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Sooo. What are your plans for surviving the YouTube ad-pocalypse? In case you don't know, YouTube seems to be cracking down on ad-blockers, steadily ramping up their level of restrictiveness over the past 4 or so months, and ramping up even faster the last 3 weeks. Adblock Plus no longer seems to work for me on Chrome, but does work on Firefox. It'll probably be different for everyone as they dial it up for more and more customers, but it'll likely keep getting more restrictive as time goes on.
I'm guessing this has to do with the same tech trend that caused the layoffs this past year. Budgets are tighter, bubbles are popping, and sources of revenue are being more exploited. But I do wonder if this particular one will work out for Google or not.
I for one plan on leaving the platform if I ever am completely unable to make it work without ads. I think there are many others who feel the same way. This may (I hope) make things worse for content creators, especially those who rely on their own sponsorships for revenue, and will drive them towards other less restrictive platforms.
It's not like I think it's immoral or wrong for Google to pull this, but it does bother me. YouTube has been around for so long, it's life a part of my life. It's my TV, it's the way I learn and become better at most things, and for many many people, it's their livelihood. My wife randomly said to me last week as I was teaching myself some drumstick fundamentals (the kind of fundamentals with deep intricacies that you can't see easily, and need an in-depth video to go into), "how did anyone ever learn anything before YouTube?" After having been around for so long, and being so ingrained, it feels weird for YouTube to suddenly switch up how it works. I'm someone who likes to skip around videos and go back and forth a lot. When ads are present on YouTube, I cannot stand how you'll skip to a section of a video, even without having watched much actual content in the video yet, and suddenly have to watch a giant string of ads. Having to watch ads like that will ruin my usage of the platform.
I also wonder if it's technically possible for YouTube to completely crack down on all ad-blockers, but I don't know enough about how their APIs work. But since so much of it it's happening client-side, I think they'd have to control the client to have complete control. This might be why youtube no longer works on Chrome when I have adblock plus, but it still works on Firefox for me.
I hate ads too, but I have noticed that a lot of people who absolutely hate ads and paywalls still expect free content to magically keep being produced for them. I mean, subscriptions or ads, those are really your only choices. People need to get paid, server fees need to be paid, etc. Shit ain't free. It's fair to complain that something is overpriced, but it's not really fair to complain that the content you want has to be monetized somehow.
Correct. I absolutely expect this. And why, I hear you ask? I reasonably expect this for the exact same reason a medieval lord could expect food to be provided to him by his peasants. End of story.
I don't know if you're being ironic or edgy or you think you sound like a chad or something, but you are not a medieval lord. You neither provide protection and security for content creators (the medieval lord's theoretical obligation in return for his provisions) nor do you have an army with which to go pillage them (the actual means by which they extracted it). So go on expecting whatever you want, it doesn't change the equation.
My taxes (and the taxes of the people like me) absolutely do provide protection and security for the rest of society. Now many of these content creators themselves are smart enough to themselves be in the group of people who produce net value and I agree they should be paid (the 6hr 1st Crusade link is absolutely amazing from the first 30 minutes or so that I've seen so far, the world is a better place for it existing), but we do have a way to pay for them, namely the taxes of me and the likes of me, which would be much better of being handed to these people for their time so they can create stuff like this rather than handing it out in housing benefit to keep poors living in expensive locations they couldn't otherwise afford (and thereby not only burning taxpayer cash but also causing a deadweight loss as high desirability accommodation close to high productivity centres gets consumed by low skilled people instead of those who can exploit such an envionment to the fullest).
It is not that I expect these people (specifically) to provide high quality content to me for free, it is more that I expect to be provided high quality content for free by virtue of my position in society and how much I contribute to it.
There effectively is an army which goes and pillages the likes of me for my taxes on threat of being jailed, and then freely celebrates this pillaging. All I ask is that it be equally turned on the lower classes when they protest, yet again, about wanting even more of the societal surplus generated by the productive being redirected to them, and then showing absolutely zero thanks for what they are given.
The point of my expectation is not in a hope that the world will change, I'm far too cynical for that, it's more for my own self to have zero moral pangs when I download and run more and more complicated scripts to keep on breaking anti-adblock. In the end if I have a device that I have full control over, there really isn't much YouTube or anyone else can do to control the exact content I see or that I don't see, they can only make my life hard, but not stop what I do on my own device.
The point is that when I do avoid ads I will not feel bad inside about depriving creators of their livelihoods, but rather feel good inside for asseting my control over my own device.
Here in the UK you are not allowed to turn left on a red light (the equivalent to right turn on red in the US), however back home where I am from it's permitted in certain locations, including my birthtown and its environs. When I am on my bike I freely turn left on red lights if it is safe to do so and do not feel bad about it at all, while not feeling the same way for breaking a light by going straight through. I basically consider it my birthright to turn left on red, something that is given to me by virtue of my birth and denied to the native brits purely based on where they were born (now they can change their law if they want to, and I think it would be sensible, but that's up to them).
To be honest with you I would freely turn left on red when driving as well were it not for the fact that cars have number plates and I'd get fined. So I don't do it. However I don't see this restriction as "yet another traffic rule" but rather as an undue and unfair restriction rather than a just law that has the "mandate of heaven". I see such a rule as being in the same class of rules that punish using a VPN in China. I wouldn't consider someone using one a "bad person", even though technically they broke the law, same here I would not consider a person that constantly turns left on red when safe to do so a bad person in a way that I would consider someone who breaks red lights to be bad.
However the British government does not have the bandwidth to stop all cyclists turning left on red (just like how China does not have the bandwidth to stop all VPNs), and so I freely do it, and when I do it I feel good about myself, because claiming what you are rightfully entitled to is not something to be ashamed of at all, but rather something to be proud of. If the government stopped fining cars that turned left on red I would start turning left on red as well, even though i the equivalent scenario where the government stopped fining cars that broke red lights by going striaght through I would not start going straight through. This is because I fundamentally believe I have an entitlement to turn left on red, while I have no such entitlements to run red lights. Whenever I turn left on red on my bike I feel good inside, but when I break red lights on red my internal moral compass tells me that I just did something wrong.
I have zero expectations that my belief and the beliefs of those who think like me make it at all any more likely that the government is likely to legalise left turns on red at all, but that's not the point of it, the point is for my own moral compass to see my actions as right and just vs wrong and a mere artifice. Same with my beliefs about what I am entitled to with online content, the point is for me to feel good and right and just as I apply the latest patch that continues to break whatever anti-adblock script YouTube et. al. are now pushing.
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