this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023

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Did youtube give in already? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I use youtube across different devices with the same account. sometimes, i even use it in multiple browser profiles or apps on the same device (with the account logged in).

the ad reminder got me. it actually stopped serving any youtube video on my laptop. so i made a new profile in firefox, logged in, and it was fine. for a couple days.

so i made a new profile, logged in, and... was foiled. but not to be deterred, i did what any reasonable person would do: i sought out one of the DOZENS of alternative frontends and used youtube's recommendation algorithm on the main site to pull videos from the alternative frontend.

for one day.

today, on my laptop, with my old profile, never changing logins or browser settings, youtube started working again.

did we win?

all 37 comments

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (2 children)

did we win?

Just because they paused this offensive, does not mean the war is over.

I believe it was a case of testing the waters. These are some of the questions they were looking to answer

Did the pop up cause those who received it to buy premium?

Did the pop up cause those who received it to turn off add block for that site?

Did the pop up cause those who received it to not use youtube at all?

Did the pop up cause those who received it to move to third party front-ends?

My guess is they are looking at the data now to answer this question: (the only one they care about)

From the data gained, is it likely that going on a full offensive against add-blockers make us more money?

If yes, the offensive will begin.

If no, they will look at other alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

And finally: "Did the popup and the massive media attention to it cause an increase in overall adblocker usage that will do more harm in the long run to Google/Alphabet than they could ever recoup from Youtube whitelisting or Premium sales."

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, good addition and probably the really important one.

Personally I think they are going to find that the people who use add blockers will never view adds on youtube.

They will either find a workaround or stop using it all together.

If the publicity around this action causes more people to move in the direction of using addblockers it could be really counter productive for youtube.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If the publicity around this action causes more people to move in the direction of using addblockers it could be really counter productive for youtube.

That all depends on if the revenue loss from an increase in ablocker use is more than the revenue gain from people either disabling adblockers or purchasing a plan.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google has the entire internet indexed for their search engine, but still somehow hasn't heard of the Streisand effect

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

If you don't stop talking about the Streisand effect, I'm going to sue you so bad the whole world will hear about it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

in the long run

Pretty sure most corporations aren't operating with this in mind at all. It's not about long term anything, it's just about how many ads the human brain can withstand before they stop feeding at the content trough.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

(ad-blockers)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d bet they’re A/B testing to see if it has a major impact on the amount an individual uses the site

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

100%.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I know that the pop up showing for some of my friends made me cancel my premium subscription. Everything else I don't know. If they stop i will think about getting it back, but newpipe has been working pretty nice. It has the same benefits as premium and I don't use youtube music. We'll see, thanks to youtube for making me go looking for alternatives i guess lol.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, did they have an exit questionnaire or something where anyone doing that can let them know why they cancelled?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they show you a survey where you can pick some general reason and then there's a comment box at the end. I seriously doubt someone real goes through that but maybe they have a bot collecting keywords or something lol.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same, I wouldn't have discovered FreeTube had they not fucked with my user experience. And since I can't comment/upvote or as far as they know, subscribe to anything they've lost all my engagement in addition to all the meta data they were collecting on me. How many seconds did I hover over each element before clicking something google? You don't fucking know now do you ya!?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trueee, FreeTube in pc, NewPipe in android and you get the same experience as premium. Even more so, with FreetTube you even get sponsor block that i have no idea with what kind of black programming magic its done but it's a plus over premium. I sound like an ad but i didn't know that shit like that existed until I cancelled premium lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What if I told you there's a fork called NewPipe+SponsorBlock on GitHub that does exactly what it sounds like?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does Google have no issues with ad blocking as long as you pay for YouTube premium? I have premium because it's included with my YouTube music subscription but I still use uBlock Origin in Firefox. I have never seen any requests for me to disable it while on YouTube or any other Google owned service.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have YouTube Premium and use the included ad-blocker of OperaGX. Never had that pop up and my YouTube runs like it always has.

I think once you pay for Premium they don't care anymore of you have an ad-blocker running.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, both YouTube and the creators get way more money from you paying for premium than even watching hours of ads per day. Google demanding you disable ad block after you paid them would effectively amount to biting the hand that feeds them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I use uBlock on Firefox and never got any kind of notification either. Not a paying customer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Obviously, why would they discourage a paying customer?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why make money off me once if they can make money off me twice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

because in such case they are risking making no money off you

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They will still be able to make money off selling my online profile and serving ads to me even if I block them....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

sure, but you could cancel your subscription

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

After I disabled all other adblocking related extensions besides uBlock, removed my custom rules and started updating the "quick fixes" filter list manually after every longer break from YouTube (+3 hours) I haven't had the popup since. Now I even have sponsor block and return dislikes enabled too and the popup still stays away.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

They caused you a major inconvinience that is enough for a % of people to turn it off, even temporally. I doubt there would ever be an ideal anti-adblock, or that they even target those who would figure it out, but swing users who can be easily pressured into surrendering. The most popular channels aren't about tech things after all, and average session\video is probably small enough to bear ads while scrolling shorts for 10-15 minutes per sitting.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am going to continue with the alternative frontends.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Same. Ads aside, they simply work better than YouTube's garbage Web version. It's unusably slow on Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Vivaldi with uBlock Origin works just as well as it's always been, I don't even need to do regular manual filter upgrades. Only two tweaks I did was disabling Vivaldi's built-in adblocker for YT (triggered the player blocking while logged in) and installing the pop-up blocker script for TamperMonkey.

So, business as usual. Google can go'an'fuck 'emselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I haven't even made any tweaks and it works perfectly for me.

Though yesterday it started triggering the "are you still watching" prompt within 15 minutes! The playlist had gone from an individual song to an hour long lofi mix I had in the background while doing laundry.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I use Opera GX exclusively for YouTube with its default ad blocker. Still working fine. My Firefox with ublock origin works fine as well. Never had the ad block page.

My wife's chrome with ublock origin still works with YouTube. But my kid got the ad block page on hers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The ad reminder popup has a 1 day cool down (at least that's what I understood) so no, I think it will come back.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Nah, it's still doing it to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I had the same thing happen on my old laptop but not on my pc, oddly enough.