The payment for the service is coming from the ad owners. Me choosing not to download parts of a webpage isn't piracy, it's me choosing not to download certain parts of a web page.
Comment on Any idea what Google are doing? Is this because I dont use Chrome (use Firefox)? I've no adblockers.
nottheengineer@feddit.de 8 months agoAds are the form of payment for the service and using a paid service without paying is piracy. How do you think this is any different?
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 8 months ago
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 8 months ago
Me choosing not to download parts of a webpage isn't piracy, it's me choosing not to download certain parts of a web page. Nobody has any right to force data I don't want onto my computer except me.
Subsequently, the owner of the website also has the right to not serve you parts of a web page. It's a two-way street mate. This argument that a service provider is obligated to give you everything you want without any conditions simply does not stand up to any real scrutiny.
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 8 months ago
Subsequently, the owner of the website also has the right to not serve you parts of a web page.
You're absolutely right. I didn't say they don't. But as long as they still do let me access it, I'll keep using an adblocker on their website. Once the spigot gets turned off, I'll move elsewhere.
nottheengineer@feddit.de 8 months ago
So if I understand correctly, you define the border of piracy as the technicality of websites where the HTML and JS are accessible as opposed to a binary that comes with built-in DRM.
How do you think about DRM-free games?
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 8 months ago
We've had the capability to pick and choose what we want to download from a website since the first web browsers. Why are ads any different? It's the same as if I decide to strip out all HTML frame and table tags just for shits and giggles. It's my device, and I decide what to accept from the website. If they want to block me completely, they can do that too. But they don't. Not yet.
Johanno@feddit.de 8 months ago
Ok the whole idea of ads is a mess. It used to be that showing ads was additional income next to doing your normal stuff. You hosted a website for a blog or sth. and if people liked your blog you could reduce server costs by a few ads. This whole thing got out of hand a century ago when you plan to host a blog(for example) with so many ads on the site so you make a profit from ads. The quality of the blog went so low since it isn’t important that people like rather than click it once. So mass trash production is the result.
Back to Youtube. They provided a service for free to host videos. They did this at a loss for almost ever. They also added a few ads in order to reduce costs, but those ads didn’t turn in profits. They added Youtube Premium in order to make profit. But people didn’t really buy it since it was too expensive (I assume). So now probably there was a big pressure from Google to get YouTube profitable. They increased the ads and the unskippable ones. Slowly they made money, but now the greed has probably taken in. “Force people into Premium by so many ads that the site is unusable without” is probably the current goal to make more money.
Now of course people don’t like to pay for a previously free service, and people don’t like ads: An adblocker it is. Now youtube wants more money! So adblockers must go! This ideology is in line with chrome DRM the web so you don’t can’t block ads anymore (like on Android)
Youtube is totally in the right here. It’s their service and they can do what they want, but I am Also allowed to decide what happens in my Browser on my computer! I can decide to disable ads all I want! There is no law forcing me to watch them. I mean what’s the difference between me bocking ads at a technical level or just go out of the room until it is over? None from a advertisors view, but for Youtube they get money even if you don’t look as long it is displayed.
Adblockers save advertisors money!
Sandbag@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Damn, didn’t think I’d see a corporate shill over here for YouTube/ Google.
nottheengineer@feddit.de 8 months ago
When did I say piracy was wrong?
In this case it’s apparently the only option.
RedIce25@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nono, fuck google but it’s still a form of piracy
ares35@kbin.social 8 months ago
running an adblocker or script blocker in your browser is a crucial component of safe and secure internet use. until the sites and ad networks fully vet and guarantee the safety and legitimacy of the ads and scripts they serve, fuck them all.
DrGunjah@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No it’s not. If an ad break comes up on tv and to avoid them you go for a pee or get some snacks, no sane person would call that piracy. It’s pretty much the same with youtube, I could just leave the room while an ad plays. Adblock just automates the task of not watching the ad.
RedIce25@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The ad is served which is what counts and you can not ignore it or not ignore it, doesn’t matter as long as it is served. adblock makes it so the ad is never served in the first place, circumventing the “payment” for the content, as in “piracy”.
GeekyNerdyNerd@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
The German government literally ruled otherwise. You are objectively, legally, and morally incorrect.
Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 8 months ago
According to that logic, muting a tab while the ad plays, then coming back and rewinding the video is piracy.
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Advertisers tried to say that back in the 90s/2000s. It’s an angle already sadly.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 8 months ago
Ads aren’t payment because it’s not you the user that’s paying, it’s a 3rd party that pays the provider to shove ads at you. Which you can take or leave.
If I go to a store and don’t want to look at the ads they won’t hold me down and shove them in my face. They’re ultimately interested in me buying actual products. But Google’s real product (YouTube Premium) is not a compelling product and the vast majority of people visiting YouTube come for the freebies not the Premium.
So they’ve resorted to feeding you ads by force but you do NOT have to take it. Google can choose to lock everything behind Premium and if you bypass that then that would be piracy. But simply refusing to look at ads ain’t.
coffeebiscuit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers.
It isn’t a form of payment from the consumer. It never was, it never should be.
Melpomene@kbin.social 8 months ago
Simply put, no. You can make the claim but it doesn't make it true.
Even if it were true, fuck the biggest pirate of them all, Google itself.
GeekyNerdyNerd@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
That logic is what will make verification cans a reality.
Professorozone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Well, for one, if you don’t want something stolen then you shouldn’t put it on your front lawn for everyone to take. There are plenty of services that require payment before you get access.
Two, they are essentially stealing our private data and selling it without our permission, so ads aren’t the only source of payment.
At no point was I informed by youtube that watching ads was a requirement for service. In fact until just now YouTube necessary even told be that using an ad- blocker was not allowed. Technically this is not the same thing. Otherwise I would be stealing every time I left the room when an ad was playing.
honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Considering that YouTube is as dominant as it is today because of the well-documented network effect[1], you can consider your use of YouTube instead of a competitor in and of itself a payment because it lets them keep their monopoly on video distribution. YouTube knows this, which is why they were so lenient in their early years - if they started off being strict, people would’ve left earlier and made YouTube’s future as a monopoly more uncertain because of a demand for competitors.
Maybe instead of justifying their profit-seeking, we should demand more oversight and democratic say over how YouTube as a monopoly operates? Kind of like how in Germany and Slovenia, workers get 50% of the seats on the board of corporation and get to have a say in how a business operates? Alike many other European countries with varying %es of the board seats, like Norway and Sweden where it’s 33%, or Finland where it’s 20%. [2]
Otherwise, don’t be surprised when YouTube starts going after creator profits next. Something they’re using to justify going after adblock users now.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] en.wikipedia.org/…/Worker_representation_on_corpo…
Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 8 months ago
Unfortunately, all it takes is one right wing nut job to liquidate the positions and sell them to corporate interests.
See the decimation of Canada's National Energy Board under Modi and Poilievre's showrunner, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The board, by law, has to be half oil industry and half environmentalists. He fired all of the sane people and sold the empty spots to the oil industry.
honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
If one person has control over what people sit on the board, that’s not democratic. I did specify “democratic” above, so I think it’s an important point to hammer in here. We could make a significant part (if not even the whole) of the board be elected worker managers. In an actual democracy, a single person doesn’t have the power to boot people they don’t like out.