- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
Drink the Kool-aid instead and join Premium. It’s great. YouTube is my primary source of video entertainment. No ads on any device and countless thousands of hours of math and science videos, SNL clips, educational videos, game reviews, and on and on.
For the cost of two beers a month, I get access to the best video library in the world with no ads, plus saved video progress so you can resume videos later, and YouTube Music to boot.
Why everyone on Lemmy thinks everything in the world should be free when it costs money to run the servers and pay content creators is beyond me. Makes no sense.
You sound like an ad. It triggered my uncanny valley response. Please never do that again.
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Edgy
I will never pay Google a dime. They make enough off of us. It’s really easy to download the video you want to watch and watch it on a stand alone player with you guessed it, NO FUCKING ADS.
I also don’t trust them that they won’t sell my data if I pay them
You know they’ll still sell it.
For now. If Google succeeds at doing this it won’t be.
as an occasional creator of internet videos,I would much rather host my own videos, because bandwidth is actually very cheap. but YouTube has a complete monopoly on internet video, so I have to host my video on their website, subject to their weird and arbitrary conditions, their trigger happy copyright system, and their general terrible treatment of their creators. they pay an absolute pittance for impressions, which is why most professional YouTubers use other revenue streams
the company, Google, that you are paying, didn’t make the videos, doesn’t fairly compensate the people who did, and they are effectively holding them and the very concept of internet video hostage
people on Lemmy mostly support a free, non-corpo, decentralised internet instead of the parasites at Google because Lemmy is free and decentralised and non corporate
get real
I’m not paying just to get back what we used to have without ad blockers. They need to offer more than just no ads. Like exclusive content.
Also:
You say that as if it’s a premium only feature. It’s not.
Don’t give them ideas…
Will that fix their horrible site and mobile app that constatntly breaks on me? I’m not going to pay a corporation that treats users and creators like shit and can’t even make a good way to interact with the service with all that money. If they prpvided a fantastic service and were pro-consumer and pro-creator then I totally would. But they’re the opposite of that.
I have no problems with either. 🤷♂️ The site and all of their apps work fine.
Just pretend like the anti-consumer and anti-creator criticisms aren’t there. They can’t hurt you if you just don’t acknowledge that they exist.
until they don’t, or raise their prices and lower their services
I use premium and even I cringed at this. The first two thirds of this are written like an AI generated ad.
What you don’t understand is that if YouTube manages to get enough people by the balls with their anti-adblocking efforts, the next step is to start jacking up the subscription price year after year to see how much people are willing to pay.
I signed up for a family plan a couple years ago and it’s honestly one of the last subscriptions I would cancel. I can justify it by the literally hundreds of hours of watching ads me and my family would have been subjected to otherwise.
I think you missed a “not” in your last sentence
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I prefer subscription models. That way I’m paying with my money and not my content. Of course with Google you’re doing both… but in principle I support it. I pay for a family plan and have some friends/ family on it.
It hate ads and to me it’s easily worth the monthly fee. I looked up a YouTube video on a TV that wasn’t signed in and there was like 60 seconds of ads! I’ve had YouTube premium / red for years I didn’t realize it was getting so bad.
But yeah, I support subscription model. More sustainable and honest way for a website to make a profit. In a subscription you are the buyer and the website is the product. In a free model ad companies are the buyer and you are the product.
They have more incentive under the subscription model to create a better experience for the user. In a free they have incentive to squeeze user as much as possible. I think it’s one of the main drivers of enshittification
Then how would you explain what netflix is doing to their customers?
Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Well couple of things.
First, I said it gives more incentive. Not explicitly mandates it. So I’m not saying all subscription services are great to the consumer. I’m saying as a whole, it’s probably better than the alternative.
Second, Netflix is a bit of a unique case I think. They essentially created the streaming industry back during blockbuster days. Nobody thought streaming rights had any value so they licensed them to Netflix for cheap. Netflix blew up because it had access to a very large catalog of media.
After companies realized they could make more money streaming things themselves, they stopped renewing the licenses to Netflix.
Netflix was very large because of their access to these licenses. If they lose the license, they over the long term lose their customers. So they took a gamble and invested heavily in self-made media in many different languages. Some were a success, like Stranger Things, but most were flops.
Essentially they became this large corporate behemoth and they are desperately trying to remain in their top hegemon spot. Once a company reaches that size, they are an entirely different animal. And unfortunately because of the way streaming rights works, you’ll probably only see large corporate streaming sites in the foreseeable future
I pay for YouTube. It is without a doubt the best subscription I pay for, that I get major use out of. I know people are hardcore anti-ad and Google is like Ad Satan, but if you can afford it, YouTube is unironically worth it.
The monthly payment for my family subscription is less than 2 tickets to the movies, not including gas, popcorn, kids, etc.
Easily the most bang for the buck entertainment we get, we watch hours of YouTube every day. News, tech reviews, travel, kids songs, tutorials…
I canceled Disney+ and Netflix, but YouTube premium is not going anywhere.