Why do we expect any free service not to have ads?
Youtube has the right to serve ads along with the content, but it does not have the right to dictate what I can or can’t do with the data once it hits my machine. It has no more right to hijack my property to force them upon me than it does to strap me to a chair and force my eyes open, A Clockwork Orange style.
If Youtube doesn’t like that arrangement, its recourse is to serve a 403: forbidden instead of the video data.
There’s also a deeper discussion to be had whether corporations have any sort of right to exist in their current form in the first place, but I’ll leave that for another time.
Is is like muting during a commercial break, or going out of the room to do something else. What happens in my home, is under my control. You want to stop me from doing that? Refuse to serve me content. I’m fine with that
It’s like flipping over the ad pages in a magazine. It’s like taking the advertisement brochures out of a newspaper and throwing them into the trash. It’s like leaving the room during halftime break. It’s like taping a show without the commercial breaks. It’s like walking past a poster without reading it. It’s like getting your letters from the mailbox and throwing away the advertising mailers. It’s like going to the cinema and talking during the ads that are playing before the movie. It’s like walking down the sidewalk and ignoring the people trying to sell you merchandise. It’s like switching channels when commercials come on.
But for some reason, people are trying to tell me that I’m ethically and morally in the wrong for blocking fucking YouTube ads.