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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 compet

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.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    You realize that it’s not “just a few dollars” right? Where I live, it’s as much as a cable TV subscription without the cable TV. Second, the entire reason they have those insane costs is because they got rid of the competition. Doing this at smaller scales is not nearly as expensive per user.
code_duck 3y ago
So if there hadn’t been a giant company with ample resources to subsidize YouTube all that time, who could have built a comparable video service and how would it have survived? Wouldn’t that mean they would have had to squeeze viewers for money in the same way sooner?
- account42 3y ago
  Do we need a giant centralized video service? Wouldn't it be better to have smaller independent services which each can set their own moderation policies?
  - supermatt 3y ago
    Indeed. Splitting the “hosting” and “discovery” would be a much more market friendly way to do that.
- janandonly 3y ago
  This is faulty reasoning. Chocking all competitors in the crib does not mean there have not been competitors nor does it mean these platforms with superior UX could not still come to dominate. But having the size of YT means it’s very hard to lose. Personally, I wish platforms like peertube or bitchute would be much more know. But since YT is the place where everybody is watching it naturally follows that somebody new will post the video on YT first (and only) as well.
  - code_duck 3y ago
    I don’t think the question is about a superior UX. It’s who could afford to run a huge video platform without moving to monetize it and achieve profitability in the way that Google is doing now.
- handity 3y ago
  There is no mandate that YouTube must exist in its current state. YouTube serves two roles, one as a free service to host videos, one as a roulette machine that might pay out money if your "content" is favored by "the algorithm". A huge amount of videos on YouTube are created for their own sake, with no expectation of going viral or making money off them. PeerTube fulfills the "free video host" role while also being ad-free. I might be naive, but I believe this is how most people saw YouTube around 2012. The "seeking to make money on YouTube" role is artificially created as a result of a massive corporation running a loss-leader for a decade, dictating what content gets popular through recommendation algorithms, and literally paying people to encourage them to produce more of the desired addicting content. Who knows what would have happened if YouTube had not been bought out and been allowed to compete fairly with P2P technologies as they emerged.
_c3ag 3y ago
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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.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  You realize that it’s not “just a few dollars” right? Where I live, it’s as much as a cable TV subscription without the cable TV. Second, the entire reason they have those insane costs is because they got rid of the competition. Doing this at smaller scales is not nearly as expensive per user.

code_duck 3y ago

So if there hadn’t been a giant company with ample resources to subsidize YouTube all that time, who could have built a comparable video service and how would it have survived? Wouldn’t that mean they would have had to squeeze viewers for money in the same way sooner?

account42 3y ago
Do we need a giant centralized video service? Wouldn't it be better to have smaller independent services which each can set their own moderation policies?
- supermatt 3y ago
  Indeed. Splitting the “hosting” and “discovery” would be a much more market friendly way to do that.
janandonly 3y ago
This is faulty reasoning. Chocking all competitors in the crib does not mean there have not been competitors nor does it mean these platforms with superior UX could not still come to dominate. But having the size of YT means it’s very hard to lose. Personally, I wish platforms like peertube or bitchute would be much more know. But since YT is the place where everybody is watching it naturally follows that somebody new will post the video on YT first (and only) as well.
- code_duck 3y ago
  I don’t think the question is about a superior UX. It’s who could afford to run a huge video platform without moving to monetize it and achieve profitability in the way that Google is doing now.
handity 3y ago
There is no mandate that YouTube must exist in its current state. YouTube serves two roles, one as a free service to host videos, one as a roulette machine that might pay out money if your "content" is favored by "the algorithm". A huge amount of videos on YouTube are created for their own sake, with no expectation of going viral or making money off them. PeerTube fulfills the "free video host" role while also being ad-free. I might be naive, but I believe this is how most people saw YouTube around 2012. The "seeking to make money on YouTube" role is artificially created as a result of a massive corporation running a loss-leader for a decade, dictating what content gets popular through recommendation algorithms, and literally paying people to encourage them to produce more of the desired addicting content. Who knows what would have happened if YouTube had not been bought out and been allowed to compete fairly with P2P technologies as they emerged.

_c3ag 3y ago

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