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by jpc0
833 days ago
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This is fine but then don't complain about the adblocker randomly not working and Google implementing measures to prevent adblockers, or actively making you, a non-paying user's experience worse. And arguably if it has been working just fine for them they wouldn't need to keep spending billions and implementing a paid tier. Also your adblocker only prevents client side tracking, nothing is stopping Google (or any other services) from collecting "anonymous" usage data and storing it. After all does it matter at all that user53728646288661442883 in the database was searching for a coffee machine on google and is now watching reviews on YouTube for coffee machines if there is no way to reference that user to who you are personally? If your complaint is tracking then stop using google services, an adblocker just reduces the amount of tracking, it doesn't eliminate it. Google offered a way out of watching ads for what is probably a quite reasonable amount of money for anyone browsing Hackernews and your reasonse is "I'm just going to keep using my adblocker and actively complain about it" |
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I really can't since I never see it. They've been unsuccessful in their efforts to prevent adblocking. I only recently learned through other people's complaining on forums that 45 minute youtube ads exist, so while I'd certainly be complaining if I saw one, they never affect me. I still think it's a dick move to degrade your service with the intention to piss off your users just so that they'll pay you to stop intentionally getting in their way though. Paid services should exist to solve real problems, not ones created by you just to harass people into paying you to stop (you here meaning Google, not you you)
> And arguably if it has been working just fine for them they wouldn't need to keep spending billions and implementing a paid tier.
I've seen nothing to suggest that they need to spend any amount of money implementing a paid tier. Google is one of the largest, wealthiest companies on the planet sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. They didn't make that obscene amount of money on youtube premium sign ups. Youtube alone pulls in tens of billions in revenue (only a tiny fraction of what Google makes in total) but they keep their profit a secret. I have zero reason to believe that Google couldn't afford to continue to operate and benefit from youtube no matter how profitable it is for them.
> Also your adblocker only prevents client side tracking, nothing is stopping Google (or any other services) from collecting "anonymous" usage data and storing it.
I have no doubt that Google knows exactly who I am even if I never sign in based on the devices I use, the times I use them, the IP address I use, the content I consume, etc and combining that with data they collect from every other Google service. They'll see me search for coffee machines on Google, they'll see me look at reviews for one on youtube, Google analytics will tell them which stores I browse for coffee machines online and Google tracks me via my cell phone while I browse stores looking at coffee machines offline, before finally Google buys my credit card purchase history (https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no...) to find out where I bought my coffee maker, which model I bought, and how much I paid for it.
They are happily stuffing my dossier with the details of everything I search for, everything I view, what devices I use, when I'm using youtube, how long I spend watching, what my IP address is, how much of each video I view, which parts of each video I rewind to rewatch/pause at/skip past/stop watching at and countless other metrics that they'll use to make countless assumptions about me as an individual (my interests, my intelligence, my attention span, my schedule, my location, my political/religious views, etc).
You can't escape google's tracking. Paying them won't stop them either. The fact that Google has the gall to ask for money on top of all the snooping they do is frankly insulting.