digital and you get banned.

      • kopper [they/them]
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        2 years ago

        have you ever searched “ad blocker” on your browser of choice’s extension store and scrolled down? or had a cheap/free VPN that advertised ad blocking functionality?

        those. for some reason people install those. and they never get updates.

        (some of them are actual malware too)

        • @CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          142 years ago

          It drives me mad when I use PCs of friends and relatives and I see AdBlock Plus installed, but they still get ads and they never seem to stop and wonder why this “ad blocker” is not working! I do however enjoy their facial expressions when I install uBlock Origin for them and start refreshing pages.

        • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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          222 years ago

          Not sure what you’re on about, Google is absolutely capable of detecting if you’re using Ublock Origin, Piped, ReVanced, whatever. The question isn’t if they CAN break those things, it’s just if they WILL.

          And if they’re beta testing this system right now, I’d say it’s just a matter of time.

          • @grue@lemmy.ml
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            22 years ago

            Lately, I’ve been getting 403 errors in Newpipe after a video has been playing for about a minute. I think they’re starting.

          • @MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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            62 years ago

            Watching all this from the sidelines, I’m very pleased that I took the time to de-Google my critical daily services, already.

            • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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              42 years ago

              Yeah, I’m glad I already have a cheap annual subscription to Curiosity Stream + Nebula. I’ll have to look for some other decent video platforms if they’re going to start being dicks about YouTube.

          • Richard
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            62 years ago

            I wouldn’t be absolutely sure about this. In the end, everything on the web still boils down to (mostly) simple HTTP GET requests. If you open a webpage, then you are served the file you requested (usually HTML with CSS for styling and JavaScript for special actions) and your browser handles the display of them and the execution of their scripts. This means that you can program a browser to detect and remove ads directly from the code and also eradicate malicious detection scripts potentially employed by Google that are meant to find out whether the ads are displaying correctly. If Google would want to circumvent this, they would either have to make YouTube available solely over their own app or block such behaviour on the client’s end, for example by manipulating the browser’s code to block ad-blocking functionality. Google is actually pursuing the latter with their Chromium browser, which is also the foundation for some others, including Microsoft Edge. This is why it’s important that people start to move away and use Firefox for browsing, THE free/libre software non-profit web solution since decades. Because then Google is essentially powerless, if they don’t want to take YouTube off the web.

            • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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              42 years ago

              Making YouTube available solely in their app sounds entirely possible and not unlikely here. They already sorta do that with age-restricted videos and videos that have voluntarily disabled embedding.

          • mesa
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            32 years ago

            Yep, they are ramping up to disable all of the scripts and extensions.

          • AphoticDev
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            02 years ago

            Oh, they absolutely are capable of telling if you have uBlock Origin installed. However, uBlock is also capable of blocking scripts, so you can make a filter to block whatever part of the scripts on the page it is that detect your adblocker. I’ve never seen an anti-adblocker that didn’t use Javascript, and the great thing about Javascript is that your browser can just… Ignore it.

            • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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              12 years ago

              It would be pretty trivial for them to just block playback completely for any agent that’s blocking their ad scripts. Or make their ad videos indistinguishable from the actually video you want.

              The question isn’t CAN they enforce this, it’s WILL they enforce this? Thus far we’ve been succeeding at this cat-and-mouse game simply because the cat is too fat and lazy to chase us. But this cat is looking more hungry and motivated every day…we’ll see.

              • AphoticDev
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                12 years ago

                Ad publishers have been in a war with adblockers for a decade now, were it trivial to detect adblockers, they would have already won. This is the sole reason Google has introduced the idea of DRM for websites.

                In fact, the only trivial thing is bypassing anti-adblock. There is no anti-adblock that relies upon Javascript that cannot be bypassed without issue. The way Javascript is executed on the user’s computer, unobfuscated, means it can be altered in whatever way you want before it is ran.

          • @whats_a_refoogee@sh.itjust.works
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            12 years ago

            They are capable of detecting it because they aren’t putting much effort into being undetectable. If there was a need, uBlock Origin itself could be made entirely undetectable.

            Of course the YouTube script running in your browser will be able to detect changes made to the page and request blocking. However, the said script can be modified by a different extension to either receive incorrect data about blocked requests and page information, or to send a fabricated result back to the server. Google can react to it by modifying the script, and the extension would need to adapt accordingly. It’s a game of cat and mouse.

            If there was a need, we could have YouTube running in an entirely clean headless browser with no adblockers, while the real browser we use pulls data from it and strips out the ads.

            Ultimately, currently we have the last word on what happens on our end. Unfortunately, Google’s webDRM, pushed by traitors to humanity Ben Wiser, Borbala Benko, Philipp Pfeiffenberge and Sergey Kataev, is trying to change that.

            • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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              12 years ago

              I mean, you could do all sorts of wild shit but at a certain point it’s impractical for most people. You think Google has actually put effort into this so far? You haven’t seen effort yet, they’re just beta testing.

      • mesa
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        122 years ago

        The reason people are talking about this new change is that it will bypass the extensions.

        • Kushan
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          92 years ago

          I understand that, but look at who I am responding to - they seem to think that they’re immune from it.

      • @rab@lemmy.ca
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        92 years ago

        Does anyone know if the dislikes extension is actually accurate or is it a sort of estimation

        • @c1177johuk@lemmy.world
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          232 years ago

          For new videos it’s an estimation with added dislike data of people using the extension, it’s rather accurate for most videos. For old videos before the dislike removal it uses old archived data plus new data added on top using the algorithm and data by the extension users

      • @NightOwl@lemmy.one
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        272 years ago

        On desktop blocktube has improved things so much too. It has made search results so much better, since YouTube suppresses smaller channels in favor of the same large youtubers depending on the subject. Really wish it could be integrated into mobile YouTube options, but until then my hope is waiting until mobile firefox getting desktop extension support.

  • @dolle@feddit.dk
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    402 years ago

    I actually don’t have a problem paying for online services. I host my own email, I pay for Kagi search and I do monthly donations to Mozilla and Wikipedia. What I have an issue with is services that start out as advertisement based and then introduce paid plans, because now you still have all these shitty mechanics just for driving up engagement which results in unhealthy incentives for content creators and rabbit holes. I want a service that is for YouTube what Kagi is to Google Search. But perhaps that model is too difficult to monetize, I don’t know.

  • I_Miss_Daniel
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    722 years ago

    Up next: An AI-enabled Web Browser extension which

    • mutes the YouTube ads and overlays it with cute cat videos
    • clicks the “skip” button for you
  • Max-P
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    112 years ago

    But what happens when the timer is done? Just a scare tactic?

  • @hackitfast@lemmy.world
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    312 years ago

    NewPipe, and YouTube Revanced are great apps you can use on mobile. They aren’t attached to any Google account so you can just use them and skip adds all day without getting any account theoretically banned.

    For those who continue to use YouTube and adblockers on PC, simply just make a new throwaway Google account. In the case that they aren’t actually bluffing (they are) then at least your temp account will be banned.