[sanswork]

Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.

[estimator7292]

Why should private corporations have unlimitied license to propagandize and intentionally psychologically manipulate the entire populace?

Why should private corporations with no oversight or meaningful consequences have the unlimited and unchallenged right to market drugs to kids? Why should they be allowed to post enormous flashing billboards on our roads? Why do these corporations have more right to common public spaces than the people do?

[sanswork]

I haven't arguing they have a right to any of those things. When you resort to straw manning it's generally a good time to step back and reconsider your stance.

[soraminazuki]

Calling out your euphemisms is not straw manning. It's the logical conclusion. When you're bending over backwards to defend surveillance capitalism, it's a good time to reconsider your moral principles.

Sorry, "but the public wants to get screwed" is a complete joke of an argument.

[bjourne]

Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video.

It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.

[sanswork]

Google has offered free hosting for millions of content creators and once they are profitable offers them a revenue source. It further helps those creators by trying to stop freeloaders. You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking about removing their income. Google offers an easy way to support creators and avoid as. If you were really concerned with creator well being you could go that route or Subscribe to the patron or similar of every creator you enjoy and bypass YouTube entirely.

[estimator7292]

Google has made untold thousands of dollars by spying on me and stealing my personal and private information to sell to other ad companies.

Why don't I have a right to that money? Why should I then have to pay google even more either directly with cash or indirectly through more advertising and spying?

Google has made FAR more than enough money by spying on me than it actually costs them for me to use adblock. Bonus, I don't have to watch AI generated ads for boner pills with a celebrity's fake face on it

[bjourne]

Most content creators have no ad revenue at all and didn't create their videos with the intent to profit from them. Yet they help build YouTube's back catalogue and get nothing in return for it. They have no Patreon accounts or donation links. I am a "content creator" too. Not like I give a shit if people watch videos of me playing guitar with their ad blockers on.

[sanswork]

They get free hosting and streaming software for it on top of free discoverability.

[bjourne]

Prostitutes get free sex.

[sanswork]

That's a really weird reply.

[inferiorhuman]

  You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking
  about removing their income.

You talk about Google as if that's their primary source of income. Most of the folks I watch on Youtube hype up the other platforms e.g. Patreon they use for income. Judging by the outro credits it looks like there are plenty of people happy to throw money at these folks via other platform as well.

Clear your cookies and check out youtube sometime. Perhaps once they stop pushing vile right wing nonsense, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and assorted brain rot I'd consider tossing money at Google.

[sanswork]

It's a lot of creators only income from creating. Once you get some scale there are certainly better ways depending on your niche.

Again justification for why your free loading is actually a moral act.

[inferiorhuman]

"a lot"

If you're small time Google won't pay out enough to make it your sole source of income so you'll probably seek out other ways of monetizing your videos (e.g. Patreon, merch). If you're large enough you're gonna seek out more stable source of income that won't threaten to demonetize you at the drop of a hat (e.g. Patreon, merch).

Me? I think it's immoral to run 30 minute ads hyping up hate churches and 15 minute ads hawking missile launchers.

e.g.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/17lcv5e/...

[dontlaugh]

That many using ad blockers would suggest there is something like a democratic mandate for disallowing ads as a business model.

[sanswork]

Those are just people who expect things for free. Free loaders will always exist and they will always try to come up with justifications for why their free loading is actually noble and not just selfish.

[inferiorhuman]

Free loaders? You're talking about Google's reCAPTCHA using my browser to train its AI, right?

[sanswork]

They are providing a service to the people protecting their services with recaptcha and you're solving those issues because you value what's on the other side so no I wouldn't consider that free loading.

[inferiorhuman]

A service that's easily defeated by automation and thus mostly devoid of value outside of training Google's AI products. I think the technical term is "false sense of security".

[sanswork]

I use it on a number of my forms and it works fantastically on almost all cases since most bad actors are lazy.

[estimator7292]

Some people just really like to believe and repeat anything a corporation tells them. It's so much easier than forming your own unique thoughts. Buy coke!

[ndriscoll]

If the "price" to load a webpage were that you run a crypto miner or give a site access to upload whatever files it feels from your computer, would you do it? Or would blocking such malware make you a free loader?

[sanswork]

I wouldn't use the site but yes using the site and not doing that would make you a free loader.

[ndriscoll]

So I presume you browse with a vulnerable webp library or something in case sites you do browse would like to use that functionality? You can't know whether they wanted to use it if your browser silently blocks their attempts.

[sanswork]

Yes, that sounds exactly like what I'm suggesting and not a bad faith argument at all.

[scotty79]

Same reason they shouldn't be able to pay with gambling, scamming, prostitution or their organs. Advertisement industry is all a scam. It's a privately levied tax that lets sellers win competition with themselves and ultimately the customer pays, both in price of products and in their attention as well.

[sanswork]

Without advertising how does anyone get visibility into new products? You are proposing winner take all markets when you propose banning advertising.

[scotty79]

Single, public, online product and service database provided by the market regulator. Since the country gets income from taxing commerce it's only fair that they also provide discovery service. If you want to sell something on the market you have to enter it into this database, with the up to date price and relevant documentation.

Consumers can access the database through provided UI or through 3rd party tools using this database API.

[sanswork]

That sounds incredibly dystopian to me. If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors. Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors.

That sounds wonderful! How do you see dystopian?

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

God forbid I listen to my neighbors and their experiences! Come on, there's even a term for it: "word of mouth".

[scotty79]

Oh, no. I can't get exploited by multitude of corporations. How dystopian. That's why we can't have nice things. Because every time an idea encroaches on some billionaire's profit it's suddenly too much power in hands other than those privately holding billions. Any government so far has been more transparent in what they do, than something like Amazon.

> you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials

You already have to do that for commerce. It's called incorporating.

> giant list of your competitors

Isn't that what market is? Giant amount of competitors is what's best for consumers. And what's best for them is the only thing that matters because they together have the money to foot all the bills.

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

It's fine, you can provide as much documentation as you want for your product or service. You are even encouraged to provide it. Like user and service manuals for your products. Maybe you even should be required to post them if you significant amount of your product.

Consumers can decide using the provided UI, or using 3rd party tools, which can't take money to promote specific items, because that, unlike verbose entry in the database, would be an ad.

> You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

Do you read all of the databases alphabetically? No, I end up with search engine, for products and services, with open data and any kind of filtering and sorting that anyone can dream of. No more enshittificarion of the result to sell clicks of confused customers.

[ndriscoll]

Retailers could always highlight high value products they are offering within their storefront (without being compensated by manufacturers to do so; that would be a scam ad).

[sanswork]

How do retailers find new products? Why would they bother highlighting new products if there is no pull demand from community awareness. You'd just pick one vendor and agree to only sell their products for better rates

[ndriscoll]

They publish contact information for vendors? They reach out to vendors through their published sales channels? Go to industry trade events or follow industry periodicals where that's the purpose?

They'd highlight new products because they believe they're good.

The solution to your last problem is to make exclusive dealing contracts always illegal and actually enforce antitrust law.

[sanswork]

All your solutions are forms of advertising.