YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

> we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright scammy ads they are hosting

This is one of the things that kills me. Even in broadcasting TV, you get typical :15, :30, :60 ads with the occasional :45 or longer :90. The ad pods are also defined so that you get a set number say something like 3:00 max.

YT has scammy ads where if you are just trying to let something stream in the background while you focus on other things where an ad plays past the 5s skippable time, they have some that are full on half hour if not even longer infomercials that takes completely out of the flow of whatever you were watching. That's down right criminal to me. The fact that long form content can be used as something that interrupts someone else's content is such a strange thing to allow. They must pay out the nose for those ad impressions

> This is one of the things that kills me. Even in broadcasting TV, you get typical :15, :30, :60 ads with the occasional :45 or longer :90.

You are absolutely on to something. I think the seemingly random length of ads makes them feel somewhat more jarring to me. I also hate how sometimes the ads are just randomly interjected into a video. I know creators can control this to some degree, but older videos seem to suffer more.

I have had ads on Youtube that were hours long. Obviously, at that length, they can be skipped. I know have some kind of 'trauma response' that when I watch Youtube on a computer while laying down, AFK, I have to have my wireless mouse in close proximity in case one those long ads appears. If I could predict the intervals in which the ads occurred and for how long, then I would probably just let them run and tune them out of my mind.

Regardless, I swear Youtube serves me such long ass ads as a punishment sometimes. Sadly, my suspicion is supported by extremely weak evidence and confirmation bias. I'll just say this... Sometimes when I get served the same ad too many times, I report the ad for something like being offensive, inappropriate, or whatever. The ads seem to never come back, but I swear within a day or two, I start getting longer ads -- even movie-length ads. I have also reported ads if they happen to be something like +30s and unskippable. This makes the ad instantly dismiss (or it used to, at least).

I’m curious if YouTube tracks the phone angle/motion through the gyroscope. I swear I always get the hour-long ads when my phone is not in my hand, and I’m not able to skip it immediately.

I doubt they actually do that, but I’m sure it would increase ad view times. Im probably just only remembering the ads I don’t immediately skip.

Activity Recognition API has states ON_FOOT and STILL [0]. They can probably register to handle ON_FOOT-->STILL and wait for N minutes without touching.

This also reminds me of the Idle Detection API they tried adding in Chrome. [1]

[0] https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/google/a...

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/idle...

You realize don't have to watch youtube right?

I'm not saying I like it. I'm saying that because I don't like it I don't watch.

That's such a low effort bit of criticism of me calling out their scammy behavior. Yes, I could not watch, but that does nothing to solve the actual problem. By ignoring the problem, you're just giving them the okay to continue with scammy behavior. If they behaved like normal broadcasters and had standards on what ads they showed, I'd have much less of a problem. Some of the content that theGoogs allows and accepts and distributes is appalling.

Being unable to accept critical comments and just brush them off with "just don't watch" is just really not appropriate. You can also just not reply to comments on HN when you don't have anything that contributes the conversation, but yet you chose not to do that yourself.

I use a plugin on Safari called Vinegar, which converts all videos to HTML5. Because of this, I can just scrub right through an ad of any length. Only use it when signed out of your account, though, because they will eventually ban you if you do it while logged in.

"You criticise society, yet you live in it. Curious."

My anecdote is the opposite: I never get the hour long ads when my tablet is sitting there, only when I'm holding it. I always thought they knew the long adds were playing to an empty room, holding my place in the video till I came back to skip, and YT was deliberately trying to coax me back to watch with short ads.

I also let the hour long ads play when I'm holding my phone (just to mess with the algorithm) so maybe that is just my experience.

OPs statement should be modified to “ you don’t have to watch free Youtube “,

You can always pay for it and not have any ads .

There shouldn’t be an expectation that a free service should confirm to any standards ? Why should a service be free and of high quality in its free variant ?

If Google refuses to offer a paid version or made it unaffordable then it would be different , but the paid version is pretty affordable with lower pricing in countries with less purchasing power

Broadcast tv is free to consume as much as you can stand. They have standards and practices that they conform and have fines assessed for infractions. Why do we accept that but have weak comments about “you don’t have to watch” for YT? Thanks for confirming the agency I have, but that does nothing to moving the conversation in a compelling manner at all.

Traditional Broadcast TV(or radio[1]) uses limited shared airwaves.

You can have only so many channels, so they has to be acceptable to plurality of people over whom you are transmitting and therefore needs content(and ad) moderation and acceptable standards.

YouTube is not a shared public good, does not have a technical limitation for another provider with different flavor to compete.

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More comparable is Cable TV. No content restrictions apply to Cable TV, this is why HBO doesn't have to censor by blurring/bleeping even common swear words as CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox do, or follow regulations around what kind of content can be shown on prime time versus late night or allocate time for just news.

There are plenty of low quality cable channels and they make money(i.e. enough people want them) like reality TV, pure telemarketing channels, televangelists or porn or anything in between, there are no standards that they need to comply whatsoever.

While the confusion is understandable, few people actually get their TV over airwaves, for most consumers it looks like it is all cable or IP these days, the comparison is not valid.

Expecting standards in a shared public limited good does not compare against expecting it from YouTube.

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[1] Meaning AM/FM stations. Modern Radio (i.e. Podcasts) or Satellite services (SiriusFM etc) can do whatever they want.