YouTube's ‘War’ on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.

This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.

This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.

Kyle_The_G,

Ya I’ll never stop using ad blockers, the internet is essentially unusable without them. Mine still work on youtube but if the day comes that they don’t I’ll just stop using it. We need some competition here, things have gotten increasingly anticonsumer and the companies have gotten too comfortable doing and charging whatever they want

dunestorm,
@dunestorm@lemmy.world avatar

There never will be a YouTube competitor, it requires continuous investment from a multibillion dollar company.

Kyle_The_G,

Nebula isn’t too bad, I like a lot of those informative creators and they collaorated and made a startup video hosting site, its essentially everything i want youtube to be. If more creators decided to do this it’s be great.

DarkenLM,

The problem with any youtube competitor is that there is no way in hell they can cover the costs of the infrastructure required to host the same amount of videos youtube has and streaming them to the millions of users youtube serves daily.

knatschus,

Why not? Youtube was big before google bought it

xapr,

They were big through investors throwing money at a money sink for years. Youtube was losing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars a year for a long time, before it finally became profitable.

A new competitor wouldn’t get such favorable support from investors.

DarkenLM,

Did youtube at the time serve millions of users daily and stored a gargantuan amount of petabytes worth of videos?

Even if a competitor rises, they will need money somehow, and in this hell of a capitalist world, only big corporations have it.

Ashyr,

Two reasons:

  1. Because no one else occupied the same space in a meaningful way.
  2. Low interest rates meant they were able to get massive investments without the burden of profitability.

Now you’d need to distinguish yourself from YouTube in a meaningful way as well as provide a sustainable revenue model, such as advertising, in order to gain access to a similar amount of venture capital.

The_Vampire,

Youtube had a space devoid of competition. The next guy doesn’t. If the next guy wants to compete, they have to have all the features of Youtube or people will complain. Many of Youtube’s current features cost money and weren’t present when Youtube started.

The space is also more regulated now that Youtube exists, meaning the new guy has to follow regulations which normally costs money. When Youtube started, those regulations didn’t exist, because Youtube didn’t exist.

Youtube got big by building a city in an open field surrounded by nothing but open fields. The next guy has to build a city directly next to Youtube, follow all the same laws as Youtube, and ask you not to drive into Youtube.

rockSlayer,

How about a decentralized, federated service instead of hoping a major corporation tries to “save” us?

DarkenLM,

I don't think even a decentralized service could hold a mass equal to youtube. That would require that either the owners of all instances pay from their own pockets with mostly no income to support it, or that every user paid up, which is not going to happen, at least not in a service like youtube.

netburnr,
@netburnr@lemmy.world avatar

Some of us are data holders and have Gigabit internet with options to go even higher. Don’t count out the little guys ability to share massive amounts of data… been doing it since zip drives and CDs

ubermeisters,

Except you don’t force licensing so you’ll get shut down immediately by some DMCA bullshit, by some asshole law firm.in another country probably.

kakes,

Have you seen the sheer amount of data hosted by YouTube though? There’s no way any amount of hobbyists are going to hold a candle to that.

Traister101,

Let’s say only 500gb of video are uploaded every hour in this hypothetical federated YouTube (actual volume for the site looks to be ~200tb an hour). Are you honestly going to argue just that is even conceivably maintainable? You have to infinitely add storage space, multiple TBs a day.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

Let’s say I run my own hypothetical, federated, userpeer-to-peer and opt-in server CDN function-platform, also known as PeerTube…

I’d only accept those video uploads/uploaders I consider quality content.

I’d love to host many content creator’s videos. From the goodness of my heart, for free, as a gift to you all. But certainly not all videos, and nowhere near 200 TB/h. But I can afford to host many TB’s without it impacting my private economy.

That video of some idiot eating tidepods or whatever the current thing is? They could find somebody else that will host. Or if unable, host their own videos. Now we’re both happy.

xavier666,

That video of some idiot eating tidepods or whatever the current thing is? They could find somebody else that will host

Oh no! Censorship /s

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

No need to be sarcastic, in my kingdom I’ll be absolute ruler and “censor” and suppress others as I see fit.

And everybody else is free to do the same and tell me to feck off.

xavier666,

I think censorship in the Fediverse works because you can always find a host which aligns with your ideology. Bad ideas automatically die out if the overwhelming majority of people stop spreading it, not because a giant megacorp decides it’s not a good message to show to their shareholders.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

But good ideas can be hidden from users if an admin bans instances or remote users. It’s a new type of censorship.

Traister101,

I’d only accept those video uploads/uploaders I consider quality content.

Cool, I like that idea unironically. So how are you going to do that? To accept only “quality uploads” you would have to somehow know, ahead of time if the uploaded content is acceptable. Sure maybe you have a white list but have fun maintaining that.

Okay so different idea maybe you let people vote on the video somehow and delete videos that are deemed poor quality. Great! So now you burn through writes instead of storage itself which is probably desirable though it only lessens the need for more drives. There’s a flaw in this system though. How do you prevent a community from removing a video that’s been voted to be poor quality (IE fake “bad” reviews)? Are these videos gonna be manually reviewed? Manually reviewing would have the same immense maintenance problems as a whitelist so again have fun maintaining that.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And who pays the creators? They are usually partly or mostly ad supported. At best they have a patreon/floatplane or other support platform.
They will simply not come over since there’s no audience. No audience, no creator. No creator, no audience.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

Just like nobody would leave reddit for Lemmy since all the content is on reddit?

To be honest, I miss the times when people made videos because they wanted to make videos, not make money. I’m willing to forego quite a lot of YouTube content if that helps build a new paradigm for how the internet works. Would you?

Muyal,
@Muyal@lemmy.world avatar

Let’s get real, most of the people stayed on reddit. Only a very small fraction tried lemmy and an even smaller fraction have completely stopped using reddit.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

That’s OK, I stopped using reddit completely almost a decade ago. I’m happier with a small group of nice people than with a large group of unpleasant people.

A lot of people seen to focus on profitability and maximum exposure as the goal. More and more people don’t think like that anymore.

pdxfed,

Wow can’t believe you’re being down voted on this, guess it shows a lot of people don’t understand that it’s the foodcarts that lead to a good restaurant scene. The hobbiests that provide valuable content(that is later repackaged and sold as a product by leachers large and small).

There are some legitimate ideas to work through as far as a decentralized video hosting platform but the idea that something would be lost by every fucking nitwit looking to “make money on ads” not having a central video source foist their content on you…uhhh I’m down with that for sure.

When stuff is done for passion and interest, it’s almost always better than a paid product or service, and if you haven’t learned that yet in life you’re making me feel old.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

The beauty of the fediverse is that “if you don’t like it, make your own” actually works.

I don’t like down votes as they’re abused as a tool to suppress “unwanted” opinions. So the instance I’m on simply don’t accept downvotes… This ride only goes up.

Thanks for your support though, people on “hate filled” (😉) instances might find some of my opinions interesting but might not see them due to the group think downvotes.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

Uploaders would be manually screened at sign-up, I wouldn’t run an open server. Many fediverse servers in general and several PT-instances in particular does it. It works fine for a community based platform. It’s not meant to be one, monolithic server doing it all, open for all.

There are many ways to handle storage requirements, I like datacenters with easily expandable storage.

You bring up “have fun with that” but I’m having great fun already helping out running both a Mastodon and Lemmy instance. I don’t see how a video hosting service would be much different, in regards to moderation. Maybe I’m missing part of your point?

Traister101,

My moderation point is that with a video service you are forced to “watch” the content in the video in order to properly moderate (though you can just block people of course). You could have a bunch of filters like YouTube does to determine if your video should have ads and whatnot or you can rely on the community (or both).

The main issue with it is that we want to prevent “bad content” that being very poor quality content to skip being all detailed. To do that kind of filtering really requires some form of community review of the content as it’s infeasible to have it all manually reviewed. If you have a community review process you open the door to mass reporting and the like so you cannot simply automatically remove content if it gets a lot of reports, it must be manually reviewed (by watching the content) to ensure it’s fair to remove it. Lemmy, at least in my usage doesn’t have this desired “bad quality” filter outside of up votes/down votes which notably don’t remove the content (and so doesn’t remove the immense storage requirement)

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

It seems like we have fundamental differences in how the fediverse could and should work. I don’t see this conversation going any further, thanks for the interaction.

Traister101,

Yeah dude this was quite nice compared to my experiences on Reddit. Might have come off too strong from all my time there.

4am,

The mistake was allowing the internet to become “the cloud” in the first place.

People should be able to host their own shit on their own machine at home. This should be simple for people to set up, like a NAS with an App Store. Default to a secure config. Don’t make it too easy; if you try to sugarcoat it all, people won’t realize what they’re getting into (like now with cloud shit)

Otherwise we get what we have now - everything from TVs to social media to fucking door locks and lightbulbs needs a connection back to the manufacturer, and they can drop support at any time. This allows the worst of rent-seeking under the guise of “everyone too dumb to do on their own”, very similar to “we must not allow security because bad guys could hurt KIDS” (while true, it’s just an excuse to read everyone’s mail to protect the ruling class from any negative opinion brewing)

Jako301,

Great, so you pretty much only host established creators. Nearly all big channels on Youtube started with what is now considered shitty contend. They trained their editing skills over time, bought proper equipment once they really got into it and probably only found their style halfway through their “career”. If YouTube pre-filtered it’s videos, then the site would be dead by now.

Sure you can shove all responsibility to someone else and say they should self host it, but then you also have to acknowledge that peertube and the like eliminate 98% of all content before its made with its cobsiderably higher entry point, and that includes the good and the bad.

PhreakyByNature,

grayjay.app

Vipsu,
@Vipsu@lemmy.world avatar

Honestly this feels like the only possible way to win against Youtube. Goal could be to just create standardized decentralized platform where number of different companies/organizations can host and serve their own content while still being searchable and accessible from single client application.

Major problem with Mastodon, Lemmy and Peertube is searching and browsing content from multiple instances is still difficult.

wizardbeard,
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

That doesn’t address the issue of storage and compute power for streaming to the absurd amount of users.

There’s been attempts before and it all comes down to file transfer time and storage (because at the time the servers weren’t transcoding for streaming the file. Secondary issue of buy in, like what we see with niche communities staying on reddit instead of moving to the fediverse.

There already exist a number of projects out there like peertube. Take a look at how even the most popular instances are doing. It’s not well.

The closest thing was around a decade ago, the popcorntime or popcornflix or whatever it was called app/program that was just a nice front end for torrenting videos and watching them before they finished downloading. Each individual user was responsible for their own storage, network connection speed, and compute power to render the video for themselves. Each end user was also contributing back through helping others to download the file via standard torrenting p2p stuff.

So now you need a front end to host the magnet links to the files, and a robust set of seed servers so no video is ever truly lost. That still doesn’t cover a significant portion of youtube’s functionality like reccomendations, comments, allowing creators to edit/adjust videos after the fact.

Unlike reddit, youtube is technologically complicated and impressive. Hell, read up on some of the stuff Netflix has had to do to achieve reasonable streaming quality and speed on an insanely smaller curated library.

A decentralized federated solution is possible, but there’s a shit ton more that would have to go into this than just appealing to the concept.

DreadPotato,
@DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz avatar

The closest thing was around a decade ago, the popcorntime

That method is still around, it’s just called stremio and you use a plugin called torrentio to get the torrent streaming functionality that popcorntime offered.

Species8472,

Would you mind sharing some ‘essential’ articles to read about this? I know the principle of how Netflix works, but always interested in learning more.

4am,

I’d rather the storage and retrieval is just kind of built in to the network itself (p2p) and companies like Google can just do search on it.

Make your money on ads, but keep it off my content if I don’t want to use your services. No need to vertically integrate so hard.

r3g3n3x,

That still doesn’t cover a significant portion of youtube’s functionality like reccomendations, comments, allowing creators to edit/adjust videos after the fact.

Seems to me that anything beyond the actual hosting and serving of the video file is unnecessary to include by default in a federated video streaming solution. To drill down a bit, recommendations don’t need to be handled by an algorithm, the content creator can make their own list of videos or playlist - do we really want another reco algo passively controlling what we feed our minds? Comments could be something as simple as a mastodon or lemmy thread with the video as the OP. Content editing after the fact doesn’t seem like its that big a deal aside from computational and bandwidth overhead which would seem small compared to the task of serving multiple thousands of viewers at once.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

I agree with you so much a mere upvote won’t do.

Goronmon,

Seems to me that anything beyond the actual hosting and serving of the video file is unnecessary to include by default in a federated video streaming solution....

You are basically saying "Other than the most expensive and complicated parts" the rest is easy or unnecessary. Which isn't necessarily accurate but still is being a bit dismissive of the problems at hand.

And one of the biggest criticisms of Peertube (aside from the dearth of content, which helpfully avoids the "expensive/complicated" parts) has been Discoverability. How do people watch your videos (or your playlist) if they don't have a way of knowing that your videos even exist?

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

At best word of mouth or users sharing it on lemmy (etc.).
Good luck getting the niche stuff out of the bubble like it sometimes does with the algo.

r3g3n3x,

I think we missed each other. My overall point is that aside from the hosting/serving, other federated networks/services could pick up the slack. The Federated Youtube doesn’t have to mirror Youtube exactly, or even mirror functionality all-inclusively (ie with reccos and comments etc. built-in), but could lean on other federated servers to provide similar functionality.

As I said, comments could be a lemmy/mastodon thread. Recommendations or other discoverability could be other threads or maybe even a completely different service that hasn’t been created yet, I don’t know, but I do know that any reco algo needs to be open and subscribed to, not jammed down our throats and gamed. In the meantime, everyone’s got a search engine, right?

Ultimately I don’t live in this social media/open source/development space too much, I just saw a way for these things to be built/used together to achieve an effect, distributing dev and process overhead and load across all the networks. I don’t have any insight on the bigger, more pertinent, file distribution problem.

pascal,

peertube started with that idea. Unfortunately is poorly maintained, also because humans are inherently evil, it’s a nightmare to moderate.

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

I think it could work if most users contribute to the maintenance cost of their favorite instance. It’s just like mastodon and lemmy, but everything costs more.

Turun,

It’s still just as expensive, you’re just adding administrative overhead.

You’d also spread the cost to more people, true, but who would operate a server for free (based on donations, but if it’s federated why should I pay for that one server?). Also, do you trust all those people to keep operating the storage for years to come? Or are you done with losing access to videos, because someone lost interest in running their instance?

Storage and bandwidth costs for video on demand are so incredibly high, I don’t think we’ll get a federated alternative to YouTube any time soon.

qarbone,

The problem with any competitor is providing enough value to content producers to get them to make the move.

LPThinker,

One alternative that seems promising is Nebula. It only fills a small part of the role YouTube currently occupies, since it focuses on being a platform for high quality professional content creators to make unfiltered content for their audience, but it’s funding model seems to be much more honest, stable, and so far viable than an ad-supported platform or the other alternatives. I don’t think anything could realistically replace all facets of YouTube (and I think the internet might be healthier if it were a little bit less centrally-located). A self-sustaining, straight-forwardly funded platform like Nebule seems like the best path forward to me.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I think Floatplane has more future but I don’t use either of them so I can judge.

Lifetime licenses are weird.

LPThinker,

Interesting, I thought Floatplane only hosted LTT content. Nebula has a LOT of creators spanning a very wide gamut of highly content. It has been gaining momentum steadily for several years now.

That said, I’d be happy to see them both succeed. We need more competition, having all internet video (minus NSFW and some short-form) hosted on one platform seems neither sustainable nor ideal.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Afaik they try to market it to otger creators but also sell tge llatform like IaaS.

shortwavesurfer,

So the answer is don’t. Let your clients help you. Like peer tube. If a video gets incredibly popular, then it will have lots of watchers at the same time. If it has lots of watchers at the same time, that means anybody who starts to watch it after those watchers have started will be downloading the video from the watchers and not from the server.

ubermeisters,

Catch me rawdoggin’ the information highway? No thanks

naevaTheRat,
@naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I prefer to call it the stormwater drain of the information superhighway

BearOfaTime,

Hahahaha, dammit this should be top comment

VelvetStorm,

Download newpipe and never use YouTube again.

derpgon,

Can’t be used on desktop

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot,

freetubeapp.io

isotope,

It somewhat can

Littleborat,

Age restricted videos are a problem otherwise it’s great. I have it on an android TV box.

uriel238,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

For static ads there will eventually be visual adblockers which detect ads not from their source but because they look like ads. (The mandated paid advertisement notice helps).

There is the utility that journalists use to capture YouTube video. A version that captured video content and then filtered ads visually would be unblockable.

DrDickHandler,

AI will be good for that. For once it will benefit the people.

merc,

I guess if you don’t use ad blockers you somehow get used to it. It’s like someone whose job is 100% outdoors vs. someone who works indoors and then has to do a day working outside. The person who is used to cold, wind, rain, scorching sun, etc. stops noticing, even though it takes a toll on them too.

Every once in a while I end up using a browser without ad blockers enabled and it’s incredible to me that some people live like that. It really is almost unusable. Things jump around as ads load in. Ads / videos pop over the content you’re trying to use. The useful part of a page might be 60% ads: ads along the sides and breaking up the text. And then there’s the bottom area of the page which is an endless scroll of “related content” ads.

elbarto777,

That’s not a good analogy. It’s more like saying that whenever you go outdoors for a walk on the park or do grocery shopping, you have to give up 15 minutes of your time to “donate” blood to the rich.

Edit: I just finished reading your whole comment. Sorry friend. We’re on the same page.

merc,

No analogy is perfect. Yours gets at the reason for the ads – they want something from you and you have no chance to bargain or say no. Mine is more about how people can become accustomed to something that’s really unpleasant and after a while not really notice it.

My point is that to me (someone who blocks ads), trying to use the web without an ad blocker is extremely painful, and I find websites almost unusable. But, to someone who has never used an ad blocker, they’re used to the crap, and have developed some ‘immunity’ to the distracting images and work-arounds for the broken thing.

Anyhow, we’re on the same page. I just felt like explaining a bit better what I was getting at.

elbarto777,

I was quite content with tolerating banner ads. Then they became animated and it went downhill after that.

merc,

I’m fine with a variety of ads, but I really hate distracting animation. The current trend seems to be that every ad is animated, so every ad is blocked.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

I’ve used adblockers for like 15 years and I genuinely get disgusted when watching YouTube without it. There’s no way I’ll go back. I even do sponsorblock to remove in-video ads.

The unfortunate thing is that I’m willing to pay a reasonable price for a lot of content creators, just not via Google/YouTube.

A dollar per channel? I follow 104 content creators om YouTube through RSS. And many more if we count all the other platforms. I can’t afford that.

It’s a difficult situation for viewers, creators and providers. I don’t have an answer, but a stop-gap solution I’d be happy to see is like 480p max for adblockers, pay for HD+. That’s reasonable based on how much ad-dodgers impact YouTube from what I’ve gathered.

OrangeCorvus,
@OrangeCorvus@lemmy.world avatar

I cannot watch a video from start to finish anymore. Thanks youtube. Almost every video is filled with bs fluff to reach the 8 minute mark. It annoys me greatly. Maybe also because I am in the industry and I learned in school to not use meaningless shit in my videos.

registrert,
@registrert@lemmy.sambands.net avatar

I’ve not thought about them time markers in a long time. One that was kinda funny and bearable was Dave509’s twist.

“I need to reach a certain time limit on my videos, so for a few more minutes I’ll just sit here, nod and say “I agree” and “I understand”. Feel free to share whatever with me…

Sits in absolute silence for 30 seconds while staring at the camera

Yes, I agree.”

But I have noticed I’ve gravitated to longer form videos, 30m+, for the last few years. I guess it has a lot to do with the fluff.

We shall from now on call such content creators “fluffers”.

aceshigh,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

i’ve gravitated to long form interviews, 8+ hours has nothing on me. i listen to them when i go to sleep or watch art videos.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Now that’s a solution.
Detecting adblock: 480/576p
Watching with ads: 720p/1080p/1440p Watching with Premium: 4K and high bitrate 1080p (and maybe 1440p?)

aceshigh,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

i also have always used adblockers, but once i had to put in effort circumventing YT ads earlier this year, i discovered sponsorblock and added it. kind of funny that had it not been for YT being an ass, i would have been fine with other kind of ads.

Ser_Salty,

The thing that gets me is how little creators actually get per individual ad view. Now, collectively, with tens of thousands and millions of views, they get a good bag. But my watchtimes of that minute worth of ads per video? Literally nothing. A fraction of a cent so small it doesn’t exist. I could watch a creator semi-regularly for like 2 years and my contribution to their income by watching ads would be in the single digits. I give them two bucks over Patreon or something just once and that’s worth as much as me giving up hours upon hours of my life watching ads. Now, I can’t afford to give literally everyone I watch more than once a dollar or two. But I give some money here and there to a couple I watch a lot. To make up for my using an adblocker.

Honestly, I’d probably get YouTube Premium if it wasn’t fucking Google behind it.

Norgur,

As much as I'm against Google: why are the the bad guys in this specific instance? They are in many other instances, absolutely. But here, they dare to block a service that legitimately costs a ton of money from being used without them making anything in return. That's not the usual evil corp BS they pull. That's rather reasonable if you ask me. Let's not exhaust ourselves in that and focus on the real Bullshit they try to pull like their web manifest ad nightmare!

originalucifer,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

i agree, its about choice. no one should be complaining about what google is doing [with youtube].

if we dont like it, we should choose a different product.

amio,

Yeah, why don't the users just pick a better option in this monopoly.

Talaraine,
Talaraine avatar

When a corporation is willing to lose billions of dollars to capture an audience, effectively locking out any competition, and then counters any possible avenue to blocking their monopolistic stance, your first statement shouldn't be about choice, because there isn't one.

originalucifer,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

i choose not to utilize youtube in any capacity. my problem here is solved.

Szymon,

So which free streaming service allowing for profit sharing on ad revenue which has essentially become the only name brand in the industry have you chosen to move to?

Or is your choice that you have to go without something you want because you disagree with the one single service offering it? Oh by the way, that company got that way through anti competitive practices to make sure that only they were able to operate this type of service.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

Nobody pays attention to anything beyond the current moment when it comes to shitty corporate behavior like this.

Every large company that isn't privately owned is going all in on this anticompetitive monopolistic bullshit. A few of the privately owned ones still care about customer good will, even if just for long term profitability. Anything on the stock market doesn't do anything for the long haul except for undercutting the competition early on before they were close to a monopoly, like youtube did.

Norgur,

Yet, by AdBlocking them, you are doing fuck all against their "monopolistic stance". You are strengthening their monopoly all the same. And to be clear: I don't want to blame here. Block YouTube ads, I'm doing that too. I'm more irritated by how it's somehow spun as evil that YouTube dares to want money for a service they provide.

If Google had not shut down competition by outcompeting them, do you think those competitors would be free? If not, your argument is besides the point all together.

Zorque,

One can be the "bad guy" without being outright evil. Their advertising tactics are heinous and exploitative, and their revenue sharing with the people actually making their content is tricky to exploit without utilizing the same shitty practices Google uses.

This is also about a relatively minor amount of users. Yes, most people on the fediverse are probably going to be running ad-blockers... but that's an incredibly small amount of people. This whole thing is about squeezing a few extra ounces of blood from "their" stone. Not a righteous battle against a foul mass who are scandalously stealing from hard working Google employees.

Norgur,

As I said: I'm not saying that one has a moral obligation to watch the 1000000th stupid raid shadow legends ad. Google would try and exploit us for all we're worth, so IDGAF about their revenue. It's just that all those posts along the lines of "Google tries to earn money by me using their service,! The audacity!" Rub me the wrong way. There are plenty of examples here where people try to spin their use of adblockers into some white knight story and claim moral high ground for doing so. That is hypocrisy in my eyes and this hypocrisy is annoying me. Nothing wrong with "yeah Google, I'm going to take your shit just like you help yourself to mine on a regular basis, because fuck you". Just... Let's not try to make this some moral thing, alright?

Zorque,

So basically you feel icky? You have a moral problem with people who have moral problems?

Cry me a fucking river. The problem isn't that Google is some nefarious Snidely Whiplash character, cackling madly as they tie some helpless waif to some train tracks... theyre "just" a business, doing business things. The problem is, at their scale, it removes opportunity and mobility of any kind of competition. Any time they squeeze their rock, it has massive implications not just in the technical landscape, but also in peoples ability to control their own life, as it pertains to the ever-growing digital landscape.

I'm sorry that all you can see is people who want free stuff... but that seems to be your own insecurities eating at you. And reflects your own motivations. Not anyone elses.

FfaerieOxide,
FfaerieOxide avatar

Then they shouldn't have subsidized the service to the point everyone is forced to use it through them.

Even if it were reasonable to seek remuneration (which it isn't in light of their being dicks with loss leadering), doing so by selling access to our subconscious by demanding we expose ourselves to mind control is abhorrent.

djsoren19,

A lot of people have become entitled to the idea of the “free internet.” In some cases, it’s understandable, like for social media where the platform is doing very little work and nearly all the value is coming from the users. I think especially in Youtube’s case, people are squinting and looking at it like a social media. They wonder why Youtube’s taking such a big cut when they think the content creators are the ones providing the value.

The issue here is that the complexities of video hosting, especially at the speed and quality Youtube provides, requires a ludicrous amount of effort and money. Youtube is providing a platform that is nearly unthinkable, something I consider to rival the entire television broadcasting sphere. The idea that such a colossal undertaking could be achieved without requiring revenue generation is simply naïve, and it’s incredible to think that a free version is even offered at all. Nobody ever really thinks about that though, they just look at it as another platform like Facebook or Reddit, and think a lazy megacorp is stuffing their pockets for nothing.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

You can see how hard they optimized by watching a very old video you uploaded yourself.
Exanple of mine:
I uploaded 3 videos some time (2x 9 years and 1x 6 years) ago with about 1min of runtime each.
They do not get clicked much.
Timing it, it took Google about 3 seconds to view it the best available resolution.
Only 3 seconds is insane if one remembers how long a drive needs to just spin up from standby. And that is not even with a cached video.

Now I wanna see how long it would take a competitor to achieve the same performance.

I remember some time ago when YT took about 10-15sec to do the same task. They heavily improved their performance. Even for low performance content.

Sad that some are so entitled.

Nougat,

YouTube was originally free, and without video ads. It remained so for some time after Google bought it. They can operate YouTube without video ads at all.

Norgur,

What?! Have you checked how big a 4k video is lately? Where do you suppose the money for that should come from?

Nougat,

Who decided to provide 4K video? (Hint: it wasn't me.)

TrenchcoatFullofBats,

1080p did nothing wrong

ExcursionInversion,
@ExcursionInversion@lemmy.world avatar

Good thing people didn’t freak out when they tested putting 4k videos behind membership

wildn0x,

YouTube lived off venture capital, search sponsorships, and content hosting. Venture capital is long dried up. Search sponsorships are just advertisements but clogging your searches. Content hosting isn’t really needed anymore since every large media company has their own streaming platform. Lot has changed since 2006.

yukichigai,
yukichigai avatar

Because this isn't just about "making anything in return" any more than neo-Nazis are booted from platforms "just for having different opinions." More people are using adblockers on YouTube because YouTube isn't simply displaying commercial advertisements, they're pushing "ads" for scams, malware, and all manner of heinous and/or sketchy content. Even separate of that, the frequency of ads and the presence of minutes-long ads you need to manually skip have made watching content difficult and unpleasant, if not unworkable. Adblocker usage is as much about restoring functionality to the site as anything.

All of these issues have been raised with YouTube, but rather than address the complaints by adjusting how ads are selected and served they've decided the only solution is for you to pay them monthly, not just a few bucks but as much as (or more than) the major video streaming services. All of this for content they do not make, at a price point far beyond what they need to be profitable. It's greed for the sake of greed, pure and simple.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

If they are so annoying, don’t watch at all? Go outside, read a book, watch Jellyfin/Plex.
Plenty of activities to substitute YT time.

un_owen, (edited )

That’s not the usual evil corp BS they pull.

Yes it is. Why do you think they force you to pay for YT Music when all you want is an ad free experience? I tell you why: people will come to the realization that it is stupid to pay for two music streaming services at the same time, so they will cancel their Spotify subscription. This will make it extremely hard for other services to stay competitive. It’s no longer enough that their app is perhaps slightly better, or that they have the better algorithm, no one will be willing to pay the extra 11 € per month for just that. So eventually, these competing music streaming services will die (maybe with the exception of Apple Music and Amazon Music). Once YouTube has the monopoly on the music streaming market, they can raise the prices again. They are using one monopoly to build a second one. And a third one. And so on, until everything is owned by Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, or Microsoft and no one is able to compete with anything anymore. And the worst part is, that Google doesn’t even deserve any of YouTube’s success. YouTube’s success comes from its creators. All that Google ever did is to provide some servers and some bandwith, which arguably is expensive, but it’s not really an achievement. They didn’t even invent YouTube, they just bought it, made it big, and now abuse it to conquer more and more markets.

originalucifer,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

i jumped the google ecosystem a few years back seeing this coming..

i hear a lot of 'but i use googles x and googles y'. yep, and you will continue to have those chains on your wrists as long as you choose to have them there. everyone has the choice to start migrating to other email providers, other phone platforms, etc.

im not saying its easy, or something that can happen quickly... but lamenting the fact youre in up to your neck is no reason to give up. baby steps. make bob wiley proud.

isles,

I’m with you, on course to de-big-tech my life. I’m not even a power user of any of them, but got caught up in the convenience.

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I’ve ditched everything but android. Been thinking about swapping roms but not all the apps I need for work will works with MicroG. And going apple is, at best, a lateral move.

foreverunsure,

GrapheneOS has sandboxed Play Services which basically means they run just like a normal app on your device and you get to choose the permissions they get. My bank’s app works with it too (no GooglePay tho). It does require you to get a Google Pixel phone though, which might defeat the whole purpose for some.

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Good to know, thank you.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The only active google services I do use are

  • Android and Google Pixel (because fuck Apple lol)
  • Google Play Store (I sometimes use F-Droid)
  • YT

I replaced my email with my very own domain
I buy my own storage to host and backup at home.
What I have from cloud storage is by chance of having Office365 (mainly because Outlook is so much superior for email management. I tried EM-client. It was worse).

rolling_resistance,

If it wasn’t for all these articles, I wouldn’t even know that something changed. Firefox + uBlock works the way it used to.

Metatronz,

What a manipulation tactic though. Phase in the change at different times for different users.

Maybe one day they’ll have the ability to just roll out the shit internet for plebs and the shitter, but shinny, version for the rich.

What if someone gets left behind in the great ad war? Lol. A lone user who has never seen an ad on the Internet ever.

disconnectikacio,

Spread the word to install firefox based browser, use different frontends to block youtube ads in browser, Invidious and use piped youtube apps on android to block youtbe ads: Newpipe

mineapple, (edited )

I can also recommend Libretube or Clipious for Android

Metal_Zealot,
@Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

We’ll start viewing Peertube as a viable option WHEN?

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.world avatar

When it works?

tony,

And cloudflare controls the connectivity… luckily they’re not (yet) evil and are happy just to provide infrastructure.

BrownianMotion,
@BrownianMotion@lemmy.world avatar

Opera GX + uBlock + ABP. I stopped seeing this shit a long time ago. (Opera de-googles where necessary, and has its own store. You can still install from other chrome stores, if something is not available in theirs)

Frankly though, Alphabet needs to start being made accountable for their own “de-privacy” behaviour, in the name of their own profits.

And on a side note, is it just me or did 404media just came out of nowhere, and is spamming “news” posts. I’ve read a few of them, and they seem more like opinion pieces, and less factual. They really seem to have little supporting evidence, proper content (the meat, proof, details) and the complete post content is paywalled.

Defederated world, can we please prioritise non-paywalled sites over monetised ones?

DrMango,

Iirc adblock plus has been known to get bribed to allow certain ads through. I’m struggling to remember the details, but there was some controversy with them a while back. If you have ublock you don’t also need ABP, just update your filters on those sites that ublock “doesn’t work” on

Cyberpunk3000,

Why uBlock + ABP though? Isn’t uBlock alone enough? And why not Firefox instead of Opera as it’s also based on Chromium?

BrownianMotion, (edited )
@BrownianMotion@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, uBlock is enough for YT specifically. I run ABP for some sites that uB doesn’t catch. (and for that matter, I also run “Ghostery” as well.

But yes, for this specific posted topic, you are correct I don’t need the other blockers.

As for Firefox, I had been a long time user, but I went through the bullshit phase they created themselves. It was because they dominated and it created a lapse in diligence, on their part. First was the bloat, it is a browser but it got mental in size. Then there was the bloat in usage, what browser needs 50% of your 32GB RAM?? (These have probably been addressed today). But the straw that broke my back was the constant lapsing of certificate renewals that broke everything in firefox including all addons. That was the final straw for me. It was clear they were not interesting in maintenance, and I needed a working browser, not bleeding edge bullshit, and constant roadblocks.

polle,

Ram usage as a talking point against ffx while using a chrome engine browser is more internet troll level i could handle after waking up.

liquidparasyte,

404 sprang up from ex-Motherboard writers when Vice Media went bankrupt this year. I think their articles are alright, because paying the bills as a journalist is very hard.

EmperorHenry,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Adnauseam! Adguard for desktop loaded with anti AdBlock killer! Lifetime license available!

Sorry I have tourette’s syndrome

_bac,

This works! Firefox + ublock did not.

yata,

Firefox + ublock definitely works.

_bac,

You are right. I updated ublock and now it works.

crypticthree,

Yeah I just switched back to ff from chrome and YouTube has never sent me their little warning on ff

EmperorHenry,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Not always. Adnauseam makes the anti-adblock bullshit think you’re clicking on ads.

There’s also adguard for desktop which filters ads through a mechanism that’s outside of your browser, which makes it much more difficult for things running inside web pages to fuck with it.

rolling_resistance,

Adnauseam is great, but it also leaves some ads on pages.

EmperorHenry,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Strict blocking

q47tx,

Imagine using the official youtube website. Piped and Invidious FTW.

specfreq,

I simply open up YouTube+Ublock in Firefox on my smartphone.

I actually like the personalized video recommendations from being signed in sometimes, but I still don’t like my data being sold. I use both.

MataVatnik,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Same. Firefox +uBlock on mobile. The YouTube app actually kinda sucks. Never used it

mobilex1122,

My solution is (and for quite a long time was) to use NewPipe on mobile and Invidious on pc.

ExLisper,

To anyone using Chrome and complaining about Google having too much control: shut the fuck up. You’re part of the problem.

zingo,

Firefox for the win. Or Librewolf even better.

Substance_P,

I love Librewolf, I just can’t work for hours using a browser that has dark mode disabled in order to preserve its privacy features.

zingo,

Well some sacrifices has to be done.

I use an add on called “Dark background, white text” or something like that. Less bloated than Dark Reader.

Has to be somewhat usable while privacy oriented.

AphoticDev,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Because the dark mode that’s built into Firefox and other browsers sends requests to websites that can identify you. If you want dark mode on Librewolf, do as the devs recommend and get Dark Reader, as that’s clientside and doesn’t identify you, and works with pretty much every website, including ones that don’t offer a dark version.

I use regular Firefox, and I have the default dark mode disabled and Dark Reader installed. I don’t need to ask permission from websites to use dark mode any more than I need to ask Google for permission to block their ads.

Substance_P,

that’s great! Yeah I understand the privacy implications but had no idea about Dark Reader. That’s why I love this community for answers like this. I’ll look into it as I’d prefer to use Librewolf as my daily driver.

AphoticDev,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Like I said, it doesn’t look good on every website, but for the vast majority it’s a really nice experience, especially if you are often online after dark. It’s definitely earned the high ratings it’s got, and it’s 100% getting downloaded anytime I use a new computer.

Besides the enhanced privacy it gives you, there’s also the fact that it doesn’t require loading additional style sheets, so it saves you a very small amount of bandwidth and time.

Neon,

the Problem is that Librewolf also doesn’t tell Extensions when system dark mode is activated, meaning you have to manually toggle between dark- and light-mode

FrameXX,

sends requests to websites that can identify you

What requests? I though that only information that the browser gives to website regarding dark theme is that your preferred-color-scheme is now dark.

tb_,
@tb_@lemmy.world avatar

That request can be used for fingerprinting, however.

www.amiunique.org/fingerprint

AphoticDev,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Yes, that’s one of the data points they use to fingerprint you. They only need several to get a reliable idea of who you are as you move from site to site.

xta,

Waterfox present!

gothicdecadence,

Floorp is my fav!

some_guy,

This is one reason why I don’t want the EU to force Apple to allow other rendering engines. Whether you think using Apple’s rendering engine on iOS is bad or good, it’s basically the only thing keeping Google from having complete control of the market.

MossyFeathers,

Imo this extends to chromium too. Google owns the source code and can pull it whenever they want. Sure, chromium browsers might be able to putter along for a little bit, but my understanding is that the reason why we’re now at Chrome/Chromium vs Firefox vs Safari is because Google shits out so many new “”“standards”“” and “features” that you need a large team to keep up. It’s supposedly why browsers like Opera switched to using chromium instead of trying to maintain their own source code.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Chobbes,

Yeah and some of these people think they’re Brave and Edgy.

bluuebunny,

I see what you did there

yata,

Or any chromium based browser for that matter.

ours,

Handing over Google the Internet standards on a platter.

FireFox is not only awesome but a true competitor rendering engine.

Immersive_Matthew,

Google only has power as we the people give it to them but using their services. Same with Reddit’s power and such. Not the people here as we have unfortunately unplugged, but admittedly, all the decentralized services have significantly less content and variety of content. We need more people to join us, but they seem happy to support the centralized services they hate.

Cethin,

The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube (ignoring all the bad bits they’ve added). PeerTube is nice to have around, but it’s not as fast and doesn’t have all the content as youtube. There’s also Nebula, which is alright. It’s not free and doesn’t have as much content, but it’s usually a higher quality.

elbarto777,

What about Vimeo?

gohixo9650,

I’m also curious why people pretend it doesn’t exist when they say “there is no other video uploading platform like youtube”

pascal,

Vimeo is expensive, I don’t know how it works today, but when I tried it, I had to pay to upload some videos.

gohixo9650,

ok, I think I had missed this crucial difference in the business model lol

elbarto777,

Interesting! I had no idea.

wewbull,

There was a world before YouTube. It grew from humble beginnings. Granted it didn’t have an incumbent to fight off, but it had all the server issues, bandwidth issues and similar.

The only thing that stops someone else doing it is the user base.

pascal,

What happened to dailymotion and vimeo?

FinalRemix,

More the commercial/pro side of things. They cost money.

Jeffool,

You’re obviously right. But it’s funny to me; I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler. Instead of YouTube and Google Buzz, we ran RSS clients akin to Outlook and Thunderbird. They torrent and seed media we’re subscribed to while we’re at work or class. It’s saved on a home server. We walk in and simply toss it up on our desktop or TV. (Or maybe a mobile client streams from your home server over the Internet or over your home Wi-Fi if you’re at home )

And if you visited the website instead of YouTube’s recommendations, The creator just adds a few RSS feeds on the backend to pull thumbnails from, of other creators’ sites they enjoy.

Crazy how easy it is to daydream though, when I’m not the one putting the work in.

richieadler,

I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler.

Sadly, money trumps “cool” most of the time.

Littleborat,

RSS would have been it. Ask around how many people even get the concept of it.

We have had it all but people chose the dumb version of it.

veniasilente,

The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube

as good

I mean, assuming that’s exactly what people wan, “exactly youtube but cheaper”, then yeah it’s an impossible and thankless task to even try something of that scale. Instead it’s better to think of building youtube alternatives that are focused on one or two parameters that allow organizational optimizations. For example, much of the issue that people complain about is the storage, but a YT-alt that dedicates to eg.: archivism of old TV shows, that scan at best at 480p or 360p, wouldn’t need to spend that much in storage compared to a service that is trying to serve 4K UHD 120fps Subwoofer Surround; that combined with the topical focus suddenly makes it much more scaleable and approachable.

ferralcat,

I’m always a bit shocked the worlds governments don’t start offering free email/hosting to their citizens. It’d give them a cheap way to surveil that was “opt-in” (but would probably catch a lot of dumb people) and everyone would have a “verified” email for official stuff too. It seems like a good investment to me.

elbarto777,

I’m okay with the less amount of content. Frankly, I mindlessly spent hours scrolling through “content” on reddit, and feeling no satisfaction. At least the content here is more relevant.

More people would mean more memes and rage bait. No thanks.

Immersive_Matthew,

I mean subreddits like Oculus and Virtual Reality and I am sure many other niches are missing on Lemmy or very quiet.

elbarto777,

Oh yeah, that’s a good point.

Littleborat,

You just need to curate your feed like anywhere else. Who can really stand the main page of reddit or yt or anything really?

Reddit made it so hard to use on mobile that I only check it on the weekend on my pc.

elbarto777,

Yup, I used to do that. But then the admins took over some of my curated subs, e.g. programming subs, when the mods refuse to open them up. So now I don’t go to those anymore.

shrugal,

The problem is the network effect. It’s hard to switch from YT if all your favorite channels and creators are there, but it’s also hard for them to switch if all the users are using YT. And because it’s many different people we cannot coordinate a simultaneous transition either.

greenmarty,

That’s why i wen FF+ Duckduck + ublock and instead of reddit > Lemmy But i have to admit that YouTube is harder to replace then reddit and I’ve tried many alternatives.

Paradox,
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

Paywalled article 🙃

HexesofVexes,

archive.ph/oOv5l

MrSqueezles,

This shows me a never ending stream of CAPTCHAs.

HexesofVexes,

Your milage may vary - but in general just force a full refresh and it should clear up

atrielienz,

The YouTube adblocker overlay and such doesn’t work if you’re in incognito mode. You’re welcome.

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