this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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I see what you mean but I don’t agree. The deal being made here is obvious and you’re signing up to give them data in exchange for watching a video. You’re also signing up to view their ads. You have an option not to be the product at all. You already have the wheat, but you’re giving the middleman less than what was arranged, not just producing less.
And if you view it as okay to not give them what they’re asking for while getting the content anyways, that’s chill. Just recognize that you’re paying less for the content than they’re asking. This is even more enforced by YouTube and news papers who charge for ad free experiences.
I don't buy this rhetoric. By your view, then if I don't watch an ad, then I don't get the content. Yet on YouTube I get the content inspite of declining to view the ad. Some websites do not let me see the content, unless I see their ads. That's fine, I just go to a different site or spend my time doing something else. This rhetoric is to help businesses make money, which is fine, but I have no interest in furthering their narrative. If websites block me from using ad block, then it is entirely within their right to deny me access to their content. *
If you are not paying for a good or service, you are the product. That is my claim. The ad is not the price paid, it is the medium someone is using to collect my market value. Were I to walk to a store, and tell them I wanted something in exchange for seeing their billboard on the highway I'd be laughed out the building.
*Yes there are ways around this, but I think that is outside the scope of this discussion on ads.
I want to be clear still, piracy isn’t a problem or wrong necessarily. I’m not pushing a corporate narrative by saying this, I’m more concerned about creators and other sites that use ads for revenue such as newspapers. So if you want to “pay” a site without money, don’t pirate their content. That’s all. That’s similar to what Linus has said.
But I think this is somewhat similar to asking you for a ticket at the door for a movie. If the “ticket” is watching the ad and they’re asking you to buy the ticket (with premium) or get it from ads, bypassing the doorman would mean it’s piracy. Doesn’t even matter if the doorman doesn’t try to stop you. Doesn’t matter if they don’t pull you out of the movie.
You being the product is irrelevant to the piracy thing. But it is relevant to the moral thing
If I DuckDuckGo something and a video pops up and I watch it, I made no affirmative assent to giving them any data. Even if I go to YouTube.com, I made no agreement. Only if I make an account do I make any sort of contractual agreement with Google. If they only want to show their videos to those who agree to their policies, that’s their perogative. That they haven’t done so suggests that they know and allow people who haven’t done so to watch anyway.
Purchasing and pirating don’t have contractural agreements. You don’t have to have a ToS to pirate something.
If DuckDuckGo does block the ad in their browser, they’ve done the work for you. And if they do not but instead Google decides to serve it to you without ads in a browser, it’s not piracy to not have ads.
As long as the intended revenue of the content you’re viewing is being blocked, you’re pretty much pirating it. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just a definitional thing.