Idk if I'd go that far. But I'm surprised at how much anger there is around the move. As if a service like YouTube could run without revenue forever.

It's a twitter-like situation. You can't simply look to payment of money directly to the company as a metric of how much power they've got.

What is it worth to wholly control the algorithm by which the whole world is shown its media, and have it summed up as 'the algorithm' and neither publicized nor questioned? How much would you pay to be in that situation? How much could you ask of third parties if you are the choke-point by which everyone gets their limited picture on the world: limited by specifically you, and you get away with it?

Monopoly in this kind of space is WAY more valuable than getting paid by users. You literally control the world on a statistical basis, which is how that is done in the first place. It's power arguably beyond states and governments, in a black box that just goes on operating, without much argument.

That's better than revenue, if you can keep it up and running, which Google has no trouble doing. There's a reason they do.

I hear you. They ignored AdBlock for a while but the business is maturing and shareholders want dollars. What you describe is useful as a business strategy but waxing on about the intangible influence of controlling YouTube isn't going to play well if the business unit revenue is down.

I think Google is tightening up the business to keep the party going.

The thing is, the areas where that strategy is MOST useful are the areas that'll get you in big trouble. They could well have taken big money, even nation-state money, for a while there, upended the whole damn planet in service of aiding state actors who're now imploding, and could be scrambling to transition to a less risky strategy.

That would be an example of trading on the true power of monopoly, algorithm and YouTube, and then having it turn and bite you. If you're selling influence to bad actors for exorbitant sums, you'd better win, by which I mean THEY had better win. Otherwise you're left holding the bag.

If it's that, I'm happy to have them pivot. Because that would be a pretty apocalyptic scenario, even as a nebulous strategy that was never implemented. If it WAS ever implemented, I'm betting it backfired and they're desperate to fall back on more seemingly normal behavior.

This is called capitalism. Everyone tries to get as much for themselves as possible. No morals needed. Greed is good ;). Why should only Big Cos play that game? AdBlockers aren't breaking any laws yet (might change soon).

Going into Target and stuffing a pack of socks down your pants isn't technically illegal either. Walking out with it becomes stealing though, so while having hotdogs down your pants isn't specifically illegal, it doesn't have to be.

The CFAA is written broadly enough that adblockers could already be considered illegal under it.

Agreed, I would not be surprised if adblocking were treated like piracy in the near future: "You wouldn't download a car without watching the ads first" ;)

Who was that TV exec who said that skipping ads on commercial telly is theft.

I don't remember, but I think it was a congressional hearing...? I was definitely all about DVR ad skipping.

Somebody on the panel asked if it was acceptable to get up and go to the bathroom during an ad, and the TV executive was forced to answer that it was.

I committed piracy everyday growing up then when I went to the bathroom during commercial breaks.

I do not have a problem with ad support. I have next to no tolerance for the way too common behaviour where a service pretends to be free to attract a large enough user base to make switching expensive, whereafter the service starts monetising its users aggressively. (The first steps in "enshittification".)

I do not feel any moral obligations to such companies.