this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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YouTube's argument is the same as Linus' from LTT: if you watch a video without ads, you're failing to comply with your side of the transaction, thus essentially pirating that content and stealing the revenue source.
Regardless if we agree or not with that statement, I'll absolutely side with adblockers always for a deeper issue: it's my screen, so I get the ultimate say on what content gets rendered. Quite literally. It's my network, my cable, my screen, my graphics card, my web browser running JavaScript on my CPU - you do not, ever, get to overreach and decide what pixels show up or not. If I don't want your obnoxious ad for an AI girlfriend to show up, there's no moral argument to be had here.
EDIT: I think some of you are missing the point of this comment. There's no reason to reply to me countering the argument in the first paragraph, as it is not my comment, in fact, I specifically mentioned how it's YouTube (and Linus') argument.
You know what, I actually agree with YouTube's argument. Ad blocking is piracy. In fact, no, it's worse than piracy. If I pirate a movie, Disney makes no money, but it costs them nothing at all. If I watch YouTube without an ad blocker, I'm depriving YouTube of its revenue source and I'm costing them money. Morally, ad blocking sits somewhere between piracy and actual theft.
The thing is? I don't care. I ad block YouTube all the time and feel not a lick of guilt. The reason: Google brought this on themselves. I used to happily pay for YouTube Red. But they have continuously, both before and after that point, been actively hostile to the people actually producing the content they make. Their willingness to bow down to copyright trolls and complete inability to properly apply fair use. They extremely harsh policies on acceptable content, stopping people talking about sex education or mediaeval weaponry being able to reliably makes money.
And the straw that broke this camel's back was when they changed the requirements to be in the Partner Program, locking out all the smaller creators from ever being able to make money on YouTube. I never considered myself a "creator", but over the 5 years prior to that I occasionally uploaded stuff I was doing anyway. I had amassed almost $100 over those 5 years. Not an impressive amount, for sure, but having that taken away from me made me feel unwelcome. I don't think I've uploaded anything public since, and I've been blocking ads on the site since then.
Even worse, not long after this change, they decided to start showing ads even on videos from non-partnered videos, so you can get ads on my videos even though I don't see a single cent.
So fuck YouTube. Ad blocking is worse than piracy, and I say good.
Google: You're pirating our content!
Us: Yeah, so what?
Google: You're pirating our content!
Us: AND THE BEATINGS SHALL CONTINUE UNTIL YOU LEARN YOUR FUCKING LESSON.