After yet another crackdown on ad-blockers, YouTube users are noticing videos that load slowly and direct them to a support page about turning off ad-blocking extensions.
But I don’t have adblockers installed and I still get told to turn my blocker off. I have no extensions and YouTube randomly stops my video to tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Edit: I guess this is the result when dealing with the kind of users who refuse to watch ads, but also can’t fuck off like decent human beings. Just millions of people who will climb your fence, pick your locks, smash your window, because they deserve to watch content, but they won’t pay or watch ads.
In the first quarter of 2025, Google’s revenue amounted to over 89.52 billion U.S. dollars, up from the 79.97 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same quarter a year prior.
… They’ll survive.
I guess the content creators take the hit when users block ads or refuse to use premium.
Edit: your addendum is false. Technically YouTube freely delivers (answers http gets and posts), the user just refuses to watch all of their content or take part in the tracking. No broken windows or climbed fences.
If I thought that way about YouTube, why not just be a sovcit about laws in general? I don’t want to cherry pick philosophy. Let’s go all in on technicalities and loopholes and definitions and wording. Life is a video game where X leads to Y because that’s the rules. YouTube is merely answering requests, and I’m merely watching a curated selection of data. They have a TOS but I never agreed to it. For I’m not a user or customer, but a Netizen, and we have rights.
Terms of Service aren’t laws. Breaking them is not illegal. It’s like using the waterslide while sitting and not lying on your back. In fact, it’s explicitly legal to use an adblocker and control what happens on your device in both the EU and the US. There are ongoing debates whether the surveillance required for blocking adblockers is legal in the EU.
Google does break laws all the time by the way, and is holding a monopoly. If people had to pay for Youtube, alternatives would spring up overnight, but since you can still watch Youtube free, they can’t.
Also, I’d be the happiest person if Google finally figured out how to block people with adblockers completely, so that the majority of people would wean themselves off of one of the world’s biggest disinfo peddlers.
But I don’t have adblockers installed and I still get told to turn my blocker off. I have no extensions and YouTube randomly stops my video to tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Edit: I guess this is the result when dealing with the kind of users who refuse to watch ads, but also can’t fuck off like decent human beings. Just millions of people who will climb your fence, pick your locks, smash your window, because they deserve to watch content, but they won’t pay or watch ads.
Umm… Maybe. Let’s take a look.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267606/quarterly-revenue-of-google/:
… They’ll survive.
I guess the content creators take the hit when users block ads or refuse to use premium.
Edit: your addendum is false. Technically YouTube freely delivers (answers http gets and posts), the user just refuses to watch all of their content or take part in the tracking. No broken windows or climbed fences.
If I thought that way about YouTube, why not just be a sovcit about laws in general? I don’t want to cherry pick philosophy. Let’s go all in on technicalities and loopholes and definitions and wording. Life is a video game where X leads to Y because that’s the rules. YouTube is merely answering requests, and I’m merely watching a curated selection of data. They have a TOS but I never agreed to it. For I’m not a user or customer, but a Netizen, and we have rights.
Terms of Service aren’t laws. Breaking them is not illegal. It’s like using the waterslide while sitting and not lying on your back. In fact, it’s explicitly legal to use an adblocker and control what happens on your device in both the EU and the US. There are ongoing debates whether the surveillance required for blocking adblockers is legal in the EU.
Google does break laws all the time by the way, and is holding a monopoly. If people had to pay for Youtube, alternatives would spring up overnight, but since you can still watch Youtube free, they can’t.
Also, I’d be the happiest person if Google finally figured out how to block people with adblockers completely, so that the majority of people would wean themselves off of one of the world’s biggest disinfo peddlers.