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More hot takes from the author: that they are unable to come up with a lawful business model is not my (or anyone elses) concern. There is no morality issue h

More hot takes from the author: that they are unable to come up with a lawful business model is not my (or anyone elses) concern. There is no morality issue here - there is no law which requires us to watch ads and there is no law which forbids us from blocking them (despite decades of lobbying to try to introduce one). Ads are a cancer on society, they are manipulative and create massive social harms. Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. This guy never watched ad-supported TV before Netflix? Never made a free Google search? Never used Twitter? He's on Twitter but doesn't pay for the checkmark (not that I like X's approach). Therefore, he's ok using Twitter's ad-supported service. He has a Twitch channel - which is ad-supported mostly. To me, the author is a giant hypocrite. How can I take the author seriously when he's benefiting from ad-supported free services? PS. He asks his followers to donate in crypto. He calls himself an "expensive consultant for hire". It feels like this guy is just trying to stir stuff up to get attention and rile up "privacy at all cost" people to give him donations and hire him. This is the equivalent to Hollywood's "all publicity is good publicity" in my opinion.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube Google themselves doesn't want us to use YouTube premium, otherwise they wouldn't be charging multiple times what they earn through ads for the premium service.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  I'm not convinced by that. I find a ton of value in Youtube Premium. I share it with my family. Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Premium provides higher quality videos where applicable. The amount of time I save myself from watching ads is already well worth it. If you're a light user of Youtube - I would agree that it's not worth it. But the way I use it makes it quite a bargain.
  - pipes 3y ago
    Right, this is making me think I should cancel my Spotify account and get YouTube premium. Is it as good as Spotify for both podcasts and music?
    - moritzwarhier 3y ago
      You might be jesting, I'll still answer :) I don't know about podcasts, but there is just so much spoken video content and there is background playback.. so I actually use YT for such content since I have premium (not YT music). For music, YT (music) has been at least on par with Spotify for me. Search can be slightly confusing when the content you are looking for has not been uploaded by "official artist channels", but in the end artist, album, title and "go to album" still always work. It feels they have at least as much content, probably more. Recommendations have been way better for me so far as well. Might be because my Spotify account was overfitted and had too many playlists, but spotify recommendations had become unusable for me, that was one of my reasons for cancelling. I guess the killer feature combination is really just background playback + YouTube catalogue + perfect filtering of music vs non music content.
      - pipes 3y ago
        I wasn't joking, thanks for the response :)
  - vintermann 3y ago
    > Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Oh great, a textbook example of using a dominating position in one market to gain entry to another. If Google gets to complain that "if we all blocked ads, we'll all be worse off", it feels relevant that "If we all played along with Google's monopoly games, we'd be worse off".
    - aurareturn 3y ago
      Businesses bundle services all the time and they have done it throughout human history. Has nothing to do with tech or being in a dominant position. If Google can duplicate Spotify’s business and give it away cheaper, why not? Add more value if you’re Spotify.
3seashells 3y ago
>Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. I did pay for prime and learned my lesson. They can't leave this dog be, so with contempt I treat all thee
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  > They can't leave this dog be, so with contempt I treat all thee This seems like a quote or paraphrase, but no amount of google/ddg/bing/gpt can find me where it's from!
  - 3seashells 3y ago
    I made it all up.. Sorry
    - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
      That's awesome! It's very quotable!
vintermann 3y ago
Haven't we been through this before... If refusing to watch the ads is evil lazy freeloading/stealing, then so is watching the ads and not buying the product. If you plan to do the latter, you might as well do the former. If there's a difference, at best it's the difference between stiffing Google and helping Google stiff their advertisers. Either way, if everyone did it, it wouldn't last.
- dangus 3y ago
  You’ve actually taken the argument further than it can go. Advertisers don’t pay Google by the number of products sold. They pay for Google to display ads. As long as the ads are displayed, the transaction is satisfied. Advertisers don’t pay for customers’ direct purchases. They know that seeing an ad influences purchase decisions, even when the consumer is aware of the advertisement. You aren’t “stiffing” the advertisers by refusing to buy their product. It’s really simple: Google can get revenue from advertisers or direct subscribers. Those are their paying customers. People who block ads entirely don’t count as ad impressions and aren’t paying the subscription fee. They are the only non-revenue user. You’ve got a right to block ads but Google has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Nobody on either is committing a crime. The leeches want to complain about their poor user experience but Google gave you a paid no-ads option alongside an ad-supported product. I can’t figure out what alternative is reasonable.
didntcheck 3y ago
It was somewhat amusing to see people who'd been saying "I'm willing to pay to support websites and creators, but alas there is simply no option for me" pivot into being outraged at the mere option of having what they asked for. It was always a clear post-hoc rationalization with no substance, but it's useful to see the bluff called
- chatmasta 3y ago
  Your point about hypocrisy may be valid, but it doesn't seem fair to imply the new behavior is to give the user an option to pay creators. That already existed. The new behavior is removing the option to block advertisements.
paddim8 3y ago
Yeah. Ads are what makes YouTube accessible to people who can't afford to pay for these kind of things. Hosting videos for free wouldn't be sustainable either.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Just to break your mental model ;-) I would recommend you leave the ad-blocker on when running youtube premium too. By now it's more like an (additional layer of) antivirus, and thus you should leave it <always on>. As people find more and more ways to make malicious online adverts and other online software, it becomes more and more important to protect against them.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  No problem. I have Adblock on always. I still pay for YouTube Premium. I know Adblock is “wrong”. I fully admit it. I’m not going to justify my Adblock usage by saying ads are morally wrong. I should disable Adblock so services can make money. But I don’t because it’s too easy to enable Adblock.
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    The incentives in the online advertising industry are a bit broken, so there are a lot of bad actors out there. Adblock is not "wrong". And you should not disable it "so services can make money". Would you disable your virus scanner "so services can make money"? There's plenty of ways to make money that don't include predatory behavior. Meanwhile, keep your security posture up. Make sure your money goes to people who deserve it, not random people who spy on you or worse. Keep your adblocker on at all times. It keeps dishonest people at bay, and keeps honest people honest too. Tell your friends and family to do the same.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. "If you don't like the illegal version, just pay for the legal version" is an interesting take, but not particularly compelling.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube Google themselves doesn't want us to use YouTube premium, otherwise they wouldn't be charging multiple times what they earn through ads for the premium service.

aurareturn 3y ago
I'm not convinced by that. I find a ton of value in Youtube Premium. I share it with my family. Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Premium provides higher quality videos where applicable. The amount of time I save myself from watching ads is already well worth it. If you're a light user of Youtube - I would agree that it's not worth it. But the way I use it makes it quite a bargain.
- pipes 3y ago
  Right, this is making me think I should cancel my Spotify account and get YouTube premium. Is it as good as Spotify for both podcasts and music?
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    You might be jesting, I'll still answer :) I don't know about podcasts, but there is just so much spoken video content and there is background playback.. so I actually use YT for such content since I have premium (not YT music). For music, YT (music) has been at least on par with Spotify for me. Search can be slightly confusing when the content you are looking for has not been uploaded by "official artist channels", but in the end artist, album, title and "go to album" still always work. It feels they have at least as much content, probably more. Recommendations have been way better for me so far as well. Might be because my Spotify account was overfitted and had too many playlists, but spotify recommendations had become unusable for me, that was one of my reasons for cancelling. I guess the killer feature combination is really just background playback + YouTube catalogue + perfect filtering of music vs non music content.
    - pipes 3y ago
      I wasn't joking, thanks for the response :)
- vintermann 3y ago
  > Youtube Premium also comes with Youtube Music - which allows me to cancel Spotify. Oh great, a textbook example of using a dominating position in one market to gain entry to another. If Google gets to complain that "if we all blocked ads, we'll all be worse off", it feels relevant that "If we all played along with Google's monopoly games, we'd be worse off".
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    Businesses bundle services all the time and they have done it throughout human history. Has nothing to do with tech or being in a dominant position. If Google can duplicate Spotify’s business and give it away cheaper, why not? Add more value if you’re Spotify.

3seashells 3y ago

>Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. I did pay for prime and learned my lesson. They can't leave this dog be, so with contempt I treat all thee

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
> They can't leave this dog be, so with contempt I treat all thee This seems like a quote or paraphrase, but no amount of google/ddg/bing/gpt can find me where it's from!
- 3seashells 3y ago
  I made it all up.. Sorry
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    That's awesome! It's very quotable!

vintermann 3y ago

Haven't we been through this before... If refusing to watch the ads is evil lazy freeloading/stealing, then so is watching the ads and not buying the product. If you plan to do the latter, you might as well do the former. If there's a difference, at best it's the difference between stiffing Google and helping Google stiff their advertisers. Either way, if everyone did it, it wouldn't last.

dangus 3y ago
You’ve actually taken the argument further than it can go. Advertisers don’t pay Google by the number of products sold. They pay for Google to display ads. As long as the ads are displayed, the transaction is satisfied. Advertisers don’t pay for customers’ direct purchases. They know that seeing an ad influences purchase decisions, even when the consumer is aware of the advertisement. You aren’t “stiffing” the advertisers by refusing to buy their product. It’s really simple: Google can get revenue from advertisers or direct subscribers. Those are their paying customers. People who block ads entirely don’t count as ad impressions and aren’t paying the subscription fee. They are the only non-revenue user. You’ve got a right to block ads but Google has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Nobody on either is committing a crime. The leeches want to complain about their poor user experience but Google gave you a paid no-ads option alongside an ad-supported product. I can’t figure out what alternative is reasonable.

didntcheck 3y ago

It was somewhat amusing to see people who'd been saying "I'm willing to pay to support websites and creators, but alas there is simply no option for me" pivot into being outraged at the mere option of having what they asked for. It was always a clear post-hoc rationalization with no substance, but it's useful to see the bluff called

chatmasta 3y ago
Your point about hypocrisy may be valid, but it doesn't seem fair to imply the new behavior is to give the user an option to pay creators. That already existed. The new behavior is removing the option to block advertisements.

paddim8 3y ago

Yeah. Ads are what makes YouTube accessible to people who can't afford to pay for these kind of things. Hosting videos for free wouldn't be sustainable either.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

Just to break your mental model ;-) I would recommend you leave the ad-blocker on when running youtube premium too. By now it's more like an (additional layer of) antivirus, and thus you should leave it <always on>. As people find more and more ways to make malicious online adverts and other online software, it becomes more and more important to protect against them.

aurareturn 3y ago
No problem. I have Adblock on always. I still pay for YouTube Premium. I know Adblock is “wrong”. I fully admit it. I’m not going to justify my Adblock usage by saying ads are morally wrong. I should disable Adblock so services can make money. But I don’t because it’s too easy to enable Adblock.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  The incentives in the online advertising industry are a bit broken, so there are a lot of bad actors out there. Adblock is not "wrong". And you should not disable it "so services can make money". Would you disable your virus scanner "so services can make money"? There's plenty of ways to make money that don't include predatory behavior. Meanwhile, keep your security posture up. Make sure your money goes to people who deserve it, not random people who spy on you or worse. Keep your adblocker on at all times. It keeps dishonest people at bay, and keeps honest people honest too. Tell your friends and family to do the same.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> Then just pay for a Youtube Premium account and get all your followers to buy a Youtube Premium account. No one is forcing you to use the ad-supported version of Youtube. "If you don't like the illegal version, just pay for the legal version" is an interesting take, but not particularly compelling.