Comment by JacobSeated | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobSeated | Hacker News Reader

The privacy argument is extremely important, also in regards to avoiding tracking via ads, but I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world, we really should aim to do better than this, and instead try to actually develop privacy respecting alternatives that is not going to undermine the internet, further empower the big players, or hurt website owners unnecessarily – including Google/YouTube.

The obvious problem with such tools is that it may allow bypassing YouTube's ad-wall, and as a website owner I can see why that is problematic. It is bad enough that local GDPR interpretations can practically prevent website owners from monetizing their websites via interest based ads.

For YouTube it probably does not matter as much it would to smaller sites and bloggers, but it is still a violation of their TOS. So, if you want ad-free, consider simply paying.

Besides, I am personally not too worried what Google might be using my data for. Thankfully, Google is owned by a US-based company – I would be more worried if the company was placed in China, Russia, or any other country that does not care about freedom rights at all.

Of course, there is always the risk of data-leaks, and that's a valid point – but then why do we tolerate that the government has data on us!? That's even worse than a company tracking us!!

The issue with YouTube isn’t the ads, it is the number and length of ads combined with a monthly premium option that is far too expensive for what it offers.

You may make the argument that YouTube includes music, but the quality and capabilities of the platform are very poor compared to competitors.

$5/mo is about the most I would ever pay.

idk, I have been using youtube music and it doesn't seem way worse than spotify. Maybe we use it differently.

There already is an alternative to youtube. Peertube https://joinpeertube.org/

The problem is most content creators are only publishing on YouTube, so that is where you have to go. If you are a content creator please publish on peertube so we have options. If you know a creator, likewise encourage them to publish there.

Content creators (the ones that we actually hear about and make money off Youtube) are too addicted to the algorithm to even consider dropping Youtube. At most you'll find some of them hedging a bit and joining something like Nebula or Floatplane

I believe that we will have to adopt some guerrilla tactics to win this war: we need to make it clear to creators that they won't make any money if they continue using Youtube. More people using frontends is a start, making Sponsorblock a feature even better, and I'd say that we should even have to run some pirate Peertube instances to copy the content away.

Many of the good ones don't have much audience

And if they are really good and expect to grow, they will stick to youtube because that's where their potential audience is. :(

Which is why i'm encouraging breaking the cycle. Get enough content there and viewers will follow.

Blocking ads is also a perfect example of a Kantian non-universalizable maxim.

I don't think Kant, or any reasonable philosopher, would consider blocking ads a moral dilemma, which is the precondition of a maxim.

Blocking harmful, manipulative, inappropriate advertisements on my childrens' (supervised) use of YouTube is the most moral thing I can do today.

A moral dilemma is not a precondition of a maxim.

I often consider Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative as a moral guide.

Internally I paraphrase it as: if everyone does this [action that I intend to do] will it be a good thing. I notionally insert "[everyone] who would wish to".

This situation is like the 'desire path' situation where an authority has imposed a pathway, but many pedestrians choose a different path because that is more useful. Ultimately the unpaved walking route will ride, and could cause a quagmire to form (in UK); should one then take the less practical, imposed, paved walkway?

I think the same conclusion forms for me. No. Because eventually the lack of utility in the imposed pathway will be made clear, and then the flaw will be designed around and utility will be increased.

Some might see this as shortcutting (ha!) the categorical imperative...

So yes, video sharing services need to be financed. But this doesn't mean we just roll over and accept alterations to the fundamentals of the web that make it worse.

Ultimately, my connection is that the whole system of brainwashing (advertising) people to increase consumption, or redirect consumption according to other characteristics besides thrift|utility, is detrimental to humanity (and the Earth) and needs to be done away with.

> So yes, video sharing services need to be financed.

I'm entirely unconvinced that even this is true. Today's platforms and software are built around control and centralization, which is indeed expensive. But there's an obvious alternate path. Instead of preventing users from downloading media, embrace it. Build ipfs into browsers. Link to videos on ipfs. Add a "pin" menu item right on the browser UI for videos/images so that users can easily save copies of what they like and help serve it. Make it so you can subscribe to a channel by pinning an ipns name so you automatically download and seed new videos you're interested in. Let people pin to their (paid) cloud storage too.

There's a huge design space here. Expensive centralization is a tiny fraction of what's possible.

> I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world...

Ads are psychological warfare against the human mind. Advertising campaigns are designed/directed by unscrupulous mercenaries trained in the latest psychology, willing to use every manipulative technique known to science to manipulate you on behalf of the highest bidder. This mass-manipulation undermines democracy and is broadly harmful to society in general.

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