this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Yeah it's weird how privacy and piracy have blended together over the years.
With some games you need to pirate them if you don't want a Russian nesting doll of launchers and accounts that are able to leak your information and fill your computer with bloat.
I do find the argument interesting some YouTubers try to make about ad blockers being a form of piracy.
To be fair, it makes sense to liken the use of ad blockers with piracy. Consuming the content without paying for it either way, either without directly paying yourself or without indirectly paying through watching ads. Doesn't change that ads on most parts of the internet are extremely invasive and far too much.
I feel fully entitled to protect myself from the ads because of the problems with them. But I don't feel the need to lie to myself about the fact that I'm consuming content without paying for it in some way. Then again I support some content creators that I feel deserve it. Not sure if that helps offset it somewhat or not, but I don't really care that much either.
Please stop doing this. It just gives bad actors better tools to fuck content creators.
If ads arent chosen and paid to the content creators directly then its a damned cancer on the entire industry and you, by giving them this, are supporting wage theft at best and exploitation at worst
How many content creators have been demonetized for no reason at all yet ads are still injected into their content anyway?
Sorry for being angry about this, but if we as a whole accept this then we are watching enshitification in action and im sick of the amazing thing that is the internet continually get worse
No, I fully believe you're making different issues into one, which is dishonest argumentation.
Adblockers are functionally equivalent to piracy, the fact that some entities abuse others is a different issue. It's the same as with gambling mechanics in games, the fact that most people would think that those are predatory and bad does not change that not paying for the game is piracy. It's possible to be more nuanced about things than to group everything together.
v
Your spelling also doesn't help your credibilityIf you can't see past someone's spelling mistakes then your credibility is the one I think is in question. Just ask me to fix it if the meaning is unclear or ambiguous instead of attacking my credibility(pot kettle black). Perhaps I did make some spelling mistakes, but do you know if english is even my first or third language?
It's interesting that you both tell me not to connect one issue and also its downstream effects, but then turn around and say that my argument lacks nuance(if that's a fair summary of your response, as I take it to be)
I'm saying that calling adblocking piracy has downstream effects that complicate the larger issue of the enshitification of the internet in general, and you want to boil things down to a simple binary of circumvention, i assume. But I reject the statement that adblockers are piracy without explanation.
So please, explain it so that the basis for this opinion can be understood instead of simply repeating it. What is it that makes adblocking equate to piracy in your opinion?
I'm passionate about this. I see it very much like a repeat of introducing micro transactions in the form of DLC into gaming which ruined gaming for me and many other people. Enshitification seems rampant these day. I believe that ive seen it in action before and that im seeing it again with this idea that adblocking is piracy.
Oh, I could see past your errors, I was just pointing it out. Errors do not help credibility, almost ever. (There might be some times it does, but I'm not sure I would want to gain credibility with people that would take such as helping my credibility). If you disagree with this I don't know what to tell you. I also didn't actually attack your credibility (I don't really think you have any, but that's a different matter), but made an observation that you could make sure your writing is better to not detract from your credibility. With the amount of tools available to avoid spelling mistakes it doesn't really matter whether English isn't a language one is perfectly proficient in.
I have clearly expressed what makes adblocking equate to piracy. It's in the first paragraph of the first comment of mine you replied to. It should be fairly straight forward. Consuming without paying.
I reject your premise that it's like microtransactions in gaming, unless you specifically mean in "free" games. Of course microtransactions and a lot of DLC for paid games are enshittification, but that's more like asking you to pay more to access a new episode of a show or a scene from a show you've already paid for. Not near the same as having ads to pay for the costs of delivering content (and I include producing the content in "delivering" it).
Now, if you instead make the argument that the amount of ads or the contents of ads are enshittificating services that let you consume content without directly paying for it yourself I can agree. But not that ads themselves are enshittification. Nor that avoiding to pay to consume content isn't piracy. I just think it's self-deception to claim that not paying by blocking ads isn't piracy. I have also made it clear that I think blocking ads is perfectly reasonable and what should be done. It may not be piracy in the legal sense, but circumventing systems meant to pay for something seems perfectly in line with the colloquial sense of the word.
Somewhat of a tangent
Now, do I think the internet would be better if there were no ads at all? Yes, of course. But do you think it would be better that people would have to directly pay to use services on the internet instead? That would mean poorer people would be barred from a lot of online services. Because it costs something to host services on the internet and that has to be paid somehow. And people generally congregate to a small subset of sites which thus get a lot of traffic and thus high costs that has to be paid somehow. Sure, you could have some sites being public forums made available by government and thus "free to use" because they payment is through taxes, but that's generally not how businesses operate.You either couldn't look past a couple of spelling errors or deliberately chose not to. My evidence? You commented on it and now we are talking about them. What was the point of mentioning it all if you were willing and able to ignore them.
You are a bad actor and you have shown what worth you are.
Go away.
Im done with you.
You have shown who you are and you arent just arent worth another thought
You're more of a bad actor with your tantrums and rage-downvoting.
I wish you a better future.
EDIT: also to add that I simply made a note of it, specifically in a spoiler, while you were the one to try to make it into a conversation and talk about it. It really shows more about you than about me.
I don't see why a free market can't take care of this problem. Let the suppliers run their ads and if it's not profitable then let them fold. None of this "please stop using ad blockers our business model sucks and we need you to accept worse overall service so we can stay in business".
This is the most important thing imo. Some people just don't care (not saying it's a bad thing). Others do so to each their own.
Sure, let everything require that you pay upfront for everything. Those too poor to afford to pay don't deserve to have access to it anyway, right?
I'm not saying that ads are good, but having an option for people to pay to access a service that isn't directly tied to money they have accessible seems better than barring them from that access. At the same time that option cannot be too intrusive or otherwise be too much of a negative before it becomes predatory. We can wish for the world to be perfect as much as we want, that doesn't make it so. We can work towards a future where people don't have to work to be able to live comfortably and where we have very different ways to compensate people for their time and effort on top of that. But we're not there.
I'm not quite sure what you meant by your last paragraph, though.
Those too poor to afford to pay get it for free, comrade.
I feel like a lot of people are wholly unaware of FOSS. But anyway my free market idea would require consent, for example a pop-up that says "would you like to pay $0.30 or watch an 8 second ad to view the content?" and then people could make their choice. If their choice is neither then they will go somewhere else for the information or entertainment. Consent is absent from the current model, aside from using an ad blocker to signal your refusal.
There are tons of videos (educational and otherwise) on youtube that have never paid out to their creators, either because they were from the era before youtube enshittified or because the algorithm decided that the content creator has earned nothing. It reminds me of the old argument that "you shouldn't pirate music because it's not fair to the artist" but man you've got to see those record contracts, especially those made to black or otherwise underprivileged artists. Being fair to the artist was never an imperative, but this argument still persists with people who identify themselves with their jailers, or who actually don't really care that much (not saying that in a bad way).
Humans by nature are creative and helpful. We will always make how-to videos, guides, music, stories, and art. We don't need megacorps to facilitate this, it's the megacorps that want in, and they're going to have to come up with a better business model.
Well yeah, of course we're consuming content without paying. But that is not piracy.
The creators are distributing the content freely, and we're consuming it, while ignoring the ads, because we have the ability to do it.
Is flipping the channel on legacy TV when switching to commercials piracy as well?
Anyone who considers adblocking immoral shouldn't block anykind of advertising anywhere.
Where did you get that it was immoral from? I don't see many (anyone?) that have claimed that.
If someone claims adblocking is form of piracy they are also claiming its immoral or bad thing to do. I doubt someone making claim like that would have anything nice to say about piracy.
I mean, why else would people speak against adblocking if they didnt think it was somehow "immoral" or otherwise negative thing to do.
No. Making a claim that adblocking is a form of piracy does not in any way say that either piracy nor adblocking is immoral. Only if they actually make a claim that piracy is immoral can it be transferred like that.
You also seem to make the claim that anyone equating adblocking and piracy are speaking against them. Why are you making such a claim?
Also *it's, *didn't. It's not that hard.
I'm just so tired and annoyed about people wanting to restrict adblocking in anyway, so I guess i assume things too easily. I consider being able to not see ads my inherent right.
Oh, absolutely. And it's just gotten worse with the intrusiveness and amount of ads everywhere. Piracy also seems to become the only way to avoid far too much data collection about us as well.
I'm not a gamer but is this really true? I thought it was the other way around, that pirated games were the ones filled with malware.
Absolutely. Sure pirated games run that risk but communities are big enough to usually snuff it out quickly if it's a malware filled crack. Going through legitimate means a PC gamer is likely to have steam, epic games launcher, blizzard launcher, EA, Ubisoft, and probably more I can't think of. Many of these are clunky and slow and demand online connectivity or multiple sign in auths every time you just want to play a damn single player, offline game
Big time. Even rumours of a repackers adding malware blow up on communities like this.
Core characters in the repack community also occasionally ask for and receive donations. I've donated to DODI, FitGirl, and Gnarly. Hopefully they receive enough to discourage them from anything malicious but they're also adored and respected by the community.
I purchased a Call of Duty title recently and that was a big thing. The amount of ads in the launcher was wild.
I didn't even think of the ads when writing that, but damn that's probably the worst part of it all! Thank you for adding that major detail, clearly my very minimal usage of most of those launchers was showing lol
Ooooh I see what you mean, thanks.
That's awesome, power to the people!
This argument makes no sense to me, it would be piracy if I was copying the videos into my own channel and raking in the views. An YouTube channel is more like TV, you're broadcasting into the wild hoping to get some eyeballs and selling those eyeballs to the highest bidder. It's up to me if I want to see the ads or not, just like TV.
"If you want basic privacy protection, you are a pirate and I hate you." - Linus Sebastian, professional L generator (abridged)
Not at all what he said, great “quote”
Did you lose your ability to recognise sarcasm, or did it never develop in the first place?
Of course that's not what he said, but the issue of web ads is much deeper than the ad revenue or no ad revenue question he is taking a stand on. It has been discussed ad nauseum by more technically minded people than him.
"I am a big dumb dumb idiot" - rtxn@lemmy.world
Don't worry it's not an attack on you or a lie about what you said, just sarcasm.
That guy is a fucking loser
Can someone give me a source to what he's referring to?
Ad blocking being likened to piracy would be valid except for the fact that internet ads have always been predominantly intrusive, misleading, predatory, and malicious.
No no it isn't piracy. Shame on you
for giving them that power to wield they will use it to claim that putting tape on your camera so you cant be spied on is piracy. And thats rediculous, but thats what will happen if we dont stand together and say no no its not piracy just because i didnt want to watch your stupid fucking add on a video that YOU ARENT MONITIZING DIRECTLY. ads that arent payed to the content creator directly is wage theft at best and exploitation at worst
Edit sorry this isnt aimed at you personally beyond the first 8 words. Im not drunk but it does feel a bit like a drunken ramble, guess it touched a nerve. Ill have to reflect on that
Is piracy not inclusive of subverting the means for a producer to profit off of a product when using that product?
The issue I see in it is that businesses have made the assumption that internet adverts are the same as television adverts. They started using them as such and now they are having a hissy fit that they don't have a captive audience.
If they find a way to force adverts on us, then we will be a captive audience once more.
It's gotten to such an extreme that some websites are nothing more than ad delivery mechanisms under the concept that "ads allow us to provide you quality content for free", which, under the hood, is just a shitty business model that doesn't work for consumers. I've seen websites that literally copy paste the content 2 or 3 times to extend the word count and have nonsensicle, out of order sentences that don't contain any information. There are also websites that have incorrect information, which are also published with the sole purpose of serving ads to generate revenue, which imo is worse. Just another way that capitalism is making our world more shitty.
This has been the way for decades now.
What should be happening is people avoid the culprits and/or use an ad blocker. I do believe this is actually what's happening, which is why content platforms like YouTube are looking for ways to control their audience.
Ad blockers aren't illegal, but neither is a website blocking ad blockers. It's an arms race that the content platforms will lose. So I wonder what will be the next step if the ad space depreciates too much to drive the content.
I think of adblockers as a filter.
Websites can choose to include ads, and I choose to filter them out with ad blockers.
Its no different than me placing a sticky note over every ad on my screen, or turning away and covering my ears when a video ad plays. But ad blockers automate that process and make it a whole lot easier. Simple quality of life