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.
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.