It is such a bizarre market. I sometimes browse it for sociological amusement, but it creeps me out quickly.
For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
The issue here is that YouTube (and other platforms) encourage this. It works, in that if you ask people to like comment and subscribe, they like comment and subscribe more. (And that boosts your standing within the system getting you more impressions.)
Plenty of good creators do this (as it works), just to keep up with their peers. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the rest of their content. Don’t blame the player, blame the game IMO
Okay, I'll hate the game. The game has existed since the first radio ad spot in 1922, the first TV ad spot in 1941, and the first banner ad in 1994.
I would far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll than be subjected to in-content advertising and begging from the creators. Certainly, creators would prefer to do their thing instead of beg and scrape.
What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
Let’s imagine the video wasn’t ad-supported, but instead viewers had to pay some money a la carte (and YouTube gets a cut of that). Creators would still want to get more viewers to make more money, and YouTube would still have a recommendation algorithm that used signals such as likes, comments, and subscribes to decide what to recommend. So I think the ad business model isn’t really at fault here. Or rather, it’s only at fault to the extent that it’s the only viable business model for a video service as large as YouTube.
The ad supported model made sense for newspapers and magazines but it doesn't scale. Anytime you obscure the price or separate the payer from the benefit you get distorted and unforseen consequences. It took scaling this model to facebook levels before the failure reared its head and it is indeed much worse than we had ever predicted.
Indeed many YouTube creators already plug the opportunity to pay an honest few c̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ dollars for their content on Patreon or their private course website in exactly the same way they ask for likes other interactions, especially if the nature of their content means they don't see [much] ad revenue.
YouTube quite literally has a subscription service. With the service you don't see ads on videos and creators get a cut based on how much you watch different content. It's been around for years, but has remained rather unpopular.
You're not wrong though. Most creators probably hate asking for stuff.
There's a few creators who often have a block at the end who tell you that they won't ask you to like or subscribe because even though it's good for the channel they hate doing it and refuse to do it.
well youtube has a premium service without ads that presumably brings money to the creators. One of the music subscription services actually is about to change their system so that the money of every subscriber actually goes to the artists that THEY listen to (sorry, forgot which service it was, not spotify). So, there actually is movement in this direction. And with ads becoming ever more obnoxious (and privacy threatening) it becomes more interesting for users, too.
Surprisingly, tiktok is better at this: it surfaces new content to people based on factors other than existing popularity.
> far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll
I don't think this holds true for most people. PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing, and eclipsed now by all-you-can-stream services. The feeling of continually inserting coins, or the taxi meter running, is uncomfortable to many people.
This is true, but I think fails to be a good counter-example. PPV has always been expensive and focused on single events. What we haven’t seen is AWS style small payments.
Imagine if instead of paying $100/mo for cable TV, we could pay $0.25/hr. If you watched TV 24x7, you’d pay more, but the vast majority of people would pay much less.
The main problem with smaller amount PPV and micro transactions in general is that it is hard to get the billing/accounting right. But this is something that could vendors get right. You only pay for what you use, and what you get is billed in small enough increments that it makes sense for everyone involved.
How this could be applied to online videos, I’m not sure.
AWS style small payments existed at coin-operated arcades. They're all dead, Jim.
Micropayment news services have existed (Blendle). Unpopular.
Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche. So is the a-la-carte gym membership. It's not that billing/accounting is difficult. It's that it plain straight up makes less money. SAAS vs one-time upgrades, etc.
> Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche.
The reason for that is that it's much more expensive than paying by the month. I wanted pay-as-you-go specifically because I have nearly zero need for cell service, but would prefer to be reachable even if I'm not at home.
But you can't get a pay-as-you-go plan with pay-as-you-go pricing. T-mobile's monthly plan now is "$15" (actually something like $16.60) per month. The pay-as-you-go plan would cost less than that, given usage rates, except that it also costs $1 for each day you use it to any degree. The incredibly high minimum fee overwhelms the already small advantage of not paying for service you don't use -- as soon as you use any service, you get charged for more than a full day of every service, and then you have to pay a usage rate on top of that!
It might be somewhat irrational, but I prefer the fixed-cost-for-unlimited-use model, as it makes the cost of looking at a new thing zero. If I have to pay per use, I'll be discouraged from exploring new content I might like or might not and will look at things similar to what I already see.
Ah, the Roddenberry universe. I think that will begin after the cost of clean, limitless energy approaches zero. At that point anyone can turn dirt into a house or a hamburger so compensation becomes much less of a concern.
> What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
Make them nonprofit foundations democratically run rather than middlemen biding their time until they can increase their margins or sell to a megacorp.
There's this minecraft youtuber I've been following for ages, who has been on youtube for like 10 years and still doesn't ask for likes or subscribes (ethoslab). Especially in that space the absence of it is remarkable, I haven't found anyone else who does this. Occasionally he does collabs and the collaborators will do it, and you can really see that it does work, it makes a big difference.
He is the only one I can think of that doesn't do this and it makes me personally much more inclined to watch him. He also feels "uncommercial" even after 10 years I think it's fantastic that he is able to keep it that way.
This. I run a... moderately popular by niche standards channel myself, and asking for likes, subscribes, comments etc gave me way more of them than I was getting before. I'm not particularly interested in the monetary side of things, but for getting a bit more popular on the platform... it's worked well.
Yeah, occasionally a reputable channel will show how many views are from non subscribers and it’s a pretty massive ratio. These creators aren’t begging, they are just trying to carve out an audience.
Is there evidence to show that it actually works? Me I instinctively want to close the window anytime a Youtuber asks me to "smash that like button and hit the notification bell" 5 seconds into the video. At a minimum I think less of the Youtuber and am less likely to recommend them to friends. Some of the fastest growing and most popular channels never beg their viewers for likes/subs.
I also hate this, but if people don't ask, they don't get, and typically those who don't end up with far fewer subscriptions. After a while they get demoralized and give up.
While I haven't taken time to measure this out to academic standards, it's extremely obvious in niche interest channels - eg I'm into synthesizers, and there's a whole little subsystem of review videos, technique videos, not-talking demos, jam sessions etc. The more heavily branded/self-promoting presenters tend to get vastly more views. My favorite reviewer centers the equipment under review and makes occasional appearances talking to the camera, but his maximum views tends to be near the average minimum for reviewers who center themselves, eg always being on-screen in a box, mirror, or direct-to-camera shot and always showing their face and a relevant emotional reaction to the subject of the video in the poster frame. I'm sure the same patterns play out in many other specialist topics.
To some extent this may be a product of the Infamous Algorithm, but it might also reflect cognitive preferences of viewers in that many people prefer to have information mediated by a recognizable presenter whose reactions and emphases become more meaningful with repeated views, while others like me find an overly-expressive presenter distracts from the material under discussion and gravitate towards a more subdued/restrained communication style.
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan distinguishes between 'hot' and 'cool' media which employ more or less intensity to solicit and maintain attention. 'Hot' styles with a charismatic and overtly solicitous presenter seem to be more popular in general, so even people who don't like that style may end up adopting it to gain viewership in a competitive market. There might be a market opportunity here for catering to different kinds of viewers, eg a 'CoolTube' for people who strongly prefer a more low-key presentation format.
Incidentally, I sometimes do prefer hot 'in-your-face' sort of media, especially on things like experimental music videos or the occasional guilty pleasure of a cheesy monster movie. It's just a hunch, but it seems to depend on things like a rapid tempo of editing and high levels of discontinuity/unpredictability rather than spatial maximalism.
The average youtube user and the average hn user are two very different populations. Things like ads etc don't make me buy things, at least in most instances. But they are effective, otherwise companies wouldn't make ad campaigns. They are just not meant for me.
> For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
Same here. There are some YouTube channels I really want to watch and follow as I can learn new skills from them, but the constant begging and over-dramatization is a real turnoff so I cannot watch it without feeling bad about it.
I have a similar feeling about people who takes photos of themselves all the time and their social feed is filled with the photos they take of themselves. I can't take a photo of myself without feeling vain, and I'm getting passive-vain feelings when I see friends of mine posting selfie after selfie of themselves...
Been using this for a month or so - game changer. Can skip in-video advertisements, interaction reminders, introductions, (configurably) via a user-submitted and curated database.
Well, The UI, Logo etc., feels like my browser blocked me from going to sponsor.ajay.app url - insecure, evil site. I closed the browser window. But went there again to see what it says.
If you're curious why asking for subscribers is so prevalent, I recommend taking a look at this Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/stalman/status/1369082704138883073) that describes the before and after effects of asking for subscribers, here's a quote: "Just the subs that came directly from the video page were 5x what they are on similar size videos".
I've never done any of these things, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it, but I consider it required knowledge for anyone with any interest in leveraging online attention.
> I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
I am aware two things:
1.) If they earn money from youtube, they need likes and subscriptions so that youtube algoritm shows them to more people.
2.) I as a programmer earn more money with less effort then them. I also very likely have to deal with less bs (like harassments and jerks trying to insult you or take you down for lolz).
A combination makes me accept that these people are doing entertainment as work, I consume that entertainment for free and thus am absolutely fine with them trying to succeed.
There is also absolutely nothing wrong with entertainers wanting attention. That is what pays their bills, without attention they cant be successful. Attention is not dirty word to me.
This is a very reasonable way of looking at the situation and I completely agree with you. It's important to consider that producing content to put on YouTube is the primary source of income for some people. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Without a subscription, the visibility of their content is at the mercy of the algorithm. What choice do they have? It's no different from subscribing to someone's email list. It's annoying, but nobody bookmarks anything these days.
It’s just how economic of YouTube works. If you don’t have likes, subscribes and views, you don’t make money. And if you want high quality content, it costs money.
Lots of educational channels I watch do it, and I fully understand why they do it.
For me it's when they do that faux: "hey guys, I was looking at my metrics and <insert percentage here>% of you who viewed the last X videos aren't subscribed, so it would be really great if you hit that bell"
I mean really? Do creators realize that viewers could be interested in several dozen channels and don't want to swamp out their own notifications since Youtube's prioritization gets shittier the more you subscribe to? Sorry you aren't in my top 10? Maybe a video got popular on an algorithmic whim...
I'd much rather they ask me to join a Patreon, which I am very keen to do if the content is good and continues to do so. But pulling that "peek behind the creator curtain" crap puts me very off because it's like trying to shame you into behaving differently as if you're part of the problem.
No... you decided to make Youtube your source of income. I don't owe you crap.
Sometimes content is good and I feel I owe them crap. But exactly! Youtube recommendation system is so cretinous and only gets worse that sometimes I end up adding videos to a special playlist that I can consult later and check a channel without subscribing. Clicking something state-changing on youtube as a viewer is like eating a trash food that seems tasty, but you’ll regret that later.
It’s actually a problem with all “favorites” on every platform. A browser bookmark system with notifications (a little dot) would be great, because then you can sort/categorize/describe/thimbnail/speeddial it, but platforms crave for stupidity and make it a non-configurable list instead.
Youtube could simply inverse that and make their “don’t recommend channel” actually fucking work. Then people would just unsubscribe from what is not needed periodically and watch a feed full of what they actually like automagically. But of course it is much easier to leave creators on their own and profit from those who survive, while doing your job with a left heel. Youtube doesn’t deserve a penny from these hardworking guys.
Nagging and soliciting subs and likes is fucking annoying. If you want me to like a video, make a good video and stop nagging.
If I dislike those naggers enough, maybe Google's stupid artificial non-intelligence will eventually learn to recommend only videos from non-naggers. I try, even though I don't have much faith in Google's algorithms.
This is nothing to do with "Google's algorithms". The simple fact is, people do not subscribe without being prompted to. The reason all the top YT'ers are annoying about it, is precisely why they are successful. Things work like that in the real world, too.
Yes, I know exactly why these annoying naggers are being annoying. I don't like it.
And here I'm telling that maybe people should stop listening to annoying naggers and just dislike & close the tab, maybe block the channel too if it keeps coming up in recommends.
Btw, it is not clear whether a dislike drowns the content – people believe it’s inverse, and you’re helping. Best you can do to counteract is closing a tab.
For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.