[SOLVED]Youtube - Apparently unblockable and long/multiple adverts, New policy

[MK14]

@MK14, what are you talking about.  Get rid of your ad blocker.  I have no ad blocker and the youtube video you posted had no video ads in it.  Just 3 little pop-up banners at 3 points in the video.  Your ad blocker is making youtube give your extraneous ads which isn't even an issue on your linked video for those of us who don't cheat.

Actually I need to apologize to you.
My ad-blocker software WAS partly to blame.

What someone else is saying happened (I link to the information source, lower down), is that there was a skip button.
But the ad-blocker software BLOCKED the skip button itself, because it was associated with adverts.
So when the advert successfully got through the ad-blocker software, the SKIP button was still blocked.

So the "Unstoppable 1 minute adverts", Was probably fully skip-able, except my ad-blocker had messed that up.

In the following link, LOTS of people, have had a similar problem to me, in the last half-day or so:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Adblock/

I'm getting this too. I tested, and found out that if you have an adblock enabled, youtube will not let you skip an ad... WTF GOOGLE.
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[–]Zithium 1 point an hour ago
Google has nothing to do it, Adblock blocks the "Skip" button because it detects it as an ad.
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[–]nemodarby 1 point an hour ago
I keep getting this one and a couple 4-5 minute long unskippable ads. On a different post on here yesterday someone suggested logging out of youtube. I tried that and now I am back to no ads on youtube.

The new unskippable ad program on youtube/twitch ( as far as I know ) (self.Adblock)
submitted 58 minutes ago by ****_zebster
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Unskippable AD on YouTube? (self.Adblock)
submitted 10 hours ago by Pexths
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Unskippable, one to five minute long ads on YouTube, not being blocked (self.Adblock)
submitted 15 hours ago by CatalystEXE
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Adblock no longer working on YouTube? (self.Adblock)
submitted 20 hours ago by nemodarby
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How do ad blocking apps find new users? (self.Adblock)
submitted 1 day ago by xzyzx33
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Want No More Ads? (self.Adblock)
submitted 3 days ago by OriginallyJames
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adblock not working on twitch anymore (self.Adblock)
submitted 4 days ago by MagicalxD
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Both adblock and adblock plus plugins for Chrome keep getting disabled (last few weeks) (self.Adblock)
submitted 5 days ago by BinaryAlgorithm

[MK14]

Here is the one which keeps on having at least two built in, and long adverts.

Well, I had to speed it up to 2x and then skip forward with the mouse to avoid getting bored, but I didn't see any adverts. So if there are special embedded adverts they may be region specific.

Sorry, that I've caused confusion. When I first encountered the problem, I thought (apparently incorrectly now), that youtube had cracked down big time on people using ad-blockers and similar techniques, to avoid watching adverts.

But it seems that the reality, was it was a problem with the ad-blocker software I was using (and maybe some changes at google, I'm not sure).

As you say, adverts probably change for different regions (and maybe different user profiles), and maybe other criterion.

[Richard Crowley]

At US$5/month, YouTube Red seems like a real bargain considering the cost of hosting and streaming those exabytes of video.  I have had it for over a year now and it is one of the best monthly recurring expenses I use.

I'd like to know why I have to log into iTunes and have an internet connection to be able to listen MY tracks I loaded onto my iPod?  The more I use those Apple iGadgets the more I loathe them.  What are good alternatives to iPod these days?

[IanB]

I'd like to know why I have to log into iTunes and have an internet connection to be able to listen MY tracks I loaded onto my iPod?

I don't know the answer to this. How and when did this happen?

[NiHaoMike]

Maybe Youtube could use a hybrid P2P network? Where users who donate their bandwidth can get credit to use for premium content?

I'd like to know why I have to log into iTunes and have an internet connection to be able to listen MY tracks I loaded onto my iPod?  The more I use those Apple iGadgets the more I loathe them.  What are good alternatives to iPod these days?

Fiio seems to be a pretty popular "iPod alternative" nowadays.

[Richard Crowley]

I don't know the answer to this. How and when did this happen?

From the moment I loaded them.  Some of my tracks play exactly as expected. And a large percentage of them say  "Connect to WiFi to play music. To play songs when you aren't connected to Wi-Fi, turn on Use Cellular Data in Music in the Settings app."  Or it simply says "Item not available. This item can't be played."  I watched these things get downloaded to the iGadget from my computer, so Apple is lying to me.

HUH?  I loaded the tracks into the memory of the iThing because I want to listen to them when I am AWAY from WiFi. And why on earth should I burn up cellular data when I loaded the track locally? This just makes absolutely zero sense to me.  I really detest the Apple "walled garden".  I'm ready to flush this stupid thing down the toilet.

[Brumby]

I really detest the Apple "walled garden".  I'm ready to flush this stupid thing down the toilet.

You are not alone.

I hate iTunes.

[Richard Crowley]

I hate iTunes.

So do I.  I didn't even use iTunes.  I used a 3rd party app (https://www.copytrans.net) to load everything.  So apparently Apple deleted the contents after I downloaded it.

[Brumby]

From what I've seen and heard, that's the Apple approach.

Like new management that walks into an established business and cleans out everything because they know better.

When I came up to getting my first Smartphone, I was getting into some web development - so I asked myself what would be the best way to go ... Apple or Android?  Since Apple was flying high at the time, I decided to go that way and ended up with an iPhone 4.  It worked OK as a phone - but I found iTunes to be reprehensible in its arrogance.  I suffered through the 2 year contract, switched to Android and purged any and all traces of iTunes.

Never again.


Actually, I still have that iPhone 4 if anybody wants it.  Still have the original box, plug pack and accessories (ear buds never used - I just don't like that style).

[RoGeorge]

I have an ancient iPod nano 4G that was won at a contest long time ago. Never used iTunes, but Floola.

Copied Floola for Windows, Linux and Mac on the iPod, plug the iPod into any computer, then just start 'floola' from the iPod drive. Nothing to install. Now can copy music from or to iPod.
No restrictions ever.

[bd139]

I'd like to know why I have to log into iTunes and have an internet connection to be able to listen MY tracks I loaded onto my iPod?

I don't know the answer to this. How and when did this happen?

This doesn't happen unless you use iCloud sync and then you only need an internet connection the first time so it can copy the file.

Going to be honest, iTunes does suck. But only on Windows. It's smooth and reliable on my Mac. In the year I've owned my iPhone and Mac I've had literally only two problems: one sign in issue with Apple Music (asked every time you played something) which was resolved by signing in again and one mp3 file of mine that wouldn't play and that turned out to be corrupted. Literally nothing else across any part of either platform. They just work for me.

This is a revelation after 25 years writing software on windows.

[Brumby]

My argument isn't how well iTunes works - it's about how iTunes works.

[bd139]

I'm a pragmatist so I traded control over the process and how it works (which is the problem here really as it's certainly not reliability) for the fact that they take away ALL of the time required to curate and manage a large mp3 collection and distribute it between 4 other family members and 6 devices. This was a massive overhead spanning several hours a week on a bad week. Even an hour down the pan isn't worth saving the £15 sub. Now everyone just gets what they want and leaves me alone

[RoGeorge]

...They (Apple) just work for me.

This is a revelation after 25 years writing software on windows.

Not a big Windows or Microsoft fan here, but that statement is NOT fare.

Windows is working on a huge variety of hardware, while Apple stays close to only a few of their dedicated Apple hardware.
Windows is writing their own software, while Mac is just taking the free GNU-Linux and lock it down to their hardware.
Windows is dealing with thousands of 'intimate' pieces of code, like firmware and drivers written outside Microsoft, while Apple asks the chip manufacturer for a dedicated driver, and so on.

Praising somebody (Apple) for a simple but well done job, is OK.
Blaming others (Microsoft) for not being perfect while dealing with a way much more complexity, is NOT fare.

[bd139]

Let's have some facts. I'm in charge of about 300 windows servers and workstations, about 50 Apple desktops and 150 Linux servers for ref.

a) Windows is tested at the vendor stage if you buy canned kit from HP/Dell/Lenovo etc. Hardware is never the problem these days. ALL of the problems are above the HAL and in the OS that sits on top of it. There's no issue with hardware support here. The difference is moot. In fact I have yet to find something that you just can't plug into a mac and it just works instantly.
b) Hardly anything on OSX is GNU, just a few terminal tools. Apple wrote or inherited everything else from NeXT. They wrote the programming language (Objective C), contributed the majority of code to the compilers they use, wrote the kernel, the device drivers, frameworks, applications, everything. Just like microsoft.
c) Windows has hardware qualification (WHQL).

Microsoft do a shitty job of QA of all of the parts that float above the hardware and vendor specific things. I spend at least 3 hours a week on the phone to our partner rep facepalming. That and the complete development schizophrenia going on for the last 20 years. It's hitting a poorly engineered moving target.

I exclude NT kernel from this which is pretty good. The Win32 and above layer is the problem.

[RoGeorge]

If point 'b)' is the true, then I was the unfair one, to Apple. My apologies.

[bd139]

It's a common misconception. It's amazing what they have written. Check the following page out which lists it all: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/

Edit: oh forgot. They also wrote the WebKit browser engine which Google adopted and contributed to as part of Chrome as the browser engine. Google forked that recently but Apple have written some massive things. So you're probably using Apple code whatever you do anyway.

[tggzzz]

Early indications are that LONG adverts = 1 minute duration each, repeating about every 6 minutes (very rough estimate).

This is excellent news. Why?... Perhaps it will persuade people to make shorter more cogent videos.

Inside most 10 minute yootoob videos there is a 30s video trying to escape. Far too many videos are full of people umming and ahhing while wandering towards making a simple obvious point that oftentimes could be expressed in text. They do that because, to misquote Pascal and others, "sorry this video is so long, I didn't have time to make it shorter".

Clearly they regard their time as more important than their audiences' time.

If you want to see examples of good, well-planned videos where the pictures are necessary, have a look at the Pace Soldering Tutorials .

Some things really were better in the past (in this case due to production and ditribution costs)!

[kalel]

Early indications are that LONG adverts = 1 minute duration each, repeating about every 6 minutes (very rough estimate).

This is excellent news. Why?... Perhaps it will persuade people to make shorter more cogent videos.

Are shorter videos really better? Sure, the concept of video series exists, but if a video is trying to teach something, I would rather hear the details than just see the person put something together and possibly rush over some numbers. As an example, I can't imagine BigClive's videos being cut down to a benefit, even though not all are long. Same with Dave, most videos are over 5-6 minutes and it just wouldn't be the same if that was the limit.

[David Hess]

Since Youtube often stutters over my US ISP, I usually download the entire video and watch it offline so I would not notice the ads anyway.

[rdl]

One thing I'm pretty sure of is if you don't want to see advertising, then you don't want to use a browser provided by a company that derives most of its revenue from advertising.

[tggzzz]

Early indications are that LONG adverts = 1 minute duration each, repeating about every 6 minutes (very rough estimate).

This is excellent news. Why?... Perhaps it will persuade people to make shorter more cogent videos.

Are shorter videos really better? Sure, the concept of video series exists, but if a video is trying to teach something, I would rather hear the details than just see the person put something together and possibly rush over some numbers. As an example, I can't imagine BigClive's videos being cut down to a benefit, even though not all are long. Same with Dave, most videos are over 5-6 minutes and it just wouldn't be the same if that was the limit.

I didn't claim that.

In the bit you snipped I used the word "most", and most != all. My claim that stands, for the reasons you snipped

Two other real disadvantages of video:

• video isn't searchable for keywords; if you can't find something it might as well not exist
• I speed read text to quickly determine whether an article is worth reading in detail; since searches are imperfect, most aren't relevant. You can't speedview videos, so it takes at least 10* more of my little remaining life to determine that it isn't interesting. Bad tradeoff, but I wouldn't expect a youngster to have that perspective!

[MK14]

Two other real disadvantages of video:

• video isn't searchable for keywords; if you can't find something it might as well not exist
• I speed read text to quickly determine whether an article is worth reading in detail; since searches are imperfect, most aren't relevant. You can't speedview videos, so it takes at least 10* more of my little remaining life to determine that it isn't interesting. Bad tradeoff, but I wouldn't expect a youngster to have that perspective!

In fairness, to an extent, you are right. But with a change of methods and acceptance that it is not as easily or reliably searched through, as a decent text article, you can do those things with videos. To a degree, but not to 100% effectiveness, as with text.

The alternative to speed reading, is to read the title and speed read the descriptive text (if filled in), just below the video on youtube and/or to jump at various time positions and watch a few seconds of the video at 5 mins, 10 mins, 15 mins etc (use common sense to determine where to click on the time line).

You can still partially text search or keyword search on it, by hoping that someone, somewhere has commented on it, in a blog or similar.

E.g.
You want a video showing how to design a linear power supply with the older 2N3055 power transistors. Which you so happen to have 5 of, as part of your component collection.

You then google (take this search string as a very loose/rough example) "2N3055 power supply design" and select type of search = video.

You can then jump through and check a few seconds of the video at strategic time positions, to see how good it is (and look at the pos/neg votes + comments can be quickly skimmed through).

I have just done this search for real, to show you the concept:

The first one it finds seems to be this one:



By skimming through and quickly looking at a few (of the more promising search results), I found this one (see below), which seems more promising. It seems to include the schematic, is amazingly compact (short, < 3 minutes), has a high pos/neg vote ratio 9 pos, 0 neg, and seems rather interesting and fun, from my quick skim through:

[SkyMaster]

Paying Google, who is already makes piles of money collecting all sorts of data, also with actual money does not sit right...

Google is owned by Alphabet, and according to Wikipedia;

Revenue: US$90.27 billion (2016)
Operating income: US$23.71 billion (2016)
Net income: US$19.47 billion (2016)
Total assets: US$167.49 billion (2016)
Total equity: US$139.04 billion (2016)
Number of employees: 72,053 (2017)


Wikipedia and Mozilla Foundation need our money more than Google.

 

[tggzzz]

When I was young, information was scarce abd it took day/weeks to access it - so the skill was to take time extracting as much information as possible from the few available sources.

Now the problem is exactly the reverse: information is so common that the necessary skill is quickly determining what not to look at. Video is very effective at preventing that.

Two other real disadvantages of video:

• video isn't searchable for keywords; if you can't find something it might as well not exist
• I speed read text to quickly determine whether an article is worth reading in detail; since searches are imperfect, most aren't relevant. You can't speedview videos, so it takes at least 10* more of my little remaining life to determine that it isn't interesting. Bad tradeoff, but I wouldn't expect a youngster to have that perspective!

In fairness, to an extent, you are right. But with a change of methods and acceptance that it is not as easily or reliably searched through, as a decent text article, you can do those things with videos. To a degree, but not to 100% effectiveness, as with text.

Nothing, including text, is 100% effective

I'll ignore searches with specific answers such as "what are the microwave x-band frequencies?", since the first result is probably sufficient - even without clicking the link.

Many of my searches are for topics that are sufficiently complex or abstruse that there is often only, say, one potentially useful result per page. 

The alternative to speed reading, is to read the title and speed read the descriptive text (if filled in), just below the video on youtube and/or to jump at various time positions and watch a few seconds of the video at 5 mins, 10 mins, 15 mins etc (use common sense to determine where to click on the time line).

Yebbut that takes 10* as long. You have to wait for the video to load, then figure out the context at that point in the video, then guess what night or might not be in the gaps...

OTOH, I'm a fast reader.

As an exercise, take one of the EEVBlog videos and deliberately ignore the table of contents - because most vloggers aren't that considerate of their audience. Pretend that you have stumbled upon  "EEVblog #1013 – Mailbag" because you were searching for "2DW233 Voltage Reference Zener".

How long does it take to find that part of the video, and to determine whether or not it helps you?

Text is an order of magnitude faster.

EDIT: I've just tried it. It took ~4 mins to find the start of that segment, then ~3 mins watching it (which is much shorter than most videos). That's ~7 minutes of my remaining life I'll never get back.

If it had been text then it would have take 30s to find out that it is marginally interesting. Bad tradeoff.

You can still partially text search or keyword search on it, by hoping that someone, somewhere has commented on it, in a blog or similar.

Ah, the AltaVista/Yahoo! model of curated directories of links. Not scalable, as was obvious back in 1995 before google was even a .edu.

One acceptable, workable alternative is the "table of contents" with times below the video in the EEVBlog videos. But that is very rare