Are we pirates?

[Sauron]

On 1/28/2022 at 5:39 PM, summoned said:

Do you use adblockers?

Yes, and I feel no moral qualms about it. It's not illegal either so it can't really be compared to piracy. I don't use them on this forum though because the ads here don't bother me.

 

Ads make the internet almost unusable in a lot of cases and I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to just take it simply because that's some platforms' chosen way to make money. If I want to support a specific creator I'd rather just donate to them directly than give money to the youtube middle man and/or suffer through intrusive garbage. In some cases it's a security hazard since malicious ad banners can trick you into clicking something you didn't mean to, or collect data about you without your consent.

 

LMG in particular aren't in much of a position to complain since they bake ads and sponsor spots directly in their videos. I prefer this approach to youtube's "let me just interrupt this video and give you virtual whiplash with an unskippable ad", for what it's worth.

[Sauron]

25 minutes ago, Commodus said:

You know you can... not visit the sites, right? Or again, only block the most egregious ads if you absolutely need to see a site.

 

I really don't get why people feel like they have a divine right to visit every site the way they want to see it. Believe it or not, it's possible to control your impulses and go to other sites that are safer and more respectful. Besides, vote with your site visits — you send a better message by not visiting at all than blocking ads.

That would be all well and good if youtube hadn't secured a de facto monopoly on its market. As have other platforms with other markets. What exactly makes visiting with an ad blocker worse for the website than not visiting at all?

[IPD]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

Ad blockers aren't piracy, but they're still harmful.

 

Folks: if you don't like that a site displays ads, don't visit that site. Ask them to offer an ad-free subscription or donation-based system if you really want to see their content; don't just be a selfish leech who expects to get everything for free without even the slightest inconvenience.

 

I know some sites' ads can be overbearing, but you're not entitled to get everything you want, however you want it. And you're not going to send the right message by continuing to visit those sites.

Disagree.  Find a way to monetize your offering that isn't so cliche and irritating that a mass portion of your clientele resorts to thwarting your revenue stream because it has become too obtrusive.

 

No one is entitled to anything.  Not freeloaders.  Not people trying to make money off streaming vids and tick-tok.  So either resort to producing GOODS (which can still be stolen and copyright infringed), or find a more acceptable means to offer your service.  If your product has no value, don't expect to make a living at it.  Content creators screaming about ad revenue is no different than influencers screaming about how you should give them goods or services "for exposure".

 

Besides, it's not like youtube wants content creators on their platform.  Between the draconian demonetization policies, spamming banners to "Fact Check" content that doesn't fit their narrative, constant removal of subscribers without their consent, and the removal of any methods (outside of browser apps) to judge content popularity and merit (i.e. the downvote button)--and it's pretty clear that YT just DGAF.

[IPD]

1 hour ago, Error 52 said:

Problem is, there are a lot of sites with ads I don't like. Even if every one of them had an ad-free option, I simply cannot be expected to spend that kind of money.

 

And the thing with ads is that they're a genuine security risk at this point. I'm sure we've all seen those fake "Download" buttons. Hell, I'd go so far as to suggest that having an adblocker is more important to keeping your computer safe than an anti-virus is. (Having both is better, ofc) I believe most companies with half-decent IT actually deploy adblockers now for this exact reason.

 

It's all completely completely ridiculous and unsustainable, but at this point I think we're just stuck watching as two trains are about to collide with each other.

Oh it's WAY worse than that.  There's a forum I'm on which has extremely strict rules about the types of pictures that can be posted--because they are kowtowing google policies.  Nevermind that google itself spams site ads that are racier than the images that are allowed (by mods) to be posted. 

[IPD]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

Then don't visit those sites unless it's necessary, or limit the ad blocking to the most egregious examples if you can. Yeah, it means missing out on a significant chunk of the internet that you might like. But shouting "I really, really want to see it," like a modern-day Veruca Salt, isn't really a great argument.

Negative.  I am not going to accept abhorrent overuse and underfiltration of advertisement streams--often which can be perverted for nefarious aims.  I'm not going to accept that any more than I accept the ethical foundations of the Patriot Act and everything the NSA has done for homeland surveillance for 20+ years.

 

What I am going to do is keep acting out of self preservation and going about my normal business.  And maybe, just maybe, the overbearing, overstepping, encroaching ilk that devised and keep expanding revenue streams as obtrusive as this--will take a goddamn hint and migrate away from their aberrant behavior.  Then go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that doesn't end up pissing off 80% of the population.

[IPD]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

I'm sorry, but blocking everything just isn't morally acceptable. You're depriving people of a living, in some cases from sites that are both reasonable about their ads and otherwise acting in good faith. It is one thing if you genuinely need to visit a site, but I'm pretty sure many of those site operators would say "making a livable income" is far, far more satisfying than visiting a site without ads.

And yet, all of these would-be 3rd party sites can't even remotely compete against juggernauts like FB, Twitter, Reddit and the like.  Why?  It's not ad revenue.  It's censorship of alternatives.  Results filtering.  Preferential listings of partner companies/sites.  So the net result is that even if a small 3rd party site only has as much revenue generation as needed to keep the lights on--that will probably end up being far more obtrusive than what a juggernaut has to do--because of the size/reach.

 

And even when sites (eg. numerous forums, like NoteBookReview) end up trying to compete on even ground--with small revenue streams, the juggernauts wipe them all out.  So the shift away from sites great for cataloguing technical know-how have been usurped by social-media sites that suck for literally everything except getting in slap fights.

 

Enabling ad revenue doesn't fix that.

[IPD]

57 minutes ago, Commodus said:

You know you can... not visit the sites, right? Or again, only block the most egregious ads if you absolutely need to see a site.

 

I really don't get why people feel like they have a divine right to visit every site the way they want to see it. Believe it or not, it's possible to control your impulses and go to other sites that are safer and more respectful. Besides, vote with your site visits — you send a better message by not visiting at all than blocking ads.

Why is it the content owner/host's right to spam us relentlessly with such a cliche and overused revenue stream that disabling it is usually the very first add-on people install on their browsers?

 

Maybe THEY need to come up with better, less annoying way of generating revenue/profit for themselves.  Or bow out of the game and yield to those with more imagination on how to monetize their offerings.

[IPD]

37 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yes, and I feel no moral qualms about it. It's not illegal either so it can't really be compared to piracy. I don't use them on this forum though because the ads here don't bother me.

 

Ads make the internet almost unusable in a lot of cases and I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to just take it simply because that's some platforms' chosen way to make money. If I want to support a specific creator I'd rather just donate to them directly than give money to the youtube middle man and/or suffer through intrusive garbage. In some cases it's a security hazard since malicious ad banners can trick you into clicking something you didn't mean to, or collect data about you without your consent.

 

LMG in particular aren't in much of a position to complain since they bake ads and sponsor spots directly in their videos. I prefer this approach to youtube's "let me just interrupt this video and give you virtual whiplash with an unskippable ad", for what it's worth.

This.  Get direct sponsors.  Get merchandise.  There's dozens of other ways to garner revenue--rather than adsense.

 

Moreover, since cell data still isn't 100% free on every plan across every carrier, unblockable/unskippable ads are LEGITIMATELY STEALING MONEY FROM ME and everyone else who doesn't have unlimited data.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, IPD said:

This.  Get direct sponsors.  Get merchandise.  There's dozens of other ways to garner revenue--rather than adsense.

Yet even for those you get nay sayers again, even here on the forum, that'll be annoyed with sponsored content and that they really want to support them, but merch is too expensive for that. It would have to come down to this: are LTT's (in this case) fans dedicated enough that they can and/or are willing to cover that nearly a fifth of lost revenue by buying even more merch and Floatplane subscriptions and "putting up" with more sponsored content?

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

That would be all well and good if youtube hadn't secured a de facto monopoly on its market. As have other platforms with other markets. What exactly makes visiting with an ad blocker worse for the website than not visiting at all?

You're consuming bandwidth they pay for, but you're not generating the ad views that would help pay for that traffic. That and their viewer numbers will go up, so they still have something to brag about when they tally up their stats.

[srcds0706]

4 hours ago, IPD said:

This.  Get direct sponsors.  Get merchandise.  There's dozens of other ways to garner revenue--rather than adsense.

There are dozens of ways to garner revenue -and none of them are actually viable for most content creators on platforms like YouTube.

 

LMG can get sponsors and sell merchandise because they're a sizable company with lots of connections in the industry and a longstanding history of content creation. They have massive outreach, and as such they can be picky with their sponsor options. They also have enough capital to invest in other revenue streams like merch.

Most content creators are not LMG.

 

Most content creators cannot afford to design and sell merch by themselves.

 

LMG can get sponsors on all of their videos because they're LMG.

Content creators with 100k subs are probably lucky if they get one sponsor a month.

Plus, replacing adsense income with sponsors would mean that creators have less options when selecting sponsors. 

Now instead of classic adsense you can get three minute baked in ads about the latest cryptocurrencies and gacha games. Very nice tradeoff.

 

"Just sell merch / get sponsors" is one of those ideas that sound good only on paper. It completely fails to account for the reality that for most content creators, AdSense is their main source of income. 

Merch and sponsor spots (if they get any) usually provide less income and are generally much more tedious to set up than just enabling ads on the youtube creator dashboard.

[IPD]

2 hours ago, srcds0706 said:

There are dozens of ways to garner revenue -and none of them are actually viable for most content creators on platforms like YouTube.

 

LMG can get sponsors and sell merchandise because they're a sizable company with lots of connections in the industry and a longstanding history of content creation. They have massive outreach, and as such they can be picky with their sponsor options. They also have enough capital to invest in other revenue streams like merch.

Most content creators are not LMG.

 

Most content creators cannot afford to design and sell merch by themselves.

 

LMG can get sponsors on all of their videos because they're LMG.

Content creators with 100k subs are probably lucky if they get one sponsor a month.

Plus, replacing adsense income with sponsors would mean that creators have less options when selecting sponsors. 

Now instead of classic adsense you can get three minute baked in ads about the latest cryptocurrencies and gacha games. Very nice tradeoff.

 

"Just sell merch / get sponsors" is one of those ideas that sound good only on paper. It completely fails to account for the reality that for most content creators, AdSense is their main source of income. 

Merch and sponsor spots (if they get any) usually provide less income and are generally much more tedious to set up than just enabling ads on the youtube creator dashboard.

Then the market has spoken, and there isn't profit to be had.  Operators who continue to pump out content do so knowing the inherent risk.

 

---

I remember when I heard similar luddite arguments about how DVR was destroying ad revenue and would prevent content from being generated.  Or how recording your favorite songs on cassette tape off Casey Casem's countdown--was going to ruin music's viability for artists.

[thrasher_565]

10 hours ago, Commodus said:

Ad blockers aren't piracy, but they're still harmful.

 

Folks: if you don't like that a site displays ads, don't visit that site. Ask them to offer an ad-free subscription or donation-based system if you really want to see their content; don't just be a selfish leech who expects to get everything for free without even the slightest inconvenience.

 

I know some sites' ads can be overbearing, but you're not entitled to get everything you want, however you want it. And you're not going to send the right message by continuing to visit those sites.

you no "youtuber" is not a real job right? its like drug dealing is also not a real job.

 

you didn't even get ad moeny in till you reached 10000 subs. meaning ALL moeny made from before then was DONATIONS... and most have a real job and do yt on the side.

 

besides show me that linus is struggling with moeny go ahead show me... all the adblocks must not be stopping all the moeny... what would he be doing now with all that moeny that he cant do now? i dont even think he pays his implyeys vary much moeny but there more then just moeny witch im guessing why people stay.

 

not only that viewers got him ad moeny that got him even better things so just watching a video as a viewer has made him thrive.  i use to watch most if not all videos back when he worked at ncix all the way up to a point. but it was clear the content changed so i was no longer interested in it. that and the stupid dyson video...

 

 

[MultiGamerClub]

15 hours ago, RageTester said:

It's harder to block ads on android... Even using brave browser, pop-ups are killing me.

Firefox with ublock origin for android?

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

most of his OG hires have now gone onto buying a house in BC Canada and are married and have a car, all of those people had nothing when they started working with him in 2012, now he has almost 60-70 people working under him and he recently said in the wan show when someone asked how he felt about the retirement video, he said, there are new workers who solely depend on his paycheck and they are the sole bread earners in the family and he feels that needs to do his best to get that check on date, that means he has to take sponsorships that he never would have considered before. people on this sub are literally acting like child mentality and don't consider there are actually people working and it affects their lives, people want everything for free.

it is piracy in a sense, imagine if he now releases all his video's with paywall, if you watch it without paying isn't pirating? he's releasing all videos with sponsors for free but those sponsors only choose to pay as long as people are viewing ads. its directly tied. simple solution get YTP subscription. 

 

 

time coded 
 

 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I'm not against reasonably supporting creators.
(I am against supporting them too much, though, for example I won't name names but there are some out there who may only do as little as a few hours of work writing a piece of music, or maybe a thousand or so hours writing software, books, etc, and it turns out to be a huge hit, and due to copyright law, they or their family or whoever they sold the rights to (that's another gripe I have too) are still getting tens or hundreds of millions in royalties even decades later.)

Also while I'm not against some advertising, if it's properly done,
I do not like self-promotion, paid promotion (I prefer independent reviews, anecdotes, recommendations from friends, etc, truth, honesty, don't try to sugarcoat things, tell the bad with the good, etc), and I especially don't like, as the OP mentioned, stealing our bandwidth and data.  (Speaking of which, my preferred max to allow for advertising would basically be like the equivalent of storing the original Commodore 64 boot loader, or Xerox Alto, or Apple I, or some other now-ancient boot software, or one of those boot sector floppy games (the ones that fit entirely in the boot sector), on whatever storage would be the equivalent of Petabyte Project III, Google's, Amazon's, BackBlaze's servers combined, say, 50 years from now.)

[thrasher_565]

27 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

most of his OG hires have now gone onto buying a house in BC Canada and are married and have a car, all of those people had nothing when they started working with him in 2012, now he has almost 60-70 people working under him and he recently said in the wan show when someone asked how he felt about the retirement video, he said, there are new workers who solely depend on his paycheck and they are the sole bread earners in the family and he feels that needs to do his best to get that check on date, that means he has to take sponsorships that he never would have considered before. people on this sub are literally acting like child mentality and don't consider there are actually people working and it affects their lives, people want everything for free.

it is piracy in a sense, imagine if he now releases all his video's with paywall, if you watch it without paying isn't pirating? he's releasing all videos with sponsors for free but those sponsors only choose to pay as long as people are viewing ads. its directly tied. simple solution get YTP subscription. 

 

 

time coded 
 

 

i got one problem with this. who said he had to go bigger? who said he needs 70 people... thows people he had would still have houses...and family's regardless...

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

3 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

i got one problem with this. who said he had to go bigger? who said he needs 70 people... thows people he had would still have houses...and family's regardless...

are you for real? 

[thrasher_565]

25 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

are you for real? 

hmm so its happened. expend so fast  thought the growth will keep climbing, no wonder why they have to do the things they do now. all yt fall for this trap. have to bigger and bigger things to stay on top... this is why i liked the contend back then. regardless i wish him luck.

[M9_Shyamalan]

I signed up for a forum for the first time in years to have a look through this discussion. I think it raises a lot of moral questions.

Let me preface this by saying, I'm a Youtube Premium guy because I don't like ads.

 

I sympathize a lot with content creators when it comes to adblocking, as they bear the brunt of the struggle against it. Advertisers don't care, they only pay for the people watching. Facebook and Google would prefer you watched their ads, as their bottom line would go up, but there's enough people who have no idea how to go about it that it has a small impact on these mega-corps. It's the small guys trying to make it on Youtube who suffer the most.

 

From a historical and technical perspective, the internet is the complete opposite of traditional TV media. Terrestrial TV is a push medium. A video feed was beamed and picked up by an antenna at your house, and you had no control over what appeared on a particular wavelength.

At the point in time this was the primary form of video consumption, I think everyone would agree that changing stations during an ad break, or going to the bathroom wouldn't have been thought of as piracy, despite the fact the broadcast only existed because of advertising. 
Then along came the VCR and betamax recorders, and eventually Tivo and DVRs. People could record whatever came over the air. Content holders at the time took manafacturers to court because they thought recording the content was piracy, and luckily lost. Was fast forwarding through an ad on a recorded tape piracy? I personally wouldn't think so.

What about when you rented a DVD from Blockbuster and didn't watch the trailers? The cheap rental prices were surely subsidized to some extent by including these. The same could be said for DVDs you bought, or when you would arrive 15 minutes late to the cinemas to avoid the ads and trailers?

 

 

On the other hand we have the internet, a pull medium. While a simple take on it, essentially you have a bunch of files on servers all over the internet, which you download and run on your PC. This made it easier than for people to continue doing what they have been doing for the last 40+ years, ignoring ads. In the early days of the internet, up until probably the early 2010's internet advertising was paid for based on PageRank and views, much like traditional TV, radio and newspaper advertising. There was just an understanding between advertisers and content providers that a portion of eyes and ears on the content would not be consuming the ads.

 

Then along come Facebook and Google. They have quickly become the biggest advertisers in the world, as well as the biggest collectors of personal data, which they use to sell more and more targeted advertising. But more importantly, they also stopped charging for advertising based on PageRank and views, and instead started collecting extremely accurate metrics to sell their advertising. They do this by tracking all of our browsing behaviour.

This raises another ethical question. We all know data collection is part of the deal when it comes to using Facebook, or Gmail, or Google search. Is it therefore piracy if you use a VPN, or take other measures to try and protect your privacy on the internet?

What about doing it on free wifi? Part of the deal of using a free hotspot is the data collection.

How about your adblocking your smart TV? It was sold at a discount because it was subsidized by ads.

 

Realistically this issue is just a microcosm of capitalism as a whole. The consumer is trying to pay as little as possible for the most amount of product. The employer wants the employee for the cheapest wage and the most productivity, and the employee wants the opposite. I wouldn't call this piracy, it's just human nature.

Unfortunately for content providers and creators, the internet is and always will be a pull medium. You can't force people to run your code unaltered. You can't force people accessing one website to pull images and videos from a server they don't want to. The consumer will always try to pay as little as possible for as much as possible, and the internet, as a pull medium, will always be tilted in their favour.

[thrasher_565]

44 minutes ago, M9_Shyamalan said:

Realistically this issue is just a microcosm of capitalism as a whole. The consumer is trying to pay as little as possible for the most amount of product. The employer wants the employee for the cheapest wage and the most productivity, and the employee wants the opposite. I wouldn't call this piracy, it's just human nature.

Unfortunately for content providers and creators, the internet is and always will be a pull medium. You can't force people to run your code unaltered. You can't force people accessing one website to pull images and videos from a server they don't want to. The consumer will always try to pay as little as possible for as much as possible, and the internet, as a pull medium, will always be tilted in their favour.

to be fare im not saying i HATE ads but just dont like em. i stopped watching tv for that reason and now the content i watch littered with ads. but still better then back then with all the popups (if you no what i mean) just to get a free game... anyway i use to pirate games. my family was poor so saving moeny here and there was ideal. we did buy games from time to tome thow like cac and so on. anyway along came steam and steam sales and well i got games for $5 to $10 witch at that point i stopped getting games for free. so if there was some site that offers alot of value for a low cost then ya ill do it. but im not spending $5 here and $5 there or even $5 per person i watch. not only that the thing im paying for is normally not that good there bugs and glitches with them like yt for example. but now the problem is the games i own on steam i moight not own or paly down the road..witch is another problem...

 

i like j2cents ifixit ads...there funny. there are short ads that are fine too. i dont care about tamponds im sorry i just dont. one time me and my mom watching a movie and saw the same oxey commercial like 7 times...

 

just a note when minimum wage went up i didn't get a raise so i have to budget even more ...

Edited January 30, 2022 by thrasher_565

[Lightwreather]

6 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

i like j2cents ifixit ads.

IFIXIT!!!!!!!!!!!

*Explosions**More explosions***BIG BOOMS**

[RageTester]

5 hours ago, MultiGamerClub said:

Firefox with ublock origin for android?

Can you even install add-ons on android web browser versions?

Also with firefox many music videos on youtube play without sound and also some other websites... might be my device specific issue though.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, RageTester said:

Can you even install add-ons on android web browser versions?

Also with firefox many music videos on youtube play without sound and also some other websites... might be my device specific issue though.

yeap. i just had a look… there are 18 (!!!) addons for firefox on my phone (including ublock)… might be a mistake because the number is so low… there are hundreds for samsung beta however…

 

Quote

Also with firefox many music videos on youtube play without sound

protip, use samsung internet beta, can be installed on any android phone afaik, and is very fast, has no issues  with yt, and has pip : )

 

[IPD]

2 hours ago, RageTester said:

Can you even install add-ons on android web browser versions?

Also with firefox many music videos on youtube play without sound and also some other websites... might be my device specific issue though.

On my Xperia, I disabled Chrome.  FF is my Default, and I added blockers.  I have no issues playing YT vids.