6 ms·

what i’m reading from these comments: we will do anything, including leaving youtube, but for sure we will not be either watching ads or paying for content.

• Barrin92 3y ago
  in due time you'll be paying both for content and watch ads, as is the norm now on more and more platforms. It's an absolute category error to think you can haggle with for profit corporations worth trillions about when they've extracted enough value from you. You ever hear the one about the missionary who tried to negotiate with the tiger? He told the tiger he could eat most of him, but he had to stop when he got to his head
• 000ooo000 3y ago
  I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I agree that if you use a service, paying for it so it can continue to be enjoyed by all makes sense. On the other, I'm not sure there's a tech company fighting against my interests as a regular person harder than Google is, and I don't really want to give them money out of principle. Maybe there's some hyperbole in that last sentence but hopefully my point is made at least.
  • autoexec 3y ago
    Depending on your age you've either been paying for the service that is youtube with your data and content for your entire life or for at least as long as Youtube has existed. Please don't waste any time feeling bad about Google not getting what they're owed. Trust me, at this point they owe you. The story is a bit different when it comes to the creators themselves who would get money from those ads. They offer their videos for free, and you have no obligation to support them monetarily, but if there is a youtuber whose content you really want to support there is probably some means already to pay them directly without giving anything to Google.
• rpgwaiter 3y ago
  They came first for the non-paid viewers, and I didn't speak up because I pay for Premium... (Point being people paying for premium are also mad at these tactics)
• Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Spoken like someone from the universe where paid services do not still show ads and engage in countless other user-hostile behavior.
  • kmlx 3y ago
    does anyone know of any services that do this?
    • paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Paid services that still show ads? Cable, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, etc.
      • callalex 3y ago
        YouTube as well, from the end-user perspective. I understand that there is a distinction between sponsor segments and preroll/midroll ads, but at the end of the day it’s all ads and paying for YouTube doesn’t get rid of all the ads.
        • acdha 3y ago
          That’s due to ad blocking: it doesn’t make creators not want to make rent, it just means more ads in the content and things like sponsor products being woven into the content. Worse for everyone but people are going to chase money if their income declines.
      • kmlx 3y ago
        i never got any ads on netflix, disney+, prime video or youtube premium.
        • Brian_K_White 3y ago
          Incorrect.
• davedx 3y ago
  The problem is, how these things sometimes go is: you are fed up of ads so you start paying them. Then a year or two later you get ads as a paying user too. There’s a long history of paid products doing this. Look at Windows, Smart TVs, etc…
  • piva00 3y ago
    In my case I was fed up with ads and subscribed to the YouTube Premium Lite offering 2 years ago, in September I got an email with: > Thank you for being one of our first Premium Lite members. > We’re writing to let you know that after October 25, 2023, we will no longer offer your version of Premium Lite. And so I refused to be nudged into a more expensive subscription, YT didn't give me any more information why that subscription wasn't being offered so fuck them, I will use ad blockers for as long as they work.
  • coldpie 3y ago
    I've been a paying YouTube user since it was called YouTube Red (remember that? lol) in 2014 and they haven't shown any sign of introducing ads. So that's almost a decade, versus your "year or two".
  • dncornholio 3y ago
    Then stop paying in 2 years, meanwhile you will have ad free videos. Problem solved.
• mschuster91 3y ago
  > but for sure we will not be either watching ads or paying for content. The quality and quantity of ads is the problem. Getting blasted with Uber Eats ads all the time (I had a two week streak on my tablet for this crap) without any ability to tell Youtube that, no fuck no I will never eat at Uber Eats and their jingle is annoying the fuck out of me, absolutely sucks. And no I don't want to be interrupted every five minutes with an ad break that completely breaks the flow of the video, and especially not right after coming out of a 2 minute "sponsor" block shilling NordVPN, Athletic fucking Greens, Aura or AirUp. In contrast, regular TV ads are at least placed in joint blocks that leave you enough time to go to a loo and then have 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted video. Oh, and there also won't be low-quality ads for Evony or whatever other free-to-play whale hunter games on TV either.
• Lio 3y ago
  I don't wish to be tracked by Google. If I paid for YouTube Premium then I voluntarily provide even more tracking data to Google. If they offered an ad free tier where you weren't tracked then I would pay for it. Since Google don't respect people's right to privacy or to watch content ad free I don't pay them and instead use ad blockers locally and pay for a proxy server with ad blocking DNS.
  • acdha 3y ago
    If you don’t want to be tracked, you have to stop using YouTube. Your ad blocker does nothing to prevent tracking - Google can see what you’re doing because it’s their servers. It only helps on other third-party sites.
• Moldoteck 3y ago
  i pay for premium. But funny thing, this will not disable the tracking, so I still use the ublock. I've also had problems when visiting my parents in another country and background play was blocked bc yt premium was not available there, even if i was a paying customer. At that time I was using yt in firefox mobile with background play. I also still get sponsored ads and need to use the sponsorblock extension, that does not work for yt mobile app. In other words paying premium solves a small subset of problems and gives a worse experience compared to ppl that use ublock+sponsorblock in the browser
  • acdha 3y ago
    uBlock does not prevent tracking. The only way to keep Google from tracking you is to stop connecting to Google’s servers.
    • Moldoteck 3y ago
      It prevents some of it, better than nothing
      • acdha 3y ago
        It doesn’t prevent Google from tracking you in any way. The most you could say is that if YouTube is loading third-party ad network it’ll prevent those services from tracking you, but that’s not especially useful when Google can resell your data to the same company.
        • Moldoteck 3y ago
          if it doesn't prevent, why it includes trackers that are blocked in this case? Not including them is easier than including & maintaining, no?
• bowsamic 3y ago
  I have no shame for my selfishness in this case
• kibwen 3y ago
  Watching ads is like going to the bathroom without washing your hands after. It's simply bad hygiene, and future generations will hopefully look back with disgust at how putrid our current society is for allowing our minds to be polluted for thousandths of a penny.
  • BenjiWiebe 3y ago
    I don't even get thousandths of a penny for viewing ads - someone else does.
    • paulryanrogers 3y ago
      You didn't have to pay, or paid less, for storage in the nearest POP and bandwidth -- in exchange for viewing as ads.
• prawn 3y ago
  I can appreciate your point, but there's a broad history of paid services introducing ads, ads getting longer and more abrasive, content people having paid for being disappeared at the whim of the network, algorithms dictating how people are introduced to content or pushed to keep using an app, etc. I don't have much trust that many services do the right thing for subscribers. A few services I pay for (Spotify, Xero, etc) seem to lock a user in and then push up pricing while adding functionality I have no need for. Not to mention the split of content across an increasing number of networks. Having to juggle 5-8 paid streaming services, to watch a few 90s films that feel like they should be on all of them, seems rough to me.
  • tensor 3y ago
    I don't see how any of that is an excuse not to pay for youtube. If there is no ad-free version and no alternative products then I get blocking ads, I do too. But when I'm given an option to pay to remove ads, I generally pay. For websites that give me a popup saying disable adblock or no content, I immediately hit the back button and let them rot in no-view hell.
• autoexec 3y ago
  There's zero reason to think that people who are unwilling to sit through ads are also unwilling to pay for content. Many people pay content creators directly. They send donations. They buy merch. They even pay for useless shit like emojis just to show their support publicly. People simply want to choose which creators they support, when, and how, which is entirely their right
  • carlosjobim 3y ago
    Should that be their right? If somebody is watching a ton of Vincent's videos, but chooses to send donations to Clara that he watches much less, is that fair?
    • autoexec 3y ago
      Vincent and Clara's videos are offered for free and there is zero obligation for anyone to pay either of them anything whether it be money, time, attention, or engagement. If someone who spends less of their time watching Clara's videos chooses to support Clara because they value her content more than Vincent's, or because they feel like Clara needs the money more than Vincent does, or for any other reason that's entirely up to them. Similarly, it doesn't matter how many of my comments here on HN you read, you don't owe me upvotes, or responses, or donations although I might certainly appreciate them
      • tredre3 3y ago
        And, likewise, Youtube is free to send the bytes to only the people they want. If they don't want to serve video data to people who use adblocks, it's their right. You are then free to try to work around it, the same way Youtube is trying to work around your adblocker.
        • autoexec 3y ago
          I'd agree with that, although that doesn't make both activities equivalent either. Google is being increasingly obnoxious and user-hostile in an effort to get people to pay Google money to stop harassing them and wasting their time by delaying and interrupting the free content they requested with repeated attempts at manipulation, while the people who block ads are just trying to avoid Google's unwanted (and at times harmful) behavior.