I know someone who works on the technical side of a national newspaper and he has been happy and encouraged me to continue when I pointed out scammy ads ("Japanese knives" and that sort of things).
Seems they don't vet ads individually but can take down ads they become aware of.
With Google however it seems to me money is all that matters.
normalize the 40+ age check
> Notably, the ingredients do not include “midnight beetle powder,” which the long video pitching Prolong Power explains is the secret ingredient that gave the church bats their magnificent erections.
Just lazy training. The relaxing power of the golden shower. Enjoy.
I get that it’s a cat and mouse game, and the advertisers are going to keep tweaking the ad and re-uploading it. But surely YouTube can detect literally any of the keywords. The ad I saw the other day still uses the same general script as what’s in the article.
> The video takes viewers on a bizarre journey from a strip club in Texas to a fake Harvard urologist’s office to an abandoned church in Thailand where scientists discovered a species of bat with abnormally large and long-lasting erections. Along the way, deepfake videos of everyone from Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and adult entertainment star Johnny Sins are made to say they have been quietly using this secret formula to last longer in bed. The video eventually concludes by offering viewers the opportunity to buy six bottles or 180 days-worth of Prolong Power at $49 per bottle.
We can talk about what kinds of ads are appropriate but the right to use YouTube without paying either in money or time spent watching ads has never, will never, and does not currently exist.
This is a deeply interesting comment. Obviously, YouTube began and spent several years as an ad-free, subscription-free platform, so to state that no one has ever had the "right" to use YouTube without paying or watching ads is patently false. But why would someone make such statement? Are they too young to remember an ad-free YouTube? Do they have some vested interest in pushing the idea that the YT user experience has never been and never could be more consumer-friendly than it is? Has the state of political rhetoric in 2025 - the age of Applied Big Brother, where simply stating one's preferred history makes it "real" - trickled down to normal discourse?
Who knows? Anyway, I use an adblocker and Grayjay.
They can then change their mind.
You are not entitled to it, you never had any “right” to it, and no force real or imagined in the universe will make that so.
I believe that payment in “exposure” is exploitative bullshit and many of my favorite video makers rely on revenue from YouTube as a not-insignificant portion of their income, so I pay.
I very much don't understand the opposition to paying for some of the services we use every day. I get not wanted to pay 15-20/month for something like Apple or Disney, if you only want to watch a single show/film. But people act like you are crazy for paying for YouTube or Twitch, meanwhile they lose countless hours experiencing the frustration of advertisements. It's common to find discussions online where people are both completely opposed to paying for YouTube, with no real justification for that position, and highly upset at having to watch ads. Same goes for Twitch, which is arguably worse as the ads interrupt live broadcasts.
I use adblock everywhere else, but I thoroughly enjoy not having to worry about it on the platforms I use the most. It's not a scam to pay for something you use and enjoy every day.
What's next.... Pay this subscription or we will install malware?or break your windows?
If you watch YouTube with an ad blocker, you are still watching YouTube and not supporting a more ethical alternative. Sure, you are not giving YouTube any money, but you are still supporting their dominant position.
E.g. names like: "Teylor Swift" or "Hilary Clinton". I.e. the difference between the name of the account and an actual real account name is literally 1 letter. You want to tell me that Youtube can auto-detect music playing in videos, and do advanced AI attribution of music to artists, etc... But it can't spawn a manual review process or flag if an account is created with 1 minor letter change?
It was $7.99 on launch in 2014 (as an early adopter price that they actually let people keep until 2024), $9.99 in 2016, to $11.99 in 2018 (for new subscribers only, you could still keep the old price if you were already paying), to $13.99 in 2024.
While the 2024 was rather steep, it imo doesn’t seem unreasonable (especially for the family plan that went from $17.99 to $22.99, which lets up to 5 people join with their own Goog accounts).
Sidenote: I personally don’t care in the slightest whether people decide to pay for this or just watch with ads or deal with adblockers (or other workarounds). But discussions of YT premium on HN have been a major eye opener for me, as they made me stop believing entirely in all the claims I see on HN in regards to “omg only if Facebook (or any other popular service that is free but makes money through ads) allowed a paid tier without ads, I would instantly pay, as this is an honest business model I support [followed by a large support of that opinion in replies]”. I always took them as genuine takes, but turns out that if even on HN that doesn’t end up holding true (given the discussion in this thread), it stands no chance among the general population.
As for me, I am glad that this option exists, simply because Youtube is one of those online services I peruse quite a lot, and not having to deal with their ads (or even thinking about them or being aware they exist) has been something I am glad to pay the amount they are asking for. Plus, I genuinely support the model of being able to pay a small amount instead of dealing with free-by-making-money-through-ads, especially for services that I spend a ton of time using.
I will pay youtube when they change the algorithm and system to not reward clickbait, not reward god awful thumbnails, not reward literal lies, not penalize a channel for a single poorly performing video, etc.
A simple word filter for “this one simple trick” or “get your _ rock hard” could catch all of these ads. But I guess YouTube makes money off of it, so they have no real incentive to fix the problem.
I even recently got a gun ad with an AI voiceover. Advertising features such as how you “don’t need a license” and it’s “easy to sneak through security”.
Reported that one to YouTube a week ago. Not sure if the ad is still running, but the unlisted video is still up a week later, and it has 2 million views! (Some (all?) ads are just an unlisted video you can grab the id to.) There are multiple comments on it asking how it’s allowed, or saying how they reported it. (As well as a terrifyingly many, possibly bot comments, asking how to buy the item)
It’s breaking TOS in so many ways. There’s a transcript of the video. Videos that contain too many swear words get automatically marked as adult content or demonetized, but they seemingly allow anything in advertisements.
Most ads are less than a minute! If any human at YouTube glanced at the ad for even a second they could remove it and ban the account. Something which should happen before showing the ad to millions.
Criminals the size of Google don't have rap sheets, they have a fan base.
Are you?
I could tolerate Mozilla’s annual pontifications on colour and shape, but YouTube is tone deaf. The design changes they are making aren’t going to shape or mitigate the harm the ads they host are bringing.
I can't think of any clearer indication that absolutely nothing is being done about these scam ads.
To me it seems like a clear indication that he's lost control of the platform.
The ad was (not so obviously) AI generated; both an AI clone of his voice and an AI-generated face-swap/ lip replacement.
This seemed pretty surprising because it was fairly convincing. He looks like he is saying the dialog of the ad.
It's surprising because there's no way the creator of the ad got Hanks' approval to use his likeness; meanwhile Youtube is profiting by selling the ad. Seems illegal, yet i'm forced to watch the garbage.
The ad in general is part of a similar trend I've been seeing of these AI generated voices speaking fast about prostates or large eggplants (if you know what I mean) used with influencers' or podcasters' likenesses. I would never click on the garbage, and it's probably a scam anyway.
I just scratch my head wondering if this massive company realizes the garbage they are forcing into our lives.