5 ms·

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

by vvggff 10y ago

imglorp 10y ago
Yeah we should probably whitelist youtube to sponsor the vids there. That's reasonable. HOWEVER the real assholes are whoever is serving bloat and ads that will do anything to get malware onto your machine and track your every breath. This is really why we're blocking.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  That's the actual problem with these ads: bloat, bandwidth usage, javascript, profiling, de-anonymization, tracking, attacks on privacy, sound, unskippable videos, etc. I will feel no remorse for adblocking until advertisers go back to static, single-request, non-tracking, non-targetting ads.
whatismyip 10y ago
When it's available in my region, sure. It's coming up to 2 and a 1/2 years old and still only available in 5 countries.
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  End of October 2015 - Feb 2017 Huh, that's about right. It feels like it was released after that.
crestedtazo 10y ago
Surely this comment is against HN guidelines and should be removed....
- Rumudiez 10y ago
  Regardless of opinions, the poster's first sentence does present an argument. Having to block ads in the first place makes the ad creators and deliverers assholes, but not the user, as explained in other comments.
lightbyte 10y ago
>Look, bandwidth costs money. You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. I only get a set amount of data each month, so you can be sure I'm going to block 100% of the ads I can to stop them from wasting my limited bandwidth.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  > You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. No, you paid for bandwidth from your ISP to you. Your ISP doesn't pay anyone else for traffic. YouTube also has to pay your ISP and that cost is made up from ads.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. But even that is beside the point. I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. I see no moral problem here, and I will choose what the bandwidth I pay for is spent on.
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      Yeah and my supermarket is totally cool with me shoplifting because they haven't stopped me yet.
      - ue_ 10y ago
        The supermarket is obviously not cool with you shoplifting beacuse they have security guards that try to stop you from doing it, and they call the police when it happens.
    - Veratyr 10y ago
      > I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. It's not your responsibility to make YouTube profitable but if you enjoy the content, it's in your best interest to contribute to it, whether it be through watching ads or subscribing. The service needs some amount of money just to cover bandwidth and maintenance but more importantly, most of the money from those ads/subscriptions goes to the people who make the content you watch, many of whom can't do so without that money. Those people also can't choose to block adblockers. > If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. They do. It's called ads. You can't watch the video until you watch the ads. > And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. Or they don't want to get into an arms race just yet. > I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. The download of the thing you don't want here is the payment, not the product. Most of us do pay for things we want. > I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. What's your profession? I believe it's okay for me to promise you payment in exchange for your work then take it without payment.
svantana 10y ago
What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the techies.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  > they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
    - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
      > I don't understand. What do you mean by this? Ads embedded in the video stream (i.e. "burnt" as one with subtitles) can't be blocked but also can't deliver any active content (JS, Flash, etc) used for tracking or infecting users.
- icebraining 10y ago
  That wouldn't be a silver bullet; MythTV already has ad-blocking tech that works for a single stream.
maqr 10y ago
Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them? If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model. No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.
- AjithAntony 10y ago
  > If giving out free videos Are they giving out free videos? The content creator gets to choose how to monetize, right? The platform does allow for free, and the creator chose to get paid.
- Rumudiez 10y ago
  For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see people defend businesses without viable models. If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for, "selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is usable despite the income generating parts. Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable enough to, well, be "in business."
  - always_good 10y ago
    Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially blocked. We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking like adblockers won. Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.
jameskegel 10y ago
That type of discourse is not needed here and does not contribute to the topic of conversation.
city41 10y ago
The problem is people can be an "asshole" with no repercussions and completely no way Google can stop them. Almost all business models rely on receiving payment before delivering product, simply because of the fact we can all revert to being assholes quite easily. So Google and other companies that largely depend on online ads just have to accept the fact that some people are going to disable them. They have complete ability to do so and simply no way it can be stopped. It's inevitable. If ad blocking becomes so rampant that businesses start to collapse, we'll likely see the internet really ramp up subscription models.
camus2 10y ago
> Look, bandwidth costs money. For the user too, do you think people have unlimited data plans? I'm not paying to see ads. > Don't be an asshole. Because insults are going to rally people to your cause?
- hasenj 10y ago
  You're getting the videos for free ... So that's a weird excuse.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  > do you think people have unlimited data plans My phone has unlimited data (only plan advertised by T-Mobile) but it's possible for my home internet not to be (restriction removed on the gigabit plan, which I have). So if the company only cares about the US then... "Hahaha yyolo rigt?!1!" - some exec
rchaud 10y ago
Nothing's stopping Google from simply charging people to access Youtube. The reason they don't do it is because YT offers network effects and user lock-in that have significant economic benefits. I trust that a large corporation with some of the smartest minds in the world working there would have changed the YT business model if they were worried about their bandwidth costs.

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

by vvggff 10y ago

Look, bandwidth costs money. If you don't want to see ads, just subscribe to Youtube red. Don't be an asshole.

Yeah we should probably whitelist youtube to sponsor the vids there. That's reasonable. HOWEVER the real assholes are whoever is serving bloat and ads that will do anything to get malware onto your machine and track your every breath. This is really why we're blocking.

vonuebelgarten 10y ago
That's the actual problem with these ads: bloat, bandwidth usage, javascript, profiling, de-anonymization, tracking, attacks on privacy, sound, unskippable videos, etc. I will feel no remorse for adblocking until advertisers go back to static, single-request, non-tracking, non-targetting ads.

whatismyip 10y ago

When it's available in my region, sure. It's coming up to 2 and a 1/2 years old and still only available in 5 countries.

ReverseCold 10y ago
End of October 2015 - Feb 2017 Huh, that's about right. It feels like it was released after that.

crestedtazo 10y ago

Surely this comment is against HN guidelines and should be removed....

Rumudiez 10y ago
Regardless of opinions, the poster's first sentence does present an argument. Having to block ads in the first place makes the ad creators and deliverers assholes, but not the user, as explained in other comments.

lightbyte 10y ago

>Look, bandwidth costs money. You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. I only get a set amount of data each month, so you can be sure I'm going to block 100% of the ads I can to stop them from wasting my limited bandwidth.

Veratyr 10y ago
> You're right, and I already paid for it with my ISP. No, you paid for bandwidth from your ISP to you. Your ISP doesn't pay anyone else for traffic. YouTube also has to pay your ISP and that cost is made up from ads.
- ue_ 10y ago
  I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. But even that is beside the point. I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. I see no moral problem here, and I will choose what the bandwidth I pay for is spent on.
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    Yeah and my supermarket is totally cool with me shoplifting because they haven't stopped me yet.
    - ue_ 10y ago
      The supermarket is obviously not cool with you shoplifting beacuse they have security guards that try to stop you from doing it, and they call the police when it happens.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    > I don't see why it's my responsibility to see Youtube makes money. It's not your responsibility to make YouTube profitable but if you enjoy the content, it's in your best interest to contribute to it, whether it be through watching ads or subscribing. The service needs some amount of money just to cover bandwidth and maintenance but more importantly, most of the money from those ads/subscriptions goes to the people who make the content you watch, many of whom can't do so without that money. Those people also can't choose to block adblockers. > If they didn't want me to consume the content, they would have a model in which you can't view the content without subscribing for a fee. They do. It's called ads. You can't watch the video until you watch the ads. > And yet Google knows about adblockers and continues this model, suggesting that they are fine with people skipping the ads. Or they don't want to get into an arms race just yet. > I assume you do not download things you do not want, so I am merely doing the same thing. The download of the thing you don't want here is the payment, not the product. Most of us do pay for things we want. > I believe it's fine for me to access whatever information that people release. What's your profession? I believe it's okay for me to promise you payment in exchange for your work then take it without payment.

svantana 10y ago

What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the techies.

vonuebelgarten 10y ago
> they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
  - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
    > I don't understand. What do you mean by this? Ads embedded in the video stream (i.e. "burnt" as one with subtitles) can't be blocked but also can't deliver any active content (JS, Flash, etc) used for tracking or infecting users.
icebraining 10y ago
That wouldn't be a silver bullet; MythTV already has ad-blocking tech that works for a single stream.

maqr 10y ago

Look, my time is valuable. I decide what media to play based on my preferences. If I don't want to see ads, why would I instruct my browser to play them? If giving out free videos isn't a sustainable business model, change your business model. No amount of shame will ever be effective in getting me to turn off my adblocker. Sorry if this offends you.

AjithAntony 10y ago
> If giving out free videos Are they giving out free videos? The content creator gets to choose how to monetize, right? The platform does allow for free, and the creator chose to get paid.
Rumudiez 10y ago
For being such a bunch of stingy capitalists, it's always surprising to see people defend businesses without viable models. If hosting content online for free isn't working for you, maybe that's not a commercial space worth occupying. Not everything deserves to be paid for, "selfish" or not. Users, aka "the market," will decide if your product is usable despite the income generating parts. Marginally related, if your business isn't profitable enough to pay your employees a livable wage, then maybe your business isn't actually profitable enough to, well, be "in business."
- always_good 10y ago
  Dunno, what doesn't seem "viable" is serving ads that can be trivially blocked. We haven't even reached the real arms race yet, and people are already talking like adblockers won. Let's pick this convo back up at least when ad networks like Adsense let you proxy through your server, ending an entire class of adblocking at once. And that's not the end of the low-hanging fruit.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Adblockers have blocked first-party ads forever. They just use other methods to recognize them, rather than the origin URL.

jameskegel 10y ago

That type of discourse is not needed here and does not contribute to the topic of conversation.

city41 10y ago

The problem is people can be an "asshole" with no repercussions and completely no way Google can stop them. Almost all business models rely on receiving payment before delivering product, simply because of the fact we can all revert to being assholes quite easily. So Google and other companies that largely depend on online ads just have to accept the fact that some people are going to disable them. They have complete ability to do so and simply no way it can be stopped. It's inevitable. If ad blocking becomes so rampant that businesses start to collapse, we'll likely see the internet really ramp up subscription models.

camus2 10y ago

> Look, bandwidth costs money. For the user too, do you think people have unlimited data plans? I'm not paying to see ads. > Don't be an asshole. Because insults are going to rally people to your cause?

hasenj 10y ago
You're getting the videos for free ... So that's a weird excuse.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ReverseCold 10y ago
> do you think people have unlimited data plans My phone has unlimited data (only plan advertised by T-Mobile) but it's possible for my home internet not to be (restriction removed on the gigabit plan, which I have). So if the company only cares about the US then... "Hahaha yyolo rigt?!1!" - some exec

rchaud 10y ago

Nothing's stopping Google from simply charging people to access Youtube. The reason they don't do it is because YT offers network effects and user lock-in that have significant economic benefits. I trust that a large corporation with some of the smartest minds in the world working there would have changed the YT business model if they were worried about their bandwidth costs.