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YouTube's ‘War’ on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 year ago by Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 384 points 1 year ago

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

[-] DarkenLM@kbin.social 78 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago

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

[-] DarkenLM@kbin.social 52 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] LPThinker@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] registrert@lemmy.sambands.net 54 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] Ser_Salty@feddit.de 18 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] dunestorm@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] ExLisper@linux.community 188 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Chobbes@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] zingo@lemmy.ca 65 points 1 year ago

Firefox for the win. Or Librewolf even better.

[-] Substance_P@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] Gigan@lemmy.world 119 points 1 year ago

Antitrust laws are not enforced nearly as much as they should be, especially in tech.

[-] user_2345@lemmy.world 92 points 1 year ago

Stop using Google's products and continue using adblockers. Don't come back at me with excuses. Otherwise, don't complain.

[-] JoShmoe@ani.social 41 points 1 year ago

But

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 year ago

no, butts are over at pornhub

[-] guyrocket@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content. I wish it weren't that way but it is.

So they will continue to dominate until similar vast content can be created elsewhere.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content.

PornHub: uh, hello?

[-] guyrocket@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Funny!

Boom chicka wow wow......Hey baby. Let me show you how to torque your nuts deep down inside my motor...Guitar solo...rocket launch video...

It would be interesting if PornHub started paying people for non-porn content. Because of their high traffic I assume they might be able to compete with YT...someday. It would be fun for them to try.

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[-] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 64 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.zip 37 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Jeffool@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] Rambomst@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just got an email from YouTube, my premium price is going up by almost double....

[-] malchior@aussie.zone 20 points 1 year ago

Same. It is no longer worth it, I'll be sad to lose my music streaming, but there are other pathways that some may consider unethical.

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[-] Paradox@lemdro.id 51 points 1 year ago

Paywalled article 🙃

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[-] atrielienz@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago

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

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 37 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] elouboub@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago

Stop begging them, stop using them.

[-] mobilex1122@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023

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