Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad” (opens in new tab)

My favorite "dark pattern" plausibly disguised as a simple bug is that the countdown timer, across multiple platforms I've used YouTube on, doesn't work correctly and very easily will let the ad play for a second or two longer than you intend. It behaves as if it's supposed to count down to 0 one second at a time, but there's a recurring event that is run every second to see if the countdown timer needs to be lowered. However, it's very easy for that event to be ever so slightly delayed or advanced relative to when the timer counts down, and as a result the timer doesn't get decremented correctly. It's very easy to see if you watch the timer carefully; it almost never counts evenly like it should, and it very often skips a beat entirely. (Compare with a simple timer app, which is correctly updating every frame the display renders. This isn't that hard.)

It's very plausibly a bug that a novice dealing with time in a UI would make, and in many other circumstances I'd accept that explanation. But, a bug in such a critical piece of YouTube's functionality, with a root cause I'm pretty sure I've diagnosed just by glancing at it, surviving for years and years across multiple platforms? This isn't a bug. It's policy. At scale, those seconds add up.

People complain a lot about Youtube ads and how awful they are but as a thought experiment I once tried to imagine the amount of storage and bandwidth Youtube must need everyday to operate.

So after some basic research it looks like they need to add almost 1 petabytes of storage and I couldn't find much info on the bandwidth and servers it uses.

As much as I don't like Google for their shady business practices, I couldn't help but marvel at this feat of engineering. It's mind blowing tbh.

I mean I can still access my video with 10 views I uploaded 8 years ago.. can't do that on my HDD and they have it in 5 formats.

I think the biggest dark pattern is allowing skipable ads to be long. Sometimes over an hour. I spent some time in the hospital not too long ago, and it was physically painful for me to move enough to skip an ad. I would have been fine watching 30-60 second ads without skipping, but they just put infomercials in the middle of the video you're watching. it is outrageous.

The ads are genuinely one of my most frustrating experiences when using the Chromecast with Google TV. And seeing this kind of pattern makes it more likely that I’ll never sign up for premium YouTube (whatever it is called) and just use YouTube less.

Also, I swear they do this - If you click on the try YouTube premium for 14 days, once the 14 days end you are bombarded with extra ads. And ads that are usually not skippable. I also remember getting multiple 60 min ads. I don’t remember any of these ads but I do remember how frustrating my experience with YouTube was and still is. But I’m also the kind of person that is still surprised that advertising works.

If only I could use my raspberry pi to block all YouTube ads at home. My life would be immensely better.

Alternate theory: A large-scale, ongoing A/B test on what gets the perfect balance between watching ads and keeping total view time high.

Recently, I've been with people who unlike me don't have youtube premium and I loathe the ads. I'm so happy I pay for premium so I don't have to experience this.

I want to say "subscription is the right answer" but it clearly isn't enough for some people (netflix).

What is dark about the design pattern? They have an ad-free YT that anyone can pay to subscribe.

Is it considered dark because they want the users to subscribe to paid version?

I think labelling everything “dark pattern” just makes the term lose its meaning and it actually helps the real dark patterns go scot free

Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows of unread emails at the top. Right when you attempt to click on the top row, it rearranges the rows to show a few rows of ads instead (and the ads are fairly indistinguishable from the unread emails) so you end up unintentionally opening an ad.

Now, there’s no good reason for this loading pattern - since they intend to show the ads, they could have allocated a few rows, shown a loading skeleton, and then asynchronously loaded ads and emails in their expected place. Instead they now get a ton of extra ad clicks, but I wonder how happy their advertisers are to pay for these unintended clicks.

Well, some of the ad money goes to content creators. Since my wife and I each spend more time on YouTube than we do on any of Disney, Netflicks, Amazon Prime, or Hulu we “splurge” $15/month on Google’s family plan that gets no ads and all the music and music videos we need.

Even though I am a big fan of open distributed media like Mastodon (follow me at @mark_watson@mastodon.social), I like to see quality paid for services. I am looking forward to spending $2/month on Twitter if they require real-people paid accounts to get rid of the bots.

When I found out my kids spend more time on YouTube than any other video platform I paid for YouTube Premium. They're a little older now and are shifting back to other platforms but I don't think we'll cancel our subscription anytime soon given how many complaints I see about their ad delivery.

I find YouTube basically unusable on any device except for my laptop with an adblocker. The ads are so intrusive and cut in at such jarring moments that it's just not worth it. It's not uncommon to have to tolerate several minutes of ads just to watch a sub-10 minute video.

I watch a lot of YouTube on my smart TV even an old Roku but after the changes to the frequency of ads it was unbearable. It was to the point where I would mute the TV and put my hand up to block the ad from my eyes. I would also press back a few times to exit out of the ad and most times if done twice no ad plays.

Ads always cut off the first 5 seconds of the videos, and ads were popping up seconds after the initial two ads, and then ads cut in mid sentence. No thought of the content presented like a TV ad would do just stuff in as many as possible.

Eventually I gave in an paid the $10/moth. YouTube is broken and unwatchable without doing it that way at least on a smart TV or a Roku.

>By introducing so many versions of design, it forbids a pattern to be established and recognized by the users.

I dont think the author properly acknowledges just how voracious the human appetite for patterns are. We are absolute machines when it comes to spotting even the hint of a pattern, and few things can prevent us from establishing and identifying them as a function of our basic existence. millions of years of evolution have basically guaranteed that when patterns arise or exist, we are borg-like in our pursuit.

shuffling a few choices of skip is a cheap effort that probably appeased a few C level ad execs. the biggest coffin-nail for ads is of course adblock.

Folks are completing MSc, PhDs, submitting to cutthroat recruitment processes to architect, enable, and implement this level of malicious counterproductive sophistication. Google employees, how do you find motivation to wake up in the morning? Is it >300k USD salary and FIRE before 40? What if they told you to scam your own children for additional bonus?

And how we make sure to always skip ads is

1) use an adblocker

2) use a pihole

3) use sponsorblock

anything short of the first two is literally using a different internet. Marketers and Advertisers would ruin the net if we let them.

When I see scummy advertising practices, I get so upset that the product being advertised is associated with something bad and frustrating in my mind.

I'm always a little puzzled with how there is so much money in advertising.

PSA, uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock (blocks in-video ads by automatically skipping them via crowdsourced timestamps) exist, as do Vanced for Android (until it dies, could also use NewPipe, a fork with SponsorBlock is available) and SmartTubeNext for Android-based TVs.

I don't think I've seen a YouTube ad in years. uBlock Origin plus SponsorBlock make for a much better watching experience.

Quote from the article:

> By introducing so many versions of design, it forbids a pattern to be established and recognized by the users. Essentially, the users look at the design, get confused about if there is going to be a “Skip Ad” button or not, get tired of trying to figure it out, and finally pay less attention to it which increases the chance of them ending up watching ads that could have been skipped.

Honestly, this does not match (at least) my usage pattern: I am so annoyed by the ads that I always look for the skip button - sometimes successfully, sometimes in vain.

(by the way: I see strong evidence that Google's (and thus YouTube's) ad network has a lot of difficulties finding ads that are of interest for me - likely because I have quite different interests from the typical citizen; perhaps this is the reasons why YouTube's ads are so annoying for me that I always look for the skip button on YouTube).

I didn't get that amount of variations the OP sees so far, but I've been wondering if the number of ads you get and the distribution of skippable vs unskippable ads is somehow personalized.

At least my subjective impression is that when I go on a youtube binge, over time it will slowly increase the number of ads it shows back-to-back and also increases the amount of nonskippable ads.

I wonder if there is some kind of reinforcement learning going on, which tries to figure out just how many ads I'm willing to tolerate before switching away. (Or employ the good old "boiling frogs" strategy and train me to tolerate more ads over time)

I got no evidence for this at all of course, so just a conspiracy theory for now.

YouTube, like TV and any other technology infested with adds seems to me completely unusable as it is, I don't understand how people are so patient and keep using it.

I use uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock and Watch On Odysee extensions to improve it.

use a vpn and new chrome session in some low income country. this will remove most of the ads

but now what many content creators are doing nowadays is making the ads part pf the video itself, so you cannot skip it or block it. The product placement may transition seemingly in such a way as you may be listening to a video about the history of some math concept and suddenly the narrator will start talking about VPNs, and when that happens I just hit the back button. At this point the problem has gotten bad enough that I stopped watching any channels where this may happen, which is many of them now.

Don't forget the "oh, I see you didn't skip the first ad. Let me play a much longer second ad".

I've seen another YT dark pattern lately. I often skip ads with youtube-dl (download the video and watch offline). But sometimes I like to be even more aggressive and skip the whole video, by using ytdl to download the closed caption text (VTT file) so I can read it instead of watching the vid. I have a python script that reformats the .vtt (a messy xml file full of timestamps and other markup) into something like readable text, and that worked pretty well until recently.

Lately I've found that 1) more videos don't have auto transcription, and 2) the vtt files have gotten messed up so that the timestamps are no longer properly interspersed with the text. My script strips them all out except once per minute, so if I find something interesting or confusing in the transcript, I can quickly find that spot in the video and watch it. That doesn't work any more. The hack is still better than nothing but I wonder what YT is up to, messing up a feature like that, which was presumably done for accessibility reasons, so its breakage likely has consequences beyond annoying freeloaders like me.

These patterns are clearly visible and so similar that I don't even behave differently to them. I don't care about any of the variants: I wait until I see Skip Ad and press it as soon as I can. It's not even like it's ever in a different place... unless I'm earnestly interested or have time to kill and want the channel to get paid with my time.

Do these variations only appear on the website version of YouTube? I use an ad-blocker so I haven't noticed this pattern exactly. However, one pattern I've noticed using the mobile app is that in order to disrupt the automatic habit to skip, they seem to randomise whether or not they make any specific ad skippable. It seems some ads are always skippable, some are sometimes skippable and sometimes not and some are never skippable. It doesn't always correlate to how long the ad is either. Overall this seems to result in my actually watching the ad all the way through because it takes too much effort to figure out what kind of ad it is and whether I can press the button at the right time. At least if I do nothing, I know the video I want will play eventually.

Another random one I’ve come across. I can block most YouTube ads with uBlock Origin in the browser. I can also cast my browser tab to an Android TV device. But if I try and cast a tab with YouTube, it will open the app instead of casting the browser, and I can’t block ads in the app.

This article comes across as a bit conspiratorial. I feel like "dark pattern" is on the verge of losing meaning when it's applied in cases like this as opposed to for example: making accept cookies one click and reject multiple clicks (which Google is also guilty of).

I have a special hatred for the ads which stick an additional 5 second outro after their (false) progress timer reaches 0:00

It's lying. Trying to be unpredictable to prevent you from being able to unconsciously skip ads is one thing, but lying is unforgivable.

I would likely pay for youtube premium if the TV app wasn't so absymal.

However, having something that does not allow sorting by 'new' (and constantly recommending videos that are many years old), regularly re-introducing channels that have been marked as 'do not show' along with injecting the popular junk into 'for you' despite me having constantly marked similar as 'not interested'.

There is no way I will pay premium for such a terrible experience, even if it does remove ads. The TV experience - where I consume most content - is fast becoming the biggest reason to never use youtube.

This doesn't sound much like a dark pattern to me. I think they probably have a few variations they use based on the length of the ad, and some agreement with the sponsor, but that's just speculation.

It would be much more evil if sometimes the "see more about this product" button was where the "skip ad" button was, so that users who were reflexively clicking it would get sent to the sponsor.

Has anybody here ever been so confused by these variants that you watched more than an additional 1/4th of a second of the ad?

Twitter doesn't count blocked accounts as ad impressions.

If I see an ad on twitter, I block the account that displayed it. Invariably, there is another ad in the next 3-5 tweets. I can do this 3 or 4 times in a row before I give up looking at the feed because the signal-to-noise ends up being too low when 25% of my feed are ads.

My guess is that after blocking an account, the ad you saw doesn't count as an impression. It's also possible that 25% is normal, but it doesn't seem that way if I scroll and not block accounts.

One point I hate on YouTube are the clickbaits thumbnails and title. I found an extension that uses a random image of the video for the thumbnail and it's much better

Maybe more productive way is to use youtube premium instead of looking dark pattern in youtube ads.

Or is the idea is something similar to if restaurant displayed unlimited buffet ads and some jackass customer decides wasting trays of uneaten food is okay. Anything else is restaurant owner is liar and using dark pattern to lure customers.

Reality: ad blocking without feeling guilty.

So this article wasn’t about how the close caption menu more often than not opens and blocks the skip add button

I have no idea why or how it's happening, but whenever I view a Youtube video on my personal computer, it stops after < 1 second and I get skipped right to the content. It's the only device in my home that happens to, and I'm afraid to touch anything, lest I lose that magic power.

They do also appear to work out stuff I’m interested in… there are rare days where I’ll get a stream of promoted Kickstarter projects that actually match my interests… then it goes back to the most generic advertising and I’ll be back to slamming the skip button.

That's why a pay for Youtube Premium. I find it irrealistic to expect to be able to access youtube content without either paying for it or having to watch ads. Nothing is free, ever. Even public education is paid by people's taxes.

My favorite variation is “you can skip in 5 seconds” but the ad itself is 5 seconds long

I'm convinced the countdown timer lingers on the 5 longer than a second, also.

TouchTunes jukeboxes -seem- to use a dark pattern of playing music nobody wants to listen to in order to encourage jukebox purchases. It could also be that the default music is stuff that is less popular.

The very very few times I allow yt video to play (in private nav only), if I ever see an ad I just reload the page until the ad is gone. It works (but I watch like 1 video every 6 month, so YMMV).

Do you own a Macbook with touch bar? Use Safari and skip ads by using the scrubbing feature of the touch bar. No adblock needed, all ads skippable, and they're none the wiser.

Mwua-ha-haaa.

youtube music will often interrupt startup and ask you to signup now with a large button at the bottom. There is small text below it (not even a button) to say "not now". That line of text is wedged in really close to the "close" button.

frankly, also, shutting down an existing app (well liked google play music) and implementing a less functional replacement (for their benefit) should be called the Google Two Step Dark Pattern Shuffle.

What a long winded way of saying “YouTube is AB testing 5 UIs for skipping ads”. There’s zero evidence that this tricks anyone; Just a bunch of hand-waving.

I haven't even noticed the differences. I just wait until the skip button appear, or wait a few seconds before glancing. Who cares about to he text?

This isn't great, but there's no ethical dilemma. Being able to skip an advert at all is a pretty recent luxury.

This is an interesting piece but why is there some sort of redirected url used instead a normal one?

That seems like a dark pattern itself.

I don't really see this as a dark pattern.

Being exposed to an ad is not a dark pattern IMO. And this particular pattern is IMO pretty dang obvious if you use YouTube much at all.

Someone has to pay for YouTube ... someone has to pay for this stuff. If it is ads that's it.

I think the issue involves two parties, the sites who want revenue, and the vast majority of users who want content for free. So yeah here we are on the web where most people want everything free.

I've honestly never noticed this. You just wait 5 seconds, see if it says "Skip ad" and then click it. I bet most users don't notice this either and it's probably not especially effective (but still worth it at Google scale).

I can't really blame Google for not wanting people to skip ads. The fact that skippable ads even exist is kind of crazy.

More of a "dimly lit pattern" maybe.

Ublock with Sponsorblock, Invidious, Freetube or Newpie and you're good to go!

You could tell them to 'fuck off' with this extension fuckoff.yt

They'll probably find some way to block this.

In firefox type cs-] then press the right arrow 4-5 times, then alt-tab, then tab until "Skip add" is highlighted and hit space. No need for extra extensions or anything.

Note: this lets you skip unskipable ads too.

What ads?

Speaking of dark patterns, Medium paywalling other people's writing.

Just gonna leave this link to ublock origin here. If nothing else, install it as a small "fuck you" to dark patterns:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

This is why I use uBlock Origin. I don't feel guilty if I have to put up with such asshole design. I would much rather have (even non-hideable) text ads in the bottom. Something similar to what they used a long time ago.

Likewise with many Polish entertainment/content aggregator/news websites - there are goddamn ads in the BACKGROUND of the page! Ugh!

Just look at this beauty: https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c0834752/436c59464448525156546b3d_f...