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Comment by PurestGuava | Hacker News Reader

> If people don’t think there’s enough value in YT, then don’t pay and don’t use it.

The most common throughline of all pro-piracy discourse is that there's a lot of people who feel completely entitled to free entertainment, and they will come up with all sorts of bizarre mental gymnastics to justify that as something other than "I want free entertainment and don't want to see ads."

I don't think anyone could articulate a coherent logical argument as to why they feel they should get YouTube's services, and the entertainment produced by the creators who are on YouTube, while not paying either of them through any means, other than pure selfishness.

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YouTube is providing these videos through the standard html ports with no authentication necessary, like most websites on the planet. This is how you give away information away for free on the web. I don't feel entitled to free stuff, but if someone is giving it away, why not take it?

And since I'm taking what they are giving me for free, then whether or not I decide to watch the parts they try to force on me to try to entice me to buy something I have no intention of buying is none of their business.

If they didn't leave this door wide open then I would be forced to decide if it's worth enough for me to pay to use it. But since they do I do what I want. It's not up to me to make sure that YT's and creator's business models are making them money.

You'll notice that it's always YouTube that is the target, though. People feel entitled to free YouTube as though by birthright. If someone doesn't like Netflix, they cancel and move on, they don't usually claim they deserve it free.

Maybe because it was not monetized originally, and so those who were around back then argue it must remain that way?

> If someone doesn't like Netflix, they cancel and move on, they don't usually claim they deserve it free.

Not really. I cancelled netflix and I went back to torrents. And I'm sure there were many like me.

I don't think I deserve it free, but by doubling the price for the adfree option they just got to the point where I didn't care anymore.

I just get it free because I can, not because I think I deserve it. I don't have ethics when it comes to megacorps. Just like they screw us over whenever they can.

Previously I subscribed because watching on netflix is less hassle than downloading. But now the price is too much of an annoyance to bother with downloading. I used to be on the 720p plan which is enough for me, and when they dropped that and included ads on the cheaper 1080p plan, I would have had to move to the ad-free 1080p and that was just too much. Literally double the price.

Even worse, it's come to the point where it is actively destroying the internet. Everything from every news site being paywalled to click bait mania to brain rot content focused on the bottom suckers who can't ad block.

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