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Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to stor

by tlogan 1y ago

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

rwmj 1y ago
I'll think about the morality of ad blocking around the same time that Google thinks about the morality of all the crap they do all the time.
Culonavirus 1y ago
> Why do we justify blocking ads ... https://youtube.com/shorts/cdyhoTqWFSc?si=aSV46HfI8_0kUIy1 https://youtube.com/shorts/cdyhoTqWFSc?si=aSV46HfI8_0kUIy1 ^ Replace the women with any "why" arguments you might have for not using ad blockers.
jacquesm 1y ago
Bait-and-switch.
charcircuit 1y ago
There is a category of people for where if they are able to get away with not paying for something than they think it would be foolish not to.
bitmasher9 1y ago
Some websites will stop me from accessing content because I use an ad blocker. I think that’s fair play, and take my attention somewhere else. I don’t hide that I use adblocker, and it’s easy enough to identify.
aniviacat 1y ago
Watching ads just offloads the cost on other people. I would go as far as saying that watching ads is immoral (if you can avoid it), as you are effectively stealing from others.
like_any_other 1y ago
> Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? With how user-hostile and anti-competitive Google is behaving, this is like asking why soldiers feel entitled to shoot at the enemy. Keep giving them money, keep watching their ads that they sell on rigged auctions [1], and eventually the only way to access the web will be with locked-against-the-user browsers [2], and everything will be surveilled (though it nearly already is - Google never asks itself why it should feel entitled to follow users around the web, or in real-life, despite opt-outs [3], and you'll find support for any alternative OSes mysteriously withering due to secret anti-competitive contracts between Google and manufacturers [4]). I know this isn't the reasoning people use, but that is what the outcome will be. As for ads - it has always been hard, nearly impossible to block them, and few people did. Just like you can't block a billboard next to the freeway, you can't block a jpeg that's served as part of the webpage you're visiting, as it's programmatically indistinguishable from native content. What people actually block are not ads, but a hybrid half-ad-half-surveillance entity, that's called an "ad" by historical accident. [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-three-times-a-monopolist-says-doj-in-anti-trust-lawsuit https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-three-t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity [3] https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.protocol.com/google-android-amazon-fire-tv https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.proto...
throw123xz 1y ago
Back when I started using Google Adsense, they had a 3 ad per page rule. You could be banned if you went above that limit. Today you can easily find web pages with 10, 15 or even more ad spots... one after each paragraph, sidebar, full page "popup", etc. On YouTube, we went from a banner on the video to a few seconds of a video before to multiple ads before the video to multiple ad pauses even on relatively short videos (under 10 minutes). Add to that the sponsored sections of the video itself, which are added by the content creator, and other ads (stores, tickets, etc) that sometimes YouTube adds under the video even if you pay for premium. Google Search pages used to have one or two ads at the top, with a different background colour than search results. Now sometimes I have to scroll down to see organic content, because sponsored content fills my screen. I don't think I'm entitled to have access to all this for free, but we went too far... and so I use an adblocker on all my devices.
- AlienRobot 1y ago
  AdSense had that rule when you manually placed the ads on your website. Ever since they started doing automatic placements with AI or whatever, they simply spam the page with ads. Pretty much all article-based sites, recipes, news, blog posts, anything built with wordpress to blogspot. Their algorithm seems to ensure that there is always 1 ad visible on screen at all times. With font sizes as big as they are these days this means 1 ad every two paragraphs. And the auto placement is enabled by default on new accounts, and all these new "features," get automatically enabled from time to time. I'm sure there is a mountain of webmasters that didn't even notice that their websites have gotten filled with ads. The worst one is that interstital that appears whenever you click a link. I'm pretty sure Google had a rule against that type of popup, and then they literally made the popup themselves. On the other hand, all of this can be disabled. The question is how much money does a website need to make to stay online. If it could survive with fewer ads, I'm sure there would be fewer.
arcbyte 1y ago
For the same reason I had all the ads cut out of my newspaper before I read it back in the day - i don't want to see them. It's my browser, my copy of the website, and I'll have my user agent do whatever I want.
dleslie 1y ago
They should follow in the steps of news media and simply block users who use ad blocking. But they seem hesitant to, probably because that would risk losing the engagement of those users.
- anticensor 1y ago
  Or make all videos DRM protected and pre-ad-injected, with fast forward disabled at and around ads.
bgwalter 1y ago
Because the paid plan isn't anonymous and you have no guarantee that they won't sell your history to advertisers, even if you don't see ads. Perhaps you also have to show your YouTube history when you enter the US.
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
There’s no morality one way or the other. Google couldn’t care less about me; I have no personal connection with anyone there. They’ll treat me as poorly as the law allows (and then some) if it increases their bottom line. By the same measure, I’ll do as much as I can get away with to remove the bad aspects of their service. If we lived in a system where I was using a service made by a person I knew and could talk to, then maybe there’d be more obligations to the exchange, but in this impersonal setup I feel no such obligation.
psychoslave 1y ago
It takes a lot of time, money, care, education and love to grow human individual. Who would dare to even start considering paying high fees for the honor of receiving some of their time and attention? Why are video provider not paying people to obtain this privilege? No one dare to think they can get that for free, right?
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  They are paying you, they are paying you with free content. It's actually a trade. Free content in exchange for your attention on ads
  - psychoslave 1y ago
    That's not how it works at societal level. The social structure is funnelling people to some mind-time eater. The fact that it's labeled free doesn't matter much. There is nothing as free content consumption, because people necessarily need to pay with time and attention they allocate to access it, not even mentioning all the extra burden like acquiring access to the device/platform/seat/whatever without which there is no way one is going to be spectator of anything. One can always pay more attention at the continuous flow of local events that cosmos provide to self, instead of whatever other humans wish they would focus on.
vehemenz 1y ago
It’s my GET request. I can do what I want with it. If Google want to force ads, they can put them in the video stream. If not, then they’re trying to have it both ways.
- bitpush 1y ago
  Great analogy. Its the same reason why I grab stuff off of supermarkets and walk out. If they really cared about it, they'll invest in better technology to stop me. Suckers.
  - thowawatp302 1y ago
    Your analogy is terrible. GET requests can be denied.
whatshisface 1y ago
You're asking the question in a way that's unreflective of how people think. They can do it and want to do it and would need a reason to not do it. So the question is, what would make someone feel like they were ethically compelled to watch an advertisement? It sounds impossible to me, maybe someone with a very unique perspective could chime in about themselves. Here's an attempt at a double-negative answer: you can't be ethically compelled into an unethical contract, and since advertisements are manipulative, voyeuristic and seek to take advantage of the limitations of human attentional control, it's a priori impossible for watching an ad or downloading a tracker to ever be ethically compulsory.
- nadermx 1y ago
  Taking this in a more tangential, but similar thought. The copyright holder does not own the copyrights of the ad. Different copyrights.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  There's a very simple answer. You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You are not obligated to watch ads. You are opting to watch them in exchange for the free content, then skipping out on a commitment you volunteered for while still taking the free content. The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because you made a choice but didn't live up to it. Instead of either paying or not watching, you watched anyway.
  - whatshisface 1y ago
    All the best to you, I hope you enjoy watching your ads. :-)
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      I actually pay, rather than watch the ads, but a large part of that was also dumping Spotify and using the YouTube music app instead for listening in the car.
  - 1y ago
rapeddangagain 1y ago
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Workaccount2 1y ago
Just want to point out, adding on to OP, that creators on youtube get 55% of revenue. I get that Google has infinite money and infinite evil. But how convenient you also get to skip out on paying the majority expense, which goes to the creator... And yes virtuous commentor, I know you are one of the 1.5% that convert to a patreon supporter. Now ask everyone else why they get to eat for free (while endlessly complaining that the restaurant sucks).
- anothernewdude 1y ago
  People create for free. The content that is created in order to earn revenue suffers because of it.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Creators choose to host their content on platform that puts it on the public Web where ads are easily blocked. If creators have an issue, it is with Google, not my ad blocker. I don't owe creators anything; I have no agreements with them. Google is the one with creator contracts. Google may owe creators something, but I certainly don't and I'm not going to adopt Google's burden on that.
- aucisson_masque 1y ago
  Honestly the kind of video out there made solely to make money aren’t what I’m looking after, I wouldn’t mind if they all went away. YouTube has always been the guy showing how to replace a 97 Honda civic oil filter in an unedited 5 minutes video and 240p, or the one sharing their passion. You know, the genuinely interesting stuff.
- spixy 1y ago
  Right, because all that hardware needed for storing and streaming all that video is free. 55% is OK
nurumaik 1y ago
Do I even need justification for not doing what I don't want to (watching ads)?
usernamed7 1y ago
ads are awful on a good day. YOUTUBE ads are 5x worse. I'm not going to sit there, waste my time, watching the same ads for the 5th time that has no relevance to me. Adblockers make youtube tolerable. If there were no adblockers i genuinely would be unable to use it. Has nothing to do with a sense of entitlement, they are ads for things I would never purchase. so whats the point then? Why is it OK for people to pay to waste my time just because they paid to? What gives them the right to force me to watch that? Hard no. It's my browser, and I'll do as i damn well please. I WOULD pay for youtube if it was a good product. But it's not. I'm not going to opine on all the reasons it's not. if/when they make it good i'll pay. That's a them problem. but there is NO WAY i am going to start accepting ads back into my life. I'll just stop watching youtube.
rbits 1y ago
I don't feel entitled to it. I don't like the company Google
zarzavat 1y ago
ARE YOU OVER 40 AND THE ONLY AI YOU KNOW IS CHATGPT? The burden of proof is on the ads to justify why they should be watched, given that the ads themselves provide zero value to the viewer. YouTube ads in particular are a cesspit of scams. I don't want to watch ads for things like Scientology.
- bitpush 1y ago
  Huh? You're on their website to watch videos. And it costs them money to send you those bits. And they offer two ways for you to compensate. Watch ads, or pay premium. What is so difficult for you to understand this business relationship?
  - zarzavat 1y ago
    It's Google. The relationship is not consensual but adversarial. Google attempts to get free things from me. I attempt to get free things from Google. It's like asking a lawyer why does he defend an obviously guilty client? Because it's adversarial system, his job is to protect his client, not to worry about the other side. The other side is trying to maximize their advantage too. Google has defined my relationship with it in such terms through its behavior. If YouTube were still an independent operator I would be more amenable to your argument. In any case, the fact I can recite an ad from memory shows that I am at least watching some of their ads, notably on mobile.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    It's funny that you think that me sending a GET request to an IP makes me enter a business relationship.
gessha 1y ago
Back when I listened to Spotify Premium, they would mess around with the shuffle or add a “smart” shuffle to the UI that you can’t opt out of. They would try to insert songs to my playlists where they don’t belong. Gtfo let me listen to my music. I listen to Spotify Freemium. There’s a special ad that says: “Enjoy the next 30 minutes of ad-free listening”. 2 minutes later I get 2-3 ads back to back. Enough. Happy Jellyfin user. I’ll buy up my music gradually.
tomasphan 1y ago
Ads are a litmus test for how much a service values its users and the ecosystem it’s built upon. When premium cable first replaced broadcast television it had no ads in lieu of a subscription cost. Now you pay a subscription and get ads. The same is true for streaming services which switched to ad supported subscriptions. Let’s look at YouTube; in the early years ads were few and far between, then came mid roll ads, then end roll ads, then multiple ads in a row. Now YouTubers started doing their own ad reads, baked into the video. We’re in a growth oriented era, so companies and individuals will take more and more, as much as they can to keep the numbers going up. What they’re taking is your time; a very precious commodity in my opinion. Why do I Adblock? Because a line must be drawn or else this marketing growth engine will consume everything. I mean literally without any consumer pushback this attention extraction engine will continue expanding until every moment of digital consumption is monetized. It’s already destroyed too much of the internet.
armchairhacker 1y ago
I don't, I pay for YouTube premium. I think YouTube deserves money for its service, and it needs money for its employees and infrastructure. I'd block ads if there wasn't premium (or if premium had ads). YouTube still deserves and needs money, but ads don't "extract" the money from me. At best (and most likely*) every ad shown to me is effectively the advertiser paying YouTube to waste my time. At worst (if I actually buy the product), the ad is effectively me paying the advertiser and getting something useless or harmful. The chance a YouTube ad shows me something beneficial is too small to remotely justify the other ads which waste my time (or if I buy, the Earth's resources or my attention or etc.). I also block ads on newspapers and other smaller sites, but don't buy their premium. Honestly, I don't think this is fair, although I think it's small in the grand scheme of things. The problem is, I don't feel those sites justify me paying, and I'd be spending well over $100/month if I subscribed to every one; I'd rather not see each site than pay, although currently I do see them without paying which is unfair (showing me ads is wasteful, as explained earlier, so I don't even consider it an alternative). You know what, I'll probably subscribe to a few (maybe AP and Reuters) and every other story I encounter, see if I can find the version on one of those sites. * "But ads work on you subliminally." I hear and read this a lot, but I really doubt it for invasive ads like YouTube's (also billboards etc. I'm not talking about covert ads or "good" non-invasive ads like Show HN). First, I recognize many of the big advertisers (e.g. those VPNs and sodas) and will never buy their products, so those ads shown to me specifically are wasted. Moreover, I'm particularly methodical when buying things. I always go in with a plan: sometimes it's a simple plan like "buy the second-cheapest with a good description and decent reviews" or "buy what your parents do", but I never buy something because I recognize it. In fact, if something seems familiar I pay extra attention, and if I recognize it was invasively advertised, I become less likely to buy it, because I suspect invasive ads correlate with low value and want to actively dissuade invasive ads in general. "But your parents and the reviewers buy based off ads, and you buy based off them"...OK, show my parents and reviewers the ads, not me. Ultimately, invasive ads waste my time and annoy me, and I don't see their benefits which justify that. I'd rather pay a small fee than see or hear every invasive ad (like with YouTube premium), and I suspect the advertisers would benefit from that too.
anothernewdude 1y ago
Blocking ads needs no justification. Why they think I should waste my finite time, compute and bandwidth on things I don't want needs justification.
deleted 1y ago
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beefnugs 1y ago
Your brain baffles me. I have already decided that i will never ever buy any of the shit in these ads, it would save THEM TIME AND MONEY AND LYING TO THE AD BUYERS to not show me the ads. THEY are doing the immoral thing here to force waste my time for no positive benefits
Dylan16807 1y ago
> Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? In this situation, the ads are contributing barely anything to the content creation, and storage and distribution drop in price every year while youtube increases the amount of ads and decreases the video quality. So people get upset and block everything. That's part out of being fed up, and that's part out of having no way to make the ads become less bad in a non-block way.
hirvi74 1y ago
> Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? It's not free when they already track and sell user data to the highest bidder. YouTube is just trying to double-dip at this point. I'd gladly pay for premium if there was a guarantee that my user data would not sold.
bongodongobob 1y ago
It's because people are fucking lazy and completely lost in the digital world. Thinking YouTube should somehow be free is absurd and I'm sick of seeing this bullshit on this site in particular where a lot of the people here are actively involved in this kind of thing. Avg salary on this site is probably north of $200k and they're bitching about paying a few bucks a month for YouTube.
asadotzler 1y ago
Advertising is predatory by design. It is my moral duty not only to resist advertising, but to do everything I can to make it as ineffective as possible.
- dbbk 1y ago
  You can avoid the advertising by paying for the service then
Derbasti 1y ago
How much is a media service worth? How much does it cost to produce? Can I pay a reasonable fee to the right people? Most websites do not offer reasonable payment options. They'd earn fractions of a cent from the ads they'd show me, but the cheapest subscriptions they offer are several dollars. On YouTube, the value of the service is provided by creators, but too little of the subscription is going towards the creators. To make matters worse, Google seems to pull every string they can to make creators as miserable as possible. Their actions are a detriment to the service, and not worth supporting. An 80/20 revenue split would seem much more reasonable.
tshaddox 1y ago
I pay for YouTube Premium, but I don’t share your moral opposition to ad-blocking. It’s not entitlement, because the service is totally free to stop serving me the videos.
deleted 1y ago
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aucisson_masque 1y ago
Once you have something, you don’t want to let it go. Even if it’s not morally justifiable. Otherwise wealth would be much more equally spread across northern and Southern hemisphere. Personally I hate advertisement, i will do everything I can to disable it but I know that at this point I’m almost pirating. There is no shame in that, internet is the Wild West : Google and their AI crawling bots aren’t better than me, they leech contents other made, other host, to build their ai and then makes money on top of it.
astrobe_ 1y ago
This is the same situation as with the media industry, e.g. music and movies and piracy. Studies have shown that people who pirate wouldn't buy the product even if they had the opportunity (i.e. is if they had the money or if it was easy to buy). So I guess the content is not good enough.
wiseowise 1y ago
> Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? Shall we do the same to open source? “Watch this ad for 30 seconds before checking out a branch! Git commit, oops: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS”
CaptainFever 1y ago
Because I control my computer, and if I don't want to see ads, I have the right to automatically filter them out on my side. (Yes, yes, and Google has the right to block me from accessing their servers.)
jillesvangurp 1y ago
Very simple. I don't self flagellate because it hurts and I don't like it. And there's no need for me to self flagellate. So why would I? In exactly the same way, there's no need for me to watch stupid ads. I've had ad blockers ever since they came into existence. There is no incentive for me to disable them. When I need to, I actually pay for content on Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Apple, etc. It's not a money issue. I haven't done that with Youtube because 1) I don't need to, 2) Google is pretty bad about paying content creators properly (they prefer keeping the money for themselves) and 3) I feel no guilt whatsoever about not sponsoring trillion dollar companies by exposing myself to the pain of watching their shitty ads. Luckily for Google, most people aren't smart enough to figure out ad blockers. Which is why they are making lots of money with Youtube and why they are a trillion dollar company. Good for them; no need to feel sorry for them. Luckily for me, Google seems pretty conflicted about fixing this properly because they are making so much money with the way things are. If they lock down Youtube properly (not that hard technically), users and content creators might move elsewhere. They can't afford to. So good for me. It's that simple. There is no moral dilemma here.
Borgz 1y ago
Perhaps one justification for blocking ads is protecting users from personal information harvesting, tracking, and malware delivered through advertising networks. Aside from that, I can't think of a justification. I actually think it would be good if there were filter lists that whitelisted ads that were not harmful to users in those ways, but that sounds difficult/impossible to fairly maintain, and I doubt anyone else wants it.
JanneVee 1y ago
I've harped on this before: the problem is that the ads if they are fraudulent or harmful in other ways and the companies making money when presenting deserve get their shit blocked. Especially if they can target ads to vulnerable people. These are huge profitable companies that moderate the content they profit of but as soon as someone pays them they turn the blind eye.
- squaresmile 1y ago
  Yep, it's a straight up safety issue with all the scam ads. I pay for YouTube premium but sometimes my parents and grandparents don't log in, accidentally sign out, watch it on the browsers, etc that it's safer to block them all. It only takes one to get through and gen AI is not helping.
eur0pa 1y ago
I don't need to justify jack
joelthelion 1y ago
Ads are bad for you and bad for the planet. Google is a monopoly and doesn't even create the content themselves. I understand ad blocking isn't morally perfect but I can live with it.
commandersaki 1y ago
I use an ad blocker for a safer experience. There's far too many malicious advertisements on youtube, google, etc. and I don't want to be anywhere near that.
kerkeslager 1y ago
I don't feel entitled to anything. YouTube is free to stop serving me content at any time. It's trivial to refuse to serve people content they haven't paid for. Why do advertisers feel entitled to my attention when I never agreed to give it to them? Simply visiting a page with ads doesn't mean I agree to view ads.
sensanaty 1y ago
I don't pretend I have some moral high ground, I just don't want to see ads, and if I can do that and still not pay, I will do that. I don't care if it's unobtrusive, I don't care if it's relevant or not, I don't care if it's for a service I love and would otherwise be happy to talk/hear about, advertisements are a cancer that should be eradicated and I will not pretend to care about the opinions of people whose livelihoods rides on selling me crap. I'd rather not use Youtube entirely (aka be blocked off by Google) than ever be subjected to even a single microsecond of an ad. Ads are psychological manipulation and I refuse to subject myself to some slimy marketer's ad campaign. If I were made God Emperor of the Earth for the day, the one and only thing I'd do with that power is make sure these people rot away in a dark hole forever, that's how much I detest this whole "market" and the "people" involved in it. Even paying for this stuff isn't a guarantee of anything. Their "Lite" tier has verbiage to the effect of "No* Ads (* Some will still be shown)". We've seen with cable television that the insidious cancer that is advertising creeps its way in as well, and cable was NOT cheap. Plus, it's known that for advertisers, people who actually shell out cash are even juicier targets, and you'd have to be a genuine imbecile to trust the likes of Google or Meta to not abuse you even harder, even if you pay for the service. MAYBE I'd be willing to pay Google if I had a guarantee that no advertisement will EVER be shoved in anywhere in the future, and that I get a guarantee that they will punish those sponsored sections that creators put into their videos if I pay for it, and if I get a guarantee that they won't continue to profile me incessantly to shove ads at me everywhere other than YT. We all know that's not happening though, and I have absolutely 0 interest in lining their coffers with both my money and my data.
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  I mean, props for being honest, but you are exactly the reason companies like YouTube have to work so hard to trounce and blockers. And you're likely the reason legislation will eventually move in YouTube's favor. Your "no moral high ground" claim is a bold way to say you just want content, which costs people money to make, for free
vultour 1y ago
I was trying to show someone a scene from a 45-minute YouTube video the other day. I didn't know where it was so I was randomly choosing points to watch. _Every single time_ I clicked on the scrubber I was hit with a 30-second advertisement. Mind you, I always watched maybe 3 seconds of the actual content before moving on. After the 8th time I gave up and vowed to never open YouTube on a device without adblock again. This was so beyond the pale I'm never going to give Google another cent.
gblargg 1y ago
I would happily pay a few dollars a month to use YouTube ad-free, and with a bandwidth limit. I don't need to watch everything in 1080p and higher. For podcasts 144p is fine. Let me pay for the bandwidth I use.
interestica 1y ago
What does “free” mean to you?

by tlogan 1y ago

rwmj 1y ago

I'll think about the morality of ad blocking around the same time that Google thinks about the morality of all the crap they do all the time.

Culonavirus 1y ago

> Why do we justify blocking ads ... https://youtube.com/shorts/cdyhoTqWFSc?si=aSV46HfI8_0kUIy1 https://youtube.com/shorts/cdyhoTqWFSc?si=aSV46HfI8_0kUIy1 ^ Replace the women with any "why" arguments you might have for not using ad blockers.

jacquesm 1y ago

Bait-and-switch.

charcircuit 1y ago

There is a category of people for where if they are able to get away with not paying for something than they think it would be foolish not to.

bitmasher9 1y ago

Some websites will stop me from accessing content because I use an ad blocker. I think that’s fair play, and take my attention somewhere else. I don’t hide that I use adblocker, and it’s easy enough to identify.

aniviacat 1y ago

Watching ads just offloads the cost on other people. I would go as far as saying that watching ads is immoral (if you can avoid it), as you are effectively stealing from others.

like_any_other 1y ago

> Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? With how user-hostile and anti-competitive Google is behaving, this is like asking why soldiers feel entitled to shoot at the enemy. Keep giving them money, keep watching their ads that they sell on rigged auctions [1], and eventually the only way to access the web will be with locked-against-the-user browsers [2], and everything will be surveilled (though it nearly already is - Google never asks itself why it should feel entitled to follow users around the web, or in real-life, despite opt-outs [3], and you'll find support for any alternative OSes mysteriously withering due to secret anti-competitive contracts between Google and manufacturers [4]). I know this isn't the reasoning people use, but that is what the outcome will be. As for ads - it has always been hard, nearly impossible to block them, and few people did. Just like you can't block a billboard next to the freeway, you can't block a jpeg that's served as part of the webpage you're visiting, as it's programmatically indistinguishable from native content. What people actually block are not ads, but a hybrid half-ad-half-surveillance entity, that's called an "ad" by historical accident. [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-three-times-a-monopolist-says-doj-in-anti-trust-lawsuit https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/11/25/google-is-three-t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity [3] https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.protocol.com/google-android-amazon-fire-tv https://web.archive.org/web/20200311172517/https://www.proto...

throw123xz 1y ago

Back when I started using Google Adsense, they had a 3 ad per page rule. You could be banned if you went above that limit. Today you can easily find web pages with 10, 15 or even more ad spots... one after each paragraph, sidebar, full page "popup", etc. On YouTube, we went from a banner on the video to a few seconds of a video before to multiple ads before the video to multiple ad pauses even on relatively short videos (under 10 minutes). Add to that the sponsored sections of the video itself, which are added by the content creator, and other ads (stores, tickets, etc) that sometimes YouTube adds under the video even if you pay for premium. Google Search pages used to have one or two ads at the top, with a different background colour than search results. Now sometimes I have to scroll down to see organic content, because sponsored content fills my screen. I don't think I'm entitled to have access to all this for free, but we went too far... and so I use an adblocker on all my devices.

AlienRobot 1y ago
AdSense had that rule when you manually placed the ads on your website. Ever since they started doing automatic placements with AI or whatever, they simply spam the page with ads. Pretty much all article-based sites, recipes, news, blog posts, anything built with wordpress to blogspot. Their algorithm seems to ensure that there is always 1 ad visible on screen at all times. With font sizes as big as they are these days this means 1 ad every two paragraphs. And the auto placement is enabled by default on new accounts, and all these new "features," get automatically enabled from time to time. I'm sure there is a mountain of webmasters that didn't even notice that their websites have gotten filled with ads. The worst one is that interstital that appears whenever you click a link. I'm pretty sure Google had a rule against that type of popup, and then they literally made the popup themselves. On the other hand, all of this can be disabled. The question is how much money does a website need to make to stay online. If it could survive with fewer ads, I'm sure there would be fewer.

arcbyte 1y ago

For the same reason I had all the ads cut out of my newspaper before I read it back in the day - i don't want to see them. It's my browser, my copy of the website, and I'll have my user agent do whatever I want.

dleslie 1y ago

They should follow in the steps of news media and simply block users who use ad blocking. But they seem hesitant to, probably because that would risk losing the engagement of those users.

anticensor 1y ago
Or make all videos DRM protected and pre-ad-injected, with fast forward disabled at and around ads.

bgwalter 1y ago

Because the paid plan isn't anonymous and you have no guarantee that they won't sell your history to advertisers, even if you don't see ads. Perhaps you also have to show your YouTube history when you enter the US.

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

There’s no morality one way or the other. Google couldn’t care less about me; I have no personal connection with anyone there. They’ll treat me as poorly as the law allows (and then some) if it increases their bottom line. By the same measure, I’ll do as much as I can get away with to remove the bad aspects of their service. If we lived in a system where I was using a service made by a person I knew and could talk to, then maybe there’d be more obligations to the exchange, but in this impersonal setup I feel no such obligation.

psychoslave 1y ago

It takes a lot of time, money, care, education and love to grow human individual. Who would dare to even start considering paying high fees for the honor of receiving some of their time and attention? Why are video provider not paying people to obtain this privilege? No one dare to think they can get that for free, right?

aprilthird2021 1y ago
They are paying you, they are paying you with free content. It's actually a trade. Free content in exchange for your attention on ads
- psychoslave 1y ago
  That's not how it works at societal level. The social structure is funnelling people to some mind-time eater. The fact that it's labeled free doesn't matter much. There is nothing as free content consumption, because people necessarily need to pay with time and attention they allocate to access it, not even mentioning all the extra burden like acquiring access to the device/platform/seat/whatever without which there is no way one is going to be spectator of anything. One can always pay more attention at the continuous flow of local events that cosmos provide to self, instead of whatever other humans wish they would focus on.

vehemenz 1y ago

It’s my GET request. I can do what I want with it. If Google want to force ads, they can put them in the video stream. If not, then they’re trying to have it both ways.

bitpush 1y ago
Great analogy. Its the same reason why I grab stuff off of supermarkets and walk out. If they really cared about it, they'll invest in better technology to stop me. Suckers.
- thowawatp302 1y ago
  Your analogy is terrible. GET requests can be denied.

whatshisface 1y ago

You're asking the question in a way that's unreflective of how people think. They can do it and want to do it and would need a reason to not do it. So the question is, what would make someone feel like they were ethically compelled to watch an advertisement? It sounds impossible to me, maybe someone with a very unique perspective could chime in about themselves. Here's an attempt at a double-negative answer: you can't be ethically compelled into an unethical contract, and since advertisements are manipulative, voyeuristic and seek to take advantage of the limitations of human attentional control, it's a priori impossible for watching an ad or downloading a tracker to ever be ethically compulsory.

nadermx 1y ago
Taking this in a more tangential, but similar thought. The copyright holder does not own the copyrights of the ad. Different copyrights.
zdragnar 1y ago
There's a very simple answer. You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You are not obligated to watch ads. You are opting to watch them in exchange for the free content, then skipping out on a commitment you volunteered for while still taking the free content. The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because you made a choice but didn't live up to it. Instead of either paying or not watching, you watched anyway.
- whatshisface 1y ago
  All the best to you, I hope you enjoy watching your ads. :-)
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I actually pay, rather than watch the ads, but a large part of that was also dumping Spotify and using the YouTube music app instead for listening in the car.
- 1y ago

rapeddangagain 1y ago

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Workaccount2 1y ago

Just want to point out, adding on to OP, that creators on youtube get 55% of revenue. I get that Google has infinite money and infinite evil. But how convenient you also get to skip out on paying the majority expense, which goes to the creator... And yes virtuous commentor, I know you are one of the 1.5% that convert to a patreon supporter. Now ask everyone else why they get to eat for free (while endlessly complaining that the restaurant sucks).

anothernewdude 1y ago
People create for free. The content that is created in order to earn revenue suffers because of it.
asadotzler 1y ago
Creators choose to host their content on platform that puts it on the public Web where ads are easily blocked. If creators have an issue, it is with Google, not my ad blocker. I don't owe creators anything; I have no agreements with them. Google is the one with creator contracts. Google may owe creators something, but I certainly don't and I'm not going to adopt Google's burden on that.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
Honestly the kind of video out there made solely to make money aren’t what I’m looking after, I wouldn’t mind if they all went away. YouTube has always been the guy showing how to replace a 97 Honda civic oil filter in an unedited 5 minutes video and 240p, or the one sharing their passion. You know, the genuinely interesting stuff.
spixy 1y ago
Right, because all that hardware needed for storing and streaming all that video is free. 55% is OK

nurumaik 1y ago

Do I even need justification for not doing what I don't want to (watching ads)?

usernamed7 1y ago

ads are awful on a good day. YOUTUBE ads are 5x worse. I'm not going to sit there, waste my time, watching the same ads for the 5th time that has no relevance to me. Adblockers make youtube tolerable. If there were no adblockers i genuinely would be unable to use it. Has nothing to do with a sense of entitlement, they are ads for things I would never purchase. so whats the point then? Why is it OK for people to pay to waste my time just because they paid to? What gives them the right to force me to watch that? Hard no. It's my browser, and I'll do as i damn well please. I WOULD pay for youtube if it was a good product. But it's not. I'm not going to opine on all the reasons it's not. if/when they make it good i'll pay. That's a them problem. but there is NO WAY i am going to start accepting ads back into my life. I'll just stop watching youtube.

rbits 1y ago

I don't feel entitled to it. I don't like the company Google

zarzavat 1y ago

ARE YOU OVER 40 AND THE ONLY AI YOU KNOW IS CHATGPT? The burden of proof is on the ads to justify why they should be watched, given that the ads themselves provide zero value to the viewer. YouTube ads in particular are a cesspit of scams. I don't want to watch ads for things like Scientology.

bitpush 1y ago
Huh? You're on their website to watch videos. And it costs them money to send you those bits. And they offer two ways for you to compensate. Watch ads, or pay premium. What is so difficult for you to understand this business relationship?
- zarzavat 1y ago
  It's Google. The relationship is not consensual but adversarial. Google attempts to get free things from me. I attempt to get free things from Google. It's like asking a lawyer why does he defend an obviously guilty client? Because it's adversarial system, his job is to protect his client, not to worry about the other side. The other side is trying to maximize their advantage too. Google has defined my relationship with it in such terms through its behavior. If YouTube were still an independent operator I would be more amenable to your argument. In any case, the fact I can recite an ad from memory shows that I am at least watching some of their ads, notably on mobile.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  It's funny that you think that me sending a GET request to an IP makes me enter a business relationship.

gessha 1y ago

Back when I listened to Spotify Premium, they would mess around with the shuffle or add a “smart” shuffle to the UI that you can’t opt out of. They would try to insert songs to my playlists where they don’t belong. Gtfo let me listen to my music. I listen to Spotify Freemium. There’s a special ad that says: “Enjoy the next 30 minutes of ad-free listening”. 2 minutes later I get 2-3 ads back to back. Enough. Happy Jellyfin user. I’ll buy up my music gradually.

tomasphan 1y ago

Ads are a litmus test for how much a service values its users and the ecosystem it’s built upon. When premium cable first replaced broadcast television it had no ads in lieu of a subscription cost. Now you pay a subscription and get ads. The same is true for streaming services which switched to ad supported subscriptions. Let’s look at YouTube; in the early years ads were few and far between, then came mid roll ads, then end roll ads, then multiple ads in a row. Now YouTubers started doing their own ad reads, baked into the video. We’re in a growth oriented era, so companies and individuals will take more and more, as much as they can to keep the numbers going up. What they’re taking is your time; a very precious commodity in my opinion. Why do I Adblock? Because a line must be drawn or else this marketing growth engine will consume everything. I mean literally without any consumer pushback this attention extraction engine will continue expanding until every moment of digital consumption is monetized. It’s already destroyed too much of the internet.

armchairhacker 1y ago

I don't, I pay for YouTube premium. I think YouTube deserves money for its service, and it needs money for its employees and infrastructure. I'd block ads if there wasn't premium (or if premium had ads). YouTube still deserves and needs money, but ads don't "extract" the money from me. At best (and most likely*) every ad shown to me is effectively the advertiser paying YouTube to waste my time. At worst (if I actually buy the product), the ad is effectively me paying the advertiser and getting something useless or harmful. The chance a YouTube ad shows me something beneficial is too small to remotely justify the other ads which waste my time (or if I buy, the Earth's resources or my attention or etc.). I also block ads on newspapers and other smaller sites, but don't buy their premium. Honestly, I don't think this is fair, although I think it's small in the grand scheme of things. The problem is, I don't feel those sites justify me paying, and I'd be spending well over $100/month if I subscribed to every one; I'd rather not see each site than pay, although currently I do see them without paying which is unfair (showing me ads is wasteful, as explained earlier, so I don't even consider it an alternative). You know what, I'll probably subscribe to a few (maybe AP and Reuters) and every other story I encounter, see if I can find the version on one of those sites. * "But ads work on you subliminally." I hear and read this a lot, but I really doubt it for invasive ads like YouTube's (also billboards etc. I'm not talking about covert ads or "good" non-invasive ads like Show HN). First, I recognize many of the big advertisers (e.g. those VPNs and sodas) and will never buy their products, so those ads shown to me specifically are wasted. Moreover, I'm particularly methodical when buying things. I always go in with a plan: sometimes it's a simple plan like "buy the second-cheapest with a good description and decent reviews" or "buy what your parents do", but I never buy something because I recognize it. In fact, if something seems familiar I pay extra attention, and if I recognize it was invasively advertised, I become less likely to buy it, because I suspect invasive ads correlate with low value and want to actively dissuade invasive ads in general. "But your parents and the reviewers buy based off ads, and you buy based off them"...OK, show my parents and reviewers the ads, not me. Ultimately, invasive ads waste my time and annoy me, and I don't see their benefits which justify that. I'd rather pay a small fee than see or hear every invasive ad (like with YouTube premium), and I suspect the advertisers would benefit from that too.

anothernewdude 1y ago

Blocking ads needs no justification. Why they think I should waste my finite time, compute and bandwidth on things I don't want needs justification.

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beefnugs 1y ago

Your brain baffles me. I have already decided that i will never ever buy any of the shit in these ads, it would save THEM TIME AND MONEY AND LYING TO THE AD BUYERS to not show me the ads. THEY are doing the immoral thing here to force waste my time for no positive benefits

Dylan16807 1y ago

> Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? In this situation, the ads are contributing barely anything to the content creation, and storage and distribution drop in price every year while youtube increases the amount of ads and decreases the video quality. So people get upset and block everything. That's part out of being fed up, and that's part out of having no way to make the ads become less bad in a non-block way.

hirvi74 1y ago

> Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? It's not free when they already track and sell user data to the highest bidder. YouTube is just trying to double-dip at this point. I'd gladly pay for premium if there was a guarantee that my user data would not sold.

bongodongobob 1y ago

It's because people are fucking lazy and completely lost in the digital world. Thinking YouTube should somehow be free is absurd and I'm sick of seeing this bullshit on this site in particular where a lot of the people here are actively involved in this kind of thing. Avg salary on this site is probably north of $200k and they're bitching about paying a few bucks a month for YouTube.

asadotzler 1y ago

Advertising is predatory by design. It is my moral duty not only to resist advertising, but to do everything I can to make it as ineffective as possible.

dbbk 1y ago
You can avoid the advertising by paying for the service then

Derbasti 1y ago

How much is a media service worth? How much does it cost to produce? Can I pay a reasonable fee to the right people? Most websites do not offer reasonable payment options. They'd earn fractions of a cent from the ads they'd show me, but the cheapest subscriptions they offer are several dollars. On YouTube, the value of the service is provided by creators, but too little of the subscription is going towards the creators. To make matters worse, Google seems to pull every string they can to make creators as miserable as possible. Their actions are a detriment to the service, and not worth supporting. An 80/20 revenue split would seem much more reasonable.

tshaddox 1y ago

I pay for YouTube Premium, but I don’t share your moral opposition to ad-blocking. It’s not entitlement, because the service is totally free to stop serving me the videos.

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aucisson_masque 1y ago

Once you have something, you don’t want to let it go. Even if it’s not morally justifiable. Otherwise wealth would be much more equally spread across northern and Southern hemisphere. Personally I hate advertisement, i will do everything I can to disable it but I know that at this point I’m almost pirating. There is no shame in that, internet is the Wild West : Google and their AI crawling bots aren’t better than me, they leech contents other made, other host, to build their ai and then makes money on top of it.

astrobe_ 1y ago

This is the same situation as with the media industry, e.g. music and movies and piracy. Studies have shown that people who pirate wouldn't buy the product even if they had the opportunity (i.e. is if they had the money or if it was easy to buy). So I guess the content is not good enough.

wiseowise 1y ago

> Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? Shall we do the same to open source? “Watch this ad for 30 seconds before checking out a branch! Git commit, oops: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS”

CaptainFever 1y ago

Because I control my computer, and if I don't want to see ads, I have the right to automatically filter them out on my side. (Yes, yes, and Google has the right to block me from accessing their servers.)

jillesvangurp 1y ago

Very simple. I don't self flagellate because it hurts and I don't like it. And there's no need for me to self flagellate. So why would I? In exactly the same way, there's no need for me to watch stupid ads. I've had ad blockers ever since they came into existence. There is no incentive for me to disable them. When I need to, I actually pay for content on Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Apple, etc. It's not a money issue. I haven't done that with Youtube because 1) I don't need to, 2) Google is pretty bad about paying content creators properly (they prefer keeping the money for themselves) and 3) I feel no guilt whatsoever about not sponsoring trillion dollar companies by exposing myself to the pain of watching their shitty ads. Luckily for Google, most people aren't smart enough to figure out ad blockers. Which is why they are making lots of money with Youtube and why they are a trillion dollar company. Good for them; no need to feel sorry for them. Luckily for me, Google seems pretty conflicted about fixing this properly because they are making so much money with the way things are. If they lock down Youtube properly (not that hard technically), users and content creators might move elsewhere. They can't afford to. So good for me. It's that simple. There is no moral dilemma here.

Borgz 1y ago

Perhaps one justification for blocking ads is protecting users from personal information harvesting, tracking, and malware delivered through advertising networks. Aside from that, I can't think of a justification. I actually think it would be good if there were filter lists that whitelisted ads that were not harmful to users in those ways, but that sounds difficult/impossible to fairly maintain, and I doubt anyone else wants it.

JanneVee 1y ago

I've harped on this before: the problem is that the ads if they are fraudulent or harmful in other ways and the companies making money when presenting deserve get their shit blocked. Especially if they can target ads to vulnerable people. These are huge profitable companies that moderate the content they profit of but as soon as someone pays them they turn the blind eye.

squaresmile 1y ago
Yep, it's a straight up safety issue with all the scam ads. I pay for YouTube premium but sometimes my parents and grandparents don't log in, accidentally sign out, watch it on the browsers, etc that it's safer to block them all. It only takes one to get through and gen AI is not helping.

eur0pa 1y ago

I don't need to justify jack

joelthelion 1y ago

Ads are bad for you and bad for the planet. Google is a monopoly and doesn't even create the content themselves. I understand ad blocking isn't morally perfect but I can live with it.

commandersaki 1y ago

I use an ad blocker for a safer experience. There's far too many malicious advertisements on youtube, google, etc. and I don't want to be anywhere near that.

kerkeslager 1y ago

I don't feel entitled to anything. YouTube is free to stop serving me content at any time. It's trivial to refuse to serve people content they haven't paid for. Why do advertisers feel entitled to my attention when I never agreed to give it to them? Simply visiting a page with ads doesn't mean I agree to view ads.

sensanaty 1y ago

I don't pretend I have some moral high ground, I just don't want to see ads, and if I can do that and still not pay, I will do that. I don't care if it's unobtrusive, I don't care if it's relevant or not, I don't care if it's for a service I love and would otherwise be happy to talk/hear about, advertisements are a cancer that should be eradicated and I will not pretend to care about the opinions of people whose livelihoods rides on selling me crap. I'd rather not use Youtube entirely (aka be blocked off by Google) than ever be subjected to even a single microsecond of an ad. Ads are psychological manipulation and I refuse to subject myself to some slimy marketer's ad campaign. If I were made God Emperor of the Earth for the day, the one and only thing I'd do with that power is make sure these people rot away in a dark hole forever, that's how much I detest this whole "market" and the "people" involved in it. Even paying for this stuff isn't a guarantee of anything. Their "Lite" tier has verbiage to the effect of "No* Ads (* Some will still be shown)". We've seen with cable television that the insidious cancer that is advertising creeps its way in as well, and cable was NOT cheap. Plus, it's known that for advertisers, people who actually shell out cash are even juicier targets, and you'd have to be a genuine imbecile to trust the likes of Google or Meta to not abuse you even harder, even if you pay for the service. MAYBE I'd be willing to pay Google if I had a guarantee that no advertisement will EVER be shoved in anywhere in the future, and that I get a guarantee that they will punish those sponsored sections that creators put into their videos if I pay for it, and if I get a guarantee that they won't continue to profile me incessantly to shove ads at me everywhere other than YT. We all know that's not happening though, and I have absolutely 0 interest in lining their coffers with both my money and my data.

aprilthird2021 1y ago
I mean, props for being honest, but you are exactly the reason companies like YouTube have to work so hard to trounce and blockers. And you're likely the reason legislation will eventually move in YouTube's favor. Your "no moral high ground" claim is a bold way to say you just want content, which costs people money to make, for free

vultour 1y ago

I was trying to show someone a scene from a 45-minute YouTube video the other day. I didn't know where it was so I was randomly choosing points to watch. _Every single time_ I clicked on the scrubber I was hit with a 30-second advertisement. Mind you, I always watched maybe 3 seconds of the actual content before moving on. After the 8th time I gave up and vowed to never open YouTube on a device without adblock again. This was so beyond the pale I'm never going to give Google another cent.

gblargg 1y ago

I would happily pay a few dollars a month to use YouTube ad-free, and with a bandwidth limit. I don't need to watch everything in 1080p and higher. For podcasts 144p is fine. Let me pay for the bandwidth I use.

interestica 1y ago

What does “free” mean to you?