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I just pay for Premium instead of grifting. Planetary-scale server farms and video hosting is not free.
by xvector 3y ago
I just pay for Premium instead of grifting. Planetary-scale server farms and video hosting is not free.
- oaththrowaway 3y agoThey harvest everything I do online without my consent or permission without paying me. Fair is fair
- dangus 3y agoYou consented by using the service. You don’t have to use YouTube.
- oaththrowaway 3y agoI don't consent on every other site that uses google analytics? And last time I checked, consent isn't implied.
- recursive 3y agoDisable third party cookies.
- oaththrowaway 3y agoBut then Google won't know everything about me so that would be immoral of me to do
- recursive 3y agoIf that's what you believe, then I'm not sure what the original problem was.
- oaththrowaway 3y ago/s
- recursive 3y agoOk, then disable third party cookies, unironically.
- Sebb767 3y agoYou are free to use an adblocker. But it's completely fair for Google to refuse their services if you do.
- LegibleCrimson 3y agoThen they should. They are perfectly capable of actually making YouTube unusable without watching ads. When they actually force me, I'm perfectly happy to mute my TV during ads and do something else, which is the exact same moral area as blocking ads.
- oaththrowaway 3y ago> Drink verification can
- dangus 3y agoGoogle analytics isn’t relevant to this subject.
- jraph 3y agoIt's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere. Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules. Nobody asked them to kill their competitors. Besides, I'm not really concerned for them. It's not like they are struggling.
- Sebb767 3y ago> It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere. Yes, but these things are far from essential. Most of YouTube is entertainment, which is as fungible as it gets, and what isn't (for example repair tutorials) can usually be solved by buying repair guides or hiring professionals. There are alternatives. You might not like them, but they exist. > Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules. This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free". > Nobody asked them to kill their competitors. YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source.
- spaceribs 3y ago> YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source. This is like saying Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on the PC market in the 90s because Apple had 5% of the market. They only feel comfortable designing serious limitations in MV3 because chrome owns 90% of the browser landscape. > This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free". This is not absurd, they got to where they wanted through massive investor led subsidies and buying out their admittedly better competitor (remember google video?) What they performed on the on-demand video market was a form of predatory dumping, and when all the competition was gone they used that position as well as other positions to extract "value" and cash out. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatorydumping.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatorydumping.asp
- dangus 3y agoOnly if we ignore facts. Chrome only has a 64% market share, not 90%. Nobody has ever dominated a consumer tech market in the same way that Microsoft dominated the 90s. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/ https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/ On top of that, YouTube is only one choice of many for user created videos. Sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all top 20 sites that host user created videos. A number of YouTube creators mirror their content to Nebula and other creator platforms. Twitch is yet another alternative and is likely more popular than YouTube’s live feature. We also have to count every streaming video service from the legacy media companies and Netflix/Amazon/Apple as competition as well. In the 90s you couldn’t complete basic computing tasks without Internet Explorer and Office. Even while fully admitting to YouTube’s relative dominance of its niche, the situation is not the same.
- isaacremuant 3y agoYouTube is a service that competes unethically with others and censors wildly to further its political interests. Some of us control our computers, instead of letting every third party do it.
- scotty79 3y agoNo, I did not. The fact that somebody somewhere wrote "You consent to ...." doesn't mean I actually consented.
- dangus 3y agoIf you went to the site and continued to use it, you consented. That’s how EULAs work. Your consent was given by the fact that you directed your browser to interact with the service continually, if that’s something that you did. You can’t say you didn’t consent to be searched if you walked into an airport. You can’t say you didn’t consent to be splashed with water if you got on the log flume ride. Your own ignorance or disagreement with the fact that you can get searched at an airport or wet on a lot flume ride isn’t really an excuse.
- scotty79 3y agoEULA is just a wishlist of a service or software provider. Nothing more unless it's upheld in court. And sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't: https://superuser.com/questions/30940/is-an-eula-enforceable#30959 https://superuser.com/questions/30940/is-an-eula-enforceable... Comparison to real world situations when the trigger is physical presence are not a good example exactly because they require physical presence, something unachievable in the virtual world of software and internet.
- rockskon 3y agoI have no sympathy for a company that operated at a loss for enough years to price out competitors to the point it was the only real game in town. You kill competitors and now want to dictate the price (including attention) everyone pays to see user-generated content? Yeah no. Got zero sympathy. None. You do not command my attention - a resource I am less and less willing to pay with these days. If that results in YouTube becoming unsustainable and collapsing and something more sustainable emerging charging a price consumers are willing to pay? Well then that sounds acceptable.
- Jensson 3y agoThat has almost no value to them unless they can use that to show you ads. They use that data to target ads to you, that is the whole point. Do you think they care about what you do or who you are for any other reason?
- oaththrowaway 3y agoIf it has no value then why don't they stop?
- Jensson 3y agoBecause they show ads to people. Do you think they should stop collecting your data just because you block their ads? I don't see why that would make any sense, they have no reason to incentivize ad block use.
- oaththrowaway 3y agoBut even if I pay them, they still collect my data. I lose either way. I'll pick the way that is better for me in that situation
- Jensson 3y agoBut that isn't a fair trade, you argued that your data is worth enough to them that you should be allowed to use their server resources without anything extra from you. But that isn't true, every user like you costs them much more money than they earn. In such a situation where one part pays for the other parts benefits, you should expect the part that just loses out to try to end the trade. And that is what we see happening here, youtube tries to block you since youtube doesn't want you as a user, since you lose them money.
- oaththrowaway 3y agoNo, you argued that my data wasn't worth anything. I argued that if it wasn't they wouldn't desperately try and get all my credit, medical, schooling, and browsing history. What they do is incredibly immoral and despicable. There is no opt-out (even if I pay them money). Even if I never use their services they still try to vacuum up all my data. Me watching a few YouTube videos a week is a better deal for them than it is for me.
- zeta0134 3y agoI do not have a moral obligation to waste my time on content B, merely because it has been delivered alongside content A. The advertiser paid to make that offer to be, but I am not obligated to pay it any mind. That I've instructed my computer to automatically reject such offers is no sin. For the record I do pay for premium, but that's because I want to support creators directly. I do that a lot actually; Patreon is great. But I block ads anyway, everywhere I go. There is no moral argument you can make that will convince me to actually watch ads. If companies want to stop making stuff available for free because advertising is not a sustainable business model, good! Cut the marketing out. Let it die.
- Sebb767 3y ago> I do not have a moral obligation to waste my time on content B, merely because it has been delivered alongside content A. Of course you don't. But neither does Google have the obligation to serve you if you don't pay and don't watch ads.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoI pay a certain fee in the effort I have to go to in order to block scam content reaching my home network. Given that advertising platforms are one of the primary vectors of scam content these days, it's almost negligent to not block advertising.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Hikikomori 3y agoI happily paid for YouTube lite until they cancelled it.
- rainyMammoth 3y agofollowing your logic, people should actively engaged with ads if not they are grifting. Please tell me you work for google?
- Jensson 3y agoThey pay to display the ad. Think of a highway ad. If you sell a highway ad placement and then cover it with a big blanket (with maybe another ad on it) so nobody sees it, that would be a serious case of fraud. So if you tell them the ad has been displayed so you get the video, but no ad was displayed for you, then that is a form of fraud. I don't think that would hold in court since it is such a petty crime, but it is still fraud. You lie to their server so that you can see the video without ads, that is fraud.
- LegibleCrimson 3y agoAnd if I simply mute the ad and do something else until it's over? It's that still fraud? How about if I download the ad but don't watch it? Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative?
- Jensson 3y ago> Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative? Since you got paid for it. Youtube pays you by serving you content for those ads. Note that I also block ads. However, unlike you I don't try to tell myself that I am morally right when I do so, I know that it isn't a nice thing to do and that the content I consume when doing it is paid for by all the users who doesn't block ads. I am not sure why you try to argue that you are morally good when you block ads. Does that really matter to you? That is the most interesting part of this discussion to me, all the people who want to see themselves as good people even though they leech off others.
- LegibleCrimson 3y agoI consider pervasive advertisement a moral wrong. I don't have to tell myself anything to know that blocking ads is the ethical thing to do. They are already a moral perversion. Edit: I kind of consider it disgusting that watching a video is considered by anybody to be "payment", or that anybody legitimately believes it's somebody's duty to watch an advertisement. The worship of abusive corporations in our culture has gotten insane. You already aren't understanding us when you come in believing that we're convincing ourselves of anything. We actually do have an ethical and moral map that is consistent with blocking ads, and we don't consider not watching a commercial to be the same thing as theft, or even to be morally questionable.
- Boogie_Man 3y agoRequired default response to all of these comments calling me a criminal (that is the implication of grift, intended or not): I have and will never ever pay one red cent to any company to watch videos for the purpose of entertainment outside of specific creators making high quality content that I personally enjoy. You can not make me. I have zero (0) moral compunction on the subject. I will explore every legal avenue. Weep and gnash your teeth. If every other legal avenue is exhausted I will imagine new Top Cat episodes in my head. You cannot stop me.
- Jensson 3y agoIt being junk doesn't matter, if you like to watch it then it should be fair to pay for it. If you don't like to watch it then why do you even care what YouTube does, just don't watch.
- koolba 3y agoThey’re free to provide the service over a different channel than HTTP which restricts my ability to restrict their ads. My user agent works for me.
- crummy 3y agoDo you sneak into movie theaters?
- Boogie_Man 3y agoAs a kid I used to sit across from the drive in and watch. I also used to watch other people's TV's through their windows before I knew it was creepy.
- crummy 3y agosometimes I watch the movie in the person's seat diagonally in front of me while I'm on a plane :(
- sys_64738 3y agoMaybe not but I don’t watch ads from ad companies like GOOG.
- rchaud 3y agoI prefer to think of myself as grandfathered into the free plan.
- aftbit 3y agoI pay for Premium and use it on one PC, but I browse logged out (with ublock) on another PC. This gives me two (slightly) different views into what the Youtube algorithm wants me to see, based on what I happen to watch on each machine. I occasionally reset cookies on the logged out machine. I definitely avoid watching ads, except the non-national spots on local TV where I kinda like the local city flavor of the ads. Is that grifting? I dunno. The ads are still there in aggregate, I just won't give them my brain space. Give me a way to pay without being tracked and having my content streams tied to a single account, and I'm all over it instead of adblock.
- oska 3y agoConversely, 'grifting' is exactly what you should be doing if you want to undermine the current server farm supported by advertising business model. Videos don't need to be hosted on a server, they can be shared through peer to peer networks, which cost nothing.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoWhich is not something that could scale to Youtube’s levels. > nothing Except huge amounts of drive space and upload bandwidth. Considering most (to an overwhelming degree) people consume videos on phones, tablets or laptops with relatively tiny drives it’s not realistic. Maybe some decentralized system with content providers hosting themselves might work. However all that is irrelevant even if it were technically feasible because it doesn’t align with the incentives many/most content creators have (they actually want to be paid either through ads or subscriptions..)
- crimsontech 3y agoI used to pay for premium but I stopped just incase they thought ramming shorts and ‘people also watched” videos on me was the reason I was paying.