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Nice moving the goalposts! I wasn’t talking about the types of ads you see, I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are

by wredue 3y ago

Nice moving the goalposts! I wasn’t talking about the types of ads you see, I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Secondly, paying for premium doesn’t in any capacity stop you from seeing scam ads in the sharing networks Google powers. Given that other platforms are already showing ads for their paid tiers, it is not a matter of “if”, but “when” for YouTube.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Nice moving the goalposts! ... I'll type slowly this time to make it easier to understand: I don't care about ads on other sites, I only care about avoiding them on YouTube, and YouTube Premium currently works fine for that. It's OK if they "spy" on me to keep the other ads relevant, but that's not the subject of this thread.
- wredue 3y ago
  Okay? The point is that the claim that “paying for premium means you’re no longer the product” is absolutely, and demonstrably bullshit. Now you’re just giving money to Google for you to be the product, with a side benefit of (currently) not seeing Google ads. This it going to change within 16 months anyway, as Google shifts away from broad spectrum premium towards premium having different benefits, and you’ll have to have individual paid subscriptions to remove ads for specific users (not unlike twitch, where paying for prime no longer removes ads).
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Right, you are never "product" in the first place. You are either paying user or a supplier of product, both of which are providing something of value to the company in exchange for what they provide you. The "product" witticism is a bad presentation of the problem, both mistaking the source of distinction (presenting it as pay vs. not-pay) and the nature of the issue (presenting it as product vs. customer.) It's related to another overused and misleading statement, the idea that "the customer is always right" is a general principle (when, in fact, it very much is not and businesses actively work to drive out undesirable paying customers, and strategically neglect the particular interest of others, all the time.) The real issue is that if you are a small, replaceable fraction of a broad set of people from whom a firm can get the same thing of value -- whether its attention to ads, or a small monthly payment, or whatever -- there is very little reason for the company to expend effort catering to things that will keep you in particular (rather than the broad group as a whole) happy and willing to supply the thing of value in question, and if you are part of a particularly demanding subset of that group, placing a high demand on resources but from which the firm is not able to extract greater value by market segmentation, then the firm is quite likely to not only not want to expend much to satisfy you, but is likely to actively wish to drive you off as a customer. The real issue is that you are a commodity vendor seeking to influence a large buyer (or a commoditized purchaser trying to influence a large seller), not that you are "product" or that you aren't "paying money".

by wredue 3y ago

CamperBob2 3y ago

Nice moving the goalposts! ... I'll type slowly this time to make it easier to understand: I don't care about ads on other sites, I only care about avoiding them on YouTube, and YouTube Premium currently works fine for that. It's OK if they "spy" on me to keep the other ads relevant, but that's not the subject of this thread.

wredue 3y ago
Okay? The point is that the claim that “paying for premium means you’re no longer the product” is absolutely, and demonstrably bullshit. Now you’re just giving money to Google for you to be the product, with a side benefit of (currently) not seeing Google ads. This it going to change within 16 months anyway, as Google shifts away from broad spectrum premium towards premium having different benefits, and you’ll have to have individual paid subscriptions to remove ads for specific users (not unlike twitch, where paying for prime no longer removes ads).

dragonwriter 3y ago

> I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit. Right, you are never "product" in the first place. You are either paying user or a supplier of product, both of which are providing something of value to the company in exchange for what they provide you. The "product" witticism is a bad presentation of the problem, both mistaking the source of distinction (presenting it as pay vs. not-pay) and the nature of the issue (presenting it as product vs. customer.) It's related to another overused and misleading statement, the idea that "the customer is always right" is a general principle (when, in fact, it very much is not and businesses actively work to drive out undesirable paying customers, and strategically neglect the particular interest of others, all the time.) The real issue is that if you are a small, replaceable fraction of a broad set of people from whom a firm can get the same thing of value -- whether its attention to ads, or a small monthly payment, or whatever -- there is very little reason for the company to expend effort catering to things that will keep you in particular (rather than the broad group as a whole) happy and willing to supply the thing of value in question, and if you are part of a particularly demanding subset of that group, placing a high demand on resources but from which the firm is not able to extract greater value by market segmentation, then the firm is quite likely to not only not want to expend much to satisfy you, but is likely to actively wish to drive you off as a customer. The real issue is that you are a commodity vendor seeking to influence a large buyer (or a commoditized purchaser trying to influence a large seller), not that you are "product" or that you aren't "paying money".