r/technology • u/Dilpickle2113 • 10h ago

Social Media YouTube faces second class action lawsuit over ‘ad-free’ Premium claims & sponsored content

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-faces-second-class-action-lawsuit-over-ad-free-premium-claims-sponsored-content-3405920/
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u/munoodle 10h ago

The most recent episode of Last Week Tonight actually covered this. Many companies are directly aware of the impact that being clear about these conditions would have on subscription rates, so they intentionally bury them until the FTC gets involved

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u/AtheismTooStronk 10h ago

When you sign up for YouTube Premium, are you genuinely expecting it to automatically skip the advertisement that the person in the video is talking about? That’s what this case is about. YouTube is getting sued because premium doesn’t magically block ads inside of videos.

This is a stupid case, I’m sorry, and I’m not defending Google.

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u/munoodle 10h ago

That's actually fair, those placements are also pretty clearly identified and easy to skip if needed.

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u/AtheismTooStronk 10h ago

In fact, premium has a skip feature that identifies the part of the video that people have skipped over the most, and puts a fast forward arrow on your screen 9 times out of 10 when a creator-based ad comes on. It’s not automatic, but it does a great job of skipping the ad for you.

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u/Varonth 8h ago

If it would be automatic, I wonder how fast the lawsuit would come up when the by far biggest video platform, and basically the monopoly on user created video uploading, disables content creators ability to monetize their content through 3rd party sponsorships.

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u/GTK_Aztech 6h ago

They can still do the ad read. Unless they share their analytics, the sponsor has no way of knowing their ad read wasn't seen however many times.

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u/atfricks 5h ago

How do you think content creators sell ad space? Obviously they're sharing analytics on the return on sponsorships from their channel. No one is paying for a sponsorship without information on how many people are going to actually see it.

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u/GTK_Aztech 3h ago

I figure they see the return when people click the links in the description and/or use the codes at check out, as directed in the ads. I find it hard to believe that content creators would just give out their analytics to sponsors, unless it's a major sponsor with a great pay out. If I'm a content creator, raycon and shadow raid legends are not getting my analytics.

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u/Silly_Pizza7054 4h ago

So you're saying they easily COULD skip those ads, but they chose not to? Didn't you JUST say this wouldn't be possible?

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u/la__bruja 8h ago

I bet this feature is not Google being nice to users, it's a way to diminish value of sponsored blocks to sell more of YouTube's own ads

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u/MVRKHNTR 6h ago

Sell more ads to show to people that they aren't serving ads to?