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It’s not just you, but you are a tiny minority. You’ve expressed a sentiment that’s very popular on HN, but not among the general population. Take YouTube - a p

It’s not just you, but you are a tiny minority. You’ve expressed a sentiment that’s very popular on HN, but not among the general population. Take YouTube - a popular ad supported service with a premium tier. How many people are willing to pay to remove ads? Less than 1%. Even on HN I don’t think that number would be more than 10%.

serf 5y ago
>Take YouTube - a popular ad supported service with a premium tier. How many people are willing to pay to remove ads? Less than 1%. I think that's an inaccurate assessment of 'people who don't want to see ads', given that statistics put internet wide usage of ad-blockers at around 42%.[0]. Maybe it's just that no one wants to pay their captors for golden ear-muffs and blinders when they themselves are the ones responsible for the poor user experience. [0]: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > Maybe it's just that no one wants to pay their captors for golden ear-muffs and blinders when they themselves are the ones responsible for the poor user experience. I vehemently refuse to pay for YouTube Premium for that exact reason. I get ads that amount to something like "You know how we just stuff ads down your eyeballs constantly? You know how it's really annoying? For just X.99 a month, we'll no longer do that!" These enrage me to the core. Now that I have NewPipe and other methods of watching YouTube without ads and artificially freezing the stream when I switch away from the app, the official app is useless.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I don't understand this. Would it be better if YouTube "Free" didn't even exist? No one's forcing anyone to use youtube. How is this different from any subscription service that has a hobbled "lite" version?
    - freeone3000 5y ago
      YouTube doesn't provide the content, the people I watch do. I send them money. A youtube subscription to them, of which youtube takes a cut, doesn't disable ads -- only a second service, paid to youtube itself, does. Apparently $15/mo gets rid of ads, but $5.99 a month (less 20%, thanks youtube) actually creates the content I care about watching. Youtube has inserted themselves in the middle, and are extracting rent from both sides.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        Precisely. I want to compensate content creators for their content, and YouTube for their bandwidth, discovery and video storage with some markup on top. YouTube wants too much for what they do.
      - floatboth 5y ago
        > youtube subscription to them, of which youtube takes a cut, doesn't disable ads This is a really stupid oversight.. Twitch did subscriptions first and there they do disable ads on the channel you subscribe to (if it has them).
        freeone3000 5y ago
        This isn't an oversight. YouTube allowed this from 2018-2020, but no longer allows creators to disable ads on their channel.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > No one's forcing anyone to use youtube. No one's forcing YouTube to send me the videos either. If it gives me ads, they will be deleted before they even make it to my screen. If they don't like that, they are free to return 402 Payment Required instead of giving me stuff for free.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      It's the sheer aggression in their advertising that they introduced recently. There are memes that you have 2 ads every video, and that is closer to reality than parody these days. My touchstone for excessive advertising is a Polish TV station called Polsat, which often had very good programming but also lots and lots of ads. We often joked that Polsat programming was "all ads, sometimes broken up by a few minutes of actual TV". It wasn't quite that bad, but it was true that you would get just under ~10 minutes of adverts per every 15-25 minutes of programming. YouTube exceeds that ratio, these days. And when that happens, I'm almost positive it's time to start packing your toys and looking for a different source of entertainment.
- thathndude 5y ago
  Plenty of people will pay nothing to block ads (I.e. use a free ad blocker). But when it's time to pay, different story!
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> I think that's an inaccurate assessment of 'people who don't want to see ads' They made a statement about people who are willing to PAY not to see ads. People don't want to pay for anything. Give me free content! And then when they don't like the ads - give me a free ad-blocker! For me, I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for most things as long as I'm convinced I'll like it. But that's a problem with most content - uncertainty.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  Probably a very large overlap between people who would pay and people using adblockers
wincy 5y ago
I’m getting close to paying, YouTube has figured out some clever way to keep AdGuard on iOS from properly blocking ads and it’s super annoying. But I mean when it’s trivial for a technical user to download a few adblockers why pay, right?
- tomjen3 5y ago
  That is one of the reasons I love using a real computer. I can install firefox with ublock origin and sponsorblock. Bomm. No more ads, no more tracking and no more in-video ads. I would only get the first by paying, and I have found videos without ads so more more relaxing.
  - wincy 5y ago
    You also get the “bonus” of full quality videos on mobile. The safari version of YouTube is limited to 720p and music videos 360p.
    - floatboth 5y ago
      Well, the web version in Firefox on Android works with 2160p. Apple is still not supporting any free codecs on the web. Apparently they actually do have a hardware VP9 decoder in the newest chips but it's only exposed to the YouTube app?? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decoding.2269938/page-2 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decodi...
hobs 5y ago
I paid, then they killed google music for no damn reason, so I stopped paying.
perryizgr8 5y ago
> How many people are willing to pay to remove ads? For me, I'd rather not watch Youtube at all if I have to pay to use it. I have found that it is an incredible time-waster and really adds very little value to my life. If I had the self control I would stop using it on my own.
Folcon 5y ago
My biggest bugbear with youtube premium is that there's very little way to control your youtube recommendations other than being in incognito / a new browser session. I constantly find that youtube's algorithm just recommends me less interesting stuff over time. If I could have some decent controls on it, paying for an ad free experience would be worthwhile.
thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago
You're oversimplifying, because the question isn't about paying to remove ads vs not paying and seeing ads, but about paying and getting the product or not paying and not getting the product. People's behavior depends on the circumstances they are given, and if "free (with ads)" is one choice, then indeed a lot of people will choose it over paying. However, if option is not given, it doesn't mean everyone who would've picked free are not going to pay at all. There are some highly popular freemium/ad supported games but also lots of very popular games that you simply must pay for. Applying the 1% number from products where the choice is ad-free-or-paid to must-pay-for games and assuming they'd get 99x more users if given for free with ads is just completely wrong. In general, people seem quite willing to pay for games (this may be less true in mobile, that's a rather different market). The challenge isn't that people don't want to pay, it's that the market is extremely saturated and it's hard to stand out from the crowd & produce a game that everyone wants to play over all the other choices.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> It’s not just you, but you are a tiny minority. No, everyone agrees that ads are annoying. I install uBlock Origin on every single browser I come across. Every single time, people take notice almost immediately. They always tell me the internet just feels so much nicer. Many times they can't explain why, they just know. Ads are a blight on the modern web. Everyone prefers the low-noise version.
- nickik 5y ago
  They can't explain that they are not seening popups every 5s is better?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Not in my experience. People usually just ignore annoying stuff. They don't even read anything, it barely registers on their minds. I've seen people browsing a website get extremely confused when some newsletter bullshit pops up in front of the content. They immediately start searching for a close button to get rid of it. They assume annoyances like that are an inevitable part of life on the internet. With uBlock Origin we can show them a better world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

serf 5y ago

>Take YouTube - a popular ad supported service with a premium tier. How many people are willing to pay to remove ads? Less than 1%. I think that's an inaccurate assessment of 'people who don't want to see ads', given that statistics put internet wide usage of ad-blockers at around 42%.[0]. Maybe it's just that no one wants to pay their captors for golden ear-muffs and blinders when they themselves are the ones responsible for the poor user experience. [0]: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users

selfhoster11 5y ago
> Maybe it's just that no one wants to pay their captors for golden ear-muffs and blinders when they themselves are the ones responsible for the poor user experience. I vehemently refuse to pay for YouTube Premium for that exact reason. I get ads that amount to something like "You know how we just stuff ads down your eyeballs constantly? You know how it's really annoying? For just X.99 a month, we'll no longer do that!" These enrage me to the core. Now that I have NewPipe and other methods of watching YouTube without ads and artificially freezing the stream when I switch away from the app, the official app is useless.
- recursive 5y ago
  I don't understand this. Would it be better if YouTube "Free" didn't even exist? No one's forcing anyone to use youtube. How is this different from any subscription service that has a hobbled "lite" version?
  - freeone3000 5y ago
    YouTube doesn't provide the content, the people I watch do. I send them money. A youtube subscription to them, of which youtube takes a cut, doesn't disable ads -- only a second service, paid to youtube itself, does. Apparently $15/mo gets rid of ads, but $5.99 a month (less 20%, thanks youtube) actually creates the content I care about watching. Youtube has inserted themselves in the middle, and are extracting rent from both sides.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Precisely. I want to compensate content creators for their content, and YouTube for their bandwidth, discovery and video storage with some markup on top. YouTube wants too much for what they do.
    - floatboth 5y ago
      > youtube subscription to them, of which youtube takes a cut, doesn't disable ads This is a really stupid oversight.. Twitch did subscriptions first and there they do disable ads on the channel you subscribe to (if it has them).
      - freeone3000 5y ago
        This isn't an oversight. YouTube allowed this from 2018-2020, but no longer allows creators to disable ads on their channel.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > No one's forcing anyone to use youtube. No one's forcing YouTube to send me the videos either. If it gives me ads, they will be deleted before they even make it to my screen. If they don't like that, they are free to return 402 Payment Required instead of giving me stuff for free.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    It's the sheer aggression in their advertising that they introduced recently. There are memes that you have 2 ads every video, and that is closer to reality than parody these days. My touchstone for excessive advertising is a Polish TV station called Polsat, which often had very good programming but also lots and lots of ads. We often joked that Polsat programming was "all ads, sometimes broken up by a few minutes of actual TV". It wasn't quite that bad, but it was true that you would get just under ~10 minutes of adverts per every 15-25 minutes of programming. YouTube exceeds that ratio, these days. And when that happens, I'm almost positive it's time to start packing your toys and looking for a different source of entertainment.
thathndude 5y ago
Plenty of people will pay nothing to block ads (I.e. use a free ad blocker). But when it's time to pay, different story!
phkahler 5y ago
>> I think that's an inaccurate assessment of 'people who don't want to see ads' They made a statement about people who are willing to PAY not to see ads. People don't want to pay for anything. Give me free content! And then when they don't like the ads - give me a free ad-blocker! For me, I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for most things as long as I'm convinced I'll like it. But that's a problem with most content - uncertainty.
thatguy0900 5y ago
Probably a very large overlap between people who would pay and people using adblockers

wincy 5y ago

I’m getting close to paying, YouTube has figured out some clever way to keep AdGuard on iOS from properly blocking ads and it’s super annoying. But I mean when it’s trivial for a technical user to download a few adblockers why pay, right?

tomjen3 5y ago
That is one of the reasons I love using a real computer. I can install firefox with ublock origin and sponsorblock. Bomm. No more ads, no more tracking and no more in-video ads. I would only get the first by paying, and I have found videos without ads so more more relaxing.
- wincy 5y ago
  You also get the “bonus” of full quality videos on mobile. The safari version of YouTube is limited to 720p and music videos 360p.
  - floatboth 5y ago
    Well, the web version in Firefox on Android works with 2160p. Apple is still not supporting any free codecs on the web. Apparently they actually do have a hardware VP9 decoder in the newest chips but it's only exposed to the YouTube app?? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decoding.2269938/page-2 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decodi...

hobs 5y ago

I paid, then they killed google music for no damn reason, so I stopped paying.

perryizgr8 5y ago

> How many people are willing to pay to remove ads? For me, I'd rather not watch Youtube at all if I have to pay to use it. I have found that it is an incredible time-waster and really adds very little value to my life. If I had the self control I would stop using it on my own.

Folcon 5y ago

My biggest bugbear with youtube premium is that there's very little way to control your youtube recommendations other than being in incognito / a new browser session. I constantly find that youtube's algorithm just recommends me less interesting stuff over time. If I could have some decent controls on it, paying for an ad free experience would be worthwhile.

thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago

You're oversimplifying, because the question isn't about paying to remove ads vs not paying and seeing ads, but about paying and getting the product or not paying and not getting the product. People's behavior depends on the circumstances they are given, and if "free (with ads)" is one choice, then indeed a lot of people will choose it over paying. However, if option is not given, it doesn't mean everyone who would've picked free are not going to pay at all. There are some highly popular freemium/ad supported games but also lots of very popular games that you simply must pay for. Applying the 1% number from products where the choice is ad-free-or-paid to must-pay-for games and assuming they'd get 99x more users if given for free with ads is just completely wrong. In general, people seem quite willing to pay for games (this may be less true in mobile, that's a rather different market). The challenge isn't that people don't want to pay, it's that the market is extremely saturated and it's hard to stand out from the crowd & produce a game that everyone wants to play over all the other choices.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> It’s not just you, but you are a tiny minority. No, everyone agrees that ads are annoying. I install uBlock Origin on every single browser I come across. Every single time, people take notice almost immediately. They always tell me the internet just feels so much nicer. Many times they can't explain why, they just know. Ads are a blight on the modern web. Everyone prefers the low-noise version.

nickik 5y ago
They can't explain that they are not seening popups every 5s is better?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Not in my experience. People usually just ignore annoying stuff. They don't even read anything, it barely registers on their minds. I've seen people browsing a website get extremely confused when some newsletter bullshit pops up in front of the content. They immediately start searching for a close button to get rid of it. They assume annoyances like that are an inevitable part of life on the internet. With uBlock Origin we can show them a better world.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]