YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan. Nobody gets ads. It is a bargain.

You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build projects without videos. But why??

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. I pay for YT premium family, and it's basically the only subscription in 2025 that feels worth it to me. My wife watches YouTube instead of cable TV, so it's already a cheap cable bill. But you also get YouTube music! Which I'll admit is a slightly janky music app since it also kind of sits on top of YouTube videos that it decides are mostly music. But their actual music selection is good if you kinda know how to navigate the UI to the "real" music.

I’d gladly pay for YouTube or other Google services when they offer an option to not track my activity at all. For me it’s not about seeing ads just on YouTube, but being tracked all through the web and still being served inappropriate or spammy ads.

A lot of people will spend $30 at a coffee shop in a week. Maybe $150 in one month.

I think $15 for a whole month of entertainment, tutorials, and useful content and to pay the people who create the videos is worth it.

  > when they offer an option to not track my activity

this right here, im not opposed to paying for content, but the tracking and sharing is a big concern for me too

if all i'd watch are tv shows like netflix its one thing, but yt has such broad content i'd rather not be advertised/tracked about stuff i just clicked once and never again...

If someone really likes Youtube content - sure, I guess. For me the cost isn't worth it - when I compare with other streaming services.

I got rid of the Youtube app from my Roku many months ago, and I haven't missed it. That wouldn't be the case for most other streaming apps that I still have.

I think for me - right from the day Youtube launched - I never liked the interface. It's the worst streaming interface of all the streaming services.

Or just block the ads, let others subsidize it for me until the executive greed eventually turns the product to crap and we collectively move on to the newer options that have filled the gap. Cable used to mostly be ad free as well. Now normal TV shows are 21 minutes with 9 minutes of ads. Older TV show reruns are actually sped up with parts cut out of them. Google created a monopoly by making the product great with unobtrusive ads and now is trying to change the deal. There is absolutely already a plan in place where the number of paying premium users hits some critical number and they "test out" short ads. I am not going to reward them.

I just checked my uBlock stats inside of AdNauseum on my personal laptop. This is a machine I have not used regularly in over 2 years. Being generous I am assuming every ad blocked was static, not animated, had no sound, and required no interaction by me to skip, so just was a one second glance.

I have gotten back 115+ days of my life to do things I actually want to do. 10.34 million ads. From one single machine, in just Firefox. I now have AdGuard on my network and use Tailscale to block ads on all my devices. There is no world where I ever go back to seeing ads that I can block and definitely will not be rewarding them for trying to push ads on what was a great product.

I'm barely sure that the long term strategy of YouTube is "more ads". The premium account won't be always ads free

While I strongly doubt this fully disables tracking, you can at least disable your watch history on youtube which will have the effect of the recommendation algorithm not adjusting to your preferences.

You can change it from Google account > Data & Privacy > History Settings > youtube History

If you have youtube premium + a general purpose ad blocker + disable watch history its really hard to tell if you are being tracked.

If you do decide to disable watch history, be prepared for just how terrible the median youtube interest is. All recommendations become beyond worthless.

People dont understand how world works. Management reward are tied to earning more money. As long this is true, the next year, the reward will be tied to earning even more. The more you pay, the more it will cost. And when people wont be prepared to pay more, alternative model will be invented, like adding ads to paid content. There is only one way to stop this - break it from the start and make it nonviable, don't pay.

They are trying to block ads blockers as some manager wasn't able to get reward. Or is worried he wont get it. And this means that money that can be collected from ads has peaked. Now come the "optimizations", now payable, then no longer free, later payable with ads, then they will squeeze content creators, that will move to other platforms where you will have to pay for multiple platforms where you were once watching it for free on YT.

Sounds familiar?

Made it as short as possible, but this could be wall of text, from comparing to what happened to streaming services etc. Without piracy (not advocating but it is a fact that it forced publishers into internet model) we would probably still buy content on CDs and DVDs, maybe BluRays.

Greed of infinite growth in finite system has destroyed the planet and you can bet it will destroy YT too.

You also have to account for whatever awful thing Google is likely to do with your $15.

But it is now. And there's no contract, so it's easy to cancel if that ever changes.

Except the alternative model will be invented even when people can pay more — do both and make even MORE.

It used to be practically shameful for large companies to run ads on their websites. They had clean websites with only their content. Especially for subscribers. Now they’re all filled with ads!

This is a big misunderstanding of the business model. The price might go up, but there will always be a tier with no ads.

Everyone wants to talk about other people being greedy when justifying their own coincidental preference for not giving away money they don’t have to.

Nebula is there, it’s not free either.

Things at scale are so incredibly cheap if you take out unnatural profits.

This argument doesn't really hold.

Hm, in my opinion there's no such thing as "YouTube content". Content, that's the blanket word I object to.

What there is is people (and companies) uploading stuff. Some useful, some entertaining, some mindless, some for me, some not for me.

I cannot say "YouTube content" is -- or is not -- for me because the notion is meaningless. Individual videos and channels are definitely for me, and are hard to find elsewhere. YouTube by itself is not a thing.

Unfortunately, the way ads work, the people who pay to avoid ads are inevitably the ones worth advertising to. The Nash equilibrium is that every user sees ads.

They split revenues 55/45 with creators. That level of profit sharing is basically unheard of in television, film, books, etc.

Again, yea, there are monopoly concerns, but you’re going to move the goalposts to “anything scalable” being worth stealing from then good luck to you.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t use Adblock, but when sites actually enforce using it, I’m not going to pretend they’re evil for doing it.

> Or just pay for it?

So I do now, but only since I moved to a country where it doesn't cost so much. I watch maybe 6 hours absolutely tops of YouTube a month? I get charged $7/m for it, which still feels usurious, but in the UK they want almost $17/m which is firmly in "go fuck yourself" territory. I'd like them to tier pricing so casual users like me aren't paying for people who are using YouTube as their primary entertainment mechanism.

That sounds off to me. I would think that the people who pay to avoid ads are very likely to jump to ad blockers if the ad-free subscription ceases to exist. Not to mention that they’re going to be very unlikely to convert on advertising.

My higher point was you probably don't need video entertainment in your life. Surely you would agree that just about any hobby is more holistically enriching than watching youtube? Not to mention other issues surrounding mass video content.

$17 is about £12.69 at the moment so there does not seem to be any dishonesty in the claim.

Making any profit at all on a service that hosts and streams 4K video from everyone to everyone over the Internet while also compensating the creators of that video is no mean feat.

They want 23.99€ for a family account for me. It's hard to say if it's fair or reasonable but it's too rich for me.

> No it isn't. YT Premium in the UK is £12.99.

https://www.google.com/search?q=12.99+GBP+in+USD

> It's funny how people are so dishonest on HN

seriously?

We don’t know that YouTube has become profitable yet.

YouTube provides a lot of information and learning material for hobbies. That’s what I mostly use it for, besides music, and movie reviews which save so much time compared to having to watch the movie (so do reduce time spent with video entertainment).

£12.99, which is around $17 USD, which is what the person you're replying to stated, though American defaultism kicked in and they didn't specify which dollar, but still.

So... yes it is?

I used to, but I stopped recently.

1. They still serve ads. Often for Google products underneath the videos and in the feed. Content creators are also allowed to turn on contextual ads over the top of videos, as well as merchandise underneath their videos.

2. Sponsored segments are unbelievably widespread now, and can take up significant portions of the video. These are ads, and they are also permitted by YouTube.

3. YouTube has been making the service worse and worse as time goes on. I cannot turn off shorts, even though I despise them. They're all over my feed. Removing the downvote score means I cannot tell if a video is spam before clicking on it now. Ostensibly YouTube serves more video hours now, but at our expense.

4. YouTube recently raised my price 40% overnight.

There was space for reasonable prices without making their service worse. They crossed that line for me and I think for many others too.

I will never pay for an ad-supported product. As long as YouTube accepts money from advertisers, their loyalty is split between users and advertisers. And advertisers will eventually win: if YouTube Premium gains traction, advertisers will be willing to pay more for access to premium users, and YouTube can only ignore that for so long. YouTube Premium will have ads eventually--it's just a matter of time. It already happened to cable, it happened to Prime, and it will happen to every streaming service that relies on ads eventually.

The only answer is to support companies that do not receive any money from ads (i.e. Kagi). Until that exists for streaming, I'm blocking ads and not giving them a cent.

Like giving 55% of it to content creators

You would, but most people who pay are not technically savvy enough to get the right adblock, keep it up to date, etc.

> Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan.

Thats exactly what some mobster would say to you when asking/forcing you for some money to buy protection for his etablisment.

I see that you can argue that you use a service that costs money. Yes. But the advertising is unacceptable not only because it is advertising, but also because of its content AND the way it is delivered. You can't support that.

If that ever happens then we can reopen the discussion of the morality of adblockers on youtube. In the mean time, just pay for it.

It sounds like you don't like the experience and an adblocker isn't going to change that. If you don't like youtube and you don't watch it... it's fine? Everyone is entitled to their preferences.

Specifically though:

2. Content creators shill for things, sure. Youtube doesn't stop you from fast-forwarding through these segments. These creators are real human beings that put a ton of work into bringing me content and I don't begrudge them making some money. These are the ads that work on me; I deliberately use their affiliate links. I want them to spend more time making content. Hell there are a dozen different Youtube creators I pay monthly on Patreon just because!

I don't find these sponsorships terrible and at any rate it's not Youtube's fault.

3. Yeah I would love to have a Shortblocker extension in my browser, no argument there. But I don't think the visible downvotes make any material difference. The recommendation algorithm is excellent and I don't see spam.

4. The price is still extremely reasonable compared to the value I get. Maybe it isn't for you, that's fine. But the fact is you can pay for no-ads; complaining about adblock behavior rings incredibly hollow.

Or routing it to support work for countries with profitable contracts, but questionable dedication to human rights.

The paid service would of course have to offer something else other than “no ads” if they started showing ads in it

The type of people who have already indicated that they have disposable income, and are willing to pay for a service, are more attractive to advertisers than people who are known to have opted for a worse experience for free

> Or just pay for it?

on top of all the things already mentioned like privacy issues, etc.

- you'll also still see "Branded Content" when paying Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_content

- because of Googles "monopoly", they take a big % of your money, instead of you actually paying the content creators themselves.

> You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build projects without videos. But why??

> redirecting that time towards more creative or mindful pursuits.

at this point, there's no use in implanting the goal posts into the ground, they're going to be moved again in a few seconds.

As do coffee roasters.

Yeah putting a reaction video in the same category as a video essayist/documentary is strange. In a sea of content farm videos there are still many interesting islands of thought-provoking stuff on youtube.

They are not responsible for the content, so they are not a publisher, more like the company that prints the newspapers. Imagine if NYT printers charged more if NYT decided to raise the sticker price?

Why not charge creators for the infrastructure cost?

If you use Firefox Nightly (mobile) then you can:

1. Fully block ads with uBlock Origin

2. Block in-video sponsorships with Sponsorblock

3. Block all shorts permanently with Hide Youtube-Shorts

These 3 extensions fix your issues. There is also an extension to bring back downvotes. I do not use it but I think it is widespread enough to be useful as spam detection.

This also allows you to listen to videos with your screen turned off and gives you the option to have the video playing in a tiny screen so you can watch it while doing other things on your phone.

> It sounds like you don't like the experience and an adblocker isn't going to change that.

It does though. It blocks the modal ads by content creators, the merchandise ads, and the feed ads for Google products. With other extensions I can skip through sponsored segments and see a downvote approximation.

> Content creators shill for things, sure. Youtube doesn't stop you from fast-forwarding through these segments. These creators are real human beings that put a ton of work into bringing me content and I don't begrudge them making some money. These are the ads that work on me; I deliberately use their affiliate links. I want them to spend more time making content. Hell there are a dozen different Youtube creators I pay monthly on Patreon just because!

My house is an ad free space and I do find these ads intolerable. I'm happy to pay for content I like, but there is no way for me to pay for this content without these ads. Indeed, YouTube Premium was sold to me as paying content creators more than ads, and I purchased it on that premise. This wasn't enough for content creators, however, and they wanted to make even more money. That's fine, but I refuse to listen to their ads, and I do not owe them my attention to watch their ads. So I use SponsorBlock.

> Yeah I would love to have a Shortblocker extension in my browser, no argument there. But I don't think the visible downvotes make any material difference. The recommendation algorithm is excellent and I don't see spam.

The downvote score makes an ENORMOUS difference to MANY people. It allows us to determine what is spam at a glance. YouTube is filled with low quality content which isn't helpful and is often harmful. YouTube does a terrible job of policing this content. Often the very worst content will trick a large number of people into clicking on it, which makes the algorithm think it's good content, and promotes it to even more people. This is great for YouTube's bottom line, but serving people DIY advice which could harm them is bad for us, the users. A high downvote ratio indicates that the content is inaccurate, harmful, or spam, and we can avoid it BEFORE we sit through the whole video.

Thank you. I assume this isn't available on iPhone?

YouTube Premium starts at 14$ which is wildly un-representative of the price it takes to run the site.

You mention revenue sharing - but either you are a publisher and share both revenue and responsibilities with creators, or you are not a publisher.

If we for a moment imagine that they are a publisher, then they better pay their content creators a livable wage - or not sign them - and the content creators better not show ads, as I have already paid them through YouTube.

If we imagine for a second that they are merely a distribution platform, then they better not interfere with what I see with ads, or make a value judgement on my curated feed - ISPs also don't interject ads into your browsing.

I never said that they should not be able to make money. But services like YouTube tries their absolute best to both have the cake on eat it. And that is not fair.

Google just bumped the subscription cost for my 2-person household to 18,99€

I don't want to pay for 6 members. I don't want YouTube Originals. I sure as hell don't want YouTube Music. And I'd really like it if I didn't have to manually set my videos to the premium bitrate every damn time.

I'd be fine with paying 10€ for no ads + premium. But for almost 20€/month, I'm thinking of just going back to adblockers.

For 20€/month I expect them to not allow any sponsored content in my feed, including those served by the authors.

Luckily I kinda have that option with sponsorblock.

Or lowering the price at which you can buy an election outcome.

Nowhere near as good as Firefox on Android. That said you can get a clunky version with Brave. It's got a block and You can use use picture in picture to throw the video in the background. It sometimes pauses if you lock the screen but if you play around, there's a kind of race condition where you hit play again at the right time and it'll work.

There's also uYouPlus if you have a way to load apps without going through the store.

Then just use a burner account with a fake name…

You vastly underestimate the practical uses of youtube. Crash course alone gets millions of people through their formal education.

This is why the price goes up.

If the LTV of a "good" user (e.g. user who buys things from ads) is X, you price the non-ad tier at X + Y. Y is the premium you pay for not wanting to see ads.

So you're right, but also wrong, in that you can extract EVEN MORE money from the user you were talking about through a non-ad tier.

Companies (Meta, Google, etc) get better at advertising -> LTV goes up -> non-ad tier goes up