Every time I see anyone complain about YouTube or any other media site blocking Adblock users, I see entitled people who refuse to compensate their content creators and hosting providers. I wonder how many of you bother to fund your mastodon fediverse instances.
I often use an adblocker. I get it. I respect anyone who denies to serve me as a result. This is working as intended.
Netflix revenue and subscriber numbers went up after they got real about account sharing anti-freeloader enforcement. Clearly a lot of people admitted that value existed and they had been freeloaders just because they could.
@gpshead I pay for YouTube Premium. I use Patreon to support various things I like, including the Mastodon instance I post on. I've paid to subscribe to people on Twitch who I thought were doing good/fun stuff. I've bought merch and books and other things from creators I like. I pay for multiple streaming video services. I pay for the music I listen to. I've never had a problem with paying to support creative content.
I also use an ad-blocker. It's a matter of basic personal safety and hygiene. And I don't use Chrome for any personal browsing, ever.
I also don't have much sympathy for YouTube -- the recent social media post they did about "it's your lunch break, what are you watching" that was inundated with "nothing, because by the time the whole series of forced unskippable preroll ads were done, my break was over" was pretty spot-on. They're in that phase where they got so big and so universal that there's no meaningful "growth" left, but they're still required to find a way to show it every single quarter. Which means they're going to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, and the experience is going to get worse and worse and worse for viewers. It is correct to call that out and criticize it.
@gpshead@brettcannon I have a hard time sympathizing with this, because adblocking is also a security feature. Online ads remain one of the most prevalent delivery vectors for malware. Often this takes the form of advertisement for software -> download site purportedly serving installer for said software -> installer executes malicious code.
For this reason, a lot of corporate IT environments push out adblock extensions to browser installations on endpoint machines, or do DNS-based blocking. Therefore, using an adblocker often isn't even the choice of the end user; it's something that's mandated by their IT department on their work computer.
CISA and NSA both have public advisories highlighting this issue, and recommending that organizations deploy adblockers. Note that in their advisories, they explicitly mention the ability of malicious actors to target advertisements towards specific groups of users or demographics when purchasing ads; this is of course a feature baked in to how modern online advertisements work.
@cxiao@gpshead And that's also fine. And if a web site doesn't want your business because that is your situation, that's a choice. If your company wants to inadvertently prevent you from looking at that content (just like other content they may filter for as inappropriate for work), that's also a choice.
No one hear is saying ad blockers are bad, I'm just saying if someone blocks me for blocking their revenue stream, I'm okay with that and simply won't use their site; no hard feelings.
@gpshead Fascinating mental gymnastics in your replies. We’ve gone from “if you don’t pay for the product, you’re the product” to “I’m gonna sue at the supreme court to get everything for free”.
@bohemianchic@gpshead 👏I block ads not because I object to advertising, I don't, but because I object to the surveillance economy and the auctioning of personal data
It is an existential threat to democracy and everything dependent on it. I'd like to see a YouTube creators strike / mass move to another ad-free platform where they get paid directly by subscribers and pay hosting fees.
I pay Vimeo to avoid assigning any rights to YouTube.
@bohemianchic@gpshead it also ignore the psychological harm of advertising. I'm a former alcoholic, if I look at stuff without an ad blocker I'm then exposed to ads for alcohol.
I need an ad blocker for safety, or should I just isolate myself entirely from society? Even most news sources have ads
@Dangerous_beans
Yes this targeting problem is real (Including in worse ways despite ad content policies). The partial way out: disable Adblock on services that require it and pay those instead. Which I've heard targeted people refer to as protection money. Not a great feeling.
The problem remains with the broader web that cannot afford to run subscription models and places that also run ads despite subscriptions (scum!). I've not yet seen anyone with a viable sustainable solution.
Yea, there’s a lot of unthinking “what if your whole personality was based on near-zero interest rates” energy around. The extent to which many simply expect things to be given to them … sighs.
Add comment