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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#641

Post by 127 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #217
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> patio11’s post “The optimal amount of fraud is non zero”. Thanks, I just skimmed this post. It seems to me that "optimal" is substituting for "cost effective". The optimal amount of fraud is always zero, it's just not cost effective given the existence of people willing to go to lengths to commit fraud. > Can YouTube squeeze more money from ads by doing this? The third option is that this would incentivize a portio…

It's not just cost effectiveness. It's about how awful you will make the user experience for real users if you tried to bring fraud truly to 0. It's essentially the security-convenience tradeoff. In terms of YouTube, it's the monetization-experience tradeoff.

The willingness and ability of people to commit fraud is not a constant. It's highly variable depending on social context. The more you allow fraud also changes society to accept more fraud, which is a vicious circle.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#642

Post by erremerre »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #626
belltaco wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moral issues, security issues, etc. How is blocking ads not a moral issue? Video creators also get hurt by ad blockers, not just YT, which does have costs associated with serving you video. > So on those you never see ads? I think they started showing ads on them, just fewer. They do cost storage and bandwidth, so what's wrong with that? > Well, I can't speak for anyone else but I'm a middle-aged historian, so star…

There is a moral issue, you're right. Blocking ads is clearly morally permissible. Blocking ads is equivalent to not locking at billboards and skipping ad pages in a magazine (or tearing the pages out). There is no moral issue with any of that. You've bought a PC, you run whatever software you like on it. You have a right to chose how your machine displays content you download from the net. In turn, the maker of a we…

Blocking ads is not morally permissible. Charging ads by the display is. Any ad should charge the user by ad displayed or attempted to display, not by click or any other way. Just as TV advertisement. If the user goes to make a sandwich, skip it or remove the sound the ad should still be charged to owner of the ad.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#643

Post by jonathanstrange »

erremerre wrote: post #642
jonathanstrange wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a moral issue, you're right. Blocking ads is clearly morally permissible. Blocking ads is equivalent to not locking at billboards and skipping ad pages in a magazine (or tearing the pages out). There is no moral issue with any of that. You've bought a PC, you run whatever software you like on it. You have a right to chose how your machine displays content you download from the net. In turn, the maker of a we…

Blocking ads is not morally permissible. Charging ads by the display is. Any ad should charge the user by ad displayed or attempted to display, not by click or any other way. Just as TV advertisement. If the user goes to make a sandwich, skip it or remove the sound the ad should still be charged to owner of the ad.

Do you have any arguments for this opinion or is it an expression of a personal moral sentiment?

My argument why ad blocking is morally permissible is that it's a matter of the end users personal freedom if and how they display content from remote servers. They should be allowed to use a hex editor, plaintext, braille, TTS, a browser with or without ad ons, etc., and must be allowed to modify the content for their display purposes as they wish as long as they don't redistribute it. That's even a central idea of the HTML specification. There are also plenty of analogies to similar freedoms, for example if I buy a magazine (or get it for free) I can tear out ad pages and use them to fire my stove.

Redistribution is another matter and concerns copyright, but I just can't see any reason why the maker of a web page ought to have a right (or even feel entitled) to control my machine and how the data they voluntarily send to my machine is displayed on it. It's not as if anyone forces them to send the data in the first place.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#644

Post by uncletammy »

gmerc wrote: post #614
selcuka wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get VC funding, run at a loss and burn through money but gain a monopoly market share, and once you've done that you can raise your prices Slightly off topic, but the business plan of most startups seems to be "get VC funding, and exit". What you wrote may be the business plan of VCs. I don't understand the valuation of many startups these days (even in the hypothetical case where they capture 100% of their potenti…

VCs don’t invest because your business has a bright future as a valuable, sustainable operation . Not anymore. The crypto dynamics have shifted the expectations so far to cheap, quick moment they most VCs, especially the a16z kind are more about “Can I juice this business and it’s metrics enough to sell it to someone to hold the bag”. Ironically I think the large numbers involved are basically part of that PR game -…

> The crypto dynamics have shifted the expectations so far to cheap, quick moment they most VCs, especially the a16z kind are more about “Can I juice this business and it’s metrics enough to sell it to someone to hold the bag”.

This strategy existed long before "crypto"

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#645

Post by ndriscoll »

mrtksn wrote: post #609
mkesper wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said is right except for the "rightfully".

Why?

Because providing a product/service below cost to drive competitors out of the market followed by using your new monopoly to raise prices is exactly the definition of illegal predatory pricing.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#646

Post by thirdsun »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #429
caconym_ wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. By all accounts, YouTube is implementing countermeasures that block adblock users from watching videos on their site. What is functionally different between that and returning a 402, especially since you can in fact pay for ad-free YouTube?

Nope. Still free, they just managed to circumvent my browser extension. They're not even supposed to know I have it installed. They need to either start charging everyone for access or stop complaining. I pay for access to a lot of things but I'm not paying money to avoid ads. I sure as hell am not gonna pay money to watch videos with hard coded ads.

> They need to either start charging everyone for access or stop complaining. I pay for access to a lot of things but I'm not paying money to avoid ads.

Then don't. It's fine. However please don't complain about not being able to get access to the content on Youtube without paying or watching ads.

> I sure as hell am not gonna pay money to watch videos with hard coded ads.

That's up to the content creators, not Youtube. Very few of my subscribed channels use hard-coded apps and if they do they need to make up for it with worthwhile content.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#647

Post by amadvance »

Prickle wrote: post #601
amadvance wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a heavy user of ad blockers, but there is something to be said in defense of YouTube. Creators have the final decision on the ads shown. I have a YouTube channel, and I always disable monetization on all my videos, so no ads are ever shown on my channel. If you see an ad, it's because the creator decided to include one. YouTube is simply the platform that enables this choice.

They are actually removing the ability to control ads in the near future. To my understanding, the only ads creators will have full control over are midroll ads. They will be improving ads on the platform by removing the creator's control over them. > optimizing creator revenue and taking the guesswork out of which ad formats to use by removing individual ad controls for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippa…

From what is written, they plan to reduce the control of where ads are placed, but still allow enabling or disabling them.

Anyway, at present it's possible to disable them if you have reached the monetization requirements on the channel, like 1000 subscribers and some amount of hours viewed.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#648

Post by Rastonbury »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #451
eqvinox wrote: post #427

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention. There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly. When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, inc…

Classic bait and switch. Google's own search page is a good example of how ads have overrun the search results.

Ad blocker detected please disable to use Search

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#649

Post by ndriscoll »

pb7 wrote: post #586
ndriscoll wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is free high quality security software, and the author doesn't even accept donations. The other is "free" videos that come with malware.

One is the best, most reliable video serving platform on the planet and the other is a scriptkiddie’s project that evidently doesn’t even work and he’s so salty about it that he had to make a post.

The OP is a post by a random person discussing reddit drama. As far as I can tell, the author of uBO isn't involved in any of it.

uBO does work fine, and is easily one of the most valuable pieces of end user software there is. Raymond Hill is very generous and has made a very positive impact on the world.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#650

Post by amadvance »

radley wrote: post #545
amadvance wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a heavy user of ad blockers, but there is something to be said in defense of YouTube. Creators have the final decision on the ads shown. I have a YouTube channel, and I always disable monetization on all my videos, so no ads are ever shown on my channel. If you see an ad, it's because the creator decided to include one. YouTube is simply the platform that enables this choice.

That's not correct. A few years ago YouTube changed their TOS, so they're now allowed to show ads on any content, regardless of settings.

You're mixing up two different things. It's true that YouTube now places ads to small channels that have not reached the monetization requirements.

But after the channel satisfy such requirements, like 1000 subscribers, the creator gets control of the monetization and they can choose.

For any major channel you watch, it's the creator decision that you see ads or not.

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