I watched a Warframe (game) YouTube video on the Steam integrated browser, without beeing connected to my account and Holly s* it was horrible.
In a 14 minutes video, I got 5 ads. 1 (or more skippable once) at the beginning, 1 during the first half of the video, 2 during the second half, and 1 at the end.
All were skippable after 5 sec.
2 were close together at about 1 min interval during the second half of the video.
But that is not the only issue. 4 of those ads (not the last one at the end), were Israeli hate/war anti-hamas propaganda.
I consider these ads horrible and they should not be allowed in my opinion.
Most people, including myself, seem to agree, that ads were never the problem. When YouTube started, it had ads too and nobody cared. But the ads got worse and websites started to shove them down our throats. I miss the times of a single banner below a video. I don’t think Google and all the others realise just how much determined nerds can achieve. So far the ad blockers seem to win the race, minus some minor setbacks.
Yep. My day job is providing tools to marketing folks and improving lead gen. It pays me well.
But I also contribute to open source projects to unfuck the internet. I know the tricks people like me use.
Real heroes have shitty day jobs. Checks out.
Except Batman and Iron Man. Those guys also have mansions, hot chicks, cars, and sarcasm.
It was October Spooky when Microsoft dropped the GetWinX.exe icon on everyone’s Win7 and Win8 taskbars. The first time, we all followed the directions and dove into the registry to remove it, because it wasn’t enough to just delete it. The icon would self restore.
Then Microsoft reinstalled their adware in a critical security update Big Mic also started using dark patterns making upgrading opt-out, and hiding the onay anksthay toggle.
Thats when an engineer, UltimateOutsider, I think, created the GetWinX Control Panel which not only did the full remove in a wizard but also monitored on boot to see if it came back.
It was a reassuring day. I think no matter how much the companies enshittify, it will only drive pissed off engineers to write hard bypasses. It’s how we got the GCP. It’s how we got Windows Loader for every release since XP’s activation process.
You don’t run gnu; you probably run Linux. In the same sense, you don’t mention how you ride the tires to work but you probably mention riding a bicycle, bus or car. You go to see art, not the tools used to create it, and this is why van gogh’s art is on display and not the brushes he used to such great effect.
Keep it in perspective no matter how hard the feet-picker wants to distract you.
When youtube started, the ads would load perfectly every single time and the video was a tiresome afterthought that would load in fits and starts if it loaded at all.
I use an ad blocker but I cringe when I see my wife viewing a short recipe online, on a page with 10+ ads.
Why don’t you help her? Do you not like her??
She’s drowning and you’re just standing there watching :( :(
Not OP but I run a Pi Hole for the home network, but don’t intrude to install software on her laptop.
This. Ads can be somewhat okay as long as they don’t interrupt or otherwise hinder the functionality of the website or application I’m using.
YouTube’s video ads interrupt the main functionality of the website for the full duration of the ads (some are skippable after 5s).
In the early days of the Internet, ads were ok.
Then the popups came.
Then came the popup blockers.
It’s been an arms race since the beginning. The ad-throwers get greedy, not knowing when to stop pushing. That’s how things escalate.
The pop-up divs annoy the fuck out of me. And most websites have gotten smart about them by creating the div ids on the fly so ublock can take them on.
I’m getting close to completely disabling JavaScript at this rate.
While I think this may play a part, YouTube was unprofitable for more than a decade and probably still is right now. It’s not greedy to want to pay server costs
My company is heavily considering raising premium prices because ad revenue is now equal to the subscription cost, and we’re still very unprofitable. That’s not greedy, that’s basic business
if they come for yt-dlp i will record their videos with a fucking VCR and clip out the ads so help me god
I’ve got a vcr in my closet, I don’t know why, but maybe their days are coming back.
I can’t watch YouTube without getting ads with some gravy seal in camo walking around in the woods telling me there’s a storm coming.
Who’s allowing these clowns to spread their propaganda?
I don’t know what a “gravy seal” is, but I’m trying to picture it and I’m kinda laughing to myself
Imagine a fat, old, or otherwise unfit civilian who has purchased tactical-looking gear and weapons, which he uses for aggressive posturing. That’s my understanding of the term.
Pretty much spot on. This imaginary man also owns a truck too big to park and will assault you for being gay and/or brown. People just like him populate moderate swaths of the American South and make other minor appearances farther north.
Seriously!! I don’t mind the frequency so much as the absolute SHIT they’re serving up. Conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. I’ve been skipping some of my favorite creators because I just don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with the bullshit every five minutes. It is truly enraging.
I also got a Nebula subscription. It’s not perfect, and I wish more of the people I follow were on there, but it helps so much, mentally. I don’t have to see crappy ads I didn’t sign up for, or feel guilty for using an ad blocker, because the people I follow are getting paid through the subscription.
Ads are the reason I stopped listening to regular FM radio. I used to live in a more rural town and it was at least half an hour to get to any city I would have to go to for more than basic groceries. Once when I was coming back somewhere that takes a whole hour drive to get home, I heard nothing but commercials the entire drive. Not one fucking song (aside from ad jingles) for a whole fucking hour. Ridiculous.
I switched to Sirius. And it was great… Until they got bought/merged with XM. Now they have a monopoly on satellite radio, they immediately cut features and jacked up prices. They also started playing ads. So I cancelled that.
I’ve been using Spotify Premium ever since. It started off pretty great; they’ve recently been cutting back features and jacking up the price tho. So I may end up cancelling Spotify, too, if shit keeps trending downhill. Especially if they put ads in the premium service I pay for specifically to not have ads.
I’ve been adding music to my mp3 collection since Napster got started. It feels old fashioned now but I have yet to see a reason to use an alternative method. I actually have a lifetime subscription to SiriusXM. So I pay nothing, and I still don’t listen to that shit.
Remember the time when people used to have a stack of CDs in the car? Some cars even had a a fancy player that could hold multiple discs.
Yeah I wish I still had a cd player or an aux jack. At least I can load up mp3s on a flash drive.
At least those flash drives can easily store your entire library these days. You only need one, and it doesn’t even have to be an expensive one.
Older poorer people. Younger poorer people stuff a bunch of songs in an USB stick.
Idk I pay for Spotify family premium and it’s only gone up $1 since their launch in 2011… I think that’s pretty good. Now if it becomes and annual thing then fuck’em.
For me it was TV. I stopped watching TV when I became aware of the amount of ads for cars. There’s at least one ad for a car in every “commercial break”. So I just stopped about 15 years ago.
I filled the entertainment gap with internet and lately I’ve been using YouTube a lot. However it’s also becoming annoying with the sponsors inside the videos as well. I was not using SponsorBlock before but I installed it a few days ago.
If I’m ever forced to watch the awful ads on YouTube, I’ll quit too. My life is just gonna be better for it.
YouTube Ads: “You are a MAN with a GUN and you will MURDER EVERYONE if it means you can PROTECT your FAMILY”
I don’t even know, or care, wtf they are selling but they missed the target audience with that one. That’s the cringiest fetishism I’ve ever seen in my life.
Google must be scraping the bottom of the barrel of crazy that’s also stupid enough to pay for ads, I think it’s common knowledge now that Google games analytics to artificially inflate the appearance of ad impact.
Honestly, I don’t really think they could be any more impactful with ads than they actually are, though. Might have to side with them against the advertisers on that front. YouTube Sponsors should know by now exactly how effective Google is. If Google attempts to be even more pushy, like with the banner that disables video player, the only thing they get is massively reduced user engagement as people either log out or leave the site.
A much bigger issue is that Google has either Monopoly or strong Oligopoly on serving online ads, and they set their rates accordingly.
