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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

by bArray 1y ago

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.

shadowgovt 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    And like the mosquito, ads can sometimes give you viruses!
PaulHoule 1y ago
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/ 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 1y ago
  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.
  - throwawayben 1y ago
    yeah I had a deep fake Kier Starmer tell me about some investment opportunity with guaranteed returns.
    - mindslight 1y ago
      Where is the "ads are just a way of telling people about things they might want" crowd? heh.
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        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.
      - cjs_ac 1y ago
        An investment opportunity with guaranteed returns is something I would definitely want if it actually existed.
      - themafia 1y ago
        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.
kllrnohj 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  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.
slightwinder 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  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.
tantalor 1y ago
"would have updated" what? Their browser?
- bArray 1y ago
  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.
aequitas 1y ago
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 :)
- bArray 1y ago
  Yeah exactly, sometimes I just give up entirely. If it's a podcast I might persist, otherwise it's just not worth it. The compromise for Google would be to limit ad-blocker users to a reduced quality version to save on bandwidth... After using Peertube, it would make a lot of sense if pretty much all media assets went the way of decentralisation. It lowers bandwidth, reduces server overhead and increases availability.
tap-snap-or-nap 1y ago
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.

by bArray 1y ago

shadowgovt 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  And like the mosquito, ads can sometimes give you viruses!

PaulHoule 1y ago

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/ 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 1y ago
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.
- throwawayben 1y ago
  yeah I had a deep fake Kier Starmer tell me about some investment opportunity with guaranteed returns.
  - mindslight 1y ago
    Where is the "ads are just a way of telling people about things they might want" crowd? heh.
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      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.
    - cjs_ac 1y ago
      An investment opportunity with guaranteed returns is something I would definitely want if it actually existed.
    - themafia 1y ago
      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.

kllrnohj 1y ago

> 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 1y ago
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.

slightwinder 1y ago

> 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 1y ago
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.

tantalor 1y ago

"would have updated" what? Their browser?

bArray 1y ago
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.

aequitas 1y ago

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 :)

bArray 1y ago
Yeah exactly, sometimes I just give up entirely. If it's a podcast I might persist, otherwise it's just not worth it. The compromise for Google would be to limit ad-blocker users to a reduced quality version to save on bandwidth... After using Peertube, it would make a lot of sense if pretty much all media assets went the way of decentralisation. It lowers bandwidth, reduces server overhead and increases availability.

tap-snap-or-nap 1y ago

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.