I can’t say I had such a civilized discussion on reddit. At least I can’t remember. Typical reddit discussions always felt a bit more filled with emotion, maybe hatred. Lots of shitposting too. Might have to do something with the more targeted demographic of Lemmy.

Something being a business model actually doesn’t mean it’s right. Dropshipping exists after all. Paying everyone for their services can’t be a viable solution either. The main business model here usually consists of “pay to upgrade”. If you don’t pay, it kinda works. If you do want to pay, it works really well. BitWarden is my personal hero in that regard. Their product works really well as freeware. It works even better when you pay for it. But I believe many paying users don’t even need the additional functionality, they just pay to give something back. Moral retribution so to speak.

I see how blocking ads on freeware isn’t morally wrong, I mean there’s not much that’s universally immoral. It’s quite the topic in ethics, deontology says some acts are universally bad or universally good, no matter the consequences. A common example is honesty: being honest is always good, but I’m sure you thought of a dozen examples where honesty might not be the “good” way.

I still do agree with you. Blocking ads in specific instances can be completely fine. I mean we could construct setups where not blocking ads might lead to nuclear war. But I truly believe that it’s fine in everyday use. You don’t wanna see ads, they annoy you, you don’t feel like paying with your time and brain cells. An individual avoiding ads is so inconsequential for everyone else involved, utilitaristically, that’s a net gain of happines. On the other hand, ethics is not a study about individual actions, that’s morals. I don’t believe that any ethics could realistically support such a choice in the grand scheme. Assuming everyone acts by those rules, buying advert slots is wasted money.

Luckily we are indiviudals and like you said a day ago, there’s enough people paying their taxes for you to evade them without consequences for either party.

I, in this instance, decided it’s not about the company per se, it’s more about the individual action. I’m no sucker for Nestlé, but you can’t argue that they don’t do good things as well. They are quite the big player in vegan meat alternatives and they actually do seem to put in quite the work to make sensible products in said category. They superficially seem to be sustainable and healthier than many other comparable products. Even if that’s not true, even if their products are shipped around the globe eleven times a day, it’s pushing for something that’s ecologically sensible. If they themselves don’t produce an ecological product, they still help to establish shelf space for other, more ecological products. So yeah, I’d buy a Nestlé product in that case. Even just to show Nestlé and the stores that such a product is in demand.

There’s other scenarios where I don’t act by the same logic simply because I’m a human and humans aren’t known for being all that logical after all.

I’m a capitalist consumer and I greatly profit from my financial situation each and every day. I do live in a way too big apartment after all, and plans for individual housing are on the way. Not very ethical in the grand scheme xD

Oh buddy I get you so well. I’m not german by the way, but I guess DACH is close enough.

I actually do work software development now, even though I said systems engineering in an earlier comment. Systems engineering is ‘just’ my past, back when I actually learned stuff. Funny enough, I work for the medical sector. Not IN the medical… oh what ze hell… We make software stuff for hospitals and whatnot. At least that’s what I’m up to right now and I don’t have to tell you, it doesn’t feel as good as it should. I am essentially hired for life. As decent people in IT do, I earn more money than one should reasonably spend and demand is so high, I could just sit back and relax 4 days a week with no major consequences other than my team hiring yet another person to compensate for my lazyness.

I don’t wanna work there anymore. I probably won’t be working there today one year later. Not because we scam people or anything, I just don’t think we do justice to what should be expected from us. Our oh so cool product saves lifes and that’s good. But shouldn’t we care a bit more about better quality control, more efficient workflows, more reliable products?

We’re good enough to “win” the capitalism game. People want the thing we make and the thing we make is a good thing. But is it as good as it could be? Definite no. Do others do better? Probably, they just invest more… higher costs. Could that mean that we are inactively killing people because we force them into buying our product due to cost efficiency? Yeah sure but it’s not that easy, is it? There’s no right or wrong here, really.

So… anyway.

I see your point about you not blocking ads actually being harmful for the advertiser, because you differ from the average Joe in terms of advertisement influence. But I don’t believe that’s for us to decide. By opting for advertising a product, companies risk approaching people like you (and ME if we are being honest… I guess it’s the high rate of autism in IT (I’m not gonna include a sarcasm tag here because they stink)), that don’t recieve advertisements well and might actively steer away from their product. They contractually do NOT risk their advert not being displayed at all… you see where this is going.

Genug Moralapostel. The existence of ads in modern media is okay with me. I don’t exactly wanna see them, but I understand their business model and it’s not really all that reprehensible to me. I do prefer straight up pay walls over ad walls… sometimes. At least for video streaming platforms. To be honest it’s probably the other way around for most situations. I gladly accept ads on websites if it means I don’t have to pay for each and every single website access all the time. Moral dillemmas everywhere.

I don’t think our opinions differ all that much. We basically had a “well if you feel like this, why don’t you do this?” “oh it was just a hypothetical, I actually already do this. But this and such…” “Ah yes, but no but, this and that”

I’m with you, homeboy.

No use justifying your wrongdoings by pointing at what anybody else did.

If you think Google or YouTube are evil, bad or immoral, just avoid em.

I don’t feel like adressing every point seperately because I’m just slothing with my cat in my bed right now. I’ll just be rambling a bit.

Anyways. Yeah sure, Google is a bad company in many regards, I’m with you. Morals and ethics are about as subjective as it gets, so here’s my take on that. Just because some entity is morally in the wrong doesn’t justify my own actions, whatever they may be. What makes it fair to obtain goods and services from Google without paying the price? It’s quasi-stealing but I already brought that up before. If the Alphabet Corp. (Google and stuff) is so bad, then maybe you should avoid their products by principle.

I know in the grand scheme it doesn’t matter what I do. The odds of my actions actually doing anything at all are quite low. Where I’m from people used to say “somewhere a bag of rice tipped over”. It’s inconsequential. And I believe that’s true in everyday life but I also know it’s not true in the grand scheme. While I am an individual, I have to look at my actions as if they are not. It doesn’t matter if I burn through 100 gallons of petrol a day… but it does matter if we all do it.

So yes, I agree with you in each and every way. Except I somehow also don’t. It’s really hard to live by the same morals and ethics each and every day. Utilitarism sounds good… but not for everything, same goes for deontology. Many concepts in ethics are not compatible with eachother and I don’t think it’s “normal” to even strive to find your own morals.

Google may be bad, but their business model with YouTube specifically isn’t really all that evil. They maintain a well established, feature rich platform and people get to share their content on that site for free. A small percentage earns money or even gets to make a living through that. They also maintain said platform for advertisers with promises on how often their ads will be shown and how they will be placed, received and forced upon a user. In this instance it’s not entirely clear who the bad guy is. All of em, kind of.

I studied for a bit a few years back and we had a series of courses called “ethics for engineers”. It was mainly about figuring out what you get to do and what you have to do as an engineer of any kind in terms of ethics. Right now I’m wondering, would I really feel all that bad as a software engineer or whatnot at such a company? It really depends I guess. Sure, increasing the ad counter from 2 to 3 sucks for users. Yet they accept it in some way u know? If they didn’t accept, they wouldn’t stay on YouTube. Using YouTube is not something you are forced to, you could, at any time, just stop. So, if supplying more ads is really totally nessecary to have the platform be profitable (which, be honest, in some form or another, it must be), it’s morally sound. Would it really be better to let the platform die? I don’t belive so. I believe the platform kind of self regulates in a sense that it would just die off it they took any negative aspect too far.

I don’t know what they promise their content creators… this view might look completely different by the way.

So. Yeah. Dunno. I don’t think “cheating” YouTube by blocking ads or whatnot is all that fair. It’s still legal, though. Probably still better to stay away if you believe that they are such a bad company.

I mean yeah, suck a fat dick, I’m with you. But IMO paying for YouTube isn’t wrong. If not for ads, they gain nothing from me. I used to lock them in. 3rd party instance, no google accounts, separate browser clients, ad block, sponsor block… everything a decently smart systems engineer could think of.

That’s wrong. I pay for services like nebula, why not pay for YouTube?

I currently pay about 2 bucks a month for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. I legally share it with people I’m close with. 30 bucks a year for unlimited ad free (other than sponsorships) is very affordable, even if I didn’t share it with family and friends.

I still don’t share personal information with them. They probably think I live in Argentina or something because my account is not defined to a region and my IPA reads as residential Argentina most of the time.

YouTube started as a free to use service (in terms of monetary cost). There’s no way they could ever go from that to pay to use. Content creators depend on YouTube being accessible without monetary compensation through the viewer’s wallet. At the same time, upkeep for on demand 4k video up- and downstreaming is not easy, not simple, not cheap. Not cheap at all. Go ask Nebula and the likes.

Ads are ineviteable. You want goods and services, you pay for them. If you don’t feel like spending money, you will pay by watching ads and/or by giviny away personal information that in turn can be used to create monetary value in some form or another (better advert targeting, better market analysis, etc.).

Strategically avoiding any form of payment for goods and services is frankly immoral. It’s exactly the same as stealing. It morally is stealing. If you go to the store and steal a product, you’re doing the same. You cost said store money without reimbursing them by paying for it. Blocking ads and especially sponsorships is immoral and you have every right to do it as it stands. Just don’t complain about companies disliking your behaviour.

Come on. The internet is kinda anonymous, you could tell us it’s because it’s your biggest kink and noone would bat an eye. If you don’t tell in fear of IRL friends finding out… that’s already gone anyways.

As a swiss person, I get surprised every time the price doesn’t automatically round to the next multiple of 5 cents when I’m in the EU. So yes, get rid of them.

VPN, yes. For some reason your regular credit card works just fine. They don’t check at all.

Less than 15 USD a YEAR.