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.

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moffkalast 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not true, most all but the very top creators have stopped relying on Youtube's measly ad revenue and just run sponsored content instead, in which case the actual view count (minus SponsorBlock users anyway) is very relevant to show how much they actually reached.

What Google gets out of it is free content for their platform, which other platforms seem to be only able to dream about, and accurate metrics would be something like the lowest possible bar to provide. But well, turns out you can do just about whatever if you're the defacto monopoly and the experience doesn't matter anymore, not for creators, not for the consumers.

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kelnos 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google provides YouTube to creators because Google derives a benefit from it. If they don't want those "freeloaders" hosting videos without Google getting anything in return, then they can charge for it, or delist them, or delete their videos, or whatever.

But they are getting something in return: a near monopoly in this particular market.

Not providing correct view counts just because some of those viewers use adblockers feels kinda petty.

	▲	xp84 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> then they can charge for it, or delist them, or delete their videos, or whatever That doesn't really apply because these creators' video views aren't entirely adblocked. Just some portion of the views are. So it would be dumb for Google to punish the creators so harshly. Also, you're telling me that you think there would be fewer pitchforks out if Google just started deleting and banning channels due to their users' adblocking behavior?

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Intralexical 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What about adblocked views by YouTube Premium subscribers?

The point is that a view counter should show an accurate and honest count of views, because that's what it's presented as and lying is bad. Why should ad blocking have anything to do with that? Companies should aim to protect their revenue stream by providing a good service, not cripple their service to match the basest vision of their revenue incentives.

	▲	shagie 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In looking at my filter log (I use AdGuard on a Mac), I do not see the API calls associated with YouTube getting blocked. In particular, the "cross device continuity" (Continue Watching) feature provides the data sufficient for monetization of the channel view. When I looked at the same video while in incognito (and signed out), I could see some requests originating getting blocked that were not at all present during my watch of the video under premium. --- For YouTube, what is a "view?" If a chunk is downloaded, is that a view? If the next chunk is downloaded, is that two views? How do you verify that it's not the person who watched the first chunk? YouTube doesn't appear to be counting views based on chunks downloaded as there are lots of ways to download chunks. Even doing things like scrubbing the video back 5 minutes would produce incorrect chunk download counts. From this it appears that YouTube is counting views based on an API call from the page that identifies you (arguably through privacy issues) so that you downloading 1 chunk or 10 chunks only counts as one view. That API call appears to now be blocked. Counting chunks downloaded would arguably be even less truthful or accurate than counting API calls.
	▲	what 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>lying is bad So turn off your ad blocker so you don’t lie about your views.