rossman has lost the plot, hasn't he?

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

As for not needing ads, read my apart above your quoted text. There is no such thing as free content.

counterpoint:

 

if youtube can't guarantee the safety of their ads and compensate users for any damage done accordingly, they should just close shop.

[starsmine]

3 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

counterpoint:

 

if youtube can't guarantee the safety of their ads and compensate users for any damage done accordingly, they should just close shop.

counterpoint. 
Youtube ads are a god damn video, not malicious javascript. they are not going to break into your computer and run a virus. 

 

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

There is no such thing as free content.

bilibili has entered the chat.

[Mark Kaine]

9 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Youtube ads are a god damn video

Thats cool, shouldn't be too hard to block then!

 

 

[Neroon]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

Never said it couldn’t be fixed. But as an American I know these companies won’t do their due diligence, even if the government is breathing down their necks. To me the burden of proof that ads are safe are on companies that sell ad space. Knowing that these corporations don’t give a fuck means I ain’t going to give one either. 

It is already fixed on sites. So either you are sticking with the story that all are bad, or you come the side of rational thinking, and state that a lot is problematic, but definitely not all, and that ads in itself are not the problem.

 

Discussions are not done in absolutes. Using words like 'all' 'nothing' etc are extremely problematic and very rarely true. This not being an exception.

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

And I struggle with how people defend these corporations as if they need your money while they want to force intrusive and dangerous ads onto everyone. Ad blockers are simply a solution to the problem these companies have caused, people don't want to view ads and have lost trust with seeing ads at all given that even allowing them is a security risk.

Most companies are going to sell your data no matter if you pay or not, especially with Youtube, so IMO people should have no issue with using an ad blocker, just support the content creators you watch if you feel like you want to support them.

Except youtube/google will still collect data regardless if you pay for it, so it isn't free as a user.

Also as Rossmann points out in the video ,YT/Google wants to verify your home address after you sign up for YT premium, IMO that sounds like an invasion of privacy. But YT/Google won't ask for that if you use an ad blocker instead of paying to remove ads. The point of the video is people shouldn't be so accepting of paying for things and still getting treated like crap or getting an even worse service than you could for free.

I'm a socialist, I'm not of the believe that companies have to be protected. I also said nothing that would imply that I believe that.

 

That is not the same as understanding that companies need to make money to operate.

Companies needing money, and companies doing fucked up things, are not the same thing. You can agree that they need money, and that if everyone runs adblockers that they will close down, and also agree that their ads are so problematic that the site is unusable/unsafe without them.

Adblockers are not the solution to these problems, laws on how ads are done is the solution.

 

51 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

counterpoint:

 

if youtube can't guarantee the safety of their ads and compensate users for any damage done accordingly, they should just close shop.

That's not a counterpoint. And I already stated that the ways ads are done should change.

38 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

bilibili has entered the chat.

And you think that site is free? You think no one is paying for that?

 

I don't know how it's paid for, but I'm gonna do a guess that it's government controller and that they pay for it? How does the government get that money?

[NavyCobra1417]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

counterpoint:

 

if youtube can't guarantee the safety of their ads and compensate users for any damage done accordingly, they should just close shop.

Guess we should shut down the whole internet then.

 

It's been a good run y'all

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

Using words like 'all' 'nothing' etc are extremely problematic and very rarely true. This not being an exception.

When it comes the safety and security of my person or property (ex: Computer security) it is all or nothing.

 

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

It is already fixed on sites

Is there a 100% guarantee across the whole internet? If the answer is not 100% then its not fixed.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

And you think that site is free? You think no one is paying for that?

it's free, there are *no ads* (*very* few exceptions,  but not traditional ads for sure, but the vast majority has no ads at all)

 

you can buy coins to give to uploaders, everything above 1080p is also not *free* but big whoop lol, most videos aren't higher res natively anyways...

 

basically how it works: 

Spoiler

so everyone can write "barrages" (scrolling text over the video) honestly its great fun, and you can turn it off so its not distracting,  but *premium* user get color for their scrolling text... that's it, tons of people doing that, *that's* how bilibili makes money mostly - its not much, but enough to get them by  - all for Hatsune Miku, my friend (true story btw)

 

 

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

don't know how it's paid for, but I'm gonna do a guess that it's government controller and that they pay for it? How does the government get that money?

you what, mate? nah Hatsune Miku rules over bilibili,  no government involvement,  that's the great thing about it

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, NavyCobra1417 said:

Guess we should shut down the whole internet then.

 

It's been a good run y'all

long overdue tbh yeah (seriously the internet was never intended to "make money" so if that's how you see it or what it has become,  yes, shut it all down... restart)

 

Spoiler

wait, but make it so bilibili stays online,  tyvm ~

 

[Neroon]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

When it comes the safety and security of my person or property (ex: Computer security) it is all or nothing.

 

Is there a 100% guarantee across the whole internet? If the answer is not 100% then its not fixed.

Yeah I'm done with you. We are having a discussion, not setting up your PC.

 

7 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

it's free, there are *no ads* (*very* few exceptions,  but not traditional ads for sure, but the vast majority has no ads at all)

 

you can buy coins to give to uploaders, everything above 1080p is also not *free* but big whoop lol, most videos aren't higher res natively anyways...

 

basically how it works: 

  Reveal hidden contents

so everyone can write "barrages" (scrolling text over the video) honestly its great fun, and you can turn it off so its not distracting,  but *premium* user get color for their scrolling text... that's it, tons of people doing that, *that's* how bilibili makes money mostly - its not much, but enough to get them by  - all for Hatsune Miku, my friend (true story btw)

 

 

you what, mate? nah Hatsune Miku rules over bilibili,  no government involvement,  that's the great thing about it

 

 

You don't get it now do you. Free for you, doesn't mean it's free to run. Like I said, someone is paying for it, and you argue against is by then telling me who's paying for it and that it makes a profit. Go think about that for 5 minutes and come back to tell me if someone is paying for it or not, and how every site needs to pay the bills somehow.

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

You don't get it now do you. Free for you, doesn't mean it's free to run. Like I said, someone is paying for it, and you argue against is by then telling me who's paying for it and that it makes a profit. Go think about that for 5 minutes and come back to tell me if someone is paying for it or not, and how every site needs to pay the bills somehow.

no, you don’t get it. if not enough people pay for your service then your service isn't profitable,  hence you either need to change your business model or need to close shop.

yt's business model (amongst other things like the search algorithm)  are horrible,  and apparently they are unable or unwilling to change their business model, sooo

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

Yeah I'm done with you

its a valid concern tho, if someone tries to have the best security then you cant just tell them to turn off adblockers, doesn't matter if its "just videos" no exceptions,  adblockers are 100% on, as said if your business model relies on brainwashing, threatening people's  security and generally just selling snake oil, maybe your business shouldn't exist in the first place. 

[Soukamoshirenai]

26 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

its a valid concern tho, if someone tries to have the best security then you cant just tell them to turn off adblockers, doesn't matter if its "just videos" no exceptions,  adblockers are 100% on, as said if your business model relies on brainwashing, threatening people's  security and generally just selling snake oil, maybe your business shouldn't exist in the first place. 

what security? the only ad blockers youtube blocks are the intrusive/shady ones that could actually compromise your security, in fact, AdBlock was the one popping out windows asking for donations some time ago.

 

that being said, i doubt anyone here is asking people to turn off adblockers, just use a normal instead of the absurd trickery you've done to block pre-roll ads. ublock origin doesn't block pre-roll ads and that's exactly why youtube allows it, i haven't had a single "turn off your adblocker" screen in different 5 computers.

[Sauron]

13 hours ago, Vilacom said:

Wikipedia also actually survives by large donations($50,000+) from more than 20 "Major Benefactors" one of which is google that gave 3 million in 2022.

And you're under the impression there wouldn't be any large donors interested in having youtube exist?

 

By the way, if there aren't, so be it... maybe we'd be better served by multiple smaller platforms. Or perhaps the people uploading hundreds of GB per month to the website should be the ones paying for that storage.

13 hours ago, Vilacom said:

Edit: To be clear as well, that is just the OPERATING budget for youtube, it includes none of the money that gets paid out to creators which reportedly averaged about 10 billion per year getting paid to creators alone from ad revenue....so that 60 bucks is gonna need to go up quite a bit if 10 billion is the 45% of ad revenue that actually goes to creators. 

This is a separate problem; creators have other ways of being paid, including direct donations to them and sponsors. I also don't feel any obligation towards making "content creator" a profitable business venture... it's great if people can make enough money to live by making videos but I also won't lose any sleep over them having to find a normal job instead.

16 hours ago, Neroon said:

I mean you can't guarantee any 100% safety in anything. LMG could put malicious shit on this forum tomorrow. It's that simple.

And it would be less likely to make it to your machine with an ad blocker. This is one of the few sites I somewhat trust with ads though.

17 hours ago, Neroon said:

What can happen is that sites take control of the ads, just like back in the day. Basically you pay us X amount per month, you send us the image of your ad, and we host it on our site with a link to the main page of your site, also we will only host ads for reputable companies.

Difficult to enforce and also does not prevent sites from placing the ads in an intrusive way.

17 hours ago, Neroon said:

As for not needing ads, read my apart above your quoted text. There is no such thing as free content.

Believe it or not people sometimes do cool things for free. I've certainly never seen a dime for the thousands of posts I've typed out here and neither do the vast majority of those who upload to youtube, which would not exist and certainly not have a de facto monopoly without the content those people upload for free. The early internet was full of free content people just shared with the world expecting nothing in return, often paying for their own hosting. It's partially the fault of companies like google that this isn't possible anymore.

 

There are also business models that don't involve ads if you want to make money from something. It's not my problem to ensure a private company makes a return on their investment after muscling out everyone else. If they want to paywall youtube then I say just get on with it; but I have a feeling they don't do it because it would kill their monopoly, so... not my problem.

 

By the way, none of you are addresing my observation that if they simply didn't track ad views we wouldn't be having this discussion because there wouldn't be a problem.

[Soukamoshirenai]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

1. The only reason there's a fuss about this is that trackers exist and ad providers have had the stupid, but profitable on the short term, idea of using them to track viewing statistics. By doing this they screwed themselves over; now if I block the ad the advertiser does not see a view and does not pay Google or whoever else for that placement. This is an insane and invasive way of doing things; ads you see on billboards don't track how many people look up (yet) and are paid for nonetheless. If they simply removed tracking data and asked for upfront payment for a certain appearance frequency this would not be an issue on either side.

2. By the way, none of you are addresing my observation that if they simply didn't track ad views we wouldn't be having this discussion because there wouldn't be a problem.

i really doubt the great majority of ad block proponents care about being tracked since ad blockers do very little regarding tracking anyway, they just want the premium ad-free service for free when ublock origin (which is allowed in youtube) blocks most ads (including those in youtube) except only for the pre-roll ads. 

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, taekononomiya said:

i really doubt the great majority of ad block proponents care about being tracked since ad blockers do very little regarding tracking anyway, they just want the premium ad-free service for free when ublock origin (which is allowed in youtube) blocks most ads (including those in youtube) except only for the pre-roll ads. 

That's not what I mean. If google didn't track ad views it wouldn't make a difference to them and their pay cut whether you're blocking the ad or not.

 

ublock origin so far has blocked all youtube ads for me.

[Soukamoshirenai]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

That's not what I mean. If google didn't track ad views it wouldn't make a difference to them and their pay cut whether you're blocking the ad or not.

 

ublock origin so far has blocked all youtube ads for me.

i feel that im being gaslighted.

• your ublock has blocked all ads.
• mine has never blocked pre-roll ads.
• others are claiming that youtube is blocking their ublock extension.
  • this claim includes that it's being rolled out to different regions and that's why i haven't (yet) gotten the youtube "turn off your adblocker" notice. 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, taekononomiya said:

what security? the only ad blockers youtube blocks are the intrusive/shady ones that could actually compromise your security, in fact, AdBlock was the one popping out windows asking for donations some time ago.

 

that being said, i doubt anyone here is asking people to turn off adblockers, just use a normal instead of the absurd trickery you've done to block pre-roll ads. ublock origin doesn't block pre-roll ads and that's exactly why youtube allows it, i haven't had a single "turn off your adblocker" screen in different 5 computers.

you're assuming *way* too much... if its not clear yet I only use ubo and channel blocker, and i don't care if yt "allows" either,  i don't work for them, they aren't my boss... there's also no "contract", so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Mark Kaine]

Just now, taekononomiya said:

i feel that im being gaslighted.

mutually exclusive feeling tbh..

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, taekononomiya said:

thers are claiming that youtube is blocking their ublock extension.

You have to keep the extension updated and make sure you block lists are being updated frequently. Also YouTube hasnt started harnessing everyone yet, they have been slowly roiling this out.

[Mark Kaine]

35 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

You have to keep the extension updated and make sure you block lists are being updated frequently. Also YouTube hasnt started harnessing everyone yet, they have been slowly roiling this out.

that's the concerning part about this... i noticed yesterday my channel blocker partially stopped working ... still can block channels,  but not channels from people commenting, not directly at least... that's what i used it most for lol... write a stupid comment that clearly didn't watch the video... write a stupid comment about what is said in the video as if you personally just figured that out lol, any mention of "flat earthers".... and so on (yes, i would have to block myself now lmao)  

 

 

sus! i hope its just a bug, needs updating or whatever. 

[Neroon]

4 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

no, you don’t get it. if not enough people pay for your service then your service isn't profitable,  hence you either need to change your business model or need to close shop.

yt's business model (amongst other things like the search algorithm)  are horrible,  and apparently they are unable or unwilling to change their business model, sooo

You say YT's business model is horrible, yet they are make shitloads of money. So please explain how it’s horrible? That you dislike it, doesn't make their business model horrible.

So what would be a good business model? All free? Who is gonna pay for it? Not just the hosting, but also lawsuits (if you got a videoplatform, it will happen), employees etc etc. Go look at what YT costs, now tell me your non intrusive plan that keeps the site going.

4 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

its a valid concern tho, if someone tries to have the best security then you cant just tell them to turn off adblockers, doesn't matter if its "just videos" no exceptions,  adblockers are 100% on, as said if your business model relies on brainwashing, threatening people's  security and generally just selling snake oil, maybe your business shouldn't exist in the first place. 

Did I say or ask him to disable it? All me devices have them. This is a discussion about how it can be done safely. Just stating it isn't possible is just stupid, because it absolutely is.

There is 1 site I actively whitelist, they have made it very clear how they are handling ads, like I said, they are locally hosted and the advertiser has zero control over it, accept of course by requesting changes. Advertisers are handpicked and if there are issues, they can and will remove them.

Yes this is rare, but it's possible. We are talking about what's possible here. If you can only say it's not possible, then you shouldn't be in this thread, because it's not constructive.

 

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

And it would be less likely to make it to your machine with an ad blocker. This is one of the few sites I somewhat trust with ads though.

Difficult to enforce and also does not prevent sites from placing the ads in an intrusive way.

Believe it or not people sometimes do cool things for free. I've certainly never seen a dime for the thousands of posts I've typed out here and neither do the vast majority of those who upload to youtube, which would not exist and certainly not have a de facto monopoly without the content those people upload for free. The early internet was full of free content people just shared with the world expecting nothing in return, often paying for their own hosting. It's partially the fault of companies like google that this isn't possible anymore.

 

There are also business models that don't involve ads if you want to make money from something. It's not my problem to ensure a private company makes a return on their investment after muscling out everyone else. If they want to paywall youtube then I say just get on with it; but I have a feeling they don't do it because it would kill their monopoly, so... not my problem.

 

By the way, none of you are addresing my observation that if they simply didn't track ad views we wouldn't be having this discussion because there wouldn't be a problem.

Less likely... well that's a comforting argument. My point is that there are always risks, and if they wanted to be malicious, I doubt an adblocker would pick up on it fast enough, hell most things couldn't even be picked up, like them selling all our info.

 

The point is, if LMG controls the ads they are showing, then the ad is as safe as anything else on this site.

 

If sites place ads in a way that are too intrusive, then you can just stop using them. If we keep using them, keep linking to them etc, we only get people who don't use adblockers on these sites.

I've stopped watching channels who kept mercilessly pushing their shitty products and ads so much, that my YT bar looked like a rainbow. Even though sponsorblock kills all that, I just didn't want to watch people who are that obnoxious.

 

You still don't get it. Someone is still paying for that free stuff. Just because you and I place these messages for free, doesn't mean this site is free. Free for us? Yes. Free for LMG? No. Now how do you think LMG gets the money to run this site? Do you get it now?

 

That's the whole thing about adblockers. We use them, meaning websites don't make money on us, they lose money. They make this back on donations, subscriptions, ads etc. Just because we are getting/taking a free ride, doesn't mean others aren't paying for it. Like I said, nothing is free.

 

Btw has your mother ever told you to close the damn door because heating isn't free, or turn your lights off? Yeah you didn't have to pay for it, but she did.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

Just stating it isn't possible is just stupid, because it absolutely is.

yeah, idk who said its not possible tho (maybe missed it)

 

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

You say YT's business model is horrible, yet they are make shitloads of money. So please explain how it’s horrible? That you dislike it, doesn't make their business model horrible.

that i dislike it is what kinda makes it horrible, indeed lol.

 

Maybe but you got the receipts?  

 

[Vilacom]

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

23 hours ago, Vilacom said:

Wikipedia also actually survives by large donations($50,000+) from more than 20 "Major Benefactors" one of which is google that gave 3 million in 2022.

And you're under the impression there wouldn't be any large donors interested in having youtube exist?

 

By the way, if there aren't, so be it... maybe we'd be better served by multiple smaller platforms. Or perhaps the people uploading hundreds of GB per month to the website should be the ones paying for that storage.

Orders of magnitude difference, there is no donation structure that would enable youtube to replace the nearly 30 billion it takes in per year, that's nearly 6% of literally all global charitable giving(which wikipedia is counted as).  Charging for video storage is certainly something that will likely be considered at some point, but that would really hurt the real overall value of youtube, which far from being the 1-2% of videos released by major channels and mostly comes from non monetized content that probably never breaks 100k views.  Quick little repair videos, educational content, entire MIT courses available for free.  

There are already multiple smaller platforms, and to a one they require subscriptions to access content and limit what can be uploaded/who can upload.  Floatplane is a great example, you and I cannot sign up and start making video content on it, and even if we did no one who wasn't willing to pay for it could see it.  So if you wanted to make a go of making money by making video content it will never come from STARTING on one of those sites.  It's why youtube is so popular and the fact that you can upload anything you want for free enables things that you never would see on any of those other sites as well as the development what has probably become the most comprehensive accumulation of human knowledge and history that has ever existed.

 

 

9 hours ago, Sauron said:

23 hours ago, Vilacom said:

Edit: To be clear as well, that is just the OPERATING budget for youtube, it includes none of the money that gets paid out to creators which reportedly averaged about 10 billion per year getting paid to creators alone from ad revenue....so that 60 bucks is gonna need to go up quite a bit if 10 billion is the 45% of ad revenue that actually goes to creators. 

This is a separate problem; creators have other ways of being paid, including direct donations to them and sponsors. I also don't feel any obligation towards making "content creator" a profitable business venture... it's great if people can make enough money to live by making videos but I also won't lose any sleep over them having to find a normal job instead.

There are many ways of being paid, but those all require some degree of success before you can ever take advantage of them.  The passive income from ads also is what enables a number of creators to make content without needing to get into some of the problems that can come from dealing with sponsors and the legal side of things they may not have a good understand of or want to engage with period.  

As for making content creator a profitable business venture...I mean yes you do, you consume media, presumable you enjoy things like television shows and movies, all this is just different aspects of the entertainment industry.  Technology has just finally gotten to where you dont need hundreds of thousands of dollars in specialized equipment to make high quality video content and then be able to negotiate distribution rights and logistics in order to actually get that content in front of people who might want to see it.  Which is great, because youtube has added an incredible amount of value to the world as a whole that is available for free.  People with no access to effective schools but have a decent internet connection can get a pretty damn decent education/training for thousands of potential jobs.  Not to mention news distribution and information that might never have been available without it.

It's easy to get lost in the idea that the value from youtube comes from channels like review/showcase type channels like LTT or pure entertainment stuff like Mr Beast or gaming focused channels.  But that's really just what pays for the actual value with the high quality children's channels, educational content, and I'll include the good review channels in there as well.  It's fantastic for photographers like myself even if the clickbait stuff gets pretty annoying.  

Obviously its not your obligation to make it a profitable business venture, but the idea that just because you don't like how distribution/monetization is being handled means you can just bypass the way those platforms are making money...i mean it only works because in this particular form factor(a website) there can be ways to trivially(for now) bypass those monetization practices and still enjoy the full functionality and experience that's intended.  Basically everything else you have to actually give up the service or item you're upset about.  So the argument only exists in exactly this context, if I said I hated how this grocery chain was doing their checkout or required me to make a profile for their customer database so I just walked out of the store with a cart full of food no one would bat an eye if I ended up in legal trouble or would tell me too bad then you'll have to go to another store.  

 

[QuantumSingularity]

What i don't get from all of this is why is no one using the path of least resistance - VPN and Indian premium subscription. It's ~$1.55 month and i have been using it for well over 3 years now. I think Argentina even in some months dips below $1, but the price deviations there are wild. Why are people trying to swim against the current, instead of calmly turning on their back and steadily move left or right towards the shore? It's braindead easy, it takes less than 2 minutes and i still don't have a clue why is no one using it. I get it when we are talking about non-tech-savy people, but in PC enthusiasts forums ??!?!? C'mon guys... It's basically like pressing "I am 18 or over" when you are actually 17 and on a site that requires basic age confirmation.