Of course this could happen. This plugin automates clicking ads on a page, which does directly violate exactly what that section of the TOU is saying.

The users of this extension have a clear case of the "I'm allowed to poke the dog with a stick, but the dog is not allowed to bite me" mentality, so it's a complete surprise to them when it happens.

If you're not browsing youtube with the extension enabled, I'd expect that Google refrains from using that completely unrelated customer relationship to fuck you over for using an extension they don't like. It's like if the city arranged to have your publicly-managed utilities cut off because you're fighting them in court over a traffic ticket, only I guess a bit less critical.

more like "I'm allowed to defend myself from the attacking dog by using the stick." I'm not surprised they want to take my stick away, but that doesn't make Google's actions any less shady.

The dog, in this case, is protecting their property. They're not in your yard, you're in their yard. So get out of their yard if you don't like the dog.

Maybe the dog in this case is protect people's incomes, but they're not a regular guard dog in the sense of protecting from intrusion. More like they're out in public, begging for food. Oh and some of them might have rabies.

> So get out of their yard if you don't like the dog.

I would if I could!

But we are not in a yard. We are in a public area, where I was walking along minding my own business and the dog came up and started barking at me. I never wanted to interact with the dog in the first place. He intruded on my life.

There's no public space on the internet. Everything is somebody's yard.

This is Y Combinator's yard. YouTube is Google's yard. So is the Chrome Web Store.

If it's publicly available then it's public, otherwise it's just deep web requiring authentication which is not public by any means. WWW was designed to be public, if you don't believe me you could ask Tim and "World Wide Web Foundation, which seeks to ensure the web serves humanity by establishing it as a global public good and a basic right." (http://webfoundation.org/about/sir-tim-berners-lee/)

What Tim Berners-Lee aimed to do is largely irrelevant, it's how it works in practice that matters, and in real terms, it's not public space. You can be banned by the owner with no rationale, or access could be restricted behind a paywall with no notice, or content you contribute could be deleted with no notice.

The World Wide Web Foundation has no particular standing and no authority on what actually happens on the web.

Shitty metaphors are shitty. It doesn't detract from my point. I'd avoid using Google if I could, but they seem dedicated to interacting with me even when I go out of my way to avoid them. I'm not going to accept that I'm the bad guy when I try to fight back.

Since when is youtube a public area?

But the internet packets are sent to your computer, so it is your yard that the dog is throwing things at.

A friend of mine studied abroad in Cuba. There were wild dogs everywhere. One of his roommates was shocked at their treatment. She would feed them and try to pet them, until one day she was bitten.

So maybe it's OK to poke them preemptively, to keep them at a distance.

I believe there's a saying in the Caribbean: "Feel sorry fi maga dog, him turn roun' bite you."

They fall into the gap where the most humane thing to do would be to kill them, but they aren't quite dangerous enough for anyone to do that without feeling bad about it.

In the context of ad networks, they do need to be burned to the foundations and rebuilt better, but no one can stomach hurting anyone that currently needs them.

Better link (jumps directly to the review):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/rev...