I should probably just walk away from this, but a friend of a friend (certainly not my friend) have been having the following argument: 1) My friend complained that she's having to watch YouTube ads for a congressional candidate she hates. I offered my position, which is simply that Google should offer a paid option so that YouTube users can have an ad-free experience. 2) Her friend said such a scheme would be "allowing the users to censor ads." Given that advertisers' content would still be on Google's servers, and YouTube would still show the ads to non-paying users under the scheme, can somebody please explain to me at a third grade level how this is censorship?
If you're paying to not see ads, then that per se is not inhibiting the advertiser's free speech because people who don't pay for ad blocking can still see the ads. That's my two cents, but someone else who knows more about censorship will likely give a more credible opinion, lol.
There is no such thing as free speech on the Internet. The Internet is just infrastructure, like roads are. You may have free speech standing out on the road, but as soon as you walk into someone's house you are under their rules when it comes to what you're allowed to say (within some limiting boundaries, of course). The same goes for when you are on someone's website. They're allowed to censor whatever they like, so claiming censorship is irrelevant to whether they are allowed to do it or not. As for whether a consumer paying to turn off ads falls under censorship: not by any reasonable definition. You have, under your own volition, decided you don't want to see those ads and have paid to prevent them from appearing. You're in control of what you are seeing which is essentially the antithesis to censorship. You could argue it is extortion though.
Right, well, I intentionally left the merits of "Google owns their servers" out of the mix for that reason. We're ultimately talking about the voluntary financial transactions and right of association of people. That is, we're talking advertisers versus content users. I only allowed Google to count inasmuch as I didn't claim they had to accept the scheme. I just said "here, what do you think if Google were to offer this?" But I am really beginning to think that Americans' view of free speech is so fucked up that they can't even recognize the difference between censorship and any negative choice or avoidance people make around speech they disagree with. Even on this forum, American users sometimes preface their disagreements with "it's a free country" or "everyone's entitled to their opinion" as if mere criticism is an infringement of free speech that requires an apologetic qualification like this.
I think the simplest way to describe it is free *speech* is not the same as "you're obligated to listen to what I have to say" Our constitution guarantees (to the extent the Supremes and our government haven't eroded it) the right to express a viewpoint. Nowhere does it say you get to do that on anybody's network, newspaper, media source, private meeting, or anything else. You can express whatever it is you want to express, but nobody's obligated to listen to it. If your friend doesn't get that then... wow. On a separate note... there's a great product called AdTrap that is a hardware-layer ad filtering system. Of course, if everyone had one, the internet would come crashing down because all of the advertiser-supported sites wouldn't be able to make a living. But for now, at least, it's a great resource that filters out prerolll ads from Youtube, CNN, Hulu, and virtually every other type of ad from any website. I've had it since January, and it's remarkably effective... and they silently update the software (unless you turn off that option) several times a week to tweak it as websites find ways around their ad blocking. It also gives you some pretty scary statistics about the number of ads served. It's pretty revolting how many ads we are subjected to every day on the 'net, let alone in media and society.
Under that logic, I'm violating a street preacher's right to free speech by putting my earphones in when walking by. But ya, there is such a thing as adblocking software. I use 'AdBlock'. It's worked perfectly, and I haven't seen a single ad (excepting sites which I've disabled it on) since I started using it. Just doing my bit to further the collapse of the internet's economy.
2) Her friend said such a scheme would be "allowing the users to censor ads." Why is that a problem? Free speech is your right to say things, not your right to be heard.
I almost hate that the paraphrase "freedom of speech" exists. The law states roughly that you cannot be arrested for any opinions you voice. Everything above and beyond that is fair game. Do I detest censorship in almost all its forms? Absolutely, but if it's censorship not done by the government (and only on matters the entity controls), it's unregulated. That is a slippery slope though, considering how tight the US gov. and big business are getting (they're now essentially two heads of the same Hydra.) But paying for premium ad-free access to a web service is not even in the same zip code as free speech arguments. I have a sneaking suspicion the friend in number 2) is an idiot.
