There's a plausible argument that advertisement killed "mainstream media" as a <i>mass</i> media. It survived only while there were no other options, giving the illusion of genuine mass appeal. The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class: governments in the TV age pressed hard to ensure the public never got what it wanted (consider, eg. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood</a>).<p>It seems we are roughly in a place where power has equilibrated between creators giving the people what they want: advertisers have no choice but to go to mass media platforms, because one's under their control are dead. And "free speech" is increasingly been given an ahistorical radically liberal interpretation. Thus we can have multi-hour podcasts with politicians asked real questions on the audiences mind; we can have companies held to account for the real quality of their products; films, games, and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.<p>The whole traditional media ecosystem, of course, is in a full-blown panic about this -- and continues to blame the new media and their audiences (their customers, whom they long forgot existed as anything other than domesticated animals that will turn up to the only game in town). It's hard to tell how many involved realise they are purely a construct of an advertised-determined, government-sanctioned world -- a world that almost no one ever actually lived in.<p>My great concern with the "YT is being TV" direction is that this history repeats. Just as facebook (etc.) centralised and ad-santisied the "local, independent" internet -- so will, YT/spotify/etc. just return the mass media back into advertiser hands.<p>Many will say: this has already happened, etc. But I think: not quite. I think at the moment it feels like a balance. One hopes the internet stays free enough, in protocol, that if advertisers (and governments) try again to dominate and control the mass media, there are ready-made alternatives to spring up.
Today I was gonna watch a ~14 minute video on YouTube while having a quick lunch. After the 1:30 mark, YouTube showed me a five second ad. Fair enough. After 4 minutes, it served me a 30 seconds ad, bit less fun, but fine, YouTube gotta get theirs also. After 6 minutes they showed me a 1 minute ad, and now I started getting frustrated. At the 7 minute mark they tried to show me another 1 minute ad, but at that point I just shut off the TV as it's just too frustrating when they're trying to shove in as much ad-time as there is real-content-time.<p>One of the initial reasons YouTube was better than TV was because it lacked so much ads everywhere. Same for the streaming services. They're quite literally shooting themselves in the foot with adding so much ads...<p>Now my fingers are itching to build a tiny little service for myself, where I can have a bunch of YouTube channels in a .txt file, and have yt-dlp iterate over them once a day and add automatically to Jellyfin, or something similar, almost solely out of spite. Realistically, I'll probably just avoid YouTube on the TV for a week, until I forget how painful that experience is.
YouTube Premium is a very reasonably priced service that actually results in more money going to the creators of videos than watching ads does.
+1 I can understand people being annoyed by in video sponsorship if it’s done too much, but if you’re not paying for premium and you’re complaining about ads you’re not worth taking seriously.<p>Being able to pay to remove ads is one of the best things about the new media ecosystem. When I go to my parents house and see them watch cable it’s dystopic how many ads there are for a service with primarily trash content that’s still ridiculously expensive.
I suspect this reasonable ad-free pricing will only last as long as needed to gain the majority of users on board. Video hosting costs will have to rise (there are ever more videos being created; you can't host all of them indefinitely available at everyone's fingertips at low cost) and they will have to increase prices to keep up.<p>Not that this implies you shouldn't get premium, but just worth keeping in mind I think.
It also results in more money going to Youtube/Google LLC/Alphabet Inc.<p>There are many wonderful videos and video-makers on youtube - but I think the platform has been a net negative for creativity, and for humanity, in many ways. Hence I personally would never support them with my money.<p>We haven't ever ran the counterfactual, and maybe there's some reason we can't or won't. But I would absolutely love to see youtube without youtube - no middleman, direct payments to the video-makers.<p>I'm not proposing a technical discussion here on what such a platform might look like or whether it's feasible - I just mean culturally, I'd love to see what videos we would come up with if we weren't constantly adjusting to suit the all-powerful and unknowable "algorithm".<p>I think this pressure to conform to the algorithm, to always chase more views, subscriptions, and comments, to frame every choice around that, has probably been much more prohibitive on creativity than we are able to imagine.
Why do you think the platform is a net negative?
You claim it is a net negative for humanity. Yet most how tos are in you tube. Plus there are tons of learning materials. Seems like a positive to me.
Creativity? Seems like there is a lot of creative content as well. So I'm not sure why you think that is also a negative.
Yes it sucks when the framework wants to make money. But the framework is expensive. Now maybe more needs to go to the content creates. But the underlying framework deserves to make money as well.
<i>It also results in more money going to Youtube/Google LLC/Alphabet Inc.</i><p>yup, they should run this whole service free of charge, no ads and no subscription :)
I'm not saying I want them to run the whole service free of charge, I'm saying I'd consider it a gain for the species if the business closed down. I look forward to alternative ideas (with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment) being tested out.<p>The TV era held some promise but steadily declined, and the Youtube era has went similarly. The audiovisual onslaught continues. Technically competent people on here are innoculated against the realities of the average usage on these platforms, which equates to brain-rot of the lowest calibre.
<i>with e.g. no middlemen, and direct payment</i><p>this sounds amazing but it can’t be done. no one is going to 79 websites to watch things from 79 different artist. the middleman are core evil part not just in this area but many others but I can’t see how this kind of society we have built can function without it
It wouldn't have to be 79 websites, obviously - there's RSS, for example. But there's also ten other things that already exist, and probably ten other things that don't exist that neither of us could imagine.<p>I know that if you live in one place, in one time, and everyone does one thing around you and acts like it's the only thing that ever existed, that it's really (really, really) tempting to think it's the only thing that could exist. But it's completely false. Loads of obvious seeming things are totally false, and this is definitively one of them.<p>Not only is it possible that we'll have a totally different society one day, and maybe even one where we have no to extremely few middlemen, but since Pascal and de Fermat we've known it to be roughly 100% likely! You can completely depend on the fact it <i>will</i> happen!
Almost every video I watch these days has a sponsored segment that ends up taking around 1/10th of the video’s total run time. Better than TV, but if I’m paying for the service I’m not willing to watch <i>any</i> ads.
sponsorblock + uBO.<p>Giving into the wishes of tyrants (pay us or else we're going to saddle you with ads) never weakens the power of the tyrants, it only strengthens and encourages them.
YouTube Premium ads a button to skip sponsored segments.<p>It's worth noting that sponsorship segments are supplemental income. The more they're skipped, the less they're paid out in the future. Some creators rely on that when their partnership money on the platform can't cover expenses on its own.<p>It sucks, but those are not priced into the payment for the platform to remove <i>their</i> ads. So this devaluation of sponsored segments can be seen in an increasingly large number of content creators having member-only videos that require a Patron subscription.<p>I'm not defending them or saying you should or should not watch the ads (I don't). But just explaining the reality and that there's not currently a great alternative.
Paying for streaming services used to result in zero ads too, and now lots of services either don't offer ad-free or charge double for it.<p>I think ads are extremely valuable to brands, more than we realize. It's basically allowed propaganda for consumerist behavior. I don't think we can set a pricetag on ads, which is why I don't think they'll ever go away. This is just temporary, don't get used to it.
YouTube Premium is some of the best money I spend. Just buy it if you have the money. 55% goes to creators.
One of my handful of follows puts out multiple 2 hour videos a day sometimes, almost every day. I hardly watch, but I always throw it on and let it play through, and will replay it on mute while doing other things, just so this guy with 1.8k views is getting a bigger share of my youtube premium money. I don't participate in the channel, like I said, I really hardly watch, but monthly I have been getting free memberships to his channel since I started doing it.
Influencers like to stick ads right in their videos now so you can’t avoid that. Thankfully that’s just influencers and not other types of videos.
You're only stuck watching YouTube ads if you are on an Apple device. There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.
You can absolutely get rid of ads on an iOS device. You just need to use YouTube in safari.
> There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.<p>What about an LG TV, which is where I mostly watch YouTube? Think the platform is WebOS unless I'm mistaken.
Rooting your LG TV allows you to install homebrew apps. If you have a device that's at least a couple of years old and has not had its firmware updated, try <a href="https://rootmy.tv/" rel="nofollow">https://rootmy.tv/</a>
You can either root it or enable developer mode to install an ad-free youtube.
The discussion is specifically talking about watching on TVs. Those (usually) don’t have ad blockers natively. You can of course block outside of the platform.
Adblockers/no-adblockers is missing the point. YT and other internet media WILL eventually be mostly ads just like TV became. And they WILL figure out ways to prevent blocking, in fact there are likely very smart and talented people on HN will devote their knowledge and expertise to achieve these ends in exchange for fat salaries. There will also be lobbying of course and I foresee that ad-skipping will eventually be criminalized (harshly) to ensure compliance. There is no escaping these fates. The only hope is a brand new form of media and the brief window of ad-escape it grants before it too is overrun and conquered by ads.
You can block YouTube ads in Safari on iOS/iPadOS. There are also alternative players you can sideload with AltStore or other methods, all without jailbreaking.
web Youtube started preliminary work on muxing video on server - js player no longer fetches two separate standard video & audio sources, it gets binary encoded bundle instead. They will at some point hard switch to this method of injecting ads.
Or just pay them their $14/mo (or is it $8 now?). It’s revelatory.
It's 18EUR/month, or 21 freedom dollars, for me in Spain. Compared to what I used to pay for it, not worth it in the end.
YouTube hack: when you see an ad, refresh the page.
If you're not sideloading an alternative YouTube client then yeah, you gotta put up with the ads.
The "they" that is shoving those mid-roll ads in the video is the content creator, not YouTube. YouTube won't stick ads in the middle of the video unless the creator opted in to monetize it.
Do you mean that creators choose explicitly how many ads to insert and their length? Because if it's just an ON/OFF switch and then Youtube proceeds to put almost equal lengths of ads than of content (1+ min ad after 2 minutes of content, as per the previous comment) then that's truly terrible.<p>Also... ads after only 2 minutes? Am I the only one who thinks that feels much worse to bear than longer ads more spaced out? There's something that feels odd with having to get interrupted by an ad after mere 100 seconds of watching something.
This is a bit misleading, IIUC. "Content creator" in this case means the nominal copyright-holder, which often means someone simply claiming copyright, in practice, and not necessarily the uploader ("Fair Use" be damned). The person who uploaded the video might have fully intended there to be no ads run during playback, but has little say in the matter if someone comes along and claims that their content is used in the video.
ytdl-sub, I use it to load educational content into jellyfin for my kids, the config file format is poor, but it works well
Many real people sharing real personal stories and real doctors sharing their real experiences in hospitals got banned from YouTube during COVID lockdowns. It's freer but it's not free.
That's not strictly a platform problem. US Federal Government (intelligence agencies) were conducting aggressive information operations (i.e. narrative control) and has effectively infinite taxpayer money to bully / sue / harass / force any noncompliant corporation to play ball. Corporations, being naturally focused on profit-seeking, tend to fear loss of revenue more than they love civil liberties, freedom of information, freedom from censorship, etc.<p>It's a match made in hell. The only real way to beat these is to stick to information sources that are small enough to not be a target. Or to just accept that much of what you see, hear, read, and think has been deliberately curated by a government that is aggressively hostile against your ability to access narratives and information they either disagree with or simply dislike.<p>Some might see a government scrubbing "malinformation", but the Chinese government would call photographs of Tienanmen Square "malinformation" even though they were real, important, and culturally relevant - they just stood in opposition to the Chinese government's efforts to quell any hint of opposition. Narrative control by silencing people who see things differently.<p>What the US government did here was no different.
"One hopes the internet stays free enough, in protocol, that if advertisers (and governments) try again to dominate and control the mass media, there are ready-made alternatives to spring up."<p>What if the "alternatives" are dominated and controlled by intermediaries that are 100% funded by advertising, e.g., YT is subsidiary of company that sells online advertising "services", YT is used to deliver ads and data obtained from YT is used to support the parent company's ad services business
>The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class<p>This applies to American car culture also, as mentioned in this video on Tempe, AZ's "Cul De Sac" carless community: <a href="https://youtu.be/4UAZMEpOKTI" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/4UAZMEpOKTI</a><p>Something important to remember on this matter is that the American car industry almost collapsed during the GFC and had to be bailed out. Ford, GM, et al. exist today largely because their potential failure represented a national security concern, not because they make products that people desire (at least, at volume), or because those products enable a way of life that people desire.<p>>My great concern with the "YT is being TV" direction is that this history repeats. Just as facebook (etc.) centralised and ad-santisied the "local, independent" internet -- so will, YT/spotify/etc. just return the mass media back into advertiser hands.<p>Likewise, it would be nice if our realization that forced car ownership is bad for society didn't push us into a world where public transit was the only option, and owning a car too expensive to justify. In all, sociocultural monopolies seem like the thing to avoid. Not just a matter of not allowing one company to own a market, but not allowing one notion to monopolize our imaginations and ideals. Choice and competition in a capitalist society, whodathunk?
> Thus we can have multi-hour podcasts with politicians asked real questions on the audiences mind; we can have companies held to account for the real quality of their products; films, games, and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.<p>The problem is, it's increasingly less attractive. Like, the NordVPN, AG1 supplement or whatever else shill scripts, they're all the damn same, it's annoying, particularly if you know the product being shilled is a fucking scam like AG1.<p>With "traditional" media you at least had some regulatory requirements here in Europe - either ad blocks clearly labeled as "advertising", or a permanent "infomercial" text overlay. And anything that was advertising outside of these two factors meant fines, sometimes serious ones, for violating the regulatory framework ("Schleichwerbung", see Art. 13 European Convention on Transfrontier Television [1]).<p>But these days? You can't be sure that influencers comply with even the bare minimum of regulation that exists, and no one takes care about prosecuting anyway.<p>[1] <a href="https://rm.coe.int/168007b0f0" rel="nofollow">https://rm.coe.int/168007b0f0</a>
Sure, but let's do like-for-like. MLMs and other scams were institutionalised before crypto -- the bushes and top cliton admin people were right there on their payroll. Madelein albright was infamous as an MLM shill. All this was conducted on the mainstream media of that era.<p>TV never protected people from scams, the law did. TV was the propaganda organ of a corrput elite --- see no more than george bush snr complaining about the simpsons, prefering the cosbys -- a man himself who turned up at the funeral on one of the most psychopathic of the Eron scammers, who was flown to his own inauguration in one of their private jets.<p>The original conservative cultural elite used the mainstream media to create an illusion of western life consistent with values they wish to see the public perform. Values they themselves did not practice.<p><i>They</i> were not protecting people from scams. They were in on the largest scams in american history.
> TV never protected people from scams, the law did.<p>Indeed, that's my point. And that even for Americans, despite y'all's regulations (particularly when it comes to product placements) being far more relaxed than in Europe.<p>The problem is, the law hasn't even come close to catching up with reality for well over a decade. Influencers obviously - look no further than Fyre Festival or multi-million subscriber YouTubers that have a primary audience of <i>children</i> shilling online casinos [1] - but also the platforms themselves. YouTube is particularly egregious... in TV the regulation here is 12 minutes per hour and minimum 30 minutes between ad breaks [2], but YouTube? If you're not subscribing for Premium, it's a 30 second preroll and about a minute or two every 5-ish minutes - on top of the influencer's <i>own</i> ad roll that's usually 2 minutes per 10-minute video. That ad load is <i>ridiculous</i>.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ingame.de/news/illegales-gluecksspiel-marcel-eris-buxtehude-montanablack-online-casino-deals-92691576.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.ingame.de/news/illegales-gluecksspiel-marcel-eri...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.rnd.de/medien/eu-und-fernsehwerbung-warum-es-nur-zwoelf-minuten-werbung-in-deutschland-gibt-HJSK2TT3WFFTPFHWG5AKRUQD3Y.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.rnd.de/medien/eu-und-fernsehwerbung-warum-es-nur...</a>
>and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.<p>There's nothing wrong with taste-making, having criticism structured and communicated in an intelligent way that gives an audience a way to look at things is valuable when engaging with art, including popular art. What you have instead now is entirely audience captured creators who will just produce viral and controversial content and tell audiences exactly what they want to hear. A literal echo chamber where any critic that would say something unpopular is immediately dropped because they can never offend their audience.<p>The advertisement is of course as omnipresent, and in addition without shame or guard rails. Now you have mainstreamed bogus medical advice, VPN ads, nutrition pills, cam and porn sites, and stuff you'd otherwise only found at the bottom of a email spam folder.<p>There's basically a complete collapse in audience and discourse quality. Very practical example, I came across an interview with Frank Herbert, and funnily enough almost every youtube comment on the interview mentions how articulate it is (<a href="https://youtu.be/26GPaMoeiu4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/26GPaMoeiu4</a>).<p>That's what you had when culture was still discussed at a level that wasn't a Joe Rogan podcast. On TV we used to have interviewers who were at least intelligent enough to comprehend the topic they were interviewing on, instead of just sitting there stoned.
This is such a current era comment.<p>Vast conspiracies? Check.
Ignore that creators now are audience captured in a way worse, way more manipulative of the outcome, and way less free for the creators then previous capture, check.
Ignore that 'unpopular manufactured' previous mass culture was popular, mass culture, check. People literally talked around the water cooler about 'did you watch XYZ'? Did you got see XYZ movie yet?<p>Your argument makes sense if you had no experience with the past and sounds plausible. It would be perfect for a Youtube video, especially one for someone audience captured by a 'we know the truth' type audience. They would eat it up.
I don't really see how any of these points relate to my comment.<p>1. That advertises played a shaping role in what could be broadcast on TV is not a conspiracy, but documented fact. That, eg., the FTC had "public airwaves" obsceneity rules that made saying "shit" on TV revolutionary in the 2000s is, again, a fact. And so on.<p>2. That the mainstream media of the past was highly limited is again, a fact. Fox news, indeed, only arose post elimination of the fairenes doctrine (again, another extrordainary gov regulation on speech for a so-called Free Speech culture). It took the end of the FTC's public airwaves rules, via private means; the end of the fairness doctrine, and the like, for any diversity to arise: this was cable. HBO was the first breaking through of what-the-public-wanted.<p>Therefore that the public engaged with the mainstream media is beside the point: it has nothing to do with my comment. My comment describes what happened when these extraordinary government and advertiser require restrictions were relaxed. (See, even hollywood <i>before</i> they existed: precode hollywood is a vastly more "modern" place than the gov-constructed fantasy land on TV which followed).<p>3. You diagnose problems with the present day mass media landscape ("audience capture") and the like. This was already a problem with TV, and indeed also caused by advertisers (see, e.g., the movie Network which basically diagnoses an aduience-captured TV host as necessary schiozophrenic).<p>The relevant comparison I am making is not between the sins of one and the sins of the other. It is to simply observe that the modern mass media is not a product, in origin, of vast state and ad-sponsored censorship. That TV was is extremely well-documented. I've given you many search terms in this reply.
It was mainly censorship over form not thought. The modern media landscape has no censorship on form, but thought is manipulated/segregated so much more. I'd gladly give up the ability to say 'shit' for more freedom/diversity of thought instead of audience captured self selecting islands.
This is, unfortunately, quite false. It would be an opinion I had a few years ago, but after much investigation of foreign policy and the like its extremely clear how much actual content is decided by governments.<p>Most neutrally, for example, consider the run up to the iraq war: what was said, what was printed, and so on.<p>But more recently, consider what's printed or included on any TV programme about any of the major conflicts in the world. There is no context or analysis or history provided. There's, at most, two sides: the government's preferred case and the government's preferred opposition to that case.<p>This does not take much research, today at least, to discover -- frequently even mainstream expert opinion, outside of the government, says precisely the opposite. And that this is never broadcast or written about.<p>Vast swathes of the media elite maintain their access to information via governments, and the wealth via ad companies. They are empty moronic vessels who perform the most ill-informed scepticism you could imagine. But it all passes with the public who think that if there's a leftwing view and a rightwing view on an event, then the event itself isn't made up -- or the facts shared across them must be true. But, often enough: nope.<p>On the cultural side, the FTC and the Hollywood censors were in direct contact with TV production companies -- deleting scenes, and the like. Very contentful. All of this is well-documented.
> The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class<p>Did anyone else hear this narrated in Adam Curtis's voice, or is that just me?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation</a><p>> HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC4NNScEI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC4NNScEI</a>
HyperNormalisation explained by Adam Curtis<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to72IJzQT5k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to72IJzQT5k</a>
HyperNormalisation (2016)