• BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Well, if YouTube were truly so terrible that you think it offers no real value, you wouldn’t use it at all. If you yourself don’t use it, that’s all well and good, but if you do still use it anyway but block ads, then you’re admitting that it offers some amount of actual value while refusing to pay for it. In that case, it’s hardly unreasonable for YouTube to decide to not take on the cost of offering the service to those that aren’t going to pay for it. You’d probably be more than a little annoyed if your boss told you that you’ll be working extra hours for free.

    • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      There’s nothing inherently valuable to YouTube other than the fact that it’s the default video hosting website because it got there first. You can find other similar websites that provide video hosting that is equivalent, just without the massive audience YouTube has. Keep in mind your argument only works for G rated content because anything that is slightly controversial, even history based content, gets demonetized and there’s an entire other website called patreon that gained popularity because YouTube wasn’t paying its content creators for their work.

      YouTube has lots of options for getting people to pay for their content. If they opt to pursue ad revenue they need to accept that a subset of their audience will use 3rd party apps to get around that. Most people don’t have ad blockers so it’s really only people smart enough to download the plugins. To me this is akin to Reddit pissing in the face of their users for the sake of maximizing profits. I get why they’re doing it, but for every trick they employ to get around ad blockers someone will come up with a workaround and I’ll just download that plugin each time.

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is an interesting perspective. Many people are willing to put in time and effort to get around restrictions on adblockers, but not willing to give up time to ads or give up money to avoid ads.

      I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.

      The minority would go elsewhere to find other entertainment at an acceptable price.

      • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.

        Given the success of Netflix’s ban on password sharing, I think you’re right here. Most people really don’t care about this nearly as much as the average tech enthusiast.