[xythian]

Yes, but also less so every day. Google has already figured out that they should serve Youtube ads and content from the same servers to limit the ability of DNS based ad filtering.

DNS filtering is a cat-and-mouse game that DNS filtering tools will eventually lose. Don't get me wrong, I love Pihole and have used it for a while, but I know that I'm on the losing side of this battle.

[seanp2k2]

DNS filtering has been on the "losing side" for a few decades now. As long as more than 0.1% of people don't use it, it's not worth solving for most ad companies. Even if places like YouTube DO find ways to stuff ads into my face (likely at great technical and operational expense to them), I make it a point to NEVER EVER buy anything advertised, search for any of it, etc. Because they know so little about me (I go out of my way to block as much telemetry and data sharing as possible), their ads aren't very relevant to me anyway, so they're literally just wasting money serving me an ad, trying to pressure me into paying for their premium service. Instead, I just get annoyed if there are too many ads and find something else to do. It would probably serve them better to just realize that some users won't ever convert, and stop wasting time serving them ads.

[dylan604]

So you're getting down voted, but I totally agree. I too used to disable javascript using NoScript every where until it was a site that I was okay with. I played the game of only allowing javascript from the same domain, and then looking at the remaining scripts the site wanted to request. CDNs for jQuery, FontAwesome, etc, started to get whitelisted. Anything else, nope. If the site didn't work after that, then the tab was closed. After allowing NoScript to run javascript, I would then lean on uBlock to block the trackers etc that were loaded by anything I missed. It's amazing how difficult surfing the web like this was.

[briandear]

Maybe if you won’t ever convert, they should simply stop wasting time serving you anything? YouTube isn’t a charity.

[notacoward]

They're not a charity, but their business model is based on ads and they rely on the network effect to support that model. People who can't see anything at all will immediately defect. No revenue at all from the moment that policy is implemented, plus significant risk that enough will leave to weaken the network effect. People who are forced to watch ads with their content will grumble, some of them might eventually defect, but for the most part they will stay and continue generating revenue. Less immediate impact to the bottom line, and hardly any risk of undermining the network effect.

The "just go away" approach is proving suicidal for online newspapers and magazines. It would be no less so for YouTube. Their content is neither compelling enough nor exclusive enough for that to work.

[visarga]

How could YouTube know you won't ever convert beforehand, and at scale? If they started blocking users for suspicion of not buying anything from ads they would have to block a sizeable portion of their traffic and that would have a negative impact on their company.

[jaxn]

YouTube doesn't care if you buy what the ad is selling. They are selling the fact that you viewed the ad.