[ryandrake]

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for.

Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the browsers to become agents of the web developers instead, gatekeeping on behalf of web sites, rather than serving the user's interests.

My ideal browser would load up a site like YouTube, and, knowing my already-configured preference for ad-free, minimalist layout, would present it as a Craigslist-style list of links with thumbnails, ignoring the mess of JS and CSS that the site's developer futilely sends.

[atleta]

Lookig at it source (the page downloaded when you open a YT link pointing to a video), it's almost certain that YT doesn't load without JS. It's not an html page with some extra functionality implemented in JS, it's a web app that builds the web page you see from JS.

So firefox can't do much about it without actively trying to circumvent YT and YT specifically.

I don't think browsers made the turn you mention. It's more like browsers became more and more capable and web developers made use of it. Sometimes it's annoying because most websites are not websites anymore but apps (GUIs) that run in the browser and some of the web sites/apps people use could never work without it. Sure, we could all deploy those apps onto our machines (or have them deploy automatically in a sandbox) and there were actually technologies that did just that (think java web start or whatever the name ended up being) but they lost to what we have now: running these apps in the browser.

Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. On YT you can buy a subscription and you'll see no ads. But sure, most sites don't offer this.

[matheusmoreira]

> So firefox can't do much about it without actively trying to circumvent YT and YT specifically.

There's no reason why Firefox couldn't do that.

> Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you.

Sure I can, uBlock Origin provides exactly that. They are not entitled to my attention. If they have a problem with that, they can return 402 Payment Required.

[_cenw]

That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable. Who decides what websites get "fixed", and how? That's a great bit to move to addons. Maybe recommend them more visibly instead.

Also, remember how Mozilla is funded.

[matheusmoreira]

> That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable.

Not to Google and its fellow corporations apparently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29707078

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/pa...

They have site-specific fixes for their own sites. Instead of fixing their stuff, they fixed the browsers instead. We can obviously apply the exact same strategy to dealing with every single website out there. If a website is broken or generally annoying to use, just fix it by providing a site specific version of the browser.

They don't even need to reinvent the wheel. Port yt-dlp to Firefox. That will fix YouTube and literally every other video website out there. What yt-dlp does should be a core feature of every browser out there. It's that good. uBlock Origin too.

> Who decides what websites get "fixed", and how?

Whoever develops the browser or its extensions. Arguably the whole of uBlock Origin and its filter lists are just databases of site specific fixes. If people can maintain an extremely huge list of advertisers and blockers for every website out there, surely they can maintain something like this.

> Also, remember how Mozilla is funded.

I remember Mozilla has about a billion dollars in the bank. Who cares about their Google funding? I doubt they're gonna drop them anyway. I bet they pay them just to ward off risk of antitrust lawsuits.

[progval]

Firefox has this kind of workaround too: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/extensi...

[matheusmoreira]

Every browser does. I'm arguing they should have even more extensive workarounds for website idiocy than they do now. They're our user agents. Their purpose is to make the consumption of data from remote servers as painless as possible. They should totally fix sites in pursuit of that goal. Whether the sites want to be fixed or not.

[atleta]

There are a lot of reasons why Firefox or other browsers can't do that, but my claim was that FF (or any browser) can't do it without writing code specifically to get around YT. And this was a response to the parent who said that FF should (and could) simply just ignore the CSS.

> Sure I can, uBlock Origin provides exactly that.

Obviously, I meant that it doesn't work financially so there is no point being upset about it. If enough people block the ads then they'll do something about it. Actually it's not hypothetical anymore, I just started to see these warnings a few days ago. (I wasn't deliberately blocking the ads, I've been just using ghostery which, it seems, started blocking YT ads.) So yeah, in the end, as you also say, people in general can't consume ad supported services without paying with their attention. It just doesn't work business wise.

[Fnoord]

If youtube-dl (or its successor) can do it; so can a browser (extension). Whether the browser should natively allow this I leave up to the browser devs.

> Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. On YT you can buy a subscription and you'll see no ads. But sure, most sites don't offer this.

Websites have various models: non-profit, donation-based, advertising-based, tracked-based. A website like YouTube still has high profit margins as they do tracking as well.

[hombre_fatal]

What’s the difference between tracking and ad revenue? If you refuse to even let them serve you ads (and won’t pay for premium) what exactly are you contributing to those who create the content that you want? Or is that just the creators’ problem?

[Fnoord]

Tracking data can be used long-term to profile and manipulative you as well as sell your soul to the devil. Whereas ads are a result of tracking data. If you want to combat ads then you want either no ads or you don't want relevant ads, and you achieve that by avoiding tracking.

One could say: "Google will keep my tracking data secure, because it is in their primary interest to do so in order to be the primary benefactor to their ad revenue." Sure, that holds some merit. Til Google figures a way to circumvent your ad blocker, til Google sells your data to a third party ("partner"), til Google gets hacked (and they were hacked by the NSA).

Data is a toxic asset; I rather give them nothing. But I do understand then they don't want me as customer. Which is why I do have YouTube Premium. But I pay an equivalent to ~2 EUR/month in Indian rupees to keep my family (especially my children; I got NewPipe x SponsorBlock x Return YouTube Dislike [1]) advertising free. And as much tracking free as possible while still using Android TV (too user-friendly to give up on) thanks to Pi-Hole and strict Google account settings [2].

Anyway, yeah, it is the creators problem. All too often creators do have a Patreon or Onlyfans or whatever, or they 'borrowed' the content anyway. Though they do get a hit, so it might be Google's problem. Cause they still get hosting and platform for free.

[1] https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

[2] https://myactivity.google.com

[mandmandam]

> Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. On YT you can buy a subscription and you'll see no ads.

Just to be very clear, those are not the only two possible options.

YouTube - and Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, etc - are extraordinarily simple concepts. We don't need private corporations running them for profit. In fact, it's turning out really bad for us.

[yakshaving_jgt]

You're welcome to build an alternative and claim their kingdom.

The reason that hasn't happened yet is because whether or not you find YT an extraordinarily simple concept, the execution is tremendously difficult.

[Fnoord]

It has happened, claiming their kingdom hasn't happened because of network effect. Not because they're objectively better.

[littlestymaar]

The execution being nontrivial is not in fact the main reason why you can't just “claim their kingdom”, their biggest most is by far the network effect, not the technological challenges (which also nontrivial, is far more tractable today than it used to be when YouTube was founded, and even then it still only required 67 employees to build from scratch).

[yakshaving_jgt]

The "execution" I'm referring to isn't limited to the technical implementation.

I'm not sure why you decided to interpret my comment in the least charitable way.

[littlestymaar]

Unless you think the initial YouTube team that was acquired by Google had 67 engineers and nothing else, I don't get the point you're making here.

The fact that you can in fact execute (whatever you want to put in this) a YouTube alternative with a team of less than 100 is easily demonstrated by the fact that YouTube used to be this small at some point…

[mandmandam]

The execution isn't actually that difficult for things like Facebook and Twitter. As pointed out, it's a network effect thing; the same reason Bitcoin is dominant despite there being alternatives that are orders of magnitude better on every metric.

The cost per user to run most of those platforms is in the pennies range. Certainly under $4 / year / user.

Compare that to the cost of leaving our vulnerable minds - our parents and grandparents, or angry loners, etc - to the likes of Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson, who YouTube is weirdly obsessed with.

YouTube is a bit more expensive to run, sure... But the total cost is still a tiny fraction of the tax take, were we to fund a free and fair alternative ourselves.

Btw, expecting a fully viable alternative from a single person before you ever start exploring criticism or alternatives is wildly silly, imo.

[yakshaving_jgt]

As I already replied to an adjacent comment, the execution includes designing in those network effects and maintaining/modifying them over time. It also includes the moderation, marketing, operations, etc. It's literally everything beyond just the idea.

Furthermore, in no way have I stated nor implied that I expect an alternative must be implemented by a single person. I think your least charitable interpretation of my comment is wildly silly.

[BiteCode_dev]

Now that DRM are part of the web standards, and TPM are generalized, it's game over.

I predict youtube will escalate this way:

- Pump up aggressive anti ad block measures.

- It will fail, so they will enforce DRM so that they have control.

- It will not be enough, so they will ask to only serve DRM to "trusted browsers".

- And it will not suffice, so the trusted browser will have to run on a trusted OS checked by hardware.

That will work since almost nobody will take the risk to jailbreak their expensive device.

And we will all have lost.

[Tor3]

If the day comes when it's impossible to watch Youtube without ads I'll have to leave, despite how important youtube is for me currently. I just can't watch ads. It's impossible. I don't watch a single TV channel with ads, it's too painful. So, advertisement-supported "moving pictures" (or sound, for that matter - I never listen to radio channels serving ads either) is out of the question, with no exceptions for me personally.

[ta1243]

My understanding is you can pay a relatively small amount and get ad-free youtube. At least google ads. You'd still need sponsorblock.

That said I do like a well designed sponsor. Map Men for example, I'd rather not watch them.

[BiteCode_dev]

Tv says there are plenty of people who will suffer ads.

Spotify free offer is also proof of that.

[_Algernon_]

Youtube just isn't valueable enough (in my mind), to get away with that.

[BiteCode_dev]

The new generation knows mostly the web through jailed devices called "smartphones".

They will have no idea, and just assume that's how things are.

HN bubble strikes again.

[_Algernon_]

I'm well aware that I'm an outlier here which is why I stated "in my mind". Not sure why you feel the need to write "HN bubble strikes again" except for a lack of reading comprehension or an attempt at trolling.

[taway1237]

I also assumed that by saying "in my mind" you mean "in my opinion". English is not my first lamguare, but I think this is a reasonable reading?

If you wanted to say "youtube is not important enough for me" then your post reads weird - what is youtube going to get away with? Losing you personally? I think they'll get over it.

[matheusmoreira]

Yup. Only way we can possibly win is by writing computing freedom into actual law. Make it literally illegal for them to use cryptography to violate our freedoms. Service providers should be required by law to interoperate with our computers, no matter what software we choose to run. If we reverse engineer their little apps and make free software versions, they should have to suck it up. We used to be able to buy whatever phone, modem or router we wanted and hook it up to the network with no issues. Software should work the same way.

[doctor_radium]

I'm thinking about a corollary to Net Neutrality (which is allegedly coming back thanks to the new Biden-appointed FCC commissioner) which states that public web sites need to be accessible by the public. I've ranted about this a few times on HN. This isn't about working around bugs and quirks in umpteen different versions of umpteen different browsers, but making sure we don't start actively coding hard stops again: "Your browser is too old" messages, endless Captchas, purposely giving one browser a clearly worse or even unusable experience. Incompetence would be embarrassing but not illegal. Whenever I find the time, I really want to send the FCC a registered mail packet with my proposal and lots of examples of why this is already necessary.

And yes, the web sites will need to suck it up. You can't choose your visitors...which may occassionally be a bot or screen scraper.

[JodieBenitez]

> And we will all have lost.

Or we will all be gone elsewhere ?

[BiteCode_dev]

Who? The people paying thousands of dollars for locked down mac devices they never modify, the ones giving all their data to social network and clicking on ads or the ones sending money to the NPC streamers to watch them licking an imaginary icecream?

HN is the opposite of their market.

[petree]

You can use NoScript to disable JS and see how well that works.

But more to the point, yes, a browser is a client, but without the economic incentive of either ads or direct monetization from users, many sites, YouTube included, would simply not work. Storage and bandwith costs money. Unless we decided to somehow fund all of this through some sort of additional tax through the ISPs or governments, ads or subscriptions are a necessary evil.

[tgv]

Storage and bandwidth cost money, but not $14/month. You can get a server for yourself for that kind of money, and I don't think YouTube has a server per user.

[marticode]

Producing content also cost money, and producers get a cut of the ads or the subscription.

[safety1st]

This kind of fantasy microeconomics debate is silly at best, disingenuous at worst. We are talking about a company with $280B in revenue per year and one of the highest profit margins in America. How they spend that money is not connected to what is fair or what makes some kind of logical sense in your head. It's connected to whatever will increase their profits further.

All you are doing is laying down cover fire to support further advances by an abusive monopolist. YouTube's financials don't HAVE to add up. Google owns advertising for the entire Internet! The entirety of YT could be a loss leader just to suppress the growth of streaming video businesses outside of their control, and the Google monopoly would carry on.

[petree]

Having a loss leader like this is exactly monopolistic behavior though. The fact that Google are trying to make money from it is expected and more fair to their competitors than just having it completely free, and not having ads either.

[safety1st]

No. Trying to make money is something that all businesses do, not just monopolies. Having loss leaders is also something that many businesses do.

Here are behaviors that are fairly unique to monopolies: raising prices while degrading their product. Many businesses try to do these, but monopolies, who have no significant competition, are more likely to succeed. Sure enough this monopolistic behavior is what Google has just exhibited: by banning people who use ad blockers, they have either degraded their product, or raised the price (from $0 to the cost of YouTube Premium for those users), depending on how you look at it.

They can do this because they are a monopoly.

[tgv]

Produces receive very, very little. And YT doesn't check content (nor content strikes, BTW), so there's a lot of illegal(ish) content which moves money from producer to leecher. It seems active channels get most of their income from 3rd parties as a result. So there's little reason to place ads as far as content production is concerned.

[petree]

Sure, it is definitely more expensive than I would like. But you still have the option to watch the ads if you don't like paying a sub. Expecting it to be completely free is unrealistic though.

[tgv]

Sure, but then the logical step would be to charge producers and get them to charge viewers, either directly or via ads. But we all know that will result in the demise of the platform, so that's a no-no for both youtube and producers.

Your subscription money doesn't go to the producers anyway, or only little of it, so the $14/mo is for a large part Google's profit.

[iamjackg]

I'm not sure I would say your $14 doesn't go to the creators: they get paid per minute watched when the user has Premium. A while ago Lon Seidman published a video discussing his YouTube earnings, and he mentioned that Premium is actually much more remunerative for creators compared to traditional ads.

[drdaeman]

> Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn

It was a variation of Eternal September that caused it. ;)

The majority of users became non-technical, so the focus had shifted as browser vendors needed to cater to different audiences.

[tgv]

Not needed, but could. Google simply exploited that possibility, from the start.

[pmontra]

How could that work, given that a web site can change its working every day? Each site can have its passionated circumvention developer that maintains an extension like this. Is it reasonable to expect that each browser can do the same for each website? And is it reasonable to expect it for Google's Chrome?

[pbhjpbhj]

It is within Mozilla's reach to spend an extra $200k on compatibility [hacks] for each of the top ten websites. Their CEO could easily take a $2M wage cut and still be overpaid.

[vorticalbox]

I guess in an idea world servers would return only data and browsers would style that data to each yours preferred looks.

[anon_cow1111]

I don't think firefox could reasonably do this, just because a significant part of their funding comes directly from google.

And maybe more relevant, having this be default behavior would just cause the cat-and-mouse to get worse, when the majority of users are now blocking it with no effort, and the bean-counters notice the ad impression numbers suddenly dropping.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

this is true from a practical standpoint.

It's like an adult watching a child's idealism and knowing the child is right.

I'm not calling the OP a child, I'm saying the OP is right and the world sucks.

[tianqi]

I'm not sure you can still "do what you want" because without ads Youtube would not exist.

[globular-toast]

Where does this idea that YouTube couldn't exist without ads? Not with it's current architecture, sure, but do people really lack the imagination to see a web with videos that aren't served by a monopoly? Peer-to-peer sharing has been around for a very long time and works very well. You can share large content right now with essentially no extra cost (you already pay for bandwidth, you already have storage etc).

The trouble is finding said content. There is a huge conflict of interest due to the most popular search engine also owning the most popular centralised content platform. This should never have been allowed to happen, but here we are.

[butz]

What you just described is "User agent stylesheet" and in theory you could build your own styles for any website which your browser will prefer.

[RockRobotRock]

Go ahead, fork Firefox with extensions pre-installed that disable JS and default settings that disable CSS. See if your idealistic world works in reality. :)

[kzrdude]

It's a lot better if the user-agent is extensible. For one thing, so that users can customize it. But also so that it will not be summarily blocked by websites and networks.

[cyanydeez]

Most of these services just don't exist in that timeline.

[pchangr]

DuckDuckGo browser does this by default

[paulryanrogers]

My ideal getaway car would include an automated drone which flies into the store to exfiltrate the codes from the prepaid cards, and present them as credits in my phone, ignoring the mess of walking inside, paying, and typing into my phone that the retailer futilely demands.

[whelp_24]

This analogy isn't even close.

[Mindwipe]

Indeed, it's exact, not just close.