• dan@upvote.au
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    4 hours ago

    The article makes it sound like a new concept, but it’s a very old approach for adding ads to video streams. I mean, it’s essentially how regular TV works.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Oh well.

    YouTube can be past-tense. There’s a million places to post a video these days. Spill out some whiskey and read a book. Fuck em.

  • bokherif@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Only if premium did not have ads. They show you ad videos as if they’re part of your “recommendations”. They also allow creators to get sponsorships within videos. So even the premium experience isn’t really ad-free and they tout that shit everywhere.

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      3 hours ago

      As a YT Premium subscriber I really don’t mind the sponsor sections. Money goes to the creator and a few taps and I’m back to watching. Also, I think outright banning sponsor segments is going to make creators more creative in a bad way…

      • bokherif@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I totally understand your views, although I’m paying this platform to not show me ads, that money should then go to the creators if they have to insert ads into their videos for some change. This is the platform’s fault.

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      I remember subscribing to YouTube Red when it first came out (and had a reasonable price), literally the first video I watched after subbing included an ad for YouTube Red in it. I was so fucking pissed lmao, thank goodness for SponsorBlock.

  • lud@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    I’m surprised it took them so incredibly long to crack down on adblockers.

    • Casey@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      They used to still be only a small percentage until the entire internet got completely decimated by ads in the past 5 years.

  • tomjuggler@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    So AdGuard works on the YouTube website. I haven’t been there for some time - I use 2 other methods to watch YouTube ad-free.

    1. Newpipe - Android app that works by parsing the website, will probably be affected?
    2. YouTube Kodi add-on - works with Google YouTube API, I was wondering when this loophole is going to be plugged…

    Anyone with knowledge of the matter care to comment? So far my YouTube watching is still ad-free.

    I also run pi-hole in front of my WiFi. Nothing gets through. Or will it?

    I noticed some podcasts these days have random server injected ads - usually the same ad repeated 2 or 3 times, is this going to be my video stream soon?

    • dan@upvote.au
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      4 hours ago

      If ads are injected server-side like the article is taking about, your downloads in Newpipe and Kodi are going to have the ads in them.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      Nothing gets through. Or will it?

      You would have to block the video itself to get rid of them

    • bokherif@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Pihole will not work because it works on the DNS queries. With server side injection it’s gonna be tougher to block ads, but I’m sure we’ll find a way

    • Kadaj21@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Most of the ads we see on our Roku Tv are political. I don’t know about Temu’s but I’d rather get non-political ads.

  • Zementid@feddit.nl
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    13 hours ago

    So, instead of iterating the ancient concept of frontal assault ads towards something less intrusive and more engaging, they go the black mirror path of force feeding ads?

    Sounds about right regarding the decision makers have as much creativity as a Vogon.

    Man I really hate those suit MBA circlejerk idiots in positions of power.

    • bokherif@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      The sad thing is they inject ads to your feed even if you have premium. I keep seeing product videos in my feed named “Meet the x product”. Youtube and google is just shameless and I’m pretty sure they’re breaking a bunch of laws.

      • Zementid@feddit.nl
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        3 hours ago

        So YouTube Premium is as worthless as I thought. Google was never great in drawing recognizable lines between their free offering and paid… and it seems their solution is to make everything as shitty as possible and barely fix the stuff they fucked up.

        Let’s wait until Google Maps gets ads … routing already seems fishy to me.

        Thanks for your brief description… only shows me that my next Phone won’t be a Pixel.

        • bokherif@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Definitely avoid Pixels. They look better than most Android devices in terms of software imo, although it’s because they’re really locking down the firmware similar to iOS, which breaks the purpose of using Android anyway. Also the processor on the Pixels are even behind 5-6 year old phones.

          Btw…Google Maps has ads already, the square icons are all ads paid by the place owners. Routing is fishy yes, because they’re actively routing people through different routes in order to collect data for their algorithms.

          The biggest reason I still use Google products is there is no alternative and they fully know this.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    So if YouTube is now serving up the ads directly to me, does that mean they’re finally liable for the content of those ads? Can we have them investigated for all the malware, phishing, illegal hate speech, etc.?

    • dan@upvote.au
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      No, at least not in the USA. They’re still protected under Section 230, which makes them immune from liability of third-party content on their platform.

      now serving up the ads directly to me

      What do you think they were doing before? 🤔

    • shades@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      Great, now it’s Russian roulette every time you hit that pause button. <clickPause> ¡BOOM ZERODAY MALWARE!

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      No, because that would be communism, and that killed 100 million people. You also think genocide is bad, aren’t you? And besides of that, if there were less regulations, you could make your own video platform to challenge Google’s monopoly!

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          13 hours ago

          The problem with pretending to be a dumbass on the Internet, is it’s almost impossible to outdo the professionals.

        • L3dpen@lemmy.ml
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          14 hours ago

          Reading comprehension is for people who paid attention in school. Nerds.

        • Badland9085@lemm.ee
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          7 hours ago

          It’s not possible for everyone to just tell if it’s supposed to be sarcasm. ADHD makes it hard. A bad day makes it hard. A tiring day makes it hard.

          The downside of the misunderstanding isn’t just downvotes. It’s possibly a proliferation of misinformation and an impression that there are people who DO think that way.

          Being not serious while saying something grim is not a globally understood culture either. It’s more common and acceptable in the Western world as a joke.

          So… call it accessibility, but it’s just more approachable for everyone to just put an “/s”.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          6 hours ago

          Well… Communism is directly responsible for multiple famines that killed into the hundreds of millions. Then there are the inevitable purges that have taken millions of lives and hosts of terrors as well.

          You’re free to dispute history if you need to, and claim that theoretically communism is nice, but in practice, history tells us that living under communism reaaaalllyy sucks.

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            that’s like saying capitalism is directly responsible for school shootings because it happens all the time in the US. but no one’s dumb enough to claim that because that’s not how things work.

          • Teils13@lemmy.eco.br
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            There are people here not from western europe or north america, we felt all of that and beyond with capitalism too. Do you think Asia and Africa, who received aid and support from the soviet union to free themselves from capitalist Europeans will fall for that ? Where did you arrive at ''multiple famines that killed into the hundreds of millions" ? Even the soviet famines of 1930s and chinese great famine ‘only’ killed at maximum intervals of estimation 9 and 50 millions each, and this article over-viewing all atrocities maxes at 150 million, with a low 10-20 million estimation, not hundreds of millions in famines alone.

            Are you paraphrasing that ‘Black Book of Communism’ shtick ? It is a propaganda tool not valid in actual academic research, even by liberals that are not fraudsters, because the author twists every single communist countries-adjacent deaths as ‘‘mass killing caused by communism’’, including brilliant takes like total number of abortions (ex: France, that practices 250.000 abortions per year must be enraged with a capitalist regime that killed 5 million people only in the 21st century !) and all WW2 eastern front deaths (so both the nazi germans and allies that invaded USSR and USSR soldiers and civilians killed count as ‘killed by communism’).

            Last but not least, the USSR had much higher GDP per capita and living standards than the average third world capitalist country (which is where the demographic majority of capitalist people live), so even if the USSR could not equate Switzerland, they achieved a good quality of life better than the world average.

  • Buttons@programming.dev
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    Ads will always be detectable because you cannot speed up or skip an ad like you can the rest of the video.

    If they do make it so you can speed up or skip the ad sections of a video, mission accomplished.

    If all else fails, I’d enjoy a plugin that just blanks the video and mutes the sound whenever an ad is playing. I’ll enjoy the few seconds of quiet, and hopefully I can use that time to break out of the mentally unhealthy doom spiral that is the typical YouTube experience.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      always be detectable

      Maybe with some content ID system… but you’ve just predicted their 2025 update which we might imagine would go something like this:

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I briefly touched on this in a lengthy comment when this scheme was originally floated a few months ago. Your prediction, which granted is something that Youtube/Google absolutely would try if they thought they could get away with it, would only work on viewers that remained within the confines of Youtube’s native player.

        Any third party app capable of bullying or tricking Youtube into handing them the video data is free to do whatever it wants to with it afterwards, even if this ultimately means impeccably pretending to be the official Youtube player in order to get the server to fork over the data. Furthermore, video playback is buffered so a hypothetical pirate client would have several seconds worth of upcoming video to analyze and determine what it wants to do with it.

        Youtube could certainly make this process rather difficult by including some kind of end-to-end DRM or something, but at the end of the day you need to make a playable video stream arrive on the client’s device or computer somehow, and if you can’t guarantee full control of the entire environment in which that happens, dedicated nerds will find a away to screw with that data.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 hours ago

          Introducing…

          Oh, the year is 2100 and YouTube only plays on dedicated Alphabet-produced hardware (available “free” of course) with cam-proof screens? Storytelling will come back in style with a vengeance overnight!

          …and then, with the passion of a man whose next meal depends on it, he pleads:

          ”like and subscribe.”

          OK kids good night!

    • Celestus@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      Yep. YouTube must include a manifest with each video to tell the player what time ranges are un-skippable. Baked in ads were doomed from the beginning 🤡

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      No you don’t have to be able to detect it if you can’t skip. Since they’re injecting the stream directly every time you hit skip they move the counter and when you come back in it just continues to stream you the ad. Just let the time code go negative at the end of the video if you skipped.

      All they have to do is not really care about minutes and seconds displaying correctly exactly if you’re working around with fast forward. Alternately they could also just disable fast forward and rewind if they detect you’re using it to abuse commercials.

      I think Sooner or later, pretty much all blocking becomes a store the entire video with commercials and strip the commercials out with comskip end. If you’re just storing the buffer off, and stripping it out privately there’s not really a lot they can do about that.

      • Buttons@programming.dev
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        8 hours ago

        I may not like it, but you do make an interesting technical argument.

        I think it would still be detectable though because of buffering.

        What you’re saying assumes that videos are streamed frame-by-frame: “here’s a frame”, “okay, I watched that frame”, “okay, here’s the next frame”.

        With buffering videos will preload the next 30 seconds of video, and so if you pressed a button to skip ahead 10 seconds, that often happens instantly because the computer has already stored the next 30 seconds of video. Your plan to just pretend to skip ahead doesn’t work in this case, because my computer can know whether or not it really did skip ahead, because of buffering.

        • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          That depends on what video player you use. Of we have control of that, then sure it works. I use mpv to play things, so for radio streams or live videos I can go back/forward as long as it’s cached.

          But if it’s the web service, even though the browser video player has something cached, the player is still controlled by the website. And considering most of the people use chrome/chromium derivatives or YouTube app, it wouldn’t be hard for them to make it so that the player itself will collaborate with whatever they want to do.

          If YouTube was a separate organization it wouldn’t have been the problem it is because of how Google has been taking over all the different parts they need for advertising.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          There will probably be a hundred different tits for tats that we can only both dream of.

          In the end, they have some form of knowledge of how many minutes of data they’ve sent you. You have the entirety of the MPEG stream and a cell phone powerful enough to do things to it.

          There are different levels of crazy that can be waged If they were to do something like custom stream encryption to their client. We’d be playing cat and mouse with keys much like satellite dish hacking back in the day.

    • Hrothgar59@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      My brain just does that anyway, after decades of ads I just tune them out. And at home I use ad blockers.

      • vvvvv@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        That’s not how it works. Or, rather, that’s not only how it works. Sure, advertisers dream of users who see an ad once and run to buy a product. But ad effects are spread over time. They build brand recognition. They fake familiarity. Say you are in a supermarket and you want to buy a new type of product that you haven’t bought before. Very likely you’ll pick something familiar-sounding, which you heard in an ad. Ads pollute the mind even if the most obvious effects are, well, obvious and easily discarded, more subtle influence remains.

        • thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev
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          17 hours ago

          If it makes you feel any better, I intentionally never use products that have intentionally repetitive messaging or earworm tendencies out of spite. Though I know I’m probably in the minority

          • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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            16 hours ago

            Do we unintentionally use products we didn’t realize repetitively messaged us?

            We’ll never know…

            Just kidding, we can be sure it’s incredibly well studied given the billions and billions of dollars going into ads!

            • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              Totally no bias in these studies at all either, they totally wouldn’t try to skew these studies for personal gain and to try and justify the huge spending on ad money right?

              • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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                15 hours ago

                You can fool some of the people some of the time… right? :)

                I’d expect nothing less than executives at a number of the Fortune 50 to be ruthlessly cutthroat, including when it comes to vetting the claims of their marketing teams.

                (I know I’m speaking about studies I only assume to exist by the way, will have to research it later)

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I think the main problem is that this type of reasoning can’t actually be proven scientifically, even if we have a study there’s not a guarantee it’s unbiased (who do you think funds research on advertising effectiveness). Then there is the problem that every product or brand in modern advertising is likely one of the handful of pseudo monopoly brands. One might argue that a person bought their product because they heard it in an ad, but in reality they might not have really had much choice, that makes it hard to say if people buy the products because they’re familiar or if they just don’t have much option.

          The main point I’d like to make is that advertisers would like to believe they aren’t wasting money or time, they need people to believe it in some capacity, because if enough people don’t, eventually the dumb and blind companies who give them money will realize it too and stop giving them money. That’s why the ad-funded internet is considered a bubble, it’s not worth it, or necessary in a lot of cases, and the moment the dumb and blind corpos realize that, they’ll stop dumping money into a hole.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        20 hours ago

        The reason we’re absolutely fucking blasted away with ads is because even if they only have a 0.01% success rate, that’s enough to make them super profitable. So if you and 998 other people all pay zero attention to ads, they still make money.

        There’s also lots of people (like one of my family members) who become absolutely irate by ads but still buy the shit they’re shilling anyway.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          Advertisers claim that it’ll work eventually which is how they can justify companies paying them to display ads, and how they can justify paying for ads on a service like YouTube or even a website. In a sense they are being hung out to dry, many of the big companies seen in ads these days don’t actually need to convince you to buy their product because they have an almost complete monopoly on the market, they’re only technically not monopolies, so you’re going to buy their products anyway or live without the convenience. This is why among other things Ad-funded internet is considered a bubble in a sense, because advertisers are spending money paying websites to show people things they don’t think or care about, but somehow this translates into profits? Seems like the only one profiting is the site being paid, and the creator on it.

          I’m sure Nestle, Pepsi Co. P&G, CocaCola Bottling Co. Walmart, Amazon, and the other big boys really need to tell others about them or people wouldn’t know they exist and buy from them. Get real, these companies have their foot in the door, when it comes to the whole consumers buying from them. You can’t not buy from them and live as anyone else would, it takes effort to cut them out, and in many cases living without the convenience they bring.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      If they do make it so you can speed up or skip the ad sections of a video, mission accomplished.

      Mission failed sucessfully, if people can speed up or scroll through the ad, then it kind of defeats the point since people can skip ahead or increase the speed.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Well it’s what people want. No one even is complaining about the ads wants to pay for anything. And stuff costs money no matter what people choose to believe. Creators need to eat YouTube has costs. Money has to come from somewhere.

      • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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        7 hours ago

        Honestly, if there was a remotely reasonably priced premium version of just youtube, no music or movies or whatever they try to shove down your throat nowadays, I would pay for that. But instead they rather price hike and make the ads more intrusive.

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    1 day ago

    Imagine all the cool stuff we could be doing if we weren’t wasting the time of hundreds of engineers figuring out how to shove ads in people’s faces.

    • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Machines could be doing all the work. We could have clean energy , air ,water and food and shelter for all…

      • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        “Line go up” is the animating force of the age, the critical philosophical principal around which our entire society is arranged.

        Gives me a fucking headache.

        • Isoprenoid@programming.dev
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          “Line go up” is the animating force of the age the rich and powerful, the critical philosophical principal around which our entire society their lives is are arranged.

          I choose not to confuse their values as mine or that of my community.

          • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            Agreed. I really hate it when people see the problems in the world, fall for misanthropy, and blame everyone, most of whom are blameless beyond their failure to put their lives at risk to change things.

            People are great. We’ve done great things. We’re a species who’s defining advantage is cooperation. None of what we see today would be possible if most of us were greedy, hateful, idiots.

            People can be lead astray. but who can blame them? We’ve created a world more complicated than any one of us could fully understand. It’s bad enough that a handful of psychopaths can take advantage of that, we don’t need to add to it by making it seem like everyone’s at fault for not instantly bashing their heads in.

            • ochi_chernye@startrek.website
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              20 hours ago

              I really appreciate this take. It’s good-hearted and makes good sense. I’ll try to remember it going forward, when cynicism overwhelms.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      If everyone were a paying subscriber we could actually do all those things. No one wants to be ad supported, including the people at YT. But there are bills to pay.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        I’m using lemmy right now and it’s not ad supported and I’m not the product.

        It’s always weird to me when people post on lemmy and just assert something that implies lemmy is impossible, bro your using it right now!

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          LOL I donate to my instance, “bro.” Lemmy costs money. You’re just freeloading for the moment.

      • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/02/us-cities-and-states-give-big-tech-93bn-in-subsidies-in-five-years-tax-breaks

        They get loads in governments tax breaks and they data mine the fuck out of us so fuck them and their ads.

        https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/19/social-media-companies-surveillance-ftc

        I’ll continue to block them as long as we can and then move on to something else if we can’t. By paying you are just rewarding this exploitative behavior.

        If you simply must pay for something then donate it to a charity instead. These companies do not need your money.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          I did $390 in charitable giving last month and paid $23 for YT Premium. My priorities are just fine so please don’t lecture me on how to spend my money.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
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        13 hours ago

        Ads give more profit than subscriptions, since if you would adjust subscription price to match ad income, too less people would buy it at that price.

        Source: Netflix and Disney Ad-supported tier analysis.

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          5 hours ago

          I can point you to some people who need your money more than you do. Are you going to give it to them? Why not?? Doesn’t money flow to those who need it??? Isn’t that how this works???

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 hours ago

            It doesn’t, which informs the rise technical mitigations of YouTube’s terrible ad schemes. YouTube isn’t interested in a more egalitarian society but serving its shareholder masters, and it sucks even at that.

            YouTube subscriptions are not a good deal for the consumers, so they’re not going to be popular, which might serve to explain to you why everyone is not a paying subscriber, nor will they ever be.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        They’d have more paying subscribers if they didn’t charge more than Netflix for what amounts to user-generated content that they’re getting for free.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          They’re not getting it for free. They pay video creators. And they know that the more they can pay them, the more and better content they will get.

          And with any product pricing, there is always a balance between charging less to get more customers, or charging more to get more money per customer.

          I’m pretty sure YouTube knows more about how to price their service than any of us.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              It’s not like YT is a democracy LOL

              And YT was never free. It has had ads from the beginning. Perhaps not its very first months as a startup but those were supported by its seed investment capital so obviously a special and finite circumstance.

              YT is ad supported. It always had been. Free services need to make money somehow and ads are one way. It is baffling watching people realize this for the first time because they’ve been shielded by their ad blocker for years, but dude, here outside that little bubble, in the real world, this is how things work.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              Everyone in every aspect of this economy tries to get the most while paying the least. I swear people in here are bitching about absolute economic basics that they themselves are guilty of.

              If you hate monopolies, go pay for Nebula and Curiosity stream like I do.

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        23 hours ago

        I’m not terribly sympathetic to arguments about covering costs when it comes to corporations. If they were just looking to cover costs or even just make a reasonable profit, there are all sorts of arrangements we could come up with that would be acceptable to most people.

        But they’re not trying to do that. Profit isn’t enough for a corporation. They need to make the most profit. And then after that they somehow need to make more than the most.

        So they put in ads. But that’s not enough and oh look there are more places we haven’t put in ads, we should fix that. Oh look, our studies show that if we make the ads more obnoxious in these ways they increase this number by 3%. Oh wait, we have all this info we got from spying on people, why don’t we sell that too? Hey guys, we’ve heard you about the ads. Have we got a solution for you! For a small protection payment subscription fee of $10/month, you can get rid of those pesky ads we know you don’t like! Oooh sorry everyone, the price of the subscription went up again. We promise this is all necessary. Oh by the way, we’re adding ads back into the service. But don’t worry, wait until you hear about our NEW subscription tier! (I don’t think that last one’s happened with YT premium yet, but it’s happened with cable and most of streaming at this point, so I wouldn’t put it past them.)

        There’s no way we can have nice things while this is the driving force organizing where our resources go.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          I’m not terribly sympathetic to arguments about covering costs when it comes to corporations.

          That’s fine. No one needs you to be.

          If they were just looking to cover costs or even just make a reasonable profit, there are all sorts of arrangements we could come up with that would be acceptable to most people.

          What are those? No, really, this is the crux here. The whole rest of your comment is about growth capitalism generally, and I agree it sucks in many ways. But until you can reasonably provide a working alternative to property ownership, we will continue to have things like rent and lending. Investment is a form of lending. And yes YT shareholders don’t give a shit about anything but more and more and MORE insane profit. Because to succeed, a company has to not only profit but profit above expectation, rewarding the speculative investments others have made in them.

          It’s foolish though to think that YT’s management are the source of this desire for profit. It’s their shareholders. YT really want to deliver the best product while making a good living, and their staff are also minor shareholders to some extent.

          But your problem is capitalism. And if it took ads on the pause screen to get you to see the issues with growth capitalism, then sheeit you are late to the game and I won’t wait up to hear what your alternative suggestions are going to be. I’ll just point out that you waved your hand at that subject and then moved on like we wouldn’t notice.

          • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            And if it took ads on the pause screen to get you to see the issues with growth capitalism,

            I don’t know why you’d assume that. I’m pretty staunchly communist from a mix of seeing our current problems and understanding history enough to know that this didn’t start yesterday. But if it takes companies being really obviously greedy for some consumers to see anything is wrong, it doesn’t hurt to try to focus their anger to a productive understanding of the problem rather than whatever other nonsense they might get drawn to.

            As far as alternatives. I’m always up front with people in saying that I don’t have precise answers for what our future ought to be after capitalism. That’s a difficult problem and up to everyone to work together to figure that out. But there is no future where we stick with capitalism. Or at least, not one we’d want to live in for very long. It’s a cruel system and it’s going to be responsible for ending the human habitable environment if we don’t do something about that. People need to understand this and they need to understand that tweaking around the edges isn’t going to fix the issue.

            The thing about if they were ok with a reasonable profit is a thought experiment or rhetorical device more than it’s a proposed solution. It’d be nice if it worked that way. Capitalists want us to think things do or could work that way. Hence corporations saying they NEED to cut costs or raise prices while continuing to make increasing profits. But it’s important to understand why it could never work that way, at least for very long.

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        23 hours ago

        I would love to be a subscriber if Google could guarantee that they won’t take my viewing information and then sell it to other advertisers or data brokers, or use that info to push ads on behalf of those brokers in other Google products.

        As it stands now, why would I pay with my money AND my data? Google shouldn’t get to double dip.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          This is not double dipping, because the value of your data is factored into the subscription cost.

          Personally, I don’t care that much if I watch YouTube videos about Game of Throne and then see ads for HBO House of the Dragon in Google search. But that’s me. I don’t have this overinflated concept of how precious my YT watchlist is to me.

          An old coworker of mine started a company that was an ad network that paid YOU for your data every month, drawing from the ad revenue they got from using your data. The fact is that your data is not worth very much at all on the open market.

          With some exceptions I think all the “BUT MY DATA!” is disingenuous pearl-clutching. Because everyone ITT has a credit card in their wallet right now, and that company has sold their personal information and purchasing habits thousands of times over and they’ve never cared.

          But suddenly they have to sit through a YT ad because their ad blocker got killed, and now people suddenly care about their data, and fairness to creators, and capitalism, and privacy!

          All those are just ways to legitimize the fact that people lose their minds when they have to wait 15 seconds to get the thing they want for free. They’re ashamed to admit that they are that childish, so they make it about their deep, deep commitment to data integrity.

          People need to take a step back from their devices IMO.

          • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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            20 hours ago

            There’s a lot of implicit assumptions about me and my ego in your reply by grouping me with some nebulous group of “childish”… tech privacy moralists?

            You’re right, people should take a step back from their devices…

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              Don’t worry, I spent zero seconds considering who you might be. I’m arguing with your point of view as expressed here by you but also similar statements by others.

  • capital@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Seeing as these ads will be targeted and of varying length, I wonder if a SponsorBlock-like extension with the ability to accept training data from users to help identify ads.

    The Plex server application has a feature which scrubs videos and identifies intros so you can skip them like you can on Netflix. Wouldn’t it be sort of like that?

    Seems like a good use of AI/ML.

    • bokherif@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      The fucked up part is that I have to use SponsorBlock even with Premium. I thought I was paying for no ads…like wtf?

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      19 hours ago

      I wonder if a SponsorBlock-like extension with the ability to accept training data from users to help identify ads.

      That’s…how SponsorBlock works? The ads come at different entry and exit points for every user. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a problem for sponsorblock.

      The Plex server application has a feature which scrubs videos and identifies intros

      Pretty sure they just use timestamps from a crowdsourced database, just like sponsorblock.

      • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Pretty sure they just use timestamps from a crowdsourced database, just like sponsorblock.

        Nope, it’s analyzing the sound to guess where the intro starts and ends. Turns out this is pretty simple to implement, but quite reliable. Source: worked for Plex

          • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            This is about intro detection in TV shows, not ad blocking. I’m not proposing this as a good way to block ads, just noting that this feature in Plex doesn’t use a database.

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        18 hours ago

        The ads come at different entry and exit points for every user.

        They’re not referring to the YouTube ads, but the “let’s take a minute to talk about today’s sponsor nordvpn that I used on my trip to Antarctica.” This is a part of the video file itself, and it starts and ends at the same time for all users.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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          17 hours ago

          This is a part of the video file itself, and it starts and ends at the same time for all users.

          Except it doesn’t when a YouTube ad is injected in the middle. Then all timestamps after the ad are offset by the length of the ad. That’s not from me, that’s from SponsorBlock themselves in the OP.

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    1 day ago

    I’m getting tired, man. these people are truly just the shittiest individuals ever.

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      MBAs on their way to destroy their company’s relationship with their customers and cause a socioeconomic disaster (their numbers will grow by 0.01% 💪💪)

      • plz1@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        If you don’t pay for something, you are not a customer, you are the product. If you pay for Youtube, you don’t see the ads, but you are also still their product. Lose /Lose

          • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
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            20 hours ago

            The network effect is too strong. The minority that are whining here isn’t going to make a dent. Next time you’re out, look at how many people are using ads ridden apps instead of paying $0.99 or whatever to remove them. The users have already decided their time and privacy is worthless and would rather getting the service for “free”.

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Hey don’t blame us, blame the nepos who got on the board without even needing to study for it!

        My MBA track actively rewards me for thinking like a socialist XD.

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    1 day ago

    If YouTube offered premium without music for a discounted price I’d probably be willing to pay for it. But I just want no ads, not a bunch of bundled stuff.

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      9 hours ago

      And then there are people like me, who aren’t opposed to paying for access in theory, but will never be okay with having the videos I watch be tied to an account. It’s inconvenient and I don’t trust Google with my watch history, even when the option is turned off.

      Also I wouldn’t pay until: Youtube stops showing ads for hate groups; stops its manipulative recommendations and push towards right-leaning and extremist content; stops manipulating creators to all make the same kind of video in order to please the algorithm; removes hate content and extremist content; stops auto-flagging and removing fair-use content.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      I’ve said it many times but I would gladly pay for Premium if they would just make the first-party experience not absolute garbage. My experience has been better with literally every other 3rd party app/service. It’s not that hard. Just stop cramming shit down my throat and give me control over what I want to see.

      Also they need to do something about the midroll ads.

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      23 hours ago

      This is exactly me.

      I’ve been paying £5 a month by using a VPN to sign up for Premium from Ukraine. Been doing so for the past couple of years without complaint. Literally all I need from them is to fuck off the adverts. I have Apple Music for music and I’m happy with it.

      Now they’ve rumbled us and will be cutting off our Premium next month.

      I am fucked if I’m paying those ratfuckers £20 a month just so I can watch other people’s hard work without the adverts they force in. Fuck that noise.

      So I’m now researching ways to get my subs onto Plex so I can carry on watching on my Apple TV.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      I get what you’re saying, but YouTube music is pretty much just a different front end for the normal site.

      Sure, it does some filtering to attempt to be music only (though I’ve seen non music stuff sneak in before) but in the end, you get pretty much the same core experience if you open up the YouTube app and start “watching” a song (with premium for the background play capability).

      I’d be willing to bet this is why they won’t go the route you’re talking about.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I’d prefer some kind of limited amount of viewing. I don’t watch a ton of YT, so give me some kind of reasonable ad-free cap. I’m willing to pay to not see ads, but I don’t watch enough to be worth their asking price.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          22 hours ago

          I would rather micro transactions. Like just load up a dollar and get like 1000 minutes ad free…with the ability to turn off and save for later.

          • Auli@lemmy.ca
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            9 hours ago

            Don’t think a dollar is going to give you anywheee near 1000 minutes of ad free video.

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      Even then it doesn’t have sponsorblock or a customisable UI like revanced does.

      It’s crazy how unofficial free is actually better than official paid.

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        23 hours ago

        See, I don’t really mind the sponsored segments. Some creators actually have fun with their ad reads, like the Map Men or Colin Furze. But if it’s boring I just tap the forward button on my Apple TV remote and skip past.

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          16 hours ago

          If I’m paying for premium, I just don’t want ads! But they keep trying to shove it down my throat regardless

          • Auli@lemmy.ca
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            9 hours ago

            Different ads though. One is from YouTube and one is from the creator.

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                6 hours ago

                Exactly. In my opinion, that’s Google’s biggest mistake, and I can’t believe some people are okay with it. Everyone attacks YouTube as if they are the biggest villains, but let’s not forget that without them, most creators would be nothing. Most people here are aware of how difficult it is to maintain such a platform, yet they are unrealistic with their attacks. And yes, I am someone who has LineageOS installed, which says enough about what I think of Google, but sometimes you have to be fair. If they banned creators from having ads within their videos, I might even consider paying for premium.

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      22 hours ago

      I’m a bit surprised they don’t do this actually. Premium is good valued off you use the music side of it as well, which I do, but not for just ad free YouTube.

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      16 hours ago

      Why are we the ones that need to pay?

      Bandwidth and storage is not free. So the person uploading something and using the platform to distribute that content should be the one paying? Right? Or did we totally forget that?

      • Auli@lemmy.ca
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        9 hours ago

        So then you have to pay the content creator to watch their videos? Like float plane? Creators aren’t doing this for free and they need to make a living.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        The ones that pay are the ones running the ads. If the content creators have to pay, they will be the ones doing ads. This is how AV content has worked since the dawn of broadcast radio.