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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 quest

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.
- usernamed7 1y ago
  this is ridiculous. The provider is welcome to serve ads, and i am welcome to not watch them. When there are Ads on TV and I get up to go to the kitchen, am i skipping out on a commitment? Am I now a freeloader? Should the TV have a camera to make sure I watch all the ads like a good little boy? People have been fastforwarding/skipping ads for decades. this is nothing new.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    Technically, the provider only really cares that the ads played, not that you were paying attention to them. Unlike DVR for TVs, you are not welcome to skip playing them entirely. They've been pretty clear that skipping them via the use of ad blockers is a violation of the terms of service.
    - tock 1y ago
      > Technically, the provider only really cares that the ads played, not that you were paying attention to them. Advertisers do care about them. It's just that they don't have a way to track/measure it.
      - wussboy 1y ago
        And if they could find a way to make you pay attention you’d better believe they’d do it in a heartbeat
        nofunsir 1y ago
        When Apple first launched face ID, there was talk (I can't remember where) of developers being excited about the possibility of tracking where their users were looking.
        jama211 1y ago
        And apple, being not terrible in this one specific regard (their privacy record tends to be decent for a tech giant), didn’t allow it fortunately. Not sure if the same is true on other phones.
- throwaway31094 1y ago
  Do the less fortunate not deserve to have access to culture and information without being subjected to the psychological abuse that is advertising?
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    If they can't afford a YouTube subscription, they're not going to be buying anything that would be advertised anyway. Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy things, but "psychological abuse" is a pretty extreme hyperbole, especially for people already in such tight poverty. They've got enough going on that someone trying to get them to buy shitty knives or switch their car insurance isn't going to be impactful.
    - throwaway31094 1y ago
      > Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy things The issue is that those are not the only ads Youtube is showing to people. You can basically upload any video and make it an ad. Sometimes Youtube's moderation fails and some nasty stuff slips through the cracks: > In the latest incident, a Redditor describes how their young nephew was exposed to an explicit ad while watching a Fortnite stream by the well-known YouTuber Loserfruit. > “My 7yr nephew was watching Loserfruit (Fortnite streamer) and then came up to me asking what Loserfruit is doing because this ad started playing,” the concerned uncle shared. Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-explicit-ads-problem-3520285/ https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-explicit-ads-proble... Hell, they'll show weight loss ads to people with eating disorders - and this one might just be intentional rather than a failure of Youtube's moderation: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18gx1v1/how_to_stop_triggering_ads/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18gx1v... (Just one example but it's not hard to find more) "Psychological abuse" is very much not hyperbole in the worst case scenarios. And as an extra bonus, Youtube promotes scam ads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39117360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39117360
      - e44858 1y ago
        This seems to be a very big problem for YouTube: “In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and suspended 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year,” the platform told us at the time. I wonder what proportion of those 5.5 billion inappropriate ads were removed only after people watched and reported them.
- eviks 1y ago
  > The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You're wrong in both parts. 1. There is no way to pay to only remove all ads. YT premium bundles some music nonsense and also doesn't remove ads added by creators. 2. "Watching" isn't part of the contract, only "injected ads" are. Do you read every billboard in exchange for the benefit of better roads financed with ad revenue?
  - jama211 1y ago
    You’re just factually incorrect on 1. Creator sponsors are not YT ads, by your logic i wouldn’t be allowed to watch a movie trailer on youtube because it’s technically an ad for something. What we choose to watch on youtube is also up to us.
    - eviks 1y ago
      > Creator sponsors are not YT ads They are. YT shows content, and has several mechanisms of including paid ads in that content. From content consumption perspective there is no difference which specific mechanism is used. > by your logic i wouldn’t be allowed to watch a movie trailer No, that's your own twisted logic. By my logic you'd be free to consume directly whatever you want, just be able to "pay and get no ads"
      - jama211 1y ago
        And what if I want to watch mightycarmods entire videos including their personal sponsorship segments? Are you just going to take that away from me? Stop fallaciously pretending they’re the same thing.
        eviks 1y ago
        > No, that's your own twisted logic [stop fallaciously doing that!]. By my logic you'd be free to consume directly whatever you want, just be able to "pay and get no ads"
  - 1y ago
- asadotzler 1y ago
  >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. Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them. There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite options to the user here. Google may prefer you engage in only one of two ways, but they have no legal ground to require that with content on the public Web.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    This is a pedantic response to a reasonable suggestion. It is not reasonable to complain about a product or service you are not paying for.
    - nofunsir 1y ago
      The pedantry comes not from someone using their User Agent however they want to use it. It comes from a company trying to (with receipts and lawsuits to prove it) LITERALLY redefine the World Wide Web into their own money making machine, and punish anyone who rocks their boat. They can cry "legal argument" all they want. At the end of the day, they're trying to force pedantry on their users. The only problem is most of the public has bought it Hook, Line and Sinker.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    > have no legal ground That's moving the goalposts of the conversation.
    - nofunsir 1y ago
      No it's not. It's shining a light on where the real WWW goalposts are and always have been.
  - nofunsir 1y ago
    >I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them. This is the unsung argument everyone forgets! It goes to the very start of why someone might register a domain name and set up a website on the... World Wide Web... for people to visit with their User Agent software, ask for some HTML and get some HTML back. "HOW DARE YOU NOT DO A RANDOM SOCIALLY DEFINED THING AFTER ASKING FOR OUR HTML (AND OTHERS' MP4S)?"
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. Wrong. The content provider explicitly states “ad-free”, yet I still see ads from content creators themselves.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  The terms of the contract are the terms encoded in the HTTP protocol. They are: - I, as the user, (or my user agent on behalf of me) ask for a resource. - YT, as the provider, (or the server on YT's behalf) decide whether to send that resource to me. - If you do, I'll use or not use it in accordance with my user agent configuration. I asked for the video, and YT chose to send it to me. I'm not going to lose sleep over the morality of using the web as it was intended to be used.
tlogan 1y ago
Why isn’t simply avoiding YouTube considered a viable solution?
- jama211 1y ago
  If you can’t make a reasonable attempt to answer your own question, you’re not here to argue in good faith.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  Stop playing dumb
- wiseowise 1y ago
  “Why isn’t simply avoiding de facto standard video delivery platform isn’t simply an option?”
  - tlogan 1y ago
    You brought up something I’ve been thinking about too: the real issue is that YouTube has effectively become a monopoly. It’s the de facto standard for online video. It makes me wonder: is there room for meaningful competition or an alternative platform? And if so, how could it be made sustainable? Are there any viable revenue models beyond ads and surveillance capitalism?
    - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
      Google has enough cash to squash any competitors. For now, the only remotely hopeful viable alternative is the creator-owned Nebula.

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.
usernamed7 1y ago
this is ridiculous. The provider is welcome to serve ads, and i am welcome to not watch them. When there are Ads on TV and I get up to go to the kitchen, am i skipping out on a commitment? Am I now a freeloader? Should the TV have a camera to make sure I watch all the ads like a good little boy? People have been fastforwarding/skipping ads for decades. this is nothing new.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Technically, the provider only really cares that the ads played, not that you were paying attention to them. Unlike DVR for TVs, you are not welcome to skip playing them entirely. They've been pretty clear that skipping them via the use of ad blockers is a violation of the terms of service.
  - tock 1y ago
    > Technically, the provider only really cares that the ads played, not that you were paying attention to them. Advertisers do care about them. It's just that they don't have a way to track/measure it.
    - wussboy 1y ago
      And if they could find a way to make you pay attention you’d better believe they’d do it in a heartbeat
      - nofunsir 1y ago
        When Apple first launched face ID, there was talk (I can't remember where) of developers being excited about the possibility of tracking where their users were looking.
        jama211 1y ago
        And apple, being not terrible in this one specific regard (their privacy record tends to be decent for a tech giant), didn’t allow it fortunately. Not sure if the same is true on other phones.
throwaway31094 1y ago
Do the less fortunate not deserve to have access to culture and information without being subjected to the psychological abuse that is advertising?
- zdragnar 1y ago
  If they can't afford a YouTube subscription, they're not going to be buying anything that would be advertised anyway. Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy things, but "psychological abuse" is a pretty extreme hyperbole, especially for people already in such tight poverty. They've got enough going on that someone trying to get them to buy shitty knives or switch their car insurance isn't going to be impactful.
  - throwaway31094 1y ago
    > Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy things The issue is that those are not the only ads Youtube is showing to people. You can basically upload any video and make it an ad. Sometimes Youtube's moderation fails and some nasty stuff slips through the cracks: > In the latest incident, a Redditor describes how their young nephew was exposed to an explicit ad while watching a Fortnite stream by the well-known YouTuber Loserfruit. > “My 7yr nephew was watching Loserfruit (Fortnite streamer) and then came up to me asking what Loserfruit is doing because this ad started playing,” the concerned uncle shared. Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-explicit-ads-problem-3520285/ https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-explicit-ads-proble... Hell, they'll show weight loss ads to people with eating disorders - and this one might just be intentional rather than a failure of Youtube's moderation: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18gx1v1/how_to_stop_triggering_ads/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18gx1v... (Just one example but it's not hard to find more) "Psychological abuse" is very much not hyperbole in the worst case scenarios. And as an extra bonus, Youtube promotes scam ads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39117360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39117360
    - e44858 1y ago
      This seems to be a very big problem for YouTube: “In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and suspended 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year,” the platform told us at the time. I wonder what proportion of those 5.5 billion inappropriate ads were removed only after people watched and reported them.
eviks 1y ago
> The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. You're wrong in both parts. 1. There is no way to pay to only remove all ads. YT premium bundles some music nonsense and also doesn't remove ads added by creators. 2. "Watching" isn't part of the contract, only "injected ads" are. Do you read every billboard in exchange for the benefit of better roads financed with ad revenue?
- jama211 1y ago
  You’re just factually incorrect on 1. Creator sponsors are not YT ads, by your logic i wouldn’t be allowed to watch a movie trailer on youtube because it’s technically an ad for something. What we choose to watch on youtube is also up to us.
  - eviks 1y ago
    > Creator sponsors are not YT ads They are. YT shows content, and has several mechanisms of including paid ads in that content. From content consumption perspective there is no difference which specific mechanism is used. > by your logic i wouldn’t be allowed to watch a movie trailer No, that's your own twisted logic. By my logic you'd be free to consume directly whatever you want, just be able to "pay and get no ads"
    - jama211 1y ago
      And what if I want to watch mightycarmods entire videos including their personal sponsorship segments? Are you just going to take that away from me? Stop fallaciously pretending they’re the same thing.
      - eviks 1y ago
        > No, that's your own twisted logic [stop fallaciously doing that!]. By my logic you'd be free to consume directly whatever you want, just be able to "pay and get no ads"
- 1y ago
asadotzler 1y ago
>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. Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them. There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite options to the user here. Google may prefer you engage in only one of two ways, but they have no legal ground to require that with content on the public Web.
- simianwords 1y ago
  This is a pedantic response to a reasonable suggestion. It is not reasonable to complain about a product or service you are not paying for.
  - nofunsir 1y ago
    The pedantry comes not from someone using their User Agent however they want to use it. It comes from a company trying to (with receipts and lawsuits to prove it) LITERALLY redefine the World Wide Web into their own money making machine, and punish anyone who rocks their boat. They can cry "legal argument" all they want. At the end of the day, they're trying to force pedantry on their users. The only problem is most of the public has bought it Hook, Line and Sinker.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  > have no legal ground That's moving the goalposts of the conversation.
  - nofunsir 1y ago
    No it's not. It's shining a light on where the real WWW goalposts are and always have been.
- nofunsir 1y ago
  >I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them. This is the unsung argument everyone forgets! It goes to the very start of why someone might register a domain name and set up a website on the... World Wide Web... for people to visit with their User Agent software, ask for some HTML and get some HTML back. "HOW DARE YOU NOT DO A RANDOM SOCIALLY DEFINED THING AFTER ASKING FOR OUR HTML (AND OTHERS' MP4S)?"
wiseowise 1y ago
> The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads. Wrong. The content provider explicitly states “ad-free”, yet I still see ads from content creators themselves.
_Algernon_ 1y ago
The terms of the contract are the terms encoded in the HTTP protocol. They are: - I, as the user, (or my user agent on behalf of me) ask for a resource. - YT, as the provider, (or the server on YT's behalf) decide whether to send that resource to me. - If you do, I'll use or not use it in accordance with my user agent configuration. I asked for the video, and YT chose to send it to me. I'm not going to lose sleep over the morality of using the web as it was intended to be used.

tlogan 1y ago

Why isn’t simply avoiding YouTube considered a viable solution?

jama211 1y ago
If you can’t make a reasonable attempt to answer your own question, you’re not here to argue in good faith.
bowsamic 1y ago
Stop playing dumb
wiseowise 1y ago
“Why isn’t simply avoiding de facto standard video delivery platform isn’t simply an option?”
- tlogan 1y ago
  You brought up something I’ve been thinking about too: the real issue is that YouTube has effectively become a monopoly. It’s the de facto standard for online video. It makes me wonder: is there room for meaningful competition or an alternative platform? And if so, how could it be made sustainable? Are there any viable revenue models beyond ads and surveillance capitalism?
  - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
    Google has enough cash to squash any competitors. For now, the only remotely hopeful viable alternative is the creator-owned Nebula.