Every time there's an article about this fight, someone inevitably chimes in with their "Just Buy Premium" contribution. While true, it's not very useful or topical, and it's been re-posted so many damn times that it's pretty much zero-value.
It's like going into a discussion about building your own custom PC from scratch and posting "Just buy it from Dell!" I mean, no shit!
Everyone obviously knows paying is an option. These articles/discussions aren't about the obvious, short, straightforward path.
Bad analogy. Six Flags has a fence and doesn’t offer free rides. Jumping the Six Flags fence is not legal. YouTube has no fence and advertises free rides without a ticket, by design, but does serve ads. (YT didn’t used to, they only got big in the first place by offering free rides w/ no ads.) YouTube could have a fence, and only offer rides to paying customers, but they don’t. Avoiding those ads is perfectly legal. Using an ad blocker is perfectly defensible, as defensible as turning the volume down or doing something else while an ad is playing. You certainly don’t want ad avoidance to become illegal and considered stealing under the law do you? Imagine being arrested for failing to read a billboard, or for talking to a friend during a TV commercial.
Honestly, there's no great real-world analogy, that's why we keep re-discussing it (and ultimately, I think, the business model is flawed). Let's try a better one though:
I go into a store and they offer to give me a free cupcake if I'm willing to take their branded bumper sticker and put it on my car. I say sure, take the cupcake and the bumper sticker, and toss the sticker in the trash before I reach my car. Now they're following me out to my car to make sure I put it on. Fine. I'll do it, and then once I turn the corner, I'll pull it off and toss it. And the cat and mouse game continues, which is why nobody tries the "free cupcake for a bumper sticker" business model.
This thread starts, and someone says "You could always just pay for the cupcake, or keep the bumper sticker on your car..." Wow, no shit, Sherlock! That's obvious and adds nothing to the conversation.
That’s a decent example, and the questions are: is it wrong to take the cupcake and toss the bumper sticker? Is it illegal? In YouTube’s case, did I even agree to the bumper sticker? They never asked, and the rules don’t say I have to watch ads, there’s no legal requirement. People can and do suggest it’s breaking a contract, but in this case I disagree, the contract has been effectively changing out from under me and YouTube and advertisers are fully 100% aware that they’re asking for something that nobody wants to do willingly.
To extend your analogy, it’s like your favorite cafe decided to offer free cupcakes, and not for a quick promotion, but for ten years, and then after all other bakers in town gave up on cupcakes, and there was only one provider of cupcakes that was very popular because they were completely free, the cafe put bumper stickers on the table next to the cupcakes for a few years and noticed people don’t like bumper stickers, and then one day they said these cupcakes weren’t free before, you were supposed to be putting stickers on your car, and the other patrons started accusing you of grift for not having adorned the bumper sticker, despite the fact that the cupcakes had been offered for free.
I’d say there are a bunch of acceptable analogies, such as the free time-share vacation if you listen to the real-estate pitch, or almost any sweepstakes scheme, or the old 10 cds for a penny - if you subscribe to the monthly plan - thing. TV advertising is exactly what YouTube is doing, and they’re trying to exert more control over viewers than TVs ever did, because they can.
The analogy that doesn’t work is comparing YouTube to any strictly paid product, and equating it to stealing. That’s false and bogus, but I’m preaching to the choir there, you already know that. :) I don’t mind the reminders that it’s available as a paid service. I might mind if YouTube does what movies and other paid streaming services have done and start showing ads during the paid content anyway.
The “just buy premium” comment is usually the lone voice of reason in a sea of people jumping through hoops to justify why they like getting things for free without paying for them.
There is value in reminding people that blocking ads when there is a paid ad free option is scummy behavior.
We don't want to see ads. No further justification is necessary.
If they don't like it, they should eliminate the "free" version of the service straight up. If they send us ads, we'll delete them. Nothing they can do about it. We won't lose a second of sleep over it either.
Our attention is ours. It's not currency to pay for services with.
Certainly you decide if it runs. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
However, I imagine the hard part, if it comes to that, will be determining which code is which. Imagine the UI presented in a canvas, updated by a proprietary VM. You can see server connections of course, but their purpose is opaque. Perhaps ad/non-ad content is mixed into the same response. The ad-blockers may make some breakthroughs, but Google's under no obligation to keep it as easy as it is now. I suspect they've barely begun to try.
> However, I imagine the hard part, if it comes to that, will be determining which code is which.
One day someone much smarter than me will invent an AI ad blocker which will do stuff like that automatically. Just imagine it. An AI that automatically filters ads, brands and other forms of noise in real time. It'd even work on audio and video. Hell, it'd work on real life through augmented reality glasses or something. If I can imagine it, then it must be possible.
> Google's under no obligation to keep it as easy as it is now
Actually they kind of are due to accessibility laws. Everything you proposed means rolling back literally every single one of the hard won advances in web accessibility. Everything that enables assistive technology also enables bots, scripts, automated access. I bet they really hate those users because of that.
> I suspect they've barely begun to try.
Yawn. Trillion dollar copyright industry has been playing this exact same cat and mouse game with copyright infringement for literally decades now. You're telling me Google's gonna win this?
Everyone who has any respect for the word "hacker" and what it stands for better hope they give up. There's only one way for them to win and that's by owning our computers. Devices must be literally physically cryptographically unable to run software that hurts their bottom line for them to win.
Not really, you have an option to exclude your content from being indexed by Google (robots.txt).
I don't care as much about Google losing money because of ad-blockers, they have plenty of money going around. The real people losing here are the ones who are creating the content. As it is they need to amass a large number of views to earn few dollars from a video. Depending on the type of content, a lot of time, money and effort goes into creating each of those videos.
They're totally free to configure their servers to return HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of a free web page. They keep sending us free stuff loaded with ads instead. Only have themselves to blame. Nobody's actually obligated to "pay" by looking at that junk.
i don't need to justify my actions. I know adblocking is denying revenue to the platform. i don't care.
The "just buy premium" crowd is assuming that people are rich enough to afford premium. May be they should consider how priviledged they are for having the spare money to dump on premium.
Even if you're rich, you're not obligated to see ads. Our attention belongs to us. It's part of our inalienable cognitive functions. They're not entitled to it.
That's fine, and quite reasonable, as long as it works. Google has no obligation to maintain that state of affairs. I agree that Google isn't entitled to your attention. My point is that, just because they're clamping down on ad-blockers, doesn't mean they think they're entitled to your attention.
Suppose a $14 subscription to YouTube Premium is typically split in half, $7 for the platform and $7 for content creators. If someone signs up for YouTube Premium but doesn't watch any videos at all, do creators split that $7 (in a proportion that roughly mirrors the existing amount creators were already getting paid: a bigger share of the $7 for those with a bigger share of views generally) or does the platform keep both halves?
I don't know that anyone here can say what does happen with that $7, but what should happen with it? Did creators earn it? If they earned it regardless of no plays from that user, it follows that in another universe where the Premium user only ever watched one single creator, that creator doesn't earn more of that particular $7 than they otherwise would.
No justification necessary. No creator ever charged me for products or service. They did it for free. They assumed I was gonna look at the ads. Unfortunately for them that assumption just isn't going to hold.
> I wouldn't believe you if you told me you're subscribed to every Patreon of every content creator you consume the content of.
Everyone’s YouTube consumption is different. I’m not the person you directed the comment at but I realistically follow less than a handful of creators on YouTube. Subscribing to all their Patreons (not sure if all of them have it) would be quite doable.
If the platform operators want to offer a service that's free for the user, there are more ethical business models they could use. e.g. implement p2p video distribution (conveniently, they also make the most popular browser, and could bake p2p in, e.g. support for IPFS), and let the uploader pay for the platform to act as a seed box (or just let the uploader seed). For users that don't want to run a p2p client (phones, etc.) offer paid gateway services. Provide other creator support services like patreon.
Note that the above architecture is modular in a way where other businesses could compete within individual components. E.g. a seed box provider, or a gateway provider, or creator services. Obviously, this is not as good for them (they'd like to force their vertical integration), but better for everyone else.
Or they could stop giving their service away for free, but we all know they benefit from network effects and mindshare, so they want to keep everyone there.
As long as they provide a free service that's bundled with malware, people will accept the service and just remove the malware. When you do something unethical to start, you can't be surprised that people don't play along as planned.
Point is, they chose to corner the market and be a vertically integrated platform with all the costs involved. They didn't have to. They do bad things to maintain that position. No need to shed any tears for their decision.
In hindsight I agree, but I'm confused why only the comments on "one side" (which all seem to be equally substantive) are being flagged, and not all the participants in general.
That's either randomness (every random sequence has long strings of all-heads or all-tails) or cognitive bias (it always feels like the other side is getting treated better) or some combo of the two.
I don't mean to be glib or dismissive I'm just writing this rather hastily! and this is a pretty well-established finding, at least in my own head, having gone over I don't know how many thousands of these cases...
Edit: but if you want to link to specific cases where you feel like there was an asymmetry, I'd be happy to take a look.
At this point I think it's the principle of the thing. I mean I have premium but I still want them to get smacked down for this because Google made one of the endgame moves to drink verification can.
Ads are supposed to incidental, you run ads and if too many people block them because they suck then congrats sucks for you. If no one sees them then sucks for you. Most people put up with TV ads when they're not even hard to skip. And for some reason IG ads are well liked. Forcing them harder I think has to make us confront what we're really doing here and what we're gaining by all this. Just pay for premium sounds nice when you don't think about it. If there's no universe where someone might actually prefer the ads if they were the same price then we're kinda admitting they have literally zero value to the viewer.
And that paints a very different picture of advertising than "the grease of the economic wheel" ya know? And clearly all advertising isn't like this, like I paid to see the Lego movie, Barbie was fantastic. I watched a YT video of a woman showing her design process for a product she's selling and it was fascinating but it was also just an ad. But if YT are there to suck just so you'll pay for it to suck less than that's not mutually beneficial trade that's extortion.
I don't care. I'll keep saying it anyway. You can't actually refute it.
Are you going to claim people's minds aren't sacred ground? That they're the corporation's market battle ground where they compete for brand awareness? That they're the government's blank slate to fill with propaganda at will? Ridiculous.
Ah yes I want it so much that despite being able to block YT ads for years and get all the content for free and still able to do that now I pay for premium. Clearly I just want free shit.
I know it's crazy but what I actually want is an ad model where I don't feel the need to make it go away and might actually enjoy. An ad model where it doesn't have to interrupt me and force itself upon my eyes because it's actually content I would watch on my own.
Like take for example Fly.io's blog. It's is some of the best advertising for the service and is definitely why I use them today. Raymond Hettenger's python YT series is a fantastic ad for his consultancy. Wendy's Twitter was/is hilarious. But its a weird dynamic because if the content is good you don't have to pay for it which seems silly because it's an ad all the same.
Sigh. I would pay for and ad free experience in a heartbeat if, and only if, they also don’t steal my data, build a profile on my usage and feed it all into some current or future AI to optimize how to manipulate me.
Of course that will never happen because these crooks are addicted to our data - and even more so if I am a paying customer.
I'd consider paying for Premium if they remove the free with ads version of Youtube. Ideally every single person on the planet blocked ads on Youtube on every imaginable platform so they were forced to restrict all access to content if you didn't pay for Premium.
What an excellent idea. Pay money to Google every month in order to segment yourself into the "has lots of disposable income" marketing category thereby increasing the value of your attention, for the privilege of not having your mind raped by ads you never wanted to see in the first place, all while they continue to track your every move online.
Good deal is uBlock Origin, paying Google any amount of money is just foolish. Subscribe to the patreons of your favorite creators in order to support them, it's a perfectly ethical way for creators to make money.
