I work for a programmatic advertisement company. It’s a big name in the space. Whenever someone shares their screen during a meeting I pay special attention to their browser. Every single one of my colleagues runs some kind of ad blocker. Some run multiple. Many run additional browser extensions that block trackers and cookies and otherwise improve privacy.

I go even further and run a VPN with pihole as its DNS server.

Ads are easy to block these days. Why not block for free instead of spraying cash here and there?

I guess for moral reasons. For YouTube and most websites, the 'Quid Pro Quo' for using the service is supporting them via ads, or in certain circumstances like YT, via a monthly subscription.

If only that were true, and your money would go to the content creators, instead of Google... (who abuses our privacy in the process)

YT Premium money going towards Google is part of the service contract - they provide the website, storage, bandwidth[0], recommendations, etc. I don't think Google sees adblock as the end of the world, given they don't ban or even try to curtail blockers (really because mobile ad viewership is rising over desktop), but in general they expect you to either pay them or watch ads for access to the website.

To be clear, I don't think using adblock is immortal - just that I personally like it when services offer a subscription that remove ads.

0: https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure

Paying Google to destroy the web and your privacy? That sounds very immoral to me

Both are very very disputable.

YouTube doesn’t need your support, but creators do. Many offer a more direct way to funnel donations than via ads on YouTube, ie Patreon, merch, Twitch subs, etc.

Haha, right? I pretty much did a similar thing in uni. I think I might have paid like $100 over seven years of uni for textbooks. I've figured out when to go on Caltrain for free, too.

There are lots of life hacks to not spend money. I used to think it was my responsibility to pay, but honestly, if I can get away with it, why would I?

Why not both?

> "I only block ads because of privacy reasons."

> "OK, then we'll offer the option to pay a small fee to support the content creators and not have to deal with ads."

To offer a counterpoint, if you're trying to protect your privacy, signing into Google to watch Youtube videos is probably not the right way to do it. Google isn't offering any guarantees that Youtube Premium data isn't used exactly the same way that any other data would be. They're still building a profile on you, and your recommendations are still tailored based on that profile.

This is also one of the big issues I have with online newspaper accounts. Part of the reason I'm blocking ads and trackers is because I don't want newspapers to track me either. I don't want somebody to be monitoring what I read. Logging into an account is counterproductive to that goal, so at best I'm going to give them money for an account and then never use it.

I pay for a Youtube Premium account at the moment, precisely because I wanted to signal that I would pay for content. But none of that subscription money is actually going to creators I watch because I never log into it. I'm just throwing money at Google for basically no reason.

Adblocking is a better option than Youtube Premium not just from a UX perspective or monetary perspective, but also if you care about privacy, because it means you can handle all of your account stuff through local RSS feeds and NewPipe on mobile, which is a significant win in the fight to stop Google from putting me into a box.

This perfectly nails the point.

In the old times, I could just pass at the newsstand while walking to the bakery at the start of my morning, drop a few coins, pick a paper or magazine and its done ... nobody would know what parts of the paper I read, for how log I focus on particular paragraphs, which pictures grab my attention, etc. neither will the newspaper owner know who I am, keep a history of what I am reading or follow me around my other shopping to add information to my profile.

Anonymous micropayments would be a excellent approach here. AFAIK Bitcoin never intended to solve this particular problem, maybe GNU Taler may work here (better yet: it's a payment system using Euros, Dollars, etc. not a wildly-floating new currency/asset).

> "I only block ads because of privacy reasons."

Did you see me saying that anywhere? Are you a mind reader?

You can always use Patreon, Subscribestar, Librepay, Paypal subscriptions, etc etc.. if your favorite creator supports them.

You can also go to their website and buy t-shirts, coffee cups and other merch. If you're a creator and want funds from people who block ads, promote your merch.

Agree, but my solution is to donate to them on Patreon and block ads on YouTube. I do like the idea of Youtube Premium but they're still tracking me regardless.

Please don't put things in quotes that no one in the conversation has said.