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At this point, I consider blocking ads to be a moral obligation. By giving in, you enable Youtube to abuse users further
by alwayslikethis 3y ago
At this point, I consider blocking ads to be a moral obligation. By giving in, you enable Youtube to abuse users further
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gruez 3y agoWhat's the point of blocking ads when they're already not present? Or are you saying that we should block ads and refuse to pay? How is that sustainable in the long term? If you're against ads, shouldn't you support monetization models that don't involve ads?
- jona-f 3y agoWe treat google how they treat us, as exploitive as possible.
- mvdtnz 3y agoYou're just rationalising. You know it's not a defensible position.
- Spivak 3y agoSure it is, you're not even involved in the transaction. Just because someone pays Google to show an ad doesn't mean you have to look at it. USPS is funded by ads going through the mail and I throw them straight in the trash without remorse. I bet you do too. Bet you don't feel guilt about going to the bathroom or fast-forwarding your DVR during commercials either. Ad space is sold on the possibility that someone will see it and you don't owe anyone valuable ad real-estate. It's wild how many people unironically think "drink verification can" is in any way acceptable.
- gruez 3y ago> Just because someone pays Google to show an ad doesn't mean you have to look at it Just because someone has an internet connection doesn't mean google has to serve them videos, either.
- Spivak 3y agoSuch is their prerogative. You'll notice that nowhere are people saying "Google should have to give you a switch to turn off ads for free." You act like that's a gotcha when "I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing" is the state I'm arguing for.
- frumper 3y agoI’m confused. Google doesn’t serve every internet connection videos. The serve people asking for videos.
- mvdtnz 3y agoAt no point did I suggest people should be forced to view ads.
- rerdavies 3y agoI can't actually remember the last time I got mail-mail.
- unshavedyak 3y agoI think it's somewhat defendable when youtube doesn't give you an option to pay for what you'd be "stealing". Overall i agree with you, but lets not pretend that Youtube doesn't feel exploitative in the corporate behavior here. Especially considering the data they're stealing from me, harvesting and selling, etc. Ie show me the ads i'm missing, and let me pay for the view. It would be what, $3|5|7/m or w/e in value? Instead they're trying to strongarm you into an upcharge of $14/m for additional services. Show me the data they're harvesting from my viewing patterns and the added revenue they're getting from that. Tie that into my "cost" each month and reducing how much i owe. But of course they won't do that. Because this isn't an exchange. This isn't a service we're paying for, it's a data harvest where they want to have their cake and eat it too. This is scummy in the same way that my music software, Spotify, is trying to expand revenue streams and shoving more crap (podcasts, audio books, etc) down my throat. If Youtube isn't going to try and play fair then i'd rather leave (and will) than pay them.
- gruez 3y ago>I think it's somewhat defendable when youtube doesn't give you an option to pay for what you'd be "stealing". https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium
- kemayo 3y agoNot the person you're responding to, but from how they phrased it I suspect they'd be annoyed that they're having to pay for YouTube Music as part of Premium.
- unshavedyak 3y agoExactly. I want to pay for what i'm supposed to be paying for. Not subscribe to extra services i don't use.
- throw_nbvc1234 3y agoYou're not just paying Youtube/Google for the ad, you're paying the content creators as well. You can always buy the music directly from artists if you don't like Spotify's revenue model. Or ditch Spotify and use the free Youtube Music subscription you get with premium, maybe combined it'd be worth the $14 to you.
- xuhu 3y agoIt sure is. I'm still watching their ads on every other site, but youtube ads for gambling and soda that interrupt while I'm watching someone talk about Bezier curves ? Na-ah.
- gruez 3y agoAll this performative righteousness is only going to end up hurting your cause in the long term. If a major site offers an ad-free option, and people refuse to take it, what does it tell the executives? What does it tell other publishers who are considering their monetization options? How do you think a business should respond to users that neither refuse to watch ads nor pay, can't be bargained with (see above), but nonetheless think they should be entitled to service? Companies aren't owed a viable business model, but consumers aren't owed a free service either.
- LtWorf 3y agoThey still mine your data…
- frumper 3y agoAre you complaining about ads or data? The only way to avoid giving them data is to not use them, which also lets you avoid their ads and you don’t need a subscription. Simple solution.
- bsaul 3y agothe amount of ads on youtube has grown exponentially and i highly doubt this was because of profitability issues.
- Wildliferanger 3y agoThe problem is higher than zero intrest rates the free money dried up where before all the platforms were chasing infinte growth and free money meant they could run deficts as long as they grew they now need to make a profit now that debt costs money plus investor cash got sucked away to Bonds, CDs, and money market accounts giving a safe 5-7%. This is why every service went to shit at the same time in the past year.
- missedthecue 3y agoIn a hypothetical world without adblockers, wouldn't YouTube need to show a lower amount of ads per person to make the same amount of revenue?
- mfru 3y agoi love paying for nebula and support my favorite creators there and blocking everything else on youtube
- heavyset_go 3y agoI don't care if Google is sustainable in the long term or not, just like they don't care if they serve me malicious content and malware via their ad networks, or take money, and show me ads, from groups that want people like me dead.
- LtWorf 3y agoIn my area they started to put ads to meet hot russian women in youtube. I reported and they said it's supposed to stay there.
- heavyset_go 3y agoWe're back to 2002-style ads about meeting hot singles in your town, where you can get free "natural" Viagra, and content taken directly from weird political chain letters that are written by people who, while barely literate, are loud and opinionated.
- hkt 3y agoMaybe we don't want the business models of data hoarding multibillion dollar corporations to be sustainable. Maybe there are good alternatives that don't rely so much on exploitative practices. Just a thought.
- acdha 3y agoThose are great reasons not to use YouTube. If you’re worried about data mining, your ad blocker has no effect there – you have to stop using YouTube if that bothers you.
- NotSuspicious 3y agoWhat if I considered it a moral imperative to financially damage FAANG companies in any way I can? What if I was fine paying money each month as long as it went towards harming Youtube?
- acdha 3y agoHow do you think that’s relevant to the question of data mining?
- hkt 3y agoOr use it in a way that doesn't give up your data quite so easily. I recommend Minitube for Linux desktop and NewPipe for android.
- acdha 3y agoIt’s wishful thinking to hope that they can’t mine that. If you connect to a Google server, they’re analyzing your activity. Not running their JavaScript disrupts ads but they still get information about what type of videos you like, when and where you watch them, and what kind of devices you use.
- hkt 3y agoTrue enough. I've thought before it'd be good to cache and mirror YouTube videos as they're watched, and then provide them through IPFS with an index that's shipped around so people can pre-filter their searches and page hits against that index first. Lots of work, obviously. More than I have time for, alas. But I'm confident that'll happen eventually.
- acdha 3y agoStealing is never a moral obligation. The only moral choices are not using YouTube or paying for it - and if you truly believe YouTube abuses users, you definitely shouldn’t be encouraging more people to use it, which your presence does by telling creators they get more traffic there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 3y agoYoutube are the ones stealing. I pay for premium, but people who don't and still block ads are not wrong.
- acdha 3y agoYouTube offers their service under specific terms: watch ads or pay directly. If you don’t like it, your only ethical option is not using it. It’s not a basic need and anyone can live a happy and full life without it, there’s no need to pretend that not keeping your side of the agreement is somehow just if you squint hard enough.
- Brian_K_White 3y agoYoutube offers a service to advertisers. The users are both the content providers as well as the content consumers, which cancels out. Youtube sells something which is essentially parasitical on the uploaders, who actually create the value that they get to sell to advertisers, but you can say symbiotic instead of parasitic as long as the uploading and downloading are free. The mail example is great. The post office has no right to withhold your other mail between someone else and yourself, because you threw away the ad flyer someone paid them to deliver. Meanwhile, I pay for premium and still have to suffer ads, because every video has ads in-band in the content, and I have to watch youtube on someone else's device probably 30% of the time, and have my content (what I would consume not produce) censored and inhibited by bs ai "community standards" and dmca takedowns I didn't approve of, and even without ever looking at an ad, they are collecting and selling profiling data of me which I also don't approve of. So where's my option to strong-arm youtube to force them to fully meet my "terms" and get what I'm paying for? How come it's not reasonable for me to somehow make it that if they don't please ME, that their own server side somehow breeaks unless they conform to what decide is a reasonable fair transaction? None of this "terms" argument holds up. All they have is might, not right.
- infecto 3y agoIf you have a moral obligation why would you even use YouTube?
- paddim8 3y agoHonestly, I don't think preventing ad blockers is abusive. Hosting videos for free is simply not sustainable. It does not work. We aren't entitled to getting everything on the internet for free.
- bboygravity 3y agoBittorrent would like to have a word.
- infecto 3y agoI am in the same boat. They are providing a service. Ads suck so I pay for. The evil angle is tiring. If they are so evil why even use YouTube at all.
- eastbound 3y agoBecause we’re addicted? I’m serious, but philosophically, the onus is clearly on us to get rid of our addiction. But Youtube is a quasi-monopoly of random micro-conferences. Nebula and Vimeo aren’t on the same market. So basically we specifically like Youtube. But I’d never pay Google after what they did to James Damore.
- epgui 3y agoIf Costco decided they wanted to make a profit on their 1.50$ hot dogs and cranked the price up to 3$, they would lose a ton of goodwill and many of their loyal customers would be upset. Google isn’t exactly struggling to make ends meet. They seem perfectly okay to be losing money on search. YouTube is no different.
- TylerE 3y agoI have zero problem paying for premium. I like it when the products I like, you know, survive.
- graftak 3y agoIf YouTube dies another party will take their place and hopefully learn from their mistakes. But YouTube won’t fail because it’s backed by Google and they’ll squeeze their monopoly for all that it’s worth.
- TylerE 3y agoCompetitors DID learn from their mistakes. The problem is they then built not a better YouTube, but Tiktok.
- paulcole 3y agoAvoiding using services whose business practices you disagree with feels like a bigger moral obligation but what do I know?
- graftak 3y agoThat would be a fine argument of Google did not own the long-form general topic diy online video space. Since they do and there are no alternatives they can suck it until they (if ever) improve their business practices.
- paulcole 3y agoThe alternatives are to not watch it, watch it under their terms, or do something you’re not supposed to do because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re right.
- thehappypm 3y agoI think this is a bad take, because YouTube is a rare web service that allows you to just pay them directly. Then you aren’t the product anymore
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- graftak 3y agoThey still data mine every move you make.
- t0bia_s 3y agoHow many hours daily you spend on YT?
- thehappypm 3y agoMe? About 0