It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust.
I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Even going so far as believing they have a right to free lemonade...
I feel like you're right about initial value proposition, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are other things about treating youtube as netflix/hbo/hulu:
- I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there
- 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading
- I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get a lot of advertisement, because I dared to turn SponsorBlock off. Creators have a very good reason to use this type of ads, and youtube have all responsibility of not providing solutions for this.
- I can pay for HBO max and watch Sopranos. On youtube I can pay and content of interest could be deleted next second
- I have no idea if my favourite creator was demonetised for DMCA spam by youtube, but I certainly know they are not treated as equal partners in this business in many ways.
- Ultimately I pay for content, and subscription guarantees some kind of investment from the platform in acquiring or producing it. Not true for youtube.
edit: not saying one should not pay for youtube, but these points are for comparing youtube with established paid platforms. I believe youtube could offer very interesting and fair subscription schemes and conditions in principle.
I love how there's a perfect counter to every single point you posted. It seems like some people just want to hate.
> - I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there
That's a bug, not a feature. You're basically restricted to the tastes of Netflix's buyers.
> - 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading
Then you're watching the wrong videos. Most of the videos that I and my friends watch are high quality, entertaining, and informative. Their creators usually have Patreons making five figures monthly.
> - I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get a lot of advertisement, because I dared to turn SponsorBlock off. Creators have a very good reason to use this type of ads, and youtube have all responsibility of not providing solutions for this.
You can easily skip these, not sure what the issue is here.
> - I can pay for HBO max and watch Sopranos. On youtube I can pay and content of interest could be deleted next second
Guessing you started streaming only recently, since Netflix/Hulu/HBO all change their inventory frequently due to licensing. It wasn't long ago that you could watch Sopranos on Amazon.
> - I have no idea if my favourite creator was demonetised for DMCA spam by youtube, but I certainly know they are not treated as equal partners in this business in many ways.
This isn't a problem with YouTube, it's a problem with the US legal system.
> - Ultimately I pay for content, and subscription guarantees some kind of investment from the platform in acquiring or producing it. Not true for youtube.
This is your best one, YouTube has created tons of wealth for creators and has cut out tons of the usual Hollywood intermediaries. Additionally, there has never been a greater investment made on storing and distributing video like the one Google made on YouTube.
Re-read the sentence you're replying to. "99% of videos on youtube", not "99% of videos I watch".
>You can easily skip these, not sure what the issue is here.
You can also ad-block. The issue is that even paying for YouTube isn't enough to not see any ads on YouTube.
>Additionally, there has never been a greater investment made on storing and distributing video like the one Google made on YouTube.
YouTube merely provides the logistical support. It's not a production company. That is, it doesn't seek out talent to produce content for it. This is the difference the GP is highlighting.
> "99% of videos on youtube", not "99% of videos I watch".
And in the context, this is even less sensible. 99% of content on Netflix is what "you" don't watch. So there's literally no difference on that point for YT and Netflix.
> The issue is that even paying for YouTube isn't enough to not see any ads on YouTube.
Native ads are skippable and are already providing revenue for the creator - skipping them doesn't affect creator's income. Ad-block screws over the creators. There's a difference...
> YouTube merely provides the logistical support.
Have you ever worked at a production company? Because providing legal, logistical and marketing support is also what production companies do - that is what YouTube provides to creators. If you apply the same logic, then Universal Media Group isn't a production company - because they also primarily provide those functions.
Not to mention that YouTube has produced, may even still produce, original content.
>99% of content on Netflix is what "you" don't watch.
"I don't watch this" and "I would never watch this under any circumstance" are different.
>Have you ever worked at a production company? Because providing legal, logistical and marketing support is also what production companies do - that is what YouTube provides to creators. If you apply the same logic, then Universal Media Group isn't a production company - because they also primarily provide those functions.
What you're saying is that production companies provide logistics, and YouTube provides logistics, therefore YouTube is a production company. Socrates is a man, and I am a man, therefore I am Socrates.
>Not to mention that YouTube has produced, may even still produce, original content.
Sure. But the vast majority of the content that drives traffic to YouTube is not produced by them.
> "I don't watch this" and "I would never watch this under any circumstance" are different.
OK. How is this even relevant. Both YouTube and Netflix have easily over 90% of content that "I would never watch under any circumstance"(which is already a false statement on your part).
> What you're saying is that production companies provide logistics
Way to ignore literally everything else I wrote.
> But the vast majority of the content that drives traffic to YouTube is not produced by them.
Same goes for Netflix
When you move the goalpost, make sure that where you move it supports your argument.
No hate, I simply can understand why paying for youtube feels different from paying for netflix. These are not some bulletprof arguments why nobody should pay money, it's just why I personally can feel it's different than paid content provider/producer.
>You're basically restricted to the tastes of Netflix's buyers.
Same as going to the cinema. I don't expect to see 5 minutes of figuring out camera settings and 2 hours of black screen. I completely miss how it's not a feature. At the same time I support variety and experiments with a content of any kind, it's just not that.
>You can easily skip these, not sure what the issue is here.
No issue. I use sponsorblock as I mentioned, so no manual intervention required. Why do I have to do it though.
>all change their inventory frequently due to licensing. It wasn't long ago that you could watch Sopranos on Amazon.
Did you know they announced removal of Sopranos beforehand? You could make an informed decision given a warning.
>it's a problem with the US legal system.
No it's not. But thank you for a perfect counter.
>YouTube has created tons of wealth for creators and has cut out tons of the usual Hollywood intermediaries.
Fair enough, there is some service being provided by youtube. They basically made all the content on platform possible.
>Additionally, there has never been a greater investment made on storing and distributing video like the one Google made on YouTube.
You can feel whatever you want, your rationalizations are wrong though.
And if someone uses false rationalizations to use ad-blockers, while claiming to support the content creators - I can only sense hypocrisy and entitlement.
It's a repeat of the long ago years when piracy and torrents were more popular. And people pretended that stealing movies was somehow ethical.
People will always justify a way to steal, when they can get away with it.
- they could simply not watch YouTube if the content is "99% not worth watching"
- they could pay to watch the content
- they could pay the creator on their patreons, and watch there
Be comfortable stealing and saying that it's stealing. Or pay with your ads / money. The hypocrisy is stealing and claiming that YouTube should somehow provide a service for free.
I think the DMCA issue is a problem with both the US legal system and YouTube. A big part of it is the fact that YouTube makes it way too easy for supposed rightsholders to automatically DMCA any videos they want, and don't provide a reasonable process for clearing false claims. Their own system for detecting things like copyrighted music also makes no attempt to account for fair use, treating even a 5 second snippet of a popular song as if it was the whole thing.
> This is your best one, YouTube has created tons of wealth for creators and has cut out tons of the usual Hollywood intermediaries. Additionally, there has never been a greater investment made on storing and distributing video like the one Google made on YouTube.
Patently not true. Most of the big YT channels these days have sponsors or controlling orgs. Often own wholely or partly by the big dogs.
Plenty of others like that, e.g. Take 5 Media Group , Wake Up , and INNOCEAN, etc.
There are certainly individual contributors, but if you think most of the big channels aren't 100% owned and operated you're being played.
And in their defense, there is just a lot of dross on YT; allowing anyone to upload anything means 90% of it is crap. Netflix's buyers may have a specific set of tastes, but I don't have to sort through reams of poorly edited memes & reaction videos.
> 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading
Then you just use the ad-supported version, which seems to be what suits you.
> On youtube I can pay and content of interest could be deleted next second
Which online video platform doesn't suffer from that?
Sopranos is a core HBO product. YouTube does have YouTube's core content. Non core products get removed off MAX(HBO's new name) all the time. There's literally "Leaving Soon" section in my MAX app.
I was never notified in advance before Netflix removed The Office UK or People Just Do Nothing? I was in the middle of both of these shows when they were removed.
They don't seem, to as far as I can tell. I have uBlock origin and Sponsorblock on and now that I've caved for Premium I haven't seen any kind of nagging from YT.
Google destroying goodwill with a low-effort rent seeking agenda, after years of effort to extinguish real competiton.
Giving money to Google for programmatic ads ≠ funding creators. Most creators are small and don’t make any real money from YT anymore, and every year fewer and fewer are willing to endure the infinite mystery box of YT moderation and contentID policy.
Yeah, if it wasn't run by Google, I'd be more likely to pay for it.
And paying for it will result in most of my money going to Google and asshats like xQc even though I'd never willingly watch one of his videos and barely know who he is.
And I've watched the algorithm wreck some youtube channels that I used to enjoy as the creators chase after revenue.
(Not to mention that the ads that Google shows are fucking awful)
> And paying for it will result in most of my money going to Google and asshats like xQc even though I'd never willingly watch one of his videos and barely know who he is.
55% of the subscription goes to the channels you watch [1]. This money is divided based on your watch time [1]. If you don't watch a channel, none of your subscription pays for that channel.
> To determine how much subscription revenue each channel receives, YouTube will aggregate viewing data from Premium users to determine a value based on watch time.
The word "aggregate" there is particularly important.
And:
> The exact amount of money you will receive for each minute of YouTube Premium viewer watch time will always vary based on viewing habits, and there are complex aspects of the distribution algorithm that are not disclosed by YouTube
That's a very long way from 55% of _my_ subscription going out to the channels that _I_ watch. That would have been a simple thing for them to state, and they certainly didn't state anything close to that.
I'm pretty convinced by those statements actually that a good chunk of my subscription would go to xQc and his ilk to keep him on youtube collecting more views since he's more valuable to the platform than anyone that I watch.
> And I've watched the algorithm wreck some youtube channels that I used to enjoy as the creators chase after revenue.
Take a look in the mirror. You wrecked those channels. Together with other people who also enjoy those channels but refuse to pay for the entertainment. So creators are forced to seek a wider audience or a more lucrative audience, because the people enjoying their videos also think that they don't deserve to be reimbursed for their work. You're the algorithm.
> It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust.
It's almost like Youtube is a different product and UX!
People obviously think of Youtube as the place where nearly all the important, timely video/streaming content exists in some form or another. Professionally produced content sits right next to town hall meetings with 13 views, or some kid's first remix. People sometimes use it as an extension of their harddrive for random video content. Hell, there's a whole genre of people sitting silently in picture, watching professionally produced content. Plus a genre of obviously fake reactions to content that rando's claim they've never seen before.
It's difficult to unwind a product pitched for decades as a kind of public good video cloud, and re-pitch that as monthly-charge cable television.
"Aren't people fickle?" is a hilarious way to misunderstand the situation. I mean, ok, but that take applies equally to nearly any non-trivial business challenge of any company that has ever existed.
Nebula, especially the curiosity stream bundle, just looks like a better and better deal every year. $15/year, most of which goes to the people actually making videos based on your watch time for a better experience than YouTube is totally worth it when google pulls this kind of shit lol
People might be less disgusted with paying for YouTube if their model was "make a good product for end users" instead of "premium is to make the experience less worse by removing the worst part of a bad experience".
This is exactly why I refuse to give Google money voluntarily.
All of my issues with YouTube they created intentionally. I just recently found a trick that had YouTube play in the background when I switched tabs and I recalled how life was before they created Red and it annoyed me all over again.
Google is the devil of today's tech companies - most of what they do utilizes the outright theft of our data and what they do with it is purely manipulative in nature.
So... Why do you use YouTube? Ask your creators to move to something like Patreon and you'll be free. You'll have to pay, but you will not be paying Google.
Why do you personally think that you're entitled to consume content from YouTube?
This is going to sound harsh but maybe your videos just aren't worth that much monetarily?
You aren't entitled to a revenue purely because you upload some stuff onto someone else's computer.
If you produced content that had value worth paying for, then people would happily pay it. Perhaps if "getting screwed" upsets you so much, you should move to a paid, subscription-only model where your content will get 100% of the earnings (you feel) it merits.
Same. I’m still waiting (8+ years now) for their *promised* “better” replacement for subscription collections.[1] Until that day comes (along with all the other features that I used to use but have since been removed (not replaced)), I will not pay for a still not as good as the past subscription service.
This isn't about paying for youtube, this is about ads.
People don't want youtube ads, and frankly it's their good right to not have to download, display and watch them if they so choose. What youtube now wants is proof that people have watched ads. This is problematic for 2 reasons. The first is that there is no way to prove you've watched an ad in a way that's not a privacy nightmare and extremely hostile to users. The second is that most people are simply unwilling to watch youtube ads.
I'm not disgusted with the idea of a paid youtube, I'd simply go somewhere else, I'm disgusted by having ads shoved down my throat and that of others.
Paid youtube is the default. Ads are just an alternative option for people who don't want to pay. Why do you feel so disgusted that they're providing you with an alternative option?
The thing is that this argument only works if you just assume that everything people put on youtube is put there with the expectation that people will pay to see it, rather than just to put it out there in whatever way is most convenient.
If they want to be paid they should just go paid and see if anyone still wants to share videos on a closed platform, if they don't want to do that why should I need to approve of every single alternative they manage to come up with?
It costs Google billions of dollars every year in servers, storage, bandwidth, and electricity just to keep the lights on at YouTube. Just because a video is posted without the uploader expecting people to pay for it, does not mean it can be hosted without any cost to the infrastructure operator.
I’m not the OP but my response is that I will not pay for content twice and it is impossible to get a truly adfree experience on YouTube by paying for premium.
> I'm not disgusted with the idea of a paid youtube, I'd simply go somewhere else, I'm disgusted by having ads shoved down my throat and that of others.
The only issue I have with paid Youtube is privacy. We are talking about Google after all....
I know there are other techniques like fingerprinting but I prefer to use youtube as anonymously as possible and payment+login violates that completely.
"Restaurants are making me pay before eating because I usually just dine and ditch. How am I supposed to eat out if I have to pay? They are greedy as fuck, so no way will I give them a cent. But honestly not eating out is also not an option."
Using bypass-paywalls works so far if you add it to the custom list, and as a bonus, you end up getting in less of an echo chamber because it displays as if you've never logged in. There's also a set up for ublock origin that works that's out on their reddit somewhere, though I can't be asked to go through it, nor use reddit anymore, so you may need to search that up on your own, but it's recent and works.
It isn't the library. Youtube's trove of videos will age fast if there was any meaningful alternative. What prevents any competitor is youtube's legal backing. They have already fought the RIAA/MPAA and the content rules of hundreds of jurisdictions. Youtube has deals, understandings, in place that allow youtube to keep going. But if anyone else tries to setup a similar video service, at scale, those hard-fought deals will not apply. Those past enemies of youtube are now its tame watchdogs ready to unleash themselves on anyone who else attempting to enter the market.
Vid.me did and it failed because no one wants to views ads and no one wants to pay for a subscription. They gained a lot of traction too and were really flying for a bit. But eventually they had to become profitable without showing ads.
Youtube only exists because google was ok with not making any money from it for years.
The lemonade stand put all the other stands out of business ...
who all got lemonade delivered for free by a million lemonade aficionados who wanted to share their lemonade with the world, for which YouTube showed the lemonade drinkers ads while pickpocketing all the documents in their wallet and copying them, also throwing buckets of lemonade in the trash because it wasn't the officially approved taste of lemonade, some other lemonade claimed there was a hint of taste that "copied" theirs, or for no stated reason at all, just dumped it, sorry, "terms and conditions", which.. we'll never tell you.
No one else wants to run a lemonade stand because they can see customers do not want to pay for lemondade.
See the Vid.me rise and fall illustrates this perfectly. Their closing letter to users even says in so many words "Ya'll don't want to pay, so how can we stay open?"
It's easy to wonder why. The status quo at the time had been that user-submitted video content (YouTube) is free. It was only free because Alphabet had their losses from YouTube subsidized by their profits from Google. Maybe not for all, but for many this is an anti-trust issue.
Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be.
Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice. Plenty of tech companies have had the technical and monetary firepower to run a youtube competitor. But you just have to read a few threads on the internet from anytime in the last decade talking about youtube and monetization to see why no one wanted to jump in. This thread included.
> Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be.
Sorry but this take is pretty wild to me. I can understand that there is a paid option but YouTube is free today given that I can currently watch a video after watching a couple ads without paying any money.
> Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice.
I'm not sure this is true in theory but, regardless, to each their own. This practice of keeping competitors down by subsidizing business losses with profits from another business, only to try to change the status quo for their customers, seems pretty shitty from where I'm standing.
I see nothing wrong with subsidizing customer costs per se. The only potential problems arise when this leads to lock-in. You could argue that subsidizing videos helps achieve lock-in via network effects. If we can just figure out a way to regulate away those network effects (forced interop), then there's nothing wrong with the subsidies.
Again, that is a non-obvious conclusion. Many people will consider ad-supported to be free for the sole reason that it doesn't affect the amount in their bank account.
> No one else wants to run a lemonade stand because they can see customers do not want to pay for lemondade.
Of course nobody wanted to pay with ad view time because youtube didn't require that. In practice, one could watch a youtube video without watching any ads and the practice was allowed because it kept competitors down.
> Watching ads is what covers the cost of watching a video. It's no secret that running a site like youtube is extremely expensive.
This is exactly correct, and it's why this practice was so effective. Nobody wants to pay with their time and youtube didn't force them. Why is someone going to go to Vid.me where they will be disallowed from blocking ads? The only reason it wasn't necessary for youtube to show the ads is that they had their losses subsidized by google's profits.
Going back to what you initially wrote:
> No one else wants to run a lemonade stand because they can see customers do not want to pay for lemondade.
Because there was a lemonade stand backed by the profits of one of the most profitable companies in history handing out free lemonade, no questions asked. Yeah, nobody else wanted to pay for something that was free in practice, even in the context of time spent watching an ad.
Imagine if you walk into a 7/11 and just fill your bottle with soda for free without paying. They eventually decide that too many people were doing this, so they decide to place their soda machine behind the counter, so you're required to pay. Then you complain that they're putting all the other convenience stores out of business because they used to give you soda for free. This is how entitled you sound.
> they decide to place their soda machine behind the counter, so you're required to pay
Let's add another step before this:
Understand that people are visiting the store because the soda is free in practice and allow the practice to continue until other stores don't see any business because they can't afford to offer free soda.
Now we move the soda machine behind the counter because we don't like that people are getting free soda.
Then they complain about other convenience stores being put out of business.
If we're going to start calling people entitled, my eyes are still on Google.
This is a stretch. Youtube might have done something anticompetitive but I doubt allowing adblockers was one of them.
My point is that people who were never intent on paying businesses for their services never cared about the sustainability of those businesses in the first place and are just using it to rationalize their anger. This sort of moral consistency matters with civil law where good and bad aren't trivially obvious.
Society collectively agrees that it's good for supermarkets to offer loss leader rotisserie chickens. An argument can be made that it's anticompetitive because it basically put Boston Market out of business, but I wouldn't be as receptive if that came from someone who was caught stealing supermarket rotisserie chickens.
I've been paying for premium for years now - at least 6 years. I think the problem for me now, and why I'm canceling it shortly, is their push to raise the price by 40% in the coming months. The value for that new price is just not there.
Some of that is due to my own changing habits, but even more of it comes from the content creators I follow in the gaming space being serially demonetized thanks to overly sensitive advertisers. So even though I'm trying to pay to support the content I watch, my money isn't going to the right creators.
As such, even at the seemingly reasonable $14 every month... it's no longer worth it.
Is the 40% increase region-specific? I'm a YT Premium subscriber and they just had a price increase in the US three months ago ($120 to $140 yearly, similarly billed monthly).
I recognize this doesn't solve your reasons at all, but for anyone facing an un-grandfathering who is simply price-conscious, if you're willing to commit for a year to YT Premium, it's effectively $11.66/mo.
I just squeaked into pre-increase Nest pricing for the final year I'll use it. This has been a big year for 40%+ subscription price increases, Google and otherwise, it seems.
You’re right in that people are more reluctant to pay for something they’ve had for free for so long. I also think YouTube is pushing this pretty late in the game. People already have $15 subscriptions to multiple services at this point. The $15 YouTube subscription feels expensive to me on top of the ones I already own. I wish it was like $6 for no ads especially since I don’t care for the bundled music service.
Alongside the distaste of the bait-and-switch, I suggest that there's a perception among most folks that what is primarily being paid for is the content, not the services (hosting, transmission, recommendations, etc.). In that sense, paying for Netflix "feels" less bad because, in some sense, Netflix "owns" the content in its catalog for which you are buying access - whatever you may feel about the rights or wrongs of copyright law, it is undeniably a practical fact. By contrast, it feels less accurate (though is, in fact, still just as legally accurate) to say that YouTube "owns" the content uploaded to it - the content feels more personal, and YouTube is merely the conveyance mechanism. Part of the negative reaction might be due to this perception of being asked to pay for a support mechanism rather than for what you actually care about - the content.
> youtube [...], who directly profit shares with small creators you adore
Citation very much needed :P every report I've seen and insight I've heard is that anyone below the very top echelons earns negligible profit from their YouTube content. A commenter lower in the chain points out that "many of the YouTubers I watch have Patreons earning thousands of dollars", which...sort-of proves the point that YouTube, in isolation, is insufficient.
Well, I don’t subscribe to any services like Netflix, et al. I do use YouTube, for watching some videos around my hobbies, like woodworking, but they aren’t important enough to me to pay for. I could easily live without them. The ads have become onerous enough that watching a video is painful now. It became bearable with an ad blocker, but I’m prepared to not use YouTube anymore.
Ads are not necessarily the problem. It's the way they're delivered.
For one thing, if they are so damn dominant at advertising, why can't they show me a better variety of ads?
Another problem is the jarring nature of ads. They are just IN YOUR FACE all of a sudden, and it's basically rude the way they're presented. Is there not a more "polite" way to go about it?
You could have me watch 5 minutes of straight ads, reset every 12 hours, and I'd be OK with that. I'd even be glad to rate each ad along the way. Are they hellbent on interruptions, or do they just want the ads to be seen? I hate the interruption.
The reason they don't do 5 minutes of straight ads every 12 hours is because you'd get people that just walk away, switch to another tab and mute Youtube for 5 minutes, or any number of other things that would end up with juiced ad statistics with no corresponding real benefit to the advertiser.
Then, you'd get the response to that, which is ads you have to interact with to essentially tell the server you've seen the ad. I've seen this in mobile games already, and it's damn annoying. There's no way I'd want to spend 5 minutes doing that kind of thing.
I would question that "readily" statement now that most people can't afford netflix and hulu and hbo and etc. anymore because everyone's priced their plans to the point where a cable subscription is starting to look attractive again. The same goes for youtube: I would gladly pay however much my ad impressions are actually worth to not see them, but I would be VERY surprised if they amounted to more than a Canadian dollar a month, so the idea of paying 150 Canadian dollars a year just doesn't make any sense.
Google is immorally trying to control the web, is a significant difference. I pay creators through patreon or their tip jars, and it's rather more than they'd make from me paying Google.
If you don’t want to support Google, you need to stop using YouTube even with an ad blocker. Your activity still counts in the usage stats and choosing to watch there tells the creators of the videos you watch that they have to stay on YouTube because it’s where their audience is.
I don't really care if they stay on YT or not. If I like them, they get paid through patreon either way. (And I'm not sure how I could convince them their audience is elsewhere through any action of mine. It would take a pretty serious concerted effort.)
Now that you mention it... [checks] The app I use does have patreon as a source! Thanks!
Edit: that's all set up now so it'll show me the patreon videos first. And creators are making many times more money off me than they were before. Google is unnecessary!
Apples to oranges (live vs not), but last Sunday (the very expensive) NFL Sunday Ticket via YouTube TV had terrible buffering problems for about the first half of every 1pm game
Eventually they made a config change and it began varying the bit-rate instead of just stopping, but it wasn't a great demonstration
Incidentally, it's teh other way round for me. I find the contents of Netflix etc. utter crap and won't pay for it. However, there are some extremely valuable tech channels on YT that I appreciate a lot and I support individual creators. But YouTube/Alphabet? I have zero sympathy for these folks, two decades of small malicious steps did their work.
But I don't pay for any of that now, and never have (Amazon video aside, which comes with Prime, a service invaluable to my wife). If YouTube's ad blocking finally comes for me, then I will cease to use YouTube.
I don't know that I would put Netflix and youtube in the same category, but regardless I now don't want to pay Google for youtube just to spite them.
Instead I built and elaborate and very overenginered hack that pulls RSS feeds from channels and then pulls videos from the feed, before putting them up on a private Trello board where I can organise them. Then I can watch them, order them, etc and optionally tag them for download.
Its unstable, its totally not worth my time, it has serious issues and I had a ton for fun building it.
YouTube does not provide the same value as it used to and therefore paying for it seems only to block ads. These days I rarely find new content creators and content creators are probably struggling even more. The recommendation algorithm is totally biased towards some screwed sterotypes and clicking I do not want to watch this content creator's video never helps. Some ads are so offensive/dangerous you do have to use an ad blocker just to protect your mental health.
It is like someone peed into the free lemonade and demands money for it.
Because it wasn't the deal when they were consolidating the all online video content into themselves. And then once they've gotten "too big to fail", the greed rolled in.
They bait and switched us.
Youtube killed private video hosting.
Reddit killed small thematic php-bb forums.
If people knew that they'd eventually do that, none of these platforms would be as big as they are today.
Is it at all surprising? Free content replaces all kinds of free time, not only quality kind. So when it goes non-free there’s enough people who say “nah not worth it” in different accents. Personally if I was forced by youtube to do what they want, I’d probably just watch it much less (with ads, only required content) and spend time in a similar or less useless activity.
Trying to get customers to pay for something they have been readily getting for free is a difficult proposition. Ask Vice News. This is the problem. YouTube was “free” for a long time and now it needs to turn a profit. Ads was the easy way to do that. Subs is the only way to sustain it.
Not really. What pisses me off is they still have a free tier backed by an advertising+surveillance business model. They should charge everyone for access, stop advertising and stop tracking us.
"but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust."
Probably a combination of misgivings:
1. Google cant keep a product/service alive worth a damn, or ones that do get changed to be piss eventually
2. Paying other content providers for content they provide feels different than paying Youtube for mostly content they carry that was pirated/unlicensed anyway (e.g. full disclosure,I mostly use it to watch jazz and funk bootleg concerts or old 80s music videos or other ephemera YT really had damn all to do with and likely dont monetize for the actual creators worth a damn).
3. Somewhere between the two is the fact that for some licensed materials, you still have the region-constraint. If Yt Premium covered truly global reach, it might be more tantalizing, but as it stands...meh.
Well, you can't pay for Youtube. You can pay for a bundle of some mostly unrelated products that's named Youtube Premium, or you can live with an insanely degraded product experience on Youtube, but you can't pay for Youtube.
Am I paying for an ad-free Youtube or a Spotify competitor? I'm not at all confident the money I'd be paying is going to the creators of the videos, or even feature development of the main Youtube platform.
Creators get the income from views, with any copyrighted material licensing subtracted and a cut to YouTube.
But no one is forcing you to use YouTube, it's just way more accessible for any content creator that can't spend weeks in getting a commercial license for music and such.
But I have good news for you. Many creators have Patreons, that serves video.
Several creators I watch have said they get more profit sharing from premium views than ad views. So even though it pains me to give money to Google "just" to make their product not shitty (removing ads and allowing background play, back when I had goog products on my phone), it's also paying content creators more.
I prefer to subscribe and watch on Nebula to support them more... but YouTube has such a good mix of content that isn't on Nebula that I find myself using it as a hub regardless.
You're absolutely right. I use SponsorBlock and uBlock Origin on Youtube and will continue to do so until there is a way to pay to 1) remove all ads and 2) remove all data collection by Google. Until then, I'll continue paying with my data while blocking ads.
No, it means that I'm willing to pay Google for YouTube without Google Ads with either my money or my data. I will not pay with both. It is that simple.
I recently left Spotify because their web app makes my monitors flicker when it gains focus and they inserted ads into podcasts. What am I paying for with Spotify if not ad removal, just like YT?
I actually bumped my YT plan to family and put my parents on it. They didn't know about ad free YT, now they don't know how they went without it.
I happily subscribe to Spotify because it just works better for me. I would subscribe to YT Premium if I could get YT only for like $5-7. I'm not paying $14, or realistically whatever the family plan is up to now, for ad-free YT and an inferior music experience. So YT doesn't get any money from me.
I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Even going so far as believing they have a right to free lemonade...