Morally you should stop using youtube.
It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.
When you don't like something, you don't use it. It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service. Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
Advertising in general and Google in particular are so immoral that morally you should rip every YouTube video and distribute it freely outside of their platform while actively looking for ways to force them to fundamentally change or close.
The problem is that you feel you have an intrinsic right to the content. Like the content is a public good, and youtube shimmied it's way inbetween so it can shove ads in your face.
But that is not what the deal is. The content is made by creators explicity for youtube, and you are the one making a decision to go to youtube to view privately owned content that you have zero right to.
YT didn't have to build their platform on the web. Nobody forced them to. They could avoid all of these issues by setting up a dedicated client application using a custom protocol with ads already baked into the video stream, for example.
I don't feel like I have an intrinsic right to any content on YT. But I do feel like I have an intrinsic right to use the web the way it's supposed to be used. Which, of course, includes simply ignoring any HTML, CSS, JS or other bits that I don't like. I'm free to send whatever HTTP requests I want to YT, YT is free to respond with whatever they want and I'm free to do whatever I want with their responses. That's just how it is.
If YT doesn't like that... again, nobody is forcing them to use the WWW. They are free to use some locked down technology that better fits their specific needs.
Claiming that I am morally obligated to look at ads on YT is like claiming that I'm morally obligated to look at ads in a print magazine. I hold the magazine in my hands. I flip the pages. I guide my eyes towards the things I want to look at and away from the things I don't want to look at. This is not a surprise to anyone, it's just how reading a magazine works. Same thing with YT ads and the WWW.
You need to extend your logic to everyone, or define who can ad-block and who must watch the ads. It's great you have decided that you don't need to cover the cost incurred serving you a video, can you please tell me the logic we should use to pick who must pick up the tab you left behind? The volunteers who never skip ads?
Surely you have thought your philosophy through.
Businesses that rely in it don't have an innate right to exist. It is ok for some businesses that are viable now to not be in a future, better world. It's ok for some people who are rich now not to be as a result of that.
It's ok for there to be less total content, too. Perhaps that's even desirable when so much is bottom of the barrel stuff (and sometimes 100% a net societal negative) because that's the only way to fund something with a handful of ad views.
Not at all.
I no more claim the right to force someone to serve any given video to me than to force authors to send me copies of their books, musicians to perform for me, etc.
The tl;dr of my position is basically: you don't have to make it free, but you can't pay for it with surveillance capitalism (or at least you can't force anyone to participate when you try to do so).
If you serve data to me over the internet, I have a right to process that data however I want, including ignoring parts of it, and that that cannot be made subject to some contract or deal. Similarly, I can rip the ads out of magazines, skip ads in recordings of TV, etc. etc. and there's nothing the "content creator" can do about it.
Ads are not a deal or an obligation, they're the hope that if you show enough of them it'll be good enough for someone's business that they're willing to pay you for doing so. If you make the ads unbearable or show so many of them that too many people take steps to avoid them, that's your problem.
Make ads acceptable to enough people or find another business model[0].
[0] Not particularly relevant, but I pay for YouTube Premium and plenty of others, both platforms and individual creators. I still aggressively run all possible ad and tracking blockers against every site/platform. It's not about getting free content, it's about avoiding and ideally ending user tracking and targeted ads aka surveillance capitalism.
> When you don't like something, you don't use it.
Morality in your approach is absolute, and it represents the best possible outcome.
For all others stuck in the morass, you must navigate the BATNA.
Everything on my PC is on my terms, and I don't watch ads.
Only when they pay me for the use of my computer equipment and network traffic, do they have any claim to tell me what I must watch on it.
They don't like it, they can feel free to not send me network traffic.
If they really don't want people to watch without ads... surely a tech company of their calibre is capable of blocking content server side, or putting it behind a login.
Forgive me for not feeling morally inadequate compared to a multinational that happily takes ad revenue for toddlers on ipads having their brain fried by endless AI slop that they refuse to moderate.
Also stop leaving your children unattended on brain slop videos. You're basically speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
Today it's that they're not moderating the content and tomorrow it's a complaint of censorship.
When I go to the cinema, that's the cinema's video platform.
In my house, on the equipment that I paid thousands of dollars for and support, using the connection I'm paying for... that's my platform.
>they'll have just as much right to stop serving you videos when you're blocking ads
That's literally what I said they should do. "They don't like it, they can feel free to not send me network traffic."
>stop leaving your children unattended on brain slop videos
I don't have kids. But I have, out of morbid interest, been down the rabbithole of the weird ultra-creepy AI stuff that comes up in their "childrens videos" category.
Some of those creepy AI channels have millions of subscribers.
It's all obviously some kind of weird scam, but google would still be getting ad revenue for it.
If they're going to have a childrens videos category, then obviously they should be moderating it.
For adult stuff yes I would complain of censorship.
> No, no, no.
Not an argument
> Morally you should stop using youtube.
Why?
> It's incredible how people mental gymnastics there way into a solution that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.
I noticed it too, but it's not an argument. I could say something similar e.g.
> It's incredible how corporations mental gymnastics there way into defending their interest that provides themselves all the benefit and pat themselves on the back for being morally righteous.
In either case, it would be nice to read an actual argument.
> When you don't like something, you don't use it.
This is not true, People use stuff they don't like all the time. Should they stop? You may not like to use a bus, but it may be your only means of transportation. You could then argue one should like what he has no alternative to, but I don't see how ones emotional attitude relates to morality.
> It sends a clear message that you don't like the product/service.
Are people morally obliged to send this message? I don't see how this argument relates to morality.
> Using it and not compensating for it (because you actually do like it, just on your terms) is not moral or a good signal in anyway way, shape, or form.
Again, not everyone necessarily likes what he uses, but I can agree, most people use Youtube because they like it, and in particular, people use Youtube with adblocking because they like Youtube without ads. But where is the argument for it being immoral?
You could start with some probably agreeable statement like "Everyone should be paid for his work" and go from there, and then maybe I or someone else could point out some error in the reasoning, but currently your whole post reads as "what you do is immoral because I say so" - there is no proper argument.
It's amazing how you can talk to seemingly intelligent people, and then when you say "Services cost money, and you should either honor your end of the agreement or forgo the service" they somehow get deranged and start with these wordy long dialogues about "well actually it's my computer and I can chose what I want to display on it and, and, and..."
Go read the story of Vid.me, the only serious youtube competitor to come around in a decade. They went bankrupt because it turns out those childish wordy dialogue preachers actually just dont't want to see ads or pay subscriptions. They just want a charity streaming service for their entertainment. Must be such a huge surprise for you to hear that....
It's the same BS as the "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" response to piracy.
People just want their stuff and then add whatever rationalisation on top.
I pay for YT premium because I put my money where my mouth is.
I also simply avoid content that has ads, and have ended up blocking a lot of sources from my news apps because of the ads-to-quality ratio not being worth it. I also don't try to get around paywalls. When I get a pop up that asks me to enable cookies to see the content, or subscribe, I just close the page and don't consume the content because I don't like the terms.
I tip because, even though I think the tipping system is entirely bullshit (and never got tips while working in fancy restaurant kitchens because there was no tip sharing), people deserve to make a living and me stiffing people on their tips is just me being shitty and not some grand revolutionary gesture against the system.
What I don't do is create my own terms on which to still consume the content/services I'm getting.
Also worth noting that absolutely none of this represents some endorsement of that companies like Google, Meta, etc do (in particular in the ads-based world).
I don't like ads, I don't like shitty JS. I don't like being "forced" (by norms) to tip.
I just agree to either paying for something (directly or indirectly), or not using the product.
And, maybe most of all, I don't believe that Google being shitty means I can be shitty. My ethics are mine, and they're not relative.