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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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271–280 of 781 posts

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#271
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're neither paying YouTube any money nor watching their ads, meaning you're a pure money sink, why should they care about your goodwill?

Because you're an active user and thus help make the site "popular". We're seeing on Twitter what happens when management starts ignoring this basic logic of the internet.

On Twitter and Reddit, the users most affected were also the people providing most value to the platform (tweets, reddit submissions, discussion, moderation). They're fairly symmetric platforms.

On YT, the people providing the value are the content creators. That is the same content creators who get a revenue share from ads and premium. They're the ones who benefit the most from blocking ad blockers. The people watching videos with ad blockers (and sponsor block)? They're not providing anything in exchange, to the platform or the creators.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an ad blocker just as a blanket response to too much crap on websites and being uninterested in having advertising be in my face as much as it would be without. However, that's not to say that all advertising is irrelevant, or that I'm immune to it. When an ad gets through usually my response is something to the tune of "oh well". The devil's advocate argument against your second to last point is that you'd act…

> 10% of the total ads somebody sees I have a special reserve of hatred tucked away for advertisers who take up that much of my consciousness. It's top-shelf, cask-conditioned hatred. Rare, excellent stuff.

So if you see 10 ads in a day, say while you're sitting in a doctor's office, you hate each advertiser? What if one of them is from a business you already patronize?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#273
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad Blockers are special glasses that allow the wearer to see an empty area where the ad is supposed to be. I believe people should be allowed to wear the glasses they want.

I agree. But services should also be able to require that you remove those types of glasses to use their service. In that case, if you ride the bus for free, you see the ads or you don't ride the bus.

Blind people shouldn't be allowed to ride the bus then?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an ad blocker just as a blanket response to too much crap on websites and being uninterested in having advertising be in my face as much as it would be without. However, that's not to say that all advertising is irrelevant, or that I'm immune to it. When an ad gets through usually my response is something to the tune of "oh well". The devil's advocate argument against your second to last point is that you'd act…

It sounds nice in principle, but, anecdotally, I had some youtube ads slip through on my phone recently and made a mental note against buying any of the brands advertised.

I get the emotional response, but it's not logical. The only thing the advertiser did wrong was pay Google to advertise their product. Can you imagine what percentage of products or services you regularly buy that have done that?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, rubbish. We've been able to do high quality video with P2P protocols for decades at this point. We have the bandwidth and the storage just sitting there. The only reason we haven't developed a system like YouTube is because we have YouTube. But take YouTube out of the picture and we're very ready for something like Wikipedia for videos. Let's not forget that just 20 years ago we didn't even have a free encyclopa…

And how do creators get paid for the videos shared by P2P?

They don't. I don't want paid for content. If you will only make a video because you want to get paid for it then please, don't make the video.

Many people will make videos without expecting payment. See YouTube, for example.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#276
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay-per-view creates a perverse incentive to make SEO noise and make it more difficult to find what you want. You would be mostly paying to make your life worse. Better to just block ads, encourage and help others to block ads, and hope those sites die.

I certainly understand the perverse incentive, but that's already the incentive we're working under. And how do you propose we fairly compensate people for the value they've created when making content? How can we support artists, journalists, and so on to do the work that we enjoy? If everyone did as you suggest, spammy SEO sites will be the last to die, because the effort invested to make them is so much lower than…

> And how do you propose we fairly compensate people for the value they've created when making content?

> How can we support artists, journalists, and so on to do the work that we enjoy?

We either pay them before the work is completed or in an ongoing manner to support their activities. Patronage. Crowdfunding. Plenty of people seem to be achieving success via platforms like Patreon and GitHub Sponsors. This is ethical.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it costs them money to host the videos on their servers, you're not paying for the protocol to deliver the content, just like you're not paying for the roads when you ride the bus. Additionally it cost the content creators time, money, and energy to make the content. People should get paid for that. So you're also paying the bus driver, the mechanics, etc.

People pay for the roads that is being used while riding a bus. It is built and maintained by their taxes. Bus fares is going towards other costs from operations to salaries. YouTube on the other hand is a freeloader on the internet infrastructure.

That's a ridiculous take. The Internet isn't just free infrastructure that anyone can use. The data has to live somewhere. 2,500 people work at YT. They pay salaries, have offices, manage servers to store the videos, pay their content creators, etc.

So nobody is allowed to start an internet company and make money from it?

Uber is a business using roads that people pay for, should they not make money? Should those drivers not get paid as well?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#278
I am otherwise unGoogled on purpose (Kagi, Fastmail, Apple Maps, etc.) and YouTube Premium is some of the best money I spend on a monthly basis, especially because of family usage and plan. YouTube Music has been a surprisingly excellent throw-in as well, and I often end up using it more than Apple Music because it's so easy to browser-search with an Alfred shortcut. I want to support creators, and cannot personally wrap my head around western IT folks deeming it worthwhile to either spend time watching ads or trying to evade them.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#279
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I sent you data so you have to use all of it exactly the way I want" is the entitled perspective.

Nonsense. I provide a service in exchange for payment, then not paying is entitlement.

You're implying that my not watching your short video that you sent to me is equivalent to my not paying for a service you just rendered. The fact that this extremist opinion is anything but ultra-fringe is evidence of the deeply greedy, entitled, irrational, antagonistic, dangerous, bully-ish relationship some businesses have with citizens.

The internet is not a platform for exchanging services for the promise that the user viewed a short video. It is a general purpose platform, on which you happen to be able to almost implement said exchange. The fact that it's "almost" is not the user's fault - you are simply trying to do something at odds with the platform you are using. You are free to use a different platform, or adjust your strategy on the current platform in an honest manner. But trying to alter the premise of the internet in order to remove that "almost" is immoral. If you don't feel that way, that's a pretty fundamental disagreement that is likely unreconcilable.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you ask? Because it would cause them more harm than benefit. They have thousands of people working on that and this is the conclusion they got so far. I never used youtube without adblock and won't ever use it. I hope they block adblocks so it become so annoying that better options start to appear again.

Better options don't magically appear. Especially in an unsustainable market: nobody wants an audience of users who don't watch ads and don't pay. Where's the money to make the better option coming from?

I don't think not wanting to pay for YouTube is the same as not wanting to pay, period. I happily pay for Nebula but block ads on YouTube. I know plenty of people who do the same, or subscribe to patreons and such of people they follow.
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