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Comment by moonchrome | Hacker News Reader

No that's what you get when you're the product by being a free user. Paid service relationship works just fine for me - Google isn't ideal but YouTube is one of my main content sources + YouTube music for my family for slightly more than the price of Spotify family subscription - yeah it's an easy choice.

Spotify suggestions and playlists weren't a seller feature for me for years. Maybe I'm missing out on a few podcasts.

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No, Google will keep fucking you over and destroying the Internet, whether you pay or not. Not to mention the fact that what they pay out to creators is absolutely pathetic. Go find their Patreon, their Ko-fi, hell their paypal, anything but giving Google 13 bucks.

Adblocking Google is morally right.

> Adblocking Google is morally right.

All ads should be blocked. I do not consume ads, and am not interested in paying a ransom to hide them.

If you don't consume ads, please do not use any ad-supported service, that's the easiest thing to do.

No.

lol no

“Consume” ads? That is a quaint 1960’s take that is long dead.

Ad companies have been tilting the agreement attention for content ever more in their favor in aggressive and privacy harming ways. They long ago broke any moral standing.

The content creators need to seek a better deal, they’re getting screwed by Google too.

I'd rather use their services and block their ads, if I'm honest.

Ad supporters talk like blocking ads is literal theft, which is absolutely laughable. It's further away from theft than piracy, which is also in no way literal theft.

If I'm watching traditional non-demand television, and I go to the bathroom or change the channel during an ad, am I stealing from the network or the show? Hell no, that's ridiculous.

Theft? Of course it's theft, if I reduce to what is happening - you're using their services for free with no compensation. That is the definition of theft.

I would agree with you it's ok if there was no way to _otherwise_ pay for the service. If they push a only ads-supported version, and I have no choice but see ads, and I don't consent to the impact of ads on my brain, it makes a case for blocking ads being ethically correct.

But since there is a choice on how to pay, I find reasoning is no longer ethically right. You can choice to pay with your attention and brain, or to pay with hard cold cash, so the argument of ads being shoved down your brain no longer holds. You can choose to not see ads and pay for the service, and you chose to steal.

And you can make the argument that stealing is ok since you steal from the bad guys, but then you don't get to complain when others may steal from you - we're all "the bad guy" for somebody else

No. Theft would mean they no longer have the service once I've taken it.

Me taking a copy of Shrek 2 at the local store and not paying for it is theft: the store can no longer benefit from Shrek 2.

Google can re-send the exact same bytes to someone else. All I've costed them is what it costs to send those bytes over. But then, would you consider going into a store, loitering for two hours, taking the sellers attention (therefore, costing them time that they cannot use to sell things to other customers) then leaving without buying anything theft ? Most reasonable people would say no. We'd all agree it's a dick move, but since corporations are not people, it doesn't matter.

Would you go into a restaurant, occupy a table, spend server's time to bring you only tap water, loiter for a couple of hours, and leaving without paying anything OK? if that's what you want, go to a public library.

I think the sooner we move from ads-supported models to pay-per-use like Netflix, the better we are - those that can afford will consume the best content, and the rest will stick to public domain.

That is not literally not the definition of theft.

Hear hear. I'm beyond tired of all these self-proclaimed hackers with their lips so far up Google's ass that they can taste what Sundar had for breakfast.

The ad industry is a scourge on humanity, and its gormless defenders are willing accomplices.

Wouldn't be not using Google at all the morally right choice ?

It would be, if Google didn't have a chokehold on most of the internet. Sure, Nebula exists, I can watch three creators there, woohoo. Let me go on Dailymotion too for those sweet 2005 videos.

Google did everything in their power to force themselves into every aspect of our lives and leaving no alternatives, or destroying them, or buying them. Now they get to deal with the consequences

The morally right choice would be for the government to use antitrust regulation to break Google up into ten companies, and yet here we are.

Stop using Google if you want to promote alternatives.

Otherwise you're just rationalising freeloader behaviour.

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I'm not _rationalising_ freeloader behaviour.

I'm saying Google _deserves_ to have freeloaders milking them for every bit they can. So does Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon...

And it's just a convenient consequence of doing the "morally right" thing, that you happen to get your content for free? And content creators be damned?

No, I just happened to always have it for free. They are the ones that decided that it was a good deal in exchange for tracking me throughout the internet, stalking me. They are the ones that decided to make my watching experience miserable by putting unskippable ads. They are the ones that decided to make the videos I watch crap, because if they're not 10 minutes long with a perfectly engineered cover image, they won't pay out the creators and they won't show their content. They are the ones allowing literal hour-long ads. They are the ones that decided to make my home page """algorithmic""", which is really "oh you watched a video game ? Others like <literal nazi>, you should watch it". They are the ones hiding, destroying, trying to piss me off by removing features one by one and putting them into Youtube Premium. Play in background ? High quality videos ? Not stopping autoplay every 30 minutes to ask me if I'm still here ? Picture-in-picture ? Adding to queue ? These are all features that they proudly displayed in blog posts saying how awesome they are, and that it'll always be free. Now, they blast me with popups telling me to get Youtube Premium. One per person in my household by the way, account sharing is bad and they must extract as much money as possible.

The content creators I support get their money on Patreon or whatever fundraising platforms they use. Same things for my favorite journals. The others ? Well, I don't care enough about them to think that I would pay for them. Maybe others will. And if they don't, well, they'll stop.

So you are vehemently anti-youtube, yet it still sounds like you get tons of content from it.

Why not get your content from ad-free platforms?

To quote another comment I made:

It would be, if Google didn't have a chokehold on most of the internet. Sure, Nebula exists, I can watch three creators there, woohoo. Let me go on Dailymotion too for those sweet 2005 videos.

Google did everything in their power to force themselves into every aspect of our lives and leaving no alternatives, or destroying them, or buying them. Now they get to deal with the consequences

The content creators could post anywhere, there is no reason they can't cross-post their videos to other platforms. Most publishers who are on Patreon post all their videos ad-free on there so you don't even need to go to YouTube.

The reason most publishers post on YouTube is because they depend on the revenue from the YouTube network.

If you don't want to watch ads, fine, but you are expressly violating the wishes of the people who are creating the content and then rationalizing it to yourself. The fact that you still rationalize not buying the ad-free premium offering is the kicker.

How is utilizing free services ever not freeloading?

Ads are emphatically not a valid monetization tactic. Holding up a corner store at gunpoint is unethical; getting up to go to the bathroom during a commercial break is not. There has never, ever, ever, ever been any moral or ethical imperative to view ads, in any context. By asserting otherwise you're simply being dishonest.

None of the content I'm interested in is available elsewhere. I've checked for exactly this reason. I don't want to be freeloading off of google, ideally I'd not use their platform at all, just like how I replaced gmail with self hosting, googlemaps with openstreetmap, googlesearch with duckduckgo, etc.

It costs creators literally nothing to upload an mp4 file to a second website and it would create market forces where youtube now has to compete for views with those alternate platforms (even if it's fragmented). But they're not doing it. Okay, so then I need to use youtube, doesn't mean I need to give google my payment information to pay a fraction of that money onto creators and mainly further their adtech

I'll stop freeloading when mega corps start paying back even a fraction of what they take from society. Governments have a setup for this, it's called taxation.

Google uses their primary business (surveillance and propaganda) to subsidize their other endeavors, engaging in unfair business practices by providing services below cost to destroy any competition. Taking them up on their offer while protecting yourself from their primary operation is no more freeloading than buying only the loss leaders from one store while going elsewhere to get the rest of what you need. They're a business, not a public service.

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