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I have YouTube Premium, so this doesn't affect me as a YouTube viewer. However, this is the sort of foundational service change that you simply don't do ten yea

I have YouTube Premium, so this doesn't affect me as a YouTube viewer. However, this is the sort of foundational service change that you simply don't do ten years into a lucrative partner program without a good reason. "It's 2020 and our investors are hungry for growth" is not a good enough reason, IMO. Any good business needs to keep it's goals aligned with it's customers or it will stop being a good business and people will want to leave. "Changing the deal" in a very big way like this makes your customers - the people giving you video content with no up-front expectation of payment - very, very mad. I have a feeling you're going to start to see certain creators deliberately put advertiser unfriendly content in their videos just to get out of monetization now. Certain videos are already deliberately not monetized because they either are viewer-funded channels (which YouTube very much missed the boat on) or are promotional videos. YouTube should grandfather those channels and videos in as monetization-exempt, because that was "the deal" that people signed on to. Hell, if that's already financially untenable, you should at least still allow YouTube Partners - i.e. the people whose financial incentives are most aligned with monetization anyway - deliberately demonetize their own videos. Because, again, they are your customers and that was the deal they signed on to.

jonathankoren 6y ago
> However, this is the sort of foundational service change that you simply don't do ten years into a lucrative partner program without a good reason. YouTube is a monopoly. This is exactly the type of things monopolies do. Yes, there are other places to upload videos to watch on demand, but they’re much smaller, less well known, and just more niche. > "Changing the deal" in a very big way like this makes your customers - the people giving you video content with no up-front expectation of payment - very, very mad. As the saying goes, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” The creator is not a customer. The viewer is not a customer. The advertiser is the customer. Yes, you can poison the well and lose users, and thus alienate your customers, but again, YouTube is a monopoly. There aren’t any obviously viable alternatives for long form videos.
- tombert 6y ago
  > There aren’t any obviously viable alternatives for long form videos. There are plenty of alternatives in some sense; stuff like Bitchute exists and allows you to post whatever you want and it works well enough, but the reason I don't go on there is that it seems like a lot of the content is basically just neo-Nazi crap, which of course I don't really want to watch. And I suppose that's kind of the issues; YouTube has become so normalized that it's sort of impossible for alternative video sites to reach a similar scale, and the ones that do pop up inherently start appealing mostly to the fringe groups that aren't safe for YouTube.
  - jonathankoren 6y ago
    I think you’re analysis is basically correct. The only creators attracted to YouTube alternatives are those that have been forced off YouTube. You see the same thing with 8chan, Gab, and now Parler. Now niche doesn’t necessarily mean “cesspool of hate”, but that is a niche. For a while Vimeo seemed to be the place where I found embeds of art videos, so I attributed that niche to it, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a Vimeo embed. YouTube has sucked all the air out of the room. To underline this point, I hadn’t even heard of Bitchute until now.
    - chii 6y ago
      Vimeo has sold itself as a video host, rather than a platform for attracting viewers. There are plenty of vimeo videos that are private and password protected.
gundmc 6y ago
> Hell, if that's already financially untenable, you should at least still allow YouTube Partners - i.e. the people whose financial incentives are most aligned with monetization anyway - deliberately demonetize their own videos. Because, again, they are your customers and that was the deal they signed on to. My understanding is this is exactly what they're doing. Another poster in these comments reached out to YouTube support who confirmed ads will not be placed on partnered videos who have declined to show ads. The policy is effective for non-partnered videos. Admittedly this is second hand information.

jonathankoren 6y ago

> However, this is the sort of foundational service change that you simply don't do ten years into a lucrative partner program without a good reason. YouTube is a monopoly. This is exactly the type of things monopolies do. Yes, there are other places to upload videos to watch on demand, but they’re much smaller, less well known, and just more niche. > "Changing the deal" in a very big way like this makes your customers - the people giving you video content with no up-front expectation of payment - very, very mad. As the saying goes, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” The creator is not a customer. The viewer is not a customer. The advertiser is the customer. Yes, you can poison the well and lose users, and thus alienate your customers, but again, YouTube is a monopoly. There aren’t any obviously viable alternatives for long form videos.

tombert 6y ago
> There aren’t any obviously viable alternatives for long form videos. There are plenty of alternatives in some sense; stuff like Bitchute exists and allows you to post whatever you want and it works well enough, but the reason I don't go on there is that it seems like a lot of the content is basically just neo-Nazi crap, which of course I don't really want to watch. And I suppose that's kind of the issues; YouTube has become so normalized that it's sort of impossible for alternative video sites to reach a similar scale, and the ones that do pop up inherently start appealing mostly to the fringe groups that aren't safe for YouTube.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  I think you’re analysis is basically correct. The only creators attracted to YouTube alternatives are those that have been forced off YouTube. You see the same thing with 8chan, Gab, and now Parler. Now niche doesn’t necessarily mean “cesspool of hate”, but that is a niche. For a while Vimeo seemed to be the place where I found embeds of art videos, so I attributed that niche to it, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a Vimeo embed. YouTube has sucked all the air out of the room. To underline this point, I hadn’t even heard of Bitchute until now.
  - chii 6y ago
    Vimeo has sold itself as a video host, rather than a platform for attracting viewers. There are plenty of vimeo videos that are private and password protected.

gundmc 6y ago

> Hell, if that's already financially untenable, you should at least still allow YouTube Partners - i.e. the people whose financial incentives are most aligned with monetization anyway - deliberately demonetize their own videos. Because, again, they are your customers and that was the deal they signed on to. My understanding is this is exactly what they're doing. Another poster in these comments reached out to YouTube support who confirmed ads will not be placed on partnered videos who have declined to show ads. The policy is effective for non-partnered videos. Admittedly this is second hand information.