Countering the Ad-Blockers being theft argument

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, will0hlep said:

 

If your point is that each ad source has more statistics than I'm giving it credit for, then I amend my orginal statement to:

 

"The Ad companies only pay for the ad to be shown,

The contracts don't say x number of people will watch the ad intently,

They say the ad will be broadcast x number of times, at y time(s) of day and on z day(s) of the week/month/year (or put up for x days from date y),

The contracts likely also include a price structure negotiated to reflect the likely numbers watching or seeing it based on statistics measured afterwards, if the price structure is wrong then the ad company neogotiated badly and got a bad deal but it still dosn't make dodging the ad (by muting or turning off the TV/Radio or refusing to look at the billboard) piracy."

 

Every ad source has feedback mechanisms, even if you don't think they do. Anything you have to sign up for (magazine subscriptions for example) are tracked statistics for advertisement purposes. There is a reason why you see "age bracket, income, education" questions on completely irrelevant things. Those are demographic trackers. Also, just lie on that stuff. *Nobody is checking.

 

*By "Nobody" I mean nobody is actually checking this data to be true, and ultimately nobody wants to pay to have it verified. Ask anyone who has changed their name, how many DECADES they continue to get marketing junk in their misspelled name.

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

If you’re not a Nielsen household, your viewing habits don’t affect ratings in the slightest. 
 

Every ad impression matters online. 

 

If you are a Nielsen household, you have tracking hardware in your home, and on your person, or you're manually writing down what you see and watch.

https://strategyonline.ca/2000/11/20/nielsenbbm-20001120/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_People_Meter

 

Every ad you hear, has tracking data in it. This is for the tracking hardware to pick up. If you have IPTV hardware, it likely is doing this automatically, I know the Telus Optik TV has this feature.

 

There is NOTHING stopping Microsoft or Google from incorporating this into the OS either, nor web browsers. You might actually even be agreeing to this if you "log in" to the browser. I don't know if they are doing this or not, I've not sat there and checked every piece of data the browser sends. It's completely possible that youtube doesn't need to track this data because the ads are hosted on their own platform and thus don't require any third-party involved.

[Dedayog]

14 hours ago, NsRhea said:

For clarity, I've use ad-blockers since they've existed, and I don't think I'll ever stop given the state of the internet by and large.

 

Your content, statistically speaking, is not worth my time. I don't mean LTT but I am speaking to the broader creator.

 

Services like YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, and more allow any and everyone to upload content that is essentially unmoderated (except for the obvious racism / illegal activities). For creators this is excellent at removing barriers of entry or the requirement to sign over your rights of your content to a studio. It also gives you access to the largest audiences on Earth.

 

For users though, you're at the mercy of the algorithms. Creators expecting a user to watch a 30 second ad for every piece of random content they watch is not only ridiculous, it's downright disrespectful of their time. This is especially so when we consider for every one good-to-great creator worth watching, you can sift through hundreds or thousands of creators uploading literal fart videos, or 'reaction' videos they sit silent on the entire time. I'm much more likely to watch an ad baked into the video (such as those LTT does) than one shown at the beginning of a clip that is un-skippable. Statistically speaking, your content isn't worth the extra 30 seconds. If you are one of those good creators, I'd argue relying on Google to pay you isn't a good business decision. Merch, subscriptions, and baked in ads are a much better option imo.

 

This is where 'traditional' media dominates the internet. Content on cable networks or your airwaves is pretty moderated from a quality standpoint. Even the bad shows go through vetting processes. They want the highest quality programming because better programming means more eyes and more eyes means more money. I expect ads on TV because the floor entertainment level is much higher than endlessly browsing YouTube. Watch a random 20 minute YouTube video and compare it to a rerun of NCIS or whatever. You can catch gold, but statistically you're wasting your time - and that's the nature of YT allowing anyone to upload anything.

 

The bigger issue however, is the responsibility of content distributors such as Google.

 

I use an ad-blocker because I hate ads. I installed ad-block on every family computer because ads these days are unmoderated garbage. They're quite literally linking to malware, adware, crypto bros, pyramid schemes, dick pills, phishing sites, and more. My mother clicked an ad to get a quote to repair her windows, and her email address was sold to like 7 other spam sites. It's insane.  Yes, yes... There's the late night infomercial trying to sell me a $5 Magic Bullet blender for $49.99, but at least I'm not getting my credit card stolen, my address broadcast across whomever will pay for it, and my credentials being swept across other websites trying to gain access without my knowledge. I'm not dumb enough to click these links AND I understand the risk. I work in the CyberSecurity field and couldn't explain session hijacking or cookie theft enough to matter for my family to not click on 'too good to be true' links immediately after I left.

 

Tl;dr Statistically your content isn't worth watching advertisements for. If it is, generate money another way than expecting people to watch automatically served ads.

 

Content distributors don't do their due diligence into advertisers and what exactly they're advertising or linking to, creating MAJOR security risks for end users.

 

We also don't call it theft when I leave the room during a commercial break for football, either. Advertisers pay for access to audiences, not how many people actually watch the ads.

Getting up in a commercial is different than blocking the commercial.

 

It's more like old school using a DVR to skip the ads, but you still get a tiny snip of the ad usually.  So it's in your brain.

 

Ad blockers stop the ad entirely.

 

[thrasher_565]

long time ago looking a blocking ads i came across something called pf sense (linus did a video on it) witch was a program that can move your mouse over the network. but then it changed to a device to block ads on all the things connected to it. meaning the ads were not on the site it self but the ad box can be controlled elsewhere with out having to update the site.

how youtube works i dont no if its youtube ads or 3 party or both.

[Donut417]

Im an ad block user as well. Id pay for YouTube if the price was about half of what it is. I just decided to give up on YouTube but I know many cant. Personally Ad Block is no different than me using my HD Homerun + Plex to skip ads on recorded Over the Air TV. 

 

14 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

to letting their monopolistic and anti-competitive master plan go trough.

Yeah but I pretty sure the DOJ or FTC is looking in to Alphabet as a whole for being monopolistic. 

[Dedayog]

15 hours ago, NsRhea said:

For clarity, I've use ad-blockers since they've existed, and I don't think I'll ever stop given the state of the internet by and large.

 

Your content, statistically speaking, is not worth my time. I don't mean LTT but I am speaking to the broader creator.

 

Services like YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, and more allow any and everyone to upload content that is essentially unmoderated (except for the obvious racism / illegal activities). For creators this is excellent at removing barriers of entry or the requirement to sign over your rights of your content to a studio. It also gives you access to the largest audiences on Earth.

 

For users though, you're at the mercy of the algorithms. Creators expecting a user to watch a 30 second ad for every piece of random content they watch is not only ridiculous, it's downright disrespectful of their time. This is especially so when we consider for every one good-to-great creator worth watching, you can sift through hundreds or thousands of creators uploading literal fart videos, or 'reaction' videos they sit silent on the entire time. I'm much more likely to watch an ad baked into the video (such as those LTT does) than one shown at the beginning of a clip that is un-skippable. Statistically speaking, your content isn't worth the extra 30 seconds. If you are one of those good creators, I'd argue relying on Google to pay you isn't a good business decision. Merch, subscriptions, and baked in ads are a much better option imo.

 

This is where 'traditional' media dominates the internet. Content on cable networks or your airwaves is pretty moderated from a quality standpoint. Even the bad shows go through vetting processes. They want the highest quality programming because better programming means more eyes and more eyes means more money. I expect ads on TV because the floor entertainment level is much higher than endlessly browsing YouTube. Watch a random 20 minute YouTube video and compare it to a rerun of NCIS or whatever. You can catch gold, but statistically you're wasting your time - and that's the nature of YT allowing anyone to upload anything.

 

The bigger issue however, is the responsibility of content distributors such as Google.

 

I use an ad-blocker because I hate ads. I installed ad-block on every family computer because ads these days are unmoderated garbage. They're quite literally linking to malware, adware, crypto bros, pyramid schemes, dick pills, phishing sites, and more. My mother clicked an ad to get a quote to repair her windows, and her email address was sold to like 7 other spam sites. It's insane.  Yes, yes... There's the late night infomercial trying to sell me a $5 Magic Bullet blender for $49.99, but at least I'm not getting my credit card stolen, my address broadcast across whomever will pay for it, and my credentials being swept across other websites trying to gain access without my knowledge. I'm not dumb enough to click these links AND I understand the risk. I work in the CyberSecurity field and couldn't explain session hijacking or cookie theft enough to matter for my family to not click on 'too good to be true' links immediately after I left.

 

Tl;dr Statistically your content isn't worth watching advertisements for. If it is, generate money another way than expecting people to watch automatically served ads.

 

Content distributors don't do their due diligence into advertisers and what exactly they're advertising or linking to, creating MAJOR security risks for end users.

 

We also don't call it theft when I leave the room during a commercial break for football, either. Advertisers pay for access to audiences, not how many people actually watch the ads.

But I wanted to say I am glad you posted an entirely new thread, so we could rehash this once again with absolutely no new perspectives, including mine or yours.

 

Well done, sir!

[Bitter]

So Google is already harvesting and selling my data AND I have to pay them money for the privilege to let them do so even more easily? How about a big fat NO. Not my fault they build a fiscally irresponsible business model with YouTube and now want to claw back money. Google can basically get bent, they make oodles of money already with so many things boo hoo they lost money on YouTube or whatever.

 

https://www.shacknews.com/article/136393/google-googl-q2-2023-7-billion-youtube-ad-revenue

 

Quote

Google (GOOGL) reports $7.665 billion of YouTube Q2 2023 ad revenue

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

no its not theft, if google wanted to enforce this they would need to make it members only and also have proper contracts where you click "yes i agree" which they currently dont, you can just watch without account and without ever agreeing to anything...

 

And that's besides it not being clear that forcing possibly malicious or inadequate ads onto users is even legal! 

 

its different on tv, ads are curated, have a certain level of decency, and cant just nilly willy render your hardware unusable or steal your passwords... 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

This isn't flogging a dead horse, this is violently clobbering a trilobite. 

 

 

Back in the '00s, everything became terrorism. Domestic violence? Domestic terrorism. Insult someone? Verbal terrorism. 

The media industry has its own infatuation with theft. Copyright infringement? Theft. Not watching ads? Theft. 

 

And if this is about Linus specifically, at this point he has shown repeatedly that he won't backpedal from it, will play it down as minor terminology issues, and ultimately fish for the weakest counterarguments against his take when he feels like doubling down on it again. To be honest, some of the arguments you make may actually qualify as the next low hanging fruit for him to take down. But your very least point, among other stronger arguments to support the obvious where put forward by e.g. Louis Rossmann back in the day, to little effect. 

[Touch My Hamm]

My main issue with ad is companies like Google dont do enough vetting and like video muting/algorithm/what have you, alot of it is not sent over a human persons desk or seen by a human. Its approved with a set criteria. Please show my ignorance as I would love to see how ignorant people are allowing every other fake Mr.Beast scam company getting through to be able to ads on sites like youtube. If ads where not mostly scams/malware/etc more people would be ok. TV advertising has some of the same issues where we had years of the magic electromagnetic bronze wrist band that was said to cure all ailments. but for the most part they are vetted to be inm line with whatever channel that are published on. If im watching a simple commercial for yogert I have no issues but every other ad is meant to look like a legit video with clickbait title in hopes to scam you when you click it and install malware.

 

Google and these companies are going about this the wrong way imo. If they simply vetted better for ads and simply made them less intrusive to the experience they are selling then more wouldnt be googling how to get around the anti ad blocking features. 

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, Touch My Hamm said:

My main issue with ad is companies like Google dont do enough vetting and like video muting/algorithm/what have you, alot of it is not sent over a human persons desk or seen by a human. Its approved with a set criteria. Please show my ignorance as I would love to see how ignorant people are allowing every other fake Mr.Beast scam company getting through to be able to ads on sites like youtube. If ads where not mostly scams/malware/etc more people would be ok. TV advertising has some of the same issues where we had years of the magic electromagnetic bronze wrist band that was said to cure all ailments. but for the most part they are vetted to be inm line with whatever channel that are published on. If im watching a simple commercial for yogert I have no issues but every other ad is meant to look like a legit video with clickbait title in hopes to scam you when you click it and install malware.

 

Google and these companies are going about this the wrong way imo. If they simply vetted better for ads and simply made them less intrusive to the experience they are selling then more wouldnt be googling how to get around the anti ad blocking features. 

[Absentia13]

Ads disturb me from enjoying videos. It's a stain on the internet. I don't care about any arguments not in line with me being annoyed by them. I will block everything, everywhere, all the time for as long as possible. There will always be a solution for those who look for it and put in the effort to use it. 

[Bitter]

Also knock on effect seems to be that as blockers are just getting better at a faster rate. Rather than fixing the problem they created and then decided to fix they seem to have made it worse for themselves and better for us more rapidly.

[wasab]

I wonder how all those free ad blockers make money. Do they serve the user ads or something

[thrasher_565]

51 minutes ago, wasab said:

I wonder how all those free ad blockers make money. Do they serve the user ads or something

adp asks for donations but probably collects data.

[kumicota]

Paraphrasing Linus, "Adblocking isn't theft is being auctioned to /dev/null"

[kumicota]

11 hours ago, wasab said:

I wonder how all those free ad blockers make money. Do they serve the user ads or something

UBlock Origin doesn't profit from it or sell user data. They don't have any telemetry on their software and it's open-source

 

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

[Vishera]

The ad blocker that worked best for me was AdGuard - It circumvented the YouTube Anti-Adblock 99% of the time.

I had less success with Brave's build in adblock - It circumvented the YouTube Anti-Adblock 70% of the time.

[Bitter]

11 hours ago, wasab said:

I wonder how all those free ad blockers make money. Do they serve the user ads or something

Ublock Origin literally is fueled by spite and hatred for ads. I genuinely believe they might even be willing to pay users to run it out of malice at this point

[Neroon]

The biggest issue imo is that using adblockers has no impact on the system.

 

In an ideal world, you could argue that adblockers reduces their profits, which it does, which in turn causes them to have to get more money from other customers. Like if say they want 30% of their revenue to be profit, then removing adblockers would reduce the number of ads being pushed to a single consumer, and make premium cheaper.

 

But that will never happen, if you stop adblocking, it just means more profit, and that's what they have to do, because a public traded company has to maximize profits. The simple fact is that they will always try to get more, and will only stop if reduces their profits.

 

If anything, the only way to reduce ads and prices, is if more people start blocking ads, or just stop visiting the site.

 

I absolutely do believe that adblocking like this is a form of theft, and at the same time it feels like they abuse the position they are in. If there had been competition this wouldn't happen.

 

Anyway I guess I need to update again, because my uBlock is blocked again. So far my only reliable blocking experiences has been Revanced on my phone, and Microsoft Edge on my iPad.

[Rocketdog2112]

On 11/5/2023 at 5:22 AM, will0hlep said:

Linus' arguement was simply that "adblocker is piracy". He is (imo) right..

Maybe you and Linus need to read and interpret the meaning of Piracy.

 

Watching a YouTube video and blocking or skipping ads does not fit the description of Piracy aka "the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work". 

[Holmes108]

11 hours ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

Maybe you and Linus need to read and interpret the meaning of Piracy.

 

Watching a YouTube video and blocking or skipping ads does not fit the description of Piracy aka "the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work". 

 

 

Sounds like unauthorized use to me.

 

Edit: To be clear, I pirate stuff here and there. It's not a judgement on the action/person. Just a disagreement in definitions, I suppose. 

[DoctorNick]

23 hours ago, Vishera said:

The ad blocker that worked best for me was AdGuard - It circumvented the YouTube Anti-Adblock 99% of the time.

I had less success with Brave's build in adblock - It circumvented the YouTube Anti-Adblock 70% of the time.

I've also used adguard since I first heard about it 6-8 years ago and it just works. 

[TetraSky]

11 hours ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

Watching a YouTube video and blocking or skipping ads does not fit the description of Piracy aka "the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work". 

Disclaimer : I block ads.

That said, it's literally unauthorized use regardless of how you see it.

This is the only "authorized" way of getting rid of ads on Youtube:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3181017?hl=en&ref_topic=9257895&sjid=9709122582208201460-NC

Quote

Turn off ads

If you want to turn off ads on YouTube, check out our paid memberships for an ad-free experience. 

Anything other than this, is not "authorized" by the Youtube terms of services.

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, DoctorNick said:

I've also used adguard since I first heard about it 6-8 years ago and it just works. 

ublock Origin + adguard list. It just works and does a lot more. 

[Lurking]

Unless there is an applicable law prohibiting ad blockers, it can't be theft. Theft requires a violation of property rights. My viewing time isn't their property. If they want my eyeballs, they have to make better ads, or improve their technology. 

 

Morally it could be anything and everyone has their own standards. Some people support via Patreon, some don't even watch ads. But neither is legal theft. 

 

Same way I wasn't required to watch a TV ad, there is no legal requirement to watch YT ads. 

 

The actual reason companies pay for ads is to sell products. Someone just watching the ad itself is meaningless. So, if you argue about moral obligation to watch the ads, you should say anyone not actually buying an advertised product is stealing. Obviously this is nonsense, but not different from not watching ads. 

 

YT and the creators hope that their business model of free access and ads works for them. But there is no legal guarantee it does. Same way a grocery store sells or gives away a loss leader product in the hope people end up buying high margin item. There is nothing legally wrong for me to just eat the free samples, but not buying the product.

 

Any content creator who doesn't like this is free to start their own streaming platform, or get a regular job. There is a legal right to have that business model, but no legal guarantee for success. 

 

Anyone calling it theft should cite the exact federal or State law that says ad blocker use comes with some sort of penalty. 

[Holmes108]

1 hour ago, Lurking said:

Unless there is an applicable law prohibiting ad blockers, it can't be theft. Theft requires a violation of property rights. My viewing time isn't their property. If they want my eyeballs, they have to make better ads, or improve their technology. 

 

Morally it could be anything and everyone has their own standards. Some people support via Patreon, some don't even watch ads. But neither is legal theft. 

 

Same way I wasn't required to watch a TV ad, there is no legal requirement to watch YT ads. 

 

The actual reason companies pay for ads is to sell products. Someone just watching the ad itself is meaningless. So, if you argue about moral obligation to watch the ads, you should say anyone not actually buying an advertised product is stealing. Obviously this is nonsense, but not different from not watching ads. 

 

YT and the creators hope that their business model of free access and ads works for them. But there is no legal guarantee it does. Same way a grocery store sells or gives away a loss leader product in the hope people end up buying high margin item. There is nothing legally wrong for me to just eat the free samples, but not buying the product.

 

Any content creator who doesn't like this is free to start their own streaming platform, or get a regular job. There is a legal right to have that business model, but no legal guarantee for success. 

 

Anyone calling it theft should cite the exact federal or State law that says ad blocker use comes with some sort of penalty. 

 

I don't think too many (or any?) people are making a legal argument. Even Linus was pretty clear in just saying that it's effectively the same thing as piracy. Even piracy (in the truest sense of the word) is different than "real" theft, in my mind. Still reasonable to be a crime technically, but not really the same thing overall. So yeah, there's all kinds of differences, and nuance. But some of us still think there's little difference in bypassing ads, or simply cracking the .exe of that game you really want. 

 

I think many of the arguments against this concept (though not all, to be fair), come from a place of feeling offended of being called  "thief". But I don't think most of us are saying that. At least in any sort of judgmental, or negative context.