_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers
elAhmo wrote 5 min ago:
I have been contacted more than once by close family members because of
ads that look like system prompts inside Youtube feeds asking to delete
photos, free up space, clear phone from viruses, and this is not even
including AI slop and porn stuff.
Blocking ads is the way to go, and I am sure creators will survive
this.
Curzel wrote 52 min ago:
WAN Show is going to be wild this week
manbash wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
Maybe a "view", however YT defines it, is a poor metric? It doesn't
show engagement and it's time for YTers to have better means for
analytics.
I have an Android TV device, and YT has been so horrible with its
constant ads popping up, that I have to put it on MUTE to prevent any
further brainrot.
I wonder when they're going to blame me muting my TV and harm their
viewership. Or maybe they will just prevent me from being able to mute
it.
drnick1 wrote 1 hour 29 min ago:
No, I won't turn my ad blocker off. In fact, I go further and use
uMatrix to block ALL third party content by default on ALL websites
(uBlock in advanced mode can also do this). That's on top of an
aggressive DNS-level blacklists targeting ads and trackers.
Some manual adjustment to allow CDN on some websites is needed, but 95%
of the cruft is left out. That cruft is usually malware in a broad
sense: ads, trackers, embedded Youtube videos that seem benign but
allow Google to follow users across the Internet, etc.
dyauspitr wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
YouTube finally was able to block me from using ublock (and all the
workarounds) a couple of weeks ago. This has finally prompted me to
shift from Chrome to Firefox.
th0ma5 wrote 2 hours 18 min ago:
It seems politically inconceivable to discuss advertisement network
security, ethics, consolidation, negligence, etc etc. I cannot more
strongly recommend running an ad blocker.
whywhywhywhy wrote 2 hours 34 min ago:
Lengths Google are going to fighting ad blockers when really it's a
small niche of people who can't stand to use their platform without one
is getting silly and this feels like a tactic to try and push the onus
on making people turn them off on their favorite youtubers
arccy wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
is it a small niche when the youtube creators can see it in their
stats and are panicking?
bitpush wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
Its frustrating to see how HN commenters just jumped onto conclusions
without even doing any bit of critical thinking.
The top comment on HN says
> So Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?
When even a cursory look would show that if you block stats-aggregation
endpoint .. stats go down. Sometimes it is occam's razor.
nomel wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
It's a 20 year streaming service, and it's Google. There's a certain
expectation I have from that. The fact that it's just an endpoint
being hit by the client is...baffling. I don't think it's in the
realm of expected possibilities for most of us, being the most naive,
and fragile, implementation possible.
The fact that ad revenue didn't change means they do have robust ad
tracking, but the view numbers are +/- some unexpected level of
fiction.
spankalee wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
> The fact that ad revenue didn't change means they do have robust
ad tracking
Ad tracking is usually done client-side too, so ad revenue being
stable just means that the missing view counts are probably limited
to the users who already weren't viewing ads.
philjohn wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
The question becomes ... why are they relying on client side counting
of views? They know how much of a video they've distributed to a
given client on the backend after all (YouTube does buffer, but not
the whole video).
nightpool wrote 15 min ago:
The other commenters point out more prosaic problems with CDN
architecture, but a more product-focused answer for this is
"because users execute Javascript but bots don't". Using client
side counting is an easy way to filter out simple automated
traffic.
Also, with segmented MP4 streams, the files on the backend won't
necessarily be easy to match up 1:1 with videos. How do you count
the views if someone watches a video, and then skips back to watch
the middle section a few times, and then doesn't finish it? Because
that would show up as (1, 1, 4, 3, 0) in your database for the
different files involved. Now imagine doing that for ~500 people on
a shared IP address for their high school. And now your minimum
threshold for view counting is tied to the size of your MP4 chunks,
or range requests. And now you've put this view counting logic into
the hot path of serving terabytes of data.
From a product perspective, you can see why "A video view is
counted the first time the user presses the play button and watches
for at least 30 seconds" is a much more desirable definition, both
technically and for stakeholders (video creators, advertisers, etc)
to understand.
axus wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
The computers serving advertisements should also know how much data
has been delivered. Alphabet should be able to expect more from a
CDN they have a business relationship with, than the people
watching YouTube.
gregschlom wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
Not necessarily. Youtube makes extensive use of third-party CDNs. A
lot of the videos aren't coming from their servers at all. I
believe that's also why it's so hard for them to embed the ad
directly in the video. They instead having to rely on splicing the
ads client-side, which makes it possible to block.
Disclaimer: I work at Google but not at Youtube and have no idea
how things work really. This is just based on some info I read
online.
therein wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
Yeah they give caching boxes to ISPs as far as I can tell, and
videos are served from there if they exist in that cache. About
8-10 years ago, they had an issue with that and they'd serve you
the wrong video because your neighbor had watched something and
it was in the cache. Literally title of the video wouldn't match
what is playing.
smallnix wrote 1 hour 0 min ago:
And these caching boxes can't talk back to Google?
spankalee wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
YouTube has a crazy CDN. They very well might not be able easily
attribute exactly what the client requests to specific accounts.
arccy wrote 2 hours 21 min ago:
because distributed CDN means it doesn't necessarily hit a backend?
spankalee wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
It seems like this statement from YouTube[1] and this Github issue
(referenced by granzymes[2]) have key information being missed by a
lot of commenters.
From YouTube:
> Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad blockers
and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts.
Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion of users utilizing
such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic related to updates to
these tools.
Quoting granzymes:
> According to the GitHub issue, YouTube didnât change anything.
There are two endpoints that can be used to attribute a view. One is
called multiple times throughout a video playback and has been in the
easylist privacy filter for years. The other is called at the start of
a playback, and was just added to the list (the timing lines up with
the reports of view drops from tech YouTubers).
Source from the GitHub issue for easylist: [1]: [2]:
URI [1]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomment...
URI [2]: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45277768
j-bos wrote 14 min ago:
Seems like a balanced approach, people can watch videos with
adblockers but it won't count towards youtube's public facing
metrics.
flohofwoe wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
I don't think it's a counting issue but that the various experiments
that YouTube did recently to block adblockers are causing people with
adblockers to leave the page early before the video starts playing,
because they are greated with infinite loading spinners, incomplete
page loads or in the best case 10 second delays until the video starts.
I happily watch the embedded ad-segments of YouTubers, but not the
aggressive scam/slop-ads that YouTube puts before the actual videos
thank-you-very-much.
georgeofjungle7 wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
Kinda ironic â the tools meant to block ads end up hurting creators
by messing with view counts.
chatmasta wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
Off-topic, but this 9to5google blog is the first Iâve seen âtop
commentâ embedded inline with the blog post. Thatâs really cool.
Itâs more like how youâd comment on a google doc rather than
threaded conversations appended to the end of it. Iâd like to see
more exploration of this UXâ¦
teekert wrote 3 hours 27 min ago:
Ah yes because they canât measure streams with blocked ads.
And whatâs up with that âsubscribingâ, never saw the use for it,
yet many (respectful, great) creators beg for it. I almost feel bad for
not using the feature. I mean, Iâm watching the content, that must
count for something?
duxup wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
The difference where they see dramatic PC views dropping and phone and
tablets remaining steady and the quote do seem to hint at ad blockers
being the cause.
But it's not at all clear to me 100% if this really is an ad blocker
problem / there's not any real proof.
Meanwhile I'm getting another add for "stuck poop" and scam health
products ...
stronglikedan wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
TechLinked's take is pretty good (as usual):
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ5pATTvc2o
mindaslab wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
I use Newpipe on my mobile, and Adnauseum + Firefox on my laptop to
escape from Youtube Ad's.
johnklos wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
"Because you're using adblockers, we're going to punish them."
Sounds about right for Google.
LeicaLatte wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
YouTube's messaging is the more frustrating part about all this. Panic
might drive more creators toward direct monetization, that might just
be the better net outcome.
trilogic wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
YouTube is history, last time I used it was covid time. Blame AI if you
want but time don´t stop for anything. That´s it and that´s all.
mock-possum wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
I wonder if YouTube/creators can tell at what point viewers abandon the
video - and I wonder if they can tell how many times Iâve opened a
video, been greeted with another grating Liberty Mutual ad, and
immediately closed the tab.
moolcool wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
YouTube showed me the same phishing ads depicting an AI version of the
Canadian Prime Minister.
Why should I not filter ads from a provider who is OK with people
stealing from me?
zanellato19 wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
I find it so weird how we just accept the fact that ads can be for
fake things and not blame YouTube/Google for those things.
SilverbeardUnix wrote 10 min ago:
People in general have stopped trying to hold people accountable
and have just accepted defeat.
tomrod wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
Morally, you should filter ads. If ads could be relevant, vetted,
non-intrusive, and ancillary to the experience, all actions that are
required to be performed by the ad platform Youtube/Google, then you
wouldn't have much moral leg to stand on.
Due to YT/G's moral failings to host a sufficiently serviceable
platform for their product, your eyes, then your only real recourse
outside adblocking is to buy a device and put on a separate network
with no reasonably important traffic.
I don't lose one bit of sleep knowing that adblocking prevents Google
from externalizing their curation costs onto me.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
No, no, no.
Morally you should stop using youtube.
It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a
solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat
themselves on the back for being morally righteous.
When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear
message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not
compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your
terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
tomrod wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
> Morally you should stop using youtube
> When you don't like something, you don't use it.
Morality in your approach is absolute, and it represents the best
possible outcome.
For all others stuck in the morass, you must navigate the BATNA.
devinprater wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
Don't forget to like, subscribe, hype, hit the bell, and turn off your
adblocker! Thankfully I think Sponsorblock has a section for those
points in the videos.
xandrius wrote 7 min ago:
Never mention that word, the fewer the people who know about it the
better. It's one of my favourite things in my online life xD
NoSalt wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
Am I the only person who is confused by the anger from people who use a
free service (like YouTube) or participate in a gig service (like
Uber), and get upset when it doesn't go their way? Meaning, they get
upset when they cannot make money off services provided by a company.
Seems like entitlement to me.
mtrovo wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
Lol honestly, not sure how they can be compared. Uber is a shitty
proposition in any way and is mostly a way for us to get easy access
to cheap labor. Nobody ever got rich driving for Uber.
There's no way you can say the same about YouTube, the value
proposition is quite good and it leveled the field in a way
traditional media would never do, just think for a moment what's the
chance of seeing someone like MrBeast surging as a TV personality.
Insanity wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
Disagree - the services make money _from_ the users. It's a symbiotic
relationship, and I totally understand the frustration. Especially
when decisions are opaque and you're left guessing about what 'the
platform' is doing.
827a wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
The fact that a client-side change can impact reported views is wild.
Its so wildly the wrong place to track views that it forces me to
wonder if its an intentional & malicious decision by Google to mobilize
YouTube creators against the idea of viewer privacy.
jsnell wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
This is how it has worked for ages. If you think about it for a bit,
I think you'd come up with all kinds of reasons for why this can't be
done with just server-side signals.
For example, how do you account for skipping over already fetched
parts of the video or rewatching the same section multiple times?
Or for the entire video being cached and researched? For bots
downloading the video?
The idea that this is some malicious anti-adblocker time bomb
implanted a decade ago is preposterous.
mbirth wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
Did we hear anything about people using ad blockers and still having
YouTube's watch history enabled reporting that a watched video didn't
pop up in the history?
paol wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
I use uBo which uses easylist, and when I watch youtube videos they are
marked as viewed, so this explanation does not seem likely?
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
How do you know they're marked as a view on the video?
Venn1 wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
If you're unfamiliar with the creator dashboard there is a spot
reserved for notifications from YouTube. This should have been front
and center last week, not buried in a creator help thread. Why wasnât
it? That's open to speculation.
As someone with a small tech channel, I'm glad I was following this. If
not, I would have spent the last week swapping out thumbnails and video
titles, which seem about as effective as percussive maintenance. But
hey, you have to try something.
Well over a decade ago a gentleman by the name of Brian Brushwood said,
and I'm paraphrasing, âYouTube is like working for an AI manager that
never tells you what it wants but punishes you severely if you get it
wrong.â
Welcome to 2025.
Gualdrapo wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Yesterday I wanted to watch a video of a song which was made originally
english. It was auto translating lyrics to german. I just speak some
spanish and some english. Couldn't decide if I should be annoyed with
it translating to a language I just know a handful of words or should
be thankful because it's trying to help me learn more of it.
tehwebguy wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
View counts are on borrowed time anyway, Iâm sure.
yard2010 wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
YouTube has ads?
not_a_bot_4sho wrote 5 hours 6 min ago:
> I don't want views going down for creators on youtube.
Agree to disagree. That's kind of the point of an ad blocker.
If you want to support creators, stop blocking their ads.
bazmattaz wrote 16 min ago:
I block ads on my favourite channel but then support the guy through
Patreon every month. I figure heâll get more revenue form that than
the shitty ads
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
Views support the videos in the algorithm.
Do you think someone like Louis Rossman, who wants to use Youtube to
share his message but doesn't use YT as a business, would rather
views or ad money?
humpty-d wrote 4 hours 49 min ago:
Presumably Louis wants to reach as many people as possible and
would like to know how many people he's reaching though.
Telaneo wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
I suspect his desire for people to block ads ranks higher than
his desire for statistics.
thrance wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
Putting my tinfoil hat on, maybe they knew ad blockers would mess with
their new implementation and expected the freak out to mount "creators"
against ad blockers?
bArray wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
Counter-argument: Youtube's aggressive anti-ads campaign resulted in
failed loads, videos that appear stuck, etc. The more techy people
would have updated, but others were left with the choice of a buggy
experience or dreadfully long ads. Maybe people just got fed up with
Youtube.
aequitas wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
I consider myself a little techy, since I visit this site quite
often. But for me YouTube is curing me from my addiction to it by
ramping up its ad blocker blockers. I know I have to wait roughly the
adâs runtime looking at a frozen video before the video actually
starts playing and it is often enough to let me go do something
productive or useful instead. Thanks google :)
tantalor wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
"would have updated" what? Their browser?
bArray wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
For quite a few people, they would have had to manually pull in an
updated ad-blocker change. This would be the case if they run the
source release, or have disabled updates.
slightwinder wrote 4 hours 32 min ago:
> Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.
This specific case is about an unusual high drop of viewers
specifically on desktops on a specific date. The assumptions are,
that it's just too unusual for the normal drop in that timeframe, so
it has to be a bug of some kind. Would it be a normal drop in
viewers, it would not be on a specific date, months after the
problems with AdBlocks started.
bArray wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
There is middle-ground: anti- ad-blocker changes cause a large
number of ad-blockers to fail entirely.
It would make sense too, Youtube wouldn't care to make their videos
viewable to a large number of ad-blockers, and ad-revenue would be
near steady because ad-blockers were not generating any ad revenue.
kllrnohj wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
> Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.
Creators are not reporting any declines in ad revenue that match the
drop in view count. Indeed several have reported revenue is the same
despite the view count drop. So it's quite unlikely people are fed up
with youtube in any meaningful way.
bArray wrote 3 hours 29 min ago:
The people using ad-blockers were not watching ads, so it would not
make a difference to revenue streams. If anything, profit would go
up because Youtube server capacity is not being used as much by
ad-block users.
PaulHoule wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
Plus so many ads are malware, dangerous, or scams that even the FBI
says you should use an ad blocker [1] YouTube is one of the worst
offenders for scam ads. Even today you sometimes find an ad that
talks about some scary health risk and points to some ad that drones
on and on for 45 minutes and if you get to the end they try to sign
you up for an $80 a month subscription for some worthless supplement.
URI [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
alex1138 wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
I see it as part of the same general package. The censoring for any
reason at all (including real time, via AI, in the comments, which
were already! ruined by Google+ integration going back years)
Youtube Rewind 2018 - before they got rid of dislikes, to make ad
videos harder to spot - was one of (was the?) most disliked videos
in Youtube history
A very far cry from the halcyon days of ~10 years earlier
bscphil wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
I endorse the view that everyone should use an ad blocker, but for
what it's worth I keep seeing this techcrunch article and the
original advice offered by the FBI [1] is actually much more
limited.
> Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches.
Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including
extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be
turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on
certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.
So the specific recommendation is that you turn on an ad blocker
while performing searches. Why are they so concerned about
searches? It's because of a specific form of fraud, where someone
purchases an ad pretending to be the business you're searching for,
but actually takes you "to a webpage that looks identical to the
impersonated businessâs official webpage" - that is, a phishing
scam.
That's way more limited than the "FBI recommends ad blocker"
statement would lead you to believe. From the FBI's point of view,
pitching a bullshit supplement in an ad (what you're talking about)
is an entirely legitimate business practice, and selling
supplements is legal in the US so long as you don't make certain
medical claims or imply FDA approval.
URI [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221222162340/https://www.ic3...
conductr wrote 36 min ago:
I think searches are just a common entry point to the internet at
large. People search then they have some mistaken trust those
links are legit.
ikekkdcjkfke wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
I borrowed the phone of someone who is older to watch a facebook
video in the app. In the middle of the video there was a video ad
with sound playing, an amber alert for sound and a warning to
click the link. The next ad after that one was also a warning
that there was a virus and you needed to click the link
PaulHoule wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
In the age of A.I. blocking that kind of content should be
easier than shooting fish in a bucket and the false positives
should all be things the platform would be better off without.
complianceowl wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
100%. I can't count the amount of times I've seen an AI-generated
Elon Musk promoting a Tesla coin lol. I've lost count.
Sanzig wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
A deepfake version of Mark Carney keeps trying to get me to sign up
for scam crypto exchanges. Clicking the report link does nothing.
With all the money that Google has plowed into AI, they clearly
could solve this problem if they want to. The fact that it's still
an issue means they don't care, or are happy to take the ad money
from the fraudsters.
throwawayben wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
yeah I had a deep fake Kier Starmer tell me about some investment
opportunity with guaranteed returns.
mindslight wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Where is the "ads are just a way of telling people about things
they might want" crowd? heh.
themafia wrote 28 min ago:
Right behind the "regulatory agencies are asleep at the
switch" crowd.
If you build /anything/ there will be people who dedicate
time to learning how to abuse it for profit.
We don't live in Narnia.
cjs_ac wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
An investment opportunity with guaranteed returns is
something I would definitely want if it actually existed.
PaulHoule wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
I can make that argument wholeheartedly, not even as a
âsteelmanâ when it comes to legitimate advertising but so
much of it is criminal, morally if not legally â- and the
victim is not just the viewer but also the advertiser which
is running ads that are completely mistargeted, that damage
their brand, or get fraudulent clicks â- I remember the
layout of anandtech always shifting around so you would try
to click on a link and just before you did an ad would slide
under your finger and ka-Ching! Was it by accident or
design.
On the other hand Iâve known people who sold ads for
newspaper and radio and all of them had some sense of ethics.
mitthrowaway2 wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
I'm seeing the same ad. There's no way that can be legal to
broadcast.
AlexandrB wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
The problem is enforcement. Legal or not, it's extremely
unlikely that law enforcement will pursue these kinds of scams.
shadowgovt wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
This article is less about view counts dropping due to people
abandoning the platform and more about view count spikes and troughs
that are a consequence of the measure-countermeasure game of YouTube
tweaking its code to account for ad blockers vs. ad blockers tweaking
their code to account for YouTube ads.
Ad blockers (especially for complex sites and data streams) are
basically like using a chainsaw to remove a mosquito(1); sometimes
innocuous or beneficial features get omitted too because they're too
"ad-shaped" for the heuristic.
(1) Anyone who thinks I'm under-selling the risks of unblocked ads
has never seen the consequence of an unlucky bite from Aedes aegypti.
sebastiennight wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
This is the last thread I would ever have expected to see those
little striped monsters mentioned.
Not sure about the chainsaw analogy, but I guess Aedes Aegypti is a
fair metaphor for the cumulative effect of the tiny daily (hourly?)
annoyance of the free-with-ads model.
shadowgovt wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
And like the mosquito, ads can sometimes give you viruses!
charcircuit wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
>Whatever, there's no problem for user. EP is for user and not for
those so called creators or site owners.
It's sad to see how little sympathy there is for people other than
oneself and how changes are affecting the larger ecosystem. Especially
for a site as critical as YouTube to people's livelihoods.
Though having said that, at the same time I'm not surprised that
someone who spends their time modifying sites to remove ads and
analytics to make their personal experience better at the expense of
everyone else would act this way would have this kind of selfish
mindset.
rodrigodlu wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
I'm a heavy AdBlock user, I pay for YT premium, and I paid Nebula for
2 years, also I try to buy some albums on Bandcamp even with YT music
subscription. What more they do want?
And I do use referral codes for the content creators I do like. My
Amazon referrals do still work.
As a mostly software backend dev I even visualize the JS guy saying
"it's solved" when he forgets to tell that the correct choice is to
do the counting on the backend, period. Not hacking a crappy JS
snippet calling a different host.
I obviously ask for more time to make sure it's reliable.
I literally saw something similar happening around some years ago in
a adjacent team I was working.
I want to pay with money, not attention. Both at the same time? Non
negotiable.
dang wrote 4 hours 49 min ago:
(This was a response to [1] via [2] , but we merged that thread into
this one)
URI [1]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45276614
cluckindan wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
If only YouTube made ads run on the side instead of trying to emulate
television.
Iâm not going to sit through two 15-30 second LOUD ads just to see
if a video is actually worth watching.
nightpool wrote 12 min ago:
How much do you think advertisers would be willing to pay for ads
on the side, relative to what they're currently paying? You can see
how people wouldn't be willing to pay the same amount for that,
right?
charcircuit wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
I agree that video ad experience on YouTube isn't great, but they
do offer a subscription to remove ads at least.
slightwinder wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
They also do this (or did?). But I guess on mobile this is not
working well, because of limited screen estate, and people will
obviously not focus much on them.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
Youtube could fix it by counting when the video page is loaded from
the server.
charcircuit wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
The work to do this isn't free. YouTube already has their code
working, but they don't expect browsers to be blocking arbitrary
requests or injecting their own javascript into the page. These
kind of breakage are not free for YouTube to fix and often YouTube
is the one taking the reputational hit for their site being broken.
It ultimately is antisocial behavior to be breaking other's sites
even if technically they can workaround the bugs being added.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
> antisocial behavior
This is hard to take seriously in defense of YouTube. I suppose
the most respectful answer is that I'll be willing to stop when
they do.
humpty-d wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
Stop what? Showing ads? They have to fund it somehow, there
will always be ads. Most users aren't willing to pay for
anything on the internet, and unfortunately revenue is required
to run anything at scale. You can charge users, show ads, or
maybe get funding from Saudis.
kentm wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
> Stop what? Showing ads?
Using abusive advertising practices and being reasonable
about the number of ads shown.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 4 hours 44 min ago:
> Stop what?
Tracking with javascript.
humpty-d wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
So just track you on the back end instead? I don't know
what that really changes. If you mean to say just not track
you at all and show you untargeted ads, well they are worth
less, so they'll have to blast you with more of them.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
> I don't know what that really changes.
It changes what they assume to do with my hardware and
user agent.
humpty-d wrote 58 min ago:
Why be cryptic and weird when you can just plainly say
whatever it is that you actually mean? Communicate
clearly, nobody knows what the f you're on about.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 17 min ago:
> cryptic and weird
Mine is a common opinion within this community. I
won't deny that I was short in my replies but it is
hard to know what is over-explaining in this context.
Additionally, it seems that "tracking with
javascript" is pretty much exactly the topic of these
comments so I'm not sure why I should not have
assumed that it would be clear what I meant.
doright wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
I don't think they'd be interested in fixing this. I suspect
YouTube is trying to create a double bind for users of adblockers
by pitting them against creators' incentives. People in the thread
were discussing ways of disabling uBO filters to restore view
reporting.
pier25 wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
So Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?
Wouldn't surprise me if we now see a new trend of "click like, bell,
and suscribe and don't forget to disable your ad blocker!".
Obviously they don't care about these views since they are not
generating ad revenue. Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals
etc do care though.
dmix wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
> Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?
Youtube isnt quoted in this article. It's someones speculation
spankalee wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
YouTube is quoted in the article.
> Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad
blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported
view counts. Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion
of users utilizing such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic
related to updates to these tools.
carlosjobim wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
View counts is a worthless metric for sponsor deals, as are any other
type of metric provided by a third party.
To get exact metrics, you should use discount codes that are unique
for each channel. Then you will know the exact amount of sales each
sponsorship is netting.
kelvinjps wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
I believe the metrics are before the sponsorship is made, like a
company will only sponsor a creator if that creator has more than a
number of views
gizmo686 wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
YouTube has a BrandConnect program where they facilitate sponsored
videos. I'm not sure how many sponsorships are done through that as
opposed to third party agents though.
cactusplant7374 wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Brave will hit 100 MAU this year. That is a lot of users that will
never see ads.
ziml77 wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
If all videos are affected by this, then it really should not be hard
for these people to adjust their deals with sponsors to compensate.
babypuncher wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
If views aren't being counted, it will still hurt their revenue
from YouTube Premium subcribers. Premium views pay out a lot more
than ad revenue from "free" views so that can hurt a lot.
tantalor wrote 3 hours 37 min ago:
YT premium subscribers should disable adblockers anyway
disiplus wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
no.
CamperBob2 wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Why?
tantalor wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
Because YT doesn't serve ads to those users, so there is
nothing to block at best, and at worst it screws up view
counts.
righthand wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
Youâre wrong. The tracking code is two pronged: 1 to
serve you ads, 2 to track you. By blocking ads while paying
for Youtube Premium you block the tracking end as well.
This goes for any site that sells you an ad-free
subscription. No ads but youâre still being profiled.
LexiMax wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
People who pay for YouTube Premium are already tracked by
virtue of the fact that they are a logged in user who has
a credit card associated with their account.
Google has to do no legwork here to figure out who you
are and what videos you are watching. There is no
ambiguity. There should be no reason to not count views
from Premium subscribers who don't disable their
ad-blocker.
I'm sure Google knows this, and has a good reason for
this behavior that they are not telling us. I'm not sure
what it could be, other than spite.
righthand wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
Yes but I guess the advice is better supported on
platforms where your identity is not directly tied.
No reason to ever turn off your ad-blocker even if you
do pay and they identify you.
tantalor wrote 1 hour 24 min ago:
If the point of "ad blocker" is not to "block ads"
then maybe it needs rebranding.
ndriscoll wrote 1 hour 12 min ago:
Right, they are content blockers with a focus on
malware (but also annoyances like cookie banners or
whatever you'd like via right-click menu). Adware
is a subset of what they block. "Web malware
blocker" is probably the most concise while
reasonably correct characterization.
"People should disable their web malware blockers
to support creators" makes the insanity of the
proposition as clear as it ought to be. "FBI
recommends using a web malware blocker" makes the
advice as obvious as it ought to be.
tantalor wrote 50 min ago:
That makes a lot of sense.
flerchin wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
I pay for premium. YouTube clearly keeps track of what I'm
watching. It's in my history amongst other things. My
adblocker is not coming down.
whatevaa wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
They are serving you that content. They know anyway.
CamperBob2 wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
(Shrug) As a Premium user, Google obviously knows what
videos I'm watching, given that I'm logged in. Failure to
credit the creator accordingly would amount to fraud.
So that sounds like a 'them' problem, not a 'me' problem.
There is no reason for ad tracking to play any role in the
process whatsoever.
granzymes wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
According to the GitHub issue, YouTube didnât change anything.
There are two endpoints that can be used to attribute a view. One is
called multiple times throughout a video playback and has been in the
easylist privacy filter for years. The other is called at the start
of a playback, and was just added to the list (the timing lines up
with the reports of view drops from tech YouTubers).
This is not definitive proof that easylist caused the view drops, but
itâs Iâve read the issue and a writeup by a YouTube creator and
it seems pretty likely.
swiftcoder wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
That's not quite what the github issue says? There appear to be
several potentially contributing changes in the time window, and
one of them actually re-enables a previously blocked YouTube
analytics endpoint
granzymes wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
The re-enabled endpoint is yet a third endpoint different from
the two I mentioned above.
Turns out YouTube has a lot of analytics.
reddalo wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
>Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals
Laughs in SponsorBlock
stemlord wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
I find it incredibly difficult to shed any sympathy for youtube
"content creators". Youtube was most entertaining, or at least most
interesting before anyone was monetizing the platform. Same goes
for most of thr rest of the web but I digress
zanellato19 wrote 3 hours 7 min ago:
That's bizarre. I watch a lot of great content on YouTube that's
possible because those people get paid. I would rather like if
YouTube paid them _more_ because the sponsors and patrons of the
world prove that not all views are the same. Sadly, a lot of shit
content gets lots and lots of views
everforward wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
I dislike it because it exposes content creators to similar
pressures as traditional TV. There's a lot of content that
doesn't get made because that content would be unsponsorable or
worse yet would make the creator in general unsponsorable.
It's also created some strange and twisted linguistics to
appease sponsors or YouTube's algorithm like "unalive" or "PDF
file" (as a standin for pedophile).
I guess it's the way of the world, but the introduction of
heavy monetization has definitely influenced the kind of
content YouTube carries.
whatevaa wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
You can make content without monetization in mind. But it's
like giving your time away.
Content which doesn't get made without sponsorship wouldn't
get made even if sponsorships didn't exist.
People want to get rewarded for they work, you know. Do you
also want your plumber to work for free?
PeterisP wrote 23 min ago:
I'd probably be OK if all the content which doesn't get
made without sponsorship wouldn't get made at all, and the
people who work as content creators stopped doing so. There
is an overabundance of new content, having 10x less content
would be perfectly fine, and in pretty much every niche
there are amateur enthusiasts who clearly (based on their
amount of viewers) are giving their time away, and their
content is in many ways preferable and "more real" than the
professionals - so I'd be OK if all the professionals stop
and these awkward amateur enthusiasts are all that remain.
The same applies to web and blogs; the ability to monetize
them by ads (and I do remember the "old web" before it was
the case) increased the content but drowned out viewership
for the true enthusiasts running things in their spare
time, which IMHO were more valuable and I think that regime
was better; again, losing 90% or 99% of the content
wouldn't be bad in my mind, there still would be more than
enough for anyone to ever "consume".
rafram wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
It would be great to live in a world where everyone could make
cool stuff without needing to get paid, but we don't.
Monetization is why YouTube gained a community in the first
place.
ahepp wrote 3 hours 53 min ago:
That simply isnât true. YouTube had a huge community when it
was just amateurs sharing videos for the love of the sport.
Professional content creators didnât come along until much
later.
whatevaa wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
You can do that today too. Like a channel Airborne
Entertainment, strapping a boat motor to a car. Dump
engineering, just two dudes doing stupid shit.
rafram wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
And they stayed because they could get paid for it.
Eisenstein wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
It can be argued whether it is better to have creators who
make it their income to constantly produce content or to
have a revolving door of amateurs who cut their teeth on
video production in youtube and move on.
jjice wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
Hell, YouTube even added that feature where it'll autoskip commonly
skipped section so it's basically a built in SponsorBlock at this
point (no doubt helped powered by those who skip via SponsorBlock).
I'm surprised I haven't seen any controversy from people who are
having their sponsors pay less because of this.
BizarroLand wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
I'll stick with Sponsorblock since Googles motto is "Embrace,
Expand, Extinguish"
craftkiller wrote 51 min ago:
It's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" (assuming you're referring
to the phrase from Microsoft [1] )
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_ext...
Workaccount2 wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
I believe it is only a premium feature, and premium user views
pay substantially more than sponsors or ads.
netsharc wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
Hah, the next move will be picture-in-picture ads (whether the ad
or the content will be in the box in the corner depends on the
desperation...
Reminds me of F1 racing coverage on a free-to-air German TV
network being reduced to a letterbox..
ta1243 wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
Idiocracy TV
URI [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2...
PaulHoule wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
YouTube stole that user interface, Judge should have sued
them.
mitthrowaway2 wrote 4 hours 21 min ago:
YouTube already does this for livestreams.
FinnKuhn wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
In my opinion the only sponsorships that actually work are the
ones that are integrated into the content.
For example Linus Tech Tips wearing his clothing in his videos
and using his screwdriver. For car and/or hardware channels I
often see sponsors products being used throughout the video as
well, which you can't skip with Sponsor block.
jorvi wrote 19 min ago:
What I've never understood is, aren't people slowly waking up
to product placement and sponsored content?
Whenever I see something thoroughly being advertised, and
especially stealthily advertised, I immediately assume you
have a shit product and need to bribe your way to success.
Nothing turns me off more from a product than seeing an
advertisement for it.
unsignedint wrote 37 min ago:
Product placement ads can be the best kind when theyâre
done well. The catch is they take far more effort to weave
naturally into content, and that limits the kinds of
sponsorships you can accept.
The sweet spot is when it feels seamless, but too often
creators overdo it and the result is hilariously awkward.
Think of someone discussing, say, the dangers of mountain
climbing, then suddenly blurting out: âAnd you know what
else is dangerous? An unprotected connection. Which is why
you need X VPN!â
legitster wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
Honestly, LTT does a real good job of their in-content ads as
well. 30 seconds at the beginning and end. Them being so
short and sweet really makes them more palatable.
What's crazy is they've said their 60 seconds of ads per
video generate way more revenue per video than Google's
minutes of Google Adsense ads. So the real story here is the
collapse of Adsense.
StackRanker3000 wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
What do you mean when you say âworkâ? That you personally
find them helpful? Or that theyâre the only ones that
canât be easily avoided even if the viewer wants to?
I think itâs pretty clear that other forms of sponsorships
also drive revenue to advertisers (whatever people may feel
about that)
FinnKuhn wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
I think the two existing replies to this question already
answered this mostly, but I would define a "working"
sponsorship as one that makes me consider buying it.
Sponsorships that are basically just an add I don't even
see thanks to SponsorBlock for example. So those are "not
working" for me.
But for the LTT screwdriver or the bamboo labs 3D printers
where I see how they can be used I actually consider buying
them or have already done so. One factor for this is
obviously that they can't be skipped, but the bigger one is
that they are obviously more relevant for me as I am
already interested in the video's topic and therefore the
products used in it.
BizarroLand wrote 3 hours 13 min ago:
Work as in, "are effective at advertising a product"
Showing "regular" people solving common recurring issues
like, "what clothes should I wear, what tool will simplify
this task, what products are effective at a good value,
what software/hardware can accomplish the goals I have set"
are the only effective advertising for many people.
Sure, with kids you can show them a cool toy that other
kids are playing with, inspiring desire.
You can show adults and teens a sexy girl or a hot guy
somehow attached to the product so that by association your
product is hot or sexy, but those are the low handing fruit
and only work on specific demographics.
However, if you can clearly identify your target audience
and then put a product that matches that audience in front
of them while showing how the product is being used, thats
it. Everyone who would purchase that type of product will
buy it.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
> Or that theyâre the only ones that canât be easily
avoided even if the viewer wants to?
Surely this one given what they wrote.
> which you can't skip
this_user wrote 5 hours 21 min ago:
But are really this many users actively using ad blockers? Presumably,
a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native
app that doesn't even support this. If we subtract them, then a
significant share of users on browser would have to be using EasyList.
PeterisP wrote 12 min ago:
One report ( [1] ) indicated that more than half of Americans use an
ad blocker.
URI [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/
drnick1 wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
"a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native
app that doesn't even support this."
Laughs in NewPipe.
xandrius wrote 6 min ago:
Laughs in patched YT.
miyuru wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
Something like ~30% of desktop users use ad-block.
If you are tech or tech-adjacent content, it can double or triple
that.
geerlingguy wrote 3 hours 37 min ago:
40-50% of desktop users on my channel, heh.
I don't hold it against anyone. YouTube's ads are horrible, and
overstuffed into videos.
I use premium and know not everyone can afford it, but one concern
I have is premium views are also not counted if someone still uses
the adblocker while logged into YouTube premium. (So you miss out
on the view and on that extra bit of premium revenue).
charcircuit wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
The view drop only happened for desktop views.
throw_m239339 wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
What's the meaning of this? Is Google trying to make content creators
tell their viewers not to use adblockers? I don't think it's easylist's
problem here. I don't understand.
ecshafer wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
I am not sure why this is a bug? Youtube is tracking people, this
blocks them tracking people. A side effect of a view not being counted
on Youtube, is 100% Youtube's problem, and doesn't effect the user in
any way.
paxys wrote 2 hours 30 min ago:
It doesn't really affect YouTube either, it affects creators who rely
on view counts to monetize their channels.
swiftcoder wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
It seems like a YouTube bug, that they are performing view tracking
on the client, when they own the whole server backend and could just
as well track them server side (which wouldn't be blockable in the
first place)
paxys wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Server-side tracking would be the easiest thing in the world to
spoof.
swiftcoder wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
How is it any easier to spoof than client-side tracking?
In the server-side case I can certainly increase views by
fetching the video multiple times, but in the client side case I
can hit the analytics endpoint directly just as easily
nonameiguess wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
It seems like server-side would suffer from issues due to buffering
lookahead and autoplay. A client can request a video that is
skipped within seconds, but if buffering causes it to request five
minutes worth, the server only sees five minutes were requested,
whereas the client can clearly tell how much of that was actually
watched.
slightwinder wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
It's a problem for the Creators. Their stats are lower than they
should be, which could have negative effects on their business, like
YouTubes recommendation-system not working as efficient as it should
be. Similar, would they have a weaker selling-point for companies
advertising on their channel.
It should be noted that YouTube income is unaffected by this, as Ads
are still shown and counted to people without AdBlockers. So this is
only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.
thomastjeffery wrote 4 hours 8 min ago:
That's a rule defined by YouTube and/or advertisers in their
relationship with content creators. By defining that rule, YouTube
and/or advertisers have chosen to drag my participation into that
relationship. My participation does not belong in their
relationship. The only thing I can do to communicate my opinion on
the matter is to do precisely what this "bug" entails.
awaythrow999 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
Aren't many channels funded by the companies they pretend to get
sponsorship from? If you look at the OSINT and Natsec adjacent
topics there are many who have had the same sponsor for years:
ground.news ... many pretend that they are indie content creators
when they are just the marketing / growth hacking arm of the
sponsor.
Examples: Caspian report, Warfronts, Geopolitics decoded, ...
Many of them (the content creator) are even located in the same
city.
slightwinder wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
> many pretend that they are indie content creators when they are
just the marketing / growth hacking arm of the sponsor.
Just curious, but can't they be both?
I don't know those channels. The one I regularly see are very
diverse in their partners, and usually the content is unrelated
to the promotions. But overall those promotions are negotiated
based on viewer counts, and at a certain size, they are more
valuable than earnings from ads.
awaythrow999 wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
Absolutely can be both. And often they make it clear: like
cappello army does. But then there are the more shady ones
where it's less transparent
humpty-d wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
Any credible evidence that they get enough money from the
sponsorships to be considered fully funded by them? Or that
ground news uses influence over these channels?
I can throw a dart and hit a random podcast that has been
sponsored by blue chew for years, but that doesn't mean said
podcast is funded by them or bends to their whims.
IMO your comment is pure conspiracy theory.
awaythrow999 wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
Why would thet be a conspiracy theory. The public facing guy
who is behind Warfronts has 4 other channels that peddle
content unrelated to natsec/warfare. If you follow "cappy army"
and the drama he went through at "task and purpose" his former
employer it becomes pretty clear that there are entire media
companies behind what looks like "a single hobbyist content
creator expat living in Prague" ...
actionfromafar wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
Eventually the whole system will rebalance. TV ads were shown to
people even though you couldn't if any single person was watching
or not.
Where does line go? If a future "Adblocker 3000" don't let
advertisers capture you eyemovements in realtime 30 times per
second, would that be sad?
Seems the ball is with Youtube. They can compensete and pay out
more. Or not.
falcor84 wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Oh, really, are you sure? They still charge advertisers the full
amount? My understanding was that they're only charged if there is
evidence of an "ad impression" which there shouldn't be if the
request was blocked
izzydata wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
That still isn't an issue for the end-user. It is Youtube's problem
to keep their content creators happy and not mine.
Personally I would even prefer anything that allows for a Youtube
alternative to do better.
ecshafer wrote 5 hours 6 min ago:
But why would I, as a user of Easy Privacy, care about this? It is
protecting my own privacy. Someone trying to get more money on the
internet isn't really my concern.
Wololooo wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
While I agree with you, not every channel is big and some of the
smaller ones might rely partially on this in order to get
materials/sponsorship in order to be able to have the parts to do
some projects they make videos on because it is more a passion
project and they might barely break even or even make losses on
doing it.
The context that I am thinking about is, for example, a small
hobbyist that might rely on the added value for making some odd
things, requiring exotic hardware, quantities of materials that
could be prohibitively expensive or the lend of access to said
hardware might be blocked behind viewership metrics, and there
this might make some difference, and I personally enjoy those
little odd channels and this is why I, as a viewer, might care
about it. But again, I totally see where you are coming from.
0xbadcafebee wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
For every one hobbyist making some kind of interesting video
that they couldn't have made without ad money, there are 1,000
moronic influencers making the same video about the same thing,
grasping at ad money or free products to shill. YouTube is 99%
dreck now. Hooray for the hobbyist, poor us having to wade
through the influencer swamp.
slightwinder wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
You don't have to care about it. But this is not about privacy,
as this API likely does not impact your privacy. YouTube can
track what you watch anyway.
And if you watch videos, there is a chance you also enjoy them,
so it would be in your own interest to support creators in making
more of them. But that's a bit more complicated.
anon1395 wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
If i am correct, YouTube is trying to say "If you don't watch
the ads, you are harming the poor, small content creators!"
slightwinder wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
Maybe, but that doesn't matter for this case. This is
specifically about the view count, not whether you see the
ads. But I've seen this was in the meanwhile merged with
another thread, which is about the statement(?) from YouTube.
groby_b wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Because you might have a perfectly selfish stance in the short
term, but it turns out that creators not making enough money
leads to creators not making content.
Someone you care to watch not making enough money to make the
things you like to watch is your concern, because making
equivalent content yourself is out of your reach.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
It's worse than creators not making content, they move their
content to be lower rung click bait garbage to maximize
ad-views.
If "smart" people use ad-block, then all the content gravitates
towards those who don't.
kentm wrote 2 hours 22 min ago:
> It's worse than creators not making content, they move
their content to be lower rung click bait garbage to maximize
ad-views.
They will do this whether or not people use ad-blockers.
We've seen this happen before; someone will claim that they
are an ethical ad company and don't do shady things, people
allow-list in ad blockers, then they start ramping up.
I remember back in the day where Google was a "good
advertiser" because they had simple textual ads and didn't do
shady things. IIRC plenty of ad blockers just allow-listed
Google at that time. And then they acquired Doubleclick.
ndriscoll wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
The videos for smart people are things like:
* University lectures
* Conference talks
* Random clips of homeowners doing some DIY repair
i.e. things that were being done anyway, and someone decided
to post it online because it's free and they wanted to be
helpful. "Content creators" are already almost never making
videos with high value information. The entire idea of
"creating content" rather than "sharing information" is a bad
framing to start from. When we recognize that "sharing
information" is the high-value action, we're better able to
see that it not only can be done by someone who isn't a
full-time "creator", but may actually be done better by
people who aren't devoted to it since their occupation is to
be a practitioner of the field they're sharing information
about. i.e. they are better informed.
pseudalopex wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
Smart people enjoy many different things.
ndriscoll wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
What I listed encompasses many things. You can find
lectures on philosophy, biology, anatomy, psychology,
physics, Russian literature, religion, history, or
whatever topic you're interested in. It's more about
depth of information and level of expertise of the
presenter vs. "lower rung click bait garbage".
Information that demands your full attention for an
extended period of time and expects you'll put in effort
to engage with it instead of just throwing gimmicks at
you to hold a piece of your attention before you click
away.
Or if you want to enjoy some slop, then apparently we'll
all get plenty of that if the smart people block malware,
so no problem.
Generally speaking, something with wide appeal is going
to be trash anyway because most people aren't going to
want to (or will be unable to) engage with any given
topic at more than a superficial level. e.g. compare
Andrew Ng's Coursera MOOC to problem sets you can find
from his real class at Stanford. It is obvious that he
watered down the information hard for Coursera. Almost
every class on those MOOC sites is of the "X for non-X
majors" variety at best (and that's for people who are
motivated enough to self-learn!), which IMO is why it
could never truly be disruptive. The "creators" people
are talking about are generally this except even more
targeted at mass audiences.
Even for people who are interested in "smart" stuff, 100x
more people will watch some 10 minute video of surface
level discussion with doodles about algebraic geometry[0]
and then move onto another 10 minute video vs. putting in
the work to engage with 15+ hours of lectures on the
subject from a Fields Medalist[1]. World-class
researchers provide graduate level educational materials
for free (which is awesome), but they could never succeed
as "content creators" because any given video will only
get ~1k views after years of being up.
[0] [1]
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MflpyJwhMhQ
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8yHsr3EF...
mbirth wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
I remember a time where people actually had to pay money to
publish their videos (on their own server, using their own
storage). And they still did it if they wanted to get something
out into the world.
Workaccount2 wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
The correct approach is to not use these services. Ad-blocking
and using the service just sends the message that you are
leeching, not that the service is bad.
autoexec wrote 3 hours 4 min ago:
Ad blocking and using the service only sends the message that
the service with ads is bad, but the service without ads is
acceptable.
Often this means "the way you've implemented ads is terrible
enough that I went out of my way to block them" and sometimes
it means "any and all ads are terrible and I don't want them"
There's nothing at all wrong with ad blocking. Someone who puts
their content on the public internet has zero right to require
me to view that content, or to control how much of it I see or
how I choose to view it. If I want to block ads, or only watch
the last 20 seconds, or watch the whole thing played backwards
that's my business. This is equally true for websites where I'm
free to decide what to download and how to display it in my
browser.
SoftTalker wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
No more than going to the bathroom or getting a drink during a
TV commercial break is leeching. Watching ads is not and has
never been obligatory for the viewer.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
You are free to go to the bathroom or get a drink when a
youtube ad is playing.
Telaneo wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
I'm also free to automatically skip ads on both TV and
youtube.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co....
pessimizer wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
And also free to block it. What was your point again?
baseballdork wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
Correct by what metric? Why do I care if I send the message
that I'm leeching?
mhuffman wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
It seems to be sending the same message either way, no? Either
not watching them or the ad-blocking reducing their count seems
to be the same in the end.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
If you had a lemonade stand, and I came and drank one, told
you it was bad and didn't pay, that's one thing. I'd probably
not come back.
If I kept coming everyday, multiple times a day, and never
paid "because its bad", it's extremely unlikely that I don't
like the lemonade, and extremely likely that I just like that
it's free as long as I complain.
autoexec wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
It's more like a lemonade stand which advertises a free
glass of lemonade to anyone who asks for one, but every
time someone comes up and asks for a glass the guy handing
out cups gives a long-winded highly insulting sermon about
how the person drinking should live their life.
Then the lemonade stand guy feels entitled to bitch about
it when more and more people start showing up wearing
headphones because they don't want to hear his bullshit
even though literally nobody came for his abuse, what they
came for was just the free lemonade.
The people still show up though because clearly people like
the lemonade, they just hate the annoying guy who won't
shut up about his rude opinions nobody asked for.
Telaneo wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
If I drink your lemonade, you no longer have it. If I watch
your video, you still have it.
Workaccount2 wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
The cost to youtube is the overhead. Youtube doesn't even
pay for the videos, but the infrastructure, delivery
network, and service is very expensive.
It's a very naive view to think that serving videos is a
zero-cost endeavor because the video isn't consumed.
Telaneo wrote 2 hours 34 min ago:
If they don't want people to watch without paying, they
can put up a paywall.
mhuffman wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
I am not sure that this example really works. Youtube is
happy to give you all the "free lemonade" you want (from
videos that aren't really monetizable) but the ones that
are, they make onerous to use. I get 20+ ads per day right
now from an Internet service that I already use, and get
untold ads from products that I would never use. Some of
the ads are up to 1 hour in duration. Granted, they
mercifully offer a skip button, but it seems to me that the
ad is being forced on you, not offered to you. That is the
big difference. A funny, engaging ad is not a problem for
nearly anyone.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
No, the ad is not being forced on you.
It's your choice to go to youtube and watch the video. No
one is forcing that on you. Youtube is a service that is
offered. If you don't like youtube or the ads, you can
not use the service. Just like no one is forcing you to
go to the lemonade stand.
NewsaHackO wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
Or he can just use it and block ads :)
philipallstar wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
It's not about sending a message. It's about making sure you
use a service in the way it's being offered, or not using it
at all.
nemomarx wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
YouTube is free to only serve videos to paying users if
they don't like ad blockers. it would destroy the site, but
they're technically able to do it.
mhuffman wrote 4 hours 44 min ago:
Well that is not a law, and even bringing it up on a site
called "Hacker News" makes me almost think you are making a
joke that is going over my head.
rapind wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
> So this is only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.
Pretty sure this is harmful to youtube as well as it lowers the
value (less personalization data) for advertisers. Also the
knock-on effect of impacting creators, meaning less investment in
creating content.
That being said, I've always hated this business model. It's
created so many other problems in our society. Resulting in a shift
to authoritarian leadership in many countries.
DoctorOW wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
Adblock users already have no value for advertisers.
cluckindan wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
Sounds like YT is trying to mobilize creators and influencers against
adblocking.
alkonaut wrote 4 min ago:
Sounds fair? Both creators and YouTube have the same goal of having
people watch ads (or pay not to).
tomrod wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
Morally indefensible. Adblockers are used as a response to Google
externalizing/ignoring the cost of proper ad platform curation.
marcosscriven wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
This was my exact thought when I read about it. YouTube clearly has
a record of what Iâve watched, because itâs in my watch
history.
What they are missing is proof Iâve watched the ads - which I
havenât.
natebc wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
They may in fact not know what you watched. I was having an issue
with my youtube recommendations becoming generic to the point of
irrelevance, when i went and looked at my watch history and it
hadn't been updated in MONTHS despite me watching youtube daily.
Turns out that pi-hole was blocking the endpoint that records the
watch history! IIRC allowing queries for something like
s.youtube.com made my watch history start working.
I agree that they should know w/o all this client based nonsense
but :shrug:. They don't, somehow!
reddalo wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
> against adblocking
And extensions such as SponsorBlock [1], which help user skipping
sponsored sections or useless intros in videos.
URI [1]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/
MattBearman wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
YouTube premium actually has its own version of sponsorblock
called skip ahead, it works really well, so theyâre not
ideologically opposed to skipping sponsored segments
paxys wrote 2 hours 29 min ago:
Plus it works on mobile and TVs.
disiplus wrote 3 hours 11 min ago:
Where ? Like I have sponsor block on a desktop but on my pixel
I don't have it and would like to have the option. Have the yt
premium but don't see the option to skip sponsors.
Andrex wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
If you double tap to skip 10 seconds during an ad read, it
should appear as a button in the bottom right. It does not
pop up proactively. It's algorithmically-based on which parts
of the video get skipped most often by viewers.
delecti wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
I've got Youtube premium and have never noticed that popping
up. Is this platform or browser dependent? Is it only on some
videos?
bogtog wrote 12 min ago:
Might just be the channels you're viewing. This video should
have a "Jump ahead" appear around 0:19:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs5PfanIkC0&t=1s
Wohlf wrote 3 hours 27 min ago:
It isn't automatic for me unless I try to skip a sponsored
segment myself, then it will kick in and skip me to the end
of that segment with a popup above the scroll bar saying they
did so.
gloxkiqcza wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
Iâm surprised they allow ads (sponsor segments) they get no
cut from at all.
anon1395 wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
Why would they not allow them?
Sanzig wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
Sponsorships are the primary way YouTube creators make money.
There aren't many things that could knock YouTube off its
near-monopoly market position, but banning sponsorships is
definitely one. Creators would revolt.
izacus wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
They pretty surely would not.
xmprt wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
Creators are already starting to build their own
platforms for hosting videos and many of these are quite
successful unlike prior iterations from 10 years ago.
sebastiennight wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
Do you have some examples? I am still a bit sore from
my adventures as a creator on Viddler and Dailymotion.
pyth0 wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
I would point to platforms like Curiosity Stream and
Nebula, which are creator driven. Though I would not
exactly call them Youtube replacements, as they are
more just platforms designed for supporting specific
creators more directly (akin to Patreon). These
platforms are often advertised as in-video
sponsorships, so going back to the original point, I
do think creators would be very vocal if such ads
were banned.
SoftTalker wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
Yes, I discovered this recently and it's nice. I presume they
are not opposed to it because it's not costing them any lost
revenue.
humpty-d wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
That doesn't just target sponsor segments. It's for stuff
commonly skipped. Like annoying parts of videos. Some video
game guy I occasionally watching thinks he needs to sing for
some reason, very useful for skipping those sections.
mustyoshi wrote 5 hours 6 min ago:
Ads are how they get paid until they're big enough for alternative
revenue generation.
avian wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
I don't think YouTube needed to do anything. The change influenced
creators' bottom line so they are motivated on their own to
mobilize their viewers against this change.
cluckindan wrote 4 hours 44 min ago:
It was YT that changed the ad delivery mechanism to prevent view
counting, not adblockers.
kllrnohj wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
It was an easylist change (so adblockers) that caused the
issue: [1] Whether or not you consider that an issue shrug but
it's not directly YT's fault.
URI [1]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/2d39de407d...
andrewmcwatters wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
A lot of people clearly didnât like Yukiâs response, but heâs
entirely right.
Bigsy wrote 4 hours 36 min ago:
Right or wrong you don't think it was unduly combative right off
the bat? Manners cost nothing.
andrewmcwatters wrote 4 hours 31 min ago:
Itâs not how I would have responded either, but people are
entitled to their own ways of communicating.
ecshafer wrote 5 hours 8 min ago:
The thumbs downs on Yuki's responses are baffling. It is a privacy
filter, improving privacy. There is a strong para-social
relationship with many younger internet users, so maybe people
really do feel strongly about affecting their favorite youtube
star's view count? Or it could be youtube creators who are worried.
I can't think of any other reasons a user would be on the side of
youtube here.
Avamander wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
This actually makes me feel more confident that it's actually
blocking tracking and not caving in to vanity needs.
NewsaHackO wrote 3 hours 54 min ago:
> There is a strong para-social relationship with many younger
internet users, so maybe people really do feel strongly about
affecting their favorite youtube star's view count?
100% this. They were even threatening him with facing the ire of
social media if he didn't reopen the issue.
philipallstar wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
Picking sides is silly. Just don't use YouTube, or pay for it
with money or ad time and data.
zelphirkalt wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
I think, if that was YouTube's goal, they should close their
platform tomorrow, and put everything behind a paid login. That
would be the honest move. Instead they are trying to sneakily
profit from viewers, by sneaking in ads in whatever way
possible. They are employing dark pattern after pattern and are
extorting "consent". It is entirely reasonable to block their
dark patterns and just watch videos without ads. If it bothers
them, go ahead, hide everything behind paid access. See how
quickly their monopoly will evaporate then.
lupusreal wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
I'll use it and I'll not pay.
SchizoDuckie wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
Go complain to Youtube, where the views should be measured on the
backend instead of via an API call.
Does anyone realize how many missed views this implies??
giancarlostoro wrote 4 hours 44 min ago:
What if its both? ;)
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
Ad-block views don't help anyone anyway, so I'm not sure why this
would matter. If anything it's more accurate.
owisd wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
View count is used to guide to price embedded sponsors, so in the
short term matters while things get recalibrated.
slightwinder wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
I also see the opposite problem: can one abuse that API to artificial
inflate the view count?
SoftTalker wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
They certainly are counting views on the backend also, and I'm sure
they know exactly what the cause of the discrepancy (or "drop" as
they term it) is.
giancarlostoro wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
They probably use a combination of the API and raw server requests
due to how easy it would be otherwise to spoof viewership for ad
revenue fraud. Would not surprise me anyway.
thrance wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
It does kinda make sense for once, you probably wouldn't want to just
count API calls for views. I heard you need to watch a significant
portion of the video before it counts as a view.
driverdan wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
Source:
URI [1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597
izacus wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
Interesting, I thought it was due to absolutely horrible TV UI redesign
which now shows exactly 1 and a bit of a video thumbnail on my 77" TV.
Who the heck designs that.
Insanity wrote 4 hours 49 min ago:
Huh, I'm having a hard time interpreting what that looks like. Have a
link to a photo you can share anywhere? The "1 and a bit" part is
confusing.
izacus wrote 4 hours 32 min ago:
Not around the TV right now, but they increased the size of the
thumbnails in the first row of "Recommended" content to the point
where only one is visible fully. (Not unlike new Netflix UI)
I might be in some A/B test tho.
Insanity wrote 4 hours 31 min ago:
ahh, that sounds like a poor UI indeed given the screen
real-estate.
faangguyindia wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
i used to watch lots of videos, but since LLM came into being i find
them much faster than watching videos.
Infact, i used to watch videos because they used to be more "targeted"
at problem solving when i ran into any issues.
but these days LLM ftw.
the_af wrote 5 hours 40 min ago:
How are LLMs an alternative to videos? They are different mediums.
What's your use case?
shagie wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
Not OP (and I don't use it for this case), but I suspect that the
instructional "how do you do X" videos that supplanted the "look up
the blog post" of even longer ago.
"How do you start a react application" and going to [1] (incognito
or private session suggested to avoid search history getting you
react application suggestions for the next several months) and
watching those videos.
For many people looking for a guide, they've switched to an LLM
which gives them a more tailored experience.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+do+you+st...
metalman wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
My bill for access to phone and internet where all data is celular,
runs $3000~6000/yr,and includes a domain and email, I refuse to watch
any adds ever or pay for anything else that is not property that can be
re sold, rented, insured, transfered, or returned cause it's junk, or I
dont like it.
I pay my fucking rent, have payed for a long time, and know that there
is another way that everything can be configured that sends the
"platforms" packing.
The difference is a world where everyone self manages there affairs,
does there best, can work and contribute, while living there best
lives, or the nasty shit show we have now with a tiny minority
attempting to puppet the whole world and everything in it.
bachmeier wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
Maybe views are simply down. I can't be the only one getting tired of
the out-of-control sponsored videos. Even if you pay for YT Premium,
you get hit with that crap on most of the popular channels.
pier25 wrote 5 hours 25 min ago:
Anecdotal but my usage has been slowly dropping in the past year or
two as the experience has gotten worse. First it was the terrible
search results and then with shorts plaguing the whole thing.
meatmanek wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
And you think everyone simply made the same decision as you on the
same exact day?
SoftTalker wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Anecdotally I am watching less. Not because of sponsorships, but
because more and more content is AI-generated slop or copied
(stolen) from other channels and reposted.
jdiff wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
But we're talking about a substantial viewership drop, across a
single platform (only desktop), all simultaneously on a single
day. That's clearly not any sort of organic change.
bachmeier wrote 5 hours 38 min ago:
It's possible that the YTers complaining about this are affected
once you bring the algorithm into it.
aszantu wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
Pretty sure it's caused by the algorithm not serving the user
anymore... Unless I block a channel forever I only get served the same
channels over and over or it's an endless reel of ai slop with that
dead crappy voice on all kinds of variations...
magicalhippo wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
I too have noticed a lot more slop in my feed the last several
months, and generally have to explicitly check my subscriptions to be
sure I don't miss videos.
And I'm quite deliberate with avoiding ragebait and slop, and I
remove stuff from my watch history if I get duped etc.
That said, I have noticed a trend amongst the creators I've
subscribed to that the average video length has gone up. This has
been a longer term trend, but many who used to do 30-40 min videos
now often to 1-1.5 hr videos.
I've heard YouTube punishes people quitting a video midway, so
perhaps there's something going on there too. At least for myself I
often have to watch these videos over multiple sessions, and chances
are there that I just forget and move on.
So perhaps some compounding factors making things worse.
jlarocco wrote 5 hours 42 min ago:
Yeah, these companies are pushing AI so hard they don't see it's
destroying the value they had. I don't want to watch an AI reading
Wikipedia, showing stock photography, and I doubt anybody else does,
either.
And lately they're starting to get more malicious:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHW24jOYVw
imglorp wrote 5 hours 59 min ago:
Could it be the recommendation algorithm is so terrible that people
can't even?
Mine is just a sewage firehose so yes, I watch less now, and I use
NewPipe on mobile to have a chance to see my subscriptions.
yard2010 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
I couldn't stand the shorts nonsense. I don't want to consume this
kind of media, why force it down my throat.
crazygringo wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
It's based on what you watch.
My recommendations are entirely in line with what I watch. I never
need to check channels i like for a new video because they
automatically get recommended.
If yours is a sewage firehouse, are you logged in? Or are you sharing
your account with family members who watch what you consider
"sewage"?
Telaneo wrote 3 hours 8 min ago:
Mine's still stuck on recommending me culvert uncloging videos
after I watched one way back. I switched to Freetube and imported
my subscriptions, and that made things much better, since now I
can't even accidentally see what my recommended videos would be.
portaouflop wrote 5 hours 12 min ago:
As noted above my recommendations are excellent and a source of great
joy.
I donât get how other people have such an inverse experience
Measter wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Here's my experience of recommendations right now: videos I've
already seen, videos on topics I have no interest in, or a
completely empty page.
the_af wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
I wonder about this. I'm not discounting your experience, but my
YouTube recommendation page is great.
I only see my subscriptions, or things directly related to things
I've watched and liked. If I remove a disliked video from my watch
history, it "mostly" works to tell YouTube I don't want to see it
anymore.
I very seldom see crap I really do not want in my YouTube
feed/recommendations. All I see are hobby videos and cartoon clips of
things I like.
This is totally unlike Facebook (where random garbage recommendations
are the norm) or Reddit (which is hit or miss).
andrewflnr wrote 4 hours 18 min ago:
Same. My recommended feed is relatively ok, but I'm fairly ruthless
with the "I don't want this" and "Don't recommend this channel"
buttons. Meanwhile I've been off Facebook for years in large part
because their feed appeared to be unsalvageable.
PaulHoule wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
On the computer attached to my stereo YouTube shows me almost 100%
conservative, boring, safe but good music recommendations -- all
things I've liked before, it rarely tries to show me anything new
or challenging.
On another browser it shows me mostly videos about stereo
equipment.
One yet another it shows me a mix of videos aimed at someone who
listens to The Ezra Klein Show. That browser and the previous
browser sometimes get a burst of videos about "How Brand X has lost
its way" or "Why Y sucks today".
One time on shorts I clicked on a video where an A.I. generated
woman transforms into a fox on America's Got Talent and then after
that it wanted to show me hundreds of A.I. slop videos of Chinese
girls transforming into just about anything on the same show with
the same music and the same reaction shots.
If you click on a few Wheat Waffles videos you might quickly find
your feed is nothing but blackpill incel videos and also videos
that apply a blackpill philosophy to life such that not only is
dating futile but everything else is futile too.
The conclusion I draw from it is that you can't easily draw
conclusions about the experience other people have with
recommenders, it's one reason why political ads on social are so
problematic, you can tell baldfaced lies to people who are
inclined to believe them and skeptical people will never see them
and hold anyone to account.
vorpalhex wrote 5 hours 13 min ago:
I did an experiment where I really invested in my YouTube
suggestions, and you can definitely groom your recommendations, and
then they can be pretty good. But then you have an issue where you
get into a new hobby or a new interest, and so you watch some
videos attributed to that, your recommendations spiral back out of
control. So you can do a whole bunch of grooming work, but probably
they just go back to being like 80% wrong. I got vaguely interested
in the piano, and now 80% of my recommendations are music related,
but not actually things I care about, and they've just gone back to
being total trash.
SoftTalker wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
My recommendations are generally aligned with my interests as
derived from my view history, likes, and subscriptions. But more
and more of it is AI-generated or videos copied from the original
creator and reposted by someone else. I try to use "don't show me
videos fron this channel" on those but more and more just appears.
I think there must be bots creating new channels and
copying/generating content faster than I can block them.
And please, let me opt out of Shorts permanently. I keep telling
them I don't want shorts but they always come back. I pay for a
Premium account, so they should resepect my wishes on this.
the_af wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
Agreed on Shorts. I don't understand why YT is pushing so hard on
those, they are never going to be TikTok and I repeatedly signal
I don't want to see them.
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
The trending page is usually so decadent and tasteless that I'm
ashamed.
qilo wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
Trending page[0] is gone for non logged-in users as of couple
months now. (No idea if it's still up for logged-in users) As a
result my YouTube consumption went down (not complaining).
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending
bluSCALE4 wrote 5 hours 47 min ago:
Log out and youâll be even more ashamed.
hightrix wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
Turn off Watch History and enjoy bliss.
bluSCALE4 wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
Yep! I actually mentioned this as well. I did it recently and
though I miss some of the recommendations, I can't say I miss
them that much.
mikert89 wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
I wish their algorithm would show me videos with my actual interests,
instead of some kind of repeat material click maximization
kouteiheika wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
Have you tried clicking on the the dot dropdown menu and selecting
"Not interested" or "Don't recomment channel"?
hightrix wrote 4 hours 15 min ago:
I've found that "Not Interested" does either nothing or sends an
engagement signal to show me more of the same. "Don't recommend
channel" does seem to work with that channel, at least.
pndy wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
I'm seeing abundance channels with generated content - doesn't matter
if it's official page, "proxy" services or apps. It's always
heartbreaking stories about poor senior women whose lives are hell
because of their families or homeless girls who want to eat leftovers
from the plates of the rich, or supposed death of celebrities.
Considering I have zero interest in this stuff it seems their
algorithm pushes such trash by cross-referencing with the closest
thing possible - even by a digital picometer distance.
grues-dinner wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
I'm getting videos with under 10 views in my recommendations now.
They're AI generated "educational" videos, but sound like
interesting documentaries. Considering how many users YouTube had the
chances that I could be in the first 10 viewers for a listed video
are tiny unless I personally know the creator or the place is
absolutely flooded in AI shit and there is O(users/10) of these
videos being uploaded regularly.
smusamashah wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
I get good recommendations. They key is to not getting distracted by
videos you don't really want to see in the feed. Its very tempting
some times and watching just one video can mess up the feed. Takes a
while to get back.
Same with twitter.
MarkusQ wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
It could be the causality runs the other direction; I know that my
youtube viewing is way down since they decided that they could decide
what software I may/may not run on my computer.
pndy wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
On your computer? Could you elaborate?
MarkusQ wrote 5 hours 46 min ago:
They told me I couldn't run ad blocker/anti-virus software on my
computer while watching their videos. So I stopped watching their
videos. (Technically, the videos aren't theirs, but belong to the
creators. Many of them provide the same (or better) content on
other platforms),
kouteiheika wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
You adblocker is misconfigured; I haven't seen any ads or
anti-adblocker popups in months.
motrm wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
Jeff Geerling has been sleuthing into this lately too - my biggest
takeaway is that it's only viewer counts that are suffering, he's not
seen revenue drop which is key. Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is
sanity :)
URI [1]: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/digging-deeper-youtubes...
geerlingguy wrote 9 min ago:
Two concerns I have in the long-term:
1. It seems views from Premium users who use adblock might also not
get countedâand I'm not sure if the revenue from a Premium view in
that circumstance would be counted or not (more research needed).
2. YouTube's recommendation engine weights views heavily in the
system, which means channels with a more technical, traditional
desktop viewing audience (probably a substantial portion of HN users)
will be most impacted, and will not be able to grow an audience to
help fund projects, yadda yadda.
YouTube creators with younger, mobile, less FOSS-y, and less
tech-savvy audiences are therefore rewarded with more
views/mindshare.
I know some here are like "go get a REAL job, influencers are scum",
but I think that discounts the helpful work of many tech creators.
Not only in direct contributions to open source projects, but also in
being a voice to balance out the paid 'product showcase' style videos
for many tech products that come to market.
In other words: if adblock users disincentivize creators like me from
spending time and resources on YouTube, then video content will more
quickly settle into the online magazine/news status quo, where 99% of
the articles you read are just PR spin. Which you could argue would
bring about YouTube's downfall earlier... or would lead us even more
quickly to an Idiocracy-style society :D
I'm not saying adblock is bad or wrong or anythingâI can't stand
the YT ad spam, so I pay for Premium. To each their own. In any case,
YouTube shoulders some of the burden, but will be the main entity to
profit in any scenario.
dogleash wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
> Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :)
Except viewer counts are a factor for baked in ads. In this case,
all the sleuthing and videos about the change are the probably the
only thing that will alleviate/lessen the seemingly-worse ad rate
negotiation position youtubers with less viewers suddenly find
themselves in.
bluGill wrote 5 hours 39 min ago:
Those buying baked in ads just need to find other ways to verify
value. This is nothing new, no large company buys ads without
checking how they really work (though many small companies would).
There is someone who checks all those "how did you hear about us"
responses asked at checkout - they want to know if the ad really
provided value. Sure the TV stations tracked and reported ratings,
but that is only one of the signs ad buyers look at, and it is one
they only trust because they check and so would catch if it is
manipulated.
The ad business is far older than the internet and there is a lot
of old knowledge that apples directly to the internet. Those buying
backed in ads should be aware of and tracking such efforts.
typpilol wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
A lot of sponsors have shyed away from YouTube because of the
fake views and botting problem.
Some were paying big money to streamers with 20,000 live viewers.
Even though 19000 of those were fake.
The sponsor then sees the ad and did terribly and doesn't sponsor
anyone else in the future.
pilaf wrote 5 hours 52 min ago:
Many youtubers have sponsorships though, and their viewership stats
come into play when negotiating with potential sponsors.
I guess if everyone was hit equally across the board then those
sponsors will eventually adjust to the new metrics, but I assume some
genres have more tech-savvy audiences which are more likely to use
ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how evenly distributed this penalty
falls.
themafia wrote 30 min ago:
It's wild to me that advertisers are willing to use first party
metrics. In any other media business you'd have a certified third
party ratings agency to give "audience size" metrics some
legitimacy.
Youtube has no incentive to accurately report this data and no
apparent accreditation in their methodology.
secondcoming wrote 4 hours 43 min ago:
Surely YT know if a video has sponsored content and so can refuse
to play the video - or even not suggest it - if the user is using
adblockers?
SilverbeardUnix wrote 12 min ago:
YT would start a revolt among Youtubers if they did this.
tehwebguy wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
The automated âSkip Aheadâ button (which I use daily) is
already hostile to sponsorships. I would not be at all surprised
to see them hitting sponsors on multiple fronts.
downrightmike wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
in video you can just hit a number to go to the next chunk
1,2,3,4,5 etc. just hit 8 or 9 if you want to see if there is
anything of value in a 10 minute video that should have been 30
seconds, but youtube wants 10 minutes
nonameiguess wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
Skipping sponsored segments is not necessarily a reflection of
hostility. My wife has been subscribed to the Factor meal service
for over three years, yet all of my favorite podcasts are
constantly hawking it, and I don't particularly feel like sitting
through 20 sales pitches a day for something I already purchased.
There is unfortunately no way to communicate that information to
either the channel owner or the sponsor.
a2tech wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
Google is not getting a cut of that sponsorship money. They don't
care if it wrecks your deal. They want your ONLY source of income
to be Youtube. If you're fully beholden to Youtube, there will be
no escape, no way for you to leave and take your viewership with
you.
Remember how Youtube used to be a nice cage with lots of air
holes and fun toys to occupy you? Light ad enforcement, tools to
help you build your viewership etc? People are starting to feel
the pinch of those being removed. That cool room is starting to
look like what it really is--an industrial cage.
eastbound wrote 12 min ago:
> They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube.
Iâm not sure. They want influencers to make profit using
their platform, so they want to make them rich. On the
viewcount, a skipped sponsor still looks like a view. No
sponsor is going to look at the proportion of watching each
part of the video, they just care about the view counter.
What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be
able to skip ads. âIf you pay you should have no adsâ.
PeterisP wrote 19 min ago:
It's interesting that I just read an inteview with YouTube CEO
( [1] ) who mentioned that YouTube fully intends to start
getting a cut out of that sponsorship money ("to align
interests better").
URI [1]: https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-youtube...
Andrex wrote 2 hours 34 min ago:
I think it's less ominous than that.
Skip Ahead is only for Premium subscribers. The logic probably
being native-ads/sponsorships are in fact ads, and Premium
users are paying for an ad-free experience.
johanyc wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
> The automated âSkip Aheadâ button (which I use daily) is
already hostile to sponsorships
Is it? If I proactively click skip, that means that sponsor is
offering something of no use to me. As the sponsor, they
successfully make an impression for a second or two anyway. And
as a viewer that skip ahead button is much better than pressing
right arrow button multiple times
everforward wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
The brand recognition is worth something. I haven't been in
the market for new headphones in a long time, but I still know
the name Raycon from the bajillion sponsorships they do.
Likewise with NordVPN and Raid: Shadowlegends. Never used any
of them, don't really intend to, but I do know the name.
Ajedi32 wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
I'm guessing the viewers who now suddenly aren't being counted were
already not contributing to revenue because they block ads.
themafia wrote 29 min ago:
I pay for youtube. Payments from my views should come from my
subscription payment. Ad blocking should be irrelevant in my case.
shadowgovt wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
They impact individual channel revenue because so many channels
have gone to sponsored ads, which automatic ad-blockers can't block
(yet (1) ). The calibre of sponsor a channel can attract is
impacted by the reported views from YouTube.
(1) Hey, imagine I had a plugin that monitored the behavior of
several viewers of each video and could collate where most people
skipped a big chunk of video, then, oh I don't know, offered a
feature where if lots of people skip one chunk, it'll automatically
skip it for you when you're playing the video....
sebastiennight wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
You're describing an existing plugin called SponsorBlock.
IIRC it even has lots of options such as enabling you to
allow/disallow self-sponsor segments (the creator promoting their
own product), "like and subscribe" calls to action, shock-and-awe
intros, podcast recaps, and several other segment types.
typpilol wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
YouTube has it built in now. We just need auto skip to be built
in now
fragmede wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
If only there were some way that money in my pocket went to some
of the people related to the things I like to watch. Some sort of
premium service where YouTube could pay for a person to come to
my house and collect money from me, and them give it to the
people making videos, and then we won't have ads?
Nah, that'll never work.
WD-42 wrote 3 hours 15 min ago:
I really wish there was a little micro-donation button, using
something like the lightning network. I'd smash the crap out of
that for good videos. But YouTube would never support it
because they wouldn't be able to insert themselves between the
creator and consumer.
trenchpilgrim wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
It already exists:
URI [1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10878910?h...
WD-42 wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
Wow, so it does. I just checked. Most of my subscriptions
apparently do not have it turned on. The one that I found
that does have it turned on, it's hidden behind a hamburger
menu that's located next to, you guessed it, an AI button.
Nice to see Google prioritizing their crappy AI integration
over their content creators getting paid.
typpilol wrote 2 hours 37 min ago:
You can already "super thank" people in the comments
WD-42 wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
I am being completely honest when I say I had no idea this
even existed. As per my other comment, itâs very well
hidden.
sebastiennight wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
So... BlockBuster video ?
nemomarx wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
do we know what happens if you run premium and an ad blocker
together? I would hope they would still pay the creator for my
views but I'm not sure now
carlosjobim wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
They pay creators more when a person with premium is watching
their videos. Ad-blockers have no relevance in this case.
machinate wrote 2 hours 32 min ago:
Apparently ad blockers can interfere with key view metrics.
Unclear what premium uses to disburse the 55% share that
goes to creators; hopefully it's not those ones.
carlosjobim wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
I don't think it's likely that the ad blocker is
interfering, because you need to be logged in to use
premium.
happytoexplain wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
You're saying that YouTube implemented a change that significantly
reduces creators' viewer counts but won't affect their revenue, and
they haven't told creators? "Here, have a heart attack"?
kllrnohj wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
YouTube didn't change anything. The ad blockers recently started
blocking the metric call for whatever reason.
a_shovel wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
nobody's ever accused youtube of being too transparent with
creators
squigz wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Is there any hard, reliable data on how much money is "lost" by users
with ad blockers? Some of the measures Google has taken with regards to
ad blockers seem wholly disproportionate to my own impression of how
common they really are.
bee_rider wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
I wonder if they want to occasionally agitate against ad blocking
just to keep the pressure on.
If I were Google I wouldnât be that worried about, like, Firefox
users with ad blocking addons, or pihole users. But Iâd be a bit
worried that Apple might take a harder stance against ads, in their
browser.
SoftTalker wrote 5 hours 26 min ago:
If Apple were to include an ad blocker by default in Safari it
would be the greatest thing they've done for users in the past 5
years. Their privacy/anti-tracking stuff is good but it's largely
invisible to the end user. People would never want to go back to
the raw internet once they experience it without ads.
bee_rider wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
Yeah. And, âprivacyâ is part of their pitch (itâs just a
sales pitch, not a moral philosophy, and Iâm aware that they
donât always live up to it). Including a default-on ad blocker
would be an extremely user-visible way of emphasizing that pitch.
suby wrote 5 hours 58 min ago:
Well, if the recent drop in views was due to adblockers, we now have
some data about what percent of viewers block ads. There would have
to be an effort to collect this data, and the view discrepncy is
probably going to differ by genre of video (eg, tech youtubers
probably experienced a greater dip), but this should roughly tell us
how much is lost to adblockers.
Creators have stated that while their viewcount is down their ad
revenue is not - but a lower viewcount still presumably hurts
youtubers for in video sponsorships, and if some genres of video have
a higher portion of users with blockers, that probably hurts that
entire genre in the algorithm. It sounds like viewcounts are
returning back to normal though.
tcfhgj wrote 5 hours 54 min ago:
> but this should roughly tell us how much is lost to adblockers.
not really, because watching videos without ad blockers would be
quite painful
suby wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
Well, I meant how much is lost financially. Ah, unless you mean
that people would watch less videos if they were subjected to
ads, which is a great point I didn't consider. You're right, you
can't just linearly extrapolate as I suggested due to that.
tene80i wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
It will be a low percentage, but a low percentage at youtube's scale
is still a vast amount of money and worth going after.
fishgoesblub wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
I have no actual hard stats to back this up sadly, but from what I've
read ad rates are the same, but the views are down. Presumably
because everyone who is using an AdBlock isn't counted as a view, and
they obviously don't watch ads so the rates are the same.
jdiff wrote 6 hours 4 min ago:
If this is what they're doing, then it would seem to be negligible.
The channels I've heard talking about this don't seem to be taking
home any less money despite tanking viewcounts. Earnings are
constant, but the numbers supporting those earnings have shuffled
around unpredictably. When it's your income, you really don't like
things to be shuffling around without warning.
Workaccount2 wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
The views didn't count in the first place, that's why the money
stayed the same.
Creators can now though, knowing how much they make per view on
avg, and slot in the avg number of view that were missing, work out
how much they are missing out on due to ad-blocking.
For large creators, it's likely in the tens of thousands of dollars
per video assuming most are seeing the same ~20-25% drop.
Eventually the "morally pure" internet will need to reconcile it's
habit of not compensating creators.
Arcuru wrote 4 hours 32 min ago:
I think you're not understanding. The claim is that view counts are
down but revenue is not because people using ad-block previously
did not contribute to revenue but did contribute to view count, and
now they are not counted as either. So view counts are down and
creators are getting the same ad money because they already earned
no money from the adblocking people.
When channels are claiming their view count is dropping 30% but
still earning the same amount of money, that would indicate that
they are losing out on 30% of their potential revenue because of ad
blockers.
MarkusQ wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
If you don't like random/inexplicable changes in your income, you
probably shouldn't have youtube involved.
jdiff wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
YouTube's where the money is. There are very few other places
where you can make money like YouTube. Yes, that also means
having to deal with their many, many issues, many of which
directly threaten that money, but the solution is to work to
solve those problems and highlight new ones. YouTube's too big to
ignore, and too big to die no matter how many paper cuts and
gaping wounds it gives itself.
NotPractical wrote 6 hours 15 min ago:
Are views also decreasing on channels without ads enabled? Is it
possible that some endpoint that needs to be hit to register a view is
being blocked by privacy-related (not ad-related) lists that adblockers
use?
If the answer to both is no, maybe Google's intentionally punishing
creators whose viewers use adblockers. But if the goal is to force
creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would
they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it
up to speculation?
vintermann wrote 5 hours 44 min ago:
> But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop
using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that
they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation?
Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment
to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing" but they know it
won't work if people see them as the source of the message. They want
video makers to internalize their message, do what the boss wants on
their own initiative, so Google only want to drop hints.
NewsaHackO wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
100%. They are trying to get YouTube a exclusion from the list, or
make the list the non-default. I already know the next step is that
the "community" is going to fork the list, and the forked list is
going to be heavily advertised on YouTube channel as a way to
support the channel.
yard2010 wrote 5 hours 3 min ago:
You wouldn't steal a car.
Well I definitely would if I could torrent it. Facebook would have
too.
thewebguyd wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
> Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the
sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing"
Ah yes, the good old "don't copy that floppy" argument.
The advertising industry brought this upon themselves. The web is
straight up unusable without an ad blocker. Between malicious ads,
drive-by-downloads, content shifting, and other dark patterns,
websites are now more ads than content.
It's like in the days of streaming (when it was still good and not
enshitified) reducing piracy rates - companies can get me to
disable my ad blocker if they start becoming good citizens actually
make their site or service usable without it.
Get rid of the invasive tracking, dark patterns, un-dismissable
modals, etc. Stop jamming your content so full of ads and SEO spam
and maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker as much.
PaulHoule wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
I bought a new Mac for a secondary computer, particularly for my
wife to use, and she was driven crazy by ads in just one hour of
browsing on Safari without a proper ad blocker. Adding an ad
blocker to Safari required using an Apple account which she
doesn't have and I didn't want to use it for mine (never plan on
buying NERFed apps from the NERFed mac app store which is 99%
spam anyway) so I switched her to Firefox which lets me add an ad
blocker without signing in.
xandrius wrote 9 min ago:
Make her an account with throwaway everything or switch her to
a sane browser, as you did :)
ge96 wrote 6 hours 0 min ago:
Is it possible not to have ads? It seems like YouTube puts them in
there regardless, unless once your channel is monetizable you can
choose to not show ads.
rwmj wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
Uploaders can disable mid-roll adverts, ie ones that appear in the
middle of the content.
s1mplicissimus wrote 6 hours 5 min ago:
My current theory is that this whole "mystery around viewcounts"
thing is fabricated by google.
From a PR viewpoint it's much better to just imply that adblockers
are bad, so in case of backlash they can go "Idk why the community is
going ham about this, we didn't even say directly you shouldn't
adblock, you people are kwuaazy"
jordanb wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
I understand that they've massively reduced the compensation creators
receive from monetization. This is why the creators all do
sponsorships now. But they force creators to monetize to get reach
(if the video isn't monetized it won't be recommended, even to
subscribers).
My guess is that yeah, now they're going after people's sponsorship
revenue by under-reporting views if their monetized content is being
viewed by people with adblockers.
izacus wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
> I understand that they've massively reduced the compensation
creators receive from monetization.
Do you have any article about that? How much did the monetization
drop for?
the_af wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
I don't know the data but every YouTube author I follow is
basically saying the money they get from YouTube is almost
nothing compared to the effort they put into their videos. Almost
all of them seem to be going for sponsored ads embedded in the
video (so not automatically skippable) or Patreon.
izacus wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
How big are the channels? As far as I follow, the revenue
numbers creators get from Ads aren't ignorable at all.
the_af wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
I didn't check all of them... I wanna say they range from
~200 to ~500K subscribers? No idea if that's big or not. For
comparison, the official Warhammer channel has ~900K
subscribers, which I assume is decent.
The argument I've heard repeatedly from them is that the time
and effort involved in making a YouTube video that gets
enough hits (which means lots of experimentation) is
disproportionate compared to the meager return of investment;
that for money reasons it's best to get sponsorships.
(I'm not a YouTube author myself, I wouldn't know what's a
decent size).
bluSCALE4 wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
Regarding recommendations. I recently disabled history and
recommendations and the subscribed tab has everything Iâd expect.
No more surprises and no more political garbage.
portaouflop wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
Thatâs crazy, when I am logged out I only get political garbage
and the most insane braunrot you can imagine.
My recommendations are really good on YouTube, I find a lot of
interesting stuff
bluSCALE4 wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
You must fight the urge to click on controversial topics. If
you mentally subscribe to any fringe idea, the algo immediately
feeds you echo chamber / bubble content. It's crazy.
pimlottc wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
I agree, this seems more like a policy decision to turn creators into
anti-adblocker advocates than a technical problem registering views
accurately.
lotsofpulp wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
Why would most creators be pro ad blocking in the first place?
Donât most of them want to earn money via advertising?
pseudalopex wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
Pro and expressly anti are not the only positions. Some were
indifferent because their income from YouTube ads was much less
than their income from sponsorships or subscriptions. But view
counts affect sponsorship income. Some said blocking ads hurt
them but they couldn't blame people when ads included scams. And
so on.
bluGill wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
That isn't clear. Some earn money from ads of various forms.
Some earn money from patreon like things and the youtube views
are loss leaders. Most are not earning enough money from ads to
care (generally 0, but sometimes a few bucks).
Even if you earn money from ads, view count is only a proxy at
best. Youtube seems to track ads seen not view count (payments
from youtube have not changed). Other ads track effectiveness of
the ad, and viewcount is only a proxy - if youtube changes the
count it means that the constant applied to viewcount in the
formula changes but otherwise the payment is the same.
Thus if you get significant money from YouTube adds you care
about ad blocking. None of the others need to care (they might,
but it could go either way how they feel)
PaulHoule wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
What videos you see on YouTube really varies from one person to
another: I have one browser where it shows me predominantly
videos with titles like "Why Brand X has lost it's way" or "Why
the Y industry is broken" where X could be a fast food chain or
a game studio and Y could be housing, video games, private
equity, etc.
That kind of creator expresses a lot of negativity towards
YouTube, as X is frequently "YouTube" or "Google" and Y is
"Big Tech", "Social Media", etc.
cogman10 wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Because most creators use the internet and have experienced the
internet with ads.
I imagine most don't think about ads seriously, they think about
youtube and sponsor revenue.
lotsofpulp wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
Isnât sponsor revenue ad revenue? And I would expect most
creators to be smart enough to realize that the money they get
from Youtube will be at least loosely related to the ad revenue
Youtube can earn from whatever the creator made.
cogman10 wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
> Isnât sponsor revenue ad revenue?
It is, but it's functionally different because the content
creator you are watching is both directly getting that
revenue and often doing the testimonial for you. They have
an incentive to avoid being annoying about the ad as it
reflects bad on them if they go nuts. It's also usually a
lot easier to skip. It doesn't capture your video playback
and force watching.
The money you get from youtube make things ambiguous.
Especially if someone is watching your stream with youtube
premium.
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