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People have different views about ethics. Fortunately, there is no truth of the matter, so anything goes as long as we're internally consistent. I think ad rev

People have different views about ethics. Fortunately, there is no truth of the matter, so anything goes as long as we're internally consistent. I think ad revenue models are unethical. Promotion of extremist content is unethical. Privacy-invading data collection is unethical. Honestly, I think shitty content, in general, is unethical too. On the other hand, I think it is ethical for an entrepreneuring developer to charge users $5 to bypass bad faith actors, at the (questionable) expense of "content creators". And I'd feel pretty good about paying the $5 too.

lelandfe 5y ago
If you feel ad-supported content is flat out unethical, how would you prefer to pay for media online?
- 3np 5y ago
  Remember the times before Spotify? Piracy was the only way to get a lot of music ; there simply weren’t any paid options. Nowadays the market for buying or streaming digital music has made paying for digital music viable. With a lot of YouTube content, the situation is very similar today; there isn’t a way to pay for content without simultaneously being exposed to ads and the associated tracking/profiling/stalking. Maybe as adblocking becomes more common, creators and platforms will be forced to accommodate for the change in demand.
  - mcdoogal 5y ago
    YouTube premium removes ads on YouTube so that covers half the woes.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    That Spotify model basically already exists on YouTube with YouTube Premium. YouTube pays creators directly when a Premium viewer watches.
  - dakom 5y ago
    I remember buying cassettes and then CDs, either from a known distributor or litte hole-in-the-wall shops. When digital music was getting big, it was mostly experienced through DJs at parties. They got their records from distributors and there were ways of pressing small amounts of vinyl cheaply. Artists who didn't have a record deal had to hustle, selling their tunes directly from the trunk of their car or any means necessary. Lots of musicians didn't make their money from these routes, instead they gave their music out for free as promotional material for live shows where they charged tickets. Even if we jump forward to now, there's a few listener-supported models like soma.fm which may not last forever but have survived without resorting to ads or piracy. Piracy is fun for the consumer, while it lasts, but it suffocates the artists and was never a viable solution. For anyone willing to pay, there is always a way to get your wares if you know what you're looking for.
    - hnlmorg 5y ago
      Electronic music wouldn't exist if it wasn't for ignoring copyright laws. The entire scene is built off the back of sampling and mix tapes. Likewise MP3 players and similar portable music devices (like the iPod) were technically advocating breaking copyright laws in some countries. Like here in the UK where it was illegal to rip a CD you owned. That law was clearly idiotic but the only reason it changed was because everyone was already doing it. I'm not trying to argue that piracy is good. However it's not as black and white as some make out.
      - dakom 5y ago
        Small nitpick- I'd say one of the hallmarks of electronic music was that it wasn't built from copyrightable samples. It was trackers and analog-then-digital synths and all sorts of microtonal weirdness which had never been heard before. It's a nitpick because I agree large swaths of the dance and hip-hop music we have today wouldn't exist if not for copyright violation, no denying that. However, if we can put aside the legal angle, there's an understood difference between copyright violation for the purpose of sampling and remixing vs. outright "gonna steal your stuff because I don't want to pay for it." Tiny anecdote fwiw, I once worked a summer gig for a wedding/bar-mitzvah DJ who had a legal license to rip and play mp3s. Iirc part of the deal was they had to be a certain quality, e.g. 320kbps straight from the source. Or at least that's what he told me (this was AJ the DJ in Houston, Tx circa 2000 if anyone wants to do the fact-check legwork)
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily think ad funded content is bad. But YouTube seems to do it the worst. 2 ads at the start, sometimes they can’t be skipped. Ads in between at weird places. Now there are 2 ads at the end too. Spotify is ok. Ads. Bunch of uninterrupted songs. Ads. Like radio. Many Anime streaming services are similar. Ads bookend the content. YouTube could have spent time curating good content and building a platform worth a damn. Instead the vast vast majority is trash. There are really only a handful of content creators that make anything good. And it seems like more and more of them have patreons or their own sponsorships. I again don’t mind these. But I have direct ways of paying the creators. And if they moved somewhere else I’d follow them.
  - mcpherrinm 5y ago
    Would you consider paying for YouTube and Spotify instead? Both are available ad-free.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      I can easily afford that but I never want to pay a single penny to Google/Alphabet Inc. More of an ideological thing than economical, probably many have different reasons here instead of not being able to afford it. Also, "then don't use" is not an option either as almost all the content out there is uploaded to YouTube, so it isn't like same content is available on Vimeo/Facebook etc.
      - lelandfe 5y ago
        Without trying to sound too puritanical, your stance sounds like a way to avoid paying creators
        can16358p 5y ago
        Nope, seriously. If there were a way to directly pay the good content creators (not talking about $5, Patreon etc, but having a microtransaction everytime I watch a nice video like 0.05 each which does sum up to something similar aggregated) I'd love to.
klodolph 5y ago
> Fortunately, there is no truth of the matter, so anything goes as long as we're internally consistent. I don't think that what you said is internally consistent. Now, we may disagree about exactly what you mean, but it sounds like you are putting forth some form of moral relativism, which has appeared in various forms over the millennia. Many ways of phrasing moral relativism have logical inconsistencies in them. I think the "anything goes as long as we're internally consistent" is a statement that any ethical system, E, is correct if and only if E is internally consistent. And "there is no truth of the matter" is saying that "no ethical statement is true in all systems of ethics". Now, is the "anything goes" statement an ethical statement? Is it true in all systems of ethics? If both, then this is a contradiction. If it is not an ethical statement, then what does "anything goes" even mean? If it is not true in all systems of ethics, then how can you defend it without begging the question? I'm not trying to enumerate all the possibilities, but just illustrate my skepticism... I don't see an easy way out here. It's not impossible, just really quite tricky, and if you value being internally consistent, maybe you should dig deeper.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  To quote Stephen Fry, moral relativism is just another way of saying "thinking". Morals can come from culture, they can come from religion, or they can come from individual contemplation. Morals are axioms. The one thing we can say for sure about them is that nobody agrees on what they should be. Saying that advertising is a pest that should be actively removed is not even an uncommon viewpoint. The city of Sao Paolo famously banned all advertising.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    Please provide clarification: is something "relative" if people disagree on it? If there are two different interpretations of a single data set, for example, does it mean that the reality of what that data means is "relative" or just that one or both interpretation don't have enough information (or appropriate understanding of it)? Basically, I want to know what "relativism" actually means to you since your quote seems to imply that anything you think about is "relative". Thank you, I'm excited to hear your response.
goto11 5y ago
If you think the content is shitty, why would extend effort to circumvent the revenue model to access it anyway?

lelandfe 5y ago

If you feel ad-supported content is flat out unethical, how would you prefer to pay for media online?

3np 5y ago
Remember the times before Spotify? Piracy was the only way to get a lot of music ; there simply weren’t any paid options. Nowadays the market for buying or streaming digital music has made paying for digital music viable. With a lot of YouTube content, the situation is very similar today; there isn’t a way to pay for content without simultaneously being exposed to ads and the associated tracking/profiling/stalking. Maybe as adblocking becomes more common, creators and platforms will be forced to accommodate for the change in demand.
- mcdoogal 5y ago
  YouTube premium removes ads on YouTube so that covers half the woes.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  That Spotify model basically already exists on YouTube with YouTube Premium. YouTube pays creators directly when a Premium viewer watches.
- dakom 5y ago
  I remember buying cassettes and then CDs, either from a known distributor or litte hole-in-the-wall shops. When digital music was getting big, it was mostly experienced through DJs at parties. They got their records from distributors and there were ways of pressing small amounts of vinyl cheaply. Artists who didn't have a record deal had to hustle, selling their tunes directly from the trunk of their car or any means necessary. Lots of musicians didn't make their money from these routes, instead they gave their music out for free as promotional material for live shows where they charged tickets. Even if we jump forward to now, there's a few listener-supported models like soma.fm which may not last forever but have survived without resorting to ads or piracy. Piracy is fun for the consumer, while it lasts, but it suffocates the artists and was never a viable solution. For anyone willing to pay, there is always a way to get your wares if you know what you're looking for.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    Electronic music wouldn't exist if it wasn't for ignoring copyright laws. The entire scene is built off the back of sampling and mix tapes. Likewise MP3 players and similar portable music devices (like the iPod) were technically advocating breaking copyright laws in some countries. Like here in the UK where it was illegal to rip a CD you owned. That law was clearly idiotic but the only reason it changed was because everyone was already doing it. I'm not trying to argue that piracy is good. However it's not as black and white as some make out.
    - dakom 5y ago
      Small nitpick- I'd say one of the hallmarks of electronic music was that it wasn't built from copyrightable samples. It was trackers and analog-then-digital synths and all sorts of microtonal weirdness which had never been heard before. It's a nitpick because I agree large swaths of the dance and hip-hop music we have today wouldn't exist if not for copyright violation, no denying that. However, if we can put aside the legal angle, there's an understood difference between copyright violation for the purpose of sampling and remixing vs. outright "gonna steal your stuff because I don't want to pay for it." Tiny anecdote fwiw, I once worked a summer gig for a wedding/bar-mitzvah DJ who had a legal license to rip and play mp3s. Iirc part of the deal was they had to be a certain quality, e.g. 320kbps straight from the source. Or at least that's what he told me (this was AJ the DJ in Houston, Tx circa 2000 if anyone wants to do the fact-check legwork)
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
I don’t necessarily think ad funded content is bad. But YouTube seems to do it the worst. 2 ads at the start, sometimes they can’t be skipped. Ads in between at weird places. Now there are 2 ads at the end too. Spotify is ok. Ads. Bunch of uninterrupted songs. Ads. Like radio. Many Anime streaming services are similar. Ads bookend the content. YouTube could have spent time curating good content and building a platform worth a damn. Instead the vast vast majority is trash. There are really only a handful of content creators that make anything good. And it seems like more and more of them have patreons or their own sponsorships. I again don’t mind these. But I have direct ways of paying the creators. And if they moved somewhere else I’d follow them.
- mcpherrinm 5y ago
  Would you consider paying for YouTube and Spotify instead? Both are available ad-free.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    I can easily afford that but I never want to pay a single penny to Google/Alphabet Inc. More of an ideological thing than economical, probably many have different reasons here instead of not being able to afford it. Also, "then don't use" is not an option either as almost all the content out there is uploaded to YouTube, so it isn't like same content is available on Vimeo/Facebook etc.
    - lelandfe 5y ago
      Without trying to sound too puritanical, your stance sounds like a way to avoid paying creators
      - can16358p 5y ago
        Nope, seriously. If there were a way to directly pay the good content creators (not talking about $5, Patreon etc, but having a microtransaction everytime I watch a nice video like 0.05 each which does sum up to something similar aggregated) I'd love to.

klodolph 5y ago

> Fortunately, there is no truth of the matter, so anything goes as long as we're internally consistent. I don't think that what you said is internally consistent. Now, we may disagree about exactly what you mean, but it sounds like you are putting forth some form of moral relativism, which has appeared in various forms over the millennia. Many ways of phrasing moral relativism have logical inconsistencies in them. I think the "anything goes as long as we're internally consistent" is a statement that any ethical system, E, is correct if and only if E is internally consistent. And "there is no truth of the matter" is saying that "no ethical statement is true in all systems of ethics". Now, is the "anything goes" statement an ethical statement? Is it true in all systems of ethics? If both, then this is a contradiction. If it is not an ethical statement, then what does "anything goes" even mean? If it is not true in all systems of ethics, then how can you defend it without begging the question? I'm not trying to enumerate all the possibilities, but just illustrate my skepticism... I don't see an easy way out here. It's not impossible, just really quite tricky, and if you value being internally consistent, maybe you should dig deeper.

zarzavat 5y ago
To quote Stephen Fry, moral relativism is just another way of saying "thinking". Morals can come from culture, they can come from religion, or they can come from individual contemplation. Morals are axioms. The one thing we can say for sure about them is that nobody agrees on what they should be. Saying that advertising is a pest that should be actively removed is not even an uncommon viewpoint. The city of Sao Paolo famously banned all advertising.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  Please provide clarification: is something "relative" if people disagree on it? If there are two different interpretations of a single data set, for example, does it mean that the reality of what that data means is "relative" or just that one or both interpretation don't have enough information (or appropriate understanding of it)? Basically, I want to know what "relativism" actually means to you since your quote seems to imply that anything you think about is "relative". Thank you, I'm excited to hear your response.

goto11 5y ago

If you think the content is shitty, why would extend effort to circumvent the revenue model to access it anyway?