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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please. If the ad industry hadn't turned out to be predatory and malicious, I'd be just as apathetic to watching ads today as an adult as I used to be as a child. Google has nobody but themselves to blame for pissing in the pot and telling us to drink up. You'd have to be a fool to allow ads on your machine in the modern era.

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Yes, but that works both ways. My website works the way I code it to work, and if that means I detect adblockers and display a different page to you if you're running one then that's the website you visited and you have no recourse other than to accept that's how I want it to work.

You can't have things both ways. You have to accept that the cost of seeing content is to see ads. You should have no expectation that you can block ads and see content.

Or you know, try to evade the detection.

Like you can say that is unethical or immoral or whatever, but it is certainly a form of recourse.

I agree, but that leads further to the argument that I then have the right to modify the code that is running on my machine as I wish, which includes removing protections you put in place to make it not work when I do something you don't like.

The cat-and-mouse game continues...

It’s an impasse not a cat-and-mouse game. Sure you have the right to modify any code that Google’s server serves to your machine, but if Google’s server decides to not serve you videos, for any reason, then that’s where your game ends.

It’s likely that there are server side checks for a whole tangled mess of client cookies and XHR pings across a hundred different subdomains, and you’re not going to trick them into thinking you’re watching ads when you aren’t.

> and you’re not going to trick them into thinking you’re watching ads when you aren’t.

Trivial.

https://adnauseam.io/

No, it is a cat-and-mouse game, because I could start doing things like detecting the ad frames and blacking them out in the compositor. What if my browser had a plugin that did that? Think SponsorBlock that talks with the browser's rendering engine. As far as youtube could tell (unless they record my screen and process it to detect that I'm viewing an ad...but that would be a bridge too far for a lot of people I think) the ad is playing, but I'm not viewing. Audio can get similar processing.

Oh, true. Then you’re not really blocking ads, you’re sending them to the shadow realm!

Except for some reason Google wants to show me Two ads every 10 minutes, to the point Ive given up on YouTube on devices without an ad blocker.

Cable tv is much nicer. (Although they’re under local jurisdiction which may have something to do with it.)

I wonder if Googles idea of ads is even legal here…

Every 10 minutes? I envy you, I get them every 5 minutes.

No one is stopping you from watching cable TV instead of complaining about YouTube

Most video creators choose to upload only to YouTube.

I generally watch neither :)

Not into talking heads, if it’s worth saying it’s worth putting it in writing.

I used to use YouTube for music occasionally, now I’m a Spotify subscriber.

If your site wants to block me, that's fine, you have that right. What I object to is the notion that I should feel any sort of moral guilt for viewing a website however I choose to. Your site is a newspaper that is delivered to my house; you have the right to charge for it, and you have the right to put ads in it, but once it is in my hands it is mine, and I will cut it up with scissors or scribble mustaches on all the photographs to my heart's delight.

If you cut the ads out of the newspaper, the publisher still gets paid. If you block ads on YouTube, they don't (but still need to pay for the bandwidth to deliver you the video).

That's a problem with YouTube's business model then. If a business wants to make money, then charge for it, just as businesses have done for thousands of years. Don't tiptoe around the issue and hide prices by presenting it as "free" and get mad when people take that literally. YouTube can very well be Premium-only and they'll see how much their service is actually worth to people.

they could monetize differently, without ads. let creators monetize it like patreon tiers and let users make proportional donations to their favourite creators through a flattr-like system. take the ads out and a place like youtube only need like 5 guys to run.

I've recently been wondering how viable is it for me to send a ToS in a request header that basically says something along the lines of "If your server chooses to respond to this request with a non-error HTTP code and content, it constitutes your acceptance of these terms. These terms say you owe me $10 per ad you attempt to show to me."

It’s entirely viable to send, but said contract would be entirely invalid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds

My headcanon is that this is no different than most ToS on websites, and if those hold up to legal scrutiny, so should this. Either both are valid or neither are.

They are largely invalid too, which is why no one catches CFAA charges for accessing YouTube in violation of their terms.

It depends on how the website handles its TOS. See this article [1] for information on how a website can make its TOS legally binding.

[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...

Or perhaps a kind of standardized reverse EULA that you store in your browser. If the webpage doesn't support it, the page won't load.

Nah, no standardized EULA -- if they're going to have us accept freeform ToS, the same should apply in reverse.

I've never signed a contract with Alphabet or Youtube. Maybe because I don't log into Youtube? I'm still waiting for people to follow my AUP/ToS. [1] I will never know if they are in compliance.

[Edit] I suppose ironically Youtube have a myriad of instructional videos on how to follow my AUP/ToS. [2]

[1] - https://bender.ohblog.net/#AUP-ToS

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuTSLp8BCwo [video][3 mins][tutorial]

I have no problem with sponsored YouTube videos where the host inserts a quick ad. If it's too long I can fast forward through it.

I'm at the point though where if I want to watch a YT video I'll download it.

> Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please.

If only - but sorry, nope. Both for websites and software, the provider provides a service under conditions (or license) backed up by IP laws. This is what allows Windows to behave as if your PC was their property.

Your only option to keep being a master in your house is to not let in vampires.

Whoever came up with that copy must be a complete megalomaniac.

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