YouTube stop the ad if you mute it

YouTube ads are the worst. I run a company and definitely have the budget to get YouTube Premium, but I refuse. It just seems like a product that should be free and paying for it feels weird given how little I use it (transparently I mainly use YouTube to make unhinged concepts about… YouTube).

This got me thinking about the ad-watching experience. Typically when an ad comes on I’ll either mute it or just wait until the soonest possible moment to be able to skip. What if YouTube was a bit more forceful and made you unmute to continue watching a video. Even worse, what if streaming providers like Hulu did this?

I think people could tolerate this on something like Spotify or YouTube. If they did this on TVs, it would be unbearable, especially since Hulu has made the deranged product decision for ad volume to be like 1.5x louder than the movie or show you’re watching.

There’d be a slight revolt if this got shipped. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but people would not like it.

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