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Comment by rollcat | Hacker News Reader

> A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes.

Great. Good for them. What about the rest of the world, some (many) of whom can't afford a(nother) monthly subscription fee?

Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising?

Youtube basically reached a de-facto status of a public library, considering it contains archival TV shows, sports matches, original music, documentaries, lessons, instructions, clips of contemporary life, and so on. While median quality is much lower, it easily rivals Wikipedia in breadth and depth.

It my opinion, it should be publicly funded, without discriminating access based on willingness (ability!) to pay or to be subjected to ads.

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It's possible that my comment is misinterpreted. YouTube is a service provided by a company and you have to pay for it in some way. You can pay with your time and watch ads, you can pay money and not worry about ads, or you can somehow cheat with tools, so you're again investing your time to install and maintain the cheat.

My sole argument is that a lot of people in tech are better off just paying for Premium because their time is worth more than using a cheat or watching/dealing with ads.

And for those who think it's not worth it, that's totally fine. I'm not arguing that you should pay or even use YouTube.

My only point is that devs should think carefully about the value of their time.

That argument could work better if premium wasn't priced at probably 10x the average revenue per user they are getting with the ads.

I don't think even Google consider it as a real option internally, it's just a way to get more money out of higher income users.

How did you come up with this number? Advertisers pay a varied rate per impression. Actually, high income users are valuable ad viewers and I'm sure advertisers pay a premium to display ads to them.

They make 11B$ from the premium subcription with only 80 millions suscribers whereas they make around 30B$ from the ads from the rest of the 2.6 billions users.

The pricing of the premium subscription is absolutely insane, they get peanuts from each users from the ads compared to that.

That is surprising! I read somewhere that advertisers are paying $.1 to $.5 per impression, which seems like it would add up pretty quickly over a month.

I still think if you are a high value target for advertisers, it’s a probably a worse deal for YouTube if you’re on premium.

It’s a little pricy. But it’s a bundle with YouTube music which is better than I expected. I think the payments to creators are a little greater because of that.

It’s also a little bit moot because YouTube creators often in-line their own ads so they can’t be skipped…

For the latter there’s the open-source SponsorBlock: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Is it really cheating though? My computer, my rules.

Copyright effectively gives YT an arguably illegitimate monopoly status on a lot of content which hasn't been uploaded elsewhere. Compared to, say, "modern" Usenet where files are distributed and users choose their provider.

Ads are trash and I'm somewhat willing to pay, but not on the Google terms that takes away my privacy and right to run FOSS.

> My computer, my rules.

YouTube server's not running on your computer.

> YouTube server's not running on your computer.

The client is, my browser is, and the ads that I suppose they want me to watch would be displayed through my computer.

You totally have the right to not watch the ads, because you're right, it is your computer and you get to decide what is done with it.

But if that's the choice you prefer to make, then the objectively more ethical thing to do is to not watch the video content either.

Would it be ok for me to manually mute the ad and spend the 20 seconds on a bit of breath work? I'd hate to do wrong by the monopoly...

lol, this here is the right attitude.

For some reason people have misconstrued ones responsibilities towards ones neighbors with ones responsibilities towards multi-billion dollar companies.

copying isn't theft, convincing people it is theft is tantamount to the scam that caused people to believe diamond rings were a part of marriage proposals.

It's no more unethical to refuse to play specific content on a device you own than it is to refuse to purchase a diamond ring when proposing marriage.

>It's no more unethical to refuse to play specific content on a device you own than it is to refuse to purchase a diamond ring when proposing marriage.

That's a strained analogy at best. Let's just go back a few decades: is it unethical to mute your TV and go to the bathroom in 1980 when a commercial comes on? Of course not. So is it unethical to not watch an ad on YouTube? Of course not. Using an ad-blocker to make the experience more seamless therefore isn't unethical either.

If YouTube wants us to watch ads without being able to skip them, then they need to shut down their web service, and make special closed-source player apps that allow them to fully control the viewing experience. Good luck with that.

You're obviously not aware of the history of diamond rings.

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

> In the early 21st century, the jewellery industry started marketing engagement rings for men under the name "mangagement rings".

...

> The idea that a man should spend a significant fraction of his annual income for an engagement ring originated from De Beers marketing materials in the mid-20th century in an effort to increase the sale of diamonds. In the 1930s, they suggested that a man should spend the equivalent of one month's income in the engagement ring.[40] In the 1980s, they suggested that he should spend two months' income on it

---

it's a marketing swindle, not an analogy.

I'm perfectly aware of the history of diamond rings and De Beers' marketing campaign. I just don't think this analogy works very well, and it really seems like it came out of left field. The diamond-ring thing is really about following the crowd, and whether it's ok to ignore certain social customs because it might make your spouse's friends think you're cheap or uncommitted.

Blocking ads has nothing to do with people thinking you're cheap, and certainly nothing to do with commitment to a relationship, or your prospective spouse's opinion of you. It's only about whether you're somehow morally obligated to pay attention to advertising that comes along with something free. There's nothing at all free about diamond engagement rings.

The ethical thing to do is shutdown YouTube because it got popular from serving pirated movies.

YouTube is an inanimate phenomena.

Blocking ads is about as unethical as shielding your eyes from the sun.

But the cost of you watching the video you want to watch is on their dime, and the person who made the video gets nothing for their work either.

Pretty sure most people who upload things to YouTube get nothing from the video. YouTube knew what they were doing when they destroyed competition by making uploading anything for free. This is their fault and should have to live with the consequences or charge people to upload content. Charging viewers to watch content is stupid.

If YouTube blocks your player due to your ad-blocker, they are clearly telling you that they no longer want you as a visitor, and you can rest assured that your client did not download any ads. Using your argument, this is a win-win situation.

In reality, however, this is just a dumb justification for unethical behavior because people with ad-blockers will just investigate how to circumvent anti-adblock measures, to keep consuming content for free.

And this behavior is akin to software piracy, which ensured monopolies thrived. Just as in the 90s, when software piracy helped companies like Microsoft or Adobe to own the market, YouTube is now a monopoly thanks to people like you. Because alternatives, like Vimeo or PeerTube, can't differentiate by being ads-free.

And now, the monopoly, which ad-blockers helped create, is used as further justification for the existence of ad-blockers. Funny how that works out.

I wouldn't care, except the writing is on the wall for where this is going. In truth, ad-blocking still works simply because publishers like Google still allow it to work, by not investing in anti-adblock tech or lobbying for legislation that bans it altogether (e.g., DRM). It's either that or paywalls everywhere. And this will hurt the open web, much like how software piracy hurt general-purpose computing.

Enjoy the freeloading while it lasts.

As I said in another post, this idea that it's unethical to avoid watching ads is one of the great scams in history, on par with convincing the american public that purchasing diamond rings is a major part of marriage.

but shush, we don't talk about the pirated ... err blood diamonds involved, ethics only becomes important when it's the public doing something they don't like.

It's really interesting seeing a corporate boot-licking comment like this. I guess you refuse to mute the TV when commercials come on too?

Don't back off from your original point, friend. It made complete sense.

The person replying to you probably wouldn't work for free or "exposure," would they?

I wouldn't mind paying but I refuse to pay to give them my data and mass-disseminate that for that pleasure. Once they have no access to it and its a black-box they stop obsessing about, we'll talk.

They still get your data as long as you use the service – and by using it you’re telling the creators and anyone you share links with that they need to keep giving Google their data, too, because that’s where everyone else is. Fighting this requires privacy legislation and not using YouTube.

Then they need to fix that. That's the future. This is not a negotiation and consequently, I'm amused by the tenor of this topic and the various threads that try to shift the Overton window as if that is or will remain the case

No, it’s not a negotiation. They’re going to keep tracking you and blocking ad blocker users. What I don’t understand is how anyone can care about that and think they should be putting their time and energy into cementing YouTube’s market share rather than voting with their feet.

"Voting with their feet"? With what alternative? Which other site has TF2 video tutorials on the best rollouts for cp_granary? Cmon, give me a cp_granary rollout video link that's not YouTube.

Not my game so I can’t say, but if it’s that irreplaceable in your life doesn’t that mean YouTube is providing you a valuable service and you should pay them for it?

It’s easy to host video now so I’d also note that not treating YouTube as a fundamental human right would also open up room for competition. If they’re so bad you can’t stomach paying for what you like, why are you spending your time helping them maintain their high market share?

Tracking and selling my shit is not a valuable service in my eyes. And even if they did, I just can't trust them anyway.

They can only do that because you visit their site. Why are you helping boost the numbers for a site you dislike that much?

No comment

odd you make that claim considering my adblock successfully removes ads from youtube's service.

Yes, for now. It does nothing to prevent Google from seeing what you do on their servers of linking that to what you do elsewhere, and your activity tells anyone who makes videos that the place their stuff will be watched is YouTube.

How 'bout their choices are:

1) no money + they get data

2) money + they get no data

3) no money + no data (me ;)

Choose one. Non-negotiable. Seriously. Gatekeep or pretend like you have any jurisdiction or power all you like while I sidle by on option 3)

Sighyanara

YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators hosted by YouTube. If they put their content elsewhere, it will disappear and never be seen. YouTube is the tax people are being made to pay in order to have their videos seen or to see videos now, not some great provider

> YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators...

Exactly!

Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content? And why do you think they willingly upload the content to <insert here your streaming platform of choice -- YouTube, Twitch, Nebula, etc>?

Putting YouTube aside -- there's basically three options for the future of content:

1) we pay for content

2) somebody else pays for it (like advertisers), in exchange for something they need (e.g. visibility, ability to sell you products)

3) you freeload folks in #1 and #2 for as long as you can get away with, until you become the majority, and things start crumbling apart (creators stop producing, paywalls create a caste-like system, etc).

> Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content?

People will continue to make and share videos regardless of whether they get paid for it. There are countless channels that have less than 1k subscribers (Google's threshold to pay you anything at all), that upload semi-regularly and often have interesting content. (I subscribe to those via RSS, just to make sure I don't miss an upload.) People made content long before YouTube was able to pay anyone anything at all.

People make their videos even though YouTube basically guarantees them nothing in terms of promoting/driving traffic (btw even if you have a million subscribers, you have to continue to game the algorithm, please remember to upvote this comment!). Even after that, your payout is a cut of Google's ad/premium income, not "pay per view".

Finally, people make sponsored content, set up tip jars, sell merch, etc because ads alone can't fully support a high-effort channel.

More importantly, YouTube has been generating losses for a heck of a long time (including after being acquired), which again - considering that it is a de facto public service, makes me think that it should've been publicly funded. (By whom? Excellent question. Maybe tax some of those billionaires who poured VC money to kickstart it.)

I'd rather have medical care for all than free youtube...

Agreed a thousandfold. Meanwhile nothing stops us from pursuing both concurrently.

YouTube isn’t a service. YouTube is a website. The fundamental principle behind the WWW is everybody is free to point their user agent at a public website. Google wouldn’t exist without that principle, they built their empire based on having a crawler download everybody’s websites.

If YouTube wants to put a paywall up then fine, but until then I’m going to keep using my user agent which includes an ad blocker. I didn’t turn the adblocker on specifically for YouTube and I’m not going to turn it off for YouTube.

I'm failing to understand the difference between a website and a service. Are you saying that all modern SaaS offerings are just websites? Can you give some examples of a "service?"

Until it's publicly funded, it needs to be funded somehow. People who don't pay and block ads are scamming YouTube, or scamming advertisers.

Won't somebody _please_ think of the advertisers!?

lol, do as you like. But this attitude that we are somehow owed a service like youtube for free without ads is comical.

Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that the adtech industry is just serving up harmless banner ads or 30 second videos and calling it a day. Seeing an ad is one thing, the surveillance that comes with it is a whole new insidious beast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

Sure, maybe we shouldn't be using YouTube at all. And I would prefer if we had more legal protections for user data in the US. But that aside, the sheer size and quality of YouTube. It's availability on every phone tv or whatever. This doesn't just happen magically.

You’re right. It’s not magic at all. It happens via monopoly and network effects

> This doesn’t happen magically.

Correct! It happened by offering a completely free service with no advertising, in order to become the dominant player and eliminate all the competition, some of which was trying to use more sustainable business models. The idea that YouTube should be free also didn’t happen magically, it was (and still is) intentionally fostered.

Sure, well was there a competitor you would have preferred to prevail? What was their business plan?

YouTube is free. If you don’t mind ads.

YouTube was free even if you do mind ads, on purpose. To a first approximation everyone minds ads. YouTube used this fact to establish their dominance before switching tactics.

Lots of competitors have tried to use both paid accounts and ad-funding. What competitor I might prefer is irrelevant here, but there are plenty of them, just Google YouTube competitors. Vimeo is a good example of a site with high quality content and a more sustainable business model that tried for a while and was unable to broach the same market. YouTube so far surpassed everyone by offering videos without ads until more recently, in order to gain market share. The mindset you’re currently arguing against was established and curated and encouraged by YouTube, and they’re still hoping you hang on to it while they keep cranking up the amount of advertising and trying to normalize the bogus idea that avoiding ads is somehow bad. They do not have to offer an ad-funded business model, so if they don’t like the cat-and-mouse adblocker game, they can switch to paid accounts only.

It’s perfectly fine to block ads, because it’s perfectly fine to ignore ads we didn’t ask for. You can fast-forward or turn the volume down manually, just like you can write software to automate it. As a society, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ve had this same debate over VHS and DVD warnings & trailers, over TV and cable ads, over radio ads, and over general internet website ads. It will never change because advertisers are not allowed to force us to watch ads, as much as they’d like to.

I think it’s fine for people to block ads and i think it’s fine for YouTube to try and counter that.

Same, agreed!

The issue is those who turn it into a moral or ethical dilemma, as if people avoiding ads is akin to cheating on ones spouse, theft, murder, etc.

If you don't agree to the terms of service, don't use the service? It's not a right or necessity to life.

How I watch the served content in my browser isn’t covered in the terms of service, nor is there valid legal precedent for that. It’s my right to turn down the volume or fast-forward at any time, by any means. If YT doesn’t like that for fear of losing money, then they shouldn’t serve free videos at all. Or they can thwart ad blockers. Their being under the same company as the most used browser gives them plenty of monopoly power to control the flow of ad blocker extensions, and turns out they’re exercising that power. And I haven’t argued against any of that. My sole point is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with people skipping ad viewing by manual or automatic means. Being bad for YouTube doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong for anyone else. I don’t expect free anything, but I do have a right to consume the “free” content they offer however I like.

If you’re worried about surveillance, stop using YouTube. It’s a Google first-party product, they don’t need ads to collect and resell information about your viewing habits.

You have a YouTube alternative to recommend I take it? Because I looked for one and there isn’t any, just a bunch of half baked sites that I can’t get to work properly. YouTube ate everything

I don’t use YouTube much so I’m skeptical that it’s impossible to live without it but the point is simply that if your top concern is surveillance, then you don’t have a choice where you continue to use Google services.

Turn on your TV or radio? They're still there. Read a book?

Put rabbit air antennas on your TV and tune into PBS. Minimal ads except for "this broadcast is sponsored by viewers like you" and no tracking.

The attitude that we have to somehow endure whatever advertisers want us to and be grateful for it, just because YouTube destroyed all competition with a free-to-use model they changed after becoming a monopoly, is comical.

Considering Google and advertizers have been scamming us for decades, I'm just clawing payback.

Which advertisers have been scamming us? And does that subset encompass everyone who advertises on YouTube?

Not to mention everyone who creates Youtube videos with the expectation of making money.

Those get money off Patreon and sponsor deals. And they’re welcome to come over on Nebula or equivalent.

In any case, if they make the choice to live off advertising, it’s their problem. They are not owed a business model.

And you are not owed online videos.

I am not arguing otherwise. I’m not the one complaining, though.

How is it a scam to watch 15s of ads before a 10 minute video? Wait until you hear about cable TV.

It's 30s every two minutes.

And more importantly, they are scamming the content creators. They are not usually a massive company, but working alone, with YouTube revenue as their main income.

It is factually incorrect to call it “scamming”, and this cancer of an idea needs to stop.

YouTube has the right to offer only paying accounts, and stop serving free videos. They are choosing not to exercise that option. In fact, they chose to monopolize video streaming by initially offering free videos with no ads. Demanding ad viewing time is a recent change to their business model.

Consumers also have the right to pay for YouTube, or to not watch YouTube, but when YouTube chooses to serve “free” videos with ads that are annoying and waste time, as long as there are easy technical options for removing the ads, the temptation is pretty high. There is no law that you must watch ads, not on YouTube, not on TV, not for billboards, not on the internet. And basically nobody wants to waste time watching ads. This is why it’s wrong to call it “scamming”.

BTW I’m perfectly fine with the idea of an ad-funded business model for free services. I’m only objecting to your framing that avoiding ads when they can puts consumers in the wrong. YouTube’s funding is YouTube’s business, and they are free to fight against ad-blockers, but please don’t be a shill or vilify people for doing the obvious and legal thing. YouTube wants you to spout this crap because Google and advertisers would love it if there was public support for making ad-watching legally mandatory, and that would be a nightmare dystopian future we don’t want.

I can tell you've never actually been poor, you image what they're worried about is "participating in popular culture".

That's the middle-class concern of children who have never known what it's like to go hungry.

Of all the things to push for being publicly funded, this aint it. How about daily medical and dental? How about insurance for vehicles so the poor don't get unduly punished?

I could go on and on, your perspective is just out of touch.

> Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising?

I think they should pay their fair share and not expect us to give them stuff for free

The 'Us' that want 'that'? Crap! I thought I was a part of a different 'us'. Or is this a different 'us' to the one i first thought?

Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it?

Do you want to work for free?

> Do you want to work for free?

If I "[worked] for free", I'd be giving away hours of my time.

When Google "[gives me] content for free", they're losing fractions of fractions of a cent in bandwidth.

This is a shitty equivalence.

Convenient to forget the video creators.

I work for free every time I contribute to an open source project, and I directly donate to content creators I enjoy watching, so you'll have to come up with a better argument.

>Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it?

What about the first language you acquired? I hope you pay a per use perpetual fee for every sentence popping in your mind in its expression space, and that your license to use it also includes an obligation of permanent report of every single bit of intimacy that you might experiment.

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