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| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other Browsers
tpoacher wrote 7 min ago:
Vote with your wallet.
Tell your favourite content-creators to consider alternatives alongside
youtube (like peertube), and promote the alternative platforms, until
the network effect pays off.
supernes wrote 7 min ago:
It's only a matter of time before the entire YouTube catalog
transitions to DRM-encrypted video that you can only watch on
Google-sanctioned devices. They're probably doing the math on how to
make the platform at least as profitable with a drastically lower DAU
count, since alienating users now seems to be their top priority.
sylware wrote 42 min ago:
It seems youtube wants to become a "video game".
Then they better have a 'correct' client for all platforms out there
because they are filthy dominant at worldwide scale.
In my personal space: I don't think they are competent enough to
provide a 'correct' set of ELF64 binaries for elf/linux, you know
'wayland->x11' fallback, 'vulkan->CPU' fallback, OLD glibc ABI, etc
(BTW, wayland+vulkan = android).
cyberrock wrote 45 min ago:
Even for paying customers this is rather annoying, because the YouTube
app prevents background playback of members' only streams, and I have
never been able to find a convincing justification for why this is.
Hackbraten wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
I can't believe I'd ever find myself shilling for Google of all
companies, but how is it sustainable from a creator's point of view if
the viewer neither pays for a subscription nor looks at the ads?
shevy-java wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
It should be trivial to work around; for instance, yt-dlp or so
( [1] ) and I think you can as-is stream
e. g. via mpv or something, probably to the browser too. Some python
script for an ad-hoc localhost webserver I'd think.
What is much more worrying is how aggressively Google tries to abuse
its de-facto monopoly. I have said it before, I will say it again:
Google abusing everyone else is a bad situation. We need to make
Google smaller again.
URI [1]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
sxde wrote 1 hour 41 min ago:
Revanced allows you to patch the official Android YouTube apk to enable
this feature alongside many others, including a block, Sponsorblock,
and dislikes. [1] Rossmann's Grayjay app offers the same functionality
in a separate standalone client. It has a paid pro mode, but is free
software. I use this on devices that I haven't signed in with Google.
URI [1]: https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager
URI [2]: https://grayjay.app/
jwrallie wrote 1 hour 29 min ago:
The real reason why sideloading is soon to be blocked by Google,
along with NewPipe.
zarzavat wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
I'm confused. Wouldn't Brave just stop telling YouTube if it's in the
background or not?
ed_mercer wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
Will someone _please_ make a decent linux phone already so we can stop
this nonsense.
sevenzero wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
You're free to do so, probably your million dollar idea right there.
p4bl0 wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
What a shame. What's the point even? I'm not going subscribe to YouTube
premium anyway, and even less install and use the YouTube app. What
happens with this move is just that I will just use YouTube less. I
believe that's the case for most people who chose to use YouTube in a
browser precisely for background playback.
As an example: knowing that I won't be able to keep the sound playing
for the 5 minutes in between two buses when I need to walk and pay
attention, I'll probably just launch a podcast from the beginning of my
hour of transportation so that I'm not interrupted. For these five
minutes, they loose me for almost an hour.
renewiltord wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Perhaps that's what they desire. Serving YouTube video has marginal
cost and you provide marginal zero value. Losing you as a customer is
probably desired.
p4bl0 wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
That's a very narrow view. YouTube is the only reason I have a
Google account. Because of it I use some of their other products.
And because I'm connected to my YouTube/Google account, they can
track my behavior across products and across devices. My usage
profile has value if only because it can be correlated to others
(who don't bock ads), and because I share link to their platform on
social media and messaging app. That's still true even if I'm able
from time to time to continue listening to a YouTube video while my
phone is in my pocket. But I will share less link and leave them a
lot less usage data if they push me away from their products.
renewiltord wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
Yeah and people have been trying to pay artists in exposure for
eons now. Iâm sure the artists are really feeling bad about the
decision now.
nikanj wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
The point is that youtube is an ad-funded service, and if you're not
watching the ads, Google is losing money on you.
wazoox wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
Bwaaa an evil monopolistic empire won't get our money, that's so
sad really. They're racking up tens of billions of money every
quarter, we don't. I carefully do my best not to give any money to
Microsoft, Google and the likes. They must be dismantled anyway.
nikanj wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
If they are an evil monopolistic empire, why are you upset you
canât use their services? Itâs not like watching shorts is a
matter of life/death.
baxtr wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
If youâre on iOS, put the video on full screen and then put Safari in
the background. Next, press play in the Control Center. This should
now allow the audio to play in the background.
speedylight wrote 2 hours 21 min ago:
On iOS you can get free background play with Youtube App by putting the
video in picture-in-picture -> locking the screen, -> going to control
center and hitting the play button. Donât let Google know!
jwrallie wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
For me just pressing the power button twice and play on the lock
screen quickly does it.
kurito wrote 2 hours 24 min ago:
What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant
engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially
worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them
into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place.
At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side
behaviour.
Buttons840 wrote 11 min ago:
It's a testament to the health of our free markets and competition
that the winning move here is to spend a lot of time and money making
your product worse for the average person.
stavros wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
> At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client
side behaviour.
This is where their most brilliant engineers have bested you, because
they control the client too.
bpavuk wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
and my answer is Firefox! (maybe also Ladybird and Servo in distant
future)
stavros wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
I agree with you there. Anything non-Chrome is better than
Chrome.
slvng wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
The best engineer I've ever known ended up working for years on
optimizing ad space auction time by micro seconds.
bpavuk wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
they either:
a) don't care
b) were desperate enough at the time, then, like that damn
videogame, it sucked him in
it's too easy to get carried away by sheer technical complexity of
optimization tasks, even if you are optimizing for bad.
speedgoose wrote 1 hour 17 min ago:
They may have been extremely competent at this, but if they decided
to spend years of their relatively short ephemeral life on such a
useless project, perhaps they werenât the best at the time.
Perhaps they needed money and were focusing on family life, I
donât know. Who I am to judge? Iâm judging though.
blell wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
Why is that useless as opposed to what most of us do for work? I
think you guys have a weird sense of how useful the average job
is, or how much the average job contributes to society at large.
At least this made a lot of money I guess.
speedgoose wrote 32 min ago:
I think most jobs contribute positively to the society. Not
much, for sure, but they contribute.
Is the cleaner regularly removing poop stains from the personal
toilet of a big and rich Google shareholder more useful than
the qualified Google engineer working hard so a big number is
very slightly bigger on one the shareholderâs list of
numbers? I think the cleaner has more impact.
alternatex wrote 59 min ago:
You can create a lot of profit for your employer whilst
contributing nothing to society or even be detrimental to it.
Money has no bearing on that.
malicka wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
I would like to add they waated their time on something evil, not
useless. Canât say I blame them too much for cashing that
check, though.
snakeboy wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
Well, nobody needs Google-level money...
AlienRobot wrote 1 hour 29 min ago:
Agreed. I was leaving the mall with lots of great goods I had found,
but then the guard stopped me and told me I was stealing! Imagine
paying that guy a salary just to blackmail me into paying them! This
is an outrage.
testfrequency wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
Apple has entered the chat
shevy-java wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the
planet
I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it
should
also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be
ashamed
for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...
latexr wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the
planet
Maybe we should stop with that tired fallacious rhetoric? Just
because you work at a massive company doesnât make you
âbrilliantâ.
keepamovin wrote 2 hours 1 min ago:
Maybe ads-as-business-model is like political ideology - it is not a
human universal but must adapt to the place: for instance
collectivism over individualism in East Asia, theocratic conservatism
over democracy in Afghanistan -- maybe ads as business model is
despicable to some regions, but accepted in others? Albania it's
apparently illegal for YouTube to serve ads?
jy14898 wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide
how to monetise their product, including things which were originally
free. If you don't like free services, stop using them
zigzag312 wrote 35 min ago:
> including things which were originally free
Oh, I despise this tactic so much. It means the company has known
from the start that they can't offer it for free in the long term,
but decided to subsidize it in order to gain a dominant position
and get rid of competition. This breaks the conditions needed for a
free market to work. In other words, they win market share for
reasons other than efficiency, quality, or innovation. That's why
some forms of government subsidies are prohibited under certain
agreements, for example. Some multinational corporations have
annual revenues larger than the GDP of many countries and can
easily subsidize negative pricing for years to undercut
competitors, consolidate market share, and ultimately gain monopoly
power.
Also, the company has hinted false promises to the customer, as it
signals that they have developed a business model where they can
offer something for free. For example a two-sided marketplace where
one side gets something for free to attract users and the other
side pays (as it profits form these users). Users can't know
something isn't sustainable unless the company explicitly states it
in some way (e.g. this is a limited time offer).
So from the user's perspective, this is a bait-and-switch tactic,
where the company has used a free offer in order to manipulate the
market.
deaux wrote 58 min ago:
As soon as the laws on the books get enforced and they get broken
up, sure. Until then, absolutely not.
sidrag22 wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
> If you don't like free services, stop using them
If they don't like users using their service how they deem
improper, ban them? they know what accounts are doing it... There
is a reason for this cat and mouse, and its not ending with youtube
banning people.
A lot of the current issues i see with it, is that it is treated
like the go to service for video hosting...
Just consider image hosting... If i see an image in a thread and
click it (much like people will do with youtube urls), and block
the ad that was on the hosted site, is there this much uproar about
it? That image hosting site might charge 5$ to do what an adblocker
already does... If they wanna lock that up? actually lock it up,
and remove the "service" portion of the business, otherwise I don't
see any legs to stand on here.
Service in my eyes here, is a public service. This is a company
posing as a public service, and occasionally deciding it hates how
a % of the public is using their service. So they hand them a 10$ a
month ticket that they pretend is required, but they will never
take action on users who dont pay that ticket.
rockskon wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast
its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were
willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people
don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates!
There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.
ffsm8 wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
Wait what? When was there ever a competitor to YouTube?
Did you travel from a parallel universe?
Sorry man, the whole industry was created by YouTube paying
creators ad revenue.
LeoWattenberg wrote 37 min ago:
Dailymotion, Google Video, sevenload, german TV stations RTL
and Pro7 even launched Clipfish and MyVideo respectively to
compete with youtube. Youtube happens to be the only one that
survived on Googles ad model, the others very quickly realized
that paid premium content is much easier to handle (copyright,
CSAM) and monetize.
AnonymousPlanet wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
GP and I are apparently from that universe where you remember
that YouTube wasn't the only popular video on demand game in
town and, e.g., Vimeo is older than YouTube. They only won
because they didn't charge you for uploading or watching. They
could afford to undercut the competition since they were bought
by Google.
They were also somehow the only ones that offered music videos
without being shut down.
silverpepsi wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
There wasn't but consider the context: at the time YouTube was
an almost purely piracy platform most likely the biggest on the
planet if quantified in IP dollar value - yet was magically not
shut down by the government. How unfair to the competition is
that? Remember that other piracy based sites were raided in
that era. But when Google started acquiring it, it was very
quickly above the law. YouTube should not exist.
- fair use was also sot as permissive in that era! Web 2.0
coerced a legal shift -
tjpnz wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
Is this product or hampering the way the web works with video? Go
to any other site with a tag and you won't face similar issues.
reddalo wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
>If you don't like free services, stop using them
Problem is, there's no real alternative for YouTube. It's a
monopoly.
sneak wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
Thatâs not remotely true.
fatherwavelet wrote 41 min ago:
I was going to try to make the monopoly argument but then
realized I only think youtube is a monopoly because I don't use
tiktok.
It is just an oligopoly like most other sectors.
reddalo wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
Okay, so list which websites I can use to watch all kinds of
content that I can find on YouTube.
Vimeo? It's basically dead. DailyMotion? It could've been an
alternative, but they've recently deleted most old videos.
Peertube? Nice idea in theory, but lack of content.
icepush wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok all fulfil the
'whatever topic I am interested in this second, there are
videos about it' property, though admittedly they do not have
near as much meritorious long-form content as YouTube.
lombasihir wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
is use yewtu.be from time to time on web, and pipepipex on
android.
reddalo wrote 57 min ago:
Do you realize that those are just wrappers for YouTube,
not a real competitor?
tjpnz wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
No worse than what a lot of their other "brilliant" minds are working
on - ads.
throwaway132448 wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
Whataboutism is just fascinating. How myopic must your world view
be that when you see one bad thing, you immediately try to justify
it by pointing out another bad thing?
nikanj wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for
the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads
anonymous908213 wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
Google is the richest company literally on the entire planet, you
really don't need to go to bat for monopolistic practices.
BrenBarn wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they
should never have made YouTube free in the first place.
reddalo wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
They made it free just like any other startup makes a free tier
to obtain market share.
deaux wrote 56 min ago:
I'm sure the US government will be appreciative of a Chinese
car manufacturer selling free cars in the US to obtain market
share, and there definitely won't be calls of "dumping", no
siree.
lurk2 wrote 1 hour 17 min ago:
YouTube got to where it is by making intentional moves to be
the only game in town. They arenât the most user-hostile
platform by any means, but they have been coasting on the
network effects of backlogged content for close to a decade
now. Even if a competitor could deal with network and storage
costs, and somehow manage to attract a network of uploaders,
the platform would be 20 years behind, and thereâs certain
content (e.g. older content) that you simply wouldnât ever be
able to find there in any appreciable quantity.
learingsci wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
Drug dealers invented this business model, they would give
heroin to young children for free and then once hooked hike the
prices or force them to turn tricks to pay for their habit.
Itâs effective but not very admirable to say the least.
stavros wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
I've also seen this done for cheese, do you find that equally
reprehensible? Or is the argument just rhetorical sleight of
hand, where "drug dealers do X, so therefore X must be bad"?
Drug dealers also consume food, and you know who else
consumes food? You.
learingsci wrote 48 min ago:
Cheesemongers have a bit less impact on society than drug
dealers or Google. If Google were raking in hundreds of
billions giving kids free cheese then charging them full
price for parmigiana some might complain and I would not
find fault in that. Scale matters.
stavros wrote 45 min ago:
It's not that we got hooked on YouTube (that would maybe
be ok in a free market), it's that YouTube used "free" to
make itself a monopoly. That's what the issue is, that
you have no other options now.
realusername wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
Maybe if the Youtube subscription wasn't 10x what they earn from a
single user with ads, that would be more believable option.
saagarjha wrote 2 hours 6 min ago:
Monetizing a basic OS feature is not a good look.
sidrag22 wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
the only time ive tried to use a feature like that, is when im in
the car listening to a podcast or something.
juggling the phone to not only skip ads, but also forcing the
phone screen to be active, is a hazard.
In my case this loophole being closed, wouldn't make me pay for
premium... but it would make a younger version of me certainly
more dangerous on the road.
Ampersander wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
Aren't they going to win in the long run with remote attestation?
sfdlkj3jk342a wrote 2 hours 26 min ago:
Still working on IronFox (Firefox fork) on Android with the Video
Background Fix extension.
redml wrote 2 hours 30 min ago:
i had that happen on firefox mobile months ago and installed video
background play fix which all it does is stop sending the js hooks for
when tab/window focus is lost. it was something clearly targeted to
mobile browsers for people like me who don't bother with official apps
anymore as they're riddled with antipatterns and ads. you can just
youtube to the homepage like it's an app anyway.
Imustaskforhelp wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
+N for video background play fix extension. Highly recommended on
firefox.
This and ubo on android really make firefox a really great (the best
imo) browser on android.
barnabee wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
Background playback is a feature of the browser and operating system,
not YouTube.
Consumer laws should prevent Google doing this. We need an anti-DMCA to
make circumvention, bypassing, or disabling of userâs device or OS
features illegal.
deaux wrote 53 min ago:
No, we need the laws already on the books to be enforced and Google
to be broken up. And Meta. And Microsoft. And Amazon.
ThatMedicIsASpy wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
They removed the UI option to find newest videos first yesterday.
lmz wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
Serving requests is a feature of Youtube and if they don't want to
serve your client... well you didn't pay for it anyway.
homebrewer wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
We all pay plenty. Don't forget that every product you buy that
advertises on YouTube forwards some of that money to YouTube, even
if you then don't watch the ads. I would be happy to pay the same
amount for everything, but somehow block vendors from spending any
money on ads, if it were at all possible.
esperent wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
The equivalent here is if Sony owned the most watched TV network
(by far) and decided that it would work fully on Sony Bravia tvs.
People with LG or Samsung TV's could only watch a degraded version.
VadimPR wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
They corned the market, drove everyone out of it, and are now
rent-seeking. Can't say you have much of a choice between youtube
and any other video provider that has the same content on it.
reddalo wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
>They corned the market, drove everyone out of it, and are now
rent-seeking.
It's almost dumping [1]: they gave a service away for free (even
if they were losing a lot of money) just to make it unfeasible
for any other company to start a competing service.
Vimeo could have been a competitor, but then they pivoted to a
professional market and now that Bending Spoons bought them [2],
I'm not sure they will even have a future. [1]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302
deaux wrote 50 min ago:
It is dumping. The whole YCombinator VC Silicon Valley model is
entirely based on dumping. They call it "burning VC cash",
which is an overly wordy synonym for it to muddy the waters,
and it would be positive for the world if everyone installed a
browser script that did a `s/burning vc cash/dumping` on all
text elements.
deafpolygon wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
This is precisely why I donât use YT anymore. On top of these scummy
behaviour on Alphabets part⦠the content has taken a deep dive
because more and more people are creating it for the âalgorithmâ
and less for the content.
doe88 wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
There must be reaching a state where there must have more code for
blocking all the stuffs there are trying to block than displaying
videos. No wonder its UI feels bloated.
xnx wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
This will be a positive if browsers (extensions?) allow the ability to
spoof visibility by site. Most websites have no business knowing if
they're in the foreground or background.
madeofpalk wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
Nice - youâve just increased significantly power consumption of
your browser!
Browsers will âslow downâ various aspects of pages when theyâre
not visible, like animations or timers, to save on battery usage on
laptops or phones.
Even if your remove explicit APIs for backgrounding, pages can still
use heuristics to detect anyway.
chii wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
The user should be making the choice - not the website. The website
could be informed about being backgrounded, if the user chooses to.
But the user should have the priority in the decision chain - their
choice overrides any that the website makes.
That is what it means to have control over your own computing.
touwer wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
That's actually quite easy. onBlur, etc
reddalo wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
Just to be precise, onBlur is a JavaScript event for an item that
loses its focus, visibilitychange is what you actually need to
detect tab changing.
hsbauauvhabzb wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
Imagine trying to take a basic browser function weâve all taken for
granted for decades and attempt to paywall it as âBackground playback
is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members.â
Get fucked. I vote we remove API access to any focus state information.
Fuck you google.
laserlight wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
It upsets me to see YouTube Premium apologists despite all the
hostile moves by YouTube. YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme.
When there are enough paying customers, YouTube Premium will begin
showing ads to them. They won't forget sugarcoating ads as being
âunobtrusiveâ or âenvironment-supportingâ or whatever. But
guess what? If you don't want to see them, you can upgrade to YouTube
Premium Plus and continue being an apologist.
slig wrote 17 min ago:
>When there are enough paying customers, YouTube Premium will begin
showing ads to them.
We'll see. Until then, it's cheap and works fine.
mschuster91 wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
> YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme.
One might also say it was unsustainable from the start, video is
incredibly expensive to host and especially moderate.
All we're seeing right now is the beginning of the end of the
ad-financed world. Someone has to pay the bills in the end and
advertisement spending is on the way down, more and more of it is
going to influencers/TTL instead of traditional ATL/BTL marketing.
wiseowise wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
But think how hard it is for them to earn money to make up for all
the billions theyâve used to create de facto monopoly in video
space? Wonât someone think of poor capitalists trying to squeeze
the niche dry?
politelemon wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
Newpipe remains one of the best solutions for background playback. They
do tend to move pretty quickly to patch "fixes" that YouTube throw in
now and again. It's also useful for video backups if you need to
preserve them for any reason.
GvS wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
I recommend PipePipe:
URI [1]: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
keepamovin wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
I released a browserbox variant many years ago that could ensure
background playback on YouTube. Despite multiple posts here and on
PH, it never gained any traction. It seemed people were simply not
interested in overcoming no background playback for free on every
platform (including mobile).
Same time, one can appreciate the YouTube business: once you give
something away for free, people absolutely loose their fucking minds
if you make it paid. Once you set the bar to zero for payment, people
will murder in the streets and despise you if you reasonably charge
for what could have been a paid product all along. So there's a
psychological blocker to switching on payment that people are ready
to go to war for. It's the same blocker that cripples "open source"
sustainability. People quickly develop an entitlement-callous, and
feel cheated if you require payment instead of just continuing to
surrender value to them.
It reminds of how a group of primates will kill a handler who gives
cake to one, but not the group. This "free / paid" tension triggers
some kind of deep-rooted human fairness wiring that is really tricky
to extinguish once activated. That's why you should never open source
your code and never give stuff away for free, if you plan to posslby
make money from it somehow or make it paid in future. Because if you
ever withhold the siphon of value related to ads or other 'you as a
product' models, they will launch a jihad against you.
I think it's interesting how the human fairness reflex, often
correct, breaks down in the context of "provider / consumer"
dynamics. Even if the provider is not some "evil mega corp" but
simply a solo software creator, people will still feel you are
attempting to rob them of all dignity and debase their honor if you
require payment for what was previously gratis.
Oh well. Live and learn, YouTube.
stavros wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
The issue isn't with the payment, it's that you've burnt a ton of
money to extinguish all competition (by giving away stuff for free)
and then, when you're a monopoly because of network effects, you
lock it in and charge whatever you want.
If YouTube allowed syndication with other websites, for example, so
I could watch videos on whatever website I wanted (with an
appropriate portion of the revenue going to YouTube), I would have
no problems with them changing their monetization model.
keepamovin wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
That's a good point I hadn't considered it. So YouTube loss-lead
with free for all videos -- then became a monopoly and people are
reaction badly not because of any inbuilt fairness wiring
trigger, but because, actually the price is merely too high?
Hmmm, possible. How to test? Hard, given their monopoly status.
Tho does Rumble offer paid subscriptions?
A small but perhaps weak counter to your thesis is that if people
were really unwilling to negotiate with YouTube over
cost/experience, why would they then so vehemently attempt to
eradicate ads, rather that accepting them as a lesser cost than
the subscription fee?
But I guess what you're really saying is that none of the costs
YT deigns to levy is felt as fair by those complaining. Not the
ads. Not the USD9 (?) / mo subscription, however localized. Thus
it's not free-then-paid, it's "bad pricing" that's arming the
militia? Were the pricing simply "fair" people would be happy to
pay it. But what rational expectation could they have for a fair
price? Unless I'm mistaking Disney+, Netflix, HBO, are all more
expensive, but IMO provide less range. I'm less convinced "fair
price" is it the more I think about it, but there could be
something there. How else would you expand that?
Good, self contained point overall. Tho I'm going to side with
the psychological factor as I've experienced that in other
domains where the monopoly is not a factor. And the "merely a
fair price" argument hinges on a sense of rationality which
appears conspicuously absent from the reactions. Emotional and
ape logic, yes, but objective and economic rationality + empathy
logic? No.
anonymous908213 wrote 54 min ago:
> Unless I'm mistaking Disney+, Netflix, HBO, are all more
expensive
Disney, Netflix, and HBO all fund the creation of and own the
content they provide to users. Youtube does not. Youtube
inserts itself as a middle-man taxing regular people sharing
videos with other regular people. There is obviously a non-zero
cost to infrastructure but their attempts to extract revenue go
far, far beyond that, hence people feeling their prices are too
high, whether the price is paid in ads or subscription fees.
keepamovin wrote 44 min ago:
OK, again a good point. There is YouTube Originals ( [1] )
not sure the model vs the others (also want to ad I enjoy the
classic films that YT provides for free [tho I think I need
to be on a US VPN to get that if traveling], plus of which
you need to buy/rent), but I'm also not sure any of us has
the inside track on YT's costs/revenue, so I guess we're all
speculating.
When you say "their attempts to extract revenue go far beyond
that"(A) I feel I can't accept that on good faith, I'd need
to see numbers. Also I doubt this kind of data is the thing
most people reacting with "prices are unfair" or "payment is
bad", are drawing on, instinctively or not. So it's hard for
me to accept this thesis as the source of ills. Tho, maybe it
is. Maybe people's innate sense of fairness really does cover
this, somehow.
I'm not aware of those numbers, so it doesn't seem that way
to me, but maybe I'm just not across it. Can you give
examples of your claim (A)?
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqVDpXKLmKeBU_yyt_Q...
anonymous908213 wrote 28 min ago:
Youtube's direct expenses are not published by Google, but
there are a couple of ways we could measure it. One is the
fact that Google is among the richest companies in the
world, if not the richest at any given time. This
definitionally indicates that the margins on their main
revenue-generating services, among which Youtube is one,
are extremely high, with revenue far, far, above expenses.
Another way we could measure it is by the value of an
ad-view relative to the price of the subscription they
offer. Ad views are auctioned and go for different prices
based on category, demographics of viewers, etc., and
aggregate statistics are not provided, but an ad-view
typically tends to be in the range of US$0.01 per ad view.
A subscription fee of US$9* to avoid ads, then, would
require viewing 900 ads to justify the cost. I suspect in
reality most people don't see more than 100 ads in a month,
so Youtube is likely generating an 8x profit margin over
costs of not showing ads to Premium users, give or take
depending on how you work out the napkin math. If people
had an option to buy an ad-free subscription with none of
the other premium features for $1/mo, I suspect the uptake
would be significantly higher and feel fair to the general
population.
*After looking it up, Youtube Premium apparently actually
costs US$14.
Anecdotally, I used to spend, I believe, ¥480 per month
for a Niconico subscription (Niconico is the Japanese
domestic equivalent to Youtube). I was content paying this
subscription fee for years, until they increased the price
up by 50% to ¥720, and about two years ago the price
further increased to ¥990. I cancelled my subscription and
stopped using the website. I am not opposed to paying
subscription fees to platforms, but when it feels
extortionate, I won't. The same is likely true for many or
most people.
stavros wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
For me personally, the ads are too high a cost for me to pay.
When my ad-free way of watching breaks and I get an ad, I
simply close the tab. I find ads really annoying these days,
and I pay to avoid them where I find the price fair, otherwise
I don't use the thing.
keepamovin wrote 41 min ago:
I don't like the ads, which is why I switched to Premium. I
like it. I also listen to white noise variants at night, so I
can't tolerate ads there obviously. I know a little of your
situation I think from reading your previous posts here, so
I'm sure you are able to "afford" the premium fee. What makes
you not pay it?
Small strange nuance for me is when I switch to my corp
account, and see an ad, sometimes I really enjoy the ad,
because it's novel and creative. Sounds funny to say, and I
probably wouldn't fele like that if I saw ads all the time.
But some of the YT ads do seem pretty high quality.
stavros wrote 13 min ago:
I watch maybe an hour of YouTube a month, so it's not worth
it for me.
rkomorn wrote 53 min ago:
This is what I appreciate about paywalls, subscription
modals, etc: there's a clear definition of the "deal", and I
can just nope out. "Please enable ads or don't view our
content" is also perfect.
I don't wanna trick anyone into showing me ad-free content, I
just want a chance to choose.
learingsci wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
Itâs called âopportunity cost.â
If you marry somebody and they suddenly become a totally different
person and try to extort you a common reaction is to feel deceived
and unhappy. They have cheated you in a sense of the opportunity
cost of being able to marry someone else.
That people might not understand that tells you something about
them.
keepamovin wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
Yeah, that marriage situation can be totally tough. If you're
going through that, I feel for you. I can relate, but then who of
us has ever really picked the "right" person to marry the first
time around? Sure, some get lucky. But often our wapred
childhoood expecdtatiosn contaminate the idea of a perfect match
with something that feels familiar but is actually wrong for us,
or worse, just abusive.
Anyway, in this case I think the analogy is a little overblown
because the stakes are so different, but is revealing. You can
way more easily divest of a software product than a marriage
(presumably, tho that may differ locally). But, as in marriage,
there's a interesting nuance: the stories we tell ourselves about
what went wrong are so often one-sided, which lacks empathy for
how the other person is probably just doing their best. A similar
empahty mismatch with the entitlement of consumers who don't
comprehend that the value they expect a person to provide them
for free, should actually be compensated. As in, a free exchange.
That someone might confuse those could tell you 'something about
them.' Or it could just be an honest mistake, on their part. That
we're all likely to make.
Still the trigger to ape-brained fairness-wiring seems similar,
and embodies that same one way empathy. Free and fair exchange,
in commerce and relationships, should be based on more of a
mutual empahty.
Thanks for bringing it up!
learingsci wrote 35 min ago:
Iâve read about this concept the Indians have called
âizzatâ which probably explains why they have arranged
marriages. You can imagine the deceitful games that might be
played on unsuspecting brides and bridegrooms if one doesnât
find deceitful games out of bounds morally; arranged marriages
address that.
Arranged marriages are unpopular because we value choice. For
the same reason we, westerners, abhor monopolies that transform
society, wreck age old institutions, remove choice and limit
access to what once was free.
scns wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
> It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for
any reason.
You can download only the soundpart as mp4 or opus too.
mhitza wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
I'm a NewPipe user as well, unfortunately the experience is getting
worse there too. Might be because I also use a VPN, but after every
couple of videos I have to cooldown my usage until the IP block is
reset.
This started happening for me a few weeks ago.
happymellon wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
Why install additional software? Firefox hasn't broken for me only
the Chrome clones.
Pooge wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
Because modern websites are unusable on mobile; it's a feature and
not a bug.
hrnnnnnn wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
I've been using Firefox on android for over a decade, including
for YouTube, and maybe once a year I encounter a problem where I
need to use Chrome for a specific website.
Erenay09 wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
I am using Tubular, a NewPipe fork that has built-in SponsorBlock and
ReturnYouTubeDislike features.
Pooge wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
yt-dlp is great if on desktop.
deafpolygon wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
I do this, then send it to VLC on mobile.
keyle wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
If this may help you, some browser allow youtube videos in PIP (e.g.
Orion). That keeps the video going, you can scale it down in a corner.
Otherwise the other option is to drag the tab out to a window of its
own, they can't know it's not visible, at least that works for Twitch
ads.
jsilence wrote 3 hours 4 min ago:
This is so annoying.
Along the same line is that you can watch any hour long video without
interruptions unless it is music where you will get interrupted every
couple of minutes with "are you there?" dialogues.
computerfriend wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
YouTube NonStop: [1] .
URI [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-nonst...
poulpy123 wrote 3 hours 6 min ago:
Fuck google
gethly wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
I've noticed yesterday before and after update. So annoying. I so
fucking hate Google and what they've become.
idrissbellil wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
still works for me
Banditoz wrote 3 hours 10 min ago:
Not for long, probably.
I've noticed YouTube likes to A/B test a lot. If you use it signed
out you pretty much get a new set of minor changes each time.
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