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Comment by wand3r | Hacker News Reader

>> The removal of in-video ads. > You can pay YouTube for ad-free viewing... not doing so and stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it"

I don’t understand this sentiment AT ALL. Google has built an entire business out of scraping and selling other peoples content. YouTube has become the defacto host of virtually ALL VIDEO. So yeah, I would watch a video without ads.

This is the internet. If they send the ad and the video and I use a program to hide the ad but watch the video thats my choice. Its MY computer. If they want to take steps to stop this thats up to them.

Advertising is disgusting honestly and your statement in my opinion is an ice cold take

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Some people work their ass to make a living and even if ads are annoying, for a lot it is what's keep them moving forward.

Maybe Google makes money by selling other people content but they provide all the infrastructure to allow content creators to have their business first.

Bypassing the ads is hurting mainly content creators, not Google...

> Bypassing the ads is hurting mainly content creators, not Google...

No, it hurts Google too. Google isn’t some benevolent actor operating youtube at a loss. It’s a cash cow now.

It hurts both. If people support the YT creators they watch on Patreon or in some other way, that's fantastic. But you should support them in some way if you watch and appreciate their content.

I do it, but the point is most of the people don't, they simply watch YouTube.

I'm also a content creator myself, guess what, most of my revenues come form ads, not Patreon.

> Advertising is disgusting honestly

Again, they give you the options: subscription model or ad-based model.

This covers the cost of infrastructure, paying creators, and paying developers.

It doesn’t make sense that they or any other company will host and send you video for free at a financial loss to themselves because you’re watching it on “your computer.”

Then again, we live in a world where drugstore makeup needs to be kept behind lock and key, so this shouldn’t be surprising.

> Again, they give you the options: subscription model or ad-based model.

They offer those options, but the fact remains that there is a third option: ad-free no-subscription model.

As a user of the ad-free no-subscription model, I give them two options: internalise the costs of people taking the third option, or spend time and resources trying to make the third option technically impossible.

As a user of the ad-free no-subscription model you can’t become their customer. There is no requirement for any business to offer to sell you exactly what you want.

You can’t buy a word processor without non-English dictionaries, buy a fivepack of beer, buy half an apple, etc.

That’s no reason to then find it reasonable to take that, let alone take that for free.

Completely your choice to bypass it, I just don't agree it's ethical when there is a choice to pay a bit of money instead to not have the ads. I will agree that this does not stop them from gathering your data and that is fair. But just stripping the ads without paying when they give you that choice doesn't seem like an ethical choice.

With all the shit google has done i honestly don't care if people are ethical when dealing with them.

I don't care about Google. I'm more concerned with the creators on YouTube.

Still don't care to be honest.

I close my eyes during the ads. Want to lecture me about how unethical that is? I’m “stealing” from the advertiser now because google will charge them for that view.

In a way, yes, but both Google and Advertisers know that not every view is going to have a fully captive viewer. It's a spectrum, and where you think the line should be drawn between unethical and ethical behavior is a personal viewpoint.

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