Experimental Youtube "feature" detects and blocks some users of ad blocking browser extensions on Youtube

[wamred]

I mean, it's not surprising. At some point, this will be permanent.

[Mark Kaine]

14 minutes ago, wamred said:

I mean, it's not surprising. At some point, this will be permanent.

its especially not surprising because yt changed a bunch of things earlier this year and everyone knew that's what they're going for with those changes. 

[Dracarris]

4 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Oh look the big box store has theft insurance and is making hands over fists in money.  Lets steal from them because no one feels sorry for the big box stores.

 

It doesn't matter if you think Google makes too much money.  YouTube had a history of LOSING billions.  Google was closing in on bankruptcy before going towards target ads.

As someone already pointed out to you, a digital service like YT is not comaprable to a big box store that sells physical goods. Yes, CDNs and bandwidth cost money as well, still not the same. Your whole calculation around the cost of HDDs is rather pointless, those numbers are for sure way way off and HDDs are for sure not the primary cost driver of serving video content.

It does not matter what was in the past. Google is an insanely rich company which pays absurd wages. They are sitting on their tardeted ads gold mine, so to add insult to injury, in addition to tracking every little thing you do on YT and selling this data, they also plaster the user with ads.

 

And as I've said before, even if Google can't figure out a way to make money without charging for a premium plan: I am happy to pay as a daily user. But for Christ sake give me a reasonable 3-5$ plan to solely remove ads and enable some mid-tier quality settings. Google does not pay for content creation, so they don't get to charge me as much as Netflix, for crying out loud.

4 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Chicken and the egg.  If there wasn't adblock they would have 42% more ad revenue; which mean less ads (or better curated ads)

Spoken like a true seller of ads. We have as little proof for this theory as for the other way round, that the increase in ads has driven users into the hand of adblock in the first place. Personally, that's how happened to me. Where do you get the 42% from? A number that Google told you and that you trust?

 

What people always seem to forget in this chicken and egg discussion: Even without any adblock it's likely that we would've ended up in this situation, since after all YT/Google/any internet company wants to increase their profit margins. So as long as people continue to use their service, it's only logical that they keep increasing ad intensity and frequency and lower QC to save associated cost and further increase profits.

 

It's a lame "blame the user" corporate-friendly justification that you're parroting there.

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Dracarris said:

12$ or whatever it is now for removing ads is horridly expensive, period. It's fine if you use YT music, which many don't need. As long as that is a mandatory part of YT premium, it remains rubbish. 12$ buys you subscriptions that unlock content the provider has to pay for (Netflix e.g), plus the streaming delivery service. For YT, the content is absolutely free to them. So this pricing remains horseshiet.

Its $13.99 a month in the US. But you are right its not really a good price. I think part of the issue is because Google allowed Ad Blockers for so long they reduced the value of their product. Its kinda what Subway did in the early 2000s with the $5 Footlong. At $5 it was well worth it going Subway but since increasing their prices its not worth it to eat at Subway when better sub shops exist like Jersey Mikes or Fire House.

[Godlygamer23]

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Yeah, I got blocked on Youtube for using uBlock Origin as well...
Then I deactivated it, but left Vivaldi's built-in adblocker on. Apparently youtube doesn't detect that one yet, because I can watch videos again with no ads and no popup.

I got that same prompt in Firefox, but just closed it, and I was able to watch the video. I went to another video and wasn't prompted by anything. I am also using uBlock Origin.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

It's a lame "blame the user" corporate-friendly justification that you're parroting there

Same bullshit the studios say about piracy. When they are probably the largest contributing factor for why people pirate.

 

On a side note my friend told me about a Firefox extension where I can just download the videos from Youtube and still not see an ad. On top of that he said there was a tool for Linux he uses that does the same thing but more on mass, where he could pull down a playlist for example.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I got that same prompt in Firefox, but just closed it, and I was able to watch the video. I went to another video and wasn't prompted by anything. I am also using uBlock Origin.

Its hit or miss on what videos you will get it. After a while the X to close the popup will turn in to a timer, after it counts down you can close it. Eventually it turns in to screw you, you will not watch another video until you sub or kill ad block.

[Dracarris]

4 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Its $13.99 a month in the US. But you are right its not really a good price.

And a US Netflix subscription is how much, 14$? With that money, they need to pay for the production of their own series/content, pay insane license fees and finance a massive CDN. YT only needs to do the latter.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Does Pihole still work for that?

It'll catch a lot of the video ads, though not all of them. Depends on the lists and the settings. There's no one-stop feature for add removal. I still need to setup one for Twitch, but I haven't been watching enough there lately to bother.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, Dracarris said:

And a US Netflix subscription is how much, 14$? With that money, they need to pay for the production of their own series/content, pay insane license fees and finance a massive CDN. YT only needs to do the latter.

YouTube is the most expensive website or web-based service on the planet.  The cost-base to compare it to is Facebook. 

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

And a US Netflix subscription is how much, 14$?

Its a little over $15 but you get two HD streams at a time. Where YouTube Individual well is one person.

[Dracarris]

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

YouTube is the most expensive website or web-based service on the planet.  The cost-base to compare it to is Facebook. 

I guess that comes from the sheer amount of total users? So per user, I hope they operate at a lower cost than Netflix.

[TempestCatto]

28 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I got that same prompt in Firefox, but just closed it, and I was able to watch the video. I went to another video and wasn't prompted by anything. I am also using uBlock Origin.

My account is "banned" now. FF uBlock Origin. However, I can watch anything in Private Browsing with uBlock still enabled. No ads, no "REEEEE DISABLE YOUR ADBLOCKER HUGH" I get that it's expensive to run such a site. But the amount of ads was just too damn much. If they were spaced out more, and way less intrusive, yeah I'd still be rockin' ads. The internet has imploded on itself. It's no longer all that useful, just a spidering of ads and spam. We'll never be able to go back.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Dracarris said:

I guess that comes from the sheer amount of total users? So per user, I hope they operate at a lower cost than Netflix.

I think the issue is they never delete a video. So they have to have a shit ton of storage to store all those videos since the beginning.

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, Godlygamer23 said:

but just closed it,

How do you even close it? There's no options for me to close it when I re-enable ublock.

[Donut417]

19 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

How do you even close it? There's no options for me to close it when I re-enable ublock.

That might be the screw you screen. Normally there is an X in the upper right corner. At stage two they have a timer before the X appears. You seem to be at Stage 3.

 

I did test @TempestCatto method of using Private browsing with ad block and thus far it has worked.

[Lupino]

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm sorry, but no that isn't how digital works.  Also if you want a closer analogy then it could be said the people who steal electricity

 

Try streaming 10 HD movies from your HDD; it's going to get bogged down.  The cost to provide HD video over the internet is actually quite high.

 

Lets say each YouTube video is 0.5 GB (probably an underestimate).  You can buy HDD's at 16 TB for maybe $200 (underestimate).  Now Google  has to have a form of redundancy; so that lets say is now 16TB for $400.  That means each video costs at least $0.01 in harddrive space/5 years (because HDD's fail).

 

While small, it's still costly when you consider that so many of those videos will be ones that have 5 - 10 views (where ads haven't been run on).

 

Now bandwidth and usage costs, that could cost maybe $0.005/GB.  If lets say a video had 1 million views, based on average pricing for youtube  ads, that's $2000 / 100,000 in terms of revenue.  That's $20,000 on that 1 million ad views, but you can probably watch maybe 3 - 4 videos before an ad; so $5000 for 1 million views...but 42% use adblock so $2,900.  Bandwidth cost, 0.5 * 0.005 * 1000000 = $2500.  (This differs wildly based on the types of ads being ran, and location of the end user)

 

Overall digital transmission of data is a limited resource and one that can actually cost quite a bit.  Look at floatplane, they claim to have priced it at a point where they make a very small margin (to the creators).  Video hosting can get expensive quickly

That's why i wrote that it is the medium that requires some resources, not the information that is stored on that medium. Infrastruture is a cost factor in both the analogue and the digital economy, so that cancels out: Like the online company needs electricity, hardware and a data center to run its operation, the bakery needs a building, an oven, fuel for that oven and roads + parking lots (or streets and bike stands for all non-Americans) for their customers. This is infrastructure cost which both business types have.

 

But the nature of the actual goods that are traded (bread and it resources on one hand, and bits and bytes on the other) is fundamentally different: If a bakery wants to double their bread output, the cost for flour, water and yeast doubles permanently (mass discounts set aside), while the costs for additional infrastructure like a bigger oven is a one-time expenditure. If a digital company wants to double their output (e.g., they want to reach double the number of customers or serve double the amount of TB of video files), they only have to upgrade their infrastructure, once. And yes, if infrastructure is upgraded, maintainance and operating costs raise as well, but this is also something that both business types have to account for: a bigger oven will raise power consumption for the bakery, just as a new server rack raises power consumption for the online company. The additional increase in production costs, however, is virtually non-existent for the online company compared to the increase in production cost for the bakery, simply because information does not need any additional resources to be created, while bread does require additional ressources to be manufactured.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, Dracarris said:

I guess that comes from the sheer amount of total users? So per user, I hope they operate at a lower cost than Netflix.

Netflix has licensing & production deals, so it's not quite a 1 to 1 comparison.  But YT has a user base 10x higher in monthly (basically the whole of the open internet), and the data storage costs are several orders of magnitude higher. 

 

Netflix also this really smart approach where they have these 4U rack mount end point clients they install all over the place within ISP's central offices. You can put the entirety of Netflix's catalog on there and it saves a lot of secondary data traffic, mostly given how intense the traffic spike can be in the evenings for them.

[starsmine]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Its a little over $15 but you get two HD streams at a time. Where YouTube Individual well is one person.

one person, but I have yet to hit a stream limit with TV, Desktop and laptop all streaming different videos. 

[williamcll]

People talk like anti-adblockers somehow hurt content creators when so many people are demonetized and the workers underpaid. 

[wanderingfool2]

16 hours ago, Lupino said:

That's why i wrote that it is the medium that requires some resources, not the information that is stored on that medium. Infrastruture is a cost factor in both the analogue and the digital economy, so that cancels out: Like the online company needs electricity, hardware and a data center to run its operation, the bakery needs a building, an oven, fuel for that oven and roads + parking lots (or streets and bike stands for all non-Americans) for their customers. This is infrastructure cost which both business types have.

 

But the nature of the actual goods that are traded (bread and it resources on one hand, and bits and bytes on the other) is fundamentally different: If a bakery wants to double their bread output, the cost for flour, water and yeast doubles permanently (mass discounts set aside), while the costs for additional infrastructure like a bigger oven is a one-time expenditure. If a digital company wants to double their output (e.g., they want to reach double the number of customers or serve double the amount of TB of video files), they only have to upgrade their infrastructure, once. And yes, if infrastructure is upgraded, maintainance and operating costs raise as well, but this is also something that both business types have to account for: a bigger oven will raise power consumption for the bakery, just as a new server rack raises power consumption for the online company. The additional increase in production costs, however, is virtually non-existent for the online company compared to the increase in production cost for the bakery, simply because information does not need any additional resources to be created, while bread does require additional ressources to be manufactured.

You are being too pedantic in regards to an analogy that works; but again if you must, it's like stealing electricity then.

 

Overall you are missing the point.  Bandwidth and data transfer isn't free.  Storage cost of the medium isn't free.  So it matches what is being talked about.  Your whole bread comparison is also flawed in that the "information" does cost money to effectively send to the end client.

 

If you have a webserver that pulls 100 TB of traffic a month, but then you need to expand to 200 TB the cost will double (and worse than that, your infrastructure costs likely also doubles).

 

19 hours ago, Dracarris said:

As someone already pointed out to you, a digital service like YT is not comaprable to a big box store that sells physical goods. Yes, CDNs and bandwidth cost money as well, still not the same

And yet you used the same justification that people use for stealing from big box stores.  Or are you too dense that I also  pointed  out that if you want a closer analogy that electricity stealing is also a similar one.

 

It doesn't matter if you think that Google makes too much money, that doesn't make it somehow alright to say that you are justified in STEALING.  Do you seriously not understand that those 42% of people who use ad-block contribute nothing to YouTube and thus YouTube's operational costs are now higher and need to be made up for by lets say higher prices or more ads.

 

19 hours ago, Dracarris said:

And as I've said before, even if Google can't figure out a way to make money without charging for a premium plan: I am happy to pay as a daily user. But for Christ sake give me a reasonable 3-5$ plan to solely remove ads and enable some mid-tier quality settings. Google does not pay for content creation, so they don't get to charge me as much as Netflix, for crying out loud.

Then don't use the service if you don't want to play by the rules.

 

If I am going by the pedantic reasoning that you guys are using, I can easily say that Netflix is not a good analog to YouTube...after all, Netflix doesn't have to worry about encoding user content, they don't have to worry about TB's of new content being uploaded every hour.  Netflix's catalog is estimated at 3.14 Petabytes, that's puny compared to the estimated 8 - 70 PB [depending where you get the stats from] of data a year.

 

Also, Google PAYS for those affiliated...which is 30 - 50% of their revenue.

 

19 hours ago, Dracarris said:

It's a lame "blame the user" corporate-friendly justification that you're parroting there.

And you are using the lame "lets steal from big corporate because it won't hurt them"

[wamred]

22 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

its especially not surprising because yt changed a bunch of things earlier this year and everyone knew that's what they're going for with those changes. 

Fair enough, I swore I would never pay for youtube premium but here we are and now I watch youtube premium every day ...

[Dracarris]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

STEALING

Using adblock is NOT stealing, and if you seriously think it is, well, I‘m afraid there‘s nothing I can do to change that twisted conception.

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

that those 42%

again, where do you get this number from? From the same giganto corporation that you‘re defending so hard here that we should make them more money by not only selling our data but also wasting time looking at braindead ads?

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also, Google PAYS for those affiliated...which is 30 - 50% of their revenue.

yeah again, boohoo poor Google. If no ad is played, no affiliates are paid.

People that don‘t watch ads contribute nothing? Sure. They only provide

- Watch time statistics

- like/dislike

- comments

- sub counts

- their whole bloody watch history

 

all to a company that makes money almost only through selling user data. Figure out how to make money with that data gold mine.

Or give me a sensible premium subscription that also removes any and all tracking/data collection.

 

I do play by their rules, which include using every technical aid I have at my disposal to skip ads.

Mandatory bundling of a subscription for a video platform that removes ads (and enables background play ffs) with a music service that nobody asked for is a very stupid rule, especially in light of the near-monopoly that YT has.

[wanderingfool2]

12 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Using adblock is NOT stealing, and if you seriously think it is, well, I‘m afraid there‘s nothing I can do to change that twisted conception.

It's funny that you say twisted conception, when you are incapable of thought/reading.

 

Again, you are using the same stupid logic that people use when stealing from big box stores.  The whole concept that you are too self-centered or too inept to realize to recognize that your actions on a whole damages others experiences.

 

It's also the same stupid concept of people who say that you aren't "stealing" cable, because after all the signal was already being delivered to your door.  The only thing that changes is that there is a filter put on your house, so if you bypass the filter you get free TV and no one gets harmed.

 

Again, if people didn't use adblockers on YouTube, I'm willing to bet that there would be less of a push for the longer ads, more frequent ads.

 

19 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

all to a company that makes money almost only through selling user data. Figure out how to make money with that data gold mine.

Or give me a sensible premium subscription that also removes any and all tracking/data collection.

Until recently, YouTube was still losing money.  That's beside the point as well, it doesn't matter if you think they make "too much money".  Stop crying about it, and just stop using their service.  You are not entitled to getting things free you are just being a self serving self centered person.

[Dracarris]

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

Again, if people didn't use adblockers on YouTube, I'm willing to bet that there would be less of a push for the longer ads, more frequent ads.

Yeah. And I'm willing to bet it would've changed nothing. Also, for the third time: Where do you pull those 42% percent from?

1 minute ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Until recently, YouTube was still losing money.  That's beside the point as well, it doesn't matter if you think they make "too much money".  Stop crying about it, and just stop using their service.  You are not entitled to getting things free you are just being a self serving self centered person.

If you would've even read one of my many replies here properly, you'd know that I am a paying customer of Youtube. The only one crying here is you, because people are using services from your favorite big corpo by only paying with their data and not their time in addition.

Also, you are calling me self-centered and incapable of thinking and reading, yet don't even realize that I am a paying customer. Nice play.

6 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

and just stop using their service

how about no, as they have a near-monopoly over the absurd amount of content over all kinds of fields that is put on there?

 

All that said: I don't give a shit if YT by itself is losing money, it's tightly integrated into the chaotic and wide spectrum of Google SW products and platforms which together make for a data gold mine. So figure out a way to be profitable overall without drowning the user in braindead ads and ruining the watching experience.