this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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The fact that you don't like the product doesn't really change that their expected transaction is "watch an ad to receive it". Every argument against the idea of not watching the ads being piracy seems to be, essentially, either "the product isn't good" or "the price is too high", neither of which is relevant to the fact that they've put a "price" on it and you're skipping the part where you "pay".
Quality of the videos is irrelevant. Intrusiveness of the ads is irrelevant. The ads are the price, the videos are the product. You're getting the videos without seeing the ads.
I agree that the "price" is too high, the ads are awful, and the videos are frequently bad. I will continue to block those ads as long as I am able, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that I'm not skipping out on the cheque, as it were, when I do so.
Literally no one is asking you to have any sympathy. Why get so defensive when it's pointed out that skipping ads is skipping on your side of the transaction when using an ad supported service?
I liked the service up until ~2016 and was a yt red family subscriber. Then they upped the prices, then they started pushing more ads + more frequently, then they got butthurt about third-party apps, then they raised prices again...
My "expected transaction" is to host decent-or-better content (not shovel clickbait disinformation nonsense) in a fashion that is palatable to me, and they are failing miserably on the first and are fighting to fail miserably on the second. If you go to a restaurant expecting decent food but are served actual shit, are you going to be like 'thank you sir may I have some more'? We have been the frog in the pot of boiling water for the last 15+ years of bullshit like this, where a company makes a compelling product, then makes it shit but incrementally so 'it's not so bad compared to the last update' but compared to a few years ago it's completely garbage. And they want more money for a worse experience? Are for fucking shitting me?
Quality of the content is relevant. I guarantee you aren't going to the movies to watch something that scored a 4% on RT. Everyone wants to be like' poor yt/alphabet, they only got 63 billion this quarter 'but if it was a real issue they'd be doing stuff like charging fees to upload content (goodbye 9 year-olds screaming about fortnite skins) or something else to curb the amount of content they host. Google knew what they were getting into when they bought yt - at least they sure as fuck should. Nobody has ever made a profitable video service afaik. There's what, yt, vimeo, and... liveleak is dead, uh... crickets.
I'm not even pretending to skip out on the bill. I'm screaming from my table "this is fucking terrible and you should all feel awful about it" before proudly walking out.
Also I'm not asking for sympathy? I'm saying "this service has turned to shit". Also none of my above comment, or this, is defensive; it's being pissed off that a company is fucking people on both sides of the transaction and still complaining that they don't get enough of a cut, while actively making their service worse for their customers and doing nothing to save it themselves. They are a sinking ship complaining that they need more help chucking buckets of water overboard, while they simultaneously poke additional holes in it.
I don't really disagree with any of that, and it's all a great argument in favour of just not using YouTube. Hell, it might even be a good argument in favour of using it as much as possible while blocking ads just to consume bandwidth on their dime while denying them ad revenue.
None of it really counters the idea that using it without viewing ads is skipping out on "paying" for that usage, which is the entire "argument" being presented, which you claimed falls short. The content being bad doesn't change the fact that they expect you to view ads (or pay) to see that content, and we're not paying.