First, there is the glaring ethical violation of writing software that deliberately works against the user's interest. In this case the Youtube player is not ju

First, there is the glaring ethical violation of writing software that deliberately works against the user's interest. In this case the Youtube player is not just playing the requested video, but also displaying ads, backhauling surveillance telemetry, and trying to lure users into the world of conspiracy tripe. It's unfortunate that software development has very little in the way of professional ethics and essentially relies on punk volunteers to counter the surveillance industry's continual aggression, but here we are. Second, Youtube gained outsized winner-take-all popularity by the anticompetitive dumping of hosting and development effort at below the apparent cost. This created a simulation of the early Internet's liberating spirit while killing any competitors that could have been based around sustainable economics (ideally some combination of publisher hosting plus p2p). Blocking ads is continuing the relationship as Youtube created it. Third, just fuck ads in general. The original post is a fun piece of art, but even seeing those three quick blips in the demo video was still an unneeded mental attack. The less I have to suffer and mentally repel corporate attempts at faking social proof, especially interruptive video/audio ones, the better my life is. If I could get AR glasses that blocked billboards, I would. My only concern of Youtube somehow going out of business would be losing the back catalog, which I think is better served by independent archiving rather than framing business revenue as some kind of collective responsibility.