[baumy]

This is juvenile nonsense.

I can point directly to the law in whatever jurisdiction you care to name that makes doing what you describe illegal.

You cannot point to anything that makes it illegal to view videos on a publicly accessible website without watching the ads that usually play before them.

[HDThoreaun]

This is how I feel about claiming that stealing from YouTube isn’t actually stealing. Juvenile nonsense. That’s why I came up with a nonsense counter argument

[komali2]

Negative proof. We've no obligation to prove your point for you.

You claim we're stealing.

In Texas, theft is a crime per Sec. 31.03:

> THEFT. (a) A person commits an offense if he unlawfully appropriates property with intent to deprive the owner of property.

Please link the law, and jurisdiction, that is broken when I view a YouTube video and don't view the ad.

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.31.htm#31....

Nobody disagrees with you that YouTube wants us to view ads.

[HDThoreaun]

I don’t give a shit about laws. Common sense and morality are what matter to me and taking without paying will always be stealing according to both. I’m not trying to prove anything to you, other than how juvenile it is to hide behind laws and technicalities I guess.

[komali2]

> Common sense and morality

Hah! Someone after my own heart. Well, since we're not talking law, let's get into it!

First of all, all profit is theft. Your boss and shareholders are only able to make money because they steal margin from your labor.

In this case, Youtube may be providing a platform, but what it gets in return is far more than it gives back to creators. Creators have no rights when it comes to Youtube - I can list many who were nixxed from Youtube because they violated a specific subset of neoliberal, puritanical "ethics." For example, Youtube will delist or demonetize videos that have too many swear words in them, or videos that discuss things that aren't illegal but Youtube doesn't like, such as adblockers or emulation software.

This is unethical. Youtube has no value outside of its creators. Yet it has total say over what kinds of content creators are allowed to make, and it sets the prices for creators, keeping the lion's share for itself. That is theft.

Youtube abuses its users as well, cramming features we don't want down our throats, like "Shorts" (puke) and increasingly longer ads. I know for a fact not enough revenue is going to the creators because they still need to seek external sponsorship, resulting in double-ads: youtube ones, and then sponsored portions of videos. Youtube also constantly enshittifies the UI. And, despite its puritanical neoliberal ethics, it does basically nothing about the extensive racist content on its platform (any video featuring black people doing just about anything will have years-old comments on it with racist content). And don't even get me started on the freakshow that is Youtube Kids. Just search "Elsagate."

Youtube feeds into the demonstrably mentally unhealthy attention economy and engages in dark pattern UX.

Youtube is undergoing platform enshittification, making things worse for its creators and users in order to extract as much profit as possible. It's not illegal, but it's certainly unethical. Given their shittiness, it's completely reasonable to leverage tooling to block their shitty ads. And don't pretend like this harms creators in any meaningful way. If I buy one t-shirt from a creator I like (which I do, frequently), I've given them more revenue per head than if I watched every single one of their videos, start to finish, one hundred times, with no ad blocking.

[HDThoreaun]

I’m not reading all that, but certainly you can make the argument that stealing a zero marginal cost good isn’t wrong. It’s still stealing though. Stealing from an unethical entity may not be wrong either, but it is still stealing.

[komali2]

> I’m not reading all that

I was under the impression we were communicating, which I was genuinely interested in doing with you. Thank you for letting me know that wasn't the case.

I haven't read your comment and won't be replying to the content of it. I hope you have a good weekend!

[joquarky]

You have no concern for proper semantics. I don't know why OP bothered to respond to you.