Google ad for a scam site made to look like a legitimate Australian Bank: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-21/scammers-using-text-m...
Youtube's home page seems to always have, at the top, some kind of get-rich-quick video advertisement when I (rarely these days) visit it. Far from trying to improve on this, it feels as if Google/YT are actively trying to normalise scam advertising. I just cannot support that, at all, ever.
If Google has no mechanism to prevent their platform from being used by scammers, I feel it's my responsibility that their platform doesn't reach my screen, lest I, or my family members fall for a scam - which can be psychologically damaging beyond the potential financial damage.
I've mentioned before that this isn't a problem Google are inspired to solve, since their current advertising scheme successfully scales to the size of the Web. However, appropriately policing advertising to ensure scams don't get through would seriously affect the ability to scale. And it's the scaling that makes the billions.
Regulate Internet advertising the same way television advertising is regulated.
Colour me unsympathetic at my most forgiving.
They show you advertisements in exchange for the free content they provide.
You can just as easily not visit the website if you don't feel like the service they provide is worth the risk of being shown the ads they serve.
When I shout on a public street "sing me the Francoise Hardy version of I'll Be Seeing You," no one has to reply. If they do reply, but they decide to sing a 2 minute ad for a pyramid scheme first, I am free to cover my ears till the song comes on.
Google's servers have a public internet IP. I can "shout" a request to them. The data they send back to me, is mine to do with as I please. I am free on My computer, from the memory buffer on a RAM stick I own, to ignore some of the bytes, in My RAM change some of the bytes, or save some of the bytes to a file on my HDD. They are free to ignore any request I shout at them, but they have zero say in what I do on equipment they do not own.
Okay well they're about to not show you the videos. You support their latest announcement right? It is completely in line with the the philosophy you just put forward.
"They are free to ignore any request I shout at them"
I don't have any opinion on, nor care about their latest announcement to do with their hardware as they please. Their announcements are theirs and of no concern of mine. It's just a random website the has content duplicates available at a hundred more places. Bing video search has fifty times more results than youtube for example for any item I search.
Given that, of course, they're always going to show me their videos, because about a day after whatever change they make, software (that runs on my computer against my data) will catch up. They've made changes like this many times over many years. For about a week awhile ago the ads were not blocked and I stopped clicking youtube videos and just typed the title into bing and in 5 seconds played the same video from another source. Worked 100% of the time.
Sorry if that's not the gotcha you were going for.
Exactly: it just takes one bored or determined hacker to investigate their changes and update the ad-blocking software, and suddenly everyone is able to see the videos and block the ads again. The ad-blockers don't seem to have trouble keeping people around to do this work.
Exactly. That's why they're blocking ad-blocker users now. You're describing the exact thing they are doing and going to do more. Guess you're actually supporting Youtuber's policy.
Are you typing up an email right now? I can't tell, I'm on HN on my computer. To be able to tell what you're doing, I'd need to be on your computer. Hope that helps explain things.
YouTube is where people go to post and upload videos. YouTube has a dominant place in the market and in people's minds.
Does it cost money to run? Yes. Does Google deserve to have those costs covered? Yes. Should Google be entitled to abuse their dominant position? Certainly not.
I do feel bad for who high-quality creators are not able to make ends meet, but I have zero sympathy for a business the size of Google.
Those are not the terms of the implicit (and somewhat explicit) deal Google/YT originally offered.
Any and every net pundit and idiot pointed out at the start that any video hosting system that became as successful as YT said it wanted to be (and has become) would cost a fortune to provide.
YT could have said from the start "once this scales beyond <small scale> we'll need to charge <X> because the only alternative to that are ads". But they never said that, they just gave us ads even if we didn't want them.
Of course you can. Me blocking ads is just business. It's nothing personal.
Them blocking my blocking is also just business. Me blocking their blocking is likewise just business.
Either they'll give up or I'll give up. Whichever happens, that content will make less money.
IOW, the money that content is making right now is exactly what the market will bear.
If too many people stop watching because they can't block the ads then content producers have to decide to migrate, to stay and make exactly what their product is worth, or to simply stop producing.
It's purely business for all parties involved, including the product i.e. viewers.
it's one thing if googgle were demanding I watch their ads to get the free video in exchange, but it is not an honest broker, because it doesn't vet the people it allows to advertise with it thoroughly enough to prevent scams and everything else from slipping through.
And frankly i'm taking a moral stand as well by blocking their adsr ads, I refuse to allow Google to profit off of scammers in my or my families name.
you don't get free access to my time, there will never be a point where I'm willing to spend time watching an advertisement or sifting through advertisements looking for real content.
I haven't watched television regularly since the mid-90's specifically due to the commercials, I'll be damned if I'm going to do it online.
And I don't give a shit if you think I'm entitled or not, it's my time not yours.
I adblock everything but I am sympathetic to the idea that video hosting costs money. But I watch, on average, less than 1 hour of Youtube videos a month, so paying for Youtube makes no sense. Plus I have issues with privacy (part of the reason I've never created a Youtube account). The videos I do watch on Youtube are short ones for a specific need: e.g., a company showing me how to install their product in an easy way (I'd prefer a write up, but sometimes those are so bad you need to rely on a video), or a simple how-to on changing the battery in X model of car. So when I do need to go to Youtube for something, often its because the video is nowhere else. People don't even think of hosting it elsewhere. I don't watch any long form stuff there, don't listen to music there, etc., so paying for premium makes no sense.
I wish there was a free and open video platform that had a funding model like Wikipedia, where people could upload things that they had no intention of "monetizing".
What's your issue with having to watch ads if you watch less than 1 hour of video content a month?
> I wish there was a free and open video platform that had a funding model like Wikipedia, where people could upload things that they had no intention of "monetizing"
There's a lot of content on YouTube that people upload that they have no intention of monetizing.
> I wish there was a free and open video platform that had a funding model like Wikipedia
Why don't you or someone else try starting one?
Moral issues, security issues, etc. These have been discussed in pretty much every thread about adblocking ever, really. I get that you might disagree with them, of course, but no need to rehash the here. I don't even like company logos displayed on my clothing, so you can guess which side of the "how much do you hate ads?" spectrum I'm on.
> There's a lot of content on YouTube that people upload that they have no intention of monetizing.
So on those you never see ads? Hilariously I don't actually know how Youtube works since the only time I've seen ads is when someone who doesn't use an adblocker shows me something (i.e., extremely rarely). Firefox + uBlock Origin (and Adblock Plus before that) has been enough to guard me for as long as I can remember.
> Why don't you or someone else try starting one?
Well, I can't speak for anyone else but I'm a middle-aged historian, so starting a video hosting platform is far beyond my expertise. Though in general asking someone "why don't you just go build it yourself" in response to a complaint about a service, software, or hardware item is a bit trite.
How is blocking ads not a moral issue? Video creators also get hurt by ad blockers, not just YT, which does have costs associated with serving you video.
> So on those you never see ads?
I think they started showing ads on them, just fewer. They do cost storage and bandwidth, so what's wrong with that?
> Well, I can't speak for anyone else but I'm a middle-aged historian, so starting a video hosting platform is far beyond my expertise. Though in general asking someone "why don't you just go build it yourself" in response to a complaint about a service, software, or hardware item is a bit trite
Popular web sites are typically co-founded by non-tech folks. Anyway, what I meant that if you looked into starting one, you'd understand the immense scale of storage and bandwidth costs.
They advertise nordvpn claiming that without using it, all of your traffic is unencrypted for example.
I don’t have any kind of business relationship or agreement with content creators. This is their problem and YouTube’s problem.
I only deal with YouTube, which sends video streams to my computer for free, and I’m exercising my right to decide what I want to play on my own computer that I own.
More and more content creators are getting their income through sponsorships and referrals, anyways, as they feel the squeeze of YouTube’s exploitative and predatory behaviour.
I believe that - if at all - only tightly controlled government authorities should be allowed to force display messages on end user machines, and if so, only in severe emergencies and for the protection of civilian lives.
People in this debate sometimes argue based on costs and money lost from ad revenue. These are business discussions that have no place in the moral evaluation at all. Not every business model works. So what, find another business model, is the answer.
My argument why ad blocking is morally permissible is that it's a matter of the end users personal freedom if and how they display content from remote servers. They should be allowed to use a hex editor, plaintext, braille, TTS, a browser with or without ad ons, etc., and must be allowed to modify the content for their display purposes as they wish as long as they don't redistribute it. That's even a central idea of the HTML specification. There are also plenty of analogies to similar freedoms, for example if I buy a magazine (or get it for free) I can tear out ad pages and use them to fire my stove.
Redistribution is another matter and concerns copyright, but I just can't see any reason why the maker of a web page ought to have a right (or even feel entitled) to control my machine and how the data they voluntarily send to my machine is displayed on it. It's not as if anyone forces them to send the data in the first place.
There are several instances, but that is not the solution to what the parent comment is pointing out. Videos are being published on YouTube because of network effect; it has become the defacto platform.
Why should I be forced to watch something I don’t want to watch? Google sends my computer a stream of “[ad][ad][content]”. It’s my own damn choice which parts of that to watch.
What does chrome have to do with it though? Was there some sort of 0day that got exploited? I find that unlikely given how valuable 0days are and the low ROI from in targeted attacks. Shouldn't you be moving off google search itself, since that was ultimately responsible for the malicious ad? Or is it a generic "fuck google" move?
"Entitled" came up a lot, but I would have to disagree. Au contraire, YouTube is the one that feels "Entitled" to show me advertisements, even when that feature potentially exposes me to the risk of Malware.