YouTube don't stop watching the ad

Happy Thursday everyone. Hope your week is going swimmingly.

In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself in a nearly constant state of distraction. If I find the time to lock in and finish a task, when I pull back to see what’s next, two new tasks have taken its place.

It’s like I’m on a giant hamster wheel that keeps turning faster. Thankfully, things slow down enough on weekends that I catch my breath a little bit. I think between building a new consumer social app and scaling a design agency, I’ve become painfully aware of the finite nature of life’s most valuable asset: time. What I would give for another hour in the day.

Unfortunately, that’s not happening. Even less fortunate is the fact that I’m not a YouTube premium subscriber. If I want to show my friend a 30-second video, I find myself stuck watching like 2 minutes of ads. Thankfully sometimes they can be skipped.

This got me thinking about how effective (or not certain ads are). What if, to make sure the audience viewed ads, YouTube locked their ads and restarted them if you looked away? If the app had camera permissions, it would be technically feasible.

This is not the techno-dystopia anyone asked for, but I could imagine it becoming a reality if the right companies become desperate enough.

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