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Comment by chfalck | Hacker News Reader

The equivalent behavior on YouTube for your analogies would be for you to mute the ad or to browse a different tab while the ad still plays. Removing the ad altogether is very different. TV and radio can’t (last time I checked) tell if you’ve muted the ad, changed the channel, or have walked away. There’s no telemetry they can access that tells them that, so there is no legal course for the ad companies to say “we’re not going to pay you for that ad” because the best the TV and radio companies can do is say “yup we ran it” and there is a guarantee that every person at a minimum had to wait the amount of time the ad takes, and many will likely just endure it. On the other hand, it’s absolutely possible to track ads getting blocked and skipped altogether, and ad companies have legal grounds to say “we won’t pay for that”.

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> and many will likely just endure it

And many will change the channel and watch something else in the meantime. Youtube checks that you have clicked away and just waits for you, basically FORCING you to watch the ad. TV and radio don't do that, neither do magazines.

If Youtube was TV, in this analogy every channel has an ad as soon as you open it. Oh, and when you go back to a channel you switched from due to an ad, that very same ad is waiting for you to watch it dutifully.

I wasn’t aware they paused ads if you clicked away. That certainly feels like an abuse of browser APIs, and I agree that’s inappropriate behavior.

As for the TV analogy, it’s a paid option which still serves ads. YouTube offers a paid option which does not serve ads. Should they ever try to cross the line of charging money and still serving ads then all bets are off.

The space of what's possible on the advertising attribution side doesn't change my moral obligations as a member of the audience. If that were the case, anything disrupting any kind of advertising attribution, even if not entirely intentional, could be said to be theft. For example, if I buy land and build a building in between a billboard and the road the billboard's pointed at, am I in some way liable to the billboard company? What about if I pay someone to follow me around with large cardboard panels and block large advertisements out in the world from my line of sight? What if I build a very fancy automated hat with arms which blocks ads in my real life vision (or even on every screen I look at)? I'm not seeing the ads, have I broken some rule?

This whole thing is happening because content makers have become VERY entitled to the system of advertising which pays them; rather than innovate in the space, they're trying to moralize and legalize their way into forcing the audience not to look away. Don't let it happen folks.

To be clear, I'm not saying YT should give things away; I'm saying the mask should come off and they should outright charge money.

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