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Not a lot of people will like to hear this, but you can pay YouTube a few dollars per month to remove ads and allow the player to run in the background. A lot o

Not a lot of people will like to hear this, but you can pay YouTube a few dollars per month to remove ads and allow the player to run in the background. A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes. Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads?

shiroiuma 3y ago
>Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Exactly what time are you referring to? It took me precisely zero time to remove ads on YouTube: I already have uBlock Origin installed, because ads on all the other websites are so unbearable, so I don't have to do anything at all to block ads on YouTube: it's already done for me. By contrast, subscribing to YouTube Premium would require a fair bit of my time, in going to the website, figuring out where to click, going through the payment process page, digging out a credit card, etc. etc. Then I have to worry about managing yet another subscription, which will take time every month. Is it really worth investing your time to subscribe to YTP when you can just block the ads by default by having a proper ad-blocker installed on your browser in the first place, which is a prerequisite for safe browsing in the modern age?
slyn 3y ago
Yes
globular-toast 3y ago
And if all the "tech people" pay a fixed charge for YouTube regardless of how much they actually use it, they'll remove ads entirely, right? Get real. Fuck ads. Nobody should ever have to deal with them.
- bwb 3y ago
  Ads pay for everything online? How else do you pay for everything unless you pay them directly??
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    A common model is to have a free tier subsidized by the premium users. The free users still provide value to the company, because they're all prospective premium users.
    - bwb 3y ago
      Might not work here, we are not on the inside so can't see.
      - Retr0id 3y ago
        If youtube can't make it work, I hope they go bust so that something better can take their place.
        bwb 3y ago
        What they are doing is working great... not sure why you would say that. They are the most popular platform, fantastic services and adding more, and easy to pay to remove ads for a reasonable amount of money. Their model is working great from a business and service perspective. What else do you want? You want it to be free for you where you don't have to pay anything to use it? Seems like you don't have a realistic view of what it costs to run / build / maintain this.
        Retr0id 3y ago
        I've served terabytes worth of video content from my home internet connection, for free.
        bwb 3y ago
        Congrats?
        Retr0id 3y ago
- IshKebab 3y ago
  If you have a better way to fund sites like YouTube that doesn't involve either adverts or paying a fixed subscription I'd love to hear it!
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    Pay by use, for either the people watching or the ones hosting video content
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      I believe Vimeo does the latter if you want. Guess how many people use that...
      - tcfhgj 3y ago
        Its better than ads though
- caesil 3y ago
  The only options here are 1. deal with ads, 2. pay to support the service without ads, 3. use adblocking and be a free rider off people doing #1, or 4. expect web services to be given to you as an act of charity You and I are both doing #3, but let's not pretend it's some act of noble civil disobedience. It is good for us that others are subjected to ads, as it allows us to get useful services for free without having to be.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    I do block ads as an act of civil disobedience. I also pay for services, when I consider it to be appropriate. The problems with the ad industry run much deeper than ads merely being annoying to look at. It is bad that anyone is ever subjected to ads. We're talking about this right now on a web service given to us as an act of charity (modulo the occasional sponsored job listing), and I'd like more of the web to be like that. Refusing to participate in the ad revenue model makes sites like this more likely to arise.
    - hiq 3y ago
      > We're talking about this right now on a web service given to us as an act of charity (modulo the occasional sponsored job listing) I think your modulo is missing some aspects. How many VCs are as famous as YC among tech workers? How many of them have as much credibility in the tech scene as YC? How much of that comes from this site? I don't know how much it costs to run it, but I assume it's peanuts compared with what YC gets out of it. I wouldn't confuse altruistic charity (e.g. donating anonymously to a cause you don't personally benefit from) with what boils down to sponsorship and getting the goodwill that comes with it.
  - ozim 3y ago
    First of all YT and other companies hooked people on free stuff and after years are doing bait and switch - it is totally on them - not on the people wanting free stuff. They should not offer free stuff in the first place to be fair. Which is also now they are abusing their market position built by cutting all other companies that could do the same but simply could not get past dumping price of free by VC fueled "startups". Which I believe some government org should look into. Second of all they benefit by externalizing all negative effects of their platforms where they don't handle moderation of offensive comments towards creators which causes lots of psychological damage. There is whole load of evidence they even set it up in ways to specifically get people dependent on dopamine from watching just one more video. Lastly - cable TV in US was paid with no ads and when they found out they can earn more money they still put in ads. For me it is noble act of civil disobedience.
serf 3y ago
yes. ads represent (to me) psychological coercion, exploitative capitalism, fear-mongering, and generally the worst cultural and psychological trends packed into dense snippets of trash. very few of the things I actually use and adore were ever advertised to me in any way other than by trusted word-of-mouth, and the results of that are staggeringly better-fit than anything i've ever encountered on the web. and that isn't even talking over the ads shown for wars and efforts I don't support, ads that are vehicles for malware, or ads that are vehicles for either propaganda from a state agency or somewhat radical organizations. Most videos on YT are simply not worth my trading of values for the exposure to the trash. The transition from "creator place" to "media moat" isn't something I appreciate nor am I willing to participate in. simply put : Ad-blockers simply enable me to stay in a better place mentally. The moment they started getting iffy on YT I tried to disable them and got a bunch of war-gore imagery thrown in my face from some NGO relief group begging for money in the midst of a hobby machinery video, these types of ads and abusive imagery are simply inappropriate, and I won't let the media be held hostage against me for the sake of collecting a toll or else being exposed to it : I just won't participate on that side of the net.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Uhm right. So you agree that paying to remove ads is the sensible option?
  - scotty79 3y ago
    Then coercion succeeds. The point of coercive ads is to make you spend money. Either on advertised products ... but if they can force you to pay for just not seeing the ads it's even better. It's cutting out the "middle men" of real world economy from this extortion scheme.
- bagels 3y ago
  This response does not really address the question in the comments it is attached to.
the_omegist 3y ago
You're right in the absolute, but the issue here is that YT has a monopoly. So if it gets too easy for them to make people abandon ad blocking like this, what stops them from rising their prices every year ? I see this as a nice "balance" that reminds them (if enough people don't cave in) that their monopoly is not giving them a free rein to do anything they want.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Between Reddit, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, etc Youtube hardly has a monopoly.
  - bhdlr 3y ago
    It's like people are being intentionally obtuse in this thread, almost like there's a bunch of paid shills Let's read your list and consider which of those options hosts long form video content Reddit: a link aggregator, not a video hosting site Tiktok: Chinese data collection machine that hosts very short form videos Instagram: data collection machine that hosts pictures your mom likes and short form videos Twitch: focused on streaming and gaming, not a YouTube competitor
    - delecti 3y ago
      Depending on your threshold for "long form", nearly all of them: Reddit has supported direct video uploads for literal years, maybe 5 years at this point, and up to 15 minutes in length. TikTok also collecting your data doesn't change that it hosts videos, and supports up to 10 minutes, and that limit has been increasing as they try to be a more general purpose video platform. Instagram hosts pictures, but also livestreams and videos, both short-form (a few minutes), and long-form (IGTV supports to an hour). Twitch is the only one that seems to clearly not support long-form video content, but even then it's still a competitor because that's not all Youtube does either.
      - mutualaidwins 3y ago
        [dead]
matkoniecz 3y ago
Yes. For start I worry that if I will use YouTube while logged then it will increase risk of my mail account being randomly banned by Google. I already got "your account is temporarily disabled" once after I used "import mail filters" feature. Also, I do not want to risk accidentally sharing exact videos I watch, while logged in. Also, I anyway need to download videos as browser player lags while VLC does not.
- delecti 3y ago
  Your account isn't going to be randomly banned just from watching Youtube.
joejoint 3y ago
of course you can pay, but where's the fun in that.. in a hacker's mind hacking youtube is time well spent.
Litenfrys 3y ago
If they had a premium version for something like a third of the prince I would gladly pay for it. I don't care about Youtube music, offline mode or background playing. I just want to get rid of the ads - and their current model doesn't offer anything that does only that for less money.
- Szpadel 3y ago
  I dont think that this would be any cheaper, (maybe excluding yt music would cost them little less? idk) but this price is mostly what they think removing ads is worth and rest is like a free bonus. In my country yt premium costs almost like Spotify premium and for me it doesn't bring enough value in comparison
  - Lewton 3y ago
    They tested a premium lite that only included removing ads, at about half the price of normal premium, sadly they discontinued it this month
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      That's because it was intended to show the music industry it wouldn't canibalise Spotify subs so Google could get cheaper music licensing, and it showed the opposite. So now ad free YouTube wil never be cheaper than Spotify/Apple Music et al. YouTube Music is bundled because it's free.
veidelis 3y ago
Yes, it is. To me ads are totally useless. I have never bought anything. It's nothing else than unnecessary distraction. I'm not worried about not paying this monstrously huge company.
- LightBug1 3y ago
  What? Don't you want to shop like you're a billionaire? /same
- gentleman11 3y ago
  Ads are about subtly and unknowingly influencing attitudes and beliefs, not direct sales
lionkor 3y ago
As a student, while I do write and maintain software for my job and my FOSS projects, I do not make enough to justify yt premium at all
- jensneuse 3y ago
  They should definitely offer a free or almost free student version. Supporting students is a good thing.
  - basisword 3y ago
    There is a free way for students to use it - with ads.
    - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
      There's an even better free way for students to use it - with adblocker! It even saves Google the bandwidth of streaming the ads! How considerate!
  - otteromkram 3y ago
    There's a Student version of YT Premium for ~$8/month.
grardb 3y ago
I was considering getting YouTube Premium, but then I realized that it wouldn't work while incognito. I very often open videos in private tabs so it doesn't destroy my recommendations, so I'd still need an adblocker.
- rolisz 3y ago
  You can remove videos from your YouTube history and then they won't influence the recommendations you get.
  - montag 3y ago
    Recent product improvements have also made this process really easy.
- redbell 3y ago
  > I very often open videos in private tabs so it doesn't destroy my recommendations +1, I thought you were talking about me :)
- bagels 3y ago
  If you log in to YouTube it does.
- jetofff 3y ago
  There is an incognito mode within YouTube by clicking your profile picture and “turn on incognito” Also available on mobile. Works great with Premium.
  - grardb 3y ago
    I think this is only available on mobile, actually. I don't see this option on desktop.
  - thejsa 3y ago
    On my iPhone, selecting this option brings the ads straight back, unfortunately.
Barrin92 3y ago
>A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes The average compensation for a software engineer, in the realively wealthy country of Italy, is like 40k annually. 140 bucks per year just to remove ads is obscene You can get a netflix subscription for that money (which invests billions into content) or like 5 digital newspaper subscriptions (who do investigative journalism)
randomdata 3y ago
I personally just watch the ads, but I understand why one would not want to subscribe to the service even if it is reasonably priced. It is not the sticker cost, but the additional cost of the cognitive load that comes with a subscription. Having to remember yet another service that needs to be paid for, that needs to be cancelled when you don't want it anymore, that needs to be included in budgeting, etc. occupies a lot of mind space for the lifetime of the service. An ad blocker can be created and then forgotten about.
i8comments 3y ago
I am not giving into Google s coercion. Why are you?
- bagels 3y ago
  How should YouTube be funded? How is it coersion?
  - account42 3y ago
    I don't think it should be funded at all.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > How should YouTube be funded? Maybe they can do something with their trillions of dollars, or since we're already paying for youtube with our data, maybe they can do something with that and all the other highly personal and intimate details of our lives they've collected primarily without our consent (and at times through violations of the law). Seems like they ought to have some kind of way to make money with that... Maybe they can let people pay them to get to the top of search results or something. Maybe they could sell locked down data collecting laptops or do something with cell phones? They seem pretty smart, I'm sure they'll figure it out.
    - thdespou 3y ago
      or maybe they should cut monetisation by half.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    It's up to them to figure out. But if their only solution is inconvenience users to the point they start bleeding money then screw them.
    - delecti 3y ago
      They have figured it out, and they even have two options so you can pick which you prefer.
autoexec 3y ago
There's nothing quite like being forced to continuously pay someone money to solve a problem they're causing you. Well, there is something a bit like that, and it's called "racketeering". Paying youtube to solve the problem of youtube's obnoxious ads may not rise to the same level, but it's close enough that I find it extremely distasteful. Don't reward companies for creating artificial problems just so that they can bill you for getting out of your way. Save your money for companies that offer solutions to problems they didn't invent.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  YouTube is a private service funded by revenue that has to come from somewhere, we're not entitled to have it for free. How do you suppose they'll earn money without ads or subscriptions?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I've been paying Google with my data since long before youtube started. They've certainly been collecting it and profiting from it without writing checks to me. Maybe when youtube stops collecting data and they delete all they have they can start asking for money, but ultimately I'm not going to worry about how the trillion dollar multinational corporate giant which has been exploiting us since at least the 2000s is going to keep stuffing their pockets with cash. They've done pretty damn well for themselves so far, even though ad blockers have always existed. They'll figure it out.
    - fma 3y ago
      And I bet you use Google's other services for free.
      - polygamous_bat 3y ago
        The whole point is that there is no moral/ethical way to enter a “contract” with a party who has been knowingly siphoning (read “stealing”) your and everyone else’s data without being upfront about it since time immemorial. Oh you want to enter a contract with me? Send me an invoice at the end of every month about what data you collected from me and how you used it to pay for the services. Otherwise, there’s no way they won’t be double dipping. Or they can drop the adtech business or spin it out as a separate company. But either way currently there is no way to fairly deal with ad tech companies with thinly veneered “free” services on top.
scotty79 3y ago
You don't want to make inconveniencing you profitable for companies.
- acdha 3y ago
  If you like watching video, the people who make and host it need to get paid somehow. There are only three real choices: don’t watch it, watch with ads, or pay to watch. Anything else is just fooling yourself into believing that other people will work for free making the things you like and the endgame for that is unskippable ads and more content only available to subscribers behind DRM.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    There's huge gap between "they need to get paid" and "viewers need to pay for viewing". There is this thing called mécénat in French that translates to patronage or sponsorship. Which means that whoever has the money and wants to see the thing created, pays. And everybody can enjoy it. And this doesn't need to be a single rich person. In modern times communitites can fund millions for projects they want to see created. And YouTube doesn't create anything at the moment except wonderfully popular YouTube Rewind videos.
bigcloud1299 3y ago
Haha. This. I had to swallow that $30 a month cost. Because by going through the family sharing, I am saving so much heaxh and time wastage for my family who use YouTube for learning (school, college…), parents who watch videos, listen to music etc. well worth it for me.
dageshi 3y ago
Some people are just freeloaders. They'll dress up their refusal to pay in any number of ways but what it comes down to is they just want stuff for free and aren't honest enough to just say that.
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago
  Oh kind of like how Google has been freeloading on our private data for decades? Yep you're right, Google isn't honest enough, so I'm happy to stick it to them.
- concordDance 3y ago
  As someone who uses ublock and gives £50/month away on Patreon: no
- jonathanstrange 3y ago
  This just means that Youtube isn't worth the ad watching time for them that Youtube feels entitled to. I personally, for example, will continue watching Youtube with an ad blocker but I'm also perfectly fine if Youtube closes entirely or becomes subscription-only.
  - VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    This is a fact that internet publishers simply don't want to accept: the value of what you're offering is so low, that the most I'm willing to pay you for it is zero dollars. This affects publishers both large and small, from Youtube to mommy bloggers. Like all those recipe blogs filled with bloat so they can stuff more ads. And the passive aggressive popup complaints about asking me to disable my adblocker: absolutely not. Sorry dude, but the value of what you're offering is worth "free" to me, and you can prove this to yourself by switching to a subscription payment model for whatever you're publishing. You'll make almost nothing compared to what you make from ad revenue because what you're offering just isn't as valuable as you think it is.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Call me a freeloader then. My computer, my internet service, my choice. I'll do what I want with my computer as long as I don't break a law, there is no moral right side in this debate.
Wool2662 3y ago
Sure , supporting the evil megacorp suppressing any real alternative products seems like the ethical thing to do.
jonathanstrange 3y ago
Youtube isn't worth the "few dollars" for me (it's actually very expensive). However, I'm using an ad blocker instead. They still work and give you a seamless experience.
nkrisc 3y ago
Yes, it’s worth it to exercise my right to choose what runs in my computer. A web browser is a client application and I get to choose how it renders the content the server sends to me.
- acdha 3y ago
  Yes, and you get to choose between doing that and getting blocked because it’s their server. Stealing entertainment is hardly a bold stroke for freedom.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    By that logic, going to the bathroom while ads are playing is “stealing”
    - acdha 3y ago
      Try writing out the argument more formally and you’ll learn why that’s not true.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        Disabling ads is exactly the same as going to the bathroom during ads. In both cases, I don’t see it. In both cases, I am choosing to do something else than watch the ads. The only difference is… hmm, nothing.
        acdha 3y ago
        Come on, you can do better than this. Nobody expects you to watch every ad, it’s a numbers game. Advertisers know that people don’t pay rapt attention to every ad but they also know that you’re going to see the at least start, hear it even if you’re looking at your dinner, and the only thing more unlikely than you going to the bathroom every 6 minutes is that you mute the audio and turn off the display each time. A lot of ads are familiar brands, so they don’t even care about watching the full length if it reinforces something positive about their company. Businesses will pay for those percentage changes because in aggregate a lot of people will see the ads. This changes when they know the odds are zero and that’s why YouTube is doing this.
tim333 3y ago
In the UK it's £13/month which is noticeable for people in ordinary jobs, paying rent, and with half a dozen similar things wanting monthly money also.
- jackjeff 3y ago
  Agreed. It’s clearly over the limit of things you care about. I don’t regret the couple of evenings I spent installing Yattee and Piped on my own server. Now I need not worry about YouTube. Over 10 years I’ll have saved enough to get a MacBook Pro
thegabriele 3y ago
I would pay a few dollars for ALL the Google benefits: no ads, a little bigger drive, youtube premium, music. Then i'd feel i had a bargain. By splitting everything i just feel..milked.
- kilroy123 3y ago
  Good point. I never understood why they didn't offer this. Apple does.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    Apple's deal is not even a good deal - it only works out if you use all the services that no one uses.
mainde 3y ago
Probably not worth anyone's time to remove ads but I can't convince myself that the premium subscription is worth buying, I feel like many are in a similar situation and struggle due to how addicting (and useful) the platform can be. About two years ago, pre-adblocking crackdown, I was having a great time with YouTube and I considered buying the premium subscription because I really liked the product. Then the number of ads and their frequency changed massively, ruining the whole experience for me, the premium subscription went from feeling like "something I want because of perceived value" to "something I now need because YouTube has been made unusable in an attempt to coerce me into paying". I went from checking out the prices and planning the purchase to blocking the whole domain on my pihole for all devices except my workstation. I was also very disappointed by the subscription model: no yearly plan, no way to bundle it with the Google One subscription that I already pay for, the price of a family plan Vs individual subscription is predatory and anti-consumer (325% higher per individual).
baz00 3y ago
Or you could not give them any funding to push their DRM agenda on the web? I am happy to steal the content and I shall do that with yt-dlp and VLC because it is the best user experience for actually watching videos. The browser is not anyway.
snowstormsun 3y ago
Absolutely
eqvinox 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38065387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38065387
pacifika 3y ago
A family plan is an order of magnitude more than a few dollars. £20/m (£240/year) in the UK. That’s a few dollars a month short of an Xbox Series S console yearly.
gherkinnn 3y ago
They proverbially kick me in the shins for every video I watch. Typically more than once, and for ever increasing periods of time. And once they're done kicking I get asked if I want to give them money so they stop kicking me. Right.
rollcat 3y ago
> A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes. Great. Good for them. What about the rest of the world, some (many) of whom can't afford a(nother) monthly subscription fee? Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising? Youtube basically reached a de-facto status of a public library, considering it contains archival TV shows, sports matches, original music, documentaries, lessons, instructions, clips of contemporary life, and so on. While median quality is much lower, it easily rivals Wikipedia in breadth and depth. It my opinion, it should be publicly funded, without discriminating access based on willingness (ability!) to pay or to be subjected to ads.
- jensneuse 3y ago
  It's possible that my comment is misinterpreted. YouTube is a service provided by a company and you have to pay for it in some way. You can pay with your time and watch ads, you can pay money and not worry about ads, or you can somehow cheat with tools, so you're again investing your time to install and maintain the cheat. My sole argument is that a lot of people in tech are better off just paying for Premium because their time is worth more than using a cheat or watching/dealing with ads. And for those who think it's not worth it, that's totally fine. I'm not arguing that you should pay or even use YouTube. My only point is that devs should think carefully about the value of their time.
  - realusername 3y ago
    That argument could work better if premium wasn't priced at probably 10x the average revenue per user they are getting with the ads. I don't think even Google consider it as a real option internally, it's just a way to get more money out of higher income users.
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      How did you come up with this number? Advertisers pay a varied rate per impression. Actually, high income users are valuable ad viewers and I'm sure advertisers pay a premium to display ads to them.
palmfacehn 3y ago
I don't personally use adblockers. I have no problems paying a few dollars a month. I do have an issue with providing banking details to social media platforms.
- dgellow 3y ago
  You don’t have to, you can pay through Apple Pay or Google Pay if you’re on mobile.
  - Nostrada 3y ago
    Funny. Don't give Youtube your credit card, use Google Pay instead.
    - dgellow 3y ago
      What is funny about it? The person I responded to was concern about sharing banking information with social platforms. Apple and Google pay aren’t social platforms.
abenga 3y ago
I can't (in my country).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dean2432 3y ago
i am subscribing to yt premium but i don't like supporting google. i despise their active shadow banning on yt. this company is actively blocking legit constructive comments on "sensitive topics" such as religion. it's disgusting and also dangerous that a big corporation is declaring what should be allowed and not allowed to think and express.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I'd pay for YouTube if it curated its content to skip all the clickbait, engagement garbage, AI-generated channels, scam videos and so on, which make this unbearable to use. Even if you remove the ads, it's WORK to find quality content on YouTube these days, and this happens to a large degree because they incentivize their content providers to trick the algorithm and users into watching garbage for money. We saw the same happen with Twitter in real time when they announced revenue sharing. YouTube is more broken today than it ever was. I don't know the exact recipe for fixing this, but this ain't it. I'm not paying to support this cesspool.
deafpolygon 3y ago
A few dollars? Try in the order of 17 bucks a month. It costs more than Netflix where I am.
weystrom 3y ago
Because that wasn't the deal. Nobody complained when YT was monopolizing online video because it was convenient and free and then they proceed to bait and switch us into paying. Screw them, I won't pay out of principle.
- acdha 3y ago
  The deal was that you watch ads in exchange for unlimited video. Then they added the option to pay instead of watching ads. If you no longer like either deal, stop reinforcing their market share: your usage tells creators they need to stay on YouTube.
madeofpalk 3y ago
I cancelled Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+. They just kept getting more expensive yet I barely watched content on them. Youtube Premium is the best subscription video service out there in my opinion. I'm very happy with it being the one thing I pay money for.
- kderbyma 3y ago
  Just the one last one to quit and your free ;) - I don't use any of them and I don't see ads
usr1106 3y ago
A few dollars? Don't remember what they charged here, but I found it completely overpriced. There are many months a year I manage not to waste any time on Youtube. While I generally prefer paying for service over surveillance capitalism I found Youtube far too less value for the money for my usage. For someone using it hours every week, the price might be more in line with the costs. I could subscribe to a pay per view with monthly cap model. For now I use it with ads, hate it, and use it less. Only for information gathering, certainly not for entertainment.
ecmascript 3y ago
I'd pay in a heartbeat for youtube premium if youtube weren't owned my the FAANG companies. I dislike these companies and don't want them to have a cent of my money so I'll continue to be a freeloader and I don't care if the company goes bankrupt because the world needs more competition.
glun 3y ago
I tried that once, but paying changed the ui in some way that I found to be a huge degradation. Dont remember what exactly it was, but now Im using the adblocker again. Just ublock works fine btw, as long as you keep it and its filters up to date.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  It would be useful if you can elaborate because as a paid user I've never spotted any UI or UX degradation and I'm now curious.
  - glun 3y ago
    It might have been a ”continue where you left off” player that always showed on the main page or something like that. Continuing is never desirable so I always had to waste a click closing that so it wouldnt obscure part of the screen.
bozhark 3y ago
You can also do this for _free_
wg0 3y ago
I'm or probably won't pay but this feels immoral. Not a fair transaction where you consume content and bandwidth but give back nothing in return.
giancarlostoro 3y ago
I used to have Premium back when it was called Red, because I got grandfathered from Google Music All Access. Then when my card expired they had me put in a new card. They didnt bother grandfathering me, so I didnt bother with YouTube premium since I am not paying double, despite paying for Google Music All Access… since launch. My phone renewal was around the corner so I got an iPhone this time and got Apple One with everything it offers. I am much more happier. Last I heard they wanted to nerf Google Music for YouTube music which is an awful exchange. Now I dont mind ads but if they are annoying or too many, or worse: their new adblocking system was detecting me as adblocking despite me having it all off, or it not working on mobile whatsoever, you know the site is just flat out broken for me, well… I will just refuse to go on YouTube.
MikusR 3y ago
You can't! No ads is bundled with Youtube Music and other useless options.
VancouverMan 3y ago
For me, the money itself isn't really a problem. Creating a Google account, however, is a problem. Having to log in with that account is a problem. Having to link the account with a credit card or some other payment method is a problem. Having the account tied to my identity via a phone number, and/or the payment method, is a problem. Having the account used to track my viewing history is a problem. Having to possibly deal with a suspended/banned/compromised account, payment issues, and so on, is a problem. Those are far too many problems to deal with, just to watch some videos. If there was something more like dropping coins/bills in the hat of a street performer, I'd generally be willing to pay.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Chef's kiss. How are techy people this damn ignorant about what's really going on in that contract. Yes the ads are invisible, but you can get that for free but more importantly, free of the Goog's nonsense and aggregation. Why do you pay to sow your data like its wild oats or something? Sad!
- pjc50 3y ago
  Ironically, if you watch youtube in incognito mode, it doesn't complain about adblockers. > If there was something more like dropping coins/bills in the hat of a street performer, I'd generally be willing to pay. Some of the people producing on youtube have arrangements for this (kofi, patreon etc); there's also one built into youtube called "superchat", but of course that relies on being logged in and giving google your payment info.
  - eye-robot 3y ago
    ...and YT gets 30% of that. So it's still a fail.
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  Same, I technically have a Google account and Gmail address because I'm an Android user. I've never actually used by Gmail address or given it to anyone, I don't log into my Google account on the desktop so all my Google account has is a small amount of data from my phone. I've never looked into Youtube Premium until this thread but it seems to be available for 10€ a month in my location. That's a reasonable amount of money I could certainly pay if I had the option of doing so privately. I don't want to have my viewing history associated with my account, I don't want to log into my Google account and have it remember my searches. Give me a way to pay for the service without my subsequent use being tracked and data mined, and I'd be happy to pay.
fzzzy 3y ago
It's $14 month now. It's still worth paying for.
supermatt 3y ago
I have no intention of ever giving YouTube money. A multi billion dollar company basically treated it as a loss leader for over a decade to eradicate the competition, and now they have “won” they want to squeeze users as much as they can. Resources are cheaper and yet they now show more ads per video than ever. No doubt they are trying to position YouTube so it can survive on its own going forward now the regulatory bodies have awoken. I have no intention of supporting that. FYI, I use adnauseum and don’t seem to get served ads on YouTube on my desktop where it is installed. I don’t choose to “block” ads on YouTube, so I guess they just aren’t serving them to adnauseum users.
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  Basically, you have elucidated their entire revenue model. Those exact words came out of some executives orifices, and like you I would not give them the better part of a millionth of a cent. I recently had a site owned by the theme plug in. (They were using word press? What are they stupid? ) chrome edge and others had problems. Firefox/nightly with a hosts file and ublock origin? Nothing. I cannot remember the last time saw a youtube ad. Kudos for everyone that got this to work.
- naikrovek 3y ago
  > treated it as a loss leader for over a decade to eradicate the competition, and now they have “won” they want to squeeze users as much as they can every silicon valley startup ever has this same plan of attack, and no one bats an eye. it's kind of like a long-term bait-and-switch. that's just how these things work, apparently. sadly.
  - stemlord 3y ago
    Yes the entirety of web2.0 has been a bait & switch scheme. No one can actually afford to just serve the platform, ads don't generate enough leads to make up for the cost of running them, and the average person can't afford to pay a $5-10 subscription for each web service they have grown accustomed to using every day.
    - 3y ago
atombender 3y ago
It's more than a few dollars. It's not an expense that makes sense to everyone. Anecdotally: I use YouTube very rarely. I follow a couple of channels that post new episodes now and then. And sometimes I need to study some DIY technique, or someone sends me a link to something they thought was funny or interesting; basically my use is random and mostly utility-driven, and certainly not fueled by me endlessly trawling YT for entertainment. So for me, the ads are super annoying because they steal time away from me when I need to access some random video, and ad-to-video ratio is rather huge. But since I'm a light user, it will never make sense to pay for it. In fact, I often close down a video when I'm met with an ad, because it's just not important enough. For me, the ads kill the potential spontaneous joy that could be had from a short video. Many people do pay for YT, and I don't really understand the attraction unless you're a parent with kids. But everyone is different.
- coffeefirst 3y ago
  Same. I would gladly pay for adfree, but the price is hard to justify for infrequent casual users. They should introduce a lower tier with a usage limit. Say $5/mo for the first 50 videos being adfree.
  - hahn-kev 3y ago
    So how much would you pay per video to not have an ad?
gentleman11 3y ago
YouTube wiped out part of the music industry by hosting so much illegitimate music and had either zero or almost zero ads for most of its history until it’s monopoly was complete. Now that it’s captured almost 100% of online video content, it’s pulling a bait and switch and pretending to be copyright friendly while bombarding it’s captured audience with ads who have nowhere else to go. They don’t deserve a penny from any of us And anyway, the videos themselves are ads and contain sponsored and affiliate content anyway, the tracking is intense, etc. you don’t get much value from your subscription
- IronRod 3y ago
  Yep #enshitification engaged.
josephcsible 3y ago
This is the worst time to replace your ad blocker with YouTube Premium, because by doing so, you're rewarding their bad behavior.
- Astronaut3315 3y ago
  I agree, which is why I cancelled my Premium subscription when all this started. I’m not interested in paying Google to degrade the viewing experience for everyone else.
s3p 3y ago
"a few dollars"
hunters_laptop 3y ago
[dead]
callmeal 3y ago
>Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Yes, because like anything google, pretty soon the few dollars you pay per month to make ads go away will mean "pay to see fewer ads". Exactly like what happened to cable and subscription services.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Most of us pay for a lot of services like netflix, spotify, etc. We are ok with paying, but not: - giving money to a user hostile company with a terrible moral track record - giving money to keep being tracked anyway - having to log in with a google account that can be locked down any time with no given reason, and will take over your entire android phone even from a single app - being served ads from other unrelated services using data collected from google service we paid for
OOPMan 3y ago
Yes, it is worth my time. Ads are cancer. If you can't find some other less toxic way to support your business then it should die. FYI, I pay for plenty of other streaming services. I just don't feel YouTube is worth it. The content creators are worth it, YouTube itself is not.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Marsymars 3y ago
> A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes. Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Well, my anecdote: I'm a tech worker, but I make some multiples lower compensation than SV comp. I'm pretty frugal, but my household budget is still pretty tight. I can't pick up OT shifts at my job or easily transform my free time into money at a worthwhile hourly rate - and if I could, any additional money I'd make would be taxed at a relatively high marginal rate. To widen the gap between my income and expenses, it tends to be more time-effective to reduce my expenses by avoiding paying for services where I can do the work myself. Every dollar I save on expenses is a dollar that either a) goes into tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts, b) pays down my mortgage, or c) pays for self-investment, e.g. home insulation upgrades. (Once I run out of those options for my money, it will affect the marginal value of my time, but I'm some decades off still.)
icehawk 3y ago
I want to do the opposite of supporting google, so yes it its.

shiroiuma 3y ago

>Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Exactly what time are you referring to? It took me precisely zero time to remove ads on YouTube: I already have uBlock Origin installed, because ads on all the other websites are so unbearable, so I don't have to do anything at all to block ads on YouTube: it's already done for me. By contrast, subscribing to YouTube Premium would require a fair bit of my time, in going to the website, figuring out where to click, going through the payment process page, digging out a credit card, etc. etc. Then I have to worry about managing yet another subscription, which will take time every month. Is it really worth investing your time to subscribe to YTP when you can just block the ads by default by having a proper ad-blocker installed on your browser in the first place, which is a prerequisite for safe browsing in the modern age?

slyn 3y ago

Yes

globular-toast 3y ago

And if all the "tech people" pay a fixed charge for YouTube regardless of how much they actually use it, they'll remove ads entirely, right? Get real. Fuck ads. Nobody should ever have to deal with them.

bwb 3y ago
Ads pay for everything online? How else do you pay for everything unless you pay them directly??
- Retr0id 3y ago
  A common model is to have a free tier subsidized by the premium users. The free users still provide value to the company, because they're all prospective premium users.
  - bwb 3y ago
    Might not work here, we are not on the inside so can't see.
    - Retr0id 3y ago
      If youtube can't make it work, I hope they go bust so that something better can take their place.
      - bwb 3y ago
        What they are doing is working great... not sure why you would say that. They are the most popular platform, fantastic services and adding more, and easy to pay to remove ads for a reasonable amount of money. Their model is working great from a business and service perspective. What else do you want? You want it to be free for you where you don't have to pay anything to use it? Seems like you don't have a realistic view of what it costs to run / build / maintain this.
        Retr0id 3y ago
        I've served terabytes worth of video content from my home internet connection, for free.
        bwb 3y ago
        Congrats?
        Retr0id 3y ago
IshKebab 3y ago
If you have a better way to fund sites like YouTube that doesn't involve either adverts or paying a fixed subscription I'd love to hear it!
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  Pay by use, for either the people watching or the ones hosting video content
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    I believe Vimeo does the latter if you want. Guess how many people use that...
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      Its better than ads though
caesil 3y ago
The only options here are 1. deal with ads, 2. pay to support the service without ads, 3. use adblocking and be a free rider off people doing #1, or 4. expect web services to be given to you as an act of charity You and I are both doing #3, but let's not pretend it's some act of noble civil disobedience. It is good for us that others are subjected to ads, as it allows us to get useful services for free without having to be.
- Retr0id 3y ago
  I do block ads as an act of civil disobedience. I also pay for services, when I consider it to be appropriate. The problems with the ad industry run much deeper than ads merely being annoying to look at. It is bad that anyone is ever subjected to ads. We're talking about this right now on a web service given to us as an act of charity (modulo the occasional sponsored job listing), and I'd like more of the web to be like that. Refusing to participate in the ad revenue model makes sites like this more likely to arise.
  - hiq 3y ago
    > We're talking about this right now on a web service given to us as an act of charity (modulo the occasional sponsored job listing) I think your modulo is missing some aspects. How many VCs are as famous as YC among tech workers? How many of them have as much credibility in the tech scene as YC? How much of that comes from this site? I don't know how much it costs to run it, but I assume it's peanuts compared with what YC gets out of it. I wouldn't confuse altruistic charity (e.g. donating anonymously to a cause you don't personally benefit from) with what boils down to sponsorship and getting the goodwill that comes with it.
- ozim 3y ago
  First of all YT and other companies hooked people on free stuff and after years are doing bait and switch - it is totally on them - not on the people wanting free stuff. They should not offer free stuff in the first place to be fair. Which is also now they are abusing their market position built by cutting all other companies that could do the same but simply could not get past dumping price of free by VC fueled "startups". Which I believe some government org should look into. Second of all they benefit by externalizing all negative effects of their platforms where they don't handle moderation of offensive comments towards creators which causes lots of psychological damage. There is whole load of evidence they even set it up in ways to specifically get people dependent on dopamine from watching just one more video. Lastly - cable TV in US was paid with no ads and when they found out they can earn more money they still put in ads. For me it is noble act of civil disobedience.

serf 3y ago

yes. ads represent (to me) psychological coercion, exploitative capitalism, fear-mongering, and generally the worst cultural and psychological trends packed into dense snippets of trash. very few of the things I actually use and adore were ever advertised to me in any way other than by trusted word-of-mouth, and the results of that are staggeringly better-fit than anything i've ever encountered on the web. and that isn't even talking over the ads shown for wars and efforts I don't support, ads that are vehicles for malware, or ads that are vehicles for either propaganda from a state agency or somewhat radical organizations. Most videos on YT are simply not worth my trading of values for the exposure to the trash. The transition from "creator place" to "media moat" isn't something I appreciate nor am I willing to participate in. simply put : Ad-blockers simply enable me to stay in a better place mentally. The moment they started getting iffy on YT I tried to disable them and got a bunch of war-gore imagery thrown in my face from some NGO relief group begging for money in the midst of a hobby machinery video, these types of ads and abusive imagery are simply inappropriate, and I won't let the media be held hostage against me for the sake of collecting a toll or else being exposed to it : I just won't participate on that side of the net.

IshKebab 3y ago
Uhm right. So you agree that paying to remove ads is the sensible option?
- scotty79 3y ago
  Then coercion succeeds. The point of coercive ads is to make you spend money. Either on advertised products ... but if they can force you to pay for just not seeing the ads it's even better. It's cutting out the "middle men" of real world economy from this extortion scheme.
bagels 3y ago
This response does not really address the question in the comments it is attached to.

the_omegist 3y ago

You're right in the absolute, but the issue here is that YT has a monopoly. So if it gets too easy for them to make people abandon ad blocking like this, what stops them from rising their prices every year ? I see this as a nice "balance" that reminds them (if enough people don't cave in) that their monopoly is not giving them a free rein to do anything they want.

madeofpalk 3y ago
Between Reddit, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, etc Youtube hardly has a monopoly.
- bhdlr 3y ago
  It's like people are being intentionally obtuse in this thread, almost like there's a bunch of paid shills Let's read your list and consider which of those options hosts long form video content Reddit: a link aggregator, not a video hosting site Tiktok: Chinese data collection machine that hosts very short form videos Instagram: data collection machine that hosts pictures your mom likes and short form videos Twitch: focused on streaming and gaming, not a YouTube competitor
  - delecti 3y ago
    Depending on your threshold for "long form", nearly all of them: Reddit has supported direct video uploads for literal years, maybe 5 years at this point, and up to 15 minutes in length. TikTok also collecting your data doesn't change that it hosts videos, and supports up to 10 minutes, and that limit has been increasing as they try to be a more general purpose video platform. Instagram hosts pictures, but also livestreams and videos, both short-form (a few minutes), and long-form (IGTV supports to an hour). Twitch is the only one that seems to clearly not support long-form video content, but even then it's still a competitor because that's not all Youtube does either.
    - mutualaidwins 3y ago
      [dead]

matkoniecz 3y ago

Yes. For start I worry that if I will use YouTube while logged then it will increase risk of my mail account being randomly banned by Google. I already got "your account is temporarily disabled" once after I used "import mail filters" feature. Also, I do not want to risk accidentally sharing exact videos I watch, while logged in. Also, I anyway need to download videos as browser player lags while VLC does not.

delecti 3y ago
Your account isn't going to be randomly banned just from watching Youtube.

joejoint 3y ago

of course you can pay, but where's the fun in that.. in a hacker's mind hacking youtube is time well spent.

Litenfrys 3y ago

If they had a premium version for something like a third of the prince I would gladly pay for it. I don't care about Youtube music, offline mode or background playing. I just want to get rid of the ads - and their current model doesn't offer anything that does only that for less money.

Szpadel 3y ago
I dont think that this would be any cheaper, (maybe excluding yt music would cost them little less? idk) but this price is mostly what they think removing ads is worth and rest is like a free bonus. In my country yt premium costs almost like Spotify premium and for me it doesn't bring enough value in comparison
- Lewton 3y ago
  They tested a premium lite that only included removing ads, at about half the price of normal premium, sadly they discontinued it this month
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    That's because it was intended to show the music industry it wouldn't canibalise Spotify subs so Google could get cheaper music licensing, and it showed the opposite. So now ad free YouTube wil never be cheaper than Spotify/Apple Music et al. YouTube Music is bundled because it's free.

veidelis 3y ago

Yes, it is. To me ads are totally useless. I have never bought anything. It's nothing else than unnecessary distraction. I'm not worried about not paying this monstrously huge company.

LightBug1 3y ago
What? Don't you want to shop like you're a billionaire? /same
gentleman11 3y ago
Ads are about subtly and unknowingly influencing attitudes and beliefs, not direct sales

lionkor 3y ago

As a student, while I do write and maintain software for my job and my FOSS projects, I do not make enough to justify yt premium at all

jensneuse 3y ago
They should definitely offer a free or almost free student version. Supporting students is a good thing.
- basisword 3y ago
  There is a free way for students to use it - with ads.
  - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
    There's an even better free way for students to use it - with adblocker! It even saves Google the bandwidth of streaming the ads! How considerate!
- otteromkram 3y ago
  There's a Student version of YT Premium for ~$8/month.

grardb 3y ago

I was considering getting YouTube Premium, but then I realized that it wouldn't work while incognito. I very often open videos in private tabs so it doesn't destroy my recommendations, so I'd still need an adblocker.

rolisz 3y ago
You can remove videos from your YouTube history and then they won't influence the recommendations you get.
- montag 3y ago
  Recent product improvements have also made this process really easy.
redbell 3y ago
> I very often open videos in private tabs so it doesn't destroy my recommendations +1, I thought you were talking about me :)
bagels 3y ago
If you log in to YouTube it does.
jetofff 3y ago
There is an incognito mode within YouTube by clicking your profile picture and “turn on incognito” Also available on mobile. Works great with Premium.
- grardb 3y ago
  I think this is only available on mobile, actually. I don't see this option on desktop.
- thejsa 3y ago
  On my iPhone, selecting this option brings the ads straight back, unfortunately.

Barrin92 3y ago

>A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes The average compensation for a software engineer, in the realively wealthy country of Italy, is like 40k annually. 140 bucks per year just to remove ads is obscene You can get a netflix subscription for that money (which invests billions into content) or like 5 digital newspaper subscriptions (who do investigative journalism)

randomdata 3y ago

I personally just watch the ads, but I understand why one would not want to subscribe to the service even if it is reasonably priced. It is not the sticker cost, but the additional cost of the cognitive load that comes with a subscription. Having to remember yet another service that needs to be paid for, that needs to be cancelled when you don't want it anymore, that needs to be included in budgeting, etc. occupies a lot of mind space for the lifetime of the service. An ad blocker can be created and then forgotten about.

i8comments 3y ago

I am not giving into Google s coercion. Why are you?

bagels 3y ago
How should YouTube be funded? How is it coersion?
- account42 3y ago
  I don't think it should be funded at all.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > How should YouTube be funded? Maybe they can do something with their trillions of dollars, or since we're already paying for youtube with our data, maybe they can do something with that and all the other highly personal and intimate details of our lives they've collected primarily without our consent (and at times through violations of the law). Seems like they ought to have some kind of way to make money with that... Maybe they can let people pay them to get to the top of search results or something. Maybe they could sell locked down data collecting laptops or do something with cell phones? They seem pretty smart, I'm sure they'll figure it out.
  - thdespou 3y ago
    or maybe they should cut monetisation by half.
- scotty79 3y ago
  It's up to them to figure out. But if their only solution is inconvenience users to the point they start bleeding money then screw them.
  - delecti 3y ago
    They have figured it out, and they even have two options so you can pick which you prefer.

autoexec 3y ago

There's nothing quite like being forced to continuously pay someone money to solve a problem they're causing you. Well, there is something a bit like that, and it's called "racketeering". Paying youtube to solve the problem of youtube's obnoxious ads may not rise to the same level, but it's close enough that I find it extremely distasteful. Don't reward companies for creating artificial problems just so that they can bill you for getting out of your way. Save your money for companies that offer solutions to problems they didn't invent.

zemvpferreira 3y ago
YouTube is a private service funded by revenue that has to come from somewhere, we're not entitled to have it for free. How do you suppose they'll earn money without ads or subscriptions?
- autoexec 3y ago
  I've been paying Google with my data since long before youtube started. They've certainly been collecting it and profiting from it without writing checks to me. Maybe when youtube stops collecting data and they delete all they have they can start asking for money, but ultimately I'm not going to worry about how the trillion dollar multinational corporate giant which has been exploiting us since at least the 2000s is going to keep stuffing their pockets with cash. They've done pretty damn well for themselves so far, even though ad blockers have always existed. They'll figure it out.
  - fma 3y ago
    And I bet you use Google's other services for free.
    - polygamous_bat 3y ago
      The whole point is that there is no moral/ethical way to enter a “contract” with a party who has been knowingly siphoning (read “stealing”) your and everyone else’s data without being upfront about it since time immemorial. Oh you want to enter a contract with me? Send me an invoice at the end of every month about what data you collected from me and how you used it to pay for the services. Otherwise, there’s no way they won’t be double dipping. Or they can drop the adtech business or spin it out as a separate company. But either way currently there is no way to fairly deal with ad tech companies with thinly veneered “free” services on top.

scotty79 3y ago

You don't want to make inconveniencing you profitable for companies.

acdha 3y ago
If you like watching video, the people who make and host it need to get paid somehow. There are only three real choices: don’t watch it, watch with ads, or pay to watch. Anything else is just fooling yourself into believing that other people will work for free making the things you like and the endgame for that is unskippable ads and more content only available to subscribers behind DRM.
- scotty79 3y ago
  There's huge gap between "they need to get paid" and "viewers need to pay for viewing". There is this thing called mécénat in French that translates to patronage or sponsorship. Which means that whoever has the money and wants to see the thing created, pays. And everybody can enjoy it. And this doesn't need to be a single rich person. In modern times communitites can fund millions for projects they want to see created. And YouTube doesn't create anything at the moment except wonderfully popular YouTube Rewind videos.

bigcloud1299 3y ago

Haha. This. I had to swallow that $30 a month cost. Because by going through the family sharing, I am saving so much heaxh and time wastage for my family who use YouTube for learning (school, college…), parents who watch videos, listen to music etc. well worth it for me.

dageshi 3y ago

Some people are just freeloaders. They'll dress up their refusal to pay in any number of ways but what it comes down to is they just want stuff for free and aren't honest enough to just say that.

hypertele-Xii 3y ago
Oh kind of like how Google has been freeloading on our private data for decades? Yep you're right, Google isn't honest enough, so I'm happy to stick it to them.
concordDance 3y ago
As someone who uses ublock and gives £50/month away on Patreon: no
jonathanstrange 3y ago
This just means that Youtube isn't worth the ad watching time for them that Youtube feels entitled to. I personally, for example, will continue watching Youtube with an ad blocker but I'm also perfectly fine if Youtube closes entirely or becomes subscription-only.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  This is a fact that internet publishers simply don't want to accept: the value of what you're offering is so low, that the most I'm willing to pay you for it is zero dollars. This affects publishers both large and small, from Youtube to mommy bloggers. Like all those recipe blogs filled with bloat so they can stuff more ads. And the passive aggressive popup complaints about asking me to disable my adblocker: absolutely not. Sorry dude, but the value of what you're offering is worth "free" to me, and you can prove this to yourself by switching to a subscription payment model for whatever you're publishing. You'll make almost nothing compared to what you make from ad revenue because what you're offering just isn't as valuable as you think it is.
mlrtime 3y ago
Call me a freeloader then. My computer, my internet service, my choice. I'll do what I want with my computer as long as I don't break a law, there is no moral right side in this debate.

Wool2662 3y ago

Sure , supporting the evil megacorp suppressing any real alternative products seems like the ethical thing to do.

jonathanstrange 3y ago

Youtube isn't worth the "few dollars" for me (it's actually very expensive). However, I'm using an ad blocker instead. They still work and give you a seamless experience.

nkrisc 3y ago

Yes, it’s worth it to exercise my right to choose what runs in my computer. A web browser is a client application and I get to choose how it renders the content the server sends to me.

acdha 3y ago
Yes, and you get to choose between doing that and getting blocked because it’s their server. Stealing entertainment is hardly a bold stroke for freedom.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  By that logic, going to the bathroom while ads are playing is “stealing”
  - acdha 3y ago
    Try writing out the argument more formally and you’ll learn why that’s not true.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Disabling ads is exactly the same as going to the bathroom during ads. In both cases, I don’t see it. In both cases, I am choosing to do something else than watch the ads. The only difference is… hmm, nothing.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Come on, you can do better than this. Nobody expects you to watch every ad, it’s a numbers game. Advertisers know that people don’t pay rapt attention to every ad but they also know that you’re going to see the at least start, hear it even if you’re looking at your dinner, and the only thing more unlikely than you going to the bathroom every 6 minutes is that you mute the audio and turn off the display each time. A lot of ads are familiar brands, so they don’t even care about watching the full length if it reinforces something positive about their company. Businesses will pay for those percentage changes because in aggregate a lot of people will see the ads. This changes when they know the odds are zero and that’s why YouTube is doing this.

tim333 3y ago

In the UK it's £13/month which is noticeable for people in ordinary jobs, paying rent, and with half a dozen similar things wanting monthly money also.

jackjeff 3y ago
Agreed. It’s clearly over the limit of things you care about. I don’t regret the couple of evenings I spent installing Yattee and Piped on my own server. Now I need not worry about YouTube. Over 10 years I’ll have saved enough to get a MacBook Pro

thegabriele 3y ago

I would pay a few dollars for ALL the Google benefits: no ads, a little bigger drive, youtube premium, music. Then i'd feel i had a bargain. By splitting everything i just feel..milked.

kilroy123 3y ago
Good point. I never understood why they didn't offer this. Apple does.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Apple's deal is not even a good deal - it only works out if you use all the services that no one uses.

mainde 3y ago

Probably not worth anyone's time to remove ads but I can't convince myself that the premium subscription is worth buying, I feel like many are in a similar situation and struggle due to how addicting (and useful) the platform can be. About two years ago, pre-adblocking crackdown, I was having a great time with YouTube and I considered buying the premium subscription because I really liked the product. Then the number of ads and their frequency changed massively, ruining the whole experience for me, the premium subscription went from feeling like "something I want because of perceived value" to "something I now need because YouTube has been made unusable in an attempt to coerce me into paying". I went from checking out the prices and planning the purchase to blocking the whole domain on my pihole for all devices except my workstation. I was also very disappointed by the subscription model: no yearly plan, no way to bundle it with the Google One subscription that I already pay for, the price of a family plan Vs individual subscription is predatory and anti-consumer (325% higher per individual).

baz00 3y ago

Or you could not give them any funding to push their DRM agenda on the web? I am happy to steal the content and I shall do that with yt-dlp and VLC because it is the best user experience for actually watching videos. The browser is not anyway.

snowstormsun 3y ago

Absolutely

eqvinox 3y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38065387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38065387

pacifika 3y ago

A family plan is an order of magnitude more than a few dollars. £20/m (£240/year) in the UK. That’s a few dollars a month short of an Xbox Series S console yearly.

gherkinnn 3y ago

They proverbially kick me in the shins for every video I watch. Typically more than once, and for ever increasing periods of time. And once they're done kicking I get asked if I want to give them money so they stop kicking me. Right.

rollcat 3y ago

> A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes. Great. Good for them. What about the rest of the world, some (many) of whom can't afford a(nother) monthly subscription fee? Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising? Youtube basically reached a de-facto status of a public library, considering it contains archival TV shows, sports matches, original music, documentaries, lessons, instructions, clips of contemporary life, and so on. While median quality is much lower, it easily rivals Wikipedia in breadth and depth. It my opinion, it should be publicly funded, without discriminating access based on willingness (ability!) to pay or to be subjected to ads.

jensneuse 3y ago
It's possible that my comment is misinterpreted. YouTube is a service provided by a company and you have to pay for it in some way. You can pay with your time and watch ads, you can pay money and not worry about ads, or you can somehow cheat with tools, so you're again investing your time to install and maintain the cheat. My sole argument is that a lot of people in tech are better off just paying for Premium because their time is worth more than using a cheat or watching/dealing with ads. And for those who think it's not worth it, that's totally fine. I'm not arguing that you should pay or even use YouTube. My only point is that devs should think carefully about the value of their time.
- realusername 3y ago
  That argument could work better if premium wasn't priced at probably 10x the average revenue per user they are getting with the ads. I don't think even Google consider it as a real option internally, it's just a way to get more money out of higher income users.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    How did you come up with this number? Advertisers pay a varied rate per impression. Actually, high income users are valuable ad viewers and I'm sure advertisers pay a premium to display ads to them.

palmfacehn 3y ago

I don't personally use adblockers. I have no problems paying a few dollars a month. I do have an issue with providing banking details to social media platforms.

dgellow 3y ago
You don’t have to, you can pay through Apple Pay or Google Pay if you’re on mobile.
- Nostrada 3y ago
  Funny. Don't give Youtube your credit card, use Google Pay instead.
  - dgellow 3y ago
    What is funny about it? The person I responded to was concern about sharing banking information with social platforms. Apple and Google pay aren’t social platforms.

abenga 3y ago

I can't (in my country).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dean2432 3y ago

i am subscribing to yt premium but i don't like supporting google. i despise their active shadow banning on yt. this company is actively blocking legit constructive comments on "sensitive topics" such as religion. it's disgusting and also dangerous that a big corporation is declaring what should be allowed and not allowed to think and express.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

I'd pay for YouTube if it curated its content to skip all the clickbait, engagement garbage, AI-generated channels, scam videos and so on, which make this unbearable to use. Even if you remove the ads, it's WORK to find quality content on YouTube these days, and this happens to a large degree because they incentivize their content providers to trick the algorithm and users into watching garbage for money. We saw the same happen with Twitter in real time when they announced revenue sharing. YouTube is more broken today than it ever was. I don't know the exact recipe for fixing this, but this ain't it. I'm not paying to support this cesspool.

deafpolygon 3y ago

A few dollars? Try in the order of 17 bucks a month. It costs more than Netflix where I am.

weystrom 3y ago

Because that wasn't the deal. Nobody complained when YT was monopolizing online video because it was convenient and free and then they proceed to bait and switch us into paying. Screw them, I won't pay out of principle.

acdha 3y ago
The deal was that you watch ads in exchange for unlimited video. Then they added the option to pay instead of watching ads. If you no longer like either deal, stop reinforcing their market share: your usage tells creators they need to stay on YouTube.

madeofpalk 3y ago

I cancelled Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+. They just kept getting more expensive yet I barely watched content on them. Youtube Premium is the best subscription video service out there in my opinion. I'm very happy with it being the one thing I pay money for.

kderbyma 3y ago
Just the one last one to quit and your free ;) - I don't use any of them and I don't see ads

usr1106 3y ago

A few dollars? Don't remember what they charged here, but I found it completely overpriced. There are many months a year I manage not to waste any time on Youtube. While I generally prefer paying for service over surveillance capitalism I found Youtube far too less value for the money for my usage. For someone using it hours every week, the price might be more in line with the costs. I could subscribe to a pay per view with monthly cap model. For now I use it with ads, hate it, and use it less. Only for information gathering, certainly not for entertainment.

ecmascript 3y ago

I'd pay in a heartbeat for youtube premium if youtube weren't owned my the FAANG companies. I dislike these companies and don't want them to have a cent of my money so I'll continue to be a freeloader and I don't care if the company goes bankrupt because the world needs more competition.

glun 3y ago

I tried that once, but paying changed the ui in some way that I found to be a huge degradation. Dont remember what exactly it was, but now Im using the adblocker again. Just ublock works fine btw, as long as you keep it and its filters up to date.

pdimitar 3y ago
It would be useful if you can elaborate because as a paid user I've never spotted any UI or UX degradation and I'm now curious.
- glun 3y ago
  It might have been a ”continue where you left off” player that always showed on the main page or something like that. Continuing is never desirable so I always had to waste a click closing that so it wouldnt obscure part of the screen.

bozhark 3y ago

You can also do this for _free_

wg0 3y ago

I'm or probably won't pay but this feels immoral. Not a fair transaction where you consume content and bandwidth but give back nothing in return.

giancarlostoro 3y ago

I used to have Premium back when it was called Red, because I got grandfathered from Google Music All Access. Then when my card expired they had me put in a new card. They didnt bother grandfathering me, so I didnt bother with YouTube premium since I am not paying double, despite paying for Google Music All Access… since launch. My phone renewal was around the corner so I got an iPhone this time and got Apple One with everything it offers. I am much more happier. Last I heard they wanted to nerf Google Music for YouTube music which is an awful exchange. Now I dont mind ads but if they are annoying or too many, or worse: their new adblocking system was detecting me as adblocking despite me having it all off, or it not working on mobile whatsoever, you know the site is just flat out broken for me, well… I will just refuse to go on YouTube.

MikusR 3y ago

You can't! No ads is bundled with Youtube Music and other useless options.

VancouverMan 3y ago

For me, the money itself isn't really a problem. Creating a Google account, however, is a problem. Having to log in with that account is a problem. Having to link the account with a credit card or some other payment method is a problem. Having the account tied to my identity via a phone number, and/or the payment method, is a problem. Having the account used to track my viewing history is a problem. Having to possibly deal with a suspended/banned/compromised account, payment issues, and so on, is a problem. Those are far too many problems to deal with, just to watch some videos. If there was something more like dropping coins/bills in the hat of a street performer, I'd generally be willing to pay.

Obscurity4340 3y ago
Chef's kiss. How are techy people this damn ignorant about what's really going on in that contract. Yes the ads are invisible, but you can get that for free but more importantly, free of the Goog's nonsense and aggregation. Why do you pay to sow your data like its wild oats or something? Sad!
pjc50 3y ago
Ironically, if you watch youtube in incognito mode, it doesn't complain about adblockers. > If there was something more like dropping coins/bills in the hat of a street performer, I'd generally be willing to pay. Some of the people producing on youtube have arrangements for this (kofi, patreon etc); there's also one built into youtube called "superchat", but of course that relies on being logged in and giving google your payment info.
- eye-robot 3y ago
  ...and YT gets 30% of that. So it's still a fail.
ACS_Solver 3y ago
Same, I technically have a Google account and Gmail address because I'm an Android user. I've never actually used by Gmail address or given it to anyone, I don't log into my Google account on the desktop so all my Google account has is a small amount of data from my phone. I've never looked into Youtube Premium until this thread but it seems to be available for 10€ a month in my location. That's a reasonable amount of money I could certainly pay if I had the option of doing so privately. I don't want to have my viewing history associated with my account, I don't want to log into my Google account and have it remember my searches. Give me a way to pay for the service without my subsequent use being tracked and data mined, and I'd be happy to pay.

fzzzy 3y ago

It's $14 month now. It's still worth paying for.

supermatt 3y ago

I have no intention of ever giving YouTube money. A multi billion dollar company basically treated it as a loss leader for over a decade to eradicate the competition, and now they have “won” they want to squeeze users as much as they can. Resources are cheaper and yet they now show more ads per video than ever. No doubt they are trying to position YouTube so it can survive on its own going forward now the regulatory bodies have awoken. I have no intention of supporting that. FYI, I use adnauseum and don’t seem to get served ads on YouTube on my desktop where it is installed. I don’t choose to “block” ads on YouTube, so I guess they just aren’t serving them to adnauseum users.

ForOldHack 3y ago
Basically, you have elucidated their entire revenue model. Those exact words came out of some executives orifices, and like you I would not give them the better part of a millionth of a cent. I recently had a site owned by the theme plug in. (They were using word press? What are they stupid? ) chrome edge and others had problems. Firefox/nightly with a hosts file and ublock origin? Nothing. I cannot remember the last time saw a youtube ad. Kudos for everyone that got this to work.
naikrovek 3y ago
> treated it as a loss leader for over a decade to eradicate the competition, and now they have “won” they want to squeeze users as much as they can every silicon valley startup ever has this same plan of attack, and no one bats an eye. it's kind of like a long-term bait-and-switch. that's just how these things work, apparently. sadly.
- stemlord 3y ago
  Yes the entirety of web2.0 has been a bait & switch scheme. No one can actually afford to just serve the platform, ads don't generate enough leads to make up for the cost of running them, and the average person can't afford to pay a $5-10 subscription for each web service they have grown accustomed to using every day.
  - 3y ago

atombender 3y ago

It's more than a few dollars. It's not an expense that makes sense to everyone. Anecdotally: I use YouTube very rarely. I follow a couple of channels that post new episodes now and then. And sometimes I need to study some DIY technique, or someone sends me a link to something they thought was funny or interesting; basically my use is random and mostly utility-driven, and certainly not fueled by me endlessly trawling YT for entertainment. So for me, the ads are super annoying because they steal time away from me when I need to access some random video, and ad-to-video ratio is rather huge. But since I'm a light user, it will never make sense to pay for it. In fact, I often close down a video when I'm met with an ad, because it's just not important enough. For me, the ads kill the potential spontaneous joy that could be had from a short video. Many people do pay for YT, and I don't really understand the attraction unless you're a parent with kids. But everyone is different.

coffeefirst 3y ago
Same. I would gladly pay for adfree, but the price is hard to justify for infrequent casual users. They should introduce a lower tier with a usage limit. Say $5/mo for the first 50 videos being adfree.
- hahn-kev 3y ago
  So how much would you pay per video to not have an ad?

gentleman11 3y ago

YouTube wiped out part of the music industry by hosting so much illegitimate music and had either zero or almost zero ads for most of its history until it’s monopoly was complete. Now that it’s captured almost 100% of online video content, it’s pulling a bait and switch and pretending to be copyright friendly while bombarding it’s captured audience with ads who have nowhere else to go. They don’t deserve a penny from any of us And anyway, the videos themselves are ads and contain sponsored and affiliate content anyway, the tracking is intense, etc. you don’t get much value from your subscription

IronRod 3y ago
Yep #enshitification engaged.

josephcsible 3y ago

This is the worst time to replace your ad blocker with YouTube Premium, because by doing so, you're rewarding their bad behavior.

Astronaut3315 3y ago
I agree, which is why I cancelled my Premium subscription when all this started. I’m not interested in paying Google to degrade the viewing experience for everyone else.

s3p 3y ago

"a few dollars"

hunters_laptop 3y ago

[dead]

callmeal 3y ago

>Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Yes, because like anything google, pretty soon the few dollars you pay per month to make ads go away will mean "pay to see fewer ads". Exactly like what happened to cable and subscription services.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Most of us pay for a lot of services like netflix, spotify, etc. We are ok with paying, but not: - giving money to a user hostile company with a terrible moral track record - giving money to keep being tracked anyway - having to log in with a google account that can be locked down any time with no given reason, and will take over your entire android phone even from a single app - being served ads from other unrelated services using data collected from google service we paid for

OOPMan 3y ago

Yes, it is worth my time. Ads are cancer. If you can't find some other less toxic way to support your business then it should die. FYI, I pay for plenty of other streaming services. I just don't feel YouTube is worth it. The content creators are worth it, YouTube itself is not.

deleted 3y ago

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Marsymars 3y ago

> A lot of tech people will probably earn that money in a few minutes. Is it really worth investing your own time to remove ads? Well, my anecdote: I'm a tech worker, but I make some multiples lower compensation than SV comp. I'm pretty frugal, but my household budget is still pretty tight. I can't pick up OT shifts at my job or easily transform my free time into money at a worthwhile hourly rate - and if I could, any additional money I'd make would be taxed at a relatively high marginal rate. To widen the gap between my income and expenses, it tends to be more time-effective to reduce my expenses by avoiding paying for services where I can do the work myself. Every dollar I save on expenses is a dollar that either a) goes into tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts, b) pays down my mortgage, or c) pays for self-investment, e.g. home insulation upgrades. (Once I run out of those options for my money, it will affect the marginal value of my time, but I'm some decades off still.)

icehawk 3y ago

I want to do the opposite of supporting google, so yes it its.