I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
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You like it now, just wait though. In another year “YouTube Premium” will probably split further into basic and premium plus tiers. Basic will cost exactly the same except you now have to watch “limited” ads again, while Premium Plus will cost twice as much and be basically the same thing you’re paying for now plus some new bullshit feature no one cares about.
This is what YouTube has become. It’s what all the corporate services that like to make you think they care about you do. As long as we all keep shelling out more money for less services they will all just keep pumping us for every dollar they can possibly get.
It’s an unethical strategy called a “loss leader” where these companies offer a service they actually lose money on for a limited time until they get you to the point that you take it for granted. Then they make that same price point terrible and jack up the price for the good service you’ve come to expect.
Same with all of them. Remember when Netflix was $8 and you got all of the features? People said back then that they didn’t mind paying for it either.
I miss that :( my partner and I always talk about how that was such a nice time. I gave them my $8 every month and had access to all the shows I wanted to watch and it was great. I completely gave up on piracy, and I was more likely to rent/buy the occasional movie that wasn’t on Netflix.
Well as a counterpoint, that’s when you bounce. I had HBO MAX for years but their latest price hike was unjustifiable for me. I suppose I should prob shitcan Netflix too. And of course Amazon Prime went the exact direction you’re talking about.
That’s always an option sure, but since EVERY company does this now it means we all just stop watching TV basically. Maybe that would be the best thing after all though lol
Similarly to the “just move” when people talk about home prices, this argument holds up as long as there are alternatives.
Upvoted for a truly unpopular (and valid) opinion.
In a vacuum, I agree with you. Had it started off as a paid service, or if the paid version was substantially better on its own merits, I’d consider it. But in order for them to incentivize people to pay for Premium, they intentionally made the “standard” experience worse. I just cannot bring myself to reward that behavior/business practice.
I’m not rewarding them for bad behavior, I am paying them for running a sophisticated system that delivers any and all information in a digestible format to my fingertips. I do agree their free service has gone to shit, but it should have been a paid service from the start. I’ve built my own personal cloud and it is prohibitively expensive for me to have it stream HD video. Definitely more than a YT Premium subscription.
Don’t conflate services with goods. If your grocery bag boy showed up at your door when you were 3/4 through your loaf of bread and said you owed an extra dollar before you ate the rest you’d tell em to get the fuck off your property before you called the police.
If you want to compare them as the same, you’ve got to use every example.
No I would ask my partner if they did a doordash order and ask how did they do it for so cheap…
I’ve been a youtube premium subscriber since like 2017, long before the enshitification went terminal. I have a family plan so my kids can watch videos on the TV or on the tablet for the older kid without being bombarded by ads. I get not wanting to encourage youtube’s shitty behavior these days, but I’ve always gotten plenty of value out of my youtube subscription, more than I ever did out of hulu or even netflix or paramount most months.
Yeah, It would not be uncommon to see my largest use of data by far on my phone would be YouTube.
I got grandfathered in when they shutdown Google Play Music and it made Youtube so much more enjoyable of an experience. If I were to sign up today, I wouldn’t pay for Youtube Premium, but I’ve been spoiled and don’t want to go back to how shitty Youtube has become.
Hard agree. I’d love to have decided to most due to the convenience and quality of the service but I decided to pay because the frequency and number of ads wa ramping up. These fuckers know exactly the point that which I broke and they’re going to use that information to break others.
I also upvoted for an absurdly unpopular opinion, this is a shocking take.
It’s like paying for Exxon Mobil “premium” oil out of respect that they were one of the first oil companies.
I wouldn’t mind paying for YouTube Premium, if:
- They did not track or keep selling your info for money after buying it
- It wasn’t so expensive
But both of them seem like things that can never become true (especially the first point), so yes. I am hoping for PeerTube to get attention when YouTube starts breaking down.
I already paid for a lifetime of free Google services with all the data they stole from me before I had any sense that something so massive and invasive could even exist.
Thanks to ReVanced and Freetube and some others, Google can effortlessly pay out their equitable share.
Your take is so incredibly bad and you should feel bad and this is the most uncomfortable upvote
I acknowledge your opinion, but you won’t make me feel bad for exercising my freedom of choice. I do appreciate your upvote.
I’m with you in this one (so expecting downvotes). I’ve got 5 people in my house that all watch a shit load of YouTube. Originally I used Vanced on my phone, but realized that my kids were watching YouTube on the TVs and on their personal devices. At one point, I went into my daughter’s room at night and saw there were ads playing on her device where she had fallen asleep watching YouTube.
So once Vanced shut down (I know there is ReVanced and other alternatives) I decided to start paying for YouTube Premium. The reality is, being a tech nerd is fine for me, but it wasn’t easy to scale up and protect my entire family from ads on all their devices. So I figured that a few bucks a month was worth it for me.
That’s the only reason why i would pay for it
Same reason here, I could deal with it but my wife and kids and nieces and nephews can not
I don’t mind paying and I do pay but I do mind this disgusting bootlicking, OP…
You need to think big picture where this is going. Big tech has no limits or regard for us.
This is an adverserial situation and you are trying to be a good faith actor.
Never forget who you are dealing with here.
With that said… This is likely unpopular so got to upvote haha
I’m not bootlicking, I just recognize the value their platform adds. Do I wish there were a better alternative? Absolutely, but I have not done the work to figure that out and am able to pay without issue. I have been working on Tech for nearly 2 decades, so I am acutely aware of who I am dealing with.
recognize the value their platform adds
You are shilling for a bad faith actor who is also the enemy of the people…
I doubt Google would ever give you the same decency.
If I’m shilling for anyone, it’s the content creators. The platform wouldn’t be what it is without them. I don’t consume YouTube, I consume the videos it makes available which is a big distinction.
If this was true, you’d use an ad blocker, and donate directly to your favorite content creators. They’d see way more money, and you wouldn’t be supporting an evil organization.
They’d have more freedom to switch platforms as their revenue isn’t directly tied to youtube, but rather their viewers. Freedom to switch platforms gives youtube incentive to run a better site and charge a more reasonable fee for premium features.
But this isn’t what you’re doing. You’re supporting youtube directly and supporting all their business practices in the process
I have been looking at trying to support all the creators I watch on their Patreon pages, but I can’t pay that much to follow everyone.
I am aware that I’m not just paying for Premium features, but helping them keep the lights on. The cost for data centers, storage, and workers to keep it running comes from my contribution, so to say I’m just paying for features is inaccurate. The fact they still pay their creators after all that is good, but I agree they could do better.
All in all, I do feel there is a tipping point approaching where I will abandon Google which I am actively working on by setting up a personal cloud on my own server.
Google is a shite middle man for that tho
Big guys get most of the loot, smaller guys change and theybare the ones who need to be properly supoorted.
Mr beats types can eat a dick and stick a feastible in his anus too!
Here’s a nuanced take that agrees with the bad actor assessment of yours:
-Wiki
On average, I think something that has an unprecedented social impact probably adds recognizable value.
We vote with our wallet. Right now the value proposition is still in my favor, once it becomes not so, I’ll unsubscribe
I bought premium years ago as part of Google Music family (pre yt-music) and stuck with it, it was affordable. I am more than capable of blocking the ads over the years. Other members of my family want to use YT without ads on a myriad of devices. When the price got hiked at the start of the year I was really annoyed, and probably would have dropped the service if it were just me. However my family made it pretty clear that they did not want to jump through the hoops of blocking the ads.
Ditto
Unpopular opinion, I agree.
There was a time where I would have been happy to pay for it too, back when the ads were less intrusive. However, the number of ads increased drastically when they started pushing premium, and it’s only gotten worse - not to mention the fact that, even though they make more money, the content creators (employees) are paid less per view. I don’t mind paying for a product or service. I do mind paying to make an engineered inconvenience from a mega corporation that has a de facto monopoly go away.
I was under the impression premium views result in more revenue for the creators you watch compared to views with ads.
They do but it’s not that much more significant than overall ad revenue. Having a Patreon or a merch store will probably outperform 10 fold anything that YouTube pays from both ads and premium views combined.
They do!
I miss Metacafe and Big-Boys/Break.com. You know, from the days when YouTube actually had competition.
Even if YT Premium was cheap AF, I wouldn’t pay for it because:
- I know they will raise the price non stop (we all know this).
- It doesn’t come with Sponsorblock, that is already a downgrade.
It also does not come with downvote count.
You are right.
You can actually have both.
I’ll pay Tubular (NewPipe) / PeerTube first.
Try Pipepipe its like Tubular but better ime. Tubular crashed a lot for me.
Thanks!
Would rather pay the creators directly instead of it going 80% to anyone in ceo position and maybe 5% to the creator.
At least with ads, 60% goes to the creator and 40% to YouTube. I had a video go viral because it was newsworthy, and a CDN (Storyful) offered to help with licensing and marketing, and their price was 40% of my 60%. I wasn’t really expecting the video to go viral, so decided “why not.”
I only got 36% of the money from the YouTube views, but Storyful delivered and got it on the news and a few documentaries and I ended up making thousands of dollars for a few minutes of video. 10/10 would do again, but then YouTube changed the rules and now you need like 1,000 subscribers for your video to even qualify for monetization :(
Interesting !
That’s neat. Good on you! I like the platform but to be flushed with ads and pay more ceo salary versus creators like yourself, I rather choose to support those I enjoy my entertainment from. Of course realistically A VERY difficult thing to do. I like the idea of Jaybird and Floatplane to an extend. It’s just that if I was more settled with life, i probably could afford it finely but its not that high on my worthy things list.
Where are you getting this 5% number?
Pulled out of my ass as it was hypothetical… Just that I rather support creators instead of orgs with ceo’s salaries.
Which department do you work for?
Google is fucking evil and has had a big hand in making society worse over the last 15 years. They will never get another penny from me.
Thank you for having a conscience. I agree.
I don’t work for Google, but I have been in IT Support for almost 20 years.
Careful, you don’t want to fall and hurt yourself from up there on your pedestal
