Comment by Ilandar@aussie.zone on Linus Tech Tips uploaded a video showing how to block ads on Youtube. Which was removed by Youtube for community guidelines violations.

No, it was most definitely Linus’s take. Louis Rossman covered this a couple of years ago. Direct Linus quote from that Twitter thread:

Ad blocking is the exact same thing as piracy. Literally the exact same thing.

Linus himself covers those Twitter comments, and defends them further, in this video.

@Kbobabob@lemmy.world @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world

I really don’t get the hate he got for that take.

Circumventing the method of payment could be argued as being a form of piracy. From that point of view, adblock is piracy.

Like them or not, YouTube is not a charity and requires the serving of ads to continue funding the service. You could argue about how they go about it, but it’s a fact they need some sort of income to continue to exist.
Same goes for YouTubers. They get a percentage of that ad revenue. And they also need some form of income.

But just because he said so doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand why adblock is used. He didn’t say “don’t use adblock.” He’s shown how to use adblock before and since. He’s also mentioned that buying something from their webshop gives them a lot more money than turning off adblock.

Saying “watching movies for free is pirating” isn’t the same as saying “you shouldn’t pirate movies”.
Using adblock isn’t engaging with YouTube on YouTube’s terms.

Adblocking isnt piracy, from any point of view.

Its protection. Protection from sudden loud noises and visual diarrhea. Protection from malware and viruses from random website ads, and protection from Right Wing Extremist Propaganda like PragerU videos detailing how the black man should be grateful for the history of slavery and oppression (which has had a documented, factual effect on driving people into right wing extremist behavior, and the violent rhetoric and actions that inevitably follow)

As long as all of that exists, Adblocking will never be piracy. Adblocking is, and will be, mandatory protection.

And if Linus, or anyone else, wants to clutch pearls and cry about adblocking… They can take their complaints to Google/Facebook/Other Ad services, because their lack of moderation and inability to policing content on their services are directly responsible for creating the necessity for adblocking.

To tack onto your list, ad blocking also deprives a source from an intended revenue stream associated with the content, which is probably why it’s being compared to piracy.

I’m all on board with ad blockers, let’s just at least acknowledge the economic reality surrounding their use.

The economic reality is that I have to use adblocking because ad services refuse to police and moderate their system. Thats the economic reality that they created.

Having a problem with the end user protecting themselves from what the advertisers and their ad services created is just trying to shift blame.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t piracy?

Downloading old Nintendo ROMs because the company refuses to redistribute them is also piracy, even though I would say it’s morally justified.

This has been argued in courts ad nauseum. It is not piracy. Just downloading is not piracy. If you download a ROM from a site, the site is guilty of piracy. You are not. If you download from a torrent though, you’re guilty because you’re also participating in the distribution. There’s also nuance with profit depending on the jurisdiction. But, just like throwing away a pamphlet is not piracy, refusing to download and ad is not piracy.

Roms arent adblocking.

That’s where Youtube premium comes in. To protect you from ads with a cost per month.

you do realize that ads appear in more places than just youtube, right?

You…really don’t have to.

Again, I’m all for ad blockers, I use Firefox, I’ve ran my own pihole instance, etc.

I’m just going to be frank, you’re being a little melodramatic. Do you just get vaporized when you use someone else’s computer and an ad blocker isn’t installed? Likely not.

Ironically, by framing what is just a quality of life thing as a mandatory reaction to content providers actions, it sounds like you’re the one trying to shift blame onto them. Your entire argument has very strong “LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO” energy.

All I’m saying is call a spade a spade. I acknowledge that by using an ad blocker, I’m economically negatively affecting the content provider. I’m okay with that. On some websites I’ll disable the ad blocker, if it’s one I use a lot with reasonable constraints.

Your entire post is trying to frame end users for the responsibility of what the advertising companies have done (or more like failed to do) and caused as a result.

You’re trying to hold a fork up and demand everyone acknowledge as a spade, and ridicule anyone who doesnt agree with a very dismissive attitude.

Its protection.

From your point of view, yeah. Not from the point of view of the creator and the platform.

Linus isn’t clutching his pearls nor is he crying, he’s just pointing out you are circumventing the method of payment to the platform. It is detrimental to both the platform and the creator. That is a fact. Your choice has an impact and you should be aware of that.
But at no point did he say “you’re a bad person if you use adblock”.

What has got you so worried?

And yet he never said not to adblock, so the only thing he claims are the categorization of adblocking.

I’d argue this as well. I see it in a similar way. Linus is obviously not trying to sit on some high horse and condemn piracy, he’s just calling a spade a spade.

No, he’s calling a spade a backhoe. Piracy is one of two things, depending on your definition:

sharing/accessing copyrighted material you don’t have the rights for (i.e. seeding or downloading a torrent)
circumventing technical restrictions on copyrighted content (e.g. DRM)

Blocking ads does neither of those things, it merely blocks loading of content that you don’t want to see. It’s basically the modern version of a DVR, where you can choose to cut out portions of a video that you don’t want (e.g. the ads).

These things are technically piracy:

using a YouTube downloader
sharing downloaded YouTube videos
posting a YouTube video that you don’t own
using substantial portions of a YouTube video you don’t own w/o authorization in your own video (i.e. beyond Fair Use)

Blocking ads isn’t one of those things, neither is skipping over parts of a video you don’t want to see (i.e. the sponsor segment).

Blocking ads reduces revenue to Google and the video creator. That doesn’t make it piracy, it’s just being a jerk to the platform and the creator.

And yet he never said not to adblock

In those tweets? Sure. But that’s not an argument I was making, so this is a strawman from you that doesn’t actually counter any of the evidence I have provided. Did Linus say ad-blocking was piracy? Yes. Did Linus say ad-blocking was theft? Yes.

Whether you think this is moral hypocrisy is irrelevant to me. I was only calling out the previous commenter who straight up lied about Linus’s history and then attempted to frame the people who were right as uninformed and wrong.

The comment was replying to one about it being funny that Linus made a video about adblocking when he considers adblocking piracy. That would imply he is against adblocking in general, which your links does not show.

Yes, he considers it piracy, but he is not against adblocking, which is why the original point of the parent comment doesn’t make sense.

Read that second paragraph from me again:

Whether you think this is moral hypocrisy is irrelevant to me. I was only calling out the previous commenter who straight up lied about Linus’s history and then attempted to frame the people who were right as uninformed and wrong.

If you want to have a debate about the parent comment, debate the person who made the parent comment. That’s not me and I do not care about the point you are trying to make here.

I did read it the first time, which is why I brought up the context of the first comment, which implied that Linus is against adblocking.

The comment you claimed to be lying is talking about the actual context of why Linus compared adblocking with piracy, which is about content creators and payment of their content.

I’m only calling you out for making a point that is not in the context of the actual thread, not against the proof of what you posted in the first place, so I’m not sure we’re even in disagreement here.

I brought up the context of the first comment, which implied that Linus is against adblocking.

It didn’t. Read it again:

Funny, considering in the past he’s gone on big rants about how adblocking is no different from piracy, and is theft.

But then again, its Linux we’re talking about, its not like he has a particularly big issue with theft.

He literally said both of those things. I have proven this. Someone asked for a source. Another person replied with:

No, because that isn’t Linus’s take.

But because he uttered something in favor of ads on his videos-which is how they got paid-he’s now considered ultra pro invasive ads by the user above

As I have proven, Linus literally said both of those things. That was his take in 2022. At this point in the comment chain, no one has implied Linus is “against ad-bliocking”. They have only stated that he believed it was no different to piracy and theft, which is true. This third person in the chain was the one who actually brought up the “he’s against ad-blocking” argument as a strawman - that was never never implied in the original parent comment.

The comment you claimed to be lying is talking about the actual context of why Linus compared adblocking with piracy

No it’s not. That is quite clearly not what it was in response to. Again, read the the comment chain carefully here. You are taking things that were said or implied in other comment chains (or just completely fabricated) and pretending that they were what the comment chain I was involved in was related to.

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