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?
Ding ding ding. It’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s the harsh truth. This is akin to a super high maintenance Karen going “I’m never going to shop here again” even though she immediately returns everything she purchases. The company isn’t making any profit off of her, (in fact they’re losing money because she demands employees’ attention whenever she’s shopping) so a sensible manager’s response should be “okay, we’re glad to see you go. Please don’t come back.”
YouTube doesn’t want the users who block ads and refuse to pay. Those users are a net drain on the system. Lemmy likes to yell about FOSS, and there is a lot to love about that… But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”. Someone had to devote time and resources to building and hosting that “free” thing. The fact that they’re willing to share their effort is great! But it can’t be the expectation.
As someone who does a lot of freelance work, I’ll say the same thing that I say to clients when they ask me to work for free because of the exposure: Exposure is what people die of when they can’t pay their rent. I’m not saying YouTube is going to go bankrupt because of these users, but the users can’t reasonably expect YouTube to continue to pay for/accommodate them.
Free in FOSS means free as in freedom not free as in beer.
But ultimately, the F in FOSS doesn’t really mean “Free”. It means “Free to the end user”.
The F in FOSS does NOT mean gratis. I absolutely hate that we decided to call it Free. There have been attempts at saying another word like libre (aka FLOSS) but those haven’t worked out.
I don’t agree with the FSF on a lot, but their definition of free software is as follows:
“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
In other words software can be paid and still be FOSS. In fact, I want to see MORE paid software that’s FOSS.
Gratis software only works in very rare cases, when an entity other than the user of the software pays for it, but that is NOT the case with FOSS.
I want more FOSS software that is monetized. Charging for FOSS software is not only permissible but desirable. This model ensures that developers are compensated for their skilled labor, fostering an environment where innovation is rewarded. It’s about creating a sustainable ecosystem where the values of open-source are upheld without sacrificing the financial viability of the developers.
When software is open-source and monetized, it strikes a critical balance. Users gain the freedoms associated with FOSS – the liberty to run, modify, and share – while developers receive the financial recognition for their contributions.
Paid FOSS software also opens doors to more professional and polished products. When developers are remunerated, there’s a greater incentive to maintain, improve, and support software. This, in turn, encourages wider adoption, as users are more likely to rely on software that is regularly updated and supported.
Moreover, a paid FOSS model disrupts the surveillance capitalism model. It negates the need for monetizing user data, as the revenue comes directly from the users in exchange for the software. This aligns perfectly with the principles of respecting user privacy and data ownership.
I WANT to pay for FOSS software that respects my rights and freedoms. The payment becomes an investment in a world where software is not just a tool, but a statement of principles. It’s a declaration that I support an ecosystem where the power and control lie with the users, not in the hands of a few large corporations.
By paying for FOSS, we’re contributing to a marketplace that values ethical practices over profit maximization. We’re fostering a space where software developers don’t have to resort to underhanded tactics like data mining or invasive advertising to make a living. Instead, they can focus on creating quality, user-respecting software.
This isn’t to say that all FOSS should come with a price tag. There will always be a place for gratis FOSS, especially in educational and non-profit sectors, tho in such cases developers should strive to ask for donations. But for the software that powers businesses and our daily lives, a paid model is more sustainable and ethical.
The beauty of this approach is its alignment with the principles of free-market capitalism. It’s a voluntary exchange where value is given and received. Users pay for the freedom, quality, and respect that FOSS offers, while developers are compensated for their ingenuity and hard work.
A nice example of this is Ardour: A DAW that’s free in the sense that the source code is GPL, but the prebuilt official binaries have to be paid for.
When software is open-source and monetized, it strikes a critical balance. Users gain the freedoms associated with FOSS – the liberty to run, modify, and share – while developers receive the financial recognition for their contributions.
I never understood how these two concepts can coexist.
Lets say you made something FOSS and sold it to one person. Can’t that person just… redistribute it for free? Which kinda makes you trying to make a living out of selling it much much more difficult or downright impossible?
Of course, people can be dishonest, but nothing stops the same from happening with proprietary software. Cracks do and will always exist. As Louis Rossmann aptly put it, “If you choose to steal paid FOSS software nobody is stopping you, that’s between you and your God.”
While it’s technically feasible for a purchaser to redistribute FOSS software, this act doesn’t negate the continuous value a developer can offer. Think of it akin to a chef in an open kitchen; the recipe may be visible to all, but the chef’s expertise in crafting and adapting the dish, as well as the dining experience provided, is what customers pay for.
In the world of proprietary software, the illusion of control is often just that – an illusion. Despite the efforts to safeguard against unauthorized distribution such as DRM, software licenses, verification servers, etc. piracy remains a prevalent issue. The key difference is that FOSS is upfront about this reality, building its model on transparency and trust rather than control.
Morally speaking, the FOSS model respects user freedom and fosters a community built on mutual respect and collaboration. It acknowledges the possibility of misuse but chooses to focus on positive engagement and the creation of value that extends beyond mere code. In this way, FOSS aligns more closely with the principles of intellectual freedom and individual empowerment, encouraging a market where ideas and innovations are shared and improved upon collectively, rather than hoarded for profit.
the recipe may be visible to all, but the chef’s expertise in crafting and adapting the dish, as well as the dining experience provided, is what customers pay for.
I mean, you cant ctrl+c ctrl+v the dish. That’s the difference. If anyone could ctrl+c ctrl+v meals I think most restaurants would go bankrupt. Right?
I’m not so sure about that.
I shipped several android apps that were GPL licensed and FOSS but had in-app paid options. You could also download a fully unlocked version from f-droid. They were quite profitable and the statistics were surprising. Turns out people are willing to pay for good software
The assertion that non-paying customers do not provide value to a business is patently and demonstrably false. Especially in a free market.
A platform like YouTube benefits from non-paying customers because these customers still drive engagement and help solidify market share.
Non-paying customers still consume sponsor spots, which benefits creators, keeping creators on YouTube and therefore still benefitting YouTube.
Non-paying customers will promote YouTube just by using it, even for free, and create the impression that YouTube is the only game in town, instead of looking for and promoting alternatives.
Having a non-paying customer on your platform is in most ways better than having that customer become a paying customer on a competing platform.
The only time this dynamic no longer holds true is if YouTube believes their position is so entrenched that there is no more competition and they can squeeze the users all they want (end game enshitification).
The only time this dynamic no longer holds true is if YouTube believes their position is so entrenched that there is no more competition and they can squeeze the users all they want (end game enshitification).
Uuuhhh… Pretty sure that’s where we’re on now soooo…
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Or at least not in the longer term view of it. YT isn’t just some random store that doesn’t want to deal with an unruly customer. It’s a big tech monopoly platform. Like the other tech giants, their strategy has always hinged on becoming the only game in town. And they predictably use the same tactics monopolies have been using for the past century:
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Offer the product at such a low price that you take a loss and use your hoard of money to outlast would-be competitors who don’t have a massive pot of money to burn. In YT/Google terms this is the fact that it’s a free site and up until very recently they’ve done little to nothing about adblocking users despite being one of the biggest tech companies in the world, knowing it is happening, (It was in their chrome extensions search, plus they don’t pay the creators for the no-ad views.) and having the capability to stop it at least for their browser, which a lot of people were already using. Why not go to war with adblockers sooner when their entire business is built on advertising? Because that’s the cost they were willing to bear to turn YT into a monopoly. They could take the hit on not getting ad revenue from some users, but some hypothetical competitor certainly couldn’t.
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Make switching hard. A site that’s grown as large as YT has massive network effects. For viewers, that’s where all the videos are. For creators that’s where all the viewers are. For both that’s where there is enough of a community that there are lively discussions in comments. Nobody outside nerds like us is going to some external site they’ve never heard of. If you want to get your stuff out there, you use YT. Then there are things like creator contracts to further discourage switching.
Ad block users aren’t valueless to YT, or at least they weren’t. They were a portion of those viewers and commenters that contributed to YT becoming THE video social media site. They comment, share videos around, maybe even contribute directly to creators to allow them to keep making YT video. You maybe lose a out on a couple cents from the lost ad views for each one of them, but the value of the network effect gained by keeping them around this long far outweighs that loss.
EDIT: Oh and how could I forget: They get data from you. Sure, they can’t directly sell ads for you off that data, but the more data they have in general, the better they are able to make predictions about other similar users, which is valuable.
They’re doing this now because they can. They no longer have meaningful competition to kill off. The few that kinda cross into their market are also massive tech platform monopolies that are currently engaged in the exact same thing. They can’t expand their customer base anymore, so now they’re extracting more money from the captive audience they have.
And it’s not just adblock users they’re increasing the “price” for. YT has added an insane number of ads to their videos and increased the price of YT Premium. If adblockers died tomorrow, they wouldn’t be like “What a relief, now that we’ve gotten rid of the freeloaders, we can finally lower our prices for everyone since they aren’t bearing the burden of the non-payers.” They just get to tighten the screws even further because they would have gained an even more dominant position over their users.
In a fairer world, we’d all pay a reasonable amount for the things we use or move on to an alternative if we’d rather not. But we don’t live in that world. We live in capitalist hell world where everything is a monopoly and the government is so captured by those corporate interests that they basically never enforce even the meager anti-trust laws we do have.
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this is a salient point sure, but you are perfectly capable of wording it in a way that doesn’t also suck off a shitty malignant corporation. why the fuck would you sympathize with google? they have trillions of dollars, it is literally not at all comparable to your work.
thank you for being so mature and telling us peons the Real Mature Truths. your bravery is commendable.
Well said. Their business model is shit.
They already make money off of us, what the fuck are you talking about?
You missed my point. If you’re blocking ads/trackers, and refusing to pay for premium? Then they aren’t making money off of you. You’re consuming their resources for free. Regardless of your feelings on ads/tracking being invasive, the fact of the matter is that’s how the website makes money. So when you eliminate those, you eliminate any reason for them to pander to your wants. The only potential benefit to keeping you around would be to help drive engagement. But since they’ve run all the competition out of business, they don’t need to worry about that because they don’t need engagement from the 1% of users who still try to block ads.
Regardless of your feelings on ads/tracking being invasive, the fact of the matter is that’s how the website makes money
It has nothing to do with feelings. The data they track has a value. You’re claiming they “aren’t making money off of you”. They are.
Again, you missed my point. If you’re blocking those ads and trackers, they have no data from you and therefore you have no value to them.
If you’re blocking those ads and trackers, they have no data from you
Let’s pause and pretend that’s true.
….Ahhh. 😃 if only.
you’re wrong, actually. Google sells ads, not data. They USE data to target ads which is where the big bucks are. If you block ads, all the data in the world wouldn’t allow them to profit. So by blocking ads you are preventing Google from collecting any revenue from your participation
I didn’t say they sell data I said that the data they track has a value. Try again
On I 100% agree with you here. But here’s my (and I think a lot of people’s) logic:
It’s slightly different in the case of YouTube. The shop isn’t putting Karen (and everyone else) under a microscope the second she walks into the store, and using that data to tailor what she sees in their other branches so she’s more likely to buy. They’re not creating what’s effectively a gigantic influence market out of the data, and I don’t think you are doing that to your clients either (although to be honest, I’d be pretty impressed if you were).
YouTube is free because “we are the product”. They’re harvesting our data whether we block ads, skip ads, watch ads, or pay for premium (as far as I know, please correct me if I’m wrong). It may not be profitable on its own but it sure as hell is bringing value to Google’s other services. All the while, it’s actively getting worse for end users (more and more ads, no more dislikes, not respecting video quality choices as well as it used to, hiding quality settings behind obtuse menus on mobile, no home page without watch history…)
Ultimately, “line no go up big like last year grug mad” is what matters to Google’s shareholders and what ultimately drives their decisions. I firmly believe that we’d still be having this conversation if YouTube somehow making a profit with ad blockers on, so fuck em.
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?
No.
Im pretty sure they are fine with free riders when they are not too many.
Does that mean I should pull all my content?
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.
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)
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
This is an interesting perspective. Many people are willing to put in time and effort to get around restrictions on adblockers, but not willing to give up time to ads or give up money to avoid ads.
I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.
The minority would go elsewhere to find other entertainment at an acceptable price.
I mean, I’m a happy, paying subscriber to Nebula. Any content where I have a choice to watch it there, I do. It’s stupidly cheap, too. Usually you can find a promo to get it for under $20/yr.
But I am also not pretending that Google owes me free & ad-free YouTube on my terms. They don’t. Nor do the creators owe me uploading their videos to my platform of choice. I’d prefer both these things to be true, but I at least can understand that it is not reasonable. YouTube, frankly, is probably the ONLY killer product I couldn’t do without made by Google, other than some open source software.
People should pirate all they want. I don’t really give a fuck. I don’t consider it some great moral evil. But pirating from YouTube is not some symbolic, ethical stand for your values. If you really think what they’re doing is bad, stop using the service and pressure the YouTubers to upload elsewhere (which they pretty much ALL could do without consequences from Google). The entire platform only exists because of advertising. Period. If you hate ads as much as I do, pay for the ad-free versions.
I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.
Given the success of Netflix’s ban on password sharing, I think you’re right here. Most people really don’t care about this nearly as much as the average tech enthusiast.
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.
I don’t want to pay what they’re asking no.
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.
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.
That’s a flippant response when you were asked specifically to pretend they were your monkeys.
That’s true!
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.
For someone who doesn’t care and has no viable responses to the questions here, you sure do have a lot to say.
It’s true, I’m very passionate about never viewing any advertisements!
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.
Alternatively, they’ll take steps towards a more viable business model, and you’ll also find other things to do with your time.
I’m willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.
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.
You think it costs $30b a year to run YouTube?
There’s a middleground between reckless profiteering and not making any money at all. And yet YouTube discontinued their $5 tier. But no, it’s the kids who are out of touch.
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.
They’re not a charity, they’re a monopoly. So fuck them I don’t care how people circumvent their increasingly shitty service
“Just don’t worry about revenue at all” is the best kind of secret genius business strategy that I come to Lemmy for.
From a financial standpoint, that doesn’t make any sense though. Why would you continue to run a service that is a net drain on the rest of your business? Unless it can offer some meaningful, tangible benefit to the company, why continue to operate it at all? If a service needs to be subsidized to survive, why does it need to survive?
Google has basically used it to increase their tracking capabilities across the web. They know when you visit any site with an embedded YouTube video. But that’s only possible because they’re already a massive company. And it’s not reasonable to expect them to continue subsidizing it out of the goodness of their hearts. After all, if you’re willing to ask them to subsidize it, why aren’t you willing to help by paying for premium? It’s easy to say “just subsidize it” when it’s not your money.
To be clear, I don’t pay for premium and probably never will. But this thread has a lot of emotionally charged “because I want it” responses, which aren’t really grounded in reality. YouTube has operated at a loss for a decade, and only continued to operate because it had the backing of a tech giant. But if that tech giant wants to stop subsidizing the site and finally make the site profitable, that’s their prerogative. Yes, it’s the final step in the enshittification process. Yes, it means free users will have a worse experience. But ultimately, the company isn’t required to care about the free users.
If YouTube operates at a loss and they decide to ditch their service its their problem, not mine. I’m not here to save google
Not OP, but I personally would like to see a variety of options for how I see ads. Not what ads I see, but how they’re delivered. I imagine several less intrusive options and the option to continue ads as they are now. I would need two or three less intrusive options combined to cover my viewing, or I could take only the current annoying interrupting ads on their own.
On second thought, YouTube would just end up turning on all options and stopping playback for anyone who finds the options list.
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. Additionally, advertising is not a healthy activity for society. Spending resources to manipulate people is not really beneficial to humanity as a whole. 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)
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
That’s fine, but that’s why Google is doing this. They need people who won’t watch ads to stop using it to lower their costs. I mean what business survives with zero income? The question google is asking isn’t whether or not some people will stop using it, the question their asking is will enough of them stop for them to generate income.
If Google can pay shitloads of money to people through ad revenue, then they can also make a profit off of the platform. Claiming they make no income is just complete bullshit.
You think Google pays “shitloads for ad revenue to creators”? Is that why it’s so rare for major creators to rely on sponsorship deals to be their primary stable income?
There had been enough leaks over the last 10-15 years of some of their income from YT to suggest that they indeed get paid very well, way more than many working class people. They aren’t relying on sponsorship, they just also love to take it. And hell, there’s big content creators that get paid enough to have several people working for them in return.
So then they need to do whatever they can to stop ad block. Because Google pays shit loads of money due to ad revenue. I’m not sure how your logic disagrees with anything I said.
It’s not Google paying that, it’s the advertisers paying it. Google isn’t just giving away their money.
…yes, so google desperately needs those advertisers to advertise. And if they stop, their content stops existing. So yeah Google has to stop ad block. Otherwise who’s going to make anything for YouTube?
*Edit as you said
Google isn’t just giving away their money.
So they need advertisers to give out that money or they have no one posting videos.
Unless you think Google will just start giving out money.
They aren’t going to stop. lol
I’m sorry but your “arguments” become more and more nonsensical.
The money doesn’t come from Youtube. They’re not a big company because of youtube. They bought youtube.
I’m well aware that they bought YT.
They need people who won’t watch ads to stop using it to lower their costs.
This assumes that the biggest cost to Youtube is serving the content, not storing the content. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think it’s a valid question because if storage is the larger cost, then it doesn’t matter how many visitors visit the site, Youtube is still warehousing all that content. By the way, in that scenario, it’s actually better for Youtube to keep as many viewers on the site as possible, adblockers or not, because they can use higher viewer numbers to increase the price of the ad space they charge to advertisers.
I mean what business survives with zero income?
Yeah, I don’t care enough to simp for a company that has enough money to start off with a losing strategy to begin with of burn money to kill competition then is surprised that they can’t easily revert back the strategy that “won” them the market dominance in the market dominance in the first place.
And YouTube is one of many services that exist to try and convince people to make a Google account anyways. Without YouTube that’s one less reason to make an account with other email providers around and less of a reason for Apple users which is growing in dominance.
because they can use higher viewer numbers to increase the price of the ad space they charge to advertisers.
How does that actually work when the advertisers know people aren’t going to see the ad?
I think for a while, their strategy to ignore adblockers worked just fine. User counts were rising, ad payouts could be and would be cut, ads could be and would be placed in different parts of the video, videos that weren’t monetized were getting ads thrown in just to make Youtube/Google/Adsense money. YT was pulling lots of levers to keep the value of advertising on the platform high.
That is, until Adpocalypse. My theory is, after this point, advertisers began to question how many more levers could be pulled until they addressed the elephant in the room, an elephant that was getting larger and larger: the adblockers. Let’s be fair to Google (ugh), it would be much much easier to pull all those levers, than to tackle the technical challenge of stopping client-side software from running on their website. Once interest rates rose, and advertiser pressure reached it’s current peak, Google started taking anti-adblocker actions: Manifest V3 to kill ublock on Chrome, Youtube’s current system, etc.
Actually the other person who tried to disagree with me made a great point for my argument.
Youtube needs content creators and pays them through advertising. If advertising stopped, there would be no content creators.
So regardless of if it’s storage or bandwidth, they absolutely need to stop ad block. Otherwise no one will make content for youtube.
I think there’s some truth to that, but in my admittedly “outside-looking-in” experience, most full-time content creators have other means of raising money to operate: Patreon, merchandise, Twitch subscriptions, YT Membership, video sponsorships, etc. So I don’t think the total loss of advertising would lead to the total loss of content creators. You’d lose some, but others would survive. People like making content even when there’s no profit motive at all, it’s just less feasible to do it at an industrial scale if you don’t have more solid financial banking.
Consider Twitch subscriptions. You pay $5 to a streamer, you never see ads on their stream. No ads doesn’t mean no streamer. Likewise, streamer still streams even if you don’t subscribe, you just see the ads. As a business model, this is a little neater, tidier, than Google’s. On a technical level, it’s also better defended against adblockers since ads are injected into the stream, they’re not a separate stream you can just block.
Yes they “need” to stop adblock, but for the advertisers, not for the content creators.
What you’re saying is true, but misses the point. Yes, larger content creators can get sources of income besides advertising. However, the whole point of youtube is to let anyone big or small get started. Small creators can’t get started if they don’t have a source of income. So that’s where the advertising comes in.
In a sense, twitch builds upon the success of youtube. They took large creators who could get the $5 subscriptions on to their platform. But this only increased the need for youtube to court advertisers.
In a world without advertisers paying content creators, our options would be severely limited. We want small upstarts and cutting off their source of income is a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, our world requires the necessity evil of youtube doing whatever it can to stop ad blocker. No matter how nice it is. And if you as a user are satisficed with the limited content from large creators, as you said, there’s always twitch.
Hahahahaha, do they know that using it without the ad blocker is worse than whatever else they’re going to do? I’d rather stare at 30 seconds of black screen than a 5 second ad, lmao.
Having a blank screen will make me less angry than seeing a long advertisement. Not to mention, I come from the days of dial up. I can wait a bit until I view the video.
I remember waiting 30 minutes for 75% of a badly compressed 1 minute pornvideo to load, I can outlast whatever they throw at us.
Good thing you only needed 75% of that 1 minute porn video, or you’d have had to wait even longer.
It’s the expectation and imagination in the meantime that does it.
At some point just seeing the progress bar increase a notch might be enough.
The progress bar is almost finshed!!..and I’m done.
Please, I’m not a marathon runner.
I only needed 3 seconds.
Well actually they can do much more, like for example decreasing quality to lets say 144p
I’m not saying that adblockers will not be able to bypass it, maybe there will be a solution as well, but wanted to say that the blank screen waiting is not their only weapon
*a 5 second ad every 5 minutes
If it was really that little I wouldn’t be so up in arms about it. I put a video on yesterday and had 30 seconds of ads before it started and then another 30 seconds of ads after a minute and a half. Fuck that nonsense.
Usually the only thing I find YouTube uses for is those short 30 seconds of a video I have searched for. Like how to DIY something or quick, visualdemonstrations of concepts.
As bad as YouTube has gotten, it’s already super common for me to skip over the first four or five search results, which are usually YouTube links, and just go to like the 4th or 5th one down, and fine. It’s just as useful. If I was blind or couldn’t read, that would suck, but I can live without YouTube like, I mostly already do, and used to, too.
They couldn’t possibly make the experience worse than it already is without an ad blocker.
No adblock = No youtube
To paraphrase a great philosopher: executives… uh… find a way (to make things shittier)
No YouTube. It is YOU that is stuck with ME and I will make YOUR experience worse.
Oh no, how unfortunate. Sadly, we don’t have alternative YouTube clients like Invidious or Piped that can be used with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links to these alternative front-ends. And unfortunately, you can’t use LibreTube or NewPipe on Android, as well as Yattee with this guide on iOS, iPadOS and tvOS or SmartTubeNext on Android TV.
Can’t possibly make it worse than shoving ads from hate groups. On my computer, I use Firefox with adblock, but on my phone and tablet I had been using the YouTube app until a few days ago. Google decided to show me a PragerU ad on mobile, so I decided to switch to Firefox mobile to watch YouTube. And the app either moved or removed the ‘don’t show this ad’ selection.
If you’re using android you might want to check out YouTube ReVanced.
If you log in, know that Google knows you’re using MicroG amd has the capacity to ban your account.
Not heard of any bans yet, but I’m probably close to ditching revanced soon because this is my primary email address and Google is getting more and more aggressive
Look in to switching to a privacy respecting email. It’s not for everyone, but i am very happy with the Proton suite of apps.
I might do that, I made this email when I was 13 and didn’t know much about the digital world
I’d advise against Proton - they’re not good at actually respecting privacy and require a premium subscription to access your email over SMTP (making it much harder to switch away and locking you into their client).
Email isn’t private. They don’t scan your email for ads which is about all you can ask for
??
They strip all the tracking from the emails. I’ll unsubscribe from ads, or turn off compromised addresses, but them not scanning my emails is a plus.
How is it not private?
Email as a protocol is not private. It wasn’t designed to be.
Please expound on your thoughts. I happen to be a paid subscriber, cause I want to support them and I appriciate the extra features I get. So the issues with the free accounts arent a problem for me, but my friends who use the free account don’t seem to have any complaints.
I think what you have in mind is YouTube Vanced. ReVanced doesn’t use the MicroG Suite.
Even Walmart lets shoplifters return to their stores after like three years. Think about that, if you owned a shop, what would mean to welcome back as a customer someone who previously stole from you?
Not that blocking ads is stealing, that they need us a lot more than we need them. Can build the nicest, fanciest store around with all the best things for sale, doesn’t mean shit if nobody shops there.
If the experience gets any worse, I just won’t watch YouTube videos. I already watch way less than I used to when it was a cool video hosting platform, before it started enshitifying.
I’ve been using microg for ages both for voiced before it got shutdown by Google and for revanced
Nothing has happened to my account
Yes, I said that, but there’s still the possibility. It’s explicitly against their terms of service and when you log into an account specifically to break their terms of service, they reserve the right to tell you to go fuck yourself
Just because they haven’t yet doesn’t mean they won’t. We’re entering a new era of enshitification
Same I no longer use the YouTube app in my telphone
Newpipe is pretty good, you can get it through the f droid store
Check out Sponsor Block extension, if you aren’t using it. It’s really cool
Yeah recently starting using this and it’s excellent, no more manually trying to skip over yet another nordvpn sponsor monologue
Fennec is Firefox for Android and it even supports uBlock, Dark Reader and others.
…and your viewing experience will be far, far worse if you don’t use one.
Right? Having an ad blocker means my video gets slowed down by a few seconds, not having an ad blocker means I get to watch a 30 second ad from a local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators. I think I know my choice lmao
local politician telling me about how we need to get rid of fornicators.
So now I have another reason to use an ad-blocker. This world needs fornicators, dammit.
This world needs fornicators
in saunters the Alphabet subsidiary gang
by a few seconds
For now.
They had a long time to make the ad watching process less painful, or adding actual value to a premium subscription, but they are doing everything to make YouTube worse.
i could maybe start to swallow the actual tech getting worse (just like everything else is lately) but this arrogant, odious attitude they’re putting on lately is so obscene and anti-consumer. it’s like it’s their god-given right to serve us ads and our solemn duty to consume them.
YouTube premium should have built-in sponsorblock. That’s one of the ways that free clients are literally better than the paid service, mostly on mobile. Let me change the theme to different colours, let me show/hide the “shorts” and “create” tabs. In general, just give me the features that YouTube revanced has on the official app.
If the price was like $5 per month and it gave you no ads and 4K steaming it might be worth it. But at the current pricing it just isn’t good value since YouTube doesn’t produce content like other streaming services (and creators still have to rely on sponsorships for their livelihood regardless of whether the viewer is a premium subscriber) that justifies paying the higher prices for the service.
Instead their attack on their customers rather than just making the service valuable enough to pay for makes me never want to give them a cent.
I know right? Executives just never seem to get that you actually need to provide value to have people want to sign up for it. Saying that though, there’s a lot of dumb consumers out there that just pay for it if needed.
I had the paid service until they jacked up the price for no reason at all. The second they announced the price hike for no reason I cancled my sub and have just been using a third party app to watch it on my phone or ublock on firefox
They should allow premium users to use third party YouTube clients using an API, like Reddit before Spez’s war on third party apps.
I remember what the internet was like before we had ad-blockers. I concur with others who have said turning the blocker off would make it even worse. There no fucking way I’m turning off ad-blocking under any conditions. I’d rather just stop using the internet altogether. I can not verbalize how much I hate ads. I stopped watching TV because of ads a long time ago. Never again.
Oh man, I wish I could get a pair of AR-glasses with ad-blocking in real life. No more ads polluting the streets. That would be great.
Pretty sure any AR-glasses from the megacorps will add ads to real life soon enough. Any AR-glasses not from megacorp will be bought out to shut them down. Not like there is functional antitrust.
Yup, that’s bound to happen, which is why I’ve written off actual AR-glasses long ago. Maybe if there’s an OpenSource solution, but seeing how slow Linux phones are coming along, I’m not holding my breath. But I can still dream!
If there’s anything I’ve learned, some open source genius hacker will figure it out, publish an early demo with 99% of features, and then disappear off the face of the planet before they ever make it available.
Hey, how else are they going to make money from that $1500 pair of AR glasses you bought?
I cannot stand ads anymore to the point that when I happen to watch TV stream and ad break come up, I put the TV on mute and go browse Lemmy on my phone.
I remember the first time I saw ads on YouTube, I had just set up a new computer and wanted to test everything. So I opened Firefox and loaded a YouTube video. I got a preroll and wondered “wait ad’s, on YouTube?” Then I realized I had been using AdBlock for so long I never witnessed the transition from ad free YouTube to YouTube with ads.
These days I use unlock origin, Sponsorblock and revanced. For now it still works but maybe I’ll leave YouTube soon :/
I’m in the same boat and often wonder what right these billboard companies have to put their messages in my face
Yesterday a site for image translation I was using didn’t load the image. so I thought maybe it’s the adblock and man that was a horrible experience. How can people Stand all those flashing bullshit.
Wonder how much money they’ve wasted trying to block the blockers
It’s even more weird all that invested time into people who are going to find ways to block them either way, instead of focusing on their userbase that doesn’t use them. Seems like they are rummaging through the couch cushions for pennies at this rate.
Since this whole debacle started, they’ve just made ad blockers more prevalent to people who didn’t know about them. Ad blocker use is actually up now compared to when they started making this a big deal. So, in a way, they actually screwed themselves.
Ah, the good ol’ Streisand effect.
Considering they can use this knowledge to apply it to the entire Google ecosystem, I’d say they aren’t wasting money in learning about new ways to fuck us over.
I watch YouTube content on my tv, and get ads, next to using it on my PC where I block them. Generally I did not mind the ads, since it is part of the business model.
But frankly the experience on the tv is degrading quickly in the last 12 months:
From 2 skippable ads at the start (and end) of a video, I now get 2 longer unskippable ones, but regularly it doubles to 4 and a 5th that is either short or skippable. And if it’s still 2 at the start then usually 1-2 mins in I see 2 more long ads … If I have the gall to rewind or forward the video I get 2 more long ads, usually followed by 2 short ones a minute or two later… Some of that is probably ad-space tagged by the creators, but clearly YT overrules that and places its own ad markers.
Slowly I feel it’s leaning towards punishment to watch content on YT, at least on the tv.
On top of that there is the annoying interface that blocks a full 30% of the screen, often blocking the one thing I wanted to look at. Then the ads that always break subtitles of the video, or somehow enforcing subtitles in a language that I can not read.
And don’t get me started on the topic-bubble the algorithm captures the user in.
YT should have left it as it was a few years ago, but it is forcing more and more ads, making things unfriendlier for both the viewer and creator, all to squeeze the viewers for more and more revenue.
It’s a shame it’s all so detrimental to the wealth of knowledge on there.
So if a good and proper alternative is able to stand on its feet I will gladly follow the creators and watch the new stuff on there.
Use smarttube instead of the official YouTube app, the ads are gone and it’s better in every other way as well. Faster, more features, quality settings stay where you left them, sponsorblock support and much more.
Is that better than newpipe?
I don’t think Newpipe is available on GoogleTV, but I could be wrong. You can log into your Google account with SmartTube so it functions more like the YouTube app with adding to your watch history, keeping your subs synced, and getting recommendations in the GoogleTV UI on top of having sponsorblock. It’s more like Vanced than Newpipe.
Just buy or build a pc and plug it into the TV screen
It’s more customisable than a smart tv and you can even set up something like kodi
deleted by creator
It’s google, they will find a way.
deleted by creator
These shenanigans have me rapidly transitioning from “I don’t want to see your annoying ads” to “I don’t want you to make any money at all”.
I’m already there, and I’m applying this thinking to every site - including the one hosting this article.
Same, I view the whole internet through uBlock and a pihole, so my value as an “impression” is virtually zero.
I’m not against for-profit websites making some money (and I run my own website, which generates a whopping $0), but Google has jumped the shark with their sketchy malware bullshit, and I’m starting to root for that organization to die.
I mean what’s the difference between me not watching ads and me watching ads but still not buying their shit because I don’t need it? I go out of my way to not buy anything I get ads for, so all it does is waste my time. I’m saving the advertisers money because they don’t need to pay to show me ineffective ads.
Switched to duckduckgo purely because I wanted to stop giving Google money via searching
The ads make it pretty bad. They’d have to work really hard to make it worse without ads.
