this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 70 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I can't wait to find out how much YouTube is going to sue me for in 2025 for 20 years of blocked ad revenue. They're going to use 2005 Napster math. You didn't watch 3 ads per video x 6,000,000 played videos = $2 million lost revenue, pay up citizen, your Google services have been disabled, all location and behavior data is in possession of Alphabet Debt Collection, you cannot run, you cannot hide.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If this happens I'm becoming a terrorist.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Whoa there buddy, that's risky business to say online. What you need is a VPN! Act now for 50% off NordVPN.

... or something like that.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's some Shadowrun level dystopian shit

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

See you in the ad revenue gulag. We're going to love our cooperate sponsors when we get out. I hope we both get McDonalds.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Eat verification McChicken®

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Alphadebt Inc

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The entire fucking web worked with no ads for literally years. I do not feel bad, and won't lament if companies can't afford to pay people to cram even more JavaScript into web pages.

Sorry, web developers. Your masters are making you do evil things. It isn't your fault, but I hate your jobs.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (4 children)

There were less than 200 websites in 1993 when the first paid ad was introduced shortly thereafter. There were over 100k websites by the end of 1995.

So you're kind of right, but ads have been part of the Internet for 30 years. And half of the internet that we know today wouldn't have survived if this wasn't the case.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Half of he internet is shit, so - again - I personally would not lament its loss. My mom, who lives in games like Farmville these days, probably would, but she'd probably be healthier and happier if she took up knitting again.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I concur. There's a sweet spot for ads where they are mostly tolerable. We haven't been in it for a long time though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

FOR YEARS!

August 1991 the web was made available to CERN, 1993 was the year it truly became open to the public and ads were introduced the same year...

I mean, I guess they were technically right? But it's the same as the "cable didn't have ads" bullshit people keep saying...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I think the difference was, they were just side banners and that's it. They didn't have all this insane tracking, data analysis, metrics, and knowing everything about you bullshit they do now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

So you're kind of right, but ads have been part of the Internet for 30 years.

And so have been adblockers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_blocking

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

It's probably worth noting that this has a lot to do with VCs pumping in a seemingly unlimited amount of funding for services that aren't profitable yet but has potential to be later. Hence why Twitter is still a thing despite running at a loss for almost its entire lifetime.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Well, if you don't mind losing all online content that's more than a couple mb in size then sure, what you're saying makes sense... Safely hosting over 1 billion videos costs money and people don't want to pay for it directly so...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tens of millions of people can and do pay. This isn't about covering costs, this is about making line go up faster than last year, every year, no matter what.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

And there's even more people that don't...

80m premium subscribers, 2.7b monthly users... Do you really think that's sustainable without having a secondary source of revenue? Because I don't know that many businesses that survive from 3% paying customers...

That's just for YouTube, but there are other websites that host content that wouldn't be sustainable without ads and that would need to switch to a paid subscription format.

Is it so hard to admit that there's something unusual about expecting websites to run out of the pocket of the owners/employees when we don't expect real world businesses to do so?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do you really think that’s sustainable

At $15 a month? Yeah totally. The vast majority of that 2.7 billion probably cost a few cents at most to offer service to. Very few people actually upload anything and streaming video is way cheaper than the various streaming services would have you believe. It's expensive to get off the ground, sure, but it scales well.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago

Repeat after me, Google isn't the only provider that hosts a lot of content.

Would you like it if the majority of websites became pay per use or subscription only?

[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ads are psychological abuse. I refuse to subject myself to that.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Excuse me but I'm entitled to a sliver of your spongy grey matter because I spent money. /s

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

What about Mr beast and moist critikal how will they feed their children. Think of the YouTube's you monster.

Look at moist consuming his once a day meal.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Better yet: Or use adnauseam and fuck up their ad-tracking infrastructure beyond just blocking the ads

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It's weird to see how many comments are hysterically defending excessive ads.