Octopus Overlords

Good idea: charge new users just enough to make them think twice about joining, and not enough to actually make any money off the ones who do.

Should be fun to see the cascade of folks for whom the sustained enshittification, far-right propaganda visibility increases, trust/safety demolishment, blue-check trolls, and site performance drops weren’t enough to make a move to a diff platform—but a dollar? Right out.

The dollar per year is only for new accounts, if I read that correctly, so this won't have an effect on existing users at all and so shouldn't drive an Xodus of any sort. It also won't have an effect on bots other possibly allowing Xitter to say they're doing something about the problem.

It's a minor firewall against bad actors who have to go through the process of registering a payment method and actually be bothered to pay a $1. It will discourage new users, but how many new users are they attracting now?

I don't see it is a horrible move, but then I'm not a Twitter user, not do I intend on becoming one.

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2023 11:34 pm Good idea: charge new users just enough to make them think twice about joining, and not enough to actually make any money off the ones who do.

It's not about making money of the annual fee. Musk has said several times that he wants xtwitter to be an everything app and that includes payment and banking. This is a bid to get everyone's credit card/payment info into the xtwitter ecosystem.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 9:09 am The dollar per year is only for new accounts, if I read that correctly, so this won't have an effect on existing users at all and so shouldn't drive an Xodus of any sort. It also won't have an effect on bots other possibly allowing Xitter to say they're doing something about the problem.

Today, in these two trial markets. It’s certainly not the intention that it stays that way.

Yes, because a $1/yr/account is going to stop the bots.

Looking forward to someone's analysis that can correlate the rollout of this policy to a verifiable increase in credit card theft.

How is Twitter/X even still alive at this point? It must be operating in the red. Is Musk's billions keeping it afloat?

coopasonic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:03 am Yes, because a $1/yr/account is going to stop the bots.

I was about to quasi-snarkily post that bots can't complete payment options, but they probably can by now. If they can't now, it's probably not far off with Skyn...I mean AI ascendance upon us.

In other social media news, YouTube began implementing their anti-adblocker solution today. Hopefully the ad blocker devs figure out a way around it. Ads are one thing, but YouTube's are absurdly obnoxious. I've gotten three separate blocks of ads in a video that was less than three minutes long. Video starts. Four or five seconds, then ads. Video resumes. 1 minutes, ads. Video resumes, 45 seconds, ads.

If you want to encourage me to actually unblock them, make them reasonable. Or make disabling them not cost more than some full ad-free streaming services. After all, YouTube is getting 99.999% of their content for free.

Glad you posted something as I wasn't sure where to air my grievances about it. Holy forking shirtballs, it's oppressive - like they're trying to make up for me blocking their ads for years.

I've been reading some stuff about it on Reddit, YouTube has been rolling it out in waves, and people are pissed. I saw it pop up a warning only once so far, in Chrome. Firefox + uBlock isn't affected (yet).

My dad called me yesterday to vent about it. He watches a lot of YouTube, and he said he lasted all of 10 minutes without adblock, but he messed around with uBlock settings, and the warning went away. I have no idea what he did, and apparently neither does he, but he figures when that breaks, he'll need to find some other workaround, because otherwise YouTube is borderline unwatchable.

I wonder what you guys are watching as I've never used an ad blocker and I generally only get stuck with a 5-15s ad at the beginning and maybe one more 5-15s ad in the middle. Hardly oppressive when the vids are 15-20 minutes.

The constant ads are what I experienced when I tried watching YouTube on my Smart TV. Haven't seen it on Firefox + Ublock.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:39 pm In other social media news, YouTube began implementing their anti-adblocker solution today. Hopefully the ad blocker devs figure out a way around it. Ads are one thing, but YouTube's are absurdly obnoxious. I've gotten three separate blocks of ads in a video that was less than three minutes long. Video starts. Four or five seconds, then ads. Video resumes. 1 minutes, ads. Video resumes, 45 seconds, ads.

If you want to encourage me to actually unblock them, make them reasonable. Or make disabling them not cost more than some full ad-free streaming services. After all, YouTube is getting 99.999% of their content for free.

I started using ad blockers for youtube when I was getting random breaks in short videos and when they more often than not political ads and more often than not political ads full of disinformation. I don't spend a lot of time on youtube but if that ever resumes I'll spend even less time there.

stessier wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 2:45 am I wonder what you guys are watching as I've never used an ad blocker and I generally only get stuck with a 5-15s ad at the beginning and maybe one more 5-15s ad in the middle. Hardly oppressive when the vids are 15-20 minutes.

It was reasonable on Monday, but last night it was out of control. I typically set up Youtube as my audio mixer - it'll just randomly generate playlists that I can listen to while working on other things. Last night there was a ~5 second ad between each song and then every ~3rd song it was a 1 or 2 minute ad. If this continues, I'll just go back to using Tidal or Amazon music, but they weren't as good at generating mix tapes.

Ok, I'm done. I had to punch out of using Youtube as my audio mixer.

I am getting ads between every song. Some are 15 seconds and you can skip at 5 seconds; sometimes not. Others are 1+ minute ads that you can't skip. So anything I'm working on has me tabbing over to the Youtube window to try and deal with non-stop interruptions. Congrats Youtube, you win.

I still get zero YT ads. I'm using Vivaldi and its built-in ad blocking.

i don't get ads but I pay them for their service. /shrug

I got YouTube Premium or whatever so my kid could avoid ads. It's been worth the money.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 10:39 pm After all, YouTube is getting 99.999% of their content for free.

Even ignoring their overhead costs, the content isn't really free. Content producers make their content with the expectation of making money, which they are able to do via ads. If there were no ads, YouTube wouldn't pay them and they'd stop making content.

Sure, there will always be some content from peole not looking to get paid for it but the majority of popular content today is supported by ads.

Yeah, YouTube takes a big cut. That doesn't erase the fact that there is still a lot of content created because the producers expect to get compensation for it.

JFC I fired up Tidal and it's the same - 30+ second commercials after every song or every other song. Time to fire up my Ham radio and pipe in a pirate station.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 3:16 pm Ok, I'm done. I had to punch out of using Youtube as my audio mixer.

I am getting ads between every song. Some are 15 seconds and you can skip at 5 seconds; sometimes not. Others are 1+ minute ads that you can't skip. So anything I'm working on has me tabbing over to the Youtube window to try and deal with non-stop interruptions. Congrats Youtube, you win.

For me, ublock still works but I did have to clear its cache the other day (the 3 cogwheels that take you to the ublock settings "dashboard" - Filter lists - Purge all caches - Update now). This is in Chrome.

This came across my feed today: Windows Phone gets revenge on YouTube from the grave by helping users bypass its ad-blocker-blocker (workaround for Chrome)

I'm using Firefox (plus AdBlock, UBlock and NoScript) and it's like they developed a laser-targeted bunker buster. I tried blocking specific elements related to ads and and Youtube just freezes.

The joys of me using a browser with a miniscule market share--not worth targeting back, I guess.

Yeah, I never heard of that browser. I'd just like crap to work.

I forgot I can use Amazon as a streaming station for for now, that is my plan.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 3:46 pm I'm using Firefox (plus AdBlock, UBlock and NoScript) and it's like they developed a laser-targeted bunker buster. I tried blocking specific elements related to ads and and Youtube just freezes.

As far as I know, you shouldn't be trying to use more than one adblocker with Youtube right now, and no custom filters, it just breaks things faster. Disable everything but ublock for the Youtube domain, reset all filters to default, and purge ublock cache.

I'll give it a try - thanks!

Interesting: The above suggestion stops the ads from playing, but there is a 10-30 second pause where Youtube is trying to play an ad (but it can't), so it's just silent. That's certainly better. Here's hoping they (uBlock) keeps tweaking...

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 4:04 pm I'll give it a try - thanks!

Interesting: The above suggestion stops the ads from playing, but there is a 10-30 second pause where Youtube is trying to play an ad (but it can't), so it's just silent. That's certainly better. Here's hoping they (uBlock) keeps tweaking...

This more closely aligns with what I see in Vivaldi. Critically, though, that delay happens only once per video. The interstitials are just gone.

Well, if you are interested in some *ahem* light reading on the subject - source

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 4:04 pm I'll give it a try - thanks!

Interesting: The above suggestion stops the ads from playing, but there is a 10-30 second pause where Youtube is trying to play an ad (but it can't), so it's just silent. That's certainly better. Here's hoping they (uBlock) keeps tweaking...

Does that mean that you lose the option to skip some ads after a few seconds?

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 5:57 pm Does that mean that you lose the option to skip some ads after a few seconds?

That "skip" button didn't always appear after I was raw-dogging Youtube over this last ~5 days, so that hasn't changed. What happens now is I see that it's trying to play an ad, but Youtube just "spins". After 5-10 seconds sometimes the "skip" button comes up but other times it just then goes to an ad splash screen, does that loading/spinning for another ~5 second and then resumes with the next video.

I'll need to see what happens when I'm watching something longer. Over the weekend I was watching a replay of a Twitch (?) stream that was like 2 hours long and an ad would take over ~8 minutes.

gilraen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 4:57 pm Well, if you are interested in some *ahem* light reading on the subject - source

I'll leave it up to the big-brains to figure it out and tell me what to do, but that's crazy.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos, have never paid for premium, and don’t have these massive papers you guys are complaining about. A minute long ad that isn’t skippable? I’ve never once seen that. The most I’ll get is a 15-second ad that I can’t skip.

That said, I would argue YouTube is terrible for music, unless you have specific songs/videos you want to watch.

YouTube as a music service seems crazy to me. It's good for sharing music (as in, "check this song out"). But music servuce is usually a case of you get what you pay for.

Maybe it's because I've been using it to listen/view music for years, but Youtube has auto generated song/video lists that are thematically connected by decade or similar artists. I play the first video and I now have hours of music that follows.

If I want to hear/see attractive women playing a new song on a theramin while another is hula-hooping in the background, I just wait for Daehawk to post a video.

There aren't a lot of options for 'view', but if it's just 'listen', both Spotify and Pandora do the automatic related playlist quite well.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 9:29 pm YouTube as a music service seems crazy to me. It's good for sharing music (as in, "check this song out"). But music servuce is usually a case of you get what you pay for.

I listen to a lot of stuff on youtube. Most of it is just something catchy with an incredibly creative and entertaining video. Without that video I probably wouldn't bother with the music. I assume I'm no where near the majority on this but this is how I listen to music these days. By watching it.

when I am about to buy some music, first I check it on youtube to make sure I have the right music. Meaning, is it the right version the right remake, etc.

Exodor wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 3:20 pm i don't get ads but I pay them for their service. /shrug

I got YouTube Premium or whatever so my kid could avoid ads. It's been worth the money.

Same. I use youtube music and my kids spend 90% of their video watching on youtube. It's up to $23 per month but with the amount of youtube my kids watch it's significantly cheaper per hour watched than Netflix, HBO-HBONow-HBO-Max- Max, or Disney/Hulu/ESPN+.

gilraen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 3:59 pm As far as I know, you shouldn't be trying to use more than one adblocker with Youtube right now, and no custom filters, it just breaks things faster. Disable everything but ublock for the Youtube domain, reset all filters to default, and purge ublock cache.

So now it's been two days and I did exactly what you said here. For the first day I had ad "breaks" where Youtube would go silent and churn for 5-10 seconds and then the next video would just play.

Well today there aren't any breaks - it's working like it did before Youtube rolled out their ad blocker last week. I don't know if uBlock is building up a "library" and just instantly stopping the ads that it recognizes, but all day today it's been playing without any problems.

I guess the cat and mouse game will escalate, but for now all is good - thanks again!