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.
  • confusedwiseman@beehaw.orgEnglish
    78·
    1 year ago

    It seems like we’ve all lost the plot. We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring. Try browsing for a day on a plain-no-extension browser. If you use other web enhancement tools kill those too. Straight-up internet is cancer, especially on mobile.

    It’s impossible to read a 250-word article without being interrupted 5-7 times. Two of those interruptions are likely a full page overlay with give me your email, and are you sure you don’t want to subscribe, just give me your credit card number.

    Then there are auto-play videos on the side, some with audio on by default. I mean I came here to read something, so of course we have things flashing and moving and making noise, it’s the most conducive environment for thought, right?

    Ad blockers and script blocking are essentially a hazmat suit that allows us to withstand a hostile environment. Remember when we said myspace pages with audio and [marching-ants] borders was a bad UX? At least we didn’t have overlays back then.

    Go back to basics and consider what makes a good vs bad internet experience. The reality sounds like someone with a minor case of severe brain damage. I think we’ve just become unashamed of greed as a society. It’s clearly all just about money.

    Those annoying customers/users generate content and we have to put up with them so we can monetize it. *Sadly, It’s unclear if I’m talking about youtube, reddit, or nearly any other site.

    Le sigh.

  • mog77a@beehaw.orgEnglish
    29·
    1 year ago

    Yep, got selected for this test and I thought my network went down.

    Had to do nearly 30 mins of debugging until I realized it was youtube actively withholding JUST the video. Took some effort but managed to get them to send the videos again after resetting a bunch of things.

    I refuse to view ads and will go to the ends of the earth to make that happen.

    Paying is most certainly an option, but only when that becomes the ONLY option.

    I’ve been using an adblocker since ads starting becoming more intrusive and the internet has progressed so much that it’s become generally unusable without one. I remember when a mobile ad popped up on my phone and it straight up startled me.

  • eight_byte@feddit.deEnglish
    23·
    1 year ago

    I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.

    On the other side, as a user, I just can’t browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.

    But to be honest, I don’t see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can’t pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.

  • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    I’ll say something unexpected: I pay for YouTube. With money! Why?

    • I use it every day and I’m a human who likes boosting the things that I enjoy
    • I think YouTube’s content recommendations are a genuine value-add and not easily replaced
    • A cut of my subscription fee goes directly back to the video creators that I watch
    • The “premium” encoding levels are actually a substantial improvement to video bitrates
    • Important: the premium bitrate is higher than anything previously offered and probably would not have been otherwise practical to serve for free

    So yeah. I personally like YouTube enough to pay for it and I have the financial means to do so. Am I a clown for expressing personal appreciation towards a faceless megacorp? Yes. Yes I am. Constantly winning is a drag though, so I think I’ll continue to enjoy getting swindled.

  • anthoniix@kbin.social
    21·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, others do have point when they say we are basically leeching off of the platform. I honestly don’t think I’d mind paying for youtube, I currently don’t because it kind of just got ingrained in me that youtube was “free”. I think the ad supported model is fundamentally flawed though.

    Platforms will always want to make it worth it for advertisers to work for them. With the huge trove of user data that sites like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc. have they will use that to leverage personalized ads that will feed your brain with garbage all day and coax you into buying shit you don’t need or sometimes even falling for scams.

    I’d honestly like it better if these sites just straight up charged you right out of the gate. Maybe on top of that we could have sites be interoperable, like the fediverse, so it’s not necessarily what the site offers but how they offer it to you. Making you want to pay for an experience that you truly can’t get anywhere else.

    • Sev@pawb.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      For folks considering paying for YT, note that you get YT Music Premium bundled in with it. The music premium alone is only $2/mo cheaper than the bundle.

      I got it when I bailed on Spotify, and gotta say, the app is a little less polished, but I don’t miss Spotify a bit. Just putting it out there if you were looking for a push to get yourself off Spotify or a push to get YT ad-free, there ya go. It works out to $10/mo if you get the annual plan, so same as Spotify Premium, plus yanno, the YouTube benefits. It’s a pretty decent deal tbh.

      • JillyB@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        Yep. I’ve had Google play music since it came out so I’ve never seen YouTube ads except when at a friend’s house. Each time I do, I’m reminded how worth it YT premium/YT music is. I wish more platforms would allow me to simply pay a small fee to enjoy an ad-free experience.

        Personally, I think YouTube will be the hardest thing to replicate in a federated way.

    • LwL@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Ironically I wouldn’t mind paying for it if yt didn’t have these stupid monetization rules. Every time i hear a word being bleeped out my hate for youtube grows.

      I actually do give them some money as there is a band I really like and due to shipping costs/import tax yt channel membership is the most viable way I have to support them, so while it’s less than yt premium, I’m still not completely leeching off the platform.

    • RandomException@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      1 year ago

      I started paying for YT Premium years ago after I got fed up with the ads. I value the content and I think the service is actually really good so why not pay for using it? Premium users also generate more income for creators so that’s also a huge upside since I want the creators to thrive as well and keep on making good content on the platform. I think the basic ad-free subscription is only 4,99€ and Premium including YT Music is 9,99€ here in Finland so not bad at all compared to for example Netflix.

      It’s one thing to replace Reddit since it’s basically just serving text content but replacing YouTube is not easy at all. Videos take huge amounts of space, bandwidth costs arms and legs after you gain any user base and then you also would have to be attractive to the content creators somehow. I think YT at it’s current state is worth the subscription cost and given how the platform works it’s also IMO completely reasonable to either force users to watch the ads or pay for ad-free subscription.

      • anthoniix@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, the replicated youtube we’d need to either have a lot of money for hosting or use a decentralized model. The second option isnt even that feasible though.

  • vraylle@beehaw.orgEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    At least with my subscriptions I’ve been noticing an increase in sponsored segments. And you know what? I don’t mind. It’s much less jarring when the “host” is also doing the ad and pretty much just works it into the video. People have to make money, and this old-school approach works for me. Reminds me of ads in old TV/radio shows. And it doesn’t suddenly change the scene and quadruple the volume along with seizure-inducing backgrounds.

  • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
    17·
    1 year ago

    If they really block adblockers, I will subscribe. To Nebula. It’s got everything I want, adfree (including sponsored segments), extra content and is cheaper. And the content creators get a bigger share of the money.

    • nodiet@feddit.deEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      There is nothing stopping you from subscribing to nebula right now. Since I haven’t gotten any ads on YouTube in many years and even use sponsorblock to skip those annoying video segments I started thinking about how I am basically leeching off of most content creators. Subscribing to nebula was a no-brainer. It’s about $4.16 per month on the yearly plan and lets me support all content creators I watch on there at once rather than subscribing to each and every one of them on patreon and I still don’t see any ads

  • chillybones@beehaw.orgEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    The comments in here are interesting to me. Ads and Premium are a way for your favorite content creators to get paid for the content that they produce. I’ve listened to a number of creators talk about the YouTube revenue sharing model and most of them (LTT and Hank Green) says that YouTube is actually really fair with how they share ad revenue and how Premium is actually a good alternative that meets the needs of the platform, users, and creators. And YouTube, the platform, DOES need to get paid as well otherwise your videos can’t get to you.

    I also hate ads, like a lot, and I do whatever I can to get them off of my screen because I think they are intrusive and we have proof of how they enable tracking across the internet at large. However, for those platforms that I find extreme value in (YouTube being the example here) I see how and why ads/Premium pump value into their system. If your favorite content creator isn’t getting paid for their content, they won’t be able to sustain it long term.

    One last thought about video streaming and the content we all love that is hosted by YouTube: if we were to say that we would rather our money go directly to our favorite content creators, we would end up with a very fragmented ecosystem akin to the Streaming Service MESS we are in with TV/Movies. I would LOVE to pay LTT directly through Floatplane, but then where would I be with being able to watch other content creators?

    • MrAegis@lemmy.mlEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago

      Remember when ads were short and easy to skip? They’re just getting more annoying now.

      I could bear them back then, but now I can tell immediately if I accidentally use the mobile app on my phone vs my phone’s web browser.

      • mrmanager@lemmy.todayEnglish
        14·
        1 year ago

        This is the thing about ads. It’s never, ever enough. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and it doesn’t matter. We still get more ads.

        Basically I think we are going to have to find more and more alternatives to the web. It’s ruined and it’s not coming back.

        I know many people who are back on piracy now. It’s just impossible to take all the ads.

      • chillybones@beehaw.orgEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        I have heard that the ads are getting worse and longer/unskipable. I do wonder how YouTube determines what the ‘balance’ should be. You know they have the usage and engagement statistics to back up the increase. It did get to a point where I said there was no way I could continue to use YouTube as it was; but it was also around the time that I pretty much switched to YouTube for content over Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/TV so Preimum was a no brainer as I could drop 3 or 4 streaming services for YouTube.

        • Bardak@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          My understanding is that as rates have gone way down the last couple of years and it wouldn’t surprise me if Google just has less high quality ads and is dipping into the crappy cheaper ad buys to fill the space.

      • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Once, I played the first YouTube of the day on the Roku, and instantly got 2 minutes of unskipable ads (4, 30 second segments) with (what I would categorize as) unnecessarily sexual content on a children’s playdough video. That was when I installed and configured PiHole for the Roku. That was the last straw. My 2-yo niece should not have seen a dude’s butt. A 5-second video-age-appropriate ad, ok. An age-appropriate banner on the bottom, ok. 2 minutes of unskipable adult ads on a kid’s video, no. I started blocking, when they started intruding.

    • Terces@vlemmy.netEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      I understand your argument, but I think the issue is more complex. I would wish that it was just advertisers paying money to YouTube and YouTube taking its cut and giving the rest to the content creator. It used to be like that in the beginning, but it isn’t anymore. I do not pay for a YouTube subscription, because I don’t want YouTube to track my videos and create a profile of me. Especially when I often have to sift through multiple videos just to find an answer to very specific question and YouTube takes that as me being super interested in that whole topic. Watching ads on the other hand is also just a large tracking apparatus that tries to squeeze money out of my pockets. My preferences over the whole Internet is being tracked to serve me “the most relevant and personalised content”. Basically, they try to figure out what I want, before I do and then try to sell me that. If there is a way to directly support content creators (donations, subscriptions, etc), I usually do that. But I don’t want to support shady business with my data behind my back.

      • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Very much this. If I visit the grocery store, I am not walking through other businesses just to get to each isle.

        I am perfectly happy with going back to amateur YouTube somewhere else. If it was a real community of individuals I would probably post content again myself. The whole idea of YT as career content creators only is not very interesting to me any more.

        I do not use an ad blocker. I use a whitelist firewall. I only visit the websites I request. If anyone wants to show me content, it must be on the servers I wish to visit. As far as I am concerned, if I invite you into my home, you head to the bathroom, open the window and let a dozen people into my home, you’re never going to get invited to visit again. This is how ads work.

        If YT can’t trust these people to host their content directly, that is not my problem.

    • not_a_dog@lemmy.oneEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      If they would let me just specifically pay for ad-free YouTube at a reasonable price, instead of lumping it in with a bunch of shit I don’t use and am not interested in, I would happily pay.

    • promitheas@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      And YouTube, the platform, DOES need to get paid as well otherwise your videos can’t get to you.

      I disagree. YouTube is owned by Google as we all know very well. They don’t need to show you ads technically. I get why they would want to, because obviously its a company and they want to make more and more money. But I (and many more like me), as users we feel that it gets to a point where I’m not watching a video with ads sprinkled in, but ads with a video sprinkled in. So I as a consumer will find ways to circumvent that, and avoid watching ads. There comes a point where they’re getting far too greedy and I can no longer tolerate the extent to which their “more and more money” practices get to. As another commenter mentioned, the ads arms race will simply continue turning. As for creators, there are other ways for them to make money, as was the case when YouTube was still a younger thing. Now there’s even more options such as Patreon. Also, bigger brands such as LTT inevitably branch out and create separate revenue streams (think LTT store). Obviously, not every creator might want to do that simply to get paid, but when did we shift to this idea that its a job. Even though I’m young(er), I still remember the beginning of YouTube, though barely. It seems like it was more people back then that wanted to do this as a passion, not that they felt “I need to release a video every week at a set day and time or I get less money” as it seems to be now.

      I wouldn’t even mind that much if the ads didn’t interfere with the primary function of the site, which one would think is to serve content (the product) to me (the consumer). Such as ads which are not part of the video but are loaded on the side for example. However, this is not the case. Primarily I think because we have reached a point in the internet’s timeline where people using it are not the customers anymore, but the product. And we’re being sold to ad companies.

      Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk xD

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      YSK that Premium pays considerably less to creators than any other form of monetization.

      So, if you want to support your favorite creator, literally send them a dollar.

      One dollar is more than what that creator will ever make from a single viewer on YouTube.

  • WondrousFairy@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    Translation: YT tests randomly pissing off users until they get fed up and leave for another site. if a site tells me I can’t partake of their content with my adblocker engaged, I simply find my fix elsewhere.