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nostupidquestions No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world
Mothra @mander.xyz

What does it look like for a YouTube creator when the audience uses something like NewPipe or Freetube?

I'm not too tech savvy so I appreciate responses in layman's terms.

I have a rough concept of how NewPipe works, (correct me if I'm wrong though!) basically it's a scrapper so it somehow reads the information in YouTube, anonymously, and filters the ads for you.

What I'm interested in knowing is, how does this behaviour look like from YouTube's perspective. Can the platform "tell" that someone is accessing their content but not the ads that should go before and inbetween the videos? Do these views requested by NewPipe count towards the global amount of views a video has? Do content creators still get money from youtube ads with NewPipe views? Do they also get to see engagement data from views (such as which parts are skipped)? Etc etc.

60 comments

  • Sorry, no answer here. I just want to say that this is a really interesting question and I hope someone is able to answer.

  • There is definitely the concept of monetised (ie ad-viewing) vs unmonetised views, here's a random day example from mine:

    Unfortunately I can't see a way to filter to just unmonetised views, to take a look at the traffic sources. I did have a quick look through the traffic sources in general though and can't see any of the popular frontends listed in external, other YT, or anywhere else. So if those views are counted (which it seems like they are from the experiment in top comment) I expect they probably end up in one of the "unknown" buckets. Whether that means it really is unknown or just that YT don't want to be drawing attention to these services by name, who knows.

    • As a creator, how do these things make you feel? Do you understand the users of sponserblock or ...?
      Ive legit always wondered if creators were always fully against adblocking, or if they understood those users and wished it was different. Idk :')

      • Oh yeah I don't care. My videos go up on PeerTube as well, don't make any money there, just enjoy sharing my crafts with people really! I won't deny the bit of extra cash is nice and it definitely helps afford stuff for new videos, which I struggled with sometimes before getting monetised. But that doesn't take much, anything else is just a bonus.

        You'd probably get a different answer from someone who's into it like a proper business and trying to grow grow grow.

  • I've heard anecdotally that they don't get paid when the ads are blocked. I assume there's some kind of confirmation built into the process?

    I'm curious about the specifics too though. There are lots of tech creators involved with open source, maybe they can share more?

    • From what I understand, creators get their payout triggered at the same time that youtube does, so in general Amy behavior not triggering YT's revenue will almost certainly also not trigger the creator's

60 comments