this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 144 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

Same with Google's ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn't make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.

They're obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they'd be a more trusted company today (and what's that worth monetarily) if they hadn't gone down this race to the bottom.

ETA: Part of what I mean is that now they create things like Stadia and most people didn't even bother trying it because they knew it'd hit the Google Graveyard in a few years. Had Google been a more trusted company, people may have been willing to give it a try and they could possibly have printed money since by all accounts the service was actually pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Instead I'm putting great energy to get away from Google, along with a lot of other people

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (4 children)

We are an insignificant amount. Most people likely don’t even know how to change the default search engine on their phones.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Most people don’t even know what a search engine is by that term. They just know they type things into search boxes and click things that come up. Greater majority of phone users don’t even use the browser, it’s just endless apps

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Youtube Ads used to be for pizza restaurants and lawnmowers.

Now they want me to join a fucking cult that worships alphabeta-blocking milkshakes.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I was getting ads for a very blatant scam. They used extremely well known buzzwords for it too, it's actually embarrassing that it could have passed even automated screening.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

I'm a software engineer at AWS and work on video content delivery for services like Netflix. The idea that one single ad could cover the cost of delivering a video that's been replicated in multiple servers, multiple regions, multiple countries throughout the world is pretty hilarious. No matter how much money you think YouTube is making I can almost guarantee it's not enough. There is a reason there is no significant competition in this space, it makes no money.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (5 children)

What’s less sustainable is centralized web. You must know that since you work for Amazon, right?

When PopcornTime was still a thing you could watch adfree any movie you’d like even in 4K because resources were shared through peer to peer.

Now, YouTube gets up to 12$ RPM, content creators get maybe 40% of that. With 2 prerolls and 2 midrolls + banners they get plenty enough money to make things work. Google has the most aggressive VASTs of the market. They are everywhere, called multiple times per pages.

Spare us your tears.

Besides, no significant competition? Is that a joke?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not really a single ad though, right? It's a single ad per view. I realize that each view costs money, but at some point you're just paying for bandwidth, after paying the upfront replication costs right? Assuming replication is an upfront cost, I might be misunderstanding there. If that's true though, then surely there's a breakpoint where ads start making money. Though I suppose if that breakpoint is like a million views, your point basically still stands.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Genuine question.

How is been running for almost 20 years, most of them with very few ads?

I doubt they had been just sinking money for the kind of their hearts.

I do not know how much it cost to run a service like YouTube. Or how much money they make by ads or other ways. But they have been running for long enough to be a successful business.

And it's just the latest few years when they are pushing these aggressive techniques.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How is been running for almost 20 years, most of them with very few ads?

Investor money, then Google money. Video streaming requires fuckloads of storage and is a HUGE bandwidth hog, especially if people want to watch stuff at 1080p or higher resolutions. Youtube is a money pit, but it's a major and nearly untouchable internet power, especially given its size and reach.

And it’s just the latest few years when they are pushing these aggressive techniques.

The "easy money" from loans with very low interest rates has dried up, also Google being Google.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Capitalists don't care about making quality products/services.

They care about squeezing more profit out of you as time goes on.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Bad capitalists, yes. The trend of "maximize profit this quarter at the expense of everything else" is a recent (meaning a few decades old) idea.

Once upon a time the boards of publicly traded companies could think long term and sacrifice short term gains without getting fired by shareholders. When a large firm prioritizes long term success efficiency still matters but so do things like building reputation through quality and retaining talent - the things sorely missing from publicly traded firms today.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago

The commodification of securities has been one of the most ruinous trends in human history.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I refused to use adblock for years. Not because I thought Youtube needed MORE money, but because I did realize that a business ultimately only continues operating as long as the business model is sustainable. I endured, through occasional ads, ads at the bottom, then through ads every time a video was watched, then ads in the middle of videos, and even two ads before every video.

But three unskippable ads was where I drew the fucking line. Now I use adblock for Youtube and Youtube only.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

I like to watch video game speedruns. I especially enjoy the really long, challenging ones. Watching a 2 hour video on YouTube without an ad block is basically impossible at this point.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (7 children)

That's nice of you, but it appears that the ad-supported business model doesn't work. It just results in enshittification and surveillance.

"We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that it can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them."

Jaron Lanier: How we need to remake the internet

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I was fine with giving them 5 seconds of attention in exchange for a video. Then they added more and more, and moved the skip button SOMETIMES. It's straight up disrespectful.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago

I also HATE that if you miss the skip button on the first of multiple ads, they disable the skip button for another number of seconds.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (8 children)

I'm not here to defend the soulless multi-million dollar corporation, but we don't actually know how much money it costs for youtube to stay up. The scale they are operating on is immense, I wouldn't be surprised, if they were still making a loss with 10 midroll ads.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago

They almost certainly are running at a loss. Same as Twitch, their parent companies are generally okay with it, because they also serve as pretty solid tech demos for other services they offer (YouTube runs on Google Cloud Platform, Twitch runs on Amazon Web Services), and that pays off indirectly.

Moreover, their parent companies can use them as free advertising. Google about to launch a new phone? Guess what you’re gonna see ads for!

I think the term for this is “loss leader”

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I accidentally watched a YouTube video on a browser without blocking. It started with an ad. I thought I'd just endure it this time. Then another ad. OK, just this time then. Suddenly, another ad in the middle of the video. I gave up. Who'd have the patience to sit through this?

Then there's Google's habit of completely ignoring the browser's language settings so I have to sit though ads I don't even understand.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Then there's Google's habit of completely ignoring the browser's language settings so I have to sit though ads I don't even understand

I used to occasionally watch YouTube on my lunch break when I would go into the office. I loved getting ads in Spanish, the office was in Greenville,SC not a large Spanish native population. I have premium on my account but don't like signing in personal account on work machines.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That, and the absolute curbstomping of creativity through their copyright enforcement methods has gutted the core of a once great service. We are simply watching this thing shamble on to find a place to die: like a heart-shot elk bounding off into the bushes

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's an unexpectedly poetic and melancholic way of portraying some lamentable decisions.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Fuck YT, but bad meme. YouTube has never been profitable

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Whoa

Becoming ever more obnoxious with ad placement because your ad-supported service is losing money and you don't know what else to do is a classic late-stage-enshittification step. It is usually the last one before the service becomes openly hostile to its users and partners and becomes a mostly-worthless relic. I did not think Youtube was at that stage or even close to it but maybe it is.

I can't really tell if Youtube is losing money or not, but it creates about $8 billion per quarter, and Google's overall operating expense is $55 billion per quarter, and I think it actually might be a safe assumption that Youtube is a pretty decent amount of that expense given its scale and its storage, bandwidth, and employee-resources requirements.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Here's the thing about YouTube. From the very beginning, it was a video-hosting platform. Users create content. They upload the content to YouTube's servers. Other users view the content, and upload their own. A simple formula, no? That's why their pre-Google slogan was "Broadcast Yourself". The thing is, storing video data long-term is expensive. This is where Google comes into play, because, unless you've got Google's money, you cannot afford to store literally 100s of Yottabytes of video data, not for very long, anyway. Even if YouTube becomes a "mostly-worthless relic", there's nobody who can readily replace it. I suppose someone could create a fediverse version of it where you simply upload your own content to your own server and then sell (or give) access to other users, but it would be slow to start, and small as not everyone can afford their own server to host their content on. Or, a service that aggregates videos by scraping them from from video servers that it has access to, creating a hub for users to enjoy the content made by other users that is stored on their own servers.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Yeah. As with many things, "Can this make money?" is not the same as "Is this a nice thing to have around?" and the disconnect between the two when capitalism tends to assume they'll be the same thing, is a source of unhappiness in many ways.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Ads never bothered me on YouTube.

They’re bothering me enough now that I’m going with an android phone after more than a decade on iPhones just so I can get back to YouTube the way it used to be with a decent ad blocker (better than it used to be actually).

I can’t fucking stand it, and again, it didn’t bother me before.

Want to show someone a short clip? Nah. Gotta skip two fucking ads first while you stand there looking stupid and waiting.

I’m fucking done.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (5 children)

The irony of a Google product pissing you off so you switch from iOS to Android

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (20 children)

The reason YouTube makes the ads so unbearably obnoxious is they want people to pay for premium. That's all they're doing is annoying people until they pay. I've been paying for premium since the beginning, I know it's awful, but at least I have never seen any ads.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Until they pull a Microsoft and start throwing ads into the paid model as well.

Or like all the other streaming platforms that you paid a subscription for to not see ads, but believe it or not you now have ads.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Objectively wrong.

YouTube could not be profitable showing one quick ad per video, especially if it's longer content.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

My father in law uses the built in YouTube app on the TV. There were 3 ads that played. The first one was 15 minutes. The second one was also around 15 minutes. The third one was an hour. One fucking hour for a 5 minutes video.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

Passively?? Video streaming is anything but passive income.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mid to late 2000s adds were very easy to avoid

Didn't have to pay to see much of anything.

Just every now and then a virus.

Soon we will return to that, except smarter and more adept at not downloading viruses and traps songs labelled as Linkin park

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (18 children)

Is there a blocker I can use on the android YouTube app? I put videos when I'm doing dishes, and in the last year the ads have gotten so long that if you don't skip em or can't (cause you're hands are wet) they go on for 10 minutes or more. The worst are the ads that end, but don't leave your screen until you physically press skip.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

YouTube revanced gives me ad blocking with sponsor block included

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As someone that has used ad blockers for just about as long as I have been able to, I would like to think that this is true. However, I'm not entirely sure that it is. I've heard that a surprising percentage of people just don't even know that ad blockers exist. If that's the case then they may be very well aware of what is happening. (Using made up numbers for the sake of argument since I don't have real numbers) Like if only 5% of users use ad blockers and doubling the number of ads they show only brings that to 10% then it is certainly worth it financially. I doubt that if you were to graph that curve it would be linear - there is certainly a point where you inundate users with so many ads that even non-technical people will start learning about ad blockers. Regardless of what the real numbers are, I would be very surprised if they are making decisions this big without at least being aware of what those numbers might be. And if they can make a small amount of money indefinitely but they have evidence to suggest that they can make even more money also indefinitely then the financial motivation is obvious. Not all infinities are the same size.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Who cares about a privately owned platform? It was never ours.

Spending time there was always going to be a waste of time. Every business wants to grow like a cancer to consume us all. The next service that you use will want the same if you use another private platform.

You should consider using something that is open source and self hosted. Peertube right? Anyone got other recommendations?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

Until the content I want is on another platform, I don't really have a choice of what platform to go to. Of course, I can also just go outside which YouTube has made more and more appealing by the week, but telling people "just use Peertube" isn't a solution when the content they want to see simply doesn't exist there

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