• But it’s quite horrifying to see people around the world having been taught into thinking that everything should be “free”

    Maybe the businesses shouldn’t have created the expectation that everything was “free” then.

    YouTube used to be 1 skippable ad at the start of the video. Now it’s multiple unskippable ads throughout the video. If the 1 skippable ad wasn’t a viable business model then they shouldn’t have been pretending it was and then changing things later once people have gotten used to the “free” system.

      • Yup.

        YouTube could easily avoid AdBlockers by simply having ad part of the video itself. Not pulling it from a different server, not hijacking your video player to prevent user controls, just part of the video like any other part of the video and AdBlockers would not be able to detect it. They’re not going to do that though, because then users won’t be forced to watch an ad they have no interest in.

          • Do you realize how low quality your stuff would be?

            YouTube makes $30 billion a year. They’ll be fine.

            Then people would bitch that they can’t get the high quality version for free

            Reducing the max resolution for people who aren’t on YouTube Red will come next once they stop focusing on AdBlockers.

            “Service quality will continue to decrease until profits improve!”