Can someone explain to me why this sentiment is often downvoted on HN? Why is YouTube seemingly the only software platform that people chafe at having an ad-free tier and seemingly believe should be completely free to all with no ads?
It seems absolutely intuitive to me that if you don't want to see ads on a content enterprise, which are monetizing that content enterprise, you should generally be prepared to pay. Why is that deemed so outrageous with regards to YouTube?
YouTube is getting progressively worse every year with ads, introducing unskippable ads, mid rolls, end rolls, several ads queued, etc. At times it feels plain hostile for the users, especially those who have been watching for a long time, before any of the monetization existed.
YouTube used to be totally different, also it was free with very unintrusive ads. It's hard to sell people on the current monetization model and a lot of the current practices to get you to pay just antagonize viewers. The content is also not always perceived to be worth your money.
There are also moral issues, like Youtube showing ads on demonitized videos, or on channels that don't qualify for monetization. Meaning not all creators even benefit from YouTube's ads.
But eventually it boils down to user experience. You can block ads and get a massively better experience for free, or pay to have an OK experience (sponsor block isn't included in YouTube premium).
On sponsor block, most of the creators I follow have visual indicators for the sponsor time so I can just tap the arrow key or the screen until that goes away. I guess I don't mind that 'skip ad' arrangement since the creators are getting paid directly by the sponsor. Some creators also have Patreon model where you can get sponsor-free edits for regular payments which seems like an alright decentralized solution.
> Some creators also have Patreon model where you can get sponsor-free edits for regular payments which seems like an alright decentralized solution.
Patreon is OK for some things but you have to be very passionate about what this creator is doing to spend the time (besides money) to follow and consume their content on an additional platform.
I completely and fully respect people who choose to do this, but as a more casual YouTube user who just wants to see a video once in a while from one of my subscribed channels, this is not something I am going to do personally.
To each their own but personally I feel as if ads and sponsor blocking is the best experience you can get at this time, and it doesn't cost you anything. It's a hard deal to beat.
Because compared to other streaming services, that money is made off content that YouTube didn't produce and pays peanuts for. And because YouTube/Google will still track you and use that data to make more money in their other advertising schemes.
YouTube didn't produce the content(except sometimes when they do actually pay content creators), but they pay massive amounts(billions of dollars per year), not peanuts, to build the hosting and discovery infra that lets people get these views, which is why very few huge creators host their content on, say, Vimeo, or by themselves, or on peertube. On top of that, creators have ways of monetizing their videos which completely leave YouTube from getting any kind of a cut, such as Patreon, sponsorships, in-video ads, etc.
I mean, is it worse than a traditional Hollywood type model for low level creators? Aren't traditional media firms famous for shenanigans like making entry level work so underpaid that you basically need wealthy parents to get your foot in the door? Or crunching visual effects artists because their whole craft was born post-unionization? The elites ultimately win everywhere, (in this case it is Google instead of say, Disney) but at least with YouTube it is ostensibly meritocratic to climb the career ladder from the bottom?
But I definitely can see the dystopia in an algorithmic platform seeking content hegemony at highest possible profit as opposed to how traditional firms work which is... not too different to me. But I can see a higher ceiling to the gray goo problem in the notoriously willing-to-be-bad-at-customer-service Google.
Idk necessarily if the issue is 'who are you paying' as much as it is 'what are the people I'm paying actually contributing.'
And in the case of YouTube the answer seem to be: we created and refined some amazing video compression and streaming techniques. Now that that's done we just want to profit indefinitely?
I have just about zero warm and fuzzy feelings towards big corporations. But to claim that Youtube's giant infrastructure its development and maintenance has no cost (zero overhead) is totally wrong.
first link below estimates that YouTube's total storage needs for all of its content are roughly 10 exabytes. It goes into a lot of detail that you can check for yourselves, because it's a bit too much to copy over here, and though I can't say it's correct for sure, the description of how they reach their calculation is quite robust.
Anyhow, if we assume storage costs for YouTube are the same as what AWS charges per month (roughly 2 cents), this would mean that it costs YT about $2.4 billion per year just to store those 10 exabytes. I'm assuming that Google can cost its storage at quite a bit cheaper than 2 cents per GB at the immense scale it operates on, so let's halve that. This still means simple storage costs of $1.2 billion per year.
These of course don't include hardware replacement, other capital costs, or the bandwidth costs of all that video being uploaded (and downloaded).
Youtube's revenues for 2019 (so a bit out of date) were nearly 16 billion (2), so while they certainly have lots of costs beyond what I described above, they're also wonderfully profitable it seems.
>It feels somehow like you're paying the middle man for nothing?
They also promote your content and find and auction off ads for you. Unless if you're an advertiser, you aren't paying YouTube anything. If you have a problem with it, you're free to host your content on another platform. Keep in mind that that YouTube has to serve the hundreds of millions of videos that get a handful of views, and if you're a monetized YouTuber, it's only fair to be taxed to pay for hosting these videos as everyone starts in that position.
Because Alphabet will have around $280 billion in revenue for 2022, and the masses need to pay them $12 a month to see less ads because YouTube has decided to ratchet up the frequency and length to force that? And users are already paying via their data being collected and sold.
Yeah, I get enough out of YouTube that I’m willing to pay that. Apparently a premium view pays out more to creators than hundreds of regular views, so that feels good too. But I can’t believe so many normal people (who don’t know about adblockers or watch in the app) are able to stand non-premium YouTube, honestly.
I don’t use an adblocker at all. I try to pay for the sites I enjoy with money whenever possible. When that’s not an option, I gladly look at the ads I’m shown. If I find the ads distasteful enough then I stop going to that site.
