this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Youtube Adblock Reckoning as a service problem? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/technology
72 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

At the end of the day, its pretty clear to me that Youtube is going to lose the war on adblocking. Either by hook or by crook those that want to use Adblockers are going to keep doing it no matter what.

And to be clear, I am not trying to equate Adblocking to video piracy. To me, the fact that I choose to go to the bathroom during a commercial of a tv show doesn't constitute piracy and Adblocks just automate that process for me on Youtube. I would also never click on an ad purposefully, no matter what it is for.

With all that being said, I am a hopeless cause and I don't think that anything will convince me to buy YouTube premium, but I also used to think that about MP3s.

My real question to anyone reading this is, as the devil's advocate, what could YouTube do with ads or otherwise that would solve the "service problem" of "YouTube piracy"? And furthermore, is there any situaton where you would do anything other than block all Youtube Ads immdediately and with extreme prejudice?

This is an old article but this is Gabe Newell describing video game piracy as a service problem and why he believes that in case anyone is unfamiliar with it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My real question to anyone reading this is, as the devil’s advocate, what could YouTube do with ads or otherwise that would solve the “service problem” of “YouTube piracy”?

Their goals is definitely not to convert everyone. This is just to make using adblockers annoying enough that they can convert a substantial amount of adblock users into Youtube Premium users. They will eventually stop the war and allow the small minority of successful adblockers to continue if they can't find an easy way to eliminate the most popular extensions entirely.

Their end goal is to make YT Premium more of a standard like it is for other streaming services so people consider it the default way to engage with Youtube and not as an extra service.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I guess it's harder to do this after 13 years of default "free" content. It's easier for someone like Spotify to do that because there has always been the option to pay for premium.

I remember in the earlier days of Spotify there were a lot of ways to get half priced service just by finding xyz code or paying $5 for a code on eBay that got you a year of half priced Spotify. I don't know where those came from or how those existed but it was definitely what finally convinced me to subscribe.

(I've since cancelled in favor of buying CDs again but I realize I'm the oddball in that scenario)