• coolin@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    The natural next place for people to go to once they can’t block ads on YouTube’s website is to go to services that exploit the API to serve free content (NewPipe, Invidious, youtube-dl, etc.). If that happens at a large scale, YouTube might shut off its API just like Reddit did and we’ll end up in scenario where creators are forced to move to Peertube, and, given how costly hosting is for video streaming, it could be much worse than Reddit->Lemmy+KBin or Twitter->Mastodon. Then again, YouTube has survived enshittiffication for a long time, so we’ll have to wait and see.

    • Moonrise2473
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The apps you mentioned are scraping or pretending to be the official app.

      The official API doesn’t have public methods to build an alternative third party player .

      The only way YouTube can stop those apps (beside blackmailing devs with legal letters) is to shut down both their own website and their own app

    • Veloxization@yiffit.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The thing is, none of the services you listed use YouTube’s API. They scrape the data directly from the page. YouTube can’t really do much against it. They’re apparently currently trying to shut down Invidious, though I’m not sure how they’re planning to do that considering Invidious is open-source, meaning anyone can develop and host it.

    • Dusty@l.dustybeer.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The vast majority of people that watch youtube, are most likely not using an ad block and won’t be affected by this at all. Just like the vast majority of reddit users use the official app, and the vast majority of people on twitter stayed.

      It will take a lot more than this to make something else the next big thing. Just like lemmy is nowhere near as popular as reddit, mastadon is nowhere near as popular as twitter. Yes those of us technical enough or that care enough will use an ad block or similar, but we are in the minority, and always will be.

      • along_the_road@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        According to the latest estimates, the ad blocking user penetration rate in the United States stood at approximately 26 percent in 2020, indicating that roughly 73 million internet users had installed some form of ad blocking software, plugin, or browser on their web-enabled devices that year.

        https://www.statista.com/topics/3201/ad-blocking/

        Sounds like will affect 1/4 of youtube users. I highly doubt google would be doing this if it wasn’t getting in the way of making more money.