I'm paying for Youtube Premium, but its a plain utilitarian decision after they started hassling me with captchas and intimidations that someone at my IP address was using an ad blocker. So yeah, I'm paying protection money. But I don't feel in the least good about it.
I am not Google's accountant. They can figure it out.
I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)
Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?
Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?
consumer: I want to fill my content hole with content someone made through hard work right now and for free and how dare they delay that by 5 seconds after which I can press Skip. I will employ sophisticated tricks and run untrusted code in my browser to work around that delay.
also consumer: I will totally not be pissed at all if there is no free content for me anymore. Their business model should fail because I did not consent to ads. How dare anyone consider and live within an objectively true reality that things have costs?
Is not you since you said you don't use youtube. but it is what many youtube users seem to think.
These are honest questions and it seems way too fuzzy to me to be making moral judgments about the whole mess.
I think one does have the right to block ads on one’s machine if one chooses.
However, personally, because of the “if ad blocking was universalized, the services I appreciate would likely not exist” reasoning, I choose not to block ads.
As for other things like “muting/covering ads on screen”, yeah, that does seem a bit fuzzy. Sometimes I’ll even use a browser extension to fast forward an ad somewhat.
I do think this is something for the individual to decide how they will deal with ads. When I mute an ad, I don’t think I’m really free riding? For one thing, I don’t think it is contrary to the expectations of those being sold the ad slot. Me fast forwarding the ads a bit probably is contrary to their expectations, so I don’t have as good justification for it, but I don’t feel like I’m cheating when I do it. (Or, if I do, it is because the particular ad is objectionable enough that I’m willing to stick it to the advertiser)
It's the same mistake libertarians make when they assume a fully informed and rational society.
If their copyright monitoring algorithm recognises the tracks being performed and the licence holders have opted to receive a share of ad revenue rather than issue a takedown notice, then I think the answer might well be yes.
Did I just pirate my drive to work?
I never claimed that ads can't be profitable; I was responding to a commenter who implied that ads are necessary in order to have a viable streaming business, which is very obviously not the case.
If they were unable to gain any revenue from advertising, they would go out of business if they could not find an alternative source of income.
I feel that they are more likely to find an alternative than go out of business. That alternative might not motivate people to make content that no-one wants and trick viewers into watching. If it were a system where the users being happy dictated their income perhaps the service might be better than a system where the happiness of advertisers defines how much they get
if tomorrow youtube decides only paid subscribers can view videos... do they maintain that market share?
99% of internet content is complete crap, the equivalent of email spam, that only exists because each piece makes a few dollars a month from ads. On the old internet, without ads, there was plenty of useful content and much less spam.
And the spam crowds out good content, as seen in recipe sites for example.
Similar reason to why DVR recording is not pirating.
