• 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.
  • Static_Rocket@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I want the statistic on how many Google employees use ad blockers now. It’s basically a necessity.

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        They still probably use ad blockers for other sites though. It’s essential on the Internet these days.

        The number of malware or otherwise malicious ads is too damn high. There are articles that are so filler they literally have less content than ads, it’s an embarrassment.

  • Emmie@lemmings.worldBanned
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    9 months ago

    I hope one day we will find a method to finance websites operating costs without ads. Meanwhile I will be using blockers and hope someone else’s does the ad clicking.

    It’s my little internet piracy you could say, if I am already doing it with every movie and tv show and most games it would be out of character. I am obsessed about saving money and so if I can get away with it I will do almost anything.
    Same with the health insurance I have 1/5 of the real cost for full package because of various gray area tax optimisations. Then double dipping on real estate rent+appreciation. Most efficient used car purchase. 25 year old fridge and washing machine because new ones break down too fast and can’t be repaired. Manual renovation between tenants to save on labour cost. Lack of addictions. Relatively cheap hobbies. 4 milion in assets, zero debt.

    • demesisx@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      We have a solution but….

      you’re not going to like it

      cryptocurrency (especially 3rd generation cryptocurrencies like Cardano which uses proof of stake) could easily fund website operating costs without ads.

  • pop@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    The surface level entitlement in these threads are always off the charts.

    Everyone is on this bandwagon that Google hates adblockers on youtube. It certainly does but it hasn’t been this agressive as of late.

    You know why?

    The issue google has is with server farms guzzling up the entirety of their video database for training their AI. They’re using open source tools/frontends to do these downloads. That takes up lot of resource and bandwidth unlike ignoring the minority of plebs using youtube without ads.

    They want to rule the AI trend not fuel the COMPETITION. They will do whatever to keep their competition from getting ahead.

    And it isn’t cheap to keep up with server farms unlike letting miniscule numbers of terminally online mouth breathing basement dwellers who think too high of themselves block ads.

    But whatever floats your boat.

  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Good.

    Youtube is a wonderful thing. It’s a wealth of knowledge and resources unlike anything this world has ever seen.

    And it’s ran by one of the worst, most predatory corps on the planet.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Perfectly put. The product is great and I love how it democratizes “being on TV” and lets some people make a living doing their own thing.

      But I do not like where YouTube’s cut of that ad/sub money goes, and the enshittification pushed into it.

      Unfortunately, YouTube is not unique in that regard. It’s a sucky fact of life that just about any complex product you spend money on will benefit a collection of rich sociopaths skimming as much as possible from the incomes of the people actually making the thing. Gotta vote with your wallet where you can, and vote the traditional way for the systemic issues.

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      Platforms like Floatplane, Nebula, Patreon etc make it so easy to support creators outside of YouTube, while also giving creators a larger share of income compared to Adsense.

      There’s YouTube Premium… but I don’t think I’m alone in not wanting to give Google a single cent of my hard earned cash

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The problem with things like Patreon is that nobody with an average income can afford to pay “only 5 dollars per month, 10 for premium membership” for each channel and podcaster they have subscribed to. It makes more sense to rather pay a flat fee for one or two streaming services (in my case Nebula and YT Premium) than 30 Patreon memberships.

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    i consider unblockable ads to be direct attack on my psyche, trying to worm in and make me think in a way they want. I will never tolerate them and would rather see anything relying on them burn. My mind is my own and no one else has any business influencing me without my permission.

    • tacosplease@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I agree with that… somewhat. Except they are providing a service.

      The content is not produced by YouTube, but it is made available by YouTube. There’s a cost to provide that service and value to the consumer for having videos available to watch.

      I doubt you want to pay for the service, so how is it supposed to work? What pays YouTube’s costs so we can all keep watching videos for months and years to come?

      I get that this comes across as someone simping for YouTube. I’m not trying to do that though. I’m just intrigued by this worldview and would like to understand if there is more to it or if you believe YouTube should not be compensated some other way.

      Is it a “Fuck you. I got mine.” mentality where people watching ads and paying premium cover the cost for you to use the service for free? Or is there some nuance I’ve missed?

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Nationalize youtube and turn it into a public utility financed by the UN. Create a kind of patreon system that distributes funds to creators similar to how it’s done for music collection agencies.

        There are always alternatives, but not until people demand an alternative to constant brainwashing. Right now it’s unthinkable because people insist that there cannot be an alternative and therefor the status quo mustn’t be endangered.

        At this stage burning it all down would be preferable although that would never happen until we’re seen widespread system collapse.

        • TheDonkerZ@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Yeah, but the issues there are any musicians that aren’t Taylor Swift don’t make enough on their music alone. They have to either continue working, or go to other extreme lengths with frequent touring, extensive merch offerings, etc. They have to work the equivalent of 3 full time jobs (somehow) to make the money worth it.

          If they were to nationalize YT in the same way, there would be 0 content creators. There is already so much effort that goes into that work, lowering the amount people earn even more would kill that as a career path.

          Just my speculation of course, but I don’t think the answer is always “make the governments pay for it”. That will come back around in taxes, and the everyone is paying for YouTube Premium.

          • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            Well even if you’d keep advertising if you turn YT into a public utility or non-profit, MUCH more of that money would go to creators. And/or much less advertising. Or less annoying or more discerning ads. And of course no demonetization because you talk about problematic issues.

            Without advertising you’d need some kind of revenue. I imagine something like e.g. a EU wide “universal content subscription” or something like that. So if you create good content the various distribution channels simply track what you watch, anonymize it (firefox has this new system that got them in hot waters) and distribute the money from the giant pool to the creators.

            Maybe start with a universal newspaper subscription so we’d have a free press again, new newspapers or channels that produce independent news with only the viewer as a customer, without ads.

            For music in the EU / Germany there are collection agencies that already do this sort of thing. So it’s not even without precedent.

            Obviously there are tons of issues to work out, but the biggest is simply that the elite do everything to gain and maintain power or wealth and this would go contrary to that.

        • ticho@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          There is nebula.tv which works like that, but it lacks content. I am a subscriber, but I’m running out of interesting content to watch there.

          OBviously there is network effect in play here. If Youtube switched to subs-only model tomorrow, they would have much wider content offer from the get-go.

      • mrinfinity@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Not our problem. They can go the twitch.tv’ish way and add subscription models for people to subscribe and support their favorite content producers and Youtube can take a cut.

        Just because they can’t think of a profitable business model other than annoying and exploiting the internet’s userbase while deplatforming, demonetizing and having their own myriad of problems doesn’t mean that’s on us.

        Doesn’t mean you’re simping. You have a valid point, but when’s enough enough when they’re squeezing everything out of us for ad revenue and finding new ways to fuck with our psyche/psychological things like Facebook does with its highest paid employee(s) to rake in attention for cost-per-click and cost-per-view? We’re more than just ‘metrics’ and KPIS. We’re humans, we deserve joy. If youtube dies, there’s decentralized solutions out there that can become more mainstream. People can self-host and host their own content.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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    9 months ago

    Eh, I dunno if I’d say they’re “losing”.

    I’ve certainly noticed disruptions on every platform except GrayJay. LibreTube stopped working for several months for me.

    Certainly these interruptions could be enough for some users to abandon them.

    • BleatingZombie@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        9 months ago

        youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot

        How are they doing that? Users who aren’t watching ads have absolutely zero value to YouTube, and only cause increased use of their computing resources. If they leave, YT has lost absolutely nothing, and gained a decrease in energy use. Most likely these people won’t leave YT altogether but just go back to watching ads or paying for premium, which is exactly the point.

        Not saying I give a shit, that’s just reality.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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    9 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.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s so bad that I 1) refuse to pay for premium so I don’t enable the behavior and 2) ended up sideloading an alt YouTube app on iOS that just doesn’t display the ads. YouTube hasn’t been able to block that one yet as it spoofs as the original YouTube app. Totally unsanctioned and a pain in the ass to keep the certificate alive but worth it. YouTube is actually enjoyable again. All that because the ads interruptions were constant. If it was every 15 min or so I wouldn’t care, but every 5!? Get the hell out of here!

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      9 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.

    • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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      9 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.

      • John Richard@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Same here. FreeTube for desktop and NewPipe are all you need though if you don’t want to pay and/or have access to music.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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        9 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.

      • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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        9 months ago

        Is that what they are trying to do? Push crap ads and try to kill adblock to get a little extra user share to pay for yet another subscription?

        PS: let me add that I also watch TV and the balance between quality of content and ads and their placement is much better (yes, some countries are worse than others with this). I don’t know what they are doing in youtube ads, but it’s anti-human (not just the ads, but the design too: super slow loading, tricks you into clicking the wrong content). Like they don’t want you to “pay” by watching ads, they want to torture you until you subscribe, go away or get adblock.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I don’t care if you block ads… but to act like Google owes you and that you deserve free content is called entitled.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I forgot… where can I get my free data center with petabytes of storage & 300TB/s fiber interconnects?

          • towerful@programming.dev
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            9 months ago

            I get what you are saying, but the balance is off.
            YT premium costs (edit) more than a streaming service per month.
            There are no industry leading movies or series released exclusively on YouTube.
            YouTubes benefits of premium is “not being delivered ‘skip after 5 seconds’ live streams” as an ad that will play indefinitely (or at least for hours).
            Also, streaming services provide much better series discovery. Ie, find a show you like and easily discover the start of that series, then binge watch the entire series in order.
            YT premium is basically a “play next” queue, 1080p, and no ads.
            It doesn’t (AFAIK) support creators any more. It’s literally just a fee to not-be-inconvenienced, and it’s not great at that

            • auzy@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Yep… i actually looked at Subscribing. But… It’s basically mostly amateur hour and the subscription costs a huge amount.

              Even worse, I don’t believe creators even get revenue until they exceed sufficient subscribers. So most people are actually paying youtube to put benefit from other people’s video’s which they have no involvement in.

              • Alex@lemmy.ml
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                9 months ago

                When did this change? AIUI creators got a larger cut of YouTube premium views compared to ad share.

                • auzy@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Not sure if its subscribers or views… But, I tried to monitize one or two of my videos, and it wouldn’t let me because I don’t think I had enough views or something.

      • bulwark@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s only a matter of time until the premium users get ads. Just like Netflix, and cable TV before that. You will inevitably wind up paying to be advertised to.

      • Damage@feddit.it
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        9 months ago

        Google makes enough money evading taxes already. Not gonna help them make more.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I don’t care if you use ad blockers. I get annoyed when people publish articles like… “Google is losing the adblockers war” cause then advertisers are going to start pushing harder for Google to actually prevent adblockers entirely, which they could have done already. Thus far Google, despite issues, does quite a lot of good things… Android is the only open source OS out of Apple & Windows. Android lets you install third party app stores. Chrome (Chromium) is open source… etc.

          These users writing this content don’t even develop the apps to block YouTube ads. If you’ve ever explored the APIs by YouTube, then you’d know that Google despite pushing ads for users without blockers, is still rather friendly to third party apps.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    “Should we moderate our ads and get rid of 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn,scams and fake products?”

    “No, no. Thats to much effort. Lets spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to force people to watch our 2 hour long ads, disinformation, porn, scams and fake products. Thats clearly the way forward.”

    This decision process brought to you by Prager U proceeds into 30 minutes about how slavery was good for the black man and he should be grateful for it

  • Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org
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    9 months ago

    The reason I left Twitch was because the fucking ads were unbearable. I’ve even taken a screenshot to show people that I wasn’t lying when I said I saw that Twitch expected me to sit there and listen to and watch 8 fucking ads. Ads to shit I don’t care about other than think of violent thoughts in what I’d love to do to marketers and find a way to advertise that so they get a god damn clue.

    In a perfect world, maybe A ad wouldn’t be so bad. But this has gotten out of hand and out of control. We shouldn’t ever have to sit and watch a string of ads, all varying from 20 seconds to an entire minute and even longer.

    And good, I hope YouTube is stupid as fuck enough to be aggressive. Drive more creators out, even hit the successes of the YouTube whores who’ve long lived on the platform. Because all that they’re going to do is affect everyone at the end of the day, all for the sake of profiting for marketers.

  • John Richard@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Sounds like users are trying to end up in the find out phase.

    YouTube… “We provide these APIs and make our apps and privacy policies more accessible than most, but we still can’t give everything away for free.”

    Users… “Haha scum of the earth we think we’re beating you and that you have no way to stop us from circumventing your ads without paying.”

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Meh, paywalling some videos behind Google+ (or whatever the current iteration is) would’ve been the honest option. But they chose ads and tracking for everything (makes more money), i can understand why people circumvent them.

      • John Richard@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I can understand why people circumvent them too. I can’t understand why they’d claim… “Hey Google, you suck at blocking ads. You can’t stop us from doing it.”

        Seriously, fuck people that do this. Google knows people use third party apps that block ads. They might as well say… we’re not happy not having ads. We want Google to block it entirely so we can be even more pissed off.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      My dude, white knighting a company that had almost $60 billion in profit in 2022 and $73 billion profit in 2023 isn’t a good look.

      Source.

      • John Richard@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        My dude… There are 100s of legitimate things about Google to complain about, but you pick the weakest argument and then say I’m white knighting them. YouTube doesn’t owe you cause they made profit… you’ve been able to still bypass their ads for this long, and so now users are complaining that they were able to circumvent something easier in the past?

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          There are 100s of legitimate things about Google to complain about

          But you’re not. You’ve made several comments on this post criticizing the people who 1. want control over their own devices and 2. are sick of ads being forced into every aspect of their lives.

          you pick the weakest argument

          And I happen to think that a company throwing such an entitled fit over money, when they are making an immoral amount of profit that is increasing YoY, is super relevant when discussing the profitability of one of their services.

          YouTube doesn’t owe you cause they made profit

          Pretty sure I didn’t say they did.

          you’ve been able to still bypass their ads for this long, and so now users are complaining that they were able to circumvent something easier in the past?

          People always complain when their convenience is removed from them. Welcome to the human condition.

    • net00@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      "but we still can’t give everything away for free.”

      Then why have they positioned youtube to be a public worldwide service freely accessible all these years?

      It is the usual tactic of operating at a loss for years, building an unsustainable service and supporting it with revenue from other places. Google was officially declared a monopoly, and youtube is not profitable, so it’s easy to connect the dots and say youtube grew to it’s current dominance unfairly through that monopoly money.

      Now they want to enforce their TOS on you, pay up or watch a million ads or leave. Well fuck their TOS, I avoid anything google like the plague, but their unfair position on video sharing makes it hard to avoid youtube particularly. I respond unfairly in turn, by proxying youtube through invidious.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    I’ll stop using YouTube altogether before I disable my ad blocker. My time is simply more valuable than whatever video I’m watching.

  • Noble Shift@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    YouTube has been a dumpster fire for many many years now and it continues its slide down.

    Patreon would not exist had anyone over at YT had focus beyond the next two quarters.

    Sooner or later an actual real contender will be created, and you’ll see YT’s knee jerk reactions with a surprised Pikachu meme in full effect.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      I would love it but I don’t see it.

      It costs an enormous amount of money to host video content, doubly so when you need to replicate it across servers. I have never seen another company come close to usurping them.

    • Delta_V@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think its more likely that YouTube will shut down and be replaced by nothing. Its existence has never made sense as anything but an act of charity from an organization with tech resources to burn.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Remember that Google bought YouTube only AFTER it was successful for several years. This was also before Google turned evil.