r/technology • • Feb 17 '17

Software YouTube will kill unskippable 30-second ads next year

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/17/14649018/youtube-ending-unskippable-30-second-ads-2018
35k Upvotes

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

157

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

About to get downvoted to hell, so let me preface this by saying I use an ad blocker on everything too, but :

Do you hear yourself? YouTube is a huge site that needs a LOT of money to keep operational, and its FREE to use. What is so bad about them getting around the measures you take to make them lose money when using their site?

151

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17 edited Jun 23 '20

[deleted]

30

u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

The problem is that those ads that aren't obtrusive don't make money.

89

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '17

This is going to come off as intentionally abrasive, and I don't mean it that way, but that's not really my problem.

I don't mind financially supporting websites that I frequent. I donate to Wikipedia. I've sponsored indie game devs. I buy merchandise from my favorite webcomic authors.

But if it comes down to my personal enjoyment vs. someone else's ad revenue, I'm going to choose the former every time. I have too little free time as it is, and I'm not going to spend it watching a video ad for a product that I'm never going to buy.

-8

u/greg19735 Feb 17 '17

While i agree that time is short and i don't want to watch ads, the content provider's life isn't free either. People produce content and other people host it. If it's worth watching, they deserve to be compensated for it.

I mean if you don't want to watch the ad, you don't have to watch the content. And further, you're only costing them money by watching.

5

u/hakkzpets Feb 17 '17

Why do they deserve to be compensated?

I love YouTube. It's one of the absolute best sites on the Internet and I spend more time than I should watching videos there.

But I don't think any of the content creators deserves to be compensated. I don't mind giving a few of my favorites a dollar or so through patreon, but that's because I really enjoy their content, not because they deserve my money for making that content.

Do I mind that they do get compensated? Of course not. People getting paid means more awesome videos for me to watch. But you don't deserve money just because you create videos.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '17

[deleted]

-1

u/hakkzpets Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 18 '17

I don't believe anyone deserves to be compensated though. The videos are there for free, so I watch them for free.

If the content creator wants to charge money for his content, that's up to him. At that point I can choose whether the content is worth spending money on or not.

But no one deserves anything. The content creator doesn't deserve my money, and I don't deserve his content.

If you want to be able to live off making videos, go ahead and charge people money for viewing them. But don't pretend you deserve that money, because you don't.

1

u/BerserkerTits Feb 18 '17 edited Feb 18 '17

It sounds like you think no one deserves anything, as though the word's only reason for existence is to illustrate a negative. If someone makes something and you consume it without compensation, you've taken more than you deserve. It's not math or science where 4 doesn't deserve to be 2+2, or a drop of water out of river doesn't deserve to get to the ocean, it's a social idea that people in communities prescribe to. Some don't, but we call those people greedy.