Comment by echelon 7 hours ago
I hate ads and use adblock on websites too, but I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for. We're counting on "normies" footing the bill for our technical sophistication.
I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.
YMMV, to me there’s nothing I would watch an ad in order to use, given the choice. As in there are things I value enough to pay for, and things I don’t care if they go away. No ad-supported middle ground.
Unfortunately “normies footing the bill” means in many cases we’re stuck with engagement optimized drivel instead of actual thoughtful content, which is largely the point of the original post. I’d love a world where this was driven out of existence because people stopped watching ads.
I would like to take this even further, I'd like to see what it's like to not consume any intellectual property encumbered media of any sort, so either public domain or CC licensed materials. I can, and do this easily enough with books, but for video it seems impossible. Of course, one could make the argument that would mean I'd be unable to read the comments here on Hacker News, however in practice IP protections on such tiny bits of content are rarely if ever enforced.
In a similar vein, I'd like to be able to block any YouTube content that is sponsored. This seems a lot more possible, since Sponsor Block already maintains this info.
> I don't care about blogspam, but a lot of YouTube content clearly costs money to make.
By the time the video is uploaded to Youtube, for the creator is a sunk cost. What most of your Youtube ad view generated money goes to is the hosting on Google’s end, not the creator. It’s a false belief that 99% of Youtube creators will go extinct if you use an ad blocker, because it’s a post pay system.
This is only really true for successful channels not most Youtube content. The ad blocker hurts Google more than YT creators.
> I also wonder how this stuff gets paid for.
For folks in the ad-enabling chain: Caring about their well-being isn't really reciprocated. Not in a tangible way.
If that ever changes, my psychological hygiene can be up for discussion.