• sodium@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    YouTube feels unusable without an ad-blocker. I’ve gotten like 30min crazy conspiracy videos as an ad that shit is bonkers.

  • vraylle@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    At least with my subscriptions I’ve been noticing an increase in sponsored segments. And you know what? I don’t mind. It’s much less jarring when the “host” is also doing the ad and pretty much just works it into the video. People have to make money, and this old-school approach works for me. Reminds me of ads in old TV/radio shows. And it doesn’t suddenly change the scene and quadruple the volume along with seizure-inducing backgrounds.

    • goji@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yeah I wouldn’t hate this quite so much.

      But then the creator gets the ad revenue instead of the platform, and they just can’t have that can they.

      One of my fave podcasts is hosted by an intelligent, genuine woman who happens to have a very soothing voice. She covers topics that matter to me, and as a person who has sensory issues, the fact I’ve never found her jarring is rare. I wish I could pay to skip the ad service she uses, because I’m just trying to be calm and peaceful and learn something that’ll improve my life when some prat jumps in and starts yelling at me about a casino or some irrelevant trash.

      Bring back creator vetted ads. At least they’d be (hopefully) more relevant and fit the tone of the media I’m choosing to engage with.

  • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I’ll say something unexpected: I pay for YouTube. With money! Why?

    • I use it every day and I’m a human who likes boosting the things that I enjoy
    • I think YouTube’s content recommendations are a genuine value-add and not easily replaced
    • A cut of my subscription fee goes directly back to the video creators that I watch
    • The “premium” encoding levels are actually a substantial improvement to video bitrates
      • Important: the premium bitrate is higher than anything previously offered and probably would not have been otherwise practical to serve for free

    So yeah. I personally like YouTube enough to pay for it and I have the financial means to do so. Am I a clown for expressing personal appreciation towards a faceless megacorp? Yes. Yes I am. Constantly trying to win at every transaction in life is a drag though, so I think I’ll continue to enjoy getting swindled.

    • Slashzero@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’m also a YouTube premium user. I realize there are other ways to get around the ads, but I prefer supporting the services I enjoy using.

    • Danny M@lemmy.escapebigtech.infoEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      rather than paying for youtube premium you should use an adblocker, or download all the videos you watch, then donate the money to creators you watch. if everyone who paid for youtube premium just decided to split the cost of the subscription between the creators they watch, creators would make a lot more money and as a bonus you hurt Alphabet, one of the worst companies in the world. It’s a win win

      • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Alright, let’s say I do that. I’ll take my $12 and split it equally between every unique channel I’ve watched in the last 30 days. Eyeballing my watch history shows… about 100 different channels.

        Let’s ignore for the sake of argument the incredible overhead I’d have to take upon myself in order to facilitate and account for 100+ recurring micro-donations. How much more money do you think these creators would get from my direct donations rather than going through greedy Alphabet? Let’s do math together:

        • Subscription: $12.48 (the extra $0.48 is applied at checkout for the 4% VAT)
        • 4% VAT (rounds up): -$0.48 ($12.00)
        • 1.9% + $0.30 Processor Fee (rounds up): -$0.53 ($11.47)
        • 45% Platform Split (not rounded!): -$5.1615 ($6.3085)
        • 100x split: $0.063085 p/channel

        Ok. That’s ~$0.06 instead of the $0.12 each creator would have gotten had I simply hand-delivered two pennies and a dime to every single individual. Now, I don’t know about you… but I’m kind of too busy watching YouTube to go outside right now, so let’s go ahead and factor in what would happen if I managed to donate using a platform like Patreon instead:

        • Not-Subscription: $12.48
        • Rounded up: $13.00 (the donation has to be evenly divisible by 100)
        • Per-creator donation: $00.13
        • 4% Local Digital VAT (rounds up): -$0.01 ($0.12)
        • 5% Platform Fee (rounds up): -$0.01 ($0.11)
        • 5% + $0.10 Processor Fee (rounds up): -$0.11 ($0.00)

        In other words: I’d be paying $0.52 more to donate a grand total of: no money. If we ignore the “no money” problem, there’s also the issue of it being literally impossible to donate such a tiny sum in the first place. We also conveniently ignored the challenge of individually navigating numerous currency conversions…

        Let’s be honest and come clean with each other now: you weren’t being completely serious with me when you claimed that your suggestion was about helping ✨the creators✨. Even if you were serious, I’m certain that you don’t actually follow your own advice because it’s quite clearly impossible for a normal person to internationally distribute $12 among dozens of strangers.

  • Grizzzlay@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I imagine folks wouldn’t have a problem with this if the ads weren’t already so aggressive. Numerous ads before and during the content break it up too much. And if the content is extremely short form, it completely ruins the experience.

    The number of ads and their length should be proportional to the length of the video. And any creator doing built-in ads should also not be able to inject a bunch of other ads. Burying content is an easy way to get avoided.

    Print media had limits for advertisements, heck, in magazines they were premium real estate for the finest graphic designers to put together incredible imagery to get your attention. This level of care (not necessarily images or what have you) has yet to translate to the web.

  • confusedwiseman@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    It seems like we’ve all lost the plot. We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring. Try browsing for a day on a plain-no-extension browser. If you use other web enhancement tools kill those too. Straight-up internet is cancer, especially on mobile.

    It’s impossible to read a 250-word article without being interrupted 5-7 times. Two of those interruptions are likely a full page overlay with give me your email, and are you sure you don’t want to subscribe, just give me your credit card number.

    Then there are auto-play videos on the side, some with audio on by default. I mean I came here to read something, so of course we have things flashing and moving and making noise, it’s the most conducive environment for thought, right?

    Ad blockers and script blocking are essentially a hazmat suit that allows us to withstand a hostile environment. Remember when we said myspace pages with audio and [marching-ants] borders was a bad UX? At least we didn’t have overlays back then.

    Go back to basics and consider what makes a good vs bad internet experience. The reality sounds like someone with a minor case of severe brain damage. I think we’ve just become unashamed of greed as a society. It’s clearly all just about money.

    Those annoying customers/users generate content and we have to put up with them so we can monetize it. *Sadly, It’s unclear if I’m talking about youtube, reddit, or nearly any other site.

    Le sigh.

    • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring.

      Not me, sorry. Fuck ads. I’ve been ad-free for like a decade, and I’m not interested in regressing.

      • confusedwiseman@beehaw.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive? I mean, servers and bandwidth cost money. I’m in the same boat as you where I have run ad blockers, adblocker blockers, no script, privacy enhancers, and anti-fingerprinting since forever ago.

        I’d rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data. If there was a balance, this is where I’d say it was reasonable. Since not reality, I’m with you, nuke them all, and just take the content.

        • longshaden@beehaw.orgEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          The definition of “reasonable ads” and “just a few ads” keeps sliding. I’m old enough to remember the early internet, and that this lie has been told many times.

          Just a few acceptable ads always becomes many unacceptable ads, because money.

        • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive?

          I don’t need propaganda telling me to want to buy shit that I otherwise wouldn’t want to buy, no. I’ll go to other consumers (and, more specifically, people I trust) to determine what things are worth, not entities with a conflict of interest in the matter.

          The whole marketing/advertising industry is illegitimate and harmful, and I’m “boycotting” the whole thing until we finish the job of destroying capitalism and it’s no longer needed anyway.

          I’d rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data.

          The corporations are going to try to mine and sell your data anyway. Why wouldn’t they? You think just because they have a revenue stream through ads that they’ll give up another revenue stream from fucking over your privacy? Then I’ve got this nice bridge to sell you, too…

          • confusedwiseman@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            I think you’re right, I feel like I’m looking for a little good-will among our kind (bleak and probably misguided at best). Sellers and consumers need to coexist in some manner, but what that relationship should be is yet to be defined. For now, we’re in a place that needs change for sure.

    • Mavapu@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I fully agree. Online ads used to be some banners next to the content you came to the site for. I was fine with that. As soon as they put it in front/in between/… the content, I very quickly got fed up with it.

    • sexy_peach@feddit.deEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring.

      Not really I don’t want to view propaganda about how the new 6 wheels family killer wagon is still chill even if you’re going through the desert.

      I just don’t like ads and unnecessary consumerism.

      • Gray@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        God, this is tangential to your point, but car and housing aesthetics have gotten terrible. Everything is BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER. People need to buy huge fucking hulked out monster trucks now for their suburban ass lives so they can make sure to fit their entire home when they commute an hour to work in soul crushing traffic. And they absolutely NEED their giant ass monstrous mcmansions. How can they survive without the extra dozen rooms that they can fill with more cheap bullshit? And don’t get me started on color. Houses are all beige, grey, monotone terrible. Cars are silver, white, grey, black. There’s no color anymore. It just feels like what’s the point? Why bother trying when this is what success looks like. We have this beautiful planet and this is the shit we fill it with. I’m sorry. /endrant

  • Aurix@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I never thought YouTube’s business model was very sustainable. As the world economy goes down, so does the value of ads. Creators or consumers need to pay up for all the bandwidth and storage. The question is about what is a reasonable price. Are low tiers for $3/mo. possible along with premium 4k options or does everything need to be at more than that?

  • dr0037@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    While we are saying “fuck reddit”, let’s say “fuck you too YT”. Fucking malware machine.

  • SuperSpruce@vlemmy.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    This is old news from a month ago.

    And here’s my hot take on YT ads: They need to make money somehow, but unfortunately they are subject to “ad creep,” where they slowly increase the intensity of the ads. I’ve gotten 15+20s unskippable ads before.

    But what really grinds my gears are how the ads almost seem designed to annoy you. If you commonly skip ads, that’s when you get unskippable ads all the time. And if you try to listen to YT in the shower expect the ads to come and go like radio, you come out listening to some skippable 30 minute long ad.

    And I hate how the ads on mobile decide to cover the comment section. That’s ridiculous, like imagine if you’re reading a newspaper and when you get to an ad the ad suddenly expands to fill the entire page.

    And the forced ads on unmonetized channels is plain cruel.

    So, as much as I want to support creators (and I do leave AdBlock off on YT most of the time), I’ll come out against YT over this decision. My usage of it will drop, but only minorly.

  • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    If they really block adblockers, I will subscribe. To Nebula. It’s got everything I want, adfree (including sponsored segments), extra content and is cheaper. And the content creators get a bigger share of the money.

    • nodiet@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      There is nothing stopping you from subscribing to nebula right now. Since I haven’t gotten any ads on YouTube in many years and even use sponsorblock to skip those annoying video segments I started thinking about how I am basically leeching off of most content creators. Subscribing to nebula was a no-brainer. It’s about $4.16 per month on the yearly plan and lets me support all content creators I watch on there at once rather than subscribing to each and every one of them on patreon and I still don’t see any ads

    • PhatInferno@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Suggestions?

      My issue is that the content creators i watch probably arnt going to leave… and im sure ad blocks will find a way around it after a month or so