this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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159
Youtube Adblock Reckoning as a service problem? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/technology
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At the end of the day, its pretty clear to me that Youtube is going to lose the war on adblocking. Either by hook or by crook those that want to use Adblockers are going to keep doing it no matter what.

And to be clear, I am not trying to equate Adblocking to video piracy. To me, the fact that I choose to go to the bathroom during a commercial of a tv show doesn't constitute piracy and Adblocks just automate that process for me on Youtube. I would also never click on an ad purposefully, no matter what it is for.

With all that being said, I am a hopeless cause and I don't think that anything will convince me to buy YouTube premium, but I also used to think that about MP3s.

My real question to anyone reading this is, as the devil's advocate, what could YouTube do with ads or otherwise that would solve the "service problem" of "YouTube piracy"? And furthermore, is there any situaton where you would do anything other than block all Youtube Ads immdediately and with extreme prejudice?

This is an old article but this is Gabe Newell describing video game piracy as a service problem and why he believes that in case anyone is unfamiliar with it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I agree. They do operate in bad faith. And not only do they throw ads into every possible crevice but the advertisers themselves may be bad faith actors. It's easy for a local radio station to decide not to run ads for a shady local business but YouTube doesn't really seem to have anything in place to vet advertisers or a robust system to report ads for malfeasance.

I'm interested in the framing of advertising as a threat rather than just an annoyance. I think even ads for something like laundry soap being spammed over and over for hours on end can be harmful even without being directly malicious. As someone who has been blocking ads for 10 years, every time I am on someone else's device the amount of garbage that just gets thrown into your face by default is just atrocious.