For context I’m in the US. The last time I used YouTube without an ad blocker, there were 2 ads back to back, and way too frequently. I tried watching on my PlayStation tonight, and not only are they more frequent, they’ve increased in quantity by 150%. It’s also very common for the last ad to last 2 minutes to over an hour long. What the actual fuck, why would anyone watch YouTube without an ad blocker at this point? It’s literally unwatchable
Edit: the amount of unsolicited advice in the comments is unreal. I don’t get ads on my phone or on desktop, I’m very aware of how to block them. I simply won’t watch YouTube on my PlayStation anymore. I’m not looking for suggestions, please stop with the recommendations.
Call me insane but I pay for youtube premium. People have NO problem paying for netflix/hulu/amazon/HBO and whatever else but theres a large amount of people who wont even consider paying for Youtube( presumably because the adblocking options are relatively easy to install and use, especially on desktop)
Youtube premium and it is BY FAR the best value in entertainment for me. I watch videos on it multiple hours a day sometimes (in the background while Im doing housework or whatever) No ads for me or my kids, more money to creators, Its like $12/month or something and with that I also get a music service thats - for me - better than spotify/apple/napster or anything else really.
Theres a reason theres no completely free tier on the other services, and its because supporting things with ads alone takes lots and lots of ads. If you arent paying a dime for the service its tough to take your complaints seriously about how many ads there are, becaus you are getting the content FREE, thus you pay with your time and attention
Because Netflix/Hulu/HBO/etc hosts TV shows that are expensive to make. YouTube hosts various types of content that is produced on shoestring budgets compared to TV shows.
Just because someone would pay to watch The Boys or Game of Thrones doesn’t mean they’d pay to watch Let’s Plays.
Thats an interesting point, but I think a very, very small percentage of people are actively thinking about how much the content they are enjoying costs to make when they are factoring in if its worth paying for. Enjoyment is the number 1 metric by a country mile.
If an expensive show is shit to watch or listen to, no one is going to pay for it. You couldnt pay me to watch Battlefield Earth again for example, I dont care how expensive it was to make.
True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.
There’s also the fact that YouTube is more of a social media outlet than a content creator. Its content comes from people and organisations experimenting and assuming all risks for themselves. YouTube isn’t commissioning works (bar one or two notable exceptions) and the biggest risks they assume is storage space holding dud content.
Streaming services actually create, or at least license, the content they host. That costs significant sums. Therefore it makes sense for them to be paid services. YouTube itself doesn’t create or license shit.
I don’t think of it as paying for the content, as much as just paying for an ad-free experience that doesn’t require maintenance on my end and still helps pay creators. I watch YouTube a lot, and on several devices that aren’t easy to adblock on, so I just pay for a family plan and none of my family has to see ads on any of their devices, either. I don’t think YouTube is really doing exclusive content anymore, so that’s not really a huge reason to subscribe.
YTP is one of the few “quality of life” subscriptions that I think is genuinely worth it, IMO.
Lots and lots and lots of people make bank “on youtube” because people sub to their patreons or buy their merch as a way to support the channel. I think you vastly underestimate what people are willing to spend on a creator whose community they feel apart of and whos content they like.
Is that creator YT? No?
Do they share most of premium’s revenue with said creators? I’m guessing the answer is “none”
If you want to support a relevant creator that’s your choice… but it’s highly unlikely that creator benefits from you going premium,
Thats why I added in the bit of patreon and merch. The persons argument was that no one was going to pay for content that was cheap to make, which is patently absurd given the amount of people making a living off of merch/patreon type deals
Youtube ad revenue is split 55% with the creators - presumably its the same for premium - so yes it actually is “most” depending on how you want to define that.
This is wild… seeing someone in earnest putting hollywood on the same level as some dude in their garage. This is zero chance I would ever pay 1 cent for 100 video essays because they don’t entertain me and they don’t feel worth anything. On the other hand yes it makes full sense to me to pay under $10 a month to watch unlimited productions which clearly cost a lot to make. The costumes, writing, research, and everything else that go into an actually immersive experience cannot be compared to some dude reacting to Linus TT being shitty. I will never understand not appreciating the difference here. The shocking part is that your opinion isn’t even that unpopular. Blows my fucking mind… For some of you, the only things in the world required to make video entertainment is an opinion and a cheap cell phone. 🤯
Im not saying there isnt a difference, or that I dont appreciate it personally. Im saying there are plenty of people that DO pay for video essays or LTT and find them even more entertaining than Game of Thrones or whatever show you want to watch on HBO or Netflix, at least at certain times of day and in certain scenarios
This is exactly what my head is exploding about though.
Main issue is logging in with my main Google account. I don’t want my google data to be accessible in the house from the speaker or the tv or the tablet.
I could pay more by buying YouTube family (or whatever they call it today) and share it with a burner account but that would be ridiculous.
Also, I don’t want to even consider supporting them when they’re pushing their TikTok clone down my throat. Until the TikTok clone is baked in their app with their shitty videos mixed with regular content, then I’m forced to use alternative clients that remove all the short videos from my view.
That TikTok shit bothers me more than 1 minute of ads.
I’ve been paying for premium for a while now as I get a ton of value out of it as well, and want to support creators. I watch youtube pretty much exclusively these days, besides the occasional (heh) piracy.
That being said - I am absolutely at the point where I am considering backing up all my subs and switching fully to newpipe. I already use revanced just to deal with their absolute nightmare of a UI - YT, I don’t EVER want to see your fucking shorts. Having to hear about them continually making it worse for everyone else makes me want to just leave for another platform… but sadly 99% of long form content is exclusively hosted on youtube, so there isn’t much of a choice.
I think one of the moral (?) objections to paying for YouTube versus paying for streaming services is that a streaming service actually creates (some) original content whereas YouTube merely hosts other people’s content. YouTube is only a facilitator and (ironically) not a creator. All of its content (both original and unoriginal) is produced by money that isn’t YouTube’s. They take zero risk and expect maximum returns.
YouTube hosts millions upon millions upon millions of videos for free, and they set up and maintain the ad network that gets creators the money (55% of the ad revenue goes to them, 45% to youtube). That is the value they provide, not the content they create. They dont take a “risk” per se (anymore, that risk was taken in the beginning), but they are 100% outlaying resources to maintain the youtube network/experience at great expense so that people can create, host, and profit on their website with no risk to the creator except wasted time.
Obviously not a simple thing to do otherwise tons of websites would be doing the same thing and YouTube would have lots of competition, but they don’t because its actually a very resource intensive process that literally - and I mean literally as in literally - no other company is willing to take on.
There is no moral objection, unless you find funding Google in any way immoral.
Its a mutually beneficial relationship with YouTube and the Creators. Youtube has reduced the risk of spending money on content creation but takes on all the work of maintaining everything youtube offers, and the creators have reduced the risk of financial/commerical resources needed to make money on their product. Neither could exist withou the other
I mean, yeah that’s mostly all true; but you’re kind of missing the point. Alphabet created the ad-soaked centralised monopoly you describe. They obviously shut down Google Video pretty quickly after buying YouTube. They bought-out or strangled competitors, leveraging their SE dominance, to get to where they are now, which is offering small pockets of content scattered about in an advertising platform. Alphabet knew what kind of monster they wanted to create and set about doing it. More adverts equals more profit. Profit must increase year on year. That’s how it works. I don’t begrudge Alphabet trying to fleece everybody - it’s how capitalism operates. I just don’t buy into the “good old Google letting me watch stuff for (almost) free” mantra.
Yeah just that one little tiny exception that literally no one could agree with /s