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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2864 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 27, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Sooo. What are your plans for surviving the YouTube ad-pocalypse? In case you don't know, YouTube seems to be cracking down on ad-blockers, steadily ramping up their level of restrictiveness over the past 4 or so months, and ramping up even faster the last 3 weeks. Adblock Plus no longer seems to work for me on Chrome, but does work on Firefox. It'll probably be different for everyone as they dial it up for more and more customers, but it'll likely keep getting more restrictive as time goes on.

I'm guessing this has to do with the same tech trend that caused the layoffs this past year. Budgets are tighter, bubbles are popping, and sources of revenue are being more exploited. But I do wonder if this particular one will work out for Google or not.

I for one plan on leaving the platform if I ever am completely unable to make it work without ads. I think there are many others who feel the same way. This may (I hope) make things worse for content creators, especially those who rely on their own sponsorships for revenue, and will drive them towards other less restrictive platforms.

It's not like I think it's immoral or wrong for Google to pull this, but it does bother me. YouTube has been around for so long, it's life a part of my life. It's my TV, it's the way I learn and become better at most things, and for many many people, it's their livelihood. My wife randomly said to me last week as I was teaching myself some drumstick fundamentals (the kind of fundamentals with deep intricacies that you can't see easily, and need an in-depth video to go into), "how did anyone ever learn anything before YouTube?" After having been around for so long, and being so ingrained, it feels weird for YouTube to suddenly switch up how it works. I'm someone who likes to skip around videos and go back and forth a lot. When ads are present on YouTube, I cannot stand how you'll skip to a section of a video, even without having watched much actual content in the video yet, and suddenly have to watch a giant string of ads. Having to watch ads like that will ruin my usage of the platform.

I also wonder if it's technically possible for YouTube to completely crack down on all ad-blockers, but I don't know enough about how their APIs work. But since so much of it it's happening client-side, I think they'd have to control the client to have complete control. This might be why youtube no longer works on Chrome when I have adblock plus, but it still works on Firefox for me.

Just pay?

If that wasn't a worse experience than using an adblock or sponsor block..

How is it worse?

Bruh. You're welcome to try it and see for yourself.

YT without additional client-side mods is nagware filth full of Tiktok shit in the form of shorts, endless sponsor sections per video, awful community posts because what a video platform needs to be is social media too, and no end of miscellaneous garbage.

I have and I have not really experienced what you describe or don't care.

Maybe this is an app/browser thing? I almost only ever used the app for the past 8 years so I've not bothered to optimise the web client, perhaps there is a large difference there?

The one thing you mention that I have seen is the shorts. But that is one recommendation second from the top of the feed which I just scroll past and I'm not bothered by again, and occasionally the shorts are of interest to me.

It's possible we have very different tolerances, or what I consider severe annoyances aren't so for you.

The YT app by default is clogged with bullshit that gets in the way of my primary use case, which is to see videos from people I'm subscribed to, as well as occasional fresh recommendations. When I open it right now, even using a patched app, the entire front page is taken up by crap I'm not interested in, like live streams, shorts, or playlists.

Further, my modified client has a ton of QOL feature that YT either never had or has deprecated, like forcing video resolution and so on.

Strange. Some of that I have literally never seen promoted, like live streams.

The one gripe i do agree with is the promoted playlists (mixes), that is completely useless to me and I would like to disable the feature. It's not a major issue, it takes a millisecond to scroll past but it is a completely unnecessary annoyance and I dont see why they wouldn't allow you to disable this.

Furthermore, I might have agreed with you more a few years ago (4+ maybe), when the recommendation algorithm was pure garbage, but as it is now I rely more on the algorithm than subscriptions anyway. First off, the rexommendqtions are pretty good and include plenty of things I wouldn't have found ok my own and it also solves the issue of creators that make different kinds of content on same channel, only some of which I'm interested in, which used to be a frequent problem for me.

I'm quite happy with the recommendations myself, I guess we simply have different thresholds for annoyance.

I still suggest you try a modded client yourself, if you're feeling conscientious you could still pay for Premium and use it too, I think you'd find that acceptable right?

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This is what I've been doing for years, starting back when Google Music became a thing, because subscription to that also came with a subscription to YouTube Red (a terrible name for their premium service, given the existence of RedTube - though still preferable to calling it YouTube One like every single brand in existence has been doing the last decade). Once Google Music got shuttered I just kept the YouTube Red subscription at the same price.

Of course, this makes me the sucker who got baited into a service I didn't initially want and stuck with it just out of laziness and inertia. I rationalize it that $10/mo is worth it for the hours I must save not watching ads on YT, to say nothing of the disruption and annoyance, but that rationalization is going to be harder for others depending on their circumstances, I admit.

Paying a small fee for a service you use a lot doesn't sound like being a sucker.

It can be when you're accustomed to not paying, and you see plenty of others not paying. If free riding is an option, why not take it? In this case, it's partly the extra convenience and the little warm and fuzzy feeling I get from doing things above board, but, again, that seems just like rationalizations that I'm telling myself so I don't feel too much like a sucker.

In this case, it's partly the extra convenience and the little warm and fuzzy feeling I get from doing things above board, but, again, that seems just like rationalizations that I'm telling myself so I don't feel too much like a sucker.

It's rationalisations all the way down!

Seriously though, what do you use for music now, you don't use YouTube music? It sucks so much, but I haven't found another music streaming service that will let me upload several thousand tracks to it (and I assume youtube wouldn't let me these days either.)

I decided to just embrace streaming and use YT music now. It's good enough for my needs, since I'm not the type of person to listen to music much, and the few times I feel like putting something on, just a YT recommended playlist does the job well enough. I've also actually come around to not hating discoverability - i.e. YT recommending music to me that I hadn't listened to before.

Am I a sucker for not stealing from my local grocery store or not paying for PT? I'm sure I could get away with both with little to no negative consequences.

You wouldn't steal a car.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg?si=KHIsWoGo3JgSvR5Q

Ignoring the discussion about IP, you're not copying here. You're literally stealing.

Ad blocking on a streaming site seems less like stealing to me than what the "you wouldn't steal a car" campaign was targeting. In the streaming ad-block case, you're just finding clever ways around certain aspects of the APIs/functionality that they're already putting forth. In the downloading movie case, those movies were never supposed to be put up for distribution on the pirating sites to begin with.

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Yeah the number of people who just expect to never pay for anything and think it's some kind of moral statement on their part... Fundamentally unserious. Pay, watch ads, don't use their product. Three very easy choices.

There's no way I'm incentivizing them to do this. I'm very stingy, I barely pay for any services.

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