tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359774943568563177.post5422126766509567927..comments2014-05-22T10:21:31.492-07:00Comments on randomphil.com: Youtube and adblockPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14791359210633134794noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359774943568563177.post-75425113593166826652014-05-22T10:21:31.492-07:002014-05-22T10:21:31.492-07:00Sure take advantage of it. Just don't cry fou...Sure take advantage of it. Just don't cry foul when savvy users use adblock, especially after your advertisers have repeatedly exploited their good will with annoying, malfunctioning, and outright malicious adsPhilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14791359210633134794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5359774943568563177.post-51454862224846345892014-02-06T11:20:43.297-08:002014-02-06T11:20:43.297-08:00Very interesting thoughts! Man, this whole topic c...Very interesting thoughts! Man, this whole topic can be unpacked to reveal a whole bunch of legal, ethical, cultural, and even philosophical questions. I'm glad it's being discussed.<br /><br />I also very much dislike advertising as a revenue scheme, simply because of its unpleasantness for the consumer. But I know that advertising does *work* as a revenue scheme, and it works so well that it's almost an act of foolishness to not take advantage of it, especially on a platform as popular as Youtube. <br /><br />But I'm not convinced there's an actual ethical issue here. This is the wild-west chaotic realm of the internet, where intellectual property laws are fuzzy at best, and the infrastructure of content distribution is simply not standardized in any meaningful way. We're not talking about legal issues here, just structural and commercial ones.<br /><br />We are encouraged to watch ads because they support our content creators. But they only support our content creators because we watch them in the first place! Do we have an obligation to perpetuate that cycle? If enough people were to break the "rules" by using Adblock, ads would become an ineffective revenue method. But wouldn't that in itself simply be a sort of natural selection? Why is a revenue structure worth keeping simply because it's the one we're already using? What if there are other, even more effective systems out there that are just waiting for the ad system to collapse so they can have a try? Who are we to argue with evolution? :)Marishahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04845443687321780905noreply@blogger.com