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What does winning mean in this context? If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? Do you think Google is going to go to a model where

What does winning mean in this context? If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? Do you think Google is going to go to a model where things are freely accessible without ads? Feels like even when a company provides a way to get rid of ads, many people still won't pay. They _say_ they will, but I find often people will want to substitute their own terms (Well, youtube premium is $x, but I think it's only worth $y, so I'm going to just block ads completely).

jacquesm 3y ago
> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I can't speak for anybody else but my content will still get made. > Do you think Google is going to go to a model where things are freely accessible without ads? Maybe, maybe not, whose to say what Google will do. Maybe they will value the influence or the goodwill more than the lack of income. Maybe some of the content will be free and other bits will be walled off (effectively this is already the case with youtube music). Maybe there will be less MFY content and that's perfectly ok with me, 99.99% of it is crap anyway. Youtuber isn't a profession I recognize. > Feels like even when a company provides a way to get rid of ads, many people still won't pay. And that's ok. > They _say_ they will, but I find often people will want to substitute their own terms (Well, youtube premium is $x, but I think it's only worth $y, so I'm going to just block ads completely). Yes, or you pay and you still get ads...
- CubsFan1060 3y ago
  > I can't speak for anybody else but my content will still get made. How will your content get served? If you say you'll just pay to serve it, I think that's a fine answer.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    Unless you're a VERY large and successful YT channel, you aren't making bank on YT itself, it's merch and sponsorships, Patreon and so on that make the money. Monetized Twitch-like feeds are another winner, and again not dependent on YT monetization.
    - CubsFan1060 3y ago
      Aren't these all VERY tightly integrated? They can sell merch and sponsorships _because_ of YouTube in the first place?
      - bluefirebrand 3y ago
        The point is that many successful YouTubers wouldn't be broke if they stopped making ad revenue from YouTube, because they make most of their money elsewhere anyways. Which means they would continue making content
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      That does not answer the question. There is floatplane and Nebula, but beyond those where will be the content be hosted and will those revenue stream actually cover those hosting/development costs and running the site? And on other hand if users are paying you something, would they not expect not to have to watch through mediocre sponsorships?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    The 10 views my videos get I can afford. Just like I can afford my web hosting.
- bko 3y ago
  YouTube is incredibly expensive to run which explains why there's such little competition. Think about it, anyone can host gigs of videos perpetually indexed for free. What percentage of videos have fewer than 100 views? Google has killed off profitable projects. If you think they'll dump tens of billions every year hosting videos that no one watches, you're kidding yourself. And what we noticed with paying is that people are very unwilling to pay even a small amount for a service. For instance FB makes around over $50 per user in North America. What percentage of users do you think would pay $50 a year to use Facebook?
  - account42 3y ago
    > YouTube is incredibly expensive to run which explains why there's such little competition. So? That's their problem. > Google has killed off profitable projects. If you think they'll dump tens of billions every year hosting videos that no one watches, you're kidding yourself. Can't wait for YouTube to die. Hopefully the replacement will be less centralized and not beholden to a single american company. > And what we noticed with paying is that people are very unwilling to pay even a small amount for a service. Most "services" are not worth the effort needed to pay them, the amount doesn't even come into it. This is also a self-created issue. Google et al have trained people to not pay by dumping money into these "free" services to kill the competition. Now they are upset that people don't want to pay them? I can't find a violin tiny enough to express my compassion for them. > For instance FB makes around over $50 per user in North America. What percentage of users do you think would pay $50 a year to use Facebook? So? They make $0 off of me. I don't care how much they can or cannot make with ads, that doesn't make ads acceptable.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    > tens of billions every year hosting videos That seems way too high. There's something like half a trillion hours watched per year. Does it really cost almost $0.10 for an hour of video?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Youtube is hilarious, on the one hand they keep forcing autoplayed content on you and then they match that with a popup that inquires if you are still watching the video.
beeboobaa 3y ago
Because those companies are just taking the piss. They are like an abusive boyfriend that wants to know what you're up to all the time. They pretend you can pay them off so they won't have to stalk you, but the prices they ask are greatly exaggerated and exist solely to try and fool regulators. But if you're happy to pay whatever is asked of you, that'll be a 100 dollars thanks
- dageshi 3y ago
  Youtube premium is £12.99 / month or £19.99/month for a family plan. That really doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    To know whether that is unreasonable or not you'd have to compare it to the cost of providing you that service, taking into account that youtube is just a delivery mechanism and so is infrastructure, not content. And what is or is not affordable is really dependent on where you live and that kind of money is a very large amount in some places. And especially in those places access to youtube for educational purposes can be quite important.
    - dageshi 3y ago
      Youtube premium also pays out the content creators you watch in lieu of the ads you don't watch does it not? At least that was my understanding. If so it's not just the infrastructure cost which itself is not trivial for a site like youtube.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Infrastructure costs are such that they're a rounding error on the total google budget.
        tmtvl 3y ago
        With all respect, do you have a source for that? I thought Alphabet was losing money hand over fist on YT before they started being so aggressive with the ads.
simiones 3y ago
> They _say_ they will, but I find often people will want to substitute their own terms (Well, youtube premium is $x, but I think it's only worth $y, so I'm going to just block ads completely). That just means, by definition, that the prices YouTube are trying to charge are too high, doesn't it? What we're seeing is basically a negotiation tactic: you either reduce the price, or we'll keep using ad blockers. Not to mention, most creators don't really live off YouTube ads, those pay too little for the vast majority of channels as far as I understand. Creators live off their own sponsorships, Patreon etc. Note, I'm actually someone who thinks YouTube Premium is good value for my money and am already paying for it.
- dageshi 3y ago
  In this circumstance there isn't a price those people would be willing to pay. They simply want the service for free, refuse to pay but are unwilling to come out and say as much, so they use host of justifications to avoid it.
  - aeze 3y ago
    I think they are simply saying they’d rather not have the platform at all than pay for it. Which is fair.
- CubsFan1060 3y ago
  Maybe. I think "too high" is probably subjective to each person. But, I'm in the camp of "if it's too high, just stop using it". I think this isn't different than most things. If I think the price of electricity is too high, my option isn't to say "well, your price it too high, so I'm going to use electricity for free".
irrational 3y ago
This reminds me of a business colleague of mine who truly does not understand why anyone would write software and then release it for free. There are many people willing to do that, and many people willing to create content on YouTube for free. We aren’t all driven by the almighty dollar.
- CubsFan1060 3y ago
  I think that is totally fine. Serving it, of course, is not free. Content may not have been my best choice of words.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
guerrilla 3y ago
This has nothing to do with content. Patreon, non-profit and other models exist for this purpose.
jonathanstrange 3y ago
I personally prefer free content made by volunteers and would like the whole web to be ad free. It would be fine for me if Youtube stopped operations and if all "income-oriented" content producers went away. I feel the same about websites. The Internet was fine before it became commercialized. I'm both creating and consuming free content (why not?) but I'm not willing to waste my time on watching ads or anything like that. For other things, I'm willing to pay. Other people's mileage may differ, of course. It's just a personal preference.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  The people that create the content you consume only have so many hours in the day, just like you. They need to pay the rent, buy groceries, get their kids braces, just like the test of us. It seems immoral and unrealistic to expect that for free. Consume it and support them or don't consume it and don't support them but the attitude that you're entitled to it is a little slimy.
  - jonathanstrange 3y ago
    Huh? Why would it be immoral? I'm producing free content myself, e.g. my open source repositories have permissive licenses like MIT, I run a blog, have put some of my music online, etc. Seriously, chances are almost 100% percent that you are massively benefiting right now from completely free of charge software that some guys developed for free in their spare time (perhaps even decades ago) - how immoral of you!
    - dncornholio 3y ago
      What are these mental gymnastics? You're practically saying nobody is allowed to make money for their content because you don't. Where is the logic in this?
      - jonathanstrange 3y ago
        You misunderstood me entirely. People can sell their content for whatever price they like. For example, I sell my science fiction and fantasy novels although I could give them away for free. I also used to sell shareware in the past and plan to sell commercial, proprietary software in the future. People can freely decide whether they want to sell the content they've created or give it away for free. If it's the former, they should sell it, and if it's the latter, they should give it away for free. They just cannot and ought not rely on business models that restrict how people display information on their devices that has been sent to them voluntarily. As I said in the beginning, I have no quirks with Youtube going subscription-only.
smallerfish 3y ago
> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I'd argue that _content_ is a fairly gross word that we've all come to use because we're in the industry -- "I need some _content_ around my ads so that we get some impressions". There are plenty of other words that are less marketing associated and more clearly connotative with creatively produced material - article, report, essay, story, paper, proposal, manifesto, gallery, video, photographs, exhibit, website, blog post - even material. _Content_ is efficiently produced filler. As such, yes, in the extreme less _content_ gets made, and in the absence of _content_ there is organically more of the latter category. You can still make money on the internet without ads. Ads have in recent history been an easier, higher margin route. If the entire online ad industry fumbles, will we be substantially worse off? I don't think so: the number and size of websites would for sure shrink, but those left would have a much higher signal to noise.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Video as a format seems drastically overused to me. When I go to the internet to find some information, I either get ai generated essays of great length and no substance, or a link to YouTube. I'm not wasting my time watching a video even if it is sped up, just to learn something that could have been cleanly represented as a short document. If more people start using documents instead of videos where they stare at you and speak, I am in favor of this series of events.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Agreed, nothing more annoying than a video where a 10 line web page would suffice. And google - coincidentally, of course - ranks that video much higher than the 10 line webpage.
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      I use ddg and it still manages to be videos, and ddg seems to have a problem filtering ai spam pages. Is there a ubo list for that?
- 3y ago
account42 3y ago
Most "content" is not made with intent of monetization. Having less cash grab "content" and more genuine expressions would not be a bad thing. If centralized hosting of such "content" becomes unsustainable then that's even better.
gpderetta 3y ago
Youtube and friends only have themselves to blame: the tighter they turn the ad screw the more people they push to ad blockers. We went from a single tolerable, skippable 5 seconds ad segment to multiple unskipable very long segments in just a few years. I say this as someone who pays for YouTube Premium.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  And that's before we get into the content of the ads themselves, which is beyond insulting.
wruza 3y ago
First they destroyed the old internet by “forgetting” sites from search and created “platforms”. Then they abused adnetworks to take the biggest share and control over what users can do or will likely do with their user agents. Then they degraded every site and product searchability into ads-favored keyword matching. Then, when people started using their well-setup cardboard box traps to their taste, they demanded to either pay for that or to forcefully watch ads. I’m not gonna play a reasonable guy here, because it’s not a logical issue. I never wanted or expected to live in an internet like that. Google can go cry in a corner and look miserable. And everyone should install ublock origin. Think of it as Python 3 or ESM or Democracy. It’s much better, you all just have to figure out new life with it.
- godzillabrennus 3y ago
  I pay for YouTube to support the platform and creators. If you don't pay for a service, you aren't the customer you are the product. Google may need to shut down the free viewership of most YouTube videos unless the creator pays for them to be hosted or the viewers sign up for a subscription. The ad model is clearly failing.
  - kiba 3y ago
    Just because you are paying for a service doesn't mean that companies won't double dip or triple dip by either showing you ads or selling your data.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Yeah, movie theaters figured that out 30 years or so ago when they realized besides trailers (which okay, are ads of a sort), they could subject viewers who paid for a ticket to 20 minutes of ads for things like M&Ms and Coke before even the trailers begin. It's gotten to the point that you might as well show up 30 minutes after a movie is scheduled to begin as the movie itself won't have started yet.
      - smileysteve 3y ago
alemanek 3y ago
I have a bit of a different take on this. If we win the war against Ads lots of content won’t get made. But, the content that thrives in an Ad driven world is mostly toxic rage bait. I would argue that losing this content and instead only being left with content that people will actually pay for is a big net win for humanity. Likely we will never see a world without Ads but I can dream.
- acdha 3y ago
  There’s no winning a war against ads. There are too many people who can’t or won’t pay for services directly, and there are too many people looking to promote products or viewpoints who’ll keep offering money to anyone with an audience. What I’d like would be focusing on the downsides: ad networks should have legal restrictions on how they collect and share data, liability for any malware they distribute, and every ad should include the legal identity of the person who paid for them (which the network is required to certify). When sites see ads as free money, they plaster them everywhere. When they have to think about the negative externalities, that becomes a more nuanced decision than “would we like more money?”
  - octacat 3y ago
    We have legal restrictions now. Companies just figured out that they would show a form with buttons: "Accept All", "Accept essential". And said tracking cookies are now "essential". I don't believe "Accept essential" would not share your data - so, just using as privacy oriented browser as possible is the only solution. Youtube is full of clickbait, get rich quick and unhealthy influencers (how to work 80 hours a week and buy my book btw). Same with fb/ig. Maybe we have just too much content now.
  - alemanek 3y ago
    Oh yeah I agree. I was using “If we win the war on Ads” much like “If we achieve world peace”. Unlikely to the point of impossibility. Liability for malware distribution was something I haven’t seen proposed before but totally makes sense.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
redserk 3y ago
> Feels like even when a company provides a way to get rid of ads, many people still won't pay. I don’t think it’ll ever be possible to get everyone to pay, but if it’s easy to pay and priced low enough, paying becomes the easiest option for a lot of people. Why bother pirating music in 2023 when any number of music streaming services are about $10-11/mo? YouTube Premium bundles YouTube music and costs $19/mo. This is higher than (or on par) a lot of streaming subscriptions. Another annoyance is that it’s bundled with a music service. Some non-US markets experimented with a cheaper ad-free-YouTube only tier for less than half the price. When that tier of service can be offered, it is very hard to think most of the $19 goes towards storage, bandwidth, and operational overhead.
- CubsFan1060 3y ago
  Keep in mind this is a random reddit thread I found and I can't vouch for the information, but: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should_at_least_know_that_55_of_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should... According to that, $8.55 of your $19 would go to the creators. Presumably the other $10.45 goes for storage, bandwidth, operational overhead, and profit.
  - redserk 3y ago
    Interesting! I haven’t done much digging but that is a much larger share than I was expecting.
concordDance 3y ago
> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I'd be quite fine if the only "content" is funded by patreons (I give £60/month to various patreons) or just people doing it for non-financial reasons.
Beached 3y ago
I still won't pay because I consider YouTube predatory with their ads. they are not a company focused on providing a service and making a reasonable profit on top. their ad policies are about maximum extraction from the platform, couple with aggressive behavior towards content creators that make the platform. I used to be fine with the ads, but they got greedy and ratcheted it up way to much. now I block them all or don't use the service. yt could have had my ad views, but they demanded too much.
ulrikrasmussen 3y ago
No, but I also don't expect Google to change, I want their business model to become untenable so better alternatives can get a larger market share. If content creators don't think they get anything out of enabling advertising on YouTube, then they'll stop or move to other platforms which are not based on providing algorithmically generated feeds with interspersed ads based on user profiles. I hate advertising; I think it results in perverse incentives which promotes short-form generic low-effort entertainment. I therefore want to actively steal compute resources from companies whose business model is based on online advertising without giving them ad impressions and pay content creators that I like via other means such as Patreon. I also just think 99% of advertising is bad taste which makes me mentally exhausted and puts me in a bad mood, so I just want it out of my sight. Yes, I could pay for YouTube Premium, but that would go against my own interests since I would be financially supporting a platform with perverse incentives for content creators.
throwuwu 3y ago
Sure and platforms _say_ they will give you an ad free experience if you pay them a monthly fee but they always wind up adding ads once they’ve captured their audience.
- musictubes 3y ago
  So you don’t support them because of what they might do later? That’s insane. Support the platforms you like right now. If they get worse you stop supporting them. “Captured” is such a dramatic term. Nothing stops a person from walking away from a video service. Can’t help but think the worry about future ads is simply rationalization for pirating now.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    I have a hard time having sympathy for a platform that ruined my suggested videos feed and then proceeds to put two unskippable ads plus a skippable one at the start of videos plus more ads in the middle and end. When uBlock stopped working I actually stuck with chrome and thought I’d give ads a shot knowing that some of the money would go to creators but the ads literally got worse over the course of a few weeks so I’m happily going back to blocking now.
throw10920 3y ago
I block ads both because $14/mo is too much for me (I simply don't use YouTube enough to get that much value out of it), I object to ad-funded models (I don't want to watch a few ads instead of pay for Premium), and I strongly object to giving Google money because of their extremely broad portfolio of evil behavior (e.g. the terrible DMCA process - it's actually bad for creators to stay, and I want them to leave!) I would pay to watch videos using microtransactions on a platform that is not owned by a depraved company. I have no objections to compensating creators for their work in general (unlike a lot of people here, who feel entitled to get everything for free).
Log_out_ 3y ago
We are forcing cooperations to take a shareholder value cut and pivot away from advertising models that do no longer work.
jszymborski 3y ago
I pay for Nebula, I pay for Patreon. I cannot find it in me to give Alphabet a red cent of my money. Alphabet's primary goal is to turn the internet into cable and I honestly have no stomach for it. Furthermore, I have precious few moments on this earth, I have no desire to have to spend them watching propaganda from corps (and sometimes just unfiltered political propaganda). But most of all, ads are a privacy and security risk like no other. They follow you across the internet for ages, sell your data to the highest bidder (sometimes that bidder is the feds) and are the foremost distribution network for malware. Sorry, I rather YouTube go away than have to agree to the above.
RoyTyrell 3y ago
Taking it to the extreme is pointless: the other extreme is that YT is only ads. That doesn't make sense either. Here is my problem with the ads: the same ads will repeat many times over the course of a video, some ads will blast obnoxiously loud, and there are just way too many ads. Also when I say too many ads, it's not just YouTube - we are bombarded by ads everywhere now. A few days ago I was watching a 4hr YT stream on my Fire Stick (and don't block ads there) and they were cutting to ads every 5min. Also I sometimes like to listen to music during walks and cutting to an ad in the middle of a 3min song is so ridiculous and obtrusive. YouTube premium is expensive, especially if you have other streaming services. This is Google's problem to solve, not ours. When you are "at war" with your customers, then the business needs to stop and think "what am I doing wrong". Under capitalism, it's the buyer that decides what your product or service is worth. YouTube Premium isn't worth $14/mo to me, so yes, I will continue to block ads as much as I can.
lopis 3y ago
If content creators leave YouTube for better platforms, and those platforms become even better as a consequence, I count that as a big win. I would love if platforms like Nebula would get a real chance at life. But nebula is only for educational content. I miss the comedy part of YouTube and would gladly pay the same I pay nebula for an extra "comedy tube" subscription of comparable content quality.
jrm4 3y ago
It's utterly bizarre to me that this people still get this idea that everything would just stop? Peertube et al exist. Patreon exists. Vimeo, Twitch, Tiktok. On one hand I'm absolutely aware that the TYPE of video content we have would change. On the other, I'm not at all convinced that the destruction of YouTubes particular monetizing model would be a bad thing. I don't think much of value at all would be lost if people couldn't make money off Youtube the way they do now.
potsandpans 3y ago
For every one youtuber making a living, there's 1000s making pennies. I'm old enough to remember that content creators existed before the youtube monetization machine. I think if there's one thing we can rely on not stopping, it's people's urge to create and share
cyanydeez 3y ago
well, commercial content takes a hit.
reportgunner 3y ago
> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? If the content is made only because of the ads, is it still content or actually an ad ?

jacquesm 3y ago

> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I can't speak for anybody else but my content will still get made. > Do you think Google is going to go to a model where things are freely accessible without ads? Maybe, maybe not, whose to say what Google will do. Maybe they will value the influence or the goodwill more than the lack of income. Maybe some of the content will be free and other bits will be walled off (effectively this is already the case with youtube music). Maybe there will be less MFY content and that's perfectly ok with me, 99.99% of it is crap anyway. Youtuber isn't a profession I recognize. > Feels like even when a company provides a way to get rid of ads, many people still won't pay. And that's ok. > They _say_ they will, but I find often people will want to substitute their own terms (Well, youtube premium is $x, but I think it's only worth $y, so I'm going to just block ads completely). Yes, or you pay and you still get ads...

CubsFan1060 3y ago
> I can't speak for anybody else but my content will still get made. How will your content get served? If you say you'll just pay to serve it, I think that's a fine answer.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Unless you're a VERY large and successful YT channel, you aren't making bank on YT itself, it's merch and sponsorships, Patreon and so on that make the money. Monetized Twitch-like feeds are another winner, and again not dependent on YT monetization.
  - CubsFan1060 3y ago
    Aren't these all VERY tightly integrated? They can sell merch and sponsorships _because_ of YouTube in the first place?
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      The point is that many successful YouTubers wouldn't be broke if they stopped making ad revenue from YouTube, because they make most of their money elsewhere anyways. Which means they would continue making content
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    That does not answer the question. There is floatplane and Nebula, but beyond those where will be the content be hosted and will those revenue stream actually cover those hosting/development costs and running the site? And on other hand if users are paying you something, would they not expect not to have to watch through mediocre sponsorships?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The 10 views my videos get I can afford. Just like I can afford my web hosting.
bko 3y ago
YouTube is incredibly expensive to run which explains why there's such little competition. Think about it, anyone can host gigs of videos perpetually indexed for free. What percentage of videos have fewer than 100 views? Google has killed off profitable projects. If you think they'll dump tens of billions every year hosting videos that no one watches, you're kidding yourself. And what we noticed with paying is that people are very unwilling to pay even a small amount for a service. For instance FB makes around over $50 per user in North America. What percentage of users do you think would pay $50 a year to use Facebook?
- account42 3y ago
  > YouTube is incredibly expensive to run which explains why there's such little competition. So? That's their problem. > Google has killed off profitable projects. If you think they'll dump tens of billions every year hosting videos that no one watches, you're kidding yourself. Can't wait for YouTube to die. Hopefully the replacement will be less centralized and not beholden to a single american company. > And what we noticed with paying is that people are very unwilling to pay even a small amount for a service. Most "services" are not worth the effort needed to pay them, the amount doesn't even come into it. This is also a self-created issue. Google et al have trained people to not pay by dumping money into these "free" services to kill the competition. Now they are upset that people don't want to pay them? I can't find a violin tiny enough to express my compassion for them. > For instance FB makes around over $50 per user in North America. What percentage of users do you think would pay $50 a year to use Facebook? So? They make $0 off of me. I don't care how much they can or cannot make with ads, that doesn't make ads acceptable.
- concordDance 3y ago
  > tens of billions every year hosting videos That seems way too high. There's something like half a trillion hours watched per year. Does it really cost almost $0.10 for an hour of video?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Youtube is hilarious, on the one hand they keep forcing autoplayed content on you and then they match that with a popup that inquires if you are still watching the video.

beeboobaa 3y ago

Because those companies are just taking the piss. They are like an abusive boyfriend that wants to know what you're up to all the time. They pretend you can pay them off so they won't have to stalk you, but the prices they ask are greatly exaggerated and exist solely to try and fool regulators. But if you're happy to pay whatever is asked of you, that'll be a 100 dollars thanks

dageshi 3y ago
Youtube premium is £12.99 / month or £19.99/month for a family plan. That really doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  To know whether that is unreasonable or not you'd have to compare it to the cost of providing you that service, taking into account that youtube is just a delivery mechanism and so is infrastructure, not content. And what is or is not affordable is really dependent on where you live and that kind of money is a very large amount in some places. And especially in those places access to youtube for educational purposes can be quite important.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    Youtube premium also pays out the content creators you watch in lieu of the ads you don't watch does it not? At least that was my understanding. If so it's not just the infrastructure cost which itself is not trivial for a site like youtube.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Infrastructure costs are such that they're a rounding error on the total google budget.
      - tmtvl 3y ago
        With all respect, do you have a source for that? I thought Alphabet was losing money hand over fist on YT before they started being so aggressive with the ads.

simiones 3y ago

> They _say_ they will, but I find often people will want to substitute their own terms (Well, youtube premium is $x, but I think it's only worth $y, so I'm going to just block ads completely). That just means, by definition, that the prices YouTube are trying to charge are too high, doesn't it? What we're seeing is basically a negotiation tactic: you either reduce the price, or we'll keep using ad blockers. Not to mention, most creators don't really live off YouTube ads, those pay too little for the vast majority of channels as far as I understand. Creators live off their own sponsorships, Patreon etc. Note, I'm actually someone who thinks YouTube Premium is good value for my money and am already paying for it.

dageshi 3y ago
In this circumstance there isn't a price those people would be willing to pay. They simply want the service for free, refuse to pay but are unwilling to come out and say as much, so they use host of justifications to avoid it.
- aeze 3y ago
  I think they are simply saying they’d rather not have the platform at all than pay for it. Which is fair.
CubsFan1060 3y ago
Maybe. I think "too high" is probably subjective to each person. But, I'm in the camp of "if it's too high, just stop using it". I think this isn't different than most things. If I think the price of electricity is too high, my option isn't to say "well, your price it too high, so I'm going to use electricity for free".

irrational 3y ago

This reminds me of a business colleague of mine who truly does not understand why anyone would write software and then release it for free. There are many people willing to do that, and many people willing to create content on YouTube for free. We aren’t all driven by the almighty dollar.

CubsFan1060 3y ago
I think that is totally fine. Serving it, of course, is not free. Content may not have been my best choice of words.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

guerrilla 3y ago

This has nothing to do with content. Patreon, non-profit and other models exist for this purpose.

jonathanstrange 3y ago

I personally prefer free content made by volunteers and would like the whole web to be ad free. It would be fine for me if Youtube stopped operations and if all "income-oriented" content producers went away. I feel the same about websites. The Internet was fine before it became commercialized. I'm both creating and consuming free content (why not?) but I'm not willing to waste my time on watching ads or anything like that. For other things, I'm willing to pay. Other people's mileage may differ, of course. It's just a personal preference.

idiotsecant 3y ago
The people that create the content you consume only have so many hours in the day, just like you. They need to pay the rent, buy groceries, get their kids braces, just like the test of us. It seems immoral and unrealistic to expect that for free. Consume it and support them or don't consume it and don't support them but the attitude that you're entitled to it is a little slimy.
- jonathanstrange 3y ago
  Huh? Why would it be immoral? I'm producing free content myself, e.g. my open source repositories have permissive licenses like MIT, I run a blog, have put some of my music online, etc. Seriously, chances are almost 100% percent that you are massively benefiting right now from completely free of charge software that some guys developed for free in their spare time (perhaps even decades ago) - how immoral of you!
  - dncornholio 3y ago
    What are these mental gymnastics? You're practically saying nobody is allowed to make money for their content because you don't. Where is the logic in this?
    - jonathanstrange 3y ago
      You misunderstood me entirely. People can sell their content for whatever price they like. For example, I sell my science fiction and fantasy novels although I could give them away for free. I also used to sell shareware in the past and plan to sell commercial, proprietary software in the future. People can freely decide whether they want to sell the content they've created or give it away for free. If it's the former, they should sell it, and if it's the latter, they should give it away for free. They just cannot and ought not rely on business models that restrict how people display information on their devices that has been sent to them voluntarily. As I said in the beginning, I have no quirks with Youtube going subscription-only.

smallerfish 3y ago

> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I'd argue that _content_ is a fairly gross word that we've all come to use because we're in the industry -- "I need some _content_ around my ads so that we get some impressions". There are plenty of other words that are less marketing associated and more clearly connotative with creatively produced material - article, report, essay, story, paper, proposal, manifesto, gallery, video, photographs, exhibit, website, blog post - even material. _Content_ is efficiently produced filler. As such, yes, in the extreme less _content_ gets made, and in the absence of _content_ there is organically more of the latter category. You can still make money on the internet without ads. Ads have in recent history been an easier, higher margin route. If the entire online ad industry fumbles, will we be substantially worse off? I don't think so: the number and size of websites would for sure shrink, but those left would have a much higher signal to noise.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Video as a format seems drastically overused to me. When I go to the internet to find some information, I either get ai generated essays of great length and no substance, or a link to YouTube. I'm not wasting my time watching a video even if it is sped up, just to learn something that could have been cleanly represented as a short document. If more people start using documents instead of videos where they stare at you and speak, I am in favor of this series of events.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Agreed, nothing more annoying than a video where a 10 line web page would suffice. And google - coincidentally, of course - ranks that video much higher than the 10 line webpage.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    I use ddg and it still manages to be videos, and ddg seems to have a problem filtering ai spam pages. Is there a ubo list for that?
3y ago

account42 3y ago

Most "content" is not made with intent of monetization. Having less cash grab "content" and more genuine expressions would not be a bad thing. If centralized hosting of such "content" becomes unsustainable then that's even better.

gpderetta 3y ago

Youtube and friends only have themselves to blame: the tighter they turn the ad screw the more people they push to ad blockers. We went from a single tolerable, skippable 5 seconds ad segment to multiple unskipable very long segments in just a few years. I say this as someone who pays for YouTube Premium.

jacquesm 3y ago
And that's before we get into the content of the ads themselves, which is beyond insulting.

wruza 3y ago

First they destroyed the old internet by “forgetting” sites from search and created “platforms”. Then they abused adnetworks to take the biggest share and control over what users can do or will likely do with their user agents. Then they degraded every site and product searchability into ads-favored keyword matching. Then, when people started using their well-setup cardboard box traps to their taste, they demanded to either pay for that or to forcefully watch ads. I’m not gonna play a reasonable guy here, because it’s not a logical issue. I never wanted or expected to live in an internet like that. Google can go cry in a corner and look miserable. And everyone should install ublock origin. Think of it as Python 3 or ESM or Democracy. It’s much better, you all just have to figure out new life with it.

godzillabrennus 3y ago
I pay for YouTube to support the platform and creators. If you don't pay for a service, you aren't the customer you are the product. Google may need to shut down the free viewership of most YouTube videos unless the creator pays for them to be hosted or the viewers sign up for a subscription. The ad model is clearly failing.
- kiba 3y ago
  Just because you are paying for a service doesn't mean that companies won't double dip or triple dip by either showing you ads or selling your data.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Yeah, movie theaters figured that out 30 years or so ago when they realized besides trailers (which okay, are ads of a sort), they could subject viewers who paid for a ticket to 20 minutes of ads for things like M&Ms and Coke before even the trailers begin. It's gotten to the point that you might as well show up 30 minutes after a movie is scheduled to begin as the movie itself won't have started yet.
    - smileysteve 3y ago

alemanek 3y ago

I have a bit of a different take on this. If we win the war against Ads lots of content won’t get made. But, the content that thrives in an Ad driven world is mostly toxic rage bait. I would argue that losing this content and instead only being left with content that people will actually pay for is a big net win for humanity. Likely we will never see a world without Ads but I can dream.

acdha 3y ago
There’s no winning a war against ads. There are too many people who can’t or won’t pay for services directly, and there are too many people looking to promote products or viewpoints who’ll keep offering money to anyone with an audience. What I’d like would be focusing on the downsides: ad networks should have legal restrictions on how they collect and share data, liability for any malware they distribute, and every ad should include the legal identity of the person who paid for them (which the network is required to certify). When sites see ads as free money, they plaster them everywhere. When they have to think about the negative externalities, that becomes a more nuanced decision than “would we like more money?”
- octacat 3y ago
  We have legal restrictions now. Companies just figured out that they would show a form with buttons: "Accept All", "Accept essential". And said tracking cookies are now "essential". I don't believe "Accept essential" would not share your data - so, just using as privacy oriented browser as possible is the only solution. Youtube is full of clickbait, get rich quick and unhealthy influencers (how to work 80 hours a week and buy my book btw). Same with fb/ig. Maybe we have just too much content now.
- alemanek 3y ago
  Oh yeah I agree. I was using “If we win the war on Ads” much like “If we achieve world peace”. Unlikely to the point of impossibility. Liability for malware distribution was something I haven’t seen proposed before but totally makes sense.
- bluescrn 3y ago

redserk 3y ago

> Feels like even when a company provides a way to get rid of ads, many people still won't pay. I don’t think it’ll ever be possible to get everyone to pay, but if it’s easy to pay and priced low enough, paying becomes the easiest option for a lot of people. Why bother pirating music in 2023 when any number of music streaming services are about $10-11/mo? YouTube Premium bundles YouTube music and costs $19/mo. This is higher than (or on par) a lot of streaming subscriptions. Another annoyance is that it’s bundled with a music service. Some non-US markets experimented with a cheaper ad-free-YouTube only tier for less than half the price. When that tier of service can be offered, it is very hard to think most of the $19 goes towards storage, bandwidth, and operational overhead.

CubsFan1060 3y ago
Keep in mind this is a random reddit thread I found and I can't vouch for the information, but: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should_at_least_know_that_55_of_youtube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should... According to that, $8.55 of your $19 would go to the creators. Presumably the other $10.45 goes for storage, bandwidth, operational overhead, and profit.
- redserk 3y ago
  Interesting! I haven’t done much digging but that is a much larger share than I was expecting.

concordDance 3y ago

> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? I'd be quite fine if the only "content" is funded by patreons (I give £60/month to various patreons) or just people doing it for non-financial reasons.

Beached 3y ago

I still won't pay because I consider YouTube predatory with their ads. they are not a company focused on providing a service and making a reasonable profit on top. their ad policies are about maximum extraction from the platform, couple with aggressive behavior towards content creators that make the platform. I used to be fine with the ads, but they got greedy and ratcheted it up way to much. now I block them all or don't use the service. yt could have had my ad views, but they demanded too much.

ulrikrasmussen 3y ago

No, but I also don't expect Google to change, I want their business model to become untenable so better alternatives can get a larger market share. If content creators don't think they get anything out of enabling advertising on YouTube, then they'll stop or move to other platforms which are not based on providing algorithmically generated feeds with interspersed ads based on user profiles. I hate advertising; I think it results in perverse incentives which promotes short-form generic low-effort entertainment. I therefore want to actively steal compute resources from companies whose business model is based on online advertising without giving them ad impressions and pay content creators that I like via other means such as Patreon. I also just think 99% of advertising is bad taste which makes me mentally exhausted and puts me in a bad mood, so I just want it out of my sight. Yes, I could pay for YouTube Premium, but that would go against my own interests since I would be financially supporting a platform with perverse incentives for content creators.

throwuwu 3y ago

Sure and platforms _say_ they will give you an ad free experience if you pay them a monthly fee but they always wind up adding ads once they’ve captured their audience.

musictubes 3y ago
So you don’t support them because of what they might do later? That’s insane. Support the platforms you like right now. If they get worse you stop supporting them. “Captured” is such a dramatic term. Nothing stops a person from walking away from a video service. Can’t help but think the worry about future ads is simply rationalization for pirating now.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  I have a hard time having sympathy for a platform that ruined my suggested videos feed and then proceeds to put two unskippable ads plus a skippable one at the start of videos plus more ads in the middle and end. When uBlock stopped working I actually stuck with chrome and thought I’d give ads a shot knowing that some of the money would go to creators but the ads literally got worse over the course of a few weeks so I’m happily going back to blocking now.

throw10920 3y ago

I block ads both because $14/mo is too much for me (I simply don't use YouTube enough to get that much value out of it), I object to ad-funded models (I don't want to watch a few ads instead of pay for Premium), and I strongly object to giving Google money because of their extremely broad portfolio of evil behavior (e.g. the terrible DMCA process - it's actually bad for creators to stay, and I want them to leave!) I would pay to watch videos using microtransactions on a platform that is not owned by a depraved company. I have no objections to compensating creators for their work in general (unlike a lot of people here, who feel entitled to get everything for free).

Log_out_ 3y ago

We are forcing cooperations to take a shareholder value cut and pivot away from advertising models that do no longer work.

jszymborski 3y ago

I pay for Nebula, I pay for Patreon. I cannot find it in me to give Alphabet a red cent of my money. Alphabet's primary goal is to turn the internet into cable and I honestly have no stomach for it. Furthermore, I have precious few moments on this earth, I have no desire to have to spend them watching propaganda from corps (and sometimes just unfiltered political propaganda). But most of all, ads are a privacy and security risk like no other. They follow you across the internet for ages, sell your data to the highest bidder (sometimes that bidder is the feds) and are the foremost distribution network for malware. Sorry, I rather YouTube go away than have to agree to the above.

RoyTyrell 3y ago

Taking it to the extreme is pointless: the other extreme is that YT is only ads. That doesn't make sense either. Here is my problem with the ads: the same ads will repeat many times over the course of a video, some ads will blast obnoxiously loud, and there are just way too many ads. Also when I say too many ads, it's not just YouTube - we are bombarded by ads everywhere now. A few days ago I was watching a 4hr YT stream on my Fire Stick (and don't block ads there) and they were cutting to ads every 5min. Also I sometimes like to listen to music during walks and cutting to an ad in the middle of a 3min song is so ridiculous and obtrusive. YouTube premium is expensive, especially if you have other streaming services. This is Google's problem to solve, not ours. When you are "at war" with your customers, then the business needs to stop and think "what am I doing wrong". Under capitalism, it's the buyer that decides what your product or service is worth. YouTube Premium isn't worth $14/mo to me, so yes, I will continue to block ads as much as I can.

lopis 3y ago

If content creators leave YouTube for better platforms, and those platforms become even better as a consequence, I count that as a big win. I would love if platforms like Nebula would get a real chance at life. But nebula is only for educational content. I miss the comedy part of YouTube and would gladly pay the same I pay nebula for an extra "comedy tube" subscription of comparable content quality.

jrm4 3y ago

It's utterly bizarre to me that this people still get this idea that everything would just stop? Peertube et al exist. Patreon exists. Vimeo, Twitch, Tiktok. On one hand I'm absolutely aware that the TYPE of video content we have would change. On the other, I'm not at all convinced that the destruction of YouTubes particular monetizing model would be a bad thing. I don't think much of value at all would be lost if people couldn't make money off Youtube the way they do now.

potsandpans 3y ago

For every one youtuber making a living, there's 1000s making pennies. I'm old enough to remember that content creators existed before the youtube monetization machine. I think if there's one thing we can rely on not stopping, it's people's urge to create and share

cyanydeez 3y ago

well, commercial content takes a hit.

reportgunner 3y ago

> If we take this to an extreme, doesn't content just not get made? If the content is made only because of the ads, is it still content or actually an ad ?