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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

YT premium subscribers should disable adblockers anyway

Why?

Because YT doesn't serve ads to those users, so there is nothing to block at best, and at worst it screws up view counts.

(Shrug) As a Premium user, Google obviously knows what videos I'm watching, given that I'm logged in. Failure to credit the creator accordingly would amount to fraud.

So that sounds like a 'them' problem, not a 'me' problem. There is no reason for ad tracking to play any role in the process whatsoever.

I'm not sure why it seems you have downvotes for saying that. Premium users by their very nature need to be logged in. YouTube has all of the watch stats for logged in users without needing the view to hit an extra analytics endpoint. They can and should just use that.

I pay for premium. YouTube clearly keeps track of what I'm watching. It's in my history amongst other things. My adblocker is not coming down.

They are serving you that content. They know anyway.

You’re wrong. The tracking code is two pronged: 1 to serve you ads, 2 to track you. By blocking ads while paying for Youtube Premium you block the tracking end as well.

This goes for any site that sells you an ad-free subscription. No ads but you’re still being profiled.

People who pay for YouTube Premium are already tracked by virtue of the fact that they are a logged in user who has a credit card associated with their account.

Google has to do no legwork here to figure out who you are and what videos you are watching. There is no ambiguity. There should be no reason to not count views from Premium subscribers who don't disable their ad-blocker.

I'm sure Google knows this, and has a good reason for this behavior that they are not telling us. I'm not sure what it could be, other than spite.

Yes but I guess the advice is better supported on platforms where your identity is not directly tied.

No reason to ever turn off your ad-blocker even if you do pay and they identify you.

If the point of "ad blocker" is not to "block ads" then maybe it needs rebranding.

Right, they are content blockers with a focus on malware (but also annoyances like cookie banners or whatever you'd like via right-click menu). Adware is a subset of what they block. "Web malware blocker" is probably the most concise while reasonably correct characterization.

"People should disable their web malware blockers to support creators" makes the insanity of the proposition as clear as it ought to be. "FBI recommends using a web malware blocker" makes the advice as obvious as it ought to be.

That makes a lot of sense.

no.

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