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Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies. (www.engadget.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube's dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there's an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

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[–] 43 points 2 years ago (40 children)

What Google seems to forget or simply not care about is I can always just... leave.
I used reddit a lot more than I use YouTube.
If enough viewers and content creators were to jump ship, they'd scramble to change their tune.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    That's a big if though. Unless an actual creator-exodus happens, it's not going to happen.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (8 children)

    It will happen eventually. These kinds of adversarial arrangements between parties are inherently unstable. The enshittification cycle only ends when a site properly collapses. If you think they couldn't get shittier, give it time. They'll find a way.

    All we need is for a good alternative to become more viable and for the site to have a few more exodus events and it'll lose its critical mass. Ultimately I think most platforms are going to have to become federated, it's the only way to avoid enshittification and still grow the network. Growing the network is important because it is the size of youtube and other centralised sites' networks that gives them their stability and utility. It's the network effect.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

    All we need is for a good alternative to become more viable

    This is where the biggest challenge lies. Doing what YouTube does is not easy. I don't think anyone could do it all. So it would have to be picking a choosing. Can anyone upload hours/days/years worth of video content? Are the people who put up those videos able to get paid without having to create their own relationships with advertisers or asking for viewer donations? How are copyright violations handled? Or more sinister video content?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Peertube is a federated system that already handles video.

    Moderation is handled by instances with more personal mods.

    Bandwidth is handled via multiple instances & p2p protocols so viewers help distribute the load.

    I think you're overstating how difficult youtube's job is. A lot of that work is problems youtube creates for thsmselves by trying to squeeze their platform for more money. A federated platform doesn't have that issue.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Yes, things get easier when you take paying creators out of the mix.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Youtube pays creators basically nothing.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    $10-$30/1,000 views doesn't sound like much. Except the people who make a career out of YouTube are regularly producing 100k+ view videos. It adds up. It's one of the things you can pick and choose to leave out of a competitor. But it is a major reason why people put videos on YouTube.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying that YouTube is nothing without both its creator and viewers.
    A viewer-exodus and a creator-exodus would be tied together, they both feedback into each other.

    I even get why YouTube doubledown on catering to their advertisers over the creators and viewers, that's just money talking.
    I'm just saying I don't owe them my time or attention.
    They would hardly be the first Internet giant to fall, thinking they're too big to fail, not that I see it happening soon though.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.

    The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.

    As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    What are you using instead for Maps and email?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I use Organic maps and K9 mail

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    k9 mail has a really poor rating on the app store. I hear Thunderbird will be revamping it though. Are you happy with where it is at right now?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I've had good success with FairEmail its open source and on Fdroid appstore but google made it so it will only work if you download through the play store which is BS.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Definitely fair email, code is solid and so is the dev. Its got more features for customization than any other mobile email client. Super frequently updated too. And no ads even in the unpaid version.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Exactly, I had people tell me that we should support YouTube, because it costs money and if we don't it will disappear.

    I would celebrate the day it would happen, YouTube is actually the reason we don't have much competition there. They used their position and Google monopoly in other areas to establish this monopoly.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

    There's creators out there running a non YouTube channel in parallel, mostly on Odysee. Good to see an alternative out there.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    I just looked up Odysee. They use Google AdSense on their site, so really all you’re getting is a bad YouTube

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Right enough. They're also owned by Google! Probably not a good alternative then. PeerTube any good?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    That is and big if though. Yeah you, me and half the people here might leave over this, but we block ads already and so are not highly valued to YouTube or a lot of the creators and are only a small drop in the ocean of viewers.

    YouTube is betting on more people turning off ad blockers then those that leave. And i am glad to see that it might be having a small effect on more people actually discovering ad blockers instead. Which I bet is something YouTube did not expect to see.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    No one in the 90s could imagine the internet without AOL or Yahoo either, and yet..

    Or the great Myspace collapse of 2008. Digg before that. Tumblr most recently.

    Big sites go boom fairly often.

    Now, watching Google go Boom, that's gonna be like modules breaking loose of the ISS and rez-entering the atmosphere. Drawn out over months, as one wing goes, government breaks up another wing, class action lawsuits bankrupt another wing.

    Alphabets circling the drain. And good. Fuck em. Fuck Apple, Fuck Meta, Fuck Amazon, Fuck Reddit.

    Just a couple more years now and imma nominate Craig from Craigslist for all the years nobel prizes for officially winning the internet.

    Specific niche forums, Craigslist and Wikipedia are the last bits of honestness and fun online. And ymmv with Craigslist people being honest.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    In what world Craigslist is honest and Alphabet is circling the drain? They make billions of profit per quarter and they have majority control of the biggest two platforms worldwide (mobile and web). We are not in the wild west years of the early web. It will be decades before Meta or Alphabet collapse, in favor of TikTok or a similar, or even worse, competitor. Mastodon and lemmy are an exception and a niche, not a rule.

    Wishing something very hard doesn't make it true.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why would creators leave? They only earn money from users that watch ads or use premium. Ad blocker users leaving doesn't affect them.

    And if you "just leave", guess what? You just saved them a few bucks in bandwidth. It's a win-win for them.

    It's YouTube, they don't need "exposure". They are out to make a profit.

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