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As someone who has no "special love" for YouTube, I feel like the equation for YouTube is different for me that what they have in mind. YouTube chose to host a

As someone who has no "special love" for YouTube, I feel like the equation for YouTube is different for me that what they have in mind. YouTube chose to host a public mode of displaying videos that someone in a third world country made or Linus Sebastian made. As long as they don't put everything behind Netflix style login, I will fight tooth and nail with UBO. I don't care about "ethics" of ad blockers. If its public, I will do what I darn want. Want to stop me, well put it behind a paywall. That does two things. I don't use Netflix so any content there is of 0 interest to me. You don't get to stay public and expect ad dollars. It doesn't work like that on the internet. Same for NYT. I don't pay for it and have no use for content there. If if were an ad supported one, then I could use an ad blocker. Think of it this way. If you screen your movie in a cinema hall, I will watch it if I pay for a ticket. Fair and square. If it is played on a public roadshow, I will skip all ads or skip it altogether. The org has to decide. Either make content pay per use or free. No middle ground.

midoridensha 3y ago
> If its public, I will do what I darn want. Want to stop me, well put it behind a paywall. The ethics are pretty clear I think: if I navigate with my browser to YouTube, or any site with ads, I'm able to see the content, plus annoying ads. I don't have to watch the ads: I can use an ad-blocker to tell my browser to not render those ads. The site has every right to serve me HTML/JS/video however they wish, but they have no right to tell me what to do with that data. If I want to ignore part of it, that's my right, and if I use automated means to ignore selected parts, that's also my right. If they want to spend massive resources trying to figure out ways to get around my automated means, or to detect my ad-blocker and refuse to send me data, they can do that too, but at what cost? But if they want to avoid this arms race of ad-blocking, they can just do what Netflix does: require payment and an account to get in. As for paywalls, those are really the same thing as ads usually: they load the article, then use JS to block it. You can block the JS and read the article.
- eipi10_hn 3y ago
  Yes, in fact the "ethics" is written clearly in web standards principles: > 2.12 People should be able to render web content as they want > People must be able to change web pages according to their needs. For example, people should be able to install style sheets, assistive browser extensions, and blockers of unwanted content or scripts or auto-played videos. We will build features and write specifications that respect peoples' agency, and will create user agents to represent those preferences on the web user's behalf. https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render --- And guess who is one of the members of World Wide Web Consortium: https://www.w3.org/membership/list/?initial=g&ecosystem= https://www.w3.org/membership/list/?initial=g&ecosystem= > Google's mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Exactly. Inundating information with intrusive ads works directly against this goat, so blocking those ads isn't just your right, it's a moral imperative.

midoridensha 3y ago

> If its public, I will do what I darn want. Want to stop me, well put it behind a paywall. The ethics are pretty clear I think: if I navigate with my browser to YouTube, or any site with ads, I'm able to see the content, plus annoying ads. I don't have to watch the ads: I can use an ad-blocker to tell my browser to not render those ads. The site has every right to serve me HTML/JS/video however they wish, but they have no right to tell me what to do with that data. If I want to ignore part of it, that's my right, and if I use automated means to ignore selected parts, that's also my right. If they want to spend massive resources trying to figure out ways to get around my automated means, or to detect my ad-blocker and refuse to send me data, they can do that too, but at what cost? But if they want to avoid this arms race of ad-blocking, they can just do what Netflix does: require payment and an account to get in. As for paywalls, those are really the same thing as ads usually: they load the article, then use JS to block it. You can block the JS and read the article.

eipi10_hn 3y ago
Yes, in fact the "ethics" is written clearly in web standards principles: > 2.12 People should be able to render web content as they want > People must be able to change web pages according to their needs. For example, people should be able to install style sheets, assistive browser extensions, and blockers of unwanted content or scripts or auto-played videos. We will build features and write specifications that respect peoples' agency, and will create user agents to represent those preferences on the web user's behalf. https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render --- And guess who is one of the members of World Wide Web Consortium: https://www.w3.org/membership/list/?initial=g&ecosystem= https://www.w3.org/membership/list/?initial=g&ecosystem= > Google's mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  Exactly. Inundating information with intrusive ads works directly against this goat, so blocking those ads isn't just your right, it's a moral imperative.