[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?