The 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers
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It's very similar to having a right to refuse to eat something you think is unhealthy or that you're simply not interested in.
If you feed your brain enough garbage (and ads have a very high "information noise" content) then your thinking will eventually become garbage as well. In this respect, we're no different than any other AI model.
I hear you objecting and saying that ads create value. Suit yourself and watch all the ads you want. But oh, boy.
They do. You do, I do, we all do. No one has to watch any ad they don't want to.
I think your complaint is that people don't have a fundamental right to download video for free from someone else's web site? And, no, they don't.
Again, the right you demanded clearly exists. You seem to me to be just asking for free stuff. Am I wrong?
Where is this written?
Edit: it's a legitimate question. You can argue that nobody "needs" YouTube but the fact of the matter is that if you can't access YouTube, you can't ramp up on academic topics as easily as your colleagues, so you are at a disadvantage. It's a material effect. The question is "at what point" does this access become worth protecting.
I think big social networks have immense importance in society (much like many other utilities), and I think it's worth raising the question, and seriously considering, no matter what answer you land on.
But you can easily imagine a model in which government subsidies are granted at arms length to offset revenue lost by the protection of such a hypothetical right as the one I'm proposing.
It doesn't have to be as alarming as many seem to think either. It's not so different from the current relationship between governments and utilities, NGOs, universities, telephone companies, power companies, etc.
Block all the ads you want, but this argument that rights are being trampled is just nonsense
I agree... But shouldn't it be society's problem? That's what I'm saying: I am not talking about what the current law is. I am proposing that perhaps (just perhaps) there ought to be different laws.
> this argument that rights are being trampled
That is not the argument, as I hope I have clarified above.
Let the government create its own taxpayer funded social media platforms if it's so important, maybe even require academia to publish to those platforms. That would also be a solution.
For every objection one could raise, there's about a million different legal and administrative knobs you can turn to fine-tune the relationship between public and private, government and corporate.
> That's not something free societies do
Oh yes it is. The government in most (all?) developed countries has special (often at arms length) relationships with utilities, research institutions, nonprofits and NGOs, universities, etc.
> You seem to want to grant the government carte blanche to seize, nationalize and regulate social media
This is probably the most extreme interpretation possible of what I'm saying. Do you really think it's what I'm suggesting?
I'm not claiming to have all the answers, merely raising a question I think is worth seriously considering.
Youtube is none of these things, it's private property. The government in free societies tends to respect private property. Especially when that property is a platform for speech. Television and radio being an exception because spectrum is a limited resource, but there is no equivalent to that on the internet. Youtube's dominance is not the end result of their control over infrastructure, we could have a million video platforms on the internet, if we wanted.
>This is probably the most extreme interpretation possible of what I'm saying. Do you really think it's what I'm suggesting?
I think it's the inevitable result of what you're suggesting. Why stop at Youtube, after all? Aren't Twitter and Facebook also "sufficiently important?" I've seen people suggest any social media platform with over some arbitrary number of users should be automatically nationalized. It's a moving target.
And of course, these platforms will be regulated and censored, because that's what government does.
Again, I think a better solution would be for governments (or even academic institutions) to create their own platforms. That would be more in the spirit of the internet, rather than centralization and government control.
"What is" is different that "what ought to be". I am talking about the latter, but you continue to refer to the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
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> I think a better solution would be for governments (or even academic institutions) to create their own platforms.
This is perfectly compatible with what I was saying. It's a reasonable approach.
> rather than centralization and government control
The other kinds of approaches I was considering have nothing to do with control in the sense of "government oppression". Much to the contrary. There are many laws and rights that are technically a form of government control but which have the effect of protecting individuals from being oppressed by larger forces. These types of government control are generally very important. (I also worry when government control serves the government's interests more than that of individuals, but that's not really what I'm talking about in this context.)
It is a legitimate question, but we're nowhere near that point. If YT vanished from the face of the Earth tomorrow, the country would continue without any problem.
This is interesting, because it's probably true (but what would the economic impact be? I'd wager it could be rather large)... And yet the cost of staying out of a massive social network is enormous for a single individual, relative to their peers.
You keep implying all over this thread that ad-free access to funny Youtube videos is something like a human right. This is absurd. Your logic would result in my tax dollars paying for your funny Youtube videos. I don't want that.
I too am from the generation that prefers to read. But my kids prefer videos, and it's not for want of me working with them to read more, they simply don't like reading and they pick up a fairly incredible amount of stuff from watching videos. Unfortunately their gullible little brains are also wide open to advertiser.
> You keep implying all over this thread that ad-free access to funny Youtube videos is something like a human right. This is absurd. Your logic would result in my tax dollars paying for your funny Youtube videos. I don't want that.
You are not arguing in a serious manner. Funny Youtube videos are your strawman and nobody wants to use your tax dollars to support funny youtube videos. But there is plenty of higher quality content on youtube and google shouldn't be the gatekeeper to that content over the heads of the creators and the consumers alike. Economies of scale and network effects translate into users no longer having a free choice in this. And that is precisely where regulation kicks in.
I don't know any reasonable government will now start considering free beer as public good over free speech.
Should it be? Probably, yes. No reason there can't be oversight of the industry the way there is with TV stations and radio.
Should that oversight extend to letting people deny ads in their homes? That's a trickier question.
At the moment, the thinking is you choose to do so as a consequence of choosing to view something else, e.g. a TV show or a YouTube video.
It's the cost of doing so, and the cost is generally known about upfront.
The question then is, should you have the right to still consume a free optional service and not be forced to view those ads?
Sure, but at the moment you can avoid using the service.
> But my government posts their stuff on youtube, as does my kids' school, as do the manufacturers of the gear I use, as do the courses that I have already paid for. So it's not like I have much of a choice here.
You could petition the government and school to not put stuff on YouTube, maybe even take the issue to court. You could also rally other people.
But if not enough people care, then there probably is not ever going to become any sort right that would protect you against having to view ads. Rights don't get introduced to protect things that people don't care about.
At the moment you can also bypass youtube completely downloading the videos to view offline, and there are various solutions that will do that and then serve it back for viewing in a browser. So with a little more work you do still have an option to avoid their ads completely.
Which brings us back to the question being should you have the right to do that?
The best bit: I already pay google a whole bunch of money for other services, and it isn't rare that their support sucks to the point that the only thing that I can find to help out with some issue is - tadaa - a youtube video.
Whenever people are rallied to a cause, it starts with someone doing something. And if you take the issue to court, they have to listen to you.
Besides, you still have alternatives to not viewing their ads and still obtaining the content, just requires a few hours work to set something up.
And sure you can say fuck YouTube, but going back to whether or not you should have a right to deny ads...at the moment I would say no, since there isn't a need for it to be a right yet.
My time is worth quite a bit for me, as is the hygiene of what goes on in my skull and advertisers are way too good at making people that think they are immune to that shit do their bidding. You too. Adblocking is a mental health thing, not a commercial thing.
Sure you keep saying this, but then you are not willing to put in the work to not see ads and save that time.
That's why it doesn't need to be a right. Because you could do something about it to help yourself and don't want to.
You are probably misunderstanding something because I do put in that work and I don't have any ads in my life. In spite of G's best efforts to force them on me.
Earlier in the discussion I suggested software you can setup that "is a bit more work", but allows you to download and stream back YouTube videos without ever having to see any ads.
You said you don't do that work because you don't feel the need. That's the work to which I am referring.
But if you already are ad free, then that's exactly why it doesn't need to be a right. You have no need to use YouTube at all, and if you do you can already do so ad free, it just requires some work.
Around same time when individuals decided that everything on internet should be free.
When the government buys it and operates it with your tax dollars.
The question here is not whether they have a right to use it, but whether they should have a right. All rights are invented, created essentially out of thin air, to protect things people care sufficiently about. All rights were at some point not rights.
Things that could more easily be argued to be important would be stuff like academic content or news content.
At this point Youtube is a part of the broader internet infrastructure (as are many other large social networks), and you can make an argument that it's a bit like any other utility (roads, phone lines, fiber op cable, GPS satellites, etc).
government offers schooling. if you wish to seek additional, that is offered in other ways. when i went to school, YT didn't exist. yet, i still sought out additional resources that were available outside of school. this argument carries no weight with me.
news content is available in other places. these news sources choose to offer their content on YT because that's where the audience is. if YT were to no longer exist, the news content would still be available elsewhere. again, no weight here either.
considering YT part of the infrastructure means to me that you are very confused on what infrastructure is. YT utilizes that infrastructure. if YT didn't exist, it does not mean that the internet wouldn't work. it would not prevent anyone from accessing other resources utilizing the actual infrastructure of the internet. so either, this word has a confused meaning for you, or you're just beyond hypothetical and not realizing it. i realize some people would feel like the internet was broken if social media sites were down, but they'd eventually get over it if they were to never come back
There is plenty of academic literature which explores the concept of social media as infrastructure. I didn't come up with the idea, I only pointed to it.
I won't point to any specific document, but there is plenty of related material here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=soci...
Or, take a look at the wiki page for "infrastructure" to get a rough sense of how broad the concept really is.
What more do you want? I essentially sent you to the entire corpus of human knowledge lol.
Great!
Go back to school and let us know what you find? Yes, school is important, and schools from time to time lean on YouTube content (from authoritative sources, generally, because not all videos are from internet randos).
We certainly do impose certain responsibilities and duties even on non-public airwaves - for example we require them to distribute emergency content to viewers even if this interrupts the ordinary revenue operation/broadcast schedule (as it usually does).
That’s precisely a taking of private property for governmental purposes and public utility.
I would agree that the network as a whole might comprise a public resource, although I would also disagree vehemently with letting the government regulate speech on it like the FCC, but not individual sites and platforms.
I don't think the scarcity is the most important feature, I think it's the "public nature" of the thing. But how do we decide what is of a "public nature"?
There is no "public nature." Simply allowing the public to use a service doesn't make it public. MacDonald's will let anyone walk in and order food, and it's ubiquitous, but that doesn't make it a public utility.
Which I'm reasonably confident (despite not being a lawyer) is not a thing in the US. At least not yet.
Also I said “and license” which is effectively all the third party content. Syndication is one of the oldest network models.
Government announcements, instructional videos by governments (e.g. for voting), educational content for children, etc.
Governments should really be banned from putting that kind of stuff on a site like YouTube. That aside, the point on criticality is not really a good one, it is important for any sort of cultural content to be widely accessible and not behind walled gardens.
Furthermore while I don't necessarily agree that users have a "right" to Youtube, I do believe that sensible antitrust enforcement would require Youtube to make its service client-agnostic, and prohibit this current practice of bundling a proprietary client with the service.
Users should have a right to use a client that doesn't serve up ads.
A monopoly like Google/YouTube should't be allowed to block users on a right that they should have, to control their client and a right to privacy. In many countries they are parts of contracts that are simply not enforceable because they are overwritten by legislation.
YouTube is, by the way, basically a monopoly on user-created videos (except perhaps for shorts) and network effects prevent true competition. The argument that users should "go elsewhere" is pretty distasteful if you ask me. I like to be a part of culture and if someone sends me a link to a YouTube video I should be able to watch it. Copyright reform and P2P liberalisation would really help in this regard.
No freeloader will see their valuable content (which, as I recall...they get from where again?) if they don't put up a publicly viewable web site, and no law is forcing them to do so.
That sounds like people have right to not get stabbed or mugged by not going to secluded parts of downtown.
If they don't like that people can view public things and decline to view other public things, they have the choice not to display the things in public. That is the entirety of the choices they have a right to.
YouTube is a business and no one is making you visit that website.
Did you miss those key words?
there's nuance clearly. "i go to youtube" etc. but also, youtube comes to me. i do think i should have the right to reject packets at the protocol level.
i did open my door, but also do i not have the right to still arbitrate what passes my dear home's threshold?
packet by packet. why not!
The fact that you initiate the interaction is not on its own free license to force feed you whatever the requestee pleases.
edit: this is fun. i can see that it's actually "filter" the water to still take it and reject only what i deem dirt. and the water provider doesn't like that.
You do! But so does YouTube![1] If they don't want to serve you the video they don't have to, either. And that's what's happening here. I'm amazed to see arguments like this up at the top of the page.
To take your point maybe more seriously than it deserves: this seems like maybe an argument for socialized media hosting. You're saying the capitalist ad economy isn't equitable or fair or just (or frankly maybe just not doing what you want), and that you think this should be something the government pays for in the aim of general societal benefit.
And... I don't know that I completely disagree? But if you want that you need to go there and have the argument, not just demand that the corporate overlord enemy of the week give you free stuff.
[1] Or any other media site with adblockblocking, YouTube is hardly alone here.
I don't see people getting upset at the special relationship between government and power companies or telephone companies.
Oh, you don't know which packets to drop? That's a real shame.
Your comment is a bit like saying... "The right to potable water is not violated because individuals are free to build their own desalination plants and move closer to the ocean. Oh, they don't have the resources to do that? That's unfortunate."
Google is within their rights to want people to view ads, and even within their rights to attempt technical measures to ensure viewership. But we all have the right to circumvent those technical measures, if they're running on our property, in addition to viewing, inspecting, saving, and copying them.
One could argue that you should, indeed, have the right to block whatever parts of YouTube's 'code' from running on your machine. Currently, this is the case.
I'm not kidding about that, BTW[1][2][3]. There is a silent and ongoing effort by everyone - including ad companies - to appropriate your physical property with their intellectual property[4]. You see, on the totem pole of capitalist legitimacy, physical ownership is actually really weak. There's all sorts of government-granted monopolies that can be traded like property[5], but let you bulldoze lesser ownership over physical objects. You might own your computer, but I own the content, so I own your computer for as long as my content is somewhere on it.
Talking about fundamental rights is interesting. Right now, at least in the US, people have a fundamental right to advertise - it's called the 1st Amendment. We can't even have functional campaign contribution laws because SCOTUS demands that billionaires have a god-given right to spend their billions shouting over everyone else in campaign ads. Several other fundamental rights mean you have the right to ignore shouty ads, but you don't have the right to shut the advertisers up. Likewise, the right to refuse ad exposure online is implied by the fact that the website runs on your computer. But other rights - such as the right to control copies of your speech - can negate that same implication.
Anyway, this is why I think we should bring back the Boston Strangler[6]. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
[0] This is separate from the concept of "ambush marketing" where you try to ride another marketer's coat tails as close as possible without violating trademark law, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambush_marketing
[1] https://digiday.com/media/adblock-plus-accuses-axel-springer...
[2] https://torrentfreak.com/dmca-used-to-remove-ad-server-url-f...
[3] Here's a longer GitHub issue/flamewar full of people debating whether or not you can apply DMCA 1201 equivalents to ad blockers: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/issues/1034
[4] Shut up Stallman, you know what it really means. - Not Cory Doctorow
[5] I'm afraid to call them property because if I do that means the Takings clause applies and we can't ever roll back the life+70 insanity that Berne, Germany, and the EU foisted on us.
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_te...
Thought experiment: What is the thinking behind such regulation.
Now imagine that the communications and discussion around the regulation of billboards was intermediated by billboard companies.
Imagine the billboard companies are trillion dollar companies with lobbying budgets amongst the highest in th e world.
This seems a bit of a strawman in this context. You have the right to not visit YouTube.
Likewise, you have the choice in subscribing to a magazine. If you choose to buy the magazine & bring it into your home, it seems odd to ask why you don't have the "right" to an ad free existence in your home.
And, at least, in this context, YouTube does offer an ad-free version, YouTube Premium.
It also helps them in their upcoming anti-trust case where the EU will mandate their break up into an advertising company, a browser vendor, a search company and something called 'the bin', which in time may become further subdivided.
Basically, the people that care, are in the long tail of browser users.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Strictly speaking it's between Alphabet, the company popularly known as "Google" (and subdivisions - here's another from the same family[0]), and ad blockers.
That each product line is a singular actor that has no bonds to the rest is a fake image to convey. But then for the company behind this campaign having many different hands in the game makes it seem like there are really more parties opposed to ad blockers than reality would have it.
I'm curious how much Streisand effect all of this causes. We know that there are large numbers of people not using blockers. Is there are risk that YT is causing new people to learn about blockers from the news this stuff generates? I'm assuming that the braniacs at YT have crunched the numbers and come out with it's worth it.
It's also bait-and-switch: youtube got big on being a free-for-all videosite and in the beginning that included massive copyright violation which was all A-Ok when Google bought it for an astronomical sum. That gives them the right to 'monetize' but it doesn't give them the right to my attention. It's like billboard but it comes with a guy that forces your head to be aimed at the billboard while you pass it.
Joe Jackson in 'TV-Age' joked that pretty soon you won't be able to turn your TV off at all. Well, he missed out on the internet but your computer screen might as well be your TV in terms of media delivery and what a ridiculous situation we've created: a protocol designed to give people access to each other and to knowledge has been inverted to give companies access to your eyeballs, your brain and your wallet.
It's amusing to me how we keep reinventing existing models but consider them a totally new thing because "on a computer" kind of thing.
Some amount of reinvention seems necessary, the cost model of video hosting (without just making it a public service) changes the maths a fair bit.
Does my issue start to look a bit more reasonable?
From your commenting in this thread I surmise that you have some kind of stake in the outcome. Personally, I'll just boycott youtube and I can't wait until I'm in a position to remove Google from my life entirely.
Now it became this company that needs to serve big companies, and pays some money to authors.
I did not endorse the second. I was interested in the YouTube for the people, not the YouTube for the companies.
YouTube is like cable, tv. It is less like a social platform. It is not a place for Passion, but it is a place for monetization and artists as employees
That being said, the other changes are clearly anti-adblock.
As always you can tell who makes on ads by how fervently they defend the bullshit.
Mental gymnastics dont even change they dont bother to learn new dismounts.
Trying to escuse this bullshit is what's going to lead us to the black mirror episode '15 million merits'.
In their future you have to watch ads. Advertisers and businesses have the rights, not the people.
That future can get fucked.
Notably Firefox, Onion Browser, DuckDuckGo, Brave and even Safari: cannot go wrong with these alternate browsers.
You absolutely can, and will go wrong when you pick a Chromium browser. Picking a Chromium supports Google much more than any developer who decides to redistribute Chromium with a theme and a few addons. It also makes the case for funding other web browsers that aren't controlled by Google much weaker.
The only lock-in solution is the faulty-designed HTTP3 protocol, security-wise and privacy-wise.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883680/us-google-antitr...
Yup, they may still allow extension updates without going through review, but they'll still have to either fork or go along with manifest v3.
Both browsers will have Manifest v3 but Chrome will take much longer to approve extensions in the Chrome web store.
If your extension requires frequent changes due to its target site(s) changing underneath it, the Edge version can end up being weeks behind. At least they do let you cancel pending versions and resubmit, unlike the Chrome web store where you're just stuck until the review is done.
Just use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
For me, currently, my setup is the best browser I've ever used.
Some forks have clear advantages, are well maintained and trustworthy.
There are numerous reasons to maintain a user.js file also, not just performance reasons.
Indeed, report issues to Mozilla directly, but that isn't inconsistent with using a fork and maintaining a user.js
That is of course not the case.
With more effective ad blocking in Firefox you'll process less and load less. And since Firefox lets uBlock Origin use WebAssembly the blocking runs faster and more efficiently too.
It isn't. Chrome and Firefox have similar memory usage these days.
Actual measurements are better than anecdotes. Here are some actual measurements:
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/chrome-firefox-edge-ram-compa...
I've had Chrome open for some number of days and when I check Activity Monitor, the most RAM-expensive process is currently sitting at <500MB, a few others at 100-300MB, and the rest at under 100MB. The "energy impact" of it is at 160-ish. Whereas, again, Firefox was taking up 1GB+ of RAM in multiple processes and the energy impact was more like 260-ish, my battery was dying way faster, I would see CPU usage of double Chrome regularly, and macOS was always saying that Firefox was using a lot of power. The RAM usage is something I've seen on Windows as well, along with issues with the browser just behaving poorly over time. I just don't see these issues on Chrome or (most of) its derivative browsers. (I've used Brave a lot as well)
Guess I'm just objectively wrong though, because Toms Guide disagrees with what I'm seeing.
I've had Firefox 120 running for days and it's not doing what your strange set up is doing.
E.g, my boring Chevy starts to looks pretty performant next to your Ferrari once you have to tote around 2 tons of bricks and I don't :)
I held on to a 2012 4 GB MacBook Air until fairly recently as my casual web browsing machine. With such low system memory, I had to be extremely economical with my open tabs; no more than 3 or 4 at a time. The great suspender plugin helped until it became malware infested, and with that no longer an option, I moved to Firefox. The resource utlization improvement was immediately apparent and I haven't looked back, even after I finally updated my machine.
It's not hard to not use them. I don't use either one.
That kind of extraneous functionality just shouldn't be bundled with Firefox to begin with.
If a user does want such functionality, then an extension could be voluntarily installed to provide it.
The other browser tried to push for Web Integrity API and is now degrading adblock experience, I feel that there's really no comparison.
Mozilla may have missteps but the browser still clearly seem to be siding with the user.
The defaults are almost always not what I want.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-data-another-bro...
It does not do what I asked for. I believe it works from a fixed list of extensions.
Here's a pair it doesn't find:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-pathofexile-...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/better-pathof...