It's amazing to me how Google is allowed to control every side of the market with no real repercussions.
I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money..
That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices.
Worst case scenario it helps me consume less YT videos which would be a huge win for me.
I don't disagree with YT attempting to show me ads, but I have control of my computer, and if I can direct my computer not to show them to me, I will.
I simply won't tolerate ads for any reason. I find the experience user hostile. So I'm always going to adopt some path that delivers me content without ads. And in choosing which path to adopt, I will always choose the least costly. Right now that's free. If in the future google successfully blocks in-browser ad blockers, I will either pay for YT premium or a third party service that downloads and delivers the content without ads, whichever is cheaper.
So what you're saying is that I, someone that makes woodworking videos on YouTube, have to accept you getting my videos without compensation.
Because I, not you, choose to host them on YouTube and give Google about half of revenue from ads. And now because I chose YouTube - you feel that it's OK for you to screw me...
This is the level of entitlement I will never accept.
My personal solution to this is that I subscribe to a few patreons. I do want creators I appreciate to be paid and get to create more good things. I'm not willing to tolerate annoyance, and I'm not willing to play the cable tv game.
I read an article about how Ticketmaster has a kickback scheme with artists, where artists price their tickets low, ticketmaster charges big fees, and kicks them back to the artists, so ticketmaster is a hired bad guy and the artists looks good.
I get that you might not want to get a CDN for your content, and manage your users' ux yourself. But when you pick youtube to distribute your stuff, you getting dinged when folks circumvent youtube's annoyance engine is just collateral damage, and you're going to have to accept some percentage of folks doing that in exchange for utilizing YT and mentally checking out.
In addition, I have a very hard time feeling like I'm screwing you when all I'm doing is requesting a webpage, and instructing my browser to render half of the delivered information. If they sold gasoline for $1 off but you had to watch a bunch of ads on their little screen, are you 'screwing' them by sitting in your car while they play?
I don't even feel bad about the hypothetical future where I pay some third party site that scrapes youtube and resells their stuff ad-free for less than a youtube premium subscription, because it puts a practical limit on youtube's ability to inflate the cost. The higher the cost, the more lucrative it is to sell a slightly cheaper alternative. I may pay for YT premium, but I'll always support the existence of a competing black market because of the pressure it exerts.
When it becomes not viable, I suppose I and everyone else will do something else, but for now I sleep well at night.
This is exactly how I feel with the exception of paying for YouTube premium. If I am ever unable to watch stupid videos on YouTube without seeing ads, I won't watch on YouTube.
They are creating a reason to black market a free product and I find it hilarious how quickly the market is responding to that demand.
I think it's reasonable to be frustrated with a free-then-not-so-free bait-and-switch [1]. Ads in YouTube used to be fairly unobtrusive bottom banners or one-off pre-roll spots. But they've gotten longer and more intrusive since. It's understandable for a business to need to make money. But there will absolutely be pushback if they do so by offering something great "for free" then ratcheting up the cost over time. People appreciate honest pricing and setting expectations properly from the get-go, but that goes against the Silicon Valley playbook of growth-at-all-costs-and-monetize-later.
I don't know, people tend to be multidimensional and complex. I'll talk to my therapist.
> Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?
I only can talk for myself, but I don't feel entitled. I apply the same level of morality when dealing with these juggernaut companies as they apply it when dealing with me, which is: None.
YouTube with ~20% market share is amazing, YouTube with ~90% market share is a cancer to society.
Either way I don't care about YouTube, Google or any of these people. I DO care they have an insurmountable amount of power over the Internet.
And yes, you are entitled. You've just rationalized it in a way that doesn't cause any cognitive dissonance.
I make woodworking videos on YouTube. The majority of ad revenue hits my account. Just because "you feel" like you're screwing Google, doesn't mean it's true. You're actually screwing people like me.
I'm one. I'm not a giant corporation. Yet people like you like to pretend that blocking ads on YouTube is an FU to the big guy, when it's quite the opposite.(we're talking YouTube ads specifically here)
But at the same time, Google is not entitled to dictate how my user agent renders a page, locally, on my own computer.
I'd have no problem if google just inject ads directly into the video streams. ( by which time, equally I'm entitled to configure my own video player to skip whichever frames I want )
Well, they are entitled to code the page how they'd like, provided it's not anything that meets criminal standards for malware.
And if they do start putting ads in video streams then I will likely be writing them off for dead just like I did months ago with Reddit. Til then I'll be using the various moles that still haven't been whacked (there's a good few) and not suffering through the experience. If they think they're getting a dime from me with the agenda they push, just because the creators I want to see don't have time to post across the variety of platforms (yet), they can get their heads examined.
> they are entitled to code the page how they'd like
Yeah, and as the owners of the computers we are entitled to alter or even delete that code as we see fit. They should pray we do not alter it further.
> provided it's not anything that meets criminal standards for malware
Google spies on us. Pretty much everything Google ships is malware since spyware is malware by definition. I also consider anything that so much as tries to circumvent uBlock Origin to be malware.
> And if they do start putting ads in video streams then I will likely be writing them off for dead just like I did months ago with Reddit.
Well... I'm a creator. I choose to post to YouTube with a reasonable expectation that you're either a YouTube Premium subscriber or will produce ad revenue.
None of that entitles you to see my work on your terms, no matter how (insert rant about evil corporate overlords)
Yet here you all are, making any and all excuses for your obvious entitlement.
You should instead have a reasonable expectation that some percentage of people will and some percentage of people won't, because that's the world you live in.
You work with youtube to deliver a box of files to people's houses free of charge, with the expectation that folks will view every file in the box. Do you think it's reasonable to believe or expect that folks won't throw the annoying ones over their shoulder?
> Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?
I don't feel entitled to them, but I do feel entitled to control what code is run and what content is shown on systems I own. I don't like watching ads, so as long as I can do it without onerous effort on my part, I will block them. Ultimately, if Youtube doesn't want me messing with the bytes they sent me, they shouldn't send them to me at all.
Nobody is "consuming" any "YouTube videos". I couldn't care less about YouTube. It is just an intermediary to content that I would enjoy if it was published on any other website. More often than not, YouTube gets in the way instead of helping, too: hiding notifications and new publications, exposing my favourite creators to abuse through comments, financially and legally abusing them themselves with crappy copyright practices (e.g. video taken down because someone DMCA'd based on static noise, or video demonetized because it is political or mentions a curse word, etc.), directing my attention away from them by their awful recommendations (recommendations which are horrid in and of themselves and provide even less value as days go by), and so on, and so on...
And then, it is not like paying and ad block are mutually exclusive. I do actually pay for YouTube because I don't want the ads on my living room TV, but I have many devices with many browsers and I don't want to log in on all of those. For example I have a Chromium profile dedicated to shopping, on which I deliberately don't log in to any Google or other services, because, among other reasons, if I did, all my YouTube recommendations would be product reviews. And then, many apps of YouTube are just plain unpleasant, so on my main phone I use NewPipe, despite being logged into YouTube as a paying premium user.
So, just because I don't want to log in on every device and browser combo, and prefer alternative apps, am I supposed to see the ads, which I pay to not see? Just because a website I couldn't care less about needs to make money off the backs of people whose work I like, all the while abusing them deeply and causing them to burn out?
And I am not even beginning about how godawful YouTube ads are. Not a decade ago YouTube was liberally allowing Musical.ly ads in which half naked underage girls were dancing suggestively and getting explicitly objectified on nearly every video. And now _most_ of these ads are scams, disgusting politics, more scams, get rich quick schemes, and other godawful things. At least on TV the ads don't threaten your mental health. Why would I support a business as filthy as this? Just for the privilege of _sometimes_ being spared from it.
> It is just an intermediary to content that I would enjoy if it was published on any other website.
Then go to those other websites.
This argument is akin to saying that I will disregard any FOSS license terms of any code posted to GitHub, because I hate Microsoft.
> And then, it is not like paying and ad block are mutually exclusive.
Content creators get a bigger cut from subscriber views, than from ad-supported views. So you are absolutely shortchanging the people who create content for you on YouTube.
> needs to make money off the backs of people whose work I like
I create videos and I choose YouTube to distribute them. So do many others... It's definitely not your call where to post my or their videos. And spare me the "I'm actually doing this for them", when you're actively trying to stop their ability to earn money through ads.
1. These corporations are so user-hostile, hypocritical, and scummy that I derive a small bit of enjoyment from the pennies I cost them when I pirate their stuff.
2. The overwhelming majority of content on youtube isn't worth paying $15/mo for.
I grew up in the 90s when "Information wants to be free" and "fuck corporations" were still part of the mainstream zeitgeist, and I guess I still carry a bit of that with me today.
Especially with their censorship campaigns underway. How many got demonetized or blocked for suggesting COVID may have been a lab leak, right on up until Jon Stewart said the same thing on Colbert's show? How many had the same situation over vaccines with myocarditis, right on up until (and maybe since even) Pfizer released data about the incidence of it as a side effect? And how many videos have been actively taken down that dare to tell the truth about what's going on in Gaza?
We KNOW Google takes its marching orders from the 3 letter agencies, thanks to Ed Snowden. Why anyone would shed a tear for them losing ad revenue is beyond me. Do I wish the creators would move to Rumble? Yes, and many for whom it is a sensitive matter do, actively. In the meantime though, I'm not going to stop watching; I'll just keep blocking, because no matter how much they want to persist in this little game, they're never going to whack more than 90% of the moles.
I'd never heard of Rumble, so I googled it (how ironic!) and the results page included a sublink of whatever is trending, which was a video called "The Commie Left Is Melting Down (Ep. 2121)"
So yeah, no thanks, I'm not interested in your alt-right echo chamber.
I post my own videos on YouTube, so I'm pretty sure that you're not pirating anything owned by Google when you screw individual creators.
Now tell me how noble you are, when you do everything in your power to reduce income from ads for these "fatcats"(Like the evil ServeTheHome or Stumpy Nubs Woodworking)
Well, the way Google sees it (and other media companies) I'm pirating because I'm not watching ads.
>I post my own videos on YouTube
Me too, or at least I used to several years ago. I don't monetize my videos, though. I'm not a "youtuber", just a guy who posted some videos for il2 sturmovik.
>Now tell me how noble you are
You're pretty high up on that horse there, pal. I never claimed to be noble, I just don't like Google.
> Why are so many people feel entitled to YT videos without ads?
No one's "feeling entitled" to anything. They're the ones who send us free videos. No reason not to accept.
If anyone's "feeling entitled" here it's them. To our attention. We're not actually obligated to look at the noise they sent along with the video. It's that simple.
Too many advertisements are low quality garbage (fraud, scams, soft porn, malware, FOMO, etc.) designed to target susceptible individuals. For those of us with vulnerable family members, it's not worth the anxiety. I don't even trust myself to not fall victim.
Additionally, it's not the user's fault that advertisements have become a security threat, a significant visual nuisance, and now an environmental issue [1].
Probably the bait and switch. Fire up an ad free platform, drum up a viewer and creator base to undermine competitor sites (remember Vimeo?), and once they're all irrelevant or outright gone, start pulling this crap? Yea, people will be annoyed. At least until the content creators get smart, and start posting their content across the various alternatives that have been popping up since YouTube has become a cesspool, such as Rumble, Bitchute, or Odysee.
I don't see a reason to be too upset about this all though; it doesn't take much to still block these ads, and meanwhile, this is going to just help motivate creators to finally do the smart thing and move to the less abusive platforms.
Regarding YouTube specifically: bandwidth is still an issue. It's nontrivial to stand up a service that can provide storage and reliable streaming of video, and the costs impact directly upon the provider. So it's an ecosystem where competition is risky (and if someone succeeds too well, Alphabet can just buy and squash them).
The "call" could be when their deal with Mozilla is up for renewal or just a chat during some private family together. Let's not forget most of these people know each other personally. In SF it's actually a much smaller World than it sometimes seems.
Google has been fighting lawsuits like this for a reasonable long time, they are careful but also confident in their abilities to make them toothless and/or defeat them. As of right now nothing of substance made them not do anything important for them.
I don't want to be the cynic who says Google has been paying lots of money to "the right people" in order to keep the status quo, but.. Google has been paying lots of money..
That might be a moderate huge win for Firefox.. until someone at Google makes a phone call to Mozilla's offices.
Worst case scenario it helps me consume less YT videos which would be a huge win for me.