I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
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I already paid for a lifetime of free Google services with all the data they stole from me before I had any sense that something so massive and invasive could even exist.
Thanks to ReVanced and Freetube and some others, Google can effortlessly pay out their equitable share.
There was a time where I would have been happy to pay for it too, back when the ads were less intrusive. However, the number of ads increased drastically when they started pushing premium, and it’s only gotten worse - not to mention the fact that, even though they make more money, the content creators (employees) are paid less per view. I don’t mind paying for a product or service. I do mind paying to make an engineered inconvenience from a mega corporation that has a de facto monopoly go away.
I miss Metacafe and Big-Boys/Break.com. You know, from the days when YouTube actually had competition.
I was under the impression premium views result in more revenue for the creators you watch compared to views with ads.
They do but it’s not that much more significant than overall ad revenue. Having a Patreon or a merch store will probably outperform 10 fold anything that YouTube pays from both ads and premium views combined.
They do!
I enjoy making Google hurt by blocking the ad revenue.
I would be ecstatic if they failed as a company.
Google is evil, supporting them financially is unethical.
I enjoy making Google hurt by blocking the ad revenue
I’m sure they’re in agony…
They would not spend so much effort blocking adblockers if it wasn’t hurting them to some degree.
It is about more. There must always be more. They aren’t hurting but they would like MORE.
I bought premium years ago as part of Google Music family (pre yt-music) and stuck with it, it was affordable. I am more than capable of blocking the ads over the years. Other members of my family want to use YT without ads on a myriad of devices. When the price got hiked at the start of the year I was really annoyed, and probably would have dropped the service if it were just me. However my family made it pretty clear that they did not want to jump through the hoops of blocking the ads.
Ditto
Would rather pay the creators directly instead of it going 80% to anyone in ceo position and maybe 5% to the creator.
Where are you getting this 5% number?
Pulled out of my ass as it was hypothetical… Just that I rather support creators instead of orgs with ceo’s salaries.
At least with ads, 60% goes to the creator and 40% to YouTube. I had a video go viral because it was newsworthy, and a CDN (Storyful) offered to help with licensing and marketing, and their price was 40% of my 60%. I wasn’t really expecting the video to go viral, so decided “why not.”
I only got 36% of the money from the YouTube views, but Storyful delivered and got it on the news and a few documentaries and I ended up making thousands of dollars for a few minutes of video. 10/10 would do again, but then YouTube changed the rules and now you need like 1,000 subscribers for your video to even qualify for monetization :(
Interesting !
That’s neat. Good on you! I like the platform but to be flushed with ads and pay more ceo salary versus creators like yourself, I rather choose to support those I enjoy my entertainment from. Of course realistically A VERY difficult thing to do. I like the idea of Jaybird and Floatplane to an extend. It’s just that if I was more settled with life, i probably could afford it finely but its not that high on my worthy things list.
I’m the same way. I bought Premium when I started sleeping to Thunderstorm Sounds videos and didn’t want ads interrupting my sleep. And I found that it’s nice to watch my ASMR videos and videogame reviews without struggling with ad blockers, etc. Overall I don’t mind spending a couple bucks a month for it. I get that server costs are expensive and the platform needs a way to make money so it is what it is.
My lemmy instance doesn’t support downvotes and I only see upvotes, so feel free to downvote me to oblivion - I’ll have no idea.
Why does your instance not support downvotes tho?
I can only imagine that some people are so fragile that they can’t cope with a random internet stranger disagreeing with them. I honestly can’t think of any other reason - but they still allow upvotes. What’s the point? I really can’t understand. If someone can give me another reason, please do. I really really really hope I’m wrong.
There are more empathetic ways to think about things.
I mean, yeah, trans folk being brigaded makes sense - I’m surprised and disappointed that it’s a major deciding factor on an area of the web like Lemmy which is generally (at least) a bit more accepting. If I was trans I’d probably wind my neck in if I were on 9gg, Re**it, 4chn because you’re unlikely to feel better after interacting there - which is a pity. Still think it’s a bit weird having upvotes only though; but I guess there has to be some mechanism to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
It’s bothered me but I’m glad you asked.
Shining the best light I can:
Every Lemmy comment as a bad take / disagree button, and it’s the reply to box. You can express whatever opinion you want and anyone who has a problem with it will have to use at least 3 or so taps or clicks to express their disapproval. So no drive by downvoting from people who don’t actually care that much about your comment but saw other people downvoted it and succumb to the herd mentality.
When you use an instance which doesn’t support downvotes, you’ll never visit your profile and see that a bunch of strangers didn’t like something you freely put out into the world unless they offered some feedback beyond a singular thumbs down - unless they reply with a thumbs down emoji, of course.
I would hope that on a platform where downvotes are disabled, when you go into a spicy thread, if 3 idiots posted comments sympathizing with Nazis or something, they would all be at the bottom regardless with 1 upvote each and lots of sarcastic and angry replies.
I still am not sold. But it’s making more sense than before you asked the question.
Thanks. I kinda half-thought some of that myself but you put it way better. I can’t buy into it though. It just stinks of weakness and fragility to me. I still struggle to understand why being downvoted is seen as bad. Is not having people disagree with you a vital part of your personal development as a human being? If your instance is mollycoddling you then you don’t get to appraise your own views vis-a-vis the internet’s moral majority. Seems an ideal recipe to increase the herd mentality of the instance. I don’t know though…
I believe the official reason is because it’s a trans-focused instance, and trans people are often downvoted by bigots. But to me, the biggest advantage is escaping the peer pressure of upvotes/downvotes.
I found myself easily swayed by karma on Reddit, and it got so bad that I could barely express myself without trying to copy the Reddit “tone of voice” and agree with everything the hivemind went for. Now that I don’t see downvotes, it forces people to actually have a discussion in the comments if they want to sway my opinion. It feels much more human and has been great for my mental health.
By choice, because fuck toxic culture and herd mentality
The problem is that the paid premium is NOT better than free with extensions. Piracy is a service problem, and the paid service is NOT better than the “pirated” one. Even if premium was completely free, if it didn’t allow extensions I would still use the ad version with extensions.
Revanced android apps also exist, and I won’t use them with premium accounts (no point) and they are the only way of having sponsorblock, return youtube dislike, manual HDR and many other small but very useful features.
I would gladly pay for the content if and when the youtube official apps and website had features similar to those extensions.
Good post, I vehemently disagree in every way
I don’t mind ads.
But I do mind having targeted ads. To be fair, most of what Google presumes about me is wrong, but from the ad patterns it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Our data shouldn’t be hoarded and we shouldn’t be herded like cattle from which they can extract money through ad placement.
I’m fine with subscription services, and ads, but the steps they’re taking to maximize their revenue is gross and I don’t just mean youtube. This is just the stuff we know about for sure.
You can just turn off targeted ads in the Google settings though
I also don’t mind using ReVanced and getting the same features as YouTube Premium for free.
I have a family plan but it’s not for any reason other than my children use it and I can afford to pay to reduce their ad exposure. We live in a swing state so they were previously bombarded with political advertising.
The way I see it, I swapped the Netflix account for a YouTube account because that’s what the kids favor now. If they move on, I will drop it immediately. If the price goes up then I am very likely to drop it. It’s already overpriced for what it is.
It made economic sense for us to get the YouTube Premium family plan. When we dropped several streaming services and also Spotify, it was a bit more expensive than Spotify’s family plan, but YouTube without the ads was worth it, especially considering they have a huge library of movies that they are offering in high quality for streaming.
Honestly, I’m more satisfied than when I was paying for Spotify Family and Disney+ and Paramount+. And if I must see the eight billionth Marvel show of the year, which I generally don’t, there’s always the high seas.
I only wish they’d kept the “premium light” option (which I paid for until they canceled it). I don’t need another music service or locked screen playback, so I wish I could still pay a bit less for not using those.
I didn’t really mind until the recent pay rise. It was ok value (for me) before. Now it’s getting expensive. Not sure if I’ll cancel or not yet.
I cancelled Disney+ after the last increase, if YouTube premium does the same, I’ll have to reconsider, I can’t justify paying over $20 to only get rid of ads.
I agree with this, though part of it is that I am still grandfathered into the $7.99/mo original Google Music launch promo price. It is worth it to me not to see ads to continue paying for it. The current monthly premium at $14/mo for new users is insanity.
