I know the topic of whether adblock is piracy is debated, but I am guessing there are a lot of adblock users here and I was wondering if anyone has seen the youtube adblock warning message in the wild. I use ublock origin and still haven’t seen it once.
I know the topic of whether adblock is piracy is debated
Its not debated. Its bullshit.
flat earthers existing doesnt put the earth’s sensual curves up for debate either.
Don’t give them any ideas. lol Otherwise, cable boxes around the world are likely to receive a firmware update that blocks you from changing channels during commercials.
All future displays will have built in cameras that start dimming and turn off the screen if it notices you aren’t paying attention. They’ll say it is a power saving feature, but not put in an option to disable it.
Exactly. You’re being fed HTML etc and then deciding how to render it (or part of it in the case of ad blocking). This isn’t piracy. There’s no rules that come with the HTML in terms of how to render it. Different browsers can render it a number of different ways so how is not rendering part of it any different?
It is indeed a ludicrous idea.
It’s one of Lienus’s L takes. People are giving it the benefit of a doubt because he has a huge following.
I started parroting “using a VPN to bypass region block is privateering” in response. LMG taking any VPN sponsorships after that L take is hypocrisy in my book.
Yeah it’s even more ridiculous when you apply this logic to sponsored segments.
It’s an ad, I skip it by seeking in the video, therefore it is piracy?
Also, people get arrested and fined for piracy where I live (because it is, well, illegal), so people blocking ads should go to prison?
When the face of LMG talks about things like this in a main channel video they should look into the consequences of the opinion they present.
Excuse the language, but what the actual fuck was Linus thinking?
Like what is the actual end goal here?
Linus says people should be punished for blocking ads, and the best way he thinks it should be executed is by law enforcement? Last time I checked that is how illegal actions are usually handled.
Why hyprocisy? It’s a fair point to say circumventing paying in some way is piracy. It’s possible, so anyone can decide for themselves.
The hypocrisy lies in Linus preaching “ad blocking is piracy” while taking VPN sponsors which enables piracy in another way.
Gotta work on that reading comprehension friend.
If blocking ads is enough to constitute piracy then piracy ceases to lose meaning since then every act of using any website with an Adblocker is an act of piracy. At that point piracy becomes a meaningless phrase when even the FBI endorses the piracy tool.
For Linus to insinuate that a crime is being committed by comparing it to piracy is ridiculous, since last I checked there isn’t a country where adblocking is a crime. He can argue it’s morally unfair for people to legally visit YouTube and legally not disable Adblock to view his channel, but it’s not a crime. He’s basically implying that people should be running around without Adblockers on the web, which itself is a security risk to do. But, hey blocking ads is piracy and you wouldn’t want to be a criminal would you?
But it is you are using the service without “paying” for it. What would you rather call?
Another issue which is connected to labeling users “pirates” is the data caps and bandwidth throttling by mobile carriers and ISPs. Users make agreements with carriers for data and bandwidth for x.x price, but YouTube “steals” data limits and bandwidth by ads. Shouldn’t we expect them to pay us for our lost bandwidth and data caps?
It can’t be a one way street for a corporation to label users as unethical reprobates or “pirates” while he steals my paid for data limits and bandwidth.
I won’t use the term “piracy”. Just because the man says “up is down” doesn’t make it so. Piracy, historically is using threat of force and/or harm to force capitulation. In history past, pirates would fire across the bow to allow the target to choose to fight/flee or capitulate and pay the pirates, which is extortion. Technically, ransomware hackers are, by the historical definition, the true pirates. Individuals watching videos without ads is, by definition, individuals watching videos without ads.
People typically associate piracy with actions that can land individuals in legal trouble due to it being law breaking. I don’t know that there is a country yet that sentences people for using Adblocker. Even the FBI recommends it.
Like I can see how companies don’t like people consuming their service without seeing ads, but this isn’t people copying or cracking and stealing account credentials to get access to something that is paywalled like some Netflix account. This is a flaw on their end and people are accessing it legally.
It’s like some drive in theater getting mad someone who lives across from there can just watch movies from their backyard without paying and then saying they are committing piracy. They aren’t sneaking into a theater.
Google must be fucking salivating at the prospect of manifest v3 going live and adblockers being gimped.
I wish more people would switch to Firefox.
Hi, could you give me a brief on how manifest v3 will help Google disable the blocking of advertisements?
It changes how extensions work in Chrome (and derived browsers), notably it modifies the API that adblockers use to block requests and dramatically restricts the number of rules they can support. It’s a change pretty clearly designed to limit the scope of adblockers and make it easier for companies like Google to work around them.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
Which would mean that Brave and Ungoogled-Chromium won’t work as well anymore
ReVanced and Newpipe on mobile, SmartTube on TV, uBlock origin on Vivaldi and LibreWolf (currently in the middle of switching).
Seen nothing on any of those. They’re all working flawlessly, for now.
If you use uBlock origin you would never see it. I use both PiHole + uBlock origin and I would never see it lmao.
Pihole does nothing on YouTube as their ads are served on the save server as the videos.
I know, but they help with the ads on the website itself. Not the videos.
How do you know that? I’m fairly certain that google can tell if they have served you an ad, and cutting off access to their streaming services seems like a straightforward thing from their point of view. How could ublock (or anything) prevent google from blocking the stream? It’s not about blocking ads, or blocking messages to turn your adblocker off. It’s about google acknowledging that they haven’t served you an ad. You can’t force them to serve a video, I don’t think.
This “feature” is being rolled out slowly, which probably means they are taking lots of telemetry about how users try to circumvent this. It also means that just because you or I haven’t seen it does not mean we are safe against it. I’m not saying there is no solution, but I don’t think the solution is an adblocker or a sinkhole.
Interesting! So if I’m understanding correctly, the scare about YouTube stopping adblocked users was being caused by the Enhancer for Youtube extension? If so, that’s a relief.
Youtube’s ad policy is abusive, and online ads are not always safe. Regardless of whether adblocking is legal or fair to Youtube, not doing so puts you at greater risk of malware insertion so is a necessary safety precaution.
As YouTube profits from your engagement through more than ads, YouTube still benefits even when you watch videos without ads.
Edit: downvoted with 0 counter-arguments. Classic.
Personally, I don’t see how YouTube can be abusive. It is their platform and they can do whatever they want with it. It is your choice if you use it or not. If you think the ads are out of control, you can pay for their subscription or use free services.
If content creators are uploading their videos there, it is because YouTube can pay them more than other platforms… Thanks to the ads. So it’s not like there aren’t other options out there, it’s just that YouTube pays content creators more. Free market.
You’re getting an endless amount of information backed by amazing engineers that designed a service that never goes down and loads 4K videos at incredible speeds worldwide for millions of users concurrently… At the price of a few minutes of your life per day. Seems fair. They are not denying you the access to the information. They are using that money to pay content creators fairly so they are incentiviced to create more content that you can enjoy.
YouTube is a high quality service. Why is it bad to give them something back for the high quality service you’re receiving? It’s not like this is a mediocre click bait article with 50 ads attacking your screen. Plus, you’re also giving back to the content creators. If you didn’t like the content, you can downvote them or report them to tweak the algorithm.
It’s abusive because a 2min video will have 30sec of ads its absolute bullshit and worse than even cable fuckery.
And I’m really, REALLY sick if seeing this idiotic argument of company X can do anything they want, because free market.
This isn’t even youtube specific but I absolutely disagree with that line of reasoning. That same argument is used by people whenever a company does shady shit.
No company just materialized out of thin air pulling themselves out of the ether, they all exist and thrive because of the community WE all created! Our public infrastructure, education, tax codes and million other things WE contributed allows any corporation to exist at all.
So no, corporations don’t get to just do whatever the fuck they want, because “market”.
I personally would pay for YouTube for a reasonable price and 10$/month ain’t it. I don’t want youtube music or whatever shit they are bundling with it.
Yes, corporations get to do whatever they want with their property. If you don’t like it, you can choose other services, nobody is forcing you to stay there.
Well, if it is abusive or not will be determined by the majority of people. If their numbers start going down because of this, they’ll act on it. If not, it means the majority of people are willing to see the ads to get to the content. People also complained when YouTube implemented ads in the beginning, very short ones. Clearly, the majority of people were fine with it. Free market, supply & demand.
Personally, I run away from ads so I don’t use YouTube that much. I watch Veritasiun and 3Blue1Brown mostly and every time I see an ad come up, I like it because I know I’m giving money to the dudes giving me great content. It’s my way of giving back.
Yeha and pirates say that content should be free and accessible, and that’s why piracy is ethical. YouTube is providing a way to keep content available for everyone while keeping a business running for millions of people around the globe.
Just look at all the posts in this community saying that piracy is THE ethical way.
So, they fucking hate it when content is paywalled and say that this is awful because content should be free for poor people. But they also hate it when content is free and they have to watch ads. They just hate every sustainable business model. Wtf.
This is just communism in disguise. They want private effort for free and hassle free anytime, anywhere. Probably looking at it on their Iphones or Samsung phones. Thst they were able to purchase because they were paid for their work.
I don’t see how YouTube can be abusive
Do you also not see how a Tyrant boss that screams and belittles their employees is being abusive? The employees are free to quit and find work elsewhere right? Oh wait, freedom to avoid abusive behaviour doesn’t make that behaviour non-abusive!
I’ll also add that Youtube’s ads aren’t the only way you ‘pay’ for the service. They gobble up all the data they can glean from your interactions with them. So much data most people don’t even really understand how much they’re giving away. This data is sold sure, but it is also used to inform the algorithm on how to make the service more addictive to the users. That is to say, some of the abuse is insidious. Are drug dealers paragons of virtue when they offer free samples?
No other service advertises as obtrusively as Youtube does. Twitch comes close. The reasons they get away with this are:
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the service is designed to be addictive, and
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they have an effective monopoly. No other free service (and paid for that matter) comes close.
Both easily defined as abusive.
Personally, I don’t see how YouTube can be abusive. It is their platform and they can do whatever they want with it. It is your choice if you use it or not. If you think the ads are out of control, you can pay for their subscription or use free services.
Personally, I don’t see how people using adblockers can be abusive. It is their computer and they can display whatever content they want with it. It is their choice whether an ad plays on it or not. If YouTube thinks the adblockers are out of control, they can start paying people money to watch content on YouTube’s computers.
Just because you think making you watch ads make it abusive doesn’t mean it is.
Why do you hold the voice of truth? I just told you, I don’t think it is abusive because that is giving more money to content creators. If you think it is abusive, stop using the service. Also, you knew about the data they are mining and you’re still using the service. Do you think others are blind to the fact Google collects data? They just don’t care, like you.
Also an unpopular opinion but I actually don’t mind paying for YouTube Premium to avoid the ads. Content creators get a bigger cut from my watching habits and it comes with a music streaming platform.
We are in piracy community though so it makes sense people are against paying for content that once upon a time was completely free.
Totally agree with you, but they need to make an Ad free only subscription. YouTube Premium is more of a package deal (Ad Free/ YT Music/High bitrate).
Spotify used to have a tier called Spotify Unlimited which basically was essentially ad free Spotify with no other premium features. Half the price £5 per month.
But despite paying still remain the product since Google is still data mining users instead of opting paid users out. And doesn’t have options like sponsorblock built in, dislikes returned, or ability to combine subscriptions into custom groups.
I feel you could get the annual cost and divide it among channels you want to give the money and that’d be more money for them. Like I don’t see the official YouTube app being a better app than third parties personally.
Even YouTube front ends I’ve found better than the official YouTube site, since they can bypass region blocks.
I disagree with the “it’s their platform” argument, but I definitely agree with you that people should stop complaining about YouTube ads so much.
They give you an option to both remove the ads and support the creators you watch. They support billions of hours worth of content watching each year and millions of hours of content storage, across the world, for free if you so choose. Seems quite generous.
I’d bet most people watch YouTube almost as much as Netflix or Hulu, again for free, and still complain about YouTube serving ads. The solution is to just pay for premium. They even give you music streaming with it anyway.
