Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
Here’s an interesting idea: pay for what you consume. We can argue whether ads or a YouTube Premium are a fair price, but I don’t think you’d have a moral or legal leg to stand on if your argument is that Google must provide you with hosting and streaming for free.
You are consuming resources on Google’s computers. I think they have a right to ask for payment.
To me, the ad tracking industry is completely out of control, and I’m not going to disable my ad blocker. So I signed up for YouTube Premium.
I hear you but this seems to largely ignore that we are all already paying google, a lot. It is only thanks to their unscrupulous private data harvesting that they have become the mastodon they are. This has been going on for so long and only in the recent past to we get the scale of this effort. Now they want us to pay them too, while nothing is changing on the data privacy side? Frankly, I don’t think they deserve our trust. It’s not like paying makes them get any less of our private data, so they are basically double dipping. That does not sit well with me.
I’m all for paying for a due service, but I also have expectations of data privacy rights. Those are mostly vanishing into thin air with google…
I’m surprised they don’t gift YouTube Premium to Google One subscribers. The same way Amazon does with their streaming service and Prime.
That’s what I want. Give me a Google One tier where I can pay whatever amount and don’t see ads in any Google product.
If you feel strongly that Google is a data-gathering evil so great that they deserve not a sliver of your money or attention, then stop using YouTube.
Sorry, but you can’t make a moral argument for your position. What you want is to benefit from Google’s services without paying them. That’s it. That’s the whole argument. It doesn’t really matter if you like them or not, really. You’re arguing that you deserve free service.
That is not a morally sustainable argument.
I’m arguing I’m already paying…
Additionally, google has no right to how the website they serve me is displayed in my browser on my computer. If they send me the video stream despite me not looking at their ads, that’s on them. What happens in my browser on my machine should not be Google’s business.
As long as Google illegally tracks my online movement and scrapes my data, I can do whatever the fuck I want to them.
They are the ones in the wrong.
Hey, look at you so high in your horse!
Morals are subjective anyway.
So you can’t say “you can’t make a moral argument.”
Of course OP can!
Here’s another example: before the era of music streaming, downloading pirated mp3s was the norm. The music industry is notoriously explotative of artists, so, you may build a case about how immoral it is to download a pirated mp3, while I can build a case that I’m morally obligated not to give the music industry money since very little goes to the artist. I’d rather buy their merch or go to their concerts.
Then the music industry sued regular people for thousands of dollars per downloaded song just to make an example of them. Well fuck that. From that moment on, I swore to never buy music from the RIAA again, because what they were doing was immoral.
I can’t escape Google’s ecosystem even if I tried my best. They’re constantly following me around even if I tell them “no, don’t do that, leave me alone.” So, fuck them. I’ll play dirty too. I’m morally obligated to do so.
They may be subjective, but they exist as a concept and can be discussed. Morals describe the value system from which you make decisions and build consensus. Pretending they don’t matter is nihilistic and self-serving.
Let me frame this issue a different way: when Google doesn’t make money from showing you ads, or getting money from your subscriptions, they don’t pay the creators for your views. Are you arguing this is also OK? Will you promise to support each creator directly instead? Or are you only interested in getting entertainment for free?
While the RIAA does continue to exploit artists, it’s now possible to support many artists directly by buying their albums online, buying merchandise, and attending their concerts. Do you do any of that, or are you simply pirating music for your consumption?
Let me frame this another way.
Google is monopolistic and kills any other competitor from competing. Thus preventing consumer choice.
Google is already one of the biggest companies in the world. I’ve never given them a penny in my 2 decades of service use. Yet the line goes up.
They exist because of us the consumer.
They also don’t pay, let alone treat, their creators fairly. Although they are 99% the reason they exist.
Yet Google wants more because line must go up.
There are other services I pay for such as nebula, float plane, patron specifics. But not all creators can sustain that. And I doubt it I pay for YouTube that will change. Because spoiler alert. YouTube don’t pay well. It’s sponsors and merch that keep creators alive.
I probably will do that tbh. Youtube is like reddit to me - I’m addicted and I’d take the opportunity to quit.
Someone breaks into your house and steals something from you. This person is also selling bananas at the supermarket. Am I morally required to pay for those bananas when I shop at that store?
Your argument makes the most sense to me only if it’s limited to basic exchange of goods, but Google doesn’t exist in a vacuum and mega-corporations should be everyone’s shit list.
Imagine criticising the morals of the end user (a paying one, at that), but not of the multi billion dollar company holding them hostage (and exploiting their employees, and avoiding tax, and deliberately enshitifying their services out of pure greed, and so on and on and on)…
Is boot really that flavoursome, or are you just a clueless clown doing the bidding for the evil overlords for no good reason at all?
Either way, it’s a pretty pathetic look…
And you’re paying to keep it that way. You’re not paying for the added value YT Premium supposedly has, but to disable the enshitification they added on purpose for you to pay.
The only added value premium has is being able to switch off the screen and maintain YT playing. Still I’m not paying a 14$ subscription just for that. I pay that value for much more valuable software for my every day use with real added value.
Here’s an idea: my user activity generates marketable data for Google, so get rid of the ads or start paying me.
Pay for what you consume is a fantastic idea for a service that hasnt been free for it’s lifetime, and only really grew popular because it was free. Just like every other company, it seems YT would rather keep squeezing every last cent out of the consumer in hopes of a “record profit year!”.
They still harvesting your data. So not only do you pay for product monthly but you also pay with your data.
This data is so important they are able to subsidize either YouTube or YouTube music.
Legally I have no right.
Morally I have right to pay to not be tracked. If thats the case I would pay.
But paying a high price for one product forced to get at same time being harvesting my data?
No thanks I will watch my YouTube free as I am already paying them with my data.
You already paid for those resources, at least half of it. YouTube put caching appliances on your ISP data center, and they don’t pay for electricity and bandwidth to your ISP you paid for. YouTube cost for serving video is incredibly low, yet they keep increasing the subscription price. This is purely money grabbing by Google instead of simply covering their cost. They are already profitable before removing their lowest subscription tier.
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It’s totally not fair that a Bently costs so much money. Sure, I could, you know, buy a different car, but fuck Bently for their unfair pricing model, so I regularly steal them.
I’m sure Bently would love to have me not stealing their cars and Google could not give less of a fuck about not having to lose money from you consuming content and server resources without paying. Over half of the money YouTube makes goes to creators. Consider who you’re stealing from.
Edit: you = OP
You wouldn’t download a Bently.
Holy fucking shit I had no idea that I couldn’t download a car. So if it’s really easy to take something without paying, it’s legit, but if it’s difficult and I might actually go to jail, then it’s not. Got it.
It’s easier to take because it’s fundamentally different. If I take my neighbour’s crops they can’t eat or sell them but if I take their poem they still have it and can perform it. Laws to restrict unauthorised copying will be arbitrary instead of a simple concept like “don’t steal the thing”.
It’s mind-blowing how people think they have a God-given right to freeload and leech off of the tech, music, film and television industries. For big tech in particular they whine and bitch about having to watch ads, having their data collected in bulk and being asked to pay for services they’ve been using for free for years. Meanwhile content creators on YouTube in particular have been hit by many unpopular advertiser friendly guidelines and taken many revenue hits because Google remain beholden to their key stakeholders which are the advertisers. Adblock users are part of the reason why so many content creators have to now resort to shilling crappy VPNs or mobile gacha games in every single one of their videos just to break even.
Similar argument goes with the entertainment industry. “How fucking dare they stop me from stealing all these shows and movies!” “How fucking dare they move their stuff to rival streaming services!” It’s more baffling that they think a single $9.99 a month ad-free subscription is going to pay for an entire industry when production costs are skyrocketing and the industry previously enjoyed much higher pricing under the cable model.
“This shit is getting as bad as cable” is another argument I often see thrown around by people justifying piracy because they want to freeload, as if you are being forced to subscribe to every single platform all at once. Cable hardly even gave consumers that choice to pick and choose. You had to pay dozens, if not over a hundred dollars a month to Comcast, TWC, etc for access to everything, even a lot of stuff you otherwise didn’t want to watch.
FTFY
It’s what they do. Extract rent for user generated content - whether that be videos or advertising metrics. The disparity between the value users provide to Google and that which Google provides to users is immense.
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