this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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While consuming the content, you're avoiding paying some content its price, because you protest how the content guards its commercial interests. Thus, ahoy!

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[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 0 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Hmm... People in your comments either conflate ads with telemetry (you can have tracker free ads) or they don't understand that there is value in ads equal to at least a fraction of sold content. Maybe they're triggered by the term piracy, which admittedly is a strong term, but honestly your core argument is correct.

I'm pro-piracy, though, and certainly take pride in picking and choosing who or what I put value in. It's more obvious with paying a patreon or buying a product you already pirated, but allowing ads to play (or at least giving a video view though to trigger the counter, liking and subscribing, etc) is also a form of support. And yes, you can do so without completely violating privacy although they're certainly making that harder lately...

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

(you can have tracker free ads)

In theory, yes. But in practice? It's quite rare these days.

(Honestly, I don't even see why they want to track users so much. Is it really that effective? You could just have targeted ads based on the content of the web page you're on, rather than based on the identity of the user. That should still target your ads pretty well, and without infringing on anyone's privacy in the slightest. Plus, you don't need the overhead of maintaining a giant database of every potential customer in the world.)

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Yeah, and there really are much better ways to support creators.

And for real, since my family tends to share accounts and I keep my stuff relatively secret, tracking never gets it right. Hell half the time they just give me Spanish ads. I don't speak Spanish.

[–] xep@discuss.online 1 points 7 hours ago

It really is that effective.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

to be fair, the most popular ad platforms like google ads use trackers, so it is something to consider. but i do agree that this kind of lumping is bad since this thinking hurts ethical ad platforms too.

[–] xep@discuss.online 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

There's no such thing as ethical advertising.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

I believe that advertising without trackers is ethical.