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I see there is lot of dilemma in comments here regarding blocking ads. blocking ads is not piracy, blocking ads should be norm. I am ok with seeing ads, until t

I see there is lot of dilemma in comments here regarding blocking ads. blocking ads is not piracy, blocking ads should be norm. I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. I am "ok" with ads shown in TV channels, because they show the same for all above mentioned categories. let me make a simple analogy, how do you feel if a circus publicizes as free, has a billboard to show ads, and in background they hires a detective to follow your every move 24/7 , note down your interests/dislikes so they can show you personalised ads based on the interests. creepy right, That how i feel these companies do. just because someone/company spent money and posted a billboard on public space, doesn't mean you have to read through it. It is the risk they assumed, just like youtube/creators made the decision to host videos for free on a public space. it is a bad decision from their part and they have to live with it and not gaslight people. I hate to see youtube die, It is a wonderful archive for society. if you want you can buy premium/see ads so that society wont lose some thing valuable. but not because of creators/YT losing revenue.(that's the risk they assumed when they started the business). and then there are people who say, you can turn off ad personalization, I did since last 5 years and you know what I see. Some Scam apps/NSFW ads content. and there is no way to report the ads unless I turn on ad personalization. I would like to repeat statement from louis rossmann , don't accept the premise of the corporates when the premise itself is shaky.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. How do they try to manipulate you? Appeal to you, sure. Not wanting them to have your data, absolutely. But manipulate?
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Much advertising is psychological manipulation. The creation of a vacuum that didn't previously exist but now needs to be filled. Or the pointing out of a vacuum that previously went unnoticed, but is now noticed and therefore must be filled.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- unforeseen9991 3y ago
  How don't they manipulate you? They are designed to get you to buy things you don't need, and they do that through manipulating human traits. They make you feel you will be lesser/incomplete/not as good as unless you have such and such product. This is not "appealing" to people - it's stone cold corporate manipulation with only one goal in mind. People have way less control over how they react to what they take in then they think they do.
- scbzzzzz 3y ago
  2 instances I would like to share from my personal experience. when I am in freshman year, I wanted to host a website and started looking online for best service, I was bombarded with google cloud ads across all websites. I thought google cloud is the best service.(I was never shown results of AWS/IBM watson, when they are far better than Google Cloud at that time). you always use web for exploring options and these ads can manipulate to pivot to one service, when it is not always the best. after that I tried an experiment with my friends from my collage dorm. we have a proxy for our university. so only tracking I assume is done through respective google accounts.one of them has an Iphone (buys a lot on amazon), others use android. we searched for "best watches to buy", the recommendations/ads(top results) for iphone user is ~1k$(premium brands) and we were shown results of watches around 100$ etc. I would say above results are manipulative because they will pivot our further searches, the search is not showing best watches/blogs about it. but showing results that the AI think will have higher rate of ads - buy conversion. The above results definitely will have an impact on further searches, The iphone user will pivot his search to the top results he see which might not always be best.
- alias_neo 3y ago
  Abso-fucking-lutely they do. I recall at the time of the EU referendum in the UK, I was being bombarded with video "adverts" about how Turkey was about to enter the EU, and if they did, it would be a corridor for terrorists, we'd had some incidents around that time, and so it was targeted to play on people's fears. If only for a second, it gave me pause for thought. I'm not here to comment on any of that, but that was the time when I realised, we _are_ being manipulated by targeted "advertising"; in what I consider the most underhanded and disgusting ways. I'm much wiser to it now, I was always cautious before, but now I've seen the manipulation of others, and their fears; I'm constantly shooting down bullshit that family, friends and acquaintances are being targeted with on social media etc. Fuck advertising, and targeted advertising even more so. I'll block it, and if I can't I won't use the platform, it's that simple.
- usefulcat 3y ago
  The entire point of all advertising is to get you to think or feel a certain way about something or someone. If that can't be described as 'manipulation', then I don't know what can?
- slumberlust 3y ago
  As other's have said, they hire highly skilled psychologists to increase patterns associated with consumption. It's an unfair fight, like throwing a civilian in the ring with Tyson. I guess you've got a chance, but why is that fight even allowed in the first place?
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Edward Bernays manipulated the populace into smoking by branding cigarettes as 'Torches of Freedom' for Feminists who were eager to push back against the social taboo. He did a whole lot of other manipulative tricks, his wiki page is intense. Ads are known to exploit and enflame insecurities and doubt to garner sales.
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding >*Emotional brands have a significant impact when the consumer experiences a strong and lasting attachment to the brand comparable to a feeling of bonding, companionship or love*. Examples of emotional branding include the nostalgic attachment to the Kodak brand of film, bonding with the Jim Beam bourbon brand, and love for the McDonald’s brand. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays >Edward Louis Bernays (/bɜːrˈneɪz/ bur-NAYZ, German: [bɛʁˈnaɪs]; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[3] His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and *his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954*. If you don't consider deliberate induction of emotions that imitate love, fear or hatred in order to sell product manipulative I don't know what to tell you.
Asooka 3y ago
I am fine with unobtrusive ads to the side, ad banners, etc. But not with peacefully watching a quiet video about the greatest one-shots in Golf history and being interrupted by a blaring loud ad for a crap mobile game. It really is the loudness that bothers me the most. Newspapers didn't used to shout at you. If ads go back to being as unobtrusive as newspaper ads and didn't siphon your personal data, I would unblock them. Ironically, I think 4chan is the only site I visit where I have all ads allowed, because it is still only showing simple quiet banner ads.
- skydhash 3y ago
  I think there was a company doing that (Carbon?) I first saw them on Laravel’s site. And I did read their ads. Like I read the ads in the few magazines I read, because the products are themed with my current activity. I don’t think someone would complain seeing cars ads on a blog centered around cars if it is done in a calm way
spuz 3y ago
> and then there are people who say, you can turn off ad personalization, I did since last 5 years and you know what I see. Some Scam apps/NSFW ads content. I don't want my personal data to be in the wrong hands and that's why I disable ad-personalisation. But I don't agree that seeing ads for scam apps, NFTs, gambling or get rich quick schemes is better than personalised ads. The reason you are seeing those ads when personalisation is turned off is that they are the only kind of scheme which can scattershot their advertising while still remaining profitable. I'd much rather live in a world where the ad system knows exactly what I need or want and shows me appropriate ads. That way advertisers waste less money and there is more money available for the service provider or the content creators to provide value back to me. The only reason we don't live in that world is that Google and other companies have been shown to be untrustworthy when it comes to handling their customers' personal data.
- scbzzzzz 3y ago
  true I agress, I hate facebook/google a lot for developing tools to track users and target ads based on their personal data. yes, it optimized advertisers money but at the cost of our privacy. I know, If it is not fb/google someone else will develop the tools. I wish world governments will establish some doctrine on targeted ads and ads in general. I am ok with seeing scam ads on shady small website, but for a company of google/FB scale . No. they should be more responsible. they have tools/money to be more responsible and yet they are not. the only reason I think is they are forcing people to turn off ad-personalisation this way. by responsible I mean, we should have ability to report scam-ads even if we didn't sign-in/opt out of ad-personalisation. every time , i try to report a scam-ad on youtube, it asks me to turn off ad-personalisation to proceed.
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago
  >I'd much rather live in a world where the ad system knows exactly what I need or want and shows me appropriate ads. Er...just fucking no thanks.
  - spuz 3y ago
    Can I ask why? Is it because you find ads for things you don't want easier to ignore? Or is it because you'd prefer to see no advertising at all?
toastercat 3y ago
Every HN thread about YouTube and ads, we see the same ads/tracking/Google apologist fallacies: 1. Equivocating adblock with stealing 2. Using adblock deprives content creators of funds 3. Users of adblock are entitled whiners who just want free stuff 4. Without ads, YouTube cannot exist It is getting tiring.
- Goronmon 3y ago
  What's tiring is trying to figure out why people just don't use sites/services that show them ads. It's extremely simple and from my experience pretty effective at avoiding the ads those sites/services display.
  - haspok 3y ago
    Or just use an ad blocker. Also extremely simple.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      How simple is it for a normal person to use an ad blocker on their TV, where they want to watch YouTube? And don't "just pihole" me, mister!
      - toastercat 3y ago
        At least for Roku, I recently found and had good luck with https://github.com/iBicha/playlet https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        Very cool!
      - herbst 3y ago
        Smarttube is one of several apps that work just like YouTube but without ads. Also skips sponsor Blocks
xtrohnx 3y ago
I agree. There's a certain amount of personalization I'm willing to accept - like if I'm in the market for a 3d printer and I start getting targeted ads. Where it goes off the rails for me is if I search for information on a certain cancer, and then I start getting targeted ads for medicine and services. At that point the veneer of innocent advertising is blown away and I don't have to accept it.
Beijinger 3y ago
"I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status." I think you have not tried to view pages without an adblocker. Nearly impossible to navigate, they blur news and ads, nasty pop-ups etc. I have no idea how someone without an adblocker is able to use the internet. And in Europe you also need the "I don't care about cockies" plug in.
- scbzzzzz 3y ago
  True (i am not ok with those ads(I am taking about youtube ads above), I forgot about the irritating ads/pop-ups/redirects . I have firefox+ublock on all my devices/even on incognito.I recommend the same for all, no allow acceptable ads nonsense etc.
- slumberlust 3y ago
  When I see someone raw dogging the internet, it physically hurts me. It's gotten so bad.
Podgajski 3y ago
Yes! I want to ask the people who believe this, if they would also assume it's piracy if I turn off my television when the commercials come on.
Draiken 3y ago
One aspect you didn't mention is the ability to not look at the ad billboard. If I see a giant ad billboard, I can not look at it, look away, close my eyes, block it with my hands, etc. In a distant future I'd buy glasses that blur ads from my sight (if that could be done without a company seeing everything I see). For me ad-blockers are the same with some automation. It's a way for me to not give up my time and attention for something I never asked for in the first place. Moves like this one from YouTube are one step closer to that dystopian nightmare depicted in Black Mirror where you have to watch the ad no matter what. You close your eyes, and the ad pauses and only goes away after you finish watching it. It's absolutely insane. We somehow got gaslighted into believing there's something good with advertising and there are just a few "bad actors" (where did I hear that before?). I firmly disagree. The entire world would be a better place without ads.
- gigaflop 3y ago
  A funny edge case of those glasses might be accidental blurring of people's faces, if their face is prominent enough in advertisements.
  - Draiken 3y ago
    Hahaha, haven't thought of that! I'd probably call that a feature and not a bug.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  To add another example, I arrive late to the movie theater, I'll arrive anywhere from 15-30 minutes late. why? Because I paid to watch a movie, I did not pay to watch advertisements of movies. There's typically 15-30 minutes of ads in front of movies nowadays. When I was younger I didn't have this policy because there were far fewer ads, but they keep cramming more and more.
  - aequitas 3y ago
    YouTube use to have a single pre roll of just a handful of seconds. Now there are multiple which take 10 seconds each, unskippable and also ads on top of the video an in between segments. They have just become to greedy, like a Pythagorean cup, take too much and you will end up having nothing.
shipscode 3y ago
Ok cool but this is the real world and companies need money to stay in business. This open source free internet principle works great, until nobody wants to do the work for free, which is accelerating due to global recession. Mark my words, by the end of this economic downturn you’ll just be happy that you’re not getting charged for a web browser… if you’re lucky.
- scbzzzzz 3y ago
  oftopic but. yes, I agree. Software development costs a lot. but I think you missed something important. The thing is, we are collectively paying for internet-infra through broadband charges/taxes.(we collectively own it). we don't have to subsidize greedy companies making bad decisions with our time/money/privacy. the business models/decision of the companies is at fault, they made it monetarily free, and when they find they can't make money, rather than fixing the problem with their model, they try to own/charge internet which is not theirs. (drm etc) I argue otherwise regd economic downturn, if it is not for selfless opensource developers the internet/business we see , will not exist. even many of these so called businesses use their work and make unimaginable pool of profits of their work, with zero concern for society.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  In a more reasonable world, web browsers would've been more-or-less done once we had xhtml/xslt and flexbox, and they wouldn't cost $500M/year to maintain. The insanity we have today is largely thanks to the influence of... the ad companies.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Well no, web technologies have evolved for the better, and browsers enabled that. Security patches have to be shipped. That takes resources to build.
- skydhash 3y ago
  I would be perfectly happy paying for a browser (60% or more of my computing) if it was aligned to my incentive (better extension than safari’s and no third party like pocket)
nerdjon 3y ago
Personally I think he dilemma is justified, just because I use an ad blocker doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it on principal. However like you said, the problem is not the ads themselves it is the tracking that comes along for the ride. There isn't any inherent reason that ads have to be so privacy invasive (I guess it is hard to not have ads at least log your requests when they go to a different server but that alone is normal I guess). It is unfortunate that is seems the ship has sailed on actually privacy focused ads and instead of being tailored to the user they are just tailored to the content on the page/video/whatever. I would allow those ads if they existed. It sucks since I do think ads are important, website operators need some way to make money and it is clear that most people are not going to pay for the things they have grown accustom to getting for free. But the current solution is so privacy invasive that you have to block it.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  We have no moral obligation to be advertised to just as we have no moral obligation to be advertised to in order to consume content we didn't pay for. > It sucks since I do think ads are important, website operators need some way to make money They can sell physical goods and services, no one is preventing them from making money.
  - delecti 3y ago
    > They can sell physical goods and services, no one is preventing them from making money. Youtube does indeed offer a way to pay to not see ads. That you're still talking about blocking ads would imply that you're only theoretically in favor of Youtube selling services.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    If you are going to quote me, maybe quote the entire line? > and it is clear that most people are not going to pay for the things they have grown accustom to getting for free. The unfortunate reality is that many people have been conditioned to get content for free. We can complain about it all we want but the vast majority of people are not going to suddenly going to start paying for something that was once free. You're right nothing is stopping them from selling physical goods and services, but wether or not that actually turns into making money is another story. I feel like if you are getting free content an ad is a fair tradeoff. IF that ad is not invading your privacy.
jasonlotito 3y ago
> I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior Once again, people blaming sites for things browsers should handle. It's not YouTube that does the tracking; it's your browser allowing it to happen. YouTube is not fetching data from you. YouTube is using the data you send it. This comes from the browser, allowing it to happen. The misplaced blame is why we are in this state.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Maligned usage is what they’re doing. Cookies is good for storing state as HTTP is stateless. Bu if you storing some marker so you can track me around the web, it’s in bad faith. Just like a program can use 4 GB of RAM if that’s needed but something that is just greedily taking memory is what we call a malware.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    This can be solved in the browsers while still keeping cookies. And it's not the sites forcing this, it's the browsers allowing this.
guestbest 3y ago
I don’t like advertising because it doesn’t even pretend to be informative firstly and secondly it’s not entertaining. Just inform me of what the product or service does and then if that is impossible just do a joke. I haven’t seen a YouTube in ads in years that doesn’t show some aspect of our society I don’t care about such as medications, crypto, how stupid a consumer who doesn’t buy their product is, etc. That’s what I am avoiding with ad blocking. My life is better without all these things. I’m actually living a better life without ads.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
> I hate to see youtube die, It is a wonderful archive for society The actions of the past few weeks have proven it's a terrible archive for society. If there is anything you enjoy on there I'd suggest you archive it from there while you can because they'll be putting the same effort into blocking yt-dlp before the end of the year once people start taking advantage of that to bypass the ablock-block.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  I agree that some of the content on YT is of great cultural and useful value. The usual answer when the profit motive enshitifies something that is considered culturally valuable is to serve the public through a non profit organization instead of a publicly traded company. I realize I am saying this on a forum created for technical folks who hope to win the startup lottery so I don’t expect much…
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
To be precise, this is not "blocking" ads, this is simply not making HTTP requests for ads. It is the web user's choice whether or not to send an HTTP request. Servers "block" HTTP requests, not clients.
bobdvb 3y ago
The biggest issue with generic or burnt in ads is that they're not targeted ads. The value of an ad which isn't targeted is more than an order of magnitude less than one which is targeted. Traditional free-to-air broadcasting (mostly) works financially because they pay once for the transmission, it's a largely fixed fee to cover an area, and then they get paid for the audience they potentially reach. Even still the broadcasters have to pay to have market research agencies run surveys to figure out what's being watched and by whom. When pay TV providers became able to get telemetry from set-top boxes the value of the addressable market rocketed because the audience was no longer hypothetical, it could be measured, analysed and segmented. The reason you get crap ads when personalisation is turned off is because the advertisers who have money want their advertising dollars spent on addressable market, not on random NPCs. A non-addressable ad is cheaper, so that's the market for who's buying the ads. I hate ads, so I have YouTube Premium Family, that works great because I can see content without interruption and I support the independent content creators. I also run PiHole because some sites and services are just so loaded with advertising that it's annoying, so I might well be hypocritical here. But the biggest issue that people don't understand, or think they understand but totally under estimate, is the technical challenge of delivering every video on YouTube everywhere in the world with fair quality. I build streaming infrastructure at scale (not for Google) and I'll tell you that it's really expensive to do what they do and yet people take it for granted. They feel entitled to watch YouTube because Google represents the evil establishment, without recognising the challenges they face. I don't agree with the idea that it's good to write apps that mooch off YouTube just because they're a big corporation. Yup, it's not piracy, it's probably on the lighter side of the grey area of unauthorised API abuse. If you want to build a competing service to Google that comes without personalised ads and has great content, I wish you all the best but when you get the CDN bill, you'll understand. There's a cost per viewed minute that's probably unsustainable. Heck, even traditional broadcasters who have launched their own streaming services have struggled to make money, and that's with targeted advertising enabled.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. How do they try to manipulate you? Appeal to you, sure. Not wanting them to have your data, absolutely. But manipulate?

BLKNSLVR 3y ago
Much advertising is psychological manipulation. The creation of a vacuum that didn't previously exist but now needs to be filled. Or the pointing out of a vacuum that previously went unnoticed, but is now noticed and therefore must be filled.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unforeseen9991 3y ago
How don't they manipulate you? They are designed to get you to buy things you don't need, and they do that through manipulating human traits. They make you feel you will be lesser/incomplete/not as good as unless you have such and such product. This is not "appealing" to people - it's stone cold corporate manipulation with only one goal in mind. People have way less control over how they react to what they take in then they think they do.
scbzzzzz 3y ago
2 instances I would like to share from my personal experience. when I am in freshman year, I wanted to host a website and started looking online for best service, I was bombarded with google cloud ads across all websites. I thought google cloud is the best service.(I was never shown results of AWS/IBM watson, when they are far better than Google Cloud at that time). you always use web for exploring options and these ads can manipulate to pivot to one service, when it is not always the best. after that I tried an experiment with my friends from my collage dorm. we have a proxy for our university. so only tracking I assume is done through respective google accounts.one of them has an Iphone (buys a lot on amazon), others use android. we searched for "best watches to buy", the recommendations/ads(top results) for iphone user is ~1k$(premium brands) and we were shown results of watches around 100$ etc. I would say above results are manipulative because they will pivot our further searches, the search is not showing best watches/blogs about it. but showing results that the AI think will have higher rate of ads - buy conversion. The above results definitely will have an impact on further searches, The iphone user will pivot his search to the top results he see which might not always be best.
alias_neo 3y ago
Abso-fucking-lutely they do. I recall at the time of the EU referendum in the UK, I was being bombarded with video "adverts" about how Turkey was about to enter the EU, and if they did, it would be a corridor for terrorists, we'd had some incidents around that time, and so it was targeted to play on people's fears. If only for a second, it gave me pause for thought. I'm not here to comment on any of that, but that was the time when I realised, we _are_ being manipulated by targeted "advertising"; in what I consider the most underhanded and disgusting ways. I'm much wiser to it now, I was always cautious before, but now I've seen the manipulation of others, and their fears; I'm constantly shooting down bullshit that family, friends and acquaintances are being targeted with on social media etc. Fuck advertising, and targeted advertising even more so. I'll block it, and if I can't I won't use the platform, it's that simple.
usefulcat 3y ago
The entire point of all advertising is to get you to think or feel a certain way about something or someone. If that can't be described as 'manipulation', then I don't know what can?
slumberlust 3y ago
As other's have said, they hire highly skilled psychologists to increase patterns associated with consumption. It's an unfair fight, like throwing a civilian in the ring with Tyson. I guess you've got a chance, but why is that fight even allowed in the first place?
barrysteve 3y ago
Edward Bernays manipulated the populace into smoking by branding cigarettes as 'Torches of Freedom' for Feminists who were eager to push back against the social taboo. He did a whole lot of other manipulative tricks, his wiki page is intense. Ads are known to exploit and enflame insecurities and doubt to garner sales.
_Algernon_ 3y ago
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding >*Emotional brands have a significant impact when the consumer experiences a strong and lasting attachment to the brand comparable to a feeling of bonding, companionship or love*. Examples of emotional branding include the nostalgic attachment to the Kodak brand of film, bonding with the Jim Beam bourbon brand, and love for the McDonald’s brand. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays >Edward Louis Bernays (/bɜːrˈneɪz/ bur-NAYZ, German: [bɛʁˈnaɪs]; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[3] His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and *his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954*. If you don't consider deliberate induction of emotions that imitate love, fear or hatred in order to sell product manipulative I don't know what to tell you.

Asooka 3y ago

I am fine with unobtrusive ads to the side, ad banners, etc. But not with peacefully watching a quiet video about the greatest one-shots in Golf history and being interrupted by a blaring loud ad for a crap mobile game. It really is the loudness that bothers me the most. Newspapers didn't used to shout at you. If ads go back to being as unobtrusive as newspaper ads and didn't siphon your personal data, I would unblock them. Ironically, I think 4chan is the only site I visit where I have all ads allowed, because it is still only showing simple quiet banner ads.

skydhash 3y ago
I think there was a company doing that (Carbon?) I first saw them on Laravel’s site. And I did read their ads. Like I read the ads in the few magazines I read, because the products are themed with my current activity. I don’t think someone would complain seeing cars ads on a blog centered around cars if it is done in a calm way

spuz 3y ago

> and then there are people who say, you can turn off ad personalization, I did since last 5 years and you know what I see. Some Scam apps/NSFW ads content. I don't want my personal data to be in the wrong hands and that's why I disable ad-personalisation. But I don't agree that seeing ads for scam apps, NFTs, gambling or get rich quick schemes is better than personalised ads. The reason you are seeing those ads when personalisation is turned off is that they are the only kind of scheme which can scattershot their advertising while still remaining profitable. I'd much rather live in a world where the ad system knows exactly what I need or want and shows me appropriate ads. That way advertisers waste less money and there is more money available for the service provider or the content creators to provide value back to me. The only reason we don't live in that world is that Google and other companies have been shown to be untrustworthy when it comes to handling their customers' personal data.

scbzzzzz 3y ago
true I agress, I hate facebook/google a lot for developing tools to track users and target ads based on their personal data. yes, it optimized advertisers money but at the cost of our privacy. I know, If it is not fb/google someone else will develop the tools. I wish world governments will establish some doctrine on targeted ads and ads in general. I am ok with seeing scam ads on shady small website, but for a company of google/FB scale . No. they should be more responsible. they have tools/money to be more responsible and yet they are not. the only reason I think is they are forcing people to turn off ad-personalisation this way. by responsible I mean, we should have ability to report scam-ads even if we didn't sign-in/opt out of ad-personalisation. every time , i try to report a scam-ad on youtube, it asks me to turn off ad-personalisation to proceed.
Ylpertnodi 3y ago
>I'd much rather live in a world where the ad system knows exactly what I need or want and shows me appropriate ads. Er...just fucking no thanks.
- spuz 3y ago
  Can I ask why? Is it because you find ads for things you don't want easier to ignore? Or is it because you'd prefer to see no advertising at all?

toastercat 3y ago

Every HN thread about YouTube and ads, we see the same ads/tracking/Google apologist fallacies: 1. Equivocating adblock with stealing 2. Using adblock deprives content creators of funds 3. Users of adblock are entitled whiners who just want free stuff 4. Without ads, YouTube cannot exist It is getting tiring.

Goronmon 3y ago
What's tiring is trying to figure out why people just don't use sites/services that show them ads. It's extremely simple and from my experience pretty effective at avoiding the ads those sites/services display.
- haspok 3y ago
  Or just use an ad blocker. Also extremely simple.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    How simple is it for a normal person to use an ad blocker on their TV, where they want to watch YouTube? And don't "just pihole" me, mister!
    - toastercat 3y ago
      At least for Roku, I recently found and had good luck with https://github.com/iBicha/playlet https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        Very cool!
    - herbst 3y ago
      Smarttube is one of several apps that work just like YouTube but without ads. Also skips sponsor Blocks

xtrohnx 3y ago

I agree. There's a certain amount of personalization I'm willing to accept - like if I'm in the market for a 3d printer and I start getting targeted ads. Where it goes off the rails for me is if I search for information on a certain cancer, and then I start getting targeted ads for medicine and services. At that point the veneer of innocent advertising is blown away and I don't have to accept it.

Beijinger 3y ago

"I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status." I think you have not tried to view pages without an adblocker. Nearly impossible to navigate, they blur news and ads, nasty pop-ups etc. I have no idea how someone without an adblocker is able to use the internet. And in Europe you also need the "I don't care about cockies" plug in.

scbzzzzz 3y ago
True (i am not ok with those ads(I am taking about youtube ads above), I forgot about the irritating ads/pop-ups/redirects . I have firefox+ublock on all my devices/even on incognito.I recommend the same for all, no allow acceptable ads nonsense etc.
slumberlust 3y ago
When I see someone raw dogging the internet, it physically hurts me. It's gotten so bad.

Podgajski 3y ago

Yes! I want to ask the people who believe this, if they would also assume it's piracy if I turn off my television when the commercials come on.

Draiken 3y ago

One aspect you didn't mention is the ability to not look at the ad billboard. If I see a giant ad billboard, I can not look at it, look away, close my eyes, block it with my hands, etc. In a distant future I'd buy glasses that blur ads from my sight (if that could be done without a company seeing everything I see). For me ad-blockers are the same with some automation. It's a way for me to not give up my time and attention for something I never asked for in the first place. Moves like this one from YouTube are one step closer to that dystopian nightmare depicted in Black Mirror where you have to watch the ad no matter what. You close your eyes, and the ad pauses and only goes away after you finish watching it. It's absolutely insane. We somehow got gaslighted into believing there's something good with advertising and there are just a few "bad actors" (where did I hear that before?). I firmly disagree. The entire world would be a better place without ads.

gigaflop 3y ago
A funny edge case of those glasses might be accidental blurring of people's faces, if their face is prominent enough in advertisements.
- Draiken 3y ago
  Hahaha, haven't thought of that! I'd probably call that a feature and not a bug.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
To add another example, I arrive late to the movie theater, I'll arrive anywhere from 15-30 minutes late. why? Because I paid to watch a movie, I did not pay to watch advertisements of movies. There's typically 15-30 minutes of ads in front of movies nowadays. When I was younger I didn't have this policy because there were far fewer ads, but they keep cramming more and more.
- aequitas 3y ago
  YouTube use to have a single pre roll of just a handful of seconds. Now there are multiple which take 10 seconds each, unskippable and also ads on top of the video an in between segments. They have just become to greedy, like a Pythagorean cup, take too much and you will end up having nothing.

shipscode 3y ago

Ok cool but this is the real world and companies need money to stay in business. This open source free internet principle works great, until nobody wants to do the work for free, which is accelerating due to global recession. Mark my words, by the end of this economic downturn you’ll just be happy that you’re not getting charged for a web browser… if you’re lucky.

scbzzzzz 3y ago
oftopic but. yes, I agree. Software development costs a lot. but I think you missed something important. The thing is, we are collectively paying for internet-infra through broadband charges/taxes.(we collectively own it). we don't have to subsidize greedy companies making bad decisions with our time/money/privacy. the business models/decision of the companies is at fault, they made it monetarily free, and when they find they can't make money, rather than fixing the problem with their model, they try to own/charge internet which is not theirs. (drm etc) I argue otherwise regd economic downturn, if it is not for selfless opensource developers the internet/business we see , will not exist. even many of these so called businesses use their work and make unimaginable pool of profits of their work, with zero concern for society.
ndriscoll 3y ago
In a more reasonable world, web browsers would've been more-or-less done once we had xhtml/xslt and flexbox, and they wouldn't cost $500M/year to maintain. The insanity we have today is largely thanks to the influence of... the ad companies.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Well no, web technologies have evolved for the better, and browsers enabled that. Security patches have to be shipped. That takes resources to build.
skydhash 3y ago
I would be perfectly happy paying for a browser (60% or more of my computing) if it was aligned to my incentive (better extension than safari’s and no third party like pocket)

nerdjon 3y ago

Personally I think he dilemma is justified, just because I use an ad blocker doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it on principal. However like you said, the problem is not the ads themselves it is the tracking that comes along for the ride. There isn't any inherent reason that ads have to be so privacy invasive (I guess it is hard to not have ads at least log your requests when they go to a different server but that alone is normal I guess). It is unfortunate that is seems the ship has sailed on actually privacy focused ads and instead of being tailored to the user they are just tailored to the content on the page/video/whatever. I would allow those ads if they existed. It sucks since I do think ads are important, website operators need some way to make money and it is clear that most people are not going to pay for the things they have grown accustom to getting for free. But the current solution is so privacy invasive that you have to block it.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
We have no moral obligation to be advertised to just as we have no moral obligation to be advertised to in order to consume content we didn't pay for. > It sucks since I do think ads are important, website operators need some way to make money They can sell physical goods and services, no one is preventing them from making money.
- delecti 3y ago
  > They can sell physical goods and services, no one is preventing them from making money. Youtube does indeed offer a way to pay to not see ads. That you're still talking about blocking ads would imply that you're only theoretically in favor of Youtube selling services.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  If you are going to quote me, maybe quote the entire line? > and it is clear that most people are not going to pay for the things they have grown accustom to getting for free. The unfortunate reality is that many people have been conditioned to get content for free. We can complain about it all we want but the vast majority of people are not going to suddenly going to start paying for something that was once free. You're right nothing is stopping them from selling physical goods and services, but wether or not that actually turns into making money is another story. I feel like if you are getting free content an ad is a fair tradeoff. IF that ad is not invading your privacy.

jasonlotito 3y ago

> I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior Once again, people blaming sites for things browsers should handle. It's not YouTube that does the tracking; it's your browser allowing it to happen. YouTube is not fetching data from you. YouTube is using the data you send it. This comes from the browser, allowing it to happen. The misplaced blame is why we are in this state.

skydhash 3y ago
Maligned usage is what they’re doing. Cookies is good for storing state as HTTP is stateless. Bu if you storing some marker so you can track me around the web, it’s in bad faith. Just like a program can use 4 GB of RAM if that’s needed but something that is just greedily taking memory is what we call a malware.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  This can be solved in the browsers while still keeping cookies. And it's not the sites forcing this, it's the browsers allowing this.

guestbest 3y ago

I don’t like advertising because it doesn’t even pretend to be informative firstly and secondly it’s not entertaining. Just inform me of what the product or service does and then if that is impossible just do a joke. I haven’t seen a YouTube in ads in years that doesn’t show some aspect of our society I don’t care about such as medications, crypto, how stupid a consumer who doesn’t buy their product is, etc. That’s what I am avoiding with ad blocking. My life is better without all these things. I’m actually living a better life without ads.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

> I hate to see youtube die, It is a wonderful archive for society The actions of the past few weeks have proven it's a terrible archive for society. If there is anything you enjoy on there I'd suggest you archive it from there while you can because they'll be putting the same effort into blocking yt-dlp before the end of the year once people start taking advantage of that to bypass the ablock-block.

wintermutestwin 3y ago
I agree that some of the content on YT is of great cultural and useful value. The usual answer when the profit motive enshitifies something that is considered culturally valuable is to serve the public through a non profit organization instead of a publicly traded company. I realize I am saying this on a forum created for technical folks who hope to win the startup lottery so I don’t expect much…

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

To be precise, this is not "blocking" ads, this is simply not making HTTP requests for ads. It is the web user's choice whether or not to send an HTTP request. Servers "block" HTTP requests, not clients.

bobdvb 3y ago

The biggest issue with generic or burnt in ads is that they're not targeted ads. The value of an ad which isn't targeted is more than an order of magnitude less than one which is targeted. Traditional free-to-air broadcasting (mostly) works financially because they pay once for the transmission, it's a largely fixed fee to cover an area, and then they get paid for the audience they potentially reach. Even still the broadcasters have to pay to have market research agencies run surveys to figure out what's being watched and by whom. When pay TV providers became able to get telemetry from set-top boxes the value of the addressable market rocketed because the audience was no longer hypothetical, it could be measured, analysed and segmented. The reason you get crap ads when personalisation is turned off is because the advertisers who have money want their advertising dollars spent on addressable market, not on random NPCs. A non-addressable ad is cheaper, so that's the market for who's buying the ads. I hate ads, so I have YouTube Premium Family, that works great because I can see content without interruption and I support the independent content creators. I also run PiHole because some sites and services are just so loaded with advertising that it's annoying, so I might well be hypocritical here. But the biggest issue that people don't understand, or think they understand but totally under estimate, is the technical challenge of delivering every video on YouTube everywhere in the world with fair quality. I build streaming infrastructure at scale (not for Google) and I'll tell you that it's really expensive to do what they do and yet people take it for granted. They feel entitled to watch YouTube because Google represents the evil establishment, without recognising the challenges they face. I don't agree with the idea that it's good to write apps that mooch off YouTube just because they're a big corporation. Yup, it's not piracy, it's probably on the lighter side of the grey area of unauthorised API abuse. If you want to build a competing service to Google that comes without personalised ads and has great content, I wish you all the best but when you get the CDN bill, you'll understand. There's a cost per viewed minute that's probably unsustainable. Heck, even traditional broadcasters who have launched their own streaming services have struggled to make money, and that's with targeted advertising enabled.