I will not be pretending that. I am _asserting_ it. I made no such agreement with YouTube. I am very confused why you think I did

I agree with this. There was no meeting of the minds, no contract. But, the terms in the Google account probably include something about the terms for viewing youtube videos.

You seem to mistakenly believe that a contract requires some sort of a signed document or something.

You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business... right? And it doesn't matter if you noticed it or not.

> You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business

You are incorrect about that, which probably invalidates your other arguments. A condition of entry is not a contract. If you disobey the condition of entry then you have not broken a contract, and nothing changes between you and the business owner. They can ask you to leave and they can trespass you if you do not, but importantly, they can do those things for any reason they like, whether you obey the conditions of entry or not.

It is not a contract by law, nor does it meet the definition of a contract.

Similarly, YouTube can retract their website from public view, or attempt to block you specifically. But you have not entered into a contract with them by viewing the site.

> A condition of entry is not a contract.

It's literally a legal contract, under contract law. It's called a unilateral contract.

I didn't expect a Dunning-Kruger effect on NH, but here we are.

If you bring a dog in, you cannot be sued for any sort of tort relating to breach of contract. At most, you could be asked to leave, and sued for damages if the dog broke something or someone.

Please don't attack others, and in general, it's not a good idea to use terms like Dunning-Kruger when you are incorrect. Ad blocking is not piracy under any statuatory or case law, period.

As far as I can find, in the US and the UK, conditions of entry to a business are considered an implied license and not an implied contract because there's no mutual intent to form a binding legal agreement. A business can revoke the license and trespass you, but they cannot sue you for breach of contract.

A unilateral contract requires some kind of "promise accepted through performance"

I note that this does appear to be different under Australian law, if that is where you're from, although it's still not a unilateral contract.

Are you going to lie that you didn't know that the videos are shown to you in exchange for ads?

Entering into a contract doesn't necessarily require you to sign a document. Quite a few contracts that we make every day require no formal acceptance, like entering a shop.

No, I'm going to state the truth that I never agreed to be shown ads, and you are extremely weird for lying and claiming that I did.

Google wants to show me ads. I don't want to see them. I demonstrated this by blocking them. Google continues to show me videos anyway. Clearly they're ok with the arrangement. They are free to present me with written terms, or gate all their videos behind a login, but they choose not to do so.

You are either very confused or playing stupid for some reason that I don't understand, but it isn't amusing or cute. This will probably earn me a dang warning but I don't really care - you are full of shit. You're making claims all over this thread that you've literally just made up.

Grocery store wants me to buy groceries. I steal them instead. Grocery store didn’t ban me so clearly they don’t mind me taking goods without paying. Grocery store is free to require membership like Costco but they don’t, so clearly they are ok with the situation.

did you give the grocery store an account name and tons of other information while stealing and they still allowed it? and welcomed you back the next visit, for years on end using those same credentials?

also did the grocery store start out as a free food store similarly to youtube? and then just expect people pay despite not enforcing it?

This is juvenile nonsense.

I can point directly to the law in whatever jurisdiction you care to name that makes doing what you describe illegal.

You cannot point to anything that makes it illegal to view videos on a publicly accessible website without watching the ads that usually play before them.

This is how I feel about claiming that stealing from YouTube isn’t actually stealing. Juvenile nonsense. That’s why I came up with a nonsense counter argument

Negative proof. We've no obligation to prove your point for you.

You claim we're stealing.

In Texas, theft is a crime per Sec. 31.03:

> THEFT. (a) A person commits an offense if he unlawfully appropriates property with intent to deprive the owner of property.

Please link the law, and jurisdiction, that is broken when I view a YouTube video and don't view the ad.

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.31.htm#31....

Nobody disagrees with you that YouTube wants us to view ads.

I don’t give a shit about laws. Common sense and morality are what matter to me and taking without paying will always be stealing according to both. I’m not trying to prove anything to you, other than how juvenile it is to hide behind laws and technicalities I guess.

> Common sense and morality

Hah! Someone after my own heart. Well, since we're not talking law, let's get into it!

First of all, all profit is theft. Your boss and shareholders are only able to make money because they steal margin from your labor.

In this case, Youtube may be providing a platform, but what it gets in return is far more than it gives back to creators. Creators have no rights when it comes to Youtube - I can list many who were nixxed from Youtube because they violated a specific subset of neoliberal, puritanical "ethics." For example, Youtube will delist or demonetize videos that have too many swear words in them, or videos that discuss things that aren't illegal but Youtube doesn't like, such as adblockers or emulation software.

This is unethical. Youtube has no value outside of its creators. Yet it has total say over what kinds of content creators are allowed to make, and it sets the prices for creators, keeping the lion's share for itself. That is theft.

Youtube abuses its users as well, cramming features we don't want down our throats, like "Shorts" (puke) and increasingly longer ads. I know for a fact not enough revenue is going to the creators because they still need to seek external sponsorship, resulting in double-ads: youtube ones, and then sponsored portions of videos. Youtube also constantly enshittifies the UI. And, despite its puritanical neoliberal ethics, it does basically nothing about the extensive racist content on its platform (any video featuring black people doing just about anything will have years-old comments on it with racist content). And don't even get me started on the freakshow that is Youtube Kids. Just search "Elsagate."

Youtube feeds into the demonstrably mentally unhealthy attention economy and engages in dark pattern UX.

Youtube is undergoing platform enshittification, making things worse for its creators and users in order to extract as much profit as possible. It's not illegal, but it's certainly unethical. Given their shittiness, it's completely reasonable to leverage tooling to block their shitty ads. And don't pretend like this harms creators in any meaningful way. If I buy one t-shirt from a creator I like (which I do, frequently), I've given them more revenue per head than if I watched every single one of their videos, start to finish, one hundred times, with no ad blocking.

I’m not reading all that, but certainly you can make the argument that stealing a zero marginal cost good isn’t wrong. It’s still stealing though. Stealing from an unethical entity may not be wrong either, but it is still stealing.

You have no concern for proper semantics. I don't know why OP bothered to respond to you.

> I’m not reading all that

I was under the impression we were communicating, which I was genuinely interested in doing with you. Thank you for letting me know that wasn't the case.

I haven't read your comment and won't be replying to the content of it. I hope you have a good weekend!

and magically, the sneakers are also still there.