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

[Stahlmann]

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The sad thing is that they did offer such a subscription in a few countries, but a while ago they removed it. 

Seems like it wasn't very popular. 

 

In Sweden, it was 69 SEK for the "YouTube premium light" version (only removed ads, nothing more) and 119 SEK for the full YouTube Premium (download videos, YouTube music, background playback, etc).

That sucks to hear because it pretty much guarantees that it will not happen again.

 

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Personally I was never interested in YouTube premium light even when it was available for me. The reason is that I no longer think YouTube ads are the most annoying type of ads. I find all the in-video ads far more annoying, and youtube premium doesn't get rid of those. 

I use Sponsorblock to get rid of these. As long as you don't immediately view videos on upload it's very reliable. Even 5-10 minutes post-upload are enough for the sponsorblock community to reliably flag these segments for follow-up-users. And it's not something YouTube can work around without completely blocking API access i think. Also not really directly YouTube's problem so chances are low they're working on preventing this.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

In Sweden, it was 69 SEK for the "YouTube premium light" version (only removed ads, nothing more) and 119 SEK for the full YouTube Premium (download videos, YouTube music, background playback, etc). 

6-7$ for pure ad removal is still really steep IMHO and probably much more than they'd otherwise make with a user that doesn't block any ads. You do not unlock any content that isn't available for a free user, and AFAIK you still get all the sweet Google tracking. Sorry, wouldn't be a deal for me.

[dalekphalm]

29 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

6-7$ for pure ad removal is still really steep IMHO and probably much more than they'd otherwise make with a user that doesn't block any ads. You do not unlock any content that isn't available for a free user, and AFAIK you still get all the sweet Google tracking. Sorry, wouldn't be a deal for me.

Realistically, $6-7 is pretty much perfect for a sweet spot for Ad-Free YouTube with no Music subscription. If that's too expensive for you, that's fine - your call, but I think most people would find that fairly reasonable.

[Dracarris]

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Realistically, $6-7 is pretty much perfect for a sweet spot for Ad-Free YouTube with no Music subscription. If that's too expensive for you, that's fine - your call, but I think most people would find that fairly reasonable.

Not sure about that. I'm expecting the no-brainer point for most people and therefore max-revenue point for Google to be between 3-5$, maybe 4.99$

I still don't get why I should pay that much for simple ad removal with zero added conent. At 7$ the difference to full Premium would again be 7$ and given how much Music streaming services like Spotify cost, while being barely profitable, it's rather clear that at 7$ there's still a good profit margin in it for Google compared to what they'd make with a purely ad-supported user.

[dalekphalm]

9 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Not sure about that. I'm expecting the no-brainer point for most people and therefore max-revenue point for Google to be between 3-5$, maybe 4.99$

I still don't get why I should pay that much for simple ad removal with zero added conent. At 7$ the difference to full Premium would again be 7$ and given how much Music streaming services like Spotify cost, while being barely profitable, it's rather clear that at 7$ there's still a good profit margin in it for Google compared to what they'd make with a purely ad-supported user.

It comes down to how much you value the removal of ads. If you don't value it that much, you can stand using the ad-supported system. If the ads bother you enough, you'd pay.

 

It's certainly far better than the current system where you need to pay $14 (ish) and it includes a major feature a lot of users don't care about.

 

But sure, it's not like I would complain if they announced a $3/mo ad-free Premium tier. I just don't think that's realistic, and I would personally pay upwards of $8/mo for a non-music Premium tier.

[Neroon]

They should offer basically everyone the student tier, which is 7 euro/8 USD (I'm not used to euro prices being lower interestingly enough) which gets you premium incl music.

After having to change adblocker yet again, I might just bite the bullet. I feel conflicted because I don't like being 'forced' like this, at the same time I was already considering it before all of this.

In the end I use it a ton, more than any streaming service. On my phone and TV I don't need it (both run an adblocked version), but for PC and car use I'm definitely interested.

 

I'm not blaming them for their tactics, I do wonder if I can still run sponsorblock after, because I really like sponsorblock.

[Donut417]

23 minutes ago, Neroon said:

I don't like being 'forced' like this

Youre not being forced. You could just stop using Youtube. Thats what I did for the most part. I pay for an LTT floatplane sub and I just use other streaming services like Amazon and MAX that I already pay for.

 

[jagdtigger]

On 10/27/2023 at 9:25 AM, Spotty said:

In the screenshot that is included with the tweet it shows that he is not signed in to a Youtube account.

How the f i missed that?

[Neroon]

10 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Youre not being forced. You could just stop using Youtube. Thats what I did for the most part. I pay for an LTT floatplane sub and I just use other streaming services like Amazon and MAX that I already pay for.

 

Hence the apostrophe's.

 

I have Amazon and HBO Max (yeah, still called that here), as well as Disney+ and Netflix (all are shared)

LTT is only a small fraction of what I watch on YT. I'm not going to go without watching stuff on YT, and I rather pay for Premium than for LTT on Floatplane.

[suicidalfranco]

On 10/27/2023 at 1:06 PM, Lightwreather JfromN said:

 

 

Can I point you to the screenshot?

snip

 

more specifically this part:

snip

Let me post that again

snip

 

You cannot have premium without signing in. 

On 10/27/2023 at 9:37 AM, LAwLz said:

You are not reading the tweet correctly.

What Dave is trying is saying is this:

"I have Youtube Premium so I don't get ads. I tried Youtube without Premium recently and noticed this annoying type of ad. For how long has this type of ad existed?".

 

He is not saying "I am now starting to see ads even though I use Youtube Premium". I can see how you could read his tweet that way, but clearly, there are two ways of interpreting it and one doesn't really make much sense sense. What he meant was the way I rephrased it first. It wouldn't make any sense for Youtube to push ads to Premium subscribers. They are trying to get people to subscribe to Premium, and it would greatly devalue the service if they started putting ads in it.

 

Dave is saying "Youtube without premium has some awful ads". He is not saying "Youtube with Premium now get awful ads".

fool me once shame on me i guess

 

i'll no longer accept a tweet post as an argument

[Blademaster91]

On 10/27/2023 at 4:25 AM, Spotty said:

In the screenshot that is included with the tweet it shows that he is not signed in to a Youtube account. You need to be signed in to access Youtube Premium features, including the removal of ads. While I agree the way the tweet was written was ambiguous it does appear he is referring to ads shown on Youtube without Premium. If somebody was seeing ads with a Premium account it would make sense for them to show that the ad is displaying while they are logged in to their premium account, and very little sense for them to do it while logged out.

I missed that, looking at the tweet again yeah they weren't signed it I guess it wasn't obvious the first time I looked at it.

I've been using an ad blocker for a long time so i'm not used to seeing an ad on youtube at all.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

fool me once shame on me i guess

 

i'll no longer accept a tweet post as an argument

I think it's fine to bring up some tweet as an argument.

You just have to be critical of the source, be careful with how you interpret it, and be sure you understand it correctly. The same applies to all sources really. And also be aware that some people might want to fool you to push their agenda. Not saying that's what happened here, but I am just talking about sources in general, be it twitter, some random comment, or some news website (mainstream or not).

 

Dave also apologized for how he worded his post so I don't think you were the only one who misunderstood/was fooled.

 

It's very easy to misinterpret things. But that's why it's important to consider alternative ways of interpreting things and not just assume the first thing that comes to your mind is the correct interpretation. I probably fall into that trap all the time too, so we should rely on each other to correct us instead of falling into the "us vs them" mentality.

 

 

It's also entirely possible for something to be true, but not everything we see needs to be evidence for it being true.

For example, it is possible that Youtube is ruining the website with ads, but that does not mean everything you read regarding "Youtube" and "ads" has to be spun into evidence that "Youtube is ruining the website with ads".

I feel like that happens quite a lot on this forum, where some belief becomes popular (and might be true), but then everyone starts seeing "evidence" for it everywhere. If Apple is anti-reparability then every single change it makes gets spun into "see, this is evidence that they hate repairability", even though there might be a perfectly logical explanation for the change that wasn't just "let's make it harder to repair". But just because that specific change wasn't made to make repairability harder doesn't mean they aren't against repairability either.

 

Us humans are very good at seeing patterns, even in random noise where no pattern actually exists. When you hold some belief, especially if it's a very strong belief, then it's very easy to come up with ways to "connect the dots" between events and facts that may actually not have anything to with each other.

[Dracarris]

13 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

How the f i missed that?

By smelling big corpo conspiracy at every corner and not checking things properly.

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Dracarris said:

By smelling big corpo conspiracy at every corner and not checking things properly.

Probably has to do with all the other streaming services doing it.

[Taf the Ghost]

The more I've seen of this, the more convinced I am this is going to end up far more expensive for Youtube than the increased revenue they think they're going to get as a result.  The first reason being they've basically started a Ad Blocking War, which is going to have unforeseen consequences.  But, the second is this seems to be an attack at competitive browsers to Chrome and their built-in Ad Blockers.

 

At some level, at least until different approaches are found and/or non-Chrome browsers come with specific Youtube exceptions, Youtube is rendering their product useless on competitors to Chrome.  As Chrome has the dominant market share in Browsers, this definitely is going to get at least some EU complaints. (US Anti-Trust is, sadly, too far gone at the moment.)

[CarlBar]

2 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The more I've seen of this, the more convinced I am this is going to end up far more expensive for Youtube than the increased revenue they think they're going to get as a result.  The first reason being they've basically started a Ad Blocking War, which is going to have unforeseen consequences.  But, the second is this seems to be an attack at competitive browsers to Chrome and their built-in Ad Blockers.

 

At some level, at least until different approaches are found and/or non-Chrome browsers come with specific Youtube exceptions, Youtube is rendering their product useless on competitors to Chrome.  As Chrome has the dominant market share in Browsers, this definitely is going to get at least some EU complaints. (US Anti-Trust is, sadly, too far gone at the moment.)

 

I saw an article a few days ago, (haven't shared as not sure how reliable it is), that said someone in Ireland had lodged a GDPR complaint over youtubes ad-block detection working without requiring permission. Not sure if it has any legs, assuming the article was trustworthy of course, but similar enough to your thought, that i figure i'll mention it with a take a big dose of salt provision.

 

8 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Probably has to do with all the other streaming services doing it.

 

That, the way it was presented and the fact some of us haven't seen ads in so long, (and have never had premium) we just weren't expecting it because we've never seen it like that before. I've been perma logged in for so long i basically auto filter the top right out in my head.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

As Chrome has the dominant market share in Browsers, this definitely is going to get at least some EU complaints. (US Anti-Trust is, sadly, too far gone at the moment.)

I for one switch to Firefox due to all this BS and honestly Im kinda kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I find I kinda like Firefox a bit better. Also Google is currently in a lawsuit with the US Government. So Anti Trust is not dead yet. 

 

5 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

which is going to have unforeseen consequences

You mean like people discarding Chrome and going to other browsers. Or people finding other video platforms besides YouTube. I used to watch hours of YouTube every day, now I dont. I have to use private browsing and not be logged in to have my ad blockers work, which makes it an experience I dont want. Google fails to relies that they are technically competing with Netflix, Disney, Hulu, MAX, Paramount Plus, etc. 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I for one switch to Firefox due to all this BS and honestly Im kinda kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I find I kinda like Firefox a bit better. Also Google is currently in a lawsuit with the US Government. So Anti Trust is not dead yet. 

 

You mean like people discarding Chrome and going to other browsers. Or people finding other video platforms besides YouTube. I used to watch hours of YouTube every day, now I dont. I have to use private browsing and not be logged in to have my ad blockers work, which makes it an experience I dont want. Google fails to relies that they are technically competing with Netflix, Disney, Hulu, MAX, Paramount Plus, etc. 

 

 

I love the irony that YT served me a recommendation to a video discussing the problem.    Video is solid enough.  Youtube without an Ad Blocker is a horrible experience. At least the video content is still solid since there's so much available, but the recommendation algo itself also spazzes out a lot more than it used to.  At least it hasn't thought I was Finnish this week. (One of my browsers has had the Algo think I was a Finnish Woman with a love for American R&B... 3 times. Actually pretty good music tastes by whoever the system thought I was.) 

[LAwLz]

15 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Probably has to do with all the other streaming services doing it.

Which other streaming services has started serving ads to paying customers who previously didn't ads? 

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Which other streaming services has started serving ads to paying customers who previously didn't ads? 

Disney +, Paramount+, etc. They all were ad free. Then most added ads on the current tiers of service making people pay more for ad free. Netflix is the only one who did it right and made an ad free option cheaper then the previous cheaper option.

[Obioban]

Hopefully this significantly impacts Chrome's dominance. One company commanding so much of the internet browsing experience, especially THE company that also sells the Internet's ads, is not a healthy situation.

[dalekphalm]

On 10/29/2023 at 12:39 PM, Donut417 said:

Disney +, Paramount+, etc. They all were ad free. Then most added ads on the current tiers of service making people pay more for ad free. Netflix is the only one who did it right and made an ad free option cheaper then the previous cheaper option.

I can't say about all of them, but I just looked up the D+ "Basic" plan (which is unavailable in Canada) and it's definitely cheaper than the regular plan.

 

I'm not sure about the chain of events, so I cannot say whether they raised the regular plan's price first and then introduced a cheaper plan after, or if they did it at the same time.

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I can't say about all of them, but I just looked up the D+ "Basic" plan (which is unavailable in Canada) and it's definitely cheaper than the regular plan.

 

I'm not sure about the chain of events, so I cannot say whether they raised the regular plan's price first and then introduced a cheaper plan after, or if they did it at the same time.

I had D+ when it first came out. We had no ads. Period. Even if you had an Ad plan on Hulu, you had no ads on Disney.

[PocketNerd]

For me it seems like if I try to block the pop-up then the video doesn't load.

 

Like... 0:00 / 0:00

[CarlBar]

10 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

For me it seems like if I try to block the pop-up then the video doesn't load.

 

Like... 0:00 / 0:00

 

Force update your adblocker. it's an ongoing war between the blockers and youtube with both updating a few times a day. UBlock has been good for the last few days for me, but was having to update every day for a few days before that.