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Comment by edwardbernays | Hacker News Reader

I'm not complaining that higher-quality advertisers aren't spending money trying to reach me. I'm saying the fact that the lowest common denominator ads are so hostile is reason enough to completely avoid them.

This might be a controversial take, but I don't want to see soft-core porn ads. I don't want to see scam ads. I don't want to see the worst of the worst. It is not a necessary state of affairs that the lowest common denominator ads are ads that are explicitly attempting to prey upon the least informed, most vulnerable members of society.

The fact that the worst ads are the way that they are is indicative of YouTube's willingness to engage in user-hostile activities.

If they were less willing to engage in hostile ads, there would be less hostility towards their ads.

YouTube's solution is extremely simple: vet ads and don't accept money to run hostile ads.

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> is reason enough to completely avoid them.

Right, then avoid them. Either don't use YouTube, or else pay for Premium so you don't see them.

You claim people are hostile to watching YouTube's ads because of their quality. But I don't think so -- I think they're mostly seeing normal ads, not scammy ones. Because they're not taking measures against tracking. Your experience would seem to be very much an outlier.

I simply don't see the ads you're talking about, not even a little bit, so I can't really speak to YouTube's acceptable ads policies. But just so you know -- you can also mark checkboxes in your Google profile around which categories of ads you are and aren't interested in. I actually did that, and got less ads for categories I have zero interest in. That may help your ads experience, and make your ad quality complaints go away, if you're philosophically OK with that, since you're providing data freely rather than through tracking.

No, I'm going to continue watching YouTube while also avoiding their ads. If they want to engage in an adversarial relationship then I will as well. Until there's another competitor in the space that provides the same value, I will just take value from the only game in town. They don't owe me their service, but I also don't owe a bad faith monopolist anything. I do pay for premium, and I also block all of their analytics and ads at the network level.

EDIT: also, I think everyone should block ads. We should snub advertisers and surveillers all of the time. If they want to be hostile towards users, users should be hostile towards them.

Capitalists have had it too good for too long. It's time consumers stop caring about how the poor capitalist will make their dime.

Until the capitalists take the time to respect us, the consumers, we don't owe them anything.

It's time for reciprocity. If they're hostile, we reciprocate. If they're cooperative, we reciprocate.

> I do pay for premium

You pay for Premium?

Then why are you complaining about ads when you don't even see them?

And why are you talking about being hostile to a company when you pay them every month?

I'm even more confused than before.

giving them $13/month is not being hostile to them, it’s being a long term customer. they have exactly the relationship they want with you, minus your adblocking. i too pay for premium, run a pihole and use ubo. i pay for premium because the company sells a quality product at a good price and adfree. sponsor segments is another thing, but solveable. i also use sponsorblock and have a docker setup to autoskip segments on devices connected to my wifi. but out of all streaming services out there, yt actually seems like the least vampiric.

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