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It’s my computer, not theirs. Watching a video isn’t the same as taking money, you seem to have a lot of confusion on this point.

Oh, I consent to the content. Just not to the ads, so I stream the content and my software skips the ads for me automatically. Couldn’t be simpler. Puts me in control over what I do and don’t download onto my computer. I’m not buying anything.

I don’t consent to watching the same ads over and over. I don’t consent to them being downloaded onto my computer against my will. You consent, that’s fine. You enemies consent to sending the richest corporations on the globe your hard earned cash so you can avoid the same ads I don’t want, and they still send you ads. I don’t know why you like that stuff, but I don’t. I’m in charge of what I do and don’t download onto my computer.

Not really.

You’re trying really hard, for days and days, trying to make me feel guilty about skipping ads, and it’s just not working. At all. But you persist. It’s weird.

You’re being a bit weird about this.

The word “theoretically” is doing a lot of lifting in that video. He said that the Queen is in important political figure, but that’s incorrect. The monarchy in the UK survives by being apolitical and they all know that the day they start meddling in politics is the day when the royal family loses its one remaining role in the UK - ceremony. Their long standing popularity comes from the pomp and circumstance, and if they get mixed up in politics, they’ll become deeply unpopular, just like everyone else who tells the British people what to do does in the end.

All the real power went in the civil war and the glorious revolution. Parliament decides who is the monarch. If the king went rogue, he’d be gone before you can say “that’s not what we were looking for in the role of ceremonial figurehead.”

“The Crown” actually includes, quite as a matter of law, the government and specifically the prime minister.

So all the stuff about signing laws isn’t real power. It’s not about whether it becomes law, it’s about when it becomes law.

The King is The Sovereign, but he is not sovereign, Parliament is sovereign.

He embodies British power, but he doesn’t wield it.

The king has no real power. Real power lies with the prime minister since previous kings with the same name and the Glorious Revolution. He’s a figurehead.

You can talk as much crap as you like, watching a video without ads isn’t theft.

No, because that would be theft - taking something from its owner with the intent to permanently deprive them off ownership. Nothing is removed when you watch a video.

Skip 'em with an ad blocker for the win. Better experience, and you don’t have to pay megacorps with megaprofits your own money.

OK, the first article points out that he has a lot in common with the American right wing churches in that they don’t actually believe a word of it and just use it as a cultural sheild for their hatred, which is a fair point.

The second one doesn’t seem as related.

I get, given how right wing, nasty, anti women and anti LGBTQ+ the American church is, why you would want to put Richard Dawkins, who is so nasty and anti trans (probably among other things) into the same bucket, but he’s British, not American, and famously very firmly anti-religion.

He has always been a dick, whatever he was trying to convince people of, and it’s no surprise he continues to be a dick in his old age. It doesn’t mean he’s a Christian. He’s really, really, really not.

Wild topic change there!

So when will democrats drop gun control

Nearly every legislative session, iirc. More permanently, probably when school shootings stop for good.

Today, Pakistan, tomorrow, USA. You might be sceptical today, but if you think it really couldn’t happen in America, you haven’t been paying nearly enough attention.

They’re not spending ANYTHING like 50% on the tech work. Reminder: one of the most profitable companies on the globe. The huge profit comes from the HUGE gap between their costs and their income. So no, it’s not proportionate at all, and it’s gullible for anyone to pay them to reduce ads when they could block them for free.

You don’t think it’s a little hypocritical to call people stealing when they’re just skipping ads automatically? You see a huge moral gulf between clicking a button and having a piece of software click the button? You pirated a bunch of stuff when you were a teen and now you’re on your moral high horse over someone blocking an ad or 300?

I’m guessing you feel like a bit of a mug for paying your hard earned money to faceless mega wealthy corporation so you want to believe that people who skip the ads without needlessly paying Google are stealing.

Well, they’re not. They’re just skipping ads.

And you want to make other people feel guilty for skipping ads because it’s easy for them to get your experience without paying uber-wealthy corporations, so you try to make out that they stole something? Get off your high horse. Your giving would be far more beneficial if it went to a charity instead of Google.

The content creators make content using which YouTube/Google earns vast sums of money in advertising. They top slice most of the money for themselves and forward very little of it to the people who worked to create it, so in that sense they change the content creators. They’re one of the most profitable companies on the globe. Where does that profit come from? It comes from underpaying content providers. Still don’t know why you’re defending them. They dropped the “don’t be evil” plan and they meant it.