Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube’s dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there’s an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.
To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?
Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.
I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.
Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.
There’s no need to look for conspiracies when the truth is simple enough. Current YouTube CEO Neal Mohan was senior vice president of display and video ads at Google. Ads has been his wheelhouse for quite awhile.
Could be but it’s such a bad short term solution that I can’t help but think there’s a little more. Look at the other replies, they have some interesting perspectives on the matter.
Google = biggest advertising company in the world
Youtube = biggest money drain for Google
Adblock = a direct obstacle to the longterm feasibility of Google’s ability to ever reconcile the money drain against their primary product (advertising) and end up in the black
The current state of Youtube’s profitability is a long way off mattering for anything. For all it costs to run, it can be sustained indefinitely without much issue. This will remain the case until Youtube advertising reaches saturation. Given how much stuff like TV ads still cost, we can safely say this is still a long way off, regardless of the potential rise of competing platforms.
The landscape of youtube & adblockers is unlikely to be the same then, and restrictive measures taken now aren’t really representative of what it’ll be like. The actions taken now are for 2 reasons: maintenance of consumer expectation, so that it doesn’t feel like site monetization is changed substantially when the money faucet gets switched on. And market research.
I have no doubt that a primary intent behind recent actions to do with delays or slowdowns was to measure the blowback, using it a yardstick for further actions not yet taken, which will eventually culminate in some action which actually meaningfully changes Youtube’s monetization. But this may not be for many years.
None of us here are really experiencing problems, we have only heard of them and are discussing them. When something new happens, you’ll hear “what else is new? they’ve done [something similar to] this many times before”, with those people ignoring that the historic actions were totally mitigated everytime. And in the process, we the vanguard of the internet keeping Google’s advertising monopoly restrained by engaging with adblockers, become conditioned to yield to advertising and a Google-controlled internet.
Because that’s the only way they can win. Barring serious pro-Google changes to privacy laws around the world, the ultimate means to force advertising simply isn’t available to them. Their best hope is to try and convince us that blocking ads is just too much of a hassle, ideally without ever actually making it so in a way that causes some mass migration away from Youtube. That’s not a hard line to tread
This is likely to be going on indeed. It’s just that the drm failed (for now), so maybe they are trying to get the next best thing? For the short term it surely isn’t but a long term goal in case the drm fails to be implemented again could be a reason for these experimental actions. It isn’t bad to have a plan b I guess.
Great response, thanks.
You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.
You know how Firefox is built different from Chrome. You know what Manifest V3 is. You know how Ublock Origin is different from other adblockers, etc.
The fact is, we are the minority. Most people would just keep using Chrome or Chromium-based browsers and won’t know any better. They’ll end up (and already end up) in a trap that’s super easy to escape, they just don’t plan to/don’t know how.
And for us Firefox geniuses they prepare quite a few surprises, like the recently found artificial delay of 5s when your user agent reports you use Firefox on some experimental users. This will drag on, and while we absolutely know what to do to fuck them up, normal users, who are the majority, don’t.
You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.
This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.
Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.
That already qualifies you as tech-savvy, lol. Going so deep as to know what Lemmy is is quite an accomplishment in itself. You don’t have to be an IT specialist, you should just know the most general details on what computer is and how it works instead of “magic box that runs YouTube” with latter being synonymous to “video”.
I reckon when Chrome fully switches to Manifest V3, most users won’t bother looking for alternatives - for them it’ll just be the end of an adblocking era. Then maaaaybe some of them will learn to switch. But very far from everyone.
Frankly, with the prevalence of adblocks everywhere, even on your grandma’s computer, this way YouTube can actually significantly increase the ad revenue.
They probably believed there were easy things they could do that wouldn’t result in an “arms race” that would net them a larger profit than the effort they put in. Once you promise x% more revenue they won’t let you take that back so they keep pushing.
Very possible