Hello everybody, now youtube is blocking adblockers and limiting users to watch only 3 videos with a adblocker. This is not good, as youtube ads are very annoying and not good. Is this because of youtube propreitory and centralized?
Is there a way to create a decentralized alternative to youtube?
What do you all think about this?
Which ad blocker are you using?
This is pretty interesting, could you share where you got the information from?
Yes, this is because Youtube is fully controlled by Google. Google makes profits from Youtube ads, so they will implement such a policy, they have the power to do so.
There’s apps like Newpipe, a front end for Youtube. There’s also Invidious, another way to watch every video on Youtube. And you can check our platforms like PeerTube and Odysee for videos, those are independant of Google since they’re a separate platform.
Google’s becoming more and more controlling of their products all of a sudden. I should warn that with products that rely on Youtube’s functionality, like Newpipe, and Invidious, they can have problems, or are having problems. Those apps can shut down anytime Google chooses to shut them down.
Odysee and Peertube are your only alternatives that Google doesn’t control.
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Ublock origin, but I didnt get blocked, but heard the news.
Is there any way to stop them because having too much power will make the experience on youtube worse, it already got worse.
I’m very well aware of this platforms but sadly these are just front end client, if youtube tries to take them, they could! We want complete independence. Youtube is the only which doesnt have any alternative, all other google services have alternatives.
Yup, there are bare minimum content.
I cant specifically youtube because of the stem concepts in it which are really engaging and fun.
I could subscribe a platform for science, but I cant access cs concepts from it.
We can reupload videos from youtube if they have copyleft license, but most doesnt have a license.
For many channels, it’s not worth using Odysee or Peertube because nobody knows those platforms exists, except for us privacy advocates. If someone’s trying to build a business out of a channel, they’re better off with going with Youtube.
Could you please share the news source
I doubt it, unless many people purposely boycott Youtube due to these changes and cause Google’s profits to change, they won’t revert back to how it was.
Although many people started hating youtube, they doesnt make a effort to switch. Atleast they reupload their videos in odysee.
Is there a way to reupload videos to odysee?
Is youtube profitable?
That’s the problem! Although we use these, but most content are on non privacy products, if youtube is decentrialized then we could change server and can use the videos in other server without ads. But is it sustainable?
I actually don’t think YouTube forcing users to turn their adblock off will negatively impact their revenue. The problem is that YouTube has become too big, they have an effective monopoly on serving video content online. You basically have no choice but to disable your adblock to access the best repository of content.
Google’s primary business is as an advertising company so I think it would make logical sense that they would go ahead with this as it would increase the amount of ads that users are watching.
But it will negatively affect the experience of the end user, it creates a bad rep for google. If common ppl started hating google, then they would change their aggressive policies.
If it’s a entertainment platform, it would be easy to quit but it also lot of educational stuff which are essential for everybody. It could be when changed creators upload their video in odysee.
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Use native clients - newpipe for android, freetube for desktop.
I don’t think youtube or any big tech can beat us in tech because math is not regulated. Just learn to jump from one solution to another. This is just the story of the internet.
More ways they will find to block the unblockers, more ways we will find to block the ads. The cat and mouse game will just go on.
And the recent development of revanced and related RE patches ecosystem gives me more hope than ever.
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I think you may have vastly overestimated the amount of people that use adblock, if you check on the Chrome web store it’s like 10 million downloads on uBlock and other adblock extensions. There are billions of people using the internet without any adblock, I’m not sure this is going to really effect much.
I’ve been using native clients and it is good. But still it is not a real alternative. Still, newpipe, libretube, freetube are all dependent on youtube.
I cant understand what you mean?
Yes, but still it is waste of time. If youtube is decentralized, then the power would be distributed to servers. So, we would not be dependent on youtube.
I meant that if youtube started to show more ads, then the common ppl would be much more annoyed which will be a real problem for google. Because google is unshakable because of it’s extremely large user base, if it’s foundation is shaken, youtube will bow down to user requests. But annoying adblockers wont be that trouble as you said it’s just 10 million or something.
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Welcome to the the forum,
Is this (blocking adblockers/forcing ads) because of youtube propreitory and centralized?
No. (click to expand)
There are good reasons to prefer open source software or decentralized or federated platforms, but the reason Youtube is hostile to blocking trackers and ads is not because of being proprietary or centralized.
Youtube (Google) is an advertising company, their entire business model is to give people free services, and in return monetize those services through tracking, profiling, and advertising as much as possible. Adblockers threaten Google’s bottom line and threaten their business model. That is why they are hostile to them, not because of being “centralized” or “proprietary”. There is nothing inherent to being proprietary that means a service or app will be dependent on ads or hostile to adblockers and conversely, open source isn’t a guarantee that a service won’t track you or be dependent on ad revenue.
That said, open source and (for many people) decentralization are important when it comes to control, trust, and not being dependent/reliant to a single corporation or individual. You are right to be interested in these things. But the most important thing is not just looking at open source or decentralized, you need to look at the incentives of the people behind a project/service, and choose services where the incentives of the people behind it are most inline with your own.
Is there a way to create a decentralized alternative to youtube?
Yes. And they already exist. (click to expand)
Creating alternatives isn’t the hard part. The hard part is scaling it, popularizing it, and making it good and sustainable. Youtube is not popular because it is an incredibly great platform, it isn’t, it is popular because it is popular and free. People use it because people use it… It sounds a bit circular but it is the case with every major social network. The ones that are popular aren’t objectively better than the million alternatives that exist, they are popular because popularity is self perpetuating, a social network is only useful to people if they can find the people and the content they want on it. This is especially true of a social media platform.
It is a chicken and egg problem, not made easier by the relative complexity of decentralized systems in comparison to centralized platforms we are familiar with. People want alternatives but they don’t use them unless other people they are interested in already use them.
Peertube and Odysee / LBRY are the names of two decentralized youtube alternatives. Peertube is part of the fediverse, Odysee is built on LBRY. Techlore actually publishes videos to Peertube and posibly Odysee as well.
What do you all think about this?
It has been a bad couple of months with respect to social media / advertising corporations (Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube) doubling and tripling down on their shittiness.
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I see your point here. Google blocks adblockers because it is a threat to their business model. So they do it in youtube. Well, if youtube is decentralized they cant suddenly implement these measures to block adblockers. Youtube tries and are able to do because of their centralized power over youtube. It could be applied to all centralized apps like reddit, instagram, facebook, etc. They have the power to act anti-consumer, but how do they gain power over their apps? - Centralization.
Yes, it’s always good to see intentions of the devs behind the app.
The main problem of decentralized software is really hard to understand how they work like peertube, but in odysee I could understand but there is a lack of content.
I dont want all videos on youtube to be on odysee rather I want documentaries, awareness, educational videos which are really essential.
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I don’t think blockchain is the solution here, we need open-souce, decentralised, federated and community driven solutions to seize back control of the internet. There is a reason that Odysee is moving further and further away from the LBRY network…
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Beside the already mentioned platforms, I think using decentralized platforms is a win-win for everybody:
- Everybody can chose the server they want and move if they feel a server is making the wrong choices
- Everybody can host their own server. This is especially beneficial for large brands. Music labels, large news companies, governments etc can host their own instance. They host it under their domain, basically verify their identity via the domain. Basically solving the blue check Twitter used to have. See this example where the EU created an own mastodon instance. They also made a peertube instance.
- The different federated video platforms create competition and thus innovation. I personally like that Peertube implemented peer-2-peer streaming to reduce server loads for busy video’s.
I agree that web3 is a buzz word stolen by crypto lovers. I my opinion, there are valid uses of crypto like the graph, filecoin, Theta etc (bitcoin and dogecoin not included).
It is however to note that blockchain in a social network often only is there a identity layer. The actual content is often not stored on the blockchain. See this article for a really nice explanation between federated, blockchain and centralized social networks.
As users, it is a win situation.
For creators?
Some would donate, most would not.
Decentralized is a great option only if it has a sustaining business model, premium model but without we may get some quality videos that are made for fun, not for money.
Power could be distributed to servers, so they can make their own changes and policies. If A server is not good, we may go to B.
It creates competition which leads to innovation.
So yea, decentralization is the way. But there are some problems that needs to be solved like conveniency, business model, etc.
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Very true, monetization is something that needs to be fixed for the fediverse in general, not only peertube.
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If anybody have any ideas on how to monetize, share it here.
Bitcoin and monero solves a very fundamental problem… i am not too sure about Etherium / EVM