YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker

[Bryn]

I've noticed the "autoplay" keeps turning itself back on (for the PC at least), very annoying.

That's not happened to me... but then again I always open video pages in a new tab.

[PlainName]

There is a firefox extension: Disable AutoPlay - Click to play

In use any autoplay video gets a red border and doesn't play. Just click it to play, otherwise ignore. Even works with gifs and the like, and nothing is going to disable it on the sly.

[tggzzz]

3 videos, so I guess one just clears cookies after 3 vids? They couldn't dare enforce this by IP address because too many addresses are shared, so it will surely be a cookie.

Browser fingerprinting is pretty good at identifying specific browsers, e.g....

https://www.amiunique.org/
Yes! You are unique among the 1935768 fingerprints in our entire dataset.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Our tests indicate that you have you have strong protection against Web tracking.
Is your browser:
Blocking tracking ads?    Yes
Blocking invisible trackers?    Yes
Protecting you from fingerprinting?    No
Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 167,649 tested in the past 45 days.
Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 17.36 bits of identifying information.

[madires]

There is a firefox extension: Disable AutoPlay - Click to play

In use any autoplay video gets a red border and doesn't play. Just click it to play, otherwise ignore. Even works with gifs and the like, and nothing is going to disable it on the sly.

Firefox has a built-in setting to disable auto-play (audio, audio & video). It's hidden under Privacy & Security, Permissions, Autoplay.

[PlainName]

Yes, but it appears to come undone arbitrarily.

Does it allow autoplay content to be played? Without effectively whitelisting a site?

[madires]

You can select a default for all websites and also add site specific settings. So you could deny autoplay by default, but allow it for some websites, or vice versa. 

[PlainName]

The addon allows you to disable everywhere, but nevertheless run something just by clicking. No dicking around with white or black lists, no setting and unsetting for a one-off view. Just massively simpler and friendlier.

[SiliconWizard]

Just a question, as I don't have the figures:
Does YT even make any profit?

[ataradov]

They generate $30bn  year,  this is 10% of total Alphabet revenue. They are highly profitable. And they have 50+ million premium subscribers, so that's a lot of direct cache.

[SiliconWizard]

The question is not about the revenue, it's about profits.
Many of these giant online services generate enormous revenues, yet have negative results. I'm not sure about YT, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[ataradov]

In 2019 their estimated operating profit margin was 3-18%. It is hard to find more recent numbers.

[m k]

I'd say just bring out the stealth adblockers and make the whole idea of "push" advertising come crashing down.

So ad-not-renderer API.

I'd say that ad-on-demand it the way.
I'd say also that westerners are practically already there, advertisers not quite yet.
Sort of like through the grapevine first.

[Bicurico]

I use uBlock Origin and today I got the first Youtube message complaining that it is not allowed to use ad blocker.

I can click the X on the message box (instead of the two buttons, one to switch off ad blocker, the other to subscribe to Youtube Premium) and the video is shown.

But the next video shows the message again...

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

Anyone using a "better" Ad Blocker, which is not recognized by Youtube?

[tom66]

You can watch any YouTube video by just pasting the URL into VLC.  I guess it won't take too long until a full desktop client becomes available if they keep pulling this crap.

[langwadt]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

[tom66]

if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

I'm fine with text and even image based advertisements next to the video and even below the video, I know they need to make money.  And that's what YouTube used to do.

Now they've changed it to be like television with ads frequently interrupting the content.  Shame. 

[Bicurico]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

I am indeed unwilling to pay for the service.

When it started, it was free and I contributed with content by uploading my videos, without getting paid for it.

Also, there is lots of content that does not respect any IP of the original owner and Youtube seemed to have circumvented legal action quite well.

How is it possible to have all those music videos, excerpts of series and movies, etc.? Does Youtube pay to host this? No, they don't.

Also, users come up with this crap on their video description:

Code: [Select]

Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

xxx only plays legally obtained physical copies of vinyl records. Their daily streams are solely for the purposes of education and demonstration. Viewers are regularly encouraged to support the creators and publishers of the music by purchasing their own physical copies.

What a bunch of bullshit! And I refuse to pay or watch ads on top of this.

Youtube grew to what it is by offering free viewing of videos uploaded by users, which more than often partially or fully contained copyrighted content. Nobody cared too much about that, as it was free to upload and free to watch.

Taking that huge content and suddenly monetizing it, doesn't seem fair to me and I wonder how the US of A would react if Youtube was i.e. an European company, full of copyrighted material from american people or companies.

And regarding supporting content creators: they nowadays use patreon and ads embedded in their own videos. They are sponsored by companies.

As a consumer I can only stand so many ads. If they get too much, I stop consuming or find ways to circumvent them. Also, I tend to avoid doing business with companies that annoy me with their ads. Finally, i don't understand how ads are so stupid in a time full of AI. How is it possible that I do a Google search for a product, buy it online and then have to see ads for simular products for months (i.e. a washing machine)?

To finish: I have no bad feeling on using ad blockers, especially with Google, Youtube and alikes. They suck my private data illegally and without my consent. So screw them.

[tom66]

YouTube does pay rights money to actual content creators, this is via the Content ID service.  So music in a video will lead to some/all of the revenue from that video going to the music creator.  YouTube were sued over this and it took many years to come to a resolution that satisfied the industry.

However, Content ID matching is only provided to a limited number of copyright holders, not to general creators of content.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en-GB

[Bicurico]

Yes, but their business model was based on first abusing the IP and then reaching a dubious settlement with a few of the IP owners.

[JPortici]

Screw Youtube, I will significantly reduce my Youtube usage, which mainly consists in using it for playing background music, by listening to online radio or my own playlists for my own music collection.

 if you are unwilling to pay for the service, one way or another, why are you using it? does Youtube owe you free service?

I am indeed unwilling to pay for the service.

When it started, it was free and I contributed with content by uploading my videos, without getting paid for it.

Also, there is lots of content that does not respect any IP of the original owner and Youtube seemed to have circumvented legal action quite well.

How is it possible to have all those music videos, excerpts of series and movies, etc.? Does Youtube pay to host this? No, they don't.

Also, users come up with this crap on their video description:

Code: [Select]

Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

xxx only plays legally obtained physical copies of vinyl records. Their daily streams are solely for the purposes of education and demonstration. Viewers are regularly encouraged to support the creators and publishers of the music by purchasing their own physical copies.

What a bunch of bullshit! And I refuse to pay or watch ads on top of this.

Youtube grew to what it is by offering free viewing of videos uploaded by users, which more than often partially or fully contained copyrighted content. Nobody cared too much about that, as it was free to upload and free to watch.

Taking that huge content and suddenly monetizing it, doesn't seem fair to me and I wonder how the US of A would react if Youtube was i.e. an European company, full of copyrighted material from american people or companies.

And regarding supporting content creators: they nowadays use patreon and ads embedded in their own videos. They are sponsored by companies.

As a consumer I can only stand so many ads. If they get too much, I stop consuming or find ways to circumvent them. Also, I tend to avoid doing business with companies that annoy me with their ads. Finally, i don't understand how ads are so stupid in a time full of AI. How is it possible that I do a Google search for a product, buy it online and then have to see ads for simular products for months (i.e. a washing machine)?

To finish: I have no bad feeling on using ad blockers, especially with Google, Youtube and alikes. They suck my private data illegally and without my consent. So screw them.

FWIW, mediaset made a huge effort to have google delete everything on youtube that had their logos somewhere, and they complied.
Anyway i agree 100%, with the amount of money that google makes from me by monetizing my data (android phone, gmail, google drive - which i paid because i need the additional space - and also videos i had not monetized because screw ads but alas, they showed ads anyway) they owe me an ad free experience.

Today i started receiving the infamous popup, guess i'll wait a few days until ublock updates itself

[hans]

I looked on Reddit this week what to do. Some thread said to remove cosmetic filters on YT, purge the list cache, and then update them. But, I'm still getting the pop up message. However only once a day.

Another thread said to completely reset your uBlock profile, etc. But I'm not doing that; I've too many custom filters going on, and YT is not important enough for me to warrant that. At this pace, I'll watch videos via VLC or rip them with yt-dlp, and for "burning time" I'll dive into my backlog of TV series.

[tom66]

YT's problem is there are smart TV's from 2012 or so that still work with their service, they do show ads, but the ads are just added as entries to play in the stream.  uBlock just causes those to fail to play.  YT can defeat that by failing to play subsequent streams, but can't stop something like yt-dl or VLC playing the stream directly without also breaking all of those older devices without updates (which won't be provided as the manufacturers of smart TVs seem to get bored after about 12 months when it comes to software support... another reason to never buy one.) 

[Bicurico]

That's the thing: Youtube is not that important and there are so many other options. It is just confortable, but not to a point I would pay for it.

Example: I like to listen to some political comentators. The guy in particular has a huge following (for a Portuguese channel) and has a sponsor. Every single daily episode starts with a mention to his sponsor and the discount you get if you mention the channel name in the purchase. I am totally Ok with that.

Anyway, I listen to this daily Youtube video in my car, while driving. Of course I am not watching it. But my car allows to listen to the phone via Bluetooth and that works just fine. Because Youtube started to interrupt the video every 5-10 minutes for 2 minutes of ads at a much higher volume, it became impossible to use. So I started to use Youtube on my phone with Firefox and uBlock (works fine so far), instead.

If Youtube finds a way to make this unusable, too, I just start to listen to the respective Podcast! The author of this channel features all his Youtube videos as audio Podcasts. I am not using that right now, because I am just not used to Podcast and find some details annoying (somehow it used to automatically download the subscribed episodes, but then it stopped doing so and after some time I had so many downloaded episodes, it became difficult to navigate to the new ones, etc.). But I could switch today from Youtube to Podcast and my resistance would disappear once I understood the quirks of it.

Same with Dave's videos. I can watch them here on this blog as an embedded video and get (AFAIK) no ads. Why should I get ads when watching it in a dedicated Youtube tab on Chrome, which I would do to better adjust the screen size or to be able to read the comments?

Dave might complain that my use of ad blockers lowers his ad revenues, but on the other hand, I do spend time on the forum, contributing to it. Good or bad posts aside, the interest and importance in EEVBlog depends on active users posting here. I am not getting any money for posting here and sometimes my posts may be valuable for someone accessing this portal. I am not asking for any payout and am OK with the fact that Dave makes a living of it (hell, I am truly glad for him). But I don't see myself obliged to contribute with watching ads or even paying money.

[ve7xen]

but can't stop something like yt-dl or VLC playing the stream directly without also breaking all of those older devices without updates (which won't be provided as the manufacturers of smart TVs seem to get bored after about 12 months when it comes to software support... another reason to never buy one.)

As I've mentioned before, they can mux the ads directly into the video stream. It isn't as trivial as what they've done so far, but it's not difficult enough to be a barrier for the likes of Google either. There would be no way for uBlock or anything else to conclusively detect them, and if they wanted to, they could probably also enforce that you download those stream segments in order and in approximate real time, so they can't be trivially skipped. This requires no special support from the client device either.

This is an arms race that the freeloaders will lose, if it comes to it, but the juice may not be worth the squeeze for Google if they can get 95% of the way there with client-side adblock detection.

Operating YT is expensive. I'm not sure what alternative you guys are gunning for if not a subscription service (YT Premium) or ad supported service. What other revenue model would satisfy you? Keep in mind it needs to cover the cost of storing the 500,000+ hours of video that are uploaded every day, in HD, indefinitely (~1 petabyte added per day @ 5mbps).

[ConKbot]

My main thing is the ads I see when I listen to an occasional video on phone so ads aren't blocked, they are mostly scam/ripoff stuff. (Advertising personalization turned off in as many places as I can on google sites) It's truly a rarity to get a "we're xyz company and we sell uvw, check us out at <website>"
Like maybe if your ads weren't trying to take advantage of people, maybe I wouldn't feel morally superior for blocking them
But it's always the grossest feeling scummy ads, or if personalization was on, it would be "you thought about your kitchen towel earlier, heres ads for kitchen towels"