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Linus Tech Tips uploaded a video showing how to block ads on Youtube. Which was removed by Youtube for community guidelines violations.
(sh.itjust.works)
https://files.catbox.moe/a6111d.png / https://nitter.poast.org/LinusTech/status/1825956050685800834
If you go the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjHMzGl-VY. You will see it's gone. So Youtube being Youtube.
Here's a Odysee mirror of the video, https://odysee.com/@jopec:7/linus-tech-tips-degoogle-your-life-part-2-adfree-youtube:0.
Isn't he the same person who calls adblocking piracy?
I mean I get that Youtubers have no morals and it's all about money but that seems excessively hypocritical, even for a Youtube "personality".
He's also got a generally nuanced opinion of piracy, in that it's justifiable in some situations. If you call it piracy and you're okay with piracy then it's not really a contradiction.
Being willing to talk about it despite working against your interests isn't always bad depending on context.
Breaking news, people on the Internet have no concept of nuance.
How dare you make such a direct and personal attack on me!
A fact I struggle with on an almost daily basis...
I had the vague recollection of him having a small-business-owner-brain moment and going on about how it's theft, and it's taking money out of his pockets, or something along those lines.
Looks like I may have been either thinking of someone else, or misinterpreted a snippet of video of him ranting about something.
I will admit to not watching his stuff for a good number of years now, and could be totally conflating things.
That was probably his stance when YouTube ad revenue was his stream of income.
In 2024 they pay pennies, and his real income is from sponsorships like those d-brand skins and manscaping utilities. And their own merch, of course.
They've been pushing their own media platform (floatplane), so I'm willing to bet this was a bit of a game of chicken with YouTube. YouTube wouldn't ban one of their biggest channels, and even if they did it'd turn into great publicity for floatplane.
While I don't think they'd be able to get a lot of their subscribers over to floatplane completely, I do think they'd be able to pull over lots of random views by having their shorts on Facebook, Instagram and whoever else is trying to mimic tiktok these days.
They've been pretty good about playing both sides. There have been plenty of videos of how to bypass add traffic and in the same video explaining how they rely on ad traffic . I don't love everything LMG does but they do seem to be kind of Open about the house wise and why nots of ad blocking.
In 2022 he tweeted this.
That might be what you're remembering, but he's definitely addressed his views on piracy during the WAN show several times as well.
Edit: someone else posted the full context elsewhere in the thread. I'd link to that comment, but idk how on lemmy so here: https://archive.ph/VavFc
Isn't that essentially what it is? Getting something for free through certain means you wouldn't get for free otherwise? Which means no money goes to whoever owns the service you're using?
Say you walk up to some person giving out free samples of food. As a condition of taking this free sample, you also must take a pamphlet of advertisements from the people who are giving you the free sample. You take your free sample, and then walk away while dropping the pamphlet in the nearest trash can. That's essentially what ad blocking is. You're simply preventing certain parts of a web page from being downloaded to your device. That's why people have issues with the "piracy" label, because nothing is being "stolen". You're just refusing to take all of it.
More accurate comparison would be taking the sample but refusing the pamphlet. Dropping it in the nearest bin would be skipping the ad after 5 seconds.
Exactly. Getting media without paying (either in currency or in data for ads). Which they also address and talk about plex and jellyfin to consume the newly "liberated" media. I find his opinion on this quite fair.
LTT always seemed "slimy" to me, especially after the whole mistreatment allegations ordeal
Yeah, ever since all that stuff came out just before the new CEO took over, including the video/audio of the sexual harassment meeting which was treated as a total joke, I unsubscribed and stopped viewing their content. I couldn't reconcile their fun and approachable/friendly image with how they're treating staff. Moved on to watching more from other creators like Jayztwocents. Unfortunate that people keep turning out to be shitty left and right.
All I want is a tech youtuber that doesnt do clickbait, currently I only know hardware unboxed
GamerNexus and Level1Techs are pretty good at that since they target a much more technical audience. For mobile devices I thought Michael Fisher is also great. High production value and has a very different style.
Gamersnexus?
Tech Jesus does not fuck around. Jokes aside- it's a good channel.
He’s a driven-but-not-that-smart type of person from the videos I’ve seen.
I find what happened, and their response to everything, completely unacceptable.
But even if you forget that entirely, i decided to see if anything has changed after a year, and the quality of videos is genuinely shocking. A production studio of such scale makes videos, that your typical 14 year old would find embarrassing. The attitude towards everything, and the overwhelming fake energy, are both very repulsive
He's right that it's piracy, he doesn't go on to say piracy is wrong, and neither would I.
It's piracy to block ads, and piracy isn't always wrong, so who cares?
I put the local football game on my tv over antenna. Oh a commercial, I guess I'll walk away to take a piss now. The swat team busts down my door. I run for my scabbard to resist but with one peg leg I'm not quick enough. The seas are rough sailing for pirates willing to skip ads mateys.
It's really not. YouTube doesn't get to decide what I play on my browser, I do. I just choose to not load the ads, and I choose to skip over sponsor segments manually. I don't use sponsor block or anything automated like that, I just use a content blocker and the fast-forward buttons YouTube provides.
At what point did I pirate anything? I asked YouTube for content, and it gave it to me. I didn't ask it for the ads, and it didn't give it to me. I fail to see where the piracy occurred.
I'm certainly breaking their TOS, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm pirating their content.
If I find value in a platform, I'll pay. I pay for Nebula, for example, because I've gotten a lot of value from a number of their creators and prefer to watch their content there than on YouTube. I'll occasionally buy merch from a YouTuber, and sometimes donate. But YouTube actively tracks me in ways I'm not comfortable with, so I block their trackers and their ads.
...So, you skip the ads using an external program, which prevents the youtube channel you're watching from getting their money.
That's the part that makes it piracy. Of course you have the right to do this, I have no ethical problem with it, i'm doing it now, but you have to understand that when you're doing this you're preventing the youtube channels you're watching from getting paid, you're taking their content without paying them what they asked for in return.
If the youtube channel disables the ads themselves, that's one thing, but you not watching those ads is not what the youtube channels want... because that's how they get paid. Getting free content without paying the content maker is... piracy.
Could use the same argument for most games, streaming services, movies that you bought etc. Games that require you run Denuvo or Steamworks to function, streaming sites that require you run that particular browser or app with that particular DRM software, Blu-ray discs that require HDCP to work etc.
You can avoid these companies dictating what you run on your computer by doing one thing...
Let's go to the early days of "piracy"
You are claiming that fast forwarding the opening trailers and adverts on a rented VHS is piracy.
Is it piracy if I skip the ads on the DVD I bought?
No, the ads on the DVD you bought have already paid the company that made the DVD.
You skipping those ads has no consequences for anyone, and nobody cares if you skip them.
Calling it piracy doesn't mean you think it's the worst thing in the world. I do it unless I like a service, and c'mon, it is piracy.
I've literally voted for the "Pirate Party" in my country
There are dozens of us, dozens!
Yes. Because it is, and I do it gladly.
Youtubers have no morals? What kind of idiotic generalisation is that?
BTW, adblocking is a form piracy, that I'm completely fine with.
Yeah, on the WAN Show.
Also I found this, https://archive.ph/VavFc.
No, that's called nuance and honesty.