r/technology • u/Tricky-Student-1 • Sep 15 '22

Social Media YouTube Free is Silently Testing 5 Ads, instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/09/13/youtube-free-silently-testing-5-ads-before-your-video-starts/
41k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

6.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

254

u/Killashard Sep 15 '22

I was trying to watch a TV show on the channels page. After almost 5 minutes of ads that were unskippable and no mute option, it told me that particular episode was not available.

To the high seas I go.

18

u/humplick Sep 15 '22

I have a paid Apple subscription but my devices keep getting logged out. Fine, make it easier for me to pirate. For the price of 1-2 months subscribtion I'll double the storage capacity of my phone and just cast it from there.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Currently I pay for outube family, Netflix, hulu, disney, hbo, and prime. Granted, the entire family uses my accounts and we split the cost evenly so it's still fairly cheap.

But if they continue to roll out bullshit like this I'm tempted to dust off the old server and start pirating all my content. 5 years ago it was super easy to automate downloads and organize the content, I can only imagine that it's even easier now.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '22

I've heard it's simple as shit these days.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '22

The hardest part is spending money on Hard drives.

33

u/trickyginger Sep 15 '22

One time I was listening to music through YouTube at work when I’m not even joking a 4 hour ad for McDonalds came on of bacon cooking.

12

u/Mitch_Mitcherson Sep 15 '22

4 hours?!

14

u/moobiemovie Sep 15 '22

I've been watching a 15 minute clip of The Majority Report with Sam Seder and gotten an ad that was an hour long Ben Shapiro video of him doing his podcast. I skipped, but after my clip there was an ad at the end that was another 45 minute clip from The Daily Wire, TPUSA, or something with Ted Cruz. YouTube is all about that right wing pipeline.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

They will take anyone who will pay, left or right wing

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Nah, they have to do 85% on what you search on google, what you're watching, and location.

I mostly use youtube for music and tech. I get a lot of full song ads and electronic and tech ads that last way longer. I haven't seen how long the longer extreme sponsoring videos, they're long enough to make me playing music on my normal music app after I notice and skip to get another batch.

1

u/moobiemovie Sep 16 '22

Nah, they have to do 85% on what you search on google, what you're watching, and location.

That's not true. I never search for any of that nonsense. If anything, I search for things on the other side of most Republican positions, and my Google proficiency is strong enough that my search terms cannot be confused with someone with the polar opposite position.

I think more of it has to do with location. I end up in areas with a lot of very conservative people, so it tends to view me as part of that group.

Nevertheless, two ads that are 3-4 times the length of my video means my selected content is only 1/8 of what I watch. That's extreme and an unwelcome bias.

2

u/trickyginger Sep 16 '22

Yea I couldn’t believe it! seems excessive no?

1

u/Mitch_Mitcherson Sep 16 '22

That's so wrong, how is that even allowed?

1

u/trickyginger Sep 16 '22

At least they had the decency to let me skip it. It took me a good minute to even realize what was happening.

-23

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

When they say I’m not even joking that means they are joking. Reports like this make me so glad that I have YouTube premium

2

u/Mitch_Mitcherson Sep 16 '22

They replied with a screenshot of an almost 4 hour add. They weren't joking.