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Why, from first principles, should YouTube allow this? Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? I understand ads are annoying - I block as many as I can! - but I’v

by ketzo 3y ago

Why, from first principles, should YouTube allow this? Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? I understand ads are annoying - I block as many as I can! - but I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice.

throw_pm23 3y ago
What about ads displayed on a busstop? Should I feel guilty for looking the other way? It subsidizes public transportation afterall..
- jamielife 3y ago
  Not really a fair comparison. The equivalent to "looking the other way," on YouTube would be exactly that, looking somewhere other than the ad (opening another browser, going to the bathroom, etc.). Ad Blockers are essential painting over the bus stop ad completely, so you don't even have a chance to see it.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    That's an even worse analogy, because ad blockers only block the ads for you, not for everyone else. A better analogy is getting someone else to paint over all the ads in the free ad-supported newspaper before you read it.
  - bluish29 3y ago
    While the comparison is not 1:1 but the result is the same in the two cases. I don't see the ads, one of them I have more control on how effective I can prevent ads. Also in both cases I pay for the bus from my money so that I pay for the internet connection from my own money. The internet is built on free protocols and I can use it whatever I want. Google does not pay TCP/IP..etc designers/operators a portion of theid ad revenue. Why would they feel entitled to the the internet infrastructure they don't pay for?
    - jamielife 3y ago
      Because it costs them money to host the videos on their servers, you're not paying for the protocol to deliver the content, just like you're not paying for the roads when you ride the bus. Additionally it cost the content creators time, money, and energy to make the content. People should get paid for that. So you're also paying the bus driver, the mechanics, etc.
      - bluish29 3y ago
        People pay for the roads that is being used while riding a bus. It is built and maintained by their taxes. Bus fares is going towards other costs from operations to salaries. YouTube on the other hand is a freeloader on the internet infrastructure.
        jamielife 3y ago
        That's a ridiculous take. The Internet isn't just free infrastructure that anyone can use. The data has to live somewhere. 2,500 people work at YT. They pay salaries, have offices, manage servers to store the videos, pay their content creators, etc. So nobody is allowed to start an internet company and make money from it? Uber is a business using roads that people pay for, should they not make money? Should those drivers not get paid as well?
        bluish29 3y ago
        >That's a ridiculous take Please chill up and don't forget the HN guidelines [1] "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." That is not the point of my comment, you misinterpreted the meaning of my comments and then built an assumption that it says that "nobody is allowed to start an internet company and make money from it?" Which is not what my comments says. I will also not try to engage with a discussion in which side don't discuss in a good faith. Specially coming from a new account created for this purpose only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - seasox 3y ago
    Ad Blockers are special glasses that allow the wearer to see an empty area where the ad is supposed to be. I believe people should be allowed to wear the glasses they want.
    - jamielife 3y ago
      I agree. But services should also be able to require that you remove those types of glasses to use their service. In that case, if you ride the bus for free, you see the ads or you don't ride the bus.
      - alucardo 3y ago
        Blind people shouldn't be allowed to ride the bus then?
        jamielife 3y ago
        Blind people would be fine as they wouldn't be wearing the glasses. Being physically unable to see the ads and purposely hiding them, are two different things.
  - meindnoch 3y ago
    What about using AR glasses that recognize ads and paint them over? Is that also unfair? Should we ban such AR glasses in the future?
    - acdha 3y ago
      That’s not an appropriate analogy: advertisers know what they’re getting into and how much they pay isn’t contingent on forcing you to look. If AR glasses become common, expect to see ad revenues decline even as ads become more annoying.
- tmtvl 3y ago
  No and you should also not feel guilty for ignoring the ads on a YT video. Getting a chip implanted in your brain which filters out advertisements from your vision would be closer to installing an ad blocker in your browser; and I don't know how I would feel about companies denying free service to people with such chips implanted.
- lazycouchpotato 3y ago
  At the very least, everyone sees the same ads. Bus stop ads (for now) don't have access to your private information, don't make models out of you and don't abuse that information in order to serve you highly targeted ads. It's creepy. https://mastodon.social/@lazycouchpotato/111251984595065259 https://mastodon.social/@lazycouchpotato/111251984595065259
MostlyStable 3y ago
Neither side is wrong. Youtube has every right to try as hard as it can to get users to view ads. And users have every right to try as hard as they can to block those ads. I don't have a right to ad-free youtube, but I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer. If I (and people like me) are abundant enough and succesful enough, then youtube and other services will be forced to abandon an ad-supported model. I'm personally ok with that. But as long as they are attempting to pursue ad revenue, I'm going to try and avoid those ads, for a host of reasons.
- ketzo 3y ago
  I think this is a great take, with one exception: I think the loss of (free) ad-supported YouTube would be a devastating loss for the world at large.
  - darthrupert 3y ago
    How's that? Its algorithm is not exactly making the world a better place. It's filled with propaganda from all corners of the political spectrum with about zero responsibility. But there is also TikTok, which is even worse. So yeah, in that way you could be right. If only we could pay for the things we use, and only that.
    - crop_rotation 3y ago
      YouTube has been such a big boon to the world in helping people learn. The amount of people who have learnt several skills from YouTube enabling them to make a living is very very large. I know several people who had non STEM education and taught them CS via YouTube and went on to have good SWE careers. Whole of MIT OCS is hosted on Youtube. All of Khan Academy videos are also hosted on Youtube.
      - trimethylpurine 3y ago
        They could be hosted elsewhere. Why should free education material that is already funded by donations be locked behind ad based hosting? Hosting is not that expensive if you're using only those services. Especially in the countries where it's mostly being used.
afterburner 3y ago
They totally could. But then I would probably watch way fewer videos, just like before.
Mordisquitos 3y ago
If I were an advertiser on YouTube I would be very wary of YouTube's efforts on this. I wouldn't want to be paying YouTube for ad views of people who find advertising so annoying that they make such an effort to block it. Best case scenario, frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away, so I'm paying the same price for less value, sometimes as low as zero. Worst case scenario, these users will actively despise my brand and avoid it altogether because they will associate it to their disdain for YouTube ads, so I'm paying for negative value.
- andirk 3y ago
  Agreed, but I think the key is: targeting + good creative. Ad networks often allow targeting to some extent and I suggest targeting your audience as much as possible. 2nd, if the ad isn't relative to me BUT is interesting or funny, then I also often don't mind that.
- StableAlkyne 3y ago
  The trouble is that ads frequently don't try to make you love a brand. What they do is build up familiarity - for example, a rule of thumb they all use, that you will notice everywhere, is to repeat the product name at least 3 times. Then when you're at the store or buying a service, you are more likely to choose a product you are familiar with. Even if you don't consciously acknowledge that familiarity. Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects.
  - Mordisquitos 3y ago
    > Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects. I'm not talking about people who think they are immune to advertising, I'm talking about people who take active measures to reduce its effect on them—be it technological (adblock), sensory (muting) or psychological (disdain). I would argue that people who think they are immune to advertising are not motivated to do any of these things. In any case though, I have never seen any data or research that supports that common truism that "nobody is immune to advertising". If anything, it may be true that nobody is immune to some kind of advertising—not to generic advertising per se. It is well accepted that advertising should be targeted by age, income, culture, educational level demographics. An ad designed for American teenagers probably won't work well on a middle-aged Indian lawyer, and an ad targeted at Indian educated professionals is not well suited for a 20-something Italian mechanic. So how can we assume that an ad that works on a person who makes no conscious effort to block or avoid ads will work just as well on a person who is constantly taking active steps to avoid them?
starbugs 3y ago
> Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? They might lose significant Chrome market share. Chrome is also a "free" product. I could reverse your logic and ask why they shouldn't inject their ads into the HTML you downloaded from somewhere, from first principles?
bravoetch 3y ago
Here's my defense of ad-blocking: Autonomy.
meiraleal 3y ago
Why do you ask? Because it would cause them more harm than benefit. They have thousands of people working on that and this is the conclusion they got so far. I never used youtube without adblock and won't ever use it. I hope they block adblocks so it become so annoying that better options start to appear again.
- ThatPlayer 3y ago
  Better options don't magically appear. Especially in an unsustainable market: nobody wants an audience of users who don't watch ads and don't pay. Where's the money to make the better option coming from?
  - ozyschmozy 3y ago
    I don't think not wanting to pay for YouTube is the same as not wanting to pay, period. I happily pay for Nebula but block ads on YouTube. I know plenty of people who do the same, or subscribe to patreons and such of people they follow.
    - ThatPlayer 3y ago
      Patreon is still heavily reliant on YouTube for the actual video hosting. Vimeo didn't go well [0]. Patreon has started their own video hosting service in beta, but haven't finalized prices yet. Even then plenty of creators would probably rather upload on YouTube for free than pay for Patreon. Other services like Nebula are not a replacement for YouTube in this use case and many use cases. The comment I was replying to wouldn't be asking for better options instead of just using Nebula if it was. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-creators-price-increase https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-cr...
  - meiraleal 3y ago
    Google became a trillion dollar company in this "unsustainable" market. It won't work forever, that I can agree.
Lammy 3y ago
From first principles: any person’s most limited resource in life is their attention, and YouTube should be grateful that anyone is willing to dedicate any attention to videos on their service at all considering the power it grants The Algorithm to shape our ways of thinking about ourselves, each other, and the world we inhabit. Ads, paywalls, and all other forms of access-control are a way of obscuring the relationship between programming and programmed, inverting it to me about me wanting to access them instead of them wanting to access me. It’s like that Cartmanland episode of South Park where telling people they can’t come to the park makes everyone want to come to the park. This is not unique to YouTube or other streaming services, just the newest and most effective in the long line of newspapers, Hollywood, radio, TV, etc, and why all of those previous forms of media are as well-aligned with the US Government as is “““Big Tech”””. Ever gone for a Cultural Victory in Civ?
jeroenhd 3y ago
For random websites, adblockers provide security against malvertisers. On Youtube, it's convenience and unwillingness to either pay or stop using the service. I don't have a problem being unethical to Google, but I will probably end up paying once my adblocker no longer works on Youtube. Many people have literally grown up with Youtube, and a large section of them have used ad blockers for most of their lives. They see the adblockblock on Youtube as an attempt to take away a service that's supposed to be (ad) free, because to them, it always has been free. When you see Youtube as the free, unlimited repository of videos that the internet provides you with, forcing minute long ads on Youtube would feel like putting billboards in a national park. The same is true for many other services. Everyone is mad that Netflix wants its customers to pay. The best stretch I've found is that Netflix tweeted "sharing is caring" once, but sharing accounts within a household has always been allowed. In their attempts to undercut the competition by shedding money to provide services for free or for cheap, large corporations have cultivated a large audience that expects everything for free with no contribution from their end. Fifteen years of free, almost ad-less service, is a long time, and it changed the culture of the internet.
healsdata 3y ago
Almost every argument is readily dismantled because Google offers a paid, ad-free version of the service. I can see a privacy argument being made by folks who don't want their viewing history associated with one account but also don't want ads. I'm not an expert, but I'm not sure what monetization strategy would appease those folks. Proof of work on crypto mining for each video you want to watch, with any found coins going to Google?
- mda 3y ago
  Simple, because most of the people wants to have the cake and eat it.
snickerbockers 3y ago
It's because you have to use YouTube. You don't get a choice. Content creators who upload to other sites don't get an audience, and audiences who go to other sites don't get any content. This is effectively a monopoly. It probably doesn't fit any legal definition of a monopoly but it has all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship between a service and a customer base. And therefore you shouldn't feel any guilt of depriving Google of their ad-revenue or their mining of your personal data. Google's not some poor little startup that bit off more than it could chew and accidentally ended up serving videos to the entire world, they have strategically maneuvered themselves into this position for the money and influence they stand to gain by putting themselves in a position where they have information and control over how information is exchanged between people online.
meindnoch 3y ago
>Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? What does "going thermonuclear" look like in this context?
- serf 3y ago
  my imagination of it : YT search as well as playback is behind a login.
- akshayt 3y ago
  Directly embedding ads in the video
zeraholladay 3y ago
Think we agree that blocking ad blockers is in YouTube's immediate, short-term interest. However, I'm not sure it's in their long-term interest because it goes against the principle of reciprocation. Regarding reciprocation, a lot of platforms offer a free tier and then offer additional features for paid subscribers. There's the principle of reciprocation at play: they give me something for free and that then makes me more likely to pay for additional features. But I'm only willing to pay for features, not to have an annoyance, like ads, removed. The conditions I'd have to agree to feel coerced ... like making an agreement with Darth Vader: "pray YouTube doesn't alter the deal further by now only blocking 50% of ads for a paid subscriber." What do I, as an end user, get out of this other than feeling hostile towards YouTube? It's my computational device and my internet connection. I think there's a very complex argument to be made but this isn't the forum for it.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Why aren't you hostile against your Internet service provider for charging you for access? Why do you accept paying the ISP to access YouTube, but not paying YouTube or video creators?
  - zeraholladay 3y ago
    I think with ISPs there's an obvious upfront material cost for building infrastructure. In that sense I'm very much the consumer. Obviously, there's substantial infra cost too with social media platforms like YouTube. However, the consumer-producer dichotomy isn't as clear with social media platforms since the user base is the product. That is, the value of a social media platform comes first from the masses of people using it and second the design, the infrastructure, etc. This is why I think reciprocity (in the psychological sense) is so important for social media companies because the product can just walk out the door. My understanding is that content creators see very little or next to none of the ad revenue. The content creators are the reason people are using YouTube. So I prefer to support them through Patreon. Second, I've heard that the vast, vast majority of content creators make next to nothing through YouTube -- these content creators are paying the opportunity cost to "make it big" or simply enjoy making content or using YouTube as a promotional vehicle for other services. I'm not trying to define a moral equivalence of why it's right to directly support content creators but not YouTube (Google is making enough money off me so that I have a clear conscience), but for the price of their ad free service I'd like to see a more equitable distribution.
deleted 3y ago
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NelsonMinar 3y ago
I wager most of the YouTube engineers use an ad blocker. As do many of the other people who work on YouTube. They don't want ads either. They know they are intrusive and obnoxious.
globular-toast 3y ago
I'll try to explain why I use adblock, use YouTube, but won't be paying for YouTube premium. First of all, I absolutely will not have ads in my own home. Ads are bad enough in public, but they will not be in my home. This is completely non-negotiable. So then, what are my choices? Well there are paid-for services like Netflix, for example. This is a straightforward choice for me: I either pay for it or I don't. Simple. Then there's the web. The web is essentially a public place. It thrives because it's free at the point of access. Unlike netflix, YouTube put itself on the web. It would not have become anywhere near what it is if it were like Netflix and behind a paywall. They used their "free" and "public" image to make themselves the only place on the internet for videos. What they want is to have their cake and eat it too: they want to be the dominant public platform, but they want guaranteed revenue like Netflix too. What I want is just to pay for my bandwidth fairly. If I pay for YouTube (which I must because remember ads are non-negotiable) then I'm not going to pay for any other platform. So YouTube grows as a monopoly. This is not the web. So you might say, well just stop using YouTube then, but why should I? I don't want to use YouTube. I'm not there because of anything they deliver, I don't care about 4K quality or whatever. I'm there because I want to learn how to put up a shelf. A lot of that videos are posted by people thinking they are doing a public service and sharing knowledge. If YouTube were behind a paywall then they'd post them somewhere else. So they just need to make up their mind. You want money? Then don't be public. Watch other platforms grow overnight. Watch P2P video sharing grow (which is how it should be). You want to be public and be the only video platform? Then I'll be blocking the ads when I try to access video in the only practical way I can. Also, if this is about the cost then why not get the uploaders to pay for it? After all, it's their content that's being stored. Again, because if they did that then YouTube would not be the Borg of video content that it is.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
eh_why_not 3y ago
One point I don't see mentioned: YouTube is not the creator/owner of the content. There are even channels that are actively against the advertising business model and that rely on off-platform subscriptions and donations. I.e. the creator still gets value even if no ads show on their videos. YouTube still shows ads on those channels though. And the more eyeballs and YT subscriptions these channels get, the more YT makes money off them. Now what percentage of viewers use ad blockers? 5%? 10%?... YT still makes money off the rest. It's not like those are a worrying cost center to YT. Why then go to those extremes to shave the last penny of the last person who really strongly does not want to see the ads (which potentially undermines the advertiser's purpose of making you like their product)?
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice Let me give it a try then. As part of part of our cognitive functions, our attention is inalienable. It is ours. It's not theirs to sell off to the highest bidder. It's not currency to pay for services with. They do not get to insert brands and taglines into our minds without our consent. Advertising is mind rape and ad blocking is justified self-defense. I literally don't care how many billions they lose, I will block ads, I will help others block ads and I won't lose even one second of sleep over it. They are not entitled to our attention. Their choices are to charge money up front or to deal with it. If they send us ads, we'll delete them.
- ketzo 3y ago
  If you care enough to describe advertising as “mind rape,” why use the service at all? Why should you be allowed to take a thing from them without paying for it in some way? Just because you are technically able?
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Because I'm not "taking" anything. They're the ones who send people stuff for free. They're more than capable of returning HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of a video stream. If they send me ads instead I'll delete them. Don't turn this around on us. They're the ones poisoning the well by offering free stuff with implicit strings attached and thereby normalizing "free" services. We're under exactly zero moral obligation to "pay" them by looking at ads. They have absolutely no one else but themselves to blame for their business model and the assumptions they made.
Garvi 3y ago
Youtube is very much in the wrong here. They are playing victim while there's hundreds of firms out there that would kill to be in their position, but cannot as Youtube has the monopoly on video on demand. Is this what we want, one megacorp for every major industry? Sounds like the Soviet Union and very much the polar opposite of competition, which is the base for any capitalistic society. A healthy market would have sorted this adds mess out by itself. Even if Youtube were an entity on it's own and not already owned by an even more massive corp, it'd be way overdue for breaking up. No competition -> no capitalism -> no personal prosperity -> no personal financial freedom
sumedh 3y ago
> Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? Why shouldnt users go thermonuclear if Google tracks you everywhere. Why was Google allowed to buy Double Click and become a giant in ad space?

by ketzo 3y ago

throw_pm23 3y ago

What about ads displayed on a busstop? Should I feel guilty for looking the other way? It subsidizes public transportation afterall..

jamielife 3y ago
Not really a fair comparison. The equivalent to "looking the other way," on YouTube would be exactly that, looking somewhere other than the ad (opening another browser, going to the bathroom, etc.). Ad Blockers are essential painting over the bus stop ad completely, so you don't even have a chance to see it.
- jstanley 3y ago
  That's an even worse analogy, because ad blockers only block the ads for you, not for everyone else. A better analogy is getting someone else to paint over all the ads in the free ad-supported newspaper before you read it.
- bluish29 3y ago
  While the comparison is not 1:1 but the result is the same in the two cases. I don't see the ads, one of them I have more control on how effective I can prevent ads. Also in both cases I pay for the bus from my money so that I pay for the internet connection from my own money. The internet is built on free protocols and I can use it whatever I want. Google does not pay TCP/IP..etc designers/operators a portion of theid ad revenue. Why would they feel entitled to the the internet infrastructure they don't pay for?
  - jamielife 3y ago
    Because it costs them money to host the videos on their servers, you're not paying for the protocol to deliver the content, just like you're not paying for the roads when you ride the bus. Additionally it cost the content creators time, money, and energy to make the content. People should get paid for that. So you're also paying the bus driver, the mechanics, etc.
    - bluish29 3y ago
      People pay for the roads that is being used while riding a bus. It is built and maintained by their taxes. Bus fares is going towards other costs from operations to salaries. YouTube on the other hand is a freeloader on the internet infrastructure.
      - jamielife 3y ago
        That's a ridiculous take. The Internet isn't just free infrastructure that anyone can use. The data has to live somewhere. 2,500 people work at YT. They pay salaries, have offices, manage servers to store the videos, pay their content creators, etc. So nobody is allowed to start an internet company and make money from it? Uber is a business using roads that people pay for, should they not make money? Should those drivers not get paid as well?
        bluish29 3y ago
        >That's a ridiculous take Please chill up and don't forget the HN guidelines [1] "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." That is not the point of my comment, you misinterpreted the meaning of my comments and then built an assumption that it says that "nobody is allowed to start an internet company and make money from it?" Which is not what my comments says. I will also not try to engage with a discussion in which side don't discuss in a good faith. Specially coming from a new account created for this purpose only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- seasox 3y ago
  Ad Blockers are special glasses that allow the wearer to see an empty area where the ad is supposed to be. I believe people should be allowed to wear the glasses they want.
  - jamielife 3y ago
    I agree. But services should also be able to require that you remove those types of glasses to use their service. In that case, if you ride the bus for free, you see the ads or you don't ride the bus.
    - alucardo 3y ago
      Blind people shouldn't be allowed to ride the bus then?
      - jamielife 3y ago
        Blind people would be fine as they wouldn't be wearing the glasses. Being physically unable to see the ads and purposely hiding them, are two different things.
- meindnoch 3y ago
  What about using AR glasses that recognize ads and paint them over? Is that also unfair? Should we ban such AR glasses in the future?
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s not an appropriate analogy: advertisers know what they’re getting into and how much they pay isn’t contingent on forcing you to look. If AR glasses become common, expect to see ad revenues decline even as ads become more annoying.
tmtvl 3y ago
No and you should also not feel guilty for ignoring the ads on a YT video. Getting a chip implanted in your brain which filters out advertisements from your vision would be closer to installing an ad blocker in your browser; and I don't know how I would feel about companies denying free service to people with such chips implanted.
lazycouchpotato 3y ago
At the very least, everyone sees the same ads. Bus stop ads (for now) don't have access to your private information, don't make models out of you and don't abuse that information in order to serve you highly targeted ads. It's creepy. https://mastodon.social/@lazycouchpotato/111251984595065259 https://mastodon.social/@lazycouchpotato/111251984595065259

MostlyStable 3y ago

Neither side is wrong. Youtube has every right to try as hard as it can to get users to view ads. And users have every right to try as hard as they can to block those ads. I don't have a right to ad-free youtube, but I do have every right to try and control what things get sent to and viewed on my computer. If I (and people like me) are abundant enough and succesful enough, then youtube and other services will be forced to abandon an ad-supported model. I'm personally ok with that. But as long as they are attempting to pursue ad revenue, I'm going to try and avoid those ads, for a host of reasons.

ketzo 3y ago
I think this is a great take, with one exception: I think the loss of (free) ad-supported YouTube would be a devastating loss for the world at large.
- darthrupert 3y ago
  How's that? Its algorithm is not exactly making the world a better place. It's filled with propaganda from all corners of the political spectrum with about zero responsibility. But there is also TikTok, which is even worse. So yeah, in that way you could be right. If only we could pay for the things we use, and only that.
  - crop_rotation 3y ago
    YouTube has been such a big boon to the world in helping people learn. The amount of people who have learnt several skills from YouTube enabling them to make a living is very very large. I know several people who had non STEM education and taught them CS via YouTube and went on to have good SWE careers. Whole of MIT OCS is hosted on Youtube. All of Khan Academy videos are also hosted on Youtube.
    - trimethylpurine 3y ago
      They could be hosted elsewhere. Why should free education material that is already funded by donations be locked behind ad based hosting? Hosting is not that expensive if you're using only those services. Especially in the countries where it's mostly being used.

afterburner 3y ago

They totally could. But then I would probably watch way fewer videos, just like before.

Mordisquitos 3y ago

If I were an advertiser on YouTube I would be very wary of YouTube's efforts on this. I wouldn't want to be paying YouTube for ad views of people who find advertising so annoying that they make such an effort to block it. Best case scenario, frustrated ex-adblock-users will ignore my ads by muting them or looking away, so I'm paying the same price for less value, sometimes as low as zero. Worst case scenario, these users will actively despise my brand and avoid it altogether because they will associate it to their disdain for YouTube ads, so I'm paying for negative value.

andirk 3y ago
Agreed, but I think the key is: targeting + good creative. Ad networks often allow targeting to some extent and I suggest targeting your audience as much as possible. 2nd, if the ad isn't relative to me BUT is interesting or funny, then I also often don't mind that.
StableAlkyne 3y ago
The trouble is that ads frequently don't try to make you love a brand. What they do is build up familiarity - for example, a rule of thumb they all use, that you will notice everywhere, is to repeat the product name at least 3 times. Then when you're at the store or buying a service, you are more likely to choose a product you are familiar with. Even if you don't consciously acknowledge that familiarity. Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects.
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  > Nobody is immune to advertising - the people who fool themselves into thinking they're immune are less likely to notice its effects. I'm not talking about people who think they are immune to advertising, I'm talking about people who take active measures to reduce its effect on them—be it technological (adblock), sensory (muting) or psychological (disdain). I would argue that people who think they are immune to advertising are not motivated to do any of these things. In any case though, I have never seen any data or research that supports that common truism that "nobody is immune to advertising". If anything, it may be true that nobody is immune to some kind of advertising—not to generic advertising per se. It is well accepted that advertising should be targeted by age, income, culture, educational level demographics. An ad designed for American teenagers probably won't work well on a middle-aged Indian lawyer, and an ad targeted at Indian educated professionals is not well suited for a 20-something Italian mechanic. So how can we assume that an ad that works on a person who makes no conscious effort to block or avoid ads will work just as well on a person who is constantly taking active steps to avoid them?

starbugs 3y ago

> Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? They might lose significant Chrome market share. Chrome is also a "free" product. I could reverse your logic and ask why they shouldn't inject their ads into the HTML you downloaded from somewhere, from first principles?

bravoetch 3y ago

Here's my defense of ad-blocking: Autonomy.

meiraleal 3y ago

Why do you ask? Because it would cause them more harm than benefit. They have thousands of people working on that and this is the conclusion they got so far. I never used youtube without adblock and won't ever use it. I hope they block adblocks so it become so annoying that better options start to appear again.

ThatPlayer 3y ago
Better options don't magically appear. Especially in an unsustainable market: nobody wants an audience of users who don't watch ads and don't pay. Where's the money to make the better option coming from?
- ozyschmozy 3y ago
  I don't think not wanting to pay for YouTube is the same as not wanting to pay, period. I happily pay for Nebula but block ads on YouTube. I know plenty of people who do the same, or subscribe to patreons and such of people they follow.
  - ThatPlayer 3y ago
    Patreon is still heavily reliant on YouTube for the actual video hosting. Vimeo didn't go well [0]. Patreon has started their own video hosting service in beta, but haven't finalized prices yet. Even then plenty of creators would probably rather upload on YouTube for free than pay for Patreon. Other services like Nebula are not a replacement for YouTube in this use case and many use cases. The comment I was replying to wouldn't be asking for better options instead of just using Nebula if it was. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-creators-price-increase https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-cr...
- meiraleal 3y ago
  Google became a trillion dollar company in this "unsustainable" market. It won't work forever, that I can agree.

Lammy 3y ago

From first principles: any person’s most limited resource in life is their attention, and YouTube should be grateful that anyone is willing to dedicate any attention to videos on their service at all considering the power it grants The Algorithm to shape our ways of thinking about ourselves, each other, and the world we inhabit. Ads, paywalls, and all other forms of access-control are a way of obscuring the relationship between programming and programmed, inverting it to me about me wanting to access them instead of them wanting to access me. It’s like that Cartmanland episode of South Park where telling people they can’t come to the park makes everyone want to come to the park. This is not unique to YouTube or other streaming services, just the newest and most effective in the long line of newspapers, Hollywood, radio, TV, etc, and why all of those previous forms of media are as well-aligned with the US Government as is “““Big Tech”””. Ever gone for a Cultural Victory in Civ?

jeroenhd 3y ago

For random websites, adblockers provide security against malvertisers. On Youtube, it's convenience and unwillingness to either pay or stop using the service. I don't have a problem being unethical to Google, but I will probably end up paying once my adblocker no longer works on Youtube. Many people have literally grown up with Youtube, and a large section of them have used ad blockers for most of their lives. They see the adblockblock on Youtube as an attempt to take away a service that's supposed to be (ad) free, because to them, it always has been free. When you see Youtube as the free, unlimited repository of videos that the internet provides you with, forcing minute long ads on Youtube would feel like putting billboards in a national park. The same is true for many other services. Everyone is mad that Netflix wants its customers to pay. The best stretch I've found is that Netflix tweeted "sharing is caring" once, but sharing accounts within a household has always been allowed. In their attempts to undercut the competition by shedding money to provide services for free or for cheap, large corporations have cultivated a large audience that expects everything for free with no contribution from their end. Fifteen years of free, almost ad-less service, is a long time, and it changed the culture of the internet.

healsdata 3y ago

Almost every argument is readily dismantled because Google offers a paid, ad-free version of the service. I can see a privacy argument being made by folks who don't want their viewing history associated with one account but also don't want ads. I'm not an expert, but I'm not sure what monetization strategy would appease those folks. Proof of work on crypto mining for each video you want to watch, with any found coins going to Google?

mda 3y ago
Simple, because most of the people wants to have the cake and eat it.

snickerbockers 3y ago

It's because you have to use YouTube. You don't get a choice. Content creators who upload to other sites don't get an audience, and audiences who go to other sites don't get any content. This is effectively a monopoly. It probably doesn't fit any legal definition of a monopoly but it has all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship between a service and a customer base. And therefore you shouldn't feel any guilt of depriving Google of their ad-revenue or their mining of your personal data. Google's not some poor little startup that bit off more than it could chew and accidentally ended up serving videos to the entire world, they have strategically maneuvered themselves into this position for the money and influence they stand to gain by putting themselves in a position where they have information and control over how information is exchanged between people online.

meindnoch 3y ago

>Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? What does "going thermonuclear" look like in this context?

serf 3y ago
my imagination of it : YT search as well as playback is behind a login.
akshayt 3y ago
Directly embedding ads in the video

zeraholladay 3y ago

Think we agree that blocking ad blockers is in YouTube's immediate, short-term interest. However, I'm not sure it's in their long-term interest because it goes against the principle of reciprocation. Regarding reciprocation, a lot of platforms offer a free tier and then offer additional features for paid subscribers. There's the principle of reciprocation at play: they give me something for free and that then makes me more likely to pay for additional features. But I'm only willing to pay for features, not to have an annoyance, like ads, removed. The conditions I'd have to agree to feel coerced ... like making an agreement with Darth Vader: "pray YouTube doesn't alter the deal further by now only blocking 50% of ads for a paid subscriber." What do I, as an end user, get out of this other than feeling hostile towards YouTube? It's my computational device and my internet connection. I think there's a very complex argument to be made but this isn't the forum for it.

carlosjobim 3y ago
Why aren't you hostile against your Internet service provider for charging you for access? Why do you accept paying the ISP to access YouTube, but not paying YouTube or video creators?
- zeraholladay 3y ago
  I think with ISPs there's an obvious upfront material cost for building infrastructure. In that sense I'm very much the consumer. Obviously, there's substantial infra cost too with social media platforms like YouTube. However, the consumer-producer dichotomy isn't as clear with social media platforms since the user base is the product. That is, the value of a social media platform comes first from the masses of people using it and second the design, the infrastructure, etc. This is why I think reciprocity (in the psychological sense) is so important for social media companies because the product can just walk out the door. My understanding is that content creators see very little or next to none of the ad revenue. The content creators are the reason people are using YouTube. So I prefer to support them through Patreon. Second, I've heard that the vast, vast majority of content creators make next to nothing through YouTube -- these content creators are paying the opportunity cost to "make it big" or simply enjoy making content or using YouTube as a promotional vehicle for other services. I'm not trying to define a moral equivalence of why it's right to directly support content creators but not YouTube (Google is making enough money off me so that I have a clear conscience), but for the price of their ad free service I'd like to see a more equitable distribution.

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NelsonMinar 3y ago

I wager most of the YouTube engineers use an ad blocker. As do many of the other people who work on YouTube. They don't want ads either. They know they are intrusive and obnoxious.

globular-toast 3y ago

I'll try to explain why I use adblock, use YouTube, but won't be paying for YouTube premium. First of all, I absolutely will not have ads in my own home. Ads are bad enough in public, but they will not be in my home. This is completely non-negotiable. So then, what are my choices? Well there are paid-for services like Netflix, for example. This is a straightforward choice for me: I either pay for it or I don't. Simple. Then there's the web. The web is essentially a public place. It thrives because it's free at the point of access. Unlike netflix, YouTube put itself on the web. It would not have become anywhere near what it is if it were like Netflix and behind a paywall. They used their "free" and "public" image to make themselves the only place on the internet for videos. What they want is to have their cake and eat it too: they want to be the dominant public platform, but they want guaranteed revenue like Netflix too. What I want is just to pay for my bandwidth fairly. If I pay for YouTube (which I must because remember ads are non-negotiable) then I'm not going to pay for any other platform. So YouTube grows as a monopoly. This is not the web. So you might say, well just stop using YouTube then, but why should I? I don't want to use YouTube. I'm not there because of anything they deliver, I don't care about 4K quality or whatever. I'm there because I want to learn how to put up a shelf. A lot of that videos are posted by people thinking they are doing a public service and sharing knowledge. If YouTube were behind a paywall then they'd post them somewhere else. So they just need to make up their mind. You want money? Then don't be public. Watch other platforms grow overnight. Watch P2P video sharing grow (which is how it should be). You want to be public and be the only video platform? Then I'll be blocking the ads when I try to access video in the only practical way I can. Also, if this is about the cost then why not get the uploaders to pay for it? After all, it's their content that's being stored. Again, because if they did that then YouTube would not be the Borg of video content that it is.

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eh_why_not 3y ago

One point I don't see mentioned: YouTube is not the creator/owner of the content. There are even channels that are actively against the advertising business model and that rely on off-platform subscriptions and donations. I.e. the creator still gets value even if no ads show on their videos. YouTube still shows ads on those channels though. And the more eyeballs and YT subscriptions these channels get, the more YT makes money off them. Now what percentage of viewers use ad blockers? 5%? 10%?... YT still makes money off the rest. It's not like those are a worrying cost center to YT. Why then go to those extremes to shave the last penny of the last person who really strongly does not want to see the ads (which potentially undermines the advertiser's purpose of making you like their product)?

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice Let me give it a try then. As part of part of our cognitive functions, our attention is inalienable. It is ours. It's not theirs to sell off to the highest bidder. It's not currency to pay for services with. They do not get to insert brands and taglines into our minds without our consent. Advertising is mind rape and ad blocking is justified self-defense. I literally don't care how many billions they lose, I will block ads, I will help others block ads and I won't lose even one second of sleep over it. They are not entitled to our attention. Their choices are to charge money up front or to deal with it. If they send us ads, we'll delete them.

ketzo 3y ago
If you care enough to describe advertising as “mind rape,” why use the service at all? Why should you be allowed to take a thing from them without paying for it in some way? Just because you are technically able?
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Because I'm not "taking" anything. They're the ones who send people stuff for free. They're more than capable of returning HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of a video stream. If they send me ads instead I'll delete them. Don't turn this around on us. They're the ones poisoning the well by offering free stuff with implicit strings attached and thereby normalizing "free" services. We're under exactly zero moral obligation to "pay" them by looking at ads. They have absolutely no one else but themselves to blame for their business model and the assumptions they made.

Garvi 3y ago

Youtube is very much in the wrong here. They are playing victim while there's hundreds of firms out there that would kill to be in their position, but cannot as Youtube has the monopoly on video on demand. Is this what we want, one megacorp for every major industry? Sounds like the Soviet Union and very much the polar opposite of competition, which is the base for any capitalistic society. A healthy market would have sorted this adds mess out by itself. Even if Youtube were an entity on it's own and not already owned by an even more massive corp, it'd be way overdue for breaking up. No competition -> no capitalism -> no personal prosperity -> no personal financial freedom

sumedh 3y ago

> Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? Why shouldnt users go thermonuclear if Google tracks you everywhere. Why was Google allowed to buy Double Click and become a giant in ad space?