YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

Talos@lemmy.world to Technology@beehaw.org – 507 points –
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
bleepingcomputer.com
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We’d probably be willing to view ads if the experience wasn’t literally jarring.

Not me, sorry. Fuck ads. I've been ad-free for like a decade, and I'm not interested in regressing.

Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive? I mean, servers and bandwidth cost money. I'm in the same boat as you where I have run ad blockers, adblocker blockers, no script, privacy enhancers, and anti-fingerprinting since forever ago.

I'd rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data. If there was a balance, this is where I'd say it was reasonable. Since not reality, I'm with you, nuke them all, and just take the content.

The definition of "reasonable ads" and "just a few ads" keeps sliding. I'm old enough to remember the early internet, and that this lie has been told many times.

Just a few acceptable ads always becomes many unacceptable ads, because money.

Even if there was a balance and the ads were non-intrusive?

I don't need propaganda telling me to want to buy shit that I otherwise wouldn't want to buy, no. I'll go to other consumers (and, more specifically, people I trust) to determine what things are worth, not entities with a conflict of interest in the matter.

The whole marketing/advertising industry is illegitimate and harmful, and I'm "boycotting" the whole thing until we finish the job of destroying capitalism and it's no longer needed anyway.

I’d rather view a few reasonable ads than have a site try to mine and sell my data.

The corporations are going to try to mine and sell your data anyway. Why wouldn't they? You think just because they have a revenue stream through ads that they'll give up another revenue stream from fucking over your privacy? Then I've got this nice bridge to sell you, too....

I think you're right, I feel like I'm looking for a little good-will among our kind (bleak and probably misguided at best). Sellers and consumers need to coexist in some manner, but what that relationship should be is yet to be defined. For now, we're in a place that needs change for sure.

I'm willing to pay for site and services I consider valuable. Not with my data, not with my attention.

I feel this way about many sites and services. There are a few that are on the fringe of worthwhile and not willing to pay for. If it did work on paid models only, I wonder what would happen to growing services that don't have the user base to exist on paid subscriptions alone but may be or are better alternatives to the current paid dominant providers. I.e. would this create a higher barrier of entry in a market than exists today, reducing competition and strengthening market monopolies?