[kibwen]

> The projects can be appreciated while also acknowledging that advertisements are part of the value exchange.

No, this is preposterous and I will continue to refute this silly idea every time it shows up here. It is not stealing from radio stations to change the station when ads come on. It is not stealing from TV channels to go get a drink when ads come on. There is no moral compunction to watch ads, from anyone, anywhere. Stop trying to normalize advertising, which is to say, stop trying to normalize the enshittification of the human mind.

Meanwhile, a web browser is a user agent running on my machine. Youtube's content is a guest on my hardware. Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it. If Google doesn't want to serve it to me, then it has the right to prevent me from accessing their server, such as in exchange for payment. But again, advertising is not payment, it's just corporate-sanctioned, socially-acceptable brainwashing.

[crazygringo]

> Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it.

Sure, but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos. You both get to try as hard as you can, so good luck to you both.

There's no brainwashing here. It's just a business trying to make money, and trying to outsmart the users trying to outsmart it.

[I_Am_Nous]

>There's no brainwashing here.

Advertising is at least trying to make you think thoughts it feeds you. "Buy Brand X, you'll get women!" If the advertising is effective, you'll associate Brand X with something positive and want to buy it.

It's kind of blanket brainwashing with extra steps because it's more indirect. Similar technological brainwashing might be joining an algorithmic social media site and becoming convinced of something the algorithm felt was the most engaging thing that day and spread, regardless of truth. Choosing to believe what social media or advertising tells without healthy skepticism you is willingly accepting some brainwashing.

There are people who feel really strongly about ads, and I'm one of them. I hate them, they don't share my values, and they are only trying to extract value from me. I run ad blocker in my browser, but mute and skip any ads I can like a peasant on my TV or phone. So overall I end up watching more ads than not since I don't watch videos on my PC much.

[Nevermark]

I can't say I never see an ad, but I avoid/cancel services with ads, or happily sign up at the no-ad level.

When I do see ads its shocking. Car ads have little to do with cars, and everything to do with insecurity and Pavlovian hacks. Idiocracy drip by drip.

People expose themselves to crap influences day in and day out, then imagine this or that ad isn't impacting them. The stream has profoundly impacted them or they wouldn't tolerate any of it.

[somenameforme]

I can't really remember the last time I saw an ad. And as a result (probably?) I find I "want" for far fewer things than most people who let themselves be drawn in by ads. If a million dollars just hopped into my bank account, I'd probably just invest it and go back to living, more or less, the same. And I'm in no way whatsoever rich. But contentedness is cheap, and easy, when you don't let yourself get drowned into the endless vacuum of artificial demand. [1]

I am absolutely certain that the exponential increase in advertising is probably going to ultimately have been found to be at least partly responsible for so many of the mental and psychological problems that seem to be on the exponential increase in places like America. Humans are not designed to live our lives as donkeys chasing a carrot on a stick.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_demand

[godelski]

> Car ads have little to do with cars,

That's because most car ads aren't actually trying to sell you the car. They are instead trying to sell you the idea of the car's status[0]. While people are most familiar with ads that are blatant attempts to get you to buy something, many are much more indirect. It's also why native advertising is so nefarious. A large portion of ads actually aren't the direct version, but most often people don't notice they're taking in an ad, and that's kinda the point.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-26-me-62995-...

[kibwen]

> People expose themselves to crap influences day in and day out, then imagine this or that ad isn't impacting them.

Precisely. Subjecting yourself to advertising (or allowing your children to be subjected to advertising) is simply bad mental hygiene.

[godelski]

> Advertising is at least trying to make you think thoughts it feeds you.

BuT aDs DoN't AfFeCt Me!

I'm honestly frequently impressed how how often people don't understand what ads are or do. Especially considering they funds most of our paychecks. Everyone is affected by ads and convincing yourself that you aren't makes you more vulnerable to them.

I think the problem comes from people thinking ads exclusively are about selling things that have a monetary value. But ads sell ideas. Often that idea is that you should buy something, but sometimes it is a preference like a politician or a celebrity in their latest scandal or rise to fame. Ads can be good too, like public service announcements. But for sure we're over inundated with them and there's too many bad ones.

I am also particularly peeved about the ads that come from email addresses I can't exactly block. I really don't think anyone should be accountable for missing an important email if the sender also sends 90% junk from the same address. I'm looking at you every university ever[0]

> skip any ads I can like a peasant on my TV or phone.

Maybe check out reVanced. You can recompile the YouTube APK to be ad free.

[0] Here's the text from my uni's page when you click unsubscribe. What a joke. I don't need emails from the alumni association, publicity channels, or all that. And you have the audacity to try to convince me it isn't spam? What a joke. I'm glad I use a third party mail client that can filter this stuff but it is an absolute joke that we think this is acceptable. It shouldn't require special tools. There is a clear difference between police reports and the alumni association and they even come from different senders. In fact, not allowing for you to unsubscribe actually goes counter to the safety claim because it teaches people to ignore your emails.

> In order to share information quickly and efficiently with faculty, staff, GEs, and students, the university uses email as its official form of communication. All emails that end in an @<theuniversity>.edu address are required to receive email communications sent by the university. As such, there is no option for @<theuniversity>.edu email accounts to unsubscribe from official university communications emails and these emails are not considered spam under applicable laws.

[I_Am_Nous]

I understand not all advertising is bad as a good product might not spread during the critical growth phase without it. It just raises a lot of red flags for me when someone is desperate for my attention like ads are. Google reeeally wants me to buy a Pixel 8 lol

Glad you can filter the crap, but I guess from a CYA perspective the school can say "we notified everyone through our official email channel" whether you were ever going to read that email or not.

[godelski]

There's also things like PSAs that can be good ads. I think it's important we remember that it's not always about consumerism.

Haha there's only a few places I get ads and I lock as much down as I can. There's a certain sense of joy when you get ads so misaligned from you that you know they are reaching.

Oh it's a constant battle to filter. But what worries me is actually that people honestly do not get it. These are clearly little metric hacking and I'm afraid we're just traveling deeper and deeper into Goodhart's Hell.

[aaomidi]

> but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos

So, like use an entirely different part of the company like Chrome to push for WEI to make adblockers not run?

Or maybe use chrome to push for manifest v3?

Maybe the __moral right to do everything possible__ isn't actually moral when it's using its leverage in a separate market to protect another one of its assets. Maybe we should see this as something to anti-trust them?

[crazygringo]

I dunno -- you've still got the moral right to use Firefox or Safari or a Chromium fork.

Ads and adblockers are always going to be a cat and mouse game, so I don't see any reason to complain.

Antitrust doesn't really enter the picture. Chrome doesn't even come preinstalled on PCs or Macs anyways -- you've got to go out of your way to choose to install it. So just don't, if you don't like it.

[aaomidi]

> Antitrust doesn't really enter the picture.

I don't think this is true. Google Meet, Youtube, etc all perform worse on non-Chrome/Chromium based browsers.

I do think that the world's most popular browser, being owned by the same entity that owns Youtube, actively working to block adblockers (adblockers which, do *not* harm Chrome but do harm Youtube) is something for regulatory bodies to take into consideration.

[kelnos]

> Sure, but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos.

The person you're replying to acknowledges this, albeit indirectly.

But the point still stands: if Google sends me the bits, I am free (morally, and, at least for now, legally) to discard the bits that correspond to the ads if I can figure out how to do so without watching them. If Google can figure out ahead of time that's what I'm planning to do, and refuses to give me the bits, that's of course Google's right.

> There's no brainwashing here. It's just a business trying to make money

Advertising is psychological manipulation to coerce you to buy whatever product is on offer. The "best" advertising will convince you that you need a product that you'd never consider buying otherwise. "Brainwashing" might be a sensationalized way of putting it, but I don't think that's particularly inaccurate.

[freshpots]

PREACH. I love and 100% agree with your passion.

[oneplane]

You're wrong. Radio and TV from your example get paid anyway and you count as a watcher in the statistics so it doesn't matter if you're there for the broadcast or not, transaction complete either way.

When you are an on-demand user where the transaction is media in exchange for something (advertisements or a paid subscription), and you weasel your way out of exchanging something you're not 'moral' or whatever measure you take.

It also doesn't matter what you think or feel with this transaction since the rules are known ahead of time, and you either agree to them or don't, and there is no third option that entitles you to free content. That includes your mental gymnastics about who is a server, who is a client and who did what. The technical details do not matter, they never did and they never will.

Is it a shit experience? Definitely. It doesn't mean that the rules you agreed to suddenly don't apply anymore.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Wow. Eloquent. Awesome!

[geodel]

> Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it.

Huh, you can throw the guest out by not watching youtube. Ripping off guest seems strange moral right.

> Stop trying to normalize advertising, which is to say, stop trying to normalize the enshittification of the human mind.

Seems like you are deciding on everyone's behalf on what one should do with their mind.

[martimarkov]

The alternative is to leave to a for profit company. That company should not have that right.

If the content is rendered in my browser I can manipulate the JS and HTML as much as like. If you don’t like that -> feel free to put protections. But the same way a browser interprets the code I can put stuff on top of that interpretation.

So morally I’m okay to use a blocker if that’s what I want to do. It’s also immoral to track me but Google seems to be okay with it. If that is the relationship they want to establish so be it. I will act in the reciprocal manner.

The idea is not to decide on what someone else is going to do with their mind. Hence the idea that everyone is free to do what they want. Ads are not a natural part of the world so making the argument that not watching them is somehow wrong is what is actually a decision being pushed on others.

If companies didn’t try to normalize ads and tell you off for using adblockers then nobody would have a problem with it. But given that people say: You need to watch ads otherwise you are stealing is putting decisions in someone’s mind.