YouTube Premium

Stumble Bum · 16 Oct 2023 at 08:38

Apex said:
You're quite right, that's exactly what I think.

**** Google, I don't give a **** how it funds YT either. Why should I? How much are they worth again?

I think they owe everyone free unfettered YT for all the data and information they have stolen from us, they're utter *****, and I find it absolutely baffling why anyone would defend their interests.

That's my take, I'm not going to run defense for hugely wealthy and exploitative mega-corps - I'll leave that up to others.

You're the sort of person that doesn't return the shopping trolley aren't you?

tom_e · 16 Oct 2023 at 08:48

Stumble Bum said:
You're the sort of person that doesn't return the shopping trolley aren't you?

No self checkouts either, need to stick it to the man!

Priapus · 16 Oct 2023 at 09:03

I've been on YT premium for awhile now - maybe a year or two and much prefer that then trying to constantly block the ads - plus I use it on my TV, which means its way more effort than its worth trying to block ads on there.

Maccy · 16 Oct 2023 at 11:28

Tried to VPN to another country to sign up for premium, Youtube just kept saying it couldn't verify which country I was in.

Getting more and more fed up with Nord :/

adencool · 16 Oct 2023 at 12:26

!hijack! has anyone found a way to get paramount + via Argentina, it looks like less than £1 a month over there?

Junglist · 16 Oct 2023 at 13:18

Maccy said:
Tried to VPN to another country to sign up for premium, Youtube just kept saying it couldn't verify which country I was in.

Getting more and more fed up with Nord :/

Yeah I found it difficult to sign up for Martyn. Think I used Ukraine in the end. I'm still on my Argentinian subscription. Nord runs out next month so I'm going to give Proton a go

Puzzled · 16 Oct 2023 at 18:27

Maccy said:
Tried to VPN to another country to sign up for premium, Youtube just kept saying it couldn't verify which country I was in.

Getting more and more fed up with Nord :/

I had to connect to their Turkey server a few times before the IP showed me being in the country.

Test it with https://www.dnsleaktest.com/ first

Throrik · 16 Oct 2023 at 22:57

Junglist said:
Yeah I found it difficult to sign up for Martyn. Think I used Ukraine in the end. I'm still on my Argentinian subscription. Nord runs out next month so I'm going to give Proton a go

Proton didn't work for Argentina for me on Youtube either, had to go with Ukraine, not going to complain though as it's only a little over £2 a month.

Vanquish-Storm · 16 Oct 2023 at 23:07

Is it bad that those results show your ISP as NordVPN?

Won’t Google and the likes just ban connections from them in the end?

jpaul · 16 Oct 2023 at 23:09

Further degradation on the windows/ublocko youtube access - now has a countdown clock bezel making you wait maybe 4s before you can remove the 'you have an add blocker' popup.

( Subscriptions to Tidal via vpn have also been clamped down on in Argentina - ability to identify credit cards w/o local billing - been using it 5 years+
it & deezer are the daddy if you want cd music quality, for home)

Throrik · 16 Oct 2023 at 23:44

jpaul said:
Further degradation on the windows/ublocko youtube access - now has a countdown clock bezel making you wait maybe 4s before you can remove the 'you have an add blocker' popup.

( Subscriptions to Tidal via vpn have also been clamped down on in Argentina - ability to identify credit cards w/o local billing - been using it 5 years+
it & deezer are the daddy if you want cd music quality, for home)

Mine had gotten even worse, and told me I had 3 videos left to watch and then just refused to load at all.

Chuk_Chuk · 17 Oct 2023 at 07:07

YouTube takes its sweet time dealing with a popular YouTuber that they have promoted in the past that doxxed another YouTuber. But they sure do act fast when it comes to ad block. Even though I’m certain most of their traffic is from mobile nowadays.

Well I got put on my friends family plan and being able to play videos while the screen is closed and in other apps is a game changer. The UI is so much cleaner without all the scam dating apps. And yes it is a lot more pleasant to not have to deal with the ads. And all the time wasted from it.

If YouTube is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find extra money by going after adblockers (I’ve seen suggestions that 70% of YouTube’s traffic is mobile.). Could this be signs that YouTube is not as healthy as one might assume?
We may see more extreme action happening soon outside of just blocking ad blockers.

Anyone want to make bets on a price increase for premium and another cheaper tier that comes with ads

Maybe they might start deleting old videos.

malachi · 17 Oct 2023 at 08:38

Chuk_Chuk said:
If YouTube is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find extra money by going after adblockers (I’ve seen suggestions that 70% of YouTube’s traffic is mobile.). Could this be signs that YouTube is not as healthy as one might assume?
We may see more extreme action happening soon outside of just blocking ad blockers.

All tech companies are tightening up on loopholes which they overlooked for years. Such as account sharing with Netflix.
Google changed their algorithm for ads a few months ago and people making money from Google ads dropped by 70% :eek:

Google are still making their profit of course!

Back on topic,, people wouldn't use ad blockers in the first place if companies didn't take the P' with the amount ads. Even paid for services are getting ads due to dynamic ads :mad:

james.miller · 17 Oct 2023 at 08:43

malachi said:
people wouldn't use ad blockers in the first place if companies didn't take the P' with the amount ads.

Of course they would. People were using adblockers on youtube long before they jacked up the ad rate.

malachi · 17 Oct 2023 at 09:02

james.miller said:
Of course they would. People were using adblockers on youtube long before they jacked up the ad rate.

Was you around before Youtube came popular and it was just an place to watch any kinds of videos?

Not many knew about adblockers on Youtube until ads became more frequent, longer and unskippable which slowly happened over time.

It went from people putting up with it to people getting annoyed. Thats when people started looking for solutions such as adblockers.

Stu999 · 17 Oct 2023 at 09:08

malachi said:
All tech companies are tightening up on loopholes which they overlooked for years. Such as account sharing with Netflix.
Google changed their algorithm for ads a few months ago and people making money from Google ads dropped by 70% Google are still making their profit of course!

Back on topic,, people wouldn't use ad blockers in the first place if companies didn't take the P' with the amount ads. Even paid for services are getting ads due to dynamic ads

They also won’t use them if the paid for services were a reasonable price. If YT Premium was £3/month without music a lot more people would get it just to be rid of the ads.

There seems to be more unskippable ads nowadays and they’re longer too.

james.miller · 17 Oct 2023 at 09:09

malachi said:
Was you around before Youtube came popular and it was just an place to watch any kinds of videos?

Oh, are you referring to that single year of existence where it wasnt owned by Google again?

adblock plus has been around since 2006 ,the same year Google bought youtube...

people will block anything if they want to even solitary adverts. Does Ocuk take the **** with ads on the forum? no? people block that add at the top with adblock though, dont they?

drakioned · 17 Oct 2023 at 09:47

james.miller said:
people will block anything if they want to even solitary adverts. Does Ocuk take the **** with ads on the forum? no? people block that add at the top with adblock though, dont they?

I had to scroll up to check that there was an ad at the top... guess mental adblock works :cry:

drakioned · 17 Oct 2023 at 09:51

FWIW, I think YouTube Premium is better value than most things because it comes with a free YouTube music sub, so like.. I think of it like a bad Spotify that comes with free adblocking on YouTube.

Chuk_Chuk · 17 Oct 2023 at 10:57

drakioned said:
I had to scroll up to check that there was an ad at the top... guess mental adblock works

This is the issue with the cheap, over abundance of ads. People just ignore it. Their eyes glaze over it as they skim to the content they want. They are soo worthless now that I do wonder if companies truly recuperate the cost of the ads.

Sort of ad related but a previous company I worked at the marketing guys were talking about how some instagram post by David Beckham was viewed millions of times. That’s great but our annual sales for that year was about 55k only slightly more than the year before. The conversion rate is shockingly low.

Would the internet be better if we had less ads but they had a higher guarante to get people’s attention. Sort of like how the superbowl gets people talking about the ads.