Hypocrites who block ads
Let’s start with a little background. As a web contributor, it may not be right for me to block Internet advertising. That’s because over the past 13 years, most of our revenue has come from web ads above, below, and around this article. A writer on a free-to-read site who blocks ads is like a vegetarian butcher.
Advertising is the source of sustainability for most content on the Internet. Social media services that provide free access to information, such as Google, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter in the past, are almost always paid for through advertising. Google is not a search company, it is the largest advertising company on the planet. It also includes Google subsidiary services such as Gmail, Google Docs, and YouTube.
But just because advertising is literally essential to the web doesn’t mean the problem goes away. Modern web advertising targets incredibly specific users. Advertising profiles, which are curated and updated through tracking cookies, contain much more data than users are comfortable with seeing.
Ads clutter the page, obscure the content they are supposed to support, and degrade performance with unnecessary videos and animations. This is true even when the ads are not actively malicious, such as spreading malware, targeted misinformation, or simply selling fraudulent data. Google, like other advertising giants, officially tries to police what’s advertised through its systems, but its mostly automated systems have built-in loopholes that continually allow nightmare content to leak out.
So, although it may be hypocritical, I use an ad blocker in my browser. And don’t criticize other users. This is because ad blockers have become an essential tool for all users of modern technology.
To maintain a minimum of dignity, we did not block all advertisements. We used a ‘reverse whitelist’ to manually block ads only on websites that slow down your PC with performance-degrading videos and animations, and only block ads when there are no other alternatives. Since I keep dozens of tabs and windows open at the same time while working online, I don’t have the option to block a lot of ads, even on a spacious desktop with 32GB of memory. The reverse whitelist feature is why we recommend AdGuard over popular alternatives like AdBlock Plus.
According to this standard, ads should not be blocked on YouTube. Ads don’t significantly reduce performance, and although annoying, they pay for the content you watch.
If the YouTube environment gets worse, do I have to become a paid user?
Wrong. Over the past few years, Google has been abusing YouTube, its viewers, and its creators at every opportunity, and we’re really sick of it. And because YouTube enjoys a virtual monopoly on the web, it has no shame about shying away from attempts to get people to pay for it with money or attention.
A few years ago, while watching an ad on YouTube, I would wait patiently for the ‘skip’ button to appear, and I would grit my teeth as it took longer and longer. The first time I considered blocking was when unskippable 30-second advertisements began appearing in front of movie trailers posted by Hollywood studios. But the decisive moment was when Google started showing two ads at once in front of almost every video.
Coincidentally, I started seeing twice as many ads around the exact same time that YouTube Premium became an option in 2018. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. Google decided to introduce a paid plan to improve the YouTube experience while simultaneously making the YouTube experience substantially worse.
The same thing is happening on most mainstream video platforms. Cheap ad-supported plans appeared and suddenly the ad-free experience became ‘premium’. Amazon didn’t even try to hide this, they put ads on all Prime Video content and made you pay if you didn’t like it. Since Prime was already a paid service, you have to pay more.
The practice of arbitrarily deteriorating service in order to make a profit is truly infuriating. I decided to block all YouTube ads possible and never pay for them. And it succeeded.
How to block all YouTube ads
The easiest way to do this on a desktop is to use a standard ad blocker. In general, I prefer reliable adguards. And it supports almost all browsers, including Vivaldi.
There are other ways to improve the user experience that Google might not appreciate. You can skip repetitive channel intros and outros, and you can also automatically skip paid sponsorships (ads within ads) that YouTube forces channels to use when they don’t pay enough. According to SponsorBlock’s advertising page, the extension automatically skipped over thousands of integrated ads for users.
But this only applies to desktops. What about mobile, the platform where most users around the world watch YouTube? It’s not that simple on Android, but it’s pretty easy. ReVanced If you patch the official app using the same tool, you can immediately apply a custom version of the ad blocking tool. You can block ads, skip sponsored promotions, and even unlock features that Google only offers on paid plans, such as the ability to play audio in the background while using other apps or with your phone turned off completely.
Please note that this is an act that Google might call theft, and is a clear violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service. That’s why Google is taking strong action against these apps.
What if you’re using an iPhone instead of an Android or aren’t interested in the somewhat cumbersome task of fiddling with the official app? Watching YouTube through a mobile browser like DuckDuckGo provides easy access to ad blocking and background audio. As a third-party YouTube client, we do our best to circumvent Google’s restrictions. PopTube There are several similar apps as well.
If all else fails, you can use a VPN to pretend you’re in a country that Google doesn’t deem worthy of showing ads. There are also several VPN services you can consider in these cases. Coincidentally, a VPN service that requires a monthly fee is cheaper each month than a YouTube premium subscription.
Playing like cat and mouse with Google
As ad avoidance methods become more and more popular, Google is doing its best. Google is experimenting with different ways to determine if users are paying or watching ads, and apps like Vance have had to shut down over concerns about legal repercussions. Google tried to make it as inconvenient as possible by slowing down YouTube performance for users who block ads. And every time, ad blockers won. This is because YouTube is run by money, but ad blocking developers are run by malicious intent.
The next way Google is trying to bypass ad blockers is to insert ads right into the base of the video stream, encoding them in the same file as the video itself. Technically, this is a huge overhead and puts a serious strain on YouTube’s data center. And even if this feature works, it’s unlikely to work properly. The ability to bypass sponsored ads hard-coded into videos already exists, and appears within hours of new videos being posted on popular channels.
You have to take so many steps to save just $15 a month? In fact, many more people watch YouTube than any other paid streaming service. But it’s not just the minority who are tired of YouTube. Unfortunately, there is no suitable alternative. YouTube creators are also bored.
Creators are tired of YouTube too
Too many times we hear of videos being removed due to overheated and questionable legal copyright claims. There are also sophisticated ways to flag videos with copyright notices, leave them alone, and take (or steal) the revenue generated from them. It was a system designed to end the days when YouTube, before Google, was a safe haven for piracy, but it is now being weaponized as a means for large corporations to rob true creators of the fruits of their labor.
This is done under the assumption that advertisers are willing to pay in the first place. Google’s monetization system, where advertisers don’t pay creators because they don’t want to be associated with controversial topics, actually poses a major threat to anyone trying to make a living on the platform. We see creators censoring their own words or using ridiculous euphemisms like ‘unalive’ for murder or ‘self-deleted’ for suicide, and these topics appear next to big-ticket commercials on television every day. Do it.
However, the monetized video contains a lot of profanity.
Try making a video about a true crime without the word ‘murder’ and you’ll see why YouTube creators are always asking for subscriptions on fundraising sites like Patreon. This is because it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually make money on YouTube, and the main culprit is YouTube.
Even if you use YouTube in a different browser or with the extension disabled, you’ll still see the same garbage ads as before. The same kind of trash commercials that stole your money on late night TV 30 years ago offer blatant training methods to get rich. Mobile game rip-offs that often lie about actual game play. Dating ads featuring Photoshopped models who appear to be fake or victims of human trafficking crimes. There is an endless stream of political advertisements with no production process or standards of truth.
There are even ads for ad blockers. So Google is getting paid to advertise products that its terms of service absolutely prohibit it from using on YouTube. YouTube seems to have much lower standards for those who buy ads than for those who create the content for the ads to work.
To ease your conscience, you’re paying for some of the content you watch. In fact, support your favorite channels on Patreon. Because YouTube is the only way to view this content, and you don’t want your favorite channels or creators to disappear. As a way to express my gratitude, I once purchased D&D goods sold by the creator I supported. I subscribe to the comedy channel Dropout, which is probably the only standalone streaming service that’s actually worth paying for.
But will you be paying YouTube directly in the future? I will never do it. We’ve already paid a lot of money for smartphones and tablets made by Google, and we’ve paid a lot of money for Google Play Music even as Google is eliminating services at will. We won’t pay Google any more until Google respects both the users it serves and the creators who depend on it.
editor@itworld.co.kr
Source: www.itworld.co.kr
