It seems like this statement from YouTube[1] and this Github issue (referenced by granzymes[2]) have key information being missed by a lot of commenters.

From YouTube:

> Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts. Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion of users utilizing such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic related to updates to these tools.

Quoting granzymes:

> According to the GitHub issue, YouTube didn’t change anything. There are two endpoints that can be used to attribute a view. One is called multiple times throughout a video playback and has been in the easylist privacy filter for years. The other is called at the start of a playback, and was just added to the list (the timing lines up with the reports of view drops from tech YouTubers).

Source from the GitHub issue for easylist: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...

[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45277768

• granzymes

  yesterday at 10:03 PM

  Thanks for lifting up my comment. It’s amazing how quickly people want to point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in.

  Someone even relied to your comment implicitly assuming that YouTube cares about conditioning views on whether a user has an adblocker enabled when what happened is easylist added the view counter API to their privacy list.

  • taurath

    yesterday at 11:54 PM

    > point fingers at YouTube for something they weren’t involved in

    YouTube monetizes based on view count. They also send the data to the client. That client data is in anyway involved, and could be blocked, is YouTube’s design problem.

    • Konnstann

      today at 12:21 AM

      A number of YouTubers have made the claim that their views were affected but not revenue, so it seems like the monetization is based on ad-watching views at least.

      • Intralexical

        today at 2:42 AM

        The entire way this issue was figured out was because it only affected desktop views that weren't monetized to begin with, which the guy in the linked video guessed meant adblockers.

        If the monetization weren't limited to ad-watching views, we'd probably still be trying to figure out what happened.

      • hypeatei

        today at 1:19 AM

        Couldn't that affect third party sponsorships, though? Both getting them and reporting numbers to existing ones?

        • Intralexical

          today at 2:53 AM

          Presumably, it would affect that, and also long-term channel growth. Which would be dastardly if it were intentional, because it would basically cull the platform of channels who voice support for ad blocking.

          I wonder if CTR was affected. Could one of the affected channels could have detected that not adding up? I guess it was probably already blocked for privacy. Maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas.

          Interestingly, anybody can now measure what percentage of any channel's viewers run ad blockers, by using publicly available data on how much their views dropped during this period.

    • Scaevolus

      today at 12:27 AM

      Should a video watched with ads blocked earn money?

      • twothreeone

        today at 2:39 AM

        yes? It's called pay-per-view. Many creators will insert a segment in the video with a sponsor who will pay them based on their reach. These are typically not blocked, since they're inserted into the video before uploading. YouTube inserts random ads on top of that for every view (which can be blocked).

    • Intralexical

      today at 2:58 AM

      Worse than that, YouTube relies on client data for view counting while also actively creating an incentive for ad blockers to disrupt client data because of their anti-ad blocker measures.

      This reminds me that I think it was the Invidious project that had a disclaimer saying they could not prevent YouTube from counting your view. Well, I guess they probably could after all, and probably did, depending on which method was used to fetch the video.

  • apercu

    yesterday at 11:37 PM

    YouTube immediately pointed fingers at creators by saying that certain audiences are more likely to use ad blockers.

    :)

    • paxys

      yesterday at 11:42 PM

      That's not pointing fingers but an objective fact. Technical audiences are more likely to use adblockers than the general population. If your channel caters to them you will be disproportionately affected.

      • perching_aix

        yesterday at 11:56 PM

        This makes sense in principle, but is not really what this is primarily about. Or at least I'm not aware of such excessive disparities, and haven't heard this being the primary angle.

        Consider Charlie (penguinz0 / MoistCritikal). Hardly a techtuber. Despite this, he has seen a drop in computer-originating views to the tune of 1.4M (avg, eyeballed) -> 800K (avg, eyeballed): https://youtu.be/8FUJwXeuCGc?t=290

        Lots of people use adblockers, sure, even those not terminally online and tech enthusiast. But to have nearly half the (computer-originating) views evaporate? https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users

        Even from that perspective though, what would be the dominant effect then is the share of computer-originating views compared to other origins, rather than a disparity in adblock use habits for the given audience.

        • MichaelZuo

          today at 12:19 AM

          It seems pretty likely for well over half for a channel like that to use ad blockers.

  • Intralexical

    today at 2:49 AM

    If Dirty Stan spends an hour making guests uncomfortable at your house, some of those guests might come to think of you as a bad host even though Stan's behavior was the issue.

    I think it's reasonable to attribute moral responsibility to the entity that owns and has the most control over the platform, even if the technical details aren't quite so simple. Doubly so in this case since YouTube is a profitable business. Given [0], it sounds like this bug with view counts is a direct result of YouTube choosing to start an arms race against users who run ad blockers.

    [0]: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...

  • shimbucktwo

    yesterday at 10:21 PM

    At this point the "peanut gallery" of the web is essentially just a firehose of misinformation, best avoided. Not two minutes before this I read some comment confidently stating that the last time Apple offered iPhone leather cases was for iPhone 11.

    • Braxton1980

      yesterday at 11:20 PM

      Why not just look for sources for factual information instead of avoiding all of it?

      • irjustin

        yesterday at 11:36 PM

        To be fair it's mental effort that you now have to expend when you didn't before.

        I stopped reading the news because it just became too tiring.

        Not saying it's right or wrong. It's just - I understand.

        • autoexec

          today at 12:32 AM

          I don't think there was ever a time when critical thinking and fact checking wasn't needed. Nobody has the time to do deep dives into everything, but the more important something is to you, or the more likely it is to impact your life the more it's worth investing the time it takes to do a couple web searches.

          Today CNN says that Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has skin cancer. Is that true? Damned if I know. Will I spend the time trying to verify that? Nope.

          • SchemaLoad

            today at 12:40 AM

            The speed and spread of nonsense is accelerating. Within a day the story about youtube view counts spread with hundreds of angry comments about youtube and enshitification.

            People are getting ragebaited repeatedly on a scale that is new. Not that misinformation in general is new

            • bethekidyouwant

              today at 1:02 AM

              I’m not sure about that is there’s something that could’ve happened in the 60s that is so oddly technical, yet understood by millions of people? that it could be misinterpreted and spread like this: add block users mistaken as bots? It would just sound like gobbledygook to someone in the 1960s.

    • renewiltord

      yesterday at 11:18 PM

      Accurate but I don’t think it’s new. It’s a property of human intelligence called “hallucination” where facts are made up.

      I don’t know about this leather thing but the participants on non-technical forums like Reddit or HN frequently do this.

      • yndoendo

        today at 1:01 AM

        I wouldn't call it hallucination. It would be coherent stories that fit their belief system and allows them to short their brain. [0]

        Coherent stories that are blatantly false are great tools in misinformation and social engineering. [1]

        [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception

• j-bos

  yesterday at 8:45 PM

  Seems like a balanced approach, people can watch videos with adblockers but it won't count towards youtube's public facing metrics.

  • kulahan

    yesterday at 9:06 PM

    Makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a view counter. People want to know how much it was watched, not how much money YouTube made off of it. They’re pretending people care about their internal metrics, when people really do not. Maybe the creator, but again, they’re probably also just interested in eyeball counts.

    It’s dumb in almost every direction I can imagine. The only one that makes sense is if you’re simply at war with adblockers and you’re trying to turn the public tide of opinion against them.

    • jefftk

      yesterday at 11:54 PM

      Perhaps then you should try to convince EasyList to remove the view counter from their block list? This wasn't a change YouTube made, this was adblockers choosing not to let YouTube track views for privacy purposes.

      • echoangle

        today at 12:12 AM

        Well it’s not like youtube couldn’t technically track the views even with adblockers if they wanted. The video is still being streamed after all, you don’t need the client to call another endpoint to know whether it’s streaming the video.

        • jefftk

          today at 12:14 AM

          Google built a system that tracked video views. Users installed a browser extension that intentionally breaks this tracking for privacy reasons. Why should Google do anything? They're not the one that broke it, and these users don't want to be tracked!

          • gretch

            today at 2:16 AM

            > Why should Google do anything?

            Imagine the headlines if Google did do something - "YouTube implements advanced user tracking to counter act Privacy and Ad blocker"

          • echoangle

            today at 12:17 AM

            Because it’s hurting creators, not viewers?

            • jefftk

              today at 12:24 AM

              I don't know, it's not obvious to me that YouTube should prioritize the creator's desire to track users over the user's desire not to be tracked.

            • SchemaLoad

              today at 12:42 AM

              Google already doesn't pay out creators for views with blocked ads, no advertiser is going to pay for ads that were never shown. The view counter doesn't matter to that. Perhaps Youtube could enforce tougher blocking of ad blockers to support creators better.

    • estimator7292

      yesterday at 9:15 PM

      The view counter isn't for you. It's merely a convenience that you're showed it at all. View counts are for monetization. If a view isn't monetized, why count it? Purely foe vanity?

      You, a viewer, are nearly irrelevant to YouTube. You exist purely as a revenue source and no other reason. View metrics and monetization are what count, not your subjective experience. YouTube does not care one tiny bit about how much you like the site or interface or what you think of the view counter.

      • stetrain

        yesterday at 9:59 PM

        Videos are often monetized via sponsor placements in the videos themselves. The creator of the video would like an accurate view count to report to their sponsors.

        This is completely separate from the YouTube platform ads and monetization which is what the ad blockers are blocking.

        • bruce511

          today at 3:34 AM

          People who install ad blockers are perhaps not good recipients of in-video sponsor placements. So maybe not counting them as viewers is at least honest to the sponsor?

          With something like YouTube there are so many different parties involved. Sponsor, creator, Google, advertiser, consumer. Clearly the system could be optimized for any of them, or it can present some balances that naturally make one or more of the groups unhappy. Clearly it's easy to criticize the system if it's not optimized to your perspective of it.

          It's very unpopular to say it, (cue downvotes) but on the whole I think Google mostly gets it right. Advertisers have a channel to reach consumers [3]. Creators have a way to earn income [1], consumers watch for free [2], Google makes money (and provides infrastructure).

          [1] sponsorships are allowed, although none of that revenue flows to Google, which I think is fairly tolerant of Google.

          [2] Google has an option to turn off ads with YT Premium.

          [3] Ad blockers serve consumers, but hurt the whole system. I get that they're very popular here, but they are effectively a tax on Google, and now on creators. A more ethical approach IMO (and ethics are both personal and subjective) is to pay for YT Premium if you'd prefer to suppress ads. Then you are "paying your way" not free-loading.

        • xp84

          today at 12:14 AM

          This is the best counterargument I've seen for why YouTubers might be vexed by this, however I've felt it was pretty fair to expect that adblocked views don't really "count" in the "game" that you can argue YouTube is operating with the "View Count" metric and therefore I don't see much room for anyone to feel indignant or wronged.

          Imagine a creator whose viewers all watched with ads blocked (and without YT Premium either). That creator is, objectively speaking not partnering with Google in any way, they're just using the platform as a free CDN. So the failure of Google to provide that person with accurate metrics for him to operate his business (that Google isn't a part of) isn't all that offensive.

          So someone losing visibility to their "views" if it's because of non-monetized views (adblocked ones) seems proportionally fair.

          There's always self-hosting your videos, but yes, that's expensive. It's a tradeoff the content creator has to make: A cut of your revenue + a ton of content restrictions, in exchange for discoverability + free CDN.

          • kelnos

            today at 1:26 AM

            Google provides YouTube to creators because Google derives a benefit from it. If they don't want those "freeloaders" hosting videos without Google getting anything in return, then they can charge for it, or delist them, or delete their videos, or whatever.

            But they are getting something in return: a near monopoly in this particular market.

            Not providing correct view counts just because some of those viewers use adblockers feels kinda petty.

          • Intralexical

            today at 3:00 AM

            What about adblocked views by YouTube Premium subscribers?

            The point is that a view counter should show an accurate and honest count of views, because that's what it's presented as and lying is bad. Why should ad blocking have anything to do with that? Companies should aim to protect their revenue stream by providing a good service, not cripple their service to match the basest vision of their revenue incentives.

        • xeromal

          yesterday at 10:09 PM

          I can't reply to your deeper comment but there is a youtube specific extension that blocks ads to sponsor placements by skipping them.

          https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-yo...

          Has 2 million users which isn't a ton but just mentioning that it is used and it works well.

          • slaymaker1907

            yesterday at 11:40 PM

            There is also kind of a built in sponsorblock for YouTube on mobile. If you double tap to skip 5s repeatedly, a button quickly pops up to skip ahead (not explicitly about sponsor segments, but I'm sure this is what it is used for 99% of the time).

            • mvdtnz

              today at 12:49 AM

              FYI this is a premium-only feature. It's one that I am very thankful for. I pay a pretty penny for youtube and I don't appreciate "creators" end-running around that to peddle their shitty AG1 supplements or woodworking tools I can't buy in my country.

          • hirako2000

            yesterday at 10:35 PM

            And this ships as a plugin to some unofficial YouTube player. The actual number is far higher.

      • ianbutler

        yesterday at 9:21 PM

        It's for sponsors too so yes a total view count is important since creators use views to negotiate deals. I have adblock[0], but I still watch sponsor spots.

        0: I just side step this entirely these days by paying for premium.

        • yesterday at 9:53 PM

        • nandomrumber

          yesterday at 9:54 PM

          Why should sponsor care sent viewers who block their advertising?

          I’ve been a premium member for about 15 years.

          • stetrain

            yesterday at 10:00 PM

            Ad blockers and Premium don’t block embedded sponsorships in the videos themselves, which are a common way for creators to monetize their videos.

            • girvo

              yesterday at 10:52 PM

              Premium absolutely does, via YouTube's new "Jump Forward" feature.

            • hirako2000

              yesterday at 10:35 PM

              Some do. With crowd funded submissions on where the placement starts and ends.

            • Braxton1980

              yesterday at 11:30 PM

              There's a new skip method for premium members (which I have) where you can skip commonly skipped sections as recorded by other users.

              For example- if a video has a section about their sponsor from 3:30 to 4:10 and I press the right seek button twice around 3:30 the jump will be to 4:10. It also displays an alert that it's using the feature.

            • tcfhgj

              yesterday at 11:16 PM

              sponsorblock does

          • yesterday at 10:00 PM

      • easygenes

        yesterday at 9:41 PM

        This is a bit too blunt a look at it. YouTube exists as an ecosystem with increasing competition. View and subscriber counts are their core incentive and feedback systems they have with the actual producers that make their whole ecosystem work. Without those there's no real reason for people to put videos there.

        This as an open and celebrated system drives producers to advertise for YouTube via the almost-compulsory every-video mention of liking and subscribing and forwarding videos to friends.

        Youtube is well aware of this, hence things like the iconic long running physical play button trophy delivery system.

        I'd also say more broadly that making such sweeping claims for YouTube as a collective entity not caring at all about viewers is too reductive. It's more defensible and relatable to claim that, though there may be many people working for YouTube because they deeply care about a mission of democratizing multimedia publishing, the incentives and structures around it being a PBC often lead to decisions which drown out that care from corporate heads who are more profit than mission driven.

      • ruszki

        yesterday at 11:51 PM

        If I understand well, my view is not counted as a YouTube Premium subscriber. I’m not sure that anybody is happy with that. Also there is zero good reason to have a separate API for this. Even Google knows this, because Google Analytics has an adblocker proof solution for at least a decade.

        • tracker1

          today at 12:08 AM

          It's counted as a view, and beyond that, in general the content creator gets a higher payout from Premium viewers than from ad viewing users.

          • xp84

            today at 12:16 AM

            I'd worry that if this is really caused by an adblocker, it's possible YT uses these same view counting mechanism that's being blocked to increment their Premium views, meaning Premium subscribers who don't explicitly turn their blocker off on YouTube could be being undercounted. If so that should be fixed, for Premium viewership, as that's not really fair to anyone.

      • yesterday at 9:58 PM

      • manquer

        yesterday at 11:00 PM

        > View counts are for monetization

        Agree, however view counts, i.e. metrics tracked by YT, or by sponsors,creators in fancy dashboards isn't the view counter we are shown and nobody is questioning how those are implemented. The View Counter means very specific UI component in YT interface shown to regular users.

        > view counter isn't for you

        Disagree,

        View counter is a important decision making input along with the thumbnail, title and duration of the video on if a user will click on the video to watch them.

        It is in effect an advertisement for the video.

        If that wasn't the case, then YouTube wouldn't be showing them in every list view and next to every thumbnail. When the numbers no longer represent what the users think they represent I would say it is not far from false advertising.

        A fair amount of people on here and I have both YT Premium and also use some adblocker, should our views be counted or not according to this point of view? .

        • Braxton1980

          yesterday at 11:34 PM

          I'm so glad other people here pay for premium because on Tiktok and Reddit a common joke is how few people pay for YT.

          My Verizon cell phone plan offers it at a slightly discounted $10 a month. For a completely ad free (ads from Youtube) experience it's well worth it considering how many car and tech videos I watch.

          It also offers a higher bitrate 1080p option on some videos which is a cherry on top.

          • xp84

            today at 12:19 AM

            Yeah it's absurd to me how much people bitch about YouTube advertising and don't pay. To me, either you don't watch enough YouTube for the complaints to be warranted, or you do watch a lot, and you're just torturing yourself to save $15 and blaming YouTube for your choice. It's like complaining about a Quarter Pounder "not coming with cheese" and constantly trying to steal cheese, when you could just pay the dollar and get cheese every time.

      • Braxton1980

        yesterday at 11:22 PM

        >You, a viewer, are nearly irrelevant to YouTube. You exist purely as a revenue source

        How are these two statements not contradictions?

        • rmunn

          today at 1:47 AM

          Rephrase it as "Youtube doesn't care about you, just about putting ads in front of your face" and it's not a contradiction. As long as you don't get irritated enough to go away and stop using Youtube entirely, they don't care about improving your viewing experience.

          Another way to phrase it is the classic line "If you're not paying for it, you aren't the customer, you're the product."

    • monkeywork

      yesterday at 9:16 PM

      Why does anyone not financially motivated care about how many views a video gets? Use the like function if you want I guess .

      It makes sense to have the view count only show views that could be useful for ad revenue ... This way you can be honest with advertiser's about roughly how many eyeballs they can expec5

      • NonHyloMorph

        yesterday at 9:43 PM

        If you claim your counting views while simultaneoudly andvwithout disclosure don't count views of people using an adbkocker even so you could then thagvis deceiving. If it was the case I second waht the above poster hinted at: seems like a strategy to manipulate public discourse by using influencers frustration over where it hurts them (their purse) enhanced by the haunting sensation of loosing control (since they cannot know how and if they are negatively impacted by what - which makes the desire to find the cause of effect/guilty oarty/or a scapegoat) in order to disincentivice adblockers. If the articles assumptions are correct, and it is beyond googles engineering teams to fix that issue (which seems unreasonabke to assume) theb that would be a pretty (and petty) malign and antisocial policy to pursue. (Don't be evil once was a thing for good reason)

        • jsnell

          yesterday at 10:00 PM

          What you're ignoring is that this was a change to an ad blocker[0], not a change to the site.

          Google did not implement a change to stop counting views. An ad blocker intentionally[1] choosing to block the long-standing API calls used for the view statistics. How would you propose Google fix this, when there is an adversarial team in control of what requests many browser may make, and are choosing to use it to break the site?

          [0] Or rather, an URL block list used by many ad blockers.

          [1] It was almost certainly an honest mistake originally. But when the blocklist authors were informed of the problem and chose to not roll back the change, it became intentional.

          • chris_wot

            yesterday at 11:10 PM

            Google could improve the way they serve ads. Like, one ad per “ad session”, no 5 minute ads that are longer than the video you are trying to watch, etc.

            They are trying to increase ad revenue, but by increased Nguyen ads and making it harder to skip them it ironically is causing much worse practices such as ad blocking.

      • kulahan

        yesterday at 11:22 PM

        Why are we not counting financial reasons? Yeah, it’s a number both creators and advertisers looking to strike a direct advertising/sponsorship deal can use as an easy point of reference, which cannot readily be modified by the creator.

        But to your point, the site is borderline social media nowadays when you consider all the features.

        Bragging rights for sure. Many channels are parasocial relationships, and that number matters a lot to both the creator and the viewers.

        It’s also mildly informational. If I see a completely out-of-whack suggestion in my feed, but it has a billion views, suddenly I know why it’s in my feed.

        There are probably other reasons. I remember there was ongoing reporting about a race between two channels on YouTube racing to have… I dunno, the first video with a billion views or something. The number of video views for Gangnam Style was something everyone was talking about.

        Plus, it’s nice to have. That’s reason enough imo.

    • tracker1

      today at 12:06 AM

      Especially in terms of baked in ads from the creator, whose terms are based on views, separate from YouTube revenue.

    • nkrisc

      yesterday at 10:09 PM

      Why would anyone just watching videos on YouTube care how many people have seen the video? You enjoy it or you don’t, how many other people have seen it doesn’t change the viewing experience at all.

      The only people who would care are YT themselves, the creator, other creators, and advertisers.

      I don’t know why they even publicly display the view count.

      • t_mann

        yesterday at 10:26 PM

        > Why would anyone just watching videos on YouTube care how many people have seen the video?

        For the same reason online shops show "Most popular" items and ads say "trusted by X people worldwide". People on average apparently like feeling being part of a bigger crowd. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're probably in the minority (which by that logic shouldn't bother you).

      • tempestn

        yesterday at 10:21 PM

        Number of views and views to likes ratio are both signals of value.

    • ajross

      today at 2:15 AM

      > It’s a view counter. People want to know how much it was watched

      That's emphatically not what people "people want". People want to get paid. And creators get paid based on views.

      So... per the upthread point, paying people based on views that actually generate revenue seems fairer and more optimal, no? If YouTube can't make money from your content, why do you expect them to pay you for it?

  • jsnell

    yesterday at 9:38 PM

    The comment you replied to explained that nothing was changed on the YouTube side. This was an adblocker choosing to start block a non-ads, non-tracking, samesite API call that had probably been in place for like a decade.

    So it's quite amazing that even with that context you still managed to hijack that into a discussion about the merits of what Google did with this "balanced approach" bait. This isn't a balanced approach! It's not an approach at all!

    It is the ad blocker willfully choosing to break totally normal and benign site functionality. Google had no agency in this, and doesn't have much recourse.

    • speff

      today at 12:35 AM

      The comments that really get me are the ones putting the onus onto Youtube to refactor their view approach to "just" count it from the backend. Rhymes with consumers asking gamedevs to add multiplayer to games.

  • granzymes

    yesterday at 10:06 PM

    There is no balancing happening here. YouTube needs to make an API call to attribute a view to a video, and easylist started blocking that API call. YouTube was perfectly happy a month ago to count views for users that were blocking ads, and presumably remains happy to do so.

    The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API.

    • hananova

      today at 2:59 AM

      The do not need an API call, obviously they know that the video is being watched, because it's being streamed.

      • granzymes

        today at 3:25 AM

        YouTube serves videos from CDNs, many of which it does not own.

    • justinclift

      yesterday at 10:52 PM

      > The only thing that changed is easylist blocked the API.

      Wonder if there's a good reason they started blocking that API?

  • CAP_NET_ADMIN

    yesterday at 9:35 PM

    You can still have in-video sponsor spots, in fact, most of the creators have them. Viewership is an important metric to those sponsors.

    • bonoboTP

      yesterday at 9:44 PM

      Use the SponsorBlock extension to autoskip in-video ads.

  • john_moscow

    yesterday at 9:04 PM

    This looks like an additional incentive to channel owners to somehow convince their audience against the ad blocker use. Makes sense, better than trying to win an unwinnable arms race against the blocker maintainers.

    • NoahZuniga

      yesterday at 9:33 PM

      But this is not Google's doing? Adblockers are not sending requests to increment the view count, so yt doesn't increment the view count.

    • geerlingguy

      yesterday at 9:19 PM

      I'd argue use the adblocker, but if you want to ensure views are counted, add an exception for the URL in question, for example [1].

      [1] https://github.com/Scrxtchy/ReturnYoutubeView

    • Krasnol

      yesterday at 9:14 PM

      I hope by admitting defeat and shifting the blame for the numbers to creators, they also stop this ridiculous fight with adblockers. I'm sure they could allocate the investments in this elsewhere.

Jeff Geerling has been sleuthing into this lately too - my biggest takeaway is that it's only viewer counts that are suffering, he's not seen revenue drop which is key. Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :)

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/digging-deeper-youtub...

• pilaf

  yesterday at 3:07 PM

  Many youtubers have sponsorships though, and their viewership stats come into play when negotiating with potential sponsors.

  I guess if everyone was hit equally across the board then those sponsors will eventually adjust to the new metrics, but I assume some genres have more tech-savvy audiences which are more likely to use ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how evenly distributed this penalty falls.

  • themafia

    yesterday at 8:29 PM

    It's wild to me that advertisers are willing to use first party metrics. In any other media business you'd have a certified third party ratings agency to give "audience size" metrics some legitimacy.

    Youtube has no incentive to accurately report this data and no apparent accreditation in their methodology.

    • kulahan

      yesterday at 9:08 PM

      Google in general have been resistant to letting anyone see how effective their ads truly are - and most studies that get close tend to show extremely questionable efficacy results.

      If Google shows everyone how ineffective ads actually are, they’d crumble.

      • jefftk

        yesterday at 11:59 PM

        This is very much not true: Google has a bunch of options for measuring ad effectiveness, and when I was there (until three years ago) it was very hard to get advertisers to use them.

        The two main options advertisers have are:

        * Brand Lift Studies: split audience into treatment and control, use surveys on a small fraction of participants to measure impact

        * Conversion Lift: again split audience into treatment and control, compare downstream actions like purchases ("conversions")

        These both work on YouTube IIRC.

        • kulahan

          today at 12:07 AM

          I am not surprised google has many tools to tell you how great google is doing at using google's data for you.

          Anyways, I was mostly referring to sales at physical locations; I assume it's pretty viable to build a system to figure out if someone who previously bought a lot of shein is now buying a lot of temu.

          • jefftk

            today at 12:12 AM

            If Google didn't want people to see "ineffective ads actually are" why would they build and push Brand Lift Studies and Conversion Lift?

            Offline purchases are harder, of course, but pretty sure you can still do this: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9994849

    • kelnos

      today at 1:32 AM

      I feel like it's more "second party" in this case. The first party is the creator, and the tracker/keeper of the view counts is Google. Google certainly isn't a disinterested, certified third party, but they're also not a creator who might make up inflated numbers to get a more lucrative sponsorship.

    • girdi

      yesterday at 9:17 PM

      >It's wild to me that advertisers are willing to use first party metrics.

      I agree, and find it even wilder that first party metrics from Meta and Google are trusted by most major advertisers (including ad agencies). I'm talking about six-seven figure budgets spent without any third party validation.

      I've seen some studies on click fraud[0], but when advertisers are effectively choosing from a duopoly that has limited incentives not to lie in their metrics, I find it strange that there are no popular, widespread and accessible independent validation tools.

      0 – https://www.mdpi.com/2073-431X/10/12/164

      • Macha

        today at 12:51 AM

        There's a whole industry of independent validation tools - DoubleVerify, IAS, Human, etc.

    • rchaud

      yesterday at 9:21 PM

      Advertisers have 2 options for who to place ads with: Google and Facebook. When you have a monopoly, the customer has to take what it can get. Facebook has overstated its views and clicks for years to charge advertisers more, and faced no consequences for doing so.

      • themafia

        yesterday at 9:52 PM

        This is largely true because this is where the largest volume of traffic comes from; however, it's not exclusive to these two by any means. There are some pretty big Supply Side Platforms and aggregators out there for advertisers to use. This comes into play a lot more often on podcasts and streaming audio, in particular, consider the fleet of Amazon Alexa devices out there.

        Many of the advertisers that sell on these platforms are quite familiar with buying ads directly from "old school" media companies. So they have the competence and familiarity to be put off by the metrics but are apparently not in a position to force Google and Facebook to match standards used in other contexts.

    • roboror

      today at 12:43 AM

      Click campaigns/conversions and user codes are more important than pure impressions.

    • zahlman

      yesterday at 10:55 PM

      To me the wild thing is that this ad revenue model could ever have been profitable in the first place.

  • tehwebguy

    yesterday at 4:00 PM

    The automated “Skip Ahead” button (which I use daily) is already hostile to sponsorships. I would not be at all surprised to see them hitting sponsors on multiple fronts.

    • a2tech

      yesterday at 4:19 PM

      Google is not getting a cut of that sponsorship money. They don't care if it wrecks your deal. They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube. If you're fully beholden to Youtube, there will be no escape, no way for you to leave and take your viewership with you.

      Remember how Youtube used to be a nice cage with lots of air holes and fun toys to occupy you? Light ad enforcement, tools to help you build your viewership etc? People are starting to feel the pinch of those being removed. That cool room is starting to look like what it really is--an industrial cage.

      • PeterisP

        yesterday at 8:40 PM

        It's interesting that I just read an inteview with YouTube CEO (https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-youtube-ceo-n...) who mentioned that YouTube fully intends to start getting a cut out of that sponsorship money ("to align interests better").

      • Andrex

        yesterday at 6:25 PM

        I think it's less ominous than that.

        Skip Ahead is only for Premium subscribers. The logic probably being native-ads/sponsorships are in fact ads, and Premium users are paying for an ad-free experience.

      • eastbound

        yesterday at 8:47 PM

        > They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube.

        I’m not sure. They want influencers to make profit using their platform, so they want to make them rich. On the viewcount, a skipped sponsor still looks like a view. No sponsor is going to look at the proportion of watching each part of the video, they just care about the view counter.

        What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

        • kelnos

          today at 1:34 AM

          > What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

          It feels rare that I agree with Google on anything these days, but if that is the case... sounds fair.

    • nozzlegear

      yesterday at 11:32 PM

      Truly one of the best updates they've made to the YouTube app on Apple TV (and presumably other tv operating systems) of all time. Just one tap of the remote and we can skip all of the "sponsored by Made In" nonsense.

      Edit: I guess this is a YouTube premium feature?

    • johanyc

      yesterday at 4:18 PM

      > The automated “Skip Ahead” button (which I use daily) is already hostile to sponsorships

      Is it? If I proactively click skip, that means that sponsor is offering something of no use to me. As the sponsor, they successfully make an impression for a second or two anyway. And as a viewer that skip ahead button is much better than pressing right arrow button multiple times

      • recursive

        yesterday at 10:02 PM

        There's a shift in tone of voice or ham-fisted segue that gives it away before they even name the sponsor. I can usually click the button before they even name the sponsor.

      • everforward

        yesterday at 6:26 PM

        The brand recognition is worth something. I haven't been in the market for new headphones in a long time, but I still know the name Raycon from the bajillion sponsorships they do.

        Likewise with NordVPN and Raid: Shadowlegends. Never used any of them, don't really intend to, but I do know the name.

    • nonameiguess

      yesterday at 4:25 PM

      Skipping sponsored segments is not necessarily a reflection of hostility. My wife has been subscribed to the Factor meal service for over three years, yet all of my favorite podcasts are constantly hawking it, and I don't particularly feel like sitting through 20 sales pitches a day for something I already purchased. There is unfortunately no way to communicate that information to either the channel owner or the sponsor.

      • stevage

        yesterday at 10:00 PM

        I'm always just amazed how damn long they can be. On some channels I watch they are 2 to 3 minutes long every video. It would be madness to sit through that.

    • downrightmike

      yesterday at 6:40 PM

      in video you can just hit a number to go to the next chunk 1,2,3,4,5 etc. just hit 8 or 9 if you want to see if there is anything of value in a 10 minute video that should have been 30 seconds, but youtube wants 10 minutes

  • secondcoming

    yesterday at 4:16 PM

    Surely YT know if a video has sponsored content and so can refuse to play the video - or even not suggest it - if the user is using adblockers?

    • SilverbeardUnix

      yesterday at 8:47 PM

      YT would start a revolt among Youtubers if they did this.

• Ajedi32

  yesterday at 3:06 PM

  I'm guessing the viewers who now suddenly aren't being counted were already not contributing to revenue because they block ads.

  • themafia

    yesterday at 8:30 PM

    I pay for youtube. Payments from my views should come from my subscription payment. Ad blocking should be irrelevant in my case.

    • hamdingers

      yesterday at 11:51 PM

      It's not in their interest to solve this problem. YouTube is more than happy to pretend you watched nothing and therefore disburse nothing.

      To ensure my premium subscription dollars are making it to the creators I've now disabled uBO for the entire youtube domain.

    • jonny_eh

      yesterday at 11:27 PM

      As long as your ad blocker isn't blocking the metrics endpoint YouTube relies on to determine whether you're actually watching a video, the youtuber gets paid. In fact, Youtubers make more revenue from Premium views vs ad supported views.

    • renewiltord

      yesterday at 11:34 PM

      Mate, you’ve taken the pains to configure your user agent to block tracking of views and then you’re complaining that views aren’t tracked. It’s got a nice well-defined API with a sane default and you’ve decided to override it with something else. That’s fine too, but now you’re complaining that you overrode it?

      As the old joke goes:

      “Doctor, it hurts when I do this”

      “Then don’t do it”

      • themafia

        today at 1:53 AM

        To view the video I have to make an HTTP request for it. That request could easily contain my login name. The backend could be built to count views without a javascript callback running in my browser.

        You're acting as if the way Google does it would be the _only_ way to do it. Obviously untrue.

        • renewiltord

          today at 2:39 AM

          The tracking blocker you have installed on your user agent actively attempts to block their view attribution and your solution is that you want them to bypass your tracking blocker's active and affirmative attempt to block their view attribution. You could just not actually block their view attribution if you want your views to be attributed.

          I suppose Man was never meant to know Hacker News User's mind.

      • pharrington

        today at 12:32 AM

        You know full well that almost nobody expects their adblocker to block an *invisible view count incrementer".

        • SchemaLoad

          today at 12:54 AM

          How is it youtube's fault that you have an extension breaking the app without your knowledge? This is just more evidence to the case that extensions shouldn't be allowed to tamper with applications.

        • Macha

          today at 12:54 AM

          Why not? They block all the ad attribution companies that are doing this. Is it being first that makes the google one special? Or is youtube somehow more trustworthy than the rest of google?

        • renewiltord

          today at 12:44 AM

          EasyList also blocks tracking. I agree that no one expects their ad blocker to block view counts. But EasyList is advertised as a tracking blocker as well. And true to form, they eventually merged a change to block more tracking. So this guy is upset that his tracking blocker blocked tracking and wants YouTube to find a way to circumvent the tracking blocker? The whole thing sounds bizarre.

  • shadowgovt

    yesterday at 3:56 PM

    They impact individual channel revenue because so many channels have gone to sponsored ads, which automatic ad-blockers can't block (yet (1) ). The calibre of sponsor a channel can attract is impacted by the reported views from YouTube.

    (1) Hey, imagine I had a plugin that monitored the behavior of several viewers of each video and could collate where most people skipped a big chunk of video, then, oh I don't know, offered a feature where if lots of people skip one chunk, it'll automatically skip it for you when you're playing the video....

    • sebastiennight

      yesterday at 4:59 PM

      You're describing an existing plugin called SponsorBlock.

      IIRC it even has lots of options such as enabling you to allow/disallow self-sponsor segments (the creator promoting their own product), "like and subscribe" calls to action, shock-and-awe intros, podcast recaps, and several other segment types.

      • typpilol

        yesterday at 6:21 PM

        YouTube has it built in now. We just need auto skip to be built in now

        • SchemaLoad

          today at 12:55 AM

          Only for YT Premium users. But since premium views pay creators more it's less of an impact.

    • fragmede

      yesterday at 4:19 PM

      If only there were some way that money in my pocket went to some of the people related to the things I like to watch. Some sort of premium service where YouTube could pay for a person to come to my house and collect money from me, and them give it to the people making videos, and then we won't have ads?

      Nah, that'll never work.

      • nemomarx

        yesterday at 4:45 PM

        do we know what happens if you run premium and an ad blocker together? I would hope they would still pay the creator for my views but I'm not sure now

        • kelnos

          today at 1:40 AM

          I expect my (Premium) views are no longer counted, because my ad blocker is blocking the API endpoint that counts my views.

          The fact that I have Premium is irrelevant; if YouTube isn't getting the metrics that says I watched a video, then it won't be counted.

          Certainly YouTube could change the method they use to count views so it would work in my case, but they probably don't have an incentive to do so.

        • carlosjobim

          yesterday at 5:15 PM

          They pay creators more when a person with premium is watching their videos. Ad-blockers have no relevance in this case.

          • machinate

            yesterday at 6:27 PM

            Apparently ad blockers can interfere with key view metrics.

            Unclear what premium uses to disburse the 55% share that goes to creators; hopefully it's not those ones.

            • carlosjobim

              yesterday at 7:31 PM

              I don't think it's likely that the ad blocker is interfering, because you need to be logged in to use premium.

      • WD-42

        yesterday at 5:44 PM

        I really wish there was a little micro-donation button, using something like the lightning network. I'd smash the crap out of that for good videos. But YouTube would never support it because they wouldn't be able to insert themselves between the creator and consumer.

        • trenchpilgrim

          yesterday at 6:28 PM

          It already exists: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10878910?hl=en

          • WD-42

            yesterday at 7:02 PM

            Wow, so it does. I just checked. Most of my subscriptions apparently do not have it turned on. The one that I found that does have it turned on, it's hidden behind a hamburger menu that's located next to, you guessed it, an AI button. Nice to see Google prioritizing their crappy AI integration over their content creators getting paid.

        • typpilol

          yesterday at 6:22 PM

          You can already "super thank" people in the comments

          • WD-42

            yesterday at 7:12 PM

            I am being completely honest when I say I had no idea this even existed. As per my other comment, it’s very well hidden.

      • sebastiennight

        yesterday at 5:01 PM

        So... BlockBuster video ?

• geerlingguy

  yesterday at 8:50 PM

  Two concerns I have in the long-term:

  1. It seems views from Premium users who use adblock might also not get counted—and I'm not sure if the revenue from a Premium view in that circumstance would be counted or not (more research needed).

  2. YouTube's recommendation engine weights views heavily in the system, which means channels with a more technical, traditional desktop viewing audience (probably a substantial portion of HN users) will be most impacted, and will not be able to grow an audience to help fund projects, yadda yadda.

  YouTube creators with younger, mobile, less FOSS-y, and less tech-savvy audiences are therefore rewarded with more views/mindshare.

  I know some here are like "go get a REAL job, influencers are scum", but I think that discounts the helpful work of many tech creators. Not only in direct contributions to open source projects, but also in being a voice to balance out the paid 'product showcase' style videos for many tech products that come to market.

  In other words: if adblock users disincentivize creators like me from spending time and resources on YouTube, then video content will more quickly settle into the online magazine/news status quo, where 99% of the articles you read are just PR spin. Which you could argue would bring about YouTube's downfall earlier... or would lead us even more quickly to an Idiocracy-style society :D

  I'm not saying adblock is bad or wrong or anything—I can't stand the YT ad spam, so I pay for Premium. To each their own. In any case, YouTube shoulders some of the burden, but will be the main entity to profit in any scenario.

  • shagie

    yesterday at 11:49 PM

    Prior to getting Premium, YouTube was able to detect that I was watching a video (and nag me about premium as a way to get rid of ads). Since getting Premium, I haven't gotten the nag message.

    I run AdGuard (on a Mac). It has a filter log feature.

    Poking at the log while playing a video, I do see calls to ttps://{{clusterid?}}.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1758173247&...

    However, this call is not being blocked.

    I suspect that this is the "keep watching" feature that tracks where I am in various videos (switching from one logged in device to another keeps the same position). Watching the video all the way through, I don't see any requests relating to this getting blocked while on Premium. This feature is also likely more than sufficient data to attribute a view (and monetization of the view).

    There was also a call to ttps://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/log_event?alt=json that was not blocked.

    I do see some doubleclick.net links being blocked, thought that could be from any number of other pages I've got open.

    Going to an incognito session and pulling up the same video (Once Around Trappist 1)...

    There's now a call (that has gotten blocked) to ttps://www.youtube.com/api/stats/watchtime...

    That call was not something that I saw when logged into premium. This rule is described as "@@||www.youtube.com^$generichide (AdGuard Base filter)"

  • whatarethembits

    yesterday at 9:53 PM

    If this leads to lower quality videos, due to change in incentives, for certain segments, then I would consider it a WIN for users. For the portion of users for whom the lower quality is not palatable, they will get their time back to spend on other things in life.

    This is all completely subjective of course.

  • navigate8310

    today at 1:15 AM

    Your presumptions are akin to gaslighting and YouTube has successfully pitted the viewers against creators this time. Ad blocking will never stop no matter what creators and monopolists have to say.

  • makeitdouble

    yesterday at 11:18 PM

    > I know some here are like "go get a REAL job, influencers are scum"

    Signing up for the creator's patreon or buying merch is the more widely adopted reaction by the those actually enjoying the content.

• dogleash

  yesterday at 3:10 PM

  > Viewer counts are vanity, revenue is sanity :)

  Except viewer counts are a factor for baked in ads. In this case, all the sleuthing and videos about the change are the probably the only thing that will alleviate/lessen the seemingly-worse ad rate negotiation position youtubers with less viewers suddenly find themselves in.

  • bluGill

    yesterday at 3:20 PM

    Those buying baked in ads just need to find other ways to verify value. This is nothing new, no large company buys ads without checking how they really work (though many small companies would). There is someone who checks all those "how did you hear about us" responses asked at checkout - they want to know if the ad really provided value. Sure the TV stations tracked and reported ratings, but that is only one of the signs ad buyers look at, and it is one they only trust because they check and so would catch if it is manipulated.

    The ad business is far older than the internet and there is a lot of old knowledge that apples directly to the internet. Those buying backed in ads should be aware of and tracking such efforts.

    • typpilol

      yesterday at 6:23 PM

      A lot of sponsors have shyed away from YouTube because of the fake views and botting problem.

      Some were paying big money to streamers with 20,000 live viewers. Even though 19000 of those were fake.

      The sponsor then sees the ad and did terribly and doesn't sponsor anyone else in the future.

      • bluGill

        today at 1:34 AM

        That is why big companies calculate returns. That type of fraud predates the internet. you can be sure one of the first newspapers tried it.

• happytoexplain

  yesterday at 3:02 PM

  You're saying that YouTube implemented a change that significantly reduces creators' viewer counts but won't affect their revenue, and they haven't told creators? "Here, have a heart attack"?

  • kllrnohj

    yesterday at 4:20 PM

    YouTube didn't change anything. The ad blockers recently started blocking the metric call for whatever reason.

    • Larrikin

      yesterday at 5:04 PM

      [flagged]

      • kllrnohj

        yesterday at 5:08 PM

        It's in the github issue in OP: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375#issuecomme...

  • a_shovel

    yesterday at 3:31 PM

    nobody's ever accused youtube of being too transparent with creators

YouTube showed me the same phishing ads depicting an AI version of the Canadian Prime Minister.

Why should I not filter ads from a provider who is OK with people stealing from me?

• zanellato19

  yesterday at 5:56 PM

  I find it so weird how we just accept the fact that ads can be for fake things and not blame YouTube/Google for those things.

  • ndriscoll

    yesterday at 9:45 PM

    That was also my take when I first saw the FBI advice about using an adblocker. Like, yeah, it's good advice, but also why is no one being prosecuted for acting as an accessory if not accomplice to fraud? They're labeling their product as a search tool and then taking money to funnel users away from the thing they're searching for to scammers instead. Surely they are aware of their pure negligence in vetting business partners if the government is issuing warnings to citizens about their behavior?

    • zanellato19

      today at 1:28 AM

      Yeah, it's crazy. I have gotten ads on Gmail that are clearly fraud.

      On my email! I really think Google should be liable for shit like that.

  • kylehotchkiss

    yesterday at 10:03 PM

    30% of my YouTube ads are now a large fart sound followed by an AI generated old doctor talking for 15 minutes about some sketchy diet modification

  • SilverbeardUnix

    yesterday at 8:49 PM

    People in general have stopped trying to hold people accountable and have just accepted defeat.

• tomrod

  yesterday at 4:16 PM

  Morally, you should filter ads. If ads could be relevant, vetted, non-intrusive, and ancillary to the experience, all actions that are required to be performed by the ad platform Youtube/Google, then you wouldn't have much moral leg to stand on.

  Due to YT/G's moral failings to host a sufficiently serviceable platform for their product, your eyes, then your only real recourse outside adblocking is to buy a device and put on a separate network with no reasonably important traffic.

  I don't lose one bit of sleep knowing that adblocking prevents Google from externalizing their curation costs onto me.

  • kelnos

    today at 1:44 AM

    > If ads could be relevant, vetted, non-intrusive, and ancillary to the experience, all actions that are required to be performed by the ad platform Youtube/Google, then you wouldn't have much moral leg to stand on.

    Even if ads were all of those things, ads are psychological manipulation, and I there is no moral imperative that says I have to subject myself to that.

    Sure, you could say, "well then instead just don't use YouTube", and I would say... "yeah, maybe, but... I'm a selfish human and want to, and unless YouTube is going to give me a way to exchange something else for a better experience, tough shit on them."

    But anyway, they do give me that option, and I pay for Premium, so it's not a problem.

  • Workaccount2

    yesterday at 4:26 PM

    No, no, no.

    Morally you should stop using youtube.

    It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.

    When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.

    • barnabee

      today at 1:19 AM

      Their business model and their belief that there’s an obligation to view ads when consuming content are not our problem.

      Advertising in general and Google in particular are so immoral that morally you should rip every YouTube video and distribute it freely outside of their platform while actively looking for ways to force them to fundamentally change or close.

    • tomrod

      yesterday at 4:32 PM

      > Morally you should stop using youtube

      > When you don't like something, you don't use it.

      Morality in your approach is absolute, and it represents the best possible outcome.

      For all others stuck in the morass, you must navigate the BATNA.

    • heavyset_go

      today at 12:38 AM

      Is it moral to pour out your verification can instead of drinking it?

    • batch12

      yesterday at 9:56 PM

      Is it morally wrong to fast forward ads on your TV or mute the volume?

    • wiredpancake

      yesterday at 10:47 PM

      [dead]

    • 737282251819

      today at 12:55 AM

      [dead]

• donmcronald

  yesterday at 9:18 PM

  About 30% of the ads I see are that crypto scam. I’m sure I’ve seen it over 100 times. There are several variants with different people. I don’t understand how that scam is paying for the massive volume of ad time they’re getting. It must cost a fortune.

  I also get tons of French ads and I don’t speak French.

  • ChocolateGod

    yesterday at 10:11 PM

    You would think Google having all this amazing AI could moderate their YouTube ads....

    But those crypto scams make them money.

Oh how incredibly convenient.

Plus, making ad blocking a channel owner's problem is kind of genius.

Are views also decreasing on channels without ads enabled? Is it possible that some endpoint that needs to be hit to register a view is being blocked by privacy-related (not ad-related) lists that adblockers use?

If the answer to both is no, maybe Google's intentionally punishing creators whose viewers use adblockers. But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation?

• vintermann

  yesterday at 3:15 PM

  > But if the goal is to force creators to ask their viewers to stop using adblockers, then why would they not also just admit that they're doing this rather than leaving it up to speculation?

  Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing" but they know it won't work if people see them as the source of the message. They want video makers to internalize their message, do what the boss wants on their own initiative, so Google only want to drop hints.

  • NewsaHackO

    yesterday at 5:10 PM

    100%. They are trying to get YouTube a exclusion from the list, or make the list the non-default. I already know the next step is that the "community" is going to fork the list, and the forked list is going to be heavily advertised on YouTube channel as a way to support the channel.

  • thewebguyd

    yesterday at 3:23 PM

    > Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing"

    Ah yes, the good old "don't copy that floppy" argument.

    The advertising industry brought this upon themselves. The web is straight up unusable without an ad blocker. Between malicious ads, drive-by-downloads, content shifting, and other dark patterns, websites are now more ads than content.

    It's like in the days of streaming (when it was still good and not enshitified) reducing piracy rates - companies can get me to disable my ad blocker if they start becoming good citizens actually make their site or service usable without it.

    Get rid of the invasive tracking, dark patterns, un-dismissable modals, etc. Stop jamming your content so full of ads and SEO spam and maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker as much.

    • PaulHoule

      yesterday at 4:01 PM

      I bought a new Mac for a secondary computer, particularly for my wife to use, and she was driven crazy by ads in just one hour of browsing on Safari without a proper ad blocker. Adding an ad blocker to Safari required using an Apple account which she doesn't have and I didn't want to use it for mine (never plan on buying NERFed apps from the NERFed mac app store which is 99% spam anyway) so I switched her to Firefox which lets me add an ad blocker without signing in.

      • voltaireodactyl

        today at 1:43 AM

        FWIW wBlock is on GitHub and can be used without an Apple account. I’ve found it to be excellent.

      • xandrius

        yesterday at 8:50 PM

        Make her an account with throwaway everything or switch her to a sane browser, as you did :)

    • stonemetal12

      yesterday at 9:02 PM

      >The web is straight up unusable without an ad blocker.

      Parts of it are good, and parts are bad. The problem with ad blockers is it distorts the signal for bad sites. Why reduce ads if your page views and time on site metrics are good with them?

      Without Ad block when you hit a garbage site you backout and go somewhere else, maybe even blacklist it so you don't end up there in the future. Then their metrics start looking as bad as their site and they shape up or go under.

  • yard2010

    yesterday at 3:56 PM

    You wouldn't steal a car.

    Well I definitely would if I could torrent it. Facebook would have too.

• jordanb

  yesterday at 2:53 PM

  I understand that they've massively reduced the compensation creators receive from monetization. This is why the creators all do sponsorships now. But they force creators to monetize to get reach (if the video isn't monetized it won't be recommended, even to subscribers).

  My guess is that yeah, now they're going after people's sponsorship revenue by under-reporting views if their monetized content is being viewed by people with adblockers.

  • bluSCALE4

    yesterday at 3:10 PM

    Regarding recommendations. I recently disabled history and recommendations and the subscribed tab has everything I’d expect. No more surprises and no more political garbage.

    • portaouflop

      yesterday at 3:45 PM

      That’s crazy, when I am logged out I only get political garbage and the most insane braunrot you can imagine. My recommendations are really good on YouTube, I find a lot of interesting stuff

      • bluSCALE4

        yesterday at 7:46 PM

        You must fight the urge to click on controversial topics. If you mentally subscribe to any fringe idea, the algo immediately feeds you echo chamber / bubble content. It's crazy.

        • coolcoder613

          yesterday at 10:58 PM

          I usually open videos of any topic I don't want in my recommendations in a private window.

  • izacus

    yesterday at 3:16 PM

    > I understand that they've massively reduced the compensation creators receive from monetization.

    Do you have any article about that? How much did the monetization drop for?

    • the_af

      yesterday at 3:23 PM

      I don't know the data but every YouTube author I follow is basically saying the money they get from YouTube is almost nothing compared to the effort they put into their videos. Almost all of them seem to be going for sponsored ads embedded in the video (so not automatically skippable) or Patreon.

      • izacus

        yesterday at 4:39 PM

        How big are the channels? As far as I follow, the revenue numbers creators get from Ads aren't ignorable at all.

        • the_af

          yesterday at 5:37 PM

          I didn't check all of them... I wanna say they range from ~200 to ~500K subscribers? No idea if that's big or not. For comparison, the official Warhammer channel has ~900K subscribers, which I assume is decent.

          The argument I've heard repeatedly from them is that the time and effort involved in making a YouTube video that gets enough hits (which means lots of experimentation) is disproportionate compared to the meager return of investment; that for money reasons it's best to get sponsorships.

          (I'm not a YouTube author myself, I wouldn't know what's a decent size).

• s1mplicissimus

  yesterday at 2:54 PM

  My current theory is that this whole "mystery around viewcounts" thing is fabricated by google. From a PR viewpoint it's much better to just imply that adblockers are bad, so in case of backlash they can go "Idk why the community is going ham about this, we didn't even say directly you shouldn't adblock, you people are kwuaazy"

  • Macha

    today at 1:00 AM

    Honestly I'm willing to bet that the contacts/account managers at Google genuinely didn't know that easyprivacy had added their view tracking to the blocklist, and reached out to some people internally who's job is implementing youtube and not anti-adblock features who correctly said they didn't change anything, and would have no reason to know that easyprivacy had changed anything.

    Then the AMs just issue vague statements to the youtubers as it feels more like saving face than admitting they have no idea

• pimlottc

  yesterday at 2:52 PM

  I agree, this seems more like a policy decision to turn creators into anti-adblocker advocates than a technical problem registering views accurately.

  • lotsofpulp

    yesterday at 3:11 PM

    Why would most creators be pro ad blocking in the first place? Don’t most of them want to earn money via advertising?

    • bluGill

      yesterday at 3:32 PM

      That isn't clear. Some earn money from ads of various forms. Some earn money from patreon like things and the youtube views are loss leaders. Most are not earning enough money from ads to care (generally 0, but sometimes a few bucks).

      Even if you earn money from ads, view count is only a proxy at best. Youtube seems to track ads seen not view count (payments from youtube have not changed). Other ads track effectiveness of the ad, and viewcount is only a proxy - if youtube changes the count it means that the constant applied to viewcount in the formula changes but otherwise the payment is the same.

      Thus if you get significant money from YouTube adds you care about ad blocking. None of the others need to care (they might, but it could go either way how they feel)

      • PaulHoule

        yesterday at 4:04 PM

        What videos you see on YouTube really varies from one person to another: I have one browser where it shows me predominantly videos with titles like "Why Brand X has lost it's way" or "Why the Y industry is broken" where X could be a fast food chain or a game studio and Y could be housing, video games, private equity, etc.

        That kind of creator expresses a lot of negativity towards YouTube, as X is frequently "YouTube" or "Google" and Y is "Big Tech", "Social Media", etc.

    • pseudalopex

      yesterday at 6:09 PM

      Pro and expressly anti are not the only positions. Some were indifferent because their income from YouTube ads was much less than their income from sponsorships or subscriptions. But view counts affect sponsorship income. Some said blocking ads hurt them but they couldn't blame people when ads included scams. And so on.

    • cogman10

      yesterday at 3:29 PM

      Because most creators use the internet and have experienced the internet with ads.

      I imagine most don't think about ads seriously, they think about youtube and sponsor revenue.

      • lotsofpulp

        yesterday at 4:17 PM

        Isn’t sponsor revenue ad revenue? And I would expect most creators to be smart enough to realize that the money they get from Youtube will be at least loosely related to the ad revenue Youtube can earn from whatever the creator made.

        • cogman10

          yesterday at 4:26 PM

          > Isn’t sponsor revenue ad revenue?

          It is, but it's functionally different because the content creator you are watching is both directly getting that revenue and often doing the testimonial for you. They have an incentive to avoid being annoying about the ad as it reflects bad on them if they go nuts. It's also usually a lot easier to skip. It doesn't capture your video playback and force watching.

          The money you get from youtube make things ambiguous. Especially if someone is watching your stream with youtube premium.

• ge96

  yesterday at 2:59 PM

  Is it possible not to have ads? It seems like YouTube puts them in there regardless, unless once your channel is monetizable you can choose to not show ads.

  • rwmj

    yesterday at 3:02 PM

    Uploaders can disable mid-roll adverts, ie ones that appear in the middle of the content.

I am not sure why this is a bug? Youtube is tracking people, this blocks them tracking people. A side effect of a view not being counted on Youtube, is 100% Youtube's problem, and doesn't effect the user in any way.

• cluckindan

  yesterday at 3:47 PM

  Sounds like YT is trying to mobilize creators and influencers against adblocking.

  • reddalo

    yesterday at 3:54 PM

    > against adblocking

    And extensions such as SponsorBlock [1], which help user skipping sponsored sections or useless intros in videos.

    [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/

    • MattBearman

      yesterday at 3:58 PM

      YouTube premium actually has its own version of sponsorblock called skip ahead, it works really well, so they’re not ideologically opposed to skipping sponsored segments

      • xgulfie

        yesterday at 9:50 PM

        I guess it makes sense, they have no financial incentive to keep people from skipping sponsors, they don't make YouTube any money

      • humpty-d

        yesterday at 4:01 PM

        That doesn't just target sponsor segments. It's for stuff commonly skipped. Like annoying parts of videos. Some video game guy I occasionally watching thinks he needs to sing for some reason, very useful for skipping those sections.

      • whatevertrevor

        yesterday at 11:52 PM

        That's a feature that learns commonly skipped over sections, ads or otherwise.

      • SoftTalker

        yesterday at 4:02 PM

        Yes, I discovered this recently and it's nice. I presume they are not opposed to it because it's not costing them any lost revenue.

      • disiplus

        yesterday at 5:48 PM

        Where ? Like I have sponsor block on a desktop but on my pixel I don't have it and would like to have the option. Have the yt premium but don't see the option to skip sponsors.

        • celsoazevedo

          yesterday at 10:18 PM

          Firefox for Android supports desktop extensions, including Sponsor Block and uBlock Origin.

          There's also Tubular, a YouTube client and fork of NewPipe with Sponsor Block built-in. If you don't mind installing apks from outside the Play Store: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

        • Andrex

          yesterday at 6:26 PM

          If you double tap to skip 10 seconds during an ad read, it should appear as a button in the bottom right. It does not pop up proactively. It's algorithmically-based on which parts of the video get skipped most often by viewers.

      • gloxkiqcza

        yesterday at 4:02 PM

        I’m surprised they allow ads (sponsor segments) they get no cut from at all.

        • Sanzig

          yesterday at 4:09 PM

          Sponsorships are the primary way YouTube creators make money. There aren't many things that could knock YouTube off its near-monopoly market position, but banning sponsorships is definitely one. Creators would revolt.

          • izacus

            yesterday at 4:37 PM

            They pretty surely would not.

            • xmprt

              yesterday at 4:43 PM

              Creators are already starting to build their own platforms for hosting videos and many of these are quite successful unlike prior iterations from 10 years ago.

              • sebastiennight

                yesterday at 5:10 PM

                Do you have some examples? I am still a bit sore from my adventures as a creator on Viddler and Dailymotion.

                • pyth0

                  yesterday at 5:38 PM

                  I would point to platforms like Curiosity Stream and Nebula, which are creator driven. Though I would not exactly call them Youtube replacements, as they are more just platforms designed for supporting specific creators more directly (akin to Patreon). These platforms are often advertised as in-video sponsorships, so going back to the original point, I do think creators would be very vocal if such ads were banned.

        • anon1395

          yesterday at 4:12 PM

          Why would they not allow them?

      • delecti

        yesterday at 5:03 PM

        I've got Youtube premium and have never noticed that popping up. Is this platform or browser dependent? Is it only on some videos?

        • SchemaLoad

          today at 1:00 AM

          On the TV app, if you hit the forward button it instantly skips over the entire "commonly skipped section".

        • Wohlf

          yesterday at 5:32 PM

          It isn't automatic for me unless I try to skip a sponsored segment myself, then it will kick in and skip me to the end of that segment with a popup above the scroll bar saying they did so.

        • bogtog

          yesterday at 8:47 PM

          Might just be the channels you're viewing. This video should have a "Jump ahead" appear around 0:19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs5PfanIkC0&t=1s

      • paxys

        yesterday at 6:30 PM

        Plus it works on mobile and TVs.

  • avian

    yesterday at 3:49 PM

    I don't think YouTube needed to do anything. The change influenced creators' bottom line so they are motivated on their own to mobilize their viewers against this change.

    • cluckindan

      yesterday at 4:15 PM

      It was YT that changed the ad delivery mechanism to prevent view counting, not adblockers.

      • kllrnohj

        yesterday at 4:22 PM

        It was an easylist change (so adblockers) that caused the issue: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/2d39de407dc96904...

        Whether or not you consider that an issue shrug but it's not directly YT's fault.

  • marcosscriven

    yesterday at 4:00 PM

    This was my exact thought when I read about it. YouTube clearly has a record of what I’ve watched, because it’s in my watch history.

    What they are missing is proof I’ve watched the ads - which I haven’t.

    • natebc

      yesterday at 7:20 PM

      They may in fact not know what you watched. I was having an issue with my youtube recommendations becoming generic to the point of irrelevance, when i went and looked at my watch history and it hadn't been updated in MONTHS despite me watching youtube daily.

      Turns out that pi-hole was blocking the endpoint that records the watch history! IIRC allowing queries for something like s.youtube.com made my watch history start working.

      I agree that they should know w/o all this client based nonsense but :shrug:. They don't, somehow!

  • tomrod

    yesterday at 4:21 PM

    Morally indefensible. Adblockers are used as a response to Google externalizing/ignoring the cost of proper ad platform curation.

  • mustyoshi

    yesterday at 3:53 PM

    Ads are how they get paid until they're big enough for alternative revenue generation.

    • zelphirkalt

      yesterday at 4:06 PM

      This actually hints at a way out of the YouTube monopoly. Make creators' business model no longer work on YouTube, by blocking the tracking. Make it so that creators are forced to go to other, paid video platforms, instead of them feeding the YouTube monopoly.

      This might temporarily lead to a collapse in video creator business, but in the long run might result in more viable businesses for creators, without them having to push shit onto their viewers. Make videos and enjoy them being seen, or make paid content and have people pay for that, but don't try to shoehorn it into viewing videos that are accessible for anyone running a Youtube search.

  • alkonaut

    yesterday at 8:55 PM

    Sounds fair? Both creators and YouTube have the same goal of having people watch ads (or pay not to).

• swiftcoder

  yesterday at 4:22 PM

  It seems like a YouTube bug, that they are performing view tracking on the client, when they own the whole server backend and could just as well track them server side (which wouldn't be blockable in the first place)

  • nonameiguess

    yesterday at 4:29 PM

    It seems like server-side would suffer from issues due to buffering lookahead and autoplay. A client can request a video that is skipped within seconds, but if buffering causes it to request five minutes worth, the server only sees five minutes were requested, whereas the client can clearly tell how much of that was actually watched.

  • paxys

    yesterday at 6:31 PM

    Server-side tracking would be the easiest thing in the world to spoof.

    • swiftcoder

      yesterday at 7:26 PM

      How is it any easier to spoof than client-side tracking?

      In the server-side case I can certainly increase views by fetching the video multiple times, but in the client side case I can hit the analytics endpoint directly just as easily

      • paxys

        yesterday at 9:13 PM

        Bot detection systems all work client side. What browser are you using, what cookies do you have, how is your mouse moving, how much time are you taking between clicks, how many captchas have you solved. All this and more is collected and passed to the server, which can then determine if the view was valid or not. Plus you can do this multiple times during a watch session rather than just in the beginning when the video is requested. If the adblocker is blocking this data then the server has nothing to go on.

• slightwinder

  yesterday at 3:50 PM

  It's a problem for the Creators. Their stats are lower than they should be, which could have negative effects on their business, like YouTubes recommendation-system not working as efficient as it should be. Similar, would they have a weaker selling-point for companies advertising on their channel.

  It should be noted that YouTube income is unaffected by this, as Ads are still shown and counted to people without AdBlockers. So this is only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.

  • ecshafer

    yesterday at 3:53 PM

    But why would I, as a user of Easy Privacy, care about this? It is protecting my own privacy. Someone trying to get more money on the internet isn't really my concern.

    • Wololooo

      yesterday at 4:06 PM

      While I agree with you, not every channel is big and some of the smaller ones might rely partially on this in order to get materials/sponsorship in order to be able to have the parts to do some projects they make videos on because it is more a passion project and they might barely break even or even make losses on doing it.

      The context that I am thinking about is, for example, a small hobbyist that might rely on the added value for making some odd things, requiring exotic hardware, quantities of materials that could be prohibitively expensive or the lend of access to said hardware might be blocked behind viewership metrics, and there this might make some difference, and I personally enjoy those little odd channels and this is why I, as a viewer, might care about it. But again, I totally see where you are coming from.

      • 0xbadcafebee

        yesterday at 4:14 PM

        For every one hobbyist making some kind of interesting video that they couldn't have made without ad money, there are 1,000 moronic influencers making the same video about the same thing, grasping at ad money or free products to shill. YouTube is 99% dreck now. Hooray for the hobbyist, poor us having to wade through the influencer swamp.

    • slightwinder

      yesterday at 4:02 PM

      You don't have to care about it. But this is not about privacy, as this API likely does not impact your privacy. YouTube can track what you watch anyway.

      And if you watch videos, there is a chance you also enjoy them, so it would be in your own interest to support creators in making more of them. But that's a bit more complicated.

      • anon1395

        yesterday at 4:14 PM

        If i am correct, YouTube is trying to say "If you don't watch the ads, you are harming the poor, small content creators!"

        • slightwinder

          yesterday at 4:53 PM

          Maybe, but that doesn't matter for this case. This is specifically about the view count, not whether you see the ads. But I've seen this was in the meanwhile merged with another thread, which is about the statement(?) from YouTube.

      • stefan_

        today at 12:45 AM

        Requests that have no benefit for the user need to be blocked on that premise alone. Do your tracking whatever nonsense on your own computing, thanks very much.

    • Workaccount2

      yesterday at 3:57 PM

      The correct approach is to not use these services. Ad-blocking and using the service just sends the message that you are leeching, not that the service is bad.

      • autoexec

        yesterday at 5:55 PM

        Ad blocking and using the service only sends the message that the service with ads is bad, but the service without ads is acceptable.

        Often this means "the way you've implemented ads is terrible enough that I went out of my way to block them" and sometimes it means "any and all ads are terrible and I don't want them"

        There's nothing at all wrong with ad blocking. Someone who puts their content on the public internet has zero right to require me to view that content, or to control how much of it I see or how I choose to view it. If I want to block ads, or only watch the last 20 seconds, or watch the whole thing played backwards that's my business. This is equally true for websites where I'm free to decide what to download and how to display it in my browser.

      • SoftTalker

        yesterday at 4:04 PM

        No more than going to the bathroom or getting a drink during a TV commercial break is leeching. Watching ads is not and has never been obligatory for the viewer.

        • Workaccount2

          yesterday at 4:08 PM

          You are free to go to the bathroom or get a drink when a youtube ad is playing.

          • Telaneo

            yesterday at 5:40 PM

            I'm also free to automatically skip ads on both TV and youtube.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N...

          • pessimizer

            yesterday at 5:02 PM

            And also free to block it. What was your point again?

      • baseballdork

        yesterday at 4:04 PM

        Correct by what metric? Why do I care if I send the message that I'm leeching?

      • mhuffman

        yesterday at 4:01 PM

        It seems to be sending the same message either way, no? Either not watching them or the ad-blocking reducing their count seems to be the same in the end.

        • Workaccount2

          yesterday at 4:07 PM

          If you had a lemonade stand, and I came and drank one, told you it was bad and didn't pay, that's one thing. I'd probably not come back.

          If I kept coming everyday, multiple times a day, and never paid "because its bad", it's extremely unlikely that I don't like the lemonade, and extremely likely that I just like that it's free as long as I complain.

          • mhuffman

            yesterday at 4:19 PM

            I am not sure that this example really works. Youtube is happy to give you all the "free lemonade" you want (from videos that aren't really monetizable) but the ones that are, they make onerous to use. I get 20+ ads per day right now from an Internet service that I already use, and get untold ads from products that I would never use. Some of the ads are up to 1 hour in duration. Granted, they mercifully offer a skip button, but it seems to me that the ad is being forced on you, not offered to you. That is the big difference. A funny, engaging ad is not a problem for nearly anyone.

            • Workaccount2

              yesterday at 4:36 PM

              No, the ad is not being forced on you.

              It's your choice to go to youtube and watch the video. No one is forcing that on you. Youtube is a service that is offered. If you don't like youtube or the ads, you can not use the service. Just like no one is forcing you to go to the lemonade stand.

              • NewsaHackO

                yesterday at 5:07 PM

                Or he can just use it and block ads :)

                • yesterday at 5:37 PM

          • autoexec

            yesterday at 6:04 PM

            It's more like a lemonade stand which advertises a free glass of lemonade to anyone who asks for one, but every time someone comes up and asks for a glass the guy handing out cups gives a long-winded highly insulting sermon about how the person drinking should live their life.

            Then the lemonade stand guy feels entitled to bitch about it when more and more people start showing up wearing headphones because they don't want to hear his bullshit even though literally nobody came for his abuse, what they came for was just the free lemonade.

            The people still show up though because clearly people like the lemonade, they just hate the annoying guy who won't shut up about his rude opinions nobody asked for.

            • Workaccount2

              yesterday at 10:07 PM

              If you go to the side table of the stand, you can purchase a lemonade, no hassle, no sermon. But people are incredibly opposed to this because they genuinely believe that they are entitled to this lemonade at no cost.

              • autoexec

                yesterday at 10:27 PM

                > If you go to the side table of the stand, you can purchase a lemonade, no hassle, no sermon. But people are incredibly opposed to this because they genuinely believe that they are entitled to this lemonade at no cost.

                How dare people genuinely believe they are entitled to this lemonade at no cost, when it's got a huge sign that says "FREE LEMONADE"!

                Youtube has every right to take down the free lemonade sign and paywall off their service, but they wont because they know they make far more money luring in the people who come for the free videos, sucking up their personal data, and then increasingly abusing them until some number of suckers cave and start paying into their protection racket scheme.

                A racket is exactly what youtube premium is too. Never pay someone for protection against the very harms they're causing you. There's nothing to stop them from demanding increasing amounts of protection money whenever they feel like it, which is exactly what Google has done. Repeatedly. Most recently sticking their oldest suckers with a 62% hike in protection fees. (https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1jqzu4g/et_tu_yout...)

                Don't encourage or try to justify that kind of shit. Just put on a pair a headphones and enjoy the sweet lemonade Google chooses to offer for "free". Don't forget that even with those headphones, Google is still collecting every scrap of data they can get from you and your device while you're using their service and that they'll happily leverage all of that data against you in any way they can think of, any time they feel it might benefit them. That price is itself high enough, but for me still worth what I'm getting from the content I view.

          • Telaneo

            yesterday at 5:41 PM

            If I drink your lemonade, you no longer have it. If I watch your video, you still have it.

            • Workaccount2

              yesterday at 6:14 PM

              The cost to youtube is the overhead. Youtube doesn't even pay for the videos, but the infrastructure, delivery network, and service is very expensive.

              It's a very naive view to think that serving videos is a zero-cost endeavor because the video isn't consumed.

              • Telaneo

                yesterday at 6:25 PM

                If they don't want people to watch without paying, they can put up a paywall.

            • whatevertrevor

              yesterday at 11:41 PM

              Ah yes the infinitely reproducible digital content fallacy. If you watch a movie at the cinema, they still have the movie, do you expect that to be free too?

              Products have more than just marginal production costs, especially true for digital ones.

              • Telaneo

                today at 12:13 AM

                > do you expect that to be free too?

                The seating and good screen and audio? No.

                The digital file? I don't expect Disney to provide that free of charge, or at all for that matter, but I do believe it should be free. Copyright has gone way too far of one end of the scale, and I'd like to pull it as far as possible to the other side, then hopefully we can meet in the middle in a position we can both respect. The current position taken by Society™ is one I don't respect.

                • whatevertrevor

                  today at 2:58 AM

                  I agree copyright goes too far, but that doesn't mean we should just delete everything. Creative content producers don't need food to eat. We still need mechanisms to pay them for it, the more direct the better.

                  The value of digital content comes from more than just the final sequence of bytes.

                  • Telaneo

                    today at 3:39 AM

                    > but that doesn't mean we should just delete everything.

                    Where did this come from? This has nothing to do with anything.

                    > We still need mechanisms to pay them for it, the more direct the better.

                    Patreon is a good option, although I wish we had better ones. It's not like Youtube's paying any significant amount to any content creator other than maybe the top 0.01%. Anyone who's tried that has discovered that Youtube's payout is some extra pocket change rather than anything you can actually sustain a business with; hence why everybody who's on Youtube and does it as a business also has a Patreon or does sponsorships, or something else, as that's the only way to make ends meet.

                    > The value of digital content comes from more than just the final sequence of bytes.

                    I fail to see what else I would derive value from. I just want the damn file in most cases, with minimal interference., but Youtube seems to always want plop their schlong inbetween the content creator and their audience, to everyone's displeasure.

        • philipallstar

          yesterday at 4:07 PM

          It's not about sending a message. It's about making sure you use a service in the way it's being offered, or not using it at all.

          • mhuffman

            yesterday at 4:15 PM

            Well that is not a law, and even bringing it up on a site called "Hacker News" makes me almost think you are making a joke that is going over my head.

          • nemomarx

            yesterday at 4:49 PM

            YouTube is free to only serve videos to paying users if they don't like ad blockers. it would destroy the site, but they're technically able to do it.

            • whatevertrevor

              yesterday at 11:38 PM

              It would be really tough. I do think YouTube provides a lot of value by making its videos accessible to everyone.

              Plenty of closed ecosystem streaming services exist and they continue to be niche things where creators who had no audience before YouTube are trying to keep going. I'm not sure how long the likes of Nebula and Floatplane are going to last honestly, because they have fundamental discovery issues in both directions:

              The creators need a constant influx of new viewers to replace people growing out of their content, and the viewers need a platform where they can experiment with new content without a big paywall upfront.

      • paxys

        yesterday at 9:16 PM

        YouTube and every other site on the internet can trivially block all users with an ad blocker but choose not to. Why is that?

        • whatevertrevor

          yesterday at 11:44 PM

          Well they want you to pay obviously, they don't want you to disappear. Setting an expectation that things should be free on the internet is what killed the internet. We all want good things until we have to pay up.

          • paxys

            yesterday at 11:57 PM

            > Setting an expectation that things should be free on the internet is what killed the internet

            You must be very young if you actually think that. In reality the internet was infinitely better when there was no commercialization at all.

            • whatevertrevor

              today at 3:06 AM

              I may or may not be younger than you, that is of no relevance other than a vague appeal to defer to your experience about it.

              I find plenty of valuable things on the current internet that wouldn't exist without commercialization, the possibility of a career as an individual YouTuber or streamer, for example.

              And I'd like to see them continue and be actually paid for their efforts in a sustainable way instead of pining for a return to "all content is just passion side projects".

              Because absolutely nothing about the current internet stops people from posting passionately as a side project.

            • barnabee

              today at 1:34 AM

              I’d love to go back to a completely non-commercial internet that only contains things people put there with no expectation or possibility of profit.

    • groby_b

      yesterday at 3:58 PM

      Because you might have a perfectly selfish stance in the short term, but it turns out that creators not making enough money leads to creators not making content.

      Someone you care to watch not making enough money to make the things you like to watch is your concern, because making equivalent content yourself is out of your reach.

      • Workaccount2

        yesterday at 4:11 PM

        It's worse than creators not making content, they move their content to be lower rung click bait garbage to maximize ad-views.

        If "smart" people use ad-block, then all the content gravitates towards those who don't.

        • ndriscoll

          yesterday at 4:31 PM

          The videos for smart people are things like:

          * University lectures

          * Conference talks

          * Random clips of homeowners doing some DIY repair

          i.e. things that were being done anyway, and someone decided to post it online because it's free and they wanted to be helpful. "Content creators" are already almost never making videos with high value information. The entire idea of "creating content" rather than "sharing information" is a bad framing to start from. When we recognize that "sharing information" is the high-value action, we're better able to see that it not only can be done by someone who isn't a full-time "creator", but may actually be done better by people who aren't devoted to it since their occupation is to be a practitioner of the field they're sharing information about. i.e. they are better informed.

          • pseudalopex

            yesterday at 6:21 PM

            Smart people enjoy many different things.

            • ndriscoll

              yesterday at 7:07 PM

              What I listed encompasses many things. You can find lectures on philosophy, biology, anatomy, psychology, physics, Russian literature, religion, history, or whatever topic you're interested in. It's more about depth of information and level of expertise of the presenter vs. "lower rung click bait garbage". Information that demands your full attention for an extended period of time and expects you'll put in effort to engage with it instead of just throwing gimmicks at you to hold a piece of your attention before you click away.

              Or if you want to enjoy some slop, then apparently we'll all get plenty of that if the smart people block malware, so no problem.

              Generally speaking, something with wide appeal is going to be trash anyway because most people aren't going to want to (or will be unable to) engage with any given topic at more than a superficial level. e.g. compare Andrew Ng's Coursera MOOC to problem sets you can find from his real class at Stanford. It is obvious that he watered down the information hard for Coursera. Almost every class on those MOOC sites is of the "X for non-X majors" variety at best (and that's for people who are motivated enough to self-learn!), which IMO is why it could never truly be disruptive. The "creators" people are talking about are generally this except even more targeted at mass audiences.

              Even for people who are interested in "smart" stuff, 100x more people will watch some 10 minute video of surface level discussion with doodles about algebraic geometry[0] and then move onto another 10 minute video vs. putting in the work to engage with 15+ hours of lectures on the subject from a Fields Medalist[1]. World-class researchers provide graduate level educational materials for free (which is awesome), but they could never succeed as "content creators" because any given video will only get ~1k views after years of being up.

              [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MflpyJwhMhQ

              [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8yHsr3EFj53j51FG6wCb...

        • kentm

          yesterday at 6:37 PM

          > It's worse than creators not making content, they move their content to be lower rung click bait garbage to maximize ad-views.

          They will do this whether or not people use ad-blockers. We've seen this happen before; someone will claim that they are an ethical ad company and don't do shady things, people allow-list in ad blockers, then they start ramping up.

          I remember back in the day where Google was a "good advertiser" because they had simple textual ads and didn't do shady things. IIRC plenty of ad blockers just allow-listed Google at that time. And then they acquired Doubleclick.

      • mbirth

        yesterday at 4:06 PM

        I remember a time where people actually had to pay money to publish their videos (on their own server, using their own storage). And they still did it if they wanted to get something out into the world.

  • rapind

    yesterday at 3:52 PM

    > So this is only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.

    Pretty sure this is harmful to youtube as well as it lowers the value (less personalization data) for advertisers. Also the knock-on effect of impacting creators, meaning less investment in creating content.

    That being said, I've always hated this business model. It's created so many other problems in our society. Resulting in a shift to authoritarian leadership in many countries.

    • DoctorOW

      yesterday at 3:54 PM

      Adblock users already have no value for advertisers.

  • awaythrow999

    yesterday at 4:00 PM

    Aren't many channels funded by the companies they pretend to get sponsorship from? If you look at the OSINT and Natsec adjacent topics there are many who have had the same sponsor for years: ground.news ... many pretend that they are indie content creators when they are just the marketing / growth hacking arm of the sponsor.

    Examples: Caspian report, Warfronts, Geopolitics decoded, ...

    Many of them (the content creator) are even located in the same city.

    • slightwinder

      yesterday at 4:16 PM

      > many pretend that they are indie content creators when they are just the marketing / growth hacking arm of the sponsor.

      Just curious, but can't they be both?

      I don't know those channels. The one I regularly see are very diverse in their partners, and usually the content is unrelated to the promotions. But overall those promotions are negotiated based on viewer counts, and at a certain size, they are more valuable than earnings from ads.

      • awaythrow999

        yesterday at 4:19 PM

        Absolutely can be both. And often they make it clear: like cappello army does. But then there are the more shady ones where it's less transparent

    • humpty-d

      yesterday at 4:06 PM

      Any credible evidence that they get enough money from the sponsorships to be considered fully funded by them? Or that ground news uses influence over these channels?

      I can throw a dart and hit a random podcast that has been sponsored by blue chew for years, but that doesn't mean said podcast is funded by them or bends to their whims.

      IMO your comment is pure conspiracy theory.

      • awaythrow999

        yesterday at 4:17 PM

        Why would thet be a conspiracy theory. The public facing guy who is behind Warfronts has 4 other channels that peddle content unrelated to natsec/warfare. If you follow "cappy army" and the drama he went through at "task and purpose" his former employer it becomes pretty clear that there are entire media companies behind what looks like "a single hobbyist content creator expat living in Prague" ...

  • actionfromafar

    yesterday at 3:59 PM

    Eventually the whole system will rebalance. TV ads were shown to people even though you couldn't if any single person was watching or not.

    Where does line go? If a future "Adblocker 3000" don't let advertisers capture you eyemovements in realtime 30 times per second, would that be sad?

    Seems the ball is with Youtube. They can compensete and pay out more. Or not.

  • izzydata

    yesterday at 3:56 PM

    That still isn't an issue for the end-user. It is Youtube's problem to keep their content creators happy and not mine.

    Personally I would even prefer anything that allows for a Youtube alternative to do better.

  • fleeting900

    yesterday at 9:50 PM

    Why do YouTube creators deserve special treatment compared to any other entity whose analytics are impacted by adblockers?

    Every publisher on the internet has been bleating for years about how adblockers negatively impact their business and their ability to provide [some value] to customers.

    If your ability to generate value is hitched to surveillance capitalism then that’s a choice, whether you’re a folksy mom and pop YouTube creator or a multinational publisher.

    • whatevertrevor

      yesterday at 11:50 PM

      I don't think the parent implies that. Advertising has destroyed a lot of value, YouTube or otherwise. But you can either push the equilibrium in a (imo) productive direction by paying your creators (via subscriptions) or continue to attack the symptom of the problem (ads) while everything shittifies further around you. That's the choice.

  • falcor84

    yesterday at 3:58 PM

    Oh, really, are you sure? They still charge advertisers the full amount? My understanding was that they're only charged if there is evidence of an "ad impression" which there shouldn't be if the request was blocked

    • slightwinder

      yesterday at 4:06 PM

      Why would they charge for an ad which was not shown? This is not about the view count of the ad.

  • thomastjeffery

    yesterday at 4:51 PM

    That's a rule defined by YouTube and/or advertisers in their relationship with content creators. By defining that rule, YouTube and/or advertisers have chosen to drag my participation into that relationship. My participation does not belong in their relationship. The only thing I can do to communicate my opinion on the matter is to do precisely what this "bug" entails.

  • xhkkffbf

    yesterday at 3:58 PM

    Isn't it likely that Google charges the advertisers for each time an ad is shown? So lower view counts mean lower ad views which means lower revenues for both Google and the content creators. (And, if the advertisers are counting on the views to drive their own business, it could mean lower revenues for them to go with the smaller ad bills.)

    • slightwinder

      yesterday at 4:04 PM

      The ads are not shown anyway. This is about the video where the ad would be embedded. Those are two different view counts.

• marklubi

  yesterday at 4:03 PM

  Might be a problem with Adblock, but also, Firefox just released an update that blocks social networks.

  I run a couple different privacy add-ons for various different levels of blocking things, but the Firefox update has seriously broken a lot of stuff

• andrewmcwatters

  yesterday at 3:45 PM

  A lot of people clearly didn’t like Yuki’s response, but he’s entirely right.

  • ecshafer

    yesterday at 3:51 PM

    The thumbs downs on Yuki's responses are baffling. It is a privacy filter, improving privacy. There is a strong para-social relationship with many younger internet users, so maybe people really do feel strongly about affecting their favorite youtube star's view count? Or it could be youtube creators who are worried. I can't think of any other reasons a user would be on the side of youtube here.

    • philipallstar

      yesterday at 4:01 PM

      Picking sides is silly. Just don't use YouTube, or pay for it with money or ad time and data.

      • barnabee

        today at 1:40 AM

        I’d rather actively hurt their business model, thanks

      • zelphirkalt

        yesterday at 4:21 PM

        I think, if that was YouTube's goal, they should close their platform tomorrow, and put everything behind a paid login. That would be the honest move. Instead they are trying to sneakily profit from viewers, by sneaking in ads in whatever way possible. They are employing dark pattern after pattern and are extorting "consent". It is entirely reasonable to block their dark patterns and just watch videos without ads. If it bothers them, go ahead, hide everything behind paid access. See how quickly their monopoly will evaporate then.

      • lupusreal

        yesterday at 4:12 PM

        I'll use it and I'll not pay.

    • Avamander

      yesterday at 6:20 PM

      This actually makes me feel more confident that it's actually blocking tracking and not caving in to vanity needs.

    • NewsaHackO

      yesterday at 5:05 PM

      > There is a strong para-social relationship with many younger internet users, so maybe people really do feel strongly about affecting their favorite youtube star's view count?

      100% this. They were even threatening him with facing the ire of social media if he didn't reopen the issue.

  • Bigsy

    yesterday at 4:23 PM

    Right or wrong you don't think it was unduly combative right off the bat? Manners cost nothing.

    • andrewmcwatters

      yesterday at 4:28 PM

      It’s not how I would have responded either, but people are entitled to their own ways of communicating.

• paxys

  yesterday at 6:29 PM

  It doesn't really affect YouTube either, it affects creators who rely on view counts to monetize their channels.

• yesterday at 4:02 PM

Don't forget to like, subscribe, hype, hit the bell, and turn off your adblocker! Thankfully I think Sponsorblock has a section for those points in the videos.

• xandrius

  yesterday at 8:52 PM

  Never mention that word, the fewer the people who know about it the better. It's one of my favourite things in my online life xD

Great, finally a thread Youtube employees might be looking at.

Ever since the election you guys RAMPED up the ads, please drop it back down. It's becoming unbearable to get a 50 minute podcast AD every 5 minutes of video I watch when I'm shingling a roof and my phone is in the truck. There HAS to be some limits here.

• pluto_modadic

  yesterday at 11:21 PM

  I don't think the grunts get to decide. youtube is now governed by the dude who used to run AdSense, and has a mandate to fix revenue losses.

• sojournerc

  today at 2:21 AM

  Firefox and ublock origin, or... Just pay for it

• thetrb

  yesterday at 10:52 PM

  Do you think a random Youtube employee makes that decision and can just drop it lower?

  • throwmeaway222

    yesterday at 11:04 PM

    No, but feedback goes into the machine in odd ways. This has a 1000x higher factor of being considered and thought of more than any other forum.

No, I won't turn my ad blocker off. In fact, I go further and use uMatrix to block ALL third party content by default on ALL websites (uBlock in advanced mode can also do this). That's on top of an aggressive DNS-level blacklists targeting ads and trackers.

Some manual adjustment to allow CDN on some websites is needed, but 95% of the cruft is left out. That cruft is usually malware in a broad sense: ads, trackers, embedded Youtube videos that seem benign but allow Google to follow users across the Internet, etc.

• roscas

  yesterday at 9:33 PM

  But how many people know how to do that? Almost zero.

  So it is up to us tech guys to teach them about the danger it is to open a single web site without protection. Several levels of protection.

  Including stop being abused by Windows, switch to Linux. But there is so much more to do, that it is very hard to teach and make people do it.

  Everything is created to abuse you, and most of people don't have a single clue about what is going on.

• AlgebraFox

  today at 2:02 AM

  uMatrix is not maintained. Use NoScript or uBlockOrigin.

From the GitHub issue it becomes clear that blocking happens by the EasyPrivacy blocklist. The blocked URL youtube.com/api/stats/atr is/can also be used for tracking users, this is why some are arguing that it legitimately on that blocklist.

The tracking not malicious. YouTube has a legitimate interest to verify views, e.g. to recommend popular videos to others. If a view counter was increased by just invoking an API, view counts could be manipulated easily. Also see the video [1] from ... 13 years ago ... so it might be slighly outdated. Just slightly.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI

Counter-argument: Youtube's aggressive anti-ads campaign resulted in failed loads, videos that appear stuck, etc. The more techy people would have updated, but others were left with the choice of a buggy experience or dreadfully long ads. Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.

• PaulHoule

  yesterday at 3:57 PM

  Plus so many ads are malware, dangerous, or scams that even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker

  https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/

  YouTube is one of the worst offenders for scam ads. Even today you sometimes find an ad that talks about some scary health risk and points to some ad that drones on and on for 45 minutes and if you get to the end they try to sign you up for an $80 a month subscription for some worthless supplement.

  • Sanzig

    yesterday at 4:18 PM

    A deepfake version of Mark Carney keeps trying to get me to sign up for scam crypto exchanges. Clicking the report link does nothing.

    With all the money that Google has plowed into AI, they clearly could solve this problem if they want to. The fact that it's still an issue means they don't care, or are happy to take the ad money from the fraudsters.

    • mitthrowaway2

      yesterday at 4:39 PM

      I'm seeing the same ad. There's no way that can be legal to broadcast.

      • AlexandrB

        yesterday at 5:18 PM

        The problem is enforcement. Legal or not, it's extremely unlikely that law enforcement will pursue these kinds of scams.

    • throwawayben

      yesterday at 4:53 PM

      yeah I had a deep fake Kier Starmer tell me about some investment opportunity with guaranteed returns.

      • mindslight

        yesterday at 5:01 PM

        Where is the "ads are just a way of telling people about things they might want" crowd? heh.

        • PaulHoule

          yesterday at 5:39 PM

          I can make that argument wholeheartedly, not even as a “steelman” when it comes to legitimate advertising but so much of it is criminal, morally if not legally —- and the victim is not just the viewer but also the advertiser which is running ads that are completely mistargeted, that damage their brand, or get fraudulent clicks —- I remember the layout of anandtech always shifting around so you would try to click on a link and just before you did an ad would slide under your finger and ka-Ching! Was it by accident or design.

          On the other hand I’ve known people who sold ads for newspaper and radio and all of them had some sense of ethics.

        • themafia

          yesterday at 8:31 PM

          Right behind the "regulatory agencies are asleep at the switch" crowd.

          If you build /anything/ there will be people who dedicate time to learning how to abuse it for profit.

          We don't live in Narnia.

        • rchaud

          yesterday at 9:33 PM

          They live in the pages of an economics textbook, blissfully untethered from reality.

        • cjs_ac

          yesterday at 7:52 PM

          An investment opportunity with guaranteed returns is something I would definitely want if it actually existed.

  • bscphil

    yesterday at 5:20 PM

    I endorse the view that everyone should use an ad blocker, but for what it's worth I keep seeing this techcrunch article and the original advice offered by the FBI [1] is actually much more limited.

    > Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.

    So the specific recommendation is that you turn on an ad blocker while performing searches. Why are they so concerned about searches? It's because of a specific form of fraud, where someone purchases an ad pretending to be the business you're searching for, but actually takes you "to a webpage that looks identical to the impersonated business’s official webpage" - that is, a phishing scam.

    That's way more limited than the "FBI recommends ad blocker" statement would lead you to believe. From the FBI's point of view, pitching a bullshit supplement in an ad (what you're talking about) is an entirely legitimate business practice, and selling supplements is legal in the US so long as you don't make certain medical claims or imply FDA approval.

    [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221222162340/https://www.ic3.g...

    • ikekkdcjkfke

      yesterday at 5:28 PM

      I borrowed the phone of someone who is older to watch a facebook video in the app. In the middle of the video there was a video ad with sound playing, an amber alert for sound and a warning to click the link. The next ad after that one was also a warning that there was a virus and you needed to click the link

      • PaulHoule

        yesterday at 5:40 PM

        In the age of A.I. blocking that kind of content should be easier than shooting fish in a bucket and the false positives should all be things the platform would be better off without.

    • conductr

      yesterday at 8:23 PM

      I think searches are just a common entry point to the internet at large. People search then they have some mistaken trust those links are legit.

  • alex1138

    yesterday at 5:21 PM

    I see it as part of the same general package. The censoring for any reason at all (including real time, via AI, in the comments, which were already! ruined by Google+ integration going back years)

    Youtube Rewind 2018 - before they got rid of dislikes, to make ad videos harder to spot - was one of (was the?) most disliked videos in Youtube history

    A very far cry from the halcyon days of ~10 years earlier

  • complianceowl

    yesterday at 4:52 PM

    100%. I can't count the amount of times I've seen an AI-generated Elon Musk promoting a Tesla coin lol. I've lost count.

• slightwinder

  yesterday at 4:27 PM

  > Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.

  This specific case is about an unusual high drop of viewers specifically on desktops on a specific date. The assumptions are, that it's just too unusual for the normal drop in that timeframe, so it has to be a bug of some kind. Would it be a normal drop in viewers, it would not be on a specific date, months after the problems with AdBlocks started.

  • bArray

    yesterday at 5:29 PM

    There is middle-ground: anti- ad-blocker changes cause a large number of ad-blockers to fail entirely.

    It would make sense too, Youtube wouldn't care to make their videos viewable to a large number of ad-blockers, and ad-revenue would be near steady because ad-blockers were not generating any ad revenue.

• kllrnohj

  yesterday at 4:17 PM

  > Maybe people just got fed up with Youtube.

  Creators are not reporting any declines in ad revenue that match the drop in view count. Indeed several have reported revenue is the same despite the view count drop. So it's quite unlikely people are fed up with youtube in any meaningful way.

  • bArray

    yesterday at 5:30 PM

    The people using ad-blockers were not watching ads, so it would not make a difference to revenue streams. If anything, profit would go up because Youtube server capacity is not being used as much by ad-block users.

• tap-snap-or-nap

  yesterday at 10:14 PM

  Some people I know do not ever change any settings on their computers, they certainly are worst hit by youtube's ads and have given up opening youtube links or close youtube links immediately after because there are 3-4 ads before the video even begins.

• aequitas

  yesterday at 6:14 PM

  I consider myself a little techy, since I visit this site quite often. But for me YouTube is curing me from my addiction to it by ramping up its ad blocker blockers. I know I have to wait roughly the ad’s runtime looking at a frozen video before the video actually starts playing and it is often enough to let me go do something productive or useful instead. Thanks google :)

• shadowgovt

  yesterday at 3:54 PM

  This article is less about view counts dropping due to people abandoning the platform and more about view count spikes and troughs that are a consequence of the measure-countermeasure game of YouTube tweaking its code to account for ad blockers vs. ad blockers tweaking their code to account for YouTube ads.

  Ad blockers (especially for complex sites and data streams) are basically like using a chainsaw to remove a mosquito(1); sometimes innocuous or beneficial features get omitted too because they're too "ad-shaped" for the heuristic.

  (1) Anyone who thinks I'm under-selling the risks of unblocked ads has never seen the consequence of an unlucky bite from Aedes aegypti.

  • sebastiennight

    yesterday at 4:55 PM

    This is the last thread I would ever have expected to see those little striped monsters mentioned.

    Not sure about the chainsaw analogy, but I guess Aedes Aegypti is a fair metaphor for the cumulative effect of the tiny daily (hourly?) annoyance of the free-with-ads model.

    • shadowgovt

      yesterday at 6:51 PM

      And like the mosquito, ads can sometimes give you viruses!

• tantalor

  yesterday at 5:24 PM

  "would have updated" what? Their browser?

  • bArray

    yesterday at 5:33 PM

    For quite a few people, they would have had to manually pull in an updated ad-blocker change. This would be the case if they run the source release, or have disabled updates.

Good.

This era of streaming being a viable business model is an aberration, and it will end.

And frankly, the sooner the better. It's not clear to me how funnelling an entire generation into trying to be 'content creators' has in any way been a positive development. Tons of young people are expending untold effort trying to secure for themselves a discretionary fiefdom from Google, and meanwhile our bridges are collapsing and our society withers.

I realise everyone's deep into parasocial relationships with their favourite creators already, so I don't expect this to be a popular view, but I will note that (a) people made hobby content for fun before YouTube, and will do so after YouTube, and (b) we're pretty well aware of what the social consequences of this industry are, and they're not great.

We're ripe for a situation where YouTube subpoenas ISPs MPAA 2.0 style over their users habitually accessing video and audio content streams without paying or validating through their ad chain. Google has every way from Sunday to identify users very accurately and I see it being an option on the table to ban accounts to the name, and potentially seek damages. RIAA did it for MP3s, MPAA for video content; rule of thirds?

Ultimately most sane people see ads as vomitpuke and this will continue to be a contention.

• belorn

  yesterday at 11:42 PM

  I would find it exceptional interesting if youtube moved away from the concept of providing content for free without an expectation for repayment, to a model of selling a service. Selling a services is covered under a very different kind of laws, and where I live, tax law, while giving away content for free with ads has their own little exception carved out for it.

  It is similar to how phone companies had to charge 0.1 cent for phones, rather than advertise it as gratis. The law said that companies could not advertise a product as being gratis if they also expect the customer to pay for it in terms of a binding contract with a provider, but they can sell the phone for any amount greater than 0 and have it as a combined sale with a binding contract. Thus companies changed how they sold their product, and also had to inform the customer of the binding terms (and if I recall, expected total cost) in the advertisements.

  As one politician put it; You can't put a sale tax on services supported through advertisement since the customer may watch the full add, half the add, or none of it. Since the tax office can't determine how much of an add, if anything, is watched, there is no value in the exchange for which to tax.

• thousand_nights

  yesterday at 10:27 PM

  i've noticed recently youtube added a "most commonly skipped to" marker on their videos which is very useful when watching on my TV which doesn't support sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments

  more and more youtube creators seem to be integrating their sponsors in their videos in a way where if you skip it you miss an integral part and i do wonder if this is youtube's way of fighting against being left out, but then again, i don't know shit, just an interesting observation

  • drozycki

    yesterday at 11:27 PM

    Have you looked at https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV ?

What is the technical challenge behind stealthily blocking ads? Making the backend unaware if ads are actually being seen or not - just fetched.

This may even serve as some accelerationism for invasive web tech where ad middlemen may resort to doing render checks. The invasive practice may with low likelihood advance some web technologies into blocking such measures.

• Bilal_io

  yesterday at 10:47 PM

  Not sure what the technical challenge here is either. I use an ad blocker and I assumed YouTube already counted my view, since the video can be found in my YouTube history.

  • Macha

    today at 1:08 AM

    I imagine watch history view tracking and view count view tracking and possibly even ad impression view tracking are three disconnected systems. Google is still going to update your history view even if it thinks you're a bot so you don't know you're being filtered out for example. The data to power that UI can also be partitioned by user while the ad and view count data needs to be aggregated performantly across large numbers of users in different slices. On the other hand your watch history doesn't keep multiple entries if you watch the same video multiple times in a day (say a music video on loop) but does want to charge for each ad impression seperately.

• pluto_modadic

  yesterday at 11:20 PM

  render the video twice -> gotcha, the GPU needs to run TPM code and knows where the buffer will go.

Go complain to Youtube, where the views should be measured on the backend instead of via an API call.

Does anyone realize how many missed views this implies??

• SoftTalker

  yesterday at 3:49 PM

  They certainly are counting views on the backend also, and I'm sure they know exactly what the cause of the discrepancy (or "drop" as they term it) is.

  • giancarlostoro

    yesterday at 4:16 PM

    They probably use a combination of the API and raw server requests due to how easy it would be otherwise to spoof viewership for ad revenue fraud. Would not surprise me anyway.

• slightwinder

  yesterday at 3:52 PM

  I also see the opposite problem: can one abuse that API to artificial inflate the view count?

• Workaccount2

  yesterday at 4:01 PM

  Ad-block views don't help anyone anyway, so I'm not sure why this would matter. If anything it's more accurate.

  • owisd

    yesterday at 5:31 PM

    View count is used to guide to price embedded sponsors, so in the short term matters while things get recalibrated.

• thrance

  yesterday at 3:43 PM

  It does kinda make sense for once, you probably wouldn't want to just count API calls for views. I heard you need to watch a significant portion of the video before it counts as a view.

• giancarlostoro

  yesterday at 4:15 PM

  What if its both? ;)

• poly2it

  yesterday at 3:37 PM

  How many?

  • SchizoDuckie

    yesterday at 3:39 PM

    Only YouTube can tell, that's the fun part.

    • emsign

      yesterday at 3:44 PM

      And because only YouTube knows this, they can tell us anything they want.

  • tomasphan

    yesterday at 3:38 PM

    [dead]

• archerx

  yesterday at 3:36 PM

  I realized this when I watched one of my friends music videos to give the extra view (they had less than 100) but the views number didn’t go up because of my ad blocker.

  • SchizoDuckie

    yesterday at 3:38 PM

    afairc sub-100 views are not counted in realtime anyway.

    • reddalo

      yesterday at 3:55 PM

      I think it was 300.

      • ConfuSomu

        yesterday at 10:12 PM

        Then it used to stop at 301 views, while the system was verifying the veracity of the views, or at least, that's what I've been told…

  • esafak

    yesterday at 3:39 PM

    Because Google still can't count that low, amirite?!

Let me guess they are not blaming the terrible ad experience that cause people to use ad blockers?

But are really this many users actively using ad blockers? Presumably, a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native app that doesn't even support this. If we subtract them, then a significant share of users on browser would have to be using EasyList.

• Workaccount2

  yesterday at 4:03 PM

  Something like ~30% of desktop users use ad-block.

  If you are tech or tech-adjacent content, it can double or triple that.

  • geerlingguy

    yesterday at 5:22 PM

    40-50% of desktop users on my channel, heh.

    I don't hold it against anyone. YouTube's ads are horrible, and overstuffed into videos.

    I use premium and know not everyone can afford it, but one concern I have is premium views are also not counted if someone still uses the adblocker while logged into YouTube premium. (So you miss out on the view and on that extra bit of premium revenue).

• PeterisP

  yesterday at 8:47 PM

  One report (https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/) indicated that more than half of Americans use an ad blocker.

• Eji1700

  yesterday at 3:42 PM

  I would suspect it affects specific channels more than others. Obviously smaller tech channels are probably hit the hardest % wise

• drnick1

  yesterday at 7:37 PM

  "a lot of users are on mobile devices where they are using the native app that doesn't even support this."

  Laughs in NewPipe.

  • xandrius

    yesterday at 8:53 PM

    Laughs in patched YT.

• miyuru

  yesterday at 4:03 PM

  Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin.

• charcircuit

  yesterday at 3:42 PM

  The view drop only happened for desktop views.

Interesting, I thought it was due to absolutely horrible TV UI redesign which now shows exactly 1 and a bit of a video thumbnail on my 77" TV. Who the heck designs that.

• Insanity

  yesterday at 4:10 PM

  Huh, I'm having a hard time interpreting what that looks like. Have a link to a photo you can share anywhere? The "1 and a bit" part is confusing.

  • izacus

    yesterday at 4:27 PM

    Not around the TV right now, but they increased the size of the thumbnails in the first row of "Recommended" content to the point where only one is visible fully. (Not unlike new Netflix UI)

    I might be in some A/B test tho.

    • Insanity

      yesterday at 4:28 PM

      ahh, that sounds like a poor UI indeed given the screen real-estate.

So Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?

Wouldn't surprise me if we now see a new trend of "click like, bell, and suscribe and don't forget to disable your ad blocker!".

Obviously they don't care about these views since they are not generating ad revenue. Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals etc do care though.

• granzymes

  yesterday at 4:17 PM

  According to the GitHub issue, YouTube didn’t change anything. There are two endpoints that can be used to attribute a view. One is called multiple times throughout a video playback and has been in the easylist privacy filter for years. The other is called at the start of a playback, and was just added to the list (the timing lines up with the reports of view drops from tech YouTubers).

  This is not definitive proof that easylist caused the view drops, but it’s I’ve read the issue and a writeup by a YouTube creator and it seems pretty likely.

  • swiftcoder

    yesterday at 4:20 PM

    That's not quite what the github issue says? There appear to be several potentially contributing changes in the time window, and one of them actually re-enables a previously blocked YouTube analytics endpoint

    • granzymes

      yesterday at 4:22 PM

      The re-enabled endpoint is yet a third endpoint different from the two I mentioned above.

      Turns out YouTube has a lot of analytics.

• reddalo

  yesterday at 3:56 PM

  >Youtubers who use view counts for sponsor deals

  Laughs in SponsorBlock

  • jjice

    yesterday at 4:05 PM

    Hell, YouTube even added that feature where it'll autoskip commonly skipped section so it's basically a built in SponsorBlock at this point (no doubt helped powered by those who skip via SponsorBlock). I'm surprised I haven't seen any controversy from people who are having their sponsors pay less because of this.

    • netsharc

      yesterday at 4:25 PM

      Hah, the next move will be picture-in-picture ads (whether the ad or the content will be in the box in the corner depends on the desperation...

      Reminds me of F1 racing coverage on a free-to-air German TV network being reduced to a letterbox..

      • FinnKuhn

        yesterday at 4:29 PM

        In my opinion the only sponsorships that actually work are the ones that are integrated into the content.

        For example Linus Tech Tips wearing his clothing in his videos and using his screwdriver. For car and/or hardware channels I often see sponsors products being used throughout the video as well, which you can't skip with Sponsor block.

        • StackRanker3000

          yesterday at 4:58 PM

          What do you mean when you say ”work”? That you personally find them helpful? Or that they’re the only ones that can’t be easily avoided even if the viewer wants to?

          I think it’s pretty clear that other forms of sponsorships also drive revenue to advertisers (whatever people may feel about that)

          • FinnKuhn

            yesterday at 6:15 PM

            I think the two existing replies to this question already answered this mostly, but I would define a "working" sponsorship as one that makes me consider buying it. Sponsorships that are basically just an add I don't even see thanks to SponsorBlock for example. So those are "not working" for me.

            But for the LTT screwdriver or the bamboo labs 3D printers where I see how they can be used I actually consider buying them or have already done so. One factor for this is obviously that they can't be skipped, but the bigger one is that they are obviously more relevant for me as I am already interested in the video's topic and therefore the products used in it.

          • BizarroLand

            yesterday at 5:46 PM

            Work as in, "are effective at advertising a product"

            Showing "regular" people solving common recurring issues like, "what clothes should I wear, what tool will simplify this task, what products are effective at a good value, what software/hardware can accomplish the goals I have set" are the only effective advertising for many people.

            Sure, with kids you can show them a cool toy that other kids are playing with, inspiring desire.

            You can show adults and teens a sexy girl or a hot guy somehow attached to the product so that by association your product is hot or sexy, but those are the low handing fruit and only work on specific demographics.

            However, if you can clearly identify your target audience and then put a product that matches that audience in front of them while showing how the product is being used, thats it. Everyone who would purchase that type of product will buy it.

          • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

            yesterday at 5:15 PM

            > Or that they’re the only ones that can’t be easily avoided even if the viewer wants to?

            Surely this one given what they wrote.

            > which you can't skip

        • jorvi

          yesterday at 8:40 PM

          What I've never understood is, aren't people slowly waking up to product placement and sponsored content?

          Whenever I see something thoroughly being advertised, and especially stealthily advertised, I immediately assume you have a shit product and need to bribe your way to success. Nothing turns me off more from a product than seeing an advertisement for it.

        • legitster

          yesterday at 7:15 PM

          Honestly, LTT does a real good job of their in-content ads as well. 30 seconds at the beginning and end. Them being so short and sweet really makes them more palatable.

          What's crazy is they've said their 60 seconds of ads per video generate way more revenue per video than Google's minutes of Google Adsense ads. So the real story here is the collapse of Adsense.

        • unsignedint

          yesterday at 8:22 PM

          Product placement ads can be the best kind when they’re done well. The catch is they take far more effort to weave naturally into content, and that limits the kinds of sponsorships you can accept.

          The sweet spot is when it feels seamless, but too often creators overdo it and the result is hilariously awkward. Think of someone discussing, say, the dangers of mountain climbing, then suddenly blurting out: “And you know what else is dangerous? An unprotected connection. Which is why you need X VPN!”

      • ta1243

        yesterday at 5:07 PM

        Idiocracy TV

        https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/uploads/2007/01...

        • PaulHoule

          yesterday at 5:41 PM

          YouTube stole that user interface, Judge should have sued them.

      • mitthrowaway2

        yesterday at 4:38 PM

        YouTube already does this for livestreams.

    • Workaccount2

      yesterday at 5:07 PM

      I believe it is only a premium feature, and premium user views pay substantially more than sponsors or ads.

    • BizarroLand

      yesterday at 5:41 PM

      I'll stick with Sponsorblock since Googles motto is "Embrace, Expand, Extinguish"

      • craftkiller

        yesterday at 8:08 PM

        It's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" (assuming you're referring to the phrase from Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... )

        • BizarroLand

          yesterday at 9:53 PM

          Yes, right, thank you

  • stemlord

    yesterday at 4:53 PM

    I find it incredibly difficult to shed any sympathy for youtube "content creators". Youtube was most entertaining, or at least most interesting before anyone was monetizing the platform. Same goes for most of thr rest of the web but I digress

    • zanellato19

      yesterday at 5:52 PM

      That's bizarre. I watch a lot of great content on YouTube that's possible because those people get paid. I would rather like if YouTube paid them _more_ because the sponsors and patrons of the world prove that not all views are the same. Sadly, a lot of shit content gets lots and lots of views

      • everforward

        yesterday at 6:23 PM

        I dislike it because it exposes content creators to similar pressures as traditional TV. There's a lot of content that doesn't get made because that content would be unsponsorable or worse yet would make the creator in general unsponsorable. It's also created some strange and twisted linguistics to appease sponsors or YouTube's algorithm like "unalive" or "PDF file" (as a standin for pedophile).

        I guess it's the way of the world, but the introduction of heavy monetization has definitely influenced the kind of content YouTube carries.

        • whatevaa

          yesterday at 7:43 PM

          You can make content without monetization in mind. But it's like giving your time away.

          Content which doesn't get made without sponsorship wouldn't get made even if sponsorships didn't exist.

          People want to get rewarded for they work, you know. Do you also want your plumber to work for free?

          • PeterisP

            yesterday at 8:36 PM

            I'd probably be OK if all the content which doesn't get made without sponsorship wouldn't get made at all, and the people who work as content creators stopped doing so. There is an overabundance of new content, having 10x less content would be perfectly fine, and in pretty much every niche there are amateur enthusiasts who clearly (based on their amount of viewers) are giving their time away, and their content is in many ways preferable and "more real" than the professionals - so I'd be OK if all the professionals stop and these awkward amateur enthusiasts are all that remain.

            The same applies to web and blogs; the ability to monetize them by ads (and I do remember the "old web" before it was the case) increased the content but drowned out viewership for the true enthusiasts running things in their spare time, which IMHO were more valuable and I think that regime was better; again, losing 90% or 99% of the content wouldn't be bad in my mind, there still would be more than enough for anyone to ever "consume".

          • stemlord

            today at 1:11 AM

            >You can make content without monetization in mind. But it's like giving your time away.

            You're missing the point entirely, the content I refer to as more interesting is stuff people made for fun or on principle not because of financial incentive

            Imagine if people only commented on hn because they were expecting a paycheck for it

    • rafram

      yesterday at 4:56 PM

      It would be great to live in a world where everyone could make cool stuff without needing to get paid, but we don't. Monetization is why YouTube gained a community in the first place.

      • ahepp

        yesterday at 5:06 PM

        That simply isn’t true. YouTube had a huge community when it was just amateurs sharing videos for the love of the sport. Professional content creators didn’t come along until much later.

        • rafram

          yesterday at 5:20 PM

          And they stayed because they could get paid for it.

          • Eisenstein

            yesterday at 5:59 PM

            It can be argued whether it is better to have creators who make it their income to constantly produce content or to have a revolving door of amateurs who cut their teeth on video production in youtube and move on.

        • whatevaa

          yesterday at 7:45 PM

          You can do that today too. Like a channel Airborne Entertainment, strapping a boat motor to a car. Dump engineering, just two dudes doing stupid shit.

• ziml77

  yesterday at 4:43 PM

  If all videos are affected by this, then it really should not be hard for these people to adjust their deals with sponsors to compensate.

  • babypuncher

    yesterday at 5:09 PM

    If views aren't being counted, it will still hurt their revenue from YouTube Premium subcribers. Premium views pay out a lot more than ad revenue from "free" views so that can hurt a lot.

    • tantalor

      yesterday at 5:22 PM

      YT premium subscribers should disable adblockers anyway

      • CamperBob2

        yesterday at 5:31 PM

        Why?

        • tantalor

          yesterday at 5:31 PM

          Because YT doesn't serve ads to those users, so there is nothing to block at best, and at worst it screws up view counts.

          • flerchin

            yesterday at 5:39 PM

            I pay for premium. YouTube clearly keeps track of what I'm watching. It's in my history amongst other things. My adblocker is not coming down.

            • whatevaa

              yesterday at 7:46 PM

              They are serving you that content. They know anyway.

          • righthand

            yesterday at 5:46 PM

            You’re wrong. The tracking code is two pronged: 1 to serve you ads, 2 to track you. By blocking ads while paying for Youtube Premium you block the tracking end as well.

            This goes for any site that sells you an ad-free subscription. No ads but you’re still being profiled.

            • LexiMax

              yesterday at 6:08 PM

              People who pay for YouTube Premium are already tracked by virtue of the fact that they are a logged in user who has a credit card associated with their account.

              Google has to do no legwork here to figure out who you are and what videos you are watching. There is no ambiguity. There should be no reason to not count views from Premium subscribers who don't disable their ad-blocker.

              I'm sure Google knows this, and has a good reason for this behavior that they are not telling us. I'm not sure what it could be, other than spite.

              • righthand

                yesterday at 6:19 PM

                Yes but I guess the advice is better supported on platforms where your identity is not directly tied.

                No reason to ever turn off your ad-blocker even if you do pay and they identify you.

                • tantalor

                  yesterday at 7:35 PM

                  If the point of "ad blocker" is not to "block ads" then maybe it needs rebranding.

                  • ndriscoll

                    yesterday at 7:47 PM

                    Right, they are content blockers with a focus on malware (but also annoyances like cookie banners or whatever you'd like via right-click menu). Adware is a subset of what they block. "Web malware blocker" is probably the most concise while reasonably correct characterization.

                    "People should disable their web malware blockers to support creators" makes the insanity of the proposition as clear as it ought to be. "FBI recommends using a web malware blocker" makes the advice as obvious as it ought to be.

                    • tantalor

                      yesterday at 8:09 PM

                      That makes a lot of sense.

          • CamperBob2

            yesterday at 5:34 PM

            (Shrug) As a Premium user, Google obviously knows what videos I'm watching, given that I'm logged in. Failure to credit the creator accordingly would amount to fraud.

            So that sounds like a 'them' problem, not a 'me' problem. There is no reason for ad tracking to play any role in the process whatsoever.

            • ziml77

              yesterday at 10:25 PM

              I'm not sure why it seems you have downvotes for saying that. Premium users by their very nature need to be logged in. YouTube has all of the watch stats for logged in users without needing the view to hit an extra analytics endpoint. They can and should just use that.

      • disiplus

        yesterday at 5:42 PM

        no.

• gizmo686

  yesterday at 5:08 PM

  YouTube has a BrandConnect program where they facilitate sponsored videos. I'm not sure how many sponsorships are done through that as opposed to third party agents though.

• dmix

  yesterday at 5:33 PM

  > Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?

  Youtube isnt quoted in this article. It's someones speculation

  • spankalee

    yesterday at 6:12 PM

    YouTube is quoted in the article.

    > Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts. Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion of users utilizing such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic related to updates to these tools.

• carlosjobim

  yesterday at 5:09 PM

  View counts is a worthless metric for sponsor deals, as are any other type of metric provided by a third party.

  To get exact metrics, you should use discount codes that are unique for each channel. Then you will know the exact amount of sales each sponsorship is netting.

  • kelvinjps

    yesterday at 5:24 PM

    I believe the metrics are before the sponsorship is made, like a company will only sponsor a creator if that creator has more than a number of views

• cactusplant7374

  yesterday at 5:01 PM

  Brave will hit 100 MAU this year. That is a lot of users that will never see ads.

Heaven forbid Google/Youtube actually count/measure the streaming output themselves. Same goes to CBS/Paramount whose whole service breaks (on some streams) when using a pihole.

Maybe a "view", however YT defines it, is a poor metric? It doesn't show engagement and it's time for YTers to have better means for analytics.

I have an Android TV device, and YT has been so horrible with its constant ads popping up, that I have to put it on MUTE to prevent any further brainrot.

I wonder when they're going to blame me muting my TV and harm their viewership. Or maybe they will just prevent me from being able to mute it.

• bl4kers

  yesterday at 11:54 PM

  SmartTube is way better and free: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/

I’ve been using Brave browser to watch YouTube for years. Haven’t seen one ad in years. I’m probably part of the problem

Hordes of people skipping ads is a reasonable price to pay for market monopoly.

Source: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/373195597

It could be the causality runs the other direction; I know that my youtube viewing is way down since they decided that they could decide what software I may/may not run on my computer.

• pndy

  yesterday at 3:07 PM

  On your computer? Could you elaborate?

  • MarkusQ

    yesterday at 3:13 PM

    They told me I couldn't run ad blocker/anti-virus software on my computer while watching their videos. So I stopped watching their videos. (Technically, the videos aren't theirs, but belong to the creators. Many of them provide the same (or better) content on other platforms),

    • kouteiheika

      yesterday at 4:11 PM

      You adblocker is misconfigured; I haven't seen any ads or anti-adblocker popups in months.

> I don't want views going down for creators on youtube.

Agree to disagree. That's kind of the point of an ad blocker.

If you want to support creators, stop blocking their ads.

• OsrsNeedsf2P

  yesterday at 4:03 PM

  Views support the videos in the algorithm.

  Do you think someone like Louis Rossman, who wants to use Youtube to share his message but doesn't use YT as a business, would rather views or ad money?

  • humpty-d

    yesterday at 4:10 PM

    Presumably Louis wants to reach as many people as possible and would like to know how many people he's reaching though.

    • Telaneo

      yesterday at 5:54 PM

      I suspect his desire for people to block ads ranks higher than his desire for statistics.

  • bobsmooth

    yesterday at 10:02 PM

    Rossman has a separate business to support him.

• bazmattaz

  yesterday at 8:43 PM

  I block ads on my favourite channel but then support the guy through Patreon every month. I figure he’ll get more revenue form that than the shitty ads

Lengths Google are going to fighting ad blockers when really it's a small niche of people who can't stand to use their platform without one is getting silly and this feels like a tactic to try and push the onus on making people turn them off on their favorite youtubers

• arccy

  yesterday at 6:40 PM

  is it a small niche when the youtube creators can see it in their stats and are panicking?

Off-topic, but this 9to5google blog is the first I’ve seen “top comment” embedded inline with the blog post. That’s really cool. It’s more like how you’d comment on a google doc rather than threaded conversations appended to the end of it. I’d like to see more exploration of this UX…

Yesterday I wanted to watch a video of a song which was made originally english. It was auto translating lyrics to german. I just speak some spanish and some english. Couldn't decide if I should be annoyed with it translating to a language I just know a handful of words or should be thankful because it's trying to help me learn more of it.

No problem YouTube. I'd rather give my data to the browser extension which brings back dislikes.

The fact that a client-side change can impact reported views is wild. Its so wildly the wrong place to track views that it forces me to wonder if its an intentional & malicious decision by Google to mobilize YouTube creators against the idea of viewer privacy.

• jsnell

  yesterday at 5:31 PM

  This is how it has worked for ages. If you think about it for a bit, I think you'd come up with all kinds of reasons for why this can't be done with just server-side signals.

  For example, how do you account for skipping over already fetched parts of the video or rewatching the same section multiple times?

  Or for the entire video being cached and researched? For bots downloading the video?

  The idea that this is some malicious anti-adblocker time bomb implanted a decade ago is preposterous.

• donmcronald

  yesterday at 9:33 PM

  Yeah. How does the client get trusted and could someone write a view amplifier that reports extra views to YouTube? I would assume it’s already being abused if they trust the client side to report views. If they’re not trusting the client, the ad blocker explanation doesn’t work.

  It makes no sense.

• mbirth

  yesterday at 5:23 PM

  Did we hear anything about people using ad blockers and still having YouTube's watch history enabled reporting that a watched video didn't pop up in the history?

• yesterday at 4:31 PM

Am I the only person who is confused by the anger from people who use a free service (like YouTube) or participate in a gig service (like Uber), and get upset when it doesn't go their way? Meaning, they get upset when they cannot make money off services provided by a company. Seems like entitlement to me.

• Insanity

  yesterday at 4:08 PM

  Disagree - the services make money _from_ the users. It's a symbiotic relationship, and I totally understand the frustration. Especially when decisions are opaque and you're left guessing about what 'the platform' is doing.

• mtrovo

  yesterday at 4:30 PM

  Lol honestly, not sure how they can be compared. Uber is a shitty proposition in any way and is mostly a way for us to get easy access to cheap labor. Nobody ever got rich driving for Uber.

  There's no way you can say the same about YouTube, the value proposition is quite good and it leveled the field in a way traditional media would never do, just think for a moment what's the chance of seeing someone like MrBeast surging as a TV personality.

• bobsmooth

  yesterday at 10:04 PM

  Yes. People feel entitled to free shit and refuse to pay even with their attention.

I wish their algorithm would show me videos with my actual interests, instead of some kind of repeat material click maximization

• smusamashah

  yesterday at 3:31 PM

  I get good recommendations. They key is to not getting distracted by videos you don't really want to see in the feed. Its very tempting some times and watching just one video can mess up the feed. Takes a while to get back.

  Same with twitter.

• kouteiheika

  yesterday at 4:09 PM

  Have you tried clicking on the the dot dropdown menu and selecting "Not interested" or "Don't recomment channel"?

  • hightrix

    yesterday at 4:44 PM

    I've found that "Not Interested" does either nothing or sends an engagement signal to show me more of the same. "Don't recommend channel" does seem to work with that channel, at least.

• pndy

  yesterday at 3:56 PM

  I'm seeing abundance channels with generated content - doesn't matter if it's official page, "proxy" services or apps. It's always heartbreaking stories about poor senior women whose lives are hell because of their families or homeless girls who want to eat leftovers from the plates of the rich, or supposed death of celebrities.

  Considering I have zero interest in this stuff it seems their algorithm pushes such trash by cross-referencing with the closest thing possible - even by a digital picometer distance.

• grues-dinner

  yesterday at 3:33 PM

  I'm getting videos with under 10 views in my recommendations now. They're AI generated "educational" videos, but sound like interesting documentaries. Considering how many users YouTube had the chances that I could be in the first 10 viewers for a listed video are tiny unless I personally know the creator or the place is absolutely flooded in AI shit and there is O(users/10) of these videos being uploaded regularly.

TechLinked's take is pretty good (as usual): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ5pATTvc2o

Maybe views are simply down. I can't be the only one getting tired of the out-of-control sponsored videos. Even if you pay for YT Premium, you get hit with that crap on most of the popular channels.

• meatmanek

  yesterday at 3:07 PM

  And you think everyone simply made the same decision as you on the same exact day?

  • bachmeier

    yesterday at 3:21 PM

    It's possible that the YTers complaining about this are affected once you bring the algorithm into it.

  • SoftTalker

    yesterday at 3:29 PM

    Anecdotally I am watching less. Not because of sponsorships, but because more and more content is AI-generated slop or copied (stolen) from other channels and reposted.

    • jdiff

      yesterday at 3:58 PM

      But we're talking about a substantial viewership drop, across a single platform (only desktop), all simultaneously on a single day. That's clearly not any sort of organic change.

      • bachmeier

        yesterday at 9:04 PM

        Everything is driven by the algorithm. You can have big changes on one day and for specific platforms, even if it's something that's been building up gradually, because that might be the day the algorithm adjusted. It's hard to talk about "this caused that to happen" if you don't know what the algorithm is doing.

• pier25

  yesterday at 3:34 PM

  Anecdotal but my usage has been slowly dropping in the past year or two as the experience has gotten worse. First it was the terrible search results and then with shorts plaguing the whole thing.

View counts are on borrowed time anyway, I’m sure.

I use uBo which uses easylist, and when I watch youtube videos they are marked as viewed, so this explanation does not seem likely?

• OsrsNeedsf2P

  yesterday at 4:48 PM

  How do you know they're marked as a view on the video?

I use Newpipe on my mobile, and Adnauseum + Firefox on my laptop to escape from Youtube Ad's.

If you're unfamiliar with the creator dashboard there is a spot reserved for notifications from YouTube. This should have been front and center last week, not buried in a creator help thread. Why wasn’t it? That's open to speculation.

As someone with a small tech channel, I'm glad I was following this. If not, I would have spent the last week swapping out thumbnails and video titles, which seem about as effective as percussive maintenance. But hey, you have to try something.

Well over a decade ago a gentleman by the name of Brian Brushwood said, and I'm paraphrasing, “YouTube is like working for an AI manager that never tells you what it wants but punishes you severely if you get it wrong.”

Welcome to 2025.

Is there any hard, reliable data on how much money is "lost" by users with ad blockers? Some of the measures Google has taken with regards to ad blockers seem wholly disproportionate to my own impression of how common they really are.

• suby

  yesterday at 3:01 PM

  Well, if the recent drop in views was due to adblockers, we now have some data about what percent of viewers block ads. There would have to be an effort to collect this data, and the view discrepncy is probably going to differ by genre of video (eg, tech youtubers probably experienced a greater dip), but this should roughly tell us how much is lost to adblockers.

  Creators have stated that while their viewcount is down their ad revenue is not - but a lower viewcount still presumably hurts youtubers for in video sponsorships, and if some genres of video have a higher portion of users with blockers, that probably hurts that entire genre in the algorithm. It sounds like viewcounts are returning back to normal though.

  • tcfhgj

    yesterday at 3:05 PM

    > but this should roughly tell us how much is lost to adblockers.

    not really, because watching videos without ad blockers would be quite painful

    • suby

      yesterday at 3:28 PM

      Well, I meant how much is lost financially. Ah, unless you mean that people would watch less videos if they were subjected to ads, which is a great point I didn't consider. You're right, you can't just linearly extrapolate as I suggested due to that.

• fishgoesblub

  yesterday at 2:57 PM

  I have no actual hard stats to back this up sadly, but from what I've read ad rates are the same, but the views are down. Presumably because everyone who is using an AdBlock isn't counted as a view, and they obviously don't watch ads so the rates are the same.

• jdiff

  yesterday at 2:55 PM

  If this is what they're doing, then it would seem to be negligible. The channels I've heard talking about this don't seem to be taking home any less money despite tanking viewcounts. Earnings are constant, but the numbers supporting those earnings have shuffled around unpredictably. When it's your income, you really don't like things to be shuffling around without warning.

  • Arcuru

    yesterday at 4:27 PM

    I think you're not understanding. The claim is that view counts are down but revenue is not because people using ad-block previously did not contribute to revenue but did contribute to view count, and now they are not counted as either. So view counts are down and creators are getting the same ad money because they already earned no money from the adblocking people.

    When channels are claiming their view count is dropping 30% but still earning the same amount of money, that would indicate that they are losing out on 30% of their potential revenue because of ad blockers.

  • Workaccount2

    yesterday at 4:31 PM

    The views didn't count in the first place, that's why the money stayed the same.

    Creators can now though, knowing how much they make per view on avg, and slot in the avg number of view that were missing, work out how much they are missing out on due to ad-blocking.

    For large creators, it's likely in the tens of thousands of dollars per video assuming most are seeing the same ~20-25% drop.

    Eventually the "morally pure" internet will need to reconcile it's habit of not compensating creators.

    • zetanor

      yesterday at 9:01 PM

      Nobody wants to watch ads to generate $4/hr (a good chunk of which Google keeps). The Ad-driven internet needs to understand that my time is worth more than that.

  • MarkusQ

    yesterday at 2:59 PM

    If you don't like random/inexplicable changes in your income, you probably shouldn't have youtube involved.

    • jdiff

      yesterday at 3:55 PM

      YouTube's where the money is. There are very few other places where you can make money like YouTube. Yes, that also means having to deal with their many, many issues, many of which directly threaten that money, but the solution is to work to solve those problems and highlight new ones. YouTube's too big to ignore, and too big to die no matter how many paper cuts and gaping wounds it gives itself.

• bee_rider

  yesterday at 3:26 PM

  I wonder if they want to occasionally agitate against ad blocking just to keep the pressure on.

  If I were Google I wouldn’t be that worried about, like, Firefox users with ad blocking addons, or pihole users. But I’d be a bit worried that Apple might take a harder stance against ads, in their browser.

  • SoftTalker

    yesterday at 3:33 PM

    If Apple were to include an ad blocker by default in Safari it would be the greatest thing they've done for users in the past 5 years. Their privacy/anti-tracking stuff is good but it's largely invisible to the end user. People would never want to go back to the raw internet once they experience it without ads.

    • bee_rider

      yesterday at 3:42 PM

      Yeah. And, “privacy” is part of their pitch (it’s just a sales pitch, not a moral philosophy, and I’m aware that they don’t always live up to it). Including a default-on ad blocker would be an extremely user-visible way of emphasizing that pitch.

• tene80i

  yesterday at 2:57 PM

  It will be a low percentage, but a low percentage at youtube's scale is still a vast amount of money and worth going after.

I have been contacted more than once by close family members because of ads that look like system prompts inside Youtube feeds asking to delete photos, free up space, clear phone from viruses, and this is not even including AI slop and porn stuff.

Blocking ads is the way to go, and I am sure creators will survive this.

Dear Youtube. Please, just give us an API to get the video data for the _premium_ subscribers.

I can use my own viewer then, instead of relying on your ever-worsening website.

It's win-win. I keep paying you, you get accurate view counts.

I wonder if YouTube/creators can tell at what point viewers abandon the video - and I wonder if they can tell how many times I’ve opened a video, been greeted with another grating Liberty Mutual ad, and immediately closed the tab.

WAN Show is going to be wild this week

What's the meaning of this? Is Google trying to make content creators tell their viewers not to use adblockers? I don't think it's easylist's problem here. I don't understand.

• euLh7SM5HDFY

  yesterday at 3:48 PM

  It was mostly panic. As in: it didn't apparently affect revenue in any way, but content creators always check view stats/graphs for their own videos to see how well each of them is doing. So sudden drop made YT the main suspect. It didn't help some changes to video visibility for "children" profiles was pushed at same time.

  • slaymaker1907

    today at 12:50 AM

    The interesting question is how/if this impacts the recommendation engine. If it does impact recommendations, then that will directly penalize channels with more adblock users.

YouTube's messaging is the more frustrating part about all this. Panic might drive more creators toward direct monetization, that might just be the better net outcome.

I don't think it's a counting issue but that the various experiments that YouTube did recently to block adblockers are causing people with adblockers to leave the page early before the video starts playing, because they are greated with infinite loading spinners, incomplete page loads or in the best case 10 second delays until the video starts.

I happily watch the embedded ad-segments of YouTubers, but not the aggressive scam/slop-ads that YouTube puts before the actual videos thank-you-very-much.

YouTube is history, last time I used it was covid time. Blame AI if you want but time don´t stop for anything. That´s it and that´s all.

Pretty sure it's caused by the algorithm not serving the user anymore... Unless I block a channel forever I only get served the same channels over and over or it's an endless reel of ai slop with that dead crappy voice on all kinds of variations...

• jlarocco

  yesterday at 3:17 PM

  Yeah, these companies are pushing AI so hard they don't see it's destroying the value they had. I don't want to watch an AI reading Wikipedia, showing stock photography, and I doubt anybody else does, either.

  And lately they're starting to get more malicious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaHW24jOYVw

• magicalhippo

  yesterday at 3:26 PM

  I too have noticed a lot more slop in my feed the last several months, and generally have to explicitly check my subscriptions to be sure I don't miss videos.

  And I'm quite deliberate with avoiding ragebait and slop, and I remove stuff from my watch history if I get duped etc.

  That said, I have noticed a trend amongst the creators I've subscribed to that the average video length has gone up. This has been a longer term trend, but many who used to do 30-40 min videos now often to 1-1.5 hr videos.

  I've heard YouTube punishes people quitting a video midway, so perhaps there's something going on there too. At least for myself I often have to watch these videos over multiple sessions, and chances are there that I just forget and move on.

  So perhaps some compounding factors making things worse.

Kinda ironic — the tools meant to block ads end up hurting creators by messing with view counts.

"Because you're using adblockers, we're going to punish them."

Sounds about right for Google.

Could we test this theory with an unlisted video?

The difference where they see dramatic PC views dropping and phone and tablets remaining steady and the quote do seem to hint at ad blockers being the cause.

But it's not at all clear to me 100% if this really is an ad blocker problem / there's not any real proof.

Meanwhile I'm getting another add for "stuck poop" and scam health products ...

Ah yes because they can’t measure streams with blocked ads.

And what’s up with that “subscribing”, never saw the use for it, yet many (respectful, great) creators beg for it. I almost feel bad for not using the feature. I mean, I’m watching the content, that must count for something?

YouTube finally was able to block me from using ublock (and all the workarounds) a couple of weeks ago. This has finally prompted me to shift from Chrome to Firefox.

It seems politically inconceivable to discuss advertisement network security, ethics, consolidation, negligence, etc etc. I cannot more strongly recommend running an ad blocker.

Its frustrating to see how HN commenters just jumped onto conclusions without even doing any bit of critical thinking.

The top comment on HN says

> So Youtube changed how views are counted and is blaming ad blockers?

When even a cursory look would show that if you block stats-aggregation endpoint .. stats go down. Sometimes it is occam's razor.

• nomel

  yesterday at 7:25 PM

  It's a 20 year streaming service, and it's Google. There's a certain expectation I have from that. The fact that it's just an endpoint being hit by the client is...baffling. I don't think it's in the realm of expected possibilities for most of us, being the most naive, and fragile, implementation possible.

  The fact that ad revenue didn't change means they do have robust ad tracking, but the view numbers are +/- some unexpected level of fiction.

  • spankalee

    yesterday at 7:33 PM

    > The fact that ad revenue didn't change means they do have robust ad tracking

    Ad tracking is usually done client-side too, so ad revenue being stable just means that the missing view counts are probably limited to the users who already weren't viewing ads.

• philjohn

  yesterday at 6:33 PM

  The question becomes ... why are they relying on client side counting of views? They know how much of a video they've distributed to a given client on the backend after all (YouTube does buffer, but not the whole video).

  • gregschlom

    yesterday at 6:45 PM

    Not necessarily. Youtube makes extensive use of third-party CDNs. A lot of the videos aren't coming from their servers at all. I believe that's also why it's so hard for them to embed the ad directly in the video. They instead having to rely on splicing the ads client-side, which makes it possible to block.

    Disclaimer: I work at Google but not at Youtube and have no idea how things work really. This is just based on some info I read online.

    • therein

      yesterday at 7:22 PM

      Yeah they give caching boxes to ISPs as far as I can tell, and videos are served from there if they exist in that cache. About 8-10 years ago, they had an issue with that and they'd serve you the wrong video because your neighbor had watched something and it was in the cache. Literally title of the video wouldn't match what is playing.

      • smallnix

        yesterday at 7:59 PM

        And these caching boxes can't talk back to Google?

      • yesterday at 7:31 PM

  • spankalee

    yesterday at 6:39 PM

    YouTube has a crazy CDN. They very well might not be able easily attribute exactly what the client requests to specific accounts.

  • nightpool

    yesterday at 8:44 PM

    The other commenters point out more prosaic problems with CDN architecture, but a more product-focused answer for this is "because users execute Javascript but bots don't". Using client side counting is an easy way to filter out simple automated traffic.

    Also, with segmented MP4 streams, the files on the backend won't necessarily be easy to match up 1:1 with videos. How do you count the views if someone watches a video, and then skips back to watch the middle section a few times, and then doesn't finish it? Because that would show up as (1, 1, 4, 3, 0) in your database for the different files involved. Now imagine doing that for ~500 people on a shared IP address for their high school. And now your minimum threshold for view counting is tied to the size of your MP4 chunks, or range requests. And now you've put this view counting logic into the hot path of serving terabytes of data.

    From a product perspective, you can see why "A video view is counted the first time the user presses the play button and watches for at least 30 seconds" is a much more desirable definition, both technically and for stakeholders (video creators, advertisers, etc) to understand.

  • axus

    yesterday at 7:36 PM

    The computers serving advertisements should also know how much data has been delivered. Alphabet should be able to expect more from a CDN they have a business relationship with, than the people watching YouTube.

  • arccy

    yesterday at 6:38 PM

    because distributed CDN means it doesn't necessarily hit a backend?

Putting my tinfoil hat on, maybe they knew ad blockers would mess with their new implementation and expected the freak out to mount "creators" against ad blockers?

Could it be the recommendation algorithm is so terrible that people can't even?

Mine is just a sewage firehose so yes, I watch less now, and I use NewPipe on mobile to have a chance to see my subscriptions.

• crazygringo

  yesterday at 3:52 PM

  It's based on what you watch.

  My recommendations are entirely in line with what I watch. I never need to check channels i like for a new video because they automatically get recommended.

  If yours is a sewage firehouse, are you logged in? Or are you sharing your account with family members who watch what you consider "sewage"?

  • Telaneo

    yesterday at 5:51 PM

    Mine's still stuck on recommending me culvert uncloging videos after I watched one way back. I switched to Freetube and imported my subscriptions, and that made things much better, since now I can't even accidentally see what my recommended videos would be.

• yard2010

  yesterday at 4:00 PM

  I couldn't stand the shorts nonsense. I don't want to consume this kind of media, why force it down my throat.

• 2OEH8eoCRo0

  yesterday at 3:05 PM

  The trending page is usually so decadent and tasteless that I'm ashamed.

  • bluSCALE4

    yesterday at 3:12 PM

    Log out and you’ll be even more ashamed.

    • hightrix

      yesterday at 4:40 PM

      Turn off Watch History and enjoy bliss.

      • bluSCALE4

        yesterday at 7:44 PM

        Yep! I actually mentioned this as well. I did it recently and though I miss some of the recommendations, I can't say I miss them that much.

    • yesterday at 3:18 PM

  • qilo

    yesterday at 5:17 PM

    Trending page[0] is gone for non logged-in users as of couple months now. (No idea if it's still up for logged-in users) As a result my YouTube consumption went down (not complaining).

    https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending

• the_af

  yesterday at 3:18 PM

  I wonder about this. I'm not discounting your experience, but my YouTube recommendation page is great.

  I only see my subscriptions, or things directly related to things I've watched and liked. If I remove a disliked video from my watch history, it "mostly" works to tell YouTube I don't want to see it anymore.

  I very seldom see crap I really do not want in my YouTube feed/recommendations. All I see are hobby videos and cartoon clips of things I like.

  This is totally unlike Facebook (where random garbage recommendations are the norm) or Reddit (which is hit or miss).

  • SoftTalker

    yesterday at 3:27 PM

    My recommendations are generally aligned with my interests as derived from my view history, likes, and subscriptions. But more and more of it is AI-generated or videos copied from the original creator and reposted by someone else. I try to use "don't show me videos fron this channel" on those but more and more just appears. I think there must be bots creating new channels and copying/generating content faster than I can block them.

    And please, let me opt out of Shorts permanently. I keep telling them I don't want shorts but they always come back. I pay for a Premium account, so they should resepect my wishes on this.

    • the_af

      yesterday at 3:42 PM

      Agreed on Shorts. I don't understand why YT is pushing so hard on those, they are never going to be TikTok and I repeatedly signal I don't want to see them.

  • andrewflnr

    yesterday at 4:41 PM

    Same. My recommended feed is relatively ok, but I'm fairly ruthless with the "I don't want this" and "Don't recommend this channel" buttons. Meanwhile I've been off Facebook for years in large part because their feed appeared to be unsalvageable.

  • PaulHoule

    yesterday at 4:12 PM

    On the computer attached to my stereo YouTube shows me almost 100% conservative, boring, safe but good music recommendations -- all things I've liked before, it rarely tries to show me anything new or challenging.

    On another browser it shows me mostly videos about stereo equipment.

    One yet another it shows me a mix of videos aimed at someone who listens to The Ezra Klein Show. That browser and the previous browser sometimes get a burst of videos about "How Brand X has lost its way" or "Why Y sucks today".

    One time on shorts I clicked on a video where an A.I. generated woman transforms into a fox on America's Got Talent and then after that it wanted to show me hundreds of A.I. slop videos of Chinese girls transforming into just about anything on the same show with the same music and the same reaction shots.

    If you click on a few Wheat Waffles videos you might quickly find your feed is nothing but blackpill incel videos and also videos that apply a blackpill philosophy to life such that not only is dating futile but everything else is futile too.

    The conclusion I draw from it is that you can't easily draw conclusions about the experience other people have with recommenders, it's one reason why political ads on social are so problematic, you can tell baldfaced lies to people who are inclined to believe them and skeptical people will never see them and hold anyone to account.

  • vorpalhex

    yesterday at 3:46 PM

    I did an experiment where I really invested in my YouTube suggestions, and you can definitely groom your recommendations, and then they can be pretty good. But then you have an issue where you get into a new hobby or a new interest, and so you watch some videos attributed to that, your recommendations spiral back out of control. So you can do a whole bunch of grooming work, but probably they just go back to being like 80% wrong. I got vaguely interested in the piano, and now 80% of my recommendations are music related, but not actually things I care about, and they've just gone back to being total trash.

• portaouflop

  yesterday at 3:47 PM

  As noted above my recommendations are excellent and a source of great joy. I don’t get how other people have such an inverse experience

  • Measter

    yesterday at 7:26 PM

    Here's my experience of recommendations right now: videos I've already seen, videos on topics I have no interest in, or a completely empty page.

>Whatever, there's no problem for user. EP is for user and not for those so called creators or site owners.

It's sad to see how little sympathy there is for people other than oneself and how changes are affecting the larger ecosystem. Especially for a site as critical as YouTube to people's livelihoods.

Though having said that, at the same time I'm not surprised that someone who spends their time modifying sites to remove ads and analytics to make their personal experience better at the expense of everyone else would act this way would have this kind of selfish mindset.

• cluckindan

  yesterday at 3:49 PM

  If only YouTube made ads run on the side instead of trying to emulate television.

  I’m not going to sit through two 15-30 second LOUD ads just to see if a video is actually worth watching.

  • nightpool

    yesterday at 8:47 PM

    How much do you think advertisers would be willing to pay for ads on the side, relative to what they're currently paying? You can see how people wouldn't be willing to pay the same amount for that, right?

  • slightwinder

    yesterday at 3:55 PM

    They also do this (or did?). But I guess on mobile this is not working well, because of limited screen estate, and people will obviously not focus much on them.

  • charcircuit

    yesterday at 3:58 PM

    I agree that video ad experience on YouTube isn't great, but they do offer a subscription to remove ads at least.

• rodrigodlu

  yesterday at 4:20 PM

  I'm a heavy AdBlock user, I pay for YT premium, and I paid Nebula for 2 years, also I try to buy some albums on Bandcamp even with YT music subscription. What more they do want?

  And I do use referral codes for the content creators I do like. My Amazon referrals do still work.

  As a mostly software backend dev I even visualize the JS guy saying "it's solved" when he forgets to tell that the correct choice is to do the counting on the backend, period. Not hacking a crappy JS snippet calling a different host.

  I obviously ask for more time to make sure it's reliable.

  I literally saw something similar happening around some years ago in a adjacent team I was working.

  I want to pay with money, not attention. Both at the same time? Non negotiable.

• dang

  yesterday at 4:10 PM

  (This was a response to https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/22375 via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45276614, but we merged that thread into this one)

• lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

  yesterday at 3:48 PM

  Youtube could fix it by counting when the video page is loaded from the server.

  • doright

    yesterday at 4:01 PM

    I don't think they'd be interested in fixing this. I suspect YouTube is trying to create a double bind for users of adblockers by pitting them against creators' incentives. People in the thread were discussing ways of disabling uBO filters to restore view reporting.

  • charcircuit

    yesterday at 4:03 PM

    The work to do this isn't free. YouTube already has their code working, but they don't expect browsers to be blocking arbitrary requests or injecting their own javascript into the page. These kind of breakage are not free for YouTube to fix and often YouTube is the one taking the reputational hit for their site being broken. It ultimately is antisocial behavior to be breaking other's sites even if technically they can workaround the bugs being added.

    • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

      yesterday at 4:09 PM

      > antisocial behavior

      This is hard to take seriously in defense of YouTube. I suppose the most respectful answer is that I'll be willing to stop when they do.

      • humpty-d

        yesterday at 4:14 PM

        Stop what? Showing ads? They have to fund it somehow, there will always be ads. Most users aren't willing to pay for anything on the internet, and unfortunately revenue is required to run anything at scale. You can charge users, show ads, or maybe get funding from Saudis.

        • kentm

          yesterday at 6:39 PM

          > Stop what? Showing ads?

          Using abusive advertising practices and being reasonable about the number of ads shown.

        • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

          yesterday at 4:15 PM

          > Stop what?

          Tracking with javascript.

          • humpty-d

            yesterday at 4:34 PM

            So just track you on the back end instead? I don't know what that really changes. If you mean to say just not track you at all and show you untargeted ads, well they are worth less, so they'll have to blast you with more of them.

            • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

              yesterday at 4:54 PM

              > I don't know what that really changes.

              It changes what they assume to do with my hardware and user agent.

              • humpty-d

                yesterday at 8:01 PM

                Why be cryptic and weird when you can just plainly say whatever it is that you actually mean? Communicate clearly, nobody knows what the f you're on about.

                • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

                  yesterday at 8:42 PM

                  > cryptic and weird

                  Mine is a common opinion within this community. I won't deny that I was short in my replies but it is hard to know what is over-explaining in this context.

                  Additionally, it seems that "tracking with javascript" is pretty much exactly the topic of these comments so I'm not sure why I should not have assumed that it would be clear what I meant, especially when my first comment was explicitly about YouTube tracking on the back end.

• draw_down

  yesterday at 3:50 PM

  [dead]

I'm so sick of tech companies choosing to build something a certain weird way and then in the media blaming something else.

My bill for access to phone and internet where all data is celular, runs $3000~6000/yr,and includes a domain and email, I refuse to watch any adds ever or pay for anything else that is not property that can be re sold, rented, insured, transfered, or returned cause it's junk, or I dont like it. I pay my fucking rent, have payed for a long time, and know that there is another way that everything can be configured that sends the "platforms" packing. The difference is a world where everyone self manages there affairs, does there best, can work and contribute, while living there best lives, or the nasty shit show we have now with a tiny minority attempting to puppet the whole world and everything in it.

YouTube has ads?

i used to watch lots of videos, but since LLM came into being i find them much faster than watching videos.

Infact, i used to watch videos because they used to be more "targeted" at problem solving when i ran into any issues.

but these days LLM ftw.

• the_af

  yesterday at 3:19 PM

  How are LLMs an alternative to videos? They are different mediums.

  What's your use case?

  • shagie

    yesterday at 5:23 PM

    Not OP (and I don't use it for this case), but I suspect that the instructional "how do you do X" videos that supplanted the "look up the blog post" of even longer ago.

    "How do you start a react application" and going to https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+do+you+star... (incognito or private session suggested to avoid search history getting you react application suggestions for the next several months) and watching those videos.

    For many people looking for a guide, they've switched to an LLM which gives them a more tailored experience.

    • faangguyindia

      today at 2:25 AM

      Exactly this! Not sure why i am being downvoted it seems people don't like me using LLM over Videos. But i've not watched a single "tutorial video" this year.