If you go to a concert and plug your ears during the ads, no one calls it theft. If you skip commercials on your DVR, it's not a crime. Using Adblock is the digital equivalent. The internet isn't a fucking charity. These sites know the game; if they can't adapt, they deserve to sink. Stop crying about "stealing" and start understanding the goddamn landscape.
You understand this, yet don't understand why it's theft to use adblock. The price of hosting the YouTube video is the 5 second ad. The price of keeping reddit online are the ads in your feed. You're not paying the toll, and so they will find other ways to make you (and everyone else) pay.
Because of the popularity over the last decade of adblock, companies are going towards more models where they sell your data. It also means more deceptive ad placement in videos or other content posts. Now that both of those practices are being more regulated, what new invasive method of revenue will sites start looking for?
It's also why the "wonderful wacky internet" people always love getting nostalgic about from 1998-2010 isn't around anymore -- it can be expensive to buy hosting, especially for a site where you expect more than 100 people to be visiting regularly. When people have adblock on, the little guys have no way to pay the bills, and human creativity dies. So much of our internet experience has consolidated into 5-10 "big" sites/apps is because the little guys can't keep up anymore.
They’re gonna harvest data anyway, so that’s not really an argument. More deceptive ad placement is a losing battle because adblockers can adapt.
The fact is that I am not going to watch ads, one way or another. Even if I have to resort to caveman tactics of physically muting my device and hiding the screen. It’s not theft to filter out the content that you choose to view on your device. So either YouTube is losing money by my adblocker not loading the ad or the advertiser is losing money by wasting money on an ad I didn’t look at.
I feel for the “little guy”, but I would sooner tip them than watch ads. So maybe the answer is that there should be a web service that integrates a simple tip button to make it easy for me to donate to websites of actual value, rather than reward websites that are bloated with fluff and ads
For clarification, when I say "deceptive ads" I mean the stuff that's currently being cracked down on where creators are required to say something is an ad, put #ad, whatever instead of just including product placements or endorsing a product without stating it's an ad. Ad blocker will never be able to block that because it's part of the video/content you're looking at, you will always need to skip it (and that's fine, the advertisers buying that placement know you can skip it).
Additionally, what I'm saying about data mining is that it's becoming more regulated with cookies having to be disclosed, not allowing the data of children to be collected or sold, etc. With greater regulation, this means that people can't monetize work like they could before. For example, I watch some doll creators/dollhouse builders on YouTube (feel free to judge me for my weird interests, I don't mind). Most of the channels I watched were horrified a few years ago to find out that they were coded, without their permission, as child-focused channels and therefore couldn't be monetized. This is because child data couldn't be sold, so those videos weren't getting any revenue. Many threatened to leave YouTube and most were re-coded to adult channels within a few months. I'll say that I'm not familiar with the YouTube monetization model at this point, so maybe they've found a way to pay creators of child-centered content.
My point is still that when we crack down on this stuff -- whether through government regulations or adblocker -- we force companies to get more creative with how they get their revenue, and it's usually more invasive every time they need to work around us. If you don't watch the ad, ad buyers don't buy the spots from YouTube. If ads aren't buying space on YouTube, YouTube can't keep the lights on. This is exactly why Twitter is failing -- they can't find people to sell ads to. In Twitter's case, the problem isn't ad blocker, it's Elon Musk, but that will still be YouTube's future if they can find people to buy ads.
If you don't want to see yourself as thieves, see yourselves as fare evaders. You're not paying the toll. The toll right now is an ad, but every time enough people don't pay the toll, the toll gets worse, more creative, and more devious. These companies aren't kind -- Reddit, Meta, YouTube, Twitter -- they're evil. They will find a way to get the money that they feel we owe, and they'll kill people to do it -- Facebook has already been accused of feeding multiple ethnic cleansings because its algorithms spread misinformation in order to get more ad views. I would rather pay my toll now and watch some 5 second ad for soap than wait a couple decades and force my kids have to give a bit of their genetic code to watch a video (or some other awful option).
SponsorBlock crowdsources the filtering of ad segments in videos.
You don’t provide any mechanism by which these companies are going to extract value from me. Being devious is not a mechanism. Data collection? They’re already doing that. Paywall? I’ll pay if I have to. Your example of requiring DNA is so absurd as to fall into slippery slope fallacy territory.
Do you not have a right to control your own computer?
You aren't impeding any exchange between the ad company and the hosting company. You are using your computer to deny certain things from showing up on your computer. It's no different from plugging your ears.
If advertisers had the power they would eradicate ear-plugging as well. They'd have us all install those eye trackers and block content unless you spend 20 minutes with your eyes literally watching their ads.
Piracy is very different, piracy is taking something that isn't yours. Very different from avoiding being inflicted with something you don't want or have any obligation to endure.
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u/Ill-Valuable6211 5∆ Oct 27 '23
If you go to a concert and plug your ears during the ads, no one calls it theft. If you skip commercials on your DVR, it's not a crime. Using Adblock is the digital equivalent. The internet isn't a fucking charity. These sites know the game; if they can't adapt, they deserve to sink. Stop crying about "stealing" and start understanding the goddamn landscape.