And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one.

If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.

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danpalmer 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But in those cases someone is still seeing the ads. It's when no one is seeing the ads that it becomes piracy, in my opinion.

A summary is not the same as the content either, that's a fairly well tested concept (fair use, etc).

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opello 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's an "if a tree falls in the forest" version of "if the viewer leaves the room" at which point has a theft still been visited upon the broadcaster? The business that paid for the ad?

In a newspaper if I skip over ads with my eyes do you think I've marginalized/pirated/stolen from the business that paid for the ad? They paid for placement and not an impression. I'd argue that if YouTube presents the ad and my browser/app/whatever skips it then YouTube satisfied its obligation and that's where it ends. The advertiser, knowing full well the limitations of the access mechanism, made a choice to throw money into this version of the attention economy. It's obviously worth it to them or they wouldn't do it, or haven't made as careful of an economic decision as I would imagine I suppose.

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Nextgrid 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ok, let’s switch it up a bit. I give the ad-full newspaper to someone not speaking the local language. Or an illiterate person. Or a monkey trained to be good with scissors. Is this also piracy? At what point does it become piracy? How little of an ad should someone see/understand before it counts as a “valid” ad view? A few words? A full sentence? Etc.

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danpalmer 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You're trying to nit-pick where the line is drawn. The point is not where the line is drawn, it's that there is a line.

Installing an ad-blocker in your browser and never seeing an ad while consuming hours of content for free, depriving those creators of revenue, depriving the platform of revenue to support your usage of it, is in no way comparable to these at-the-margin contrived examples.

	▲	sidrag22 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		depriving? the creators are posting their content on a free platform, with hopes that it will generate enough views so that enough of those viewers are ad watching viewers so that they will gain revenue. you're acting like the view is 100% meaningless and ONLY a bad thing, and its quite the opposite. the "free" view costs the creator literally nothing, and it gains them an additional view, if its a good video its potentially gonna help spread the video elsewhere where maybe they can find some suckers to mindlessly consume ads. and lets be real, the platform you are "depriving of revenue" is google... they operated ad free to create massive market capture to create the current monstrosity that is youtube in 2025, think they can't cut off all users that block ads right now? there is a reason they aren't doing so.

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jemmyw 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not piracy. You might have a problem with it ethically. But you're not breaking copyright laws by blocking ads.

Another way to look at it is additive rather than subtractive. If I visit a site with a text only browser that cannot display ads, what is your position then? And if I then implement the ability for my browser to play only the main video on any page, what then?

When it comes down to it, we have no obligation to view the content on a webpage the way the publisher of said webpage wants us to. You can think of plenty of other examples that make "adblocking is piracy" ridiculous - I invert the colors but the publisher doesn't want me to see it with inverted colors. I wear sunglasses while looking at it, which changes the way it looks. Maybe the site I use always puts an ad in the same place so I stick a bit of tape on my monitor in that location, is that bad?

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JAlexoid 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube.

It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.

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Nextgrid 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m totally cool with “screwing over” people who make their income screwing gullible people into falling for scams or buying useless, overpriced junk they don’t need. I don’t need to rationalize it for myself, I’m just trying to show some people the error in their ways, but maybe their portfolio of ad-related stocks is clouding their vision?

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JAlexoid 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I hate to break it to you, but you're not doing any of that.

You seem like you have a robin hood complex or something similar.

	▲	sidrag22 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the creator is being harmed in no way at all, the ad free viewer is still a viewer and still could potentially generate more traffic to that creator by word of mouth algo pushing based on more views etc. Its still a net positive for the creator, just not AS net positive as an ad viewer. its not some secret that some % of viewers, block ads.. either you lean into it and utilize it, or you pretend people should be obligated to only watch your videos by paying or watching ads, in that case find a new platform.

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aspaviento 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The choice of an individual to skip an advertisement has minimal impact on the content creator or the platform. This person isn't accountable for the decisions of others regarding whether they watch the ad or not. Ultimately, their actions only affect themselves and do not influence anyone involved in the advertisement process.

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pessimizer 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're not replying directly to the last comment because it posed a hard question, and you've resorted to an emotional appeal.