12 ms·

YouTube networks drop thousands of creators as YouTube policy shifts

159 points by PuffinBlue 8y ago

shadowmore 8y ago
BureaucracyTube -- the creators get no support or feedback, the networks get no control over their clients, and the advertisers get played like a fiddle by the loud minority of the easily offended. Personal agency is dying, and Silicon Valley is, sadly, complicit.
- PuffinBlue 8y ago
  > advertisers get played like a fiddle by the loud minority of the easily offended. It seems you can replace the first word in that sentence with many others and still accurately describe much of modern society. I wonder if it was always so? Perhaps the same technology that brings offence to them allows the offended to shout loudly their displeasure with it.
  - mtreis86 8y ago
    "What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." -Thomas Jefferson
  - scottie_m 8y ago
    Why can’t you curse on broadcast tv or radio in the US? Just for one of many examples where the previous “vocal minority” have dictated policy. Why are there blue laws? Why is pot illegal at the federal level in the US? Prostitution? Religious and “moral majority” types still dictate to a less vocal majority. That this only seems to have occurred to some people when the people complaining include some on the Left speaks volumes. For me, I’d like neither political pole to dictate to the rest of us, but I wasn’t born yesterday so I’m not holding my breath. I’m also not acting like this is somehow new. The only thing that’s changed is that the vocal types with clout aren’t just the religious Right. On the bright side that means more people are empowered, on the downside it now means that two extremes are fighting for power over us instead of just one.
    - chiefalchemist 8y ago
      > "Why can’t you curse on broadcast tv or radio in the US" Because SV has had a holier than thou attitude. SV has promised us it is beyond tradition. Those previous enemies are obvious. But SV said it would be __less__ of the same. Where are the jet packs we were promised?? Or was that (empthy) promise just a press release?
      - scottie_m 8y ago
        I said US, not SV, and contrary to the beliefs of some in a bubble, one is not the other. Silicon Valley is also a place full of different people and companies, so no “it” didn’t say anything, the people and companies there have made a ton of claims and promises, some of which they’ve even upheld. Fortunately jet packs aren’t one of them, because I can’t think of anything more likely to get people killed on a regular basis, while being terminally noisy and polluting. Of course what serious person believed they were getting jet packs? The same people who still think that flying cars will be in every driveway? Some promises are made just because there are people with money who are stupid enough to believe them, and predatory people can’t resist parting fools and their money. Don’t take it all so personally, and don’t invest in things like Juicero or jet packs and you’ll be a lot happier and wealthier.
        chiefalchemist 8y ago
        To clarify. To me. YT / Google is a reliable proxy for SV. I was simply trying to answer the quoted question in that context. Whether you like and/or agree with the answer is further discussion.
    - dgzl 8y ago
      Along the way, our government has been somewhat hijacked. The 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights says to the effect: ~"The Feds can only do what the Constitution says they can, states have rights to create their own rules, and all other liberties are given to citizens." If you're imagining the power dynamic between the federal, state, and citizen level, the Constitution was written to give citizens a framework of higher government, while the Bill of Rights was written to explicitly restrict that government's power. (i.e. "government shall make no law" vs. "citizen has rights xyz") Somewhere along the way people started seeing the federal government as the top of the pyramid rather than a caged beast. Somewhere the beast escaped the cage.
- trophycase 8y ago
  Technology is inherently used to further systems of control. The death of individuality and agency is directly linked to technological improvements. I shudder to think 50 years from now when your every movement/word/thought is known and truly fear for humanity.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nukeop 8y ago
Can anyone really keep up with Youtube's policies anymore? Especially when they're partially created and enforced by automated scripts? I keep hoping that the worse this situation becomes the better incentives people will have to move to alternatives. A man can dream.
Eridrus 8y ago
> “[It] in effect forces MCNs to either watch every video uploaded by their partners, or at least be reasonably confident none of the videos they are uploading could possibly either in the present or in the future violate or even come close to violating a YouTube guideline/terms,” Urgo said. Its funny how a lot of people think its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. To some extent, if you're bundling content and you want all your content to be treated equally, there is a shared responsibility to not upload things advertisers don't like.
- sillysaurus3 8y ago
  It's not about what advertisers don't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    And people think Facebook is bad. Remember DoubleClick, the ad company that did all sorts of scammy and slimy and hacky advertising? Yeah, Google bought them years ago. Now mix in "AI" -- which really means crap arbitrary computer decisions that you have no recourse on. Yeah, "Do Evil, and dont care". That's their slogan now.
    - HenryBemis 8y ago
      DoubleClick is not the devil. Ok it kinda is. I have been blocking them on my hosts file [1], Noscript, and Adblock+ for years. But I don't feel that YouTube content is relevant to this discussion (evil-ness of Advertisers). I don't think that YouTube has signed a Contract with (majority) of content creators that they will get paid $XX for YY-hours of viewing (or for ad display). That would have been breach of contract (kinda like when you bank changes your interest rate or your employer your salary without agreement). I don't really like what Google has become, but it's their rules, and it's a take it or leave it. Do creators have the guts to abandon massively Google for a couple of months? Similar to going for a strike. Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? [1]: someonewhocares.org/hosts
torgoguys 8y ago
I wish there was more transparency here from both the MCNs and especially YouTube, but I'm also leery about some complaints from channel owners. Specifically the ones that sound like they feel entitled to the services YouTube provides them (free distribution, tooling, outsourced ad sales, audience, cross promotion, etc) at zero "cost" (not necessarily monetary costs) to themselves. Creators should feel free to try and lobby YouTube to make things better for themselves (YouTube depends on creators), but please try and steer clear of things that look like entitlement. It's a bad look. And if things really are so bad, don't distribute via YouTube if the downsides of their policies outweight the benefits. If your content is good and a larger movement starts, that's the strongest message you can send to YT.
- viraptor 8y ago
  YT is not doing it for fun though. They get paid because they slap ads around the content the creators provide. What you said here means "don't complain you got fired, steer clear of looking entitled" for some creators. You wouldn't like to hear someone saying that about you losing your job, would you?
  - torgoguys 8y ago
    Yes I pointed out that YT needs the creators. And I was recently told by my employer that due to budget cuts, a bunch of my services were no longer needed. Of course I'm bummed, and I think they made the wrong cuts, but I didn't go around b*tching that they owed me a job.
- sillysaurus3 8y ago
  Creators should feel free to try and lobby YouTube to make things better for themselves (YouTube depends on creators), but please try and steer clear of things that look like entitlement. It's a bad look. Users are entitled to certain rights when it's a monopoly. And YT is essentially a monopoly. Think of it this way: Why are you entitled to privacy from Facebook? You can simply stop using Facebook, right? What's the difference between FB and YT?
  - 8y ago
ironjunkie 8y ago
Modern censorship at work. People should not forget that Youtube is an extremely left leaning organization and therefore polices videos under that angle. Most people in tech are left leaning (especially in the Bay area) and as such this is not seen as a big deal, but this censorship is growing and it is one of the biggest democratic danger at the moment.
- bllguo 8y ago
  Absolute BS. The only reason you would perceive YT to be "left-leaning" is that advertisers in general don't want to be associated with alt-right content. YT is merely mirroring the biases of the advertisers.
  - peterhadlaw 8y ago
    A 9th circuit judge (inarguably a left leaning court) has stated in a lawsuit involving Google (YouTube) and PragerU (far from alt-right), that claiming YouTube acts in a neutral way is "puffery" (yes that's a legal term).
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      Source?
      - tomsthumb 8y ago
        https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4421826-Prager-Dismissed.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4421826-Prager-Dismi...
    - asdsa5325 8y ago
      Prager's lawsuit claims that YouTube's censorship is violating their first amendment rights. This is simply bullshit, since first amendment rights don't apply to a private company like YouTube. YouTube has the right to remove / restrict whatever it likes on it's own site.
calimac 8y ago
YOUTUBE IS POND SCUMB. LOWER THAN USED CAR SALES. YOUTUBE MUST BE ELIMINATED BY AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION.
geuis 8y ago
I'm glad to see this policy. MCN's are a cancer on Youtube. I don't even have a remotely popular channel, and I've still been contacted multiple times by these folks when a small video starts getting legs. Its usually directly tied to reddit, where a few times I've shared a video I made in a specific small subreddit related to the content and it gets a small amount of upvotes. Its really ridiculous. A good friend of mine has just randomly posted a few videos over the years that when "viral" in certain Reddit subs like /r/lego and he got deluged by emails from various MCN's. Their entire business model is to find niche, sometimes entertaining videos through reddit and then artificially inflate the views to reap the advertising awards. And unless you're careful as the creator of the video, some of the dodgier ones demand you to sign over copyright to them. I'm happy to see pirhanas like this be forced out. Its partly because of their shenanigans that Youtube is requiring partners to have at least a thousand subscribers before monetization kicks in now. I have 150ish and its not like that $2 a month was make or break, but there are other up and newcomers that probably liked getting that $20-$40 a month or whatever the amount is and it encouraged them to keep making interesting content. I'm kind of hopeful that policies like this will help with this problem in the long run.
wagecuck 8y ago
Nasim did nothing wrong.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Live by the hoard. Die by the hoard. Seems to me the bed being used is a bed that all have agreed to get into.
- ta2987 8y ago
  Hoard?
- tempodox 8y ago
  You might benefit from using a dictionary.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Yes. Sorry.
sschueller 8y ago
If you don't agree with these policy shift I urge you to support projects such as PeerTube[1] any way you can (code, running a node etc.). [1] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
- romanovcode 8y ago
  Content creators do not give a shit about privacy. Since PeerTube is not-for-profit nobody will move there. All they care about the fact that the revenue source was pulled off of them.
  - pickpuck 8y ago
    Maybe the most open platform will win if the future is Patreon, Twitch, Brave Browser...
    - romanovcode 8y ago
      Twitch is bought by Amazon long time ago. Brave is closed-source browser so you have no idea what is happening there. Patreon is amazing tho.
      - sschueller 8y ago
        Brave is open source [1] to my knowledge. [1] https://github.com/brave https://github.com/brave
- dbbk 8y ago
  Why? There would be no way to make money on PeerTube (and very hard to even get an audience).
  - onion2k 8y ago
    and very hard to even get an audience The question here is whether it's harder to get an audience by being discovered among the millions of other videos on YouTube, or by being discovered among the millions of websites on the internet. If you're competent at marketing it shouldn't really make a difference either way.
return1 8y ago
it feels like youtube could avoid a lot of controversy by adding a button to tip/pay creators directly on the site. But the broader issue is that Google, an advertising company, will probably not do it. That's why youtube should break out of google.
- Crash0v3rid3 8y ago
  How can YouTube possibly break away from Google? Hosting costs for YouTube are astronomical, they would’ve never survived without Google absorbing their costs.
- remram 8y ago
  Isn't that where they are doing with the "paid subscriptions"? Twitch has that already with the "subscribe" and "bits" buttons.
Retroity 8y ago
I'm just sitting here wondering how far YouTube will go to make the site "Ad Friendly" with all these changes lately. At this rate it wouldn't surprise me if the YouTube Partner Program went back to it's original form, where it was invite only for a select few creators. But this also highlights the need for creators to diversify their revenue. Don't just rely on YouTube. Offer T-Shirts. Take sponsorships. Open a Patreon. Start streaming on Twitch. Try to get to that point where the majority of your revenue comes from sources outside YouTube.
chaoticmass 8y ago
I watch a lot of YouTube, probably more than what is healthy, and I happily pay for YouTube Red (ad free youtube). I have no idea how my subscription supports the channels I actually watch. It would be nice if my subscription payment actually was divided among the channels I actually watch. This way I'd automatically be supporting the channels I enjoy simply by watching them, regardless of how ad-friendly they are.

159 points by PuffinBlue 8y ago

BureaucracyTube -- the creators get no support or feedback, the networks get no control over their clients, and the advertisers get played like a fiddle by the loud minority of the easily offended. Personal agency is dying, and Silicon Valley is, sadly, complicit.

PuffinBlue 8y ago
> advertisers get played like a fiddle by the loud minority of the easily offended. It seems you can replace the first word in that sentence with many others and still accurately describe much of modern society. I wonder if it was always so? Perhaps the same technology that brings offence to them allows the offended to shout loudly their displeasure with it.
- mtreis86 8y ago
  "What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." -Thomas Jefferson
- scottie_m 8y ago
  Why can’t you curse on broadcast tv or radio in the US? Just for one of many examples where the previous “vocal minority” have dictated policy. Why are there blue laws? Why is pot illegal at the federal level in the US? Prostitution? Religious and “moral majority” types still dictate to a less vocal majority. That this only seems to have occurred to some people when the people complaining include some on the Left speaks volumes. For me, I’d like neither political pole to dictate to the rest of us, but I wasn’t born yesterday so I’m not holding my breath. I’m also not acting like this is somehow new. The only thing that’s changed is that the vocal types with clout aren’t just the religious Right. On the bright side that means more people are empowered, on the downside it now means that two extremes are fighting for power over us instead of just one.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    > "Why can’t you curse on broadcast tv or radio in the US" Because SV has had a holier than thou attitude. SV has promised us it is beyond tradition. Those previous enemies are obvious. But SV said it would be __less__ of the same. Where are the jet packs we were promised?? Or was that (empthy) promise just a press release?
    - scottie_m 8y ago
      I said US, not SV, and contrary to the beliefs of some in a bubble, one is not the other. Silicon Valley is also a place full of different people and companies, so no “it” didn’t say anything, the people and companies there have made a ton of claims and promises, some of which they’ve even upheld. Fortunately jet packs aren’t one of them, because I can’t think of anything more likely to get people killed on a regular basis, while being terminally noisy and polluting. Of course what serious person believed they were getting jet packs? The same people who still think that flying cars will be in every driveway? Some promises are made just because there are people with money who are stupid enough to believe them, and predatory people can’t resist parting fools and their money. Don’t take it all so personally, and don’t invest in things like Juicero or jet packs and you’ll be a lot happier and wealthier.
      - chiefalchemist 8y ago
        To clarify. To me. YT / Google is a reliable proxy for SV. I was simply trying to answer the quoted question in that context. Whether you like and/or agree with the answer is further discussion.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    Along the way, our government has been somewhat hijacked. The 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights says to the effect: ~"The Feds can only do what the Constitution says they can, states have rights to create their own rules, and all other liberties are given to citizens." If you're imagining the power dynamic between the federal, state, and citizen level, the Constitution was written to give citizens a framework of higher government, while the Bill of Rights was written to explicitly restrict that government's power. (i.e. "government shall make no law" vs. "citizen has rights xyz") Somewhere along the way people started seeing the federal government as the top of the pyramid rather than a caged beast. Somewhere the beast escaped the cage.
trophycase 8y ago
Technology is inherently used to further systems of control. The death of individuality and agency is directly linked to technological improvements. I shudder to think 50 years from now when your every movement/word/thought is known and truly fear for humanity.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nukeop 8y ago

Can anyone really keep up with Youtube's policies anymore? Especially when they're partially created and enforced by automated scripts? I keep hoping that the worse this situation becomes the better incentives people will have to move to alternatives. A man can dream.

Eridrus 8y ago

> “[It] in effect forces MCNs to either watch every video uploaded by their partners, or at least be reasonably confident none of the videos they are uploading could possibly either in the present or in the future violate or even come close to violating a YouTube guideline/terms,” Urgo said. Its funny how a lot of people think its totally reasonable to expect YouTube to pay people to watch every video, and yet the people bundling the video think thats unworkable. To some extent, if you're bundling content and you want all your content to be treated equally, there is a shared responsibility to not upload things advertisers don't like.

sillysaurus3 8y ago
It's not about what advertisers don't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8n78AuN3w
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  And people think Facebook is bad. Remember DoubleClick, the ad company that did all sorts of scammy and slimy and hacky advertising? Yeah, Google bought them years ago. Now mix in "AI" -- which really means crap arbitrary computer decisions that you have no recourse on. Yeah, "Do Evil, and dont care". That's their slogan now.
  - HenryBemis 8y ago
    DoubleClick is not the devil. Ok it kinda is. I have been blocking them on my hosts file [1], Noscript, and Adblock+ for years. But I don't feel that YouTube content is relevant to this discussion (evil-ness of Advertisers). I don't think that YouTube has signed a Contract with (majority) of content creators that they will get paid $XX for YY-hours of viewing (or for ad display). That would have been breach of contract (kinda like when you bank changes your interest rate or your employer your salary without agreement). I don't really like what Google has become, but it's their rules, and it's a take it or leave it. Do creators have the guts to abandon massively Google for a couple of months? Similar to going for a strike. Can they make 500 million people not look at cat-videos for 2 months? [1]: someonewhocares.org/hosts

torgoguys 8y ago

I wish there was more transparency here from both the MCNs and especially YouTube, but I'm also leery about some complaints from channel owners. Specifically the ones that sound like they feel entitled to the services YouTube provides them (free distribution, tooling, outsourced ad sales, audience, cross promotion, etc) at zero "cost" (not necessarily monetary costs) to themselves. Creators should feel free to try and lobby YouTube to make things better for themselves (YouTube depends on creators), but please try and steer clear of things that look like entitlement. It's a bad look. And if things really are so bad, don't distribute via YouTube if the downsides of their policies outweight the benefits. If your content is good and a larger movement starts, that's the strongest message you can send to YT.

viraptor 8y ago
YT is not doing it for fun though. They get paid because they slap ads around the content the creators provide. What you said here means "don't complain you got fired, steer clear of looking entitled" for some creators. You wouldn't like to hear someone saying that about you losing your job, would you?
- torgoguys 8y ago
  Yes I pointed out that YT needs the creators. And I was recently told by my employer that due to budget cuts, a bunch of my services were no longer needed. Of course I'm bummed, and I think they made the wrong cuts, but I didn't go around b*tching that they owed me a job.
sillysaurus3 8y ago
Creators should feel free to try and lobby YouTube to make things better for themselves (YouTube depends on creators), but please try and steer clear of things that look like entitlement. It's a bad look. Users are entitled to certain rights when it's a monopoly. And YT is essentially a monopoly. Think of it this way: Why are you entitled to privacy from Facebook? You can simply stop using Facebook, right? What's the difference between FB and YT?
- 8y ago

ironjunkie 8y ago

Modern censorship at work. People should not forget that Youtube is an extremely left leaning organization and therefore polices videos under that angle. Most people in tech are left leaning (especially in the Bay area) and as such this is not seen as a big deal, but this censorship is growing and it is one of the biggest democratic danger at the moment.

bllguo 8y ago
Absolute BS. The only reason you would perceive YT to be "left-leaning" is that advertisers in general don't want to be associated with alt-right content. YT is merely mirroring the biases of the advertisers.
- peterhadlaw 8y ago
  A 9th circuit judge (inarguably a left leaning court) has stated in a lawsuit involving Google (YouTube) and PragerU (far from alt-right), that claiming YouTube acts in a neutral way is "puffery" (yes that's a legal term).
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    Source?
    - tomsthumb 8y ago
      https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4421826-Prager-Dismissed.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4421826-Prager-Dismi...
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    Prager's lawsuit claims that YouTube's censorship is violating their first amendment rights. This is simply bullshit, since first amendment rights don't apply to a private company like YouTube. YouTube has the right to remove / restrict whatever it likes on it's own site.

calimac 8y ago

YOUTUBE IS POND SCUMB. LOWER THAN USED CAR SALES. YOUTUBE MUST BE ELIMINATED BY AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION.

geuis 8y ago

I'm glad to see this policy. MCN's are a cancer on Youtube. I don't even have a remotely popular channel, and I've still been contacted multiple times by these folks when a small video starts getting legs. Its usually directly tied to reddit, where a few times I've shared a video I made in a specific small subreddit related to the content and it gets a small amount of upvotes. Its really ridiculous. A good friend of mine has just randomly posted a few videos over the years that when "viral" in certain Reddit subs like /r/lego and he got deluged by emails from various MCN's. Their entire business model is to find niche, sometimes entertaining videos through reddit and then artificially inflate the views to reap the advertising awards. And unless you're careful as the creator of the video, some of the dodgier ones demand you to sign over copyright to them. I'm happy to see pirhanas like this be forced out. Its partly because of their shenanigans that Youtube is requiring partners to have at least a thousand subscribers before monetization kicks in now. I have 150ish and its not like that $2 a month was make or break, but there are other up and newcomers that probably liked getting that $20-$40 a month or whatever the amount is and it encouraged them to keep making interesting content. I'm kind of hopeful that policies like this will help with this problem in the long run.

wagecuck 8y ago

Nasim did nothing wrong.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Live by the hoard. Die by the hoard. Seems to me the bed being used is a bed that all have agreed to get into.

ta2987 8y ago
Hoard?
tempodox 8y ago
You might benefit from using a dictionary.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Yes. Sorry.

sschueller 8y ago

If you don't agree with these policy shift I urge you to support projects such as PeerTube[1] any way you can (code, running a node etc.). [1] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

romanovcode 8y ago
Content creators do not give a shit about privacy. Since PeerTube is not-for-profit nobody will move there. All they care about the fact that the revenue source was pulled off of them.
- pickpuck 8y ago
  Maybe the most open platform will win if the future is Patreon, Twitch, Brave Browser...
  - romanovcode 8y ago
    Twitch is bought by Amazon long time ago. Brave is closed-source browser so you have no idea what is happening there. Patreon is amazing tho.
    - sschueller 8y ago
      Brave is open source [1] to my knowledge. [1] https://github.com/brave https://github.com/brave
dbbk 8y ago
Why? There would be no way to make money on PeerTube (and very hard to even get an audience).
- onion2k 8y ago
  and very hard to even get an audience The question here is whether it's harder to get an audience by being discovered among the millions of other videos on YouTube, or by being discovered among the millions of websites on the internet. If you're competent at marketing it shouldn't really make a difference either way.

return1 8y ago

it feels like youtube could avoid a lot of controversy by adding a button to tip/pay creators directly on the site. But the broader issue is that Google, an advertising company, will probably not do it. That's why youtube should break out of google.

Crash0v3rid3 8y ago
How can YouTube possibly break away from Google? Hosting costs for YouTube are astronomical, they would’ve never survived without Google absorbing their costs.
remram 8y ago
Isn't that where they are doing with the "paid subscriptions"? Twitch has that already with the "subscribe" and "bits" buttons.

Retroity 8y ago

I'm just sitting here wondering how far YouTube will go to make the site "Ad Friendly" with all these changes lately. At this rate it wouldn't surprise me if the YouTube Partner Program went back to it's original form, where it was invite only for a select few creators. But this also highlights the need for creators to diversify their revenue. Don't just rely on YouTube. Offer T-Shirts. Take sponsorships. Open a Patreon. Start streaming on Twitch. Try to get to that point where the majority of your revenue comes from sources outside YouTube.

chaoticmass 8y ago

I watch a lot of YouTube, probably more than what is healthy, and I happily pay for YouTube Red (ad free youtube). I have no idea how my subscription supports the channels I actually watch. It would be nice if my subscription payment actually was divided among the channels I actually watch. This way I'd automatically be supporting the channels I enjoy simply by watching them, regardless of how ad-friendly they are.