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YouTube will shove ads in your face even when you pause videos (www.pcworld.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Verge reports that YouTube is rolling out advertisements that show up when you pause videos, continuing experiments that the company started a year ago. A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response.”

The representative said that advertising on paused videos is designed to create a “less interruptive” experience. But as The Verge notes, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to see a drop in the increasing load of obnoxious and often unskippable advertising on YouTube. And since I’m seeing more and more creators pack their videos with sponsorships, I somehow doubt that the people making YouTube’s content are going to get a bigger slice of the advertising pie.

“We estimate we can sell up to 80 percent of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures,” said the fictional CEO (of a company that bears more than a passing resemblance to Google) in Ready Player One.

Apropos of nothing, it’s possible to block every single ad on YouTube — even the sponsorships that are baked into the videos themselves — on both desktop and mobile.

(page 2) 8 comments

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I just downloaded FreeTube today after seeing that.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen...strong viewer response.”

I have often lamented about those boring times when I have to suffer through a plain old paused screen, with nary an ad to be found.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

One way to fight back is to try to get the video ID of the advertisement from the debug info, go to the video directly and leave a dissatisfied comment. This will work until they hide that ID anyway. Or the advertiser turns off comments. At that point we're left with sending our disapproval in other public forums, preferably the more public the better.

"Your ad was shown to me on a pause screen where I don't want to see ads. As such I will ensure that I do not purchase your products for the foreseeable future and that I will recommend that friends and relatives do the same. Thank you for participating in YouTube customer feedback."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fucking hell, I had to check several times that I wasn't reading an onion-y article.

I barely use YouTube and when I do, I use tubular or freetube apps, but I think I'm going to use it even less from now on.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 month ago (5 children)

A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response.”

Anyone else get the idea that these two "responses" were vastly different?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

Imagine... "I just love sitting through annoying unskippable ads so much! And I simply can't wait to see more ads still when I pause!"

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I so look forward to seeing an ad when I pause a video to inspect whatever is on the screen at that moment.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That won't push me to use yt-dlp to just download the fucking video and watch it locally or anything, completely giving up on using their shitty fucking site. VLC has no ads on pause.

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