YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

Thank you for your important work fighting this battle, it must be exhausting.

The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us, the more we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright scammy ads they are hosting. If they can't leave well enough alone and look the other way on ad blocking, (which is the only way to avoid exposing myself and family to these dangerous ads), they need to be under a lot more scrutiny for the ads they choose to run.

people deserve to get paid for the work they put into creating content and building platforms, no? books, movies, tv shows, news, etc, are all distributed in some way or another that costs the consumer either money or their time viewing advertising. if you don't want to watch ads, pay YouTube for a subscription.

YouTube spent about a decade and a half running unintrusive banner ads. Until they secured enough of the market that network effects locked content creators and consumers together in a two-sided market where it's hard for either group to leave unilaterally. Then they ramped up the length and intrusiveness of their ads while flouting content regulations on what they're even allowed to advertise.

Why should I reward that by paying them?

You can keep bringing up Google, but you're still glossing over the part where you're not paying the people creating the content you're watching.

Seems awfully convenient.

No I'm not blocking the ads, I'm just avoiding YouTube as much as possible and desperate for someone to break their stranglehold.

If I were blocking the ads, I wouldn't be aware of how bad it's gotten.

Vid.me broke the stranglehold back in 2016-2017.

Their story reveals that all these people hating on YouTube are actually just selfish children doing mental gymnastics.

Their savior came, disrupted YouTube pretty deeply, then went bankrupt.

That's a needlessly hostile remark. This is part of my point. A content platform is a two-sided market, and you can't unilaterally defect from a Nash equilibrium. Back in 2017, YouTube wasn't running unskippable investment-scam and tobacco ads. They were doing their best to attract content viewers and producers away from competitors by offering a good experience. Once they'd driven the alternatives to the ground and achieved network lock-in, they began twisting the screws, gradually running ever more intrusive and distasteful ads.

Nebula might have a shot at breaking the stranglehold, and I support them, but it remains to be seen if they can do it. A lot of content creators would have to move there, and there's a lot of random stuff (recorded lectures, video instructions, music, etc) that probably never will because it doesn't fit their premium original content model.