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> 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 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.
    - realusername 3y ago
      They make 11B$ from the premium subcription with only 80 millions suscribers whereas they make around 30B$ from the ads from the rest of the 2.6 billions users. The pricing of the premium subscription is absolutely insane, they get peanuts from each users from the ads compared to that.
      - wombat-man 3y ago
        That is surprising! I read somewhere that advertisers are paying $.1 to $.5 per impression, which seems like it would add up pretty quickly over a month. I still think if you are a high value target for advertisers, it’s a probably a worse deal for YouTube if you’re on premium.
  - acomjean 3y ago
    It’s a little pricy. But it’s a bundle with YouTube music which is better than I expected. I think the payments to creators are a little greater because of that. It’s also a little bit moot because YouTube creators often in-line their own ads so they can’t be skipped…
    - eddyg 3y ago
      For the latter there’s the open-source SponsorBlock: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- linuxandrew 3y ago
  Is it really cheating though? My computer, my rules. Copyright effectively gives YT an arguably illegitimate monopoly status on a lot of content which hasn't been uploaded elsewhere. Compared to, say, "modern" Usenet where files are distributed and users choose their provider. Ads are trash and I'm somewhat willing to pay, but not on the Google terms that takes away my privacy and right to run FOSS.
  - meatjuice 3y ago
    > My computer, my rules. YouTube server's not running on your computer.
    - linuxandrew 3y ago
      > YouTube server's not running on your computer. The client is, my browser is, and the ads that I suppose they want me to watch would be displayed through my computer.
      - cfiggers 3y ago
        You totally have the right to not watch the ads, because you're right, it is your computer and you get to decide what is done with it. But if that's the choice you prefer to make, then the objectively more ethical thing to do is to not watch the video content either.
        falseprofit 3y ago
        Would it be ok for me to manually mute the ad and spend the 20 seconds on a bit of breath work? I'd hate to do wrong by the monopoly...
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        lol, this here is the right attitude. For some reason people have misconstrued ones responsibilities towards ones neighbors with ones responsibilities towards multi-billion dollar companies. copying isn't theft, convincing people it is theft is tantamount to the scam that caused people to believe diamond rings were a part of marriage proposals. It's no more unethical to refuse to play specific content on a device you own than it is to refuse to purchase a diamond ring when proposing marriage.
- otteromkram 3y ago
  Don't back off from your original point, friend. It made complete sense. The person replying to you probably wouldn't work for free or "exposure," would they?
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  I wouldn't mind paying but I refuse to pay to give them my data and mass-disseminate that for that pleasure. Once they have no access to it and its a black-box they stop obsessing about, we'll talk.
  - acdha 3y ago
    They still get your data as long as you use the service – and by using it you’re telling the creators and anyone you share links with that they need to keep giving Google their data, too, because that’s where everyone else is. Fighting this requires privacy legislation and not using YouTube.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      How 'bout their choices are: 1) no money + they get data 2) money + they get no data 3) no money + no data (me ;) Choose one. Non-negotiable. Seriously. Gatekeep or pretend like you have any jurisdiction or power all you like while I sidle by on option 3) Sighyanara
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Then they need to fix that. That's the future. This is not a negotiation and consequently, I'm amused by the tenor of this topic and the various threads that try to shift the Overton window as if that is or will remain the case
      - acdha 3y ago
        No, it’s not a negotiation. They’re going to keep tracking you and blocking ad blocker users. What I don’t understand is how anyone can care about that and think they should be putting their time and energy into cementing YouTube’s market share rather than voting with their feet.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        odd you make that claim considering my adblock successfully removes ads from youtube's service.
- gentleman11 3y ago
  YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators hosted by YouTube. If they put their content elsewhere, it will disappear and never be seen. YouTube is the tax people are being made to pay in order to have their videos seen or to see videos now, not some great provider
  - guiambros 3y ago
    > YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators... Exactly! Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content? And why do you think they willingly upload the content to <insert here your streaming platform of choice -- YouTube, Twitch, Nebula, etc>? Putting YouTube aside -- there's basically three options for the future of content: 1) we pay for content 2) somebody else pays for it (like advertisers), in exchange for something they need (e.g. visibility, ability to sell you products) 3) you freeload folks in #1 and #2 for as long as you can get away with, until you become the majority, and things start crumbling apart (creators stop producing, paywalls create a caste-like system, etc).
    - rollcat 3y ago
      > Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content? People will continue to make and share videos regardless of whether they get paid for it. There are countless channels that have less than 1k subscribers (Google's threshold to pay you anything at all), that upload semi-regularly and often have interesting content. (I subscribe to those via RSS, just to make sure I don't miss an upload.) People made content long before YouTube was able to pay anyone anything at all. People make their videos even though YouTube basically guarantees them nothing in terms of promoting/driving traffic (btw even if you have a million subscribers, you have to continue to game the algorithm, please remember to upvote this comment!). Even after that, your payout is a cut of Google's ad/premium income, not "pay per view". Finally, people make sponsored content, set up tip jars, sell merch, etc because ads alone can't fully support a high-effort channel. More importantly, YouTube has been generating losses for a heck of a long time (including after being acquired), which again - considering that it is a de facto public service, makes me think that it should've been publicly funded. (By whom? Excellent question. Maybe tax some of those billionaires who poured VC money to kickstart it.)
- zarzavat 3y ago
  YouTube isn’t a service. YouTube is a website. The fundamental principle behind the WWW is everybody is free to point their user agent at a public website. Google wouldn’t exist without that principle, they built their empire based on having a crawler download everybody’s websites. If YouTube wants to put a paywall up then fine, but until then I’m going to keep using my user agent which includes an ad blocker. I didn’t turn the adblocker on specifically for YouTube and I’m not going to turn it off for YouTube.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I'm failing to understand the difference between a website and a service. Are you saying that all modern SaaS offerings are just websites? Can you give some examples of a "service?"
fma 3y ago
Until it's publicly funded, it needs to be funded somehow. People who don't pay and block ads are scamming YouTube, or scamming advertisers.
- Y_Y 3y ago
  Won't somebody _please_ think of the advertisers!?
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    lol, do as you like. But this attitude that we are somehow owed a service like youtube for free without ads is comical.
    - gnz11 3y ago
      Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that the adtech industry is just serving up harmless banner ads or 30 second videos and calling it a day. Seeing an ad is one thing, the surveillance that comes with it is a whole new insidious beast. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
      - wombat-man 3y ago
        Sure, maybe we shouldn't be using YouTube at all. And I would prefer if we had more legal protections for user data in the US. But that aside, the sheer size and quality of YouTube. It's availability on every phone tv or whatever. This doesn't just happen magically.
        gentleman11 3y ago
        You’re right. It’s not magic at all. It happens via monopoly and network effects
        dahart 3y ago
        > This doesn’t happen magically. Correct! It happened by offering a completely free service with no advertising, in order to become the dominant player and eliminate all the competition, some of which was trying to use more sustainable business models. The idea that YouTube should be free also didn’t happen magically, it was (and still is) intentionally fostered.
otteromkram 3y ago
Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it? Do you want to work for free?
- creata 3y ago
  > Do you want to work for free? If I "[worked] for free", I'd be giving away hours of my time. When Google "[gives me] content for free", they're losing fractions of fractions of a cent in bandwidth. This is a shitty equivalence.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Convenient to forget the video creators.
- rollcat 3y ago
  I work for free every time I contribute to an open source project, and I directly donate to content creators I enjoy watching, so you'll have to come up with a better argument.
- psychoslave 3y ago
  >Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it? What about the first language you acquired? I hope you pay a per use perpetual fee for every sentence popping in your mind in its expression space, and that your license to use it also includes an obligation of permanent report of every single bit of intimacy that you might experiment.
JCharante 3y ago
> Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising? I think they should pay their fair share and not expect us to give them stuff for free
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  The 'Us' that want 'that'? Crap! I thought I was a part of a different 'us'. Or is this a different 'us' to the one i first thought?
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
I can tell you've never actually been poor, you image what they're worried about is "participating in popular culture". That's the middle-class concern of children who have never known what it's like to go hungry. Of all the things to push for being publicly funded, this aint it. How about daily medical and dental? How about insurance for vehicles so the poor don't get unduly punished? I could go on and on, your perspective is just out of touch.

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.
  - realusername 3y ago
    They make 11B$ from the premium subcription with only 80 millions suscribers whereas they make around 30B$ from the ads from the rest of the 2.6 billions users. The pricing of the premium subscription is absolutely insane, they get peanuts from each users from the ads compared to that.
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      That is surprising! I read somewhere that advertisers are paying $.1 to $.5 per impression, which seems like it would add up pretty quickly over a month. I still think if you are a high value target for advertisers, it’s a probably a worse deal for YouTube if you’re on premium.
- acomjean 3y ago
  It’s a little pricy. But it’s a bundle with YouTube music which is better than I expected. I think the payments to creators are a little greater because of that. It’s also a little bit moot because YouTube creators often in-line their own ads so they can’t be skipped…
  - eddyg 3y ago
    For the latter there’s the open-source SponsorBlock: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
linuxandrew 3y ago
Is it really cheating though? My computer, my rules. Copyright effectively gives YT an arguably illegitimate monopoly status on a lot of content which hasn't been uploaded elsewhere. Compared to, say, "modern" Usenet where files are distributed and users choose their provider. Ads are trash and I'm somewhat willing to pay, but not on the Google terms that takes away my privacy and right to run FOSS.
- meatjuice 3y ago
  > My computer, my rules. YouTube server's not running on your computer.
  - linuxandrew 3y ago
    > YouTube server's not running on your computer. The client is, my browser is, and the ads that I suppose they want me to watch would be displayed through my computer.
    - cfiggers 3y ago
      You totally have the right to not watch the ads, because you're right, it is your computer and you get to decide what is done with it. But if that's the choice you prefer to make, then the objectively more ethical thing to do is to not watch the video content either.
      - falseprofit 3y ago
        Would it be ok for me to manually mute the ad and spend the 20 seconds on a bit of breath work? I'd hate to do wrong by the monopoly...
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        lol, this here is the right attitude. For some reason people have misconstrued ones responsibilities towards ones neighbors with ones responsibilities towards multi-billion dollar companies. copying isn't theft, convincing people it is theft is tantamount to the scam that caused people to believe diamond rings were a part of marriage proposals. It's no more unethical to refuse to play specific content on a device you own than it is to refuse to purchase a diamond ring when proposing marriage.
otteromkram 3y ago
Don't back off from your original point, friend. It made complete sense. The person replying to you probably wouldn't work for free or "exposure," would they?
Obscurity4340 3y ago
I wouldn't mind paying but I refuse to pay to give them my data and mass-disseminate that for that pleasure. Once they have no access to it and its a black-box they stop obsessing about, we'll talk.
- acdha 3y ago
  They still get your data as long as you use the service – and by using it you’re telling the creators and anyone you share links with that they need to keep giving Google their data, too, because that’s where everyone else is. Fighting this requires privacy legislation and not using YouTube.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    How 'bout their choices are: 1) no money + they get data 2) money + they get no data 3) no money + no data (me ;) Choose one. Non-negotiable. Seriously. Gatekeep or pretend like you have any jurisdiction or power all you like while I sidle by on option 3) Sighyanara
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Then they need to fix that. That's the future. This is not a negotiation and consequently, I'm amused by the tenor of this topic and the various threads that try to shift the Overton window as if that is or will remain the case
    - acdha 3y ago
      No, it’s not a negotiation. They’re going to keep tracking you and blocking ad blocker users. What I don’t understand is how anyone can care about that and think they should be putting their time and energy into cementing YouTube’s market share rather than voting with their feet.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        odd you make that claim considering my adblock successfully removes ads from youtube's service.
gentleman11 3y ago
YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators hosted by YouTube. If they put their content elsewhere, it will disappear and never be seen. YouTube is the tax people are being made to pay in order to have their videos seen or to see videos now, not some great provider
- guiambros 3y ago
  > YouTube is a service provided by millions of content creators... Exactly! Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content? And why do you think they willingly upload the content to <insert here your streaming platform of choice -- YouTube, Twitch, Nebula, etc>? Putting YouTube aside -- there's basically three options for the future of content: 1) we pay for content 2) somebody else pays for it (like advertisers), in exchange for something they need (e.g. visibility, ability to sell you products) 3) you freeload folks in #1 and #2 for as long as you can get away with, until you become the majority, and things start crumbling apart (creators stop producing, paywalls create a caste-like system, etc).
  - rollcat 3y ago
    > Now, how do you think these millions of content creators get paid for their content? People will continue to make and share videos regardless of whether they get paid for it. There are countless channels that have less than 1k subscribers (Google's threshold to pay you anything at all), that upload semi-regularly and often have interesting content. (I subscribe to those via RSS, just to make sure I don't miss an upload.) People made content long before YouTube was able to pay anyone anything at all. People make their videos even though YouTube basically guarantees them nothing in terms of promoting/driving traffic (btw even if you have a million subscribers, you have to continue to game the algorithm, please remember to upvote this comment!). Even after that, your payout is a cut of Google's ad/premium income, not "pay per view". Finally, people make sponsored content, set up tip jars, sell merch, etc because ads alone can't fully support a high-effort channel. More importantly, YouTube has been generating losses for a heck of a long time (including after being acquired), which again - considering that it is a de facto public service, makes me think that it should've been publicly funded. (By whom? Excellent question. Maybe tax some of those billionaires who poured VC money to kickstart it.)
zarzavat 3y ago
YouTube isn’t a service. YouTube is a website. The fundamental principle behind the WWW is everybody is free to point their user agent at a public website. Google wouldn’t exist without that principle, they built their empire based on having a crawler download everybody’s websites. If YouTube wants to put a paywall up then fine, but until then I’m going to keep using my user agent which includes an ad blocker. I didn’t turn the adblocker on specifically for YouTube and I’m not going to turn it off for YouTube.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm failing to understand the difference between a website and a service. Are you saying that all modern SaaS offerings are just websites? Can you give some examples of a "service?"

fma 3y ago

Until it's publicly funded, it needs to be funded somehow. People who don't pay and block ads are scamming YouTube, or scamming advertisers.

Y_Y 3y ago
Won't somebody _please_ think of the advertisers!?
- wombat-man 3y ago
  lol, do as you like. But this attitude that we are somehow owed a service like youtube for free without ads is comical.
  - gnz11 3y ago
    Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that the adtech industry is just serving up harmless banner ads or 30 second videos and calling it a day. Seeing an ad is one thing, the surveillance that comes with it is a whole new insidious beast. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      Sure, maybe we shouldn't be using YouTube at all. And I would prefer if we had more legal protections for user data in the US. But that aside, the sheer size and quality of YouTube. It's availability on every phone tv or whatever. This doesn't just happen magically.
      - gentleman11 3y ago
        You’re right. It’s not magic at all. It happens via monopoly and network effects
      - dahart 3y ago
        > This doesn’t happen magically. Correct! It happened by offering a completely free service with no advertising, in order to become the dominant player and eliminate all the competition, some of which was trying to use more sustainable business models. The idea that YouTube should be free also didn’t happen magically, it was (and still is) intentionally fostered.

otteromkram 3y ago

Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it? Do you want to work for free?

creata 3y ago
> Do you want to work for free? If I "[worked] for free", I'd be giving away hours of my time. When Google "[gives me] content for free", they're losing fractions of fractions of a cent in bandwidth. This is a shitty equivalence.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Convenient to forget the video creators.
rollcat 3y ago
I work for free every time I contribute to an open source project, and I directly donate to content creators I enjoy watching, so you'll have to come up with a better argument.
psychoslave 3y ago
>Why should you get content for free if you aren't able or willing to pay for it? What about the first language you acquired? I hope you pay a per use perpetual fee for every sentence popping in your mind in its expression space, and that your license to use it also includes an obligation of permanent report of every single bit of intimacy that you might experiment.

JCharante 3y ago

> Are they now to be excluded from participating in popular culture, if they do not wish to be subjected to obnoxious advertising? I think they should pay their fair share and not expect us to give them stuff for free

InCityDreams 3y ago
The 'Us' that want 'that'? Crap! I thought I was a part of a different 'us'. Or is this a different 'us' to the one i first thought?

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

I can tell you've never actually been poor, you image what they're worried about is "participating in popular culture". That's the middle-class concern of children who have never known what it's like to go hungry. Of all the things to push for being publicly funded, this aint it. How about daily medical and dental? How about insurance for vehicles so the poor don't get unduly punished? I could go on and on, your perspective is just out of touch.