Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adblock Plus and (a little) more

blog.adblockplus.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 132 posts

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#11

Post by dewey »

franczesko wrote: post #8
IanCal wrote: post #2

This may be controversial but YouTube ads are surely ones that meet all the reasonable criteria. They're not a surprise, you know it's an ad supported business. They're served from YouTube so it's not random companies tracking you while you use a different service. And you can get rid of them by paying for the service. What's the proposed alternative where you contribute for the service? Just paywall the whole thing?

The alternative might be Google paying their fair share of taxes. I might consider supporting their product then. Ad blocking is not as severe as tax avoidance though. I have no sympathy for the service. If it's not profitable, Google can cover it from their other revenue streams with ease.

That sounds like one of these reasons that people come up with to justify their unwillingness to pay.

Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? I'm all for big companies paying their fair share, but I'm not blaming the company, I'm blaming the people in charge who don't close these loopholes. Same issue as with Ireland in the EU, undercutting all the other EU countries with tax rates.

One option if you want to fight back in the exact same way: Sign up for YouTube Premium through a cheaper country and pay $2/month instead of 15.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#12

Post by hendersoon »

IanCal wrote: post #2

This may be controversial but YouTube ads are surely ones that meet all the reasonable criteria. They're not a surprise, you know it's an ad supported business. They're served from YouTube so it's not random companies tracking you while you use a different service. And you can get rid of them by paying for the service. What's the proposed alternative where you contribute for the service? Just paywall the whole thing?

I am not responsible for sustaining Google's monetization. There is no such social contract. If their business model isn't sustainable, they should find a new one. That's their problem, not mine.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#13

Post by meindnoch »

dewey wrote: post #11
franczesko wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative might be Google paying their fair share of taxes. I might consider supporting their product then. Ad blocking is not as severe as tax avoidance though. I have no sympathy for the service. If it's not profitable, Google can cover it from their other revenue streams with ease.

That sounds like one of these reasons that people come up with to justify their unwillingness to pay. Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? I'm all for big companies paying their fair share, but I'm not blaming the company, I'm blaming the people in charge who don't close these loopholes. Same issue as with Ireland in the EU, undercutting…

They game our tax system, we game their ad system. It works both ways.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#14

Post by pravus »

IanCal wrote: post #2

This may be controversial but YouTube ads are surely ones that meet all the reasonable criteria. They're not a surprise, you know it's an ad supported business. They're served from YouTube so it's not random companies tracking you while you use a different service. And you can get rid of them by paying for the service. What's the proposed alternative where you contribute for the service? Just paywall the whole thing?

I currently pay $5/month to the Kevin Richardson channel as a member and have been a member since inception for over 4 years now. When I went to the members section of YouTube to view my members-only videos I received the blocking message and was denied access to the video player. This is in addition to other wildlife charities for which I send monthly donations directly.

I use uBlock Origin on YouTube specifically to work around many UI issues related to their recommendations and player. I will not turn it off. One example is that they will not honor my closed-caption settings on all videos so I have a filter rule to remove the call to the captions URL to eliminate them. That's one of countless issues.

They are now denying me access to a service for which I do actually pay for. I consider that to be illegal.

My proposal is simple:

    * Give me an option to pay for what I use.  I do not want music, 99.9% of live streams, news, or tons of the other content they try to force on me for money-making purposes.
    * Make the price reasonable.  The videos I watch are primarily educational lectures.  This really shouldn't cost much more than the price of disk storage and network egress (both of which are cheap at scale).
    * Give me a recommendations and preference system that actually work.  I spend more time curating my list of videos than watching anything meaningful to my interests.  At one point I was watching 2 luthiery channels and "guitar necks" came up as a category.  What the ever living fuck?  Related yes, but not quite the topic I really want to focus on.  I would remind people that this is a multi-billion dollar company with PhDs that has changed the face of AI and hyper-scale computing as we know it.
    * In general, operate like a long-running business... offer good value to your paying customers.  Now that the customers are not advertisers, Google will need to rethink their sales strategies.  They have not yet convinced me.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#15

Post by causality0 »

IanCal wrote: post #2

This may be controversial but YouTube ads are surely ones that meet all the reasonable criteria. They're not a surprise, you know it's an ad supported business. They're served from YouTube so it's not random companies tracking you while you use a different service. And you can get rid of them by paying for the service. What's the proposed alternative where you contribute for the service? Just paywall the whole thing?

I spent years having to click "No, I do not consent to creating a Google+ profile" every time I used YouTube so I refuse to give them money on principle.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#16

Post by franczesko »

dewey wrote: post #11
franczesko wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative might be Google paying their fair share of taxes. I might consider supporting their product then. Ad blocking is not as severe as tax avoidance though. I have no sympathy for the service. If it's not profitable, Google can cover it from their other revenue streams with ease.

That sounds like one of these reasons that people come up with to justify their unwillingness to pay. Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? I'm all for big companies paying their fair share, but I'm not blaming the company, I'm blaming the people in charge who don't close these loopholes. Same issue as with Ireland in the EU, undercutting…

Ad blocking is not illegal. If I can do it, as Google does with taxes, I see no reason why I shouldn't.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#18

Post by logifail »

dewey wrote: post #11
franczesko wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative might be Google paying their fair share of taxes. I might consider supporting their product then. Ad blocking is not as severe as tax avoidance though. I have no sympathy for the service. If it's not profitable, Google can cover it from their other revenue streams with ease.

That sounds like one of these reasons that people come up with to justify their unwillingness to pay. Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? I'm all for big companies paying their fair share, but I'm not blaming the company, I'm blaming the people in charge who don't close these loopholes. Same issue as with Ireland in the EU, undercutting…

> Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with?

Umm, where possible why wouldn't one choose to avoid giving your money to companies that behave in ways you object to?

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#19

Post by kmbfjr »

IanCal wrote: post #2

This may be controversial but YouTube ads are surely ones that meet all the reasonable criteria. They're not a surprise, you know it's an ad supported business. They're served from YouTube so it's not random companies tracking you while you use a different service. And you can get rid of them by paying for the service. What's the proposed alternative where you contribute for the service? Just paywall the whole thing?

Paying for the service replicates the cable TV industry. In order to get what I want and support, I end up supporting what I don’t want and don’t want to support.

I am under ZERO obligation to watch advertising, that is the risk the industry takes. The ad industry has long ago tipped the scales in the trade of attention for content and now they resort to shaming the viewers into compliance.

Everyone supporting the adblock countermeasures are hypocrites; as if they never went to the bathroom during a TV show commercial break.

Re: Adblock Plus and (a little) more

#20

Post by dewey »

logifail wrote: post #18
dewey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like one of these reasons that people come up with to justify their unwillingness to pay. Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? I'm all for big companies paying their fair share, but I'm not blaming the company, I'm blaming the people in charge who don't close these loopholes. Same issue as with Ireland in the EU, undercutting…

> Are you also boycotting every other large company that uses the tax system in a legal way that you don't agree with? Umm, where possible why wouldn't one choose to avoid giving your money to companies that behave in ways you object to?

Voting with your wallet is always the best, my point was that most (all?) big companies will use the tax system in a way to give them the best outcome that's possible through legal means.
Post reply on HN