from Hacker News

YouTube cracking down even harder to punish user for skipping ads

by dbajaj on 4/16/24, 2:24 PM with 65 comments

• by goalonetwo on 4/16/24, 3:17 PM

  SmarTube works amazingly well. I expect them to circumvent those limitations as usual.

  I see it as a morale duty to not watch ads and also not pay an ethically dubious company like Google.

  They are free to try to stop me but I'm also free to not watch their brainwashing ads.

• by tiltowait on 4/16/24, 3:27 PM

  Was the headline changed? Because it now reads "YouTube cracking down on third-party apps that block ads".

  That aside, "punish" is an odd choice of word. Users aren't "punished"—no fines, no accounts locked, etc. They're simply prevented from viewing the videos. Annoying? Yes. But given a premium, ad-free version exists, it's hard to blame Google.

• by apetresc on 4/16/24, 3:04 PM

  The window on being able to archive your favorite channels with yt-dlp is definitely closing fast.

• by rvanmil on 4/16/24, 3:43 PM

  I'm subscribed to the Premium Family plan to get rid of the ads and for the music service, which I think at the current price is a great deal. I just wish they would add more options to the premium plan, like:

  - add proper filters (e.g. for sponsored content, low effort content creators, any content about spending/winning money, other obvious nonsense which exists just to increase views, etc. etc.)

  - detect and filter generated and other low effort crap content

  - add proper parental controls (it's a family plan, after all and YouTube Kids does not count, it sucks)

  - disable Shorts (if there's one thing that's going to make me cancel my subscription it's the cancer that is Shorts)

• by fen4o on 4/16/24, 3:07 PM

  They are only targeting apps that use the API to skip the Ads. Use htlm-parsing 3rd party client such as NewPipe instead.

• by space_oddity on 4/16/24, 2:32 PM

  I definitely understand why YouTube have this policy

• by darepublic on 4/16/24, 3:31 PM

  Premium seems like it would be well worth it but YouTube doesn't have a right to tell me what code I can run client side on my machine

• by snapplebobapple on 4/17/24, 2:40 PM

  I'm kind of curious to see where this cat and mouse game ends up. I'm definitely never watching ads again personally and all my mission critical stuff is moved off gmail (I basically have one google account that is just used for google play on one ancient backup phone at this point) so if they take it as far as banning my account I can create an infinite number of additional accounts as needed or go without an account (the stuff I care about is subscribed via rss in a third party application I self host). it's just going to push me to not login and then eventually to not use youtube and go without.

  I wonder what happens to everyone else the first time they get their account deleted? Do they kowtow to this bs or do they start down the path off their crappy platform for the mission critical stuff so they don't have to care anymore?

• by znpy on 4/16/24, 10:03 PM

  But frankly, youtube has become unusable without some kind of ad blocker. I can't use ad blockers on my work laptop (security policy) and on my iphone and OH MY GOD i want to nuke the google plex in california every single day.

  I don't use VPNs. I used to use a vpn for work, but I haven't been on the company vpn for months.

  * I get multiple advertises in a single batch.

  * Sometimes I get the same advertising over and over again, particularly in long videos.

  * I get advertising for stuff i clearly won't buy (like bus-based tourist travel service in Ireland[1] where have no interest or plan visiting as a tourist)

  * I get advertising for products i CAN'T buy (some kind of chocolate brand they don't sell in Italy where I live -- Cadbury i think?)

  * Aldi advertising... In German, about German stores. I recognize the Aldi logo, I don't speak German.

  * I get advertising in languages (both audio and text) i don't speak (already mentioned German, but lately Spanish as well).

  * God forbid I open a video from a link that points at some second in the middle of the video... Some moron Product Owner has decided i MUST catch up with all the advertising i would have watched otherwise before i can watch anything past the custom starting point. Yesterday I had to watch eight pieces of advertising before i could start watching a video.

  * God forbid i skip something like a third of a video... i have to catch up with advertising first.

  * I'm getting A LOT MORE advertising, A LOT MORE OFTEN.

  It's unbearable. I hate youtube/google so much, with passion. It hurts me so much because I used to keep them in such high regard when both me and they (as a company) were younger.

  They're effectively bullying me into getting youtube premium.

  [1] Hey Paddy Wagon Tours, Google has been scamming you out of advertising money for months i think - Same happens for Cadbury I guess.

• by dotnet00 on 4/16/24, 3:43 PM

  As before, will continue to keep up with the workarounds. I'd be far more open to paying up if Google hadn't burned up all their good will by being awful to content creators. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too, they want your data, they want to bully and steal from creators without offering proper support, and despite all that they still want you to pay them.

• by ruined on 4/16/24, 3:18 PM

  give it a week, there will be a workaround. unless they auth every user they can't stop it.

• by wly_cdgr on 4/16/24, 3:16 PM

  Seems perfectly reasonable. Y'all think this shit is cheap and easy to build and maintain? Just buy YT Premium, jeez.