The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead

[@GalaxyGamingGroup]

Hello everyone! I definitely did not expect one of my first videos ever to get this much attention. The stories you all shared, even the alternate opinions from those who use premium or don't use adblockers were great to read. My notifications can't even keep up with the comments anymore. I'll address a few commonly brought up points (Last updated July 3rd): 1) I've heard all the feedback on audio levels and pacing. It's definitely being applied to future videos. 2) Looks like the "It would have stopped being free a long time ago" segment may have aged rather poorly, because KZbin is now testing out disabling video playback after 3 videos for some users. While some will debate the underlying meanings, if I severely underestimated the value of KZbin analytics data for Google as a whole, then I'm perfectly willing to own up to that mistake. 3) There's a bit more debate on "the customer is always right in matters of taste" than I thought. I thought it was derived from a Latin phrase meaning "regarding tastes, it shall not be disputed", but some attribute it to the hotel or fashion industry and say it's about taking customer complaints at face value (before the era of Karens) 4) I mistakenly said that "a judge" ruled on a supreme court case, when I should have said the jury. The annotation tool would have been helpful here, but apparently it was removed years ago. 5) Additional links and sources are (slowly) being added to the description. I should have done so from the beginning, but it won't be an issue in the future. 6) Nothing wrong with creators monetizing content as a whole. It's a tough career, and they have no control over what ads you see. Criticizing them is misguided energy in most circumstances (it's usually the guilt-tripping or blaming you for a bad sponsor when it becomes a problem). 7) My channel is now a part of the KZbin Partner Program. My ads are still disabled because I didn't create this channel with the intention of becoming a full time creator. It's purely a personal choice to try to make it "donation only", and not any form of moral statement. KZbin still has a "right to monetize" videos though, so if it reaches the point where you see ads every video anyways or receive unskippable ads, then let me know, because then at that point it's just a matter of "Do I want 55% or 0% of the revenue?" 8) A lot of you asked about that "alternative youtube site". Apparently there are certain issues with posting comments about it. But a recent C&D they filed may help you find it, since it failed to stop the group.

[@The_Dr_Fate]

undersand

[@nick1752]

wtf? 1) it's perfect 2) IT'S PERFECT 3) it's 4 am but you good bro, I thought you're like a 1 mil channel or smth, don't overly explain yourself, you good.

[@GalacticPoisonX]

Oh wow I didn’t even realize you were such a small KZbinr. I thought you at least had a couple of hundred thousand subs

[@cbsGD]

The thing that caused me to start using an adblocker is when youtube started showing unskippable double ads, and most of the time they would show up mid video, not to mention I like to watch youtube in bed and when they would show up, I would have to get up from where I was comfortably laying just to skip a double ad just for another one to appear 5 - 10 minutes later.

[@Aysentaro]

bro can you stop hitting your mic thx

[@so_fia]

I love how advertisers can put literal shit in their ads, but content creators have to be ad-friendly to be able to stay monetized for youtube to show the same literal shit from advertisers.

[@clemente_01]

THIS

[@azuarc]

TOXIC POOP.

[@mrcombustiblelemon2902]

Advertisers are KZbin's customers, content creators are the product. No double standard here.

[@so_fia]

@mrcombustiblelemon2902 Wow. Never thought about it like that. On one hand, it makes sense. But on the other hand, sometimes advertisers put things that are totally banable by KZbin rules. YT has a system that usually filters stuff like this, but I feel like it doesn't work for ad videos. So I don't actually see why ads can be... intricate, but a video can't. I guess it's just because ads are being hosted for money, but like... no? KZbin provides a place for advertising. it's not like you pay for hosting. You pay for a place, your ad can be put on, but any video uploaded on YT can be turned into ad (with some twiking).

[@mrcombustiblelemon2902]

@@so_fia the KZbin rules are for the products, not for the paying customers. The rules are in place to make YT more appealing to customers so YT can make more money, so applying them TO the customers would be counterproductive.

[@diamonddust4486]

Gotta love KZbin having no quality control on their ads and then blaming us for wanting to avoid them.

[@wombatillo]

KZbin ads often make me want to shout at the screen of my phone. They really are terrible. Never had that problem with milk toast tv ads for example. (Been using adblockers for +10 years on my desktop but it's not as trivial on a phone.)

[@TheRealNintendoKid]

I don't want ANY ads, for anything. Forcing me to see their ads is a bad idea anyway. The more I have to see ads for your shitty product, the less likely I am to buy it.

[@chicken29843]

But they're oh so worried about what is in the content that those advertisements are on

[@TheGreenKnight500]

That's the thing. It's not like they're just adds. They're mostly adds for weird scams and spyware. I only occasionally see KZbin adds for normal products and businesses. Occasionally, I'll see adds for local businesses. I think I've only ever seen an add for something I was actually interested in once or twice. You'd think with all this data collection and learning algorithms, you'd have a system that would constantly send adds that I'm actually interested in. I've been here for over a decade. They have the data on me. And yet, they send me the most irritating adds they possibly could for things I'd never touch with a ten foot pole and a hazmat suit.

[@RedCrusader-ph2vk]

Some of the ads on here are just blatant scams that they're flat out ignoring. Who cares if our users are getting scammed if we profit from it, right?

[@LeTtRrZ]

It’s amazing to me how websites serve ads that are intrusive, obstructive, annoying, resource-intensive, and potentially dangerous, and then wonder why people block them.

[@NerdConfederation]

Totally forgot that they're so resource intensive actually. They outright cook your hardware and bloat your bandwidth now that I remember it. Phones are even worse. Whenever a network is available, the phone downloads ads in the background(destroying your hardware) so that it can play those while you're not connected. Recovered a few phones, and usually most of the phone's storage is covered in adware.

[@protonjones54]

​@@NerdConfederationis there a way to check for that stuff / remove it?

[@viermidebutura]

ALL are intrusive, obstructive, annoying, resource-intensive, and potentially dangerous

[@foresthillwolf7998]

It's even worse when your interest is already low. Looking for a quick answer to a question? First 3 links are to websites where even reading the text is a puzzle. Then, no one uses those sites. At all. They click and leave. That's not how you keep getting revenue or payouts from ads. That's how you deter everyone from staying long enough to make you money off of ads.

[@CatHasOpinions734]

​@@viermidebuturatrue, but there are degrees to this problem. Like, the "YOU'RE NOT A DISH" ads are so obnoxious that I have promised myself never to buy anything from that company as long as I live, but most people don't have trauma relating to soap. But YT also has tons of ads for alcohol and diet products, and for anyone who's recovering from alcoholism or an eating disorder, those can be extremely destructive. Hell, I've even seen ads for gambling apps.

[@joshmartling]

My breaking point was when I started getting literal scam ads. Fake Mr. Beast giveaways and blatant pyramid scheme gurus along with the constant spam of hyper sexualized/shocking mobile game ads using stolen footage from other games. The fact this stuff gets approved and pushed by KZbin is very worrisome to me

[@Jane-oz7pp]

it's not actually that it gets approved. They just literally don't screen ads before publishing them because the law explicitly protects them from accountability for advertisers. They don't moderate them unless they're reported.

[@Jane-oz7pp]

However I'd like advertisers to know that when your product appears alongside fake Mr Beast give aways and outright ponzi schemes and just blatant money theft scams, it erodes the consumer's trust in it. Why should I trust, say, HelloFresh (besides the fact that I already know they're a scam lol) when they're alongside 90% scams? You're making your brands look fake by proxy and association.

[@TuxedoDogss]

@@Jane-oz7pp its still terrible because i see the same mrbeast scam ad over and over, so clearly the reports dont do anything to help, even when ive reported them multiple times over a month (when i still didnt have ublock, i got it because someone came up with code to return youtube to its non-shitty scrambled form which they decided to force upon me)

[@IspGuy]

​@@Jane-oz7pp it _does_ get approved, thats the only way ads get on youtube.

[@Doglooksh]

Yeah but at least you’re not getting h*ntai

[@FurryEskimo]

Hiding dislikes was also something they tested out, they did it, and ignored everyone who said it was awful.

[@miciso666]

Yeah its pro scammer....

[@plumebrise4801]

Return KZbin Dislike extension (There is also SponsorBlock to get)

[@halisternator]

@@plumebrise4801Thank you!

[@dubbyplays]

​@@plumebrise4801It's good but unfortunately it just gives the dislikes of people who used the extension to givs them. It doesn't reflect the amount of dislikes. But it's better than nothing

[@8bitmagic]

Pretty sure it actually pulls the information from the webpage. I installed a return dislike button like the day it was removed.

[@RandomHandle120]

My breaking point was when KZbin started showing ads on videos they had "demonetized" for not being "advertiser friendly". This was extremely hipocritical, so my thought was "if the creator is not getting paid for the ad, neither are you".

[@LRM12o8]

The whole "advertiser-friendly content" program is just one thinly veiled excuse for KZbin to not pay the content creators! Good to hear you don't support it! This in conjunction with the fact that the slew of shady advertisers and disturbing ads on KZbin should be of much more concern for Google than the content that's being uploaded are the reason why I will not consider KZbin Premium, no matter how hard they manage to make watching KZbin with an adblocker! And I did consider getting a Premium subscription before! The KZbin mobile app is also not appealing at all. It's so incredibly dumbed down/and or broken that even if I had Premium, I'd still wanna use an alternate app! Those alternate apps of course don't require premium to enable premium features, so there's also no point in premium from a UX standpoint. but like seriously: English video titles and -descriptions are being auto-translated without any way to view the original instead of that bot-generated mutilation of my native language, subtitles appear on every other video despite automatic captions being "turned off" in my settings, precise options for video resolution (like 480p, 720p(30/60), 1080p(30/60) ) have been replaced with stupidly vague options labeled something like "good image", "automatic" (which defaults to 480p on WiFi with a 500Mbps fiber connection, ridiculous) and "data efficient", with the actual numbers for the resolutions being hidden in a sub-menu under the "advanced" option 🤦‍♂🤦‍♂ and the app has been showing me some completely random short video immediately upon opening the app the last times I launched it, which is the latest stupid hoax of that shitty app. 🤮 EDIT: and also after you watched an ad, there's still an ad banner where the comments/infobox would be that you still need to click away and when you do click it away, a smaller ad banner will still permanently remain, absolutely ridiculous! Premium would solve this of course, but still it's yet ANOTHER deterrent from the official KZbin app.

[@QuikVidGuy]

"If the advertiser doesn't want their name associated with rhis video, why did you put it here?

[@petros_adamopoulos]

@@QuikVidGuy Yeah and also, they not want to be associated with it but if Hitler was a client, that'd be fine. Why don't they divulge their client list, maybe I wouldn't want to buy anything from them if I knew. Reciprocally, for me, if an ad of a brand I like appeared over a terrorist's video, I couldn't care less, firstly because I don't expect ads to be perfectly placed over videos approved by a person sharing my own political views or anything. Well, anyway, I'll always block ads and have never willingly clicked on a single one since the internet exists. They're just tasteless.

[@SamnissArandeen]

That's called *theft*

[@КПСА]

@@SamnissArandeen its not, ye stoopid

[@thelostredcoat4844]

my last straw was when KZbin started putting ads on non monetized creators, up until that point I reluctantly watched ads on peoples videos knowing that at the very least a portion of the revenue was going to the creator without me directly giving them money, but as soon as that changed it felt very money grabby, and since you can't tell the difference between a monetized KZbinr and a non monetized KZbinr I just turned ads of completely.

[@stonebubbleprivat]

Although ads are annoying, you forget that storing and streaming videos is extremely expensive, and videos with not many views cost more to host than youtube earns. KZbin is still not profitable.

[@Robidu1973]

@@stonebubbleprivat Then why is Google keeping YT alive if it's hitting their bottom line?

[@stonebubbleprivat]

@@Robidu1973 like all the tech companies do. To profit eventually when they figured out how to make money.

[@InsanePigeon]

​@@stonebubbleprivat1:23 BTW. Please watch the video before you preach your lord and master's word like gospel.

[@stonebubbleprivat]

@@InsanePigeon I watched it. That are numbers from alphabet the parent company of Google. Of course alphabet is profitable with Google search but that doesn't mean KZbin by itself is profitable. Amazon also makes a lot of money but twitch, a company of them, also looses money.

[@AlastorFan5900]

here's the thing: i never read those messages as "disable adblockers", i read them as "get a better adblocker, or wait for the next update"

[@braineaterzombie3981]

Lol same

[@Colin12475]

I read them as "leave our website".

[@AngelDustIsSus]

yep. when my adblocker stopped working for youtube when they first rolled out the "3 free videos then disable ur adblock" thing, i watched those 3 videos and dropped youtube for a bit, checking in every couple of days and updates to see if ublock has gotten past it yet

[@Артём-ц3с3ъ]

I read them as: get outside and enjoy human living instead wasting lifetime

[@yipperdeyip]

I applaud this. - comment sent from my Revanced Extended app

[@roscob7089]

I think part of my breaking point was how ads have gotten so overstimulating. It felt like whenever I would try to relax by watching a video, there would be 5 different loud, screaming, in-your-face ads before I could even think about being calm.

[@thoopsy]

Yeah as somebody who's eye is naturally drawn to movement, how AM I supposed to read this article if it won't stop, if it's brighter and louder than what I'm ACTUALLY interested in?

[@dolfuny]

Damn ads for horror movies before like a 10 hour rain sounds video are the worst. I already don't like horror, I don't need an ad for them before I sleep lol

[@scrittle]

@@thoopsy I make an argument for hyperactive kids who are being manipulated for a worse viewing experience because KZbin wants to stuff elements everywhere to grab your attention, especially shorts! Shorts should've been its own app but they had to shoehorn it in (proud Revanced user, who disabled shorts)

[@soup331emd5]

​@@scrittleShhhh, we don't talk about revanced. God forbid Susan finds this one too.

[@Tera_GX]

90s TV did it first. And of course further in the past things had already gotten bad enough to force establishing laws about false advertising (which we all know is poorly enforced).

[@sopi2]

KZbin has actively been getting more aggressive with ads. It's really brave of them to think users would leave ad-blockers before they leave the platform.

[@kingofcrap4414]

Not brave, they're just so stupidly arrogant that they believe they can get their way no matter what.

[@combinecommando001]

@@kingofcrap4414 the mentality of "we're too big too fail" but we know that pride comes before the fall.

[@cockatoofan]

They're just desperate not brave or stupid

[@nyx_jupiter-trash]

The amount of 3 in a row ads ive gotten is insane or unstoppable ads. Also some videos even from smaller creators give me ads every few mins in a 10 min video.

[@lyon2475]

All the adblockers I tried to use also didn't work after my main one broke, you got a recommendation for the current day?

[@kasPWI]

One thing worth noting: The original KZbin app that came pre-installed on early iPhones had the feature to play videos while the screen was locked. Eventually the feature got removed and made a premium only "benefit".

[@blaacksugar7714]

An important rule of drug dealing: First one's free.

[@reinhardt3090]

And this is one of the many reasons I will happily use AdBlock.

[@sticksbender4057]

Another note, you can actually trick your iPhone into playing KZbin videos with the screen locked without premium.

[@antonyduhamel1166]

​@@sticksbender4057You can do this on Android as well.

[@flaturiah]

I was there when that happened, iirc was washing dishes

[@Sadee.456]

Every time I get that "Adblockers are not allowed on KZbin." message I switch to another browser with the same adblocker and continue on with my day. Works like a charm

[@hashemalawadhi9475]

Like from chrome to Firefox or a new window

[@mark77193]

I just log out and back in, then carry on as before. Using the Brave browser that has built in adblock.

[@ember9361]

@@hashemalawadhi9475 because Firefox is not Chromium! Make the switch

[@Frank-Thoresen]

Firefox and Ublock Origin is a success in October 2024

[@magicmaze1998]

Even easier. Reliadibg once or twice works 97% Times

[@fatercoelho7476]

my breaking point was repetetive ads, being served the exact same ad 10x is just ridiculous, this was many years ago and I can only immagine how much worst the situation might be now

[@legionofanon]

I made the mistake of watching anime on a "smart" tv, the same ad played 3 times at every ad break, and there was about 3 breaks per episode. 3 episodes in i gave up and unplugged the tv

[@runelt99]

Me watching video normally: unskippable 20 second ad Me having a video in background while I shower: deploy the skipable 20 minute ad, good luck doing that with wet fingers hahahaha

[@Vilonu]

Remember when pretty much every 10 second ad on youtube was skippable after 5 seconds? Sometimes even 7 second ads were skippable. Now it's not uncommon to get two 16 second unskippable ads one right after the other, 32 seconds total, even if you're only watching like a 30 second video. Still not as horrendous as twitch tv though.

[@Gigachad-mc5qz]

Its bad enough they use your data without your consent, which is theft. Then they show you more garbage to keep the capitalist machine and consumerism going

[@voidcommando7574]

@@Prime501 how about the 10h ads that you couldn't skip so that u needed to restart the same video like 5times since u never would watch a 10h add

[@TheManOfManyNames.]

KZbin: "We're only testing this out, you can give feedback" Content creators: "This is terrible" KZbin: "Too bad, we're putting it in full throttle"

[@alexterra2626]

And when they actually like a feature KZbin is adding, they end up not adding it

[@sazikanebaldimor2386]

One just has to love modern marketing...

[@UtubeH8tr]

Cool well, I can put my v8 truck into full throttle through your front entrance to your hq.

[@hoverspike1]

this is what happened to the dislike button

[@user-nu8in3ey8c]

KZbin no longer cares about the customer experience, they now exist largely to use their algorithms and bots to shape your opinions and behaviors. It is why you cannot "dislike" things anymore, and the like button doesn't really do that much anymore.

[@Rainbowplayz-ix5ix]

The ironic thing is, if youtube was still only running a single ad at the start of the video like they used to, I might actually consider disabling my adblock. Right now though, i'm not even gonna think about considering it. I aint watching 4 minutes of ads every 2 minutes of a video.

[@sev1120]

Like I saw some bad rapper paid youtube to put their entire album as a freaking ad

[@HanZufu]

I've had some ads that are just straight up podcasts that are up to like an hour long, it's insane.

[@doktormozg]

This

[@shjilz]

​​@@HanZufuOmfg. I've gotten one that was a mini documentary about a hiking trail and one that was a church service, both nearly 40 minutes

[@caki4695]

I once got a compilation of some trabslated kids cartoon. But I didnt realize it was over an hour long until I accidentally activated thatglitch where watching a short mid-ad will remove the ad's info and skip option, but I thougjt it was funny so I watched one of them. It was okay, def for kids, not that bad though. I didnt wanna lose the video but iirc I had to cuz im not sitting through over an hour of that 😔

[@islippedtheslime]

The best analogy for ads I can think of is this: Banner ads are like billboards. Not too distracting, just an optional, out-of-the-way advertisement for a local business. Modern ads are like having random stops where a lengthy video is projected onto your windshield displaying someone’s attempt to disguise a robbery as “an investment opportunity”. And the gov gets mad when you bypass these stops.

[@DanceAbstractFloor]

This is so true

[@eimerhegel427]

The FBI advises that you use an adBlocker though.

[@gangliaghost8720]

I started ad blocking for one of the examples in the video: targeted alcohol ads. Looked up an AA meeting list and every single ad became an alcohol ad. It was unbelievable how awful it was. It actively interfered with my recovery, because they make them as tempting as possible.

[@niklasschmidt3610]

Good luck with your recovery

[@gangliaghost8720]

@@niklasschmidt3610 Hey thanks, it's going really well.

[@blllk8189]

Wtf that's terrible, they should honestly be sued for that! Thats just not okay. Btw, good luck with your recovery!

[@sogerc1]

Oh man that's terrible. I never even thought of it this way, to me ads are just annoyances and a waste of my time, but that's an actual problem. Stay strong!

[@gangliaghost8720]

@@sogerc1 yeah, it really changed my opinion about a lot of society in unexpected ways. I still get really mad at gas stations advertising when I pump gas.

[@jopeteus]

My biggest problem with youtube ads is that they are 2-4 times LOUDER than the video I am watching

[@LoganHunter82]

Yeah. Hate that too. Especially when you're listening to something relaxing (like ASMR or rainfall) then suddenly BOOOM! BUY THIS CRAPPY MOBILEGAME! WOOHOOO!

[@jopeteus]

@@LoganHunter82 I listen to them sometimes too if I can't sleep. Then suddenly I get woken up by an annoying add

[@ARCHIVED9610]

⁠@@jopeteusYES! i listen to lofi hiphop on one tab and ambience on another and i cant even count how many times ive been woken up

[@falcon_arkaig]

SERIOUSLY!! I'll be watching a generally quiet KZbinr, so I have the volume up a bit. Then an ad jumpscares me as I'm trying to sleep :/

[@Pushing_Pixels]

It's 100% deliberate in order to capture your attention. Basically, every ad wants to be louder than the others so they stand out. So they all compress the crap out of their audio, then normalize it to maximum volume to saturate the whole dynamic range in the audio stream. It's so jarring because content creators generally aren't mutilating their audio just to be louder than each other, so viewers set their volume to match the level of most creators' content, but then the ad volume maxes out the signal and it's like being shouted at through a megaphone.

[@TSteffi]

What bothers me the most about ads is how they always crank up the volume. That means that whenever an ad starts, it always is a little jump scare and forces me to turn down the volume or mute the ad. This is not just inconvenient for me, but also makes it so that every ad comes with a built in negative emotional experience.

[@TSteffi]

As for the breaking point, that was a long time ago on a small german social media site called "kwick". They added banner ads, and it was fine. They added side bars left and right, and it was ok. Then came ads with auto playing videos. So I had to mute the site to not get constantly jump scared. But it was still ok-ish. But then they added another banner across the bottom, and it just didn't work properly. It showed up across the middle of the page, making it literally unusable. Not just me, but hundreds of users begged them on the forum to please fix it. They constantly refused, instead demanding users switch to a different browser. That was the breaking point for me, and many others. Needless to say the site went down shortly thereafter.

[@davidanderson4091]

I'm afraid that is a problem that goes way back before the internet. My parents used to complain about that 40 years ago with TV ads. The TV companies claimed they didn't push the volume up on ads, but my dad was a radio engineer, and he proved it to them when they interviewed him on a local news program. Right there in the studio, he attached an averaging power meter to a TV audio output, and showed that the volume jumped up by 5 dbm when the ads came on (5 dbm is almost double the volume!!). They didn't want to talk to him again after that!!

[@rubenskiii]

@@davidanderson4091did footage of that survive in any way shape or form? Would be a good watch!

[@rubenskiii]

A thing about adds on KZbin that has changed and when i saw it the first time it actually spooked me(i use adblocker but had to use another device than my own): In the earlier days there was a small count-down before an add would come on, so you knew. But now screen just goes to black for a second and then BAM! the add comes barging into your head, with colours and sounds so loud my god… Horrible change not a lot of people talk about. Also I’ve noticed that subtitles always glitch nowadays, to the point they are useless.

[@Multimasti3]

I swear, all ads need an "ad in 5 sec" warning for this situation

[@theopoldthegamer4284]

My breaking point was a slow culmination of A) more than 2 ads started playing at the same time, B) the "skip" button was downgraded or C) purposely ads-disabled video (possibly a medical one) had ads added anyway, D) 1-minute MINIMUM ads for a 5-second video, E) HORROR ADS (they became a repressed memory after I installed adblocker!) Edit: Oh, I just found the legitimate reason, from an old message I sent I clicked "stop seeing this ad" on an NSFW ad I'd been getting for weeks when I clicked "tell us why" it remembered the last time i put in the "tell us why" thingy *and it autofilled it to "repetitive" because it remembered my preference for the same ad*

[@haydentravis3348]

Why do you need to be broken before you'll do something good for yourself? Just don't let things get that far, don't tolerate any amount of hurt from others. It's not worth it letting things get to a breaking point. Believe people when they tell you who they are and you won't ever have to get to a breaking point again. This applies to games, websites, art, whatever. Just don't.

[@pantsdraws]

my breaking point was the minute that youtube introduced two 15 second unskippable ads in a row. i can understand a 30 second ad that i can skip in 5 seconds but having to sit for half a minute and have my intelligence insulted by ads that aren't for me was the last straw

[@cbsGD]

frrr

[@ShinsHandle]

Mine was the same, but they'd put them on videos that aren't even as long as the ad itself.

[@articulated_clavicles]

@@ShinsHandlesame. wanted to watch a 10 second video and youtube tried to put me through 30 seconds of ads. i gave up

[@ChronomancerDe]

That was the same for me.

[@ssisnake]

I had this happen on a minute and fifteen second video, the ads were almost the same length as the actual video.

[@TheRealSpellstar]

I grew up in a household of people who muted or fast-forwarded through ads, and my parents always educated me about the manipulative tactics that advertisers use. Using an adblocker just felt like the right thing to do. My breaking point happened before I was born

[@certaindeath7776]

@bassplayer2773 yeah i cant stand the manipulative voice acting in ads. on a computer you can aditionally turn the screen off

[@pi4795]

My parents didn't teach me about it but we got it explained in high school and luckily it really stuck with me. I adopted Firefox pretty early because of its tabs and after looking through add-ons I still remember what a game changer blocking was... Pages so clean, no more weird ads about winning a prize or you have a virus plz download this antivirus 😂. Good times when we were four randoms and nobody cared

[@StarHorder]

thats damn good parenting

[@keiraaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Never had that but once I got to the internet and saw ads go from one 30 second skippable ad, to 2 unskippable 30 second ads and then so on so forth… Yeah, i’ve picked up adblocker. I think KZbin still does the 2 ad thing but some sites I went to would have 5 in a row and that to me is absurd. If I cannot skip those ads I will simply not use the service. And the same goes for youtube tbh.

[@c.edwards4457]

I was taught that anything you see on TV is trying to get your money.

[@Halvorwin]

I think the funniest thing of this whole ordeal is that KZbin quite literally is the REASON a lot of people use adblocker programs across the entire internet. Their ad practices have been down right terrible for years now.

[@MegaLokopo]

Why not pay for premium then? Does youtube not provide a service that is worth %45 of whatever premium costs now?

[@yankotliarov9239]

​@@MegaLokopobecause a) you still need ad blocker for other sites that run google ads. B) premium still gives worse experience than YT Revanced and adblocker

[@piljara]

@@MegaLokopo this is a very difficult question to answer and it's pointless to even talk about. youtube is used all over the globe, in many third/second world countries where it absolutely is not worth it to pay for premium. a lot of the first world already pays for premium. the people who dislike youtube as a company are always going to find workarounds to not have to pay.

[@MegaLokopo]

@@piljara KZbin premium is priced lower in those countries. If you don't like youtube as a company, why would you use youtube?

[@ILoveCatsYippee.]

@@MegaLokopo i dont believe in subscription based services period. the ONLY service I have is Spotify, and that is because THAT, something that i stream for 16 hours a day, is worth $5 (student) a month to me. I watch KZbin while I eat and for something on the side if I'm playing a boring game, it isn't worth it for me to pay for premium

[@cosmogoblin]

My breaking point: I made an educational KZbin site. I steadfastly refused to monetize it (the channel isn't big enough anyway, but I made a promise to my viewers early on that I'd never put ads on it). Then in 2020 KZbin put ads on *all* videos. I didn't want ads, but they were forced on me AND I don't get a cut of the profits. So now I view adblockers as a way of taking back, in a small way, what we used to have.

[@haydentravis3348]

Yeah, they can exploit your content to sell ads and not pay you any share. That's theft and should be criminally prosecuted, but we don't have any laws dealing with that so its perfectly legal XD

[@GarbsyWarbsy]

my breaking point was recently. Instead of simply skipping ads, you now HAVE to sit through one ad, and then press a Next button to see ANOTHER ad.

[@Satan_Official]

Damn, now that's a load of BS. Next they're gonna do something like "You need to have your webcam so we can use this eye tracking technology to make sure you are watching the ads" that'd be the day I'd either stop using KZbin or find a way to avoid ads permanently.

[@caiomurilo8246]

Wich is also unskipable by the way. And they aren't small either, sometimes I have to wait a full minute before actually watching what I clicked to watch.

[@paulstrobeck8947]

Same here. It’s why I got uBlock Origin.

[@MoonLäden]

enshittification! we made youtube too important and now cant get off this damned site

[@lucybiddle3912]

My first 'breaking point' was at 14 years old, when I literally did not HAVE any money to pay for premium anything and installed adblock out of necessity. As I started hitting adulthood and having my own money I started getting a few premium subscriptions and allowing ads on some sites. Then a friend passed away by suicide. Immediately every ad I saw was about suicide awareness, estate planning, will writing, the whole lot. I went on the internet to distract myself from it and instead every ad on the entire internet shouted constantly in my face, "HEY REMEMBER YOUR FRIEND'S DEAD?!" Adblock on maximum ever since. Effing ghouls.

[@happysocialmoth1197]

Dear God…. That's so effed up. I'm sorry that you had to go through this:(

[@Zythria]

I hate that this is something that happened to me; only not as morbid. Your phone is spying on you, and it is collecting data, based on what you say, key phrases... I swear. I was on the bus at work when someone co-workers were talking about some videos they saw, the day after the guy there were talking about, showed up in my feeds. It just makes you wonder...

[@BattOuttaHel]

Yeah the 3rd party trackers are seriously ill because they sneakly implement them on the bias of a wall of text, their terms of service. Google (alphabet inc.) and Facebook (Meta) are run by vampires

[@sleep_deprived_stormworker]

@@Zythria i swear they will find a way to see through face cam tape

[@berehap7004]

​@@sleep_deprived_stormworkerI might be thinking too far into it, but some phones, for example Huawei, tell you to remove your hand when its in front of the front camera. Always a little suspicious lol

[@westube643]

My breaking point was when I realized 1. More time was given to the ads then the actual video 2. When I clicked on a video and an ad played I immediately lost interest and/or forget why I wanted to watch the video in the first place.

[@tsm688]

pretty much the same breaking point as television for me, 23 years ago. more ads than program, and the ads are NOTHING which interests me. why bother?

[@Lemmon714_]

I haven't watched an ad in years and don't use an ad blocker

[@timefliesaway999]

@@Lemmon714_ good for you being rich but not everyone is

[@QuiVierge]

@@tsm688 This is the main reason why i stopped watching television all together, why am I forced to watch the same ads for like 5-10 minutes just so i can watch the second half of my favourite show just so that when it ends I'll have ANOTHER long ad that I'm forced to sit and watch? Yeah, no thanks.

[@floof6896]

probably an issue with your attention span on the 2nd part?

[@leah___6627]

Respect the hell out of you for putting a disclaimer about your potential biases and conflicts of interest. I think more people who make commentary videos should put similar disclaimers at the beginning of their videos whenever they talk about a person/subject/event. Nobody is inherently unbiased and it's refreshing to see somebody being upfront about it.

[@Shoopuffishgud]

Do you have autism? This is a foregone conclusion for most people. It's not insightful at all.

[@Soheil-ev6ls]

Rule #1 of advertising, is attracting customers. Not harassing them 💀

[@phantom-ri2tg]

That is not meta. The things I have heard of being meta is businesses.. It sounds like politics where the goal has become just aim to be the worse of two options is easier than aiming to be liked.

[@fred_derf]

Advertising, by its very nature, is annoying. It must interrupt what you want to do to attract your attention away from what you're actually interested in doing. It must be invasive or it doesn't work.

[@phantom-ri2tg]

meta in businesses. annoying typo.

[@phantom-ri2tg]

@@fred_derf I actually look at ads on the off chance something there interests me. it actually annoys me there is not a list of all the ads. like if the goal was actually to reach people who wanted the product I would figure there would be a list. For looking up lists online there is so much bloat of available stuff online it is pretty hard to do it unless you already know what you want. and even then for things like popular game genres it is hard.

[@fred_derf]

@@phantom-ri2tg OK great, so you've "justified" for you, 1% of the advertising you're inundated with on a daily basis. Good job.

[@gapirchik]

My favorite thing about adblocks is that if someone starts to use adblock, it's VERY unlikely that they will stop using it. Even if you make ads better. So sites with extreme advertisement hurt themselves permanently.

[@TheyCallMeIce]

No kidding. It's annoying being the "tech guy" of my house, but I take the opportunity to install adblockers on every device I set up. The internet is just a whole lot more usable with a metaphorical condom on.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

@@TheyCallMeIcePractice safe hex, use an adblocker! 😎

[@Adam_U]

@@TheyCallMeIce You ever kind of forget that ads even exist (because you've blocked them for so long), and then you use/see a friend or relative's device without a blocker? And you think "this is what the internet is like for normies??? WTF?"

[@CarpeNoctem135]

@@Adam_Uas someone without Adblock and refuses to pay for premium out of principle… I gotta say yes

[@ceilingfan12345]

@@Adam_U Yeah. I was talking to my parents about how I couldn't understand how they could watch cable TV because I can't stand watching ads. They seemed confused since they knew I watched youtube all the time. I was shocked when they showed me how bad it had gotten.

[@SamePaul]

You actually described it right - when "single ad per video" was replaced by "double ads" I started to look for ad-blockers. Paid off greatly when ads became "every 5 minutes" and later non-skippable. But yes, 1 ad per video I was ready to tolerate

[@corruptedcardinal9253]

Even 2 ads per video were tolerable (for me) as long as they were skippable. When they started to be unskippable, I installed an adblocker and stopped using the app.

[@icantthinkofaname4723]

@@corruptedcardinal9253 I installed an adblocker when they started the BS that is the double unskippable 15 second ad. No thanks, I value my time.

[@yokusfrequently9362]

One time I literally got 3 ads and they were unskippable what is going on 😭

[@dragongolden1065]

@@yokusfrequently9362 if you're unlucky, it could be 5 unskippable ads I hate it

[@garvat2246]

same here

[@LadyHeathersLair]

Well said. Even “safe” ads are annoying. Especially when they pop up out of nowhere, and pressing the “x” brings you to the ad instead of deleting it.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

My breaking point was when Google removed "Don't be evil" as their corporate slogan and Facebook had the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Seemed like the morally correct thing to do to cost these companies as much money as possible.

[@nashaigra8973]

We have 0 adds in Russia. Maybe use VPN for it? I dont really know if that works but mb give this a try

[@CodaCoda9]

Your are also hurting the content creators though. And sure mr beast won’t notice, but tons of small content creators need those views.

[@nashaigra8973]

@@CodaCoda9 I mean i aint hurting anyone, they gave me that and i took it. If some1 does Utube as a job idc about them

[@shadesoftime]

Worst of all, google still gets profit from you, because not only do they show ads, but they also collect your data and you physically can't stop them from doing most of it since the data they collect is what videos you watched and stuff like that

[@CodaCoda9]

@@nashaigra8973 why don’t you care about people that do KZbin?

[@superlynx98]

To be honest, it was over 10 years ago that I first installed an ad blocker, so I can't actually remember what the "final straw" was... But seeing how much worse it's gotten now, I'm so glad I got in when I did

[@LoganHunter82]

Yeah. I've been using adblock also something like 10 years now. To me, breaking point was when there began to be something like 10 ads in a 10 minute video. And unskippable ads.

[@sayingnigromakesyoutubecry2647]

Same

[@RandomPerson964]

At least fifteen years for me (2008-ish). I was 12 or 13 at the time. Since I now have money to buy things myself, I've come to prefer outright buying the media I consume and I've been paying for KZbin premium for a few years.

[@barritoothy]

@@RandomPerson964 4k video downloader + ad blocker = youtube premium

[@MakiPcr]

Me, I heard of adblock and immediately started using it, then some time later I was on a computer without adblock and thought "how did I ever survived like this?" ever since, every time I'm using a computer with no adblock, I install one (usually ublock origin)

[@MeowMeowMeowX3333]

My breaking point was seeing how little my favorite content creators were getting out of ads, and seeing how they still had to bend over backwards to be advertiser friendly so they didn't get punished by the algorithm. The content I was receiving was worse not only because of the ads, but because the content creators themselves were being forced to create worse products in order to survive on the platform.

[@Taka.1011]

The first adpocalypse, the content creator didn't get ad revenue, becouse yt didn't serve ads in that video. The second time, when yt decided that they could serve ads and not pay the content creator, that was it. At that second it became ethical

[@Depl0rable10]

​@gataca4548 just remember, if 1 percent of consumers paied 8.50 a month, content creators would make 1 million dollars annually per million subscribers. Same goes if half the people paied 20 cents per month. 1.2m dollars per year per million subs. Unironically if you want to turn on ad blocker but have any guilt in the matter, buy one thing from the creator. Doesn't matter what it is. T-shirt, waterbottle, 5 dollar super chat ect. That is worth probably double or triple what your ad time for the rest of your life is worth.

[@HelloHamburger]

​​@adamvargo7830 Bad take. Stop trying to guilt trip other people for trying to create a useable convenient product for themselves and skip ads they had no interest in buying in the 1st place. Also, I don't believe that if more people used YT Premium, that creators would be paid more. They're only paid by what people watch. So, like, if the video blocks ads, they get cents for your view. YT is a corporate company and it is not in their best interest to pay $1 million to every YTuber with over a million subs. Will never happen. Even if YT was the most profitable business out there, more than Disney or Amazon combined. It still would likely never happen. Also, like was shown in the vid, Indians don't pay that for Yt Premium. So, they wouldn't count for 8.50 like you said, where is this # from anyway?

[@XMysticHerox]

Just give people 5 bucks once and you will have given them more money than they would have ever made off of ad revenue from you.

[@Ryusuta]

Oh my god, THIS. Seriously.

[@Thecelestial1]

My breaking point was when the Adblock informed me how many ads it’s blocked. I just checked, 8.3 MILLION ads since installation.

[@hashemalawadhi9475]

When did you install?

[@Thecelestial1]

@@hashemalawadhi9475 few years ago

[@Thecelestial1]

@@hashemalawadhi9475 a few years ago.

[@neoleonor7140]

8.3 MILLION ads💀?????

[@Thecelestial1]

@@neoleonor7140 yep! insane!

[@gamilith]

my breaking point was when i would click on a video and decide i didn't want to watch it anymore simply because there was an ad.

[@lessermook7608]

Exactly. 🤣

[@michellegodwin6567]

That's what I used to do - and then every video I clicked had an ad. Then I got ad block.

[@theConcernedWyvern]

Mine was when they introduced double ads before videos. My new one has been skipping to a different part of the video after viewing an ad and getting *another* ad, sometimes for the same product (which I won't remember or buy).

[@azalaeel]

Yep, this is what happened to me too, why would someone want to watch a video for 3 mins and then get 2 unskippable ads for 1 min, sucks to my teeth

[@theultimateemeralds]

@@azalaeelwomp womp suck it up watch a 5 second ad bucko

[@kaylistensmusic]

The breaking point for me was youtube 1. Saying certain content is not adworthy to punish certain creators 2. Going ahead and putting ads on those videos anyways

[@Leandro-bj6jh]

Same, also I jumped to the adblock train way later then every body else. It happened when the videos just became unwatchable, I'd be listening to a video and then it would get interrupted over and over again, for minutes at a time.

[@VentelHD]

Imagine kids watching a cartoon with 10 ads in it, and one ads is some random dudes doing something and talking for 30 minutes... Sure you can skip it, but kids might not know yet how to do it. Then they're stuck watching some random crap!

[@totalmiroku89]

Why are children that young being left alone on KZbin? That's way more concerning@@VentelHD

[@RT-qd8yl]

@@totalmiroku89 Agreed. I wasn't allowed a computer with internet until I was 13. Granted things were way different in the late 90s, but either way kids under 10 shouldn't have unsupervised unrestricted internet access in ANY circumstance.

[@MrSpirit99]

I see where they are coming from, the more the advertiser pays the more specific he can be with its requirements, like video content, target audience and so on, the ads you usually see on that videos are incredibly cheap, t´if the add is shown a 100,000 times it costs around $300. The high end is $1000. If the video is monetized, the creator gets 55 percent of that. Also bandwidth and hosting isn't free. But it has gotten so out of hand, it's ridiculous.

[@diamondinvr]

The cracks started with the double unskippable ads, but my breaking point was mid-roll ads. Nothing I love more than watching a gameplay video and having it abruptly interrupted by something I literally couldn't care less about

[@dustinrichardson6533]

mid-syllable too. and now there's 2 of them. Every 5 minutes. And then an ad at the end of the video. And it'll play another 2 when you click on the next video you want to watch. Did I mention that 3 of those ads were the same clip, and one of them was just a longer version of the same ad that was skippable? And that there's a ~40% chance that those ads were for a political candidate (60% if it's an election year)? And one was in spanish, even though you aren't anywhere near fluent in it? Bonus points when you're cleaning or doing chores around the house and it just plays a casual, 15-minute ad for a church that is almost definitely a cult and you're so numb to the ads that it takes you a full 3 minutes to realize what's going on.

[@hbalint1000]

Not to mention how even mid-roll ads were shown to you as tiny yellow bars before so you could at least prepare to be interrupted but they had to take that away as well.

[@soupcangaming662]

@@dustinrichardson6533 and 70% them is just TikTok.

[@soupcangaming662]

@@hbalint1000 And then take away dislikes. And then take away comments. And then take away videos. And then take your computer. And then take away your family. And then kill you, and use your brain for robotic personalization experiments whilst forcibly overthrowing the US government to create a dictatorship and start a nuclear war. Okay, I made most of that shit up.

[@raymondwiggins354]

Midroll ads are a lot like popup (keeps trying to autocorrect to popular) ads, the most annoying form of advertisment. Ads like old spice (specifically terry crews) are pretty good, but so many youtube ads are stupid, inappropriate, and/or boring.

[@joe_the_zombie]

Fandom was what finally made me use an adblocker, imagine trying to research your favorite game but seeing more than 3/4 of your screen covered in ads. I hate using fandom and am glad to see so many using other wikis

[@reaux1560]

That shitty site takes 2,5 gigabytes of ram just with ads.

[@Catonator]

My breaking point was about 10 years ago. I was living in a rural area and my internet was terrible. KZbin was beginning to have an issue with 10-hour unskippable garbage ads due to their new ad serving platform, and ads would just generally be forced to play at higher resolutions than my internet could support. I got adblock and it literally saved me money by triggering my bandwidth limit less often.

[@MutleeIsTheAntiGod]

Always found it funny when I was on a limited plan and they'd serve an HD video for an ad before my 240p music video

[@mr.voidout4739]

Daaaamn, that sucks. I'm eternally grateful to my friend for introducing me to firefox and adblockers when I got my first comp. I still remember an internet plastered with ads, but I've never experienced a single YT ad (on my own comp of course.) They block adblock, I google a 20x more talented coder that can write script that not only blocks ads, but outright disables them. You still have the embedded ads, but at least you don't have an experience akin to trying to enjoy a walk in a park while "salesmen" rush at you and wave their peddlings in your face.

[@Ratigan2]

I like your pfp, it reminds me of nimbat

[@HeadacheCentral]

My mom's laptop was generally slow as it was and ads would just slow it to an even slower crawl. Shit like this wouldn't have benefited anyone.

[@SebineLifeWind]

I love the mobile "feature" where your video starts muted and the ads don't. Just refresh until your video says CLICK TO UNMUTE.

[@iansarmiento23]

The thing is, I probably wouldnt had been blocking ads if KZbin didn't become greedy. They increased the length of the ads, the amount of ads, the frequency of ads, and even put them on videos that didn't even have ad sense in the first place. We're hardly supporting creators with ads since I doubt majority of the videos ad revenue actually goes to the creators.

[@lostbutfreesoul]

A lot of it does not. Not only is it a small percentage of each advertisement, but there is a long list of things that get you disqualified from that payout as well. What, you thought they stopped running advertisements on platforms that where demonetized? Naaaah, they just don't give any of it over to the person who made that video in the first place.

[@officer_friendly_]

especially on 15 second shitpost videos i get 2 unskipabble ads

[@FM-Whispers]

I'm pretty sure the revenue split for creators/KZbin is 55/45, which is a majority split, but still, it's practically as low as it can get with the creator still getting the majority split, so KZbin is being greedy, I agree though I hate that sometimes I'll get 2 unskippable 15 second ads

[@LawfulBased]

My basic reaction on any site where I could not avoid the ad's with blockers has been the following for years: _" Open an alternate tab with middle-mousclick or better have one open already._ _Mute the tab with the ad and do something different for the 15 to 40 seconds included. "_ This boosts your synapses with multitasking training and sends the right mental message at least for myself. 👏☺

[@user-ejxomyq]

KZbin tried to make me watch two unskippable drug ads. Both are 2 minutes long,

[@hilmiylmaz527]

i used youtube without adblock for years, my breaking point was the time when i was watching a 3 hour gameplay video and there were double unskippable ads every five minutes.

[@ghb323]

2 15-seconds. Yeah actually 30 seconds.

[@new_simsons]

Yep, same. I was watching a long video where a KZbinr played bad games. The video was divided by chapters. Each chapter was 1 game and about 5 minutes. EVERY SINGLE TIME A CHAPTER ENDED AN UNSKIPPABLE AD APPEARED. Now I'm considering installing an ad blocker. Might be too late tho.

[@MachineWashableKatie]

@@new_simsons I switched to Firefox, ublock origin works well on desktop and mobile

[@scalylayde8751]

only health and safety psas should be allowed to be unskippable, I think

[@new_simsons]

Now I installed a bunch of extensions including an ad blocker (AdBlock) and I'm much more happy

[@Zorothegallade-rpg]

A corporate not only giving a free pass to advertisers to put whatever NSFW content they want in their ads, but also constantly saying "we don't give a shit if you don't want to see them, we will piss away millions to find new ways to shove them down your throat" wonders why those measures aren't very popular.

[@aperson6821]

One thing that really annoyed me was being forced ads to watch in HD, when I was using KZbin at 144p for audio-only purposes. I was often running other programs on my laptop which made the ads cause a lot of lag, and it just became unbareable.

[@ChronomancerDe]

Jeah Ads just forcing max Resolution is just insanity. Best example is when using mobile data and like video:360p Ad:1080p

[@kewlkidsklub4207]

Absolutely agree, before I upgraded to 40g of data I only had like 3 gigs, I refused to watch KZbin with it because half my data would be used just loading and watching ads at max resolution, despite watching my videos as 240p.

[@norrecvizharan1177]

On the flipside, I've been on tows far out into mountainous/foresty areas where the connection's more spotty than usual, and I've noticed that for some reason, the ads have a far faster load time than the actual videos themselves. I mean, it still struggles out there, but it's like a 10 second average load time versus a half a minute or more, give or take. So it's as if they straight up give advertisements bonus data priority or somethin.

[@ethribin4188]

This also. Especially when i was on the way and paying for every MB. I dispised adds, as they cost me not only time but also money

[@viiltelijamurhaaja7225]

@@norrecvizharan1177 Or maybe they have less ads than videos so they can process them into smaller file? Dont know

[@xXRedTheDragonXx]

My adblock "Breaking point" was back when I worked at a computer repair store. We would have people come in time and time again with viruses on their computers. In each of these cases, I started showing people how to install adblock. I noticed that there was an approximately 95% drop in re-opened tickets for malware removal after this happened. The problem with advertising quality control is so bad that it's actively harmful to people online, and I am genuinely of the opinion that until actual legislation is put in place to enforce "ad quality control" that I will not disable my adblocker for any reason outside of it breaking a website that I need to use for work.

[@eekee6034]

I've been saying for years now that the #1 defense against malware is an adblocker. In 2015, I noticed my Linux laptop having big GPU slowdowns which persisted until reboot. I traced it to a Microsoft advert. I installed an adblocker and the problem went away. 2 years later, I was running FreeBSD on the same laptop. My conscience was bothering me a little bit, so I didn't install an adblocker. Same advert, same problem: graphics crippled until reboot. I installed an adblocker and have never looked back.

[@computerkiller1494]

my adblock breaking point happened in when i was watching a normal yt video with my dad and then two really sexualised unskippable ads came one after the other, with my dad asking if i visited any "naughty" website. Also i have limited data (80gb per month when it happened, 100gb per month now) and with like 6 unskippable 15 or 20 second ads per video that loaded at 1080p i always consumed all my data by the end of the month. Also my brother got a virus more than twice because of sketchy ads on yt and guess who had to remove those viruses? ME! and so after thinking a bit i decided to make my brother install adblocker, and i also did as well. Then a month later my father (who listens to old school music with yt) asked me if it was possible to remove the ads, since he puts the phone with a playlist on while in the car and can't just leave the wheel, pick up the phone, skip the ad, put down the phone and then return back to driving.

[@BloodWraith777]

I first learned of malware "leaking" through ads in the late 2000s, on the old Steam forums (TF2 forum specifically), there being a thread warning about an audio virus on Fpsbanana (now Gamebanana). I forget if this is what caused me to get ABP and NoScript or not, but just as well, ABP and NoScript are like an extra layer of ballistics glass on top of your actual antimalware, just gotta allow scripts on NoScript for sites you completely trust (and begrudgingly temporarily allow some scripts for random sites you don't frequent). It's sickening how some sites have 10+ interlinking sitescripts leading to many different websites, sometimes going into the 20+ range, it's like "Ah yes, dozens of potential for malware to leak through random scripting and ad BS with zero quality control." Like, keep that shit to under 10, much like this site.

[@crabwater]

kobold spotted

[@pureexile1702]

@@eekee6034 i do not understand what shady fucking sites people go to. i've bin running without adblock for years now. i've never got a malware or virus via a add

[@Marcongo]

My breaking point was probably seeing all those NSFW ads as a 14-15 year old and fearing my parents would see it and take my laptop/internet away from me for looking at such things.. not even on some fringe site, but on youtube and other "mainstream" sites. Also those long unskippable ads that would show up on youtube more regularly at that time. I immediately noticed how cluttered most sites were with ads and how barren or empty they looked without them... made me realize just how many ads i used to be subjected to.

[@kerbereal934]

one time i got a 14~15 minute UNSKIPPABLE AD on youtube. It was just a video but like an ad like holy shit wtf youtube and the funny thing is that it happened on a SMART TV i couldnt just refresh the page and exiting the app and logging back on would take ages

[@StevenHawkingsSpitrag]

@@kerbereal934 you didn’t get no 15 minutes unskippable ad my boy. If you gonna lie at least make it believable 😂🤦🏻‍♂️

[@ANGER2077]

@@StevenHawkingsSpitrag I once got a 2 hour unskipabble ad he's most likely telling the truth

[@-MariotAndVoid-]

⁠@@StevenHawkingsSpitragpeople have gotten ads longer then an hour. 14 to 15 minutes is far from unbelievable.

[@njdotson]

For me when I first heard of adblocker it was in coolmath games telling my dad that the games were laggy. He installed the adblocker and it was like I upgraded my computer

[@rougnashi]

My breaking point was a horror movie ad (I'm especially sensitive to horror) while I was trying to get myself to sleep because I was nervous about my first day on the job starting at 3am. A man stuck his hand in a blender... I didn't sleep.

[@phutureproof]

thats totally your fault for watching youtube at 3am and not being asleep cmon bro

[@swinginthewolf6554]

Oh god yeah I remember that. That one fucked me up too. I got those ads when I was in high school while a teacher tried to show us a video. It was unskippable so we all saw it on the giant projector screen.

[@swinginthewolf6554]

@@phutureproof Not everyone can get to sleep when they're stressed out. Let them put on a relaxing video without shoveling gore in their face because they dared to be awake past little Timmy's bedtime

[@rebjr6615]

​@@swinginthewolf6554well said. The sleep struggle is real, especially when u got an interview next day or something

[@diamondsanchez224]

There was a point, back in college, where I legitimately didn't mind ads on KZbin. At first I was like, "Eh, KZbin has to make money somehow right?" But as the ads became more frequent, misleading, and inappropriate, and as KZbin's PR tanked due to their own poor decisions, I hit my breaking point where I began using adblockers on all my devices. There are too many ads, most of which are unskippable or blatant lies, and rather than just fix them, KZbin wants to shove them down our faces even more. We don't come to KZbin to watch advertisements. We come to KZbin to watch videos we want to watch. Without the videos, you don't even have the advertisements.

[@murtadhaAlhusne]

can y say some of the AdBlockers ?? you use

[@PedroAbreu-im4sd]

@@murtadhaAlhusne ublock origin

[@manhle1582]

​@@murtadhaAlhusneI use AdGuard for desktop browser (Firefox and Chrome), Kiwi/Brave for mobile and SmartTube for Android TV. The best combination should be UBlockOrigin because AdGuard still sounds a little bit unprivacy imo.

[@ravenlorans]

Yeah but ebuTuoY don't need Ads, they get enough from the % they get from all the Sex Site Bots that have taken over and from all the people Stupid enough to join those sites. Then take Down My Instructions of how to Actually Report them but Leave the SSB Comments alone...

[@supme7558]

Inappropriate..oh brother

[@NXTangl]

Love the netflix piracy example, since piracy is now probably more convenient than netflix again.

[@GeorgeSukFuk]

It is

[@Ruchunteur]

I wouldn't go as far as "more convenient". Piracy is cheaper but it's not that convenient. Most site are dodgy, quality isn't always there and sometime it's just plain impossible to find what you are looking for. Piracy never has been about convenience, not now, not ever. It's always been about the money. Maybe you are a student, maybe you have no revenue, maybe you can't afford the price or maybe you just not willing to pay for the product in question (as in, you'll rather not ever get that product at all if it mean you have to pay for it. You are not a potential client).

[@8BitShadow]

@@Ruchunteur "Piracy never has been about convenience" are you sure about that? The entire anime industry would beg to differ lol.

[@Ruchunteur]

@@8BitShadow even anime. If you had a proper place to get the anime you want at a reasonable price and you had the money you would probably go there instead of going to website that set off your anti virus every 5 minutes. The thing is, a lot of people watching anime doesnt have the money. Lots of student or young adult with low incomes.

[@vylbird8014]

@@Ruchunteur I've been pirating since before Napster, and I can tell you it was /all/ about convenience! Back in those earlier days, there simple was no legal media source on the internet. No steam, no itunes, no spotify, no netflix. You wanted a film, you got off you ass and walked your way down the store to buy a DVD. Or you ordered online and waited for delivery. Compared to that, piracy was very convenient indeed - and that convenience is the main reason is thrived. An argument could be made that the many convenient legal platforms we have today exist only because of piracy. It forced companies who were very reluctant to accept online distribution to do so anyway.

[@napalmchicken]

The "enough is enough" point for me were ads that prevented my ability to even view or interact with the content. Like I would be reading a news article, and suddenly a new car drives across the screen. Also, where the appearing and disappearing of ads means that when I'm trying to click on something, the thing I wanted to click on is suddenly in a different place and I click on something totally random.

[@havenbastion]

Look up the definitions of contempt and disdain. That's exactly how we're being treated, as though our interests are beneath concern, even beneath notice.

[@OrdericNeustry]

That's why I ended up getting an adblocker on my phone. Went to a site where the the search bar was in a small pop-up and the ad beneath that made it impossible for me to actually select the search bar.

[@cericat]

Ugh I forgot that, at one point I had to enable an ad blocker on YT because their ads kept breaking the videos for me, sucks I wasn't alone with that sort of experience.

[@ripcactusify]

I have a REALLY bad eating disorder and adblockers have genuinely saved me here. There's way too many food commercials that REALLY make me want to give into my disorder, so avoiding them all together has both made me feel more in control of myself. It's not that I can't look at food, it's just they're advertised in such a way that almost forces you to crave it.

[@MaxWellington46]

Um, not saying it is or isn't your eating disorder, but food advertisements are done that way purposely so everyone even those without an eating disorder would crave it and go out and buy it. That's why they constantly bombard you with restaurant commercials on TV all day. Or there's a billboard advertising one on the street. It's to get you hungry and to buy their product. That's also why they doctor the food (the images on the commercial) for a pleasing and appealing look. As opposed to what you really get when it comes out. From the colors and the way it's laid out, everything. It sells.

[@ripcactusify]

@@MaxWellington46 It's predatory advertising practices. They did this with alcohol for decades. "Stay thirsty my friends" type shit. One of the biggest problems with food addiction is that food is everywhere. You can't just stop eating like a person can stop drinking or smoking. There's no age limit to food you can buy by yourself either, like alcohol and cigs. There's quite literally no escape, but in moments like that it's still good to at least have some semblance of control available. Ad blockers have been a real lifesaver for me, and I hope the folks who go on to make those don't get too discouraged from how KZbin and other sites handle them. It's given me control in my enjoyment, like I'm allowed to be happy without it being used as a lure for once. I get what you're talking about, but just know this: addiction is like a need, but your body isn't enjoying it, and neither do you (you're not having fun while addicted to something), but the dopamine in your brain tells you you'll die if you don't have it, so it begins to physically hurt or punish you for not continuing. They say you're addicted to a drug the moment you notice you're not having fun anymore (the whole "chasing the dragon" thing), it's the same with food. Normal people will get a craving from these commercials, and make unhealthy decisions, but addicts will feel PAIN upon seeing them, and it's better to just block them out until our bodies are ready to deal with it better. Like getting away from a toxic parent or something until you're ready to face them. There needs to be a distance in order to heal.

[@MaxWellington46]

@@ripcactusify I agree on all points made.

[@danhatman3538]

The thing that bothered me most about ads is how often they're much louder than the source material. Like 1.5 -3x louder than my actual playlist. Scared the hell out of me

[@hatti...]

Pair that with the fact that ads often have the most annoying, obnoxious sounds and music. It completely kills any mood or train of thought you got going on

[@bixybixy2]

Honestly my 'breaking point' was the actual malware ads. Not the ones you click on, but the ones that simply load and cause pop-up tabs to appear and attempt to force a download or add something to your browser cache, etc, etc. THOSE aren't common anymore, but early 2010 era, there were a few ad companies that, knowingly or not, added those to the list of ones that could appear for people.

[@Jerry_quesoso]

Oh God, I just remembered the pop-ups that sneakily opened themselves on another browser window. Literally had to stay alert at both tabs and taskbar

[@viiltelijamurhaaja7225]

Just today a website opened calender and tried to something before i closed it on my iphone. Like wtf, why is a website even allowed to open my calenter?

[@tsm688]

they knew exactly what they were doing. I remember looking at programming jobs on rentacoder ages ago, and tons of them had requirements like a) must redirect internet explorer when it is open b) must open internet explorer when it's not this exploitation has been absolutely knowing and always has been.

[@xChristmas1]

My personal limits when it comes to ads are horror movie trailers and fake game ads that are often super sexualized. I used to think to myself "I'll enable ads on the content creators I want to support most" but it's come to a point where I can't just ignore it even for creators that make things I love to watch. There's just far too little oversight on KZbin's part on what ads get shown

[@atk05003]

It's infuriating when we try to bring up something fun or educational for my kids and an ad for a horror movie starts up. If I'm on my TV, which doesn't have an ad-blocker, I have to sit with the remote in my hand so I can mute the ads that would freak out my kids.

[@interstellarsurfer]

It's a race to the bottom.

[@ioppisheliolisk]

I’m glad to see someone else who hates horror trailers (and those game adverts). I’m an anxious person so they can really set me off. I can enjoy horror content in my own time but I keep that to what I know I can handle, whereas horror trailers are always unexpected. It isn’t fair to market that stuff on completely unrelated videos; I just wanted to watch a gaming video to relax, not see an image that’ll get stuck in my head for a good while.

[@scaper12123]

I started actively seeking out ad blockers when i got horror movie ads.

[@solitarelee6200]

For real, I wouldn't mind ads as much if they had any oversight at all about content, legality, factuality, oh and also VOLUME. But I simply can't deal with it when my video is interrupted by ads with sounds loud enough to cause actual real hearing damage, which is a known, well-recorded issue on KZbin and has been for like a friggin decade now. They clearly have no interest in making their ads less actively hostile to the people being advertised to, so why shouldn't we act to protect ourselves?

[@firesonic1010]

Its like what Gabe Newell said about Piracy: "Piracy is a service based issue" I feel this also applies to the ad problem as well.

[@negativearchitecture]

I started using adblockers when websites became genuinely unusable without them. Like, to the point where you were 100% going to get a virus if you clicked around a website enough times. All the excessive & incessant ads annoy me enough but all the straight-up malicious/dangerous ads out there were my breaking point.

[@thoopsy]

Oh yeah, I got a computer virus once because of wanting to download a foreign song. It's terrible.

[@Anolaana]

It's coming full circle back around to the 2002 days where there were popups everywhere. Now they're just implemented with CSS lightboxes and stuff that try and nab you when you tab away from the page and stuff.

[@Zoey--]

Fun fact I've not had a single virus since installing adblock. Not had one in over 15 years!

[@ElJosher]

@OURO8ORUOon computers, ublock origin is top of the line.

[@ethanbiedess2285]

@@ElJosherwhat about for a phone

[@ElliotZealGaming]

Breaking point is when I was trying to download a mod for a video game and there were about ten different download buttons. I thought it wasen't worth the risk. I looked up how to stop seeing ads, or something like that and have been living in bliss for years

[@IcecalGamer]

Same here, mods for games "Download now!!!" x10. And this was over a decade ago... 😥 Got an add blocker ಠ_ಠ and i never saw the internet with the same eyes again.

[@shrimpfry880]

and even if you start torrenting, the cracked installer might install some crap like Opera or a weird datastealung search bar if you aren't careful enough to uncheck everything

[@pantommy]

​@@shrimpfry880reason why I won't use opera or avast in my life, these morons are just shooting themselves in the foot by doing stuff like this.

[@bastienfelix4605]

Shady minecraft mod sites be like…

[@hertzwave8001]

this is how i borked by crappy laptop back in the day trying to download slendytubbies, though my breaking point was a pair of 2 minute unskippable ads on here

[@thebearded4427]

The breaking point for me was when i realized i spent more time watching ads to see if the video was decent than i was actually watching content. Ironically this was made even worse when the dislike button change was implemented

[@ceilingfan12345]

That's a big part of the reason why the dislike button change was implemented

[@RazorM97]

KZbin seeing vanced including features users like: 👎 KZbin removing dislikes and stopping addblockers to get revenue for YT premium, ignoring everyone and taking a politically biased stance:👍

[@Denastus]

ReturnKZbinDislikes is pretty good.

[@stitches768]

Exactly, I only watch videos I've watched dozens of times before. I mean I used to for drawing and other multitasking but at this point it's just for my sanity

[@TheGravityShifter]

@@Denastus It's basically a necessity if you can get it.

[@ZX_STH]

My breaking point was one ad that was played constantly. More than half the ads KZbin showed me were this one single un-skippable ad. I don't remember what company it was for specifically. But it had a robot in a board room meeting going over a cellphone data plan. The ad ends with the robot on the building's roof, announcing it to be the "best deal ever". It was grating and obnoxious, and would be forced to sit and watch 3 to 4 times per video, until I decided "hey, this is way over the line for viewer respect. I'm going to use an ad blocker".

[@dungeonsanddobbers2683]

My breaking point was finding out adblockers exist. Mostly because I'm old enough to remember an internet uncorrupted by ads, and one where it was still slow enough that you would have to leave a video to buffer for a while, yet the 30 second ad would load immediately and have no issues.

[@TheyCallMeIce]

Ah, yes. The time when you could leave your browser open when you have a spotty connection and let the video load completely so you could watch it without interruption. Where did it go

[@tappajaav]

@@TheyCallMeIce Bandwidth saving.

[@mynameisben123]

The quality of the content online was significantly lower back then though. I look at it as, the quality increased and this extra quality needs to be funded somehow.

[@TheyCallMeIce]

@@mynameisben123 That's... not entirely true. To put it lightly. From what I remember, content mostly had A LOT more effort put into it than today.

[@viceroybolt3518]

Stone age internet was a place of wonder, clicking on a link to an image and waiting 10 minutes as it wrote line by line or talking to random strangers in chat lobbies was fun!

[@m13253]

Back in the old days (2015-ish), when KZbin was the only website that allows skippable ads, all the ad companies were competing to increase the artistic value of their ads. Those old ads were so artistically good that I watched most of them without skipping. The deterioration of ad quality and the inability to skip them were the tipping point. I ended up with ad-blockers since then. I hate those fake mobile game ads nowadays.

[@Warp2090]

Yeah or those awful grammarly ads, issue is google has like no moderation/verification process for ads so they can appear as viruses ands tuff

[@skrbidi]

and now these mobile game ads... (I really dont know how to word this) they just became too sexual and its always about getting together with a woman or something related to sex (again, i really dont know how to word this). I saw an ad about a pixel game thingy, a woman is being held by a tentacle and other tentacles are spewing out white liquids. I screen recorded that and sent that to a friend on twitter and my account got locked for a day

[@jakerockznoodles]

I feel ancient when someone is describing 2015 as "the old days" rather than, like, 2006. 😂

[@lawncrow]

I had one of these moments just recently. There was an ad for a food delivery company that utilised stop motion animation, that's an art form you hardly see anymore these days so I actually voluntarily watched it through, really goes to show that if you don't make an ad an active liability to your end user then they are a lot more willing to sit through them.

[@_Devil]

I remember when I got my Xbox One in 2018 and I watched KZbin on there. Advertisers were so keen to get me to not skip their ads that sometimes I would get entire episodes of TV shows as ads straight from their production company. And I never skipped them, cause free content is free content lol

[@otooandoh9556]

My breaking point was when I would be watching a video and get a double unskippable ad and wanted to go back and rewatch the portion that got interrupted only to be hit with another double unskippable ad not 2 seconds after I rewinded. That was just ridiculous at that point.

[@MrDoboz]

"oh, you missed the ads? you can watch them again!" lmao

[@JD-td6dc]

That combined with the tiktok ads Was mine.

[@feasibilyheretical]

I have never once bought a product because an ad before, never once. I will continue to do this. Watching ads are literally just a waste of my precious time on this earth nothing more.

[@billy6044]

I definitely have seen a dominos ad and been like “damn, I want a Pizza” and then got from the much nicer local place

[@mjetektman9313]

To be honest, adblockers nowadays are basically a requirement for web browsing since web became so bloated and full of spam that sometimes your PC will struggle to open a website like it was a AAA PC game

[@RmFrZQ]

I've felt that way two decades ago. Web was a garbage pit back then and it gradually got worse and worse.

[@nvelsen1975]

I'm happy with my $ 600 new graphics card, so I can watch the ads on a website again and actually open it at all.

[@punknerdvee]

Fucking this.

[@vorpal22]

As any content distributor, when you know that 90%+ of the data retrieved for your page is ads, you should know that nobody is going to use your page without adblocking.

[@vorpal22]

@@RmFrZQThe ads were competing with the ads for our attention. It was reminiscent of those garish 90s webpages that used scrolling marquees and flashing fonts just because they could and it was a novelty that was "fun." Unlike actual content distributors, advertisers never learned that nobody finds that fun.

[@PoggerFoxy]

the very first reason I actually decided to use an adblocker was because I noticed the sheer amount of ads on certain websites was making my whole PC SLOW DOWN. So a friend showed me adblockers and other extensions that help with safety and privacy, and right after adding those... I didn't have any more slowing down issues at all. I was SHOCKED at how resource heavy the ads were

[@CirnoFairy]

Not to mention malicious ads and the like, it's just safer in general.

[@nightigal]

The state of advertisement on websites is comparable to sites in the 90's and early 2000's that would be considered unusable and had a high chance of bricking your computer. Why advertisers and website owners think we want to go back to that is anybody's guess.

[@HelloHamburger]

​@CirnoFairy I also hate ads that block content. Like on News Sites. It's either always, 1. Pay money. 2. Watch ads that cover up the content (so pay wall or no. It is difficult to read content. And these sorts of websites always have the "here's the trick to cure toe fungus. Here's a video that is unskippable that goes on forever on other tangents." Sort of medical scam ads or ads about fake celebrity drama shit.) 3. Be forced to unblock ad blocker if the site does not allow it. It's sad how against they are users using their website for free or making limits like 3 articles per person/browser. Sometimes, it feels justified to ctrl a and ctrl c it and paste it into a word processor like Google Docs. They make it seem like their content is something everyone should read but then make it hard for people to access the system.

[@raphaeldagamer]

The major issue I take with KZbin banning ad blockers is that the platform does not moderate the advertisements, and they are trying to make it a violation of the TOS to moderate ads. I hope this goes crazy and makes it to the supreme court where it will then become illegal to block ad blockers in any capacity, including in a mobile app. Google can afford to lose ad revenue from KZbin. Content creators might not be able to afford that loss. This is just going to become KZbin trying to outsmart the room for their own profit and ending up ruining it for everyone.

[@havenbastion]

When the information reaches your device it's no longer their business. That's the real evil. They want to control your device, not their site.

[@LoLFilmStudios]

What are you on about? KZbin because intolerable with ads years ago. Pay.

[@v.k.8153]

I dunno which supreme court you mean, but the US Supreme Court would *NEVER* side with consumers over corporations.

[@Spacecoreinspace]

​@@v.k.8153 yeah, they'd more than likely completely ruin the chance, despite adblockers being on the client's side of the things, which the provider of the service should NOT be able to tamper with in any way shape or form unless it's sending malicious feedback to the server i could see the eu maybe putting pressure on them, and forcing them to back off of it, but even that's unlikely

[@Adderallie]

This video getting recommended again is very applicable to the current state of worsening ads on KZbin. I originally turned on an ad blocker bc I really didn’t have any reason not to. It was always annoying that ads would turn on when a teacher was trying to show us an educational video in class. I think that that made me have an initial negative impression of ads on a desktop pc, so when I finally built my own computer, when I got served an ad it just reminded of all those intrusive ads we used to have to sit through and class, and figured I should just nip it in the bud.

[@person_perhaps]

My tipping point was when I realized that over 30% of my monitor had ads plastered all over it. I had initially disabled my Adblock for KZbin, to support creators, but KZbin’s double unskippable ads convinced me otherwise.

[@ethribin4188]

Same

[@theConcernedWyvern]

Absolutely. That was the same for me. I just wish I could have an adblock on my phone. I listen to stuff at night to help me sleep and all of a sudden theres loud crashes and bangs and obnoxious talking at the end of the video.

[@bad_bau]

My breaking point for Adblocker was when KZbin started playing multiple ads every ad roll. My breaking point for Sponsorblocker was the Established Titles fiasco immediately followed by a bunch of creators accepting BetterHelp sponsorships again.

[@jimbob5891]

Better help is a scam? I've gotten their ads, never looked into them.

[@muenstercheese]

@@jimbob5891 yeah, they have terrible conditions for their contractors and shitty privacy/service for users

[@boianko]

I have just realized that trusting sponsors is never a good idea, especially if it's some general service and not a niche ad that conforms to what the channel advertising it is actually about. If a movie review channel is telling where to get my razors, or a cooking channel is telling me that I should buy a novelty plot of land, more likely than not they just took some money and didn't bother to look into what they're actually advertising.

[@ariabritton9669]

lol i hated betterhelp before i knew this. fuck all advertisers

[@SomeplaceScary]

It feels like every single podcast I follow is doing betterhelp sponsorships and its 🙃

[@wbm756]

My breaking point to get an ad blocker was specifically because it became cumbersome to listen to music. I was ok with an ad every once and a while, but when I’m getting like 2 or 3 ads per song it gets pretty degrading

[@niconiconiccorin]

why i don't like spotify

[@ZarkowsWorld]

@@niconiconiccorin Could just pay for it, like not-a-bum

[@parthon]

@@ZarkowsWorld Or just not use it at all.

[@aschelocke5287]

​@@niconiconiccorinfunfact: adblockers work on spotify (web) too...

[@wakkowarner3716]

@@ZarkowsWorld Or you could just download your music instead. No ads, no paying, easy access, even offline.

[@OnryoGD]

Started using adblocker because there was literally no incentive to not use adblocker. I turned adblocker off again when KZbin threatened to end video playback. BUT THEN, KZbin started failing to render the "Skip Ad" button on 3-4 minute ads, forcing me to refresh the page until the video would play. So now I just use adblockers that don't trigger KZbin's adblock detection

[@uhoh8489]

My breaking points were 1.) when the sheer amount of ads on webpages started lagging my entire computer and 2.) seeing one of my friends use one; it was just that much better.

[@Juline1221]

Na it's not ads. If u have multiple youtube tabs open it willyour whole computer. I have premium and still go thru it

[@spibow]

​@@Juline1221Absolutely wrong. Ads will lag your computer, your wifi, everything. One tab open with a fuck ton of ads takes a remarkable amount of processing power, especially if the site has not implemented those ads well.

[@JiorujiDerako]

​@@spibow This. Maybe not KZbin (as Juline seemed to be assuming this was about), but I've absolutely had websites that work fine *until* all the ads finish loading. Crashed my phone visiting a few of them because I don't have a convenient adblocker on my phone or tablet, all the auto-play video ads started up and without fail, it'd crash my mobile browser every time I tried to go back.

[@Juline1221]

@JiorujiDerako I know ads lag your computer. I'm just saying youtube will lag your computer regardless of ads

[@JiorujiDerako]

@@Juline1221 the original commenter was talking about webpages in general, not just KZbin. Though it's the same reasons that cause things to lag, a lot of ads now are videos regardless of the site.

[@blackheart7921]

Interestingly enough my breaking point wasn't actually the amount of ads or their content. It's that every ad on youtube would throw away the video buffer that had built up, and back when I didn't have that good internet that was mighty annoying especially when I intentionally let the buffer build up before playing the video.

[@jamesphillips2285]

Related: most of the controls are disabled when an AD plays: so you can't even adjust the video resolution.

[@cloudynguyen6527]

I know right? I don't mind the ads as long as it might peak my interest or support the creator a bit. But my internet being fucking shit means I have to wait 5-10 seconds of loading whenever an advertise end. I'm surprised this is common to others as well.

[@Pantology_Enthusiast]

I remember those days. I used to download the videos with _youtube-dl_ because I couldn't watch them at all otherwise (dial-up until late 2011; 30-40 kps cellular until 2017; 70-120kps cellular until 2021). I still use it to archive some creators but not like I used to.

[@Nickname863]

Back when i prebuffered videos they never inserted ads, but in that time people usually didn't have partner status. I remember having 15 tabs open to buffer so i could watch offline afterwards.

[@saladgreens912]

Even worse when the video won’t load because it needs to load multiple ads. And of course the ads can’t be loaded in low resolution or the advertisers would be upset so it just takes forever on my mobile plan.

[@IAmAGyroGamer]

The breaking point was having way too many repetitive ads, cutting out the "skip ad" button, and the quality control of ads became nonexistent. The ads go against KZbin guidelines as there was violent and sexual content being shown, and yet they got a pass compared to KZbinrs.

[@FlyoutAerospace]

Exactly

[@pokepress]

The quality control aspect is especially interesting, as some of the most popular videos on KZbin are actually compilations of retro advertisements. The irony.

[@am_Nein]

They've started removing the (i) buttons, sometimes removing any option to report the ad at all.

[@PixEII]

I'm pretty sure they removed the ability to report ads aswell. Which is kinda fucked up. Cause now at this point your basically forced to watch a bunch of unskippable scam ads you can't report, Or unskippable hentai ads, both of which wouldn't fly if they were actual videos but since they're paying, it's fine in KZbin's eyes.

[@drakZes]

You buy KZbin premium to get rid of ads but then the creator puts an add in their video so their is still ads even with YT premium.

[@addicted2mako]

My breaking point was getting an ad in the middle of a meditation video. No better way to throw me into a state of irritation than ear-blasting me with product shilling when I'm just starting to relax

[@ShadowXII]

This is my problem, too. It makes me remember the product alright; I remember that it woke me the fuck up!

[@sadfatdragon9529]

I used to listen to hour long music mixes until ads would put themselves in the middle of songs breaking the mood.

[@themysterylady842]

Or when you're trying to sleep and you put on one of those 10-hour videos and in every 30 minutes there's an ad or worse every 10 minutes.

[@FEZERVED]

Download videos

[@dummydodo737]

On youtube tv theres so many more ads, like 3-5 every 10 minutes and i can only skip the last one. Its so stupid.

[@thijsstavenga4350]

For me the tipping point to use an adblocker had nothing to do with youtube. At some point webpages were just 90% advertising with popups everywhere. It is just infuriating. having an adblocker made the webpages so much cleaner and nicer to view. The whole internet became a better experience

[@neurofiedyamato8763]

True that was a huge annoyance for me too.

[@popcorn8153]

you start reading the news and everything shifts down a paragraph for an ad, then it happens again and again and again. How can people read anything with that kind of shit?

[@Connection-Lost]

You're shaving tons of bloat off your monthly bandwidth allowance. There's no argument against willingly using that bandwidth for ads about things you don't want and won't buy.

[@phost9011]

sometime you don't even know what is an add and what is not. It was like walking on a landmine, you are afraid to click somewhere wrong

[@myfatassdick]

Yea when there’s 5 glowing green download buttons on the page and only one real one that’s when I had enough and also KZbin getting more and more ads on top of it That was in like 2012 and I never looked back

[@melkbuds3073]

My breaking point was the implementation of consecutive ads that had inconsistent or misleading skip timers. For example, skipping a 10 second ad to be met with an unskippable 15 second ad. Another one being a 5 second ad with a 5 second skip timer. The illusion of convenience.

[@BenjaminEsposti]

I got adblock before that, but yes those ads are annoying. I noticed the "skip" buttons (on mobile w/out adblock) have a delay, they don't respond immediately.

[@SupremeST25]

Ditto. But in my case, it was more the insane frequency at which i get ads now. I’m talking 5 seconds maximum between two sets of unskippable ads. I think it might be a glitch because it doesn’t happen that often (I’d say once every 20 videos), but KZbin isn’t exactly known for fixing defects in its website, let alone it’s app which is where this happens to me the most. And it would at least be tolerable if it wasn’t the same constant gambling ads, mobile game ads or “stock trading finance” ads - none of which could ever, ever say anything to captivate me even if they literally offered me money to download them

[@ghb323]

dark patterns, sometimes have “visit site” instead of skip ad on some news sites.

[@undefinedusername]

I've also noticed that the "5-second" countdown for the skip button hangs on 5 for three or so seconds before it starts to count down.

[@mobilemcsmarty1466]

see, here's something annoying you didn't have to do before. you have to keep your remote in hand all the time now to do "skipping." it's just a few ads really that play over and over and over ..and over. sometimes you can skip, other times another tired ad plays after with a new countdown, or even no option to skip. play an ad for me 50 times over and it guarantees that I'll specifically avoid your product.

[@leafisactuallyaplantyk]

My breaking point was several unskippable ads at once. I actually used to let ads play all the way through cause they were short enough and it'd probably support the creators a tiny tiny bit, but then they got longer, they got stacked together and the decision to let them play wasn't mine anymore. I already give 9 to 12 hours of my day to work, sleep around 5 to 6 hours. So I have 10 hours at best and 6 at worst left in my day for everything else, taking care of the house and of myself, running errands, etc... I don't even have a TV, so KZbin is my main source of entertainment and it just doesn't make sense to spend such a big fraction of my time on it watching ads I know I won't click on.

[@astra_not]

My breaking point for using an ad blocker was when I got an unskippable 30 minute ad before a five minute video. It’s basically impossible to use the internet without one these days.

[@sydneygorelick7484]

What the fuck, that has to be a typo. 30 minute unskippable?? You've gotta be kidding!

[@bigdadbeefsticks]

YES! This happened to me and I was absolute baffled. Thankfully I could still do the ad skip work around by hitting the little i icon and saying I didn't wanna see that ad anymore, but it's crazy that I even got that ad to begin with. You can't even use the workaround for some half of the ads now.

[@walters9620]

@@sydneygorelick7484 i had a few of those. your content will play after this ad and then its a damn 20 minute ad for utter bullsh@t

[@norml.hugh-mann]

Yet all you have to do is pay for the services

[@deathwingterminator2786]

I have gotten that too and worse yet, you know the thing in the bottom left corner that appears and tells you how many adds you have left? Yeah it said "1 out of 5" ads

[@mythrix5565]

Its so addicting hearing about everyone's "breaking point". Mine was when I had so many ads that half of the websites I used had ads covering 90% of the screen

[@77elite9]

I actually don’t know why it is so addicting… But it definitely can be funny but shows that it isn’t just a me issue, it’s an everyone issue.

[@kelly4187]

The worst part is that these don't even work for the website or advertisers. Almost noone clicks these adverts but the website gets their money anyway, and Google gets paid by the companies anyway. It's all a big scam.

[@bestaround3323]

I had to turn to alternate forms of watching anime after using a friend's ad Hulu account. Minutes of ads were one thing, ads replaying if you Rewind back to that point in the show was another, but my absolute breaking point was when it got stuck in an infinite loop never ending the ad.

[@Koyu_Ruh]

My breaking point was when I saw a five minute video that was so stuffed full of ads, that I said eff that, my life time is limited and ads should pay me to rob my time. Ads are not worth my attention, my time, or my money. Eff that, I refuse to have my most valuable and limited resourced sapped by those most certain scams. Plus before I used Opera, youtube gave me ads for big PP pills, which showed an uncensored image of a succ. Aaaaaaand that was the point where I swapped to Opera. Can't say eff anymore or watch youtubers cussing, but you can give me . . . Ads with that kind of content, which by KZbin's definition is targeted towards kids due to their monetization system was the breaking point of me looking for a functional ad block on mobile. Opera works. Only thing that properly works for mobile without risking a virus.

[@chaoticclonestudios]

In terms of youtube ads, Mine on pc was when I realized ad blockers existed, and on mobile, it was when I started getting ads that would probably be taken down if they were youtube videos

[@MusicalCreativity]

My breakind point with ads were 10 minute videos that took 20 minutes to get through just by the sheer volume of ads. Then, when I would listen to mindfulness/relaxation content I'd get blasted by extremely loud and obnoxious ads which doesn't help when you're already overstimulated. Now I use a browser with Adblock built in and my life has never been more peaceful.

[@Daladun]

Which browser?

[@Javin12345]

​@@Daladunbrave is a good possibility, it's got built in ad block and it's chromium based

[@SalveSandWonk]

Vivaldi is also a good browser, very similar to brave, but without all of the crypto stuff.

[@chlorophyllphile]

​@@SalveSandWonkBut it's proprietary and not the best for privacy. Librewolf or Firefox + Arkenfox is the best option imo. Maybe Mullvad too these days.

[@tsm688]

pretty much the same experience people had with the implosion of television. it became unwatchable

[@TrashSpace69]

My breaking point was when I got sick of having to go trough 4 ads while listening to my music playlist and there being ads on my own videos even though I didn't set them up there.

[@rubenrock]

Scams on ads were the breaking point for me. They even try to appear as well known government institutions, this should be illegal.

[@Avruthlelbh]

It IS illegal. KZbin just gets away with it by "taking down" the ad after its been up for basically its entire runtime, anyways.

[@GreatFox42]

​@@Avruthlelbh Someone on another vid pointed out how newspapers are held responsible for the ads they print. I think the websites should be as well. Or at the very least, Google, since it's _their_ ad service the vast majority of websites use. I can understand a third-party wevsite not being able to vet the ads since it isn't their service. But Google? They have the means and the resources to screen every ad they put through, and it's time they start being held responsible for pushing scams and malware that endanger users' financial and device safety.

[@pixelduster2000]

It's not just KZbin, it's Google. They've messed with my legit ads so many times, but they let password stealers, fake crypto wallets etc being advertised in some legitimate company's name in Google ads and it's continuous.

[@crimson3859]

Malware and scam ads are the reason all my tech illiterate friends and family have adblockers installed. These are people who never would have known adblock even existed if I didn't go out of my way to install it for them. Good job KZbin, now even my grandparents are aware that they should be blocking ads. A lot of these scams are illegal. But the perpetrators are impossible to prosecute because they live in other countries or use endless shell companies to obfuscate themselves. What needs to be done is holding the big ad hosting services accountable. If an ad host allows a malicious ad through to their clients websites then those clients should be able to sue them for damages.

[@Mercurio-Morat-Goes-Bughunting]

​@@crimson3859 and that's how you bring the people responsible to justice. Hit the advertisers and there's a type of search that lists all of a company's owning entities so the real person owners, at the end of a chain 1000s of shell companies long, are only ever a matter of record - and the entire ownership chain should be provided as a complete report for a nominal and easily affordable fee...unless the government or government department, in question, is in on it....

[@wombatillo]

The idea that skipping or muting ads is 'theft' is ludicrous but this is what we get when intellectual property rights have been normalized as if they were completely analogous to physical property rights.

[@fss1704]

Yeah, unless you talk about buying something and keeping, then they reserve the right to be digital and delete the stuff you paid for from your device because it was removed from the store.

[@majbloodnok]

Especially when they are serving those ads over your mobile data connection, many of which have data caps on them. Yes, you are actually paying for that unstoppable advert to be transferred to and played on your mobile device.

[@sazikanebaldimor2386]

i used to switch channels when TV got ads and try to switch back in time to the program when ads where finished 😅. most of the time it worked

[@sazikanebaldimor2386]

@@ithecastic Thanks for telling me about the spelling error. i think i missed the point where they synced up. im not watching tv since somewhat around 20 years. got bored of the content, moved to the internet.

[@fovarberma752]

"Intellectual Property Rights" is the reason Star Wars Episode 7-9 are so bad while fan-made content manage to remain awesome. It has the same effect everywhere.

[@Acylenn]

this really just serves to prove once again that when a company says "we're testing this new thing out to collect feedback" what they really mean is "it's coming no matter what, we're just letting you get annoyed at it preemptively so when we actually roll it out you'll have given up trying to tell us how shit it is"

[@craigpridemore7566]

And at that point we start 'voting with our feet'. I'M OUTTA HERE!

[@absoultethings4213]

@@craigpridemore7566 ...where will you go? There's nowhere else to go. Nowhere else with NEARLY the same amount of stuff KZbin has. There are no alternatives, or no attractive alternatives. So who will you vote for with your feet when there's only one candidate?

[@reesecates8620]

You can of course just not vote at all. Might I recommend just downloading videos using 3rd party websites?

[@sihamhamda47]

​@@absoultethings4213Sadly the only way to get out of all this BS right now are stopping using internet entirely, which is doable but very difficult Because we are now in an "always connected era" invented by all those big tech companies

[@absoultethings4213]

@@reesecates8620 fair

[@sjoerdvanoudenaren6020]

Another thing, KZbin continues to advertise on videos that were demonetised. So a video deemed ‘not advertiser friendly’ still gets ads played on it. In conclusion, the stricter the rules the more videos and creators are demonetised the more money KZbin gets to keep for themselves.

[@seronimo__7735]

My breaking point was when KZbin started demonetizing all of the video essays from multiple creators I watched. They gave no reason, so it was obvious that some trolls had just started reporting everything. This was after they'd started demonetizing song covers, music tutorial videos, you name it. They also put ads on channels who had previously made a point about using no ads (such as Bill Wurtz). If none of the creators I watched were gaining anything from the ads I watched, I wasn't going to watch them.

[@bmprimer7809]

video essays are so good man, do you watch jacob geller?

[@BioCreatorZ]

What's ironic is that without things like this happening, I could've gone my whole life without things like ReVanced and Adnauseam

[@LeafShade]

Adnauseam is the exact opposite of privacy protection, it's reaally bad.

[@electron6825]

​@@LeafShadeHow so?

[@Jaminux]

replying to this because i noticed someone asked how adnauseam is bad and i would like to know as well, have a good day :)

[@charliesnark6535]

I would also like to know

[@electron6825]

@@LeafShade The pressure is on bro 😂

[@s17r]

I'm sure many people remember when KZbin initially decided to allow mid-roll ads for videos that were at least ten minutes long (now eight minutes). It essentially let creators spam ads by elongating their videos to ten minutes, and seeing 6 ads (when KZbin had those yellow bars to indicate when an ad would play) within a ten minute video was the breaking point for me.

[@Gayd1]

Wait what they got rid of the yellow bar? Is it just a complete Jumpscare when you get an add now?

[@MimeThe]

@@Gayd1yes

[@Gayd1]

@@MimeThe welp that just makes so much sense, I love vanced so much

[@n4ttyyy]

I remember this. So many different breaking points

[@ДимаСлинько-н6с]

@@Gayd1 i believe they are trying to hide visual representation of amount of ads, because sometimes the whole bar is yellow

[@sethb3090]

The fact that they use users for quality control. I see so many ads that are blatant violations of KZbin's written ad policy, but since no one looks at them for approval, policy-violating ads go straight to viewers and persist until a critical mass of viewers go out of their way to do a thirty second per report (assuming you don't add comments) process to where someone finally looks at it and maybe removes it a day or two later. By that point they've served the kinds of ad they say they won't serve to literally millions of viewers, and this happens all the time. And just to ad insult to injury, reporting an ad (at least on mobile) doesn't _hide_ it on your feed. Even Facebook will hide a reported ad.

[@BobbysArchive]

Another breaking point was an ad I kept repeatedly seeing about 2 or 3 years ago, it was a un-skippable google ad during Christmas time and it was a kid getting excited over a random present. It was literally just google’s usual awful music, followed by the kid’s worst ear-rape high pitched screaming that a deaf person couldn’t ignore. I swear they’re somehow convinced that if they create the most abrasive and annoying advertisements possible it will somehow create profit

[@eugenie8661]

Well, seems like it was "meMOrabLe and aTtEntiOn GrABbinG" For real, loud ads are the worst, they compress the sound and rip your eardrums out ON PURPOSE wtf

[@pauljerome01]

@@eugenie8661 SO TRUE

[@maxduif4728]

i got an ad today that was 400 seconds of someone reviewing a product. Who wants to watch that??

[@SoupyMittens]

@@eugenie8661 I hate it when i'm watching a relatively quiet video and have to turn up my volume, and then some stupid ass ad plays blasting royalty free music at 100 decibles

[@ladywaffle2210]

There is a theory in advertising that the more irritating an ad, the more memorable it is. This fails to take into consideration that humans are spiteful little bastards that will remember to not buy whatever service said advertiser was promoting instead of just remembering the ad.

[@AquaDivider]

my breaking point was the video quality of ads on yt. they were always unchangeably set to higher than my connection speed could handle, and sometimes I couldnt even watch videos at all because yt refused to play them without the ads running first. they literally forced me to use an adblocker just to make their website work properly lmao

[@whytho1690]

That pissed me off to the nth degree too. If I have the video I *want* to watch at 360p on mobile, maybe, JUST MAYBE, you could set the ANNOYING AD to that quality too🤬 It's amazing how badly they screwed up on that front.

[@gandalftheantlion]

For me, it wasn't even youtube, it was gaming wikis that ruined any form of ads for me.

[@adog3129]

oh yeah, i remember on my internet growing up, the ads would buffer so much

[@evoluxman9935]

@@gandalftheantlion fandom is so cancer, i avoid it like the plague but for many wikis thats all there is :(

[@blllk8189]

True tho, I think the reason that your internet requires you to use 360p is cause THEY PRELOAD THE ADS IN 4K ULTRA HD 240HZ ADOBE RGB 3D QUALITY

[@Namesarenotimportant-hr2cw]

my tipping points were: 1. getting so many election ads to the point were like 1/100 ads i got were something not related to the election 2. going on any forum or wiki was hell since like 90% of the screen would just be ads 3. i got the same ad like 20 times in a row and after that i remembered adblock exists

[@aatenjoyer]

During election season it feels out of place to get an ad not about voting

[@twotruckslyrics]

fandom on mobile is literally unusable

[@dahliasareflowers]

I once got a whole election debate as an unskippable 3 hour ad because my family kept talking about it near my phone

[@consumerofbepsi5254]

The funny thing is, they managed to accomplish the complete opposite of their goals. I actually managed to convince my friends to get ublock because we got pissed off at ads in discord's built in KZbin watch party feature. Didn't stop the ads on discord, but they were genuinely baffled at how much more usable fandom and KZbin were after they got it lol

[@barsozuguler4300]

It makes me uneasy to know that my taxes spent on convincing me to repeat the cycle of election :/ This kind of monetary shenanigans keep me awake on night thinking about them

[@nitefurie.]

I put up with KZbin ads for over half a decade, but my breaking point came when I got a 30 second unskipable ad for one of those highly suggestive mobile games, followed by a *2 minute long* unskipable ad before a video that was 1 minute and 19 seconds long. For those doing the math, that’s almost double the amount of time spent watching ads than the video I actually wanted to watch.

[@Lucyfire64]

I have zero tolerance for ads, even back in the day I would mute the TV and look anywhere else until they were done playing. Nowadays if for some reason my ad-blocker won't work on the content I am trying to consume, I will simply not consume said content. In the rare cases that I absolutely have to consume that content, I will go out of my way and spend more time to get the ad-blocker to work than sit through any kind of ad. No exceptions.

[@JagaimoNeko]

Same

[@jacob2808]

Same, did it with twitch, will do it with youtube as well

[@ZIGZAG12345]

I actually really respect that sort of bloody-minded refusal to "accept"! (I'm the same with some things too! I still use the YT app on my phone because NewPipe seems a bit janky most of the time. But clicking "back" then re-clicking the vid I want to watch until it actually starts without showing ads is something I do quite a lot!)

[@CrawshawCompositions]

Yep, exactly the same. Why would I allow myself to manipulated into parting with my money...

[@MarvinPowell1]

@Lucyfire64 Exactly. It may sound weird to some, but ads feel like you're being violated by corporations. Forced to sit through something that makes you uncomfortable or annoying. In most cases, I'd gladly pay for something than have to sit through f*cking ads; but KZbin Premium is so awful and the site in general is so terrible to its creators, I have no reason to financially support KZbin over just using adblockers. Make a product that isn't sh*t and actually support the people who keep you in business; then we can talk about me not using piracy and ad-blockers.

[@sneepsnoop9547]

For years and years I was one of those people that adamantly refused to get an adblocker. It wasn't out of moral principle, I didn't think ads were a necessary evil or anything, I just generally don't go out of my way to fiddle with browser add-ons or third party apps. So I was fully tolerant of ads just out of pure laziness. What really broke me was the sheer QUANTITY of ads. 5-10 years ago you got maybe 1 ad at the beginning, 1 at the end, and maybe 1 or two midrolls. Now it's an unending barrage of double ads, unskippable 15 second ads, skippable ads that will keep playing for minutes if you're not at your device to skip them (huge problem when trying to listen to videos while doing something else). I think youtube truly killed their golden goose by making their platform a nightmare for people like me, the lazy folks that would never have gone out of their way to get an adblocker if they didn't ramp the ads up to such an obscene amount.

[@andymanaus1077]

I don't install many apps, not out of laziness but because the apps themselves can sometimes screw around with my computer and phone. Orphan files often get left on the device when you uninstall an app and they will slow down your computer or phone dramatically.

[@son_guhun]

I don't use an ad blocker (yet), but I do user an ad skipper for those horrendous 3-minute ads that will play forever when you are trying to watch a video away from your keyboard or have KZbin alt-tabbed.

[@andymanaus1077]

@@son_guhun My record for the longest skippable ad was FORTY FIVE MINUTES. I was listening to music at work and was away from the phone for a while. When I came back, it was already 15 minutes into the ad with another 30 to go. I had already put an ad blocker on my computer and was trying to be fair by letting ads play on my phone while I worked but that ad was the last straw.

[@ravengrey6874]

I used to watch Hulu when it was part paid service part ad service. They had a paid no ad side that got access to shows for a month or two then opened them up to everyone with a couple of ads based on episode length. I stopped using Hulu after opening a show to see no less than twenty separate ad breaks scheduled during my watchtime, shortly thereafter Hulu went paid only

[@dovedozen]

It's really bananas on, like, the PS5 app or what have you, and really UNPREDICTABLE, too; sometimes it's ads every 10 minutes, sometimes it's one at the beginning and you're safe for the entire rest of the video; sometimes you can rewind without re-triggering an ad & sometimes you can't, and there's nothing in the progress bar that shows you where the ads are even going to be or how long they are. They're always louder than the video itself and sometimes they only have a couple running at a time so I see the same one like 12 times over the course of 1 goddamn dinnertime. It's EXHAUSTING. I am TIRED. The UX is in fucking SHAMBLES, and exerting a completely ridiculous amount of effort to figure out how to block video ads On A Game Console sounds FUN to me in comparison, at this point. Corporations make ppl like us into their own stupid stubborn worst nightmares every day.

[@Deditzy.]

If KZbin is wondering what their current “disable blockers” campaign has done, then: I found this video & learnt even more ways to disable ads should I ever need.

[@lorikeetrainwing]

Yep. Reminds me of the Streisand Effect, since doubling down has led to content about it, which then tells viewers about it as well as suggestions for getting around it. All that's missing (as far as I know) is KZbin trying to get rid of pro-adblock content, thus telling more people about it. Also, I think I'll look into adblock, I am getting tired of so many obviously untrustworthy, really poorly aimed, and intentionally infuriating ads. And the same thing half a dozen times. Give me quality, entertaining ads in reasonable quantities. I'll even take poor quality, entertaining ads.

[@iiide3]

The cycle continues. My final straw was sex ads on the homepage then finding out Vanced has been resurrected, happy watcher since.

[@NeilMalthus]

It's ironic they want to block adblockers but then allow lots of people to post music videos that kind of steals from the artist who owns the rights to the music.

[@sirduckington5641]

"I found this video & learnt even more ways to disable ads should I ever need." link please? :D

[@slickricky769]

dude same I had a regular ad blocked and I asked my friend that was tech savvy about it, He set me about a new Browser with ad blocker on everything so I don't use google chrome anymore and different websites to watch KZbin without ads all together..