3 ms·

Because the rest of us aren’t given the option to pay for it. “But it’s free” is a ridiculous argument when there’s no paid alternative.

RestlessMind 6y ago
This is simply not true in my experience. Most prominent example is Youtube, where there is an option for an ad-free experience which is decently priced. And yet, the adoption is very low and you still see people complaining about ads on Youtube all the time. I guess a vast majority of people simply don't want to pay if there is a somewhat acceptable free alternative.
- beagle3 6y ago
  I'm paying for many "freely available" services, like RSS readers, email service, and more. I pay to not be the product. The reason I do not pay for YouTube is that despite paying, I'm still the product - Google is still collecting every bit of data about me, to spam me on their other channels. Instead, I use YouTube (and every other Google product) logged-out, deleting cookies often[0]. I can't do that if I pay for YouTube. [0] I used to reject cookies, but Google has become unusable that way -- everything goes back to defaults which are exceptionally bad for me.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  > Most prominent example is Youtube, where there is an option for an ad-free experience which is decently priced. And yet, the adoption is very low and you still see people complaining about ads on Youtube all the time. For me, this is similar to why I won't pay for the New York Times subscription, either. I mainly only do stuff on both sites when I find a link to their site. I don't go to their site to do stuff on my own. Why would I subscribe to a site that I don't go to on my own? I do subscribe to ArsTechnica, for example, because I go there frequently. Furthermore, I might not mind ads, but the ads on YouTube are very obnoxious. There's no intelligence, so you get weird situations like watching a 2 minute ad before being able to watch a 30 second video. Or ads cutting off the speaker mid word. Who thinks that's a good experience? If they can't get that stuff right, why would I pay them? And on top of that, I find YouTube's "Hey did you know you can pay us money now?!?!?!" pop-ups all over the page to be obnoxious enough that I have decided I will never pay them any money. Were I a regular visitor who wasn't so off-put by their ham-fisted advertising, I might have considered it, but now they've made going to their site so unpleasant I just avoid it if I can, or hold my nose for a few minutes when watching something with ads. Then I get away from their site as quickly as possible.
- dime 6y ago
  I'd love to pay for Youtube if they eliminated tracking/profiling. Not having ads is not enough of an incentive here.

RestlessMind 6y ago

This is simply not true in my experience. Most prominent example is Youtube, where there is an option for an ad-free experience which is decently priced. And yet, the adoption is very low and you still see people complaining about ads on Youtube all the time. I guess a vast majority of people simply don't want to pay if there is a somewhat acceptable free alternative.

beagle3 6y ago
I'm paying for many "freely available" services, like RSS readers, email service, and more. I pay to not be the product. The reason I do not pay for YouTube is that despite paying, I'm still the product - Google is still collecting every bit of data about me, to spam me on their other channels. Instead, I use YouTube (and every other Google product) logged-out, deleting cookies often[0]. I can't do that if I pay for YouTube. [0] I used to reject cookies, but Google has become unusable that way -- everything goes back to defaults which are exceptionally bad for me.
thewebcount 6y ago
> Most prominent example is Youtube, where there is an option for an ad-free experience which is decently priced. And yet, the adoption is very low and you still see people complaining about ads on Youtube all the time. For me, this is similar to why I won't pay for the New York Times subscription, either. I mainly only do stuff on both sites when I find a link to their site. I don't go to their site to do stuff on my own. Why would I subscribe to a site that I don't go to on my own? I do subscribe to ArsTechnica, for example, because I go there frequently. Furthermore, I might not mind ads, but the ads on YouTube are very obnoxious. There's no intelligence, so you get weird situations like watching a 2 minute ad before being able to watch a 30 second video. Or ads cutting off the speaker mid word. Who thinks that's a good experience? If they can't get that stuff right, why would I pay them? And on top of that, I find YouTube's "Hey did you know you can pay us money now?!?!?!" pop-ups all over the page to be obnoxious enough that I have decided I will never pay them any money. Were I a regular visitor who wasn't so off-put by their ham-fisted advertising, I might have considered it, but now they've made going to their site so unpleasant I just avoid it if I can, or hold my nose for a few minutes when watching something with ads. Then I get away from their site as quickly as possible.
dime 6y ago
I'd love to pay for Youtube if they eliminated tracking/profiling. Not having ads is not enough of an incentive here.