this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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I think what you perceive as "free-loading attitude" is a strong reaction to the fact that because of mostly unfettered capitalism, Google has made untold billions off of stealing our data. If we all were allowed to use ad block for the next 10 years we might get somewhat close to "freeloading". As it stands they've sold our info and paid us not a penny.
What exactly makes you think they don't make piles of cash from YouTube?
I am sorry, I thought I'd read that it was a massive loss leader for Google, but in looking for a source I've learnt it is actually very profitable.
I think my reaction stems from the way, many people on Lemmy seem to point to piracy as a solution to everything that streaming and gaming companies do. In fairness, I think in this case I may be unfairly lumping people in with that crowd.
I mean, piracy is one of the very very few ways we have of fighting back, ad blocking fits the same description.
I'm kind of confused how you could have possibly believed youtube wasn't profitable. There probably has never been anything as close to as popular for video entertainment no matter how you slice it, and it's globally popular too. Even if they made .000000001 cent per video view, they'd still probably be printing money.
I thought I'd read that due to the massive expense of hosting the sheer amount of data, particularly when large placentals of the days is watched 1 or 2 times meant that it had been large overheads.