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Any idea what Google are doing? Is this because I dont use Chrome (use Firefox)? I've no adblockers.
(lemmy.world)
So this started coming up today. On every video. I can (so far) click the "x" and remove it to watch (still see 2 ads before the video, and one after 4 minutes - ruins music on YT), but did click the "Report issue" only for the dialogue box not to work.
I found a link to a that said 11% use adblock. Thats not a lot.Maaayyyybe there is a problem with the amount of ads youtube forces down our throats for even short videos. π€·ββοΈ
Letβs be real. Blocking ads isnβt pirating.
I know but there's no other noun that rolls off the tongue quite the same way.
The equivalence the person is drawing is something like what Denuvo does on PC. Games that ship with Denuvo suffer significant performance issues but when Denuvo is cracked and the game is put on the high seas, they don't come with Denuvo so the pirates end up having a better experience.
Pirating seems to be always the more convenient way.. Especially if you have a docker server..
Ads are the form of payment for the service and using a paid service without paying is piracy. How do you think this is any different?
Considering that YouTube is as dominant as it is today because of the well-documented network effect[1], you can consider your use of YouTube instead of a competitor in and of itself a payment because it lets them keep their monopoly on online video distribution. YouTube knows this, which is why they were so lenient in their early years - if they started off being strict, people would've left earlier and made YouTube's future as a monopoly more uncertain because of a demand for competitors.
Maybe instead of justifying their profit-seeking, we should demand more oversight and democratic say over how YouTube as a monopoly operates? Kind of like how in Germany and Slovenia, workers get 50% of the seats on the board of corporations and get to have a say in how a business operates? Alike many other European countries with varying %es of the board seats, like Norway and Sweden where it's 33%, or Finland where it's 20%. [2]
Otherwise, don't be surprised when YouTube starts going after creator profits next. Something they're using to justify going after adblock users now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors
Unfortunately, all it takes is one right wing nut job to liquidate the positions and sell them to corporate interests.
See the decimation of Canada's National Energy Board under Modi and Poilievre's showrunner, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The board, by law, has to be half oil industry and half environmentalists. He fired all of the sane people and sold the empty spots to the oil industry.
If one person has control over what people sit on the board, that's not democratic. I did specify "democratic" above, so I think it's an important point to hammer in here. We could make a significant part (if not even the whole) of the board be elected worker managers. In an actual democracy, a single person doesn't have the power to boot people they don't like out.
Damn, didn't think I'd see a corporate shill over here for YouTube/ Google.
When did I say piracy was wrong?
In this case it's apparently the only option.
The payment for the service is coming from the ad owners. Me choosing not to download parts of a webpage isn't piracy, it's me choosing not to download certain parts of a web page. Nobody has any right to force data I don't want onto my computer except me. Piracy is illegal, adblocking is not (so far).
This isn't like you copied a game and cracked the DRM. An adblocker just strips out the HTML and javascript needed to display an ad. It's not different than if you turned off images in your browser like we used to do back in the day on dialup to make it load faster.
Subsequently, the owner of the website also has the right to not serve you parts of a web page. It's a two-way street mate. This argument that a service provider is obligated to give you everything you want without any conditions simply does not stand up to any real scrutiny.
You're absolutely right. I didn't say they don't. But as long as they still do let me access it, I'll keep using an adblocker on their website. Once the spigot gets turned off for good, I'll move elsewhere.
So if I understand correctly, you define the border of piracy as the technicality of websites where the HTML and JS are accessible as opposed to a binary that comes with built-in DRM.
How do you think about DRM-free games?
We've had the capability to pick and choose what we want to download from a website since the first web browsers. Why are ads any different? It's the same as if I decide to strip out all HTML frame and table tags just for shits and giggles. Would you call that piracy?
It's my device, and I decide what to accept from the website. If they want to block me completely, they can do that too. But they don't. Not yet.
I also have no stomach for downloading 10 megabytes worth of ads and trackers for a website where the actual content is like, 300 kilobytes. THAT is complete bullshit.
Ok the whole idea of ads is a mess. It used to be that showing ads was additional income next to doing your normal stuff. You hosted a website for a blog or sth. and if people liked your blog you could reduce server costs by a few ads. This whole thing got out of hand a century ago when you plan to host a blog(for example) with so many ads on the site so you make a profit from ads. The quality of the blog went so low since it isn't important that people like rather than click it once. So mass trash production is the result.
Back to Youtube. They provided a service for free to host videos. They did this at a loss for almost ever. They also added a few ads in order to reduce costs, but those ads didn't turn in profits. They added Youtube Premium in order to make profit. But people didn't really buy it since it was too expensive (I assume). So now probably there was a big pressure from Google to get YouTube profitable. They increased the ads and the unskippable ones. Slowly they made money, but now the greed has probably taken in. "Force people into Premium by so many ads that the site is unusable without" is probably the current goal to make more money.
Now of course people don't like to pay for a previously free service, and people don't like ads: An adblocker it is. Now youtube wants more money! So adblockers must go! This ideology is in line with chrome Manifest v3 so you can't block ads anymore (like on Android)
Youtube is totally in the right here. It's their service and they can do what they want, but I am Also allowed to decide what happens in my Browser on my computer! I can decide to disable ads all I want! There is no law forcing me to watch them. I mean what's the difference between me bocking ads at a technical level or just go out of the room until it is over? None from a advertisors view, but for Youtube they get money even if you don't look as long it is displayed.
Adblockers save advertisors money!
According to that logic, muting a tab while the ad plays, then coming back and rewinding the video is piracy.
Advertisers tried to say that back in the 90s/2000s. Itβs an angle already sadly.
Ads aren't payment because it's not you the user that's paying, it's a 3rd party that pays the provider to shove ads at you. Which you can take or leave.
If I go to a store and don't want to look at the ads they won't hold me down and shove them in my face. They're ultimately interested in me buying actual products. But Google's real product (YouTube Premium) is not a compelling product and the vast majority of people visiting YouTube come for the freebies not the Premium.
So they've resorted to feeding you ads by force but you do NOT have to take it. Google can choose to lock everything behind Premium and if you bypass that then that would be piracy. But simply refusing to look at ads ain't.
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers.
It isnβt a form of payment from the consumer. It never was, it never should be.
I have to disagree with you that it's not a form of payment. How many platforms offer a subscription model to go ad free? Ads are a revenue stream for any given platform. You either pay the platform with your money, or your time watching ads.
If you disagree that you can't pay for things with your time, then we will have to agree to disagree
There has to be an explicit agreement accompanying the payment. When you pay directly and buy a product or service you have that explicit agreement. With ads you don't, there's only implicit statements hidden in terms of service and things like that. In the EU that's illegal and doesn't hold any power over the consumer.
Let Google come forth and say "you can only watch this video with Premium" and that would be ok. Mandating ads is not.
Simply put, no. You can make the claim but it doesn't make it true.
Even if it were true, fuck the biggest pirate of them all, Google itself.
That logic is what will make verification cans a reality.
Well, for one, if you don't want something stolen then you shouldn't put it on your front lawn for everyone to take. There are plenty of services that require payment before you get access.
Two, they are essentially stealing our private data and selling it without our permission, so ads aren't the only source of payment.
At no point was I informed by youtube that watching ads was a requirement for service. In fact until just now YouTube necessary even told be that using an ad- blocker was not allowed. Technically this is not the same thing. Otherwise I would be stealing every time I left the room when an ad was playing.