272 points

While the company stops short of directly saying as much, it sure feels like the preposterously long ads we’re seeing here are an example of one tool in Google’s arsenal for effectively disabling YouTube playback for violators of the site’s ToS.

That makes no sense at all. It isn’t like skipping ads results in a black screen for the length of the ad.

People with adblockers aren’t going to see hour long ads or black screens when they don’t see ads in the first place.

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150 points

It’s hilarious that they think it would matter to anyone with an ad blocker. I haven’t seen an ad for years on youtube. Hell I haven’t even seen promotions in videos for a few months now that I found a sponsor segment blocker.

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18 points

Both are available on pc and mobile. Love it.

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3 points

What do you use?

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13 points
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deleted by creator

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41 points

All that does is make YouTube money while costing money to the advertisers.

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20 points

How long do you think those advertisers will stay when it turns out they’ve paid $1M in advertising with no change in sales?

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37 points

I think Google doesn’t care about that at all.

They most likely pay peanuts compared to you for “bandwidth” (which for them is more of an electricity cost and trough-output allocation than a specific numeric value like consumers and smaller companies have). You also cache the video on your own device making the multiple tab thing useless if you don’t know what you’re doing. And Google can also just block you when they attack their servers, move traffic around, and so much more advanced stuff that protects their infrastructure.

tl;dr: Trying to boycott Google by trying to waste their resources is useless.

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-6 points
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deleted by creator

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140 points

The YouTube owner explains that normal non-skippable in-stream ads are limited to just 15 seconds in length.

This is bullshit. I don’t use an ad-blocker and often get a full minute of ad. And an extra minute if I happen to pause the stream for like 30 seconds and come back to it.

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186 points

This is bullshit. I don’t use an ad-blocker

You should be kinder to yourself.

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95 points

I consider the internet unusable without an ad blocker, ESPECIALLY youtube. I can’t imagine life without it. It would be like camping without a tent, I guess I could get by but it can really suck depending on where you go.

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18 points

Hey! Whoa! That’s not fair at all!

You can TOTALLY go camping without a tent. Just as long as you don’t camp in a mosquitto heavy area.

Just sleep outside.

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6 points

Then you get wet from dew, investigated by various night creatures, etc. Mosquitoes aren’t active at night, so that’s not a concern at all.

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42 points

Not using a real ad blocker (read: PiHole or UBlockOrigin, fuck AdBlockPlus) is a serious security threat this day in age. Do yourself a favor and get that set up ASAP.

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40 points

Using the internet without an ad blocker is like fucking every sex worker in Vegas without a condom.

Practice safe internet.

This message has not been sponsored by Firefox or uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger or Decentral Eyes, but if they want to throw some money my way I would accept.

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8 points

It’s decentral eyes still relevant? I was reading that it use was now discouraged.

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2 points

Nah, I’ve heard they stopped development. People use LocalCDN as a drop in replacement. However, by itself, it doesn’t change much when it comes to ads and tracking.

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16 points

You’re pretty much asking for it by not using an ad blocker. Want it to stop? Boycott the ads.

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10 points

What?! You are forced to watch an ad if you pause it for too long?!

Jfc i hate this gods damned timeline

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6 points

Same. I get the whole range. Usually it’s short but occasionally it’s an hour long.

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16 points

You’ve been here for two years and haven’t installed a blocker yet? That’s almost impressive

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10 points

I wonder how they managed that, I’ve been here about a year and a half and I use Linux now, lol.

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4 points

I been on the internet since the 90s. I want to know what people are seeing. A commercial here or there keeps me in the loop about what is being pushed.

1 hour unskippable ads tells me a lot about what is going on, unfortunately.

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-5 points

Watch Youtube on the Brave Browser and you’ll get zero ads.

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-5 points

This is bullshit. I don’t use an ad-blocker.

You’re right. It IS bullshit that you don’t use an adblocker. It’s kind of like saying “This is bullshit! I don’t use oven mitts as I take hot metal trays out of the oven! Why am I the only one getting burned???”

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17 points

You’re misunderstanding. They are calling out the claim of 15 seconds explicitly, they aren’t necessarily complaining about the ads.

Don’t hand wave their statement by arguing against something they aren’t talking about.

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125 points

Are ad blockers to blame?

Why do you make me hit you?

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62 points

The funny thing is using a good adblocker and I haven’t noticed a single youtube ad, so if they’re to blame, they’re also the solution. I don’t see how this move functionally does anything other than punish those who can’t block ads.

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13 points

Collective punishment

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25 points

People that know what ad blockers are frequently use them. The act of punishing the group that isn’t aware of adblockers simply will drive more users to discover/make use of them.

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9 points

No no no…don’t hit them. That leaves a mark. Instead, hold them down, and tickle them for an hour.

Then if they try to go to the police, and say “they tickled me!” the cops will just laugh. And, no marks.

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3 points

The only reason adblockers would be to blame would be because Google wanted to make up for lost revenue, similar to the myth of high end department stores having high prices because they expect their customers to shoplift.

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82 points

While their statement is entirely correct, they’re still wrong. YouTube is basically unusable without an ad blocker. Multiple 10 to 15 second long unskippable ads before the video even starts, and unless you watch videos all the way through you end up watching as much ad as you do content. It is damn near impossible to hop around between videos trying to find the one you want because of the pre-roll ads on every vid. On the other hand, with an ad block enabled YouTube is actually quite nice. The engagement algorithm is fucking trash of course but if you know what you’re looking for and you go directly to it it’s pretty good.

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10 points

Do you habitually not watch videos all the way through, or am I misunderstanding your comment?

No judgement, you obviously should consume media in the manner you find most enjoyable, but once I start and enjoy a video - YouTube or otherwise - I tend to get invested and want to watch as much as is available.

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57 points

If you’re looking for tutorials or other immediately applicable information, you’ve often got to skip a LOT of bullshit before even determining if this video is relevant to you.

"Hey everybody it’s Mike from Mike’s the guy named Mike, it’s a snowy day out there, I got my coffee, took my dog for a walk, it’s been the morning of a day, and now I’m out here in the garage and I figured I’d make a video about a topic a bunch of you have been asking me about. You guys have been asking me a lot lately “Hey, Mike’s the guy named Mike, could you show us how to properly lick a drill press?” Well let’s find out.

10 second title screen because Mike thinks he’s making TV

“So a lot of you guys have been asking me “Hey, Mike’s the guy named Mike, could you show us the right way to lick a drill press?” Before we get into that, be sure to leave a like, drop a comment below and be sure to subscribe. It’ll really help me out more than you can think…”

19 minutes into a 21 minute video and there hasn’t been a drill press on screen yet.

Three weeks later Mike’s the guy named Mike along with his entire family is killed in a rock slide. The UN declares it an international day of celebration.

What was I talking about?

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11 points

19 minutes into a 21 minute video and there hasn’t been a drill press on screen yet

And that’s intentional. The algorithm rewards them for having people watch more / watch longer, and a 21 min video might have 2 or 3 ad rolls. If someone watches all the way thru, creator gets more money and higher placement in search results.

I like YouTube as a concept but the algorithms are totally enshittifying it.

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11 points

You need to get sponsor block. Not only does it block all the sponsor segments because they are also ads, that the ad blockers don’t otherwise block, but they also block all of the other annoyances, like instructions to subscribe and intro animations.

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10 points

Holy moly this is spot on 🤣🤣

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5 points

I tried to watch one video from a guy on a specific topic and he opened with an update on his divorce. Coooool.

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5 points

Emotional rollercoaster.

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5 points
*

Brilliant 😄

The way I see it these folks don’t respect my time when pulling off shit like this.

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17 points

When I’m ‘watching a video’ I watch it all the way thru. However often I’m looking for something specific, like how to do something, and a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever). In that situation I’m usually looking for a specific piece of information which often requires scrubbing around in multiple videos. Same thing if I’m doing research on a product, while I might watch a review will the way through I’m more often looking for some specific things like video of the interface or does it have some specific setting or can I set it up without needing a phone app or cloud account. That requires scrubbing around in multiple videos to see bits of the setup UI. Unusable if each video has an ad

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11 points

a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever)

You’re not alone in that, and it seems neither am I

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8 points
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a lot more tutorials are now in video form than written (which I don’t love but whatever)

One of my favorite Youtubers (Greg’s Airplanes and Automobiles) has excellent in-depth content mostly about WWII piston-engined aircraft with lots of detailed discussion and reference to original source materials. But it’s just him reading a written script while presenting still photos and excerpts from flight manuals and the like. It really would be perfect as a blog or in book form, but he has to turn it into videos in order to have any chance at making decent money from it. It’s just such a shame that this is how things are going now.

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2 points

Fair enough. Thanks for the answer!

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73 points

While the company stops short of directly saying as much, it sure feels like the preposterously long ads we’re seeing here are an example of one tool in Google’s arsenal for effectively disabling YouTube playback for violators of the site’s ToS.

I don’t get it. When my adblocker works, I don’t get to see this shit. Only if it fails I’llbe confronted with hour-long ads, so the incentive to find a better blocker is even higher?

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22 points

They are trying hard to block all known adblockers. And if they ever do, this will become a serious problem.

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27 points

It won’t, I’ll just go do something else with my free time…

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8 points

So they effectively blocked the video then?

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17 points

Arms races are rarely won by anyone.

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22 points

They are won by arms dealers.

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5 points

This is a war that was fought by broadcast TV and the makers of videotapes, DVDs, and blu-rays. In every case the Corpos failed. So no, this arms race is and will be won by the ad blockers.

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