this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Serious question: YouTube is a business and owned by a public corporation and not a FOSS so they can dictate how they want to run their platform. They want to run ads and blacklist ad blockers running on their platform. They have created a premium subscription for those who don't want ads. I understand the public outrage, of course. My question is why can't they do what they want with their own platform? I guess I'm finding it hard to see a different perspective. FYI, I'm in the process of distancing myself from Google services as much as possible.
People should always be able to control what their hardware does. Google go beyond selling goods/services when they control how using the internet works with changes to the web browser (that most people use). Google could just paywall all their content but they want to dictate their cake and eat it.
Because corporations and businesses are still bound to the law of the country they offer their services in.
Just because some hillbilly bar in Kansas allows minors to smoke and drink doesn't mean that's legal because it's their place.
When I visit the YouTube site, all that happens is their server sends data to my browser that it requested. What I/my browser do with that data (especially how and whether to display parts of the site) is up to me.
edit: Of course, they can try to forbid this via ToS but afaik nothing more than that.
I use ad blocker, and I think it's fine if YouTube wants to try to stop it.
Buteventually someone will find a workaround for their efforts to stop it.
It's a never ending game of cat and mouse.
Personally I wouldn't mind paying for YouTube premium. As a matter of fact I did in the past. But it's priced at least twice as high as I'm willing to pay. Perhaps if they had full premium with YouTube music at the current too high price, and then a "premium lite" that was simply no ads and but no YouTube music either at half or less the full price. Personally I just don't want ads, I don't want to over pay for a music service I dont want, just because I don't want ads in the unrelated video portion of youtube.
Currently I feel like they are bullying me into buying a service I don't want, by interfering with a service that I do want. Which is honestly what I suspect is at the root of this current push against ad blockers in the first place. It's not about the video service in any meaningful way, I suspect they are trying to leverage their video dominance to bolster their music subscribership. This seems antisocial enough for me to have no ethical concerns about attempting to circumvent their ads.