this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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"Logical conclusion" does not mean that you suddenly add in an unjustified premise of "all people will endure some amount of hassle to use an ad blocker".
I think the best analogy is Netflix's password sharing, which not only didn't hurt them, but actually brought them a lot of subscribers.
No no no, he's right. The logical conclusion of every online argument is a strawman.
You'll have to elaborate. In my eyes, justified or not is a non-sequiteur. The premise is people will want to avoid the commercials, and as Google gets more draconian with commercials more people will attempt to avoid them, either by using adblockers, or by paying the sub fees.
People take the most direct path to avoiding aggravation (as the Netflix case shows, as its easier to just pay the unjustified extra cost than having to cancel their sub and finding another streaming service).
Having to constantly watch a bunch of commercials is way more aggravating that clicking a few buttons once to add an addon to your browser that removes the bigger constant aggravation of commercials.
I'd say that the more accurate version of that premise is that people will exert some limited amount of effort in order to avoid ads (or fees, for that matter), and the challenge for the service provider is to make blocking ads more annoying than simply paying the fee. The real question is how successful Google will actually be at that, and that is admittedly a bit of an open question. That said, we know that there is a limit to how much effort people will put in, because it's not that hard to pirate literally anything, but plenty of people don't bother with piracy because it's a hassle.
It'll be interesting to see how things ultimately shake out. Google is in a bit of a privileged position though, given that they own the service and the browser most people are viewing YouTube. There's also more and more of a shift towards watching it on mobile devices and TVs, where they can control the client environment a lot more tightly. And at the end of the day, it is a solvable problem; beyond that, they don't have to even win the cat and mouse game. They just have to make playing it annoying enough that most people won't bother.