this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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You know what, I actually agree with YouTube's argument. Ad blocking is piracy. In fact, no, it's worse than piracy. If I pirate a movie, Disney makes no money, but it costs them nothing at all. If I watch YouTube without an ad blocker, I'm depriving YouTube of its revenue source and I'm costing them money. Morally, ad blocking sits somewhere between piracy and actual theft.
The thing is? I don't care. I ad block YouTube all the time and feel not a lick of guilt. The reason: Google brought this on themselves. I used to happily pay for YouTube Red. But they have continuously, both before and after that point, been actively hostile to the people actually producing the content they make. Their willingness to bow down to copyright trolls and complete inability to properly apply fair use. They extremely harsh policies on acceptable content, stopping people talking about sex education or mediaeval weaponry being able to reliably makes money.
And the straw that broke this camel's back was when they changed the requirements to be in the Partner Program, locking out all the smaller creators from ever being able to make money on YouTube. I never considered myself a "creator", but over the 5 years prior to that I occasionally uploaded stuff I was doing anyway. I had amassed almost $100 over those 5 years. Not an impressive amount, for sure, but having that taken away from me made me feel unwelcome. I don't think I've uploaded anything public since, and I've been blocking ads on the site since then.
Even worse, not long after this change, they decided to start showing ads even on videos from non-partnered videos, so you can get ads on my videos even though I don't see a single cent.
So fuck YouTube. Ad blocking is worse than piracy, and I say good.
Google: You're pirating our content!
Us: Yeah, so what?
Google: You're pirating our content!
Us: AND THE BEATINGS SHALL CONTINUE UNTIL YOU LEARN YOUR FUCKING LESSON.
My god… are you… me? Same exact shit. Created my YT account 14 years ago. Made some vids… some got some views… eventually I got a few dollars deposited like for 3 years. Probably totaled the same $100 you mentioned then boom. Shut down.
I uploaded what I think was the first tutorial on how to use Photoshop's then-new "Content-Aware Fill" to help create panoramas, and also a tutorial about...something, I forget what, to do with the music engraving software Sibelius. They were things I was doing all the time, but there didn't seem to be any guide on how to do it, so I thought I'd help out. And I got rewarded with a little cash and a few tens of thousands of views. Felt good.
There are much better, higher-polish videos that deal with those subjects now, I'm sure. But still, it didn't feel good getting that ripped out from under me, and being told I was no longer welcome.