• Grizzzlay@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I imagine folks wouldn’t have a problem with this if the ads weren’t already so aggressive. Numerous ads before and during the content break it up too much. And if the content is extremely short form, it completely ruins the experience.

    The number of ads and their length should be proportional to the length of the video. And any creator doing built-in ads should also not be able to inject a bunch of other ads. Burying content is an easy way to get avoided.

    Print media had limits for advertisements, heck, in magazines they were premium real estate for the finest graphic designers to put together incredible imagery to get your attention. This level of care (not necessarily images or what have you) has yet to translate to the web.

  • confusedwiseman@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    It seems like we’ve all lost the plot. We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring. Try browsing for a day on a plain-no-extension browser. If you use other web enhancement tools kill those too. Straight-up internet is cancer, especially on mobile.

    It’s impossible to read a 250-word article without being interrupted 5-7 times. Two of those interruptions are likely a full page overlay with give me your email, and are you sure you don’t want to subscribe, just give me your credit card number.

    Then there are auto-play videos on the side, some with audio on by default. I mean I came here to read something, so of course we have things flashing and moving and making noise, it’s the most conducive environment for thought, right?

    Ad blockers and script blocking are essentially a hazmat suit that allows us to withstand a hostile environment. Remember when we said myspace pages with audio and [marching-ants] borders was a bad UX? At least we didn’t have overlays back then.

    Go back to basics and consider what makes a good vs bad internet experience. The reality sounds like someone with a minor case of severe brain damage. I think we’ve just become unashamed of greed as a society. It’s clearly all just about money.

    Those annoying customers/users generate content and we have to put up with them so we can monetize it. *Sadly, It’s unclear if I’m talking about youtube, reddit, or nearly any other site.

    Le sigh.

    • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring.

      Not me, sorry. Fuck ads. I’ve been ad-free for like a decade, and I’m not interested in regressing.

      • confusedwiseman@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive? I mean, servers and bandwidth cost money. I’m in the same boat as you where I have run ad blockers, adblocker blockers, no script, privacy enhancers, and anti-fingerprinting since forever ago.

        I’d rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data. If there was a balance, this is where I’d say it was reasonable. Since not reality, I’m with you, nuke them all, and just take the content.

        • longshaden@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The definition of “reasonable ads” and “just a few ads” keeps sliding. I’m old enough to remember the early internet, and that this lie has been told many times.

          Just a few acceptable ads always becomes many unacceptable ads, because money.

        • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive?

          I don’t need propaganda telling me to want to buy shit that I otherwise wouldn’t want to buy, no. I’ll go to other consumers (and, more specifically, people I trust) to determine what things are worth, not entities with a conflict of interest in the matter.

          The whole marketing/advertising industry is illegitimate and harmful, and I’m “boycotting” the whole thing until we finish the job of destroying capitalism and it’s no longer needed anyway.

          I’d rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data.

          The corporations are going to try to mine and sell your data anyway. Why wouldn’t they? You think just because they have a revenue stream through ads that they’ll give up another revenue stream from fucking over your privacy? Then I’ve got this nice bridge to sell you, too…

          • confusedwiseman@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I think you’re right, I feel like I’m looking for a little good-will among our kind (bleak and probably misguided at best). Sellers and consumers need to coexist in some manner, but what that relationship should be is yet to be defined. For now, we’re in a place that needs change for sure.

    • Mavapu@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I fully agree. Online ads used to be some banners next to the content you came to the site for. I was fine with that. As soon as they put it in front/in between/… the content, I very quickly got fed up with it.

  • Aurix@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I never thought YouTube’s business model was very sustainable. As the world economy goes down, so does the value of ads. Creators or consumers need to pay up for all the bandwidth and storage. The question is about what is a reasonable price. Are low tiers for $3/mo. possible along with premium 4k options or does everything need to be at more than that?

  • Square Singer@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    If they really block adblockers, I will subscribe. To Nebula. It’s got everything I want, adfree (including sponsored segments), extra content and is cheaper. And the content creators get a bigger share of the money.

    • nodiet@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      There is nothing stopping you from subscribing to nebula right now. Since I haven’t gotten any ads on YouTube in many years and even use sponsorblock to skip those annoying video segments I started thinking about how I am basically leeching off of most content creators. Subscribing to nebula was a no-brainer. It’s about $4.16 per month on the yearly plan and lets me support all content creators I watch on there at once rather than subscribing to each and every one of them on patreon and I still don’t see any ads

        • Marud@lemmy.marud.fr
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, that was fun as they said they were using the API illegally and as they are not :D

          But I mean, google KNOWS about Invidious. They will try to f**k them as hard as possible by every mean, that’s for sure.

  • sodium@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    YouTube feels unusable without an ad-blocker. I’ve gotten like 30min crazy conspiracy videos as an ad that shit is bonkers.

  • eight_byte@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I do understand that if companies running ad-supported models, they need to make sure users are actually watching those ads. Seems logically to me - no ads mean no money, and no money means no sustainable business model.

    On the other side, as a user, I just can’t browse the internet without an ad-blocker any more. They just got so annoying and sometimes even break the actual website.

    But to be honest, I don’t see an alternative to ad-supported models except paying money directly via subscriptions plans etc. But this also will not work in the long term. I just can’t pay afford to pay a subscription for each website I visit during the day.

    • Crotaro@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The biggest issue, I guess, is the amount and obnoxiousness of the ads. I could live quite well with seeing one ad banner per page-worth of scrolling, if it’s for example off to the side in a specific “your ad here” place.

      Or if the ads would be thematically related to the topic at hand. I don’t want to be reminded of how much our devices listen in on us by seeing ads for diapers on a website for posting news about the Ukraine War, just because I happened to talk with my gf about how my step mom has another child now. But seeing ads for a website to buy camping tools, on a website for hiking backpacks, is fine by me.

      Unfortunately those types of non-intrusive ads probably aren’t what’s raking in the most money.

  • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Seems fair enough, I’ve personally been freeloading for a while. Youtube is irreplacable, so there’s not much we can do.

    • iopq@latte.isnot.coffee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve started using Mastodon after the Twitter changes, Lemmy after the Reddit changes, I don’t think any website is irreplaceable

      • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Twitter and reddit have externally hosted media, so they consist of mostly text which is easy to host. YouTube has a lot more data to deal with, a federated alternative wouldn’t be feasible for literal petabytes of it.

    • janeshep@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      to be honest YouTube has great content because of the video length allowed. You can find all sorts of tutorials on pretty much anything. Instagram and TikTok, on the other hand, fit your description much better.

    • Slashzero@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      While YouTube, or any service, has bad users/channels, there are also many great users/channels for people with varying interests to enjoy. You can ignore the channels you don’t like, and get to watch some of the best content from regular people you’ve never heard of, who aren’t major television studios or corporations with an agenda. All they want to do is make videos of things they are passionate about.

    • blackbelt352@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      That entirely depends on who your subscribed to. Personally all my stuff channels like Numberphile/computerphile, or SmarterEveryDay, and plenty of Blender3d tutorial channels, animators, and a whole bunch of other informative channels.