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Thanks for posting - Google needs to face serious competition and market penalties for the recent anti-user behavior. I feel that the products that matter at Google are controlled by an extremely distasteful group of people. Looting the users amassed years ago by real innovator engineers.

For example, the real implied free storage in GMail has implicitly been reduced by 80%. Their failure to reduce prices and in fact their price INCREASES are just pure greed on display.



How would competition even work? How could any company succeed proving a product to a user base that doesn’t watch ads and doesn’t pay for the service?

Would be like proving an alternative to cater to shoplifters.


Let's permanently dispense with this weird notion that blocking ads is theft. When you're listening to the radio, it's not theft to change the station when ads come up. When you're watching TV, it's not theft to mute the TV and get a drink when ads come up. Youtube has zero moral expectation that people will actually watch the ads it serves. They're giving a product away for free, and people are consuming it for free; end of story.


Just because it isn't theft doesn't mean they need to be okay with you doing it. If I went to a restaurant and decided I didn't like of the wine they have on their menu, so I went to the store next door and grabbed a bottle of wine, I'd likely be asked to pay a corkage fee. If I refused I'd likely be asked to leave.

Businesses get to define their own rules and if you don't abide by them they're allowed to choose not to do business with you. You either need to agree to their terms of service (no adblock) or you need to take your business else where. They don't owe you anything.


No, I really don't have to agree to their terms of service. Their website serves me videos when I request them, and then tries to insert ads. I simply decline to load and view the ads. If they don't want to serve me the videos I request, they can do that, but that's not what they're doing.

Your mentality seems to be that a restaurant can offer free meals to anyone who walks in and sits down, then after they're already eating, demand they watch an annoying ad on a screen built into the table, and somehow the diners are morally obligated to watch it instead of just covering it up with their menu. That's BS.


> I simply decline to load and view the ads.

That's fine, but then they can also choose to retaliate how they want. It's really weird that everything you're saying seems to boil down to "I don't need to play by their rules, but they need to play by mine."

I'm of the opinion that if you want to bypass their ads that's fine, but you can't get angry when they take action to prevent that.

> Your mentality seems to be that a restaurant can offer free meals to anyone who walks in and sits down, then after they're already eating, demand they watch an annoying ad on a screen built into the table, and somehow the diners are morally obligated to watch it instead of just covering it up with their menu. That's BS.

Yes, that's my attitude. I don't know why it wouldn't be. If a restaurant wanted to make me watch an ad before every single bite, then that's their prerogative. I wouldn't eat there, but if that's what they want to do, then that's their choice.

If YouTube wants to make you watch 10 ads before a 30 second video then more power to them. If they want to take action against people trying to bypass that then good for them. Similar to the example above, I'm not going to use them, but I don't get to dictate how they run their business. If you don't like their actions, then take your business elsewhere. They don't own you anything and vice versa. It's really as simple as that.


It’s not theft, but they are negative profit users. What competition would start up to collect these users?

It’s more like a restaurant kicking out a group that just wants to sit at a table for free without buying anything.


> Let's permanently dispense with this weird notion that blocking ads is theft.

So what is a better term for unauthorized use of compute and bandwidth?

The terms of service for YT are: watch ads or pay for premium. This is so that YT can pay their bills (hosting, salaries, cheques to creators).

> They're giving a product away for free, and people are consuming it for free; end of story.

No they are not. They are providing a service according to certain terms of service. If you don't like the terms feel free not to use the service.


> So what is a better term for unauthorized use of compute and bandwidth? > If you don't like the terms feel free not to use the service.

If it's unauthorized, why is the server responding with that data? Youtube has a very simple solution if they don't want the data they send to you to be modified at your discretion -- don't send the data. Their servers are perfectly free to respond with some kind of HTTP error code and not serve up the video data. Once they've sent me the bytes, their control over which of said bytes I consume, modify or discard is over.

I never agreed to any terms of service. My browser made a request and their servers responded with some data. If my request alone constitutes accepting a terms of service, I too should be free to include some sort of X-ToS header with my requests that impose similarly onerous terms on the operator of the server I am making the request to, provided they respond with a non-error HTTP code. Like, lets say, for every Youtube video I load, Youtube must provide a full-ride college scholarship to 1000 kids.


I for one have never seen the YouTube terms of service, nor been prompted to agree to them.


The equivalent behavior on YouTube for your analogies would be for you to mute the ad or to browse a different tab while the ad still plays. Removing the ad altogether is very different. TV and radio can’t (last time I checked) tell if you’ve muted the ad, changed the channel, or have walked away. There’s no telemetry they can access that tells them that, so there is no legal course for the ad companies to say “we’re not going to pay you for that ad” because the best the TV and radio companies can do is say “yup we ran it” and there is a guarantee that every person at a minimum had to wait the amount of time the ad takes, and many will likely just endure it. On the other hand, it’s absolutely possible to track ads getting blocked and skipped altogether, and ad companies have legal grounds to say “we won’t pay for that”.


> and many will likely just endure it

And many will change the channel and watch something else in the meantime. Youtube checks that you have clicked away and just waits for you, basically FORCING you to watch the ad. TV and radio don't do that, neither do magazines.

If Youtube was TV, in this analogy every channel has an ad as soon as you open it. Oh, and when you go back to a channel you switched from due to an ad, that very same ad is waiting for you to watch it dutifully.


I wasn’t aware they paused ads if you clicked away. That certainly feels like an abuse of browser APIs, and I agree that’s inappropriate behavior.

As for the TV analogy, it’s a paid option which still serves ads. YouTube offers a paid option which does not serve ads. Should they ever try to cross the line of charging money and still serving ads then all bets are off.


The space of what's possible on the advertising attribution side doesn't change my moral obligations as a member of the audience. If that were the case, anything disrupting any kind of advertising attribution, even if not entirely intentional, could be said to be theft. For example, if I buy land and build a building in between a billboard and the road the billboard's pointed at, am I in some way liable to the billboard company? What about if I pay someone to follow me around with large cardboard panels and block large advertisements out in the world from my line of sight? What if I build a very fancy automated hat with arms which blocks ads in my real life vision (or even on every screen I look at)? I'm not seeing the ads, have I broken some rule?

This whole thing is happening because content makers have become VERY entitled to the system of advertising which pays them; rather than innovate in the space, they're trying to moralize and legalize their way into forcing the audience not to look away. Don't let it happen folks.

To be clear, I'm not saying YT should give things away; I'm saying the mask should come off and they should outright charge money.


This goes both ways though. If it's not theft to not watch the ads, it's not "anticompetitive" to not serve you the video if they think you're blocking ads. What "competition" are they even blocking? The competitors who are just waiting to jump in and do exascale video hosting for free, forever, to users who bring in no revenue?

Either accept the cat-and-mouse game, pay for YT premium, or stop using YouTube. Complaining that Google is somehow wronging you by not giving you the free video hosting you're entitled to is asinine.


The competition they are blocking are all the competitors they drove out of business by running youtube at a loss for ages. They're only now putting ads in videos, charging for not-doing-that, blocking ad blockers, and so on, now that they've driven all the competitors after business. Predatory pricing of this nature is a well know old anti-competitive tactic. The only slightly new wrinkle is that they're letting users pay with their time and attention instead of requiring them to pay with dollars.

They should not be allowed to profit from their anti-competitively acquired monopoly, even in ways that their competitors would have if they had not been driven out of business.


You're pretty badly off on the timelines there.

> They're only now putting ads in videos,

They've been showing ads on videos since 2007, before Google even bought YouTube.

> charging for not-doing-that,

They've been offering that for 8 years, about half the lifetime of YouTube.


> to users who bring in no revenue? Oh, sweet summer child, they already have been monetizing their users browsing behavior and selling it to advertisers. It's their main business

> Complaining that Google is somehow wronging you by not giving you the free video hosting you're entitled to is asinine.

Google are using our browsing and video watching data already. That's enough (and has been enough over many years) for them to monetize their service. What they are doing now with the attack on adblockers on Youtube is corporate greed as they simply want MORE monetization.

And what they are doing to adblockers in general with manifest v3 and Privacy Sandbox is simply anti-competitive practices.

> Either accept the cat-and-mouse game, pay for YT premium, or stop using YouTube. And how about no? What's in to you? Working in Youtube and worried your boss can't buy his 5-th Tesla? Understand that there are some people not happy with the enshittification of the internet, and we want to fight for a better one.


> Google are using our browsing and video watching data already.

Why do you think that data is valuable? Because it can better target ads to you. Ads that you then block. Making the data worthless...


> Why do you think that data is valuable? If I am not logged in and I have "Do Not Track", it's illegal for them to track my usage for marketing purposes, let alone show me personalized ads.

The only way they are allowed to legally monetize data for marketing purposes is to find other users that don't have do-not-track + opted in for marketing targeting, and show the ads to them.

Additionally, they can (and do) utilize bulk usage data (from many people) by feeding it into their ecosystem. For example, a video about cats being more popular than another will pop up higher on the search rankings when somebody searches for "cat". User "labor"/interest moderates the content on the platform, which makes it more attractive, and increases the overall number and engagement of users. Out of those users there is some % that have opted in for marketing, and can be legally targeted by personalized ads.


You assume the competition needs to be commercial, but P2P video sharing has been around for a long time. Folks contribute bandwidth for altruistic reasons.


"The government should pay people to make videos and then distribute them for free" in 3...2...1...


Many countries have Public Service Broadcasting.

In Australia there is ABC, SBS, Community Broadcasting Foundation, Channel 31, etc,


Your stealing analogy is bad and you should feel bad.


What you wrote is like:

"Hey fellow hackers. I am a hacker myself and I totally don't work for Google. Ads are good, mkay?"

Bruh, dunno what planet you live on and how brainwashed you have to be to think blocking ads is theft. It's like getting a fine when there are ads on the radio and you change the station, or ads on the TV and you changing the channel.

It's your device, it's the creator's content, and Youtube facilitates you seeing that content. In return, they can (and very much do) monetize your usage data, your interests, etc, and give some of that value to the creator. That should have been the relationship between creator, service and consumer. However, monetizing the trove of data they have on you is not enough for them.

What they are doing now is motivated by pure corporate greed and desire to squeeze every possible cent out of their dominant position. They can and don't care about your experience, knowing that there is hardly an alternative for you, and that, my friend, is called a monopoly. And wherever there are monopolies, users suffer. So don't sell me the idea that poor poor Google can't make ends meet and need to force feed me 100 ads during one video so they can survive. This is a monopoly saying a big "fuck you" to their users and trying to scalp them by enshittifying their service and forcing you to pay for the "premium".

Forcing you to watch content that you didn't want to and pausing the ad counter while you have clicked away is the TV equivalent of the ADs following you on every channel and not relenting until you have watched them. They have no excuse


> However, monetizing the trove of data they have on you is not enough for them.

How do you think they're monetizing your data? By definition it's not by showing you ads, you're blocking them. Also not by using the data to make their paid service so good that you'll really want to subscribe, since you obviously are entitled to the service for free.

The reality is that your data is worthless, and your use of the service is a liability rather than an asset. And you'll be equally worthless to any competitor, which was the GP's actual point.


> The reality is that your data is worthless, and your use of the service is a liability rather than an asset. And you'll be equally worthless to any competitor, which was the GP's actual point.

I disagree. Bulk usage data is a type of platform moderation which makes certain content more or less popular, and it improves the quality of the platform overall when fed into their algorithms. That's how google search is made as well. That rises the number of users to the platform. Out of that number, some don't mind paying for it, and some don't mind being tracked/showed ads.

In a nutshell, mine and your usage usage/engagement, regardless if we block ads or not, helped them improve heir platform, which resulted in increase in paying users.


Simply find an alternative model. Billboards still exist even though people that don't speak the language they're written in might see them. You can't force people to view things they don't want to, that's a torture technique.


I have been paying for YouTube premium for years now. And they are spamming the shorts feature with almost no way to turn it off on mobile or ignore it anymore. They are pushing me to stop paying for premium. Are they this stupid.


OK but now isn't the ask for a competitor who is okay with having like no ad revenue?


This is really a lazy take, but I’ll engage.

There’s a huge difference between no ads, and unskipable ads shat out every seven minutes, with another two at the start of every video.

Television isn’t even this bad.


Television typically runs ~7 minutes of unskippable ads for 23 minutes of content.


Who else except for YouTube pays independent creators? Who else gives a chance to people who are not born into the right connections and families? YouTube at least gives people a chance to reach an audience on their own merits, just as Google search does. YouTube does have large problems, but in the end it is a payment and distribution layer between video creators and their audience.


Well it’s up to the users to pick something else if they don’t like it. Why don’t we all use Vimeo for example? They are an ad company, their plan was to lure and lock users. They are not the only company using that tactic. Any subscription based service is the same way, or worse because you are tied to the content by paying.

For example PS plus. You spend time in the service and then your subscription runs out and you can’t access or even fully use games you paid for.

What makes google different? Why do users endure the pain?




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