[luc4]

What? We're not refusing to "pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work", we refuse to give in to the extortion attempts of a greedy multi-billion dollar company.

I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.

[izacus]

And in case of Mozilla it'll be the CEO's compensation, or engineering pay, or the fact that there was Pocket integration or something else will be made up to fuel angry refusal to support development of the browser.

There's always SOMETHING that's morally unacceptable to people who want it for free - I bet even full, total, complete submissions to whims of such community would not result in any significant revenue.

[iteratethis]

It's counter-productive for sure.

Reminds me of the crypto controversy of 2 years back. Mozilla had been allowing crypto donations for as long as they existed.

But then some important ex-employee "rediscovered" this, virtue signaled on Twitter how wildly inappropriate this is and formed a mob powerful enough to make Mozilla take the bow and close crypto donations.

And now? Well, now there won't be crypto donations. The same amount of crypto is mined, just none of it donated to Mozilla. You've achieved less than nothing, but you did the virtuous thing. Whilst simultaneously being funded by Google, with a laundry list of ethical violations, but those "don't count".

[Xenoamorphous]

> I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful

If you watch YouTube you presumably find it useful too?

Also, what about content creators? They get paid off the money Google gets from YouTube.

[luc4]

I find the videos themselves useful. YouTube just happens to be the place where they're hosted. I support content creators directly and I have a Nebula subscription.

[subtra3t]

So it is "extortion" if you are asked to pay for a service you use? A service that is available for free and is very hardware-intensive, mind you.

[shiroiuma]

If they want to charge for it, they're free to put it completely behind a paywall with accounts requiring sign-in, just like Netflix does.

The problem is they want it both ways: they want to give it out for free, but with annoying ads, but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads.

Where I live, people regularly stand on the street in busy pedestrian areas and hand out free packets of tissues with a piece of paper on top advertising some business. These businesses aren't clamoring for laws or some technical means to force people to look at the ads closely; people routinely take the tissues, toss out the ad, and use the tissues, and it's ok. But according to many, many HN users with stockholm syndrome, not reading these ads closely and just trashing them is somehow "stealing", because that tissue took resources and a factory to make.

[jpc0]

> but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads

They aren't tracking your eyes and pause the video if you aren't watching the screen. Not saying they wouldn't do that if it was feasible...

They are annoyed that you are actively preventing them from playing out the ads in the first place, and they offered an alternative, to pay for not having the ads, at what is in my opinion a very reasonable price concidering the vast array of content you have access to on YouTube.

So they are effectively making the implicit contract explicit. Watch with ads or pay for no ads, otherwise you can happily choose to not use YouTube.

If you really think hosting video is cheap, make an alternative to YouTube.

[shiroiuma]

Or, I can simply decline to watch (or even load) the ads, just like I decline to look at the ads in those tissue packs that are given to me on the street. I have no moral obligation to watch any ads on video that is freely shown in response to a normal HTTP GET request.

[jpc0]

Just don't join the gaggle complaining about your adblocker randomly no longer working or YouTube randomly blocking the page till you disable it and were all good.

[shiroiuma]

What's to complain about? My adblocker hasn't had any trouble at all yet, and even if it does, it won't be long before the adblocker people update their lists or software to work around whatever attempts YT might make against them. YT's efforts are utterly futile; there's absolutely no way they can stop adblockers without going to really extreme measures (like requiring a special client viewer app, or basically turning into another Netflix). Trying to devise a technical means of stopping ad-blockers requires far more effort than working around those attempts, and it only takes one determined or bored hacker to figure out a workaround and update the ad-blockers so suddenly everyone worldwide is blocking the ads again.

[izacus]

And yet Mozilla also wants it both ways - have a free browser and still be paid to develop it. What gives?

[jamespo]

It's hardly extortion, watching Youtube isn't a human right

[93po]

Google has massively anti-competitive practices, and especially with Youtube. They have made an explicit effort to kill competition in the online video space and have been very successful at it. We are now left, as a result of Google's malicious actions, with a single realistic option of platforms for video content creators. To have Google take these actions, then force us with the decision of "let us shove ads and tracking down your throat" or "miss a massive part of important media available, including for professional and educational reasons", feels pretty bad to me. Maybe extortion isn't the best word, but it's super shitty.

[abenga]

I'm going to feel icky for being a corpo simp, but how is asking for payment for a service an "extortion attempt"? Not asking as a YouTube premium subscriber or watcher of of ads (can't pay for Premium in my country and cannot bear to watch ads, so I use Firefox and an alternative client on my TV). I find it hard to frame it as an ad free but still subscription free service I am entitled to, and any attempt by Google to circumvent my workarounds as something unethical on their part.

[simongray]

Google only sells YouTube Premium bundled with a music subscription in my Spotify-dominated country, because they obviously want to use their large video platform to expand into music.

Classic monopolistic behaviour.

[jpc0]

I'm going to guess the reason for this is you would be pretty annoyed if you get ads on music videos watch on YouTube even if you are paying for YouTube premium, and if you aren't 99% of users would.

You can't have your cake and eat it, Google neither and they will get what's coming but this is not the battle to pick, they do far worse than put ads on a video sharing platform

[abenga]

I honestly don't see how that is relevant, unless your perceived value of just watching videos ad free is lower than whatever price they have set; you can ignore that feature, right?

[simongray]

It's a feature to only sell the bundled product at a much high cost?