Are we pirates?

[Mutta Bones]

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Except piracy is downloading a movie from pirate bay, you're taking copyrighted protected works in that case, blocking an ad on youtube is just blocking an ad, the video is completely free. If I close out a tab while an ad is playing, or walk away from the TV while an ad is playing, then the argument of adblocking= piracy means I'm pirating even without using an adblocker.

 

Again, who is to protect us smaller creators ? We can neither go to the govt for copyrights, neither can we release that content, as it is most likely going to just be thrown away immediately. neither do we have the time for govt org to wait. Does that mean you exploit us as much as you can ?

long ago, I used an adblock for a surprisingly small time I still feel guilty for, Every time I couldn't see an ad, it made me think whether I was stealing legit some creator's revenue. I again, dont give a flying fuck about youtube and their loss. But the smaller person needs help. And that is why I just got premium. It felt as good as an adblock, but without the felling of guilt throughout the video within the next minute.

Ofc, neither do I command you to do or not to do an adblock. I ask you to help smaller creators on this platform. The Govt is not known for helping smaller people or even businesses and that doesn't give you the right to take us for granted.

[tkitch]

Just now, Blademaster91 said:

The ad is intended to be viewed to promoted a product, ideally people viewing the ad would buy the product, or else the ad company is just lighting money on fire.

And yes I realize Linus doesn't care, however their argument is hypocritical in the first place as theres quite a few LTT videos on how to block ads, and its a weird argument as ad revenue isn't much compared to how much LMG is making from merch and sponsorships.

Yes and no, and you're still missing the same point you did the first time.

 

YT gets paid for running ads that actually get played on devices.  Creators get paid for ads that actually get played on devices.

 

Commercials on TV get ignored, regularly too.  This is expected.

 

Nobody, including the companies making the ads, expects people to pay as much attention to ads as they do the content they consume.  Because obviously.

 

But even having it playing while you're ignoring it, at least a little bit will take up residence in your brain, so they get something out of it.  

 

And Linus has outright addressed the adblocking bits he's covered, and said "I'm explaining this, even though it hurts LTT's bottom line."

[Forbidden Wafer]

58 minutes ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

Unfortunately for me, I think I just convinced myself that I should pay for Youtube premium... Damn it.

Youtube premium isn't that bad, except for the fact that Google still manipulates what is shown to you, removes content you might have watched, do not deliver all notifications, still milks your data to sell ads elsewhere, etc, etc. 

I want a subscription service where they completely stop tracking me, collecting my data and showing me targeted ads.
And I want that for all online advertisers, not just youtube. They totally have a way to do this since you can (in theory) control your targeted ads preferences this way (https://thenai.org/opt-out/ and optout.aboutads.info).

I will keep blocking everything I can until they start doing that.

[Mutta Bones]

4 minutes ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

Yeah this is what I do now, but as I stated, I do believe that Youtube should be compensated for hosting. I can't pretend I don't believe that, or rationalize my behavior by blaming Youtube. There are plenty of things I hate about Youtube and how it operates, but at the end of the day, they still provide a service that I use and appreciate.

Youtube IS compensated, and for good will. for them it is just a few gigabytes of storage on their servers which would cost less than you might think. But youtube take a 45% cut, which is good and bad.

smaller creator's don't have funds to completely compensate youtube for it's services, while this takes a BIIIIIIIIG cut from bigger ones. 

[tikker]

  

22 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

A content creator might not be able to individually determine if you personally watched the ad, but they have analytics available that generally show you how much of a video your viewers watch. Here's what it looks like:

 

You can see the steady drop-off, with only a third of people who have started watching actually finishing the video.

If an advertiser is really adamant in knowing the engagement curve and sees massive troughs wherever the ads are run, they can generally estimate how much worth their investment was and how many people saw the ads.

Unless the graph and second comment are unrelated, there's no "massive through" in that graph though.

  

22 hours ago, joaopt said:

I could honestly care less about Alphabet's profits. Monopolistic, intrusive in peoples private lives, etc...  If they switch to payed i'm fine with it, i would still not support them in any way, there is already competing platforms including Floatplane, we'll survive.

Well unfortunately "I don't care about X's profits" does not grant rights to consume the content however one sees fit.

 

16 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

This is entirely besides the point. Ads cost money and they're designed to bring in more money by convincing you to buy what they promote.

Sure, but how will the generate that revenue if people block them from playing? That just gets you in a vicious circle of nobody ever seeing a cent. People won't know about the brand or product at all, so they won't buy those products, meaning companies can't advertise anymore, even less people buy products, company goes under, no more company to pay creator to advertise, creator loses income, creator maybe goes under, internet gets upset. One reason this works is likely, because you only need a susbtantial fraction of people to buy your product to offset the advertising costs. Globally apparently it's around 40% or so of people blocking ads. The other 50-60% may carry enough weight to not make it an immediate issue and they may also mention it to others without those others seeing the ad, having a cascading effect.

20 hours ago, joaopt said:

Did you fell like a pirate for going into the bathroom in the middle of a tv transmission of a football game? Because that's how they make their money!

Besides the differences between cable and YT advertisting, again: you are still letting the ad play in that scenario. The YT payments come from the ads playing. You are mistaking ignoring it while it plays with blocking it from playing at all. They are not the same here.

14 hours ago, Areco777 said:

the uploading part on your name is related to copyright , i am saying youtube never send the content to your pc without the ad , it was you who used third party solution to block those ads , is it so hard for you to understand , i am just asking you people to agree that we are pirates and we are fine with it 

Quite an important detail indeed. One is not simply ignoring part of the transmission, one is blocking part of the transmission from successfully going through.

2 hours ago, joaopt said:

 

and i'm asking people to stop saying absurd things, so i'm a pirate because i decided not to watch a part of the content? do you realise how absurd that is?

In light of the court ruling that ad blocking is not copyright infringement I can agree that piracy is not the right term for it. You did not, however, decide not to watch part of the content. You stopped that part of the content from not being watched, because you never allowed it to start playing in the first place.

 

Now I'll be reading the next page(s) to find new comments

[Mutta Bones]

3 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I want a subscription service where they completely stop tracking me, collecting my data and showing me targeted ads.
And I want that for all online advertisers, not just youtube. They totally have a way to do this since you can (in theory) control your targeted ads preferences this way (https://thenai.org/opt-out/).

I will keep blocking everything I can until they start doing that.

I would bet my bottom dollar that adblock's aren't 100% safe. And even if such a service was created, then this would

1) DESTROY google

2) openly make google admit it tracks you, which is a fine sauce for lawsuits and userbase loss.

[Forbidden Wafer]

5 minutes ago, Mutta Bones said:

I would bet my bottom dollar that adblock's aren't 100% safe. And even if such a service was created, then this would

1) DESTROY google

2) openly make google admit it tracks you, which is a fine sauce for lawsuits and userbase loss.

I tend to agree.

1) I doubt that it would be the case

2) They already do.

Proof that adblocking is working as intended: 123 trackers were blocked and I could not opt out using the official way. 4 went through, but I can add rules for them right now

[tikker]

56 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The ad is intended to be viewed to promoted a product, ideally people viewing the ad would buy the product, or else the ad company is just lighting money on fire.

And yes I realize Linus doesn't care, however their argument is hypocritical in the first place as theres quite a few LTT videos on how to block ads, and its a weird argument as ad revenue isn't much compared to how much LMG is making from merch and sponsorships.

Their breakdown shows that Adsense is 18% of their revenue. It brings in just over half of what merch brings (32%) in and is only 3% less compared to what in-video sponsors bring (21%). You can call them hypocritical, but something almost a fifth of your revenue stream or half of other main ones I wouldn't really call "not that much".

49 minutes ago, Mutta Bones said:

Youtube IS compensated, and for good will. for them it is just a few gigabytes of storage on their servers which would cost less than you might think. But youtube take a 45% cut, which is good and bad.

smaller creator's don't have funds to completely compensate youtube for it's services, while this takes a BIIIIIIIIG cut from bigger ones. 

Ehm, if you take YouTube's recommended bitrate of 5 Mbps for 720p@30 and assume the something like 500 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute, then even at 720p they get presented with (5 Mb/s * 500 h * 60 min/h * 60 s/min) = 9,000,000 Mb * 1/8 B/b = 1,125,000 MB = 1.125 TB every minute. That is 1620 TB per day. Now of course they compress stuff, have variable/dynamic bitrate from what I can find and content varies from glorious 8k to potato 144p, so there is a margin of uncertainty in there, but it's a lot more than hosting and serving a few gigabytes. They're not building multi-petabyte or exabyte data centres for nothing.

52 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I want a subscription service where they completely stop tracking me, collecting my data and showing me targeted ads.

There was this article that touched on why Spotify's "random shuffle" isn't actually random. It turns out that, because they can both show wildly unrelated things or closely related things for a many times subsqeuently (both of which we don't always perceive as random) people like truly random things less. It would be interesting to see how users would respond to a service without tracking or personalisation and see if we'd actually start to miss all teh tracking that they do

47 minutes ago, Mutta Bones said:

2) openly make google admit it tracks you, which is a fine sauce for lawsuits and userbase loss.

With all the pages outlining what they collect from you and even pointing out it's for personalised ads and stuff I feel this is all but a technicality at this point.

[ThePinkPiggy]

I don’t know if this was already mentioned in this thread, but everyone should watch Rossmann’s response to Linus’s comment. IMO he does a much better job at breaking down the problem of blocking ads than the self-righteous way that Linus does. 

 

Basically, Linus is wrong to say ad blocking is exactly the same thing as piracy, because it is literally not. Maybe it is similar in *some* ways, but they are still two very different things.

 

The important distinction is that piracy is more concerned about the illegal distribution of content rather than just downloading the content. In ad blocking this “illegal distribution” part does not exist, as your content still comes directly from the original distributor, so it is essentially a different thing.

 

Another interesting thing that Rossmann mentions is whether it is fair for content creators to receive money for ads that their users play but don’t actually watch (e.g., go to the bathroom while the ad plays). Sure, playing the ad is good for the content creator as they get paid, but the advertiser gets screwed because they pay for an ad that somebody didn’t watch. In that case, for the advertiser it might be better if people who are not interested in ads use Adblock, so that they don’t need to pay the content creators for essentially useless ad views.

 

The last point is very much playing the devils advocate, but this is the discussion we must have if we want to assign moral or ethical values to blocking/watching ads, and/or compare it to something like piracy.

 

Sure, in reality the content creator loses money if people use ad block. However, does that money belong to the creator in the first place? The user who uses Adblock clearly has no interest in buying any ad products, so they would never generate any profit for the company to which the ad belongs, who is actually the one paying for the ad in the first place.

 

And if the creators don’t want to loose the money from ads, maybe they shouldn’t upload their videos for free on some stupid notion of a “implied contract of watching an ad”. Instead, they should charge their content consumers 0.001$ for each view, or however much one view is worth in terms of ad money. In that case, if someone rips the content and distributes it for free, then it would be “exactly the same as piracy”.

[Forbidden Wafer]

6 minutes ago, tikker said:

It would be interesting to see how users would respond to a service without tracking or personalisation and see if we'd actually start to miss all teh tracking that they do

The difference with spotify: I actually want them to track my music taste and suggest me similar stuff. I want personalized ads in this case, since I don't listen to what most people do where I live, and consistently get ads for funk/rap/country music, which are total garbo. But that is it, it is restricted to only music, not everything else.

[SimplyChunk]

Youtube could also fix this by adding a 'Support this channel by viewing ads' option when you click the 'subscribe' button and only showing ads on any channel when that mark is checked

[joaopt]

If Linus is upset by adblock imagine what he would fell about spornsorblock

 

btw i found out about because of him, so thanks Linus.

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

Youtube could also fix this by adding a 'Support this channel by viewing ads' option when you click the 'subscribe' button and only showing ads on any channel when that mark is checked

then majority of the time, youtube is providing a service for free, which costs them money

what u described is replaced with an optional membership fee for youtube channels

Spoiler

 

[tikker]

1 minute ago, joaopt said:

If Linus is upset by adblock imagine what he would fell about spornsorblock

 

btw i found out about because of him, so thanks Linus.

Probably nothing, as he touched on sponsors in the WAN saying they don't get paid on a per-view basis for those, but rather through their "interaction" with them.

[joaopt]

2 minutes ago, tikker said:

Probably nothing, as he touched on sponsors in the WAN saying they don't get paid on a per-view basis for those, but rather through their "interaction" with them.

you can't interact if don't even know they exist

 

I think this sort of talk always tends to backfire, a lot of people descovering this type of stuff like abblock and sponsorblock for the 1st time.

[tikker]

8 minutes ago, joaopt said:

you can't interact if don't even know they exist

 

I think this sort of talk always tends to backfire, a lot of people descovering this type of stuff like abblock and sponsorblock for the 1st time.

"Their interaction" was LTT's interaction with the sponsor. That can be anything from using their products, mentioning them, doing builds sponsored by them, working with them otherwise etc.

[SimplyChunk]

Well kind of.. yeah but to quote yourself from earlier

 

3 hours ago, Moonzy said:

I also am very stingy about paying for things I consume, so yea, i prefer to "watch" ads rather than paying

See i'm the same about that.  but if i could turn on ads for just a few 'regular creators' i watch and leave ads off for all shit posts and meme stuff from creators i'd only watch the once anyway that would be much better system.  this would probably mean i'd whitelist youtube for good

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

this would probably mean i'd whitelist youtube for good

i think adblock (the one i use at least) allows whitelisting by channel

not sure if it still works since i don't bother with it anymore, but it used to work

[SimplyChunk]

16 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

i think adblock (the one i use at least) allows whitelisting by channel

not sure if it still works since i don't bother with it anymore, but it used to work

I'll look in to that one.  Thank you

[chocolatekarma]

Piracy means unauthorized duplication.  That's not at all what ad blocking is.  It's a dumb take. 

[Error 52]

2 hours ago, joaopt said:

If Linus is upset by adblock imagine what he would fell about spornsorblock

 

btw i found out about because of him, so thanks Linus.

Linus said on the WAN shows that the sponsors are delibrately made easy to skip through, so I can't imagine he's quaking in his boots.

[IPD]

On 2/1/2022 at 2:58 AM, RasmusDC said:

"the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work.

"software piracy""

 

So that it the definition of piracy, Adblockers are not illigal, so i tend to not see it as piracy, so all of Linus trying to compare it to stealing seats at concerts, i just think that is plain wrong, i AGREE that if you want this type of content then you have to support the add part of it, or have the paywall and get in, however, with a paywall he would not have a business that big, and Linus has also turned it into a LOT of advertisement, and things that "smell" of reviews but are actually just "promotions".

 

now i like Linus techtips, so fine, i however USE adblockers, not on my personal laptop or company (where most of my youtube is watched) i use it either on all my son´s devices (7 years old) and my smart tv platforms for 2 simple reasons

 

I can tailor the viewing for my son, and see the what he has used his youtube for, but i have NO control of ad´s and they are many times not for his age, so i filter them away.

 

with regards to tv´s, i run mainly a samsung platform, we have a well lit house, so the OLED will never work, i need non glossy high nit tv´s so i run Qleds mostly. Samsung believes that even though i have paid full price for my tv, that it is an AD broadcast platform, and they push services, and other elements to me, i run ADBLOCKER on all my tv´s to speed the old ones up (especially my old 55" Sony that i use for my driving sim (google tv) and to remove the obscene amounts of data these products ship. when i look into my Pihole, the 8-10 highest blocks are samsung.

 

it is also fun at times, just to see how fast the internet actually works, without ad´s just insane the difference of speed, and i am on a fiber 5/5gbit, so not like i am lacking the internet speed.

It's--at best--"theft of services".  It is most definitely NOT piracy.

 

It's like a prostitute claiming she was raped, because her client refused to pay.  Again, "theft of services", not rape.

 

The bombast Linus is using to "sell" his case, and his refusal to remedy his poor choice of nomenclature--only goes to undermine his own, feeble position.

[IPD]

On 2/1/2022 at 10:08 AM, MageTank said:

This is the problem with the "me me me" generation. You don't like something yet you feel entitled to it anyways. If you are fine with paid alternatives then simply use those. Don't complain about a companies moral or ethical issues yet still consume their products, that is just weak and hypocritical, lol.

Or...

 

Those who are producing "content" can simply take their ball and go home until their own idiom concerning a fruitful business model--comes true.  If you are still producing content and whining about how people aren't consuming ads to "pay" you--then perhaps you should find a different/better way to monetize your offerings--or come to the conclusion that "free-99" isn't worth your time and effort.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, IPD said:

Or...

 

Those who are producing "content" can simply take their ball and go home until their own idiom concerning a fruitful business model--comes true.  If you are still producing content and whining about how people aren't consuming ads to "pay" you--then perhaps you should find a different/better way to monetize your offerings--or come to the conclusion that "free-99" isn't worth your time and effort.

That seems completely unrelated to the text you quoted given my quote was referencing a generation of people that object to companies, products, services, etc. for ethical/moral reasons but choose to consume them anyways. It was about the hypocrisy of those people and their shallow code of ethics/moral code.

 

That said,  I also don't disagree with you. I would never want to be at the mercy of an audience or advertisers for my livelihood. The simple fact is, people are lazy, people are cheap and people largely do not care about things that do not pertain to their everyday lives. Expecting people to view ads on your channel simply because you provide them entertainment is a lofty goal given empathy is rare nowadays (except from those teenage empaths that are being meme'd on right now, lol).

[IPD]

On 2/1/2022 at 11:00 AM, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

Does it piss you off because you feel you are being judged, you don't want to be called a pirate, or you don't want to be associated with piracy?

 

I'm honestly curious to know those answers.

 

Because pirating content and blocking ads have very similar motivations, and very similar outcomes. The motivation is that for whatever irrelevant reason I don't want to pay the implicit or explicit cost for the content, and the outcome is that the creator misses out on revenue.

 

So it seems like a fair comparison to make.

It pisses me off because it's not piracy.  None of those 3 things you listed matter--as they're all tangential to the crux of the matter.  Words matter.  One cannot simply redefine a word to suit the whims of the speaker.

 

Moreover, piracy and blocking ads have vastly different motivations.  Piracy is usually motivated by either people who will never legitimately pay for a service--or by those to whom the legal option is either unavailable to far too costly.  Blocking ads is motivated by concern for one's own safety (online), a response to the overabundant glut of ads, and a reprisal for their abject over-intrusiveness.

 

To say nothing--again--of how ad revenue is highly partial, and only content/videos that meet with YT standards--can even qualify.  As that inequity continues to exist, cutting out all revenue streams for all content providers is actually the most equitable thing that can be done.