This would make replays or scrubbing count as additional views. To fix that, they would need some kind of set to uniquely store all clients, and that‘s questionable from a security and moral point of view, even for YouTube.

But then they’d have to report significantly lower CPM’s to content creators.

Indeed. It's essentially malware.

At least BonziBuddy sang for me.

They already do something like this - some videos have an indicator for how many times a chunk of a video is played.

Plus that would make cheating on traffic really bandwidth expensive

Presumably, it would affect that, and also long-term channel growth. Which would be dastardly if it were intentional, because it would basically cull the platform of channels who voice support for ad blocking.

I wonder if CTR was affected. Could one of the affected channels could have detected that not adding up? I guess it was probably already blocked for privacy. Maybe I shouldn't be giving them ideas.

Interestingly, anybody can now measure what percentage of any channel's viewers run ad blockers, by using publicly available data on how much their views dropped during this period.

Just to be clear, YouTube doesn’t pay users based on view count, it revenue shares based on money generated by ads and subscriptions. Using an ad blocker without premium has always meant the creator doesn’t get paid for the views, because that traffic generates no revenue for them to share

For better or worse a gigantic portion of people who make their livelihoods on the internet are fully dependent on closed source platforms. Do you think people who sell things on Shopify or Etsy are any more able to scrutinize the systems they depend on to make a living?

It was funny how my former boss (also a software engineer) looked when I showed him that you get the same thing by installing an ad blocker ^^

> These are typically not blocked

sponsorblock would like a word with that!

Aren’t those segments deals between the creator and the sponsors and nothing to do with Youtube?

While I can't speak to anyone else, back when I did tech support as a job for the elderly, one of our policies was to always install uBlock Origin. Our docs even had warnings to remove ABP and similar stuff because they let ads through.

Speaking from a purely personal experience (both before and after that job), the moment you ask me to regularly fix a device for you, I'm going to install uBlock Origin on every major browser you have and finetune it for privacy (aka enable the anti-tracking lists - these days I'd probably also install consent-o-matic to get rid of cookie banners without agreeing to sell all personal data). 99% of the bizarre computer problems people run into is because they clicked on a malicious internet ad and now a ton of PUPs are installed, are probably mining out their personal information or are trying to sell their users on junk subscriptions (this not so entertainingly includes virus scanners, which are almost all perversions of their original selves).

An adblocker is just basic hygiene and allows for the discussion to be on that remaining 1%, which usually is more on boring corporate fuckery from either Apple or Microsoft or the remainder which are the real technical problems people have.

AdBlock is basic hygiene, and I imagine most people have one installed on their desktop these days if they're either barely technically literate or have a family member who is.

It seems pretty likely for well over half for a channel like that to use ad blockers.

Tech adjacent has similar levels of ad blocking as tech. If it's mostly people who internet a lot on a PC in your audience, expect a lot of ad blocking.

Back in the day a gaming forum I was part of revealed that 85% of users were ad-blocking. The forum had a few banner ads.

> But to have nearly half the (computer-originating) views evaporate?

I wonder on the other side why 50% of users would not take the few minutes to install an ad blocker.

> Objective fact and "more likely" do not match well.

Huh? If I take a die and paint a 6 on the sides which previously had 4 and 5 then it is an objective fact that you will be more likely to roll a 6 than a 1 with that die.

I don't think there was ever a time when critical thinking and fact checking wasn't needed. Nobody has the time to do deep dives into everything, but the more important something is to you, or the more likely it is to impact your life the more it's worth investing the time it takes to do a couple web searches.

Today CNN says that Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has skin cancer. Is that true? Damned if I know. Will I spend the time trying to verify that? Nope.

Google built a system that tracked video views. Users installed a browser extension that intentionally breaks this tracking for privacy reasons. Why should Google do anything? They're not the one that broke it, and these users don't want to be tracked!

What you're ignoring is that this was a change to an ad blocker[0], not a change to the site.

Google did not implement a change to stop counting views. An ad blocker intentionally[1] choosing to block the long-standing API calls used for the view statistics. How would you propose Google fix this, when there is an adversarial team in control of what requests many browser may make, and are choosing to use it to break the site?

[0] Or rather, an URL block list used by many ad blockers.

[1] It was almost certainly an honest mistake originally. But when the blocklist authors were informed of the problem and chose to not roll back the change, it became intentional.

This is the best counterargument I've seen for why YouTubers might be vexed by this, however I've felt it was pretty fair to expect that adblocked views don't really "count" in the "game" that you can argue YouTube is operating with the "View Count" metric and therefore I don't see much room for anyone to feel indignant or wronged.

Imagine a creator whose viewers all watched with ads blocked (and without YT Premium either). That creator is, objectively speaking not partnering with Google in any way, they're just using the platform as a free CDN. So the failure of Google to provide that person with accurate metrics for him to operate his business (that Google isn't a part of) isn't all that offensive.

So someone losing visibility to their "views" if it's because of non-monetized views (adblocked ones) seems proportionally fair.

There's always self-hosting your videos, but yes, that's expensive. It's a tradeoff the content creator has to make: A cut of your revenue + a ton of content restrictions, in exchange for discoverability + free CDN.

I can't reply to your deeper comment but there is a youtube specific extension that blocks ads to sponsor placements by skipping them.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-yo...

Has 2 million users which isn't a ton but just mentioning that it is used and it works well.

People who install ad blockers are perhaps not good recipients of in-video sponsor placements. So maybe not counting them as viewers is at least honest to the sponsor?

With something like YouTube there are so many different parties involved. Sponsor, creator, Google, advertiser, consumer. Clearly the system could be optimized for any of them, or it can present some balances that naturally make one or more of the groups unhappy. Clearly it's easy to criticize the system if it's not optimized to your perspective of it.

It's very unpopular to say it, (cue downvotes) but on the whole I think Google mostly gets it right. Advertisers have a channel to reach consumers [3]. Creators have a way to earn income [1], consumers watch for free [2], Google makes money (and provides infrastructure).

[1] sponsorships are allowed, although none of that revenue flows to Google, which I think is fairly tolerant of Google.

[2] Google has an option to turn off ads with YT Premium.

[3] Ad blockers serve consumers, but hurt the whole system. I get that they're very popular here, but they are effectively a tax on Google, and now on creators. A more ethical approach IMO (and ethics are both personal and subjective) is to pay for YT Premium if you'd prefer to suppress ads. Then you are "paying your way" not free-loading.

Why should sponsor care sent viewers who block their advertising?

I’ve been a premium member for about 15 years.

Rephrase it as "Youtube doesn't care about you, just about putting ads in front of your face" and it's not a contradiction. As long as you don't get irritated enough to go away and stop using Youtube entirely, they don't care about improving your viewing experience.

Another way to phrase it is the classic line "If you're not paying for it, you aren't the customer, you're the product."

It's counted as a view, and beyond that, in general the content creator gets a higher payout from Premium viewers than from ad viewing users.

I'm so glad other people here pay for premium because on Tiktok and Reddit a common joke is how few people pay for YT.

My Verizon cell phone plan offers it at a slightly discounted $10 a month. For a completely ad free (ads from Youtube) experience it's well worth it considering how many car and tech videos I watch.

It also offers a higher bitrate 1080p option on some videos which is a cherry on top.

That's deliberately misinterpreting. The overwhelming criticism of this view count regression kerfuffle was centered around creators and the lost revenue: YouTube was pervasively accused of cooking numbers to stiff their creators.

No one anywhere was arguing from the perspective of a viewer. Until it turned out that the regression was due to an adblocker change. Now suddenly creators don't matter and it's really the viewer's visibility into view counts that is the important element.

And that seems... insincere.

To whom? To advertisers, and the creators, of course. To viewers? How does that help inform me if I'll like it?

Likes to dislikes is an even better signal. Shame on YouTube for removing that.

I missed the part where that's our problem.