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Comment by qilo | Hacker News Reader

I'm clicking somewhat often on youtube ads, because there's no way to escape them without the content blocker, so you have to watch the ad anyway. So if I have to wait anyway until the ad ends, I just waste aditional click. But I never buy anything nor have any interest in the advertised product. I do this mainly for 2 reasons:

- waste the budget of annoying/scam ads in hope that in the future I'll see less of those

- support the content creator

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> there's no way to escape them without the content blocker

You can pay for the service, which supports it and the content creators, plus you get a few extra goodies.

I started doing it about a year ago for the "play in background" feature, but the no-ads thing has been nice.

> support the content creator

Do realize that unless the content creator is in the YouTube Partner Program, clicking on the ad does not support them at all, you only waste your time making Google more money.

Is there an easy/simple way to spot if the video I'm watching is monetized for the benefit of the creator?

> there's no way to escape them without the content blocker, so you have to watch the ad anyway

I’m confused. So you use the content blocker.

On iOS Safari, Firefox Focus acts as a content blocker, but it doesn't block YouTube ads. Elsewhere, uBlock Origin blocks everything.

Their model likely detected you as an outlier and might disregard your clicks

If google thought your IP was from a click farm, wouldn't it block you from youtube entirely, to avoid wasting the bandwidth?

Why give free information to your adversary instead of ignoring their clicks silently?

No way. Imagine the terrible user experience when that goes wrong.

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