Instead of blocking them, this extension speeds them up to x16 and also mutes the ad. Experiencing a 30 second ad in 2 seconds is pretty funny. And it works on Edge and Chrome.

  • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    111
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Everyone’s hating on this approach but I think it’s nice that we have other options. I’m sure Ublock is going to come out on top of this cat and mouse game YouTube is playing with them, but if YouTube manages to temporarily disable Ublock I’ll look into this solution. Thanks!

    • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Google will give up eventually. They’re definitely burning more money than they would gain from winning the battle

      • Wisely@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        26
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        They give up on everything else all the time. I wonder if expanding their ad business is the one exception though. They ran out of new users and already pack videos full of ads. Forcing them on people who block them is the only thing left for them to attempt as they seek to continue perpetual growth.

        • uzay@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Ads are the very core of Google at this point. They are more likely to give up their search engine and the name Google before they give up their ad business.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately the videos with ads absolutely packed through them are largely due to the creators choosing the settings for extra monetization.

          • kent_eh
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Youtube just made changes that prevent creators from choosing to only allow skippable ads. Now youtube chooses what type of ads to run at the start and end of a video.

            The only choice creators have is to enable or disable mid-roll ads, and where to place them (but the default is to allow youtube to make those choices too)

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I do not believe that is the case. Youtube ads are an insanely profitable business. I suspect throwing a couple dozen of FTEs on blocking ad blockers would be <1% of current revenue.

        • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I don’t doubt they make tonnes of revenue from ads however you have to remember how small the share of adblocker users are. So the extra money from fighting the adblock user base is a clear gamble. Especially as those types of users are the ones who are more likely to avoid YouTube completely if they can’t bypass ads.

          Someone in Google would have done the research because it’s not a simple case of war profit = adblockusers * ad revenue per user

          I strongly believe they’ll stop once they hit a certain threshold/target of “reduction of adblock users”. They won’t go on like this forever.

          • 1984@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Don’t forget they want to introduce things like WEI to lock down what devices and plugins you can even use on your own computer. That’s what Google stands for.

          • Kayn@dormi.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            To be fair, at the current monopolistic state of YouTube, how many people are actually likely to avoid YouTube completely?

            • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              If YouTube truly succeeded in forcing 90 seconds of unavoidable ads with no exceptions without paying $20/month then I genuinely think YouTube won’t be a monopoly for very long.

              • credit crazy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                1 year ago

                Honestly I’ve tinkerd with the idea of making a genuine ad free YouTube competition. But the industry standard is operating at a loss. No one wants to pay for a YouTube service and no one wants to watch ads. If anyone has any ideas on how a YouTube competitor could stay afloat I’m all ears.

                • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Oh I don’t expect it to be free and ad free. Just not as invasive as it is now, the ads are relentless especially when the form factor of videos are usually proportionally quite short.

                  Alternatively have a reasonable price for add free. Google is an enormous company which operate as a loss for monopoly and exposure reasons, they’ve put themselves into this position

              • remus989@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                How can a competitor handle Google dropping ads and/or pricing and run at a loss until the competitor is bought or destroyed outright? Google has too much money and existing infrastructure for someone other than say Amazon to compete with YouTube and god help us if that’s the alternative we get.

              • Kayn@dormi.zone
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                How can a new competitor acquire content creators to actually threaten the monopoly? Genuine question.

                • 0xD@infosec.pub
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  They can’t. Unless YouTube fucks up big time, nothing will touch it, especially since they are the most “generous” with their payouts to creators. Only if someone steps up with a platform just as good as YouTube (UI, infrastructure) AND pays a bigger share, maybe it will happen. But video streaming is a thankless business so I personally doubt it will happen anytime soon.

      • kent_eh
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        They’re definitely burning more money than they would gain from winning the battle

        Maybe at the moment, but I suspect part of the motivation for this is that they are trying to prevent another “adpocalypse” type boycott from their advertisers.

    • atrielienz@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s why I tried to present it without an anti-google seeming bias. I wanted people to just have the facts and not all the BS in the article. I think it’s a good option for people who don’t want to block ads so creators they watch benefit.