12 ms·

Blocking ads is hardly "pirating" content

by tcfhgj 11mo ago

crazygringo 11mo ago
I don't really see what the difference is. They're not getting the payment for the video either way. Morally I don't see how they aren't equivalent. I'm not going to stand on a high horse saying you shouldn't do either, but I don't really see how you can pretend one is less harmful to creators than the other, in terms of the basic principles involved.
- akersten 11mo ago
  > the payment for the video either way. "the payment for the video" as if it's a given that my ad impression is required for me to watch some video that they made available to me on their website for free. Morally, YouTube shows the most heinous and scummy ads 24/7 on their platform and fails to take them down when reported. Gambling, AI sex games, "cure what doctors miss" ads for human use of Ivermectin - it's your moral duty to block them.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  Piracy involves obtaining media content for free for which you should normally pay for, as a result of someone sharing the media meant for their own personal use to the general public. YouTube does not ask for payment, it sends the video data you want alongside some bullshit you’ll ignore and waste precious human time doing so. Ad blocking just involves offloading the ignoring to the computer, as it should, since computers are meant to automate menial tasks.
  - renewiltord 11mo ago
    I've tried to explain this to people repeatedly and they don't get it. They're always like "oh no the AI scraper is slamming my website it's ruining everything". Um, maybe configure your web browser to not send me data if you don't want me 'scraping' your website. It's literally your server's choice to send me data. I'm just asking from a few IPs. If you want to send data to all of them that's your server's choice. But I think people don't get the fact that they can just request payment or only send to authenticated users from authorized IPs and so on. Instead they want to send to all IPs without payment but then get upset when I use a bunch of IPs without paying. Weird. I'm trying to read a bunch of stuff. The entire point of a computer is to make that easy. I'm not going to repetitively click through a bunch of links when a bot can do that way faster.
    - gusgus01 11mo ago
      And what is the surefire way to stop AI scrapers from accessing your website? If there is no way, how can this be an acceptable ask? It already sounds like you're using several IPs to access sites, which seems like a work around to someone somewhere trying to limit the use of one IP (or just lack of desire to host and distribute the data yourself to your various hosts). Just because you can do something doesn't mean everyone must accept and like that you are doing that thing.
      - renewiltord 11mo ago
        The answer is right there: use authentication with cost per load, or an IP whitelist. GP is absolutely right. If your server is just going to send me traffic when I ask I’m just going to ask and do what I want with the response. Your server will respond fine if I click through with different IPs and it’s just a menial task to have this distribution of requests to IPs, which is what we made computers for. Yeah, you’re right of course that no one has to like the “piracy” or “scraping” or whatever other name you’re giving to a completely normal request-response interaction between machines. They can complain. And I can say they’re silly for complaining. No one has to like anything. Heck you could hate ice cream.
        gusgus01 11mo ago
        As long as we all understand that this mentality is advocating for the end of an open internet. This is the tragedy of the commons in action, the removal of a common good because the few that would take advantage of it do. Just because something is programmed to be a request and response interaction (although the use of blocklists and robots.txt and etc should reveal that it's not a simple request and response interaction), does not mean we should have to go all or nothing in ensuring it's not abused. We are still the operators of programs, it's still a social contract. If I block an IP and the same operator shows up with a different IP, it's like if I got kicked out of a bar and then came back with a fake mustache on and got confused why they think it's wrong because they don't have a members list. A personal website is like a community cupboard or an open access water tap, people put it out there for others to enjoy but when the reseller shows up and takes it all it's no longer sustainable to provide the service. Of course, it's all a spectrum: from monster corporations that build in the loss to their projections and participate in wholesale data collection and selling to open websites with no ads or limited ads as a sort of donation box; from a person using css/js to block ads or software to pirate for cheaper entertainment to an AI scrapper using swathes of IPs and servers to non-stop request all the data you're hosting for their own monetary gain. I have different opinions depending on where on the spectrum you are. But I do think piracy and ad blocking are on the same spectrum, and much closer to acceptable than mass AI scraping. These responses were more about your comments about AI scraping then the piracy vs ad blocking conversation, but in my opinion the gap between them and scraping is quite large.
danpalmer 11mo ago
To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.
- komali2 11mo ago
  > but ad blocking is definitely piracy This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term. Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft? I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad. It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.
  - HDThoreaun 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Nextgrid 11mo ago
      I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
      - JAlexoid 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        11mo ago
tonyhart7 11mo ago
its pirating content in a way that you dont generate revenue for youtuber that expect from ads
- akersten 11mo ago
  I'm sure that trillion-dollar analytics empire is worth something even without my eyeballs consuming some shitty pre-roll.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    Most of the ad revenue actually goes to the people uploading content. But sure... they're all clearly are "trillion-dollar analytics empire"
- archargelod 11mo ago
  Most content creators have links to support them with donation or patreon. Once a year choose 3 small youtubers (larger ones are already multi-millioners, they don't need your help) and drop them $5 each. Now you just did 1000% of what they could get from you watching ads.
  - chrneu 11mo ago
    what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos. The issue is processing fees on that payment, so might as well give em a bit more. It's wild how low the payout on ads is. Seriously, just flip people $1 every once in a while and it's more support than ads. It's so stupid how people get all morally superior when they figure out that someone block ads.
    - tonyhart7 11mo ago
      "what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos." how can you confidence with being so wrong btw ???? Ads bringing more money than donation ever would be
thaumasiotes 11mo ago
You wouldn't not download a virus.

Blocking ads is hardly "pirating" content

by tcfhgj 11mo ago

Blocking ads is hardly "pirating" content

I don't really see what the difference is. They're not getting the payment for the video either way. Morally I don't see how they aren't equivalent. I'm not going to stand on a high horse saying you shouldn't do either, but I don't really see how you can pretend one is less harmful to creators than the other, in terms of the basic principles involved.

akersten 11mo ago
> the payment for the video either way. "the payment for the video" as if it's a given that my ad impression is required for me to watch some video that they made available to me on their website for free. Morally, YouTube shows the most heinous and scummy ads 24/7 on their platform and fails to take them down when reported. Gambling, AI sex games, "cure what doctors miss" ads for human use of Ivermectin - it's your moral duty to block them.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Nextgrid 11mo ago
Piracy involves obtaining media content for free for which you should normally pay for, as a result of someone sharing the media meant for their own personal use to the general public. YouTube does not ask for payment, it sends the video data you want alongside some bullshit you’ll ignore and waste precious human time doing so. Ad blocking just involves offloading the ignoring to the computer, as it should, since computers are meant to automate menial tasks.
- renewiltord 11mo ago
  I've tried to explain this to people repeatedly and they don't get it. They're always like "oh no the AI scraper is slamming my website it's ruining everything". Um, maybe configure your web browser to not send me data if you don't want me 'scraping' your website. It's literally your server's choice to send me data. I'm just asking from a few IPs. If you want to send data to all of them that's your server's choice. But I think people don't get the fact that they can just request payment or only send to authenticated users from authorized IPs and so on. Instead they want to send to all IPs without payment but then get upset when I use a bunch of IPs without paying. Weird. I'm trying to read a bunch of stuff. The entire point of a computer is to make that easy. I'm not going to repetitively click through a bunch of links when a bot can do that way faster.
  - gusgus01 11mo ago
    And what is the surefire way to stop AI scrapers from accessing your website? If there is no way, how can this be an acceptable ask? It already sounds like you're using several IPs to access sites, which seems like a work around to someone somewhere trying to limit the use of one IP (or just lack of desire to host and distribute the data yourself to your various hosts). Just because you can do something doesn't mean everyone must accept and like that you are doing that thing.
    - renewiltord 11mo ago
      The answer is right there: use authentication with cost per load, or an IP whitelist. GP is absolutely right. If your server is just going to send me traffic when I ask I’m just going to ask and do what I want with the response. Your server will respond fine if I click through with different IPs and it’s just a menial task to have this distribution of requests to IPs, which is what we made computers for. Yeah, you’re right of course that no one has to like the “piracy” or “scraping” or whatever other name you’re giving to a completely normal request-response interaction between machines. They can complain. And I can say they’re silly for complaining. No one has to like anything. Heck you could hate ice cream.
      - gusgus01 11mo ago
        As long as we all understand that this mentality is advocating for the end of an open internet. This is the tragedy of the commons in action, the removal of a common good because the few that would take advantage of it do. Just because something is programmed to be a request and response interaction (although the use of blocklists and robots.txt and etc should reveal that it's not a simple request and response interaction), does not mean we should have to go all or nothing in ensuring it's not abused. We are still the operators of programs, it's still a social contract. If I block an IP and the same operator shows up with a different IP, it's like if I got kicked out of a bar and then came back with a fake mustache on and got confused why they think it's wrong because they don't have a members list. A personal website is like a community cupboard or an open access water tap, people put it out there for others to enjoy but when the reseller shows up and takes it all it's no longer sustainable to provide the service. Of course, it's all a spectrum: from monster corporations that build in the loss to their projections and participate in wholesale data collection and selling to open websites with no ads or limited ads as a sort of donation box; from a person using css/js to block ads or software to pirate for cheaper entertainment to an AI scrapper using swathes of IPs and servers to non-stop request all the data you're hosting for their own monetary gain. I have different opinions depending on where on the spectrum you are. But I do think piracy and ad blocking are on the same spectrum, and much closer to acceptable than mass AI scraping. These responses were more about your comments about AI scraping then the piracy vs ad blocking conversation, but in my opinion the gap between them and scraping is quite large.

danpalmer 11mo ago

To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.

komali2 11mo ago
> but ad blocking is definitely piracy This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term. Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft? I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad. It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.
- HDThoreaun 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Nextgrid 11mo ago
    I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - 11mo ago

tonyhart7 11mo ago

its pirating content in a way that you dont generate revenue for youtuber that expect from ads

akersten 11mo ago
I'm sure that trillion-dollar analytics empire is worth something even without my eyeballs consuming some shitty pre-roll.
- JAlexoid 11mo ago
  Most of the ad revenue actually goes to the people uploading content. But sure... they're all clearly are "trillion-dollar analytics empire"
archargelod 11mo ago
Most content creators have links to support them with donation or patreon. Once a year choose 3 small youtubers (larger ones are already multi-millioners, they don't need your help) and drop them $5 each. Now you just did 1000% of what they could get from you watching ads.
- chrneu 11mo ago
  what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos. The issue is processing fees on that payment, so might as well give em a bit more. It's wild how low the payout on ads is. Seriously, just flip people $1 every once in a while and it's more support than ads. It's so stupid how people get all morally superior when they figure out that someone block ads.
  - tonyhart7 11mo ago
    "what's insane, even $1 is more than they'll get from you watching every single one of their videos." how can you confidence with being so wrong btw ???? Ads bringing more money than donation ever would be

thaumasiotes 11mo ago

You wouldn't not download a virus.