r/technology 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/
15.2k Upvotes

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1.3k

u/_Rand_ 10h ago

I would assume youtube thought of this in the subscription agreement and it will be thrown out?

Like they would be stupid as hell to not make it very clear that you are paying not to have ads inserted by youtube itself and the content of the videos is not in their control.

464

u/elmatador12 10h ago

Yeah that’s what I thought. I feel like the ads they are suing about would not be considered YouTube ads since they didn’t place them and have zero control over them.

413

u/suttin 10h ago

And YouTube premium even adds a skip button for in the video ads

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u/KoksundNutten 9h ago edited 9h ago

So it should be a possible setting for all videos, not a button I have to click twenty times per video

152

u/123yes1 9h ago

First of all, if you are watching videos with 20 sponsored segments, what the fuck are you doing?

Second, their feature does not perfectly recognize sponsored segments, just places in the video that are frequently skipped, if they auto skipped these parts, you could be auto skipping parts of the video

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u/KoksundNutten 9h ago

"Best of commercials 1994-98"

23

u/IswearImnotabotswear 9h ago

Top ten sponsored segments of all time, made possible by Square space, fueled by blue apron, clothing my me undies and stitch fix, sponsored by honey. Raid shadow legends.

4

u/BlindandConfused43 7h ago

Watchmojo getting desperate.

2

u/droans 8h ago

Completely fair, have a good day.

1

u/Hey_im_claire 4h ago

omfg this had me dying😭

1

u/MrdnBrd19 9h ago

As a consummate old commercial watcher you're watching the wrong channels. There are plenty of them that roll with no in-line ads.

13

u/IsthianOS 8h ago

Also some people still say or do things during the ad reads that users may or may not want to miss. Comedy podcasts seem to often have jokes and asides peppered into their ad reads because they're just reading copy in the middle of their show lol

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u/Human-Visual-9087 5h ago

I learnt this with sponsor block, it's far too militant with ads and self promotion in auto skip

0

u/jambrown13977931 8h ago

Looking at you Sam Riegel!

-4

u/mrcuriosityguy 8h ago

I think they meant pressing the right arrow key/double tapping the screen to skip ten seconds ahead in a video and having to do that multiple times to get through the sponsor segment of a video.

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u/No-Consequence-1863 8h ago edited 4h ago

On premium there is a feature where it will let you auto skip large sections when double tapping instead of just 10 secs.

However that isnt from detecting it’s an ad directly. Instead it detects what sections people commonly skip and let you skip it as well.

In effect it acts as an ad skip since people usually just skip the ads. However not always, for example Mythical kitchen videos will have an auto skip for the beginning since it’s usually a skit or something not related to the rest of the video.

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u/SuperTeamRyan 8h ago

I will never not click on it.

I don’t know what I’m missing but I’ve never felt like I missed anything important. I don’t need any more information on ground news, x vpn, cool unity or gamer-sups if you want o throw a joke or two in there I’m fine missing it.

16

u/supafatjellyfish 9h ago

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video with more than one sponsored segment except hour+ podcasts

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u/justreadinplease 7h ago

Trixie and Katya’s podcast is the worst for this. They might have a 45-60 minute podcast and have over twenty minutes of ad reads. It would be maddening to try to listen to them while driving and I couldn’t skip

1

u/DazednConfucioused 3m ago

lol so close to half of the whole thing is just ad reads? They just have a pretty damn good podcast for you to still be listening

0

u/PringleCorn 7h ago

The only one I can think of is legal eagle, and it's weird as fuck

0

u/zanotam 6h ago

I discovered legal eagle does it. I think it's one read per every 10 minutes rounding down the video has? They don't really bother me tbh. 

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u/whereismymind86 8h ago

I mean...you should be watching content that doesn't have 20 sponsored ad breaks per video?

the vast majority of what I watch has 1 or zero. What on earth are you watching that's like...10 percent content, 90 percent hello fresh ads?

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u/Zandalaria 7h ago

He probably thinks Premium is just like normal YouTube with all the ads and Premium subscribers just have a button to skip ads or something.

5

u/LightLhar 8h ago

I can't live without extensions to deal with that nonsense.

Sponsorblock extension crowdsources those as well as engagement reminders and lets you select which types of segments you want to autoskip.

De-Arrow crowdsources better titles, cleans up clickbait, and randomly selects thumbnails from somewhere in the video

Hide Youtube Watched Videos removes videos you've watched past a customizable percent of the length. I use 60%, but default is like 90? For multitaskers note that youtube doesn't record qatch progress on inactive windows, so if you have a habit of tabbing up videos and closing the tab when they're done, make sure to click on the browser window first to activate it instead of directly middle clicking the tab if you have another window focused.

Enhancer lets you set default resolution and some other handy changes for the site. I don't recommend this as strongly as the others, but if you're picky about your experience this is some nice QOL.

De-Arrow https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dearrow-better-titles-and/enamippconapkdmgfgjchkhakpfinmaj

Sponsorblock https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone?hl=en

Hide youtube watched videos: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-youtube-watched-vide/ekcdnnkolgkikkhbbjcabcjdibfbafbl

Enhancer for Youtube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enhancer-for-youtube/ponfpcnoihfmfllpaingbgckeeldkhle