YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers

That's not quite what the github issue says? There appear to be several potentially contributing changes in the time window, and one of them actually re-enables a previously blocked YouTube analytics endpoint

Hell, YouTube even added that feature where it'll autoskip commonly skipped section so it's basically a built in SponsorBlock at this point (no doubt helped powered by those who skip via SponsorBlock). I'm surprised I haven't seen any controversy from people who are having their sponsors pay less because of this.

A deepfake version of Mark Carney keeps trying to get me to sign up for scam crypto exchanges. Clicking the report link does nothing.

With all the money that Google has plowed into AI, they clearly could solve this problem if they want to. The fact that it's still an issue means they don't care, or are happy to take the ad money from the fraudsters.

The automated “Skip Ahead” button (which I use daily) is already hostile to sponsorships. I would not be at all surprised to see them hitting sponsors on multiple fronts.

Surely YT know if a video has sponsored content and so can refuse to play the video - or even not suggest it - if the user is using adblockers?

They impact individual channel revenue because so many channels have gone to sponsored ads, which automatic ad-blockers can't block (yet (1) ). The calibre of sponsor a channel can attract is impacted by the reported views from YouTube.

(1) Hey, imagine I had a plugin that monitored the behavior of several viewers of each video and could collate where most people skipped a big chunk of video, then, oh I don't know, offered a feature where if lots of people skip one chunk, it'll automatically skip it for you when you're playing the video....

Those buying baked in ads just need to find other ways to verify value. This is nothing new, no large company buys ads without checking how they really work (though many small companies would). There is someone who checks all those "how did you hear about us" responses asked at checkout - they want to know if the ad really provided value. Sure the TV stations tracked and reported ratings, but that is only one of the signs ad buyers look at, and it is one they only trust because they check and so would catch if it is manipulated.

The ad business is far older than the internet and there is a lot of old knowledge that apples directly to the internet. Those buying backed in ads should be aware of and tracking such efforts.

YouTube didn't change anything. The ad blockers recently started blocking the metric call for whatever reason.

nobody's ever accused youtube of being too transparent with creators

It seems like server-side would suffer from issues due to buffering lookahead and autoplay. A client can request a video that is skipped within seconds, but if buffering causes it to request five minutes worth, the server only sees five minutes were requested, whereas the client can clearly tell how much of that was actually watched.

> against adblocking

And extensions such as SponsorBlock [1], which help user skipping sponsored sections or useless intros in videos.

[1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Morally indefensible. Adblockers are used as a response to Google externalizing/ignoring the cost of proper ad platform curation.

I don't think YouTube needed to do anything. The change influenced creators' bottom line so they are motivated on their own to mobilize their viewers against this change.

This was my exact thought when I read about it. YouTube clearly has a record of what I’ve watched, because it’s in my watch history.

What they are missing is proof I’ve watched the ads - which I haven’t.

Ads are how they get paid until they're big enough for alternative revenue generation.

The thumbs downs on Yuki's responses are baffling. It is a privacy filter, improving privacy. There is a strong para-social relationship with many younger internet users, so maybe people really do feel strongly about affecting their favorite youtube star's view count? Or it could be youtube creators who are worried. I can't think of any other reasons a user would be on the side of youtube here.

Right or wrong you don't think it was unduly combative right off the bat? Manners cost nothing.

But why would I, as a user of Easy Privacy, care about this? It is protecting my own privacy. Someone trying to get more money on the internet isn't really my concern.

> So this is only harmful to the creators, and not YouTube.

Pretty sure this is harmful to youtube as well as it lowers the value (less personalization data) for advertisers. Also the knock-on effect of impacting creators, meaning less investment in creating content.

That being said, I've always hated this business model. It's created so many other problems in our society. Resulting in a shift to authoritarian leadership in many countries.

Aren't many channels funded by the companies they pretend to get sponsorship from? If you look at the OSINT and Natsec adjacent topics there are many who have had the same sponsor for years: ground.news ... many pretend that they are indie content creators when they are just the marketing / growth hacking arm of the sponsor.

Examples: Caspian report, Warfronts, Geopolitics decoded, ...

Many of them (the content creator) are even located in the same city.

Eventually the whole system will rebalance. TV ads were shown to people even though you couldn't if any single person was watching or not.

Where does line go? If a future "Adblocker 3000" don't let advertisers capture you eyemovements in realtime 30 times per second, would that be sad?

Seems the ball is with Youtube. They can compensete and pay out more. Or not.

Oh, really, are you sure? They still charge advertisers the full amount? My understanding was that they're only charged if there is evidence of an "ad impression" which there shouldn't be if the request was blocked

That still isn't an issue for the end-user. It is Youtube's problem to keep their content creators happy and not mine.

Personally I would even prefer anything that allows for a Youtube alternative to do better.

Isn't it likely that Google charges the advertisers for each time an ad is shown? So lower view counts mean lower ad views which means lower revenues for both Google and the content creators. (And, if the advertisers are counting on the views to drive their own business, it could mean lower revenues for them to go with the smaller ad bills.)

> Oh, that one is easy to understand. They want to change the sentiment to "adblockers are bad, it's basically stealing"

Ah yes, the good old "don't copy that floppy" argument.

The advertising industry brought this upon themselves. The web is straight up unusable without an ad blocker. Between malicious ads, drive-by-downloads, content shifting, and other dark patterns, websites are now more ads than content.

It's like in the days of streaming (when it was still good and not enshitified) reducing piracy rates - companies can get me to disable my ad blocker if they start becoming good citizens actually make their site or service usable without it.

Get rid of the invasive tracking, dark patterns, un-dismissable modals, etc. Stop jamming your content so full of ads and SEO spam and maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker as much.

You wouldn't steal a car.

Well I definitely would if I could torrent it. Facebook would have too.

Regarding recommendations. I recently disabled history and recommendations and the subscribed tab has everything I’d expect. No more surprises and no more political garbage.

> I understand that they've massively reduced the compensation creators receive from monetization.

Do you have any article about that? How much did the monetization drop for?

Why would most creators be pro ad blocking in the first place? Don’t most of them want to earn money via advertising?

Uploaders can disable mid-roll adverts, ie ones that appear in the middle of the content.

No, no, no.

Morally you should stop using youtube.

It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.

When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.

They probably use a combination of the API and raw server requests due to how easy it would be otherwise to spoof viewership for ad revenue fraud. Would not surprise me anyway.

Only YouTube can tell, that's the fun part.

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afairc sub-100 views are not counted in realtime anyway.

Because Google still can't count that low, amirite?!

Log out and you’ll be even more ashamed.

Same. My recommended feed is relatively ok, but I'm fairly ruthless with the "I don't want this" and "Don't recommend this channel" buttons. Meanwhile I've been off Facebook for years in large part because their feed appeared to be unsalvageable.

My recommendations are generally aligned with my interests as derived from my view history, likes, and subscriptions. But more and more of it is AI-generated or videos copied from the original creator and reposted by someone else. I try to use "don't show me videos fron this channel" on those but more and more just appears. I think there must be bots creating new channels and copying/generating content faster than I can block them.

And please, let me opt out of Shorts permanently. I keep telling them I don't want shorts but they always come back. I pay for a Premium account, so they should resepect my wishes on this.

On the computer attached to my stereo YouTube shows me almost 100% conservative, boring, safe but good music recommendations -- all things I've liked before, it rarely tries to show me anything new or challenging.

On another browser it shows me mostly videos about stereo equipment.

One yet another it shows me a mix of videos aimed at someone who listens to The Ezra Klein Show. That browser and the previous browser sometimes get a burst of videos about "How Brand X has lost its way" or "Why Y sucks today".

One time on shorts I clicked on a video where an A.I. generated woman transforms into a fox on America's Got Talent and then after that it wanted to show me hundreds of A.I. slop videos of Chinese girls transforming into just about anything on the same show with the same music and the same reaction shots.

If you click on a few Wheat Waffles videos you might quickly find your feed is nothing but blackpill incel videos and also videos that apply a blackpill philosophy to life such that not only is dating futile but everything else is futile too.

The conclusion I draw from it is that you can't easily draw conclusions about the experience other people have with recommenders, it's one reason why political ads on social are so problematic, you can tell baldfaced lies to people who are inclined to believe them and skeptical people will never see them and hold anyone to account.

I did an experiment where I really invested in my YouTube suggestions, and you can definitely groom your recommendations, and then they can be pretty good. But then you have an issue where you get into a new hobby or a new interest, and so you watch some videos attributed to that, your recommendations spiral back out of control. So you can do a whole bunch of grooming work, but probably they just go back to being like 80% wrong. I got vaguely interested in the piano, and now 80% of my recommendations are music related, but not actually things I care about, and they've just gone back to being total trash.

Presumably Louis wants to reach as many people as possible and would like to know how many people he's reaching though.

I've found that "Not Interested" does either nothing or sends an engagement signal to show me more of the same. "Don't recommend channel" does seem to work with that channel, at least.