this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Yes, corporations get to do whatever they want with their property. If you don't like it, you can choose other services, nobody is forcing you to stay there.
Well, if it is abusive or not will be determined by the majority of people. If their numbers start going down because of this, they'll act on it. If not, it means the majority of people are willing to see the ads to get to the content. People also complained when YouTube implemented ads in the beginning, very short ones. Clearly, the majority of people were fine with it. Free market, supply & demand.
Personally, I run away from ads so I don't use YouTube that much. I watch Veritasiun and 3Blue1Brown mostly and every time I see an ad come up, I like it because I know I'm giving money to the dudes giving me great content. It's my way of giving back.
And I get to do what I want with my property. I don't want ads on my screen, so I block them.
And they can do anything they want with their property so they'll block you if you do that.
But that is the point!! Don't use their service man, nobody is forcing you :)
There are many forms of entertainment out there, you're not tied to any of them. Be free, enjoy your life.
They haven't blocked me so I guess they're ok with it.
Nobody forces me, but I choose to. Just like I choose not to watch the ads.
They're still doing canary testing. Eventually they'll block accounts from users that use adblock after they get a warning.
So you'll have to choose if you want to keep using the service with ads or move on to something new. And the great news is that it is totally your choice and you're free to make it.
Alright so you've literally just ignored everything I've said. Got it. Have a good day.
This is logical nonsense. If their numbers don't go down, that doesn't make their actions not abusive, it simply indicates that people are willing to put up with the abuse (because they get enough value out of the platform despite the abuse). Whether it is abusive or not is not a numbers game.
This means that people still derived enough value from the platform, despite the ads. That is, stopping using the platform would be more of a net loss than accepting ads on the platform. And yet, this doesn't have anything to do with whether it is an abusive practice or not.
In fact, you're touching on something here: ads were initially very brief and intermittent; they've gotten progressively worse and more invasive and so, just as boiling a frog, you can't take peoples' acceptance of the situation at face value. If you've conditioned someone to put up with (worsening) abuse, their seeming acceptance of the situation doesn't mean you aren't being abusive.
So please give me the objective definition of what is abusive. Because in my book that is totally subjective. I just told you they created an almost perfect service that let's you stream infinite amounts of information with zero downtime and minimal buffer times, and they are asking a few minutes of your time per day, so they can make a profit and pay fairly to content creators and very smart engineers.
For me that is fair. For you, that's abusive. Who is right? You because you agree with yourself?
I'm not sure if you're constructing a strawman or if you think you're replying to someone else.
I didn't say whether or not it's abusive.
All I said was that your logic of "if their user count doesn't go down it's not abuse" is bullshit. I went on to bring up the "boiling the frog scenario" to further explain how users can become accustomed to abuse.
OK, let's start from scratch then. The person who replied to my comment said it was abusive. "Abusive" is totally subjective, how can we know if this is abusive or not? You're right, numbers might not reflect this but they do show if they think the content is worth watching the ads.
For me, it isn't worth it so I almost never use YouTube, but I don't think it is abusive. It's a really high quality service with incredible engineering.
So there's no point in talking in subjective terms, people will always disagree. Let's just wait and see if people still want to use their platform after the change. If they do, that is their decision, they are free to make a choice. There are many video streaming platforms out there. Just not as high quality as YouTube. They also don't have as much content because content creators want to receive ad money.