Not in the slightest. They want to have their cake and eat it, meaning they want you on the platform but using it their way. Why else would they put so much effort into this fools errand of subverting ad blockers?
I mean if they really didn’t care about random visitors and cared more about making people watch ads. There’s a very simple way to accomplish that, they only let you watch if you’re logged in, and give your account a temp ban if you’re blocking ads. But since they’re not doing that they obviously see some value in anonymous visitors.
yeah, them needing the money (??) or whatever is one thing, but this arrogant fucking attitude lately is so repugnant. set up a patreon, don’t fucking fight against your users like this. it’s not exactly real TV or oxygen, it’s fucking youtube. it’s 90% garbage anyway
Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don’t think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don’t think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?
I…honestly don’t think you’re particularly honest about this.
Mainly because Youtube red exists and it’s main sell is removing ads, but we already know the answer to that. (Most people don’t actually want to buy the service)
And it’s not like it’s shitty service. It’s Youtube without ads.
yt-dlp A bit of an inconvenience, but if it comes to having to sit through ads to see it on YT, I will download the video to prevent that. I already archive a couple of channels I love.
How much do you really think they would take off of the price tag if you didn’t have music? most similar subs are within the same price range…
I always figured youtube music only existed to make the sub more incentivizing. It probably doesn’t even cost them anything they aren’t already spedning on youtube.
It needs to be about half the price, if not less tbh. At its current price it’s rivaling netlflix, paramount, etc which are full studio’s producing the content, not just hosting it.
Well, if YouTube were truly so terrible that you think it offers no real value, you wouldn’t use it at all. If you yourself don’t use it, that’s all well and good, but if you do still use it anyway but block ads, then you’re admitting that it offers some amount of actual value while refusing to pay for it. In that case, it’s hardly unreasonable for YouTube to decide to not take on the cost of offering the service to those that aren’t going to pay for it. You’d probably be more than a little annoyed if your boss told you that you’ll be working extra hours for free.
There’s nothing inherently valuable to YouTube other than the fact that it’s the default video hosting website because it got there first. You can find other similar websites that provide video hosting that is equivalent, just without the massive audience YouTube has. Keep in mind your argument only works for G rated content because anything that is slightly controversial, even history based content, gets demonetized and there’s an entire other website called patreon that gained popularity because YouTube wasn’t paying its content creators for their work.
YouTube has lots of options for getting people to pay for their content. If they opt to pursue ad revenue they need to accept that a subset of their audience will use 3rd party apps to get around that. Most people don’t have ad blockers so it’s really only people smart enough to download the plugins. To me this is akin to Reddit pissing in the face of their users for the sake of maximizing profits. I get why they’re doing it, but for every trick they employ to get around ad blockers someone will come up with a workaround and I’ll just download that plugin each time.
@BraveSirZaphod this is pretty much what I was going to respond to you with
I understand people need to be paid, I’m just not willing to pay in my time. The paid service is also questionable as well.
I rediscovered this guy very recently, he talks a lot about the same points I’ve been making and I think he does it in a pretty fair way, I’m curious what your thoughts are (anyone feel free to jump in of course)
But YouTube Premium is incredibly reliable, unlimited, famously has very little content moderation, and is full of enjoyable content? (i.e., all of YouTube)
I don’t care what YouTube wants to do or how they do it, they need viewers and if they can’t figure out how to keep em, ah well. They gotta create a service that caters to my behavior, not the other way around.
Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn’t you, they don’t have to, and actively shouldn’t, cater to you at all.
You’re just saying “I don’t have an actual answer” in a roundabout way.
Google makes enough money as is, I don’t really care if the make poor decisions and end up with an unviable business model. I’ll do other things with my time.
I don’t really care about Google’s wellbeing. I pay directly to the content creators I like and I hate seeing ads anywhere in my life and I’m willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.
If they say that the marketing data they scrape from user activity isn’t enough for em, well, sucks to suck I guess.
That’s the thing with ads. They’re a thorn in my side. That Google puts there.
If you were charging me to remove the thorns you put in my side, I’d be belligerent towards you. And I ain’t gonna give ya money.
Is YouTube running at a loss, anyway? Or is Google just trying to squeeze more money outta its products? Maybe they should be content with the profits they got. Some quick searching says it generates somewhere in the realm of $29,000,000,000 in revenue annually. I imagine it’s likely they can afford to not be so damn greedy.
We have no idea if YouTube operates at a loss or is profitable. Google won’t say. Revenue really tells you very little when you look at what it takes to run something like YouTube. It’s a huge reason why an open competitor is so hard to make work.
The reason I don’t bring them revenue is because they continue to make the experience worse. Paying isn’t going to make that stop, it’s just going to temporarily shift the bar a little; the bar is however still moving towards a shittier experience for all.
Why would I look at this and go “Yes, I’ll pay!” There are a lot of services I would genuinely pay for if I didn’t have an impending dread that the service is just about to get worse again regardless of if I pay or not. It’s not like paying is a magic bullet, either, it comes with a ton of different issues like privacy. They still sell your soul to advertisers if you pay them.
Ultimately, they have no obligation to provide you something of value for free, and given that you do apparently use YouTube, they are objectively providing you something of value. They’re completely within their rights to not do that.
I’ll gloss over that you either missed my point or ignored it; I don’t use YouTube because it’s too shit, actually.
I don’t pay for any Google services, not that I’m using any with any consistency anymore, for the same reason that I don’t use them anymore. Google cannot be trusted to provide a good service, paying costumer or not. If you punish me for using the free product, why would I ever trust you? Steam doesn’t slap me across the face at every chance it gets when I don’t spend money on their store for a long period of time, yet I have no issue paying for the games I do want to play despite piracy being completely risk-free by comparison.
If you aren’t getting paid for your content, they’d probably be glad to not have to host it anymore. Anyone with content where it’s worth them hosting it is getting paid.
I paid for Lynda.com, and it could have easily taken in more business if YouTube wasn’t working so hard for Google ads. There are a lot of paid (and free) services that suffer because of YouTubes ad-money business model.
Netflix could use the extra business. There are plenty of services failing to thrive while YouTube exists. Peertube would be wide open if YouTube went the way of most of Google’s stable of apps. PeerTube is wide open even if YouTube doesn’t go away anyway.
People genuinely hate ads. It’s a high degree of enshitification. YouTube could divide into paid content and free content in a simple Freemium model.
Or, add third tier with ads, which any user can opt out of in the same way contributers can. I’d be happy to click subscribe on an ad free experience with less content available to me.
Or, add an option for a couple of free tier items per month, week, or day. Like Medium’s business model.
In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.
Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.
Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.
And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.
I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Honestly, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. If it were up to me, it would be banned.
by being owned by google? treating users with respect and running graceful and non-invasive ads? (maybe still image banner ads only? ratchet up the tension on the advertiser ghouls, not the end users?) having something akin to a patreon? simply eating the cost because it’s a public service? (not to mention the public service of draining the bank accounts of VC/investor/silicon valley vampires)
Sorry Google.
I’m gonna use YouTube ad free or I won’t use it.
And I ain’t gonna pay for it.
Pretty sure that they are fine with that, they are actively trying to get rid of you.
Not in the slightest. They want to have their cake and eat it, meaning they want you on the platform but using it their way. Why else would they put so much effort into this fools errand of subverting ad blockers?
If that were true they’d have restricted YouTube to logged in people.
What? They are trying to get rid of people with ad-blockers, not random by-passers that view 5/5 ads.
Could you explain that? Don’t views or engagements count if you’re not logged in?
I mean if they really didn’t care about random visitors and cared more about making people watch ads. There’s a very simple way to accomplish that, they only let you watch if you’re logged in, and give your account a temp ban if you’re blocking ads. But since they’re not doing that they obviously see some value in anonymous visitors.
I’m thinking anonymous visitors are harder to track, and ad-watching farms are probably a thing too, I imagine.
I’m guessing the value is simply a semblance of goodwill, to not be as transparent about their ad-watching mania. Maybe?
Does that mean I should pull all my content?
No.
Im pretty sure they are fine with free riders when they are not too many.
yeah, them needing the money (??) or whatever is one thing, but this arrogant fucking attitude lately is so repugnant. set up a patreon, don’t fucking fight against your users like this. it’s not exactly real TV or oxygen, it’s fucking youtube. it’s 90% garbage anyway
Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don’t think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don’t think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?
For me personally, I would rather pay for a service than with my time via ads.
That said the services provided these days are unreliable, gatekept, metered and not enjoyable. Why should I pay for shitty service?
Therefore I’m only left with one option and my wellies are strapped tight! 🫡
I…honestly don’t think you’re particularly honest about this.
Mainly because Youtube red exists and it’s main sell is removing ads, but we already know the answer to that. (Most people don’t actually want to buy the service)
And it’s not like it’s shitty service. It’s Youtube without ads.
I don’t need music, I just want ad free YouTube. There isn’t an option for users like me.
yt-dlp A bit of an inconvenience, but if it comes to having to sit through ads to see it on YT, I will download the video to prevent that. I already archive a couple of channels I love.
…?
Just use the ad free youtube…and don’t use the music section?
That’s what I do 90% of the time…
The price reflects including the music service whether you want it or not.
How much do you really think they would take off of the price tag if you didn’t have music? most similar subs are within the same price range…
I always figured youtube music only existed to make the sub more incentivizing. It probably doesn’t even cost them anything they aren’t already spedning on youtube.
It needs to be about half the price, if not less tbh. At its current price it’s rivaling netlflix, paramount, etc which are full studio’s producing the content, not just hosting it.
Well, if YouTube were truly so terrible that you think it offers no real value, you wouldn’t use it at all. If you yourself don’t use it, that’s all well and good, but if you do still use it anyway but block ads, then you’re admitting that it offers some amount of actual value while refusing to pay for it. In that case, it’s hardly unreasonable for YouTube to decide to not take on the cost of offering the service to those that aren’t going to pay for it. You’d probably be more than a little annoyed if your boss told you that you’ll be working extra hours for free.
There’s nothing inherently valuable to YouTube other than the fact that it’s the default video hosting website because it got there first. You can find other similar websites that provide video hosting that is equivalent, just without the massive audience YouTube has. Keep in mind your argument only works for G rated content because anything that is slightly controversial, even history based content, gets demonetized and there’s an entire other website called patreon that gained popularity because YouTube wasn’t paying its content creators for their work.
YouTube has lots of options for getting people to pay for their content. If they opt to pursue ad revenue they need to accept that a subset of their audience will use 3rd party apps to get around that. Most people don’t have ad blockers so it’s really only people smart enough to download the plugins. To me this is akin to Reddit pissing in the face of their users for the sake of maximizing profits. I get why they’re doing it, but for every trick they employ to get around ad blockers someone will come up with a workaround and I’ll just download that plugin each time.
@BraveSirZaphod this is pretty much what I was going to respond to you with
I understand people need to be paid, I’m just not willing to pay in my time. The paid service is also questionable as well.
I rediscovered this guy very recently, he talks a lot about the same points I’ve been making and I think he does it in a pretty fair way, I’m curious what your thoughts are (anyone feel free to jump in of course)
https://youtu.be/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
YouTube is okay. I’ll watch it if it’s free or very cheap. I won’t watch ads for it.
And they may decide in kind that they don’t want to offer a service to you for free.
They’ve already decided that. If they make it too difficult to watch it without ads then I’ll stop watching. No skin off my nose.
patreon
https://infosec.pub/comment/4467335
Sorry I have no idea how to @ people yet, not sure it’s implemented in this app yet
But YouTube Premium is incredibly reliable, unlimited, famously has very little content moderation, and is full of enjoyable content? (i.e., all of YouTube)
I think you just don’t want to pay.
if people can get things for free
they’re going to get things for free
Mmm not the whole truth, and that is why they get away with it:
https://youtu.be/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS
Netflix does similar things it would seem
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?si=bZLNupgMEnn_uWDS
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What other video platforms does Louis Rossmann upload his stuff to, by the way?
He does, you know. But I notice you aren’t watching him there.
Not sure I use a proxy application to watch YouTube videos
So you could be using and supporting alternate platforms, but YouTube is so valuable to you that you don’t bother.
Who said I don’t? Why can’t I use both?
You’re trying to fabricate a point here, and I just don’t think it fits me
Honestly?
Not my monkeys, not my circus.
I don’t care what YouTube wants to do or how they do it, they need viewers and if they can’t figure out how to keep em, ah well. They gotta create a service that caters to my behavior, not the other way around.
Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn’t you, they don’t have to, and actively shouldn’t, cater to you at all.
You’re just saying “I don’t have an actual answer” in a roundabout way.
Well, I don’t, but it isn’t my problem.
Google makes enough money as is, I don’t really care if the make poor decisions and end up with an unviable business model. I’ll do other things with my time.
I don’t really care about Google’s wellbeing. I pay directly to the content creators I like and I hate seeing ads anywhere in my life and I’m willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.
If they say that the marketing data they scrape from user activity isn’t enough for em, well, sucks to suck I guess.
Alternatively, they’ll take steps towards a more viable business model, and you’ll also find other things to do with your time.
You can zap all ads forever with a few minutes and a credit card, if you’re willing.
That’s the thing with ads. They’re a thorn in my side. That Google puts there.
If you were charging me to remove the thorns you put in my side, I’d be belligerent towards you. And I ain’t gonna give ya money.
Is YouTube running at a loss, anyway? Or is Google just trying to squeeze more money outta its products? Maybe they should be content with the profits they got. Some quick searching says it generates somewhere in the realm of $29,000,000,000 in revenue annually. I imagine it’s likely they can afford to not be so damn greedy.
We have no idea if YouTube operates at a loss or is profitable. Google won’t say. Revenue really tells you very little when you look at what it takes to run something like YouTube. It’s a huge reason why an open competitor is so hard to make work.
The reason I don’t bring them revenue is because they continue to make the experience worse. Paying isn’t going to make that stop, it’s just going to temporarily shift the bar a little; the bar is however still moving towards a shittier experience for all.
Why would I look at this and go “Yes, I’ll pay!” There are a lot of services I would genuinely pay for if I didn’t have an impending dread that the service is just about to get worse again regardless of if I pay or not. It’s not like paying is a magic bullet, either, it comes with a ton of different issues like privacy. They still sell your soul to advertisers if you pay them.
Ultimately, they have no obligation to provide you something of value for free, and given that you do apparently use YouTube, they are objectively providing you something of value. They’re completely within their rights to not do that.
I’ll gloss over that you either missed my point or ignored it; I don’t use YouTube because it’s too shit, actually.
I don’t pay for any Google services, not that I’m using any with any consistency anymore, for the same reason that I don’t use them anymore. Google cannot be trusted to provide a good service, paying costumer or not. If you punish me for using the free product, why would I ever trust you? Steam doesn’t slap me across the face at every chance it gets when I don’t spend money on their store for a long period of time, yet I have no issue paying for the games I do want to play despite piracy being completely risk-free by comparison.
That goes both ways. I can stop providing youtube with free content.
If you aren’t getting paid for your content, they’d probably be glad to not have to host it anymore. Anyone with content where it’s worth them hosting it is getting paid.
I paid for Lynda.com, and it could have easily taken in more business if YouTube wasn’t working so hard for Google ads. There are a lot of paid (and free) services that suffer because of YouTubes ad-money business model.
Netflix could use the extra business. There are plenty of services failing to thrive while YouTube exists. Peertube would be wide open if YouTube went the way of most of Google’s stable of apps. PeerTube is wide open even if YouTube doesn’t go away anyway.
People genuinely hate ads. It’s a high degree of enshitification. YouTube could divide into paid content and free content in a simple Freemium model.
Or, add third tier with ads, which any user can opt out of in the same way contributers can. I’d be happy to click subscribe on an ad free experience with less content available to me.
Or, add an option for a couple of free tier items per month, week, or day. Like Medium’s business model.
It’s not hard to stop sucking!
well its not my problem
In 2022, Youtube was getting $14 ARPU for free users (from ads) and $120 ARPU for premium users. With premium users contributing so much more to their bottom line, one would think they would strive to keep those users subscribed, but instead YouTube started raising prices and even stopped honoring the grandfathered price points their long term subscribers (like myself) were at. I would have kept paying for my family subscription indefinitely at that price point - which is still several times higher than the revenue they would get from me as an ad-consuming customer - but they opted to not allow that, so they lost all the revenue they’d been getting from me entirely.
Youtube specific stats are hard to find, but Alphabet is one of the most profitable companies worldwide, with a profit of just under $80 billion in 2022, so your question is honestly irrelevant. The status quo would have been more than enough to keep the lights on. This isn’t about making ends meet; it’s about getting as much profit as they can.
Even so, the person you replied to didn’t say YouTube shouldn’t run ads or charge for a subscription. They were talking about themselves and their willingness to watch ads or subscribe.
And because enough people aren’t like that person or like me, YouTube is going to continue to grow their revenue and their user base - for now, at least.
I don’t mind paying for YouTube content. I do mind their data harvesting, however. Figured out that my life isn’t diminished at all without Youtube.
I’m perfectly fine if commercial platforms like YouTube go out of business. This will create space for smaller platforms run by users as a hobby instead of a business, which I think would lead to a healthier media ecosystem. Honestly, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. If it were up to me, it would be banned.
Subsidise it with your other services
Why would they? It’s not like it’s going to be bringing customers to their other services and Google isn’t a charity.
“Just don’t worry about revenue at all” is the best kind of secret genius business strategy that I come to Lemmy for.
by being owned by google? treating users with respect and running graceful and non-invasive ads? (maybe still image banner ads only? ratchet up the tension on the advertiser ghouls, not the end users?) having something akin to a patreon? simply eating the cost because it’s a public service? (not to mention the public service of draining the bank accounts of VC/investor/silicon valley vampires)