You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads.
You are not obligated to watch ads. You are opting to watch them in exchange for the free content, then skipping out on a commitment you volunteered for while still taking the free content.
The "unethical contact" argument is bullshit, because you made a choice but didn't live up to it. Instead of either paying or not watching, you watched anyway.
Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them.
There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite options to the user here. Google may prefer you engage in only one of two ways, but they have no legal ground to require that with content on the public Web.
This is the unsung argument everyone forgets! It goes to the very start of why someone might register a domain name and set up a website on the... World Wide Web... for people to visit with their User Agent software, ask for some HTML and get some HTML back. "HOW DARE YOU NOT DO A RANDOM SOCIALLY DEFINED THING AFTER ASKING FOR OUR HTML (AND OTHERS' MP4S)?"
- I, as the user, (or my user agent on behalf of me) ask for a resource.
- YT, as the provider, (or the server on YT's behalf) decide whether to send that resource to me.
- If you do, I'll use or not use it in accordance with my user agent configuration.
I asked for the video, and YT chose to send it to me. I'm not going to lose sleep over the morality of using the web as it was intended to be used.
You're wrong in both parts.
1. There is no way to pay to only remove all ads. YT premium bundles some music nonsense and also doesn't remove ads added by creators.
2. "Watching" isn't part of the contract, only "injected ads" are. Do you read every billboard in exchange for the benefit of better roads financed with ad revenue?
What we choose to watch on youtube is also up to us.
They are. YT shows content, and has several mechanisms of including paid ads in that content. From content consumption perspective there is no difference which specific mechanism is used.
> by your logic i wouldn’t be allowed to watch a movie trailer
No, that's your own twisted logic. By my logic you'd be free to consume directly whatever you want, just be able to "pay and get no ads"
> Ads however may appear on ... Shorts, and when you search or browse.
So again, you can't pay just to replace ads. (By the way, there is another huge difference - premium is a subscription, so not tied to ad time replaced)
Let's be honest here, ads are trying to get you to buy things, but "psychological abuse" is a pretty extreme hyperbole, especially for people already in such tight poverty. They've got enough going on that someone trying to get them to buy shitty knives or switch their car insurance isn't going to be impactful.
The issue is that those are not the only ads Youtube is showing to people. You can basically upload any video and make it an ad. Sometimes Youtube's moderation fails and some nasty stuff slips through the cracks:
> In the latest incident, a Redditor describes how their young nephew was exposed to an explicit ad while watching a Fortnite stream by the well-known YouTuber Loserfruit.
> “My 7yr nephew was watching Loserfruit (Fortnite streamer) and then came up to me asking what Loserfruit is doing because this ad started playing,” the concerned uncle shared.
Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-explicit-ads-proble...
Hell, they'll show weight loss ads to people with eating disorders - and this one might just be intentional rather than a failure of Youtube's moderation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/18gx1v... (Just one example but it's not hard to find more)
"Psychological abuse" is very much not hyperbole in the worst case scenarios. And as an extra bonus, Youtube promotes scam ads as well:
Psychological abuse doesn’t even begin to describe experience.
Are they? The last time I made the mistake of watching youtube without an ad blocker I got served US right-wing propaganda. I live in Spain, always have, and Google knows enough about me to know I'd despise that content.
The provider is welcome to serve ads, and i am welcome to not watch them. When there are Ads on TV and I get up to go to the kitchen, am i skipping out on a commitment? Am I now a freeloader? Should the TV have a camera to make sure I watch all the ads like a good little boy?
People have been fastforwarding/skipping ads for decades. this is nothing new.
Unlike DVR for TVs, you are not welcome to skip playing them entirely. They've been pretty clear that skipping them via the use of ad blockers is a violation of the terms of service.
Advertisers do care about them. It's just that they don't have a way to track/measure it.
Principally - the latter actually affects the compensation given to the creator of whatever video you're watching. The former does not.
TV, speaking of cable, is exclusively for entertainment. YouTube is used for pretty much everything these days. Imagine being in a panic, looking for a video how perform CPR, and getting 30 seconds unskippable ad.
Wrong. The content provider explicitly states “ad-free”, yet I still see ads from content creators themselves.
