Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users
Search giant says delays not specific to any browser – just those evading advert breaks. YMMV
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Whatever happens on my browser is client side, which is hardware and software I own. I can make what I own do what I want. It's a right.
It's like Google saying that I can't skim a magazine in my home, and that I must read the ads. Google can do what they want server-side, and I'll do what I want client-side.
They're not saying you can't have an adblocker. They're saying their software will try not to serve you their data if you do, or at least make it inconvenient.
You have a right to your computer. You do not have a right to their service.
That's exactly what I said, yeah
Me after reading the 1st comment: "OK. True. Fair." Me after reading the 2nd comment: "OK. True. Fair." Me after reading the 3rd comment: "OK. Also true. Also fair."
Me reading you:
Fourth gosh darn level of agree
I’ll never disable my PiHole or turn off ublock tho
Fair.
I wish PiHole wasn’t so absolute dogshit about DNS requests from outside the local subnet, might use it then
Permit all origins, allow all destinations. In the settings.
Tried that, it just reverts back after a few weeks :/
Open an issue on the forums if it hasn’t already been fixed.
Mine doesn’t revert.
What OS/computer?
Tried it bare metal on a Pi 4 and as a VM. I have my LAN using the 10.0.0.0/8 space and I couldn’t have DNS breaking all the time
And it would set itself back?
I'm going to try ad guard today... That way I can keep my DHCP
Update: adguard does not block YouTube ads.
You can use PiHole without their DHCP.
Oh yeah? I didn't know. I thought I read on the pihole website that if you use pihole on a system on your network, you have to use static ips and cannot use DHCP.
Nope. You can use whatever DHCP server you’d like; you just have to set the pihole as your DNS server in DHCP.
I'll relook at it, thanks.
There was a rabbi arbitrating a dispute between neighbours. One of them complained that the other one gathers apples that fall off his apple tree and into the other neighbour's garden. "Those are my apples grown on my tree. He's stealing them!"
"You're right," says the rabbi. But the other neighbour counters.
"But the branches of the tree are above my property. If he doesn't want them to fall on my garden, he can cut off the branch. But he lets them fall into my garden making them my apples."
"You're right," says the rabbi and adjourns the diapute to be able to think about it. He's at his wit's end and tells the whole story to his wife when he gets home.
"That doesn't make sense. They can't both be right."
"You're right."
No, you don't have a right to it. If they want to they can put the entire site being a subscriber paywall. That's their call. But until they do that i will continue to access the site with my adblocked browser.
You do have a right to your computer. After content is delivered to you, you have downloaded data, and your own hardware and software acts to consume said downloaded data. After it is downloaded, even if it is in a browser in a cache, it is considered offline content. This also applies to streaming media chunks, too: once it's downloaded, you have acquired it locally.
They don't have the right to disregard my right to privacy either, yet here we are.
Well.... They do because it's their tos, no?
But their software is just blocking based on browser. Their message to you is not "don't use an ad blocker". It's "use chrome and you won't have this problem". Theyre literally just hoping to abuse their position as a monopoly in video to try and strengthen their monopoly on browsers.
Is that why I haven't had any problems? I thought it was either Google A/B testing again or my ad blocker updating often enough to keep up, but I do have a user-agent changer installed in Firefox that's configured to tell YouTube I'm on Chrome...
And as a service provider, they can choose to degrade your experience. It goes both ways.
Except they want to send you videos. The power is with you, the viewer. Without you, advertisers will have no reason for buying ads. Google can't collect your data either. Realise that you have this power. Youtube is not like electricity or clean water. We can live without it if push comes to the shove.
To be fair, what they want is to make money off of you, be it through metadata or through advertising. It's just that sending you videos happens to be the model which they use to get the metadata or advertising income.
If they wanted to make money off of me then they should have kept the Pixel Pass as a thing so I'd have a reason to have YT premium
Or make YT premium worth it
But nah, they'd rather ruin the product I was paying for, so now they get nothing. At least then I'm not paying for it to get worse
They don't want to send us videos, they want to serve us ads and annoy us into buying Youtube Premium, which someone using adblocker won't see, or need. From their point of view they would win either way - if they successfully block adblockers it either converts us into ad watchers, premium subscribers, or we fuck off and stop using their bandwidth.
It's funny because I pay for premium and have noticed a worse experience since this was revealed. They don't seem to check if a user has adblock and pays.
They don't seem to check if a user has adblock and pays.
They definitely seem to have checks in place for it. I have Family Premium and so far no issues at all.
Edit: to clarify, not a fan of any of this. Just saying it does work for me
Weird. It's not happening to me today. Maybe it was something else.
Well, I don't pay for premium, and I use an adblocker, and I haven't had any problems. Not having a problem doesn't prove anything if they're only targeting a subset of their users...
The article says that this isn't happening for all users, which indicates that they're still experimenting with it and haven't fully rolled it out yet.
I do have the issue when I'm logged out
You have no value to advertisers if they can't serve you ads. By not doing so, they'll also cut down on bandwidth costs, so it's a double positive for them.
You have no value to advertisers if they can’t serve you ads. By not doing so, they’ll also cut down on bandwidth costs, so it’s a double positive for them.
When you take your comment to its logical end though your comment makes no sense, as hence there's now no one to watch the videos and earn money from them doing so.
You can't force someone to consume your content, and if you earn money by people consuming your content, then the power is ultimately with them.
Plus, all this discussion, we're assuming that serving ads is the only way that Google can make money off you when watching the videos, which is not true. They can do the same kind of things they do with Gmail and make money from that.
this assumption is only correct if EVERYBODY is using as blockers. They aren't - so it makes sense to cut off the proverbial leeches
this assumption is only correct if EVERYBODY is using as blockers. They aren’t - so it makes sense to cut off the proverbial leeches
That's why I said logical conclusion.
My bet would be the vast majority of people (what you call leeches) would eventually use ad blockers, as people in general usually do not like to watch commercials. (Again, speaking in endgame scenarios, AKA 'logical conclusion').
"Logical conclusion" does not mean that you suddenly add in an unjustified premise of "all people will endure some amount of hassle to use an ad blocker".
I think the best analogy is Netflix's password sharing, which not only didn't hurt them, but actually brought them a lot of subscribers.
No no no, he's right. The logical conclusion of every online argument is a strawman.
“Logical conclusion” does not mean that you suddenly add in an unjustified premise of “all people will endure some amount of hassle to use an ad blocker”.
You'll have to elaborate. In my eyes, justified or not is a non-sequiteur. The premise is people will want to avoid the commercials, and as Google gets more draconian with commercials more people will attempt to avoid them, either by using adblockers, or by paying the sub fees.
I think the best analogy is Netflix’s password sharing, which not only didn’t hurt them, but actually brought them a lot of subscribers.
People take the most direct path to avoiding aggravation (as the Netflix case shows, as its easier to just pay the unjustified extra cost than having to cancel their sub and finding another streaming service).
Having to constantly watch a bunch of commercials is way more aggravating that clicking a few buttons once to add an addon to your browser that removes the bigger constant aggravation of commercials.
I'd say that the more accurate version of that premise is that people will exert some limited amount of effort in order to avoid ads (or fees, for that matter), and the challenge for the service provider is to make blocking ads more annoying than simply paying the fee. The real question is how successful Google will actually be at that, and that is admittedly a bit of an open question. That said, we know that there is a limit to how much effort people will put in, because it's not that hard to pirate literally anything, but plenty of people don't bother with piracy because it's a hassle.
It'll be interesting to see how things ultimately shake out. Google is in a bit of a privileged position though, given that they own the service and the browser most people are viewing YouTube. There's also more and more of a shift towards watching it on mobile devices and TVs, where they can control the client environment a lot more tightly. And at the end of the day, it is a solvable problem; beyond that, they don't have to even win the cat and mouse game. They just have to make playing it annoying enough that most people won't bother.
Yep, they can send me 500s if they want to, too
Technically 400s would be more appropriate here. :)
Response codes only matter to good-faith actors
If the service degrades to far due to using ad blockers then I'll just stop watching anything on YouTube. Easy.
Okay then. That was always allowed.
Umm, ok. You were not making them any money before, when you were blocking their ads, why would they care if you left?
Because the big channels will get a significant drop in views which lowers their sponsor pay and willingness to work with them.
I think you're overestimating how many people care enough about this.
Remember when killing password sharing was gonna be the death of Netflix, and then they saw a significant increase in subscriptions and profits?
A possible answer is because the creators that have their own sponsors in their videos want the view even if you don't see the Google ads, so Google on one hand want you to watch their ads while on the other hand cannot afford to really lose you since that would reflects on the creators and then if a creator leave for another platform (a big if, I agree) Google lose all the traffic generated by said creator, both who use an adblocker and who don't use an adblocker.
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Google can do what they want server-side
Sure, like not sending you videos. 🤔
Client side DRM is coming.
They’re mostly there on Android already.
You forgot to mention it's also coming to all Chromium based browsers (i.e. Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc) as well in the form of ManifestV3
Manifest V3 doesn't really have the real client side DRM. It just has the ad-blocker breaking API changes. The real DRM will be whatever comes of the abandoned Web Environment Integrity API. (It's not really abandoned just shifted over to only Android WebView.)
Couldn’t they fork Brave and have both a current and a ManifestV3 version?
Usually Brave already strips away invasive/unfavolrable stuff from Google before releasing. OTOH, browsers with inbuilt adblockers won't be affected by MV3, as the latter only applyes to extensions. Inbuilt adblockers are part of the browser itself and aren't constrained by whatever rule Google may want to put in place.
That’s ok. Us nerds have been defeating DRM in its many forms for decades. This will be no different.
Not really true for video games. Plenty of popular games still with uncracked denuvo...
It's called a "User Agent" for a reason.
You can, but as a part of doing what they want serverside they can ask for some kind of proof you don't have an adblocker on the server-side, you can reverse engineer that and spoof the checks and it becomes an arms race just like we have now... You're effectively just saying the status quo is a-ok with you
I don't personally enjoy the status quo, but they're not obligated to serve me any videos if they don't want to. However, if they have given me media to consume on my devices, it's up to me to decide how I consume the media that was already delivered.
Let's just hope they don't start injecting their ads into the video stream itself
