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You can pay for ad free YouTube by paying for YouTube Premium. No annoying micropayments. All the content with none of the ads. It does not satisfy your anonym

You can pay for ad free YouTube by paying for YouTube Premium. No annoying micropayments. All the content with none of the ads. It does not satisfy your anonymous requirement but very little does. Most content creators appreciate (directly or indirectly) the features a non anonymous platform provides.

lrvick 4y ago
YouTube premium requires I have a Google account, and consent to Google ToS which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder. Youtube Premium is not acceptable. I can use cash to buy a book or a movie at a store and not have to reveal anything about myself in the process. No targeting, no having my personal data and behavior collected in centralized systems and sold forever. The only acceptable model I have seen is what LBRY does, where I can have an anonymous account and top up a wallet of tokens which are used to support creators with microtransactions. No tracking, no ads, but creators get paid.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder. You can use Ad Block while using YT Premium.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    no adblock blocks in-content ads, and if we are talking technicalities and theory anyway, surely it violates the tos. I'm not sure what this suggestion even meant to accomplish now that I think about it.
    - joecool1029 4y ago
      >no adblock blocks in-content ads Ever heard of SponsorBlock?
  - lrvick 4y ago
    But you cannot opt out of Google having a list of every video you watch and when/where you watch from tied to your credit card details and browser. Google will use this data to sort feeds and recommendations in a way that helps meet the behavior modification goals of their partners. When creators upload to platforms that let me anonymously pay them with money, I will happily do so. LBRY has proven this can be done.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      How do you think creators gain a following in a world without a recommendation system? I can assure you only maybe a dozen of the (english) creators in the top 1000 are actually popular from word-of-mouth, with the rest entirely dependent on the recommendation system for their entire channel. I think you misunderstand what YouTube is. YouTube's primary product IS its recommendation system. Other platforms will happily host video files for you for a marginal cost, but nobody goes to them because they won't see videos that appeal to them specifically when they visit the site's homepage.
      - lrvick 4y ago
        I would counter that by asking how someone who is not blessed by the almighty advertizer-friendly algorithm can ever be seen. I suggest that the internet is healthiest when anyone has a real chance of gaining a following because they organically went viral or were upvoted by users like frequently happens on mastodon or even hackernews... even if the content is not advertiser friendly. I understand what YouTube is quite well. The product is providing the most addictive advertiser friendly content possible that ignores all mental health studies. The product is cigarettes and like cigarettes, their use will only be reduced when enough people are educated on the harms and reject the second hand smoke in our public places. Humans are capable of simply searching for things and subscribing to things like RSS. RSS was peak internet and ActivityPub is the next generation of this. We can go back to that, while maybe adding unbiased, open source, and provably fair user voted topical discovery engines. https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ is getting close with an open source system with community voted content discovery and creator support via microtransaction tips. You do not need to be advertiser friendly to succeed there, and we all get the same view of the world.
- jsnell 4y ago
  You can opt out of ad personalization: https://myadcenter.google.com/ https://myadcenter.google.com/ But I get it, why pay for the content or the service when you can just take it for free?
  - lrvick 4y ago
    If I could pay creators directly and anonymously with only money and not my data and viewing habits and agreeing to let random third parties try to manipulate me, I would. For now the only creators I can support with privacy are on LBRY.
    - jsnell 4y ago
      "If the grocery store allowed me to pay via gold bullion, I would pay rather than shoplift." I'm sympathetic to "I would pay for this if I could" argumentation when it comes to digital goods. But at some point the conditions you're setting become so unreasonable that nobody can reasonably fulfill them, and it becomes clear you're only doing it to get free stuff and stiff the creators. You don't want to see ads? YT already gives you that option. You don't want YT data to be used for ad targeting? YT already gives you that option. But you additionally want to pay in gold bullion and only to the farmer rather than the grocery store that actually provided you the service. It's not very reasonable, is it?
      - lrvick 4y ago
        You talk as though a refusal to compromise privacy is unreasonable. We all need privacy to protect ourselves and each other. What happens when your searches for a medical condition are sold to your insurance company? Or when your political searches are used to inform new gerrymandering lines? Or when an anti-choice state gives Google a warrant demanding the identity of everyone who has made searches for abortion information? What about someone in China or Russia searching for content that casts their government in a negative light? Laws change and politicians change. History has taught us over and over that centralized personal data will always eventually end up in the hands of those who will weaponize it. Those of us with influence in technology must demand privacy. Privacy is not negotiable. Content hosts will either offer privacy or continue to see tool after tool emerge to make it easy for people to circumvent their surveillance capitalism models. LBRY/Odysee has already proven it is totally possible to support video creators online without with anonymous microtransactions. I have hope more creators sick of ads and censorship will mirror their content to privacy preserving systems that allow direct monetization.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Incorrect. I have premium and I still get all kinds of ads, in the content itself, and of course premium means a login which means not anonymous and absolutely "personalized" content.
- schmichael 4y ago
  If the content itself includes paid promotion then (a) it’s not individualized, and (b) the platform you view it on (YouTube, FreeTube, Blu-ray, or VHS) doesn’t matter… …so I don’t think paid promotions from the content creators themselves are relevant to the discussion? Your only option is manually skipping the promotional content which is usually really trivial to do. I have YouTube Premium and don’t see any ads by Google/YouTube. I’m not a heavy YouTube viewer though so it’s possible I’m missing something. Edit: just discovered sponsorblock and wooow am I impressed at the lengths some folks will go to skip ads. TIL
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Sponsorblock is great, it really makes some videos watchable. Though in general if there is a lot of sponsorship in videos it usually means the content itself is also really mediocre and spammy so I don't tend to watch those anyway. The people who really have a lot of technical knowledge don't monetise it very much because they don't have to. Being an expert in their field already nets them more than enough money. I watch very little youtube anyway, as I dislike the video format and prefer written content. But when I do need to because what I'm looking for isn't available elsewhere, sponsorblock is a great help.
goodpoint 4y ago
If you pay very little of the money go to the creators, while the centralization and monopoly on content grows. Plus, even more user tracking.

lrvick 4y ago

YouTube premium requires I have a Google account, and consent to Google ToS which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder. Youtube Premium is not acceptable. I can use cash to buy a book or a movie at a store and not have to reveal anything about myself in the process. No targeting, no having my personal data and behavior collected in centralized systems and sold forever. The only acceptable model I have seen is what LBRY does, where I can have an anonymous account and top up a wallet of tokens which are used to support creators with microtransactions. No tracking, no ads, but creators get paid.

judge2020 4y ago
> which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder. You can use Ad Block while using YT Premium.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  no adblock blocks in-content ads, and if we are talking technicalities and theory anyway, surely it violates the tos. I'm not sure what this suggestion even meant to accomplish now that I think about it.
  - joecool1029 4y ago
    >no adblock blocks in-content ads Ever heard of SponsorBlock?
- lrvick 4y ago
  But you cannot opt out of Google having a list of every video you watch and when/where you watch from tied to your credit card details and browser. Google will use this data to sort feeds and recommendations in a way that helps meet the behavior modification goals of their partners. When creators upload to platforms that let me anonymously pay them with money, I will happily do so. LBRY has proven this can be done.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    How do you think creators gain a following in a world without a recommendation system? I can assure you only maybe a dozen of the (english) creators in the top 1000 are actually popular from word-of-mouth, with the rest entirely dependent on the recommendation system for their entire channel. I think you misunderstand what YouTube is. YouTube's primary product IS its recommendation system. Other platforms will happily host video files for you for a marginal cost, but nobody goes to them because they won't see videos that appeal to them specifically when they visit the site's homepage.
    - lrvick 4y ago
      I would counter that by asking how someone who is not blessed by the almighty advertizer-friendly algorithm can ever be seen. I suggest that the internet is healthiest when anyone has a real chance of gaining a following because they organically went viral or were upvoted by users like frequently happens on mastodon or even hackernews... even if the content is not advertiser friendly. I understand what YouTube is quite well. The product is providing the most addictive advertiser friendly content possible that ignores all mental health studies. The product is cigarettes and like cigarettes, their use will only be reduced when enough people are educated on the harms and reject the second hand smoke in our public places. Humans are capable of simply searching for things and subscribing to things like RSS. RSS was peak internet and ActivityPub is the next generation of this. We can go back to that, while maybe adding unbiased, open source, and provably fair user voted topical discovery engines. https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ is getting close with an open source system with community voted content discovery and creator support via microtransaction tips. You do not need to be advertiser friendly to succeed there, and we all get the same view of the world.
jsnell 4y ago
You can opt out of ad personalization: https://myadcenter.google.com/ https://myadcenter.google.com/ But I get it, why pay for the content or the service when you can just take it for free?
- lrvick 4y ago
  If I could pay creators directly and anonymously with only money and not my data and viewing habits and agreeing to let random third parties try to manipulate me, I would. For now the only creators I can support with privacy are on LBRY.
  - jsnell 4y ago
    "If the grocery store allowed me to pay via gold bullion, I would pay rather than shoplift." I'm sympathetic to "I would pay for this if I could" argumentation when it comes to digital goods. But at some point the conditions you're setting become so unreasonable that nobody can reasonably fulfill them, and it becomes clear you're only doing it to get free stuff and stiff the creators. You don't want to see ads? YT already gives you that option. You don't want YT data to be used for ad targeting? YT already gives you that option. But you additionally want to pay in gold bullion and only to the farmer rather than the grocery store that actually provided you the service. It's not very reasonable, is it?
    - lrvick 4y ago
      You talk as though a refusal to compromise privacy is unreasonable. We all need privacy to protect ourselves and each other. What happens when your searches for a medical condition are sold to your insurance company? Or when your political searches are used to inform new gerrymandering lines? Or when an anti-choice state gives Google a warrant demanding the identity of everyone who has made searches for abortion information? What about someone in China or Russia searching for content that casts their government in a negative light? Laws change and politicians change. History has taught us over and over that centralized personal data will always eventually end up in the hands of those who will weaponize it. Those of us with influence in technology must demand privacy. Privacy is not negotiable. Content hosts will either offer privacy or continue to see tool after tool emerge to make it easy for people to circumvent their surveillance capitalism models. LBRY/Odysee has already proven it is totally possible to support video creators online without with anonymous microtransactions. I have hope more creators sick of ads and censorship will mirror their content to privacy preserving systems that allow direct monetization.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

Incorrect. I have premium and I still get all kinds of ads, in the content itself, and of course premium means a login which means not anonymous and absolutely "personalized" content.

schmichael 4y ago
If the content itself includes paid promotion then (a) it’s not individualized, and (b) the platform you view it on (YouTube, FreeTube, Blu-ray, or VHS) doesn’t matter… …so I don’t think paid promotions from the content creators themselves are relevant to the discussion? Your only option is manually skipping the promotional content which is usually really trivial to do. I have YouTube Premium and don’t see any ads by Google/YouTube. I’m not a heavy YouTube viewer though so it’s possible I’m missing something. Edit: just discovered sponsorblock and wooow am I impressed at the lengths some folks will go to skip ads. TIL
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Sponsorblock is great, it really makes some videos watchable. Though in general if there is a lot of sponsorship in videos it usually means the content itself is also really mediocre and spammy so I don't tend to watch those anyway. The people who really have a lot of technical knowledge don't monetise it very much because they don't have to. Being an expert in their field already nets them more than enough money. I watch very little youtube anyway, as I dislike the video format and prefer written content. But when I do need to because what I'm looking for isn't available elsewhere, sponsorblock is a great help.

goodpoint 4y ago

If you pay very little of the money go to the creators, while the centralization and monopoly on content grows. Plus, even more user tracking.