General > General Technical Chat
YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker
ve7xen:
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 18, 2023, 05:49:49 am ---You forget: even though I block the ads, they're still collecting information of my habits and sites I visit and videos I watch, and my e-mail address, and combining that information to a valuable packet of information advertisers are willing to buy (even if that packet contains the information on ad-blocker use). It is this information profile that they make their profit on, and their gathering of it and selling to others, that is the price I pay for using their services.
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Why do you believe that they 'sell' this information? This is oft claimed, but never substantiated, and it doesn't make any sense. Google is primarily an advertising company. They want their clients paying them to distribute ads. They are not interested in selling their competitive advantage at doing that directly to their competition, and indirectly leaking it to the world at large, at the same time burning their mostly-good reputation for protecting their users' data. People love to hate on Google, but I don't believe this is happening at any meaningful scale, it would be monumentally stupid for them to do so.
--- Quote ---The fact that you're considering me as "acting like they're entitled to consume Google's resources without giving anything in return", is both idiotic and offensive. Equating it with piracy puts you in my ignore list, because that shit just gets me angry, and that leads to no useful interaction.
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I should have said 'without paying the asking price', but the point is not substantially different. Google does not agree that the value you are providing is sufficient for the services you are consuming, and has started blocking you from consuming those resources in a way contrary to what they intended. I'm not sure why people feel so strongly entitled to doing this; they are Google's resources to offer under the terms they choose so they can operate a business, not given freely for the 'good of the world'. Nothing else in the world works like this, why the Internet?
--- Quote ---There is exactly one case where I condone media piracy: when the rights-owner does not want to sell the media to you at all.
(The reasons for this go deep into the roots of copyright, and the necessary interplay between culture and media, requiring a finite duration for copyright protection.)
Today, that is not the case anymore.
It is my opinion that Youtube and Google in general (as well as Meta and all other social media companies) already get an equitable "fee" out of users by collecting their information, packaging it, and selling it and making a profit out of it. (Note that advertisements are only a part of the entire equation: market analysis, focus group information, also involves a LOT of money, and these companies are making a tidy profit out of all this.)
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Do you condone media piracy when the price is 'too high' in the user's opinion? I don't think Altium is worth the asking price to me, should I just pirate it? Youtube and Google do not agree that what you are 'paying' is an equitable fee, and they have an alternative offer which you believe is too expensive (whether that is ads or the subscription). Unlike with media piracy, using their resources has a direct and quantifiable cost, and it maintains the similar-to-copyright aspect of viewing the material without compensating the creator under the terms they have offered. Subscriptions like this are the future of distribution for copyrighted material, media that can be 'pirated' is dying; if you don't believe similar terms should apply then I am confused why you believe copyright should exist at all.
I don't see how these are ethically substantially different beyond the fact that views actually directly cost the service provider real money, not just 'lost sales', which is not helping your case. In any case, arguing about this is not on topic, so I'll leave it there.
--- Quote ---Only that as long as they are collecting information on me to sell, I have the right to exploit their services back.
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I don't disagree at all about your right to exploit them, 'back' or not, though I don't think Google is selling your information in the way you believe, nor that this is your decision to unilaterally make, in contract disputes a court is needed to determine this. I don't believe blocking/skipping ads or circumventing technical measures should be illegal or punishable in any way, and I feel the same about copyrighted material, but the right to circumvent is not the same as the right to a service with no technical measures to circumvent, nor does it include the right for them to leave 'exploits' in place indefinitely.
--- Quote ---Being mutually beneficial, i.e. equitable relationships in the commercial sense, is extremely important to me. I refuse to exploit others – even Google –, but I also refuse to be exploited if I can do anything about it. If you do a search here, you'll even find posts where I explain that I have to block ads even here because they make it impossible for me to participate; but to compensate, I'm trying to be useful enough so that the cost to Dave is offset.
(To understand exactly how such offsetting works in real life, you need to understand why libraries increase rather than decrease author profits.)
--- End quote ---
If Dave has agreed to these terms, then great, you have an agreement that is mutually beneficial, equitable, and importantly agreed upon. If Dave has not agreed, you do not have the right to determine for him what are equitable terms, and that is frankly an absurd suggestion that this is how the world should work, with one party dictating what terms are 'equitable'. Equitable terms are arrived at through negotiation and agreement, not with one party doing what they want and claiming it must be equitable for both parties because it is equitable for them. In a sense, this is exactly what Google is doing to you, using your data in a way they believe is equitable, with you not in agreement. Except that I am quite sure they have been careful to explain exactly what they are and are not doing with your data in their privacy policies and user agreements.
MK14:
--- Quote from: ve7xen on October 18, 2023, 07:52:24 pm ---.........[[Very big post, I enjoyed reading it, I've NOT copied it to save room in this thread. Please click the link to it or see above, if you want to read it]].........
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I think in summary, you just said:
"Google are selling (via subscriptions or adverts), a video service. Which people should really be paying for (via subs or ads), just like any other business, such as can you walk into a car showroom and just drive away with an expensive car for free, if you can't or don't want to pay for it?".
My current feelings, are that in the same way we have Water, Electricity, Gas (in some cases), Telephone, Postal services and perhaps some other things. Considered, as basic Utilities (sort of human rights to get access to) services, that peoples homes should have.
Maybe more modern things, such as TV, Radio, Broadband (internet), also should be added to that list.
YouTube (as well as internet searches), seem to be becoming a 'standard' way of life, expected feature. The loss of which, would make things hard, at least for some people.
So, perhaps such things, should be more like basic household services. Rather than potentially high priced luxury items, which YouTube subscriptions, could become.
I.e. What about all the people who genuinely can neither afford the high (in some peoples opinions), subscription costs, and also can't stand the large number of spammy annoying adverts, at least for some people?
People basically 'need' YouTube, perhaps?
So, having a specific business, dictate most of its rules, control it, and decide how much to charge for it. Maybe, NOT the way things need to go ahead for the future.
ve7xen:
--- Quote from: MK14 on October 18, 2023, 08:14:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: ve7xen on October 18, 2023, 07:52:24 pm ---.........[[Very big post, I enjoyed reading it, I've NOT copied it to save room in this thread. Please click the link to it or see above, if you want to read it]].........
--- End quote ---
I think in summary, you just said:
"Google are selling (via subscriptions or adverts), a video service. Which people should really be paying for (via subs or ads), just like any other business, such as can you walk into a car showroom and just drive away with an expensive car for free, if you can't or don't want to pay for it?".
My current feelings, are that in the same way we have Water, Electricity, Gas (in some cases), Telephone, Postal services and perhaps some other things. Considered, as basic (sort of human rights to get access to) services, that peoples homes should have.
Maybe more modern things, such as TV, Radio, Broadband (internet), also should be added to that list.
YouTube (as well as internet searches), seem to be becoming a 'standard' way of life, expected feature. The loss of which, would make things hard, at least for some people.
So, perhaps such things, should be more like basic household services. Rather than potentially high priced luxury items, which YouTube subscriptions, could become.
I.e. What about all the people who genuinely can neither afford the high (in some peoples opinions), subscription costs, and also can't stand the large number of spammy annoying adverts, at least for some people?
People basically 'need' YouTube, perhaps?
So, having a specific business, dictate most of its rules, control it, and decide how much to charge for it. Maybe, NOT the way things need to go ahead for the future.
--- End quote ---
This is an idea I have thought about in the past as well. As far as the infrastructure part (to deliver Internet service), IMO this is absolutely a no-brainer, but at least in North America I don't see how we arrive at it without the will of the government to act with authority in a way that will cause significant, possibly catastrophic, harm to the existing infrastructure companies, which seems like a tough mountain to climb. This part of the system is a natural monopoly due to the cost of building the infrastructure and the fact that it makes no economic sense to duplicate it. I've been gunning for this for a long time, but at least here in Canada it seems less and less likely as time goes on.
On the services side, I agree that some level of 'social network' kind of services is probably something that should be treated more like a utility, but I have no idea how that would work in practice, since these products rely so much on the network effect and I don't think it'd make sense to 'ban' private efforts, probably the publicly funded option is just not as good on some other axes as some commercial offerings, and has trouble succeeding. Also hard to imagine how this would work in a global economy, with no global jurisdiction to make the rules and pay for it, but at the same time no borders. Maybe you could just ban competing products from having ads altogether, forcing them to rely on subscriptions, driving most users to the publicly funded version? Seems heavy-handed though.
In general we are seeing more and more verticalization and consolidation across many segments of the economy, so stronger consumer monopoly protections, especially surrounding digital platforms, are warranted IMO. This might enable forcing them not to bundle these subscriptions together, more transparency about costs and pricing. Maybe the advertising arms of these companies could be split from the service arms, to change the incentives against collecting data they are not allowed to share for advertising purposes.
Lots of ideas, but none if it sounds all that realistic to me.
MK14:
--- Quote from: ve7xen on October 18, 2023, 08:29:30 pm ---Lots of ideas, but none if it sounds all that realistic to me.
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It is VERY tricky, indeed. It is well known, about the problems of publicly run (government/committee) organisations vs privately run businesses.
With something very technically complicated (in real terms), such as YouTube, considering a goverment created and run version, would really worry me!
I'm guess/speculating, but they would form committees, who wouldn't have a clue about YouTube, the internet or technical things, or even real businesses. They would come up with a set of rules, such as my example below:
* Age restrictions don't work, so everything must be suitable for very young people
* Strictly no copyright violations. So no music, movie clips, clips from other videos, or any brand identifying things, whatsoever
* No smoke, fire, flames, or showing inside items (sorry BigClive), as it might give children the wrong idea
* Not everyone understands electronics, computers, maths, science. So that it is all-inclusive and everyone feels safe and happy. Strictly no technical, electronic, scientific, mathematical etc content allowed
* Each video, before being allowed on the new system. Has to be verified, by a committee of 12 people, repeated in 95 different countries. If even 1 person disagrees with that video, the entire video channel is permanently banned, with no options for appeal
* The IT infrastructure, will be run and sorted out by the government
* All videos will be permanently deleted, after 7 days. Which is plenty of time to give to people to watch them, surely?
* There will be strictly no adverts, whatsoever. So anyone worried about that, doesn't need to. All videos, will have a short government safety clip, only 5 or 10 minutes long, unskippable for safety reasons, only at the start, end, middle, and various chapter positions, throughout each video
* There will be no cost for the video creators, at all. Totally free. It will be paid for by the new, viewing tax, where each YouTube channel owner, will pay a tax, for each view. What can be fairer than that?
thm_w:
SmartTube is still working for me on the TV with no ads and no prompts.
So maybe one solution is faking the browser ID as being a smart TV (as was sort of mentioned above).
--- Quote from: peter-h on October 18, 2023, 01:34:10 pm ---What surprises me is that you can make a browser which strips off the adverts without the server being able to detect it, but nobody has done it.
It would render the page onto a hidden pane and then implement an adblocker on a second, visible, pane.
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True but it will come, if needed. The advantage of existing adblockers was that you saved bandwidth/time by not downloading the ads.
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