Decrapifying Youtube
June 25, 2023 1:19 PM Subscribe
If you hate how Youtube's home page is lately full of clickbait thumbnails and titles desperate for you to load them, you might want to take a look at DeArrow, written by Ajay Ramachandran (Chrome, Firefox), an extension that can replace them with crowdsourced alternatives, or in their absence provide de-emphasized titles and random thumbnails. Ramachandran also produces SponsorBlock (Chrome, Firefox), a crowdsourced system for skipping past the sponsorship ads in videos, as well as the non-music portions of music videos.
Note: a side effect of this extension I discovered is, at least on Firefox, if you load a Youtube video's page while it's active, even if it's disabled in its interface (but not if it's disabled in Firefox's extension list), and the video has an ad that loads before it, the title of the page, in the title bar or tab label, will actually be the title of the ad video in Youtube's collection.
(Did you know that all the ads that appear on Youtube are, themselves, Youtube videos? And you can get their URLs and view them directly, by copying out the ID in the "Stats for Nerds" option you can get from right-clicking the video while the ad plays, then pasting that ID after the "watch?v=" part of a Youtube video's URL? Useful or entertaining applications of this are left to you to invent.)
Also note: by default, these extensions work by sending videos IDs to an outside service. Some of this can be disabled in the Miscellaneous tab of DeArrow's settings. However, the crowdsourced aspects of DeArrow and SponsorBlock pretty much rely on passing video IDs to an outside service to operate. Ramachandran maintains the server that is used by default. The extensions are open source and the databases are public, for whatever that's worth.
Note: a side effect of this extension I discovered is, at least on Firefox, if you load a Youtube video's page while it's active, even if it's disabled in its interface (but not if it's disabled in Firefox's extension list), and the video has an ad that loads before it, the title of the page, in the title bar or tab label, will actually be the title of the ad video in Youtube's collection.
(Did you know that all the ads that appear on Youtube are, themselves, Youtube videos? And you can get their URLs and view them directly, by copying out the ID in the "Stats for Nerds" option you can get from right-clicking the video while the ad plays, then pasting that ID after the "watch?v=" part of a Youtube video's URL? Useful or entertaining applications of this are left to you to invent.)
Also note: by default, these extensions work by sending videos IDs to an outside service. Some of this can be disabled in the Miscellaneous tab of DeArrow's settings. However, the crowdsourced aspects of DeArrow and SponsorBlock pretty much rely on passing video IDs to an outside service to operate. Ramachandran maintains the server that is used by default. The extensions are open source and the databases are public, for whatever that's worth.
SponsorBlock has settings to customize exactly what sorts of things get blocked, and the default settings are pretty good at blocking only sponsorship sections/ads, though since it does rely on volunteers tagging these things, there is a certain amount of judgement involved. You can also change the level of blocking, from auto-skipping a category of content, manual skipping, just showing it in the progress bar, or disabling any sort of blocking altogether. Definitely recommend checking it out.
posted by Aleyn at 1:59 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Aleyn at 1:59 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
SponsorBlock is absolutely amazing and I love it!
I also swear by Enhancer for YouTube (Firefox, Chrome), which among other interface tweaks completely eliminates YouTube ads, including the unskippable ones.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:02 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I also swear by Enhancer for YouTube (Firefox, Chrome), which among other interface tweaks completely eliminates YouTube ads, including the unskippable ones.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:02 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I find it's generally pretty easy to block Youtube ads. I have disabled ad blocking though, at least for the moment, for Youtube though, so that the channels I follow will get at least a little money from my viewing their efforts. I don't begrudge anyone else from blocking them, and they are very annoying and I use the Skip Ad button whenever it's active, but I like to think that I'm helping the content producer at least a little, since I have no means to contribute to any Patreons. (Which also means, all those bonus bits that places promise will always be out of my reach. That does sting a bit.)
posted by JHarris at 3:06 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 3:06 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I actually don't mind youTube ads. When I use ad blocker it is usually just to make local news media websites non-broken but... honestly the channels I watch the embedded SponCon isn't terrible.
BUT HOLY FUCK 2/3 of my favorite channels use the worst fucking thumbnails imaginable. I understand why they do it... doesn't make it less garish but I understand.
posted by midmarch snowman at 3:14 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
BUT HOLY FUCK 2/3 of my favorite channels use the worst fucking thumbnails imaginable. I understand why they do it... doesn't make it less garish but I understand.
posted by midmarch snowman at 3:14 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have YouTube Premium, so it's ad-free, so this is going to make looking at my recs and subs so much nicer. The arrows and weird faces were a lot of visual noise, and as I have ADD, it's overstimulating in my experience.
I tried it, and it was refreshing not to be bombarded by clickbaity titles.
posted by tlwright at 3:49 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I tried it, and it was refreshing not to be bombarded by clickbaity titles.
posted by tlwright at 3:49 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
Really why would anyone use suggestions from any of these companies? YT has so much incredibly fantastic stuff, click search. (psst, yt-dlp to keep the good stuff)
posted by sammyo at 4:27 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 4:27 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Apparently I am the objective function because I've always found the home page recommendations pretty good and not even overly clickbaity. They have a few noticeable failure modes like recommending something that I just watch listed because I don't have time for it right now, but those are easy to ignore.
posted by allegedly at 4:29 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by allegedly at 4:29 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Firefox's Facebook container tabs (maybe plus uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger?) actually also turn out to block YouTube ads on my Mac, for the moment, so I've been using that to make my playlist of hours-long video game music extensions safe for my delicate, ad-phobic ears
posted by gusandrews at 4:47 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by gusandrews at 4:47 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
As someone who makes FPPs here all the time about YouTube videos i've found that are worth sharing, I think, I will admit I find YouTube ads incredibly annoying. I also have no way to fathom which video I'm going to watch will have zero ad breaks, not counting beginning ads, or maybe one ad break across a half hour, or maybe an ad break every 5 video minutes.
Also, this being YouTube, I have no idea whether anyone else's experience on the exact same video is the same as me. Maybe it was my turn to get a shitton of ads so that's what I got, and someone else only got one or two ad breaks. There is no way to know, really.
posted by hippybear at 4:54 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, this being YouTube, I have no idea whether anyone else's experience on the exact same video is the same as me. Maybe it was my turn to get a shitton of ads so that's what I got, and someone else only got one or two ad breaks. There is no way to know, really.
posted by hippybear at 4:54 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Between Adblock Plus and Privacy Badger, I forget that YouTube even has ads (other than the sponsor messages the actual creators do) until I happen to view things on my phone.
But those recommendations, ugh.
posted by Foosnark at 5:23 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
But those recommendations, ugh.
posted by Foosnark at 5:23 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I watch enough Youtube with ads to tell you that they hugely harm the experience, and sometimes I'm greatly tempted to block them again. I probably will eventually, but I do want my views to translate into some kind of value to the people whose videos I watch, at least for awhile.
posted by JHarris at 5:42 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 5:42 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I find that the recommendations get shitty when I've been watching too damn much YouTube. Otherwise, they're fine most of the time. I'm pretty careful about what I click on, though. The biggest problem is that when I watch too many videos from my local news outlets I end up getting recommendations for videos of people going out of their way to bait cops during traffic stops.
I've long been a happy Premium subscriber, but after the recent price increase I don't think of it so fondly. It's still worth it to me, but I no longer feel like I'm getting a screaming good deal. Not surprising when it went up 53% in one shot. (I was still paying the same $14.99 a month for the family plan as I had been paying since the Play Music All Access family plan became a thing back in 2016ish)
If I were just watching silly cat videos or whatever, I'd probably feel less compelled to actually pay, but I mainly watch longer form stuff that I feel like people should be compensated for making. And not with "exposure," but actual money. It's still not a lot of money, but it's a hell of a lot more than creators are getting from AdSense on a per view basis, even when people actually watch the ads.
Just to be clear, I don't begrudge anyone blocking ads on YouTube. Last I saw when I was inadvertantly logged out it was an utter shitshow that I couldn't stand 5 minutes of. Apparently creators have to put in a significant amount of effort manually placing ad breaks and telling YouTube to be less shitty on every single upload to keep the automated placement system from going nuts.
posted by wierdo at 5:48 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've long been a happy Premium subscriber, but after the recent price increase I don't think of it so fondly. It's still worth it to me, but I no longer feel like I'm getting a screaming good deal. Not surprising when it went up 53% in one shot. (I was still paying the same $14.99 a month for the family plan as I had been paying since the Play Music All Access family plan became a thing back in 2016ish)
If I were just watching silly cat videos or whatever, I'd probably feel less compelled to actually pay, but I mainly watch longer form stuff that I feel like people should be compensated for making. And not with "exposure," but actual money. It's still not a lot of money, but it's a hell of a lot more than creators are getting from AdSense on a per view basis, even when people actually watch the ads.
Just to be clear, I don't begrudge anyone blocking ads on YouTube. Last I saw when I was inadvertantly logged out it was an utter shitshow that I couldn't stand 5 minutes of. Apparently creators have to put in a significant amount of effort manually placing ad breaks and telling YouTube to be less shitty on every single upload to keep the automated placement system from going nuts.
posted by wierdo at 5:48 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
My system is this (on a computer in a web browser, not via a smart TV or via a YT app on a phone/tablet):
1. Optional (I do not bother): Have a separate dummy google account to prevent google tracking what you watch.
2. FF + "Enhancer for Youtube" extension = 0 ads.
3. Load only my subscriptions page (https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions) so I never see YT home page recommendations.
4. Ignore recommendations in sidebar.
5. Occasionally load YT anonymously in another browser or a private tab, and pop lots of tabs on my various favorite subscriptions and let their longest playlists play overnight, muted, so they get some ad $. (At least I hope the creators get some ad $, as long as google can't tell I'm muting everything.)
posted by kiblinger at 6:46 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
1. Optional (I do not bother): Have a separate dummy google account to prevent google tracking what you watch.
2. FF + "Enhancer for Youtube" extension = 0 ads.
3. Load only my subscriptions page (https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions) so I never see YT home page recommendations.
4. Ignore recommendations in sidebar.
5. Occasionally load YT anonymously in another browser or a private tab, and pop lots of tabs on my various favorite subscriptions and let their longest playlists play overnight, muted, so they get some ad $. (At least I hope the creators get some ad $, as long as google can't tell I'm muting everything.)
posted by kiblinger at 6:46 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Almost every channel I subscribe to seems to have a Patreon page, and I wonder how hard it would be for Patreon to spin up a competitor to YouTube Premium where they would charge say ~2/3 of what YTP used to charge, and gave the creators more per view than YTP does right now, and would let you watch any video associated with a Patreon page.
I suppose you'd want a pilot program to be able to reassure channels that patrons wouldn’t substitute such a membership for the donations they are already making or might make, but I doubt that would be too much of a problem.
posted by jamjam at 7:22 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I suppose you'd want a pilot program to be able to reassure channels that patrons wouldn’t substitute such a membership for the donations they are already making or might make, but I doubt that would be too much of a problem.
posted by jamjam at 7:22 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Youtube still has RSS feeds and there's no algorithm to decide what's important or not.
posted by meowzilla at 7:36 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 7:36 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe five years ago I visited a friend lives in CA. Like so many ppl, first thing he did was fire up his pc, check out what is happening in this big old world we've got. I was astounded to find he had *nothing* blocking him off from the garbage we get shoved in our direction. I hadn''t seen any of it in at least ten years. It is absolutely vile. Disgusting. If I had to live with that I would not use the internet; I'm one of those insufferable ppl who refused for decades to watch any television and then felt all good about it.
Anyways, no way I would put up with all of the garbage shoved in the face of ppl on a daily basis.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:31 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Anyways, no way I would put up with all of the garbage shoved in the face of ppl on a daily basis.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:31 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
spin up a competitor to YouTube
If you've got half an hour, you might want to watch Wendover Productions' latest, giving the history of how a bunch of youtubers and an ad agent created the successful Nebula streaming service for/by themselves: How We Built a $150m Streaming Platform Without Venture Capital.
Its roster of creator-member-owners might be too broad for some, hosting everyone from Jessie Gender to JJ McCulloch; and its mostly educational content too narrow for others. But depending on your YouTube diet, you might be able to replace it with Nebula content.
posted by bartleby at 8:53 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
If you've got half an hour, you might want to watch Wendover Productions' latest, giving the history of how a bunch of youtubers and an ad agent created the successful Nebula streaming service for/by themselves: How We Built a $150m Streaming Platform Without Venture Capital.
Its roster of creator-member-owners might be too broad for some, hosting everyone from Jessie Gender to JJ McCulloch; and its mostly educational content too narrow for others. But depending on your YouTube diet, you might be able to replace it with Nebula content.
posted by bartleby at 8:53 PM on June 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I have ads blocked when I watch Youtube on my computer; but I also have Youtube on my smart TV, and haven't figured out how to block ads there.
And the smart TV viewing emphasizes just how AWFUL the ads are. Every two gad-damn minutes something I'm watching is interrupted by an ad. And - to add insult to injury, it's the same damn ad each time. Like, if it were different ads every two minutes it'd be almost bearable; but no, The thing I'm watching gets interrupted once by a Melissa McCarthy Booking.com ad, and then two minutes later it's the exact same Melissa McCarthy Booking.com ad, and then maybe two and a half minutes go by and then I get the exact damn same ad again, and....
I mean, are they trying to ANNOY us into submission, like a little kid asking "can we get a puppy" every five minutes or osmething?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:34 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
And the smart TV viewing emphasizes just how AWFUL the ads are. Every two gad-damn minutes something I'm watching is interrupted by an ad. And - to add insult to injury, it's the same damn ad each time. Like, if it were different ads every two minutes it'd be almost bearable; but no, The thing I'm watching gets interrupted once by a Melissa McCarthy Booking.com ad, and then two minutes later it's the exact same Melissa McCarthy Booking.com ad, and then maybe two and a half minutes go by and then I get the exact damn same ad again, and....
I mean, are they trying to ANNOY us into submission, like a little kid asking "can we get a puppy" every five minutes or osmething?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:34 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
The Fediverse (there's that word again) has its own alternative to Youtube, called Peertube. It doesn't seem nearly to have anywhere near the buzz or content that Youtube has, but it seems like it might be the seed of something big?
A Peertube server hosts videos itself, but popular videos get cached locally by other servers, and even viewers help spread video around when they watch. It uses a browser-based version of bittorrent under the hood. I don't pretend to understand the legal implications of that, but it's an interesting idea.
One of the biggest pushes towards Peertube's adoption came in 2018, when Youtube blocked the official channel for the Blender Foundation throughout the world, I think over a refusal to sign a contract allowing ads on their videos? This is what I saw on the matter.
That block seems to have been resolved now, but it pushed Blender towards setting up their own Peertube instance. Blenders official Youtube channel and their Peertube instance have different content. Their videos on Youtube average maybe 5-8K views; their Peertube views are more like 80-100 views each, much fewer. But, as more people find out about the Fediverse and Peertube, maybe that will change? I don't know: video is a much different use case than microblogging or community discussion, requiring much more storage and bandwidth, and while Youtube certainly has significant issues, it hasn't pissed off its users in a memorable way like Twitter and Reddit have.
posted by JHarris at 9:40 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
A Peertube server hosts videos itself, but popular videos get cached locally by other servers, and even viewers help spread video around when they watch. It uses a browser-based version of bittorrent under the hood. I don't pretend to understand the legal implications of that, but it's an interesting idea.
One of the biggest pushes towards Peertube's adoption came in 2018, when Youtube blocked the official channel for the Blender Foundation throughout the world, I think over a refusal to sign a contract allowing ads on their videos? This is what I saw on the matter.
That block seems to have been resolved now, but it pushed Blender towards setting up their own Peertube instance. Blenders official Youtube channel and their Peertube instance have different content. Their videos on Youtube average maybe 5-8K views; their Peertube views are more like 80-100 views each, much fewer. But, as more people find out about the Fediverse and Peertube, maybe that will change? I don't know: video is a much different use case than microblogging or community discussion, requiring much more storage and bandwidth, and while Youtube certainly has significant issues, it hasn't pissed off its users in a memorable way like Twitter and Reddit have.
posted by JHarris at 9:40 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
The issue with peertube is having to bear the cost of bandwidth. At the moment, YouTube is gloriously free, funded by people who don't run ad blockers (and a few people who pay for Premium). Not a scalable solution of course, but for now, it's perfect for those of us so do use ad blockers.
(Similarly, did yous all know that Spotify in browser with a good ad blocker is functionality equivalent to Spotify Premium?)
posted by Dysk at 11:31 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Similarly, did yous all know that Spotify in browser with a good ad blocker is functionality equivalent to Spotify Premium?)
posted by Dysk at 11:31 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have an irrational hatred of shorts. Currently using a homemade userscript to get them out of my subscriptions and search results but always on the lookout for more comprehensive solutions. DO NOT WANT!
posted by donio at 12:46 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by donio at 12:46 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have an irrational hatred of shorts
If you have Chrome, there's an extension to hide Youtube Shorts. I have that too.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you have Chrome, there's an extension to hide Youtube Shorts. I have that too.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
YouTube now is the equivalent of The National Enquirer. Though there is much good to be seen and heard there in spite of this.
posted by DJZouke at 5:01 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by DJZouke at 5:01 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Tangent about youtube crappiness: My favorite teacher passed away on the 22nd, and in searching for a good clip to drop into an online memoriam I saw that multiple sources (like, three) were trying to get clicks by running instant obituary videos about his "shocking" death. (It was cancer, not that shocking.) One warned the viewer to "get ready to cry!" Two of them had zero views, so it didn't seem to be working, but wow, what a shitty way to try to make a buck.
posted by anhedonic at 6:34 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by anhedonic at 6:34 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
I have ads blocked when I watch Youtube on my computer; but I also have Youtube on my smart TV, and haven't figured out how to block ads there.
One solution is to use your TV as a huge computer monitor. I have an old laptop running Linux which is our "entertainment center" (for want of a better title) - music, Youtube, Netflix, Instagram, etc. The laptop uses the TV for a monitor and an old Bose stereo amp for sound.
I have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad which is a sort of giant remote control.
posted by mmrtnt at 8:01 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
One solution is to use your TV as a huge computer monitor. I have an old laptop running Linux which is our "entertainment center" (for want of a better title) - music, Youtube, Netflix, Instagram, etc. The laptop uses the TV for a monitor and an old Bose stereo amp for sound.
I have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad which is a sort of giant remote control.
posted by mmrtnt at 8:01 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
I have an irrational hatred of shorts
I have recently decided to no longer wear shorts in public.
We'll see how this summer tests my resolve.
posted by mmrtnt at 8:03 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have recently decided to no longer wear shorts in public.
We'll see how this summer tests my resolve.
posted by mmrtnt at 8:03 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Man, lotsa people here angry about what seem like relatively small things.
Just as a reminder, ad revenue is how the people who make the YouTube videos get paid. So when you ad block, you basically say "I think you should give me all this content for free." And maybe you do think that, but I personally like the fact that people can make money while also creating things they love.
That being said, most monetized creators actually have control over how and where their ads are placed in their videos. So if you're getting ads every two minutes, either they're not monetized (generally have under 1000 subscribers) or they're setting it up do to that (or just failing to adjust their ad settings), so perhaps take that into consideration when you choose who to watch.
Also, there is a whole science to video thumbnails (YT is about to roll out real time A/B testing for thumbnails actually) and I'm honestly struggling to understand why anyone would want to create an entire tool just to change the thumbnails. Very strong "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" vibes.
On your home page, you can always just choose "don't recommend this channel" "not interested" or "report" (in the case of anhedonic's teacher situation).
I have an irrational hatred of shorts
This is hilarious to me because ... just don't watch them? You can actually click on the section header for shorts to close that section for 30 days.
YouTube now is the equivalent of The National Enquirer.
YouTube, like all user-generated media, contains every aspect of the human experience... but you've got to put in a little work to curate it. My recommended right now is a lot of Time Team, some musical theater, a woman who grooms dogs, cute owl videos, a couple of minecraft videos, Taskmaster, Smosh, and a channel about taking the train through Iceland. If yours is different, than maybe its because you haven't told it what you actually want to see.
posted by anastasiav at 8:29 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just as a reminder, ad revenue is how the people who make the YouTube videos get paid. So when you ad block, you basically say "I think you should give me all this content for free." And maybe you do think that, but I personally like the fact that people can make money while also creating things they love.
That being said, most monetized creators actually have control over how and where their ads are placed in their videos. So if you're getting ads every two minutes, either they're not monetized (generally have under 1000 subscribers) or they're setting it up do to that (or just failing to adjust their ad settings), so perhaps take that into consideration when you choose who to watch.
Also, there is a whole science to video thumbnails (YT is about to roll out real time A/B testing for thumbnails actually) and I'm honestly struggling to understand why anyone would want to create an entire tool just to change the thumbnails. Very strong "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" vibes.
On your home page, you can always just choose "don't recommend this channel" "not interested" or "report" (in the case of anhedonic's teacher situation).
I have an irrational hatred of shorts
This is hilarious to me because ... just don't watch them? You can actually click on the section header for shorts to close that section for 30 days.
YouTube now is the equivalent of The National Enquirer.
YouTube, like all user-generated media, contains every aspect of the human experience... but you've got to put in a little work to curate it. My recommended right now is a lot of Time Team, some musical theater, a woman who grooms dogs, cute owl videos, a couple of minecraft videos, Taskmaster, Smosh, and a channel about taking the train through Iceland. If yours is different, than maybe its because you haven't told it what you actually want to see.
posted by anastasiav at 8:29 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I do almost 100% of my YouTubing on the TV via the Roku app. $11.99 a month for YT premium (and YouTube Music Premium) is a small price to pay to get rid of all the ads.
posted by COD at 8:33 AM on June 26, 2023
posted by COD at 8:33 AM on June 26, 2023
I have recently decided to no longer wear shorts in public.
We'll see how this summer tests my resolve.
There's always Utilikilts...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:40 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
We'll see how this summer tests my resolve.
There's always Utilikilts...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:40 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm honestly struggling to understand why anyone would want to create an entire tool just to change the thumbnails. Very strong "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" vibes.
YouTube thumbnails are the worst. I can't stand "Youtube Face" and all of the other dumb clickbait tropes that get endlessly repeated over and over again. They are a cancer that started with the content farms but are now is so necessary that even otherwise sensible creators are obligated to it for the algorithm.
And yes, it does come down to "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" because the covers do suck that much.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:48 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
YouTube thumbnails are the worst. I can't stand "Youtube Face" and all of the other dumb clickbait tropes that get endlessly repeated over and over again. They are a cancer that started with the content farms but are now is so necessary that even otherwise sensible creators are obligated to it for the algorithm.
And yes, it does come down to "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" because the covers do suck that much.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:48 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
One solution is to use your TV as a huge computer monitor. I have an old laptop running Linux which is our "entertainment center" (for want of a better title) - music, Youtube, Netflix, Instagram, etc. The laptop uses the TV for a monitor and an old Bose stereo amp for sound.
I am flattered that you think I'd know how to do this.
Just as a reminder, ad revenue is how the people who make the YouTube videos get paid.
The bulk of people whose channels I watch a) are doing this as a side thing for fun as a break from their day jobs, b) have Patreon channels, c) get sponsors for their content, and d) have book deals and other merch. Try again.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I am flattered that you think I'd know how to do this.
Just as a reminder, ad revenue is how the people who make the YouTube videos get paid.
The bulk of people whose channels I watch a) are doing this as a side thing for fun as a break from their day jobs, b) have Patreon channels, c) get sponsors for their content, and d) have book deals and other merch. Try again.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I’m tempted to get a nebula subscription for the music educators I follow on YouTube, but I’m not tempted to turn ad-blocking off.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:57 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 8:57 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
And yes, it does come down to "I like this book but I'm embarrassed by the cover" because the covers do suck that much.
Well, ok, but how long do you spend looking at the cover/thumbnail? This feels like spending an hour to fix something you see for five minutes.
The bulk of people whose channels I watch a) are doing this as a side thing for fun as a break from their day jobs, b) have Patreon channels, c) get sponsors for their content, and d) have book deals and other merch. Try again.
That "Try again" is pretty needlessly snarky.
Yes, Patreon, sponsored content, and other merch are certainly other revenue streams for creators. but that's not universally true. Particularly in the case of the "fun break" people -- they might actually be enjoying also getting paid by YouTube. Don't dismiss the couple hundred a year they are probably making through Ad Sense. And, I mean, if you are actually subbing to the patreon for every channel you watch, or buying the merch or whatever -- go you. That's great that you have that much disposable income. Most of us don't.
posted by anastasiav at 9:04 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, ok, but how long do you spend looking at the cover/thumbnail? This feels like spending an hour to fix something you see for five minutes.
The bulk of people whose channels I watch a) are doing this as a side thing for fun as a break from their day jobs, b) have Patreon channels, c) get sponsors for their content, and d) have book deals and other merch. Try again.
That "Try again" is pretty needlessly snarky.
Yes, Patreon, sponsored content, and other merch are certainly other revenue streams for creators. but that's not universally true. Particularly in the case of the "fun break" people -- they might actually be enjoying also getting paid by YouTube. Don't dismiss the couple hundred a year they are probably making through Ad Sense. And, I mean, if you are actually subbing to the patreon for every channel you watch, or buying the merch or whatever -- go you. That's great that you have that much disposable income. Most of us don't.
posted by anastasiav at 9:04 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, ok, but how long do you spend looking at the cover/thumbnail? This feels like spending an hour to fix something you see for five minutes.
I look at it enough. Why should I--the consumer--have to put up with crap I don't like? If even glancing at the thumbnails is too much of a burden, I'll just stop watching the channel.
The same goes for adblockers. Show me unobtrusive advertisements which are engaging to me personally, and I won't expend the effort to block them. Make it impossible for me to use an adblocker and I'll just stop consuming all together.
It's amazing how much advertisements suck and how poorly they're targeted despite the enormous heaps of personal data that these platforms collect. It's all ads for the same dumb gacha games interspersed with disguisting toenail fungus shocker videos.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:18 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I look at it enough. Why should I--the consumer--have to put up with crap I don't like? If even glancing at the thumbnails is too much of a burden, I'll just stop watching the channel.
The same goes for adblockers. Show me unobtrusive advertisements which are engaging to me personally, and I won't expend the effort to block them. Make it impossible for me to use an adblocker and I'll just stop consuming all together.
It's amazing how much advertisements suck and how poorly they're targeted despite the enormous heaps of personal data that these platforms collect. It's all ads for the same dumb gacha games interspersed with disguisting toenail fungus shocker videos.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:18 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, ok, but how long do you spend looking at the cover/thumbnail? This feels like spending an hour to fix something you see for five minutes.
Technology has, more than ever, enabled capitalism to pinpoint the level of misery it can induce to make you normalize it rather than rebel, right before it pushes you to the next level.
It's funny that the mefi post before this one is titled, "Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts".
posted by AlSweigart at 9:31 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Technology has, more than ever, enabled capitalism to pinpoint the level of misery it can induce to make you normalize it rather than rebel, right before it pushes you to the next level.
It's funny that the mefi post before this one is titled, "Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts".
posted by AlSweigart at 9:31 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Technology has, more than ever, enabled capitalism to pinpoint the level of misery
on the scale of everyday misery I endure youtube thumbnails are not even in the top 100
I'm delighted to learn that so many other people have so few issues in their life that they can spend a lot of time being very old-man-shouts-at-clouds about this. So, I'll leave you folks to be angry at youtube creators for trying to make a buck and go somewhere people aren't so miserable about everything
posted by anastasiav at 9:51 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
on the scale of everyday misery I endure youtube thumbnails are not even in the top 100
I'm delighted to learn that so many other people have so few issues in their life that they can spend a lot of time being very old-man-shouts-at-clouds about this. So, I'll leave you folks to be angry at youtube creators for trying to make a buck and go somewhere people aren't so miserable about everything
posted by anastasiav at 9:51 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I use unhook YouTube with very aggressive settings (plus some other extensions mentioned in this thread). My YouTube has no recommended videos or homepage. I just follow half a dozen channels and that's all I get. No discovery at all (though I am subscribed to Tom Scott's newsletter, which occasionally gives me other content).
For me, yt used to be a multiple-hours-at-a-time time sink, and now it's just not. Huge improvement.
posted by look upon my works progress administration at 10:06 AM on June 26, 2023
For me, yt used to be a multiple-hours-at-a-time time sink, and now it's just not. Huge improvement.
posted by look upon my works progress administration at 10:06 AM on June 26, 2023
It would be good if I could filter YouTube recommendations by keyword - for example, I'm fairly sure I have no use for any video that has the word "reacts" in the title. Or "Jordan Petersen" for that matter.
I've only just realised that deleting videos from watch history it has at least some effect on recommendations. For example, last week I stumbled on a perfectly delightful reviewer person, and clicked through a number of their videos to see whether they'd mentioned something specific. I deleted those videos from my watch history and it doesn't seem to have skewed the list that much (again, I didn't dislike them, I just didn't want the algorithm to make recommendations based on my having watched them).
I pay them to make the ads go away, as I watch on the TV as much as a computer. I kind of resent it, I guess - if you give money to Netflix or Disney+ they (theoretically) use it to make or buy cool programming, but it feels like you pay YouTube to stop punching you in the face: The ads seem to be designed to be intrusions to incentivise subscription uptake as much as anything else (they could have the same effect with twenty second of high-pitched noise, apart from the fact that that wouldn't raise any revenue), and in my case it seems to have worked.
posted by Grangousier at 10:09 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've only just realised that deleting videos from watch history it has at least some effect on recommendations. For example, last week I stumbled on a perfectly delightful reviewer person, and clicked through a number of their videos to see whether they'd mentioned something specific. I deleted those videos from my watch history and it doesn't seem to have skewed the list that much (again, I didn't dislike them, I just didn't want the algorithm to make recommendations based on my having watched them).
I pay them to make the ads go away, as I watch on the TV as much as a computer. I kind of resent it, I guess - if you give money to Netflix or Disney+ they (theoretically) use it to make or buy cool programming, but it feels like you pay YouTube to stop punching you in the face: The ads seem to be designed to be intrusions to incentivise subscription uptake as much as anything else (they could have the same effect with twenty second of high-pitched noise, apart from the fact that that wouldn't raise any revenue), and in my case it seems to have worked.
posted by Grangousier at 10:09 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
So, I'll leave you folks to be angry at youtube creators for trying to make a buck and go somewhere people aren't so miserable about everything
There must be an extension that helps prevent you from reading/responding in threads you don't enjoy reading or are about topics you don't agree with.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:24 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
There must be an extension that helps prevent you from reading/responding in threads you don't enjoy reading or are about topics you don't agree with.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:24 AM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]
"...you pay YouTube to stop punching you in the face: The ads seem to be designed to be intrusions to incentivise subscription uptake as much as anything else"
Which is why I still won't pay for youtube. And why I won't watch it except for rare exceptions.
posted by aleph at 10:29 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Which is why I still won't pay for youtube. And why I won't watch it except for rare exceptions.
posted by aleph at 10:29 AM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I do want my views to translate into some kind of value to the people whose videos I watch, at least for awhile.
Louis has run the numbers and his opinion is that flicking a creator a dollar on Patreon makes more for them than watching hundreds of hours of ad-encumbered content.
Fran isn't impressed with YouTube's rewards model either.
posted by flabdablet at 11:08 AM on June 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Louis has run the numbers and his opinion is that flicking a creator a dollar on Patreon makes more for them than watching hundreds of hours of ad-encumbered content.
Fran isn't impressed with YouTube's rewards model either.
posted by flabdablet at 11:08 AM on June 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
on the scale of everyday misery I endure youtube thumbnails are not even in the top 100
That's okay. Other people than you have other problems than you.
Like, I maintain a blog of video game finds and curiosities with a weekly Youtube silliness feature. Seeing a whole home page full of obnoxious clickbait thumbnails makes me want to load each video and respond in the comments with why? Sometimes the thumbnail's topic isn't even addressed by the video. It's become ubiquitous on my home page. It might not be for yours, but your discoverability experience is heavily flavored by the kinds of things Youtube things you like, which can fluctuate a lot depending on the last two or three videos you watched. I mentioned a few months back that I left an eight-hour video of birds and squirrels going for a cat I was sitting while I was away, and managed to accidentally convince Youtube's whimsical algorithm that I was a cat, filling my homepage with similar videos. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it was easier to discover interesting and useful content on Youtube. But that front page, and text searches, are the only useful doorways to literally centuries of video.
I have suffered with this problem for several years now, and am glad to see that someone else was annoyed enough with it to do something about it.
posted by JHarris at 11:13 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's okay. Other people than you have other problems than you.
Like, I maintain a blog of video game finds and curiosities with a weekly Youtube silliness feature. Seeing a whole home page full of obnoxious clickbait thumbnails makes me want to load each video and respond in the comments with why? Sometimes the thumbnail's topic isn't even addressed by the video. It's become ubiquitous on my home page. It might not be for yours, but your discoverability experience is heavily flavored by the kinds of things Youtube things you like, which can fluctuate a lot depending on the last two or three videos you watched. I mentioned a few months back that I left an eight-hour video of birds and squirrels going for a cat I was sitting while I was away, and managed to accidentally convince Youtube's whimsical algorithm that I was a cat, filling my homepage with similar videos. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it was easier to discover interesting and useful content on Youtube. But that front page, and text searches, are the only useful doorways to literally centuries of video.
I have suffered with this problem for several years now, and am glad to see that someone else was annoyed enough with it to do something about it.
posted by JHarris at 11:13 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Louis has run the numbers
Did not see number running, but thoroughly enjoyed watching his cat hang out with him while he talked.
posted by mmrtnt at 11:37 AM on June 26, 2023
Did not see number running, but thoroughly enjoyed watching his cat hang out with him while he talked.
posted by mmrtnt at 11:37 AM on June 26, 2023
Why you should NEVER feel bad for blocking ads; youtube's system sucks
posted by flabdablet at 12:23 PM on June 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 12:23 PM on June 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
Hey so if you are worried about leaking the IDs of videos you watch to third parties, Ajay has you covered. SponsorBlock (and I would assume DeArrow) only sends a hashed prefix of 4 of the 11 characters of the video ID. It returns all potentially matching results, and the client discards all but the ones that match the full ID.
What this means is that if you are watching a video that has no user segments submitted, nothing on SponsorBlock's server will ever know the full video ID and therefore cannot leak the details of what the video was, exactly. Of course if segments exist then the SB server has the full 11 char ID, so potentially a data leak of server data could let someone see what video you watched in that case, but that has to be the case for the service to function.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:05 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
What this means is that if you are watching a video that has no user segments submitted, nothing on SponsorBlock's server will ever know the full video ID and therefore cannot leak the details of what the video was, exactly. Of course if segments exist then the SB server has the full 11 char ID, so potentially a data leak of server data could let someone see what video you watched in that case, but that has to be the case for the service to function.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:05 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are really fabulous things on YouTube, but with the way YouTube is acting lately, it’s more and more like we’re dealing with some kind of bizarre hostage situation.
My most recent great find is the Medical Secrets channel.
This video, for example, has totally changed the way I see PTSD, and for an incredible bonus, one of the comments, by a vet who does a lot of surgeries in dogs, offers the only believable estimate I’ve seen of the rate of severe PTSD in dogs: about 1 in 5.
I wouldn’t mind a semi-regular thread on MetaFilter where people mention channels new to them that they really like and talk about what makes them so good.
posted by jamjam at 1:41 PM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
My most recent great find is the Medical Secrets channel.
This video, for example, has totally changed the way I see PTSD, and for an incredible bonus, one of the comments, by a vet who does a lot of surgeries in dogs, offers the only believable estimate I’ve seen of the rate of severe PTSD in dogs: about 1 in 5.
I wouldn’t mind a semi-regular thread on MetaFilter where people mention channels new to them that they really like and talk about what makes them so good.
posted by jamjam at 1:41 PM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
And for an example of what I mean by 'some kind of bizarre hostage situation', the video I linked in my previous comment does not show up on the Medical Secrets channel page I linked, either when I’m logged in or browsing in private mode, and was missing from my favorites as well, though I’ve made a point of favoriting everything from that channel I’ve watched.
I was able to retrieve it from my Watch History, however.
posted by jamjam at 2:05 PM on June 26, 2023
I was able to retrieve it from my Watch History, however.
posted by jamjam at 2:05 PM on June 26, 2023
Youtube creators can elect to keep a video private which means it won't display on their page or in search results. Sometimes creators will hide a video when they put out videos to their patreon subscribers. They'll host the video on youtube, hide it, and then publish the link on patreon.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:13 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:13 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wouldn’t mind a semi-regular thread on MetaFilter where people mention channels new to them that they really like and talk about what makes them so good.
I watch a lot of YouTube, but as with so much of the experience there, my recommendations end up backed into a corner for a lot of the time. I post a lot of the "breakthrough" videos I find here, because if there is one thing YouTube seems to be really good at doing, it's serving you 100 items of shit and then one little gold nugget in there. It's recognizing that nugget if it comes my way that is the challenge.
I'm curious where a "these are good YouTube channels" on, let's say a monthly basis, might exist? Is that Fanfare, or MetaTalk chat filter, or AskMe?
I would welcome something like that.
Is there maybe a way to rig up a catch-basket for "this is a channel I recommend" that could then be published in whatever appropriate subsection of MetaFilter is appropriate? That kind of automated "submit here, see it later here" would be sort of like old LISTSERV summary emails, and would be awesome.
posted by hippybear at 2:15 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I watch a lot of YouTube, but as with so much of the experience there, my recommendations end up backed into a corner for a lot of the time. I post a lot of the "breakthrough" videos I find here, because if there is one thing YouTube seems to be really good at doing, it's serving you 100 items of shit and then one little gold nugget in there. It's recognizing that nugget if it comes my way that is the challenge.
I'm curious where a "these are good YouTube channels" on, let's say a monthly basis, might exist? Is that Fanfare, or MetaTalk chat filter, or AskMe?
I would welcome something like that.
Is there maybe a way to rig up a catch-basket for "this is a channel I recommend" that could then be published in whatever appropriate subsection of MetaFilter is appropriate? That kind of automated "submit here, see it later here" would be sort of like old LISTSERV summary emails, and would be awesome.
posted by hippybear at 2:15 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Argh... I think I may myself have been a little too snarky in responding to anastasiav. I am trying to dial it down a bit. Sorry if my line ("other people than you have different problems than you") was a bit sarcastic. Old habits, I guess.
posted by JHarris at 2:36 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 2:36 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
And I also would like a regular channel finds feature! I have several that I could suggest (although I suspect many members already know most of them).
posted by JHarris at 2:38 PM on June 26, 2023
posted by JHarris at 2:38 PM on June 26, 2023
JHarris, I reread their comment and you could have either responded with a 4,000 word reply explaining how they were being disingenuous or you could reply with a bit of snark. You took the route that was less derailing and I'm thankful for that.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:00 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 4:00 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's really too bad COVID made Rossmann go nuts. Not like MAGA nuts, but at least mildly unhinged. I used to enjoy his repair videos quite a lot.
posted by wierdo at 4:22 PM on June 26, 2023
posted by wierdo at 4:22 PM on June 26, 2023
I am another Roku user and Youtube Premium subscriber.
I do resent that they got my $12 by making the baseline experience fucking unusable. But for me the subscription is defensible: I have a couple dozen channels I follow daily and $12 monthly isn't a bad price for me given the amount of watch time I have.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:27 PM on June 26, 2023
I do resent that they got my $12 by making the baseline experience fucking unusable. But for me the subscription is defensible: I have a couple dozen channels I follow daily and $12 monthly isn't a bad price for me given the amount of watch time I have.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:27 PM on June 26, 2023
OMG, thank you SO much for posting this, JHarris. Coupled with uBlock Origin and Disconnect, SponsorBlock began to make YouTube a bearable experience for me until I became increasing aware of random arrows, circles, and stupid faces on thumbnails, paired with SHOCKED titles. It's incredibly intrusive, sharpening on a sensitivity in me akin to Cayce Pollard's in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition: a kind of wincing, psychological allergic reaction. This will certainly improve things.
(I'm not yet at the point of decanting store-bought food into plan containers for long-term storage, but I'm getting close. I've seen YouTube personalities like Sam Seder apoligise for his clip titles: apparently that's something that's often outsourced now, decided on by a freelance editor to maximize clicks. The apology is always coupled with a shrugging, "well, what are ya going to do" attitude. It's terrible that we're forced to evolve and deploy these kinds of digital vaccines to preserve our mental health, but I don't see any other way under capitalism).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 5:17 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I'm not yet at the point of decanting store-bought food into plan containers for long-term storage, but I'm getting close. I've seen YouTube personalities like Sam Seder apoligise for his clip titles: apparently that's something that's often outsourced now, decided on by a freelance editor to maximize clicks. The apology is always coupled with a shrugging, "well, what are ya going to do" attitude. It's terrible that we're forced to evolve and deploy these kinds of digital vaccines to preserve our mental health, but I don't see any other way under capitalism).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 5:17 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I am eager for a curated youtube experience. As this post shows, you'dubes recommendations sometimes hit the mark but more often leave me wanting more.
posted by rebent at 5:34 PM on June 26, 2023
posted by rebent at 5:34 PM on June 26, 2023
Wow. Thanks for this, the big shocked face, wide open mouthed with hands slapped on their side like the home alone poster, with big ATTENTION words and ARROWS pointing randomly, they're really getting to me. Feels like even the more respectable channels I see are having to do this just to get the clicks?
Slightly tangential to the thread, but is sponsorblock that useful/great a thing? Are in-line sponsorships deserving of the "crap" label? Trying to understand.
I'm not sure how much inputs youtubers have over the pre- and mid- rolls, but in-line sponsorship content is typically made by the creator and forms part of their video, so they tend to be more selective about who gets to be a sponsor. I'm generally fine with that because at least it's not weird mobile game ads or financebros hawking their grifts on pre-rolls.
I've no problems "supporting" the youtubers I'm subscribed to by sitting through a sponsor they've vetted. Some even have great skits for their sponsor segments.
At least, this is the case for the youtubers I'm subscribed to.
posted by theony at 10:12 PM on June 26, 2023
Slightly tangential to the thread, but is sponsorblock that useful/great a thing? Are in-line sponsorships deserving of the "crap" label? Trying to understand.
I'm not sure how much inputs youtubers have over the pre- and mid- rolls, but in-line sponsorship content is typically made by the creator and forms part of their video, so they tend to be more selective about who gets to be a sponsor. I'm generally fine with that because at least it's not weird mobile game ads or financebros hawking their grifts on pre-rolls.
I've no problems "supporting" the youtubers I'm subscribed to by sitting through a sponsor they've vetted. Some even have great skits for their sponsor segments.
At least, this is the case for the youtubers I'm subscribed to.
posted by theony at 10:12 PM on June 26, 2023
Yeah, I also find the youtube complaining a bit much. I've never really had the problems that people moan and groan about. I subscribe to about 400 channels. For whatever reason, their content is pretty non-clickbait-y, and I can't recall getting mad over thumbnails. However, it may be because I am ruthless about culling bullshit recommendations. It works. I rarely get shitty recommendations. When I do get one, maybe once every couple months, you could almost always tell it's crap by the title or even the name of the youtube channel. It's surprising how often people wear their asshole on their sleeves. If the title is shit, it gets culled. If the name of the channel sounds suspicious, I google it, and it almost always turns out to be ripe for culling.
If this sounds like a lot of work, it really isn't. In fact, it's almost none. But as a result, my home page is almost all content that is at least somewhat tailored to my interests. And if it really bothered me, I'd simply make my subscription page my youtube portal. I getting an awful lot of value here for basically free.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:34 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
If this sounds like a lot of work, it really isn't. In fact, it's almost none. But as a result, my home page is almost all content that is at least somewhat tailored to my interests. And if it really bothered me, I'd simply make my subscription page my youtube portal. I getting an awful lot of value here for basically free.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:34 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Again, not to try to seem sarcastic about this, but just because you personally don't experience a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It definitely seems to affect some types of video more than others though.
I don't personally begrudge a sponsorship, but I find that when the sponsor part of a video comes up I always flip through it with the forward-arrow button. It's nothing against the creator or even the company who sponsors them, but there tend to be a small number of these companies making these sponsorships in each field, and there are only so many times that I can usefully be told about, for example, PCBWay.
They're a company that you can send a custom circuit board design to for hobbyist production and prototyping! That's awesome! I'd never have known about them without sponsorships! I may use them some day! That there is an ad campaign that has unquestionably done its job, an example of how advertising can still work and even perform a useful service. But it also feels sometimes like every Youtuber I follow has a sponsorship from them. Ad campaigns cast a wide net, and it's easy to get caught in them over and over again.
And think about the future. Youtube's been around for 18 years now. The internet has changed a lot in that time. The nature of sponsorships is that the company can change focus or even go under, but the sponsorship segments will still be there, locked, frozen as if the company were still active. Imagine if Pets.com had been around during the sponsorship age; we'd have that hand puppet telling us to buy dog food over the internet from them for the rest of Youtube's run. Google likes to kill projects unexpectedly, but besides search and maybe Gmail, if there's one thing we could probably expect them to keep going for whatever the internet version of a long haul might be, it's Youtube, the home of a truly massive amount of culture, entertainment and information, the greatest central repository of visual media there's ever been, perhaps ever will be. If Google killed Youtube there'd be a gigantic outcry, so they probably won't, and hitching a ride on that presumed persistence is PCBWay, possibly forever.
Anyway. A nice thing about SponsorBlock is that it doesn't necessarily have to _block_ the sponsored bits; it can just color their location on the scrub bar so you'll know they're coming and can choose to skip past them, which is how I use it. It can also skip/color introduction segments, Patreon lists, credits and even meme/joke segments that aren't related to the main thrust of the video. What it actually does is put the viewer back in control of what they watch, free to see whatever and whenever they see fit. That's so powerful.
Yet, I think the extension's server might be creaking under the weight? I find, since I started trying it out, that Youtube has become a fair bit less responsive. I might stop using it, or just turn it on when I'm in a hurry. Funny thing is, when I made this post, it wasn't even about SponsorBlock, I had originally written it to only be about DeArrow, which resolves is a much greater annoyance, to me, than sponsorships, but the same person made SponsorBlock so I figured I should include it too.
posted by JHarris at 1:48 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't personally begrudge a sponsorship, but I find that when the sponsor part of a video comes up I always flip through it with the forward-arrow button. It's nothing against the creator or even the company who sponsors them, but there tend to be a small number of these companies making these sponsorships in each field, and there are only so many times that I can usefully be told about, for example, PCBWay.
They're a company that you can send a custom circuit board design to for hobbyist production and prototyping! That's awesome! I'd never have known about them without sponsorships! I may use them some day! That there is an ad campaign that has unquestionably done its job, an example of how advertising can still work and even perform a useful service. But it also feels sometimes like every Youtuber I follow has a sponsorship from them. Ad campaigns cast a wide net, and it's easy to get caught in them over and over again.
And think about the future. Youtube's been around for 18 years now. The internet has changed a lot in that time. The nature of sponsorships is that the company can change focus or even go under, but the sponsorship segments will still be there, locked, frozen as if the company were still active. Imagine if Pets.com had been around during the sponsorship age; we'd have that hand puppet telling us to buy dog food over the internet from them for the rest of Youtube's run. Google likes to kill projects unexpectedly, but besides search and maybe Gmail, if there's one thing we could probably expect them to keep going for whatever the internet version of a long haul might be, it's Youtube, the home of a truly massive amount of culture, entertainment and information, the greatest central repository of visual media there's ever been, perhaps ever will be. If Google killed Youtube there'd be a gigantic outcry, so they probably won't, and hitching a ride on that presumed persistence is PCBWay, possibly forever.
Anyway. A nice thing about SponsorBlock is that it doesn't necessarily have to _block_ the sponsored bits; it can just color their location on the scrub bar so you'll know they're coming and can choose to skip past them, which is how I use it. It can also skip/color introduction segments, Patreon lists, credits and even meme/joke segments that aren't related to the main thrust of the video. What it actually does is put the viewer back in control of what they watch, free to see whatever and whenever they see fit. That's so powerful.
Yet, I think the extension's server might be creaking under the weight? I find, since I started trying it out, that Youtube has become a fair bit less responsive. I might stop using it, or just turn it on when I'm in a hurry. Funny thing is, when I made this post, it wasn't even about SponsorBlock, I had originally written it to only be about DeArrow, which resolves is a much greater annoyance, to me, than sponsorships, but the same person made SponsorBlock so I figured I should include it too.
posted by JHarris at 1:48 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh about clickbait thumbnails and titles affecting some types of video more than others, if you want to experience how bad the problem can be, watch two or three videos about video games and see what happens to Youtube's home page while you're logged in. As with many other internet problems, geek culture magnifies and concentrates them in a way that makes obvious a lot of things that would ordinarily seem only sort of vaguely bad.
posted by JHarris at 1:54 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 1:54 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
A nice thing about SponsorBlock is that it doesn't necessarily have to _block_ the sponsored bits; it can just color their location on the scrub bar so you'll know they're coming and can choose to skip past them, which is how I use it.
FreeTube also has this feature, turned on by default. Plus, it allows you to create subscriptions that are purely local to the FreeTube instance that created them; you don't need to log into or even have a Google account to subscribe with FreeTube.
posted by flabdablet at 2:51 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
FreeTube also has this feature, turned on by default. Plus, it allows you to create subscriptions that are purely local to the FreeTube instance that created them; you don't need to log into or even have a Google account to subscribe with FreeTube.
posted by flabdablet at 2:51 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The thing about sponsorship segments, at least for me, is that it's the same handful of companies dumping millions into YT. Betterhelp, Nordvpn, Raid, whatever. Before Sponsorblock I was pulling my hair out hearing the same ad read for Nordvpn -- a service I will NEVER, EVER use -- for the hundredth time. It's such a relief not seeing any of that. Sponsorblock opened up whole parts of YT for me, such as LTT which was unwatchable prior to finding SB.
Also SB is much wider than sponsorships now. They have custom user-submitted chapter labels for instance. Do you have a long video and you want a very granular summary of each topic? Well if it's a popular video, fair chance someone submitted chapters.
And intro animations drive me crazy. One, anything gets old after you've seen it 50 times. Two, don't waste my time on that junk. Three, the first 30 seconds are the most precious part of the video, why you fill with empty nonsense?
Finally, interaction reminders. Are you tired of being told to smash that bell? SB can remove that.
Honestly, as someone that watches a lot of YT in the background, I can't imagine life without SB after using for a couple years.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:12 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also SB is much wider than sponsorships now. They have custom user-submitted chapter labels for instance. Do you have a long video and you want a very granular summary of each topic? Well if it's a popular video, fair chance someone submitted chapters.
And intro animations drive me crazy. One, anything gets old after you've seen it 50 times. Two, don't waste my time on that junk. Three, the first 30 seconds are the most precious part of the video, why you fill with empty nonsense?
Finally, interaction reminders. Are you tired of being told to smash that bell? SB can remove that.
Honestly, as someone that watches a lot of YT in the background, I can't imagine life without SB after using for a couple years.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:12 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The problem with shitty clickbait thumbnails and titles is they quite often alude to something AMAZING or DRAMATIC that’s gonna happen or be revealed in the video and then it just doesn’t. So it colours the whole experience of an otherwise perfectly interesting video.
(Yes, I should learn not to pay attention, but I am a poxy mushy human)
posted by grahamparks at 3:16 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
(Yes, I should learn not to pay attention, but I am a poxy mushy human)
posted by grahamparks at 3:16 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ah, I did not realise the sponsor skip is not forced by sponsorblock, or the other features of it. Yes, that does sound useful. I still think it doesn't really solve a problem but like you said, just because I don't have a problem doesn't mean others don't.
This dearrow plugin works pretty well, I've set it to not change anything except for one channel's egregiously attention-grabby video thumbnails and my subscription tab looks so much better now.
posted by theony at 4:02 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
This dearrow plugin works pretty well, I've set it to not change anything except for one channel's egregiously attention-grabby video thumbnails and my subscription tab looks so much better now.
posted by theony at 4:02 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was wondering - do YouTube give people specific instructions as to what to do? A lot of the tropes come across as people clumsily doing things that YouTube told them to do in order to maximise engagement - not just the Like and Subscribe section, but also things like "Let's Get Started..." (pointing out of the screen); looking away from the camera at odd moments in a way that's more un-nerving than just staring into it; Video titles that are some variation or another on "Why You Suck!" or "10 Worst Mistakes".
posted by Grangousier at 4:06 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by Grangousier at 4:06 AM on June 27, 2023
I've posted a few videos, but mine are mostly esoteric stuff, and none with a narration or human video footage. I can vouch that there is nothing like that that they send you as a requirement of using their service. But maybe it's only a list of suggestions they send you if you get a bunch of subscribers? Or maybe it's some other organization suggesting they do it, or maybe it's just a case of common spread-around knowledge, a word-of-mouth culture of progressively worse trends taken as a matter of faith. Or alternatively, maybe it's the absence of a common official body of suggestions, telling everyone to not do these things, or even, maybe it's just very little things that we all fixate upon because we're now exposed to them so much. Really, I have no idea.
posted by JHarris at 4:20 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by JHarris at 4:20 AM on June 27, 2023
By the way, if you want to see absolutely all SB segment categories, here they are. It's a lot.
There's even a flowchart for which type to use when.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:36 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's even a flowchart for which type to use when.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:36 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
I had noticed that. One of the more annoying things about 2023 is that practical information that used to be presented as a blog post is now embedded in five minutes of waffling, invaded by annoying GIFs.
Would it be mean of me to say that I think that there are many people who ought to stop trying to chase the Google Dollar and just accept that their hobby is their hobby and do it for the fun of it, and if it's not fun, not do it?
posted by Grangousier at 7:00 AM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Would it be mean of me to say that I think that there are many people who ought to stop trying to chase the Google Dollar and just accept that their hobby is their hobby and do it for the fun of it, and if it's not fun, not do it?
posted by Grangousier at 7:00 AM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, and while I'm moaning about things: the comments on YouTube used to be a place of horror, but now that's been cleaned up and they're nothing but the kind of sycophancy you'd expect from Louis XIV's butler. I'm not sure it's an improvement.
posted by Grangousier at 7:40 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 7:40 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The Google Dollar used to be distributed via AdSense. People trying to make money off of their content have always had a difficult time of it on the internet, but lately Youtube seems to be the biggest game in town for that.
posted by JHarris at 7:40 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by JHarris at 7:40 AM on June 27, 2023
It just looks like a barrel full of puppies snapping after a treat on a bit of string, always just out of reach or yanked away at the last moment.
posted by Grangousier at 8:07 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by Grangousier at 8:07 AM on June 27, 2023
They're a company that you can send a custom circuit board design to for hobbyist production and prototyping! That's awesome! I'd never have known about them without sponsorships! I may use them some day!
If you watched the sponsor reads more often, you'd know that they don't just do PCBs any more. They also do assembly, 3D printing, injection molding, and turbo encabulation now.
That's meant to be amusing, not chastising or anything, which I note because text does not convey tone. I certainly can't disagree that the lack of variety makes the ad read thing a lot more annoying than it would otherwise be. At this point I generally treat them the way I did commercial breaks with a TiVo. I'm good at fast forwarding, having had decades of practice. A few creators manage to wedge in sufficiently amusing gags into their ad reads that I will sometimes let them play while I wonder what could possibly entice me to order Factor for three times the price of the frozen meals I can get delivered from one of the grocery conglomerates.
On a completely different note, I ran the numbers and even with the recent price increase I get far more value out of YouTube Premium than I do any other subscription service I pay for. The only one that even comes close is GeForce Now.
Not including YouTube Music, and using only my own watch time to calculate, not including the four other people I'm sharing the family plan with, it would have cost me 18 cents per hour watched if I'd been paying the current price since the forced switch from PMAA to YouTube Premium. Seems like pretty good value for money to me even with the dramatic overestimate of the actual cost.
posted by wierdo at 8:39 AM on June 27, 2023
If you watched the sponsor reads more often, you'd know that they don't just do PCBs any more. They also do assembly, 3D printing, injection molding, and turbo encabulation now.
That's meant to be amusing, not chastising or anything, which I note because text does not convey tone. I certainly can't disagree that the lack of variety makes the ad read thing a lot more annoying than it would otherwise be. At this point I generally treat them the way I did commercial breaks with a TiVo. I'm good at fast forwarding, having had decades of practice. A few creators manage to wedge in sufficiently amusing gags into their ad reads that I will sometimes let them play while I wonder what could possibly entice me to order Factor for three times the price of the frozen meals I can get delivered from one of the grocery conglomerates.
On a completely different note, I ran the numbers and even with the recent price increase I get far more value out of YouTube Premium than I do any other subscription service I pay for. The only one that even comes close is GeForce Now.
Not including YouTube Music, and using only my own watch time to calculate, not including the four other people I'm sharing the family plan with, it would have cost me 18 cents per hour watched if I'd been paying the current price since the forced switch from PMAA to YouTube Premium. Seems like pretty good value for money to me even with the dramatic overestimate of the actual cost.
posted by wierdo at 8:39 AM on June 27, 2023
Clickbait is such an interesting thing--in one sense, it's just advertising, trying to get people's attention and be appealing to them. On the other hand, it seems like we only ever talk about it in order to complain about it. Other forms of advertising occasionally rise to the level of art. Book covers and movie posters have a lot in common with YT thumbnails, but the thumbnail seems to hover around a "straight-to-dvd sequel" or "vanity-published screed about a conspiracy theory" level aesthetic, regardless of channel size.
And despite the fact that a lot of people hate it, it doesn't ever seem to actually put that many people off from interacting with clickbaity content. Is it that those who complain about it are such a small part of the audience? Is it that even hating it isn't enough to stop people from falling for it? I definitely feel like I've become acclimated to it; I wonder if I took a couple months off from YT if I'd feel about thumbnails the way I feel about mainstream advertising now?
posted by radiogreentea at 9:11 AM on June 27, 2023
And despite the fact that a lot of people hate it, it doesn't ever seem to actually put that many people off from interacting with clickbaity content. Is it that those who complain about it are such a small part of the audience? Is it that even hating it isn't enough to stop people from falling for it? I definitely feel like I've become acclimated to it; I wonder if I took a couple months off from YT if I'd feel about thumbnails the way I feel about mainstream advertising now?
posted by radiogreentea at 9:11 AM on June 27, 2023
And despite the fact that a lot of people hate it, it doesn't ever seem to actually put that many people off from interacting with clickbaity content.
It does me. I joked above about going to each thumbnailed video and asking why in the comments, but really I'll just select Not Interested from the three-dots menu. I've been doing that a lot lately.
Most of the clickbaity thumbnails I interact with these days are from people who I already know do good videos. I've been burned a lot by false promises.
posted by JHarris at 10:35 AM on June 27, 2023
It does me. I joked above about going to each thumbnailed video and asking why in the comments, but really I'll just select Not Interested from the three-dots menu. I've been doing that a lot lately.
Most of the clickbaity thumbnails I interact with these days are from people who I already know do good videos. I've been burned a lot by false promises.
posted by JHarris at 10:35 AM on June 27, 2023
The thumbnail and title are so important that there are services that have sprouted up that pay people to A/B test your thumbnails and headlines before you post your video. You pay a certain amount, based on how many people's opinions you want to get (e.g. show it to 500 people for $10 or whatever it is) so that you can fine tune it. It's that important, because getting clicks from the related videos column is the majority of traffic these days.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:57 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by Rhomboid at 10:57 AM on June 27, 2023
Yeah, I've watched videos done by YouTubers who were doing things like posting the same video with different thumbnails to see what generates traffic, also different video titles can make a big difference.
One of the pieces of research I read about all the time is how thumbnails that have a human face in them are something like 1/3 more likely to get a click than without the face.
posted by hippybear at 11:12 AM on June 27, 2023
One of the pieces of research I read about all the time is how thumbnails that have a human face in them are something like 1/3 more likely to get a click than without the face.
posted by hippybear at 11:12 AM on June 27, 2023
Oh also, on the topic of 'pirates always get the better experience' from one of those Rossmann videos, the tool yt-dlp has been finding creative ways of bypassing lots of youtube shenanigans. As of right now, it's able to download the extra high bitrate video stream (format tag 6xx) as well as obviously 4k, which youtube seems to have been gradually making Premium-only.
And downloading it actually works offline, in a format that's free forever. Throw that in with some RSS and baby you got a stew.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:27 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
And downloading it actually works offline, in a format that's free forever. Throw that in with some RSS and baby you got a stew.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:27 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why you should NEVER feel bad for blocking ads; youtube's system sucks
His calculations about how an alternative subscription-based platform might work, are particularly interesting.
He gives an example of a current monetized video which had 13,000 views and earned him just $0.10.
Imagine a system where users may just 1 cent per 10 minutes of watched video - and where the creator gets just a tenth of that figure. Under that system he would make $1 for every 10,000 views; $13 for his 130,000 views.
The point is, that an alternative subscription system could make good money for the platform owner, much better rates for content creators and deliver a far better experience for users - all without having to worry about what advertisers think. And note the subscription cost of watching, say 4 hours of Youtube per day - would still be only only be a little of $7 at that rate.
posted by rongorongo at 11:27 PM on June 27, 2023
His calculations about how an alternative subscription-based platform might work, are particularly interesting.
He gives an example of a current monetized video which had 13,000 views and earned him just $0.10.
Imagine a system where users may just 1 cent per 10 minutes of watched video - and where the creator gets just a tenth of that figure. Under that system he would make $1 for every 10,000 views; $13 for his 130,000 views.
The point is, that an alternative subscription system could make good money for the platform owner, much better rates for content creators and deliver a far better experience for users - all without having to worry about what advertisers think. And note the subscription cost of watching, say 4 hours of Youtube per day - would still be only only be a little of $7 at that rate.
posted by rongorongo at 11:27 PM on June 27, 2023
The hope of microtransactions, as well as that name, as a way of supporting online content has been with us for over two decades, but was forgotten about by the media when free-to-play games and DLC content co-opted the term to mean transactions that were far from micro. Wikipedia doesn't even acknowledge the original meaning now.
More recently, microtranactions were used as a justification for "Web3," that horribly misguided way to shoehorn cryptocurrency and NFTs into basic browsing. The idea was a creator could get a tiny fraction of a crypto token for someone using their content.. Yet NFTs, and crypto, both quickly oozed out of their early niche of online payments for anything other than contraband, and instead became a speculation tool.
Yet the basic idea, now stolen twice, still has merit. Because credit card transactions each carry a small fee, probably some entity would have to serve as a central repository of funds, people depositing amounts of a few dollars with them and keeping track of values of a penny flying back and forth. Ideally a given piece of "content" would only ever be charged for once by a given person. And rather some oversight must be applied, both to keep bad actors under control and prevent the greedier creators from pricing their content high to take advantage of users who just want to browse and watch. And this whole thing would be rife with opportunities for exploitation by a company, which is why competition and regulation would be important aspects of that system.
Yep, people have been fantasizing about such a system for a long time, the idea appealing enough, finally a way to pay creators while also not being onerous to any one user and cheap enough for low-income users to participate. Maybe someday it'll actually happen.
posted by JHarris at 6:14 AM on June 28, 2023
More recently, microtranactions were used as a justification for "Web3," that horribly misguided way to shoehorn cryptocurrency and NFTs into basic browsing. The idea was a creator could get a tiny fraction of a crypto token for someone using their content.. Yet NFTs, and crypto, both quickly oozed out of their early niche of online payments for anything other than contraband, and instead became a speculation tool.
Yet the basic idea, now stolen twice, still has merit. Because credit card transactions each carry a small fee, probably some entity would have to serve as a central repository of funds, people depositing amounts of a few dollars with them and keeping track of values of a penny flying back and forth. Ideally a given piece of "content" would only ever be charged for once by a given person. And rather some oversight must be applied, both to keep bad actors under control and prevent the greedier creators from pricing their content high to take advantage of users who just want to browse and watch. And this whole thing would be rife with opportunities for exploitation by a company, which is why competition and regulation would be important aspects of that system.
Yep, people have been fantasizing about such a system for a long time, the idea appealing enough, finally a way to pay creators while also not being onerous to any one user and cheap enough for low-income users to participate. Maybe someday it'll actually happen.
posted by JHarris at 6:14 AM on June 28, 2023
Congratulations, rongorongo you've reinvented YouTube Premium! Or maybe Nebula. YouTube, Nebula, and the creators are all very vague about what they actually make. Partly because there are times of the year that ad views on YouTube are worth a great deal and talking about that doesn't garner many views while complaining drives engagement and thus views.
posted by wierdo at 6:33 AM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by wierdo at 6:33 AM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
YouTube, like all user-generated media, contains every aspect of the human experience... but you've got to put in a little work to curate it. My recommended right now is a lot of Time Team, some musical theater, a woman who grooms dogs, cute owl videos, a couple of minecraft videos, Taskmaster, Smosh, and a channel about taking the train through Iceland. If yours is different, than maybe its because you haven't told it what you actually want to see.
I was being facetious. Please do not take things too literally especially from me. It is just that two ads sometimes is one too many. Google knows what it has bought. Google know what it is going to do with YouTube.
posted by DJZouke at 12:04 PM on June 28, 2023
I was being facetious. Please do not take things too literally especially from me. It is just that two ads sometimes is one too many. Google knows what it has bought. Google know what it is going to do with YouTube.
posted by DJZouke at 12:04 PM on June 28, 2023
I tried out PCBWay's turboencabulation-as-a-service and found it pretty meh. The capacitive diractance was greater than I can manage at home, obviously, but they didn't achieve the warmth I'm accustomed to from my own retroencabulator. I think they might have cheaped out and used aluminium in the phase detractors instead of oxygen-free copper.
posted by flabdablet at 1:50 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 1:50 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
But...doesn't that put you in danger of allowing sinusoidal repleneration to run rampant??
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Never mind the repleneration, feel the fumbling.
posted by flabdablet at 2:15 AM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 2:15 AM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's good policy for anything that's been effectively eliminated.
posted by flabdablet at 12:53 PM on June 29, 2023
posted by flabdablet at 12:53 PM on June 29, 2023
Yesterday, upon the encabulator,
I touched a fumbling that was eliminatored
It wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish it'd go away
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:55 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I touched a fumbling that was eliminatored
It wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish it'd go away
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:55 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Just saw this today: YouTube is suddenly taking a harder stance against ad blockers, and it’ll cut viewers off after three videos if they’re unwilling to turn them off.
:(
How long do you reckon it'll take ad blocker devs to figure out a way to trick YouTube into thinking people are watching ads when they actually aren't?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:57 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
:(
How long do you reckon it'll take ad blocker devs to figure out a way to trick YouTube into thinking people are watching ads when they actually aren't?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:57 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'd be surprised if they haven't already. And in a way, it's surprising it's taken this long for Youtube to start cracking down on people blocking ads, especially when they started an (overpriced) service the point of which is avoiding ads.
I'm not saying that's a good thing. Youtube has accreted so much content over its 18 years that sticking an ad barrier in front of it feels exploitive somehow. It's just another step in the enshittification of the internet. As I mentioned above, Peertube is the Fediverse's alternative to it. I've explored Peertube a bit, there is not a lot there to find yet, and of course video sharing requires much more of both storage and bandwidth than microblogging or a message board, plus if a Peertube instance goes down a lot is lost. It's a beautiful dream though.
In addition to Peertube, there are still alternative video services to Youtube, and this will probably push a lot of people out to them, but community-run groups, and maybe the Internet Archive, are the only places that I imagine would not also introduce ads in the long run.
posted by JHarris at 10:15 PM on June 29, 2023
I'm not saying that's a good thing. Youtube has accreted so much content over its 18 years that sticking an ad barrier in front of it feels exploitive somehow. It's just another step in the enshittification of the internet. As I mentioned above, Peertube is the Fediverse's alternative to it. I've explored Peertube a bit, there is not a lot there to find yet, and of course video sharing requires much more of both storage and bandwidth than microblogging or a message board, plus if a Peertube instance goes down a lot is lost. It's a beautiful dream though.
In addition to Peertube, there are still alternative video services to Youtube, and this will probably push a lot of people out to them, but community-run groups, and maybe the Internet Archive, are the only places that I imagine would not also introduce ads in the long run.
posted by JHarris at 10:15 PM on June 29, 2023
There is no fucking way I am ever going to pay Google a subscription fee.
Nebula is creator-owned, reasonably priced, and its terms of service are well worth a read.
posted by flabdablet at 1:50 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Nebula is creator-owned, reasonably priced, and its terms of service are well worth a read.
posted by flabdablet at 1:50 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, for those on Android there's the YouTube client Newpipe (which also supports PeerTube, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp).
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:35 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:35 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Nebula looks nice, but as usual, I have to watch my outgoing expenses carefully. Maybe someday--that subscription to the NYT is looking rather extravagant these days.
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on June 30, 2023
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on June 30, 2023
On, and in the Verge article about Youtube blocking people who skip ads:
“In cases when viewers feel they have been falsely flagged as using an ad blocker, they can share this feedback by clicking on the link in the prompt.”
(chokes violently)
YES THAT WILL WORK WONDERFULLY LIKE IT DOES WHEN YOU BLOCK SITES FROM USING YOUR API KEY SPURIOUSLY OR WHEN TROLLS CLAIM FALSE COPYRIGHT ON A VIDEO OR WHEN YOURE ASKED TO TAKE DOWN NAZI PROPAGANDA OR WHEN YOU DECIDED TO STOP DISALLOWING BLATANT MISINFORMATION YES YOUTUBE YOURE SO FUCKING RESPONSIVE AUISHESGHJIOJHLSDJHKSJTSJKTPSEJKGSG
ahem sorry im going to go have a lie down i need a rest
posted by JHarris at 9:34 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
“In cases when viewers feel they have been falsely flagged as using an ad blocker, they can share this feedback by clicking on the link in the prompt.”
(chokes violently)
YES THAT WILL WORK WONDERFULLY LIKE IT DOES WHEN YOU BLOCK SITES FROM USING YOUR API KEY SPURIOUSLY OR WHEN TROLLS CLAIM FALSE COPYRIGHT ON A VIDEO OR WHEN YOURE ASKED TO TAKE DOWN NAZI PROPAGANDA OR WHEN YOU DECIDED TO STOP DISALLOWING BLATANT MISINFORMATION YES YOUTUBE YOURE SO FUCKING RESPONSIVE AUISHESGHJIOJHLSDJHKSJTSJKTPSEJKGSG
ahem sorry im going to go have a lie down i need a rest
posted by JHarris at 9:34 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
In another illustration of Google's unique talent for pissing off all parties: The contention that 3/4 of the adverts actually shown to Youtube viewers, were served from platforms which did not support Google own minimum standards. Google invoice advertisers per view delivered - which sounds like good value - unless it transpires that the view was delivered in shitty quality or without sound.
It turns out that the occasional blissfully sound-free adverts from YouTube that I've seen on my TV, were less likely to have been a discerning decision to give me 10 seconds of peace and more likely to have been a screw-up.
posted by rongorongo at 5:37 AM on July 3, 2023
It turns out that the occasional blissfully sound-free adverts from YouTube that I've seen on my TV, were less likely to have been a discerning decision to give me 10 seconds of peace and more likely to have been a screw-up.
posted by rongorongo at 5:37 AM on July 3, 2023
Louis Rossman: Youtube goes to war with ad blockers - how companies die
posted by rongorongo at 10:26 PM on July 3, 2023
posted by rongorongo at 10:26 PM on July 3, 2023
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I might check this out on a browser I don't use often to see what it might lead me to. I generally don't want to skip over the non-music portions of music videos because often those videos are designed as mini-films and those non-music parts are important. But having different videos thrown at me is something I'm welcome to generally.
posted by hippybear at 1:36 PM on June 25, 2023 [11 favorites]