4 ms·

So basically I'm supposed to pay protection money? Yeah, I don't give into extortion...

verdverm 3y ago
You can see it as extortion or... Paying for a product instead of being the product. Huge quality of life improvement. How is it different from paying for Netflix and similar?
- JanneVee 3y ago
  Because YouTube takes money deliberately from criminals an ad supported version of Netflix would hardly have Get-Rich-Quick schemes advertised which you need to pay to avoid. Make no mistake, I've seen criminal scammer ads on YouTube.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Does Netflix try to scam you if you don't subscribe to the premium tier? If it were ads for car insurance and lego, I don't think there would be the same concern.
- wredue 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    I dislike ads. But when I do see them, I'd prefer they were relevant to my interests. I might order an ADF4377 evaluation board, but I'm not going to be buying any feminine hygiene products or timeshares in Phoenix. So as far as I'm concerned, they can spy all they want. That horse left the stable years ago anyway. Just don't waste my time with ads on YouTube, and we won't have any beef. So far Google has held up their end of the bargain; we'll see if that remains true going forward.
    - wredue 3y ago
      Nice moving the goalposts! I wasn’t talking about the types of ads you see, I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Secondly, paying for premium doesn’t in any capacity stop you from seeing scam ads in the sharing networks Google powers. Given that other platforms are already showing ads for their paid tiers, it is not a matter of “if”, but “when” for YouTube.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Nice moving the goalposts! ... I'll type slowly this time to make it easier to understand: I don't care about ads on other sites, I only care about avoiding them on YouTube, and YouTube Premium currently works fine for that. It's OK if they "spy" on me to keep the other ads relevant, but that's not the subject of this thread.
        wredue 3y ago
        Okay? The point is that the claim that “paying for premium means you’re no longer the product” is absolutely, and demonstrably bullshit. Now you’re just giving money to Google for you to be the product, with a side benefit of (currently) not seeing Google ads. This it going to change within 16 months anyway, as Google shifts away from broad spectrum premium towards premium having different benefits, and you’ll have to have individual paid subscriptions to remove ads for specific users (not unlike twitch, where paying for prime no longer removes ads).
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Right, you are never "product" in the first place. You are either paying user or a supplier of product, both of which are providing something of value to the company in exchange for what they provide you. The "product" witticism is a bad presentation of the problem, both mistaking the source of distinction (presenting it as pay vs. not-pay) and the nature of the issue (presenting it as product vs. customer.) It's related to another overused and misleading statement, the idea that "the customer is always right" is a general principle (when, in fact, it very much is not and businesses actively work to drive out undesirable paying customers, and strategically neglect the particular interest of others, all the time.) The real issue is that if you are a small, replaceable fraction of a broad set of people from whom a firm can get the same thing of value -- whether its attention to ads, or a small monthly payment, or whatever -- there is very little reason for the company to expend effort catering to things that will keep you in particular (rather than the broad group as a whole) happy and willing to supply the thing of value in question, and if you are part of a particularly demanding subset of that group, placing a high demand on resources but from which the firm is not able to extract greater value by market segmentation, then the firm is quite likely to not only not want to expend much to satisfy you, but is likely to actively wish to drive you off as a customer. The real issue is that you are a commodity vendor seeking to influence a large buyer (or a commoditized purchaser trying to influence a large seller), not that you are "product" or that you aren't "paying money".
- epgui 3y ago
  I mean, you can see it that way, or you can realize that paying the mafia protection money actually is a fantastic way to keep both of your legs in working order.
- notpachet 3y ago
  > Paying for a product instead of being the product. You're still the product. You think they aren't still collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web?
  - mgraczyk 3y ago
    You can opt out of that without paying anything
    - ilovetux 3y ago
      You can opt out of the personalized ads, but you cannot opt out of the data collection, storage and correlation.
      - mgraczyk 3y ago
        To the extent that it is relevant to what I was replying to, you absolutely can opt out of "collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web". https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads
        sbarre 3y ago
        My ad blocker and Pi hole block that page, (un?)ironically.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  Why not both? -Every corporation in the world.
  - verdverm 3y ago
    yup, I don't see YouTube as an outlier in this regard I do really enjoy my ad free YouTube, 8 years and counting, the $20 / month for 5 accounts is very much worth it
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      I piggyback on a friend's account, for a small fee, so likewise. I also run pi-hole at home, because while I understand the need for ads, I'm done with 23 ads, 15 flyouts, 1 video that will play in the corner until the end of time even though you obviously scrolled past it with zero intention of viewing it, 4 animated gifs, a pop-up chatbot window, etc. etc. etc.
    - callalex 3y ago
      We’re going to get to the section of this video about ad-free YouTube, but first, a message from our sponsor, VPNOfTheMonth! <insert some scare mongering directly into the video stream that premium doesn’t remove>
      - sonicanatidae 3y ago
        At least it's not ANOTHER League of Legends ad.
      - verdverm 3y ago
        You can skip past those pretty easily. I let them play for creators I actually like, who also tend to pick less scummy sponsored ads. Some of them even make the sponsored content really funny or personal to them. You'll find the same quality spectrum. At least I know that the creator is seeing more of the ad dollars.
        callalex 3y ago
- simion314 3y ago
  It is also hilarious that the FBI also recommends using ad block. I might be sorry for smaller companies but Google contributed to this scams and now even the FBI is against their scheme.
- callalex 3y ago
  You’re still the product. YouTube screwed up their monetization scheme so badly that any content worth watching still inserts its own non-Google ads directly into the videos. So I would be paying to remove ads and…still see ads.
- throwawayffffas 3y ago
  There are two issues. On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone. Additionally it's a matter of user control and rights. They don't get to tell the user what their user agent does and what content it should fetch or display to the user or what code it should run. It's their website, but it's my device. The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone. A lot of YouTube creators make their content for money. YouTube in this case is the layer between creator and watcher, making sure they get paid. Wether that is by ad money or subscription money. Before that, things were much more difficult for video creators. > The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away. The next step for YouTube is hopefully to put the entire site behind a login and remove all ads.
    - LocalH 3y ago
      Google is an advertising company first and foremost, so I doubt that'll happen. But, this kind of stuff is a big reason they want remote attestation so badly.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        Video creators can also move to other platforms, or make other platforms that are subscribe only. It only takes a very small percentage of channels currently on YouTube to make for a high quality streaming platform that covers the interests and needs of a large part of potential subscribers.
- michaelteter 3y ago
  The difference here is that the ads are not just neutral revenue generators, but they are actively harmful revenue generators.
caskstrength 3y ago
You are not a shopkeeper being extorted for protection money, you are a (unwelcome) shop customer demanding things you don't want to pay for while being free to go to another place.
- JanneVee 3y ago
  You haven't followed my argument, so I'll break it down for you. There are ads on YouTube that prey on vulnerable people as per the original post. I came with a small clip in a larger video that YouTube has these categorized so creators can opt-out of these most likely predatory ads. And on that I had an anecdote of my elderly father having ones these predatory ads presented to him, after he was asked a while ago to turn off ad-blocking by YouTube. I'm not the shop customer here, my elderly father is which he has done what was asked of him. I'm simply unwilling to pay for a service so I can opt-out predatory ads on behalf of my father. YouTube does business with organized criminals and is demanding money not to present to the predatory lies of organized criminals. I refuse to pay and demand that YouTube stops taking the criminals money and presenting them as ads.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Yeah except the real situation is that you have the "choice" of going to the one and only shop that sells <thing> and you are given the "choice" of paying extra, or be forced to sit through a timeshare pitch before you can even pick the thing off the shelf. Except the timeshare pitch is hyper-personalized specifically for you based on your entire internet history everywhere and is designed to yield the maximum chance of manipulating you into falling for it. As a consumer you have easy options to block out the sales pitch, except the store who has a monopoly on the thing you want is now trying to scare users into disabling their ad blockers. The users that do this are disproportionately more likely to be less versed in how these things work and are thus more likely to fall for the scam. Yes, it's a protection racket. It's just got a funny hat on this time.
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    It is not the only shop in town. Vimeo, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram Stories exist and compete with Youtube where their target audiences intersect. Just because you reeeeealy want to watch that particular video that is only on Youtube and you reeeeealy don't want to pay for Premium doesn't change that fact (same as if you wanted some Amazon Essentials shoes that are only available from Amazon and have a very good price doesn't mean there are no other places where you can buy pair of shoes, albeit with arguably worse price-quality ratio).

You can see it as extortion or... Paying for a product instead of being the product. Huge quality of life improvement. How is it different from paying for Netflix and similar?

JanneVee 3y ago
Because YouTube takes money deliberately from criminals an ad supported version of Netflix would hardly have Get-Rich-Quick schemes advertised which you need to pay to avoid. Make no mistake, I've seen criminal scammer ads on YouTube.
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
Does Netflix try to scam you if you don't subscribe to the premium tier? If it were ads for car insurance and lego, I don't think there would be the same concern.
wredue 3y ago
[flagged]
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  I dislike ads. But when I do see them, I'd prefer they were relevant to my interests. I might order an ADF4377 evaluation board, but I'm not going to be buying any feminine hygiene products or timeshares in Phoenix. So as far as I'm concerned, they can spy all they want. That horse left the stable years ago anyway. Just don't waste my time with ads on YouTube, and we won't have any beef. So far Google has held up their end of the bargain; we'll see if that remains true going forward.
  - wredue 3y ago
    Nice moving the goalposts! I wasn’t talking about the types of ads you see, I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Secondly, paying for premium doesn’t in any capacity stop you from seeing scam ads in the sharing networks Google powers. Given that other platforms are already showing ads for their paid tiers, it is not a matter of “if”, but “when” for YouTube.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Nice moving the goalposts! ... I'll type slowly this time to make it easier to understand: I don't care about ads on other sites, I only care about avoiding them on YouTube, and YouTube Premium currently works fine for that. It's OK if they "spy" on me to keep the other ads relevant, but that's not the subject of this thread.
      - wredue 3y ago
        Okay? The point is that the claim that “paying for premium means you’re no longer the product” is absolutely, and demonstrably bullshit. Now you’re just giving money to Google for you to be the product, with a side benefit of (currently) not seeing Google ads. This it going to change within 16 months anyway, as Google shifts away from broad spectrum premium towards premium having different benefits, and you’ll have to have individual paid subscriptions to remove ads for specific users (not unlike twitch, where paying for prime no longer removes ads).
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Right, you are never "product" in the first place. You are either paying user or a supplier of product, both of which are providing something of value to the company in exchange for what they provide you. The "product" witticism is a bad presentation of the problem, both mistaking the source of distinction (presenting it as pay vs. not-pay) and the nature of the issue (presenting it as product vs. customer.) It's related to another overused and misleading statement, the idea that "the customer is always right" is a general principle (when, in fact, it very much is not and businesses actively work to drive out undesirable paying customers, and strategically neglect the particular interest of others, all the time.) The real issue is that if you are a small, replaceable fraction of a broad set of people from whom a firm can get the same thing of value -- whether its attention to ads, or a small monthly payment, or whatever -- there is very little reason for the company to expend effort catering to things that will keep you in particular (rather than the broad group as a whole) happy and willing to supply the thing of value in question, and if you are part of a particularly demanding subset of that group, placing a high demand on resources but from which the firm is not able to extract greater value by market segmentation, then the firm is quite likely to not only not want to expend much to satisfy you, but is likely to actively wish to drive you off as a customer. The real issue is that you are a commodity vendor seeking to influence a large buyer (or a commoditized purchaser trying to influence a large seller), not that you are "product" or that you aren't "paying money".
epgui 3y ago
I mean, you can see it that way, or you can realize that paying the mafia protection money actually is a fantastic way to keep both of your legs in working order.
notpachet 3y ago
> Paying for a product instead of being the product. You're still the product. You think they aren't still collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web?
- mgraczyk 3y ago
  You can opt out of that without paying anything
  - ilovetux 3y ago
    You can opt out of the personalized ads, but you cannot opt out of the data collection, storage and correlation.
    - mgraczyk 3y ago
      To the extent that it is relevant to what I was replying to, you absolutely can opt out of "collecting info on what you watch and associating that with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web". https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads
      - sbarre 3y ago
        My ad blocker and Pi hole block that page, (un?)ironically.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Why not both? -Every corporation in the world.
- verdverm 3y ago
  yup, I don't see YouTube as an outlier in this regard I do really enjoy my ad free YouTube, 8 years and counting, the $20 / month for 5 accounts is very much worth it
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    I piggyback on a friend's account, for a small fee, so likewise. I also run pi-hole at home, because while I understand the need for ads, I'm done with 23 ads, 15 flyouts, 1 video that will play in the corner until the end of time even though you obviously scrolled past it with zero intention of viewing it, 4 animated gifs, a pop-up chatbot window, etc. etc. etc.
  - callalex 3y ago
    We’re going to get to the section of this video about ad-free YouTube, but first, a message from our sponsor, VPNOfTheMonth! <insert some scare mongering directly into the video stream that premium doesn’t remove>
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      At least it's not ANOTHER League of Legends ad.
    - verdverm 3y ago
      You can skip past those pretty easily. I let them play for creators I actually like, who also tend to pick less scummy sponsored ads. Some of them even make the sponsored content really funny or personal to them. You'll find the same quality spectrum. At least I know that the creator is seeing more of the ad dollars.
      - callalex 3y ago
simion314 3y ago
It is also hilarious that the FBI also recommends using ad block. I might be sorry for smaller companies but Google contributed to this scams and now even the FBI is against their scheme.
callalex 3y ago
You’re still the product. YouTube screwed up their monetization scheme so badly that any content worth watching still inserts its own non-Google ads directly into the videos. So I would be paying to remove ads and…still see ads.
throwawayffffas 3y ago
There are two issues. On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone. Additionally it's a matter of user control and rights. They don't get to tell the user what their user agent does and what content it should fetch or display to the user or what code it should run. It's their website, but it's my device. The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  > On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone. A lot of YouTube creators make their content for money. YouTube in this case is the layer between creator and watcher, making sure they get paid. Wether that is by ad money or subscription money. Before that, things were much more difficult for video creators. > The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the ad and stop playing if you look away. The next step for YouTube is hopefully to put the entire site behind a login and remove all ads.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    Google is an advertising company first and foremost, so I doubt that'll happen. But, this kind of stuff is a big reason they want remote attestation so badly.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      Video creators can also move to other platforms, or make other platforms that are subscribe only. It only takes a very small percentage of channels currently on YouTube to make for a high quality streaming platform that covers the interests and needs of a large part of potential subscribers.
michaelteter 3y ago
The difference here is that the ads are not just neutral revenue generators, but they are actively harmful revenue generators.

caskstrength 3y ago

You are not a shopkeeper being extorted for protection money, you are a (unwelcome) shop customer demanding things you don't want to pay for while being free to go to another place.

JanneVee 3y ago
You haven't followed my argument, so I'll break it down for you. There are ads on YouTube that prey on vulnerable people as per the original post. I came with a small clip in a larger video that YouTube has these categorized so creators can opt-out of these most likely predatory ads. And on that I had an anecdote of my elderly father having ones these predatory ads presented to him, after he was asked a while ago to turn off ad-blocking by YouTube. I'm not the shop customer here, my elderly father is which he has done what was asked of him. I'm simply unwilling to pay for a service so I can opt-out predatory ads on behalf of my father. YouTube does business with organized criminals and is demanding money not to present to the predatory lies of organized criminals. I refuse to pay and demand that YouTube stops taking the criminals money and presenting them as ads.
calamari4065 3y ago
Yeah except the real situation is that you have the "choice" of going to the one and only shop that sells <thing> and you are given the "choice" of paying extra, or be forced to sit through a timeshare pitch before you can even pick the thing off the shelf. Except the timeshare pitch is hyper-personalized specifically for you based on your entire internet history everywhere and is designed to yield the maximum chance of manipulating you into falling for it. As a consumer you have easy options to block out the sales pitch, except the store who has a monopoly on the thing you want is now trying to scare users into disabling their ad blockers. The users that do this are disproportionately more likely to be less versed in how these things work and are thus more likely to fall for the scam. Yes, it's a protection racket. It's just got a funny hat on this time.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  It is not the only shop in town. Vimeo, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram Stories exist and compete with Youtube where their target audiences intersect. Just because you reeeeealy want to watch that particular video that is only on Youtube and you reeeeealy don't want to pay for Premium doesn't change that fact (same as if you wanted some Amazon Essentials shoes that are only available from Amazon and have a very good price doesn't mean there are no other places where you can buy pair of shoes, albeit with arguably worse price-quality ratio).