Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Ad Block – Sponsored By Google?”.
Youtube’S campaign against Adblock YouTube confirmed that it’s Adblock blocking small experiment that began in May has gone Global and so far seems to be successful. Adblock developers reported spikes in uninstalls with hundreds of thousands of users, apparently removing extensions in October wow, according to stats from ad blocking company ghosty 90 % of recent us users, who gave a reason for uninstalling the ad blocker cited YouTube’s recent policy change. There has also been a spike in installations, though, as users search for an ad blocker that YouTube cannot detect, but ghostery says that they lost users overall. Interestingly, the expanded Crackdown seemingly began right after the end of the ad filtering Dev Summit, which Google sponsored alongside ad block company’s adg guard and IO. Members of Google’s Chrome team also gave presentations at the summit about how they’re making it easier for developers to create ad block extensions. I do find it interesting that so many users are uninstalling completely yeah and I – and I bet you if, if these ad block software developers – maybe I don’t know – maybe this is even a thing that they do. I genuinely wouldn’t know um, but maybe if they gave you a little tutorial on how to you know allow list certain sites.
It wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Oh so I mean because, like I, I suspect, a lot of these people would still want to run their ad blocker on sites that aren’t YouTube. So almost like a dark pattern, but more of like a you, know, hey.
We really do think that you probably like our service and probably still want to use our service, and you should continue to use our service because we’re not bad people really honestly for real, but a dark pattern. Yeah is pretty much what you’re pitching maybe just a little bit of a suggestion, not necessarily a dark pattern. You could still make the actually. Yes, I want to uninstall button, be really obvious, but you could be like hey. This is probably not honestly what you’re really intending to do light pattern, uh, yeah, shaff, 2K and float plane chat suggests.
We just call it a light pattern. Okay sure no problem yeah uh, while the idea of Google simultaneously supporting and cracking down on ad blockers, is in conr there’s our $ 20 word for the day. The fact is, as a Google software engineer implies, that Google wants people using Chrome and Chrome users want ad block extensions, so this is a quote from them. The company isn’t killing ad blockers, we are making them safer intriguing.
I wish I could share my screen with you guys, because this Google security blog post actually says that is, that is fantastic. So our discussion question here here is: is Google being hypocritical here or should they get to have their cake and eat it too uh? I don’t think they’re necessarily being hypocritical. I actually don’t see a lot of the things that I had um intended to talk about in our notes. Here you could support something but not allow it on a certain premises that you own yeah like if you, if you owned a Distillery and made alcohol yeah and also owned a daycare, you might be like.
Well, we sell home brewing kits at The Distillery, but we don’t want you bringing alcohol to the daycare. I was reading one of those like it’s a weird analogy, but I like it like lisal articles, you know 20 30 things you didn’t know about the Hell’s Angels. So take it take this for what it is, but um, apparently they uh they they do. They do not encourage their members to partake in substances really yeah. That probably makes sense yeah because, like those substances that you know they allegedly may or may not have, some involvement in the distribution of right are, if they are what they allegedly maybe could be? U probably the kind of thing that would allegedly mess you up pretty good according to a doctor. Why are we? Did you get that in your Google News? No, no it just.
Why did you see the same? One. I’Ve been getting a weird amount of Hell’s Angels content in my Google. It was trying to sell me houses. Well, you probably I got and I got an article that was like there’s three previous Hell’s Angels headquarters out for sale now like well you’re getting into your mid-30s you’re white Prime Prime Membership material right there time to become a refrigerator. He does ride. Okay, he doesn’t ride so sorry, guys it’s the recruitment’s, not gon na, not going to go with him. Yeah yeah, I remember um when he used to work at Geek Squad. One of the guys did an inhome repair, yeah uh and he came back and was like.
You could tell something happened. He he didn’t seem. He seemed slightly rattled but like he had had a good time as well um and he came back in and told us.
The story of how he showed up and it was like dude had he he called it a monster truck, I’m assuming it was just a jacked truck um and he had like a big boat. He had a massive house and all this like clearly very wealthy offered offered him a beer when he came in the door and was like sorry, I’m like on shift. I actually can’t take this guy, just laughed um and and as he was leaving, he was like guess what I do for work seriously and he’s like I like the The Geek Squad.
Guy was like I I don’t know what he’s like. I fix refrigerators. He, like sure dude, he had a bunch of like biker gear and a Harley, and it’s like okay yeah, all right, hey Dan.
Can we get some more? Are these books, please books, yeah, I’m kind of yeah. We we neither of us uh, I think, accounted for that we’re going to need to be a lot Clos for them to actually sound any good. It’S only he needs. I definitely need some books. That’S that’s my yeah that might have one.
Oh wow look conveniently. We have lots more books, okay, that should be better guys, I’m going to keep an eye on these levels and try and make it not a horrible, unpleasant listening experience for yall uh. Why don’t we jump into our next topic? Oh wait! No! I there were the things I wanted to talk about with this, that we never actually did so. What raised this uh? What raised this for me was actually not that I saw an article on the verge or saw Google’s. You know blog post about it or whatever else, but um. I just saw people talking about it in the subreddit and here’s.
What I would like to know – and I realize this is going to be opening up an old wound for some people, but now that Google is doing the thing that people said they weren’t doing and therefore what I said was wrong so now that Google actively prevents People from using the site and has made it very clear what their position is on ad blocking on YouTube. I think, based on most of the arguments that I heard then now as of now you’re right do do so so so what you’re saying is that I was just ahead of my time I think maybe well. I know I agreed with you at the time, but but maybe in the public eye, maybe in the public eye, I don’t know I feel like the goalpost is just GNA shift. I think it’s one of those things where a lot of you know back to the arguments that people were making at the time.
I think a lot of the arguments people were making at the time were not actually um that were not actually even in response to what I said, but they were in response to what people felt like I meant yeah and felt like was a personal attack against Them and a lot of the really really you weren’t saying like you’re, a bad person, no a lot of the most upvoted responses to my whole ad block is piracy. Take were addressing things I didn’t say so, I’m talking about how hypocritical it is that, on the one hand, I make a video about py hole and, on the other hand I say, ad block is piracy um. The thing is that I never said: don’t do it ever. I actually didn’t say that seriously it’s worth it go back and actually watch the video.
Where I didn’t say, don’t do it. It makes you a bad person. I never said that what I said was it’s a circumvention of the intended obvious form of compensation for the service that you are obtaining and therefore Bears a lot of similarity to the concepts of of piracy, especially with respect to Media intellectual property. Piracy. Because whoever is creating, it is not being compensated, and you can say well, I don’t like ads and to which the response would be.
Okay. Well, then, don’t consume it or then buy premium. Those are those are your three options right, be ad, supported, pay for it or don’t consume it or pirate.
It yeah. That’S your fourth option right and I never said I never said don’t pirate it. I said, be aware of the impact.
That was what I said, and I think that people didn’t want to hear that um, and so you know, I think I think you’re right. I think that these goal posts are going to move. Um upside, don’t read this, I don’t know.
I don’t know how to read this username if lonus is going to rehash. This respectfully suggest that you start reselling. The private tier t-shirt on the store so like, like said one of the biggest arguments that we saw against it, was that well, Google doesn’t prevent it. Therefore, it’s not a problem. Well now they do um. Has your stance actually changed or I seriously doubt it yeah? I I doubt it and I suspect some people will but minority absolutely I I I really.
I really don’t think so. I think that at the end of the day, people have their tolerance for what kind of compensation they’re willing to pay. People have content that they want to consume and they will you know they will figure out in head how all of that makes sense to them.
It’S just it’s been wild to me the whole time that someone will have like a a Netflix, a gole plus uh, an Xbox. I don’t think they have that Google Spotify, you know Disney plus um Spotify Xbox Live gold or whatever it’s called These Days. Game Pass. Um and then be like I no ads and I’m not paying for premium for YouTube and then they’ll watch YouTube more than they’ll do like all the rest of the things combined. I think part of the problem and I think part of the reason that um we see this in such a in such a black and white manner, is that you run and I pay to run a video streaming platform.
Yeah it’s expensive. We actually do know. There’S cost we really do know that no bandwidth is not free, no storage is not free and no operating at scale doesn’t suddenly make it free or even cheap yeah. Certain things like storage, just like they honestly, don’t even scale very well. They use the same hard drives that you do they actually do so for every gigabyte you upload to a site like YouTube, sits on a hard drive that costs exactly the same as every gigabyte that sits on a hard drive that is in your computer. In fact, it’s getting access a lot. It might be sitting in Ram – oh that’s, that’s true, actually or or like there’s going to be tiers of storage right, like y or an SSD tier um, like sure that that video, with four views that was uploaded 10 years ago, maybe that is stored on hard Drives um but like if you’re watching a viral video right now, it’s very likely stored in Ram somewhere um to those suggesting. No, the problem is not that, I’m being that, my mic is not working. So someone mentioned a pickup pattern thing. I noticed you have two knobs: is it a pickup pattern problem? I don’t know no.
This is just my monitoring. Oh yeah, sorry Dan’s on it. It’S definitely working all right yeah. I can bring it up a little bit or I can just kind of get closer to it. I could use one more book because I’m still hunching all right, but if you heard an ad halfway through a song you were listening to. Would that not annoy you? Yes, second, on a second hold on a second people are saying the tap actually didn’t work. No, that’s definitely working guys. Yes, my mic works. You know. What’S funny is I I was even joking with Luke before the show like I’ve got the big Alpha mic and he’s got this like one. It’S actually a lot smaller, apparently apparently sizes and everything not not to get into continued conversations about size being everything, but my bar on there is thicker stereo, oh fantastic, don’t worry, guys Dan’s working on it. .