I don’t mind the in video sponsors. Some are good (ok map men ones are good), but crucially it’s not really something YouTube could directly block. They could put terms and conditions in place, but you’re driving product placement and it becomes a slippery slope.

Howver recently I’ve noticed adverts for “membership” for channels, and that is getting me close to picking my youtube habit. Same with Spotify and advertising concerts, but that seems to have gone away for me after I complained.

Sadly even the bbc does adverts on iPlayer. You used to be able to instantly skip them, but then in a big (internal) fanfare some idiot decided they could make them not skippable and increase some metrics and then get a promotion.

I worked on Prime during the rollout of Prime Video and shortly after (maybe a year or so) pre-roll for other Prime Video content was inserted. I brought it up in a meeting with our org (but the Amazon Video team wasn’t present) and one of our business guys shrugged it off as not interrupting content, blah, blah, blah. I said the agreement was ad-free content, not uninterrupted content. The conversation stopped and nothing was done.

I worked on backend subscription management and the implementation of benefits. The team that business guy worked on was the group eventually at the center of the predatory subscription issue (I can’t say whether they were still around when that happened or not).

>* Ads underneath videos for products from the channel owner. > >* Sponsorships within videos from the channel owner.

I actually agree this is a bit annoying, but also the alternative is Google banning Youtubers from finding their own advertising partners, which I'm sure people would hate.

> I cancelled my YouTube Premium plan because of ads.

That would make a great title for a write-up of your experience.

Pro tip. Ublock origin gets you that mostly ad-free experience you were hoping for. Donate the money you save from the YouTube premium sub to ublock origin instead.

I mean, the stuff that's in the video is not really under Google's control.

Are you suggesting that the burden should be on channel owners to upload variations of their videos that don't include sponsor blocks? That's a bit onerous. My commercial agreement is with YouTube, not with the video creator.

If you don't like ads from creators, don't watch those channels?

YT Premium does provide the "skip ahead" functionality that almost always jumps over sponsor blocks.

I will say I've been a YT Premium subscriber for years and I've never seen any ads for other Google services in my feed, and I don't get advert emails either.

I'd pay $20 / month for a Youtube subscription with no ads or sponsored content. Unfortunately even with sideloading on iOS there's no alternative live youtube vanced.

And then on the flip side you have people who won't blink an eye with Apple doing it. Shame, really.

What sucks is it’s never enough

It always gets more expensive for a lesser enshittified version, removed/fucked with features to keep a bloated product team employed

Sponsorship within videos at least gives money to the uploader. YouTube has forced that by demonetising videos or paying peanuts.

YouTube Premium now has integrated sponsor block. At least that's something.

And any ads underneath a video is at least not shown in the Roku YouTube player, nor are ad overlays as far as I know, since I've never seen one.

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That's like complaining you purchased netflix subscriptiomn without ads and saw a product placement ad in a movie. I guess you want netflix to not show the movie, start cutting up the movie or ask that the movie be remade without any products.

This is a bigger problem than it may appear. The business lifecycle is well understood, whereby a company innovates, expands, and then when it has a sufficiently large customer base, it monetises. I.e. it enshitifies its products - making them more expensive over time relative to the value. This process is death by a thousand cuts. A PM might see that having the modal you hate show every time you load the site increases conversion by 3%. That's $1M ARR you just made the company! Wow! You get a bonus and a promotion! The problem is you erode customer sentiment by some undefined unit. Many people think NPS measures this, but it doesn't. That measures how many people love and hate the product. It omits the vast majority of people in the middle. They just add it to the increasing list of annoyances until one day there are so many annoyances that they leave. At that time it's very difficult for the company to understand why the user churned. It wasn't any one thing. It was a concerted effort over years to squeeze every cent out of the user at minimum cost.

Do you want to upgrade now or later? Will you upgrade now or do I need to nag you to death?

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I've talked to Apple support about this. Their website says...

    Apple Originals are always commercial-free.

Yeah, I actually canceled Netflix when they started making it impossible to look at the available shows without seeing previews of each of them. I am trying to leisurely decide what I want to watch, not have 15 different actors scream catchphrases at me.

What would you say is comparable experience wise to 1Password? I’ve found particularly the 1Password Family plan there’s not really a good alternative of rolling with KeepassX, Bitwarden, etc.

The answer could be nothing and I still respect the choice to speak with your wallet.

Anyone that doesn't see the obvious play here probably wasn't alive when cable was the "ad free" tv option.

These media companies cannot help themselves. Advert money is very tantalizing and they'll always want to find ways to sneak it in whenever and wherever they can.

> My kids see far, far, far fewer ads than I and my peers did growing up

But now these are targeted ads based on browsing data for ad profiles linked to your IP and devices. IMO just a few of these are far worse than the general run of commercials we used to have on TV. Corporations obviously think so too otherwise we would still have that.

I remember those days, and when Cartoon Network was the same. I didn't mind it then because, like you, I found the promos were a great way to know what was on the channel at different times. Especially in the age before on-screen guides.

But there are a few crucial differences between then and now: The ad spots were there to keep the timetables accurate, which is no longer necessary. They also served as a way to let you know what else was on the channel, which again is no longer necessary because that app opens to a menu of all available programming. And, now this is the important part, back then I wasn't specifically paying for ad-free access.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, my Jellyfin server is about to get much more use.