Sure, maybe we shouldn't be using YouTube at all. And I would prefer if we had more legal protections for user data in the US. But that aside, the sheer size and quality of YouTube. It's availability on every phone tv or whatever. This doesn't just happen magically.
Correct! It happened by offering a completely free service with no advertising, in order to become the dominant player and eliminate all the competition, some of which was trying to use more sustainable business models. The idea that YouTube should be free also didn’t happen magically, it was (and still is) intentionally fostered.
YouTube was free even if you do mind ads, on purpose. To a first approximation everyone minds ads. YouTube used this fact to establish their dominance before switching tactics.
Lots of competitors have tried to use both paid accounts and ad-funding. What competitor I might prefer is irrelevant here, but there are plenty of them, just Google YouTube competitors. Vimeo is a good example of a site with high quality content and a more sustainable business model that tried for a while and was unable to broach the same market. YouTube so far surpassed everyone by offering videos without ads until more recently, in order to gain market share. The mindset you’re currently arguing against was established and curated and encouraged by YouTube, and they’re still hoping you hang on to it while they keep cranking up the amount of advertising and trying to normalize the bogus idea that avoiding ads is somehow bad. They do not have to offer an ad-funded business model, so if they don’t like the cat-and-mouse adblocker game, they can switch to paid accounts only.
It’s perfectly fine to block ads, because it’s perfectly fine to ignore ads we didn’t ask for. You can fast-forward or turn the volume down manually, just like you can write software to automate it. As a society, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ve had this same debate over VHS and DVD warnings & trailers, over TV and cable ads, over radio ads, and over general internet website ads. It will never change because advertisers are not allowed to force us to watch ads, as much as they’d like to.
How I watch the served content in my browser isn’t covered in the terms of service, nor is there valid legal precedent for that. It’s my right to turn down the volume or fast-forward at any time, by any means. If YT doesn’t like that for fear of losing money, then they shouldn’t serve free videos at all. Or they can thwart ad blockers. Their being under the same company as the most used browser gives them plenty of monopoly power to control the flow of ad blocker extensions, and turns out they’re exercising that power. And I haven’t argued against any of that. My sole point is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with people skipping ad viewing by manual or automatic means. Being bad for YouTube doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong for anyone else. I don’t expect free anything, but I do have a right to consume the “free” content they offer however I like.
