They pay to display the ad. Think of a highway ad. If you sell a highway ad placement and then cover it with a big blanket (with maybe another ad on it) so nobody sees it, that would be a serious case of fraud.

So if you tell them the ad has been displayed so you get the video, but no ad was displayed for you, then that is a form of fraud. I don't think that would hold in court since it is such a petty crime, but it is still fraud. You lie to their server so that you can see the video without ads, that is fraud.

And if I simply mute the ad and do something else until it's over? It's that still fraud?

How about if I download the ad but don't watch it?

Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative?

> Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative?

Since you got paid for it. Youtube pays you by serving you content for those ads.

Note that I also block ads. However, unlike you I don't try to tell myself that I am morally right when I do so, I know that it isn't a nice thing to do and that the content I consume when doing it is paid for by all the users who doesn't block ads.

I am not sure why you try to argue that you are morally good when you block ads. Does that really matter to you? That is the most interesting part of this discussion to me, all the people who want to see themselves as good people even though they leech off others.

It is overall better for society to block ads because ad-funded services have bad incentives, and so anything you can do to hurt the business model is a plus.

The specific act of not watching the ad is morally neutral, you can render content sent to your computer however you want or not at all.

> It is overall better for society to block ads because ad-funded services have bad incentives

This would eliminate most free flows of information. I really doubt that is the "better evil" compared to watching the occasional ad.

> Since you got paid for it. Youtube pays you by serving you content for those ads.

Is that technically true though? Legally it certainly wouldn’t be, there is no explicit agreement between you and Google. Even if some people feel that they have some ‘moral’ obligation to watch those ads..

I consider pervasive advertisement a moral wrong. I don't have to tell myself anything to know that blocking ads is the ethical thing to do. They are already a moral perversion.

Edit:

I kind of consider it disgusting that watching a video is considered by anybody to be "payment", or that anybody legitimately believes it's somebody's duty to watch an advertisement. The worship of abusive corporations in our culture has gotten insane.

You already aren't understanding us when you come in believing that we're convincing ourselves of anything. We actually do have an ethical and moral map that is consistent with blocking ads, and we don't consider not watching a commercial to be the same thing as theft, or even to be morally questionable.

The simple fact is that video hosting is incredibly expensive. Do you still want information on the internet to be freely shareable via video? Ads are the price.

> Do you still want information on the internet to be freely shareable via video?

Yes. And I'm willing to pay for it in taxes, or directly to creators and hosts, but I'm not going to pay Google after the massive amounts of abuse and anti-competitive behaviors. I will never pay Google.

> Ads are the price.

I don't accept that. Ads as "funding" for "free" content is a myth.

> that is fraud.

I don’t think that true. Users have no have signed no contract and/or have any obligations to watch those ads.

Of course it would still be fraud if ad buyers were paying for ads which were never displaying it, except Google would be committing it. In most cases on a significant scale to warrant legal action.

> Think of a highway ad.

Equally annoying, I'd block those too if I could.

bad analogy. An Adblock would be similar to blocking part of my windshield so I don't see the highway ads. No fraud there.