I mean, I dont actually mind ads… within reason. But over the past few years I have watched less and less youtube content due to the ratio of ads to the actual bloody content I wanted to view.
One recent video about a bloke’s guitar amp was great. The ads not so much. I had to view two lots of 30 second unskippable ads before the 9 minute video would start. The guy starts this amazing guitar solo half way through, only to be cut off by TWO MORE bleeding adverts. The solo continues, the guy shreds it out then the video ends… two more adverts, 30 seconds each no skips (I reloaded the browser in the end which seemed to trigger a 2 minute ad at the start of another video).
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money. The real solution is to tell everyone we know to use other platforms as much as possible and avoid Youtube. Tell every creator we love and respect to diversify where their content goes.
I know people here dont like the politics and trolling that happen on other platforms but thats because they’re insulated. With more exposure those platforms will tackle it. Or quarantine it. The other danger is if we dont diversify our viewing and creator hosting then Alphabet will just hold a monopoly and strangle any other real chance.
No, most people really don’t care.
I’ve have premium because of YT music (formerly Google Play Music) which imo is the best music streaming service. I have the family plan that is me my wife, and three friends, the friend paying their portion of plan.
I like giving money to Google less and less by the day, but I don’t mind paying for an ad free service that I use extensively. If they start putting ads in the paid service, I will be dropping immediately.
Netflix and Disney are threatening ads in their paid services, with maybe a higher priced tier to then avoid them. I think this is the model streaming is going for now.
I do my best to not give money to Disney. They’re like Nestle in that they have their dirty hands in everything, so it’s hard to completely avoid, but I do try.
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Yup, same for me. I had Ublock for youtube on my computer, but couldn’t figure out how to block ads on the tv. Since I was already paying for another music service, it made sense to just drop that and pay essentially the same price for ad free youtube and a good music streaming service.
I wish it would but it won’t.
The assumpion Google is doing is that people install AdBlockes because they want something free. They seems not to be able to understand that they simply gone too far.
Google had the problem that they must show a ever growing revenue and since they cannot add more eyeball (or data to harvest) they simply need to try to get more from what they had. So as you say, the problem is not the single Ad, or the data harvest or any other single thing they do.
The problem is the sum of all of the things they do. They show multiple Ads, harvest your data, make you pay and still harvest your data and show the Ads.People simply started to think “since Google want to screw me, then why I should not try to screw them ?”
Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money.
It will became the usual armed race, until Google would make their services so disfunctional to even the common user that people will simply stop using them since the value they get from the service is not worth the trouble.
That assuming that in some places (the EU for example) Google would not be hit by some law that force them to stop what they are doing and force them to play by the rules everyone else need to follow.
It will hurt them a little bit, because it will drive a few people to alternative platforms. However, the majority of their user base is now captive, because they have grown dependent on Alphabet for a number of services. All they have to do is ban a few people from all of Alphabet to set the example, and then 99% of folks will either subscribe or disable their ad blockers. Because getting banned from all of their services would really, really suck for most people who depend on them. Just think of how many non-Alphabet logins would suddenly stop working (either because of federation or gmail dependencies). Not to mention their data saved to the cloud.
Unfortunately, big picture is, they will come out on top. Because of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” model that they are veterans at. IOW, they know how to royally screw people.
I think our only glimmer of hope is the government continuing to go after monopolies. That’s not much of a hope, though.
All they have to do is ban a few people from all of Alphabet to set the example, and then 99% of folks will either subscribe or disable their ad blockers.
It can be like you said or, on the other hand, be the trigger to even more people to seek for alternatives.
Because getting banned from all of their services would really, really suck for most people who depend on them.
While true, fighting with your own clients/source of income is not a very brilliant strategy for a company. People that depend on them for serious reasons can simply decide that the risk is becoming too high and simply seek other solutions. All the SCO saga should have taught something…
Unfortunately, big picture is, they will come out on top. Because of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” model that they are veterans at. IOW, they know how to royally screw people.
Maybe Google can win this battle, but I am not sure about the war. If the data that show that about 42% of the internet users had an AdBlocker installed are true, it remain to be seen how many of them will accept the condition Google set.
At this point is clear that the use of AdBlockers is hurting them in a way or another and while user may find an alternative solution for Google services, Google cannot find an alternative users for its services. In the end Google lose even if they only show a slower grow then predicted.
You are more optimistic than I am, and I hope you are right. I am mildly encouraged by some of the backlash we’re seeing in the news against tech bros.
You are more optimistic than I am, and I hope you are right. I am mildly encouraged by some of the backlash we’re seeing in the news against tech bros.
Nah, maybe I am just older and already seen this happening, and not only in tech.
The problem Google has is that they are on the edge: they need to fight adblockers but they cannot hurt too much the average user while the adblock users already shown that they accept to “go to war”. And I don’t think that Google has more resources than “us”.
There is only so much ops a normal user accept to be able to use a service, they cannot take it too far to become an inconvenient to the average users. This way they simply will lose even the normal user.
A good parallel I do looking at myself is with Amazon, my orders hystory shows that when I started to use it I made much more orders, then in time Amazon got worse: cheap chinese clones, amazon ripoffs, query that shows irrelevant products, more and more difficulties to find the right product even if queried with the correct full name, so I simply switched to other online shops when I need to buy a certain brand product and not a cheap ripoff. So Amazon lost about 80% of my orders.
Same for Youtube: if while fighting against the adblockers they make the service worse even for the “average Joe” they will lose users and relevance.
I don’t think it will make enough of an impact for Alphabet to actually give a shit but I agree they’re getting out of control with the ads and I think a handful of people will start looking for alternatives. I recently switched from Google to Kagi and I set up Firefox to redirect all YouTube links to Piped lol I think a lot of people are already trying to find alternatives to Google products due to general enshittification but they’re so big I don’t really see it hurting them in any significant way. I would love to see something actually compete with YouTube though tbh. I personally try to use non Google alternatives whenever possible these days
How do you get Firefox to redirect all YT links to Piped? Please share
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Ope, ya beat me to it lol that’s what I’m using also
