1y ago

I've read some weird takes about 9/11 already.

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My "favorite" lecture from young people is the one in which they berate me for "stealing content" by not watching ads on YouTube.
I have a vivid memory of YouTube being a platform where normal people could share videos of their kids and pets or other fun random low quality but entertaining things
- I don't understand why they think we care if we're stealing content regardless. I pirate movies and TV shows, but they don't whine about that, in fact, most will approve of it. Why draw the line at YouTubers?
  
  They often say that we're screwing the person who runs the channel. In reality, I'm willing to bet my left nutsack that they make a fuckton more from the occasional donations than from ads, once Google, MCNs, and the government take their share.
  
  Pretty sure most YouTubers and streamers will tell you exactly that. Sponsorships and brand deals make them way way more
  
  Because they think that they'll be YouTube superstars one day, and we're stopping them
- YouTube has increased the amount of ads that used to be standard by about 1000%. You used to get about 22-26 minutes of actual content per 30 minutes of viewing. On YouTube it's about 2 minutes of advertising per 0.5-3 minutes of viewing. The majority of the things I watch on YouTube are short 30 second videos to see specific things, but Google seems to think it's okay to show me 2-3 minute long commercials before letting me see the 30 second blurb telling me the foot pounds per square inch I need to apply to my brake calipers before I can finish my brake change job. This is even more annoying now that Google doesn't surface this type of information on regular websites, where I can just quickly read the spec.
  TLDR: fuck Google and fuck ads
- I have an honest question and I feel like Lemmy is a good place to have a real discussion on this. To preface this, I use adblock too so I'm kinda calling myself a hypocrite with this question :P
  Why do we expect any free service not to have ads? If a paid service like Netflix introduced ads I'd be pissed, and same goes for cable TV these days. But why would something free like Youtube not have ads? How can we be bothered by ads on a service we're getting for free?
  Someone help me reconcile this for my own well-being haha.
  
  Why do we expect any free service not to have ads?
  Youtube has the right to serve ads along with the content, but it does not have the right to dictate what I can or can't do with the data once it hits my machine. It has no more right to hijack my property to force them upon me than it does to strap me to a chair and force my eyes open, A Clockwork Orange style.
  If Youtube doesn't like that arrangement, its recourse is to serve a 403: forbidden instead of the video data.
  There's also a deeper discussion to be had whether corporations have any sort of right to exist in their current form in the first place, but I'll leave that for another time.
  
  Is is like muting during a commercial break, or going out of the room to do something else. What happens in my home, is under my control. You want to stop me from doing that? Refuse to serve me content. I'm fine with that
  
  It's like flipping over the ad pages in a magazine. It's like taking the advertisement brochures out of a newspaper and throwing them into the trash. It's like leaving the room during halftime break. It's like taping a show without the commercial breaks. It's like walking past a poster without reading it. It's like getting your letters from the mailbox and throwing away the advertising mailers. It's like going to the cinema and talking during the ads that are playing before the movie. It's like walking down the sidewalk and ignoring the people trying to sell you merchandise. It's like switching channels when commercials come on.
  But for some reason, people are trying to tell me that I'm ethically and morally in the wrong for blocking fucking YouTube ads.
  
  Well said. I’ll remember this point next time blocking YouTube ads comes up in discussion.
- It feels like YouTube has become the new Hollywood with production companies and YouTubers becoming celebrities and whatnot. Such a far cry from it's beginnings as a place where people would upload random family videos that nobody watched.
- I'm not sure what those two paragraphs have to do with each other.
  
  Skill issue

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