Every time there's an article about this fight, someone inevitably chimes in with their "Just Buy Premium" contribution. While true, it's not very useful or topical, and it's been re-posted so many damn times that it's pretty much zero-value.
It's like going into a discussion about building your own custom PC from scratch and posting "Just buy it from Dell!" I mean, no shit!
Everyone obviously knows paying is an option. These articles/discussions aren't about the obvious, short, straightforward path.
Bad analogy. Six Flags has a fence and doesn’t offer free rides. Jumping the Six Flags fence is not legal. YouTube has no fence and advertises free rides without a ticket, by design, but does serve ads. (YT didn’t used to, they only got big in the first place by offering free rides w/ no ads.) YouTube could have a fence, and only offer rides to paying customers, but they don’t. Avoiding those ads is perfectly legal. Using an ad blocker is perfectly defensible, as defensible as turning the volume down or doing something else while an ad is playing. You certainly don’t want ad avoidance to become illegal and considered stealing under the law do you? Imagine being arrested for failing to read a billboard, or for talking to a friend during a TV commercial.
Honestly, there's no great real-world analogy, that's why we keep re-discussing it (and ultimately, I think, the business model is flawed). Let's try a better one though:
I go into a store and they offer to give me a free cupcake if I'm willing to take their branded bumper sticker and put it on my car. I say sure, take the cupcake and the bumper sticker, and toss the sticker in the trash before I reach my car. Now they're following me out to my car to make sure I put it on. Fine. I'll do it, and then once I turn the corner, I'll pull it off and toss it. And the cat and mouse game continues, which is why nobody tries the "free cupcake for a bumper sticker" business model.
This thread starts, and someone says "You could always just pay for the cupcake, or keep the bumper sticker on your car..." Wow, no shit, Sherlock! That's obvious and adds nothing to the conversation.
That’s a decent example, and the questions are: is it wrong to take the cupcake and toss the bumper sticker? Is it illegal? In YouTube’s case, did I even agree to the bumper sticker? They never asked, and the rules don’t say I have to watch ads, there’s no legal requirement. People can and do suggest it’s breaking a contract, but in this case I disagree, the contract has been effectively changing out from under me and YouTube and advertisers are fully 100% aware that they’re asking for something that nobody wants to do willingly.
To extend your analogy, it’s like your favorite cafe decided to offer free cupcakes, and not for a quick promotion, but for ten years, and then after all other bakers in town gave up on cupcakes, and there was only one provider of cupcakes that was very popular because they were completely free, the cafe put bumper stickers on the table next to the cupcakes for a few years and noticed people don’t like bumper stickers, and then one day they said these cupcakes weren’t free before, you were supposed to be putting stickers on your car, and the other patrons started accusing you of grift for not having adorned the bumper sticker, despite the fact that the cupcakes had been offered for free.
I’d say there are a bunch of acceptable analogies, such as the free time-share vacation if you listen to the real-estate pitch, or almost any sweepstakes scheme, or the old 10 cds for a penny - if you subscribe to the monthly plan - thing. TV advertising is exactly what YouTube is doing, and they’re trying to exert more control over viewers than TVs ever did, because they can.
The analogy that doesn’t work is comparing YouTube to any strictly paid product, and equating it to stealing. That’s false and bogus, but I’m preaching to the choir there, you already know that. :) I don’t mind the reminders that it’s available as a paid service. I might mind if YouTube does what movies and other paid streaming services have done and start showing ads during the paid content anyway.
The “just buy premium” comment is usually the lone voice of reason in a sea of people jumping through hoops to justify why they like getting things for free without paying for them.
There is value in reminding people that blocking ads when there is a paid ad free option is scummy behavior.
We don't want to see ads. No further justification is necessary.
If they don't like it, they should eliminate the "free" version of the service straight up. If they send us ads, we'll delete them. Nothing they can do about it. We won't lose a second of sleep over it either.
Our attention is ours. It's not currency to pay for services with.
Certainly you decide if it runs. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
However, I imagine the hard part, if it comes to that, will be determining which code is which. Imagine the UI presented in a canvas, updated by a proprietary VM. You can see server connections of course, but their purpose is opaque. Perhaps ad/non-ad content is mixed into the same response. The ad-blockers may make some breakthroughs, but Google's under no obligation to keep it as easy as it is now. I suspect they've barely begun to try.
> However, I imagine the hard part, if it comes to that, will be determining which code is which.
One day someone much smarter than me will invent an AI ad blocker which will do stuff like that automatically. Just imagine it. An AI that automatically filters ads, brands and other forms of noise in real time. It'd even work on audio and video. Hell, it'd work on real life through augmented reality glasses or something. If I can imagine it, then it must be possible.
> Google's under no obligation to keep it as easy as it is now
Actually they kind of are due to accessibility laws. Everything you proposed means rolling back literally every single one of the hard won advances in web accessibility. Everything that enables assistive technology also enables bots, scripts, automated access. I bet they really hate those users because of that.
> I suspect they've barely begun to try.
Yawn. Trillion dollar copyright industry has been playing this exact same cat and mouse game with copyright infringement for literally decades now. You're telling me Google's gonna win this?
Everyone who has any respect for the word "hacker" and what it stands for better hope they give up. There's only one way for them to win and that's by owning our computers. Devices must be literally physically cryptographically unable to run software that hurts their bottom line for them to win.
Not really, you have an option to exclude your content from being indexed by Google (robots.txt).
I don't care as much about Google losing money because of ad-blockers, they have plenty of money going around. The real people losing here are the ones who are creating the content. As it is they need to amass a large number of views to earn few dollars from a video. Depending on the type of content, a lot of time, money and effort goes into creating each of those videos.
They're totally free to configure their servers to return HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of a free web page. They keep sending us free stuff loaded with ads instead. Only have themselves to blame. Nobody's actually obligated to "pay" by looking at that junk.
i don't need to justify my actions. I know adblocking is denying revenue to the platform. i don't care.
The "just buy premium" crowd is assuming that people are rich enough to afford premium. May be they should consider how priviledged they are for having the spare money to dump on premium.
Even if you're rich, you're not obligated to see ads. Our attention belongs to us. It's part of our inalienable cognitive functions. They're not entitled to it.
That's fine, and quite reasonable, as long as it works. Google has no obligation to maintain that state of affairs. I agree that Google isn't entitled to your attention. My point is that, just because they're clamping down on ad-blockers, doesn't mean they think they're entitled to your attention.
It's like going into a discussion about building your own custom PC from scratch and posting "Just buy it from Dell!" I mean, no shit!
Everyone obviously knows paying is an option. These articles/discussions aren't about the obvious, short, straightforward path.