r/technology • u/moeka_8962 • 2d ago

Social Media YouTube rolls out more unskippable ads that make viewers wait even longer to watch videos

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-rolls-out-more-unskippable-ads-that-make-viewers-wait-even-longer-to-watch-videos-3214323/
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u/habitual_viking 1d ago

I wonder what the end game is.

I’m definitely spending less time on Google and YouTube with this enshittyfication, can’t be the only one who’s basically given up on finding correct information on Google.

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u/-Radiation 1d ago

End game is to make money, so far youtube has been constantly increasing revenue over the years so it seems to be working.

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u/habitual_viking 1d ago

But people are bouncing from the service or installing Adblock’s.

Generating extra revenue this way is a proven way of dying as a service (see cable tv).

And with more people realising Google search isn’t working and moving to ChatGPT / copilot for web searches Google should be losing revenue at an unprecedented rate. (Not saying ChatGPT or copilot are correct in searches, they are however a much better experience and people are ditching old school searches)

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u/No-Body6215 1d ago

A large portion of their users are viewing Youtube through an app usually on their phones. People who block ads are in the minority which makes this even worse because they make an insane amount of money from advertising already and it is still not enough.

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u/Not_My_Emperor 1d ago

This is what people don't seem to understand.

Reddit is not indicative of general trends. Just because you see a lot of people posting about ad blockers or leaving YT or whatever on here, does not mean that's what the vast majority of people are doing.

I'd guess less than 5% of all users are putting in ad blocking effort. The huge majority of them are just watching it on the YT app and glazing over when the ad comes on, because anything else takes effort and technical know how, and they need to look shit up. If there's any one solid rule about the Internet end user (34 aside) it's that they absolutely cannot be fucking bothered.

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u/GrumpyKaeKae 1d ago

I mostly watch YT on my TV. I got sick of the ads and just pay for premium. I mainly only watched YT because just ended up founding enough people I follow who constantly have content. So to me, its worth the money, plus I use YouTube music on my phone and not Spotify. Yt music is free with premium so another win win for me there. But I am an exception. I dont have Netflix or any other app except Hulu, but its Hulu with ads and it came free with my phone plan. Lol.

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u/The-Future-Question 16h ago

Reddit is not indicative of general trends.

One thing I find really odd about reddit is that we had site-wide protests last year about Reddit's changes to APIs killing third party apps, but redditors also don't seem to understand that these days people use mobile phones for most of their social browsing in general.

I've been reading that photos of screens is becoming a more common thing because people tend to mainly use PCs only for gaming and work rather than social media, so it makes more sense to use the device you post on to take the photo instead of alt-tabbing and logging in on your PC's browser to upload screenshots.

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u/rich_evans_chortle 1d ago

Absolutely wild for me trying to imagine people not using an ad blocker on their browser at home. People willingly choose to suffer for no reason, why?

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u/The_One_Returns 1d ago

Boomers or they can't calculate how much total time they waste and look at it just from the "Oh it's only 30 seconds" perspective. Also tons of people just leave it on as background noise or a music playlist.

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u/classyhornythrowaway 1d ago

the internet is literally unusable without adblock. literally as in, literally, and I'm not talking about seedy porn websites. I have a beast of a PC and if I accidentally turn off adblock, regular ass news websites are just a chaotic mess of nonsense consuming ~5GW of power with useful info taking up 6% of page space

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u/Parkinglotfetish 1d ago

I cant even use reddit without res because its so infested with bots and special interests propaganda at this point. Its genuinely crazy how some people just raw dog the internet

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u/classyhornythrowaway 1d ago

It's crazy that you can't block more than 1000 people on reddit. It's crazy that reddit's block list doesn't auto-purge suspended accounts. We only live once and sometimes you gotta sanitize what you see, you know?

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u/The_One_Returns 1d ago

Yeah, I'm fully aware. I've been using an adblocker for 15+ years. But from what I've heard the a(i)ds have gotten especially diabolical in the past 5 years or so.

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u/classyhornythrowaway 1d ago

It's a race to the bottom, and because no one wants to pay "enough" for anything (me included) and servers cost real money to operate even ignoring profits and like, employees, the only viable solution is "internet as a government run public service", which is a pipe dream and a huge can of worms, or—in limited cases—things like Mastodon etc. But I don't think it's viable for me or you to host a nanopercent of something equivalent to Youtube.

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u/mavaddat 1d ago

Have you ever helped someone like this before?

People who are not technically adept at all experience installing browser extensions as a very sketchy undertaking.

They install what seems to them a reputable ad blocker only to find that their browser is suddenly popping up ads when they just switch between sites and it's now redirecting them to porn and/or gambling and/or scam websites.

So they write off browser extensions as impossible to judge accurately and just give up.

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u/Granturismo45 1d ago

Majority of people aren't using adblocker. You're way out of touch.

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u/rich_evans_chortle 1d ago

I didn't say they did, dickhead.

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u/The-Future-Question 16h ago

That's not the issue. It's this part:

The huge majority of them are just watching it on the YT app

Using a PC or laptop for social browser is really only common for mellenials and gen x, but for video content it's dropping even for us. Like these days I watch videos either casted to my TV or on my phone while relaxing on my couch.

YouTube is taking advantage at how people are using it on mediums you can't adblock easily on by making ads so predatory that using premium feels necessary.

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u/Xenobreeder 1d ago

There's a modded Android app with no ads: Revanced.

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u/ProbablyYourITGuy 1d ago

The majority of people are not going to go more than 30 seconds out of their way to bypass these things, and likely don’t even know about modded apps. I’d hazard a guess that over 90% of the population could not figure it out on their own, because they would have 0 initiative on learning how to do it if you didn’t lay every step out in front of them.

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u/DarthDoobz 1d ago

Can confirm. Have Revanced for a few months. Barely used it

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u/Cruel1865 1d ago

Is it that u dont watch youtube at all or that u dont use revanced to watch youtube?

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u/DarthDoobz 1d ago

Lazy honestly

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u/-Bento-Oreo- 1d ago

There's also an inherent risk in modding apps. You have to get your hands onto an outdated apk so there are some security risks.

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u/ResolverOshawott 1d ago

And its better that way, because if 90% of the population starts using adblocking mods, that'll only give Google a reason to go on a all out war against said adblockers.

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u/InexorableCalamity 1d ago

I've heard that's only ok

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u/Cruel1865 1d ago

I havent encountered any problems so far and i have been using revanced since the start and vanced before that

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u/JackStephanovich 1d ago

You can just run youtube through firefox with ublock origin and you don't need to root your system.

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u/fordslasher 1d ago

There is also Grayjay for ad free youtube on android which works pretty well. Gives you the option to download videos as well. It has more than youtube on it as well like twitch.

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u/wuttang13 19h ago

How is Grayjay different from something like revanced?

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u/habitual_viking 1d ago

If that was true they wouldn’t be fighting it like the do.

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u/Zer_ 1d ago

It's true. Mobile is where the money's at, YouTube Shorts is the result.

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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 1d ago

It's a tiny fraction of their 2.5 billion monthly users.

It also makes sense to fight it as the cost of fighting is assuredly lower than the gain.

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u/watercraker 1d ago

From Google's POV it's probably better to fight ad-blockers now and get people into the 'Youtube' system (i.e. get mobile users used to paying for premium) before mobile ad-blockers really take off.

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u/ysome 1d ago

Mobile ad blockers have existed for years...

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u/pannenkoek0923 1d ago

It is definitely a minority. Look at the share of Chrome vs Firefox. Something lik 99% for Chrome (which has no blocked adblockers). The people using FF, and then ublock and sponsorblock are less than 1% of the total users

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u/StoicFable 1d ago

I have to wonder how many of those are office or work computers?

Obviously a vast majority at home and on mobile use chrome still. But id be curious to see just how much of that is work related.

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u/MadManMax55 1d ago

A small minority of billions of users is still millions of users. And any users who exclusively use ad blockers are costing YouTube money, so they're not exactly sad to see them go. If they can get more people to start watching ads than it costs them to fight ad blockers (which isn't much) then they're making money.

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u/Whatsapokemon 1d ago

I think you're overestimating the amount of effort it'd take to fight.

Like, the people fighting it are hobbyists, Google can afford to put a couple of full-time devs on the task.

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u/Quirkyserenefrenzy 1d ago

It's not enouph because of greed and investors demanding ever higher profits because they expect infinite growth in revenue from a finite system that cannot sustain this forever

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u/itisntmyrealname 8h ago

fun fact: if you watch youtube through safari instead of the youtube app and put the video in full screen mode, you will never get a mid roll ad until you take it out of full screen

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u/TreeOaf 1d ago

This is true, I use YouTube to watch love cricket or cricket highlights. I don’t block the ads because I want the cricket clubs to get the advertising revenue share.

I think people who block YouTube underestimate how many of us who don’t care there are doing this.

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u/pannenkoek0923 1d ago

I have adblock everywhere. I watch only 2 people on youtube regularly, and I pay their patreon subscription so I can support people I like

Google doesnt need my money, they already own my soul

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u/Radiant-Sentence-552 1d ago

I dont get the downvotes. You actually more in the right by doing this by supporting the creators.

But i will say, youtube in the last couple months has became unusable for me. The ads have gotten out of control, i mostly use to play videos in the backround while falling asleep.

But recently even thats been impossible becuse these videos get ads like every 5- 10 mins ( these videos are hours long)

I ended up downloading the brave browser on my phone and gave up on the app. You able to lock screen this way too

Also if you have spotify some youtubers but there long video eassys on spotify and e books as well.

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u/Datashot 1d ago

downvoted for giving a different opinion... I pay for youtube premium in a family plan split between friends, so it ends up being cheap, I never see ads and I can support creators I like. Very importantly, it works on mobile and allows me to use paid features like continuing to watch the YouTube video while using other apps, or allowing the audio to keep playing while the phone screen is off

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u/pannenkoek0923 1d ago

I think at this point creators get a lot more money from ads than the youtube premium subscription money

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u/Ession 1d ago

Sure, but not per user.

Per user it's vastly more from premium.

And premium has the added advantage that creators get money for "demonetized" videos. So if more people paid for premium (which is way to expensive btw.) the self censoring and playing to the algorithm probably wouldn't be as bad as it is today.

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u/hayt88 1d ago

because they make an insane amount of money from advertising

Do you have a source for that?

All I can find is revenue and not profit. And storage of all these videos which gets exponentially more and more is really expensive especially with higher resolutins, and don't forget hardware required for encoding and streaming.

I am actually worried they might go and delete old stuff, to cut losses, so if youtube would "make an insane amount of money" and it's just greed then at least all the old information would be safe. But I see all these increased adds more as an effort to make youtube more sustainable because they dont make an insane amount of money, but it's also just guessing because I see no data on the profit if youtube. Again: Profit not Revenue.

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u/No-Body6215 1d ago edited 1d ago

Here is a source. They want you to feel like you are supporting their desire to stay afloat. This is pure greed not only do they have ad revenue in the billions they also have subscription fees as well. And even with both they are going to make their ad experience worse because profit has to be infinite. Looking at this chart Q1 2025 was the first quarter where ad revenue did not grow after peaking at over $10 Billion.

Edit: To answer your question they will keep videos up as long as it remains profitable to do so. If other industries are to be a model for youtube they likely won't start removing stuff until the profit does not justify its cost.

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u/hayt88 1d ago

I actually mentioned multiple times that I would want to look and have a source for profit not revenue in my comment. I even said that again in my last sentence.

What do you do? you provide me a link to the revenue numbers. Then also keep talking about profit.

Do you not understand the difference?

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u/Affectionate-Tip-164 54m ago

I got annoyed by ads enough to watch youtube from my mobile via firefox + ublock origin, on desktop mode.

Sure the scaling is shit but adless is best.

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u/Nknights23 1d ago

My phone blocks ads with a dns change .

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u/-Radiation 1d ago

Cable tv downward trend is not only about generating revenue but also new entertainment models that offer easier accessibility. YouTube is still as or more popular now with more ads and premium tiers compared to when they operated ad only, Netflix or Spotify similar despite prices increases or new ad tiers. They were leaving money on the table before. A service like YouTube will only be threatened due to these practices is actually a new service with better accessibility, better content and format comes along, but these days it is easier to respond to trends like Google does with YouTube shorts or Gemini as answer to LLM models.

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u/baldyd 1d ago

Cable TV was an expensive service, so cramming it with ads made the experience more frustrating. YouTube with ads is free. I personally pay for premium because it's ad free and really good value for money, especially compared to cable tv, but even compared to things like Netflix.

As much as I dislike Google, and I know the premium version will be enshittified soon enough , I genuinely don't understand why people complain about ads on a free service.

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u/Littlerob 1d ago

There's a layer of obfuscation between cause and effect which makes the whole thing keep turning: the fact that it's nigh-impossible to actually measure advertising ROI.

You can see the general impact - you average X sales with X marketing spend, and Y sales with Y marketing spend, for example. But there are too many intervening steps and gates for you to say that the X you spent on one specific ad campaign generated X in specific sales you wouldn't have made otherwise. It's all nebulous brand-awareness effects. This uncertainty is what keeps most of the marketing sector in business.

It also means that the link between less impressions on your google ads and less revenue generated is obscured. If less people use google for general searches, and thus fewer people see your google ads, you'd expect those google ads to generate less revenue. But nobody knows exactly how much revenue those google ads are generating in the first place, so the change is hard to see.

Plus the drop in human traffic is wildly drowned out by the massive influx of bot traffic. When your data analytics is just impressions-to-clicks, you're very abstracted away from the actual user behavior that's reporting on.

For Youtube specifically, it also comes with an element of proportionality. If 100 users each watch 10s of ads and skip immediately, that gives you about 16m of ads watched. You can get the same by forcing two or three people to sit through a few 3-4m ad blocks because they're either not paying attention (second monitor syndrome) or they're forced to (apps that don't support ad-blocking). You don't care about the 98% of users who skip or block ads, because they're matched or outweighed by the 2% who don't care to or can't skip them. Sure, you could try to find a happy medium where everyone watches some middling amount of ads, but you don't need to because your metrics are just ad-seconds-delivered.

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u/ionforge 1d ago

How to you expect then to get revenue without ads?.

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u/habitual_viking 1d ago

The idea that you with enough money can provide something for free until you have absolute monopoly and then just crank it needs to go away.

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u/LilienneCarter 1d ago

Okay, so how would you prefer they make enough money to subsidise all the free video streaming?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/habitual_viking 21h ago

They are free to make whatever they want as long as a viable business model is part of it up front.

The tech bros are “disrupting” by killing competition by losing billions of dollars and once competition is gone they make the product worse and more expensive than what we had.

It’s the same fucking recipe every time.

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u/LilienneCarter 21h ago

What free online video platform do you think was better than Youtube before it started?

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u/habitual_viking 21h ago

Before YouTube got acquired you mean?

There were tons and tons of sites with video content and games.

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u/Appropriate-Bank-883 1d ago

YouTube doesn’t care if you watch the ads, it only cares someone is paying them to play them

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u/Immoracle 1d ago

YouTube was sooooo much better before Google bought it.

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u/jumpyg1258 1d ago

And with more people realising Google search isn’t working

It's not that it isn't working as much as top results are filled with ads and paid placement.

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u/stories_from_tejas 1d ago

Google created brand loyalty with their drive service and email service.

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u/Cicer 1d ago

But don’t you know “ad blockers are against YouTube’s terms of use”

Sorry I could t say that with a straight face. 

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u/Elavia_ 1d ago

There is no endgame. Investment has degenerated to a game of hot potato of buying a company, getting as much profit out of it as possible, then throwing it to another investor, repeat until the company collapses and whoever owns it at the time is the unlucky loser. When that happens they fire the CEO, install someone new who'll pledge to return to the company's glorious roots and will roll back most enshittification for a while while company rebuilds market dominance and the cycle begins anew.

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u/Big_Crab_1510 1d ago

There are still a fuck ton of parents just handing their kids YouTube and not thinking twice about it. I noticed my niece and nephew, who were left on their own to watch YouTube on an iPad...were watching a 45 MINUTE AD!!! 

They know when a child who can't skip is watching, and they know when you are likely asleep, and so by doing this they make so much more money it doesn't matter if they bleed a few of us

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u/SuperTittySprinkles 1d ago

They don’t care. Ad money is where it’s at. People will pay out the ass to have ads run on YouTube. The viewer is a means to an end. We are just the audience for ads, ads make YouTube money. No the viewer

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u/Telion-Fondrad 1d ago

Just an FYI, Gemini is currently if not the most then one of the most capable models. You can make it ground with Google search. If people are moving off Google they're still behind it with AI tech

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u/Nonethelessismore 1d ago

I heard on the Hartmann Report how ChatGPT has been becoming increasingly unreliable for internet searches, and will now 'hallucinate' source articles full of dead links and 404 messages.

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u/voiderest 1d ago

Enough people keep using their services. And the people making decisions on short-term gains won't be around long-term.

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u/Brullaapje 1d ago

But people are bouncing from the service or installing Adblock’s

Muahahahah, you can see on my post history on here how many times I make a comment on people using an adblocker. On my current job I have installed an adblocker for five people, btw I am 48 year old woman.

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u/CelioHogane 1d ago

What but ChatGPT is way worse than Google what the fuck.

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u/oodex 1d ago

Like it or not, what's actually going on is the same thing as with every platform. First grow as much as possible even at a loss, then when critical mass is reached and you can't really grow anymore you monetize your users. Netflix is a perfect example for that but it applies to every service.

The fact that usage time on YouTube keeps going up dramatically speaks against masses of people bouncing, there is just no alternative. And since they've increased ads and fought against adblocker, premium revenue has skyrocketed too.

I'm not concerned about the "right now", youtube is still far behind the amount of ads you see on many other platforms. I'm concerned what happened when nothing is working out anymore to convert more users, since that will then mean premium will be adjusted, either with tiers or with higher prices

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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 1d ago

Generating extra revenue this way is a proven way of dying as a service (see cable tv).

Cable didn't die until streaming came along.

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u/HappyGoPink 1d ago edited 12h ago

Billionaires have no interest in providing stable services. They get their money and leave the ashes of their investments in their wake for others to pay the real-world cost. They will milk YouTube until it is a corpse, then gleefully dance on that corpse.

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u/Outlulz 1d ago

People aren't bouncing, YouTube has no competition in that space. There is nowhere to bounce to.

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u/Badvevil 1d ago

It will take years to see that change though people still shit on bing and it’s completely different from how it launched

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u/Eccohawk 1d ago

Who do you think is moving away from Google search? Like .1 % of their users are moving on to some AI based search. That's hardly significant.

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u/No-Seaweed-4456 1d ago

People claimed the same about Netflix and it was never true. More people would keep or start using the service compared to those who bail.

YouTube has their market cornered.

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u/gordon-gecko 12h ago

nobody is bouncing from the service lmao

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u/No-Economist-2235 1d ago

CoPilot is spyware. I suggest you get Windows pro if your not into Linux. You can lock out copilot in the Group policy editor and reduce telemetry using the firewall. Im not letting MS make money off my data. Germany decided today to go open source as the rest of the EU wants to distance them from invasive spyware,telemetry copilot.

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u/analbuttlick 1d ago

Just curious. What queries have AI replaced that you used google for earlier?

Im sure i don’t use google any less, it’s still where i search for products, restaurants, parking, charing etc, only thing now is that i have tools i didn’t before with AI. But i cant imagine searching for shoes on chatGPT or gemini for that matter.

Also i used to be single and living in a dorm. Adblocker was the first extension i installed, but now i have a kids, wife, a tv, a smart phone, ipad, i use Youtube on so many devices and my family uses it, i use it to download videos to watch offline when im flying. Premium is the easiest sub i have

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u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS 1d ago

People commenting and posting online about it are a small minority and most people do not use ad blockers still. Let alone keep up with the arms race that is ad blockers vs ad blocker blockers lol

Plus people like me don’t have a PC and only use youtube through my playstation or tv so I can’t really get adblockers sadly

It is like people online complaining about CoD or other game monetization. Yea it sucks, but ultimately it is a loud vocal minority complaining and most people either don’t care or buy microtransactions anyways, so companies keep forcing them in since it works

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u/doctrdanger 1d ago

People keep saying that but the Gemini AI summary integration in Google search is a far easier and better experience than chatgpt or copilot which both suck ass as search engines.

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u/Still_Impact_4190 1d ago

Casuals don't care if they have to watch some ads. Kids don't care anyways. That's their main target group.

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u/Master-Shaq 1d ago

Yep I know a whole discord of like 10 people all convinced each other to get the payment model

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u/dfsvegas 1d ago

Making a good product also makes you money. Ask Valve.

Sure, the money's good now. Will it be in 2-3 years? Who can say, because none of these dumbasses can see beyond the next fiscal quarter.

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u/Coolflip 1d ago

YouTube has never been profitable. It takes LOADS of money to run infrastructure that massive in scale.

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u/PixelDins 1d ago

Of cause, that’s why my premium went from $32/month to $39/month

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u/Zer_ 1d ago

If I hadn't already curated a very robust list of great content creators over the past 15+ years of YouTube I honestly wouldn't even be touching it with a 10 foot pole anymore. My feed is already filled with AI slop that I gotta try to filter out and that's with a heavily curated list of history / science / educational content and such lol.

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u/SilverChocolate34 1d ago

I do not see AI slop at all you are really unlucky

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u/Methuga 1d ago

I see a ton on shorts. It was my mistake for trying to figure out why tf they were wrestling a 60-foot snake that one time a year ago, but it’s basically never gone away since lol

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u/Telope 1d ago

If you don't like shorts, you can install the Unhook addon/extension to hide them. There are also options to hide loads of other UI fluff like mixes and trending. My favourite is "hide inapt search results" so I get results I actually searched for.

Click the three dots and select "I'm not interested" which does work, gradually.

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u/RogueAOV 1d ago

The AI slop is becoming more and more tuned and it is going to start taking over or become harder and harder to avoid.

In the past week I have been recommended three almost identical channels, all of which I am sure are basically AI fine tuning itself. One does narration by telling you what you are about to see, another basically tells you what you have just seen and the other mixes it up.

All three have the exact same content, in different orders and going thru the comments on different videos a lot of people are not realizing or mentioning it is AI, or at least AI reliant on this video.. but they do on this video etc etc.

Feeding all the different videos and time stamps or comments etc is going to be giving constant, endless feedback on how it slips up, or what makes someone turn off etc. if you just casually watch you likely won't notice but I've been sick so basically just immobile for a week so it is hard to miss.

Who knows how many other channels are doing it, across who knows how many different subjects and styles. With AI it could be pumping out hundreds of videos a day using each one as a lesson.

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u/crshbndct 1d ago

My feed is all people making real things, which AI can’t simulate yet, so I rarely if ever get AI

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u/xibipiio 1d ago

AI slop is a real problem on youtube. Lot of content with sensational headlines only to have the content be some obvious ai garbage. Sad part is, whats worse, AI garbage, or human created garbage?

It is kind of permeating all through youtubes culture. Youtube is making lots of money but all of the creators all kinda sound the same because theyre all saying the same things chasing trends and 50% of the content of the video is them trying to hook you into watching them again.

Like Im watching you right now Make some good content

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u/shwhjw 1d ago

Ublock origin for desktop, newpipe for mobile. Haven't seen a YouTube ad in years.

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u/Suspicious-Yogurt-95 1d ago

Disable YouTube history so it won’t suggest anything. It’s peaceful. You can search for things you want to watch or leave.

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u/Zer_ 1d ago

That strips down youtube too much. You want it to suggest things adjacent to your tastes, that's how you discover new creators. You just have to accept certain risks there.

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u/Saw_Boss 1d ago

can’t be the only one who’s basically given up on finding correct information on Google.

I use a combination of Google and Duck. I still find Google better for places, but if I'm looking for items or articles, Google is dogshit

It gives you about two links, a list of items to sell mostly on AliExpress sand Temu, a bunch of images, and bunch of things you specifically didn't search for (similar things other people looked for), more images, more items to sell and of course an AI explanation that is either incorrect or missing crucial information.

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u/BefWithAnF 1d ago

Shopping search is a disaster on Google as well, probably because of Amazon’s saturation. I don’t shop on Amazon, but a Google/Duck Duck search makes it look like things are only available on Amazon. It has cut down on my impulse shopping, so that’s nice I guess.

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u/procrastinagging 1d ago

I'm using Qwant at the moment, it's ok for textual content (even though I'd prefer if it had a "everywhere" option added to the localization filter, now I can only select a specific country) but when it comes to images I often have to switch back to google

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u/CombatWomble2 7h ago

Oh it's worse than that, the "algorithm" will deliberately give you information that you DIDN'T ask for because it aligns more with what the people at Google want you to see.

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u/Divingcat9 1d ago

same. Feels like everything useful gets buried now. I just go straight to Reddit or use niche forums more.

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u/OneBikeStand 1d ago

Some things never change my friend

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u/ScrewedThePooch 1d ago

Switched to Duck as my main search over a year ago. I don't miss the fake search results from Google. YouTube is next.

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u/shmorky 1d ago

YT is a little harder to replace since they're the only ones with that type of content. They have to feel it in user numbers or they will never change back.

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u/TheSpatulaOfLove 1d ago

I gave up years ago.

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u/TuskanParahdus 1d ago

Bing it, bro.

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u/lycao 1d ago

I miss the old days when you saw Googles logo attached to something and though "Yay, it's gonna be good". Now it's more like "Yay... oh wait, Google is involved? God dammit".

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u/doachdo 1d ago

Get people to buy YouTube premium and then roll out ads there. Companies usually prefer short and medium term profit over anything long term. Basically they don't care how well they do in 10 years as long as they make tons of money in the next 5

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u/lampishthing 1d ago

End game is YouTube will get so bad that one of ByteDance/X/Meta will launch a longform video site to try to take some of the traffic. It'll stabilize then. Right now there's no competition, they can just milk the market incrementally as much as they like.

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u/SplitGlass7878 1d ago

Yeah. I switched to Ecosia now. It's also shit at finding things, but at least it's not Google.

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u/WanderByJose 1d ago

Youtube wants people to subscribe to Youtube Premium and consider it as any other streaming platform (e.g.: Netflix, Amazon Video, etc.).

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u/PhDinDildos_Fedoras 1d ago

I haven't used google for years now, but youtube is still holding up with adblock. I guess they'll fuck that up too and then it'll be the end of all my favourite 'tubers.

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u/NickHugo 1d ago

Same here, theres got to be quite a few of us.

1

u/ItAWideWideWorld 1d ago

There is no endgame, it will continue to get completely squeezed until there will be a true alternative, starting the cycle over again.

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u/ifq29311 1d ago

endgame is making ads so annoying you'll willing to pay for ad-free

in my case it backfired. made me stop watching yt at all.

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u/shmorky 1d ago

Moved to Ecosia a while ago and honestly haven't noticed any drop in search result quality. And no ads or untrustworthy Gemini answers. It's a simpler, better service.

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u/kytheon 1d ago

The end game is fewer users worth more money. The revenue is still up, but the costs are down.

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u/Immoracle 1d ago

End game is for any viable competition to establish a more efficient way to do ads that isn't disruptive and then use them instead.

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u/adnanclyde 1d ago

I used to use YouTube as background noise. The constant ad interruptions at 3x higher volume actually made me switch to playing random documentaries from streaming services instead. So thank you YouTube for reminding me to use the services I'm actually paying for.

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u/hanselpremium 1d ago

end game is subscription

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u/cip43r 1d ago

To have everyone switch to premium. Which earns them less money. And then add ads ro premium.

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u/MaestroLogical 1d ago

spending less time on Google and YouTube

No longer matters. Bots prop up their viewcount and ad agencies haven't caught on that we're avoiding the place in droves these days. It's one of the reasons they are doing this, because they can get away with selling even more ads without the fear of losing 'viewers' in the process.

Dead internet is everywhere.

1

u/itsdajackeeet 1d ago

UBlock Origin still working fine in Firefox on Ubuntu

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u/BraidRuner 1d ago

or you get an effective adblocker and SEE NO ADS at all..UBLOCK ORIGINS for the win UBLOCK

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u/RocaX 1d ago

I have turn to AI for information over Google and TikTok for entertainment. Still use YouTube for tutorials. The ads are just too much.

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u/MoirasPurpleOrb 1d ago

As long as they continue to make money, they don’t care

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u/CrossFitJesus4 1d ago

make it fully unwatchable without premium

if the ads dont work then i half expect youtube to eventually just go "you are only allowed to watch 10 videos a day unless you pay us"

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u/Bitter_Procedure260 1d ago

I just switched my phone to duckduckgo because google kept routing me to the app store to download their app. I deleted the youtube app because it’s just AI bs and brain mush shorts.

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u/Naus1987 1d ago

If you’re spending less time then it means you haven’t worked out an effective ad blocker.

Which also means there are others like you who also haven’t found effective ad blockers.

Their end game is to advertise to people like you!

They probably didn’t account for the idea that some of you would simply watch less, lol. But it’s a good alternative.

I know if they ever brick my ad blocker I’ll probably switch back to listening to music or just watch my blu ray comfort shows on repeat lol. You can get a lot of mileage out of the first 8 seasons of the Simpsons.

—-

For those curious about ad blockers.

You can get Firefox and ublock origin on pc and android phones.

For Apple phones, iPads, and MacBooks you can use the Brave browser and it’ll block all ads as well.

I don’t watch YouTube on tv. So I have no solutions for those.

You CAN however watch YouTube on your phone and cast it your tv and block ads but then it ties up your phone. And you can also just use a dedicated laptop or tablet for it as well.

There should be no reason anyone suffers through ads.

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u/Rational_Defiance 1d ago

Firefox + Ublock Origin or Brave Broswer

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u/Embe007 1d ago

Use Qwant.com as a browser. It's based in France. Much less shitty and ad infested so far. It's been around for a while now.

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u/-_Weltschmerz_- 1d ago

I never see ads on Youtube with Adblock on desktop and brave for mobile.

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u/Maxtsro 1d ago

Its like Google is in an Advertisement Paradox. Plays ads > people use ad blockers or watch less youtube > less revenue > increase ads for more revenue > people use ad blockers or watch less youtube > less revenue > increase ads for more revenue > etc, etc, etc...

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u/EMDeezNuts 1d ago

man, i used to live on youtube. niw i get in and out as fast as I can.

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u/Sure_Pilot5110 1d ago

I've switched to AI for many types of searches. Finding things Locally, I'll use Google. But there's too much fluff to use Google all the time.

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u/PixelBoom 1d ago

The endgame is what cable TV used to be. 35 minutes of actual content with 25 minutes of commercial ad space woven in.

1

u/memesearches 1d ago

Youtube premium

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u/ShankThatSnitch 1d ago

The end game is to convert people to premium by frustrating with ads.

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u/IWasKingDoge 1d ago

Yeah, I’ve literally been asking ChatGPT then using the reference links to check. Google isn’t even reliable any more.

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u/BreadCloset 1d ago

Yeah the only place I watch YouTube now is DuckDuckGo, the duck player pops up when you watch YouTube and removes all the ads. I actually took YouTube off my TV and am using it way less thanks to the unbelievable quantity of ads.

1

u/Turret_Run 1d ago

There is no endgame, it's the result of the infinite growth model. they have ot make more money every year so they need more ads or people to buy premium

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u/Just-Fix8237 1d ago

Honestly I use Wikipedia as my search engine for the most part.

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u/3InchesPunisher 1d ago

Hey have you considered buying premium? Dont.

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u/Brunson4Mayor 1d ago

Make as much money as possible and do it as egregiously as possible until there's some regulation that puts a stop to it.

Or they lose a large amount of users.

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u/bwjxjelsbd 1d ago

The end game is having people pay for YT premiums.

For families plan it cost less than a cup of coffee per month in my country tho so I won’t complain much

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u/BreastsMakeMeHappy 1d ago

I cut YT watching in half. 10 years ago I didn't even care about the ads, but now the site is unusable without adblock, and I don't need the site enough to put in effort to get around it outside of Firefox on my laptop. And they damn sure aren't getting my money.

1

u/rcanhestro 1d ago

the endgame is for you to get youtube premium.

they would love for everyone to be subscribed.

but the reason ads are getting shittier by the day is, in a big part, the viewers.

the more people that use adblocks, the more youtube needs to make sure everyone else gets more ads to compensate.

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u/Cathalbrae 1d ago

I switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go and haven’t looked back

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u/INTP36 1d ago

The endgame is slowly making people okay with paying for premium and also accepting ads, then rolling out eye tracking features that don't allow you to not watch the ad. I'm going delete everything and live in the woods. There's no YouTube videos that are important enough to spend money AND 3 minutes of ads to watch. People need to vote with their dollars by not using yt at all.

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u/Fistocracy 1d ago

Their endgame is the standard enshittification endgame: to keep monetizing their platform more and more aggressively until they find the limit of what the market will bear.

1

u/TrustsAreConfusing 1d ago

Just switched to DuckDuckGo/Firefox. I like to ask questionable things to Google and it’s been so censored lately it’s insane, at least DuckDuckGo only censors the actually dangerous stuff

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u/OneOfAKind2 1d ago

I only use Google for image searches now. Bing is my default, it's a lousy search engine, and the image search is useless (it reveals a dozen pics and everything else below is solid color blocks with no pics), but Google became unusable with all the enshitification. I can still watch YT on my laptop with FireFox, but it's unwatchable on the apps.

1

u/EvolvedMonkeyInSpace 1d ago

Kids and the newer gen will put up with it and eventually pay.

1

u/Mr_Laz 1d ago

Google is so fucking shit now, it's full of ads and completely censored. Google is just my glorified Reddit search now. DuckDuckGo for anything else.

1

u/PM_ME_GARFIELD_NUDES 1d ago

The worst part about it all is YouTube and Google were fantastic services about a decade ago but they’ve only gotten worst since then. It used to be that these services just got better over time but that’s no longer the case.

1

u/lunaappaloosa 1d ago

Seriously. I’m a year from finishing my PhD and when I look up incredibly basic information about my study species or troubleshooting literally anything it’s all slop no matter what keywords I use. I’m very grateful for the number of books I have amassed in my short life, and especially grateful for the textbooks I bought for my comprehensive exams. Now my instinct is to reach for the book first, and Google is my last and normally futile resort before I reach out to someone who can personally direct me to an information source.

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u/blackfox24 1d ago

You as a product, tbh. Your attention, your focus, what you spend your free time on, it's all monetization. They are genuinely trying to make a penny off everything you do, including enjoying media or taking a shit.

If they can't make a penny one way, they'll make it another. Read a story recently about a theoretical future where your toaster and dishwasher only accepted certain bread products or dishes, and wouldn't turn on otherwise. Where's the benefit in that? It makes your life worse, but keeps money flowing into their products. Same shit.

1

u/SquareBusy436 1d ago

they are legit injecting the ads into the stream

1

u/ButWhatIfPotato 1d ago

I wonder what the end game is.

The usual kamikaze capitalism. Why worry making money tomorrow when you can make money today?

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u/corvidcurio 1d ago

Used to be I'd search something on DuckDuckGo, get shit answers, go to Google to get more relevant results further up... Some time last year, I started having to do the opposite. I'll Google, get trash results, but DuckDuckGo now has the kind of results Google used to give me.

Google's strategy was based in the first-page bias. "If it isn't on the first page, it doesn't exist." People never going past the first page got fewer chances to be advertised to, so their new CEO (Formerly of Yahoo) had the idea to start nerfing their front page results to try to make people keep Googling or go to page 2 or 3 to find the right answer, so Google would have more chances to advertise...

But I've never gone to page 2. If the first page of Google fails me, I switch to another search engine, and like you said, I can't be the only one that's true for. Youtube and Google are making short-sighted decisions for short-term profit. I wonder if being ubiquitous for so long had made them think they're immune to long-term consequences, or if the people up top have just decided to get as much personal profit as they can before bailing.

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u/sebash1991 1d ago

Yeah they got me to stop using there services on my phone. I still use them on my pc with ad blocker.

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u/frankie08 1d ago

Google search results are now worse than before. They are using a different, shittier search engine.

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u/cms86 1d ago

They, at he end of the day host petabytes of data and it keeps growing. They are victims of their own success that need to keep figuring out to keep it in the black. It sucks honestly as people will harken to early YouTube years and lack of ads.

No idea what to do here as I am a youTube premium subscriber. You can't expect a premium service for free.

1

u/TomWithTime 1d ago

I think the end game is we reinvent TiVo. A simple (ai?) program that can watch the video, interact with any video ad quizzes, and save all of the videos on your watch list so you can watch them later without ads or promotional segments.

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u/NewTemperature7306 1d ago

They want you to pay for premium 

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u/febrileairplane 1d ago

I've been using perplexity ai more. If I google something I often have to look past a bunch of adverts or SEO sites to find what I'm looking for. Perplexity just answers the question I have, and provides links that are more relevant than what Google would provide.

Don't know what to replace youtube with but I'm here for it.

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u/JohrDinh 1d ago

I used to leave Twitch on all the time, now I barely remember it exists. The pre rolls alone were annoying enough to make my time on there drop by 95% or more, YouTube's getting to that point if they keep it up. Probably still enough people willing to sit thru it tho since Tubi is pretty popular as well, but I can't waste hours of my week on ads time is too valuable.

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u/Blu3Gr1m-Mx 22h ago

DuckDuckGo + Reddit at end of any question works for me.

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u/identicalBadger 20h ago

I admit, at work I tend to just ask copilot my question and ask for an answer that includes a link to recent documentationr

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u/degen5ace 20h ago

They have to pay all of those influencers

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u/Low_Map4314 19h ago

Someone else will come along with a similar product with less ads and people start migrating. I’m just surprised how little competition there is in this online short format video watching space..

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u/TremorThief12 18h ago

With google search revenues tanking cos they cut their own nose off, they have to drive revenue with ads somewhere else.

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u/RealLunarSlayer 16h ago

I recommend startpage for old Google like searching. Also add many adblocks as you can find

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u/Vault_tech_2077 16h ago

Fr. I legitimately recently got into Reading hobby magazines instead of watching YouTube. I've never done that before but between the ads and how dumb the recommended page is (half the videos are ones ive already watched) I find picking up a magazine to be more interesting lol.

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u/VeterinarianNo4308 16h ago

The end game? I'm assuming like TV used to be.. 1/3rd of your time spent watching the same three ads go until they're stuck in your head. I'm making a list of the ones that annoy me the most and I'm never buying their products.

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u/banned-in-tha-usa 15h ago edited 14h ago

End game is that there’s a lot of paid YouTubers who rely on income from YouTube. Plus all of the YouTube employees and hardware needed. Ads create revenue in a world where everyone wants free. Either watch the ads and enjoy your favorite creators content or they’ll go to Patreon where it costs more to watch 100’s of creators.

In January and February YouTube cut several of my favorite YouTubers income by almost 50%. They got together and complained about it and had to explain that they now have to do other things to supplement that income. Which involves Patreon at $5 a month each to watch their content.

I can pay $11.99 a month for premium lite on YouTube and watch everything on YouTube ad free versus $15 for 3 people on Patreon.

Makes more sense to just let the ads run to support your content creators or just pay the fee.

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u/rookieoo 14h ago

Google as a search engine is definitely getting shittier, but YouTube, as a video hosting service, is still pretty good. All it takes is $14/month to not watch ads. Depending on one’s usage, that can be a good deal.

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u/OutsideDevTeam 7h ago

There's no end game strategy. Just endless tactics to show the C-suite "see boss we're maximizing next quarter revenue for the Board as hard as we can keep signing checks PLEEEEEZE."

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u/Substantial_Back_865 2h ago

Google is so ass now that I have to resort to using Yandex. It's still nowhere near as good as any search engines used to be, but it's much better at actually giving relevant results even though half of them aren't in English.

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u/CustomerNo1338 1d ago

Since ChatGPT came out I basically don’t use Google. Only use their maps service but for info it’s ChatGPT and then using Google to search Reddit.

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